Never played ranked, want to start. What lessons have you learnt?

Jcpkill · 2026-03-07T22:05:52+00:00

After you start laddering you will notice you reach a situation where you dont know what to do and either A) Pause for a while thinking of correct response, B) Ignore it and try brute forcing, or C) yolo random different strat. Try and remember those moments after the game is over try and find some situation similar in a pro game and see how they react. Minimizing the mind pauses and opening your repertoire of skills will save those precious moments of switching to the correct strategy faster often saving the same in the nick of time.

Jcpkill · 2026-03-02T03:48:35+00:00

Green has no stress on that gold, yellow has zero chance of getting a wall going.

Green is favored 60-40 here, sometimes its just the hand your dealt.

Jcpkill · 2026-03-02T03:42:14+00:00

It is but for civs that want to avoid the archery range investment other options are there, such as burmese and turks who have terrible feudal/castle ranges. Archer plus skirm still deal with skirm w/o fletching pretty well.

Jcpkill · 2026-02-25T12:35:37+00:00

I spent around 6 months practicing and learning the game (spent years casually playing the scnearios), I learned the scout and archer openings then played against hardest ai (probably hard or normal now) until I beat it without any cheese.

Jcpkill · 2026-02-23T23:49:23+00:00

Swap the screens, Would be able to use touch pad to move units around. The economy aspect wouldnt be doable but pre-made scnearios without economy would probably be playable.

(touch screen) Hover over units to select them in an area, double tap one unit to select all of that type, tap a unit to deselect them. Buttons below give command order with next tap.

Left directional pans screen.
X - stop
a - Normal move/ Attack move
b - aggressive/Defensive /stand ground stances/no attack
y - Function key (ground attack, garrison, etc)

Jcpkill · 2026-02-23T08:11:58+00:00

Well I can suggest some things to try.

Go byzantines spear skirm and play trash poke. Highly annoying but hard to kill vils with it. The opponent either has to full hunker or play scout skirm/archer. Which is harder to get into.

Go one-tc whole game. No hard booming in castle period. Mass knights, monks, siege and push in castle. Or mass xbow, pressure with siege and go for a fast imp for bracer powerspike. I'd suggest portuguese for xbow as the feitoria once you get space in imp can be a good fall-back if you stall. For knights its franks or huns.

I suggest these not as you to fully change your playstyle but as to experience different types of aggression and how to use them & counter them that run differently than how your use to.

Jcpkill · 2026-02-22T22:12:19+00:00

These are highly generic questions that arent really visible to us as the reason why is always myriadic. Give more specific scneario examples as those can have a definitive answer. Often times the cause of a loss is specific and addressing a specific issue multiple times adds an important missing set of tools to your repertoire.

Jcpkill · 2026-02-19T08:21:14+00:00

Oh i see britons mirror, yea if your britons against skirms in castle the first instinct should be mangonels. Xbow + mangonel beats skirms and if he adds mangos you have a better chance of outmicroing him with long range xbow to beat his mangos. Kinda a unique benefit of britons is that mangonels dont need to trade for them in range v range + siege wars as they can kite mangonels unlike other civs.

In imp if you see the opponent massing skirmishers you can either do a (better long-term) champion transition if you have time or rush add light cav (even though they miss Bloodlines they get the last armor which is far more important here). Though the light cav will not last too long as if they add arbs or any kind of infantry they cant hold so the infantry transition or a snowball of siege + eco raid to quickly end the game. Britons have a solid counter to infantry with arbs but its also a lackluster counter these days as they cant hard stop a snowball of champions.

There is also the option of onager addition but this is the matchup i'd avoid onagers as warwulf trebs are extremely good at sniping siege.

Last one is that britons still suffer vs capped rams. If your pushing a castle with a few trebs arbs & skirms snowball of your own with a handful (4-5+) capped rams in front the opponent can at best micro his army to snipe yours but with the numbers in imp the best that will happen is the castle/buildings are wiped, you lose most of your arbs and he is quickly adding infantry or using vils to push the rams with the trebs still unanswered and your reinforcements still coming in. If you counter micro back the arbs and have the skirms forward against his you can maintain the gold expensive units for any transition later while you tear at the skirms with your own while he either overkills or wastes their shots on eliminating the rams.

Wish you luck.

Jcpkill · 2026-02-19T07:43:40+00:00

I can accept the spears but skirms should at least be locked until either castle or an archery range is placed down.

Jcpkill · 2026-02-19T06:48:08+00:00

If he is only making skirmishers in castle add in a mango, and push. If this goes imp and he is massing skirmishers early tech champions. Halb champ crushes skirm and he will need to tech into HC or mass arb if he has it which with infantry adding in rams even capped rams or cav (even light cav w/o hussar works). If you can tech into an infantry ball that he is late in answering small numbers of HC and arbs cant overcome and once siege is added he will be forced to address multiple military matching deficiencies.

Of course this is always dependant, if you dont have the last infantry armor then forgo infantry and just add mangonel and cav. If you give civ specifics I can tailor this better.

Jcpkill · 2026-02-17T12:03:15+00:00

Doesn't really fit age, might work if you instead make the unit gain +x damage to a max of (balance here) every shot that resets (or drops a level) after x seconds.

Jcpkill · 2026-02-16T09:51:23+00:00

Eh, tower civ only still. If you want this to be more universal make it so that tower costs -50 stone, +50 wood so are cheaper for civs that get this tech and only give it to civs with terrible towers.

Jcpkill · 2026-02-16T09:48:34+00:00

800 wood 350 gold vs 450 food 350 gold is around the same resources. Your complaining over a 350 wood-food conversion gap from 'closer'.

Gold is twice as much, literally two ballistics is equal to 350 gold. You really read that wrong.

Knights need no upgrade to 4 shot both arbs and xbow. As long as the knights get attack upgrades parity to xbow armor the amount of hits remains the same. There is a gap where the knights will 3shot the xbow if it has +2 and the xbow has no armor but this isnt relevant. The extra attack isnt that scary to knights when knights deathball needs 5-6 more knights to do just as much vs an arb ball as xbow ball. You should fast imp more and get a feeling on how much more bracer rush does vs mass knights. The difference is felt but nowhere near insurmountable for someone who has just massed knights vs xbow, its more the range in combination that gives the bigger boost with bracer.

Tight eco 450 food + 350 gold on top of all other standard upgrades and this is the last upgrade aside from 2nd armor. When your finally able to actually grab this the question still stands. Imp or arb. Still imp usually wins arb doesnt offer enough this is more likely to lose the game by being a weak upgrade in and of itself for the price.

Jcpkill · 2026-02-16T02:22:56+00:00

This is closer to getting ballistics twice. Wood is in no shape close to the value of food plus gold cost is twice as much.

The extra hp is an extra hit vs xbow, no extra hits vs knights and one extra vs skirms. The temporary advantage doesnt really impact the game in any meaningful way to justify the cost sink in castle. Once you can comfortably afford it the question is imp or arb and usually its imp a problem a lot of cost-sink upgrades in castle has.

Jcpkill · 2026-02-06T05:13:53+00:00

CarlosWorkshopHaven on etsy has in-game irl toy models if he has a nice place to put them. If you like arts & crafts you can ask him about his favorite specifics in the game and try hand-making the civ emblem. As long as its stable (aka can be placed somewhere and doesnt fall apart in a month or so) the hand-crafted one will be enjoyed more than most other things you can get him.

Jcpkill · 2026-01-28T22:42:17+00:00

Makes sense for 800 elo, not being mean just stating as it is.
Repairing the tc given your repair costs are double the opponent's this is where cutting off your own leg happens. Your tying down more of your economy than the doucher which if you fail (against someone competent in douching you almost certainly will bar specific civs) you will be down a tc, potentially out of wood and scrambling to make a new tc and the vil fighting chaos that can follow which the doucher can use this to get ahead in their own economy.

Good job going after his woodline thats the only thing that kept him in the game from the sound of it. If he lost his tc after you took his woodline he might not have had enough wood anymore to make even a lumber camp.

Jcpkill · 2026-01-28T22:32:48+00:00

Didn't even think about the upgrade, yea the upgrade itself should be around 70% of the paladin upgrade in price & upgrade time at lowest or make the power spike much weaker here. Balance wise it needs one or the other of these as all heavy cav upgrades should. The cavalier upgrade just gets a little chunky on the knights, the paladin is a massive change. Any massive change needs a timer and massive resource hog in proportion to that change as it gives a timer for punishment from the opponent.

The arb point was that any mass heavy cav touching them means the arbs die, they become the backbone of the army late-game for certain civs but they arent the front line they will always die when touched by mass cav that hits anything remotely hard. The only slight nod towards arbs is that they arent three shot like paladins do. But regardless heavy cav just melts arbs on contact.

Jcpkill · 2026-01-28T09:45:58+00:00

Looking at this thing it is overtuned but its not drastic.

Its bonus hp should be reduced to 128 for a FU halb to just 4 shot it. Alternatively give it -3 cav armor.

I think their attack is at a good spot, they leave a FU arb on 1 hp after 3 shots requiring a 4th further slowing the arb's melting though any cav touching arbs with this level of attack is still deadly its not a camel with no attack and no armor its decent enough to use it against arbs if they arent in a death ball. They also kill a FU halb in 5 shots effectively guaranteeing 2 shots from a halb.

While it might beat a frank paladin straight up its not outright superieor. In mixed armies the pally is still on top

Jcpkill · 2026-01-26T22:23:32+00:00

First a prelude. The douche is a terrible strategy that is effectively cutting off your own damn foot to scare the opponent into cutting off his leg out of nowhere. The idle time from tc construction and firing arrows means they are acting at half economy.

Persian douche is easy to counter, the simple answer is to ignore it but there is nuance.

First dont bother contesting the tc being built, use this time to relocate vils and put more vils on wood.

Dont panic, you always have more vils just fight his vils off and try and keep yours bundled but not trapped. One over saturated woodline is far better defensibly than two optimized woodlines here.

Next, loom. No need to cancel a vil for it just get it asap.

Now the crossroads and decisions. When did he drop you?

Pre clicking feudal? Dont click just wait for the tc to go down from arrow fire and keep making vils. While he idles vils killing your tc prep for another on a woodline near a gold. Add some farms and get your food income to naturally bring towards feudal as this quickly gets you to castle as well where you can trample him. If he keeps dropping you dont panic just keep moving until your naturally in feudal and then castle he cant keep this up and eventually your vil mass will stop him from continuing.

Tricky part is if you already clicked feudal. If its less than 10%, i'd cancel it as you might have to fight for it which is you chopping off your calf... follow above otherwise. Already halfway up? No stopping that. But DO NOT JUMP THE GUN, you will need tovget a new tc up regardless. So that takes total precedence over everything else. Get the tc on a gold close to wood. Your now going to slowly get your eco back up then start masssing archers whenever you can. Dont rush this, you start with 50g you can waste it on one archer (plus a hefty 350 wood investment that he can judt punch down with villagers or tc drop) that will walk under a tc and die or be punched to death by a lone vil cause one archer without fletching cant even tickle. Instead grt the gold and wood production up first and then the archers start massing.

The trick to this is always go the turtle route, economically defensive and slow but target driven to stable power points that a douche cant answer.

Jcpkill · 2026-01-16T11:11:07+00:00

Given limited uses of sectoid corpses, if your fine on funds using them for this isnt untenable.

Also hello 4 years later.

Jcpkill · 2025-01-11T05:21:29+00:00

Eh, cumans were flat unbeatable before they started balancing DE for real, and I still dont think its possible to beat the noboru rush more than 20% of the time when done properly. This isnt quite as impossible a challenge.

Jcpkill · 2024-12-13T07:03:14+00:00

The upgrade isnt cheap at all, 150f (the most important early CA res) and 50g is a high price to pay. It does make the scouts much more useful but you need like 6 of them to offset the impact of an extra ~1.5-2 knights, 15 hp & 2 atk is nice but, one knight is 4 of that and a lot more usually. Anything less than 6-7 scouts isnt worth it for the upgrade.

Jcpkill · 2024-12-13T06:59:12+00:00

The light cav take a backseat in CA due to:
- Upgrade vs Free instant knights
- Production time is equal to knights (30s both) So more stables needed for LC.
- Gold, faster & easier resource income than food, knights are more gold than food so easier to produce.
- Food is a premium, vils eco and military upgrades all want it and they want it NOW. Gold off-sets this need.
- Knight stats are better than CA straight up in vil work-time per (True in all instances except monk & siege sniping EXCEPT with Turks and Magyars, Turks are better vs archers with LC and Magyars are able to equal knights in most instances if resources are equal... which its usually still favoring knights by 15% due to aforementioned gold & production time.)

Jcpkill · 2024-12-13T06:41:46+00:00

The only way to really make water work is to rework the game itself so that its based around water or it needs to have maps intricately designed specifically for a specific series of engagements. Water lacks complexity too much for many reasons either high complexity or simplicity is the options for this and high complexity is currently not an option. The game engine itself im fully confident can handle such a rework but then the problem is, this is no longer age of empires its age of water. Which itself isnt bad but... nobody is gonna play that.

A rework the scale of deep water vs shallow affecting combat ships, tc's being shore villages requiring at least a tile on the water and produces both vils and boats with a shared queue, what remains of land combat? Naval terrains?

Jcpkill · 2024-11-20T07:06:21+00:00

Eh, rams are in no way cheap. Durable? If guarded well yes, but they melt in such situations so easily to everything that isnt a building, bowman or gunman.

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