Win in Age of Empires II

Age of Empires II is the sequel to Age of Empires I, a bestselling PC game. Age of Empires II allows you to play 13 different civilizations, each with different unique units and architecture.

This guide is for beginner to moderate players. This guide is useless for advanced players who can easily beat a very hard computer.

Steps

The Dark Age

  1. Create villagers. Villagers are key to a great economy. Villagers gather resources which can be used to build, create, and research stuff later on in the game. The trick is to have enough villagers to support what you are trying to accomplish at the time.
  2. Scout out with the 3 beginning and scout to find your sheep as fast as possible. These sheep should then be moved under the town center so the villagers have an instant drop off point and don't need to run to drop the food off. Six villagers is the optimum to have on sheep at any one time. It will insure constant villager production. You should now use the next created villager to build a lumber camp and the next 2 villagers should go there too. The berries should be close to the town center, the next 2 villagers should be sent to berries as well for a total of 4. You then want to send some more villagers to wood and a few more to sheep, remember to create one or two far before you click to feudal.
  3. Here as an approx build list: Villager 1 - food, Villager 2 - food, Villager 3 - food, Villager 4 - food, Villager 5 - food, Villager 6 - food, Villager 7- lumber camp, Villager 8 - wood, Villager 9 - wood, Villager 10 -Lure boar, Villager 11 - Build a mill, Villager 12- berries, Villager 13 - berries, Villager 14 - lure boar, Villager 15 - berries, Villager 16 - wood, Villager 17 - wood, Villager 18 - food, Villager 19 - food, Villager 20 - food, Villager 21 - food. Here is it explained a little better in a condensed video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtukDHXy9GU&list=PL891DE10D2EFEA2E6
  4. Explore with your scout. Number him 1 by pressing Ctrl + 1. That way, you can quickly go to him by simply pressing the 1 key. Start by exploring the black areas around the explored area. Since you need to know the map, the scout is vital. Start by scouting around your base in a circle then when you have found everything you need, 6+ sheep, gold, stone and at least one decent lumber site start scouting for your opponent, a good starting point is directly across from you.
  5. Create villagers as soon as the chance comes by. You shouldn't drop villager production unless you are going full aggressive, or have 120 villagers (In 200 pop)
  6. Research Loom when you need to. A good player won't research loom until he is about to go feudal. However, if you don't have the food to create a villager it can be a good time to do loom. Also if your boar is far away, or the game is laggy it can be a good idea to get loom before you lure it.

The Feudal Age

  1. Create more villagers and add 2 to wood and 1 or 2 to forage bushes. The sheep should have run out by now,so you can start to explore the other places including the enemy and your allies. You should now have at least 4 people on wood by now.
  2. Build a blacksmith and/or market. Blacksmiths cost 150 wood each, and markets cost 175 wood each. The thing is that markets are slower to build, and blacksmiths has a lot of upgrades for the military later on that you can use.
  3. Research Horse Collar (in the mill) and Double-Bit Axe (in the lumber camp). They are good upgrades for the economy.
  4. Create 2 more villagers. Build a farm after you build the market. Farms cost 60 wood and cost 60 wood to reseed. It is better once you hunt deer somewhere farther away from the town center. Each deer stocks up to 140 food, and there should be at least 4 of 'em there.
  5. Build a mining camp near gold, not stone. You don't need stone in the Feudal Age, so get gold. Have 2 villagers go on gold. You need 100 more gold to advance to the Castle Age. The Feudal Age should only take about 7 or 8 minutes. You need 800 food, 200 gold, and a blacksmith and a market to advance to the Castle Age. If you have extra wood, build a barracks farther to the enemy. On top of a cliff is best because infantry can't get up there by climbing.
  6. By now, you should have
    At least 15 villagers
    A scout
    At least 650 food
    Mill
    Lumber camp
    Mining camp
    At least 100 wood
    At least 200 gold
    200 stone
    Blacksmith
    Market
    Loom, Horse Collar, and Double-bit Axe researched
  7. Wait until you have 800 food. Then you can advance to the Castle Age. Keep exploring with your scout. By now, you should have at least 50% of the map explored (unless you are playing with a normal, large, or giant map).

The Castle Age

  1. Immediately research Heavy Plow and Bow Saw. If you do not have enough resources, then you will have to wait. Also, research other stuff that are good to, like Gold Mining and Stone Mining (Stone Mining should be researched later unless you want a castle as the "2" buildings).
  2. Build a Monastery and a University. Universities should be built first because they have fairly priced but powerful upgrades. Monasteries should be built later in the game unless you are planning a siege in the early Castle Age. Continue to create villagers, and research Wheelbarrow or Town Watch (Wheelbarrow may be too expensive, but do not use your food on Town Watch of you have less than 100 food). You must build another Town Center though. More villagers = more resources = better military = better chance that you will crush your opponents.
  3. Build up your military. Build a Barracks, Archery Range, Stable, Siege Workshop, and other buildings. The order is listed below.
    Barracks
    Stable
    Siege Workshop
    Archery Range
  4. Make the infantry in one group, the archers in another, the cavalry in another, and the siege units in another group. You should have 4 military groups. Continue to build up your military slowly, but DO NOT FORGET ABOUT YOUR ECONOMY!!! If you forget about it, you will not have enough resources to build up your military, well...you will lose. Keep creating more villagers until you think the mark reaches 50 for villagers and 50 for military units (15 infantry, 15 archers, 15 cavalry, and 5 siege units).
  5. Do the economy stuff before the military stuff. This will make it easier, as the economy will boost, leaving you with many resources for the military. When you reach 1000 food, 800 gold, and a castle or 2 Castle Age buildings, you can choose to advance to the Imperial Age and continue to work on your military for an easier win. Or, you can lead your military of 50 troops (it is actually a lot in this game) and destroy everyone. You should advance to the Imperial Age if there are more than 2 enemies, and just attack if there are 2 or less enemies. If you are planning to do the military attack, go ahead and crush everyone. If not, here is what you do in the Imperial Age.

Imperial Age

  1. Research all the important stuff like Crop Rotation, Two-Man Saw, Stone/Gold Shaft Mining, and other stuff that are important. Research your unique techs in the castle because no other civilization has the unique techs you have. If your enemy has many buildings, it is best to rap up 1 or 2 trebuchets until you attack.
  2. Continue to create villagers. You should at least have about 80 villagers. Create 20 more (don't worry; you do not have to do it all in one time) 5 at a time. When you reach 100 villagers, all you should be concentrating on is the military. Reseed farms as usual, and rap up your military. Create many units so that you have 50 infantry, 25 archers, 20 cavalry, and 5 siege units. If you are playing the Goths, you have a +10 population which means you can fill in 5 more villagers and some trebuchets. Now, with 100 (or 105) units, go crush your opponents as you've never done it before!!!

Alternate Method

  1. Have all villagers that you start with collect food from sheep or berry bushes. Produce as many villagers as you can. Once you create your first villager, make him build a house then set him on food.
  2. Use your scout to look around your area for additional resources. Once you have five villagers on food, get five on wood so that you have ten villagers altogether.
  3. Once you run out of food resources, have all five food villagers build a mill near your town centre. Once they are done, have each of those villagers build a farm and add five farms to the mill queue. Have your wood villagers build a lumber camp near a large forest and get wood. Get two more villagers for constructing buildings and have those two build a barracks and dock if needed.
  4. Advance to the next age.

Tips

  • You can set the difficulty level. Easiest is really easy, standard is like normal in some other games, moderate is pretty hard for some people, hard is extremely hard, and very hard is practically impossible (because the enemy uses cheats! If you set the speed to slow, it makes it easier so you can do more things in a less amount of time. However, it is slower than the normal time, so if you have plenty of time, go for it.
  • MAKE SURE YOU SET THE SPEED ON 'FAST', or else you will be moving in slow motion the whole time, and that stinks...Also make sure your map is zoomed out as far as it can go, found in the top right corner under 'Options' I think.

1. There is a fun setting called Regicide where you start with a king, along with the usual stuff, it is easier this way because you only have to kill your enemies' kings and they only have to kill yours, but it's fun building things to protect him.

2. You can hotkey him, or any unit/ group of units by holding down crtl and a number. When you press the number, it will have them selected. If you still have that unit selected, but went somewhere else on the map, you can press the space bar and it will go back to him.

3. Check your enemies' civilizations before the game starts to see what you should pick as a civ, certain civilizations are better against others usually based on special units, which are built in the castle. If you have already started the game, you can check them at the top right. If they have the Persians, for example, build lots of Halberdiers because they take them down like swatting flies, they are also good against paladins. Another plus is that they are cheap.

4. A good civilization is the Saracens, their special camel unit will take down pretty much anything, just keep them at a distance from what they attack, like horse archers.

5. The Huns don't have to build houses, I guess because they are nomadic, but their special unit is only good against buildings for the most part.

6. Food is a very important resource that you can always find more of, unlike wood, gold, and stone, if it's used right. Build tons of farms as much as you can, and hotkey your mill so that when they need to be reseeded and you're busy, you can press #8 and then space and reseed them, while reseeding the ones already dead.

7. If you have an ally/allies, build your market as far away as possible from them, and have them build theirs far away from you, and build at least 20 trade carts. The farther your market is, the more resources you get.

8. When or if you play regicide, play at a black forest map, or islands. For islands, it may be time consuming, but try to wall off the entire island with the exception of a few gates, not even allowing enough room for a transport to land, because that is your greatest threat playing at that map. For Black Forest, have at least one siege onager (be sure to pick a civilization that has them because only 4 do, and the Saracens are one). Use this siege onager to blow out trees, either by telling it to attack the tree as it would a unit, or by telling it to attack ground, but change it every time you need to blow out an area. You can make trails through the woods and build a safe place for your king there, or you can blow out a trail to your enemies area. Built outposts in the trails until you find a place your enemy doesn't have much activity, and send in at least 5 trebuchets to blow the castle up fast, or use petards. Because a king is fast, you need archer or ranged units to kill him. 

    - Also you don't always need units of every kind from every building to win, find something you like and can use well and go with it. Have other units if needed, but I mainly use cavalry because they are fast.

9. A useful thing to download for this Age of Empires is GameRanger, you can play people online and it's free. I prefer playing against friends and family at home connected to a private router, but if you have no one to play but computers, you may like GameRanger. If you can't beat a computer on medium or hard, you might not do well against online regulars (no lives), and if you do get beaten, remember if they are better than you, they have no life, and if you beat them they are a noob lol.

10. Also, there is an addition to the game that came out in December of lat year called Forgotten Empires, it has Italians and other new civilizations, units, and things in Map If you did spend time reading all this, good luck to you, and if you didn't, I would have most likely done the same

Things You'll Need

  • Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors CD. You can buy one at the store for $9.99. Alternatively, you can download the game from a p2p network.
  • As of April 9th 2013, the game along with the Conqueror's expansion will be available on Steam. It will feature an updated HD graphical engine, steam workshop support and multiplayer.

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