I'm struggling with French and would appreciate some advice.

[Lord_Mega]

[NOTE: I only play Vanilla]
Hello! So I was just curious if anyone give me some insight or advice on my French play.
I am a Master Sergeant so I consider myself to be decent. I would like to improve greatly though.

I have noticed some myself;
Didn't release villagers fast enough on start.

Didn't distribute settlers on crates properly. > (Both of these are due to no start lag, will making my graphics higher help with this?)
Was slow with explorer on starting treasures >

Didn't do well at all on a treasure.
Messed up herding at start.
I do not have a builder order.
My micro was not that good. Cav didn't properly attack the archers and at one time my Skirms decided to burn a house down instead of fighting.
My economy was incredibly weak.

[gh0st]

Hi, just wan to mention some very basic stuffs :
> in early age1, you wight wanna keep herding that starting hunt towards tc (whic you didnt), it saves a lot of vills seconds, which affects your ageup time, which can be huge in some MatchUps. Also you can start age2 before the starting hunts runs out, you dont need to send vills to far hunts before starting age2, which you did. Well maybe you can send 1,2 vills to herd, but you can do that after clicking for age2 if you herd properly.
Remember, you can herd every 12 seconds, so you need to be herding more frequently than you did to get hunts to your tc.

> Also, after you click age2, you didnt almost chop wood at all and kept gathering food, thats bad. You should chop 50+75+125 wood for Hunting Dogs, Placer Mines, Steel Traps respectively, and do some quick maths if you find a wood treasure or smthng. You need to do these market upgrades because there is no reason not to and French strength is in its Economy.

> Your Macro needs alot of improvement. You have had alot of resources stockpiled all game, and you got 1 hussar in the first batch because you over gathered food so much, you dont need that many vills on food, distribute them properly, like having around 9-10 vills on coin to get full hussar batch.

> You should practice more on how to creep while taking treasures, you spend like 2,3 minutes for taking that 3 coyote treasure, maybe visit following links to get better idea of taking treasures :
Interjection's Video
Parfait's video

Also in this Video by Veni, he talks about all the basics of game like villager, herding, treasure, hero etc.. watch it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yoiySkMMyY

> As far as the Build Orders are concerned, you should read GoodSpeed's guide, alothough its for TAD but you will get the idea.

In General, always keep thinking what can happen in a Matchup, like what your opponent can do. Like in that Rec game you played Fren vs Brits. You scouted that Brit guy was massing musk+lb and sitting in his base, so you can just semi-ff while keeping him busy by raiding and once you have tech advantage you can ADOPT his composition by having a suitable composition of your own. You kept making skirmishers and took fight with lbs, thats bad, lbs win cost effectively quite easy and you cant hit n run them with skirms. You need to always adopt, like you need either cannons or Cuirs to deal with mass longbow.
Also never go mills and plantation when you already have easy access to hunts and mines, thats huge investment which you could have invested in army and have had map control or even won the game, if your opponent went too greedy himself.

Also try to play on TAD, its just much better and have more people playing it :)

[zoom]

@urmom69

notification

[JakeyBoyTH]

@site

notification

[site]

Age 1.
Right, so the main thing I see right from the start is that you are being inefficient with your vils. You wanna minimize that idle time and walking time. For example, when you made your market you had your vil on the wrong side of it so it had to walk around the market to make the house... Just to walk back in the other direction to herd... Which you did not do enough of. Use two vils minimum to herd, one on your second and one on your third hunt, no later than transition. Remember it only takes 12 seconds before you can shoot again and in transition you don't have a lot else to do.

Also, at the beginning you had your explorer and scout exploring in the same area before you fixed it. Maximize your exploring potential and try not to cover the same ground.

You got that market up, but didn't make use of the 90 gold you found in treasures. I would have waited to put the market up until transition.

Transition:
You kept them on food but you should have had been getting wood/gold for your market ups. (treasures help a lot.) Decide in transition what your military composition is going to be and start distributing settlers for it. Since you did Huss/Musk you needed settlers on gold sooner.

Age 2:
Building placement is bad IMO. If you're going to be aggressive it needs to be much closer, if defensive put it behind your TC. That stable could be killed without being in range of your TC fire.

You had a lot of wood you didn't do much with soon enough, and a lot of food too. I'd say you need at least 5 vils on gold in transition and beginning of Colonial if you wanna be doing a hussar build.

Not sure why you sent 600 wood right after 700 wood if you're doing a hussar build and already got market ups and houses. I would suggest getting 700 coin in your deck to fuel musk/huss or go to fortress. The 700 and 600 food are just a big no no. I'd only suggest those for some crazy all in build. Food gathers the fastest, and you already were floating it. Also, since you were aging to fortress, I'd have waited and shipped a more valuable fortress shipment.


I think you lost because you didn't have good card orders, and you had bad military composition + micro. Houses are not a high priority against British, and are always second to the military force they already had. You saw that he had musk/lbow when you raided with your cav. A better thing for you to have done was sent 8 skirm, 7 skirm cards from home city while training 5 skirm from rax and as many hussar as possible. Push in and when he put his musket in melee back off and snipe them with skirm. Once the musk are gone it's GG for those longbows.

Bottom line. Minimize the 4 areas of idle time.
1.) Explorer/scout idle. They should never be idle. Always use them to scout, and you can use your explorer in combat. He's pretty tanky.

2.) Villager idle time. Minimize their walking distance by building your buildings in a better format, herding every 12 seconds, using waypoints, and distributing them better.

3.) Military idle time. Idle military is just as impactful as a idle villager. When you had just 1 hussar you could have been using it to scout. When you had more you could have been harassing vils and then getting away with superior speed. When in battle, make sure they're all fighting, not sieging a random building.

4. YOUR idle time. Make sure you're always doing something and never just looking at the screen. Use whatever APM you have to always be doing something.

Lastly, fix your deck. Look up some top players decks and copy them. That'll put you a league ahead until you get enough game knowledge to know what to change for different situations.

I hope I was helpful. If you get TAD lemme know and I'll play with you and give you more tips. :)

[iNcog]

i can't understate how much i love it when i see a new face pop up on these forums

[pecelot]

@iNcog

notification

play EP

[iNcog]

maybe one day

[Lord_Mega]

@site

notification

@gh0st

notification

I sincerely thank both of you for taking the time to watch the play and give me advice. I appreciate it, honestly. :)

[pecelot]

also, don't play vanilla! switch to TAD, if possible