Age of History II Addon + Meta and Gameplay Tips

The best and most simple tricks to having a successful playthrough in Add-on + mod for Age of History 2.

Debriefing and Early Game

Add-on + is a mod for the game Age of History 2 which adds various features to the game including more ideologies, scenarios, formable nations, and provinces. The mod is one of the most popular game and in my personal opinion, it makes the game 10x more playable.

The technology points and the only 4 categories that matter.

• Onderzoek – Research is important if you are an uncivilized state, or a state that is far behind others throughout the world. It can be an easy way to progress faster than your neighbors, if successful you can become much stronger and more able to develop your state.
• Military Upkeep – For larger nations, or campaigns that will necessitate a lot of active troops (Byzantine Empire), investing in troop upkeep is a must. It will prevent you from falling into a black hole of debt during a war, which can be a run ender if you don’t know what you’re doing.
• Economy Growth – This is the MOST IMPORTANT. The economy is critical to winning the game, especially in smaller nations. Growing your state’s internal revenue without expanding is a great start to an aggressive campaign. If you play your cards right, you can win wars that would be impossible otherwise.
• Population Growth – The second most important; people are needed. The population growth adds meatshields and revenue (more workers) which makes it yet another great strategy for Tall (developing) games.

Tall vs Wide.

In the game AOH2 and others like it, there is the concept of playing tall or playing wide.

Tall players focus on internal development, economy, and overall stability in their core provinces. There are advantages to playing this way, but AOH2 rewards wide play much more.

Wide players focus on external expansion, war, and overall military focus. These players are able to reap the benefits of their neighbors who are weaker by invading and subjugating them.

As I stated before, playing wide is far more rewarded than playing tall. Wide play allows more provinces to fall before you lose major sources of income, but it also means you won’t have many friends. Tall play can be useful if you’re in a smaller state, maar anders, it is not worth the effort.

Once you have these things settled, it’s time we get into the mid-game strategies!

Here’s a Liechtenstein game I played.

The Middle Game

Now you’ve set yourself up for success, depending on which strategy you decided, your game will be very different.

Playing Tall

To play tall effectively, you must…

• Develop all provinces
• Invest in Research
• Build up your cores
• Pay for happiness (festivals)
• Stabilize your land

Development and Building up are self explanatory. Blijkbaar, to play with a good economy you need to spend money on buildings and economic investments.

Research is done to further progress up the points tree, the goal being to fill out all categories mentioned above and their related skills in order:

1. Economic Growth
2. Onderzoek
3. Population Growth
4. Taxation
5. Administration

Taxation and Administration are important, but only after you have successfully built your country’s economy and population to a point of exponential growth. They get more effective if you have more citizens.

Playing Wide

To play wide effectively, you must…

• Expand your borders
• Integrate new provinces
• Build castles and towers to defend with
• Get new soldiers

The best way to do the wide strategy is to invest heavily in military upkeep and population growth. Both of these traits directly allow you to make a larger fighting force. Plus, the slight boost in income from population growth can be used to build castles and most importantly armories.

Both strategies are viable, but only one of them will win you the game; playing wide will let you overpower the AI before they get too strong.

The Art of War

Dus, you’re a war mongerer now.

You’ve got your nation settled and organized, with troops prepared on enemy borders.

So how do you conduct a war?

The main pillars of war strategy in AOH2:

• Defense before offense
• Save money for troops
• Land must be covered.

Defense before Offense is a basic strategy of the game. It necessitates that an opponent must attack you first and then you counterattack. If you win a military engagement with an enemy on the defensive, they will have no troops left from the attack. This will allow you to move into provinces with the remaining troops. This is a great opening strategy to break an enemy’s defenses.

Saving money for troops seems like a no-brainer. Having around 20k in the bank for emergency deployments is essential for declaring war or defending your state from neighbors. It’s okay to be below the mark if you are well defended on all borders, maar anders, I would keep funds in the bank.

Land occupation is the final tenant in the triumvirate of strategy for the game. Instead of sending massive forces into one province, split said forces into multiple parts to remove any income for the enemy for hiring new troops. If you have them on the run, letting them get any breathers is a terrible terrible idea. This game rewards blitzkrieging.

Save yourself the trouble of losing war by following these strategies, later you can get more loose strategies once you get more comfortable.

Ideologies and their Importance

In AddOn+, there are numerous new ideologies. These can be used for roleplay, but they also have unique modifiers and traits that make them more useful depending on the strategy of the player.

Despite what I just said, there is an easy candidate for best ideology.

For all players, I recommend Paternal Autocrat.

Paternal Autocracy has very few disadvantages, being administration and research costs, but the taxes are higher on citizens, development is better, population growth is better, and military upkeep is better.

It’s unequivocally the best ideology of the entire mod because it is insanely effective regardless of strategy.

Zeker, you can roleplay as a king or communist dictator, but paternal autocracy will always be the best gameplay-wise.

Closing Statements

This game is very very dead, despite how much I love it and how much I wish to continue to support it… It’s clear, the game’s dead. The creator has left.

These guides are for the few players like me, who love this game that’s simple to pick up and only a little hard to master. Cheers!