Age of kings full version free download

From The Dark Age. You will be starting off in the dark ages where you have next to nothing and are constantly fighting for survival. All in all, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is definitely a worthy sequel, thanks to the vast array of new additions when it comes to buildings, units and gameplay mechanics.

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The best compliment I can give Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings is that even after all these years I still play and enjoy the hell out of this game. There are so many strategy games these days that we are spoiled for choice. However, while it may not be the best looking by today's standards, I feel that this is a game that holds up in every single regard and is still one of the most rewarding strategy games ever created.

You will be starting off in the dark ages where you have next to nothing and are constantly fighting for survival. You then advance to the Castle Age and here you can build, well castles and more advanced weaponry and fortifications. The final age in the game is The Imperial Age and this is a far cry to what you were doing in the dark ages! You now can have an elite city with paladins that can kick some major butt. There is a fantastic sense of progression in the campaign and everything makes perfect sense.

It is very impressive how the Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings not only has 18 different civilizations in the game but how different they each are.

At a glance, it may look like there are only subtle differences, but the differences are quite deep. The British can expert bowmen and the Franks can do heavy damage with throwing axes for example. The way the battles work is very clever in that each unit can crush another type, but there is also a counter for each unit.

It is a delicate balancing act and really requires you to think about how you go about things on the battlefield. It is this kind of gameplay that makes this such an addictive game for me.

A huge part of what makes this such a popular game is that it is up to you how you play it. I am the kind of player that likes to steamroll my enemies before they have a chance to get too powerful. This means I have to rise very quickly and get my units up to speed as quickly as I can. Other players might like to take a more balanced approach or go for something that is more defensive. It is really up to you how you go about trying to prove your might in this game. As I write this, we are talking about a game that is the better part of 20 years old.

Even with that being said, I feel the visuals hold up fairly well. They may not be as sharp or as detailed as a modern real time strategy game, but you can still easily tell what everything is supposed to be in this game which is all you can really ask for. I could go on and on forever about what an amazing game Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings is.

The fact of the matter is that in a review like this, I can only touch the surface of what makes this such an amazing experience. The level of choice that you have is just staggering and something even many modern RTS games have not come close to offering. Rather than reading a load of stuff about this game, I demand you to just go and play it right now!

William H Gates III may well be the stepson of Satan, but by the horns of his adopted father, the boy's done all right for himself. No matter what gripes you have over Internet Explorer, DirectX or Windows, Microsoft's games have come on leaps and bounds since they released that soccer game a few years back. Significantly, in fact, since Age Of Empires, Microsoft's steady stream of entertainment applications has generally been of a very high quality. Initially, after just a few hours of dabbling with the game, indulging in a spot of one-player skirmishes or dipping a toe into one of the five single-player campaigns, I wasn't too impressed.

I actually blurted out - to my eternal shame - something along the lines that it was a bit shit. Then, as the hours rolled by, I gradually warmed to its hidden charms. I wouldn't go as far as to say that Age Of Empires II is the most addictive game on the planet, but I can certainly see myself playing it on a regular basis, at least until the next game appears in a couple of years' time -which I'm sure it will.

First impressions, then, are a bit 'been-there, done-that'. You collect resources in this case food, wood, stone and gold , then you assemble buildings, spend resources on military units and then twat your opponent into submission, be they real or not. However, it's not quite that simple. If we take the resource management side of things, it would be fair to say that Age II has no equal on PC.

Getting food isn't just about sending your peasants off to gather nuts. You can herd sheep, hunt deer, pick berries, fish and farm. Then you have to build a mill to hoard your dead meat and fruit before it starts to smell, likewise, you'll need a mining camp to stash gold and stone, a lumber camp for wood and a dock from which you can send ships to dredge the oceans.

The resource management could be a game in itself though not a very good one, admittedly. If you've played and enjoyed the original Age OfEmpires, you'll feel right at home with its sequel. You have the same resources to collect, essentially the same ages to progress through though this time they're called Dark, Feudal, Castle and Imperial , and largely the same types of units: infantry, cavalry, siege weapons and ships.

Like its predecessor, however, Age 2 is a carefully balanced blend of units, all of which have their strengths and weaknesses, and like all strategy games, Age II is the interactive equivalent of two people whipping their hands from behind their backs and one shouting 'Nyah, stone blunts scissors', before promptly being beaten about the jaws.

It all comes down to evolution, really, and Age II is as about as highly developed a game as you are likely to find. Its subtle differences from its illustrious forefather may be small in number, but they have a big impact. Where the first game was brilliant, if a little rough around the edges, the sequel has been buffed up to a glorious shine.

After a brief introductory movie, you are immediately thrown into the usual opening menu. No doubt many people, most of whom will be familiar with the first game, will delve straight in by choosing a map, take charge of one of the 13 civilisations and start building with a few chums, whether they're online or artificial. To miss the single-player campaigns, however, would be a mistake. Unless you're a complete newcomer to this type of game ie you're still trying to get your PC's foot pedal to work , I would avoid the William Wallace training campaign and plump straight for the Joan Of Arc series of missions.

Whatever campaign you choose, you will notice straight away that far from each separate mission being a cut-down version of the skirmish-type of game, where you just build a base of operations and hunt down the foe, in most cases you start off with a ready-made army prepared for battle. You'll notice, too, that each mission has its own graphics, unique buildings and many scripted elements, as well as a historic background for you to lose yourself in.

You will often march into a pitched battle between two massive armies, and although you won't be able to join in, you'll certainly want to watch.

It has to be said that some missions are very craftily written. I was stuck for a couple of hours on one where two British tribes were attacking my city and I had to destroy one of their castles. Waging a war on two fronts, as you know, is pretty tricky. How, then, to keep one enemy at bay while taking on the other? I figured it out in the end. Age II is not always about brute force -you need at least half a brain as well.

Thankfully, one half of mine is still active, if a little slow. Whether you play a full campaign, where your objectives are obvious and the means to achieve them are limited, or a deattimatch or random game where the scope is much broader, what is essentially so right about Age II is the balance of each of the units.

Laying siege to an enemy settlement isn't just about planting a line ot trebuchets or bombardiers and pounding a wall into the ground. Enemy archers, garrisoned in guard towers will make short work of them.

These include the aforementioned town hall bell, an AI that minimizes the amount of micro-management required during large-scale battles, gathering points and a "find-idle-villager" button that allows quick identification of workers who are currently non-productive. 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.

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. Multiplayer mode is my favorite part of the game. The computer opponents are smart and the artificial intelligence is better in Age of Kings , but there is no substitute for a live opponent even if that opponent is only your very computer-savvy six-year-old.

There is an advanced mode and a simple map mode. If you do not have enough information use the advanced mode, if it is too complicated go to the basic display.

The screenshots just do not do this game justice.