New here, looking for tips

[NeaFotia]

I've been reading through a few things and watching some tutorials, but I still wanted to see if I could get some feedback personally on where to get started. I'm already somewhat familiar with the game itself (tried playing it about a year ago and have watched a lot of Gyle's casts) from an observation perspective, but I'm not so familiar with it from a playing perspective. I've had some experience with RTS games, though nothing extensive.

I was primarily looking for suggestions as to what would be good maps to practice on against AI while I get the hang of playing the game itself once more. Though I have more of an interest in team play than the 1v1 ladder, I figured that learning to duel would probably help my skill more than just playing team matches.

[Hildegard]

Hey there sweetheart.

There'll probably be 4500 different suggestions by a group of posters soon enough. And each suggestion will be just as valid as the other. Therefore I'll just write to you what made me "good" in "short time." I had played Total Annihilation 10 years earlier for a little bit, but was otherwise near completely new to this game. I had seen a Gyle cast or two, but had no experience from this or any other RTS.

You mention you're interested in team games. Maybe you know some of the maps that look interesting? Through Gyle cast for example. I took some time to figure out who are the best players playing the type of maps I'm interested in, and then searched for replays of those players, and specifically replays of those players playing the maps I wanted to play. Then I stuck to their perspective with 'shift' held down (this will show you all of their queued commands given during that game) and just repeated the process until it all began to make sense. At first you will not make distinction between many reactions or initiations, but before long that obscurity will fade. Think of it as learning a language by simply staring at a book for long enough until the symbol combinations start to make sense.

Just as a hypothetical example, we'll assume you're a future Seton's player. I'd search replays by, for example, Foley, and start going them through. You can see who are the top players by observing some hosted lobbies and scouting out which players have joined or typically join that game. Generally anyone over 2000 (playing normal maps, not noob maps like thermo or astro) should be more or less 'qualified' to be observed from. After observing replays, I also tested some of the concepts I'd seen by myself in a sandbox. Such as building a base and trying to replicate what I'd seen (I counted on it being most efficient method, so I learned first by mindless copying until I started figuring out *why* it was the best solution). I paid extra attention to base building and economy progression, which gave me a massive jumpstart once I actually began playing after maybe 100 or 200 replays. Ensuring you're off to the best possible first 5-10 minutes of a game gives you great freedom later on. It's like trying to live life starting from 25 years of age with either of these backgrounds: ivy league doctorate or a bum who's never worked a day in his life and dropped out of school. Both of these guys can make it far (we are assuming the goal is to be a very good and successful boy in this society) but I think the first candidate has made the path easier for himself. The difference between a strong fundamental grasping of basic base building and efficient economy progression make a similarly striking difference. Lastly, the replays won't teach you to 'play the game' in itself, which sounds a bit counter intuitive at first. They merely let you plagiarize an array of concepts to use. Such as what to do when enemy attacks with a unit spam of this type, or does a rush of high tech in water/land/air, or a million other different scenarios. This makes first real games far easier as you don't have to do so much thinking by yourself, but can resort to learned methods that will likely far more than do the trick at beginner levels. (Prepare to get called out for smurfing.)

This is what I did and it worked really well for me. Maybe it doesn't work for everyone, but you can try. Personally, I doubt I'd gotten even nearly as quick results utilizing any other method of study.

Good luck champ, and remember to never give up.

[biass]

but I'm not so familiar with it from a playing perspective.

I understand that this is very cookie cutter information, but after all my time training people to play; this following advice is the most important.

You're not getting anywhere unless you actually go play the game.
If you can't, because of rating/performance anxiety, playing something you don't want to play, or some other reason, what people tell you won't stick.

Go and have fun playing, experiment with what you like, and make some friends along the way. Noone just jumps in and grinds to the top level of a game if they don't enjoy it at a base level, especially for an old game like this which is so unrewarding to do so.

If you like the idea of playing teamgames, go play them.

[armacham01]

For playing against the AI, I would go with maps from the current ladder pool. I would suggest playing small, medium, and large maps with no water (or just a small pond here and there). Why not water? Well, the AI is terrible at navy so you won't end up learning much.

I would suggest practicing build orders, and practicing trying to expand across the map (including some builds where you make an early transport). The key is to have the mindset: I'm simulating the ladder so I want to play the way ladder players do.

NOT: I'm competing with the AI, and a win is a win, so I'm going to do whatever is most effective against the AI, which is to build a few triads at each choke point because the AI is stupid and just walks into point defense. Don't fall into the trap of exploiting the AI's stupidity.

I think you have the right ideas but I don't want you to get an inflated sense of the benefits of laddering: You want to play team games, but you want to play a better quality of team game (e.g., you'd rather play 1k+ than 0-800), but you need to get your rating up to get into those games, you need better skills to get your rating up, and you think the way to boost your skills is to play ladder, and you want to prepare a bit for ladder rather than jumping right in so you want to practice against the AI a bit. That all makes sense to me. If you enjoy playing silly Astro Crater Battles games with other players who are rated 0-500, then by all means, have fun doing that and don't feel guilty. If you want to improve, you're on the right track, but you should understand that the skills you will learn from ladder are more general/abstract. You will develop better map awareness/scouting, and a better sense of balance, than if you just play team games, and in the long run, you will be a stronger player for it. In the short run, the fastest way to boost your global rating is probably just to keep playing the same team games and learning from that, and skip ladder entirely. (Also, you might have a LOT of fun playing ladder matches; you can't know until you try. You can't know what kind of games will be the most fun just by watching YouTube videos.)

Apart from playing against the AI, or playing on the ladder, there is a third option: you can make a custom 1v1 game, and call it something like "noobs 1v1 practice" or "1v1 0-500." There are other new players who might be interested in practicing 1v1 without the pressure (that some people feel) about playing in the official ladder. If you set it up as a custom game, you're both guaranteed to have a map you're okay with and an opponent who doesn't intimidate you.

If you're going to do that, I would suggest you start with "Vale of Isis." It is relatively simple, but there's some reclaim, so playing it should teach you about the importance of grabbing reclaim, and in general you need t1 spam to survive, so it should teach you to t1 spam, which will get you past one particular bad habit that new players tend to have (turtling and trying to get to tech 2 immediately instead of expanding from your base). You will also learn how to deal with players who turtle up, because some of your opponents will do that.

You can watch a few replays to steal a build from a good player, and then play against AI a few times to practice your build, and then play against humans. Make a point of watching the replays after to see if your opponent was more successful in growing their economy, if you overbuilt power, if you missed an opportunity to raid them, etc. I do believe the best way to get started is to refine your 1v1 skills on a single simple map. When you play on the ladder you have to adapt to many different maps, which means figuring out different build orders and strategies for every map. E.g., one of the things I struggled with was "how many land factories am I supposed to make on this map?" If you play one map over and over again, you can figure out a good answer for that instead of guessing. You can narrowly focus on developing an effective build for that particular map. (And later you can experiment with builds like "first bomber" or "first jester")

You will probably not have trouble finding opponents. People at your level will hopefully want to play. And if not, you will probably get people higher-rated than you who want to drop in and bully you. (Here's a terrible secret of FAF: people like to win games and they expect they can win if they play against people rated below them, so a low-rated player asking for a 1v1 match is a tempting target.) You can learn from them. Just make a point of trying to watch the replays to see what they're doing better than you. And don't worry about losing global rating in the process. If your skills improve, your rating will follow.

Other maps I would recommend for the same purpose, and the same reasons, are "Fields of Thunder" and "The Ganges Chasma." In fact almost any 5x5 or 10x10 ladder map could work but you asked for recommendations and I do recommend those.

If anyone is intimidated from getting into the 1v1 ladder, playing 1 t1 spam map 20+ times against other people (or however long it takes) should build skills and confidence to jump in to the global ladder. You can worry about learning things like "how do I keep up with the air game" or "when do I get to t3 tech" later, organically, by playing ladder matches, or by eventually looking for more guidance/tutorials/advice, after you have some ladder experience. You won't really be able to learn those things by playing against AI.

[tatsu]

good advice all around.

here's a forum tool to help newcomers : viewforum.php?f=40

most importantly the trainer thread : viewtopic.php?f=40&t=16380

don't hesitate to use the main chat asking for help from people. there's bound to be someone who will reply. (and train you)

same with discord : https://discord.gg/hgvj6Af

[Bennis-]

I will just leave this here:

1. The most interesting, deep, best explored and most fun map (mode) ist Setons Clutch, aka senton
2. the bestest player is me, bennis
3. https://www.twitch.tv/epic_bennis <--- like follow subscribe and watch me stomp noobs for massive gains. Also I love answering questions with my limitless wisdom. they call me the professor, after all. unfortnately I cant stream as often these days because im always banned.

jk