Previous Tips of the Week!

Many, many people try and get to castle age as soon as they can and then attack with knights. Most people get spearmen or pikemen to defend off these knight attacks, but sometimes, if the knights run around a lot, you can lose a lot of villagers.

Very few people use a monastry. You would be surprised what you can do with a couple of monks!

Train a couple and put them into a TC, then when the knights come, un-garrison them and convert the knights. You will be surprised how many of their knights you end up with.

Don't worry if their knights come to attack your monks - ring your town bell - and their knights will die anyway :)

Defense is a question I always get asked about.

How do you defend against this Mystic? and How do you defend against that?

Well, all defenses are different depending on what you are being attacked by but as a rule I would suggest you try the following:

Do you ever lose track of your scout?

Well, if its in the dark age you can always press the comma button [,] and he will be found, but after that in feudal age and beyond when you may have other military units, it may not be so easy to find.

Try assigning a key to this scout. Select the scout and hold down Ctrl and press the number 1 on your keyboard, then let go of the Ctrl button. Now, each time you press the 1 button, the screen will centre on your scout.

Remember, scouting is important at all times in a game, not just at the start. Use my other tips to set multiple rally points for your scout andthen use the 1 key to give him some more scouting commands

Popular at the moment is a feudal rush. Most people just don't know what to do when they find 3 or 4 archers in their town and a tower in the feudal age.

Well my tip is simple, skirmishers, 3 or 4 of these are dirt cheap and will keep the archers away, plus they will shoot any incoming villagers who try to build more towers.

The one tower which is already up is probably best left until later when you can get rams, but try to avoid letting them build a second tower near other valuable resources, skirmishers will help you do this.

As you will need an archery range for skirmishers, I recommend you build this instead of a market at feudal in order to get to castle age, the blacksmith is the other feudal building you will need, as fletching may be an important upgrade too.

If possible get a tower up near to your wood / gold to ensure resources keep coming in.

In Conquerors edition we are told we will get renewable farms, well until then we just have to manage.

If you have several idle villagers standing on expired farms, or perhaps they have just run out of berries and you want to build farms with them quickly, the best way I find is to do this:

Select the whole group of villagers and count how many heads you have, lets say you have 6, then press B then F on the keyboard (for build farm), then press and hold down the shift button on the keyboard. Now right click around your TC in several places and you will find that a farm is started in each place. When you have built 5, let go of the shift key and right click where you want the last farm to go.

You will find all 6 of your villagers go off and build the last far, but only one villager will farm it, leaving the other 5 to wander off to the other 5 farms you built and this happens all automatically - so you just need to go back to the fighting!

This weeks tip is about building.

So many times I see people building a tc, market, or castle with about 12 villagers. Unless its an absolute emergency then this is an entire waste!

Did you know that if you use 3 villagers on a building it builds in twice the speed, thats 50% quicker, well if you use 6 villagers its only 38% quicker! - so those villagers could be put to use doing other things like gathering resources.

I recommend using a maximum of 2 villagers on any building, this will increase the build time by 25%, leave your other villagers gathering resources, the buildings will still go up almost as quickly, except you will get heaps of resources at the same time!

This week I thought I would give all you guys a tip for slowing down a treb assault.

Ever wished that when you have 4 or 5 trebs marching forward smashing your buildings, how you can slow them down to gain a little time to re-group your men?

Well, it may already be too late it they have already started coming, but when your opponent reaches imperial age, you know it wont be long before the trebs will be pounding you.

I suggest you get a university and upgrade masonry and if possible, architecture too. This will make the trebs take a long time to kill the buildings, in fact, if you are chopping lumber with many men, you can build TC's quicker than your enemy can destroy them!!

This upgrade costs less stone than a castle and only a little more wood than a TC - for Both upgrades, and it strengthens ALL your buildings one go!

This weeks tip is for when you find yourself with too much gold and not enough food, like sometimes in early castle age when you have put all your resources into getting a fast castle age, so theres not much wood for farms, or food for villagers.

What I do is build a monastery in their town - near to my stables / archery range / town centre - whatever else you have built there. Train monks (which use no food or wood) and convert enemy villagers!

This way you get villagers for free, whout having to use up any of your valuable food resources!

My tip this week is for Highland / Rivers type maps where you get to the river crosing and find that your enemy has already alled off the bridge.

Well the fear here is that he already has a villager or two in your town hiding until castle age, when he will begin building in your town.

What I do is build a barracks and get a couple of militia. Click on your scout and select agressive mode, then have him patrol your land, when he finds the villagers he will begin hitting them, move him immediately as if they have loom they will kill him, but have your militia go in and kill them. Not only will it kill his plan, but you should also have an advantage as you will have more villagers that him.

Don't forget to build your won wall accross the bridge, as it will be easy for him to delete his won wall when he wants to attack you.

This week, my tip is about using the keyboard.

I use the keyboard all the time to speed up my play. I find it incredibly useful to be able to press a key or a couple of keys and it takes me straight to the building.

The most useful ones are H for town centre, this key is a must for all reasonable players, then when the TC is selected, use C for create villager.

CTRL-S for Blacksmith is essential. If you are in the middle of a fight somewhere on the map and want to upgrade something at the blacksmith, ctrl-S will take you there immediately.

CTRL-B for Barracks, then press it again to go to another barracks and again for another.

CTRL-V for Castle

CTRL-Z for lumber camp - ideal when you are scouting, but want to get double-bit axe etc.

CTRL-G for mining cap - to upgrade gold mining.

CTRL-A for archery range

CTRL-K for seige workshop

CTRL-Y for Monastory

These are the most useful, but whats good to remember is that when you have a villager selected, its:

BE for Build house, BF for Build Farm and BN for Build Town centre.

But BS for Build smith

BB for build barracks

VV for build castle

BZ for build lumber camp

BG for build mining camp (i.e. the same character after the B as for the CTRL- command)

and so on with BA, BK and BY

Other useful keys to remember are

. (period / full stop) for idle villagers

R for skirmishers (with archer range selected)

shift-R to train 5 at once

S for swordsmen (with barracks selected)

T for train unique unit (with castle selected)

This is a tip about unique units

Many people pick their civilisation because of the unique units, but are they really worth getting?

Well I can't think of a single unique unit which has caused me much trouble at all. Longbowmen can be a pain, but get some skirmishers and they are easy pickings. Janissaries can be good with many together, but against town centres, they die like flys. Its just a case of knowing the weakness.

My tip is, don't use unique units unless you really need to. Use castles for getting trebuchets and for fortifying a position, don't build your castles on the front line, instead build town centres, with a castle or two behind for back-up. Hide your barracks behind the castle and rally point your men just in front of it to protect against paladins / trebs.

Here blue is attacking red who is bottom left. The barracks are creating infantry with rally point in front of the trebs, but both Tc's have villagers inside providing cover against large infantry assult against the trebs. The swordsmen will stop any cavalry and the TC's will also protect against archers. Your castle is safe from treb attack. If trebs hit your TC's go and kill them with your swordsmen.

Did you know that if there more than 2 deer in an area, its worth building a mill closeby?

Well its true, if you calculate that the wood needed for a mill is 100, and the wood for a farm is 60. The food from a farm at dark age is 175. Whereas the food from one deer is 140. therefore for 3 deer, the food would be 420, which is more than two farms, plus the mill costs less in wood than two farms would!

Also, at dark age you don't have the farming upgrades so its well worth getting the deer in, particularly if you're mongols as their hunters work extra fast!

Ever find people are using buildings to beat you back instead of units?

Well here is a screenshot from one of my games, I am Vikings at the bottom and yellow is Britons at the top.

As you can see he's a pretty good player and there is one heck of a battle going on. However, as we have both just reached imperial age, we only have one or two trebuchets each, it is important to take out enemy castle as soon as possible.

Here, if you hit the town centres first then you will give yellow time to get enough trebuchets out to beat you back... So instead hit the castle first, destroy it, then it will be very difficult for him to stand his ground or counter, as you can build buildings towards him faster than he can re-build castles.

While this is going on, make sure that your resources are still coming in, for yellow, he will need a lot of wood to re-build all those buildings, and this screen shot shows that he will soon be running out of it!

Its always a good idea to start chopping wood in two or three different places, so if one supply runs out when you're in trouble, you will still have enough to fight back with.

People are always asking me about good tc pushing.

The key to good pushing is first of all to get a fast Castle age, preferably before 21 minutes. Check this out by pressing F11 key, you will see how many minutes have passed so far in the game.

Many people can get to Castle Age in this time and go off to build buildings in their opponents town, this is called tc pushing, but the key to good pushing is to scout their town properly first.

Try your best not to lose your scout early on otherwise you wont be able to search through your enemies town for important reconnaissance information.

Most important of all, is, if possible build your town centre close to where your enemy is chopping wood. Wood is one of the most important resources at this stage of the game, and depriving him of it will surely hurt him hard. Sure he will go and chop elsewhere, but you will probably have already killed 3 or 4 of his choppers, plus you must build a stables after your town centre and your knights will find his new choppers and after that its just "send in the battering rams".

This tip is for river maps, or Highland where there are usually bridges between each persons island and his opponent.

Well, first off, as soon as you have found your sheep and berries, send your scount to find the bridges, there is usually only one bridge between you and your opponent, wall this off with a villager VERY early, BUT, instead of sending the villager over to the other side (where he will probably die to wolves anyway), bring him back to get berries or chop wood. Then, build a dock, and then as soon as you are at feudal age, train a transport. When you are upgrading to Castle age, get a War Galley and send two or three villagers over to your opponents side. scout with the Galley and kill any ships he may have, plus if he tries a militia rush through your palidsade wall, kill his men with your galley. Meanwhile repair the wall and build a town centre there as soon as you get to Castle age.

Use your forward builders to cause him the usual trouble in his town and if you have time, patrol a couple of knights along the coast to kill off any villagers he may send there to build a dock.

With him trapped on his island and you attacking his resources, while you can get in resources with no worry, you should easily win!

Ever go fishing with your boats and get fed up when they use up the fish patch next to the dock and just sit there without finding more fish?

Well, do what I do.... The first boat out, select it, then hold down your shift key and right click several points on the water where you want explored, then let go of the shift key and right click a patch of fish. Blimey Charlie!! The fishing boat wanders around the sea revealing loads of fishing patches and finishes off by taking fish from the patch you could originally see, leaving you to concentrate on other matters, then when you return to your dock you can see all the fishing patches available to you!!

Ever find someone building a town centre in your town as soon as you got to castle age?

Well, Don't panic! Just build a monastry, train monks and garisson them in your town centre, research redemption, and when he sends the battering rams in to destroy your TC, just convert them with your monks, and send them right back where they came from!!

This is only possible though if you are Byzantines, Chinese, Teutons, Japanese, Turks or Saracens.

Don't you just hate it when you play Black Forest map and someone has walled off with so much wall it will take a decade to get through?

Well, before starting the game, I recommend selecting Celts and then if someone has walled you off, then later in the game get seige onagers and destroy a large part of the forest between you and your opponent in an area where they would not expect to be attacked from, and at the same time train heaps of seige weapons and champions. This will work particularly well with Celts as their seige weapons fire 20% faster and train 20% faster too, so you can completely destroy their town before they can get their units back from the wall to defend themselves!!