Overview
Hey,So you’re an Age of Empries II player like me and you’ve decided to give Empires Apart a try?Wonderful! In this guide, I will quickly show you the differences between the two games.Knowing those differences might be crucial for you to start enjoying the game and avoid doing the same mistakes I did!Let’s get started
Game Modes
The first thing you will see in the game is that it features four game modes.
There is a Tutorial, which is what I’d suggest you to start with. Yeah, do the tutorial even if you are an ELO 2000 in AOEII! This game is different. The tutorial will also let you to experiment with different video settings and find the best compromise between video quality and FPS in case your GPU isn’t exactly a GTX 1080 Ti.
After you complete the tutorial, you can either go Skirmish or Ranked Multiplayer.
The Survival mode can be quite harsh for new players. It’s a great way of testing your skills, though many players find it too hard or tedious. Don’t play it in case you don’t enjoy it.
The Challenge mode is a great way for you to learn some of the game basics – it teaches you about unit counters and unique abilities. IMO, it’s a must for those who want to get high in the competitive ladder. Again, this mode is an advanced tutorial and it should not be taken as a campaign.
Skirmish is your basic Single Player Random Map mode. Except that maps aren’t randomized. There are several to choose from and you might see some similarities with AOE II (Mirage is like Oasis, Great Marsh is like Arabia, etc)
You choose your nation, your hero, your opponents, etc.
I really recommend you playing 1v1 against the AI unless your PC has a good CPU (this game is CPU-intensive).
Edit: it seems that after the latest updates the game now enjoys better performance in larger maps.
Civilizations
Age of Empires offers a huge array of civs to choose from. Empires Appart takes a different approach to this. Have you played Starcraft where you can choose from only 3 civs? Well, Empires Apart takes a similar direction by letting you choose from six civilizations.
Moreover, just like in Starcraft, every civ is unique. Say, in AOE II you can do trash wars and archer rushes or castle drops with any civ. What changes is the tech tree, civ bonuses and unique units. In Empires Apart, the difference betwen civilizations is way larger. Let me give you a couple of examples:
The French are the civ that feels the most like AOE II. You’ve got your barracks with the militia and spear lines, an archery range with xbowmen, a stables with light cav, knights (evolving up to paladins) and anti-knight cavalry. You even got trebuchets! So when you go French, you can expect a gameplay similar to AOE II
Now, Aztecs are totally different. Instead of doing your usual upgrades, you’ve got to train your units in the battlefield. Your military units only evolve if they inflict a certain amount of damage. You’ve got to manage your units correctly, have a ton of priests and also capture enemy prisoners so you can sacrifice them to yoru gods and get additional bonuses. This is definitely not AOE II!
Mongols are again a world apart from AOE II. They are nomads (no Mongol castles like in AOE II), so you’ve got to move your buildings around the map and be aggressive, because if you let your French opponent to get some Templars (deus vult!), you’re screwed. Or maybe not, it all depends on how you manage your resources and use your strenghts wisely.
Controls and UI
Luckily enough, Empires Apart borrowed its controls and even hotkeys from Age of Empries II. The transition from one game to the other is seamless. Which is cool. I don’t like games that add or change stuff just to look different.
Game UI is a bit different, though. While it does feature some elements you are familiar with, it also has some new stuff.
First of all, you’ve got the auto farm reseeding (yeah, finally) – don’t forget to switch it on when building your first farms. It also shows you how many iddle villagers you’ve got. If you’ve got unit groups (you create them by pressing Ctrl+any number from 1-9, just like in AOE II), you will also see them on the top left corner of the screen. This is useful to check how many units a certain group has and whether they are still alive, etc.
Once you build a market, you wil also see a new icon that looks like four coins laying on top of each other. Clicking on it basically brings the market screen from AOE II. Use it to buy or sell resources.
About health bars. Those will appear above injured units. A 100% healthy army will have no health bars on top of them. It is also worth mentioning that priests will heal automatically as soon as a unit comes within range. (You can customize the visibility of the health bars in the game options)
Another addition are upgrade queues. You no longer have to wait for an upgrade to finish in order to start the next one. Upgrade queues work exactly like unit queues.
Units and other stuff
Can priests wololo? In AOE II, they do. In Empires Apart, only Arabian priests have that power.
All civilizations can use their priests to grab relics. Those work like in AOE II – select a priest, right click a relic. Once he picks it up, right click on your monastery. Sweet and easy.
Now, relics don’t focus on giving gold like in AOE II. Instead, they give unit bonuses with more relics meaning you’ve got access to sweeter unit bonuses (your units get a total of +4 attack damage, +1/1 armor and +1 range once you collect all of the five relics). When you’ve got two relics, you will have a passive income of 2 gold/second, though it does not increase with the amount of relics you’ve got.
In Empires Apart, certain units have passive abilities (black icon next to the unit portrait), as well as active ones (orange icon). Watch out for those. For instance certain Aztec units have the ability to capture enemies and convert them to prisoners. All cool, except that when that ability is turned on, your unit will inflict less damage. It is specially designed when you are raiding and capturing enemy villagers. Having the ability turned on during a fight will render your units less effective. So make sure you keep a constant eye on those icons in case you turn them on by accident.
Multiplayer
As for today, Empires Apart multiplayer is the way to go once you’ve mastered the basics while playing against the AI.
Developers were right and eventually the game does have a very active community. Don’t quote me on that if you are reading this guide one year after its release – communities change over time.
As for now, the average queue time for a ranked game is about 7 seconds. No, you are not playing against bots. This is a real match against a real human opponent.
In order to chat with your opponent, you’ve got to click shift + enter
If you simply click Enter you will send a message to your teammate(s)
Oh and don’t be scared if you click on Normal Game and find no lobbies. For some reason, everyone plays ranked.
Here’s a video if you’re too lazy to read
I’ve also made a video where I explain basically the same things. Here is a link if you’re interested in watching it:
Thank you for reading!
Your questions and suggestions are more than welcome!