As the technology tree shows there are new units in The Conquerors. The availability of units depends on your society evolution. At this time of the game, the powerful hand cannoneers were not ready for production.
Castles are the best investment for your stone. One thing that changed in my gameplaying style, was the use of stone - I build cheap palisades instead of stone walls,
Below, you can download a 5 hours long battle (2 humans versus 2 machines, in the HARD difficulty setting) that was the most horrible carnage ever! Just myself, I killed 1137 enemies... Remember that there is a population limit of 200 per civilization! This means I killed the equivalent of nearly enemy 6 civilizations. Bloody!
Age of Empires 2 - The Conquerors
The Conquerors is an expansion for the world's greatest (and best-selling) strategy game, ever: Microsoft's Age of Empires 2 - the Age of Kings.
Straight to the point, what debuts in The Conquerors?
There are new civilizations: the Aztecs, the Huns, the Koreans, the Mayans and the Spanish. It is strange to debut the Spanish and not the Portuguese, since these civs once shared the world...
New civilizations means new units, as AoE2 central rules state that each government should be able to produce its special unit, not available to the adversaries.
However, The Conquerors offer more units, besides the unique ones. For example, the Britons (of which I am a specialist :)), now have Eagle Warriors... Other new folks are the Conquistadors, the Halberdiers, the Hussars, the Jaguar Warriors, the Missionaries (argh!), the Petards, the Plumed Archers, the Tarkans, the Turtle Ships and the War Wagons.
Beware with the Missionaries! Religion always was my most hated opponent on AoE2 games, and these troops are really annoying, being able to convert your citizens, warriors and buildings (!), from ridiculous distances.
The new technologies are so new, that I have won many battles and yet didn't notice any, except for the Caravan (better trade between markets). Still, you now have Theocracy (strange thinking of it as a tech), Parthian Tactics, Thumb Ring, Herbal Medicine, Bloodlines and Heresy (cool!).
The Conquerors pack indeed debuts many new units and techs, but the most important and most visible changes, are on the playing style. For example, I bet that it sometimes took you crucial minutes, to replant your farms, but now you can queue farm production and avoid worrying about it! Considering that food availability is of extreme importance for your economy and even for military purposes, this really aids human players against computer players, at least when daring to the higher difficulty levels.
Your villagers are also clearly smarter, and they probably won't stop working when their last assigned task ends - they will search for more things to do. For example, if they were mining stone, and if there is a gold mine nearby, they'll probably go dig it.
One thing I still didn't try, is garrison inside Battering Capped and Siege Rams units.
For the looks, there are new maps: Arena, Ghost Lake, Mongolia, Oasis, Salt Marsh, Scandinavia, Yucatan and Random Land. Scandinavia is really great and strange, with everything going snow white and footsteps becoming visible...
For those who enjoy sea battles, boats can now move in formation, exactly like land units, which was the natural way to go, and shows the object oriented natured of this software title.
Somewhere above, I wrote that I usually play as a Briton. Well, there are new advantages to my civilization. The Briton's bonus is on town centers, that cost half the wood, when built in Castle and Imperial ages. If I was to chose one other civ, I might try the Teutons, whose town centers have +5 of line of sight, something quite handy in defensive époques...
Ah, and for those - like myself - who never gave chivalry a try, because swordsmen and archers could really do better, faster, and for less money, The Conquerors change things a bit...
The new chivalry moves faster, fire faster and are created faster... I'd better think twice :)
One novelty I do appreciate, is FULL SIZE screenshots of the map (CTRL + F12)! Because I play on "gigantic" scenarios, these screen shots translate to HUGE files, which are absolutely lovely to watch, when the game is finished, though a scale of 1:3 is the higher you can get.
I don't remember if "game recording" was available in the default AoE2 installation, but it sure is available now, and it is quite a nice thing to do. For example, I am making available a 5 hours long battle, on a gigantic map, where up to 800 individual units once existed... Really a monster battle! The winner (my girlfriend) scored the highest score I have ever seen in an AoE2 game (over 40.000 points)...
Check below for The Conquerors downloadable goodies.
huge_map.zip [ZIP of a 5802 x 3042 x 24 bits JPEG, 1363 KB]
five_hours_win.zip [ZIP of a recorded game, 1195 KB]
Halberdier (top right) are your best choice against enemy chivalry. In fact, I rarely bet on chivalry. and prefer investing on archers and champions.
Going multi-town-center is a must for your expansion, when maps are gigantic. In order to protect yourself, the wisest placements are on the map's borders.
Use the geography in your favor - place archers on top of hills, then attack enemies trying to climb in.