Easy Level Trick / Age of Empires II

• In many, many missions, you start off with a handful of units. Often, if you rush the nearest enemy base with your starting units, you'll find that they have little to no defenses, which lets you rampage through their base until they scrape up enough units to push you back or are forced to resign.
• Joan of Arc:
  • In the first mission, you have to escort Joan to a castle. You can find a path way that will allow you by pass all enemies and reach your objective without attacking anyone.
  • A significant portion of the difficulty in the third mission "The Cleansing of the Loire" comes from Fastolf's Army, which, if left alone long enough, will advance to the Imperial Age (while the player is still limited to the Castle Age) and attack the player with waves of Cavaliers. In the cutscene before the mission, you're warned to avoid Fastolf until you're strong enough to face him. However, if you completely disregard that advice and rush his camp, you'll find that he starts with only a handful of villagers and a Guard Tower. Since you start with a small army, you can destroy his camp before it gets built up, taking a lot of the heat off.
  • In the fifth mission "The Siege of Paris", you need to escape into an allied town in order to win, however, there are Burgundian ambush troops in front of the gates, and you can't go around them because the rest of the way is blocked by forests... unless you managed to save your Trebuchets, which can force-fire on the trees to clear you a way, slip pass to the back of the Burgundy forces, who wouldn't attack you because the script expected you to enter from the road, then proceed to stone them to death from a safe distance. Either that, or just march happily from that point to the finish line. By setting yourself to Ally with Burgundy before they see player's units can cause them to just become neutral, avoiding the ambush entirely.
• In Saladin's sixth scenario "The Lion and the Demon", you have to build a Wonder and defend it from five enemies who use powerful units. While the game expects you to build the Wonder in your city, in the original release there is an island in the west of the map that is just large enough, and only one of your enemies uses warships.
• Genghis Khan:
  • In the first level, "The Crucible", you can change your stance to neutral and use the monk to convert all the tribes' units without completing their tasks. Rectified with an Obvious Rule Patch in the Definitive Edition, however, where they will immediately become hostile when this is done. The same change also applies to certain other campaigns where the player might be tempted to abuse the diplomacy change to nab free units from their allies (e.g. Dracula).
  • In the fourth scenario, "The Horde Rides West", the Persians remain allied to you for thirty minutes (reduced to 13 minutes in the Definitive Edition) or until you assassinate the Shah. They will automatically resign when their Wonder and two Castles are destroyed. You can use the two assassins to kill off their army, and build a Siege Workshop next to each castle to produce Battering Rams to destroy the Castles and the Wonder before killing the Shah. Meanwhile, in the north, one enemy resigns automatically when all their military units are killed and transfers their buildings and resources to you, while the other resigns when their castle is destroyed and only four or less of their military units are left, so you can build a Siege Workshop near that castle and send Battering Rams to destroy it while using Subotai and your other starting units to kite their units. This can win the level in under ten minutes.
• Barbarossa:
  • In the second mission, "Henry the Lion", the namesake's army is allied with everyone, including the Polish army, however, the Polish army isn't allied with him. Sometimes, a small Polish force will push past your base and attack him. If you don't disturb them, this leads to a rather amusing scene where Henry declares supremacy over Barbarossa, when all he has to his name are a couple of wrecked houses and a handful of badly wounded soldiers.
  • "Pope and Antipope", the third mission, can be tricked if you don't mind a little Save Scumming. Take your starting units on a transport across the river north of Milan, then convert a couple dozen infantry and rush the gates. Send your monks straight to the Cathedral (research Redemption first) while your military units draw attention away. It'll take a few tries, but you'll clear the level in about ten minutes when it works. This was even made an achievement in Definitive Edition.
  • "The Lombard League" features a downplayed example. Henry the Lion returns, and will betray you yet again, but only when you build a Castle. If you play without one, he stays allied to you. He's completely useless as an ally, and you lose out on a bunch of useful techs, but having one less enemy to fight makes the mission slightly easier.
• Atilla the Hun:
  • In the first mission "The Scourge of God", If you ally with the Scythians, they will probably attack the Persian fortress before you get the chance. Since the Persians are still marked as being allied with the Scythians, the Persian AI apparently bugs out and just twitches spasmodically as the Scythian archers cut them to shreds.
    • It's possible to defeat Persia with the starting units. They're still in the Feudal Age and don't have an army or Murder Holes^note which removes the close range limit from Towers, Town Centers and Castles, so you can destroy their towers, castle and town center and wipe out their villagers before they age up.
  • Unintentional example: in the fourth mission, "A Barbarian Betrothal", you have to fight off the Roman Army's counterattack after you destroy all three cities. However, if you can find a placeholder unit hidden on the map, you can kill him, which breaks the script and allows you to skip the fight with the army. However, in later versions of the game, the army will still spawn even after the placeholder is killed, forcing the player to defeat them to finish the scenario, though now if you place a few units at the edge of the map on their spawn point, they are prevented from spawning, automatically winning the scenario. This was patched out in later versions, however.
• The penultimate El Cid level, "King of Valencia," if you're fast you can build a wall in front of Berenger's gate, breaking the script completely and preventing him from sieging Denia or spawning new units. He has a few units scattered throughout the map, but once they're dealt with the entire map is yours. The objective of simply building a Wonder won't occur, requiring you to defeat Berenger, but aside from his starting units (which are stuck in the walled-off area and easy prey to cavalry archers or conquistadors) and four villagers (which makes Spies very cheap), his base is empty and can easily be destroyed with trebuchets and cannon (it may be necessary to destroy or convert Denia's Siege Workshop to win).
• Montezuma:
  • The second scenario, "The Triple Alliance", requires you to fight the Tlaxcala alongside the Texcoco and Tlacopan, both of whom turn on you after the Tlaxcala are defeated. If you know it's coming, you can build a Castle right next to their Town Centers. This locks down their villagers and paralyzes their economies, and the Castle will destroy the Town Center by itself if given enough time.
  • In the fourth mission, "La Noche Triste", you have to retake Tenochtitlan, which is now occupied by the Spanish army, and destroy the Spanish wonder being built inside it before the time runs out. The script expects you to fail in your first attempt, make it to the docks with what is left of your original, small army, hijack some ships, cross the lake, find an allied town and rebuild your forces in time to march against Tenochtitlan again. However, by the time you reach the docks, you would have recruited a few Gaia units, and there's only a simple gate separating you from the wonder site. This means that a player can simply tear down the wall then and destroy the wonder before it is finished. There's even an easier way where you can just waltz straight into the construction site by accident and destroy it effortlessly if you avoid the guards since said route is neither walled off nor filled to the brim with guards. Even then, the Spanish don't even bother sending reinforcements to fend off those who interrupt the Wonder construction, unlike what even the Random Map A.I.s would do in the first place.
• Battles of the Conquerors:
  • "Tours": You're expected to play conventionally, building up your forces to hold off the enemy advance and eventually attack the Saracen-occupied city of Poitiers at the far south end to take their supply carts and send them back to Orleans. However, it's possible to beat the battle within minutes of starting by using Charles Martel and his army of knights and axemen at the southeast end of the map to attack the gate of Poitiers, baiting the garrison into heading out the gates to attack- just as the gate opens, wedge one of your knights under it to keep it from closing, allowing you to easily capture the carts and take them back to your base.
  • "Manzikert" : You have to force three Byzantine towns to pay tribute to you. By using anti-"fog of war" or you just know the map, Pisidia can be the first to pay tribute to you. They have no gates guarding them on Easy, enabling you to rush your Light Cavalry units to their Town Center. They have gates at harder levels but attacking the gate and withdraw closely will draw the defending Cavalry Archer units to attack at the opened gates, enabling you to rush your Light Cavalry through the gauntlet of enemies to their Town Center too. This strategy also works with Cappadocia's eastern gate. This tactic will keep their gates intact when they switch sides and get their tributes for necessary resource for early gameplay.
  • "Agincourt" : You start with a large army with a few monks and only 80 Wood and 85 Gold and cannot build a base. You can convert four villagers, task them with collecting 20 Wood each, then have them build a farm, which automatically deposits it in your inventory, which allows you to build a lumber camp, collect more wood and build a base, or just a dock to make a transport. Alternatively, you can rush through the map with just Henry V and reach the transport back to England.
• In the second mission of the Bari campaign, "The Rebellion of Melus", you have two enemies. One of them does not produce new units or have any buildings, the other does not produce units until you complete a certain objective. You are meant to bring a relic to the Norman village and receive it (this will prompt the Rebels to start producing units), fight your way to Potenza, complete an objective for them, receive Potenza's buildings, and then take Bari. Alternatively, once you are given a monk to help with the task to get the Norman village, if you can carefully manage troops to avoid losing any, you can make it to Potenza, complete their objective, receive the city along with a few villagers and a chunk of resources, and then storm Bari while they are still unable to produce new units.
• Sundjata:
  • In the fourth scenario, "Blood on the River", it is possible to trigger a glitch where endless Gbeto will spawn after saving the Mema Princess, pretty much turning the final battle into a Zerg Rush.
  • In the final mission, "The Lion's Den", the enemy will waste no time in overwhelming you from land and sea while you will struggle to advance and defend yourself from frequent, massive invasions. To make it worse, they will go for a Wonder victory after a certain amount of time. If you can wall a small chokepoint separating you and the enemy and build a Castle there, it will give you ample time to build up a strong enough force to storm their fortress. It helps that the enemy will never send troops through the sea, so you don't need to focus too much on building a navy. In terms of unit compositions, an army of Gbetos and siege weapons are enough to beat them on land, as they are mostly made of close combat units with low melee armor.
• In the third mission of the Le Loi campaign, "The Battle at Hanoi", you receive military buildings and immediately pass by an extremely high HP gate with a Castle behind it you are clearly intended to bypass. However, just a bit later you will receive a large group of villagers. Shortly ahead of this is an area which will give you transport ships to cross a river. If you pay close attention to the highlighted area of the main enemy city, you will notice that receiving these ships is what activates the enemy ability to start gathering resources, producing new units, and upgrading. There are also a number of farms, trees, and gold deposits prior to the transport ships that you can have your new villagers gather. Using the Stable you were given previously in the mission, it is extremely easy to simply build a group of Battle Elephants, break down the gate, destroy the entire enemy base, and win the mission without them ever able to produce troops or effectively fight back.
• Francisco de Almeida:
  • The second and third levels, "The Lion of Africa" and "Ruins of an Empire", your allies will change their stance to enemy once the main enemy is defeated, and will themselves be defeated once you destroy their castle and wonder, respectively. You can put a catapult or bombard in front of that building and set it to Attack Ground to destroy it, which will cause them to be instantly defeated when the other enemy is defeated. Alternatively, you can bring it to within one hit and then wait for the other enemy to be defeated before destroying the building. Additionally, in Ruins of an Empire, you can build a base earlier than you're supposed to by switching your stance to neutral and converting an ally's villagers.
  • In the final level, "A Son's Blood," you're allied to everyone else until you convert Afonso, at which point they go to war with you and one will instantly gain a Wonder, but you can Take Your Time and build up your forces, exhaust all resources around their bases, abuse Attack Ground to destroy their entire bases and position troops around their units and where the Wonder will appear to defeat them when they become enemies.
• In the first Ivaylo scenario, you may choose to attack Konstantin instead of allying with him. The game intends for you to siege the largest, best-fortified Boyar city in order to reach Konstantin. However, the only thing separating his base from the destroyed, unguarded town just outside of it is a line of thin forest, which can easily be cleared with Trebuchets or Villagers. This allows you to totally skip the fortress and most of Konstantin's army. Using this trick, you can beat the scenario after killing only one of the Boyars and never even bothering with the Tatars, since Konstantin's death ends the match. You can make it even easier by using Trebuchets to siege his town from the other side of the forest first. The AI will send much of his retinue out and around the Boyar city to reach you, but while they're making the trip, break through the treeline and kill Konstantin, who is now virtually unguarded.

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