AOE and The Importance of Reflection

I recently rediscovered Age of Empires after many years of not playing, and I discovered a fairly large, vibrant community of people who still play, and I've started playing online. This is actually the closest I've become to a "gamer", as I've also started watching recorded/commentated games online in addition to playing a good amount. [As an aside, I never used to understand what the appeal was in people like Sam Li watching recorded games, but now I understand].

I was listening to an interview of one of the top AOC players (I think it was FeAge) by ZeroEmpires, and he asked FeAge if he had any tips for getting better. FeAge gave the following two tips -

1) Play against people that are as good or better than you.
2) After every game, spend 5 minutes and think about why you won or why you lost the game. 

I've been practicing the second tip, and while it might not seem like such a big deal, it has actually helped my game tremendously. Thinking about the one or two things I did right or wrong and either applying or avoiding them in future games has helped me improve dramatically. I've improved from being a "Super Noob" with twice as many losses as wins to simply being a "Noob" with as many wins as losses (though I definitely had to win much more than I lost to get here). I didn't realize at first how much I was improving until I realized that I had jumped much higher in rating than I ever thought I would. At first I thought this was a fluke, and that I must have just gotten lucky a few times, but after a while of maintaining my rating and outplaying players of lower rating, I think I can say with confidence that my rating isn't a fluke.

I've always assumed that just playing the game a lot will somehow automatically make you better at it, and to some extent, that's true. Joshee once mentioned to me and he was frustrated with someone who had played LoL for a long time and still wasn't very good, and I remember wondering to myself if that guy was just incompetent and kind of stupid. But now I guess I've realized a bit more that to become a better player, there needs to be some intentionality behind it and improvement doesn't just come by "playing a lot". Either that, or I'm just stupid and not as talented as everyone else.

Obviously, this lesson on reflection can be applied to many different arenas in life, and this practice of reflection has also helped me specifically in my ultimate play. But whatever. This is an AOE post, so here are some of the random reminders and tips that I've picked up that have really helped my gameplay:

• You are going to need to transfer your villagers from one resource to another, so don't be afraid to do it. Start sending your lumberjacks to seed farms once you have your extra Town Centers up. Don't wait until you've saved up a ton of wood to do it. You'll end up with too much.
• Start trading before your gold runs out. When it runs out, it will already be too late.
• When playing Turks, don't forget that the Light Cavalry/Hussar upgrades are free. They make for a great meat shield for your Janisseries/Hand Cannoneers.
• Don't be afraid to ask for help from your teammates. If you need resources or military support, ask immediately.
• Do your military upgrades before you need them. Especially the upgrades to Champion. Those take a while.
• Don't forget to make siege. Good use of siege seems to actually be the difference between noobs and better players.
• Anticipate what your opponents are going to make, and make the hard counter to them. Don't forget about Hand Canoneers and how much they tear through infantry.
• Build an extra Blacksmith or two to get all your upgrades faster.

There was a time when I thought that any decent RTS player who decided to pick up AOE could still beat me because I simply wasn't very good at AOE, but not anymore. So if there are any of you people out there who still play AOE or want to get back into it or want to challenge me, hit me up so we can Wololo together.