I just got the Conquerors expansion. Anyone else play this game and, if so, would you like to play online some time?
I am not particularly good at the game and could use some pointers.
Lemme know!
Tibs.
Vikings still rule. Lemme know if you wanna play online some time. I haven’t played in a while, so I kinda suck, but let me know anyway.
BTW, the Age of Empires series is probably the best thing that Microsoft has ever caused to come into existence.
Vikings if you’re playing with water, and really Teutons if you’re anything else (especially if you go on the defensive). Fire twice as many arrows from towers, garrison 2X as many in towers, monks do their stuff from farther away, units more resistant to conversion.
If you’re going on the offensive, I dunno what you want to do. I always do better when I send teams of five cavaliers and paladins out to have fun, then send them back home to be healed. Anyone who pursues gets shot beyond recognition by my guard towers and castles. Takes . . . about an hour, game-time, for me to conquer one civilization, if I’m trying, though they usually resign and I go shooting someone else up.
I don’t have the AoE2 expansion pack yet. Still having way too much fun training on hard with two allies vs everyone else.
oh god nooooooo!! it’s spreading!!!
sorry… damn near every guy in my building has that game and plays it all the time, tying up the network with all that traffic.
I haven’t had that much time to play because I got the game while studying for the bar exam. So I still sort of sucked but bought the expansion because I like the game.
I’m learning the hotkeys and that helps quite a bit.
I still have trouble remembering what each of the units strengths and weaknesses are. I don’t know why, I should pay closer attention but sometimes, I just sent troops in fighting madly.
Also, I still don’t think I’m grouping my troops together well. Let’s say I have a group of archers, cavalry and pikemen and I have them all selected - I click on something to attack - they don’t always seem to move in the best fashion - like arches in back, etc. I watch other players and they seem to have all their arches together, all pikemen together, etc.
Did I learn a bad habit by letting them get in a jumbled up mess?
And, for the record - I’m a fan of the Koreans. Tower upgrades, baby!
Tibs
IMHO: if you can pause the game, that’s the only hotkey you need. That and H for home (town center).
"I still have trouble remembering what each of the units strengths and weaknesses are. I don’t know why, I should pay closer attention but sometimes, I just sent troops in fighting madly."
Archers are good for far away. Pikemen are good for elephants and horses. Swordsmen are good for stationary objects and other swordsmen. Horses and elephants are good for anything you can use them for, but you want to bring ranged units to fend off monks and other ranged units. Having to go chase down elite spear-throwers with a cavalier when you’re attacking a guard tower is really unnecessarily annoying:) Siege weapons are fairly easy to get ahold of, though admittedly I’ve been playing the game (AoE2) since last spring.
The special units (units produced only in the castle) are . . . well, special. I haven’t played all the civs yet, so I can’t answer questions on all of them.
Does that answer that question? If not, feel free to hammer away.
I personally attack with groups of five or ten, just because I’ve found that this is the best way to economize. Most ground troops are done with a single attack of five cavalier, for example. Ten arbalests can take care of most ranged units with one shot each. And, of course, you want monks lurking in the background to tend to the wounded units.
What you absolutely do NOT want to do is send non-ranged units and, for example, a mangonel to attack the same building. Your mangonels, onagers and siege onagers can hit your units/buildings as well as enemy targets. I’ve had units gets severely damaged (to the point of being killed) by my own onager.
Also: if you have walls near a forest, do NOT build siege onagers, which can wipe out trees, unless you want to go building more wall to replace the trees. That can get really annoying, especially since it’s impossible (so far as I’ve played) to turn the map and see where the trees end and the walls begin. I’ve lost games because of a siege onager wiping out a tree I couldn’t see, and t hen having 100 enemy units rush into the city and absolutely maul me in five minutes.
"Also, I still don’t think I’m grouping my troops together well. Let’s say I have a group of archers, cavalry and pikemen and I have them all selected - I click on something to attack - they don’t always seem to move in the best fashion - like arches in back, etc. I watch other players and they seem to have all their arches together, all pikemen together, etc."
Archers in back, swordsmen in front, try to have to cavalry get in back of the enemy (with a return route planned and available) to enclose them. And have monks staying safely back to convert the occasional unit or heal as necessary.
Another tactic is to have cavalry rush ahead and fight the enemy’s non-ranged units, while your own archers can fire away at the enemy’s non-ranged as well. Then you bring the infantry in to add some pressure and have the occasional onager along to wipe out things like bombard cannons and scorpions.
If you get a group of mixed troups, you can shape them into various things depending on how you’re going to attack (or run for your life). You can find these various formations at the bottom-left corner of the screen when you have more than one of them highlighted. Just make sure, for example, you don’t go having your trebuchets and monks going for the same building, else you’ll have some repairing to do.
"Did I learn a bad habit by letting them get in a jumbled up mess?"
Yes and no. While you do want to keep like units together, you also want to have mixed troups, for the reasons I mentioned (and more—I’m not a pro at this game. I still have difficulty beating it at level Hardest with 4 opponents and three allies).
My method of starting the game: random map, all visible, 125 units. I get 15 villagers right after I get the loom, then I get back to 500 food and start collecting massive amounts of gold and stone, with some wood. As soon as is possible I get to Feudal Age, build my walls and towers, and garrison like crazy.
Oh, and you definitely want to get siege weapons, because once the AI sees you have walls, it’s gonna come at you with rams and mangonels. I usually also have a few villagers chopping wood nearby so they can go repair the walls (stone, not wood) when the need arises.
One last note: if you do the wall bit, you want to have some powerful cavaliers (or other fast and strong unit) ready for when the enemy brings along a trebuchet, because the trebuchet is the longest-ranged of any land unit I’ve seen. I think elite cannon galleons have a range of 16, but if you’ve got no water for them to be floatin’ in, you can’t build them.
Hope this helps.
Like many others, I’ve been with this one since AoE 1, and can lose hours, and even days playing it.
I’m not sure I’m ever going to play against anything other than the CPU though… I’m way too addicated to the pause key.
-Doug
Welcome to my world. Couple that with a processor that has a bit of trouble handling 1000 units, and one battle can last 30 mins, realtime.
Plus my friends could kick the AI’s ass, just as I can. Is there a way to make an AI modeled on your friends?
I sooooo wish I had the expansion. I played a demo and it rocks - particularly farm queing.
I do have AOE2 though and if a game is organized, I’m there. So so so so there.
Teutons are pretty powerful. I used them a lot when I first got the game. Now I’m big on the Byzantines. Their special unit is almost crap, but they have the largest tech tree so you can adopt a wide variety of strats.
Sign me up!
I picked up the expansion two weeks ago, and it has added several new levels of enjoyment to the game. While the new races and unique technologies have been great, farm queueing has been OUTSTANDING!
Friday night, I picked up the greatest tool ever created for gaming (and especially for this one). Game Commander (at http://www.gamecommander.com) is a voice recognition program that allows you to map various vocal sounds to keyboard commands. My wife thinks me loony, but I can sit in my den and speak aloud “Set one, go to town, make villager, make villager, villager, make house, villager, make mill”, etc. and it keeps my hands free for scrolling and keeps the mouse arrow centered on the screen for emergency use.
I’ve been playing online in a closed game with my brother and his coworkers. None of us are very good, but the game is a blast with 4-8 players of similar skill. King of the Hill is a great variant, espcially in a free for all format.
Finally, Huns are the best race for early game victories. They don’t need houses so you can generate many resources very quickly and send in a large army of weak soldiers and archers before your opponent can respond.
And everyone knows the Turks, with their Janissary units are the best in the long game, at least I like to think so =)
Well, sounds like we have a few people interested in a game or two.
We need to figure out how to meet up in The Zone to play a few games so how about we all tell each other our Zone Name so we can look for each other and then try to figure out a time that’s good for folks to meet up.
My Zone Name: Matmiya
I’m usually logged on in the evening, 8:30 Central Time until about Midnight. I’ll log into the zone - just message me there and we can start up a game. I’m a rooky, though, so go easy!
How about the rest of you? When’re you usually on and what’s your zone name?
Tibs.
What you absolutely do NOT want to do is send non-ranged units and, for example, a mangonel to attack the same building. Your mangonels, onagers and siege onagers can hit your units/buildings as well as enemy targets. I’ve had units gets severely damaged (to the point of being killed) by my own onager
They changed this for the expansion, doesn’t happen anymore.
I love the expansion! I’m definatly hooked. The farm queues make playing so much easier. I also love garrisoning pikemen into my Siege Rams, they eventually die, and then you have the pikemen pop out and kick some behind, plus it makes the rams stronger and faster. I also must agree about the Huns, constantly being them is quite tempting. I havn’t played any of the Aztec or Myan civs yet, how are they?
Mayans are pretty popular, from what I can tell from playing online. I was lucky enough to get the expansion set that came with the free Strategy book for $25.
I believe someone in the book (near the end) felt like the Mayans were a good civ for a mod advanced player. A novice/rookie like myself rather likes the Koreans.
I’ll be online tonight around 9 pm central at the zone.
Tibs.