Age of Empires II: Age of Kings

Rating: 4/5

Doing a sequel to a game as successful as Age of Empires has been is a delicate task indeed. The makers have to produce something that is going to be familiar to anyone who played the original but it also has to at least match features that subsequent games in the genre have introduced and show real progress, otherwise people feel cheated.

With Age of Kings, Ensemble Studios has accomplished that goal admirably well. They have retained the original game's ease of use but added plenty of advanced features for experienced players which help to remove some of the frustrations of the original. To my delight, the company has also managed to achieve all of this without demanding the latest computer hardware.

The original Age of Empires covered all of the best-known early empires like the Greeks, Egyptians and (in a subsequent expansion set) the Romans. With this game, we move ahead a couple of centuriesto the Middle Ages, but the basic principles remain largely un-altered.

You start with a bunch of villagers and set them to work gathering resources (the same 4 - gold, wood, stone and gold). They use these to create new units and buildings in towns. Each of the buildings in the town let you create different military units and/or research new technologies. You can also build fortifications around your town to protect it - and in the days before gunpowder this is crucial. Age of Kings now lets you build gates so (unlike the original game) you don't have todestroy and re-build walls to get in and out!

The online help is much improved in Age of Kings - you don't have to refer to the manual any more to see the technology tree or seethe capabilities of an individual unit or building. If you have the featureactivated, useful context sensitive information will pop up when youput your mouse over any element.

It's a pretty game, like its predecessor. The buildings are somewhat larger and more elaborate than the original game, and you getdifferent-looking ones for each civilization at each tech level (or "Age")though their function is the same. There are 13 different civilizations on offer, from the Britons to the Vikings. Each is better at some things than others and some can't create certain weapons - Brits can't use cannon, apparently, for example. But each only has one "unique" unit, which is a shame since gamers tend to really enjoy using elite units like these.

The only problem with the attractive scenery is that there is only one "point of view" which means your units or the enemy's can often be hidden "behind" walls, buildings or the ubiquitous forests.When this happens you see outlines of the hidden units, which sometimesmakes the game seem haunted by the ghosts of the slain!

The must important technical innovation in Age of Kings, in my view, is the introduction of formations. It is important that the different kinds of units work together - that pikemen protect archers, for example. Before Age of Kings, it was difficult to make your troops protect each other without continually adjusting their positions by hand - now you can group all your troops together and select one of four different formations. Whether they are moving or attacking, they will always try to stay in the formation you gave them.

The game also now allows you better control over what your units get up to when you aren't moving them around. You can set themto patrol, guard a specific building or unit, or to follow a unit (useful for following units with sort spotting range back to their HQ). You can also decide how aggressive a unit is, up to a point. The "aggressive" stance will make your units attack any unit they see and follow themuntil they or the enemy are killed, "defensive" stance units only followunits for a short distance before returning to their original location,"stand ground" units won't move at all to attack units and "No attack"units - well, you can imagine.

Your units don't have to stand around outside the buildings where they were created any more, either - you can send them directly to the battlements (or wherever you want them to). It's ironic that this game should give players so much better control over their units than the first Age of Empires did since, as they point out in their own historical notes, real-life medieval armies tended to be un-disciplined and battles tended to degenerate into disorganized scraps once hand to hand fighting began.

Unfortunately, you can't ask units to flee from any engagement or to stay automatically at maximum range from your opponent - two crucial capabilities for scout and archer units. There also isn't an "auto-explore" command, so you can spend much of the first few turns just moving your scouts around the map. It's a shame that Ensemble Studios brought the game so near to the capabilities of other RTS produced since, then left out such key capabilities.

Diplomacy and trade are pretty basic, though much improved from earlier games. You can offer tribute to other players and tradewith them - there is even a simple economic model so that the price ofcommodities traded rises and falls. Allies can view each others' worldmaps (when they have researched map making) and cleverly Microsoft hasput in a "signal allies" command so you can show your ally where youwant to attack instead of having to type "please attack that villageover there - in the bottom left (well more towards the middle). Unfortunately,these are only really useful in multi-player games. There is no way tonegotiate with computer players or to ask computer allies to do whatyou want (other than giving copious tribute and hoping for the best).Generally in single-player games it is a fight to the death.

There are also more ways to win the game than just killing all of your opponents (though that is still the most popular option). As with Age of Empires you can build "wonders" (if you build and keep an expensive "wonder" for several turns you win), or you can capturerelics scattered across the map. New Age of Kings victory options include"high score after a set time", "first to reach a set score" and "regicide"where the objective is to have the last king alive.

One of the more frustrating things about the original game is the way that villagers who had finished mining, building or othertasks would just stand around. They still do this, unfortunately, butat least now there is a "go to next idle" command so you can quicklyfind loafing villagers or soldiers and give them orders. Villagers alsodon't know to run away from enemy units, but to get around this you canring the bell in your town centre and all of them will run to take shelterin the nearest fortification. Once I found that a band of enemy soldierswere inside my gates even though my walls had not been breached - itturns out that they snuck in when my own soldiers were leaving. Fortunately, you can "lock" your gates as the enemy approaches - something worth remembering!

The enemy's AI is also not very bright. If you build your walls a fair distance from other buildings, enemy troops will keep battering at them even after they are breached instead of moving inside them and looking for more buildings to attack, and for some reason enemy siege engines will often roll around outside the walls waiting to be destroyed instead of attacking.

This, together with the rather dull single person scenarios, means that after you have mastered the mechanics fighting the computer you will soon be bored unless you can find human opponents. Fortunately, there is no trouble finding them online - Microsoft's Age of Kings area on the Gaming Zone often has as many as 2000 players in it! It's just a shame that the games can take hours, which can run your phone billup prodigiously.

Age of Kings is a worthy upgrade to Age of Empires and contains more well-thought-out enhancements than I could tell you about here.It may not keep your attention too long in single player mode thanks to its rather limited computer players, but if you are looking for an easy to grasp, addictive multi-player game, look no further.