[Outdated] Avoid losing time by changing game speed during levels loading (William Wallace)

NOTE: WILLIAM WALLACE IS NOW LOCKED AT THE SPEED 1.5, THIS GUIDE IS NO LONGER VALID.
Step 1: Start the level.
Step 2: As soon as the beginning wallpaper appears/first bgm starts playing, spamming the button "+" on the numpad.
Step 3: Done, you will get 2.0 game speed before the objective appears on the level.
This trick allows you to avoid losing time for having to press "+" and execute at the same time on WW campaigns.
Note: This trick is considered outdated, due to the fact that it's only viable for real time and not in-game time.

Change the difficulty of The Art of War Campaign

You can't select the difficulty in this campaign menu, however there exists a method to change it. If you doubt my words, please press F11 to check the timer/difficulty.
The game actually keeps and uses the difficulty of the last scenario you played in the official campaign section, so what you need to do is simply play a scenario in the campaign with the difficulty you desired and finish/quit the level, then you can play the AoW missions with the difficulty you wanted.
For example: You want to play "Destroying a Castle" on Moderate, then you need to play a scenario in the official campaign (e.g. "Marching and Fighting") on Moderate first so the game will remember that data. Now when you play "Destroying a Castle" it will always put you on Moderate. If you want Hard or Standard, just do the same.

Downgrading game versions

https://youtu.be/izI0OjphSos

PLEASE BACK UP YOUR PLAYER DATA BEFORE DOING THIS (e.g. campaign progress).

Patching campaign to its original state

As you all already knew, due to the changes to the campaign through the patches some of the levels are impossible to improve due to these issues. However we can use the backup files to patch the campaign to its original state.
1. Download the file "Campaign backup before 34699" in the Resources section.
2. Extract the file.
3. Overwrite all of the files at "SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\AoE2DE\resources\_common\campaign" using the files in the backup folder you just extracted. (REMEMBER TO BACK UP THE FILES BEFORE OVERWRITING)
4. Feel good.

Some of the levels to test out: "Razzia", "The Lombard League", "Ruins of Empires".
Currently this is allowed to make things fair for everyone.

Settings for speedruning (60 fps)

https://prnt.sc/pz7wnw

Reduce your screen resolution to increase performance (not entirely, but to get optimal performance)

Tactics for recording :
-if you are on Windows 10 : use Windows recorder Alt + G (best option in my opinion)

-You can use OBS for streaming (reduce the bitrate of your stream or non-stream if the lag appears in the level)

If you play individual campaign - full campaign use SSD hard drive for reducing load time

For York, a strong GPU is requiered for optimal performances as the size of the map is super giant it slows the game horribly especially if the settings are to the max or activating 4k setting (example GeForce GTX 1080)

The Forgotten HD Campaigns

https://www.ageofempires.com/mods/details/16234/

William Wallace - Training the Troops

Below is the second-by-second breakdown of the run. The excess time is for the unskippable dialogue. You want to ensure you do not get housed to avoid additional unskippable dialogue. You should hover over the initial barracks location to place, then queue a vil.

For this run, I re-bound the select all barracks hotkey to shift+b so I could hold shift + press delete -> b -> q in order to queue in all barracks without getting housed as quickly as possible. 

Notable points are:

11 & 12: sending two vils to work on the new barracks. I also shift-queue the remaining vils to the new barracks around here

34: trying to kill the 5th vil as late as possible, but without any delay on queuing the militia

35: I shift-queue the militia to ensure the second is placed, but you don't need to obviously.

55: the del->b->q banana needs to happen quickly. One barracks might be built before the other, but that doesn't matter because the timing of the *last* militia is the only thing that matters. If done correctly, the last two barracks should be in sync up with the first one. 



In theory, this could be 1m30 based on my spreadsheet, but not by my hands. If I divided up the seconds, maybe there's even more juice to squeeze, but I can't confirm. 

![](/static/blob/5ngd2d4n.png)

BellumZeldaDS

pandookrb

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition

Barbarossa: Barbarossa's March

Ivaylo: Tsar of the Bulgars

Tamerlane: Scourge of the Levant

Liu Bei: The Oath of the Peach Garden

Cao Cao: The Battle of Red Cliffs

Alexhao

32708-33315

The Age of Kings

The Conquerors

The Forgotten

The African Kingdoms

Rise of the Rajas

The Last Khan

William Wallace PC

Joan of Arc

Saladin

Genghis Khan

Barbarossa

Attila the Hun

El Cid

Montezuma

Battles of the Conquerors

Alaric

Dracula

Bari

Sforza

Pachacuti

Prithviraj

Battles of the Forgotten

Tariq ibn Ziyad

Sundjata

Francisco de Almeida

Yodit

Gajah Mada

Suryavarman I

Bayinnaung

Le Loi

Ivaylo

Kotyan Khan

Tamerlane

The Art of War

34055-34223

34397-34483

34699

34793

35209

35584

36202

36906

37650

37906

39284

39515

40220

40874

41855

42848

The Lords of the West

Edward Longshanks

Grand Dukes

The Hautevilles

Historical Battles

Feudal Age

Castle Age

Imperial Age

Random Map

Arabia

Standard maps

44725

44834

45430

46295

47820

Dawn of the Dukes

Algirdas and Kestutis

Jadwiga

Jan Zizka

50292

50700

Arena

51737

53347

54480

54684

No AI

56005

58259

58850

59165

Babur

Dynasties Of India

Devapala

Rajendra

61321

Definitive Edition

Lords of the West

Version

All Campaigns

Individual Campaign

Storage Type

Setting

Maps

Individual Campaign Co-op

Wonder Race AI

Individual Levels Legendary difficulty

PlayStation 5

Xbox Series X

Xbox Series S

PlayStation 5 Pro

Age of Empires

Discord Server

Game Speed Unable to be fixed to Fast in Campaign Levels

New Category Request - Forrest nothing 11x11 turbo

100% runs?

New patch changed Barabarossa 4

New rule: glitches are banned

Mhmd_FVC

Freezard

Chazb

Whizzy_the_Elephant

FolderOfDoom

bengute

Piloerector

Rauvetii

Da_Comanda

名称	作者
[Outdated] Avoid losing time by changing game speed during levels loading (William Wallace)	Tei 4 years ago
Change the difficulty of The Art of War Campaign	Tei 5 years ago
Downgrading game versions	Tei 3 years ago
Patching campaign to its original state	Tei 4 years ago
Settings for speedruning (60 fps)	BellumZeldaDS 5 years ago
The Forgotten HD Campaigns	BellumZeldaDS 4 years ago
William Wallace - Training the Troops	pandookrb 1 year ago