Basics

Beginner’s Questions

Ok, so I finally broke down and bought AoK this weekend. Now for some quick questions:<br /> 1) When do you get the loom? This upgrade seems really important. Do you get it right away?<br /><br /> 2) How important is walling? I can see walling early at river crossing since dock blocking is out, but with the early defense of the TC, is walling important?

On the Road to Expert 1: Villagers

The importance of having many many villagers can NOT be overstated in Age of Kings. Often the inferior military player can win by sheer volume of the same unit, which in order to happen, must occur with a superior economy. Now obviously a mixed and managed military will win given equal economies. But we'll leave that for a later strat.

On the Road to Expert 2: Villagers (Continued)

Now that you've started making enough villagers, its time for you to learn what and how many villagers you need on each resource. In general for a flexible "formless" strategy, As you start castle you should have about 2/5 on food, 2/5 on wood, and 1/5 on gold (but the goldies only started right when you clicked to upgrade to feudal) IE with the standard 30, when you start castle you want 6 on gold, 12 on wood and 12 on food.

On the Road to Expert 3: Upgrades

This is for a basic 30 ish vil strong castle. If going for a feudal rush or very early castle rush you may wish to skip the economic upgrades early on. Also I use a BLACKSMITH, and a STABLE as my two requisite buildings to advance. The next building is usually either an ARCHERY RANGE or another STABLE. After that it depends, but its often A SEIGE WORKSHOP, then multiple town centers, then A MARKET, then UNIVERSITY, then CASTLE, then a MONESTARY later to pick up relics.

On the Road to Expert 4: Counter-Attacks

Though the manual lists the most common counters to many units, there are several problematic situations, and several counters that just work better. These are as always in addition to the Manual counters, which actual do work generally Lets start with Massed Archers: Supposedly skirmishers smash archers, however you and i both have seen how british archers and longbows can take even elite skirmisher- maybe not one for one but in a combination with something else the archers are far superior.

On the Road to Expert 5: Castle Probing

Many people over at the gx forum (www.gamersx.com/aoe) seem to feel that attacking in castle is generally a futile effort and should be avoided at all costs.. I DON'T agree. I tend to take the same view as Staffa in that you don't always need to kill the TC right away, and that in general attacking in castle can be a good thing, you've just got to know what you're doing and evaluate the situation.

On the Road to Expert 6: Civ Choices

I prefer to play, mostly on water maps (brits on land)and why:<br /><br /> Britons: Shepherding bonus means I can do with only 6 on food early, meaning a faster dock in water maps. Half Price town centers mean that once castle I can boom really well. Good archers and faster archery ranges are good vs infantry civs. Britons main problem: Paladins.

On the Road to Expert 7: Analysis

Ok since yesterday I was a little devoid of ideas and gave you a mediocre post today I come back with one of the things that I really think separates the experts + those who will be from those who aren't. Frankly even Sammy could learn from this post... There are not one but TWO times that you need to go into game analysis mode in AOK. Immediately Post-Game and during recorded games.

On the Road to Expert 8: Repel the Rush

DAY 8:I took the weekend off: I'll take next weekend off too as I'm going on a retreat. In ROR repelling a rush was near impossible without troops of your own. Not so in AOK, with Town Centers that fight back and can garrison your villagers in Safety, rushing has become a situational strat at best. But the rush really only loses its viability if you know how to defend properly.

On the Road to Expert 9: The Ripple Effect

Also titled: Sacrificing time for villagers.... You might want to try downloading the file later as it appears that my site is down (but NOT on my computer... it looks like one of the routers is down... its pretty bad when I can't access my own site from my computer :-) ) I was down for a little while this morning because I upgraded to Service Pack 6

Unique Weaknesses

Ok, we all know that every civ has a unique unit which only they can build, but a look at the tech tree reveals that most civs also have a unique weakness, some tech (or two closely related techs) or unit they don't have that every single other civ does. These unique weaknesses can have substantial effects, too. By now, most players are familiar enough with the game to know what their civ can do; now, keep in mind what they CAN'T do, too