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    Age of Empires II Queens' Charity Clash: An Age of Queens Event

    March 03, 2022

    Age of Empires II Queens' Charity Clash: An Age of Queens Event

    Queens' Charity Clash: An Age of Queens Event

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 06:42 AM PST

    Age of Queens* is happy to present Queens' Charity Clash: A fundraising event featuring a series of Ao2:DE showmatches played by women during Women's History Month. Teams will each represent one of two charities that support women, Girls Who Code or Feminist Frequency, in a month-long showdown for top donations!

    Players will compete individually or as a team to score points for their charity. All money donated by you the viewer will be split between the two charities based on points the players earn. Everyone who donates will essentially be supporting two organizations, but will the one you're rooting for come out victorious? Come find out and stop by our Age of Queens Twitch Team page ( https://twitch.tv/team/ageofqueens ) to find women streamers who will be playing and casting, as well as anyone in the community participating in the open streaming of this event.

    The opening ceremony will commence on International Women's Day, Tuesday March 8th. We'll start off with a 4v4, all 5 games played, showmatch, followed by two weekends of multi-player events and a grand finale March 30th, featuring a 1v1 showmatch between our highest ranking players.

    Don't miss out on the fun! You can find more information on the public AoQ server: https://discord.gg/maNyegedwc Throw your money here, now! To donate: http://paypal.me/ageofqueens

    AoEZone post: https://aoezone.net/threads/queens-charity-clash.180095/

    submitted by /u/Yekkies
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    Nomad is hard.

    Posted: 03 Mar 2022 01:22 AM PST

    Survivalist

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 12:35 PM PST

    Watching good games is a little harder novadays. I am sure many of you have heard about Survivalist. He has started to upload daily videos for 3 weeks. Most of the his contents are great to watch. He always tries something new. After watching his videos you want to play arabia. I think he deserves more followers. Take a look. https://youtube.com/c/SurvivalistAoE

    submitted by /u/West-Construction-56
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    Opponents Persian Douche fails. Only possible explanation is I'm a smurf. True story!

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 09:58 PM PST

    So I just played a Four Lakes game as Britons against an opponent who had Persians. Red flag number one.

    I was slow scouting my base and even slower finding his base. At the time I arrived in his base, I was about 20-21 pop and had taken both boars and working on my sheep. I happened to pass his second boar as I entered his base. Red flag number two!

    I got suspicious of a douche coming, so I stayed close to his base and happened to get close to his TC, which I hadn't discovered yet and immediately turned around and got out of range right as he garrisoned his vills, so I got away without taking damage. Just before that, I manage to trap his scout in my wood line with a house. He IMMEDIATELY started accusing me of cheating! LOL!

    I click up and he ungarrisons his vills and walks them RIGHT PAST MY SCOUT! So I knew a douche was coming.

    I followed the vills all the way back to my base and he attempts to drop his TC. I had already started sending villages toward his. The moment he drops the TC, I attack his vills, basically attacking 1-on-1. He has about 10 vills and I've brought about 16 to the fight, so I know I'm either going to deny the TC, or it's probably game over.

    After he loses about 4 vills, he gives up on the TC and just starts accusing me of being a smurf. Why? Because clicking single vills to attack his vills so quickly was impossible, as far as he was concerned. I even told him how I did it (Select them all, attack one vill, deselect one villager, attack then next vill. Repeat until all vills are under attack.) Apparently, that's impossible!

    So, he decides to behave true to the name of the strat, refuses to resign and forces me to kill every unit has on the map. What should have been a 15-20 minute game, took about 40 minutes!!

    Lesson of the day - only smurfs can stop a douche that was obviously coming and only smurfs can quickly attack and kill 10 vills around a TC. Who knew?!

    submitted by /u/kellytehuna
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    Blast from the past: A snippet from an online Q&A session with Sandy Petersen, one of AoE 2's original developers, posted on the 14th October 1999, so 2 weeks after AoE 2's release. Source in the comments

    Posted: 03 Mar 2022 03:08 AM PST

    A solution to the "can't cast old recs" problem: let us revert to previous builds via the beta menu in Steam

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 04:50 PM PST

    Donjons

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 10:32 PM PST

    Should Donjons provide +10 housing, it's a minor buff to make Donjon rushes just a little more effective given there higher cost.

    Could also change the Civ bonus from 100% faster building TC & Castles to 20% faster per age for TC's, Donjons & Castles. (Increases Donjon build times to balance in the Feudal age)

    submitted by /u/Aggravating-Skill-26
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    Bo21 Daut Vs Tatoh 3rd March 2022

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 07:24 AM PST

    Jordan is hosting a Bo21 Daut Vs Tatoh starting tomorrow 3rd March 2022. The total prizepool is 1000$.

    The event will start tomorrow, with the target of completing 7 games in a day.

    More information: https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/DauT_vs_TaToH/6

    submitted by /u/studentofaoe2
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    Any advice for someone that's never tried ranked regarding maps/lobbies?

    Posted: 03 Mar 2022 01:21 AM PST

    Hadn't played aoe2 since it came out (yes, I'm old) and after randomly watching WWC on YouTube I bought it. Have played around 10 hours and beat Hard for the first time so feel ready to play some humans.

    However, the amount of maps worries me.

    Do you think I ought to ban certain maps where the known 'better players' play?

    Any advice appreciated as certain maps seem to be played by specific sub-sets of players, such as Arena, Arabia, Black Forest...

    I have only played random map against AI the past few days and have probably seen 7 or so maps in total.

    Also, how do I know what lobby to join to find casual players?

    Thanks

    submitted by /u/Redditing12345678
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    Ultra late-game diplomacy is hard.

    Posted: 01 Mar 2022 09:35 PM PST

    Key Military Unit Hotkeys

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 06:54 PM PST

    Hey Guys,

    Are there key hotkeys for unit selection outside of control groups I'm missing?

    It seems like the pros very quickly select all of a unit type (archer vs knight or picking archers out of skirts) with just the click of a button while I highlight them all and shift click an archer.

    Any useful military hotkeys are appreciated!!

    submitted by /u/ghknapp
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    Why don't some people resign?

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 08:57 AM PST

    I have only started playing ranked. For my last two games I encountered people who did not resign, until the last villager was standing. These were not even close maps.

    In one match, I had to go to imperial age and research spies to find last remaining transport hidden in the last corner of map. Even with spies, it was diffcult to see blue transport on water.

    In another, the opponent kept using transport to move around and building lumber camps, only. He did not have any food, gold or stone. Again had to use spies, spent a awful lot amount to find and kill each villager.

    I do not have too much time to play games, games longer than 1 hour becomes problem.

    Please don't do such things.

    submitted by /u/mimbari
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    How the hell do I win a single game in Arena?

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 08:08 AM PST

    Hello it's always me your friendly scrub with another dumb question.

    So here it is : How do you win in arena? I seem to get smashed over and over by people doing cheesy strats, I play mostly Byz, if I go fast imp i get castledropped before I can make a single unit, if I go fast castle then I don't have time to place a single tc because the enemy is at my doors with rams/spearmen/cavaliers/monks before I even placed my barracks, because somehow the dude made castle age 50 sec faster than me even though I followed the build order to the letter and was in a good timeframe myself.

    What my broader question is, how do I effectively prepare for these cheese strats? It's arena so it is walled and I cannot scout to see what the enemy is doing, I can assume for example 90% a turk goes for fast imp then hand cannoneers and bombard cannons for example but it is not 100% certain and most civs can do whatever they want.

    especially vs rams, I cannot even make a siege workshop when I fast castle before the dude is at my walls with units.

    ​

    Insane how my arabia winrate is like 3 times my arena winrate lmao please help.

    submitted by /u/CammelloRotante
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    Your Favorite Paladins?

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 06:45 PM PST

    Mine are Franks and Lithuanian Paladins, for their tankiness and power from relics.

    submitted by /u/hussar269c
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    Deer vs. Berries

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 03:28 AM PST

    Deer vs. Berries

    Many players don't hunt all deer because usually the build orders you find around don't include them. But what if you had 2 berry patches? Would take them both?

    In this post I'll compare deer vs. berries from the economic stand point and analyse if it makes sense to take always all the deer the same as you always take the berries.

    Berries

    I'll start with berries. This is the cost (in villager time) of gathering 750 F from berries with 4 villagers:

    1. Walking time from TC to berries: 20 s * 4 villagers = 80 villager-seconds.
    2. Build time of Mill = 35 villager-seconds.
    3. Time gathering (including bumping and walking) = 750 F / 0,271 F/s = 2767 villager-seconds.
    4. Cost of Mill = 100 W gathered at 0,359 W/s = 100 / 0,359 = 279 villager-seconds.

    Its sum gives 3161 villager-seconds to gather 750 F, so the effective gather rate for berries is 0,237 F/vs.

    How to compare Deer vs. Berries

    When gathering deer, depending of how you arrange your hunters, you can optimize 2 things: total food or gathering rate. For example, long distance with 8 villagers will get most of deer food while long distance with 3 villagers will get only 105 F but at maximum speed. Of course, it doesn't make sense to send 8 villagers accross the map to gather 1 deer because the walking time would be too much and they could be gathering other resources instead. So there's a need of something to take this into account, I need a single metric that allows to decide if certain method is better than the other or better than berries.

    This is the formula I came with for that:

    % Improvement = (FT2 *(1 - VFOTHER/VF2) - FT1*(1 - VFOTHER/VF1))/AVERAGE(FT2;FT1)

    Where FT is the total food collected by the method, VFOTHER is the gathering rate of a 'reference' food source, usually berries, and VF is the effective gathering rate by the method.

    That formula calculates the % of extra food that method 1 gets over method 2 evaluated in the time of the method that takes longer to finish. It assumes that extra time that the shorter method has (before the longer finishes) is spent gathering food at VFOTHER.This is done to take into account the benefit you get from the faster method.

    If you want to check the development of this formula, see this sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_K7mvoqZLKK8ffbw9XWQ7QjRtpx-jdwi/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107994287938808773998&rtpof=true&sd=true

    So having the formula that allows to compare with berries now I need to find the FT and VF for each deer hunting method. This can be done with some formulas (which I used but they are too complicated to put it here) but it can also be done experimentally in-game. For example, if you send 3 villagers to gather 1 deer and measure the time and the total food they gather, and they will take around 154 s and will comeback with 105 F for a effective gathering rate of 105 F / (154 s * 3 v) = 0.227 F/villager-seconds.

    I got this results for different methods of hunting patches of 3 deer (#V is the number of villagers used and LD is Long Distance):

    ​

    https://preview.redd.it/zvz3n2bgbyk81.png?width=1052&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ba77fb02bbc579b4521fea4fbbc77d5557dfbb9

    Some conclusions I came up with those results:

    • Hunting deer from the first patch is comparable to gathering berries. I think this should be incorporated in the build orders for lower and medium ELO players. They could be taken in late dark age or while advancing to feudal to reduce the risk of having your villagers too exposed.
    • Deer is 'free' food. If you don't gather it, you will need to gather wood and then make farms which is very slow. If you gather all deer, you will delay your farms and you won't have such a big wood/food shortage in feudal.
    • If you are able to push at least 1 deer, you can take long distance the 2 deer left and choose between a faster gathering method or a maximum total food method.
    • If don't like to push deer, you can make a mill for them and it still is good compared with berries.
    • It doesn't matter if you build the mill with 4 or 1 villagers. Build it with 4 since it requires less micromanagment.
    • Pushing all 3 deer is obviously much better for food gathering efficiency, but it comes at the cost of exploration and it's hard to execute perfectly. For build orders for average players I think pushing just one is good enough.
    • Your second patch of deer could be taken with a mill if the area is safe. It's less efficient than berries, but may help you to convert quickly 100 W (Mill cost) into 366 F, getting a healthy food boost in moment when food may be difficult to get. Maybe timing it some minutes before going to castle age may work.

    What are your thoughts? Do you have any other idea or conclusion about this or maybe you found an error?

    submitted by /u/Vixark
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    How do you all beat Extreme AI?

    Posted: 03 Mar 2022 01:05 AM PST

    Rushing, or booming and holding out until their gold runs out and then going all-out to defeat them?

    Suppose I'm Poles in Ghost Lake, 4v4.

    submitted by /u/hussar269c
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    should people be required to provide their elo when giving strategy advice?

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 05:03 PM PST

    Personally I feel like this would be really helpful and honestly fairer. I would like to know if the advice I'm receiving about when to add my next TC is coming from someone 500 below me or 500 above me.

    submitted by /u/Neighbourly
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    What 1 strategy/civ do you think is best to master to move up the ranked ladder?

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 10:43 AM PST

    I know it depends but for someone is who has limited time but is looking to improve their elo what is a good strategy/civ to work on.

    submitted by /u/Just_Natural_9027
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    Attack Move logic and Search Radius (Spirit of the Law)

    Posted: 01 Mar 2022 09:08 PM PST

    Source for all hidden unit armor stats?

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 07:13 PM PST

    Is there a comprehensive list of all the units' hidden armor stats somewhere online or in a file? I can't seem to find a table with them when I search online. Maybe in the game files on the hard drive?

    submitted by /u/Sevesys
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    Month 8: Chinese (Analysis in Comments)

    Posted: 01 Mar 2022 07:55 PM PST

    Why Burmese get so much moan?

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 08:38 AM PST

    Me see Burmese get lots of moan but am uncertain this why. Darkel not bonus true but feudal get lumberjack techs pronto. Tho Britons get faster ranges the gooder wood income makes Burmese skirms competitive no? Castle skirms start fall apart but requires great big upgrades and instead Burmese start favour horsies which have all big techs except paladin. This makes for sufficient cope into castle age? Not need worry skirmisher armour when xboys need shoot knights.

    Plus in imperial age have make-crunchy archer tech and make-uncrucny elephant tech.

    Seriously though, I understand the Skirmishers are an especially weak link in the Burmese composition but are they really hopeless? Asking for a friend.

    IF you could post your approximate ELOs at the same time that'd be awesome and help me get some context whether Burmese are just hopeless or whether they're just hard to use.

    submitted by /u/Unbridledscum
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    How to Get and Stay Above 1000 Elo

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 09:55 AM PST

    Which civilization should have a dedicated architecture set?

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 11:44 AM PST

    Looking for player buddies

    Posted: 02 Mar 2022 09:21 AM PST

    Hey guys,

    Been feeling like i haven't been really improving by playing on the ladder lately and team games without a party mostly suck

    So I'm looking for players qround 900 elo looking to practice to together and working on improving and maybe doing some team games as well

    submitted by /u/IberianDread
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    Civilization Match-up Discussion Round 14 Week 3: Bulgarians vs Tatars

    Posted: 01 Mar 2022 09:51 PM PST

    Battle of the two more agreeable Last Khans civs :P

    ​

    Hello and welcome back for another Age of Empires 2 civilization match up discussion! This is a series where we discuss the various advantages, disadvantages, and quirks found within the numerous match ups of the game. The goal is to collectively gain a deeper understanding of how two civilizations interact with each other in a variety of different settings. Feel free to ask questions, pose strategies, or provide insight on how the two civilizations in question interact with each other on any map type and game mode. This is not limited to 1v1 either. Feel free to discuss how the civilizations compare in team games as well! So long as you are talking about how the two civilizations interact, anything is fair game! Last week we discussed the Berbers vs Poles, and next up is the Bulgarians vs Tatars!

    ​

    Bulgarians: Infantry and Cavalry civilization

    • Swordsmen-line upgrades free
    • Town Centers cost -50% stone
    • Blacksmith and Siege Workshop techs cost -50% food
    • Can build Krepost
    • TEAM BONUS: Blacksmiths work +80% faster
    • Unique Unit: Konnik (Heavy cavalry that becomes an infantry when felled)
    • Unique Building: Krepost (A mini-Castle that can only train Konniks)
    • Castle Age Unique Tech: Stirrups (Cavalry attack +33% faster)
    • Imperial Age Unique Tech: Bagains (Swordsmen gain +5/+0 armor)

    ​

    Tatars: Cavalry Archer civilization

    • Sheep and other herdables last +50% longer
    • Additional Town Centers spawn 2 Sheep, starting in the Castle Age
    • Units deal an additional +25% bonus damage when fighting from higher elevation
    • Thumb Ring and Parthian Tactics free
    • TEAM BONUS: Cavalry Archers gain +2 LoS
    • Unique Unit: Keshik (Medium raiding cavalry that slowly generates gold when in combat)
    • Unique Unit: Flaming Camel (Speedy Petard that is only powerful against elephants)
    • Castle Age Unique Tech: Silk Armor (Scouts, Steppe Lancers, and Cavalry Archers gain +1/+1 armor)
    • Imperial Age Unique Tech: Timurid Siegecraft (Trebuchets gain +2 range; enables Flaming Camels at the Castle)

    ​

    Below are some match up-specific talking points to get you all started. These are just to give people ideas, you do not need to address them specifically if you do not want to!

    • Okie dokey, this should be a fun one! For 1v1 Arabia and other open maps, I would hazard to say top players generally think Tatars are a bit stronger on average when compared to Bulgarians. That said, in this match up, Bulgarians do have their strong openings, as well powerful cavalry and infantry. Tatars, meanwhile, are going to be much more focused on the ranged units and avoiding head-on fights. Which civ do you favor on your typical ladder Arabia game and why?
    • On closed maps, both of these civs have some distinct strengths and weaknesses. Bulgarians have a fantastic post-Imp army of infantry, siege, and possibly Konniks, but lack a particularly powerful boom or gunpowder. Tatars, meanwhile, also lack Bombard Cannons, but in this case it becomes especially painful when there are few ways to deal with Siege Onagers + Halbs. Can Tatars get a strong foothold on maps like Arena and Regicide Fortress before being mowed down by Bulgarians?
    • In team games, both of these civs again face some notable strengths and weaknesses. Bulgarians clearly prefer pocket, and although their strong cavalry play may be tempting, the lack of Paladin or an especially strong boom holds them back somewhat compared to the other strong cavalry civs. Tatars, however, have a perfectly solid flank play through Castle Age, the lack of the Arbalest upgrade means the civ is forced to switch into cav archers at that point (if they have not done so already). How do you see these two civs fitting into a typical TG setting?

    Thank you as always for participating! Next week we will continue our discussions with the Franks vs Indians. Hope to see you there! :)

    ​

    Previous discussions: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

    submitted by /u/OrnLu528
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