Community Forums > Voobly General > Strategy Guides > MaJoR_Kd's Huns War Guide

MaJoR_Kd's Huns War Guide

 KD2K


编辑21 April 2011 - 12:27 pm通过KD2K
Status: Updated on 21/04/2011 at 11:17 AM GMT

*JUST ADDED!* - Some great games against [ nV]_ToRcH:

Game 1 - MaJoR PoV: Anti-market (Win)
Game 2 - MaJoR PoV: Market (Win)
Game 3 - MaJoR PoV: Market (Win)
Game 4 - MaJoR PoV: Market (Lose)
Game 5 - MaJoR PoV: Market (Win)
Game 6 - MaJoR PoV: Market (Lose)
Game 7 - MaJoR PoV: Market (Lose)

Check these out - sorry, I can't upload to Voobly so I can't put them into a zip/gamepack. Might put them on FileFront or one of the many others in the future. For now, this will just have to do. Enjoy!


Hotkeys and YouTube demonstrations can be found here: http://www.voobly.com/forum/thread/45705

Hey guys,

I came to thinking that what with some of the demonstration videos I've been making, together with the release of my hotkeys that I use whilst playing on Voobly, I would set about making a guide to accompany that which I have uploaded onto YouTube, or to be used as a stand-alone article that you can refer to, should you wish to do so.

This guide has been edited quite a few times for clarity and consistency, so please bare with me; this guide may take a few days or a matter of weeks to fully complete.

Now, before I begin, I'd like to mention again that this guide will be solely focused around Huns and more specifically, Huns War. Why? Because Huns War, especially in a 1v1 setting, is a popular civilization/war of choice, especially at higher ratings. Due to the balance issues surround 1on1 DM, wars are most likely played. There are of course alternative and equally popular wars, such as Mayans war, Franks war, Goths war and even Celts and Pers war. However, for the purpose of this guide and to aid in supporting my demonstrations released onto YouTube, I'm making this ALL ABOUT HUNS!

So, what's important in Huns?

Well, in my demonstration video consisting of three parts, I broke huns down into a few fundementals; fundementals I would like to expand upon and talk about in a little further depth.

The table of contents is therefore as follows:

- The Initial Start
- General Strategies
(This section is still being reworked)
- Old skool/Fun strategies you might like to try
- Market or Not to Market and When?
- Waypointing and Rushing
- Unit Control
- Economy
- Late Game


The Initial Start

The initial start in a Huns War game should be a process executed almost the same way, time and time again. By process, I mean the first few actions that you make at the beginning of a game.

The first thing you want to remember is "Scout Control" - this is EXTREMELY important at the initial outset of a game, and has more influence than a lot give credit for. A scout can harass, kill villagers very early on (before your opponent has a chance to repel/kill it), and kite units who wish to follow, leaving them potentially 1 or 2 (or more!) units down at the beginning of a game (if they do not take a moment to recall them onto the frontline).

So, as I say, the scout should be used first. So what's next? The next thing you need to do as a matter of urgency is to select your Town Center (TC). The quicker you can select the TC and queue villagers, the quicker you can set about building an adequate number of buildings and therefore output an adequate force to combat your opponent.

Thirdly, but not lastly, is the 3 villagers you begin with in Huns War. It is paramount that as soon as you have selected your TC and queued villagers, that you select those 3 villagers and set them to work.

But what kind of work? What should I build?

Well, it's not always easy to know exactly what is the "best" thing to do at the beginning of a Huns War game. As I have mentioned in my videos, knowing what is best depends on how experienced you are with your opponent (making judgements on what they're likely to do) and your own playstyle. If you find you're a better defender, turtling your base and repelling the enemy force, then by all means, stick to that. If, however, you are better on the offensive, crippling your opponent before he has a chance to even defend himself, then again, stick to what you do best. Adapting to your opponent is something that takes time to develop and more often than not, when you see a player who is not adapting, it's usually a confidence thing. E.g., "I'll stick to what I know because I usually win playing this way and I think I'll lose if I change tact."

Either way, there are some generic builds you can start off with. They are as follows:

3 Stables
2 Stables, 1 Market
1 Stable, 1 Market (Placing either 2 villagers on the stable for faster paladin output or 2 villagers on Market for faster resource selling)
or;
1 Market (3 villagers tasked to build it. Risky due to being vunerable in a rush, but can have huge pay-offs on long maps)
3 Barracks (usually a specific strategy)
or;
1 Stable 2 Barracks (Again, usually quite specific to a strategy due to the trade off you make by having limited paladins at the early outset of the game, unless you chose to make more, and quickly!)


There ARE other variations, of course, but these are the most likely of all.

General Strategies

This section covers your general strategies played during a Huns War. Now, I want to make something ABSOLUTELY clear before I begin discussing strategy that WASN'T INCLUDED IN MY DEMONSTRATION VIDEOS.

Strategy.

What is it?

Well, all strategy is, is "how" you are going to achieve something. HOW do I accomplish X. Do I use plan A, B, C or D? Because that is, in effect, all a strategy is. It's a plan of action. But it isn't simply a thin, weak idea. It's an idea that needs a lot of thought and development.

It has been stated by Sun Tzu that a man wins first, then goes to battle. A defeated warrior goes into battle first, then seeks to win. Similarly, in anything that requires strategy, you need to plan out what you're going to do first, then, once decided, execute that in game, as you originally intended.

When we're talking about Age of Empires strategy, there are many things players chose to do which can clearly be described as tactics. For example, if your strategy is simply to defeat the opponents army head-to-head, you may decide to adopt the 'ram tactic'. The ram tactic is a simple idea developed by former top players of Huns, whereby you place your rams infront of your force (typically infront of their cavalry archers (CA)) so that you soak up some of, if not all of, their arrows. Now, whilst placing rams infront of your force won't allow you to single-handedly defeat the opposing force, it will help you to achieve your objective. When I did my degree, tactics were used interchangably with "activities" - in other words, you pick a central strategy and then from those central strategies, you develop activities.

You want to set your rams to "Stand Ground" and not "Aggressive" or "Defensive", as they will automatically move around when hit. It's something rams do, it's very annoying so make sure you do that whenever you're adopting this tactic.

To give a brief overview, see below:

You must login into Voobly to view image


To explain the above diagram when relating it to Age, you can simply see that the central strategy above, "Effective rushing", is "how" I may choose to win. The activies - or "tactics" - stemming away from the central strategy are those things I will do in-game to help me, but do not directly enable me to rush effectively on their own.

So, to sum up, strategy is HOW you achieve something, HOW you accomplish a goal and tactics are any action you make that directly influences and helps you to achieve it. I hope you got all that!

Now that my explanation about the differences between strategy and tactics are out of the way, I'd like to talk to you about a little more about the type of "classic strategies" you can adopt.

So what are the general strategies/classic strategies I'd recommended when playing Huns War?

They are as follows:

NOTE: A strategy has been removed from this list due to sharing too many similarities with another.

Strategy 1: Making a market and selling resources to create a superior army and quash your opponents initial force. The number of stables/barracks/archery ranges is up to you and you can toy with the number the more experienced you become.

Here's a demo game vs HoNdA to show this strategy in action http://www.voobly.com/match/view/4320208 - Here, I anticpate HoNdA will attempt to market early and place 2 villagers, with a 3rd coming from my TC, to complete it before him. I also notice that his is a long map, so I decide that market is definitely the right choice. Watch and see!

Best used when: You've noticed the map is long when sending your initial scout - fighting for market is less risky when the map is longer, due to the fact that it'll take your opponent longer to rush you, if he has noticed or knows you're going to market. Below is what I'd term a "long map":

You must login into Voobly to view image


It's also best to go for market in addition to many of the strategies stated below, simply because you want to test your opponent or force him into a 3-villager-market-start because he fears you'll try and beat him to it. By not doing so, your opponent may feel you'll never try to market and he can gain the same advantage with a 3 stable/barracks start and quickly create a market with 1 villager, ultimately reaping the rewards of two advantages: quick unit output AND a superior force.

Will work against you if: It's on a short map and the enemy attempts to rush you hardmode. Here's a screenshot of what I would deem a "short map":

You must login into Voobly to view image


It also doesn't pay to sacrifice going for market at the start if you think your opponent will likely get to it before you; if you fail to get it, you're no better off in terms of speed and unit output than he is. He'll then have the overall advantage, which will be difficult to come back from. It'll also work against you if you're likely to build A LOT of 1 type of unit. For example, if you adopted Strategy 5 and you sell your wood, stone AND food and then mass 150+ paladins or more, then you've not only exhausted your initial food stock with this expensive unit, but you've also trashed your reserves by selling them. In THAT particular instance, you may in fact choose to buy some more of that particular resource. Sometimes it can work against you due to the fact your opponent can sell that resource and get a better price for it, but sometimes it can work in your favour, especially if that player has seen you've sold the wood/stone but not food and sells food in a bid to at least gain some additional gold. If that happens, you can buy food at a cheaper price. If your opponent doesn't, you can still buy some anyway, just not as much.

Strategy 2: Starting with 3-5 stables, create paladins and rush offensively in an attempt to kill villagers and gain and early advantage. You should choose to follow up your stables with 3-6 barracks and 6-12 archery ranges. The idea is to attempt to overwhelm the enemy's force by slowing down the number of buildings they can create and therefore the number of units by attacking villagers with your initial paladins and following through with a combination of paladins/halbadiers/cavalry archers and hitting the enemy offensively with waves upon waves of units. You can also gain a lot of the no man's land between you and your opponent, meaning you can dominate the middle of the map with defensive structures/your forces.

Here's a demo game, again vs HoNdA, to show this in action http://www.voobly.com/match/view/4320225 - In this game, I see it's a short-map and select my strategy to rush and play offensive. Watch and see what happens!

Best used when: You want the early advantage, or the middle of the map quickly to build castles in tight formation to block and ultimately halt (that's your main objective), your opponents' force - the last thing you want is a superior army at your front door. This will help you in that it restricts the players mobility with his initial army, and may force him to make the decision of charging your structures and try to push you back, meaning that, as long as you can survive his initial attack within reason (i.e. not get beaten all the way back to your base), it's a good situation to be in. You've used your stone for defensive structures, and if he has marketed, sold his in exchange for gold (though not all marketers sell stone, keep that in mind). Bascially, if you play like this, you want to accept you'll likely lose some castles, but your opponent has to get past ALL of what you've put down first, including your army. Meanwhile, your army is safe to follow the waypoint just infront of your base, and gather there until ready to be used in groups of 20-40, depending on how quickly you want the force, and what kind of punch you wish to deliver. This kind of strategy works extremely well against market, and is one of the most commonly seen counters to Strategy 1.

Will work against you if: Your opponent is very good at defending, or focuses his initial strength (especially if he markets), toward flanking your base and attacking your villagers who are collecting resources (farms, gold mines, stone mines, lumber camps etc). Your strength is to capitalise on early pressure and force your opponent to attack your structures at the beginning. If you fail to achieve that when executing this strategy, your opponent may decide to defend his front heavily and mirror what you're doing with regard to structures to slow down your initial pressure, and then use his superior force to attack your flank where it's weaker and follow up his attacks with siege workshops/barracks/castles and so on. He may even invest in making the trebuchet to maximise damage to these weaker areas.

It'll also work against you if you decide to break from your defenses and fight a battle that isn't supported by castles, since you'll almost always need those castles to provide you with the extra damage to even the playing field. Also, this strategy relies on banking gold quickly from across the map to even the advantage your opponent gained (if he marketed), and if your opponent is wise to what you're more than likely going to do, and you fail in applying pressure quickly enough, he can simply use his (initial) superior force to obliterate your hold on the map.

Strategy 3: Starting with 3 barracks or 3 stables followed by 12-16 archery ranges, follow up with very fast castles built infront of and around your base, and sit fast with the bulk of your army made up of CA. From there, you can defend heavily, repelling enemy attacks with an immense volume of CA, and even use them as a very mobile raiding units in groups of 20-40 to run around the map and destroy your opponents early map control or economy.

Best used when: This strategy is perceived as riskier against opponents who create a large number of paladins, but can be highly successful with careful use of positioning and of the "Stand Ground" stance and moving them behind and between defensive structures such as your castles. If you don't have those available, you can back-up against trees. The "backing-up against trees tactic" works with any ranged cavalry unit in the game and it is highly effective when used defensively (due to the fact huns don't have any good siege weapons other than the ram) and also when you're raiding the enemy's economy. If the enemy attempts to repel your cavalry archers whilst you're raiding - using paladins or other melee units - and you can either see a chance to defeat the opposing force or simply have no other option than to fight, you can move as close to a bed of trees as possible and select the "Stand Ground" stance. You'll be surprised at how effective it can be, unless they're using CA, in which case you can keep them on aggressive/defensive, depending on the situation.

Due to the sheer number of CA, it is possible to succeed with this strategy and overcome difficulties faced such as the 'ram tactic' because enough CA can destroy rams relatively quickly without the assitance of too many paladins or halbadiers. The strategy still accompanies paladins and halbadiers, though, depending on what you'd like to build at the beginning of the game, but as I mentioned in the above paragraph, the strategy focuses around CA and defense. Executed well, you can keep a lot of gold in reserve and repel the initial force of your opponent. That said, this strategy is best used when your map is closed (instead of open) and favours more defensive play, where CA cannot easily be surrounded and quashed.

Will work against you if: As I mentioned previously, playing this type of strategy on an open map may work against you if your opponent manages to successfully surround your forces and quash you before you can dig in a successful foothold. If the opponent plays offensively, they can be quick to 'disarm' this type of strategy and gain the upper-hand, due to the fact that cavalry archers are highly susceptible to melee units. If you don't dig in the foothold fast enough against your opponent, errecting castles and camping behind them before they bring in their opposing force, you can lose before the game has already begun. Also, if defending isn't for you, I wouldn't recommend this strategy. It's quite fiddly and it requires a lot of concentration to execute perfectly. However, if you feel this is a strategy for you, and you'd like to develop it, by all means do so. Pino used to use this strategy with high levels of success, as well as being the instigator and popular user of the next strategy.

Strategy 4: Starting with 3 barracks, make a total of 6-8 barracks and a large number of halbadiers, followed by 6-12 archery ranges. The idea behind the strategy is to wear down the opponents paladins and, due to cheap CA and a large number of reserve gold, use it to create 40-80 paladins in a follow-up attack in an attempt to destroy and overwelm the opponents forces, or use the paladins to wreck their economy/gold mining/map control.

Best used when: This strategy relies heavily upon the halbadier unit at the beginning of the game. Starting with a large number of barracks first, your initial force will be heavily dominated by this unit, and can be committed to the battlefield in mass, or waves of 40 + CA, in an attempt to force your opponent to commit to battle and lose more units created with gold than you have. By playing in this way, you can save your gold slightly longer than your opponent, allowing you to amass paladins later on in an attempt to overwhelm their forces, or use the paladins to wreck their economy/gold mining/map control.

A favourable tactic along side this strategy is to camp before you're ready to unleash hell. This strategy is defensive toward the outset of the game, not offensive (bar rushing early halbs at your opponent to wear down his early forces); it's highly unlikely you'll outright crush your opponent if you adopt this, but given time, e.g. by the 10th minute+ when you're paladins are ready in grps of 40-80 and dominate the field, then you may choose to switch from defensive to offensive, simply because the moment you unleash them and your opponent sees that many paladins, oh yeah, he's running for the hills indeed.

See the diagram below for how your gold will likely flow against an opponent who uses his early on:

You must login into Voobly to view image


Will work against you if: This strategy actually has few weaknesses other than that it requires you to play defensively towards the beginning of the game, until your paladins are ready. If your opponent decides not to attack you offensively and mirrors your defensive play (but with market), he could potentially take more of the map from the outset. This could leave you with too many halbs/CA and max out your population. You may be required, therefore, to make the first move in order to reduce this and allow for your paladins.

Realistically, though, it all depends on you. I can't see many weaknesses to this strategy, other than that you turtle early and your success is dependent upon them being highly offensive. If they aren't, this could draw out treb war in the middle of the map, or turn into a fight over map control on your flanks. The longer your opponent has to mine gold and sit on his early advantage, the quicker your advantage will diminish. In these types of situations, whereby the opponent defends heavily, using your paladins to attack his economy/gold mining and map control may be the best choice.

This strategy is also heavily resource dependent in that you'll be using a lot of wood and food toward the beginning of the game to amass early halbs/ca/stables and make around 25+ buildings, including stables and seige workshops. If you decide to market a lot of it away and don't balance your economy, you could be in a world of hurt. That's why this strategy is often seen as a classic anti-market strategy, in that it allows you to successfully ward off your opponents attempts to destroy you offensively toward the outset of the game, but then turns the table when your paladins arrive. If you don't balance your economy initially, even without the use of market, you could end up exhausting one resource too quickly and run into trouble.

Strategy 5: Starting with 3 stables, make a total of 6-12 stables and a large number of paladins, followed by a few barracks/archery ranges should you feel they're necessary, though they are not usually required with this particular strategy. Using the paladins in large groups, attempt to overwelm the enemy's initial forces through the sheer strength of the unit. If successful, you can often win very quickly. Due to the enormous amount of food and gold required, however (especially if you market away food), this can often be seen as an risky strategy and can quickly become a win or die situation if you decide to use it.

Best used when: This strategy is excellent against almost any unit your opponent can muster (including the halbadier), simply because the paladin is one of the strongest and fastest melee units in the game (if used correctly). The trouble is, this strategy goes against one of the golden rules of Huns. A lot of good players argue that, if you can play well enough not to get rolled by your opponent, you can save your gold/gold units and play them as your 'Ace card' when you need them, or save this gold and use it slowly to play a stronger long-haul game overall, making up the majority of your army with cheaper units such as halbs/ca/skirms. By playing this way, you can also use your gold in an attempt to overwhelm the enemy if they're down on gold and finish the game quickly. So if this strategy goes against one of the golden rules of Huns, why adopt it?

Well, the strategy, as I mentioned in the above paragraph, utilizes one of the strongest melee/mobile units in the game. If used correctly, this strategy can crush your opponent before he has a chance to say Buck Rogers. But, due to the fact the strategy (as I will mention next in the "Will work against you if..." section) has so many limitations attached to it, it's crucial that you execute this strategy with next to near perfection, or use it when the map is favourable e.g. wide and open!

To help you in executing this strategy, you need to know how you can succeed with a mass paladin combo, and the truth is, it isn't easy. The strategy itself is very do or die, and if your opponent realises what you're doing (e.g. sees your building format during his initial scouting), then he may focus heavily upon churning out halbadiers, which can lead to a very messy situation where the initial 'sharp edge' of your blade goes blunt, if you allow your opponent to wear down your forces before you amass them. So, simply put, halbadier "rushing" is one of your greatest threats towards the outset of the game. So what can you do to avoid this, how can you make it run smoothly to crown a win?

Well, you need absolute protection over your paladins until they can amass to a sizable enough force to smash your opponent's army off the face of the map, meaning you need to distract your opponent or fend them off with early defensive structures before they have a chance to fight the first 40-80. The ideal number of paladins you'd like to group and mobilize (preferrably before they can amass adequate defenses) is between 60-100 and above, depending on whether or not you've decided to rush and what kind of a force they've managed to create (and in what combination). Heavy on paladins and CA and few on halbadiers puts the ball back in your court, but doesn't garantee a win. Usually you either know you've won or you've died using this type of strategy, because you either smash their face in, or you die miserably. Most of the time, with this kind of strategy, there's no real hope for a long-game, unless you're a master of diversion, simply because of the amount of food and gold you lose toward the initial outset of the game.

So, should I go for market to compensate for losses in other resources, then?

Well, it's up to you, but if you do, for god's sake DON'T sell food. I've tried and tested it and it failed, hard. One of the hilarious fortunes of this strategy is early pressure, meaning you can mine gold like a god for the first few precious minutes of the game. I've ended up with 3-4k gold and 0 food on a game before, simply because my army runs out of steam and I lack significant food output (since food takes longer to accumulate than gold) and my initial 'core buildings' are heavily dominated by stables and I am limited to paladins as a fast means of unit output, unless I make barracks and archery ranges right after (but it kind of weakens and undermines the point of the strategy all together). So, as I've mentioned when giving an overview of using market in strategy 1, if you want to BUY food (especially if your opponent sold a ton of it at the start), then go ahead. But before you raise the hammer of almighty ownage, remember first to be distant and work to distract your opponent or fend off his initial attempts to blunt your forces with early defensive structures. Raid, kite, or defend, whatever you choose to do to stop his initial army blunting yours until you're ready to let loose your accumulated force. By all means, create a lot of stables and make 5-10 paladins across all of them to speed up initial output. Buy food if you can, but don't buy a lot if your opponent didn't market due to the risk of losing too much gold at the outset, then set about mining gold like a beast. I garantee that if you execute this perfectly, it's a hell of a lot of fun :P.

Will work against you if: This strategy will work against you if:

- You allow your force to be worn down at the beginning of the game to waves of halbadiers or a combination of units.
- You don't accumulate your force, instead you rush in early and lose your strength. The opponent will eventually overwhelm/overcome your force and ultimately win the game.
- You sell food at the outset of the game in an attempt to raise gold. See "Best used when" section above for a brief overview of the limitations of selling too much food early on.

So, there's 5 classic strategies you can adopt that popular in huns war. They all have a purpose and they ALL work. There's plenty of variations to these, but to be honest, I just want to cover some of the "core" strategies, since expanding anymore on the topic of strategy can often be quite tricky!

Old skool/Fun strategies you might like to try

This section covers strategies that are either old skool or just fun to play (all stored and not forgotten in my memory bank!) that were used and played by the old greats of the zone.

The first one I'm going to talk about (and the last for now due to time constraints) is a huns strategy that was... should I say "invented"... by a once good friend of mine, MaLiCiOuS_K1LLa aka pG_Bravo. The reason I want to pay tribute to this particular player/strategy is that he was, by a mile, one of the greatest strategists I've ever known within the age community. Despite hating the civ, I once witnessed K1LLa playing huns vs an under-par player and losing, but having an excellent advantage toward the beginning of the game due to the execution of this strategy - I would like to point out that when I witnessed this game, I felt he lost due to attacking the incorrect flank and allowing the player to continue mining gold whilst he held the advantage. So anyway, enough about the player, onto the strategy!

This strategy is hilariously effective vs. players who are otherwise not expecting it, or aren't necessarily at the same particular skill level you are, at the civ. The initial start depends upon a single castle and is built toward the outset of the game. The idea is that this strategy is "anti-rush" made easy. You build the castle before the opponent can send an onslaught of paladins toward you, and then build stables and archery ranges (no barracks) around the proximity of the castle, thus allowing your villagers maximum protection from the castle as they build. See a screenshot below of the build layout:

You must login into Voobly to view image


So, is that it?

Well, no. The next bit is to utilize the castle as soon as its built. No, don't build the unique unit of Huns... instead, build around 4-5 trebuchets IMMEDIATELY and garrison them within the castle. When you have amassed a force of paladins and cavalry archers, control them as best you can (you can't afford to let your gold units die early on or you could lose the game at the outset) and release your trebuchets. The idea is this is an ANTI-RUSH, ANTI-CASTLE strategy, whereby you keep maximum range from your opponent's castles by deploying your trebuchets, thereby forcing the opponent to either retreat further back at the outset, or force them to attack you whilst you sit there with a massive amount of paladins and cavalry archers. The 4-5 trebuchets will inflict MASSIVE damage on the opponents castles, especially if they haven't managed to get a strong enough foothold, and can allow you to use your stone to build where they fell and counter their early defensive structures with your own (in exactly the same place, or slightly toward their base).

This, funnily enough (if executed properly), is not only fun but hilariously effectively and I wanted to include it in my guide to show the different ways players adapt to their opponent and act independently and creatively to add something new to the community.

Try it out for yourself!!

Market or Not to Market and When?

Completely and UTTERLY... up to you - though I would say to refer to the "General Strategies" section, specifically looking at "Strategy 1" for my answers regarding the use of market. Aside from what it says there, however, I would give you my honest opinion in saying that I feel the use of market (if you claim it first and sell the resources) is one of the most straightforward Huns War strategies you can use (and potentially execute very well without much trouble) due to the intial army you can create and sheer pressure you can exert on them. This can make winning their initial army fairly straightforward (against many, what I would call, 'intermediate' players) and allowing you to cover the map fairly easily due to the fact they've had to turtle and defend themselves against your strengthened army, which you'll more than likely - for the most part - be patrolling at them.

When to market? Well, it's totally up to you when you do it, based on your opponent. If he markets regularly against you, then market back and try to do it quicker, especially if you are struggling to counter it. Sometimes, when all else fails, strategy resolves itself in fighting fire with fire. It's quite entertaining when you win, playing their card back on them, but if you want to be respected, then of course, finding another way to blow them out of the water and executing it superbly will win you a lot of kudos amongst the community and will make your games more interesting and therefore more popular.

Waypointing and Rushing

I plan to cover this a little later on, but there is some demonstrations based on this in part 2 of my video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSyzIzzI7aE (43 seconds in).

Unit Control

Personally, I think unit control is fairly straightforward, especially if you play with a great deal of speed. However, if you don't, I can see where you may struggle. So, my general take on unit control is simply to practice numbering them 1-9 (yep, 1-9!) and regularly control units in this way. When battling with a huge army, number them. When rushing, number them, if you find it helpful, when raiding, definitely number them! Pretty much whenever you are controlling your units, capatilize on their control by numbering them in small or large groups. Trust me, this will massively improve your gameplay if you do.

Other than what I've said in the above paragraph though, I wouldn't say there is too much to worry about, especially if you're using hotkeys. Most of the time I just click on the formations I want in their little panel. I do use the A and D key for aggressive and defensive stances, though. If you're defending, then you want them to stand within a proximity and not get kited away. Sometimes you need units to stand on their own feet and think for themselves!

Economy

Economy is a juggling game, most of the time. You need to practice anticipation, and take careful note of your spending (especially in DM, where you're spending in mass!).

If you notice you're down to 5k in food and wood, then your alarm bells should be ringing to get on the economy front, if you havn't done so already. Most of the time, I won't eco until I have to. Sometimes I'll lay down the odd wood cutter or farm at the start, just to try and buffer my losses, or provide me with 1-2 extra units across my barracks/stables/archery ranges when I could REALLY use a final squeeze of units. Doing that also stops you running completely out of everything and sitting there taunting 24, thinking, "damn, why didn't I just make a lumber mill? Now I have 23 wood and nothing to replenish the resource quickly. I'll have to make these gold miners walk all the way over here and farm these trees if I am to hope to build anything that requires wood in the next few minutes!"

So, that's one mentality you can adopt. Anticipation, buffering with a few villagers before the clock starts ticking, then making sure you're DEFINITELY on food and wood when you drop to 5k or below, since trust me, you'll be burning those resources one way or another, or if you're playing in a team setting, your partner might be koreans (for example) and REALLY need your surplus wood resource; one of the resources you thought you wouldn't need!

So how many? Well, some players like pG_Lance used to really think carefully about the number of villagers for his economy and lay them out correctly across all 4 resources. That way, you're not having WAY too many villagers all over one resource and you're balancing it nicely. Also, you're not having like, 160 villagers and an army of 40. I've done that, used my hotkey for selecting my TC and then wizzing round each tc, making 1-2 villagers each time I do it, not waypointing them when they arrive, then using my idle villager key to select them, then send them to work...

...Bad idea. You need some sort of idea behind what you're doing, otherwise you end up with WAY TOO MUCH STUFF. So bascially, practice juggling resources and acquiring them BEFORE you need them or they hit rock bottom. It'll help a lot in games when you're playing for the long haul.

But where to farm? Cut wood? Mine gold & stone?

My advice? Everywhere. Put your finger in as many pies as you can and never keep all your eggs in one basket. Spread out your farms across 3-4 tcs, or in different patches. Put your wood cutters in different locations, or make sure you defend them well if they're clustered together. Never move your villagers to work too far from a TC unless you're confident you'll win, absolutely HAVE TO, or you have the opponent playing highly defensive and turtling (meaning low risk of being raided).

Some players play neat. Neat works. Neat's cool, actually, but again, that takes practice. So mainly I'd say to do what I do, hold shift and clickly clickly, because most of the time your window of opportunity to spend dilly dallying over your economy is limited since your most important priority is your MILITARY!

Late Game

I'll cover this later!:P
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 simba_


发布9 April 2011 - 3:08 pm
that is amazing... ty so much bro, take care and be in safe always:)))))
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 _N_I_L_S_


发布9 April 2011 - 8:33 pm
nice work of u.
freaky but nice u explain it to ppl.
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 KD2K


发布9 April 2011 - 8:43 pm
what ya mean, "freaky"? :P
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 protectURanal


发布10 April 2011 - 2:48 am
i love how you whoop my ass lol on the first game.. :P

- HoNdA
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 KD2K


编辑10 April 2011 - 9:38 am通过KD2K
Haha, you mean in the example of Strategy 1 or 2?

Personally, I like the "Strategy 2" game - that's the best one, simply because of how quickly the game is decided. Won't reveal too much for those waiting to watch and see!

Hope you don't mind me using recorded games against you for my guide. It's just to show different strats.
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 TheItalianKing


发布12 April 2011 - 11:20 pm
Thanks is many time i search for these , sure now im a better player!!!!
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 [Exalted]EthiCaL


发布13 April 2011 - 8:11 pm
Nice Try....
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 [ A ]HiTmAnX


发布14 April 2011 - 11:53 am
Its really fantastic, Thank You :)
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 Slenderblood


发布16 April 2011 - 7:13 pm
It is obvious that you have spent countless hours preparing this. I applaud you. Very nice work.
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 [IN_]FreakKing


发布17 April 2011 - 5:58 pm
thank you.
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 Good


发布9 August 2011 - 5:46 pm
please cover late game kd :) you noob
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 Molotov14


发布10 August 2011 - 1:49 am
You obviously very good nice strategy!
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 Good


发布10 August 2011 - 5:19 pm
You don't have to be very good at implementing good strategies to know, explain or write about good strategies.
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 Slenderblood


发布14 August 2011 - 7:20 pm
^^ Also I haven't seen Major in a long time :( I think he quit since people weren't recognizing the work he was doing. Last time I played with him was like 8-9 months ago.


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