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Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition |OT| Castle Doctrine

Mentalist

Mentalist

Member
Mar 14, 2019
18,251
Sandersson said:
Yeah it sure is pretty punishing. Also im having a bit of trouble balancing my economy.

One more question, do siege weaoons etc cause friendly fire?
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Mangonels and bombard cannons have splash damage that hits everyone. Scorpions only hit enemy units.

When rams are upgraded they do splash damage, but it's negligible to units.

Trebs do splash damage in theory, but it's negligible, unless it's Ethiopians with the unique tech researched.
 
TaterTots

TaterTots

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,993
What kind of hardware is required to hit high frame rates in this game? I just build a new PC and was laughing at my fps.
 

Sandersson

Banned
Feb 5, 2018
2,535
Mentalist said:
Mangonels and bombard cannons have splash damage that hits everyone. Scorpions only hit enemy units.

When rams are upgraded they do splash damage, but it's negligible to units.

Trebs do splash damage in theory, but it's negligible, unless it's Ethiopians with the unique tech researched.
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Anteo said:
Onagers do.
afaik trebuchets too but their aoe is small and the arc is to big and takes too long to hit the ground so its not a concern
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Oh my god.. those poor bastards.. I have killed sooooo many of my own units because of this xD Well, regardless.. just won my first game with a wonder victory! I shall raise my glass to the fallen!
 
Barahir_mjh

Barahir_mjh

Member
Feb 18, 2018
178
Mentalist said:
Mangonels and bombard cannons have splash damage that hits everyone. Scorpions only hit enemy units.

When rams are upgraded they do splash damage, but it's negligible to units.

Trebs do splash damage in theory, but it's negligible, unless it's Ethiopians with the unique tech researched.
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Mangonel AI tries to avoid firing when it would hurt your own units, though it's not completely reliable.
 

Deleted member 29660

Banned
Nov 1, 2017
8,061
Is there any reason why it seems like the enemy soldiers feel stronger? I had quite a few made but they got chewed up rather well. I was leading overall but ran out of gold because I kept having to make soldiers that were as strong as paper.
 
Anteo

Anteo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,104
Calles said:
Is there any reason why it seems like the enemy soldiers feel stronger? I had quite a few made but they got chewed up rather well. I was leading overall but ran out of gold because I kept having to make soldiers that were as strong as paper.
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It may depend on the matchups, certain units have bonus damage against others. For example the pikemen line deal huge bonus damage vs cavalry. Skirmishers deal bonus damage vs Archers, Hand cannoneers deal +10 vs infantry, etc. Unique units may also have bonus damage like the Samurai, they have +10 vs other unique units iirc
 
Mentalist

Mentalist

Member
Mar 14, 2019
18,251
Calles said:
Is there any reason why it seems like the enemy soldiers feel stronger? I had quite a few made but they got chewed up rather well. I was leading overall but ran out of gold because I kept having to make soldiers that were as strong as paper.
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Either they had better Blacksmith upgrades than your units, OR:

The AI was using units that do bonus damage to your unit types. AoE2 is built around rock-paper-scissor system of various armour types and bonus damages.

Most common examples- skirmishers do insane damage to all archer types; pikemen (and especially Halberdiers) shred cavalry ( I think they get like + 20 something per hit against cavalry and + 70 something against elephants; camels kill Cavalry but are weaker than them agains pikes; and scouts/light cavalry do bonus damage against monks; rams basically one-shot any siege if they can get close enough to hit it; unique units are often specialized the same way.

There are guides on Reddit that show how most of these work. If you want an in-depth, but casual overlook of most civs, look up Spirit of the Law on YouTube; his stuff isn't suited for high-level play, but as a beginner's guide, he does a good job explaining some of the nuances and of the system that otherwise the game doesn't tell you about. You can also try to figure stuff out from the tech trees, but they're pretty vague.
 
Sotha_Sil

Sotha_Sil

Member
Nov 4, 2017
5,147
Loving the game overall, but I'm having an issue where all audio but the music and informing a unit to move go out. So I can't hear villagers cutting wood, mining, units attacking each other, etc. I tried looking in the settings, but the audio options are minimal. Am I just missing something here?
 
Rare Opiums

Rare Opiums

Member
Oct 28, 2017
949
This game and Football Manager are the reason why I got bad grades during the first year of my college life. Now I'm tempted to ruin my career as well.
 
Sibylus

Sibylus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,732
Doing nothing more than a casual play of all the campaigns, but mission 3 of Genghis Khan (Into China) kicked my ass the first time through. Did not expect that Jin dynasty wonder at the bottom of the map, didn't notice when it started building, and I didn't even get a hit on it before the countdown completed. Next try I completed it by going against the Jin first and worrying about the great wall and the lands beyond later. Still took me three and a half hours lol.
 
Mentalist

Mentalist

Member
Mar 14, 2019
18,251
Sibylus said:
Doing nothing more than a casual play of all the campaigns, but mission 3 of Genghis Khan (Into China) kicked my ass the first time through. Did not expect that Jin dynasty wonder at the bottom of the map, didn't notice when it started building, and I didn't even get a hit on it before the countdown completed. Next try I completed it by going against the Jin first and worrying about the great wall and the lands beyond later. Still took me three and a half hours lol.
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Into China was always one of the more challenging scenarios in the original.

I found myself losing Attila 1 on Moderate. Could not believe it, but I just could not pull off a quick raid on Romans and kept getting ganked by Persia and Rome if I tried to build up.

Turned the speed down to "slow" and now things are as they should be. Allied Scythians, got a castle up to kill Persian Navy and i'm getting ready unleash my hordes onto them.
 
Puggles

Puggles

Sometimes, it's not a fart
Member
Nov 3, 2017
2,906
TaterTots said:
What kind of hardware is required to hit high frame rates in this game? I just build a new PC and was laughing at my fps.
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I get 140+ FPS at 4K on max settings with a 3700 and a GTX 1070 at the start of a match. It can drop to 30 FPS by the end of a match if there is a lot going on.
 
Sibylus

Sibylus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,732
Mentalist said:
Into China was always one of the more challenging scenarios in the original.

I found myself losing Attila 1 on Moderate. Could not believe it, but I just could not pull off a quick raid on Romans and kept getting ganked by Persia and Rome if I tried to build up.

Turned the speed down to "slow" and now things are as they should be. Allied Scythians, got a castle up to kill Persian Navy and i'm getting ready unleash my hordes onto them.
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Maybe normal is too fast for me lol, even on the lowest difficulty 🤔 Not done much in the ways of meta builds or anything, mostly chilling out and making things.
 
Mentalist

Mentalist

Member
Mar 14, 2019
18,251
Went thru the Historical battles to check what's new.

3 of the Battles of the Forgotten got a complete overhaul- Honfoglas (the Magyar one), Cyprus, and Bapheus (the Turkish one) Bapheus and Cyprus lost the opening parts, getting right down to business of war, and Honfoglas is just a totally diff scenario, with some interesting limitations of nomad vs sedentary-style play. The old Battle of Tours from the original Age of COnquerors now features Berbers and Saracens, instead of just Saracens. Didn't check all of the original Battles, but I doubt there's been a ton of changes.

The Orellana campaign was replaced with an actual Incan one- dealing with the life of Pachacuti, the son of Viracocha, who was the actual founder of the Incan Empire. Makes sense, really.

Need to see if Prithviraj, Dracula or Sforza had any major changes.
 
Sibylus

Sibylus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,732
Lost the Mongol mission against Russia and the Khwarazmian empire twice because I kept forgetting I have to keep Subutai alive... I think I'm too tired today for this shit lol.
 
horkrux

horkrux

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,803
So they simply botched the AI in Joan 4. They wanted Rheims to wait until you've crossed the river before they start building literally anything (which is stupid), but didn't implement this correctly. Now they never build anything at all.

Watch this never get fixed
 
Mr.Deadshot

Mr.Deadshot

Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,285
Any way to show further infos to a unit after I clicked it? I mean that small description text that comes when you hover over their icon in the building menus. Age of Mythology had a great implemented Wiki. Anything similar in AoE2 DE? I can't find itl.
 

Deleted member 28523

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Oct 31, 2017
2,911
Mr.Deadshot said:
Any way to show further infos to a unit after I clicked it? I mean that small description text that comes when you hover over their icon in the building menus. Age of Mythology had a great implemented Wiki. Anything similar in AoE2 DE? I can't find itl.
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top right is a Emblem of whatever Civ you are playing. pressing that takes you to the tech tree which has all the info you need. You can also just press F5.
 
5taquitos

5taquitos

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,969
OR
I'm having tons of loading issues when starting any mission, it hangs at the loading screen and sometimes just doesn't come back.
 
GenTask

GenTask

Member
Nov 15, 2017
2,676
Can't wait to do the Joan of Arc campaign again, my fav. Off topic I wish someone, like Netflix, would make a new series about her.
 
Launchpad

Launchpad

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,196
Does anyone know if there is a way to add a timer to the game? It would be good to know how fast/slow my teching up is and such.
 
Soph

Soph

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,503
Completed both William Wallace and Joan of Arc. I did miss the old narration in the Wallace campaign, the narrator was so psyched all the time. At least this one sounds more Scottish. I also didn't like them calling "Joan" "Jone" a few times in the second campaign, let people learn the proper pronounciations for once!

I didn't see many changes as of yet in either of these campaigns, it's all Franks, Britons and Celts. Mission 6 of Joan of Arc got pretty difficult, I even had to restart two times(playing on moderate), I guess the AI got a little better or I just forgot the strategy I once used to beat the mission.

Time for Barbarossa next, I'll keep you posted!

If anyone can answer, how much harder would "hard" difficulty be compared to "moderate". I know difficulty is really scenario specific.
 
Anteo

Anteo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,104
Soph said:
If anyone can answer, how much harder would "hard" difficulty be compared to "moderate". I know difficulty is really scenario specific.
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It really really depends on the map. I remember going through most of the campaings on hard in the hd edition and in non military only maps you had to get your economy going asap, and if you do then the difficulty drops a lot. The hard part is always getting your stuff online in the middle of enemy raids.
 
Mentalist

Mentalist

Member
Mar 14, 2019
18,251
As a general rule, if you can get a good enough eco to get a castle up and the holy trinity of Castle Age upgrades (Bodkin, Ballistics, Murder holes), you're usually golden.

Unless your opponents are in Imperial age already and they start building trebs. Then you need an actual army.
 
Anteo

Anteo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,104
Mentalist said:
As a general rule, if you can get a good enough eco to get a castle up and the holy trinity of Castle Age upgrades (Bodkin, Ballistics, Murder holes), you're usually golden.

Unless your opponents are in Imperial age already and they start building trebs. Then you need an actual army.
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The Sundjata campaign has a map where the timing is such I always was about to get to castle age right as a crosbow enemy push was destroying the first few buildings on my town. It was really well timed by the devs, i had to stall until i got the upgrade for the skirmisher. After clearing out that push and building a castle with murder holes i was able to start pushing out and removing enemies from the map. Ideally most maps would play like that, but then there is the first map on the yodit campaign where I just cant find the right way to get anything going on Hard
 
Mentalist

Mentalist

Member
Mar 14, 2019
18,251
Anteo said:
The Sundjata campaign has a map where the timing is such I always was about to get to castle age right as a crosbow enemy push was destroying the first few buildings on my town. It was really well timed by the devs, i had to stall until i got the upgrade for the skirmisher. After clearing out that push and building a castle with murder holes i was able to start pushing out and removing enemies from the map. Ideally most maps would play like that, but then there is the first map on the yodit campaign where I just cant find the right way to get anything going on Hard
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Feudal warfare sucks. There, I said it.

I actually beat Yodit 1 on hard once, after wiping out all of Dagnajan's camps with those 2 rams. It was a ridiculous slog that took like 4 hours, but I did do it, abusing the pause button to target-fire enemy units with the most effective counters. I also wiped out The camp in the Mountains and the Camp in the forest before finally calling it quits and just sending Yodit through. That's not the way to play it, obv (you're supposed to commit all your forces + the rams to a singular push in one direction to allow her to get to a flag), but I was so pissed off at that scenario that I was resolved to crush everyone.

-send your workers south of the main camp to chop trees and mine gold; wall all entrances except 1 in your base; set up farms around the TC.
-before you claim the village, explore the map with Samuel to collect all the stranded shotel warriors- these, a few spears and archers will be be your defensive force- along with your garrisoned TC. As soon as the attack is over, garrison your shotels to heal them.

I ahven't checked to see if they changed that one, but it was a huge difficulty spike before. So was Sundjata 5, until they nerfed it.
 
xyla

xyla

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,458
Germany
So I think instead of a patch, the whole game is just redownloading on the game pass app. Hopefully that doesn't become the norm with the game.

At least it fixed my Texture pack problem - that works now.
 
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Sibylus

Sibylus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,732
xyla said:
So I think instead of a patch, the whole game is just redownloading on the game pass app. Hopefully that doesn't become the norm with the game.

At least it fixed my Texture pack problem - that works now.
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Seems my game is also being wholly redownloaded, not on game pass though.
 
Mentalist

Mentalist

Member
Mar 14, 2019
18,251
didn't have a lot of time to play today as I had to take some work home.

tried starting Scen 1 in every Forgotten Campaign (Dracula, Sforza, Bari, Prithviraj)- They've ALL been overhauled. In most cases, probably a good thing. I do hope they kept the Risk-system in Dracula 2, though, because that scenario was awesome.
 
Windu

Windu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,723
xyla said:
So I think instead of a patch, the whole game is just redownloading on the game pass app. Hopefully that doesn't become the norm with the game.

At least it fixed my Texture pack problem - that works now.
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Sibylus said:
Seems my game is also being wholly redownloaded, not on game pass though.
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did you guys get that error "this app can't open" and then on the ms store it said "this app encountered a problem, reinstall to fix"? I got that. I tried quite a few steps because the ms store button wasn't working, but finally gave up and was going to reinstall it. I avoided hitting the "reset" button in the application's settings, because it said it would reinstall it. I clicked it, and it didn't reinstall it at all, went through a quick 10 sec process. Ended up solving my issue, although it has screwed up my Enhanced Graphics pack. I don't think it has uninstalled it, but my game or the store isn't recognizing it being installed.

don't know exactly what had changed on my end, since the last time AOE2 updated was a few days back and I played it since then. /shrug.
 
xyla

xyla

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,458
Germany
Windu said:
did you guys get that error "this app can't open" and then on the ms store it said "this app encountered a problem, reinstall to fix"? I got that. I tried quite a few steps because the ms store button wasn't working, but finally gave up and was going to reinstall it. I avoided hitting the "reset" button in the application's settings, because it said it would reinstall it. I clicked it, and it didn't reinstall it at all, went through a quick 10 sec process. Ended up solving my issue, although it has screwed up my Enhanced Graphics pack. I don't think it has uninstalled it, but my game or the store isn't recognizing it being installed.

don't know exactly what had changed on my end, since the last time AOE2 updated was a few days back and I played it since then. /shrug.
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For me, it automatically started the redownload. I just noticed when I wanted to shut my PC down that it was only at 50 percent. Waited for a while and when it was done I could finally use enhanced pack.
 
Sibylus

Sibylus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,732
Windu said:
did you guys get that error "this app can't open" and then on the ms store it said "this app encountered a problem, reinstall to fix"? I got that. I tried quite a few steps because the ms store button wasn't working, but finally gave up and was going to reinstall it. I avoided hitting the "reset" button in the application's settings, because it said it would reinstall it. I clicked it, and it didn't reinstall it at all, went through a quick 10 sec process. Ended up solving my issue, although it has screwed up my Enhanced Graphics pack. I don't think it has uninstalled it, but my game or the store isn't recognizing it being installed.

don't know exactly what had changed on my end, since the last time AOE2 updated was a few days back and I played it since then. /shrug.
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I didn't. Launched the game and it still remembered my campaign progress without incident, no errors.
 
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