Friday 9 October 2009

1x1 arabia huns war revisited (Map adaptation)

Now that you have gone through the basic strategies of 1x1 arabia like tower rush, feudal rush and castle rush, make way for some advanced tips and tricks. In this post I will concentrate on how to adapt to the map and the enemy's strategy. I have split this post into 2 parts, first adaptation according to your map and the second according to the enemy's map.

1. Your own map:-Things to look for on your own map are the hills, its openness and the position of gold mines and forest. Analyze the hills and see how the enemy may gain advantage of it, maybe by doing a forward. Try to gain advantage on the hills by setting the gather point of your army on the top of that hill. An open map means that you are vulnerable of attack from many sides by scouts. Try to protect the most vulnerable positions(like woodcutters, forager or miners) by keeping spears or by walling that part so that scouts can't easily access them. I always prepare walling one part of the map so that I can concentrate all my time on just the other part. Open maps mean the enemy might try to exploit it by heavy scout rushes. So keep an eye on how many stables he is going for. There are many options to protect yourself. You can keep many spears or can even tower the important positions by going 2 stone miners.

If both your and your enemy's maps are open, then it makes way for a hell of a raiding game. Raid as much as you can with scouts during feudal age and do the same with knights in castle. The key here is to be really aggressive and not lay emphasis on booming. I would recommend going 3 stables and a monastery. If you think you are having an upper hand, immediately go for a forward siege and keep attacking him from different spots. Boom only so much to support your army and make town centers only at important positions.

What if your map is open and enemy's map is closed. He might try to go fast castle. In this case I would recommend you to go a few archers and get to castle around 20 mins. Keep spears or archers because he will be reaching castle before you. Try to wall as much even if the map is open, try to keep just a spot or two open. The only way you can win this game is by outbooming him. Remember his map is closed and you can't raid his villagers unless of course he chooses to expand beyond his closed walls or has a spot open. I recommend a castle age play during which you go cavalry archers, keep looking for his open spots meanwhile booming with 4-5 town centers.

Enemy's map:- The strategy here is the same but now you have to analyze how you can exploit your opponent with the hills, his forward gold mines and the open spots. it is most important to realize the open spots in his map so that you can attack from different positions. Generally people wall every other spot than the spot where they have their own army concentrated on a hill top. So be careful not just to click one his spots directly because you might be falling right into his trap. If you see 2-3 of his mines to be forward then its best to consider a forward.

In this post I have not talked about imperial age play because the map makes a little difference on your imperial age play. During imperial age you need to have a good map control. Spread to the maximum and try to take control of most mines and forests. Always try to open 2 or more fronts and make way for rams. Make much of trash army and raid continuously with Hussars.

Thats about how I think of maps. Any suggestions and questions are welcome.

Thursday 8 October 2009

Voobly:The new IGZ

The IGZ client exists no more. It has moved to a new location of voobly.com . The client is now accessible from its homepage. This helps the site by ads revenue. The client itself is a significant improvement from the previous version with less crashes and more features. The concept of premium membership has also been introduced for access to more features.

The overall look and feel of voobly looks impressive. The moderators are helpful in understanding the new client. With a strong base and continuous revenue for the site, the future of strategy gaming looks bright.

New look and feel

Thanks for making this blog popular guys. Now this blog gets a daily hits of around 70 people. For a blog dedicated to AoC that is quite an insppiration to me as a writer. The look of this blog will completely change from now on. No google ads, no cheats and download links; just pure strategies and how to play AoC better. I will start posting some AoC recs of experts which will be relevant to the posts and will help you understanding a particular strategy. Please feel free to leave comments of how I can improve the blog. Anyone with HTML experience who can help is welcome.

Enjoy the re-birth of aoeism.blogspot.com

Tuesday 26 August 2008

1v1 Arabia

In this post I will try to give my experience and how I play a 1v1 Arabia especially with Huns,then I will extrapolate it to other civilizations.First part of the post will be about micro-management of the resources, and the next part will be scouting and other minute details like map etc.

Micro-Management of Resources
As the game starts,my first move is always H-CCC,queuing vils in my tc.Next will be to find the 4 nearest sheep. Initially, I will take wood with the 3 vils or explore with 1 vil for a sheep.As soon as I get the 4 sheep,I will explore with 2 sheep and bring the other two to my tc.Drop all the wood in the tc and start having sheep beneath the tc.Next 3 vils also eat sheep.Next vil goes to the nearest forest,builds a lumbercamp.next 3 vils go to have wood near the lumber.Here the micro is 6-4.Next vil goes to lure the boar,while loom is researched.next four vils go for berries with a mill.Now the micro is 6-4-4.Continue queuing vils on boar and the next boar should be lured when the present boar has 100 food left.Meanwhile I will build a farm as soon as I get 60 wood with the injured vil.After I reach pop=20 I will start queuing vils for a second LC and keep four more for it.Also I will make 3 more farms with injured vils.with pop 24 I click feudal age.
I described the 24 pop feudal above which is easy to execute.You might opt for a different pop feud but that entirely depends on the map and other factors such as what the opponent is doing etc.

Scouting
I prefer to number the scout as 1 and the tc as 2.In the beginning,I scout and look for basic resources like nearest forest,2 boars,gold and stone mines for the first 4-5 mins. I will see which of the resources are forward,the terrain and go for the forest that is backward.Forward mines are always vulnerable to a forward attack especially the stone mines.After the first 4-5 mins I will look for the enemy at directly the opposite side.If I find a big mine,then the enemy is near.I will carefully move my scout keeping it at a safe distance from enemy tc.I will look for his mines,whether I can do for a forward,the terrain etc.Also I will look at what resources he is taking.Whether he is going for gold or for more farms than expected etc.

Map and other Micros
As soon as you click feudal age,I will scout for enemy forwards and also look at what kind of army he is going for.This can be found out by scouting his army buildings.I will make the exact counter for the army he has.In case I detect a forward,then i will go for 1 rax + 2 archery ranges and protect myself as well as possible.If my map is wall-able,then I will wall,make 1 rax and a stable,Go for 4-5 scouts and try a fast castle.Otherwise the army I make will depend on what the enemy is doing,but I personally prefer 1 rax+1 stable+1 archery.Keep raiding his vils time to time and defend yourself by walling or making tower at forward gold etc.I will do wheelbarrow around 17 mins and build a smithy around the same time.Do researches according to the army.Army micros are very important at this stage and they need to used carefully.Scouting is very important part during this time as you will know when and where to attack .

Actually there are innumerable strategies you can try out.I have just given a brief idea of how I approach a 1v1 arabia.

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