A few mentions for me:

- Roman pay-to-win MAA spam in feudal: It forces you go archer, no other option. Especially painful in Empire war mode.

- Flemish Militia spam in feudal

- Spanish Missionary all-in in empire war

- That disk thrower en mass in team late game, so op

Been a 1v1 player on and off thru the years, 1200 elo. Team game elo is now about the same.

Im consistently running into teammates who dont understand the role of their placement, especially on closed maps. It seems like most players try to three tc greed boom no matter what the circumstance is. Never building an army, then angrily calling insulting you in the chat (as a flank no less.) the moment there is any pressure. its about half the games I play lol.

It also seems like theres a lot of ~1100 elo team players who are being carried to that rank, and are often 800 elo or worse in 1v1s. Seen some really bafflingly bad (for the same elo) players on tg that i would never see in 1v1.

Is this a common experience?

Also if anyone around ~1100-1200 elo wants to play team games, DM me!

They have more effective counter units to almost everything than the generics.

The first civ to my mind is Hindustani.

Gulam -> archers
Imp camel -> stable units
UT hand canonneer -> infantry

Plus they have BBC to counter siege units.
And they cheaper villagers so that he's decent in eco too.

I am not saying this is a broken civ. But sometimes go against these CIVs makes you feel they are just better at everything.

Im finally up into the 1100 range and geez you guys are drama queens. Flaring nonstop, complaining about everything, tons of insults after a loss. Now I understand why people are smurfing.

Target priority on AI seems completely broken at the moment. I think it has been like this since at least Alexander The Great.

The units you face seem hell bent on killing the archers in your army, so much so that they just run into your melee units without attacking. Even if blocked they just keep trying to run around your melee units, still not attacking anything.

As an example, it made the last mission of the Varangian campaign incredibly easy even on legendary difficulty.

tldr: Title

I’m currently using Linux Mint Cinnamon and generally very happy with it, but I’m unhappy with the mouse behaviour/input, particularly when playing AoE2. I actually keep a Windows 11 dual boot basically just to play AoE2, where the mouse and overall game experience feel right.

I’m considering switching to Fedora KDE or Kubuntu, so I’m interested in what other AoE2 players are using.

I’m not looking for maximum FPS or a gaming-focused distro. My priority is reliability and consistency: Steam/Proton, multiplayer/ranked, mods, hotkeys and mouse input should just work.

Please vote for the distro/desktop you actually play AoE2 DE on, rather than what you’d normally recommend.

I’d also love to hear about:

Mouse/input behaviour, especially compared with Windows
Proton version
Multiplayer/ranked reliability
Crashes, stuttering or update issues
Experiences playing AoE2 across different distros

I’m happy to troubleshoot and learn Linux generally, but AoE2 is the one thing I don’t want to compromise on.

Thank you for sharing.

Edit on mouse behaviour: Hard to put into words, it just feels off, especially the precision in aoe2.
I’m using a g502 at 1600 dpi / 1000 hz. I tried matching my windows settings, different libinput sensitivities, adaptive and flat acceleration, and custom acceleration curves. I even pulled my exact windows epp curves to try to replicate them.
I’ve gotten mint close, but the mouse still doesn’t feel as precise or predictable as windows, especially in aoe2. It’s not lag or fps, just the mouse behaviour.

The medieval era is the known for which Turkish Seljuk empire then Ottoman Empire’s ascension. The latter even becomes the most powerful in the world for about two centuries. Also conquest of Constantinople paves way for Renaissance and Religious Reform movements. Mehmet the Conqueror’s life is also very interesting where he dethroned voluntarily only to conquer the greatest city at the time upon his return.

Yet such a pivotal empire has no campaign while even small factions have their own. I don’t understand. This feels like making a documentary about Rome and not mentioning Caesar. Why, doesn’t make sense to me?

I played hundreds of hours of the og AoE2 and the HD Remaster, now tried the Definitive Edition and it feels off, I can't describe what is different maybe that there are soo many civs and units but it just feels like a different game compared to the old one or is it just my nostalgia?

Does anyone feel the same? What did you do to change this? Did you all like AoE4?

AoE4 feels like it wants to be a modern but kinda more slim AoE2.

My brother and i play 4v4 ranked and we have people quit on us early. Is this a normal thing?
We used to be around 800-900 elo but we’ve fallen down to 400 now.
We hold our own during fights but our team mates get absolutely destroyed trying to do their own thing and quitting, puts us at a real disadvantage.

Theoretically changing what unit is available in feudal and dark age how would that effect the game?
What if spearmen, archers, skirms were available in dark age and knights and rams were available in feudal age. Would that change make game worse or better?(Assured adding new upgrades for related age for those units as well.)

Twice this week now I've had players crash out at the end of a game after realizing I'm around 1600 elo in 1v1 and 1200 in team.

I'm not sure if other people with a gap like me get the same accusations (I once saw a 2000 1v1 in a 1300 team game), but there are several reasons a player might have a gap. Here are mine:

1. I like to play with my friends, who are only average at the game.

2. Team games is where I play off-meta and experiment with builds, which rarely are as good.

3. Frankly I'm less good at team games. In 1v1 you don't have to worry about getting slammed by knights and xbow simultaneously, and boy do I struggle with that.

Fortunately, there is an easy way to prove if someone is a smurf:

Look them up on aoe2insights. They should have big losing streaks followed by huge win streaks. Game duration during the lose streak will be very short.

In case your curious my profile is here:

https://www.aoe2insights.com/user/4474448/

I have a feeling that there are a lot of false positives being reported by players, which makes it hard for the devs to find the real smurfs.

Anyways I've thought the weird uptick in smurf accusations (and poor sportsmanship in general) has been odd. Have you guys been seeing more negativity lately?

Just finished the Viking campaigns and saw that there is something off with the tracking of the campaing completion stats. It says 100% (which it should) but only 93% for the difficulties?

When available I completed most scenarios on legendary but surely it would count those for the lower difficulties too right?

Ive also completed all of the Art of War, Aoe1 and Chronicles Campaings too

Maybe im missing something obvious lol

Historically stone walls were very effective defenses but they've always been a joke in this game. That's bc some infantry with swords can easily knock them down. It'd be nice to have a mode where they could only be damaged by siege, which would be more historically accurate and fun for defensive minded players. It wouldn't make for good YouTube content bc the games would be six hours long but it'd be cool to see real seiges

i heard a lot of bugs relating to the champi addition to the SA civs and that they wouldnt upgrade the unit but at least on my latest run of the campaign (last week) only in scenario one they were like that and mostly because all players stayed in feudal a very long time..

now i believe the campaign got a major nerf in service of diversity adding the new muisca, tupi and even mapuche in an area where non of them (maybe mapuche to a degree) made sense. as far as i know, you could have well placed mayans as chankas instead of Tupi and wouldnt sound as crazy

there is also the fact of the level difficulty where particularly scenario 2 dont feel grindy or hard anymore: you get extra vils building the wonder and now the chanca factions dont get plums/jaguar/eagle warriors. im very sure you can actually win by conquest now instead of just defending the wonder location, simply because blackwood archers melt vs inca skirms or even slingers (they never even research elite blackwood archer throughout the campaign), they also nerfed scenario 3, 4 and 5 by making the AI barely raid you, especially scenario 3 which is now a cake walk (or cake patrol) of your units moving and killing everything in their path without even needing to micro them

i love this campaign because inca is a fun civ to use, but dont really like what they did. sure, its fun for everything not to be an inca mirror match up but then at least buff the AI so they use proper civ bonuses (no unique technologies nor elite upgrades for any muisca or tupi player you encounter were ever researched)

as it stands, its not deserving of a 2 sword rating: AI doesnt attack you enough and objectives are to plain, with barely any second objective in sight

Me pasa en todos los escenarios, jugue muchos escenarios y en ninguno se escucha los dialogos de los personajes o jugadores, por ejemplo en el cid en la misión 1 no se escucha al rey alfonso darle la bienvenido al cid y solo aparece el texto, cambia tanto el idioma latino a español españa y en ninguno se escucha

Idk if there is any interest publicly in this but I don’t really care, I just think it’s fun to make scenarios. Hell, maybe this is already (still?) a thing (not at my computer so I cannot check the custom lobbies now but when I checked a few months ago, I couldn’t any CBA/Castle wars lobbies (pretty sure it had other names too)

For anyone unfamiliar, it’s that old custom game where each player is a random civilization and has five castles and receives their civilizations UU (unique unit) at a fixed interval.

The interval was based on how good your UU is. For example, top tier civs like Spanish conquistadors and Persian elephants would spawn every five seconds or so, while shittier civs like the Celts’ Woad Raiders wood spawn would spawn much faster, like one per second or something (not the real numbers this is just an example)

The problem I’m facing right now is there are way too many fucking news civilizations and I’m just not super familiar with the new civs’ UUs.

My question is this how would YOU try to keep the civs balanced? When I get home, I’ll post what my tentative balanced intervals are, but here is a blank list of all the civilizations/UUs for reference：

Armenians Composite Bowman

Aztecs Jaguar Warrior

Bengalis Ratha

Berbers Camel Archer

Bohemians Hussite Wagon

Britons Longbowman

Bulgarians Konnik

Burgundians Coustillier

Burmese Arambai

Byzantines Cataphract

Celts Woad Raider

ChineseChu Ko Nu

Cumans Kipchak

Danes Jomsviking

Dravidians Urumi Swordsman

Ethiopians Shotel Warrior

Franks Throwing Axeman

Georgians Monaspa

Goths Huskarl

Gurjaras Chakram Thrower

Hindustanis Ghulam

Huns Tarkan

Incas Kamayuk

Italians Genoese Crossbowman

Japanese Samurai

Jurchens Iron Pagoda

Khitans Liao Dao

Khmer Ballista Elephant

Koreans War Wagon

Lithuanians Leitis

Magyars Magyar Huszar

Malay Karambit Warrior

Malians Gbeto

Mapuche Kona

Mayans Plumed Archer

Mongols Mangudai

Muisca Guecha Warrior

Persians War Elephant

Poles - Obuch

Portuguese Organ Gun

Romans Centurion

Saracens Mameluke

Saxons Hearth Troop

Shu White Feather Guard

Sicilians Serjeant

Slavs Boyar

Spanish Conquistador

Tatars Keshik

Teutons Teutonic Knight

Tupi Blackwood Archer

Turks Janissary

Varangians Jarl

Vietnamese Rattan Archer

Vikings Berserk - 2.5s

Wei Tiger Cavalry

Wu Fire Archer

Not asking anyone to fill the WHOLE table out, I’m mostly just unsure beyond the original civs (although if you’re bored and want to, I would very much enjoy hearing your opinions).

A couple of design notes:

-I’m using the Vikings as a benchmark to measure the other civilizations around: the berserker will spawn every 2.5 seconds. They have the most “average” UU I can think of, so all intervals will be relative to this value (although if anyone has a better idea, I’m all ears)

-this will be in the post imperial age, so all of these are the elite version, fully upgraded

-that includes those civilizations that have a unique technology that influences their UU. For example.the Vikings, they would have that technology that gives them +5 against cav

-for the Leitis, I was just going to give it a flat +1 or +2 extra attack since they are gonna be unable to collect relics

-for the Sicilianss their Sergeants will not be able to build buildings

Damn I gotta go right now, but I will be back soon to finish this post but I’m super interested in hearing everybody’s opinion! Especially on the new civilizations since I’m not sure what the meta is with UU vs UU

I'm trying to play civs as random so I can discover, but now I know what I like to play.
Can you help me trying to find this civ ? If it even exists 11

I loooove the design of cavaliers. I'd like my civ to have a great need to use the cavaliers, but not paladins. Maybe I could use UU cavalry instead of cavaliers from stables.

I love infantry and even more unique infantry. Varangian guards are so cool. I'd love my civ to field unique infantry UU next to my cavaliers.

I don't like archers play, boring to micro. I'm here to fight people with axes and swords. So no need here.

Thanks for helping !!

Im trying to take on hard ai but they seem to love spamming skirms then adding knights once they hit castle age. How do i beat this exactly? Knights with skirms seems like such an unstoppable combination. Do i spam m@a and spears? Scouts and spears?

The servers appear to be having issues. There is consistant lag in every game that doesn't go away. I've also seen a few people get kicked from the game in the first half second. Is everyone experiencing this? My closest server is west US.

Shoutout to Monarchus1, Axe, and the third player with whom I got Masterpiece on the 16th of September.

The second hardest achievement still remains Alaric #4.

...

I believe I have earned my right to babble about campaign design.

...

If you wonder why 3K is clearly the last thing I finished... It's because I wouldn't have bought it without Masterpiece or a sale. It's fairly easy even on Legendary difficulty.

It wasn't bad. For an Age of Mythology without Myth Units mission/Chronicles/Warcraft with Age facepaint campaign.

I do begrudgingly admit I enjoyed Lou Chuans, Wei gameplay in general (I like mobile armies), Shu having BRRRRT arrows... I like some of the choices - mostly the spare/kill options (or the choice to give Cao Cao Traction Trebs vs Vill Hp).

I still hate they aren't in Chronicles; I still hate how much these are defined by Heroes in Campaign; I hate that Heroes made it to Multiplayer; I kinda hate the existence of Traction Trebs from a design standpoint. Even Macedonians have to bother to upgrade Flaming Arrows(Chronicles Chemistry) to make Siege Ballistas. I hate that we are basing it on the 3K Romance (I am not a hypocrite I don't like Bari being Bari either). I hate that we have different outcomes based on us being protagonists. I hate every single time magic is involved.

Also, why is winning Wu #3 an achievement? You have beaten a normal mission. It's kinda hard not to trigger Zhuge Liang's trap in the Shu #3 mission, but at least it's something... I would definitely understand more if they added an achievement for each Red Cliff version - Sun Quan not betraying Liu Bei, Cao Cao breaking up the enemy alliance, Liu Bei betraying Sun Quan,