AGE OF EMPIRES 2

Genre	Real time strategy
System	P166 32MB
Year	2000
Developer

As a sequel, AoE2 was a bit of a disappointment. As a game in it’s own right, it deserves (and gets) a place in almost everyone’s half of fame. Excellent graphics, balance, AI and gameplay make it one of those games that you will keep on coming back to have another go. Like many sequels of the same vintage, coming as they did just after the 3D accelerator revolution, it is, in essence, the game that its predecessor tried to be (vide Dungeon Keeper 2). If you have the original, there are good arguments suggesting you shouldn’t bother buying the second version, at least not until it is well down the budget route. Don’t listen to them.

HISTORY

Age of Empires came out in 1996 to much acclaim. Published by Microsoft, it was the first game to put the otherwise all conquering company on the gaming map, as well as taking the RTS genre in a new direction. It worked, for most of us, as a single player game, though as you are able to go from start to finish in two hours at the most, it’s long term re-playability has been questioned by some. It was as a multiplayer game, however, that it really scored, with thousands of games going on even today. Age 2, Age of Kings was thus eagerly awaited, heralded by pretty screenshots and a comprehensive website, it was generally hailed as the most wanted game of the year. It finally appeared in 1999, apparently having undergone a change of direction at the concept stage and received a pretty rapturous welcome. At first. Dissenting voices were raised as it became clear that apart from updated graphics (many critics were disappointed that it wasn’t true 3D), some tweaks to the original’s controls and gameplay and a much improved campaign option, it really wasn’t that different from its predecessor.

THE GAME

For those who haven’t played AoE, this is how the sequel goes. Your world is a map varying in size from small to huge, randomly generated each time you play (with the exception of scenarios of course). The balance of land and sea varies, which has a major effect on strategy, as do the size and location of the various resources. However, you will always have food to hand and the nearest wood, gold and stone won’t be far away.

Starting with three villagers and a town centre, you must gather food with which to feed new villagers, chop wood to build houses for them to live in and gather stone and gold which can be used, along with food and timber, to build new buildings, train new troops and research new technologies. These last give you access to better armour and weapons for your soldiers, more advanced military units (including ships) and faster and more efficient management of resources. Building slowly out from your base, protecting it with walls and fences, guarding it with towers and gates, you eventually come into contact with other tribes. You then have the choice between allying with them or fighting. The last one left standing is, unsurprisingly, the winner. Alternative routes to victory are to find and hold all five holy relics, or build and keep safe a Wonder of the World. In the single player mode, this will take you 2 - 4 hours once you know what you are doing. In multiplayer, it entirely depends on how good the players are, rather like chess. Alternatively, there are several campaigns, with around 10 scenarios in each, linked chronologically and reflecting some aspect of history, whether it be the unification and domination of the Mongol hordes under Ghengis Khan and Sons, or the travails of Jean d’Arc against the evil British. (History question; who burned the mad tart, anyway? The Brits or her own side?) These are much better thought out and implemented than in the original and add a whole new layer of replay value.

As in the original, the game is divided into four ages; this time round starting in the Dark Ages and progressing through Feudal, Castle and Imperial. The mechanics are virtually identical, but almost all the old niggles have been addressed. For instance, you can now queue the building of all types of units of which a building is capable. You can tell newly finished units where to muster, allowing reinforcements to be sent straight to the front or to take up a defensive post on your perimeter. Troops with ranged weapons can be garrisoned in guard towers to add to their firepower and if and when your village is invaded, you can ring the town bell to order all villagers into the town centre, from where they will rain down arrows on everything in range. One very useful addition is that of the Idle Villager button. Clicking on this will take you to whichever serf is currently sculling around with nothing to do and, combined with a tote showing what they are all supposedly up to, it allows for much more efficient use of manpower.

The mini-map has been enhanced, though it remains a little on the small side, even on a large monitor. You now have the choice of showing military units, villagers or resources (wood, stone and gold), though for the most part you will just use it as you did the original. There is no facility for having two map windows open at once, which is a shame, as is the inability to "photograph" locations for quick zoom to vital areas. However, there are shortcuts to most of the buildings, so managing and monitoring your production is easier than it was in the original version. One feature that could do with improving is the alert system, which gives you a heads up when something of note occurs. There is a distinctive sound and a written message comes up, but it is insufficiently attention grabbing and it’s all too easy to miss it in the heat of battle, with the result that just when you need plenty of food to build up your army after heavy losses, you find all the farms abandoned and your villagers standing around picking their noses.

Where the designers really tried to improve things is on the tactical side. Military units now have a variety of stances, from purely defensive and static, to aggressive pursuit of any enemy that strays into range. One of the most useful is an intermediate stage, where the troops will attack anyone coming close and pursue them for a short way, before returning to their assigned post. Their AI isn’t perfect however and it’s still possible to find that all your archers have wandered off after a lone scout, only to stumble across a major enemy formation. With predictable results. Also on the tactical front, you can now order troops into a variety of formations and they will keep to them even when moving. For instance, you could order all your troops into a square, with strong defensive units on the outside, ranged units inside them and the weakest (e.g. priests) in the middle, then send them off to do battle some way away. If the distance is great enough, the formation will alter into column for the transit, reforming at the destination. You will still have to watch to make sure some of the units don’t wander off after stray enemies, but the column will move at the pace of the slowest unit and should arrive intact. You can even order units to guard each other, so if you have to send a priest halfway across the map to retrieve a relic, you can assign some troops to him and they will follow him all the way out and all the way back, though again, you have to keep an eye on things, or they may be led astray if they come close to a foe.

TRADE AND ALLIANCES

Trade has been enhanced, in that you can now buy and sell all types of produce, but in single player random map games, it doesn’t get a look in, at least not in my games. It is possible to ally with other tribes, but the AI implementation is suspect and I remain to be convinced that allies hold up their side of the bargain, especially in the warfare department. In some of the scenarios, however, it works very well, with your allies’ responses scripted so that they really do contribute to the overall effort.

MULTIPLAYER

I haven’t tried this yet, but if AoE is anything to go by, it should be pretty good. It’s all a question of numbers, balance and timing. You have to produce the optimum amount of villagers early on so that you can get production up to a high level. This allows expansion and progression through the ages, which results in technological advancement and well equipped troops. When the time is right, you attack, making sure that you can either deliver a killer blow, or else have sufficient reserves to defend against the counter attack. If you have the time to build walls and towers, you can use them to create killing grounds for attacking enemies, though they can conversely slow down your own people as well.

SUMMARY

The game looks good and plays well. Things that needed fixing in the first game (and which weren’t fixed in the add-on pack, Rise of Rome!) have been fixed and the addition of well designed scenarios is most welcome. For my money, the gameplay is still a bit rushed, with players usually trying to get to the Imperial age as quickly as possible. I felt after playing the original, that there should be some way of forcing players to play in the earlier ages, so that all the different units and technologies had a role, rather than racing to the most modern units and trying to get them as well armed and armoured as possible. To some extent the game has addressed this, giving you some powerful units in the Castle Age, meaning that you don’t have to advance to Imperial to win, but I wouldn’t put it to the test in a mutliplayer match. Overall, it’s a game any strategy gamer should have, even if it didn’t take the original concept quite as far as three years development would suggest.