this topic has been on my mind for a while, so i would be glad to hear some opinions about it!
i remember when i started to dig into competitive aoe 2 years ago and when i really enjoyed to binge through hours and hours of YT videos on the different civs (SOTL etc), learning about the bonuses, unique units, technologies etc. and still today, i feel that a large chunk of content thats supposed to teach us new players, is very focused on civilisations. hera has his (supposedly successful) "so you want to play..." series. youll see posts (on this sub) like this every day: "what do i do with [civ X] against [civ Y]?", "what civ can i pick to counter XY?", "whats the best civ for feudal aggression" (the latest example). the notorious "top 5 civilisations of all time" is on youtube probably 20 times. (and the funniest aspect of this "civilisation fetish" is off course when people 1k4 and downwards discuss "meta" or "civ balance", while regularly losing games because of the most basic mistakes, like not knowing when to add a tc and when to better make some army to not f*ing die instantly.)
i absolutely get that the different civs are a key feature of the game that makes people (myself included) excited about age.
but lately i feel what im really missing to actually get better, theory wise, is way more general stuff. i would totally watch a 4 hour video by hera/viper/whoever thinks they can do it titled "how to play archers", covering questions like:
-how do archers work, what is the unit about, what are strenghts and weaknesses? (like: why would i play with archers in the first place, what are some general characteristics to have in mind when playing them compared to melee/mounted units)
-how does a game with archers typically play out, what are the best build ups, power spikes, strategies? (when am i able to do most damage with them, when should i defend/focus on economy)
-match ups: archer vs archer, archer vs knights. what are the most likely scenarios that can come up in a game, and how do i respond to them? (how do i defend vs a 1tc knight mango push, how do i recognize and pressure a greedy boom early, when do i prioritise ballistics over a new tc, when should i use monks for defense and when pikes, how do i finish off my opponent most efficiently in imp)
...and then the same 4 hour thing again for knights. this stuff is 99% independent of your civ, yet it gets just a fraction of the attention it deserves. when watching casted games, it is mostly the same: what gets most of the attention is of course the unusual, exciting stuff, like specific unit combinations in a certain civ matchup, cheeky micro, and the small little tricks. im not saying all that is not important or interesting, but its not what makes the experts of this game so good.
although casters regularly refer to how great some players are at "decision making", they dont emphasize very much what those decisions are.
so what i would like to be at the center of my "ideal" aoe2 content (not referring to casted games of course, everyone can cast how they like), is this: im in a certain situation, what do i do? what is my ideal reaction to any threat that can potentially come my way. and it is not: are franks paladins stronger than lithuanian paladins, or how cost efficient is the teuton unique tech, because this piece of information is rarely gonna win me a game.
basically what i imagine is content that provides a bit of a "short cut" to all the knowledge that right now we have to get by just grinding out own experiences. obviously im not sure about how good this kind of content "sells", and that is the factor that will always decide what people create (i imagine it would be quite a challenge!) and what they ignore. for me, whos experiencing a little bit of a skill-ceiling that i cant cross right now, i think it would be great if there were some resources to fall back to and to learn new things from :)
sorry for the wall of text, any thoughts?
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