How do you become OP at AOE3?

[Garja]

Ye was about to say that.

[flontier]

Just from my personal point of view of an average player : imo the best way to improve and well understand the game is to focus on some mus, mainly mirror, play a ton of basics mirrors like ger or fr mirror, thats really something who help me to improve a lot since a year.

I mean, for exemple play 100 or more german mirrors, you will lose the 1rst because you take tp too late, the next because your build sucks, the 20th because you haven't scout and be rekt by a rush, the 60th because your first batch is 4dopps and your opponent has 5, another because you have vills idle some sec so you age too late, then because your units comp was bad etc...
Finally, when you was focus on big things like your bo execution, at the end you are more and more carefull about small things who will really make the difference at high level and understand how scouting and adaptation are important, when push or not, whats your windows to attack, how many units he has atm and train your mechanics because you don't have made a good connexion in the dopps fight etc... and have this automatism in all other games.
Not sure about my english but i think we say "mindset" ? thats probably what make the biggest difference between players.

[Mitoe]

Well, people who blame the game don't even want to improve, that's different.
Apparently we've had a different experience because it's been the opposite for me most of the time, the people I've tried to coach would often think that they lost because of their micro while most of the time, and they don't understand it, it's because of bad macro and bad decisions.

Not long ago I would have agreed with you, for the most part. Nowadays whenever I watch weaker players play, it's more often than not mechanics that would have made the biggest difference.

Here's a short list of very common mechanical mistakes or inefficiencies that can have a big impact on the game:

- Losing vills to raids or rushes = Less units over time / Slower Fortress Time
- Losing units while raiding = Wasted Units
- Idle vills/mismacro = Less units at important timings /Slower Colonial/Fortress Time
- Not kiting backward or forward efficiently = Losing Extra Units / Not capitalizing on winning a fight as hard
- Losing the 2 falc fight = GG?
- Not splitting off snared units when retreating = Wasted Units
- Losing your explorer/nats/pets in age 1 = No scouting information, can't adapt to opponent, less treasures, no TP?
- Taking unnecessary damage from treasure guardians = More likely to die / not be able to scout
- Not scouting / Paying attention when scouting = Bit of an issue mechanically and strategically
- Less APM = Less Map Awareness

I could go on, but the point is that these are not mistakes that are irrelevant to the outcome of the game, and I see several of them in every single game from the vast majority of players. If you could play without making theses sorts of mistakes, you would do very well, almost despite how bad your build might be.

It's your mechanics that opens up opportunities for you in the game. Killing those few extra units can enable you to age or get stagecoach, saving vills can keep your eco ahead in a situation where your opponent committed quite hard to a timing or a rush, aging to Colonial or Fortress even a few seconds earlier can be a difference between popping units or a shipment out before your opponent gets to your base or being forced to pop that 5 crossbow into sepoy.

Back during the ESOC Spring and Summer tournaments in 2015, H2O and I would practice a lot before a match. Often, I would lose even if I had more units or a better or more efficient build, just because at the time his mechanics were that much better than mine. I can clearly remember games where my build would put me far ahead, and then I'm just losing long-term because he's outplaying me in small skirmishes and raiding, etc.

It wasn't until I improved my mechanics that I stopped losing matchups 1 - 20.

[Hawk_Girl]

I wish I knew how to micro/kite/fight/win in skirmvskirm and muskvmusk wars.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Mechanics matter a lot. I’m finding it’s hard to judge team fights because when I say go the path forward may not be as obviously. I end up calling fights we lose as I think it’s because we don’t fight them the same way as I would. You can quickly see windows of opportunity open and close with practice but your mechanics change which fights you can take even.

Well that's a different way to play.
I wouldn't take such a fight because I know I wouldn't win it, and outmacro or make a better unit composition instead.

Obviously, if you improve mechanically, you'll improve in general, but I think that improving strategically is much easier.

[gibson]

yea mechanics are super important. At least 50% of the games I lose to people lt colonel and below are because I lose a fight(or several) that should be even or that I should win. Now it's a bit of an extreme example because my unit positioning and micro is incredibly poor but shows that micro and unit control aren't as irrelevant as some people make it out to be. You don't have to have great mechanics to be a good player, but you can't have bad mechanics.

[[Armag] diarouga]

yea mechanics are super important. At least 50% of the games I lose to people lt colonel and below are because I lose a fight(or several) that should be even or that I should win. Now it's a bit of an extreme example because my unit positioning and micro is incredibly poor but shows that micro and unit control aren't as irrelevant as some people make it out to be. You don't have to have great mechanics to be a good player, but you can't have bad mechanics.

Well of course if you lose your falcs for free or get totally out of position with your anti cav then it's huge. But frankly, instead of losing a fight on micro you could have hit a better timing and win with just more stuff.

[evilcheadar]

To become OP, I recommend taking a look at my tip of the week series.

[Sargsyan]

New phone who dis

[momuuu]

Actually I think some people just never reach the mechanical proficiency to simply manage a slightly chaotic game. Its a bit of your echo chamber to think that aoe3 is super easy probably. I mean, it is pretty easy relative to aoe2/sc2 but the people major+ tend to actually have reasonable mechanics.

I played a game of aoe2 against an 'untalented' friend who does play that game a bit whereas I have only played some games vs AI following some BO and I actually just beat him because of more apm. This ofc wont happen in aoe3, but its to show that most decent aoe3 players actually are pretty good at rts games.

Now you are probably right to say that talent doesnt really matter. The level of play required for aoe3 is trivial in that aspect. With dedication I think anyone could become good at aoe3 (save for a few people that just seem stupid), and you are right in saying that few people have this dedication. I think if you manage to get to captainish and then find a good practise partner and just start trying to figure out all match ups together then you will become really good in a matter of months. Its just that egoes and schedules get in the way. Ideally you'd have a clone of yourself to play against and test things with.

[bwinner]

Actually I think some people just never reach the mechanical proficiency to simply manage a slightly chaotic game. Its a bit of your echo chamber to think that aoe3 is super easy probably. I mean, it is pretty easy relative to aoe2/sc2 but the people major+ tend to actually have reasonable mechanics.

I played a game of aoe2 against an 'untalented' friend who does play that game a bit whereas I have only played some games vs AI following some BO and I actually just beat him because of more apm. This ofc wont happen in aoe3, but its to show that most decent aoe3 players actually are pretty good at rts games.

Now you are probably right to say that talent doesnt really matter. The level of play required for aoe3 is trivial in that aspect. With dedication I think anyone could become good at aoe3 (save for a few people that just seem stupid), and you are right in saying that few people have this dedication. I think if you manage to get to captainish and then find a good practise partner and just start trying to figure out all match ups together then you will become really good in a matter of months. Its just that egoes and schedules get in the way. Ideally you'd have a clone of yourself to play against and test things with.

Can you all stop saying I am stupid ? If you only needed a couple of months of serious practise I would be pr40 for a long time

[blackwidow]

Ideally you'd have a clone of yourself to play against and test things with.

Man that'd be great, I want a learning AI that observes all of my games to be able to play like me against me. infinite value practice <3 looking at you deepmind

[[Armag] diarouga]

Actually I think some people just never reach the mechanical proficiency to simply manage a slightly chaotic game. Its a bit of your echo chamber to think that aoe3 is super easy probably. I mean, it is pretty easy relative to aoe2/sc2 but the people major+ tend to actually have reasonable mechanics.

I played a game of aoe2 against an 'untalented' friend who does play that game a bit whereas I have only played some games vs AI following some BO and I actually just beat him because of more apm. This ofc wont happen in aoe3, but its to show that most decent aoe3 players actually are pretty good at rts games.

Now you are probably right to say that talent doesnt really matter. The level of play required for aoe3 is trivial in that aspect. With dedication I think anyone could become good at aoe3 (save for a few people that just seem stupid), and you are right in saying that few people have this dedication. I think if you manage to get to captainish and then find a good practise partner and just start trying to figure out all match ups together then you will become really good in a matter of months. Its just that egoes and schedules get in the way. Ideally you'd have a clone of yourself to play against and test things with.

Yea aoe2 and sc2 are really different because you need 100-150 just to have an okish (not even good) macro, and you can outmicro hard, like get a 300-400% value on your units.
On sc2 I got to gold after my placement matches, and got like +200 elos on aoe2 after 10 games because of good APM, on aoe3 however it's all about strats since you barely need 100 APM.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Ideally you'd have a clone of yourself to play against and test things with.

Man that'd be great, I want a learning AI that observes all of my games to be able to play like me against me. infinite value practice <3 looking at you deepmind

Yea I would love to have a practice partner like me

[Snuden]

I'll update this thread in 30 days with how I went from 2lt to Colonel.

[momuuu]

Ideally you'd have a clone of yourself to play against and test things with.

Man that'd be great, I want a learning AI that observes all of my games to be able to play like me against me. infinite value practice <3 looking at you deepmind

In all honesty, I think the main reason I'd enjoy that is for the sake of protecting my ego. Losing against myself can't hurt my ego, can it?

[[Armag] diarouga]

Ideally you'd have a clone of yourself to play against and test things with.

Man that'd be great, I want a learning AI that observes all of my games to be able to play like me against me. infinite value practice <3 looking at you deepmind

In all honesty, I think the main reason I'd enjoy that is for the sake of protecting my ego. Losing against myself can't hurt my ego, can it?

Yea, practice games aren't really useful when there's ego in it. I think the games which made me improve the most are the games I played with spadel, blackstar, El_Pistolero_ or garja when I was lt colonel, because it didn't matter who won, what mattered was to find the best way to play.

[Snuden]

I just watched a rec with myself playing, please disregard everything I said about my macro not being that bad.
Holy shit.

[Snuden]

2leltenant is my destiny!

[blackwidow]

Ideally you'd have a clone of yourself to play against and test things with.

Man that'd be great, I want a learning AI that observes all of my games to be able to play like me against me. infinite value practice <3 looking at you deepmind

In all honesty, I think the main reason I'd enjoy that is for the sake of protecting my ego. Losing against myself can't hurt my ego, can it?

I'd say for me it'd be mainly because you can practice against the same playstyle for a while instead of so many different strategies / skill levels so that you can focus on the important mechanics, instead of (counter) strategies.

[InsectPoison]

I just watched a rec with myself playing, please disregard everything I said about my macro not being that bad.
Holy shit.

Post the rec, or pm me

[Googol]

I just watched a rec with myself playing, please disregard everything I said about my macro not being that bad.
Holy shit.

I hope you played on Vanes Patch, it’s overall a really macro intensive stuff and you need to build walls a lot to defend against otto serial killers.

[WickedCossack]

Also should be noted that it's very easy to talk about strategy and how to improve in this area as opposed to mechanics. Which is partly why it gets a lot more focus.

A how to improve your mechanics guide could be very useful since a lot of people might not actually know?

[Kaiserklein]

Just need to spam 1 civ with a couple strats so that you can focus on mechanics and not on strategy. Also time to micro helps improving control groups, unit composition knowledge, apm, and overall micro quite fast. Macro is easier (as in it requires less mechanics) but you can't really learn it I think, it just comes with experience, you get kind of a feeling about how to split your vils etc.

[Snuden]

See if you can get higher ranked players to play vs you and have them obs your gamesh.
Turns out my game is terrible, what a surprise!

Having a PR38+ player obs and comment would probably break down my ego.