Back at the beginning of 2021 some interesting articles began appearing talking about a new mode that was found in a 22 year old game, Age of Empires 2. Sure the HD edition of the game was receiving new updates, even DLC but that’s not what the stories were about. Someone had found out that if you launch an online game with a friend, you can play as the same side just by choosing the same team number and nation. Not separate nations and units but exactly the same team. Everyone could control and build anything. Fucking gamechanger!!
Timing for this was massively appropriate. The vast majority of my co-op gaming is local on the sofa with a few beers. In COVID times, with yet another lockdown this is obviously impossible. What better way to while an evening a week away trying to figure out the best co-op way to play a single player game? Sure I could be playing Borderlands 3, PES21, Halo Reach but instead a new way to play an absolute classic? I am all in.
Age of Empires is a series I have touched upon before. A real time strategy game in which you gather resources, build a base and create an army to take down other empires on the map. The game has a huge following with the online PvP being the biggest draw. As you know I tend to eschew these modes by keeping to the story or fighting the AI. Less abuse, fewer problems. However there are only so many times you can keep playing the same old maps and modes.
Curiosity grabbed me on this, I wanted to check it out for myself and see if it actually works. I had no clue if it would be an enjoyable way to game but fuck it. Let’s try. And who better to rope into it but a fellow Age of Empire 2 nerd, my Editor, Shifty. We play co-op all the time so this should be a doddle with our 20 odd years gaming together right? Er….
The How
Steam has two versions of the game, Age of Empires II (2013) and Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. We both have the former so was easy to install and fire up. We have individually played multiplayer maps against AI and knew that the sessions could be long. What kind of map? How high should the unit cap be? And would this even work? There are a lot of options and it is a case of finding which works best for us would turn out to be the hardest part.
It’s not actually signposted on how to try this mode. Usual Steam invites don't seem to work, though it turns out they were not obvious. The home page has a Letter (what is this, 2000s email!?) with the invite. Once selected you get to the Lobby and it’s myriad of options. The secret is in the Player number. Selecting the same number as your fellow human Generals will cause the magic to work. In fact the Definitive Edition actually has a description when hovering over it explaining this!! Below our noses the whole time.
Selecting the same team will mean completely different Civilizations to play as which is not the aim of the game. Some default Game Mode selections and we were in! For ease we used a Whatsapp call to communicate. Ingame chat would have been a slow nightmare. Not the most elegant solution but it works. We could both select Units, create buildings and purchase upgrades. Fucking A!
Our first match was as basic and barebones as possible, we just wanted to see it work. We could build things, force units into attack. Have two pairs of eyes and ears keeping an eye on things!
Our next problem? Figuring out how the hell to play this game again. It had been a long while, even just playing two years prior was enough time for me to forget! The tech trees, Age unlocks and logistics of resource gathering. We are far off our epic co-op army scheme, particularly when the AI comes over to fuck you up.
Problems
Once we had half remembered what was needed other issues arose. Much of the RTS battle is getting your industry in a position to be able to support a rapid growth army. But how to divy these tasks up? We have two decades worth of co-op experience (or suffering?) yet this still had us unprepared. Delegation. A good manager's strength! One controlling production and one controlling the army made sense. But we soon found how boring that could be.
The early game is packed with growth and production whereas the end game is all about armies and attacking. Either way one of us was going to be at times bored. When you only have seven workers it’s hard to share a single builder… For the most part we stuck to our roles to really hone them down before mixing it up. Army general gets to build the walls and defences. Production manager gets to control base defence and supplementary attacking force. Has enough to keep us both interested. Weekly sessions were on!
Most of the problems came from user error but there are technical limitations. There is no Pause which is an absolute ballache. Considering we are only playing the AI it should be there. It came at our cost when he had to take a phone call and I was powerless to stop an attack! He came back to basically ruins and me being very sheepish.
These end up being marathon sessions, mostly clocking in at three hours long (the endgame is punishingly tough) that we tried out save files. Crashing every fucking time which must be a mixture of our setup and missed bugs. This rather limits the size of the set up, we generally keep it to five players though would love to max it out. The internet has been an issue, though that is certainly my end. Crashing out though it's not been as bad as it could. Playing such an old game really helps.
Actually the hardest part has been finding the right AI opponents. There are only three options and none seem very suited for what we need. Two are absolute walkovers and the third is extremely aggressive early game but relies on huge unit numbers while holding back near the end. Attacking these mass defended towns is borderline impossible, particularly as the resources dwindle and your mix of units disappears.
Defending these huge attacks early is hard, walls are a must otherwise you lose in about 20 mins. Then it’s a case of counter attacking with a large enough force to deal a strong enough blow to win. This is actually where Hivemind comes into its own. You can only control 60 units at a time, using hot keys to corral mass units. Having two of you means specialists like Bombardiers can strike at Castles and Town Centres whilst the other keeps their units busy. It’s not easy but a game changer! Double the clicks, the brains and attacking nous.
Tweaks
It works and we love it. But we have not found the right formula. A good starting point was us both upgrading to the Definitive Edition of the game. It looks far better, buildings and walls crumbling down is borderline sexual now! Pausing is now included. There are more modes, maps, civilisations and crucially AI. Finding the right mixture of these is our main problem at the moment. How do we tweak these to get the best possible experience?
Strictly there are no right answers so part of the fun will be experimenting. For instance the Builder AI did not make walls but all the others did… Weird considering the name. Depending on time I would love the max amount of AIs on the battlefield though each smart enough to not get demolished in the first 20 minutes. So far we have ended up one on one with the Smartest AI which is fine but we would like to have some variety. It only seems to know how to rush us….
The resource cap in each map needs some tweaking as although you have four resources, food and gold are required for units with gold in huge short supply. We end up cheesing it with sales of Wood and Food though that is still a challenge. In theory we should gain more resources as we conquer the map but usually the gold and stone is gone. Instead we strip mine every tree off our area and use them to power as many farms as possible.
This is all based on Deathmatch, pummelling the (remaining) enemy into submission. Regicide, Wonder wins among others give plenty of options to keep it interesting. Map size seems to be giving us considerable lag on Ludicrous so we need to reign that in a bit. Impressively it works for the most part which is amazing considering how slow my internet speed is. Upgrading the game was the right decision, it's so so much better. The stress and exhilaration are quite extraordinary, it doesn't even compare to single player. Hivemind all the way!
I love this mode, it’s breathed new life into a title I thought I was long done with. Having added complexity with production and controlling armies really mixes it up. Even with our Co-op experience we are constantly learning to play with each other. Ongoing fighting over a single villager when 83 others exist is hilarious. Completely forgetting to do any of the blacksmiths upgrades even though we had a tonne of resources. Not playing for two weeks and barely remembering how an RTS works.
It’s amazing we ever win at all. We do though there are the restarts when we are too late putting up a wall, completely forgetting a section to wall (twice), opening the gates when the enemies are right there (twice in two minutes). With hard AI these are catastrophic mistakes! After a thirty minute set up to get through the ages and unlock things its a bit of a ball ache restarting. These matches always seem to end up as three hour epics!
Our old set up grew boring fast, zero gold means basic units of Elite Skirmishers and Hussars (who actually turn out to be fucking heroes) which is fine due to the lack of gold but it takes waves and waves of attacks to kill off that single hard AI. 250 units camped across their base makes it a war of attrition. They do attack during the middle game but play uber defensive by the end. Victory is more of a relief than a surge of excitement.
Our current compromise is having six HD enemies and using Random resources. Having the same enemy types ensures that you only lose one in the early game at the most. This does mean that we have a constant barrage of attacks from enemies, the bigger the base the more problematic it is. Thirty units with a couple of Trebuchets cause mayhem on our defences with stone at a premium makes a tower going down a real problem. 25 Hussars sweeping in are ideal and cheap defence! See HEROES.
Honestly though? Thank fuck for Relics! These items are scattered across the map, can be collected by a Monk and deposited in a monastery. A solitary Relic gives you a gold piece every second. The bigger maps seem to have about 50 so as long as you get 8 early game you have enough money for units AND buying stone from the marketplace. It completely changes the way you play, in particular a mode with a heavy emphasis on defence. We actually build a base that looks amazing!
Get through the early game, design the base with precision, take out a couple of enemies and then sweep through them late game is incredible. It feels like this was how the game was meant to be played. We built more than one castle (four, I demolished one for space!!), the whole base looked like a 'real' town. Hell we even built a wonder!
This mode has been around for years and I wish we had known far earlier. Though really with lockdown and couch co op a no go it has been brilliant for us. Ideally Hivemind would be an option in other RTS games but sadly it seems to be only a feature of Age of Empires. Other games like Parkitect have just added 8 Player Co-op. This in StarCraft 2 would be ridiculously good! Though it’s probably not going to happen. Hopefully Age of Empires 4 will have it included. Please Microsoft!!
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