Why is AoE II so tryhard now? I play 1v1 ranked at like 900 ELO and people are already>sheep scouting (evident from score)>fight back with villagers>constant harassing micro while apparently booming at home>everyone has a near-perfect Dark Age>quickwalling constantlyThis isn't even average ELO yet. I'm just going to do Persian TC drop every game now to be as toxic as possible until I derank to 500 ELO and then I can have fun again. It's just crazy to me that stuff I saw in high-level strat guides for 1500 ELO+ a few years ago is now basic practice at 1000 ELO.
I prefer 4 desu, love that game and have been looking for people to play it with
>>2327433The playerbase simply got better overtime. Game is over 20 years old, people have caught on to what's most effective.
>>23281854 is also fun. I like 2 for snappier micro responsiveness and more civs and the graphics, but 4 is also great. I love Mongols just for actually being to shoot and move with horse archers. Fun as hell.
>>2328203Its beyond that though. Even 2 or 3 years ago I would not see people doing this shit. Now everyone is playing on a borderline pro level and if you make one fuckup they brutally exploit it. Game is honestly bot-tier at this point and I seriously don't even understand how the entire spectrum of 1200+ ELO exists when people are playing this well in the 3 digits. I mog all my friends at AoE II and can't even compete with these fuckheads that memorize build orders.
Unsure if this is the best place to ask, but do you have tips for a beginner? I have been playing this game on and off almost 20 years, but on this last binge I've finally decided to try to get a bit better, maybe beat the campaigns once and for all. I'm not really interested in multiplayer (does anyone even play HD anymore?), I just want to improve at the game a bit at least.I've just been playing against the AI on moderate so far, but I always find myself lagging behind. Of course the AI is not very competent at this level, so turtling plus wonder victory always works, but I know on a higher diff or a real game I would get absolutely demolished. I've tried reading some guides but they seem very sweaty ("yeah bro just get to feudal at 20:00 ez") and it's all a bit overwhelming. Basically I just want some pointers, things to work at, noob traps, etc. Thanks in advance.
>>2330282>start game>build 2 houses>move sheep under TC>rally point TC to sheep>send villagers to sheep>learn to use Shift-queueing actions a lot>6 on food 3 on wood then 11 more on food>age up to feudal at 20 vills>honestly? Drush as soon as you go up to Feudal>learn to use attack move / patrolI don't really know what else honestly.
>>2327433The pro scene is well and truly popular now, both on Twitch and YouTube. The playerbase of olds who played it when they were kids is experiencing turnover, and their replacements are people who got into it from watching tournaments. This affects their habits, naturally, so they go into ranked after having looked up builds and shit.Personally I’ve played 1 ranked game and have a 100% winrate so I’m done.
>>2330375>Personally I’ve played 1 ranked game and have a 100% winrate so I’m done.unbelievably based
>>2327433>Everyone knows how to make effective use of their time and resources so I can't have funLmao
>>2332422man it's more that some fag will bodyblock my boar lure or bodyblock my villager with his scout and my villager will take extra damage and fuck up my lure and as a result I end up 100 Res behind and there's no point. These people are like perfectly tuned bots and do shit like quickwalling which used to be high ELO tricks. Now that everyone's learning it it's just fucking annoying. It'll probably be at 800 ELO soon and it's just too tryhard to enjoy anymore. It's not being efficient that's the problem, it's all these annoying fiddly tricks that make it MOBA/FPS tier.
>>2327433>>2328203the playerbase is small as fuck its just full of smurfs and most of them are asians. you can tell that the pop is tiny because you will regularly be paired with and against people 2-300 elo above and below you because they added a fix to the auto-team generator to stop the 30 minute match wait time that everyone was whinging about. the entire quality of the game has gone to shit since DE was released partly because in OG and HD manual match fixing meant you tended to be paired in games against people from your 'local' area, and that over time there tended to be an extended community that grew up around that which meant you tended to know who was roughly your skill level vs who wasnt. the transfer to the new match-making system also removed the barrier for entry that asians had since in the past, someone from outside your area or who didnt speak your language, or who used strange symbols for a name would be force kicked by host as a rule and so all their degeneracy has been pushed into automatched games and been made a default state of play. this is also what gave rise to the copious amounts of smurfing, since most of it is chinese players, also the habit of asians (koreans and chinese in particular) to immediately project their failures or fear of failure onto other players during team games and resign early when one thing doesnt go their way - flaming the person next to them for not having done enough or having been an idiot (usually they go the route of calling someone an idiot and claiming the other persons low-intelligence is the reason they are losing so simply 'giving up' is the noble thing to do).any game where a team has exclusively asian characters in the names, its usually the case that some chinese streamer is getting paid to carry people from his stream, you just have to figure out which of them is the smurf. obviously the player numbers will continue to shrink because of this.
lmao people arent good at that rank they still fuck up many things. Just because you see a bit of micro doesn't mean they're insane players, yeah the skill floor is higher but it doesn't mean you need perfect dark ages and micro to win at those ranks. You're getting btfod because advantages compound and your macro isn't better than theirs. At least learn a build order if you want to be competitive its not hard
>>2336688>this is also what gave rise to the copious amounts of smurfing, since most of it is chinese players, also the habit of asians (koreans and chinese in particular) to immediately project their failures or fear of failure onto other players during team games and resign early when one thing doesnt go their way - flaming the person next to them for not having done enough or having been an idiot (usually they go the route of calling someone an idiot and claiming the other persons low-intelligence is the reason they are losing so simply 'giving up' is the noble thing to do).god this happens to me all the time. I report it too. Idiots who resign because I don't immediately send 5000 cavalry to help him from the other side of the map.
>>2336942>At least learn a build order if you want to be competitive its not hardI did but they all did too and thus costing me 300 or 400 food with a boar lame is gg.
>>2337683yeah the resigning is all about saving face. they arnt even alt-f4'ing to save elo, they just hit resign so its literally that they cant stomach the idea of losing a video game because they find that humiliating or something. its pretty pathetic. a lot of people will cope on forums or in game about how resigning early is about 'saving time'; they'll say something like "i dont want to waste my time" but of course thats a stupid thing to say because the point of a video game is literally to waste time, you are playing it because you have time to be wasted. it is just a cope to save face because they dont want to lose their equivalent of izzat points - the chinese call it mianzi, i dont know what word the koreans use for it.
>>2338059true. I mean I ragequit too but these faggots will quit before it's even half over. Like dude at least fight til you're broken and then resign. I'll delete my own shit before resigning to spite the enemy but that's as bad as I'll get honestly.
>>2327433You say that as if you have a choiceYou will derank to 500 elo because you're a fucking trashcan lmfao not because you chose to
>>2341777???No I hold pretty steady at 900 or so. Even broken 1000 a few times.I can definitely get better, it's just not enjoyable to play at some point.Deranking to 500 would absolutely be a choice.
>>2327433just git gud, you also dont know if your opponent is fucking up unless you watch the rec back (your opponent is 100% playing far from perfect at your elo and making tons of mistakes).Also persian tc drop is a legitimate strat, you can actually gain elo with it if you dont intentionally lose games with it. I broke 1k elo for the first time with persian tc drop.
>>2327433Go all-in on Bulgarian MAA rush, thank me later.
>>2356051People see Persian TC drop now too, I don't even telegraph it and then I get there and dude has a lattice of perfectly-built palisades to prevent me from dropping it, doing fast-walling shit, it's insane. All legitimate strats, just not shit I want to play against at 1000 ELO, fuck it.>>2356340That's what I've started doing. I drush almost every game.
>>2358357palisades do not work against tc drops, there is always a spot to drop and you can quickly beat down a palisade on the edge of the enemy tc range. Your tc foundation just needs to be in one tile of the enemy tc range (getting a range mod can help), just walk your vills around and just try to place it. Like any other strat, you need to play it a lot, learn and eventually you will get good at it. Pro players lose to the tc drop so surely you can beat 1k players with it who barely touch their keyboards.
>>2358357>People see Persian TC drop now tooPeople expect it by default for the sole reason you picked Persians.
>>2358976>People expect it by default for the sole reason you picked Persians.Exactly, it's not even any good now. Everyone watches videos and learns to counterplay it.>>2358857>1k players with it who barely touch their keyboards.That's not true anymore. 1k players do constant skirmish harassment with scouts, split-formation-dodge with archers, all kinds of shit I only used to see in pro player videos. They absolutely know their hotkeys and use them like crazy.>palisades do not work against tc drops, there is always a spot to drop and you can quickly beat down a palisade on the edge of the enemy tc range.I couldn't cause his villagers were beating up mine while I was trying to break them down. He spaced them out perfectly that it was hard to find a place to put it. I looked at the map afterward and I didn't have a single spot.
>>2360151How many vills forward do you send to tc drop and do you have hotkeys to wall in your vills? And I don't like repeating myself but there is always a spot unless you are really slow to place the tc foundation or something.
>>2361458I send all but two forward so usually 16 to 18 vills
>>2365680I think 15 is enough, usually people do the opposite and send too few villagers, just make sure you have enough eco behind your tc drop that you can keep your tc running
>>2365868How do you follow up if they're smart enough to float wood and delete their TC and run? Chase? Or just take the eco advantage?
People don't really try their best either and stick it out they usually give up when the autism isn't on their side.
>build order>microI don't do any of that shit. Whenever I log into the game it's to have fun so I always play the way I want even if it's not """optimized"""Sure you see a lot of tryhards in low elo trying to do whatever they saw in their youtube howtobepro streamer but from my experience they are terrible at managing actual late-game. If you manage to survive the initial onslaught you can just economy wear them down.Honestly what got me bored of playing ranked is not much of the tryhard aspect but people, as a result, always playing the same strategies, which boils down to either being early drushed, scout drushed, mid age knight rushed or castle drop rushed.The thing that irritates me the most with those people is how they have nothing to defend their base with when they do this so it's literally just gamble play. Not that much of a strategy in a fucking strategy game.
>>2369291>delete their tc That is a massive mistake in itself>how do you follow upchase them down and vill fight like crazy when the enemy tc goes down (during this time you can make additional vills and your opponent cannot).Then try and go for an additional douche, go for feudal if you are having a hard time finding your opponents new tc or if they are massing archers, idle your tc to get up if you need to
>>2328231Some people prefer learning games and getting better at them rather than dropping elo to smash people even lower than them. Thats like saying I cant swim so i go into water where i cant sink below my tum tum. Just try not to drown, win games you thought are lost against these tryhards. They are not good, just better. Its hard, and you cant win every game, but over time you will adapt to the skill level and the skill system will adapt to you.
>>2328231>Now everyone is playing on a borderline pro level99.9% of the time when people say this while playing in low MMR their opponents are making a comical amount of mistakes whenever you analyze the replay and they could easily improve enough to beat them if they just tried, thought, and had some patience.
>>2338059>they cant stomach the idea of losing a video game because they find that humiliating or somethingI've seen people say that kind of shit on here and /v/ so often and it's so unbelievably pathetic, even for a site full of cope artists, that I still second guess whether or not it's trolling when I hear it in my head.
>>2341660i rarely ragequit. if im playing team game i will play on so long as i have a single teammate. you are screwing them over if you dont give it a proper try, its their time too, not just yours.
>>2328203how the FUCK does a newbie like me start? Both games are soul crushingly difficulty to get into :<<<<
