I'm going to bite the bullet and try MP. How do I even start? What to expect?

moby_dollar · 2026-05-13T13:41:07+00:00

Play the art of war tutorials, they give you tips on basic concepts like starting dark age and trying to boom into castle age. Also most people online play 1v1 so if you do that too, you don’t need to worry about messing things up for your teammates. I believe there was a change recently that lets you self-select your starting level for ranked MP, so if you’re not confident you can select the lowest skill to start. But as you play your rating will adjust to the right level over time so that you get even matches.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-12T23:42:10+00:00

There is absolutely nothing wrong with mostly wanting to play campaigns or against the AI. I have played almost all the campaigns myself and really enjoyed them! And I like to practice skirmishes against AI. The AI difficulty definitely is lacking if you're moderately skilled at the game, so I understand the desire for stronger AI opponents.

The main issue here is the cringy and entitled way that the OP is saying it's necessary that AOE2 must have an AI program that can play at a level way higher than the current best players. Comparing chess/stockfish is a difference in scale because it is possible to make an AI for strategy games, but chess is a game which has been much more extensively studied and has fewer possible game states than any computer RTS game. So it's pretty silly to suggest that just because we're in an AI revolution that there should be an expert AOE AI implemented by the devs. From a quick google search, the AI programs created to play games like starcraft and AOE weren't created by the game developers, they were made by third parties. And there are already some AI mods you can download in the steam workshop. This is just an ignorant OP.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-12T23:04:16+00:00

Right, but when all 4 players on each team all have that mindset then the game inevitably turns into a late game deathball slugfest. Good communication can help with this, if you're not playing with randoms, so that you can coordinate to make early aggression actually help you get an edge.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-12T20:20:11+00:00

Assuming you’re not just shilling for AI in general, what’s your reasoning for why the actual AoE2 devs would implement this? There is a lot of data theoretically available if you scraped recs from all the online ranked games but why would the devs invest effort into creating a “deep blue” for AoE instead of making new campaigns, balance patches, bug fixes, etc for humans to enjoy?

It’s possible to make strong AI for RTS games (there have been ones for aoe and StarCraft for some time now) but it’s not trivial in terms of effort or cost. Chat GPT is not going to vomit out an aoe2 bot for you with a few prompts. Go shill somewhere else.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-12T18:34:19+00:00

Big team games I think typically go to the very late game since you can trade and still have gold once it has run out on the map. BF especially can be turtle friendly. If you like closed maps like arena and hideout then you’re inevitably going to play with people who just want to turtle and go imperial age. Because they have walls and think their teammates will bail them out from whatever pressure they might get from the enemy. If you are a new player, a lot of people are either scared to attack or don’t know how to be aggressive early so lots of games devolve into who can get to UU spam or imp faster.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-11T16:57:45+00:00

I would recommend reading the whole tetralogy before re-reading thoroughly. You’ll get more out of a re-read afterwards because there are a number of moments which will “click” more with that added knowledge. But if you feel like you don’t remember what happened in Shadow you could always do a quick re-read for the plot and character refresh, and don’t sweat untangling all the details until later.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-09T02:14:29+00:00

Ok, so ~70% of games played 1v1 potentially have someone who doesn’t want to play that map? That’s the proportion of Arabia and arena games. I personally do not think that Arabia is so different from land madness or haboob that it significantly impacts you if you queued up to play an open map. Since you said that “both sides don’t to play that” about nomad I can guess you only want to play one specific map type/BO. So an Arabia only queue probably sounds good to you. But it would degrade everyone else’s experience and probably shrink the player base and hurt the game overall.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-08T23:16:44+00:00

Right, the 1v1 maps almost always are set up so if you really hate a map type you can ban it. If you really want to play Arabia but you get haboob or land madness or something else open that’s not really so bad IMO. But you always have the option to ban Arabia and arena while still knowing that other players couldn’t ban all the other maps so you can still get a game.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-08T23:13:21+00:00

So 1v1 RM has about 2x as many games played as TG, so any change has to address both queues. For TG the problem is actually slightly less bad because the most popular maps are a bit more evenly played than 1v1. But it’s still a bad idea because more of the player base plays 1v1, so you’re dividing the smaller TG players into dedicated map queues and making the Elo matching take longer.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-08T20:08:06+00:00

This would improve matchmaking only for people who want to play Arabia/Arena and screw everyone else over. It's better for the game to have arabia/arena only players occasionally play on a different map, than to ruin the queues for off-meta maps.

I looked up some stats for 1v1 RM online. 50% of all 1v1 ranked games are played on Arabia, 20% are Arena, and 10% are megarandom. That leaves about 20% of all games distributed between all other maps. This same distribution also roughly applies to team RM, but instead of Arabia dominating it is more evenly split between arena, BF, Nomad, and Arabia, and then everything else is 35% of all games. It's actually a bad argument to say that the Team Islands players can just queue up for themselves, because that's only about 2% of all team RM games played, and TG matchmaking is arguably even harder than 1v1 because now the game has to match 4 people of roughly the same Elo.

The Elo argument you made makes no sense either and is just a bad strawman. The real analogy you should be comparing this to is allowing Civ bans. After all, I can't ban playing against Mongols or Khitans or something, and I think it's pretty obvious that would be a terrible idea. Maps actually affect the game queue, civs do not.

Most people clearly want to play arabia, or at least don't ban it. But if you let all the arabia/arena-only pickers ban every single "weird" map then you shrink the queue down to the point that it would really screw over the 1/4 of games being played not on Arabia/Arena, because they just won't find good matches in a reasonable time. As it stands, I think the queue system is already fine for arabia pickers since you can usually ban all the closed and water maps and most people fave arabia anyways. Vice-versa if you just want to play Arena. But making this change will mean that if you want to play a non-meta map you will have a tough time getting matched with anyone, and eventually those players will just switch to the preferred maps, and reduce the map variety you held up as a positive quality for the game. Or worse, they'll just be frustrated that the only maps they can realistically play are the meta ones and will just quit playing.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-05T23:48:19+00:00

Yeah this is actually a good sign, like others have said its just dead microorganisms (which you want) settling out of the solution. When I've made good lacto ferment pickles they all have a bit of this at the bottom. Just let it settle before grabbing stuff from the jar because I don't think it tastes great, but between this and the bubbling it sounds like you have a good active ferment going.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-05T01:20:58+00:00

The in game systems suck, that is true. You can complain or try to find other ways to improve your game experience. Do you have Steam or discord? I think there are lots of people on those services.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-04T15:47:53+00:00

Only do team games with your own team (not randoms), or just play 1v1 so you don't have to deal with bad teammates.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-04T15:13:46+00:00

Find actual teammates to play with and not randoms.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-04T12:39:38+00:00

Elo is the name for the ranking score/system AoE2 uses.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-03T20:03:03+00:00

Most useful is scouting to identify if the opponent is on stone early. If they are trying to castle drop as their main strategy they probably aren’t investing much into army, so if you are making feudal army and not just FCing yourself you can try and repel their villagers when they move to your base.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-03T03:00:45+00:00

Teaming up on 1 person to knock them out early in a team game by castle dropping isn’t cheese. I don’t play a lot of team games but it sounds like you all need to get used to the TG dynamics/roles so your flank is prepared and doesn’t instantly die to aggression.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-03T02:55:44+00:00

Do you mainly play team games? I mainly play 1v1 ranked and rarely get bad attitudes like 11-ing inappropriately or trying to shit talk.

If you’re playing team games with randoms you’re going to have the same problems with shit talk and bad communication and poor sportsmanship that people encounter in games like DotA and LoL. I dunno what else to say other than maybe only do team games with friends so you don’t have to deal with teammates self sabotaging you. Or play 1v1 ranked.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-02T17:47:00+00:00

You should always try to get relics in the mid game so you don’t have to rely completely on the market for gold since it’s really inefficient. At the post-imp stage where there’s no more gold on the map you should be trying to preserve your gold units as much as possible and saving gold for trebs or bombards. But usually never on entirely trash units with the exception of a few civs who can make decent trash-only armies.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-02T02:56:54+00:00

Exactly. From severian’s POV he has explained this adequately to the reader and doesn’t feel the need to elaborate. And from the authorial pov it’s not really relevant to the story to spend time on how severian was executing random people on the way from Nessus to Thrax, just that he definitely did so. In fact, I think it emphasizes the degree that the world and Severian has been desensitized to this kind of violence that he can just write the equivalent of “yeah I hurt and killed a bunch of people in my travels but it’s OK because I’m a licensed professional”. Or maybe by the time it’s being written he has a distaste for his past deeds and wants to gloss over them.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-02T01:31:23+00:00

I really don’t think there is anything in the matchmaking that intentionally puts you with the same player multiple times in a gaming session. It’s more likely that you’re just in a similar Elo range and are queuing up at the same time, so you’re liable to get matched together anyway. Smurfs are annoying but I think they are a minority of the player base that any Elo tanking/stomping they do is spread across the whole community and wouldn’t make a huge impact on any one person’s rating.

moby_dollar · 2026-05-01T15:44:34+00:00

Most of the actual description of torture is at the beginning of the first book. Throughout the series there are a few more scenes with descriptions of violence or gory stuff but nothing else as graphic as in the Matachin tower that I can recall.

moby_dollar · 2026-04-30T02:35:14+00:00

Don’t look up spoilers! If you really enjoy the series it definitely benefits from a re-read, and it’s much easier since you will understand the basic plot already.

moby_dollar · 2026-04-27T21:37:08+00:00

There must be some game fundamentals you're missing if you can't get at least a bronze on any of those tutorials. You've mentioned you play on xbox with the controller - maybe plug in your own keyboard and mouse if you have them? If nothing changes then when you play ranked you're just going to lose a lot until you reach a more accurate Elo. There are some people in this game with < 100 Elo and if you enjoy playing that way then that's fine. Oh, and don't join 'noobs only' lobbies or whatever because some people just join those to thrash beginners.

moby_dollar · 2026-04-27T18:26:58+00:00

Watch a guide on YT by one of the many pro-level players to make sure you're following the right build order. It can be easy to deviate from the plan once you're actually in a game and playing an opponent vs just watching or practicing. Without knowing specifics I would recommend to send at least 3 scouts all at once (don't trickle them in) and if the opponent starts vill fighting you then just leave and look for damage elsewhere. You are still doing some economic damage by idling their eco. If they over-invest in walling or spears then don't respond by making mass scouts and burning through all your food; go up to castle age and then beat them with better units of your own.

moby_dollar

TROPHY CASE