HomeFeaturesAge of Empires II: Definitive Edition
I’ve decided to get really good at Age Of Empires 2My first ever ranked game!
My first ever ranked game!
Top 12 Best Strategy Games to Play on PCWatch on YouTube
Top 12 Best Strategy Games to Play on PC
If you’re not familiar, AoE2 is a fast-ish strategy game where you become a medieval king and beast your foes with the metaphorical willy that is your army. To grow your willy, you have to build up a resource-gathering infrastructure, not just to build troops with, but to afford progression into four increasingly expensive “ages” (dark, feudal, castle and imperial), which each offer better upgrades. I’d always known that to win in a competitive 1v1, there’s a strict build order that you must adhere to, with rigid timings, if you’re going to stand a fighting chance. You also need to memorise a lot of hotkeys, and practise unit micromanagement. This had always seemed joyless and uncreative - like it robbed the game of any whimsy or fun. But after a bit of mucking around with the game’s Art Of War trainer, which teaches you to do this stuff against AI opponents, I suddenly saw not just the appeal, but also how quickly I could pick it all up. I resolved, for the first time in my life, to become Good at a game. And last night, after a few weeks of practising on non-frightening computers, I finally worked up the nerve to embark on my first, ranked, 1v1 game. Here’s what happened.
I (blue) had elected to play as the Ethiopians, because their archers fire faster, their siege engines shoot bigger, and they get bonus resources when they go up an age, which would help me afford age advances quicker. My enemy (red) was the Britons, who get better archers, shootier towers, and more efficient food-gathering from herd animals. The map we were assigned was black forest - a map mostly covered in wood, with several chokepoints connecting each player’s territory. It always, always ends in a bloody, early struggle for one of those chokepoints, but I was determined to come out on top.
Here I am as the game opens, smashing away at a dead cow to pile up the dinners, as I religiously and mechanically follow the build order so I can get to the feudal age first and outgrow my opponent. A look at the minimap in the bottom right (these screenshots are from the replay, so you can see the enemy position), shows me that the choke point this will all come down to is near the enemy town centre - it’s the pale green passage just to the right and down from the red blobs.
Alas, my dirty tricks are not enough - as I’m headed into the feudal age (as you can see from the bar at the top), my foe is already there, and has, crucially, sent forward a villager to build a wooden palisade wall across the chokepoint. I send in my scout to try and mangle them, but their horse is also on hand, and so my scout gets fully Tescoed before it can finish off the wall-builder. To the bottom right, you can see I was sending in a villager of my own to attempt a counter-fortification, but tragically, I hadn’t noticed the wolf lurking a few tiles away. The villager was savaged, and the britons had control of the point.
Now I’m in feudal age, I bring in a couple of lads to build an archery range and a defence tower to have another stab at wresting control of the pass. At the moment my mind is fully on defending against an incursion, but now I look at the replay - this is red’s town, right on the other side of the wall - I should have been looking at an early push, to whack that gate down and bother his economy. The best defence is a good attack, right? But no; I was scared, and concentrated on building up a little force of fast-firing ethiopian archers to secure the point.
Another villager dies, trying to build a second tower.Yikes.But it’s ok! Because of my age-advance bonus resources, I’ve been able to economically outpace red, even with my lower villager count, and “fast castle” - slingshotting straight into the castle age from feudal, a few minutes before the Britons are able. Surely this will give me the upper hand!
As soon as the wall comes down, in come the skirmishers, and clean up my crossbowmen with grim ease. Worse still, the Britons are now packing a couple of mangonels - area-effect catapults that devastate massed range infantry. Panicking super hard, I build a mangonel of my own, and throw up a stable and a… monastery? But it’s too late to start developing a proper counter.
I do eventually scrape together a repelling force, but in the time red has had the advantage, they’ve muscled in with a pack of builders and started building a castle right in the gap. I mangonel the builders, and send panic-horses round to try and cut them down, but red knows this is an all-or-nothing moment, and has abandoned his whole economy to throw troops at the castle. Seconds after this image it is completed, and I know I no longer stand a chance. It’s GG for me this time - but I’ve learned some valuable lessons, and I still need to practice my hotkeys. Let’s see how I fare in my next game…
