Is playing defensive easier at low ELO?

[Giggling Gbeto]

Hey guys,

I'm around 1100 Elo and recently started to play ranked a bit more. I noticed that I usually have 2-4 Minutes TC Idle time in mid feudal age. Also my eco balance is usually far off from clicking castle age without floating wood or using the market 2-3 times. This is due to the early aggression where I always go for scout or archer rushes.

Last game I got vikings and thought: Why not sit back and let my eco kick in? It felt so much easier to sit back, build some skirms, care about my eco balance till castle age, boom, make a defensive siege workshop to defend and at some point win with superior eco. I also felt more relaxed without the small time window of doing early damage.

I know it's a small sample size :D. But have you made similar experiences in low elo? I can imagine that with low APM it's more worth to focus on eco and macro instead of overmicroing scout/archers while the own eco is in shambles.

PS: I can imagine that at higher levels, the players can just maintain their eco disproportionately better while putting on early pressure.

 

[Bandana]

Being the defender is overall easier than being the agressor in most cases. Like you said, you have more time to focus on ur economy and I would say that is most important at lowlevels. You can go aggresive at your opponent and kill 3 vils, but if you have 5 min of idl tc time because of that, your vilkills will do nothing and you will be still behind.

I do think, when you become better at balancing your economy and not idling your tc. You should play more aggresive to improve. Not because it is ''better'' but to get some more understandig of the game. When I start playing aoe again, the first 10 games I will go forward every game. I think that is at some point the best way to improve a big step skillwise. Just to get a feel for mapcontrol and the way people react. But that is because I wont idl my tc and have a decent balance. Keep in mind that this is just my take. There are probably others with other opinions.

imo atleast below like 1750 being the defender always gives you an advantage

 

[Tiekel]

The other day I watched back a rec against an 1100 in a tg. I did some miss micro and lost a scout fight...while he ended up being 2 vils behind because of idle time. Watching back your recs will probably help you realise better when it's important when and where to focus. this has little to do with being aggressive or not.
Another tip; check idles! I easily gained 100 elo by simply being more consistent in clicking the idle button.

 

[HongeyKong]

No, at low levels people dont know how to adapt / when to stop producing army/ when to add TCs. So just go the all or nothing route, either go full aggression or full greedy boom.

EDIT: Going aggressive usually gives you map control + scouting info, which low lever players never get while playing defensively, as they just dont know how to scout.

 

[emarz4697]

I recently went from 1200 to 1400, can confirm that people at my elo (myself included) aren't the best at early and midgame aggression. For example, if I play gold pit and find that I have a back gold I always wall fc and if my opponent opens scouts, then that's almost guaranteed to be my win.

 

[kalpit00]

Wall. Make TCs. Make mangos. Make knights and try to counter attack and raid as much as possible. Make opponent react in his base while you defend with mangonels. Don't think too much about civ matchups or unit choices at that elo, just react properly when defending and make opponent multitask by reacting in his own base and its guaranteed one of you will potato at one place. Use stand ground on archers or MAA, very useful when u have to focus army in 2 different spots

 

[kalpit00]

imo atleast below like 1750 being the defender always gives you an advantage

Hmm, I would say below 1600 for sure. Openings aside (because most 16-17xx always go drush or MAA archers = meta, opening scouts is always losing strat bc u never find someone playing full open), i think map spawns and civs play a very huge role.

Under 1550, if someone is fully walled, they find it incredibly difficult to break that in feudal age, and they don't know exactly how to proceed (full feudal, but dont prepare spears in defense and idle enemy gold so kts still overwhelm, or half ass and try to idle army production to catch in castle age time and lose all army to tech advantage and then are in disadvantage).

But I believe 1600 onwards, macro and map awareness improves a lot, and people start to value map position more than vil kills, so if someone is going greedy by full walling, the opponent won't be too far behind even if they committed to more army. It's like they take the damage they can get with minimal army (like forcing a tower, or making them run from 1 woodline to another, idling gold = most crucial one), and inevitably their full walled eco would be untouched so they try to buy as much time as possible with the feudal army and transition to their castle age comp.

I think the strongest strat at 15xx level tho, is 1 TC kt siege aggression, they really struggle vs that. Mangonels are too good at that level, and 1 TC kts overwhelm if the opponent goes for 3 TCs.

1700+ gets most tricky. Civs play a huge role, timing attacks, reacting in time, focusing in exactly how eco is developing to prepare the next transition (and also hiding that transition), map dependent strategies, unit control (not so the flashy dodging ballistics micro, but more so the functional split micro, stand ground units, scouts picking off monks taking relics, killing reinforcements, sniping low hp kts and sending back low hp ones to heal) - all these start to become a thing in my experience

 

[_Donatello_]

No, at low levels people dont know how to adapt / when to stop producing army/ when to add TCs. So just go the all or nothing route, either go full aggression or full greedy boom.

EDIT: Going aggressive usually gives you map control + scouting info, which low lever players never get while playing defensively, as they just dont know how to scout.

I agree on this that all in agression work best on low lvl, but if you have several minuts idle TC in feudal it would pay off more to just wall and try to keep TC working

I jumped between 1100-1300 trying to do all kinda different play.

Then for a few weeks switched to 1 TC 3 ST all in just picking bloodline civs (never french but with them would be even easier) and it worked easy up to 1500 were I stopped doing it because it was booring doing the same every game and I felt like I were cheating and not really playing the game. Went back to random and back to 1300 ^^. This prob harder now with all the indian pickers.

So if you only wanna improve rating I think this is easiest way. I used one of Dragonstarts builds, but don't remember what one, it was back in february, one of the scout into knights BO's here Dragonstar BO

In short you stayed feudal abit longer intill 22-26 farms, 10 wood and 8 gold then up with wheelbarrow, and when you halfway to castle you switch 5 woodies over to gold so you can no stop produce from 3 ST, normaly enemy try to boom and you can just down his TC with your mass, if he go heavy pike try to add siege

 

[kalpit00]

In short you stayed feudal abit longer intill 22-26 farms, 10 wood and 8 gold then up with wheelbarrow, and when you halfway to castle you switch 5 woodies over to gold so you can no stop produce from 3 ST, normaly enemy try to boom and you can just down his TC with your mass, if he go heavy pike try to add siege

This right here is what will 100% work in any lower elo game (13-14++ below) but should never work after that level. Even after the xbow nerf, the early castle age spike is too strong and as the knight player, you cannot afford to wait any longer than 22 mins (Most ranged unit builds aim to click up around 18 mins, I think hera used to do a crazy MAA ranged build where he farmed so early and would click castle at like 16:30 mins). Now I don't know what time exactly would this BO by dragonstar would arrive you at castle age, but these few mins late to castle age and going directly for 3 stable kts will never work, you can say goodbye to your gold and all secondary golds, all woodlines and 5-10 farms because xbows will force any of your feudal army back (including skirms unless you try to make more and more, which should further delay your castle timing), and not to mention that xbow into camel or xbow - kts transition is a very potent strategy at higher elos just for this reason, you use that early xbow timing to get map control, idle enemy gold and add camels to counter the few knights he can make with the gold in his bank (or add knights if he is opening E-skirms)

All this being said, directing back to the first sentence, such a BO will guaranteed work at lower elos, granted your base is walled and you prepare for the later castle age by making a tower at gold, and banking enough gold. I am pretty confident a 1300 would be on cloud nine with the "damage" he will have done in those few minutes, and then autopilot and make TCs and fail to adapt in time, and then the 3 stable kt aggression with siege will win.

 

[SuperskinnyBLS]

Playing defensive = you have the whole action on your screen. It's easier on any level

 

[GosBanyat]

i don't know, im kinda low elo, i suck at defending, i suck at attacking, but im good at raiding... i think? The only think im certain of is that i never wall because i always leave a hole, so i kinda stopped walling

 

[Memeluke]

playing aggressive is easier, just abuse the market and eat tc no skill required.
Attack is the secret of defense; defense is the planning of an attack

 

[Tiekel]

playing aggressive is easier, just abuse the market and eat tc no skill required.
Attack is the secret of defense; defense is the planning of an attack

It's nonsense that a player like Hoang doesn't have skill. He generally has little idle time unless intended. He shows by his responses he understands the game well. His attention is where it needs to be. I've never seen him bing completely unaware of his own hometown getting flattened like I saw a top player called Spring doing once. He has the general skillset of a top 100 player.

 

[amazing_knight]

Attack is the secret of defense; defense is the planning of an attack

- Sun Tzu

but...
"It depends" - TheViper