Age of Empires Online: Defense

I think too often I will play a game only for a person to build walls around their base and build towers and fortresses around each corner.  This person feels that they are keeping the enemy out of their base, in reality they are setting limits to where they will go… thus giving the opponent control of the entire map with no cost involved.

It happens time and time again, I will be moving my units along and suddenly my opponent will be erected a lot of fortresses.  By the time he has them all up… I have advanced to Age IV and am knocking them all down with Stone Throwers.

In order to invest in early stationary defense you have to very quickly Age up to Age 3.  If you are doing this as fast as possible it means you will not have as many harvesters as your opponent.  Consider it is 20 seconds for each harvester.  Age 2 costs 30 seconds, Age 3 costs 60 seconds, and Age 4 costs 90 seconds.  By aging up you will have 9 less harvesters plus whatever harvesters you have cut to try and get that ultra fast age up.

I’m not saying that aging up is bad, I’m simply stating that it is not a good defensive tactic.

Instead think of fortresses and towers as zoning.  Wherever you build your fortress is an area the enemy ought to avoid.

In this regard early defense means having an army.  If you spot your opponent building up an army while you are trying to Age up, shift all your workers to wood production until you have 200 wood, build a barracks and start making units as soon as possible.

Even if you are outnumbered it will not matter.  Your small group of units will be able to protect your harvesters and your Town Hall will be doing a lot of early damage.

I think one of the odd thing s about Age of Empires Online is that defense is only really available later in the game, and by later in the game they get worse.  By the end of the game I’d suggest building defenses to slow down the enemy from taking out important structures.

In truth by the time you build a fortress you might want to even build units from the fortress.

Having said that defensive structures are not terrible, they’re just limited.

A lot of people think about walling themselves off and building defensive structures.  In reality a person should be thinking completely opposite of that tactic.

You should not think “how can I wall myself off” you should think “how should I wall my enemy off.”

The goal is not to prevent an enemy from attacking your base, the goal ought to be to use barriers to maintain control of sections of the map.  On certain maps it can be seen as advantageous to actually build a wall around your opponent and strategically place towers in certain places, that is of course if your opponent lets you get away with this clever proxy play.

In the end it should be emphasized that Age of Empires Online is not a game that can really be played defensively, it is one in which you are expected to bring the fight to the enemy.

Celtic Age of Empires Online Strategy: Fast Age 2

You will start off with 200 wood.  As shown in the Spearman rush tactic this is enough wood to get you a very fast barracks and start pumping out a lot of units.

It was also noted that with the spearman rush if your opponent also had a very fast barracks up the logical step was to Age up.

Note that this strategy is more of a mindset than a tactic.  With spearman you are chain making spearman in order to gain a position and/or economic advantage.  With this tactic you will be behind economically but will gain access to more tech, more upgrades, and most importantly, more units.

What do I mean?

In going from Age 1 to Age 2 you will not be producing any villagers.  This means that using this tactic you will be behind about 5 villagers and your army count will be about 6 spearman smaller.  So in doing this you are risking having about 11 less supply than your enemy.

What is the advantage?  You will be able to get the barracks upgrade to increase productivity of your barracks based units.

This means that your army count will catch up rather quickly.  It also means that you will have stronger overall units.

Scouting is important here.

Initially you should build three homes and have all of your villagers on bush gathering.  Once you have the 300 food you need for Age 2 make sure the remainder of your villagers are building the remainder of the three homes.

Once the three homes are built you can split up all of these villagers in terms of Wood production, Food production and Gold production.  Gold and wood are going to be very important resources here.

If you scout that your opponent is building a barracks I would suggest moving all of your workers to wood production and try to get up a barracks of your own.  You will only need to produce a hand full of spearman for the only purpose of protecting some of your workers.

The idea is simple, minimize defenses at all costs and maximize food production to get to Age 2.

Once you hit Age 2 you have tones of options.  If your opponent is also going for Age 2 and not attacking you can get unit and gathering upgrades to get even further ahead.

If your opponent is poking around with Age 1 units in large numbers it would be wise to get Long Swordsman to counter them.  After you have 8-10 of these you can get the barracks unit upgrade to make them more effective.

The goal from here is to catch back up using better units and having more productivity.

If your opponent does not Age up his units will always be weaker.

If your opponent does Age up he will fall behind on Villager production as well.

It is important to note that because you have been sitting in your base only using your scout to move around and check the map that your opponent has been given free roam on the map and may have expanded storehouses all over the place.

Make sure your scout is constantly active while you are not doing anything regarding your economy.  When you get enough Age 2 units you can move and shut down any and all storehouses across the maps.

From here the goal is to contain your opponent to this one part of the map.  If the map has an ocean make sure to build a port and take control of the seas as well.  Without access to a lot of stone and wood they will not be able to keep up with upgrades and production.

Celtic Age of Empires Online Strategy: The Spearman Rush

Slowly I’ll be working on basic strategy guides for Age of Empires Online.  This will be the first one.  Because of this it will start off with precursor basic RTS knowledge.

Basic: How to Play

A standard for any RTS build order is to constantly be building Villagers.  The more villagers you have, the more resources you have.  The more resources you have, the more units you can make.

The game has four basic resource types: Food, Coin, Wood and Stone.

Food: Although you need this the most for units it is the least valuable of the resources because of how easily accessible it is.  In early game food is very important, in later game it is stockpiled in surpluses

Coin: This resource is used for purchasing other resources.  This makes it the most important resource in the game.  On top of that coin is used to purchase more powerful units making it something that a person will slowly want to increase in, in supply.

Wood: This is your buildings resource.  It is also used to make primarily ranged units.  Having a good supply of wood is important as you need it to build Homes to expand your total population.  Early early game wood may not seem that valuable but by late in the game you’ll want bushels of it.  Because it also builds unit producing structures it is important to have a lot of wood.

Stone: Probably the least valuable of the resources this is your defensive structures and upgrades resource.  The significance of this resource really does not pay off until much later in the game.  For this reason people often ignore it until mid-game.

Mastering the collection of these resources is essential to playing this game well.  If your opponent gets an upgrade on you it means he’ll have a massive advantage in the upcoming battle.  If you do not have enough wood you will not be able to spend resources on units.  If you have  not enough food you will not be able to build villagers… who get you more resources.

Understanding this balance is important and it becomes important to look at your resources and see what you have and what you need.  This means understanding unit costs in relation to unit type.

You should have buildings in control groups.  I use 3, 4, 5, and 6 as building control groups.  6 is my town halls.  5 is my barracks.  4 is my archery range. 3 is my siege factories.  Using these hotkeys you can quickly switch between buildings and maximize unit production.

I leave groups 1 and 2 for units.  To group units select them and hit Ctrl+#.

Storehouses are used to reduce travel time of villagers.  Storehouses also give critical gathering based upgrades.

If your strategy is designed to be long term getting any and all upgrades earlier is more advantageous.  In games which you intend to end it quickly, ignoring upgrades to get extra units will pay out.

It is important to remember that while playing this game your fingers should always be useful.  If at any point you are idle you should think “what else can I do.”  There is always something to do with your fingers.

The Tactic

You will start every single match up with 200 wood.  This is enough for a barracks.

Making this early barracks will allow you to get a unit head start.

Make sure you are constantly making villagers.  If you are not any gains you make in this strategy will be lost.  All new villagers should initially be gathering food.  One villager can gather wood to make more homes.

The starting supply should last quite a while so building homes is not high priority.  However gathering a lot of food will be necessary for building more villagers and building spearmen.

I would move out with your first five spearmen.

Your scout should have successfully located the enemy’s base.  If you keep your scout active (but not attacking) you will be able to see any movements on the map.

If the enemy has a barracks of their own and it is up as early as yours stop producing more spearmen and proceed to Age up.  In this instance playing defensively and getting to the next Age will give you a better advantage than attacking.

If the enemy has no barracks up proceed with an attack.

Try to hit any outlaying buildings or any villagers outside of Town Hall range.  Getting a storehouse is big.  Destroying a storehouse will severely reduce his productivity.

If there is nothing to attack make sure to contain.  This means keeping your army at one area and your scout at the other, can’t let the enemy get away with any sneaky activity.

This will give you an opportunity to build storehouses all over the map and clean up the quick and easy supplies of berries all over the map.

You should constantly be building spearmen while also building villagers.  Eventually you’ll have enough resources to age up, which will give your spearman more health and damage.

Doing this gives you position.  Thee enemy will be forced to expand at some point and when they do this you can simply destroy their storehouses with your spearman army.

As well after Aging up consider getting the Spearman upgrade for 200 gold.  This will make spearmen into monsters against buildings.

At this point in the strategy you should have an idea of what the enemy has.