Age of Empires II

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a real-time strategy computer game set in the Middle Ages. It was released in 1999, and it is the second game of the Age of Empires series developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. more...

Home
*Best Sellers
Accessories
Genre
Internet Games
Others
Platform
3DO
Apple
Atari
Colecovision
Commodore
Intellivision
Microsoft Xbox
Microsoft Xbox 360
Nintendo 64
Nintendo DS
Nintendo Game Boy
Nintendo Game Boy Advance
Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP
Nintendo Game Boy Color
Nintendo Game Boy Micro
Nintendo GameCube
Nintendo NES
Nintendo, Super
PC
Age of Empires II
Age of Mythology
Baldur Gate
Baldur Gate II
Battlefield 1942
Civilization III
Civilization IV
Diablo
Diablo II
Doom
Guild Wars
Half Life
Half Life 2
Myst
Neverwinter Nights
Quake
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
The Sims 2
Warcraft
Warcraft II
World of Warcraft
Sega CD
Sega Dreamcast
Sega Game Gear
Sega Genesis
Sega Master
Sega Pico
Sega Saturn
Sinclair
Sony PlayStation
Sony PlayStation 2
Sony PSP
Systems
Vintage Games
Wholesale Lots

Because of its commercial success, an expansion pack was released: Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion, followed by a Gold Edition, which bundling together the game and its expansion, and a true sequel, Age of Empires III.

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is sometimes called Age of Kings, or abbreviated as AoK, AOE2, or AOE II.

Gameplay

The player controls a society and guides them through four "ages". The game begins in the Dark Ages, where very few buildings and units are available. After a short time, the user gains the ability to advance to the Feudal Age, where more upgrades, buildings, and units become available. The next age is the Castle Age, and finally the Imperial age, which is reminiscient of the early years of the Renaissance.

The player directly controls the citizens, and can order them to construct buildings, collect resources, and attack.

There are four types of resources, all of which are necessary: Wood, food, gold, and stone. Wood is used for building structures, providing renewable food resources and training archers, stone for defenses like Castles or towers, and gold and food for constructing units and researching technologies. Often, one of the difficulties of a certain scenario or map is that it is short one type of resource, forcing players to adjust to this shortage. This can be avoided by playing in a "Deathmatch" game type, wherein the player is given resource stockpiles in the thousands.

The real-world maps available in the expansion (Scandinavia, Central America, Sea of Japan etc) are small versions of real-world territories, with geography very close to their real-world equivalents.

The original game comes with five campaigns, and the expansion adds three more, all of which reflect some event in history, like Joan of Arc leading the French to battle, or Genghis Khan's invasion of Eurasia. There is also a Standard Game feature, which pits a player against a set number of Computer players for control of a map. The usual goal in standard games is to defeat any enemies and force them to surrender, but other goals like building and protecting a special type of building (called a "Wonder") also exist.

In multiplayer mode, up to eight players compete with other nations for world dominance, online or offline. Microsoft Zone used to be the most popular Internet server for The Conquerors, but the Zone pulled its support of the game June 19th, 2006. During the seven years on the zone a number of famous players were formed including _DAN_, Mat_The_Cool and Kleft_Angels, players often met up to play tournments and these three players would often come first in the results. Another popular form of ranking was the Top 30 where players would all strive to be. Yet top 30 never had an official list and was often the communities consensus. After a hiatus, Ensemble Studios established multiplayer support on GameSpy Arcade. There is also an open source multiplayer effort called GTADS that allows 1 vs 1 for Age of Empires and Age of Empires II. Most people who played on Zone play on Gamepark now. The most popular 1 vs 1 strategy is "Flush", which means FeudaL age rUSHing. This can upset beginners, as they usually expect to advance to Castle age before fighting.

Read more at Wikipedia.org