QGL -- Queensland Gamers League

Do you have any favourite civilisations you like to play as a team? Do some compliment others?

We usually select "Random Civ" when we play, although at times we'll pick civs that work well together. A good combination is playing as the Teutons with a Byzantine ally - the combined bonuses gives the Teutonic monks 3x the healing speed at twice the range, and they're twice as hard to convert. A Mongol player on your team is also great, as it increases the field of vision on all the team's scouts, which is a great advantage early in the game.

Do you have some favourite maps?

There's only a few maps that we really dislike playing on. Black Forest is a horrible map, as it is easily walled and games often stretch out to over an hour of gameplay. Continental, Coastal, Highlands and Rivers are all good maps, as they've got a good balance of water and land.

Clan Vile has been unstoppable in the QGL Season. Do you play online as well? How do you go against other AOE2 clans?

We play a fair bit on the Zone, and regularly play other Australian clans there. We're not quite as serious as most of the other players though, and recently we've taken a bit of a break - there's such a thing as too much Age playing.

Do you guys sit down to together before matches and work out tactics, or just wing it?

AOK strategies work on specific starts - basically how you play the opening 10-20 minutes. Each player has an idea on how they're going to tackle a map, but as the maps are randomly generated it's sometimes necessary to switch strategies - farming early if there's no fish, etc. We'll let each other know what start we're planning to use, and perhaps what units we're going to use.

Are there any other comment you'd like to make about AOE2 or the QGL Finals?

The expansion pack for AOE2 is great, the new civilisations are a lot of fun. We're looking forward to the QGL Finals, we might even put our Quake 3 skills on display.