Hi there!
I’m mostly a custom games player, and just recently, after more than 1000 hours, I realized that the game doesn’t perform well. Amazon Tunnel/Michi Lobbies 300 pop per player is enough to drop your FPS to 10 or even less in long games with trade and units. I’d attached a picture of the CPU Utilization - always see loadout like this: only 4 threads, load constantly rising and falling there, not holding somewhere on a stable level. So, it’s the way the game’s engine can utilize our resources, and that’s sad.
I have the AMD Ryzen 7 5700 CPU, not the best one, but by the results here, it’s very comparable to a few tests I found on YouTube, check below. I feel like 2026 is a good year for the devs to try make it better if it’s possible. In 1v1/2v2 it’s fine, I have like 4k/120FPS there, with enhanced graphics, GPU is chilling in this game, with my RTX 5070ti, never saw more than 15% load. 8 player games with 1400+ pop we’re starting to have a huge problem. Maybe it’s the Microsoft servers struggling to transfer data about unit movements between players, or the game engine bottlenecking on the CPU, result: 8 player lobbies starting to heat your butt with army-controlling challenges while the game lags.
By the test I saw on the internet: AMD Ryzen 9800 X3D scored around 1450 points on the benchmark, just 200 points above, still struggling with AOE 2 DE, therefore, the last and shiny CPU will not solve the problem. Folks, welcome to your thoughts. Does the game engine affect your experience with your ways playing AOE?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aB1dhWAU88 -1252 Score Ryzen 5 7600X
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=notrwzxrFO0 -1290 Score Ryzen 7 5850X
My Performance test Score: 1230(Ryzen 7 5700)
AOE 2 DE CPU Utilization:
