

You also have a one Villager lead now meaning that you’re constantly earning additional resources over your opponent for a potentially infinite amount of time. You also have to factor in the time of the new Villager walking to berries, which probably takes about 10 seconds, so another 4.5 food, totaling 155.75. It also cost them 50 food to replace that Villager, costing the enemy 151.25 food in total. This means your distraction led to your enemy missing out on 101.25 food. You should also have an extra Villager in your population compared to your enemy - as long as you didn’t lose one yourself too - meaning you’re now collecting resources at a slightly faster rate to them.īerry-foraging Villagers collect around 0.45 food per second. What if, despite only getting one kill, you managed to attack and distract 5 Villagers for 45 seconds? Not only have you cost your enemy 50 food to replace the Villager that you wiped out, you’ve also prevented an additional 4 Villagers from collecting resources whilst your own Villagers will have been collecting resources the entire time. It’s nowhere near as simple as saying that you lost 180 food and 60 gold whereas they lost 50 food (the cost of a Villager), that’s for sure. If you went on an early attack with 3 Militia and manage to kill one Villager, but your 3 Militia die, how much did you lose compared to your opponent? It costs 180 food and 60 gold to create 3 Militia - the most basic infantry unit. It’s surprisingly easy to damage your opponent’s Eco in a way that is profitable. You should use your resources to earn more resources, or use them to damage the Eco of your opponent and force them into an early resignation. Later in the game, you should have so much food income that the cost of a Villager is virtually nothing, relatively speaking. You don’t ever want to be “floating” resources, or stockpiling them, because they’re effectively losing value whilst they’re sat there.Īt the start of the game you have 200 food (with most Civilizations, or Civs for short) but you have no food income, therefore it costs 25% of your total food resource to produce a single Villager. This means that whilst you want a rapidly increasing income of resources, you don’t ever want to accumulate a bank balance.īecause resources continuously decrease in value - until the whole map has ran out of them, that is - it means that you need to be continually spending (or investing) resources. However, resources get less valuable over time. You must grow your own Eco as quickly as you can whilst trying your hardest to prevent your opponent from growing their’s. The game is won and lost on economy how you build it and how you use it. In its most basic form, Age of Empires has always been a numbers game. Useful Resources Fundamentals Game of Math It contains all of the information you need to eventually become a consistent, above-average player. You’ll find this guide useful whether you’re a total noob to the game or even if you already possess intermediate-level skill. We’re going to focus on winning Ranked multiplayer matches as that’s the truest test of skill in my opinion, but you can take everything I say and apply it to beating the AI if that’s your jam. Instead, every bit of information included for you here is a mix of mathematically-proven strategies, along with effective tactics utilized by the top pros playing the game today, such as The Viper, Hera and Daut. That said, what I’m sharing in this guide is not my advice. And now, my with age approaching 30, I can say that my love for the Definitive Edition version of the game is stronger than ever. I returned to playing the game with my friends as a young teenager. I did my first ever “all-nighter” playing Age of Empires 2 when I was 9-years-old. I really wanted to make sure I did this game justice. I’m fairly confident what you’re reading is the most detailed strategy guide to Age of Empires 2 ever created in one place. This guide is going to teach you a huge amount about Age of Empires 2 strategy and includes hundreds of tips throughout. It’s much more complicated, however, to figure out the right move at the right time and be able to remember the really fine details when the pressure is on. Like chess, it’s easy to learn what the pieces do.

The beautiful thing about Age of Empires 2 - other than the fact that it was first released in 1999 and is still going strong - is that the basics of the game are extremely simple.
