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[DJ]

But boars are *expanding* your production. Meat is the fastest food source to gather, so you get more of it sooner. Just switch to berries when it runs out. And the extra free food means you'll need to build farms a bit later, which means you need less villagers on wood initially so you can get more food for faster castle. And when it comes to economic expansion, nothing is better than a fast castle time so you can crank out new TCs.

[3]

Yes, the argument falls apart when you get to Castle. That doesn't stop the fact that I dislike the prevalent style of play.

[Leatra]

I always played AoE2 with Chinese. Their archers are amazing. Chu-ko-nu or something. Get 30 of them together and they will rain death upon every unit without getting even one of your archers injured. Be careful for castles though.

[ShadowBroker]

I always played AoE2 with Chinese. Their archers are amazing. Chu-ko-nu or something. Get 30 of them together and they will rain death upon every unit without getting even one of your archers injured. Be careful for castles though.

ugh, just did chinese against mongols. not surpisingly, they are better archers, and have the benifit of being on horseback, with well done hit and run on their part
oddly enough, i opted to build a massive system of walls and towers, and shot down any siege weapons.
it was like some sort of documentary being played out >.>

[MarcAFK]

I used to love AoEII till i discovered Stronghold Crusader, No matter what strategy i tried i alway ended up turtling AND Bumrushing the enemy, good times...
With AoEII i generally had little luck against the CPU on harder difficuties if i couldn't rush them and either cut off expansion or find some way of getting them to waste resources attacking the same point constantly. generally against max difficulty i would end up with a huge pile of fortifications at the point i knew they kept rushing/a large cavalry force to take care of trebuchets/archers to take care of whatever's defending the trebuchets.
Though often just having more trebuchets than the enemy would work as long as they could get a few hits in before his unpacked.
That said i rarely defeated more than 1 AI on hardest.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Some general personal advice to players which is mostly from personal play and is considered opinion.

If you have the expansion pack the Huns are generally considered to be the better "Horse Archer Rushers". They get some nice discounts on horse archers and a much better unqiue unit (imo).
While I've always enjoyed horse archers I find that the Castle Age restriction affects them gravely. One should really be raiding in the Fedual Age with infantry rather than focusing all efforts on trying to reach to reach the Castle Age and focusing on rather expensive horse archers.

The Japanese are a nice infantry focused civ which get nice economic bonuses like faster fishing ship food gathering. They're perfect for a jack-of-all-trades focusing on early rushing and expanding industry.

I've always prefered the Britons when I'm trying to footman archer rush. They get range bonuses depending on age. Which is, to me, the most important aspect of archers. Archer raiding civs are great against "turtling" players since you can often pick off lone villagers without having to reveal the raiding party like infantry heavy civs.

If you're one of the "Defensive players" consider the civs such as the Koreans, Byzatinium and the Teutons. If you set the age limit to Castle you'll find that the defensive civs are much much stronger and only real dedication will crack your defences. Which will allow you to focus on a counter offense.

The civs could really be split into low, medium and high tech. The Goths, Aztec and Celts for example are considered low tech and are generally good for rushing. The Britons, Franks and friends are considered medium tech. The Spanish, Turks and Byzantium are considered high tech which are better in the later ages. Use this to your advantage when the host changes the starting age, or your own personal playing style.

[DJ]

Byzantines can do a surprisingly good feudal rush thanks to cheaper skirmishers and spearmen.

[Rex_Nex]

Am I the only one that absolutely adores AoE2's graphics?

(Oh, and I love big posts about AoE strategy. They are awesome to read, delves into my nostalgia pretty far. I should go find my disks.)

[3]

Yeah, I don't think I'd class the Byzantines as high-tech specifically. They'd work well anywhere.

I've been trying to get my head around how some of the lower-end civs work in a practical sense. Take the Aztecs, for example. You get +50 gold and somewhat faster unit production to help early on, but if you don't rush - or if your rush doesn't work well enough - you're basically behind by default because you have so few other bonuses that are actually useful and you get locked out of so much stuff. It's to the extent that you can automatically assume what any Aztec player's going to be doing. Admittedly they're almost certainly the worst of the bunch.

I also tried a more standard, metagame-oriented build out with the Huns. Feudal before the 10 minute mark (including two on gold) with my poor macro. I think I've gotten the idea.

[Mech#4]

Am I the only one that absolutely adores AoE2's graphics?

(Oh, and I love big posts about AoE strategy. They are awesome to read, delves into my nostalgia pretty far. I should go find my disks.)

I remember pointing out the sprite graphics to my dad while playing AoE2 and saying "look at how detailed they are. So much effort has gone into them, you can even see each of the stones in the castle wall and each tile on the roofs"

Though, graphics wise, I'm going to have to lean slightly towards Age of Empires 1 over Age of Empires 2. The graphics in AoE1 just seem a bit more... clean to me, if that makes sense. Their quality is lower yes, but I think it's the larger size of the units that I prefer.

[DJ]

I've been trying to get my head around how some of the lower-end civs work in a practical sense. Take the Aztecs, for example. You get +50 gold and somewhat faster unit production to help early on, but if you don't rush - or if your rush doesn't work well enough - you're basically behind by default because you have so few other bonuses that are actually useful and you get locked out of so much stuff. It's to the extent that you can automatically assume what any Aztec player's going to be doing. Admittedly they're almost certainly the worst of the bunch.

Don't forget the villager carrying bonus, it's a huge boost early on. Late game, Garland Wars is arguably the best UT in the game. Elite Eagle Warriors with it are extremely effective for their cost. And Jaguar Warriors are among the best UUs. So yeah, they're at least as good as Goths when it comes to infantry.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I _love_ sprite graphics. 

As for why I ranked Byzatinium as late tech group I find that the Skimershers and Spearman are more defensive or reactionary. They're good against units which they specialise against and not much all. They can floor horsemen/archers heavy armies but those are very rare untill latil late in the game.
Byzatnium gets great bonuses to their buildings health which really helps towards a defensive play. Never underestimated them though. My brother was hopeless at the game and used to try and hack while he thought I didn't I know, The skimershers ripped through the conquistadors like hell and playing defensive I was able to assemble an army of seige weapons that even more than the stone on the map couldn't match.

The Aztecs are a great civ if you ignore horsemen. Their bonuses to both infantry and monks are very nice and can be a right pain to verse if you're new to the game or are fighting a player who knows how to use the civ.

[DJ]

Skirmishers are actually the unit of choice for feudal tower rush. And the building hp bonus is quite handy for those towers. They're still not a great rushing civ because they got no economic bonuses to get a really fast rush, but they're decent.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Well in my opinon if your enemy have towers in the Fedual Age, one of you are Doing it Wrong(c).
For a fedual age rush one should be focusing on villagers and not much else (imo). Doing a suicide rush of 5 or so infanty shouldn't really slow down economoy oppose to a few villagers lost or camping main economic advantage points.
Houses and sheep are also considerable targets for slowing down the enemy as well.

[3]

I don't think anyone was suggesting a direct attack. Just tower-blocking resources and possibly walling the skirms in with the tower as a last denial resort.

The thing is, if you're defending a rush, you're going to be mostly coming up against skirms. If your skirms are cheaper than his skirms, you just win flat-out, because you have more of them. This is why I said Byzantium is an all-round choice: You can use that lower cost to win engagements or cut economic corners... or both.