Around Spring of 2006 I was trying to play via IP with a friend and we had all kinds of issues, then we tried out hamachi and it seemed to help out a lot. Not sure what all it did as I'm not good hardware/technical stuff, but it made that pretty easy. We were in the same apartment complex, but different buildings, and we each had our own ISP account and modems/routers.

I had to look this up because I was curious about this myself. From the fan wiki on Age of Empires about Conversion (https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Conversion From The Conquerors onwards, AI Monks attempt to convert their target at regular intervals, called here conversion intervals (CI), roughly equal to 1 game-time second. Once a Monk is at conversion range of his target (or touches it in case of rams, Trebuchets, and buildings), his first CI starts. His three first CIs have no effect on the target and only serve as warm-up. Starting from the fourth CI, the Monk has a 28% chance to convert a unit at the end of every CI. The Monk is guaranteed to convert his target at the end of the 10th CI. Attempts to convert buildings start at the 15th CI and are guaranteed to succeed at the end of the 25th CI. What this means is that having more monks convert an enemy target helps a bit in that you have more "Conversion Intervals" that might trigger the conversion itself. However, because all monks are attempting to convert the target, they are all considered to have converted the target. There's a very interesting post on Reddit that covers this in a lot more detail: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/4aj2c0/how_monks_really_work/

I don't think he's cheating. The first reason is that Allow Cheats was not checked. The second is that a high economy score does not seem like sufficient grounds with which to accuse someone of cheating. Economy score = 10% of all resources (spent or unused) + 20% of resource value of surviving units and buildings except for Castles and Wonders. A high economy score is more likely to be due to legal in-game means. Reasons including: Your opponent gathering more resources by having more resource gathering units. Given the high components of food and trade, it is likely that he had more villagers and/or fishing boats for food and more trade carts or trade cogs to generate trade profit (or made the trade carts travel to markets separated by greater distances). This contributes ot the 10% of all resources component of the economy score equation. If he won the game, he likely has more surviving units and buildings. This contributes to the 20% part of the economy score equation. This somewhat also fits in with him using many elephants. These units require a high amount of resources, food particularly, and he would have thus placed a greater emphasis on collecting food. Elephants are strong units, and he can get away with using smaller army sizes due to their strength, as opposed to non-Persian teams which cannot access elephants and must thus compensate with a larger number of weaker units. Given a limited population limit (the standard being 75), with a smaller army, he can afford to have more units dedicated to gathering resources such as villagers, fishing boats and trade carts. This would have a greater impact over a long match, which gives more time to produce elephants and for resource-gathering units to produce resources. This match was indeed long being nearly 3 hours long.

According to the website, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings supports multiplayer through both wireless and LAN. There is a place in the main menu called Lobbies, and from there you can either create a lobby or join your friend's lobby, and add as many computer players as you want from the game. You can also join online wireless lobbies through this website.

Well, I finally cracked it. For anyone having this issue, the problem is that Windows 7 does not support natively the IPX protocol anymore. So to overcome this, you can download this app : http://www.solemnwarning.net/ipxwrapper/ This will automagically convert your network packets to IPX using UDP tunneling. I tested it and it works like charm! Now the game works fine and we can play through Lan with no issues and most importantly no lag at all. So, to quickly sum up, this is what I did to make it work: Deactivate the firewall in your Domestic network in the Windows Network setting. Download IPx wrapper and unzip all the files in the same folder as the executable of the game. For instance, we play The Conquerors expansion so I right click on the properties of the shorcut and then on Open file location. Thats where you should place all the files. Do this for every machine that will join the game. Once the files are copied there are two .reg files you should execute, depending if you are in either 32 or 64 bit version of Windows. Execute it before going to the next step. Open the game in one machine and create a game using IPX protocol. NOT using TCP/IP. Other users are now able to see the game even if they are in Windows 7. Enjoy an awesome game.

Like what does the 12+4 mean in the knife symbol, and how is it different from 16? It is the same damage. 12+4 is simply added together and the total output is 16. The number right to the + is comming from unit upgrades. Some units also have a red circle symbol (I think it's for ranged units). What do the numbers on that symbol mean? The number next to the circle stands for the units range. Either take the number as it is and compare it to other ranged units to get a feeling for how much is what. It's been a while but I think it represents the tiles, that you can also see whenever you open the editor. Also, in the scenario editor I think they show the stats for these units a bit differently [...] The difference might be because of the huge amount of different civilizations, that each have their own bonuses. Or the units are from the campaign. I wouldn't pay that much attention to that. I think your confusion comes from the hidden bonuses. If you checkout the damage stats on a Pikeman, you ll see that it does very little damage. But if you see it hitting cavalery, it does huge amounts of damage. The reason for that is there is a fixed value added to the Pikemans damge, whenever it hits a cavalery unit. So the damage would be something like 3 + 20 against cavalery and 3 against the rest. Another good example is the Ram. You ll see that it only does 2 damage. But when you see it hitting a building, it actually gainst +200. There are many hidden bonuses like that. They are done this way to have you finding out the effective counters by playing. Please don't pin me on the exact numbers, but this is the way the system works. If you want a fun way to get into the AoE2 mechanics, you might like the youtube channel called "SpiritOfTheLaw". He goes very in depth into the mechanics in a very fun way.

I ran into this issue myself a while back except that my desktop got nasty colors in the process. So it's a compatibility issue rather than anything else. You can either fix it by installing Userpatch or preferably install the latest version of AoE2Tools then press "1. scan" and once the scan is done press "2. Start". You will be asked to apply a hotfix just do that and finally there is a little alert text "Fix Userpatch" just click that and hit yes to apply it. Done. (ignore Wololokingdoms alert as it's for users that own aoe2 on steam with all dlcs) At first your game will start in window mode which is totally fine but once the actual game starts it should go full screen (in case it doesn't Press F10 > Options > Opt your preferred resolution. From now on it always goes full screen)

You can use the "trumpet" icon at the top of the screen to open the chat dialog. There you can use the check marks to select the players your message shall be shown to. See the icon pointed out by the red arrow in the top right corner: Alternatively, you can use various characters when typing a message to select a group of recipients: Send message to enemies: # Send message to allies: ; Send message to everyone regardless of the team: * Example use: #Your villager is ours now! Wololo!

SOLUTION 1: LAN party creation explained based on my deep experience and knowledge. STEP 1: DO NOT use Internet TCP/IP! Instead Use Local (LAN) TCP/IP as demonstrated in the image below. STEP 2: One of you creates a lobby while the others join. If the joiners can not see the lobby name e.g. (Alex's Game). All of you should temporarily turn off Windows Firewall, as well as Enabling UPNP in the router and disabling upnp of all your machine using this utility https://www.grc.com/unpnp/unpnp.htm (Make sure the status of upnp tool is green) SOLUTION 2: Using AoE2Tools and Voobly This solution will also set you up for multiplayer and playing other people online (over 4000 players). STEP 1: Download the latest version of AoE2Tools from here https://github.com/gregstein/AoE2Tools/releases STEP 2: Install and press scan then the tool should be able to detect your cd installation then make the game completely playable on Voobly without any further configuration. You can either Press "2 - Start" button in AoE2Tools then press Fix Voobly Not Found (Which installs voobly automatically), or you can go to Voobly.com and download the client manually. STEP 3: Sign up an new account for all users from here https://www.voobly.com/signup (No need to add real emails because the accounts don't need verification). Now Login in each computer with the username not email. Step 4: Once successfully logged into Voobly; a game browser window should pop up then you can join either "New player Lobby" or "RM/DM Medieval Siege". (can't see game browser? File > Game Browser from the messenger menu) Now one of you creates a room, change its title name while the others join the same lobby and find the room with that title name. Once all players are in the room, the host can press launch and the game will start for all of you (nobody clicks resume lobby button). You will notice that the game start in window mode but that's fine once all of you are ingame it should go full screen but if it doesn't you can Press F10 > Options > then select your preferred resolution. Another the advantage of setting up AoE2Tools and Voobly is that anyone of you or all of you together can play multiplayer against other people. Happy game,

Age of Empires 2 HD unfortunately doesn't really have a LAN setup. The best thing you can do, is create a password-protected lobby and have the machines connect to that. If you don't have HD and have day, Age of Kings, then you could also set up GameRanger and have everyone connect through that. Still needs Internet connection for all machines but it means you can play multilayer with all of the machines.

To my knowledge the only 'handicap' you could set up for the better players is to create your own custom map and assign player location carefully. Less skilled players could have more resources nearby for example, or are surrounded by forest (but with the resources within of course). Of course, all the players would need to agree to your set up and respect the location you choose for them. This could be more entertaining for the stronger players as well, because the challenge is bigger now. Some things to consider for the stronger players: More dangerous wild animals (wolfs, jaguars, etc...) and closer to the town center. This makes it risky for villagers to go too far from the town center and explore. Scarce resources (or even shared resources in between camps, to have them fight over it) no/less relics (you can even make them hard to find, like inside forests) disable specific buildings/research/units in the custom map (I'm not sure this still works with AOE II HD for custom maps which are then used for multiplayer) Some things to consider for the weaker players: Longer peace treaty Enclosed area where the the stronger players can't reach them More starting villagers Starts with a small army No dangerous wild animals, instead supply more deer or turkeys. More resources and closer by Relics (be careful! Too many relics can seriously break the economy of your map, 2 per weak player should be enough.) Start with a castle next to the town center Start out with resource buildings next to resources (mining camp/mill) Lock teams when setting up the game If you create a custom map and use it for a multiplayer game, make sure you do NOT toggle the 'All techs'. This will reset player specific settings, like disabled units. Note that settings starting resources in the custom map won't work for multiplayer games because this will be overwritten when selecting the resources (low, medium, high). At LAN parties I would prepare a custom map in advance and use this setup for new people. Other times I would create a custom map where we would challenge ourselves with a very powerful AI, where the AI would start with an army of 2000 (buffed) units. Teaming up against such a strong enemy could be fun with people from different skill levels, as you need to assign roles to make a strategy work properly. Usually if a skilled player thought he could go solo against the AI, he would lose, requiring a team. Another more advanced options is to make use of triggers. In a custom map, triggers allow you to do various actions on the map or to players based on an event. For example, if a player1 comes into a certain area, you can grant player2 1000 gold. You can even place units or increase their attack and HP. In a custom map the world is yours :). Some ideas I put the practice in the past: A strong player crosses a certain border (think of the only bridge to cross deep water). This would grant the weaker players 2500 of each resource. A strong player comes into view of the town center, boost the town centers health to 20000. A strong player comes into view of a 'sacred monastery', kill all units in a certain area. A strong player comes into territory of another strong player and they become enemies (make sure to lock teams, triggers can still override this in-game) To give it more flavour, you can have the 'world' (gaia) send out messages to all players from time to time, to warn them for certain dangers. Now the stronger players are warned and would have to think twice if their strategy would actually still work.

As this ("finally unlocked the Emperor achievement in a 3 hour game") and this (first comment: "I've done it on a +2:30h hour game") thread suggest - and no allegations against the OP's for being silly are to be found in both threads - I assume it has to be done in a single game.

You will need to turn on advance commands -> Top right corner of the minimap.

Aside from the obvious cleaning already mentioned, games from the Age of Empires II era had annoying copy protection that relied on putting garbage data in areas of the CD that weren't technically within the CD-ROM specification in question (ISO9660, I think?). Your optical drive would be asked by the copy protection software to read out the data in these invalid areas to see if it matches what it's supposed to... the idea was that simply copying the files from one CD to another to pirate the game wouldn't bring the purposefully-bad sectors with it. The major flaw with this plan is that some CD drives are "smart" enough to not bother reading the gibberish or attempt to error-correct it, resulting in a disc that won't validate as genuine, even if it is.

I played the old version of AOE II with expansion for a long time over lan, including Windows 10. The only problems I ever had starting the game (ranging from Windows XP to Windows 10) was administrative rights for the network tool AOE II uses and fire wall blockage for which you just have to say 'Allow' and be done with it. Make sure everybody has version 1.0c and maybe check compatibility mode. To be honest, I have more problems with the steam version than the old version for multiplayer. The old version loads multiplayer save games nicely, but I never got that working for the steam version. I also have more problems with network stability when playing on steam compared to the old version.

In the original game, you can only move up to 40 units. In the HD version of the game, this number has indeed been updated. You can select and move up to 60 units at the same time. It used to be 200 in the public beta of the 2.4 patch, but it has been quickly lowered to 60. There is no real explanation for that, but main suspicions is about path finding being too complicated to calculate, while other think it could be because of the game balance itself.

You may have some better success finding games to play on GameRanger. I just logged on and saw 250 rooms for Age of Empires 2. For Age of Empires there were only about 30.

http://voobly.com supports AoE II. In fact, the Conquerors is the most played game there. It is an attempt to replace Zone.com, the original service for playing AoE II and The Conquerors online.

There are differences between the two games, but they are mainly graphical or Steam-related. As stated on Wikipedia: The HD Edition includes both the original game and the expansion The Conquerors, as well as updated graphics for high-resolution displays. It also supports user-generated content through the Steam Workshop and multiplayer games provided through the Steam servers. There are three paid expansions, The Forgotten, The African Kingdoms and Rise of the Rajas which are exclusive to this version of the game. It's also important to note that a team keeps working on patching the HD version of the game. While it would be ridiculously long to enumerate all those changes here, we can at least say they cover a lot of different points: upgrading performances and rendering, fixing bugs, balancing the units, upgrading the AIs and other convenient points. We can for instance quote this question where we have been talking about the possibility to move a greater amount of units comparing to the original version of the game. Source: Wikipedia

This is a rather broad question, since it depends on the map and on the situation. In general, if your feudal aggression can take out villagers or win you the water, you usually end up ahead. I'm just going to handle land maps, and I'll break it into closed and open maps. Closed On closed maps, the superior strategy is usually to skip the feudal age. This is because closed maps are very easily walled off, and feudal units take too long to break through walls. By default, go for a fast castle or fast imp, but don't be afraid of jumping at a chance for feudal aggression if it seems like you could get it to work. Black Forest: It all depends on the initial wall-off. If you were aggressive in walling and managed to wall such that the opponent doesn't have a wall to match yours, go for the feudal aggression. Trushing seems to be a popular choice. This messy game commentated by ZeroEmpires features this strategy. Arena: Feudal aggression is usually impossible. However, the walls in arena look like so: #### # # # There is a small "gap" in the corner. You could possibly "tower hop" the corner by placing a tower there and un-garrisoning units inside the tower. This video from the "Break the Meta" series by Resonance22 features it. Those are the two most commonly played closed maps, but on other maps, look for opportunities. It might be possible to trush or go for archers even though your opponent locked themselves into their base. Keep your scout alive to help you make your decision. Open On open maps, the superior strategy is usually to go into a feudal war. This is because open maps tend to be hard to wall off, meaning that your army can get in there and take out villagers, preventing your opponent from castling or from actually using the castle age technologies due to lack of resources. On the other hand, your opponent is also likely to fight in the feudal age. With no army, how can you keep their units from slaying your villagers? Arabia: This is the most popular open map. Almost every player will go for feudal aggression on this map. If your opponent tries to fast castle, your feudal army will take out many villagers, either preventing their castle age technologies from helping them or allowing you to castle and not be behind them. On the other hand, if your opponent manages to stone wall, you have to reach the castle age in order to debilitate them. There are a few options which might make you consider fast castling instead of going for a feudal war: You drushed. While drushing, many players wall up and castle right after reaching feudal, as the extra villagers makes it easier to obtain the necessary resources. That doesn't mean that you can't go for a feudal army, but a castle age army is just that much stronger that you should probably fast castle unless your drush fails. You realize that you have an easily walled map. In this case, you want to palisade wall / house wall up. If you can actually do this, go for the fast castle. When you reach feudal, consider stone walling or double-layering the palisades to make it even harder for your enemy to get in. You may need to act fast in the castle age and start churning out knights or mangonels to take out your enemy's feudal army pounding on your gates (don't forget to start pressuring your opponent with the army as well; unused military is a waste of resources). I would only do this if you have a place within your walled off base where you can place a town center, as one of the biggest advantages of the castle age is the ability to produce villagers from multiple town centers rather than just one. Most open maps behave similarly to Arabia. However, some "open" maps are easily to wall, such as Mongolia. You have to be careful and keep your scout alive to see if your opponent is walling up. It is very costly to invest in feudal military units when your opponent is really fast castling behind walls.