Real-time strategy games of 1997 were mostly about fictional wars; PC Player in Germany noted that this one was not about the usual “aliens, orcs or mercenaries”. Age of Empires gave the player a Stone Age tribe instead: a handful of villagers, a town centre and ten thousand years in which to turn them into an empire. Computer Gaming World’s Elliott Chin called it “a perfect blend of familiarity and innovation”. Anyone who had played Blizzard’s Warcraft II could pick up the controls at once. The ambition came from the turn-based Civilization: research, trade, religion and a choice of ways to win.
That mix came from its designer. Bruce Shelley had co-designed Civilization with Sid Meier at MicroProse, and he and Rick Goodman began the design of Age of Empires at the new Ensemble Studios in Dallas in 1995. It was the studio’s first game, and Microsoft published it in October 1997. Nine months later Computer Gaming World reported that it was “on the verge of breaking the million-copy sales mark”.
Fast facts
- Developer: Ensemble Studios, Dallas, Texas.
- Publisher: Microsoft.
- Designers: Bruce Shelley and Rick Goodman.
- Released: October 1997, for Windows 95 and NT, at $54.95 in America; a Macintosh version was announced in 1999.
- Civilisations: twelve, from Egypt, Greece, Babylon, Assyria and Persia to the Shang and the Yamato.
- Expansion: The Rise of Rome (1998).
- Sales: more than 850,000 copies in 55 countries by February 1998, by Microsoft’s count.
From the Stone Age to the Iron Age
Every game starts in the Stone Age, with a few villagers and a town centre. The villagers are the economy. CGW’s preview listed their jobs: “hunting and foraging food, mining gold and stone, and chopping wood”, as well as building and scouting. PC Player in Germany enjoyed simply watching them: a hunting party setting out after an elephant, a buzzard circling the village, busy workers hauling stone, meat and gold.
Advancing to the next age needs buildings and a stockpile of resources, and each age, Tool, Bronze and Iron, unlocks new buildings, units and research. The progression made sense of the economy, as Chin noticed. In the Stone Age a tribe hunts and forages; from the Tool Age it can build farms, “a self-replenishing food supply”. He liked that “the resources you have to gather are the same ones that early man had to acquire: food, wood, stone, and gold”. Gold became essential in the Iron Age, “since by then man’s economy thrives on money and not such barbaric currencies as meat and wood”.
The research was not all military. CGW listed discoveries such as writing, irrigation, nobility and polytheism, a market that taught woodworking and domestication, the wheel to speed up carts and troops, and merchant ships to trade with neighbours. Priests could convert enemy units to the player’s side. PC Player counted more than 100 upgrades and 40 kinds of troops, from a club-wielding warrior to the armoured war elephant.
Twelve civilisations
The twelve civilisations shared four sets of buildings, but each had its own strengths and a limited share of the technology tree. PC Player gave examples: the Greeks had the fastest ships, the Sumerians the most productive farmers and the Egyptian priests the longest range. CGW explained how that shaped a game: “A Yamato player will try to defeat his opponents on the seas since he has access to all the naval discoveries, while a Shang player might commit to a war of conversion since he has access to all the religious discoveries.”
Ways to win
Conquest was only one route. Players could win by collecting all the artefacts on a map, by holding all of its Stonehenge-like ruins, or by building a Wonder and keeping it standing for 2,000 years, which CGW worked out as “roughly 2,000 seconds”. In multiplayer, Chin wrote, some players raced through the ages while others “quietly wall themselves off and amass resources for Wonder construction”, and others “just crank out a massive army of club-men in the stone age to club their berry-picking opponents to death”.
There were also four campaigns, the first an extended tutorial, and scenarios drawn from history and legend. PC Player mentioned the siege of Troy and the search for the Golden Fleece, with heroes such as Achilles and Jason, and an encyclopaedia of 50,000 words on the ancient cultures.
Reception
CGW gave it the magazine’s Multiplayer Game of the Year award. Chin’s review was enthusiastic but not quite a perfect score: “I really wanted to award Microsoft and Ensemble’s Age of Empires a perfect score, but I just couldn’t.” His main complaint was the population limit of 50 units: “In a game where your civilization advances through 12,000 years of discovery, it’s silly to think that your people can’t even procreate beyond their Stone Age numbers.” He also thought the walls too strong and missed the unit queues of Total Annihilation. PC Player’s reviewer admitted that he had been firmly convinced that no really brilliant game could come out of Microsoft, and was relieved, he joked, that it had been developed by Shelley’s new company instead.
The comparisons with Command & Conquer came too. Computer and Video Games opened its December 1997 round-up entry with “Another C&C clone? Perhaps, but this time the battle ground is history itself.” Microsoft announced in February 1998 that customers had bought more than 850,000 copies in 55 countries, and that it was the best-selling strategy game in the United States, Britain, Germany and France since its release.
The Age series
The expansion The Rise of Rome (1998), led by Sandy Petersen, formerly a designer at id Software, added new civilisations and units such as camel riders and fire-spouting galleys. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (1999) moved to the Middle Ages, and Computer Gaming World said it “looks and plays like the Renaissance”. Ensemble followed it with Age of Mythology (2002) and Age of Empires III (2005). Microsoft closed the studio in 2009, but the series went on: Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, a remaster with 4K graphics and an orchestral soundtrack, came out for Windows 10 on 20 February 2018, and Relic Entertainment’s Age of Empires IV followed in 2021.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 159, October 1997, pp. 78–79: preview by Elliott Chin (Shelley as “cocreator of Civilization”; Warcraft II controls; twelve civilisations; the four ages; villagers; resources; farms; research; priests; victory conditions; the Wonder and its 2,000 years; four campaigns).
- Computer Gaming World issue 162, January 1998, pp. 274–277: review by Elliott Chin (designers Rick Goodman and Bruce Shelley; $54.95; system requirements; “a perfect blend”; discoveries; the Yamato and the Shang; multiplayer strategies; the population limit; walls and unit queues).
- Computer Gaming World issue 168, July 1998, p. 56: The Rise of Rome feature by Ken Brown (the Multiplayer Game of the Year award; “on the verge of breaking the million-copy sales mark”; Shelley’s work on Civilization and Railroad Tycoon; the design begun in 1995 with Rick Goodman).
- Computer Gaming World issue 171, October 1998, p. 62: The Rise of Rome preview (camel riders, fire galleys, Sandy Petersen).
- Computer Gaming World issue 177, April 1999, p. 25: Macintosh games announced, including Age of Empires.
- Computer Gaming World issue 185, December 1999, p. 14: Age of Empires II. Issue 221, December 2002, p. 102: Age of Mythology feature.
- PC Games (Germany), December 2005, p. 33: Age of Empires 3 hardware check.
- PC Player (Germany), December 1997, pp. 86–88: review (twelve civilisations; four graphics sets; four campaigns of eight scenarios; Troy and the Golden Fleece; the 50,000-word encyclopaedia; more than 100 upgrades; 40 kinds of troops; the population limit of 50; civilisation strengths; the reviewer on Microsoft); p. 90: interview with Bruce Shelley.
- Computer and Video Games issue 193, December 1997, p. 61: “Another C&C clone?”
- Edge issue 211, February 2010, p. 105: Microsoft’s closure of Ensemble Studios the previous year.
- Microsoft, “Age of Empires Tops Worldwide PC Game Best-Seller Lists”, press release, 5 February 1998 (web, secondary): 850,000 copies in 55 countries; best-selling strategy game in four countries since its release in October 1997. https://news.microsoft.com/source/?p=11274
- Microsoft, “Age of Empires: Definitive Edition now available on Windows 10 PCs worldwide”, Windows Experience Blog, 20 February 2018 (web, secondary). https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/02/20/age-empires-definitive-edition-now-available-windows-10-pcs-worldwide/
- For Age of Empires IV (2021), see the real-time strategy entry and its sources.