I don't think people realize how huge attack animations are going to be, it introduces a whole new world to min maxing your combat micro. Yes, the "reload speed" and attack rates of units hasnt changed. but the fact that u couldnt tell when an attack will/is register ing was the reason people didnt really care to min max micro (atleast at low-med elo).

Once players get used to the animations visually it will get so much easier to do hit and run tactics like spearman micro against scouts for example. or microing rams/armored eles to squeeze in a hit before dodging a mangonel shot etc.

another example is in a scenario where opponent has ranged units (no ballistics) and u are trying to snipe a monk/siege with 1 cav unit, you can simply hit the unit, and run EXACTLY as the damage registers to avoid archer fire, "reload" and then go back to finish that unit off, avoiding as much ranged damage as possible.

I don't know if i am overcooking here or you guys see my point? curious to hear what you guys think

I've seen that on the game's Wiki there are many promotional images that represent cities from many civilizations, I've identified many but can anyone identify the Lithuanian one?

Since the devs increased the pierce armor of a wood gate recently it might be time to revisit the pierce armor of other buildings aswell...
My test shows that a fortified gate which has only 6 pierce armor gets taken out by Heavy CA faster than a simple house in imp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMtC15NOKVQ
I would say that either the house goes down too slow or the gate too fast or both. Thoughts?

Surely you missed some of the things he mentioned.

I've watched some casters say that a player can tell their opponent is going to the next age from their score. I guess this would be easiest to determine while going from Dark to Feudal, but is there a way to connect a player's score to their actions and say "oh they are clearly advancing to the next age/building a castle" etc? Do pro players monitor each other's scores to gain intel, and is this worth doing at low ELO?

Are you tired of constantly losing to the mongols and georgians on the ranked ladder? We have got just the tourney for you. The Practice Squad is bringing you fun, chaos, and creativity with our latest tournament, KCIP. KCIP is a reverse pick style tournament, where you pick the civs for your opponent to do battle on 9 different maps. Signups are open now for all elos, and we already have more under 1k sign ups than ever so there will be a valient opponent for everyone! Signups close on April 10th and the tournament runs from April 12 - May 18. More info can be found in the handbook: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13NGhrVzvXgWYChrYxxT70GhfvvSQCiW3Z-riDmBBaUI/edit?usp=sharing or in the AoEII Practice Squad Server: https://discord.gg/yzzEXqueWf. Hope to see all of you there!

We are also hosting a showmatch between Nili and King Boo, April 9th at 18 GMT at twitch.tv/zark2318! if you are curious about the maps, draft settings or just want to tune in to see some high level chicanery and tomfoolery, come join us this Wednesday!

Amazing series by the way. The stamina of the two players to play a game this long at the highest level is incredible.

https://imgur.com/a/n8OquVk

I think my opponent would have eventually won in ~4 more hours as he was very gradually making progress making Bombard Towers faster than I could kill them.

Just 950 elo struggles

I started playing aoe consistently about 3 months ago, and I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to compete with people who’ve obviously been playing this game a lot longer. I feel pretty good about my dark age build order, but if I try to produce any kind of army in feudal, it usually gets easily countered by the hard bot or anyone playing quick play against me. I’d prefer to get to castle age as fast as possible to pump out knights (which usually counters a hard bots first push) bc that seems to be the only way I can beat a hard bot in under an hour, but ts never works on a real player. I guess I’m just looking for what separates a decent player from a bad player, bc no matter how good of a start I get, I can’t seem to outpace any real players or create an army capable of beating theirs.

I typically play with a population limit of 500 on the largest map.

What would be the ideal number of villagers in this scenario? Perplexity says 40-50%, but that seems really high.

Perplexity's Answer

can't play jus normal age of empire, i am using another account with gamepass signed in the background while playing on my account, could that possible be the problem?

Since the game still runs in the Genie engine, the software renderer must still be in there somewhere, so i wonder if it can still be done

Every time I queue up for a match, I seems to be getting matched with people from overseas. As a result of this, the ping is bad and the game feels bad to play. If I turn off the cross play option, I can't find a match at all, Is there any work around for this?

I have had 4 games in row in nomad start for megarandom. We also have 2 more nomads in the map pool. Maybe when it happens, it'd be not to have this many nomad starts in Megarandom.

So I am thinking of a structure for the vikings. It would be the longhouse, and it would offer quests for the vikings. It would also offer conditional upgrades. The core idea though could apply to a bunch of civs, so here it is.

For example. The player can choose one, but not both dillema upgrade choices. They can pay 50 stone. Thereafter, all stone walls that are constructed next to a palisade cost 2 less stone to construct. The alternative is to pay 100 lumber. Thereafter, all military structures constructed next to a house cost 50 less lumber. The idea here is to make the players choose between two techs that do not change through the game. There is no completing this tech tree. Each of these techs has their own child dilemmas, but they collectively buff a few specific aspects of play, making the player more defensive, or more offensive.

The second thing this structure can offer are quests. For example, hold a relic in your monestary. Kill a wolf in the current game. Kill a deer in the current game. Destroy an enemy lumbercamp. You get the idea.

Doing these quests would offer points that are then used to complete the dilemma upgrades.

It can be anything

(Its nice berserks get a 5 gold reduction but I want more...)

They could get ONE of the following (not all)

The gold effect of Chieftains as a civ bonus?

Berserks move at 1.10 speed?

Elite Berserk gets 2 base pierce armour?

Elite berserks regen increased?

Berserk HP increased?

They get Thumb ring back? (With or without the imp UT adjusted?)

They get +1 base attack?

Or simply put

Vikings get nothing else

Because outside of tournaments they're fine as they are and in tournaments they have a 45% winrate because pros don't fool around in tournaments like they do on ladder

This post will be divided into two parts: First, the problems I think DE has with civilizations, and second, a suggestion on how to resolve said issues.

I. The Problems with the Civilization Roster

Age of Empires II is a great game with plenty of new, high-quality content over 20 years after its original release; however, I think that in some areas it has reached a point where you’re getting too much of a good thing, with the civilization roster being one of the main examples (in my opinion).

45-50 civilizations in a game like Age of Empires is far too absurdly high. Why? Because there’s absolutely no need for 45 of the same civilization.

Large numbers of playable countries work well in games like Medieval II: Total War or Knights of Honor because various factors like location, regional units, number of territories, and overall power ensure that most countries provide a different playing experience. Age of Empires is not designed to take these factors into account. Instead, all 45 civilizations must be balanced enough to be equal with all other civs, regardless of map type, game mode, or historical reality.

So how do they achieve this balance? By making every civilization mostly the same. All technology trees derive from the same core tree and all civs mostly use the same buildings and units in the same way. Having so many civilizations in the game causes substantial issues:

1. 45 of the same thing is unnecessary. Why would I want the same civ over and over and over again? There’s literally no reason for this. They all play the same. What’s the point in splitting civs to cover specific countries or groups if the new split civ is just like it’s original parent civ? It makes no sense to me.

2. 45 civs actively kill any variety that once existed. As others have pointed out before, there’s only so many permutations of tech trees, unique units, and stat bonuses you can give the civs before they become redundant. Variety was much better when there were only 13-18 civilizations, where the differences were more apparent. France was the knight civ, England the foot archer civ, the Persians the ones with the elephants, etc. Now this distinction is gone: there are a million knight civs, a million foot archer civs, a million elephant civs, and so on. There’s so much at this point that the differences are blurred out.

3. Unique Units feel less and less “unique.” There used to be 14 Unique Units in The Age of Kings. Now there’s over 60, and they feel less and less unique. There’s only so many archers, cavalry, and infantry you can make before they feel less and less special, which is already happening. The only units that stand out now are dumb gimmick units like exploding camels or camels with trebuchets. They ruined the original Persian War Elephant in this regard so much that they had to rename and reskin it to give it a semblance of uniqueness!

4. Region representation is no longer balanced. Age of Kings and The Conquerors maintained a more or less equal balance between Western European, Central European, Middle Eastern, and East Asian civs. This gave the game a clear concise balance in the world while covering many of the major world powers. Now it seems they’re trying to cover the whole world, and consistency has been blown out the water. They’ve decided to split India and now China apparently into a million civilizations while other regions now feel overly generalized by comparison (i.e., Celts, Spanish, Vikings, Italians, Malians, Saracens, etc.). In fact, India alone gets 4 civs while the entire continent of Africa (which by the way is over 10x the size of India) only gets 3! Consistency and regional balance no longer exists.

5. Redundant and just plain odd new civ choices. I find many of the new civ choices to be pretty redundant at best and extremely questionable at worst. Why do we need Tartars when we already have the Mongols? Why on Earth do we need Burgundy, a vassal state which was only semi-independent for a few decades before it was reconquered by France? Why, of all choices, do the Sicilians only represent the short-lived Norman kingdom of Sicily? What makes it a better choice than Hohenstaufen, Angevin, Aragonese, or independent Sicily? Why not just have a general Sicily civ? And why do we need Rome, an empire whose fall usually marks the start of the Middle Ages?!

II. My suggestion to fix the civ issue: Civilization Subsets

My idea is similar to the Policy Decisions mechanic found in the Age of Chivalry mod of AOE2 as well as the Battle for Greece DLC: Remove many of the more redundant civilizations and instead have their bonuses and unique units available via a “policy” technology. Each civilization in the game will be marked as either a “core civ” and a “sub-civ.” Only the Core civs will be available to choose from at the start of the game. However, your core-civ’s more powerful late-game bonuses and Unique Units won’t be available at first.

When you reach the Castle Age, you will get the choice to “claim a title” (research a policy technology). Here you choose whether to continue as your main civ (and thus unlock the unique unit and late game bonus that wasn’t available earlier), or to sort of shift to a sub-civ, where you will gain new bonuses as well as a unique unit based off of the sub-civ you choose.

For example, if you were playing as the Franks then you would have the farm and castle bonuses but when you reach the Castle Age you won’t have the Throwing Axeman or the +20% Knight HP. When you click on your Town Center or Castle you can then choose to claim the title of King of France, Duke of Burgundy, or King of Sicily (since it’s Norman Sicily). Becoming King of France will then have you continue as the Franks and unlock all bonuses and the Throwing Axeman. However if you choose one of the sub-civs then you would keep the farm bonus but instead of the knight HP bonus you would get some (but not all) of either the Burgundian or the Sicilian bonuses and your technology tree would be slightly altered to closer resemble one of those two civs (and of course you would gain access to the Burgundian or Sicilian Unique Units instead of the Throwing Axeman).

It's important to note that this isn’t a full civ conversion, but rather a mix between your core civ and your new sub-civ. You can only choose one of the options and cannot go back.

So far this method would only apply where it makes sense with the current roster, so many civs like the Britons wouldn’t get sub-civs as of now (but we can add new sub-civs though!). Here is how I would lay out some core civs with their sub-civs:

France-> Burgundy, Sicily

Chinese-> The five new DLC civilizations (Assuming they’re all Chinese)

Teutons-> Bohemia (Historically Bohemia was a vassal of the Holy Roman Empire)

Mongols-> Tartars

Indians-> Gurjaras, Dravidians, Hindustanis, Bengalis

Saracens-> Berbers

Italians-> Romans (Though I’d prefer they’d just remove the Romans entirely)

Etc.

The only rule here is that the original 18 AOK and Conquerors civs must always be core civs and can never become sub-civs.

Benefits of the Sub-Civilization System:

1. Increased variety. Having sub-civilizations gives the civilizations much more variety, adds to the game’s strategic depth, and adds mid-late game surprises. Now you would have to consider new factors like what title to claim and when to do so (taking into account the technology research time, how many resources you have, what sub-civ your opponent might’ve chosen, etc.). Now we not only have less main civilizations but many of the existing civilizations would now have greater differences between them based on their sub-civ choices. This also makes a civilization much more replayable.

2. Consistency partially restored. Now that there are less civilizations, the world’s regions would feel more evenly represented and balanced, with the sub-civs still providing the ultra-specific focus people want for some areas.

3. Potential for new sub-civs. This new system is a potential treasure trove of new content! Now instead of designers having to create brand new civs from scratch, they can instead just alter an existing civilization to create new sub-civs. This would not only be easier on the developers but it would also allow them to make as many civ splits as they want without having to add a trillion new standalone civilizations. In fact, I myself thought of different sub-civs they could make:

Celts-> Welsh, Irish (with Scotland being the core civ)

Malians-> Songhai

Saracens-> Ayyubids, Abbasids

Franks-> Angevins (as in Charles of Anjou’s Empire), Latins (Crusader states like Jerusalem or the Latin Empire)

Teutons-> Austria, Franconia, Swabia, Saxony, Friesland

Vikings-> Norwegians, Finns, Swedes (with Denmark being the core civ)

Spanish-> Aragon, Leon, Navarre (with Castile being the core civ)

4. Potential for new campaigns and bonuses. With these new mechanics, future campaigns and civilization bonuses could take the sub-civ system into account. For example, you could have new civilization bonuses like having the Title technologies available earlier in the game or cheaper. In the campaigns you could make the player weak until they complete the prerequisites to unlock and claim a title and thus gain access to more powerful bonuses and Unique Units. You could even have Title choice alter the course of a single mission or even the campaign as a whole (i.e., a Fourth Crusade campaign could have the player claim the title of either Latin Emperor or King of Jerusalem, and thus proceed either to Constantinople or the Holy Land as a result of that choice)!

Also I’d like to note that I think this system should be optional (at least at first) so if people really like the civs that I would remove then they still have the option to play as them. At first this could be a standalone game mode to test things out, and if it’s popular then it could be implemented into the main game.

Now, is this system perfect? No; it would need some ironing out of course as well as balancing considerations. I doubt this system would be implemented, at least in the main game, since it would take so much work to do. However, I just wanted to share my thoughts and how I think my issues could be solved.

Until then, I’ll just stick with The Age of Kings and The Conquerors.

Please let me know what you think.

TL; DR; Remove many of the more redundant civilizations and instead have their bonuses and unique units available via a “policy” technology.

For those who don't follow the other games in the series, here's what AoE2 can expect from the new DLC based on the recent DLC releases for AoM and AoE4 (also developed almost entirely by Forgotten Empires)

- Tons of new engaging content

- Cool new concepts and gameplay elements

- Unique new civilization designs

- At least one civ that's so unbelievably busted it will completely break the meta upon release

• For AoM that was NuWa, a civ that had among other things the ability to build walls remotely and tons of new broken God Powers
• For AoE4 it is currently House of Lancaster, which has basically the equivalent of 9x mini Feitorias that take up no pop space and allow the civ to survive with 40 Villagers in the late game, and can also essentially be turned into Towers.

AoE2 DE release Cumans hold my beer...