Age of Empires/Age of Empires Expansion: The Rise of Rome

Age of Empires

     Age of Empires takes place in an era before rifles, tanks, and grenades. It is even before knights in shining armor. Humans are ready to start their journey into civilization. It is the beginning of man... the age of empires.

     The gameplay is similar to Red Alert. There are 12 different civilizations to choose from. Some, such as Egyptians, Greeks, Hittites, Babylonians, and Persians, are better known than others. Each has its advantages and disadvantages of structures and units to choose from. You have to choose your civilization wisely and make smart decisions to stand a chance of winning.

     Age of Empires features realistic changes such as the evolution into a new age. To advance to the next age, you must build two buildings from that age and gather certain amounts of resources. The ages are Stone, Tool, Bronze, and at last, Iron. Every time you advance into a new era, you are able to build more structures and military units.

     The four types of resources in Age of Empires are wood, food, gold, and stone. You have villagers that collect these things. To get food, you may hunt, farm, or fish. In order to get wood, you must chop down tress, and to get stone and gold you must mine. You spend a great deal of time in the beginning of the game building villagers to do these jobs.

     You can win the game by building a wonder and having it last for 2,000 years, or you can wipe out all the other civilizations. It may sound easy, but it's not. There can be up to 7 computer-controlled civilizations to play against. You can also win by collecting all the ruins or artifacts on the game map and keep them in your possession for a set amount of time.

     The battles in Age of Empires are fun and challenging. You can build guard towers and walls to help defend your villagers and resources. Even if you have an arranged group of troops, the battle will most likely turn into a screen of confusion. You also have priests that can convert enemy troops and ships that will start fighting for you. Even though the priest has few hit points and can be killed very easily, this unit still comes in handy at times.

     The layout of Age of Empires is simple and extremely easy to understand. The graphics are detailed and the various music tunes give this game a great replay value. Age of Empires supports single player mode, multi-player deathmatch, or multi-player cooperative. It also features a map editor. On multi-player, AoE plays better on a direct modem-to-modem connection. But if you really insist on having 3-8 players, you have to be willing to sacrifice speed in the game (meaning sometimes the animations will be choppy and the game will freeze up).

     Despite all the good qualities of Age of Empires, it still has a few down sides. One thing about it that I did not like was the 50-unit population limit. The low population limit does not allow you to create a huge army to go out and conquer the world.

     If you are a big strategy fan, Age of Empires is a must.

Age of Empires Expansion: The Rise of Rome

     Rise of Rome is the spectacular expansion pack to Age of Empires. It include everything in AoE, but adds bug-fixes, new technologies, the armored elephant, camel rider, fire galley, scythe chariot, and slinger as new units, and four new civilizations: the Macedonians, the Romans, the Palmyrans, and the Carthaginians.