It's been pointed out to me that knights aren't actually weak to conversions. Knights (and even elephants) get converted at the same rate as other units, it's just that their high cost makes them worse to lose to monks. Scouts and eagles are still resistant, however.

Im just out here trying to make my city look organized

Played AoE 1 and 2 as a kid when they first came out. Went on with life as I grew up, got married and had kids, and this month finally bought a PC for myself (been a casual console gamer for years). Pleasantly surprised how far AoE2 has come, its a gorgeous game now, and is cemented in my heart. Its the first game I bought for my new PC, love it.

I played this game for the last 20 years just for fun and when I watch videos like this I realize I've been doing it wrong my whole life lmao

I found myself taking notes on this as if I was back in college, then it dawned on me that this is far better quality than most of those lectures back then that I actually PAID for

Its obvious a LOT of work and planning went into this, thank you Survivalist!

this is a really good guide, well done!

0:00 - Intro 2:59 - Standard Opening 3:55 - Overview of each of the 4 Resources 6:13 - Basic Scouting 8:05 - Boar Luring 10:07 - Walling 12:13 - Hotkeys 14:22 - Basic Unit Counters 16:01 - Control Group your Scout

I've never touched the game, but after youtube started recommending me videos for it, I've been getting interested. The game looks really overwhelming to me, but this video got me a step closer to finally trying it! I love the way you present information - a lot of it in a (relatively) lenghty video, but I can understand every bit of it, even if I've never even played the game before. Cheers!

Gee, what a LEGENDARY tutorial. Just backin playing since more than a decade!

I started playing aoe2 about 2 months ago, and basically this guide wouldve saved me about 3 weeks worth of trial and error :o For a game that has such a great, generous community behind it there is such a paucity of simple guides like this for noobs like myself, so thank you and I hope you keep making videos!

this is like applying for a job and seeing you don't meat the minimum requirements

I love how thorough you are. You added a lot of simple things that I haven’t heard other casters mention that I found really helpful, things like “build that first house in between the two villagers.” Thanks!!

I've just started learning aoe2 a few months ago and have been poring over every piece of info I can find on it and trying my best to categorize it, its such an interesting game. But god damn is this video and its further parts catharsis. So thorough, but prioritized and concise. I bet writing the outline for this was satisfying as hell lol

Incredibly indepth! Had to check this out thinking it could be useful for some new players in my group, didn't expect to learn so much myself! This is the best beginner guide I've seen so far :)

Mate this video is amazing! I play with a few of my mates who are quite good and this definitely helped to show how they are able to expand so quickly, definitely going to be implementing all of this stuff!

Thanks to the dude who added subtitles in Spanish!

Best guide I've seen, period!

Such a brilliant series. I come back to it time and again, and I take something helpful from each video every time I watch. Thanks so much for the hard work you put in, mate!

Thanks a bunch for the guide. Only played aoe2 when i was like 7 in 2005 and just found out its popping 2 days ago.

Just found this game after 20 years . I am loving it. Thanks for the video

those tutorials are better than SotL and Hera tutorials. Great content Survivalist

Oh my god, I am downloading the game, and clicked on so many videos looking for something at this level. It's shockingly hard to find. Thank you.

誰翻中文的 好讚喔 這部,精確地說了很多秘密數字 !! 我以前常常研究這個讓效益最佳化

Although I didn't find anything in here that I didn't already know, I realise how much time this all must have taken and how useful it would be to newer players. Thanks for uploading this!

you beat me first round of Red Bull Wololo, I was disappointed but now i dont feel so bad :P

I came to this game first but only for a month until aoe4 came out. I've been playing aoe4 ever since. I'm a noob at both games and at rts in general. But I've managed to understand aoe4 for a bit, and now I don't really like the siege meta of aoe4 anymore. So I'm returning to this game. Call it returning but I haven't actually played this game that much in the beginning. I was looking for a sophisticated, but still noob-friendly guide. And I found it. Thank you so much.

I signed in to like, subscribe, and comment! Great stuff -- thank you for putting in the time for all of us!

Great outlook, not just for AoE, but RTS in general.

One of the best guides I’ve seen on YT. Thanks

Your video really puts the fun back to the fundamentals !

ive seen many aoe guides, this one is the best

I've been playing Age of Empires II for years now (only casually and mostly single player mode though) and still - these don't feel like fundamentals, more like advanced pro-techniques. But well, now I see the reason of losing every multiplayer match... Still I really appreciate the hard work you put into this :D

Time to time i watch your streams, but never saw your guides. Thanks for that. Very helpful videos.

Great series man, you match your video quality with guys like Hera oder Spirit of the Law! Thanks for the effort you took!

A brilliant guide. Thank you! I'm so glad I found this one. Literally tons of priceless information here!

What a great video. This is definitely going to be my go to for new players! I also really liked that eco upgrade hotkey trick. Alt+Z is my lumber camp, but I've kept the upgrade at Q. It might not be any slower, but I like how Alt+ZZ is more natural.

Really great job, mate. This lesson is extremely informative and easy to follow. Without question, I'm better at aoe2 because of it.

thanks for your time and effort =) Stumbled over your content via twitch and i love it

I'd say rewatch all your games, even the ones you won. I won my first ranked match today, was brutal. I rewatched it and realized some mistakes I made, some wrong assumptions I had and missed opportunities.

Always good to see people trying to give some tutorials. I am not bad at using limited hotkeys for say getting vills to build which building. some like gate build always stumps me As I do not use it enough. I think almost always I Have regretted using gates as they come down So fast. Better off deleting a section ans putting the Wooden wall up or a house to plug it. That usually happems on golden pit In early castle. I definately could improve on grouping units/ doing more patrol for melee units and hot Key select for builings into unit production.

I liked your video, and I'd like to expand the tips slightly with a few ideas: 1. During Boar luring, if you dont want to use the garisoning technique, you should send your Villagers out of the luring villagers path, and task the vills to shoot the boar, when the boar is 3 tiles away from the TC. Send them preferably to the southern part of the TC, and task the luring vill to stick close and underneath the TC 2. With Hotkeys, uniforming the unit hotkeys is also a good idea. I only you the A S D F keys to train units, eaxh key represents where the unit is located, for examlle A trains archers, Light Cav, Militia and Rams. This way, the margin of error is way lower and it is super easy to learn. 3. You ought to hotkey herdables too. Use two herdables for scouting, and use preferably the smaller herdables for scouting (sheep, lama, goat), because they are faster and you dont loose much food in case the enemy scout s, the herdables. 4. If you play on the Conqerors edition of the game, it is a good idea to send your sheep next to the berry-pickers, while hunters gather food from boar. If you do this, the enemy scout has a harder time to steal your sheep, and the sheep wont block your vills from the food-gathering.

Idea with lumber camp and mill is very good one, thanks

This will help a lot of players. Thanks for the video keep them coming 👍🏻

I need part 2 now!!! hurry up man! lol. jk. great summary of fundamentals. consider me subscribed!!

Been playing at 1100 ELO for few years, great tips on camp upgrades (especially changing Mill to Ctrl+X) and the set gather point. I’ve killed way to many boars by just right clicking the boar w town centre before the vils finish killing it.

This is soooooo comprehensive!

Nice vid! I love the pyramid concept, it's great

This video is excellent! Thank you so much

I wish I could put this stuff in my curriculum.

The efforts creating this video...good job bro, you deserve a sub! Have been playing AOE since i was a lil kid, but yeah not a good player, as long as i can create mass army and huge wall, that was all that matters XD

Nice work, simple and to the point

oh man so good i was searching for something like this

Wow, lots of things to work on. I really appreciate you sharing, thanks!

The QWERTY ASDFGH ZXCVB -Grid layout is a cool choice for hot keys as well. I only have to look where the button I need is located on the grid. I knew most of them by heart after a short amount of time.

hello im from age of empires 2 the age of kings so good to know theres more to it than that

Looking forward to next parts!

Very nice and useful video! Keep making these videos! 👍

thanks for the video! it's really helpful!

Really great vid!

ohh this is what i was looking for sometime ago

The correct build order is 4 houses, then 3 barracks (before producing 1 unit). This is the way.

Amazing vid bro, subbed and bell’d. Waiting for the next instalment

In the end , it boils down to ....... MATH !!

Thanks i'm a very casual player and these tips should just put me over the edge against my friends :D

Very helpful video, thanks.

9:54 nice clip of you stopping Hoang's boar lame.

Awesome, as some okayish player myself I also learned a few things, like gates pierce armor, # of lumberjacks and stuff, the trick with ctrl+z+Z (but i use A as my go to hotkey for all upgrades). Please make a longer version of number of villagers on each resource to make military on 1-3 military buildings, like you explained before where you said 4 on gold to archers, 7 to knights, but what if you're turks (faster gold), or berbers, or portuguese (cheaper), or huns (faster training) of course not everything for specific civs, but at least the first gold mining upgrade, how many villagers on stone for a constant tower rush, stuff like that nvm, I found your site in the comments and it's amazing

hehe... about to watch this vid, wanna put out.. i generally succeed as an agressive millitaristic expansionist that fortifies massive amounts of territory (way more than my fair share) cutting off resources for my closest neighbors who can't get through my heavily garrisoned walls (as i train up a couple battalions of mixed cavalry to basically Genghis khan everyone.

I feel like there is so much I could learn from just fundamental sections like this. Do you have a video (or one planned) that goes into more depth on the fundamentals?

Excellent content! High quality content!

you deserve more suscribers, well done video!

Since 20 years I have been playing only death match with Britons lol that too with map explored and revealed.

Excellent work, very well done!

Very structured and useful!

13:45 TIP to cancel units: If you have the command queues up on the top of the screen and you see you accidentally clicked to produce a certain unit. Ctrl+click on it to cancel its production.

Great guide mate!!

Thank you! This helped me so much!👍

Great insights and tips. However, I am not so sure about boar stealing as a foundamentals. What about fish, using the mini map and use civ bonuses in Dark Age?

Insane amout of work. Thank you!!

bro, you inspire me to try to become a chess streamer sometime in the future. I used to love playing chess back in the day and peaked at ~1900 ELO. That's not that good compared to GrandMasters, but I'm better than 98% of the player base and can teach everyone worse than me. Meanwhile, it would take a couple of years for me to get anywhere near 2k in AOE2. That, and AOE2 fucks my wrist up bad.

So now I know more about "resourzes".

This video is really good rezource!

Me - *watches guide for strategies and tips* - "I understand now" Also me - *Places town center in enemies base*

Thumbs up for this Intro Jokes with boar (lurers) i guess

Please make the video about Units and Counters. That'll be super lovely.

Hey, this channel is awesome! Subbed! I am going to reccomend you to any new player as well as SOTL and t90 low elo legends.

Houses houses houses *Laughs in Hun main*

Waiting for part 2 🔥

A fellow salesforce dev? Excellent vid man

came, watched, subscribed :)

I actually hadn't played the game in awhile and forgot I should build a house with 2 vills. I had been queing a villager and loom while building a house with 1 villager and gathering sheep. I wonder if that's part of why I'm always 150 points behind in dark age and lost 100 ELO.

Great video. I need to get good a hotkeys.

the problem isi when you are 30+ is that you want to get better in the game you love and played since 99 but that damn work (and all the other stuff) won`t let you to get enough time to practice ;(

It really helps, thank you.

very much appreciated

The problem with chainging hot keys is that then you should change all the others and i never understand how should i change the others I would like a full description of all the changes needed if possible

this is insane value

absolute chad.

Noice thanks!!! And I thought I was good enough, but the moderate Ai didn't turn out to be.