Road to expert

Step 1 - Introduction

Hello.

Through
the last wcl I wrote a few articles about aoc themes such asteam
strats, guides, various data, which I though could be of help tothe
team and now it's over I think they could be useful for other aocfans.
Before getting into the articles I'm going to explain a littleabout
them and how they are meant to be used. Here we go!

There are a
lot of players who chase after experts asking forlessons, mistake
reviews and a wide variety of stuff. I think that's awrong approach to
the matter of improving and I believe this guide canbe an example of
how to be able of training and improving on our own.

Aoc is a
real time strategy game. This implies there are 2 innerfactors in it:
the strategy and the skill to be able to perform it in alimited amount
of time (which is my opinion are perfectly balanced inthe game and is
one of the reasons why I think this game is great).Both fields
complement each other and can be learnt separately.Strategy includes
the knowledge of the game in general, its units andtheir dynamics while
The Skill focuses on mechanic aspects such as thespeed at which we are
able to produce, move, place, react, etc.

One of the most
important things to me is to be able to think onour own. It is true
that many of the strats and moves are already verydeveloped and known
by everyone, but it is important to understand theway they work as well
as their strengths and weaknesses in order to beable to use them to our
full advantage. Remember Aoc is a rock paperscissors game. There is no
absolute strategy, they all have their goodand their bad points and
keep in mind the scissors is not good or badon itself, it always
depends on whether the enemy went rock or paper.


What can we
do to improve on these fields? Well, the answer isanything you can
imagine can help you. It is important to knowourselves and to
understand the resources we have. Watching a record wecan focus on
details such as how did ThuG_Ruso place his villagers togather
resources? Why did he make that wall and what benefit did he getfrom
it? While we are walking the dog we can figure out that when weplay
against ThuG_Ruso we will lure our boar as soon as possible inorder to
avoid getting harassed by his scout, etc. It is very common tohear
people saying "I don't know how to improve". Well, I think theright
statement is "I don't know what I want to improve". In Aoc thereare
loads of factors we can approach individually. When we know what wedo
want to improve it is very easily to design a way to train it: Iwant to
be able to manage 3 different groups of units simultaneously. Iam going
to pick a scout an archer and a camel and make slalom withthem till I
can manage them perfectly, or whatever you might think of,it is not
difficult, I swear.

Another very important thing when playing
aoc is to know how to usethe time we have. It is impossible to control
everything so it is vitalto know how to choose between all the options
we have those which aregoing to help us the best, so when we have 10
enemy archers walkingtowards our lumber we will use the game time we
have to save ourvillagers instead of chasing deers away with the scout.
Of course beingable to build farms in 2 seconds instead of 8 always
help in thesematters

To summaries these articles, these are
examples of the way Iapproach Aoc and the how I use the things I've
learnt to makestrategies and game plays, as well as giving you some
data andinformation that might be useful to you.

Step 2 - Data Tables and Times


Villager
-> Sheep: 50f in 2:30 (2:30 = 2 minutes 30 seconds = 150seconds) *It
doesn't include the time killing the sheep or moving fromone to another

Villager -> Berry: 50f in 2:45

Villager -> Tree: 50w in 2:10 *no walk

Villager -> Deer: 50f in 1:25

Villager -> Pig: 300f in 13:55 (835") *villager average counting the time luring and killing it

Villager
-> Farm: 50f in 2.51 or 175f in 9:40 (it varies in +/-20 seconds
depending on the position on the farm when farmer reachesmax. food to
the drop point) *build time included

Villager -> Gold: 100g in 4:30

Villager -> Stone: 100g in 4:40

Upgrade Times:


Loom: 0:25

Town watch (LOS for buildings): 0:25

Wheelbarrow: 1:15 (same time to create 3 villagers)

Handcart: 0:55

Gold/Stone Mining: 0:30

Feudal age upgrade: 2:10

Castle age upgrade: 2:40

Unit Production Times:


Villager: 1 in 0:25 (6 in 2:30)

Spearman: 0:22 *(Goth or Goth ally barracks 20% faster making it 0.176)

Skirmisher: 0:22

Camel: 0:22 *(Hun or Hun ally stable is 20% faster making it 0.176)

Knight: 0:30 *(Hun or Hun ally stable is 20% faster making it 0.24)

Scout: 0:30 *(Hun or Hun ally stable is 20% faster making it 0.24)

Archer: 0:35 *(Brit or Brit ally Archery Range is 20% faster making it 0.2

Cav Archer: 0:35

Feudal age Galley: 1:00

Castle age Galley: 0:35

Fire Ship: 0:37

Demolition Ship: 0:30

Upgrades Causing faster production of different units

Conscription: Units produce 33% faster (Upgrade in a castle and only in Imperial Age)

Perfussion: Only for Goths -> Own Barracks works 50% faster but not allies

Building Times:

House: 0:25

House (2 villagers): 0:18*

Mining and lumber camp: 0:35

Mill: 0:35

Farm: 0:25

Barrack, range and stable: 0:50

Barrack (2 villagers): 0:38 *

Barrack (4 villagers): 0:26 *

Town Center: 2:30

Market: 1:00

Black Smith: 0:50

Dock: 0:35

To
balance things ES made it so if your using one villager to builda
building (for an example a house) and it takes 25 seconds, you'dthink
adding a 2nd vil would cut this time in half to 12.5, but no ittakes 18
seconds, the more vils you add the more this difference isincreased. So
in conclusion if your building more than one buildingusing more than
one villager try to split the villagers as much aspossible so that
every building is being constructed by one or morevillagers at a time
rather than have all villagers work on one buildingthen more to the
next, this is especially good for imperial fighting.

This concludes Step 2, you are now ready to move onto and understand Step 3

Step 3 - Economy Upgrades


AoC
economy is based on inversions and rentability. What I mean is itis
necessary to invest a certain amount of resources and of time todevelop
them and they have a very certain impact on the game. It isgood to
understand how they work to be able to decide which and when toupgrade
them to suit your purposes best. There are a lot of factorsthat affect
this matter. Some are random such as the distance betweenthe town
center and the resources you are going to gather, the way thevillagers
spread to collect the resources etc that make the mathematicsto
evaluate them very complex (at least for myself), so you have to
useyour common sense/experience to analyze their impact on the
gathering,others are always fixed such as the villager walk or
gathering speedwhich I'll try to explain the best I can.

Resource pack
Understand
a 'resource pack' to be the following: imagine a playerplans on going
to the Castle Age and make knights from one stable. Heneeds 75g per
turn. Now he doesn't wait till he is Castle to place 8villagers to mine
gold but he had 5 gold miners since the beginning ofupgrading to Castle
Age. By the time he reaches the Castle Age he has5(miners) * 6(turns
Castle Age upgrade takes) = 30 turns of villagework = a 'resource pack'
of 300gold by the time he goes castle. Noweven keeping 5 gold miners
only he can produce knights non-stop usingthe resource pack he has: he
needs 75g per turn --> he collects 50gper turn with his 5 gold
miners --> 75g - 50(the 5 miners mine thismuch per turn) = 25g per
turn he needs to take from the resource pack--> 300 / 25 = 12 turns
or 12 knights he can produce before this"resource pack" empties. So its
good to put units on a resource beforethey are needed if they are not
needed elsewhere, such as going tofeudal age putting 3 villagers on
gold just before you click up thushaving enough (200g) to click up to
castle age.
Feudal age -> Double Bit Axe in Lumber Camp:

+20%
raw (with raw I mean the villager works 20% faster when a treeis cut
down). This upgrade doesn't affect the time it takes to carrythe wood
to the drop point (lumber camp/TC) or the time it takes to cutthe tree
down. So to evaluate it's real impact on the economy you haveto analyze
the 'hard to evaluate' factor I just talked about which isthe average
time it takes for your villagers to carry and drop thewood. Through a
few experiments I have decided that in normalconditions (not too many
choppers on the same forest, not too farlumber camp) the improvement is
around 15%.

It helps me a lot to think in terms of "villagers"
and "turns".Understand turn to mean basic time unit in aoe (25
seconds), which isapproximately the time it takes to make a villager in
the town centerand to collect 10units of a resource. In reference to
the Double BitAxe upgrade, the way I evaluate this 15% is that with the
upgrade 7woodcutters do the work of 8 woodcutters without the upgrade
making ita substantial investment if you have a lot of wood cutters.


How to take advantage of this?

Imagine
we go up to Feudal Age with 30 population and we have 100uof food
available to invest in either making 2 villagers or upgradingto Double
Bit Axe when reaching it. If we had 14 woodcutters Double BitAxe would
mean these 14 villagers are doing the work of 16 woodcutters,which
accounts for the 2 villagers we could have made. If we had morethan 14
villagers upgrading to Double Bit Axe becomes the obviouschoice as the
villagers are now doing the work of more than 2 extravillagers. If we
only had 8 woodcutters it would be more efficient justto make 2 new
villagers and make them chop. Of course this is just anexample.
Generally in the Feudal Age it is better to make new villagerssince
even if it is less efficient in the beginning, later on when wecan
finally afford the upgrade these additional vills will give us morewood
than the amount we lost in the beginning. This kind of thinking isgood
for Castle Age instead where we might have to choose betweengetting the
upgrades and making new TCs first.

In Reference to turns: Double
Bit Axe costs 100f and 50w. If forinstance we had 10 woodcutters they
would do the work of 11.5 vils,gaining around 15w extra per turn (0.25,
time to make a vil) so itwould take 10 turns till we would start having
more resources (100f,50w to upgrade it) than someone who didn't
purchase it.

Imagine the following: in a 1v1 match 1 player
purchases Double BitAxe and the other player decides to use these 150
units making 2 scoutsextra and waits 3mins before purchasing Double Bit
Axe. If the playerwith the scouts can use them in these 3 minutes to
inflict more damageon the enemy than the benefit he gained from
upgrading to Double Bit(vils doing work of 11.5 instead of 10 vils)
then he will have gainedan advantage, otherwise it will be the player
who upgraded Double BitAxe who gained it. The enemy waiting 3minutes
until getting thisupgrade means you will gain 7 turns (7x15 = 105 wood)
on the enemy.Quite a substantial amount to have extra.

These
examples are of course extreme situations. If you are savingresources
(for castle upgrade for instance) it is almost always betterin mid to
long term to invest them in economic upgrades (such as DoubleBit Axe,
Wheelbarrow, Horse Plough).

Feudal Age -> Horse Plough in Mill:

This
farm upgrade makes neither farms cheaper or farmers collectingfaster.
This affects the farm by adding 75 food to a newly placed oneafter the
upgrade, going from 175f - 250f. It also affects it inanother way
explained below

It lengthens farms life or reduces the amount of
wood we need toreseed them. To reseed a farm (60 wood) we need to have
a villagerchopping solely for each 3 farms we have to collect enough
wood so thatwhen each of these farms run out there is enough wood to
replace it.With the farm upgrade 1 vill can collect the wood to reseed
4 farmsinstead of 3 because each farm has more food (or life) lasting
longerallowing the vil to chop more wood. So for every 12 farms we have
wewill need 3 woodcutters instead of 4 meaning we have a free villager
touse somewhere else.


Feudal Age -> Wheelbarrow in TC:


Wheelbarrow
increases the amount of resources each villager cancarry (he has to go
drop them less often) and increases its walkingspeed (less time spent
carrying them).

It is hard to evaluate the impact of this on a
full economy. Whenwe have a lot of villagers dropping resources on a
single lumber campor far away from it (for example when we use a single
lumber camp orwhen we do a galley rush: multiple lumber camps) or when
we do severalrows of farms on a single drop point its effect on our
economy is verybig, in these cases it is best to purchase it as soon as
possible.

When the distances villagers have to walk are short
(farms insingle row, few villagers per lumber camp, etc.) I estimated
itimproves the economy in around 10% (on wood and farmers, its effect
inminery are almost null since the walking there is minimal unless
youhave loads of miners). Knowing this and taking its upgrade time
of1:15(exactly 3 villagers) into consideration it is my
beliefWheelbarrow is good once you have 30 or more villagers (which
comes tobe around 14 minutes game time in Feudal Age - 16 if we rushed
with 4/5vills because they wont be working normally or if we are
mininggold/stone with them once rushed, and 17 minutes in Castle Age if
youwent feudal with 28, made 2 villagers and clicked castle, wait till
youreach castle age then click Wheelbarrow).

Feudal Age -> Gold/Stone Mining:

15%
raw. It costs 100f and 75wood and as a reference it takesaround 4
villagers per range/stable to keep a constant flow, so inCastle Age
with 2 Stables making knights you need 8 miners, if you had7 miners and
the upgrade they would do the work of 8. It is anexpensive upgrade and
slow to pay for itself in general so it's usuallybetter to wait till we
have a decent amount of miners to upgrade it


Castle and Imperial upgrades:


their
logic is the same as Feudal upgrades but they are morecomplex to
evaluate due to the role of the additional town centers.Hand Cart
becomes good from 50-60 vills+. 2 Handed Saw (in Lumber Camp)is best if
you reach castle and will need a lot of wood and have atleast 16
villagers or more on wood (rough estimate). Heavy Plough (inMill) its
best you wait until you have 20+ farms made and are planningon dropping
a lot more or your existing one's are starting to run outthen research
it.

Building An Economy

In this part of the article we're going to analyze how the economy works in aoc and how to build it most effectively.

Our
first task is deciding what do we want to do. For example, thepocket
player in an arabia game decides he wants to go to castle ageand make
knights from one stable while booming. It is good to know thatfor
making knights he needs 60f and 75g per turn. This is about 6farmers
and 8 gold miners just to supply the knight's cost. At the sametime he
will need around 6 farmers more per town center to pay for thevillagers.

How does Upgrading an Age work?

When
you go from one age to the next it affects your economy inthis way:
imagine player X upgrades to Feudal Age with 22 villagers andplayer Y
goes up with 26. Through the 2:10 of upgrading time (around 5turns of
villager building) player X had 4 less villagers collectingresources so
by the time player Y reaches Feudal although both willhave the same
villager pop the first player will have 5(cost of 2.10 ofgoing to
feudal) * 4 (villagers he had less) = 20 turns less of villagework
(minus 200units of resources).

You have to take away from this
amount the effect of thetechnological upgrades: when you upgrade faster
you get benefits forlonger so for example if you do an upgrade and your
vils are workingfaster (14 working as 16 etc) 4 turns earlier the
difference will bethe 100units instead of 200 (cost of upgrading early
above). At thesame time, reaching ages faster allow you to produce
certain unitsearlier and so you can get economic advantage through
military wars. Incase you reach castle age faster you can also make TCs
faster and soget extra villagers. The balance is very subtle and so
very hard toevaluate. Generally the best thing to do is to adjust our
times so wecan go up as fast as possible but always having the minimum
amount ofresources necessary for the strat we have in mind. So you must
learnwhat strats you can do in situations and tailor your economies
forthese strategies as best you can. Keeping total balance

Resource pack


Understand
a 'resource pack' to be the following: imagine a playerplans on going
to the Castle Age and make knights from one stable. Heneeds 75g per
turn. Now he doesn't wait till he is Castle to place 8villagers to mine
gold but he had 5 gold miners since the beginning ofupgrading to Castle
Age. By the time he reaches the Castle Age he has5(miners) * 6(turns
Castle Age upgrade takes) = 30 turns of villagework = a 'resource pack'
of 300gold by the time he goes castle. Noweven keeping 5 gold miners
only he can produce knights non-stop usingthe resource pack he has: he
needs 75g per turn --> he collects 50gper turn with his 5 gold
miners --> 75g - 50(the 5 miners mine thismuch per turn) = 25g per
turn he needs to take from the resource pack--> 300 / 25 = 12 turns
or 12 knights he can produce before this"resource pack" empties. So its
good to put units on a resource beforethey are needed if they are not
needed elsewhere, such as going tofeudal age putting 3 villagers on
gold just before you click up thushaving enough (200g) to click up to
castle age.


Town centers

Town
centers are expensive buildings (275w and 100s) and slow tobuild (2:30
with 1vill 1:15 with 4vill) so just by using 4 vills tobuild them we
lose 4 * 3 (1:15) = 12 turns of village work (-120u). Youalso need 6
farmers just keep the vill production from that one TC.This is why it
is not good to make too many TCs when booming. Throughmy personal
experience and talking to some great players such as kkabor geek I have
come to the conclusion it is not good to make more than4 TCs (3 with
persia) when you are making boom + army or more than 5 (4with persia)
when you are aiming for a long and massive boom (lets say140 vills or
more). This doesn't mean you can't make more than 5 TCs.The TC has
other applications such as ground control, villager defence,pop
redistribution, etc. Just understand that in economy terms makingtoo
many TCs are not an improvement.


Some advice at resource gathering

Usually
the amount of mine resources that we need is very even (75gper turn for
knts, 100s for a TC etc), that's why I like to place acertain amount of
miners and focus on the gathering of wood/food. It'sin the way we play
with the wood and the farms where I think the key ofbuilding a good
economy is. The trick is in making the farms we need assoon as possible
(remember farms require wood for maintenance) andusing the wood excess
to build the TCs we will need. It is not good tobuild new TCs before we
have the necessary food to keep them working(except for military
purposes). It is important to control woodcuttingbecause providing
close drop points improve the efficiency greatly. Bewarned about stone
gathering, it weakens the economy considerably. Itis usually better to
collect as much as we will need and sometimes itis even better to just
buy it on the market (once again these advicescome from an economic
point of view, if you plan to use it for militarypurposes such as
castles, towers, walls, etc by all means mine it!).

Pride and honour.

And that's all we have to say about this you are now ready to move onto Step 4, Saludos.

Step 4 - Nomad

Hello,

I
made several observations in Nomad watching CTC, MysT and otherexpert
records as well as playing a few games and talking to Poisn(BsK_Force)
and these are the general notations I gathered, I hope youfind them
useful.

Most common civs are: Vikings, Persians and as a third
civ eitherChinese or Mayans. Spanish, Celts and a few others are good
too but notat the same level as the previous 2.

All civs excluding their particulars share the same basic goals, there is 5 Steps in this and they are as follows:

1st
Build
the TC as soon as possible. Usually the vills are sent to
anintermediate point, the one point that is closest to all of your
vils(except one vil that searches for a good water spot and builds a
dock)and once reaching that area a vil uncovers a good spot to TC you
startbuilding it.

[see basic RM strategy ]



2nd
Secure
the min. food to guarantee non stop vill production. Oncethe TC is up
put the min. of villagers on food to keep the tc workingand the rest go
to wood to make fish boats from your dock as soon aspossible.

3rd
Place
enough vills on wood to keep dock working and making housesas well as
some additional wood to build the remaining Dark Agebuilding to
purchase the Feudal Age upgrade.

4th
Scout
the map until you have found all the resources you will needfor your
strategy. It is normal to scout with a villager in nomadunless we were
lucky enough to find some sheep. It is crucial to findenough resources
to keep your TC pumping vils, but if we alreadycovered this it is a
good idea to start scouting with a villager whenyou have around 10,
once your villagers and fishing are secured.

5th
Focus
on reaching our goal age. Generally it's not profitable todelay the age
upgrading for a 2dock boom (except severe lacks of food)so in my
opinion it is best to focus on the resources we need once thefish boat
production is steady. So once you have enough vils on woodput more on
food if you found more (hunting, berry etc) and up ASAP, iffood is
short put more on wood and drop a 2nd dock and pump both. Youtypically
need 6 vils on wood to pump one dock and build houses

When playing nomad 3v3 it is common to share the tasks this way

Viking
-> goes for a Grush (galley rush) except when he needs todesperately
defend a Flush (feudal rush) or when enemy docks are toofar to reach in
a timely fashion. In this case it is usually better togo for a Castle
Age galley rush.

The other 2 civilisations usually focus on land
(in Castle Age)although they can also Grush if enemy docks are very
close or theirfish cant be defended by the viking ally. Alternatively
they can Flushif the enemy is close and his spot is weak enough (hard
to defend forenemy).

Another important factor when using task
distribution is to supporteach other: Viking should defend ally fish
boats if possible as well asget as many enemy fish boats as he can
(it's also a good idea if yourallies going land make a second dock
behind the Viking protection ifneeded) as well as land allies should
defend the water player from landattacks (it helps a lot if the viking
can just wall himself in).

Being Nomad a random position map,
playing 2v1, 3v1 or 3v2 is verycommon. Team coordination is very
important as well as killing theweakest enemies (land economy of water
players, water economy of landplayers). Viking player slinging food to
his allies going land army isa good option if the game conditions are
good for it.

Civilisation Details

1)Vikings

Just a few details

Vikings
need to gather 20wood before they can afford to make their1st fish boat
(they have to wait till the tc is up to get 1) so theydon't need to
drop a dock as fast as other civs, they can sparesometime to find a
good dock placement

Since they usually galley rush it is
important to find food to getto feudal fast and gold. It is also
important to locate enemy and allydocks to grush most efficiently so
sparing a fish boat to scout orsimilar is a good idea.

Walling
their economies totally (preferably in Stone) before enemyreaches
Castle is a good idea since they will be weak against landattacks. If
they are attacked by mayan archers it will be their alliestask to help
them.


2)Persians

Persians start is very similar to
the vikings, the difference is theycan make a fish boat before building
the TC (Persians start with +50wood) so they have to make a dock and a
house as soon as possible inorder to make a fishing boat ASAP, even
before their TC is up.

3)Mayans

Mayans are nearly the
same as vikings, their priority is to buildtheir TC faster and they
need food fast too (their initial food is 150compared to 200 for Vik
and 250 for Persian) although they start with+1 vil

Mayans usually either go Xbow or help Vikings with the Grush.


4)Chinese


Chinese
have the most complex start of all the civs. Poisn told mehe thinks
china is the strongest civ if they have the right start.

They
start with no food so they usually need to gather even beforethey build
the TC. It is very good to mill either shore fish or deerswith 2 or 3
villagers right from the beginning (starting positions isusually a good
way to decide). They can also start the same way as inLand Nomad if we
are lucky enough to have close villagers and good food(quite rare
though).

Chinese generally have more villagers and less fish
boats thanother civ, which I particularly fancy a lot since villagers
are waymore versatile.

With Nomad out of the way you are now ready to move onto Step 5, everyone's favourite
Step 5 - Land Nomad


General Map Notations

First thing to do is to define how the map is made. Land Nomad(fixed), the official wcl version is like this:

-
There are defined bases for each player with the standard
aocdistribution (one side for the allies one for the enemies). Each
ofwhich has straggler trees, a pack of 7 or 8 deers (between 11 and
16squares away), a pack of 4 sheeps (9/11), a pack of 3 pigs (13/30),
4packs of 3 sheeps (10/50), a lonely pig (14/1 and certain amounts of gold and stone.

- Villagers start at a minimum distance of 8 and a max of 70 from their defined base so they can be nearly everywhere.

- There are other food sources (berries) as well as gold, stone and 5 relics with a random distribution on the map.

The Start

With
this in mind it is time to begin. The standard is to send thevills to
an intermediate point (central point to all) and it isimportant to
flare the area we are going so we can avoid sharing spotswith allies as
well as getting a general idea of what is "ally ground"and "enemy
ground". It is usually best to build the lumber camp in themeet point
of the villagers unless we were lucky enough to walk by agreat spot
(look for straggler trees / deers / pigs).

It is important that
every player has at least some sheep toexplore. Once again priority is
finding enough food to allow usnon-stop vill production. If you get the
feeling that is not going tohappen it is a good idea to explore with a
villager. It is not good tomake a very fast tc knowing it will be idle
soon. The food our alliescan send us is as good as any, it is important
to tell them ourcondition in case it is required to send or receive
sheep.

When scouting our goal is the same as in nomad: finding
theresources we are going to need for the strat we want to do.
Whenlooking for food remember to look for straggler trees / deers /
boarssince once you find one of them you are certain there are more
aroundthat general area. Once we are sure we have enough resources it
is agood idea to send a sheep looking for enemy bases.

About how fast to go up it depends on what's our goal as usual.We
usually aim for castle age: 23-25 pop to Feudal ---> 25-28 toCastle
[b]although it can be faster or slower too depending on how muchfood
we've found. Again using advice from previous articles and
comingarticles you can decide on strats and econ upgrades.

[b]Military Strategy

The
most usual civs in LN (3v3) when picked are Mayans, Persiansand
Chinese. Generally on LN TC's cover the wood so the conventionalFlush
is far less effective than in the other maps. Certain kinds ofDrush or
Archer Flush may work if enemy has weak mines or gatheringpoints such
as far deers, gold etc. But usually the most effective rushis the Trush
(tower rush), the reason is quite simple: it's the onethat can most
efficiently nullify the tc cover. When there is a Feudalrush of any
kind in a game allies role is fundamental. Usually all thebattle
focuses over the players engaged in the feudal war because theyare the
most vulnerable targets. Allies have the task of defendingtheir ally
and finish the enemy if possible.

When the players are not far
enough to allow feudal attacks mostcommon is either all the players go
to castle or one of them sling.When all the players go to the castle
age mayans have an important rolebecause they have no "mobile" units.
This can lead to 3 differentsituations:

1)mayans have a close enemy: in this case the most effective is Mayan go Xbows.

2)mayans have no close enemy leading to 2 situations:

-a)they go plum archers to attack together with their allies.
-b)boom ---> imperial ---> eagle warrior rush.

When
Mayans go Xbows ally Knights have an important role as meatshield
protecting the Xbows (main attack unit) from enemy Knights, etc.It is
important the Xbows keep active as well as good communication
andcoordination between allies.

The Sling


The
sling is a very common ln strat. Usually China gets resourcesfrom
either Mayans or Persians. It is important that the playertribbing is
in a favourable position: hidden/walled/well protected.When slinging
its most efficient sending wood and food, gold issomething the slung
player can collect easily by himself (unless weirdmap conditions). You
usually see long slings (loads of resources),which is something that
annoys me a lot. I have the theory that thebiggest amount of resources
a player can tribute without auto erasinghimself from the game are
600units in land maps and around 800-900unitsin maps with good fish.
Hypothetically a sling of 600 food (bloodlines+ 2 armor upgrades) or
300/300 to each ally (bloodlines + one armor)and the addition of a 3rd
ally playing is a godly strategy. Not likelywe will see it anyway.

When
defending sling teamwork is crucial. Monks and camel areusually the
best option. It is very important when fighting a slungplayer to
understand that a 1:1 killed / lost unit ratio is no longeracceptable.
(Theoretically over 1,5:1 should be good) and thereforeit's important
to pick fights carefully. Notice slung players usuallyhave a few
upgrades so they are stronger.

Some important data:

- Market tribute taxes are 30% raw ---> 20% with Coinage (Feudal upgrade).

-
Tributing team usually has 800 additional resources in game(slinger's
castle upgrade resources become military units resources forthe slung
player: 1000 - 20% = 800)

- When the players reaches Castle Age
the slinger is still Feudaland therefore have 7 additional villagers
(35/28 =25% additionaleconomy for him, counting the market taxes it
becomes a 5% additionalmilitary resource available for the slinging
team and it decreases asthe game goes on: when the rest of the players
have 42 villagers (notcounting additional tcs) slinger has 49 that is a
17% more -20% ofmarket taxes = -3% of resources. Having this in mind
you can deduce:

a) Time benefits the defender: the longer the battle the weaker sling team econ becomes.

b) Slinging team must translate its initial military advantage into damage to the enemy as soon as possible.

Slinging
team score increases "virtually" the slung player scoreincreases 100
points each 500units received and the team scoreincreases 100points
each 1500units tributed.