• Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings

  

  Written by Weekday Warrior 1 Comment
  Last Updated:: October 10, 2007

  During the Middle Ages, there wasn’t a whole lot of fun and excitement to be had in the daily musings of life. The simple minded peasant farmed the land, raised the sheep, and helped where ever they were needed by their feudal master.

  The feudal master controlled and instructed his people on what their tasks would be from day to day, which could have been any number of things. You, my dear Old Wizard patron, shall be that Master. You shall be the master of the Middle Ages, and of the many different civilizations that claimed the times of castles, catapults, swords, and pikes all to their own. But it’s not just instructing the peasant to build and till the farm for the good of the colony. It is much more survivalist than that. This game can only be mastered through thinking like a King that must house, feed, and protect his people.

  It begins with choosing your game play. After a few introductory (and fairly interesting) AVI clips, you will have a medley of options to choose from. You can choose to begin the generic campaigns preprogrammed, create your own game, online play, or Regicide (My personal favorite, which I’ll get back to). The predetermined campaigns aren’t much to rave about. They mimic actual historic happenings, but change them into an AOE friendly format. (AOE = Age of Empires for those who haven’t caught on yet). For example, one of the first campaigns is that of Joan of Arc, where she must be navigated through hostile terrain to a safe area in order to muster an army. Again, nothing too thrilling with these campaigns.

  Where the real meat of game play lies is in the “creating your own” game option and the Regicide option. With these options you literally do just that, create your own game. You can choose from any number of different terrains, to different civilizations. These range from the Chinese to the Vikings, and everything in between. With these different classifications of people come different types of options with the game. Meaning that some colonies will have the ability to create armored elephants of war, where as others may be able to research different technologies to create any number of different characters.

  But these features are not what make the games so intense. So dreadfully, yet glued to the screen and mouse intense. Your game will start after you set all your specs, and its off to the races. You will be given a set number of villagers to start with; as well as a scout horse, some food, and other food resources close by. Other resources include wood, stone, and gold. And of course, all of these resources are up for grab. Once you master the point, click, click again technique of game play you will be ready to build your empire and compete in the game.

  The point of the game is domination…of course. It is critical to understand what you need to survive, and what type of “personality” your opponents will take on. Meaning that some civilizations are more war-like, and others may keep to themselves and rely more on commerce and trade to survive.

  The details of the game are endless. It really does just take some time to go through all of the options you as feudal master possess. For instance, you will want to try and build every building you can in order to find the different options you can access to improve your civilization. It is imperative to think capitalist in this game. Food, stone, wood, and gold are your currencies, and you need to get to work.

  After immersing myself in the game for almost two days straight, I found several key points to keep in mind while creating and defending your empire:

  1. Be very aware of what resources are around you. The game will try and place certain resources throughout the game map. Locate the ones near you, and the ones not near you. It may be the case that you have a lot of stone near you, and not as much gold. Both are equally important to procure.

  2. Try and be as equally offensive and defensive as possible. While this may sound rather obvious, it is rather easy to find yourself in a bind at some point during game play. You will need military to secure resources, but you will need a suitable force to defend the colony. Keep it in mind.

  3. FISH!! Try and build as large a fishing fleet as you can. The fish are almost unending, and fishing boats rarely ever get attacked by enemy vessels. But that isn’t a promise. It’s an easy way to stay ahead in gaining food.

  4. Always take on angry animals with two villagers when exploring. Wolves are mean. They kill villagers by themselves.

  Rating:

1 Comment

1. #1 raunak says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 2:38 pm

   how to finish the computer as far as possible in hardest.they comes to attack very fast.can relic be destroyed.