Cheat Codes:
Activate the following cheats by pressing [Enter] to display the chat window and typing the corresponding codes:
CHEAT FUNCTION – CHEAT CODE
1000 gold – robin hood
1000 wood – lumberjack
1000 stone – rock on
1000 food – cheese steak jimmy’s
Instant victory – i r winner
Instant loss – resign
Fast building – aegis
Full map – marco
Kill indicated opponent – torpedo[number]
Kill all opponents – black death
No shadows – polo
Control animals – natural wonders
VDML – i love the monkey head
Cobra car – how do you turn this on
Saboteur – to smithereens
Commit suicide – wimpywimpywimpy
Activate the following cheats by pressing the corresponding key combinations during gameplay:
CHEAT FUNCTION – KEY COMBINATION
Fast construction – [Ctrl] Q
Build immutable structure – [Ctrl] P
Alternate resource menu – [Ctrl] T
View ending sequence – [Ctrl] C
Activate the following cheats by starting the game with the corresponding command line parameters:
CHEAT FUNCTION – COMMAND LINE PARAMETER
800 x 600 screen resolution – 800
1024 x 768 screen resolution – 1024
1280 x 1024 screen resolution – 1280
Auto save game – autompsave
Standard mouse pointer – NormalMouse
Fix display problems with some video cards – Mfill
Fix SoundBlaster AWE freezes – Msync
Disable all terrain sounds – NoTerrainSound
Disable all music – NoMusic
Disable all sounds except during FMV sequences – NoSound
No pre-game FMV sequences – NoStartup
Cheat Codes (Japanese version):
Activate the following cheats by pressing [Enter] to display the chat window and typing the corresponding codes:
CHEAT FUNCTION – CHEAT CODE
1000 gold – coinage
1000 wood – woodstock
1000 stone – quarry
1000 food – pepperoni pizza
Instant building – steroids
Full map – reveal map
Control animals – gaia
No fog of war – no fog
Phrases:
After pressing [Enter] during game play, type a number from 1 to 30 and press [Enter] again to hear different phrases such as “Don’t point that thing at me”.
Fast resources hints:
-To quickly enter the cheat codes and get resources, for wood, press [Enter], type woodstock, press [Shift] [Home] to highlight the word, then press [Ctrl] C to copy it. Press [Enter] to activate the cheat. Press [Enter] again, then press [Ctrl] V to or [Shift] [Insert] paste the word on the screen for activation. Repeat to get resources quickly. This may be used with the quarry, coinage, pepperoni pizza, and photon man codes.
-During a random map, use a team islands setting and have seven players. Make three of them your allies and four enemies, then begin the game and go to the third button from the top right corner. Put check marks next to all your allies and click on “Food Please”, “Wood Please”, “Stone Please” or “Gold Please” in the box below. The only resource your allies will not give you is gold.
More bases advantage hint:
To have a greater chance of winning,? build more than one base. Increase the base you start out with, making it completely fortified with at least two castles. After that, send a scout cavalry, or some other fast moving unit, to the opposite side of the map from your base. After you have checked the area and confirmed that it is safe, send a villager to build a castle at that location and fortify that base. This is very helpful if your enemy knows where one of your bases are located, especially during online play.
Free ally hint:
When you build a market, it is possible that a rival tribe will ask you to send them a certain amount of wood, stone, gold, and food. When they do, click on “Diplomacy” or press [Alt] D and click “Ally” on the name of that tribe. They will become an ally free of charge. However, when you do this, you will no longer be able to align yourself with any other tribes. This is helpful if there are four tribes in the game.
Saving resources:
When you have allies, do not build a market to avoid giving them resources.
Saving your villagers hints:
-To keep your villagers alive while hunting boars, if you are in the Castle Age, create some monks and place them close to the villagers as the kill the boar. The monk will keep replenishing the villagers’ health as they kill the boar.
-Whenever your villagers are building a castle or tower in enemy territory that takes time, send several villagers to build a small tower that can be constructed easily. After that is built, build your castle and if anyone attacks you, you can either go to the tower, or the tower can shoot at them and the enemy will not harm you.
Easy opponent elimination hint:
At the start of any random map game, at least one CPU opponent will become your ally if you give them 100 of the resource that they request. Remember the opponent that asked for the resources, as this will be important later. Wait at least until the castle age, then give that opponent the resources they requrested. At this point during the game, you should have either well over 4,000 of all resources or a huge military (depending on your population limit). Either way, that payment should be no more than a small investment. Afterwards, set your stance with them to ally. When you have a large enough army, switch your stance to either enemy or neutral and attack them. They should be almost completely eliminated before they switch their own stance to enemy.
Recommended defense:
A large amount of stone and wood are required. When you reach the Feudal Age, build walls all around you, even at the water’s edge (in a straight line if possible) This will ensure that the enemy does not land his troops, and will give you time to attack. While the wall is in construction, build two or three gates, preferably spaced apart. Afterwards, build three gates directly behind the ones you just built to add more defense, thenbuild three towers to the left and right of each gate. Place a Bombard Tower at the end of each. Repeat this pattern until it covers the entire wall, even by the water (to defend against the galleons). Then, do the reverse, which is instead of towers use Bombard Towers. When that is done, finish it off with a wall as the inner coating to seal those towers in. The purpose of this is that if the enemy is lucky enough to break through the first wall and the tower as well as the Bombard Towers, you have some insurance to hold them off a bit longer. Usually you would not need to constantly repair the towers unless the wall breaks, allowing the enemy to attack them. However, they may sometimes use a trebuchet, ram, or catapult to get at your.
Easy wins hints:
-For easy victory over the CPU under any difficulty setting, place eight to twelve villagers into three control groups. After that, have two control groups working on gold and one working on stone until all of the stone piles and gold piles are gone. Next, build at least two of every building and upgrade everything as fast as possible. If done quick enough you should be able to either swarm your enemy or surround him with castles.
-Select the Spanish and create plenty of their riflemen and the things that launch rocks. Look on the map and see which empire is the largest. Go to the vine icon in the corner. Make the largest empire your ally. Send all of your troops and rock launchers into the main part of their empire. Afterwards, click on the vine and make them an enemy. They will be taken by surprise and you will easily defeat them.
-First, make as many allies as you can, then advance through as many ages as you can to upgrade all your units. Make sure you can build Towers and Castles. Next, go directly next to your ally’s main city and surround it with towers. Build a castle every so often on your way from your city to theirs, so they cannot counterattack. Aftewards, build up an army of siege weapons (for the buildings) and cavalry (for everyone else), and position them inside your ally’s city. Finally, switch them to “Enemy”, sit back, and watch the city crumble.
-While playing a random map, use a team islands setting and have seven players. Set three of them as your allies, and four as enemies. Begin the game and go to the third button from the top right corner. Place check marks next to all your allies and click on “Food Please”, “Wood Please”, “Stone Please” or “Gold Please” in the box below. The only resource your allies will not give you is gold.
-Build any type of tower and place some of your military units behind the tower so that your opponents cannot see them. When they attack the tower, have your units come out and kill your opponents.
-When playing on a map with plenty of water, stay or walk near the shore or in the shallows. Use a heavy demolition ship to bomb your opponents. One heavy demolition ship can take out at least twenty infantry, monks, archers or light cavalry with it, or multiple scorpions and onagers. Two ships can take out knights, camels and trebuchets. Three ships can take out rams. Do not use them to bomb elephants; it is too costly unless you have a lot of resources.
-Always put swordsman on flat ground and archers on hilly ground during a battle
-At first in a regicide you will get ten villagers to start. Put three on wood, three on food, two on gold, and one on stone. Have your final villager build your military base, then slowly add villagers from your town center and put them on resources.
-If you build a long wall with several gates and your peasants are opening the gates for your enemies, you can block the gates. Click the gate and click the icon that appears in the left corner so it will remain closed until you open it again. Note: If you close all gates, not even your allies can get resources from your land.
-When under attack by an enemy and they are moving to your town center (or something you can garrison people in), click your stable and set the gather point to that building. Make some units. When your building are ungarrisons, your men will kill the enemy.
-In a three player game, when you become allied with one player, construct 15 battering rams and take them to your ally’s kingdom. Place them near the important buildings, such as the town center, etc. After that, take a mangonel, select “Attack Ground”, and?Right Click?the ally’s building. He will become an enemy. Use all your battering rams to destroy the ex-ally.
-Use the following trick when playing against the CPU and you have a neutral tribe and an ally that is currently at war with that neutral tribe. To aid your ally, create a group of five villagers. Upgrade the Loon tech, create university, advance the fortified wall, and gather stones as much as possible. Send the villagers to the ally base and create three to five fortified walls near the neutral tribe’s building. You want them to attack the newly created wall, and thus the adjacent building. While they are attacking their own building, create more fortified walls besides another building (for example the monastery or town center).
-Always build gates instead of walls around your city. They cost the same, but have a difference between their attack chances. If a wall is attacked one time, it is attacked 0.001 times. They will simply roam near your city outside, but cannot attack your city. Always try to make your city wide open. They cannot attack the gates, but will attack the buildings such as houses and barracks by means of archers, mangonels, and trebuchets. Do not make towers and castles for defense near your gates. The gates will not be attacked and you can progress without defense until you can attack. Your first priority should be to surround your city with gates and capture huge areas and resources.
-To gather more resources, you must create more villages. If the population is 75, you will need no less than 25 villagers so that they can provide more resources and allow you to create more soldiers. Before starting a multi-player game, take a tribe that has more research so that your men and buildings will be strong enough to withstand any type of attack.
-This trick requires a created map with at least one shah on it. Play the map and choose your shah. Bring it over to an enemy unit or building (preferably a house).?Right Click?on that object. The shah will start attacking it rapidly. The only drawback is that the shah has a very weak attack.
-Instead of building walls, build watch towers in a wall like formation. In front of this “wall”, build a castle.
-You can take advantage of the AI by building a wall around your entire base, except for a small and heavily fortified opening. The CPU will only enter through the opening you left and will get slaughtered if you have archers. You can even make a maze-like entrance, which will increase the time the enemy spends getting fired upon.
-Set up a game in “The Black Forest”. You will begin in a massive forest with a small village, depending on the settings. Death Match is recommended to get plenty of resources. Make sure you have a Onager or something that can destroy lots of trees very fast. Start tunneling into the trees, making walls and gates along the way. Place towers with archers behind each gate. Make large areas where you can put castles, barracks, churches, and town centers. This tactic will require about one hour.
-Take several villagers near your enemy’s base and build two of each building. Load all the buildings up with each type of unit. Cut the wood down with you villagers and ambush your enemy.
-The Japanese Samurai unit is incredibly powerful once fully upgraded. Get ten capped Rams and put four Samurai in each and any town will fall. Accompany the capped Rams with Cavalry and target your enemy’s Town Center and Castles. After they are destroyed, release the Samurai and watch them destroy everything.
Easy ambush win:
First, set “Diplomacy” to “Ally” with lock teams off and also the opponent set “Diplomacy” to “Ally”. After that, build an army powerful enough to destroy the towers and castles (if there are any), such as Onagers and Rams. Bring your army within your ally’s walls and set “Diplomacy” to “Enemy”. Then, attack at will.
Easy gold hints:
-Build a Monastery once you reach the Castle age and collect as many Relics as possible. For every Relic you have, you will get one gold per second. For example, if you have five Relics, you will get five gold per second.
-Build a Market as far away from your allies as possible and build 20 to 30 Trade Carts. Send them to trade with your allies. After all of your Trade Carts are built, you will get plenty of gold. If you have 30 built, in about ten minutes you will have earned at least 10,000 gold.
-If you are in the Black Forest, get over 20 Villagers to chop Wood (30 would work better). After you have 20,000 Wood, sell it for tons of gold.
-Destroy your weakest opponent, then finish off everything except its market. Make sure that the path between your market and opponent’s market is secure. Route at least twenty trade carts to trade and get tons of easy gold.
Efficient boar hunting:
Gather every villages that you want to hunt the boar with in between it and your town center (preferably closer to the town center). Then, send your scout cavalry to attack the boar. As soon as the animal begins to attack the scout, order him to flee behind the villagers, then command the villagers to shoot the boar. This saves valuable time and resources that would otherwise be wasted by building a mill beside the boar. It also makes the trip to the town center or mill much quicker. Another way to effectively hunt boar is to attack it with military units until it is low on health, then finishing it off with villagers. Note: Boars hunted with military units will not be worth meat.
Explore enemy territory without being attacked:
Advance to the Feudal age, build a Market, then create a Trade Cart. Use the Trade Cart to safely explore your opponent’s territory. If your opponent is neutral, they will not harm the Trade Cart. Another trick is to create several Trade Carts and place them evenly across your opponent’s area to see everything they are doing, without having to spend thousands of gold to research Spies/Treason.
Easy taunts hint:
Type in the number that appears next to the taunt to access it easily (for example, “Long time, no siege” and “Don’t point that thing at me”).
Ensemble Studios logo easter egg:
Enable the?marco?code in mission one of the William Wallace campaign to see the Ensemble Studios logo on the west side of the map.
Enemy believes you are an ally glitch:
Go to Death Match mode and put your opponents on Team 1, then set yourself on Team 1. Activate the “Team Together” option and play. The enemy will think you are an ally, even when you switch your stance with them to enemy.
Walk on water glitch:
Create a scenario and make all allies and enemies as desired, but have at least two enemies. Make the map have water and build an enemy bridge or go to a campaign with a bridge (for example, Attila the Hun). Enable the?torpedo?code, followed by the number of whatever player it is with a bridge. The bridge will disappear. After that, click a unit and walk on the “bridge”.