That sounds way too fast. I would recommend 27+3 or 28+2 for someone who fast castles in 20 minutes.
I remember being happy doing a tight 26+2 (no deer, no market selling/buying), when I was around hard AI level.
I think the hardest HD AI = extreme HD AI cheats a little.
My two cents:
If you want to play online, just start playing online. Youâll encounter more varied opponents and strategies, and there wonât be that jump between AI levels where beating one is easy and beating the next is impossible.
Having the skirmish option is great, but youâll learn playing against humans quicker if you play against humans, or if you mix playing against the AI and playing against humans.
Only if you go online and after your placement matches and maybe a few extra you still canât get paired up with people of around your own skill level are you âdoomedâ to try and get better solo.
Rather, what youâre suggesting is too slow for the strategy I was discussing. Fast Castle Hussite Wagons is best when done extremely early 14-15 mins.
Age 3 is the only Age game with difficulty levels that make sense.
Yeah, thatâs the AI that was made for DE. Doesnât really cheat, to my knowledge, and doesnât get a resource bonus to start with. (Unlike HD and CD.) Early attacks to DEâs AI actually does some damage because of the ripple effects to their econ
Although, Moderate AI recently got some changes made to it, imo, to make it more challenging, which is good and bad. A little too predictably tough, imo. And going 1v2 Moderate AI is nearly impossible for me now (until I figure out the secret) whereas 6+ months ago it was fine
Donât forget you can use âHandicapâ in lobby to make you and/or individual AIs have higher gather rates and such.
And if you use DEâs AI and want to play âto the bitter endâ, donât forget you can go to chat icon, click AI Commands, scroll to â104 - Donât Resignâ and choose it⊠so AI enemies never resign
Which is sad. But, yeah, if you try to wall up and turtle with towers and castle, youâre toast. DE was designed for eSports and Marketing. Need offense, aggression, etc. It is more exciting
Donât think Iâd be able to win a 2v1 against the current Extreme AI without a keyboard though, even if I knew how to use a controller. Thatâs whack 
I donât know the skirmish maps because I never played them much. Whatâs a good army composition supposed to look like? I thought that flooding in swordsmen and putting some in battering rams would be a good start, then Iâve got cavalry and siege to back it up. Iâm missing spearmen and archery units.
Thatâs right, scroll up and see my post. I didnât understand the ai settings and I had it set wrong all along.
What do you mean by +3 and +2 on those numbers?
If I think I can focus then yep Iâll go online, but I never played many games online (any game/genre in the past 20 years) so huge anxiety for me lol. Iâm still making rookie mistakes and forgetting stuff because Iâm trying to process everything at once.
If you time your resource collection well you can go up to fuedal at 27 or 28 villagers, then add 3 or 2 villagers extra while youâre in fuedal age, building the buildings and gathering the resources needing for castle age, for a total of 30 villagers.
Iâll tell you a little secret: so do most of us. One of the first games I won was a 2v2 where the opponent on my side was dark age with something like 8 villagers by the time my scouts came in. And I can guarantee you that some of my losses were other peoples easy victories. I had a few games where I went forward only to look back at my base later to realize most of it was gone. Aoe2 is just a really complicated game, but the game tries to match you up with people of around your own level of play, so youâll win some, youâll lose some.
HD neither gets extra resources but DE is the more redefined one.
Oh, I see. How does HDâs AI get crazy big and relentless sometimes without it? Or, what forms of âcheatingâ did it use, if you happen to know
HD didnât cheat, only the original AOK/AOC AI cheated. It cheated by getting extra resources at set points in the game.
Neither AI cheats in DE. If the AOC AI cheats in DE thatâs news to me, but then again I never saw any reason to play the AOC AI. Just donât play the AOC AI if it does? Not like youâre going to have a better time playing the DE AI nowadays if you think the AOC AI is too hard.
DE added a new difficulty level with Extreme whereas HDâs AI came from a time when that level didnât exist. So Moderate HD AI will be somwhere between Hard/Hardest DE AI. 
The only âcheatâ the AI has (which it needs to function properly) is knowing how many units you have and how much % of those units are military, but not your exact army. However, to get that info, it still needs to scout you.
As a test, can you try 1 vs 2 AI on DEâs Moderate difficulty on a mostly land map or all land (like Four Lakes or Arabia to help remove glaring chokepoints), small or medium size map, 400 population max, enable â104 - Donât resignâ AI command once the game starts, Conquest mode, not Nomad, and see how that goes for you? I also play âFastâ game speed, so try that.
And maybe you play as Spanish civ, them on Random civs, if you donât mind. I know Spanish is fairly weak and no eSport player ever picks them, but Iâm curious how it goes for you.
If that fails, you can play with different civs until you win. I realize you will probably win on your first try, though
I used to be able to beat 1v2 90% of the time on Moderate using any civ. Now, as of last handful of months, Iâm lucky if I survive the first onslaught from them no matter what civ I use. Theyâre definitely on steroids now compared to before. Not cheating, but just really tough
If you win without cheating, how did you do it?
Spanish is weak? How?
Sorry for the slang. As PanCalvus said, I mean 27 population (27 villagers +1 scout) before clucking up to Feudal age, then 3 more villagers before clicking up to castle age.
A few notes:
Spanish is underwhelming on maps with early aggression/rushes. As soon as you can fast castle without trouble, it is and has always been a great civ, even for eSport players.
Spanish are very good on maps like Arena, Nomad, Black Forest, and have one of the best team bonus in the game.
Against AI, they cannot abuse you Feudal age, so it is a good civ against them as well.
Lol, for my FC strats on the ranked ladder I hit Castle Age at 14:00 minutes
20 minutes is slow
Yeah, as @Zelley00 pointed out, their early game isnât the greatest, Iâve heard⊠and any time I watched T90 eSport tournaments last year and earlier this year, I noticed Spanish was rarely, if ever, picked. At least in the battles I happened to watch.
Maybe recent balance tweaks have fixed things for the better? I donât like that castles now
I like open maps and natural-looking ones (as much as possible, which is nearly impossible in DE), so I donât play Arena or Black Forest. Nomad isnât appealing to me because they give you so many starting villagers, and at like three different places on the map. So, if you try 1v2 AI (Moderate) using the parameters I gave above, I wish luck.
If Nomad started you with 3 villagers in one spot, and the maps were natural/organic-looking instead of mirror worlds, then Iâd do Nomad more.
True, it is good. But in 1v2 AI matches, that doesnât help me
Since the recent AI algorithm updates to put them on steroids, I notice they often wait until Castle or Imperial to coordinate their onslaught. Sometimes, though, they instead coordinate an early relentless onslaught in Dark or Feudal. If you try the Spanish 1v2 AI test I outlined for Apocalypso4826, let me know how it goes for you. Anyone can feel free to try, Iâd be curious on results
Unless it is a specific map, such as Water Nomad, you will always start with 3 villagers. Mayans and Chinese only get their extra vills once the TC is up.
I mean, I wouldnât try to play 400 pop usually against AI, from my experience it really screws with their gameplan and makes them way easier to beat. Gameâs built and balanced around a 200 pop cap, and the AI is tested under those parameters.
Further, I really wouldnât try to play a Hybrid map against the AI, because the AI usually sees any small body of water and immediately commits 40+ population to it. Itâs basically impossible to find a hybrid map that the AI doesnât overcommit on water to and simply get rolled by the land aggression. I literally sat there and waited for them to actually come and attack for 40 minutes then rolled them both in imperial because I got bored of waiting. Managed to kill four buildings for every one unit I lost. Ironically, one of those losses was to the boar because I got distracted by someone on discord⊠So if youâre looking for an AI game where the doesnât have two arms tied behind itâs back, play a no-water open map on 200 pop.
On my second crack at this on a land map, they actually attacked me before I headed out to roll them. It was 100% xbow with 2 rams so I crushed that and then went out to steamroll both players without much issue.
The problem is the Moderate AI just doesnât keep up in macro at all with anyone whoâs got the minimum of a solid build order down. Iâm usually ~30 pop ahead by the 20-25 minute mark no matter what, and at that point Iâm basically even on population with the two AIâs put together and from there itâs trivially easy to beat the AI since itâs unit control is so poor, especially on lower difficulty levels.
Youâre correct, thanks for that. I mixed something up and itâs been a while since I looked at a Nomad map
In my tests just now, I see there are some Nomad maps where you start with 3 villys in the same spot rather than sprawled across the map. Thatâs good, I can try sometime
I canât stand 200 population. Such an artificially low number, and annoying to try and stay under it Sadly, I canât comply with this
Four Lakes was maybe a bad example, then. Good point. I havenât tried playing it for a while, but I do remember them committing a bit to water. I might actually win with that map like I used to, so Iâll try sometime out of curiosity.
I should have instead put Yucatan in my screenshot or Arabia, or another map with mostly land and no tree or river funneling that is easy to wall off, because I did Yucatan last night and got stomped. I just didnât want to mention Yucatan before because omg, what is up with all the resources on that map!
Youâre welcome to test on Yucatan, then.
I donât like water maps, and the selection of land maps that look natural and not like man-made arenas is tiny. Doesnât help that I rule out all snow maps, too (too bright). Sorry, I have fine-tuned particular tastes with AoE maps. I would love to not play Hybrid maps, but with the limited map selection I have, I do what I can
