Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

4.24 / 5 - 17 votes

Description of Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

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Developed by Ensemble Studios, Age of Empires 2features the expertise of Bruce Shelley, co designer of Age ofEmpires and the hit strategy game Civilization. Age ofEmpires 2: The Conquerors Expansion adds five new civilizations,four new campaigns, 11 new units, 26 new technologies, real worldmaps, and much more. It is very impressive how the Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings not only has 18 different civilizations in the game but how different they each are. At a glance, it may look like there are only subtle differences, but the differences are quite deep. Each one has their own “special” unit. Age Of Empires 2 Conquerors Portable Free; Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition completes the celebration of one of the most beloved real-time strategy franchises with stunning 4K Ultra HD graphics, fully enhanced audio, two new game modes, and includes all expansions and all 14 civilizations, plus two brand new civilizations – the Swedes.

| The original Age of Empires sold by the million. The blend of epic historical conflict, real-time gameplay and silky presentation made it exceptionally attractive to mainstream gamers. The basic premise of taking a few villagers, gathering resources such as food, lumber, stone and gold, building up a settlement, developing an army and crushing your foes was not new, but Ensemble managed to make it look so good that it sold incredibly well. Yet at the same time AoE had a number of problems, primarily in the AI of the villagers and soldiers in the game - they failed to react to nearby events (like their friends being eaten by lions), and if asked to move from A to B would often get stuck at C (where in one case C was a single tree in the open). A patch pretty much fixed those problems, yet others remained - for example the interface was relatively basic, lacking any ability to set aggression levels for units, or to queue production orders. In a head-to-head feature count with the contemporary Total Annihilation, AoE looked as ancient as the Roman people it portrayed.

Our AoE review from late 1997 highlights the game's weaknesses, but it's also worth reading for a basic description of the game mechanics, which remain the same. Despite not being overly enamoured with the original, I'm happy to report that the improvements in the medieval follow-up Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings, while not individually ground-breaking, add up to a very impressive whole. In fact, there's a lot more improvements in the game than you realise, it's just that you take so many interface features for granted now, that you forget how many were absent from AoE 1. Rather than write up this review as a standalone piece, I'll skip over the game basics (see the above review for more details) and instead focus on what's new in this version, and how it affects the gameplay.

Game Styles

AoE 2 offers five campaigns of multiple scenarios, including a very good tutorial campaign. You can play through these at any of five difficulty settings, or you can instead generate a random 'skirmish' map on which to face up to seven computer (or human) opponents. Multiplayer play is available on a LAN, or via Microsoft's Zone. The campaigns mix victory conditions quite well, and are far from easy to complete. The game setting is now Middle Ages, rather than ancient, so for example the Franks, Japanese and Teutons make up three of the 13 nations. Each nation has limits on which technologies it can develop (e.g. Vikings don't get access to the best cavalry, while Mongols don't get the advanced monk abilities), and each nation has distinct racial bonuses (e.g. Britons have archer bonuses) and a military unit unique to that nation (e.g. the Japanese Samurai). The excellent fold-out glossy chart explains all, and the technology tree can also be viewed from within the game itself, which is rather handy. Progression to new technologies is done as per AoE 1, with four Ages; as you upgrade your Town Hall through Dark, Feudal, Castle and Imperial Ages, new buildings, units and technologies become available for construction or purchase.

The first interesting new feature to report is the addition of random map templates. Rather than having some 'truly' random map, AoE 2 lets you pick the style of map from one of around a dozen templates. One example is the Black Forest, in which the map is heavily wooded with paths connecting clearings; this sort of map is suited to a more defensive game where you can wall off and defend your enemies' avenues of attack. In contrast the Gold Rush map has one of the game's key resources, gold, predominantly in the middle of the map, so to mine it you have to be aggressive, attacking enemy miners while defending your own. Another of the styles, Fortress, sees you start out in a small walled town, so you don't have to worry about the initial buildup stages (if that's what you prefer).

There's also a new style of skirmish game called Regicide. In this variant you have a king to defend. If your king is killed, you're out of the game. In practice, finding and killing the enemy king is very hard, as a smart player will hole him up in a castle or similarly beefy structure, but the mere presence of this Achilles heel, which always gives the 'losing' player some hope, adds well to the gameplay. The old winning conditions still apply - by conquest, by gathering all relics on the map, by building and defending a wonder (a special building), or by amassing the best game score. You can specify the size of map you want, and the number of opponents, so you can tailor the game to be as long and drawn out as you wish. Unlike the original, you can set the maximum number of units allowed for any side (by default this is 75, where AoE 1 allowed 50 units).

The game difficulty setting has a pronounced affect; the default 'easy' level is certainly not that easy, particularly for a novice player. As it happens there's a setting below 'easy', and that's where novice players should start out. The difficulty setting affects your initial resources and, more importantly, the rate at which enemy sides develop. It also restricts what the AI can do, e.g. whether it can move to the Imperial Age to gain the more advanced units and technologies. To see (and learn from) how the computer AI plays, you can play with the 'visible map' option on - the default is for 'fog of war' where you only see what your units can see. You can set which teams computer players are on in a skirmish game, and lock them to those teams; if you don't put each AI player on their own fixed team, they'll more than likely team up against you. For an interesting skirmish game you can assign an AI player to your team, and the AI player will announce its attacks, offering you the option of joining in. For a novice player, playing with an allied AI side against two solo AI enemies can be quite a good way to learn. Once you get the cartography technology, you can share map information with allies. Also, sides which team up share that nation's special team bonus (e.g. the Goths team bonus is that barracks produce units 20% faster).

The Looks

One of AoE 1 's great selling points was its slick presentation. AoE 2 continues the tradition, offering resolutions from 800x600 to 1280x1024; I found the 1024x768 setting about right if you want to see enough of the map to co-ordinate battles but not have units appear too small. The quality of the artwork and the animations is high, with very few blemishes, walls built over undulating hilly land being one such minor failing. The cavalry animations are particularly good. The map can still only be viewed from one direction, and cannot be zoomed or rotated, an omission that games like Braveheart (though weak in other areas) put somewhat to shame. In deference, AoE 2 helps you avoid losing units behind buildings and trees by drawing the outlines of any obscured units.

The building artwork varies depending on which part of the globe your nation is from, and the speech from your minions is geared to the language of your nation. The sounds and music in the game are both very good. One 'token' new graphic comes in the form of women villagers. This serves no gameplay purpose other than you being able to send all the women to do the real hard labour(!), although I must sa

Game Age Of Empires 2 Portable