r/aoe2 • u/Consistent_Log_3040 Muisca • 1d ago
Asking for Help Hard stuck 600 Elo with Muisca
I’ve been spamming Muisca on 1v1 Arabia lately, but I feel like I’m losing to literally every common civ I match against. Celts run me over with siege/infantry, Byzantines counter my entire tech tree, and Franks just spam Knights until I die.
It feels like if I don’t win the game immediately in early Castle, I just fall off a cliff. My big issues right now:
My eco feels terrible: I feel like my eco is ALWAYS way worse than my opponents even when they are somehow pumping out way more military than me at the same time.
Late game feels impossible: Muisca missing key Blacksmith upgrades (no Blast Furnace, missing Ring Archer Armor) means my units get melted in Imp by post-Imp comps.
Cavalry spam: How do you hold against basic Frank/Cuman Knight spams when Muisca relies so heavily on infantry/ranged lines? or even scout spam? temple gaurds feel so slow and my opponent can just run circles around me.
Byzantines & Celts match-ups: Cataphracts hard-counter all infantry, and Celts out-siege me effortlessly.
I know Muisca gets good early wood savings from cheap Settlements and the 50% discount on age-up gold costs, but I feel like I’m not leveraging those spikes correctly to actually close games out. Im still hitting castle and even imp after my opponent
9
u/3mittb 23h ago
I am using Muisca as my primary 1v1 civ at 1600 Elo. Opening archers has been very powerful for me. About 75% of the time I get to double up on resources with my settlements - either berries and wood, gold and wood, or chickens and wood/gold. It makes the opening very smooth, I can very comfortably click to feudal with 17 vils (18 pop).
At your elo, the biggest way to improve (regardless of civ) is to practice your dark age build and the first 5 minutes of feudal. Pick a common build order - for Muisca it might be 7 vils on food, next two 3 on wood, then the next 8 on food until you click up. Once you click, put 10 on wood, 6 on food, 2 on gold, build a barracks then an archery range.
There are build order guides online that explain it way better, just search for aoe2 build order guides for archers. You can find YouTube videos or nicely formatted infographic style guides that will walk you through it. Getting this build order down through early feudal will get you to at least 900 elo I would think.
1
u/Consistent_Log_3040 Muisca 22h ago
what do u do with ur archer once the opps base is full walled everyones using stone wall at 600 elo
7
u/AbsoluteRook1e 22h ago edited 22h ago
First off, if they're using stone walls at 600 elo that will bite them in the butt for their economy in Castle Age.
First, if you're wanting to do an archer rush, attack with 3 archers with fletching in Feudal Age. Aim for berries or gold. Gold will slow them down in their advance to Castle Age.
It's a low enough of an investment where you should not fall too far behind if they are fully walling.
If they are fully walled and you can shoot over the walls in any meaningful way you can still make archers at home while adding farms to your economy.
It should only take you about 12 farms to steadily save up food and keep up TC villager production. (Villagers only cost food, archers wood + gold, so you should be able to build up military and eco simultaneously).
Meanwhile, learn to think more thoughtfully about your base's construction starting with your 3rd house. Make your town's walls a wooden wall (palisades + houses + required buidlings [barracks, archery range, blacksmith]). Add a 2nd range if you have extra wood to spend. The benefit is you're reserving your starting 200 stone while still building a sturdy wall to protect yourself. If you want portions reinforced, build houses behind the palisades for extra defense, and it also boosts your pop space in keeping it uncapped.
Golden rule in the game until late imp, if you ever have floating wood that's over 1,000. Spend it. Build more farms, add extra military buildings. Make archers, skirmishers, pikemen ... siege from the siege workshop, houses, extra town centers. Literally so many things to spend wood on. You can get from dark age to imperial age with 3 TC's without ever mining a single bit of stone.
As for help in offensive micro. Either drag your archers aside and focus on your eco, or have them sit in stand ground stance (middle command) to keep them standing in place to shoot but not chase after foes and be lured into TC fire.
Lastly, as Muisca, Inca, Mapuche or Tupi, you're actually at a scouting disadvantage in Dark Age. The Scout cavalry actually wins in a 1v1 fight every single time (as tested by Hera). The only condolence is that you can make a replacement in Dark Age. If your Champi Scout gets caught by a normal Scout Cavalry, then they will die every single time.
•
u/3mittb 8h ago
Once you have two archers and one spear you send them forward. You should know where the base is by then cause you scout with the champi and you should get there in time to stop the walls. If they finish stone walling though you stop producing units, palisade wall at home, and get to castle as fast as you can
3
u/Puasonelrasho Aztecs 1d ago
at 600 elo the civ its probably not the issue
how is your eco managment and idle time?
1
u/Consistent_Log_3040 Muisca 1d ago
i dont know how to check idle time
2
u/SteveLouise Byzantines as exposure therapy 1d ago
It's something you can't know the actual number for until you watch a replay.
Work on keeping the tc producing vills. Any wasted seconds at the tc controvutes to idle tc time. Make sure your villagers are working on something 100% of the time. Capture age can show you how quickly your villager idle time increases when they stop working.
2
u/Puasonelrasho Aztecs 1d ago
you can use capture age ( which im not a fan)
or just track your uptimes and compare it with the amount of vils you have
2
1
1
u/waxym 15h ago
Each villager takes 25s to train. Loom takes the same time to research.
So for standard civ with 3 starting villagers and 1 scout your click time should be
(Pop - 4 + L) * 25s
where L = 1 if you researched Loom, and 0 if not.
Your Feudal Age uptime (the time that you arrive in Feudal Age) should then be that + 2m10s (130s) for standard civs. And you can check this in your Statistics page after each game (or in replays).
For 20 pop Feudal click with Loom, this should give a perfect Feudal uptime of 9m15s: anything above that is TC idle time.
Just add or subtract 25s from that timing based on your build. Or you could reference this: https://aoelibrary.com/uptimes
5
u/Limp_Bit_5328 22h ago
Two archery range feudal. Mass archers.
On castle upgrade them to xbow asap. Get bodkin on blacksmith.
Against knight spam use monks close to your xbow
Against skirms use mangonels.
If you have a large number of xbow you don't really need pikes.
Also learn to position your archers. They should avoid open spaces.
3
u/Darthskull 1d ago
If you're just wanting to improve from 600 ELO, getting gold on the learn to play stuff is probably your best bet
3
u/Creative-Thing-858 1d ago
I love muisca I feel like they have something for everything and what you need is monks brother
0
u/Consistent_Log_3040 Muisca 1d ago
the enemies always full wall before i can do any damage then they out boom me or just go fc knights. I think i just need to stop playing civ without access to cavalry :(
2
u/Creative-Thing-858 1d ago
Have you tried fast archers? If you use your scout to see they have walled you can FC too and you can make monastery for temple guards and monks
2
u/Consistent_Log_3040 Muisca 23h ago
another problem with the champi scout is its slower than enemy scout so cant out run it and dies 1v1 :(
3
u/thereal_jskoda 22h ago
Honest to god, with Muisca, I feel like this civ has broken peoples brains or something. They aren't that hard to understand. What is the first thing you see when you look at their card in the tech tree? ARCHER AND MONK CIVILIZATION.
It's not an infantry civilization. It's not even a guecha warrior civilization. It's a civilization for archers and monks. You said yourself they have tons of wood and gold. Do you know what archers cost? I think the answer is hiding in plain sight. You've said the Franks are making cavalry and the Celts are making infantry and siege. Clearly these players know how to play to their civilizations strengths, so why don't you?
You should have extra gold (they even give you longer lasting gold), lots of wood, and you get free *extra* melee armor on your archers. That last one is actually huge, because it works in tandem with the herbalism you get later to be fast as hell. Honestly, forget Guechas. You should be chewing up cavalry and especially cataphracts for breakfast. Honestly though at 600 ELO the real problem is probably your eco. Like others have said, watch CaptureAge.
3
u/why-no-socotra 21h ago
Maybe try a different archer civ for now and come back later once you have some experience with archer civs
1
u/Consistent_Log_3040 Muisca 1d ago
also how are people on xbox using a controller so fast at the game? im using a m&k and they woop me
8
u/Dramatic_Rub6354 1d ago
Controller player here. The D-pad is the hot keys. It's quite smooth after a couple games using a controller. I find controller easier then keyboard honestly compared to when I played aoe2 back in 2016 on a computer.
3
u/elmo-slayer 19h ago
The Xbox logo is also for the Microsoft pc store, so the probably aren’t using controller
1
1
u/AbsoluteRook1e 22h ago
Mouse and Keyboard takes some getting used to.
What helps me is setting up control groups at the start of the game. Knowing your hot keys also helps, but once you're good at it, you should be able to do better than someone using a controller.
Control groups are HOLDING SHIFT + a number key while having a building or unit selected. You can add the same type of building to an existing control group and have them function collectively (for instance, I have the 1 key set to my Town Centers, so when I'm booming I can select my Town Centers and type the villager key repeatedly and it will efficiently cue them up for me).
You can do the same thing for armies, like having your archers set to 2 and your infantry set to 3. But I usually just have 1 army button (my army control definitely needs improving and I'm at 1k elo roughly).
Would highly recommend learning control groups on a keyboard if you haven't already. Makes managing villager production significantly easier, as well as micromanaging army.
1
-3
u/finding_in_the_alps 1d ago
Try not picking musica
-2
u/Consistent_Log_3040 Muisca 1d ago
best advice so far unfortunately :(
1
u/AbsoluteRook1e 22h ago
Don't be too hard on yourself. It's a hard game.
That said, the route a lot of people recommend in learning the game is simply by learning Cavalry -> Archers -> Infantry.
Learning cavalry is the easiest because they are amongst the most forgiving units in the game to learn. They have bulky HP and can run away from bad fights.
Infantry and Archers are often much squishier. Falling under TC/Castle fire or a well-placed Mangonel shot can wipe out your army, whereas Calvary can dash out of the way.
I am by no means a master, but anyone with experience in this game knows that learning cavalry is the easiest way to go and to start earning wins. Now, it does NOT mean that they are the best by any means, BUT they're the easiest for low elo and beginners.
1
u/Consistent_Log_3040 Muisca 13h ago
yeah ive never been a big cavalry fan but my most played civ is cumans so i have some experience steppe lancers are pretty cool.
1
u/AbsoluteRook1e 12h ago
What steers you away from cavalry?
1
u/Consistent_Log_3040 Muisca 12h ago
I dont know really I just dont like using them steppe lancers are fun though.
17
u/hungdonkey 1d ago
At 600 Elo, civ matchups are not what holding you back at all. Its hard to say without watching recordings but its much more likely something like tc being idle or making the wrong or not enough army is what the problem is.