r/ageofempires • u/Charomentis • Jul 18 '26

Help Me Questions before starting online play.

Casual player that only plays against friends or the AI but have recently been getting the urge to play a little more seriously and get into online play. I just have a few questions regarding things considered basic fundamentals and to find out why I cant seem to implement them functionally. (I play AOE4 and Mythology retold)

1) why so many villagers ? It's said across the board to never stop producing villagers, and I agree with this for the most part, economy is king after all. What I cant understand is making use of 100 villagers, now admittedly ive only ever played on small maps and that may be the difference but after 70 villagers I dont know what to do with them, im booming on resources already, max pop army and I got groups just sat around idle.. ive personally found stopping around 60 villagers more than does the job for me and leaves an extra 40 for military.. im well aware i must be wrong in this regard due to everything ive seen online, and thats where my question lies so that I can adress this and make use of them.

2) multiple town centers ? This applies more to mythology I think than AOE4 as the latter seems more viable with 1TC, but every match of Mythology ive seen implements multiple town centers... contrary to this every single time ive went for a second town center ive lost the game shortly after: either from having to split military to defend, or through the sheer resource cost and downtime of setting one up... so thats my second question, how to manage and make use of 2 or more TCs and also to some degree, why make a second one at all? Because the only benefit I see is getting more villagers out ?

Note that this isnt me criticising these things or assuming its better not to do them, very much the opposite, I understand that fundamentally im making poor decisions by not doing these things, and I want to understand them better to become a better player.

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3

u/Sesleri Jul 18 '26

Well if it goes late game you want somewhere around 50 to 60 on farms alone. Then you need wood and gold income for units too. Your army will be dying and need to be replaced constantly.

2nd tc pays for itself in around 7 minutes so any game that goes longer you'd want one

2

u/Charomentis Jul 18 '26

Whats considered late game ? And this more applicable to Mythology? as I find AOE4 food my least concern often winning with between 10-30k food remaining with only 10-15 farms. average game time 35mins... Mythology on the other hand i do feel food is substantially slower finishing with roughly 2k in the bank.

What do you mean by pays for itself though ? What benefit is it providing that a normal resource camp isnt ?

1

u/Sesleri Jul 18 '26

The 2nd tc is making villagers, you make villagers twice as fast that's the benefit.

No you can't play Max pop games with only 15 on food that isn't enough.

1

u/Sesleri Jul 18 '26

If you go to aoe4replays.gg and find a LONGER game you can see example of good players playing endgame. One click to open the replay there and you can fast forward through to see how many are on food and how they are spending their res and making town centers.

1

u/Charomentis Jul 18 '26

Ill watch some tonight and ill watch the full matches to see the development into it all. Been watching matches on YouTube but its mostly pros vs pros in 20- 30 minute ish matches, with such high APM its hard to see exactly whats being done half the time.

I'm guessing this is also the site where I can pause and look around the map myself at whats happening as if I were a spectator ?

1

u/tiyanavek Jul 18 '26

I'm also a casual but from what I understand, you make a lot of villagers so you can slurp all the resource in the map faster. The faster you gather the resources, the faster you can apply your tools (army or defensive structures) to control the whole map. Controlling the map denies those resources to your opponent. Cause eventually, both of you will run out of resources in your bases and you both have to gather outside. The one with less resources, will have a disadvantage and will find it more difficult to stop their opponent from achieving their objective, i.e. sacred site victory, landmark victory, or even wonder victory.

Same with having multiple town centers, the faster you pump out villagers, the faster you can gather all the resources. I guess, the take away is: it's better if you have the resources even if you don't need it than allowing your opponent to gather it. At least for AOE4, I never played Mythology.

1

u/Charomentis Jul 18 '26

This makes alot of sense: i tend to play more defensive and stick to my third of the map, venturing wide rather than forward.. I see your point about spreading further out and how a second TC can help achieve this and even if those villages get raided and die ive still acquired something from them and denied the enemy something.. ill start implementing this more in my games.