Town Center (Age of Empires II)

"Used to create villagers, deposit resources (food, wood, stone, gold), advance to next age, and improve buildings, villagers. Units can garrison inside for protection."

—Age of Empires II description

The Town Center is a key economic building in Age of Empires II that becomes available for construction once the Castle Age is reached. It trains and improves Villagers, advances through Ages, and serves as a drop off point for all resources. Each Town Center also provides five population.

In regular random map games, every player starts the game with a Town Center. Until the Castle Age is reached, no more Town Centers can be built unless the only Town Center is destroyed, in which case the player may build one new Town Center. If the player has no starting Town Center (e.g. on Nomad), one Town Center can be built (and rebuild if destroyed) before the Castle Age.

Up to 15 Villagers can garrison in Town Centers for shelter from attacks. By doing so, they give the Town Center an attack (arrow fire). This way, players can survive and fend off early attacks. Archers can also garrison in Town Centers to give it an attack. Any non-mounted unit can heal its HP if garrisoned. This is especially useful before the Castle Age when there are no Monasteries and Monks.

Town Centers cannot be converted.

Tactics and placement Edit

The Town Center is the most frequently used building in the game (it even has a unique hotkey: pressing the H key cycles between all of a player's Town Centers), and it starts as the nucleus of every player's settlement and the only way to produce Villagers that will become the backbone of every player's empire. The Town Center is also a strong defensive building and through garrisoning, it also serves as a way to protect a player from some enemy attacks. Losing Town Centers hinder the economy of the player, even in the late-game, so they are often the target of attacks.

Once the Castle Age is reached, building more Town Centers is critical. These allow the player to increase Villager production and accelerate their entire economy. With the 200 stone from the default starting resources and no expenditure of Stone up to that point, two extra Town Centers can be built before having to mine more. Town Centers should be built close to freely available resources to allow Villagers to be quickly garrisoned. Preferable locations would be near gold or stone, because these resources are scarce and Miners are often target of harassment attacks. Town Centers have a lot of building armor, but it is not impossible to destroy one with a large mass of strong units such as Knights. Town Centers benefit a lot from University technologies, especially Treadmill Crane, as well as the increased damage per arrow from the Fletching line of upgrades at the Blacksmith.

There is a game mode called Sudden Death in which the players are limited to their starting Town Center. If the player loses it they are automatically defeated, so when playing Sudden Death, players must defend their Town Center at all cost.

Town Center rush Edit

The Town Center rush strategy was very popular in the earliest times of Age of Empires II, before The Conquerors made it nearly unviable due to balance changes. It revolves itself around deleting the own Town Center at the game start and rebuilding it close to the enemy's. That way, it could function as a tower and drastically hamper the targeted player's economy early on. To successfully employ that tactic, the Teutons were the only civilization in question, because their Town Centers got +5 range and +2 attack (changed to LOS in The Conquerors). With that bonus, the Town Center could be placed so that it could attack the enemy's Town Center without being in their range to be attacked itself. That led to many hosts adding 'No Teutons' in the lobby description, and kicking players choosing the Teutons. That was very unfortunate for those favoring the Teutons for other of their qualities. Persian players can still employ a similar tactic, as their Town Centers have double hit points, but at the risk of losing Villagers in the process. Teutons can still use this tactic, as with the HD expansions, their Town Center can garrison 25 units and have more firepower than others. Byzantines can also use this, because of their HP bonus to buildings, but in the Dark Age, the bonus is relatively small and the player has to be very careful. The Cumans can perform a double Town Center rush, since they can build an additional one in the Feudal Age, but it takes time, and also has the risk of losing Villagers in the process.

Repairing Edit

Repairing a Town Center does not cost any stone but twice the wood building a new one requires. So repairing an almost destroyed Town Center costs almost 550 wood compared to 275 wood and 100 stone for building a new one. That is very different from usual repairing cost which is simply half the building cost. Although it does not require stone, the stone pile must not be empty, otherwise the Villagers will not start repairing.

Trainable units and technologies Edit

Clicking on the icon links to the corresponding page.

Blue: Units

Green: Technologies

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Further statistics Edit

Building strengths and weaknesses
Strong vs.	Short-ranged weak units (with garrison only)
Weak vs.	Long-ranged units, Tarkans, Huskarls, War Elephants, rams
Upgrades
Hit points	Masonry (+10%)  Architecture (+10%)
Attack	Fletching (+1)  Bodkin Arrow (+1)  Bracer (+1)  Chemistry (+1)  Tigui (enables Town Centers to shoot arrows without garrison, Malians only)
Range	Hill Forts (+3, Lithuanians only)
Accuracy	Ballistics (hit moving targets)
Armor	Masonry (+1/+1, +3 building armor)  Architecture (+1/+1, +3 building armor)
Line of Sight	Town Watch (+4)  Town Patrol (+4)  Fletching (+1)  Bodkin Arrow (+1)  Bracer (+1)
Construction speed	Treadmill Crane (+20%)
Other	Herbal Medicine (garrisoned units heal faster)  Crenellations (Teutons only, enables garrisoned infantry to shoot arrows)