Age of Empires 1 (1997)
Page last updated on 2011 / 02 / 08The initial release of the AoE franchise, the original Age of Empires was one of the most popular real-time strategy games of the 1990's, giving you the chance to lead one of histories glorious empires to a rapid succession of campaign victories.
AoE has you as overseer of a primitive group of people, with the duty of developing their society in order to make them self-sufficient and able to defend their way of living from enemeies; and ultimately to defeat your enemies.
Situated on a scrollable 3-D map, your town area is surrounded by the fog of war, where lucrative resources and potential enemies await.
The game takes a leap from the likes of Mega-Lo-Mania, an Amiga real-time strategy game that was set on fixed squares of a map. The fluid movement of the AoE map was one of the major leaps forward of the genre and brought about a new and refreshing way to play real-time strategy.
Game Purpose Strategy
With a choice of culture and civilizations, you must pick one and develop their society through the ages in order to remain competitive and ward off potentially all-conquering neighbour towns. Starting in the Stone Age, technologies can be researched, resources and be gathered, armies and buildings can be raised and in-play goals can be reached. In the meantime, you will be advancing through the Ages and building ever more powerful armies to defend yourself and attack to expand your civlization's influence.
AoE Stone Age Buildings & Strategy
Beginning with a Town Centre, to expand you must create other buildings, each of which perform their own function for your civilization. You may build houses to support a higher population and a barracks to train some basic Stone Age military units. The storage pit and granary are warehouses for your resources, while the dock can also store seafood and create ships.
This line of action essentially leads your civilization to a path of self-sufficiency, allowing you to amass resources once you assign villagers to collect them. Throughout the ages you will continue to collect food, wood, gold and stone to support your people and advancement.
As with all AoE games, the strategy is to have a balanced and productive economy as early as possible, enabling you to leapfrog into the next age.
From Stone Age to Iron Age
As time goes on, new technologies become available, making your buildings and people stronger in a variety of ways. New buildings become available, giving you a greater diversity of military (and some non-military) units which broaden the strategic element of your economy and military crusades.
With so many building strategies, economic considerations, time constraints and military unit choices, there's a rich environment for you to deploy your own idea of how the game should be won.
Victory Types
It's not always a case of 'kill every man standing' that isn't part of your team. There are several other outcomes that you can achieve victory with:
- Building a Wonder of the World! Such an achievement, should you be able to defend it for 2000 years will result in your cultural magnificence winning the game.
- Control the Map Ruins By controlling the ruins of the map you are not only displaying territorial superiority, but also the cultural influence associated with these mystical constructions.
- Time Limit As there is a scoring system, you can opt for a time-limit to see who can amass the highest score within the given time constraint.
- Conquest Probably the way that 90% of games end, total destruction of your enemies.
Game Customisation & Multiplayer
- A range of single and multi-player scenarios provided with the game
- Create new scenearios from scratch
- Death Match, last man standing
...Undoubtedly, AoE the original made way for an extremely successful franchise, bringing some originality to the table and spawning off an appreciable number of clones due to its success at the time.
Useful Links for AoE 1
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