Description
In
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, the player takes control of one of thirteen civilizations, including the Chinese, Goths, Britons, and Vikings, among others. The player starts with a handful of villagers, through expansion and careful handling of the economy, the player can advance up to the point where powerful war machines and well trained masses of troops will be the player's to make and control.
There are three distinct ways to play, one of which the object is to hunt and kill the other player(s) king, however there are a lot of options for each, anywhere from what type of map to start on (including coastal, gold rush, arabia, and rivers) to what the maximum amount of units are allowed.
The player can also play online at the Zone vs. up to seven other players, or via a TCP/IP connection.
Alternate Titles
- "帝国时代II：帝王时代" -- Chinese spelling (simplified)
- "世紀帝國 II：帝王世紀" -- Chinese spelling (traditional)
- "AOK" -- Informal title
- "AoE2" -- Common abbreviation
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Trivia
Cut Content
Age of Kings, during its development, was subject to many changes. Some things that were cut out of the final game are...
- A fifth resource: ore. Was removed because it made the game too complex.
- Outlaw units. These were intended to function like wolves, guys that belong to no player and attack you if you get near. Were removed because they were too annoying.
- Sea walls. These were supposed to be built by ships and could withstand a good amount of damage. I'm not sure why they weren't included.
- Dolphins: you were supposed to be able to fish these like any other sort of fish. Microsoft forced Ensemble to remove them!
The interesting thing is, all of those things and more are still hidden in the game, buried inside the .dat file. If you reverse-engineer the game, you are able to access them, and add them to custom scenarios. Templates have been released that contain all of them.
Dry Dock Technology
Dry dock technology decreases the amount of gold a trade cog brings back home. The reduction can be at least 33% in some cases.
It seems to be balanced with the ship speed increase so that the productivity of trade cogs remains about the same as before dry dock research. In some cases I had slightly better gold income (gold/second) before the research of dry docks than after. I did not make a thorough testing with many different distances, but what I did was test it in a deathmatch game too, to be sure it does happen in real games.
Source - From a post by SimMayor realsimmayor@geocities.com
on the AoE2.com forum
http://www.coolboard.com/frame.cfm/mb=902460962910918
EULA
The EULA of this game includes a clause which prohibits the use of
Age of Empires II in a nuclear plant.
Multiplayer
The MSN Gaming Zone is notoriously easy to hack, and cheaters are rife in
Age of Kings games. A programmer named Tormentium released an unofficial patch for AoK (1.0E), which is supposed to make the game harder to hack. Too bad it doesn't work.
References
This occurs during the Saladin Single Player campaign, during the mission in which you secure Jerusalem. If you strike down the Knights Templar leader (a hero unit), he declares, "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!" This is obviously a reference to Obi-Wan Kenobi dueling Darth Vader in
Star Wars: A New Hope.
Sales
Between 1999 and 2000, Age of Empires II (PC) won a single Gold- and three Platinum-Awards from the German VUD (Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland - Entertainment Software Association Germany) for selling more then 100,000 units (Gold) and more then three times 200,000 units (Platinum) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. As the Gold-Award is not counted into the Platinum-Award, all four awards total in between 700,000 and 1,700,000 units sold.
Awards
- Computer Gaming World
- March 2000 (Issue #188) – Best Weapon of the Year (for the Trebuchet)
- March 2000 (Issue #188) – Best Interface Design of the Year
- GameStar (Germany)
- 1999 - Best Game (Editors' Vote)
- 1999 - Best Game (Readers' Vote)
- PC Gamer
- 1999 - Real-Time Strategy Game of the Year
- PC Player (Germany)
- Issue 01/2000 - Best Real-Time Strategy Game in 1999
- Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (Entertainment Software Association Germany)
- 1999/2000 - Gold Award for selling more then 100,000 units in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
- 1999/2000 - Three Platinum Awards for selling more then 200,000 units in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Every award is counted individually
Information also contributed by
Heikki Sairanen,
Ingold,
jeremy strope,
Maw and
Xoleras
