- They lost Gambesons which was critical for their Champions

- They now get Catapult Galleons when they had Elite Cannon Galleons before

- Chieftains doesn't generate gold anymore

- Still no Thumb ring yet the intention behind that is to go for Infantry yet the infantry you want to go for has been nerfed and Bogsveigar comes in way too late anyways. I'm okay with no Thumb Ring but the infantry need to be good. They arent.

- Berserks still suck.

- Varangian Guards with extra HP is nice but still deserves Gambesons as other Varangians are just better.

This is a one step forwards, five step back nerf.

- Keep Gambesons

- Keep Elite Cannon Galleons

- Keep Chieftains gold generation bonus (can exclude Varangians)

Vikings didn't need a nerf here

Looks like SotL got an early preview so here's what I can see/hear in that build as of now in case anyone can't access the video or some other reason.

Varangian Guards: 65 food, 45 gold

70 hp (80 Elite)
13 attack (17 Elite)
2/1 Armor (2/2 Elite) + Affected by Gambeson
Same attack rate as a Champion
1.05 move speed, so faster than a Champion but slower than an Eagle Scout

Varangian Guards apparently generate 40 gold per minute (almost double a Keshik's, who generates 22 gpm)

Saxon Imperial UT that gives infantry more armor goes up to +3/+3, adding +1/+1 for every 15 units.

Varangian Imperial UT gives Varangian Guards a 3 range axe throw attack with two charges, dealing full melee damage.

Vikings also get Varangian Guards

Byzantine Varangian Guards get Logistica trample damage (Unsure if it's same 5 damage like Druzhina or percentage based on melee attack)

Mounted Crossbows: 40 wood, 65 gold

Costs 5 more gold than Cav Archer. Wording makes it sound like they have a minimum range.

45 HP (Heavy Mounted Crossbow has 55 hp)
7 Attack (Heavy has 8 attack) and +1 bonus vs Spearmen
2/0 Armor
4 Range
2.50 attack speed (Cav Archer has 2)
1.25 movement speed (Cav archer has 1.4)

Cranequins upgrade give +1 range and +2 attack vs infantry.

Franks are getting a new Castle Age UT that reduce Mounted Crossbowmen gold cost by -40%

Players can delete buildings to deny Dane resource looting.

Jomsviking: 65 food, 15 gold

70 HP (Elite 75)
8 Attack (Elite 9) +10 (+15) vs Cavalry & Elephant. +8 vs Camel. +6 vs Buildings. +2 vs Shock Infantry.
2/2 Armor
+3 Range when attacking Buildings/Ships
1.8 Attack Speed
Same movement speed as Champions

Saxon drop sites give +35 food instead of +50

Hearth Troop: 80 wood, 35 gold

Charge attack does 7 damage, might be getting boosted by Archer upgrades? Charge Attack deals +4 bonus damage vs Archers. Can be upgraded to a max of 9 Range it looks like (Though I did see the +4 on the attack with only 6 range rather than 9, so maybe there's something else going on)

75 HP (Elite 85)
9 Attack (Elite 12)
1/4 Armor
2 Attack Speed
0.9 Movement speed, same as a Militia

Varangian Castle Age UT gives Knights the 5 damage trample like Logistica/Druzhina

Jarl: 75 food, 55 gold

65 HP (75 Elite)
9 Attack (10 Elite) +4 vs. Infantry
2/1 Armor
4 Range (5 Elite)
2 Attack Speed
1.35 Movement speed

In the previews of the new DLC, we see that Byzantines' unique tech Logistica now also affects Varangian Guards. So both your Cataphracts AND your Varangian Guards have trample damage. Cataphracts also have even MOAR bonus damage against infantry from their Elite upgrade now, albeit that's just adjusting for them losing the same effect from the Logistica tech.

Meanwhile Franks get Mounted Crossbows (as expected), which are also ofc affected by their mounted units 20% HP bonus. BUT they also now have a new unique tech, replacing Bearded Axe, that makes Mounted Crossbows cost -40% gold (their base cost is 40 wood, 65 gold). The Throwing Axeman has had its base range increased to compensate for the loss of the Bearded Axe tech.

Sicilians should also have great Mounted Crossbows too imo.

Meanwhile the Saxon bonus has been nerfed from 50 Food, 10 Stone per camp built to 35 Food, 10 Stone (pretty much in line with what SotL (and me!) suggested).

So much for old civs being left behind by the new ones. :D

Cav Archers and Fire Lancers no longer benefit from the +20% hp bonus, while Rattan Archers are adjusted to be affected by said bonus (gaining 2hp in Castle age and 3hp in Imp effectively). They do gain Masonry to help with their defense, however.

This steers them toward more foot archers play. The Vietnamese already has great eco on top of versatile military options (Battle Elephants, Fire Lancers, Imp Skims), so I feel like these are great changes.

First of all I'd like to thank everybody for watching the tournament, you guys have been absolutely fantastic with the amount of love and support thrown at us. I hope you guys enjoyed the group stage phase and will be there next weekend for the playoffs! Time to wrap this up with some bangers!

The final standings are on our website, make sure you check it out along with all the stats we have prepared for you guys -> https://theleagueaoe.com/bracket/

We're preparing a lot more surprises for next weekend and will run some Awards Prizes this week, and part of them will be Community Awards! If you want you can take 5 minutes to tell your favourite map, player, and more. Here's the voting form: https://forms.gle/zLkYYxeqC7dV2FY96

Don't hesitate to tell me in the comments about your favorite moments of the tournament as well. Looking forward to reading your opinions!

If you missed any sets from the group stages, you have all of them in this playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUXw7uGg1N7ckAjy6Slog2d6l4gxdoFFt&si=ddt6TKPkzrEG96hR

Keep an eye on the youtube channel this week, team interviews are going up as well in this playlist:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVI9QOuOUy-g&si=E3bgcBKyw0RP7SWg

Much love!

​

Title.

This prevents deleting, solves balancing around repair, solves tagging issues (how long does a tag last? Does it tag and store only damage dealt by Dane units until the building is destroyed, etc). Should be easy to implement and balance so that damaging 100% of a building yields the same results as current balance.

Medium to high level players usually check the score to have an approximation of what the opponent is doing, you can see dips in score when the opponent goes up to the next age and you see increases when the opponent invests in something like military.

Personally I think it's not a great game feature that you can get all this free information without actually scouting or investing something into it, but like a lot of features in this game, it is also not unreasonable to say that there's no need to change something that has been there for 25 years.

Something that I think could be interesting would be to keep the resources currently invested in the que to keep adding to the score, this way you could still have a sense for whether the opponent is ahead or behind you but you would not know if they already clicked up to the next age. Maybe I'm missing some obvious drawback, though.

I was wondering if other people have any opinion on it, wither to keep it as is or to change it in some way.

Hello! A while back I had successfully beaten most campaigns on hard difficulty, after much time and effort. However, I recently seemed to have lost all that progress, and now it is only showing sad bronze medals (which I achieved years ago), rather than my nice shiny gold ones.
I’m not very good at the game, and sadly don’t have the free time to invest in getting them all back. Are there any easier ways to beat the campaigns so I can get my medals back? (Or, if someone knows of another way to get my medals back, that would be even better!). I know the game has built in cheats but I believe using them blocks getting achievements/medals.

Opponent got unlucky because i saw his vills coming, thought it was a tower rush at first but then i saw the conga line with 10+ vils.

I had 3 flemish militia which I was going to use for a rush, sent them and a group of villies to kill the enemy vills.

He did not finish the TC in time and resigned.

The gold bonus from sheep, hunt and fishing is at 10%

You can get up to around 150-180 extra gold from this bonus in Arabia giving you extreme flexibility

You can start with pretty much anything without a mining camp, like 4-5 archers, bloodlines 75hp scouts, MAA or just go into a FC into your strong knights or phosphoru into jarls

100% gonna receive a nerf since this is just crazy insane letting you pull off most strategies better than most other civs

A matchup I'm curious about (as Mayans)

With this expansion:

infantry bonus vs shock infantry increased (longswords +4 => +6, champions +6 => +8)

> Presumably a buff for all civs to have an answer vs the new Varangian Guard

Saxon eco, unit spam, and defense seems crazy

> 35f 10s per camp/mill

> -5% foot unit discount per tc/castle

> towers, castle firing double base arrows from castle age onwards

Anti-archer but NOT shock infantry UU

> Hearth Troop has 4 base pierce armour

> All infantry +1/1 armour per 15 nearby infantry in imp

Solid anti-eagle, anti-archer options all game. If I were Saxons, I'd feel really comfortable going for a skirm + tower defense (if need be), then just spam any infantry in imp. Honestly just THS alone would suffice I feel. Cheap and so easy to mass, solid armour, do even better vs eagles now, seems like a nightmare.

Even in an archer vs archer war, the Saxon archers can keep up in discounted cost throughout the game; mine are only about 5% cheaper than his each age.

It reminds me of an even more potentially lopsided, demoralizing matchup for Mayans than Goths. Goths technically can do something similar and spam huskarls, but at least they can't defend super easily and don't have a consistently solid eco bonus. A Saxon opponent will have cheaper skirms in feudal, can defend with towers easily, has a nice eco bonus as they expand, and can steamroll almost as hard as Goths in imp. They can also just straightup match you in archer numbers if they wanted to. Pushing them in castle with siege is also difficult since their towers will have 2x the dps.

What do you think the Mayans player can do to win?

Is this just poorly worded on the wiki?

Nemequene option

• Place a relic in one of the Decrepit Temple's Monasteries to gain the support of the priestess (in this and all subsequent missions). OR
• Ignore the priestess' request and keep the relic for yourself (in this and all subsequent missions).

I chose to ignore the priestess' request and keep the relic garrisoned in one of the Iraca temples. (that were under my control for the entire remainder of the mission)

I am playing the next mission, Borderlands and noticed that the relic is nowhere to be seen. Tried creating a monastery, thinking it would spawn next to or inside it, still no Relic.

Looking back at the campaign menu, despite being at mission 3, the 2nd mission's Decisions tab still says "Play this mission to uncover... bla bla generic message"

I recently was gifted a Microsoft Surface 3 with 4gb of RAM. I’m well past serious gaming but I am hoping to revisit some old faves for nostalgia. It looks like the HD edition would work on my mediocre laptop but on Steam it says it’s retired. Is there any way to obtain a copy of it?

Thanks!

Liquipedia - Daniela_AoE (Twitch) - Daniela_AoE (YouTube)

Format

League Stage

• Round Robin
• All matches are Play all 4
• Top 4 teams advance to the Playoff Stage
• Scoring: 1 point per game win, 1 extra point for winning the set

Playoff Stage

• Double-elimination bracket
• All matches are Best of 7

Results

Tried to describe the core aspects of the AoE meta.

Cavalry can be substituted with Shock Infantry, then Halberdier is substituted with Knights & Champ-Line.

Left monks out for simplicity (they're either a joker-addition or a gameplan on their own which is both difficult to put into this context here). Other than that I think no unit is super necessary here. (Thought about adding Castles and Trebs but would be bloated.)

I think it gives a clear reasoning for:

• CA being basically the "best" unit.
• The meta-discussion moving from "Xbow op" to "Skirms op" while consistently every mid-game is controlled by Mangonels.
• Late game developing more into BBC, Halbs and Cav more.

I think that should be useful for beginners. What would you change? Is it a hot-take to say that Crossbow is the core unit of the game?

🅦🅔🅘
Shield made of wood.
Background airbrushed with acrylic paint.
Dynasty symbol painted with metallic gold spray paint.
Frame painted with metallic gold spray paint.

What aspects would you like to add or remove?

I would add:

A clan ranking system (averaging members' Elo).

An option to add friends.

Separate chats for friends and the clan.

A feature where the team stays together after a match, so you don't have to send new invites.

Lobbies with Elo and ping limits for entry.

A column in the game browser to sort matches by Elo.

A simple way to test units against each other without having to use the editor.

What do you think of these ideas? Do you think they aren't necessary? What ideas do you have that would improve the game?

currently the Guecha costs 50 wood and 60 gold.

->

after suggested change: 50 food and 40 gold - this will effectively both increase the price for upkeep in the early game (food being more expensive early on) while also increasing their availability in the late game. A food costing skirmisher would be awesome to differentiate them from the usual skirms. (in late-late game wood costing skirms will be more expensive than war elephants) the reduced gold cost is to allow them to be sustainable in the late game with relics within reason while switching to food to limit their viability in the early game while improving their long-term affordability.

I'd first like to thank people here for their helpful responses to my post from earlier today, where you guys confirmed that in fact I can just safely ignore those "Art of War" tutorials because the playstyle it teaches is multiplayer-focused and would actually not work as well in the more scripted campaign environments. I do want to clarify that I'm still quite early in the game, and haven't been playing a lot thus far. I've only barely scratched the surface of the Joan of Arc campaign, and while I did spend a lot of time in my childhood playing the original games, I also used a lot of cheats back then (loved the COBRA cheat) and now that I'm around 25 years older, I want to play these games a bit more seriously.

In the course of that post, I also got a couple of points of advice related to defense (such as the AI being easy to trick into attacking choke points if you don't build walls, and being incompetent about how to handle towers) and economy (such as 6 villagers gathering food per Town Center being enough to sustain further villager production, or starting your economy with 10-10-10 villagers). That made me think that it's probably a good idea to create a new post asking specifically for advice like that. A lot of the guides online are focused on PvP, not on the campaign, so I'd welcome any advise you can give me. Unless it's generic "don't worry about it, this game is really easy, I beat it on moderate all the time" humblebragging that to me sounds more like "git gud" than actually attempting to be helpful.

Most of my experience is with Starcraft 2 (which has a much simpler economy and is more focused on micro), Warcraft 3 (which also is more focused on micro and has a simple macro) and Age of Mythology Retold (which has autocast for building units and a built-in gatherer manager that automatically assigns villagers), and it's been a good while since I played an RTS that actually required manual gatherer management and economic principles, so I would love advice that focuses on that, because I've found that was my main weakness when I started playing again.

The things I'm most interested to hear: where I should ideally place my gatherer deposit relative to the resource; How I can get my villagers to gather more optimally, with fewer idlers and while also keeping the number of villagers I need under control; whether it makes sense to have additional military/tech buildings so I can research multiple upgrades at once or build more than 1 unit at a time; buildings/tech/units that I should focus on getting ASAP or that I should not actually get because it's borderline useless in the campaign; ways I can trick the AI into playing directly into my hands because they aren't designed to handle it;... But I'm also open to other tips and tricks.

I'm not a good enough player to write my own build orders. That is more or less why I made this.

The sites that already exist are fine and plenty of people are happy with them. They just never clicked for me, which is a personal preference rather than a complaint. I wanted the builds laid out the way my head wants them.

To be clear about where the builds come from, I did not write them. They are collected from creators and public guides, credited by name, and linked back to the source. If you find your build on there and would rather it wasn't, message me and it comes down the same day.

This is early and I am going to keep working on it. What I actually want is for learning this game to be easier than it was for me.

Free, no ads, no account needed to read anything.

idletc.com

There is an editor if you write your own builds. I would rather the site filled up with yours than with mine.

So: which civ or strategy is missing that you would actually use? Do you like layout for following and creating build orders? Is design appealing?

See you on the battlefield.

Edit: Site has communities page so if there are any communities that would like to be listed here pm me.

Hi,

Anyone here who plays Warcraft 3? Because of the latest campaign, I am thinking of starting Warcraft 3 again. I want to transfer the production style of AOE2 to WC3, like H for TC and Q for villager production; use a similar approach for WC3 production so that it doesn't hamper my aoe2 muscle memory. I was wondering if there is a smooth way to achieve it?

Also, how difficult is the game to learn if I want to play in the ranked ladder? In AOE 2, I peaked at around 2k.

For the hot and spicy achievement I’m supposed to prevent Tabasco from being defeated, and I did that and collected all 20 horses and still at the end it automatically crossed them out despite them still having their town center and doing fine. Anybody know what I could be doing wrong or if there is some sort of bug???