Age of Empires II: The Conquerors - New Features

New campaigns

The Random Map game in The Age of Kings is now called the standard game, and the interface is simplified to make it easier to choose which type of standard game to play.

The Conquerors Expansion includes three new game types.

• King of the Hill ¡V To win, control the Monument in the center of the map for the specified time period. To take control of the Monument from an enemy, kill all of the enemy units near the Monument and move one of yours nearby. The map style greatly affects this game. For example, on Coastal maps, you can defend with walls and Castles; on Island maps, you can defend only with ships; on Ghost Lake maps, you can defend only with land units.

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• Wonder Race ¡V No combat; the first player to build a Wonder wins. All players are allied and cannot change alliance or form teams. However, you can play a coopera-tive multiplayer game, where two players control the same civilization. There are no walls, Siege Workshops, or Trebuchets.

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• Defend the Wonder ¡V One player starts with a Wonder surrounded by walls and defends it from enemy players to win. All players begin in the Imperial Age with all technologies researched, large stockpiles of resources, and several villagers.

Farms can now be queued at the Mill so they are automatically replanted when all of the food has been collected from them and they expire. If there are Farms in the queue when a Farm expires, you do not receive a ¡§Farm expired¡¨ notification.

To automatically replant Farms: Click the Mill, and then click the Reseed Farm button. Click multiple times to replant several Farms.

Automatically replanting costs the same as building a new Farm, so you must have enough wood in your stockpile for each Farm you add to the queue. You can use any of your Mills to add or delete Farms from the queue. If all of your Mills are destroyed the queued Farms continue to be replanted. If you research technology that improves your Farms, queued Farms also benefit.

All foot units (infantry and archers) can garrison inside a ram; villagers, Monks, Petards, Kings, mounted units, and siege weapons cannot. Garrisoned infantry and pikemen increase the ram¡¦s speed and attack vs. buildings. Units garrisoned inside a ram are not damaged during an attack, and garrisoned archers do not attack.

Battering Rams and Capped Rams can garrison four units. Siege Rams can garrison six units. A flag appears on rams with garrisoned units. Allied players can garrison units inside each other¡¦s rams (and ungarrison them at will). Units are automatically ejected if the ram is destroyed, converted by a Monk or Missionary, or if allied players change their diplomatic stance.

When a garrisoned ram is loaded aboard a transport ship, the ram and each garrisoned unit count toward the ship¡¦s capacity. For example, if three units are garrisoned inside a ram, then four units are loaded onto the transport ship.

Villagers are now smarter so resource gathering and wall building are easier.

• Villagers automatically begin gathering resources that are nearby after building a Mill, Mining Camp, Lumber Camp, or Town Center.
• If a villager is carrying resources when you order it to construct a building, the resources are deposited in your stockpile before the villager gathers a new resource. For example, if a villager is carrying 8 food from hunting and you assign it to build a Lumber Camp, the food is added to your stockpile before the villager begins chopping wood.
• When you send a group of villagers to a single Farm, the villagers automatically spread themselves among any untended Farms nearby.
• When two or more villagers are assigned to build a wall, they space themselves out so the wall is built more quickly and efficiently. Also walls are now built starting from the outside and working toward the middle so they end properly at the edge of water and forests.

You can buy, sell, and tribute the resources in your stockpile in lots of 500 or tribute your entire stockpile of a resource.

To buy, sell, or tribute lots of 500 Press the SHIFT key, and then click the button of the resource to buy, sell, or tribute. To tribute your entire stockpile of a resource Press the CTRL key, and then click the button of the resource to tribute.

Improved chatting Chat text is shown in each player¡¦s color and there are two new ways to send messages to specific players. As in The Age of Kings, you can begin a message with a semicolon (;) to chat only with your allies. Now you can use an exclamation mark (!) to send a message only to your enemies or an asterisk (*) to send a message to everyone.

The friend or foe option uses a simpler color scheme to indicate which players are your allies and which are your enemies. When you set the friend or foe option, colors are not unique for each player. Instead, enemies are red, allies are yellow, neutral players are gray, and your units are blue. The colors are determined by your diplomatic stance toward each player (not theirs toward you).

If you are playing a standard game (not a campaign scenario), you can use the Commands button in the chat interface to send commands to allied computer players.

The computer player recognizes the following commands:

• 3: Food, please ¡V Computer player tributes 100 food to you.
• 4: Wood, please ¡V Computer player tributes 100 wood to you.
• 5: Gold, please ¡V Computer player tributes 100 gold to you.
• 6: Stone, please ¡V Computer player tributes 100 stone to you.
• 31: Attack an enemy now! ¡V Computer player uses any available units to attack the most dangerous enemy. If you have sent a ¡§Wait for my signal to attack¡¨ command, the computer will not attack until it receives this command.
• 32: Cease creating extra villagers ¡V Computer player focuses on building its military.
• 33: Create extra villagers ¡V Computer player focuses on building its economy.
• 34: Build a navy ¡V Computer player focuses on building combat ships.
• 35: Stop building a navy ¡V Computer player stops building combat ships.
• 36: Wait for my signal to attack ¡V Prevents computer player from attacking until you send the ¡§Attack an enemy now!¡¨ message. The computer player automatically attacks unless you send this command.
• 37: Build a Wonder ¡V Computer player hoards resources and attempts to build a Wonder when its stockpile is large enough.
• 38: Give me your extra resources ¡V Computer player sends you any resources it can spare.
• 42: What age are you in? ¡V Computer player tells you the age it has reached.

Recorded games now save chat messages, and you can insert chapter markers so you can easily find important battles when you play back the recording.

It is now possible to create a screenshot of the entire game map exactly as it appears on the screen, including fog of war. You can save screenshots at any time during a single player game, but you must wait until after a multiplayer game has ended to save screenshots from it. In order to create a screenshot while using the map editor, you must either play or test the scenario.

To create a screenshot of a full-size map Press CTRL+F12, and then click the button to select the reduction ratio (1:3 is the largest image; 1:8 is the smallest). The map image is saved in the Screenshots folder where you installed the game.