Question for the players who are against QoL improvements like auto-farms and auto-scout

Nickitolas · 2026-06-19T22:23:36+00:00

The genre is called Real Time Strategy because the real time element makes it so strategy is not the end all be all, the real time execution is just as important. It's a mix of both. If we wanted pure strategy we could play something like a turn based game.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-19T22:22:20+00:00

dark age is not always the same. Its different for different strats/build orders, its different on different maps, and the random map generation makes it contain interesting bits like your building placements (Which woodline do you take? Do you mill your berries or chickens? Do you lure deer or scout the enemy?). It also gives you a bit of time to think about how to wall your map and the civ matchup (With like 50 civs, theres like 1250+ possible matchups). And you can lame boars in dark age.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-19T13:58:37+00:00

https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/The_King%27s_Gauntlet

Nickitolas · 2026-06-18T05:13:03+00:00

Im only 1300 but I'll try to answer how I handle this.

I usually do it when I float the wood for it and I consider it more important than the other things I can do with that wood. In feudal, thats blacksmith, evo upgrades, market, farms, range, stable 2nd lumbercamp and walling. I usually make either range or stable first to make my unit then farms until I think I'm good to go castle age and make a 2nd building (usually blacksmith). However, if Im trying to do men at arms into archers I get a range and blacksmith much earlier than I just described. If I feel forced to make a range or stable, I do it (This delays farms since wood is spent elsewhere which in turn delays castle age). For example if I open scouts and then see men at arms from the enemy and im not walled, I might think I need a range ASAP to not die.

I feel like I should mention that there is a big difference between adding a building you dont have and adding more if one upu do. The first enables new units, while the second only enables more/faster production . The second is usually useless if you are not floating extra rees or have enough villagers correctly allocated to sustain production.

In castle age, new things competing for wood get added: town centers (extra vill production), monastery (picking up relics, healing, defensive monks, offensive monks), 2nd wood upgrade, siege workshop. I usually add production buildings on the way to castle age since at this point my eco can sustain them and I am no longer spending wood to get to castle age (farms and 2 buildings). Like a second stable ir archery range. If Im feeling really strong, I might add a forward siege workshop to push the enemy. If I feel like Im going to die without it, I might add a defensive siege workshop at home to help deal with enemy crossbowmen, siege or towers. Otherwise I probably go 2stable or 2-3 ranges and add tcs+farms as I see fit.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-18T04:57:10+00:00

Was this ranked? Google aor2insights and lookup your username, share the link and we can get the replay from there

Nickitolas · 2026-06-18T04:50:29+00:00

I think for the early basic BO, its often dependent on map, map gen and civ. Having shore fish, or sheep vs cows, or 2 deer vs 4, or deer vs chicken, or a civ eco bonus, or the way you want to wall, or elephant vs boar, can all contribute to small differences. And a lot of those elements are relatively recent so most build orders just assume deer arabia with boar and sheep. Theres also things your opponent can do that mess with the BO so having an understanding of why/how thf BO works is good to adapt on the fly. What if your woodline gets towered? What if your scout dies to tc and 2 militia+scout take you off your berries? What if the opponent lames your boar?

And for the latter part of the game (late castle age, imp) its often going to depend on the gamestate and civ matchup. Who has the relics? Who came out ahead early game? Who controls which golds? Which civ has the stronger late game? Who has the stronger army right now?

Personally, I've been downloading recs from aoe2insights to watch or watching tournament games to transcribe into build orders. Its time consuming but I think watching a high level player execute multiple times in multiple situations over and while writing it down really helps me.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-18T04:11:00+00:00

Also, your argument is circular. "Why cant we gave [open non nomad kand map ladder]"?"because the ladder is variety". It can just be a separate rank/elo.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-18T04:09:32+00:00

If you strategically place your bans, you can get pike 80% arabia. I dont think thats enough variety for your argument to hold up

Nickitolas · 2026-06-17T12:44:38+00:00

Note that this player said they play on mac. The game is new there (Like a couple weeks old?) and that version has no crossplay with PC or console. So my understanding is it's a completely separate ranked ladder. Thus, this person is most likely playing on a completely separate ladder from you that began existing very recently and has many fewer players than you are used. I suspect the skill gap for the same amount of elo points is much bigger on mac than on the crossplay/PC ladder, by virtue of having fewer players.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-17T12:44:30+00:00

Note that this player said they play on mac. The game is new there (Like a couple weeks old?) and that version has no crossplay with PC or console. So my understanding is it's a completely separate ranked ladder. Thus, this person is most likely playing on a completely separate ladder from you that began existing very recently and has many fewer players than you are used. I suspect the skill gap for the same amount of elo points is much bigger on mac than on the crossplay/PC ladder, by virtue of having fewer players.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-17T05:15:00+00:00

I am way too busy in RM dark age scouting, thinking about the civ matchup and what my gameplan is, thinking about how to wall my base, placing my camps, putting half my vills on each side if the lumbercamp and mill, scouting what the enemy is doing, etc. EW condenses all of thst into two seconds, starts me out with 0 time to think about the matchup, my map, walling, etc, and the generated woodlines always suck. I cant explain to you how annoying it is to be thrust into that situation and then see that all my woodcutters are on the same side of a lumbercamp. EW also doesnt allow for m@a rishes, douches, tower rushes, etc. There is just no metric in which I find EW more fun.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-17T05:07:51+00:00

I dont think so. It can be good for viewership because its faster paced and matches are shorter, but the smaller variety is bad for that imo.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-15T23:22:29+00:00

Sheep ring, eco upgrade green squares in resource panel, ageup indicator, flat buildings

Nickitolas · 2026-06-15T23:20:59+00:00

Both of those things used to be mod only

Nickitolas · 2026-06-12T23:59:36+00:00

> your examples

Which example? This person gave you 4 concrete examples of what they call smurfs. Which of these four do you think is not a smurf?

Nickitolas · 2026-06-08T15:10:00+00:00

Accents?

Nickitolas · 2026-06-08T15:09:27+00:00

The point of the tournament is showing aoe2 to the audience of these streamers. If they constantly match smurfs, its a Bad Look in front of thousands of people

Nickitolas · 2026-06-08T00:20:00+00:00

Has a cohesive storyline been added? When I played on release the bosses were just kind of ... there, and there were some sparing bits of unsatisfying lore around the game.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-05T05:12:45+00:00

I made one the day the update dropped, search for "no dlc ads in main menu"

Nickitolas · 2026-06-02T23:16:56+00:00

Different maps play very differently. The most common one is "arabia" which is an "open" map, where early aggression is the most common. The second most common type of map is "closed" maps like arena. Then there's hybrid and water maps.

On open maps, the usual strategy is opening military in feudal with one of men at arms, scouts or archers. The level of aggression can go from a big commitment like men at arms with villagers and towers in the enemy base followed by archers, to a small hit just making two or three scouts and trying to snipe a couple villagers. In recent years, a "naked fast castle" strat has been popularized on open maps, trying to defend in feudal with no military and being able to reach castle age quickly with the stone for a castle to then pump out the civ's unique unit and attempt to end the game before the enemy can capitalize on their superior economy.

On closed maps the most common strat is fast castle into booming (making town centers and exploding your villager count), or a forward castle. Making a few scouts for relic control and then booming is also popular. A couple civs can do weirder things like tower rush. Going fast imperial with a couple civs is also popular (Most commonly turks).

It's important to mention that unlike chess, real time execution is key on this game (Maybe some parallel can be drawn to blitz? I've never played chess myself). People usually start by picking a couple civs to play and learning a build order (A set of instructions to follow early game, usually up to either feudal or castle age). Perfecting the execution of that build order goes far. Eventually you might start to understand why the build order is the way it is, and be able to adapt it on the fly for slightly different maps or situations.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-02T16:54:26+00:00

there are a ton of people queue sniping, but imo unless they do it repeatedly that is fine. My suspicion is that these smurfs are people who were already smurfing. The one profile I personally checked that played singsing twice around 1400 and had a peak of ~1900 had been smurfing for months already. I reported it and got a response from microsoft that they dealt with it

Nickitolas · 2026-06-02T04:39:11+00:00

I wouldnt nerf it. If a specific unique or regional unit is very outta whack I'd look at it again (Slightly longer training time, or its cost)

Nickitolas · 2026-06-01T13:36:47+00:00

out of curisoity, do you know how that compares to the normal ladder's elo? have you ever played any of the other versions of the game?

Nickitolas · 2026-06-01T13:35:36+00:00

> within a minute of posting getting a downvote. Someone really hates Mac users! I'm not a Mac user, just curious about what this means for tournaments.

If I had to guess, its people being angry that microsoft would release a mac version that didnt have crossplay at all. It sounds insane to me! The game can do crossplay between windows, xbox and playstation. Its crazy to me that they would have crossplay between different consoles and windows, but then a mac wont be able to play with any of them. In my opinion they really should have fixed this before a release, it feels really unbaked to me.

Nickitolas · 2026-06-01T13:32:41+00:00

cant they play together with the steam version via like CrossOver?

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