site wrote:I was curious what non civ-specific strategies can go into those massive battles aside from throwing two big armies at each other and seeing who wins. Granted, a lot of it is circumstancial, what tips do you guys have for beating the enemy?
Not many combat strats being shared in here.
1. Before treaty ends, designate 10 melee cav to specifically hunt and kill map control & forward base vils. attack move 4-6 melee cav feom your base walls towards your opponents base walls at varying distances so you get maximum coverage. do this seconds BEFORE treaty ends so that they cross HM approx when treaty ends so you dont break HM rules, while saving yourself some precious post Treaty APM. Micro the other 4-6 cav to flank opponents start army to kill fb vils. prioritize vils activly building stables/baracks, and further prioritze settler wagons over settlers.
2. Scout opponents finished base perimeter in its entirety. Look for weaknesses to exploit. A shocking amount of players are incapable/too lazy to make proper bases. This is a tactical decision, and a tactical error. They chose to be stupid and/or prioritzed spending vil seconds on economy rather then making a proper base. Exploit these bad decisions.
You don't need to fully commit to wall weaknesses. 1-10 melee nats, dopps, halbs, etc can cause some havoc and make your opponent spend more time defending then you spent attacking that exploit.
3. Set waypoint of your fb towncenter behind enemy lines, into opponents fb. Spam explorer revive so your explorer is constanty walking into enemy, and tanking dmg. Well worth the gold. As your APM improves, you can use explorer crackshot as often as it comes up vs opponents expensive units. Well worth the revive gold. Make sure you get the hero upgrades from capital.
4. When opponent has sloppy map control, shift click some seige units to take out specific enemy installations, aka native posts, trade posts, artillery foundries. Shift click units to get around obstacles and avoid areas of conflict. It takes you a couple seconds to execute this order, but it will take more then that for opponent to clean up the mess. Taking out an active artillery foundry or a native post can kill a fight and force opponent to fall back hard. Oo, spanish church is also a priority target that is usually in the forward base.
5. Consider how effective your horse artillery/rockets/heavy canon are being. If they are dying instantly to enemy culv, you shouldnt be making them. Pull them back when enemy culverins are out. They will still be effective vs enemy melee units that come in range, dont risk losing your artillery to enemy culv!1
6. keep stables up on your flanks. that way you are positioned to punish opponent for stupid positioning. dont spam cav, but every once and a while a few hussars to some exposed artillery is huge.
7. Learn hotkeys for unit formations. You ahould be staggering inf vs artillery you cant run from/as you run from them, and you should be putting a couple musk in melee mode vs cav formations to slow them, etc.
8. command group your forward base buildings so you can focus on the fight and queue more units without looking away. keep buildings to the same command group so you memorize them and they become second nature aka always put artillery foundry to #5, dont switch with stable etc.
9. forward base as you advance and as you fall back (reverse... base...?). it seems obvious but many people get focused on the fight and the micro and they spend all game fighting from the same FB without ever advancing. this means units spend more time traveling and you arent getting the best trades.
10. Your opponent is microing better then you? Your eventually gonna lose if you keep bashing into eachother? Mix something up to knock him off his stride. Bolster walls at your fb while developing a flank fb. commit one or two vils to develop an fb at your opponents walls. you sont even have to use the fbs, but making him deal with clearing them out will dramatically help your fight at the primary fb. plus, if opponent sucks at managing idle mili, he may not retask the troops clearing out the flank fbs promptly, giving you pop advantage for some time.
11. If you have a civ that uses an infinite native card shipment like cherokee or tupi, spend an abnormal amount of time making sure they stay alive and are positioned correctly. this is all about maintaining superior pop numbers, which will give you better trades. when opponent has nats out, task artillery to clear those batards out and lower his total pop on the field.
12. dont let any artillery piece be touching another artillery piece. youre just giving freebies to enemy culv. micro and seperate those bitches. likewise prioritze enemy grouped artillery.
VIRTZN and CM1993 are my friends and they never cheat. everyone should add them. kappa