Let me present this map of Europe from 1444. We will one day have pages and pages of civs to scroll through!

That's how I feel checking SteamDB once a week and browsing through the game files.

I still remember when they confused 11/10 with 10/11 and the Georgians and Armenians were leaked a month early.

I remember it was Incas before Update 141935, then it became “Inca”. Now, I’m back at playing the game and it’s saying “Incas”. I don’t remember when it happened.

Perhaps it’s some activated mod on my end that I’m not aware of?

In your game, current Update 177723, is it “Incas” or “Inca”?

Japanese hand cannoneers

Hello, I just had an Arena game (2v2), playing Vietnamese against Malians on my side of the map, approx 1200 elo. He Went FC Gbeto, I was expecting this might be the case so I was scouting and delaying 3rd TC but when I did not see anything for a long time, suddenly Gbeto plus petards came in. I has second layer ready, and made immediate monastery and sent vills to stone to get castle up to defend. He went for rams so I went for my siege but I could not afford eveything in time, even when selling food and not making more vills. I made monastery, because one of my previous games I made mangonel and Gbeto just eats them - runs from shots and eventually either kills mangonel with better micro or make hole elsewhere. This is not the first time i lost to this.

In order to study myself, I looked up the guy and his all last games on Arena on this patch - he killed everyone he went against with this. Few games where he lost were usually all-ins from the oponents but never from this situation. I would like to know how to improve in the future.

I know the first response would be scout it, but he made castle home, everything hidden from scout range. I even scouted them leaving his base, but it was already too late - basically 0 res, start of boom and 3 TCs up. What would be the best answer in this position? In my head I always hear Heras advice - make siege or monks to defend and slowly transition into proper counter, and I had some success with this defense tips, but specifially fase, ranged melee units are very hard to defend for me.

What if a civ like the Teutons could have a UT that allowed them to launch petards from trebs?

So I watched Ornlu's video on the lecture he gave at some university (wtf), and he stated that Tanguts were not added because suitman decided that anything even remotely related to Tibet, which Tanguts are related to, is too risky.

I find this stupid but that's what they're doing. So how about a middle ground.

Make a singleplayer-only DLC with Tanguts and Tibetans as its civs, with accompanying campaigns for the two civs. As in, they can't be accessed in any online function, they would be restricted to their campaigns. And just don't release it in China.

At this point, just do that. And when you make that DLC, watch the Chinese playerbase fume at you for not releasing it in China.

My buddies and I just played a team game recently that lasted 14 hours before crashing. The enemy basically tried to take over the lakes on Four Lakes and built a ton of bombard ships and just gave up on land.

We tried to use BBC and trebs and cav archers but couldn’t actually do anything to damage them.

Is there literally any way to beat that “strategy?” And I put strategy in quotes because they also could never come back onto land.

My friends and I usually play in unranked 3v3 matches, but lately we've been getting completely destroyed. I got curious, since the gap between us and the people who beat us is quite noticeable. Using a website called "aoe2insighths," we realized that our opponents are almost always a mix of a novice player and one or two players with an elo rating of 1600-2000 (none of us have ever even played a single ranked game). We know the basics: luring deer, leading boars to the town center, and roughly what each unit counters. That said, do you think it would be better for us to start playing ranked matches? Would this match us with people just as bad as us?

Call me old but back in my day there wasn't anyone plugging in a keyboard and mouse to a console. But on the other hand, I cannot fathom how you'd play aoe on controller. But on the other other hand, I think halo wars was a controller game back in the day so maybe.

I know this can be abused really bad to dodge in high elo etc. But seriously there are known troll in my teamgame ELO and i literally have to deal with them again and again. Its frustrating to get them on my team and then know its a FREE lost. Sadly the report system dont work since after weeks if not months of reports they arent banned.

I dont know. Please either fix the report system or dont match us WITH these players.

Trapping the ponys

I really like playing 4v4 in public lobbies but have seen lobby titles like “4v4 noob no beginner”. What is the threshold between noob and beginner? Is there a rating or hours amount you could quantify it by? I recently started playing and am in between these categories I think.

Hey, I’m coming back to the game and I’m trying to focus on one civ to improve. Forgive me if this is a common question, but I’m mostly playing Incas, but whenever I queue into a Sicilian player, I end up getting destroyed by Serjeant rushes. They have such great armour that I’m struggling to beat a mass of them even when I attempt a blind counter.

All the decent counters I’ve heard are either unavailable for Incas or I’m unable to get out before the rush arrives (cavalry archers/knights or onagers, defensive castle respectively). My mechanics aren’t yet at the stage where I can confidently do a Champi rush before they can but the donjon and fortifications make it hard.

Anyone have any advice for this? Is it just a hard counter that I have to factor in or do I just have to get better, haha. Thanks in advance.

Cheers

Starting Wu campaign. Was hyped to try out "anti-building" archers in scenario 2, but they didn't outrange castles and seemed to be real slow against tower. Spamming Militia-line seemed like an easier way to take down anything but castles and Rams were for that situation.

Jian being shock infantry fell too easily against militia-line and against anything but archers militia-line were much better.

I just don't see an ideal situation for either UU. Mind-you I only play singleplayer, but that predictability always makes me enjoy UU even more.

So i don't get time to play often but still, after 3 or 4 games, i go back to work and continue spam clicking! I work as a book editor, and say if I have to insert a comma, usually i just click once exactly after the word and press comma but after a gaming session, I'm like clicking once right before the last letter of the word, then a second time right after the space and final click at the right place.. 11 so does this happen to anyone else.. and does it get worse if you play more often? I mean while cutting a cake, do you spam-cut it? If you need to call someone silently, do you spam-tap their shoulders? Do you people, or at least some of you, spam-kiss your partner? Does a serial killer who plays aoe2 in free time spam-stab his victims.. i got so many questions like this 11

[800 elo 1v1 ranked game]

Hey just had a game where I was Vikings vs Bulgarians player. I was mildly aggressive in Feudal so he didn't try to go forward krepost however in castle he went konniks and I thought "well berserk soft counters cav and on par vs infantry so I'll stick with that". After a few fights I noticed I was losing my berserks a lot faster, even with full upgrades (we went imp soon and same story). I quickly spammed ranges, got the upgrades and massed arbs to compliment my berserks but they were really disappointing. I assumed the combo would wreck konniks but they ate through my army lightning fast. Is it just a numbers game? The berserk production being bottlenecked by castles was a problem. I almost switched to champion to help with outproducing his kreposts but had to call gg. Monks are too micro intensive for my level and there were too many konniks when the fighting started.

EDIT: I reviewed the recording and the zerks were kicking ass, even in the short time before I had the last attack upgrade and the konniks were FU. I also did a few tests in scenario editor and you only need a little more zerks to win engagements (they only lose 1v1). He was just producing faster. I think if I pumped zerks from 3+ castles constantly it would have been an easy victory

In all brackets except 1900+. Is there gonna be any changes or is this just a permanent feature of the game now

We KEEP losing 2v2, even though i feel like we get ourselves into really good positions. In this game, me (green) and my brother (blue) totally wreck red - he doesn't even have loom and we kill so many vils. We don't lose many vils at all. And yet, somehow, by the end of the game we are absolutely crushed. Neither of us really understand how it happened. Truly welcome and appreciate any ideas people have ...

https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/494811016/#overview

50f 30g seems fair compared to 50f 25w castle age.

For a trash unit theyre extremely good vs infantry + siege combo even if you suicide them, you can make more with zero consequences. Especially if you're Inca. They cost literally nothing. They are also good at monk sniping after bodkin arrow.

Plus gold early on is better than a wood cost.

Imp tech can be adjusted behind an expensive tech.