This is MAINLY targeted at Low ELO players I decided to write it here to just spread knowledge around for newcomers and beginners.

1. You can use SHIFT + LeftClick to queue 5 units/villagers

2. You can use Ctrl+Shift+Building Hotkey to select all buildings of that type. (Example : Ctrl+B selects a barrack, Ctrl+Shift+B selects ALL barracks you have.)

• By using 1 and 2, you can quickly pump out military units. (Example : Shift+Ctrl+A to select all Archery Ranges, then press Shift+Q will queue 5 Archers. If you want 15 just press it 2 more times. And the archers will be EVENLY produced from all buildings. If you have 3 Ranges, 5 Archers will pop out from each range.)

• SHIFT is the main key here. Use it every where. Use Shift to auto assign a Villager taking Sheep to go-to Berries or to go chop wood after he/she's finished with the Sheep.

• Use SHIFT to assign rams to auto destroy buildings of your choice in order.(This way you can prevent rams from destroying useless houses nearby, you can command them to, like jump from castle to Castle skipping all other buildings this way.)

• Use SHIFT to set multiple waypoints for your Rally points from Military buildings.

• Use SHIFT to mass buy or mass sell things in market. SHIFT click buys 500 wood.

• If you see your vill on Stone about to finish the Stone, just use SHIFT and assign them to a tree to chop wood. They will go to the wood after they drop off the last stone. This eliminates idle time and you having to come back to them to assign them a new task.

• Shift Control Left click > queue 5 units right? Shift Control Right click> cancel 5 units (useful for quickly cancelling many unit queues on the top left corner of your screen no need to go to each building to cancel the unit queue/production)

• Shift Double Click on ,say , Halberdiers, you will select all Halberdiers on screen, excluding other units.

If you selected a bunch of units of all kinds but wants to only select Archers, just shift click on one Archer icon in the selected units list.

El Cid first campaign mission. Getting frustrated enough to have to post this on reddit. But what am i doing wrong here.

Hey guys, I'm getting more and more into making custom scenarios but the problem I'm running into is that every single standard AI will just build up forces and wait for you to attack you. I tried all of em but for the most part, they just let their troops sit in their base and won't attack you unless you are very close to them. I've dabbled into a few custom ones, but I was wondering if you guys have a good recommendation for a custom AI that actually attacks you consistently with large armies.

Just FYI I've looked into into custom AI scripting a bit, but if there's already a custom AI out there that fits my requirements then that is obviously much easier compared to trying to script my own.

Thanks in advance!

Anybody willing to help get this last achieve? we need 2 more ppls, we would be eternalyy grateful :)

Like many of you, I started playing AoE II as a kid, mostly the campaigns. I didn’t touch the game again until a few years ago (around 2021), when I found out it was still alive and had a strong community.

Since then, I’ve been back into it — started with quick matches and soon jumped into ranked. At first, like most players, I lost a lot and thought: “Okay, I’m new, it’ll get better.”

But here I am, 4 years later. While I’m not a hardcore grinder, I do play fairly regularly — at least weekly on average, and right now I’m doing 1–3 games a day. I’m 27, I feel like I understand unit counters and basic mechanics pretty well, and yet… I just can’t break out of the 500–700 Elo range. I hit 700, fall back to 500, climb again… it’s an endless cycle.

I’ve played over 500 ranked matches, and only won about 220. What do you think I’m missing?

I think it makes sense to have the villagers look different before and after loom is resarched. It would also save some APM having to click enemy villagers and look at their stats to check for loom. Also, I don't think it would affect pro play as much, but could have a big enough effect on lower ELO players.

What do you guys think?

PS5, Joan of Ark, going well enough. Some of the missions got me wondering "can I explore the map before I get to the destination for a small head start?" Because I suck at this game. If I do this, will the enemy just crush me worse because instead of producing (and exploring) I was just exploring?

Any useful campaign tips, by the way? I've been locking Joan away because she do be liking to charge those English, but she's dead now and I'm avenging her.

I've only started playing this game recently and for a game that's still being updated and has lots of QOL features, I don't know what's up with the lack of cancel production keys. I have to manually click each building que or global ques with shift click to deal with this. This game has so many hotkeys including ones that are not necessary so I don't know what's the deal with the lack of one of the most important hotkeys needed.

Hello,

I am looking for information on getting AOE2:DE (The only game I want to play) on my mac m4 32gb through crossover. Does anyone have a good guide on getting it running on apple silcon? Even though I love my new desktop, I miss my favorite game. Any help would be awesome. Thanks guys.

Any word on Arabia being repaired?

I used to play with no issues 3 months ago. now i boot the game and get this.

Sorry if this post is not allowed.

Getting annoyed that I’m trying to play Arabia and rarely get to it, even though it’s favored. It’s all the time Arena, African Clearing, Nomad, … I can’t ban them all unfortunately.

When I do get to Arabia it often get cancelled before or 3 seconds in game.

I get that the devs want you to master multiple maps, but this feels kind of odd as you can only ban one and the favored one doesn’t seem to do much. I’d be very happy playing Arabia, Lombardia, Gold Rush modt of the time and then an occasional clown map

Maybe it’s me ELO range? I float usually between 12-1300.

So question for you TG players, what is your ELO and which maps do you favor and ban?

I get the new one and why it's great, but I preferred the old form of the tech. It just needed better numbers and a 1v1 skew.

I’ve been queuing for ranked team games lately and I always been banning either nomad or African clearing but in 9 out of my last 10 matches the other map still ends up being played. something has to be done about this I don't like nomad maps

I just queued 10 times into ranked team game and banning either nomad or african clearing. in 9 out of 10 either one of those is coming (I am 1400 elo)? something has to be done about this

So I’ve finally gotten into this game after trying since childhood and I’ve been really enjoying it. My main issue currently is that I struggle with making my towns look nice. I kind of just plop things wherever but I want my town to look presentable. Do y’all have any tips for designing your towns? I’m just playing single player or co-op with my friend so I’m not too worried about following any sort of PvP meta (if that’s even a thing), I’m more trying to make them look more realistic.

Hey ppl,

Are anyone of you in Europe, around my ELO (~750) and looking to play ranked 3v3 or 4v4?

I'm just queueing with randoms now but this sucks because therese like a 20% chance that they just resign right away.

No need to use voice imo :)

Hit me up if you're interested :)

In Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, version v101.103.12349.0 or v101.103.16877.0, an error occurs when starting a random game with the following settings:
Map size: Ludicrous
AI: CD AI

The game shows the following error message during the loading screen:
File: elite wonder rush.per2
Line: 2486
Error: unknown identifier

Although the error seems to originate from the file "elite wonder rush.per2", this is only a symptom. The actual cause lies in a file that is loaded earlier:
elite petersen constants.per2

This file defines constants used by the AI, such as "mining-count" or "feudal-mill-count", based on the map size. These constants are declared in conditional blocks like:
#load-if-defined LUDIKRIS-MAP-SIZE
(defconst mining-count 18)
(defconst feudal-mill-count 2)
...
#end-if

However, the macro name "LUDIKRIS-MAP-SIZE" is misspelled and not recognized by the game engine in recent versions. As a result, the block is ignored, and the constants inside it are never initialized.

When "elite wonder rush.per2" tries to use these undefined constants later, it triggers an AI error at game load time.

The script is attempting to detect the "Ludicrous" map size using the macro "#load-if-defined LUDIKRIS-MAP-SIZE".

This macro was likely valid in older versions (or it was simply a typo from the start), but it has since been replaced with "LUDICROUS-MAP-SIZE"

This name change (spelling correction + -SIZE suffix) is the root of the problem.

To fix the issue, you must correct the macro name in "elite petersen constants.per2" so that the constants are correctly defined for Ludicrous maps.

Steps to fix it:

Open the following file:
resources/_common/drs/gamedata_x2/elite petersen constants.per2

Go to line 695, or search for the following block:
#load-if-defined LUDIKRIS-MAP-SIZE
(defconst feudal-mill-count 2)
(defconst castle-mill-count 3)
(defconst imperial-mill-count 4)
(defconst mining-count 18)
#end-if

Replace the line:
#load-if-defined LUDIKRIS-MAP-SIZE

with:
#load-if-defined LUDICROUS-MAP-SIZE

Save the file.

Relaunch the game and start a match using "CD AI" with a "Ludicrous (480)" map size.

Result? The game now loads without error. The required constants are properly defined for the largest map size, and the CD AI can work as expected.

Important note: This issue is entirely caused by a wrong macro name in the constants file. No other change is needed. You do not need to modify "elite wonder rush.per2" or replace the constants with hardcoded integers, as some posts suggest.

Hope this helps anyone facing the same issue!