for people who have ranked up, how long did you spend at each rank / what did you do to progress?

[[Armag] diarouga]

You're stuck at colo because you don't want to improve honestly. You play suboptimal build orders because it's fun and more PLOPish, but you reached brigadier in the past when you were tryharding.

[Guigs]

From my personal experience and the experience of the people I've talked to, MS, captain and lt co are the 3 big ceilings.

There are many players who are stuck at MS level (although they're not many on ESOC), and once they improve a bit and fix the basics, they reach captain. In ESOC however, there are a lot of players who are stuck at the captain level or who have been stuck at the captain level in the past (I know that hazza, castete and myself got stucked at that level for quite some time, same for the dutchies), before improving at strategy (and not mechanically) and reaching lt co.
lt co => colonel is the last big step, and I actually don't know that many players who are stuck at pr 35-36. Usually after a few months, colonels manage to improve and peak at brigadier.

Agree with small d, I got stuck at captain/major for quite a while without knowing why. Then I realized I had terrible macro, wasn't training units and vills most of the time and automatically got myself behind in 90% of my games at 10 min because of that, no matter the build order I was doing. Most players between pr30 and 35 think they have good mechanics, and it's mostly true but they have quite poor muscle memory and automatisms (bad macro habits in something I see in 90% twitch streams, for example retasking idle vills incorrectly or not doing it at all). I think this is the thing players should focus on the most as it is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of this game, more important than having good micro or solid multitasking.

Decision making and tactics should be something coming after you master (or at least be confortable with) your macro.
The mechanical aspect is something you develop while grinding and that you can only get by constantly playing and using efficient hotkey setup. (some players are naturally gifted, some others acquire it in 2 or 3 times the time required for a gifted player but everybody can master it on aoe, it doesn't require crazy apm)
Last point is the game knowledge and knowing what to do in a given situation and this is also something you develop while practicing match ups several times, but also that you truly develop when you reach top level and play vs players who won't make much of macro/micro/mechanical mistakes.

To sum up on the topic, I think players stuck around 1st lt have mostly macro issues and do build orders incorrectly.
From captain to pr30, they mostly do correct build orders but lack scouting and still have bad macro + bad decisions
from pr 30 to 33, the macro gets better, standard build orders get applied correctly but it's usually bad decision making and lack of gameknowledge leading to more bad decisions (wrong units being made, bad timings, wrong time to age... etc)

Also one more thing, some players have difficulties to acknowledge where and when they are making mistakes, even though they watch their recorded games or pov streams. That's when posting recs on forum can be useful, as well as getting coached. But you should try to find out yourself before asking for help imo as it is good methodology that you can apply at any level of gameplay.
A good example of how useful a single coached game can be :

[[Armag] diarouga]

Ye, captain castete had a really bad macro. I remember you'd have iddle vills all the time during fights, get housed, miss batches etc. Sadly, I didn't keep my captain recs (that would be useful to know how I played back then) but I think that my macro was probably bad although I thought it was good.

I agree with your summary. Below pr26, micro and decision making (to some extent, but less) are irrelevant, it's really all about macro.

It's harder to find a "general weakness" for captain+ players however. Some have a good macro (although it's rare), some have a good micro (cometk when he was captain, butifle and some others), some are stuck at pr30 with a decent game knowledge. That's why pr26+ should try to find where their main weakness is (or ask people) and try to fix it.

[Aizamk]

Slightly off topic but I found some old nilla games of me vs rapha from 7 years ago. (note PR is a bit misleading since it was the time at which 8 player obs games were flourishing on nilla so my rank would decay all the time)

My style hasn't really changed at all since then, the only difference is that I've incorporated a few more hotkeys.

[Hazza54321]

2ez pr26> 37

[Aizamk]

And if anyone's wondering why there were so many units with low HP, on nilla you don't have this alt key shows HP bars TAD cheat, you actually have to click on each unit individually to see the HP when microing. Even when herding - you need to click on the bison to check the HP. So in a way that's why I developed this clicky click style.

[deleted_user]

I played TAD without using the alt key for years, clicking on bison to find their health to herd them. It reminds me of when I was taking swimming lessons as a kid, I didn't know that you could open your eyes under water. And so the swimming teacher would throw often a baton into the water and we'd race to grab it at the floor of the pool. Then one time she said "OK now try to grab the stick without opening your eyes" and I was like whoa, you can open your eyes? And of course I won since I was so adept at not using my visual sense under water then.

[chronique]

You're stuck at colo because you don't want to improve honestly. You play suboptimal build orders because it's fun and more PLOPish, but you reached brigadier in the past when you were tryharding.

You are so rude!
1) i play a lot of build (and most of them are obtimal)
2) colo 2020 is prob better than brig 2012. I am better currently.

[[Armag] diarouga]

You're stuck at colo because you don't want to improve honestly. You play suboptimal build orders because it's fun and more PLOPish, but you reached brigadier in the past when you were tryharding.

You are so rude!
1) i play a lot of build (and most of them are obtimal)
2) colo 2020 is prob better than brig 2012. I am better currently.

1) We've already had this discussion, but I'm quite sure you'd be brig if you decided to go for the standard ff every game instead of trying colonial builds.
2) Colo 2020 is better than 2012 brig for sure, but it's not harder to reach colo in 2020 than it was to reach brig 2012. There is more content to work on strategy and mechanics, especially with streams and ESOC tournaments. You're just not trying as hard as you were in 2012, because now you play for fun (and that's why you don't want to play in tournaments) while you used to play competitively.

[chronique]

I will reach brig on DE then (because of iro laming ^^)

And i wasn't more serious in 2012, the things is i don't care about tourney because i don't need money nor than i want visibility. And i don't like tourney game, it's more stressfull so i have no reason to play it. Tbh i play this game pretty seriously, my own way.

[Aizamk]

Been looking at waybackmachine aoe3 stuff for memories before DE comes out.

My old clan (clans were still pretty organized back then):
https://web.archive.org/web/20090215015 ... Staff.html
(my main civs were brit, dutch, germany at the time, so I actually gave new members "training" on those civs)

My nilla elo in 2010:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110211064 ... 480&page=2
(was still PR37, haven't really progressed in the past 10 years)

What I remembered of LordImperialist from back then in 2010 (75% win, +streak of 80) - though there's no denying he got a lot better later on:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110113125 ... atestmatch

[Riotcoke]

Really puts into perspective how long some of you guys have been dedicated to AOE3 if you're having to use wayback machine to find old games.

[Scroogie]

I got back into aoe3 watching Smackdown and EsocTV on youtube and started playing somewhere in 2016 i think. I read the Goodspeed guide and got to Msg almost instantly ( i was accused of being a smurf with a 100% winrate at 5 games :( ). After that i slowly improved in Macro and build order, always heeding the stay with one civ (France) advice. There werent really aha moments, just slow, graduous improvement. I think i suck because my strategy decision making is terrible and i usually make one big bad mistake every game (in the beginning it was army getting caught, nowadays its losing 7cdb under tc to 2 uhlan, not protecting vills with army) and im also not very consistend when it comes to practice.
It also feels like the EP Captains are getting better consistently and my improvement is not enough to get ahead of the curve.

[rsy]

X

[harcha]

• Started playing TR30/45 in gameranger back in 2011/2012. Met a few cool people like @farran34 @t3rror1sta and even @storm_999_ , some turned out cooler than others. At the same time I was watching vids and recs (imagine watching treaty recs LOL) of StormComing @sc, @_PI, Milky__ @ocemilky, which made me work on my boom and unit control, helped understand counters and use of artillery more.
• Then somewhere in 2013 I think Fuher was inactive so he gave me his ESO account, and I thank him for that. Not only did this let me play better players, but I also started playing supremacy as then there was less risk of game dropping before 40 minutes are over. Also it is easier to find games. Also met @domerino at this time. The youtube and twitch content of @Veni_Vidi_Vici_W and @Interjection helped me improve.
• Started playing 1v1 QS with france using the updated guides that @Goodspeed was putting out. This really helped me get out there and understand the basics of 1v1. Eventually I started recognizing and familiarizing some of the players I met on QS. This let me reach PR30. It was also more fun playing while streaming (in 2014) which made me more likely to play. Thanks to my IRL friend who gave me his desktop because he didn't need it anymore.
• Probably the biggest boost was switching to Japan. This made playing QS far more enjoyable as suddenly I wouldn't be screwed every time an RE map spawned bad. This let me reach PR32.
• The last bit of progress was made in 2014-2015 where I dodged a bunch of good players (Umeu, @Garja, Darwin and @BlackStar_OP) on QS just to milk that PR one more step. This let me grasp the colonel rank.

[t3rror1sta]

• Started playing TR30/45 in gameranger back in 2011/2012. Met a few cool people like @farran34 @t3rror1sta and even @storm_999_ , some turned out cooler than others. At the same time I was watching vids and recs (imagine watching treaty recs LOL) of StormComing, @_PI, milky__, which made me work on my boom and unit control, helped understand counters and use of artillery more.
• Then somewhere in 2013 I think Fuher was inactive so he gave me his ESO account, and I thank him for that. Not only did this let me play better players, but I also started playing supremacy as then there was less risk of game dropping before 40 minutes are over. Also it is easier to find games. Also met @domerino at this time. The youtube and twitch content of @Veni_Vidi_Vici_W and @Interjection helped me improve.
• Started playing 1v1 QS with france using the updated guides that @Goodspeed was putting out. This really helped me get out there and understand the basics of 1v1. Eventually I started recognizing and familiarizing some of the players I met on QS. This let me reach PR30. It was also more fun playing while streaming (in 2014) which made me more likely to play. Thanks to my IRL friend who gave me his desktop because he didn't need it anymore.
• Probably the biggest boost was switching to Japan. This made playing QS far more enjoyable as suddenly I wouldn't be screwed every time an RE map spawned bad. This let me reach PR32.
• The last bit of progress was made in 2014-2015 where I dodged a bunch of good players (Umeu, @Garja, Darwin and @BlackStar_OP) on QS just to milk that PR one more step. This let me grasp the colonel rank.

good old days

[evilcheadar]

literally just 9/10 on great plains RE until you hit 1st lut

[Miyawaki Sakura]

I spent 1000 hours in qs on TAD and reached pr29(2017~2018)
piroshiki, kojica, fal, nayuki, iwakita, etc. were my rivals at the time
At this point, I was able to almost completely copy other people's bo in recs.(Previously, it was impossible to fully understand and copy bo by looking at someone's recs.)
In early 2018 I detected the presence of ESOC and twitch and copied the VC bo of diarouga and GS to reach pr32.
After that, I stopped playing for reasons of military service and came back when de came out.
I copied bo from brits main players like GUA and Aiz and someone smurf(better than me).
I also immediately discarded bo that lost to opponents when I was playing perfectly.
After that, I made my own bo and macro, and then reached the top 10 elo with brits.

[look]

I spent 1000 hours in qs on TAD and reached pr29(2017~2018)
piroshiki, kojica, fal, nayuki, iwakita, etc. were my rivals at the time
At this point, I was able to almost completely copy other people's bo in recs.(Previously, it was impossible to fully understand and copy bo by looking at someone's recs.)
In early 2018 I detected the presence of ESOC and twitch and copied the VC bo of diarouga and GS to reach pr32.
After that, I stopped playing for reasons of military service and came back when de came out.
I copied bo from brits main players like GUA and Aiz and someone smurf(better than me).
I also immediately discarded bo that lost to opponents when I was playing perfectly.
After that, I made my own bo and macro, and then reached the top 10 elo with brits.

I Like you.
Nice history

[callentournies]

And if anyone's wondering why there were so many units with low HP, on nilla you don't have this alt key shows HP bars TAD cheat, you actually have to click on each unit individually to see the HP when microing. Even when herding - you need to click on the bison to check the HP. So in a way that's why I developed this clicky click style.

until I mapped alt to my mouse I'd herd like this, well into 2016