Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings
Introduction
This page regards issues and fixes to Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings and Age of Empires II: The Conqueror's Expansion.
Where to Buy
Can often still be found on store shelves as "Age of Empires Collector's Editon", which contains the following games on one DVD-disk:
- Age of Empires
- Age of Empires : Rise of Rome Expansion
- Age of Empires II : Age of Kings
- Age of Empires II : The Conquerors
Due to faulty file management on the DVD-disk, problems can be encountered:
While playing Age of Empires II (and Expansion) the background music is completely missing.
Windows 7 Compatibility
Ingame color looks odd
See Also: Colors Fixes
Problem: The color within the game tends to look noisy, overly saturated, pixelated, and overall odd. Diagnosis: The Windows 7 explorer (explorer.exe) has a lot of new features for display, and particularly color display changes. Think of the new transparent windows aero, and the features for adjusting window theme colors. The new explorer has a conflict with the graphic display of the game. Solution:
- Open Age of Empires II
- Alt-Tab out of the game
- Turn off explorer.exe
- open task manager (ctrl+alt+del or ctrl+shift+esc)
- go to "processes" tab
- find "explorer.exe" in the "image name" column
- select "explorer.exe" and hit "end process"
- (Play Game without color issue)
- (finish playing game)
- Restore explorer.exe
- open task manager (ctrl+alt+del or ctrl+shift+esc)
- in the top left, on the menu bar, click "File" and "New Task (Run...)"
- The "Create New Task" window will pop up
- enter "explorer.exe" in the open:[textbox]
- click "ok" button
This process can be automated with a batch file. Save this text into a file named "AgeFix.bat"
REM -AgeFix.bat taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe age2_x1.exe start explorer.exe
Store the batch file in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\age2_x1 . Run the bat file to run the game.
Network Issues
Patches
Age of Empires II : Age of Kings
Age of Empires II : The Conquerors
User-Patches
UserPatch v1.1 by xomicron ; February 9, 2010 http://widescreengamingforum.com/node/12090 Age of empires HD Mod; Up to 1080p ;Janurary 15, 2010]
Mods and User Made Content
Age of Empires 2: The Forgotten Empires
Links
Age of Empires II Official Microsoft Site; Download Trial Version available
Age of Kings Heaven (Community Site)
System Requirements
Minimum:
- CPU: 166 MHz
- RAM: 32 MB
- HDD: 300 MB free space
- Video: 2 MB, SuperVGA
- Audio: Sound card, speakers/headphones
- Multiplayer: 28.8 KB/s
Recommended:
- CPU: Intel Pentium II or AMD Athlon MP
- RAM: 64 MB
- HDD: 300 MB free space
- Video: 16 MB Nvidia TNT2 or 16 MB Rage 128