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258 users online 11/17/2003 18:42
Date Created: 5/19/2002




Top 10 Games of All time

About the Game

Date: April 2000. This game is extremely memorable for me, I remember watching it over and over again trying to figure out what was going through RD_Champion's mind as his attack was extremely unconventional. After about the 3rd viewing, I made the decision that his RD_Champ's attack was far from foolish and extremely innovative although it was helped by Littleknife's difficult early game (unlucky dock placement, rough boar luring, bad luck on walling). This game is also very interesting in the late game action that goes on. You can clearly see how the unit dynamics played out before the patch. In otherwords, the land holding power of the 2400HP British archery unit called the TC.

Game Id: 910 [DOWNLOAD FILE]
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Rating
# Ratings: 24
Uploaded by: St_LothaireDate: 4/11/2000
#Views: 8422  #Downloads: 2989
Game Type: ZoneRatedMap: Rivers

Description:
Long 3v3 - TheLiquid vs SHS
Player Name Faction Color Team Result
(1) SHS_AssasiN Vikings Yellow 2 Watch and See
(2) RD_ChampioN Britons Light Blue 1 Watch and See
(3) SHS_Disciple Britons Purple 2 Watch and See
(4) LittleKnife Chinese Green 2 Watch and See
(5) _IamJordan Chinese Grey 1 Watch and See
(6) Pak_se_ri Vikings Orange 1 Watch and See
This game gets my vote for the top game of the week. There is some great team interaction that goes on here. All the players are top notch and they all put on quite a display.
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Commentary from Slugur

This is a pretty old game played by SHS vs 3 Asians, rd_champion, pak_seri and _IamJordan. I don't think it was for any tournament or anything. It was just a for fun game. Littleknife was new in SHS. The map is rivers, and I think that it was random map.

The first map that i ever got pretty good at when playing AoK, was highland. Highland is a lot like rivers, and the same strategies can be used on these maps most of the time. You have to remember that this was before TC and strategies were quite different back then. Having 30 villagers before feudal age on 1v1 Arabia was not uncommon. On highland and similar maps, i learnt how to feudal rather slow with a high population and steady fishing, and reaching castle reasonably fast. This is shown in this game as i castle in 18 mins with about 45 population, mostly villagers and fishing boats. While castling i'm making galleys and doing a small grush against pak_se_ri who is closest to me. We have a small galleys fight that i come out on top of. Disciple later joins me in castle age with his fire ships, and we take over the river-water on our side of the map.

Littleknife fares less well early on in the game, and he is feudal attacked by champion and towered upon. Disciple makes up for this fact by attacking champion heavily as he reaches castle age. He makes castle upon him and just generally hits him with archers and rams. Champion holds out well and keeps the pressure on littleknife, while waiting for support from IamJordan who is next to champion and in the middle of the Asians.

The problem in this game, the way i see it, and the reason that we lost it, is that Jordan (grey) never got attacked. In a big team game, the worst thing the team can do is to leave one or more of the enemy players untouched. Leaving Jordan (grey) free to do whatever he wants to do, of course, lets him assist champion enough to stay alive and kicking, while also booming and reaching imperial age rather quickly. Therefore, grey wins them this game in my opinion, while staying un-attacked for most of the game.

We take over the river on our side pretty early on, and i use transport for landing 3 vills on Pak_se_ri. Normally this is what i always do (or rather used to do) on highland- or river-type maps. I make 2 docks, boom with fishing boats, take over the river with galleys, and castle around 18-20 minutes. And as the river is safe enough I transport 2 or 3 vills. We also most of the time took use of each others' transports. In this game, disciple uses mine for getting his villager over the river. This type of highland strategy was used with a high rate of success for quite a long time, by myself and SHS_StormiN. Back around this time, most people would either sit back and boom until imperial age, in which case, castle attacks of this size were almost always successful. Or the enemy would go with a low population and try to take over the river or do a land-based feudal rush, or a small castle rush. In either case, the strong fishing boat boom and early castle made it pretty easy to counter all of this.

Normally this would be done by us (SHS_Slugur and SHS_stormin) using franks and celts. Using knights (with extra line of sight), tcs and rams, we used enormous castle rushes to take the map earlier than other strategies at the time did. Once the castles were up we'd also produce enormous armies of unique units for backing up the other units. These were obviously woad raiders and throwing axemen, which are in my opinion the two best units in the game. Non-counterable and very strong. In this particular game, however, I use knights, monks and rams early on in castle age for taking the advantage. The first castle goes up late and by the time it is up, I am almost at imperial with 130 population. At this time I’ve been making researches for infantry, planning to use champions. pak_se_ri kind of turns the fight around here, using many tcs and archers against my swordsmen, castles and trebuchets. pak_se_ri also lands me and I am set back to defend for a while. Doing so for a while turns out well, and with some help from disciple we take back my space and invade pak_se_ri once again. Jordan helps both champion and pak_se_ri with large champion armies and littleknife is continuously pushed back. Rd_champion fortifies his ground in littleknife's territory with tc after tc.

Also at this time in AoK, building fighting was very big. The discussion of TC rushing and building fighting was wildly argued, but I never cared much about it. It was a part of the game, and even if it's taken very far in this game, normally I didn't think of it as a problem. However, at the time, having a lot of trebuchets was a great idea in imperial, since taking down tcs and castles was main part of the business in imperial. Also flooding with champions was very popular at the time, which is exactly what I was planning, and also grey (IamJordan).

We lost this game in the end, mainly due to grey's champion armies and rd_champion's extensive tc-use. At one time I counted 14 tcs in the same screen on rd's side. Which is quite absurd I think, but still...they won. Most of us ran out of wood before the game was over, which is pretty rare. Also gold was scarce of course but most of us held out with trading carts etc.

All in all a wonderful game, that would have been even more wonderful if it had been after the TC-modifications

At one point in playing this game, when you have learnt enough about the game and how all the units work, micromanagement becomes a lot easier. This game is played before I had really learnt some of the important parts of micromanagement. You'll see how many of my swordsmen wander right into the arrows of TCs and/or castles. Also there are many more idle villagers than there should be. This is true for all six players though. Villagers shouldn't be idling and low numbers of champions shouldn't charge at a castle. This is of course obvious, but it's very hard to control the small things in a large and intense team game. However, when you have played this game a lot and learnt it well, it's possible to keep all things under control much better. At one point, you will see how micromanagement is no longer the main challenge when playing. Picking a strategy and executing it well, will become more difficult than making sure you have no idlers. Today when I’m playing there will be no suicidal champions and no idling villagers. I'm not saying I’m a better player today, but micromanagement-wise, I am Which is good, because you can concentrate more on the game and the strategy that way.

I guess this demonstrates pretty well how the game has developed since this game was played.


Screenshots


RD_Champ sneaks his forward vils in there just in time!

A group of feudal units bring havoc to Littleknife's base.

All the players use units effectively to counter each other.

The battles in this game wage across the entire map and every player is giving 110%

As the game gets near the end, hordes upon hordes of gold free units cover the battlefield.

Towncenters play a crucial role in holding land.

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