Certain types of units, such as cavalry archers, will simply not be able to function in a realistic way. Accordingly, your tactics will not be much better than driving your units into contact and slugging it out with the enemy.
#AGE OF EMPIRE 2 UNITS MANUAL#
This is primarily because manual control is required for units to avoid unfavorable situations. In AoE, unless you micromanage your units in combat continuously, your casualties will always be enormous and unnecessary, because the default for uncontrolled units is to commit suicide, regardless of the combat stance you assign to the units. Run in this mode, the game functions as a turn-based game, with each turn being approximately one instant of time long.Īs a specific example, what this allows you to do is check all of your villagers to see who is idle, reallocate villagers from one resource type to another, build a wall (and frequently, getting a gate to go where you want it takes an awful lot of effort, including building guide walls that are deleted immediately afterward), hunt efficiently (which is otherwise virtually impossible), check all of your idle military units, check your recent warnings, admire the scenery, check to see which units are in trouble, assign attack orders to all your units, assign flee orders to all your units (very, very important!), scout with a bunch of units, check all of your production buildings, and so forth, all at the same time. The tactics and operations that are possible using this feature are vastly more complex than in a standard RTS game.
Most importantly, this means that you can analyze the situation and issue orders to any and all of your units, all within the instant of time determined by how long it takes you to press the F3 key. In Age of Empires 2, the Pause feature has been modified so that you can take any possible game action while the game is paused. There are also other useful procedures that are non-military in nature. Avoiding the fire of an enemy archer would be a tactical maneuver. An operational plan would be to send the shock troops in first, supported by foot archers, and followed by combat engineers, while the cavalry harasses the rear areas. For example, one strategy in a multi-opponent situation would be to concentrate all your forces against one opponent. "Strategy" refers to overall considerations. "Operations" refers to maneuvers that large groups of units use, or that take place over a large part of the battlefield. In AoE, "tactics" refers to maneuvers that individual units or small groups of units use to accomplish their objectives.