GG with drew ( My new mentor )

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BashUgood
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GG with drew ( My new mentor )

Post by BashUgood »

Hi..

drew's been great with coaching me.
This is the top game I've ever played with someone like him of such high rank.

drew pointed out my villie production wasn't good.
I improved somewhat in this game and it helped, but ofcourse I still need to improve more, I stopped villie production earlier then I should have but still a vast improvement in my opinion.

After playing game, after game, after game, it's good to find what's been a real problem for me and make some progress.
If anyone wants to review feel free, I have no quirks with constructive critisizim.

Thanks again drew. :mrgreen:
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NEO_CrAz3n
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Re: GG with drew ( My new mentor )

Post by NEO_CrAz3n »

I have a few tips after watching the game. I need to follow a few of these myself. You probably know most of these but they were all small problems I saw. A few small problems can equal big problems. You definitely did some things well and early vill production looked good to me.

1- Keep your explorers moving/collecting treasures at all times. Scout his base multiple times and scout for enemy forward before/while you think he may be transitioning.

2- Put Villager collecting crates to work immediately after he/she is done collecting. That's valuable seconds off your age up time.

3- Always send buffalo to base immediately and use the edge of the map if you think the enemy may be scouting the area. Use way-points for this. They can also help you scout on the way if you know where the enemy explorer is.

4- Scout ahead before dropping your military rickshaw. Sometimes dropping it in a direct path to the enemy base is a bad idea and sometimes they will look for players to drop theirs in a direct line from base-to-base. Put it off to the side. Make him scout to find it (too late hopefully).

5- Scout the enemy base well and often to find where resources/vills are so that when/if you raid you can use the best path for surprise. Keep an eye on explorers when near the base. You don't want to give your enemy valuable XP by allowing him to kill your explorer/explorers.

6- Attacking outer houses (away from main base) is better than houses withing TC fire range so early. But it's even better to look for villies instead and kill or make them garrison. Try to mess up his early economy as much as possible. Then back away, when they un-garrison, do it again. Villies before houses if you can.

7- Only garrison vills that are in danger at your base when raided. If he heads out to attack vills on the other side, garrison them and ungarrison the others to the safe side. Try to keep as many vills working as much as possible without getting them killed. Then always be sure to un-garrison ASAP.

8- A fews short walls within your base would have made his hussar raiding less effective and protected your vills better. You would have also been able to kill more cav if he committed and the walls held him up. Don't wall in, just a few walls to hold him up, give you more warning and allow vills a good escape route.

9- Keep your army active. Idle army is an army waiting to lose a battle sometimes. Harass, scout and kill.

10- You went after his LI with your cav mostly. Take out the organs guns/cannon first (use FOW whenever you can, come around back or in from a side to attack cannons) and then attack the LI. Your LI should have been moved back from organs to a point where he has to move them to engage LI while your cav attacks the guns/cannons and while your LI got in position to attack his LI out of range of his guns.

11- Going after Port TC's early is a bad idea when the TC is under cover fire from another TC. It's better to attack/harass vills.

12- Sometimes retreating is good so that you can get the counters you need to beat the army you just retreated from.
I stopped villie production earlier then I should have but still a vast improvement in my opinion.
NEVER stop. If you have 5 military unit queried but not enough for a villager, un-query a military unit/units, query a villager and then query the final military unit/units before they spawn if you can.


GG

I know these are just general rules and that you probably know them all but I don't play Japan so I can't give you any civ-specific tips. I'll leave that up to the guys that know.
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BashUgood
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Re: GG with drew ( My new mentor )

Post by BashUgood »

^ Noted...

Thank you very much for that lenghty informative post..
Some things I knew, reminders are always helpful.
Some stuff I didn't, for example : in every game I've been dropping my military rickshaw in direct line to enemy base, and most times I'm unable to hold it as you saw in this game..

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it when people take the time to help me become better.. :mrgreen:
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Re: GG with drew ( My new mentor )

Post by StrokeyBlofeld »

It was an interesting watch. First thing I noticed was you seem to have quite a few cards in your deck that you didn't use. As a general rule, don't put a card in your deck unless there is at least a 75% chance you are going to use it (if you get to the age they are in), you only get 25 cards for a deck so make all of them count.

300 food as your first card, not sure on this. I would pick a card that would be more usefull in the long term. Even more so against ports as you will not be expecting them to rush you so there is no need to try and age asap (which is what 300 food suggests).

A lot of stuff craz mentioned will help you out, I'll watch the rec again later and add some more thoughts.
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Re: GG with drew ( My new mentor )

Post by ZoRPrimE »

I was able to watch the begining in normal speed but speed it up for the rest of the game.

Was a suprisingly close game for a while but be aware, just in case you're not. Drew was solving a rubiks cube for the first 8 minutes to add extra challenge to himself. IOW he's not familiar with ports or playing unlike normal Drew.

Nice raiding early on, I didn't check to see who got a better villie count but, I believe you were ahead of drew in villies for a decent amount of time.

Okay here's what I saw in the begining that is mostly age up timecrunch and efficiencies.

You passed up a food treasure early on, prioritize food pretty high. I've only recently developed that habbit with India since they're quite the struggle.

For treasure hunting with 1/2 weaker guardians you can take good advantage of shift click. Beware because Japanese won't auto attack a single guardian after it dizzies it, so you have to do the following clicks with shift down. dizzy guardian>attack guardian>get treasure> move to next scouting waypoint! Doing this will give you more time to make sure you're not leaving your TC sit without a villie producing.

If you don't have show unit training queue enabled get it. It's great for helping remind you if a villie is queued. A good player should have strong habits of quick checking his build queue & minimap for warning signs!

Wonder builders sat around after age up before being retasked. Take advantage of shift-clicking when you build your wonder to assign them to another resource once thier done. Best to make a habit of this when you initial age up! Dont' worry if your not certain at the time what resource it's better to have 200 wood you don't need than 3 minutes of idle villies.

Don't let your desired shrine location be more important than having available population. If you're finding that upon age 2 shortly there after you're getting not enough population you know you need to practice your start some more.

If you can make a habit of hitting T then V every 20 seconds. Needs to be like an instinct with this game. In early game don't get too many villies get queued up as in the first few minutes resources and pop space is pretty scarce pretty quick. If you do run out of pop space make sure you see what you've got queued. If it's 7 minutes in the game you can't send a troop card check, unit queue and if you have more than 2 villies queued with 1 TC get one unchecked so you can send the card! I often habitually queue villies and end up bringing it down to make pop space.

I think you're doing well, once you have your start 2nd nature to where you know you want have idle villies or no villies queued. You can concentrate on some better micromanagement of battles.

It's hard to notice in game but Drews TC's were doing hella damage to your units compared to most civs defences. The games I've won with age 2 rush's vs. Ports I've mostly stayed on outskirts keeping them garrisoned and confined in thier little space. I've risked fire to take down a rax but then got back out until I could sige a TC. It takes a lot of micro against a half decent port player to keep them couped up and overwhelm them. If you're on em early you can keep them from sprawling so much that you can't keep them from resources.

Good game I thought you did pretty well against my India the other day too!
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Re: GG with drew ( My new mentor )

Post by NEO_CrAz3n »

If you had rushed him hard it would have been almost worthless as a training exercise. Basics first.

The Hussar raiding was a good lesson as well.

Good job training Drew!
Some stuff I didn't, for example : in every game I've been dropping my military rickshaw in direct line to enemy base, and most times I'm unable to hold it as you saw in this game..
Nav has told me many times, don't do it. Make them wonder where the units are coming from and work to find it. Very good to do especially vs a higher skilled player. Nav did it today, in direct line from my base to his and I found it fairly early. Wasn't able to finish it off (pikes came our before I could) but was fairly close.

They may also not know what to expect unit-wise.
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"Any strat that beats me is lame." -CrAz3n

"Quoting yourself is just as bad as speaking about yourself in the third-person." -CrAz3n
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Re: GG with drew ( My new mentor )

Post by 36drew »

^ Bashugood had a 20% gatherate bonus for the game. To make it a bit more of a challenge.
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Re: GG with drew ( My new mentor )

Post by StrokeyBlofeld »

[quote=""36drew""]^ Bashugood had a 20% gatherate bonus for the game. To make it a bit more of a challenge.[/quote]

Ah, I was wondering. Talking of the hussar raiding, it cost you a lot of villie seconds and some villies too. You allowed him to keep them within easy raiding distance which was very costly. If someone is doing this, the best thing is to send a small group of ashi over (perhaps just 5 or so) to deal with it. Even just what you did later on, keep them by the spot he keeps raiding and keep an eye open, when he raids again ward him off with them and he'll think again before trying to raid there.

If your aging to fortress reasonably early like you did here, it should always be for a reason. The point of aging up is for upgrades, flaming arrows, and sometimes for more TC's. If you get to age 3 with less than 50 vills it is always worth considering getting another TC up. Not only will it increase your vill production and better your eco, but it will strengthen your base too.

Also, not used them much myself but Yabusame are suppose to be very good against artillary. This might be worth remembering if your opponents artillary is heavily gaurded with anti-cav.
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