Age of Empires II: The Conquerors

Age of Empires II: The Conquerors (sometimes abbreviated to AoC) is the expansion pack to the 2000 real-time strategy game Age of Empires II. The Conquerors is the fourth instalment of the Age of Empires series by Microsoft Game Studios and Ensemble Studios. It features five new civilizations (the Aztecs, Mayans, Spanish, Huns, and Koreans), four new campaigns, eleven new units, twenty-six new technologies, new gameplay modes, new maps and different minor tweaks to the gameplay.

New Additions

 * Civilizations: Aztecs, Mayans, Spanish, Huns, and Koreans.
 * Campaigns: Montezuma, Attilla the Hun, El Cid and several miscellaneous one-map campaigns (Agincourt or Hastings, for example).
 * Game Types: King of the Hill (Wonder), Wonder Race and Defend the Wonder.
 * Tile Sets: New Jungle & Winter tile sets.
 * AI Upgrades: Villagers and siege weapons are smarter.
 * New Units: Eagle warriors, Jaguar warriors, Conquistadors, Halberdiers, Missionaries, War Wagons, Turtle ships, Tarkans, Hussars, Petards and Plumed Archers.
 * New Technologies: There are twenty-six additional technologies.
 * Misc. Changes: Many smaller upgrades including: new multiplayer maps, the ability to have farms automatically replant, more efficient game recording, new technologies, and garrisoning in battering rams.

Gameplay
The gameplay in Age of Empires II: The Conquerors remains largely unchanged from Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

There are four resources necessary to wage a successful war: Wood, Gold, Stone and Food. Wood is used for most buildings and some soldiers, such as archers. It is gathered by having your villagers cut down trees. They can drop off the wood at a lumber camp, or your town centre. Gold is used for payment. Usually this is used when creating military units. Otherwise, it can be used to pay for researching certain technologies, or constructing certain buildings. It is harvested from mines established on deposits of gold. Stone is the least important, but still useful, resource. It's used for building castles and stone walls. It can be mined from the few stone deposits found on the map. Finally, there's food, the most important resource to any civilization. Food is primarily used to create villagers and soldiers. It is used up the most and also easiest to harvest. Villagers can create farms, harvest from wild berry bushes, or hunt packs of boar and/or deer. If any of these resources become scarce, the player can simply create a marketplace and sell resources to buy what is needed.

Combat is usually close ranged. Close-range units are the various types of infantry and cavalry. Infantry refers to fighters on foot. They are cheaper but weaker than cavalry. Cavalry refers to units riding on horseback. There are also ranged units, such as the crossbowmen and spear-throwing skirmishers. These units are weak to melee attacks and are best served as defensive units, or backing up a group of melee units.

For the destruction of buildings, there are siege weapons. These are destructive catapults and battering ram type weapons. The strongest siege weapon is the trebuchet, a slow loading, slow moving, giant catapult. Archers arrows are weak against all siege weapons.

There are different game types available to the player outside of the campaigns. The "Standard Game" mode allows you to set the map, the number of players, the AI difficulty and more. Objectives are changed depending on the game selected: You could make it so that whoever destroys each and every unit & building of the enemy wins, whoever reaches a certain score wins, whoever kills the enemies king wins, or you could even have a non-combat game where whoever builds a Wonder wins. These are only some of the game modes and options open to you before you start a game.

Campaign
The Conquerors Expansion adds four additional single player campaigns. These are based on Attila the Hun's rise to power, Montezuma's defense against Hernán Cortés and the adventures of El Cid. The fourth campaign, "Battles of the Conquerors," is actually a group of unrelated single scenarios, each based on a significant historical battle. These include the Battle of Agincourt, the saga of Erik the Red, and the Battle of Hastings, among others. Possibly by coincidence, all three campaigns (excluding "Battles of the Conquerors") deal with the history of Spain. The Visigoths (who later became the Spaniards) play an important role in the Attila the Hun campaign, El Cid goes over the Christian reconquests against the Moors, and Montezuma is about the Spanish conquest. In addition, the "Lepanto" scenario from "Battles of the Conquerors" is about a Spanish victory against the Ottoman Turks.

New Factions
The Mayans appear in The Conquerors Expansion and their unique unit is the Plumed Archer, which are stronger, faster and have better pierce armor but less attack.

Online play
In June 2006, MSN Gaming Zone was shut down. The most popular places to play 'Age of Empires II: The Conquerors'' online after this shutdown were Gamespy and GamePark.

Patches
1.0c was the final official patch by Ensemble Studios; it fixed many bugs and balanced units. Before 1.0b bombard towers were able to defeat armies of rams easily; after 1.0b and 1.0c, cavalry archers and bombard towers were balanced to be less powerful. The graphics of the armored Korean "turtle ship" were modified as well.