Players: 1+
Playing Time: 1-4 hours
Difficulty: 6 (of 10)
This is a review of the gold edition of Age of Empires, which comes with the original game as well as the one expansion: The Rise of Rome. The expansion includes some new cultures, new troops, etc. I haven't bothered to distinguish what's there because it's all presented as a cohesive whole once both the game and the supplement are installed.
The Components
Age of Empires' gold edition comes in a large computer game box which contains: manual, reference sheet, and CD.
Manual: The manual is a flip book, with the Age of Empires manual on one side and the Rise of Rome manual on the other. It's quite readable and easy to learn the game from. It's also well put-together, with charts full of the tech trees of the various civilizations, building cost lists, and a complete index. The book also has a very cool feature: it includes 2-4 pages detailing each of the cultures including in the book, with full information on its history and society (which is a running theme throughout the campaigns as well).
The book is printed in sepia tones, and thus the (too scarce) screenshots are a bit hard to make out due to lack of contrast.
Reference Sheet: This sheet is a cool quick-reference for playing Age of Empires. It includes a full tech chart, which is highly useful for new players as well as charts for scoring, hot keys, unit attributes, and civilization attributes. It's all printed full color on coated card stock, and thus should hold up to Coke spills and other gaming dangers.
CD: A regular CD in a plain case.
Overall, the components are good quality and generally make the game easier to play.
Graphics and UI
Graphics: There are a couple of cut-scenes, used as campaign prologs and epilogues, which frankly look bad. I think this is mainly an issue of not holding up to modern standards. I tend to skip these cuts.
The game itself is done as an isomorphic 2.5D overhead view. A lot of attention has been paid to detail here, with variations in building based on both age (of which there are 4) and culture (of which there are 14). The age changes are quite notable. The cultural changes are less global, but there's enough to add a lot of richness to the game.
Overall the graphics are pleasing, useful, and easy to distinguish. They're not as amazingly beautiful as some more recent games, but especially considering the era of the game, they're nice.
User Interface: The majority of the screen is taken up by that isomorphic overhead view of the local area. The top and bottom of the screen feature an overlay specific for your culture through which the rest of the UI is accessible. Across the top are stats on resources and a couple of buttons.
The bottom right of the screen features a global map.
It's at the bottom left of the screen where most of the actual UI is. The game centers on selecting units, then taking actions with them. When you left-click on a unit, more info on that unit appears at the bottom left, and a number of specific actions appear just to the right of it (e.g., for a villager the "build" and "repair" actions appear, while for a building various technological advances will appear). You can click on one of those actions if you want to take it, sometimes requiring a second click afterward (e.g., after you click "build", you'll then get a choice of buildings). Alternatively, after you've selected a villager or military unit, you can right-click on the map. This moves the unit (if you're clicking an open space) or allows the unit to interact with what you've clicked (e.g., if you'd chosen a villager then clicked on forest, he'd start cutting lumber) or allow a unit which has already selected the build action to build (e.g., if you'd selected an empty space after previously choosing something to build). The UI is overall easy and intuitive and doesn't require remembering a bunch of different possibilities. The only downside is that the onscreen menus aren't always intuitively arranged and the icons sometimes aren't clear enough to figure out what they are--until you mouseover. (I've gone hunting for a specific building a number of times without finding it, largely because their look changes from age to age.)
People Control: In a real-time strategy game, one of the questions is always, "how easy it is to control the people?" The click-and-click interface at the heart of Age of Empires works fairly well for individuals. You can group together individuals by either lasso-selecting a large group of people or else shift-clicking the people you want; both work pretty well in actual use. You can also assign numbers to groupings, which lets you reselect them with one click, which is very helpful, though it would be better if the screen also zoomed to the group in question. Adding individuals to a group is a bit of a pain, because you have to select the group, then the individual, then use the control key to connect them to a number again. It's a pity that there's no easier way to do this and also that there's no way to automate new units being added to a grouping (e.g., "any new cavalry unit goes into group 2"). It's also a pity that you can't see listings of your groups, particularly with names; as it is, if you create too many groups it's possible to lose track of who's in what group. Despite these, the numbered groups work well for people management.
Two other annoyances: first, it's possible to lose some of your people if you don't group them into a number and they then wander off. Second, it's easy to lose track of villagers who have stopped worked, military units who have wandered off, etc. (though some of this is apparently dealt with by a more recent patch).
Charts: For most strategy games you want beautiful charts showing you the progress of your civilization. These are fairly notably lacking from Age of Empires, probably because of its real-time ancestry. The couple that exist are buried a couple of screens deep: you can see a numerical listing of how you're doing in a number of categories opposed to other civilizations and you can also see a graphical timeline of peoples. However, none of it is terribly interesting; this is probably the place where Age of Empires could have been improved the most, by including more extensive comparison charts with other civilizations and also by including better charts of technological advancement.
Overall, Age of Empires is fairly appealing and easy to use. As has already been noted, the components are nice too, particularly considering how much those are increasingly ignored in today's game releases If I were judging the game by today's standards, I'd say the graphics were old fashioned and thus only award a "3" out of "5" for Style; however, presumably you know you're getting a game that's a generation or two old, and by that standard its Style is "4" out of "5", which the primary lapses due to lack of graphical charts and some minor annoyances with people control.
The Game Play
Age of Empires is a strategy game of resource collection, building construction, technological development, and real-time combat.
Setup: You start a typical game of Age of Empires with a couple of villagers and a Town Center. You'll also belong to a specific culture (there are 16 including those in the supplement, from Sumeria to Rome) and be set in a specific Age (there are 4 and you'll usually start in the first, which is the Stone Age).
Resource Collection: Age of Empires centers around the collection of four resources: wood, food, stone, and gold. Each resource is collected from specific work sites, then deposited at your Town Center (or, after you've built them, at a Granary or a Storage Pit).
Wood is gathered by assigning villagers to chop down trees.
Food is gathered by assigning villagers to pick berries, fish, or hunt animals. Later in the game you can also farm or send out fishing ships.
Stone is collected from stone mines.
Gold is collected from gold mines. Later in the game you can also use trade boats to trade other resources for gold.
Using Resources: Once you have resources you can use them for three things: building structures, creating units, and developing technology.
Buildings. Buildings are created by assigning villagers to build. Most buildings are constructed via stockpiles of wood, but walls and towers require stone.
Units. Units are created by specific buildings. Villagers come from the Town Center, hand-to-hand units from the Barracks, archers from the archery range, etc. Most basic units require just food to be constructed, while more advanced units require food and gold. Some special units also require some wood (e.g., archers) and some stone (e.g., slingers).
Development. Finally, some buildings allow for technological development. For example, the Storage Pit allows the Toolworking technology, which gives +2 to any hand-to-hand unit attack. Technologies are purchased with various combinations of resources, with food common early on and gold for more advanced technologies.
The Ages of Empire. All development centers around the four ages of the game: the Stone Age, the Tool Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. New buildings, units, and technologies only become available as a civilization progresses through the ages (e.g., the Storage Pit can be built in the Stone Age, and has 4 technologies that become available in the Tool Age, another 5 in the Bronze Age, and another 5 in the Iron Age).
In order to advance your Age you must first build 2 technology buildings from the current age (there are 3-4 per age), and then you must pay resources to advance: large quantities of food early on, and large quantities of food plus gold later.
Advancing through the ages is very useful, first because it gives you better military units, and second because it gives you access to totally new technologies and totally new types of units.
Combat: As you'd expect in a RTS game, combat is pretty important. You'll peaceably advance your civilization for a while, but then your neighbors will start to get ornery.
Every military unit has values for hit points, attack, armor, range, and speed. You attack by the usual tactic of selecting a unit, then right-clicking a target, and then they'll go at each other. Nothing too fancy here. Various technologies can increase hit point, attack, armor, range, and speed values.
You can also attack buildings, which is quite important for destroying an opponent. There are also a number of special units. In particular there's one type of ship which can be used to carry units across water and there's also a special Priest unit which can convert enemies as well as heal your own troops.
Winning the Game: The game goes until one of three things happens: you capture all the artifacts (special units) for an extended period of time, you capture all the ruins (special locations) for an extended period of time, you build a Wonder and defend it for an extended period of time, or you destroy all your opponents.
Game Variants: Age of Empires allows for a lot of different types of games. You have random maps, campaigns, individual scenarios, and death matches which concentrate on the more combative elements. Most games are single-player, but random maps and scenarios can also be played multiplayer.
The campaigns are quite well done and highlight different aspects of the game against a realistic, carefully detailed, historical background. For example the Chinese campaign starts off with an assassination: you must get a small group of military units deep into an opponent's stronghold, then assassinate his leader. The Greek campaign, meanwhile, begins with driving out natives of Greek and settling in their land. There are a few more than a half-dozen campaigns total, each with a number of scenarios.
The Game Design
Overall, Age of Empires is quite playable and enjoyable, though it doesn't have quite the same constantly addictive quality as other civilization-building games that I've played. Here's some of the things I liked:
Great Background: The background of the game, with players advancing up through evolutionary ages as one of 14 different cultures, all comes across very well. The appearance of new technologies in different ages and the revamping of all the graphics for different cultures and ages all does a lot to make this core precept of the game feel real. The various campaigns are also quite well done and integrate great into this historical background.
Simple, Enjoyable Play: The core gameplay is fairly simplistic, centering around giving orders to individual persons. It's very intuitive to figure out what to do with people on a case-by-case basis, and you get a constant feeling of accomplishment as individuals make quick, notable advances for you.
Good Time Delays: The game enjoys a good timing balance, which is critical for RTS. At the default time rate buildings and troops are built quickly, but at the same time battles occur at a reasonable speed. As a result, you don't sit around for too long, and neither do you go crazy trying to keep up with all your troops (though in an acute case, with things happening on multiple fronts, you will get a bit harried).
Here's some of the things I found problematic:
Dumb AIs: All around, the artificial intelligence in the game is pretty bad. Your villagers can and will get stuck when you're moving them around. They'll also often be unable to figure out how to continue with their task (e.g., if you tell a villager to cut trees and he finishes cutting and no other tree terribly nearby he'll idle, even if you know there are more trees a bit further out). The opponent AIs are pretty bad too, particularly in combat. They'll often send repair villagers out to be totally massacred, and not kill your own while trying to raze buildings. They'll let you gather large forces just outside of their range. They generally won't team up on individuals with superior numbers, but will definitely die when you do the same. A lot of the campaigns start off with your opponents holding vastly superior power, and after you've played a while it'll be obvious why.
Repetitive Strategies: Despite a wide breadth of options, some strategies became reliable winners, leading to repetition, including: always building a Barracks in the Stone Age (as it becomes a requirement in the Tool Age), and building up a powerful navy as quickly as powerful.
Bad Lookahead Commands: Controlling up to 50 persons can be a bit trying in this game because of the built-in "resource obselence". Generally, any resource in the game, be it wood, stone, or even food in farms, eventually runs out. As mentioned above, the villagers sometimes aren't bright enough to find other like resources elsewhere. This is especially bad in the case of farmers, where you have to keep rebuilding their farms, and if you don't they (uselessly) help out other farmers.
Generally, there's no lookahead UI available anywhere in the game. You can't set units to perform specific actions as soon as they're built, nor can you set units to do a different action upon the completion of their current one. As a result, whenever there's a state change (usually a unit build, the completion of a building creation, or the expenditure of a resource), you have to go find the unit in question and retask it. As the game procedes you have increasing numbers of people standing idle while you try and catch up with them.
Arbitrary Tech Tree: Although the tech tree allows for a nice feeling of advancement, it feels arbitrary in a number of ways. Why do Watch Tower and Wall technology come from a Granary? Why does a Temple require a Market? Why does Alchemy come from the Government Center? This can be quite non-intuitive in early games, as you click through all your technology buildings, trying to find the one that has the tech you're looking for.
End Game Chaos: The end game often becomes quite chaotic, due to the large number of people you're controlling. You tend to end up with huge stockpiles of some resources that you're not always using effectively and are more likely than ever to lose track of peoples, buildings, or general plans.
Overall, Age of Empires does a good job of merging a number of different types of gameplay including real-time combat, civilization building, and resource collection and allocation. Other than some narrowing of strategic options, the game play is quite good, with any problems arising from AI and UI choices. Still, these can be problematic, and thus the game only earns an average Substance rating overall: "3" out of "5".
Conclusion
Age of Empires is an older game and this shows, not just in the coarser graphics than today's standards, but also in the more primitive AI and UI. Nonetheless, it's still well worth playing thanks to its interesting, well-represented backgrounds and the fact that it gives you the ability to bring mankind out of the Stone Age.
