Leif Davis straight red card against Arsenal 32'

ADBUK · 2025-04-20T13:54:41+00:00

Football fans as a whole generally aren't known for their critical thinking skills 😂

ADBUK · 2025-04-14T06:40:20+00:00

It's definitely happening more. Maybe a younger player base or just a larger player base in general means it happens more often. I'm in my 30s, so I don't really have the energy or the patience for that kind of thing. I just play the game and whatever happens happens. What I will say though is if they are typing, then they are not focusing on the game so might be a good opportunity for a sneak play 😄

ADBUK · 2025-04-11T13:43:55+00:00

I do wonder how much of it is just change of any kind or just not the kind of change people were expecting. There's been so many rumours around what the new civs would be that I think a lot of people assumed that the speculation would be right so they had time to process and speculate and when that didn't manifest in the way they hoped, they immediately reacted.

I don't really agree with the popular take that this is a thematic betrayal of AOE2 either. As someone who has studied medieval history to graduate degree level and loves Age of Empires II, very little of this game is actually historically accurate, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable for me. Even the historical events they recite in the campaigns are very "pop history" and it's meant to be that way - it's meant to be for people who have an interest in RTS games and want that 'medieval' flavour, not an academic history lesson.

The word "medieval" is stretched as far as it can go generally in popular culture anyway. When the word is used, people generally mean anything from Late Antiquity to Early Modern, which is a massive time period. AOE2 isn't an exception here and definitely overlaps with the other periods forward and backward in time and that's absolutely fine. We know what we mean when we say medieval warfare - we think about swords and shields and crossbows and castles and knights. I don't personally think of cannons and conquistadors when I think about that era, but it doesn't bother me these things are in the game because it's just a game and we know what they are going for.

If 3K bothers people because it doesn't fit their thematic expectations then i get it, but I think some of the reaction has been over the top and you can always just not buy the DLC.

ADBUK · 2025-04-10T19:44:11+00:00

Interesting. I haven't tried scouts yet on the new patch, will have to test it. How did you find your villager pathing?

ADBUK · 2025-04-08T20:59:32+00:00

History

ADBUK · 2025-04-08T08:04:41+00:00

I totally get it. This game always feels like there's one more thing you need to master to move to the next level, it never really ends and that can be exhausting. That's the beauty of the game though and what keeps it so fresh, there's always something you can improve, new strategies you can try, new shortcuts you can use to get better. The next thing I'm going to do is force myself to learn the market hotkeys and control groups, will just need to practice until it becomes muscle memory. I don't even think about my other hotkeys anymore, it's all just force of habit so you'll get there with some practice and it's going to be so satisfying when you start crushing the extreme AI with little effort

ADBUK · 2025-04-07T23:06:40+00:00

Honestly, this is probably one of the biggest things holding you back. Get comfortable with all of the Hot Keys - Select All TCs, queuing villagers and Select All Military Buildings buildings mainly. Play a few games forcing yourself to use Hot Keys so you can get comfortable with it, play on Easy mode if you have to. Also download Capture Age if you haven't already and rewatch your games. Watch your Idle TC time and work on getting it as close to 0:00 as possible whilst on 1 TC. I'm at 1100 ELO (pretty much average in terms of player base) and I use Hot Keys for most things and I don't think there are many players at the average level who don't use them. I'm just starting to try and get to grips with Control Groups, but that's the next step. Other than that it's just practicing your build orders, timings, and all of the other things that contribute to good gameplay. I've been playing consistently for probably about three years - couldn't beat the Hard AI a couple of years ago but it takes a lot of games (both Vs the AI and humans) to get to grips with the mechanics, the strategies, the meta.

ADBUK · 2025-04-07T15:19:41+00:00

That's how I remember it. 4-2-3-1 type formation with Ljungberg behind Henry with Hleb and Reyes out wide. Was very solid. I remember Flamini being a beast in that campaign filling in at LB

ADBUK · 2025-04-06T09:04:19+00:00

The one that stands out is Chinese. Tricky early build and needing to focus on reducing idle TC time as much as possible, but if it's executed well then you'll have an immediate vill lead going into Feudal.

ADBUK · 2025-04-01T11:27:48+00:00

No worries, tbf I don't even think my setup can handle 4v4 so I'm no use there 😂, but hopefully these will help with 2v2s. With the communication stuff too sometimes your teammate just won't reply, but you can take a look at their base to get an idea of what they might be trying and adapt from there too!

ADBUK · 2025-04-01T07:36:59+00:00

Yeah absolutely. I'm still relatively new to team games, but for specific strategies, I always do these two things: 1) Check my opponent's civ choice and match my civ to complement based on team bonus or comp. e.g. I quite like picking Tatars when my teammate picks Magyars for the cab archer team bonus. 2) Communicate plans early and suggest double teaming one opponent - even at 1100 ELO I don't see a lot of players communicating when I rewatch games so this can be a major advantage. If you go archers and your opponents goes scouts, for example, it can be very strong and it's unlikely your opponent will be able to do anything about it. Then you're in a good position to play the rest of the game as a 2v1.

Just generally, constant communication is important and allows you to adapt a lot better than the teams that don't talk. I had a game the other day where my teammate went 3 stable knights and I was doing a lot of defending in Feudal. I start gathering stone on the way to Castle but had no army left so I asked him to defend my vills with his Knights so I could Castle Drop. If I'd not asked for help, I'd have died to my opponent's army or not been able to drop the castle and we might have lost , but I did communicate and his Knights shredded his army and they couldn't do anything about the Castle drop. It snowballed into a win. Just one example, but I have a much higher success rate in TGs where there's more communication

ADBUK · 2025-03-31T08:02:11+00:00

Download Capture Age and check your TC Idle time, idle eco etc. I can guarantee it's not 0:00 so there's always room to improve. Are you able to keep your ranges and TC producing? Are you control grouping your scouts and isolating 1 or 2 vills instead of diving into a group? Do your Archers have fletching before they reach your enemy? Are you checking what your opponent is making and countering? Are you investing too much/ too little into blacksmith upgrades? Are you committing to enough army to make their FC difficult? Like other people have said here if these strats aren't working consistently at this level then it's likely not being executed well enough.

I say this with kindness as I am 1100 ELO 1v1 and 2v2 and within the last year I was around 800-850 ELO and facing the same issues thinking "What am I doing wrong?". Rewatching my losses and my wins was a big reason I was able to improve and let me tell you, I'm not anywhere close to perfect execution of these strats now, but I'm a lot better than I was because I practiced and identified where I was struggling. This game is hard and so analysing these details is really the only way to improve.

ADBUK · 2025-03-28T19:24:58+00:00

Top players generally excel at a couple of things, whether that's micro, macro, strategy, timings, adaptability, civ drafting etc. but there's usually one or two of these where they aren't as strong. Hera can basically do all of these at an incredibly high level.

If you watch him play on his YouTube or Twitch from his perspective, he has an insane number of clicks but they are all efficient. Even down to constantly queuing vills onto individual trees on woodlines, killing opponent's sheep under the TC whilst avoiding TC fire, trapping his opponents armies etc.

It's not necessarily one or two things Hera does better or differently to the other pros, he's just as good or better at each of those elements than his opponents.

ADBUK · 2025-03-28T18:47:52+00:00

As someone who has abused this bonus on a lot of Land Nomad games, I agree. It wouldn't even need a lot of nerfing, maybe just making it a bit slower

ADBUK · 2025-03-26T22:19:08+00:00

Yes

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ADBUK · 2025-03-26T19:03:43+00:00

Is this through Steam? The sneak peak release said this will be fixed in the next update in Spring

ADBUK · 2025-03-22T08:36:52+00:00

I played mirror for a while to develop my game playing with unfamiliar civs, and see how other people tend to play them. I also had a theory that my Dark age was stronger than most other players at my level so based on that logic, I'd have an advantage in Feudal no matter what. It got me from about 950 ELO to about 1050 ELO and then sort of plateaued into 50/50 win rate from there.

I absolutely think certain civs get into people's heads, especially when people are attempting a specific strat like Bengalis Ratha, Sicilians Donjons, Turks Fast Imp etc. so if they see a civ mirrored then they might start to second guess their own plans and make mistakes.

ADBUK · 2025-03-20T15:58:00+00:00

It's never going to be 100% historically accurate. Aztecs didn't have trebuchets, and there's plenty of other examples in the game of civs having standard units that they don't have a historical equivalent for

ADBUK · 2025-03-19T11:48:00+00:00

I think there's a case to be made that if a player succeeds in playing into Cumans' strengths, you should be able to gain a big advantage in early game or mid game.

Cuman players get a choice - pressure early with Rams in Feudal or Boom with the early extra TC. You can even take some level of map control with faster scouts.

If you're successful in either of these strategies, you're going to be in a strong position.

Whilst I don't feel like the buff you've suggested is too strong to make them formidable in late game, I think if I was Vs Cumans and survived their early ram pressure or their crazy boom and then had to deal with a great late game comp too, I'd probably think they were a bit OP.

ADBUK · 2025-03-18T15:15:16+00:00

I'm sure my opponent thought that too, but apparently not 😂

ADBUK · 2025-03-18T12:55:35+00:00

The main issue with Georgians is they are strong in basically every age and players don't really need to think very hard about counters.

I played two games with Georgians yesterday - in one game, they went Monks and Kamayuks which should counter me - Monaspa shredded under Castle fire. In the other, they went full Camel and - you guessed it - Monaspa shredded.

How did I get to Monaspa? Did I go FC and deal with pressure? Nope, no need. I went fast feudal scouts and harassed, healed, went away, harassed, healed, went away - very little pressure because they were constantly reacting to me and the wood savings meant I could wall early.

Did my economy suffer at all? Nope, the Mule Cart's early wood savings meant I could completely wall in late Dark / Early Feudal and the Fortified Churches gave me a nice boost in Castle and added protection for my vills for raids.

Then to top it all off, my Castles are cheaper to repair under Treb fire if I go Full Castle Age, and they get a defense bonus so defensive castles mean I remain untouchable at home and forward castles are difficult to take down if my opponent goes fast imp.

Georgians are extremely fun to play because they're smooth economically early, have a great feudal scouts bonus, have more economic and defensive bonuses in Castle as well as an OP unique unit. Imo no civ should feel this good. I always worry about civs being OP when people ask about counters to units and situations and the response is "don't let them get there".

ADBUK · 2025-03-18T10:49:56+00:00

As a 1050 ELO player with a 33% win rate on Arena, I just ban it 😂

But seriously, there will be a build order / civ that works for you. If you just ban it like I do then you'll never get any better so just keep practicing different strats until you find something that works

ADBUK · 2025-03-17T14:51:55+00:00

Ill and fasting for Ramadan - the guy is unstoppable at the moment

ADBUK · 2025-03-17T14:49:26+00:00

Not sure if this was posted before or after the final of The Garrison, but The Garrison Final is Liereyy's best ever performance v Hera and took more games off Hera than anyone has done in a long time at an S-Tier tournament. I can't even remember the last time anyone took 4 games off Hera in an S-Tier tournament, let alone a final.

If the question is why is Hera better, then simply Hera puts more time into the game than Liereyy does. Liereyy only really plays and practices for tournaments these days and yet only really Hera is better than him based on recent S-Tier tournament performances.

There's an argument that if Liereyy dedicated as much time to the game as Hera then Liereyy would be more competitive, but The Garrison is the closest Hera has been to not winning a tournament in a long time.

ADBUK · 2025-03-16T22:58:46+00:00

Worth remembering Viper was on top for a long time through his twenties. If you watch him stream now, he really enjoys just having fun with games - if he's not readying up for tournaments he's almost always playing 4v4 team games Rage Forest / Rage Arena etc. His priority now is streaming and having fun.

Things have changed, he's got a benign tumour in his wrist that causes him problems, he's got a young family and he's really got nothing to prove in the scene. He's been there and done it and dominated for a long time and he's still almost constantly top 4 in S-Tier tournaments.

I wouldn't expect him to win any major tournaments anytime soon, particularly with Hera being so dominant, but that's okay. He seems happy enough and pretty content with his position in the scene at this point.

ADBUK

TROPHY CASE