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