No no no! This isn't some adventure story set in South Asia or the Middle East. It isn't a script to the next Hollywood movie. This is a battle between two Age of Kings: The Conquerors newbies.

Candle ICQ's me and asks for a game. I had lost earlier that day in another game, and felt a little revenge wouldn't be too bad. I join up his TCP/IP game and soon afterwards, we're off. Both of us let the computer decide which kingdom we would lead on the battle over Rivers on Random Map mode.

I found myself the King of Persia, and Candle led as the Shogun of Japan. Here are the bonuses of each kingdom:

As soon as the game starts, I take one of my three villagers and construct a house (equivalent of a depot) while sending the other two to gather sheep for food. I also begin creating another villager in my town center.

Candle on the other hand, opts to build 2 quick houses; putting 2 villagers on constructing the first house, and the other on the second house. He also builds another villager and both Candle and I use our Scout Calvary for.... SCOUTING!!

I send the sheep that haven't been killed yet for food into the middle of the town center so my shepherds don't have any travel time to return the food from the sheep to the town center (units can be placed on the town center area). This helps my shepherds a lot in collecting food more efficiently. My scout finds a few more sheep, and I send them right next to the others to be killed (poor sheep). I build another house at 8 population (supply) to keep up my constant villager production. I also build a mill near my berries in anticipation of when sheep run out and I need another source of food.

Candle quickly gathers sheep after the houses are done and starts killing them off for food. He does not however use my l33t "strat" to gather food faster. He also builds a mill near his berries and lures a boar near his town center before killing it to add to his food supply.

I put 2 villagers to cut wood near my town center so I will be able to build farms around them later when I need to and so I can put them in optimal locations (right next to town centers or mills). I also build a lumber camp next to my large forest so I can gather wood faster. When I go to build another villager, I find that I need another house before I can, so I tell a villager to go build one, and I cancel my que-ed villager and research loom (adds armor to villagers; the time it takes to research is the same as a villager's build time, and since there are wild animals that attack villagers, its necessary if you want to keep them alive). Since I need the technology anyway, I always find it is best to research whenever you forget to keep up with house production. I've also rallied my latest villagers to the forest, and I begin harvesting wood at an increased speed. With the extra wood, I build farms so I can increase my food income. My scout finally find Candle's base, but gets killed when the villagers garrison inside the town center (when villagers are in TC's, they can fire arrows to protect themselves).

Candle builds a palisade wall at the only bridge connecting the two islands together, and a lumber camp at his wood. This stops any Feudal Age rushes (also known as flushing) and lets him expand more freely. His villagers have already gotten the loom upgrade, and he has 3 farms around his town center. His scout finds my base about the same time I find his (except his lives to see another day).

At 10:35 game time (game clock : real-time ratio is about 2:1 or 3:2), I begin researching Feudal Age. At this point, I'm at 27 population with 8 villagers on wood, 12 on berries, 5 farmers, 1 gold miner, and 1 villager building a mining camp at the gold mine. Candle has 25 population with 2 foragers (gathering berries), 5 farmers, 11 lumberjacks, and 5 hunters killing their 2nd boar.

My berries quickly run out, and I send half of my foragers to cutting wood to compensate for the higher number of farms that I'll need soon, and build more farms with the rest. Candle at this time begins a mining camp at his gold mine (mining camps are buildings that you can return gold/stone to instead of bringing it back to the town center). At 12:41 game time, Candle begins researching feudal age, and 2 seconds afterwards, I reach the Feudal Age.

I quickly research faster gold mining and faster wood cutting along with better farms, and que up 2 farms at the mill (by queing them up, they will automatically rebuild when they run out instead of you having to click the villager and right-clicking on the empty farm). Again, I fall behind on house production, so I research wheelbarrow, which increases the overall effectiveness of villagers (they gather resources faster, and hold more resources at a time). Candle builds a barracks to prepare for his Feudal Age buildings.

At 14:50,  Candle reaches the Feudal Age, and instantly begins constructing a stable and a blacksmith (every time you want to advance an age, you have to build at least 2 buildings that are available in the age you are currently in as well as paying some food/gold/stone). He also sends his scout back into my base to get another peek at where my resource gatherers are working so he can find a weak spot to attack. Additionally, he adds a dock so he can make use of his civilization bonus of fishing boats, and get a transport to bypass the wall he built and get in my backyard.

At 16:44, Candle begins his tech towards the Castle Age.

I finally build a barracks since I didn't feel worried about an early attack, and researched town watch (+4 building LOS) as soon as the barracks finished while adding an archery and stables for my two tech buildings to reach Castle Age. At 19:21, I am surprised to hear that Candle had hit Castle Age, and I begin researching Castle Age at 19:43 to catch up..

Candle loads up a transport with four villagers and sends them off towards my island. They unload to the east of my town and begin a town center near a stone mine.

I build a mining camp at a stone mine at the other end of my town without noticing Candle's offensive attempt and research the man-at-arms upgrade to strengthen my militia and transform them to man-at-arms. I also replace my dead scout cavalry with a new one from my stables and go off to scout. This is the first time I see the palisade wall at the bridge, but I don't feel pressured since I thought I could expand to the east.

At 22:08 I hit Castle Age and shift a bunch of wood cutters to stone since I have excess wood and because I need lots of stone to build a Castle. I go to build a town center at the stone mine that Candle occupied and wondered why I couldn't build my TC at an optimal location. I assumed it was because of elevation (you can't build TC's on uneven ground) even though I couldn't see any uneven ground (turns out I was trying to build on top of his building, so it would show up red indicating I couldn't build there). Candle garrisons the stone miners at his offensive expansion, and kills my villager and I cancel my town center.

I would like to note here that once a tower, town center, or castle goes up, it is almost impossible to take it down unless you outresource him, get to imperial age, or find a way to get a battering ram right next to it without getting it killed. In fact, offensive town centering is a viable, strong strategy to use in random map (in death match, everyone starts with 10K of each resource, so they'll kill it before it finishes).

I upgrade my man-at-arms to long swordsmen and my archer to crossbowmen. I build a castle about a screen away so he doesn't advance any farther, and I send a villager to expand to the west of me. The villager runs into a wolf, but kills it with about 50% of its HP left, and scouts around to find a resource. Unfortunately, I can't find any stone or gold, so I am forced to build it for wood only (and farms).

Candle is able to put down a tower in range of my gold miners before my castle finishes and starts firing at my workers. I am forced to move to another mine that only has 4 patches of gold, whereas the one that got sieged had 6. Needless to say, this upsets me as I get slower mining speed, and I have to build a new mining camp for the new gold mine on the other side of my town. There's even more bad news as my stone mines are depleted, and I'm stuck with just the stone that I have, which amounts to a little over 800.

Once again, Castle Age units aren't very effective against buildings unless you can get a battering ram in there, so towers are extremely powerful once they have finished building.

I tell a villager to build a Castle on the choke that allows access to the other side of my town to make sure Candle doesn't completely pin me in to my little area. Candle loads up three pikemen and a militia into a new ram from his siege workshop and he begins pounding on some of my perimeter buildings (a house so I can spot enemy movement, and my mining camp) but I fail to notice it as my attention is diverted elsewhere. I research hand-cart which works like wheelbarrow and increases villager effectiveness even more.

I still haven't noticed the ram attacking the east side of my base, and my attention is distracted even more when 3 war galleys begin attacking my lumberjacks from the water. I only have minimal units, and 2 crossbowmen, so I panicked. Fortunately for me, one of the war galleys ventured right next to shore, which meant my melee units could attack it. I send them in, and was able to take one down and damage the other two before they moved into the safety of the water. My two crossbowmen died without doing too much more damage and I que-ed up three more to sink the other 2 ships. I begin moving towards the Imperial Age.

I finally notice the ram attacking my first castle, and I dispatch my knights to take it out. I had built a war elephant out of the castle, and as soon as it finished building, it attacked the ram even though I didn't notice it. This left the ram with about 15 health, and it died quickly to my 3 knights. My 3 crossbowmen finish and I send them to kill the galleys, but they suffer the same fate as the men that preceded them. However, my 2nd castle finishes, and it takes out one of the galleys and the other stays out of range from the castle fire. My 1st castle is almost dead, and I tell my villagers to repair it until I ran out of all my remaining stone.

Finally, at 33:56, I hit the Imperial Age. This gives me access to the longest ranged unit, the trebuchet.

Candle attacks again; this time with three rams with units garrisoned in them. My knights and elephants attack them, but Candle ungarrisons his units from the rams to take care of my knights and elephants. This is really bad news since the units he had garrisoned were pikemen, and pikes are counters to mounted units. I send in all the units I have which consists of about 4 elephants, 2 knights, and a long swordsman. With the help of my castle arrows (castles fire arrows even when there are no units garrisoned in them), I barely hold it off by having my elephants attack the rams and my single swordsman taking care of the pikemen.

I decide that being defensive is no fun and its time to bust out so I get a trebuchet to start bombarding Candle's offensive buildings. But first I have to use it to kill the last war galley since it decided to come back and attack some houses and villagers. I quickly unpack it, and the first shot misses, but the next kills the galley. Candle builds another Town Center on his offensive position and then builds a castle a little in front of it. Just more resources he wastes when I own his base right?

I pump elephants out of my 2 castles, and that uses up all my gold. I also complement them with elite-skirmishers (anti-archers) and pikemen (anti-cavalry) since they don't cost any gold to produce. I pack my trebuchet and move it right next to my castle and unpack it so I can fire (trebuchets are like siege tanks, except worse. they are the longest ranged unit, but you have to unpack for it to fire, pack it to move. it doesn't even have a secondary fire when its packed). I accidentally unpack it too far away and I couldn't fire anything. I punch myself in the face and proceed to bang my head on the monitor, then I click on the pack button and move it a bit closer.

First on my kill list is the tower that covered my gold. Too bad the castle covers it too. Next, I kill the first town center at the stone mines. I find that I have excessive wood so I build a marketplace so I can trade my wood for something useful like gold or stone. I attack the castle now, and his units start to move out to kill the treb. Being the smart guy that I am, I had the rest of my army behind my trebuchet, so I had to select them all and move them in front before his halberdiers (upgrade pikes) and skirmishers got in range. It doesn't help much when the core of your army is elephants, which are terribly slow. Luckily, I got my units in place in time and I mauled his army with my massive elephant/pike/skirmisher army with the help of the castle.

At 44:58, Candle advances to Imperial Age. He also has control of 3 relics. If he gets the other two, he wins unless I can destroy his monastery. I unpack my trebuchet again since there was nothing else to kill from there, and moved up. I also built another town center near the gold mine I just regained by destroying the tower and castle. The treb fires on the siege workshop, and Candle charges in with halberdiers. I thought to myself, another massacre; and indeed it was, until the monks came and started converting the elephants to fight for the dark side.

I'm still able to kill off everything, but I take much heavier losses than needed. I rejoice when my trebuchet destroys the monastery right after the battle ends and I also raze the 2nd town center and am about to regain control of my island. I have no idea what's happening on the other half of the map during the game, but Candle has taken the entire island, and has over 5 town centers gathering resources.

Candle attacks again with halberdiers. my elephants rush to save the trebuchet, and I'm horrified to see about 10 monks. They begin enticing my elephants with peanuts, and stole half of them. Man, I hate those monks. With the brunt of my army wearing blue now instead of red, I am forced to resign as he pushes into my base.

When I resigned, I saw that Candle had THREE monasteries hidden in the back. =(

Score:

Here's the pretty graph (Light colors represent the percentage of villagers compared to total world population, and the dark colors represent the percentage of military units compared to total world population. Obviously, the blue colors are Candle, and the reds are me.):

Download the recorded game for Age of Kings: The Conquerors Expansion here.