Age of Empires

Age of Empires, sometimes abbreviated AoE, is a history-based real-time strategy computer game. The game, developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, was released in 1997. The game allowed the user to play as the "spirit guide," god, or immortal leading a historical tribe or civilization. The game became immensely popular and led to several sequels and expansion packs. There have been many similar games that have used the Age of Empires formula including Empire Earth and Rise of Nations. Age of Empires was re-released in 2003 for the Pocket PC.

The term Age of Empires also sometimes refers to the Age of Empires series as a whole, which includes Age of Empires II: Age of Kings, and the upcoming Age of Empires III.

Overview

In AoE, twelve civilizations (often referred to as "civs") are available:

• Ancient Egyptians
• Assyrians
• Ancient Greeks
• Babylonians
• Choson (Koreans)
• Hittites
• Persians
• Phoenicians
• Minoans
• Shang (Chinese)
• Sumerians
• Yamato (Japanese)

While a "single player mode" is available, the AoE series features online and network play in groups of up to eight players simultaneously. In addition to lag, another common problem was being disconnected while in the middle of a game.

Like most real-time strategy games, Age of Empires uses resources to pay for new units or buildings. The resources used are gold, wood, stone and food. Food can be gathered by hunting, gathering berries, farming, and fishing. The amount of resources collected by a player in addition to the types of buildings they've created allow the player to advance through the ages. In Age of Empires, there are four ages: the stone age (aka paleolithic), the tool age (aka neolithic), the bronze age and the iron age.

World tournaments are played regularly to establish the best players.

Technology

Research into various types of technology can allow one civilisation to gain advantages over others in a number of ways.

A major research goal is advance through the ages (stone age -> tool age -> bronze age -> iron age). This makes new buildings, units and technologies available. To advance from one age to the next two technology buildings from the current age and some resources are needed. The research takes place at a Town Center.

Other research consists of researching technologies. Each technology is performed in a certain building, and may require other technologies to be researched first, and may be only available after a certain age. Each technology will require some resources to research.

There are several types of technologies. Some technologies improve the efficiency of buildings and units. Some allow the construction of new buildings, or creation of new units.

Some new buildings and units are upgrades of others. This means that the new item can only be researched when the previous one has been, and when the new item is researched, thus making it available to build, any of the old item still present is replaced with the improved version.

Units

Archers

• Bowman – upgrades to Improved and Composite
• Chariot Archer
• Elephant Archer
• Horse Archer – upgrades to Heavy Horse Archer

Infantry

• Clubman – upgrades to Axeman
• Short Swordsman – upgrades to Broad Swordsman, Long swordsman and Legion
• Hoplite – upgrades to Phalanx and Centurion

Cavalry

• Scout (military)
• Chariot
• Cavalry – upgrades to Heavy Cavalry and Cataphract
• War Elephant

Siege Weapons

Siege Weapons are weapons designed to destroy buildings, and can do large amounts of damage in one shot. They are vulnerable to attack by troops, as they are slow, and can only attack units that are at least a certain distance away, so they cannot attack troops in contact with them.

There are two families of siege weapons, both built at the siege workshop.

The first family are represented by the Stone Thrower. They are all variants on the Catapult, firing stones at the enemy. They thus can attack a small area, rather than targeting a particular unit or building.

The members of the family are as follows, in increasing order of effectiveness:

• Stone Thrower
• Catapult
• Heavy Catapult

The Stone Thrower is available in the Bronze age, and the Catapult and Heavy Catapult in the Iron age. The Catapult in an upgrade to the Stone Thrower, with a greater range, area of attack, and attack strength. The Heavy Catapult is an upgrade of the Catapult, improving on its hit points and attack strength.

The second family is represented by the Ballista. They fire missiles at the enemy, which only affect one unit, rather than attacking an area as with the Stone Throwers. They fire faster than the Stone Throwers, but do less damage in each attack, and have fewer hit points. This family consists of the following units:

• Ballista
• Helepolis

Both are available in the Iron Age. The Helepolis is an upgrade to the Ballista with a greater range, and faster rate of fire.

Other units

• Priest

Priests are military units that cannot attack the enemy directly, but can heal friendly units, and convert enemy units, making them into friendly units. They can also convert enemy buildings in a similar way. They are very vulnerable to attack, so must be supported by other units to be effective.

• Villager

Villagers are the main support units, as they are the only ones capable of gathering each resource (except food, that can also be fished with boats, and gold that can be earned by trade) needed to train new units, construct buildings and advance in technology, and also repair buildings and boats. They can fight but other than swarm a weaker tool age military unit, isolated archer or siege weapons and priests, they are no match to melee units. Fannish lore holds that villagers say "evil volvo" (among other such nonsensical words such as "rogan" and "habidakus") when clicked on.

• Ships

Ships can be built at the docks. They come in two types, War ships, that specialise in attacking both other ships and land-based units close to the water, and support ships, that help the civilisation by either fishing, trading with other civilisations, or transporting units over the water.

• War Ships

• Scout Ship – upgrades to War Galley and Trireme
• Catapult Trireme – upgrades to Juggernaught

The Scout Ship and the War Galley initially shoot arrows, and when the Trireme upgrade is completed, Ballista bolts. On the other hand, and the name shows, the catapult trireme throws rocks, and although their shots do more damage than a trireme, can't attack nearby units. A successful marine attack depended on both juggernaughts for offense and triremes to both attack and stop other ships of coming too close (this turned to be particularly important when the expansion added a close range Fire Galley).

• Support Ships

Support ships are those ships that do not fight, but perform other important function. They each have no attacking ability, thus making them particularly vulnerable to attack if not properly defended. There are 3 classes of Support ships, Fishing ships, trade ships and transport ships:

• Fishing ships provide food for the civilization by fishing in nearby rivers and oceans. To build a fishing boat a dock must first be built. Upon gathering a full load of fish, the boat returns to the dock to drop off the fish. There are two kinds of fishing vessels in Age of Empires.

• Fishing Boat – upgrades to Fishing Ship

The fishing ship is an upgrade of the fishing boat and is much quicker and can hold more fish than the fishing boat. The fishing ship can also take more hits from an enemy.

• Trade ships are ships that allows a civilisation to trade with another. They take excess resources from the owner's civilisation, and exchanges them for gold at the dock of another civilisation, with more gold being earned the further the ship travels. This does not affect the civilisation being traded with, only the civilisation with the boat, which loses the resource in question (food, wood, or stone), and gains gold in exchange. There are two types of trade ships:

• Trade Boats – upgrades to Merchant Ships

Trade Boats are first available in the Stone Age, and can be upgraded to Merchant ships in the Bronze Age. Merchant ships are faster and stronger.

• Transport ships are ships that can carry units, and artifacts over water. They come in two types:

• Light Transports – upgrades to Heavy Transports

Light Transports are available in the Tool Age, and can carry 5 units and/or artifacts. They can be upgraded in the Iron Age to the heavy transport, which can carry up to ten units and/or artifacts, and are stronger and faster than Light Transports.

Cheat Units

Unlike other strategy games where cheats are limited to extend resources or remove the fog of war, Age of Empires also had several cheats that allowed the player to use hidden units or enhance regular units. All units created appear next to the newest town centre.

• Winsett's_Z – Using the code bigdaddy, a black sports car equipped with a deadly (300 HPs in damage) rocket appears
• Nuke Trooper – there are two versions of this unit. Using the code Photon Man it's a ranged foot unit that fires a red laser; with the e=mc2 trooper code, it's equipped with a long-range missile launcher instead.
• Medusa makes villagers transform into Black Riders (horsed archer) after dying (except if deleted), and after dying for a second time into a catapult.
• big bertha' transforms every stone thrower or catapult into a "big bertha", a heavy catapult with extended area damage.
• hoyohoyo increases priest speed and hit points. If polytheism (increases speed) and mysticism (double hitpoints) are researched after the cheat is entered, the improvements are done over the cheat statistics.
• darkrain turns all foot archers into composite archers that transform into a tree when not moving, as well as walk on water.
• flying dutchman allows catapult triremes and juggernaugts to travel on land as well as water
• ICBM increases ballista and helepolis range to 100

Buildings

Technology

• Academy
• Archery Range
• Barracks
• Dock
• Government Center
• Granary
• Market
• Siege Workshop
• Stable
• Storage Pit
• Temple

Town Center

The Town Center is one of the most important buildings in the game. Players can only begin with a single Town Center. Building the Government Center in a later age allows a player to build more than one. Town Centers allow the production of villagers, as well advancement between ages. Town Centers also act as resource collection points. Villagers who have collected resources, provided the Town Center is the closest drop off point, will bring their resources to the Town Center and then return to their work. Any resource can be dropped off at the Town Center. This is in contrast to other drop off points which will only accept a few resource types.

Non Technology

Farms

Farms are a building that can provide food, when villagers are allocated to work at them. Eventually farms will go fallow, and disappear. Farming production can be increased by researching domestication, the plow, and irrigation.

Houses

Houses are needed to support units. Each house can support 4 units, as does a town center, and new units can only be created if there are enough houses to support them. After a unit is built, it doesn't matter if the house that supports it is destroyed, but if the number of houses is not enough to support the current number of units, more houses must be built before new units can be created. However, there is a population limit set inside the game; if the player reaches a total of 50 units, he can't produce additional units even if there's enough housing. A patch later added the possibility of changing the limit via the command line and the expansion allowed it to be customized before each game.

Walls

Walls are defensive buildings, that prevent units of any civilisation from passing, unless they are destroyed. They come in 3 varieties, in order of increasing strength:

• Small Walls
• Medium Walls
• Fortifications

These are available in the Tool Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age respectively, with small walls the weakest, and fortifications the strongest. Medium walls are upgrades of small walls, and fortifications are upgrades of medium walls.

Towers

Towers, like walls are defensive buildings, but also fire arrows and later missiles at nearby enemies. They come in four varieties, in order of increasing effectiveness:

• Watch Towers
• Sentry Towers
• Guard Towers
• Ballista Towers

Watch towers are available in the Tool Age, sentry towers in the Bronze Age, and guard and ballista towers in the Iron age. Sentry towers are upgrades of watch towers, guard towers of sentry towers, and ballista towers of guard towers.

Wonders

Wonders are crowning architectural feats created by civilizations that can potentially win the match in standard or wonder games, and can play a major part in score games. They are the most expensive building in the game, require several villagers to be completed in a medium term and cannot be converted even by monotheistic priests. Each wonder design is unique, some of them based on the seven wonders of the world:

• Egyptians, Assyrians: Pyramids
• Babylonians, Hittites, Persians, Sumerians: Ziggurat
• Greeks, Phoenicians, Minoans: a giant bronze statue of an warrior, possibly based on the Colossus of Rhodes
• Choson, Shang, Yamato: large round oriental temple

Expansions

In 1998 Age of Empires was followed by the expansion pack Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome Expansion (or simply RoR). A few units were added or revised, but no gameplay mechanics of the original were changed; this resulted in the game reflecting a more militaristic view of the rise of Rome than most historians ascribe to it, in that they tended to avoid tactics such as scorched earth and genocide when possible. In a sop to such sensibilities, holy men can be generated who are in effect employing persuasion technology to convert followers of other traditions to itself.

Sequels

• Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (AoK) (1999)
• Age of Mythology (AoM) (2002)
• Age of Empires III (2005)

See also

• List of computer and video games by name

External links

• Official website
• Fansite