What is the Optimal Civilization to Familiarize Oneself With the Game?
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Greetings everyone!
I’m new to the Age of Empires 2 world and am looking for some guidance.
What are the best two civilizations to learn the game and not be terrible at it?
I don’t just want to do well in low-level matches, but to understand the fundamentals of how the game works.
I’ve already tried the Byzantines and I can’t even beat moderate AI with them.
I had more success with the Magyars, but I’m not a big fan of cavalry.
Is this a bad approach and should I instead be trying to impose my style of play on my opponent?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks and best of luck!
Your last statement is pretty spot on.
When you send military to your (AI) opponent’s base, they will make military to counter.
If you send scouts, they’ll add spears.
If you send archers, they’ll add skirms.
Due to this nature you can somewhat predict what units they’ll make based on what units/upgrades you’re showing to them.
Additionally, you’ll want to be scouting them because you can see the buildings they make and anticipate what units they might make just from seeing their buildings.
As far as picking a civ, Byzantines are great to learn the game.
They don’t have any economy boost which is good for learning because otherwise you might become reliant on that bonus, whereas if you’re used to playing Byzantines other civs will feel easier to generate resources.
Byzantines have cheaper spears, skirms, and camels so you can respond to any of the best unit compositions efficiently.
Magyars are another good civ for learning the basics because they also don’t have any economic boost.
They’re much different though, as instead of excelling in a wide variety of units like the Byzantines, Magyars are more military and aggression centered with a special focus on cavalry units.
If you wanted to learn the game with a more economy focused civ, I would recommend Celts, Britons, and Franks.
They are all great civ’s with a deadly potential and smooth economy.
random.
You need to learn the basics before worrying about civs
Actually learn the game: Byzantines I think.
Cheaper counter units make you win by scouting and thinking ahead.
Win games easily: Franks (or similar cav civ) or Britons.
Both can play all games exactly the same no matter opponent and you can get good at learning that one thing.
Stay away from: Huns – doesn’t need houses so you will not learn the habit of building houses and housewalling.
Also stay away from weird starts like Chinese or Gurjaras that require a civ-specific build order.
Also avoid the noob trap Mongols – Mangudai are awesome but Mangudai are one of the most expensive units to go for in the game as they are expensive, require a castle and require a lot of upgrades.
You need to learn how to expand your economy and transition feudal->castle->imperial before Mangudai and therefore Mongols works.
My number 1 advice is to play the campaigns.
1) Ghengis Khan, El Cid, Atilla the Hun, Joan of Arc are all excellent and pretty easy campaigns but have strong narrative elements that make them quite fun and generally not a slog.
Some of the campaigns can also be insanely hard at points like Alaric 5 so dont feel like they are just there for training wheels.
The campaigns will often put you in awkward positions and expect you to figure out the path to victory.
2) From your experience in the campaigns, draw upon your preferred playstyle, units you like using and which you dont use.
You are going to see a LOT of people reccommend Byzantines, Spanish, Teutons but its more important to figure out what you enjoy, figure out a couple of civs that support your playstyle and learn the ins and outs of those civs.
3) Try to improve YOURSELF.
This is where build orders, guides and matchup knowledge become more relevant.
Matchups matter but not THAT much below 1k ELO.
You are far more likely to win based on villagers idle/town centre idle/ forgot blacksmith upgrades/ too small economy or other similar errors rather than losing to a civ specific bonus/weakness.
4) If you find yourself constantly losing to 1 specific strategy, try to study the strat in question, identify weaknesses in the strat. (Very often effective scouting will win you the game)
Civ choices don’t help you to understand the game.
Do the tutorials (William Wallace and Art of War).
Focus on basic stuff like constant villager production, unit interactions, how upgrades work, and then once you can do this, learn some beginner build orders.
Civ choice actually has an effect on gameplay after you can do all this.
Until then, most players at beginner level will use all civs in the same way.
Franks
Going random civ is always a good option.
If you’re going to pick though, I don’t think there’s many bad choices.
I do recommend avoiding civs that significantly alter how you play the early game.
For example, its probably good to avoid focusing on Huns, Burgundians, Gurjaras, or Khmer.
If you were to get used to not having to build houses with Huns, you’d have a bitch of a time learning other civs.
Stick with civs that have a fairly standard dark/feudal age.
If you like to play the counter game then you should seriously consider Dravidians IMO.
Their halberdier and skirmisher lines are BOTH exceptional, and on top of that they have REALLY scary lategame options (very high DPS elephant archers and basically the best lategame melee unit in the game)
Franks and vietnamese are pretty easy civs to use which teach you how to play with either cavalry or archers respectively, infantry is something you can learn later as incas or Ethiopians (maa archers, eagles)
It’s definitely not a bad habit but sometimes you have to get on the offensive and you should get to know how to do that and make your opponent adapt to you.
Byzantines are great to do both.
Also a big tech tree so you don’t miss important stuff.
I don’t think its that important which civ, I think picking a civ can be helpful to focus more on the gameplay and the options you have than having to learn all units, techs etc.
At once but which civ isn’t so important, although avoiding the really weird ones is a good idea, so go ahead pick byz or whatever you want to!
Moderate AI is actually pretty brutal when starting out.
Each jump in AI difficulty is rather substantial (except the two lowest, they are both pretty weak).
Don’t be discouraged by the name “moderate”.
Byzantines are probably one of the best civs to teach you the game.
No complicated tricks, just discounts and increased stats.
And they have one of the widest tech trees in the game, perfect for testing out more unit types than anyone else.
Learning Aoe2 is more about learning strategies than about learning civilizations.
There are openings, such going for Scouts, or going for Archers, or going for Men-at-Arms, that you can pull off with pretty much every civ.
To be super-optimized there are a few civ-specific differences between how the strategies are executed, but I wouldn’t recommend worrying about those until you’ve gotten the basics down first.
Just do whatever you find fun: go random civ, pick a few civs that seem fun for you, play just the Huns, whatever you want.
Magyars is another good one.
No eco bonus and extremely flexible military tech tree.
Probably less good after the Dynasties of India expansion because they don’t match up so well against Gurjaras or Hindustani.
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