You missed the all-important AI openings: full skirms vs scouts, two range spear skirm archers mix, and of course, that 4d chess build where you make militia but don't send them across the map.

These are all highly appreciated..it's just great , accessible fundamentals for the game that comes with no stress. Many thanks!

Great timing with you making these videos. I only started playing again maybe 6 weeks ago, and they've been a great aid in learning the game again. GGs

I love so much your content Hera, so chill and detailed

Good info. I'd love to see more about how to defend aganist these. At low levels these feudal pressure rushes tend to end with one of the players crumbling completely either by losing too many vils or messing up the macro at home.

Thank you for all these amazing guides!!

Hey man, congrats on your placing and your performance in TTL 2, thought you played really well. Tournament games between you and Viper are always my favorites, you always push each other to the absolute limit and it's just a joy to watch regardless of who wins with what score!

Thanks Hera, just started playing on Xbox for the first time in a decade and your videos give me the edge in the battlefield!

I have been expecting this kind of content for a long time. Too little atention is brought to these more general but often obscure topics. I would love to hear your take on how te game flow or the stagea a match can go through work.

Great content. You are so good explaining as much as playing!!

Thanks for the new content. I play 3 mostly but will never stop playing 2. Cannot wait for your vods about the new ancient return to Rome mod.

Dude, overall the content you put out Hera is so enjoyable! Personally I don't even play aoe on a high level - at all. I still get pooped on by hard AI. Still your video's entertain me so much. You basically give insight in your massive aoe brain showing us all sorts of stuff you have in your mental archieve. It's great Hera, thanks for the great content brother.

Thank you Hera .... Always for the amazing content

Thanks Hera, this was a great video. It would also be good to understand the best way to counter each of these rushes. Also how do you counter Saracens TC drop? Thanks

13:00 I think VERY long ago SMUSH also used to mean "saracen monk rush", when you FC selling stone with their good market rates and then went all-in monks

Thanks for explaining the different builds! I do like to go castle into UU, but what is your recommended pop for this? Is it like 23+2 or something? Missed that from the vid

You missed the dark age gg opening, very effective one of the fastest. jokes aside fantastic work bro, another great video.

i really wanted to see all the strats that you can go for in this meta

amazing vid!

11:25 - making the walls as soon as you make a house; nice tip, thanks

I've played 1 2v2 ranked game in my life. I'm too scared to play. Somehow, i convinced myself to play ranked. Me and my teammate were on the same brainwave pattern and did a drush in the exact same time without telling each other anything

great video as allways, could you please do a video of how to defend a militia or man at arms rush? i=

Okay, now we need a video about counter-play these strats!

This combined with the top5 would be fun. There is top5 scout rush civs and archer rush but the others dont exist yet.

My favorite - Turks fast imp attempt straight into GG 😂. Now seriously great video thanks

Thank you my lord!

Damn, this is great!

I wonder if my favorite "wall everything extremely early and pretend it's an arena map because I wanted to play arena but rolled another map" strategy is in the list

you mention drush and fast castle, u could have mention the old school "Drush to FC" like just a comment somewhere that explain how u can combine them! great video, Luv from MTL

Your opening made aoe sound like chess. Very inspirational

Don’t forget my fellow LELs no opening is worth it if you idle your TC

maybe a video/videos on how to defend vs the various rushes??

Hera, you need to continue your ultimate guide civs for all of them bro!

Can you recommend a 20 pop archer build (that works for Mayans?) I use an old 23 pop build into 2 ranges, which is fine but a bit slow!

Nice video but I see you missed my own personal favorite build of a random mishmash of units queued up out of one of each unit production building until hitting imperial age around 45 minutes and slapping down some random castles, getting every single upgrade, and pushing the easy AI down with about 8 trebs supported by a maxed out army around 1h30 mark. What's that build called?

If you drop a range right away in Feudal, what buildings are you building in Dark Age? I always build a lumber camp and a mill and focus on food to get to Feudal. Don't usually have enough wood to build a barracks til Feudal.

What about horsecolar? What meta with arche play, do i pick it up asap after 1st range and blacksmith or delay till castleuptime for exmpl?

You missed another FC strat: Fast Castle into GG.

So much love for your content Hera, 🌸🥰

You didn't mention the fast imp into GG 😁

Hey Hera. You probably won’t see this but I directed two new players your way tonight! I played them online and beat them 2v1. They started messaging me “this game is so confusing I don’t know how to play” I sent them your way for some tips and tricks! I’ve been watching for I think 4 years now! Love it

"Scout rush [...] is extremely stable. * No pun intended." LoL!

lol the ones I found more interesting are the ones that causes the more headaches LOL Archer, Scout and Man-at-arms rush sounds really good

You forgot the ever-popular (at my Elo) fast Feudal trade... but on a serious note good video. Might have been worth mentioning that Men At Arms can take down buildings, which is an advantage over other openings.

Can I put in a request for a vid that talks about effective responses to these openers? My biggest weakness is tower rushes because I find them so unintuitive. How do I punish a player doing that? Same with a drush. How do I make an opponents drush not only ineffective but also turn his aggression into a boon for me?

Have Hindustani had theor halbs removed? I cant remove them but tier tree says they have halbs.

if you could make some real quick BO for water maps or nomad ones

I was looking into trying anything other than scout rushes, thanks for putting this together!

Thanks Hera, great video ! You mentioned 20 pop for archers and scouts but in your discord channel the build order (latest is Oct) is stil 21 or 22 pop. What am I missing ?

Great Video, thanks Hera. I am still wondering if Drush counters MAA or the other way around. Lierrey said in a video long time ago, drush has the upper hand because it hits earlier and holds the MAA at home. Recently I heard you commenting on Live Stream in one situation, that you go for MAA because you expect a drush of your enemy. I am confused now.

very useful tips, I just reached 9k elo after watching this :P

do we have data on how often each of those strategies are played?

Excellent! But in a map like arabia how do you decide wich strategy to follow? I lesrned scouts, archers and finally m@a+archers and I don't know when is better to play one over the others.

can we have a build up order( and maybe some adapting details) for those strategy. everytime i try to drush, i ruined my own eco instead of disturbing my opponent's.

What are the names of the mods you use to improve UI?

Where can I get good modern build orders?

Just a small question: why are the drush and the man-at-arms rush so different? Are there downsides to starting with a drush, and then go for man-at-arms if your initial 3 militia survived?

After seeing the thumbnail, I was thinking that being able to build improvized palisade-like bridges across rivers for a raid would be an awesome addition to AoE

Saw you wrote something about it on twitter already, but still going to mention it here: I'd be interesting in a video (or multiple) about dealing with certain military situations. For example playing against an all in, (monk+) siege push, triple stable etc. on Arabia/Arena. :)

You forgot the new 8 pop scouts. Poop lord is the new Hera

My favourite is the fast Imp into GG

We need more scholar in our university, glad you can teach more

if opponent is on fires why not add a demo to the galleys?

I mostly play 19-20 pop straight archers, i think it´s kinda fast, but maybe it´s better to go for maa first and then archers? sometimes the opponent is already walled and I'm not sure what to do then

I think the nomad start should be included here as well.

I wonder how meta is to be slightly misleading with a meta strategy. Like pretending to want to start with one and instead doing another. It might cost half a minute or a minute more because you waste 1-2 units and the resources needed for it and maybe the building, but for that you can mislead and confuse the opponent. In intermediate play I had some success with it, but maybe in the highest tiers that half minute delay with the first attack might make it not worth it (because that could be enough for the opponent to finish walling or to start applying pressure)?

Isn't Trush more commonly seen as a maa trush these days ? It's way more threatening than a trush as you can kill buildings and you force military rather than just towers so your opponent can't rush to castle faster than you.

For M@A opening - is it ever better to destroy the mill/lumber camp than chase fleeing villagers? I've noticed 3 M@A are very quick to take down buildings. Thanks for the video!

i'm LOVING this new types of videos you are making hera! specially for low elo noobs like me, i love the tips and deep explanation about the game coming from a pro!

Ahn i was thinking when its worth to get “suplies”? Its early feudal, or only to mass units?

why no fast imp strategy?

You forgot the noboar opening, when you eat the boars with tc, and go fast skirmishers😅

07:40 My elo level: didn't understand the pun

Missed the ultra classic! Forward barracks, mass Militia, destroy his buildings and add second barracks for more Militia! 20+ is a good number

Now do every non-meta opening

I've heard some confusion around the term "flush" meaning "feudal rush", seeing as it refers to an archer rush specifically, at least in today's use. I'm wondering if it might have meant "fletching rush" originally, and then kind of got mixed up over the decades? Great video by the way! I always second guess what pop to click up at for different builds.

The eagles opening

Tower rush is the most entertaining form of play

how about starting with a good conversation while both booming our economy

discord link not working

thanks

Next time, do a video about my favorite builds please - TC drop, vil rush, etc. All that stupid stuff that if done correctly gets you no gg from the opponent.

Where can I learn the updated builds you mentioned? Still on 22 pop scouts...

where do i get these 20pop archer build orders?

This thumbnail looks like a blurry pizza

Tower rush is by far the most fun

Where is the fast imp amigoo

8:09 didn't know they made some villagers gay, that's great

You missed the fish boom.

The latest guy i would look for information about this game, no real explanation on any video with multiple examples of counters, how to switch villager tasks depending on situations etc

I love the late game, with tons of units, big fights and chaos, its sad that most of the meta strats are rushes, consisting of finishing the game the soonest possible, its like people its scared to play the actual game

What about „fast gg“ ? 🤭

What about the Toxic Archer Rush (TAR) 11 (Alt title: Fastest Archer Rush). Edit: It's popular with 1600-1800 elos. Some of them it's all they do 11

Hera, don't u think that the units should lower their efficiency (attack speed/ move speed/ gathering rate) while on low health? Exampl: -5% with 60% hp, -7% with 30%hp and -10% with 10% hp spreaded throughout the upper factors as a whole?

how many pop for a maa rush with a generic civ ? 22 still good ?

Where is FI into GG?

where be my fast imp of my Lithuanian drush

Got 8 ranked wins in a row yesterday all quit before castle age went with vikings because they have 20 percent more hit points on there infantry so you only have to build the barracks anyway smash a blacksmith down soon as you can upgrade infantry and attack with 5 infantry units and they all ended up quiting before castle age 😂

why does the icon of this video look like a pizza

How about defining acronyms when you use them. Not everyone knows what META stands for.