Okay, I've been playing the Civ series for 4 years now. I'm getting AoE2 for x-mas. What can I expect? What sort of things are going to really draw me in to this game? I know its RTS which I'm looking forward to trying out, but will there be specific things that will draw me away from Civ?

In AoE2:
a swordsman will always kill a pikeman, a longbowman kills a musketman, catapults now have very lethal bombardment, Gunpowder technology comes after researching Chemistry, samurais are not very good units, longbowmen are very good units, a catapult (trebuchet) is better than a cannon for destroying buildings, war elephants are very powerful.....and best of all.....spearmen will get slaughtered easily unlike in Civ3 (watch them drop like flies!). :mwaha:

That's all I can think of now. Enjoy AoE2!

You didn't mention that pikeman kill Knights although they don't do welll against the better Knight types. Random maps are the best maps for most games. When you start playing its nice to build walls at choke points to stop the computer troops from attacking, use castles to build your civs unique unit and to hold a reserve position for your attacks.

also: instead of researching all the required techs to advance in age, you have to build 2 of required buildings then research one tech to advance

I started playing Civ before i got AOE2, and the Civ games leave it dead in the water.

Although to be honest i find it hard to play RTS games now after playing Civ, they seem kind of weak.

All aside though, if you like RTS and you like Civ you'll like this game. Its got a lot of unit varity and a pretty cool editor for building scenerios.

I totally agree with gael on this issue

Well, its real time, so its all about war and not much on infrastracture. It does have a lot of strategy though. Swords easily beat pikes, but pikes can win against knights. Catapults actually have a defense of some sort. Its different. I played AoE2 before I got civ3, but theyre both really good, even if civ3 is better ;)

Originally posted by Silverflame
Well, its real time, so its all about war and not much on infrastracture. It does have a lot of strategy though. Swords easily beat pikes, but pikes can win against knights. Catapults actually have a defense of some sort. Its different. I played AoE2 before I got civ3, but theyre both really good, even if civ3 is better ;)

agreed.

Silver flame is right. AOE is an RTS which is....well...and RTS so it deals with different aspects of gameplay. You still use strategy, but different tactics to achieve what you want. Civ 3 lets you focus outside the box (or castle in this case.) I'm glad I like both genres. ;-)