aoe Units - basic Guide

Units

Villagers are the key for a fast unit production. A crucial part of the game is getting up the buildings that produce the military units and upgrade quickly. Never stop producing villagers until you have 15+ of them. Later in the game, you will need the villagers to build towers everywhere so they will remain useful.

Towers become much more important than in normal games since you can get (almost) as many of them as you wish. However, you should not build too many towers at the beginning because their construction time is so high. Once you have enough villagers (about 17), you can build your towers and other buildings very quickly. Do not waste stones for towers at useless positions, though.

Catapults will rule on land maps, and they are also important on sea maps. Make sure that your research Ballistics as soon as you hit the Iron Age, along with an upgrade from the Stone Thrower to the Catapult. A bunch of Heavy Catapults is almost unstoppable. The only thing that can stop them is more Catapults :)
Because their high cost does not matter anymore, you can set up 12+ Siege Workshops that keep pumping out these catapults. This will also offset another disadvantage, the high production time. If you have some Ballista Towers that protect your Catapults, all other units (Infantry, Cavalry and Archers) will become useless and hardly ever touch one of your Catapults. 30+ catapults mow through all buildings and towers really fast, it is only a matter of seconds until they are crushed. Cats rule in deathmatch!
Ballistas are less important because they have no radius damage and can be killed with one Catapult shot.

Juggernaughts are the most important unit at sea. If you start at the Iron Age already, forget about Triremes and go for Catapult Triremes from the beginning on. Research Engineering to be able to get the Juggernaught upgrade, then Ballistics. Build at least 10 docks so you can pump out these ships quickly. Protect the docks with towers, later with Catapults. Put all Juggernaughts together in one group and try to eliminate the enemy fleet. If successful, go for the docks first, then spread your ships around the enemy island so no new dock can be built. If you have made it that far, a land invasion will be no problem.

Never underestimate the value of Scouts! Even though casualties will not matter that much in deatchmatch (you can simply produce more units to fill the gaps), Scouts are crucial to detect weaknesses in enemy defenses. Later in the game, Heavy Horse Archers can replace Scouts. However, even when fully upgraded, their attack value is negligeable compared to Catapults, so their main use will be to kill villagers.