Age of Empires II: Age of Kings

The b*st real-time strategy game yet released

While I was preparing for the review (translated: playing lots and lots), I came to the conclusion that I wanted to call this the best real-time strategy game I have ever played. Unfortunately, my editor (send flame mail to Scott Udell - ~~sudell@mail.cdmag.com~~) was not comfortable with that, so I won’t. Instead, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings is currently the finest example of excellence and superiority without exception in the real-time strategy (RTS) genre, reaching prominence with superlative heights of quality and fun, and basically kicks ass. But, as per Scott, it’s not the best. It accomplishes what almost every sequel sets out to do, keep the fun stuff from the first game while fixing any problems and adding new stuff that doesn’t make the game too complicated. Also, a lot of that new stuff, like automatic formations, is almost certainly going to be “must-have” for any RTS games that follow.

For those not familiar with the original, Age of Kings is a builder RTS. You send out villagers to gather food, wood, gold and stone. Then, you have other villagers build your empire’s structures including barracks, docks, walls, and even castles. Once you have the buildings in place, you use them to either research new technologies for your empire, or to build units who kill stuff and break things. The thing that sets the original as well as Age of Kings apart from other builder games is large number of technologies available to research combined with the fact your empire moves through four distinct historical ages: the Dark Ages, the Feudal Age, the Castle Age, and the Imperial Age. Advancing to a new age opens up new buildings and technologies for your empire. Basically, it’s about as close to real-time Civilization as anyone has gotten.

What’s new

The biggest complaint players of the original game had had nothing to do with the game itself, but with the advertising that showed armies arrayed in formation preparing to do battle. Unfortunately, Age of Empires was like all almost all other RTS games in that your units did not move in formations, they just ran around in a mob.

Age of Kings answers that complaint completely. When you grab a bunch of infantry and move them, they fall into a line for short moves or a column for long ones. If you grab different types of units like infantry, archers, and siege engines, they will fall into a logical formation with heaviest armored units towards the front, ranged units next, and siege engines protected in the rear. The different types of units will move at the speed of the slowest unit which formations together, even over long marches. You can select several other formations for different situations. The box formation is a strong defensive formation that puts the weakest units in the center of a box of defenders. The staggered formation keeps your units spread out, reducing the number of units that a siege engine can hit with a single shot. The flanking formation works well for cavalry attacking siege engines that are being defended. Formations make managing your units and planning attacks much easier and makes it less likely that battles will turn into click-fests. The automatic formations are so well done in Age of Kings that they will almost certainly be copied in future RTS games and will likely be a must-have feature for gamers.

The other big complaint from the original game was the very poor pathfinding. Admittedly, trying to write instructions to have units move around on random maps is a serious challenge, but the fact remains, the original game had some of the worst unit pathfinding of any RTS game out at the time.

The designers answered this complaint as well. Although unit pathfinding isn’t perfect, it is at least as good as any other RTS game, and better than most. Combine that with the simplicity of setting waypoints for your units, and it is unlikely that moving your units around on the map will ever present a problem (other than those problems caused by enemies).

Age of Kings now lets you garrison your units in certain types of buildings. Your town center can hold any foot units like villagers and infantry. This is very useful when you get attacked early on and have no way of protecting the helpless villagers. Your military buildings like the barracks and stables can garrison newly created units rather than always sending them out. This type of garrisoning is useful to build up a large number of units before launching an attack at enemies standing right outside the building. Towers can garrison any foot units as well, and archers garrisoned in towers will still shoot at enemies outside while remaining safely hidden away. Castles can hold any units except siege engines, and they can hold more units (20) than any other building.

Gather points are another big addition. Any unit that can build or garrison units can have a gather point set for them, and in the case of buildings that create units, they gather point can even be inside the building (which is the only way to garrison military units inside barracks, stables, and archery ranges). Any unit created by that building will automatically head for the gather point, and if it is inside a building that the unit can enter, it will automatically garrison. The town center can set gather points on resources and newly created villagers will automatically start collecting that resource when created. This is another of the “must-have” features for future RTS games.

Some of the other new features include regicide games, death match games, better multiplayer options with the ability to signal allies and lock teams. There are even female villagers for the guys who just cannot live without seeing the opposite sex (and for the sickos, there are sheep…).

Byzantines and Vikings and Celts, oh my…

Age of Kings lets you play as one of thirteen different civilizations, loosely based on historical empires. Each of the civilizations has a different part of the technology tree available to them, and they all have at least one unique unit (the Vikings have two). Each civilization also has unique advantages such as low-cost advances for the Chinese and free farming advances for the Franks. The different civilizations lend themselves to a different style of play. The Teutons and Franks both make for strong defensive civilizations. The Goths and Mongols are excellent attackers. However, each of the civilizations tends to have enough strengths and weaknesses and they are balanced well enough that there is no dominant civilization and any civilization can be played aggressively or defensively. In fact, game balance is one of the biggest strengths of the game.

Just as there is no real dominant civilization, there are no dominant units. The Teutonic Knights are very strong, but very slow which makes them easy prey for cavalry archers. The Mongol Mangudai (unique cavalry archers) are deadly to all infantry, but cannot match up to foot archers or light cavalry. The Persian War Elephants are hard to kill and receive a bonus when attacking buildings, but they are very expensive and weak against cheap spearmen. In fact, every unit in the game has situations in which it excels as well as at least one critical weakness. This rock-paper-scissors approach means that a player who actually uses strategy will almost certainly be able to handle the classic ‘rush’ type game play that is commonplace in most RTS games.

The other reason rushes don’t work is that in the Dark Ages, you do not have access to any combat units except basic militia, and they are not very strong. As stated earlier, you can even garrison your poor, defenseless villagers in the town center where they will shoot arrows at the bad, nasty people trying to kill them. In the Feudal and Castle Ages, the civilizations have access to towers, walls, and castles that make it possible to set up strong defenses, and the best siege engines are not yet available so any attack is going to be a long, drawn-out affair. In the Imperial Age, your attack options open up and you get access to the most powerful attackers and siege engines, including the trebuchet which can reduce a building to rubble very quickly but is virtually worthless against anything that isn’t stationary.

Game Play

Features are great, but if the game isn’t any fun, it just doesn’t matter. Age of Kings does not have that problem. There is a definite attraction to starting out with only a handful of buildings and units then seeing your empire expand and advance (it’s the exact same attraction that made Civilization so incredibly popular). Age of Kings also demonstrates that it isn’t necessary to have high-powered 3D graphics to make popular games in the current market (but it does look very good, anyway).

Age of Kings is also a very easy game to get started with. Almost all unit commands can be handled simply by clicking on the unit and then right clicking where you want it to go. If you click on a villager then right click on a tree, the villager heads over to the tree and starts collecting lumber. If you click on a knight and then right click on a pikeman, the knight rides over and attacks the pikeman (and probably dies, too, since pikeman have an advantage against knights). There is even a well-written tutorial campaign featuring William Wallace that teaches new players all about controlling units, researching technologies, and even gives a few hints on successful strategies.

The game provides a lot of variety for players, too. The most common games are played on a random map, but those random maps can be anything from the deserts of Arabia, to the Black Forest of Europe, to islands or plains covered in rivers. Winning random maps can be accomplished either by building and defending a wonder, capturing all the holy relics on the map, or everybody’s favorite, slaughtering everyone else. You can also play special types of games like regicide and death match. In regicide, you start with a castle and a king in addition to the villagers and scout. The goal is to hunt down and kill all the enemy kings. In death match, you start with plenty of resources so that you can get started on building your army right away.

There are also four campaigns set around historical figures that loosely follow the major campaigns of those figures. Joan of Arc starts out a peasant girl who must raise an army and drive the British from France. Ghengis Khan must unite the various Mongol tribes into a single army before setting out on his conquests. The Saracen king, Saladin, has to bring the other Middle Eastern kingdoms into line before driving the Crusaders from the Holy Land. Finally, Frederick Barbarosa sets out to rebuild the Holy Roman Empire in the image of Charlemagne. And once you finish those campaigns, there is an editor included that allows you to make your own scenarios and link them together into a full campaign.

Perfection would be wonderful, but…

Of course, as good as Age of Kings is, it’s not perfect (just better than every RTS before it). There are a few minor bugs in the game. When you are building a long section of wall, it is commonplace for unwanted sections to appear. Removing them is simple, provided you notice it happen. It is also possible for units to move through the wall right next to a closed gate. This happens as the units pace back and forth in front of the gate trying to find a path through until they slip into the crack and sneak in. To prevent this, all you need to do is build anything that covers the edge of the gate and the edge of the wall (houses work well), or just put a tower near the gate to kill the units long before they wiggle in.

There is also a bit of micromanagement needed for resource gathering. Your villagers will happily clear-cut forests, strip mine all the available gold and stone, and catch fish until not even a minnow is left swimming (obviously there are no environmentalists at Ensemble Studios). They will even seek out new gold, wood, and food if it is nearby. However, if it’s not, they just stand around, and unlike most other things in the game, there is no audio warning for idle villagers. This single largest micromanagement complaint, though, is farms. Food is the single most important resource in the game since it is used in almost all research and unit building. Farms are the primary source of that food. Unfortunately, when a farm is built, it has only a fixed amount of food that can be gathered before they go fallow and have to be rebuilt. This would not be that big of deal if not for the fact that you manually have to order your villagers to rebuild the farms, and as per Murphy’s Law, the farms always go fallow right in the middle of a battle. Allowing players to set farms to be rebuilt automatically would have removed the single biggest source of frustration in the game.

Overall, Age of Kings is an excellent game. It looks good, it is very well balanced, and it is easy to get started on. There is more strategy and less mouse gymnastics than the average RTS game. There is also plenty of variety, and only a few things that keep it from being perfect. It is not the best (again, that was Scott Udell - sudell@mail.cdmag.com), but there isn’t anything better…yet.

--Xavori

Developed by Ensemble Studios
Published by Microsoft

Requirements:
166Mhz Pentium
Windows 95/98/NT
32Mb RAM
300Mb hard drive space
4x CD-ROM

Multiplayer
1-8 players
MSN Gaming Zone
IPX for DirectPlay
TCP/IP for DirectPlay
Local TCP/IP connection
Modem connection for DirectPlay
Serial connection for DirectPlay

Game Ratings
Overall: 5 stars
Gameplay: 5 stars
Graphics: 4 stars
Interface: 4 stars
Multiplayer: 4.5 stars
Depth: 5 stars
Stability: 4 stars

It’s like: Real-time Civilization done to near perfection