Age of Empires II is a
real-time strategy game that focuses on building towns, gathering resources, and creating armies to defeat opponents. Players conquer rival towns and empires as they advance one of 13 civilizations through four "Ages": the
Dark Age, the
Feudal Age, the Castle Age (representing the
High Middle Ages), and the Imperial Age (reminiscent of the
Renaissance)—a 1,000-year timeframe. Advancing to a new Age unlocks new units, structures, and technologies, but players must first build certain buildings from their current age and then pay a sum of resources. Civilian units, called "villagers", are used to gather resources; they are either male or female—sex does not affect their abilities. Resources can be used to train units, construct buildings, and research technologies, among other things; for example, players can research better armour for
infantry units. The game features four types of resources: food, wood, gold, and stone. Food is obtained by hunting animals, gathering berries, harvesting livestock, farming, and fishing, both from shore and from boats. Wood is gathered by chopping down trees. Gold is obtained from either gold mines, trade, or collecting relics in a
monastery. Stone is collected from stone mines. Villagers require checkpoints, typically depository buildings (town center, mining camp,
mill, and
lumber yard), in order to store gathered resources. Each civilization can purchase upgrades that increase the rate of gathering these resources. Players can also construct a
marketplace for trade, where they can trade wood, stone, and food for gold, and use gold to buy other resources. Market prices fluctuate with every transaction. Furthermore, markets and docks can also generate gold by using trading carts or cogs, which are sent to visit foreign markets and ports; once they return to the player's market/dock, gold is added to the stockpile. The amount of gold a trade unit earns on each trip is based on the distance it needed to travel to a foreign market; more gold is earned on longer trips. It is possible to trade with enemies' markets or docks, but the player's trading units may be attacked or destroyed by enemy units in the process. Players do not need to keep trading manually, because once they select the port or market the trading units continue to trade automatically and indefinitely. There are 5 campaigns in
The Age of Kings, containing historically based scenarios such as
Genghis Khan's invasion of
Eurasia,
Barbarossa's
Crusade, and
Saladin's defence of the
Holy Land. In the
Joan of Arc and
William Wallace campaigns, the player can control a unit based on its namesake; in others, players take orders from guiding spirits representative of the army's commander. Additional game modes are available to the player in
The Age of Kings. One mode,
random map, generates a map from one of several randomly chosen map-generating scripts, with players starting in the Dark Age with a Town Center, three villagers (or more depending on the civilization), and a scout unit. The game can be won through military conquest, by constructing a special building known as a Wonder and keeping it standing for a certain amount of time, or by obtaining control of all relics on the map for a set amount of time.
Deathmatch mode allows players to begin with large amounts of resources, creating a focus on military dominance, while in the
regicide mode each player is given a king unit, winning by killing all of the other monarchs.
Units and civilizations civilization in the
Feudal Age. The Town Center is visible and has several farms surrounding it; villagers of both sexes work there and elsewhere to gather resources. A scout on horseback is also at the ready. Military buildings such as the
barracks, archery range, and
stable are visible, as well as economic buildings—the market,
blacksmith and mill. The right bottom corner of the screenshot shows the player's walls and a gate. Every player has an ultimate limit to the number of units they can create—a population limit—but cannot immediately use this entire potential population. and 200 in intervals of 25, is based on the number of houses, Castles, or Town Centers—the main building in a player's town—which have been built.
The Age of Kings introduced two significant new features for unit management: the idle villager button, which helps players identify villagers that have not been assigned a task, and the town bell, which sends all of the player's villagers into their Town Center, Castle, or tower for safety; Each civilization in
The Age of Kings has one or two special units that are exclusive to that civilization. These civilization-specific units are generally more powerful, but still follow the basic rock-paper-scissors model. The
monk is a special kind of military unit that has the ability to convert enemy units to the player's civilization, and to heal allied units. Monks are also used to collect
relics, which accumulate gold once held in the player's monastery—the more relics are captured, the faster the gold is accumulated. Collecting all relics on the map is one method by which a player can win a random map game, depending on the victory condition. Once a player has all the relics in their monasteries, a timer is shown to all players. The player holding all of the relics wins if they maintain control of the relics for the length of the timer. Players choose to play as one of 13 civilizations split into 4 architectural styles—
Western European (
Britons,
Celts, and
Franks),
Central European (
Goths,
Teutons and
Vikings),
Middle Eastern (
Byzantines,
Persians,
Saracens, and
Turks), and
East Asian (
Chinese,
Japanese, and
Mongols) —that determine building appearance in-game. The civilizations have varying strengths and weaknesses with regards to economics, technology, and combat, and each has access to one or more different, very powerful "Unique Units". Additionally, each civilization provides an individual team bonus in team games. To add variety, each civilization has a set of
sound bites in its native language that are uttered by units when selected or instructed to perform a task. and military categories. Other economic buildings include storage buildings for resources, farms, docks (the dock may also produce several military ships), and houses to support a higher population. Military buildings include unit-producing buildings such as barracks, archery ranges, stables, and castles, as well as defensive buildings such as walls and towers. Military buildings can conduct research to improve the abilities of military units, increasing their strength, defensive capabilities, or other capabilities. Castles are a key offensive and defensive building as they can build
trebuchets, train the civilization's "unique unit/s", and fire a hail of arrows at enemy units within range, with garrisoned units firing extra arrows. Castles can only be built after a player has reached the Castle Age, although in some game options, players begin with an already-built castle as early as the Dark Age. After advancing to the Imperial Age, players can also construct a Wonder, an expensive non-military building. On many gameplay modes building a Wonder triggers a victory countdown; unless it is destroyed within a certain timeframe, the player who built it wins. Every civilization's Wonder is in the shape of a real-world landmark unique to that historical culture.
Single player campaigns The Age of Kings shipped with five campaigns, each having multiple playable scenarios that progress a story line, and each centered around a different civilization. The campaign of
William Wallace (Celts) serves as a tutorial campaign, and teaches the player how to move units, gather resources, and build armies to defeat the enemy. It takes place during the
Wars of Scottish Independence against the English under King
Edward I Longshanks. In the Frankish campaign, the player leads
Joan of Arc against the English in the
Hundred Years' War. The Saracen campaign features
Saladin and his efforts to repulse
Crusaders in the Middle East, while the Mongol campaign documents
Genghis Khan's conquest of Eurasia; finally, the Teuton campaign focuses on
Frederick Barbarossa's ambitious expansion of the Holy Roman Empire. The campaigns are sorted numerically to distinguish difficulty, with the William Wallace campaign being the easiest and Barbarossa and Saladin being the two most challenging.
Multiplayer The Age of Kings supports
multiplayer over the
Internet, or via a
local area network (LAN). Up to eight players can take part in one game, with all of the single-player game modes available. The
MSN Gaming Zone supported the game until the service closed on June 19, 2006. After that, various multiplayer gaming services such as
GameRanger supported it. Since April 2013,
Steam supports in-game multiplayer for
HD resolution. ==Development==