Another great video covering a topic that I've felt I needed to know more about. The audio seems a bit quiet, but no big deal

Sth on water. Balancing different types of ships

Ty for the video very intresting! I think a good way to prove ur point is to watch the relative value of the upgrade: if I have 10 attack and I get +1 is a 10% increase where if I have 1 armour and I get +1 armour I get double the armor from the upgrade! P. S. An hotkey video would be super useful thx from Italy! :D

I'd like to know if mining upgrades, especially stone mining should be researched.

Show this with persians and possible other civs bonuses

Underrated comment!!!

Black smiths matter

yeah i randomly came here because youtube algorithm and i stayed because of this awesome work

Except with conqus 11

My brother and I were just talking about this topic, thanks for the video!

You get: +4 Attack for Infantry and cavalry +2 Attack and +2 range for Archer Units And you lose: -1 Melee armor for Infantry/Cavalry/Archers -2 Pierce Armor for Infantry/Cavalry/Archers

First of all, you need to set your Hotkeys so you can access it really easy. And you need Map Awarenes, so you notice, when you are under attack And you have to practice... Like 100 Games min... Thats about it

The only thing you need to know to quickwall is first the hotkeys and the most important thing, try this Click (or use hotkeys) to make a wall and at the same time press shift, you won't have to press the hotkeys again and this in online games helps a lot as the ping doesn't matter

I dont recommend beginners to try to quickwall, much better to focus on other things. That said i might make a video on it

@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 Right! I hope to see you in the red bul wololo tournament. best of luck there, man!

@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 I'm not a beginner. I'm 15x DE rated and can't quick wall in DE. It was easier in Voobly. I'd like a video too

War wagons can't deal with massed skirms. As long as you're not playing turks just spam skirms until the korean player runs out of gold.

Hey, I think I am a bit late. But in my opinion you have to think about the investments you both make. A castle cost 650 stone (for most civs) This is a huge investent if you compare it to a situation where you invest your viltime into getting food/gold/wood for more tc's or other militairy buildings. You did not specify if the person makes the castle in early castle age or later on (late castle age when he already has 3 tc's or imp). And the map you are playing so I will try to describe most of the situations. Arena 1. The person is getting his castle right away in castle age. (this can be 1 castle or double castle) This is a common strategy for civs like Burmese and Spanish. You took Koreans for an axample but Warwagons simply cost to much for a 1tc eco unit. You will be investing everything you have in that unit where it can easely be countered by things like knights and monks, or knights and skirms. This is the best example of a big investment to get a big reward. Where you are making another 2 towncenters you will be having the better eco. He has got to do damage in this is something you have to remember. The problem in Arena is that you can't really use mobility that well. You have to get inside his base to do damage but this does not mean that there is nothing you can do. You will have the better economy and you can use this to your advantage. When he is pushing you try to use monks. Specially when he has low numbers there is not a lot he can do against that. Besides that monks have more range than most Unique Units. This will hold him back for atleast 5min game time. Just make sure you get sanctity (this gives you +15 hp which means monks can take a little more hits fighting against small numbers). After the 5min of defending him while you will be having atleast +20 vils by now, He will come with siege. This can easely be countered by using your own siege. It might be smart to get townwatch at this point. Also get handcart if you can affort it. With some basic economy macro you should be able to affort that and this should boost your economy. At this point there are two things you could do. 1.1 Go full castle age play and kinda powerplay him out to his own base This is something I recommend when you have a heavy knight civ like franks, slavs, khmer etc. This is also something I would recomment if you really want to improve, because it really practises your economy balance and production. Keep in mind to NOT overmicro your units since this will disbalance your economy and will give him a change to get back into the game. Either just patrol in or in case he has a treb or bbc snipe the bbc/treb and gb. Keep working on your economy. At some point you really want to go up and ones you click up you want to get like 7-8 vils on to stone for your 4th towncenter and to make a castle right away. (if you can effort it do this earlier but keep in mind that at this point taking out his army is (imo) more important than building that castle. 1.2 the second thing you could do at this point is go up to imp. You should be imp at probably the same time as him if he stays one tc. This is something I would recomment if your a civ with BBC and arbalest. You can effort this because the upgrades and units are rather cheap and besically counters everything he could use. 2. The person is going FI with a castle This is done with civs like Turks or Maya. This is not that common anymore since I believe they nerfed plums a lot and I heard that jans suck now. But if you happen to face this strat it is rather easy to counter. Basically what you have to do is going 3 tc like always and the moment he is imp and will be pushing you make a lot of knights and siege to push him back (He would even have a worse eco than someone who is going castle age play). 3. Miniboom into multiple castles in imp. Seeing that you talked about Warwagons I believe this is the situation you were talking about. Your right, it is really hard to face War Wagons. Specially when they are combined with siege. But you have to remember that they need to get to that point of the game. We are talking about late game here. 3.1 The best way to counter this is simply be faster than him. Doing your own Fast Imperial (using trebs or bbc and a support unit) and making sure that even if they have castles, that you take them down right away. He has to mass his unit anyways and if you can prefend that than that would be awesome! 3.2 Just powerplay in Imperial. Even if you kind of do the same boom as him (taking in count your civs have the same economy). You should be able to be slightly faster in imp than him. Against WarWagons simply get heavy cav or some other powerunit with some siege. and make sure he can not expand to the other golds and stones and make sure you get the same or more relics than him. Now I will talk a bit about other maps. Since I have basically talked about the way you should approach. However in every map this plays out a bit differently. In the situations above I took Arena for an example and Arena is kind of a closed map. But what if you have an open map like Arabia?

Arabia In my opinion it should be harder to go for the Unique Unit aproach than in a closed map like Arena. You need to spent time walling and this will delay your push. But on the other hand you got the same problem while you have to defend. Also, you most likely won't stone wall in Arabia. In Arabia you have the advantage that you can scout what he is doing. And you are able to pressure him before he got his castle up. This can be done by a simple drush or flush build where you make sure he does not have the change to get to stone. If he happen to have both his stonepiles in the back you still delay him. I know that in practise this is a lot harder than in theory since you need to defend well and your uptimes and eco management has to be on point. Since this is the comment section of Hera I will start with saying that if you really want to learn a perfect buildorder to stop these kind of pushes I would recomment subscribing to Hera's Twitch stream (www.twitch.tv/hera). Because if you are a subscriber there, you get acces to his Build Orders in his discord. Apart from that I will talk a bit about some other things to improve your game play Eco management I cant stress enough how important this is. Specially now with all those Build Orders and all the fancy micro happening nowadays people tend to forget how important eco management is. A build order is not enough. It sure helps a lot (specially Hera's Build Order guides for subscribers) but it does not tell the whole story. I would recomment watching this video (kzfaq.info/get/bejne/sK9iYLd_mLGXdJs.html) Its a video from Daut talking about how and where you should focus on while improving on what level. The video is from two years ago on voobly. But in my opinion its even more relevant today. Also Hera has a lot of video's where he talks about tips for improving your economy kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o7CWecuHuNvdgnk.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bMl5lJNhy9qRgIE.html Important is to note what you want to make and bace your economy around that. I give you an axample. Lets say I am castle age at around 23min. I made scouts and I did more damage than I took. My opponent is now fully walled and I know I have the economy advantage. However I found it risky to do a 1tc all in push since I don't want to screw it up and give away my advantage. I am Lithuanians and I know I have the better army combo aslong as I get relics. and map control. So I want to do a miniboom into full knights. In that case you will spent a lot of food, wood and gold in the near future. So after you placed your two extra towncenters while scouting what he is doing, you should do upgrades that will help you with getting to the point of getting 5 stable knight production. In this case heavy plow, handcart and gold shaft mining upgrade might be a great idea before you add all those stables since handcart boosts your food production by a lot so you need less farms to keep your stable and tc production going while still looking towards Imperial at some point. Heavy plow helps safe you a lot of wood while you are making new farms. This helps you expand when you get to late game (you safe a lot more wood wich helps you later in the game) and goldshaft mining since you will be spending a lot of gold. The point I want to make clear with this axample is that you need to look into why you do upgrades instead of simply blindly doing them because experts do them. Scouting Scouting is also a big helping key in countering strats like these. Scouting does not stop after dark age! I mentioned in my example above that you should scout what your opponent is doing. If you don't do that you will get suprised and will be losing a lot of vils. Lets say your adding two extra tc's without scouting what your opponent is doing. He is going double stable with a forward siege workshop and you haven't scouted it. You will not be prepaired for his push and will most likely lose because of this. That is why you should always keep scouting. It is even worth it making an extra unit (preferably a scout) to know what your opponent is up to. Xbows are easely countered by some siege and walls and is a big investment. And you can counter Knights with your own knights and monks. Some even use towers and monks. This is basically how to counter the Hoang rush in theory. Try to raid his side golds. He most likely has walled his main gold but at some point he has to get to his side golds since his main gold will dry out fast. If you can raid him at those so called key positions you can slow down his push or even stop it all together. A good axample of good scouting is this video (kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ibacqtyWudbRc2Q.html) I hope this helps somewhat. I hope you are still playing and improving! I just want to add that I am not an expert. I have reached 2k on Voobly pre-DE so I know the basics of the game. If someone like @Hera - Age of Empires 2 or any other person got some critisism or comment about what I have said above. Feel free to reply.

Ranged units have to go fetching first for the extra range

If you're going archers then you get fletching first. If you have a lot of skirms then you get fletching first too but it's also recommended to get armour on them.

You can find all this stuff on Spirit of the Law's channel. He does the maths and everything around the hidden bonuses.

PianoDome I know that's where I got all of this knowledge from😂 that and from aoe2 fandom Wikia. But I would LOVE LOVE if the pros become aware of such hidden bonuses because it can be game changing for an important tournament match

I love ur explanation more. And that's what i am always thinking of. It's more important to look how many hit to kill and resist before and after upgrade.

Spirit of the law, that's your second account?^^

@@hallo918 please this isnt even math. that's just counting. a real Math question would be: how many more Numbers would you need for which amount of upgrades. also tiny advantages steamroll heavily so what looks like small advantages on 10 knights could be huge on 30 knights with equal ratios. Lancesters laws are a bitch.

@@hansoskar1911 True! Same as why I think one damage upgrade for knights is pretty important if you want to raid with them cause they will kill vills in 4 hits instead of 5 making your raids a lot more deadly.

I mean "the devil is in the details"... Plz. The conclusion is the same you simply wrote off the exact numbers. Ok cool but in order to get good at the game you don't need to know every bonus in exact numbers and do calculations to know if you are going to win or less a fight. Hera's video is not to make happy the stat nerds is for helping beginners understand which upgrade to take first.

You are too dangerous to be kept alive

Ctrl+shift+F2 to control the second player.

Run away, don't get your Knights In a fight with pikes if you can avoid it. Skirms are a good counter

I'd say armor. Vils can also fight scouts if they outnumber them..

Good question! In most cases one blacksmith should be enough. However lets say you are playing some Blackforest teamgame and you did a standard boom. Now you want to get all blacksmith upgrades as fast as possible. In that case (since a blacksmith is only 150) wood it might be worth making two blacksmiths to get the upgrades slightly faster. This also applies if you want to make a quick unit switch and you have the resorses for it. Apart from that its better to just stick with one since it still is an investment you could avoid most of the times.

Hi! No, you have to upgrade the archer's armor line to improve cavalry archers, elephantos (and conquistadors too!) However, they take benefeit from cavalry upgrades like bloodlines or husbandry.

@@Sjavlin Graciaas Javi!!!

btw @hera , are you a Scarborough mans? I feel like it's that or Brampton -- just a suspicion based on some of your team-game argot ;) #6ixhype #drakeshighkeyabitch

you can put a very narrow cliff around them so they can only walk into each other. Or make a script to make them move towards each other.

Set the AI personality to "None"

It's about having a stronger eco while castle age is researching.

Good question! A vilager has 40 HP and 1 melee armour. A scout has 5 attack up on reaching fudual age. So without forging a scout needs 10 hits to kill a villager. With forging a scout needs 8 hits to kill a villager. So it does help. However this is with the cost of two extra scouts and it could delay your uptime. So I would say, if you can effort it and if you are able to do the damage with those scouts, do it! But if you can't it is not really worth it. Hera has some insane Buildorders for going for a heavy scouts aproach on his discord. If you are a subscriber at his Twitch channel, you will get acces to the Buildorder! (www.twitch.tv/hera)

They will get a better surround, makes it harder for the xbow to leave as well

Perfect thanks 11, well I just used 10 as an example and I hope it was enough to answer the question in the vid

@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 Well if the attack of a Pikeman minus the armor of a knight was roughly equal to the attack of a knight minus the armor of a pikeman, it wouldn't matter that much which Blacksmith upgrades to get, would it?

Martijn Bouman That makes it even better. 2 Atk increase from 12 to 14 is more effective than from 24 to 26, which means it’s even more worthless to go for Atk upgrade.

Martijn Bouman No, the armor upgrade is always better. The surviving units make a huge diff. A unit dishing out n hits with +2 atk is worse than doing extra 1-2 hit with original atk (for the case of Pikemen, the effect is even bigger due to their sky high atk vs cav).

it feels like the effect of +10 dmg bc the pikemen attackrate is 3 vs knights 1.8 so if they attacked at the same rate +10 would be be in the right ballpark.