Kicking Off A New Age of Empires II Grind
A look into my goals and thought process
Hey team,
Recently I’ve been writing a lot of communications at work that begin with the greeting “hey team”, even when reaching out to people in completely unrelated roles and organizations. I think it builds a sense of camraderie and rapport - aren’t we all just partners working toward the same goals? Doesn’t this imply that, inevitably, we will get things done, drive toward the right outcome, and deliver new business value, no matter the degree to which we are currently misaligned?
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that whatever writing talent I may have gets soaked up by this Substack, and my communication at work is unbelievably obtuse.
Let’s get this thing started!
Kicking Off A New Grind
I haven’t done a solid Age of Empires II ladder grind since the first half of 2021, which culminated in a consistent top 1% rating and a solid win in Hera’s RBW3 community tournament. I fell off the grid soon after, largely due to work, while promising to get back into the swing of things when Age of Empires IV came out. That happened - and I wasn’t super happy with it - and I ended up spending most of 2022 working to land a promotion. That also happened - I posted about it on my Instagram, if you’re into personal life updates - and since then I’ve just been cruising along, wondering what I should do next.
With Return of Rome’s release, I figured it’s a good time to do another ladder grind. And I wanted to write something on that! I think for a lot of people, a guy in his 30s taking a decent chunk of his personal time to get better at a computer game is a strange thing to wrap their head around. I wanted to write a piece on how I’m thinking about it and what I’m trying to accomplish.
The Motivation
I see playing computer games competitively as a healthy thing for adults to do, when done the right way and in moderation. It’s not much different from playing in a basketball league after work or participating in kickball and soccer tournaments on the weekends. It’s an outlet for a competitive drive, an opportunity for self-analysis and improvement, and more generally, just a hobby that’s fun to look forward to and connect with others about.
I also stand by the notion that competitive RTS is a great mental gym. I think that there’s a train of thought in modern society that we should strive to do what makes us feel good and strive to avoid what makes us feel bad. And I think that’s reasonable, in moderation. But when I look at the most meaningful aspects of my life, many of them involve a good amount of time and work and sacrifice. And if I stopped doing them the moment I encountered obstacles, my life would be substantially less interesting and vibrant than it is now.
Yeah, playing ladder was not always fun, back when I was grinding. Sometimes, I dreaded it! But running is not always fun, either. Yet I’m thankful I’ve stuck with it because it’s a meaningful pursuit that’s brought a lot of joy in my life. And while not-laddering has been enjoyable, I’ve always had this persistent, low-volume sense that I’m missing out on something. And I feel that way because I remember what it was like to follow along with the meta and try to improve at it back when I was playing the game, and it was a really neat feeling.
What I don’t think about is stuff like ladder anxiety or dreading playing the ladder, even though I do remember it happening - because, honestly, I think you forget about that kind of thing pretty quickly.
The Goal
I don’t think I’m in a place to set goals around particular outcomes, because I’m not in a situation where I can freely adjust my schedule. If I put in an hour a day and I land at 1800, well, I land at 1800 - I can do my best to practice more efficiently, but I don’t have spare buckets of free time I can grab from.
I do think it’s important to set process goals, though, because it keeps you honest. A process goal is just a goal around doing something - e.g. “running twice a week” - instead of achieving something - e.g. “completing a marathon”. With a process goal you can evaluate where you’ve ended up on a regular cadence to see if what you’re doing is taking you in the direction that you want to be going in. But it doesn’t put pressure on achieving a particular outcome under a particular time frame, which is great for hobbies and time-limited stuff.
Looking back on my last grind of Age of Empires II, I’m really happy with what I achieved. But I don’t feel like I built a strong foundational knowledge base of the game, and I think that limited my ability to turn it into a durable hobby. For example, when I tune into competitive streams nowadays, I sometimes struggle to conceptualize the match-up and the tech tree traversals in my head. I think that’s because, in my grind, I focused so hard on the highest priority stuff - nailing build orders and late Feudal / early Castle tech transitions, especially - that I never really stopped to comprehensively “get” each individual civilization. The nuances of the tech trees, the meaning of certain bonuses or unique units in certain match-ups, etc. Given that my goal is to re-establish Age 2 as a durable hobby of mine, I want to get that fixed up.
Aside from that, I just want to get back into this thing, man! Anytime you take a long break from the ladder, the ladder anxiety grows and grows. I think it’s important, especially early on, to set a basic playtime goal, just to ensure things get moving.
Putting that all together I’m eyeing two goals right now, with the plan to re-assess in 90 days:
Playing one ladder game a day
Memorizing, over time, the different civilizational bonuses and unique units, and the most classic tech tree traversals for those civilizations based on their unique bonuses, unique units, and tech tree limitations
The Process
I streamed most of my ladder games last time, and that had a number of pros and cons. Streaming ladder games is not free. It’s not like you do exactly what you would have done before, but you happen to click a broadcast button.
This time around, though, I still plan to stream as many games as I can, even if that translates to a large number of 45 minute streams. While streaming was stressful and hard, it was also incredibly rewarding (note the pattern!). I met some great friends that I really like to chat and play with and it pushed me to “put myself out there” and participate in stuff like Hera’s community tournaments. Streaming was tough in the moment, but really rewarding in the long-term.
This time around I’m going to try to grab a slot I regularly play at, because I think that’s the easiest thing to do long-term. And I’ll get a good multi-monitor setup going so that streaming is as easy as possible. I think a key thing with establishing good habits is making it as easy as possible for yourself to do the right thing - like putting your running shoes and socks in place the night before, so all you have to do is roll out of bed and get going.
The other thing I’m going to do is primarily play on my main account. I think using alternate accounts as a means to get over ladder anxiety is not a good long-term solution, because it’s not addressing the root cause of the problem. I think Tasteless put it best in one of the old GSL broadcasts when he said that ladder anxiety is a disconnect between your mental perception of your own skill level, and your actual skill level. Playing on alternate accounts reinforces the idea that your “real skill level” is on your main account, whereas you’re just playing around on this side account. And I don’t think that’s healthy.
Final Thoughts
This piece was a little more personal blog-ish than I like to write, even for the more casual format of a newsletter. I hope you liked it! My thought is that ladder grinds are the sort of thing I do often, and I don’t think they’re something most adults do often, so perhaps it’s a unique and interesting perspective that people in the RTS space may enjoy. Plus, I think it’s a cool new well of content - I’m looking forward to updating you folks on this grind periodically! I’m planning to re-assess my process goals in 90 days, and I think that’s a great time to post an update here as well.
Until next time,
brownbear
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