The Art of Deception - An AoE2 Breakdown

the legend sun tzu once said all warfare is based on deception and in this video i will show you how deception was utilized in age of empires 2 one of the greatest strategy games the world has ever seen now this is a bit of a different speed for my content and i hope you like it because if the feedback is right i intend to make this into a series so sit back relax and enjoy this masterpiece our action begins five minutes in to game one in a best of five tournament game and many of you might be familiar with this map this map is bae from hidden cup four this tournament was visible cup four but we can get more into that later on now game one in tournaments can bring a lot of nerves and both of these players are no strangers to the big stage both stark and capture were favorites to make it deep into this tournament stark known for upsets known for being able to out strategize people despite being awfully slow compared to other pros this is age of empires 2 speed is needed it is not everything so let me just bring you up to speed what's happening here it is the norm to see players contest on water on this map and you can see both players have docked and behind this they're going to collect as much food as possible they're going to try and rush to feudal age to contest the water with ships now earlier on cap watch tried to steal resources from stark and stark scout spotted him so as you can see here cap watch has been all over the map stark has been chasing this scout and capwatch's scout is very weak now this is important this is important because stark has a plan here and stark has a villager running out across the map if you look at cap hauch's base he's streamlining everything towards wood everything towards gold because he wants to add a second dock he wants to go fire galleys what star can or sorry excuse me what cap catwatch cannot see in the darkness is that stark villager heading to the back corner now scouting is hugely important in age of empires but at the same time you do kind of get used to the meta you do get to assume certain things and for capacity of course is going to assume the enemy is going to do this so whether it was because stark started to attack that scout maybe stark realized there was an opening for him this is of course very risky i'm not sure but stark he's on the move and he will be right behind enemy lines now i say lines that normally you're not going to see walls we'll talk more about that but cap watch is gonna be he's gonna win this race to the feudal age and he has most things on wood a lot on gold he's actually does not have a lot on food right now because he only needs fishing ships to bring in food the goal is to have 50 food at a time for each villager producing out of the tc and cap watch can accomplish that here you've got cap watch does need to be a little worried about that scout from stark and from stark's point of view stark now knows it's double dock for the opponent now what's stark going to do here is he just going to give water to the enemy that's such a huge eco lead for the enemy if he does that well for now stark's trying to be annoying he's going to use this scout and run around he of course attacked the villager but didn't kill one and he's going to make a demolition raft now this is a strategy i have seen on this map before because fishing ships tend to clump up so if you're not going to be able to compete with multiple docks because of the wood cost of other things then you make one demo you try and take out their fish and at least they will have to afford more cat podge hopped out of here with these fires cap watch is definitely going to clear out the fishing ships and cap watch just loses one and cap watch guys immediate reaction immediate squirrely check it out he's going to make one more fire galley and immediately add fishing ships capac has got to be like what this is amazing stark doesn't know what he's doing i'm gonna win this best of five so quickly by the way it's worth pointing out that terrain change is a spectator bug there's no way cap watch would know that there's anything back here but there are ways to maybe find out so look at this cap watch is going to send his scout in and he's got to be confused right so he's going to check out and say what is stark doing here why does he only have one dog and so here he comes and he doesn't see a barracks he doesn't see a stable he just sees walls so he's got to be thinking well okay i'm going to have fishing ships he's just going to farm i don't know but he's still checking right but guess what stark brought his scout back and eventually stark scout is going to be able to kill cap watch's scout as stark is basically playing like someone who does not understand the map okay now this sneak here was brilliant but the story doesn't stop here stark is making archers out of that range now starting to see cap watch wall up because stark might be making something on land see if maybe stark with a bit of uh trickery here oh well done okay the scout's dead and stark can now send this scout forward now look at the economy lead look at the amount on food for cap watch cap watch has all these fishing ships there's no way star can compete with food eco there's just no way there's a reason you've got to contest water on this map so catwatch he also it's worth pointing out he's over here and cap watch hits the deer and uh he has mongols as well so he gets the hunt bonus now pay attention to the chat here okay so the scout shenanigans were happening for a while i'm gonna pause the scout shenanigans were happening for a while and it did kind of start at the beginning now nothing you would have seen from stark i know i sped through it really indicated that he got screwed up or in his his words f'ed up this is a bold-faced lie this is to make cappucce believe that he is dead he's he's basically showing lack of confidence he's already letting the enemy know i think you've got me here he says you screwed up my start well we'll keep it pg for the kids catwalk said how and stark said i got distracted by scout catwalk says ah which is acknowledgement if you don't play age of empires two there are taunts and that would normally make a noise but we continue so cap watch he has the deer he's bringing in food with the mongol hunt bonus is now making a barracks to deal with the scalp he's walled up basically all the things i mean he's not fully walled i suppose but all the things you'd want to do he's currently doing he has fish the goal is to get 800 food and 200 gold to go castle age and then dominate from there and you can see that cap watch is significantly closer to getting there than stark will ever be um and so here here comes the surprise okay catholics thinks that he's going to win this game he thinks he's going to dominate in the series he's feeling like he's done everything right and then the attack noise is going to come in and he's going to say what and he's going to look and the archers are in on his wood lines the stark has killed one villager stark has killed two villagers stark is gonna kill oh a little couple misfires there actually three villagers and i think we're gonna make it four villagers here for stark uh no we're not actually excuse me i'm wrong on that uh catwatch immediately has to go into damage control mor mode he doesn't have army so as his resources climb to get to castle age he suddenly has to save all of his villagers so he drops what i would consider a good tower because that will protect his gold but now he's had to abandon this woodline he is on this wood line but we'll kind of have to abandon this as well and look what stark does with that one villager he's going to build a tower here right behind that gold so this tower is good against archers not against another tower tap watch is scrambling and the beautiful thing about this really is that stark has been able to take him off of almost every resource so he says okay catwatch i gave you the fish but guess what i've got archers at your base now and he even needs to build a lumber camp to take wood so both of his lumber camps denied temporarily off of gold if you played age of empires 2 you know there's a lot of anxiety and panic in these situations but it is so much more so in tournaments trust me i can only imagine imagine cap watch his heart is racing right now his mind is racing and he does not know what to focus on these villagers have been forgotten about here he goes over with the spearman to try and to stop this i mean he can't run out here with villagers that spearman's gonna end up going down there these archers have not have not allowed the houses to complete these archers have been attacking the scout's still here it's panic mode now at this point you're probably already impressed i know you are because you youtubers have good taste here come the archers but this only gets more interesting all right i don't remember the exact time it's going to come in any moment but it only gets more interesting beautiful work from cap watch there damage control with some quick gates quick walls and kills two archers but at the same time as he's doing that guess what these units are through and stark kills two more villagers what no we could have killed that villager but he's still denying resources and he's not going to miss out on this one and and now what's so crazy is catwalk just had the resources to go castle age for so long for the last couple minutes but hasn't been able to afford the buildings has the blacksmith would need the market but the market's been denied that everything that could have gone wrong here has gone wrong and caps maybe not too happy about this maybe realizing he's dead he says lol nice distraction now stark acknowledges it now this this conversation is going to continue but i need to talk about this before this conversation between these two continues cappucce now the shoe is kind of on the other foot he is kind of letting the enemy know i think i'm dead only it's real this time right when stark did it stark was expressing that he felt he was behind and stark just so happened to not be behind okay and cap watch is saying oh basically in one way or the other saying that he's behind and they are going to chat it out here as cat pouch is just desperate if this villager goes out here to complete the market that's not gonna happen that one by the way is yes that one is is is uh taunt that says yes and so this was the reaction now save your thoughts for the end of the video please i have a lot of things to say and i know there's already going to be people trying to type and give input on this but this is so fascinating so this was the whole conversation now from 1924 to 1958 the game was still running okay it was paused here and it was paused by cap hatch and stark says i'm glad you liked it which was probably something he immediately typed right after the pause came in right because they they had a message come in well actually you know that's it i'm wrong on that sorry it doesn't like judge the time based on when it was typed it judges it based on the time of the game so this is the conversation let's break it down stark says uh i'm glad you liked it which is very sassy by the way catholic isn't saying nice distraction like oh high five bro that was really cool this is sassy all right this is this is to get under the opponent's skin here and cap watch says and it's an interesting question he says was the chat part of the strat because it's bad sportsmanship now let's think about that okay there's no way in my opinion that stark set out to play this game and as that villager is walking across the map stark is in his mind he's thinking let's make a barracks let's make an archery range let's sneak archers but oh yeah let's say something there's no way that was part of the initial strategy i'm sorry it it was probably something he thought of in the middle of the moment and it ended up working out right so gap watch says that was this part of the strategy because it's bad sportsmanship it's there's arguments to be made there that some of this is bad sportsmanship some of this is a little bad manners but i don't think saying you screwed my startup is truly bad sportsmanship i think saying screw you might be bad sportsmanship but saying what stark said was just it was just strategy it was deception a cap watch he says it's not allowed which is true by the way to an extent every tournament has rules that you must be a good sport it's kind of vague and every tournament has their own rules on conduct but typically it's like don't let your make sure you resign if you actually are dead do not wait until the last villager things like that um it never really dives deep to to this type of thing so um capwatch says it's not allowed stark says no i don't think so cap watch says so i'll get admin win sorry frowny face which means i will win this game or the series potentially depending on what the admin would say and he's like sorry um and then he says ready he's like i'm gonna get him you know and stark says well you can ask later to the admin and he can judge apple chisel speak to the admin after stark says sure and then stark says don't be upset it's just a game and then says yes you can restart so they go back into the game the game continues what intense conversation there people now i have to say as good as this this video is going to end up being i i really i like to see people get along right i like to see people get along but if you've watched my legend of the liar upload which i'll link in the description if you've watched some of my content i do think chat is a real big part of age of empires and like i don't it's hard to say that capwatch is he's finally on his way up to the next stage by the way uh he's he's pretty screwed but he's finally on his way to the next stage um you know i really don't think a cap watch would have reacted any differently if the chat wasn't there i think in the moment and and let's let's be honest with ourselves as we've seen cap watch completely surrounded cap watch got overwhelmed he got upset that he got outplayed and he kind of lashed out a little bit now he didn't lash out with personal attacks so maybe lash out is the wrong word but i think he was just upset right so i think like in a simple man's terms you could say it was a little bit of whining from kappa trey as he's trying to survive here and get back in business and i mean unfortunately with when things get this stressful you've had a pause you've had conversations your whole base is surrounded you forget to build houses and gaps and so stark sees this as stark is going to kill more villagers a stark even denies the stable and here even cap which can't even kill the freaking archers and so now there's this other element to it right there's this other element to it and it it's all about the rest of the series um we're going to see cap watch try his absolute best to fight back but if you think of the mentality going into future games in this set which capac has favored to win by the way you know i think it's pretty safe to say that win or lose here for cap watch he might be a little rattled you know um as stark has now two stables in the back of the enemy base a monastery in the back of the enemy base i mean capuche can take resources now he is okay i should i should have noticed this he just came over here to this gold which is in the middle of the map there's four villages there earlier yeah i think it's fair to say that capoch is going to be a little rattled here is credit to him he is trying to find his way back into this game now the food income in the middle and this is a sad moment for him is completely gone uh these eight fishing ships are now idle you can see his idol eco time just skyrocketing uh he's not gonna have the food to make any more nights and he actually does not have a completed market i think yet he might go over here to do this now but um can't even buy food so he's got a few farms that's not gonna be enough for night production look how weak the villagers are in this eco it's a struggle and it's a struggle and uh oh yeah a little bit more of a struggle as stark at home is sitting pretty stark is sitting pretty stark doesn't have to stress too much you can consider this a little bit of a risk he wants to recover some stone so he can make a second town center but you know as far as stark's concerned he just needs to continue to make knights he just needs to continue to keep tap watch off with his gold and it is still a relatively even game in terms of eco but that is deceiving again because these fishing ships are not working right now and what you need is a hundred wood to make a fish trap now i think another thing to bring up here which is important is just like how much damage you have to do and how good the timing has to be to do to have any success with what stark has done here um you know he killed so many villagers and yet tap watch was still able to have a castle age which was 30 seconds behind starks now the aftermath of this is going to be pretty brutal and you're seeing that now as the knights dive in i'd like to see stark pull the weak ones back to the monastery so the monks could heal them up that'd be good value looks like he has every intention of doing that but um now as he pulls back here it it really needed it's that many villager kills and still was somewhat even with the uptime so you know what i was thinking was maybe there's a world where stark is just going to heal these knights up and make more maybe there's a world where if there was more fish here stark would then dock to take the water but these fish and ships are useless and what that does is that adds to your population that adds to your score even in the game which is uh which is based on uh so many different factors in the game and stark is just gonna end up booming this game out and boom he will second tc more villagers from home all safe of course i think stark right now knows he's like i got this game right that watch is trying cat punch is struggling catwatch he's doing the right thing and he is not going to try and do anything more than just stay on one town center you start to try and add a second one you don't have the economy to even make knights to keep up with the opponent right now good luck being able to create villagers out of that and also knights great game here though to start off that whole series like is this incredible and there's more things i'll say about what happens in in the upcoming games what an interesting one because these knights are gonna loop around and just try and get back it looks like that monk will get a conversion there and there you go for cap watch i mean not too bad for him i just can't help but laugh at this little city that that stark has built up over here almost looks like an episode of louis le legends man and i think stark is probably leaning off the aggression just a little bit um tap watch is of course completely rattled and scared of this attack so we're going to see another town center here for stark he's got a monastery at home to get any conversions if knights come in yeah stark is just going to make sure that he's distracting cat watch and also booming up at home and most of you probably know this but the most important thing in age of empires is villager cow you need villagers and uh oh you need monks in this situation as well if you're stark monk goes down a few villagers will go down there's actually a monk inside the town center as well but okay monk goes down there for stark looks like cap watch was a little hesitant to eject that monk but he can't engage this there's always more monks for stark so this cannot be engaged otherwise these things are going to get wallowed right over to his team and the lead is now growing for stark i i think he seems to be what's interesting about stark is how he doesn't seem to really be in a rush for these transitions it's nice and smooth he's such a great player and there he's going to convert his knight back that night's very confused but i mean this town center a lot of people would build it with five villagers he's like it doesn't matter to him i have the lead and i'm gonna make sure i maintain the lead by not throwing away any army i'm gonna hold as much control as possible and i will eventually get to that third town center anyways siege workshop now for stark so what's crazy about this is he's controlling the main goal he's controlling the four tile gold they'll lead now growing ever so slightly for the brazilian you know to add to the rivalry a little bit by the way i don't know if i can really relate to it but uh it is a brazilian verse in argentinian and i know there's uh there's definitely some rivalry there at least in sports there tends to be from time to time it's always good to see uh i guess times are changing nowadays but uh you know argentina and and brazil have just had incredible teams over the years in football i i really like how stark was never in a rush to get enough like too many upgrades here he's like he's just so so comfortable i would want to go all in i'd want to get ahead of a guy and kill him but he said no you know what cap watch is really good at defending he's respecting his opponent's skill by just gradually building up to what this is going to end up being actually did not react here so much focus on the front and capo just getting some villager kills and there we go stark reacts that does hurt but i'll tell you what else is gonna hurt it's gonna hurt if capwatch loses this town center and as long as stark is paying attention to this as long as the monks are focused there they're gonna end up getting conversions but catwatch could get conversions and gap watch all unlucky there i think with the monks actually might end up getting them anyways the monks continue their conversions and there you go tc though is on the way down you have another tc for cap watches he's trying to get to a castle and that's that's definitely something you've got to be worried about if you're a stark mongols have one of the best unique units in the game in the manga die look at the overall eco numbers though so much on wood so much on gold food the only thing that stark doesn't really have a lot of is stone because he forgot to un-garrison this dc oh man he forgot to add garrison that town center's stark because of those two nights it's not because he sees them there right i think it's because he just forgot about it he thinks they're all working he knows if he looks away from his monks for a second all the all the gold will go down the drain so just worried about that and okay now we're gonna see cap watch try his best to get a castle down here now this castle is gonna be huge for two reasons first it gives you a security blanket so you don't lose your town center and second it's going to allow you to produce some mangadai big magnel shot that magana was pretty much the only thing that capwatch had to worry about i think you guys might be seeing why catwatch was actually the favored player in this series i thought he was going to be dead 10 minutes ago but no he's still alive i don't know about well but he's still alive and maybe capwatch can like can't comfortably take this gold yet but maybe he can take out the tower maybe drop a town center here he's gonna drop a town center out here actually that was maybe a little late here i think maybe he could have rushed that up a while ago stark's got this random silly little army and uh stark is gonna go up to the imperial age now with a 30 villager lead and these players have been so focused credit to them so focused on the game these villagers need to find another area to chop wood but uh stark's got plenty wood so no worries there and yeah stark is now even going to wall in the gold there and this gold is is of course crucial to cap watch the good news is on bay uh the the general idea is to expand to get other resources it's funny that that was not really a concern here or uh or sorry it's funny how uh it's not something that um has played out the same in this game or what am i talking about like this is still important but normally it you would get to that and then you move out to the other gold sorry my brain a little bit of brain fog so focused on the other shenanigans so here comes stark and he just was able to run around the dock there and he's actually trying to save himself at home and watch ends up taking some losses there magnel villagers some knights the monks are here as well but what stark is really going to want to end up doing here is raiding this wood line stark has every he's occupied the north of capture's base stark stark stark stark never mind to take it all back but yeah he's occupied the north so he's forced cap watch towards the middle and that's a position that will be pretty easy for stark to deny i think now here comes catwatch and he has a big army and that army would actually beat stark's army plus stark's army is not really in position and he's gonna go now for a forward castle at stark's base the downside really is as long as this is able to be defended with some military units as stark is going to start off by getting some cav armor and cavalier the stark has the stone to drop a castle so if stark realizes this castle is going up star could just drop a castle on the other side and then start making trebuchets i really think stark made a mistake with these knights he could have attacked these villagers he's he's definitely not followed this up in a perfect way and we will talk more about that in this game trust me stark's going to try and drop the castle here though and unfortunately i mean this this really is giving cap watch time he's got to send all of his knights back and cap watch isn't really interested in making manga die right now a little bit of a surprise but the knights are certainly doing fine the downside though is that cavalier is going to take care of these knights and cavalier could take care of these villagers as well okay stark you had a moment where you missed it earlier surely you see this and oh boy the jackpot baby these nights are feasting and not only do they get 20 free villagers today they get the win right before the cavalier upgrade cap ends the game this is game one unless everything was that i know is is wrong this is game one and trust me what i know is correct there were more games after this because i have information to give you and capac says gg congrats a little bit of salt perhaps i think yes uh listen we all have rough days we all get salty not all of us maybe everyone's cheerful out there but i can kind of understand this the frustration in himself when this strategy happened but i really do think that this deception was beautiful from stark and oh so rare as well a little bit of story time as we look at the statistics for this game after this game an admin was involved so they went to admin and they said hey admin this is the situation um i'm not gonna i don't want to like air all their dirty laundry i don't want to put the whole conversation here this isn't a trial okay this is an age of empires game but basically what ended up happening was uh the admin looked at things and the admin said this game counts but stark don't do that anymore that's pretty much what happened right capwatch was upset he felt it was unsportsmanlike and i will touch on that a bit more but admin gave stark his win and then the next day after this series even added a rule publicly that players cannot type about anything like they basically can't say anything except good luck have fun and gg and just like very short bursts of activity with the chat now i think this was brilliant and i think that this made the strategy so much better and cappucce per his words actually felt like this made it more successful because if cap didn't think that he wouldn't say lol nice distraction was that chat part of the strat maybe he was just grasping for straws or maybe he took the bait and that there was just a giant old hook and that hooked his lip and it was painful i mean i think he took the bait hard the guy lost his scout he then felt like he had the lead because stark said i you screwed up my start approach acknowledged that comment and then got destroyed by it it is a beautiful age of empires game now i don't know if we're gonna dive deep into this one but this series did go the distance and it went down to the final game and stark ended up winning the best of five now this is with stark coming in as the underdog it's not like he wasn't favored to win a game but he was the underdog and stark afterward had a few things to say and he said first off the chat was not part of my strategy but i realized he was getting upset by my comments and so when he said was the chat part of your strategy i thought about it and i said well if i say yes he's gonna get a little butt hurt if i say no then you know he's going to get less butt hurt and cap watch being butt hurt helps me win he said if i boom if i play standard i get wrecked by cap watch cap watch his top 10 on the ladder i have to think outside the box in any way i can this is a strategy game and that is exactly what stark did here the art of deception the legend sun tzu said all warfare is based on deception hence when we were able to attack we must seem unable when using our forces we must appear inactive and when we're near we must make the enemy believe we're far away and when we're far away we must make him believe we are near uh some of that definitely happened here in this game and uh you know it's just incredible to me how how deep we could dive into this game how many things we could pick apart how much there was to say about it so i hope you guys enjoyed this one it is my intention to have this analysis series continue um you know with the recent changes on my channel what i'm trying to do is increase the quality of the youtube uploads i of course have all that streaming content that that keeps me busy but with the amount of support you guys have given me over the years and the channel is growing i'm investing back into this channel i want these videos to be better and there's so many good games out there this is one of them so if you can do me a favor i'm not the youtuber to really do this i i feel a little cheesy doing it but i feel like considering the work we're putting into this and how much we care about this project we've got a team now working on everything it is something i will ask of you uh because i need to know if you guys are actually appreciating this and i tend to see that with some of the statistics so just like the video let me let a comment uh or leave a comment in chat letting me know that either what you thought or that you want to see more of this um share it with your friends share with your buddy you know the usual stuff just just let me know if you enjoyed this and give me support in any way you can that would be awesome because i have ideas i have games and i really think that we can make this series something special really break down games and get back to what age of empires 2 is for a lot of people it's not just spamming units okay it's not just spamming eco it's not about that it really is beautiful and it's a work of art which is why i love the game and i'm addicted to it so that's it for me i'll see you in the next video thank you for everything there will be more analysis in future uploads there's this guy his nickname is currently standing among the top 10 players he is capac he's 2k5 he reached 2k5 do you know how many times i've reached a 2k5 in my whole aoe career not even once guys so i know that kapoch is ahead of me at this point i know that he probably has more skills he's a more experienced players he played in the past i know that he was a better player what i have to do i have to come up with some strategy to kill him you

Channel: T90Official - Age Of Empires 2

Views: 88,348

Keywords: Twitch, Games, Game, Age, of, Empires, Two, Definitive, Edition, AoE, AoE2, AoE2DE, AoE2HD, HD, DE, Age of Empires II, II, Facebook, facebook, face, book, Face, Book, FaceBook, game, games, gaming, art, deception, deceit, admiral, general, tsu, tzu, sun, son, st4rk, capoch, stark, visible, cup

Id: VsRFNiPNr60

Length: 34min 24sec (2064 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 26 2021