For many Age of Empires was their first foray into the RTS genre and it’s a classic that still holds up to this day, so much so the original and its highly popular sequel have been re-released in HD remakes and remasters more than once. But for anyone with fond memories of this series, there’s always a handful of cheat codes that they hold dear since it was back in an era when you could pop in a random code that sounded like nonsense but changed the game exponentially.
Age of Empires 2 has always leaned into the weird and dumb fun side of things when it comes to its cheats and it only got stranger as the series went on, but there are also some incredibly useful ones. If you’re thinking of revisiting AOE 2 or are trying it for the first time, here’s a couple of classic cheat codes you can play around with by just hitting Enter and typing them out.
Updated February 10th, 2023 by Matthew Mckeown: They say Cheaters never prosper, but they do in Age of Empires, especially if you use some of the powerful unit spawning codes. Everyone has their favorite and the franchise has continued to add more and more oddities as the series went on.
In AOE 2 there's a plethora of codes to use to cheat your way to an easy victory, help out in a dire situation or just have a bit of wacky fun with some overpowered units. We listed some great ones, but there's still more to get through as the cheat list is pretty long. So here’s an updated look at the best cheats in Age of Empires 2.
15 Saboteur
A highly damaging one-and-done unit that also appears briefly in the campaign, the Saboteur is a highly destructive unit that detonates itself in a spectacular explosion. To summon this big boom-providing boy, just enter “to smithereens” and one will appear in your town center.
Saboteurs are the ultimate siege weapon as they have a +500 attack bonus against buildings and stone defenses. With a blast radius of 2.5, it’s a moderately spaced bang that will deal plenty of damage to a town if set off in the right spot. Though their hitpoint value is a tiny 45, and they only have an armor amount of one, they’re perfect for breaking through fortifications. Oddly enough, they also have the Ship armor class, which gives them an attack bonus against boats. So if someone is holding a chokepoint with a Navy force that’s close to the shore, you can turn those barges into tinder.
14 Furious The Monkey Boy
If you’re looking for the epitome of a Glass Cannon, then Furious The Monkey Boy is an oddity you’ll definitely want to spawn in. This cheat unit is called in when you enter the code “furious the monkey boy” and he’s an ape that knuckle-walks its way around the map at a brisk 0.99 movement speed, not the fastest but he’ll get there eventually. When he does, Furious unleashes a brutal 99 points of damage on a target. More than enough to instant kill minor units or seriously dent late-game soldiers in just a few swipes.
Old Furious’s swipes are so powerful in fact that he can absolutely decimate buildings as he gets a +999 attack bonus against structures. So let that ape loose on a base and watch it burn. However, this fuzzy furious chap has very thin skin, with only nine hitpoints it takes just a few smacks to send him screeching to the grave. Best used in massive monkey waves, Furious is a great cheat unit that can cause complete chaos easily.
13 The VMDL
Age of Empires 2 has a lot of very useful cheats and a fair amount of pretty useless ones. The VMDL doesn’t fully fall into the latter camp, but it does dip a toe in that particular pool. Resembling a wooden model doll, entering “i love the monkey head” will spawn one of these odd chaps at your Town Centre. An interesting fact about this unit is that its full name is Villager Male Dave Lewis and it's named after David Lewis, an employee of Ensemble.
The VMDL’s role is a pretty odd one. It can put down basic foundations for buildings and garrison itself inside towers or other structures to give it an attack bonus. However, they can’t actually build anything, gather resources, or attack anyone. They’re best used for scouting or acting as sentries as they’re the fastest unit in the entire game. But other than that they just mainly stand around doing nothing.
12 Instant Player Kill
Similar to the Instant Win cheat, this one is a more situational code that can be used for cheap and easy wins, dealing with an AI faction or just trolling your friends if you’re playing as a group. When entered correctly, it instantly destroys a specific faction, town centers, villagers, and all. To use it just type “Torpedo <number>” with the number corresponding to the specific player in the list.
For example, “Torpedo <7>” would instantly wipe out player seven, whilst “Torpedo <1>” instantly kills your own civilization. If you’re unsure what faction corresponds to a specific number, just open the player list and count. The position of the faction correlates to their number, so just make sure you put in the right one, the last thing you want is to accidentally nuke a teammate or yourself.
11 Taunt Control
This cheats more aimed that the multiplayer crowd as it impacts the taunting mechanic that’s hard-baked into the game. For those not familiar, it’s a system that plays out a short taunting audio line that players can send each other when they enter a specific number in the taunt list. There are 42 in the standard edition of Age of Empires 2 and 105 in the Definitive Edition, so there are a lot of audio lines to throw around at each other.
However, if you tire of the constant noise you can easily shut everyone up. Just type in “!mute” and all of the taunts will be instantly muted, ah sweet silence. Entering in “!nomute” turns them back on, so you can hold the threat of it over other players if the server is getting particularly rowdy. It’s not a particularly impactful cheat, but it’s still fun to mess around with if you get a good group together.
10 Give Resources
Building up resources in Age of Empires 2 isn’t too difficult as long as you don’t spread your villagers too thin, but often by the time you have enough to put aside for a decent army or powerful upgrades, the in-game enemy AI is already on its way to steamroll you.
To top up your supplies in a pinch there’s a couple of handy resource cheats that give 10k per resource apiece. For example, "Cheese steak jimmy’s" is for food, "Robin hood" is gold, and "Rock on" is for stone. The catch-all ‘Ninjalui’ gives 10k by default for all resources, but that code can be a little temperamental and it doesn’t always work.
9 Reveal Map
The map of Age of Empires 2 is a dark and fog-covered realm. There are two layers to it, vision range and fog of war and they obscure the entire map until it’s uncovered by your units. A staple in every RTS, the only downside is that the enemy AI likes to spread itself across different parts of the map, turning short matches into long slogs as you need to hunt down every last villager.
But, entering "Marco" reveals the entire map including view range, so you can instantly see where the hostile encampment is and where their troops are currently headed. It’s pretty handy for planning your attacks ahead of time, finishing off stragglers or keeping an eye out for any incoming assaults before they hit your walls.
8 Instant Build
Building anything in Age of Empires 2 is going to take time, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is your village so you’ll need to be patient. Low tiers buildings like huts, towers, and barracks are relatively quick, but bigger things like marketplaces and especially Wonders can take quite a while.
You can get around this completely though with the instant build cheat. By entering in "Aegis" you will be able to construct buildings as quickly as you can place them. Although bear in mind those constructs aren’t free and if you get a bit overzealous you can burn through resources too quickly accidentally.
7 Control Wildlife
One of those cheats that belong in the weird and odder side of Age of Empires 2, the control wildlife cheat is strange but pretty fun if you want to mess around with something different for a while. In this case, you can take full control of the various animals dotted around the maps.
By entering "Natural wonders" you’re immediately given control of every single sheep, hawk, bear, deer, and any other animal wandering around the map. You can order them around, some of them can attack hostile forces, but keep in mind they still have the same stats of wildlife so they can’t really do much other than be a minor annoyance.
Still, it’s fun to send a hoard of hawks to circle an enemy base as recon or waves of deer to confuse and delay. Or you can bring every huntable animal in the game to your base to make gathering meat from their carcass that much easier for your villagers.
6 Instant Win
Although it may seem like just entering in a code where you automatically win can seem like it sucks the fun out of the game, it can be pretty helpful.
For example, if you’ve already destroyed the enemy base but there are villagers scattered around the map that would just unnecessarily prolong the game and you just want it to end already. Or, if you’re stuck on a mission and would rather see the rest of the game, or you’re close to winning and a single mistake makes it all go wrong. Just sticking in ‘I r winner’ instantly nets you the victory regardless of what was going on.
5 The Cobra Car
Anyone who played the original Age of Empires 2 back in the day will remember with fondness the anarchy a couple of Cobra Cars could bring to a fight. Easily spawned en mass by putting in "How do you turn this on", this ridiculously overpowered unit could devastate armies and turn cities into crumbling heaps in seconds.
Based on the iconic Shelby Cobra roadster, this nippy sports car comes with 500 hitpoints, a rather large range of 10 (archers have 4) and it sprays a relentless wall of bullets at any target that wanders too close. They cost no resources to have and despite their need to be constantly micro-managed, the Cobra Car is a high damage dealing force of nature.
4 Turn Hawks Into Dogs
Another of the weirder cheats, this one turns the non-interactive Hawk animals in Age of Empires II into cape-wearing flying dogs. It doesn’t alter gameplay in any way, but it’s a fun visual change that can always raise a chuckle when it floats past.
To unlock the Stormy Dog model for the Hawks just press Enter then put in the code “WOOF WOOF”. It should then immediately take effect turning all of the screeching birds into red-caped covered flying Alsatians. According to developer Matt Pritchard, the cheat was based on his own dog that he rescued as a puppy from a storm drain in 1997, and putting this good boy in the game was his way of memorializing him in videogame history.
3 The Sharkazator
One of the most interesting things about this cheat code, aside from what it does, is that it went completely undiscovered by the Community for a long time. Originally it was introduced in the Rise of the Rajas DLC for Age Of Empires II: HD in 2016, it took until the Definitive Edition two years later for it to be found.
Sticking in “catzor” will spawn this incredibly adorable but extremely deadly unit at your Town Centre. With a staggeringly high Hit-Point size of 600, this amphibious unit of a hat-wearing cat riding a shark spews out high damaging laser beams that also do splash damage. Also, it counts as Siege Equipment, so upgrades for your artillery will also buff it even further turning it into quite the monster when you get to that late-game tech.
2 The Photon Man
Perhaps the most iconic cheat unit in the entire series, the Photon Man first appeared in the first Age of Empires game and this space suit-wearing trooper was a laser spewing damage-dealing demon. Capable of blasting apart Town Centres in minutes, spawning these futuristic soldiers of fortune en masse before sending them as a devastating wave that melts through enemy defenses was always satisfying to watch.
To grab this extremely overpowered unit just press Enter and put in the cheat code “Photon Man”. There won’t be any noise or signal that the cheat is activated, but if you check around your Town Centre you should see him hanging out, silently waiting for his next orders. Although if you own the Definitive Edition he’s only available after taking part in the Age Of Empires 2 Anniversary Event.
1 Alfred The Alpaca
The Lord of Sass, the Wooly Wanderer, call him what you will but Alfred The Alpaca is the darling of the Age Of Empires Community. Using the same Llama model, only slightly smaller and with a sparkling golden crown sitting at a jaunty angle, Alfred is a surprisingly effective unit that also has some of the best voice lines in the game.
Spawned using the code “Alpaca simulator”, Alfred puts out a decent melee damage amount of 120, but his real selling point is high armor of 20 and 140 health points. What this means is he’s incredibly tanky and he does trample damage which is basically chip damage to units adjacent to the one he’s currently attacking. Even if you don’t use him in battle, Alfred is still a pretty funny character to keep around your base, for moral support if anything.