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Originally posted by 
L_Clan_Chris on Legion Clan forums (link).
Written on 15th of February 2009, after losing vs _kyo 2:1 in BCC2.
"There have been quite a few times I've felt like I've noticed that my adversaries have been extremely quick, strong, coordinated, and intelligent.
Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." I have always liked to take very key aspects of these giant’s styles and intertwine them with my own.
Over the years, I have felt this way against these giants (presented chronologically): _IamCat,
Anycall_PD1, 
Aluba007, RD_ChampioN, Arch_Koven_, _IamKmkm, Grunt, 
Halen,
_DauT_, 
Ruso, 
Alive, (hong kong) Ding, 
Feeling, and now (hong kong) Kyo.
I am going to briefly cover the small (in my opinion, major) things that have fine tuned my style of thinking into understanding AoC a little better. Each and every one of these players has demonstrated their abilities by giving me a sound whooping at least once (every one of the games discussed are categorized as a severe destruction of yours truly).
Push Push Push
The game with Cat
It was mid AoK, where everyone would fast castle and boom to imperial age. TCs were cheap, feudal rushes were assumed ineffective, and castle was more of a lay over to imperial. In my game against Cat, I assumed this would be the same as any other game. It was a china war, I started upgrading to imperial age at 30 minutes. I had nothing other then my initial scout, a castle in the center of my base with a siege shop nearby. I walled in a mangonel by the castle, but cat did a full out castle push. 10 rams, 20 knights, I probably killed about 6 of the rams by repairing my castle and using that mangonel, but I was still utterly overrun. I was dead by 36 minutes.
Morale: Well executed castle age attacks hitting at an opportune moment can give you a huge edge over a "straight boomer".
Mix it up a bit
Anycall_PD1
In the game with anycall, I used a castle push strategy similar to what cat used on me. Anycall responded with a castle and some solid unit defenses, he used kts to continually focus rams while letting his castle shoot my army. He pretty much sacrificed his entire defending cavalry army to take out all my rams, and sent the other half of his army to raid my base. He killed loads of villagers. That game taught me why a "defensive offense" is sometimes better then a "pure offense." This can apply to the feudal, castle, and imperial ages!
Morale: It's typically better to have a balance between offense and defense than pure offense or defense.
Who Needs Villagers
Aluba007
So I've taken up the "defensive offense" style, but this was another game fought mostly in the castle age. I decided that defending and imperialing would be my best choice. Aluba showed me why it's extremely necessary to gauge the particular situation and continually adapt to it. The details aren't necessary, but the main thing I took away from this game was how army management can make a huge difference. I remember watching the game from his perspective and noting that his economy management was particularly poor in that instance. I figured out why I was completely destroyed. The key to the game: raiding. This was my first true run in with the multi angled raids, in many many spots, at the same time. He had roughly 25 knights, it was an extremely open map, one tc, while I had 3 tcs, probably twice the number of villages, a vastly higher score, but yet I still managed to lose (and quite bad). When I met up with him in WCG 2001 in Korea he mentioned that he used to number groups of his kts from the numbers 1 through 9. In that game I am sure he had at least 9 groups of knights. He would just scroll through the numbers, attack at the same time, and as soon as I responded to any he would retreat them, watching his army instead of his economy. His knights also had +2 armor while my ranged attacks were unupgraded. From this game the main things I took away were:
Morale: Well executed raiding can be extremely effective, and fletching is a must for TCs if your enemy has +2 armor knights even if you aren't making ranged units.
Looks can be deceiving
RD_ChampioN
Armed with awesome raiding tactics, I decided to try out this part of style addition on a player known as RD_ChampioN. I don't think I've been as hilariously destroyed, ever. I raided excessively with knights. He straight out boomed, except he used a very smart cost effective weapon, one that I can't believe I overlooked: monks. That's right, those old guys in the robes, yelling gibberish and costing an excessive amount of gold, are extremely cost effective. At the end of the game, there were 54 conversions. Yes, 54. The funniest part was that they were mostly knights and he used them to kill me. He didn't make any other unit in the whole game. As a small army where it is easy to control monks, there aren't really too many good counters, which is why monks can often be seen with certain arena castle age push strategies. (at the time of this game I wasn't aware that light cavalry are more resistant to monks or of their attack bonus)
Morale: An army of slow old men speaking gibberish can be a huge plus to your army!
Bring it, boy!
Arch_Koven_
He had a "I see you rushing, I won't bother trying to defend with towers and walls, lets fight!" style, especially in early feudal age. I rushed him with a 9:50 4 vil china feudal rush. I made 2 ranges near his base, and some spears. He feudaled at 10:10. This was the time when archers were predominant, so fighting with villagers could be extra dangerous because 5 archers vs less armor vils meant a lot of 'blood in the streets.' I had the hill, he spotted me. Within 10 seconds there were 10 angry villagers, with 2 militia and a scout storming my 4 villagers, 2 spears and 1 archer. 2 minutes later: my entire army dead. 6 of his villagers dead, all my production buildings walled, with 4 of his archers marching towards my base. I resigned, and I was impressed.
Morale: There are times when being a manly man can be the best, or your only alternative to losing.
Who needs villagers, Part II
_IamKmkm
If you've ever gone up against a kmkm rush, you know why it's effective. Strategic hills, controlling the game and the resources, and an offensive tower at your disposal make rushing a lucrative option. You know its kmkm, you know hes rushing, and sometimes it felt like there wasnt a solid thing you could do about it. Even iron-manning it like koven didn't necessarily work. He would choose hills, use 5 villagers forward, and if you rushed his buildings, he would stop making villagers, and he would put all of his resources into army production. After he won the fight (which was almost always), he would use hit and run tactics combined with excessive towering of key resources. Games against him were often less than 15 or 20 minutes.
Morale: if you can take an economic hit to gain a large militaristic advantage, it can pay off. Hit and run is very effective and cutting off key resources can be very useful.
Cost Effective Suicide
Grunt
Grunt is an interesting character. If you’ve ever met him in real life, you can tell that he’s friendly, sharp, and easy to have a good time with. What doesn’t meet the eye is his competitive nature. When you play him in friendly games, he will not play his best. Once tournament time rolls around, however, he is always on his A game. This, combined with owning a PC café giving him a lot of spare time to practice, has let him win more large tournaments in varied RTS games than any other that comes to mind. In this particular game, we were adversaries once again in a team tournament well known around here as the WCL. The map: land nomad. The situation: our team having a much larger combined economy than the enemies, the upper hand, all of us in castle age with a spread out economy. Their team was feeling the heat from our pushes. Then, grunt imperialed, with a small economy and nothing but a couple dozen eagle warriors. He managed to have enough resources to upgrade them to elite. If he fought our army straight up, the game would have been lost for them. He played much smarter then that, sending a couple elite eagle warriors to every TC he could find. He didn’t even bother looking for stray vils, or good spots to hit. He focused on his economy instead. At one point we must have had 80% of our villagers locked up in TCs shooting eagles. He tried to never fight our army, only our economy. This strategy turned the game and caused us to lose.
Morale: El dorado eagles are cost effective when being shot by TCs filled with villagers. Unfortunately for the defender it is still a smarter decision to garrison vils then let them die.
The Makings of a Fortune Teller
Halen
Another teamgame, Arabia, typical civs on both sides (china, mong, hun). Halen on the same side as me, him mong, me china. I understand that late game mongol is a powerhouse, so I use all my power to push halen – in feudal and castle. He plays well, defending properly, not too much of an advantage either way. He makes sure to do pure defense against my pure offense, but he manages to use less resources defending than I spend offending, by building a castle dead center between his 3 town centers, and using camels to stop my knights. Once the castle is up, I immediately sent my army to his next door neighbor (incidentally koven), because I know I can’t do any more damage to halen. His knowledge of the game allowed him to predict what I would do before I do it, so he sends his camel army at the exact same time, to the spots I was planning on hitting.
Morale: It’s impossible to predict the future, but it is very often easy to predict what a rational person would do in some situations.
The Knowledge Mafia
_DauT_
I would have to say that DauT was one of the first ones to constantly find when and where my feudal rushes were before any initial fight. He scouts, then scouts, and scouts, then scouts again. If I didn’t know better I would have to say my villagers are consistently shouting “I’m here, come kill me, I’m right here!” with the amount of times they are found. Scouting is even more necessary than predicting the future – because if you see what your opponent is doing now, you have a much better idea of what could happen in the future. In the particular game I am thinking of, I opted for a very fast feudal – in the range of 9:30, on a typical Arabia map. Daut had one main wood pile, and before this particular game that used to be my favorite thing to do: tower the single wood piles! It was sitting there attracting me like a giant pot of gold attracts leprechauns! My plan for the map: use 3 forward vils, tower the only noticeable wood, whilst stone walling my town and then hiding a stable until daut was forced to use another, far away, forest. Mass scouts killing far off unprotected wood vils. I thought it was ingenious, but wow, I was mistaken. Not only did daut notice my 3 unprotected villagers and kill them with his own vils before I even had a chance to start the tower, he also predicted that I would try to wall and sent all of his scouts to the edges of my base, where he killed another 4 villagers.
Morale: Predicting what your opponent will do is a good thing – seeing what they are actually doing is better. If you go through an intersection without looking, there is a chance you will get killed – the same applies here.
A World of Peace
Ruso
Sometimes I wonder if Ruso is secretly Canadian. The extent to which he will go to not fight you is sometimes unbelievable. We are playing a game of war – and he will do nothing but try to stop the war from happening. Such is the case in a 2vs2 tournament where Geek and I faced off against Ruso and Rukie. The map – Arabia, with huns and Aztecs on both sides. The situation: a relatively open map where both Spaniards chose to wall. We had a sizeable advantage, with much larger armies and clear map control. At one point in time I had 40 castle age eagles banging on wooden buildings. Houses, blacksmiths, markets, palisades, a university, and a siege shop. I made sure to focus as many different spots as possible. My experience tells me that usually after a couple minutes someone will miss a spot or two and allow your entire army to flood through their undefended base. Not Ruso though, he smartly added to his building walls, for at least 5 minutes. I probably pushed 4 tiles worth of walls, and I still couldn’t break through, and we ended up losing as he was continuously slinging rukie allowing him to kill geek, then me.
Morale: It is sometimes very advantageous to decide not to fight at all, but to let your enemy hack at cheap buildings and walls. If only that was true in real life so we could have worldwide peace!
The Map is MINE!
Alive
If you’ve played against both Ruso and Alive, you feel like they are mentally related. Alive very commonly tries to keep you on the defensive at the beginning of the game, while walling in and going for a quick castle. In one particular game, I did what I often do, focus on a defensive defense style with tactical offense. There was relatively little action throughout the feudal age – even early castle age, with small skirmishes going back and forth. We opted for two very different strategies. I often go to imperial age with roughly 90 vils and rely on my defense advantages to let me survive the transition – followed by a heavy push the second my units are upgraded. He opted for a full out castle push. It was a huns war – I had mass CA while he had lots of CA and knights and was continually adding to them. I also tried to save resources for army by not mining stone. The result: I had a very strong more upgraded defensive army, but I could never truly get on the offense, because of his larger economy and tactical castles. This caused me to be eventually gold starved and lost because of it.
Morale: Take your enemy’s key resources, even if you can’t use them, as long as he can’t either, you have positioned yourself for success.
There are only 2 types of units in this game, and I will use them both!
(hong kong) Ding
The game: a mongol war from one of the more recent 1vs1 tournaments. It was on Mongolia, we both walled and boomed, typical of a Mongolia game. We had relatively close armies, but I made the mistake of making units other than mangudai and trebuchets. With only those 2 units – and castles, I was utterly destroyed. He used tactics noted above, such as map control and good army control, but I believe that the capitalization point of the game was that he focused his entire economy on producing the two most useful units for the situation.
Morale: Know the situation, and understand what will work best to destroy your enemy.
The Height Advantage
Feeling
The game: an Arabia 1vs1, a huns war, where feeling pushed initially, towering my main gold pile, and making 2 archery ranges there. We had some skirmishing, both lost a few villagers, but around mid feudal I had a very tough situation to deal with. We both had mass ranged armies (roughly 35 skirms/archers), but I think that in that particular situation it was extremely difficult to win. I had an open map – and maybe even a better economy – but he had the full advantage of deciding where and when to fight. On Arabia there are often lots of hills. In this one there were two hills that I had to make sure to defend in order to keep my economy safe. If he managed to get on either one – I would lose. I knew this was the case, and closely watched his army. He sent roughly 25 ranged units to one side, leading me to bring my entire army because I thought this was his as well. Then, as I got closer to his army, and farther away from the other hill I needed to defend, he ran with his 25 unit army. At the other location, 10 archers promptly arrived shooting the better half of my farm villagers dead.
Morale: The split is a brilliant strategy. It causes your enemy to have a tough time reacting, and is also very useful when you lose water and you are trying to kill enemy fishing ships.
Kyo Knows Best
(hong kong) Kyo
The game I am sure you all know is the very recent Goths vs Mayans game posted in this topic. I chose to use palisade walls, boom, and try to use my civilization advantage to my benefit. I was wrong on several accounts, and Kyo was there to show me how very wrong I was. I thought palisade walls took a single point of damage against archers, and that they would last much longer. I didn’t realize that plums shoot fast, and are effective, at taking down wooden walls. Kyo utilized strategies presented here such as suiciding army to kill villagers, controlling the map, and scouting your enemy. He walled in a very key section of the map where there were several gold piles. He used the mayan advantage to ensure he gathered all the relics. And he knew that a pure offense would force me to play pure defense because of the way my gold was laid out. I thought huskarls received the same bonus that champions do against eagles, and I believed that mayans had no reasonable counter to them. He knew otherwise.
Morale: Know your units, unit bonuses, and have a general idea of how the game will play out. Trust your adversaries. Since he was confident playing mayans against Goths than I should have had more of a reason to wonder why that was so. You can also learn from Kyo by seeing that he used many of the tactics learned above. This is why I think Kyo will have the potential to be a major player in the future.
There are many players that have taught me other things throughout AoC that I haven’t mentioned here, but these instances are the ones I have been most impressed by.
I wish I still had so many of the games I discussed above.
PS: I appreciate the criticism. I know that the key reasons on my end for losing the second game were losing villagers at both gold mines, and not using my full army in several key fights. I know that huskarls don’t cost effectively beat eagles, and that there is another player that is now on my radar. I should have used champions, controlled the gold better, watched the relics closer with my scout, and been more wary of my opponent making a seemingly bold move. If Kyo wasn’t on the other end of the line those mistakes might have not cost me the games. Good game, well played.
PPS: I will train harder now that I realize there are much more competitive adversaries. My engineering “hell week” is over and reading week (a week long holiday) has begun.
It’s nice to see such passion throughout these posts – both rooting for and against me. If I was a fan, I would be rooting against me too, but since I am not, I will train, learn, and try to be better. If I am given a second chance, I will be much more competitive than in my first. If not, I still look forward to facing new competition in and out of the rated rooms."
L_Clan_Chris on Legion Clan forums (link).Written on 15th of February 2009, after losing vs _kyo 2:1 in BCC2.
"There have been quite a few times I've felt like I've noticed that my adversaries have been extremely quick, strong, coordinated, and intelligent.
Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." I have always liked to take very key aspects of these giant’s styles and intertwine them with my own.
Over the years, I have felt this way against these giants (presented chronologically): _IamCat,
Anycall_PD1, Aluba007, RD_ChampioN, Arch_Koven_, _IamKmkm, Grunt, Halen, _DauT_, Ruso, Alive, (hong kong) Ding, Feeling, and now (hong kong) Kyo. I am going to briefly cover the small (in my opinion, major) things that have fine tuned my style of thinking into understanding AoC a little better. Each and every one of these players has demonstrated their abilities by giving me a sound whooping at least once (every one of the games discussed are categorized as a severe destruction of yours truly).
Push Push Push
The game with Cat
It was mid AoK, where everyone would fast castle and boom to imperial age. TCs were cheap, feudal rushes were assumed ineffective, and castle was more of a lay over to imperial. In my game against Cat, I assumed this would be the same as any other game. It was a china war, I started upgrading to imperial age at 30 minutes. I had nothing other then my initial scout, a castle in the center of my base with a siege shop nearby. I walled in a mangonel by the castle, but cat did a full out castle push. 10 rams, 20 knights, I probably killed about 6 of the rams by repairing my castle and using that mangonel, but I was still utterly overrun. I was dead by 36 minutes.
Morale: Well executed castle age attacks hitting at an opportune moment can give you a huge edge over a "straight boomer".
Mix it up a bit
Anycall_PD1In the game with anycall, I used a castle push strategy similar to what cat used on me. Anycall responded with a castle and some solid unit defenses, he used kts to continually focus rams while letting his castle shoot my army. He pretty much sacrificed his entire defending cavalry army to take out all my rams, and sent the other half of his army to raid my base. He killed loads of villagers. That game taught me why a "defensive offense" is sometimes better then a "pure offense." This can apply to the feudal, castle, and imperial ages!
Morale: It's typically better to have a balance between offense and defense than pure offense or defense.
Who Needs Villagers
Aluba007So I've taken up the "defensive offense" style, but this was another game fought mostly in the castle age. I decided that defending and imperialing would be my best choice. Aluba showed me why it's extremely necessary to gauge the particular situation and continually adapt to it. The details aren't necessary, but the main thing I took away from this game was how army management can make a huge difference. I remember watching the game from his perspective and noting that his economy management was particularly poor in that instance. I figured out why I was completely destroyed. The key to the game: raiding. This was my first true run in with the multi angled raids, in many many spots, at the same time. He had roughly 25 knights, it was an extremely open map, one tc, while I had 3 tcs, probably twice the number of villages, a vastly higher score, but yet I still managed to lose (and quite bad). When I met up with him in WCG 2001 in Korea he mentioned that he used to number groups of his kts from the numbers 1 through 9. In that game I am sure he had at least 9 groups of knights. He would just scroll through the numbers, attack at the same time, and as soon as I responded to any he would retreat them, watching his army instead of his economy. His knights also had +2 armor while my ranged attacks were unupgraded. From this game the main things I took away were:
Morale: Well executed raiding can be extremely effective, and fletching is a must for TCs if your enemy has +2 armor knights even if you aren't making ranged units.
Looks can be deceiving
RD_ChampioNArmed with awesome raiding tactics, I decided to try out this part of style addition on a player known as RD_ChampioN. I don't think I've been as hilariously destroyed, ever. I raided excessively with knights. He straight out boomed, except he used a very smart cost effective weapon, one that I can't believe I overlooked: monks. That's right, those old guys in the robes, yelling gibberish and costing an excessive amount of gold, are extremely cost effective. At the end of the game, there were 54 conversions. Yes, 54. The funniest part was that they were mostly knights and he used them to kill me. He didn't make any other unit in the whole game. As a small army where it is easy to control monks, there aren't really too many good counters, which is why monks can often be seen with certain arena castle age push strategies. (at the time of this game I wasn't aware that light cavalry are more resistant to monks or of their attack bonus)
Morale: An army of slow old men speaking gibberish can be a huge plus to your army!
* * * * *
Fast forward to the time of feudal fighting, but before the patches, so archers are built faster, vils had less piercing armor, skirmishers had no attack bonus againt spears, and a large mass of skirmishers could kill anything. Bring it, boy!
Arch_Koven_He had a "I see you rushing, I won't bother trying to defend with towers and walls, lets fight!" style, especially in early feudal age. I rushed him with a 9:50 4 vil china feudal rush. I made 2 ranges near his base, and some spears. He feudaled at 10:10. This was the time when archers were predominant, so fighting with villagers could be extra dangerous because 5 archers vs less armor vils meant a lot of 'blood in the streets.' I had the hill, he spotted me. Within 10 seconds there were 10 angry villagers, with 2 militia and a scout storming my 4 villagers, 2 spears and 1 archer. 2 minutes later: my entire army dead. 6 of his villagers dead, all my production buildings walled, with 4 of his archers marching towards my base. I resigned, and I was impressed.
Morale: There are times when being a manly man can be the best, or your only alternative to losing.
Who needs villagers, Part II
_IamKmkmIf you've ever gone up against a kmkm rush, you know why it's effective. Strategic hills, controlling the game and the resources, and an offensive tower at your disposal make rushing a lucrative option. You know its kmkm, you know hes rushing, and sometimes it felt like there wasnt a solid thing you could do about it. Even iron-manning it like koven didn't necessarily work. He would choose hills, use 5 villagers forward, and if you rushed his buildings, he would stop making villagers, and he would put all of his resources into army production. After he won the fight (which was almost always), he would use hit and run tactics combined with excessive towering of key resources. Games against him were often less than 15 or 20 minutes.
Morale: if you can take an economic hit to gain a large militaristic advantage, it can pay off. Hit and run is very effective and cutting off key resources can be very useful.
Cost Effective Suicide
GruntGrunt is an interesting character. If you’ve ever met him in real life, you can tell that he’s friendly, sharp, and easy to have a good time with. What doesn’t meet the eye is his competitive nature. When you play him in friendly games, he will not play his best. Once tournament time rolls around, however, he is always on his A game. This, combined with owning a PC café giving him a lot of spare time to practice, has let him win more large tournaments in varied RTS games than any other that comes to mind. In this particular game, we were adversaries once again in a team tournament well known around here as the WCL. The map: land nomad. The situation: our team having a much larger combined economy than the enemies, the upper hand, all of us in castle age with a spread out economy. Their team was feeling the heat from our pushes. Then, grunt imperialed, with a small economy and nothing but a couple dozen eagle warriors. He managed to have enough resources to upgrade them to elite. If he fought our army straight up, the game would have been lost for them. He played much smarter then that, sending a couple elite eagle warriors to every TC he could find. He didn’t even bother looking for stray vils, or good spots to hit. He focused on his economy instead. At one point we must have had 80% of our villagers locked up in TCs shooting eagles. He tried to never fight our army, only our economy. This strategy turned the game and caused us to lose.
Morale: El dorado eagles are cost effective when being shot by TCs filled with villagers. Unfortunately for the defender it is still a smarter decision to garrison vils then let them die.
The Makings of a Fortune Teller
HalenAnother teamgame, Arabia, typical civs on both sides (china, mong, hun). Halen on the same side as me, him mong, me china. I understand that late game mongol is a powerhouse, so I use all my power to push halen – in feudal and castle. He plays well, defending properly, not too much of an advantage either way. He makes sure to do pure defense against my pure offense, but he manages to use less resources defending than I spend offending, by building a castle dead center between his 3 town centers, and using camels to stop my knights. Once the castle is up, I immediately sent my army to his next door neighbor (incidentally koven), because I know I can’t do any more damage to halen. His knowledge of the game allowed him to predict what I would do before I do it, so he sends his camel army at the exact same time, to the spots I was planning on hitting.
Morale: It’s impossible to predict the future, but it is very often easy to predict what a rational person would do in some situations.
The Knowledge Mafia
_DauT_I would have to say that DauT was one of the first ones to constantly find when and where my feudal rushes were before any initial fight. He scouts, then scouts, and scouts, then scouts again. If I didn’t know better I would have to say my villagers are consistently shouting “I’m here, come kill me, I’m right here!” with the amount of times they are found. Scouting is even more necessary than predicting the future – because if you see what your opponent is doing now, you have a much better idea of what could happen in the future. In the particular game I am thinking of, I opted for a very fast feudal – in the range of 9:30, on a typical Arabia map. Daut had one main wood pile, and before this particular game that used to be my favorite thing to do: tower the single wood piles! It was sitting there attracting me like a giant pot of gold attracts leprechauns! My plan for the map: use 3 forward vils, tower the only noticeable wood, whilst stone walling my town and then hiding a stable until daut was forced to use another, far away, forest. Mass scouts killing far off unprotected wood vils. I thought it was ingenious, but wow, I was mistaken. Not only did daut notice my 3 unprotected villagers and kill them with his own vils before I even had a chance to start the tower, he also predicted that I would try to wall and sent all of his scouts to the edges of my base, where he killed another 4 villagers.
Morale: Predicting what your opponent will do is a good thing – seeing what they are actually doing is better. If you go through an intersection without looking, there is a chance you will get killed – the same applies here.
A World of Peace
Ruso Sometimes I wonder if Ruso is secretly Canadian. The extent to which he will go to not fight you is sometimes unbelievable. We are playing a game of war – and he will do nothing but try to stop the war from happening. Such is the case in a 2vs2 tournament where Geek and I faced off against Ruso and Rukie. The map – Arabia, with huns and Aztecs on both sides. The situation: a relatively open map where both Spaniards chose to wall. We had a sizeable advantage, with much larger armies and clear map control. At one point in time I had 40 castle age eagles banging on wooden buildings. Houses, blacksmiths, markets, palisades, a university, and a siege shop. I made sure to focus as many different spots as possible. My experience tells me that usually after a couple minutes someone will miss a spot or two and allow your entire army to flood through their undefended base. Not Ruso though, he smartly added to his building walls, for at least 5 minutes. I probably pushed 4 tiles worth of walls, and I still couldn’t break through, and we ended up losing as he was continuously slinging rukie allowing him to kill geek, then me.
Morale: It is sometimes very advantageous to decide not to fight at all, but to let your enemy hack at cheap buildings and walls. If only that was true in real life so we could have worldwide peace!
The Map is MINE!
AliveIf you’ve played against both Ruso and Alive, you feel like they are mentally related. Alive very commonly tries to keep you on the defensive at the beginning of the game, while walling in and going for a quick castle. In one particular game, I did what I often do, focus on a defensive defense style with tactical offense. There was relatively little action throughout the feudal age – even early castle age, with small skirmishes going back and forth. We opted for two very different strategies. I often go to imperial age with roughly 90 vils and rely on my defense advantages to let me survive the transition – followed by a heavy push the second my units are upgraded. He opted for a full out castle push. It was a huns war – I had mass CA while he had lots of CA and knights and was continually adding to them. I also tried to save resources for army by not mining stone. The result: I had a very strong more upgraded defensive army, but I could never truly get on the offense, because of his larger economy and tactical castles. This caused me to be eventually gold starved and lost because of it.
Morale: Take your enemy’s key resources, even if you can’t use them, as long as he can’t either, you have positioned yourself for success.
There are only 2 types of units in this game, and I will use them both!
(hong kong) Ding
The game: a mongol war from one of the more recent 1vs1 tournaments. It was on Mongolia, we both walled and boomed, typical of a Mongolia game. We had relatively close armies, but I made the mistake of making units other than mangudai and trebuchets. With only those 2 units – and castles, I was utterly destroyed. He used tactics noted above, such as map control and good army control, but I believe that the capitalization point of the game was that he focused his entire economy on producing the two most useful units for the situation.
Morale: Know the situation, and understand what will work best to destroy your enemy.
The Height Advantage
FeelingThe game: an Arabia 1vs1, a huns war, where feeling pushed initially, towering my main gold pile, and making 2 archery ranges there. We had some skirmishing, both lost a few villagers, but around mid feudal I had a very tough situation to deal with. We both had mass ranged armies (roughly 35 skirms/archers), but I think that in that particular situation it was extremely difficult to win. I had an open map – and maybe even a better economy – but he had the full advantage of deciding where and when to fight. On Arabia there are often lots of hills. In this one there were two hills that I had to make sure to defend in order to keep my economy safe. If he managed to get on either one – I would lose. I knew this was the case, and closely watched his army. He sent roughly 25 ranged units to one side, leading me to bring my entire army because I thought this was his as well. Then, as I got closer to his army, and farther away from the other hill I needed to defend, he ran with his 25 unit army. At the other location, 10 archers promptly arrived shooting the better half of my farm villagers dead.
Morale: The split is a brilliant strategy. It causes your enemy to have a tough time reacting, and is also very useful when you lose water and you are trying to kill enemy fishing ships.
Kyo Knows Best
(hong kong) Kyo
The game I am sure you all know is the very recent Goths vs Mayans game posted in this topic. I chose to use palisade walls, boom, and try to use my civilization advantage to my benefit. I was wrong on several accounts, and Kyo was there to show me how very wrong I was. I thought palisade walls took a single point of damage against archers, and that they would last much longer. I didn’t realize that plums shoot fast, and are effective, at taking down wooden walls. Kyo utilized strategies presented here such as suiciding army to kill villagers, controlling the map, and scouting your enemy. He walled in a very key section of the map where there were several gold piles. He used the mayan advantage to ensure he gathered all the relics. And he knew that a pure offense would force me to play pure defense because of the way my gold was laid out. I thought huskarls received the same bonus that champions do against eagles, and I believed that mayans had no reasonable counter to them. He knew otherwise.
Morale: Know your units, unit bonuses, and have a general idea of how the game will play out. Trust your adversaries. Since he was confident playing mayans against Goths than I should have had more of a reason to wonder why that was so. You can also learn from Kyo by seeing that he used many of the tactics learned above. This is why I think Kyo will have the potential to be a major player in the future.
* * * * *
I have enjoyed AoC for many great years, especially in times of fiercest competition. I think it is one of the most trying games in terms of strategic outlook, style of execution, and the random maps. There are many skills that have yet to be fully developed. I have seen several games that have been near-perfectly played for the situation, but they are rare, which means we all have the chance to improve ourselves. There are many players that have taught me other things throughout AoC that I haven’t mentioned here, but these instances are the ones I have been most impressed by.
I wish I still had so many of the games I discussed above.
PS: I appreciate the criticism. I know that the key reasons on my end for losing the second game were losing villagers at both gold mines, and not using my full army in several key fights. I know that huskarls don’t cost effectively beat eagles, and that there is another player that is now on my radar. I should have used champions, controlled the gold better, watched the relics closer with my scout, and been more wary of my opponent making a seemingly bold move. If Kyo wasn’t on the other end of the line those mistakes might have not cost me the games. Good game, well played.
PPS: I will train harder now that I realize there are much more competitive adversaries. My engineering “hell week” is over and reading week (a week long holiday) has begun.
It’s nice to see such passion throughout these posts – both rooting for and against me. If I was a fan, I would be rooting against me too, but since I am not, I will train, learn, and try to be better. If I am given a second chance, I will be much more competitive than in my first. If not, I still look forward to facing new competition in and out of the rated rooms."
I saw Ding had Hong Kong flag on one site, but when signing up for MOTH, he had Japan flag on his Voobly account (and he still does), that`s why the mistake...
thepitzaboy
