Walkthrough V: Age of Empires II

As is the case with most resource-management based titles, the real-time Age of Empires II offers a complex array of choice-driven gameplay. First, the player chooses from different civilizations to play as, each with their own unique strengths and military units (ex. gunpowder for the Spanish, camel cavalry for the Saracens, superior ships for the Vikings, and slow but powerful elephants for the Persians). The game also allows you to customize its settings, difficulty level, and maps.

The basic plot/setup for the game is similar to all Age of Empires and Age of Mythology titles- the player must build their civilization as they progress through the ages, and each new age reached allows you to research more upgrades, build new buildings, and produce and equip new units with which to explore and conquer the other nations on the map. The concept is more casual and less time consuming than Medieval Total War, for example, and most games can be finished within an hour or two.

Some features make the semi-large scale of the game easier to manage, starting with the aerial isometric view to give a clear look at the sprawling map, while giving enough visual information as to what the player's units and buildings are doing. Features like "idle villager" and the outlines showing when units are hidden behind trees or a building allow the player to easily locate all of the people they control. The interface itself is a compact, graphically themed frame that holds allthe necessary resource supply numbers (Ex. food, wood, and gold), and health statuses and military formation options for a player's selected units. Historical facts are incorporated into the gameplay to further enrich the action.

More goal content comes into play in the form of winnable achievements and different goals to try and meet (time, conquest, wealth, trade, capturing of relics, and the building of expensive Wonders). The player can also choose to follow specific capaigns that follow the rough backstories of some of the included characters.