[Anonymous Player]

I’ve been looking at Age of Empires II for a while as a potential new RTS to play.

I have a decent amount of experience in StarCraft II.

Every time I consider starting to learn AoE2, there’s one thing that keeps nagging at me.

In SC2, the average “fixed” phase of most builds is around 3 minutes or less.

I’ve looked at some AoE2 build tutorials and the “set in stone” part seems to be much longer than I would like.

I don’t mind the apparent slower pace of the game, but what I do mind is having to play with sheep for 15 minutes every game.

I’ve watched some “low elo legend” videos, and if I get to around 30 minutes of game time, both players still only have four military units and have barely interacted with each other.

I know low elo is not representative, but still, it’s something to consider.

Can someone help me understand this?

I’ve played other slower pace RTS games such as Supreme Commander, and it didn’t bother me at all.

I still think it’s an interesting topic to discuss.

[31_SAVAGE_]

im new to the game and yes, it is fairly slow.

compared to other rts my main observation is how resilient buildings are against anything that isnt a purpose-made siege unit.

definitely incentivizes slower play and full macro focus for a good bit of the game, especially if players arent that good and dont harass economy/micro that well

[justQb]

Playing sc2 from time to time,

I have the same problem with aoe2 as you.

I don’t like doeing the same stuff every game for the first 7-12 minutes (real time, not ingame time)
(hunting boar, finding and collecting sheep etc.)

i came back for aoe2 because of the empire wars, since it skips the (for me) anoying slow “mini game / single player” early phase.

Empire wars has an easy start for beginners, since you dont have to command your villagers as soon as the game starts (beside to go for sheeps).

In the first SC2 you would have to command the firs workers to go mining.

But they changed that a few years later, so that the workers are already mining when the game starts.

​

main differences for me:

SC2

* needs more micro in your army (thats pretty much why i am always stoping to play it ^^)
* shorter time per game (because tech and army is quicker accessed)
* macro is alot easier for beginners (only 2 resources, effecieny worker cap per base, )

AOE2

* needs more micro for your economy
* verry slow start/ramp up (gets boring over time) ( empire wars skips this phase but feels not completly mature yet.
* i like the setting more

So i will give empire wars some time, for me it is a promising mode, that skips all the unneccessary parts of an early aoe2 match.

[robo_boro]

Depends how broad you consider set in stone.

Technically it deviates from the first second if you consider different maps and civs variations.

If you mean a specific civ on a specific map then maybe the first minute is always the same, then it can start to vary.

[FavorableTrashpanda]

“Set in stone” implies the build is fixed, which doesn’t have to be the case.

Sure, usually we follow a certain script in the Dark Age (aka build order), but you can actually change things up a lot if you want.

You have more flexibility here than in StarCraft 2 IMO.

AOE2 games just need a little more time to build up, but once the fighting starts it doesn’t tend to stop.

As the game goes on, the fights tend to increase in intensity.

It’s just a different kind of game, but I think the slightly slower start pays off in the end.

[Igor369]

The dark age can be kind of dull but as long as there are specific early game civ strats (like lithuanian drush or persian douche) and special game modes (nomad) I think it is fine.

AoE 2 maps are randomized each game unlike SC2 so it also makes dark age a bit more interesting.

[MtG-Crash]

The game is so fast that you have literally zero time for microing and it makes the entire game about macro.

One of the first things Starcraft 2 players usually need to learn in AoE2 is how this game is not about micro.

This game is so fast, that macro actually decides the games, because just throwing more units at your opponent than they can produce already wins games.

I have played around 300h with a friend coming from LoL and he would still micro his scout to kill a villager, while not producing 3 vills of his own.

And I remember him saying “this was my best Dark Age ever” during an Arena game, and I told him my vill count, and he was 4 vills behind before we even clicked Feudal Age.

And he is a 1k – 1k1 elo player (thats in the top half, slightly above top50%).

I have 1k+h in this game and I still mess up Dark Ages of my tight BOs, even when its on Arena.

The game is actually incredibly fast and simply achieving a state of playing it cleanly will take you forever =) So there is really no reason to be afraid of something boring at the beginning of games.

[Mathantastic123]

Ok, starcraft 2’s “set in stone” is smaller, cause the devs iintentionally removed the beggining a long time ago to make it faster, the devs on aoe2 also did that, its the empire wars mode, but it plays so diferently from the original mode that veteran players would never want for that to be the standart (even though its nice as a different thing every so often)
Also, 9-11 minutes in game is a pretty common fast feudal time, that is 5-6:30 minutes real world time, definitly way less that the 15 minutes playing with sheep u mentioned.

AOE2 is a bit unusual when compared to other E-sports, cause the noobs in aoe2 are way “noober” than the noobs on starcraft or lol, almost everyone in those games knows the basics, while in aoe2 even on the ranked ladder, a very small amount of players ever tried to get good at the game, so that 30 minutes in lel is even less indicative of the time.

If u want faster pace, go for empire wars, or play maps like socotra and avoid arena.

The more open and the smaller the map is, the faster paced itll be

[supervoegli]

1) i think youre correct in that for standard game mode (random map arabia with 3vil start), the build up phase that is the same in every game is pretty long.

like, 6-7 minutes.

this phase only changes when the map is changed, or some minor stuff for specific civs.

2) the fact that bad players dont have military until very late is not representative indeed, BUT the first unit coming out at 10 minutes is pretty common.

aoe just has a very slow start, and there are ambitions to change that (some big tournaments recently played around with higher vil count from the beginning to speed things up)

[Kondimen]

Only thing that you have to do and never deviate from except for some exceptions is first 6 vills go to sheep and 4 next go to lumber camp after that you send some vills to berries and for hunt but that is already up to you how you chose to play at that point.

Agression can start in dark age with milita drush but real fight starts once both players reach 20 vills and reach feudal age

[andrasq420]

Everyone’s saying LeL.

What is/Who is LeL?

[jeowaypoint]

The “set in stone” phase for all land-map openers is

1) maintain villager production = 6 on food

2) get wood for houses+necessary buildings = 2-4 on wood

3) get excess food to go towards feudal age, namely huntables (boars or elerhinos) and making a mill on berries or deer depending on map.

4) other resources needed for opener at a given time (such as gold for militia /men-at-arms)

The dark age is mostly all about gathering information to determine what opener strategy to go for, information like opponent opener, map features (openness/closed = wallability/defensibility without army investment), strategically interesting locations/features (res locations).

Basically the stone-set prioroty order is about 3 ingame mins here too.

I don’t know which tutorials you watched (low elo legends and T90 in general is not really guide content, LeL especially is completely worthless to watch even for beginners), but I can link you relevant ones upon request.

Ones like Survivalist, St4rk etc.

Seeing how you mentioned Supreme Commander, I know a few players of that who reached 13-1800 elo in a relatively short few weeks/month or two period, so an intermediate 13+ level is very achievable for an RTS veteran of any game with little effort.

[Pantherist]

Usually it’s place 2 houses with starting vils, move scout then keep making vils as 6 to sheep, 4 to wood and the next one to boar.

This is what you will see an overwhelming majority of the time, and it does indeed work as a safe, efficient way to set up the very crucial Dark Age start.

However, with experience, and with a few civs, you can play around with this.

A few examples:

– Chinese will have a weird start; you’ll have to do Loom right away and one house will do.

Then you make haste with the starting 6 vils to sheep and force-drop repeatedly to get vil production going asap to minimize idle time.

The vil that pops out should build another house immediately.

This leads to an intense opening few seconds but as time goes by you’ll pull yourself ahead of your opponent.

– With Gurjaras, you can use your starting sheep, scout and maybe even one of the vils to locate your berries asap.

Drop a mill and garrison all the sheep while using your scout to round up the extra sheep till you have 8 in the mill.

This means you won’t have wood for a lumber camp, so chop straggler trees around your TC.

You also have berries under your TC with this civ, so you can gather from those while you push deer and lure boar.

– With Portuguese you can send 4-5 to mill berries asap since you get a wood trickle.

Chop stragglers for lumber camp (like for Gurjaras mentioned above) and save sheep for later.

– With Lithuanians you can even go hyper-aggressive drush; drop barracks and a house with starting vils and send your scout to enemy when you feel like you have all your resources located.

Here the aim would be to hit the enemy as early as possible while maintaining eco at home.

– With Vietnamese you know where enemy TC is so you can orient drush strategy and scout the enemy a bit later than you would normally.

– Mongols hunt faster so you can prioritise hunt over other food sources.

The current early game meta is actually quite exciting and I hope there’s even more room for creativity with future balance changes.

[Vixark]

I don’t think the set in stone in AOE2 is that long.

Most people may play it like that, but mathematically there are many options for sending the 7th villager and so on.

So I’ll say the ‘set in stone’ phase is 1:40 in-game minutes which is 1 real life minute.

[Scrapheaper]

It’s not set in stone, you could imagine it as ‘scouting phase’

You can make strategic decisions about whether to use your scout:

defensively (scout your own base first and find all your resources/plan a layout based on resource placement) then go and find the enemy base and try and infer what to expect.

Greedily (push deer and be blind to what’s around you)

Aggressively (try for a boar or sheep steal, or damage on enemy scout, focus entirely on probing enemy base for weaknesses).

You can also use sheep to scout, which has its own set of strengths and weaknesses.

Based on your map you can also adjust your build order and early game strategy once you see your base/enemy base.

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