Age of Empires II: The Conquerors (0)

Overview

Age of Empires II: The Conquerors is an expansion pack which adds a large variety of new features to the original game, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings. The expansion pack requires to work. The expansion pack was well received by critics and currently has an 88.5% rating on Gamerankings.

Additions to the game

Many new features were added into the game, tweaks to the core gameplay were also put into place.

Gameplay Tweaks

There were many changes made to the core gameplay in order to make it more user friendly. For one thing artificial intelligence was made more user friendly and was changed in order to be more intelligent. This aided in 'micromanagement' which made the game easier and more accessible to new players. Other features were also added to aid in single player gameplay. Chat commands, a staple to the series were added to ask AI players for resources such as food, gold, stone, and wood or to tell their AI allies to attack the enemy. This is a feature still used in the third part of the series. Another significant improvement was the population limit for each player/civilization, which increased from 75 to 200. Smaller improvements were added, such as in the campaign, Hero Units were now able to regenerate health.

New Campaigns

Four new campaigns were added into the game. They were based on the exploits of

• El Cid
• Attila the Hun

Another campaign, called Battles of The Conquerors, was added which took a different approach then the others. Rather then having a campaign centering around one character, it was based on a variety of battles which had no relation to each other. All of these battles are important to history but were not featured in a narrative campaign like the other ones, and unlike the other campaigns, the player did not need to unlock missions by completing other missions, and there was no progression to the campaign. The player could play any battle at any time. The list of battles featured in this campaign included;

• Agincourt (Britons vs. Franks)
• Hastings (Franks vs. Britons)
• Manzikert (Turks vs. Byzantines)
• (Japanese vs. Japanese)
• Lepanto (Spanish vs. Turks)
• Noryang Point (Koreans vs. Japanese)
• Tours (Franks vs. Saracens)
• Vindlandsaga (Vikings expedition across the Atlantic to the New World at Newfoundland, North America)

New Civilizations

A total of five new civilizations were added to the game. These civilizations include;

• Mayans
• Aztecs

Each of these civilizations brought unique new units to the game.

Spanish: Conquistadors, Missionaries (created at monastery)

Aztecs: Jaguar Warriors, Eagle Warriors (created at barracks, shared with Mayans)

Mayas: Plumed Archers, Eagle Warriors (see above)

Huns: Tarkans

Koreans: War wagons, Turtle ships (created at docks)

New Maps

The list of maps includes;

• Arena
• Ghost lake
• Mongolia
• Nomad
• Oasis
• Salt Marsh
• Scandinavia
• Yucatan

Other New Features

Other new features include twenty six new features, new real world maps, and new units available to all races. Each new civilization in the game also got their own unique heroes. The level soundtrack was changed completely.

Soundtrack

1. Pork Parts (3:06)

2. Pudding Pie (estimated 3:11)

3. Tide Me Over Warm 'em Ups (2:51)

4. Voodoodoodoo (2:55)

5. The Bovinian Derivative (3:10)

6. Case in Point: Paste (2:58)

7. Mountain Lie On / Seamus and Chamois (3:24)

8. Subotai Defeats the Knights Templar (estimated 3:06)

9. Roi-r! / Basura! Basura! (2:42)

10. Neep Ninny-Bod (3:16)

Sabotai Defeats The Knight's Templar (full soundtrack in one track (30:50)