Fascism and Communism. Imperialism and Self-Determination. Conservatism and Anarchism. The Green movement and Jeremy Clarkson. Titanic clashes of personal ideals that have shaken our planet. But none is so mighty, so earth-shattering as the constant, often controversial internal battle between various video games in my head to become Will Anderson’s Bestest Game Ever. I’m spoilt for choice, if I’m honest. The incredible Half-Life 2? The hyper-realistic “soldier sim” Operation Flashpoint? The gritty Russian flight sim IL-2 Sturmovik? The 64-player multiplayer Battlefield series? Rome : Total War, or its more gunpowdery big brother Empire? Perhaps. But one game that has always held a special place in my heart, and by always, I mean about 10 years (since November 1999 – why I’m writing this article, in fact) is the original strategy game to end all strategy games, Age of Empires II
“What?!” some will cry (notice how all my articles are structured like this?), “What?! How can you say that Age of Empires II is the original strategy game to end all strategy games? You have neglected the plural! What about Age o-” at which point they’ll shut up because my Petards will have walked into their city and blown themselves up. Yes, what makes AoE II so special is that it was the first game to introduce suicide bombers into a medieval setting. No, seriously though; who gives a monkey’s about AoE I? It was never as good as II and this is almost universally agreed. For starters, who can run an empire with a fifty unit pop cap? Actually, I can’t think of any other reasons right now, and my esteemed colleague, Mr Green, claims to be writing a counter article to this, but whatever. I’ve never owned I, and I have never desired to. It just seems…wrong. I know it shouldn’t – I’m more interested in ancient history than medieval – but I just don’t like it very much. It is hugely overshadowed by RTW, in a way that AoE II just isn’t by Medieval II Total War. Whatever. This article is about Age of Empires II, not I, and what are you gonna do?
1999 was not the best year in video gaming, nor the worst, it was just mediocre. But out of the Y2K hype (remember how worried we were?) and the world’s population reaching 6 billion, came a game now acknowledged to be one of the greatest of all time. Now, to be fair to AoE I, it was a moderately successful game, and Ensemble were keen to make another. They decided to keep with the same formula that had worked for the original – sprites, not 3-D graphics (this was the 20th Century, remember) but it still took a year longer to produce than they thought, so they had to release Rise of Rome to keep the punters happy. However, the wait was worth it, as the new game was…well, not unlike anything ever seen before, but miles, miles better.
Ah, sprites. That reminds me. To anyone who doesn’t know what “bitmapped graphics” means, here’s a picture:
Looks nice, doesn’t it?
but essentially what this means is that, as well as looking good (I simply love its unique style – each unit, instead of being a poor 3-D model (like in Empire Earth), is a moving 2-D picture), it’ll run on any machine. And I mean ANY. When I got this I had a Windows 95 with a 200Mhz processor, a 4Gb hard drive and 32Mb RAM, and it played fine (I was very happy with that. Haven’t times changed?). You could run this on a cow strapped to a 1950s TV and Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, if you wanted. Ok, not really. But really, you have no Crysis-like excuses for not owning this game. But do you have any excuses because it isn’t actually good game?
Well, no, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this. AoE is, for those of you who have been living in a cave for twelve years (you haven’t missed much, otherwise…oh, Katie Price and Peter Andre split up), a real RTS. Not one of these RTSs that I dismiss as RTTs (subtle difference between tactics and strategy, look it up), but a real, Warcraft (the original, not World of) style strategy game. That means you get your faithful, obedient, yes-milording citizens to build things, gather resources and occasionally be attacked by wolves, while the army that you’ve built (you DID build an army, didn’t you?) sits around in your main base until you notice that they’re there and you send them off on some suicidal mission against the enemy’s ridiculously well fortified base where they all get slaughtered by well placed bombard towers.
Oh all right. These aren’t bombard towers, they’re keeps. But what are you gonna do?
That’s the thing. The AI, though antiquated, is GOOD. Really, really good. On “hard”, or “very hard”, you’re pretty much screwed unless you’re very very good. They know where to place their towers. They know where to build their walls. And worst of all, they know where you live. At the start of any game, their scout cavalry always comes past your base very early on, and then that’s it. After that, you’re constantly harried by well mixed groups of units which just never seem to stop coming.
And the units are varied. In the base game there are 13 different civilisations, from the Dark Age (after the fall of Rome) to the Imperial Age (Renaissance) each with their own unique units, technologies and bonuses, and these range from the Britons to the Goths to the Saracens to the Japanese. This makes for plenty of difference in gameplay, and the expansion pack, The Conquerors adds five even more different ones; the Maya, Aztecs, Spanish, Huns and the Koreans. This gives rise to a huge range of units, including Mounted Handgunners, Huscarls, Beserkers, Throwing Axemen, Samurai, Armoured Turtle Ships and machine-gun-crossbow thingies called Chu Ko Nu. However, way you use your units is very old fashioned. There’s no flanking, no trample damage (except from the Byzantine Cataphracts), no splash damage, no tactics at all, in fact, apart from the age old triangle of units. What? You don’t know what that is? You must know! Fine. Cavalry beat archers. Archers beat spearmen. And spearmen ALWAYS beat cavalry. Of course, it isn’t quite so clearcut. Skirmishers (shield and javelin armed troops) also beat archers. Artillery, which comes in a wide range of types, from ballistas, cannons, trebuchets, rams, the aforementioned suicide-bombing petards, and the best, onagers which fire groups of rocks, can generally destroy tight-packed clumps of slow moving infantry but are generally taken down quickly if cavalry attack. Swordsmen are mediocre against most things, and villagers should not really be involved in combat at all. There is also a range of sea units, and these work in the same little triangle. Fireships (literally, ships that spew fire) beat Galleons, but Demolition Ships (suicide bombers again – this is a real 21st century game…except it isn’t. Whatever) will always pwn Fireships. There’s nothing wrong with this style of gameplay; indeed, it makes the game more challenging. You can’t win a fight just by charging in cavalry from behind and routing them; you have to play it more like you’d play chess; you need to be INTELLIGENT. Like me.
I have elephants. This makes me clever
Of course, for those whose strategies are failing, help is at hand. Because one of the easiest aspects of the game to master is the cheats. There used to be a time when everyone (or at least, it seemed like everyone to me) knew most of the cheats for this game. The thing about them is that in some aspects, they make the game more challenging. The best, and the one which I think actually enhances the gameplay, is aegis, which, when entered in the chat box, enables instant build on EVERYTHING. “Aha,” you think, “this could prove useful”. This thought lasts approximately pi (3.142135…) seconds, until a massive army made up of all your enemies combined flattens your town(s). What you hadn’t bargained for was that it works for ALL players. And computers can control many things at once, and thus expand at a fantastic rate. Play the game like this and things get MUCH more interesting. Though at the same time, things get a lot more interesting if you use some of the sillier cheats. Such as “furious the monkey boy” which gives you a small gorilla with about 100000000 attack, but only 9hp. Or “how do you turn this on” an AC Cobra with machine guns. Useful for getting yourself out of a tight spot…or just for lols.
Look at that! 1400 words (you’re going to have to count them all now, aren’t you?) and I haven’t even talked about the campaigns, which are one of the best parts of the game. In the original, there are five, and in the expansion four more. These are as different as…some thing which are different and each contain at least 6 missions, so you’re never stuck for things to do, whether it’s defeating the English as Jean D’Arc, hunting wolves and arranging the assassination of your brother as Attila the Hun, or simply being overrun by the Spanish as the last Aztec emperor, Montezuma. Not content with this lot as value for money? Well then, there’s the Quick Battle mode (like “Skirmish” in any other game), which has 9 different modes (all on random, custom or real world maps), such as deathmatch, king of the hill, defend the wonder, regicide and more. And then there’s all the history. No, not kidding. How many other games come with there own mini encyclopaedia about the period of history they’re about? And then there’s a map and campaign editor, with which you can play your own scenarios and so on. And now, some of the very few bad points…
“Petard no like bad points. Petard blow you up. Petard blow Petard up…”
The one game feature missing is multiplayer, since in 2006 Microsoft (The bas…very, VERY nice people who make so many lovely things, such as Windows 7…is that enough for you to not shoot me? It is? But I shouldn’t be writing this? Oh, I’m sorry, my backspace key is broken…can I carry on now? Thank you) decided that they would switch off the servers, so if you want to “frag with a friend” you’ll need a LAN. Other than that…oh, there are no cutscenes in the campaigns, just stories told by Californians with a French accent which gave up on its trans-Atlantic journey somewhere in Arizona. But that’s it.
Seriously, this is one of the best strategy games available today, and in my opinion, one of the greatest games ever made. So, to belatedly celebrate its tenth birthday, go out and by the Big Daddy of RTSs, Age of Empires II
[Ed: that was a rather weak ending, Will. Must try harder]
