- "The expected
release date is Fall 2000.
- There will be 5 new
civs (18 total AoE2 Civs)
- Each NEW civ
will get a NEW unique unit.
- There are
several new non-unique units in the X-Pack, and all 'old'
civs get at least one new non-unique unit. Some units
include but not limited to:
- Halberdiers
- Hussars
- Turtle Boats
- Petards - carries a bomb and blows up next to unit
specified to attack, like demo ship but on land.
- At least one new
civ will be strong with Monks.
- There is a chance
of having new Naval Units in the Game.
- There are no new
seige weapons, instead seige improvements were made,
including garrisoned rams.
- New
Game Types include; 'King of the Hill' and 'Defend
your Wonder', played either as a free-for-all or a team
game.
- 4
new campaigns based on historical heroes.
- Over 12 new
maps, including "Mongolia" and
"Oasis", and geographic maps of the world (Great
Britain, Japan, Byzantium), but no new map SIZES.
- One new
unique tech for each civ (at least one civ will get
2).
- There will be
other new technologies, available for
ALL the civs to research.
- There will be new music added to the existing
collection.
- Farm queues will be added, a
feature found at the mill.
- Smarter Villagers will waste less
time/resources.
- Scenario Editor triggers can
change unit attributes(!)
- Scenario Editor pop limit
still @ 75. In fact, all pop limits in AoE2 are kept the
same.
- The Market will let you sell large volumes of
resources quickly.
- Either we will see a whole new architectural style, or
else something 'equally significant'.
- There will be new heroes and special characters in the
scenario editor.
- There are NO new buildings in the AOE2 Xpack.
- No changes to what 'old' civ gets what Unique Unit.
New
Civs
At least some of the civilizations are located in a new
region, never before explored in an Age product. XPAC civs
remain in the medieval period extending C.E. 500-1500. As
other 'possibilities' discussed that were discussed, but not
confirmed, "the Polish UU would have to be the Winged
Hussar. If I was going to hand out a two-handed Axemen to a
civ, it would be to either the Saxons or the Dacians."
Civ team bonuses have not been changed.
The New civs will be:
- The Huns
UU: Tarkan
UT:
- The Koreans
UU: Turtle Boat and War Wagon
UT:
- The Mayans
UU: Plumed Archer
UT:
- The Aztecs
UU: Jaguar Man
UT:
- The Spanish
UU: Conquistador (mounted musketeer)
and Missionary (fast-mounted monk)
UT:
New
Campaigns
One of the campaigns is "The Conquerors", and
consists of unrelated, but famous, historical battles &
campaigns (such as Hastings & Manzikert). Other
possible
campaigns include; El Cid if the Spanish are added; Babur
the Tiger would be a great choice for a Moghul campaign;
Vlad the Impaler for a Romanian campaign; and Alexander
Nevsky for a Slavic campaign (possible, as in not
confirmed).
New campaigns include but may not be limited to:
- El Cid
- Atilla the Hun
- Montezuma
- Eric the Red
New
Multiplayer Game Types
There will be a game type where the victory condition will
be to hold a pre-built wonder in the center for a certain
length of time. There will be a new victory condition that
creates a King of the Hill type of game, played either as a
free-for-all or a team game.
New
Map Types
Many of the new map types have extremely different
configurations with respect to fundamental starting
resources. These include a map type called
"Oasis", where the center is filled with trees.
Its kind of like a Mediterranean or Baltic map, except with
trees in the middle instead of water. While there are
straggler trees as well, almost all the wood supply is in
the nigh-inexhaustible central grove. This is a good map for
raiding, and is not as easy to wall off as a
"true" Mediterranean. It's not like Gold Rush,
it's more like an inverse Mediterranean in which you can't
use the central zone as a highway. It is a wonderful map if
you like raiding.
There will be a map type called "Mongolia",
with no water, heavy elevation changes, and many cliffs. It
is a lot like Arabia, except you can wall off. The Mongolia
map is NOT a Real World map. Real world geographical maps
include Great Britain, Japan, and Byzantium. These have
their resources randomized (so that you won't know where the
gold or woods are), but the land & water & elevation
layouts are fixed. The real world maps chosen were generally
selected because they made an interesting playfield, NOT
because lots of forum members happened to live there. All of
the new map types are accessible via a Random Map selection,
though none of the Real World maps are accessible in this
manner.
New
Technologies
Each Civ in the game, even the original ones, will have a
unique research item. At least one civ gets two unique
research items. The Frankish unique research item is
"Bearded Axes", giving their throwing axemen more
range. These are designed to work well with that civ's other
bonuses & units. The new techs are generally military
benefits, cost quite a bit of money, and are not available
during the early part of the game.
We could have done something lame like have every civ's
unique research doubles the hit points of their unique unit.
Instead we spent months carefully crafting the researches so
each perfectly fits its civ's personaltiy and style.
Personally, I'm quite proud of the unique researches. They
fall into three major classes vis-a-vis their civ's unique
units. Some of them (like the Frankish one) specifically
benefit their UU. Some of them give a benefit that, while it
affects the UU, affects other units as well. The most common
type of unique research provides a benefit that does NOT
directly affect the UU.
They are pretty expensive. The price varies from civ to
civ, of course. Most are not as expensive as the most costly
unit line upgrades, such as Heavy Horse Archer, or Elite War
Elephant, but they are certainly not a gimme, and you have
to save up for them and even think twice about them.
New
Scenario Editor Features
Scenario Editor will allow triggers to change unit
attributes, though pop limit still @ 75. We will take the
opportunity to fix some of the editor bugs as well as add a
few new toys. There will be new heroes and special
characters in the scenario editor.
Farm
Queues
The Farm Queues are done in an intelligent manner which does
not force you to "search" through your farms to
find out which ones are queued up. We have playtested this a
LOT, with some very skilled players, and it's pretty obvious
that it does not save the newbie from the skilled player. It
just lets the skilled player spend more time on other
options, primarily military, and if anything increases his
advantage. Farm queues turn out to make basically no
difference in Dark & Feudal, not much in Castle, but are
a great benefit in Imperial, when we want to spend our time
fighting, not managing farms. You can't destroy your
opponent's farm queues, but you can make it impossible for
him/her to access it. If you lose all your mills, you cannot
access your farm queue until you have rebuilt a mill.
Previously-queued farms are still used to replace expired
farms. Existing civ bonuses will not change, with one tiny
exception (even there it doesn't actually change, just gets
an additional boost).
Smart
Villagers
After your villagers construct a new drop site, they then
automatically deposit any resources they were carrying and
go to work on the appropriate new resource. It also means
that if you target a bunch of untasked villagers on a group
of idle farms, they'll space themselves out among the farms.
Third, it means that when you target two villagers to
construct a wall segment, one goes to each end of the wall
and they work inward towards the middle (if you target more
than 2 villagers, they space themselves out along the span
of wall).
Smart Villagers working a mill will go for the stationary
food source which is closest, fish food or farms. They will
not auto-hunt deer or boar. If you construct a town center,
they will task on the closest stationary resource, with
priorities for gold first, then stone, then wood, then food.
If you construct a mining camp equidistant between gold
& stone, they go for the gold. Boar-hunting villagers
who build a lumber-camp will deposit their meat when the
lumber-camp completes, then head for the nearest tree.
We had some debate about the value of this and how much
it would hamper expert-player micromanagement, but after
playing with the Smart Villagers, no one was able to go back
to the old system. As with farm queues, it turns out that
experts still kick butt on newbies. And there are still
plenty of little optimizations that you can do with your
villagers. Don't worry on that account.
A villager ordered to stop harvesting and start building
a drop site will automatically deposit their load before
starting construction. In addition, you must complete the
drop site to trigger the auto-deposit. So there's not really
any way to micro-manage this particular bonus. Just enjoy it
as it was intended
Battering
Rams
You can now start putting men inside your battering rams and
load them up for battle and they'll protect the men as they
approach a castle or tower. The battering ram will speed up
with more men inside pushing it (+ 0.1 tile per second per
footman), and they'll come out and start fighting if
something attacks it. Rams only carry a handful of troops,
and cost a bundle, so they're really not that effective as
troop transports. Foot UUs can garrison inside rams. Usually
I put longswords or better into my rams. That way if the ram
is destroyed, the champs come forth and deliver some major
pain to the ram-killers. Pikemen work well, too, though. The
siege ram can hold a larger garrison than the others .
It is our view that rams are currently under-used. Adding
the garrison power has two desirable effects, to our way of
thinking. First, it gives players an alternative to the
trebuchet and second, it makes rams more valuable without
jacking up the cost. To get good value from garrisoned rams,
you really do need to upgrade your rams though. Basic
battering rams, even garrisoned, really don't cut it.
Villagers cannot garrison in rams for two reasons; to keep
forward-building from getting any easier and to simplify the
interface. When you click a villager on a ram, it's always
to repair it, you see. Garrisoned rams will likely be able
to load up allied units just as with transports. If a ram
that is garrisoned is loaded on a transport ship, the ram
and all garrisoned units count as passengers. Units do not
heal while garrisoned inside rams.
Technical
Changes
A retail copy of Age of Empires II will be required to play
The Conquerors. If you are using The Conquerors, you will
not be able to play vs. anyone who does not also have The
Conquerors installed on their hard drive. However, The
Conquerors leaves your old AoK startup available so you can
choose to play the “old way” if you like with your less
up-to-date buddies. No changes to Technical system
requirements are planned. It is not possible to put a rewind
feature on recorded games, but other features have been
added to the recorded game options.
The AoE2 XPack will include a patch/fix that will be
released seperately for all AoE2 players. It will be
released BEFORE the AoE2 XPack is released. We have fixed
Town Centers by making them almost completely ineffective
offensively, but still worthwhile defensively, at least vs.
Feudal & Dark opponents. One reason for the patch's
delay WAS the X-Pack, but the X-Pack also helped us
determine what the patch needs. In fact, the X-Pack has made
doing the upcoming AoE2 patch far easier, since the patch is
in essence a subset of the X-Pack. Yes, the patch will be
also available to fix certain AoK bugs without needing to
buy the X-Pack. The patch will not fix every little
imbalance that people have noticed in AoK, as many of these
have been fixed by new technologies, units, etc.,
particularly the new unique researches. However, the more
notorious problems and outright bugs will be addressed.
Here's what you get in the AoE2 : Conquerors Expansion Pack
(more or less in the final version)
