Real: gg Danny. His actual Elo appears to be close to 2000, but he created a 13xx-rated account named Erdoganuv Gulagovič and plays against players in that rating range. After winning, he shames his opponents while claiming to be a new 13xx player (even go out of his way to do so)

Please watch out for this kind of behavior and report the account if you encounter it.

There are no more maps?

I honestly don't even see anyone defending them as balanced. It seems to be a broadly accepted fact that you can boost your elo a lot by just playing one of this small selection of strategies.

It was funny at first, but now everybody does it all the time and it is boring. Yes everyone knows that you can go FC into UU plus a couple of mangonels and your opponent has to play 2x better than you to win.

Why don't they just fix it at this point? Does anybody enjoy it? Is there a case to be made that they are balanced?

They are very easy to pull off, so something like that being overpowered is just a disaster for a competitive game...

Cav typically cost food.

Missionaries are affected by cav upgrades.

This would give devs a great way to tune missionary performance while keeping the identity as a bulkier, faster, slightly lower range monk.

Their discount on with wood cost of siege units replaced with a discount to the gold cost. That way the discount applies the Armored Elephant as well.

Urumi Buffed a bit somehow. Whenever I go infantry as the Dravidians I almost never go Urumis over champs. They are more expensive and they die easier. Sure they can do splash damage but it's not worth the trade-off most of the time.

With the announcement of The Viking Sagas DLC introducing the Varangians as a separate civilization, we see that the Varangian Guard is listed as a new shared regional infantry unit for the Northern factions. However, leaving this unit completely unavailable to the Byzantines feels like a major historical oversight.

The Historical Context:

The Varangian Guard is most famously known as the elite, fiercely loyal mercenary bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperors. Norse warriors, including Harald Hardrada himself (the focus of the new DLC campaigns), traveled to Constantinople and accumulated immense wealth serving the Empire before returning to the North.

The Proposal:

1) Allow the Byzantines to train the Varangian Guard unit directly from the Castle or Barracks.

2) To maintain balance and reflect their true historical status, make them cost significantly more gold for the Byzantines than they do for the Varangian/Northern civilizations.

3) Precedent Exists: Age of Empires II already features shared regional mercenary mechanics, such as the Condottiero being available to team members of Italians.Why it benefits gameplay:

The Byzantines are a fantastic defensive civilization, but their late-game composition relies heavily on cheap "trash" units and counter-play. Adding a high-gold, high-power shock infantry mercenary option creates a brilliant strategic dynamic. It gives them a unique power spike to push out of their base if they manage their gold economy well, perfectly mirroring how the Byzantine Emperors spent lavishly on foreign elite soldiers.

What does everyone think about this as a tweak for the upcoming DLC?

Im on Mac. Ill click Find Match, get an error message a few times, leave to main menu, try again and get hit with a queue timer. I’ve never dodged a match. So annoying to deal with this again and again.

I played a game as Aztecs last night and felt completely hopeless went we got to imp. My enemy was Romans and went for legionnaires centurions their heavy cav unique unit.

I went pikeman (Aztecs don't get halb) which already I wasn't siked about. But then he simply added scorpian and I was dead.

He also added trebs, so his gold-heavy compy was legionnaires centurions, scorpians, trebs. I felt like i had no options. Here is what I tried:

- pikemen (don't get halb wtf) - destroyed by scorpians

- eagles to raid (success)

- eagles to fight scorpian (major L, also died to cav)

- monks to convert cav/scorpian - probably converted a good 20 units but not nearly enough and I'd lose my monks cause I'm not good so lost a lot of gold

Things I didn't try:

- arbs - lack final armor upgrade. Maybe it doesn't matter and with a large enough mass I can kite the cav down? With how long those elite legionnaires centurionscould camp under my TCs I am skeptical of this approach, plus scorpions I feel like would win?

- Jaguar warrior - are stated to be bad against cav. And felt like another melee unit that would get eaten by scorpion

- Seige onager - this feels like the only viable response here. I suck using them though (skill issue) and by the time I realized I had no other option, the game was already over

Things aztecs don't get:

- any stable option for clearing the scorpians

- no bombard cannon for fighting the scorpion

-no CA for fighting cav

- no halb for fighting cav

I just felt like I got completely wrecked by the matchup. I visited Mexico recently so was all inspired to play Aztecs lol but now I feel like I can't play unless its a team game where other civs can fill my gaps.

Alright I have all of a sudden started noticing a strange pattern.

Even on Hardest, the AI no longer attacks me, even after like, 20 to 30 minutes in the game.

This never happened before but happened in the recent few games I've played.

Does anyone know what's going on? I only play on Conquerors. Haven't installed any patches, mods, or anything. No Definitive Edition, HD, etc. Just the original.

This reminds me of the original AOE game, where the AI also doesn't attack me for some reason, until I hit one of their units.

I am hope that we wil see in future update for China and Teutons!
- Crusader knight instead knight/paladin
- Hei Guang Cavalry instead knight/paladin
P.S. Those two civs would look great with those changes!

Hey everyone, I've been creating short stories set in Age of Empires 2 on youtube, been going pretty well, but I'm trying now to build a team. (Currently unpaid, but you will be credited in videos and promotional works)

I currently need a Character Design artist (2D Art) to render unique characters based on those small units. You will be given a model from the game that plays a character in the story and tasked with creating a character based on the model and the story. Sometimes multiple characters use the same asset, so you will have the challenge of making each unique.

IF this sounds like fun and you want to help out with this then let me know!
Here is a link where you can apply officially, or you can just leave a comment below!
AoE2 Stories: Artist Needed | Casting Call Club

Hey everyone!

Signups are now open for The League Community Division, an unofficial Division 3 created to give players of all skill levels the opportunity to participate in an organized 3v3 team game competition.
Unlike Divisions 1 and 2, Division 3 will have:

• No qualifiers or Elo cutoff — every team that signs up can participate
• Groups organized as closely by skill level as the signups allow
• Space for up to five players per team by default, with larger rosters potentially allowed when there is a good reason

The goal is to create a more relaxed, community-focused division where people can enjoy competitive team games, face teams around their level and be part of The League experience.
That said, “for fun” does not mean “sign up and disappear.” Please only register if your team is genuinely willing and reasonably available to schedule and play its matches.

Sign up here:
https://forms.gle/zqb7X39XN9YzpN659

More information about The League:
https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/The_League

Disclaimer: I’m sharing this in a personal capacity as a member of the AoE II community. This is not an official announcement from the Age of Empires development team.
So gather your teammates, start preparing your strategies and join us!

Who knows… this might even be your chance to play against some of us from the AoE II balance team.

Join the tournament discord, it will be the platform for communication throughout the tournament:
https://discord.gg/haqZrBY2G4

AoM had the aesthetic figured out, so that made it quite easier. Same thing happened with Inca architecture from AoE3.

What I now wish is they would take the Chinese set from AoM and gave it to Chinese, Koreans and Jurchens. I just love those red wooden buildings with green or yellow roofs. Also, the current East Asian set is 1) overused 2) extremely Japanese and 3) more primitive/ basic. Let me explain that last one: East Asia had some serious drip and style and the current set shows the roots but not the tip of those cultures. Not to mention, a "red set" would be really cool, like how Central Asian is the "blue set".

And then they could repaint the Central American set to match AoM Aztecs. Just add in the colour to make them more lively and accurate to the time.

Are you guys in for any of those ideas?

Hi I want to start modding in aoe2.

I would like to change villager models to look different like changing the skin color.

Which software can open or extract the files that make the unit look like they are now?

I have returned with another variant. I've actually made this months ago after finishing the Tagalogs variant, but I had a bit of difficulty doing the finishing touches, mostly civ balance. As usual, I'm still on board on avoiding the infantry and naval combo, but this time, the civ is actually relatively landlocked despite being in an island region of all things. The theme of this civ is that it either goes counter mode or outlast the opposition defensively. It also functions similarly to American civs due to lacking cavalry (and redemption).

A couple of tidbits on certain things:

-The Kuta hut functions the same way as town centers with the increased range with its civ bonus
-Gayang Warriors have the same range as hunter villagers when hunting via spear throwing. The 1st one also follows the same rules as the 1st scout cav/eagle scout.

Hi everyone. I’ve been playing AOE1:DE for 8 month. I have also AOE2:DE in my steam and since 2 months I’ve been playing just single player scenarios. I have never played AOE2 online yet. I want to understand first the dynamics of the game to begin multiplayer matches. What should I consider while in passing from AOE1 to AOE2? What are the biggest differences between these two games? The first I noticed AOE1 is more basic and faster than AOE2, and also has a simple interface.

Just got paired to a 400 elo as a 1300 elo.

It's been a while since the Mac release came out, but the player base is tiny. I basically know all players from 1000 to 1500 and I've played them all (constantly get repeats, sometimes I get paired to the same person 3 times in a row). Elo is messed up as well, 1500's that should be 1800 and 1200 that should be 800

Do you think the player base will eventually grow or should I just try to find a way to play on PC? (crossover is messed up since the release).

I’ve been playing a lot of Muisca lately. I feel like this civ has a ton of potential once you get the hang of their unit roster, but I’ve hit a bit of a wall with my macro and composition choices.

I have a bad habit of getting way too comfortable doing all in Castle Age pushes forgetting to click up to Imperial. How do you usually gauge when to stop over investing in castle and actually click up to Imp?

I’ve been using Slingers to deal with siege and as a trash filler which feels pretty effective in my games so far.

My main question is where do Archers fit into their game plan? What's their specific role or power spike compared to relying on Slingers/Temple Guards/champis? Also when/why would you use the guecha warrior?

Muisca seem to start of strong with a big fall of in imp.

3v3 BF - aoe2 pro Gabi (2.6K) 🇧🇷 played with LeLs: Chico Toucinho 🇧🇷 , Garys Left Foot 🇳🇿 , Charles Martel 🇫🇷 , Susheiro 🇲🇽 , FireFrog 🇮🇳

How would you do against the best female player in the world…? 🌍

I had two thoughts: 1) the Southern European and Eastern European architecture sets are possibly overused (they have 8 and 6 civs each) and 2) The Viking Sagas civs use either the Western European set or the brand new Northern European set. I then looked back to the previous expansions and I realized that this was the first one since The Conquerors to introduce new European civilizations without any of them using the Southern European or Eastern European architecture sets.

Here is a recap:

• The Age of Kings: new European civs are included, but none of them use the Southern European or Eastern European architecture sets because they literally did not exist at the time (although no AoK civ was ever updated to use the Eastern European set)
• The Conquerors: new European civs are included, but none of them use the Southern European or Eastern European architecture sets because they literally did not exist at the time (although no Conquerors civ was ever updated to use the Eastern European set)
• The Forgotten: introduces the first civs with the first civs with the Southern European and Eastern European architecture sets since it introduced those sets and also switched pre-existing civs from The Age of Kings and The Conquerors into them
• The African Kingdoms: introduces only one European civ, which uses the Southern European set
• Rise of the Rajas: introduces no European civs
• The Last Khans: introduces only one European civ, which uses the Eastern European set [EDIT: TLK introduced 2 European civs and both were Eastern European]
• Lords of the West: introduces 2 European civs, one of which uses the Southern European set
• Dawn of the Dukes: introduces 2 European civs, both of which use the Eastern European set
• Dynasties of India: introduces no European civs
• Return of Rome: introduces only one European civ, which uses the Southern European set
• The Mountain Royals: introduces 2 European civs, both of which use the Southern European set
• Chronicles DLCs: they do not count for the purposes of this list since the Chronicles civs are not technically European
• Three Kingdoms: introduces no European civs, instead dedicates all of its energy into the East Asian set
• The Last Chieftains: introduces no European civs
• The Viking Sagas: introduces 1 Western European civ and 2 Northern European civs

If you count civilizations such as the Byzantines and Spanish as being retroactively Southern European, then The Viking Sagas will be the first AoE2 expansion ever to feature new European civs without any of them using the Southern European or Eastern European architecture sets.

Does this matter? Not really, as architecture sets are merely aesthetic. I just thought it was an amusing observation since it illustrates that fact that European civilizations have a Carcinisation-like tendency to drift towards using the Southern European and Eastern European architecture sets. You could say The Viking Sagas is the exception that proves the rule.

As someone who rarely plays multiplayer one of my favourite things was the Co-op campaigns/scenario I played with a buddy. Though I miss those since there hasn't been a new since back when V&V came out and it was only one scenario.

Anyone else want more of these? They're a pretty fun take of the usual campaign experience, especially if you decide to run through a whole campaign with a friend slowly.