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

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

Awesome thread. I'll remember to post there whenever I stop sucking.

[aligator92]

When I got the game in 2007 I immediately jumped into multiplayer and got to 2nd lt fairly quickly (using 3 hotkeys, find TC, make vill, find explorer and control groups) and then slowly progressed to low captain within about 2 years. The thing is, I had no clue about the game beyond the counter system. I either did random stuff with brits or blindly copied builds from 3 real life friends who were all better than me.
After a 5 year hiatus I found ESOC and that changed everything, I was stuck at PR 25/26 for a while and then progressed to 28/29 by adding a few more hotkeys which is where I am stuck now and I don't see myself ever improving beyond that as I have limited time to spend and I just don't like losing, so grinding games vs better players does not sound like an option for me. I might also be limited by my hardware as I am playing on a random office laptop with a random mouse, no external keyboard and unreliable internet. I feel that with everything I know today I could have probably been colonel back in 2009.

[Aizamk]

Kind of surreal to see kaiser looking up to lordimperialist as a pr40 when the lordimperialist I knew back then on nilla was a noob basher with 90% win. My story is pretty much just that I’ve been playing the game for a long time, tried many things, met many people trying different things, always played on from losing positions and as a result learned how to win from weird or losing positions.

[TNT333]

I jumped from pr0 to pr19 doing only Aztec forward warhut rushes, France FF's, and some China basic play xD

[Snuden]

I’m currently on a decline. The more I play the worse I seem to get.

[chronique]

I read a lot of top player saying that you need to play many civ at some point, and i not agree with that specific point. This is true because of tourney rules, but back in the 2010-2013 area, there was almost one civ for one player.

To talk about myself, it's quite strange because i have never tried to be better than other, my main goal is to have 100% control of what i am doing, and that's why i don't need to play other civ. In result, i have almost learn the game alone, i have never had anyone for coaching and that maybe the reason why i play like i play ^^.

[Mr_Bramboy]

It's all about viewing this game as a relative skill and determining how much time you put into it. Like any skill or quality, consistent practice makes perfect. If you stop viewing AoE3 as a game and start viewing it as a skill that can be mastered and if you put the hours into it, you will start to improve. Now I speak of a relative skill because you have to weigh the usefulness of this skill against other skills in life. Each hour you spent in AoE3 is an hour that you're not spending on doing something else: practicing music, learning a language, reading a book, or playing other video games. Effectively you're creating a cost-benefit analysis. So to get 'good' at this game (or any other game) you have to determine how many hours you're willing to put into it, you have to determine if you would be happier overall spending those hours on other things, and you have to keep the motivation throughout the entire journey.

For myself, I got to captain over the years just by playing and having fun. Last year I started playing a bit more competitive and got to lt. col. Now I'm 'stuck' because I don't spend enough hours to actually improve. In the last few months, I've just been having casual games with the EPCM community and in FFAs. If you compare the number of games I and my fellow majors/lt cols have played to top players you'll see the difference immediately.

[amiggo1999]

I first played the game maybe around 12 years ago for occassional Lans. Then bought the game a few years later for campaign and compstomp, and started multiplayer around 2015 I think. I pretty much stayed at ms level until I watched Interjections tipps & tricks as well as his saturday smackdown vids. These together with some level of drive and playing maybe every weekend helped me get to Captain in a years time. At that point I was spamming clicks in synch with my 3000 bpm music trying to outapm my opponent. Sadly that didn't result in much, other than the beginning of a carpal tunnel. I picked up the indian civilization and combined with regular team games on deccan that quickly brought me upto lt col level. And the identity India_bot was born. As a couple of times in my 'career' I hit a plateau and the way I got out of it was by adopting new civs and attempting to widen my arsenal. Since that point I have ocassionally tryharded sometimes better sometimes worse. Ever since I hit Brig rank this year I try to mostly play for fun (at least strategically) and have found that in the long run it is a good way to learn. Once you've got the current meta down, I think it's best to explore the game with your own mind and see what can work.

If I we're to summarize the things that made me improve most I would say it was a blend of mechanical mastery (find a set up that you are comfortable with), know how to execute at least 1-2 build orders very well (to the degree that you can execute on autopilot mode, and have mental capacity left over for analyzing the game) and later on learning the game from many different angles and getting the damn game KNAWLIDGE down.

[Goodspeed]

Looking back I think it's very simple for me. The times I improved most were when I loved the game, and the times of stagnation were when playing it felt a bit like going through the motions so to speak.
When you really like something, you try hard at it automatically. You think about it even when you're not playing. You try new things in order to improve. You make small changes in the way you play or your hotkey setup because it feels exciting, rather than tedious.

I think we all have phases like this. If you're in a period where you're starting up the game not because you're particularly hyped but because that's just what you do at that time of day, even if you still enjoy it I'd recommend taking a break and coming back to it later with refreshed spirit.

[[Armag] diarouga]

The hardest thing you need to improve is wanting to improve honestly.

If you want to improve as quickly as possible, you'll have to do things you won't enjoy. For instance, playing 95% of your games with top players you have no chance to beat. That means putting your ego aside.
Back when I was captain, I've played countless games with El_Pistolero (who was a solid pr38 back then), then goongoon, Garja and blackstar_op. I would almost never win (except against Garja sometimes xD), but I would learn something after every game. Many players just don't accept that, and feel like losers : "I've spent my weekend playing aoe3 and my biggest achievement was surviving more than 15 minutes in one of my 30 games". But that's really important.

For example, I learnt that even a small macro mistake like herding poorly in a defensive match-up woud mean game over against these players. Likewise, aging 1 villager too late because of bad age 1 macro also means game over.
After getting crushed in 8-9 minutes 10 times in a row because of these "small" mistakes, I practiced against computer my build orders to be sure I wouldn't make these mistakes again.
It's really important to play against players who are going to punish every mistake you make. Against other captains, a bad macro would have put me slightly behind (but that's something I wouldn't have noticed), and I would have blamed my loss on stuffs which are irrelevant at that level like "bad micro in the final fight" or "out of position".

To be fair, that's something tabben and turk did too. If you check my elo, I stomped tabben 14-1 6 months before the LAN (that's why I thought he would be a free win by the way). He didn't care and kept playing me (and the other top players) although he knew he would lose 90% of his games, but 6 months later he was as good as me because he fixed his weaknesses.


The usual advice "play only one civ, learn a BO for each MU and practice it" still stands, but I think it's very important you play against stronger players and try to understand why you lost. In strategy games, the player who makes less mistakes is going to win, so make sure you understand where your weaknesses are (herding, a particular MU, adaptation, defense, BO execution etc) and work on it until you don't make that mistake anymore.
The truth is that you'll hit a plateau if you just try to learn new BO and new things without trying to fix your weaknesses.

As for the time it took :
1) Like 1 year to reach MS (I have 12 years old back then and barely used hotkeys)
2) Another year to reach 1st lieutenant. I started using hotkeys and real build orders but still wasn't working on my game.
3) I got stucked 1 year at the 1st lieut/captain level, and got to like colonel in a few months after playing a lot and focusing on improving, and with time I eventually reached brig and higher.

[Riotcoke]

I read a lot of top player saying that you need to play many civ at some point, and i not agree with that specific point. This is true because of tourney rules, but back in the 2010-2013 area, there was almost one civ for one player.

To talk about myself, it's quite strange because i have never tried to be better than other, my main goal is to have 100% control of what i am doing, and that's why i don't need to play other civ. In result, i have almost learn the game alone, i have never had anyone for coaching and that maybe the reason why i play like i play ^^.

You need to play more than one civ not just to be able to play as other civs but to understand the weaknesses of other civs properly though

[Kaiserklein]

Kind of surreal to see kaiser looking up to lordimperialist as a pr40 when the lordimperialist I knew back then on nilla was a noob basher with 90% win.

I dunno if he used to noob bash before, but when I was on nilla he definitely was a good player. He did beat a rusty naturephoenix in pkclan iirc. I'd never come close to beating him even though I was at least worth pr 30 tad at some point

[[Armag] diarouga]

Ye, LordImperialist had really good mechanics, I'd also get stomped on nilla when I was pr29-30 TAD. On TAD however, I'd beat him half of the time with Japan and India although I was only pr30 lol. Realistically, he was pr35 on TAD.

I believe that orba27 was Cosmic by the way. Quickly after orba stopped playing, Cosmic came back, and he knew me quite well for some reasons, and had the same play style/way to talk.

[look]

CosmiC was an amazing nilla player..

[Hazza54321]

ah i remember starting off as a mastersergeant on 3v3 deccan playing mostly russia and brit. Then i met lundeby aka martin aka @oxaloacetate who became my 2nd lt practise partner. Then i met sam the lag aka @Method_man714 where we played like 100s of russia vs brit on great plains and was in awe of the 700g rusket spam build. He then sorta introduced me to @WickedCossack , @gibson , @bobabu and daniel van der moan aka daoof , where we played lt/cpt level 3v3s and 2v2s where we were all bad (including cossack but especially bobabu). Did these til i was about captain spamming like 80% russia and 20% fre brit. After that a breached to pr28 where i started to play the huge names like princeofkabul and kingofosmane ( i remember playing kaiser aswell on pansito and he was a whiny bitchboy even then) king and kaiser were both slightly above me in skill at the time and prince was much higher than both of them. Ofc not today were i smash both of them in a heartbeat. I then got some help from people like prince diarouga wicked etc but it only really kicked off when i had the 2hr veni lectures on skype analysing my plays to made me a better team player! So i started playing 2v2s when i reached major/lt, obviously lost them all as it was mostly vs veni prince blackstar spadel etc.. but i did improve alot during that time iirc i went from major to colonel within 2-3 weeks so i really have to thank veni especially for that but the others aswell.

Basically just play alot, try to constantly play vs people better than you and accept that u made mistakes vs said people to improve. And if youre lucky enough to get someone to go in depth regarding your gameplay then take advantage of that. What people seem to fail to understand is that u need some sorta benchmark to actually get given coaching from a higher level player. its no use a pr40 coaching a pr20 as they wont be able to keep up and alot of the time couldnt listen anyway as theyre trying to focus. I remember coaching castete when he was major because he had some potential to improve upon what he currently has. Bottom line youve just gotta approach somone slightly better until u reach their level and then move up. (e.g. a cpt getting coached by a major/lt col, a lt col getting coached by a brig etc)
Fuck this 1 civ 1 build stuff its so limiting to how far u can get with it.

[Kaiserklein]

Ye, LordImperialist had really good mechanics, I'd also get stomped on nilla when I was pr29-30 TAD. On TAD however, I'd beat him half of the time with Japan and India although I was only pr30 lol. Realistically, he was pr35 on TAD.

I believe that orba27 was Cosmic by the way. Quickly after orba stopped playing, Cosmic came back, and he knew me quite well for some reasons, and had the same play style/way to talk.

Well it's not fair to say he was pr35 because he couldn't beat jap or india. He just didn't know the civs and would have needed a bit of time to learn tad meta. I think if you played a euro match up he'd be better than pr 35

[chronique]

You need to play more than one civ not just to be able to play as other civs but to understand the weaknesses of other civs properly though

You don't need to play the civ, you need to play against. I play spain most of the time now and i understand almost all spain mu, i know what build work in each situation. And at some point, you need to take in consideration your oppoenent style and not only his civ (like, you know than gua will try to give you free mousket ^^).

[Garja]

It's better to play the civ to know the weaknesses.

[Warno]

Throw on some Mr. Milo tutorials for nostalgia and a bump in PR!

[flontier]

You need to play more than one civ not just to be able to play as other civs but to understand the weaknesses of other civs properly though

You don't need to play the civ, you need to play against. I play spain most of the time now and i understand almost all spain mu, i know what build work in each situation. And at some point, you need to take in consideration your oppoenent style and not only his civ (like, you know than gua will try to give you free mousket ^^).

Meh what do you mean ?
Anybody could say he masters all mu's from a civ when he plays the same civ for years, i mean thats not at all an argument that let you conclude about this is a better method than learning others civs ^^.

[Squamiger]

How much do you need to play every civ in order to understand their weaknesses and what they're doing in order to counter them? I feel like I literally just played Japan twice and that dramatically helped, as it made me realize what consulates did what, and what the wonders did.

[amiggo1999]

I mean its very obviously gonna help you counter civs the more you actually know them. And the more you play them, the more you know them. Its really so basic you can't argue against it.

[deleted_user]

"I mean we have duck (china) now on his way up to age... 2... and I do not believe that is, uh, I am not sure which wonder this is. I don't think this is the standard one (it is). Alright I believe duck is aging with a different wonder (he's not), so we'll see what that is when it's constructed.

Meanwhile, Lukas (japan) is aging with the standard... karni mata (torii gates)."

[[Armag] diarouga]

Ye, LordImperialist had really good mechanics, I'd also get stomped on nilla when I was pr29-30 TAD. On TAD however, I'd beat him half of the time with Japan and India although I was only pr30 lol. Realistically, he was pr35 on TAD.

I believe that orba27 was Cosmic by the way. Quickly after orba stopped playing, Cosmic came back, and he knew me quite well for some reasons, and had the same play style/way to talk.

Well it's not fair to say he was pr35 because he couldn't beat jap or india. He just didn't know the civs and would have needed a bit of time to learn tad meta. I think if you played a euro match up he'd be better than pr 35

Ye in nilla match-ups he was better than pr35 for sure, but TWC and TAD civs are part of the game . He was worse than the top TAD players though, probably at the same level as Umeu, so brigadier.

[[Armag] diarouga]

How much do you need to play every civ in order to understand their weaknesses and what they're doing in order to counter them? I feel like I literally just played Japan twice and that dramatically helped, as it made me realize what consulates did what, and what the wonders did.

Well, if you don't know how a civ works at all, then you need to work on that yes. You need to know the counter system perfectly, the cost of each unit, the potential shipments and age up politicians, and the most common build orders of each civ if you want to be competitive.

My point is that you don't need to play India to know that he can open sepoy rush, defensive Agra or karni mata, and can sepoy/urumi or gurkha/zam in fortress. Watching streams and strategy forums (and playing/asking people) is enough to understand the other civs well enough.