Age of Empires II The Conquerors Civilization Strategies for Newbi

Understanding Age of Empires:

Age of Empires, a game by ensemble studios, has the most strategic game play. It is a great game to play online with human players than with computer multi-player games. The better part of the game is that it is game number of strategies, which are better than others in some way or the other.

Understanding Age of Empires Civilizations:

It has 18 different civilizations namely, Aztecs, Britons, Byzantines, Celts, Chinese, Franks, Goths, Huns, Japanese, Koreans, Mayans, Mongols, Persians, Saracens, Spanish, Teutons, Turks, Vikings. Each of these civilizations have their own advantages and disadvantages. The key of the game is that, a civilization appearing weaker than second civilization may be much stronger than the third civilization which is better than the second civilization. If you understand this, that is more than enough to go on your own. But is always good to what others strategies are.

Understanding Strategies:

Every strategy in the game has a strong point and a weak point also. It is experience what really matters when it comes to what strategy to use for the others strategies. But after all experience cannot be bought.

Basic Variables in the Game:

The first and important point you need to observe about the game is that, there are many different decisions to be taken like whether to create a military unit at this time or to go for another villager? Should you build a building with the existing for the age change or you create one? Should you change the age or go for some more villagers and military units? These are the variables to decide on,

• Whats your Civilization
• Whats your opponent's Civilization
  
• Number of units to use for a task
  
• Changing age at the right number of resources and population not by time.
• Selection of military unit
• Number of military units
• Which units to create and which not to
  

Basic Strategy of the Game:

1. Never let the stock piles overflow than required before reaching Feudal and Castle age. This means that you are using those villagers on unwanted task and that is a wastage of that many number of units in your population.
2. You need to know the number of resources you need by the time you reach other civilization.
3. You should see that all the gold and stone mines are exploited once you reached Castle age.
4. For extinguishing the resources very fast you need to have more number of villagers. The fastest way of creating more number of villagers is by building more Town Centers. The major difference comes here. The faster you build more Town Centers the faster you develop.
   
5. The fastest way of building an army is by building more number of military buildings.
   
6. The exact composition of the army, meaning the number of units of each kind, is a very important variable. For example, 50 Palladins can be taken down by 50 Pikemen. But if you have 25 Palladins and 25 Champions, the case would be far different.
   
7. Using Guard Towers is skillful task. The place where you build a gaurd Tower and the units surrounding it should be thought of.
8. Use your unique technologies and make sure that they are well used in the game.
9. Use appropriate number of Ranged Units and Non-Ranged units.

What makes the difference:

The strategies can be improved in a large view by watching the recorded games of experts online. The recorded games can be played by just placing the files in savegame directory in Age of Empires installation folder. Later in the game you can go to saved and recorded games in the single player game tab and then select the game.

You can see a good number of strategies of the game when the pros are playing. Certain Civilization start the battles from the feudal age itself. This is to make sure that the enemy will be took down before he reaches castle age itself or the imperial age. Because some of the civilizations are strong in Imperial age and the other are faster from the beginning itself. If you let the other guy advance ages completely, your civilization may not beat him at all in the Imperial age. Chinese is one civilization which you need to expert in which you should not let the enemy advance the ages.

There should be any restrictions like no dark age attacks or any things of that sort which makes the team with civilizations like chinese and aztecs suffer more than what others do.

Try exploring the map as fast as possible. Keep some pressure on the opponent. Keep on getting the resources from as many sources as possible.

Defensive and Offensive Civilizations:

This classification will help you decide whether to keep your focus on developing and advancing to the next ages or to keep on going for battles with the enemy.

Formations:

Formations make a lot of difference with the army consisting of ranged units and non-ranged units. It is better to go for the formation which will save the archers for longer time.

Bonus Attacks:

Bonus attack is a special attack bonus given to some units against some other units which are sometimes more powerful than the attacking unit.

• Pikeman has bonus attack vs Cavalry and War Elephant.
• Swordsmen have attack bonus vs Buildings.
• Knights have bonus attack vs Archers.
• Skirmisher have bonus attack vs Archers.
• Samurai has attack bonus vs all Unique units.
• Cataphract has attack bonus vs Infantry.

Like this the attack bonuses have to be kept in mind while making an army. Both your units and the enemy units have to be considered. Selection of the best unit is a key.

Use hot keys:

You may not consider this a big variable but is much bigger. Using hot keys makes a lot of difference in the game. You can think about the game for longer time than struggling around to find a Mill to fill with farms, or to create villagers, or to go to the buildings.

• Tapping H, C,C,C,C does not take a second to do, and hence is better than going to Town Center, clicking on it, then going to villager icon and clicking on it for four times.
• Use hot keys to build buildings like B,E for House, B,F for farm, etc...
• Do group your army. You can group your units using Crtl+(1-9). You can have many groups like this. So that you may not waste time to group the units which are to be sent for rescue or to attack. Never keep on tapping attack key continuously on the enemy army while your army is in selection as your units all try to attack that guy only.
  

Some more:

The speed of the unit is also a key variable, even though it seems normal. Don't cluster your non-ranged units as they take time to spread around the enemy units. And in the case of ranged units clustering them may help as the enemy units does not get the contact with all the units at once. The effective area exposed for the attack decreases. But the more important point is to keep in mind the siege unit attacks. If you cluster the units. All those units may be killed with a single attack from a siege unit like Onager.

Putting apart everything, all you need is experience.