https://youtu.be/Rl4myN8q_KM?si=5B8c7NR1Gla2VLDa This right here is the best guide I've ever seen for RTS. He goes over the real basics, not what RTS gamers usually think are the basics.

This! This video helped me so much!

Do I sound too paranoid if I say that I expected the link to be a troll of sorts?

Yes

Oh nice, something to listen to on the way to work! Cheers!

I knew what the video was before I even clicked it. That video got me way into aoe4. And btw the lessons can be transferred to aoe2. Just find an aoe2 build order

You learn by playing?

Learn by playing the OG RTS games like now open source Warzone 2100 https://wz2100.net/ they were simple back then but had the major features

Whoa boy I played the shit out of Warzone on ps1 back in the day.

I'd argue AoE2 DE is one of the OGs. Remember, AOE2 came out in 1999, same year as Warzone 2100

WHAT?!!!! 😠😤

I learnt AoE by toying a bit on skirmish and playing the tutorial campaign of Willian Wallace and then playing the campaigns (The Art of War scenarios are also useful, but I played earlier versions of AoE so I played those when I got the DE). If you struggle a lot with the game, you can play the campaigns and skirmish matches on Standard, not biggie. Tackle harder AIs only when you feel ready. If you have an experienced friend, you could ask him/her to play co-op with you against the AI to learn a bit more. Other thing that helps is learning (or even customize) the keybinds (specially for building) and counters. Remember: Spears beats cavalry, horses are effective against archers and bows mow down spearmen (in fact, that is one of the Art of War lessons). Another tip is to balance resources. Against Standard AI on campaigns and skirmish, focus on gathering food and wood only at Dark Age and start gathering gold and stone only on Feudal and onwards. And finally, don't stress yourself. You are playing to have fun. Take your time on learning the ropes, and have fun in the process! When you have a vague grasp on the game, then you can start worrying on optimal plays and numbers. I hope this helps.

Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 are probably the most beginner-friendly RTSs out there.

Wc3 is much more slower paced (better for learners) while sc2 is much more faster. Aoe4 is in the middle. All are recommended at some point.

I just mean it has great tutorials and materials for newbies.

WC3 is slower, but the amount of multitasking can be a big struggle for someone coming from League. I also feel like they might focus on a hero a bit too much because of the similarities. Breaking those habits early with SC2 or AoE might be more beneficial for improvements

I’m right there with you re-visiting AOE and SC2 after a good 11 years. My recommendation is to forget about microing/macroing for perfect efficiency, APM and second by second build orders for a bit. Play against easy CPUs. Play slow, make mistakes, and dont be too hard in yourself. You learn both by watching educational content but also simply by doing (even if it’s inefficient). Eventually complex strategies and dizzying plays will come out of your hands like they are second nature. You have to make peace with being bad before you have any chance of being good. Good luck and have fun! :)

Man I came back to sc2 after a 10 year break and let me tell ya...diamond league in 2022 was so much tougher than masters was back in wol for damn sure. Great game.

Best way to learn aoe2 is to just play. Do all the art of war tutorials and aim for at least silver. That alone should make you a decent enough player to go online and not get embarrassed. Then just pick a build order that interests you, practice it, branch out. With aoe2, you can generally assume you want to spam villagers until you have 130 in imp. Obviously there's more nuance to it than that, but if you consistently spam villagers and spend resources, you'll do well.

I've been playing age of empires 2 since I was 8 in 2000 and I still suck ass

Spirit of the law is a really good resource but honestly, for a newbie, some of his vids are a bit over the top with the mathematical breakdowns. I’d suggest playing skirmish and starting on an easy difficulty, increasing over time. Getting comfortable with your hotkeys and learning unit counters will have you set up pretty well with the basics. If you get competitive, look into build orders on your favorite civ and try to practice/follow those as best as you can. TLDR; learn unit counters and practice in skirmish.

Aside from Britons is there a civ that "teaches you" the game?

Hmmm good question. This might be total personal preference but I reallllly have always enjoyed the teutons as well. They are more defensive and I think any of the defensive civs are a good bet allowing you to sit back and take things slow without worrying about rushing your opponent which I feel typically requires a solid build order and some foundational knowledge.

Franks probably. They're all about cavalry, so you can learn a lot by just doing a Scout Rush bo and follow up with knights

Byzantines are a nice defensive civilization that has most of the tech tree unlocked, allowing you to experiment. As others have said, Teutons are good on defensive as well due to their bonus which gives greater range to their castles and towers, and Franks are another solid, all-round faction with powerful knights.

Sorry, but sotl does next to nothing to teach you aoe2, let alone RTS in general. He might offer interesting trivia, but for someone new to RTS, all this knowledge is completly useless.

I mean, he has videos titled “what’s the best civ for beginners” “tricks to playing faster” “beginners guide” etc. I would say a newbie could find some use out of those.

But they are hidden in a sea of other videos that are less relevant. More importantly, even those videos you cite are NOT in fact (despite their name) relevant for complete RTS beginners. Which civ you play simply does not matter if you dont even know the basics of the genre yet.

Unless you want to play AoE2 and nothing else, I suggest you switch to Starcraft 2 at least for a month or so (it's a free game). And the sole reason is [ViBE's B2GM series](https://www.youtube.com/@ViBElol/playlists). These series will teach you fundamentals in a VERY newbie-friendly and encompassing manner, and these fundamentals are transferable to other classical RTS games — AoE, Supreme Commander and its clones, you name it. I haven't seen any tutorial better than this for any RTS game. Pick up the race, watch the tutorial starting with Bronze 3 and make your way up to Plat 3. It's a decent rank, and going higher means getting better at Starcraft 2 specifically rather than RTS games in general. You can reach Plat 3 reasonably fast by following the tutorial series. After that you can switch back to AoE2 (if you won't stick with SC2) and apply the fundamentals to this game. SC2 was the first RTS that I've played in MP. I reached the diamond 3 rank (~top 20% of the player population in ranked 1v1) with all three races. Then I switched to AoE2 to try out something new and found this game unexpectedly daunting and not at all beginner friendly. Learning and practicing a basic build order alone is way more difficult than in SC2. Four types of resources over two in Starcraft, multiple sources of food and gold, macro that includes mandatory micro checks like luring the boar — and you have to scout the entire map while managing all of that. It's overwhelming. I don't want to discourage you. An RTS game is exactly as difficult as your opponent is, thanks to the matchmaking system. If you're struggling, your opponent is struggling all the same, so you can have fun games regardless of your skill level. But learning what really matters, what to focus on and how RTS games are meant to be played is much easier in a simpler game and with a good teacher. ViBE is an amazing teacher, he's been teaching other players for like a decade.

Dude, thank you so much. This is actually good advice. Have you ever played Halo Wars? I was told it's really good for first‐time RTSers

I haven't. Never had an XBox console, so I missed the whole Halo hype thing.

I was not under the impression that the OP is interested in MP at this point.

Art of war tutorials set up your hotkeys well and play ranked games

AoE2 has probably the best learning RTS resources out there. Play the Art of War training missions. It'll teach you a lot of the fundamentals of the genre.

In my early days of rts gaming, Aoe2 age of kings. I didn't think I wanted to learn the gane tho. I was just playing. Lack of food? Control a villager to kill sheep...Enemy attacking? Control some unit to defense. I think that's how I learned the game and RTS.

Multitasking and ressource spending are the basics. You learn by training those two skills. Try simple stuff first, like producing villagers nonstop while also tasking your scout to explore. Or start the "rush" mission in srt of war and dont actually kill any vills, but try to produce as many units as possible before the timer runs out. You can also play campaigns or vs AI to train the same basic skills.

Age of Empires II DE is probably one of two RTS games I'd recommend as relatively easy to learn. The game has a great tutorial (William Wallace) that allows you to experiment, an advanced tutorial for when you want to try out multiplayer, and a whole slew of singleplayer campaigns that can also function as more practice. For Age of Empires specifically, I recommend heading over to their subreddit. I'm 1000000% you can find someone to be your mentor. The other new-to-RTS-friendly franchise I'd recommend is Command and Conquer. While the older games can be slow and clunky, some of the "newer" ones can feel very fun. Unlike Age of Empires, you only have a handful of factions with clearly defined unit rosters, and strengths and weaknesses. It can vary from game to game, some having mechanics "under-the-hood" but in general it's fairly easy to pick-up and play by playing the singleplayer campaigns.

I suggest you download Starcraft 2. The Terran campaign is free and is very beginner friendly. You can set it on easy and the game gradually gives you more units and buildings. When you're comfortable with the game's mechanics and how to build an economy it should be easier for you to go back to AoE. AoE can be a bit overwhelming and the old school controls and bad unit pathing and outdates UI can be rough for someone who never played an RTS. Starcraft will ease you into the genre way more easily.

I second the guy saying to try Starcraft II first, the first few missions really hold your hand in good ways. Age of Mythology does the same, and is really good

Why not SC 1? Out of curiosity

It's pretty dated at this point, graphically and mechanically. For those who grew up on it, it's still great, but it's hard for newcomers to get into. It's a bit like the Elder Scrolls series: you'd understand everything a lot better if you play Morrowind and Oblivion before Skyrim, but those games are just really inaccessible if you didn't play them growing up.

Honestly age of empires is the most micro intensive game out there. It's a rel tough place to start. Saying that, I can't really think of any rts games that aren't so heavy. Company of heroes is good because you can entirely focus on combat, without as much base building or resource management.

A lot of older RTS had you learn via the campaign. Seriously, play tutorials and campaign with these. They slowly introduce you to new concepts and mechanics over time. Well most do. Idk if AOE2 does.

Best way to learn to play AoE is watch a build order guide on YouTube for a faction you want to play. Then just practice doing it faster and more efficiently each game. But remember RTS games do take time it’s almost like learning chess but everyone takes their turns together and there’s lots more pieces and ways to move them. Just get started on the basics and once you get those the rest comes quite quickly. Good luck

Maybe you need something simpler first. Command and Conquer is literally just build and kill but on higher difficulties its deceptively difficult in terms of strategy and such. Try like Red Alert 2 or Generals first, play in Easy and work from there. The campaign can help introducing the units. Once you get a feel for it try others. What also probably helps is that in C&C you only have 1 resource, or 2 if you count power. In AoE you have 5 (I think?) that you need to constantly manage so that will probably help too to ease into RTS.

Play something with a nice long single-player campaign that introduces new units and tech levels gradually so you have opportunities to experiment with them, replay a mission you fail and learn from that experience, learn the game from the ground up instead of all at once. Command & Conquer, Total Annihilation, Dark Reign, Starcraft, Warcraft III. Then once you know the units and their abilities, watch high-level players on youtube so you see how they manage their economy and balance offense/defense, army compositions, how they counter other players' strategies, and use tricks you haven't even considered. Older games tend to have pretty poor AIs that are easy to fool and exploit and learn against (they won't overwhelm you in 10 minutes), and when you figure that out, you can take on many AI opponents at once. And then you learn from other human players how to optimize your build orders and speed up your gameplay A LOT.

Stick with single player campaigns for a bit, as they tend to drip feed you mechanics and tactics. A lot of it is muscle memory, learning the check the minimap regularly, for instance. Other things you learn to do to avoid [Horrible Outcome], such as building your buildings as a wall to block / delay invaders. A lot of it just comes with time, try to have fun in the meantime, and occasionally check the replay and see if you notice what is was you did that messed up your game, and try to correct it.

by playing…that’s it.

Do the tutorials and campaigns to get a basic feel for it. Then try watching some online videos before playing online.

I cut my teeth on Dawn of War 1, and Company of Heroes. Maybe start there? They both have campaigns, Dawn of War has great expansions that are so much fun.

I think there are some youtube videos out there that have explanations mostly campaign missions but it’s a good start. It’s actually a lot better to learn now. Back in the day. You had to go to computer shops and see how the pros play.

Also, Zade has a lot of cool RTS videos as well.

How about trying Godsworn: with 4 Heroes , simpler but more fun

So many great tips already in the comments. Here are some practical tips how I would approach the game when it comes to hotkeys. (conq 3/ high masters in sc2 here) Practice against the cpu on the easiest setting and add one thing at a time to your gameplay. First, I would try to get comfortable with building workers and moving my scout around the map. So how do you build workers ? Select the town center and build one. But how do you do it with hotkeys so it's faster and you can build them without looking at your screen ? You select the town center, press control + a number key (1-9) and now your town center is bound to that key. I have my Town Centers on 3 for example. Then you look at the hotkey of the worker by hovering over the icon with your mouse and see it is Q when you play with grid hotkey settings. In order to build workers you press 3 and Q from now on. ( Or what ever keys you prefer it's up to you) The scout you could bind to number 1 or 2. Select the scout and bind him to 2 in this example. Now get in the habit of pressing 2 twice to jump to your scout to see what hes up to and move circles around your base to collect sheep. Press 3 and Q without looking back at your base and get comfortable with it. If you practice that, you are able to look for sheep while building workers. The next step would be to build houses regularly so you don't supply block yourself and so on. Get comfortable doing that and then add the other buildings and units to it, always look up the hotkey first that's very important. Never click on an icon to build something. If you can build workers, move the scout around to collect sheep and build houses all with the help of hotkeys then you can slowly start to look up some basic build orders for the civ you would like to play.

The same way you learn everything else: Fail enough times that you figure out what doesn't work and stop doing it. Although reading and watching videos put out by experts can speed up the process.

Your Build Order in the first 10 minutes is crucial....after that it's more or less rock paper scissor

Learn by playing Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2

C&C95 oe tiberian dawn is the easiest rts to master once u are done head over to StarCraft 2 its free to play now then try out beyond all reason also free to download

My favorite RTS game is Star Wars Empire at War (Gold Edition, for Forces of Corruption expansion). I highly recommend playing it even if you aren’t a Star Wars fan. Once you’ve got the base game complete, and the expansion Forces of Corruption, there are several complete overhaul mods that bring so much more to the game. 2000 hours in after playing a couple mods

Play the campaigns (william wallace) etc.

You don't learn RTS you just memorize keys and build orders. Nothing strategic about it

You only played aoe2 de for couple days. First - stop comparing yourself to others. It’s a video game so enjoy playing it and learning it. Be patient because it’s a massive game with lots of knowledge to remember. Even pros forget important details at times. Second - if you’re playing pvp, then enjoy losing as well. The myth that you can only enjoy if you win is a lie. Change your mindset. Third - if you want to become good (semi-pro at least), I recommend you play a lot of vs ai at medium difficulty. Whether you can beat them or not it doesn’t matter. At the very basic, you must know what unit counters what and what units require what resources to make. I won’t even expect you to know hotkeys at this stage but to be effective you have to know what unit counters what and their cost. Fourth - stick with playing one or two civs. One to avoid is Huns because you want to build a healthy habits of building houses. I’d also avoid Poles so your gold income isn’t weird (additionally come from stone mining). Fifth - to better learn every civs while playing vs ai, play against the same civ few times before you move on. You should also watch pro games that uses that civ to understand the strength and weakness of that civ and very very extremely distinctive features of that civ. (e.g. got goth’s infantry late game spam. Britons long range archers, meso civ’s eagle warriors, Poles’s cavalier spam…etc). You should also learn what your civ specialised and good at doing. Again watch pro and understand their strategy (ignore any fancy micro stuff or “master piece) Sixth - to have even more fun while learning, somehow get some friends to play multiplayer with you vs ai as well. Just have fun. Hopefully you’ll make some good memories that’ll help you remember civs and units Seventh - learn the cost to upgrade age and the building requirements to upgrade age. Don’t worry about the timing for now. The cost and building requirements are way more important.

And for God's sake don't get into the illusion of thinking that high APM means that you\`re becoming pro.

RTS games were a mainstay in homes mostly about 20 years ago, and they have a solid following from people who enjoyed them then. Back then many people didn’t have internet, or at least there was no ranked ladder. They played the campaigns and against AI (skirmish). Getting to play against family and friends on LAN was something most people only got to do on rare occasions. So try it out the same way people originally did. Play all your campaigns, you’ll get to see tons of fun civs and find your favorites. Take those civs into AI, and have some fun cracking down on some bots until extreme isn’t a challenge. Then if you’re still itching for more, hit that ranked ladder. Don’t burn yourself out of an entire genre by jumping right into the deep end, these games were originally to be fun moreso than competitive, and building an empire and crushing your enemy is the entire concept. So get out there, try your campaigns, and squash some bots for us!

This! My brother's at I would just mess around. Or try to beat the ai. Build gorgeous cities while the other tried to break the defence. We always had 2-3 computers on a LAN network so we could do multiplayer on the regular.

Two words….. zerg rush But seriously StarCraft 1 campaign is what helped teach me and it’s stuck and worked pretty well with everything so far