How to make a custom scenario easy

Hi Guys

I’m pretty new - I played AoE as a child and my favourite thing to do was chill on a custom scenario against the computer ai. I’m trying this on AoE 2 DE and its just way too hard. What I want to do is play against AI but make it easy enough so that I can cruise and still win while I get used to the game. When I set up a scenario on the easiest difficulty I started the game and within 10 mins the ai already had a cavalry in castle age while i was on Dark Age still and just steam rolled me. I tried to set them to ally but they just turn on me straight away.

Any tips appreciated!

Hi there! Are you playing campaigns or skirmishes?

I would recommend you to start in random maps against the computer, 1v1. The A. I. got better nowadays. Anyway, here is my simple answer:

Keep doing vils. You need 6 in food to keep producing constant vils from 1 tc. Start eating the sheep. Then you create 4 more and you send them to wood. The first one should do a lumber camp near the forest those villagers will chop.
Then you make a mill on berries (you can hunt boars, but that’s more difficult)

The main idea is to advance to feudal (if you are in the dark age) or, if you are in other age, to increase your pop in villagers and army.

Hotkeys are important, but for the moment I think you will not need them.

Good Luck, have fun!

What difficulty did you set them to? Just set them to standard until you can beat that. Also, unless you are talking real-time, I don’t think the AI, or most players, will ever be able to crush you with Castle Age units within 10 mins. In-game time typically runs 1.7 times as fast, and 2.0 times on hard. Also, strongly recommend playing the Art of War tutorial missions if you want to improve.