Reading the Opponent

Scouting

Scouting well can be the difference between winning and losing, as knowing your opponents strategy is a huge advantage. All three of the Asian civilizations have an advantage here, each starting with two explorer’s/scouts. The Indian civilization starts off with two explorers’, both with good speed and the ability to heal, which makes them the best for early-game scouting. The Japanese civilization has two explorers' aswell, and the Chinese starts with an explorer and a disciple.

Try and scout in opposite directions with these two scout’s, and try to make sure there is no black area anywhere on the map, especially around the opponent’s Town Center and his second and third hunts. Making sure you have scouted most of the map by early colonial is a good practice, as it makes it easier to raid and base strategies on the geography of the map.

When there is only fog-of-war left, there are a few handy tricks on telling whether your opponent is hunting. First, if you look over a hunt, even in fog-of-war, you will be able to see whether the hunts are dead, moving, or how much food they have left. If you click on a hunt, and it is losing more than 1 food per second (decay causes 1 food per second loss) then you can assume there are settlers hunting on the carcass. The faster rate the food meter drops, the more settlers. The same principle applies to wood, but not coin.

Most European civilizations start off with one explorer, but the Dutch and the French start with two, which gives them an advantage. Civilizations like Ottoman, who have only one explorer and have to build a Trade Posts in early discovery, generally have a disadvantage during scouting.

The three Native civilizations have an advantage over the Europeans and the Asians. Firstly, Sioux gets a Warchief with amazing speed to scout the map, and all native warchiefs can convert treasure guardians and use them to scout, combat, or gather other treasures.


Fishing

In all The Asian Dynasties maps, the waterways are illuminated. This makes it much easier to tell whether your opponent is fishing, or gathering water treasures. To tell whether an opponent is fishing, simply click on fish near his side of the coast, and see if any of them have less than 500 food, and decreasing. If you can see that he is fishing with this method, then it would be wise to ship/build some war boats to put on the pressure.


Score

This is perhaps the easiest and most effective way of predicting an opponents strategy – by his score. Score takes into account shipments/resources/military/scouted area/age. By remembering these rules you can generally tell what an opponent is doing

Score drop
When an opponents score drops, this is generally a sign that he is spending resources. If his score doesn’t rise again after 25 seconds, then you can almost be sure he is FF’ing. A common way to tell that an opponent is making military is by the way his score will drop 1-2 points (or stay the same), then rise a few points after 20 seconds or so.
In mid-Fortress, this rule greatly applies, and can win you battles. If you see their score drop significantly (more than 10 points), then you can be sure he is shipping in mercenaries. In this case, you can look at his deck, see what mercenaries he has, and counter accordingly.

Score rise
A score rises whenever there is a quick increase in resources/military. Generally a quick increase in score in early colonial can symbolize a military shipment, but if his score stays the same for the first 35 seconds of colonial, then you can be sure he is not making too much military, and if you are rushing, it is safe to attack.

you appear to have included just about everything I would put in here, only thing is to watch what crates he is sending, as that is a very easy way to tell what units he will build, and check his deck

and always look at his deck, usually i do it when i'm going to colonial.
it's a good way to know what kind of strats he might use

Marlonsm wrote:and always look at his deck, usually i do it when i'm going to colonial.
it's a good way to know what kind of strats he might use

how do you read an opponents deck in game??

Go to the Player Summary Box, then just click on his HC. It should show you the cards once hes chosen his deck.