Age of Empires

[AutoAdmin]

Feel free to rate and discuss this game.

[Litude]

Back when it was released it was an absolute blast to play. I think the graphics are pretty decent, it has great music and a nice variety of units. The game does tend to get a bit spammy if it lasts until the Iron Age, but until the Bronze Age it's all good and fun. It does lack some elements that are seen as a necessity for modern RTS games like formations, double-clicking to select all units of the same type and being able to queue units.

Some of these flaws were fixed in the expansion (double-click, queue, expired farm alert) but it is a bit cheap to expect someone to pay for stuff that really should have been there to begin with (or at least with a patch). Still the lack of formations is probably going to seem like quite a lot to take for someone used to modern RTS games (though honestly I have no idea when formations really came into play in RTS, guess there might have been games released before Age of Empires that had them).

By the way, the screenshot you have on file for the game has corrupted colors (if you look at the water). I think it would be better to give an accurate representation of the game.

Also I was wondering, does anyone have the Computer Gaming World November '97 issue cover disc? It has an exclusive demo version of the game (apparently an earlier build than the one released on the internet) which also has an Egyptian campaign unavailable in both the retail version of the game and the normal trial version. Been looking for it for a few years now with no luck as of yet.

[ThreeHeadedMonkey]

Age of Empires was one of my first video game addictions. It's still quite fun to play the occasional random map game, despite the cheating AI and the issues Litude mentioned. If you can find it, I recommend to get the "gold edition", which includes the expansion pack and fixes some of these things and adds a decent amount of new content.

[DOSGuy]

By the way, the screenshot you have on file for the game has corrupted colors (if you look at the water). I think it would be better to give an accurate representation of the game.

It was difficult to take a screenshot at all! Windows' built-in screen capture function (the Print Screen button) just gives me a black screen with coloured specks in the water. I had to install SnagIt to get a screenshot that looked like the game. Does anyone know of a better screen capture program?

[Litude]

It was difficult to take a screenshot at all! Windows' built-in screen capture function (the Print Screen button) just gives me a black screen with coloured specks in the water. I had to install SnagIt to get a screenshot that looked like the game. Does anyone know of a better screen capture program?

There's a built in screenshot function in the full version that you can use by pressing Ctrl+F12 (saves a BMP file into the game directory). I'm not sure as to whether this also works in the trial version. If there isn't, you can install this registry key (the readme gives the impression that it would be game specific, but it really isn't) which enables you to take screenshots using Print Screen of old DirectDraw applications with proper colors.

[DOSGuy]

By the way, the screenshot you have on file for the game has corrupted colors (if you look at the water).

Well, I've looked at it again and again, and the water in my screenshot looks exactly like the water that I see on my screen when I play the game. Maybe the water just looks different in the trial version than it does in the full version?

[Litude]

Do you use Windows Vista/Seven? They have color corruption problems with old DirectDraw games. Here's some stuff regarding how to fix that problem.

[leilei]

Alternatively you could install Win95 in DOSBox and capture from the DOSBox end

[MrFlibble]

I like both the concept of "Warcraft meets Civilization" (although getting used to AoE-style resource management was a bit difficult to me at first) and the edutainment value the developers put in it. A comprehensive outline of ancient history that comes in the form of the game's help file is a great read that adds much to the "atmosphere" of the game so to speak. The game has its fair share of weirdness from the logical standpoint (like having to research and upgrade tower and wall technologies in the granary, or spending the same amount of wood to build both a tiny boat and a huge trireme it eventually upgrades into), and the playable civilizations' portrayals aren't always historically accurate (hoplites and triremes produced by almost all civilizations ), but in general, Age of Empires has fluent, dynamic gameplay, and the campaign missions are rather diverse as well.

Age of Empires has excellent in-game graphics and a beautiful soundtrack (it is interesting to note that, unlike many other games, the MIDI soundtrack does not completely reproduce the CD-audio one, and there are some MIDI-only and CD-audio-only tracks), but the scarce CGI cinematics aren't very impressive (this is probably why the sequel, The Age of Kings, limited itself to a single cinematic intro sequence), especially if compared with those from the Command & Conquer series of games, or even Warcraft II.

Also I was wondering, does anyone have the Computer Gaming World November '97 issue cover disc? It has an exclusive demo version of the game (apparently an earlier build than the one released on the internet) which also has an Egyptian campaign unavailable in both the retail version of the game and the normal trial version.

Wow, that's a very interesting piece of information. Would be nice if someone actually found this one an uploaded it somewhere In general, I like the way the developers went with the trial versions of both Age of Empires and The Rise of Rome, adding unique campaigns rather than parts of respective retail versions. I guess they abandoned this idea in Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings due to the fact that campaign briefings have voiced-over narration, and recording extra clips for a different story just for the sake of a demo was probably a bit more demanding that just making a couple extra levels for a short campaign.

[Litude]

The game has its fair share of weirdness from the logical standpoint (like having to research and upgrade tower and wall technologies in the granary, or spending the same amount of wood to build both a tiny boat and a huge trireme it eventually upgrades into), and the playable civilizations' portrayals aren't always historically accurate (hoplites and triremes produced by almost all civilizations ), but in general, Age of Empires has fluent, dynamic gameplay, and the campaign missions are rather diverse as well.

Yeah, one of the weirdest things about resource management is how hunted food and fish goes to the storage pit, whilst food from forage bushes and farms go to the granary. Now that had to be confusing for someone who just picked up the game.
The campaigns also have their own share of weirdness when in e.g. the Babylonian campaign you actually play the Greek civilization in certain maps (even though you're still called Babylonian and such, made me a bit confused as to why I didn't get my oh so powerful centurions) and I think there was more similar stuff going on in other campaigns as well.

Age of Empires has excellent in-game graphics and a beautiful soundtrack (it is interesting to note that, unlike many other games, the MIDI soundtrack does not completely reproduce the CD-audio one, and there are some MIDI-only and CD-audio-only tracks), but the scarce CGI cinematics aren't very impressive (this is probably why the sequel, The Age of Kings, limited itself to a single cinematic intro sequence), especially if compared with those from the Command & Conquer series of games, or even Warcraft II.

Gotta agree on that music part, some of the tracks just drag you into the setting of the game. I didn't find the CGI cinematics bad at all, the intro was IMO quite good though I have to admit I haven't played the early Command & Conquer games nearly at all. Still, I've seen games with ways worse CGI cinematics (HOMM springs to mind). Oh and despite the sequel having just one CGI cinematic, I thought that one had a very interesting approach and it had been quite cleverly done.

Also I was wondering, does anyone have the Computer Gaming World November '97 issue cover disc? It has an exclusive demo version of the game (apparently an earlier build than the one released on the internet) which also has an Egyptian campaign unavailable in both the retail version of the game and the normal trial version.

Wow, that's a very interesting piece of information. Would be nice if someone actually found this one an uploaded it somewhere In general, I like the way the developers went with the trial versions of both Age of Empires and The Rise of Rome, adding unique campaigns rather than parts of respective retail versions. I guess they abandoned this idea in Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings due to the fact that campaign briefings have voiced-over narration, and recording extra clips for a different story just for the sake of a demo was probably a bit more demanding that just making a couple extra levels for a short campaign.

Yeah, putting together a campaign for the original Age of Empires was hardly an effort at all. I imagine most of the time actually went into writing the scenario instructions with the accompanying graphics instead of doing the level design. Not that I'm criticizing the campaigns of being of poor quality, I actually think the trial campaigns are of better quality than some of the campaigns in the full game.
But with the advent of voice-acting and triggers making a nice campaign was ways more time consuming in the sequel so it's understandable that they refrained from making unique campaigns for the trial.

[MrFlibble]

Gotta agree on that music part, some of the tracks just drag you into the setting of the game. I didn't find the CGI cinematics bad at all, the intro was IMO quite good though I have to admit I haven't played the early Command & Conquer games nearly at all. Still, I've seen games with ways worse CGI cinematics (HOMM springs to mind). Oh and despite the sequel having just one CGI cinematic, I thought that one had a very interesting approach and it had been quite cleverly done.

Yeah, the intro of AoK is quite good, with that visualised chess game metaphor, and the intro in AoE is okay too (owing much to the music though IMO), it's just that the quality of cinematics, especially in AoE, was still only average compared to some of the other games of the time. Also, intro and outro sequences for the original AoE campaigns (I think they dropped them entirely in Rise of Rome IIRC) are very vague, and it's sometimes quite hard to figure out what's actually going on.

Yeah, putting together a campaign for the original Age of Empires was hardly an effort at all. I imagine most of the time actually went into writing the scenario instructions with the accompanying graphics instead of doing the level design. Not that I'm criticizing the campaigns of being of poor quality, I actually think the trial campaigns are of better quality than some of the campaigns in the full game.
But with the advent of voice-acting and triggers making a nice campaign was ways more time consuming in the sequel so it's understandable that they refrained from making unique campaigns for the trial.

BTW, do you remember that Egyptian campaign from the exclusive demo that you mentioned above? I've heard that the beta version (supposedly from beta testing) was leaked at some point, but I don't know if there was a campaign or just some missions or even multiplayer-only scenarios. Beta screenies are floating over the net, easily discernible by the X-shaped deselection button, which looks different from the final version, but I haven't looked more deeply into other differences that were in the beta.

What I found quite annoying about AoE when I first played it is that most structures, except walls and stone age houses, don't have any "half-built" animation frames (like in the Warcraft series of games). It is even more noticeable in AoK, where buildings are large and tall, and the transition from a flat construction site to a large building looks kind of weird, even more so if you take into account that walls have two frames for incomplete construction state. I don't think that adding one "half-built" frame for each structure would eat that much disk space anyway.

[Litude]

BTW, do you remember that Egyptian campaign from the exclusive demo that you mentioned above?

I have actually never played it myself, but I've found several sources that confirm that it existed and did indeed have an exclusive campaign (but sadly none of them had the demo anymore).

I've heard that the beta version (supposedly from beta testing) was leaked at some point, but I don't know if there was a campaign or just some missions or even multiplayer-only scenarios. Beta screenies are floating over the net, easily discernible by the X-shaped deselection button, which looks different from the final version, but I haven't looked more deeply into other differences that were in the beta.

Age of Empires was leaked at least twice during it's development, once during late alpha stages and the second time in quite late beta stages. Especially the alpha has some quite major differences when compared to the final game with certain units looking completely different, farms that don't run out of food but instead slowly increase the amount of food they have (quite realistic, but at the same very annoying when you actually use them in-game) buildable trade workshops which give you extra gold when trading and there are naturally a bunch of unfinished scenarios some of which made it to the final game in a more polished state whilst others got scrapped. The beta on the other hand isn't nearly as exciting as the alpha, but it does have some of the scenarios that were apparently presented at E3 1997 which is nice, but the game was already mostly finished at this stage.

What I found quite annoying about AoE when I first played it is that most structures, except walls and stone age houses, don't have any "half-built" animation frames (like in the Warcraft series of games). It is even more noticeable in AoK, where buildings are large and tall, and the transition from a flat construction site to a large building looks kind of weird, even more so if you take into account that walls have two frames for incomplete construction state. I don't think that adding one "half-built" frame for each structure would eat that much disk space anyway.

I'm not too convinced it was because of disk space, but more likely to save time and memory.

[MrFlibble]

Age of Empires was leaked at least twice during it's development, once during late alpha stages and the second time in quite late beta stages. Especially the alpha has some quite major differences when compared to the final game with certain units looking completely different, farms that don't run out of food but instead slowly increase the amount of food they have (quite realistic, but at the same very annoying when you actually use them in-game) buildable trade workshops which give you extra gold when trading and there are naturally a bunch of unfinished scenarios some of which made it to the final game in a more polished state whilst others got scrapped. The beta on the other hand isn't nearly as exciting as the alpha, but it does have some of the scenarios that were apparently presented at E3 1997 which is nice, but the game was already mostly finished at this stage.

I didn't know that; always been wondering what that "trade workshop" building used in some custom scenarios was for Is there any website or page dedicated to the alpha and beta of AoE and/or AoK? I've always been interested in the evolution of games during their development and spent quite some time browsing sites and pages with Starcraft alpha and beta screenies

[Litude]

There's AoEBeta which has quite a nice collection of the stuff but there's still a lot of stuff missing.

[MrFlibble]

Nice, thanks for the link