Age Of Empires: The Age Of Kings - Strategy Guide (Page 02)

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The Mangudai exemplify the Mongol's readiness in every situation, and are
incredibly mobile and have few weaknesses. They initially are quite weak, but
once they have a few upgrades (easy for the Mongols) they become a force to
reckoned with. They require few meatshields thanks to their first strike
ability, and can easily flank and harrass enemy lines. Plus, Mangudai will
likely be the first civ unique unit on the map thanks to their research 
abilities.

Ghengis Khan is, like his whole race, an oddball. He's one of two heroes with
10 movement, and he's the only one that can fire from a range. He is however
rather fragile, and has no healing abilities to speak of; this is partially
made up through his first strike abilities fortunately, making him a dreaded
sight on the field of battle. As hero powers go, his are quite good, but
definately narrow in application. Patron of the Arts is an incredibly useful
ability (especially in the early game) but it hurts his scouting and
harrassment potential through making him camp on top of a TC; its use really
depends on what kind of playstyle you adopt. Overwhelming Seige is quite nice,
and a great help when pushing for an early win or when seige units are
unavailable. Nomadic Travel is the perfect complement to a retreat or advance,
though it will leave Ghengis behind or vulnerable. Mongol Terror is nice, but
nothing special. As you can see, his powers are a mixed bag of situational
abilities, but his range, mobility and harrassment capabilites cannot be
overlooked. He's not a one dimensional hero however, and can help exemplify
teching strategies where every last bit of resources count. As a whole, I see
the Mongols as attempting to stay one step ahead of the opponent, thanks to a
naturally strong early game and easier access to technologies.

--------------------
Saracens
--------------------
A race I haven't had much playtime as, but nevertheless I will relay my
opinions on them. They seem to have a large focus on the acquisition of
resources, most noteworthy gold. This gives them access to a large variety of
expensive gold-heavy units such as monks, making them a race either about
numbers or quality. They have cheaper Markets making them more likely to mix in
Mercenaries and the like in their armies, making them rather unpredictable to
boot. This isn't even taking into account the fact that Markets lower the trade
rate, allowing them to their gold into vital food if a deficit ever comes up.
Cheaper stables, light cavalry and seige units don't hurt either, and make them
apt at pushing into enemy terrirtory with their economic superiority. This does
come at a price however, and more expensive higher tier infantry and cavalry
units do hurt a bit. Nevertheless a solid economy is the name of the game for
Saracens.

Mamelukes are a unit I particularily haven't had a whole lot of time with, but
they certainly are powerful and can take on enemy Cavalry with ease; this helps
make up for the late game cavalry deficit that most Saracen players will
encounter. Desert charge is rather useful when it comes up, but it isn't a deal
breaker for the already mobile and powerful unit.

Saladin himself is a great hero with excellent powers. His high movement,
attack and defensive capabilities make him an excellent anchor for offensive or
defensive formations. His first power, Benefactor, certainly has huge
implications for the Saracen player and gives them an undeniable early game
advantage for expanding and holding resources in the early game. Directly
adding 100 gold to the treasury every turn is more powerful than one would
initially think, as it allows for easier grabbing of resources which has
reprecussions throughout an entire game. This definately is worth keeping him
back for most the early game. Rain of Arrows and Aura are defensive powers, and
helps the economically inclined Saracens from losing important resources
through holding the enemy at bay. Hit and Run is quite useful, allowing Saladin
to send up a powerful strike force to flank enemies. So what keep Saladin in
check? Simple; he has a vulnerabilty to Anti-Cavalry abilities, making it a
risk to throw him forward. In fact, despite having a strong economy, Saracens
encourage a lot of Cavalry, especially through Mamelukes making this
vulnerability tough to overcome. A Saracen player must use the resources at
their disposal to leap over this barrier, so they're overall a very worthy civ.

So there's my opinions, feel free to refute them or agree. I know I left out
the Japanese, but I was tired and they're popular enough anyways >_>

--------------------
Japenese 
by Mr Strange and I_Cadfael
--------------------
A defensive player, falls back on discounts for mines, mills, & farm bonus. 
They can building up a force of calvary and Samurai, keeping off the enemy with
cheap pikemen and crossbowmen.

The hero is essentially a super-pikeman, which means you have little to fear
from fast units, which are always mounted. Combined with your solid healing
power, Japan is a strong contender for an early game assault, supported by
their hero.

Japan also has a tremendous siege ability, giving most of your units on the map
a huge bonus vs. buildings. This means that your hero can be supporting not
only the nearby attacking force he leads, but also your secondary forces which
are removing lightly defended mines and farms.

 

 

**************************************************
* 10.  Technologies                              * 
**************************************************

----------------------
Dark Age:
----------------------

* Loom
Prereqs: Town Center
Cost: 50f 150g
All Villagers get +25 DEF

* Town Scouts
Prereqs: Town Center
Cost: 50f 150g
Town Centers gain +4 Sight

* Leather Soles
Prereqs: Town Center
Cost: 50f 150g
Villagers gain +1 Move

* Weaponsmith
Prereqs: Barracks
Cost: 50f 150g
Militia gain +25 ATT

------------------------
Feudal Age:
------------------------

* Town Watch
Prereqs: Town Center
Cost: 95f 280g
Improves Town Center DEF by +20% and Sight by +2

* Wheel Barrow
Prereqs: Town Center
Cost: 125f 375g
Cost of buildings is reduced by 10%

* Advanced Mining
Prereqs: Mine
Cost: 95f 280g
+15% to Mine income

* Horse Collar
Prereqs: Mill
Cost: 95f 280g
+15% to food income

* Scale Mail Armor
Prereqs: Blacksmith
Cost: 95f 280g
+25% DEF for Infantry

* Scale Barding
Prereqs: Blacksmith
Cost: 95f 280g
+25% DEF for Cavalry

* Fletching
Prereqs: Blacksmith
Cost: 95f 280g
+25% ATT for Ranged Units

* Padded Armor
Prereqs: Blacksmith
Cost: 95f 280g
+25% DEF for Ranged Units

* Forging
Prereqs: Blacksmith
Cost: 155f 470g
+25% ATT for Infantry and Cavalry

* Tracking
Prereqs: Barracks
Cost: 95f 280g
+2 Sight for Infantry

* Cartography
Prereqs: Market
Cost: 95f 280g
+1 Sight for all units

------------------------
Castle Age:
------------------------

* Town Patrol
Prereqs: Town Center
Cost: 150f 450g
+2 Sight and +20% DEF for Town Center

* Hand Cart
Prereqs: Town Center
Cost: 150f 450g
Cost of Building is reduced by 10%

* Shaft Mining
Prereqs: Mine
Cost: 150f 450g
+15% to Mine income

* Heavy Plow
Prereqs: Mill
Cost: 150f 450g
+15% to food income

* Chain Mail Armor
Prereqs: Blacksmith
Cost: 150f 450g
+25% DEF to Age 3 infantry

* Chain Barding
Prereqs: Blacksmith
Cost: 150f 450g
+25% DEF to Age 3 Cavalry

* Bodkin Arrow
Prereqs: Blacksmith
Cost: 150f 450g
+25% ATT to Age 3 Ranged Units

* Leather Armor
Prereqs: Blacksmith
Cost: 150f 450g
+25% DEF to Age 3 Ranged Units

* Iron Casting
Prereqs: Blacksmith
Cost: 250f 750g
+25% ATT to Age 3 Infantry and Cavalry

* Conscription
Prereqs: Barracks
Cost: 150f 450g
Cost of Infantry is reduced by 15 food and 15 gold

* Husbandry
Prereqs: Stable
Cost: 150f 450g
Cost of Cavalry is reduced by 15 food and 15 gold

* Archery Tournaments
Prereqs: Archery Range
Cost: 150f 450g
Cost of Ranged Units is reduced by 15 food and 15 gold

* Mechanics Guild
Prereqs: Siege Workshop
Cost: 150f 450g
Cost of Siege Units is reduced by 15 food and 15 gold

* Banking
Prereqs: Market
Cost: 200f 600g
+ 5% gold Income and improved Trade Rate

* Merchant Network
Prereqs: Market
Cost: 150f 450g
Price for Mercenaries is reduced by 25%

* Redemption
Prereqs: Church
Cost: 150f 450g
Improves Heal ability of Monks and Elite Monks

* Fervor
Prereqs: Church
Cost: 150f 450g
Improves Convert ability of Monks and Elite Monks

* Sanctity
Prereqs: Church
Cost: 150f 450g
+25% DEF for Monks and Elite Monks

* Murder Holes
Prereqs: University
Cost: 95f 280g
+25% DEF for Towers

* Masonry
Prereqs: University
Cost: 150f 450g
+5% DEF for all buildings 

 

**************************************************
* 11.  Walkthrough                               * 
*      by MJEmirzian                             * 
**************************************************

Campaign 1 Mission 2: Sword of the Saint
Difficulty: 

To ‘make Jean de Metz proud’, just kill the introductory enemies in the manner
the tutorial instructs you to - you’ll hear them praise you after each one done
correctly. Afterwards just plow through the opposition to reach the castle in
short order.

Campaign 1 Mission 3: From Peasant to General
Difficulty: *

Build a base, a second peasant, and crank out some units. Work the peasants
around the map, attack Talbot to make him run, and then take the town hall out.

Campaign 1 Mission 4: Breakthrough to Orleans
Difficulty: *

You have overwhelming forces for this map, so no worries about dying. The relic
is randomly placed in a swamp somewhere on the map, and the hunting party is in
a forest by the road heading to the south gate of Orleans.

Campaign 1 Mission 5: Lifting the Siege of Orleans
Difficulty: **

Start cranking out units and a second peasant. Try to get out Pikemen whenever
they show up in the Market. You don’t need to worry too much about upgrading
Age or Research here. Attack the northeast castle first, while holding off the
northwest forces and eventually taking them out. 
Grab the farms, demolish the northeast castle, then mass units out to take all
three routes on. Send a large number of units west to take out the final castle
and rout the boss while plugging up the other two routes. The enemy has a lot
of units but yours are stronger, so don’t be afraid to open fire.
Reinforcements will continue from the four corners of the map, so keep a few
units handy to take them on from the NW and NE.


Campaign 1 Mission 6: Crowning of King Charles
Difficulty: **

The relic spawns randomly in a swamp area, so save your game and look for it.
Once you find it restart and go for it. You can build one peasant and one other
unit, but that’s about it - save the rest for reaching/building the cathedral.
Once it’s built, spam units and take on enemies on all sides. The boss attacks
from the mid-southwest, and he’ll run away if you take too long to kill him.

Campaign 2 Mission 1:
Difficulty: **

Split your forces NW and NE, then converge on the boss, killing him last. Send
8 units nw and 6 ne, as the nw fight is slightly tougher. Once you’ve got the
boss alone, send some injured units out to stand on the 4 bridges before 
finishing.

Campaign 2 Mission 2:
Difficulty: *

Head northeast to start razing enemy grounds, there’s no real opposition in the
map. It takes a while to reach age 3, scout the map for relics, capture them w/
monks, and take out the island castle to the northeast.

Campaign 2 Mission 3:
Difficulty: **

The point of this map is to stay healthy while taking enemies at a steady pace.
Head northeast to take on the enemies by the pass, then take out the enemies
coming towards you from the centre. Continue NE through the swamp (your mounted
units can cross for some reason), recruit the monk, then proceed to take out
enemy units in front of and around the temple. If you attack the temple all
enemies will rush to defend it, so be ready. Don’t expose yourself or bite off
more than you can chew.

Campaign 2 Mission 4:
Difficulty: ** 1/2

Rush forward to take out the initial spawn of armsmen and cavalry, then destroy
the buildings. On day 10 the Emperor will start advancing his samurai/monks so
stick your hero on the bridge to bottle them up (just have him heal himself).
Try to clog up the southwest path as well. Leave enemy units near death and
don't target their peasants.. you'll make an artificial bottleneck of units
that the AI is too stupid to remedy by suiciding or joining.

Campaign 2 Mission 5:
Difficulty: ** ½

Mongol forces will arrive and charge west, then east, then west again. Build a
stables and towers, gather resources, and build up forces to confront the
attackers as they arrive. Paladins, elite samurai, elite monks, long range
siege/crossbows (for the elite Mangudai) and elite pikemen should do well. The
map doesn’t take very long but the fighting can be intense.

Campaign 3 Mission 1:
Difficulty: ** ½

In order to finish by day 30, you’ll need to rush and wipe out the northern
enemy force, and apply pressure to the south to keep it from expanding. If you
let the south grow too far, they’ll be too entrenched to take out later. Have
Kahn and 2-3 other units up north slowly taking out new recruits and destroying
the barracks/town hall, while other units move south and claim
resources/attack. It will get messy - use the tactic of leaving enemies near
dead to block up their hiring of new units.

Campaign 3 Mission 2:
Difficulty: **

This map is more about luck than anything. Just keep trying to convert the
chieftains. Best to start northeast then work around ccwise. Nomadic travel is
useful here for running in and converting while protecting the monks.
 

 

**************************************************
* 12.  Easy Empire Points                        * 
*      by MNSpectre                              * 
**************************************************

There is a real easy way to accumulate empire points without plowing through
the single player campaign.

Just start up a hotseat game and instead of playing, just head straight for
each other and fight until one side loses all their units and the game ends.

You get 100 empire points for each "game".
 

 

**************************************************
* 13.  Training Grounds                          * 
**************************************************

If you find this game too hard, I think this is a good place to start getting
familiar with the concepts.  I am assuming you did well enough to make it
through the first three missions of the tutorial.

Start a game under the Empire Map section.  Use the Bridge map against one
opponent (Atilla) on Easy.  Make sure you turn off all options so you can see
the entire map, and make sure you select colors for the two teams that are easy
to distinguish (like red and blue, as opposed to blue and cyan).  

This is a pretty easy map where you can practice "Aging Up" quickly and get
familiar with the rock-scissors-paper nature of the battles.  

The strategy:

First turn:

* Build your first town center in a good location (near or on a road) as far
south as your initial villager unit can walk.
* Start sending your two initial militia units south picking up the free food
and gold (marked on the map by sheep and spilled bags of gold) along the way

The rest:

* Build a mill and a mine as fast as possible, and try your best to research
every turn.  Be careful that you don’t spend so much on research that you can
not build those first mines and mills, though.
* Be sure to build farms around your first mill before you build additional
mills.  Resources are tight in the beginning.  Mills cost more than farms, but
produce the same profit every turn.
* Build a couple extra units when you have the spare resources - leave one near
the town center building the farms and barracks, let one spread out to build
mines and mills on the remote resources, and send one south with your militia
units.
* Try to build a town center on the far side of the bridge - on the enemy’s
side.  You should be able to do this one or two turns after you reach the
feudal age.  This keeps the fight on their side while you get to soak up the
resources from your side every turn without contest.
* Once you get the new town center, build barracks next to it.  If the enemy is
sending cavalry at you, build spearmen - they cut through cavalry fast.  Follow
quickly with a stable and archery range.  
* Your old town center should never see battle, so build your blacksmith there.
 Also, when you reach the castle age, you can build your church and university
there.

This map should be pretty easy - practice beating it until you start getting
board, then you can try upping the enemy AI, adding additional opponents, or
new maps.  I find this is a good place to cut your teeth.
 

 

**************************************************
* 14.  Glitches                                  * 
**************************************************

There have been reports of glitches in the game.  Usually, these result in the
game freezing up, which can be annoying.  However, sometimes the game freezes
up while saving (almost always when using the "Save and Quit" function).  This
is particularly bad, because you should not attempt to restart the DS while it
is writing to the cart.  If the player attempts to restart the DS during a
freeze while saving, this will corrupt the game.

Most of the non-fatal glitches occur during battle animations - specifically,
archers counterattacking onagers.  To work around this bug, you can turn off
battle animations, or avoid such battles.

If you experience the "Save and Quit" freeze, do not restart the DS.  Instead,
try hitting buttons like a madman until you regain control.  Try leaving the
system alone for a few hours with the charger attached and see if the freeze
clears.  Basically, try anything you can think of short of restarting the DS or
removing the cart.

callmesir reported an update from NGreder at Majesco.  Below is NGreder's post:

--------------------
A Word from Majesco
--------------------

Majesco is still investigating the topic. As new information comes in about
this particular issue, all of it will be posted here. We are paying close
attention to both the forums and the AOK issue at this time.  

Additionally in the short term we have a work around.  The issue seems to be
caused by use of the "save & quit" feature. Our suggestion at this time is to
not use the "save & quit" option.  Use the "save" option and when play
continues simply power down the DS.  

Again I would like to ask that you please be patient with us here at Majesco
during the time it takes to resolve this issue.