How To Play Age of Empires 2 | New Player Guide 2023

Music in this video:

Edits by @TOPSRoundnet ​

[shaung]

Not only are you knowledgeable but also so humble towards the lower ELO community. Really appreciate your vids Hera!

[booradley]

Fair word of warning: Campaigns are super fun played on normal difficulty*

On hard a lot of them are rather scuffed where the difficulty rating means nothing and you will have wild swings in difficulty within the same scenario, as well as it forcing you into a specific tactic instead of letting you attack the challenge how you wish. You'd think its from updating the old content but no, the old content holds up far better than the new stuff.

General tips:
-Pick 2 civs to practice with at first, then branch out as you feel more comfortable. Generally you want them to be different playstyles i.e. one cavalry one archery civ. Britons and Franks are very popular for this, though a myriad of other choices are viable.
-Always make more villagers
-You can target practice skills by playing skirmishes on different populations and with different rules. If you want to practice micro, play a 25 population game. If you want to practice sustained production, play a 40 minute truce game on Michi with 500 population. Different settings can help you get the most of the specific situation you want while still practicing general gameplay.
-Utilize the resources that are available to you online. Lots of helpful people like Hera have done the work and put together condensed information to help you be able to speed through the painful segments of learning and get to the point that you feel comfortable playing. Dont waste it.

[believeinmatter]

I haven’t played one of these games in a very long time, but got back into it lastnight and really enjoyed it. As a kid I just explored and did whatever, now that I fully understand the goals it’s still quite fun.

[liam]

it was 2002 when I went to visit my Grandma, my uncle had his room upstairs, he was in his 50s at this time, playing on his Mac PC with the blue plastic back on it.
He was playing AOE1...he showed me how it worked, what to do, and let me play.
I'm 31 now and and still shit. lmao

[timii]

I paradoxally think 90% of the viewers are veteran 1999 players.
Anyway it is very well explained

[MarianoGianni]

I'm 1500 and watching this very closely, master Hera has spoken.

[hoilokzhuang]

28+2 straight castle formula
I made it myself if there is any mistake please comment me :)
I think if i put it under Hera it more newbies can see

1-6P for sheep
7-10P chop wood
11P one house+loom+boar
12-13P mill+berries
14P house+2nd boar
15-16P boar
17-18P berries
19-20P sheep/boar(depends)
21-22P gold
23-26P deer(if u are good enough use th scout, if cant just build a mill next to deers)
27P wood
after eating all the animals, go for 5 farms others go for wood
-Feudal Age
1 build blacksmith 2 build market
at the same time create 2 villagers
28+2 and go for Castle Age

[koichi_nazak]

I picked up Vietnamese really quickly... rush to feudal and just xbow gather... stops anyone from scouting or even coming into your los, then just rattan spam until you get to elite and just rush, the boom is great to be able to hold off knights ( depending on player ) the wood to gold conversion with +2 relics aswell helps produce like crazy

[countarchvile]

I'm a StarCraft player dipping my toes into AoE and this guide is pretty neat and concise. Thanks a bunch Hera.

[Concrete_Bogey]

Cheers for the refresher fella! Love the fact I can play this on consol but been that long I forgot how complicated this game is. Still great fun to play.

R.I.P. social life

[olivertate]

Hi Hera, thanks for making up to date guides :) When you do more of your new 'Road to 2k', would it be possible to have a mouse and keyboard camera/view showing how you do regular sequences of actions e.g. ctrl group production buildings, multi queue units, micro crossbows? Preferably with the DE default hotkeys but it would still be helpful with you using your custom ones :)

[natnat]

Legit perfect timing as my husband has been struggling so far on the console and it's been stressing him (and me who's more experienced) the f#*k out 😂😂

[arsm]

This one of the best video edits you have ever done I think, good work!

[mattdarwin]

Started playing on pc back in late 2019 but stopped soon after, coming back now with the Xbox release and am currently having a blast appreciate the guide will be sharing with friends who are new to aoe in general

[undefined]

I think Khmer is a great beginner civ. I used to recommend Incas before the villager armor bonus nerf because the tanky vills were very helpful against scrush, but Khmer are good at avoiding many new player traps. (not having buildings to click up, eco deficiency from awful farm placements as apm to manage eco falls off) The house garrison bonus is really strong on 1000 and below level. Their tech tree is flexible enough to allow most of the common openings and stays decent in Castle

[pretyboy]

Picked this up on console and find it fascinating.. I hope someone can make a strategies for console video because the gameplay is similar but just woefully inefficient in my opinion using controller.. certain things are so hard to do quickly or precisely. Like just clicking my trebuchet when it’s bunched with units is like difficulty: epic.. and then quickly clicking all of a military unit to try and micro them when they’re bunched with others is a nightmare so far.

[ordinaryrat]

Thanks so much for this! I just started playing and this is by far the best tutorial I found!

[ryans]

I can attest to Heras guides, I started watching him a year and a half ago, and yesterday, I played my first ranked games and won all 3

[matte]

Hera! Love all of your content.. have really enjoyed the recent 2 v 2 games with you teamed with Viper. The banter and teamwork is amazing to watch.

You are a huge asset to the Aoe2 community - be very proud mate! Thankyou! 💕

[Phrsmy]

"However, that's way easier than it sounds"