Age of Empires II Age of Kings Windows PC Ensemble Studios 1999

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Age of Empires II Review

Microsoft released the original 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.

Unless otherwise noted (e.g., by qualifiers such as "fully-upgraded"), quoted stats are base stats from the original Age of Empires II. Stats differ enormously based on Age, factional bonuses and technological research. For example, the base stat for the town center building is 2400 HPs, but Imperial-age Persian town centers have 5808 HPs.

To save me repeating myself this review only covers the sequel in so far as it notably differs from the original. Readers can consult the above-linked review for an overview of Age of Empires concepts, mechanics and gameplay. I utterly abhor sequel reviews that act as if the sequel originated this or that when, in point of fact, the original already had it (99% of computer game commentary).

By "notable differences", I am referring to the likes of unit garrisoning, gated walls, engine enhancements, stat-presentation and other facts and figures that allow me to compare the sequel with the original and assess the historical significance of the sequel. By the time Age of Empires II came out RTS gameplay had been mastered by Westwood and Blizzard three times over, each. What did Age of Empires II bring to the table that was new?

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.

Age-wise, ancient Stone, Tool, Bronze and Iron of the original is subbed out for medieval Dark, Feudal, Castle and Imperial in the sequel. Technologically, and in so far as it impacts gameplay, the differences are minimal. Indeed, some ancient units of the original would give medieval units of the sequel a run for their money. [1]

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 wall-inserted portcullis gates through which units can pass, providing they are not locked.

Portcullis gates can be placed down before walls, but they usually only assume the desired angle when walls have first been placed to orient them. (Gates do have wall-endings but gates usually don't assume the desired angle by themselves.) Portcullis gates are much tankier than walls (base 2750 HPs / 1800 HPs), but Byzantine walls out-HP gates by 200 HPs (gate max 4000 / wall max 4200). Portcullis gates can be manually locked and unlocked; they automatically open and close for units if they are unlocked. Portcullis gates cannot close on top of units (to crush them).

Unit garrisoning allows units to enter and exit keeps, castles and town centers, which are fortified buildings constructed by villagers. 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 incurs non-trivial damage it catches fire and units are auto-ejected but can repair the building (if they are villager units and have 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 2400 HPs).

Castles auto-fire volleys of arrows at the units and buildings of factions that are set to Enemy on the diplomacy screen. Players can also manually designate castle targets.

Castle-fire out-ranges most units but castles can hardly be considered safe spaces since all factions have access to 16-range / 200-attack trebuchets (and the AI always employs them, even on the easiest difficulty setting). Thus, cavalry is a necessary support to castles which would otherwise be sitting ducks. Trebs placed behind castles can support castles as well, but one dozen trebs are needed because treb-fire is inaccurate. After proactive cavalry bombard towers are the best counter to ram-convoys.

As it pertains to maximum defensive structural fortification, the Persians have the tankiest town centers by far (5808 HPs), followed by the Byzantines (3360 HPs). The Byzantines have the tankiest castles by far (7720 HPs) as well as the tankiest walls by far (4200 HPs), followed by the Britons (6908 HPs / 3000 HPs). Persian gates and walls are weaker (2750 HPs / 1800 HPs) whereas Goth walls are the weakest (250 HPs) and Goths cannot build gates at all. In addition, the Byzantines have the tankiest towers (keep: 3150 HP; bombard 3108), followed by the Chinese and the Turks (keep: 2723 HPs; bombard 2686 HPs), whereas Goths have the weakest towers (1234 HPs) and no keeps, but they do get third-tier castles (5808 HPs). Thus, the Byzantines are the strongest defensive fortifier overall, followed by the Britons.

On the other hand, Briton town centers cost -50%, Frankish castles cost -25%, and Frankish cavalry have +25% HPs (cavalry being the prime support unit for castles). In addition, Teutons receive 2442-HP bombard towers, their town centers have Attack +2 and Range +5, and their keeps can garrison twice as many units, doubling the firing rate from keeps. Thus, fortified Teutons have superior repellent capacity.

Note that only four of the 13 empires have access to 120-attack / 8-range bombard towers, which dominate their attack radius.

Like many RTS games Age of Empires games announce attacks with an audio cue. In AoE, this is the annoying-ass war-horn. However, it would have been useful if the sequel announced treb rolling in since trebs are the only unit that can truly surprise players due to their extreme range and demolitions capacity. You could spend a mere minute engaged on the battlefield and then scroll back to town only to find it has been utterly leveled by a few sneaky trebs. You won the battle, but lost the war.

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 movement 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.

Units in formation do not feel grounded on the playfield; instead, they glide across the playfield on the "formation layer", which feels fake and tacked-on (because formations were tacked-on). Thus, cavalry moves about like a flock of swirling pegasi in the wind. In my Age of Empires review the lack of unit formations was criticized. This is a good example of "be wary of what you wish for." Of course, formations could have been employed properly, but that would have required actual low-level programming, not a hack.

Over the original Age of Empires II greatly expands statistics screens, but note how statistics are called Achievements.

Also note the Team Together option. This silly little social feature bestows factional bonuses to all factions in the team; an "in-crowd bonus for the cool players". And note how the AI teamed up against me. Refusing to buy into their jerk-circle (I'd rather lose than be part of a team), that meant I was under constant barrage from the Castle Age onwards by seven factions, which explains the massive killcount and demolitions-count gleefully amassed. The castles tallied the vast majority of kills, peaking at 200 pincushionings in one five minute interval. At the same time, my cavalry hacked at the rear-ranks of siege-engine convoys one dozen strong, which continued to bee-line towards my castle-spam even as the cavalry picked them apart, one by one.

Before the Castle Age kicked in 7,000 stone was mined in preparation for castle-spam. This meant a few crews 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 squishy miners made it back to base safely even as war raged around them, which was miraculous. Their reward? Plowing the fields!

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 340-food wild boar; gazelle with deer and sheep; lions with wolves (but wolves yield no meat whereas lions did). 

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 town center or mill for butchering in close proximity to such buildings. Sheep are herded as per Age of Empires artifact wagons.

Moveable artifact 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).

As a rule, 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). [2]

Examples of fully-upgraded unique units:

• Teuton Elite Teutonic Knight infantry: Attack 17+4, Armor 10+3/2+4 and HPs 100
• Persian Elite War Elephants: Attack 20+4, Armor 1+3/3+4 and HPs 600
• Turkish Elite Janissary hand-cannoneers: Attack 18, Range 8, Armor 2+3/0+4 and HPs 60
• Briton Elite Longbowmen: Attack 7+4, Range 6+5, Armor 0+3/1+4 and 40 HPs

It is almost always worth the expense of upgrading to elite units. In The Conquerors expansion of 2000 some units are buffed. For example, the Elite Janissary has 22 Attack, not 18.

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. As in most RTS games the AI is good at positioning itself at pixel-perfect range, but poor at amassing overwhelming force of a specific type.

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 mindless mutt-like mainstream loves cinematics and voiced narration; it's how they get into games -- gameplay itself is secondary to them. If they can't hear a voice, if they can't watch a cutscene -- if they need to read -- it isn't a good game to them.

Note how the sequel's playfield aka active drawspace is actually 54 vertical pixels smaller than the original's, and more zoomed-in due to its 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 represented on-screen before one needs to scroll the screen to see more. I make a point of this because reducing the actual and effective 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 and water is too bright and 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 (and are no longer mounted), and most resource placeables look worse as well.

In the native resolution of 800x600, the sequel panel is 19 vertical pixels larger than the original panel (thereby contributing to the reduction of the active drawspace), but the icons of the sequel panel are smaller and less detailed. In addition, sequel stats are not as easy to read. Sequel icons are smaller because more icons need to be packed into the icon-cluster (e.g., formation icons and grouped-unit icons). Overall, the sequel panel is not as clear or as artistic, but its map is larger and it is functionally more advanced.

Age of Empires II Technical

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 a mere expansion on the original; an engine-layer that hooks back into the original engine; naught but several hacks. The pathfinding enhancement is a hack, formations are a hack, the UI/control extension is a hack; nothing was rewritten from the ground up, it's just layered on top.

Presentation-wise, the sequel merely subs out "ancient" for "medieval" (naught but 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 get into and 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 event-triggers, in-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.

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 Hardest 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 [2]. 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 in that no factions resigned within two hours in the base game whereas two factions resigned within two hours in the expansion.

The fully-upgraded Greek Centurion of Rise of Rome is more powerful than the fully-upgraded Elite Teutonic Knight of The Conquerors [1]:

• Rise of Rome Greek centurion infantry: Attack 30+7, Armor 14/3, 160 HPs, +55% (total) movement rate
• Conquerors Elite Teutonic Knight infantry: Attack 17+4, Armor 13/6, HPs 100, +0% movement rate

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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