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Every other week we see a post complaining about Mongols being overpowered. So... are they?

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Improved pathfinding has seemingly appeared on nearly every major update the DE has ever had. Despite these apparently continuous improvements, we complain about pathfinding more than ever. While improved pathfinding will make the game better and developers should continue to make it as good as possible, it won't do anything to make the game more enjoyable.

Imagine pathfinding improves (again) so that there are 10% fewer noticeable instances of weird/bad pathfinding. Will we be 10% less annoyed? I don't think so. We will simply redistribute our current levels of annoyance among the remaining pathfinding incidents. They will seem worse, more egregious, more annoying.

Not only that, the better pathfinding gets, the better we will get at noticing when it's suboptimal. The better pathfinding gets, the easier it is to notice subtle problems. Our ability to spot "bad" pathfinding is, in part, a product of what we expect from the game in the first place. The better the game's pathfinding gets, the better we expect it to perform. Of course, the higher our expectations get, the harder it is for the game's engine to meet them.

Our likelihood of noticing and getting annoyed at pathfinding also depends on how much we are paying attention to it. Every time an update comes out claiming pathfinding has improved, we collectively pay closer attention to pathfinding, which means we notice more occasions when it sucks, even if it objectively has gotten better. This phenomenon has gone on for so long that pathing is now a meme with its own YouTube channel and a newly announced task force. The more you try to fix a problem, the more attention gets paid to it, and the more annoying and prominent the problem will seem.

I think our anger or annoyance at bad pathfinding is a relatively fixed quantity. Improving pathing doesn't reduce that, it just redistributes irritation among the remaining incidents, such that they seem worse. Or, maybe it's not a fixed quantity, but it's only somewhat impacted by the frequency or intensity of pathfinding accidents in the game. Our capacity to be annoyed at pathfinding is mostly determined by our collective cultural psychology.

Increasing screen resolutions and PC performance have also let us notice pathfinding eccentricities that previously went undetected. Because our screens have gotten gradually bigger, we can command units to move further distances at once, across more complicated routes, than we once did. Our collective demands of pathfinding have been increasing slightly as a product of the average screen resolution and level of zoom. Pro players with serious gaming desktops in 2014 saw fewer pixels on their screen than a casual player using a MacBook Air does today.

Most importantly, though, the quantity of pathfinding rage is a subset of what I suspect is a total fixed quantity of RNG angst. Whether it's map RNG, civ matchup RNG, matchmaking teammate RNG, monk conversion RNG, or pathfinding RNG, we have a fixed expectation for how much randomness we are willing to tolerate. And we have a fixed quantity of rage for any randomness that exceeds this threshold. So even if pathfinding were perfect, we would just reallocate that annoyance to other forms of RNG in the game. Perfect pathfinding would objectively improve the game, but it still wouldn't make it more enjoyable. We would just rage at other things. That's a hypothetical, of course.

In reality, on the other hand, pathfinding has gotten more attention and become more noticeable and more irritating every time that other forms of randomness have been removed. Every time civ and unit balance becomes better, maps are improved, or monk mechanics are adjusted, rage simply relocates from these other sources of randomness to pathfinding. The better other parts of the game get, the more we hate pathing.

This hardly means developers shouldn't keep trying to improve the game. Of course they should. AOE2 is still getting objectively better, objectively more ordered and fair. And yet, because our capacity to rage at the game is fixed, we shouldn't expect pathfinding improvements to make it more enjoyable. Lucky, then, that we already like AOE2 so much.

I know it's possible to change unit training and researching in Scenario Editor for any building, but can I do the same for Random Map Scripts too? For example, enable Wonders, when built, to train Richard the Lionhearteds or whatsoever? How could I do it?

Hey guys, i've recently been having a bunch of teammates or enemies resign in TG, making me resign because I don't like 2v1s. And for some reason i have been having a 'your account disconnected from matchmaking early' penalty quite a few times. It also goes up super fast in time, making me sometimes unable to play the game at all because quitting teammates and me resigning when they leave, gives me 5 or 15 minutes of time-out from joining a queue... Is there anything i can do against this queue problem in TG ? Why do I get a penalty if an enemy or my ally resigns and i don't wanna play a TEAMgame with NO team on one side ? This has been really annoying so if there is a way to not have it or a way to know exactly why you get that 'timeout', please let me know, thanks !

Ps : if devs could fix map poop that would be nice as most allies who resign say they don't wanna play water or closed maps... Thanks !

Yeah, pretty self-explanatory title. Last night I dreamt that along with trebs and petards, castles were also capable of training unicycles (though was later taken out of the game in a patch). It was a pretty convincing dream tbh, and I woke up the next day and took me a while to realise this wasn't a thing.

How much more efficient do Wheelbarrow & Handcart make a Lumberjack, a Miner and a Farmer? I know it is impossible to tell exactly, because it depends on how far away they are from the drop off point. But would it be possible to tell the average? Did anybody do the math on that already? Would be interesting to know.

20-30 lumberjacks (first 2 upgrades applied) never be enough even for just farm+buildings. It was not like that back in 6 months ago ( maybe 1 years ago idk). 20 lumberjack were enough for 4 TCs boom; you could save enough wood for buildings but now its not. I think autofarm has a bug and it drain wood deposit. Am i the only one thinking like that ?

Imagine this scenario: Two players control the same civilization. One player takes on the role of the Feudal Lord, managing the villagers, while the other is the General, commanding and training the army. Communication between the two is essential to manage resources effectively. For example, the Feudal Lord might want to advance to the next Age, so they ask the General to stop training troops and focus on gathering resources. Similarly, the General might request that the Feudal Lord prioritize certain resources to train a specific unit.

This is just an idea I wanted to share. I'm not sure how viable it is, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Vandals

Lazi

Kyrgyz

Kurds

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A question for anyone but more targeted at the people (like myself) that play all or mostly against the AI:

What settings/maps/game types are you most using?

For me if it’s going to be a quick game I’ll do a tiny 1v1 map on moderate or hard, empire wars, random civ and random map (with migration maps removed from the selection pool since the AI just sits around). Victory set to conquest.

If I have more time usually I’ll do a huge or ludicrous random map, with 2 vs 4 or 5, and I might select civs that would have actually coexisted or been in the vicinity of one another. And if I’m feeling like it I might give a 104 command to draw it out.

Hera is Lebron

Viper is Jordan

Daut/Chris are Magic/Bird

This actually makes way too much sense lol.

DauT/Chris are the original GOATS who built the competitive scene. Viper became dominant at a point where the game was first being spectated at a high rate (Like Jordan and the removal of tape delay and growth of television). Hera is likely going to be the best for the longest but might never have the same legacy as Viper, simply because of the timing of when Viper became dominant.

This has been my Ted Talk. Thanks.

I just started scout into two stable knights build order. And I thought to myself what if I did it with burgundians. Now this build gives you two TCs and two stables right away after clicking and cavalier as well.

Once you do the blacksmith upgrades not too mention sometimes I get up faster then opponent. Cavalier seems to be unstoppable. Pikemen can be killed very easily without skirms.

As hera said for low elos that instead of making a lot of un-upgraded units in small quantity make one fully upgraded unit in large quantity. And two stables if you keep them running give you a lot of cavalier. With this strat I have climbed 150 elo in 200 days from 950 to 1100.

Is this normal in this elo range or Burgundian needs to be nerfed.

Hello fellow AoE II Fans!
Since Age of Empires II is not nominated for best eSports at the GOTY awards, I decided we deserve our own awards and made a google form to let you choose who wins the awards for 9 different categories. You have to sign in with your google account just to avoid people entering multiple times.

I will edit this post and let you know who won in each category after the form closes on December 13th. Thanks for participating and enjoy!

https://forms.gle/MZhMx3wDUmHvTfBh6

Oh boy. Wasn't really planning on doing it, but I got off work early, the wife is still a few hours out from getting home, both cats are sound asleep and it's cold as balls outside. So I thought, what the hell, let's do it.

Once I readied up for the first game I immediately regretted it. Like, I've played online before in other games, but this was my first foray into 1v1 AoE2 against strangers. I went with Mongols, got paired up against some guy who I think had something like 990 ELO and he was playing Britons.

I wrote "GL HF" and he replied with "u 2 :)". Nice! Maybe people aren't as scary as I thought.

Game started and my mind completely blanked. My build order was shambles - like, I know I'm not great (For reference - I play against the Hard AI offline) and I nothing in my game is perfect. But last time against the AI I clicked Feudal with only 6 seconds of idle time so I'm getting there.

But this was tragic. I accidentally sent my vils to go to work on two sheep at once, nearly got my vils killed while luring boars, almost forgot to build a mill, and Idle TC time was all over the place. I was about a minute late to feudal (advanced at like 1120, lol) and soon after I had archers in my eco. He was all up in my grill like his name was George Foreman.

It quickly fell apart after that - with my (at this point) completely panicked mind tried to counter his archer army with... MILITIAS AND SCOUTS. Like, it didn't even register at that point how bad of an idea that was, lol. I GG-ed a few minutes later, had a small chat after the game, and said I was super nervous with it being my first game. Got a "lol i can totally relate to that!" in reply. Top bloke! 10/10 - he can beat me any time.

Anyway, gathered my breath and thought I'd try again. Ethiopians this time. He went with the Vietnamese (971 ELO).

Nerves had settled quite a bit this time. "Gl hf" and a "u2" in reply. Nice! Got my BO working better this time and but my mind wasn't completely connected still - had 1.25 in idle TC time but still advanced to feudal at 10.40 (clicked up at 8.40 I think?).

A fun thing that happened: I forgot to ungarrison my boar-lure Vil in the TC, so when his autoscout wandered in my camp he really took a beating. Managed to escape with 7 HP left, lol. New Meta?

Got some skirms and archers out to prepare against any early raids (which came and I managed to repel them). Took a deep breath and decided to counter-raid. Got some good results and managed to fight from the higher ground and did some proper damage to his army. Advanced to castle in the middle of it, he followed shortly after. Went for another archer rush and lo and behold, I meat his skirm-spearman rush on an open field, lol. I had the high ground once again and took a clean win.

Then I had to tend to some stuff in my camp whilst my six-man crossbow army went straight for the enemy TC and got killed. lol.

Then I got my castle up - I had a monk out collecting relics (got 3 of them!) and then I went for a shotel-xbow army. We both had extra TC:s up and once again we met in between our two camps. He was really sneaky trying to place a forward castle in my face, but my shotels and Xbows took out his army and then went after his vils, castle came down and he GG-ed, I won!

Not sure if he got fooled by my points lead (sort of forgot about my scout and explored 99% of the map, lol) but he was ahead in food, gold and wood gathered while I was ahead in stone, and he was floating over 2000+ gold in the end. But in the end, a win is a win, and somehow I'm back at 999 ELO now, lol.

Looking forward to my next games, when I can squeeze the time in!

Tl;dr: Online is super fun. People are nice. It's not as scary as you think and me usually playing against the hard AI managed to win a game online. Try it out!

Edit: Grammar

I came across a 'meme' build order and tried it for fun. I'm playing on HD, and still dropping Elo to whatever my true level is. So I'm losing most games, unless I'm matched with someone under ~1100.

The build was Celts double barracks men at arms, in which you stop producing villagers in Feudal age and swarm the enemy with non-stop production. Either the guy was a total beginner or maybe he accidentally killed both his boars with his town center, but it worked and I was able to take out his military buildings before he could produce much to stop me and soon after the men at arms ate his town center.

I tried the Korean men at arms tower rush and it is also a lot of fun, but choosing Koreans, people tend to know what is coming.

I tried the "Hoang rush," the early castle age siege push by Celts, selling your stone to get to castle age quickly and then stopping villager production to attack. But the build is more complicated, and my castle age time is still far too late to make the attack a success.

Of course, I am working on my fundamentals and macro, but in the meantime, what are other options for a simple early all in push? Which civ would be best to do a double stable all in scout rush? Or a double range all in skirm rush?

Meme builds welcome, I'm trying new things here.

Edit: HD version civs are 13 original plus Aztecs, huns, Koreans, Mayans, and Spanish for 18 total

How many different land buildings are there? Like almost 3 dozen? Yet there's only ONE water building, the dock. (I guess 3 if you count fish trap and Harbor)

Villagers can completely change a losing fight into an absolute domination with a quick wall, or a well placed building. Why do fishing ships not get the same treatment?

Introducing the new building, the Fish Tard

Starting in Feudal Age, only civs that have access to Knights or Eagle Warriors can use Fishing Ships to build Fish Tards.

Costs 100 wood, 100 gold, takes 30 seconds to build. (multiple fishing ships build it faster, and do not suffer diminishing returns, aka 8 ships build it 8x faster than 1 ship)

It has 100 hp, 0 armor. Visual Representation of what it does

If an enemy ship touches it, every enemy ship within 2 tiles of it takes 500 bonus damage.

2-4 tiles away, enemy ships lose 50% of it's current HP, can't move for 2 seconds

5-7 tiles away, enemy ships lose 20% off it's current hp, can't move for 1 second

(since fish tards aren't made to counter ground units simply lose 5% of it's current hp, and the fish tard takes a +20 bonus damage from all ground units, to ensure it's only intended as an anti-ship building) Fish tards do this to them

(fish tards can also only reduce fishing ships to 1 hp(still has 7 tile radius AOE)) , and can only reduce docks by 20% of it's current HP, to prevent the effectiveness of fish-tarding someone's docks or exploding someone's fish boom instantly, but could still be useful if they have 0 naval defense and are also not paying attention, since stationary fishing ships would likely not move onto the fish tard, yet a newly created ship could, weakening the fishing ships to be easily killed by other ships)

Hello, I want to learn the scouts into skirms/archers opening (and scounts into pikes). A few years ago, it used to be very easy with the build orders around there, specially with Cicero's interactive build orders. However, these have become outdated from what I've seen.

The norm now seems to be 18/19 pop scrush. I've seen very few guides, and they almost all vary between them. Is there any that's recognized as the best? Even if there isn't any guide, which build order is the best?

Regarding scrush into archery range, I've seen pretty much no guide for it, there are barely any build orders. Is there any you recommend?

Thanks in advance, and thanks to everyone that commented on this post which mainly recommended this opening.

As the title says, I REALLY want to get into this game. I've put 500+ Hours into aoe3 and around 60 into aoe4. I love the competitive scene, I grind ranked in AoE3 but 2 and 3 are just so different. I'm so used to looking up build orders and starts for AoE3 but can't seem to find any for AoE2 that aren't several years old. Is the start the same across most civs? Are there any recourses to learn more? Any advice would be SUPER appreciated! I want to join in on this game pretty bad.

You have tons of given land army but need to transport everywhere (and defend the transports). Transporting is super annoying.

Barely any gold on your islands but emissaries are super expensive.

No safe routes for water trade, and when you convert someone with emissary the option of trade disappears.

Transporting is extremely annoying.

Transporting everywhere is EXTREMELY ANNOYING.

Any tips? Thanks!

I’ve been playing on a 16” laptop for the past 10 years or so. I’m now upgrading and getting a gaming desktop pc.

If I want to try to play aoe2 competitively (just ranked ladder not pro) what is best size/type monitor to get?

I looked a bit at old posts and seems the consensus is a 24” or 27”. I’m hoping to get a decent one for under $300 usd.

I attempted to beat Into China a few times but I could never manage to close to destroying the Wonder in time. I really thought I was doing something wrong so I watched a few play throughs, like this one..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR70LbBhFXk Tried it again and still failed a few times. Then decided to try and beat it with Marco Polo cheats. Tried a few times and not even getting close with several different methods. The Wonder starts going up even before I build up my army.

Then I actually paid attention to the clock, and motherfucker the Wonder started to be built at around 30 minutes. I did not think that was right so I started new game and set a timer. At exactly 26 minutes the wonder started to be built.

What gives? From what I see in the videos and read online it should be started at thr 40 minute mark right?

I am playing at regular play speed settings.

Thanks

Question: I'm trying to beat 2x Extreme AI on arena, letting them fully boom.

I can beat Hardest on these settings but not Extreme.

My issue is twofold - a) they trade so have infinite gold. This is ok as I can put a castle in their trade. B) army numbers. Quite simply I can field about 60 units and they can field more.

Has anyone done this (I know it's a bit niche) and did you have to resort to increasing your pop limit?