Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (usually just Age of Kings or AoK, sometimes referred to as Beach AoM) is the second of the "Age of" franchise, released in 1999. A legendary title filled up to gills with things amazing and awesome, it is universally considered the best game ever made by people writing this article, and no nostalgia is rose-tinting it at all damnit.
Age of Kings picks up where the original Age of Empires left off and spans the Middle Ages.
==Introduction==
Wikipedia says ES had a deal with Microsoft to make a sequel to AoE before they made AoE. It was supposed to come out a year earlier, but as it turned out to be a huge pain in the ass to design, they half-assed RoR instead and kept designing AoK for a year more. Which is incidentally a thing which did not happen with Ao3
AoK was released in Autumn of 1999, making it the high point of human civilisation. It was probably mainly made by Bruce Shelley
==Setting==
ROME HAS FALLEN AND THE WORLD IS UP FOR GRABS MOTHERFUCKERS
For some reason most of the civs are dark age tribes which is pretty weird because AoE had a lineup of actual empires and now we're suddenly down to Teutons vs Franks or whatever. But the civs actually represent later countries more than the nominal tribes so I GUESS THAT'S OKAY
Group 	Western European	Eastern European	Middle Eastern	Far Eastern
Civilizations	
*Britons
*Franks
*Celts	
*Vikings
*Teutons
*Goths	
*Saracens
*Turks
*Byzantines
*Persians	
*Japanese
*Chinese
*Mongols
This time ES decided to differentiate among the civs a bit and every one has a unique unit and a unique wonder and a unique intro jingle. Byzantines have the best intro jingle, it goes "YYYYYYYYYYYIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!"
The four ages are Dank, Futile, Crass and Imbecile. You basically progress from militia in leather tents to cannons and shit.
==Gameplay==
You start with your piece of shit leather TC and a bunch of vils and pony. Then you sleuth for boar and deer and then you just basically try to build more buildings than the other dudes and also use trebuchets to destroy their buildings.
I don't know it's pretty straightforward
Also there's a Regicide mode where you start with a castle and a king and you lose if the king dies and you are supposed to use him for scouting in the first age you sissy.
==Campaigns==
AoK campaigns are awesome. Unlike AoE campaigns, they are focused on dudes rather than empires. Er, dudes and dudette
===William Wallace===
This is the learning campaign and a guy with a really forced Scottish accent tells you to do menial shit and oh Christ shut up guy.
===Joan of Arc===
Joan of Arc was probably the first campaign they made because it's full of hero units and diverse, carefully crafted maps rather than the usual OH GOD OKAY YOU START WITH A TC AND TWO HOUSES KILL THE OTHER DUDES. I just now realised you never actually start with a TC in Joan, you always have to do something to even get it. Huh.
===Saladin===
Saladin is the hardest campaign and when you finish it the end game music plays so it was probably supposed to be the final campaign but then someone cocked up all the numbers or something. It's the camelest campaign and I hope you aren't sick fighting the British yet because there's a whole bunch of British
===Genghis Khan===
It's a nice diverse campaign where you fight enemies of all possible cultures while waiting for Subotai to kindly show up finally. Unfortunately it sort of runs out of steam after the first scenario.
===Barbarossa===
You bum around Europe and the Middle East while constantly betrayed by Henry the Lion and/or stuffed in a picke barrell. At the end you fight Saladin and someone missed the opportunity to have both campaigns end on the same map except on opposite sides, HOW COOL WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN
As one would expect from a game called Age of Kings, all of these campaign protagonists are kings. Except for those who are sultans, emperors, khans, rebelling nobles or peasant girls.
==Multiplayer==
Attempting to play AoK multiplayer generally consisted of several hours of attempting to threaten the outdated software into working and then giving up. But then AoK:HD was released in 2013 and suddenly everyone started playing AoK.
==Scenario design==
AoK added triggers to the map editor which was like WHOA. Also because the designing process isn’t a frustrating pile of dogshit like in AoM, AoK has by far the best fanmade scenarios of any Age game. You can download them from aokheaven’s blacksmith. All of them.
==In FPH==
AoK comes from an ancient time before FPH but, since the love for AoK was pretty much the only motivation to hang around pre-release AoM forums, it can nevertheless be considered some sort of a spiritual protoclangame. Anyone who hasn’t played AoK should feel free to goomc.
On the tenth anniversary of AoK, FPH held decennial AoKnniversary celebrations. They were extremely AoKsome and anniversaristic.
The Kara-Khitai are probably a thing that influenced FPH folklore the most, but lame references to obscure AoK stuff should be expected at all times.
In 2013, AoK HD made it possible to play multiplayer without too much of a hassle, resulting in many glorious and semi-glorious matches. Also, 2013 Kournament.
Category:Age games
Categpry:ES games