If anyone feels like chiming in here, that'd be great.
Quickly, I played AOE when I was kid sometimes, but never learned more than the basics, in my teens I knew more about AOEII than I ever did the first game, and now I play II a lot on online, learned the techniques, stats and strategies.
The only time I play the 1st AOE now is rare, always with this Upatch mod, and I want to play more, so I've slightly adapted to the techniques to play this game, as it's a bit different to the 2nd one. In saying that, I still haven't figured out how to be normally successful, and am really slow at building my Empire.
So apart from any advice, my question is how come the campaign and expansions seems so incredibly difficult to play on the 'moderate' difficulty level, and too simple and boring on 'easy'?
I know this is the age old problem with both games, as well as the AI and difficulty in general. It's either too easy, or far too hard. Is this partially caused by the Upatch?
Another thing connected to this is it seems to take ages to complete a level, such as progressing through a map in the campaign, its geographically difficult considering the 50 population limit for one thing, but that's how it was intended. How do I move on faster whilst trying to maintain my villager economy and military presence? Meanwhile the AI is at the highest Age from what seems like the start and are sending their heaviest units to my base while I'm just getting starting.
Perhaps my playing of AOEII has made it difficult to understand how to play successfully in the first game? I understand this mod is mainly aimed at multiplayer.
Rogan