This is a war story of my own. I know that for many of you expert players it won´t mean too much…no surprising and innovative strategies, probably some obvious mistakes, etc.. but I always enjoyed reading other´s stories and I want to contribute with my 2 cents. As english is not my mother tongue I hope you will excuse my poor composition.
Yesterday I started a game at the zone. It had to be a 2x2 game, but one failed to join and then it was a FFA. After fighting back a couple of early attacks from both other players (I was the one w/better score), I started to really move my army against them. At this point one resigns and then the other. How I hate it when this happens! They don´t even know how to die with honour, no comments, no gg, etc…
As I was kind of frustrated and I went to the spanish IRC channel where is possible to get some players in. Usually very few people want to play RoR (they have not abandoned AoE) so I could only set a 1x1 game versus RA_Diver. It was huge mediterranean map, no reveal, pop 100.
He picked Phoeny and I picked…Hitite, so I knew he was going to have a certain advantage until I got iron.
As soon as the game started I found the berries and picked them as there was no tomorrow so I could have a critical mass of peons to desperately chop the wood I needed. Anyway, almost from the beginning I set 2 peons to get the wood for my storage pit, so I placed it between two masses of trees.
Don´t remember my bronze time but what I really remember is that he launched an attack with bronze boats while I was still in tool. Fortunately he concentrated in my fishing boats while I was able of concentrating a large amount of scout boats (about 12, I had 6 docks) and his navy was over. I started to quicly rebuild my FB´s so I had a nice flow of food coming in again soon.
Then another surprise: 8 CA´s inside my town start to raid it. I had no defense because I forward builded 3 archeries close to his town (I was at 6 and him at 12). I moved all my villies to this forward base, made a TC and start chopping wood again.
Soon my CA´s were flooding nice from the archeries. During all that time he did not chase my villies, he concentrated in my houses. I still wonder why and I just can think that his tragic mistake was lack of scouting. He completely forgot to scout between 1 and 4 so I had quite a rest there.
I sent 8 CA´s to my town to prevent further damages (burnt houses had already been replaced at 3) and easily kill all enemy CA´s as they were dispersed. I wondered why he did not sent more CA´s to my town (I expected hordes of them) but I found why when I sent some of mine to his city. He was making dumbos and EA´s ! I believe he was dedicating all his food source to this units. And as I was really kicking him off the sea he was not getting much food.
I sacrificated a dozen CA´s killing his chopping villagers while his dumbos and EA´s masacrated them but it was wothwile as his economy was badly hurt. By this time I was iron and although he had ironed first I was imposing my rules.
Soon infantry took its place and God it was so nice to see this dumbos fall like flies to my optimized phalanx.
At this point he realised he was set to die and said he was going to resign. We talked about the game a little bit and he realized that his mistake had been not killing me soon, and making slow units that would take a lot of time to get to my city (I have to say I destroyed 3 trannies at their docks). Also not scouting had been another negative point for him.
The real point is that we both had a real good time struggling one vs another..it´s so difficult to find players that would analise w/you one particular game!
Hopefully I would get some other good games at the Zone but sometimes is soooo difficult.
Let me know something…whenplaying mediterranean do you guys dock first or go for berries ?
Long live to APC clan !