Hi there!! So recently I have bought the steam bundle that have both AoE I and II DE. I first tested out the first game and it was great! The performance and graphics were awesome, and the balance was great! Then I moved on to try out this new DE for AoE II, but when I booted up the game the loading times were excessive! I mean, it took me about 5 min to play a normal scenario! I thought that this may be a problem of my graphics card or RAM but I checked up the requirements for the game and I have both 4gb of RAM and Intel Graphics 6000. Its strange also that after the 5 min wait for the scenario, the game plays so smooth and similar to AoE I DE. Some people told me that it is my HDD but seriously, I can play, with no issues, games with way better graphics and textures but I can’t enjoy AoE II DE even though the first DE plays perfect? What do you guys think of this? Anybody has also this problem?
PS: My computer has 4gb RAM, Intel graphics 6000, Intel i3, HDD 7200 rpm.
The game is a memory hog, using up to 8-12GB for many users judging by the forums. Upgrading to an SSD and more RAM would both help in your case, most likely.
So it needs to swap a lot. Either up memory to 16 GB or upgrade to SSD. Best is doing both.
Upgrading Ram to at least 8Gb and getting an SSD makes using the PC in general a ■■■■ of a lot more fun.
If you can afford it, I’d recommend it highly.
Back in the bad old HDD days I screamed at my computer at least 5x more.
Thank you guys for your help! 
The thing that I still not understand is why can I play perfectly AoE DE I? I saw the requirements for both games and they are very similar…
I just did install and enable the Enhanced Graphics Pack and that really increases the loading time for me too and I use a 2 TB Samsung Pro 850 SSD. The graphics do look better, but I really can’t say it looked horrible without the enhanced graphics pack. More important that my benchmark scores are both fine and while playing the same mission it does feel exactly the same as without EGP enabled.
But I wouldn’t call them insane yet, but with your config I can imagine something like what you feel.
It seems that the problem is my graphics card (Intel UHD 620). I checked out both requirements for those games and I found out that I can meet the core requirements of the first game but not the second one. It would be awesome for Microsoft to make a low spec game mode for us that bought the entire DE bundle believing that our computers can play both games and not only one!!
First game was released almost two years ago, I believe some noteworthy optimization has done after it, expect no miracles tho