I prefer 4 desu, love that game and have been looking for people to play it with

>>2327433
The playerbase simply got better overtime. Game is over 20 years old, people have caught on to what's most effective.

>>2328185
4 is also fun. I like 2 for snappier micro responsiveness and more civs and the graphics, but 4 is also great. I love Mongols just for actually being to shoot and move with horse archers. Fun as hell.

>>2328203
Its beyond that though. Even 2 or 3 years ago I would not see people doing this shit. Now everyone is playing on a borderline pro level and if you make one fuckup they brutally exploit it. Game is honestly bot-tier at this point and I seriously don't even understand how the entire spectrum of 1200+ ELO exists when people are playing this well in the 3 digits. I mog all my friends at AoE II and can't even compete with these fuckheads that memorize build orders.

Unsure if this is the best place to ask, but do you have tips for a beginner? I have been playing this game on and off almost 20 years, but on this last binge I've finally decided to try to get a bit better, maybe beat the campaigns once and for all. I'm not really interested in multiplayer (does anyone even play HD anymore?), I just want to improve at the game a bit at least.

I've just been playing against the AI on moderate so far, but I always find myself lagging behind. Of course the AI is not very competent at this level, so turtling plus wonder victory always works, but I know on a higher diff or a real game I would get absolutely demolished. I've tried reading some guides but they seem very sweaty ("yeah bro just get to feudal at 20:00 ez") and it's all a bit overwhelming. Basically I just want some pointers, things to work at, noob traps, etc. Thanks in advance.

>>2330282
>start game
>build 2 houses
>move sheep under TC
>rally point TC to sheep
>send villagers to sheep
>learn to use Shift-queueing actions a lot
>6 on food 3 on wood then 11 more on food
>age up to feudal at 20 vills
>honestly? Drush as soon as you go up to Feudal
>learn to use attack move / patrol
I don't really know what else honestly.

>>2327433
The pro scene is well and truly popular now, both on Twitch and YouTube. The playerbase of olds who played it when they were kids is experiencing turnover, and their replacements are people who got into it from watching tournaments. This affects their habits, naturally, so they go into ranked after having looked up builds and shit.
Personally I’ve played 1 ranked game and have a 100% winrate so I’m done.

>>2330375
>Personally I’ve played 1 ranked game and have a 100% winrate so I’m done.
unbelievably based

>>2327433
>Everyone knows how to make effective use of their time and resources so I can't have fun
Lmao

>>2332422
man it's more that some fag will bodyblock my boar lure or bodyblock my villager with his scout and my villager will take extra damage and fuck up my lure and as a result I end up 100 Res behind and there's no point. These people are like perfectly tuned bots and do shit like quickwalling which used to be high ELO tricks. Now that everyone's learning it it's just fucking annoying. It'll probably be at 800 ELO soon and it's just too tryhard to enjoy anymore. It's not being efficient that's the problem, it's all these annoying fiddly tricks that make it MOBA/FPS tier.

>>2327433
>>2328203
the playerbase is small as fuck its just full of smurfs and most of them are asians. you can tell that the pop is tiny because you will regularly be paired with and against people 2-300 elo above and below you because they added a fix to the auto-team generator to stop the 30 minute match wait time that everyone was whinging about.

the entire quality of the game has gone to shit since DE was released partly because in OG and HD manual match fixing meant you tended to be paired in games against people from your 'local' area, and that over time there tended to be an extended community that grew up around that which meant you tended to know who was roughly your skill level vs who wasnt. the transfer to the new match-making system also removed the barrier for entry that asians had since in the past, someone from outside your area or who didnt speak your language, or who used strange symbols for a name would be force kicked by host as a rule and so all their degeneracy has been pushed into automatched games and been made a default state of play.

this is also what gave rise to the copious amounts of smurfing, since most of it is chinese players, also the habit of asians (koreans and chinese in particular) to immediately project their failures or fear of failure onto other players during team games and resign early when one thing doesnt go their way - flaming the person next to them for not having done enough or having been an idiot (usually they go the route of calling someone an idiot and claiming the other persons low-intelligence is the reason they are losing so simply 'giving up' is the noble thing to do).

any game where a team has exclusively asian characters in the names, its usually the case that some chinese streamer is getting paid to carry people from his stream, you just have to figure out which of them is the smurf.

obviously the player numbers will continue to shrink because of this.

lmao people arent good at that rank they still fuck up many things. Just because you see a bit of micro doesn't mean they're insane players, yeah the skill floor is higher but it doesn't mean you need perfect dark ages and micro to win at those ranks. You're getting btfod because advantages compound and your macro isn't better than theirs. At least learn a build order if you want to be competitive its not hard

>>2336688
>this is also what gave rise to the copious amounts of smurfing, since most of it is chinese players, also the habit of asians (koreans and chinese in particular) to immediately project their failures or fear of failure onto other players during team games and resign early when one thing doesnt go their way - flaming the person next to them for not having done enough or having been an idiot (usually they go the route of calling someone an idiot and claiming the other persons low-intelligence is the reason they are losing so simply 'giving up' is the noble thing to do).
god this happens to me all the time. I report it too. Idiots who resign because I don't immediately send 5000 cavalry to help him from the other side of the map.

>>2336942
>At least learn a build order if you want to be competitive its not hard
I did but they all did too and thus costing me 300 or 400 food with a boar lame is gg.

>>2337683
yeah the resigning is all about saving face. they arnt even alt-f4'ing to save elo, they just hit resign so its literally that they cant stomach the idea of losing a video game because they find that humiliating or something. its pretty pathetic. a lot of people will cope on forums or in game about how resigning early is about 'saving time'; they'll say something like "i dont want to waste my time" but of course thats a stupid thing to say because the point of a video game is literally to waste time, you are playing it because you have time to be wasted. it is just a cope to save face because they dont want to lose their equivalent of izzat points - the chinese call it mianzi, i dont know what word the koreans use for it.

>>2338059
true. I mean I ragequit too but these faggots will quit before it's even half over. Like dude at least fight til you're broken and then resign. I'll delete my own shit before resigning to spite the enemy but that's as bad as I'll get honestly.

>>2327433
You say that as if you have a choice
You will derank to 500 elo because you're a fucking trashcan lmfao not because you chose to

>>2341777
???
No I hold pretty steady at 900 or so. Even broken 1000 a few times.
I can definitely get better, it's just not enjoyable to play at some point.
Deranking to 500 would absolutely be a choice.

>>2327433
just git gud, you also dont know if your opponent is fucking up unless you watch the rec back (your opponent is 100% playing far from perfect at your elo and making tons of mistakes).

Also persian tc drop is a legitimate strat, you can actually gain elo with it if you dont intentionally lose games with it. I broke 1k elo for the first time with persian tc drop.

>>2327433
Go all-in on Bulgarian MAA rush, thank me later.

>>2356051
People see Persian TC drop now too, I don't even telegraph it and then I get there and dude has a lattice of perfectly-built palisades to prevent me from dropping it, doing fast-walling shit, it's insane. All legitimate strats, just not shit I want to play against at 1000 ELO, fuck it.

>>2356340
That's what I've started doing. I drush almost every game.

>>2358357
palisades do not work against tc drops, there is always a spot to drop and you can quickly beat down a palisade on the edge of the enemy tc range. Your tc foundation just needs to be in one tile of the enemy tc range (getting a range mod can help), just walk your vills around and just try to place it. Like any other strat, you need to play it a lot, learn and eventually you will get good at it. Pro players lose to the tc drop so surely you can beat 1k players with it who barely touch their keyboards.

>>2358357
>People see Persian TC drop now too
People expect it by default for the sole reason you picked Persians.