The bait trick by moving around a weakened unit is genius. In most online noob matches, the units aren't focus-firing and they'll chase after a weakened unit by default. Also, 'gr8 b8 m8 I r8 8/8' hahaha
KadlecSvk It is certainly less laggy, but I would recommend anyone to practice micro in these scenarios. When playing online you get a good feel for the lag in any given game and then can adjust as needed. Perhaps I should make a single player micro scenario for people to download and practice with.
It's good to see you're still making these! :D (I don't actually play AoE2 MP but these tips help for SP and I just love learning tips/tricks about this game)
Nice video. Are you planning a second micro video? If you do then you could consider talking about performing a bore steal, patrolling melee units into enemy, sticking ranged units into a corner, using patrol to stack ranged units on top of one another, using attack ground to catch archers that are going to split, and cliff bonus.
For archers+skirm against archers+skirms, if you have the time and micro ability to do it, it's the most effective to have skirms hitting skirms and archers hitting archers. I rarely am capable of doing this in my games, so I just work on having skirms in front like in the video.
One of my all time favourite unit combo is chu-ko-nu + siege ram + halb ... this also works great with plumed archer + siege ram + halb ... Another good one from when i used to play deathmatch was hand cannon + bombard cannon combo ... this is still a heavily used in deathmatch i believe.. i think this is really applicable in deathmatch because those two units are so costly and you can pump those out with ease and sustain production in dealthmatch. And my personal chose of unit combo is ... cataphract + halb + skirm + a couple of trebs (in case you run into bombard towers and castles) combo ... byz have so cheap trash that it's worthwhile to amass them ... only costly investment here are cataphracts, but their speed of movement and attack and ridiculously strong attack bonus and trample damage makes it totally worth the money ... add in a couple of monks and you can make your units last longer because byz monks heal unit at 1.5x rate...this combo can counter any unit in the game ... even a horde of elephants... this is probably why byz are known as a counter civ.
I often see that high rated players keep pressing the agressive stance or the line formation button repeatedly while microing. What is the purpose of this?
An effective way to micro large groups of paladins against infantry, assuming that you have the open space free of buildings or other obstructions, is to bait the enemy in line formation and then switch to the staggered formation. Next, turn around and ride back over the pursuing enemy units, then press the stop hotkey when your units have effectively surrounded the enemy. Your paladins will then be able to attack the enemy 3 or 4 to 1, reducing your casualties and greatly increasing your damage dealt. Also works nicely with the box formation, depending on the enemy unit being snared.
this is the reason I suck at this game. its a lot of fun but I cannot multitask economy and military at the same time. even the AI advances through ages faster than me, I dont know how they do it
Got to reply to this very late, but age advances are nothing to really worry about. I've seen AI advance to Imperial in 15 minutes, but they do jack s**t and I still win even if my Imperial advance time is 40 mins. Just practice and don't be afraid to lose.
So I'm wondering, to easy pressure on a new players who is learning the ropes, what strategies are the least micro intensive? I would think trash units whose loss is no huge deal, and especially units with high defenses who can be ignored for several seconds while you deal with economy stuff, right?
I have a problem with latency. I am playing with my friends while we both in the same country and different states with the car travel to reach each other at 1 to 2 hours distant. We tried 2 ways, origin steam connected game, and hamachi... both methods still lagging while we see each other as green ping... Any idea how to fix it?
If you dodge a mangonel shot it can still hit different units than it was originally aiming for. Does this also apply to arrow fire? And how does this work for the 5-arrows-at-once fire from the chinese? Finally; I often see players build their mining camp directly adjacent to gold/stone instead of leaving one tile in between which (imo) would allow for much better saturation/efficiency. Why do they do this?
cho ku nu: the first arrow does the dmg, that the cho ku nu has, the other 2 or 4 do 1 dmg or 3 dmg, if rocketry is researched. this has a huge effect on anything with huge pierce armor as rams, since u do always a minimum of 1 dmg so with cho ku nu you do 5 true dmg wile only 1 with arbalests (though cho ku nu fire less rapidely) if you do orbwalk with cho ku nu you can stop further firing, so that they only fire the first or the first 2 arrows. I really like this Unit, since it is so incredibly unique and also powerfull, but they are slow, shortranged and as mentioned not as good with orbwalking. resource camps: if your villagers have no need to walk from the resource to the camp you are more effective. only if you have a lot off vills on the resource that gets bad, so placing the mining camp on your gold has to be done carefully since if you are then left with only few accessable tiles it is very easily oversaturated. with wood placing it directly to it had the additional bonus, that the distance between the woodline and the camp will be smaller after you chopped a few trees and you do not have to replace it as fast. arrows: i don't know. would like to hear the answer, if anyone knows.
Yes, it does in fact work like that with arrows. Just like everything else (trebs, mangonels, etc.) arrows are separate things that must hit the target to do damage, which is why you can dodge arrows and mangonel shots, etc., which should mean if mangonels hit a different target and do damage, so must arrows. Also I noticed this when my castle was firing upon a group of enemies running by and I hadn't had ballistics researched, the volley of arrows killed the guys behind the original target.
thanks for the videos, i really appreciate them! sorry for the noob questions but how to say to a unit (e.g. a sheep) the path it has to walk through? it is really useful for map exploring and I can't figure out how to do it
fongfongy Comon, you know what I mean, you can have a million units targeting one enmeny (if the game allowed) but because melee fighters have to be adjacent to attack when you focus fire, it creates a kind of diminishing returns effect. After a little while, the pathfinding in this game means that your melee units start walking past targets that would be much better for them, only for the original enemy to die anyway before your units arrive. In the meantime, enemies adjacent to whichever units are in bad positions get free hits on them, and it's really difficult to tell everyone to defend against the enemies that are weakest in front of them quickly enough to be efficient because of the mess created by the lack of space (you can barely tell whats going on lol) I guess what I'm asking is how do you micro EFFICIENTLY.
You have probably seen his later video regarding this topic but if not: Use Attack>Move or Patrol to send your groups of units towards enemies. They will automatically engage with whichever units are nearest - distributing damage more evenly. Alternatively, boom, set a gather point where the enemy is and send over 9000 trash units into the meat grinder over the next few hours.
ZeroEmpires - Age of Empires 2 Sure, is possible 1v1 if both players live in the same region. Try it in a 4v4, or 2v2 even, and watch your militia land 3 hits before reacting. Although drush isn't the worst. Archer micro is definitely unmanageable in AoEHD!
I play on Steam regularly and lag is rarely a major issue. Maybe it's because your post is 3 years old and there have been improvements since it was made. Maybe it's because I filter matches to show "Regional" matches. Either way, these tips are very usable for some Steam players in 2018
So happy someone has finally made a micromanagement video, great work Zero, love your videos!
The bait trick by moving around a weakened unit is genius. In most online noob matches, the units aren't focus-firing and they'll chase after a weakened unit by default. Also, 'gr8 b8 m8 I r8 8/8' hahaha
zero is really showing off in those lag free scenarios :D
KadlecSvk It is certainly less laggy, but I would recommend anyone to practice micro in these scenarios. When playing online you get a good feel for the lag in any given game and then can adjust as needed. Perhaps I should make a single player micro scenario for people to download and practice with.
ZeroEmpires - Age of Empires 2 nice idea :) if i play single player, i have the feeling the units act actually BEFORE i task them to do something
+ZeroEmpires - Age of Empires 2 That would be fantastic, have you made this yet?
+ZeroEmpires - Age of Empires 2 Where could I download scenarios? I really have interest in them would be a great exercise :)
@@ZeroEmpires Please share training scenarios im interested in honing my micro.
It's good to see you're still making these! :D (I don't actually play AoE2 MP but these tips help for SP and I just love learning tips/tricks about this game)
Nice video. Are you planning a second micro video? If you do then you could consider talking about performing a bore steal, patrolling melee units into enemy, sticking ranged units into a corner, using patrol to stack ranged units on top of one another, using attack ground to catch archers that are going to split, and cliff bonus.
Many of those are actually things that I don´t know about, and I would be very interested!
gr8 b8 m8 i r8 8/8 no h8 just apprecia8 it
3:49 Rams in front of an archer unit is a pretty common and decent combination.
For archers+skirm against archers+skirms, if you have the time and micro ability to do it, it's the most effective to have skirms hitting skirms and archers hitting archers. I rarely am capable of doing this in my games, so I just work on having skirms in front like in the video.
One of my all time favourite unit combo is chu-ko-nu + siege ram + halb ... this also works great with plumed archer + siege ram + halb ...
Another good one from when i used to play deathmatch was hand cannon + bombard cannon combo ... this is still a heavily used in deathmatch i believe.. i think this is really applicable in deathmatch because those two units are so costly and you can pump those out with ease and sustain production in dealthmatch.
And my personal chose of unit combo is ... cataphract + halb + skirm + a couple of trebs (in case you run into bombard towers and castles) combo ... byz have so cheap trash that it's worthwhile to amass them ... only costly investment here are cataphracts, but their speed of movement and attack and ridiculously strong attack bonus and trample damage makes it totally worth the money ... add in a couple of monks and you can make your units last longer because byz monks heal unit at 1.5x rate...this combo can counter any unit in the game ... even a horde of elephants... this is probably why byz are known as a counter civ.
I often see that high rated players keep pressing the agressive stance or the line formation button repeatedly while microing. What is the purpose of this?
fuck, i need these tips just to beat the AI sometimes. This game definitely has a high skill-ceiling
Had been waiting for this series to resume for a looong tym.. Great tips here. Zero is Hero again ;)
4:02 towards the eNd
An effective way to micro large groups of paladins against infantry, assuming that you have the open space free of buildings or other obstructions, is to bait the enemy in line formation and then switch to the staggered formation. Next, turn around and ride back over the pursuing enemy units, then press the stop hotkey when your units have effectively surrounded the enemy. Your paladins will then be able to attack the enemy 3 or 4 to 1, reducing your casualties and greatly increasing your damage dealt.
Also works nicely with the box formation, depending on the enemy unit being snared.
Great idea for a tutorial. If you ever do this with DE now, you may wanna call it Zero to Hera :D
I've got a question on micro that I believe I speak for many people when I say this will be an important question:
What about lag?
this is the reason I suck at this game. its a lot of fun but I cannot multitask economy and military at the same time. even the AI advances through ages faster than me, I dont know how they do it
Got to reply to this very late, but age advances are nothing to really worry about. I've seen AI advance to Imperial in 15 minutes, but they do jack s**t and I still win even if my Imperial advance time is 40 mins. Just practice and don't be afraid to lose.
So I'm wondering, to easy pressure on a new players who is learning the ropes, what strategies are the least micro intensive? I would think trash units whose loss is no huge deal, and especially units with high defenses who can be ignored for several seconds while you deal with economy stuff, right?
jesus, I really suck at this game. All these videos are amazingh
Archers and rams. Most notable the plumes with siege ram combination.
you're the last person I'd expect to give micro tips
when everybody becomes a hero, no one is
+coronagalvez19 dont worry i'll be a zero forever ;)
first video probably ever created on micro tips
How can you set more then one spot for the scout (and sheep) the go for (for easier scouting)?
shift and rightclick on the map, and then rightclick
I have a problem with latency.
I am playing with my friends while we both in the same country and different states with the car travel to reach each other at 1 to 2 hours distant.
We tried 2 ways, origin steam connected game, and hamachi... both methods still lagging while we see each other as green ping...
Any idea how to fix it?
Try voobly
Wait you were playing against castor in the militia example?
How come the trees are so small?
If you dodge a mangonel shot it can still hit different units than it was originally aiming for. Does this also apply to arrow fire? And how does this work for the 5-arrows-at-once fire from the chinese? Finally; I often see players build their mining camp directly adjacent to gold/stone instead of leaving one tile in between which (imo) would allow for much better saturation/efficiency. Why do they do this?
cho ku nu: the first arrow does the dmg, that the cho ku nu has, the other 2 or 4 do 1 dmg or 3 dmg, if rocketry is researched.
this has a huge effect on anything with huge pierce armor as rams, since u do always a minimum of 1 dmg so with cho ku nu you do 5 true dmg wile only 1 with arbalests (though cho ku nu fire less rapidely)
if you do orbwalk with cho ku nu you can stop further firing, so that they only fire the first or the first 2 arrows.
I really like this Unit, since it is so incredibly unique and also powerfull, but they are slow, shortranged and as mentioned not as good with orbwalking.
resource camps: if your villagers have no need to walk from the resource to the camp you are more effective. only if you have a lot off vills on the resource that gets bad, so placing the mining camp on your gold has to be done carefully since if you are then left with only few accessable tiles it is very easily oversaturated.
with wood placing it directly to it had the additional bonus, that the distance between the woodline and the camp will be smaller after you chopped a few trees and you do not have to replace it as fast.
arrows: i don't know. would like to hear the answer, if anyone knows.
Yes, it does in fact work like that with arrows. Just like everything else (trebs, mangonels, etc.) arrows are separate things that must hit the target to do damage, which is why you can dodge arrows and mangonel shots, etc., which should mean if mangonels hit a different target and do damage, so must arrows. Also I noticed this when my castle was firing upon a group of enemies running by and I hadn't had ballistics researched, the volley of arrows killed the guys behind the original target.
XyntXII Hobbyloosii Chu Ko Nu fire 3 shots per volley, not 5.
something1random23 3 regular, 5 elite
The Amazing Ace Meracruzer Oh, okay.
thanks for the videos, i really appreciate them! sorry for the noob questions but how to say to a unit (e.g. a sheep) the path it has to walk through? it is really useful for map exploring and I can't figure out how to do it
Use shift and right clicks
One quick tip for microing anything is having health bars on at least for damaged units.
wat, Spreeezy here??? WORLDS ARE COLLIDING!!!
Player-colored hp bars hit the spot, even aesthetically
Awesome video, Zero! GJ!
3:50 rams and archers are the best
The machine does it, if u set hard or max
Me and my friend do a combo of Persian war elephants with Spanish conquistadors and bombardiers
gr8 b8 m8, i r8 8/8
Really nice tutorial, keep them coming! :)
5:08 i am sorry to disappoint but there are only 7 knights
Why don't you make a tutorial for this, too?
Awsome videos Zero.
Conquistadors with Missionary in box formation
What's the optimum amount of units to put on one enemy?
shyguy778 9000.
fongfongy Comon, you know what I mean, you can have a million units targeting one enmeny (if the game allowed) but because melee fighters have to be adjacent to attack when you focus fire, it creates a kind of diminishing returns effect.
After a little while, the pathfinding in this game means that your melee units start walking past targets that would be much better for them, only for the original enemy to die anyway before your units arrive.
In the meantime, enemies adjacent to whichever units are in bad positions get free hits on them, and it's really difficult to tell everyone to defend against the enemies that are weakest in front of them quickly enough to be efficient because of the mess created by the lack of space (you can barely tell whats going on lol)
I guess what I'm asking is how do you micro EFFICIENTLY.
shyguy778 YES
3.3
You have probably seen his later video regarding this topic but if not: Use Attack>Move or Patrol to send your groups of units towards enemies. They will automatically engage with whichever units are nearest - distributing damage more evenly.
Alternatively, boom, set a gather point where the enemy is and send over 9000 trash units into the meat grinder over the next few hours.
Great video Zak. Was this scripted? I like when casters put some time into some thought out explanations.
LOL can you just use patrol to micro?
Love the guide! Keep IT up!
Great vid!
Thank you
To the part at 3:50 calvary would be good!
patroll?
okay, you can consider that macro instead of micro, but it really should not be ignored!
he did miss a few things.
Zero you are my hero!
great video mate! thanks :)
huscarls always in to take arrow fire
the rams..oh god the rams
Basically, micromanagement works because game's AI is crap (like units chasing around the weakest).
Good job at Redbull Wololo
Haha You play at the last part against Charles Martel :-D Is it before or after TheViper kills him :-D
* Completely useless on Steam due to lag.
The drush example at the end was actually on multiplayer AoEHD :P
ZeroEmpires - Age of Empires 2 Sure, is possible 1v1 if both players live in the same region. Try it in a 4v4, or 2v2 even, and watch your militia land 3 hits before reacting. Although drush isn't the worst. Archer micro is definitely unmanageable in AoEHD!
SSJ5VegetaV4 I play in lan, so this is very usefull
+SSJ5VegetaV4 Why even play on steam when we got Voobly? Cant understand it tbh..
I play on Steam regularly and lag is rarely a major issue. Maybe it's because your post is 3 years old and there have been improvements since it was made. Maybe it's because I filter matches to show "Regional" matches.
Either way, these tips are very usable for some Steam players in 2018
Rams and archers
Really helpfull !!!! :)
I know I'm like 5 years too late but the archers dodging are basically fuq by default. Haha, get it .. Nevermind
I use Micro in AI matches...
5:08
This is great....but I will never attain this level of skill. 😔
Ram + Archer~~~
micromanagement is baaaaaaddd.
hahahahahahahahaha
you said nienty degrees instead of 180
+patricio torre He said.. 90 degree from the direction of Enemy Arrow
FQ!!! M8
Stop microing!