Strategy Articles

DeathMatch Dominance: The Huns

This guide's purpose is to inform you why the Huns are the most used, and most dominant civilisation in Deathmatch games today. I will go into more detail than my first article on the different starts and strategies when using the Huns. Hopefully you may get a lot out of this article - your style of game play and perhaps learn more about the game as a whole.

DeathMatch Game Overview

This article is a basic overview of what DM is, and why I, and thousands of others enjoy playing DeathMatch (DM) games. Hopefully this will help your knowledge of the 2nd, of the 3 halves of AoK (random map, deathmatch and scenario designing/scripting). Note that this just the outline, and contains no specific guides on how to win using a certain strategy.

Recommended Civs for a New Player

"Newbie" has various definitions. To some, it's a player who just installed the game, with the shrink wrap still lying on the floor. To others, it's someone who's tried to learn the game but keeps getting stuck. To a few, it's somebody making his debut in multi-player games. To a few more, it's somebody who is a net detriment to his team in multi-player rather than an advantage.

Tips for Newer Players

This article consists of tips that are both useful and intriguing. Most of these may be known by good players, but it is still useful for newcomers to find tips to start off all in one place.

AK-47 Mongol Rush

AK-47 Rush - Man-at-Arms Rush with the help of a tower, perhaps adding skirmishers later, when you estabilise the economy - perhaps, is the fastest rush strategy. The goal of the strategy is to hit the enemy as soon as you can, just as a fast flush, 1 or 2 minutes earlier then the enemy flush.

Crappy Grushing

If the name doesn't say it all, you really need it. Separating the experts from the intermediates, the Galley Rush ("Grush") is the most popular strategy on water maps today. While Grushing has only been mastered by a small percentage of those competing in multiplayer, that may be about to change. Join us as Wide_Arc reveals the art of "Crappy Grushing" with the help of an example game between two extraordinary players: DaRq_GlowWorm and Myth_Ares.

The Drush

Well...since Quazitory wanted an article on drushing and since I was pretty much jobless, I decided to try to make one. Before reading this article, keep in mind that I am not very good and do not have too much experience drushing. This is as much showing my own strat and asking people to help with it as it is a tutorial on drushing for people worse than me. Quazitory - feel no need to add this if it's not good enough (likely at it's current stage). Now on to the article:

Fending off the Flush

I'm sure we have all experienced that terrible moment when you're 13 minutes into the game and you have skirmishers and spearmen wandering around your base, hacking away at your villagers and destroying your economy. You struggle to fend off these early soldiers only to find the flush intensified by finding such things as towers, MAA, and military buildings popping up in and around your base. At this point, most people say you've lost the game. However, fending your opponent off, and even having a comeback is more than possible.

The Flush

The term, "Flush" stood for "Feudal Rush" when it was invented a long time ago (possibly about five to six years back), back in the days of AoK. Nowadays, the "Flush" isn't just a "Feudal Rush," it's the strategy that defines how the game is now played. Everywhere you go in Zone Rated RM, you'll see a Flush, be it a Hun Flush or not (the Huns are the most popular civ to Flush with).

Goth M@A Rush

They key to success of this strategy is this M@A + skirm combo of Goths which can be deadly effective in an open feudal war.

Japanese M@A Rush

This strategy is usable on any open or semi-open land map, but works best on arabia. On arabia if you follow this guide well, you can hit the enemy economy with 4-6 men-at-arms (m@a) at around 11.45 - 12.45, with the option of getting scale mail armor while maintaining almost continuous villager production. Japanese have two bonuses which help this strategy very much - Cheap lumber camps/mills/mining camps from the start and faster attack rate of infantry from feudal onwards.

Land Nomad

My purpose in posting this is both to get comments on my strategy from those who are more skilled than me and to teach those who are less skilled than me. Comments welcome but let's have no flaming in <a href="https://aok.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/aokcgi/display.cgi?action=ct&f=3,32993,,all">this</a> thread. One of the most popular RM game types on the Zone currently, especially in Zone room 'Mediaeval Siege', is Land Nomad. The differences between a Land Nomad map and the standard 'Nomad' map in AoK:TC are as follows:

LKS_Flammifer’s Japanese Monk Rush

This is the Japanese monk rush I've worked for some time on, I hope you find it interesting. Any comments and questions are welcomed but if you only want to say how dumb monk rushes are please post it in another thread.

Persian Fast Castle

This is a fast castle strategy I put together on request from TOAO_Ornlu. It will get you to castle around 15.10min, with enough resources to make knights with one stable on villagers nonstop. You also almost have wood for another tc.

Pyc_Hawk’s Teuton Tower Rush

I'm sure that many of you have heard by now of the dreaded Teuton tower rush. For those of you who haven't, you may be wondering why the Teuton tower rush in particular is so dreaded. What makes it more effective than that of other civs?

Saracen Cavalry Archer Rush

This strategy makes the most of two overlooked bonuses the Saracen civilization receives; the reduction of the Market fee to 5%, and the +3 damage to buildings by Cavalry Archers.

The Hun Drush

I am frozen, I have around 1650 rating on voobly right now and have played for about 2 years. Most of that time I have not played online at all, but only watched a few record games on the weekends. So, I would say that I know a lot about the game, but that my micro and macro are not top notch. Therefore, I think a lot of players who are around 1400-1700 will benefit from this guide even if I as a writer is quite lowish in skill. Worse player will ofc also benefit, but might be unable to copy the guide without very much practise (and thus making them 1400!).

The Sling

This strat is used by pro players, so don't dismiss it just because you think you are "above" it. The sling makes lower level players much more useful for the team than they would have been otherwise, as long as there is at least one good player on the team. The idea is quite easy:

Wolf Rushing on a Gold Rush Map

An Insight About Gathering

As we all probably know, Age of Empires II - The Conquerors has four different types of resources that are required to build more units and structures, and research technologies - food, wood, gold and stone. Your civilians (Villagers and Fishing Ships) gather these resources in order to sustain your civilization. Let's give a close examination in each of these individually.

Elevation Effects

I have completed a test on elevation effects and can report the following: The amount of elevation advantage has no effect on attack bonuses. An archer will inflict just as much damage shooting at a target just 1 elevation lower as against a target 5 elevations lower.

How Monks Really Work

With the release of two expert Castle Age strategies featuring Monks (the Sheriff's SMUSH and Crexis and Methos_ST's C&M Express), these preacher/healers have suddenly become all the rage. But how exactly do they work? What little is known of how the work comes from the kind posting of Ensemble Studios' ES_Sandyman on AOKH. This post, combined with players' anecdotal evidence, has come to form the generally accepted monk theory, and has provided the backbone to most strategic thinking of how monks work.

Market Exchange Rates

Today I want to talk about the market. I've always wondered how the rates change every time you ask your merchants for help to fund your war effort. And since I failed to find anything relevant, I decided to figure it out myself. Actually, in the beginning I intended to title it "How Market Really Works" (!), but I will only cover buying and selling resources here, not the trade carts.

Benefits of Multiple Builders

In AOE and ROR, n builders took T/n time to construct a building where T was the time required for a single builder. When you needed to make several buildings at once, it was often best to have all your builders on one building at a time. The advantage of this was that you could start using buildings before they are all complete while still finishing the last building in the same amount of time as if you had split your builders up.

Rates of Fire

A few days ago MFO Blue sent me MFO's copy of the beta so I could do my unit tests. Here are the results of my Rate of Fire (ROF) for all TC units with a few of my thoughts added. I apologize if anything is different from this beta and the released game. Soon MFO will come out with complete unit tables like we have for AOK and ROR.

Real Cost of Resources

Age of Kings is a game of military conquest, but beneath those charging armies is a powerful economic engine. Economic strategy is often more important than military strategy. To make the right choices you need to know the real cost of your assets in four economic sections: Pre-Castle (including both Dark and Feudal Ages), Castle, Imperial and Post-Imperial. This article will reveal the real cost of every resource, unit, building and technology in the Pre-Castle Age.

Relative Market Efficiency

If your new market is completely finished, then when you delete your old markets, your carts will automatically go to the new market. However, your allies carts will go directly to his or her market and then stand idle, which may block your carts from getting through to trade. So communicate with your ally to keep the gold flowing.

Relic Overview

Relics are very useful for gaining an extra gold, and in standard games, collecting all the relics starts a countdown to victory. But standard games are rare, and in conquest game, the most played ones, collecting many relics ensure you a good gold income. Relics are specially useful for the gold dependent civilizations such as the Turks.

Research Time

Knowing upgrade times of the technologies is a great tool to have. It could improve advancing, attacking, and initializing certain tasks greatly. In AoE knowing that it took 2 minutes to adavnce an age was the deciding factor for manyplayers to either not advance and build a defensive army verse a rush, or to go ahead andadvance, "I have the time." Below are all the times (in "GAME SECONDS").