Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (often shortened to The Age of Kings or AoK) is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. Released on September 30, 1999 for the Microsoft Windows and Macintosh operating systems, it was the second game in the Age of Empires series. An expansion, The Conquerors, was released in 2000. A PlayStation 2 version was released by Konami in 2001, and a Nintendo DS spinoff, Age of Empires: The Age of Kings was developed by Backbone Entertainment in 2006.

The Age of Kings is set in the Middle Ages and contains thirteen playable civilizations. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and ultimately defeat their enemies. There are five historically-based campaigns, which constrict the player to specialized and story-backed conditions. There are three additional single player game modes, and multiplayer is supported. Despite using the same game engine and similar code to its predecessor, development of The Age of Kings took a year longer than expected, forcing Ensemble Studios to release Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome in 1998 instead. The design team focused on resolving significant issues in Age of Empires, but noted on release that some problems remained.

Reception of The Age of Kings was mostly positive, and the game scored highly on review aggregators. The significant number of new features was praised, as were the gameplay improvements. Some reviewers were critical of the presentation of units—they were seen as bland and uninteresting—while others considered The Age of Kings to be overly similar to its predecessor, Age of Empires. Three months after its release, two million copies of The Age of Kings had been shipped, and it topped sales charts in seven countries. The game won multiple awards and had a significant impact on future games in its genre.

Gameplay

The Age of Kings focuses on building towns, gathering resources, creating armies, and destroying enemy units and buildings. Players conquer rival towns and empires as they advance their own civilization through four "Ages": the Dark Age, the Feudal Age, the Castle Age, and the Imperial Age, reminiscent of the Renaissance—a 1000 year timeframe.^[1] Progressing to a new Age unlocks new units, structures and technologies, but players must pay a sum of resources and construct certain buildings before advancing.

Players choose to play as one of 13 civilizations split into four architectural styles, West European, Central European, Middle Eastern, and Far Eastern, that determine building appearance in-game. The civilizations have varying strengths and weaknesses with regards to economics, technology, and battle, and each has access to a different, very powerful "Unique Unit".^[2][3] To add variety, each civilization has a set of soundbites in its native language that are uttered by units when selected and instructed to perform a task.^[4]

Civilian units, called "villagers", are used to gather resources. These resources can be used to train units, construct buildings, and research technologies, among other things. The game offers four types of resources: food, wood, gold, and stone. Food is obtained by hunting animals, gathering berries, harvesting livestock, farming, and fishing. Wood is gathered by chopping down trees, gold is obtained from either gold mines or trade, and stone is collected from stone mines. Villagers require checkpoints, typically depository buildings, where they can store gathered resources.^[5] Each civilization can purchase upgrades that increase the rate of gathering these resources. Players who construct a special building, the market, may acquire or sell resources for gold. Market price fluctuate with every transaction.^[6]

There are five campaigns in The Age of Kings, containing historically-based scenarios such as Genghis Khan's invasion of Eurasia, Barbarossa's Crusade, or 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.^[7] Additional modes include random map, deathmatch, and regicide:^[8]

• In random map, the game generates a plain map. Players begin in the Dark Age with a Town Center (where resources may be deposited), three villagers, and a scout unit. The game can be won through military conquest, by constructing a special building known as a Wonder, or by obtaining control of all relics on the map.
• In a deathmatch, players begin with large amounts of resources, which makes advancing through Ages relatively easy and creates a focus on military dominance.
• In regicide, each player is given a king unit. A player wins by killing all of the other monarchs.

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. Alternative services, such as GameSpy Arcade, were recommended as a replacement.^[9] Macintosh versions of the games use the GameRanger client.

Units

Every player has a limit to the number of units they can create—a population limit—but may not immediately use the entire potential population.^[6] The population capacity, capped at 200, is based on the number of houses 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 unit button, which helps playes identify units that have not been assigned a task, and the town bell, which sends all a player's villagers into their Town Center for safety.^[10]

The Age of Kings also includes five types of military units: infantry, archers, cavalry, siege weaponry, and naval units. Certain types of infantry, archers, and cavalry are "counter units" with special defenses against other types of unit. The three human classes of military generally follow a rock-paper-scissors model. For example, infantry are generally powerful against buildings but weak against cavalry, thus, the infantry counter units—spearmen and pikemen—have attack bonuses against cavalry.^[11] The monk is a special kind of military unit that has the ability to convert enemy units to the player's team, and to heal allied units. Monks are also used to collect relics; collecting all the relics on the map is one method by which a player can win a random map game.^[12]

Buildings

Buildings in The Age of Kings are either economic, military or defensive in nature. Buildings can research technologies and upgrades that increase economic, military or unit-based efficiency, as well as provide resources for the player. The most important economic building is the Town Center, where villagers are created, some technologies are researched, and the player can advance to the next Age. The Town Center can fire arrows at enemy units within range and garrison villagers under attack.^[13]

Military units are created at military buildings, such as barracks, archery ranges, stables, and docks. Military buildings can perform research to improve the abilities of military units, by increasing their strength, defensive capabilities, or other attributes. The castle is a military building which can train a wide variety of units, including the Unique Unit, and fires arrows at enemy units within range. It can only be built after a player has reached the Castle Age.

There are two main defensive buildings, the wall and the tower. Walls are used to prevent access to an enclosed area whilst providing a solid line of defense. Gates can be installed in walls to allow allied units to access a defended area.^[4] Towers are equipped with the ability to fire arrows and drop oil on unfriendly units, and are often used in conjunction with the wall in defense mechanisms.

Another type of building available is the Wonder—a grand building that represents an architectural achievement of the civilization. In the standard game mode, building a Wonder will start a timer, with the amount of time determined on the size of the map. The player who has built the Wonder wins if it is still standing after the time has elapsed.^[14]

Development

Prior to the completion of Age of Empires, Ensemble Studios had signed a contract with Microsoft for a sequel. The design team chose to set The Age of Kings in the Middle Ages as a logical progression from the ancient era setting of Age of Empires. The design team was conscious of attempting to capture the broad appeal of the first game without making the game's design too similar. Nonetheless, they attempted to appeal to the vast demographic who played Age of Empires.^[15]

The Age of Kings's design team intended to complete the game within a year by using code from the original and reusing the Genie game engine.^[16] Several months into the process they found they would not be able to complete a game of the quality they sought in that time. Ensemble Studios informed Microsoft they would need another year and instead created Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome, an easily-developed expansion pack of Age of Empires, as a compromise which could be released for Christmas 1998.^[15] To help meet the next year's deadline, additional programmers, artists, and designers were employed.^[17]

The original Age of Empires had been criticized for its artificial intelligence (AI). Because the original AI did not "cheat"^[18] by attributing itself extra resources or using other techniques the human player could not, it was easier to defeat than in many other real-time strategy games. For The Age of Kings, Ensemble Studios attempted to develop a more powerful AI system that did not compromise by cheating. Industry veteran Mario Grimani led Ensemble Studios in the creation of the new system. To overcome another significant objection to Age of Empires—that of path finding—the team completely redesigned the game engine's movement system.^[17] The team was less successful in resolving other issues; programmer Matt Pritchard complained following the release of Age of Empires that there was still no process by which patches could be issued. Extensive cheating in multiplayer games of Age of Empires came as a result of several bugs in the game, which resulted in Microsoft promising Ensemble Studios there would be a patch process for The Age of Kings. On release, there were several bugs that needed immediate attention, but the patch process was not yet ready. The first patch was released 11 months later.^[19][20]

Ensemble Studios developed a new terrain system for The Age of Kings, with 3D presentation capabilities that were vastly superior to those of Age of Empires. Pritchard noted an improvement in the team's artistic abilities following their work on the past two games, and he is noted as saying that "AoK became a showcase for their improved talent".^[17] However, he complained about the lack of an art asset management tool, while other departments gained new tools and automated procedures to assist in design and play testing.^[17][19]

The Age of Kings saw the introduction of a triggers system for its scenario editor. The triggers allow messages to be displayed, or actions to take place, based on pre-set criteria or "events".^[21] The scenario editor was also improved by the new AI system. The AI and trigger systems interacted regularly in the single player campaigns.^[22]

The soundtrack for The Age of Kings was directed by Stephen Rippy, who has since taken that role for all games in the Age of Empires series. Music for the game was split into two categories. For "in game" music, Rippy's team took musical elements from a variety of cultures and combined them to create a mixed sound. "Pre-game" music was designed to be unique to the civilization in question. Campaigns based on historical figures would include "a theme that will at least be rooted in [the character's] culture".^[23]

A demo of The Age of Kings was released on October 16, 1999.^[24] It featured the learning campaign, a sample of a random map game, and the ability to play via the MSN Gaming Zone.^[20] Much to Ensemble Studios' disappointment, numerous incomplete versions of the game were leaked. These were picked up by warez sites, and sold illegally throughout the Pacific Rim; warez versions of the game were even sold outside Microsoft's offices in Korea.^[19]

Reception and legacy

Reception
Review scores Publication Score Allgame [25] Computer and Video Games 9.0/10[26] Edge 8/10[27] Eurogamer 9/10[4] GamePro [10] Game Revolution A-[28] GameSpot 9.1/10[2] GameSpy 89/100[29] IGN 8.8/10[30] PC Zone 9.0/10[31]
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score Game Rankings 92%[33] Metacritic 92[32]

Reception of The Age of Kings was overwhelmingly positive. The game scored 92 out of 100 on both Game Rankings and Metacritic, the latter of which stated it received "Universal Acclaim".^[32][33]

According to Eurogamer's Geoff Richards, "the list of new features and improvements over the original game is over a page long".^[4] GamePro's review similarly focused on "new additions to the genre itself" which it argued made The Age of Kings outstanding. These included the idle unit button and town bell.^[10] GameSpy's Carlos Salgado was appreciative of other features; he praised the ability to create individual profiles for different players and to customize hotkeys.^[29] Meanwhile, IGN appreciated the new abilities given to the villager unit—the review stated villagers "now play an important role not only in the collection of resources, but also in town defense and even in combat."^[30]

Allgame's Michael L. House enjoyed the use of soundbites in civilizations' native languages, which he said was "very influential in developing an era-enhancing atmosphere".^[25] Eurogamer said this feature "gives [villagers] a personality, rather than the standard "Acknowledged" grunt of military RTS games", also stating that the use of female villagers provided a good variety.^[4] Game Revolution's review explained that by being set in a more recent epoch of human history, The Age of Kings was able to "add character to an otherwise impersonal style of gameplay".^[28] Computer and Video Games approved of The Age of Kings' use of shorter, more focused campaigns, compared to its predecessor,^[26] while Game Revolution noted that even in slower sections of the campaign, the historical narrative helped maintain player interest.^[28] GameSpot said that with the screen full of units, "you can begin to imagine how their historical equivalents once prospered",^[2] while GameSpy said The Age of Kings presents "realism rarely seen in the RTS genre".^[29] IGN staff argued that while the strengths and weaknesses attributed to different civilizations made the game more realistic, the fact that they were still mostly the same prevented The Age of Kings from "delivering the same battlefield impact of Starcraft or Tiberian Sun".^[30]

House also praised the gameplay interface, which he said "couldn't be simpler", as well as the advanced grouping and path-finding systems.^[25] Nash Werner of GamePro said that the formation tools were wonderful, and only complained that they could not be assigned to naval units.^[10] Computer and Video Games generally agreed, stating that "the controls are very user-friendly and well explained".^[26] GameSpot's Greg Kasavin wrote that despite the game's improve graphics, "there's nothing foreign about its appearance" and that most game features will be "immediately recognizable if you've played a real-time strategy game before".^[2] PC Zone agreed, but in a negative sense—it argued that The Age of Kings "is essentially an update of a two-year-old game".^[31]

Richards was surprised by the quality of The Age of Kings' graphics, considering they were all bitmapped.^[4] However, Allgame complained that units were sometimes difficult to tell apart, a point numerous reviewers agreed on.^[2][31] It also called the sound of The Age of Kings as a negative, but not something significant enough to draw players away from the game's overall quality.^[25] IGN stated that cutscenes were somewhat bland, but that overall the graphics added "an amazing amount of detail to the actual game".^[30] Its main criticism was for the in-game speech used in campaigns; it rhetorically asked "why can't they just find a Frenchman to do a French accent?"^[30] Alex Constantides of Computer and Video Games rated the graphics highly, saying that some in-game buildings are "so grand you'll even feel guilty about burning them to the ground".^[26] Werner agreed; "the most noticeable graphical advancements", he wrote, were "the sheer size and scale of things".^[10] Game Revolution stated "AOE2 is the best looking of the 2D RTS games out there right now".^[28]

In January 2000, three months after its release, Microsoft announced that they had shipped two million copies of The Age of Kings. The game topped sales charts in the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia and Korea.^[34] It would spend the next two and a half years on top 20 sales lists.^[35] The Age of Kings was top selling game in October 1999,^[36] and the fourth highest selling game in 1999.^[37]

The Age of Kings won GameSpot's Strategy Game of the Year in 1999,^[38] and was a nominee for Game of the Year.^[39] GamePower also named it Strategy Game of the Year, while PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World gave it Editor's Choice awards.^[34] The Age of Kings won Strategy Game of the Year and Computer Game of the Year at the 2000 Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awards. It was also nominated for Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Animation, Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, and Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering.^[40] IGN ranked The Age of Kings the 53rd best game of all time in 2005,^[41] and the 10th best PC game of all time in 2007.^[42] GameFAQs users placed it 56th in a poll of the best games ever.^[43]

The Age of Kings was highly influential on its genre. Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, a 2001 game by LucasArts, shared The Age of Kings' game engine, and was heavily influenced by its mechanics.^[44] Empire Earth's design was also similar to that of The Age of Kings; GameSpot said it "borrows most of that game's controls, interface features, and even some of its keyboard shortcuts".^[45] Rick Goodman, designer of Age of Empires and The Rise of Rome, designed Empire Earth.^[46] GameSpot's Scott Osborne argued that the gameplay of Cossacks: European Wars was heavily based on The Age of Kings.^[47]

An expansion for The Age of Kings, The Conquerors, was released in 2000. It introduced numerous new game features, including five new civilizations. Two of these, the Aztecs and the Mayans, represented the New World. As well as three campaigns similar in concept to those in The Age of Kings, The Conquerors included a "Battles of the Conquerors" campaign which contained several unrelated battles such as those of Agincourt and Hastings. Age of Mythology, released in 2002, broke away from the historical trend and instead focused on Greek, Egyptian, and Norse mythology. It shared many gameplay elements with The Age of Kings and was considered a spin-off of the main Age of Empires series.^[48] The third historical game in the Age of Empires series, Age of Empires III, was released in 2005. The game portrayed the European colonization of the Americas. Aside from one significant feature, the home city, the game's design was similar to that of its predecessor.^[49]

References

External links

• Official Website
• Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings at MobyGames