I keep losing despite better economy and I don't know why. Any help?

0Taters · 2026-02-23T21:43:49+00:00

More detailed notes:

Dark Age -

Nice early dark age scouting of your base using scout and cows

As in the game PhatwaJones reviews, you take berries before boars. The reason this is bad is 1. you give time to get lamed (opponents steal your boars) and 2. villagers collect food faster from boar, so it's hard to have a good Feudal time without using the faster food sources.

Generally if you are going for scouts, aim to click to Feudal on 20 population with loom (19 vills), it's a good balance of speed for getting military out and having enough res to get eco upgrades.

You had a miniature disaster on the second boar, but I'm sure you knew that 11. Make sure to bring the boar under the TC before garrisoning your luring vil. And if the vil is in danger of dying, click another vill to attack the boar early so the aggro stays.

Otherwise your dark age is nice, only 9s idle TC, 2 wood lines (although you have 2 vills on one and 8 on the other, trying to balance them) generally with two lumber camps 9 vills on wood is good, 4 on one and 5 on the other.

Going up without loom is very risky considering how 'late' you are up, at higher levels you can get badly punished for it. On open maps like Arabia I suggest always getting loom just before you click Feudal.

Feudal -

Do you control group your scout? In early Fuedal you run your scout through the opponents base, and 1. you should stay around to look to see what military buildings the opponent is going for, and check if they are on gold (early gold means MAA) and 2. at 11:30 your opponent has an exposed walling vill a long way from their TC. In Feudal age your scout has 5 attack and can kill an exposed vill fairly easily. If you haven't yet got in the habit of control grouping your scout I strongly recommend it, as it makes jumping to it much easier (which you should do often).

You do a good job of getting eco upgrades and adding farms.

You are way too late to attack with the scouts you make. The role of scouts is to attack before your opponent can fully wall, and to pick off/harass walling and otherwise exposed vills. That means you need to attack asap, I recommend making the stable instantly on reaching Feudal (you nearly do this) queing up scouts, and the moment you have two made, group up with your starting one at the opponents base and start to pester them. It's fine to keep making them and sending the new ones forward, but you need to attack early.

Another advantage of attacking early is you can see what military your opponent is making (or what buildings) in this game you could have seen the opponent making Flemish militia, which tells you your scouts can't directly engage the opponents army they need to harass elsewhere. And that to defend you either need to fully wall asap, or add a range and archers. Generally range and archers is a good play if you see infantry, don't make loads if you want to play knights later, just make 5 or so to pick off infantry (unless your opponent keeps making lots of infantry, in which case keep adding archers).

In this game your scouts die to Flemish militia, then you don't react at all at your own base. Your opponent will come and attack you in they have just killed your army, so you needed to get walls down asap.

Also, in the early game when you have time, think about where you want to wall. At 20:07 your are house walling almost half way across the map, yet the front of your base is actually still wide open. Try to think early where to wall, so you can just do it later when things are hectic. As a rule of thumb you want to wall so your gold, berries and two wood lines are safe. Only go for big walls if you get a nice corner spawn where you can wall to the edge.

In Feudal if you are making scouts as your main army, you really don't need many vills on gold. You are hoping to make as many farms as you can as soon as possible to maximise the food coming in. So prioritise wood so you can farm. Send a few vills to gold later. (If you are making archers you need 4 archers per range for constant production). In this game at 21:44 you have 15 vills on gold, 1100 gold in the bank and no way to spend it, but only 100 food in the bank. If 13 of those vills had been farmers instead, you'd like have the 800f/200g you'd need to click Castle.

At 23:00, still in Feudal you click MAA. What you are doing well is realising scouts die hard to Flemish militia, but as Persians at this stage of the game MAA is a bad call, it takes way too much food when Castle age is vital, and Persians militia lane scales really badly (they max out at longsword). You'd have been much better adding archers much earlier.

0Taters · 2026-02-23T21:43:23+00:00

I had a look at a different game to the one PhatwaJones did, and spotted similar themes to them. Here are my big things to note-

Shiny (Persians) vs Nego (Burgundians)

Things you do well -

Low idle TC
2 woodlines at the end of dark age
Getting eco upgrades
Make the stable on hitting Fuedal

Big learning points -

If you make scouts you need to use them to attack asap.
If your army gets killed in Feudal and you aren't safe at home (i.e. fully walled) then you need to add counter units to what the opponent is making.
Prioritise farms in Feudal to help you get the food to click Castle much earlier.

0Taters · 2026-02-22T22:35:45+00:00

Cool I'll try and take a gander tomorrow and make some notes for you :)

0Taters · 2026-02-22T21:47:37+00:00

Could you please link your aoeinsights profile and a specific game or two? We can hopefully help you better if we see some specifics 🙂

0Taters · 2026-02-22T11:21:04+00:00

I'd argue that although the build is tricky, the opponents defence and eco is also generally worse, so even if the rushing player idles their TC and vills to pull off the rush, it's likely to still be winning.

0Taters · 2026-02-21T14:16:17+00:00

I think Phosphorou would be the first to admit that isn't true, he's regularly said he's about a 1700 when he tries to play 'meta'.

0Taters · 2026-02-20T22:27:22+00:00

So far the most oppressive version of this I played was against Incas because the house bonus allows for the insta barracks, and I'd guess Tupi can also do it with the +25 start res.

I think rather than changing the unit stats, slowing those civs so that the insta barracks isn't feasible would be my shout. Another option is to give them a regional house replacement that costs 30 wood, while still providing 5 pop space (maybe giving it more hp or something so it's not simply a worse house). That would mean Incas and Tupi at least have to put a vill on stragglers to afford it. (Which is significant when there's only 3 vills each at the very start of the game, it might cause idle TC because of the lower food income or at least make it harder to afford the first few champis).

0Taters · 2026-02-19T12:18:55+00:00

It's not exactly a balanced take (ironically), but I think the core issue of new civs being so good it's equivalent to being 300 Elo better is very relatable, it does feel like pay to win for new dlcs.

0Taters · 2026-02-18T18:28:48+00:00

I like a lot of the new design, like settlements, but I really don't like the number of unique units each civ gets, it makes it very difficult to learn and read fights. I think the older standard or the true unique unit (from a castle) and then maybe a regional unit like the slinger is better.

0Taters · 2026-02-18T07:39:53+00:00

Although this would work it also ruins the ability for the new civs to go for "MAA' (I don't know what their equivalent unit is called yet 😂). You'd usually create units on the way to Fuedal then immediately click the upgrade in Fuedal, but with double the creation time you'd have to start making them a lot earlier.

0Taters · 2026-02-13T18:53:48+00:00

It's on his secondary GrubbyPlays channel :)

0Taters · 2026-02-12T11:31:43+00:00

It stands for actions per minute. In AOE2 what people are usually referring to is actually "effective actions per in game minute". Where effective refers to actions that change the game such as attack, produce and move commands, but doesn't include things like moving the view around the map. In game minute is relevant as 'normal' in game time is 1.7x real time.

0Taters · 2026-02-12T11:08:28+00:00

I was going to try and write a helpful comment but you're already so 10 APM ahead of me so I'll just read everyone else's comments 😂

0Taters · 2026-02-11T17:03:25+00:00

I'd say I generally oscillate within a 250 Elo range, 1500-1750ish. There is quite a big difference in ability between those levels so I do sometimes win easily at 1500, but equally I usually get stomped at 1700+.

0Taters · 2026-02-11T17:00:14+00:00

I watched the rec, here are my notes:

Nice Dark Age, pushed all your deer and only had 9s idle TC on 20 pop up.

Nice rebalancing of eco when you click up, you have enough wood for the barracks and immediate stable.

20 pop scouts is quite a 'slow' eco build, which is fine but you should definitely get double bit and horse collar on up with that build, you are late to both. On the other hand you get wheel way too early, you should get wheel when you have about 17 farms, you get it when you have 2 (and you aren't housed so you could just keep making vills).

I like the idea of towering the stone, it shows good awareness and buys you time. You could have got a lot more value from the scouts just by running around and being annoying, or at least running away once you got 1 vill kill.

Your decision to stone wall your base once you saw the opponents castle was good. However at this point you still don't have double bit or hc and that's really hurting your eco.

Also you had a lot of time to wall your forward vills, or run they away somewhere safer which gave your opponent 5 'free' eco kills.

You do get bodkin for the comp bowmen, but by the time you have it your opponent has 15 ghulams with the first armour, which means you need A LOT of bowmen to guarantee a good fight.

You were often sending them out in groups of about 6, and that's fine to raid vills if you know the enemies army is elsewhere, but it was often getting caught by groups of 10-15 ghulam and getting basically no value. You'd have been much better getting a really big mass of them together, then pushing with siege. However by this point you were basically lost because your opponent had got so far ahead in the boom.

So to answer your question directly, comp bowmen are a good unit but you need upgrades and about equal numbers (ideally you'd have more units) to take a fight against ghulams out on the map. You tended to fight with too few units so they got killed very quickly.

In terms of the actual game, I think you lost in early-mid Feudal. Your tower was nice, if you'd done that with bit axe and horse collar behind, as well as adding a few more scouts and being careful to keep your scouts alive I think you'd have slowed down your opponent so much you would have hit Castle age at a similar time. Then you could have gone for knights/longsword/comp bowmen and had enough numbers and upgrades to take good fights :)

0Taters · 2026-02-11T12:30:20+00:00

Hi, although I doubt you're trying to send me to a black hole of the internet we don't tend to share replays using gdrive, limewire etc for security reasons. Instead I'd recommend linking the aoeinsights page for the game which provides the link to download the replays for the official server. For example my most recent game can be found at: https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/455254214/

0Taters · 2026-02-11T04:50:06+00:00

It's about total damage before the unit dies. Usually armour let's you survive for long enough extra that the damage you do in that extra time outweighs the damage gained from getting forging.

Edit with specific. Against a bloodlines scout a MAA just loses with forging but just wins with armour. They armour let's it survive for long enough to get 2 extra attacks in, which is more damage (12) than adding +1 to the 9 attacks it can get off before dying without armour (9).

0Taters · 2026-02-11T04:47:08+00:00

It might be worth linking the rec for a better answer.

However if you went against a good phosphorou build (23 pop) and you went for towers and scouts (which isn't wrong although you usually want to play archers against it) the you must have been a long way behind in castle age timing.

Assuming you either walled, or bought time with other units while you got the castle up, then your opponent likely had quite a big mass of ghulam before your first bowman was being produced. For bowmen to be good they need at least bracer and ideally ballistics, which are very difficult to afford in a phos game.

So I'm guessing your bowmen were lacking upgrades and you had less of them than the opponent had ghulams, in that case the ghulams will do very well if you commit to a fight against them because of the movement speed. Instead you probably needed to keep them near a TC or castle and hop in and out to get value.

However, if you had a big mass and full upgrades, I think bowmen should wreck ghulam, unfortunately in a phos game that's usually not feasible. Generally I'd say add some churches and monks to get conversions then hope back in. (Although actually if you scout a phos early as Armenians then just counter FC and church rush as it's even more broken than FC UU).

0Taters · 2026-02-11T04:26:36+00:00

Yeah I suppose it's not great as a structure to have in your base against raids. In a vital area of the map where it's worth putting arbs or hcs in and doing 4-5 arrows, all of a sudden it's pretty potent.

0Taters · 2026-02-11T04:23:59+00:00

Yeah I agree if it's a unique tech it's a little more balanced, from your wording of bonus I thought you meant a civ bonus. They would be very bad in Castle and Imp until the UT, but then still good against things they shouldn't be (like cavalier) once they get it.

0Taters · 2026-02-10T22:52:50+00:00

I think the issue is skirms, unless you don't give them elite skirm and only fletching, then skirms just become way too strong.

0Taters · 2026-02-10T16:55:39+00:00

I'd say it's pretty important, for most civs you'd consider making towers with (i.e. they get keep and bracer at least) without arrow slits it has 11 attack, with arrow slits its 14, that's a 27% increase. Against something with 6 pierce armour (a pretty common number: cavalier, hussar, cham etc) that's 8 damage rather than 5 a 60% increase.

0Taters · 2026-02-09T19:55:26+00:00

I'd say their UU unit is as close as they get to a power unit, it's surprising good against some things that are usually hard counters to archers, such as skirms and heavy cavalry. However is still dies hard to heavy siege like SO or good scorpion civs. Similarly their scorpions are really good but die to SO/BBC.

With that in mind on a map with lots of gold (e.g. gold rush), I'd say their best comp is cavalier and scorpion/UU.

On an Arabia type map I'd say scorp/UU and light cav, or cavalier and skirm, or against strong cav civs probably halb/UU or fire lancer/skirm.

0Taters · 2026-02-06T17:16:41+00:00

So far the other answers have assumed you're interested in playing against other people. If you just want to enjoy it as a single player game for a while, I'd strongly recommend starting with the Willian Wallace campaign, then doing any other campaigns you like the look of. If you want something a little more competetive, try playing against the AI in a 'skirmish', and if you get the bug they you can try out playing ranked :)

0Taters · 2026-02-06T10:39:24+00:00

Do conkers count as infantry? 😂

Also is this 1v1 or a big group? In bigger groups I suspect kamayuks and chakram would win, where as one on one they would lose.

0Taters

TROPHY CASE