1. Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition Strategy
2. Age Of Empires Definitive Version
3. Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition Jihad Review

On August 21, 2017 at Gamescom, Microsoft announced Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition was in development by Forgotten Empires, Tantalus Media and Wicked Witch Software. On June 9, 2019, Microsoft revealed the gameplay trailer at Xbox E3 2019. It released on the Xbox Game Pass in addition to Steam and the Windows Store on November 14, 2019. Jihad – Black Guard, Spearman, Camel, Cavalry Archer +2 damage (+5 vs. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition 106 viewers Onutrem. The List of modern historians of the Crusades identifies those authors of histories of the Crusades after 1950 whose works are widely read. This is a continuation of the list of later historians of the Crusades which discusses historians from the 13th century through the early 20th century. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition Age of Empires series. Level Leaderboard View all William Wallace. The Siege of Jerusalem Saladin: Jihad!

The only problem with Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition is that you can already play the original Age of Empires 2. Oh and you can also already play Age of Empires 2 HD, which tidied up the original's visuals and, according to its store page, brought in 'improved AI, workshop support, multiplayer, Steamworks integration and more!' So if you're anything like me, that might've made you think twice.

Thankfully, there is more to the Definitive Edition than that. Talking to Adam Isgreen, Creative Director for Age of Empires on the Microsoft side of things and Bert Beeckman, co-founder of Forgotten Empires, the studio that takes the lead on these remasters, the first thing I wanted to ask was why an HD owner would want to upgrade. There is actually a decent answer.

'Well, we sell expansions for the game as well and the expansions usually run about 10 bucks, right?' Isgreen tells me. 'So, within the Definitive Edition you have a whole new expansion, basically: you've got three new campaigns, a whole bunch of new missions, you've got four new civilizations to play with as well, so right there you're pretty much already at 10 dollars into the game.'

You'll also get five dollars off if you already own the HD edition, which helps (I didn't get confirmation for the UK side of things - know you're wondering - but imagine it will be an equivalent amount). 'So for five dollars more you also get brand new AI, an entirely new multiplayer with a super-secure, awesome anti-cheat multiplayer solution that's super-stable across all kinds of connections. You get all the new social features, you get everything like the unified community, there's just a lot of things - for any kind of player you are - to take advantage of.'

Fair enough. That chat was actually after Isgreen and Beeckman had taken me through a closer look at those features in the game, via a peek at the new Tamerlane campaign, the most striking of them being that new AI.

'If you look at the old AI, it cheated' Beeckman chuckled. 'It totally cheated. It doesn't cheat anymore.'

'If you put one AI, non-cheating, of the Definitive Edition version against seven of the original that do cheat, it just wipes the floor with them. No problem. Every time. So that's the kind of level we were aiming for here... the new AI is so good that you can watch replays of it to actually learn how to play the game, because it plays the game correctly now... it tries to follow the competitive meta - on the highest [difficulty] level - because we have 20 years of pro players doing tournaments and we tried to get that in the AI as well.'

You can also talk to the new AI in a more sophisticated way. I didn't see this in action but the example I was given was how, in the past, interactions were limited to things like 'do you have any spare Gold you could give me?' whereas now you could ask an AI ally 'hey, can you attack, with Knights, that specific player at that time', and they'll go ahead and do it.

Again, it's hard to really evaluate those sorts of claims without having a proper, lengthy hands-on, but to me the talk about an AI trained on competitive strategies is genuinely exciting. I might not ever see much benefit from it, mind - I'm one of those strategy players who hits a skill cap somewhere in the no-man's-land between teching-for-fun on Medium and struggling with a rush on Hard - but even the fact that the AI always sticks to the rules is promising enough for those like me who can now actually watch what they're doing and mimic it.

The rest of the improvements in the Definitive Edition fall comfortably into the category of neat stuff for nerds - which I really should stress I count myself as, too! - rather than big headline revolutions. Isgreen and Beeckman told me that the feedback they had was always a request not to touch the gameplay, and so their focus was on how they could help that 'stand out more' and deciding on looking mostly at how it's controlled, which first of all meant the ability to zoom in and out. Hope you were sitting down for that bombshell! (Although it is, actually, weirdly neat to see, especially if you've the dosh to witness it all in snazzy 4K).

There's now a global queue for what you're building. 'If you look at professional players,' Beeckman told me, 'they're constantly clicking on all the buildings to see what's going on, so it's really hard to follow the game. Now, it's there. You know what's going on, you don't have to click any more, there's more time to actually enjoy the game.' Or as Isgreen put it: 'We want you playing on screen, not necessarily playing on the UI.'

There's also a kind of 'automatic farm receiving,' so villagers will keep going as long as they have enough resources to do so (a boon for old school players who remember having to micro-manage this). There's a command queue, which has been in plenty of Age of Empires games and just about every other strategy game since, but was never actually in the original Age 2. There's better unit selection, so if you click and drag over a large amount of military units with a few villagers smattered in there, the game will know you're only trying to select the military ones and automatically leave out the villagers. No more 'why did my villagers stop working on my Wonder?!', as Isgreen put it. Even the ability to attack-move is new. 'All these foundational things that everyone takes for granted in RTS games now, we had to go put all that in.'

It does add up - at least in theory. The Definitive Edition will have 27 campaigns in it; the original had five. There were 13 civilisations in the original and 35 now. I'm really not one for equating time spent in a game to value-for-money but, if that's your bag, Beeckman claimed that 'if you play through all the campaigns and win them all in one go, you have 200 hours of gameplay. That's how much there is, just in the campaigns, for 20 bucks.' Again, fair enough. It's cross-play between stores (Steam or Microsoft Live), 'basically it's like a mini version of Battle.net,' as Isgreen told me, so 'you have all the AoE games, all of your friends from both Steam and from Live; chat, everything across games all in one place, so we're kind of bringing the whole community together with Age' - hence the 'unified community' comment when I asked.

Basically, it does actually seem like a proper, ground-up job and a reasonable ask, given everything that's included - but it does also seem like it's still a big reasonable ask. It seems like the teams behind it, at Microsoft and at the three studios - Forgotten Empires, Tantalus, and Wicked Witch - are aware of that. The demo felt as much like a sales pitch as a walkthrough of what's new, because it's necessary if they're going to get players who bought Age of Empires 2 back in 1999, and then HD, so they could play it again with their friends, in 2013, to triple-dip on an even-more-HD version now. I can tell you it's pretty though (it really is), and I can tell I think I'm probably sold myself - even if it's just the cost of getting an AI friend to teach me how to play.

How many times have you asked yourself – Why am I so bad at this game? – What to do to beat this guy? –What am I doing wrong?

Today, you will assimilate expertise and answers to all those questions and more in top 5 reasons why you keep losing games in Age of empires 2. Who knows… This is probably what you needed all along to improve at this game.

1- Less Villagers & Bad Economy Management

Constantly create villagers at your town center

There is no doubt that villagers decide the faith of your game. Beginners usually fail to keep the town center constantly queuing villagers and especially early Dark Age.

In Dark Age you have to prioritize the gathering of food resources (Sheep, boars, forage bush and deers if possible), then wood comes second. However, Stone and Gold are optionally mined at the last second before clicking up to Feudal Age.

As soon as you reach Feudal Age, you are expected to research the economic upgrades (Double-Bit Axe, Horse Collar and Wheelbarrow) -unless you are doing a fast castle build order- while prioritizing once again the creation of villagers at your town center.

Age of Empire 2 is a slow paced game, thus the failure to make villagers constantly is going to put you in a horrible position later on that game.

When you click up to Castle Age you need to ensure that you have all the economic upgrades in addition to the gold upgrade and at least 13 Lumberjacks. This latter is important because you need extra 2 town centers upon reaching Castle Age.

Important Castle Age economy upgrades

At Castle Age, Bowsaw upgrade is a must research economic upgrade because Wood is the hero of this age. You will need to make military units, build a minimum of 2 extra town centers, seed more farms and construct more military buildings all in that particular order.

Post-Castle Age or around 30’ish mins game time, specifically 30 mins sharp you should have 27 or 30 farmers at least. Pulling this number of farmers at 30 mins is a good sign of paving your way to prowess at this game. Moreover, 30 farmers are needed to click up to the Imperial Age.

Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition Strategy

Just clicked up to Imperial Age? Starting from Dark Age to Post-Imperial, DO NOT stop making villagers. That’s where most players take the fall; it’s at late Imperial Age. They found themselves with lesser villager count compared to the enemy, as a result, the economy rapidly deteriorates with barely any resources to spare for trash army.

2- Hotkeys

Multiplayer will certainly punish you for not using hotkeys. I wish I knew about hotkeys back when I discovered Multiplayer. It felt like all the players were cheating and building things way too fast, so one day I had to ask one of these players how do you build and attack faster? The answer was: Do you use hotkeys?

As simple as that, you should use hotkeys for everything while the mouse is only used for camera movement and unit assignment.

Your first time to give hotkeys a go? I recommend hotkey profiles from pro players because they are customized not to exhaust your hand muscles.

Interested in trying them out? Check out this post: How to Install Hotkey Profiles from Pro Players

You can still customize the hotkeys to fit your needs by accessing Options >Hotkeys

3- Practice Sheet

Nobody was born a pro gamer out of playing casually and randomly. Whoever is a pro today must have been playing the game smarter than you do.

It all comes up to capturing the tiniest deal of details from your gameplay. Details that have remained oblivion to you since a very long time. But as of today, I’m honored to unveil the secret behind playing smarter.

Taa Daa…

This is one of the secrets I have been sitting on for a long time. In fact, this excel practice sheet file I am about to share with you right now has helped me make the jump from 1600 Voobly ELO to 1750-1800 Voobly ELO. Another fact, I do not play on a regular basis…

Imagine what you could achieve if you are playing Age of Empires II regularly?

Here is a download link to my AoC Practice Sheet

Before you give this a go let me explain how it works

This practice sheet is a three column table in a critical order (Errors, Mistakes, Bad Habits) + a one column Table (Notes)

An Error simply means that something came out wrong with the build order but after watching a pro you finally could see what you were going wrong. Or doing something wrong until someday someone points that out to you.

A Mistake is rarely done 3 or 5 games out 10 games due to poor reasoning, carelessness and lack of concentration.

Bad Habits or negative habits are actions you always repeat in your gameplay. Try to replace them by positive habits.

Notes are to be used for intelligence gathering from a particular player or wisdom learning.

4- Ladder Anxiety & Insufficient Practice

How to defeat Ladder Anxiety?

Self-Confidence is the essence of your gameplay. If you fear your opponent and the game has not even started yet, you might as well just resign or play a different game.

So do not let some random non-perfect human being just like you get to your mind. Play for a learning experience and fun; only later comes a deserved win.

Do you often hesitate to host a game room or join a 1v1 game? That could be a sign of “Ladder Anxiety” but you can overcome that in three simple steps.

3 Steps To Defeat Ladder Anxiety

Step 1: Take a deep breath and try to imagine all those glorious and positive moments you had in multiplayer and follow that with a wide smile (make sure nobody is looking at you).

Step 2: Forget about the existence of your enemy. Think of him as a computer bot, or a hot woman/man (not judging) that needs to be impressed by you.

Step 3: Most important step. Do not focus on winning the game but rather focus on improving very little things in your gameplay or what I call them small goals e.g. (In the next game, (Small Goal 1)I want to practice walling starting from 12 population at dark age, (Small Goal 2) I want to have 14 farms at 14 mins)

The moment you achieve a small goal your brain is going to feel positively encouraged to play and practice more because you have genuinely achieved and improved something out of a loss or a victory – It’s a win-win situation either way.

What’s the right way to practice a build order?

You may often find yourself intimidated and destroyed by some opponents then all you could think about next is to switch strategy instead of learning to adapt to the same strategy.

That is why you keep losing over and over because you do not let yourself get accustomed to the mechanics and reactions that every build order requires you to deliver.

You may ask: what are these mechanics and reactions?

Mechanics:

• APM distribution: Some advanced build orders require higher apm to manage both an attack and economy (e.g. Drush + Fast Castle, Men At Arms). Whereas standard build orders (e.g. Scout rush, 23 archers require lesser apm because the first 12 minutes of the game are more economically focused.)

Reactions:

• You are expected to react multiple times during the game-play after scouting your opponent (e.g. The enemy is spotted mining stone earlier dark age: Reaction => Anticipate the locations from where the enemy would probably hit you with the tower rush then prepare a defense such as “2 or 3 militias + scout + 2 villagers” or “5 villagers only” to deal with that.) For a more detailed post to dealing with such aggression, I recommend this read: How To Counter A Tower Rush “Trush”

The pinpoint here is to stick with one strategy and divide your build order into pieces of ‘small goals’ then practice piece by piece until perfection – Instead of wasting your time learning the entire build order at once.

5- Bad Internet

I am pretty sure that most of you are familiar with desyncs, lag and connection drops. Those are gameplay learning killers.

I drew a table to help you better understand who is responsible for these issues; how to address them and fix them.

Ports to forward For Age of Empires II HD on Steam:

• TCP: 27015-27030, 27036-27037.
• UDP: 3478, 4379-4380, 27000-27031, 27036.

Ports to forward For Age of Empires II on Voobly:

Age Of Empires Definitive Version

• UDP: 16000

If you need help with this port forwarding section feel free to join our active discord channel to receive help:

I hope these tips will improve your game day.

Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition Jihad Review

Have fun playing Age of Empires 2.