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MacSoft, $49. Arriving in late June/early July, 1999. For more information, visit MacSoft at http://www.wizworks.com/macsoft/
Sneak Peek by Bill Jahnel;
It seems appropriate that Microsoft backed the production of a game that centered around ruthless conquest and empire expansion, doesn’t it? Although Age of Empires comes to the Mac via MacSoft even as Age of Empires II is being put together by Microsoft, the original has much to recommend it. The charm of Age of Empires lies not in its originality but in its ability to take some of the best aspects of Civilization, the Settlers series, and Warcraft and meld them together into a powerful and compelling play.
Conquering the Known World (On 30 drachmas a Day)
Age of Empires starts with that most laudable of goals: Crush the life out of other historical civilizations and build your mighty civilization to its natural heights. In doing so, you will follow conventions familiar to both the real-time strategy genre and the Civilization model of gameplay. It’s the careful balance that makes this game a lot of fun.
Consider the gathering of resources, a time-honored tradition in any real-time strategy title or civ-like game. Here, you gather the basic necessities such as food, wood, gold, and stone in a manner that is most reminiscent of the Settlers II. However, unlike Settlers II, your villagers (peon units) do not have to learn specialized skills in order to do their jobs. A villager who goes to pick berries for food materializes a little basket and becomes a gatherer. Send him over to chop wood and he trades the basket in for an axe and he becomes a woodcutter. (We must assume this is a matriarchal society, since all the villagers doing the work are guys.) This versatility interestingly includes some variations on a theme of how one collects certain resources: Food in particular can be farmed, gathered, fished, or hunted. Hunting is the most interesting, as you actually chase down animals and kill them: like early tribes, scaring the animals and herding them closer to your village can be done, and predators like lions roam the wilds. The game even occasionally includes an interesting scripted moment or two. While I was sailing a boat along a river, I saw a lion chasing down a gazelle and he ate it! Now THAT’S a fun bit of detail. By the way, you can even hunt and kill Elephants ("Oh Ma, not Elephant leftovers again!") but weirdly you can only get food from animals if your settlers kill them; should your soldiers or bowmen kill a wild beast, it instantly decomposes. Perhaps my bowmen were being a bit unsporting and using curare. . .
Like RTS standards, units can be upgraded by the building of different structures; those structures often can also research technologies that benefit your abilities to gather, attack, defend, or otherwise survive. One of the more interesting innovations is that in some scenarios you must advance to different ages (Stone, Bronze, Iron); while advancing to a more advanced stage gives you access to more powerful units, there are some technology bonuses that can only be researched during each age. Therefore, there is a time tradeoff question: Do you stay in the stone age and get an advance that might make your villages harvest and gather at about three times their current speed, or advance to the next age to start developing superior military units, knowing that such an advance will be closed to you?
Them’s (Egyptian) fightin’ words!
There is, as one might expect in an RTS-like game, combat. Age of Empires, like Starcraft, Myth, and Total Annihilation, uses some level of terrain as an important modifying factor in combat. Here elevation is the primary key, and the units firing from above get damage bonuses on those units below them. Attack units tend to be grouped by Infantry, calvary, and archer units; there are also water units and siege engines. All can go through upgrades that improve some aspect of their abilities such as damage, armor, and range. Defensive buildings including towers and walls can be constructed. The most intersting unit, however, is the one "magic" unit, the priest. As a member of the clergy he can heal wounded units or, more powerfully, evangelize an opponent’s unit and "convert" that unit.
All the extra elements that make a title strong are present here. The soundtrack is extremely impressive. Visually, as you can see by the screenshots, Age of Empires has an isometric viewpoint reminiscent of Diablo or Starcraft. The models for your characters, fighters, homes, terrain, and the harvested resources are lush and animated. Control over your units conforms to most early real-time strategy techniques (click to select, "right click" / command-click to harvest / hunt / attack / move as is appropriate). The single-player scenarios follow four historical empires and give you general background on them before and after each scenario is completed. Multiplayer support promises to appear over TCP/IP connections and Appletalk.
Even in this preview of the late beta, Age of Empires is terribly addictive. There are one or two pieces of information, though, that bear some watching as the release date approaches. The most important factor will be the apparent lack of the Rise of Rome expansion pack. This is extremely unfortunate, since Age of Empires: Rise of Rome has been strongly lauded for adding new, interesting units, better balancing and stronger varieties of multiplayer games, and strengthening the continuity and personality of the single-player scenarios. The real danger lies not in losing the new scenarios but in Mac players finding themselves possibly shut out of playing games with their Wintel counterparts who may prefer the new units and options of Rise of Rome. Only time and MacSoft will tell us, but here’s to hoping that sales are strong and MacSoft will be willing to offer Rise of Rome.
In preview, Age of Empires looks to be pretty awesome. Some games such as 11th Hour lose the bloom off their rose in the intervening time from PC to MAC release while others such as Diablo and Starcraft prove their durability and deservedly gain top honors among Mac players. Age of Empires looks to be a solid contender in the latter category. The Gold Master is just around the corner and rumour has Age of Empires hitting the shelves as early as July 7th.
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