Age II: The Conquerors - The Aztecs Showcase

By Elliott Chin, GameSpotPosted Jul 12, 2000 8:08 pm PT

Our fourth installment of Age II: Conquerors' civilizations takes a look at the Aztecs.

The Aztecs Showcase

In the Montezuma campaign, you'll try to reverse history

Among the additions to the Conquerors expansion set to Age of Empires II is a new tileset, the Meso-American region, that opens up a new world to explore and interact with. While various kingdoms were rising up from the ashes of the Dark Ages to reinvent themselves and create a world-spanning collective of European powers, the New World of the Americas also saw the rise of great civilizations. In the modern western world, the most famous of these ancient New World civilizations is the Aztec civilization. The Aztecs are famous for their supposed cruelty and human sacrifice and for their utter demise at the hands of the conquering Spanish and General Cortez. The Aztecs, along with the Mayans, are the two new civilizations that comprise the new Meso-American tileset. They are also perhaps the most interesting of the new civilizations in the expansion. Not only do they have a wealth of powerful units and some interesting new technologies, but they also play the main role in one of the new expansion campaigns. The Aztecs are indeed one of the more intriguing new features of the Conquerors, although Ensemble Studios designer Greg Street indicates that initial fan reaction was cool at best.

The Aztec Wonder

"For some reason, fans can totally accept having the rather primitive Goths or Celts in Age of Kings, but perceive [the Aztecs as] some Stone Age race that could not realistically compete with the other civilizations in the [expansion pack]. They ignore Aztec advances in medicine, astronomy, botany, and agriculture. They somehow overlook the fact that the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, with a population far larger than most European cities, was built in the middle of a lake! They fail to realize that the Aztecs didn't use the wheel or pack animals because those things just weren't practical in a rain forest. They make much ado over the lack of iron weapons and armor, failing to realize that Aztec obsidian swords and spear points were just as deadly against unarmored foes. When Hernan Cortez arrived in what is now Mexico, he did have horses, iron armor, and cannons with him. None of these would have made a bit of difference in the confrontation with the full military might of the Aztec empire. Cortez's siege of Tenochtitlan is noted in military annals as being important because it was such an upset, not because Spanish victory over the Aztecs was a foregone conclusion."

The gameplay statistics of the Aztecs match up well with the other infantry-heavy civilizations, like the Japanese, Celts, and Teutons. The Aztecs, as they were in history, are ferocious warriors on the ground, and they also boast incredibly powerful monks, who draw great strength from their powerful faith. Over the next few pages, we'll take a brief look at the history of the Aztecs, as well as their unique advantages in the Age II expansion pack.

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1 Comments

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jakeboudville
Posted Sep 8, 2006 4:02 am PT

kinda impressive
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