Basics of Age of Empires 2

Basics of Age of Empires II — How to be great or simply to win your friends.

Copyright 2016 by André D. Ferreira

Published by André D. Ferreira at Smashwords

Age of Empires ® is a registered trademark by Microsoft Corporation ®. This item is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft.

Front Page Cover Design: Lauria

Last Page Image Credit: trebuxet

Interior Design: André D. Ferreira

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For any questions, suggestions or inquiries email me at: [email protected]

Version 1.04

Preface

This is the kind of book so well written, with so many details that even the most experienced players will benefit from it

I was so amazed by all the information written on it that I had to check myself if most of them were true information. It is!

It describes everything you need to know about macro, micro, strategies and other really useful tips you can use to improve your gameplay (pay extra attention to the tips if you are a new player, most of the things I`ve used to teach to students when I`ve used to give paid classes are in it with much more details. Also, the micro and the macro information are definitely something that every player NEED to know if they want to be decent at AoE2).

While most people think AoE2 is just mechanical skills and practice, this book shows how much game knowledge is hidden behind the curtains.

I think I have never seen an AoE2 book before, but I will most certainly not see another with so many details like this one. I highly recommend the read. Rate: 5 out of 5

FeAge, Top Age of Empires II: The Conquerors player

Abbreviations

== Economy ==

f: food

w: wood

g: gold

s: stone/second (see context)

r: resource

TC: town center

FC: fast castle

== Unit Related ==

acc.: accuracy

DO: Damage Output (or damage per second DPS)

UU: unique Units

FU: fully Upgraded

M.A: Melee armor

P.A: Piercing armor

M.Atk: Melee attack (attack that triggers M.A)

P.Atk: Piercing attack (attack that triggers P.A)

FR: Firing rate (or attack speed)

HP: Hit Point

E.: Elite

H.: Heavy

DD: Damage Dealer

SG: Stand Ground

PPR: Perpendicularly Patrolling Rams

== Units ==

CA: Cavalry Archer

HC: Hand Cannoneer

SO: Siege Onager

BBC: Bombard Cannon

EW: Eagle Warrior

TK: Teutonic Knight

WW: War Wagon

BBT: Bombard Tower

== Other ==

w/: with

TG: Team Game

AoE2:TC: Age of Empires II: The Conquerors

RTS: Real Time Strategy

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Military

The Hill and Numbers Advantage

Powering, Galloping and Power Spikes

Tactics

Focus Firing

Setting concaves, flanking and surrounding

Attack surface

Reconnaissance, Concealment and Misdirection

Multi-pronged attack

Runners

Patrolling and Stances

Protecting Injured Units

More on moving and attack formation

Attack paths and the element of surprise

Decision time

Building positioning

Walling

Walls as a way to buy time

Walls as a way to limit the enemy’s available options

Effective walling

Break-Even Unit Trades

Feudal Age Fighting

Notes for the Skirmishers/Spearmen player:

Notes for the scouts/archers/skirmishers player:

Microing and overkill

Accuracy

Military Upgrades

Feudal age

Castle age

Imperial age

Building-related upgrades

Units and Their Counters

Summary of Counters

Other Military Tips

Dodging Mangonels’ shots with archers

Rally points

Monk Tricks

Villager Target Priority

Raiding

Economy

Food Decay

Luring Animals to Drop-off sites

Intro

When to lure the boar for minimal food decay:

Boar tricks

Farmers Efficiency

Where should we place the very first farms?

Where should we place the next farms after the first ring is full?

Aztecs

When to make new lumbercamps

Villager Building Speed And TC Building

When Should You Research Loom?

The Value of a Villager

Resources are deposited After building a drop-off Structure

How should we gather food from deer?

Economic Upgrades

Feudal Age

Castle age

Imperial age

Trade carts and Gold Income

Why should you bother making trade carts?

Where should you place the markets?

When should you create the markets and trade carts?

Relics

Resource trading

Food Stealing

How to Correctly Macromanage

Builds & Strategies

Multipurpose Dark Age Rush

1) Drush + Early Feudal

2) Slow Feudal

3) Drush + FC

Town Center Rush

With Militia Support

Without Militia

Tower Rush

8 min. Mongol trush

Korean / Teuton Trush

Notes on Trush

Forward Rush

Important timings

About Forward

Scout Rush

Important timings

Archer Rush

Mayan Eagle Rush

Counters to this strategy and possible responses:

Important timings

Fast Castle

Variations/Follow ups

Other FUN strategies you can try

Man at arms + trush

Saracens Monk Rush

Team Games

For Arabia and its Variations

Timings and Other Useful Values

Timings

Useful resource values to know

Other Strategy Tips

General Tips & Knowledge

The Characteristics of a Good Map

Understanding Game Alerts

Groups And unit Selection

Hotkey Suggestion for High Effective APM

Go to commands:

Military commands:

Build commands:

Menu

Other commands:

Random Tips

A Few Tips on Practicing

Useful Links

References

Appendixes

Math

Lanchester’s Square Law

Break Even Unit Trades

Military Upgrades

Farm Upgrades

Heavy Plow vs Bow Saw

Villager Building Speed

The Value of a Villager

How should we gather food from deer?

Resource Trading

Constant Unit production

Constant Unit Production

Unit Attributes

Infantry

Non-siege Ranged Units

Melee Cavalry

Siege

Post-Imperial Civilization Land Combos

Civilization Land Strength Through the Ages

Post-Imperial Military Land Unit and Civilization Strengths

Unit Cost efficient Counters

INTRODUCTION

To be competent in any activity one needs two basic elements: knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge effectively. Knowledge can be acquired through self-discovery (experimenting, studying, experience …), or information transmission (books, videos, speeches,…) while the ability to apply it comes with continuous deliberate practice.

Fortunately there is an abundance of books on the topic of practicing to achieve greatness [1-5], and they cover it pleasantly well, which only leaves out the knowledge factor. But is knowledge that important and can’t you just get it by playing?

If you watch top player’s live streams you’ll see that many of them aren’t excruciatingly fast and yet are marvelous players. Yes, speed matters — your hotkeys should be optimized for it and you should feel a sense of fluency when playing the game: to be able to issue actions sequentially, continuously and quickly. For that it helps to have a clear purpose and plan in mind. But if the plan and purpose are poor, then all that speed is wasteful. It’s not just how you do something, it is also what you do — decision making. And decision making comes down to competence which again comes down to knowledge and being able to apply it.

Some do indeed argue that knowledge comes from playing hundreds upon hundreds of games, and watching a similar amount of recorded games. And it can be true. Knowledge can come that way. But at what time cost? Imagine if instead of being taught, children were told: Here is all the material you need. Now just discover algebra, physics and chemistry by yourself. Off you go! Or that coaches told their pupils to play non-stop and that knowledge would eventually come. Fortunately, that’s not what happens. Experience is just knowledge gained from practicing, from connecting dots from situations that happened in different occasions. But why not gain it in another, quicker way? In all sports, coaches act, among other things, as knowledge transmission vehicles to their pupils. In the same way paper, videos and ebooks can serve as knowledge transmission vehicles that invalidates the need to grind through several hundreds of games.

If you see the amount of knowledge that is contained in this book, a lot of which is known by top players, either consciously or intuitively, you’ll quickly see that what’s setting you back is probably knowledge and being able to apply that missing information.

Mind you, there is a considerable amount of knowledge one has to amass to be able to play Age of Empires at a high level. Indeed, because of its magnitude and because I’m unsure about the interest out there in a type of book like this as well as its success, I decided to compose but an introduction covering the basics while at the same time still being interesting to top-level players.

So whether you’re new to the game looking for ways in which to improve, or you simply want to know more about it, or you’re an expert looking for details to give you little competitive edges. Either way this book is packed with information and is targeted to both types of players which should be able to find in here information that they find useful at their level of play. You don’t need to read it from top to bottom, you can simply skip to the section that interests you the most and start there.

A lot of the knowledge and techniques contained in here should also be general enough so that they are applicable to newer expansions of the game. The way of thinking that is encouraged also enables readers to apply the same thinking techniques to develop themselves in those newer expansions.

There are many topics in this version of the book that I won’t delve into, such as navy and map specific strategies, because they would add more to an already long book and at this point I still don’t know whether there is enough interest out there in doing so. If there is, then it’s something I can consider doing in the future.

Finally I will often talk about the enemy as being he but this is just to simplify the writing and reading understanding, no gender discrimination is implied. Often times it can get confusing to refer to the other player as they in order to remove the gender issue. So I used masculine pronoun he instead, but understand that I’m referring to both genders.

I also took some care to optimize the book for color-blind people and black and white printing for your personal use, though I can’t guarantee it will be as comprehensible as the orginal color-version.

I will invite the reader to join this journey of discovering the game through the power of thinking by first principles[⁶] and of understanding and memorizing by visual imagery, as shown to increase memory retention[⁷-⁹].

Happy learning and gaming!

MILITARY

We’ll begin by exploring some of the military aspects of AoE2:TC, including:

Powering, power spikes, and the balance between economy and military spending;

The hill and numbers advantage, or the counter-intuitive way in which numbers and the geographical elevation can decisively influence the outcome of battles;

General military tactics, many of which well-known and used by great medieval generals and strategists;

Building positioning and their importance in protecting your economy and providing military advantage;

When and why to use walls;

Break-even unit trades or knowing when a fight is worth taking;

Specificities of feudal age fighting;

The accuracy of ranged units;

Break-even point of military upgrades, and when it’s better to research them as opposed to creating more units;

Units and their counters, which units are good against which units;

Rally points, micro and a few neat tricks.

The Hill and Numbers Advantage

A unit that is attacked from another that is in a higher altitude takes 25% more damage and deals 25% less damage to that unit.

The influence of army altitude in damage exchange between two units.

So let’s consider 2 units with 100 attack and 200 HP. After the first shot is fired (note that this also applies to melee damage) the unit on top has 200-75HP=125 and the one on the bottom 200-125=75 HP. 125/75=1.66(¹). Which means that the one on the top has a 66% bigger combat advantage and (roughly) vice-versa. Also note that for this effect to happen, it’s enough that your unit is above the enemy unit. It is irrelevant by how much.

But how exactly how can we translate this information to a practical action? How many more units does that mean? When numbers are involved things get curious, because the effect of a difference of numbers exponentially increases as the remaining units keep fighting. That means that in a battle of 50 vs 49 (equal units and equal altitude), the end result will not be 1 alive, but many more.

The Lanchester’s Square law is a mathematical formula that relates the starting number of units from 2 armies, their relative strength and the remaining number of units after they battle each other. More details about it can be found in the Appendix Math, here only the conclusions and the general reasoning will be mentioned. There are several nuances to it, but for here I’m just interested in using it to show you how much the number of units affect the resulting remaining units after a fight, and why you should fight when the enemy is outnumbered (all else being equal).

The exponential relationship of army size difference and casualties.

If you have an army of 50 units and your enemy of 49. That is a difference of 1, you will win the battle with 10 units left (40 will die) (1). If you have 4 more units than your enemy, at the end you’ll have 20 left (2) and if you have 10 more units, you’ll end up with 30 units left (3). In an intuitive way, this is because an initial difference of 1 quickly becomes a difference of 2 as we have one more unit attacking. Then even more quickly that difference of 2 becomes of 3 (because now we’ve 2 more units attacking), and so on.

This information has at least two important practical implications, one for when to retreat and the other for when to attack: For fights where you’re unsure who’s going to win. At the initial stage of the fight that feeling doesn’t seem to change, but after the first casualties you need to pay very close attention because it’s very likely that the tide will quickly and overwhelmingly turn towards one of the sides. This means that as soon as you think a battle is not going well for you immediately retreat, as your losses will only get exponentially larger. The inverse is true. When you recognize that you outnumber the enemy (all else being equal) even by only a small margin, you should definitely take the fight, as that small margin will only get bigger in your favor.

Now let’s introduce the hill bonus. The hill bonus is equivalent to saying that one army is 66,(6)% stronger than the other. After a few calculations the formula tells us that the army of the attacker that is below in altitude needs to be ~29% bigger than the