Age of Empires Windows PC Ensemble Studios 1997

Computer Game History | Computer Game Reviews | Amiga Game Reviews

[§1.0] Age of Empires

[§2.0] Rise of Rome

[§3.0] Age of Empires II

[§4.0] The Conquerors

Age of Empires 1 Review

[§1.0]

Microsoft released the original Age of Empires for Windows 95 and NT 4.0 SP3 in October of 1997. Developed by Ensemble Studios of the U.S.A., Age of Empires is an RTS that was inspired by Blizzard's WarCraft of 1994 and Westwood's Command & Conquer of 1995, both of which have their origin in Westwood's Dune 2 of 1992.

Age of Empires employs mechanics from its RTS predecessors as well as concepts from Sid Meier's Civilization of 1991, such as ages, wonders, research, trade, diplomacy and technological advancement.

Age of Empires campaign narrative is impersonal and historical rather than personal and story-driven. Real life heroes of ancient history do feature here and there, but they are not the focus: the empire is the focus. Each of the four campaigns consists of 8-12 historical scenarios that broadly follow the empire in question through the ages of advancement, from Stone Age to Iron Age.

The ages are Stone, Tool, Bronze and Iron. In Age of Empires the Nomad/Stone Age consists of exploring, hunting, gathering and storing resources whereas the other three are agrarian and settlement-focused, though not without foraging.

In this article faction refers to empire, kingdom or civilization; they are interchangeable terms but faction is universal whereas the others are context-specific.

Players advance their faction through the ages by acquiring resources, constructing buildings from resources, and researching theories or technologies offered by the buildings, which requires additional resources. Once the required number of buildings have been constructed (two buildings of the current age) and the required number of resources have been stored (a surplus of food and/or gold), the faction can begin "researching" the next age. Once the faction advances to the next age all of its buildings are upgraded, which means more powerful units can be generated by the buildings and more advanced research can be conducted at the buildings.

The speed at which a faction advances through the ages is dependent on faction-type, the resources to which it has access, how many villagers and buildings it assigns to the endeavor, and the order in which buildings are constructed and technologies are researched. Naturally, rival faction proximity greatly impacts the speed of faction advancement. If a rival faction is in close proximity time and resources need to be spent on building up offensive or defensive forces, thereby slowing resource acquisition, building construction and technological research.

An Iron-age empire is not necessarily stronger than a Bronze-age one; it is potentially stronger but not necessarily stronger in practice. An empire that has rushed to Iron may not have built up an offensive or defensive force; it may not have built as many buildings; it may not have conducted as much research; it may not have focused on its factional strengths; its factional strengths may not contend with those of its Bronze-age rival under map-based parameters, which vary greatly.

Each Age of Empires campaign progressively advances to the Iron Age via a sequence of objective-based scenarios whereas Random Map, Scenario and Death Match modes often offer full progression from Stone to Iron Age within one, unbroken game session.

Not all scenario objectives in Age of Empires are based on conquest. For example, a scenario may involve simply building a Wonder of the World of the Iron Age that stands for 2,000 years (before another faction manages the same feat). 50 villagers can build a Wonder in a minute of game-time, but the Wonder must stand (be defended) for 2,000 years or 15 minutes of game-time.

After winning, losing or surrendering a scenario both timeline and summary screens are displayed, giving players a breakdown on their progression as well as a total score based on their achievements in various categories. There are also sub-screens that display military, economic, religious and technological achievements. The screens can also be called up at any time, during play.

Age of Empires features 12 playable factions based on ancient empires, but only four of the factions feature campaigns (Egypt, Greece, Babylon and Yamato). The other eight factions are only playable in non-campaign modes such as Random Map, Scenario and Death Match. Age of Empires non-campaign modes support single-player mode with up to three computer-controlled factions or multi-player mode with up to eight human-controlled factions, each of which can be friend, foe or neutral.

WarCraft and Command & Conquer only feature two factions, and Dune 2 and StarCraft only three, but Age of Empires factions play very much alike (in comparison) due to its adherence to the history of ancient empires, whereas previous RTS-game factions were fundamentally different due to their sci-fi/fantasy themes (StarCraft especially).

Each Age of Empires faction has bonuses or penalities that barely register when playing through the four campaigns sequentially. However, it is certainly more efficient to play to the strengths of factions whenever possible. Faction differences become more apparent when going up against other human players.

Note that factions are not described in-game and their bonuses/penalties are not enumerated in-game: you need to read the manual, consult the foldout or access the HTML-based help file, external to the game. This is not a huge deal but it would have been easy to add.

No faction has access to every building, technology and unit. All factions have access to basic unit-types (villagers, infantry, cavalry, archers, priests, naval vessels and siege weapons), but not to all variations or tiers thereof. For example, the Persians lack the hoplite, phalanx and centurion line of elite infantry whereas the Greeks lack war elephants and don't have access to the full legion line.

In addition, relative faction strength varies based on the historical era in which the faction currently finds itself. The Age of a faction dictates what it can build, produce and research, which may or may not be subject to bonuses and penalties. One faction may be relatively strong in late-Stone but relatively weak in late-Iron whereas another may be relatively weak in late-Stone but relatively strong in early-Bronze.

For example, Yamato and Assyrian villagers benefit from a 30% movement speed increase. The early game consists of wilderness exploration and resource-gathering; advancement to the Tool Age is dependent on resource-gathering in the wilderness (foraging). It stands to reason, therefore, that Yamato and Assyrian empires will reach the Tool Age before other factions, all else being equal. Thus, Yamato and Assyrian players may attempt an early rush against factions that become stronger in subsequent eras, such as Phoenicia, Babylon and Hittite. Early-game Assyrian skirmishes can be a nightmare for such factions since Assyrian archers benefit from a 40% rate-of-fire increase. In early-Bronze Yamato is stronger than Assyrian in cavalry whereas Assyrian become stronger in cavalry by late-Bronze via chariot archers.

Bonuses/penalties and technology trees of factions generally align with basic readings of ancient history.

Age of Empires unit stats are Attack, Armor, Piercing Armor (missile attack armor), Range, Hitpoints (HPs), Rate of Attack/Fire (RoA/RoF) and Movement Speed. Catapults have splash damage (AoE). Priests can heal all non-naval units (including siege weapons) whereas villagers can repair buildings and naval units. There are no medic units or hospitals for healing. Of course, there are no flight-capable or submersible units in Age of Empires.

Consider Persian war elephant cavalry (15 attack, 0 armor, 600 HPs, trample damage to adjacents) versus Greek centurion infantry (30 attack, 8 armor, 160 HPs). When fully upgraded war elephants receive +6 armor whereas centurions receive +4 attack, +6 armor and +2 shield. Whereas (Persian-only) war elephants receive a faction-based movement speed increase of 50%, Greek centurions receive a faction-based 30% movement rate increase that stacks with the 25% movement rate increase from Aristocracy research at the goverment center. Both cost 40 gold per unit to generate but the war elephant requires 170 food, the centurion only 60.

Factions that allow for war elephant suit new players (600 HPs is very forgiving of errors) whereas skirmishing with Assyrian bowmen and long-range sniping and spraying with Minoan composite bowmen is for the veterans.

Assyrian Iron-age archery versus Minoan Iron-age archery:

Assyrian bowmen receive +40% rate of fire increase from Stone to Iron Age, and Assyrian chariot archers receive it in Bronze and Iron ages. On the other hand, Minoan composite bowmen receive +2 range in Bronze and Iron ages.

Greek Iron-age infantry versus Choson Iron-age infantry:

The Greeks are lacking in infantry selection but their academy-based Hoplite, Phalanx, and Centurion hit hard and receive a +30% movement rate increase which stacks with the +25% movement rate conferred by Aristocracy. On the other hand, the Choson receive the full line of barracks-based infantry and their Long Swordsman and Legion receive +80 HPs, but the Choson only receive the Hoplite of the academy line.

In siege warfare the best units are heavy catapult, juggernaught (firing inland from shorelines), rapid-fire helepolis and stampeding hordes of war elephants. However, catapult and helepolis require support units because they are glass cannons: a single unit of cavalry can dismantle an entire line of siege engines in the blink of an eye. Indeed, an enraged mob of villagers can make short work of siege engines. Thus, combined-armed tactics must be employed. On the other hand, war elephants need almost no support (in the campaigns), but level towns more slowly (but also more safely in that friendly-fire is a non-issue).

The effectiveness of a specific unit-type depends on map-type. Indeed, a unit-type can range from utterly useless to eminently useful, depending on map-type. On inland maps warships are utterly useless (unless there is a lake) whereas on coastal maps they excel: a fleet of juggernaughts bombarding coastal cities is a sight to behold.

On inland maps cavalry and chariots excel but on archipelagic maps, not so much.

Water-heavy map-types favor late-developing empires and those with naval supremacy whereas inland map-types suit early-developing empires and those with cavalry/chariot supremacy. Bodies of water separating empires gives late-developing empires time to develop and assemble navies (Phoenician fleets of juggernaughts), all-but-impenetrable defenses (Babylonian towers/walls) and reinforced siege engines (Hittite heavy catapults) whereas vast stretches of open land allow for early rushes with infantry, archers and cavalry/chariots.

Age of Empires limits faction population to 50 units each but supports marquee selection aka group-bandboxing of up to 25 units (16 more than WarCraft 2 but 38 fewer than C&C). The population limit can be increased to up to 200 via Limit=x command-line switch, but populations above 50 are not officially supported [2].

Population (the number of units) is limited by the number of houses that have been built. Each house or town center grants +4 population. Thus, building one town center and 11 houses grants a population of 48. Building a 12th house only adds +2 due to the 50-unit cap. Every unit has the same population weight or footprint, from a simple villager up to a Juggernaught warship. Population composition can be manually tailored by killing off unwanted units. Note that watch towers do not count as units even though players can select their targets. The number of towers and other buildings is only capped by resources.

The more units that are assigned to a task, the quicker that task will be completed. This includes attacking, building, gathering, mining, repairing and healing. In other words, the effects of combined unit actions stack assuming the units in question have space to swarm around and access targets. 

Likewise, the more unit-generating buildings one has, the more quickly units can be produced. It is almost always necessary to double-up on certain buildings. Take the barracks for example. One barracks produces one unit per interval but two produces two per interval, thereby doubling the speed of unit production. Or one barracks can produce a unit while another researches a unit upgrade.

Similarly, one "research" building (storage pit) can research one technology and the other another, but the other cannot research the same technology; that is, specific "units" of technology research do not stack across multiple buildings. Again, it is often necessary to double-up on storage pits in order to more quickly research the group of technologies (an icon-cluster) offered by the storage pit. Indeed, in big games it is not uncommon to have one dozen storage pits (but two or three usually suffices for research). Naturally, scalability is dependent on available resources.

Age of Empires features four ages, five map sizes, five map-types, nine terrain-types, 17 constructable buildings, 44 unit-types, 38 researchable technologies and four main harvestable or mineable resources (food, wood, stone and gold). In addition, there are five difficulty levels, four main victory conditions and fully customizable victory conditions via the Scenario Editor.

Harvestable food-based flora consists only of berries (which are taken to the granary) whereas gatherable food-based fauna consists of fish (tuna and salmon), whale, gazelle, elephant, lion and alligator (the meat is taken to the storage pit or the docks). Gazelle can be herded closer to stores before being slain whereas lions, elephants and alligators fight back. Lions can also attack gazelle. The lack of harvestable flora is balanced by farming, shoreline spear-fishing and deep-sea fishing and whaling. Spear-fishing accumulates food faster than does foraging berries or hunting wild game.

Farming begins slowly but picks up pace and eventually matches fishing, hunting and berry-picking once the empire thoroughly researches food production. In addition, farming is reliable in the long-term since desertified farms can simply be replaced with new ones whereas wildlife and wild plants never regrow. Farm-building requires wood but most maps have more than enough trees.

Here you can see the different roles villager units assume in Age of Empires. "Villager" is the idle state and the attacking state of villager units whereas the others are specific roles.

As can be seen, villagers have only Attack 3 and 25 HPs. However, seven of the 13 factions have Jihad-capable villagers. Thus, those dozen or so "farmers" move like the wind and fight back with Attack 3+7 and 65 HPs.

Unlike Command & Conquer's Tiberium resource, Age of Empires resources do not regenerate over time: even though an entire age has past, not a single fish respawns and not a single berry bush regrows.

As for difficulty, campaign modes are dead-easy whereas going up against experienced human players is where the real challenge lies. Single-player difficulty is impacted by difficulty mode selected, number of rival factions, screen resolution and game-speed settings.

On the easiest difficulty setting in campaign mode, only one enemy may attack your settlement per interval, whereas on the hardest difficulty setting five enemies may attack per interval. Multiply that for each unit-generator source.

Age of Empires Engine: Genie

Age of Empires is built on Ensemble's proprietary Genie engine. In terms of controls, mechanics and graphics and animation the engine is eminently capable. The game is 2D and features pre-rendered art assets. The playfield is presented in ¾ top-down isometric perspective. The playfield can be scrolled in eight directions, but the scrolling is NOT super-smooth and screens cannot be parked with pixel-perfect precision. However, the sprites are fluidly-animated and drop-shadowed. The sprite designs and animations are really well done. There are FMV-based intro and outro cutscenes for each campaign (cinematization). The overall presentation is spartan and the user interface is responsive.

Age of Empires terrain is tile-based and employs seven levels of unit-negotiable verticality and four layers of non-engageable verticality via cliff tiles. Stacked negotiable layers form hills whereas stacked cliffs form steep mountainsides with winding trails leading up to the summit. Sloping terrain impacts unit movement rate.

As in Blizzard's WarCraft 2 there are two layers of fog of war, which are based on unit vision radius: unexplored tiles are blacked-out whereas previously explored tiles external to unit vision radius are dimmed. Vision radius is not impacted by terrain height, only by unit vision capability. For example, mounted units have a wider vision radius than infantrymen.

The engine supports three game-speeds and three pathfinding resolutions.

Age of Empires Virtues

• Concepts inspired by Civ and other TBS games
• Historically-themed (earlier RTS games were themed on sci-fi or medieval fantasy)
• Easy-to-use Scenario Editor
• Robust multi-player support
• Random maps put emphasis on player skill and quick thinking, rather than on memorization
• By "shallows" tiles is meant shallow water terrain tiles that are traversable by all units. Shallows tiles are the only tiles that are traversable by all units (on-foot, wheeled or floated units)
• Trading and tributes
• Wildlife acts as both food resource and threat
• The ability to "relieve" enemies of their artifacts
• Priest unit abilities: religious conversion and healing (but WarCraft employed similar "spells" three years before AoE). Priests have seven temple-based upgrades (seven factions receive all seven upgrades, two factions only one upgrade)
• There are no scripted sequences or narrative interjections that interrupt the flow of campaign scenarios (unlike Blizzard's StarCraft of 1998)
• Catapults can target a point on the ground to repeatedly fire upon (in addition to seeking targets)
• Spartan presentation
• Responsive controls and user interface
• The AI always targets the unit with the least health remaining (HPs), so never send units into battle that are on their last legs, thinking they will survive because they are supported by lots of other units. Chances are they will be targeted and vanquished when they could have been healed or repaired.

Age of Empires Flaws

• You cannot queue units for building. You must manually click the building and then a unit icon to generate each and every unit, one by one [1]. Building can "sort of" be queued. If you start constructing other buildings before the previous one is completed, the villagers will circle back after the final assignment is completed and build the others without your intervention (a time-saver when building rows of adjacent buildings, such as houses).
• There are no unit formations. In a game that attempts to represent actual battles from history, one would have thought that formational movement and positioning would be included, but no. That said, archer units tend to form arcs around targets.
• Faction population is limited to 50 units. Hector versus Alexander the Great? Still only 50 units per side. That said, we need to factor in the technical limitations of PCs in 1997. And networking that supports up to eight simultaneous factions [2]. The game animates a lot, not just units.
• Pathfinding is poor. Units often get stuck on other units. Units with faster movement rates will not overtake slower units. A single pathfinding problem can cost you dearly, so beware. This is the biggest criticism, but it is a criticism that can be leveled at many real-time games, of all genre.
• The pathfinding is worst around rivers. AI units will bunch up around meanders. You will sometimes find one dozen AI units bunched up at a meander, unable to travel to their destinations.
• Computer-controlled factions only seem clever in campaigns if their AI (such that it is) is bolstered by conditional code.
• Ranged units are all but useless at hitting moving targets unless the targets are moving parallel or perpendicular to their aim; they always fire where the target was at the time of the click rather than where the target will be. Imagine how frustrating it is to watch a hail of two dozen arrows miss their mark on a target that you, the player, could probably hit in real life.
• Random Map games can begin at a specified Age but cannot be limited to a specified Age.
• In Random Map games of Conquest the AI wastes time and resources building Wonders (which can only be disabled in scenarios built by players in the Scenario Editor).
• Imagine a map divided in half by water, with one shallows crossing. The player's Babylonian empire builds a wall blocking that crossing, but the AI's Persian force will not even attempt to destroy the wall, even though it has 15 elephants standing around in town, doing nothing -- for hours. But if that wall is not built the elephants will stampede over that crossing towards the player's town, even if unprovoked. And yes, this is on the highest difficulty setting. And yes, the AI had stopped building and reached its peak. And yes, this is on Conquest mode.
• The AI does not take advantage of elephants as a food source (300 food per elephant). It doesn't engage in spear-fishing or wall-building either. Thus, advantage: player.
• Random map settings are not saved to a file. This means you have to retailor the settings to your liking every single time you play a Random Map -- even if you didn't exit the game. The game has no config file (*.cfg); any saveable settings are registry-based only (e.g., screen resolution).
• The savegame register lists savegames alphabetically instead of chronologically with the latest savegame at the top of the list.
• Savegames get corrupted if the progress is saved when a projectile is in flight. Projectiles take flight often. Attemping to load a corrupted save causes the game to CTD. That said, this bug deters most in-combat save-scumming.
• You cannot have villagers construct buildings if a villager is occupying the tile upon which the building is to be constructed. The villager should automatically get out of the way (as in StarCraft), but doesn't.
• Age of Empires music is not as memorable as WarCraft, StarCraft and Command & Conquer music.
• The clang of melee battle is too loud and hard on the ears.
• No stealth mechanic.

Scenario Example: Land Grab (Greek campaign)

You are commanding an Athenian tribe in 2000 B.C. Your force of four villagers and four clubmen starts off in the south. To the east are Tyrinians (yellow), to the north Ionians (brown) and to the west Dorians (red). The Dorians are your target and the biggest threat. You need to take out their five farms and establish five of your own, which means you need to build a town center, two houses and two stone age buildings as well as accumulate 500 food to advance to the Tool Age, which allows you to build a market followed by farms.

At this point, the biggest and most reliable source of food is the generous berry bush cluster in the Dorian settlement to the west. The Dorians are busily harvesting the berries, but the settlement is guarded by clubmen and barracks, which should be your first target. The longer you take to settle, the fewer berries you will have. Note that you should repeatedly right-click targets in order to have your units surround them quickly (because the pathfinding is poor).

After you have taken out the clubmen/barracks, you will be free to build your town center in the middle of the berry bush cluster. Indeed, you can start building the town center even as the clubmen/barracks are being attacked.

To stop the Dorians building a new barracks, more farms, stable and archery range, you should take out their farms and villagers straight after you take out their barracks. Once that is done, no more Dorians will spawn from the town center.

For lumber you should build your storage pit between the two forests to the east of the berry bushes. Tyrinian and Ionian clubmen may attack during this time. Thus, you will need to build barracks, archery range and stable of your own in order to defend your settlement from raids as you build up resources and an army.

Note that Tyrinian archers are difficult to tame if you don't have a few mounted scouts patrolling the southern entrance to your settlement. Computer-controlled shoot-and-run archers can pick off an entire mob of clubmen with ease whereas mounted scouts run down the archers as soon as they are fired upon, which is better than relying on watch towers for defense (which archers rarely fire upon).

Once you reach the Tool Age, you should be free to build five farms and win the scenario.

In this scenario there is no gold to be mined, stone does not need to be mined, and you cannot advance past the Tool Age.

Alternatively, you could target the Tyrinians and establish your settlement in their region. Your settlement would be resource-heavy (fish, berries and gazelle) and be naturally shielded by forest and bodies of water. You could then seal off two entrances with walls and place guard towers just behind the walls, thereby fending off any attack easily and without casualties. However, the Dorian settlement will expand during this time, by building up to 10 guard towers around their settlement perimeter. In addition, the Dorians may take out the Ionians in the north.

Age of Empires Random Maps

Random Maps range in size between small and huge. The map-types aka terrains are inland, coastal, highlands, small islands and large islands. By default each participating empire is given a town center, three villagers and a small pool of resources to get them going. In addition, each participant receives desposits of wood, stone and gold as well as berry bushes, wild life and fish/whale (if applicable) in close proximity to their settlement.

Every empire must first hunt, fish and/or harvest berries in order to increase their population and snowball their resource-gathering. Every empire must also cut down trees for wood in order to construct houses and other buildings. Food and wood are the priority in the early stages, not stone and gold. 

Phoenician villagers are the best lumberjacks (+30% wood), Persians are the best hunters (+30% meat), Babylonians are the best stone miners (+30% stone) and Egyptians are the best gold miners (+20% gold), whereas Assyrian and Yamato villagers are the best explorers and foragers (+30% movement rate).

The best farmers are the Sumerians. The Sumerians receive 200% farm production as well as domestication (+75%), plow (+75%), irrigation (+75%) and wheel (+30% farmer movement rate). Sumerian farms yield up to 725 food before they become desertified.

Each empire is allocated its fair share of resources, but the positioning of the resources varies. For example, a berry bush cluster may spawn closer to the town center for one empire, but be further afield for the other. Or three elephants may spawn in a group for one empire, but be spread out for the other. Or one settlement may begin on the coast and benefit from spear-fishing, but not the other. Forests, ridges and bodies of water may act as walls for one settlement, but not so much for the other. And so on and so forth. The terrain is randomly generated and the positioning of resources is randomly generated, but not to the point of unfairness (there are constants).

Early on, early-developing empires may attempt to attack neigboring empires whereas late-developing empires will attempt to set up defenses against early attacks. Stone Age rushes are possible with villagers and clubmen, but it is risky. Tool Age rushes are the most common rush. The best Tool Age rusher is the Assyrians (+30% villager movement rate and +40% archer RoF). The targets of the rush are villagers, unit-generating buildings and the town center. The object of a rush is to wipe out the rival settlement's units, cut off its unit-generation capacity and appropriate its resources afterwards. Unless the target of the rush is the only rival, the tedious process of destroying all of its buildings can be left for later; it's a formality.

Example of Assyrian archer rush versus Minoans on Random Map: an army of one score Assyrian bowmen took out 33 units and razed 19 buildings in 5 minutes. Building the settlement and assembling the force took 25 minutes. The Assyrians are blue, the Minoans red. You can see the Minoan settlement size on the map, in red.

Note: This time can easily be beaten. I make no claims to optimal execution, only optimal conception. For starters, I could have sent in my one dozen villagers to speed up the process. This is just an example.

But what would happen if we researched the Wheel and trained Assyrian chariot archers? Afterall, over bowmen they get +1 attack, +2 range, double HPs and faster movement speed. Well, by the time we reach the Bronze Age the Minoans have built more watch towers and have access to priests and catapults. On this map it took me 46 minutes to build that up, resulting in 47 kills and 34 razings. Instead, it is more time-efficient to build half a dozen catapults and take out the Minoans before they get their own catapults (35 minutes, 51 kills, 24 razings).

On the other hand, one could forego martial units entirely and simply rush with a mob of 20 or so villagers. The result? 14 kills, 8 razings and 8 losses in 14 minutes.

As per the above settings but with eight players (seven AI empires) and Assyrian bowmen, the result was 185 kills, 86 razings and 22 losses in 47 minutes.

Age of Empires Technical

Age of Empires requires a Pentium 90 MHz CPU, 16 megs of RAM and 1 meg of vRAM. Age of Empires natively displays in 4:3 aspect ratio at 640x480, 800x600 or 1024x768 resolution. The Age of Empires user interface is designed for 640x480. In 640x480 the active drawspace is 640x334 because the UI consumes 146 vertical pixels. Higher resolutions make the game easier by showing more of the playfield. Age of Empires requires DirectX 5.0.

Age of Empires multi-player supports DirectPlay serial, modem, TCP/IP and IPX.

Age of Empires was distributed on 1x CD-ROM and installs to hard disk drive via the Age of Empires installation program. The install size of Age of Empires is 176 megs and consists of 240 files.

Age of Empires Credits

Age of Empires was lead-designed by Rick Goodman, lead-programmed by Angelo Laudon, lead-drawn by Brad Crow, and composed by David and Stephen Rippy.

Conclusion

Age of Empires combines the gameplay of WarCraft with concepts drawn from Civilization, which are two of my favorite games. Overall, I give Age of Empires 8½/10.

The main strength of Age of Empires is its randomly generated maps that offer practically inexhaustible replay value, especially in multi-player mode. This is Age of Empires' main claim to fame. The map-creation RNG generates varied terrains and spawns resource deposits fairly, giving all participating empires a fighting chance to emerge victorious at the end, of what could be, a session that spans several hours.

On the other hand, if you are a solitaire player the campaign modes of Westwood and Blizzard RTS games are superior -- not because they are story-driven, but because they are more challenging, feature better design, and are simply more entertaining to play through.

Even armchair historians won't be overly impressed by Age of Empires' history-lite treatment of ancient civilizations. If you're into history the RTS genre cannot satisfy you: TBS and wargames is where it's at.

This review was based on the original Age of Empires, patched to v1.0c.

Rise of Rome Expansion 1998

[§2.0]

Microsoft released Rise of Rome for Windows 95 and NT 4.0 SP3 in October of 1998. Developed by Ensemble Studios of the U.S.A., Rise of Rome is an expansion for Age of Empires. Rise of Rome installs to the AoE install folder, but is run from a separate *.exe.

Rise of Rome adds four empires, four campaigns, five units, four map-types and four technologies. Rise of Rome also adds queuing of unit production and a gigantic map size. Base game content can be accessed from within Rise of Rome, meaning that queuing is available in base-game campaigns [1].

As its name suggests, only the Roman empire is playable in Rise of Rome's campaign mode (but base-game campaigns are also available within RoR).

Rise of Rome scenarios feature sprawling maps jam-packed with walls, towers, buildings and units. Siege warfare and massive reinforced fortifications are par for the course. This reflects Roman building prowess. Overall, Rise of Rome campaigns are more epic and involved than base-game campaigns.

Rise of Rome was distributed on 1x CD-ROM and installs to hard disk drive via the Rise of Rome installation program. With Rise of Rome installed the AoE install size becomes 216 megs and consists of 414 files.

Rise of Rome was lead-designed by Sandy Petersen, lead-programmed by Tim Deen, lead-drawn by Scott Winsett, and lead-composed by Stephen Rippy.

• Empires added by Rise of Rome: Carthaginian, Macedonian, Palmyran and Roman.
• Map-types added by Rise of Rome: continental, hill country, Mediterranean and shallows.
• Unit-types added by Rise of Rome: Armored Elephant, Camel Rider, Fire Galley, Scythe Chariot and Slinger.
• Technologies added by Rise of Rome: Logistics, Martyrdom, Medicine and Tower Shield.

Age of Empires II Review

[§3.0]

Microsoft released the original Age of Empires II: Age of Kings for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0 SP5 in September of 1999. Developed by Ensemble Studios of the U.S.A., Age of Empires II is the sequel to the Age of Empires of 1997, which is the original AoE RTS.

Unless otherwise noted (e.g., by qualifiers such as "fully-upgraded"), quoted stats are base stats from the original Age of Empires II. Stats differ enormously based on Age, factional bonuses and technological research. For example, the base stat for the town center building is 2400 HPs, but Imperial-age Persian town centers have 5808 HPs.

To save me repeating myself this review only covers the sequel in so far as it notably differs from the original. Readers can consult the above-linked review for an overview of Age of Empires concepts, mechanics and gameplay. I utterly abhor sequel reviews that act as if the sequel originated this or that when, in point of fact, the original already had it (99% of computer game commentary).

By "notable differences", I am referring to the likes of unit garrisoning, gated walls, engine enhancements, stat-presentation and other facts and figures that allow me to compare the sequel with the original and assess the historical significance of the sequel. By the time Age of Empires II came out RTS gameplay had been mastered by Westwood and Blizzard three times over, each. What did Age of Empires II bring to the table that was new?

Whereas the original Age of Empires was set in ancient times the sequel is set in the Middle Ages and treats medieval history. Age of Empires II features five campaigns each consisting of 6-7 historical scenarios. The five campaigns are William Wallace of the Celts, Joan of Arc of the Franks, Barbarossa of the Teutons, Genghis Khan of the Mongols and Saladin of the Saracens.

Age of Empires II features 13 playable factions based on medieval empires, but only five of the factions feature campaigns (Celts, Franks, Teutons, Mongols and Saracens). The other eight factions are only playable in non-campaign modes such as Random Map, Regicide, Scenario and Death Match. Age of Empires II non-campaign modes support single-player mode with up to seven computer-controlled factions or multi-player mode with up to eight human-controlled factions, each of which can be friend, foe or neutral.

Age-wise, ancient Stone, Tool, Bronze and Iron of the original is subbed out for medieval Dark, Feudal, Castle and Imperial in the sequel. Technologically, and in so far as it impacts gameplay, the differences are minimal. Indeed, some ancient units of the original would give medieval units of the sequel a run for their money. [1]

Age of Empires II employs the Genie engine of Age of Empires, but with enhancements to controls, pathfinding and terrain-mapping. Sequel Genie is an enhancement and expansion upon original Genie, not a hard-coded rewrite. Additional features of sequel Genie include four units formations, three unit stances, waypoint movement, unit gathering points, unit garrisoning, market trading, wheeled trading (in addition to floated trading), game-recording, team bonuses, in-game technology tree displays, and wall-inserted portcullis gates through which units can pass, providing they are not locked.

Portcullis gates can be placed down before walls, but they usually only assume the desired angle when walls have first been placed to orient them. (Gates do have wall-endings but gates usually don't assume the desired angle by themselves.) Portcullis gates are much tankier than walls (base 2750 HPs / 1800 HPs), but Byzantine walls out-HP gates by 200 HPs (gate max 4000 / wall max 4200). Portcullis gates can be manually locked and unlocked; they automatically open and close for units if they are unlocked. Portcullis gates cannot close on top of units (to crush them).

Unit garrisoning allows units to enter and exit keeps, castles and town centers, which are fortified buildings constructed by villagers. Garrisoned units slowly heal, are fully protected by the building's armor and hitpoints, and can attack enemy units and buildings that are within range. When the garrison incurs non-trivial damage it catches fire and units are auto-ejected but can repair the building (if they are villager units and have resources in reserve). Unit garrisoning constitutes the most notable change to Age of Empires gameplay because unit garrisoning hinders rushing with cheap, early units. For example, villagers can take refuge in the town center and mow down raiders while protected by the town center; the raiders cannot attack the villagers until they have set the town center alight and forced the villagers to evacuate (town centers have 2400 HPs).

Castles auto-fire volleys of arrows at the units and buildings of factions that are set to Enemy on the diplomacy screen. Players can also manually designate castle targets.

Castle-fire out-ranges most units but castles can hardly be considered safe spaces since all factions have access to 16-range / 200-attack trebuchets (and the AI always employs them, even on the easiest difficulty setting). Thus, cavalry is a necessary support to castles which would otherwise be sitting ducks. Trebs placed behind castles can support castles as well, but one dozen trebs are needed because treb-fire is inaccurate. After proactive cavalry bombard towers are the best counter to ram-convoys.

As it pertains to maximum defensive structural fortification, the Persians have the tankiest town centers by far (5808 HPs), followed by the Byzantines (3360 HPs). The Byzantines have the tankiest castles by far (7720 HPs) as well as the tankiest walls by far (4200 HPs), followed by the Britons (6908 HPs / 3000 HPs). Persian gates and walls are weaker (2750 HPs / 1800 HPs) whereas Goth walls are the weakest (250 HPs) and Goths cannot build gates at all. In addition, the Byzantines have the tankiest towers (keep: 3150 HP; bombard 3108), followed by the Chinese and the Turks (keep: 2723 HPs; bombard 2686 HPs), whereas Goths have the weakest towers (1234 HPs) and no keeps, but they do get third-tier castles (5808 HPs). Thus, the Byzantines are the strongest defensive fortifier overall, followed by the Britons.

On the other hand, Briton town centers cost -50%, Frankish castles cost -25%, and Frankish cavalry have +25% HPs (cavalry being the prime support unit for castles). In addition, Teutons receive 2442-HP bombard towers, their town centers have Attack +2 and Range +5, and their keeps can garrison twice as many units, doubling the firing rate from keeps. Thus, fortified Teutons have superior repellent capacity.

Note that only four of the 13 empires have access to 120-attack / 8-range bombard towers, which dominate their attack radius.

Like many RTS games Age of Empires games announce attacks with an audio cue. In AoE, this is the annoying-ass war-horn. However, it would have been useful if the sequel announced treb rolling in since trebs are the only unit that can truly surprise players due to their extreme range and demolitions capacity. You could spend a mere minute engaged on the battlefield and then scroll back to town only to find it has been utterly leveled by a few sneaky trebs. You won the battle, but lost the war.

Whereas Age of Empires only officially supported faction populations of 50 units (and 200 unofficially), Age of Empires II officially supports 25-200. Age of Empires supported marquee selection aka group-bandboxing of up to 25 units whereas Age of Empires II supports 40.

Band-boxed units move about in formation. The rate of movement of the formation is capped to the rate of movement of the slowest unit in the formation. Thus, fast-moving Mangudai cavalry move at the rate of slow-moving monks when placed in formation with monks, whom they can protect. The engine auto-places infantry at first-rank, flanked by archers, flanked by monks.

Units in formation do not feel grounded on the playfield; instead, they glide across the playfield on the "formation layer", which feels fake and tacked-on (because formations were tacked-on). Thus, cavalry moves about like a flock of swirling pegasi in the wind. In my Age of Empires review (posted above) the lack of unit formations was criticized. This is a good example of "be wary of what you wish for." Of course, formations could have been employed properly, but that would have required actual low-level programming, not a hack.

Over the original Age of Empires II greatly expands statistics screens, but note how statistics are called Achievements.

Also note the Team Together option. This silly little social feature bestows factional bonuses to all factions in the team; an "in-crowd bonus for the cool players". And note how the AI teamed up against me. Refusing to buy into their jerk-circle (I'd rather lose than be part of a team), that meant I was under constant barrage from the Castle Age onwards by seven factions, which explains the massive killcount and demolitions-count gleefully amassed. The castles tallied the vast majority of kills, peaking at 200 pincushionings in one five minute interval. At the same time, my cavalry hacked at the rear-ranks of siege-engine convoys one dozen strong, which continued to bee-line towards my castle-spam even as the cavalry picked them apart, one by one.

Before the Castle Age kicked in 7,000 stone was mined in preparation for castle-spam. This meant a few crews of villagers had to mine several stone deposits located deep in enemy territory during the Dark and Feudal Ages (undermining the resources of the enemy). But yes, the squishy miners made it back to base safely even as war raged around them, which was miraculous. Their reward? Plowing the fields!

Age of Empires II features four ages, six map sizes, 13 map-types, 19 terrain-types, seven terrain elevation levels, 27 constructable buildings, 76 unit-types, 59 researchable technologies and four main harvestable or mineable resources (food, wood, stone and gold). In addition, there are five difficulty levels, four main victory conditions and fully customizable victory conditions via the Scenario Editor.

Fauna-wise, Age of Empires II subbed-out the 300-food elephant of Age of Empires with 340-food wild boar; gazelle with deer and sheep; lions with wolves (but wolves yield no meat whereas lions did). 

Farming has been buffed, shoreline spear-fishing and deep-sea fishing remain lucrative, but berry-bush yield has been nerfed. Sheep are best tagged by scout cavalry and herded back to town center or mill for butchering in close proximity to such buildings. Sheep are herded as per Age of Empires artifact wagons.

Moveable artifact wagons are subbed-out for static Relics, which only monk units can pick up and carry back to the monastery (monks are functionally equivalent to AoE priests). Once the Relic is stored in the monastery the faction receives a gold-over-time bonus which stacks based on the number of Relics retrieved (up to five). Depending on a range of variables it is possible to acquire five Relics within one hour of play. Five Relics generates 1,000 gold per five minutes, which is huge since (for example) 1,000 gold is enough to generate ten monks (which heal friends and convert foes).

As a rule, each empire receives one faction-exclusive unit-type that can be upgraded to an Elite variant. Faction-exclusive units are generated and upgraded in castles during the Castle and Imperial Ages. For example, in the original Age of Empires several factions had access to war elephants (and Persian war elephants had +30% movement rate), but in Age of Empires II only the Persians have access to war elephants and Elite War Elephants, which can be further upgraded with a 30% movement rate boost in castles (but only in The Conquerors expansion of 2000). [2]

Examples of fully-upgraded unique units:

• Teuton Elite Teutonic Knight infantry: Attack 17+4, Armor 10+3/2+4 and HPs 100
• Persian Elite War Elephants: Attack 20+4, Armor 1+3/3+4 and HPs 600
• Turkish Elite Janissary hand-cannoneers: Attack 18, Range 8, Armor 2+3/0+4 and HPs 60
• Briton Elite Longbowmen: Attack 7+4, Range 6+5, Armor 0+3/1+4 and 40 HPs

It is almost always worth the expense of upgrading to elite units. In The Conquerors expansion of 2000 (see below) some units are buffed. For example, the Elite Janissary has 22 Attack, not 18.

The Elite Teutonic Knight is the most heavily armored unit versus non-piercing damage (10 armor vs. non-piercing), but its movement rate is sloth-like. The most heavily armored unit versus piercing damage is the Siege Ram (195 armor vs. piercing), but its movement rate is also sloth-like. As in Age of Empires, it is the Elite War Elephant that offers the best balance of offense, defense and movement rate in Age of Empires II (assuming one survives to the point at which they can be mass-produced -- the Persians are Imperially-loaded).

Age of Empires II employs Ensemble's custom Artificial Intelligence Expert System. The most obvious difference between original and sequel AI is that sequel AI is capable of building walls. As in most RTS games the AI is good at positioning itself at pixel-perfect range, but poor at amassing overwhelming force of a specific type.

The sequel is more appealing to the masses because "colorful and medieval" as opposed to "spartan and ancient". The sequel's terrain, buildings and units are also more graphically detailed (eye-candy).

Audio-wise, there is much more in the way of voiced narration in the sequel as well. The mindless mutt-like mainstream loves cinematics and voiced narration; it's how they get into games -- gameplay itself is secondary to them. If they can't hear a voice, if they can't watch a cutscene -- if they need to read -- it isn't a good game to them.

Note how the sequel's playfield aka active drawspace is actually 54 vertical pixels smaller than the original's, and more zoomed-in due to its bigger objects:

[Left: Original patrician viewport: 1024x622 / Right: Sequel plebeian viewport 1024x568]

Thus, not only are there fewer active drawspace pixels on sequel screens, but there are functionally fewer objects represented on-screen before one needs to scroll the screen to see more. I make a point of this because reducing the actual and effective viewport size in sequels is almost unheard of.

The color saturation of some sequel graphics are overdone: palm trees are too green, farms are too dark, gold is too yellow and water is too bright and too blue. The shallows terrain is ridiculously green-blue; practically fluorescent and bloom-like. Terrain and building graphics are over-painted, like too much oil on the canvas; they are thick and heavy. The ships look worse, the elephants look worse (and are no longer mounted), and most resource placeables look worse as well.

In the native resolution of 800x600, the sequel panel is 19 vertical pixels larger than the original panel (thereby contributing to the reduction of the active drawspace), but the icons of the sequel panel are smaller and less detailed. In addition, sequel stats are not as easy to read. Sequel icons are smaller because more icons need to be packed into the icon-cluster (e.g., formation icons and grouped-unit icons). Overall, the sequel panel is not as clear or as artistic, but its map is larger and it is functionally more advanced.

Age of Empires II Technical

Age of Empires II requires a Pentium 166 MHz CPU, 32 megs of RAM and 2 megs of vRAM. Age of Empires II-compatible video cards include Nvidia TNT2 and ATI Rage 128 with up to 16 megs of vRAM. Age of Empires II requires DirectX 6.1.

Age of Empires II natively displays in 4:3 aspect ratio at 800x600, 1024x768 or 1280x1024 resolution. Age of Empires II menus and user interface were designed for 800x600.

Age of Empires II multi-player supports DirectPlay serial, modem, TCP/IP and IPX.

Age of Empires II was distributed on 1x CD-ROM and installs to hard disk drive via the Age of Empires II installation program. The install size of Age of Empires is 334 megs and consists of 790 files.

Age of Empires II was lead-designed by Bruce Shelley, lead-programmed by Angelo Laudon, lead-composed by Stephen Rippy, and lead-drawn by Brad Crow and Scott Winsett.

Conclusion

Is Age of Empires II of 1999 better than the original Age of Empires of 1997? Well, it enhanced the pathfinding, added some quality of life features and increased production values, but it is not a better RTS game. For example, unit garrisoning does not make the sequel better than the original; it does not improve RTS gameplay; it's just different. In addition, the sequel's viewport is cramped (smaller and more zoomed in).

Engine-wise (Genie), the sequel is a mere expansion on the original; an engine-layer that hooks back into the original engine; naught but several hacks. The pathfinding enhancement is a hack, formations are a hack, the UI/control extension is a hack; nothing was rewritten from the ground up, it's just layered on top.

Presentation-wise, the sequel merely subs out "ancient" for "medieval" (naught but window-dressing) and adds much more in the way of voice-acting and cinematics, neither of which are important to RTS games.

The sequel is a great game, to be sure, but the original did all the legwork and laid down the foundations of the franchise. The sequel was more commercially successful and more popular with the mainstream masses ("colorful, medieval and easier to get into and play"), but the original is more significant to RTS history than the sequel.

I gave the original 8.5/10. Thus, I give the sequel 8/10.

 

Age of Empires II: The Conquerors 2000

[§4.0]

Microsoft released Age of Empires II: The Conquerors for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0 SP5 in August of 2000 in the U.S.A. Developed by Ensemble Studios of the U.S.A., The Conquerors is an expansion for Age of Empires II: Age of Kings. The Conquerors installs to the AoE II install folder, but is run from a separate *.exe.

The Conquerors adds three campaigns, eight historical scenarios, five empires, 12 units, eight technologies, eight map-types and three game-types (see below). The Conquerors also adds one faction-exclusive technology per faction as well as event-triggers, in-ram garrisoning, queueable reseeding of farms and real-time on-screen scoring. In addition, villagers automatically begin mining, harvesting and lumberjacking after the associated building has been constructed.

The Conquerors modified the difficulty settings of offensive AI aggression in that Easiest is an utterly meaningless doddle and Highest is a whack-a-mole slog with no equal outside of Brood War. Invasion-wise, and with seven AI opponents, Easiest is a dripping tap (one-unit raids) whereas Hardest is a never-ending tsunami of dozens upon dozens of units whose collective attacks pop 5000-HP castles like party balloons.

The Easiest difficulty was nerfed in The Conquerors [2]. On Easiest, and all settings being equal, I amassed 700 kills in the base game within two hours but only 70 in the expansion within two hours; that is, I went up against ten times more aggro in the base game than I did in the expansion. Expansion AI also resigned much more readily than base-game AI in that no factions resigned within two hours in the base game whereas two factions resigned within two hours in the expansion.

The fully-upgraded Greek Centurion of Rise of Rome is more powerful than the fully-upgraded Elite Teutonic Knight of The Conquerors [1]:

• Rise of Rome Greek centurion infantry: Att 30+7, Arm 14/3, 160 HPs, +55% (total) movement rate increase
• Conquerors Elite Teutonic Knight infantry: Att 17+4, Arm 13/6, HPs 100, +0% movement rate increase

The Conquerors was distributed on 1x CD-ROM and installs to hard disk drive via the The Conquerors installation program. With The Conquerors installed the AoE II install size becomes 561 megs and consists of 1,357 files.

• Campaigns added by The Conquerors: Attila the Hun, El Cid and Montezuma
• Battles of the Conquerors added eight historical scenarios
• Empires added by The Conquerors: Aztecs, Huns, Koreans, Mayans and Spanish
• Unit-types added by The Conquerors: Warriors, Missionaries, Petards, Plumed Archers, Tarkans, Turtle Ships, War Wagons, Conquistadors, Eagle Warriors, Halberdiers, Hussars and Jaguar
• Technologies added by The Conquerors: Bloodlines, Caravan, Herbal Medicine, Heresy, Parthian Tactics, Theocracy and Thumb Ring
• The Conquerors also adds one faction-exclusive technology per empire
• Game-types added by The Conquerors: King of the Hill, Wonder Race and Defend the Wonder
• Map-types added by The Conquerors: Arena, Ghost Lake, Mongolia, Nomad, Oasis, Salt Marsh, Scandinavia, Yucatan and Random Land
• Winter and tropical variants were added to standard maps. Snow is blindingly bright
• Fauna added by The Conquerors: Turkey replaces Sheep, Jaguar replaces Wolf

The Conquerors was lead-designed by Greg Street, lead-programmed by Angelo Laudon, lead-drawn by Duncan McKissick, and lead-composed by Stephen Rippy.

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