Colloquial language, jargon, and abbreviations are common among players of any game in the Age of Empires series. While the former is usually just short versions of the actual term and especially common in spoken language, the latter are much more common in written form and mostly consist of beginning letters of the meant term.
This page is a glossary of lists of abbreviations, acronyms, and colloquial language commonly used by Age of Empires players, especially in multiplayer matches.
Flank (for Team Together games): Player whose one of the two closest neighbors is an enemy.
Floating Resources: Extra resources collected which the player is not using.
Getting housed: Being at a position where the player is under the maximum population limit, but does not have any population headroom to create more units.
gg: "Good game" (used when indicating intention to resign, or after resigning, or in response to another gg)
Idle: Letting the Town Center go idle, i.e. any time the Town Center is not producing worker units or researching upgrades, before reaching a sufficient number of workers
K/D: Kills by deaths ratio (number of of enemy units killed compared to number of the player's own units lost)
Kite: Hit and run tactics, continuously stopping only to fire projectiles at the pursuing targets and then moving away while the units prepare the next volley. Used with any ranged units in the early game, and then primarily with highly mobile ranged units, like mounted archers, in the midgame.
PUP: Public Update Preview, a feature for Steam versions of Age of Empires series games whereby users can opt-in to beta versions of upcoming builds. The PUP version is a different game version and thus cannot interact in multiplayer with the base (live) game version. It is meant for users to test and give feedback on changes, and to identify bugs, so that they can be fixed before release.
Smurf: A player who plays at an artificially modified rating level, whether that be by creating new accounts, or resigning repeatedly even when in a winning position, etc.
Champskarl: +3 pierce armored MalianChampion, a portmanteau of Champion and Huskarl.
Chembow: BohemianCrossbowmen in the Castle Age with Chemistry researched, due to their civilization bonus to research the technology an age earlier, gaining +1 attack.
Coomer: Cuman player employing a booming strategy.
Daut Castle: Losing many Villagers when building a Castle, or failing to complete a Castle that has reached a high build percentage (usually 90+).[note 2]
GL: GamerLegion, one of the professional players' leagues
go? or 14?: Used when asking to unpause a paused multiplayer match
"Greed" or "Greedy play": Intentionally choosing a booming strategy when the opponent is going for a rush, often without investing much in the way of defense. See also: Punish.
Laming: Killing or stealing enemy's herdable animals or hunt, or in extreme cases gold and stone. Attacking unbuilt Farms to kill them instantly also counts as laming.
Punish or Punish the greed: An aggressive player causing great losses to a booming player who did not invest much in the way of defense. See also: Greed.
Thanks DE: Reacting to finding a bug, usually to pathfinding, in a joking manner (as if bugs did not exist before the Definitive Edition); popular because pathfinding at Definitive Edition release was worse than that of the Voobly Userpatch
Trash unit: Refers to any military unit which does not cost Gold. eg: Spearman line, Skirmisher line, Scout Cavalry line, and some Unique Units like Magyar Huszars after researching Corvinian Army, Malay Two-Handed Swordsmen after researching Forced Levy, etc.
Trashbows: Persian Crossbowmen after Kamandaran is researched are called as such, due to the fact that they don't cost gold anymore, making them a trash unit
↑EAPM considers effective actions rather than all actions, i.e. in-game effects rather than input, for eg: tasking a group of soldiers to attack a target requires 3 actions (clicking and drawing a box around the units or double clicking them, right clicking on the target), but is just 1 effective action.
↑The original Daut Castle actually went up but DauT lost most of his Villagers in the process
↑This abbreviation is used officially, and is not limited to Age of Empires IV
Age of Empires[]
Age of Empires II[]
Age of Mythology[]
Age of Empires III[]
