Overview

CA:DE is an external spectating client for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. It renders any supported game-mode you are currently spectating with a custom overlay with brand-new statistics not available in the game. CA:DE will be seeing regular updates improving performance and adding many more features in time. All common game modes are supported, including 1v1, Team Games, FFA, AI games, Battle Royale and others.

Important info

  1. You can use CA:DE to spectate your own live gameplay when cheats enabled in the game lobby
  2. Performance suggestions:
  • Keep the game on as small as possible window. For the best results we recommend minimizing AoE2DE which can be done from windowed mode which is accessed by, pressing (Alt + Enter) and then pressing the minimize button on the AoE2DE window. There's also a feature in CA:DE's General Settings to automatically minimize the game. Try it and if you have any issues with it you can disable it again.
  • Make use of small trees mods in the AoE2:DE and enable the experimental use of mods in the CaptureAge Graphics Settings. The inbuilt small trees setting doesn't currently work with CaptureAge.
  • Disable the use of the Enhanced Graphics DLC in AoE2 and CA:DE (if applicable, CA:DE can still make use of enhanced graphics with this turned off)
  • Try to ensure AoE2:DE is installed on an SSD, as CaptureAge uses the games files, a fast hard drive is impacting its performance as well.
  • You can also limit the framerate of CA:DE to less than 60FPS using your GPU's application. 20-30FPS leads to substantially higher simulation speed at the expense of smoothness.
  • Make the game and CA:DE higher priority processes by launching the task manager (Ctrl + Alt + Esc) and going to Details. There, right-click on the CaptureAge and AoE2DE processes and set higher-than-normal priorities for them.