posted 01-05-11 04:53 AM EDT (US)
Hi all.
Many old guidelines are lost, the sites are dead and still some new players ask for advice.
Edit: I just find that El Capitans blog is still available. It has very good strategy articles:
http://elcapitansgamingstrategy.blogspot.com/2005/08/scouting.html
Have a look around there, too!
So here i try to write down what i think helpful for beginners who want to become better at our beloved game (RoN Thrones and Patriots at standard game settings).
Tips for advanced players will be like this.
I. General preparations
Before you can even think about any strategies or what nation you pick, you need to prepare your controls. Without good control of the game, you will never be quick enough to compete. This is Real-TIME-Strategy, so time is a ressource like wood or food.
1. Turn extra options on.
2. Let plop out the extra displays the game provides.
a) There is a display which shows you how many workplaces you have at farms, woodcamps, mines etc.
b) There is an extra display at the top for library techs.
3. Have your keyboard in a comfortable position, where you have good access to the hotkeys.
4. Go to the options menu and assign hotkeys for important buildings that have none yet.
Build/select...
...Fort : r
...Tower: t
...Temple: e
5. Memorize the most important hotkeys:
city: c
create villager in a selected city: v
Library: l
farm: f
Woodcamp: w
mine: m
Stable: s
Barracks: k
university: u
market: n
6. Be aware of the use of the tab-key (click to search through available techs)
7. Be aware of the possibilty to zoom in and out by using the mousewheel.
II. General ingame-control
1. You can set waypoints for units by holding down shift while giving orders.
2. You can not only give waypoints, but also order-lines for villagers. Example: select villager (vil), hold down shift and command him to build a tower and then a granay and then a lumber mill (you need the ressources to do so).
3. Same appilies to give orders to units. You can command heavy cav to attack a certain archer and then a certain catapult, as soon as the archer is dead.
4. You can even give waypoints/orderlines to buildings by right-clicking while holding shift.
Example: There is a good rare resource (rare) quite in the edge of enemy land, but you have noticed that he has not disvovered it yet, cause he has no merchant there.
You want that resource but you cannot send a merchant there directly from your market to the rare, cause he would march though enemy line of sight:
select market ("n), produce merchant and now give waypoints to the market. The last waypoint dirctly on the rare.
Your merchant will follow your carefully planned waypoint-route and finally settle down at the rare.
Attention: You must set the waypoints carefully, sometimes this appears a bit laggy to me.
5. Apart from orderlines: Use giving waypoints for production buildings like stables, markets etc.
If you dont, the units or merchants you train will simply appear next to the building where produced. This is probably not the place where the are needed.
Troops are needed at the front, a sieged city etc., a merchant is needed at a rare.
Here is what you do, when you see a rare you want:
You see the rare at your main map, click "n" (selecting a market without going there), order a merchant and right-click on the rare.
You cannot forget anymore that you have build a merchant, you will not have to select him, search the rare again and command the merchant.
Here is what you do when in combat and you see, that the enemy has spies and you have only one scout (or none):
Apart from retreating maybe, you need a scout.
Until you read this guideline, you hectically searched your barracks, leaving your fighting units unattented, trained a scout, waited until he´s done and conmmanded him to march to your army (if there still is any).
But now: While in battle, click "k" (hotkey for barracks), produce scout and still while the barracks are selected right click to the front. The scout will go there as soon as ready.
6. One more thing about holding shift:
Holding shift and a hotkey for a buidling selects all buildings of that type:
Shift+s: Selct all stables. If you now order heavy cav (HC), you will produce a HC in every stable you have. Right-click to the front or wherever the HC is needed you have a quick way to order reinforcements.
Shift+c: Selct all cities. Click "v". Now you produce a vil in every city.
Ok, that is enough for today. There is more to come.
III. The first minutes of the game
Ok, you know how to control the game, now you need to do the "right" things. Before i tell you about nations, micro etc. you need a good start.
The following guide applies to standard games on a non-fishing map and for a 1vs1 (surely most of it is valid for team games too). If you have questions why to do it like that, feel free to ask.
1. Game starts, you have your mouse positioned at the top of the screen and immediately research science 1 and then civic 1.
2. Click c,v,v,v,v (click v as often as possible):
"c" selects your city, every "v" trains a villager.
3. Grab your scout and explore the map.
I will go into the details of scouting later maybe, but here are some hints:
a) The goals of scouting are: Finding ruins, finding a spot for the 2nd city, finding rares, scouting the opponent, exploring where good mountains/woods are, where are good defensive positions, is the opponent easy to rais (few rivers/mountains/wood?).
Generally concentrate on ruins and trying to explore the map efectively. That means:
Donever use auto-explore! Give waypoints to the scout. Set them quick, but carefully. The scout (and only he) will catch ruins that come into his LOS and then continue his path.
Send him through land where he has not yet been. Use a reasonable pattern, for the waypoints. Do not expect to find ruins around the cities of your opponent.
Remember you need ruins, a good place for the 2nd city and you wish to find rares that are close to your cities.
b) Every unit or villager can grab ruins. Send 2 or 3 vils to scout for ruins in your terretory and in the closest corners of the map.
c) The ruins will normally give you the ressource which you have the least of in the moment of catching the ruin.
So you might want to use ruin-manipulation.
4. Good, now grab a villager and build a farm. Newly trained vils will go on farms or the woodcamp (or scouting).
Build another farm asap. When you see that your 5 farms are worked on and same with the woodcamp, you send the next two vils to the place for your 2nd city. Build no more vils from that moment.
Hints for 2nd city placement:
a) Build towards the closest opponent (in 1vs1 that is towards the map-center) and close to the border. You want to grab a smuch land as possible.
b) You want to have 2 decent woods and alt least 1 decent mountain next to your 2 cities. So try to build a 2nd city where there is a mountain and a woodspot. It is ok if there is no good wood or no mountain, generally then there is a mountain/2nd wood at your capital.
5. Build your 2nd city.
6. While doing that, research com1 when available.
7. When com1 is finished, build a market.
8. When 2nd city is finished, build the 2nd woodcamp and more farms and vils.
Attention: You should have found some rares already. Have a look at what they bring. When they bring food or timber, calculate that in your ressource planning. You want to reach a production of 100 food and 100 wood.
Example: To reach 100 food without rares you need 2 cities and eight farms and 8 villagers (farming).
When there is the bison rare available (brings 20 food) you only need 6 farms and 6 farmers.
9. Build a caravan and merchants.
10. Research mil1.
11. Research Classic age (II) asap.
Do not build a temple, barracks, 2nd market in that stage of the game. You will need a lot of wood in II.
(Of course you need barracks when attacked) The only building you can build when you have more than 200 wood left is a tower (build it at your capital).
12. Once in classic, you build a stable, research mil 2 and start to raid the opponent with HA and HC.
13. You also build a mine, barracks, university,senate. Maybe a tower at your mine or at a woodcamp.
If you were faster in classic than the opponent, you are now able to raid his caravan(s), merchants and villagers. In the meantime you produce some more units and get civ2 and a 3rd city. Before 3rd city is done, research com2.
Well, this is a quite agressive way, but just try it and you once you are trained to raid, build up army and expand you will beat players that you had no chance against before.
If you are not the first in Classic, you might want to build a barracks and a tower quickly, so that you can defend against a raid.
IV. RoN and resources
Ok, now you have a plan what to do in the first minutes. Now we think about what resources the game provides us with and how we deal with it.
1. Resources
RoN has quite a lot of resources and many ways how to get them.
a) Food
Where from: Ruins, farms (plus villager), rares, trade at market, completition bonus for farm
b) Wood
Ruins, woodcamp (and villagers), rares, trade at market, completition bonus for woodcamp.
c) Gold
Ruins, caravan, taxation, rares, trade at market, completition bonus for market and temple.
d) Metal
Ruins, mines (and villagers), rares, completition bonus für mines, trade at market,
e) Knowledge
University (and scholars), rares, completition bonus for uni.
f)Oil
Oil well (and villager), rares,ruins, completition bonus and CEO-Patriot
So what do we see here and what consequences does that have?
Well, you see that gold is not so easy to get. You can easily reach a production of 100 food and wood, but not 100 gold. A caravan route needs time to establish, and for taxation you need a temple and research from the civ-line.
Conclusion: Always think twice when spending gold.
Next thing we see: Knowledge is hard to get. You need the rare gold for getting it (scholars) and it is the only resource you cannot buy at the market.
Conclusion: When you have the choice, get rares that give you a bonus in gold or knowledge, unless the alternative is a very good rare (like sugar or salt).
2. Spending resources on buildings
A good player on the one hand does not pile up loads of resources but spends them quickly, while on the other hand he knows what units, research or buildings he plans to get and will save the needed resources for that.
To know what you should build/produce, you have to know some game mechanics (maybe you know them already, but want to be sure):
a)
Farms can only be build in city radius, 5 per city. Universities: 1 per city
Mines and woodcamps can be build anywhere in your land (but without a city, they will not benefit from lumber mills and smelters)
b) You need villagers (=food) to work on farms etc.
c) The costs of buildings and villagers ramps up. The 2nd farms costs much less wood than the 10th. Same with vils, scouts, spies, generals, barrack units (except scouts), stable units etc.
d) Beginning with library tech science 2 you gain access to granaries, lumber mills and smelters. They increase food etc. income without needing a villagers and you gain access to research there, that will significantly increase your income.
Conclusion:
When trying to increase food/wood/metal income, have the granaries etc. in mind. Know what science 2,3,4 etc cost (gold and knowledge) and do not spend food and wood for more farms and vils (costs ramp up) but think about getting science research and granaries instead.
Note:
It is completely ok to reach a production of 150/150,100 without any granary or such.
e) The amount of gold that a caravan brings is relying on many factors: Distance of the cities the route is established between, number and type of buildings in radius of these cities and size of city (small, large etc.)
The amount of gold that you get from taxation depends on your taxation level and on the percentage of land that you own.
Note: In the beginning taxation does not bring much. Taxation 1 cost about 80 food/wood and brings you a gold income of about 10. You should not care about it before you have 3 cities and are in medieval (III).
f) Knowledge is expensive. Do not spend to much of your gold into scholars in classic age. A knowledge production of 30-40 is completely fine in classic.
Very important is a tech that is done in the university when reaching scince3 (etc.). It increases the knowledge production from 5 to 7 for every scholar.
Whenever researching a new level of science, check university, granary etc. to get the researches there!!!
3.Spending resources on research esp. library research
Well, you see that efficient increase of your production needs research in granaries, temples, unis etc.
But those techs only become available by library techs (including ascending in ages).
As those library techs also bring you possibility to produce better units, you see that library research is a keyfactor in the game. Even in hottest battles, remember research in the library (use the shortcut, "l").
The order how to research in the library (lib) depends on map,nations, opponent etc. but there is a standard that is never wrong:
In ancient, you do a science1, civic1, com1, mil1, II (see above).
In classic, you usually start with mil2,civic2, com2.
The next research may be III or science2, maybe even followed by science3 before going III.
As you might see, there is a huge difference if you fo into III with only science1, or if you research science2 and mabye even 3 before III. Science research is good generally, but expensive (gold and knowledge).
Without science2, you will be much faster in III than with.
That means: When you are attacked or even sieged, you want to go III as soon as possible ---> no science2 then.
That is because you need large cities (more hitpoints) and better units to defend.
Also no science 2 before III when you want a to make a quick attack with your upgraded medieval army against an opponent who is still in classic (maybe because he spend his knowledge for science2 and science3).
In case you went III with science 1 only, next lib-research will be science2, then science3, then mil3, then IV.
When you went III with science 3 already, get mil3 and then IV.
From now on, you always go into the next age with the corresponding science level and the corresponding militay level. When reaching a new age, get the according com,then the according civic (the row is fill then).
Next are science, military, age up, com, civic,science, mil, age up etc.
This is the most balanced way to go to the ages.
More to come, pls comment if you have questions.
Many old guidelines are lost, the sites are dead and still some new players ask for advice.
Edit: I just find that El Capitans blog is still available. It has very good strategy articles:
Have a look around there, too!
So here i try to write down what i think helpful for beginners who want to become better at our beloved game (RoN Thrones and Patriots at standard game settings).
Before you can even think about any strategies or what nation you pick, you need to prepare your controls. Without good control of the game, you will never be quick enough to compete. This is Real-TIME-Strategy, so time is a ressource like wood or food.
1. Turn extra options on.
2. Let plop out the extra displays the game provides.
a) There is a display which shows you how many workplaces you have at farms, woodcamps, mines etc.
b) There is an extra display at the top for library techs.
3. Have your keyboard in a comfortable position, where you have good access to the hotkeys.
Build/select...
...Fort : r
...Tower: t
...Temple: e
5. Memorize the most important hotkeys:
city: c
create villager in a selected city: v
Library: l
farm: f
Woodcamp: w
mine: m
Stable: s
Barracks: k
university: u
market: n
6. Be aware of the use of the tab-key (click to search through available techs)
7. Be aware of the possibilty to zoom in and out by using the mousewheel.
1. You can set waypoints for units by holding down shift while giving orders.
2. You can not only give waypoints, but also order-lines for villagers. Example: select villager (vil), hold down shift and command him to build a tower and then a granay and then a lumber mill (you need the ressources to do so).
3. Same appilies to give orders to units. You can command heavy cav to attack a certain archer and then a certain catapult, as soon as the archer is dead.
Example: There is a good rare resource (rare) quite in the edge of enemy land, but you have noticed that he has not disvovered it yet, cause he has no merchant there.
You want that resource but you cannot send a merchant there directly from your market to the rare, cause he would march though enemy line of sight:
select market ("n), produce merchant and now give waypoints to the market. The last waypoint dirctly on the rare.
Your merchant will follow your carefully planned waypoint-route and finally settle down at the rare.
Attention: You must set the waypoints carefully, sometimes this appears a bit laggy to me.
5. Apart from orderlines: Use giving waypoints for production buildings like stables, markets etc.
If you dont, the units or merchants you train will simply appear next to the building where produced. This is probably not the place where the are needed.
Troops are needed at the front, a sieged city etc., a merchant is needed at a rare.
Here is what you do, when you see a rare you want:
You see the rare at your main map, click "n" (selecting a market without going there), order a merchant and right-click on the rare.
You cannot forget anymore that you have build a merchant, you will not have to select him, search the rare again and command the merchant.
Here is what you do when in combat and you see, that the enemy has spies and you have only one scout (or none):
Apart from retreating maybe, you need a scout.
Until you read this guideline, you hectically searched your barracks, leaving your fighting units unattented, trained a scout, waited until he´s done and conmmanded him to march to your army (if there still is any).
But now: While in battle, click "k" (hotkey for barracks), produce scout and still while the barracks are selected right click to the front. The scout will go there as soon as ready.
6. One more thing about holding shift:
Holding shift and a hotkey for a buidling selects all buildings of that type:
Shift+s: Selct all stables. If you now order heavy cav (HC), you will produce a HC in every stable you have. Right-click to the front or wherever the HC is needed you have a quick way to order reinforcements.
Shift+c: Selct all cities. Click "v". Now you produce a vil in every city.
Ok, that is enough for today. There is more to come.
Ok, you know how to control the game, now you need to do the "right" things. Before i tell you about nations, micro etc. you need a good start.
The following guide applies to standard games on a non-fishing map and for a 1vs1 (surely most of it is valid for team games too). If you have questions why to do it like that, feel free to ask.
1. Game starts, you have your mouse positioned at the top of the screen and immediately research science 1 and then civic 1.
2. Click c,v,v,v,v (click v as often as possible):
"c" selects your city, every "v" trains a villager.
3. Grab your scout and explore the map.
I will go into the details of scouting later maybe, but here are some hints:
a) The goals of scouting are: Finding ruins, finding a spot for the 2nd city, finding rares, scouting the opponent, exploring where good mountains/woods are, where are good defensive positions, is the opponent easy to rais (few rivers/mountains/wood?).
Generally concentrate on ruins and trying to explore the map efectively. That means:
Do
Send him through land where he has not yet been. Use a reasonable pattern, for the waypoints. Do not expect to find ruins around the cities of your opponent.
Remember you need ruins, a good place for the 2nd city and you wish to find rares that are close to your cities.
c) The ruins will normally give you the ressource which you have the least of in the moment of catching the ruin.
4. Good, now grab a villager and build a farm. Newly trained vils will go on farms or the woodcamp (or scouting).
Build another farm asap. When you see that your 5 farms are worked on and same with the woodcamp, you send the next two vils to the place for your 2nd city. Build no more vils from that moment.
Hints for 2nd city placement:
a) Build towards the closest opponent (in 1vs1 that is towards the map-center) and close to the border. You want to grab a smuch land as possible.
b) You want to have 2 decent woods and alt least 1 decent mountain next to your 2 cities. So try to build a 2nd city where there is a mountain and a woodspot. It is ok if there is no good wood or no mountain, generally then there is a mountain/2nd wood at your capital.
5. Build your 2nd city.
6. While doing that, research com1 when available.
7. When com1 is finished, build a market.
8. When 2nd city is finished, build the 2nd woodcamp and more farms and vils.
Attention: You should have found some rares already. Have a look at what they bring. When they bring food or timber, calculate that in your ressource planning. You want to reach a production of 100 food and 100 wood.
Example: To reach 100 food without rares you need 2 cities and eight farms and 8 villagers (farming).
When there is the bison rare available (brings 20 food) you only need 6 farms and 6 farmers.
9. Build a caravan and merchants.
10. Research mil1.
11. Research Classic age (II) asap.
Do not build a temple, barracks, 2nd market in that stage of the game. You will need a lot of wood in II.
(Of course you need barracks when attacked) The only building you can build when you have more than 200 wood left is a tower (build it at your capital).
12. Once in classic, you build a stable, research mil 2 and start to raid the opponent with HA and HC.
13. You also build a mine, barracks, university,senate. Maybe a tower at your mine or at a woodcamp.
If you were faster in classic than the opponent, you are now able to raid his caravan(s), merchants and villagers. In the meantime you produce some more units and get civ2 and a 3rd city. Before 3rd city is done, research com2.
Well, this is a quite agressive way, but just try it and you once you are trained to raid, build up army and expand you will beat players that you had no chance against before.
If you are not the first in Classic, you might want to build a barracks and a tower quickly, so that you can defend against a raid.
Ok, now you have a plan what to do in the first minutes. Now we think about what resources the game provides us with and how we deal with it.
1. Resources
RoN has quite a lot of resources and many ways how to get them.
a) Food
Where from: Ruins, farms (plus villager), rares, trade at market, completition bonus for farm
b) Wood
Ruins, woodcamp (and villagers), rares, trade at market, completition bonus for woodcamp.
c) Gold
Ruins, caravan, taxation, rares, trade at market, completition bonus for market and temple.
d) Metal
Ruins, mines (and villagers), rares, completition bonus für mines, trade at market,
e) Knowledge
University (and scholars), rares, completition bonus for uni.
f)Oil
Oil well (and villager), rares,ruins, completition bonus and CEO-Patriot
So what do we see here and what consequences does that have?
Well, you see that gold is not so easy to get. You can easily reach a production of 100 food and wood, but not 100 gold. A caravan route needs time to establish, and for taxation you need a temple and research from the civ-line.
Conclusion: Always think twice when spending gold.
Next thing we see: Knowledge is hard to get. You need the rare gold for getting it (scholars) and it is the only resource you cannot buy at the market.
Conclusion: When you have the choice, get rares that give you a bonus in gold or knowledge, unless the alternative is a very good rare (like sugar or salt).
2. Spending resources on buildings
A good player on the one hand does not pile up loads of resources but spends them quickly, while on the other hand he knows what units, research or buildings he plans to get and will save the needed resources for that.
To know what you should build/produce, you have to know some game mechanics (maybe you know them already, but want to be sure):
a)
Farms can only be build in city radius, 5 per city. Universities: 1 per city
Mines and woodcamps can be build anywhere in your land (but without a city, they will not benefit from lumber mills and smelters)
b) You need villagers (=food) to work on farms etc.
c) The costs of buildings and villagers ramps up. The 2nd farms costs much less wood than the 10th. Same with vils, scouts, spies, generals, barrack units (except scouts), stable units etc.
d) Beginning with library tech science 2 you gain access to granaries, lumber mills and smelters. They increase food etc. income without needing a villagers and you gain access to research there, that will significantly increase your income.
Conclusion:
When trying to increase food/wood/metal income, have the granaries etc. in mind. Know what science 2,3,4 etc cost (gold and knowledge) and do not spend food and wood for more farms and vils (costs ramp up) but think about getting science research and granaries instead.
Note:
It is completely ok to reach a production of 150/150,100 without any granary or such.
e) The amount of gold that a caravan brings is relying on many factors: Distance of the cities the route is established between, number and type of buildings in radius of these cities and size of city (small, large etc.)
The amount of gold that you get from taxation depends on your taxation level and on the percentage of land that you own.
Note: In the beginning taxation does not bring much. Taxation 1 cost about 80 food/wood and brings you a gold income of about 10. You should not care about it before you have 3 cities and are in medieval (III).
f) Knowledge is expensive. Do not spend to much of your gold into scholars in classic age. A knowledge production of 30-40 is completely fine in classic.
Very important is a tech that is done in the university when reaching scince3 (etc.). It increases the knowledge production from 5 to 7 for every scholar.
Whenever researching a new level of science, check university, granary etc. to get the researches there!!!
3.Spending resources on research esp. library research
Well, you see that efficient increase of your production needs research in granaries, temples, unis etc.
But those techs only become available by library techs (including ascending in ages).
As those library techs also bring you possibility to produce better units, you see that library research is a keyfactor in the game. Even in hottest battles, remember research in the library (use the shortcut, "l").
The order how to research in the library (lib) depends on map,nations, opponent etc. but there is a standard that is never wrong:
In ancient, you do a science1, civic1, com1, mil1, II (see above).
In classic, you usually start with mil2,civic2, com2.
The next research may be III or science2, maybe even followed by science3 before going III.
As you might see, there is a huge difference if you fo into III with only science1, or if you research science2 and mabye even 3 before III. Science research is good generally, but expensive (gold and knowledge).
Without science2, you will be much faster in III than with.
That means: When you are attacked or even sieged, you want to go III as soon as possible --->
That is because you need large cities (more hitpoints) and better units to defend.
Also no science 2 before III when you want a to make a quick attack with your upgraded medieval army against an opponent who is still in classic (maybe because he spend his knowledge for science2 and science3).
In case you went III with science 1 only, next lib-research will be science2, then science3, then mil3, then IV.
When you went III with science 3 already, get mil3 and then IV.
From now on, you always go into the next age with the corresponding science level and the corresponding militay level. When reaching a new age, get the according com,then the according civic (the row is fill then).
Next are science, military, age up, com, civic,science, mil, age up etc.
This is the most balanced way to go to the ages.
More to come, pls comment if you have questions.
[This message has been edited by Galahad Berlin (edited 01-18-2011 @ 12:15 PM).]
Thank you!
