Am I supposed to be able to beat the CPU? 'Cuz I can't.

[Justincblount]

Every time I play the default scenario, Gold Separates, I lose embarrassingly. I don't seem to be improving much. Other scenarios I tried that say "2 players" are laughably easy, I don't know if they ever really build up or attack. Is there any middle ground where I can get a decent challenge, but not be guaranteed to lose every time? I tried playing the campaigns without saving, but eventually hit a wall with levels that I simply can't beat. I beat all the campaigns before, but only by save scumming.

Is being good at hotkeys required? I wanted to play this like a casual game, but it makes me rush everything, it's kinda unforgiving. Only recently did I start using hotkeys, but they're all over the place so it's hard to use them without looking away from the screen. So in short, I'm a whiny little b**** who needs to get better, but how? Losing a billion times? Maybe, but when I build up from scratch and have it torn down in 2 minutes, I feel sad.

[shesycompany]

man the gold seperates comp is hard lol,id put a couple guard towers up.

if you want casual, hate to say it just play sea.

[Winchester]

When you play default scenarios, do you change the resource setting at all? theres a low, medium and high resource setting. If you're playing low and you're new it could be a little hard on you. Where as on medium/hard you can establish a defence a bit quicker whether it be towers or soldiers.

Being good at hotkeys to beat a computer isn't required, maybe if your vsing 7 of them, but not 1. It helps to learn them for online play or multiple computers, but again it's not really a requirement against 1 computer. Though using P for Peasants/Peons whenever you click your hall will help alot so its best to use that.  Just working on your speed is most important, as soon as you hear "Ready to work" and your peon comes out of the hall, don't wait a while to give him something to do, immediately make him do something and instantly train another peon.

You can also try changing the game speed too in the settings to match your speed till you get better too.

Also when making troops, try to avoid making axe throwers/archers. They're only useful against dragons when it's up against a computer. Which is once they get Fortress/Castle. And luring them over to a guard tower is so much better, or killing them with a Mage/Death knight of your own. 1 Grunt/Footman can kill a few archers by themselves, and the computer will always make a few of them.

[mousEtopher]

Comps are mad rushers unfortunately. The first few minutes of the game are pretty crucial, you have to harvest a lot of resources and throw up your first barracks asap so you can repel the comp's first wave. The key is to 1) make peons nonstop and 2) have one peon dedicated to building farms. You should never run out of farms, a food bottleneck can really slow you down -- always try to time it so a new farm completes before or right as you run out of food. And like Win said don't let your peons laze around, they should either be building or harvesting res from the moment they're trained. Also don't waste res on unnecessary buildings, e.g. if you build 2 barracks right off the bat you won't be able to afford any units and the comp will steamroll you, so just get 1 to start and make grunts nonstop with it.

If you want more chill matches you can try posting in this thread for new players to exchange info & arrange casual matches: http://forum.war2.ru/index.php/topic,2304.0.html I know Clownboss and Alexhandr specifically are around a lot and prefer slower paced games on a variety of maps. You can meet both of them in our discord channel as well (http://en.war2.ru/discord)

[Justincblount]

Yeah, I'm pretty good at keeping the peons moving and the barracks training, it might be something about build order or upgrade order. Last time I built a barracks, then a blacksmith, then did all the upgrades and built a lumber mill, then upgraded archers and started building them... then I went scouting with my grunts, 18 of them, but they ran into a swarm of bloodlust ogres and got wiped. Did that make them attack my town faster?

[Winchester]

Yeah, try to avoid making archers & upgrading them.

if you build 2 barracks right off the bat you won't be able to afford any units

You won't be able to make peons non-stop like this, but you should be able to make alot of grunts to attack them before they upgrade to stronghold/fortress.

[Igognito]

As you are playing against the PC and you want to get better try using the: On screen cheat!
Of course the target is to win without it, but using the on screen cheat every now and then will give you a good indication when and what you do wrong.

You do need some hotkeys but not all:

for Peons:
B -> F  (to build a farm)
for Barracks (assuming orcs):
G/ O (Grunt/Ogres)
for Hall:
P (Peon)

Start using these ones, for the rest use your mouse against the computer it will be fine.

Try to use HIGH resources.

If you really want a challenge use the map: Gold Mines. The computer is tricky on that map even for advanced players ;-) (I'm assuming multiple cpus and not only 1)

Enjoy

[mousEtopher]

then I went scouting with my grunts, 18 of them, but they ran into a swarm of bloodlust ogres and got wiped. Did that make them attack my town faster?

no - usually the comp will find you with a few grunts within a few minutes of starting the game, then continue attacking with progressively stronger waves of various units. It's kind of odd if it had bloodlust and hadn't already found you.

If you're making grunts you should be using them to scout and start attacking the enemy right away, otherwise if you're going to camp at your base for a while it makes more sense to skip the grunts entirely and save your res to upgrade your hall & get ogres asap.

[Winchester]

If you're making grunts you should be using them to scout and start attacking the enemy right away, otherwise if you're going to camp at your base for a while it makes more sense to skip the grunts entirely and save your res to upgrade your hall & get ogres asap.

This

[Justincblount]

Maybe the enemies got clogged up until I triggered some. But it must have been around 12 of them stormed my settlement after wiping the grunts. I don't remember seeing anything but ogres.

I feel like I'm getting better now, probably because I'm making more barracks. I need to work on my scouting, catapult handling, and eventually towering. But the CPU doesn't build towers in my settlement, so I guess not much to be learned there.

[Winchester]

You can always try to tower your opponent too. The computers won't attack your peons with their peons unless attacked first, so the only way they'll destroy the towers is if there barracks is making units. You can do some funny things too like putting a tower next to there mine and then placing a barracks infront of it so a limited amount of there units can attack it, depending on maps and locations, it'll be a complete wall-in and they'll have to destroy the barracks first if they want to even touch the tower. Which will be firing away at them.

Try it on a map you know well where all starting locations are, and send your peons to scout then tower them. Don't forget the lumber mill to upgrade watch towers into guard! You can also use multiple peons to repair a building under construction to speed it up, this is nice for towering.

[Justincblount]

This really makes no sense. Sometimes I can handle 7 opponents without much danger, other times they rush me before I even get 4 grunts trained, every color at once. Setting resources to high might actually make things worse. I can't really tell though, since there is no predictability to the computer's actions. I've seen one build like 5 blacksmiths before.

[Winchester]

alot of maps they do a particular strategy based on there starting location, like garden of war for example, if they start at the 12 or 5 position, they will rush to fortress for quick dragons. While the other spots will be a bit more rush focused.

If your facing 7 ai and not facing any danger, then the AI probably got there units stuck while going down a path to attack you. Certain starting locations lead to this more then others on maps.

[Lambchops]

Use the hotkeys. You don't need to 'learn' them, just use them and after a while you will just start doing it automatically.

My left hand generally sits with my index finger on the B key. Most of the common build commands are easily accessable to the left of there... BB BF BT BS  etc. just BL for a mill where you have to use the right hand side of your keyboard for the basic stuff, and later there's VI (inventor) and VO (ogre mound). By the time you're building alter,mage tower, etc you can afford an extra second or two to find the key or use the mouse.

*Best tip for WC2*  When you build your hall, select it and press CTRL-0   (that's CTRL-Zero)
*Then to build a peon just press 0P  ([zero] - [P]) Zero will select your hall, the P trains a peasant/peon.
*Just get into the habit of pressing 0P every time you hear "ready to serve".

Later when you have a few barracks built, use the hotkeys to train. i.e. if you're sending knights, just have your finger on the [K] key then just click on each barracks with the mouse and press K.

... and in answer to the subject line question: NO - you don't have to beat comps, you're supposed to beat other players

If you have no idea about how to beat a comp, then you have little chance of beating a human player, that being said, you don't necessarily have to be able to beat all comps on all maps. As you are discovering, some of them are much harder than others.

Ultimately there is no way to get good at beating other players other than playing against other players. You should play vs comps to learn the basics and get an idea of what you're doing - like the order you usually build things in, which buildings train which units, and which buildings are prerequsites for building others etc.

Personally I can't recall ever having tried to play vs comps on GSEW so don't sweat individual maps, and just be prepared to lose vs other players a bit until you get up to speed. Mainly just have fun, LISTEN to more experienced players who are trying to help, and ignore the handfull of dicks who will say dickish things because you're new (sorry about them, but remember they're fat losers with no life and just say GG).

[shesycompany]

see if you can play with some new people...http://forum.war2.ru/index.php/topic,2304.0.html

i dont think comps will help alot,

or just join ru and ask someone.