Simple, standard aoe2 build orders?

[deleted_user]

Since ESO servers have gone rouge, I bought aoe 2 to try out seriously. What is standard meta on aoe 2 and what should I be doing? Best/easiest civs??

[Rikikipu]

Semi-ff 5 knights, send 2 catapults and push and gg.

[deleted_user]

mmm i like a good, broken strat

[lordraphael]

their are no real build orders on aoe 2. As a noob id suggest you try out the fast castle . Best civ are the huns id say. Azzie and mayas are also very good. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... ast+castle use this to train its great.

[deleted_user]

Thanks!

[lordraphael]

oh and use this to make your own hotkeys https://aokhotkeys.appspot.com/editor . Because if you cant double bind hotkeys in the normal options. If yu want you can have my hotkeys. Spend hours perfecting my system

[Goodspeed]

Huns are strong and easy (no houses needed), if I were you I'd start by just making scouts in feudal and mixing some archers/skirms if they bring pike. Then go castle and make cav archers. It'll be a while before you get the hang of the macro, and I'd say that's a decent place to start.
The Age1 build order is pretty complex compared to AoE3 builds, so look that up and practice it. Iirc you should be aging around the 25th vill. In castle age it's very common to immediately build more TCs and boom hard. Another big difference compared to AoE3 is you actually need siege weapons (rams in castle age or trebuchets in imperial) to kill buildings.

[lordraphael]

Huns are strong and easy (no houses needed), if I were you I'd start by just making scouts in feudal and mixing some archers/skirms if they bring pike. Then go castle and make cav archers.
The Age1 build order is pretty complex compared to AoE3 builds, so look that up and practice it. Iirc you should be aging around the 25th vill. In castle age it's very common to immediately build more TCs and boom hard. Another big difference compared to AoE3 is you actually need siege weapons (rams in castle age or trebuchets in imperial) to kill buildings.

you hsould only age with 25 vills if you are indeed planning on doing a fast castle. std age up is 22 pop id say. maybe even 21.
Quick unit counter system: archer >pike >cav but cav doesnt really counter archers once you have enough units to one shot cav knights or light cav wont cut it vs archers/ crossbows you need mangonels or skirmishers but they are hardcountered by cav I think that are the most important parts.

[deleted_user]

Update: there are a lot of things to hotkey.... outposts, castles, markets, mills, raxes, archery range, stables, dang. Much more than aoe3; I'm going to have to figure that out.

[Durokan]

Note: Arabia is one of the most popular/balanced maps.
Super basic strategies:

Dark age rush (cheese)
This is a 3/4 militia + starting scout rush designed to catch the opponent off guard if they do not scout. You can keep the opponent away from their food/wood and win the game by getting far ahead if the all-in does not fail. (Note: you will be significantly far behind if this fails)

Fuedal rush (flush)
It's pretty common, pretty much the equivalent of a cav heavy semi-ff in aoe3 (more than 5 huss). You make archers or scouts in the fuedal age and raid your opponent's resources. If you can kill alot of your opponents eco you can win here. This should hit between 9-11 mins. You want to age to
Some people, like the goths can do a men-at-arms rush. Scout/Men at arms rushing is more like a xbow/pike rush because its pretty all in, but an archer flush is more like a semi ff.

Catle Age strategies:
The most viable strategies in castle age generally rely on the knight. A reasonable time to make it to castle is around 17 minutes. Once in castle, you just spam a ton of knights. The most viable civs for doing this are the Franks, Mongols, Persians, and Teutons.

Huns build cavalry archers in castle age, don't do this with anyone else really

Mayans and britons can do a crossbowman push in the castle age.

Fast Imperial:
This is a pretty standard strategy with civs like the goths or the turks.
The goths try to fast imperial and get Conscription, Elite Huskarls, and Perfusion. This lets you train your unique unit almost instantly. You should try to train your huskarls out of 10-14 barracks based on how many resources you are gathering. Just set the spawn point on your opponents base and constantly stream in more units. Goths are pretty OP, especially against noobs.


Notes about general things: Gold runs out pretty quickly in this game, so some civs have different strengths at different times. There are generally "trash" units and premium units. Premium units cost gold, and will only be able to built as long as you have gold. Trash units can be built as long as you have food/and/or wood. Civs with really good trash units tend to win games that go long, units with good premium units tend to win games that are short.

Huns are renowned for being the best civ in the game.

[deleted_user]

I appreciate this guys, thanks.

[Durokan]

Update: there are a lot of things to hotkey.... outposts, castles, markets, mills, raxes, archery range, stables, dang. Much more than aoe3; I'm going to have to figure that out.

The hotkeys are very logical. you don't really need to rebind them if you understand how it works. The hotkeys are not bound based on their name like in aoe3, but are instead bound to keyboard locations corresponding with their location on the screen. They are grid-type hotkeys just like starcraft 2

Ex: 'A' Will be the first item from the left, 'S' will be second, 'D' will be third, 'F' is fourth, etc

[lordraphael]

Update: there are a lot of things to hotkey.... outposts, castles, markets, mills, raxes, archery range, stables, dang. Much more than aoe3; I'm going to have to figure that out.

The hotkeys are very logical. you don't really need to rebind them if you understand how it works. The hotkeys are not bound based on their name like in aoe3, but are instead bound to keyboard locations corresponding with their location on the screen. They are grid-type hotkeys just like starcraft 2

Ex: 'A' Will be the first item from the left, 'S' will be second, 'D' will be third, 'F' is fourth, etc

I would alawys use my own Hotkeys. I agree that the default system is decent but having customized hotkeys ( done by yourself ) is always the best

[momuuu]

Their hotkeys are borderline optimal though, utilizing only the left side of the keyboard like you'd want to.

[iNcog]

-- deleted post --

[momuuu]

Though usually people's taste is mostly them being used to a certain setup which might actually be inefficient. If you actually go for a new hotkey setup, I think its crucial to locate the buttons you need on one side of the keyboard (usually left) and I personally believe its good to devote different rows to different categories so that the hotkeys are easily categorized in your head too.

[pecelot]

In terms of basic AoC advice, remember that although there is no attack move, you can use patrol which pretty much works like AM.
Outposts aren't that useful so you will probably not need a hotkey for that.
A common Castle Age combo is — apart from knights — xbows + mangonels. You need to have good micro here, though. Some civs have access to all blacksmith archer upgrades and it can be utilized in such a way. Other nations, like Mayans or Goths, tend to gather stone before hitting Castle Age to build a castle immediately in order to make plumed archers or huskarls respectively.
In 1v1 you quickly run out of gold, as it was mentioned. Civs like Turks then become less viable because they are heavy gold-reliant and have terrible trash-unit lines (only no elite skirmishers, hussars or even pikemen). Others, however, become stronger — Byzantines for instance with cheaper trash.
You can also go for a monk rush. On maps like Arena it becomes a strong tactic and it's a counter to a knight rush.
Water games are pretty simple — mass as many galleys as possible. Strongest civs: Vikings, Japanese, Mayans (even Huns or Mongols).

For more basic build orders I would certainly recommend some YouTube videos from ZeroEmpires and Resonance22, which cover Dark Age build orders and some useful advice. Also search through aoczone.net topics for more.
That's from me who watched a ton of AoC pro games I played my first ever RTS online games on Voobly, reaching 1300 ELO in 50 games, which isn't that bad considering what a noob I was back in the days!
EDIT: don't forget about a tower rush, @lordraphael

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will surely recommend it to you

[musketjr]

Who are the top 5 nilla scrubs on aoe 2? Viper then...?

[Dream]

Hey

The main community site for aoc is http://aoczone.net/. On this site you can find guides, recorded games of experts... You also can find a calendar on the home page. Their you can find information on on-going tournaments, the time when games will be played and where you can watch them.

Here: https://aoc.voobly.com/display/aoc/AoC+Knowledge+Base This can also be very useful if you want to know new stuff about the game. (Currently this site is down I think. Don't know when it will get up)

This http://zeroempires.net/ is also a pretty good site, where you can find alot of useful tips and beginner guides.

Some useful youtube channels:
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheViperAOC (Top 5 player, explains the things he does in most of his games)
https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroEmpires (Great guides and great caster)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZUT79 ... -XMF7l4CFg (T90Official: Good caster)
https://www.youtube.com/user/VooblyOfficial/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/FoptMembrillo (Decent caster, a lot of tournament videos)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtPQLL ... oYXiMl1Nkg (TaToH: top HD player, good team player and 1v1)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChzLZJ ... z-oYKAIC_g (Good micro videos)

Hope this can help you
Dream

[Dream]

Who are the top 5 nilla scrubs on aoe 2? Viper then...?

Chris, DauT, slam, dogua, RiuT, Yo, mbl, BacT...

[Dream]

oh and use this to make your own hotkeys https://aokhotkeys.appspot.com/editor . Because if you cant double bind hotkeys in the normal options. If yu want you can have my hotkeys. Spend hours perfecting my system

Do you want to share your hotkeys in this thread plz? @lordraphael

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[Dream]

Also @SirCallen

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if you play on steam use this site http://aoe2.net/. It's a new lobby the community made and it's way easier than the steam one to find games.

[lordraphael]

oh and use this to make your own hotkeys https://aokhotkeys.appspot.com/editor . Because if you cant double bind hotkeys in the normal options. If yu want you can have my hotkeys. Spend hours perfecting my system

Do you want to share your hotkeys in this thread plz? @lordraphael

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https://aokhotkeys.appspot.com/presets/ ... 0788756480

[momuuu]

I swear I made a post here earlier today, must have messed it up.

I've been playing aoe2 lots, albeit only casually against AIs, and I've really been enjoying it. Might even pick up competitive play at some point. It sucks the unit control and general functionality is really shitty. The gameplay is great, albeit pretty slow, but controlling the units is nothing but annoying. If you raid and try to focus fire with cav, they dont actually focus a villager, they just go to their own shit and then not kill anything at all. Its very annoying actually.

[pecelot]

I kinda agree, there's always a downgrade when you move from AoE3 to AoC, with no shift-clicking or double hotkeys for building.