Age Of Empires 1 Full Game Download UPDATED

Age Of Empires 1 Full Game Download

Back In 1996 Microsoft may well have been the biggest visitor in the world, fronted by the richest human being alive, but it didn't necessarily follow that by providing most every PC across the planet with the ways to operate that Microsoft fabricated the finest games. Neither prolific nor prodigious, Microsoft'due south entertainment output was up to that point notable just for it'due south annual update of Flight Simulator, a game about equally entertaining in the eyes of about gamers every bit that other great Microsoft entry into gaming'south hall of legends, Solitaire. If Bill Gates and co wanted to exist taken as seriously for their entertainment software equally i they did for their applications, they needed to release a killer game. Fiddling did they know that in February of that twelvemonth they'd constitute one.

Although evolution on Age Of Empires begun early in 1995, Microsoft had little to keep when they starting time saw it later that year, as Rick Goodman, AoE's lead designer recalls: When we invited them to visit us, they came and we spent about ten minutes demoing a human being chopping a tree.

Truly, in that location wasn't much to show at that point. Yous couldn't construct a edifice, research a technology, or conduct combat. Just, a villager could chop a tree. Microsoft saw this and concluded that we were working on a Life Sim'. Apparently, they needed a Life Sim in their portfolio. And so, soon afterwards,

Microsoft offered us a publishing agreement. I'chiliad still not exactly sure why.

Back To The Stone Age

Ensemble Studios was born in July 1994 out of Ensemble Corporation, a Dallas-based database bookkeeping visitor, founded by brothers Tim and Rick Goodman. Seemingly bored with developing spreadsheets and running out of wacky ties with which to brighten the days, information technology occurred to the duo to supercede their suits with standard effect Atari T-shirts, abound their pilus down to their arse cracks and starting time programming games rather than relational databases.

Before working on Age Of Empires I was an accountant," reveals Rick. I had loved gaming of all types, video and lath games, for 20 years before starting to work on Age Of Empires, but the possibility of really designing a game, much less a videogame, had never occurred to me.

Stealing' a programmer from the mother corporation, Rick began work, commencement by burial the programmer under a pile of programming manuals and hoping he might come up upwards with something, which he did months later to the surprise of anybody - a small 2nd FPS game demo, providing the gang with the inspiration to carry on and create a game.

We had no idea what game to make, remembers Rick. I bought a re-create of the original Warcraft and we so embarked on a quest to effigy out what to do. Nosotros considered a cowboys and indians game, a railroad game and a game in which you were trapped on a deserted island and had to solve puzzles to escape.

And then at the beginning of 1995 we hired Bruce Shelley and formed a 3-person commission, consisting of Bruce, myself and my brother. We met each week to discuss proposed game ideas before finally deciding on a real-fourth dimension Civilisation'. The concept behind Historic period Of Empires then grew out of those meetings.

At that place's A Bruce Loose

Information technology's hard to imagine that someone who would later be considered a gaming legend, with hits such equally Civilization, F-nineteen Stealth Fighter and Railroad Tycoon already under his chugalug, would become involved with an unknown games studio without much experience of what was becoming a risky business to be in. Merely as the erstwhile adage proved, information technology's as much most who you lot know as what you know and Tony Goodman, the business brains behind Ensemble, had an old associate keen to assistance out.

Tony was an onetime friend from many years before, recalls Bruce Shelley. When he and colleagues at his business applications company were thinking about getting into game development, he started calling me up and request pretty detailed questions nigh the process of creating games. Eventually he asked me to get involved.

At start Rick Goodman, Tony, and I met regularly on the phone to discuss the pattern. And then Tony got more than involved in building the company, leaving Rick doing about of the piece of work with me helping him." While the pocket-size squad of Ensemble's programmers worked on a 2D tile-based engine to power the game, the three designers (Rick, Bruce and new recruit Brian Sullivan) cracked on with the blueprint, working with elements of Blizzard'south Warcraft and Sid Meier's Civilization, aiming to balance the immediacy of the former with the realism and depth of the latter.

Those games were definitely the biggest influences," says Rick. There were elements of those games that I liked and some that I felt could even be improved. I liked the epic scope of Civ and the random maps, just I actually wanted our game to be multiplayer. I liked the graphics and action orientation of Warcraft, simply I felt that a historical realistic' game would have a broader world-broad entreatment.

I call back the single greatest influence and resource available to any designer is all the games that already exist," says Bruce. Our games originally derived from several classic games and then began to derive from our own creations. We did a lot of enquiry and conceptualising because it took a while to get an engine together to build a image. Angelo Laudon did a fantastic job as our atomic number 82 programmer making that happen. From the first image the game just continued to evolve through playing, adjusting, recoding, and then on, over and over.

Overtime, the vision changed, says Rick, every bit development progressed from the conceptual stage to the implementation stage. It'due south safe to say that few of us had whatsoever real experience creating a computer game, and so we had no idea what we were getting ourselves in to. As a result, the game charted its own direction, much more so than any 1 team fellow member charted the direction for it. Our philosophy was: as long as the game was becoming more fun to play each twenty-four hour period, then we felt were on the right path.

Become The Balance Correct

Considering Ensemble'due south speciality was business software, it remains something of a small miracle that development on their first ever game continued with few real bug. With much of the team receiving on the chore preparation, and veteran Bruce Shelley's skills centred on pattern rather than coding, neither he nor Rick Goodman tin can call back whatsoever significant problems.

If I had to choose ane major challenge during development information technology would exist the operation of our 2D graphics," says Rick. The engine was relatively slow and we recognised this early on. So Matt Pritchard went to work rewriting it. His idea was. rather than redrawing the entire screen each and every frame, nosotros would, instead, keep track of every individual pixel on the screen and merely update those pixels that need updating. I had no thought if such a thing was fifty-fifty possible... only later on eight months of piece of work he completed the task and we got a massive boost in graphics performance."

Equally the game neared completion, with Microsoft now on board, the problems of having 12 races and numerous units and buildings and technological advances in the game became credible. Balancing the gameplay would be a huge undertaking that Ensemble recognised they would have to get right early.

To our credit we started the play balance process 8 months before we shipped," says Rick. We used every minute of that time to effort to balance all of the civilisations and all of the units in each civilisation. We had never done such a thing before, so we didn't know how to go about doing it. Therefore, we merely had everyone play multiplayer games every 24-hour interval from February to September of 1997. We did a pre-game briefing and a postgame debriefing. Then, I made play balance changes to the game and we played once more the next day. I think we played a total of almost 500 internal play-test games during this period, not counting the Microsoft test team's parallel effort in Redmond.

Age Of Sales

That Age Of Empires wasn't quite the Life Sim game they'd signed up to publish didn't seem to worry Microsoft equally it soon became apparent during months of testing both at Ensemble and Microsoft HQs that it would be a huge success, with forecasts putting worldwide sales at the half a meg mark. This for Microsoft fabricated the game comparable simply with MS Flying Sim and MS Golf, their only two real hit games to date. In fact, the game was so successful that the starting time shipment totally sold out, leaving Christmas shelves across the United states empty of stock.

We had no idea at the fourth dimension, but, in hindsight, AoE turned out to be a real blessing for Microsoft as well equally for Ensemble Studios, says Rick. Microsoft was suffering badly in the minds of gamers and in the printing. Even we felt the splash damage earlier the game was completed. At 1 bespeak, earlier the game shipped, we wondered whether the Microsoft proper name might really accept a negative connotation in the minds of gamers.

We only realised how successful the game was after we ran out of copies during the holiday catamenia in 1997 and it went by one million copies sold. Recalls Bruce. It was continuing to sell actually well at that point, there was a huge fan customs around the game, and information technology was clear it was appealing to a broad audience. The response greatly surpassed our expectations, although nosotros knew the game was practiced.

It was at this point that Rick Goodman, the game'southward leading builder, decided to exit the studio he helped create. In 1998, he formed Stainless Steel Studios and soon began evolution on Empire Earth, in many respects an fifty-fifty more ambitious game than AoE. This took the real-time concepts of its predecessor and added in the entire past, nowadays and potential future of Earth history.

After AoE I had a clear vision of the game I wanted to do side by side, says Rick. Ensemble also had a clear vision, and so we amicably parted company so nosotros could each pursue our own goals.

They Sold A Meg

Today with combined sales of Age Of Empires, its two sequels and two expansion packs in backlog of 8.v million, it seems unlikely the serial will ever come to an end. What imperfections remained have largely been ironed out as the series has evolved. Though relatively basic, the real-time clashes inspired past Warcraft are today regimented battles, with players able to organise their armies into intricate formations - only i of Ensemble's innovations that come up every bit standard in realtime strategy games since. The latest in the series, Age Of Mythology, takes the serial in a new management, both in terms of setting and the new technology powering it, though the core concept -to have fun - has remained central.

I would hate to pick a favourite out of the games I have worked on, says Bruce. I think in general I believe the most recent is the best because each builds on those that came earlier. AoE volition always be special, however, because it was a beginning for so many great things that take happened since. The fact that we provided and so many different gaming experiences within the aforementioned box, allowing such a broad spectrum of gamers to find a way to play and savor it worldwide, from casual to hardcore, children to seniors, in countries from Germany to Taiwan. Few games achieve that appeal. That is what I am most proud of."

I think Age Of Empires is a great game, says Rick Goodman. The sequel as well is wonderful, but I have never idea of the original every bit being a gaming milestone. I practice believe that there are games that are definitely milestones in history. But, personally, I don't consider AoE to be in that category. Microsoft we're certain would disagree. And anyhow, what exercise accountants know about games?

It's Fourth dimension For Steam And Artists In Big Pants

With the first game set in the aboriginal earth, the 2d during the medieval era, it seems obvious that the side by side Age Of game will be set from Europe'due south early Renaissance menses until the Industrial Revolution, the historic period of applied science, a time during which civilization, government and scientific discipline developed at a rate unknown since the Roman Empire. Ranks of musket-wielding infantry volition patrol the battleground, trains will chuff across the countryside carrying linen for trade and villagers will pack the local factory to brand heavy machinery. That'south our theory anyhow.

Whether Ensemble has plans to dive straight into Historic period Of Empires IV, or instead branch off over again into the realms of fantasy for Mythology'south first improver, we tin be pretty sure that the team volition want to brand more use of their new 3D engine. We haven't seen the final of the Age Of Empires, that'due south for sure.

Overview

It's rapidly becoming apparent that at that place are fewer and fewer truly well-designed games on the market, specially in the real-time strategy category. This genre seems to have fallen prey over the last year to the get-rich-quick mentality that has produced a whole host of mediocre Command and Conquer wannabes, but few real winners. With the high standards getting e'er higher, the arrival of an RTS game from a company all-time known for such pulse-pounding titles as DOS 5.0 and Visual C++ might pb you to dismiss Microsoft's Age of Empires without a second expect. That would exist your loss. This is an absolutely stellar game -- our leading contender for Strategy Game of the Year by a good altitude, even over the impressive contempo releases of Full Annihilation and Dark Reign.

What makes Historic period of Empires great? A lot of things. Most importantly, information technology is incredibly fun and addictive. We've had the beta for going on three months and we've been hard pressed to stop playing information technology long enough to review other games. Add to the not bad gameplay absolutely superb graphics, the most balanced and intelligent economic model we've yet seen, and a truly innovative tech tree that builds on the all-time of Culture, and you've got yourself a really amazing game.

Gameplay

Certain, Historic period of Empires is basically a take-over-the-world type game, and yes, information technology has a problem or two that's still hanging around in the retail release, merely those stop to matter quickly one time yous're five minutes into the game.

You brainstorm with only a tribal council fire and three villagers and must learn where to hunt and fish, get together woods and rock, and mine for gilt. Once yous have built a basic economy, you can begin expanding your village and researching new technologies that will eventually enable you to irrigate farms, smith fe and steel weaponry, perfect masonry for your metropolis walls and brainwash your military cadets into deadly legions. Along the mode, y'all'll have to deal with wildlife, famine, enemy raiders, and a vast map full of uncharted territories.

What immediately impresses, though, is non simply the richness of the earth and of the piece of work that went into all the intricacies this game offers, but rather the immersive experience of playingAOE. You know those games that you load up "just for a infinitesimal" to check out the demo and end upwardly looking up at the clock at three a.m.? This is one of those.

Start, considering you lot play the game through 4 different ages (stone, tool, bronze and iron), each of which must be reached by accumulating various resources and proving your prowess past building the staple structures of a civilisation for a given age. But don't worry, this doesn't take hours -- once you lot've learned how to coordinate your resource gathering and structure processes, y'all'll progress quite quickly. And with each new age achieved, you gain new technologies, buildings, unit types and defensive options. This makes for an RTS experience unlike any other game out there. Sure, other games allow yous "upgrade" certain units or requite access to new units with the construction of a given combination of structures, but none enquire for the sort of coordinated thought and strategy that Age of Empires requires. In a fast-paced multiplayer game, the decision to expend resources toward advancing to the next historic period vs. beefing upwards your guard towers and army could prove the departure between life and death. If your Neanderthal opponent shows up with a couple dozen gild-wielding goons while y'all're getting enlightened, you're history. But advance your civilization and gain the bike, advanced ballistics, and engineering noesis, and those cavemen volition be no friction match for your catapults led by Ben-Hur and his well-armed charioteers. 2d, consider the fine interplay between various resources in AOE: instead of simply mining some abstract fabric (spice by any other proper noun), Age of Empires requires that you lot gather wood, food, stone, and gold. Neglect whatsoever one of these and you volition lose. To win, yous will need to ship your villagers out to explore the map and secure the best aureate and stone deposits with military units and guard towers. And so you'll need to decide what rest to strike between your hunters and gatherers and your military units -- AOE adds in the additional stricture of a population limit (there have been many gripes almost this in the newsgroups, but over the class of playing the game meliorate than 30 times, I can tell you that it is not but fair, only adds an splendid boosted condition to the strategies inside the game). Now I admit, in that location accept been numerous occasions late in a heated multiplayer battle when I sent a squad of idle miners out to accept a luncheon date with the local lions, or had them wander a chip also shut to an enemy guard tower so that I could creepo out a couple more triemes or catapults back at the base, merely this also adds to the skill needed to be an adept commander.

Finally, the accented best aspect of the gameplay in Age of Empires is the vast number of options you lot have as a player. For one affair, you lot can set several dissimilar victory atmospheric condition other than simple conquest. And so in that location is the power to trade with other players for needed resource, 50+ edifice and technology upgrades, a fantastic variation in armed forces and domestic units, and distinctly different feelings to different phases of each game. This is not just a game of conquest, which is mayhap what confuses some of its detractors -- yep, it is first and foremost a military strategy game, but it is incredibly rich in its economical and technological model, even to the point of actually drawing on the historical aspects and abilities of the twelve distinct cultures represented in the game.

Criticisms

This is non a department you will ordinarily see in our reviews, simply in that location volition no doubt be a host of flames from those who think I'thou either sucking upwards to Microsoft or completely off my rocker, or both. And so here's what'due south wrong with the game, or at least the accusations I've heard:

Bad path finding AI: yeah indeed, your average woodcutter is, in fact, dumb as the stumps he leaves behind. In fact, sometimes he'll sit on one and do zero until you find him and ship him off to the next chore. And sure, your chariots volition get stuck in a narrow gap betwixt houses in your hamlet if you build 'em also close to the stables or don't leave a practiced exit path through boondocks. Word is, at that place's a patch in the works to assist correct this (where information technology'due south really a coding problem and not a symptom of bad urban planning on the role player's function), merely do you know of a single other RTS game that doesn't have slightly clueless units? That'southward why your troops need a good commander to inspire them.

It's Warcraft ii / Civilization two all over over again: It's not -- if yous've really played all three, yous'd know enough not to brand that argument. Age of Empires is the inheritor of some of the aforementioned first-class ideas from both those titles, but is itself a striking innovator in ways that neither of the earlier generation of strategy titles managed to reach.

The population limit sucks; yous can't really build an empire: play a few multiplayer games, then revisit that idea. Would you lot really similar to have 3,000 units on each side? Really? Games would take forever to complete and there would be zero strategy likewise a simple race to the resources and a blitzkrieg mentality. There are enough one-dimensional slugfest titles on the market. Can't build an empire? Well, true, not in the Civilization sense, but and so a multiplayer game of Civilization was the sort of thing that most of the states haven't had the spare time for since, say, inferior high.

Bottom line: yous can't satisfy all the people all the time, but you can definitely tick off the more reactionary elements by not having your marketing department include the disclaimer "Caution: some people might not like this game."

Graphics

At that place is no ameliorate RTS game graphically than Age of Empires, flow. Every tree, stone, bird, and bush is beautifully rendered; the mane on a charioteer's horse ripples in the wind, a lone eagle soars overhead, pausing every few seconds to flap its wings, and the villagers struggle under the weight of the loads of wood and stone they carry dorsum to the village. In that location are times, in fact, when yous will simply end to marvel at the realism that was crafted into this game. Age of Empires will stand as the high-water mark for all RTS titles that follow in many categories, simply the graphics are without question unmatched. If you doubt this, I encourage you to visit Microsoft's Spider web site and meet the animations and renderings for yourself.

Audio

Yet one more surface area where Age of Empires excels, the sound is dead on the mark. From the rumble and creak of a heavy catapult getting underway to the metal-on-rock clash of swords and pikes confronting a spotter belfry, the audio in AOE is perfectly rendered. A pocket-sized sticking betoken is that at that place is a bit of a lag outcome with the sound effects when a conversation is going on between several people in multiplayer way, but this a rare case, and is certainly not a trouble express to AOE.

Multiplayer

I personally defy anyone to play ii or iii multiplayer games of Age of Empires and not be absolutely hooked -- I simply haven't played a more addictive multiplayer game since Doom. The many different aspects of the unlike cultures, victory conditions, map types, resources, and troop and technology nuances make this thereal fourth dimension strategy game for multiplayer. Plus, given the ability to share resources amidst allies, employ priests to convert enemy units and buildings, and use wildly varying strategies to succeed, there is most no limit to the means this game tin be enjoyed by a group of people -- information technology is the closest game I've yet seen to realizing the perfect mix between strategy, economics, engineering, weaponry, and unit types without over- or under-balancing any of them.

System Requirements

Minimum: Windows 95; 16 MB RAM; SVGA 256 colors; 4X CD-ROM bulldoze; SoundBlaster or compatible audio carte du jour Recommended: Pentium 100 or college; 16 MB RAM; Win95, 28.eight modem, etc. Reviewed On: Pentium 133, 64 MB RAM, Matrox Millennium, 6X CD-ROM drive, SoundBlaster AWE32, 28.eight modem, Windows 95, mouse

Bottom Line

Become buy this game. If you tin't afford it, put information technology on your Christmas listing and go get the demo. You really can't practise better than Historic period of Empires, but I hope that a lot of game makers attempt in the future -- I'd love to see what they come up with. In the meantime, Historic period of Empires marks the first fully mature real-time strategy championship. The criticisms I have heard -- which generally focus on one) similarities to Warcraft two and/or ii) hatred for Microsoft in general -- are both simply way off the mark. This is a great game, builds on the best of both Warcraft 2 and Civ 2 (would you rather they ignored previous successful games every bit models?), and quite bluntly is the all-time game to always come out of Microsoft. And allow's non forget: although information technology has all the MS marketing and hype, this beautiful game was built by Ensemble Studios, which deserves all the credit for the substance behind the UI and the packaging. Watch what these folks do in the future, considering AOE is a great game.

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