From the moment I started playing Age of Empires the first time I played , I was hooked. It offered more than just your standard dose of whacking enemies on the head; it revolved around a significant part of human history. Elapsed time didn’t just mean new technologies; it also offered new ways of life that inhabitants of those eras more or less led. In this sense, I find Age of Empires kind of like an excellent history book that I was way into at the time I was playing it. Being the sort of full-on geek that I am, I didn’t just play the game to advance from one age to the next; I immersed myself in the kind of world that led, in most cases, to the next.
One of the things that distinguish Age of Empires from other real-time strategy games is its commitment to historical accuracy. Other games were fictional or futuristic, but we were rooted in real history. Age of Empires was designed for the history enthusiast to play. You play a major character from our past, leading our past peoples through major conflicts and developments. And this was a grand strategy game. Each era carried with it a historically accurate set of technologies, weapons, buildings, and wonders making sure that you felt like you could live out an alternate history and really affect the course of events.
The initial game in the series concerned itself with the most ancient of civilizations, such as the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Babylonians. Its design was laudable in its tremendous care to depict those cultures in their most essential forms, extending even to the representation of some of their greatest architectural and technological accomplishments. Indeed, anyone who thrilled to the construction of the Great Pyramid or the appearance of a Greek hoplite on the battlefield was a fan of this game. On the other hand, we could also say an Elbe River bridge led us more truly into the authentic ancient experience because game designers neglected no accounts of those historians who served as consultants here.
One aspect of the game that I enjoyed the most was its campaign mode, which lets you basically play in a reenactment of what are considered our most famous events throughout history. The campaigns in the game are awesome. They are challenging. They are history lessons. When you play through the campaign mode of this game, you are not only entertained, but you also learn about the events that took place in the scenarios. Each mission is introduced to you with a short narrative that gives you an idea of the situation developing both in the real world and on the virtual map on your screen. After you’ve met your objectives, you’re then treated to a post-game, in-engine cutscene that gives you a brief overview of what happened after you were done playing.
The Age of Empires series doesn’t just cover one historical era. Instead, it allows players to act as multiple civilizations and lead them from the dawn of their existence to their imperial zenith. This long arc of history was one of the features that made Age of Empires such an attractive prospect for fans. Players started as a small, primitive tribe. Then, through resource gathering and construction, they could advance to the next age. Doing so meant that you were effectively simulating the advancement of your society over time—something that few if any other games had attempted before.
Changes from one era to the next have been defined by meaningful technological and cultural shifts. When the game’s representation of history advances, the building blocks and toolset of a civilization change along with it. Many such changes amount to what one might as well call a change in the age: for instance, new epochal materials (as opposed to Stone Age materials) and new weaponry still amount to sharp sticks, just as when you’re advancing in the real-life tech tree. But the game’s mind-stick isn’t a sufficient reason to demand the player’s attention.
Expanded on this idea, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings and Age of Empires III now span two distinct epochs of human history—medieval and American colonial. Regarded by many (including me) as the greatest of all time in the RTS pantheon, Age of Empires II introduced nine more civilizations into Ensembles that were already full (to say the least). Along with unique combinations of units and tech trees among nine new playable civs most of them also introduced a new building style and a unique campaign narrative.
Playing the Joan of Arc campaign in Age of Empires II remains an indelible memory for me. It was a serious thrill to take command of the French armies and beat back the English, who always seemed to show up in the wrong place and at the most inopportune time. I’m not sure if it was mentioned in the game itself, but Joan of Arc was only seventeen when she did this for the first time. My seventeen-year-old self thought: that’s so believable: capturing the mission-driven, “I’m not dying without a fight” spirit that can lead to great victories.
Age of Empires wasn’t just a game—it was a bona fide cultural phenomenon. It made a mark that cannot be erased. The first two titles in the series sold millions of units worldwide and, along with Myst, were some of the top performers on the pre-Napster-era personal computer. At the same time, the series had a significant influence on educational circles and heavily impacted the ways in which we teach and learn about history, both in the context of the K-12 space and in higher education.
The game had a prevalent acceptance of its educational worth. Potential was seen in *Age of Empires* as a teaching instrument by an overwhelming number of instructors and mentors. The game’s creators ensured the historically faithful representation of past events and also crafted a game that’s an engaging and effective means of imparting knowledge to the player, who might just be a middle or high school pupil. Even in today’s educational climate where the push is to make learning somewhat dry, teachers love diamonds in the rough that allow them to bring their subject matter to life. For my part, this high school pupil still plays the game, and my profound knowledge of the history of medieval and early modern empires was learned in no small part from what this very quintessential, top-rated, and high-quality game has had to offer.
Age of Empires influenced more than just the people who played the game in a classroom setting. In a broader sense, the game inspired a generation of gamers to become personally invested in history, leading a significant portion of that demographic to study the subject in more depth out of pure curiosity. Websites, MySpace pages, and YouTube videos dedicated to the game became commonplace, with the space of the internet serving as a complement to foster discussions concerning the game’s historical content. And in a sense, Age of Empires was not just a mere academic tool. It was a flagbearer for making history cool. And it did; in 1997, the game sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million copies in just its first few years.
Countless real-time strategy games have followed Age of Empires. Games like Total War, Civilization, and Rise of Nations drew more than a few ideas from AoE. Each of these more recent games might be said to have a unique “gimmick” that separates it from all other RTS titles. Total War is famous for its “diplomacy through war” premise; Rise of Nations is a “tug of war for territory.” And yet, with every gimmick deployed, what essentially emerges are variations on a theme. Whether you love or hate real-time war games, it’s hard to deny Age of Empires’ influence on the genre and its pioneers.
Truly astonishing is the persistent society that has sprouted up around the Age of Empires series. The forming of an international community of Age of Empacles players, with LAN parties and packed summits, has breathed life into the community and added a sort of immortality to the original scope of the series. Now two decades past their release, the games are played and loved by virtual historians and those who simply appreciate the period settings of world civilizations and the development of combat; those who, on some level, yearn to remember when our world was the stepping of mighty empires falling into the dust of the last millennium.
Especially the life of the modding community has stretched the game. There are so many mods that keep coming out that it’s impossible to document them all. They range from a complete fan-made World War 2 scenario to those that really make a good thing better. There’s also graphic enhancements and “quality of life” improvements. And when it comes to new Civilizations, forget it. There’s enough Civilizations in my games, frankly, and I’m a little surprised more fans have not cut whole units. But one has to figure, even if a player isn’t into modding, there’s plenty happening there.
The fanbase and creators of Age of Empires haven’t let their favorite game become a thing of the past. In the last few years, the gameplay from the late-’90s has become a renewed experience, touted by critics and fans for its smart blend of historical drama and addictive strategy. The first edition of the game has been touched up across the board, with reworked graphics, smoother mechanics, and fresh content. The second edition, one of the top five best-selling PC games of all time, has received the same treatment plus a great deal more in terms of added features and nice touches to the visuals.
The community is thrilled with the many new possibilities being promised in Age of Empirates IV. The long-anticipated game is being touted as not just the series’ next step, but a genuine leap forward. The developers are hinting at a pile of cryptic “never-before-seen” features. And yet, everything that’s been said so far still makes Age IV feel like a quintessential part of the Age series: The history-spanning setting; the construction of impressive and unique castles, cities, and civilizations; the player’s role as a glorified God-figure overseeing everything in third-person view.
Age of Empires has always been more than a game to me. It represents a path through history that few other experiences offer a chance to do what historical leaders did, make the decisions they made, go to the places they went, and see the world as they saw it. Through the game, we not only deepen our sense of how history unfolded, but we increase our access to historical places, figures, and events, letting us become a part of something that, to my mind, no “World Tours” section of a high school history textbook can match.
In the end, Age of Empires has done what very few other video games have managed to do: make learning fun and memorable. Strong right out the gate with the first installment (1997), the series has consistently offered thoroughly researched experiences set in a wide range of human civilizations. Across every edition, the craftsmanship has been consistently impressive. The team has delivered on what Greg Street, one of the designers of the base game, once described as a vision of getting “12-year-old kids excited about a 1000-year-old civilization.” If that’s not a triumph, I don’t know what is.
