YMMV / Age of Empires II

• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Despite chariots being phased out elsewhere by cavalry in the Iron Age, they really were used in battle in India until the 8th century. By the time of Devapala however (mid 9th century), they were already ceremonial only, or used in Combat by Champion at most.
  • In the Lords of the West expansion, many fans complained about the narrator pronouncing Gloucester as "Glouchester" rather than "Glosster", and Worcester as "Worchester" rather than "Wooster". However, the developers pointed out that they were the correct Medieval pronunciations of the place names and only changed to their modern pronunciations centuries later.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Some gamers from certain countries have reacted badly to "their" civilization not being portrayed "correctly" in the game:
  • Greeks don't like that the Byzantines speak Latin and use the Islamic-inspired Middle Eastern architecture set in the initial release. The latter was fixed in Definitive Edition, which gives the Mediterranean architecture to the Byzantines along with the Spanish. But now there are already complaints that the Mediterranean set is too Italian looking, and therefore Catholic...
  • Western Slavs such as Poles and Czechs don't like that the "Slavs" are called that instead of "Russians" or some other alternative and think that the Teutons are closer to their culture. Grouping all Slavic cultures together as one civilization could be compared to grouping the Spanish, French, and Italians together and calling them "Latins". While the Lithuanians civilization is a decent alternative for Polish players due to the eventual Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Poland is still represented by the Slavs in the reworked Genghis Khan and Barbarossa campaigns. While the Dawn of the Dukes expansion eventually added both the Bohemians and Poles, some players are still unhappy that they share the Eastern European architecture with the Slavs, complete with Orthodox instead of Catholic monasteries.
  • To a lesser degree, Romanian players aren't happy with the fact that the protagonist for the Slav campaign is Vlad the Impaler, who in real life was Wallachian, a non-Slavic civilization, in spite of its many Slavic influences. They feel that the Wallachians should have been given their own civilization instead, rather the the Kievan Rus-influenced Slav civilization.
  • Similarly, Indian players don't like that there is a single "Indian" civilization due to India's ethnic diversity, likening the "Indians" of the game to having a single civilization called "Europeans". This was addressed in the Dynasties of India expansion that was released in April 2022, which renamed the existing Indians to Hindustanis and added 3 different Indian civilizations: Gurjaras, Dravidians and Bengalis.
  • Vietnamese players don't like that their civilization uses the Southeast Asian architecture set in the original release of Rise of the Rajas, and would have preferred the East Asian set instead. The developers' reply that the Vietnamese use the SE Asian set because of the Champa kingdom triggered a worse reaction, because Champa was a historical rival of Vietnam that was conquered and assimilated by it^note This would be comparable to the Spanish using the Middle Eastern set because of Al-Andalus. This, however, didn't affect the game's massive popularity in Vietnam. Eventually, the Vietnamese were given the East Asian architecture set in Definitive Edition.
  • Armenian and Georgian players are unhappy on how their civilizations are represented in Tamerlane's fifth scenario, "Scourge of the Levant", where Byzantines and Persians were used as "placeholder" civilizations to represent them respectively when it is more appropriate to have a completely separate civilization to represent them. Alternatively, they could have used one of the "Eastern European" civilizations like Slavs or Magyars to represent them since medieval Armenian and Georgian architecture strongly resemble Eastern European architecture in real life. In the Georgians' case, they could've been represented by a Central European civilization such as the Goths or Huns, as the Central European Monastery is based on a Georgian cathedral. Many players also felt that both factions should have been full fledged civilizations in the Last Khans expansion, as both Armenians and Georgians, being Eurasian, fits with the expansion's theme of fighting off the Mongol invasions. This was eventually rectified with the release of the Mountain Royals DLC in 2023, which added both Armenians and Georgians as full civilization alongside their own campaigns.
  • Chinese players are uncomfortable with the fact that their civilization in-game is denied Hand Cannoneers, Bombard Cannons and Block Printing, despite being rather well known for inventing all three of these things in real life. However, the game itself is still popular within the Chinese playerbase, and many Chinese players find this historical inaccuracy in their civilization tech tree to be acceptable from a gameplay perspective due to how strong their civilization is gameplay wise. The Chinese were eventually given the Block Printing technology in a 2020 update.
  • Indonesians don't like that the Malay civilization (mostly inspired by the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires) is called that, and are similarly unfazed by the claim that the civilization was named after the Malay archipelago and not the Malay people. This is related to Malaysia being Indonesia's traditional rival.
  • There are on and off arguments in the forums and wikis about what the Tatars, Cumans, and Turks exactly are, and should be.
  • Ever since the vanilla version, French players have scratched their heads over the Franks' extreme Anachronism Stew unique unit, Throwing Axemen, who appear long, long after they ceased to be relevant. In contrast for instance, British players get to play as the vaunted Longbowmen when using the Britons and can simulate The Hundred Years War rivalry with France using those units without it feeling weird.
  • The Celts' unique unit, the Woad Raider, is perhaps a bigger anachronism, being based on the "naked fanatics" encountered by Julius Caesar during the invasion of Britain (circa 58-51 BC), more than a thousand years before their appearance in the William Wallace campaign set in the First Scottish War of Independence (1296 to 1328), an artifact of the game's development predating the Rise of Rome expansion of the first game and the original course it was going take.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • In the Barbarossa campaign's last scenario, "The Emperor Sleeping", after fighting your way through Damascus and the Saracens' camp, all spawning powerful units at will, you end up in a fortified but soldierless Jerusalem. No longer the case in Definitive Edition, where Jerusalem would endlessly spawn military units and monks to protect their base.
  • There is a shade of this in the Genghis Khan campaign. The last scenario is a 1 vs 1 against Hungary, but the Hungarians are depicted as Teutons. The cutscene hypes Hungarian horses for being related to the Mongols's, but this is moot because the Teutons don't have great cavalry, despite being allowed to train Paladins. The greatest challenge is instead to get pass the Teutonic walls and castles, but Subotai's arrival with a large number of Saboteurs neutralizes it. And the final nail is that you have already fought and beaten Teutonic defenses in the previous scenario based on the Battle of Liegnitz, so the novelty (for new players, at least) is diminished. Thankfully, Definitive Edition updated this scenario so that Hungarians now play as the Magyars and train fully upgraded Paladins as well as Mongol-esque Magyar Huszars.
  • In the Saladin campaign, Reynald de Chatillon first appears as the antagonist in the second mission, Lord of Arabia, which is a rather difficult one. He returns in the third mission, The Horns of Hattin. Despite being built up as a ruthless and devious opponent in the previous mission, in this one he simply attacks your base all on his own and most likely just dies to your archers while trying to hack down your palisade wall.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: In the vanilla version, Mangonels/Onagers will not stop to attack an enemy unit within their line of sight if one of your other units can be damaged.
• Archive Panic: As of Return of Rome, there're 60^note The 43 civilizations from II and its expansions, and the 17 Age of Empires I civilizations introduced by Return of Rome playable civilizations and 41 campaigns. Each campaign is at least 5 maps long, with the Age of Kings and The Conquerors campaigns being 6 map long and the "William Wallace" tutorial campaign being 7 maps long. And even then, those capped at 3 or 4 maps such as the original The Forgotten campaigns compensate their lack of missions with an increased difficulty. And if all of this isn't yet enough, there are two extra level packs called "Battles of the Forgotten" and "Battles of the Conquerors", which contain 8 individual maps each. And since we're talking about an RTS game, where matches tend to be several hours long, with some particular exceptions, each map might last several hours. Needless to say, there's A LOT of official content to delve into. Hope you get A LOT of hours to spare...
• Award Snub: Many gamers say that this game should have won the 2016 "Test of Time" Steam Award, when it was the only nominee that was older than a decade at the time,^note as least, in terms of when the original version was released; Steam has the HD Edition of the game, which was released in 2013 while the winner (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) was the youngest of the nominees^note again, based on initial release at only a month over five years old.
• Awesome Music: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Casual-Competitive Conflict:
  • For the first few years of the HD era, competitive players tended to ignore anything beyond The Conquerors. The most common reasons being performance bugs on multiplayer in the HD versions and many changes that disrupt the well-established metagame for said expansion such as several Low-Tier Letdown and High-Tier Scrappy civilizations introduced in Forgotten Empires/The Forgotten and The African Kingdoms, as well as biased changes to the existing civilizations. Not to mention the fact that Ensemble Studios had nothing to do with the HD version and its expansions. However this became more of a Broken Base situation around late 2017 with the release of fan patches that brought the new civilizations of the modern expansions into the The Conquerors engine. The Forgotten Empires expansions were pretty much universally accepted by the competitive scene by the time Definitive Edition came out; nowadays HD retains a dedicated following among fans who want a more purist experience, while the majority of both the casual and competitive playerbase focuses on DE.
  • By contrast, there is still major controversy between casual and competitive players over whether or not there should be any more expansions to the game. Casuals tend to clamor for extra expansions so that they can enjoy new campaigns and civilizations to keep the game fresh with content, while competitive players feel there's already more than enough stuff and that the devs should focus exclusively on improving the game's performance, rather than introducing new civs and mechanics that would prolong the civ balancing and debugging process even longer. When Lords of the West was unexpectedly announced as the first official expansion for DE, the response was polarized, to say the least; many people are delighted that new civs such as the Georgians and Tamils are no longer out of future consideration despite Forgotten Empires originally stating they were done adding new civs, but many competitive players feel that far more work needs to be done to fix the base game's performance before such new content should even be considered, while others have decried the expansion as a Pay To Win ploy due to how broken the two new civilizations were upon release (even some casuals agree with the latter point).
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Expect to see Hun-only Deathmatches, and be criticized if you don't play Deathmatches as the Huns.
  • Most people try to avert this by having all players mandatory pick Random for civilization selection, but this has its own problems.
  • The very popular Castle Blood Arena (CBA), there are only 5 non-faction specific units worth producing in late game. Arbalests, Heavy Cavalry Archers, Hand Cannoneers, Paladins, and Heavy Camels. Although Pikeman/Halberdiers can be situationally useful if fighting the Persians. The only reason to produce anything else is if you can't build any of those 5 units.
  • Knight rushes are very popular since they are Lightning Bruisers and can be trained as soon as players hit the Castle Age while their counters need to be upgraded first before they can even stand a chance against them. However, civilizations that lack Bloodlines (+20 HP for cavalry) will find this strategy to be less appealing.
  • Along with Knights, Pikemen and Onagers tend to be the best units that aren't specific to any civilization due to countering cavalry and their massive damage along with slightly hitting targets in their attack's path before it lands before flattening anything it hits, respectively. Archers tend to be mixed in during the early game, as are towers for both offensive and defensive use.
  • Black Forest maps are often played by newer players due to other map modes (such as Arabia and Nomad) being much faster paced and would require more micromanagement and reaction time. Unsurprisingly, two of the most popular civilizations in Black Forest maps, Celts and Britons, happen to be Skill Gate Character civilizations that are good in Black Forest maps (with the former having good siege to create new paths in Black Forest with their Siege Onagers and the later having good archers to secure the narrow chokepoints in Black Forest maps).
  • In Definitive Edition, the Persians have acquired this reputation, largely owing to the excellent economic bonus of town centers and docks getting a faster production speed, then being able to transition to an excellent lategame with not only a fully-upgraded stable, but also the new civilization bonus Kamandaran, which makes their Bracer-less crossbows into an excellent trash unit. It's not uncommon for multiplayer matches to have at least one player be Persians.
• Demonic Spiders: Enemy Monks, especially in campaign scenarios. They typically convert from hard-to-reach and hard-to-find places. When the conversion is successful, they would vanish into the fog of war, making it a frustrating time-limited Hidden Object Game. Even worse is that in Definitive Edition, Monks convert even faster than normal due to the game mechanics. To rub salt to the wound, campaign enemies tend to have already researched Heresy (whenever possible) even when it is costly for a Castle Age tech, so converting their own units is generally pointless.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • In the HD versions, there is a huge gap in difficulty between the Standard and Moderate AIs.
  • Among the campaign missions, Joan of Arc and Alaric (in Definitive Edition) have it worst.
    • The Joan of Arc campaign is usually the first campaign players will attempt after finishing the William Wallace tutorial campaign. As such, it's the easiest of the campaigns, with the first scenario being a harmless Escort Mission and the next three giving you plenty of flexibility to do little more than destroy a few buildings from enemies with similar levels of technology as you. However, the leisurely pace is suddenly disrupted in mission 5, "The Siege of Paris", where you're tasked with conquering a massive city, only to find out that it's too heavily guarded to take and you aren't able to replenish your forces, not to mention you will automatically lose if too many refugees die on their way out of the city. Arguably even worse is "A Perfect Martyr", where you start in the Castle Age against three Imperial Age factions who will simultaneously invade you long before you're able to catch up to their level of technology; especially in the Definitive Edition, this mission puts even most of the harder post-Conquerors campaigns to shame.
    • Oh, Alaric. The Definitive Edition version of this campaign would have been perfectly fine as a 1-sword (easy) campaign, if not for its brutal final mission, "A Kingdom of Our Own". In that scenario, you're forced to build your base from scratch and must defeat four (eventually five) very strong opponents, one of which will become virtually invincible if you wait too long to defeat him. Alaric is undoubtedly one of the easiest post-Conquerors campaigns, until "A Kingdom of Our Own", which is pretty much the sole reason why the campaign as a whole is given the 3-sword (hard) difficulty rating.
    • Perhaps not by coincidence, both difficulty spikes happen right when either their titular hero is dead and/or the mission itself is technically a defeat by default, implying how much of a struggle it is for their civilization to continue without their help.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: For a very minor role in the first Genghis Khan level, Ornlu has gotten quite poular among the fanbase, enough for the developers to reference him in Age of Mythology and Age of Empires III.
• Even Better Sequel: While their predecessor got a high rating of 83% at Metacritic, this game got a 92%.
• Fan Nickname: Several maps have player nicknames based on what they look like.
  • Bay is called the "Pants" map.
  • Hidden Forts is called the "Batman" map.
  • Quarry is called the "Pokéball" map.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Crusader Kings II, particularly the fans who enjoyed the official campaigns, as both games cover the Middle Ages and offer different perspectives on the era. Many characters who appear in the campaigns are also playable in Crusader Kings II. ^note They include (among others) Edward I (antagonist of the William Wallace campaign); Genghis Khan and his sons (Subutai is depicted as being granted a nomadic horde to govern about a decade after Genghis's death); Saladin and his adversaries; Henry the Lion (He's correctly depicted as a cousin of Barbarossa's, and a brother-in-law to Richard the Lionheart as husband of Matilda); El Cid, his two lieges Sancho and Alfonso (along with their siblings who received titles from their father), Yusuf (who's historically sultan of the Almoravid Sultanate), and Count Berenguer (he actually had a twin brother, who died in a Hunting "Accident" which was blamed on him). From the HD and DE campaigns, we have the rulers of Bari, Louis II of Italy; Prithiviraj & Jayachandra; Sundjata & Sumanguru (although Sundjata is only playable after he overthrew Sumanguru and established the Kingdom of Mali); Ivalylo and his adversaries; Kotyan Khan and King Bela.
• Game-Breaker: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The game enjoys some popularity in mainland China to the point there is actually a larger competitive scene than Europe and America. ^note Which is quite ironic since a lot of fans of the game in the west have used the Chinese tech tree of lacking gunpowder units and block printing (until 2020) as an example of blatant historical inaccuracy of the game
  • According to Youtuber and streamer ZeroEmpires, Age of Empires II (as well as Age of Empires I) has a sizable fanbase in Vietnam, which may have been the reason the development team behind the HD editions and expansions included the Vietnamese civilization in Rise of the Rajas.
• Genius Bonus: It's possible to win "The Siege of Paris" with villagers inside Compiegne and Joan just outside the walls, which is exactly how she was captured in real life: she led a raid on Burgundian lines and stayed in the rear until everyone else made it in, then was left out when the defenders closed the gates too early.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • In some of the HD campaigns, there are enemy factions that don't have a base but would constantly spawn units out of nowhere to harass villagers gathering resources far from a fortified base, such as the Raiders in "The Right Partner" (Yodit mission 2) and the Javanese Bandits in "The Pasunda Bubat Tragedy" (Gajah Mada mission 6). Similarly, the Turkish in "Lepanto" (one of the Battles of the Conquerors) do have a base across the sea, but even if you destroy their docks, they will continue to spawn warships and transports out of nowhere infinitely.
  • Skirmishers and their upgrades, thanks to the way their AI handles the minimum range. When a unit they're firing at gets close, they will back up to get them outside the minimum range. In packs, this tends to mean they scatter the second any units close to melee range. Individually, they will happily lead slow melee units around the map on a wild goose chase.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In the fourth Attila the Hun mission, you are tasked with destroying three major cities. Destroying the third spawns the massive Roman Army, a force of over a hundred top-tier units...unless you found and killed the placeholder unit on the map, which causes the army to be instantly defeated. Later versions of the game have the army spawn anyway, forcing you to defeat them to win.
  • In the fifth Saladin mission, "Jihad!", one of the three cities, Ascalon, is intended to attempt a Wonder victory. However, sometimes the AI for Ascalon bugs out and doesn't do anything. Given as how "Jihad!" is That One Level even without Ascalon going for the Wonder, this is immensely helpful.
  • The in game scenario editor can do some interesting things with structures and terrain elements that shouldn't be possible. This has been abused thoroughly by the modding community creating custom campaigns.
  • In the first scenario of the Attila the Hun campaign, it's possible to fire both the "Bleda getting killed in the boar hunt" and the "Attila fleeing the Hun camp" events if your timing is good. Because of the first event, the Huns will argue over whether Attila is a worthy leader or an honorless cur, but the second event will make all Hun units instantly join your side upon Bleda's death. This has the practical benefit of giving you Bleda's entire faction with minimal bloodshed. Another bug in the same scenario can occur if the player allies with the Scythians. While the Scythians will break their alliance with the Persians, the Persians don't always do the same and won't even bother to fight back as the Scythians slaughter their way through their base.
    • Prior to the Twentieth Anniversary patch to the Definitive Edition, it was possible to lure Bleda to the conversion zone on the other side of the river, which will change him to your side. Deleting him then instantly changes his units to your side.
  • In the fourth Sundjata scenario "Blood on The River Bank", a bug can cause Gbetos to be produced every second on one of your allies' Barracks, resulting in the player having a massive amount of infinitely-generated troops.
  • In an early version of the game, in "The Crucible", the first Genghis Khan level, Genghis Khan — an extremely strong and powerful hero with a Mangudai model — could be converted to player control at the start, making it ridiculously easy.
  • The AI never builds transport ships despite making docks, at least on lower difficulty levels, making an Island game of deathmatch much easier and regicide impossible to lose because you only need to worry about navy fights.
  • The patch accompanying the Lords of the West expansion included a few peculiar bugs. The Lithuanians' attack bonus for heavy cavalry, based on how many relics they had in their possession, could be infinitely stacked by un-garrisoning and re-garrisoning the same relic over and over again, while the Burgundians' Coustillier's charge attack dealt double the bonus damage against all units with the Archer armor class. The latter bug has since been patched in the Feb 11 hotfix, along with the unit itself getting nerfs to said bonus damage.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The original cover art featured a European king, a viking, and a samurai. Many years later, a Mêlée à Trois between knights, vikings, and samurai would take place in For Honor.
• I Knew It!:
  • A datamine of the HD Version after the African Kingdoms expansion in Steam have indicated another expansion that will put focus on Southeast Asian civilizations. This was proven correct when Rise of the Rajas expansion was released focusing on civilizations in Southeast Asia.
  • In addition, another datamine after the Rise of the Rajas expansion had another "expansion" and when Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition was announced, fans speculated that Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition will be available in Steam. This was confirmed by a business representative from Microsoft that all of the Age of Empires: Definitive Editions will be available in Steam.
  • The Forgotten Empires crew was delighted to learn that Ensemble had considered all their civilizations for The Conquerors at different points.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • When the Berbers were added in The African Kingdoms, six civilizations shared the Middle Eastern architecture set (Byzantines, Indians, Persians, Saracens, Turks, and the aforementioned Berbers), many of which could not be more different from each other. The Byzantine architecture was especially egregious since they were Orthodox Christian, not Islamic, throughout their existence. The Indians were eventually given their own architecture in Rise of the Rajas, while the Byzantines switched to the Mediterranean set used by the Italians and Portuguese in Definitive Edition.
  • In Definitive Edition, many players feel that the Persians should have been given the new Central Asian architecture set, as it specifically originated in Persia despite being imported by the Tatars, but the Persian set remains unchanged upon release, probably because the civilization is primarily based on the Sassanid Empire, which existed several centuries before the architecture in question was developed.
  • In the initial release of the Rise of the Rajas expansion, Vietnam was given the Southeast Asian architecture set, which is based on that of the Indianized kingdoms such as the Khmer and Majapahit Empires. Vietnamese players weren't happy as Dai Viet was then the only Sinicized country in Southeast Asia, and argued that they should have been given the East Asian set, which was eventually changed in the Definitive Edition. However the East Asian architecture set is now shared by five civilizations (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Mongols, and Vietnamese).
  • Of the new Definitive Edition civilizations, only the Lithuanians have escaped this reaction; the Bulgarians especially are widely considered to be well-covered by the Slavs, while the Tatars and Cumans are extremely similar to each other, with many fans saying only one or the other should have been included.
  • The new civilizations in Lords of the West didn't fare any better here. Despite their prominence in the campaign mode since the Ensemble Studios era, the Burgundians are widely considered to be a minor offshoot of the Franks, rather than deserving of their own civilization.^note While the Dark Age Burgundians were separate from the Franks, both were Germanic tribes that lived in modern-day France, with the Franks being much more triumphant in the grand scheme of things, though Burgundy was influential to the development of the modern Dutch and Belgian states. It also doesn't help that the Burgundians' tech tree is very similar to the Franks, with strong cavalry and gunpowder but poor archers. Meanwhile, the Sicilians are considered either already covered by the Italians (though the Italians civilization is mostly based on northern Italy) or are yet another retread of the Franks, considering how much their design focuses on their Norman overlords.
  • While the Dawn of the Dukes expansion added the highly requested Bohemians (Czechs) and Poles, many players from these regions complained that their architecture sets are the same as that of the Slavic civilization, which is based on the Orthodox Eastern Slavs such as Kievan Rus, rather than the Catholic Western Slavs. In particular, Medieval Bohemia was an imperial state of the Holy Roman Empire, and players argued that Bohemians should have been given the Central European set, shared with the Teutons, instead.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • In certain tournaments including 2017's Escape Game Masters 2, Magyars weren't especially popular to pick either to ban or play. In spite of a mostly versatile late tech tree^note For example, being one of the few civilizations to have access to Paladins and Parthian Tactics, they lack economic bonuses early in the game^note they were initially released with a free Hunting Dogs tech in the Dark Age before the bonus, then the tech altogether got patched out; now the only one close enough to an "economic bonus" is killing wolves in one hit, and that is more ideal for forward strategies than economics, their siege is mediocre and their defenses lag behind. In EGM2 alone, they were only picked twice in the whole tournament, both by the same player. Interestingly enough, they are considered one of the better Forgotten civilizations upon release, as the others performed even worse before future expansions buffed them. This eventually led to patch 5.5 giving the Magyars several buffs, making them a more solid civilization while still keeping the Magikarp Power nature of the civilization.
  • The Vietnamese are rarely played in tournaments, mainly because of the Magikarp Power nature of the civilization (having an incredibly bad early game since they don't have any strong economic bonuses across from revealing the enemy position at the start of the game, and even so, this is only useful for scouting your own base instead) and the fact that their civilization bonuses and unique tech, Paper Money, makes the civilization really team-dependent. The Vietnamese were played in a 2v2 Return of the Kings tournament between a Chinese team and the Vietnamese team (ironically the Chinese team picked the Vietnamese while the Vietnamese team picked the Chinese), and the Chinese team lost. But this is because the Chinese team picked civilizations that are known to have an incredibly weak early game (Magyars and Vietnamese) while the Vietnamese team picked civilizations that have a strong early game (the Mayans and the Chinese to a lesser degree). A patch update in 5.8 gave buffs to the Vietnamese by having the Archery Range HP bonus have a flat increased HP rather than scaling HP on basis of Age and increased the HP of their unique unit, the Rattan Archer, although these are meant to address the issue with the Vietnamese in 1v1 matches rather than their team support potential.
  • The Khmer are considered to be one of the worst civilizations in 1v1 Arabia matches (in fact, their winning rate is at a whooping 38% according to Voobly). The civilization has various strengths such as a very strong siege line, a reasonably diverse tech tree (especially with a Balance Buff update where they are given the Arbalest upgrade), and the ability to build any building or advance to the next age without any pre-requisite allowing for unconventional build orders. So what holds the Khmer back in competetive play? The civilization is incredibly too hard to play properly. The Khmer don't have any significant early game economic bonuses across from said ability to bypass any pre-requisites for buildings or advancing into the next age, and the bonus is too much of a double-edged sword that often backfires on the player. In addition, much of the civilization's late-game army composition of Battle Elephants and siege weapons can easily be dealt with using Monks (since the Khmer don't have Heresy or Faith, making their siege weapons and Battle Elephants easily convertible) or Huskarls (since the Khmer don't have Champions despite having Hand Cannoneers), making most of their late-game power moot.
  • During the HD era, the Portuguese were considered one of the three worst 1v1 Arabia Civs alongside the aforementioned Vietnamese and Khmer, but where these two eventually received slight economic buffs to make them more feasible in Definitive Edition, the Portuguese wind up still having a low win rate. Their team bonus, which reveals allied Line of Sight without needing a market, is completely useless in 1v1, and the bonuses and unique techs serve to benefit gunpowder and naval units, so it is difficult to get to a late enough time to see the Portuguese really excel. The map type that Portuguese tend to excel in is water maps (eg Islands), but they are not nearly picked as much as open maps like Arabia or defensive maps like Arena or Black Forest.
  • Unless you're performing the all-in "YouPudding" strategy where you rush up to Castle Age to spam out as many Serjeants as possible to Zerg Rush down the opponent, you end up never seeing Sicilians picked for high-ranked games or tournaments from 2023 onward. This is largely due to two problems: the civ being quite awkward to play since its gameplay revolves around its unique Donjon tower structure, and its Crippling Overspecialization as, Donjons aside, the civ is considered to be quite bland, to the point where anything it specializes in is viewed as better performed by other civs, making the Sicilians feel weak as a result.
• Memetic Badass:
  • The aforementioned machine-gun mounted Cobra Car. Many people who play the HD version now played the original game as kids and used the car to wreck face in single-player games.
  • Spanish villagers with Supremacy are often memed to be the strongest units in the game. Particularly popular are clips where the Spanish intro music plays followed by an upgraded villager killing an enemy unit in one shot.
  • Teutonic Knights, thanks to their huge attack and armor, and also because they look cool. The devs have taken note of their popularity and featured them heavily in their special events.
  • La Hire. He's basically a French version of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Few other campaign characters come anywhere close to rivaling his superstardom in the AoE2 community.
• Memetic Loser:
  • While still a decent civ, the Chinese are often mocked for not having Hand Cannoneers, Bombard Cannons, or Block Printing despite being credited for inventing all of those things in real life. Some people even forget that they have access to Bombard Towers and Cannon Galleons because of this in addition to their unique technology, "Rocketry" (although it only boosts the damage for Chu Ko Nus and Scorpions only). Some speculated that this is for gameplay balance purposes, as they are supposed to function as the Jack of All Trades civilization.
  • The Franks, prior their Balance Buff in the later expansions, had this treatment as well, being frequently listed as an example of low tier civilizations. This was because despite being a cavalry based civilization they had a lame light cavalry line, since they lack hussars and Bloodlines, and their extra hitpoint bonus only affect the knight line, which forced them to rely completely on more expensive paladins in the late game. Also their main economy bonus (free windmill upgrades) gave them only a temporal advantage, their team bonus is very situational, and their unique unit is generally considered unimpressive compared to others, as well as an extreme case of Anachronism Stew (throwing axemen, from whose weapons the name Frank supposedly comes, belong to the so-called Dark Ages while they are only available in-game ages later). This changed a little in later expansions giving them faster foragers as an early game economy bonus, a unique technology that allows them to produce stable units faster, and now the extra hitpoint bonus that affects all cavalry units.
  • Of the HD expansion civilizations, the Magyars and the Vietnamese were given this treatment by the fandom, mainly because the former was considered to be very underwhelming for a Magikarp Power civilization while the latter is mocked for it's Crippling Overspecialization as a "support" civilization in team games and incredibly terrible in 1-on-1 matches. The former got a Rescued from the Scrappy Heap with various buffs, while with the latter, it is still debated if their buffs help them or not.
  • Of all the team bonuses in the game, the Saracens have reputation of having the worst team bonus because their team bonus gives a measly +2 attack vs. buildings for foot archers while ignoring the fact that there are some civilizations with far worse team bonuses than the Saracens (i.e. Incan team bonus where farms are built faster). It also doesn't help to note that the Saracens are notorious being one of the weakest civilizations in the game due to the Magikarp Power nature of the civilization.
  • Poor Khmer. They have statistically the lowest win rate of any civilization, lack major economy bonuses, and do not excel in any of the major unit categories. Instead, their bonuses, tech tree, and unique unit are heavily focused on having the best Elephants, best Scorpions, and one of the best Castle rushes in the game. While not a bad civ, necessarily, their focus on unorthodox bonuses and rarely-used units means they don’t fit typically used strategies very well, and thus they are generally disregarded. It also doesn't help to note that their unique gimmick of not requiring any pre-requisite for buildings and advancing through the ages is difficult to maximize and often backfires on the player.
  • When it comes to new civilizations being added into the HD expansions, the Tibetans is often seen as this within the community. While there have been many opportunities for the developers to add Tibetans as playable civilization (and it's been even mentioned a few times in interviews and development blogs), they are often opted out for more well-known civilizations such as Koreans and Indians. Because of this, the Tibetans ended up being the most requested civilization added into the HD expansions, but are often left out (although not officially stated, it is speculated that adding them in Age of Empires 2 will risk having the game Banned in China, which become a recurring joke on the main reason the Tibetans are often left out).
• Memetic Mutation:
  • There's a meme template with the king from The Age of Kings related to the game's quirks such as "10 elephants fit on a transport boat, but 11 archers don't" or "Procreation? No, civilians spawn with 50 food".
  • "How do you turn this on", the cheat for the machine gun car, has also gained some memetic popularity.
  • Spamming “Start the Game Already!” in the lobby
  • 11 ^note The in-game chat has pre-recorded voice lines, e.g. 1 for "yes" and 2 for "no". 11 is simply someone laughing, this became the stand-in for lol in the community, even outside the game, like a stream chat.
  • Historical accuracy ^note A recurring joke within the community on numerous historical inaccuracies in various official campaigns, scenarios, and even civilization tech trees. One infamous case is the Chinese, where the civilization do not get Block Printing (until January 2020 update in the Definitive Edition), Hand Cannoneers, and Bombard Cannons; which were all Chinese inventions historically (although it is said that the Chinese don't get these for gameplay balance reasons). Likewise, the Goths have Hand Cannoneers and Bombard Cannons despite them being anachronistic to the time period when the Goths raided most of the Roman Empire. And of course, everyone getting Trebuchets, regardless of their time period or location.
  • You know, a Dark Age barracks is just a house surrounded by a palisade ^note On the subreddit r/aoe2, a user made this exact observation — if you look very closely, that's exactly what the Barracks in the Dark Age is. For some reason this exploded on the subreddit and other fansites, and eventually people started making joke complaints that they had built a house surrounded by a palisade and couldn't train any soldiers.
  • Are the Dravidians good? ^note An ongoing debate between two of the world's best players, Viper and Hera, has received a lot of attention throughout the AoE2 community as to whether or not the Dravidians are a good civ. Viper likes the civ, which he tends to play the Dravidians a lot. Meanwhile, Hera finds them to be one of the weaker civs, and doesn't play them as often.
  • YouPudding strat ^note A Fan Nickname for a Game-Breaker strategy with Sicilians that revolves around rushing the opponent with Castle Age Serjeants and Donjons.
  • Triple Archeries on Neutral Island ^note The content host, T90Official, has a Never Live It Down moment where on the Islands map, he tried to do a transport rush only to realize that he build his forward production buildings (3 Archery Ranges), on a neutral island instead of the opponent's main island, which made the Archeries useless. T90Official will almost always have this brought up by himself, or by his viewers, when he's casting games.
• Narm: In "The Forgotten", the first level of "Sforza" starts with him witnessing his father drown while crossing a river, right after an argument where he calls Sforza a coward. Due to limitations of the graphics engine, this is represented by his father walking away.
• Nightmare Fuel: Some fans found the alternate loading screen, meant to be a nod to the original game's cover art, a bit disturbing to the point of creating mods to change out the loading screen.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Scorpions. They're essentially giant crossbows on wheels that fire penetrating bolts that pass through enemies, and thus can hit a whole line of enemies all at once. What's the issue? Their damage. In the original game, they had a base damage of 7, which gets reduced by pierce armor, meaning pretty much anything with upgraded armor can reduce it to Scratch Damage. Their dismal range, low mobility and poor health didn't help. Upgrading them to Heavy Scorpions, however, did give them a somewhat more respectable base damage of 16, and the later expansions raised their base damage to 12, making them at least somewhat situationally useful. The Rise of the Rajas expansion introduces the Khmer's team bonus of +1 range for Scorpions for their teammates while making their own Scorpions and Ballista Elephants fire extra projectiles with their Unique Tech, making massing Scorpions a viable option.
  • In Water Maps, Fish Traps are rarely used by professional players despite the fact that there is no lack of building space in water maps. This is because villagers gather food faster from Farms than Fishing Ship from Fish Traps. The HD expansions introduced Gillnets that greatly improve the gathering rate for Fishing Ships, and in the Rise of the Rajas expansion, two of Malay's civilization bonuses not only makes Fishing Traps cheaper, but they provide unlimited food.
  • In The Conquerors, the Franks were considered one of the worst civilizations due to effectively limiting their army to slightly beefier Paladins^note the infantry line suffers from a lack of Squires, archery is poor without Bracer or Thumb Ring, Light Cavalry do not benefit from the HP bonus and lack the Hussar upgrade, and the use of Throwing Axemen is mostly situational, as well as the economic bonus only amounting to free farming techs that hardly matter late in the game. The HD expansions addressed some shortcomings by giving the Franks Squires and a unique tech drastically speeding up stable production, giving the HP bonus to all cavalry^note still slightly weaker than many other civilizations, but particularly useful mid-game, and adding an additional civilization bonus to aid foraging speed to aid the Dark Age economy. It had gotten to the point where the Franks are now one of the better civilizations in the game. Even Spirit of the Law, himself not a fan of the Franks, is rather surprised by this finding.
  • Prior to The African Kingdoms, Camel Riders were usually avoided because they'd cost a lot of gold, yet were very frail. They die easily to building fire as they're classified as ships (which have a similar weakness) to differentiate themselves from Knights. However, they received their own armor class in The African Kingdoms, making them far more durable and thus a more plausible alternative to the slower and cheaper Spearman-line. Additionally, the Berbers civilization not only has less expensive Camel Riders, but also a unique technology that allows their camel units to regenerate health, improving their cost efficiency even further.
  • The Portuguese were seen as a nice idea poorly implemented for a long time, due to lacking an early economy bonus, having a team bonus (Free Cartography) that became obsolete as the tech was made free and automatic, a slow and expensive unique unit, and a unique building that produced free resources slowly but was only available in the Imperial Age and cost more population than a equivalent output of villagers and trade carts. However this changed after their team bonus was switched to faster research for allies and they were given the ability to gather wood in addition to food from berry bushes.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Age of Kings campaigns limiting the player to just 75 max population is a huge turn off for a lot of players, especially for those that like to boom up their economy first with many villagers since it leaves very little remaining population space for military numbers unless the player starts axing off their villagers. Then once the player actually has a military, there will be so few villagers left to barely keep the player's economy going. This is especially jarring if you're used to multiplayer or later released campaigns that go as high as 200 max population. Thankfully, the developers of the Definitive Edition took note of this criticism, and updated the population limits so that each of the Age of Kings levels have higher and much more sensible population limits.
  • The Forgotten campaigns used lots of scripting and experimented with RPG mechanics and in-game cutscenes, pushing the game engine to its limits. However, they were disliked by a large number of fans for their clunky implementation and habit to break. Come Definition Edition, all of The Forgotten campaigns received significant overhauls, making them more akin to traditional campaigns.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Khmer have Ballista Elephants, which are essentially Scorpions on an Elephant. While that sounds nice on paper, the unit is all but ruined by its huge number of weaknesses, due to its classification as an elephant, siege weapon, and ranged unit, essentially negating the advantage of its high HP. All it's left with is inferior strength and range compared to regular Khmer Heavy Scorpions, as well as an insane price tag.
  • The Indians' Elephant Archer. Since ranged units as a whole are best used when massed and able to use hit-and-run tactics, the Elephant Archer's high cost, poor movement speed, and exclusivity to the Castle makes its use situational at-best. Indians players are way better off focusing on the civilization's other unique unit, the Imperial Camel Rider. In a extremely rare instance, devs surrendered to these complains and "demoted" the Elephant Archer to a common Archery Range unit, with the Indians (now named Hindustanis) losing it altogether.
  • The Spanish Missionary is a Monk with faster movement speed but less range. Too bad range is the make-or-break factor that decides whether or not your conversions will succeed...
  • The Champion-line rarely sees use in competitive play due to being slow, requiring obscenely expensive upgrades that barely do anything and having many common weaknesses, namely the commonly-used archers, gunpowder units, knights and Onagers. Only civilizations with major bonuses to their Champions, such as the Aztecs (extra attack) and Malians (extra pierce armor), ever use them regularly, but almost all the time, Barracks are used to produce Halberdier-line units instead. At best, a few completely unupgraded Militia will be thrown at your opponent to harass them in the mid Dark Age, since the building helps progress to the next age and you want a Barracks built anyways for the Halberdiers.
  • The Tatars' Flaming Camel unit is essentially a Petard, but stronger against cavalry than buildings. Considering the civilization already has access to fully-upgraded Heavy Camel Riders, there's pretty much no reason to waste your gold on a one-use unit that lacks the strength or blast radius to ever be worth it. It doesn't help that it requires a special Imperial Age technology to even unlock. Eventually, the Flaming Camel was updated in a March 2024 patch where it's now a Siege Workshop unit that unlocks the moment the Tatar player reaches Imperial Age, which makes the Flaming Camel easier to get access to rather than them being restricted to the more expensive Castles, and being locked behind a special technology.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Campaigns from The Forgotten, The African Kingdoms, and Rise of the Rajas are noticeably harder than most of the original and The Conquerors campaigns. Or to put it another way, the Saladin campaign from the original game, the one with four missions mentioned on the Age of Empires That One Level page, is only considered "medium" difficulty in the Definitive Edition; the entire remainder of the AoK and AoC campaigns, even Barbarossa and Attila the Hun, are considered "easy", despite both having at least half of their missions mentioned in the aforementioned page. Of the newer expansions, only the Tariq ibn Ziyad and Tamerlane campaigns are rated "easy," leaving eight "medium"^note Dracula, Prithviraj, Sundjata, Francisco de Almeida, Gajah Mada, Suryavarman I, Ivaylo, and Pachacuti and seven "hard"^note Alaric, Bari, Sforza, Yodit, Bayinnaung, Le Loi, and Kotyan Khan campaigns, and even so, Tariq ibn Ziyad is infamously considered one of the most misrated campaigns in the game, easily rivaling most of the three-sword "hard" campaigns in difficulty. Averted, however, with Lords of the West, whose campaigns are roughly on par with Age of Kings difficulty-wise; even its three-sword campaign, The Hautevilles, isn't generally considered to be as hard as most other three-sword campaigns and is arguably the same difficulty as Saladin.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • The William Wallace learning campaign could pretty much be considered Braveheart: The Video Game. The fact that Age of Kings was released four years after the movie certainly helps.
  • The Joan of Arc campaign is based on Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, down to including a fictional character from it as a playable unit (Jean de Lorrain).
  • The El Cid campaign is closer to the 1961 Charlton Heston film than to the Medieval epic or the real guy's life. Not coincidentally, the movie was re-released in The '90s.
  • Prithviraj's campaign is based on the epic Prithviraj Raso, rather than the real guy's life.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While the original game was OK, this game and the expansions are universally acclaimed and seen as great improvements. The Definitive Edition has also been praised for actually improving on the HD version and being not just a cheap cash-in. It was very favorably compared to Warcraft III: Reforged in particular.
• That One Achievement: The Definitive Edition includes a lot of achievements, most of which are for winning with a civilization, winning with every civilization, or clearing campaigns. As for the rest...
  • Some achievements are tied to particular missions and require the player to do supremely well, such as "Battleship" (prevent a single Turkish transport from landing troops on your shore in the Lepanto historical scenario) or "Not a Greek Tragedy" (keep all four Hero Units alive in the fourth Le Loi campaign mission).
  • Others involve rushing to complete objectives within a certain time period, such as "The Go-Getter" (defeat Hungary before Subotai arrives with reinforcements in the final Genghis Khan mission) or "Truly Countless Bodies" (win the fifth Attila the Hun mission in 30 minutes). The worst one is "Rome Was Destroyed in One Day" (win the fourth Alaric mission by destroying all 12 Roman castles in 30 minutes), which is so notoriously demanding that it is the least obtained campaign achievement in the game (excluding "Masterpiece", which requires you to win a 1v3 match in Multiplayer, where such games are hardly ever played).
  • Others involve ignoring the easy way to win a scenario. "Lone Warrior" and "Turkish Delight" require you to forgo the chance to ally with another faction in the Kurikara and Bapheus historical scenarios, respectively. The worst require you to completely ignore the listed objectives in favor of just killing all the other factions on the map, namely "Offense is the Best Defense" for the final Saladin mission or "Furor Teutonicus" for the first Barbarossa mission. The latter is particularly annoying because the factions won't surrender until every last unit is killed, which can lead to a long, tedious hunt for a lone Pikeman standing in the corner of the map.
  • And then some are just very long and tiresome to unlock, and require building X of a Unit in a single game. The highest are "Fighting from Afar" and "Karambolage," which require you to build 500 Briton Longbowmen and Malay Karambit Warriors in a single match. Even with resources set to "Infinite" and the population cap raised to 500, that's a long time spent watching units come out of your Castles.
  • In the Art of War training campaign, getting a gold medal on "Booming" is infuriatingly difficult. The game gives you just barely enough time to train 100 Villagers and advance to the Imperial Age fast enough to succeed, but unlike the rest of the campaign's missions, the instructions are extremely vague about the required build order. The most that they suggest is that you always keep your Town Centers active and that you build at least three or four, but the order in which you designate Villagers onto food or wood, respectively, is never explained. Building five Town Centers is pretty much mandatory for getting to the 100 Villager goal on time, but having to constantly lay down farms while preventing your Town Centers from going idle can be a serious test of multitasking. If you're actually able to get the gold medal on this, you're probably a hardcore pro at the game.
• That One Level: Too many to the point it has its own page.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In the Definitive Edition the scripts and voices in the campaigns were modified and re-dubbed, dialing back much of the more hammy and stereotypical voice acting from the original. Many players however feel that the original voice acting was more passionate and lively and gave it a distinct charm, while the new voice acting come across as restrained and uninspired. This is especially noticeable in cutscenes like the third Attila mission, where in the original the Romans had a hilarious whiny voice but in the re-dub it was dulled down.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Has its own page.

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