Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

Template:Infobox Template:Infobox Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (often shortened to AGE2, The Age of Kings, AoE II or AoK) is a game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. Released in 1999 for the Microsoft Windows and Macintosh operating systems, it was the second game in the Age of Empires series. An expansion, The Conquerors, was released in 2000. Due to the game's relative age, it is officially incompatible with Windows 7, however, it is possible to run the game with a number of tweaks.

Availability

Best Version

The "Age of Empires Collector's Editon" can often be found on store shelves. It is the most cost effective way of acquiring the game, as it contains the following games on a single DVD-ROM:

• Age of Empires
• Age of Empires : Rise of Rome Expansion
• Age of Empires II : Age of Kings
• Age of Empires II : The Conquerors Expansion

However, it should be noted that the DVD re-release of these games does not feature the red-book audio stored as separate audio tracks on the original games' discs. As such, the game music will not be played while the DVD is in the drive.

Patches

Official

Age of Empires II : The Age of Kings

• Version 2.0a:Template:CitadelFile Released on 23^rd August 2000, 2.0a is an official Ensemble Studios patch for the base game, including a number of bug fixes and improvements; the most prominent of which are as follows:
  • AI update which fixes bug where AI would resign after a few minutes of play
  • Town Centre changes
  • Improved performance of the single player campaign
  • Improved stability
  • Removal of fishing ship building abilities
  • Co-operative farming bug fix
  • AI and scenario editor bug fixes
    

Age of Empires II : The Conquerors Expansion

• Version 1.0c:Template:CitadelFile Released in 2001, 1.0c is an official patch for the Conquerors expansion pack, and includes several game enhancements and fixes. It also includes all of the bug fixes and improvements introduced in the 1.0b patch.

Unoffical

Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion

• Widescreen Patch:Template:CitadelFile

UserPatch v1.1 by xomicron ; February 9, 2010Template:CitadelFile

DirectDrawFixTemplate:CitadelFile Windows Vista and Windows 7 break color compatibility with certain applications that depend upon palette-based, 256-color graphics, DirectDrawFix will allow you to resolve this specific issue by applying required compatibility fixes to the registry. Elevation is required for this application to perform its updates.

http://widescreengamingforum.com/node/12090 Age of empires HD Mod; Up to 1080p ;Janurary 15, 2010]

Issues and Fixes

MIDI Music

There is a way to regain the audio music in the game as MIDI:

1. Download The demo version of Age of Empires II
2. Copy the midi folder from the sound folder of the demo of AOEII
3. Paste the folder in the sound folder of the full game e.g.

   C:\\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\sound

4. Create a shortcut of the age2_x1.exe in the age2_x1 folder
5. Click properties and add to the target (with quote marks)

   “-midimusic”

6. Start the game with the afformentioned shortcut and the game will have background music
7. You can also do the same with the sound files from the Conquerors expansion demo, however, it is important to rename the midi files from music 1-8 to 9-16 to prevent replacement of existing files.

Mods and User Made Content

Age of Empires 2: The Forgotten Empires

Save Games

Save Game Location

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\SaveGame\

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\Campaign\

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\Scenario\

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\Player.nfo

You will need to backup all of the above folders and the .nfo file to have all of your player data and progress.

Save Game Cloud Syncing

• Dropbox: Yes
• Windows Live Mesh 2011: Yes
• GameSave Manager: No

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:

1. Open Age of Empires II
2. Alt-Tab out of the game
3. Turn off explorer.exe
   1. open task manager (ctrl+alt+del or ctrl+shift+esc)
   2. go to "processes" tab
   3. find "explorer.exe" in the "image name" column
   4. select "explorer.exe" and hit "end process"
4. (Play Game without color issue)
5. (finish playing game)
6. Restore explorer.exe
   1. open task manager (ctrl+alt+del or ctrl+shift+esc)
   2. in the top left, on the menu bar, click "File" and "New Task (Run...)"
   3. The "Create New Task" window will pop up
   4. enter "explorer.exe" in the open:[textbox]
   5. 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.

Solution #2: You can also fix this issue by following these steps:

1. Change Windows 7 theme to Windows Classic (right click Desktop, select Personalize and choose Windows Classic theme).

2. Open Screen Resolution window (right click Desktop, click Screen Resolution). No need to change any settings, leave this window maximized in the background and run the game. It should show normal colours.

Dell laptop compatibility issues

On some older Dell laptop models (e.g. the M1530) an issue occurs where the OS crashes and a blue-screen of death is displayed. This issue occurs after a seemingly random amount of gameplay time (from <30 seconds to 10 or 20 minutes). Many things have been tried to fix the issue including changing graphics card drivers, limiting the framerate to mitigate overheating and running on virtual machines of different OSs (e.g. windows 98). As far as can be seen, this issue has never been resolved nor will it be, rendering AoE2 unplayable on the affected models of laptop.

Network Issues

--Lan connectivity with Windows 7-- Setting the IP address to Static and the Default Gateway to nothing allows 2 Windows 7 64 pcs to LAN. This can be done via Control Panel - View Network Status and Tasks (under Network and Internet) - click Local Arean connection next to "connections:" then Properties, highlight "Internet protocol version 4", click properties. Check "Use the following ip address". Use an address not in use on your network (such as 192.168.1.[1-253] eg 192.168.1.11 ) mask 255.255.255.0 and default gateway blank (important). You will lost internet until you switch back to "obtain address automatically", but LAN will function in game.

A much simplier method is to install "Gameranger" and use that as a lobby (thus no need to do all of the above).

Links

Age of Empires II Official Microsoft Site; Download Trial Version available

Wikia for the entire series

Age of Kings Heaven (Community Site)

See Also

• Age of Empires
• Age of Empires III