I have seen Age of Empires II (AoE-II) in stores for a few months, but when I saw a mail-in rebate that put my final cost to $20, I had to grab it. I have AoE-I, and I like it a lot, so I had high expectations for AoE-II, and I was not disappointed.

AoE-II takes place in the "Age of Kings" as the title says. This really means that they have improved a lot of things, and they want a new genre to represent it. There are a LOT more technologies available in this game, as well as an increase in the types of military and civilian units available. Units can move on their own by selecting the new "patrol" function. There is a new button that tells you which civilian units are idle. This was a big gripe I had about AoE-I: I kept losing track of villagers. Military units are quick to react to threats, although they still don't act as units when they automatically decide on a target. Some military units aren't smart enough to avoid friendly fire; that is still up to you. I've lost many knights to a catapult or hand-cannon because I was paying attention to a sea battle, or rebuilding farms.

Villagers come in both genders in this game, but they both perform the same work. Farming, mining and gathering wood have several advances that improve villagers' effectiveness, and they are more self-sufficient than in AoE-I; they find stuff better than they used to (except stone for some reason). There is a powerful new feature called "garrison" that allows a group to defend themselves from inside a building. This is particularly useful for villagers to defend themselves in the town center. Simply ring the town bell and all villagers run to it until the danger is over. Ring the bell again, and they all resume their previous task.

All buildings allow created units to automatically move to a designated spot on the map. For example, all knights can gather in a protected area after being created awaiting orders to move out. I've used this to have all military units gather in one spot for grouping into armies.

Artifacts are treated differently in AoE-II. A monk must pick them up and bing them back to the monastery. From then on gold is collected automatically. The more artifacts, the faster gold is accumulated.

In summary, the developers of this game did their homework. They improved all aspects of AoE-I from behavior to graphics to user interface. The scenarios are more challenging, but not overwhelming, and the random maps are larger and more fun. A very good upgrade from AoE-I. It didn't take a lot of time to relearn, but then, I spent more time on AoE-I learning it.