How to Improve at Age of Empires 2 - Part 1: Fundamentals [ES/简体/繁體 SUBS]

[@SurvivalistAoE]

It's been pointed out to me that knights aren't actually weak to conversions. Knights get converted at the same rate as other units, it's just that their high cost makes them worse to lose to monks. Scouts and eagles are still resistant, however. Edit: Elephant units now have some built in conversion resistance.

[@Boxy_1]

Cool

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Update again: Elephants now have a bit of conversion resistance.

[@doublecorvid]

@@SurvivalistAoE I really appreciate the update btw.

[@Jayson1988x]

Played AoE 1 and 2 as a kid when they first came out. Went on with life as I grew up, got married and had kids, and this month finally bought a PC for myself (been a casual console gamer for years). Pleasantly surprised how far AoE2 has come, its a gorgeous game now, and is cemented in my heart. Its the first game I bought for my new PC, love it.

[@fredericoluiz6173]

Welcome back!

[@fawvertyler]

TheKaos1988 weird we living parallel lines, I could’ve written this comment lmao

[@MaxUgly]

My dad had all the box sets, aoe 1 and 2. We did not have a LAN set up so we connected over the parallel port. Nostalgia! It all started with a demo disc with the William Wallace campaign. I forget if that came with our gateway 2000 or a magazine or what..... EDIT: you guys remember the MSN Gaming Zone and 56k modems? Then it went to voobly once MSN shut down I believe. I was so excited when the HD version came out and then DE knocked it out of the park. The community is thriving, new features and civs, tournaments! Comparing the old days to now with my gigabit internet and 4k capable computer, technology is amazing!

[@superhans85]

Judging by your name we are the same age. I'm in the same boat only I never grew out of gaming. Its always been my hobby which I've managed to fit into my life. This game is always a classic tho and the remaster has been done very well

[@bbokgomu5422]

Welcome back broooo!!

[@businessclown445]

Im just out here trying to make my city look organized

[@photocide17]

Same

[@aurawolf664]

even on campaign missions i still try and take the time to make pretty cities :) which means im usually neglecting my military LOL

[@arsnakehert]

This is how is always played AoE, too, lol Now I'm trying to get good at, uh, winning matches

[@akl844]

trueeeee

[@jonjay7512]

I’ve been playing this game off and on for 20+ years. Are you telling me that having your city look pristine isn’t the point of the game? 🤯

[@Fonz0]

I played this game for the last 20 years just for fun and when I watch videos like this I realize I've been doing it wrong my whole life lmao

[@apf3290]

Depends if you simply want to play a fun game, OR, be the absolute god of AOE2 . Calculating everything like he does makes the game boring and repetitive.

[@asdf2593]

I found myself taking notes on this as if I was back in college, then it dawned on me that this is far better quality than most of those lectures back then that I actually PAID for

[@MikhalisBramouell]

Truth

[@nymets1104]

Its obvious a LOT of work and planning went into this, thank you Survivalist!

[@ADCFproductions]

it's the Penske file!

[@Welyn]

this is a really good guide, well done!

[@nithinnedumparambil1414]

ayyo welyn watching you stream aoe2 was legit the only reason i wanted to play again

[@ake8548]

Dang, never thought i would see my favorite rust youtuber here

[@ahmedh9103]

You play age of empires????

[@gwaaky26]

hi there

[@fudoq]

Lol i wanna see you playing aoe2

[@SurvivalistAoE]

0:00 - Intro 2:59 - Standard Opening 3:55 - Overview of each of the 4 Resources 6:13 - Basic Scouting 8:05 - Boar Luring 10:07 - Walling 12:13 - Hotkeys 14:22 - Basic Unit Counters 16:01 - Control Group your Scout

[@semihklcgedik7239]

good job 🧨

[@jg2283]

Just a heads up you should pin this to the top

[@SurvivalistAoE]

@@jg2283 I can only have one pinned comment and the other one is more relevant. The timestamps are in the description :D

[@jg2283]

@@SurvivalistAoE you don't have any pinned comments

[@SurvivalistAoE]

@@jg2283 OH dang, you're right. I was sure I pinned the comment that I made earlier to clarify some things. Thanks.

[@pablogauna3780]

Gee, what a LEGENDARY tutorial. Just backin playing since more than a decade!

[@olikas1000]

I've never touched the game, but after youtube started recommending me videos for it, I've been getting interested. The game looks really overwhelming to me, but this video got me a step closer to finally trying it! I love the way you present information - a lot of it in a (relatively) lenghty video, but I can understand every bit of it, even if I've never even played the game before. Cheers!

[@mattwithahat3857]

Maybe play the campaigns first and try to pick up the game from there? They are actually quite fun and may take several hundred hours to play through :D They play very differently than a standard game, but you can start learning the hotkeys and how to micro there.

[@Jimmy911ism]

I watch these videos and others, plus games high and low elo, to form an idea of how to play effectively. I've only played vs AI, around 2004/2005 last time and soon lost interest; playing vs others online is the way to go and I wish I'd done that. I've got to get the internet connected for the flat. I know my mobile phone internet won't cut it. When I buy the latest AOE2 game and a monitor, I'll practise my deer pushing and boar luring / laming. I never did that before, always building a mill near a herd or between two boars! I don't know if deer pushing would be more efficient, but I suspect you're better off actually scouting with your scout. Boar luring looks more efficient than taking 9 vills and building a mill outside. I can practise this before I get the internet on. I think outposts are crucial for spotting vills coming to trush you, which I've no experience of. So much to experiment with.

[@ConnorMacFar]

Just play it!

[@kimkwangseokfan]

I started playing aoe2 about 2 months ago, and basically this guide wouldve saved me about 3 weeks worth of trial and error :o For a game that has such a great, generous community behind it there is such a paucity of simple guides like this for noobs like myself, so thank you and I hope you keep making videos!

[@joshuahall1268]

I love how thorough you are. You added a lot of simple things that I haven’t heard other casters mention that I found really helpful, things like “build that first house in between the two villagers.” Thanks!!

[@SurvivalistAoE]

You can even send one of the two villagers to work on sheep before the house is complete. As long as the house % === villager %, then you're good to send one of the villagers to work since villagers and houses both create in 25 seconds. This can give you like +2 food. It also starts the decay process a bit faster, so maybe it's better to chop like 2 wood at a straggler instead.

[@Jimmy911ism]

@@SurvivalistAoE 2 food. That's a Snickers at most.

[@DruzhinaAoE]

Incredibly indepth! Had to check this out thinking it could be useful for some new players in my group, didn't expect to learn so much myself! This is the best beginner guide I've seen so far :)

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Nice! Great to hear since I was worried that I was being too brief with my explanations. Maybe I'm just getting right to the point :D The next parts will be about 15 minutes as well.

[@DruzhinaAoE]

@@SurvivalistAoE It's perfect! Looking forward to the next part

[@yamcha111]

this is like applying for a job and seeing you don't meat the minimum requirements

[@brianfox340]

Oh my god, I am downloading the game, and clicked on so many videos looking for something at this level. It's shockingly hard to find. Thank you.

[@YAN-98]

I've just started learning aoe2 a few months ago and have been poring over every piece of info I can find on it and trying my best to categorize it, its such an interesting game. But god damn is this video and its further parts catharsis. So thorough, but prioritized and concise. I bet writing the outline for this was satisfying as hell lol

[@SkepticalOptimst]

Such a brilliant series. I come back to it time and again, and I take something helpful from each video every time I watch. Thanks so much for the hard work you put in, mate!

[@Bigred10101]

Mate this video is amazing! I play with a few of my mates who are quite good and this definitely helped to show how they are able to expand so quickly, definitely going to be implementing all of this stuff!

[@dgoek]

Thanks to the dude who added subtitles in Spanish!

[@NobodyAgeofEmpires2]

Best guide I've seen, period!

[@bigblue3221]

Just found this game after 20 years . I am loving it. Thanks for the video

[@thescottishtraveller]

Although I didn't find anything in here that I didn't already know, I realise how much time this all must have taken and how useful it would be to newer players. Thanks for uploading this!

[@SurvivalistAoE]

This was more of an introduction for newer players. Parts 2-4 should have at least some things that you might not know yet!

[@teemo-kawaii3423]

I came to this game first but only for a month until aoe4 came out. I've been playing aoe4 ever since. I'm a noob at both games and at rts in general. But I've managed to understand aoe4 for a bit, and now I don't really like the siege meta of aoe4 anymore. So I'm returning to this game. Call it returning but I haven't actually played this game that much in the beginning. I was looking for a sophisticated, but still noob-friendly guide. And I found it. Thank you so much.

[@BlueBirdgg]

those tutorials are better than SotL and Hera tutorials. Great content Survivalist

[@E.Johansson]

One of the best guides I’ve seen on YT. Thanks

[@OverGiraffe-zl1qs]

I signed in to like, subscribe, and comment! Great stuff -- thank you for putting in the time for all of us!

[@ilbene7922]

The problem with chainging hot keys is that then you should change all the others and i never understand how should i change the others I would like a full description of all the changes needed if possible

[@j.p.691]

Great series man, you match your video quality with guys like Hera oder Spirit of the Law! Thanks for the effort you took!

[@harrij.9542]

Your video really puts the fun back to the fundamentals !

[@kunhaoho8349]

誰翻中文的 好讚喔 這部,精確地說了很多秘密數字 !! 我以前常常研究這個讓效益最佳化

[@burakguvencc]

Time to time i watch your streams, but never saw your guides. Thanks for that. Very helpful videos.

[@MrMMisCrazy]

thanks for your time and effort =) Stumbled over your content via twitch and i love it

[@Qfungi]

you beat me first round of Red Bull Wololo, I was disappointed but now i dont feel so bad :P

[@RuprechtCasimus]

I've been playing Age of Empires II for years now (only casually and mostly single player mode though) and still - these don't feel like fundamentals, more like advanced pro-techniques. But well, now I see the reason of losing every multiplayer match... Still I really appreciate the hard work you put into this :D

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Fundamentals for improving if you want to get into multiplayer at least :D

[@jedimindtrix2142]

They very much are fundamentals. Anyone who wants to compete at any level has to know a basic opening build order for any RTS game. Starcraft 2 for example has a bunch of different ways to open the game. You will learn it if you actually try. Just write the build order or order in which you do the things you open with down until you get the whole process down to muscle memory.

[@TheKringgle]

Thanks a bunch for the guide. Only played aoe2 when i was like 7 in 2005 and just found out its popping 2 days ago.

[@rolloden344]

A brilliant guide. Thank you! I'm so glad I found this one. Literally tons of priceless information here!

[@alexxx4434]

Great outlook, not just for AoE, but RTS in general.

[@pdv457]

ive seen many aoe guides, this one is the best

[@robin9740]

13:45 TIP to cancel units: If you have the command queues up on the top of the screen and you see you accidentally clicked to produce a certain unit. Ctrl+click on it to cancel its production.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

They may have added this feature after this video came out.

[@robin9740]

@@SurvivalistAoE Yeah, this feature did not exist at the time. I just wanted to add it since I use it often as I tend to missclick.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

@@robin9740 Just be careful not to cancel imp!

[@SkepticalOptimst]

Really great job, mate. This lesson is extremely informative and easy to follow. Without question, I'm better at aoe2 because of it.

[@Patchnote2.0]

What a great video. This is definitely going to be my go to for new players! I also really liked that eco upgrade hotkey trick. Alt+Z is my lumber camp, but I've kept the upgrade at Q. It might not be any slower, but I like how Alt+ZZ is more natural.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Yeah, you get used to ctrl + zz and then ctrl + xx pretty quickly (or alt, whichever you prefer)

[@j936-n6n]

I'd say rewatch all your games, even the ones you won. I won my first ranked match today, was brutal. I rewatched it and realized some mistakes I made, some wrong assumptions I had and missed opportunities.

[@danielmcgann86]

This will help a lot of players. Thanks for the video keep them coming 👍🏻

[@1985tris1]

Always good to see people trying to give some tutorials. I am not bad at using limited hotkeys for say getting vills to build which building. some like gate build always stumps me As I do not use it enough. I think almost always I Have regretted using gates as they come down So fast. Better off deleting a section ans putting the Wooden wall up or a house to plug it. That usually happems on golden pit In early castle. I definately could improve on grouping units/ doing more patrol for melee units and hot Key select for builings into unit production.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Just try to use one new hotkey per day and you'll eventually know all of the useful ones!

[@DeJake]

Nice vid! I love the pyramid concept, it's great

[@unimportantcommenter4356]

I liked your video, and I'd like to expand the tips slightly with a few ideas: 1. During Boar luring, if you dont want to use the garisoning technique, you should send your Villagers out of the luring villagers path, and task the vills to shoot the boar, when the boar is 3 tiles away from the TC. Send them preferably to the southern part of the TC, and task the luring vill to stick close and underneath the TC 2. With Hotkeys, uniforming the unit hotkeys is also a good idea. I only you the A S D F keys to train units, eaxh key represents where the unit is located, for examlle A trains archers, Light Cav, Militia and Rams. This way, the margin of error is way lower and it is super easy to learn. 3. You ought to hotkey herdables too. Use two herdables for scouting, and use preferably the smaller herdables for scouting (sheep, lama, goat), because they are faster and you dont loose much food in case the enemy scout s, the herdables. 4. If you play on the Conqerors edition of the game, it is a good idea to send your sheep next to the berry-pickers, while hunters gather food from boar. If you do this, the enemy scout has a harder time to steal your sheep, and the sheep wont block your vills from the food-gathering.

[@Jimmy911ism]

Point 4 sounds good, but you have to harvest sheep early under your TC to create vills quickly. If you do send the last 3 or 4 sheep to your mill, I can see the enemy scout killing them.

[@syeikhkebab]

The efforts creating this video...good job bro, you deserve a sub! Have been playing AOE since i was a lil kid, but yeah not a good player, as long as i can create mass army and huge wall, that was all that matters XD

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Teutons castles with crenellations vs Hardest AI was always the best.

[@corruptedsmurf260]

I feel like there is so much I could learn from just fundamental sections like this. Do you have a video (or one planned) that goes into more depth on the fundamentals?

[@SurvivalistAoE]

You should be able to pick them up pretty quickly just by playing yourself or watching some higher level gameplay.

[@NTAD1910]

I need part 2 now!!! hurry up man! lol. jk. great summary of fundamentals. consider me subscribed!!

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Working on it!!! :D

[@swisstravellearth6232]

Great insights and tips. However, I am not so sure about boar stealing as a foundamentals. What about fish, using the mini map and use civ bonuses in Dark Age?

[@MikeEmpires]

I wish I could put this stuff in my curriculum.

[@fayxe3400]

Very nice and useful video! Keep making these videos! 👍

[@sjamesvfx]

The correct build order is 4 houses, then 3 barracks (before producing 1 unit). This is the way.

[@sheldonjohnstone801]

Been playing at 1100 ELO for few years, great tips on camp upgrades (especially changing Mill to Ctrl+X) and the set gather point. I’ve killed way to many boars by just right clicking the boar w town centre before the vils finish killing it.

[@roaldthamesen533]

Please make the video about Units and Counters. That'll be super lovely.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

I've been thinking about that for a future project. It's just a really broad topic. Would probably end up being at least 1 hour on its own.

[@samajhdarprani5779]

Nice work, simple and to the point

[@kishi8774]

you deserve more suscribers, well done video!

[@kael13]

Starcraft is my RTS and I'm discovering this is quite different. 4 resources to juggle, friendly fire from siege and ranged units that hit nothing if their target is moving are at times frustrating features. Walls, so the enemy can't just walk right past, are so very key in AOE2.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

I played starcraft 2 competitively for 6 years before coming to aoe2 like 10 years ago. The mechanics are quite different but the fundamentals are the same. Collect resources, spend resources, take good fights, etc... Even though there are 3 resources, you don't really have to think as much about stone for the most part so it's mainly just juggling food, wood, and gold. I've come to realize that it really comes down to spending your wood in this game. Every 60 wood, spend on a farm. Build houses when you need them. Always have a plan for the next wood that you're going to spend and your macro will feel much smoother.

[@Coolpeter95]

Amazing vid bro, subbed and bell’d. Waiting for the next instalment

[@Hawk_R6]

The QWERTY ASDFGH ZXCVB -Grid layout is a cool choice for hot keys as well. I only have to look where the button I need is located on the grid. I knew most of them by heart after a short amount of time.

[@bhuvaneshwar8170]

oh man so good i was searching for something like this

[@0xredact3d]

Wow, lots of things to work on. I really appreciate you sharing, thanks!

[@LokirofRoriksted]

Awesome, as some okayish player myself I also learned a few things, like gates pierce armor, # of lumberjacks and stuff, the trick with ctrl+z+Z (but i use A as my go to hotkey for all upgrades). Please make a longer version of number of villagers on each resource to make military on 1-3 military buildings, like you explained before where you said 4 on gold to archers, 7 to knights, but what if you're turks (faster gold), or berbers, or portuguese (cheaper), or huns (faster training) of course not everything for specific civs, but at least the first gold mining upgrade, how many villagers on stone for a constant tower rush, stuff like that nvm, I found your site in the comments and it's amazing

[@FurkanTopal]

i dont understand anything about this heroku app, a+ c etc, theres not a description. is there a video for that?

[@SurvivalistAoE]

It says when you load in and scroll down a bit to the explanation.

[@davidkiss8845]

Looking forward to next parts!

[@13lackout360]

Saved. There was a time where I thought I was decent at the game but it turns out when I turn the difficulty up the AI crushes me. I can't beat even the moderate AI and even the Standard AI gives me trouble. Nothing left to do but find out what I'm doing wrong.

[@petersmythe6462]

I actually hadn't played the game in awhile and forgot I should build a house with 2 vills. I had been queing a villager and loom while building a house with 1 villager and gathering sheep. I wonder if that's part of why I'm always 150 points behind in dark age and lost 100 ELO.

[@viktorkm9784]

Idea with lumber camp and mill is very good one, thanks

[@Jordanmillerceo]

This video is excellent! Thank you so much

[@infinteuniverse]

bro, you inspire me to try to become a chess streamer sometime in the future. I used to love playing chess back in the day and peaked at ~1900 ELO. That's not that good compared to GrandMasters, but I'm better than 98% of the player base and can teach everyone worse than me. Meanwhile, it would take a couple of years for me to get anywhere near 2k in AOE2. That, and AOE2 fucks my wrist up bad.

[@matthewsouthwell]

This is soooooo comprehensive!

[@PhotonTrooperGaming]

Excellent content! High quality content!

[@ryan__nz]

A fellow salesforce dev? Excellent vid man

[@coddaam]

Thanks i'm a very casual player and these tips should just put me over the edge against my friends :D

[@BodkinArrow]

Excellent work, very well done!

[@diosn6909]

Very structured and useful!

[@theancientsam]

a fundimetnals video about this game could easily be 3 hours long but yet i can not find those videos youtube is just pushing popular videos, how do i find the real stuff?

[@diato2993]

thanks for the video! it's really helpful!

[@freziaplanet4198]

hello im from age of empires 2 the age of kings so good to know theres more to it than that

[@edibleanimals4392]

Really great vid!

[@alejandropalomino2723]

ohh this is what i was looking for sometime ago

[@ijhuana]

Great guide mate!!

[@Braxx-Vision]

hehe... about to watch this vid, wanna put out.. i generally succeed as an agressive millitaristic expansionist that fortifies massive amounts of territory (way more than my fair share) cutting off resources for my closest neighbors who can't get through my heavily garrisoned walls (as i train up a couple battalions of mixed cavalry to basically Genghis khan everyone.

[@russoft]

" if you sacrifice macro for micro, it's often not worth it". I'm no great player (850 elo), but often find myself beating players handily with a fraction of the APM because they're doing a lot of micro while villagers sit idle. It's all great practice, I'm sure, but keeping economy going ends up being more important than scouting a few extra tiles with sheep.

[@BuyrukA]

9:54 nice clip of you stopping Hoang's boar lame.

[@mr.nifler4602]

Thank you! This helped me so much!👍

[@Gnurklesquimp]

I have a Corsair mouse with 12 extra buttons (Scimitar Pro), I think I want to use my mouse almost entirely for combat maneuvers and garrison, 10/7 or 12/9 probably being ctrl/shift to save my keyboard hand stretches while middle mouse button is last notification as usual. (I like using ctrl/shift modifiers a lot since that way the base hotkey can remain in the same place) I think I also wanna use the scroll wheel for this, I'm thinking attack move on scroll up. Does anyone have any input on good layouts to account for several micro maneuvers, so that I don't have to jump too much across the pad? Any ideas for scroll down? Another experiment I wanna try to make it comfier to transition between games is using WASD, EQ and, `/Tab/caps and alt for actions I'll be using most extensively in the heat of the moment, it kinda feels intuitive to put formations on WASD to me, swapping between W (Line) and A (Flank) feels kinda natural to me. I'm also considering making the top row of my mouse's buttons military control groups, I'm really used to swapping to characters/skills with those in action games so it'll probably feel very natural to me as well. As for my system, I'm thinking that, say, if R equals all barracks, then ctrl-R is go to barracks, and shift will probably be my build key so I can just memorize one grid where possible.

[@Andreas-qs7ve]

Guys I have a question how u get more quickly RSS did u know any code that give u a lot RSS or any strategy

[@johnfrisby3038]

Very helpful video, thanks.

[@pragadeeshwar923]

Waiting for part 2 🔥

[@go2za_yami779]

i recently got definitive edition and my units are not routing. i try unit to follow a path but it directly goes there, ignoring the path.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Shift queueing works differently in definitive edition compared to previous versions. You don't have to right click to "finish" the path in de. You hold shift for the last action and the units will follow the path.

[@go2za_yami779]

@@SurvivalistAoE yes, i figured it out. thank you.

[@SQ97]

This video is really good rezource!

[@sawthemin77]

In the end , it boils down to ....... MATH !!

[@firebert95]

What do you mean by setting your Scout to a control group? Is that different than a hotkey?

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Hotkeys are the buttons that you use to build units/upgrades. Control groups are the ones that you set during the game on numbers 0-9

[@Koba1025]

Since 20 years I have been playing only death match with Britons lol that too with map explored and revealed.

[@petermari8299]

the problem isi when you are 30+ is that you want to get better in the game you love and played since 99 but that damn work (and all the other stuff) won`t let you to get enough time to practice ;(

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Yep, life gets in the way for most people. But for me, no gf no problems 111111

[@petermari8299]

@@SurvivalistAoE that`s why I divorced before DE came out 11

[@SurvivalistAoE]

@@petermari8299 1111

[@RuniRiot]

Does someone have notes on what he's talking about? This is super great and I want to use it during gameplay.

[@baptistelaporta7192]

Why do you have a key assigned to set gather point when you just have to click?

[@SurvivalistAoE]

If you right click something that is targetable by structures (enemy units, boar, deer) the town center will try to shoot it instead of set the rally point. This is especially bad when you're luring the boar and you don't want to accidentally kill it with the town center.

[@baptistelaporta7192]

@@SurvivalistAoE Thanks!

[@MarioRosa_70]

Hi can you help me, how do i rotate a gate?? sometimes i can´t pace a gate in the right direction, there must be a way to rotate , isn´t it??

[@SurvivalistAoE]

It should be set to rotate on the mouse wheel, otherwise you can go into the hotkeys and set it this way.

[@muffinspuffinsEE]

Insane amout of work. Thank you!!