Age of Empires

Overview

Age of empires is a classical style real time strategy (RTS) game developed by Ensemble Studios and released in 1997. This is the first game in the popular Age of empires series and is one of the first historically based RTS games and has a heavy focus on resource gathering and Base creation.

Historical Background

Sheets of ice up to three miles high covered much of the earth’s northern hemisphere during the last Ice age. Our human ancestors persevered in the harsh Ice Age environment by developing new technologies and survival strategies at unprecedented rates. When climate changes melted and removed the ice around 12,000 years ago, humans were uniquely suited to take advantage of the new worlds that were beckoning.

During the next 5,000 years humans expanded to become the dominant species on earth. Human populations exploded because of new technologies for hunting and food gathering put all other species at a disadvantage. Within 3,000 more years, humans had established the first great civilizations on earth.

Gameplay

In Age of Empires your goal is to build your tribe into a mighty civilization that can fight for world dominance. You begin the game in the Stone Age with a small tribe of villagers. You most locate and extract resources such as food, wood, stone and gold. These resources let you construct building and train units to either further your economy of to protect your civilization from attack. As you advance through the Ages your building will improve and more skilled and elite units and structures will become available to you. There are four stages to development. The Stone Age, the Tool Age, the Bronze Age and finally the Iron Age. At each Age structures will change in appearance to reflect the historical period.

As well as campaign modes, the game includes two other game types. Random map and the so called “death match” in which all players start at Iron age and have very high resources. There are multiple ways to win these game types. Such as military conquest (killing all other civilizations on the map), Building a wonder ( a unique building for each civilization that costs large amounts of resources) or by achieving the highest score.

Civilizations

There are 12 different playable civilizations in Age of Empires each with their own benefits and specialities.

Assyrian

• Archer, Chariot Archer and Cavalry Archer fire rate 40%

• Villagers 30% faster

Babylonian

• Double Wall and Tower HP.

• 30% Priest rejuvenation rate.

• 30% Stone mining.

Choson

• 80 long swordsman and Legion HP.

• 2 tower range.

• -30% Priest cost.

Egyptian

• 20% Gold mining.

• 33% Chariot and Chariot Archer HP.

• 3 Priest Range.

Greek

• Hoplite, Phalanx and Centurion 30% faster.

• War Ships 30% faster.

Hittite

• Double Stone Thrower, Catapult, Heavy Catapult HP.
• 1 Archery Range unit attack 4 War Ship Range.
• 4 warship range.

Minoan

• -30% ship cost.

• 2 Composite Bowman range.

• 25% farm production.

Persian

• 30% hunting.
• -30% farm production.

• War Elephant and Elephant Archer 50% faster.

• 50% Trireme fire rate.

Phoenician

• -25% War Elephant and Elephant Archer cost.
• 65% Catapult Trireme and Juggernaught fire rate.

• 2 woodcutting.

Shang

• -30% villager cost.

• double Wall HP.

Sumerian

• 15 villager HP.

• 50% stone thrower, catapult, heavy catapult fire rate.

• Double farm production.

Yamato

• -25% Horse Archer, Scout, Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry, Cataphract cos.

• Villagers 30% faster

• 30% ship HP

Soundtrack

Age of empire has a unique sounding soundtrack created by David & Stephen Rippy who wished to create a sound that reflected the time period of the game.

1. Title Screen
2. Win
3. Lose
4. Tango Alpha Bravo
5. Polyester Jammy
6. Hyman's Wrath
7. Mix of the Great Books
8. Mean
9. Medieval Melody
10. Rocky Roads
11. Kitty's Song
12. Fretless Salsa
13. Bigelow's Bungalow
14. Credits

System Requirements (PC)

• Pentium 90 or higher processor
• 16 MB RAM
• Microsoft Windows 95 operating system or Windows NT Workstation 4.0 with Service Pack 3
• Local SVGA bus video display (with 1 MB VRAM)
• 80 MB of available hard disk space
• 50 MB free disk space for swap file
• Quad speed CD-ROM drive - for cinematics
• Double speed CD-ROM drive - for gameplay
• Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device
• Sound board plus speakers or headphones to hear audio
• 28.8 Kbps modem for head-to-head play