Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition – Easy Start Tips

Strategy games are probably very difficult to learn how to play, and to learn you have to spend some time.

How to Start Easy

Note: Credit goes to supersand

Play skirmish with the AI on lowest difficulty, they shouldn’t advance ages until you do and are unlikely to rush you, you don’t need to know all the jargon strategy when starting out.

Basic Tips to Help

• Always try to keep your town center working until you reach about half population of villagers, or have enough steady resources coming in.
• After dark age try to keep a military building working on something, Pikemen or Skirmishers are the easiest for most civs but Cavalry / Unique units can be good if you can keep up with the gold costs.
• Bind a key that is easy for you to press to “idle villagers” in keybindings, if you aren’t doing anything then mash that key a few times. Villagers should always be doing something.
• Houses are cheap, try to build them in advance before you hit population cap.
• Rebuilding a resource camp (lumber camp, mining camp, mill, etc) closer to the resource is a good thing, especially for lumber camps as the woodline recedes. Less villager walking = more resources. Generally if they are walking more then 3-5 tiles it is time to rebuild it.