I’ve played around with 2:DE a few times and gotten clobbered by the AI.
So this time I spent a week… A WEEK… every night playing a skirmish map where there is no AI.
I worked on build queues and hotkeys and chasing after those damn boars. Got my time to Feudal Age to twelve minutes (normal speed) and then practiced getting to Castle age while building an army. Tonight I won the first standard skirmish I played with an actual AI in the game.
Unlike ‘3’ this is, apparently, a game that requires it be played in it’s own way. It is, as they say, unforgiving. But if you keep going it gets to be quite exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing what I’ll learn this coming week.
Congrats! I’m one of those guys who never had the courage to try another game. I play only AoE2.
What difficulty was the AI on? I’d say if you’re trying to work up towards playing ranked multiplayer, you should be able to beat the AI 1v1 on hardest (not “extreme”, although that’d be cool too, obviously).
Note that the AI behaves very differently from humans who can think and drastically change up everything in a strategy. The AI is cheeseable in silly ways that wouldn’t phase a human. But AI stomps are good practice. You can certainly practice your build orders against them. I’d say that you can’t practice micromanagement of soldiers against the AI in the same way that matters against humans.
good to hear it. i love the enthusiasm after getting clobbered. alot of people get discouraged when they cant beat the ai on their first try. aoe2 is alot like chess in that there is a huge skill celing and you can always improve your game. if you want tips as to improve your game i can only recomend doing the art of war scenerios.