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if you're transitioning from single player to multiplayer, play the ranked ladder, do NOT play casual rooms

Do you feel like multiplayer is no fun, because you join a room and get stomped by someone many times better than you, or worse, you just get kicked from the room for being too low?

I think a lot of new players see casual games and ranked games as the two options and assume "oh casual must be for noobs whereas ranked games must be where all the pros are". The assumption is that "ranked" = death and "casual" = a chance of winning (credit to Ok-Acanthisitta-1126 )

That's actually completely backwards.

Casual rooms are best used if you have specific people you already know who are at your level. In fact, they are commonly used at the very high level to setup matches for tourneys and for grinding strats, bc it can be hard for the very best people in aoe3 to find good games in quicksearch. If you are playing alone and you join a random casual game lobby, you will almost certainly either 1. get kicked, 2. get stomped or 3. stomp some poor person who is even more noob than you.

The solution is to play ranked quick search. This is an ingenious system that will quickly figure out your rank, and then match you against people who are a similar rank to you, so you can play fun, competitive games where you will usually end up winning or losing about half the time, unless you start making some actual progress in learning the game. The only thing is you will probably have to lose about 5-10 games before the ELO system will accurately rank you, so don't worry about these early games. In fact, you might even want to just resign quickly in your first 5-10 games just so you can get ranked low sooner, so you can start playing fun games faster.

play ranked, get ranked, start playing enjoyable and competitive matches with people at exactly your own skill level



Ressource trickle treasures and gather rate boosting treasures DO NOT stack Ressource trickle treasures and gather rate boosting treasures DO NOT stack
Strategies

It's only relevant on a few maps, like on some African maps there's one for EXP, wood, food or coin per player, and then there's Scandinavia which has one to boost the blueberry gather rate.

Those DO NOT stack, collecting more than one is pointless because the gather rate won't go up any further - unless you specifically do it do stop the enemy from getting it.

The only map where there are sometimes more than one per player per type is Unknown, so if you play that just ignore them if everyone already got one each.




Are there any random maps you wish had additional official varieties? Are there any random maps you wish had additional official varieties?
Strategies

Existing examples are for example

  • Dunes vs Dunes - the Eye

  • Texas vs Texas Border

or using the same map, Great Lakes and Saguenay in their frozen vs unfrozen versions.

Two things I'd personally like to see:

  • Arctic Territories but with sea access. Same map, but 2-3 spots for every team to build docks as well as some fish and whales.

  • "Alpine Valleys", a version of Alps which works like a better land version of Ceylon. You'd have two narrow valley strips with limited space and ressources in the north and south where the teams start, then two symmetrical mountain ridges with narrow chokepoints, then a large center valley with a trade route and plentiful ressources to fight over. Would force you to build outposts or guard your vills, then expand with more TCs. Wittelsbach settlements are nested in the mountains, Habsburg or Bourbon in the valley.








Free trial? Free trial?
Steam

So I'm planning on buying aoe3 de on steam but i have a couple of questions
1 When is the next sale after the 5th of June becuase then my exams end
2 If I download the free trial right now and after it installs I buy the game , am I required to redownload it ?
3 I saw some negative reviews about the game in steam saying it's bad compared to the original , is that true ? (I played the original and it was good)
4 I have hd 520 gpui5-6300u cpu ,16 gb ddr4 ram and an ssd recommende for the game but i have 128mbs of vram so can I run it?
Thank you all and sorry for this being so long

Update : No need for answears thanks to u/stephensundin he gave me the info I needed
Update : I noticed there was a huge typo in number two, I meant to say (saw ) not say


Overwhelmed at the start of Bolivar's Revolt (Act III, Mission 5, Hard) Overwhelmed at the start of Bolivar's Revolt (Act III, Mission 5, Hard)

I don't know when the change happened, but now at 5:20 the Spanish gather a huge force at the first village:

  • 2 Veteran Skirmishers

  • 5 Veteran Rodeleros

  • 13 Veteran Musketeers

  • 11 Veteran Skirmishers

  • 5 Falconets

A minute later they're at your base and you have only Bolivar's army, two gimped barracks (spears and muskets only) and your cards to deal with it. What can one do (preferably not cheese)?








I’ve been playing aoe 3 off and on for about 15-16 years and the most I can do is beat extreme ai. Just a confession I’ve been playing aoe 3 off and on for about 15-16 years and the most I can do is beat extreme ai. Just a confession
Help

I did play a 1v1 once. He at min 5 he asked if I ever played online and when I said no he gave me a 15min treaty time. He beat me in 16 min.

I only play against ai and love the game after 15 years no mod. I am not in the spectrum… But I really do love AOE3 and can’t wait for new update!!!




they are all just samurai? they are all just samurai?
Question

in a game loke aoe where devs research a lot and every thing is mostly accurate japan seems to stand out. The variation of units is a bit flawed as historically speaking the weapon of samurai is the yumi ,a bow so why isn't there samurai with bows in the game and while yumi archers exist in the game and have existed on the battlefield,ashigaru has more variations and have carried bows,naginatas, swords and even poison weapons(As poisoning the enemy is only dishonorble for samurai and not ashigaru,feudal lords took advantage of this rule and made ashigaru poison the enemy).same goes for yabusame and naginata riders who both resemble samurai in the game and samurai used both of these weapons more than just swords,plus yabusame is not a unit like in the game it is an art of mounted archery developed by the yamato people(predecessors to the japneese people). finally I would like to talk about morutaru and flaming arrows these are not accurate at all and japan never had such artillery until it opened up its borders,so plz fix


having difficulty beating hardest ai having difficulty beating hardest ai

I started playing the game a month ago and I really enjoyed it, going from medium to hard, to hardest difficulty on skirmish on supremacy mode. At hardest I sort of hit a wall, in the sense that sometimes I can beat the AI, sometimes I can't. That's ok, but the real problem to me, is that the ai seems to be able to shit out troops like not tomorrow, if left alone for too long. Far more than some player should. Basically, I have to do some age 2/3 rush on them, otherwise they grow too big. If the rush succeeds then I don't even have to reach age 4 to beat them and it's kind of anticlimactic, if it doesn't, I might as well restart the game, since when they reach age 4 it's the apocalypse. If I didn't know any better I'd say the Ai is cheating with the resources somewhat. I like seeing the big fights, the pew pew, but I can't really get to that if I destroy their economy within the first 10 minutes, therefore I don't really like that playstyle, even if I understand it's effective. Do I just need to git gud with eco management to be on par with ai production or are you forced to kill them before they grow exponentially?