The king can kill enemy units too

[Miguellissimo]

when I remember correctly this was not possible in the original game

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[StepS-]

The Shah unit, but not the King, was able to deal very low damage (between 0 and 1, with the UI display rounding it to 0). In the original game (without the Conquerors expansion) it even had an animation of AoE1's Nuke Trooper when attacking (and a strange colored crown above his head), but has no animation anymore in AoC.
It can take three hours to destroy a castle with a Shah.
Demonstration:

[franciscod]

That's hilarous, StepS-! probably a forgotten joke lol

[eaterjolly]

They probably wanted to leave the animation for the shah, since the player never controls one in the campaigns and they wanted someone to be able to roleplay a shah killing a character in the editor, or they thought they might need it for the Barbarossa campaign and later decided against it which might explain it getting patched out.