Age of Empires

aka: Age of Empires 1, Age of Empires: An Epic Game of Empire-Building and Conquest, Age of Empires: Bâtissez votre civilization., Age of Empires: Ein Spiel über große Zivilsationen und Eroberungen, Age of Empires: Un juego épico para crear y conquistar imperios, AoE, Dawn of Man, Diguo Shidai, Microsoft Age of Empires, Tribe
Moby ID: 384
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

In Age of Empires, players are able to manage a tribe with their mouse. Command them to build houses, docks, farms, and temples. The player advances their civilization through time by learning new skills. The game allows the player to advance through the Ages: The Paleolithic (old Stone Age), the Neolithic (new Stone Age, or the Tool Age), the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. If the player would rather get away from the historical aspect, the game offers a random terrain generator and a custom scenario builder.

The game has four resources: food, obtained by either hunting, foraging, fishing, or farming; wood, which must be logged by hand; stone, which must be mined; and gold, which can either be mined or obtained through trade with other players.

As a real-time war game, Age of Empires naturally revolves around gathering resources and producing units.

Spellings

  • マイクロソフト エイジ オブ エンパイア - Japanese spelling
  • 世紀帝國 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 帝国时代 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 40 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 164 ratings with 11 reviews)

Old, but still good RTS.

The Good
Age of Empires contains 36 missions divided to 4 campaigns. All of them has good historical description. Moreover, you can play on randomly generated map. You can set numbers of enemies, resources, civilisations (there are 12 civilisations to choose - each of them has different line-up of units and technologies) and more. There are various ways to win - you can destroy all your opponents, capture all artefacts, build a wonder and even more.

Obviously, you can't win without army - you can train axemen, horse archers and hoplites. Additionally, you can construct chariots and catapults. Your army can be upgraded by researching technologies. You should also build towers and walls to protect yourself from enemy's attacks. And believe me, computer player is hard to destroy and likes to attack you frequently.

Naturally, there is multiplayer. Even today you can find somebody to play it using TCP/IP or Internet. Graphically the game looks good, despite being only a 2D game.

The Bad
Unfortunately, controlling your army is difficult. There are no formations, and your soldiers can spread out or lose their way in narrow places.

In AoE also appears frequently very annoying situation - you have to destroy every unit of your enemy to win, so if there's single enemy unit and it's on the other side of map, you have to find it and destroy it. You can spend a lot of time searching of this unit...

Your units lack of proportions - for example, your stables are as big as your catapults, and your little transport ship can carry 5 elephants bigger than ship itself. There are 4 sets of buildings instead for 12 civilisations - Egyptian, Greek, Mesopotamian and Asiatic. So, Phoenicians use Greek tileset, despite the fact that they were unrelated to Greeks in any way, and Sumerians use Egyptian tileset. Moreover, units' appearance doesn't differ in the game, so you can train Greek hoplites when you are playing as Japanese.

Game uses a CD audio music or MIDI music, but watch out - some re-releases don't contain CD audio music, and MIDI music isn't good enough to listen to.

The Bottom Line
If you like RTS games, you should play it - it's one of most influential games in the history, and it's very entertaining, despite few flaws. Just download a patch, disable music and set the highest resolution. You can still download a trial version, which contains 6 missions unavailable in full version.

Windows · by Sir Gofermajster (485) · 2009

Microsoft=Bad entertainment.

The Good
The historical theme is quite nice. I'm not a historian but from what I can see it is more or less correct in it's historical descriptions (although "correct" is a bad word when talking about history, because history is not about facts but how we interpret what we THINK are facts). Anyway, this gives a somewhat educational touch to the game which I quite like.

The Bad
Well, the rest, more or less. There are no obvious flaws that jump at you when you start the game. It is just so... bleak. The graphics are boring to look at, and the menus would suit some Microsoft excell-program better. The illusion that you aren't just playing around with ones and zeros aren't there at all. It really feels like a computer programe, not some "alternative" reality. In short, there is no way in which I can ever feel involved in the game and that makes it uninteresting and boring, since the game is so depressingly slow. Most strategy games are slow, but when involving even the most slow-paced game becomes exciting (civilization is an excellent example). Age of Empires is just plain boring and depressing to look at. The graphics aren't bad in that sense, the game just looks bleak and uninspired. One of the most overrated games in the history of games, since it has virtually no entertainment value at all.

The Bottom Line
Well made, but oh so uninspired and boring. Bleak, boring and bad.

Windows · by Joakim Kihlman (231) · 2004

Brilliant! Up until its sequel, the best RTS ever made.

The Good
Age of Empires got me hooked on real-time strategy games. It was Ensemble Studios' first game; they put a lot of hard work into making it just right, and they succeeded brilliantly. The graphics are breathtaking and the units are plentiful and unique. Resources are balanced; sometimes hard to come by, but never impossible.

The campaigns are perfect! I didn't like the sequel's campaigns much at all, unfortunatly; I still play these sometimes. The cutscenes in between them are stunning, comparable with Blizzard's work IMO, and the stories are captivating. But the maps for them are perfect! They are challenging but balanced, with resources in key spots and enemies in just the right places to make it hard just when you thought it was gonna be easy. You'll really need to use your head to win them, unlike some other, very simple RTSs. Ground troops, flankers, bowmen, seige weapons and war boats all have their places, and they are all neccessary at some time or another.

The Bad
Stone is just about impossible to come by if you squander it early on. They fixed this in Age of Kings, by the way.

There is also a bug with the AI-- if you have two priests trying to convert a unit at the same time, it can't decide which one to attack and will just freeze. So under the right conditions, the game gets dangerously easy. On a larger scale, this could have pretty much ruined the playability of the game, but it's only an annoyance as it is ('cause the enemies normally come by with buddies who chop your priest into mincemeat when he gets near enough to convert). Also fixed in the sequel.

The Bottom Line
If you're wondering which RTS to get, get Age of Kings. It's better than this one in almost every way. But if you're either collecting good RTSs, or just good games, or want to see where Age of Kings got its brilliance from, look here.

Windows · by ShadowShrike (277) · 2003

[ View all 11 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Age of Empires appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Demo version

The demo released is worth getting, even for those owning the full game. It includes a tutorial campaign featuring the Hittites and two maps not present in the full version.

Documentation

Being a RTS, it's surprising the printed manual in the UK release only covers the game basics, but the game includes a large online help file worth hundreds of pages of both game and historical information. Guess it's true that digital information does save trees.

Online servers

The game's online servers (which were hosted on MSN Gaming Zone) were shut down on 19 June 2006 in the wake of MSN Games' shift from "CD-ROM matchmaking service" to casual online games.

Sales

In 1998, Age of Empires has won both the Gold- and Platinum-Awards from the German VUD (Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland - Entertainment Software Association Germany) for selling more then 100,000 units (Gold) and more then 200,000 units (Platinum) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. As the Gold-Award is not counted into the Platinum-Award, both awards total in between 300,000 and 700,000 units sold.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 1998 (Issue #164) – Outstanding Multiplay of the Year
    • June 2001 (Issue #203) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • Game Informer
    • August 2001 (Issue #100) - #81 in the Top 100 Games of All Time poll
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #14 Top Game of All Time
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #14 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • Interactive Achievement Awards (Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences)
    • 1998 – Computer Strategy Game of the Year – Won
    • 1998 – Interactive Title of the Year – Nominated
  • PC Gamer
  • April 2000 issue - #21 in the Readers All-Time Top 50 Games poll

  • Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (Entertainment Software Association Germany)

    • 1998 - Gold Award for selling more then 100,000 units in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
    • 1998 - Platin Award for selling more then 300,000 units in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Information also contributed by Luis Silva, Maw, PCGamer77 and Xoleras

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Age of Empires II: HD Edition
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by MajorDad.

Macintosh added by Jeanne.

Additional contributors: Ummagumma, Andrew Hartnett, Unrealist, Unicorn Lynx, Maw, Havoc Crow, formercontrib, Zeppin, Litude, Paulus18950, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, Plok, Rik Hideto, Victor Vance, FatherJack.

Game added November 5, 1999. Last modified March 21, 2024.