Welcome to Thunderdome

Posted: **Mon Dec 23, 2013 5:44 am**

Have been playing it a fair amount lately, trying to get a feel for it.

I'm not digging it so far. Playing against normal AI, they are idiots that don't do anything. They build a few things and then stagnate. Play against the next level up, and they completely out micro manage me.

Things I don't like:
1. No way points. I HATE having to check on a unit every 10-25 seconds to make sure he still doing something useful. AI reveals 100% of the map. I max out at about 70%. I miss out on resources, relics, etc.

2. I don't like how units travel. Horses slow down so they don't outrun infantry. Granted, I can assign each unit type a hot key. But, to my knowledge, there is no way to get all units onto a hot key easily. As new units come out of production, there's no easy way to add them to your hot key group.

3. When selecting units with click and drag, it includes civilians. I FUCKING hate that. One miss click and you are reassigning 60+ units to specific tasks. Meanwhile, your military units that are on 'suicide' mode by default are getting kited all the way into the enemy base and taken out by castles.

4. 70 civilian resource gatherers. In a 200 unit game. Really? Really? All needing to be micro managed? If you take your eyes off of anything in the game for more than 45 seconds, chances are, the next time you look at them they are dead or not doing anything and have to be reassigned a task. Meanwhile, while reassigning tasks, some other group of units start going off and doing something you don't want.

I don't feel like this is a resource management, strategy, tactical RTS. I feel like I'm managing a bunch of sheep that are completely unaware of their surroundings and happily do the exact opposite of what a normal 'being' would do. "Ok units, park here and wait for further instructions". Next time I look at them, they are chasing a scout into the enemy base getting picked off by arrows. Meanwhile, lumberjacks are getting picked off one by one by wolves because they are too stupid to stop chopping wood and fighting back. Or, there are a couple of enemy cavalry chewing up every farmer in any field because again, they are too stupid to stop working and fight back, take cover, etc.

Again, I don't feel like I'm playing an RTS. I feeling like I'm wrangling sheep that just want to do dumb shit for no reason.

Watching the AI decimate my troops with about 3 units is really aggravating. Their big "Arrow shooting siege unit" is kiting my army because it's faster than my infantry and my cavalry is staying slow to stay in formation. Meanwhile, my onegers are trying to shoot a MOVING FUCKING TARGET by shooting at where it IS, instead of where it's going to be. Which means, my front line CAVALRY is getting wiped out by friendly fire. And this is happening because I had to respond to a bell in my city because the civs are too stupid to stop dying to 2 cavalry killing my farmers.

Ya. Just too much work and not enough fighting.

If we are going to play an old school RTS, I'd MUCH rather it be TA.

Way points.
Resources have to be managed, but not at the expense of massive epic battles.
End game is about who built the right setup to overwhelm their enemy. I want to be beaten by my opponent because they out smarted me. Not because I couldn't micro manage 200 individual units that seem to want to do the exact opposite of what you wanted them to do.

Edited By Cakedaddy on 1387795765

Posted: **Mon Dec 23, 2013 8:13 am**

I want to say most of the gripes you have were fixed in AoE 3. Especially the micromanaging and scouting parts. But it's been a while, so I can't quite remember.

The Standard AI is braindead.
The medium I found quite hard. I died the first two times, but mostly because I wasn't used to the game yet. The 3rd time I won, but it still wasn't as good of a victory as it should have been.

Posted: **Mon Dec 23, 2013 10:08 am**

What do you mean you need to micromanage your villagers? Don't you just assign them to a rock pile or forrest and leave them be for a half hour? I do.

Units getting kited? Why are you staging them so close to a gate where they can see the scouts? Are you not building walls and gates?

If you dbl click a unit, it selects all units of that type. Makes it easier to do groupings.

I think all the problems you have would not exist in a PvP game anyway, besides the fact you think you need to micromanage your villagers.

Posted: **Mon Dec 23, 2013 10:57 am**

So, Gordon, have you ever beaten the most difficult AI?

Posted: **Mon Dec 23, 2013 11:00 am**

TheCatt wrote:So, Gordon, have you ever beaten the most difficult AI?

Not lately. I've only played like 4 standard AI games since I reloaded the game the other day.... before that, the last time I played was about 8 years ago. And I played A LOT back then, including multi, which is obviously nothing like playing against AI.

I remember tricks the AI would never use. Ha.

Edited By GORDON on 1387814461

Posted: **Mon Dec 23, 2013 4:27 pm**

Yes, I assign all my villagers to a task and can leave them alone for a long period of time as long as:

1. I have queued up enough farms in the mills to keep them farming. If I don't because I needed all that wood for something else, they just stand there. Even if I queue up more farms in the mill, they stand there. Then I micro manage them back to work.
2. No random enemy units walk into my area and start killing villagers. Sure, I can ring the town hall bell and some of them seek cover. But most go about their chores and get picked off one by one. So, I can either let them die and kill them with military units, which is going to cost a handful of villagers that I have to then replace with micro managed new units. OR, I select them, FORCE them to take cover saving me from spending resources to replace them. And when the threat is gone, micro manage them back to work.
3. Rock piles die. Then I have to find a new one. This isn't too bad. If this was as bad as it got, I wouldn't be complaining. Resource spots wear out. That is good.
4. I don't accidentally select some villagers with military units. If I do, I have to micro manage them back to work.

Building walls. I tried that. But the enemy finds a spot off in the middle of no where and starts attacking it. So I respond. But my unit's path finding is so bad that they will leave the walls to go respond, dying along the way. Or, I can micro manage their movement to the threat on an intelligent path. Meanwhile, the AI is attacking some place else that I can send units to respond to, or micro manage a response.

It just seems like you have to micro manage EVERYTHING. You can't select units and say "Go take care of that". If you do, they will do it in the most costly and dumb way possible.

I did notice you can double click to select groups of similar units. Sometimes. It seems really clunky in that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So, I'm double clicking over and over trying to select a group. Meanwhile, the enemy is expertly picking off all of my units by attacking each of my units with exactly the correct unit that counters mine. So, the AI is WAY better at micro managing it's attacks on my units than I am against his. And since I have my units in defensive stance because I was tired of them wandering all over the map as soon as I turn my back on them, only 1/3 of me units are responding. So, I have to micro manage my units into action. Then all the new units that are being produced are, by default, on suicide settings and they are getting kited to their deaths by a couple cavalry units someplace else.

It's just constant constant never ending babysitting. And the AI is WAY better at it than I am. And frankly, I don't enjoy micro managing enough to try to get better.

Posted: **Mon Dec 23, 2013 8:12 pm**

Continuing to try this game.

Built walls. Tons of walls. Half the map was sectioned off by walls. Then I had to build towers and castles all over the place to protect the walls. Then I started running out of resource spots. So everyone was chopping wood and growing food so I could sell stuff on the market for gold. Meanwhile, I'm building big groups of troops to try to do some battle. Can only select what seems like 50 units. Ok, fine. Different squads. Holding them out of my base pretty well with walls and towers. They breach here and there, but towers and castles doing their jobs. Still losing a ton of villagers though. Finally have a big mass of troops that I feel like I can do something with. Head out to their base. They have a choke point made out of water and a MASSIVE navy. No way I can get over there and no way I could build a navy at this point as all my resources went into what I have so far. All the gold deposits are spent and it's too hard to get gold at 14 gold per food/lumber. And still, they seem to be able to kill my units at a 5 to 1 kill/loss ratio because they can counter each of my units individually. Micro managing my units, I can start to counter theirs. Take out a couple of their castles with my trebs and much of their navy with ranged land units. My army is dwindling, but I had filled my build queues, so I had spare units back at my base to send down. Select and continue to battle. Making VERY slow progress through their base taking HEAVY losses. Battle continues. Go back to buildings to keep military queues full and troops coming. That's when I notice that I have about 50 villagers standing around doing nothing because my mill queue dried up. So, I have to individually tell 50 villagers to start farming again. Meanwhile, whatever military I had left is dying because if you don't tell them specifically what to do, they just run to their death doing something stupid. I didn't feel like reassigning 50 orders to keep going because I knew in the time that it would take me to do that, the AI will have EVERYTHING I took out rebuilt and replaced and I still have to reassemble my army after all the villager shit.

FUCK. I guess I have to concede defeat before any shots are fired. I guess this game is just too hard for me. I'm trying REALLY hard to figure it out. But all it's doing is pissing me off. I can take challenge. I will retry something 50 times if it's just hard. But this game is soooo fffffuuuuuucking teadious.

Posted: **Mon Dec 23, 2013 8:22 pm**

Sometimes I wont notice when my mill queue of new farms dries up, and I will lose a working farm. it makes a distinctive noise when it happens. I immediately go queue up more farms, then, put that one villager back to work, and move on.

You already figured out how to watch long stretches of walls. Yes, watchtowers.

+++++

I multied a co-op game with my kid tonight. Good stuff.

Posted: **Mon Dec 23, 2013 10:36 pm**

After playing a game of TA with it's warnings. . . AoE is WAY to subtle. I have yet to notice a different sound from when a building is done, a unit is created, etc. I didn't even notice it telling me my farms have died. There are so many alerts that get spammed that I don't even look at them. Is there a way to have it only tell you bad stuff? I don't need to know each and every time a unit is created.

Posted: **Mon Dec 23, 2013 10:36 pm**

Also, record one of your games and send me the file so I can watch it.

Posted: **Mon Dec 23, 2013 10:49 pm**

I'm doing the Hun campaign for now. Completely rocked the AI on medium difficulty the last two games.

Posted: **Wed Dec 25, 2013 12:29 am**

Had my first successful game. However, the map was EXTREMELY in my favor. I had a few gold and stone deposits. 4 relics. And the river caused a choke point so I only needed to build about 10 wall sections and protect them.

Posted: **Wed Dec 25, 2013 12:30 am**

My fave map to play is a Black Forest map. Minimum water... I don't really care to play with boats.

Posted: **Wed Dec 25, 2013 12:33 am**

I don't like boats either. I just do a standard skirmish that seems to randomize the map. However, in EVERY other game I played, the enemy had a huge navy that I had to deal with, even with a minimal water map setting. There was always a river that would lead to my base and then the water surrounding the continent. This time, I built a navy. They did not. Not sure why not. But they didn't. So, my navy stood unopposed bombarding their city edges. My boats were also a big help tearing down the gate they had plugging the water made choke point on their side of the map.

Didn't know it had maps that I could pick from.

Edited By Cakedaddy on 1387949666

Welcome to Thunderdome

AoE 2