AOE2 Unique Technologies

Unique Technologies

• Garland Wars - Unique to the Aztecs. Increases infantry attack by +4 (combined with Blast Furnace, they can have +8 attack).
• Yeomen - Unique to the Britons. Foot archers have +1 range (when combined with the technology Bracer, they will have +6 range), and towers have +2 attack.
• Logistica - Unique to the Byzantines. Cataphracts cause trample damage, meaning they can hit other units near them while attacking.
• Furor Celtica - Unique to the Celts. Siege weapons have +50% hit points.
• Rocketry - Unique to the Chinese. Chu ko nus have +2 attack, and scorpions have +4 attack.
• Bearded Axe - Many believe this is the most useless unique technology in the game. It is unique to the Franks, and gives throwing axemen +1 range.
• Anarchy - The Goths are the only civilization with two unique technologies, and this is one of them. Unlike the other unique technologies, it is available in the Castle Age. It allows huskarls to be created at barracks.
• Perfusion - The other Gothic unique technology. Barracks units are created +50% faster. Combined with the Gothic team bonus of barracks units created +20% faster, and the technology Conscription, barracks units can be created +85% faster. Combine that with the Goths' cheaper infantry, and the fact that they have +10 population in the Imperial Age, and you can create a very large army of infantry in as little as 10 minutes.
• Atheism - An effective technology unique to the Huns. Increases Wonder and Relic victories by 100, and the Spies and Treason research at Hunnic castles cost -50 resources.
• Kataparuto - Unique to the Japanese. Trebuchets pack/unpack nearly instantly, and fire faster. "Kataparuto" is the Japanese katakana equivalent to "catapult".
• Shinkichon - Unique to the Koreans. Onagers have +1 range.
• El Dorado - Unique to the Mayans. Eagle warriors have +40 hit points.
• Drill - Unique to the Mongols. Siege weapons move +50% faster, making them about as fast as cavalry.
• Mahouts - Unique to the Persians. War elephants move +30% faster.
• Zealotry - Unique to the Saracens. Camel riders and mamelukes have +30 hit points; combined with Bloodlines, they can have +50 hit points.
• Supremacy - Unique to the Spanish. Villagers have +40 hit points, +6 attack, +2 armour, and +2 pierce armour, which makes them a lot more useful in battle.
• Crenellations - Unique to the Teutons. Castles have +3 range (Bodkin Arrow can bring their range up to +5), and garrisoned infantry fire arrows.
• Artillery - Unique to the Turks. Artillery(Cannon Galleon, Bombard Cannons and Bombard Towers) have +2 range.
• Berserkergang - Unique to the Vikings. Berserkers heal themselves faster; how much faster is unknown, but it seems about +40% faster.

The Basic Start AOe

Here is a BASIC start in AoK, using sheeps, and both boars to advance to the castle age by 17 minutes

BUILD ORDER

At the very start:
Make a villager from your town centre
Make a house with 2 villagers
Make a house with the other villager
Get your 4 sheep with your scout
After the houses are complete, send all 3 villagers to gather food from your sheep inside town centre

Vill 4: Sheep
Vill 5: Sheep
Vill 6: Sheep

You should now have 6 villagers on sheep, plus a scout that is finding your other sheep around town centre.

Vill 7: Make lumber camp near forest
Vill 8: Wood
Vill 9: Wood
Vill 10: Wood

You should now have 6 villagers on sheep in your town centre and 4 villagers gathering wood near a forest and lumber camp.

Vill 11: Send towards location of boar and build a house
RESEARCH LOOM HERE

After Vill #11 builds the house, it will lure the boar back to the town centre, and then gather food from the boar

Vill 12: Build mill beside berries
Vill 13: Berries
Vill 14: Berries

You should now have 7 villagers in your town centre on the boar, 4 villagers on wood, 3 villagers on berries and a scout

Vill 15: Send to location of 2nd boar and build house

After the vill builds the house, it will lure the 2nd boar back to the town centre and gather food

Vill 16: Farm beside town centre
Vill 17: Farm beside town centre
vill 18: Wood
Vill 19: Wood
Vill 20: Farm Beside town centre
Vill 21: Farm Beside town centre
Vill 22: Build House and then wood
Vill 23: Farm
Vill 24: Farm
Vill 25: Farm
Vill 26: Wood
Vill 27: Gold
Vill 28: Gold
Vill 29: Gold

After your 8 villagers in the town centre finish gathering from the 2nd boar, send a few to wood and a few to make more farms, and leave 1 or 2 to finish sheep.

This start is very basic, and is only intended as a practise start for rooks and newbs to get used to how a proper start works. Since it advances to the Feudal Age at 30 pop, it is quite easy and after some practise you will master it. Once you fuedal you just need to build a market and stable to advance to the Castle Age.

I would suggest using Britons for attemping this start, because they are the easiest to do it with

Chapter 1: The First Two Minutes

Introduction
This is the first of a series of chapters to help players new to AoK get over the initial hurdles, to the point of being an advanced intermediate player. These articles are not written for the experts, they’re designed to get you to the point where you can win at least as many games as you lose when playing on the Zone, or to consistently beat computer opponents on the hard setting.
With that in mind, the focus will be on simple, general strategies, rather than highly optimized strategies that are easy to mess up. For example, Gutter Rat’s Fast Feudal Rush (Flush, see ) is an excellent expert strategy, but likely to be an unmitigated disaster if a newbie were to attempt it, since there are so many opportunities to make crucial mistakes.

When practical, I will include sample games to illustrate the points. The games are not "the ultimate" in perfection, you’ll usually see me make some mistakes or minor blunders, but they will show how the general strategy can work.

So, who qualifies as a newbie? For the purposes of these guides, here's the "newbie test". Play a random game on a continental map against one computer opponent on easiest difficulty at normal speed. Try to get to castle age as quickly as you can, ignoring any military buildup. If it takes you more than 22 minutes to reach castle age, these guides are for you. If you're in the 20-22 range, you'll probably still learn something. If you're able to castle in under 20 minutes, you're out of the newbie class and into the intermediate range.

Since Age of Kings was released, I’ve helped clan-mates and strangers alike get over some of the starting hurdles. Sometimes I’ll play as an ally, sometimes co-op on the same civ, and often I’ll review a replay file and email comments and suggestions. Through this experience, I’ve noticed quite a few things that newer players tend to do that keep them from being competitive. This first chapter is aimed at addressing some of these mistakes.

The Deadly Sins
1) Too few villagers

As a general rule of thumb, your first order of business is to get your population up to 30 (1 scout, and 29 villagers and/or fishing boats) as quickly as possible, before building a military, buying many upgrades, or advancing to the feudal age. And, once you reach castle age, expand to at least 40 and to at least ½ the pop limit in imperial. That’s a lot of villagers, but if you’re trying to compete against a 100-villager economy with your 25 villagers, the game is already over.

These numbers are rules of thumb. Sometimes, it will make sense to go feudal with fewer villagers, to build a military very early, or other changes, but try to stick with these guidelines until you’ve got it down cold…then play with the variants.

2) Forgetting the most important thing: food, food, and food

The number two mistake is to use your first 8 villagers for anything other than getting food or making the initially required buildings. (There are special cases where using your 7th and/or 8th villagers for wood is a good move, but in general, keep the first 8 on food no matter what, right into castle age.)

Your success in a game is going to depend heavily on getting ahead of your opponent’s economic power. Nothing is more important in that respect than the number of villagers. If your opponent makes his 15th villager when you make your 12th, you’re going to be in a world of hurt, and a minute behind in everything from that point forward. The key to making many villagers quickly is to get enough food in the first two minutes to allow your TC to create new villagers literally non-stop from the first seconds of the game. To do this without interruptions, you’ll need at least 6, preferably 8 villagers working on food from the very beginning, or you won’t keep up. I like 8 because, if things don’t go smoothly, it gives you some breathing room, while running with 6-7 on food may cause gaps in villager production.

3) Doing things that aren’t needed yet

If you’re not going to build a military force very early, you have no need for gold in the dark ages, especially before beginning your upgrade to the feudal age. (I refer to this as "hitting the feudal button".) If you’re mining gold this early, you’ve wasted 100 wood on the mining camp, and you have several villagers that could be getting food (and speeding your feudal time) instead of gathering gold that you can’t use. Some very good players will tell you to put 3 villagers on gold very early. This is simple, it is easy, but I find that it hurts your speed enough to make it worth putting off until later.

4) Scouting deep before scouting near

Unless you’re planning an early surprise attack (a feudal rush), it’s usually a mistake to send your scout deep before the eight-minute mark. Again, some good players will disagree, but I find that it takes about eight minutes to thoroughly map your home area, and to find all your resources before going on offense. If you miss four sheep, or don’t find your second gold pile, you could be in a world of hurt later on. Until you’ve mastered the game, keep the scout local until you’ve covered your whole "zone", then go exploring.

5) Using the wrong food

This is a fairly deep topic and deserves its own chapter, so let me just summarize with a few "rules" that are really more like guidelines. They are:

Sheep first, if you possibly can. Period.
Berries next until you’ve mastered the game. Reliable, easy, low management.
Nearby hunting and shore fish next. Boar luring once you’re good at it. Do not run more that a screen or two across the map for hunting, the wasted walk time ins't worth it.
Fish boats are usually a good idea, after you have a food baseline established with sheep and berries. (Requires a map with significant water, of course.) Go for deep-sea fish, ignore the shore fish because boats harvest them slowly.
Farms next. I used to advise people to never, ever farm in the dark age, because of the huge up-front wood costs for farming. After testing repeatedly, however, there are some civs that can do quite well with farming in the dark ages, for supplemental food above the initial baseline provided by sheep and/or berries. Although the farms require a lot of wood and don't produce food at a terribly fast rate, they do have the advantage of requiring no initial walk time. As a result, the net production is competitive with the other food sources. Teutons, Chinese and Franks can make especially good use of farms. Farms should never be your first food source. On water maps, though, I still don't recommend farming until you've really fished out the local seas.
Fish traps? Never. Too slow, a waste of a population unit. Delete the fish boats and add villagers.
As with everything, some experts will argue each of these points, especially when it comes to hunting vs. farms vs. fish boats. Stick with these rules until you’ve mastered the game, then selectively throw them out as you see fit. They may not always be optimal, but they’ll never be too far from the mark.
6) Failing to learn the hotkeys

I’m guilty here, too. I haven’t memorized the hotkeys for military stances and formations yet. (Maybe I should do that today, it would only take a few minutes!) It’s dull, it takes an effort, but it makes a huge difference in how much time you have available to think. Seriously. If you can cut down the time it takes to micromanage your economy by half, and it was taking 80% of your time, you’ll now have three times as much thinking time as before (60% vs. 20%). And that makes a huge difference in how likely you are to make silly mistakes under pressure. Believe me, I’ve been there.

The most important hotkeys are the ones for selecting buildings (H for Town Center, etc.), the ones for building (farms, mills, etc.), and the ones for producing common units in the buildings. In addition, learn the grouping commands for making numbered groups, adding units to them, and selecting them.

The First Two Minutes
In future chapters, I’ll cover the strategy choices you need to make with regard to land vs. water maps, feudal and castle rushing, booming, and so on. Each of these strategy choices will profoundly change your strategy beyond the first five minutes, but the first two minutes should almost always follow the same script.