Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings
Encyclopedia
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (often shortened to AGE2, The Age of Kings, AoE II or AoK) is a real-time strategy
(RTS) video game developed by Ensemble Studios
and published by Microsoft
. Released in 1999 for the Microsoft Windows
and Macintosh operating systems
, it was the second game in the Age of Empires series. An expansion, The Conquerors
, was released in 2000. A PlayStation 2
version was released by Konami
in 2001, and a Nintendo DS
spinoff, Age of Empires: The Age of Kings
was developed by Backbone Entertainment
in 2006. The Dreamcast port, by Konami, was canceled.
The Age of Kings is set in the Middle Ages
and contains thirteen
playable civilizations. They are the Britons, Byzantines, Celts, Goths, Teutons, Franks, Mongols, Chinese, Japanese, Persians, Saracens, Turks and the Vikings. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies. There are five historically-based campaigns, which constrict the player to specialized and story-backed conditions. There are three additional single player
game modes, and multiplayer is supported. Despite using the same game engine
and similar code
to its predecessor, 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 overwhelmingly positive, and the game scored highly on review aggregator
s. The significant number of new features was praised, as were the gameplay improvements. Some reviewers were critical of the presentation of units—they were seen as bland and uninteresting—while others considered The Age of Kings to be overly similar to its predecessor, Age of Empires
. 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 has had a significant impact on future games in its genre.
, the Castle Age (The Middle Ages), and the Imperial Age, reminiscent of the Renaissance
—a 1000 year timeframe. Advancing to a new Age unlocks new units, structures, and technologies, but players must pay a sum of resources to advance to the next age (typically food and gold) once selected technologies are researched from their current age, and certain buildings are constructed.
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 offers four types of resources: food, wood, gold, and stone. Food is obtained by hunting animals, gathering berries, harvesting livestock, farming, and fishing. Wood is gathered by chopping down trees. Gold is obtained from either gold mines, trade or using relics in a monastery, and stone is collected from stone mines. Villagers require checkpoints, typically depository buildings (town center, mining camp, mill, and lumber yard), where they can store gathered resources. Each civilization can purchase upgrades that increase the rate of gathering these resources. Players can construct a market for trade; players can either trade wood, stone, and food for gold, and use gold to buy other resources. Market prices fluctuate with every transaction. Furthermore, docks can also generate gold by using trading cogs which are used to visit ally ports; once they return to the player's port, gold is added to the stockpile. The amount of gold a trading cog earns on each trip is related to the distance it had to travel to an ally port. More gold is earned on longer trips. It is possible to trade with enemies' ports, but the player's trading vessels 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 infinitely continue to trade.
There are five campaigns in The Age of Kings, containing historically-based scenarios such as Genghis Khan
's invasion of Eurasia
, Barbarossa
's Crusade, or 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.
The William Wallace campaign is a tutorial that guides new players through the basic processes of the game, such as moving units, gathering resources and building before moving on the campaign play proper.
Additional game modes are available to the player in The Age of Kings. One mode, random map
, generates a plain map, with players starting in the Dark Age with a Town Center, three villagers, 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.
, Central Europe
an, Middle East
ern, and East Asian, that determine building appearance in-game. The 13 civilizations are: Britons
, Byzantines
, Celts
, Chinese
, Franks
, Goths
, Japanese
, Mongols
, Persians
, Saracens
, Teutons
, Turks, and Vikings. The civilizations have varying strengths and weaknesses with regards to economics, technology, and battle, and each has access to a different, very powerful "Unique Unit". Additionally, each civilization provides an individual team bonus in team games. To add variety, each civilization has a set of soundbite
s in its native language (except the Goths, who speak German) that are uttered by units when selected or instructed to perform a task.
Every player has a limit to the number of units they can create--a population limit--but may not immediately use the entire potential population. The population capacity, which can be capped at anywhere between 75 - 200, is based on the number of houses, Castles, or Town Centers—the main building in a player's town—which have been built. The Age of Kings introduced two significant new features for unit management: the idle villager button, which helps players identify villagers that have not been assigned a task, and the town bell, which sends all a player's villagers into their Town Center, Castle, or tower for safety; units garrisoned within these three buildings, especially archers, increase the building's fire-power (towers fire more arrows with units garrisoned inside) including the town center, which can not fire anything at all without someone garrisoned there.
The Age of Kings also includes five types of military units: infantry, archers,cavalry, siege
weaponry, and naval
units. Certain types of infantry, archers, and cavalry are "counter units" with special defenses against other types of unit. The three human classes of military generally follow a rock-paper-scissors
model. For example, infantry are generally powerful against buildings but weak against cavalry, thus the infantry counter units—spear
men and pikemen—have attack bonuses against cavalry. Each Civilization in The Age of Kings has a special unit that is exclusive to that Civilization. For instance, the Britons have access to Longbowmen, an archery unit with increased range. These Civilization-specific units are generally more powerful, but still follow the basic rock-paper-scissors
model. The monk
is a special kind of military unit that has the ability to convert enemy units to the player's civilization, and to heal allied units. Monks are also used to collect relics; relics accumulate gold once held in the player's monastery — the more relics he has captured, the faster the gold is accumulated. Collecting all five relics on the map is one method by which a player can win a random map game, depending on the victory setting. Once a player has all five in their monasteries, a timer is shown to all players. If an opposing player does not destroy a monastery holding a relic after the set time, then that player wins.
The most important economic building is the Town Center, where villagers are created, all types of resources can be stored, some technologies are researched, and the player can advance to the next Age. The Town Center can fire arrows at enemy units within range if villagers or archers are garrisoned while under attack. Other economic buildings available include storage buildings for resources, farms, docks (the dock may also produce several military ships), and houses to support a higher population.
Military buildings include unit-producing buildings such as barracks
, archery ranges, stables, and castles, as well as defensive buildings such as walls and towers. Military buildings can perform research to improve the abilities of military units, increasing their strength, defensive capabilities, or other attributes. The castle is a military building which can train a wide variety of units, including the civilization's 'Unique Unit', and fires arrows at enemy units within range, with garrisoned units (notably archery units) firing extra arrows. It can only be built after a player has reached the Castle Age, although in some game options, players can begin with an already-built castle as early as the Dark Age.
There are two main defensive buildings, the wall and the tower. The two types of walls, stone walls and the weaker palisades, are used to prevent access to an enclosed area whilst providing a solid line of defense. Gates can be installed in stone walls to allow allied units to access a defended area. Towers are equipped with the ability to fire arrows (watch tower and its upgrades) and bombs (bombard tower) at unfriendly units, and can be used in conjunction with the wall in defense mechanisms.
, or via a local area network
(LAN). Up to eight players can take part in one game, with all of the single player game modes available. The MSN Gaming Zone supported the game until the service closed on June 19, 2006. Alternative services at GameSpy Arcade
and GameRanger
and Voobly were recommended as a replacement.
automatically has a fully functioning intelligence so minimal programming is required. It is also possible to string user-created games into a whole campaign in the same way as the historical campaigns, including videos.
, Ensemble Studios
had signed a contract with Microsoft
for a sequel. The design team chose to set The Age of Kings in the Middle Ages
as a logical progression from the ancient era setting of Age of Empires. The design team was conscious of attempting to capture the broad appeal of the first game without making the game's design too similar. Nonetheless, they attempted to appeal to the vast demographic who played Age of Empires.
The Age of Kingss design team intended to complete the game within a year by using code
from the original and reusing the Genie
game engine
. Several months into the process they found they would not be able to complete a game of the quality they sought in that time. Ensemble Studios informed Microsoft they would need another year and instead created Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome
, an easily-developed expansion pack of Age of Empires, as a compromise which could be released for Christmas 1998. To help meet the next year's deadline, additional programmer
s, artists, and designers were employed.
The original Age of Empires had been criticized for its artificial intelligence
(AI). Because the original AI did not "cheat" by attributing itself extra resources or using other techniques the human player could not, it was easier to defeat than in many other real-time strategy games. For The Age of Kings, Ensemble Studios attempted to develop a more powerful AI system that did not compromise by cheating. Industry veteran Mario Grimani led Ensemble Studios in the creation of the new system. At the Standard setting, the AI does not cheat. However, at the higher levels, moderate, hard, and hardest, it gives itself free resources at various times.
To overcome another significant objection to Age of Empires—that of path finding—the team completely redesigned the game engine
's movement system.
The team was less successful in resolving other issues; programmer Matt Pritchard complained following the release of Age of Empires that there was still no process by which patches could be issued. Extensive cheating in multiplayer games of Age of Empires came as a result of several bugs in the game, which resulted in Microsoft promising Ensemble Studios there would be a patch process for The Age of Kings. On release, there were several bugs that needed immediate attention, but the patch process was not yet ready. The first patch was released 11 months later.
Ensemble Studios developed a new terrain system
for The Age of Kings, with 3D presentation capabilities that were vastly superior to those of Age of Empires. Pritchard noted an improvement in the team's artistic abilities following their work on the past two games, and he is noted as saying that "AoK became a showcase for their improved talent". However, he complained about the lack of an art asset management tool, while other departments gained new tools and automated procedures to assist in design and play testing.
The Age of Kings saw the introduction of a trigger
s system for its scenario editor. The triggers allow messages to be displayed, or actions to take place, based on pre-set criteria or "events". The scenario editor was also improved by the new AI system. The AI and trigger systems interacted regularly in the single player campaigns.
The soundtrack
for The Age of Kings was directed by Stephen Rippy, who has since taken that role for all games in the Age of Empires series. Music for the game was split into two categories. For "in game" music, Rippy's team took musical elements from a variety of cultures and combined them to create a mixed sound. "Pre-game" music was designed to be unique to the civilization in question. Campaigns based on historical figures would include "a theme that will at least be rooted in [the character's] culture".
A demo of The Age of Kings was released on October 16, 1999. It featured the learning campaign, a sample of a random map game, and the ability to play via the MSN Gaming Zone. Much to Ensemble Studios' disappointment, numerous incomplete versions of the game were leaked. These were picked up by warez
sites, and sold illegally throughout the Pacific Rim
; warez versions of the game were even sold outside Microsoft's offices in Korea
.
.
According to Eurogamer
's Geoff Richards, "the list of new features and improvements over the original game is over a page long". GamePro
' s review similarly focused on "new additions to the genre itself" which it argued made The Age of Kings outstanding. These included the idle unit button and town bell. GameSpy
's Carlos Salgado was appreciative of other features; he praised the ability to create individual profiles for different players and to customize hotkeys. Meanwhile, IGN
appreciated the new abilities given to the villager unit—the review stated villagers "now play an important role not only in the collection of resources, but also in town defense and even in combat."
Allgame
's Michael L. House enjoyed the use of soundbites in civilizations' native languages, which he said was "very influential in developing an era-enhancing atmosphere". Eurogamer said this feature "gives [villagers] a personality, rather than the standard "Acknowledged" grunt of military RTS
games", also stating that the use of female villagers provided a good variety. Game Revolution
's review explained that by being set in a more recent epoch of human history, The Age of Kings was able to "add character to an otherwise impersonal style of gameplay". Computer and Video Games
approved of The Age of Kings use of shorter, more focused campaigns, compared to its predecessor, while Game Revolution noted that even in slower sections of the campaign, the historical narrative helped maintain player interest. GameSpot
said that with the screen full of units, "you can begin to imagine how their historical equivalents once prospered", while GameSpy said The Age of Kings presents "realism rarely seen in the RTS genre". IGN staff argued that while the strengths and weaknesses attributed to different civilizations made the game more realistic, the fact that they were still mostly the same prevented The Age of Kings from "delivering the same battlefield impact of StarCraft
or Tiberian Sun".
House also praised the gameplay interface, which he said "couldn't be simpler", as well as the advanced grouping and path-finding systems. Nash Werner of GamePro said that the formation tools were wonderful, and complained only that they could not be assigned to naval units. Computer and Video Games generally agreed, stating that "the controls are very user-friendly and well explained". GameSpot's Greg Kasavin wrote that despite the game's improved graphics, "there's nothing foreign about its appearance" and that most game features will be "immediately recognizable if you've played a real-time strategy game before". PC Zone
agreed, but in a negative sense—it argued that The Age of Kings "is essentially an update of a two-year-old game".
Richards was surprised by the quality of The Age of Kings graphics, considering they were all bitmap
ped. However, Allgame complained that units were sometimes difficult to tell apart, a point numerous reviewers agreed on. It also called the sound of The Age of Kings as a negative, but not something significant enough to draw players away from the game's overall quality. IGN stated that cutscenes were somewhat bland, but that overall the graphics added "an amazing amount of detail to the actual game". Its main criticism was for the in-game speech used in campaigns; it rhetorically asked "why can't they just find a Frenchman to do a French accent?" Alex Constantides of Computer and Video Games rated the graphics highly, saying that some in-game buildings are "so grand you'll even feel guilty about burning them to the ground". Werner agreed; "the most noticeable graphical advancements", he wrote, were "the sheer size and scale of things". Game Revolution stated "AOE2 is the best looking of the 2D RTS games out there right now".
In January 2000, three months after its release, Microsoft announced that they had shipped two million copies of The Age of Kings. The game topped sales charts in the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia and Korea. It would spend the next two and a half years on top 20 sales lists. The Age of Kings was top selling game in October 1999, and the fourth highest selling game in 1999.
The Age of Kings won GameSpot's Strategy Game of the Year in 1999, and was a nominee for Game of the Year
. GamePower also named it Strategy Game of the Year, while PC Gamer
and Computer Gaming World
gave it Editor's Choice awards. The Age of Kings won Strategy Game of the Year and Computer Game of the Year at the 2000 Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
awards. It was also nominated for Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Animation, Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, and Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering. IGN ranked The Age of Kings the 53rd best game of all time in 2005, and the 10th best PC game of all time in 2007. GameFAQs
users placed it 56th in a poll of the best games ever.
The Age of Kings was highly influential on its genre. Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds
, a 2001 game by LucasArts
, shared The Age of Kings game engine, and was heavily influenced by its mechanics. Empire Earth
s design was also similar to that of The Age of Kings; GameSpot said it "borrows most of that game's controls, interface features, and even some of its keyboard shortcuts". Rick Goodman
, designer of Age of Empires and The Rise of Rome, designed Empire Earth. GameSpot's Scott Osborne argued that the gameplay of Cossacks: European Wars
was heavily based on The Age of Kings.
An expansion for The Age of Kings, The Conquerors
, was released in 2000. It introduced numerous new game features, including five new civilizations. Two of these, the Aztec
s and the Mayan
s, represented the New World
. As well as three campaigns similar in concept to those in The Age of Kings, The Conquerors included a "Battles of the Conquerors" campaign which contained several unrelated battles such as those of Agincourt
and Hastings
. Age of Mythology
, released in 2002, broke away from the historical trend and instead focused on Greek
, Egyptian
, and Norse mythology
. It shared many gameplay elements with The Age of Kings and was considered a spin-off
of the main Age of Empires series. The third historical game in the Age of Empires series, Age of Empires III
, was released in 2005. The game portrayed the European colonization of the Americas
. Aside from one significant feature, the home city, the game's design was similar to that of its predecessor.
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
(RTS) video game developed by Ensemble Studios
Ensemble Studios
Ensemble Studios was a video game developer initially established in 1995 as an independent company, but was owned by Microsoft from 2001 to 2009, when it was officially disbanded. Ensemble developed many real-time strategy games, including the Age of Empires game series, Age of Mythology, and Halo...
and published by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
. Released in 1999 for the Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and Macintosh operating systems
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
, it was the second game in the Age of Empires series. An expansion, The Conquerors
Age of Empires II: The Conquerors
Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion is the expansion pack to the 1999 real-time strategy game Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. The Conquerors is the fourth installment in the Age of Empires series by Microsoft Game Studios and Ensemble Studios...
, was released in 2000. A PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
version was released by Konami
Konami
is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
in 2001, and a Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
spinoff, Age of Empires: The Age of Kings
Age of Empires: The Age of Kings
Age of Empires: The Age of Kings is a turn-based strategy video game developed by Backbone Entertainment and published by Majesco for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console....
was developed by Backbone Entertainment
Backbone Entertainment
Backbone Entertainment is an independent video game development company located in Emeryville, California.Backbone Entertainment is the result of a 2003 merger between Digital Eclipse Software and ImaginEngine...
in 2006. The Dreamcast port, by Konami, was canceled.
The Age of Kings is set in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
and contains thirteen
playable civilizations. They are the Britons, Byzantines, Celts, Goths, Teutons, Franks, Mongols, Chinese, Japanese, Persians, Saracens, Turks and the Vikings. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies. There are five historically-based campaigns, which constrict the player to specialized and story-backed conditions. There are three additional single player
Single player
A Single-player video game is a video game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. "Single-player game" usually implies a game that can only be played by one person, while "single-player mode" usually refers to a game mode for a single player, where...
game modes, and multiplayer is supported. Despite using the same game engine
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
and similar code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
to its predecessor, development of The Age of Kings took a year longer than expected, forcing Ensemble Studios to release Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome
Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome
Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome Expansion is a history-based real-time strategy game in the Age of Empires series. It is based on the rise of the Roman Empire, and adds the Roman Empire and three other playable civilizations to Age of Empires....
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 overwhelmingly positive, and the game scored highly on review aggregator
Review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services . This system stores the reviews and then uses them for purposes such as: creating a website for users to view the reviews, selling information to third parties about consumer tendencies and creating databases for...
s. The significant number of new features was praised, as were the gameplay improvements. Some reviewers were critical of the presentation of units—they were seen as bland and uninteresting—while others considered The Age of Kings to be overly similar to its predecessor, Age of Empires
Age of Empires (video game)
Age of Empires , is a history-based real-time strategy computer game released in 1997. Developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, the game uses the Genie, a 2D sprite based game engine...
. 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 has had a significant impact on future games in its genre.
Gameplay
The Age of Kings focuses on building towns, gathering resources, creating armies, and destroying enemy units and buildings. Players conquer rival towns and empires as they advance one of 13 civilizations through four "Ages": the Dark Age, the Feudal AgeFeudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
, the Castle Age (The Middle Ages), and the Imperial Age, reminiscent of the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
—a 1000 year timeframe. Advancing to a new Age unlocks new units, structures, and technologies, but players must pay a sum of resources to advance to the next age (typically food and gold) once selected technologies are researched from their current age, and certain buildings are constructed.
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 offers four types of resources: food, wood, gold, and stone. Food is obtained by hunting animals, gathering berries, harvesting livestock, farming, and fishing. Wood is gathered by chopping down trees. Gold is obtained from either gold mines, trade or using relics in a monastery, and stone is collected from stone mines. Villagers require checkpoints, typically depository buildings (town center, mining camp, mill, and lumber yard), where they can store gathered resources. Each civilization can purchase upgrades that increase the rate of gathering these resources. Players can construct a market for trade; players can either trade wood, stone, and food for gold, and use gold to buy other resources. Market prices fluctuate with every transaction. Furthermore, docks can also generate gold by using trading cogs which are used to visit ally ports; once they return to the player's port, gold is added to the stockpile. The amount of gold a trading cog earns on each trip is related to the distance it had to travel to an ally port. More gold is earned on longer trips. It is possible to trade with enemies' ports, but the player's trading vessels 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 infinitely continue to trade.
There are five campaigns in The Age of Kings, containing historically-based scenarios such as Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....
's invasion of Eurasia
Eurasia
Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...
, Barbarossa
Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick I Barbarossa was a German Holy Roman Emperor. He was elected King of Germany at Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March, crowned King of Italy in Pavia in 1155, and finally crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Adrian IV, on 18 June 1155, and two years later in 1157 the term...
's Crusade, or Saladin
Saladin
Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was an Arabized Kurdish Muslim, who became the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He led Muslim and Arab opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...
's defence of the Holy Land
Holy Land
The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
. In the Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc
Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...
and William Wallace
William Wallace
Sir William Wallace was a Scottish knight and landowner who became one of the main leaders during the Wars of Scottish Independence....
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.
The William Wallace campaign is a tutorial that guides new players through the basic processes of the game, such as moving units, gathering resources and building before moving on the campaign play proper.
Additional game modes are available to the player in The Age of Kings. One mode, random map
Random map
In gaming, a random map is a map generated randomly by the computer, usually in strategy games. Random maps are often the core of single and multiplayer gameplay, aside from story based campaigns that are often shipped with the game. Each new game presents an unknown map, providing a new experience...
, generates a plain map, with players starting in the Dark Age with a Town Center, three villagers, 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
Deathmatch (gaming)
Deathmatch or Player vs All is a widely-used gameplay mode integrated into many shooter and real-time strategy computer games...
mode allows players to begin with large amounts of resources, creating a focus on military dominance, while in the regicide
Regicide
The broad definition of regicide is the deliberate killing of a monarch, or the person responsible for the killing of a monarch. In a narrower sense, in the British tradition, it refers to the judicial execution of a king after a trial...
mode each player is given a king unit, winning by killing all of the other monarchs.
Civilizations
Players choose to play as one of 13 civilizations split into four architectural styles, West EuropeanWestern Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
, Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
an, Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
ern, and East Asian, that determine building appearance in-game. The 13 civilizations are: Britons
History of England
The history of England concerns the study of the human past in one of Europe's oldest and most influential national territories. What is now England, a country within the United Kingdom, was inhabited by Neanderthals 230,000 years ago. Continuous human habitation dates to around 12,000 years ago,...
, Byzantines
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
, Celts
Celtic nations
The Celtic nations are territories in North-West Europe in which that area's own Celtic languages and some cultural traits have survived.The term "nation" is used in its original sense to mean a people who share a common traditional identity and culture and are identified with a traditional...
, Chinese
History of China
Chinese civilization originated in various regional centers along both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys in the Neolithic era, but the Yellow River is said to be the Cradle of Chinese Civilization. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest...
, Franks
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
, Goths
Goths
The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....
, Japanese
History of Japan
The history of Japan encompasses the history of the islands of Japan and the Japanese people, spanning the ancient history of the region to the modern history of Japan as a nation state. Following the last ice age, around 12,000 BC, the rich ecosystem of the Japanese Archipelago fostered human...
, Mongols
Mongols
Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...
, Persians
Sassanid Empire
The Sassanid Empire , known to its inhabitants as Ērānshahr and Ērān in Middle Persian and resulting in the New Persian terms Iranshahr and Iran , was the last pre-Islamic Persian Empire, ruled by the Sasanian Dynasty from 224 to 651...
, Saracens
Saracen
Saracen was a term used by the ancient Romans to refer to a people who lived in desert areas in and around the Roman province of Arabia, and who were distinguished from Arabs. In Europe during the Middle Ages the term was expanded to include Arabs, and then all who professed the religion of Islam...
, Teutons
Teutons
The Teutons or Teutones were mentioned as a Germanic tribe by Greek and Roman authors, notably Strabo and Marcus Velleius Paterculus and normally in close connection with the Cimbri, whose ethnicity is contested between Gauls and Germani...
, Turks, and Vikings. The civilizations have varying strengths and weaknesses with regards to economics, technology, and battle, and each has access to a different, very powerful "Unique Unit". Additionally, each civilization provides an individual team bonus in team games. To add variety, each civilization has a set of soundbite
Soundbite
In film and broadcasting, a sound bite is a very short piece of a speech taken from a longer speech or an interview in which someone with authority or the average "man on the street" says something which is considered by those who edit the speech or interview to be the most important point...
s in its native language (except the Goths, who speak German) that are uttered by units when selected or instructed to perform a task.
Units
The Age of Kings also includes five types of military units: infantry, archers,cavalry, siege
Siege
A siege is a military blockade of a city or fortress with the intent of conquering by attrition or assault. The term derives from sedere, Latin for "to sit". Generally speaking, siege warfare is a form of constant, low intensity conflict characterized by one party holding a strong, static...
weaponry, and naval
Navy
A navy is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake- or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions...
units. Certain types of infantry, archers, and cavalry are "counter units" with special defenses against other types of unit. The three human classes of military generally follow a rock-paper-scissors
Rock-paper-scissors
Rock-paper-scissors is a hand game played by two people. The game is also known as roshambo, or another ordering of the three items ....
model. For example, infantry are generally powerful against buildings but weak against cavalry, thus the infantry counter units—spear
Spear
A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head.The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with bamboo spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as flint, obsidian, iron, steel or...
men and pikemen—have attack bonuses against cavalry. Each Civilization in The Age of Kings has a special unit that is exclusive to that Civilization. For instance, the Britons have access to Longbowmen, an archery unit with increased range. These Civilization-specific units are generally more powerful, but still follow the basic rock-paper-scissors
Rock-paper-scissors
Rock-paper-scissors is a hand game played by two people. The game is also known as roshambo, or another ordering of the three items ....
model. The monk
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...
is a special kind of military unit that has the ability to convert enemy units to the player's civilization, and to heal allied units. Monks are also used to collect relics; relics accumulate gold once held in the player's monastery — the more relics he has captured, the faster the gold is accumulated. Collecting all five relics on the map is one method by which a player can win a random map game, depending on the victory setting. Once a player has all five in their monasteries, a timer is shown to all players. If an opposing player does not destroy a monastery holding a relic after the set time, then that player wins.
Buildings
The buildings in The Age of Kings are split into the economic and military buildings categories. Buildings can research technologies and upgrades that increase economic, military or unit-based efficiency, as well as provide resources for the player.The most important economic building is the Town Center, where villagers are created, all types of resources can be stored, some technologies are researched, and the player can advance to the next Age. The Town Center can fire arrows at enemy units within range if villagers or archers are garrisoned while under attack. Other economic buildings available include storage buildings for resources, farms, docks (the dock may also produce several military ships), and houses to support a higher population.
Military buildings include unit-producing buildings such as barracks
Barracks
Barracks are specialised buildings for permanent military accommodation; the word may apply to separate housing blocks or to complete complexes. Their main object is to separate soldiers from the civilian population and reinforce discipline, training and esprit de corps. They were sometimes called...
, archery ranges, stables, and castles, as well as defensive buildings such as walls and towers. Military buildings can perform research to improve the abilities of military units, increasing their strength, defensive capabilities, or other attributes. The castle is a military building which can train a wide variety of units, including the civilization's 'Unique Unit', and fires arrows at enemy units within range, with garrisoned units (notably archery units) firing extra arrows. It can only be built after a player has reached the Castle Age, although in some game options, players can begin with an already-built castle as early as the Dark Age.
There are two main defensive buildings, the wall and the tower. The two types of walls, stone walls and the weaker palisades, are used to prevent access to an enclosed area whilst providing a solid line of defense. Gates can be installed in stone walls to allow allied units to access a defended area. Towers are equipped with the ability to fire arrows (watch tower and its upgrades) and bombs (bombard tower) at unfriendly units, and can be used in conjunction with the wall in defense mechanisms.
Multiplayer
The Age of Kings supports multiplayer over the InternetInternet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, or via a local area network
Local area network
A local area network is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building...
(LAN). Up to eight players can take part in one game, with all of the single player game modes available. The MSN Gaming Zone supported the game until the service closed on June 19, 2006. Alternative services at GameSpy Arcade
GameSpy Arcade
GameSpy Arcade is a shareware multiplayer game server browsing utility. GameSpy Arcade allows players to view and connect to available multiplayer games, and chat with other users of the service. It was initially released by GameSpy Industries, a division of IGN Entertainment, in early 2000, to...
and GameRanger
GameRanger
GameRanger is an Internet gaming service for the Macintosh and Windows computing platforms. The service includes custom software and unlike other gaming services is not strictly web-based. GameRanger was created by Scott Kevill and was first released in July 1999 for Macintosh with support for 11...
and Voobly were recommended as a replacement.
Custom Scenario
Age of Kings like later games has a user-friendly campaign/scenario editor, unlike the sequel, Age of Empires 3. The AIAi
AI, A.I., Ai, or ai may refer to:- Computers :* Artificial intelligence, a branch of computer science* Ad impression, in online advertising* .ai, the ISO Internet 2-letter country code for Anguilla...
automatically has a fully functioning intelligence so minimal programming is required. It is also possible to string user-created games into a whole campaign in the same way as the historical campaigns, including videos.
Development
Prior to the completion of Age of EmpiresAge of Empires (video game)
Age of Empires , is a history-based real-time strategy computer game released in 1997. Developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, the game uses the Genie, a 2D sprite based game engine...
, Ensemble Studios
Ensemble Studios
Ensemble Studios was a video game developer initially established in 1995 as an independent company, but was owned by Microsoft from 2001 to 2009, when it was officially disbanded. Ensemble developed many real-time strategy games, including the Age of Empires game series, Age of Mythology, and Halo...
had signed a contract with Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
for a sequel. The design team chose to set The Age of Kings in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
as a logical progression from the ancient era setting of Age of Empires. The design team was conscious of attempting to capture the broad appeal of the first game without making the game's design too similar. Nonetheless, they attempted to appeal to the vast demographic who played Age of Empires.
The Age of Kingss design team intended to complete the game within a year by using code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
from the original and reusing the Genie
Genie (game engine)
The Genie Engine is a game engine developed by Ensemble Studios and used in several popular computer games, such as Age of Empires, Age of Empires II and its expansion and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds...
game engine
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
. Several months into the process they found they would not be able to complete a game of the quality they sought in that time. Ensemble Studios informed Microsoft they would need another year and instead created Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome
Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome
Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome Expansion is a history-based real-time strategy game in the Age of Empires series. It is based on the rise of the Roman Empire, and adds the Roman Empire and three other playable civilizations to Age of Empires....
, an easily-developed expansion pack of Age of Empires, as a compromise which could be released for Christmas 1998. To help meet the next year's deadline, additional programmer
Programmer
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...
s, artists, and designers were employed.
The original Age of Empires had been criticized for its artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
(AI). Because the original AI did not "cheat" by attributing itself extra resources or using other techniques the human player could not, it was easier to defeat than in many other real-time strategy games. For The Age of Kings, Ensemble Studios attempted to develop a more powerful AI system that did not compromise by cheating. Industry veteran Mario Grimani led Ensemble Studios in the creation of the new system. At the Standard setting, the AI does not cheat. However, at the higher levels, moderate, hard, and hardest, it gives itself free resources at various times.
To overcome another significant objection to Age of Empires—that of path finding—the team completely redesigned the game engine
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
's movement system.
The team was less successful in resolving other issues; programmer Matt Pritchard complained following the release of Age of Empires that there was still no process by which patches could be issued. Extensive cheating in multiplayer games of Age of Empires came as a result of several bugs in the game, which resulted in Microsoft promising Ensemble Studios there would be a patch process for The Age of Kings. On release, there were several bugs that needed immediate attention, but the patch process was not yet ready. The first patch was released 11 months later.
Ensemble Studios developed a new terrain system
Terrain rendering
Terrain rendering covers a variety of methods of depicting real-world or imaginary world surfaces. Most common terrain rendering is the depiction of Earth's surface.It is used in various applications to give an observer a frame of reference...
for The Age of Kings, with 3D presentation capabilities that were vastly superior to those of Age of Empires. Pritchard noted an improvement in the team's artistic abilities following their work on the past two games, and he is noted as saying that "AoK became a showcase for their improved talent". However, he complained about the lack of an art asset management tool, while other departments gained new tools and automated procedures to assist in design and play testing.
The Age of Kings saw the introduction of a trigger
Event-driven programming
In computer programming, event-driven programming or event-based programming is a programming paradigm in which the flow of the program is determined by events—i.e., sensor outputs or user actions or messages from other programs or threads.Event-driven programming can also be defined as an...
s system for its scenario editor. The triggers allow messages to be displayed, or actions to take place, based on pre-set criteria or "events". The scenario editor was also improved by the new AI system. The AI and trigger systems interacted regularly in the single player campaigns.
The soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
for The Age of Kings was directed by Stephen Rippy, who has since taken that role for all games in the Age of Empires series. Music for the game was split into two categories. For "in game" music, Rippy's team took musical elements from a variety of cultures and combined them to create a mixed sound. "Pre-game" music was designed to be unique to the civilization in question. Campaigns based on historical figures would include "a theme that will at least be rooted in [the character's] culture".
| Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings in-game music |
|---|
|
A demo of The Age of Kings was released on October 16, 1999. It featured the learning campaign, a sample of a random map game, and the ability to play via the MSN Gaming Zone. Much to Ensemble Studios' disappointment, numerous incomplete versions of the game were leaked. These were picked up by warez
Warez
Warez refers primarily to copyrighted works distributed without fees or royalties, and may be traded, in general violation of copyright law. The term generally refers to unauthorized releases by organized groups, as opposed to file sharing between friends or large groups of people with similar...
sites, and sold illegally throughout the Pacific Rim
Pacific Rim
The Pacific Rim refers to places around the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The term "Pacific Basin" includes the Pacific Rim and islands in the Pacific Ocean...
; warez versions of the game were even sold outside Microsoft's offices in Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
.
Reception and legacy
Reception of The Age of Kings was overwhelmingly positive. The game scored 92 out of 100 on both GameRankings and MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
.
According to Eurogamer
Eurogamer
Eurogamer is a Brighton-based website focused on video games news, reviews, previews and interviews. It is operated by Eurogamer Network Ltd., which was formed in 1999 by brothers Rupert and Nick Loman. Eurogamer has grown to become one of the most important European-based websites focused on...
's Geoff Richards, "the list of new features and improvements over the original game is over a page long". GamePro
GamePro
GamePro Media was a United States gaming media company publishing online and print content on the video game industry, video game hardware, and video game software developed for a video game console , a computer, and/or a mobile device . GamePro Media properties include GamePro magazine and...
GameSpy
GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...
's Carlos Salgado was appreciative of other features; he praised the ability to create individual profiles for different players and to customize hotkeys. Meanwhile, IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
appreciated the new abilities given to the villager unit—the review stated villagers "now play an important role not only in the collection of resources, but also in town defense and even in combat."
Allgame
Allgame
Allgame is a commercial database of information about arcade games, video games and console manufacturers.Allgame is owned by All Media Guide, along with Allmusic and Allmovie....
's Michael L. House enjoyed the use of soundbites in civilizations' native languages, which he said was "very influential in developing an era-enhancing atmosphere". Eurogamer said this feature "gives [villagers] a personality, rather than the standard "Acknowledged" grunt of military RTS
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
games", also stating that the use of female villagers provided a good variety. Game Revolution
Game Revolution
Game Revolution or GR is a gaming website created in 1996. Based in Berkeley, California, the site includes reviews, previews, a gaming download area, cheats, and a merchandise store, as well as webcomics, screenshots, and videos...
's review explained that by being set in a more recent epoch of human history, The Age of Kings was able to "add character to an otherwise impersonal style of gameplay". Computer and Video Games
Computer and video games
A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device, but following popularization of the term "video game", it now implies any type of...
approved of The Age of Kings use of shorter, more focused campaigns, compared to its predecessor, while Game Revolution noted that even in slower sections of the campaign, the historical narrative helped maintain player interest. GameSpot
GameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
said that with the screen full of units, "you can begin to imagine how their historical equivalents once prospered", while GameSpy said The Age of Kings presents "realism rarely seen in the RTS genre". IGN staff argued that while the strengths and weaknesses attributed to different civilizations made the game more realistic, the fact that they were still mostly the same prevented The Age of Kings from "delivering the same battlefield impact of StarCraft
StarCraft
StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
or Tiberian Sun".
House also praised the gameplay interface, which he said "couldn't be simpler", as well as the advanced grouping and path-finding systems. Nash Werner of GamePro said that the formation tools were wonderful, and complained only that they could not be assigned to naval units. Computer and Video Games generally agreed, stating that "the controls are very user-friendly and well explained". GameSpot's Greg Kasavin wrote that despite the game's improved graphics, "there's nothing foreign about its appearance" and that most game features will be "immediately recognizable if you've played a real-time strategy game before". PC Zone
PC Zone
PC Zone was the first magazine dedicated to games for IBM-compatible personal computers to be published in the United Kingdom. Earlier PC magazines such as PC Leisure, PC Format and PC Plus had covered games but only as part of a wider remit. PC Zone was founded in 1993.The magazine was published...
agreed, but in a negative sense—it argued that The Age of Kings "is essentially an update of a two-year-old game".
Richards was surprised by the quality of The Age of Kings graphics, considering they were all bitmap
Bitmap
In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
ped. However, Allgame complained that units were sometimes difficult to tell apart, a point numerous reviewers agreed on. It also called the sound of The Age of Kings as a negative, but not something significant enough to draw players away from the game's overall quality. IGN stated that cutscenes were somewhat bland, but that overall the graphics added "an amazing amount of detail to the actual game". Its main criticism was for the in-game speech used in campaigns; it rhetorically asked "why can't they just find a Frenchman to do a French accent?" Alex Constantides of Computer and Video Games rated the graphics highly, saying that some in-game buildings are "so grand you'll even feel guilty about burning them to the ground". Werner agreed; "the most noticeable graphical advancements", he wrote, were "the sheer size and scale of things". Game Revolution stated "AOE2 is the best looking of the 2D RTS games out there right now".
In January 2000, three months after its release, Microsoft announced that they had shipped two million copies of The Age of Kings. The game topped sales charts in the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia and Korea. It would spend the next two and a half years on top 20 sales lists. The Age of Kings was top selling game in October 1999, and the fourth highest selling game in 1999.
The Age of Kings won GameSpot's Strategy Game of the Year in 1999, and was a nominee for Game of the Year
Game of the Year
Game of the Year is a title awarded by various magazines, websites, and shows to a deserving game. Many are only for PC or console video games...
. GamePower also named it Strategy Game of the Year, while PC Gamer
PC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
and Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World was a computer game magazine founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe as a bimonthly publication. Early issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings , Dan Bunten , and Chris Crawford...
gave it Editor's Choice awards. The Age of Kings won Strategy Game of the Year and Computer Game of the Year at the 2000 Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences , founded in 1996, is a non-profit organization that promotes computer and video game entertainment with the annual D.I.C.E. Summit event, where its Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony has been held annually since 1998...
awards. It was also nominated for Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Animation, Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, and Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering. IGN ranked The Age of Kings the 53rd best game of all time in 2005, and the 10th best PC game of all time in 2007. GameFAQs
GameFAQs
GameFAQs is a website that hosts FAQs and walkthroughs for video games. It was created in November 1995 by Jeff "CJayC" Veasey and was bought by CNET Networks in May 2003. It is currently owned by CBS Interactive. The site has a database of video game information, cheat codes, reviews, game saves,...
users placed it 56th in a poll of the best games ever.
The Age of Kings was highly influential on its genre. Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds
Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds
Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is a real-time strategy computer game set in the Star Wars universe.Players have a choice of factions and campaigns. The factions in the original game include the Wookiees, Royal Naboo, the Trade Federation, the Empire, the Rebels, and the Gungans...
, a 2001 game by LucasArts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
, shared The Age of Kings game engine, and was heavily influenced by its mechanics. Empire Earth
Empire Earth
Empire Earth, also known as EE, is a real-time strategy computer game developed by Stainless Steel Studios and released on November 23, 2001. It is the first game in the Empire Earth series...
s design was also similar to that of The Age of Kings; GameSpot said it "borrows most of that game's controls, interface features, and even some of its keyboard shortcuts". Rick Goodman
Rick Goodman
Rick Goodman is a video game developer and the founder and owner of the now-defunct Stainless Steel Studios. He is best known for the RTS games he created, such as Age of Empires and Empire Earth.-Career:...
, designer of Age of Empires and The Rise of Rome, designed Empire Earth. GameSpot's Scott Osborne argued that the gameplay of Cossacks: European Wars
Cossacks: European Wars
Cossacks: European Wars is a real-time strategy computer game for Windows made by the Ukrainian developer GSC Game World. It was released on April 24, 2001. The game has an isometric view and is set in the 17th and 18th centuries of Europe...
was heavily based on The Age of Kings.
An expansion for The Age of Kings, The Conquerors
Age of Empires II: The Conquerors
Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion is the expansion pack to the 1999 real-time strategy game Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. The Conquerors is the fourth installment in the Age of Empires series by Microsoft Game Studios and Ensemble Studios...
, was released in 2000. It introduced numerous new game features, including five new civilizations. Two of these, the Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
s and the Mayan
Maya civilization
The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...
s, represented the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
. As well as three campaigns similar in concept to those in The Age of Kings, The Conquerors included a "Battles of the Conquerors" campaign which contained several unrelated battles such as those of Agincourt
Battle of Agincourt
The Battle of Agincourt was a major English victory against a numerically superior French army in the Hundred Years' War. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 , near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France...
and Hastings
Battle of Hastings
The Battle of Hastings occurred on 14 October 1066 during the Norman conquest of England, between the Norman-French army of Duke William II of Normandy and the English army under King Harold II...
. Age of Mythology
Age of Mythology
Age of Mythology , is a mythology-based, real-time strategy computer game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios...
, released in 2002, broke away from the historical trend and instead focused on Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
, Egyptian
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
, and Norse mythology
Norse mythology
Norse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...
. It shared many gameplay elements with The Age of Kings and was considered a spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
of the main Age of Empires series. The third historical game in the Age of Empires series, Age of Empires III
Age of Empires III
Age of Empires III is a real-time strategy game developed by Microsoft Corporation's Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The Mac version was ported over and developed by Destineer's MacSoft Games and published by Destineer and MacSoft Games...
, was released in 2005. The game portrayed the European colonization of the Americas
European colonization of the Americas
The start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492. The first Europeans to reach the Americas were the Vikings during the 11th century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement in present day Newfoundland...
. Aside from one significant feature, the home city, the game's design was similar to that of its predecessor.