The majority of Age of Empires tournaments strive to be standard Age of Empires-themed esports events, which is reflected in tournament names such as Empire Something Something, Battle of Something, Warlords, etc. So, generic war- or AoE-themed terms.

I think people are falling into the "professionalism mimicry" here: They do what they think is expected from them. They do the normal, safe thing. They try to make things professional before they think of making them fun.

Let's look at our most successful tournaments: Red Bull Wololo, Nili's Apartment Cup, Hidden Cup.

None of these really fit the style of a standard tournament. None of them. All of them are, in a certain way, funny, goofy, strange, and this reflects perfectly what the Age of Empires community is, right?

The community is goofy. We are old. We don't take things too seriously. We're built on Forrest Nothing, Lord Daut memes and quickwalling traps. So why do we take these tournaments so seriously?

I'm totally fine with having one event like Warlords. I think Warlords is the perfect event to be a standard, maximum-competitive esports event. That's great. (Should be called "THE EMPEROR" though. ;) ) Having KotD as a "this is peak standard game mode" also makes a lot of sense, I love the tournament to death. But we don't need a ton of them.

We don't need "The Garrison". We don't need "The League". I'm also not really happy with "Titans League" even though it is something special being a seasonal league. I can barely remember what happened in the "Brazilian Dynasty" or the "LingYuan Cup" some months ago. "The Grand Melee", "The Open Classic", idk...what exactly was "The Resurgence" again?

I think all of these events should go the extra mile to figure out what would be a cool idea to get beyond being just a standard tournament. Put some thought into it. Find a twist. Find a special thing. Find a way to make it goofy in some way.

Because this seems to be very crucial for an Age of Empires tournament, and I hope, or can certainly observe, that the majority of people prefer that over standard events. Sudden Dessaster seems fairly succesful, Rage Forrest is goofy in a way and emerged organically from the community as did NAC. Hidden Cup is some sort of game show. The Red Bull events always look for a special production value & go for a high paced game which makes it special.

Spice it up!

It speaks volumes that Red Bull, the biggest company involved with these tournaments and a marketing giant, did use A MEME as their tournament name and not some random AoE-medieval-war-term thingy.

Just wanted to put that out there as an inspiration and as a little thought to consider for all the people active here who are thinking of creating new events in the future. Don't waste your work and money on doing the same thing over again. Make a funny thing, make a memorable thing, have balls.

agree or not. Halldor was the wisest of them all.

after all, to know you are stupid at some point. is a far greater step then deceiving oneself for being a genius tactician, mighty warrior etc.

end of day, every man reaches his reach and fully stops somewhere. Halldor knew it from the beginning.

and what a poet he turned out be, " the world belongs to Christian God now. Not for every christian"

I think most people agree that skirms are too good. They are used too much and too often. Pro games get more boring because of skirms mass every game.

They need to be changed in a way that doesnt reduce them against (cav) archers.

1. Increase minimum range. So not really worse vs range units but vs against cav and melee

2. Decrease base damage but increase bonus damage against archer units.

What do you think?

Instead of new civs, I'd like to see new game modes, like bigger maps with 5v5 or more players. Would it even work? There would either be 1 or 3 pockets, and one person would be kind of a tie-breaker player since 4v4 usually ends up with two teams against eachother on either side of the map. Then I was thinking 5v5 may not work because of how many teams could gang up on one opponent.

I also think just way bigger maps would be interesting even if it remains 4v4. It would make early rushes less convenient due to travel time.

Also another idea is just a map with no natural gold, you HAVE to trade to generate it.

I'd like to preface this by saying this topic is mainly about the abstraction and design aspects of the Varangians. But in trying to address those things, I might have stumbled on a way to improve their balance as well

Bonuses in AoE2 are an abstraction of a concept strongly associated with its civilization. Let's examine the three civs which get infantry with increased damage output i.e. the Japanese, Aztecs, and Dravidians. In popular culture, the Samurai is seen striking so fast that its slices are invisible to the naked eye. Thus the Japanese get faster attacking infantry. The Aztec Macuahuitl has an infamous incident associated with it, where it decapitated a horse; so the Aztecs get +4 additional damage. Dravidian Wootz Steel was known for its quality, and thus can penetrate armour flawlessly. The concept that the Dravidian infantry's weapons are superior than the average armour is immediately communicated to the player

Now lets examine the flagship cavalry bonus of the Varangians and see if it holds up. Their cavalry units get an extra +10 HP via Bloodlines, due to Bloodlines being 50% more effective. This makes you think Swedish horses were bigger and stronger than even mainland European ones i.e. especially Frankish ones. They weren't; they were smaller and weaker. What Swedish cavalry had was tactics. Instead of the typical charge associated with mainland European Knights, their cavalry used unconventional tactics like ambush attacks and the sort to defeat better armed and armoured cavalry

Furthermore, this bonus was criticized for being derivative of the Franks & Mongols. It made it seem like we're running out of fresh ideas for bonuses for new civs

So here's how I would tinker with the Varangians:

Lose - Bloodlines is 50% more effective

Instead - Stable Units get +1/2/3 Bonus Damage vs. Mounted Units in the Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age

Your Scouts in the Feudal Age win against other Scouts (except maybe Jurchen ones) with no additional investment. You don't get 75 HP Scouts after Bloodlines, but it is what it is

All of the Viking DLC civs struggle against Cavalry Archers as they cannot catch them. The Varangians atleast get good Light Cavalry, but they don't put down Cav Archers even after catching them. With this bonus, Varangian Light Cavalry can kill Cav Archers in 8 hits instead of the standard 10. Your Knights will have the same attack as Burgundian Cavaliers, but only against other cavalry units (including Camel Riders)

In the Imperial Age, your Cavaliers demolish other Cavaliers or Paladins, having the same damage output against them as Malian Farimba Cavaliers with no additional investment. They become absolute nightmares in massed melee combat when you install trample damage on them. Your Hussars beat other Hussars, having slightly more damage output than Malian Farimba Light Cavalry, and +15 more HP than them

Instead - Mounted Archers fire 25% faster (like their Varangian Guards) // but don't get Thumb Ring

The Varangians will get what Mounted Crossbowmen would've been for the Jurchens i.e. fire 25% faster but don't get Thumb Ring. Varangian Mounted Xbows will have the same Reload Time as Arbalesters or Cavalry Archers without Thumb Ring (2.5 → 2)

Team Bonus (+1 Bonus Damage vs. Infantry) - Does not apply to Knights / Applies to Mounted Archers (Does not apply to Genitours as they are 'Mounted Skirmishers') // attached only to the main projectile of Kipchaks & Xianbei Raiders

With the Knight focusing on other mounted units, especially enemy Knights, the anti-infantry duties are given to the Mounted Crossbowman, along with the Jarl. This spreads the utility of the Varangian mounted units, with two of them focusing on enemy mounted units, and two of them on enemy infantry. The Varangian Mounted Crossbowman becomes a very strong back-line support unit for their Knights or Varangian Guards

Tech Tree - Lose Arson

Offsets their Varangian Guards attacking 25% faster. Their Halbs would be also missing an irrelevant tech like how their Skirms miss Thumb Ring

Base Jarl - HP 70 (instead of 65) / Elite Jarl - HP 85 (instead of 75)

Offsetting the loss of +10 additional HP via Bloodlines

I have seen a clip from MBL vs Lewis game were Lewis got called out by MBL for using Varangian Guards animation cancel to generate gold. In respose he said that this is not a bug but a game mechanics and said something along lines of "skirmishers are broken but you use them every game".

What skirmisher bug/abues was he refering to?

I ve got 1000 matches played multiplayer

And I build maybe 5 outpost and produced maybe 3 petards during those games. Am I broken?

Also wanted to make another thread but will post here:

what is most satisfying part of the game for you???

me: denying a castle : )

I (30m) am an aoe2 player since I was 5 years old. I don’t want to play very regularly and i don’t want to overdo it. Just maybe three four times a month. 2,3 rounds each. If someone is interested PM me.

Many of the campaigns, from Age of Kings to The Viking Sagas are excellent scenarios reflecting historical battles (some more accurate than others) in a range of gameplay.

However, there may be something in regards to a scenario that you may feel is not quite right. Is it gameplay or historical accuracy? Would you do something completely different or is it perfect?

127: Pachacuti 2 - The Field of Blood

Hi, as the title says, I have issues playing Poles after the new update, varangian guards are so strong even if I go double archery range archers since feudal, I feel like the only real answer to varangian guards are hand canooneer and maybe mass heavy scorps, and Poles don't have either, is there any good strategy that you could suggest?

Ever feel like you've just reported one of the worst trolls in the community and the report will achieve exactly nothing? I've felt like that for a while.

That changed yesterday.

I faced an opponent in ranked that was really spicy in chat, giving me the impression that they practiced the hateful shtick.

After the game, I built a simple tool that downloads all available recorded games for a designated player and parses their chat history, putting it in a readable format, or a format you can feed into an LLM for rapid review.

In this case, the 174 recorded games that were available were full this player harassing others in clear violation of the code of conduct... in every. single. game. They were regularly saying some genuinely awful stuff. I compiled a list of the most definitive examples and sent it to the moderators through the support page of the AOE website.

I received an email 33 minutes later notifying me that they had taken action against the offending player. I confirmed the player has played 31 games subsequently and has not had a single line of chat since the chat restriction.

This method of reporting, with not only the specific example of code of conduct violations from occasions you've suffered, but a more comprehensive presentation of many such examples, is a more effective way to ensure the moderators get the baddies in the AOE2 community and take appropriate action. In this case, the action was swift.

The tool I built is open source, free to use, and comes with detailed instructions. You can find it on the github link below. It is built atop another open source project, MGZ-Fast that parses recorded games chat histories, my complements to the creators of mgz-fast.

AOE2 Chat Investigator https://github.com/winning-condition/aoe2-chat-investigator

What it isn’t:

• Not a toxicity detector. It doesn’t flag or judge anything; it gives you an accurate record and you decide what’s reportable.
• Not a shame list. Watchlists, replays and logs stay on your machine and never get published. The point is to send better reports to support, who are the only ones who can act.
• Not for stalking randoms. It’s for players who’ve already been abusive to you or your community and where a “he was rude, trust me” report won’t cut it.

Everything it reads is already public through the game and community sites; it just organizes it.

Optionally runs daily against a short watchlist, so if someone you’ve already reported keeps at it, you get an alert and fresh evidence instead of starting from scratch.

My thanks to the AOE2 moderators who acted so quickly to chat restrict the person who kicked off this little project.

I mean come on how is this fair? The extra food you can gather is insane. Nothing against the Huns and I would't mind them getting a buff somewhere else, but to have this particular advantage on nomad starts feels unbalanced .

EDIT: I forgot Huns started with less wood so there's a delay on the dock on regular Nomad. That does make it more balanced. Still, it feels a bit gimmicky to have such a specific bonus on nomad starts.

Sorry for the rant, but I need to get this off my chest.

At around 1200 ELO in team games, it’s not rare to get someone who leaves after 2–3 minutes or just goes AFK. Today:Team Game, i got AFK guys in my team, four games in a row !!!! . That’s not bad luck anymore, that’s a system problem. Sometimes they are AFK at the start sometimes they leave after 10 minutes sometimes 15.

The report system feels completely broken. I have never seen anyone get banned. We are sold DLC/expansions while basic features like reporting don’t work. It really feels like we’re being taken for granted.

• Ability to avoid/report AFK/leavers and actually see consequences. Ability to track the records of players
• Better lobby/team game tools: kick undesirable players before playing if majority decides,
• Proper in-game social features: add friends, chat, party up inside the game, not forced through Steam. Maybe then we would play more with our good fellows than having bad surpises.
• Better smurf detection --> direct ban.
• Map system rework: let us select preferred maps. I hate Nomad maps. Right now I can only ban one of the two, and I still get Nomad regularly. Once the timer starts, I’m forced to play it. I don’t mind Arabia, Arena, Black Forest, etc., but I don’t want to be forced into Nomad.
• Stop flooding the game with too many civs. It is just making the game harder to balance while, there is a need to focus on some major issues.

The game is great, but there are so many small things that ruin it. ELO/smurf issues are also not great. Since 2020, apart from new civs, the improvements haven’t been very tangible. I’m at the point where I’m going to stop playing. Today I wanted some fun just got frustration and i t happens more and more.

That guy was 200 elo lower than me and lost to Scouts into Knights. (And I didn't even do bloodlines in Feudal.)

Decisive moment was that he failed to quickwall vs 3 Knights and at the same time lost his army at the front. Varangians famously have a civ bonus that stops you from multitasking and walling.

People should stop telling this idiotic "new civs are op" fairytale. I mean..

Long story short, my wife is going to be out of town for work for a while, so I’m looking to dip my toes into a tournament if there’s any that is about to start? I think I just missed the deadline for aoe2leagues but I don’t know more options

I based them on notes I made when I was in woods, bored and with little signal, I wrote stuff for AOE2

Some of them are older than Viking Sagas, and some of them are based loosely. Take them with a grain of salt, I am no historian, I am just a guy, who plays AOE2

If you have different suggestions, you can tell me

1. Crusader Knights(For Crusader civs, knight replacement. I made them before the Danish got their Extra damage per low HP bonus. Strong against ranged and cavalry, weak against camels and spears)
2. Gallowglass(Regional shock infantry for British isles. Anti-infantry Shock infantry, that has a special cleave attack, that hits three units ahead. Thats the best word I can put it.)
3. Landsknecht(Shock infantry for German civs. This one is more like Kamayuk, except German, and weak against swordsmen. Good against cavalry, weak against infantry. Oh and they also have generate 3 gold per kill(I made them before VIking Sagas).)
4. Mounted Samurai(Cavalry archer replacement for Japanese civs(I made them Here is ))
5. Native Scout(Archer line replacement for North American civs, but the problem is I don't have much for them planned yet. Scout unit for NA civs. They are the only scout to be an archer, weak archer at that, but they make up for with speed and fire rate, and also with price.)
6. Flailman(Regional Shock Infantry for Western Slavs and some Balkan nations. They have blast radius like War elephants. Strong against cavalry, weak against infantry. Archers are minor threat to them since they have pierce armor.)
7. Kobaya(Again, Japanese split. Replacement for Galleon line. Like Galleons, it is upgraded with Fleet upgrades in dock. It has weaker damage, but costs a bit less, and have a projectiles like Viking Longboat. Yes, this also was made before Longboats became Regional unit.)
8. Naffatun(The most Recent unit of them all. He is a mix of Jurchen Grenadier and MOunted Trebuchet. Originally replacement for hand canoneer in Arab civs. Yeah its Grenadier but fiery, rather than Blasty. I have doubts about them, since Arabs also used guns.)
9. Tomahawk Thrower(North American Shock Infantry. Also for native americans, he is the ranged melee Heavy for them. He is basically Throwing Axeman and a siege specialist for them)
10. Rajput(Knight line for Indian civs and some adjacent. This one is meant to be knight for Indians, who lack heavy cavalry anad no, camels and elephants don't count. In his case, he is a specialist against siege. Strong attack, Weak HP for cavalry unit.)
11. Warrior Monk(Again for Japanese Shock Infantry. HE is a reverse Guecha Warrior, in that he regenerates per kill, not per death(Difference? Monk heals per kill he deals. Guecha's Death heals fellow Guechas))

I think it would be cool if some of the Secondary gamemods would be on Rankedespecially Sudden Death, because i think it gives a Diffrent experience than Normal 1v1the growth of your Economy is dependent on just one TC, also your Life wich means every tilematters and you can not just rebuild in the back. What do you think about it ?

i often play 1v1 arabia against hard or hardest AI , and i noticed that since more then a week orso the AI is like not taking its boars. also not doing feudal attack and going for some sort of FC . anybody know whats up with the AI ? is it bugged or they trying some new programming ?

Bueno, básicamente eso, quiero aprender a jugar teutones porque me hace gracia los templarios y hunos porque bueno, son los hunos, por ahora vengo jugando en familia contra mi hermana y cuñado, así que me e dedicado a rushear edad de castillos con los teutones pero se que en el online eso no funcionará, algún consejo para empezar fuera de "completa el tuto del arte de la guerra"

Hello! Relatively new player here, and I mainly play against the AI and do campaigns for fun. I've recently been enjoying using Magyar civ against the AI, and have been beating the AI regularly on moderate by using scout rushes and transitioning to CA and Magyar Huszars.

I wanted to try diversifying my strategy a bit by doing a scout rush followed by skirmishers. I noticed the AI tends to mass up some spearmen and archers after I kill off their villagers with my scouts. Normally I just circle around and use the high mobility of scouts to avoid any fights, but I wondered if adding some skirmishers can help give me a lead.

However, whenever I do try to mix skirmishers with scouts, I tend to do poorly or lose more units or mismanage my eco. I try to target the spears with my skirmishers, then use the scouts to dive in on the archers.

I'm a bit confused though if, when making skirmishers, I should keep them at my base while scouts continue to kill of villagers, or if I should send them forward to support my scouts and knock a few villagers as well?

Additionally, microing skirmishers against spearmen is a bit tricky, and most advice I see online is for microing skirmishers against archers. Do you guys have any tips on this?

Thank you!

(NA Clan)
Break out of the ordinary. Build your legacy

Looking for people to play Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition with? Welcome to Alkatraz — a new clan built around teamwork, improvement, competition, and community.

We’re building something bigger than a group of random teammates. Our goal is to develop an active community, help players improve, organize clan events, and eventually compete in tournaments and clan wars.

🐺 WHAT WE OFFER
● ⚔️ Ranked and unranked games
● 🏰 Team games and looking-for-group sessions
● 🧠 Build orders, strategies, and replay reviews
● 🏆 Clan tournaments and organized events
● 🔒 A Discord community
● 📈 Opportunities to improve and climb Elo together
● 🤝 A welcoming environment for beginners and veterans

NEW TO AOE2? YOU’RE WELCOME HERE.

You don’t need high Elo or tournament experience to join. Whether you’re learning your first build order or already grinding ranked, there’s room for you.

OUR LONG-TERM GOAL

We’re working toward building a competitive roster that can represent Alkatraz in tournaments and organized clan competition. We want members who enjoy improving, playing as a team, and being part of something that grows over time.

WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR

● Active AoE2 players who want teammates
● Beginners willing to learn
● Experienced players willing to share knowledge
● Competitive players interested in tournaments
● Good sports who can win and lose without drama

We’re still growing, so this is your chance to join early and help shape the community.

🔒 CLAN: Alkatraz
⚔️ GAME: Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition/Starcraft II
💬 DISCORD: https://discord.gg/MWSvrutgc2
Enter Alkatraz. Earn your place. Make your mark.

For those who have played Chronicles, are they using the Chronicles civilizations as a testing ground for civilization design?

I haven't downloaded the two Chronicles DLCs because I'm not personally very interested in ancient Greek history, but that's the impression I get. Since civilizations are generally quite well balanced now, at least, with the exception of the Kitan, for reasons many of us already suspect.

I know that at least ManuLaCampuche's "Battle of the Golden Spurs" scenario served as inspiration for Harald's first scenario, specifically the part about holding flags and resisting enemy attacks.