When I click on Play-Button in Steam then I have to wait for a long time, about 1,5 - 2 minutes, before the application icon appears on task bar and intro starts.
I have reinstalled the game and all mods disabled. Game is located on SSD. Even the start from the .exe take ages.
Specs:
Ryzen 5 3600
RTX 2080 Super
16 GB RAM 3600 mHz Dual Ch.
Windows 10 1909
If on steam go to properties of game>set launch option on the general tab>write SKIPINTRO and restart. See if it fixes.
I don’t think it will completely but it might help speed up. I have no clue what the game is loading.
Thanks, but it did not speed up the whole process. 
put a space now and write HIGH (leave skipintro) and test
nothing has changed 
Write +DXLEVEL 80 after the HIGH (always with space)
no, nothing…I think, I need to wait for an update
Probably, tomorrow i’ll test if some other commands work but you need specific game commands.
I have had long load time since release of the game. It cannot be just on launch commands as very few use them but still have instant load
its the mod causing the slow down. AOE2DE clean game starts fast for me and I tested this just 2 nights ago.
clean game = 10-15 sec start up before intro movie starts.
with my mod = 35-45 sec to load up before intro movie.
the more mod you have the slower it gets, not sure why developer choose to load the mod into memory before game starts. it should only load the mod if we choose to use specific mod to play.
What mods are you talking about? Is it like the event mods and graphic mods you can subscribe to?
It feels like when you set the option to skipintro, it’s like it still waits out the length of time for the intro but just doesn’t play the video. I’m kind of okay with that, because it’s not that great of an intro compared to the old one, that and it uses to run really slowly and was hard to skip when it started.
I tested it yesterday again, without mods 1 min. 30 sec. starting time, I also have the same result with mods activated
Situation is getting worse and worse with new builds. In “101.101.37650.0 5061880 Steam” I now need 2 minutes 30 seconds until main menu loads 
Will I need 10 minutes in the future?
without mods, it takes me 15-20 seconds. with my mod, its 40-45 seconds to start before intro kicks in.
Any luck from anyone? My game takes 15-30 minutes to launch. It’s been this way since release.
This has to be a record… 
I disabled all my currently enabled 31 mods to check whether these increase startup time. Didn’t help, still 2 minutes 30 seconds.
disable mod does not help. you need to REMOVE them from local/subscribed folder. even if they are disabled, game still loads all of them before start into memory or some sort. its just this game is too ■■■■ old not sure if any of the devs know how to get a fix around this.
with my mod in my local folder, it takes 30 sec to start, without it only takes 8 sec.
@Schoffrey again, DISABLING will not change anything, only REMOVE them from local folder/subscribed folder.
So the game core files load in 8 seconds, while your mod loads in 22 seconds. This is disproportionately large loading time for a mod and so is clearly a problem caused by the game.
Most of my mods are campaigns, which should cause nothing to be loaded until I start them from campaign selection screen. Most of my other mods are applied to the game based on their current state, not state at startup (I know it, because changes to them are applied without needing to restart application). This means, that they should not influence startup time.
It appears, that game is doing something very wrong, so that mods cause disproportionate increase of startup time. Especially knowing, that game manages to load its massive amount of files at startup in seconds for many people. This is a bug and should be fixed.
yea mine is data mod. its a lot less file/content to read through so im not sure why it takes longer, or why it would even take longer in the first place. datamod with it’s graphic data should not be loaded whatsoever until we choose and start playing it.