That's my twitch clip! Glad you could use it for youtube content. I actually think that the second encounter with mangudai in that clip is actually a much better demonstration of this amazing technique.
He said a "real" player, compared to the AI in the clip who can micro individual units to dodge most shots. Real players move their units as a group making it much harder to dodge.
@@whatgoesaroundcomesaround4027 moreover, AI can do million APM simultaneously :) As a kid I loved to spectate after the game how AI starts developing their base. Words can't describe how I was impressed when I saw for the first time how in Regicide game all 10 villagers go to work in different directions immediately :D
I really appreciate content like this, especially from the perspective of someone who is trying to learn. Often the minutia of the game can seem overwhelming, especially when I watch what some of the pro's do, but stuff like this is truly helpful and shows that it is within the realm of possibility for even a noob like me to do. Now its just a matter of practice and then eventually execution, but thats a different story :) Thanks for the video
cuz i missed how u did it the first time and then understood it the 2nd time around, i'll summarize it for others: 1. group all onagers, having at least 8-10 in the group 2. onagers will sort themselves into 2+ rows 3. tell all onagers to attack ground at 1st row's max range (ideally where some enemies are) 4. 1st row fires, 2nd row not yet in range 5. 2nd row fires as group moves forward, 1st row reloading 6. while keeping whole group selected, spam attack ground where u expect at least some of the opponent's units to be 7. onagers will naturally fire in staggered volleys as they are forced to by staggered reload periods 8. volume of fire at multiple points will carpet the area, making nowhere safe for your opponent to be
yeah, I got it from the first time, but what I don't get is how he does it without onager range mod :) At least he plays with grid which can be used as a guide lines, but this is approximately, in real game I'm sure I will be clicking too close or too far and get cleaned by cavalry anyways :)
@@RAMMY237 yeah anyone trying to do this would probably have to be relatively comfortable in their onager knowledge anyway to try it it's maybe an advanced technique masquerading as an intermediate one (without the range outline, that is)
Look forward to practicing this brilliant concept/idea. thanks Hera. I’ll have to practice a lot to get the apm down or rather go there for this. But correct me if I’m wrong, max range attack ground move forward a little attack ground, and they should be in sync where at least half the squad is throwing lead down range while other half is reloading so no one is in the black on ammo. Amazing concept and quite like actual warfare.
"It's easy" proceeds to do some crazy high apm micro with insane precision. Even if I pull that off I would not have noticed that meanwhile all my villagers on gold are being killed.
Works even better with multiple control groups of onagers. Having 2 groups you can have 4 staggers instead of 2, which is how you want to setup an attack ground hold the gap scenario with a choke point. Nobody should be coming through, as targets will be hit multiple times, and those rocks hit hard. You still want to watch out for bombard cannons obviously.
After the introduction I stilll wasn't sure if this was gonna be helpfull or a troll video xD But actually it turned out to be very helpfull - thank you! :D
When I read the title, I thought there was some new bug or glitch. When you started explaining what you were going to do, I thought it would involve control groups. The actual technique is more interesting because it accounts for and takes advantage of the properties of the siege onager. Good stuff!
I'm a noob but I have recently applied this tip to one TG and it was brutal. I think my celt onagers made the difference. Thanks, bro, keep the good content. Just one question: any advice to protect them at close distance? Maybe some pikeman or a castle behind?
Thanks for the great video! Can you make a video on how to micro larger crossbowgroups and smaller ones vs other crossbows? Since attack move got nerfed and made useless, I have problems of microing in a good way vs them.
Whenever I see a short video from Hera I gotta pause to figure out if he's trolling with a short joke or he's actually sharing POG tips and breakdown. Just how I like my content. Cheers!
This has always been my goal, and I've executed it on a couple occasions but I've found that I'm not good enough to keep it up for more than a few shots. I think it helps to not get distracted by the units charging yours cause then you do something stupid like try to attack too close and then the mangos move
The core of AoE2 is the macro. Learning how to successfully pull of a dark age (find sheep, pull boars) then executing a reasonable build from there. Its why you focus on one civ at a time. Eventually you’ll understand the structure of how builds work. You can look at britons and say, “fast castle into crossbow is really strong here because of their civ bonus”. Then you execute your learned skill for fast castle. Since the unit sets are largely shared knowledge transfers easily. Lets say feudal archers on double range requires 15 wood cutters. The celts could achieve that with 13 wood cutters thanks to their bonus and turn the extra two into farmers to make a faster castle, skirms or spears. You can also look at a civs overall win rate at different portions of the game at aoe stats. This lets you determine a win condition and what age window that is. This lets you pick up civs faster: “oh this civ wins in castle age why? Cheaper knights. But they have bad cavalier so they don’t get an Imp power spike. You know you need to do scouts into knights and execute a castle all in ti win against a strong imperial age civ. Again the micro he showed here is actually fairly easy to execute wnd i think I’ll try it out with teutons, celts, and Slavs.
@@OpiatesAndTits He started playing the game 3 weeks ago lol. The different power spikes civs get at different stages of the game dont even matter at low elo.
@@NowhereMan7 yeah he kind of came at me with a lot to take in at once 😂 I have rts game experience in SC2, WC3 etc but that is very little matchup and unit micro compared to this
Tadakatsu Honda figured this out over 400 years ago with muskets. It is amazing to see this technique being implemented here. A slow motion version showing hands would be appreciated for the illiterate such as myself
I actually did already know this but have about 3apm and 850 Elo. But I've used a similar method when holding a choke with staggered bombard shots. As each moves into position at different times you get the same coverage effect.
How do you toggle between them so fast? How are selecting only the front line and toggling between them? Maybe having a camera showing ur keyboard when you play would be awesome!
Thank you Hera. Now I can play Teutons more effectively. How about using staggered formation, so as to prevent the SOs all shooting at once? Too risky? Sorry I'm low elo
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 Hera, thanks for replying! If you actually do the tutorial video, maybe you can run thru the different formations for the SOs. At least give us low elos more help in microing them, coz our eAPMs are terrible.
this is really cool but the hotkey arrangement / order of actions is not so clear to me? you have all of them in a group but then select only half of them first and shoot and then just keep clicking aaround with all of them together?
won't putting your onagers in a more spaced out formation ( c default hotkey) make this easier since the first line will be further away from the back line ? ( the formation in which the halbs are in the clip)
I've done similar techinques for staggering shots to emulate rapid fire, but never against real targets, it was only for cutting trees in Michi and Forest nothing.
You can, i would only recommend doing that to desync the onagers attack cycle though, since having them all in the same control group allows you to spam move and attack ground without having to change control groups every time; way less apm required.
Yes absolutely you can also do it with green box micro as well. As long as your shots are staggered to start this will work. If you patrol with one group at max range in a line formation this will start on its own and you can follow up attack ground commands as the other onagers get into range. Once its started the shots will he staggered until you stop microing the onagers.
@@Helloandhaveaniceday honestly it would be easier to use 1 group, get the onagers in a line so 2-3 (basically you form a T with the enemy formation) fire at once. Then as your onagers get into range you can start issuing attack ground commands. You xan also start the stutter with green box and attack ground micro.
So Hera have seen some movie involving Napoleonic wars and the British redcoats tactics and thought “wait a minute this tactics is cool, but what if I let shoot giant wheeled shotgun instead one poor guy with just a musket, wouldnt that be much cooler?“ 😂
i saw that on our 900 elo 3vs3 team game. Somebody was showing up with more than 25 siege onagers in the late game and destroyed everything. After that we were thinking how to counter that. I think bombard cannons are the only way to properly deal with this.
I always try to lame civpickers and I wont make an exception just bc you are famous 11. I think it wouldve been better to showcase how hard the shots are to dodge by showing the second mangudaiball I sent about 30s after this bc at this point I really tried my very best to avoid getting hit and still failed hard to do so. Your feudal and early castle age defense was absolutely insane in this game GGWP
You don't really explain how to do it though beyond the initial max-range attack ground... are you just moving and pressing stop? Moving and pressing attack?
This is not rapid fire. Rapid fire is when you hold down a button and it issues a spell or ability cast as well as a left click command at the same time. We use it in SC2 for casting various spells, spreading creep, sieging up liberators etc. What this is actually like is how you micro corrosive bile, storm, and especially disrupters in SC2. You always want the threat of a shot rather than firing all at once. Its called zoning and its the best way to handle powerful ranged AoE like an onager. Good to see the AoE2 community continuing to advance the micro. There are a lot of slow civs that could benefit from this sort of siege onager micro putting them on better footing with faster civs. What’s funny is if you patrol your onagers in because your a noob who doesn’t attack ground this happens by default so this is what my siege onagers look like always but I never thought to intentionally start the stagger letting me defacto stagger micro with attack ground.
This video also does not adequately explain it, in my opinion. Were those 'groups', as he referred to it, numbered differently to achieve this result? It didn't look like it (I just saw them all grouped as "1"), and so didn't see how he accomplished getting the onagers to fire at different times in a staggered line of fire. He mentions attacking at maximum range with what I believe was the attack ground or attack move command with hotkeys before immediately moving forward again, but this also wasn't particularly explained beyond just stating each step with general wording (and then goes on to perform this feat multiple times in quick succession in a more complicated scenario than just simply moving forward or in one direction). It looks to me, then, that a few assumptions about the audience are made. Describing the concept isn't enough if you aren't also going to explain the details in how to pull it off.
I actually came up with this idea when trying to quickly clear a forest nothing map, but I am horrible at the game, so I figured it was probably only a good idea at my low level lol. It worked pretty well on few low level team arena games for me though :)
Just force the first shot to be beyond their range. Assuming you have atleast around 6+ (4 is possible but requires some tricks) they will form 2 lines or more while walking towards it.
I got many more tricks like this if u guys enjoy this style of video, lmk
please show us all your tricks 11
That was slick. That's real Micro with them.
Good to have your Aoe2 content again here on YT. Yesterday I subscribed again. Wish you all the best
1
Sweet video man! Idk if you realized this, but you're wearing the same shirt in the replay you showed... kind of embarrassing ngl...
amazing, I cant wait for someone who is way above my level to use this on me
If you are matched vs someone way above your level the game won't last until he can have an army of SOs :D
@@jonesen4395 1
😂😂😂
Without context, that sounds like a kink/fetish 😂😂
11
Awesome tip Hera, now I can kill my own army twice as fast!
20 years since release and still discovering amazing techniques :
- aoe2 devs were amazing
- players are so creative
its a bug you fool
This channel is on a whole new level since Hera came back. This is genius.
This is exactly the kind of content only pros can make, nice work!
That's my twitch clip! Glad you could use it for youtube content. I actually think that the second encounter with mangudai in that clip is actually a much better demonstration of this amazing technique.
"its so easy against another player to do this" okay HERA
He said a "real" player, compared to the AI in the clip who can micro individual units to dodge most shots. Real players move their units as a group making it much harder to dodge.
@@Herlgar I've always wondered about the ai being like a superhuman... Because they would never idle and can do multiple APM within milliseconds.
@@whatgoesaroundcomesaround4027 moreover, AI can do million APM simultaneously :)
As a kid I loved to spectate after the game how AI starts developing their base. Words can't describe how I was impressed when I saw for the first time how in Regicide game all 10 villagers go to work in different directions immediately :D
I really appreciate content like this, especially from the perspective of someone who is trying to learn. Often the minutia of the game can seem overwhelming, especially when I watch what some of the pro's do, but stuff like this is truly helpful and shows that it is within the realm of possibility for even a noob like me to do.
Now its just a matter of practice and then eventually execution, but thats a different story :)
Thanks for the video
cuz i missed how u did it the first time and then understood it the 2nd time around, i'll summarize it for others:
1. group all onagers, having at least 8-10 in the group
2. onagers will sort themselves into 2+ rows
3. tell all onagers to attack ground at 1st row's max range (ideally where some enemies are)
4. 1st row fires, 2nd row not yet in range
5. 2nd row fires as group moves forward, 1st row reloading
6. while keeping whole group selected, spam attack ground where u expect at least some of the opponent's units to be
7. onagers will naturally fire in staggered volleys as they are forced to by staggered reload periods
8. volume of fire at multiple points will carpet the area, making nowhere safe for your opponent to be
yeah, I got it from the first time, but what I don't get is how he does it without onager range mod :) At least he plays with grid which can be used as a guide lines, but this is approximately, in real game I'm sure I will be clicking too close or too far and get cleaned by cavalry anyways :)
@@RAMMY237 yeah anyone trying to do this would probably have to be relatively comfortable in their onager knowledge anyway to try it
it's maybe an advanced technique masquerading as an intermediate one
(without the range outline, that is)
I would love to see this in a tourney final
So glad u came back to aoe2, Hera ur the best!!!
Look forward to practicing this brilliant concept/idea. thanks Hera. I’ll have to practice a lot to get the apm down or rather go there for this. But correct me if I’m wrong, max range attack ground move forward a little attack ground, and they should be in sync where at least half the squad is throwing lead down range while other half is reloading so no one is in the black on ammo. Amazing concept and quite like actual warfare.
Nicee!!! Now i cant miss al my onager shots in a hole new level hahah
Awesome video! I am enjoying your content and would like to see more. Then once I can beat extreme AI I would like to start playing PvP.
great to have you back! amazing content!
"It's easy" proceeds to do some crazy high apm micro with insane precision. Even if I pull that off I would not have noticed that meanwhile all my villagers on gold are being killed.
Excellent, this is the stuff I'm subbed for
Yes, this... this is the good stuff.
Watched the vod, after he lamed you had a "I took that personally" moment
These are my favorite kind of videos! More tips from the goat 🐐
Haven’t played since Berbers were brand new, but I can’t wait to see this on your stream live!
Just ctrl group 10 onagers to 10 groups and then do 300 apm, ez.
Works even better with multiple control groups of onagers. Having 2 groups you can have 4 staggers instead of 2, which is how you want to setup an attack ground hold the gap scenario with a choke point. Nobody should be coming through, as targets will be hit multiple times, and those rocks hit hard. You still want to watch out for bombard cannons obviously.
After the introduction I stilll wasn't sure if this was gonna be helpfull or a troll video xD
But actually it turned out to be very helpfull - thank you! :D
When I read the title, I thought there was some new bug or glitch. When you started explaining what you were going to do, I thought it would involve control groups. The actual technique is more interesting because it accounts for and takes advantage of the properties of the siege onager. Good stuff!
This is sick, machinegun onager =O
very nice idea hera, thanks for this tip
Thanks Hera, nice trick 👍.
I'm a noob but I have recently applied this tip to one TG and it was brutal. I think my celt onagers made the difference. Thanks, bro, keep the good content. Just one question: any advice to protect them at close distance? Maybe some pikeman or a castle behind?
Thanks for the great video! Can you make a video on how to micro larger crossbowgroups and smaller ones vs other crossbows? Since attack move got nerfed and made useless, I have problems of microing in a good way vs them.
Whenever I see a short video from Hera I gotta pause to figure out if he's trolling with a short joke or he's actually sharing POG tips and breakdown. Just how I like my content. Cheers!
"You can kill almost any army with this"
*Bombard cannon has entered the chat*
This has always been my goal, and I've executed it on a couple occasions but I've found that I'm not good enough to keep it up for more than a few shots. I think it helps to not get distracted by the units charging yours cause then you do something stupid like try to attack too close and then the mangos move
Are you using control groups for this. Dividing the onagers into two groups? Need to try this out. Great tip!
Him wearing the same shirt as in the clip is the best part of this video
its amazing to see that still to this day players are discovering new little things about the game
“He lamed me that game, so he deserved it” 😂😂😂 im dying laughing
This was kindof new. I thought by the title that this was a gimmic cheat or something, but this is acutally usable. Nice.
Great vid! more pls
this is master class thing good stuff
I just started playing 3 weeks ago, and videos like this make me believe it would be faster and easier to learn 2 new languages than AoE2DE
The core of AoE2 is the macro. Learning how to successfully pull of a dark age (find sheep, pull boars) then executing a reasonable build from there.
Its why you focus on one civ at a time. Eventually you’ll understand the structure of how builds work. You can look at britons and say, “fast castle into crossbow is really strong here because of their civ bonus”. Then you execute your learned skill for fast castle. Since the unit sets are largely shared knowledge transfers easily.
Lets say feudal archers on double range requires 15 wood cutters. The celts could achieve that with 13 wood cutters thanks to their bonus and turn the extra two into farmers to make a faster castle, skirms or spears.
You can also look at a civs overall win rate at different portions of the game at aoe stats. This lets you determine a win condition and what age window that is. This lets you pick up civs faster: “oh this civ wins in castle age why? Cheaper knights. But they have bad cavalier so they don’t get an Imp power spike. You know you need to do scouts into knights and execute a castle all in ti win against a strong imperial age civ.
Again the micro he showed here is actually fairly easy to execute wnd i think I’ll try it out with teutons, celts, and Slavs.
@@OpiatesAndTits He started playing the game 3 weeks ago lol. The different power spikes civs get at different stages of the game dont even matter at low elo.
probably true.
@@NowhereMan7 yeah he kind of came at me with a lot to take in at once 😂 I have rts game experience in SC2, WC3 etc but that is very little matchup and unit micro compared to this
@@spazraz1863 SC2 is little unit micro? the game where almost every unit has an active skill? lol, i bet u didnt get farther than silver rating then
Do you always attack ground with these shots or are you ever selecting to attack the actual units?
is that like attack move or something? whats the difference in how you are controlling whether they shoot all at once or staggered?
pseudo-volley fire, nice!
Loool the clip was hilarious
Tadakatsu Honda figured this out over 400 years ago with muskets. It is amazing to see this technique being implemented here. A slow motion version showing hands would be appreciated for the illiterate such as myself
Many countries developed this on their own, but for firearms the Ottoman Janissaries were the first if we exclude the Ming Dynasty artillery
these new rock throwing horse archers are amazing- they should be the unique unit in the next civ pack.
I actually did already know this but have about 3apm and 850 Elo. But I've used a similar method when holding a choke with staggered bombard shots. As each moves into position at different times you get the same coverage effect.
Yeah, I used the technique once when leveling a forest (trees are easy non-moving targets) to get it done faster (against AI).
How do you toggle between them so fast? How are selecting only the front line and toggling between them?
Maybe having a camera showing ur keyboard when you play would be awesome!
Huge tutorial!
Will make the ladder get so much stronger with mangos.
Thank you Hera. Now I can play Teutons more effectively. How about using staggered formation, so as to prevent the SOs all shooting at once? Too risky? Sorry I'm low elo
Thats fine actually not a bad idea. Can be a bit risky but its not too bad i believe
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 Hera, thanks for replying! If you actually do the tutorial video, maybe you can run thru the different formations for the SOs. At least give us low elos more help in microing them, coz our eAPMs are terrible.
Nice technique against CA or Xbow. But how would that work against melee units?
Great technique!
Id love to watch more tricks
Good advice for Hoang ...!
subscribed again!
Beast!
Yasss, slay King slay!
Hera just invented caracole.
Amazing thx
You say shoot at max range - do you have any tips for gauging mango/onager distance other than practice?
Remember this excitement Hera, after Hoang watches this video and you play him again 11
That's crazy ese
been onagering the forests on Arena (i don't like onagering infantry but will do it)
Hi Hera or other players, what other keys is Hera pressing? I notice his onagers turn backwards after shooting?
Can’t wait to use this tactic. Only problem is, I keep getting flushed and drushed, and will never make it to post-imp. :(
Amazing.
this is really cool but the hotkey arrangement / order of actions is not so clear to me? you have all of them in a group but then select only half of them first and shoot and then just keep clicking aaround with all of them together?
How do you change from player 1 to 2 in editor??
won't putting your onagers in a more spaced out formation ( c default hotkey) make this easier since the first line will be further away from the back line ? ( the formation in which the halbs are in the clip)
No
I've done similar techinques for staggering shots to emulate rapid fire, but never against real targets, it was only for cutting trees in Michi and Forest nothing.
Lol stutterstepping ongaers, next level
This is genius.
Can you also do it with two or more control groups?
I'd think so: hotkey select group 1 to attack ground to hotkey select group 2 to attack ground and repeat
I thought that is what he was going to do tbh.
You can, i would only recommend doing that to desync the onagers attack cycle though, since having them all in the same control group allows you to spam move and attack ground without having to change control groups every time; way less apm required.
Yes absolutely you can also do it with green box micro as well. As long as your shots are staggered to start this will work. If you patrol with one group at max range in a line formation this will start on its own and you can follow up attack ground commands as the other onagers get into range. Once its started the shots will he staggered until you stop microing the onagers.
@@Helloandhaveaniceday honestly it would be easier to use 1 group, get the onagers in a line so 2-3 (basically you form a T with the enemy formation) fire at once. Then as your onagers get into range you can start issuing attack ground commands.
You xan also start the stutter with green box and attack ground micro.
2:35 Double Hera commentary 11
cool tactic :)
what about assigning to 3-4 different groups?
So Hera have seen some movie involving Napoleonic wars and the British redcoats tactics and thought “wait a minute this tactics is cool, but what if I let shoot giant wheeled shotgun instead one poor guy with just a musket, wouldnt that be much cooler?“ 😂
I only play against bots but i used that technique often, thought it was already widespread within pros since i was doing it XD
i saw that on our 900 elo 3vs3 team game. Somebody was showing up with more than 25 siege onagers in the late game and destroyed everything. After that we were thinking how to counter that. I think bombard cannons are the only way to properly deal with this.
my idea was making several groups like with monk micro but this is simpler
Ah yes the Nobunaga tactic, very nice
Could you also use a Hotkey for every single onager?
yessss
wow and here i thought it was you alt plus whatever keybind selects next unit..... i did this when i was around 7
I always try to lame civpickers and I wont make an exception just bc you are famous 11. I think it wouldve been better to showcase how hard the shots are to dodge by showing the second mangudaiball I sent about 30s after this bc at this point I really tried my very best to avoid getting hit and still failed hard to do so. Your feudal and early castle age defense was absolutely insane in this game GGWP
You don't really explain how to do it though beyond the initial max-range attack ground... are you just moving and pressing stop? Moving and pressing attack?
More vids with 2 heras pls
This is what using 100% of the brain looks like
No he is at 99% coz at 100% he turns into a super computer.
Lol "he lamed me he deserved it"
Didnt know about that 11
I was expecting you to assign two groups and shoot with them at separate times
This is not rapid fire. Rapid fire is when you hold down a button and it issues a spell or ability cast as well as a left click command at the same time. We use it in SC2 for casting various spells, spreading creep, sieging up liberators etc.
What this is actually like is how you micro corrosive bile, storm, and especially disrupters in SC2. You always want the threat of a shot rather than firing all at once. Its called zoning and its the best way to handle powerful ranged AoE like an onager. Good to see the AoE2 community continuing to advance the micro. There are a lot of slow civs that could benefit from this sort of siege onager micro putting them on better footing with faster civs.
What’s funny is if you patrol your onagers in because your a noob who doesn’t attack ground this happens by default so this is what my siege onagers look like always but I never thought to intentionally start the stagger letting me defacto stagger micro with attack ground.
This video also does not adequately explain it, in my opinion. Were those 'groups', as he referred to it, numbered differently to achieve this result? It didn't look like it (I just saw them all grouped as "1"), and so didn't see how he accomplished getting the onagers to fire at different times in a staggered line of fire. He mentions attacking at maximum range with what I believe was the attack ground or attack move command with hotkeys before immediately moving forward again, but this also wasn't particularly explained beyond just stating each step with general wording (and then goes on to perform this feat multiple times in quick succession in a more complicated scenario than just simply moving forward or in one direction). It looks to me, then, that a few assumptions about the audience are made. Describing the concept isn't enough if you aren't also going to explain the details in how to pull it off.
Hey guys Hera Of The Law here
I actually came up with this idea when trying to quickly clear a forest nothing map, but I am horrible at the game, so I figured it was probably only a good idea at my low level lol. It worked pretty well on few low level team arena games for me though :)
This man created bullet hell in AoE2
Isn’t the hard part clicking exactly at the distance that is in range for some but not all of the onagers? I’m sure I’d click too close or too far.
Just force the first shot to be beyond their range. Assuming you have atleast around 6+ (4 is possible but requires some tricks) they will form 2 lines or more while walking towards it.
Neat.
so how do you stop this? Looks kinda game breaking tbh
I could see this as a troll method in team games if ur ally is bored or is mad at you.
I discovered this trick a while ago but I was never at the level in order to be able to use this in a real match 11