This game has a crazy learning curve, how many hours did it take you to become at least decent at the game? Ie. knowing basically how matchups play out, knowing counter units, being able to do various builds, being able to do Dark Age consistently, etc.
Posted Dec 18, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC
Well, after playing sporadically for the past 20 years, I can definitively say that I don’t know how long it takes to get good, as I am still terrible at the game.
Lmao that's why I'm worried, I'm playing for the first time this year.
Build orders make a huge difference. Without them you will never be good. With them you can pubstomp majority of players
Need to learn them and get decent timing with them. When you have 4 scouts while they are still in dark age is an autowin
Honestly I played age of empires 1-3 + mythology all the while having a blast since I was a toddler and never had any idea how to actually "play". If you want to get into competitive multiplayer, then watch videos, learn build orders etc. Otherwise you're gonna get stomped. If you just wanna have a good time against the AIs, just play on easy and have fun.
I am just now (since definitive edition) learning how to "actually" play the game, and it's giving it a whole new life.
Learn fast castle build, get familiar with hotkeys and you're set my man.
For me it's at least 15 years, apparently.
Build orders, hot keys, and knowing various strategies. Such as countering scouts/archers. Walling up.
If you practice you can get to a decent level in maybe 6 months. But you have to remember the game has been out for 20+ years so a lot of people you play against have years of experience.
Go to aoezone.net, read VIK_Dark(and Vinchester) interview, take note how little time it took Dark to get really decent (2k voobly). Not too long.
From coaching and following the progress of several noobs, it takes only 1-3 months to get to “intermediate” level of 1k7 voobly from absolute scratch if playing to a improve. Nowadays it is faster since there is so much knowledge around to be easily gained eg. https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/dkn3ju/any_good_tutorials_you_would_recommend/f4kscn1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
One of the guys I play with sometimes (obadiah if anyone knows him) has gotten to 2k voobly having only played online for just over a year.
I don't think he has had any pro coaching either. He's taken games off of vinch and Daniel on DE apparently 11.
7 months ago or so I lost 4-3 to him in discord tournament finals and I threw games there. Now I can't touch him at all lmao.
Awesome. :D
I have the same situation regarding VIK_Dark in fact, 4 months ago, I beat him easily, having each time before that had little to no trouble vs him since we played on HD years ago... And now, too strong to look at, Rus A 111. (I have a bit longer path to Fin A lol)
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I do not do dark age consistently yet, but a couple of thousand hours.
Depends on your previous RTS experience and what you count as competent.
For me it took me probably about 5 games to be able to beat the extreme AI without cheesing it (after that I've mainly been winning ranked games, but everybody I have play is not good so far). Is that competent? I'm competent enough to be enjoying the game and am able to try different strategies.
I watched quite a lot of T90's casts so I knew the basic unit counters (skirms vs archers, spears vs horses). I also played the game back when it came out so I knew the basics of how the game worked. I also played Starcraft competitively for years (Broodwar, not SC2, which I also played, but just for fun) so my mechanics are probably ahead of the curve. So for me it was about 80% just learning the hotkeys and learning prerequisites for things.
If you're new to RTS it's going to take a lot longer. Training up your mechanics takes significant time. Remembering to do basic things like check your mini-map, check your resources, send your vills to build before you have enough resources for the building, keeping your military buildings and TCs busy, etc are things that, if you're not familiar with RTS games will take some time to get decent at.
It took me like 2 weeks to understand the basics of 1v1 multiplayer. This used to be my childhood game, but I just started to play multiplayer after DE came out.
These are the stuffs that I did before getting into multiplayer:
If you can beat a hard AI in Arabia by a feudal scout rush, you can beat a few players in 1v1. Many things could go wrong in an actual play, but at least I am able to make strategic decisions and understand the reason I lose after a few weeks of playing and stream watching. AOE is not that complicated in terms of basic gaming concepts.
Edit: I forgot to mention hotkeys, you should learn and tune different hotkeys bit by bit while your are playing. I would suggest starting with the town centre hotkey and villager production hotkey.