Age of Empires II Saladin 1 An Arabian Knight
is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios. Released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh. Age of Empires II The Age of Kings is set in the Middle Ages.
Saladin (1137 - 1193) was a Sunni Muslim Kurd who became the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria, founding the Ayyubid dynasty. He led the Muslim military campaign against the Crusader states in the Levant.
The game features four types of resources: food, wood, gold, and stone. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies.
Egypt a month since I entered the Holy Land. I was in a foreign land. And I was dying.
I wandered the cold desert for four nights before the horse archers found me. I had abandoned my mount to the vultures and my armor to the heat of day. As a knight, I was not much of a threat to them.
I thought these men were Turks, come to toy with their prey. But when I could distinguish the riders from the blur of mirage I saw that they were Saracens, the rulers of the Middle East. I had ridden to the Holy Land with the Crusaders from France an Normandy, so I was by all rights these Saracens' enemy.
Yet they gave me water and a spindly horse and led me back to their leader.
And that was how I meet Saladin. The paintings in Europe show Saladin as demonic, barbarian. Yet lie in more chivalrous than any knight I’d met before and prefers the palaces of Damascus to slaughtering Normans in the desert. I had not expected hospitality from Saracens - we Normans execute any armed Arab we capture.
But Saladin left me free to explore his camp. Perhaps he wants an objective observer to chronicle the prodigious bloodshed ahead.
Saladin's army is heading south to Egypt to reinforce Cairo. Egypt is a tempting prize for the Crusaders. She is fabulously wealthy, yet governed by an ineffectual fool. Before my capture, I was en route to join in the Crusaders' assault on Egypt.
It is a bitter irony that now I shall view the contest from the enemy camp. So it was that I found myself less than a hundred miles from the Dead Sea, in the company of my enemies.
The Franks are dispersed, and the Egyptian army broken. Saladin has taken his place as governor of the Nile. Any European king would seize this opportunity to eliminate his political enemies. Saladin, however, allowed any Egyptian opposed to his rule to leave the city unharmed.
Saladin has set out to win over the population. In Cairo, he built mosques and palaces, universities and hospitals. My own countrymen, the sons of Europe, showed naught but treachery, while the Saracens work to dignify their civilization. It is a troubling turn of events and I have difficulty sleeping.
An expansion for The Age of Kings, The Conquerors, was released in 2000. It introduced numerous new game features, including unique technologies for each civilization, and five new civilizations. Two of these, the Aztecs and the Mayans, represent the New World and have a distinctive architectural style. Other new civilizations are the Huns, Koreans, and Spanish.
The original Age of Empires II and its 2000 expansion pack, The Conquerors, were later released as The Gold Edition. Age of Empires II is often considered one of the greatest games ever made. An updated high-definition graphics version of the game, Age of Empires II: HD Edition, was released in 2013. The HD Edition includes the original game and the expansion The Conquerors, as well as new campaigns, civilizations, and updated graphics for high-resolution displays. A remaster, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, was released in November 2019.
You can also search on digital distribution platform Apple App Store developed and maintained by Apple Inc. for mobile apps on its iOS & iPadOS operating systems or on Google Play for certified devices running on the Android operating system.
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