Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

aka: AOK, Age of Empires 2, AoE2
Moby ID: 368
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

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.

Spellings

  • 世紀帝國 II:帝王世紀 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 帝国时代II:帝王时代 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

488 People (171 developers, 317 thanks) · View all

Design
Lead Programming
Programming
Lead Art
Art
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 62 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 247 ratings with 9 reviews)

One of the best RTS games of all time

The Good
A great mixture of Warcraft II and Civilization. Great graphics, nice music and very deep gameplay make this one of the best RTS games ever. Many civilizations to choose from, lots of units and many little facets in the game make for a long entertaining and sometimes frustrating game experience. The interface is complex, but still easy to learn. It's mainly a multiplayer game, though. There are single player campaigns and there are random games against computer opponents but they are only there to train for the battles on the net.

The Bad
The computer AI has some weaknesses like the computer's settlers stopping their work and following a unit endlessly when being attacked by a scout. Marvels can make easy wins for fairly poor players. The game frame rate drops down a lot even on faster computers when you move large numbers of units and can make huge battles a pain.

The Bottom Line
A good mixture of developing a civilization, exploring and real-time battles. All in all a great game especially in multiplayer mode.

Windows · by Robert Teichmann (415) · 2000

The best RTS ever made!

The Good
The amount of options you have in this game are incredible. The included mission packs are insanely fun to play, including such famous people as William Wallace and Genghis Khan. There is a lot of game to play, and barely any micro-management is required to keep your cities up and running and to keep on producing units.

An included mission editor makes the game even greater, as any kind of mission you would like to create can be made with an easily learned scripting system.

The Bad
The pathfinding of the units is not perfect, but no pathfinding is perfect, and it is generally better than other games from it's time period.

The Bottom Line
The greatest RTS ever made, with limitless amounts of options for all players, and with the included mission editor, even more options as you can download other peoples works.

Windows · by Charles Auger (2) · 2008

Fun....in the beginning

The Good
This game needs a lot of strategy. I enjoy games that take thought in order to win, rather than just total hack-and-slash. Without thought, you will probably lose.

The graphics are very crisp and nice, and I enjoy the various ways the troops die. I prefer the nice look of the Vikings, and the interesting Aztec/Mayan buildings.

The sounds in the game are sound good, and give the impression of the sound of battle as troops fight.

By far the best thing about the game is the map editor. It is very fun to create a featureless desert, with two huge armies in the middle of the map, resulting in a quick, but violent, battle. The test feature allows you to give your map a test run to see how it works, so that you don't have to leave the editor and create a new game to try it.

The Bad
After playing for a little while on one level, the computer just repeats itself and fails to do anything new. You get bored and just resort to cheats to win, and do the same in subsequent levels.

The Bottom Line
Buy this game if you enjoy large scale strategy battles.

Windows · by Boris Stovich (26) · 2004

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Missing Unnoficial Add-Ons? Photon Fighter Dec 22, 2023
Partial credits? Mtik333 (29526) Jan 6, 2022

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The PC version of Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

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

EULA

The EULA of this game includes a clause which prohibits the use of Age of Empires II in a nuclear plant.

Online servers

The game's online servers (which were hosted on MSN Gaming Zone) were shut down on 19 June 2006 in the wake of MSN Games' shift from "CD-ROM matchmaking service" to casual online games.

Pre-release

Before release, multiple pre-release versions were released on Internet warez sites. According to Matt Pritchard, they usually were only one or two weeks older than the latest in-house versions. It seems they came from various sources, including press previews, Microsoft test versions and even from Ensemble employees. They were also multiple attempts of hacking Ensemble's server and network.

On a lighter note, the German magazine GameStar bribed one of the official webmasters with "German beer" for some exclusive screenshots.

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
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #16 Top Game of All Time
  • 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

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Related Sites +

  • Age of Kings A t r i u m   Your only source for Age of Kings
    A fan site with all the game info. Info on all the different tribes. Great forum & a page with a lot of links to other fan sites .a must site of visited.
  • Age of Kings Heaven -
    A fan site with all the game info. Info on all the different tribes. a must site of visited.
  • AoK Battlefield
    The webmasters show a lot of dedication of their site, they even took a visit to the ES office. Updated regularly and has contests for war stories and other things. Nice looking ubb forums in which to post.
  • Berserker Clan
    A group of keen AoK gamers that compete regularly online. The site has a large number of recorded games, and active forum, and some other game-related downloads.
  • IGCD Internet Game Cars Database
    Game page on IGCD, a database that tries to archive vehicles found in video games.
  • King Arthur's Castle - Camelot
    Updated regularly and a nice stylish design. The team of webmasters seem to be very dedicated and it has shown so far.
  • MrFixitOnline.com
    Probably the best site to improve your game skills. Many tactics, a strategy forum, recorded games and much more.
  • Planet Age Of Empires
    A very good website with tons of info and files, including recorded games, maps, scenarios, and AI editing tools. Also has a large forum.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 368
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Rynok.

PlayStation 2 added by Xoleras. Macintosh added by Jeanne.

Additional contributors: MajorDad, P Boughton, Robert Teichmann, Dr. Elementary, Unicorn Lynx, Dapy, Maw, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Plok, Victor Vance, FatherJack, Flapco.

Game added November 2, 1999. Last modified March 3, 2024.