Age of Empires II (2013) Guide

The Ultimate Guide to Age of Empires 2 Multiplayer & the Community for Age of Empires II (2013)

The Ultimate Guide to Age of Empires 2 Multiplayer & the Community

Overview

This guide includes a basic Voobly overview, the set up of WololoKingdoms on Voobly, useful community links and some resources to improve overall gameplay.

Introduction

Welcome to the guide. 🙂

This guide contains information designed to help both new players and those more comfortable with the game including the setup and installation of Voobly and WololoKingdoms, some basic guides to get you started in multiplayer games, and a large amount of information about the community. Please feel free to leave a comment suggesting changes and/or additions to this guide.

This guide is brought to you by the “Age of Empires 2 HD & WK”-Discord. We are a community-based server where everyone is welcome, currently over 300 members and growing.

Dec. 2019: Two years is a long time on the internet. With the release of Definite Edition, I updated the guide. You find it here. – Margaret of Anjou

The AOE Community I

This section introduces several famous/important personalities of the Age of Empires II Community.

Daut (Pro-player, Serbia)

All hail king Daut, Daut has been around in the competitive scene since 2002, so he is known for his vast experience and antiquity. Until he was dethroned by TheViper (2012), he was considered by many to be the best player (BO21 vs Chris). Nowadays he still competes at the highest level while also streaming and conspiring with Viper, who on top of things transformed his face into an emote, the iconic grassDaut.

Escape Gaming (E-sports organization, Germany)

Also known as Zero Empires 2.0, Escape Gaming is hosting big AOE events with a variety of casters. The e-sports organisation was established in March 2016 and first focused on Dota 2, CS:GO and Hearthstone, but to our approval it is now focusing on AOE.

Jordan23 (Pro-player, Germany)

“Is Ethiopians even a civ?” – Jordan23 at Gamescom 2017. Now working on his big comeback.

Killer B (Caster, USA)

Most charismatic person ever – #1 networker – on him lies all hope for getting a big AOE sponsor. Real life microbiologist who always carries a cucumber around.

MBL (Pro-player, Norway)

Promised to quit AOE >250 days ago, but somehow is still around. Is improving a lot lately – watch out Viper!

Memb (Caster, Spain)

Always streaming. Always. Black forest lover aka MembRageTV.

Nili (Caster, Germany)

AOE streaming pioneer, poker legend and elementary school teacher. Not to forget: one of the best deathmatch players and once did a 45h strim.

Slam (Pro-player, Canada)

Polite, Canadian, nicest AOE player. Recently invented the Slamgasm: [link]

Spirit Of The Law (YouTuber, Canada)

Lead AOE scientist who solves the great mysteries of the game. We are still waiting for him to reveal his music YouTube channel.

T90Official (Caster, USA)

Too nice to be American. Super tall guy and passionate pumpkin carver.

TaToH (Pro-player, Spain)

With an ELO >2800 he is the uncontested winner of HD. Notorious tower rusher and soccer pro.


Tatoh with his sister Locka

TheViper (Pro-player, Norway)

He is everyone’s favourite Swede – #clearly – and probably the best AOE-player around.

ZeroEmpires (Caster, United Kingdom)

Back from the dead he is again seducing everyone with that British accent.

The AOE Community II

We don’t want the list above to get too long. This is why the “who is who” is now continued with some smaller mentions. If you feel like someone is missing put their name in the comments.

  • ACCM (Pro-player, Vietnam)
    [link]

  • Ashleylynn (Streamer, USA)
    [link]

  • BacT (Pro-player, Vietnam)
    Game paused/unpaused by TyRanT_BacT
    [link]

  • Bean Dip (Streamer, USA)
    [link]

  • Dave (Streamer, Canada)
    [link]

  • Dogao (Pro-player, Brazil)
    [link]

  • Edie (Pro-player, France)
    King of Arena. Edie’s Instagram: [link]
    [link]

  • F1Re (Pro-player, Brazil)
    [link]

  • FeAge (Pro-player, Brazil)
    Soon hitting 2k ELO in Just Dance 2018:https://youtu.be/m0I0yqvMvY0
    [link]

  • gktCloud (Pro-player, Taiwan)
    [link]

  • Hamu3l (Streamer, United Kingdom)
    Knows all the London secrets and took home Viper’s cap.
    [link]

  • Hearttt (Pro-player, Peru)
    [link]

  • Jon Slow (Pro-player, Israel)
    Arena player who is notorious for his close to 0 APM.
    [link]

  • Klavskis (Streamer, Latvia)
    [link]

  • LB10 (Pro-player, Austria)
    [link]

  • Liereyy (Pro-player, Austria)
    At Gamescom 2017 he was actually only 15, not 17 yet!
    [link]

  • Locka (Streamer, Spain)
    Sometimes streams on her brother’s (= TaToH) stream.
    [link]

  • Maggy (Streamer, Germany)
    Teaches walling and man at arms rushes. Keepo
    [link]

  • Miguel (Pro-player, Brazil)
    Maybe the best teamgame player around, carried Brazil to Nation’s Cup victory 2017.
    [link]

  • Nicov (Pro-player, Argentina)
    We are still waiting for him to talk on stream…
    [link]

  • Riut (Pro-player, Brazil)
    Best looking AOE-player, says Fire_Nation.
    [link]

  • robo_boro (Streamer, Australia)
    The one who acutally does the work scheduling and organising tournaments and everyone’s favourite nerd.
    [link]

  • Smarthy (Streamer, USA)
    The golden grill.
    [link]

  • Snapesnaps (Streamer, Germany)
    Big Snape fan and arena pro, Kappa.
    [link]

  • Spring (Pro-player, USA)
    [link]

  • Tim (Pro-player, China)
    Long time rival with Viper, #1 stone waller and notorious for using google translate.
    [link]

  • Timotheus and Mattheus (Pro-players, Ireland)
    Two real life brothers streaming together.
    [link]

  • Vinchester (Pro-player, Russia)
    [link]

  • Yo (Pro-player, China)
    [link]

Bookmarks

There is a lot of useful stuff written about AOE in the internet. The following links will help you to keep up with the news.

AOC Zone
[link]

The most important site out there when it comes to Age of Empires. It features an event calendar, live stream info, tournament information, off-topic talk and quite some AOE drama.

Age of Empires Wiki
[link]

In a lot of articles you can read about

Discord: Age of Empires 2 HD & WK
[link]

With already >300 members we are one of the biggest (the biggest?) community-based AOE-Discords. Everyone is very welcome to join us in the HD- and Voobly-matchmaking channels and tons of off-topic talk. If you need any help like technical support or gameplay questions you will certainly find it here!

Official Sources
  • Developers of The Age of Empires 2 HD Edition, its expansions and the Age of Empires Definitive Edition – Forgotten Empires – can be found here:
    [link]

  • Microsoft’s Official Age of Empires 2 HD Community Streams can be found here:
    [link]
    [link]
    every Thursday, 10-11 am Pacific Time

  • Voobly Official
    [link]
Reddit

Voobly Installation

What is Voobly?

Voobly is an Age of Empires 2 multiplayer client for the original 1.0c patch of the Age of Conquerors expansion (disc version). This is where most of the tournaments, and top skilled players meet to play Age of Empires 2. With the introduction of WololoKingdoms the expansion civilizations from HD version (Steam version) are now available to be played there.

All in one YouTube guide:
[link]

Setup

Download and install voobly from [link]

Optional: HD Compatibility Patch

If you do not have the CD version of Age of Empires 2, you will need to install the HD compatibility patch.
Download the HD Compatibility patch from [link] and install to your game directory (typically C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/steamapps/commom/Age2HD/) and ensure that you remove the /New Folder from the end of the installation directory that is shown in the image below.

Joining a Game

New Player Lobby is the best place to start and most games will be played on the conquerors expansion (otherwise referred to as Original Data Set).


Choose the New Player Lobby from the right side of the game browser.

This will bring you to the New Player Lobby, which should look something like this:


You can click List view at the top to get this view:


Fast Proxy is definitely something to watch out for. You may have to forward a port on your roouter to your computer (by setting up a static IP address, and forwarding all network traffic on UDP port 16000 to it).
This is what Fast Proxy (fp) looks like in game:


If you would like to play with the HD Expansion civilizations, check the WololoKingdoms Installation section of this guide.

WololoKingdoms Installation

What is WololoKingdoms?
It is a mod for AoC (Age of Conquerors) that allows you to play the new civilizations (Forgotten Empires, African Kingdoms, Rise of the Rajas) on Voobly.
The advantage of Voobly is a more stable and close to lag-free experience even in team games with up to 8 players! :wololoHype: Also it is now possible to import your hotkeys from HD to Voobly, in a single click, so there is no need to customize them. To be able to play the new civs you need to own all the DLCs on Steam.

Following are the links to set up Vobbly WololoKingdoms

  1. [link]
  2. [link]
  3. [link]
  4. [link]
  5. [link]

Step 1

Install Voobly by following the instructions in the Voobly section of this guide.

Step 2

Navigate to [link] then download and run the latest version of the installer.
During the installation process you will need to be logged in to Steam, but not running Age of Empires 2 HD. Once you run the installer Steam will show that you are playing Age of Empires 2 HD, this is okay, it has to do with how the installer verifies your ownership of the DLCs. There are options available to import your HD hotkeys (you should definitely choose this option if you are freshly installing Voobly) as well as small trees, grid, short walls, and regional monks, all of which are commonly found to be very useful/interesting mods.

Playing on WololoKingdoms:

To play on WololoKingdoms simply host a game and select the WololoKingdoms mod from the mod list, or find a game that is running WololoKingdoms. For best results, ensure that the game is running on UserPatch v 1.5 or greater.

Getting Started in Multiplayer

If you have played Age of Empires II as a kid with your friends and thought you were kind of good at the game because you could beat the hard AI, you might have noticed, that online multiplayer is quite a different league. So if you have problems getting into it, follow our advice.

Tackling multiplayer
  • Learn the basics.
    Play through the first couple of campaign missions, this will get you slightly more familiar with the basic game mechanics and more prepared for basic multiplayer experiences.
  • Improve your uptimes.
    Once you are familiar with the game basics try to improve your uptimes and get less idle time. This means: Keep you town center busy producing villagers and always give your villagers something to do. Also don’t forget to use all of your sheep and the boars (+ deer) in the beginning of each game. It is extra food you don’t want to miss!
  • Start using hotkeys!
    Ensure that you know the hotkeys for making villagers and going to the town center, since most of the time you will need to be producing villagers constantly from all of your town centers as you expand through the ages until you reach between 50% and 60% of the total population limit in villagers / trade carts. Later you also want to learn the other hotkeys, but this takes time and can wait a bit.
  • The gap between HD and Voobly.
    Notice that a 1700 HD (Steam) player is on a much lower skill level than a 1700 Voobly player. If you decide to start on Voobly, you should definitely join the “New Player Lobby”.
  • It’s time for hotkeys. Learning all the hotkeys and finding the right keys so you feel comfortable using them can take some time. But it is definitely worth to take. Using less of your mouse and more of your keyboard ingame is crucial for improving your gameplay.
  • Strategies. In order to compete with other players at a certain level you cannot just built anything. In the past different strategies have evolved at which you should take a look at.

Important Terms
  • FMT – Friends May Team
  • TG – Team Game
  • Huns War – 1v1 Huns vs Huns, typically played on Arabia
  • Trush – Tower Rush, a strategy focusing on early up time to feudal followed by aggressive tower placement to deny resources.
  • Drush – The dark age rush, typically three militia used to harrass your opponent to buy you time to execute your next strategy, often a fast castle.
  • SC – Typically this just means scouts, players may say something like I go sc to let you know they are planning to do a scout rush, or ping saying sc to let you know that they have seen enemy scouts.
  • KTS – Knights
  • FU – Fully Upgraded
  • FC – Fast Castle – A strategy designed to reach castle age swiftly to either place more town centers for fast ecenomic growth, or swiftly make a castle age army, typically knights.
  • Pocket – this is a player in a team game that is surrounded by teammates. This positions distance to opponents favors the Fast Castle strategy.
  • Flank – A player in a teamgame who is adjacent to an enemy, the starting position of this player favors more aggresive feudal age strategies.
  • Sling – Sending resources to another player.
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