I am awful....

[BlazingHeart]

Basically, I suck at the game, which I found surprising as I was amazing at Age of Empires, but I do. I suck. And I always feel bad in a multiplayer game, when my teammate needs me most, and I've barely moved from my starting point..

on that note, does anyone have any good ideas/guides or can literally teach me into a better player?

[sanderd17]

@BlazingHeart, maybe you can check out some youtube videos?

And I can also give you a bit of courage: balancing still changes quite often. So if you're good at one version, it could be that when playing the next version, you have to learn the optimal strategy again. So new players do get more chances. Though the next release (A20) doesn't differ a lot from A19 according to avid MP players. Perhaps A21 will be more like your taste.

[av93]

1 hour ago, sanderd17 said:

Perhaps A21 will be more like your taste.

 The dev team have agreed to work on balance for A21?

[sanderd17]

No specific plans, but things always change, and some things have serious implications for balancing. F.e. fixing the chase-bug caused cavalry to become a lot powerful, while that wasn't intended.

[causative]

Simple:  play multiplayer.  When you see someone who plays like a king with a higher economy score and more champions than everyone else, go to Replays (from the first screen:  Tools & Options: Replays) and study what order they built things and harvested resources.  Then, build things in that order yourself.

A good player should be able to get to age III from low resources by around 12 minutes, with over 100 population, and then immediately research champions at the barracks (provided they have a civ compatible with that) and start producing them.  It's not very difficult to learn a build order that will achieve this.

Here is an example of a Briton build order, assuming a 200 population cap, chickens, and berries.

1. Make 5 women (shift-click at your civic center, or CC, to make them)
2. Use your first 4 women to make a farmstead by the berries, assuming you have berries.  Have them get berries asap.
3. Put your cavalry skirmisher on chickens, assuming you have chickens.
4. With your 4 men, build a storehouse by the nearest big forest, and set them on chopping.
5. Use your dog to explore (hold down shift and click repeatedly on the minimap to give him a path to explore, you want to explore the edge of your base first and then concentric circles out from there).
6. Set a rally point on wood by the storehouse so that the first 5 women you made in step 1 will go there
7. Queue up some more women one at a time as long as you have food.
8. When the farmstead finishes, research Wicker Baskets (berry upgrade) and make sure the women who built the farmstead go to berries and not chickens.  This will put you at about 0 wood from low resources.
9. As soon as you have 75 wood again, have one of your woodcutters start making a house.  You will want to constantly be making 1 house at all times, to keep up with your CC production.  So, when this builder finishes, you immediately have him make another house, and so on until age III.  You can queue up multiple houses at once by shift-clicking, however note that this uses up the wood for future houses immediately so you can't use it for anything else.
10. Keep making women and putting them on wood until you're at maybe 22-25 population, then start having new women build fields.  Fields should be placed as close to your CC or farmstead as possible.  Five women go on a field.  You'll probably end up with like 6-8 fields before it's time for age II.
11. When you have wood to spare (that means you don't need any wood to immediately make houses or fields), research the first farming upgrade at the farmstead.
12. When the berries run out, the 4 berry women make a field.
13. When you have wood to spare, research the first woodcutting upgrade at the storehouse. 
14. When the cavalry skirmisher runs out of chickens, he can go help the dog explore.
15. Produce women 5 at a time whenever you have enough food.  It's faster.
16. When you have enough wood, make a barracks.
17. If you seem to have enough farms and wood you can switch your CC to producing men instead of women, and put them on stone and metal.  Build a storehouse at the stone and metal.
18. If you seem to have more food than you need but not enough wood, make women and put them on wood.
19. If your woodcutters are too far from the wood, make another storehouse closer to the wood.  You probably want another storehouse for woodcutters in a completely different stand of trees, anyway.
20. At some point around when the barracks finishes, you should have enough food and wood for age II, and somewhere around 50-70 population.  There's no reason to rush going to age II.  Don't interrupt your production of workers just to save up for age II.
21. The barracks should produce skirmishers that can either go on stone/metal or on wood, depending on which you need more.  With the barracks and CC both producing units, you may need more than one worker making houses to keep up.
22. When you reach age II, you may have too much food.  If so, you can take 5 or 10 women off of farming and put them on woodcutting instead.
23. When you reach age II, your first priority is a market, which you can make with a bunch of women.  The market should be placed near the back of your base, on the side farther from your allies so that you can get a long trade route.  When the market finishes, immediately trade any excess food for some stone and metal, whichever you have less of.  Hopefully you were first to market - britons are fast - so you can get good prices.
24. Research the metal mining upgrade, the second woodcutting upgrade and the second farming upgrade, whenever you have enough wood.  You might get the metal mining upgrade during age I if you have enough wood.
25. Make the other buildings you need for age III, with several workers on each.  I usually put down a defense tower, a blacksmith, and a temple.  Sometimes I skip the temple in favor of a second defense tower.
26. Make at least one more barracks, maybe two.
27. By the time your buildings finish, between trading and mining, you should have at least 750 metal and 750 stone.  If not, just trade for it at the market and go to age III.
28. If there's another metal mine within your territory, now's a fine time to build a storehouse and start putting some men on it.  Keep your barracks producing and putting skirmishers on mining or woodcutting.
29. You'll probably reach age III somewhere between 11-12 minutes if you've been alert about not letting your workers stay idle, building houses ahead of time, and keeping up constant production from your CC and barracks.  In age III, research champions at a barracks.  Trade for the 500 metal you need if you don't already have it.
30. If you have extra food, keep producing women 5 at a time at the CC.  Maybe stop making women and skirmishers when you're at around 120 population.
31. You might want to pull some women off of woodcutting and put them back on farming at this point.  You might need a few more fields as well.  A rotary mill and the third farming upgrade will help your food production, because you'll soon need a lot of food for champions as well as metal.
32. When you've finished researching champions, start making brythonic longswordsmen 5 at a time.  Rally them all to a single place so you can more easily manage them.
33. When you have 1000 stone, pull your stone miners and maybe some woodcutters and make a fortress near your CC.  As soon as the fortress finishes, make Boudicca and put her with the champions.
34. With 30 champions and Boudicca at around 14-15 minutes, it's time to think about who you want to kill!  For extra backup you can send some skirmishers out with them, although I usually don't.  Don't take a fight you think you will lose, if retreat is an option.  Use ctrl-q-click to tell your army to kill units but not buildings.  Once the enemy units are dead, your priority target is an enemy CC.  Ctrl-click on it to attack, then when it gets to low health, regular click on it to capture.
35. If there are metal mines out on the map, you might choose to build a second CC by them with like 20 skirmishers.  You will probably be attacked but if you can get 5000 metal out of them, it's worth it.
36. If you're feeling secure about the number of champions you have, or if you just have the resources to spare, it's time to research upgrades for your champions (infantry attack, and infantry armor) at the blacksmith.  This costs a lot of wood and metal so it's best to have several dozen champions first.  Also, "battlefield medicine" at the temple is important.
37. If your metal mines are running low (before they have actually run out), stop making champions and just be defensive while you make traders.  Set the trade setting 100% for metal and rally the traders to the market or dock that's farthest away, while still being somewhat protected against enemy raids.  You can trade from one side of your base to another if you have to.  You want to shoot for like 30 traders, maybe more if the game goes on for a long time.  Protect your trade routes with towers, fortresses, and troops.
38. If you're running into the supply cap, you can delete some of your workers to make room for more champions and traders.  I usually delete women woodcutters preferentially.
39. If the supply cap is low, such as 150, then it would be better to use corrals instead of farming.  You'd have to use a whole different build for that, though.  It's much more difficult to get a good corral start than a good farming start, and they require more attention throughout the game to keep making sheep.
40. If you are low on metal and well below max supply, but have thousands of food and wood, you can mass produce cavalry skirmishers.  They're nowhere near as strong as champion swordsmen and will die in an eyeblink to arrows, but they can serve as backup to your main force.  They are mobile and can help defend against enemies raiding your base with cavalry.  You can garrison them in ships or buildings to produce more arrows.  They can also be used for scouting and killing enemy traders.  If you later acquire enough metal for champions you can just suicide or delete them.

[AtlasMapper]

@causative: Wow that's an impressive post! You definitely should consider participating in the strategy guide of this game!

[BlazingHeart]

13 hours ago, sanderd17 said:

@BlazingHeart, maybe you can check out some youtube videos?

And I can also give you a bit of courage: balancing still changes quite often. So if you're good at one version, it could be that when playing the next version, you have to learn the optimal strategy again. So new players do get more chances. Though the next release (A20) doesn't differ a lot from A19 according to avid MP players. Perhaps A21 will be more like your taste.

Thank you! Is SergiuHellDragoonHQ a good channel? I found his when searching for games, just wanted to see if he was an adept player. 

1 hour ago, causative said:

Simple:  play multiplayer.  When you see someone who plays like a king with a higher economy score and more champions than everyone else, go to Replays (from the first screen:  Tools & Options: Replays) and study what order they built things and harvested resources.  Then, build things in that order yourself.

A good player should be able to get to age III from low resources by around 12 minutes, with over 100 population, and then immediately research champions at the barracks (provided they have a civ compatible with that) and start producing them.  It's not very difficult to learn a build order that will achieve this.

Here is an example of a Briton build order, assuming a 200 population cap, chickens, and berries.

1. Make 5 women (shift-click at your civic center, or CC, to make them)
2. Use your first 4 women to make a farmstead by the berries, assuming you have berries.  Have them get berries asap.
3. Put your cavalry skirmisher on chickens, assuming you have chickens.
4. With your 4 men, build a storehouse by the nearest big forest, and set them on chopping.
5. Use your dog to explore (hold down shift and click repeatedly on the minimap to give him a path to explore, you want to explore the edge of your base first and then concentric circles out from there).
6. Set a rally point on wood by the storehouse so that the first 5 women you made in step 1 will go there
7. Queue up some more women one at a time as long as you have food.
8. When the farmstead finishes, research Wicker Baskets (berry upgrade) and make sure the women who built the farmstead go to berries and not chickens.  This will put you at about 0 wood from low resources.
9. As soon as you have 75 wood again, have one of your woodcutters start making a house.  You will want to constantly be making 1 house at all times, to keep up with your CC production.  So, when this builder finishes, you immediately have him make another house, and so on until age III.  You can queue up multiple houses at once by shift-clicking, however note that this uses up the wood for future houses immediately so you can't use it for anything else.
10. Keep making women and putting them on wood until you're at maybe 22-25 population, then start having new women build fields.  Fields should be placed as close to your CC or farmstead as possible.  Five women go on a field.  You'll probably end up with like 6-8 fields before it's time for age II.
11. When you have wood to spare (that means you don't need any wood to immediately make houses or fields), research the first farming upgrade at the farmstead.
12. When the berries run out, the 4 berry women make a field.
13. When you have wood to spare, research the first woodcutting upgrade at the storehouse. 
14. When the cavalry skirmisher runs out of chickens, he can go help the dog explore.
15. Produce women 5 at a time whenever you have enough food.  It's faster.
16. When you have enough wood, make a barracks.
17. If you seem to have enough farms and wood you can switch your CC to producing men instead of women, and put them on stone and metal.  Build a storehouse at the stone and metal.
18. If you seem to have more food than you need but not enough wood, make women and put them on wood.
19. If your woodcutters are too far from the wood, make another storehouse closer to the wood.  You probably want another storehouse for woodcutters in a completely different stand of trees, anyway.
20. At some point around when the barracks finishes, you should have enough food and wood for age II, and somewhere around 50-70 population.  There's no reason to rush going to age II.  Don't interrupt your production of workers just to save up for age II.
21. The barracks should produce skirmishers that can either go on stone/metal or on wood, depending on which you need more.  With the barracks and CC both producing units, you may need more than one worker making houses to keep up.
22. When you reach age II, you may have too much food.  If so, you can take 5 or 10 women off of farming and put them on woodcutting instead.
23. When you reach age II, your first priority is a market, which you can make with a bunch of women.  The market should be placed near the back of your base, on the side farther from your allies so that you can get a long trade route.  When the market finishes, immediately trade any excess food for some stone and metal, whichever you have less of.  Hopefully you were first to market - britons are fast - so you can get good prices.
24. Research the metal mining upgrade, the second woodcutting upgrade and the second farming upgrade, whenever you have enough wood.  You might get the metal mining upgrade during age I if you have enough wood.
25. Make the other buildings you need for age III, with several workers on each.  I usually put down a defense tower, a blacksmith, and a temple.  Sometimes I skip the temple in favor of a second defense tower.
26. Make at least one more barracks, maybe two.
27. By the time your buildings finish, between trading and mining, you should have at least 750 metal and 750 stone.  If not, just trade for it at the market and go to age III.
28. If there's another metal mine within your territory, now's a fine time to build a storehouse and start putting some men on it.  Keep your barracks producing and putting skirmishers on mining or woodcutting.
29. You'll probably reach age III somewhere between 11-12 minutes if you've been alert about not letting your workers stay idle, building houses ahead of time, and keeping up constant production from your CC and barracks.  In age III, research champions at a barracks.  Trade for the 500 metal you need if you don't already have it.
30. If you have extra food, keep producing women 5 at a time at the CC.  Maybe stop making women and skirmishers when you're at around 120 population.
31. You might want to pull some women off of woodcutting and put them back on farming at this point.  You might need a few more fields as well.  A rotary mill and the third farming upgrade will help your food production, because you'll soon need a lot of food for champions as well as metal.
32. When you've finished researching champions, start making brythonic longswordsmen 5 at a time.  Rally them all to a single place so you can more easily manage them.
33. When you have 1000 stone, pull your stone miners and maybe some woodcutters and make a fortress near your CC.  As soon as the fortress finishes, make Boudicca and put her with the champions.
34. With 30 champions and Boudicca at around 14-15 minutes, it's time to think about who you want to kill!  For extra backup you can send some skirmishers out with them, although I usually don't.  Don't take a fight you think you will lose, if retreat is an option.  Use ctrl-q-click to tell your army to kill units but not buildings.  Once the enemy units are dead, your priority target is an enemy CC.  Ctrl-click on it to attack, then when it gets to low health, regular click on it to capture.
35. If there are metal mines out on the map, you might choose to build a second CC by them with like 20 skirmishers.  You will probably be attacked but if you can get 5000 metal out of them, it's worth it.
36. If you're feeling secure about the number of champions you have, or if you just have the resources to spare, it's time to research upgrades for your champions (infantry attack, and infantry armor) at the blacksmith.  This costs a lot of wood and metal so it's best to have several dozen champions first.  Also, "battlefield medicine" at the temple is important.
37. If your metal mines are running low (before they have actually run out), stop making champions and just be defensive while you make traders.  Set the trade setting 100% for metal and rally the traders to the market or dock that's farthest away, while still being somewhat protected against enemy raids.  You can trade from one side of your base to another if you have to.  You want to shoot for like 30 traders, maybe more if the game goes on for a long time.  Protect your trade routes with towers, fortresses, and troops.
38. If you're running into the supply cap, you can delete some of your workers to make room for more champions and traders.  I usually delete women woodcutters preferentially.
39. If the supply cap is low, such as 150, then it would be better to use corrals instead of farming.  You'd have to use a whole different build for that, though.  It's much more difficult to get a good corral start than a good farming start, and they require more attention throughout the game to keep making sheep.
40. If you are low on metal and well below max supply, but have thousands of food and wood, you can mass produce cavalry skirmishers.  They're nowhere near as strong as champion swordsmen and will die in an eyeblink to arrows, but they can serve as backup to your main force.  They are mobile and can help defend against enemies raiding your base with cavalry.  You can garrison them in ships or buildings to produce more arrows.  They can also be used for scouting and killing enemy traders.  If you later acquire enough metal for champions you can just suicide or delete them.

You my man are dedicated! Thank you so much I can't wait to try it!

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Sergiu is only a basic player, but he has fun commentary.

[causative]

Aside from any specific build orders, there are some basic economic concepts.  The two most important things to keep in mind are these:

1. Your CC and workers should never be idle as you advance from age I to III.
2. You don't want to "float" too much of a single type of resource without spending it.  If you have a lot of one type of resource but can't usefully spend it, rethink what you're doing.  If you're really on the ball, all four resources will stay low.

If you can do those 2 things, then it's hard not to have a good economy.

[Mr.Monkey]

Basically what causative said, play multiplayer, its the best way to improve. His build there is the "standard" build for every civ, so its a good way to go. Further on, when you have played more you can change things up for your liking.

Small tips regarding idle workers:

• In the corner below your mini-map there is a button that finds idle people for you
• Even better if you hold "I" and drag select, it selects only idle people

These tips are really useful for a beginner as you don't have to fumble around looking for a worker that is doing nothing

Edited March 31, 2016 by Mr.Monkey

[Lion.Kanzen]

Guys try to suggest things  after read The in game manual.

 

Here another version in the trac

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0adManual

 

---------

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GameplayFeatureStatus

 

and here is another wiki about top features that was planned.

 

 

[causative]

25 minutes ago, Mr.Monkey said:

Basically what causative said, play multiplayer, its the best way to improve. His build there is the "standard" build for every civ, so its a good way to go. Further on, when you have played more you can change things up for your liking.

Small tips regarding idle workers:

• In the corner below your mini-map there is a button that finds idle people for you
• Even better if you hold "I" and drag select, it selects only idle people

These tips are really useful for a beginner as you don't have to fumble around looking for a worker that is doing nothing

What I do is include the following lines in my local.cfg, so that the "find idle worker" key is g (instead of the default comma) and the "select idle units" drag select key is v instead of i:

[hotkey.selection]
idleonly = "V"
idleworker = "G"

That way I can press them both with my left hand, while my right hand stays on the mouse.

[Mr.Monkey]

20 minutes ago, causative said:

What I do is include the following lines in my local.cfg, so that the "find idle worker" key is g (instead of the default comma) and the "select idle units" drag select key is v instead of i:

[hotkey.selection]
idleonly = "V"
idleworker = "G"

That way I can press them both with my left hand, while my right hand stays on the mouse.

Nice stuff! I have never really played around with that stuff, is there a thread or something where i can learn more about it?

[causative]

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Manual_Settings

[av93]

 

Don't know if it helps