From major to brigadier: How to improve at higher levels?

[fei123456]

I've been major+ years ago, but didn't improve much these years, though I played a lot and learned goodspeed's guild word by word
So what should I do to enhance myself now?
1. Youth/genius/talent? Sorry I'm old now
2. Should I pay most time playing only one civ, or try different civs? I've seen many players that used to be 1st lt/captain keep playing 1 civ for years, and reach colonel.
3. How to practise for a better micro?
4. To do the right thing at the right time is the key point to become an expert: but how? I've played for years but still make many wrong decisions now, being aggresive when I have weak military, or play defensively when I shouldn't. Is it related to personal character? psychology? talent?

[deleted_user]

I predict advice from less-than-major players

edit: case in point

[Challenger_Marco]

Yo ! I can answer that I guess , well I'm not major+ but my friends are , so when I asked them how did they improve,
They said:
Watched record and analysed it. I'm surprised my friend improved from 2nd to Lt colo on Nilla who's that?(lolgotcha13)
That's all they did it seems but the main thing is ur mind , simply playing unmotivated won't help u much ,u must be in a mood where u enjoy the game and ur mind must say I wanna learn more! , But for decision making idk , I think it depends on u , some may have poor decision making skills in real life too , I think that will also affect the gameplay ,
But idk how to improve decision making skills , maybe analyse the game and think about other ways how can it be done? Well these are just my views , visit this one viewtopic.php?f=29&t=9776 my views for learning is on the above link.
For better micro Time to Micro? Watch veni video where he talks about micro would be good,
To do what at correct time ask someone pr35+ to watch obs of ur gameplay and talk with him in Skype , discord etc.
U probably know to play all civs so now stick to one civ and master it , u will learn automatically others civs easily in more detail! We can take Irish he just plays France but he can learn other civs easily , same for Breeze.
Well to be pro u don't need to be necessarily a genius , hard work pays off seriously ! I think u know that too , Eg Thomas Edison.
Psychology Yeah it too has role in the game , if u have less hope , u would play nice in the game.
All the things that I said are enquired from players who are better than me so just wanna share it here that's all.
Well I think this helps but you know probably everything so its a awkward for me posting this because I am low ranked than you , but anyways you seem to be so very sad hope it helps somehow ! Lol

[giveuanxiety]

The main thing for AOE3 is knowledge, thats why almost all pr 35+ people can take years off, return and be near their old rank very quickly. In other rts games the rust from mechanics would take a lot longer to get rid of and would take other rts players much longer to reach their old shape. Also there is an insane amount of knowledge to obtain playing AOE3, and some of it has to be learned by being in that situation before in game. I believe someone said there are like 92 unique matchups, and every MU and game can change drastically on each map. Also cards in AOE3 adds another large knowledge area to obtain that other rts games do not.
Second point I would say is personal character and psychology, some people ask why did I select this vil, not the other and move it there, or press that certain hotkey, they ask WHY about every tiny thing, which allows them to dissect the game in a much deeper way than people who do not have that mindset. On the other side since aoe3 is less hot key demanding than most rts games there are pr 35+ ppl that dont use hotkeys to train units, which is insane for any experienced rts player. But they can get away with this behavior in aoe3, unlike in other rts games. These are the people that reach an impressive ranking but are held back from improving because they do on focus on the little things or make attempts to always try to be better.
I would suggest to master 1 civ then move to master another and so on. Also If you are healthy and in decent shape I dont believe age really affects you at all performance wise.

[BrookG]

It would be amazing if someone did an effort in making a guide for battles, position, decisions, e.g how to know the opponent is ageing and put pressure then. On every hard step, like yours.

[fei123456]

Also If you are healthy and in decent shape I dont believe age really affects you at all performance wise.

It does Even H2O doesn't have so much passion and creativity now. Imagine how wonderful the 2008 H2O is!

[deleted_user]

Just don't worry about playing aoe and instead shitpost in off topic forums

[giveuanxiety]

passion and creativity is a different argument than decreased performance due to age.

[Jaeger]

Do you analyze your own recs and apply the sciencific method to your gameplay? I think that's maybe the single most important thing you can do to improve.

[Mitoe]

Also If you are healthy and in decent shape I dont believe age really affects you at all performance wise.

It does Even H2O doesn't have so much passion and creativity now. Imagine how wonderful the 2008 H2O is!

I think the only reason age is an issue is because you end up having a lot less time to invest into the game. As people get older they start careers, develop relationships, form families etc. and these obligations make it hard to play a game like AoE3 anymore than once or twice a week sometimes.

This is the main reason H2O isn't playing much or as good as he used to be. He simply doesn't have the time to be good at the game.

[sebnan12]

what i would like to point out is if someone has a huge skill lvl already( im taking veni as an example) u can still perform in such a great way without alot of time to force out..beside the fact hes older than moste here! so i think theres also just a certain procent of mechanics etc need to be given...without it its going to be hard to ever play on top..

[BrookG]

Also If you are healthy and in decent shape I dont believe age really affects you at all performance wise.

It does Even H2O doesn't have so much passion and creativity now. Imagine how wonderful the 2008 H2O is!

I think the only reason age is an issue is because you end up having a lot less time to invest into the game. As people get older they start careers, develop relationships, form families etc. and these obligations make it hard to play a game like AoE3 anymore than once or twice a week sometimes.

This is the main reason H2O isn't playing much or as good as he used to be. He simply doesn't have the time to be good at the game.

Indeed it is time-consuming to invest on improving on the game. Usually and sadly, most of us want to improve, yes I include myself, by a sudden turn of a switch. I wonder how people that play many years managed to achieve high ranks it by themselves. Did you spend time that focussed to train?

[momuuu]

I think my personal aoe career has been somewhat unstandard but maybe could offer some insight in this question at hand. I don't play a lot of games, a few games per week on average, but did so pretty consistently from 2009 to 2013 and then from 2015 to now and always seemed to improve just a tiny bit based on the amount of games I played each week. Right now, I think I'm making the step up from major to somewhere above that. I don't really know where I'm at skillwise though, I'd guess somewhere between lt colonel and colonel. Especially during the last year I've often wondered why I was even winning games to begin with.

I've not yet reached a conclusion, but I'm pretty sure the defining skills are the decisionmaking and build orders. The latter can be learned relatively quickly by extracting knowledge from top players, which I've done a bit (for example have mitoe just blindly teach me build orders for certain match ups as tournament preparation) but I developed a bit of a feel for the build orders because I didn't really have much material or top players to learn from for most of my career so I ended up figuring out a lot of stuff myself. That skill can be developed to great extend, there are certain build orders other civs can do which I can respond to very well to the point where I know how the game is going to play out for the upcoming 10 minutes. When you know that you're so much more capable of actually making the right decisions. The decisionmaking was a secondary point and I think it mostly revolves around getting proper army compositions and taking the right fights. Micro is vastly overrated in the sense that picking the winning fights is much more important than dragboxing your skirms to victory. Of course to be a top player you have to have some underlying mechanics that are decent enough, macro should not be a struggle and a vague micro ability beyond attack move can sometimes be crucial.

The decision making abilities seem to be experience based. I have no idea how you'd acquire them, other than try to not play blindly and sometimes think more actively about your decisions. I've spend so much time, usually when I cant sleep or sth, trying to understand why we play the game exactly in the way we do, and I think over the years that has made me understand some parts of the game pretty well. Maybe that is the trick to achieve good decisionmaking. Build orders can be learned by doing active testing with friends or by asking good players what they tend to do. Mechanics can be improved by having a good hotkey setup, a good mouse and mousepad and by playing some aimbooster, and just by playing a lot.

[yurashic]

I don't really know where I'm at skillwise though, I'd guess somewhere between lt colonel and colonel.

Player: jerom_the_brave
Supremacy max PR: 27.14

[momuuu]

I don't really know where I'm at skillwise though, I'd guess somewhere between lt colonel and colonel.

Player: jerom_the_brave
Supremacy max PR: 27.14

http://aoe3.jpcommunity.com/rating2/pla ... lent=&ft=1

[yurashic]

I don't really know where I'm at skillwise though, I'd guess somewhere between lt colonel and colonel.

Player: jerom_the_brave
Supremacy max PR: 27.14

http://aoe3.jpcommunity.com/rating2/pla ... lent=&ft=1

1 game.

[gibson]

I don't really know where I'm at skillwise though, I'd guess somewhere between lt colonel and colonel.

Player: jerom_the_brave
Supremacy max PR: 27.14

http://aoe3.jpcommunity.com/rating2/pla ... lent=&ft=1

shots fired!

[deleted_user]

Show hidden quotes

I don't really know where I'm at skillwise though, I'd guess somewhere between lt colonel and colonel.

Player: jerom_the_brave
Supremacy max PR: 27.14

http://aoe3.jpcommunity.com/rating2/pla ... lent=&ft=1

shots fired!

POW! BANG!

[yoqpasa]

[EmoCelestia]

that was good x)

[momuuu]

Anyways I don't think it's unrealistic to claim I am somewhere between lt colonel and colonel atm because I actually do have a winrate greater than 50% against majors and haven't actually lost to people below colonel in a tournament setting since the group stage of winter. Regardless of that, I just wanted to share how I experience the step.

[deleted_user]

Anyways I don't think it's unrealistic to claim I am somewhere between lt colonel and colonel atm because I actually do have a winrate greater than 50% against majors and haven't actually lost to people below colonel in a tournament setting since the group stage of winter. Regardless of that, I just wanted to share how I experience the step.

Captain Jerom ladies and gentlemen!

[SoldieR]

Great question. I've often wondered the same. I honestly have been brig level for like 8 years and don't really know what I need to do to get to the next level.

Guys that have made that major to colonel jump are garja, diarouga, hazza. So maybe they know.

[gibson]

As someone who played a decent amount with hazza from the time he was captain to lt colonel he basically just played a lot with players better than him and learned from them. It's not rocket science. Practice with people better than you and try to improve.

[__Uhlan__]

Great question. I've often wondered the same. I honestly have been brig level for like 8 years and don't really know what I need to do to get to the next level.

Guys that have made that major to colonel jump are garja, diarouga, hazza. So maybe they know.

Hasn't garja been good for years?