r/aoe

Hi everyone. I play mostly 1v1 death matches or 1v1 random maps. Depends on my previous experiences, to avoid being confined to gold, I began preferring Scythe Chariots in my civs. Along chariots, ballista towers and heavy catapults are also essential for me. Considering these, which civs do you advise to me?

[AoE2 HD] Fortress Age – an Alpha rebalance mod for slower wars, stronger defenses and meaningful upgrades

Steam Workshop:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3783484476

Hi! I've been working on an experimental rebalance mod for Age of Empires II HD (2013) called Věk Opevnění / Fortress Age.

The idea is simple: I wanted AoE2 to feel less like a race toward the strongest upgrade and more like a long, expensive medieval war where fortifications, logistics and unit losses actually matter.

Instead of simply increasing or decreasing a few stats, the mod changes the overall philosophy of progression.

Some of the main ideas:

• Walls, towers and castles are significantly more important.
• Siege weapons are powerful, expensive strategic assets rather than disposable units.
• High-tier units are much more expensive to replace.
• Many unit upgrades are no longer pure upgrades.
• An upgraded unit can gain HP or damage while losing range, vision, attack speed or economic efficiency.
• Gunpowder weapons hit extremely hard but fire much more slowly.
• Battles are intended to last longer and developed defensive positions are much harder to break.
• The late game and Post-Imperial phase are much more important.

For example, upgrading a Crossbowman into an Arbalest gives you a much harder-hitting unit, but at the cost of a major reduction in range. Scout Cavalry can be turned into much stronger combat cavalry, but loses much of its scouting ability. Heavy Camel and Paladin upgrades give you powerful elite troops, but replacing those troops becomes considerably more expensive.

So the question is no longer always:

“Can I research this upgrade?”

but rather:

“Do I actually want this upgrade for the army I'm using?”

I am also working on a custom AI designed around the mod. It focuses more heavily on fortifications, keeps part of its army in reserve, invests more into stone, uses siege for breaking defensive positions and tries to make some of the new trade-off upgrades situationally instead of researching everything automatically. Steam currently lists the AI as the third component of the project.

The mod is currently in ALPHA, so balance is absolutely not final. I'm looking for players who enjoy slower games, turtling, huge fortified bases, long sieges and experimenting with unusual balance ideas.

I'm especially interested in feedback about:
unit balance, fortification strength, upgrade trade-offs, AI behavior and late-game pacing.

If vanilla AoE2 sometimes feels too fast and you have ever wanted to spend an hour staring at an enemy fortress thinking “how the hell am I going to get through that?” — this might be for you.

https://preview.redd.it/3pymlh5noijh1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7b0e929a0bc86ef9e2ca328ccdf3983ed5c66318

Yelp! I’m trying to unlock the “Res Publica” achievement in Age of Empires: Definitive Edition (Steam). It requires a multiplayer ranked ELO win, and the game must last at least 5 minutes to count.

I’m in Spain (CET/UTC +1) and happy to return the favor if you need it too.
Let me know if you’re up for queuing together!

Every now and then, I play 1v1 on the Oasis map against a player I come across in AOE1:DE. His strategy is always the same, but I’ve never managed to beat him. While he defends his base with towers and Heleopolis, he constantly attacks with Legions. What strategy should I use?

I’ve been playing with Greeks since long time 1v1 multiplayer matches in AOE1:DE. I am struggling with them because I am not an expert of this game. The last time I played with Greeks my opponent was Egypt. In first 30 min of the game I had twice as many points as he did. I build my soldier buildings across his base and started to attacked. I destroyed his base but the map was highland and the size was big. So he escaped to the other edge of the map. My units was catapults, helepolises and centurions. He produced endless chariots and won the game in the end. I noticed that without gold Greeks are noting. He produced and attacked me all with chariots and than elephants. I took my another lesson by this game. You need to be sure that your opponent is not running to the another side of the map and you need some horses otherwise till you arrive to the new base of the rival, he would be produced 50 new chariots.