Recent reviews by hitman

the father of modern arpgs and still going stronger than the rest.

Fantastic game, smooth graphics, great story and very fun to play.

anazub

amazingkungfugame

The most innovative rts game back when it was released. Seeing it in HD is the best revisit to a game I ever had.

Here is the recipe for a lot of fun for complete new people:
Join (find people with low rating (1500 or less) or create a game
Pick a civ you like
select a team
click ready
Start the game/Wait for game to start
Start building your empire - most of building placements are quite intuitive.
Build an army
Crush your enemies


Whether newbie, casual or going pro In an RTS game its important to understand what you want to get out of the game and what is needed to get there. Here is an example of what i think makes a great RTS game:

MAPS - Oh the maps. Imagine you play a game and by changing the map the game takes a completely different turn in strategies. As always in RTS there is a balancing act between making army, buildings or expanding economy, the maps in AoE have some of best game changing maps ever imagined. Here goes:

Arabia - an open map nothing is safe favors rushing, fast units and resource defense (a typical map type for rts games)

Black Forest - A vast forest map with narrow passages (easily walled) provides for long games - typical favored by newer players, but remains a classic sometimes.

Water maps - a new economy is rising! Fishing is the new farming and you have to defend your fleet of fishing boats while destroying the eco of the enemy. Honorable mention here is the Team island map where each team has a seperate island where the fight on water typically has the motive to clear a spot on the enemy island to set up shop and start raiding parties for the win.

Extra resourcefull maps - hate farms ? Try yucatan it has more turkey and deer that will prolong the transisition to farming and cater for new rush strategies with certain civs like mongols (faster hunting) and britons (faster turkey harvest)

NOMAD - In nomad maps you start with just villagers and no base, like everyone else. It means technology is set far back and any early advantage of finding resources or killing enemies before they complete their base can spiral completely out of control. One of my favourite map choices is random Land Nomad. Its basically like you get an extra era of your civilization.




Casuals are favored in AoE because the rather easy to learn mechanics of the game (i.e. gentle learning curve) and multiplayer friendly environment, strong defensive tools like walls and castles.

For the newbies and visitors (extremely casual) its a sweet game, with nice built campaign, ability to reduce game speed and enjoy the clash of 400 units pounding at each other, with old warmachines, soldiers and archers with a full battle formation system that is sometimes game changing when used correctly.

For the serious people (pros and alike), AoE offers more features then any other RTS that i have met to date - 10 years ago as well :) To mention a few:

BALANCE - the civs all have distinct advantages thus balance is quite unclear, when played perfectly some civilizations come ahead of others in different stages of the games.

MECHANICS - In order to play a perfect game there a few factors to include, first of all you need to master hotkeys to perfection (which are fully customizable to your own RTS fingers), secondly techniques such as microing villagers (for chopping and hunting) is very important, battle formations are still useful as they become a tool to dodge enemy fire. Battle microing changes as ballistics are being researched. Constructing buildings to interlink them and form walls and section your empire becomes an important skill toi have :) Any many more things.

METAGAME - Unlike some other games (Hi Starcraft 1, 2) this game has hard counters, pikemen vs knights is one of the obvious ones. There are many build orders out there, but at some point in higher levels of play it becomes more important to react and anticipate rather than follow some strict build orders. Multiplayer metagame, is somewhat balanced but here the Team bonus from civilizations commands certain civs to be taken on selected maps.

And there are many more good parts of the game which is why I dont think there will ever be a better RTS game, UNLESS they fix lag issues.Thats right - this game still gets 100% score in my world but here comes the bad things:

GAMING PLATFORM - the multiplayer platforms in games have evolved greatly since AoE was first released, the network stability, the lag, the slowing of the game. In AoE lag can be a severe issue, dragging the game long without any need. Also the desync happens from time to time that will destroy any match that was started. Perhaps one day it will be fixed, lets all hope.


I love this game, and if you like RTS games so will you - Im willing to bet.

C3r3brum