Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

***Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings*** is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. Released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh, it is the second game in the *Age of Empires* series. *The Age of Kings* is set in the Middle Ages and contains thirteen playable civilizations. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies. There are five historically based campaigns, which conscript the player to specialized and story-backed conditions, as well as three additional single-player game modes; multiplayer is also supported.

Despite using the same game engine and code similar to its predecessor's, development of *The Age of Kings* took a year longer than expected, forcing Ensemble Studios to release *Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome* in 1998 instead. The design team focused on resolving significant issues in *Age of Empires*, but noted on release that some problems remained.

Reception of *The Age of Kings* was highly positive. The significant number of new features was praised, as were the gameplay improvements. The game received "universal acclaim" according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. Three months after its release, two million copies of *The Age of Kings* had been shipped, and it topped sales charts in seven countries. The game won multiple awards and is today considered a classic of its type, having had a significant impact on future games in its genre. The original *Age of Empires II* and its 2000 expansion pack, *The Conquerors*, were later released as *The Gold Edition*. *Age of Empires II* is often considered one of the greatest games ever made.

An updated high-definition graphics version of the game, *Age of Empires II: HD Edition*, was released in 2013. The *HD Edition* includes the original game and the expansion *The Conquerors*, as well as new campaigns, civilizations, and updated graphics for high-resolution displays. A remaster, *Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition*, was released in November 2019.

## Gameplay

*Age of Empires II* is a real-time strategy game that focuses on building towns, gathering resources, and creating armies to defeat opponents. Players conquer rival towns and empires as they advance one of 13 civilizations through four "Ages": the Dark Age, the Feudal Age, the Castle Age (representing the High Middle Ages), and the Imperial Age (reminiscent of the Renaissance)—a 1,000-year timeframe. Advancing to a new Age unlocks new units, structures, and technologies, but players must first build certain buildings from their current age and then pay a sum of resources (typically food and gold).

Civilian units, called "villagers", are used to gather resources; they are either male or female—gender does not affect their abilities. Resources can be used to train units, construct buildings, and research technologies, among other things; for example, players can research better armour for infantry units. The game features four types of resources: food, wood, gold, and stone. Food is obtained by hunting animals, gathering berries, harvesting livestock, farming, and fishing, both from shore and from boats. Wood is gathered by chopping down trees. Gold is obtained from either gold mines, trade, or collecting relics in a monastery. Stone is collected from stone mines. Villagers require checkpoints, typically depository buildings (town center, mining camp, mill, and lumber yard), in order to store gathered resources.

Each civilization can purchase upgrades that increase the rate of gathering these resources. Players can also construct a marketplace for trade, where they can trade wood, stone, and food for gold, and use gold to buy other resources. Market prices fluctuate with every transaction. Furthermore, markets and docks can also generate gold by using trading carts or cogs, which are sent to visit foreign markets and ports; once they return to the player's market/dock, gold is added to the stockpile. The amount of gold a trade unit earns on each trip is based on the distance it needed to travel to a foreign market; more gold is earned on longer trips. It is possible to trade with enemies' markets or docks, but the player's trading units may be attacked or destroyed by enemy units in the process. Players do not need to keep trading manually, as once they select the port or market the trading units continue to trade automatically and indefinitely.

There are five campaigns in *The Age of Kings*, containing historically based scenarios such as Genghis Khan's invasion of Eurasia, Barbarossa's Crusade, and Saladin's defence of the Holy Land. In the Joan of Arc and William Wallace campaigns, the player can control a unit based on its namesake; in others, players take orders from guiding spirits representative of the army's commander.

Additional game modes are available to the player in *The Age of Kings*. One mode, random map, generates a map from one of several randomly chosen map-generating scripts, with players starting in the Dark Age with a Town Center, three villagers (or more depending on the civilization), and a scout unit. The game can be won through military conquest, by constructing a special building known as a Wonder and keeping it standing for a certain amount of time, or by obtaining control of all relics on the map for a set amount of time. Deathmatch mode allows players to begin with large amounts of resources, creating a focus on military dominance, while in the regicide mode each player is given a king unit, winning by killing all of the other monarchs.