Age of Empires

What is it?: A remarkable real-time strategy set in antiquity, 1997, Windows, 1999, Macintosh.
What computer or emulator will it run on?: I played it on a Pentium 120. The later Mac port is best played on a G3.
Tags: Isometric.

I admit that at first I was not all that impressed by Age of Empires. Ah well, I thought, The Settlers II with professional graphics. Nice. I knew every aspect of this game from somewhere else, Warcraft II, Seven Kingdoms, the City Builder Series. But very soon I noticed three things:

Age of Empires predates most of these games.
If it doesn't, and sometimes even if it does, it implements the elements better.
This game is just damn fun.

Unlike so many other real-time strategies, Age of Empires puts the main emphasis on open gameplay. Any multiplayer map or scenario can be played against the computer, or you can play on a random map with a wide array of configurations, for example you can set up teams and have allies.

The Civilisations

Previously, real-time strategy had either been in the realm of science fiction (Dune II, Enemy Nations) or fantasy (Warcraft). Age of Empires instead goes back into history, continuing the tradition of the war games of the 80s.

You can choose between no less than a full dozen of civilisations. They come in four groups that share the graphics for the buildings, unit sprites are the same for all of them. The following list is not supposed to be a strategy guide, just a general overview.

Egypt Graphics
- Egyptian: Relies a lot on chariots and priests and has more gold than the other civilisations.
- Assyrian: Rely mostly on their light but fast archers. Since their villagers are faster too, they will advance earlier. No elephants or heavy infantry.
- Sumerian: Rely mostly on fast catapults and strong villagers. They cannot engage in trade.
Mesopotamian Graphics
- Babylonian: Rely mostly on strong walls and conversion through their priests. A good civilisation to build a Wonder. Both infantry and cavalry is weak in the later stages.
- Hittite: Rely mostly on ranged attack, especially catapults and other siege weapons. Their priests are little help.
- Persian: Fast ships and elephants, but slow villagers.
Greek Graphics
- Greek: Rely on fast warships and their phalanx. They are vulnerable in the early stages of the game.
- Minoan: Rely mostly on ships and bowmen.
- Phoenician: Rely mostly on elephants and siege ships.
Asian Graphics
- Choson (Korea): A mixture of tough infantry, cheap priests and tower range.
- Shang (China): Rely mostly on strong walls and lots of villagers. They have no advanced combat units.
- Yamato (Japan): Rely mostly on cavalry. Their villagers are faster and their ships stronger, but their priests, walls, and siege weapons weak.

As you see, the choice of graphics is a bit arbitrary. Egypt look for Assyrians? Greek look for Phoenicians? It's a bit ridiculous. I cannot help but feel that originally only four civilisations were planned (Egypt, Babylonian, Greek, Japanese) and the further differentiation was added as an afterthought.

The differences between the civilisations are not very big. If you play with full tech tree, there are very few indeed, any civilisation can have any building or unit, though there may be differences in strength or speed. I tend to choose this option since I simply cannot remember which civilisation can research what otherwise, the system is just too arbitrary, even though it may be based on historical facts.

On the Mac

A Macintosh port was created two years later by MacSoft. As far as I could find out, the expansion pack, Rise of Rome, was never ported.

As so often, system requirements of the port are quite a bit steeper. According to MacSoft, you can play it on a 120MHz/604, a 150Mhz/603 PowerPC or G3 processor (including iMac) with 32MB RAM and a resolution of at least 832×624. If your system meets but does not exceed these requirements, this game may have choppy animation, or the sound or video may hesitate.

Unfortunately, the Macintosh version of Age of Empires and the PC version are not compatible. You can only play multiplayer games with other MAC users. I don't know about user-created campaigns, but I guess these won't be compatible either.

Official FAQ, where I found the information above.
Review on Insanely Great Mac
Age of Empires would be one of the best Mac games released in recent months if it had not been for two fatal flaws: its tardiness in arriving for the Mac platform, and its inability to support cross-platform gaming. After nearly two years, it is almost considered a vintage classic. So the fact it doesn't support cross-platform gaming may be a non-factor since PC users are likely not playing it anymore. All things considered however, Age of Empires is a great game. You’ll have a ton of fun.

Cheats

Age of Empires has the weirdest, whackiest cheats I ever encountered in any game. A few have been added in Rise of Rome. First, there are two completely off-topic characters you can get (three more have been added in the expansion). They have custom graphics, sounds, and attack animations. Stats are in the order as they appear on the screen. To activate a cheat, hit Enter (this brings up the chat window) and type in the code. Pretty convenient since you see what you are doing.

Very Special Units

Winsett's_Z: A black sports car, the driver has a sort of rocket launcher. The graphic is not quite in scale, it is a bit too large. 300/10/15, 500 hitpoints. Attack animation is standard arrow. The car moves very fast and has a huge range of sight, but can easily converted by enemy priests. Like a catapult, it has a minimum attack range. Cheat: bigdaddy.
Nuke Trooper: There are two variants of this guy. One attacks with a laser gun, 15/10/15, 100 hitpoints, 10 shots per second, cheat: photon man. The other fires a nuclear missile with appropriate animation, 300/10/88, 100 hitpoints, he can attack ground, but has only one shot per 10 seconds. Cheat: e=mc2 trooper.

Not Quite so Special Units

Then there are a number of units that use standard graphics, but are sometimes pretty odd too. Two of them (Medusa and Flying Dutchman) are available in the editor as well. These are all upgrades to existing units, and thus count against your population limit.

Medusa: Probably the strangest unit in the game. A Medusa has the same graphics and stats as a villagers, but when a Medusa dies, he (?) becomes a Black Rider. The cheat medusa converts all villagers that have not yet been assigned a task as well as any you create in the future to Medusae. Caution: In Rise of Rome, Medusae cannot perform any tasks!
Black Rider: Basically just a Heavy Horse Archer on steroids (8/0/2/7, 60 hitpoints), however, when he dies, he becomes a catapult! The cheat black rider will upgrade any horse archers to Black Riders.
Stealth Archer: An upgrade to the Composite Archer. When standing, his graphic is changed to that of a tree, and he can walk on water. His damage and hitpoints are also increased. Cheat: dark rain
Big Bertha: Upgrade to catapults, 65/0/16, 200 hitpoints, and a damage range of 10! Cheat: big bertha (duh).—Big Bertha was the name of a Krupp canon in World War I. Its official name was M 42 (it was a 42cm canon). Depending on type it weighed up to 20 tons. Big Bertha could breach the French Gelopin turrets, which were had walls up to 10" concrete, armed with nickel steel.
Flying Dutchman: A Juggernaut with somewhat higher attack power that can move on land. Cheat: flying dutchman (duh again).

Fun Cheats

Apart from these units, there are a few other weird cheats that are not exactly useful, but amusing:

Gaia: Usually you read in cheat lists that gaia gives you control over the animals, while you lose control of the humans. While correct in many cases, this is not a precise description. What gaia actually does is that it lets you play as Gaia. You will know what this means if you ever have used the scenario editor. There's not much you can do as Gaia. You can move your units around, you can attack, but you cannot create new units (your population limit is set to 0), research, or have your villagers perform any tasks.
Jack be Nimble: Select a Catapult and type jack be nimble into the cheat prompt. The missile graphics will change to somersaulting villagers, if the Catapult faces north to cows, if it faces northeast to naked super villagers with capes.

Standard Cheats

And then there are, of course, some more conventional cheats, designed to make the game easier, or just a fancy way to end the current game.

More Resources

woodstock: 1000 wood.
pepperoni pizza: 1000 food.
coinage: 1000 gold.
quarry: 1000 stone.

Win or Lose

home run: Win the current Scenario.
kill#: Destroys the buildings and units of player #, thus eliminating this player. Kill1 is the equivalent of hari kari.
diediedie: Buildings and units of all players are destroyed.
resign: You resign, the game is over.
hari kari: All your buildings and units are destroyed, game is over.

Stronger Units

hoyohoyo: All Priests have 600 hit points, and increased speed. If you have not researched mysticism before you activate this cheat, doing so later will give you priests with 1200 hitpoints!
icbm: Ballista has range of 100.
upsidflintmobile: Speeds up Chariot movement and fire rate.

Misc.

reveal map: The complete map is revealed (no black areas).
no fog: Removes Fog of War (no gray areas).
steroids: Instant build, research, harvesting, upgrade. Works for all players and can be toggled on and off.

Fake Cheats

On some sites, you will find cheats listed that definitely do not work. Some may be from earlier versions of the game, but most are probably pure hoaxes.

young men, bflied: Supposed to remove the population limit.
black death: Supposed to kill all other players.
gunners: Supposed to make your soldiers invulnerable.
how do you turn this on: A blue car. I think this one is from Age of Kings.
peanutbutter: 1 million of each resource.
popcorn: 1 billion of each resource.
amgod: Supposed to make you receive tributes.
modern day: Advance to post age.
tough guy: Supposed to give you a hot air balloon with an elite war elephant with a lazer gun.
eddboys: Get Edd,Ed and Eddy from the Ed,Edd n'Eddy show on cartoon network. Not that I think anyone ever believed this anyway.

A special case is zeus. It is obviously a valid cheat, since it does not show up on the screen when you type it in, but I could not find out what it does. It probably somehow makes your units stronger.

Links

AoE Last Resort by Andrea Rosa, a very talented and still active campaign designer. His site has both tips for working with the editor and general game info. As of September 2006, it is updated about once a month.
Age of Empires' Cartography Workshop was launched in April 2005. There is an interesting section about changes between beta and final.
Age of Empires Heaven, apart from the information especially interesting for its huge and still updated download section for user-created campaigns.
Strategy Guide by Mark Asher.
Like a fine flagon of wine, an empire needs to age before it blossoms into its fullest expression. You've got, oh, about five minutes of peace in Age of Empires before the barbarians are at the gate—and they're not selling Girl Scout cookies. What? You didn't even build a gate? Uh-oh.
Telcontar's Empire of the Ages, last updated Xmas 1999.