In team games I would generally speaking just make 1 unit type, you know, the kinda player that just runs port goons around or something. So the main thing I felt I had to improve on was being able to handle different units in fights. I started off playing nothing but dutch and just going skirm ruyter and building some experience that way. I improved quite quickly and landed myself at around 1700 elo being rank 100 or something along those lines. That's where I got stuck for a while, my unit control was still subpar by a lot, but my macro game was pretty good. I became friends with some of the top players and landed myself in a discord with them, where we were often talking about the game and just having a good time. Some of them were willing to help me, since I streamed they could also easily tell me what things I did wrong and that gave me some more improvement. I sniped aussie quite a bit and had a blast going back and forth with him, usually playing dutch vs swe.
Then zanerre happened. Zanerre got himself to page 1 playing nothing but sweden and when asked about this accomplishment he said he felt he was just that good and he belonged there. That motivated me to prove him wrong and make a point that it's just sweden being strong, not zanerre. I picked up sweden and climbed a lot straight away. I went from being stuck at the 1750 elo range to going to about 1900 elo in 2 days, also winning just about every sweden mirror i ran into. I think I was the first to standardize just focussing on hitting age 4 and going for svea/mams since that's their most broken shit.
Forward to late feb/early march this year. Hazza had a semi final to play against kynesie. Going into this series he didn't feel comfortable about his water ability's, back then it was still the time of kynesie/breeze basically being the only real water players. Hazza was looking for a person to practice with and asked around in the discord, I would be in the calls watching him win the games but felt like the opponents werent playing it properly. I told him to put me in coach, I was still a bit of a shitter so this could turn out a waste of time, but I asked him to give me a shot. I had a lot of water play experience from team games, but didn't play it yet in 1v1. In our first couple practice games I won almost all of them and I distinctively remember TLS saying 'hazza mate if you're losing to this don shitter, you're gonna be absolutely fucked against kynesie'. And we basically agreed that kynesie would be the final boss, so he had to make sure to at least be able to beat me. For 2 days we played nothing but malaysia over and over, me as port and hazza trying out different civs against it. For the first 15 games it was probably like 11-4 in my favor and the last 15 games probably like 8-7 or something. We both learned a lot, hazza became a way better water player and I just got a fuck ton of experience playing against the best player in the scene. Obviously port on a 2 pond water map like that is just broken which was the only reason I could take games off him, but still it gave me good experience, because we would also always play out the land fights (where my eco was so superior that I could get away with fighting worse and deleting units).
Hazza played his series against kynesie and I was very eager to see how it would go. We planned all the different possible strats, what does well against which etc. In this series he only ended up dropping 1 land game, we had played so much water games the 2 days prior that he didn't feel as good on land as he normally did. But the water games were all clean wipes, he said that the water games against me were way more difficult than against kynesie. This was a big compliment to me and gave me a big confidence boost that I might actually be able to compete in the scene. Here on out I became a lot of peoples water bitch, by this I mean, if you wanted to improve your water play, just give don artie a call and he'll play some practice games with you. I also played a lot of water on qs and I believe I standardized it a lot, it was no longer this thing that only kynesie/breeze were doing, but a lot of players picked up some water experience one way or another. Also me streaming these water games made it more standard to the public eye.
Sweden got the nerfhammer (remember how it was going back and forth between OP and meh every other patch) and I felt like I shouldn't actually belong on 1900 elo, I decided to take the pussy path of making a smurf and have my main point sit on 1900. When USA got released and people were trying it out, I busted out the main to farm some elo (in particular one special eliphent) and went up to 2k elo only to point sit again. A tournament for the top 32 got announced and I wanted to be sure to be in it, so I just played my smurf and played whatever civ I felt like, expanding my civ pool. Opnions will differ on this strat, some will feel it's way more honorable to just only have 1 account and play that, but I didn't want to have happen to me what happened to kevin. Kevin was like rank 5 when it got announced, and he ended up not making it in because of playing otto in qs and shit. At some point I was spamming brits on my smurf and actually got to rank 10, overtaking my main. So I felt better about point sitting at 2k elo, I felt like I I wasn't just a 1750 elo player who farmed sweden+ usa to get to 2k elo anymore, I was actually able to get the elo regardless.
My tournament
So the tournaments were done based on your ladder seeding, in our discord this meant a spreadsheet was made of everyone that signed up and caused a theoretical top 32 and 8 groups. Some players would try and quickly win or lose a game to get some different seeding, while some players would just do nothing and be sad about being placed with their brother
. For the tournament I had prepared 2 water civs as my main power, being port and spain. When logistician got released mid april I realised straight away that it would be most broken for water play. I purposely kept this to myself and didn't tell anyone, only trying it out against AI. Then at the end of april drongo released a video about someone doing some poor execution of spain water play, I messaged him on this discord . Luckily this didn't catch on and I didn't see it since, keeping it in the back of my mind for the tourney.So I got seeded with #1 kaiserklein #2 me #3 ailleyugg #4 turk. Kaiserklein at the time was #2 on the ladder and commonly ranked #2 in most people's eyes (only behind hazza). I was overall happy with having him in my group tho, I felt like my cheesey strats with water could have more succes against him. He wasn't one of the players that I practiced water with. But first things first, my series against ailleyugg. I was actually nervous for this match, a high ranked player from the chinese scene that I didn't know much about. Knowing kaiser would probably not watch my series I decided to already bring out the spain logistician in this series, revealing my secret. At the end I won 3-0 quite handedly and it wasn't as hard as I expected, but I was happy with my performance.
So now going into the series against kaiserklein, I felt like in terms of unit control and overall skill he was in a way different league than me, so my gameplan was to try and never give him a fair fight. If I go into the fight with 20 goons 20 skirms 10 hussars vs his equal amount of units, i'd imagine he would be left with 20-25 units when I lose all of mine. The map pool for the series was kamchatka/dhaka/pampas sierras/saguenay/mongolia. Considering the skill difference I felt like I would for sure have to win dhaka and saguenay with my water civs (port and spain) and then most likely have to somehow find a win on one of the 3 other maps, which most likely would have to be a sweden win since that civ is just too strong.
I had planned to watch kaisers round 1 series vs turk and think about what to do against it, but he won 3-0 (as expected) and asked me to play straight after he won. I was like sure fuck it lets do it, but this didn't give me a chance to see his play and it also meant he was already warmed up which I wasn't.
So we started on kamchatka, which I felt would be the best sweden map in the pool, and I was hoping to win this one. Basically minute one the game already goes in the shitter, I lose all the goats, no treasures, shit vill micro etc. I also wasn't aware that the best thing to do in a swe-dutch mu is to just train 10 huss and ship 2 leathers and nuke them age 2, I did a 4 huss semi ff and spent the game rebuilding my torps and just falling further and further behind. He played very well and it scared me a bit, the game was never close, he just won easily.
Game 2 was on dhaka, he picked spain and I counterpicked with spain. He wasn't aware of my logistician water boom plans, and i'm sure when I clicked into a mirror he must have been surprised. By then I had practiced dhaka spain quite a bit, basically beating just about anything only really struggling against skirmisher on otto. Putting some land pressure into taking stagecoach+ 3 tc taking all the resources on the top island. Eventually fish runs out and it would give a somewhat fair game. The plan kaiser had of just playing normal spain was never gonna beat my strat, the game was never close. I know kaiser felt this game was close and he was close to taking out my final docks and stuff, but I had plenty of space to rebuild, I was completely fine.
Game 3 was on pampas sierras, due to me having won last game I had to pick first. I didn't really prepare much for this map, since it wasn't part of the 2 water+ 1 swe win gameplan, but I knew he would probably pick russia on this no tp map since his dutch is already used up. I had been told dutch vs russia is actually favorable for dutch with proper base building and holding with cm+ enough hunts under tc etc. So I picked dutch and he did counter with russia as expected. Kaiser did a 11v age up instead of the regular 14v, and I didnt process this information on time. When I saw him hitting up this early I should have realised his first attack will land like 30-40s earlier, and I need to go bank wagon first instead of 700w first. However I just went 700w first like normal, and the wood is basically on the floor with me being idled in the tc. I also hadn't herded well enough, and the game was close to over 5 minutes in. I still manage to get age 3 and get the stradiots out etc, I could've maybe nuked a fight if i shipped 9 ruyters/5 huss but I went 1k wood and it was just over.
Game 4, i'm now 1-2 down and have to win both games. I still had port for this saguenay game and it became a very special game. I'm just doing the regular port water bullshit, and kaiser goes for a little bit of counter water pressure with outposts+ 3 vels. With my control on the islands I hold that quite easily, and it now becomes about kaiser putting land pressure on my base. I get this insane pop on him, which was intentional and hard to pull off under some nerves. https://clips.twitch.tv/OnerousExpensiv ... wshU4G8S-n
The timings of the mams and huss poping at the same time isn't that hard to do, mams take 60 secs and huss take 40 so you basically just queue a huss when mams are about 1/3rd done. I also had to switch up the shipment point for the age 4 covered wagon and the mams, and im fighting on water, so it was a bit much. At the start of the clip you can see me lower my huss batch from 4 to 3 to get the cm pop, everything went just perfect in the end. Then I have that monitor moment which was awesome, he drops out of vision and I suddenly realise I could use my spyglass to regain it. https://clips.twitch.tv/ColdAuspiciousS ... -CCxNrKGih I get the triple kill on the falcs and he resigns. I think at this point the game was by no means over, he is on 3 tc land booming and has stagecoach (granted i will steal at least 2 tps), but he has hunts and map control where as i have no hunts and no fish. Whales are extremely OP on aoe3, with my 16 boats on whales I basically have infinite gold the rest of the game, but it's still a close game. I was very happy to see him resign and take the game right then and there.
Game 5, so now everything comes down to game 5 and I knew I had to pick sweden, he counter picks french which I was quite pleased about, I believe some other civs do better against sweden than france. I noticed in the first minute of the game I was quite nervous, I was shaking a little bit when taking a treasure and fucked up the micro haha. I calmed myself down and got into the groove of things, in age 2 I play mostly fine but make 1 big mistake of going 2x rax instead of 1x rax. this costs me about 2 torps which snowballs a bit. He's going for a stagecoach+ cow pen boom build, and I manage to take 2 tps away. I decide not to contest his third/4th tp, even tho I have army and he doesnt at the time. I was afraid about overextending and getting caught, I've seen people lose many games that way and didnt wanna fall in the same trap. My entire goal is just to reach svea+ mams because thats swedens winning point, so you do whatever it takes to reach that point. I get my arsenal techs and everything for the big fight, and i get my guard + svea. Now all I have to do is wait for the mams to pop and win the fight and win the game. However I panic and completely fuck up, charging in before the mams arrive. If sweden was a balanced civ this is where I would have lost a game. The fight now goes about even, and even tho it may sound crazy to some I realise that i'm on a bit of a timer. If I try and stabilize with factory shipments and playing it calm I will lose for sure, seeing as my torped mines are running out and vill count will start to matter. I'm way behind on vill count, he is training cdb from 3 tc's. I have to make something happen and I go 2 heavy cannons> 16 caroleans> mams (again, ye, that's a thing xD). I have 1 big shot at winning a fight, if i don't the game is over. I get the fight I wanted and this moment is special to me, one of my cooler gaming experiences i've had. So I win and I obviously feel very proud and happy about the win. Unfortunately it took 2 weeks till the game got casted (it would've been so much sicker live) and by then kaiser couldn't contain himself anymore and made a retirement post etc, so some of the hype was killed and that post somewhat spoilered the outcome. However, watching the stream was still very cool and it was very well casted by drongo and tete. The monitor moment in particular (linked earlier), looking at the chat log now it almost feels like there is 5k people watching. I know opnions will differ, some people will just feel like i'm a shitter who only won because port water+ spain logi water+ swe is too broken. I think that's somewhat fair, all those strats are for sure strong and gave me the boost I needed, however I don't think it's a free win especially against someone like kaiser. I still had to play well to pull those things off, and the spain strat in particular is one that I crafted myself.
After the kaiser games my interest to compete drastically decreased, I was more in a mood of just fucking around in qs and doing some troll shit. Since people would ask me for streams I would fire up the stream sometimes and I would get like 100 viewers and shit, which I guess was cool. However with the 'fame' comes a lot of opnions, and I learned that I as a person am uncapable of handling that. I thought I was a mentally strong dude, and perhaps I am in different aspects, but the hate gets to me. I can't handle all the negative comments about my gameplay in my chat and stuff, especially when i'm not even playing to win. I'm just trying to do some troll stuff and have some fun, but I get all these hatefull comments on it, and I couldn't handle it. I decided to stop streaming. I was watching a hazza stream and saw him getting only 7 min queue no fun games because people avoid queueing when he is in queue (they dont wanna lose elo). Seeing him bored and he is my friend I figured it would be nice to give him some snipes, just for his entertainment. I don't go into these games playing to win, I just wanna do some troll/dumb shit and make some fun for him and the viewers. Both these games ended up on drongo's youtube channel with another couple shitty comments. I can't resist having a look and I realised that shit just gets to me, so I really shouldn't. I know there is quite a couple video's of me on either drongo's channel or age of streaming or whatever (probably like 10 alltogether), and everyone will throw their opnions about you. I also knew history would just get rewritten and people will say kaiser wasn't good anymore or I was veeeery bad only able to win cus OP strats etc. I didn't wanna deal with it anymore, i'm just not strong enough to say fuck the haters and just have fun regardless, and I have decided to quit playing. Last weekend from friday till monday I went to the czech republic to play some real life poker (for the first time since covid), and I have refound my passion for that game. You can also kinda just do your own thing, working 'from the shadows' playing online and not have to deal with opnions, just focussing on your own result. No longer having to worry about other peoples opnion makes me feel better about myself, and I will now focus back on this 'job'. I played about 15 hours a day for 4 days in czech and when I came home from a long drive I was undecided about forfeitting my series against ezad and contacted a close friend of mine about it. He told me to play it, out of respect for the tournament organisers and stuff. So I did and I gave him a quick 4-0, having had no sleep and no warm up etc and most importantly no intention to win. I will say however I still played somewhat reasonable and I think even if I came in well prepared, ezad is just better than me. So credit where credit is due, well played to ezad regardless and gl in the quarters etc, I dont wanna take anything away from his win. I purposely didn't watch the series to avoid seeing the twitch chat and having to deal with opnions once again, but I imagine people were probably calling me a shitter and what not, fair play but just want to say this wasn't me on my best.
Anyway, this has been a way too long post, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts and experiences. I'll be leaving aoe3 here, partly because of less game enjoyment and mostly due to myself/the community whatever you wanna point at. It's either the community being too toxic or me being too much of a pussy being unable to deal with haters/negative opnions. I'm not saying it's a 100% chance i wont launch the game anymore, but it's highly likely. I just can't stand the non stop negativity everywhere and the same subjects being brought up everywhere over and over again, lame this, lame that, shitter that shitter this, blablabla. It's sucked the life out of me haha. I hope this post doesnt come across as me whining or anything, I was also definitly part of the problem myself and I fully acknowledge that. I apologize to anyone that i've annoyed through chat or whatever, and I hope you know it was generally speaking with good intentions of just poking some fun. There are also some people in the community that only bring positivity, i'm not going to name names in fear of forgetting people but shout out to those guys, and i'm sorry to those that enjoyed my streams and now will have to do without dontent. Take care everyone, perhaps see you on aoe4 or some shit, i'm going back into the shadows and returning to my poker ways. Peace out
