After 4000+ Hours in Age of Empires II (1999–2026), I No Longer Recommend This Game. This is the game I used to open every single day.
The classic I’ve played for over 25 years.
The game I’ve poured thousands of hours and so much love into…And now, I genuinely cannot recommend it to anyone anymore. The game itself is still fun, but the developers’ decisions have completely killed my trust. Why ban trainers in a single-player game? For me aoe2 is single-player game. You’re playing alone. Who exactly are you protecting by blocking trainers? If you want to stop cheating in multiplayer, then just do it in multiplayer. Many other games already handle this perfectly: trainers work fine in single-player, but automatically disable as soon as you enter multiplayer. It’s not rocket science — the technology exists and is widely used. If you think third-party trainers are hurting your game, then make your own official trainer! Give players proper modding tools and customization options. Everyone wins. Instead, you chose the lazy nuclear option — a blanket ban that even affects single-player. That’s not game protection. That’s hostility toward your own players. I’m not defending online cheating. I just want to freely change resources, experiment with crazy builds, or simply enjoy god-mode once in a while in my offline games. It harms literally no one. A game that treats its single-player players like criminals is not a game I can keep supporting. The deeper my love once was, the greater my disappointment now. I hope other longtime players see this, and I hope the developers finally listen to their veteran community: Stop treating single-player fans like thieves.
The team is apparently too small or inexperienced to handle technical details like this (they don’t even allow rollbacking to old patch versions on Steam, which is basically an industry standard at this point). Big fumble on Microsoft’s part not to hire more people, it’s one of the most popular RTS games in the history and it deserves more technical care.
Is this a recent change? In interviews they always said they don’t care about single players.
Did you get banned or does the trainer just doesn’t work anymore?
You’re mad only because external cheats doesn’t work? They are under no obligation to make an external program not associated with them compatible with the game.
What do you want to modify that can’t be done via modding or in-game cheats?
If you are found to be cheating online you should be a banned immediately.
Just make a crazy scenario, with lots of cool triggers. Done.
What trainers do? How do u use them? Didn’t know that exist for strategy games. I though its only as aimbots in shooters…
Nobody is talking about cheating online, we’re talking about being able to play the campaigns and historical battles and the single player content with whatever mods we like. It’s absurd to not allow that.
The game has many ingame cheat codes. Look them up. I don’t see why you would need external cheat software trainers in signlr player to enjoy the game when their is already cheat codes.
How is this your hill to die on after 4000 hours is beyond my understanding
the trainer just doesn’t work anymore
single players is the soul of the game + campaign
unlimited pop/set pop to 0/9999 hp unit/instant build/instant make unit/instant research
all of this only apply to player not ai (aegis works for both ai and player)
i do not play online, that is boring
wemod for example now it is called wand
ingame code also works on ai (aegis) because the code is not enough
not joking, just why do you need all that, that AI gets it too? as It is scripted and wont know how to use more pop space for example… I thought cheats are there to help people who struggle to get past a certain hard mission.
Completely agree on this. Blocking trainer really kills the fun for a Single Player-only player like myself. I fully support the game with all the DLC and now can’t enjoy the game the way I want it to be anymore. The multiplayer scene really affects the Single Player too much.
The origins of cheats was to test game content or limits. You don’t want to play a full game if you just want to know if some UI thing works or a winning screen etc.
Trainers are used to change settings and are not harmful in single player. Banning them for single player is very odd and shows lack of knowledge or manpower.
I used to play this game almost every day. Ever since the Chinese DLC I have seen myself coming back to it less and less.
The most recent DLC was also disappointing. I redownloaded the HD edition and have been playing that one more than the DE. At least the HD version still feels like AoE