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Now what I did is separate certain skills by levels, try to level up each skill evenly. There's no point in trying to win games with level 3 micro when you cannot even scout properly.Imagine that AoT is one big book. Every game you play is a page of that book. As soon as you go quick setup and hit “Start game” and it goes “Searching…” it is picking a random page of that big book in front of you. Thor vs Isis (1720 rate) on Anatolia? Page 432. Thor vs Isis (1730 rate) on Anatolia? Page 433. Thor vs Loki on Marsh (1680 rate)? Page 1423. Now as soon as the game has started, or in our case the book has opened at page X, we start to “play” the game, or in our case we start to read the page. The better you are at AoT, (the better you are at reading,) the higher your chances are of winning (the higher your chances are at reading the page correctly). Easy, right?
Now what DaP has done is basically trying to remember the whole book. DaP can barely read. The book opens at page 251. DaP doesn’t know the exact contents of page 251. So DaP refers to page 248, which he does know, and page 253, which he knows a little. Will he win? Probably. The first pages of the book he knows by heart, because the lower the number of the page (the lower the rate, the easier the map) the better he has it memorized. Now, DaP’s book isn’t all that big, because he only plays 1 god. That’s less to memorize. Now when you force him to play Isis he will have to read. DaP is a very bad reader. DaP will lose to 1580 with Isis. DaP will win vs 1400s with Isis, because 1400s can’t read at all, or memorize pages of the book.
The first thing you have to do is learn how to READ. Eventually, you will automatically remember basic things of the page. Eventually, however, you will do all the reading and skip the parts that you have already memorized.
I am Thor vs Kronos(1830) on Oasis, I must up fast because I remember from page X that Kronos can krush and I remember from page Y that Oasis is usually low on food. I do, however, go double Ulf in the beginning because I remember from page Z that there are a lot of goats. ß- I MEMORIZE
It is especially good to go fast double Ulf because goats can be gathered from at the TC, which is safe, and as the Kronos will probably be rushing I will have a safe food supply. I could maybe harass some oracles on the way too. ß- I READ”
Level 1 Scout: See that black part of the minimap? Get rid of it! All of it! Scout level 1 means you scout the entire map with or without shift-clicking.
Level 2 Scout: The player scouts the map but actively searches for town centers and goldmines and adjusts his playstyle accordingly. This is also where “reading skills” come in. A backward TC with a goldmine right next to it? You have no 3rd tc? Steal your opponents forward tc! A good example is Armycore vs Hellsravage. Armycore had very forward gold with no trees close to it, and because of the matchup he didn’t feel the need to protect it with buildings. Hells could’ve rushed, undermined the tower and goldstarved him before AC was classical. But he didn’t because normally Zeus is the aggressor and Loki has to defend. I’m not saying that he would’ve won that game but I’m sure he would’ve had a better chance than in the game posted. (he lost at 9:19).
Level 3 Scout: The player not only scouts the entire map and spots opportunities and weaknesses. He also actively scouts for what his opponent is doing. In starcraft the maps are always the same so there’s no black area on the map. However they still scout, they scout to see what unit composition his opponent is going for and adjust accordingly. In aot most of the time we already know what units the opponent is going to make aka we remembered the pages. Most people do this in some extend, they leave their idle scout next to a tc so they know when it’s build or they build a house next to a goldmine so they know where they get gold from. But nobody really pays attention to the enemies base until it's too late. For example a Poseidon players' hippikon gets owned by spearmen, which makes them useless until he has finished his archery ranges and started making toxotos.
Level 1 Play according to the map: The player make fishing boats on maps with fish and tries to goldstarve on maps such as tundra and savannah. Also they do not attempt to rush on alfheim or watering hole because, due their defensive nature, they are bad maps for rushing. Instead they try to contain their opponent, 2 tc boom, or something similar. This is all basic wisdom (pages) all players should know.
Level 2 Do NOT play according to the map: Is rather similar to scouting level 2. Just because watering hole usually is a defensive oriented map doesn’t mean you can never rush. If the rivers don’t close him in to a point where all he has to do is make one or two walls and he’s save and he has forward gold you can actually rush him (make sure he doesn’t have or get access to backward gold though). This is a good example of reading, rather than remembering on page 113 that watering hole is defensive you read the map and see it’s actually not. While these cases might be rare, they usually are easy wins. Nobody expects to get rushed on watering hole or alfheim. It’s the same the other way around, you can do a 2tc boom on savannah if you can secure a 2nd goldmine with it.
Level 1 Abuse your gods strengths: Easy, do not play Set if you want to Scarab Rush. Do not play Poseidon if you want to centaur strangle. Do not play Kronos if you want to boom. Because in the end you’ll end up playing a weaker version of another god (Ra, Zeus, Gaia/Oranos respectively) instead, take what makes your god strong and abuse it. When a newb/noob asks for advice for Loki I tell him to Hersir Raid. It’s a strong strategy that works vs many gods on most maps. It’s not hard to do, especially managing your economy.
Level 2 Do NOT always abuse your gods strengths: While it may seem rather conflicting with what I said earlier, it’s not. Using earlier example of the aspirant Loki player, which I’ll now refer to as Bob, I’ll try to explain. Bob learns to hersir raid and gets better doing it in rated games. He will win at first increasing his rate. Then he meets an Isis player that knows how to read or memorized a page about hersir raiding. He makes axemen to counter Bob’s hersir. Bob cannot raid without losing many hersir and when he reaches heroic his hersir get destroyed by axemen despite being boosted by flaming weapons and his battle boars perished quickly at the hands of the Isis player’s priests which he had prepared.
Now if Bob had scouted properly he would’ve seen the barracks and if he had read he would’ve concluded that going 100% hersir is not the best approach. Instead he could’ve made hersir and raiding cavalry. Or went to mythic before attacking with Flaming Weapons, Mr. Nidhogg eats axemen for breakfast and does an excellent job at baiting priests while they break formation to try to hit the dragon.
Level 1 Micro: Being better than the AI. Basically all you have to do is make sure you aren’t “outmicro’d “ by your opponent. Make sure your units don’t all follow one enemy unit across the map and make sure you don’t have units idle across the map. (brotip: hold shift while clicking on the idle military banner. It will select all idle military on the map)
Level 2 Micro: Dealing with the biggest threads: myth units. Always have your heroes fire at his myth units or they will tear your army to shreds. Also make sure your myth units aren’t fighting with heroes as they won’t do any real damage.
Level 3 Micro: Now things are getting tough, this is the highest doable level for most players. Many players that try to do a higher level of micro will fail somewhere else economy/upgrades/whatever.
Have your units attack units they counter, archers on infantry, cavalry vs archers etc. etc. While this may seem obvious I still see people fight kapeltest with their hippikons way to often.
Pull back boats or units that are fired upon luring the enemy units to follow it. Giving your units the time to deal free damage while you take none. This is particularly effective in naval wars. Or when trying to kill an elephant or rhino with villagers.
Always kill enemy unit with low HP you will lower their damage output with extremely little effort.
Higher level micro: Always have your myth unit use its special on the right opponent. It’s such a shame to have your mummy use its special on a hoplite when there’s a colossus around. Other than that there aren’t exact guidelines beyond this point. Instead there are dozens of little tricks you can do to change the outcome for example:
Have your caladria fly over your enemies archers. They will try to hit it but they won’t thanks to its speed. The same can be done with any cavalry unit, only you run back and forth in front of the archers instead of above. The same can be done with Triremes, Biremes and Kebenits (longboats as well when upgraded with Artic Gale), have the ship fired upon move back and forth in front of the dock while the others kill it.
When playing Egyptians and you have to defend your migdol against an overwhelming army keep popping your army in and out of the migdol. like this
Also there is gambling or 'mind-reading'.Basically what you do is you look at your position and think, if I were my opponent which unit would I attack? Then you simply retreat that unit. Now, you have to be ninja quick about it because if you guess wrong you need that unit to be attacking instantly and retreating the actual unit which is being attacked.
There are many more tricks you can do but make sure you aren't failing at other skills, doing some awesome centaur micro means nothing if you are losing your entire army elsewhere.
my 2 cents,
Mirez
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some rather helpful advice just what i needed haha. Rather than the same shit told over and over.