Before learning complicated concepts, it’s important to improve your understanding of the game. Everything in AOE2 is logical, so it’s all about understanding that logic to adapt more effectively.
This game is similar to our actual economy. Imagine you invest money into something that will give you positive returns later. The more you invest in the economy, the greater the earnings you will have later, but it will take some time to see a return.
In AOE2 terms, this game is all about improving your economy by creating as many villagers as possible. The more villagers you have, the more army you can produce. Here are a few rules to help you increase your economy and use it to have a larger army than your opponent and improve in the long term:
- Produce villagers constantly.
- Use your resources as much as possible. Look at the resources panel and spend everything all the time. Resources in the bank are resources you are not investing.
- Always ask yourself what resources you need to collect to achieve your plan. The build orders you will learn later are made this way for a reason. There’s always a reason you balance your economy in a certain way, and it should make sense to you.
- Have your villagers work as efficiently as possible at all times.
Now, let’s talk again about the economy and why villagers are so important. Consider that your villager collects 10 resources in 25 seconds, which is almost accurate. A scout costs 80 food, and a villager costs 50 food. So, you might think losing your scout to kill a villager isn’t worth it, right? If you think that, you’re wrong. Let’s do some math: The scout costs 30 more resources than a villager, but it takes only 1 minute and 15 seconds for that villager to collect 30 resources. This means that in just 1 minute and 15 seconds, the investment in killing the villager will be worth it. Here’s a graphic to help you visualize it better!
I hope you now understand the power of villagers. Villagers are the most precious unit in the game, and most things you will learn later will be about having more of them.
