Age of Empires II Review
Microsoft released Age of Empires II: Age of Kings for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0 SP5 in September of 1999. Developed by Ensemble Studios of the U.S.A., Age of Empires II is the sequel to the Age of Empires of 1997, which is the original AoE RTS.
Whereas the original Age of Empires was set in ancient times the sequel is set in the Middle Ages and treats medieval history. Age of Empires II features five campaigns each consisting of 6-7 historical scenarios. The five campaigns are William Wallace of the Celts, Joan of Arc of the Franks, Barbarossa of the Teutons, Genghis Khan of the Mongols and Saladin of the Saracens.
Age of Empires II features 13 playable factions based on medieval empires, but only five of the factions feature campaigns (Celts, Franks, Teutons, Mongols and Saracens). The other eight factions are only playable in non-campaign modes such as Random Map, Regicide, Scenario and Death Match. Age of Empires II non-campaign modes support single-player mode with up to seven computer-controlled factions or multi-player mode with up to eight human-controlled factions, each of which can be friend, foe or neutral.
The four Age of Empires II ages are Dark, Feudal, Castle and Imperial.
Age of Empires II employs the Genie engine of Age of Empires, but with enhancements to controls, pathfinding and terrain-mapping. Sequel Genie is an enhancement and expansion upon original Genie, not a hard-coded rewrite. Additional features of sequel Genie include four units formations, three unit stances, waypoint movement, unit gathering points, unit garrisoning, market trading, wheeled trading (in addition to floated trading), game-recording, team bonuses, in-game technology tree displays, and 2750-HP wall-inserted portcullis gates through which units can pass, providing they are not locked.
Unit garrisoning allows units to enter and exit keeps, castles and town centers. Garrisoned units slowly heal, are fully protected by the building's armor and hitpoints, and can attack enemy units and buildings that are within range. When the garrison catches fire units are auto-ejected but can repair the building (if they are villager units and have stone resources in reserve). Unit garrisoning constitutes the most notable change to Age of Empires gameplay because unit garrisoning hinders rushing with cheap, early units. For example, villagers can take refuge in the town center and mow down raiders while protected by the town center; the raiders cannot attack the villagers until they have set the town center alight and forced the villagers to evacuate (town centers have 2,400 HPs).
Whereas Age of Empires only officially supported faction populations of 50 units (and 200 unofficially), Age of Empires II officially supports 25-200. Age of Empires supported marquee selection aka group-bandboxing of up to 25 units whereas Age of Empires II supports 40.
Band-boxed units move about in formation. The rate of momement of the formation is capped to the rate of movement of the slowest unit in the formation. Thus, fast-moving Mangudai cavalry move at the rate of slow-moving monks when placed in formation with monks, whom they can protect. The engine auto-places infantry at first-rank, flanked by archers, flanked by monks.
Over the original, Age of Empires II greatly expands statistics screens:
Note the Team Together option. And note how the AI teamed up against the player. That meant I was under constant attack from the Castle Age onwards, which explains the massive killcount and demolitions-count amassed. The castles tallied the vast majority of kills, peaking at 200 in five minutes.
Before the Castle Age kicked in 7,000 stone was mined in preparation for castle-building. This meant a crew of villagers had to mine several stone deposits located deep in enemy territory during the Dark and Feudal Ages (undermining the resources of the enemy). But yes, the miners made it back to base safely even as war raged around them in the Castle Age, which was miraculous -- and felt rewarding.
Age of Empires II features four ages, six map sizes, 13 map-types, 19 terrain-types, seven terrain elevation levels, 27 constructable buildings, 76 unit-types, 59 researchable technologies and four main harvestable or mineable resources (food, wood, stone and gold). In addition, there are five difficulty levels, four main victory conditions and fully customizable victory conditions via the Scenario Editor.
Fauna-wise, Age of Empires II subbed-out the 300-food elephant of Age of Empires with herds of 340-food wild boar; gazelle with deer and sheep; lions with wolves. Farming has been buffed, shoreline spear-fishing and deep-sea fishing remain lucrative, but berry-bush yield has been nerfed. Sheep are best tagged by scout cavalry and herded back to the town center or a mill for butchering in close proximity to such buildings. Sheep are herded as per Age of Empires artefact wagons.
Moveable artefact wagons are subbed-out for static Relics, which only monk units can pick up and carry back to the monastery (monks are functionally equivalent to AoE priests). Once the Relic is stored in the monastery the faction receives a gold-over-time bonus, which stacks based on the number of Relics retrieved (up to five). Depending on a range of variables, it is possible to acquire five Relics within one hour of play. Five Relics generates 1,000 gold per five minutes, which is huge since (for example) 1,000 gold is enough to generate ten monks (which heal friends and convert foes).
Each empire receives one faction-exclusive unit-type that can be upgraded to an Elite variant. Faction-exclusive units are generated and upgraded in castles during the Castle and Imperial Ages. For example, in the original Age of Empires several factions had access to war elephants (and Persian war elephants had +30% movement rate), but in Age of Empires II only the Persians have access to war elephants and Elite War Elephants, which can be further upgraded with a 30% movement rate boost in castles (but only in The Conquerors expansion of 2000).
Faction-exclusive units are more powerful than standard units. For example, fully-upgraded Elite Teutonic Knight infantry have Attack 17+4, Armor 10+3/2+4 and HPs 100; fully-upgraded Persian Elite War Elephants have Attack 20+4, Armor 1+3/3+4 and HPs 620; and fully-upgraded Turkish Janissary hand-cannoneers have Attack 22, Range 8, Armor 2+3/0+4 and HPs 50. (Those are Conquerors expansion stats.)
The Elite Teutonic Knight is the most heavily armored unit versus non-piercing damage (10 armor vs. non-piercing), but its movement rate is sloth-like. The most heavily armored unit versus piercing damage is the Siege Ram (195 armor vs. piercing), but its movement rate is also sloth-like. As in Age of Empires, it is the Elite War Elephant that offers the best balance of offense, defense and movement rate in Age of Empires II (assuming one survives to the point at which they can be mass-produced -- the Persians are Imperially-loaded).
Age of Empires II employs Ensemble's custom Artificial Intelligence Expert System. The most obvious difference between original and sequel AI is that sequel AI is capable of building walls.
The sequel is more appealing to the masses because "colorful and medieval" as opposed to "spartan and ancient". The sequel's terrain, buildings and units are also more graphically detailed (eye-candy).
Audio-wise, there is much more in the way of voiced narration in the sequel as well (the masses love cinematics and voiced narration).
However, note how the sequel's playfield (active drawspace) is actually 54 vertical pixels smaller than the original's, and more zoomed-in (bigger objects):
[Left: Original patrician viewport: 1024x622 / Right: Sequel plebeian viewport 1024x568]
Thus, not only are there fewer active drawspace pixels on sequel screens, but there are functionally fewer objects represeented on-screen before one needs to scroll the screen to see more. I make a point of this because reducing viewport size in sequels is almost unheard of.
The color saturation of some sequel graphics are overdone: palm trees are too green, farms are too dark, gold is too yellow, water is too blue. The shallows terrain is ridiculously green-blue; practically fluorescent and bloom-like. Terrain and building graphics are over-painted, like too much oil on the canvas; they are thick and heavy. The ships look worse, the elephants look worse etc.
Age of Empires II requires a Pentium 166 MHz CPU, 32 megs of RAM and 2 megs of vRAM. Age of Empires II-compatible video cards include Nvidia TNT2 and ATI Rage 128 with up to 16 megs of vRAM. Age of Empires II requires DirectX 6.1.
Age of Empires II natively displays in 4:3 aspect ratio at 800x600, 1024x768 or 1280x1024 resolution. Age of Empires II menus and user interface were designed for 800x600.
Age of Empires II multi-player supports DirectPlay serial, modem, TCP/IP and IPX.
Age of Empires II was distributed on 1x CD-ROM and installs to hard disk drive via the Age of Empires II installation program. The install size of Age of Empires is 334 megs and consists of 790 files.
Age of Empires II was lead-designed by Bruce Shelley, lead-programmed by Angelo Laudon, lead-composed by Stephen Rippy, and lead-drawn by Brad Crow and Scott Winsett.
Conclusion
Is Age of Empires II of 1999 better than the original Age of Empires of 1997? Well, it enhanced the pathfinding, added some quality of life features and increased production values, but it is not a better RTS game. For example, unit garrisoning does not make the sequel better than the original; it does not improve RTS gameplay; it's just different. In addition, the sequel's viewport is cramped (smaller and more zoomed in).
Engine-wise (Genie), the sequel is an expansion on the original; an engine-layer threaded into the original engine. Presentation-wise, the sequel merely subs out "ancient" for "medieval" (window-dressing) and adds much more in the way of voice-acting and cinematics, neither of which are important to RTS games.
The sequel is a great game, to be sure, but the original did all the legwork and laid down the foundations of the franchise. The sequel was more commercially successful and more popular with the mainstream masses ("colorful, medieval and easier to play"), but the original is more significant to RTS history than the sequel.
I gave the original 8.5/10. Thus, I give the sequel 8/10.
Age of Empires II: The Conquerors 2000
Microsoft released Age of Empires II: The Conquerors for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0 SP5 in August of 2000 in the U.S.A. Developed by Ensemble Studios of the U.S.A., The Conquerors is an expansion for Age of Empires II: Age of Kings. The Conquerors installs to the AoE II install folder, but is run from a separate *.exe.
The Conquerors adds three campaigns, eight historical scenarios, five empires, 12 units, eight technologies, eight map-types and three game-types (see below). The Conquerors also adds one faction-exclusive technology per faction as well as Ram-garrisoning, queueable reseeding of farms and real-time on-screen scoring. In addition, villagers automatically begin mining, harvesting and lumberjacking after the associated building has been constructed. Finally, players can switch to idle villagers by hitting the "."-key.
The Conquerors modified the difficulty settings of offensive AI aggression in that Easiest is an utterly meaningless doddle and Highest is a whack-a-mole slog with no equal outside of Brood War. Invasion-wise, and with seven AI opponents, Easiest is a dripping tap (one-unit raids) whereas Highest is a never-ending tsunami of dozens upon dozens of units whose collective attacks pop 5000-HP castles like party balloons.
The Easiest difficulty was nerfed in The Conquerors [1]. On Easiest, and all settings being equal, I amassed 700 kills in the base game within two hours but only 70 in the expansion within two hours; that is, I went up against ten times more aggro in the base game than I did in the expansion. Expansion AI also resigned much more readily than base-game AI (no factions resigned within two hours in the base game whereas two factions resigned within two hours in the expansion).
The Conquerors was distributed on 1x CD-ROM and installs to hard disk drive via the The Conquerors installation program. With The Conquerors installed the AoE II install size becomes 561 megs and consists of 1,357 files.
- Campaigns added by The Conquerors: Attila the Hun, El Cid and Montezuma
- Battles of the Conquerors added eight historical scenarios
- Empires added by The Conquerors: Aztecs, Huns, Koreans, Mayans and Spanish
- Unit-types added by The Conquerors: Warriors, Missionaries, Petards, Plumed Archers, Tarkans, Turtle Ships, War Wagons, Conquistadors, Eagle Warriors, Halberdiers, Hussars and Jaguar
- Technologies added by The Conquerors: Bloodlines, Caravan, Herbal Medicine, Heresy, Parthian Tactics, Theocracy and Thumb Ring
- The Conquerors also adds one faction-exclusive technology per empire
- Game-types added by The Conquerors: King of the Hill, Wonder Race and Defend the Wonder
- Map-types added by The Conquerors: Arena, Ghost Lake, Mongolia, Nomad, Oasis, Salt Marsh, Scandinavia, Yucatan and Random Land
- Winter and tropical variants were added to standard maps. Snow is blindingly bright
- Fauna added by The Conquerors: Turkey replaces Sheep, Jaguar replaces Wolf
The Conquerors was lead-designed by Greg Street, lead-programmed by Angelo Laudon, lead-drawn by Duncan McKissick, and lead-composed by Stephen Rippy.
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