Age of Empires is a challenging game, especially when you play at high levels. For a long time, I tought it was impossible to win with the difficulty level set to HARDEST. Indeed, to most players, it will either be extremely hard or downright impossible. There are several campaigns in Age of Empires II. They can be played in any order. Once their individual scenarios have been unlocked they can be replayed in any order at any time. The guide will give you some strategical tips, special civilization bonuses, team bonus, unique unit for Berbers Civilization in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition game. While writing this instruction, we pick up many pieces of information from several sites for you.

Easy to follow build order sheets. Build orders with a similar start are combined together to minimize the number of sheets. This guide contains 11 build orders in 3 sheets.

Based on “Build Order Reference” by Cicero, and Hera’s video guides.

Build Order Sheets

• I originally created these sheets for personal use.
• The land build orders are from Cicero’s “Build order reference” (Link) and the water build orders are from Hera’s YouTube video guides (Video1, Video2).
• I tried to write them in a way that’s easy to follow while playing.
• I grouped build orders with a similar start together, and put 2 build order groups on each sheet, so I can fold the sheet vertically and have a build order on each side.
• This guide contains 11 build orders (9 land and 2 water) in 3 sheets.

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Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition Strategy Guided

Link: Here

How to read the build order

• F = Food (only Sheep and Boar) | Fr = Farm | B = Berries
• W = Wood | G = Gold | S = Stone
• Fv = Villagers currently working on Sheep or Boar
• Bv = Villagers currently working on Berries

• “Pop 7 | 4 to wood” means at Pop 7, the next 4 vills (pop 8 to 11) go to wood.
• “Pop 22 | 2 Fv to Wood” means at Pop 22, 2 vills that are working on Sheep / Boar go to wood.

Created military units are not counted in Pop.

Like most build orders, this does not include many small details, so if you’re a new player remember to:

• Make houses (build 2 houses at the start)
• Scout your map, you need to find your 8 sheep and 2 boars.
• Lure the 2nd boar before the 1st one runs out, kill the sheep and boar right under the TC and try to only kill one at a time.
• Build a 2nd lumber-camp once you have 6-8 vills on the first.
• Create military units: usually, 3 for the men at arms, 3-5 for the scouts, and non-stop production for the rest
• Get double bit axe ASAP, get attack upgrades for archers, and bloodlines / defense upgrades for knights.
• For water maps, fishing ships should always get the deep fish first and not the shore fish.

Build orders

Men at arms into archers:
Very common build order, the 3 Men at arms are used to disrupt your opponent’s eco, and buy you some time to mass your archers, new players should start by learning a normal archer rush build order first (without men at arms).

Men at arms into Towers:
Requires more multitasking and micro then other build orders, not recommended for new player.

Scouts:
Another very common build order, usually you go for 3-5 scouts, but you can add more if needed.

Fast castle:
Fast castle build orders are usually used in closed maps (like arena or black forest), or as a pocket in team games. Can be used in open maps but it’s risky and requires you to fully wall your base against feudal rushes.

They are also easier to learn than other build orders.

Water:
Can be used in any water map that has deep fish, your first 4 fishing ships need to be on deep fish for the build order to work. Consider walling your base for the full water build order.

More of this sort of thing:

When it first came out in 1999, I played a lot of Age of Empires 2. Its blend of historical real-time strategy, with detailed rock-paper-scissors military unit management made it one of my favorite games of all time. I love the rhythm of having my villagers collect resources while I improve the village’s defenses, build and upgrade its soldiery, and ultimately launch invasions of my enemies.

So when an updated HD version came out in 2013, I gave it a try. I was disappointed. Although it was a decent update, which offered a lot of modding tools and a general visual improvement, it didn’t catch my imagination. It was, in essence, a nostalgia play.

A new version, called Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition, has captivated me entirely. Developer Forgotten Empires and Xbox Game Studios have done a fantastic job of taking a 20-year-old game and making it feel fresh. Although it’s really the same game, the Definitive Edition has made enough changes to make it feel like new, especially while we wait for Age of Empires 4 to arrive.

Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition looks better than ever before, with support for 4K resolution. It has a richer color palette, better lighting, and a host of redesigned units and buildings. I’m especially taken by the way buildings crumble to the ground when they finally succumb to siege. The ability to zoom in on the action is nicely implemented.

Music and voice acting have also been updated, giving the game a more grandiose feeling, especially during the campaigns, which are heavily narrated.

Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition Strategy Guide 1

All the old campaigns have been included, with updates, as well as a new campaign based on the waning days of the Khanate. This includes four new civilizations and three story campaigns that offer a rewarding challenge.

Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition Guide

In one new campaign, there’s a timed challenge that pits Tamerlane (aka Timur) against the heavily fortified city of Delhi. It’s reasonably easy to use catapults to get past the outer walls, but the city’s cramped streets are heavily defended by war elephants. Unit management becomes more difficult as the enemy takes out my seriously vulnerable bombardment units, leaving me unable to destroy the city’s last citadel. As I say, it’s a nicely designed challenge.

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New game modes have also been added, including one called Empire Wars, which drops the player into a town with a ready-made population of villagers, all busily collecting a balanced portfolio of food, wood, gold, and stone. This takes the chores out of the early game, for those who tire of such things.

Much-needed game-control improvements have also been added. Unit queues are now more efficient.

Each building in Age of Empires games builds multiple types of units. Stables, for example, can build light cavalry, heavy cavalry, scouts, camel riders, and more. In the past, I could only queue up one type at a time — say, 10 knights — and then go back and queue up the next desired units. Now I can queue in any order. It’s nice to create archers and spearmen alternatively, so that I have a more balanced ranged army right from its creation.

Civilians can also be instructed to construct certain buildings in a particular order. So, I can direct them to build a network of, say, towers, a gate, and defensive houses, and leave them to complete the job.

The most useful change is the ability to automatically reseed farms. In the old games, exhausted farms had to be relaid manually, which was a nuisance in the middle of a frenzied campaign. Unwary players could find themselves bereft of food, one of the game’s four essential resources. Now, I can stack up a lot of wood, and order multiple auto-reseeds that leave me free to ignore this tiresome chore, especially late in the game. The same goes for fish traps.

These useful changes show that Forgotten Empires and Microsoft have paid attention to the kinds of “quality of life” improvements rival games have made, and that strategy players now expect.

Playing online is a totally different experience than playing computer-controlled opponents, almost to the point of being a different game. There’s a bunch of hard lessons to learn about common strategies. Now, the transition from AI to human enemies is eased with a specific tutorial called Art of War, that can save a lot of dismal defeats online.

The transition to playing real humans is now much smoother. Online play has also seen a lot of user interface improvements as well as a switch to server-based contests.

In single-player mode, the game’s AI has been spruced up. Perhaps it’s this change that I like the most or, to put it another way, it was the AI’s limitations that I liked the least in the 2013 re-release of Age of Empires 2. Path-finding is much better too; units generally go where I want them to go. AI enemies are less likely to feel like they’re cheating, or worse, to behave self-destructively.

Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition Strategy Guide Download

AI has come a long way in the last two decades, and Definitive Edition’s improvements in this area really show. On the whole, this is an excellent update which I believe will please lapsed players looking to return to an old favorite, as well as new players who are curious about a genuine classic.

Age Of Empires Definitive Edition Strategy

Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition is out now on Windows PC. It’s also available on subscription service Xbox Game Pass for PC.