Middle-age themed strategy game
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a real-time strategy video game that is set in the Middle Ages, specifically the Dark Age, the Feudal Age, the High Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. You will progress through each age chronologically by gathering your resources, creating towns, and building armies that can topple rival empires. Entering a new Age enables you to own more armies or units, structures, and technologies but it also places you in a major historical event.
Gameplay
The main focus of the Age of Empires II is to have the most food, wood, gold, and stone for your civilization. As the commander, you can instruct your villagers or civilian units to gather them. Finding these resources are straightforward. Food is the easiest to source as there are many areas wherein you can hunt and harvest. You can also create a self-sustaining village by commanding them to care for livestock and create a farm.
Owning several farms not only supplies villagers with food, but also wood. Chopping down trees is the only way you can gather wood. There are also several ways of obtaining Gold. The easiest is to trade or collect relics in a monastery, but it can deplete your other resources. It’s best to send villagers to the mines to collect gold and stones. All your resources need to be deposited into checkpoints such as town centers, mining camps, mills, and lumberyards.
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Villagers can be upgraded from manual laborers to traders in the marketplace. You must use the resources you have to create a market for civilians to sell wood, stone, gold, and food. Other than a place to trade items, the market and docks enable you to generate gold from foreign markets or ports. Note that the longer the supplier has traveled, the more expensive it is. You can invest in this supply, and sell it on your market at a higher price.
Units and civilizations
Units are the villagers that populate your civilization. Within each town, there is a limit to the number of people that can populate it. Depending on the number of houses, Castles, and Town Centers in a single area, the cap can be between 25 to 200 villagers. The limit lets you know how many villagers you’re managing. For example, the idle villager button identifies how many villagers have not yet been assigned a task.
Across the four Ages are five campaigns that highlight scenarios in history such as Ghenghis Khan’s Invasion of Eurasia, Barbarossa’s Crusade, and Saladin’s defense of the Holy Land. You can immerse yourself in the game by playing solo or take over towns faster by playing with friends. Knowing how many villagers you’re managing allows you to properly distribute tasks or occupations to them.
A key occupation in The Age of Kings is the military. You can assign villagers to one of five military units: archers, cavalry, infantry, naval units, and siege weapons. Each unit has its own counter unit. For example, the infantry has the spearmen and pikemen ready when they’re against the cavalry. This means only the subunit will earn attack bonuses.
Highly rewarding and interactive gameplay
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings’ hands-on approach to world-building is suitable for players that want an immersive experience. By allowing you to dictate the villager’s roles and the town’s source of development, you get to test your unique strategy and reap its benefits much later on in the game.
