oh memories...

One of my favourite games of all time. I think Ill go and play it a bit.

I Still play AOE 2 Conquerors deathmatch at Igzones which is like MSN ZONE ressurected.

PM me I can teach you what I know.

Teutons were the best, but I liked playing as the Goths and Celts because they couldn't upgrade the trees fully.

It depends if you want to play online or deathmatchs against the computer.

Online you have to do the same as always ,start getting tons of food for a fast demographic growth and later once you have lots of population gather a lot of stone ,wood and gold to advance you civilization and create a big ,modern army .Keep upgrading your units in their bases with the appropiate icon ,select a strategic placement so you have at least one side covered by the terrain ,etc.If you have some wood to spare and you dont have any geographical limit guarding you I counsel you to construct a wood wall there ...it wont stop the enemies much but at leat will give you some 10-15 seconds to reunite your troops and send them there once they appear.Also you should create many city centres and quarrells ,stables ,castles etc ...that way if you are caught by surprise by an attack you always have other places to build the army for the counterattack .

Against the machine is similar but easier as its way more predictable.The machine really is more efficiente developing itself that human rivals but its less agressive early on and waits until it has a good army until unleashing assaults on you.That can give you enough time to build good defenses.Stone walls ,defensive towers with offensive powers ,a good naval force to protect your coast ...etc.One thing that worked for me is actually giving the enemies one way in to my territory...that way had lots of defensive towers around and defensive castles where I could cure my units and the castle itself attacked the invaders.If you do this well they will send army after army to their annihilation.They will provoke some damage ,though ,so you better have some civil units in the castle to repair the towers and stone walls after the invaders have left or died.You may have to reconstruct some towers from time to time .This strategy can grant you your territory and from there you can plan ,upgrade your units to the maximum and create invading forces that you will lead a lot more skillfully once invading the enemies domains.Main menace with this strategy is the Stone Throwers ,that you construct in the castles.They are very expensive but have a enormous reach.You should have some of those just behind the stone walls that way if the enemy starts installing them up near your walls to destroy your walls/castle your stone throwers will automatically start firing at those and destroy them in no time ...after all you have them already mounted and the enemy needs some time to mount them once they arrive ,this gives you advantage.If you cant destroy those because you dont have units in position you must send the cavalry from the nearest castle to destroy the stone throwers.

When you are attacking you must protect the stone throwers and keep the militar units out of the castles/towers reach.Use the stone throwers to destroy the defensive buildings ,castles and quarrels and limit your army to the protection of those stone throwing units.Once you have wiped out those buildings its time to send your armies in and destroy.The city centre of the enemy can also attack specially if it has lots of citizens inside ,so proceed with it as with the defensive buildings.

For this defensive tactic I always found the bizantyines quite good ,their castles were among the best ,the cataphracts were great and they had good units with gunpowder later on .

For the first few games; Brittons, longbowmen are the best archers in the game by far, amazing range and good damage!

In deathmatch AOC I usualy spam Elite Bowmen till they are 110/200 of the overall population they don't do much damage inidividualy but 110 of them will cause a problem. however this requires good economy management they are terrible effective even against a mass of War Elephants however siege onagers are abe to take them out very quickly they have very low defense.

We usualy play random civs and random teams for an extra challenge , it requires alot of versatility at first but then you understand the strengths of every civ and it becomes second nature.

the first thing you should do is just tp create as many villagers as possible, and collect as much wood and food as possible. Build alot of houses, and a barrack. If theres a ocean build a dock and plenty of fishing ships. Just keep doing this for a while, then you advance in age, and quickly create a new set of villagers to mine gold and stone. Upgrade everything that has to do with mining, farming, fishing ect.

Once you've run out of animals to kill you should build a farm, with alot alot of villagers, also make sure you have alot of villagers collecting wood as well, since farming and fishing ships cost alot of wood. After you've sustained a quite good economy, create some more villagers and use them to build archery range, black smith and market, . After they're done with that get everyone of them to gather stone as you'll need them in order build alot of castles. then advance in age to castle age.

When you've reached this age build all the buildings you can, but focus on the castles, as they are a great defence. Just be sure not to place them near the sea (easy targer for cannon ships) and not to close to the town center(use them as a defence around the town instead).

This is when you start building a big army, and be sure to have upgraded alot of stuff in the university and the siege workshop so you can get mounted cannons, cannon towers and cannon ships. Use alot of rescourses to create (the sling shot thingy you get in the castel) and prepare for attack. When you have a large army try to advance in age and upgrade you warriors(befor eyou attack you should have upgraded everything in the blacksmith and the castle)

if your enemy's town is by the sea simply use cannon ships to destroy everthing within reach(start with the docks) and then use the transport ships to get your troops across. Then start the land attack. If he has a large army you should try to get a shot at them witht he cannons ships if this is not possible, just stay by the beach(or any safe location) and try sneak a small force up(some cavelery, the sling shot thingy( at least two)and infantry, and a couple of villagers) from behind and attack the houses in order to lower his population count, use the sling shot thingy to take out castles and other defence like building, guard them with the infantry, while you let the cavelery take out villagers and gold mines ect.

He will surely try to attack this troop, so go in from the other side with your main force and attack his troops. Leave mounted cannons, catapults and a small amount of infantry behind and let the cannons and catapults attack the buildings, start with the castles, houses , towers and town centers. If your cannon ships are out of use, make them blind fire at resources around your opponents base, as this will help damage his economy. Let the villagers build as many towers and castle as possible as this process is going on, and use all of your additional gold, food to create a large attack force. And then try to wipe him out.