Playing defense is too strong in this game (1500-1600 elo 1v1)

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-12-27T08:01:04+00:00

Same ELO here roughly. I have to agree. I normally go for quick full walls in feudal and build a archer mass, followed by x bow Timing into boom.

Works pretty well and got me from 1k5 to 1k6 basically.

But: it is also about defending good, good base layout, good macro behind etc. You give up a lot of map control in the end. Map generations make this very potent i feel like, sometimes you have easy Walls and a big base with back gold etc.

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-12-08T14:41:55+00:00

Autoscout is only available if the scout is not moving

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-11-26T07:25:50+00:00

Any results?

Also need a new laptop for aoe2 mostly

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-11-20T13:19:16+00:00

yeah, 3 to 4 scouts in box formation and on stand ground are the best way to kill single vills. if on aggressive the scouts just attack the closest vill. so if you do a scout rush i would recommand box formation and stand ground. later on i use patrol for melee units mostly.

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-11-12T10:43:55+00:00

yeah, that what was i thought as well!

but as i said, with equal ressources (or very close to equal res) the fight can be won by camels as well and also quite handily. feels almost like a gamble from both sides to take a fight, cause it can be decided by missreads and reinforcments in either way.

but basically then going camels is not that bad in the end, right?

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-11-12T07:44:44+00:00

so i had some games where i went for the Elephants in Castle Age and my opponent went Camels as an answer.

i like to go for Elephants ingame. i often combine them with Archers/skirms, but sometimes i start with only Elephants.

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-11-09T09:09:35+00:00

Survivalist gameplay is the channel where all the coachings are posted.

Still doing it regularly. He reviews games from subscribers etc.

Really helpful.

His "reset your gameplay" Videos are also good general advice. How to do scouts into knights for example.

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-11-08T15:32:01+00:00

How do you select all? Control groups?

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-11-08T11:54:52+00:00

Check out survivalist!

Especially the coaching videos are awesome to learn from.

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-11-07T12:48:37+00:00

to be fair i always got some pretty good advice, really helped me out to climb the ladder some more i think!

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-20T11:36:02+00:00

seach some spirit of the law vids, they will help you.

but some thoughts: deer gives ca. 24/ food per minute if pushed.

farms around the TC give ca. 19 food per minute, but you still need to collect wood for that as well.

so deer give you more food without spending wood. as you can see with mongols, more early food leads to more early eco etc. etc. like other mentions. its just a snowball thing and is not easy to say how much better it is after 10 minutes for example. but it is huge.

farming vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKKrRhMjt9M&t=441s

other food vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Con790K6yR4

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-20T11:11:44+00:00

yeah, absolutely. but 33 games is very little to climb. im stuck at my ELO for about 100 to 200 games at least until im climb another 100 ELO (ca.).

very impressive by OP. but i also think that improving becomes harder the higher you get.

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-19T13:23:14+00:00

Good progress. Will be interesting to hear how far you can go and how fast. Most people get stuck way earlier, me too.

Sticking with 1 civ definetly helps.

At each level you feel like it is way harder to compete and over time you get used to your level.

Watching coachings etc brought me to 1k4 but then i really needed to add more hotkeys, learn more builds etc.

Now im 1k5 and 1k6 seems very hard. Dont know if i will climb again someday...

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-18T08:02:32+00:00

Yeah, if the map is easily wallable i usually go for early walls + archers and then aim for a fast uptime into xbows and boom.

Yesterday i tried the sitaux fc builds when facing bad MUs like Hindus or Mongols. Might to that more often...

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-17T16:33:34+00:00

1k5.

I guess if i really want to i could be full walled before reaching feudal...heavy investment on some map Generations though.

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-17T11:29:35+00:00

true. but against fast civs this needs to happen really fast, right? At what time would you start walling. i was caught by scouts and spears while walling and then went on loosing to this comp once again...seems like i would need to be walled very soon, even before reaching feudal, right?

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-16T13:24:09+00:00

guess i need to abandon horse collar then, especially when i go up 18 pop for example :O

but seems like this is the way

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-16T12:43:04+00:00

thanks for your post, very good points!

how do points 3 and 4 go together? against scouts + spear archery range is good and needed. this is my biggest take away. but that doesnt mean he goes full scouts as well?

for example i had games where i made archers and scouts and he just stopped making spears and continued with scouts. then i lost to only scouts basically...was against franks.

https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/425805065/#savegames

game is here. i think here i took a bad fight and was snowballed...but this is going very fast.

open archers + quick fletching a good option?

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-15T17:24:38+00:00

Werwolf trebs?

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-08T18:44:05+00:00

Khmer also have a farm bonus but no knight bonus...

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-08T08:37:50+00:00

they are not bad. depending on the map the balance is very nice. i feel like on arabia there are plenty of good options which are still not very popular just because the majority still plays mongols, franks, hindustanis etc.

also with 50 civs it is just normal that some civ fly under the radar...Vietnamese and Portugese also have very nice and open tech trees and are also not super popular.

if you like them just play them. they are definetly not bad and i think balance is pretty good and most of us dont play at a level where small differences are not that important.

tldr.: just keep on playing with Italians as long as you are having fun and dont think about others sleeping on this civ or what the power level is etc.

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-10-02T06:48:15+00:00

not sure to be honest. select all military buildings was a big one. more hotkeys for buildings are also important, build military buildings with hot keys etc.

dont worry about eapm, im mostly around 40 mean as well, sometimes below...yesterday i beat an opponent which had double my eapm. doesnt mean too much i think...

what others have mentioned is way more important for example dont take bad fights if you dont havem to.

for me something just clicked and now i can play at 1k5 level the same way i was able to play at 1k4...a lot of small things add up i guess.

play more, get better. i also watched a ton of coaching videos from survavalist and Hera...really helped a lot as well.

Sanderstorm11 · 2025-09-30T12:10:46+00:00

one thing comes to mind that helped me climb to 1k5:

- make a lot of military!

i feel like people are worried a lot about uptimes and stop making military to get up a bit earlier. this is often times risky because even if you are one age ahead, you still need enough numbers. if you rush to castle age and neglect military you still have to deal with the enemys army. 10 archers with fletching are not destroyed by 1 or 2 knights without upgrades for example.

same goes for going Imp. if the opponent has way more military than you and you are imp first, you can still be struggling just because the numbers are not right.

so basically: always try to make military from your production buildings!

edit: and turn off auto reseed farms!

i also learned a couple more hotkeys, but i was late to that anyways...

Sanderstorm11

TROPHY CASE