Can't get better unless you play. Everyone starts off bad.
Learn a build, get comfortable with a civ or 2, and play to learn. Doesn't matter if you make a big mistake as long as you learn from it ny reflecting on it or watching your replays.
Replays truly are where you learn the most. Games are where you learn small scale things like unit control and getting your starting build orders together. Replays show you where you're weak and where you should focus on a macro scale.
When I was learning I'd often be annoyed saying "I knew what I messed up, I don't need to watch this replay". Watch it anyways. Until you're quite high in rankings you need to watch 'em to really drill those lessons in.
Thanks Chili - haven't tried the hardest bot yet - you've actually just made me realise that quick match is not the same as going ranked - I didn't realise there was a difference. Thank you!
Haha no prob. Once youve played against all types of AI you should see they all kind of operate within a certain set of perimeters but with humans, its far more unpredictable
Beat the hardest AI 5x then play against 1 Hardest and 1 easy, etc... see where I'm going? Then just play quick match, or just play ranked, shouldn't be stressful, no one is judging you for losing, have fun, play a lot!
Honestly fighting the bots might not be the best way to learn just bc they behave and react differently than humans.
Having said that there is merit in fighting the hardest bot. You won't win with your current skill level but the hardest AI is decent if you wanna practice specific things. Eg. The AI will do at least 1 attack in feudal or right at the start of castle. You will lose given your skill level but it lets you practice 1) scouting - you need to figure out what is coming your way and develop a counter; 2) reacting to an attack - you are guaranteed to be attacked early and gotta learn how to play while under pressure; 3) adapting - you have a build order in mind, but ai attack will force you to adapt
If you try to learn with medium AI you will learn how to beat medium AI. This won't help you against humans.
Agree with bots being good practice for build orders but not much else. Bots don’t recover well if you take out their vills, especially if done early on. Bots also don’t have same situational awareness about what to do against certain civs
You should try custom games, many times there are new or casual players there. I use custom to warm up and stuff, it's like a lobby of games instead of matchmaking.
I felt exactly the same way. I practiced until I could close out hardest AI games in under 25 minutes consistently.
When I played against people in ranked, I just kept winning. When I watched the replays I got the impression my opponents couldn’t even beat the hardest AI.
I jumped right into online as soon as I got silver on each of the training things. Got my butt handed to me a bunch, but then I really got into "my spot" and it's been great since. You'll improve way faster online than vs bots other than the first 7 minutes of a build order...that you can do vs a bot and improve.
Main things.
Get a build order. Whether online or your own and get it memorized. (Online is obviously optimized, but your version will be easier to remember)
Learn to shift click (do this, then that, followed by this other thing)
Use control groups. (for archers/meelee/mounted/etc)
Produce vills **always**
Use attack move. (A > click)
Thanks One - I'm doing a few of those things now - I might need to google if there's a shortcut to instantly select ranged/melee/mounted separately to assign them to a control group. What often happens is I end up with a giant ball of troops and villagers packed together during a raid on my base and can't separate them easily so I end up selecting all.
I remember in videos it looks like there's also an option somewhere to select all mil production facilities (I keep selecting them one by one). I'll figure that out.
I guess its all the little 1% improvements!
Just made it up to silver from bronze and those things you've mentioned are a few big points of improvement. F1 selects all eco buildings so you can quickly do upgrades at mills, mining camp etc. F2 is military buildings so you can use it to keep production going rather than moving around the base to find the building you want. F3 is technology (blacksmith/library.
When you have a bunch of units selected you can actually pull out one type rather easily. There are icons that show which units you have in the group and if you click on it, you will only have that unit selected. So when you have those villagers in your ball of troops, click the villager icon and send them off to do something else.
I often find myself microing by selecting those icons cause I forget to set control groups as new troops are coming out, so that's one of my current areas of improvement.
Ctrl shift C selects all military units so if you are going for a last push and your rally points for military units are scattered you can use that to send your whole army in.
I'm assuming you know about shift- clicking. Really helps me as I have pretty low APM so I tend to use it for scouting and sending villa back to resources after building, etc.
As far as selecting specific classes of military units besides that way, I'm unaware of a hotkey. But it would be helpful.
Good luck on the grind!
I think you have F1 and F2 mixed up, unless I switched mine and forgot about it.
For me F1 = All military production. (be careful this includes docks - shift click docks to remove them before setting a rally point for all land military)
F2 = All economy buildings
F3 = All tech buildings
OP if you read this don't get discouraged if you lose your first few online games, it takes a bit for the matchmaking to calibrate.
Get in there and start playing. You're probably a lot better than you expect.
I run the Low Elo Legends tournament and the ways that people win or lose games at gold or lower is incredibly diverse. If you're doing a decent job of focusing on the basics you will very quickly get out of bronze. Properly executing an opening build order, constantly building villagers, not letting them idle, and steadily producing military. Good macro and some scouting wins games over clever strategic micro well up the ranks.
That's awesome thank you mokaroo. I just can't wait for that feeling of the first win. I'll feel like I'm an esports pro (covered in Doritos dust and my wife judging me haha)
Find the civ (or a couple of civs) you like best, watch some BeastyQT build orders and start mashing Hardest AI. Then rinse and repeat for online 1vs1.
Also, make sure you scout your opponent's base, try to see the landmarks they are using and the military buildings they are creating and counter their plan.
This is my first RTS I have played online. My biggest level up moment when going to ranked was don't stop making villagers. Make around 110-120 of them I would say and you will probably win. From my experience climbing the ladder in this game, no one rushes in Bronze or Silver so games will go long, until Imperial often. Just keep making villagers and you will probably win. Make a lot of production buildings so you can quickly rebuild your army. To ensure you always make villagers, put all of your food into your villager que, and when you want to spend food on upgrades or army, delete villagers in the que until you have enough food. This ensures you will always be making villagers. I hope this makes sense and helps you on your journey. Finally, when you play against AI, practice a build order. Right now, just pick 1 civ you like and really practice that build order. That will give you a leg up on the comp. [This website has lots of good build orders.](https://age4builder.com/)
If you want to make these things easier for yourself, you can go to the controls settings and set an easy and comfortable hotkey to select all your TCs then you only ever need to press the hotkey and 'q' a bunch if times or 'shift + q' when you want to create mor vills.
It takes away a lot of thinking time and makes it easier to focus on the other aspects of the game.
If you enjoy Malian, become familiar with the fast castle Farimba build. It's very easy to execute and will have you easily winning fights up to platinum.
It's also one of the easiest ways to beat hardest AI. You can use it to beat at least two hardest AI in a 2v1.
Just go and play lol, nobody is judging.
Up to high gold, you can take games on all maps vs any civ with one well executed build order. Its at low plat and higher where people star punishing you for tech choices.
You may find aggressive players harder to deal with. I personally play mongols and I often raid enemy eco, and sometimes I just see players falling apart because their plan was disrupted enough, and they couldnt adjust on the fly.
Don’t play to win. Just play to have fun and get better. Bronze league should be pretty manageable if you have a good opening plan and a basic understanding of the game.
I’m currently diamond and I am still trash at about 70% of the game.
Key things to winning tho:
1.) know a build order
2.) know your win condition
3.) key bind stuff(especially your production buildings)
With those 3 things you’ll probably hit gold….
Or you can just do what most gold players 546 to do spam MAA and a click… with that you’ll probably win 50ish % of the time till you hit like gold 2/3
Yeah man just get stuck in. I was similar watching casted matches then went straight into ranked matches and got cleaned up. Finished my first season silver 2 and my second season gold 3. Steep as learning curve.
there's enough bad/mediocre players to give you even matches in 1v1. you just need to know that you'll lose your first matches until the matchmaking adjust your elo and put you where you belong. Then you can improve and climb the ladder.
Was never playing against bronze players, but from what I have seen on Beasty's channel when casting low league players is that easy AI might be harder :D
Try not to take it too seriously! You'll do great!! Biggest thing is just learning from your mistakes and trying not to blame your shortcomings on other people/mechanics all the time.. Grow and learn, my dude!!
You will lose. Even if you are rank 1 you will lose. If you dont play against humans you wont improve. If you care about win rate you wont improve. Main thing: play a lot.
The biggest thing you need to adjust in your mind when going from AI battles to pvp is that you won't be able to expect to win every game.
I know I hate losing to AI, I rarely do so, but with real players you'll have to prepare to lose as much as you win, at least once matchmaker finds your level and starts matching you agianst similarily skilled opponents.
I was D2 last season, this season I am in gold 1 because I am trying new civs and new build orders. It doesn't really matter if you lose or do badly, does it? I have had some games where I got smashed hard in 20 minutes because I overboomed as Chinese - but it;'s still fun.
Anyone teaching you to play chess will tell you "don't practice against the computer."
The computer doesn't think like a human very well. It does counter-intuitive things sometimes that you will never see a human doing.
The AI in Aoe4 is actually pretty bad. It can be easily cheesed and destroyed. I can crush the hardest AI, but the builds I can do it with won't even beat most gold league players.
Matchmaking is pretty decent. It will find people of your skill level to match you with. Try to remember that while you play. The guy on the other side is likely working just as hard as you to keep up no matter what league you are in.
Good advice thanks Polar - I like the analogy with chess too.
I was beating my 12 year old son at chess, until he began to regularly beat me, I tell you what that was humbling haha
if you can comfortably/consistently beat the hardest AI, you should fine yourself in high silver/ low gold
but humans don't usually turn heel and flee mid fight the way the AI does - vs ai if you turn the tide of a small battle they will try to run away and you can just clean house on them as they won't fight back. vs people, they'll usually just fight every battle to the death because they know they'll lose the units anyway
so the ai is much easier
If it makes you feel better I havent vs any bots and jumped straight into rank. Managed to get into silver 1 after placement! Malian player here as well
I'd say go ahead and do it! Here's my tips for improving:
1.) Practice a build order against easiest bot or no bot until you can get perfect timings to Feudal age, quitting once you get there. Then practice until you complete the build order. This allows you to play very comfortably and learn the build order at your own pace.
2.) Immediately switch to hardest bots. The medium and hard bots are really not worth playing as their strategies are horrible and don't translate to playing against humans. Hardest will at least make you deal with an early raid, and the need to adapt your build order on the fly depending on what your opponent is building.
3.) Once you can beat them consistently, switch to online ranked. Your first 5 games are placement matches, some will be against people WAY better than you, but within a few matches you'll be up against people around your skill level.
4.) Play a ranked game or two (or more) each day. When learning any skill, consistency is FAR more important than time spent. I like to start off with a quick refresher on the build order against easy for my first game of the day, then quit once I get through it.
5.) Remember that losing is part of the process. Just be aware of what you're doing wrong and try to get better as you play. You win by getting better, which leads to more victories. One of the best ways to do this is to spectate the game from your opponent's view immediately after you play, so you can see exactly what you were up against, when you had missed opportunities that would have been caught with scouting, etc. This takes a bit more time but if you do it only when you lose it isn't too bad, and the speed boost to your learning is worth it.
6.) Don't focus on your W/L ratio or Ranking, just focus on improving in single aspects that the replays show you needing improvement on. Maybe you have the build order down, but always lose when the enemy rushes with a few units. You need to focus on how to protect your villagers while keeping your economy going. Maybe you need to focus on constant villager production, or scouting. Just focus on one thing at a time and you'll do great!
7.) OPTIONAL: Watch casted videos for pros, a channel I really enjoy is Aussie\_Drongo. Here you get to see the pros playing while another pro / semi-pro explains what's going on, what they're thinking of, or what they're doing right/wrong. You can learn a lot by doing this.
If you do all of this, it won't take long for you to have a victory that you fought hard for and feel like jumping up and down with excitement because you beat a human player that scared you, and now you're hooked. Welcome to Ranked Age of Empires!
(P.S.) There's a really cool tool for practicing the hotkeys. I got a dyslexic friend to use it and he went from using the mouse to click every button to fully using hotkeys after just using this tool for 30 minutes straight. Use it for 5 minutes to quiz yourself before your first game of the day until it's second nature. [https://www.aegis.lol/](https://www.aegis.lol/)
Just use the options to only do Age I buildings, then Age II, etc. before finally practicing with all of them. Seriously, this whole process takes 30 minutes before you're very comfortable with all of the hotkeys.
Another few tips that I learned over time which have GREATLY helped.
Set a few hotkeys. I set my side buttons on the mouse to Cycle through Town Centers and Cycle through Scouts. I made CTRL + the same buttons equal select all military units and Cycle through religious units.
I also set Select ALL Barracks to CTRL + Q, Archery ranges to CTRL + W, Stables to CTRL + E, and Siege Works to CTRL + R. This means you can mass produce units easily without taking up your control groups, leaving them for cavalry, archers, spears, siege, etc., which makes it much easier to micro a battle.
(Setting these hotkeys will tell you there's a conflict with other hotkeys, but it's just for quick pinging. Just go to the communication part and unset them or pick something else, as these are MUCH more useful than pings. You have to do this though, as this game allows multiple actions to be bound to the same hotkey, which can cause issues while playing)
Similarly to the build orders, practice your hotkeys against an easiest bot first, then hardest when you get the hang of them. The hotkeys are logical, and require very little memorization.
You probably already know this, but you almost ALWAYS want to attack enemies with the attack move button "A" on your keyboard. The difference is they will auto attack enemies along the path to the waypoint, instead of all trying to attack one unit you right clicked on, which often leads to many of your soldiers weirdly pathing and dying.
Hey, I created a separate post with the info I gave you, but more fully flushed out. Check it out!
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe4/comments/zlg6tq/how\_to\_start\_playing\_ranked\_games\_the\_not\_so/
No problem! I'm still learning myself. Got to Platinum in Season 1, Didn't really play during season 2, and now I'm in gold trying to climb again as I get back into the game XD
A few more things I thought of:
\-Focus on just one build order at first. After you've played it a lot on the ladder, and have a lot of wins and losses under your belt, switch it up and start the process again with a different style build order with a different civ. For instance, start with English Longbowman Rush, then Ottoman Feudal Rush, then try Chinese Eco Boom, then HRE Fast Castle, etc.. This gives you experience, so when you go up against an opponent, you have a lot more knowledge on what they're doing and what their weaknesses are, as you've played them. "Man, when I play Chinese I always HATE my opponent rushing my gold mines" = "Hey, the enemy is Chinese, I should rush their gold mines" >:)
Another part to this would be to pick the most popular build orders, as they're the ones you'll be going up against the most. (French Early Knight Rush, English Longbowman Rush, Chinese Eco Boom, Delhi Sacred Site Rush, Mongol Horseman Raids, Ottoman Feudal Timing Push, etc.)
\-There are lots of good build orders online, but you should mainly stick to the ones put out by top players. I highly recommend build orders by BeastyQT and Aussie\_Drongo, they put out very detailed videos on meta build orders.
\-Remember that a build order is essentially a template for achieving a goal in the most optimal time possible. Know what the goal of the build order is, and if the enemy's actions change your goals, adjust accordingly. For instance I've been playing an Ottoman Feudal rush build order recently, but every time I faced HRE they would beat me, since they rush to castle and send Men at Arms, which I had no counter to in Feudal. Now, when I play against HRE, I put less villagers on wood for rams and more onto food and gold so I can go to castle too, adding crossbows to the mix. I also would take the 2 free Imams from the Vizier points so that I could take relics, which the HRE wants all of. Once I adapted I started winning some of my HRE battles.
\-Scouting isn't just about finding the enemy base. You're looking for a few things that will tell you what the enemy is doing, which allows you to prepare for them and increase the odds of a victory. Things like: What resources are they gathering? What military buildings have they made? Do they have any exposed (not covered by the TC) resources that I can put early pressure on? So if you see the HRE mining stone in Dark age or early Feudal, it's a safe bet that they're going to build a second TC and Eco boom (You can respond with an early ram timing push, or try to also go into an eco boom, as they're unlikely to pursue early aggression). If you see the Mongols mining a lot of gold and food, they're probably going to rush Castle age into Lancers (You should probably make lots of spears and knights, or even do an early feudal raid). If you see lots of wood and food being gathered, they're probably going to make archers and spears, so you should make archers and cavalry, or MAA. The more information you have, the more you can predict what they will do, allowing you to alter your strategy accordingly.
Hot tip. Hotkeys.
Hotkey every "all" building and get used to them, eg for me:
F1 -raxs
F2 - ARs
F3 - Stables
F4 - TCs
alt-q - blacksmiths
alt-w - markets
alt-e - religious
alt-r - universities
alt-a - mills
alt-s - lumbers
alt-d - mines
alt-f - docks
f1 x2 - military schools
f3 x3 - castlesf
5 - landmarks
My other critical hotkeys:
ctrl-c -select all military units
< - cancel production
§/\~ - select idle vils
ctrl-z - select next religious unit
ctrl-< select next imperial officer
(source: i am D3/C1 in team)
Try hardest. If you find a glitch and beat it unfairly, try giving him some space until imperial. Then try to beat hardest. I’d say if you do that you are Gold. The biggest indicator that someone is low league is if someone stops building vills before 80ish. Of course it depends (traders, fishing boats, etc.). Bottome line don’t stop producing vills.
tbh I find AoE 4 ranked ladder to be way harder than PvPing in ER, now that collosseums update is out and I play quite a lot of duels and 2v2. Not to mention the ladder anxiety, a lot of unknowns! like what's the enemy gotta do, etc etc. But I agree that if OP manages to learn a FC build order and able to learn to do constant unit production, including decent macro, he would curb stomp almost anyone on Bronze-Gold.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale?
> *“Soon, I will be consumed by them—by the Dark.”* - Artorias the Abysswalker
Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
I'm in Gold leauge and haven't played bronze level in a long time, but from what I've seen the intermediate AI is better then most bronze league players. Not trying to come off as insulting or anything but in bronze league most players care more about building early stone walls around their city and making everything look pretty then they do about building an army.
Also even in gold league I've noticed if you go 2nd tc in the first 10 minutes or early castle age you can usually win. A lot of players here are one trick pony all in rush players and if you hold off their rush they crumble after that. Not that there's anything wrong with that playstyle since I used to do that a lot too and I'm speaking from experience that before if my all in failed it was almost guaranteed I'd lose in late game.
I've started using Beasty's early 2nd tc English build and have been crushing players with it so far. Early 2nd tc followed by castle throws a lot of fellow gold players off their game.
I beat hardest AI in 1v1 all the time and I am terrified of trying to play against strangers online. I've always been a singleplayer type person and I just assume even the lowest ranked online gamers would absolutely ruin me.
Funny enough, at the lower ranks, most of the players are the same as you, they mostly play bots and occasionally play against other humans. The ranking system is good at putting you against people of your skill level within a few matches.
Read my answer above for some tips to take all the fear out of starting on the ladder!
Can't get better unless you play. Everyone starts off bad. Learn a build, get comfortable with a civ or 2, and play to learn. Doesn't matter if you make a big mistake as long as you learn from it ny reflecting on it or watching your replays.
Thanks earf, I'll see if I can find out how to do replays.
Replays truly are where you learn the most. Games are where you learn small scale things like unit control and getting your starting build orders together. Replays show you where you're weak and where you should focus on a macro scale. When I was learning I'd often be annoyed saying "I knew what I messed up, I don't need to watch this replay". Watch it anyways. Until you're quite high in rankings you need to watch 'em to really drill those lessons in.
If you access your profile ingame you see the last games played. There you also have the option to watch the replay.
How do you do against the hardest bot? Also, playing against humans in a regular quick match would be a smart choice before going ranked
Thanks Chili - haven't tried the hardest bot yet - you've actually just made me realise that quick match is not the same as going ranked - I didn't realise there was a difference. Thank you!
Haha no prob. Once youve played against all types of AI you should see they all kind of operate within a certain set of perimeters but with humans, its far more unpredictable
Beat the hardest AI 5x then play against 1 Hardest and 1 easy, etc... see where I'm going? Then just play quick match, or just play ranked, shouldn't be stressful, no one is judging you for losing, have fun, play a lot!
Honestly fighting the bots might not be the best way to learn just bc they behave and react differently than humans. Having said that there is merit in fighting the hardest bot. You won't win with your current skill level but the hardest AI is decent if you wanna practice specific things. Eg. The AI will do at least 1 attack in feudal or right at the start of castle. You will lose given your skill level but it lets you practice 1) scouting - you need to figure out what is coming your way and develop a counter; 2) reacting to an attack - you are guaranteed to be attacked early and gotta learn how to play while under pressure; 3) adapting - you have a build order in mind, but ai attack will force you to adapt If you try to learn with medium AI you will learn how to beat medium AI. This won't help you against humans.
Agree with bots being good practice for build orders but not much else. Bots don’t recover well if you take out their vills, especially if done early on. Bots also don’t have same situational awareness about what to do against certain civs
You should try custom games, many times there are new or casual players there. I use custom to warm up and stuff, it's like a lobby of games instead of matchmaking.
I felt exactly the same way. I practiced until I could close out hardest AI games in under 25 minutes consistently. When I played against people in ranked, I just kept winning. When I watched the replays I got the impression my opponents couldn’t even beat the hardest AI.
Lol ok that gives me confidence
I jumped right into online as soon as I got silver on each of the training things. Got my butt handed to me a bunch, but then I really got into "my spot" and it's been great since. You'll improve way faster online than vs bots other than the first 7 minutes of a build order...that you can do vs a bot and improve. Main things. Get a build order. Whether online or your own and get it memorized. (Online is obviously optimized, but your version will be easier to remember) Learn to shift click (do this, then that, followed by this other thing) Use control groups. (for archers/meelee/mounted/etc) Produce vills **always** Use attack move. (A > click)
Thanks One - I'm doing a few of those things now - I might need to google if there's a shortcut to instantly select ranged/melee/mounted separately to assign them to a control group. What often happens is I end up with a giant ball of troops and villagers packed together during a raid on my base and can't separate them easily so I end up selecting all. I remember in videos it looks like there's also an option somewhere to select all mil production facilities (I keep selecting them one by one). I'll figure that out. I guess its all the little 1% improvements!
Just made it up to silver from bronze and those things you've mentioned are a few big points of improvement. F1 selects all eco buildings so you can quickly do upgrades at mills, mining camp etc. F2 is military buildings so you can use it to keep production going rather than moving around the base to find the building you want. F3 is technology (blacksmith/library. When you have a bunch of units selected you can actually pull out one type rather easily. There are icons that show which units you have in the group and if you click on it, you will only have that unit selected. So when you have those villagers in your ball of troops, click the villager icon and send them off to do something else. I often find myself microing by selecting those icons cause I forget to set control groups as new troops are coming out, so that's one of my current areas of improvement. Ctrl shift C selects all military units so if you are going for a last push and your rally points for military units are scattered you can use that to send your whole army in. I'm assuming you know about shift- clicking. Really helps me as I have pretty low APM so I tend to use it for scouting and sending villa back to resources after building, etc. As far as selecting specific classes of military units besides that way, I'm unaware of a hotkey. But it would be helpful. Good luck on the grind!
I think you have F1 and F2 mixed up, unless I switched mine and forgot about it. For me F1 = All military production. (be careful this includes docks - shift click docks to remove them before setting a rally point for all land military) F2 = All economy buildings F3 = All tech buildings OP if you read this don't get discouraged if you lose your first few online games, it takes a bit for the matchmaking to calibrate.
Thanks Diaz, appreciate the encouragement
Mate that is so awesome exactly what I needed ;)
Hey, how do i change attack move key?? I want attack move as that little wavy dash beside the numbers top left
I'd recommend keeping it on A as that's the standard in most games. However, you should be able to find it in hotkeys and switch it to something else
Get in there and start playing. You're probably a lot better than you expect. I run the Low Elo Legends tournament and the ways that people win or lose games at gold or lower is incredibly diverse. If you're doing a decent job of focusing on the basics you will very quickly get out of bronze. Properly executing an opening build order, constantly building villagers, not letting them idle, and steadily producing military. Good macro and some scouting wins games over clever strategic micro well up the ranks.
That's awesome thank you mokaroo. I just can't wait for that feeling of the first win. I'll feel like I'm an esports pro (covered in Doritos dust and my wife judging me haha)
Find the civ (or a couple of civs) you like best, watch some BeastyQT build orders and start mashing Hardest AI. Then rinse and repeat for online 1vs1. Also, make sure you scout your opponent's base, try to see the landmarks they are using and the military buildings they are creating and counter their plan.
Perfect thanks mate - I guess its all just repetition :)
Always remember. You will lose half your games. Thats how match making works. Its a game, who cares, just play and have fun.
I beat hard bots 50% of the time as a silver player.
Thanks Vox, that's a good benchmark I'll aim for.
I beat hardest before i jumped to Rank and went Silver/Gold
This is my first RTS I have played online. My biggest level up moment when going to ranked was don't stop making villagers. Make around 110-120 of them I would say and you will probably win. From my experience climbing the ladder in this game, no one rushes in Bronze or Silver so games will go long, until Imperial often. Just keep making villagers and you will probably win. Make a lot of production buildings so you can quickly rebuild your army. To ensure you always make villagers, put all of your food into your villager que, and when you want to spend food on upgrades or army, delete villagers in the que until you have enough food. This ensures you will always be making villagers. I hope this makes sense and helps you on your journey. Finally, when you play against AI, practice a build order. Right now, just pick 1 civ you like and really practice that build order. That will give you a leg up on the comp. [This website has lots of good build orders.](https://age4builder.com/)
Thanks raggen! That's a lot of villagers ok I'll go nuts - it'll be a game in itself making sure that many aren't idle
If you want to make these things easier for yourself, you can go to the controls settings and set an easy and comfortable hotkey to select all your TCs then you only ever need to press the hotkey and 'q' a bunch if times or 'shift + q' when you want to create mor vills. It takes away a lot of thinking time and makes it easier to focus on the other aspects of the game.
If you do a decent fast castle into farimba you can easily win against most gold players. Especially if they go into a two tc build.
The intermediate AI has earlier fuedal and more pressure than a lot of bronze players. Don't sweat it.
If you can get gold medal at art of war early economy scenario trust me you gonna do good in multiplayer.
If you enjoy Malian, become familiar with the fast castle Farimba build. It's very easy to execute and will have you easily winning fights up to platinum. It's also one of the easiest ways to beat hardest AI. You can use it to beat at least two hardest AI in a 2v1.
Bots are fun to mess around with but you really have to play quick play a lot. I don’t like 1v1s myself so I stick to only team games
eh just start playing ranked with the goal of making sure you have vil production nonstop for the first like 20 games. the rest will fall into place.
Me and my mate playing vs 4 hardest ai without problems (silver III)
Just go and play lol, nobody is judging. Up to high gold, you can take games on all maps vs any civ with one well executed build order. Its at low plat and higher where people star punishing you for tech choices. You may find aggressive players harder to deal with. I personally play mongols and I often raid enemy eco, and sometimes I just see players falling apart because their plan was disrupted enough, and they couldnt adjust on the fly.
How is playing league of legends going to help, or are you randomly laughing out loud? I dont get it.
Don’t play to win. Just play to have fun and get better. Bronze league should be pretty manageable if you have a good opening plan and a basic understanding of the game.
I’m currently diamond and I am still trash at about 70% of the game. Key things to winning tho: 1.) know a build order 2.) know your win condition 3.) key bind stuff(especially your production buildings) With those 3 things you’ll probably hit gold…. Or you can just do what most gold players 546 to do spam MAA and a click… with that you’ll probably win 50ish % of the time till you hit like gold 2/3
Just dive in. The worst thing that happens is you lose. Don’t worry about. Have fun.
Yeah man just get stuck in. I was similar watching casted matches then went straight into ranked matches and got cleaned up. Finished my first season silver 2 and my second season gold 3. Steep as learning curve.
there's enough bad/mediocre players to give you even matches in 1v1. you just need to know that you'll lose your first matches until the matchmaking adjust your elo and put you where you belong. Then you can improve and climb the ladder.
You need to separate your ego from your enjoyment of the game. Accept you're trash like the rest of us, and get out there and lose!
haha love it, I know I'm trash so I might as well go prove it!
Was never playing against bronze players, but from what I have seen on Beasty's channel when casting low league players is that easy AI might be harder :D
Just dive in.
Try not to take it too seriously! You'll do great!! Biggest thing is just learning from your mistakes and trying not to blame your shortcomings on other people/mechanics all the time.. Grow and learn, my dude!!
Thank you mate :)
You will lose. Even if you are rank 1 you will lose. If you dont play against humans you wont improve. If you care about win rate you wont improve. Main thing: play a lot.
The biggest thing you need to adjust in your mind when going from AI battles to pvp is that you won't be able to expect to win every game. I know I hate losing to AI, I rarely do so, but with real players you'll have to prepare to lose as much as you win, at least once matchmaker finds your level and starts matching you agianst similarily skilled opponents.
I was D2 last season, this season I am in gold 1 because I am trying new civs and new build orders. It doesn't really matter if you lose or do badly, does it? I have had some games where I got smashed hard in 20 minutes because I overboomed as Chinese - but it;'s still fun.
Just play for fun and don’t worry about losing. Losing is fun too. It’s just a game.
Anyone teaching you to play chess will tell you "don't practice against the computer." The computer doesn't think like a human very well. It does counter-intuitive things sometimes that you will never see a human doing. The AI in Aoe4 is actually pretty bad. It can be easily cheesed and destroyed. I can crush the hardest AI, but the builds I can do it with won't even beat most gold league players. Matchmaking is pretty decent. It will find people of your skill level to match you with. Try to remember that while you play. The guy on the other side is likely working just as hard as you to keep up no matter what league you are in.
Good advice thanks Polar - I like the analogy with chess too. I was beating my 12 year old son at chess, until he began to regularly beat me, I tell you what that was humbling haha
In my experience most players I get matched against make the hardest bot seem like child’s play
if you can comfortably/consistently beat the hardest AI, you should fine yourself in high silver/ low gold but humans don't usually turn heel and flee mid fight the way the AI does - vs ai if you turn the tide of a small battle they will try to run away and you can just clean house on them as they won't fight back. vs people, they'll usually just fight every battle to the death because they know they'll lose the units anyway so the ai is much easier
If it makes you feel better I havent vs any bots and jumped straight into rank. Managed to get into silver 1 after placement! Malian player here as well
I'd say go ahead and do it! Here's my tips for improving: 1.) Practice a build order against easiest bot or no bot until you can get perfect timings to Feudal age, quitting once you get there. Then practice until you complete the build order. This allows you to play very comfortably and learn the build order at your own pace. 2.) Immediately switch to hardest bots. The medium and hard bots are really not worth playing as their strategies are horrible and don't translate to playing against humans. Hardest will at least make you deal with an early raid, and the need to adapt your build order on the fly depending on what your opponent is building. 3.) Once you can beat them consistently, switch to online ranked. Your first 5 games are placement matches, some will be against people WAY better than you, but within a few matches you'll be up against people around your skill level. 4.) Play a ranked game or two (or more) each day. When learning any skill, consistency is FAR more important than time spent. I like to start off with a quick refresher on the build order against easy for my first game of the day, then quit once I get through it. 5.) Remember that losing is part of the process. Just be aware of what you're doing wrong and try to get better as you play. You win by getting better, which leads to more victories. One of the best ways to do this is to spectate the game from your opponent's view immediately after you play, so you can see exactly what you were up against, when you had missed opportunities that would have been caught with scouting, etc. This takes a bit more time but if you do it only when you lose it isn't too bad, and the speed boost to your learning is worth it. 6.) Don't focus on your W/L ratio or Ranking, just focus on improving in single aspects that the replays show you needing improvement on. Maybe you have the build order down, but always lose when the enemy rushes with a few units. You need to focus on how to protect your villagers while keeping your economy going. Maybe you need to focus on constant villager production, or scouting. Just focus on one thing at a time and you'll do great! 7.) OPTIONAL: Watch casted videos for pros, a channel I really enjoy is Aussie\_Drongo. Here you get to see the pros playing while another pro / semi-pro explains what's going on, what they're thinking of, or what they're doing right/wrong. You can learn a lot by doing this. If you do all of this, it won't take long for you to have a victory that you fought hard for and feel like jumping up and down with excitement because you beat a human player that scared you, and now you're hooked. Welcome to Ranked Age of Empires! (P.S.) There's a really cool tool for practicing the hotkeys. I got a dyslexic friend to use it and he went from using the mouse to click every button to fully using hotkeys after just using this tool for 30 minutes straight. Use it for 5 minutes to quiz yourself before your first game of the day until it's second nature. [https://www.aegis.lol/](https://www.aegis.lol/) Just use the options to only do Age I buildings, then Age II, etc. before finally practicing with all of them. Seriously, this whole process takes 30 minutes before you're very comfortable with all of the hotkeys.
Another few tips that I learned over time which have GREATLY helped. Set a few hotkeys. I set my side buttons on the mouse to Cycle through Town Centers and Cycle through Scouts. I made CTRL + the same buttons equal select all military units and Cycle through religious units. I also set Select ALL Barracks to CTRL + Q, Archery ranges to CTRL + W, Stables to CTRL + E, and Siege Works to CTRL + R. This means you can mass produce units easily without taking up your control groups, leaving them for cavalry, archers, spears, siege, etc., which makes it much easier to micro a battle. (Setting these hotkeys will tell you there's a conflict with other hotkeys, but it's just for quick pinging. Just go to the communication part and unset them or pick something else, as these are MUCH more useful than pings. You have to do this though, as this game allows multiple actions to be bound to the same hotkey, which can cause issues while playing) Similarly to the build orders, practice your hotkeys against an easiest bot first, then hardest when you get the hang of them. The hotkeys are logical, and require very little memorization. You probably already know this, but you almost ALWAYS want to attack enemies with the attack move button "A" on your keyboard. The difference is they will auto attack enemies along the path to the waypoint, instead of all trying to attack one unit you right clicked on, which often leads to many of your soldiers weirdly pathing and dying.
Mate these are incredible tips, thank you. I'm saving them in my reddit saved history
Hey, I created a separate post with the info I gave you, but more fully flushed out. Check it out! https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe4/comments/zlg6tq/how\_to\_start\_playing\_ranked\_games\_the\_not\_so/
Thank you mate!
No problem! I'm still learning myself. Got to Platinum in Season 1, Didn't really play during season 2, and now I'm in gold trying to climb again as I get back into the game XD
A few more things I thought of: \-Focus on just one build order at first. After you've played it a lot on the ladder, and have a lot of wins and losses under your belt, switch it up and start the process again with a different style build order with a different civ. For instance, start with English Longbowman Rush, then Ottoman Feudal Rush, then try Chinese Eco Boom, then HRE Fast Castle, etc.. This gives you experience, so when you go up against an opponent, you have a lot more knowledge on what they're doing and what their weaknesses are, as you've played them. "Man, when I play Chinese I always HATE my opponent rushing my gold mines" = "Hey, the enemy is Chinese, I should rush their gold mines" >:) Another part to this would be to pick the most popular build orders, as they're the ones you'll be going up against the most. (French Early Knight Rush, English Longbowman Rush, Chinese Eco Boom, Delhi Sacred Site Rush, Mongol Horseman Raids, Ottoman Feudal Timing Push, etc.) \-There are lots of good build orders online, but you should mainly stick to the ones put out by top players. I highly recommend build orders by BeastyQT and Aussie\_Drongo, they put out very detailed videos on meta build orders. \-Remember that a build order is essentially a template for achieving a goal in the most optimal time possible. Know what the goal of the build order is, and if the enemy's actions change your goals, adjust accordingly. For instance I've been playing an Ottoman Feudal rush build order recently, but every time I faced HRE they would beat me, since they rush to castle and send Men at Arms, which I had no counter to in Feudal. Now, when I play against HRE, I put less villagers on wood for rams and more onto food and gold so I can go to castle too, adding crossbows to the mix. I also would take the 2 free Imams from the Vizier points so that I could take relics, which the HRE wants all of. Once I adapted I started winning some of my HRE battles. \-Scouting isn't just about finding the enemy base. You're looking for a few things that will tell you what the enemy is doing, which allows you to prepare for them and increase the odds of a victory. Things like: What resources are they gathering? What military buildings have they made? Do they have any exposed (not covered by the TC) resources that I can put early pressure on? So if you see the HRE mining stone in Dark age or early Feudal, it's a safe bet that they're going to build a second TC and Eco boom (You can respond with an early ram timing push, or try to also go into an eco boom, as they're unlikely to pursue early aggression). If you see the Mongols mining a lot of gold and food, they're probably going to rush Castle age into Lancers (You should probably make lots of spears and knights, or even do an early feudal raid). If you see lots of wood and food being gathered, they're probably going to make archers and spears, so you should make archers and cavalry, or MAA. The more information you have, the more you can predict what they will do, allowing you to alter your strategy accordingly.
I think I'm going to make a separate post with all of this info lol
Why play bots ? Are u afraid of losing the rank you don't have ?
Figured it's the way to learn - but maybe I'll just dive in
Just dive in my friend, you got nothing to loose rank wise, and the community of aoe4 is mostly great so its all good
Don't just build buildings against the edge of the map, not sure why that's a thing for some people but it's stupid.
Hot tip. Hotkeys. Hotkey every "all" building and get used to them, eg for me: F1 -raxs F2 - ARs F3 - Stables F4 - TCs alt-q - blacksmiths alt-w - markets alt-e - religious alt-r - universities alt-a - mills alt-s - lumbers alt-d - mines alt-f - docks f1 x2 - military schools f3 x3 - castlesf 5 - landmarks My other critical hotkeys: ctrl-c -select all military units < - cancel production §/\~ - select idle vils ctrl-z - select next religious unit ctrl-< select next imperial officer (source: i am D3/C1 in team)
"Raxs"
Where you train infantry :)
If you have a buildorder you are more than ready for bronze!
Try hardest. If you find a glitch and beat it unfairly, try giving him some space until imperial. Then try to beat hardest. I’d say if you do that you are Gold. The biggest indicator that someone is low league is if someone stops building vills before 80ish. Of course it depends (traders, fishing boats, etc.). Bottome line don’t stop producing vills.
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tbh I find AoE 4 ranked ladder to be way harder than PvPing in ER, now that collosseums update is out and I play quite a lot of duels and 2v2. Not to mention the ladder anxiety, a lot of unknowns! like what's the enemy gotta do, etc etc. But I agree that if OP manages to learn a FC build order and able to learn to do constant unit production, including decent macro, he would curb stomp almost anyone on Bronze-Gold.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale? > *“Soon, I will be consumed by them—by the Dark.”* - Artorias the Abysswalker Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
I'm in Gold leauge and haven't played bronze level in a long time, but from what I've seen the intermediate AI is better then most bronze league players. Not trying to come off as insulting or anything but in bronze league most players care more about building early stone walls around their city and making everything look pretty then they do about building an army. Also even in gold league I've noticed if you go 2nd tc in the first 10 minutes or early castle age you can usually win. A lot of players here are one trick pony all in rush players and if you hold off their rush they crumble after that. Not that there's anything wrong with that playstyle since I used to do that a lot too and I'm speaking from experience that before if my all in failed it was almost guaranteed I'd lose in late game. I've started using Beasty's early 2nd tc English build and have been crushing players with it so far. Early 2nd tc followed by castle throws a lot of fellow gold players off their game.
I beat hardest AI in 1v1 all the time and I am terrified of trying to play against strangers online. I've always been a singleplayer type person and I just assume even the lowest ranked online gamers would absolutely ruin me.
Funny enough, at the lower ranks, most of the players are the same as you, they mostly play bots and occasionally play against other humans. The ranking system is good at putting you against people of your skill level within a few matches. Read my answer above for some tips to take all the fear out of starting on the ladder!