Author: scharfschutze
Type: PC Game
Released: 1999
Designer: Ensemble Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Games
Genre: Real-time strategy
The real-time strategy genre is an apparently inexhaustible genre. There have been literally countless RTS games released, from Command & Conquer to WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne. RTS games have taken us into fantastical realms populated by elves, dwarves, and orcs; they have taken us into the distant future or allowed us to fight the battles of World War Three. Following this path, Ensemble Studios decided to tackle a difficult subject for their entry into the RTS market: the path of ancient history.
The end result is Age of Empires. This is in most respects a typical real-time strategy game: you gather resources, build an army, and go whack the hell out of your opponents. It however possesses some very interesting qualities that have only recently emerged in other real-time strategy games.
For starters, Age of Empires possesses a truly massive tech tree as far as RTS games go. In most RTS games, the only research you do is to better your troops' weapons and armour. The same goes here, but you also research technologies that have indirect benefits for your civilization. The available upgrades run the gamut from The Wheel (which allows you to build Chariots) to Writing (which allows you to share maps with your allies). Many of these technologies are required to build certain units (Centurions, for example, cannot be trained without Nobility), and all have some sort of benefit for your civilization. In a departure from standard RTS games, several technologies do not directly affect your units, but do affect such things as creation speed, unit movement speed, and the speed at which Priests rejuvenate their spiritual energies (more on them later…).
The cornerstone of the Age of Empires tech tree is the Age Advance. Your civilization (one of twelve ancient tribes ranging from the ever-popular Egyptians to the less well-known Hittites) begins the game as a small group of peasants in the Stone Age. Gathering resources and researching technologies, you must progress from the Stone Age through three more ages: the Tool Age, representing the point at which civilization abandoned simple stone tools for tools made of cheap metal; the Bronze Age, marking the true birth of great civilizations; and the Iron Age, the ultimate age of conquest. Each age brings with it a complete addition to the tech tree, including new units, new technologies, and new buildings. As a bonus, your buildings change in architecture through the ages; in the beginning, they're nothing but wood and thatch; by the Iron Age, your cities are true architectural marvels of stone and metal.
The amount of buildings available for construction in Age of Empires is truly staggering as far as RTS games go. In fact, the amount of building options has only recently been matched in the 2003 game Rise of Nations. You begin the game with the obligatory Town Centre. This is the hub of your civilization, allowing you to build villagers (the basic builder/resource gatherer) and advance in Age. From there, your building options range from Houses (allowing your population to expand), Farms (a renewable source of Food, one of the resources), and Docks (allowing you to build ships and trade across water). You can also build less mundane structures, such as Barracks, Stables, and Siege Workshops. You can also of course build defensive Towers of increasing effectiveness. To top it off, you can build three different types of Walls as your technology progresses, using them to defend your base or create chokepoints throughout the map. As a final bonus, each civilization can build a Wonder; when completed, this activates a timer that results in victory for the owning player if the Wonder remains standing after the timer finishes counting down. As previously mentioned, all of these buildings change appearance depending on the age your civilization is currently living in, and several of the buildings (Towers and Walls) can be upgraded to successively more effective buildings as the ages progress. All of these buildings also have a different appearance based on which civilization you are playing as. The Greeks and Minoans have very "classical" buildings; the Egyptians, Hittites, Phoenicians and Assyrians all have monolithic structures of hewn stone; the Persians, Sumerians and Babylonian structures are obviously their own; and the Choson, Shang and Yamato have their buildings in the classic Oriental style. These are of course only minor esoteric concerns, but in the long run they sure make the game more fun to play.
The units available are also a large affair. In the beginning, you can only build fishing ships, villagers and clubmen. As your civilization progresses through the ages, you acquire increasing levels of unit design. In the Tool Age, Axemen, Archers, and Cavalry make their appearance, as do the first ships of war, the scout ship. In the Bronze Age, Galleys, Heavy Cavalry, Swordsmen, and siege weapons (Catapults and Ballistae) all begin to appear, as do the slow and heavily armoured Hoplites and War Elephants. By the Iron Age, your units comprise Long Swordsmen, Cataphracts (a kind of heavy cavalry, sort of like an ancient knight), mounted archers, Composite Bowmen, Phalanxes, Elephant Archers, and Triremes. All units have several basic statistics: hit points, damage, and armour (of two types, Normal and Piercing). To top it off, you have access to the mystical Priest. This unit can heal other units, or can convert enemy units and buildings to your side. It's always a pleasure to watch an enemy advance crumble beneath the feet of a few well-timed War Elephant conversions.
All this construction and destruction takes place on a well-designed set of maps. The terrain in the game is well done and quite varied, with woods, deserts, grasslands, shallows, water, and deep water, as well as actual hills in addition to the standard cliffs. In a departure from most RTS games, the maps you play on are teeming with wildlife, most of which can be killed and used for food. Some of the wildlife (alligators, elephants, etc.) will even attack your villagers if attacked! Sending less than 5 villagers to kill an elephant will end you up with a bunch of dead or wounded villagers. It's great fun to watch one villager try to take an elephant, I might add…
The graphics in this game are 2-D, as are most RTS games, and are fairly reasonable as games go. However, at higher resolutions, Age of Empires is prone to unnecessary grainy qualities, and the unit models are at times choppy and odd. The movement and death animations for most units are also fairly repetitive and simplistic. Certainly not unplayable, but I don't think the designers gave this category their best effort.
Effects: 8.5/10In this game, Effects generally refers to the sounds of combat, which are frequent throughout this game. They are well done, and certainly give you the impression of clashing steel. The units have very limited speech, and that has a slight negative effect on gameplay, but it's hardly noticeable.
Gameplay: 8/10The only major impediments to gameplay are the simplicity of the available options and the difficulty of executing some of the more complicated commands. I found trying to select one soldier in the middle of your army somewhat difficult, and it was rather annoying to try.
Replayability: 9/10The game's single-player campaigns are long, involving affairs that kept me going for hours on end. The difficulty levels are a tad underdeveloped, but nothing too serious. The multiplayer is also somewhat simplistic, with only deathmatch or teamplay options. To be honest, I didn't play Age of Empires in multi at all. But the inclusion of a well-designed scenario/campaign editor allows for almost unlimited gameplay.
Overall: 8.5/10Age of Empires is a solid RTS game that, while it doesn't in itself tackle much in the way of new concepts, nevertheless possesses above-average gameplay and reasonable graphics. As a player, I truly enjoyed Age of Empires, and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the RTS genre.