The multiplayer portion of The Conquerors is where
the expansion pack shines. AOK was already a terrific multiplayer game,
with quick and easy connectivity options, an excellent interface, and very deep,
chess like strategy. Players quickly learned how to take advantage of certain flaws
in the gameplay, however, and it wasn't too long before most multiplayer games
of AOK followed the same basic pattern. Players became forced to play a
certain way in order be competitive. Town Centers became an offensive
building, due to their extreme range and power, and certain units and civs fell
by the wayside. The Conquerors addresses these issues, tweaking those civs
and units that needed it with the new techs, or making the powerful units cost a
bit more. Town Centers, for example, now cost 100 stone - which isn't
much, but does make the player think twice about building them all over the
map. As a result, multiplayer battles in The Conquerors are often epic
battles where any number of strategies can be successful. One interesting
feature is the ability to play back recorded games - it's almost as fun to
download a recorded game between two or three masters and watch them go at it as
it is to play yourself!
 |
 |
 |
The
Mongol raiders find an innocent looking town center to plunder... |
...but
find a nasty Hun surprise waiting for them. |
The
Mongols assaulting the final Hun castle. Victory! |
The graphics in The Conquerors, and in AOK for that matter, are some
of the best 2D graphics I've ever seen. Units and buildings are large
enough to make out fantastic detail, even at the highest supported resolution of
1024 x 1280. Maps are colorful and vibrant, with constant background
animation and amazing attention to detail. Units are animated flawlessly,
and also are crisp and detailed. It's easy, at the highest resolution, to
tell the difference between two infantry units of different types, which is not
something that all games can boast. The graphical additions The Conquerors
bring to the game are simply outstanding. It's hard not to gawk at the
beautiful, historically accurate buildings of the new Central American races,
and the jungle and winter tilesets are equally fantastic. It's tough to
imagine 2D graphics getting better than these.
Sounds are equally well done, if not quite as jaw dropping. Civs
from different parts of the world all acknowledge you in their native tongues,
and the sounds of turkeys gobbling, jaguars snarling, and snow crunching
underfoot all make the game come alive. Of course, often you're far too
busy fending off the enemy to appreciate such minutiae, but in the first few
moments of a game the sounds of the forest or jungle really helps to drag you
into the game world.
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