# AoEII accessibility for new and casual players **URL:** \ **Category:** II - Discussion\ **Created:** [November 2, 2026, 4:22pm UTC](https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/aoeii-accessibility-for-new-and-casual-players/291140 "2026-11-02T16:22:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![audionysoss](https://forums.ageofempires.com/user_avatar/forums.ageofempires.com/audionysoss/32/146888_2.png) [@audionysoss](https://forums.ageofempires.com/u/audionysoss)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2026, 4:22pm UTC](https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/aoeii-accessibility-for-new-and-casual-players/291140/1 "2026-11-02T16:22:30Z")
Hi. I’ve just watched the “Auto Lure Is Nothing New. 27 Years of AoE2 Automation” and got inspired to share some of my point of view related to the topic. Since I’ve recently played a couple of matches after few years of break I can tell you how I feel about it, as I believe those automations are mainly aimed for new/casual players (or did I completely miss the point?) such as me. I first played the original, vanilla game as like an 8yo child and since then I have rather short episodes with it every few or more years, so I remember those changes over the years. Now, I can’t really tell how well I fit into “average player”, but many of the mentioned automations and discussions around them sounds funny to me. Especially like the top players arguing about auto scout… I mean, really? I’m like 0 ELO player, get the scout walled in every other game, and I don’t even use auto scout because I don’t like were it moves. Does any of those players use auto scout? So what are they are arguing about? If someone likes it, let them have it… And about the other changes, and how do I feel about them? To be honest I mostly don’t care about them. Some were like “OMG, that’s great!” (shift-queue), some “oh, that’s nice I don’t need to do that anymore” (auto farm), some were like “why did they do that?” (removing two-hit boar luring), and some were like “what’s that even for?” (the recent “drop off” button - I would image more helpful to see how much resource a group of vills carries, then using this on 5 vills were each has 1 res…). Anyway, I don’t feel most of those changes affect the game that much for me. I never ever thought something like “oh, those farms! If only I would not need to reseed them, the game would be soo much easier…” - it was literally two, most straightforward actions in the game to reseed a farm, it was not that hard, sometime annoying maybe…On the other hand, there are literally dozens of things i can think of that I’m struggling with since I first played the game, that were never improved/simplified and I’m wondering why they don’t do it and instead go for some controversial changes. So I started making a list of things that come to my mind (I believe vast majority are not controversial). It got pretty lengthy already but I still feel like I didn’t even started yet, so I will not list all but it should give you an idea of my POV. The list is not in any particular order, the numbers are only for reference. I used following to mark type of my points: 🙏- please add this to the game. 💀 - this thing (or lack) is ruining my experience. ❓ - I not sure/Can I do that?/How do I do that?/Not super important, but why it’s not part of the game? 1. **Make controlling units easier** 1. **Easier hotkeys** 1. 🙏 **Add descriptions to hotkeys**. Some hotkey names are quite cryptic. 2. 💀 **Add search bar for hotkeys** 3. 🙏 **Allow to edit hotkeys mid-game** so you can test it right away… 4. 🙏 **Watch hotkeys file** so it can be edited by external editors without the need to restart the game. 5. ❓💀 **Select all idle vills without nearby workers**. 6. ❓ **Select TC without moving view to it**. I use control group 1 as someone give this tip in a video, but I’ve recently followed Viper’s video on x.25 speed and he is not having it on control group yet he stills selects it somehow without changing view. How does he do that? 7. 🙏 **Make “Go to …” commands “Select” instead of “Go”**. For most buildings there is really no need to move view on it, and if you would want to actually “go to”, why can’t it work on double press (like the control groups are)? To not mess up with existing hotkeys it could be a switch in the options, altering the way it behaves. 8. 🙏 **Allow making empty selection into control group (as a view position)** 9. 💀 **Show hotkey for selecting a building in the selection panel.** I don’t see reason why should I remember hotkeys for all the buildings, print or keep a hotkeys sheet opened in another screen while there is plenty of unoccupied space in selection screen. 10. 💀 **How to rotate a gate?** Why can’t there be a “Ctrl+mouse wheel to rotate” text displayed when you are building a gate? In a recent game I forgot how to do it, so what do I do? Do i go to options and spend 5min in search for the command during game? No, I place palisades fist so the gate aligns. It looked like the palisades were removed but I didn’t notice there are two foundations behind the gate’s towers. The vill had a queue so he left the palisades foundations after finishing the gate. Few minutes later, enemy attacking walls next to palisade, so I send a vill to place a house… next thing I see: the vill is standing in the middle of opened gate, building the palisade behind it… 11. 🙏 Above gave me idea of a **semi-closed gate** i.e the units are not allowed to move through/open the gate by their own (when chasing spotted enemy), but the gate will be opened if you actually select the units and click on the other side of the gate. 2. **More commands** 1. 🙏 **“Previous/Next selection” command** - when you have some units selected and something happens that needs your reaction, it’s not easy to get back to that unit fast if it was not a control group. You can get back to previous view with a hotkey, but often the unit will be hard to spot and click in entangled with other one, or it could be out of the view already so you need to search for it. It would be nice to be able to get to previous selection with only a single command. For example I’m navigating a vill, then I realize the don’t have Loom and there are wolfs, so I research it, and go exactly to he the view and selection I was before. 2. 🙏 **“Go to previous work” command** - sometimes in panic you can select a lot of vills from different workplaces and instead of garrisoning them you miss click to move and they loose it’s work context. So the two attacking spearman didn’t do any physical damage, but your empire’s eco just fall apart - good luck click all that villagers back were they suppose to be… 3. 🙏 **Add “Chicken stance”** - the unit retreat once they see an enemy (acting kind of like movable outposts). It’s annoying when you use a unit to look for incoming attack and then when you go to the attack notification, it’s long gone and you didn’t even see if it was one knight or ten… 3. **Easier training** 1. 🙏🙏🙏 **Mini practice scenarios/challenges for units control.** I would pay all of the current DLCs worth for this. I love the current “Learn to play” scenarios but I imagine something smaller and more specific, for things in game that do not occur that often but that can easily screw your whole game. For example “Defend the TC”, where you have a complete setup staged for a sudden raid, with vills and some military units mixed up under the TC that is raided by whatever and you need to garrison only vills, group your army, move it to optimal position, then release the vill to work after the threat is gone - and that’s it, literally an one minute scenario you can play over and over, until you feel comfortable doing it. Another scenario be like simply “Kill the boar”, where you need to kill the boar using TC fire - in normal game you only have two boars and even if you loose one that’s a huge impact on the game, so I personally never actually even tried that, it’s to risky for me. This could be even a minigame, were you have like X boars around TC and are scored afert Y minutes by how many boars you killed, how many died, wills you lost etc. Others could be like “Split formation to avoid mangonel”, “Kill all bombard canons”, “Quick wall a woo”, you name it… 4. **Gameplay behavior** 1. 💀 **Prioritize bigger groups when selecting idle vills.** It’s annoying when for example suddenly some mine is depleted and you see indicator of 15 idle vills, so you select idle vill and it happens to be that one idle vill that just finished building an outpost. You find him some next job, got attacked so you respond, still have 14 idle, select next - it’s another lone one without any useful work nearby… go to next one, and next one and then the game will eventually show you the big group of vills that where standing and doing nothing for like a minute. 2. 💀 **Make each piece of wall foundation into the queue so it can be extended easily.** I see enemy so I place a wall towards my TC, go to other side, do the same, go back to first builder and extend first wall… next thing I see is my gold miners been shredded, because when I shift-placed the second part of the wall the builder skipped that single piece of wall right next to my gold… And I got f\*\*\* up like that a few times already in the span of couple games - it’s just not intuitive. I have two gaps between forests patches, in one gap I place a house and 3 palisades, then I shift click, to fill the other gap that otherwise will not be in range of the builder… then I see the other gap filled but the first gap have the 3 palisades foundations untouched! If I need to shift-click every single palisade to make sure the wall is properly placed, then what’s the point of having mouse-drag wall placement? 2. **Additional information about the game state and mechanics (GUI)** 1. 🙏 **Show waypoints on the minimap (and indicate area that will be scouted)** - it’s annoying that I need to pan around to see if a scout still have the waypoints that I’ve previously gave him or did I messed it up at some point. 2. ❓ **Show gather speed for a selected resource.** If I didn’t watch AOE videos I would probably never notice that different food sources have different gather speed. Even if I know this now. I still only know about relative speeds and I’m not sure if I get this 100% correct. 3. ❓ **Allow to select animal/resource in a fog of war.** I see 3 chickens, but I don’t know how many food they have, what is gather speed, how much food a vill can carry on a single trip, I don’t know if it’s worth it to build a mill there, I don’t know nothing. There is planty of space in selection panel to show this info in game. I don’t see a reason why we need to learn such things in manual/tutorial videos/forums. 4. 💀 **Walls preview.** This is one of the most infuriating things in game. You spend all the time and focus to plan and build your walls, then because of some strange terrain glitch you find out an enemy is moving his whole army into your eco. There should be a simple toggle to highlight all passable tiles that are adjacent to impassable ones. 5. 🙏 **Highlight bonuses for the civ you play.** For example if a civ gives a bonus to cav archer, it’s icon in archery range could have green border. 6. 🙏 **Give a sound alert when you are about to get housed.** Not when you are housed already. 7. 🙏 **Show control groups bigger and on the side of the screen as oppose to very bottom** , ideally make it customizable so everyone can decide where and how big it suppose to be. I know there are some mods for UI but if I have time to play once in couple years, I actually want to play and not browser mods… 8. 🙏 **Add “delete” button in GUI** (not fun when you are fully walled and keyboard battery dies). 9. 🙏 **Add progress bar for units so you can see when they are ready for next attack.** 10. 💀 **Show tips for chat messages.** I know there were some prefixes for the chat to talk only to enemies, allies or specific players but I totally forgot what are they . Why not show them in the message box? The only way to talk with specific player is to use the obstructing Chat window, which also doesn’t the you the prefixes. 11. 🙏 **Indicate chat message’s recipient.** They all look the same so you can’t tell who can see them. 12. 🙏 **Remove the enemy TC area indicator from nomad games** , or at least given an option so I don’t see it and not spoil my fun. 13. 🙏 **Make building range indicator, grid and additional unit stats enabled by default.** (I don’t even know how to enable range indicator. Is it a mod?). I don’t get the point of hiding information from the player. I personally like when a game tells me how it works and at the same time I don’t like wasting time in settings screens… Why can’t there be at least a small button near the stats “Show/hide all”? There could be also “grid settings” near the mini map etc. 14. ❓ **Make the game look good from the start.** I once get one of my friends which was (new to AoE) to play with me and first thing he said was “Why is it so ugly?” - I agree with that. That blurred, glowy look is disgusting, it’s a shame you need to install some mod to make it look normally… 3. **Multiplayer games and civilizations learning** 1. 🙏 **Make the ELO slowly decay over time.** If you didn’t play for few years and you want to have an even match, it’s basically impossible because the game thinks you are much better they you actually are. My favourites are team matches, but I don’t go for team matches because I don’t want to disappoint the other players on my team. So now I play exclusively 1v1 (not favorite) to get some practice so I don’t look THAT bad in team match… and it’s not fun to loose 10 matches in a row. 2. 💀 **Allow pre-match random civ pick so we can view a tech tree/bonuses before the game.** I don’t get why I need to wait for a game to start loading before knowing what civ I will be playing. Sometime you wait for a match a while and you just have nothing to do. 3. 💀 **Allow to view civ spec in a loading screen.** The loading screen is a waste of time. I believe previously there was an option to at least view stats/elo of the other players (or I just dreamed about it?) while loading the game. Now all you can do is only read map settings. I would like to be able to see which of the players is best/worst, what are the civs bonuses and what they will be potentially playing, instead of spending time for this in actual play. For your civ, it’s not that bad because of the tooltip, but for other players? You can only open tech tree and search for their civs there, and that’s assuming you know the actual name of their civ by their little coat of arms… There are over 60 freaking civs in the game! How a new or casual player suppose to figure out what will be played? 4. 💀 **Show civ tooltip when hovering over a player is score panel.** 5. 🙏 **Given an option of having lector read the civ specs for you while you play.** 6. 🙏 **Add “Quick test play” button on a map type’s thumbnail.** Those miniatures were great idea and I love them, but they don’t tell all the story, and with such a big number of different maps the game currently have, it will be nice if you could familiarize yourself with a new map that appears in a pool. It would be nice it we could start an AI game on any displayed map with a single click, having fog revealed… ---
**Author:** ![Thire7](https://forums.ageofempires.com/user_avatar/forums.ageofempires.com/thire7/32/171912_2.png) [@Thire7](https://forums.ageofempires.com/u/Thire7)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2026, 12:37am UTC](https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/aoeii-accessibility-for-new-and-casual-players/291140/2 "2026-11-03T00:37:51Z")
Soooo many of your suggestions are already things, but I suppose you just don’t know about them because this is a very complicated game: it takes weeks to learn, and decades to master. I suggest you learn what’s already possible first, then compare that to what you think would be more intuitive. Because I don’t think it’s that helpful to just be told to do something you’ve already done. ---
**Author:** ![audionysoss](https://forums.ageofempires.com/user_avatar/forums.ageofempires.com/audionysoss/32/146888_2.png) [@audionysoss](https://forums.ageofempires.com/u/audionysoss)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2026, 4:53am UTC](https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/aoeii-accessibility-for-new-and-casual-players/291140/3 "2026-11-03T04:53:38Z")
Told by who to do what? I’m not telling anybody to anything so I’m not sure what you are talking about. And could you also be more specific about the “already things”? The hole point of my post was to share some perspective of a casual/new player. It doesn’t matter if something is there if it’s hidden from a player. Like “ **Select TC without moving view to it** ” I know it’s there, I already wrote I’ve saw this on video and I’m saying I don’t even know were to look to learn how to do it. It’s certainly very helpful to tell someone “solve your problem” when he tells you he has a problem, almost as helpful as “kiss my ass” response… There are “sooo many” yet you couldn’t even name one.