Clan Kickass

French Class Kicking Ass

2010-04-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

We both played with the French, which Dylan was long opposed to, but finally caved in after seeing me kick ass with them for awhile. The downsides to the French are many. Everything is more expensive. Units cost more, upgrades cost more, and it takes awhile to build their economy. They are slow starters.

However, they have the best cavalry unit in the game, the cuirassier. And if you choose the right cards and make the right upgrades, you can build them as fast as you can click. The difficult thing about this is that you have to have the resources available to do that. It doesn’t matter how fast you can make the unit, if you don’t have the 150 Food and 150 coin it costs to make them.

Dylan and I like playing at least a 30 minute treaty (no rush) game anyway, just because we like the element of building your colony first. The competition is much better when people have the time to build up a city first. This makes it much easier to play with the French. Not that you can’t rush with them. They can be a great rush civ if you use the right cards. They have a great crossbowman rush that kicks ass.

In this particular game we used a No Blockade Treaty, which is a 40 minute treaty and disables the “Blockade” option at the capitol building. The two civs we played were the Aztecs and the Germans. They both did pretty well during the treaty period. Their overall scores were better than both Dylan’s and mine. Part of that was due to the fact that the French economy builds slower, and the other part was that I veered from my normal strategy and decided to build a dock and wasted wood that I would have used to build an extra town center in age III. Without the extra town center, I couldn’t max out my villagers and it slowed my progression.

Luckily, this was a 40 minute treaty and not our typical 30 minute otherwise I may have been in trouble. I had enough time to get the upgrades and shipments I needed. We still were behind the 8 ball for awhile however. Our opponents were ready to attack when the treaty ended. They attacked us from opposite sides and divided our attention. I had sent an army down to attack early and wasn’t able to defend right away.

Dylan and I built our town centers together so that we could defend our civilizations easier. We’ve found that it’s the best method for protecting yourself and launching an attack. When you build separate cities from your teammates, it allows the opponents to divide and conquer. Which as we know, historically is a very successful military strategy. And that is exactly what we did to them. They attacked us on both sides initially which put us back on our heals. The Germans broke through my side of the wall and killed about four of my villagers before I was able to recover.

By then, the Aztecs had built a military base outside our walls and the Germans were constructing military buildings along with him. We fought him back and destroyed the base only to have them build more buildings than we could destroy. Luckily, the cuirassier is excellent at destroying buildings and units and we were able to keep them at bay. Dylan took on the task of defending/destroying the base outside our walls and I launched a full out attack on their weakest player, the Aztecs.

I built some stables outside his walls, hidden just enough that he couldn’t tell where they were. Since we can produce cavalry instantly it makes for an easy attack when you can get a stable close by. From there I launched wave after wave of cuirassiers until his main base was completely destroyed. Since he no longer had the resources to help out his teammate, he quit. Once you get one guy to drop out, it drastically affects their momentum. After all, each player has a 200 pop cap. So now, he can’t produce as many units and we have the advantage.

Again, I built stables outside his walls and launched an attack. After breaking through, he realized it was over and resigned. All in all, a very good game. The French are very difficult to play because of how expensive the units are. You have to stockpile resources and have a very strong economy. But if you do it right, you can beat just about anyone. Dylan did an awesome job of protecting our economies while I got to go on the offensive and destroy the enemy.

We definitely kicked some ass.

Playing Call Of Duty

2010-04-10T19:55:00.000-07:00

Latly we have been playing Call of Duty World at War, we not only like this game because of the nazi zombie add on which is amazing by the way, but we have found a section of the xbox live onlime mulitplayer called team tactical. Team tactial breaks you off into two smaller teams no more than 4 players per team and mixes up all of the games inclueding but not limited too: search and destroy, classic team deathmatch, domination and my favorite capture the flag. Team tactical is specific to this game only, if it however had been included by modern warfare or modern warfare 2 I believe it would have been really sucessful. Another little side note to add on is that in this game when you get a seven kill streak you get to call in a pack of vicious dogs on your enemy. This has become my personal favorite thing to do in the game but getting seven kills in a row somehow is more difficult that it might appear. Anyhow to stop myself from rambleing on I'll finish by saying that we are always recruiting members and if your interested my xboxlive name is "Big Seven Zero" add me and we can play together....

Fallout 3

2010-02-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

I fell in love with Fallout 3 from the very moment I placed it into my xbox 360. The game is incredibly addictive and even when I think I've had enough, I feel like playing it a few minutes later. I've already beat all of the main quests and two of the expansions. I have yet to download the others, but I'm sure that I will soon.

I've been telling everyone who would listen how amazing this game is. I finally got my brother into it after raving about it for a year. Now he's been playing it the past few days, calling me to update me on his adventures through the wasteland.

If you haven't picked up a copy of this game, you need to do so immediately. You will not be disappointed.

Failed to Join Game Fix - Age of Empires 3

2010-01-06T16:57:00.000-08:00

I've been looking online and there seems to be a lot of people who have this issue. I was one of those people but I was able to fix the problem.

First off, you need to understand that it's not the game or your computer or your internet connection. The problem is with your router. This makes the problem much more complicated than you would think. So if you don't want to hassle with your router settings (which can truly be a pain in the ass), then simply plug your computer directly into your cable or DSL modem and reset the modem. The game should work perfect for you now and then when you are done, simply plug your router back in and reset your modem and it will work like it did before.

If you absolutely have to play the game through your router, for whatever reason, then I will show you what I did to fix it below. The fact is that every router is different, so my settings might not work for you. You will probably have to play around with yours and figure out what does work.

Here are the instructions given to us by the game manufacturer as posted in the forum:

If you are receiving the message “Failed to Join Game” when trying to play on ESO, try these steps:

• Power Cycle your network hardware: Turn off your modem, router, and computer. Wait a few minutes then turn them back on one at a time in the listed order. Some routers need to be power cycled to except new versions of software such as Age of Empires 3.

• Disable Anti Virus, Anti Spyware, and other security software while you play Age of Empires 3.

• Upgrade your firmware on your router and your network card.

• Verify your Firewall or internet security software is allowing AGE3 to pass through.

• Disable your Firewall or internet security software temporarily while you test connecting to the game.

• Toggle UPnP (If you have UPnP on, try turning it off and if you have UPnP off, try turning it on.)

• Change your DMZ settings

• Port forward UDP and TCP/IP ports 2300-2310 to your machine. If that range does not work try expanding it to cover ports 2300-2340, or try using the OverridePort command listed below.

• Some routers have a Gaming Mode. Be sure to enable that option if your router supports this feature.

• If your router has logging turned on make sure to clean off your logs or restart logging before playing Age of Empires 3

• Change your computers IP on your router. Example: if your computer sits at 192.168.0.100 change it to 192.168.0.200

As you can see, it's almost a foreign language. After hours on the phone with someone in India who was taking customer service calls for Belkin, the problem still wasn't fixed. They couldn't figure out the issue. So I set about doing some troubleshooting on my own.

First of all, turn off your router firewall. Windows has a firewall built in, and so does your anti-virus. You don't need another damn firewall on while you're playing the game.

Now, here's where it gets tricky. You're going to have to look at the instructions above and mix and match and try different things to get it to work.

First I opened all the ports by using their guidelines above: UDP and TCP/IP ports 2300-2310 to your machine. If that range does not work try expanding it to cover ports 2300-2340

You need to make sure that ports 2300-2340 are open. It's not too hard but if you need help, call your router manufacturer and have their customer service people walk you through that part. They should be at least good enough to help you that far.

For me, doing those two things wasn't enough. The last thing I did was also listed above: Toggle UPnP. Mine was automatically set to "on," so I turned it off. The combination of turning off the router firewall, opening the ports 2300-2340, and turning off UPnP did it for me. I can't guarantee that it will work for you, but if you simply must use your router when playing, then try that.

If that doesn't work, try some of the other things above. You may have to mix and match until you find the right combination, but don't give up. You'll get there. After all, if you've read this far into the article, then you must really love playing Age of Empires 3. Playing online against real people is totally worth it.

Basic Fast Fortress Strategy - Age of Empires 3

2010-01-05T19:54:00.000-08:00

Some of our members might be new to online play so I thought it would be a good idea to post a basic FF (Fast Fortress) strategy.

The transition from playing the AI offline to playing online can be an eye-opening experience. I remember thinking, "How the hell are they aging up so fast? How did they get their score so high?"

At the time I thought I was doing everything I could do to age up and build my colony faster. Of course, I was wrong.

The first thing you need to do is get really good at micro-managing your villagers. I can't stress how HUGE that is. You need to make sure that you have no idle villagers...ever. Turn on the "show gatherers per resource" button in the options menu. That will not only show you how many you have on each resource, but it tells you how many are idle as well. Clicking on the "idle villager" button will take you directly to those villagers.

Sometimes they can hide amongst farms, plantations, other villagers and behind buildings and landscapes so don't bother actually looking for them. Use that button to take you to them and give them something to do.

Below I have outlined a generic fast fortress strategy. It won't work perfectly for every civilization. For example, the Indians' (as in from India, not Native Americans) villagers cost wood, and Dutch villagers cost coin. This strategy is based off of a typical civilization where villagers cost food.

Tips by age:

Discovery Age:
-Age up: 800 Food

-Every villager you have should be focused on food until you age up. At first you're going to have 5 or 6 villagers (depending on what civilization you start with). All but one should immediately go to hunting the closest animal herd. DO NOT set them to gather on the berry bushes which will be tempting because they are close. Hunting gathers food faster than gathering from bushes. You should be hunting until you reach the Fortress age.

The one villager that you didn't put on food you can let gather the initial home city shipment. If possible make him gather the food crates first, so that you can create at least one (but not more than two because it will slow you down too much). I usually build just one extra villager because I want that food to age up.

Depending on the map, you will have 100-200 wood. Build a house first. If you have the 200, build a market. They both cost 100 wood. You need the house for population room and the market for the cheap economy upgrades that you can get early. The market offers three cheap upgrades to start that you want to get ASAP when you reach the colonial age. Upgrade for wood cutting costs 100 food, hunting upgrade costs 50 wood and 50 coin, and the mining upgrade costs 75 food and 75 wood.

Don't worry about those upgrades yet, just focus on food. As soon as the spare villager is done building a house and/or market, set him to food (If you didn't have wood for the market, don't worry. You can build it in the colonial age). Set your town center gather point on the hunted animal so that your created villager goes immediately to food as well.

Watch your food total. You need to click on the upgrade button as soon as you reach 800. It takes time to progress to the next age after you've clicked it, so click it as soon as you can. You will have 3 or 4 options to choose from when you age up, choose the one with 400 wood. You will need that wood to build in the next age.

The other key thing to aging up is using your villager card for your first Home City shipment. You start out with one that is just 2 villagers so use that until you get the card that has 3. Make sure you have that in your deck.

Your second shipment will be the 700 coin (or 600 if you haven't advanced your Home City enough to get the 700 card in the Colonial age). Do not use that second shipment while you are in the colonial age. As tempting as it might be, wait until you reach the colonial age and then use it on your 700 coin. You'll need that coin to get to the fortress age quickly.

With this method you will age up with about 9-10 villagers depending on what civilization you're using.

Colonial Age:
-Age up - 1200 Food, 1000 Coin

-As soon as you click that age up button, take 4 villagers and put three of them to wood and one to coin. The key to aging up fast in this age is to have your 700 gold card ready. Use that second Home City shipment on 700 coin. It only takes 1000 coin to age up, so with that shipment, you're already most of the way there.

However, you do need to do your initial market upgrades now, so that will cost you some of your resources but you will make it up quickly because those upgrades are pretty cheap (as I pointed out above).

Keep creating villagers as you have enough food. You shouldn't need to build more houses because you should have a pop limit of 20 at this point (unless you're the British whose houses give them an extra villager upon building completion). You also might need another house if you're playing a rush game because you'll ned the pop space to start building an army. However, if you want to fast fortress, you don't need (or want) more than 20 villagers before you age up to Fortress.

Put your new villagers on food, preferably hunting, but if you are running out of animals to hunt then you can put them on that berry patch now. All new villagers should go to food except for two or three that you can split between wood and coin.

It's tempting to use that wood you got to build all sorts of things, but don't do it. If you feel inclined to build something, build one more house and/or a barracks if you're playing a "rush" game. If you're playing a treaty game, then don't build the barracks. You want to save that wood so that you can build an extra Town Center as soon as you age up into Fortress.

A few things to keep in mind: If your villagers are building, they aren't gathering. Time is always against you, there's tough competition out there and most online players are pretty fast. More villagers = more resources, however, if your Town Center is building villagers you won't be able to age up. You also can't build villagers while you're aging up. Which is why saving wood for that second Town Center in the Fortress age (you can't build a second one until then) is so important.

Since most of your villagers are on food and you got a 700 coin card, and you didn't spend it on any upgrades except for the first layer of market ones, you should have enough resources to get to the Fortress Age.

Fortress Age
Age up - 2000 Food, 1200 Coin

-Now you're in the Fortress Age and can build multiple Town Centers (600 wood). You should have about 20 villagers. Build your extra Town Center with the wood you saved, and if you have one use your Town Center card so that you have at least three. Then pump out villagers as fast as you can. Put most of them to food by building farms, but you'll want to pepper in some to coin as well. The main key to getting alot of villagers fast is to put most of them to food first, otherwise you won't have enough food to support three Town Centers building them.

The reason you want to get to Fortress quickly is that you can have access to most of your units, you can build more Town Centers, and your first fort card is now available. Make the most of it. The better economy you can build early, will give you an advantage later on.

I've seen a lot of guys skimp on the economy and then they can't compete in the late game. The better economy you have, the better and bigger army you can support.

I know that this strategy will not apply to everyone for every civilization. I just wanted to throw together a generic strategy that would apply to most and help new players get better.

This turned out to be a lot longer than I had anticipated, but I am sure I missed some things. Feel free to add anything you think I missed.

Welcome to Clan Kickass!

2010-01-03T13:13:00.000-08:00

This is the very first post for the Official Clan Kickass! This clan started on Age of Empires 3 and has additionally carried over into Call of Duty, World at War (alias KASS).

If you are new to Clan Kickass, welcome! I started this site to share strategies, tips, and tricks amongst our clan. If you have anything you would like to have posted here, please feel free to comment or email it to me at maynardblack@gmail.com.