EVIL TIPS, TRICKS, TACTICS, AND TECHNIQUES
The following are generally evil techniques you can use to
confound your opponent, win a key battle, or just otherwise
cause mayhem. One thing they all have in common is they will
give you an edge - if you have the micromanagement skills to
execute them while not sacrificing the rest of your game. They
are ranked from cunning to very evil with lame being added
on the end. If you have any questions about whether these are
fair or cheating, you should ask your playing partners or
friends.
In Bloods book, if its in the game, its fair.
CunningPalisade or wall forward builders for protection.
When you are building that forward towncenter or
barracks, protect your villagers from attack by building
a wall segment on each side of your villager. This can
be done very rapidly, takes only 15 stone, and ensures
completion of your forward base you can then delete
certain portions to escape from.
CunningLure boars with villagers. Youll want to get the
loom for this, but it is doable without. 1) Select a
villager and attack the boar you want to lure, 2) Run
back to the safety of the nearest towncenter or mill,
and 3) Slaughter the boar with a pack of villagers. This
takes practice to time correctly. Youll want the
villagers doing the eating to drop off their resources
prior to attacking the boar. This is more common than
cunning. Also, don't lure boars with scout, this is not
cunning, it is stupid. Your scout is better off
scouting, not endangering itself with boars.
CunningThe "towncenter quick click." Ever notice how you
always seem to have 49 food stockpiled when that last
queued villager is created? Well never have 49 food
again. 1) Simply select the villagers slaughtering sheep
at the, 2) Right-click on the TC, then 3) Right click
them back to work on their sheep. Do this before the
villager pops out and you should have more than 50 food.
Your villagers do not deposit their food until the sheep
is done, or they have collected 10 food.
CunningUse houses as makeshift walls in Dark Age. Why
use houses when you have palisades? Well for one, houses
have more hit points and take longer to destroy, and for
another, you need them anyway might as well have them
perform a useful function. Fill in the extra spaces (if
any) between houses with palisades.
CunningShift-click queuing. If you want to build a lot
of units at one time, hold the shift button down when
you click the unit you want to build. Each click (or
press of the hotkey) now queues up five units instead of
one. Essential in DM games where speed is everything.
CunningPartial build walls to stop enemy traffic. Need a
wall really fast because the enemy is approaching? 1)
Build a wall line, 2) As the villager hammers away, only
let him get in two hammer hits, then move to the next
section, 3) Do this all the way down the wall line until
you get to the end. The villager will now finish the
entire wall on his own.
Dont you fing it at least annoying when your demos just sit there? Select all your demos
and then hit A (the default hotkey for aggressive AI)
and the demos will attack the nearest enemy unit that
approaches. The reason is that the default stance for
demos is stand ground, for some reason
CunningDelete your own farms Okay, so you just lost that
towncenter in a frenzied battle. Don't let your enemy
add insult to injury by building his own towncenter and
stealing your farms. That's evil. If you can't retake
the ground, delete your farms. This is cunning.
EvilSteal your opponents farms After you eliminate an
enemy towncenter, you can steal his farms and begin
using them yourself to gather food. Just move some
villagers in under the cover of your troops and begin
working the enemy farms. The farms will change to your
possession and you can gather food from them. Once
you've stolen all the farms, build a new towncenter to
gather to food. Don't build a towncenter first (unless
you want to anyway), because your enemy can be cunning
and delete the farms before you can steal them. Stealing
farms is an evil strategy for rushers, because it can
save you up to 500 wood and provide 1000 free food for
your effort.
EvilPalisade enemy resources in the Dark Age. While
scouting your enemy, find his key resource piles of gold
and stone and palisade them in. It is often easier to
use a combination of houses, palisade and forward
barracks to deny the enemy resources. If you are lucky,
you can get all of his nearby gold piles in the Dark
Age, before hes even thought about mining gold.
EvilHide archers underneath towers in feudal age. Dont
you hate in when your opponent spoils your beautiful
feudal attack by building a tower to protect his
villagers? Well, you can return the spoil, by planting
your archers on stand ground at the base of the enemy
tower. 1) Simply maneuver your archers into position,
getting as close to the tower base as possible, and 2)
Change their posture to "stand ground" (select archers
and click the N hotkey). Now your archers will fire at
will against the enemy villagers and will be safe from
the tower. If he begins to build another tower in range,
get out of there pronto. His only effective options are
to place another tower or attack your archers.
EvilKill enemy deer herds. If you see your enemy has a
large herd of nearby deer, you can attack them with your
scout. A scout requires two hits to kill a deer and they
run off after each hit, so this is fairly
micro-intensive. However, you can sometimes catch a
player just as he drops his mill ?
EvilTrade stone for wood and food in feudal age. Put
that 200 stone to use by selling it at the market. You
can improve resources available in the feudal age by
selling those you dont want or need immediately. Not a
good idea if you were planning on dropping a tower, but
extremely effective if you are planning rush or running
lean economy.
EvilRepair your offensive rams with a villager. I dont
know how many times this has helped me win battles, but
most folks never even bother repairing rams. Instead
they just let them slowly die to towncenter fire.
Instead of letting them die, repair them with a
villager. Chances are your opponent wont even notice.
For a particularly evil delight, attack from the north,
then send in the repairing villager, the villager will
be difficult, if not impossible to see and the enemy
will have a hard time targeting it. I have seen single
rams take down loaded towncenters in this manner.
EvilAttack using "hit and run" techniques against enemy
villagers. Who would be foolish enough to send 1 or 2
archers to attack a large group of enemy villagers? I
would! Thats who. 1) Send your archers in to attack
when he chases you down, 2) Run away when he turns
around to go back, 3) Attack again. This is extremely
annoying, but highly effective, because he can never
kill your archers, unless you stop paying attention.
Matty uses this one all the time. You can also use this
technique with light cavalry, infantry and pikes. But
archers work best.
Very EvilCut around enemy walls with villagers. Has the
enemy walled out of his town? If his wall is connected
to forests, especially on Black Forest, you can easily
bypass his walls without him even noticing. The
technique has 3 steps: 1) chop wood until the tree is
cut down, 2) start building a wall or palisade segment
over the chopped tree the tree disappears to make room
for the segment, and 3) delete the wall or palisade
segment. Lather, rinse, repeat. Soon you will have cut a
path around his walls. Very evil indeed.
Very EvilBuild buildings with fishing boats. You can
build buildings near the shore using a fishing boat.
Fishing boats have the same building functions as a
villager, other buildings just do not appear as an
option. However you can bypass this easily to build
barracks on an enemy island in the Dark Age, without the
use of transports: 1) Scout out the enemy shoreline, 2)
select a villager and build a barracks, and 3) Select
the fishing boat to continue building. Note: this is
almost lame because it takes several minutes for the
barracks to actually be completed. Use this one at risk
of your reputation, because it is plainly visible, and
most folks will whine about it.
Very EvilScan for enemy locations through the Fog of War
using a house. Once you have scouted the map, you can
see the terrain through the fog, but you cannot see
newly built enemy buildings or enemy units, unless they
are in your line of sight (LOS). However, since a house
can be built on elevation of terrain, you can use the
house to identify enemy hideouts, as long as you can se
the terrain through the fog. 1) Select a villager (if
you use this a lot it is good to have a villager tied
to a hotkey number like nine, 2) click B E (default
hotkey for building a house), and 3) Scroll the mouse
over the terrain you wish to scout. Do not build the
house, just look for placing. Where there is enemy
activity, the house image will glow red, indicating you
cannot build there. Now you know why they are always
able to find you! Particularly useful in DM games where
the usual setting is "explored."
Very EvilFarm bug. This is very evil and most folks
consider it cheating. You can get farms that never
expire and never need replacing. 1) Have an ally begin
building farms, but NOT complete them, 2) Your villagers
can now "steal" the farms from your ally and 3) Farm too
your hearts content. If you stop farming and comeback,
the villager will complete the farm building, so do not
stop farming. Use this one at risk of your reputation,
because it is plainly visible, and most folks will whine
about it.
Very EvilDelete your enemy's fishing spots. This is
extremely nasty. 1) Make a fishing boat, 2) Send it over
to your enemy's area 3) Begin building a fish trap on
his fishing spot, 4) Delete the unmade trap and get your
100 wood back. You have just deleted his fish. You can
do this any number of times and it doesn't cost anything
other than micro-management time. Hehe, very evil.
Very EvilUse unbuilt palisades as early warning. This is
relatively costly, but is good if you have the wood. Lay
palisade frames all over the map, but don't build them.
When enemy walks over them you can see them and when the
enemy builds on them you get a message saying building
canceled. Hehe, very evil. Thanks to Tenaciti for that
one. Tenaciti is one evil guy.
LameBuild fish traps with villagers. Fish traps are
simply the worst forms of food. It takes forever to
build them and the fish get gathered very slowly.
However, you can improve the time it takes to build them
by using a handy villager. This has two easy steps: 1)
Begin a fish trap as close to the shore as possible, and
2) Select a villager to finish building it. The villager
build rate is much faster than the fishing boat rate, so
you begin receiving food almost instantly. This tip is
lame because fish traps are a bad investment and you
want them close to the dock, not close to the shore.
