Economic tweaks

I'm a businessman

Ensemble did not ignore changes to the economic system. At first they toyed with the idea of putting in a fifth resource called Ore (AOE had food, wood, gold, and stone - all remain in AOK), but the latest builds do not have any ore. Instead of simply adding a fifth resource, AOK will make stone more of an integral resource. In the first AOE, players could frequently get away with not mining any stone at all. That won't be the case with Age of Kings. You cannot advance to the Castle stage without gathering a significant amount of stone. And without a castle, you will be without the services of your race's unique unit.

Distinctive Asian architecture

Thirteen races

On that note, there are about 13 unique civilizations in Age of Kings. All have the same units more or less, with units in certain races being stronger than others, just like AOE. The new thing is that each race in AOK gets one unique unit that none of the other races get. These are based on the kind of unit each race really had in a historical context. For example, the Germans will get the Teutonic Knight, the Japanese civilization will be able to use Samurai warriors, British get the Longbowmen, and the Persians get the War Elephant.

Two armies face off

Cornering the market

Getting back to the economic issues, one unique feature in AOK is a "world wide" economy. In this worldwide economy you can basically trade resources for gold (or vice versa) in your marketplace. Doing so will inflate or deflate prices depending on whether you're buying or selling resources. The thing that makes this "worldwide" is that prices are set amongst all players collectively. So if you knew that your enemy needed gold and was trying to unload wood for gold, you could sell all of your wood to deflate the price and screw over your opponent. This idea adds an interesting twist to the game, although it remains to be seen if it will make that big of an impact.