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 Ratios and Tendency posted:Please add this to the op, ty. Age of Empires 2: DE is a remake of the classic 1999 RTS. It features a new engine with update graphics (4K!), major quality of life changes such as changeable hotkeys and shift-queuing unit commands, and a plethora of new civilizations and campaigns to play (including all of those introduced in the 2013 remaster's expansions, for a total of 35). The game also has an official ranked matchmaking system as well as dedicated servers for custom lobbies. A new mode called Empire Wars has also been added which skips all players ahead to the Feudal Age and gives them a few of the standard starting buildings.  The game is available on Steam and the Microsoft Store (lol) for $20, or $15 if you already own the 2013 HD remake. Crossplay is enabled by default so players on either platform can play with each other. Other avenues for playing the game with the older versions are described below, but I highly recommend buying the DE if you do not already own one of the other versions as the HD Remake + all of its expansions come to a total of $50. Using Voobly Voobly is a third party multiplayer platform that replaced the official lobby system for the original version of the game. It's not as active as the DE, but there are still a good amount of people playing it at varying skill levels. While it does not feature most of the convenience changes introduced in the later versions of the game, you will need this User Patch as well as this one that adds the expansion civilizations from the 2013 Remake. You can actually play on Voobly with either an install of the original 1999 version or the 2013 HD remake, however for the latter you will need to follow these instructions. 2013 HD Remake The 2013 HD Remake also included its own ranked matchmaking and custom lobby system, however it's largely dead in favor of the DE and Voobly. It is also plagued by connection issues due to not having dedicated servers, so you may find the game to be unplayable entirely.  General Strategy Build Orders As the game has been out for 20 years, even people who are generally bad at the game have been playing it long enough that you're likely to get stomped for a while when you start playing multiplayer. The DE version added a new set of scenarios called The Art of War that do a pretty good job of providing you with the basics of how to split up your resource gathering and attacking in the early stages of the game. You should at least try to aim for a silver medal in each of these, if not gold, before trying to play a ranked game. After the above, a good place to go is Cicero's Interactive Build Order Guide. These are voiced scenarios that will guide you through a variety of standard build orders and grade you on your timing. TheViper is regarded as one of the best players in the game. His YouTube channel mostly features replays, but he also does tutorials every now and then. T90Official is a caster and streamer who also does tutorials on YouTube. You can also check out his Twitch stream where he does Low ELO Legends, in which he spectates random Low ELO games and commentates on what they're doing wrong. Harveygod posted:Two more good channels for information: You can also see a list of all ongoing matches on AoE2.net and search for them in game to spectate, which can be useful if you want to watch high level play. Picking a Civilization Every civ has one or two unique units and technology upgrades, as well as a few bonuses to various unit/building types. The in-game tech tree provides all of this information better than any outside resource could. While pretty much every civ is equally viable (counterexample: Teutons), some may be stronger on certain map types such as those that emphasize naval combat. If you look through a few tech trees and are entirely lost on making a choice, I recommend the Byzantines. They have one of the most expansive tech trees in the game, so you have a lot of options for different play-styles. Buildings and Walls The layout of your base can make a big difference in whether you win or lose. You should try to organize your base so that your villagers are less likely to get picked off by enemy run-bys and so that your production buildings require less walking distance to get to the combat area. Walls are important as well, whether you use real walls or buildings; even walling your opponent inside their own base can be a great way to starve them of resources. Tournaments The most recent tournament was Red Bull's Wololo which was held the last weekend of April, where 16 players competed for a $20,000 cash prize. VODs of the entire tournament are available on Red Bull's Twitch stream. I'm still pretty bad at this game myself, so if anyone has anything that would be useful for the OP just let me know. Discord Harveygod posted:On this note, I made a Discord server just for AoE2 games: Jossar posted:Glad to see this getting another thread, maybe it'll stick this time! i vomit kittens fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Dec 29, 2020 |
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May 5, 2020 23:31
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My friend and I play a lot of team matches together, so if anyone wants to add me on Steam to play a match sometimes you can do so here. Note that we're both not very good so it's probably better for all of us if you aren't either.
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May 5, 2020 23:32
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This Viper guy is a fun watch. "For all Koreans watching, I don't hate you, I just hate your civilization." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWt3_ud-GD8
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May 5, 2020 23:45
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Glad to see this getting another thread, maybe it'll stick this time! A few goons have semi-regular match lineups in the Something Awful discord, in the channel marked #strategy_games , here: https://discord.gg/dAyuS8n Gotta get authorized to join the general discord though.
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May 6, 2020 01:49
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i vomit kittens posted:TheViper is regarded as one of the best players in the game. His YouTube channel mostly features replays, but he also does tutorials every now and then. Two more good channels for information: Spirit of the Law: The go-to numbers guy in Age of Empires II. All videos are high-effort and extremely detailed. With Definitive Edition being rebalanced monthly, some of his older assessments won't be accurate anymore, but there is still a lot of very helpful information. For example, "How much is a villager worth?" shows why losing a villager while still in Dark Age is more damaging and hence why Loom is so important. Has recently made some videos aimed at beginners, including a useful "Beginner guide to the first 15 villagers": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7zaXjaJVWM Hera: Has become reliably one of the top 2 - 5 players in the world. His Youtube content has been focused on teaching gameplay. Far less focused on numbers than Spirit of the Law, Hera's guides are more "where the rubber hits the road". He's currently adding to his "So You Want To Play" series which is focused on specific civilizations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLb1PnEtDnE Harveygod fucked around with this message at 03:26 on May 6, 2020 |
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May 6, 2020 03:23
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It's good yall. Really really good. If you enjoyed it back in the day you'll like it more now because it's better.
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May 6, 2020 03:53
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I haven't ever played any multiplayer matches on AoE2. I didn't have internet back then. I was playing a bit of the singleplayer a few weeks ago and was having fun messing around and trying to beat the missions in nonstandard ways. Like on the Siege of Paris map you're suppose to exit the city at the gate in the northeast and fight your way to the friendly base, but I blew a hole in the wall at the southeast and escaped through there. in The Cleansing of the Loire I destroyed the middle English base and built mine there instead of to turn the enemy walls against them, but was thwarted since I couldn't bring the castle down. Turns out building a town with an enemy castle literally right next to it isn't a sound plan.
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May 6, 2020 05:30
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You missed out. The zone's gui was ugly but the community felt huge and active and I miss those blue circles
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May 6, 2020 06:11
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I like the Skirmish mode because its really chill with its settings, you can set a game up to have a massive randomly generated map and unlimited resources. Gets rid of the need to remember the cheat codes.
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May 6, 2020 06:36
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OhFunny posted:I haven't ever played any multiplayer matches on AoE2. I didn't have internet back then. I feel like some of the tricks like this have to be intentional, some of the missions seem impossible on Hard mode without doing them. Another cool thing that I saw someone point out a couple weeks ago is that they accounted for several different actions you could take in at least a few areas. In the first Huns mission, when your brother(?) tries to kill you in an ambush, you can actually attack him first or just run back to town and the dialog will change depending on what you do.
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May 6, 2020 07:00
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i vomit kittens posted:I feel like some of the tricks like this have to be intentional, some of the missions seem impossible on Hard mode without doing them. Maybe. I had a fantastic cheese on the third Saladin mission. The one where you have to grab the holy cross. Sold most of my stone, bought 800 food to get to castle age, killed enough sheep to make 1 monk. Then blew a hole in the western part of my own wall and took all my units and villages down along the edge of the map. Built a church and town hall right at the enemy wall guarding the cross. Garrisoned the town hall and blew the walls up and rushed the monk in and had him run back to base while the town hall provided cover. Won in 5 minutes. Which was very gratifying after a 2 hour 42 minute fight on the previous mission.
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May 6, 2020 09:57
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A few months ago I got sucked into T90s youtube channel for some reason and I can't stop watching Low ELO Legends. He's imo a great caster and the AoE2 online community seems pretty cool overall. Hidden Cup 3 in March was an absolute highlight with over 50k viewers on twitch for an old rear end game.
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May 6, 2020 10:56
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Yeah the one I watched he said it was the second most watched twitch going atm which pretty much boggled my mind. I guess a bunch of people who had it as kids wanted to see what top level play looked like. Viper and Hera and insanely quick but none of them are slow
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May 6, 2020 16:02
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Milo and POTUS posted:Yeah the one I watched he said it was the second most watched twitch going atm which pretty much boggled my mind. I guess a bunch of people who had it as kids wanted to see what top level play looked like. Viper and Hera and insanely quick but none of them are slow These youtubes are my first experience with AOE 2 and the speed at which they are microing peasants is hilarious.
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May 6, 2020 19:25
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FrickenMoron posted:A few months ago I got sucked into T90s youtube channel for some reason and I can't stop watching Low ELO Legends. He's imo a great caster and the AoE2 online community seems pretty cool overall. Hidden Cup 3 in March was an absolute highlight with over 50k viewers on twitch for an old rear end game. Some of the low ELO games are just incredible case studies of the determination people can show even when they have no idea what they're doing. I saw a game a week or two ago that went on for 3 hours. I turned off the stream like 15 minutes into the game to do other stuff and tuned back in at the 2 hour 45 minute mark. One of the guys had a good economy going but literally 0 unit upgrades because he never built a blacksmith, and the other had upgrades but was on a single TC for most of the game.
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May 6, 2020 20:45
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i vomit kittens posted:Some of the low ELO games are just incredible case studies of the determination people can show even when they have no idea what they're doing.
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May 6, 2020 21:49
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wololo Gz and ty to OP for this pleasing new AoE2 thread, the old one was a 2-page titan that needed spiritual succession and you've done it justice. I got into playing AoE2:DE with college friends who remember playing the Age of Kings campaigns two decades ago, and now we get a good mix of pickup games with all the new civs/out of the rotating weekly pool to choose from for the ones who just have the HD version. But half those kids don't even get their boars. And my friends who are actually good at games are watching the pro streams on Twitch and fainting over the insane plays and gratuitous cheese that makes up the competitive AoE2 scene today. i vomit kittens posted:2 hour 45 minute mark. One of the guys had a good economy going but literally 0 unit upgrades because he never built a blacksmith, and the other had upgrades but was on a single TC for most of the game.
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May 7, 2020 23:30
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AoE2: DE goon represent! This game is definitely (lol) a great remaster, unlike that warcraft 3 piece of poo poo.
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May 7, 2020 23:51
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Tutons are actually op now OP, keep up
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May 8, 2020 02:11
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i vomit kittens posted:My friend and I play a lot of team matches together, so if anyone wants to add me on Steam to play a match sometimes you can do so here. Note that we're both not very good so it's probably better for all of us if you aren't either. There are usually a few of us playing on Friday nights. I'll definitely be playing tomorrow (Friday) night with anyone who will be around. If the gentlemen here who vomits kittens doesn't host then I will. PM me here or on Steam or on Discord to get invited to the game lobbies.
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May 8, 2020 02:50
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The new AI is so tenacious. I destroyed every building inside the walls of the first enemy base in the 3rd Genghis Khan mission and pushed past toward the second, but the first enemy rebuilt everything in the south the map and counter attacked while I had nothing at home to defend with. I can't recall a RTS where the AI rebuilds destroyed buildings let alone can recover from near total destruction on the standard difficulty.
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May 8, 2020 06:41
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OhFunny posted:The new AI is so tenacious. I destroyed every building inside the walls of the first enemy base in the 3rd Genghis Khan mission and pushed past toward the second, but the first enemy rebuilt everything in the south the map and counter attacked while I had nothing at home to defend with. The China one right? Somebody beat that mission in 10 minutes in HD lmao.
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May 8, 2020 09:00
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Milo and POTUS posted:The China one right? Somebody beat that mission in 10 minutes in HD lmao. That was the next one. That one took me 4 hours. Mostly because the Jin would rebuild on one side of their island and then start rebuilding on the other side so I was running back and forth playing whack-a-mole. The other three opponents were progressively easier to defeat. Seems best to leave the Town Center for last when battling the AI and to make sure the outlaying villagers are dead.
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May 8, 2020 12:14
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Even if you leave their TC up, the AI seems to know when it's time to cut their losses and build a new one somewhere else. I was practicing the Persian douche (pulling 10 villagers, deleting your own TC, and rebuilding it just within firing range of the enemy's TC) against one and when the AI's villagers were no longer able to farm peacefully they ran off to a corner of the map and waited there to place a new TC the second their current one went down.
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May 8, 2020 17:05
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I loving love age of empires
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May 8, 2020 19:44
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I'm really enjoying Low ELO Legends, thanks for sharing. Giving me some early SC2 Day9 vibes
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May 8, 2020 21:47
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Mandalay posted:I'm really enjoying Low ELO Legends, thanks for sharing. Giving me some early SC2 Day9 vibes Reminds me of the Bronze League Heroes casts HuskyStarcraft used to do in Starcraft 2.
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May 9, 2020 02:12
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I'm sorry. We won, though! Yeah, I'm sorry. Note: The in-game timer runs at 1.7x speed, so it was really about an hour and a half, not 3 hours.
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May 9, 2020 04:18
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There was some amazing king snipe in one of T90s community games tonight. I hope that one makes it to YouTube.
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May 9, 2020 05:59
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FrickenMoron posted:There was some amazing king snipe in one of T90s community games tonight. I hope that one makes it to YouTube. Was it the one where two players had teamed up and one had his units garrisoned in the other's castle? He saw the other dude's king walking by, ungarrisoned and switched the dude back to enemy so he could take out the king. poo poo was so funny
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May 9, 2020 06:02
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZrMI7Tb4s Just watch the whole thing. I guess if you're super impatient skip to 17
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May 9, 2020 08:06
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Game is good, I got it at launch after having only ever played around with the campaigns as a kid back when the original AOE2 was out. This is the one of the only games I've ever had any interest in the online multiplayer, once you've got a handle on the basics it's a ton of fun. I got a lot better for me after I fumbled thought my first 10 ranked matches and started getting matched against people of more equal skill levels. It's intimidating at first but all that happens when you lose is you're more likely to play more evenly-matched games later on. Even the losses now are down to me making mistakes I could definitely have avoided. I got in on it with 4-5 friends in November, and we've probably all put in 50-100 hours at this point. Mostly just messing around in FFA and team games between ourselves, but lately we've been trying ranked team games with 3 or 4 of us together. Still a lot of terrible defeats as our team score adjusts, but there's been some amazing close games and last-minute wins. Team games are hugely entertaining and it's nice for an unlucky losing/ganged up on player to still have a chance and come back when they can rebuild near some team mates. Haven't touched single player at all yet but I've heard the campaigns are all well made too. Only ever did them back in the day with the original 5 AoK ones, and there's an intimidating amount between all the expansions now.
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May 12, 2020 00:46
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I first played this game in middle school and was even in a clan yet I was terrible at the game for years. Or at least random map. I was pretty good in Deathmatch but RM it just wasn't happening. Thanks to youtube I finally got a decent fast castle time (no loving idea how to fast Feudal -> rush, though) with around 16:40 with Japanese/Lithuanians and on an open map too. However, I have no clue what pros are doing with the rally point when boar baiting. A whole lot of stuff is going on at that point in time and it just kinda mushes together in my mind. I get that they're rallying the 11th villager to take the boar but after luring it to the town center they tend to stash the vill in there and... a whole lot of poo poo happens and I don't know what. Also, their boar seems to stick around while they finish their sheep. Mine? 5 seconds without aggro and he's headed back to greener pastures. I wish someone like hera would make an instructional vid for what to do if everything goes bad; slow finding first sheep, not finding next sheep, boar kills a vill, boar lamed, sheep lamed, whatever. It's possible to have a near perfect opening against a passive comp and even if you do it's not impossible to catch up. Against a human, you're pretty much screwed.
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May 12, 2020 04:26
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Milo and POTUS posted:However, I have no clue what pros are doing with the rally point when boar baiting. A whole lot of stuff is going on at that point in time and it just kinda mushes together in my mind. I get that they're rallying the 11th villager to take the boar but after luring it to the town center they tend to stash the vill in there and... a whole lot of poo poo happens and I don't know what. Also, their boar seems to stick around while they finish their sheep. Mine? 5 seconds without aggro and he's headed back to greener pastures. To "dance with the boar" while finishing a sheep: set the rally point to be the decayed sheep. Every few seconds (or if the boar starts walking away) have one of the sheep vills shoot at the boar. Garrison the vill in the TC (default hotkey is "T") just before the boar reaches the vill then de-garrison the TC (default hotkey is "G") to send him back to sheep. Boar should stand around stupid and confused for a few seconds before you have to do it again. The best map to practice this on is Hillfort: the boars start right near your TC so if you mess up you don't have to chase them down again.
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May 12, 2020 16:14
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Toast King posted:Team games are hugely entertaining and it's nice for an unlucky losing/ganged up on player to still have a chance and come back when they can rebuild near some team mates. This is my favorite part about team games, especially when I spawn the closest to the enemy teams. Doing jack poo poo until the very end of the game and then sending my almost entirely non-upgraded Skirmishers and Light Calvary in to feebly whack away at some buildings while my friends do all of the real destruction is a great final "gently caress you, I'm still alive." Also, T90 is streaming some more Low Elo Legends right now if anyone wants to watch: https://www.twitch.tv/t90official
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May 12, 2020 19:10
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I played megarandom on a ludicrous size map, full random civ, think just a normal random map game... and started with like 4 extra villagers as the slavs I believe? I'm confident I didn't do anything with the TC, like build more. I was too busy marveling at the size of the map
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May 13, 2020 04:27
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I've been messing around with the DE of the first game and was going to dip back into the 2013 release of this one, but this is the first I've heard about a remaster of AoE2. Does this one run better than the remaster of AoE1?
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May 13, 2020 05:09
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C-Euro posted:I've been messing around with the DE of the first game and was going to dip back into the 2013 release of this one, but this is the first I've heard about a remaster of AoE2. Does this one run better than the remaster of AoE1? Yes. AoE1's DE is the same exact game with new graphics slapped on. I don't know to what extent they changed the engine with 2, but there are a lot of improvements both performance-wise over the first and the additions they were able to make such as shift-queuing and army-only selection. The only drawback is that you can't switch back to the old graphics like you could in 1, if you were into that.
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May 13, 2020 05:25
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Milo and POTUS posted:I played megarandom on a ludicrous size map, full random civ, think just a normal random map game... and started with like 4 extra villagers as the slavs I believe? I'm confident I didn't do anything with the TC, like build more. I was too busy marveling at the size of the map Megarandom is my favourite map to play with friends, since everything about the start is randomised (but the same for everyone). So you get weird maps with only 3 tiles of stone across the whole thing, or a start with double the villagers or 2 scouts, an extra building, things like that. It's kind of funny to see when you start with a spearman instead of a scout and everyone has to slowly run around with it to explore the map instead of a nice fast scout.
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May 13, 2020 06:57
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i vomit kittens posted:Yes. AoE1's DE is the same exact game with new graphics slapped on. I don't know to what extent they changed the engine with 2, but there are a lot of improvements both performance-wise over the first and the additions they were able to make such as shift-queuing and army-only selection. The only drawback is that you can't switch back to the old graphics like you could in 1, if you were into that. Nice, I liked AoE1 more than 2 as a kid but its DE version drops frames for me a lot. I'll definitely give 2's DE a shot if it runs better.
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May 13, 2020 13:57
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