Yeah, Tooth and Tail, it's not as deep mechanics wise as AOE2, but there is something very reminiscent about it. Then I said to myself "I own AOE2, why am I reminiscing about it." and I booted it up for the first time in 8 years. Tooth and Tail hit that nostalgia vain that brought me back to what I believe, and I'm sure you all agree with me, to be the greatest RTS of all time.

Looking for more videos from this to consistently start going over my ELO from the pros: https://youtu.be/CsjcSIOqFSE

In this one, king DauT plays games with 1600-1800 players and shows their mistakes and gives advices.

I know St4rk’s youtube channel is kind of good too, any more of these guides for subtle tips like when to micro, when to avoid fights etc?

I watch a lot of streams, TheViper etc, but without the commentary from the player, it’s hard to understand the rationale behind the decisions.

Omg I actually remembered to write the post BEFORE I went to bed Tuesday night!

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Hello and welcome back for another Age of Empires 2 civilization match up discussion! This is a series where we discuss the various advantages, disadvantages, and quirks found within the numerous match ups of the game. The goal is to collectively gain a deeper understanding of how two civilizations interact with each other in a variety of different settings. Feel free to ask questions, pose strategies, or provide insight on how the two civilizations in question interact with each other on any map type and game mode. This is not limited to 1v1 either. Feel free to discuss how the civilizations compare in team games as well! So long as you are talking about how the two civilizations interact, anything is fair game! Last week we discussed the Chinese vs Mayans, and next up is the Ethiopians vs Incas!

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Ethiopians: Archer civilization

• Archer-line fires +18% faster
• Receive +100f, +100g upon reaching the next age
• Pikeman upgrade free
• TEAM BONUS: Towers and Outposts +2 LoS
• Unique Unit: Shotel Warrior (Fast, fragile infantry with massive attack)
• Castle Age Unique Tech: Royal Heirs (Shotel Warriors created nearly instantly)
• Imperial Age Unique Tech: Torsion Engines (Siege Workshop units increased blast radius)

Incas: Infantry Defensive civilization

• Start with a free llama
• Villagers affected by infantry Blacksmith upgrades
• Houses support 10 population
• Buildings cost -15% stone
• TEAM BONUS: Irrelevant
• Unique Unit: Kamayuk (Powerful spearman with 1 range)
• Unique Unit: Slinger (Anti-infantry ranged unit available at Archery Range)
• Castle Age Unique Tech: Andean Sling (Slingers and Skirmishers no minimum range)
• Imperial Age Unique Tech: Couriers (Eagles, Kamayuks, Slingers +1/+2 armor)

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Below are some match up-specific talking points to get you all started. These are just to give people ideas, you do not need to address them specifically if you do not want to!

• We've been on a roll with good match ups recently! On your typical 1v1 Arabia, Incas are considered to be an all-around top tier pick, but Ethiopians are certainly no slouch on the map themselves. Both have deadly early Feudal Ages, mediocre mid-game economies, and powerful options in the late game. Whom do you favor here?
• On Arena I feel like both these civs are fairly strong, if not at that highest tier (maybe more experienced clowns disagree). Potential for early trushes/Siege Tower + Xbows or Eagles, but again that very counter-unit-focused late game army. How does Arena change these civs' dynamics?
• In a team game, these two civs are probably bottom 5 pockets. However, both are excellent on the flank. Do Ethiopians offer more with their deadly archers and late game siege, or do the Incas offer more with their eagles and Kamayuks?

Thank you as always for participating! Next week we will continue our discussions with the Britons vs Persians. Hope to see you there! :)

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Previous discussions: Part 1 Part 2

So I got this mod for WASD camera movement, and I really like the idea.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=258533955

However, wasd conflicts with a lot of commands, which is to be expected. When I set all the binds in the edit hotkeys to different options, it works. However when I restart the game, all my keybinds show that they are applied in the hotkeys section but they don't work.

I have to reapply the binds every time, anyone know of a fix?

I must’ve played it for the first time when I was about 10. I’m not sure if it came out of a cereal box or if my order brother left it when he moved out. I remember playing Britons vs the AI, spending an hour taking down castles with only longbows. And that William Wallace campaign...

Then, about 5-6 years ago, I remember my sister showing me steam and all the games that were on it. I was blown away as I had never really heard of it, as I was a casual console gamer with a MacBook for school. I looked through the sale section and saw AOE2 HD. I grabbed my credit card and bought it on her account right away. I would ask her to use her computer just to play some Black Forest games. Oh the joy of being 1500.

Now it’s 2019 and I’m still playing (had to buy the game again on my account of course.) I learned to FC knights and became king of the 1500s. I’ve since learned some more build orders (thanks St4rk.) I’ve convinced my friends to play, and continue to play Black Forest AI games with them. I’ve been tower rushed on nomad. Deleted my TC by accident. Stole a few boar. Had my elephants wololo’d and wololo’d them right back. Many good times. If you asked me when I was 10 if I’d still be playing this game 15 years later, watching tournaments and continuing to improve, I think I’d say no. Unreal game we have here guys <3

Think this could be a fun new format to make team games less mirrored.

Team bonuses do not stack as far as I'm aware.

I think spanish strongest but mayans also super strong...

Is there any mod or game similar to this that has more structured unit based battles or nation building on a bigger map that has multiple countries?

As a fan of custom campaigns like the rise of Khmer, the rise of Totonacs or Far side of the world (and many more), I feel that custom campaigns are sometimes much better than the standard campaigns and it seems to me that there are not enough of those campaigns! (I subbed 20+ campaigns on Steam and still crave for more). For this reason, I really want to support campaign creators so that they have more incentives to create and maybe get a custom-made campaign for me as well (such as South East Asian custom campaigns, which is rare on the workshop). Also, I would like to hear mapmakers' perspective as well and see if there is any existing patreon for me to support!

https://i.imgur.com/AcgVwqx.jpg

Would love to try for myself after binge watching hours on YouTube.

So FFAs, especially on already slow maps, on conquest, are pretty frustrating when somebody turtles like a madman especially with a defensive civ. Other than allowing wonders (which usually just lets the biggest turtle win) and king of the hill is there any way to make FFAs a bit less boring? It's kind of lame that the best play in FFAs is to try and rush your way into having two bases and then never aggro until everybody else is dead or exhausted.

Free resources for killing an opponent's buildings? A bit of food and wood for farms, a few hundred stone and gold for castles, etc? In a perfect world you'd maybe have people surrender to you and you get their base and money but I suspect this being human players that people would just be jerks for the hell of it and give everything away to another player.

Pretty much title. I'm very new at this game, so please excuse my noob question. I noticed when watching casts of pro player games, that villager kills get highlighted way more than dead military units, even though villagers are pretty cheap and 3 dead villagers on a woodline with 15 villagers doesn't really seem that important (especially compared to half an army dying).

Thanks in advance!

I used to have a bigger font. but due to recent error, I decided to delte and reinstall aoe2. Now suddenly, the font is tiny.

What I mean by control group font is, for example, when you select your scout and press ctrl+1, it displays the number at the base of the scout graphic. It used to be decent size, but suddenly its become tiny after reinstalling. anyone know how to fix?

The Incas have a very high 1v1 winrate at the moment because of that starting llama they get that leads to a lot of consistent starts. And we've all had those games where the sheep are in the last place you look, leading to some very rough starts.

Well, what if every game started you off with one sheep next to your town center? How would this affect the winrates?

And before you say that this would depreciate the Incas, this change would stack with the Incas' free llama, so they'd essentially start with 2 herdables under their TC.

https://clips.twitch.tv/NaiveFamousCougarKevinTurtle - mb this is already a known bug, but for the first time I see

Should I be looking for some therapeutic help?

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!

Hey guys! Thought I'd rank the civs' team bonuses to get a discussion going. Obviously it completely depends on what teammates you have (e.g. Hun stable bonus is great for Franks, not so great for Aztecs) so I tried to rank them in order of how useful they are on average. I did this list assuming it's for a team game on an open land map.

Give me your own rankings or poke holes in mine!

1. Spanish - Trade units generate +25% Gold

2. Mongols - Scout line has +2 LOS

3. Portuguese - Free cartography from Dark Age

4. Britons - Archery Ranges work 20% faster

5. Huns - Stables are 20% faster.

6. Chinese - Farms provide +45 food.

7. Slavs - Military buildings (barracks, archery ranges, siege workshops and stables) provide +5 population

8. Saracens - Foot archers have +2 attack bonus against buildings

9. Persians - Knights have +2 attack versus Archers

10. Burmese - Relics visible on map (3x3 square, all visible)

11. Mayans - Walls are 50% cheaper

12. Goths - Barracks operate 20% faster

13. Celts - Siege Workshops work 20% faster.

14. Ethiopians - Towers, outposts +3 LOS

15. Aztecs - Relics generate +33% gold

16. Teutons - Units are more resistant to conversion

17. Malians - University works 1.8x faster (80% faster)

18. Turks - Gunpowder units are created 20% faster

19. Vietnamese - Access to Imperial Skirmisher upgrade

20. Berbers - Genitour available in Archery Range

21. Magyars - Foot archers (not skirmishers) +2 LOS

22. Franks - Knights have +2 line of sight

23. Italians - Condottiero available in imperial barracks

24. Khmer - Scorpions +1 range

25. Indians - Camels +6 attack vs buildings, Mamelukes and Camel Archers +5 vs buildings

26. Koreans - Mangonel line minimum range reduced to 1 (from 3)

27. Incas - Farms built 50% faster

28. Byzantines - Monks +50% heal speed

Not applicable:

Japanese - Galleys have +50% line of sight

Malay - Docks 2x LOS

Vikings - Docks are -15% cheaper

Edit: Forgot Slavs

Noobs at Winterfell garrisoned all their villagers in the Castle... So, no one was available to add one more layer of wall when the enemy was breaking the first wall... Also, they did not even research murder holes... So, the villagers were not even firing arrows from inside...

I'm collecting features for a wishlist, what should be changed or added to the Gameplay or UI or whatever for an AoEII-Game? Start to dream, everything is possible, some examples:

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• a rolling relic for the battle field with a ranged attack bonus for allied units
• renewable resources, animals repopulate as long as there are at least 2 of each kind on the map
• roads on commonly traveled areas allow faster traffic, trade spawns stone roads, the longer you have a trade line up and running, the faster your trade carts are
• Buildings can be deconstructed to recover materials, slower than just deleting/destroying it, but leaves a salvage pile behind. salvage dimishes per time. resources can be harvested by villagers on a higher rate.
• a new 5th "free trade" age where allies share resources, with massive battles happening

​

What do you people have in mind? Dream!

I've noticed a few things that don't make sense when playing online. First of all, a lot of the maps I get are bullshit, with resources so far away and things so spread out it's a logistical nightmare and screws me. It seems to happen a lot on Arabia.

I lose control of units totally. Today I was playing and I noticed that my army was moving by itself. I would mass, and if I wasn't paying attention, they would all run off towards the other players Castle and die, no trigger for it, not enemy in their LOS. I sat there and redirected them over and over and finally got them to pull back, but it fucked me all up.

Units do not attack. It's not a stance thing. They just won't fight back. Everything can't be done with a patrol, sometimes I don't want my units walking back, I want them to move and sit and attack on sight, seems to be hit or miss on my units ever giving a fight. It's infuriating. It's not just units, my castle refused to fire on the enemy until I select the castle and then right click the bad guy. It's fucking great battling and wondering what the hell is happening only to realize that the castle fire is idle. It's not murder holes, I know what I'm doing.

There seem to be too many ways for people to set up a loss for their opponent with options. FPT "friends pick teams" guranteed fucking by people who are all working together. I see a lot of Black Forrest games where it's 4v4 and I'll sit there forever seemingly playing a farming sim, until the attack starts, and then one of my allies just drops out and quits. It happens all the time.

What's up with the community only playing on the Black Forrest, Arabia and arena maps, with an occasional gold rush? Black Forrest sucks. Arabia? Ok, but why all the time? Has the community heard of the dock that exists in the game? Or that there are water maps, Archipelego, Baltic, Highlands, etc? I've only been able to play on 2 water maps in 1v1v1v1v1v1 games. I've tried hosting, but people aren't interested in any diversity in their experience.

I think the reason many people are as good as they are in rating is because there is no variety (almost as if people have spent years playing only one way, on one map, and WILL NOT vary) and people set up bad situations in the options before the game and will sabotage their team with a junk account for their friends.

I've lost out on numerous wins due to lag becoming a problem and people not cooperating with the continue/save and exit option. I've sat there for 20 minutes trying to out wait the losing team so that I can walk away with a deserved win only to end up giving up and quitting so that I can have my life back.

Hi, has anyone else noticed a glitch when playing the team migration map? I was playing as Gaia Vs all the Norse God's, built up my base to heroic age and noticed there had been no activity from the AI. Checked and the three were still on Archaic age. So I thought maybe it's just the gods, I've tried every single possible combination of gods and it's so easy to win. I get to mythic age and can see everything for like 1000 gold lol none of the AI advances they have 1 town centre and like 1 villager lol anyone else noticed this?

I've been watching the Hidden Cup 2, and noticed that often when a player builds a forward siege workshop, or mining camp, they often build a house or two around it. Why is that? For extra cheap vision? Any other ways to strategically use houses? I do see them used to block sometimes in dark and feudal.

I know its not that big of a deal but it's the first time I won after trying 10-15 times! After trying to unsuccessfully turtle up and boom multiple times I went for a scout rush into knights then focused my economy while applying pressure with my mini army. I'm excited! ^_^

As a point of reference what aoe2 hd ranking would you guys pin the "hard" ai difficulty? I'm wondering if I should move into multiplayer now or keep practicing. When I first tried multiplayer I kept getting demolished

I’ve seen it numberous times in the past couple of days. Just wanted to make this psa for anyone who wants to watch endgame.

Which campaigns do you think are the most immersive, meaning which campaigns take you to the time and place where they occurred. For me, my top 5, in no particular order are 1. Attila the Hun 2. Dracula 3. Prithviraj 4. El Dorado 5. Sundjata

The forgotten campaigns get a lot of things when it comes to bugs and triggers, but the campaign design and maps are top notch in most cases.

They are extremely powerful and instantly spawnable late game. What should i, as an opponent of France do in the late game except surrendering?

Hey !

Just played a Pilgrims game, i was the last standing vs a jap player.

I was Italian, he was pushing with only halbs, treb and Yasama towers. He destroyed me !

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I was fully boomed, so i had perfect eco, 130+ vills and still mining gold.

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I tried HC => they got rekt by trebs

BBT => rekt by trebs

Hussards => not bad once they reach trebs, but cant micro them all, after they kill one treb they are fighting Jap Halbs

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Not the first time i get rekt by this comp, really tilting to see him spamming Barracks and Towers once he progressed with 50cm of map!

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Help !

Thoughts? It's historically accurate as fuck

I play a lot of a certain fores prison variant and I've noticed this big time. If I coach my teammates during dark age on what they should be focused on and how we are going to win then I've noticed that they start playing at a much higher level, at least 150-200 elo difference. Often when I give them the advice on what to do they all end up having better scores and more kills than players on the enemy team who are 200 elo higher

This is an important skill to develop for your own play, but it can also help in team games. I remember when I first started playing I was an ultra noob who had no idea of build orders. I played with an 1800 on Arabia 4V4 and he told me to go knights, how much pop I should have before I click up, and how many villagers on each type of resource. I had no idea what I was doing but he gave me a goal and I oriented my play around it. It was an enormous help

It’s 50aud on every keystone site and steam does anyone have a cheap CD steam key I could buy or where to get one?

Please.

Upstream

• NEW: Instructions to reproduce Gource visualization (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

• Translations (Link)
• Matchmaking calculations (Link)

Roadmap

1. Rewrite of the coordinate system ✓
2. Merge eventsystem code ✓
3. Implement core gamestate
   • nyan file loading and pong demo
   • run pong with generic openage entities
   • Decouple the simulation from display
   • Define minimal gamestate for displaying entities
4. Establish modpack format
5. Create a simple demo for testing
6. Adapt the new renderer to the simulation model

Celtics, maybe with Werewolves and unicorns. Or Indians. Anything frankly.

For Extended Edition

Today in the shower, I realised something really important.

We need to encourage the youth!

I personally love spectating the high level games of Viper and others. This game has so much depth to allow greater and greater levels of skill and imagination.

Why don't we have age bracket competitions to encourage younger participation? This could really help get keep young people into the fold.

I'd really love to see players overcome the level that TheViper and Vivi and Daut play at in 5, 10 and 20 years!

Also, it'd bring a year to my eye to see AOE2 played in the esport scale that League of Legends and CSGO enjoys. With commentators like T90, it becomes so very enjoyable to see high level games and I think it spectates better than those other, larger esports.

hi,

a friend of mine is playin japan and i want to play a civ which synergizes well with them.
i am looking forward for your suggestions :)

So i've been banned from the NPL lobby because my rating hit 1375, but i play green arabia exclusively, and i haven't exactly fought difficult players, i've kinda just played anyone who joined, i'd say i sit around 1250-1275 overall? Now i can't get a game, and anyone i do play trashes me instantly in MS, I don't want to smurf by any means, i want to play people my skill level, maybe that means i need to set some game limits like 1250-1375 players only, but even with a new account it picks it up as a banned player, anyway around this?

I know people will think i want to smurf and bash noobs, but that honestly isn't the case, i want fair and equal games which i was getting when i did come up against someone 1250+

Since the HD rework of all textures the game looks great and it can render some lovely maps. Just wondering

Hi guys!

I often play with 2 friends. So it is a 2v1 game. But it's difficult to win. So I want to learn a strategy on which I can improve.

Which civ would you pick and what would be your strategy/build order (and why)?

We play the steam HD version without the add-ons. And mostly land maps.

Assume there is not a lot of feudal pressure from the other two players (maybe some scouts or random other stuff)

I am finding double-click to select all of a type of unit on the screen to be unreliable, I dont know if it due to lag or I am clicking too fast, but is there a hotkey combination I could use with a single click to work around this?

Do you think this would have any significant impact considering how underwhelming this bonus already is?

I‘m ~1630 on HD and I believe my game is relatively decent until mid to late castle age, but when it comes to imp or even post imp I just get overwhelmed with all the things going on at the same time. So much that often when I’m able to pressure an opponent all game and my score is way higher I still lose in the end because I lose focus on certain groups of units or am not able to fight the opponent in all the places he has wants to fight me. Does anyone have tips to get better in this/ to keep a better overview of what’s going on and what I need to focus on? Thanks!

I recently got extremly frustrated playing water maps, which got me thinking about possible changes to improve Naval Warfare. !This list of changes is in no way my idea, as big parts are directly copied from others! I hope to someday mod the most promising ideas in, but due to a lack of time and energy while graduating this might take a looong while. Also please keep in mind that im no native english speaker.

Goals: • Open up an increased amount of possibile build orders for water (galley drush, different feudal openings etc.) •Improved eco dependencies to emphasise on choosing and executing the 'right' build order for the players situation • Less one dimensional naval warfare in the later stages of the game; a more varied fleet as the new optimum instead of monofleets • Seperate naval warfare from land warfare, naval warfare should not be a copy of land warfare, but instead be an exciting alternative

Possible changes: New water composition: water is now seperated in shallow water (light blue) and deep sea water. Shallow water always fills at least the first 3 tiles from a landable coast, whereas deap sea water fills the rest. This allows me to split water units in 2 branches: Highly effecient naval warfare units like the canon galleon or galleons, who can dominate the deep sea but fail to widen this advantage directly to the enemies island, instead, u need to opt for small boats like Longboats, transport ships or pinnaces to raid your enemies coastal economy.

Buildings: Splits the original dock in 3 buildings: the dock, which now houses economy and light raiding ships, the shipyard, which houses heavy naval warfare units like the galleon, the canon galleon and fire ships and the drydock, a completly new building which repairs damaged ships when garrisoned and houses inportant armor upgrades, similiar to the blacksmith for land units

Dock (1; 2x2, can only train fishing ships, trade cogs, and light fleets, can refill fish traps, similiar to mill) Shipyard (2; 3x3; houses heavy naval warfare units like the galleon or the canon galleon) Drydock (3; 3x3 used to garrison ships and houses some upgrades, when garrisoned, the ships repair with a reduced ressource cost, can be upgraded to fortified drydock in imperial age, allowing it to shoot arrows and provide more garrison space)

Non-Warfare Units: Doubles initial transport ship capacity. Transport ships can now be upgraded twice, with the second one being extremly expensive, but heavily armoring transport ships against everything but ramships and demolition ships. This contributes to less transport ships, buffing sneak landings and also leaving more population space for your fleet/vills, but is balanced by the defender, when spotting the enemies transport, having to sink less transport ships, as the value of individual transport ships is gone up without an initial increase in health or armor (this doesnt apply to the final upgrade, this serves the purpose of a guaranteed landing when in complete water control)

Fishing ship (dock 1; stays the same, but can drop of ressources at drydock) Transport ship (dock 1; now slower, provide space for 10 units) Trading cog (dock 2; stays the same) Fish Trap (dock 2; can be upgraded and are queueable)

Naval Warfare Units: East asian civs get junk as a galleon replacement (loose galleon), american civs get war canoe. The bigger amount of ships allows for a bigger civ diversity, no civ gets everything but every civ has viable water options. Warships no longer only cost gold and wood:

Pinnace/sloop/sloop of war (dock 1/2/4; fast 'trash' unit for raiding and/or scouting, counters ramship; 10w 40f) Light Ramship/Ramship/Elite Ramship (dock 2/3/4; counters galleys, used to destroy coastal buildings, high pierce armor; 80w 10g) Galley/Wargalley/Elite Wargalley (dock 2/3/4; light version of the galleon, slow; 50f 20g) Firegalley/Fast fire galley(shipyard 2/4; counters galleons; 20w 70g) Demolitionship/Heavy Demolitionship (shipyard 2/4; similar to mangonel: counters big fleets; can cross shallow water; 30w 60g) Galleon/Heavy Galleon/Elite Heavy Galleon (shipyard 3/4/4; now seperate line, big, costly and population effective; 100w 40g) Cannon galleon/Elite Canon Galleon (shipyard 4/4; like current canon galleon but with a portugese like bolt speed to make it usable against ships, requires Chemestry; 50w 80g) Catapult galleon (shipyard 4; trebuchet on water with a long range and good damage but poor accuracy for city siege on the water, available to all civs; 250w 180g) Corvette/Frigate (shipyard 4/4, Fast light ship, fires like a hand canoneer, has bonus against catapult- and cannon galleon and demolition ships, can cross shallow water, requires chemestry; 10w 50g)

Longboat/Elite Longboat (shipyard 3; garrison similiar to rams, can slowly move through land when garrisoned, but doesnt shoot arrows; 80w 40g) Turtleship/Elite Turtleship (shipyard 3; armored and extremly effective against galleons, fireships, and cannon galleons, but slow; 180w 180g) Junk/Elite Junk (shipyard 3; can sail through shallow water, good alround ship) War Canoe/Elite War Canoe (shipyard 3; can travel through shallow water, very fast)

Technologies: All ships except Sloop, demolitionship and fire galley are upgraded individually in their respective building.

Improved transport (drydock, 3): Transport ships are 20% faster and provide room for 25 units Reinforced transport (drydock, 4): Transport ships are heavily armored and provide space for 40 units Careening (Drydock, 3): Increases armor by +2/+1 and speed by 10% Advanced Naval Warfare (drydock 4): Upgrades Sloop to Sloop of War, demolitionship to heavy demolitionship and fire galley to fast fire galley Improved Careening (drydock, 4): Increases armor by +3/+2 and speed by 10% Shipwright (drydock, 4): Lowers wood cost by 25% and decreases creation time by 35% Look-Out (dock, 1): Increases line of sight by 3 Shipnets (dock, 2): Fishing ships work faster, Fish traps house 75 more food Gillnets (dock, 3): Fish traps house 125 more food Improved Gillnets (dock, 4) Fish traps house 175 more food

So what do you think? Please dont refer to numbers as set in stone, they are just values i found relativly fitting - if something is op by the looks of numbers it can easily be fixed, but if the issue lies in flawed design, PLEASE tell me why its flawed. Thank you all :)

Hi Guys,

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I used to play AOE2 religiously back in the day and I've been craving my fix. I only just discovered this game had such an active community and that's awesome!

In everyone's opinion should I purchase the standard edition £14.99 or stump up £30 for a copy with all the expansions?

If your unit will never use them?
Even after a long shift of ages, they just stand there.

So I’m 1500–1600 on Voobly. Not a great player obviously but I watch a lot of aoe2 on streams and study my own play. I got crushed by Vietnamese playing as Vikings and Mayans recently and I don’t know what I could have done differently. I get on the expert level their lack of eco bonus can be exploited early but at my level I can’t do enough damage early to set myself up for the remainder of the game. Feudal is tough because of their ranged unit bonus. Then in castle those two normally strong civs can’t do much to counter an xbow/skirms ball.

Both times I did MAA and did damage early. Killed a couple of vills and idled my enemy. But eventually he gets his range units going and I’m stuck. I can’t mass enough to outnumber his ranged units efficiently even with better ecos. I know Vietnamese counter archer civs relatively well but that ends up being a lot of civs. Do knight civs fare so much better that it gives Vietnamese their stigma as a weak civ? Maybe I’m just playing them wrong but they seem tough to beat at my level.

Petards can't pack into siege towers and siege towers don't go faster with more units anymore.

Mongolian Car Bomb strat was a lie.

Sorry if this question seems too dumb. I'm only 21 and the most memory I have in this game is watching my father playing 3v3 when I was 4 and 5. I remembered him losing one game in like 5 or 6 in total so I've always tried to learn from him but was simply too bad. Back then in a 3v3 match everyone uses Hun, and I don't recall seeing any other civilization besides China or Koreans once in a blue moon.

From what I remembered, the strat in 3v3 are Hun fast Castle Aging and build knight army. As the game proceeds players might shift to Halberdiers to counter the prevalent Paladin strat, and some other players would use Skirmisher to counter. So it was like a Paladin(Hussar)-Halberdier-Skirmisher late game.

I began watching aoe videos on YouTube since April and saw all these new fancy civilizations but not Hun. I sadly don't inherent much deep knowledge in the game from my dad so I don't know where went wrong for Hun Paladin strat. Could somebody explain?

Also I'm trying to get back to the game :D

I just came back to the original AOE3 game about a week ago and it seems that everyday around 5pm EST the servers go down.

If Im in the middle of a match at this time the game never gets recorded as I always get stuck at the "Loading Home Cities" screen followed by the timeout once Im finished.

I'm positive its nothing on my end. Is this something that is known/happens to anyone else?

Thanks

Hi, I'm a stream-viewer noob. Been watching T90's Hidden Cup2 tournament on Youtube and in general a lot of aoe2 vids on youtube lately.

Sometimes the commentors will have just mentioned "a villager", "a tower being build", or what kind of unit would be good to buils right now, oe in generally what would be good to do - and a splitsecond later you see the player dp exactly that/send 1 unit to the end of the map to catch that villager just mentioned.

I recall at least one incident in footage of a aoe2 commentator streaming a random aoe2 live-noob match on twitch and halfway through the stream you could see the newbies react more and more to what the streamer had just mentioned a few seconds ago. That case I assume viewers just started to add the players on steam and spammed them with what the comment guy was talking about, like "woah a castle would be so good now", or "man he really needs some pikemen to counter..." And viewers would probably just spam the btw foreign bad english newbies with things like: "BUILD PIKEMAN!!!", and boom - they are spamming pikes all of a sudden. Btw we are talking real aoe2 newbies here, and you could basically figure out the more consistent and often the streamer mentioned what would be a streategy right now - the faster the newbs switched there strategy to that.

For pro players it's ofc a different deal, wouldn't be as easy to spot if they are watching the stream while in match - or not - and personally I don't feel pro's would cheat like that.

But the concidences I noticed in the stream footage lately have been just so much - I wonder: is stream spying in tournaments even possible? Not trying to discuss if it's likely - that someone is doing that.

Before I just wanna ask if it's possible in theory in pro tournament's like T90's Hidden Cup - or if he's just commenting on recorded footage from hours ago while live streaming?

Sorry if my question might be dumb, just a thought in my mind while enjoying aoe2 vids on Youtube :)

Does anyone know which civilizations are represented by the 3 people on the box art/cover for age of kings? The guy on the left looks like a viking, and the guy on the right is clearly one of the asian civilizations, but I have no idea which civilization the middle guy is from. Any information on any of the 3 would be appreciated.

I have kind of a strange back-story. I bought Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings in 1999, played it throughout middle school and high school, got The Conquerors expansion, but then put the whole thing to the side when I went to college. To be honest when I played it was mostly single-player play and a few matches with friends over a LAN. Now a practicing attorney, I haven't played in years and years.

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Recently however, I discovered that the game is still being widely played, that there is a community of world-class 'pro' players, and that pro matches are incredibly fun to watch! They're deeper and more interesting to watch than a baseball game, visually gorgeous (the game's graphics and historical theme have held up incredibly well) and teach many lessons about strategy.

Having found this out a couple of weeks ago, I've watched a few pro matches with the likes of TheViper, MBL, Daut and FatDragon on YouTube (mostly on T90Official's YouTube channel).

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How can I find out what tournaments and pro matches will be coming up? How can I plan in advance to watch a match live? Are there any services I should subscribe to?

Hey everybody, I have AOE2 on steam (AOE2 II: HD Edition) but the game plays really weird. For example the scrolling is really terrible (when you move the cursor), and the hotkeys are completely different from what I remember.

I also don't have the extended civs, just AOEII and AOC civs

What version are people playing on when I watch T90 + Viper streams?

And how do I start playing on voobly? Is that where everyone is at?

Sorry I'm a giant babby dumbass and I don't game much but want to get back in to AOEII since it is my all time fav and it's having a lil resurgence

It seems inconsistent? One time I shift clicked only to discover one barracks had queued 5 but when I single clicked there was some distribution.

With MQ enabled, is one click on a group of 5 barracks 5 units or 1?

I am an older player and micro feels so difficult for me. Are there things I can do to work around this? As is, I try to avoid archer type ranged units, but it limits me...

Does anyone know a forum or somewhere where I can find others players who played the pirated version so we could play online ?

If anyone here is up for a game just pm me too, and if you want to crack the game pm me too I will show you how.

I love strategy games and AoE2 is my absolute favorite, but I don't often play it the way it's exactly supposed to be played. I usually play it like it was a resource management tycoon game. I play offline with 7 easy bots and treat the game as a city-builder with bots being just random enemies that I have to defend my city from. I don't try to win the match, I just expand my city and explore the map.

Does anyone else do this? I find it very enjoyable and relaxing.

I got the 523 message error when I tried to connect to AoEZone this morning (= Origin is unreachable). My Internet connection is perfectly fine. Same thing happened to anyone?

I see a lot of people saying that the main reason to have an console is their exclusives like god of war, but honestly, most consoles exclusives are 3rd person action adventures with stealth elements(top hats and changpanhe), i never saw an console peasant talking about Age of Empires, Pathfinder Kingmaker, MOBAs, mmos, etc. Some genres i don't like, most mmos, i think that they are too different than "true" rpgs and have a lot of mechanics that makes no sense, compared to CRPG, but on PC, i can play even DOS era games, while ps4 games can't run ps3 games.

Here is an interesting video. I only think that BG needs to be higher on that list and that list misses a lot of games like ArmA 3 but is an interesting video to have an idea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=646iDnkQFAw

I used to game a lot but stopped for a long while. Looking to get back in. The games I loved were games like Age of Empire or Rise of Nations/Legends. I loved to strategy aspect and the ability to LAN against the computer.

These titles are super old by now. Are there any RTS game with todays graphics and whatnots? Looking to upgrade my games. Thanks! PC titles only please.

Hey all, I’m just starting out for online play in AOE2. I was wondering if you guys had any advice for civilizations to use and build orders.

I normally try to play Black Forest, Arabia, or Nomad.

Just a little game for the AoE2 nerds out there...

I went on vacation today to see an AoE2 wonder in real life (a nerdy hobby of mine). It's in a country in the center of western Europe, yet it's actually the wonder of a civilization that isn't that close by.

In which city am I now and what wonder am I referring to?

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Have a nice weekend, guys!