Resources must also be preserved, as no new resources become available as the game progresses, meaning, if you cut a tree down, the tree will not come back. To assure victory, the player must gather resources in order to pay for new units, buildings and more advanced technology. A compilation of the original Age of Empires and its expansion was later released as Age of Empires: Gold Edition.Īge of Empires requires the player to develop a civilization from a handful of hunter-gatherers to an expansive Iron Age empire. Despite this, it received generally good reviews, and an expansion pack, Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome was released in 1998.
Originally touted as Civilization meets Warcraft, some reviewers felt that the game failed to live up to these expectations when it was released.
The game allows the user to act as the leader of an ancient civilization by advancing it through four ages, (Stone Age, Tool Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age) gaining access to new and improved units with each advance. Developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, the game uses the Genie, a 2D sprite-based game engine. Age of Empires (often abbreviated to AoE or AofE), is a history-based real-time strategy computer game released in 1997.