#119: Age of Empires II: The Conquerors (2000, PC)

Age of Empires (II and III) are really the only RTSs I actually really like. I respect the hell out of StarCraft, of course, but given the choice to actually play something for fun, I'd take either of the former. It probably has to do somewhat with the way I play RTSs - I'm simply not at all good at doing things quickly in these. This means I'm not very good at defending rushes, much less initiate them myself, so I like to basically turtle along until I can have fun overwhelming the opponent in the endgame (I'm also not exactly very good at that either, so I'm usually playing against an somewhat easy computer opponent, rather than some online opponent). Age of Empires luckily happens to lend itself very, very well to my style, and as a bonus it sports a medieval theme (since I'm something of a fan). It's really right up my alley.

Strange thing about this expansion pack - I can barely recall what Age of Empires II is like without it. Now this has happened to me with other expanded titles - but usually in cases where I got the expansion and the original in the same package (like Roller Coaster Tycoon Gold, or Age of Empires Gold - the first Age of Empires, that is) - not a case where there was a 9 month gulf between my having the original and the expansion during which I was actually playing the hell out of it.

I remember The Conquerors so fondly in large part because the improvements it offers are so complete and helpful, that it makes going back to the original something of a pain. Little details like allowing for farms to be queued so that they can be automatically replanted upon their exhaustion - removing the need to go back late in a match to rebuild them - turn out to be a tremendous help. Other improvements are similarly subtle - expansions to the unit and technology lists enhances gameplay, that villagers tasked to build a lumber mill will, on finishing, automatically go about collecting lumber rather than await a new command removes a lot of the annoying micromanagement. New map types (and some very cool real-world maps - like the English Islands) make for more varied general gameplay, and there is an entirely new (and excellent) soundtrack.



The new civilizations, I should note, never did much for me - I had been well settled into my groove of using either the Byzantines or the Teutons for everything, and some Eagle Warriors or Friars or Turtle Ships weren't going to sway me there (funny since, new civilizations would seem to be the main draw of a RTS expansion, but for me the above improvements were the draw).

Age of Empires II: The Conquerors
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Ensemble Games
Released: 8/24/2000
Obtained: 9/2/2000

9.5/10