Units and Technology

Variety is the spice of life

Age of Kings includes a wide variety of military units to serve your every whim. These can be categorized more or less into a few unit types - Cavalry (including cavalry archers), infantry, archers, siege engines, ships, and special units. Cavalry are produced primarily at the stables, except for cavalry archers which are made at the archery range. Logically, the infantry are produced at the Barracks, siege engines at the siege workshop, and the ships are made at the dock.

A small skirmish

My castle chases away enemy cav

Age of Kings goes through a chronology of 4 stages - Dark Age, Feudal Age, Castle Age, and Imperial Age. With each step, newer, more powerful technologies are opened up to you (both military and economic bonuses), and you can research more powerful units at each of your unit producing facilities. For example, only weak, club wielding militia infantry are available to you in the Dark Age, but as you move along through time you can open up pikemen (inexpensive infantry that are good against cavalry), men at arms, two handed swordsmen, and the ultimate basic infantry unit, the champion. Cavalry proceeds as knight, cavalier, and paladin.

Siege backed up by riflemen - argh!

There goes my market

Choices choices choices

You'll also see sequences of technology in the economic side of things - wood cutting is sped up at the lumber camp with the double bit axe, the bow saw, and the two man saw. Farming is improved by researching the horse plow, the heavy plow, and then crop rotation. Again, these technologies open up gradually as you proceed through each age. Knowing when to advance in technology and which technologies to grab first become critical strategic questions. Do you want to try and hole up defensively while you go for the ultra powerful gun powder units? Is your army going to be composed primarily of siege and cavalry? Infantry, archers, and siege? Players who try to spread their attention on everything at once are bound not to be successful in multiplayer as those who focus on more specific goals.

Too bad I've got nothing to stop them

Lots of military buildings but no $$

Monks > Priests

One of the features that made the original Age of Empires special were the priests. People who hated Age of Empires often cited the priest's ability to "convert" units over to the other side as a big reason why. In response, Ensemble has toned this ability down to a degree in Age of Kings. Don't expect a handful of AOK Monks to be able to stop the tide of a huge attack. You also cannot convert siege units unless you're standing next to them, so monks can't act as a cheap siege defense against rams from inside town walls. What they did improve with monks over priests is that monks will auto heal any units standing near them, kind of like the medic in Starcraft Brood War. Healing from a Monk takes somewhat longer than the medic, although it doesn't take any "mana" to do so.