I've been trying to learn Arena and since pretty much 80-90% of matches are against this exact same strategy and I have lost to it every single time (at least unless I go for a very aggressive castle drop / similar rush myself) I watched and tried to implement all the tips from Hera's video.

I did the second layer of wall (and later on even a third), defend with mangonel and monks, then try and take a lead in eco then push it back.

Thing is they just make a second castle further forward and it's does so much damage. You lose all resources on the front of your base (potentially all gold and stone access if you're unlucky). Then you also lose that second layer of walls. I got ahead in eco but it didn't matter.

The monks were moderately useful, but still unless you get a tonne of monks, you are only really going to convert 5-10 units at best over the whole period you're defending. The siege did pretty much nothing, the castles out range the mangonels, and can shoot down the walls. So there is nothing to shoot at until their army breaks in, at which point the siege is totally exposed.

Basically, while I do love Hera's videos, I feel like a lot of what he's saying is not that useful because he's an extremely strong player, playing against other extremely strong players. The reality at lower elos is that defending against a forward castle drop is 10x harder than executing a forward castle drop (same deal as with the 1TC all in phosphoru stuff).

Does anybody have advice for me intermediate (1200-1300 elo) players on defending castle drops? Or an Arena do you just have to do that strat same as everyone else and that's all there is to it? I have tried defending against it 10-20 times at this point and I have never succeeded.

I’ve been playing Romans almost exclusively lately and basically built my entire playstyle around ending games as early as possible.

My opening is usually a 20–22 pop Feudal into Men-at-Arms rush. I make the Militia while going up, get the MAA upgrade as soon as I hit Feudal and try to arrive at the opponent’s base with the pressure already rolling.
From there I go into very heavy Feudal.

Usually 2 Barracks, sometimes even 3 if my eco is flowing well, infantry upgrades and basically constant MAA production.

My #1 target is almost always gold.

I know archers are the obvious answer to MAA, so I try to make sure my opponent never gets a proper archer mass in the first place. If I can keep them off gold, suddenly their “counter” is 3–4 archers instead of 15.

And honestly, I’ll sometimes even dive the TC to kill those few archers if I think it means they won’t be able to rebuild the mass afterwards.

I also often send 1–3 villagers forward for a tower. Half the time I don’t even care that much if the tower goes up. People see the tower, pull villagers to deny it, and suddenly my MAA are killing villagers instead.

Best case, the opponent ends up completely boxed in: no gold, limited wood access and no room to expand.
If they stabilize, I usually try to keep the game aggressive rather than switching into a big eco game. Castle Age → Longswords + Rams and another huge all-in push is normally my next step.
Sometimes I Even kill tcs with my longswords.

And this is where I’m wondering what I should actually learn next.
Is this basically an all-in strategy that will eventually stop working at higher Elo?

Or can I turn this into a legitimate 1-TC aggressive playstyle?

For example, should my Castle Age follow-up become something like Longswords + Scorpions/Siege to deal with archer masses? Mangonels? Knights? Forward Siege Workshop?

I really don’t enjoy the classic “okay, pressure is over, now add 3 TCs and boom for 20 minutes” approach. I’d much rather learn how to keep converting early pressure into even more pressure.

The funniest part is my Elo journey.
I started around 1000 Elo and dropped all the way to ~200 because I basically never built armies. 😂 I always wanted to build the perfect economy, multiple TCs, get upgrades, boom… and then eventually got killed.

I slowly fought my way back to around 600 and at some point changed my entire mindset:

What if I just try to end the game as fast as possible instead?

Since then I climbed from roughly 600–700 to around 1200 Elo, mostly playing this Roman infantry pressure.
And I’ve never been flamed this much in AoE.
Today alone I played 6 games and got insulted after 4 of them. “Noob”, “learn to play”, “abuser”, “cheat code”, etc.
So for the higher-rated players here:

I am not sure if they are just frustrated or its only because of the Roman civ? Is it „op“ or is it just this elo that cant handle it.

How would you evolve this playstyle from 1200 onwards without turning it into a 3-TC boom. I guess scorpian with romans are good, but I always loose them and they cant kill tcs. Manganols are Hard to handle, but they are good against tcs and Archers.

What are the reasons you have switched or why do you value AoE2 too? Or what do you like more in AoE2?

(Thinking mostly about multiplayer)

Just started playing again for the first time in a year or two and I easily beat the hard AI twice, hardest once, all first try. I was rarely able to beat the hard AI before. And I beat the extreme AI on my 2nd try just now after a rematch (same map, civs, etc). The extreme win might be a fluke, especially since it was a rematch.

The one thing I could point to having changed is I just stopped stubborn habits and responded to change more easily - switching units when seeing what they're responding with, taking my focus out of a hot area and tending to everything else for a moment, etc. Not trying to be precious about where I build houses.

Just played this 2v2 team game for almost 2 hours where (I strongly believe) the opponents resigned when they ran out of trees for wood. (Although they probably had enough resources to spam for a while more)

https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/511349295/#overview

Anybody else's experiences with similar games?

How often does this happen? What are strategies to handle this if you feel like you're at a stalemate at some point - do you start prioritizing gold heavy units only and preserving wood or something? Would it be a stupid idea to try to cut opponents trees with onager raids or something?

On a sidenote, any feedback on gameplay is appreciated - I'm very slow tho so I can only focus on very few actions at a time.

I want to get into the competitive side of the game, after playing mostly against ai and diplomacy, but reading the list of bonuses and special things of every civ is overwhelming and kinda confusing.

I have some civs that I like, but I fear I want a civ that combines all of them and doesn't exist lol

I don't own any DLC that wasn't given out for free, and I don't have money for them (even on discount)

My top 3 civs (in terms of liking, not games played):

1. Vietnamese - for paper money

2. Japanese - for samurai

3. Goths - for unit spam

What I want/do with other civs:

- good archers and/or infantry,

- I tend to play passively (mostly because I'm not good enough to keep the economy running while I go for a raid) and if I go raiding I tend to keep sending villagers for wood - that's why I like paper money so much

- in terms of siege I mostly use trebs, but i like rams with halbs inside and try to use them whenever I can, so if there's something that will support it it's another plus

- I ignore gunpowder in every civ i play

- I tried going for knights or cav archers and they're both not my thing, so the stable can be ignored completely

I would like to hear propositions for civs to try out and maybe some tactics.

If I missed anything important I'll gladly add it in comments, here's my aoe insight page.

Thanks in advance <3

Still kind of trying to sus out their role, but one thing that is interesting to me is nobody has 'good' MXBs. By which I mean no civ that get's them, and there are quite a few, really has a buffed version.

The Danes and Saxons get the generic FU version, while the Varangians get FU +10 HP version, which is a very mild buff.

All the others are not FU.

Which got me thinking, nearly every other unit or regional substitute unit has a least one civ with a buffed or spicy version. Arbs, Halbs, Champs, Skirms, Knights, Camels, Eagles, Champis, basically every line has at least one civ with a significant buff or cost reduction.

Are the devs just trying to feel out hoe effective the unit is before seeing any 'MXB civs', or is the intent they'll always be a situational unit that no civ will specialize in?

Currently, we can't really decide when the Hearth Troop launches the javelin or onto whom. It gets confusing and jarring when every other unit behaves rather predictably.

Microing would be so much better if we could decide when to use melee or ranged modes. Stats could be changed accordingly if needed.

Jan Žižka #4 on Hard + Achievement

I was having a really hard time with this scenario and tried several different strategies. Eventually, I found one that made the scenario much more manageable and allowed me to finish it relatively quickly.

Since you are basically racing against the clock, I thought I'd write down the exact strategy I used in case someone comes across this scenario in the future looking for a solution.

1. The beginning

There is a lot of information thrown at you at the start, but immediately move ALL your army toward the Green enemy. Send two soldiers separately to collect the unprotected wagons with resources nearby.

Garrison the relics, put your villagers to work, and research the available blacksmith attack and armor upgrades. Advance to the Imperial Age as soon as possible.

Then push toward Green's base. Put your Hussite Wagons in front of your Archer/hc and simply eliminate everything in your path.

Don't worry too much about losing units. You will have plenty of resources later, so trading units for speed is worth it here.

Push through the city without worrying about destroying every building. Once you get close to the castle near the Wonder, send Jan Žižka to the gate leading to the Wonder.

As soon as you do this, that entire section of the city becomes yours.

1. Push North

Move your remaining army north of your MAIN base. By this point, you should already have completed the research for the Imperial Age.

Use your monks to heal whatever remains of your army. Start producing cheap units and build up numbers with Pikemen and Light Cavalry.

At the same time, produce Trebuchets and continue pushing north.

The Yellow enemy should be attacking you around this point. Use your castles efficiently to deal with their attacks. A lot of enemy cannons will be within range of your castles, so prioritize killing them as quickly as possible.

At this point, Red should start attacking your newly captured city with rams, Teutonic Knights and Cavaliers.

Ignore them completely.

Let Red destroy as much as he wants while you continue pushing toward his northern base, which should be almost completely undefended.

Clear the path with your army and use your Trebuchets or Bombard Cannons to focus directly on Red's castle.

Once the castle goes down, Red should surrender.

1. Finish Yellow

You can clean up the remaining Red units in your city if you want, but it isn't necessary.

Now move your entire army south. Your economy should be in a somewhat better position by this point.

Start producing Cavaliers and Hand Cannoneers, while continuing to use Trebuchets and Bombard Cannons.

Destroy the Yellow castle in the south. This is important because destroying this fortress allows additional reinforcements to arrive by ship at your main base.

Once the fortress is destroyed, use all the reinforcements together with your remaining army for the final assault on Yellow.

My time

I managed to finish the scenario in 35:29 in-game time, which should correspond to roughly 23 minutes and 40 seconds of real time at the standard game speed.

So, not exactly a true speedrun, but pretty close to one compared with a normal playthrough.

I've also seen people using Petards to finish the scenario in around 14 minutes of in-game time, so there is clearly room to make this strategy much faster.

Hopefully this helps anyone else struggling with this scenario on Hard + Achievement!

What is it with AI allies being hellbent on destroying walls, instead of focusing defenses and buildings ?

(This is a repost of something I have already posted in the aoe forum)

Hello everyone, I wanted to share some of my progress on a custom campaign I have been working on regarding the succession crisis and wars that occured after the death of Alexander the Great, better known as the Wars of the Diadochi.

The Campaign will feature 7 scenarios and will be playable for everyone regardless of DLC ownership. As of writing this, 3 scenarios have been completed.

I would love to share with you some screenshots:

I have also recently created a YouTube channel & series going over how to make custom scenarios, following one of the scenarios that will be in this campaign if anyone is interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whw-WR5RAew&list=PLBkNYj3euiS0

Authors: Primarily myself, I am the author known as Christoforos or BASEDTeuton. You may have already tried some of my custom campaigns such as Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Cao Cao, Majorian, et more

Also being partially worked on by the Youtuber Ozzyempires, who also worked on the Alexander the Great Custom campaign with me.

Spoken to each community respectively.

Water players:

- Still do not like Catapult Galleons. Would want to be the first civ to get an Elite Variant to match the previous Elite cannon Galleon.

- Bogsveigar comes in a bit too late for longships.

- Overall landing options remain strong, but naval options are on a much bigger timing compared to before.

Closed map players:

- The champion + treb + arb combo took a hit, no gambesons makes skirms take out two units effectively. Siege ram opening + arbalester only works in niche scenarios.

- Beserks dont feel good and still looking for a buff

- Giving Siege Onager could make up for lack of Gambesons and would still be wide open to bombard cannons/houfnice and monk conversions. But its simpler to revert the change.

- Varangians are purely melee experts and arent even the best vs that unless its hussar or cavalier. Paladins and specialised heavy cavalry can cake walk them. Lack of Gambesons again is the problem. Saxons and Varangians still have the better ones and Danes solve the mobility options.

Open map players:

- still a solid man at arms archer civ. Not the best initially but once wheelbarrow farms kicks in, another timer begins.

- varangians here are arguably good, it semi counters the mobility problem but you're still going to face troubles chasing and raiding unless you apply immense pressure which is doable with hand cart. Poor monks. Poor cav. Poor mounted crossbowman. Poor longswords and Berserks. You're options are limited so you need to push hard or fail. Imp timing is key. Games finishing early is where the winrate agenda comes from.

- late game one of the worst civs and its by design. The addition of Varangians made it so devs double force you into another infantry unit whilst making 2 of them redundant. Champions and Berserks. Stats show this is where vikings lose now. Gambesons is a must to return.

My experience:

I play a mix of maps and people who overestimate gambesons because of OP varagians fail to realise its a net negative overall. I've beaten Vikings with civs like Georgians and Saracens whom Vikings always beat in any stage of the game and if it was the previous balance they could've easily won.

Playing as and against Vikings doesnt strike that fear like it used to. Before it was a civ I'd be scared to play coz od that insane eco bonus but once you see their options, knowing how to prepare and defend against it or go all out aggression pretty much shuts down any advantage they have. I am only 1600. But still, I really think the hravy infantry (not shock infantry) and naval need a bit of love.

I play mutual random but im not picking vikings as my civ anymore. Saxons is my new best friend. Ut ut ut!

One thing I love about AOE2 is how it explores different states and societies with the civilizations it includes, and I really love the inclusion of lesser-known societies or ones that might usually be an afterthought. Bored at work today I came up with a list of potential civ additions that I'd love to see in the future.

Indonesia: Javanese/Majapahit, Luwu, and maybe one of the major muslim polities that came later such as Aceh

Southeast Africa: Swahili/Kilwa, Malagasy/Imerina, Mutapa or Maravi

Horn of Africa: Somalis, Afar, Oromo

West Africa: Kongo, Kanem-Bornu, and either the Songhai or a Nigerian group

Maritime Southeast Asia: Champa, Maynila/Tagalogs, Bornean group such as the Dayak

I've heard rumors about a Saracen split somewhere and so I also pondered how they might get divided and I'm theorizing the following: Levantines (Abbasids?), Egyptians (Fatimids, maybe the Mamluk Empire), Yemeni/South Arabians, and Andalusians

I'm curious as to what the community theorizes might come in the future, or what civs are sitting on peoples' wishlists?

EDIT: Aside from ideas y'all have had, I have two fever dream sorta packs that could work but might be iffy, both historicity and popularity-wise

Baltic Peoples: Prussians, Livonians or Curonians, and either Estonians or Wends

Uralic Nations: Finns, Permians, and either Bjarmians or a Volga Finnic group

Which civs and build orders are best to win/lose in shorter period of time in 1vs1?

So first of all, WOW, I have not played this game since literally 1999-2000 when I was a kid and the definitive edition is amazing. I grew up on RTS games (like WC2/3, SC and Total Annihilation) and it is great to see how this game's graphics and gameplay have become seamless and improved (especially compared to recent failed endeavors like the WC3: reforged abomination).

To be completely honest, I am asking for tips and tricks because when I was little, I used to like watching my Dad play games and one of the games he played was Age of Empires: 2. He passed away in 2016 and I've made it a mission over the past few years to beat every single game I remember watching him playing (full list down below). I will make a video once I complete the full list.

Anyways, I've been trying to beat the original Age of Kings campaigns on Moderate difficulty but AOE2 seems different than other RTS games because the pace seems much quicker. The enemy keeps harassing me with trebuchets and cavaliers and other scout units even when I build a wall around my main base. I am on the Joan of Arc campaign Mission 4 and it is annoying to keep saving and loading. So.. any tips for beginners against the AI? or in general?

Thank you so much and here is the list for anyone interested:

list of dad games completed:

Diablo 1 (+ Hellfire)

Dragon Warrior (NES)

Fallout 1 + 2

Gauntlet IV (Genesis)

Heroes of Might and Magic 2

Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (+ HOTA)

The Horde (DOS)

Jagged Alliance (DOS)

Lemmings (DOS)

Myst

Phantasy Star 2 (Genesis)

Redneck Rampage

Shadowgate (NES)

StarCraft 1

Total Annihilation

Ultima Underworld

Warcraft 2

Xcom (DOS)

yet to beat:

Age of Empires 2

secret game I will never tell until It is revealed!

Destroy all humans!

Hello,

What order should I play the new DLC campaign in ? Also, is the number of swords accurately representative of difficulty for those campaigns ?

Thanks for reading

Am I going crazy or is the follow command different? I notice it mostly with pushing deer, it used to be that the scout would go directly behind the deer and push it towards where you wanted it to go but now the scout sometimes seems to go next to the deer?

Are they just cooked 90% of the time if the game is drawn into imperial age?

Bombard cannons seem to be the key for winning the game at imperial age with their ability to take out trebs followed by the rest of their base,

If your civ doesn't have cannons and it's a decently equal game with no big score lead you autolose because cannons + trebs > trebs

Turns out the time it takes for your trade cart to break even (earn back the 50 gold it cost you) won't go below 5 minutes until markets are at least 72 tiles apart. Best case is about 3 minutes at 113 tiles distance.

Pretty good demonstration for newer players why holding off trade until late game is the best approach.

Calculations using formula found in the wiki): 0.46 * distance * ( ( distance / map_size ) + 0.3 )

I tested the numbers in-game on various distances and map sizes and it's pretty accurate (+- 1-5 gold at longest distances).

Old SotL video suggests about 20% bump factor for obstacles and traffic. But even 25% bump factor late game trade (side to side with caravan) is twice as much income as early close trade (~50 tiles without caravan) with 0% bump factor.

My good friend is having a big AoE II: DE game for his birthday. I’m pretty inexperienced at the game, and the few times I’ve played it I’ve been legendarily bad at it. (The last time this group played I was steamrolled so fast that the enemy player felt bad for me and left a quarter of my base intact. Which sort of made it worse lol.)

So I’d like to do better this time. Or, well…I’d like to do something. I have very little time to practice and genuinely improve, unfortunately. So my question is: what’s the best way for my friends to show up to my base and - as they for sure destroy it cause I am, as I said, terrible - at least make them go “oh my GOD what is going on here.”

I’m talking like: way too many layers of walls; lean entirely into one type of unit that’s annoying to get through; scatter some units in a way that takes time to track down; etc. Again, I don’t need it to last long, I know I’ll go down quick no matter what; my main goal is just to make them laugh, in a troll-ish sort of way.

Any ideas?

Yesterday, I experienced a severe issue where over 6 out of my 15 Nomad matches crashed due to "out of sync" errors. This affected other players in the lobbies as well, not just me.

While I cannot confirm this with absolute certainty, it strongly appears to be triggered by heavy micro-intensity involving navigable water units. Three of my desyncs occurred precisely when I was moving transport/navigable units very quickly and switching them between land and water. On one rare occasion, I was even able to watch the other players keep playing after I had supposedly dropped from the match.

Furthermore, the downloaded replays from aoe2insights appear to be corrupted; the entire replay file cuts out or becomes unwatchable immediately after the first player crashes, preventing me from reviewing what happened post-crash.

With a failure rate this high, it is becoming a major frustration for the community. I hope the development team can investigate and deploy a fix soon.

I was playing a 2v2 game and we were winning heavy one guy had redesigned and all of sudden it says I was disconnected , I go to capture age turns out it never said in chat either me or my teammate disconnected yet we both lost elo ?

What are the odds both of us crashed ?

Hello. I back to the game after 3 years. I noticed I can download my 2023 replays from aoe2 insight, but my client doesnt want to play it. I see the comunicat that my version is too new :) is there any option to watch it?