[Anonymous Player]

My two closest friends and I have been playing Age of Empires 2 for more than two decades.

We are usually able to beat the Hardest AI and even the Extreme level, using a strategy where we barricade all but one entrance and then concentrate our defensive forces there.

We also assign roles to each other (like one person on siege duty).

However, it appears that this tactic is no longer effective.

I recently played Yucatan with one of my friends and we blocked up all but one river passage, but the enemy still managed to break through our walls in random places.

Has something changed?

[MtG-Crash]

There have been a ton of changes, yes.

Almost every single patchnote has a comment that AI got improved.

Also their strength roughly changes.

Viper has a series where he tries to take on as many Extreme AIs simultaneously as possible, and the more recent ones seem harder.

So yeah, the AI is under constant changes.

[King_Jon]

By “siphon” do you mean “funnel”?

The new AI does much better at finding (or creating) a weak point now than the old AI did.

The most effective strategy against the Extreme AI for us (in the Imperial Age) is actually to attack the edges.

The AI has trouble moving troops to the point of attack.

Basically “fight the enemy where they aren’t”.

Since the AI is really good with siege and monks (due to good micro), trying to attack a huge mass of the enemy rarely works for us.

It is actually better to attack the edges.

So my teammates (there are 3 of us) and I try to be attacking in two different places at all times (usually on opposite edges of the board).

Let’s say it is a 3 v 3 game.

If we attack both flanks at the same time, the AI in the middle has a lot of trouble figuring out which way to go.

His troops either stutter around (apparently getting messages to help both his allies at the same time) and don’t accomplish much on either side or else he abandons one of his allies.

So if we hit both flanks hard enough, eventually one of them will break and we can make some headway.

By the time the pocket commits to help that side, either we’ve severely damaged that flank or else we start making lots of headway on the opposite flank since the pocket AI abandons him to help the ally in more trouble.

We used to “funnel” or “maze” the old AI, and kill them by the hundreds, but the new Extreme AI has a serious advantage in mass battles so in theory you want to avoid them most of the time. (The new AI will even use onagers to cut down tree walls).

In addition, the new AI makes really long trade routes along the edge of the board.

That helps its gold generation, but makes itself vulnerable in other ways.

Because it attempts to make the longest trade route possible, it is usually easy to find a market along the side of the board and raid the trade route if you attack the flanks.

All that being said, I have noticed that once there is an obvious opening in the defenses, all the AI allies usually start moving (most of) their troops in that direction, so if that opening is on the side of the board, it usually means the AI doesn’t have much defense on the opposite side.

They still get obsessed with killing off each and every building so if they do break in on one side it is great opportunity to attack them on the opposite side while the bulk of their army is distracted and far away.

In short, I recommend a pincer attack against the AI.

[ChrisEpicKarma]

That still works well against humans at my elo range (950). 😉

[aaronrodgersmom]

This still works most of the time.

Occasionally after a while of a stalemate they try to find other weak spots.

[Pantherist]

There have been several changes.

You can still use funnel tactics a little bit by walling the sides and having the only entry point next to the TC.

The AI falls for luring troops sometimes but mostly it knows how to avoid TC fire.

And it can dance around all day while booming and gaining map control behind, so I guess it’s built into the algo so as to tire out the human player.

If you find yourself doing that, beware.

[Author]

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