Different Types of Strategies

There are basically 4 Different ways you can beat the AI (1v1) (For those familiar with AoE, this is not a surprise)

Rushing - Early Attack

Booming - Saving up troops, strong defenses, one MASSIVE attack

Turtling - Very Strong Defense, and turns to Boomer when you waste all of your opponents troops in their attack.

Pushing - Attacking right after your upgrade and before your enemy upgrades.

Alternative Ways may be:

Tower Rush - Use Outposts to block off your opponent's mines/resources

Ambush - Hit + Run, then Kill with hidden soldiers

4 different types of strategies

Timing Push

A timing push is a push at a timing that is going to give you the highest probability of winning a battle. For example, when your enemy expands, he will invest resources into a structure and not troops, if you attack at this timing you have an army advantage. Another example, you just finished an upgrade at the armory, your enemy might get this upgrade in a few minutes. If you do nothing, the fact that you got the upgrade earlier won’t change anything, but if you attack right after your upgrade, there is a probability that your opponent doesn't have the upgrade yet.

In conclusion, a push at a perfect timing is called a timing push.

Rushing

A rush is a fast push on phase 1. You sacrifice a bit of economy in order to get a larger army than your opponent early in the game.

• Good point: If successful you’ll win the game fast
• Bad point: If unsuccessful you’ll fall behind quickly
• Countered by: Turtling

Turtling

Turtling is a defensive strategy that rely on walls, towers and fortress to defend against your opponent pushes.

• Good point: Your city is protected by walls and tower, so when your “turtle” is over, you can focus on economy or harassing in mid game.
• Bad point: You’ll invest a lot in defensive structures, If your opponent doesn’t attack, you’ll invest for nothing.
• Countered by: Booming

Booming

To boom is to focus on the early stage of the game into economy. That usually means that you’ll have a lot of women and economic upgrades sooner than your opponent.

• Good point: You’ll have an amazing economy on mid game
• Bad point: If you get pressured early in the game, will be difficult to counter
• Countered by: Rushing

Playstyle

Below are some simple explanations of how to implement different playstyles.

Aggressive/active

To utilize an aggressive strategy, cavalry units should be used to harass the economy of the targeted opponent. This means sending around 5 cavalry units to attack poorly defended wood lines, or even farms if possible. This is something that is effective in the very early game, and becomes less effective as the game reaches it's later phases.

Aggressive/passive

An aggressive/passive strategy is utilized by denying the opponent access to resources by controlling as much of the map as possible, this is something that is more applicable in the midgame.

Team play

A 2v2 is not two 1v1, it is a team battle and you need to think and act as a team in order to win against the best players. E.g. I know that my ally is going to do a timing push at 12 or 13min, I need to be ready to do something too at that timing.

Always work as a team and your win rate will increase.

How to react against a double rush?

Imagine you are playing a 2v2, you are still on phase 1 and at 8min you have two enemies in your city, what do you do?

Firstly you need to evaluate the forces of your enemies; is it going to be enough to destroy your Town Center? If yes, you need to call for help, in a 2v2, the one under attack should be the one making the calls (because he is the one how knows if he can defend or not). While your ally is coming to help you, delay your attackers by moving units around the map, in and out of buildings, etc.

If you know that you can defend your Town Center (Even if you lose your army): Tell your ally to counter attack directly in the enemy base! On phase 1, if you lose your Town Center, you cannot rebuilt it therefore, the most important thing is to know whether or not your Town Center will go down.

Following information will help you better with strategies

Food

There are 4 sources of food (excluding treasures):

• Fruit: most of the maps start with a nearby source of fruit. Women have a huge bonus reaping them.
• Grain: grain are produced by building a field. Women have a huge bonus reaping them. Fields can produce infinite food, so it's the more sustainable solution.
• Meat: the sources of meat are animals, either the one available at map start (and spawning from time to time), or you can bread them. Please note that cavalry has a huge bonus hunting animal.
• Fish: for naval maps, after building a dock and training/building a fishboat, you may use fish as a food source. Caution: Like meat, the source is finite, and you have to switch to another area after exhausting one.

Wood

Wood is the basic resource. Most of the buildings cost wood (at least in the first stage of the game).

Stone

Structures available in the second age often cost stone.

Metal

A lot of the best units (or the big structures like Fortress or Town Center) cost metal (the more you progress in the game, the more it's possible you need metal). Metal is used for most of the upgrades (economic upgrades, weapon upgrades) too.

Soldiers have a bonus when gathering wood, stone and metal (comparing to women).

Population

The basic rule for developing your civilization is "you should continually produce people", but for that you need to build housing for them, so don't forget to anticipate. Depending on your civilization, houses will give you an extra 5 or 10 population.

Basic Military

Type of units

There are several types of units:

• Female Citizens, that cannot fight.
• Regarding fighting units, you have infantry & cavalry, with both ranged units and melee units : Infantry Spearman, Swordsman, Slingers, Archer, Skirmisher; Cavalry Spearman Swordsman, Archers, Skirmisher; Chariots; Siege; Elephants; Support (healing units from temple); Dog (only for Bleagras).

Cost of units

A detailed comparison of the units is available in Troops & Units section

Buildings

A detailed comparison of the buildings:

Costs: Food = F, Wood = W, Metal = M, Stone = S, Build Time = T (seconds).

Civilizations

To identify your civilization on a random game, you can use the "diplomacy" button at the top of the UI.

A (really general) overview can be summed up as:

• Strong civilization phase 1 (early) --> Civilizations that have archers or slingers (Britons, Athenes, Ptolemies, etc)
• Strong civ phase 2 (mid) --> Civilization that have access to sword cavalry / archer cavalry / chariot (Celts / Athenes / Mauryan / Persians etc)
• Strong civ phase 3 (late) --> Strong fortress, good siege, good champions --> Romans

Additional tips for In-game strategy

Many things can be considered when starting a game (they can influence your build order/strategy):

• what are the characteristics of the map
• what are the characteristics of the civilization

The map

• What is the size of the map?
• Is it naval or not?
• How many resources do you have? (this will help you devise your build order)
  1. Are there many forests?
  2. Do you have access to many stone mines or not?
  3. Do you have access to many metal mines or not?
• From where can the enemy attack you?

Advanced Economy

Tips for hunting

When hunting an animal that will try to escape, first click behind the animal and use shift click to attack him, in that way the animal will escape in your Town Center's direction. When hunting an animal that will attack you (like elephant), just attack, he will attack back in your Town Center's direction.

When do you transition to farms

Multiple deposit

Deposits can store wood, metal and stone, so you can use the same deposit for several resources. But you should try to build one close to each group of resources, so your workers don't lose time trying to reach the deposit.

Harassing

When harassing, try to make groups of units (using Ctrl + 1, 2, 3) or barracks (For example CTRL 4). If you do that and practice, you'll be able to harass and manage your city (economy mainly) at the same time.