Tower Rushing

Rushing is a great way to slow down your enemy and one great way to do it is tower rushing. Because Regicide games start with 1o villagers and has a castle at the start of the game sometimes it is not that easy to tower rush in a regicide game especially if the other player has planned his building correctly. Your best chance is if his gold mine is located a little far from his castle and to the direction of your camp , otherwise it is hard work to harass a good player with a tower rush. Instead one of the best tactics I use when playing a team game is building a castle near your enemy and harassing him. In a four on four team game this can be done with devastating effects and I have played in many games where my team won by using this tactic. Following is a guide in how to execute it.
First of all to execute this successfully good communication between team members is essential , if you don't bother to type and inform your team members about your plan its likely that this plan will be doomed. This guide assumes your playing 3-3 or 4-4 but this can be applied to 2-2 as well but its a little difficult.
The image explains where the castle should be built. Castle should be in the middle of the trade route so not only you harass them with your soldiers but also you stop their trading as well. Ideally one of the players in the middle should build the castle since once near the enemy should concentrate on building armies more in case the plan backfires. The key to doing this successfully is to build the castle without your enemy knowing it until the castle starts firing at the defenseless trade carts. Building a castle is one thing but the most important thing is to defend it and harass the enemy that is cornered. Trebs are not available till the Imperial age so if you did this at the start of the castle age your enemies don't have a way to knock down your castle without coming close, so other two players coming for support should build archers to take care of swordsman and pike men to take care of cavalry. Remember that a balanced army always comes out on top.
After building the castle defend it and start attacking the enemy trapped in the middle if all players seems to be coming to attack your castle your ally in the other corner also can join in the battle otherwise he should defend. If you do this correctly one of your enemies will be well left behind in case of going through ages ,effectively making it 3-4 game.
One important thing to remember and one mistake most people make when executing this strategy is forgetting about their economy in the heat of the battle , It may seem all right if your winning since you can build up easily without much trouble but just in case this plan backfires and you find yourself attacked by the enemy your economy is the thing that will get you through. So whatever you do don't forget the basic things I have mentioned in the previous posts.

Little things that keep you in the game
Keeping the king alive

Does the fastest with the clicks always win ?

Age of Empire is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game. One criticism of RTS games are that they are click feasts , where the guy who clicks faster usually wins. Lets check out if this criticism is valid for Age of Empire's as well. Remember that I'm discussing about the Age of Empire's 2 Conquerors expansion here.
While being familiar with the keyboard short cuts and ability to click through building fast is a great help is doesn't necessarily make or break a player. According to my experience the most important thing in AOE is the ability to build a balanced army and move your units according to the strengths of your civ. Below are some of the features I find that lifts AOE above just a click feast.
* Ability to give rally points to buildings, For example you can give your town centers rally point to a tree and the created villagers will go there and cutting wood straight away so you don't have to click on every created villager and assign them some task.
* Town Bell , which immediately garrisons your units. Not the most recommended thing to do though.
* Advance command options for units , so you can use them for defense or offense.
* Ability to queue your unit production.
* Automatic recreation of farms when you queue them.

Here are some things that can be done to improve it further , some things that I have found useful in other strategy games like Rise of Nations.
* Auto explore feature of units. This is one of the cool things I found in Rise of Nations , where you click the auto explore button and the unit will start exploring the map automatically. This is not the most efficient way to explore but at least that's one more less thing to do.
* Idle villager will go to a lumber camp or mine and start working , this also I found in Rise of Nations
* Can give a command stance to a building, like set the buildings command stance to defense so the units created from that building will get the same command stance.

Small things like that make sure that the guy who clicks fastest doesn't always win , but he sure has a little advantage , so don't make this an excuse to not to know your keyboard shortcuts. Feel free to comment on the issue. Happy gaming !

How to get through the early rush

In the first previous post I gave some points how to go for a archer rush build. This time I'll give some tips how to avoid and get through the first rush. Remember that if you defend correctly without letting him do you some considerable damage you have a big advantage over him resource wise. In a team game you have to consider many things when preparing for a rush. Your location is the first thing to consider. In a 6-8 team game if your located in the middle you can be a bit complacent about where you place your lumber mills and other buildings but if your in the corner you have to build your base in a systematic way so it isn't easy for your enemies to take you down.
If your in the bottom part of the map then your lucky since you have an automatic protection from the side that is most likely an attack could come, since your castle is situated nicely to the side the attack could come. Castle's have a great attack and a range so its almost impossible to do an early rush from the side the castle is on.
If somebody's rushing you with archers when your still in dark age then you have a long way to go learning to play Regicide type of games. Mostly an early rush will come when your in Feudal age. Mostly he will rush with some Archers and pike men or Archers and swordsman. If the bases are not that near the enemy have to spend some time moving his units and finding a nice place to attack giving you more time. Protecting your town center with houses is a good way to save your villagers and farm without much hassle. Build your house close to each other around your town center.Leave some space for farms as well. Building your lumber camps near the castle is another thing you can do to avoid falling back in the economy.
When someone is rushing you should at least have some archers to defend your base. Without an army it is pretty much impossible to defend a base. Best units to defend a base are archers. If you are very good at moving your units a small force of archers can defend until help arrives or until you build up the army. Remember that enemy has to come to your base so other than his initial force he has to spend some time to bring in more troops. Move your archers back and forth between the castle and the town center , this way he either has to come and kill your archers ( getting hit by the castle and the town center in the process ) or he will have to destroy some buildings that are out of castle and town center range. Archers are poor at taking down building so you have a slight advantage here since his archer force is wasted because he didn't kill many villagers. Target his swordsman if he brought any of them since they are good at taking down buildings.
If you have successfully defended one of the best things to do is send your remaining force to his base. Most likely you will have some archers left so take them and try to take out some of his villagers. Since he concentrated on attacking most likely he hasn't planned his town well so look for vulnerable spots and try to take out some of his villagers. In future I'll give some tips to how to do a tower rush and how to avoid one.