I've been playing and involved in Aoe since 2002 and I can say that 2018 was one of the best years ever for this game. Congratulations to this community and I hope that this trend continues into 2019. Great work everyone, keep your stick on the ice.

People quick building in both cases.

I'm a noob and starting to play in Hard Arabia against AI, and I can't keep up with it, I'm trying to find a civ for the AI weak enough to be damaged by my rushes So, Saracens, Khmer or Vietnamese?

^Title, sorry if it is a stupid question.

They say friends are the ones that stood up, you guys did it. They say friends are the one that advices for free l, you did that, they say, they say they say. Thanks and happy new year

Will there be no more updates to the game? The last one was back in September.

It's 2019 now. I'm 32 years old and still a fat virgin with a shitty job. But when I play AoE 2 I feel happy. This game is my happy drug since 1999.

If we want age to become something bigger we need to show orgs and sponsors there is viewership. The best way to show that escape has made the right decision and encourage new money into the scene is to have big numbers and what a better way to start than the first event in the new studio so I encourage everyone to get the stream open. Even if you can’t watch just having it open is good.

The event will take place on the 18th 19th and 20th of January between viper tatoh lierry and mbl with a prize pool of 2,500. Let’s get a big turnout!

I am often kicked out by game hosters because my ping is too bad. Why are people so rude?

How many (much??? Idk) DPI do you recommend for aoe 2 and should I buy a new mouse if mine has under 3k???

I mostly play with 25 pop cap so the huns no house bonus is very useless. It saves me only four houses. Wow... 😑

Hi, I will play aoe tad on vmware but not sure what the best option. 32 or 64 bit? As I remember, 32bit doesnt support over 2gb ram.

With 2018 drawing to a close, I think it’s time to share some exciting news.

EscapeAoE is moving from the web to a brand new studio in Manchester (UK). I’ll be joining them full time. And we’ll be broadcasting everything Age of Empires.

Tune into the launch party stream Friday 18th January, 18:30 - 23:00 GMT.

On the days following (19th & 20th) we’ll also be hosting a live Age of Empires 2 LAN 1v1 invitational tournament (with some whacky rules for comedic value). It should be a lot of fun even if you’re not an AoC regular!

What does this mean for ESOC & the Age of Empires III community though?

Basically, just more AOE3 content! Later this year we'll also be organising an Age of Empires 3 LAN event, we’re still figuring out the details but we’ll keep you posted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMVUoQctDUk

Their Rattan are too OP. Reveal enemy position is an enormous eco boost. I can't play AoE if Vietnamese are that top tier.

Their Elephanta are too OP. Paper Money is an enormous eco boost. I can't play AoE if Vietnamese are that top tier.

I made some really amazing friends and got to know some really interesting, entertaining, and incredibly kind and helpful people in the larger community in the past year.

I'm happy to call this tiny sliver of the gaming world and internet my home, our home.

May you all live long and prosper in the new year. Be safe tonight and have fun.

14!

The 'attacked' bell goes off when one unit starts hitting another. When a building is attacked, by multiple units, one warning sounds and then as long as the building is being continuously attacked by at least one unit, no more sound.

There's a cool down of at least ten seconds of not being hit before a new attack alarm triggers.

Using this knowledge, you can divert enemy attention away from areas of the minimap, and impersonate large scale attacks with a few units. Just attack multiple buildings slightly before and during your main assault/raid/petard rush, and the opponent is immediately at a disadvantage when it comes to assessing their map.

It's pretty contextual and has reduced effectiveness at higher elo, but it can be incredibly useful for sneak attacks, and in lategame for setting a few units on a back wall somewhere.

Thoughts?

Time for another weekly round of questions.

Talk about everything from build orders to advanced strategies.

Whatever your questions, the community is here to answer them.

So ask away!

So noob post here. I popped a 1v1v1v1 with my wife on a local connection for the record fastest feudal time for me so far is 11 minutes. We were against a moderate AI. We managed to wait out one of them getting wrecked while we were simultaneously getting attacked and attacking the remaining. I know their unit was ele-archers. So that's a chore to kill for me and her. We had this AI holed in constantly attack to the point where they should have been unable to collect resources but the POS was still getting gold. It wasn't until we both dropped the match out of frustration that we found out they had accumulated 17k of relic gold. Allowing them to spam ele-archers and siege units (black forest) it was straight BS. At the end of the match the AI had over 1k kills... 1194 if I remember correctly. Being holed in and constantly attack we were entirely unable to win. (Last man standing) so I just wanted to rant that. Also the bastard was all up on our D like no ones business.. Just sending hoards of ele-archers at us. In the end their largest army was 69 units.

A TWO HOUR GAME! AND TWO HUMAN PLAYERS JUST DROPPED IT AGAINST A MODERATE DIFFICULTY ORIGINAL AI.

I turtled in Northwest. Playing as Brits. 750 population and everyone was friendly and peacefull. My neighbour in the east (red) passive-aggressively build castles near my wall and wouldn't send a single trade-card. Other players referred to our border as "demilitarized zone" or "North & South Korea" While fighting for trees with everyone, Red suddenly placed some catapults in my city center, declared war and tried to destroy my trebuchets. He failed, and my long-bowmen let hell rain down his knights, while my trebuchets purged his castles from my border. In the meantime other players send their villagers to grab the remaining resources in that area, while some are sending resources to me and one player actually send an army of monks only to heal the wounded, lol. We also had a little zoo containing 2 boars. The others pressure me to spare reds life and be peacefull. I agree and ar promised some piece of land that belonged to red before. But red won't give it to me and takes this break to rebuild his army and re-castle. Anyways, this text is getting too long.

We spare douchebag reds life multiple times, while south african nations grow incredible strong and I have no trade route. In the end it's North vs South while South wins with a massive ship army and a bigger alliance, cause they now allied 5vs3

In the end me and my allies flee into our last retreat, pieces of my castle in the very north, while my longbowmen give their best to defend vs approaching armies. We do agree on an allied win and everyone is happy.

I gotta say I am glad I made this purchase for 3€, since money is tight, my pc doesn't run newer games and AOE2 multiplayer is new for me and appearently HELLA FUN. Also reconnected with some friends to play vs KI's so far.

I just wanna say this game is awesome and really looking forward!

Ps: I'm not the best player, first games people laughed at me for builing a 5-thick wall and tons of canon towers. If you want to add a noob on Steam: Bear Grylls. You can call me turtle lol

Any way to see if there's a recording of that game? :) thanks

I’m relatively new to AOE2 and currently playing a 4 team deathmatch where I’ve killed/destroyed all other 3 teams stuff.ive explorers all the map and there is nothing two teams have resigned and one hasn’t even though nothing of them standing or alive why won’t it end ??

Sometimes I see units going straight through a gate that's still being built. Is it a bug? Under what conditions does it happen?

I played the game way back in the day when I was in middle school but was never any good at it but I picked it up on the Steam Sale with all the expansions and I'm loving it. I'm on break right now so I have been playing non-stop. I just finished the Joan of Arc and Saladin campaigns. It's been a blast.

Hello,

​

As I posted about previously, I play weird long games where trebs generally ruin, or limit, my fun. I subscribed to the steam workshop mod "No Trebs for Plebs" (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=908683366&searchtext=treb) that removes trebs from the game. I fired up a game with that this weekend and have played it for probably 6-7 hours so far. Its pretty epic so far. No trebs build-able at my castle, and none spotted with the enemy.

​

Unfortunately, I just sat down to play some more and realized that trebs are back in the game, both build-able in my castles and an enemy AI already tried to roll in with some. I confirmed that the mod is still downloaded/subscribed on steam and within the AoE 2 client, and tried reloading an old save and restarting the game but... they're still there!

​

Is this a common problem with mods in general? Or are the all powerful Trebs not to be denied forever?!

Hey, so I was going through some numbers for late game economy set up (as in how many vils.carts needed) for different unit types and figured it might be something worth posting here. The values I am using is 20 gold per min for trade carts, 22f per min for farmers, 26f per min for slav farms (f = farmer, c = trade carts). Assuming you are not making wood units 5-10 lumberjacks should be used for farms and making new buildings and replacing carts. Keep in mind that spain trade will change these numbers (but haven't looked at the numbers for it yet) (note you can check the economy tab in game to check your numbers)

Paladin for normal civ

51f 70c (this makes 18.7 paladin per min production) assuming you have around 5-10 lumberjacks this means can sustain 70+ paladin. Note it takes about 4 minutes for the economy remake the full 70+ paladin.

Berber camels

50f 60c (this makes 25 camels per min) - with 5-10 lumberjacks will have 80+ camels sustained.

note that camels are not as tanky as paladin so having more created per minute is a must, but you could maybe go with slightly less eco if you want and more army such as:

45f 54c (22.5 camels per min) - with some lumberjacks this makes about 90 camels. It takes about 4 mins for the economy to completely remake the 90 camels.

Camel archer

assuming 32w per min per lumberjack

40 lumberjacks, 54c (18 camel archer per min) - given that it is a ranged unit and less likely to be on the front line a smaller production amount should be fine, just make sure not to throw away large numbers if your low on res. Should sustain 100+ camel archer. Need at least 3 castles (ideally more) to keep up reinforcements.

Indian camels

(note sultans)

50f, 55c (20 camels per min) for 80+ camels sustained. Economy remakes full army in about 4 mins. Could also try a lower eco if have res saved up.

Slav Boyar

37f, 77c (19 boyar per min)

Note that thier farmers work fast, meaning that a large number of carts are needed compared to farmers - also given boyar higher gold cost. A rough rule to follow for slavs would be to have double the carts to farmers. Note need at least 4 castles for reinforcements (ideally more) Will sustain about 80 boyars.

Battle elephant (khmer, viet, burmese)

77f, 50c (14 eles per min) this can sustain about 60 elephants, so can remake in about 4 mins. Note that due to slower speed and better tanking it is probably better to have slightly less eco and slightly more army than this. e.g 70f, 45c might work better with 70+ army.

Eagles

25f, 70c (27.5 eagles per min) Can have about 100 eagles and can remake army in about 3.5 mins.

Hope people find this post helpful, cheers.

I used to play this game in the 90s and loved it. Haven't really touched it since but keen to get back into it. Some graphical mods that make the game look a bit more modern perhaps, or are they buggy?

With the Red Dead 2 and Just Cause 4 coming out at the same time and having such incredibly different responses (Red Dead is perfect but slow, JC4 is a technical mess but totally crazy), it got me thinking, what if in another timeline. Avalanche had Rockstar's resources to make a Just Cause game; what if JC4 had the production value of RDR2?

While I was thinking about that, I thought of Factorio, a game I think of as from another timeline where instead of games advancing graphically they advanced in terms of systemic complexity. What if a game like that had Rockstar levels of production value? What if Rockstar levels of money and development time went into a city management or tycoon game? Would we see Dwarf Fortress levels of simulation along with Age of Empires level of historical development, given life with hi-fi and entertaining details?

The final example I thought of is the Dreamcast (I think) with it's superior sprite handling vs the Playstation with it's superior polygon handling. Looking back on those games, I think the industry rushed too quickly into 3D, with 2D games of that era holding up 10x better than the extremely low-fi 3D that was available to developers at the time. What if the industry had held back on 3D for a couple more years and given sprite work more time to shine? Even though we're kind of seeing that now in the indie scene with games like Owlboy, could you imagine how massive a 2D metriodvania with the budget of RDR2 could have been? More generally, what if less emphasis had been put on visuals and more on the complexity of interactions?

So while my alternative timelines are essentially "What if x had become as successful as the GTA/R*/RDR formula?", I'm curious to hear what other "What ifs?" the community has pondered and what they think the results may have been.

So I recently built a pc and want to get back into AOE, which is an all time childhood favorite. I noticed that amazon sells digital keys and steam also sells it. Any difference?

How do I make another online account for my brother using the same cd key? Or is it not possible :(

^Title.

So me and my mate were playing AOE 2 with random civs. I got Berbers and my friend got Huns. After 30 Minutes he spammed a lot of Cav Archers and Knights. I had no idea how to deal with that. Although my eco was stronger I lost like a retard. Please give some advices.

Helle. I was wondering about how to pause a game in AoE3 Asien Dynasties. Because I see everyone else pause their game in the start of the match, to get control of all their villigers, but I have no ideer how to pause the game, can anyone help me?

So I just started playing AOE2 for the first time, and having played AOE3 before hand, there is literally no unit variation in this game? Aside from the castle unit each civ has, every civ has the exact same units? Doesn't that get dull after like 10 hours?

I search a mod that increases the speed of Persian war elephants and Teutonic Knights. It would be more realistic if a war elephant is as fast as a Paladin or the TK as fast as an Eagle Scout.

I bought my first age of empires in 2017 but I just got into the second one this year. I love the game but I kinda wish I got into this game as a kid when I had more free time, I would love it back then as well and I would be much more better off playing now

Misc

New blogpost about our modding API. We take a look back at what we did this year and discuss several small changes and additions.

New video on the Youtube channel. In the annual talk at the 35C3, we briefly present our progress this year.

Upstream

• NEW: Add support for OpenGL uniform blocks (Link)

• NEW: [blog] Changes for pelican 4.0 (Link)

Issues

Nothing new.

Too few bugs for your taste? Build the project yourself for Linux, OS X or Windows and report your own findings to us.

Open Discussions

Design on the scripting and UI parts of the nyan API has started. Go take a look!

Roadmap

1. Rewrite of the coordinate system ✓
2. Merge eventsystem code ✓
3. Implement core gamestate
4. Establish modpack format
5. Create a simple demo for testing
6. Adapt the new renderer to the simulation model

Hey guys im coming from Age of Mythology, as ive noticed that people play this game alot more.

Was wondering if there are amy UI upgrades or any way to see the total amount of villagers i have and how much i have on each resource.

For an example in the age of mythology hd version you could easily see how much vils you have in total and see how much you have on each resource.

Another thing is loom worth getting? And when should i start mining stone and how much workers are usually on it?

Hello there,

I've been wondering if there are custom maps from aoe2 that are inspired by aoe3 maps. I can't find anything related to this so maybe somebody could land me a hand.
This started since i saw a random playtrough of aoe3 on youtube recently and it reminded me of how awesome were some maps from the campaign. My personal favorites are the Seven Years War and Last Stand of the Boneguard

https://discord.gg/VZABRCU

Loomed villagers are strong enough that with slightly higher numbers they can defeat militia. They can also quickwall themselves into their resource collection.

Three militia cost 180 food and 60 gold. People say that fighting the militia with villagers costs a lot of idle time, but since your opponent loses that many resources, and earlier than you, it doesn't seem like a worthwhile trade most of the time. The villager seconds spent on training the militia can be worth more than the time spent fighting them.

Is it just to disorient your opponent, and make it harder for them to build their archery range/stable/etc? If they catch a lone villager and kill them it makes sense to me, and maybe there are situational benefits like intercepting a tower rush, but other than that I'm not convinced. Drushes are used regularly in high level play though so there must be good reasons.

Following is the story from my childhood about how AoM brought me closer to my family.

https://www.captainobvious.me/blog-1/mythology-lessons-remembering-age-of-empires

Im 1300 voobly mostly play 1v1 arabia.

My biggest weakness is that i dont have an idea what to do when opponent walls up. Im usually quick with my fuedal aggression but if they wall up i usually struggle.

i try to batter down walls with mangonels and make forward buildings but usually, the opponent is faster at getting to castle and imperial and i never seem to have the power to defeat his army.

what can i do to improve? should i drop aggression completely and join the boom race ? or continue the aggression and improve on it. ?

Whenever I enable WK my hotkeys default back to voobly's ones.

How do I set it up properly?

I am newbie. Has anyone want to play with me? i want to use voice communicate software to play with together ,but my english so bad

So I downloaded Voobly again. I patched my HD version of the game with Aoe2 Tools but for some reason there are some mods that I don't like forced into the game. (Advanced Idle pointer and Blue berry bushes)

I can't find a way to remove them, How do I fix this?

title

I have no idea how to counter the vietnamese death ball. How I can destroy an army constisting of Rattan Archers and Battle Elephants?

Hi guys,

while I was home in Germany over Christmas I played tons of games online with my family and it would work about 9 out of 10 times. Now I am back in Austria and neither can I join any games, nor can anyone join my games.

Is this a common problem? Like, are there any specific router settings the game needs to work?

It is exactly the same for a friend of mine, but we cannot seem to fix it. Sometimes it works after going to the main menu and logging in again after like 10 tries, but that is not a real solution. It is especially strange since it worked out perfectly fine literally yesterday on this same laptop, just with a different location.

Thanks in advance!!

Has anyone seen any of the top streamers get questioned about possibly playing in 4k? If so, what was their response?

​

I was also wondering if a channel like ZeroEmpires might consider going 4k at some point because it would make, in my opinion, way better casting. You can see so, so much more of the map at any one time that the caster wouldn't need to keep zipping around, making it harder to watch.

​

I can imagine that pro's don't like the change having got used to the standard res and are good enough that they don't need the visuals of 4k, but for streaming I think it would be great.

​

As Many Knows Me and Nakamura Been Hosting Many Times Deathmatch Academy by giving our own free time with helping newcomers Not to Deathmatch only But the game on general So we Bring in back Deathmatch Academy for another year. it's super free and fast to sign up just visite link and enter your name on steam or voobly + god you want to learn hopefully we gonna give you the best experience out of deathmatch . https://meta-plays.com/index.php?/forums/topic/781-deathmatch-academy-2019-20190112/ deathmatch academy will be here to improve your gameplay on deathmatch and gather people for better experience with a lot of features you will be able to join us and learn deathmatch also we will make guides, stream,voice chat lesson,even tournament just for people in Deathmatch academy So what are you waiting for Join Deathmatch AcaDemy.

Good Luck everyone And Take Care See you at 12 January !

So... another east asian civ

Tibetans

Infantry and monk civilization

Militia line +1 melee armor each age up

Cavalry armor upgrades are free

Trebuchets and petards cost 25% less

Team bonus: transport cart avaible at the stable (or the barracks if they lack the stable)

UU: Monk Warrior (expensive but fast monk, effective vs archers and monks, can't heal or convert)

Cost: 80F 20G |Hp: 70, 80 | Attack: 10, 13 | Armor: 1/2, 1/3 | ROF:2 | Speed: 1.3 | Attack bonus: +5 vs monks and archers | Resistant to conversion

UU2: Transport cart: 80F 35G | Hp: 150 | 4/6 armor | 6 garrison capacity | 1.4 speed

ImperialAgeUT: Lamellar armor (infantry +1 pierce armor) cost: 500G 400F

CastleAgeUT: Lamaism (Monks cost 20% less) Cost: 400F 200G

Disabled techs::::::::::::::::::

Archery: Crossbowman, hancanoneer

Infantry: squires, eagle scout

Cavalry: camel, battle elephant

Blacksmith: bracer, ring archer armor

Siege workshop: bombard cannon, siege ram, siege onager

Monastery: /

University: Treadmill crane, arrowslits, heated shot, bombard tower

Economy: crop rotation, guilds

Dock: caneering, heavy demo ship, fast fire ship, elite cannon galleon

It's easy to read this civ and understand on what they are good: on the early game, they lack a consistent bonus but their M@A + tower is very strong as well as their knight rush or scout rush. On castle age you can also try a castle drop, helped with the stone bonus and cheaper Petards.

Once on imperial you have great monks cavalry and monks and some siege.

Historic background:

The theme of the civ is armored units, who is the best way to describe tibetan military on the dark age. The transport cart is here because Tibetans weren't master of the horse but they used them to transport their heavy infantry.

Previous civ:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/a8lr25/khazar_civ_idea/

So recently myself/my wife and a bunch of my friends and their wives have gotten aoe2 hd.

We like playing together but I am much better than everyone else. I'm not ranked or anything but I can generally rush or boom pretty well.

So I am looking for suggestions of game modes and maps to make it more even. We usually have between 4-8 players.

Sudden death seems like it evens the playing field some and obviously they could just always be vs me but just wondering if anyone else had ideas.

Hi all!

I just installed Age of Mythology Gold Edition and Voobly but every time I try to join a lobby it says that me and the host don't have the same version

I tried the "Game diagnostic" on Voobly and it says that I have the 1.03 version

Can you help me please?

Thanks! :)

I've installed AoE Definitive Edition Codex but it won't open. I click installapp.exe and nothing happens. It's not being installed as a Microsoft app. Just the game files are being copied but the game won't open if it's not installed as an app.

They cant join your game or you cant join theirs?

So I play AoE 2 probably a bit different than most. The game type I like to play is Regicide on Arena against 3 hard AI. I set the treaty time for 90 minutes and spend that time teching up and building a massive fortress in my starting base. We're talking double walls, castles and towers out my ears. I then start burrowing into the tree line behind my base to create a sort of epic tunnel system of castles, walls, towers, and a mini functioning economy and military. By the end of the treaty period I just try and last as long as possible as the hard AI inevitably batters down my defenses and kills my king. Typically my games last 4-5 hours. My current "record" is killing 5200 enemy units.

​

Unfortunately its not terribly fun when the AI just rolls in with Trebs and kills all my cool defensive structures without even suffering damage. Its still somewhat fun, but not nearly as much as when I get to kill wave after wave of enemy units. I was thinking there might be some AIs that were less likely to use Trebs (or bombardiers, as they too can out-range towers) and therefore fit my unique play style better. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I have played a lot of aoe3 offline, wondering if there are enough players online to play with?

Is aoe2 better as I saw more subs there?

Thanks

For context I’m playing on aoe 2 HD on steam without any dlc.

I have a 8gb ram i5 laptop with integrated 620 graphics. will aoe2 run well?

i refunded aoe 3 by an error on the purchase (originally ordered aom EE plus) but it toke a failed order of aoe 3 complete, i installed the game and later the refund came, but i still i can play online aoe 3, so im considerating to rebuy aoe 3 by some posts saying the massive lag and connection issues, also i thinked to buy valve complete pack, but some of those games have low online players and too old also.

​

what do you think

​

Cant connect to the ESO servers

I'm really new to the game having picked it up about a week ago after only having played as a child with cheats on. I have been watching a lot of videos and matches. I'm only playing with the AI on intermediate and I am able to keep up with them in score until I hit the Castle Age and then they pull ahead. I know of fast Castle, but the two times I tried it I got over run by ground units and didn't have an army because I was focused on booming. I think it may be because my Fast Castle is really slow. What are some simple things I may be doing wrong to fall behind? Other than improving my fast castle because atm I can only score a D on that fast castle tutorial.

Thanks in advance.

I'm having weird random crashes when I'm playing campaign on Age of Empire 2: The conquerors expansion non hd, the time span can happen around 30mins or in the long hours. Its annoying because I lose progress and i don't like to save regularly and also i don't know when its going to happen. I already applied userpatch 1.5 and it still doesn't fix the problem. Any Advice? I'm running this on win 7 64 bit with the no-CD crack. Also how do i remove windows error reporting (all of it) , its a completely annoying feature when it shows up when the game crashes.

I just realized that at this point in time, there’s probably enough games set in enough times to play almost all of human history. Games like Far Cry Primal, the Call of Duty franchise, Age of Empires, and Red Dead come to mind when I think of this. Play the earliest set video game, and then jump to the next earliest when you finish it.

Hi, So I decided to play with my friend oversea through Steam but I cant seems to join his lobby. He and his friend could join each other's lobby, and all of us could also join public lobby, but when we tried to join each other lobby we couldnt, since it stucked at joining multiplayer game... We also have the same version as well as all of our expansions and mods turned off but we still couldnt join. Is there anything wrong with that?

In Campaign mode, when I click on saved games nothing is listed. I looked in C:\Users\Me\Documents\My Games\Age of Empires 3\Savegame and I saw my .age3sav file. So I entered the name manually in the save game menu in AOE and it said "Save game: [name of file] failed to load".

What do?

Hi, so I bought the HD edition of the game after YEARS of not playing. I used to be pretty good (in the old LAN days) and I acknowledge I am pretty rusty; however I am begining to question whether there's cheating allowed in the game even when the toggle button for cheating is OFF.

Of all the games I've played, I am massively overpower. I mean, people create 3x more villagers than me, collect 4x -5x times more resources and rush into Imperial Age in less than half an hour. And I mean everyone.

I don't remember the game being this fast in terms of you being able to advance into civs or gather resources. I even wonder if my computer is lagging but it's not. Has anyone else found this?

​

For references I am only playing the original version of the game, no mods in near servers (NAM).

Thanks for your help,

​

​

On steam, there are multiple achievements regarding beating moderate or higher A.I.s in a standard singleplayer game. After getting knight rushed three times, I finally managed to advance quickly enough to have an army of knights ready to defend against an Italian crossbow attack. I then proceeded to win in the imperial age, but didn't recieve the 'Humanity Victorious' achievement (the one for beating 1 moderate or higher A.I.). My settings are all standard or normal, small map size and pop limit of 100. I played with all expansions enabled. Does anyone here know what's going on?

Hey everyone, I don't know if asking for coaching is a thing in here, but I can try I guess.

I'm playing Japanese and having some issues with resource management and frankly, build order and stuff. I can go to Feudal quite fast, but then I get stuck there and don't have enough resources to do a flush, or actually resources at all to continue advancing and I drag behind everyone else.

I don't consider myself a good player by any means so, don't be afraid to over-explain things.

​

THANKS!

I was thining of getting AoE2 HD and the DLC (do you recommend no DLC? Do most players use them?) to play online. I used to play AoE2 a lot when I was a kid, but I'm not a very good RTS player, barely played SC etc, so I fear about going online. I still have my normal non-HD editions so I was mostly going Steam for online. A few more questions, if you don't mind.

• If I buy off Steam, can I still play in this Voobly platform I've seen mentioned?
• Also, do you recommend I join AoE2 even as a really new player? I wouldn't want to be obliterated by much more experienced players, and I'm not really interested in the campaigns, but I guess they'd be fun for a bit.
• Anything else I should be wary of? When does the Xmas Steam sale end?
• Are there more DLC planned? If so I might just wait until another sale with all of em.

​

Thank you all...

Hi guys,

I decided to start ladder. Do you have any links sharing standard builds? And I mean any kind of strategies, not only "cheesy" ones.

​

Thanks,

...And sorry to ask, I bet you have this kind of question all the time (>_<)

My list:

• Siege Rams: They are my favorite unit... Loading infantry into it, watch them move like beasts of prey, tearing down any and every building in sight gives me the biggest thrill in the game... Archers: OMG, you are all so cute... Cavalry: 4 (ctrl-group) + L... Wrecked... GG...
• Conquistadors: A small group of even 5-6 of them is enough to completely decimate your opponent in early to mid Castle... Running around, 1-shotting villagers, 1-shotting any infantry unlucky enough to stray in their paths... Even heavy cavalry will struggle due to their massive attack and the surprisingly lower frame delay making hit and run so easy... Special mention to when you don't focus fire and you see 2-3 villagers die from a single volley... GG...
• Heavy Camels: Admittedly, the punch is lesser with these guys... But, let's say you open with Archers -> Xbows and then the opponent goes heavily into Knights... He gets blacksmith upgrades, bloodlines, husbandry etc... Then, when you send in your Camels, the opponent just goes haywire... Special mention to Chinese and Byzantines in this regard... Chinese facilitate easier transition due to cheaper researches and Byz get very cheap Camels...

I tried right clicking the market i want, then r click on the one i want to send them too, but the dumb horses always go to my nearest market they find...

So a few days ago, me and two of my friends were hosting a 3v3 Arabia on HD. Both of my friends are around 1650 ELO, I'm around 1850. At first we wished to all fight on the same team, but then 3 1500 guys came in. After some open discussion, it was decided that I should go to the opposite team to balance out the ELO. During this time, none of the 1500 guys had said anything about the accuracy of their ELO.

Turned out, one of the 1500 guy on my team is a huge smurf. He reached Castle Age by 15 minutes. Immediately built 3 monasteries. And before long, he was 1v3 kicking my friends' asses with a scary number of Aztec monks. They were all crying out loud in the voice-chat.

After some protest from my friends, I officially became their spy, feeding them information and resources. But even this wasn't enough. I estimate this guy's true ELO must be at least 1900. It is at this point I suddenly found out by chance that I forgot to switch "lock team" back on after our previous diplomacy game. I could actually switch team at any time. So at the end, I outright betrayed him by switching team and sending an army of cavaliers into the center of his base. He was not pleased.

After we "won" the game, we all felt a bit guilty for this. But hey, he screwed us first.

So just want to ask. Am I an asshole for doing this?

​

TLDR: Got our game ruined by a smurf on my team. So I switched team mid-game (forgot to turn lockteam back on) to avenge my friends on the opposite team.

Hello, new to AoE2, been watching a lot of the expert games casted by T90 Official, as well as just spectate 2k rating games on voobly. I noticed that majority of the time, the game ends either during early raids, or after being raided during a late game standstill.

How important is raiding and how can you defend it? Especially late game, where you start expanding and your previous walls are no longer maintained, hussars just sneak in and destroy your eco.

Hey all, I've spent many, many hours trying to get Age of Empires II: HD Edition working nicely on Linux. I'm pretty much there now, so I figured I'd put together a tutorial for anyone trying to do the same. If you don't use Linux and aren't interested in playing AoE2 on it, you can safely ignore this post. If you, like me, are using Linux, and are struggling to get this game working on it, read on.

I'm going to assume that you have a Steam account, have purchased the game on Steam (possibly on Windows), and are familiar with how to open and navigate with a Linux terminal. I'm also going to assume that you don't have extensive experience with Linux and Steam Play, so I'll spell out things as clearly, simply, and obviously as possible. This guide is a bit longer than others you may have come across because of that.

1. Install Steam on Linux, if you haven't done so already.
   1. Download the .deb from Steam's website (https://store.steampowered.com/about/).
   2. Install Steam, you can do so via the command line by running:Install debian package: sudo dpkg -i steam_*.debFix unmet dependencies: sudo apt install -f
2. Enable Steam Play
   1. In Steam, go to Steam -> Settings -> Steam Play, and check the 'Enable Steam Play for supported titles' box. Restart Steam if requested to do so.
   2. Again in Steam, go to Steam -> Settings -> Steam Play, and check the 'Enable Steam Play for all titles' box. Again, restart Steam if requested.
3. Install Age of Empires II: HD Edition. The 'Install' button should now be available. Make sure that you install it to an ext4 partition, not an ntfs partition!
4. Add -nostartup to the AoE2 launch options. To do so, right-click on the game and select 'Properties', then under 'General' click on 'set launch options'. In the box that pops up, enter -nostartup. This stops the video from playing when starting the game, which causes a crash on startup. If you still want to watch the video from time to time, you can find it in your Age2HD folder under Age2HD/resources/_common/movies. You'll probably need VLC Media Player to watch it, for me on Ubuntu 18.04 the native video player makes the whole movie pink.
5. Try running AoE2 at this point. There are a few people around on forums for which it worked here, but it never did for me. If it doesn't work, keep following along. If it does, quit it again and skip to step 8.
6. Configure the AoE2 wine prefix. This is where the commands get a bit harder. There are two folders you need to take note of: the first is the location of the AoE2 wine prefix, and the second is the location of the Proton (Steam Play) installation. For me, the wine prefix was at ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/221380/pfx/, and with Proton 3.16 Beta, the installation was at ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Proton\ 3.16\ Beta/. Unfortunately, you need absolute paths for these commands.
   1. Install winetricks if you don't already have it: sudo apt install winetricks
   2. Set the wine prefix and wine path. You'll need the paths I mentioned above for this:WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/221380/pfxWINEPATH=$HOME/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Proton\ 3.16\ Beta/dist/bin/wine
   3. Install corefonts: winetricks corefonts
   4. Install DirectX 9: winetricks d3dx9
   5. Install the Visual Studio C++ 2015 Runtime: winetricks vcrun2015
7. Restart Steam and run AoE2 again. Let it install anything it wants to. Then quit it again and follow this guide to the end to clean up the installation.
8. In the Age2HD folder (steam/steamapps/common/Age2HD), do the following:
   1. Rename Launcher.exe (mv Launcher.exe Launcher.exe.bak)
   2. Copy or link AoK HD.exe and rename the copy/link to Launcher.exe (ln -s AoK\ HD.exe Launcher.exe). These two steps (1&2) are critical to fixing the empty multiplayer lobby bug, and also speed up launching times a lot.
   3. Rename the install script 221380_install.vdf so the game doesn't try to reconfigure its installation every time you launch it (mv 221380_install.vdf 221380_install.vdf.bak)
   4. Rename the _CommonRedist folder, again to speed up launching the game (tar -cvf _CommonRedist.tar.bak _CommonRedist && rm -r _CommonRedist)
9. Have fun playing Age of Empires II: HD Edition on Linux, with a working friends list, steam overlay, multiplayer, achievements, and all the other game features you've missed since you played the game on Windows!

Remaining issues:

1. When typing in a text box, text is only visible for a fraction of a second after pressing a key. Otherwise, the whole box appears blank.
2. Text on buttons and in menus appears to lack font smoothing.

If anyone has a solution to the remaining issues, I'd love to add them to this tutorial. I suspect they're related to DirectDraw compatibility.

Extra notes:

1. You can switch between fullscreen and windowed by pressing Alt+Enter. You may need to do this after alt-tabbing out and back in.
2. Steam user Sparks had to disable cpu downclocking when using straight wine (no Proton). They found the command sudo cpupower frequency-set -g performance did the trick, while Steam user mahnunchik had to run sudo cpufreq-set -r -g performance instead. Their post is here, and some of my guide is taken from replies to that thread. I imagine this issue would be mostly relevant to laptops, and running these commands could increase power consumption.
3. While I was still using PlayOnLinux+wine, the map would sometimes get stuck scrolling to one side. This was fixed by pressing every arrow key once, but I haven't experienced this since using Steam Play instead.

I hope somebody finds this useful!

https://www.projectceleste.com/

Age of Empires Online is the most under-appreciated RTS game ever made. It's modern and has combined MMORPG concepts with an online persistent city-building simulation game, but what drives your progress is very intelligent RTS campaign missions, thousands of them.

The game features the same interface as starcraft 2 - it's very modern and has high quality graphics. It was originally shut down by Microsoft because it made the mistake of launching as a campaign online city-building RTS without the competitive multiplayer features that would make it successful.

Before shutting down, it had incorporated the multiplayer RTS features that it needed at launch to sustain a market. It still sold well, and has many players. Even now as a fan-revived project, it has a healthy population.

As a fan that plays casually, I felt like it was worth bringing awareness to this project.