Age of Empires II—-Game plan, Strategies and tips

Age of Empires- one of the finest strategy games ever to be made… Age of Empires- The Age of Kings and the Conqueror’s expansion is a strategy loving gamer’s delight. Along with Cossacks, this game forever stands testimony to what could be called the best strategy game ever created…. With its computer AI more improved and tougher than the one in AGE OF KINGS,, i guess i could share my strategy with you folks out there…. This has been partly an offset of watching the computer’s own strategy while playing at the HARDEST level…. Here goes….

Building your economy—

The basic fundae are

__[ 1 ] you will have to keep creating villagers continously so that you collect resources at a very good rate.

–[ 2 ] you will have to progress to the next age as quickly as you can. FOR THIS____>

Make all the 3 villagers build 1 house exactly… make the scout cavalry discover 4 sheep/turkey near your town centre.If you try a bit harder, you must discover 2 +2 more sheep nearby. That makes it a total of 8 sheep. After building the first house, take 2/3 villagers from house building to collecting food from sheep. Remaining one villager should build 2 more houses .now all the villagers from town centre are directly rallied onto the food collection. food collection can continue till production of 15 villagers.If sheep and other sources run out, build a farm near the forage bushes, and then luring of wild boar near the farm or town centre can also be carried out. After population touches 15 ,set NEW villagers to collect wood. when population reaches 18, make 3 villagers build a house. and then collect wood as normal . I normally go to the feudal at around 11 mins with a population of 27/28. { If you have carried out all the steps correctly , you must have a population of around 26 in 10 minutes. }…Build a barrack in the dark age itself before progressing to the feudal age.
Once the forage bushes have run out , you must build farms. So make sure you have a sufficient amount of wood to supplement for farms as well as new buildings necessary for progressing to the next age. Build 2-3 stables as well as a market in the feudal age. Now instead of setting NEW villagers to collect gold and stone. transfer 5 + 5 woodcutters to collect stone and gold(in that order). NOw set the rally point of the town centre to collecting wood. I go to the castle age with a population of 35/38. You MUST reach the castle age within 22 mins. Now in the castle age , first build a castle near your town centre to protect your base. build an university and research murder holes.  Then build 2 other town centres near the centres of gold and stone. So that rallying from new town centres can be directed to the gold / stone collection. You must have had 3 stables in the feudal age. Soon after you go to the castle age, create knights as soon as you can. 15-20 knights will suffice and can hold in real good stead. now depending on your enemy’s attack , you can go into the imperial age real quick or delay it . but you have to be in imperial atleast before 38-40 mins. Now into the imperial , more villagers ( total villager population – 90 odd). build an army and keep advancing the technologies in imperial. (DO NOT  MAKE ANY ADVANCEMENTS IN CASTLE EXCEPT FOR MURDER HOLES). Now if you go as planned you will reach the population limit within 1 hr. Enjoy. After the first castle, to surprise the enemy send 4 villagers protected by 6-7 knights and build a castle near their base. ( not too near) . Also keep watch so that their villagers do not build a castle near your base. your knights should not be just idle after you create them. group wise dispatch and kill villagers cutting wood. you obviously cannot kill farmers as they might be near the town centres. woodcutters on the other hand would be far off from the town centres. this might make for an easy prey and slows down their economy. Keep practising at this level , play a lot of games and watch other multiplayer games to master distribution of villagers and strategies. Also do not keep too much of extra resources. Food and gold is ok. Use market well to distribute resources. I will try to upload some good multiplayer games played in my hostel. Have fun !

Army building and War strategies—

Each civilization has its own special abilities and you better keep a watch on the civilization tree to see what is best for you. Franks and Spanish are my favorites for most of the maps. But you would prefer Koreans if you want naval combat. Ok.. you are going to build an army that are effective against the opponent and are cheap.. never even bother to create infantry from barracks unless you want to strike early. This way you can save a lot of resources instead of upgrading. Build 2-3 stables and once you are in the castle age, create knights and upgrade them. They rule in close combat and move quite fast. Create even some skirmishers and archers. Archers cost you gold and food while skirmishers cost you just wood and food-which you will be having in surplus. NEVER keep your ranged units close to each other. Spread them out.This way it makes the opponent difficult to strike at you. There are several good combinations of armies. Army strengths and weaknesses later on in this post. build some seige onagers and have them placed near your walls. This way if your opponent sends an army and if they are not spread out, they are done for…. Build trebuchets only if you want to hunt down the enemy. Coming to docks, have an good number of galleys and supplement it with fast fire ships( Fast fire ships do good esp against viking longboats) . Cannon galleons are required to make final blows through naval combat. Have your fast fire ships protect the ranged ships esp the cannon galleons as they are quite costly. That almost does it for this section.

ARMY PLANNING , STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES.

PLANNING

If you have a good regiment of horses, have your halberdiers(pikemen) protect them .

HEAVY scorpions are to be protected by horses – ( light cavalry a good option since they cost just food)

Elephants are VERY weak esp against pikes

Various other combinations can be understood by experience of playing and seeing the civilization map.

SOME COMBINATIONS

1. PIKEMEN + SCORPIONS — GOOD NO and upgraded—— ( ONE LETHAL COMBINATION !!!!!)

2. PIKEMEN + PALADIN

3. CAV ARCHER + (CHAMPS/ PALADIN)

4. YOUR CASTLE UNIQUE UNIT + SUPPLEMENT with either short range powerful regiment or vice versa.

STRENGTHS

1. PIKES ARE GOOD AGAINST MOST OF THE MOUNTED UNITS( esp war elephants ) except cavalry archers and mongol mangudai.

2. SCORPIONS are good against most of the non MOUNTED units.( slow moving infantry)

3. CHAMPIONS are good against pikes.

4. MORE TO BE ADDED SOON.

WEAKNESSES

1. PIKES WEAK TO onagers, scorpions, ranged mounted units and some good ranged infantry

2. Any Non ranged mounted unit weak againat the pikes

3. MORE TO BE ADDED SOON.

Tricks with the AI—

If you are under attack early and you are not ready yet, lure the enemy near your garrisoned town center. Also try and build some houses and 2-3 outposts in the direction of your enemy.( hey this does not work with humans– after all, humans are cleverer.. 😀 ). The AI will be busy attacking those units and you have a chance to get ready while they are not attacking your villagers. Keeping them distracted by this way really helps.. Ok then hope this section has helped you with your playing skills atleast a bit..

Re AOE stategies and queries: YOU CAN ALWAYS ANYTIME ASK A QUESTION BY POSTING A COMMENT WITH YOUR E-MAIL ID. I WILL BE HAPPY TO HELP IF I GET THE TIME.