How do you counter the Germans

[chronique]

I think you should start to macro before master haha. I'd say you should macro when you reach diam 3 because it won't take a lot of time to get back to your cheeser level with macro play. If you reach master with one base builds only, you're never going to win macro games against masters.
Anyway, begining with 3 base builds (which is the equivalent of playing Port or Dutch in aoe3) is surely not the fastest way to improve.

Idk it was a discussion between GM players (back to 2013 when i was a young boy). Ofc its prob a little caricatural (tbh its impossible to play 100% like that, playing like a bot that you are not can be a little annoying ).

[bwinner]

I think you need to spam one build that will work regardless of what opponent does. otto or spain tower ff are 2 great examples for this.
The reason is, you first need to be able to execute a build (I mean the concept to follow a build order in general and execute it properly).
If you start trying to adapt, play different civs and change plan every game while not being able to macro for any build correctly, not only you won't improve your macro as fast because you won't be able to focus on that as much, but also you won't understand builds either because you don't get an idea of what works and what doesn't if the execution is poor anyway.
So curiously, I think you get a better understanding of the game by focusing only on one versatile plan, as pointed out by poisson and rouga.
By the way I think you also improved that way @Kaiserklein , 1st you was doing your xbows nilla stuff, then when you got stuck you just changed to full uhlans semi (you was famous for a long time for only spamming it), which is also a very versatile strategy, just a bit higher level. Only when you was colonel+ you've started to really play more strats.

[Shikari]

I feel like you shouldn't even be looking at your or if you are trying to improve. It'll automatically bias you to play stuff which is easier. For example let's say you are playing vs japan and you decide to play age 2 aggro cause he went kami. Surely doing france double rax rush require way more micro and macro then otto double rax Jan or even Jan abus. Surely you can say otto player would win more cause he will win more game cause it's just easier to execute but winning doesn't mean improving here imo.

[ShawnRay223]

I tried pike rush+dogs, works pretty well