0advices

[Vrayer]

Hello everyone,

It's my turn to provide some tips for new players on how to become powerful in the game. I hope you've already read "From Nub to OP" and @Mentula's advices, which are both awesome guides to reach level 1400 and more.

I'm not the most powerful player, but I'm proud of where I am today, considering that less than just a year ago, I was begging OP players to let me play with them in TG.

The tips I'm about to share are my personal strategies, but remember that you don't have to follow them strictly since every game is different, opponents react differently, and resources are always varied. Also, feel free to share your own tips in the comments.

I only use two mods, Autociv and Quick Start, although I don't always use everything that Quick Start offers.

Here are my tips, listed in no particular order:

• Aim for 10 fields to produce food, which requires 50 women. If you plan to create cavalry or elephants, make at least 12 fields (Hans recommends 17 to 20 fields).
• Produce 65 women until P2. You may kill 15 of them at 200 population to replace them with 15 soldiers who will harvest wood more quickly. Rushes usually do this for me.
• Research eco tech before advancing to the next phase. Every minute spent gathering resources without eco tech is a waste of resources.
• Going to P2 at min 10 is okay.
• Build your first barracks around min 3.
• Aim for 3 barracks until P3. Once you have your first barracks, train units 2 by 2 using autoqueue. Do the same at each barracks and at your CC once you reach 65 women. When I'm not too busy, I stop using autoqueue around P2 and train units in batches as much as possible.
• Whenever you see an incredible move in a game, like someone booming rapidly, watch the replay and focus on that player's moves.
• Have a plan. Look at the resources around you, your closest enemies, whether they rush or boom, and who your pocket is or whose pocket you are. Then, decide on your strategy, whether it's booming, turtling, rushing, going on champs, elephants, etc.
• For non-slinger civs, send the first 5 women to berries and the rest to wood until you have 20 workers on wood. By that time, you should have a barracks producing units 2 by 2 on wood.
• A minimum of 50 workers on wood is necessary to advance to P2 (non-slinger eco).
• When you begin P2, you'll need a lot of wood to build P2 buildings (I usually build 3 forges), fields, and eco research. Don't worry if you're floating a bit in wood at the end of P1. Also, don't hesitate to use women to gather wood to have extra wood you'll need if you want to go through P2 as quickly as possible. I often select 25 women on fields and send them to gather 10-15 trees (using the "do that order first" hotkey) so that when they're done, they'll return to the field without worrying about it.
• Master using hotkeys such as giving orders to one person in a selected group, doing an order before or after another. I have all those commands in shift, <, and alt.
• For example, if you want your women to spread evenly on berries after building a farmstead, select four women, make them build the farmstead, then press shift + alt and click on each berry bush one after the
• Use three women to build houses, and try to spread them evenly on the construction of each house. This method is faster than having the same three women build three houses one by one.

I hope these tips are helpful. See you in TG!

 

Vrayer

[Yekaterina]

Some advices on booming faster:

Part 1: Houses

Use dedicated house builders and make sure they never idle. But do not place down too many foundations in advance, as you can use those wood for something else. It's best to always keep an eye on the progress of each house and place down the next one foundation when this house is nearly finished.

If your civ uses large houses of 10 pops, then use this list:

1 CC producing women 3 at a time - 1 builder is enough

1 CC and 1 barrack - 2 builders

1 CC and 2 barrack - 3.5 builders

1 CC and 3 barracks - 5.5 builders

if you are using small house civs, add 1 to each value.

Even though it's more efficient to spread out the builders, for large house civs, spreading them all out means huge investments in the foundations and taking longer to build each house. If you are using small batches of autotrained units, then you are likely to get housed. So it's actually better to sacrifice some theoretical efficiency and put all builders on one house.

For smaller houses, since they are cheaper, you can make 2  or 3 groups of builders of 2 units each. But this requires much more micro, which is why I prefer large house civs.

 

Part 2: Unit production

Produce women from the CC in batches of 3, until you reach 55. Then produce infantry from the CC in batches of 2.

In total, build  3 barracks before advancing to Town phase.

Start the first barrack as early as you can, but after you have woodcutting upgrade and reliable food income. Try to start building before 3:30 and use 5 builders on the barrack. If you really struggle with resources then you can still start the barrack foundation early but use only 2 or 3 women on building it.

Always autotrain infantry in batches of 2 from the barracks. Prioritise ranged units first as they walk more quickly and are better at defending against rushes. However, when mining starts, you can train melee.

When you have 3 barracks set up, decrease the CC batch size to 1 so that you can promptly advance to Town phase.

 

Part 3: Resource gathering

Food is important. If you have no extra berries, start building farms immediately after your wood cutting upgrade has been completed, or when you have only 3 patches of berries left. Send 5 women to build each field so that they finish it quickly and can get into production as early as possible. You need the equivalent of 5 fields (25 farming women) with level 1 farming tech in order to feed 1 CC and 1 barrack.

Later on, 6-7 fields are needed (about 32-33 women) to feed 2 barracks; 11 fields (52-55 farmers) are needed to feed 1CC and 3 barracks while saving up resources to buy Town phase.

After unlocking farming techs, you can take some women off the farms and make them do something else.

To optimise wood gathering, try to have no more than 3 gatherers on each tree. Always build storehouses as close to a dense area of wood as possible, especially empty plazas in the middle of forests or in the coves on the edge of forests.

50 wood gatherers should be enough for advancing to Town phase and saving up resources for forges.

Try to balance the number of wood gatherers and farmers.

Mining should start when there are 50 wood gatherers and 3 barracks set up already. Normally this happens around 7:30 to 8:30.

Place storehouses on either sides of the mines, or if there is space, surround the whole mine with storehouses to maximise efficiency. However, don't stick the storehouse right onto the mine as the units would have to walk around it and pathfinding will become inefficient.

The more metal miners the better (I use 24). 18-20 stone miners should be enough for non-slinger civs; for Britons maybe 30 stone miners.

 

Part 4: Town phase:

Keep producing, but now mainly melee infantry.

Build 4 forges

If you are not struggling on wood, start more metal mines. You can never have enough metal.

When advancing to phase 3, build military buildings like stables and barracks. Normally the more the better but it also depends on your strategy. I need 8-11 barracks and 3 stables, at least.

Research military techs from the forges in the mean time.

Part 5: city phase.

Get hero building and siege workshop down; train your hero and research as many upgrades as you can before joining the fight.

Woodcutting and farming techs are compulsory.

You can take all soldiers away from woodlines and instead put 15 - 20 of your farming women on gathering wood.

If you are spamming cavalry, you still need 50 women on farms so 5 women + 12 ranged units on wood.

Wheelbarrows are great techs.

Take all units off stone mine and commit them to battle; leave about 12 infantry on metal. Everyone else go fight!

 

[borg-]

Contribute with some that I remember now:

Build your barracks within range of the civic center whenever possible
Keep constant scout, if they march against you, build turrets quickly
Divide your women one on each bush (the fruits have regeneration)
Use ALT + right click mouse to focus on the desired enemy units, preventing large numbers of soldiers from shooting a single soldier
Put hero in passive mode so he doesn't run into enemy and die quickly
Press "CTRL + mouse" to garrison your units faster
Press "U" to make units leave buildings
Press "H" for your units attack the nearest enemy unit
Whenever you can, build your buildings next to each other so that they become walls
Collect wood correctly, whenever you have enough space, build a new deposit as close as possible to the trees
Training 1 on 1 or in batches has very similar results, choose what best suits your style
Use the SHIFT key to add order queues to your units. For example, build a house and "automatically" go back to collecting resources, preventing it from being idle

[Lion.Kanzen]

41 minutes ago, borg- said:

Contribute with some that I remember now:

Build your barracks within range of the civic center whenever possible
Keep constant scout, if they march against you, build turrets quickly
Divide your women one on each bush (the fruits have regeneration)
Use ALT + right click mouse to focus on the desired enemy units, preventing large numbers of soldiers from shooting a single soldier
Put hero in passive mode so he doesn't run into enemy and die quickly
Press "CTRL + mouse" to garrison your units faster
Press "U" to make units leave buildings
Press "H" for your units attack the nearest enemy unit
Whenever you can, build your buildings next to each other so that they become walls
Collect wood correctly, whenever you have enough space, build a new deposit as close as possible to the trees
Training 1 on 1 or in batches has very similar results, choose what best suits your style
Use the SHIFT key to add order queues to your units. For example, build a house and "automatically" go back to collecting resources, preventing it from being idle

CTRL+Q+clic  Attack move focus on units and ignoring buildings.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Sniping: targeting ranged units in order to maximize the effective damage of your units.

1. select all your ranged units
2. hold alt, or option (for mac)
3. attack click rapidly, clicking units that you want to prioritize (enemy ranged units)
4. with each click, the number of units you have in your selection will go down by 1. This is because each click tasks one unit from your selected group to that task.
5. When you run out of units in your selected group, repeat steps 1-4.

• In a26, this will cause you to win every single even fight due to the way melee and ranged units are balanced.
• This will be more impactful when pikemen are involved.
• Keep in mind different ranges of ranged units
• Don't be afraid to snipe with selections as large as 100-150 ranged units, just click super fast in step 3 and you will be in a great position.

I hope that in future community mod releases and alphas that sniping becomes inferior to other micro forms and that we can move away from the "meatsheild meta" that causes this tip to be so valuable.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

I think it would be a good idea to record videos of how certain strategies are developed in the game.