Review NaN of 43
, from USA
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$30.00 Summary:
The improvements in game play in Age of Empires II: The Conquerors is one area of this game that has been largely improved. Everything from the actions of your units (especially non-combat ones such as villagers or fishing ships) to the organization of your military units has been refined to provide a much better gameplay experience.
One of the first things that was improved was formations. In the first Age of Empires, you could not put your units into formations -- you simply clicked and dragged your mouse over the units you wanted to select in order to select them. Then you click on where you wanted them to go, and that was that. However, in this game, you can choose what formation you would like them to be in (which will be explained later), different things that you can do with them (such as having them patrol an area or follow another unit), just to name a few things.
Some of the new things that you can do with your units are as follows:
Patrol -- This causes your unit to walk back and forth from where they originally were to where you want them to go. This area can be relatively small (such as walking back and forth across your town), or relatively large (such as walking back and forth across the entire game map).
Guard -- You can order your units to guard another unit or building using this command. Guard units attack enemy units that get close to the building that your units are defending, then when the enemies are defeated (assuming that they are) your units return to their post. Also, stances can affect how actively your units pursue the enemy units. For instance, if you choose to have your forces in an aggressive stance, they will pursue the enemies, obviously, with much more determination and effort than if you have your characters in, say, a defensive stance.
Follow -- Using this command, you can order your units to follow another enemy unit at long range to avoid detection by enemy forces. This can be used to find an enemies home base, or to follow a Trade Cart to find new markets. Generally, though, if you're following an enemy unit into its home base, there is a large chance that your forces will be decimated, given that most people (or the computer) defend their bases fairly well, and so it doesn't really do you any good to waltz into enemy territory with a relatively small force (as opposed to what you might have if you decided to control your units personally, and that way you could have more units attacking the enemy simultaneously). However, these are just generalizations, and therefore there will be some people out there who will be able to get some commands (which I say are bad or useless) to work and so please understand that these are simply my opinions and I'm just calling these things as I see them.
Kill Your Unit -- This is an interesting option, because, well, you lose the unit. However, it does provide some uses, namely if you are at your population limit and there are some units that you'd like to replace with other units. This can be the case if you notice your enemies strategy, and you realize that your archers aren't going to do a lot against, say, the enemies' hoard of War Elephants. Interestingly enough, this also works for your buildings and such, however, you must remember that once you destroy a building in this manner, you can't just "revive it". The only way I can think of that you would want to use this option to destroy a building is if you accidentally put a building in a place where you didn't want it, and you wanted to destroy it's foundation. This was a problem in the original Age of Empires -- you would mistakenly build something where you'd rather not, but you would have to complete it, because your villagers would keep coming back to it, trying to build it after they were finished with their other tasks. The villagers in this game try to do that too, but you can eliminate that problem simply by destroying the foundation of the building.
Formations (which you could not put your units into in the first Age of Empires) are a very good improvement, and allow you to customize how you want your characters to ride into combat. Do you want them marching in a straight line? Scattered all over? Protecting a weaker unit? All these things are possible thanks to the new features in this game. These formations, in greater detail, are as follows.
Line Formation -- This is pretty self-explanatory. It forms the units into a line wider than it is deep. Units are close together, without much space between them. Military units are positioned according to their specialty. An example of this would be archers being positioned behind swordsmen, as this would allow the archers to fire at an enemy without fear of being attacked (at least from the front).
Box Formation -- This formation forms the units into a, well, box, which allows you to protect the weaker units in the center by placing stronger units around them. This also allows the units in the center to be protected from any direction, so therefore it is harder for enemies to get at the unit that you wish to protect. A good use for this formation is if you are using monks, siege weapons, trebuchets, or something that is generally slow and vulnerable to attack an enemy.
Staggered Formation -- This formation puts the units farther apart to cut down on the damage caused by enemy units with a large area of effect, such as enemy Onagers. The only downside to this formation is that it is hard to keep track of your units sometimes (especially if the units are large) because of the spacing that goes between the units. However, like in the first Age of Empires, you can simply press control+any number(1-9) to group all of your units together. After you do that, you can simply press alt+the number you assigned them to select those units, at which time you can choose any formation for them, thereby avoiding losing track of the units after they go into a Staggered Formation.
Flank Formation -- In this formation, units are formed into two subgroups, which then try to surround an enemy of your choice when you on the attack. This generally works well if you are trying to surround (and thus destroy) a building (such as an enemies wonder, barracks, etc). It doesn't work so well for small buildings (such as towers) or for individual enemy units, as all your forces will try to attack one thing, and, obviously, if you have a large group of units trying to attack one smaller unit (or building) you will not be able to get every one of your units attacking a single enemy unit. If this occurs, many of your units will simply stand around, waiting for other orders, while they are most likely getting shot at by the tower (or other nearby enemy structures).
You can also set your units into what are known as stances. You could also do this in the original Age of Empires, however I feel that in this game the feature is much improved. There are several stances which you can choose from, which are discussed below.
Aggressive Stance -- This stance causes your units to pursue enemies to the death or until the enemy leaves your units line of sight. Obviously, though, if you have lifted the fog of war(using a cheat code), or by selecting the option of "all visible" before you start a game, you unit will NEVER stop pursuing the enemy, which can be a good or bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Generally though, if you have the aggressive stance on, you feel pretty confident about your military, and therefore you probably aren't afraid of your units "meeting their match", so to speak, from enemy units.
Defensive Stance -- This stance causes your units to pursue the enemy units a short distance, then return to their post if the enemy leaves the area or is killed. Usually, this is what I keep my units in, as I really don't like them wondering around the map, getting themselves in trouble.
Stand Ground -- If you are into archers, you will love this stance. It tells your units not to move from their position to attack an enemy, but they CAN attack from range. Therefore, your archers won't get too close to enemy forces, while at the same time they are dishing out a decent amount of damage.
No Attack Stance -- Frankly, this stance seems useless to me, but maybe it's just because I haven't learned the proper way to use it. This stance causes your units not to move and not to attack, even if they are attacked. I imagine that this could be useful when you are trying to build up an army, but don't want your characters running off to pursue enemies on you. Still though, I feel that keeping them in a Defensive Stance or, if you are using archers (or units that can attack from a range), put them into a Stand Ground Stance. Nevertheless, I'm sure someone out there has found a use for every one of these stances, and can probably defeat me in about five minutes to prove it.
Age of Empires II: The Conquerors also provides some new civilizations. They are the Aztecs, the Huns, Koreans, Mayans, and Spanish. Like the civilizations that came with the original Age of Empires II, these civilizations all have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. For instance, since the horse was not native to the Americas, the Mayans and Aztecs cannot create Stable units.
Since the Mayans and Aztecs have also been added to the game, it would naturally make sense to add new maps to the game as well. Tropical terrain is one of the many new additions, as well as Winter terrain. There are also maps from the real world, which basically let you fight it out with an enemy on a location such as Britain, France, etc. However, there is one small complaint on the real world maps -- you can't adjust their size, which makes sense, because it's the real world, right? However, it does kind of get annoying, especially when you have to hunt down the LAST enemy villager over a larger area than you would normally have to. Still, it is nice to be able to see battles occurring where they actually happened.
Another nice feature of this game is the ability to command allied computer players. Short on food? Just ask for it! Most of the time they will give it to you, unless they either don't have a market (which is necessary to give tribute), or they simply don't have the resources to spare, which generally happens when you repeatedly ask for resources over a short period of time. You can also command your allies to do anything from build a Navy to stop building villagers.
Speaking of villagers, they are also smarter than they were before. Remember before, when you would create a mining camp right next to a bunch of gold, and your villagers would just stand there and look at it? Not any more, now all of the villagers that were involved in building the mining camp (or town center, mill, etc.) will begin to collect resources after they have completed the building of whatever it is you have just created. Also, after they have finished, say, collecting all the gold that a given mine has to offer, they will begin to go towards another mine (if they can see it, which occurs if you have the All Visible option turned on). This is an obvious help, especially when you have other things to attend to, such as holding off an enemy that's at your gates.
When selecting the options for your game, you can choose how much of the map you want to be revealed. When you select “Normal”, you must explore the map to reveal it and also to find opponents. There is one catch with this though. When you find, say, an enemies building, then leave the area, it will “freeze” the picture of that building, meaning that even if an enemy comes and destroys, on your map, it will look like the building is still there, unless you go and enter that area again. Therefore, you need to keep going over to an enemy’s base to see what they are doing. The same is true for the next option, “Explored”. This allows you to see the map, but you still need to explore to find your enemies. What this means is that all the terrain is visible, but your enemies aren’t, so just like “Normal” you will have to go around to find out where your enemies are. Last, we have “All Visible” which allows you to see all the terrain and all your enemies, without having to do any exploring. You can see your enemies the entire game, which definitely makes it easier to keep track of them, but they can also see you, so it does have a trade off.
There are several new campaigns for Age of Empires II: The Conquerors. These include Attila the Hun, El Cid, Montezuma, and a campaign that includes individual historically accurate battles. These aren’t like campaigns in that they only have one mission, and when you complete that, you’ve finished the entire things. However, they are fun, and they give you a chance to re-live different battles that have occurred throughout history. They also include artwork before and after the mission, similar to the campaigns.
When I bought this game, it also came with a fold-out that had Civilization Attributes, Unit Strengths and Weaknesses, a tech tree, and the technologies that each civilization can research, all there for quick reference. This was an invaluable tool when I first started playing this game, because I didn’t know what to use to counter-attack computer attacks with. I mean, I was trying to use archers to get rid of a group of Knights. Not a smart move, as the Knights closed in quickly, decimating my archers in a matter of seconds. Using this guide, though, I quickly learned what to use for each given situation, which improved my game immensely.
Overall, Age of Empires II: The Conquerors is very much improved from the original Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. It is light years ahead of the original Age of Empires due to its many new improvements. If you bought Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings but never got the expansion, I would highly recommend picking it up. For those people who never bought anything in the Age of Empires II series, I would highly recommend picking up the Gold Edition of Age of Empires II.
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