I am still little bit of a newbie at AoE: II. I’ve grown adequate at a few civilizations and found myself wanting to explore more of them. However I’ve noticed that there is not actually any way to access the tech tree of different civilizations until you are in game. This I found very strange, when I’m already in the game in multiplayer I wont have any seconds to spare to explore the tech tree of my civilization. Instead I suggest that the tech tree of all the civilizations should be available from the main menu or preferably from the menu where you pick your civilization before a multiplayer or single player match. That way I can explore the team bonuses and what units are available instead of entering the game blind.
I dont know if you all are single player gamers only. But I play exclusively online and mostly ranked. And there is no easy way to access the tech tree from ranked queue at least. Thats my main concern. Should I have to quit multiplayer menu and go into a single player lobby just to check out a tech tree? Inconvenient.
What would be nice coding would be if you also could explore the tree while youre in queue but as you cant change tab while in queue I shouldn’t expect any miracles. In most other games you’re free to explore other menus settings etc while i the queue but this game is paying homage to it old school roots I guess. Jokes aside I offer my coding skills to implement this feature if you would hire me Microsoft.
Back in the day, you could consult the paper manual that came with the game
See this thread I just made. You can see one of the photos shows a technology tree…
PS: One thing I like about the Technology Tree in AoE2:DE is that you can hover over the scrollbar at the bottom of the screen and use the mouse-wheel to scroll left and right! Ooh, just notice you can push mouse to left and right of screen to do the same. You couldn’t do that in AoE2:HD or before. Makes viewing the tech tree a lot easier and enjoyable!
Two things that would make this scrolling even better, though:
More granularity in how far the tech tree jumps per mousewheel scroll, when using the hover-over-scrollbar method at bottom. It jumps many pixels currently; very jarring and harder to keep track of your place. Smoother/finer control would be wonderful.
Actually, make it so you don’t even need to hover over the little scroll bar at the bottom to engage the mousewheel left/right scrolling. There’s no need for this from a user’s perspective. You should be able to have your mouse arrow anywhere on the tech tree to mousewheel scroll left/right.
Is cool you can collapse the left-hand panel, too, to make the Tech Tree be full-screen
Was just about to make a thread about this. Although everyone is making good points, there should 100% be a way to see the tech trees for all civs in the multiplayer ranked queue. When you’re in the queue you’re picking your civ and for most players we’re still learning about the tech trees so it makes no sense to not be able to look this stuff up while waiting and selecting.
The thing is, pro players don’t use tech tree in ranked, because they’re always using the same 5 civs. And they know the tech trees for those. A lot of people do that: they only play “the best civ” when playing ranked.
On the other hand, me (and a lot more of people) like to play random civ ranked. Or just pick a civ we feel like playing. If you do that, there’s a big chance you don’t remember the whole tech three of the civ you picked. That’s why we need a tech three in ranked. For those who like to compete and have fun at the same time
I made a post about this a long time ago. I agree you should be able to look at the tech tree especially when just sitting there and waiting for match making to find a game.
(slight exaggeration)