The key aspects of the game are the economic component quite simple, but effective and military affairs. Resources in the game 4 - food, which is spent on most units; wood for most buildings; stone for more advanced and durable buildings; and gold, which is used extensively for both recruitment and research.
Research in the game is varied and is carried out not on the global technology map, but locally, in certain buildings. Often, they relate to either the units produced there, or the buildings themselves. For example, in the city center, loopholes can be opened that will allow the settlers who have settled there during the alarm period to fire at the enemy, and you can also research handcarts to speed up the collection of resources and increase the health of workers..
Combat units are represented by infantry, riflemen, cavalry, siege engines, and special units. At the same time, when the player opens the next stage of development through research, the units are automatically improved to this level - the scout turns into a light cavalryman, and the militiaman puts on armor and changes the club for a sword.
The development process is conventionally divided into several eras. Each new era not only opens up access to more advanced buildings and improvements, but also visually changes the style of buildings already built. So a boring stone wall becomes decorated with carvings, and primitive huts turn into full-fledged houses.. Militarily, the game introduces the heretofore missing option of formation types and stances. You can configure your troops to form in line, box, staggered, flank or horde formations but the best new option in this area is the availability of combat stance, more easily identified as disposition.
Assigning your forces to take either aggressive or defensive posturing becomes an integral part of battle strategy and tactics as do the orders to simply 'stand your ground' or not attack.
There are four main campaign games centered on Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Saladin or Frederick Barbarossa, each with a handful of linked historically-based scenarios that must be played and won in linear fashion to advance. Quite possibly the best feature, though, is the random map game where no scenario is ever the same.
Nearly every aspect of gameplay is adjustable including number of players, civilizations to be used, map type and size, population limits, starting resource availability, which Age to begin in and victory conditions! The fun doesn't stop there however. You can choose to play the single- or multi-player version of the Regicide Game with its survival-at-all-costs motif where your king must be the only surviving royalty and where special rules are built in to change the results of certain technologies, thus creating a very different type of game.
Equally intense is the Death Match game with specific rules and its fight to the death scenario. The game has various victory conditions that can totally change the way you need to play.
The most common is the Conquest mode where defeat of your opponents requires meeting specific criteria, not just eliminating them. Another option is to play a game wherein the winner is the first player who builds a Wonder of the World within the specific Age required! And yet another innovative victory option revolves around becoming the first player to collect all of the relics within a certain age -- but with a twist.
Once a civilization has possession of all the relics, a countdown clock commences that allows the other civilizations a set amount of time to wrest a relic away from the controlling civilization, thus terminating the countdown clock.
Other types of play are available such as victory being awarded to the civilization that has the highest point score when a set amount of time has elapsed or a victory predicated on reaching a pre-determined score, without time limits. Multi-player action is accommodated via a LAN or the Internet up to 8 players or through a modem or serial connection two players.
As in the single player games, multi-player action in Age of Empires II offers a ton of adjustable game parameters. These new edited or created scenarios and campaigns can be made available or traded with game fans on the Internet, thus providing even more replay value beyond the random map generator.
The possibilities of this real-time strategy game seem nearly endless and it definitely is on my short list of personal 'game of the year' nominees.
If the music and sound isn't spectacular which it's not , it's my opinion that most strategy gamers will focus on the game's stellar gameplay and forgive any minor shortcomings, the largest of which is possibly the lack of a zoom or map rotation feature.
Graphics: Only held back by the similarity of some units in the earlier phases of the game. Age of Empires is one of the best real-time strategy videogame sagas in the history of videogames and one of the great favorites among lovers of the genre. It has been nearly a quarter of a century since the first version was released and more than two decades since Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. AoE II, considered as the great debut of the series, places us after the fall of the Roman Empire and leaves in our hands the destiny of Humanity during the period of time between the barbarian invasions and the end of the Medieval Age.
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is the definitive remastering of this great game , released to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. The original Age Of Empires was also let down by its AI routines, although at the time they seemed acceptable. These days, expectation is a lot higher. I'm used to bad interfaces, and I've played games where people would ask why I was giving it the time of day. I'm not turned off by poor presentation, but I've had to train myself to see them because the pathfinding problems in Age I didn't actually bother me - I'd got so used to it that I didn't even notice.
Some games are so immersive that you can forgive them almost anything, and Age l was one of them. However, to be a good games designer you have to be critical, you have to be able to look at the game from everyone's perspective, from the newcomer to the hard-core gamer.
It's hard to step back and see what turns people off the game, but it has to be done. By way of a few mouse clicks, troops can now be arranged into a number of attacking or defensive arrangements.
Infantry or pikemen will take the forward rank, with archers behind. If you have siege weapons, they'll take the protective centre ground and every one of them will stay in formation and move at the same speed. It's a powerful tool, and has been handled without the need for a complex interface. By the look on Ian's face, it's something he's immensely proud of: "The pace of the game is such that you don't even have time to pick from a massive array of formations.
The interface has had to be streamlined and in the event of a surprise attack you won't even have to select a formation, because your troops will immediately switch depending on what units have been grouped together. Of course, if you're planning an attack of your own, you can choose the best formation for the job. Once the idea solidified and we saw it working for the first time, we were very pleased.
Stunned, in fact. It worked beautifully. It's light years ahead of games where you just grouped similar units together, sent them all in en masse and hoped for the best. It might not have the depth of a real hardcore strategy game, but for the speed of Age II it works perfectly.
Ensemble make a point of burying themselves in historical books and photographing ancient buildings whenever they're abroad after all, the US isn't well known for its medieval architecture. Right at the heart of Ensemble's freshly painted Dallas offices sits a library of books spanning every culture that has ever populated the planet, a plethora of works that the British Library would be envious of.
The main characteristic of the Age series is that every building and unit is historically and graphically accurate, even in terms of sound and music. In the sequel though, there will be even more diversity, including race-specific graphics, music and dialogue. Some criticisms of the Age series have been unfair.
For some inexplicable reason, its combination of Civilization and WarCraft was lost on certain gamers. Civ fans complained it was too fast, while WarCraft aficionados complained that it was too complex. Ian explains: "There was an impression somewhere along the line that we were attempting to merge two games that are worlds apart.
Our vision was never for it to be half WarCraft and half Civ, and I believe that there was an article somewhere that called us CivCraft II, or something like that. That was probably where it all started. But that was never our intention: our intention was to take RTS, which was a pretty cool genre, and add some Civ-like aspects to it. Let's get this straight: we're going to put fun ahead of realism any day of the week. We're working with a historical background, but that doesn't mean that we can't throw fun elements into it.
And 1 like it, because for a few months at the start of the project I get paid for reading history books, so I'm happy with that. Anyway, the historical flavour is nice, it's easy to understand what the units in the game are -everybody knows what an archer is, but not what a troll does.
It's a lot easier to grasp. Trying to make the game more like Civ or more realistic is missing the point of what we're trying to achieve. Maybe some day we'll do a more Civ-ish version of Age, but only if we can make it fun. So what next from Ensemble? Obviously Ian wasn't going to spill the beans at this early stage, but I was told that Ensemble want to become a 'two-game team' - creating their next two titles side by side. At the moment we're keeping all our options open and looking at what we think would be the most exciting thing to do next.
Imagine that: taking fast-paced historical strategy out of the feudal age and through the Industrial Revolution. For now though, we're quite happy to wait for the second instalment in the series. This may not be the technological quantum leap some are hoping for, but when it comes to Age Of Empires II, it's the little things that stand out, a testament to the fact that there really wasn't all that much wrong with the first game.
Where many games developers are trying to be revolutionary, Ensemble have moved on to their evolutionary phase, honing their game and taking what made the first one such a joy and making it even better.
Barring some freak accident, Age Of Empires II will certainly be an improvement on its predecessor, we've seen the evidence and we're willing to put money on it. So close to release, the only danger is that Age fans, Ion Storm, their offices are just down the road , will be so addicted to the new sequel that Daikatana will slip by another year. But I think we could live with that. Watch out, though, because you could also become a lowly trampled serf.
Age of Kings is a masterful sequel to Age of Empires. It begins in the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome and progresses through the Feudal Age, Castle Age, and -- if you live long enough to spend the resources -- Imperial Age. The campaigns are based on historical people and events.
There are five campaign levels: The William Wallace learning campaign has seven scenarios. Each of these will give even the most experienced players a run for their money, especially if played on the most difficult settings. They are ranked and increase in difficulty level as you move on to the next scenario and on to the next level.
To be able to build your unique units you must get to Castle Age and build a castle. Below is the list of each civilization and the unique unit that they have. It is wonderful to be able to play with either keystrokes or the mouse or a combination of the two to navigate and rule your kingdom. If you know how to play Age of Empires , then you already know how to navigate in this game. Even if you have never played Age of Empires is there anyone out there who falls into that category?
There are lots of new features and things to research. One of the things that is both exciting and discouraging is the number of things that you can research.
It is next to impossible to come up with enough resources in order to research all that is available, so pick and choose what you need for the way you play. In Age of Empires I did get to the point where there was nothing left to research but I have not yet had this problem in Age of Kings. One of the nicest new features is the town bell you can ring to call all your villagers to garrison the town center, protecting your town center and villagers from those unscrupulous raids on your economy.
I guess if you played that way in the previous games you will have to come up with a new strategy. There is also a very nice feature that allows you to find your loafing villagers and get the freeloaders back to work. One of the biggest challenges is to keep all your villagers working, as they like to take breaks and stop contributing. Now you can click on the idle villager button or press the period key.
The map view allows you to easily monitor your progress and yet it does not detract from the gameplay. Overland trading with trade carts which can be created at the market has been added to the game, something that helps a lot with resources in land-based games.
In Age of Empires you needed water to be able to trade. You can still trade on the seas but you are not restricted to this supply channel. You can convert almost any resource into gold through your market, but use it wisely since the trade rate gets worse each time you use this option.
There are also new sources of food with wild animals and sheep as well as deer, farms, and fishing. Working gates for your walls now means you do not have to leave a hole and try to defend it any more. Just make sure you monitor the gate because the enemy can walk through when your people open it.
A good source of obtaining "free" gold is collecting artifacts and depositing them in your monastery where your monks will exchange them for gold. If you destroy a monastery with artifacts in it you can take them back home to your own monastery. In one game, I received almost 3, gold just from the artifacts.
It is well worth the risk of losing a monk to get all the gold you can. Go for the gold.
0コメント