Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings
by Microsoft

List Price: $19.99
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Product Summary

• Players can use garrisoning, military formations, and advantages in direction facing add interesting tactical choices. Units are also smarter, with new artificial intelligence (AI) options like Guard, Patrol and Follow as well as multiple aggression levels. Also boats will be able to ram or board enemy ships to capture them.
• Players can improve the economy of their civilization through expanded trade and diplomacy options. In addition to gathering resources, they can trade at their own market or use trading routes with their allies. A market-based economy gives new options for players to buy, sell, and speculate on resources.
• Gamers command one of 13 mighty civilizations. These include Franks, Japanese, Byzantine and the raiding Viking, Mongol and Celt civilizations. Each civilization has unique attributes, buildings and technologies as well as a particular combat unit based on its historical counterpart.
• Production queues, improved navigation points and chas more than 100 nodes, larger than one player could possibly complete in just one game.
• Experience intense single and multiplayer game play. Enhanced historical campaigns, a random map generator and a scenario and campaign editor offer players extensive replay value.

• PC Gamer (1-year)

Video Game Reviews of Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings

Customer Review: An excellent choice
Summary: 5 Stars

Description of Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings

The point of the game is to shepherd your fledgling civilization to world domination, using war, trade, and exploration. You start with the bare minimum to get going, and you've got to balance your people's needs with your desire to be a little Napoleon. The Age of Kings gives you a ton of new units and technologies to enrich your strategic options. Each scenario is placed accurately within history, but you're also free to create your own.

The multiplayer format is robust, allowing up to nine players to share a world. When battles commence, you can take control of every aspect of your workers and soldiers, sending them running for shelter in the town center, ordering them to defend a watchtower, or setting their combat stance to "aggressive" for free-for-all sword smashing fun. When you're not fighting, find your idle peasants with a mouse click and send them back to work chopping trees, rounding up sheep, fishing, or mining gold and stone.

As you acquire more resources, you can improve your soldier's gear and skills, start to trade more efficiently, and make life better for everyone in your empire. You can choose from 13 groups to manage, from the Japanese to the Teutons and Franks. Each group has unique units and special characteristics, making this a game that changes every time you play it.

If all this sounds complicated, it is. New players may be intimidated by the range of choices, but the teaching scenarios are very helpful in conquering the controls. Age of Empires II is a sophisticated, gorgeous successor to the wildly popular original. It's a real feather in Microsoft's cap--a world-building game that will hold you captive. --Therese Littleton

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