Running Age of Empires 2 DE on macOS

There are too many outdated instructions online. This place is meant to contain the most up-to-date instructions for running Age of Empires 2 DE on macOS (with multiplayer support).

With Crossover

You need MacOS Big Sur 11.1 or greater.

• Install Crossover (requires a paid license but there's a free trial)
• Create a new Windows 10 bottle in Crossover
• Install Steam
• Open steam and install AOE2:DE
• In the bottle, install "DXVK (Builtin)"
• In the bottle, install "DirectX for modern games"
• In the bottle settings, enable DXVK
• In the bottle settings, optionally enable "High resolution" to enable Retina display resolution
• Download the patched ucrtbase.dll here
• In the Crossover bottle, click "Open C: drive" and navigate to C:/Windows/System32
• Put the ucrtbase.dll file you downloaded in that folder (overwrite the existing file)
• Open the Wine configuration panel: in "Libraries" add concrt140.dll and ucrtbase. They should show up as native, builtin in the list.
• In Steam, optionally set AOE2:DE launch parameters to SKIPINTRO

Feel free to send pull requests to update this guide.

Without Crossover

Someone on reddit wrote a guide on how to play aoe 2 de on mac os without needing crossover. https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/150t2v1/aoe_2_de_fix_on_mac_using_wineskin_winery/

Copy pasted here just in case

Here's a quick guide on how to get it running (should work on Intel and Apple silicon Macs):

• Start by installing Homebrew (https://brew.sh/) by opening terminal and typing the following:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Install Wineskin Winery (https://github.com/Gcenx/WineskinServer) by typing the following in terminal:

brew install --cask --no-quarantine gcenx/wine/wineskin

• Open the Wineskin Winery app that should appear with the rest of your apps in your Applications folder.

• Make sure you have the latest wrapper (currently 2.9.1.9 or higher) and install the latest engine (currently WS11WineCX64Bit22.1.1-8 or higher).

• Click on the “Create New Blank Wrapper” button at the bottom. I named my wrapper “Steam” since it’ll be used for all my steam games. Wineskin Winery will create a new wrapper that will appear in “/Macintosh HD/Users/[YOUR USER NAME]/Applications/Wineskin/” folder (not the same Applications folder that has all your applications).

• If Wineskin Winery freezes and becomes unresponsive, just give it some time. If it doesn’t fix itself in 5 minutes, then just kill it by holding the cmd+option+esc keys to get the force quit menu and kill the unresponsive process. Usually, the wrapper will be created successfully, so go ahead and use it directly.

• Open Finder and navigate to “/Macintosh HD/Users/[YOUR USER NAME]/Applications/Wineskin/”.

• Right-click on the new Steam wrapper and click on “Show Package Contents”.

• Click on the Wineskin app in there. This will be how you control the wrapper's settings.

• You can click on “Install Software” if you have a .exe file, but in the case of Steam, it’s better to install it through Winetricks as explained in the next steps.

• Click on “Winetricks”. -It might take some time to load, so be patient :)

• Search for Steam and install it with vcrun2019 or vcrun2022. It may take some time, so be patient. -Wait until it’s done installing and it should work afterwards! Just close the winetricks page and launch the wrapper directly like you’d do with any other app.