| Tips On a Fast Arabia Castle Time | |
| I wrote this
post for all players. Hopefully even the good players will find some
interesting information. Any who are reading this should read the
various articles on the web that give you reliable build orders and
are a good introduction to this subject. The game begins-
1. One must establish constant villager production. Generally having 6 villagers on sheep will give you a steady food supply. You should not put all your villagers on one sheep, instead separate them into two groups, this will eliminate a common pause in early food production that happens when your first sheep runs out and your villagers have to kill a new one. 2. 5 villagers on berries will insure that they will be gone by the 12:00 mark. 3. Start teasing the boar as soon as possible. Usually before your 4th sheep is done. Some early basics 1. At-least 5 villagers on wood are required. If you are planing to farm 7 or more is a good idea. I usually start cutting wood after I have 6 villagers on sheep and 5 on berries. 2. Always eat all your free food first. Another words don’t start farming until your food sources are starting to run out. Some may disagree with this but to them I say this: why spend the wood on farms when you don’t have to? 3. Find your 8 sheep, 2 boar and gold mines. Never send your scout looking for your enemy if there is still food to be found unless you are planing to do a feudal rush, in which case locating the enemy is imperative (but this is a Castle age post). 4. The more villagers you want to build the more farms you will have to build. For a 27 villager Castle one needs 5 farms by 10 minutes. For every other villager one needs to add one more farm. If you hunt fewer farms are needed and less wood is spent. 5. If you are planning to mine gold you will need 3 villagers to mine the 200 gold in 2:30 minutes. 6. Hunting deer can save you allot of wood that would normally be used for farms. Always build a mill by the deer, you save an average of 180 seconds/deer if you do so. In 180 seconds a villager can collect about 50 wood so if there were 3 deer you would have saved yourself 50 wood. Note: hunt only if you are confident that you will not forget about the hunters. 7. My thoughts on selling the stone at the market to obtain gold. One should use the market in two situations: First if you are doing a sub 16:00 castle you may not be able to spare the 3 gold miners because you are desperate to get food. The second is if you are not planing to build a mining-pit at all and use those villagers to help you get more wood while preparing to boom. The Feudal Age 1. It should be your goal to have just enough wood to build your two buildings as you reach the feudal age. If you have too much wood then you are probably lacking in other resources so try to balance things out. 2. It is a good idea to build 1-2 villagers while waiting for the buildings to be done. This is a must for a good economy; your TC should never be idle. Note: it is counter-productive to research the loom at this time. Some information one should know:
For a 27 villager castle one needs 2300 food, so you will need to obtain 300 more food from farming or deer. Each deer gives you about 115 food. I hope this will help all you people. Happy Gaming. |
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| How
to play the Franks Effectively And it ain’t rushing with straight paladins, either. |
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| Introduction:
I love the Franks. I’ve been playing them almost since I got AoK, and in fact now that I think about, I only played one game with the Britons before I started playing Franks. I’ve been playing them almost exclusively ever since. Somewhere during this process, I began looking around for better ways to beat down my enemies (as we all do sometime). It was then that I noticed a very interesting fact: Very few people have written anything readily recognizable as Frank strategies, other than the popular newbie strategy “rush them with paladins!” A couple of civ guides had been done, but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted more. So it was that I wrote up a thread called Some Thoughts on the Franks a while back. This is the revised edition, expanded and now covering the Franks in AoK:TC. So what am I going to talk about? Here’s the list: I. Frankish bonuses II. Frankish units III. Frankish economy IV. Putting it together V. How I Play VI. Conclusion Now, before I start, some disclaimers. I’m not an expert by any means. I can’t rush worth anything, and I’m the most useless naval player since the age of the raft. This is tailored to RM games only, since I’m not a DM player. Now then, on to the first part. Sit back and enjoy.
In my own (rather biased) opinion, the Franks have the best set of bonuses of any civ. Most of them are combat oriented, and they mesh together well to give the Franks an excellent boost to what their role is: Cavalry. Let’s now take a look at these bonuses, shall we? Team Bonus: Knights +2 LOS: This is a really good bonus, but it’s really hard to notice in many games, because you usually have something with a better LOS along for the ride. What it means however is that your knight line units will be able to see farther and thus will chase after people with little or no micromanagement from you. Castles cost –25% stone: I love this bonus. It drops the price of castles to something very low (488 stone) in comparison to normal, thus enabling you to put up that first castle much earlier than most people, and then lets you have more castles than you might otherwise be able to. I’ll be talking about the importance of this in unit production later. It should also be noted that your starting stone goes farther with this bonus, allowing you to get more bang for that initial buck. Knights +20% HPs: This is really the bonus that makes the Franks who they are. There are other civs that have the full knight line, but no other cavalry unit is feared quite like the Frankish paladin. Some call it the Franks’ other unique unit. In effect, this gives the Frank player what amounts to free Bloodlines, but it’s even better than Bloodlines in that you get a few extra hp out of it. Farm upgrades free: The sole econ bonus of the Franks is somewhat mediocre in comparison to others (like the Vikings free handcart/wheelbarrow, for example), but it’s still nice nevertheless. It allows you to forget about spending resources on the farm upgrades, thus allowing you more to spend on your expensive units. The total savings from this bonus are 450 food, 450 wood. That’s enough to get you the entire first round of blacksmith upgrades, plus 7.5 extra farms. And that’s not counting the wood you save for having the upgrades instantly upon hitting a new age.
Part II: The Frankish Military We all know that they get paladins, but what else do the Franks have up their sleeve? Let’s find out. Cavalry: As would be expected, the Franks shine here, with every upgrade but the Hussar and the Camel line. Paladins are the obvious backbone of any Frankish army: Fast moving, hard hitting tanks capable of withstanding amazing amounts of damage before dropping. Except in special circumstances, the paladin should be your eventual goal, and the main part of your army. The Franks also get light cavalry, but these are of secondary importance before the mighty paladin, only becoming useful in the late game when gold is scarce, or when you need some extra scouting done. Archers: The entire line is somewhat mediocre. The last upgrades (bracer and ring armor) are missing, along with arbalests. The Franks have heavy cav archers, but without Thumb Ring and Parthian Tactics these expensive units aren’t really worth building. On the other hand, the Franks have Hand Cannoneers, which make excellent backups to your paladins. Infantry: Average. The Franks get every infantry upgrade except Squires (fast infantry to go with fast cavalry? Oooh…). They miss the halberdier upgrade, but don’t be discouraged by that. The champion is an excellent unit, although it pales before the throwing axeman in my opinion. Cavalry shouldn’t be a problem, since your cavalry is more than a match for anything else out there. Monks: As would be expected of a civilization that was once known as the Holy Roman Empire, the Franks have very good monks. In fact, the only things lacking are Redemption and Atonement, which allow the conversion of buildings, siege, and other monks. Seige: Frankish siege is quite good. They only lack siege onagers (but only 5 civs get this anyway) and siege rams. They get the Seige Engineers upgrade, as well as bombard cannons, allowing them to win treb wars with most other civs. Ships: I’m no naval player, but even I can tell that the Frankish navy is at least above average. Although they lack elite cannon galleons, they have every other ship. They lack the Shipwright tech, but really, when was the last time you were running out of trees so badly you needed to spend tons of valuable food and gold to make cheap ships? On the downside, they lack bracer, which forces them to play range catchup with the better naval civs. But you weren't playing Franks for the navy, were you? The Elite Throwing Axeman: I love these guys. My favorite UU by far (and I think most of the UUs are cool. Cheap to produce, quick to build, and with the cheap Frankish castles, you can have a lot of these em. They rip up infantry and cavalry with equal ease, and even archers, the recommended counter unit, need superior numbers to deal with an ETA. The only real counters to them are onagers and hand cannoneers.
Part III: The Frankish Economy Players everywhere know that the Frankish economy needs to be good. Most of the Frankish units are pretty heavily expensive in terms of both food and gold. Fully upgraded ETAs cost a total of 2,645 food (75 more for tracking) and 1,845 gold. FU Paladins are a further 2,350 food and 1,400 gold. Combined, these two units take 4,995 food and 3,245 gold. That’s a lot. The solution, of course, is to focus on food and gold. Some of the food pressure is taken off by the Frankish free farm upgrades, and gold pressure is slightly relieved by gold shaft mining, but one can’t just rely on these. Get farming pronto, and devote a whole bunch of vills to it. Only put as many vills on wood as you think you’re going to need, and otherwise put them on either farming or gold. Upon castle, get that boom going, and ruthlessly take over all gold piles or relics that you can find. You’ll need them. Wood, as I said, is of highly secondary importance. Get enough for farms and a few buildings/trebs, and then leave it alone. Stone is of about the same importance. Frankish cheap castles are great, because you can get them fast, and you won’t be building so many that you need to get all the stone right away. Get some guys on stone in feudal, but then ignore it until sometime during castle or even imperial. These are, of course, general guidelines. Going navy? Do wood. Need castles? Get vills on stone fast. Otherwise, food and gold should be your first priorities.
Part IV: Putting It Together: The Combined Frankish Military Now that we’ve talked about the units you get and how to get them, let’s talk a bit on using them in combined arms forces. First, a word about paladins. Do NOT use these without support units. You will die. Horribly. In the Xpack there are far too many ways to counter paladins (halbs, camels, mams). Use your cav wisely. Now then, on to some combos. Paladins/ETAs: This is the classic Frankish combo, and the one everyone expects. And for good reason, because used properly it’s almost invincible. Paladins kill most units, can chase down vills, and hurt buildings. ETAs take down anything but archers (which paladins kill with ease), and are very effective against buildings. The downfall, of course, is that this combo is EXPENSIVE, as I talked about in the economy section. Once you’ve got the paladin upgrade, you had better USE it. Halbs give your paladins a few problems, but all it takes is to move them back and send up the ETAs. Assuming they send pikes, it’s no problem, unless they use overwhelming numbers. Camels are a problem, but if you draw them into ETA fire they go down easily. Archers give ETAs a problem, but if you run your paladins into them, they drop like flies. Paladins/HCs: Similar to, but somewhat less effective than paladins/ETAs, this combo still rips apart anything that looks like infantry. Buildings are a problem, so bring trebs. On the plus side, this is less expensive than shelling out the cash for fully upgraded ETAs, and a lack of castles is no problem. ETAs/HCs: My second favorite combo behind paladins and ETAs, this combo has the advantage of being cheap and fast to produce, and utterly devastates anything at a range. Archers aren’t too much of a problem, and infantry and cavalry just drop to them. On the downside, onagers are a really serious problem, as are scorpions. Bring a few cav, just to be safe. On Siege: The Franks have pretty decent siege. At the very least, you should be bringing trebs along with your armies for town destruction and the occasional treb war. Rams are of little interest, unless you’re attacking in castle, but the scorpion line would be a good backup to either paladins or ETAs. The problem is, however, that they cost wood, and that’s really bad. Utilizing Your Army: There are a number of ways to kill your opposition, and I won’t go into all of them here. But Frankish knight rushes are really ugly, and if you let a Frank get to imperial, you’re in trouble. Massed paladins backed up by anything seriously ruin a day like nothing else. If you have the chance, use groups of paladins to raid towns. Unless they have random armies of pikes just sitting around, chances are you can kill a whole bunch of vills and get away with very few losses. Assuming you have the gold, try building some monks to back up your armies with. It can really help you out.
And just to illustrate some points, I’m now going to talk about how I play games. I’m not going to say that this is the best way, it’s simply the way I play. How to Castle: (With thanks to Pantheon for posting this) At the start, you crank 4 vills while your first 3 build a pair of houses. Get your scout looking for sheep, then run two rings around your base and head off to explore the corners and the center of the map. Get the first 6 starting vills going on sheep, making sure they’re 3 to a sheep. The 7th, and the next 3 vills should all go on berries. The next 3 should go on wood. The next vill should go boar luring, or if you already are boar luring, join in on the boar. The next 3 vills should go on wood. The next vill should go boar luring, or join in on a boar. The next 3 vills should start farming. The next 3 vills should go on gold. Hit the feudal button. In the Transition: Keep on scouting. Note where the enemies are, and if you have teammates, make sure you tell them. Also note things like gold mines, chokepoints, and the like. Your boar/sheep vills will likely have finished working by this point. Stick 2 on wood, 2 on farms, and have the rest either build a mining camp near stone or if you’ve just hit feudal or are very close, build feudal buildings. In feudal, make 2 more vills and put them on wood. You should also have 4 more vills working on stone, and of the other 4, 2 should farm and the others should be on gold. Get the required resources and hit the castle button. In the castle transition, you’ll want to get the first logging upgrade pronto, followed by cartography if it’s a team game, followed by gold mining and stone mining. Before castle hits, make sure you’ve got at least enough to start pumping vills. In Castle: This is highly variable, but the general idea is to get vills streaming out of your TC as fast as possible, getting at least your first TC and 2 mills ringed with farms, and at least 4 on every single gold pile you can lay your hands on. Get at least one mill and your TC going before you start on gold, and make sure your first gold mine is another TC, so you can use this for more vills. Get a castle up in your town, and keep those vills going. Military upgrades are wise at this point, as are wheelbarrow, hand cart, and town watch. You should have a good idea where the enemy is by now, and be preparing to attack. If necessary and it can be done easily, set up trade with your closest ally. Try to hit imperial unless you’re fighting a war as fast as possible. In Imperial: You should be massing up and preparing to kill by the beginning of imperial. Get the ETA and Cavalier/Paladin upgrades pronto, and then blast furnace and the platemails. Get your army together, and go crush the opposition. The Weaknesses in This Style: Rushing can be a problem, since the Franks are a slower civ. This is not the space to talk about flush defense. AoKH and MFO have tons of threads devoted to the purpose. I suggest you read them. Getting your gold choked off can be a drawback, but not totally life threatening, as long as you recognize the problem and don’t go for a paladin army. The main problem here comes down to speed. If you get rushed, you will be in trouble, but that goes for most people.
VI: Conclusion And there you have it. I hope I’ve
at least convinced you that the Franks are worth another look. For
those of you who are already Frank players, hopefully this has given
you some more ideas on how to play them. Corrections, comments,
and money are all welcome. |
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| Effective Scouting: More Important Than You May Think! | |
| As your game
improves, you will reach a point where you can, in an average game,
maintain near constant villie-flow from your TC, keep yourself from
getting hosed, and get all your villies working on the right resources
without having to move them around alot. Once you reach this point,
you can start spending more time on other areas of your game. Three
that come to mind are: scouting, strategy, and forward building. Effective
scouting is an essential element to finding resources, choosing your
strategy, defending your own base, and pulling off a successful forward
build. NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD SCOUTING!
An "effective" scout will perform the following tasks if you do everything right. I tried to put them in the order they might happen in a game. Not every point applies to every map type or strategy. 1) Find everything around your base(including 8 sheep, 2 boar, berries, good forest, 1 stone mine, 2 gold mines). Don't leave ANY black spots within at least 1 full screen away from your TC. If you leave a black patch (and your luck is like mine), that is where your last 2 sheep are hiding. 2) Scout right around the waters edge. This is important for many reasons: Sheep love to stand right on the shore. You will find all of the shallows. You get an accurate picture of the land mass without missing any peninsulas or passageways you assumed was a coast-line. If you are planning on docking, you will be able to see where a good placement would be. You might even see a few deep sea fish. 3) Protect forward villies from wolves. A loomed forward vill can survive one wolf attack, but not two. The scout will save your villies every time. (See Habby's great thread on "steeeeenking wolves") 4) Scout enemy base to find gold operation and wood operation. Your first priority with the enemy is finding his wood and gold. Report this info to your teammates. You also want to find the TC and stay away from it! Don't let your opponent kill your scout with TC fire. It is a good idea to never let your scout stop running when he is in the enemy base. ONE loomed villie can kill a scout. (see #6) 5) Locate a good spot to build a forward base. Try to find a gold mine that is on your enemy's side of the map. Don't build within 1 screen of your enemy's nearest building or you will likely be found soon. If possible, build to the side or behind the enemy. No one scouts behind their base after the first initial run. (see #7) 6) Harrass the enemy by attacking vills and running away. Don't go head-to-head with a loomed villie. Those guys are tough. Hit and run. It is annoying to have the alarm sound going off because the enemy is attacking your vills with his scout. This is the effect your are going for. You may even kill a villie if your enemy isn't paying attention. 7) Return to scout around your base and BEHIND your base to find the enemy forward build. The key to stopping forward builders is finding them fast! If you find the villies, kill them with your scout and your own villies. Use as many as necessary. If you find them after they have established a base, respond with the appropriate defenses. (This is addressed in other posts) 8) Continually monitor the area surrounding your forward base. If you are discovered, you want to know that you have been discovered and what the enemy is doing about it. Also look for spots to expand your forward base or possibly build another forward base (this might be near another gold and stone mine or a strategic land area, etc.) 9) Never stop scouting the entire game! You won't have time to micro your scout after the 20:00 point. So set him to patrol your base, your forward base, and your allies bases. And keep scouting land that has been unclaimed. You want to uncover most of the map so that you can expand your empire while monitoring your enemy's expansion. Two special notes for islands maps: Once your entire island has been scouted, set your scout to patrol the perimeter of your island until you reach feudal. When you reach feudal, immediately build a tranny and fill it with 4 vills and your scout. Head right to your enemy's island (or the main island in migration). Also, since your scout can't scout the map, you will need to use a fishing boat to scout. First circle your island looking for deep sea fishing spots, then find any nearby gold and stone islands, then scout around your enemies islands. You need to do this with your first fishing boat. Once your enemy reaches feudal, he will kill your fishing boat with a galley or fireship. So you need to be fast and circle his island during the dark age! --------- Now, you can't do all of the things I mentioned above just by running your scout around your base twice and then sending him to the other side of the map, which is how I see most intermediate players scout. Learn to spend less time watching your villies chop wood and more time directing your scout. Make sure you assign the scout a hotkey in the very beginning of the game so you can get there quickly. (I use #1 and I assign it during the first minute of the game.) You should be able to quickly take a glance at your camp to make sure you aren't getting housed, your TC is constantly producing villies, and your villies are doing what they should be doing. This can be done in about 2 seconds, then get back to the scout! The scout should be your most time consuming micro during the first part of the game. If you hotkey the TC to #2 or #3, you don't even have to return to your base to que villies. Just hit 2CC, and you get two more villies. You can do that while still watching your scout. Hope that helps. It takes lots of
practice. When a game gets going, it's easy to just set gather points
all over the map and let your scout run. But better scouting really
will improve your game dramatically! Finally, to judge your progress,
notice how much of the map you revealed in the end of game statistics.
If you did a great job and kept your scout moving the entire game,
you can get that percentage above 70% on a regular basis. |