So building a house would be Q+Q. Age I buildings start with Q, and the house is the top left grid icon, which is Q on your keyboard "grid". A Blacksmith would be W+Q, a stable would be W+S, a castle would be E+Z, etc.

Since you're learning from scratch it's best to establish the proper finger positions so that you don't trip yourself up. It's really simple. The first column (Q, A, and Z) is managed by your ring finger, the second column (W, S, and X) by your middle finger, and the 3rd and 4th columns by your index finger. I know it's tempting to use your pinky, but you want that finger to be free for CTRL and SHIFT, used in other hotkeys.

(There are a few more buildings that are for unique civs that aren't shown here, but since you'll have the process down already, they'll be easy to pick up when you play that civ for the first time. Don't worry about it at the moment.)

2.) Practice these Hotkeys with Aegis

I know, practice sucks and you just want to play Age of Empires, but this initial 30-45 minute session is very important, and will be all of the "outside of the game" practice that is required in this guide. It's absolutely worth it for the time spent, I promise!

Go to https://www.aegis.lol/, and click on "Options". Make sure "Economic", "Fortified", "Military", and "Research" are all checked. Just start with Age 1. Make sure "Show Grid" and "Fade in after 1 second" are enabled. Then back out and click "Start typin"

An icon will pop up, and you have to click the buttons needed to select that building. If you don't know the combination, the answer will fade in after a second. Play this minigame through a few times until your comfortable with it, shooting for a score of 90% accuracy and 30-40 actions per minute.

Once you can get that score two times in a row, go back to the options and select just Age II. Play through it again until you can get the scores mentioned earlier. Then repeat this process for Age III and IV, which are very small.

Once you've gotten the desired score in all 4 ages individually, go back to the options and enable all 4 ages. This will seem tricky, but you'll get the hang of it in no time at all. Once you get the desired scores here, you're done!

Congrats, you just learned 90% of the hotkeys you'll ever use!

Just practice all 4 ages together on Aegis for about 5 minutes before the first game of the day until it becomes second nature and you no longer need Aegis.

3.) Play some practice games against the AI using hotkeys

Now that you've got your hotkeys down, play the next 2-3 games using ONLY hotkeys to build buildings. I recommend starting on the easiest AI. This allows you to translate the skills you just built into the game in a low pressure environment. Just have fun playing however you would normally play, just with hotkeys instead!

Remember that before your first game of the day, you should go to https://www.aegis.lol/ to practice all 4 ages at once using the settings mentioned above for about 5 minutes, until it's become second nature.

4.) Learn the remaining hotkeys

There are a few hotkeys left to learn, but they're very important. Some of them need to be set in your settings just this once, but I promise they'll enable you to play at a completely different level!

You don't need to spend any dedicated time learning these, just try to use them in a few games and you'll get the hang of them very naturally.

For the hotkeys that need to be manually set, you can do this by going into the settings menu in-game, and clicking "View and remap controls" in the controls section. Be aware that this game allows you to bind multiple functions to the same key, which can cause issues if you try to use it without first unbinding or rebinding the conflicting actions.

• Producing units and researching upgrades from a building - Remember that grid from earlier? If you look at the units and upgrades you can produce from a building, they all use the same grid!

• Attack Move - Unless you're trying to take out a specific unit with archers, or destroy a specific building, you want to be using attack move for all of your big battles. It's simply the letter "A" for attack, followed by a left click. What this does is tell the selected units to move towards the point you clicked and attack all enemies they meet on the way. The benefit is that they will auto fight nearby units, instead of trying to only attack the enemy you clicked on, which often results in your units running around the enemy army to get to the unit you clicked on, causing you to lose many of your soldiers.

• Build Landmark - The only villager building hotkey that we left out, it's just "T". This will allow you to quickly get to the landmark selection screen. Something that will make this easier to learn is realizing that Q, W, E, and R select the age you want to build in. The next key over it "T".

• Civilization unique buildings - Some Civilizations have unique buildings, which use hotkeys in the same grid pattern, they just aren't represented in the Aegis practice we did earlier. Aegis has options to switch to these civs, but I wouldn't bother unless you want to. You can learn these as you learn a build order for these civs later.

• Seek Shelter - "G" is used when selecting villagers to make them automatically seek shelter in a Town Center, Tower, or Keep. Great for protecting your economy from a raid or for taking out a scout who got too close to your TC in the early game.

• Back to Work - "D" is used when selecting a building that has villagers garrisoned inside. Clicking this button will send the villagers back to doing whatever they were doing before you pressed "G"

• SHIFT - This button is used in a few different scenarios, and acts as a modifier.

  • When selecting units, you can press SHIFT and select a second group of units to have them all selected at once

  • When producing units from a building, holding SHIFT before you produce a unit makes you queue 5 at a time instead of 1

• Control Groups - When you've selected a unit(s) and/or building(s), you can press CTRL + a number (1-0 on the keyboard). This will put those units / buildings in a control group, so you can press the number you selected to quickly select them all again. Double pressing the number will zoom to them on your screen.

  • This is useful for micromanaging a battle. For instance, you can have all spearmen on 1, archers on 2, knights on 3, Men-at-arms on 4 Springalds on 5, Mangonels on 6, and Trebuchets on 7. This is how you micro a battle so you keep units fighting units they counter, snipe enemy siege, or escape from a bad matchup with part of your army.

• Hotkeys to manually set - These are hotkeys I find incredibly useful, but they either aren't set, or the defaults are very inconvenient.

  • Cycle through town centers - This one is very important, as it allows you to quickly produce villagers. By default, this key is "H", but I've found that it's way better to make this one of the side buttons on my mouse. You can change this in the keybinds if your mouse has side buttons. Once you've selected your town center, just click "Q" to build a villager. You'll be using this one a lot!

  • Cycle through Scouts - This one enables you to keep scouting while you manage your base, and is especially useful in the early game. I set this command to the other side button on my mouse. It will take some getting used to, but this allows you to easily micromanage your scout while you focus on building your base, so you don't have to rely on auto scouting (where you just right click one or more positions around the map and let your scout do his thing).

  • Cycle through idle economic units - I like to set this to CTRL + the mouse button I used for cycling Town Centers. This just allows you to quickly find your idle villagers, fishing boats, and traders. The default key is ".", which not very helpful.

  • Select all military units - I like to set this to CTRL + the mouse button I used for cycling scouts. It's very useful when you're trying to manage your whole army, either to get them out of a situation quickly, or move them to one location.

  • Select all idle military units - I like to use SHIFT + the mouse button I used for cycling scouts. It allows you to quickly send the soldiers that got left behind when you moved your army ahead from the waypoint for your military production buildings.

  • Cycle through religious units - I like to use SHIFT + the mouse button I used for cycling Town Centers. It isn't used as often, but allows you to quickly manage religious units when you're trying to take relics or sacred sites. This is especially useful for the Delhi and HRE.

  • Cycle through imperial officials - Only used for the chinese, but very useful. I use ALT + the mouse button I used to cycle town centers.

  • Select all military naval units - Useful for the same reason as selecting all military units. I put it on ALT + the same mouse button I use for cycling scouts.

  • Select all ____ buildings - I'm going to rapid fire these for you. I use CTRL + the standard grid buttons we learned before to select all of a single type of building. These allow you to quickly produce military or research upgrades without spending a lot of time back at base. These need to be manually set! Some of these will give you a warning that they're already in use. They should all be for ping hotkeys, which are generally useless, so feel free to go to the communications tab and get rid of or reassign the conflicting hotkeys.

    • CTRL + Q = Select all Barracks

    • CTRL + W = Select all Archery Ranges

    • CTRL + E = Select all Stables

    • CTRL + R = Select all Siege Workshops

    • CTRL + T = Select all Military Academies (useful for ottomans only)

    • CTRL + A = Select all blacksmiths

    • CTRL + S = Select all Monasteries / Mosques / Prayer Tents

    • CTRL + D = Select all Universities

    • CTRL + F = Select all Keeps

    • CTRL + G = Select all economy buildings (Mill, Lumber camp, mining camp, etc.) Great for quick upgrades

Whew, we're done with hotkeys. I know that seems like a lot but it won't take you long to get it all. Just don't focus on trying to learn them all at once. I would start at the top and try using as many as you feel comfortable with at once in a new game. Just learn them as you play, and you'll have them down in no time at all, I promise!

5.) Learn your first build order

Build orders also sound really scary, and some of you think they're unnecessary or even bad, arguing that they just script the game and make it boring. All of this would be wrong. Build orders are pretty simple, can be learned quickly (in about an hour), and function as a template for the first 10-15 minutes of the game in order to complete a certain goal in the optimal amount of time. If you want to Eco Boom as the Chinese, fight with longbows as the English, get to Castle quickly as the HRE, etc., the build order is just a template for getting to a point where you can realize your goal in the quickest time possible. After this, the game is too unpredictable to script out like this, so you play on your own.

You'll eventually have to learn to adapt the build on the fly depending on the individual game, but you don't have to concern yourself with that just now.

You can find build orders online, but I recommend finding build orders that are made by pros. The more recent the better, as they're more likely to reflect the current meta as well as any resource changes made in updates to the game. I recommend build orders made by Aussie_Drongo, BeastyQT, and Farm Man Official.

(https://www.youtube.com/@AussieDrongo), (https://www.youtube.com/@BeastyqtSC2), (https://www.youtube.com/@FarmManOfficial)

Once you've selected a build order to learn (I recommend starting with the English Longbow Rush, as it's a simple but effective build using the "starter" civ), start a single player skirmish against the easiest AI. Focus on the the first part of the build order, which is getting to Feudal age. This should only be about 4-6 minutes, depending on the build. Take it as slowly as you want to, but follow it exactly. Restart the game once you reach the Feudal age. Repeat this process until you can get to Feudal in the same amount of time (+/- a few seconds depending on resource locations) as the build order. This could take you 5+ tries to do, but at about 5 minutes each it's not bad at all.

Do this until you can consistently get to Feudal in time.

You'll find it quicker to learn if you don't focus too heavily on your scout in the beginning. Just collect the sheep around you and auto scout until you're comfortable with the build order.

This is a good time to learn those civilization specific building hotkeys we talked about earlier!

6.) Practice your build order against the AI

Once you can do this, repeat the whole process for the entire build order. When you've become comfortable with it, play against an easy AI, and you'll beat them with ease. Immediately switch to the Hardest AI, as Medium and hard do not give you any benefit. Their strategies are bad and they don't reflect how a human will play. The Hard AI will at least attack you in the beginning, requiring you to focus on a raid while you do the build order. It shouldn't take you long to beat the hard AI if you're using a build order.

That's it, you're ready to play against other people!

=====JUMPING INTO RANKED=====

Okay, you're comfortable with your build order, and you can beat the hardest AI. You're probably still scared of playing online, but don't be. Just jump in! I've listed a few things to know about how it will be as you start playing ranked matches.

1.) Your first 5 matches are placement matches

The first 5 games of ranked play are designed to figure out where your skill level is, so don't be disheartened if you get beaten pretty badly in a few of them. The game has to match you with players of different skill levels to determine where you fit, so it's completely normal to lose a few games. Just do your best!

Within a few matches you'll be playing against people of your skill level.

2.) Play a ranked game or two every day or two

When learning any skill, consistency is FAR more important than time spent. I like to start off with a quick refresher on the build order against an easy or hardest AI for my first game of the day, then quit once I get through it. If you can't play that often (maybe a few times a week), it's okay, you'll still get better, it just naturally will be a bit slower, and you should be aware of that so you don't get frustrated.

It won't take long for you to have a victory that you fought hard for and feel like jumping up and down with excitement because you beat a human player that scared you, and now you're hooked. Welcome to Ranked Age of Empires!

3.) Losing is part of the process

Remember that losing is part of the process. Just be aware of what you're doing wrong and try to get better as you play. You win by getting better, which leads to more victories. One of the best ways to do this is to spectate the game from your opponent's view immediately after you play, so you can see exactly what you were up against, when you had missed opportunities that would have been caught with scouting, etc. This takes a bit more time but if you do it only when you lose it isn't too bad, and the speed boost to your learning is worth it.

4.) Focus on improvement

Don't focus on your W/L ratio or Ranking, just focus on improving in single aspects that the replays show you need improvement on. Maybe you have the build order down, but always lose when the enemy rushes with a few units. You need to focus on how to protect your villagers while keeping your economy going. Maybe you need to focus on constant villager production, or scouting. Just focus on one thing at a time and you'll do great!

5.) Try new build orders

Once you've played several games online with your build order, you'll be pretty aware of its strengths and weaknesses. Maybe it's time to go learn a new one! By doing this, you expand your understanding of the game. The more build orders you learn, the more easily you can recognize an enemies strategy, and because you'll have played their strategy before, you'll know from experience how to disrupt them.

That's it! Beyond this you just need to keep playing and look for avenues for improvement. I've listed a few ways to do this as well as things to look out for in the final section below.

=====How to improve your gameplay=====

So you're playing ranked, and you want to get better. Here are a few ways to do this, in no particular order:

• Watch casted games of pro players. This will definitely help you learn things that you can improve on. This is especially useful if the caster is a pro / semi-pro who is talking about what they're doing right or wrong. I specifically recommend Aussie_Drongo, as I find his content extremely useful as well as entertaining. (https://www.youtube.com/@AussieDrongo)

• Watch videos online for improving specific skills (Scouting, defending against rushes, guides to different civs, etc.)

• Watch publicly available videos of a pro coaching another player. These videos are very useful, and while not specific to your game, can definitely give you a lot of insights.

• Focus on your scouting. Scouting isn't just about finding the enemy base. You're looking for a few things that will tell you what the enemy is doing, which allows you to prepare for them and increase the odds of a victory. Things like: What resources are they gathering? What military buildings have they made? Do they have any exposed (not covered by the TC) resources that I can put early pressure on? So if you see the HRE mining stone in Dark age or early Feudal, it's a safe bet that they're going to build a second TC and Eco boom (You can respond with an early ram timing push, or try to also go into an eco boom, as they're unlikely to pursue early aggression). If you see the Mongols mining a lot of gold and food, they're probably going to rush Castle age into Lancers (You should probably make lots of spears and knights, or even do an early feudal raid). If you see lots of wood and food being gathered, they're probably going to make archers and spears, so you should make archers and cavalry, or MAA. You can also use scouts to see when the enemy starts creating an army, allowing you to start producing the counter to their units, which can lead to you winning the first battle. The more information you have, the more you can predict what they will do, allowing you to alter your strategy accordingly.

• Remember that a build order is essentially a template for achieving a goal in the most optimal time possible. Know what the goal of the build order is, and if the enemy's actions change your goals, adjust accordingly. For instance I've been playing an Ottoman Feudal rush build order recently, but every time I faced HRE they would beat me, since they rush to castle and send Men at Arms, which I had no counter to in Feudal. Now, when I play against HRE, I put less villagers on wood for rams and more onto food and gold so I can go to castle too, adding crossbows to the mix. I also would take the 2 free Imams from the Vizier points so that I could take relics, which the HRE wants all of. Once I adapted I started winning my HRE battles.

• Keep playing and learning, and above all, have fun!

====================

I hope you've found this guide useful! Feel free to comment anything you think I should add to it.

I'm not a pro player yet, but I've taught myself a number of games and skills over the years, so I'm very good at assimilating information into a process to develop, and I am very much working on the same process I've given in this guide myself! The information I've compiled here is from videos and tutorials I've seen from pros, as well as my own experience in condensing learning into the quickest and easiest path.

If you guys find this helpful enough, I might make a YouTube video series covering the same points sometime in the future, I don't know. Let me know if you would find that helpful!

Another thing I want to do at some point is share my build order collection. While I don't create any build orders yet, I've watched a lot of videos with build order guides, and found myself creating my own notation system that I can have pulled up on my second monitor for learning new build orders quickly. I find it very useful, and would like to share them at some point.