Age of Empires is a strategy game that requires a lot of mental energy, fast decision-making skills, and great situational awareness. The game provides many panels and statistics to help you assess what's happening. While they do a great job at it, the community thought they could be improved, so they created many mods to optimize the current game graphics and user interface.

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The following mods were designed to help you gather information from the game with ease and without distractions. They focus on highlighting what's important, making you better at the game, and removing visual clutter.

10 Identical Pine Trees With Grid Shadow

Identical Pine Trees With Grid Shadow will replace original trees with small pines. The pines are all identical and display a shadow on their current grid square.

The reason most players love this mod is that the default game trees can be very deceiving. Sometimes villagers and sheep get lost behind trees. You might also leave a gap between your walls and the tree line because of how big the trees are, and overall, they make the game more confusing because of the great diversity of tree designs.

The only downside of this mod is that it makes the game a little bit less immersive and realistic.

9 Useless Plants Remover

Useless Plants Remover does exactly what you would think it does. It removes any plants, including small trees, bushes, and vines that you cannot interact with. The game's developers have created these graphics for decoration, in order to make the game more realistic, but they can interfere with the gameplay.

Sometimes, you will be tricked by one of these plants, thinking it could be chopped, but nope, it's just another useless plant. They can also make your units harder to see and make the game a little too crowded for most competitive players' opinions.

8 Better Resource Panel And Idle Villager Icon

Do you find it difficult to allocate your villagers to the correct resources? Are you missing out on idle villagers, because you didn't notice the icon turn yellow? This is a mistake most beginners make, but even experienced players fall victim to it on a regular basis.

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If you plan on effectively balancing your economy, you need to pay attention to what resources your villagers are gathering. Better Resource Panel And Idle Villager Icon increases the size and changes the colors of the indicators of villagers per resource. It also changes the idle villager icon to a big bell, that turns red when you have idle villagers.

7 New Fish Border

New Fish Border highlights the fish area, and it also displays an image of a white fish inside that box.

You will realize that there are way more fish in the water after you get his mod. Even though your fishing ships do a great job of finding fish on their own, it's vital to understand how much fish there are left near your docks just by taking a quick glance at the water. With this mod, you will not miss out on any more fish, and you will be able to have a better understanding of what's out there without wasting too much time.

6 Bigger And Eye-Catching Relic

The only thing worse than finding a relic and then having no idea where it went, is looking at an enemy monk carrying that same relic to his monastery.

Bigger and Eye-catching Relic is here to help you spot relics and keep track of where they are on the map. It does so by placing a bright yellow star over all relics and making them slightly bigger. You will be surprised at the amount of relics you find behind buildings or even hidden in plain sight, especially after the game goes on for a while and there is too much going on for you to be able to spot the default relic.

5 Bigger Minimap

It is crucial to see what's happening outside your screen area. Bigger Minimap increases minimap size without interfering with gameplay. The default minimap is small and difficult to understand. This mod, paired with the Map Color Clarity and Transparent UI, will turn you into one of the most aware players in the game.

Most importantly, it will save you time by allowing you to gather a lot more information from a quick glance at the minimap. The less time you spend understanding the current game state, the more time you can dedicate to productive actions.

4 Building Foundation Label

We have all fallen victim to a castle drop right next to our defenseless economy. While this mod won't help you take down the enemy's castle, it will help you notice it faster.

Building Foundation Label displays the symbol of the type of building that's being built. This is very useful for new players, but it can also help experienced players save time and enable them to focus on other details.

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If the enemy team is getting ready to build an army, this mod will enable you to easily spot what kind of troops he is making and enable you to quickly counter their efforts.

3 Map Color Clarity

We have all had trouble distinguishing between player gray and stone resources. Player yellow and gold resources are a nightmare in desert maps. And orange seems to have a slight advantage on dirt maps.

Map Color Clarity will change all that forever. It provides a bigger contrast between the main terrain color and important landmarks on the map. Stone becomes dark gray, gold is bright yellow, and the tree lines, bushes, fish, and other wild animals are much more evident. The relics pop out in a way that you can easily keep an eye on them, and hopefully capture a few, thanks to this mod.

2 Interactive Build Order Guide

Interactive Build Order Guide is absolutely crucial if you want to learn build orders effectively. Build orders are systems that players have put in place to reach a desired outcome in the most efficient way possible. A famous build order you can learn with this mod is the knights rush.

You can use it by changing the game mode to Custom Scenario and loading one that matches the build order you want to learn. In the custom scenario, it guides you through all the steps of that build order. Later, all you have to do is apply this new knowledge in your next game.

1 Advanced Idle Pointer

Are you tired of dealing with idling villagers? Do you only notice them after it's too late? Advanced Idle Pointer helps you spot lazy villagers. It places a huge exclamation mark over their heads — that way, it's impossible to ignore them.

Idle villager time is one of the most important metrics in this numbers-based game. The key for a successful economy is to keep producing villagers and to make them work as efficiently as possible. The more villager idle time you have, the more chances you are giving your opponent. This mod will stop you from making that mistake, and take your economic efficiency to a new level, especially if you are a beginner.

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