| “ | One island shared by you and your allies, and another inhabited by your enemies. The islands are not connected by shallows, so beware of enemy Transport Ships. | ” |
| —In-game description | ||
Team Islands is a map in Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. A very similar map, Corsica and Sardinia, appears in Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Knights of the Mediterranean.
Each team is placed on their own island. The number of islands generated varies with the number of teams playing. For example, if there are 4 teams with 2 players each, there will be 4 islands on the map. When playing a free-for-all game, each player has its own island, becoming almost no different from a normal Islands map.
The islands themselves are fairly large with plenty of resources. Pockets of forests are generated, so wood is plentiful. Stone and Gold Mines can be found in fairly normal piles. Also, there are some extra herds of passive huntables (like Deer) and some additional aggressive huntables (like Boars) on each island. The start-up for each player is the standard one with 8 small herdables near (or 6 Cows), 6 Berry Bushes, normal piles of stone and gold, 2 aggressive huntables and a herd of 3-4 passive huntables. Wild beasts like Wolves can be found scattered on the islands and they commonly appear near the coastline. Relics are present on the map in normal amounts and more or less evenly scattered between opposing islands.
Viable tactics[]
Team Islands promotes teamwork. The better working and more compatible team typically triumphs over the other teams. Players on the pocket positions on the map may specialize on economy and turtling the island, while the flank players perform naval raids and early landings. Sling tactics are common on Team Islands.
Detecting Transport Ships is key, as the player can stop enemy attacks before they penetrate deep into their territory. In order to prevent landings, many players often place buildings near the shoreline that leads to the opponent's island(s) in order to get sight of the coastline, or put their navy to patrol key points where opponents may land; placing towers early in order to defend from a landing is also viable and advisable, and the starting scout units may also be used for getting sight of the coast when the team finishes exploring their island. Regular turtling strategies may be viable in several circumstances, but here, the defense must focus much more on preventing landings, and is much more advisable to place towers and Castles near the coastline rather than placing walls.
As resources are not much of a problem, if playing with standard victory settings, the map tend to lend players to building Wonders, which in this case is a very viable late-game strategy. Since the map is designed for playing in teams, Booming can complement nicely a Sling strategy, and for this, the player specializing on that must start to make Fishing Ships as early as possible. In order to keep the Fishing Ships safe it is advisable to create them on the back of the island, as enemy ships can be stopped at the water choke points on each side of the island. Unlike maps like Archipelago or Islands, since the team shares the same island, it much more safe to trade using Trade Carts rather than Trade Cogs; however, both options are viable for getting extra gold.
Aggressive players may apply strategies that also works on other island maps, like Galley rushes, Fire Galley rushes or Land-to-rush strategies. The size of the islands sometimes makes teams to have blind spots on the coast that may enable aggressive players to sneak and land on the opponent's island. In long games where players reach the Imperial Age, making use of Cannon Galleons will be required for late-game landings in most cases.
Civilizations[]
Civilizations that have advantages in Team islands:
- Naval civilizations: Vikings, Spanish, Byzantines, Malay, Italians, Portuguese, Persians, Koreans, Japanese, Saracens, Berbers, Sicilians, Bengalis, Dravidians, etc.
- Civilizations with good defense and particularly good towers and Castles: Koreans, Inca, Teutons, Byzantines, Turks, Britons, Japanese, etc.
Civilizations that may struggle:
Gallery[]
