"This was not your first game. Were you lying?"

I want to post how much I appreciate this game and well made RTSs in general. I used to play SC2 several years ago and watch pro games and I was a decent player. Lately I've been watching AOE2 pro games and I've played a bunch of the campaigns and standard games against bots.

Today I decided to try an online multiplayer game for the first time, try my hardest, and see what happens. I had found a 6 player FFA. I chose Chinese and had sheep right next to my TC which gave me an easy boost. I went for an FC and even though I made a lot of early mistakes, I still got to castle age first, massed a ton of crossbows, build a second TC and tried to boom and upgrade as much as possible.

Rather than overtly attack any of the other players, I would just aggressively place castles and/or TC's on golds and stones that are fairly close to other players and back it up with arbalests, onagers, and pikemen. Over the course of a 2.5 hour game, I eventually went to mine up most of the golds and stones all over the map and control all 5 relics.

At the very end of the game, my final opponent to surrender said "This was not your first game. Were you lying?" I'm so glad that my first trip back to online gaming after a long time was an epic win. The big campaigns are what I've always loved about this type of game, and doing it online felt awesome.