The version of d3d8to9 available in Unofficial Patch 1.5 has been modified by Dr.MonaLisa to add additional fixes prepared for Empire Earth II and Empire Earth II the Art of Supremacy (for example a fix for missing fire/explosion effects) and is configurable by the 'UP1.5 Settings'.
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. WW: April 9, 2013Mode(s),Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a developed by and published. Released in 1999 for and, it is the second game in the series. An expansion, was released in 2000.The Age of Kings is set in the and contains thirteen playable civilizations. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies. There are five historically based campaigns, which constrict the player to specialized and story-backed conditions. There are three additional game modes, and is supported.
Despite using the same and similar to its predecessor, development of The Age of Kings took a year longer than expected, forcing Ensemble Studios to release in 1998 instead. The design team focused on resolving significant issues in Age of Empires, but noted on release that some problems remained.Reception of The Age of Kings was highly positive. The significant number of new features was praised, as were the gameplay improvements. The Age of Kings received 'universal acclaim', according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. Three months after its release, two million copies of The Age of Kings had been shipped, and it topped sales charts in seven countries. The game won multiple awards and is today considered a classic of its type, having had a significant impact on future games in its genre.
The original Age of Empires II and the expansion pack were later released as The Gold Edition. Age of Empires II is now considered.In April 2013, was released on the platform for. The HD Edition includes the original game and the expansion The Conquerors, as well as updated graphics for high-resolution displays., a definitive remaster, was released in November 2019.
Contents.Gameplay Age of Empires II is a that focuses on building towns, gathering resources, and creating armies to defeat opponents. Players conquer rival towns and empires as they advance one of 13 civilizations through four 'Ages': the, the, the Castle Age (being the ), and the Imperial Age, reminiscent of the —a 1000-year timeframe.
Advancing to a new Age unlocks new units, structures, and technologies, but players must first build certain buildings from their current age and then pay a sum of resources (typically food and gold).: 31Civilian units, called 'villagers', are used to gather resources; they are either male or female—gender does not affect their abilities. Resources can be used to train units, construct buildings, and research technologies, among other things; for example, players can research better armour for units.
The game offers four types of resources: food, wood, gold, and stone. Food is obtained by hunting animals, gathering berries, harvesting livestock, farming, and shore fishing and fishing from boats. Wood is gathered by chopping down trees. Gold is obtained from either gold mines, trade or collecting relics in a, and stone is collected from stone mines. Villagers require checkpoints, typically depository buildings (town center, mining camp, and ), where they can store gathered resources.Each civilization can purchase upgrades that increase the rate of gathering these resources. Players can construct a for trade; players can trade wood, stone, and food for gold, and use gold to buy other resources. Market prices fluctuate with every transaction.
Furthermore, markets and docks can also generate gold by using trading carts or cogs which are used to visit foreign markets and ports; once they return to the player's market/dock, gold is added to the stockpile. The amount of gold a trade unit earns on each trip is related to the distance it had to travel to a foreign market; more gold is earned on longer trips. It is possible to trade with enemies' markets or docks, but the player's trading units may be attacked or destroyed by enemy units in the process. Players do not need to keep trading manually, as once they select the port or market the trading units infinitely continue to trade.There are five campaigns in The Age of Kings, containing historically based scenarios such as 's invasion of, 's, or 's defence of the. In the and campaigns, the player can control a unit based on its namesake; in others, players take orders from guiding spirits representative of the army's commander.Additional game modes are available to the player in The Age of Kings.
One mode, generates a map from one of several randomly chosen map generating scripts, with players starting in the Dark Age with a Town Center, three villagers (or more depending on civilization), and a scout unit. The game can be won through military conquest, by constructing a special building known as a Wonder and keeping it standing for a certain amount of time, or by obtaining control of all relics on the map for a set amount of time.
Mode allows players to begin with large amounts of resources, creating a focus on military dominance, while in the mode each player is given a king unit, winning by killing all of the other monarchs.Units and civilizations. The civilization in the. The Town Center is visible and has several farms surrounding it; villagers of both sexes work there and elsewhere to gather resources. A scout on horseback is also at the ready. Military buildings such as the, archery range, and are visible, as well as economic buildings—the market, and mill. The right-bottom corner of the screenshot shows the player's walls and a gate.Every player has a limit to the number of units they can create—a population limit—but may not immediately use the entire potential population.
The population capacity, which can be capped at anywhere between 25 and 200 in intervals of 25, is based on the number of houses, Castles, or Town Centers—the main building in a player's town—which have been built. Main article:In 2012, began working on a high-definition of Age of Empires II, an effort spearheaded by Matt Pritchard, an original Ensemble lead programmer. On March 7, 2013, its release was announced, branded as Age of Empires II: HD Edition. It has improved graphics, widescreen support and new multiplayer options through.
It was released on April 9, 2013, and there was a pre-order available on April 5. There were three official expansion packs released for HD Edition:, The African Kingdoms and Rise of the Rajas. Definitive Edition. From the original on March 7, 2017.
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Contents.Gameplay Empire Earth II has several new gameplay features from the original gameplay of, such as the Picture-in-Picture window, a small window within the game interface which allows the player to control activities such as unit and building construction. The Citizen Manager can be configured to tell a citizen what to do if they have no set task, and the Diplomacy System allows the player to make tributes and manage alliances and wars with other players. The War Planner is another new addition, which is a map of the game that the player can display and use to coordinate attacks with allies. The crown system grants strategic bonuses to players who are first to master an epoch's military, economic, or imperial paths at the cost of losing a faster age progression.
Weather, another new feature, changes over time on the map and affects the look of the map and performance of units and, in the case of airplanes in thunderstorms, hit points.Besides campaigns and special scenarios, there is also a skirmish mode where the player can play against a computer player. The player can also play against other human players, however, the common EULA clause that each player needs his own copy of the game is actually enforced, even for LAN games. Unlike campaigns or scenarios, the winning conditions never change. There are eight different game modes in skirmish mode, which can also be played in.There are 15 epochs in the game, each representing a part of history. As the player advances through the epochs, new and improved units and structures become available.
Some of the epochs in Empire Earth II are identical to their counterparts in the original Empire Earth—one exception is that Empire Earth II does not allow players to expand their empires into space. The epochs are the, and Synthetic Age.Before buildings and units can be made or created, resources must be gathered. There are two kinds of resources: the main resources and special resources.
The main resources are available in all epochs and they are,. To collect resources, a citizen (or a band of citizens) is selected, and are directed to a resource. The citizens thus begin harvesting it.The special resources are available in only some epochs. These special resources are —available until epoch 6, —first available in epoch 4 and is no longer used after epoch 9, —first available in epoch 7 and is used until epoch 12, —first available in epoch 10, and —first available epoch 13.Empire Earth II has technologies to improve each player's civilization. Technologies are divided into three groups. The first is Military, which provides benefits mostly to military units. The next is Economic technologies, which increases resource gathering rate, decreases cost and building time for units and buildings and decreases tribute tax amount.
The final group is Imperial, which provides benefits mostly to special units and increases the health of units and buildings.There are four technologies of each group for each epoch. Technologies can be researched by spending tech points. To get tech points, an appropriate number of citizens must be garrisoned in a university and/or an appropriate number of priests must be garrisoned in a temple. Technologies are researched through the main interface (no longer through a building) by clicking the Technology Tree button. When the correct amount of tech points are available, the tech tree button will light up and new technology to research can be chosen. However, when research is no longer used (at the highest epoch specified before starting a game), the garrisoned units will become idle.In Empire Earth II, each civilization belongs to a particular world region, each having its own regional powers. These can be activated on the game interface by clicking on a crown in the top right corner.
All of the regional powers are timed; once the time is up to use it, it takes a long time for the regional powers to be recharged to use again. Each regional power can only be used in a respective group of epochs. For example, the regional power of Overtime can only be used by a player using a Far Eastern civilization in epochs 11-15.Like many games before it in the same genre, Empire Earth II has civilizations for players to lead to greatness.
Each civilization has a unique power, giving it an advantage in a particular field. Each civilization also has a unique unit, which is a more powerful version of a given unit type. The Greek, for instance, is a more effective heavy infantry than the other tribes' counterparts. The western civilizations are the, and the. The Middle Eastern civilizations are the, and the. The Far Eastern civilizations are,.
Finally, the Meso-American civilizations are the, and the.Campaigns Empire Earth II contains three single-player campaigns, a collection of scenarios called 'turning points' and a campaign. The tutorial campaign features the, featuring four scenarios to allow players to learn the gameplay. The first scenario is about the founding of the city of, followed by a scenario about the, which ends with the Aztecs driving out and his. These scenarios are followed by ones about an Aztec alliance with the United States and a war with the Incas, occurring before.Korean campaign The Korean campaign is about early Korean history, from 2333 BC to 676 AD, divided into eight scenarios. The first two scenarios are about the founding of the state of and its first contacts with other Korean states and China, followed by scenarios about Korea's first wars with the Chinese and other Korean states.
The next scenarios follow the Korean civil war and the state of 's decision to ally with China, and its eventual conquest over the other Korean states. The last scenario for this campaign is the final war with China.German campaign The German Campaign deals with the years between 1220 and 1871 in central Europe.
The first four scenarios are about the struggles of the and the ' eventual downfall. The next two scenarios are about the rise of and the. The next scenario is about the with.
The final scenario is about the war with, and and the under.American campaign The American Campaign is part-fact and part-fiction, set between 1898 and 2070. The first scenario is about the in, followed by one about the in. The scenarios are about, featuring the and a fictionalized version of the. These are followed by spy missions against the. The next scenarios are fictionalized, about an attempted coup led by a disillusioned General Charles Blackworth against the US government; the player is charged with stopping this coup, eventually engaging Blackworth and his followers in the. When the player wins the last scenario in this campaign, there is a short film about mankind and the.
When that film ends, the credits for the game are shown.Special scenarios There are four special scenarios in Empire Earth II called turning points. These scenarios can be played from either side of a battle or war which changed the course of history. The scenario takes place during the invasion, where the player can play as the Allies to repeat the success of, or play as the Germans to stop the Allied invasion force from breaching the.
The recreates the period after the end of the, where the player can play as the or the, either winning historically as the Wei or changing history as the Wu.Development and release Empire Earth II was by as a sequel to the 2001 game and by on April 26, 2005.An, which was released by Mad Doc Software called, was released on February 14, 2006.End of support The by were taken offline on October 10, 2012.After the the game's community tried to take over the support and produced which are still updated. Among other things, the unofficial patch supports all possible screen resolutions, fixes maximization problems on Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10 and enabled support to fix problems with only integrated graphics card being detected on Nvidia Optimus laptop under Windows 10. On 16 October 2015, Dr.MonaLisa (the creator of Unofficial Patches) released Unofficial Version 1.5.5 which brings back the old Multiplayer Lobby, which is now hosted.Reception. Review scores PublicationScore8.9 out of 105 out of 58.0 of 10Empire Earth II was generally well received scoring 8.9 out of 10 by, and 8.0. Shortly after the game's release, it was generally complimented for good gameplay and the options players had to customize the game.' Criticisms of the game included high system requirements, issues with unit pathfinding, modest graphics, a poor unit counter system, a clunky, complicated, almost non-existent mission editor, and the increased complexity caused by the new game features.' Others included poor in-game music and few terrain types.Empire Earth II was a finalist for 's 'Best Real-Time Strategy Game 2005' award, which ultimately went to.
References.
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