N3O Age Of Empires and Starcraft 2 Clan

Okay, long post . . . any feedback is very appreciated.

Well, as you can probably guess from my sig, I don't have a lot of experience playing against others on ESO. I think my basic skills are getting decent, but I'm woefully ignorant of how to approach a given civ matchup/map combination. Currently, I pretty much pick a basic strategy and go for it, with the only major adjustments being creating units to counter my opponents units once the fighting picks up. Obviously, in the lower teens PRs, you can win with just about any strategy as long as your basic mechanics are good. But now I'm at PR18, and can get matched with players in the 20's in QS...

On Saturday I played as France vs a PR 29 Spainsh player (Black_Ice_Spain) on Bayou. (I think my PR had momentarily gone up to 22 before losing to him, and I set QS to "within 7 PR"). Obviously, I got crushed, and I have questions about the matchup, and games on Bayou in general. Here's what happend:

My first problem was that he found a relatively lightly-guarded 2 dog treasure. So his explorer plus 3 dogs were able to take a 260ish food treasure and get to colonial at 4:30. By that time he had 1 Seminole TP up, and was working on a Cree TP, when he sent native treaties. Next he shipped 8 pikes. He built 4 cree archers, giving him a total of something like 4 riflemen, 7 archers, and 8 pikes. I had been attempting a 2 barracks xbow/pike rush, but with my barracks off in some corner of the map, and him beating me to colonial by 25 seconds, (I'm not sure why I took so long) I never stood a chance. (His subsequent rod shipments and TC fire easily handled my meager attempt at a counter-attack) He had my TC down quickly, GG.

So, when I was watching the recording I had a few thoughts/observations/questions:

- If someone beats you to colonial by a good margin, I'm thinking its best to play defensively?

- On Bayou as France, I probably should have been attempting a native rush myself?

- Generally speaking, is native TP control considered to be very important on Bayou, reguardless of civ matchup?

- In theory, shouldn't a well-played 2 barracks xbow/pike rush have been a good matchup against this strategy? (Setting aside skill differences)

- Once I realized a native rush was coming (My explorer had the misfortune of stumbling upon his army before the attack), was my best option to throw up a church quickly and try to train a few spies?

- Thinking about all the situation-specific strategies that come out of all the possible civ/map combinations is pretty overwhelming, but also fun.

Beating you by 25 seconds is pretty typical given the treasure he found. It sounds like the thing that lost you the game was your rax location. If you knew he was rushing, then a semi-ff (only if you could have fought off the rush) would have probably been you're best option. French have the best native cards in the game. Pre-patch I would have said the x-bow/pike would have worked, but against that army, 8 x-bows (from shipment, plus 4-8 from building), and a few hussars should have fought that off. Don't forget that cdb's are basically strelets, and are pretty tough with the market upgrades. Not sure if any of that helps, but recorded games are better to give feedback..

I don't always take the native on that map.

If someone beats you to colonial by a good margin, I'm thinking its best to play defensively?

I would say so, if you play aggressively, they have the upper hand of getting their units up faster which means your forward bese may go down and it will be uphill the rest of the way. If you go defensively, you can fend him off appropriately and with luck, push him back and get his forward.

On Bayou as France, I probably should have been attempting a native rush myself?

This is an option, on bayou, there is still possibility of any rush, including xbow/pike, but seminole and cree on bayou are good natives if you want to do an alternative

Generally speaking, is native TP control considered to be very important on Bayou, reguardless of civ matchup?

I would say that it's more important early to use in a rush or raiding with seminole, rather than late game with any civs

In theory, shouldn't a well-played 2 barracks xbow/pike rush have been a good matchup against this strategy? (Setting aside skill differences)

Well, pure xbow early would be alright against what he had. But I would also suggest cav and mm/8 xbow shipment. Since he had only the 8 pikes from shipment, mm/8 xbow would handle that and cav would do well against the rest.

Once I realized a native rush was coming (My explorer had the misfortune of stumbling upon his army before the attack), was my best option to throw up a church quickly and try to train a few spies?

I would say not at that time, since spies are gold heavy, and he had only a few natives.

Yes, my rax location was my biggest problem, espeically since he beat me to colonial. Had we gone colonial at the same time, I think I would have been in better shape trading blows with him, since CDBs > Vills for TC defense. But, I made a handful of other mistakes as well . . .

- Since he beat me to colonial, I probably shoudl have sent 8 xbow before 700 wood.

- I let my second colonial shipmet (8 xbow) sit around for probably 20 seconds. This was the difference in not getting the shipment before he brought down my TC.

-I let my scout wander aimlessly past his TC. He happend to notice, and garrisoned enough villies to kill him before he could escape. Losing your scout in the first 2 minutes sucks.

- I set the gather point for the barracks within sight of his TC, so that battle started before I wanted it to anyways.

- Once I knew the rush was coming, I should have put some CDBs on gold so I could afford MM. I forgot this and said GG to myself when I got that terrible clunk sound from clicking the MM button.

I thought about posting the rec, but my understanding is you can't watch it with 1.01a now, and I think I hit most important stuff in my recap anyways. Next time I get waxed by a PR29+ player, I'll post it as a warning against setting the PR range to +/-7.

Dude, Black_ice_Spain was PR 45 in TWC. He would have crashed us all. lol.

[quote=""HuggyPierre""]Dude, Black_ice_Spain was PR 45 in TWC. He would have crashed us all. lol.[/quote]

LOL, I don't feel so bad now. For what it's worth, he was friendly, too.

On Saturday I played as France vs a PR 29 Spainsh player (Black_Ice_Spain)

LMAO he's an agesanc expert

Yeah, BIS is just working his way up to the 40's. He just used you as a stepping stone. He was one of the best of the best not long ago.

[quote=""Shizle""]Yeah, BIS is just working his way up to the 40's. He just used you as a stepping stone. He was one of the best of the best not long ago.[/quote]

Oh. Now I see why I got matched with him in QS. It wasn't that my PR was above 18. I took a look at ESO Stats, and found that he was only PR 22 on Saturday! LOL. Anyways, it's nice to know that I can be there for other AOE3 players to provide the much-needed role of "stepping-stone". I guess I'll have to give that recording one more watch for educational purposes before patching to 1.01a.

I THOUGHT his name looked familiar ...

I was able to watch a 1.01 rec after downloading the 1.01a...

[quote=""Soccerman771""]I was able to watch a 1.01 rec after downloading the 1.01a...[/quote]

Well, if everyone wants to see the recording of him taking me out behind the woodshed, maybe I'll post it when I get home. But it's not pretty.

Post it . I can still watch every game i recorded, though i've patched to 1.01.

Recording is here.