News archive
AoE expansion - new info
OGR.com has new information about the AoE expansion set:
"There are four new civilizations. The
new civilizations are Carthage, Palmyra, Macedonia and
Rome. (...)
Along with the four new civilizations, there will be several
new units to choose from including the camel rider, the
spike chariot, the slinger, warship and armored elephant.
New buildings will also be constructed, over 25 to be exact,
including a Roman Wonder of the World.
AOE fans will get three new campaigns to play made up of a
total of 20 new scenarios; the campaign will focus on the
rise of Rome. To add a bit to the single and multiplayer
gameplay, larger map sizes will be included; some new map
types include mountainous highlands, a large island, the
Mediterranean Sea and a peninsula.
Finally, AOE players will be able to listen to all new musical
tracks."
This is much more than just a few new scenarios and pictures - the new units will definitely breathe new life into the game. I can't wait to see the first screenshot of a camel rider :)
Hot AoE2 info
This is from OGR's AoE2 preview:
"The towers can now be filled with a few units. We were shown one cannon tower that fired large boulders; after placing in five
English Longbows, the tower also fired five additional arrows
at a time. (...)
New animals and fish inhabit the world, providing precious
food. New creatures (all nicely animated) include deer,
wolves and dolphin. (...)
Other new units: the spy, who looks like a darkly colored
unit to you, but to other tribes, it looks like one of their
peasants. That should definitely add some interesting
elements to scouting. No word if the spy will be able to
perform any sabotage tasks. (...)
A new way to "convert" will be seeking out
damaged buildings. If you knock an enemy building down to
under 25%, the building becomes open to everyone. The
first player to get a peasant to the building and repair it to
50% will capture the structure."
Cool - "our" spy made it into the game! There are many new ideas in AoE2, and there is still plenty of time to add new stuff.
New taunts
Todd has made a new set of taunts with taunts from South Park, Army of Darkness, and more sources. If you like using taunts in the game, get them!
More screenshots
Ensemble Studios has revised their page, having now more screenshots of AoE2 at their page. There are a few previews of AoE2 buildings and more high quality screenshots available now. The screenshots are quite large, even though I have compressed some a little bit, but they are worth the download time. The screenshots are not recommended for impatient people, because you will still have to wait a year for the game ;)
New AoE2 info
The current version of AoE2 has now four ages: Dark, Middle, Castle, and Imperial. Of course this can again change (AoE1 had seven ages during the early development). Single player campaigns will involve historical campaigns such as the Crusades.
Taken from e3news.com.
New AoE2 feature: "radar"
No, it is not a new unit brought into AoE2 from the present :) It is a new part of the user interface that will now serve as "minimap". It should make navigating easier. With increasing map sizes, using a conventional minimap is increasingly difficult, so such a radar with different zoom levels is a fine thing. The user interface has always been one of the strongest parts of AoE, and so it will be with AoE2.
More news about the expansion
It should be shipped "in time for the 1998 holiday season. The Expansion Pack focuses on the ancient Roman Empire and delivers new civilizations, unique units and additional campaigns, including the rise of Rome." (from the latest press release)
This means we will finally have a Roman tribe! It will probably have to be cut down a bit in its strenghts or it might become the ruling tribe of all tribes...
Not much AoEII news yet
The press release does not contain any new information:
The Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings game spans a thousand years, from the Dark Ages to the late medieval period, in which
players control human destiny from the fall of Rome through the Middle Ages. Starting with minimal resources, players must build
nations into great civilizations. Players can win in several ways, including conquering enemy civilizations, accumulating wealth by
extensive trading and diplomacy, building and defending wonders of the world, or protecting a king or queen. Age of Empires II:
The Age of Kings, developed by Ensemble Studios, was designed using the expertise of Bruce Shelley, co-designer of Age of
Empires and the hit strategy game Civilization.
New AoE2 screenshots from the E3
With the cool screenshots script from Mike Wheeler, the page is always up to date when new screenshots are posted. There are a couple of new screenshots, showing an overview of the landscape and the buildings that AoE2 will have. The fact that there is no user interface visible may be a sign that AoE2 is yet far from being completed. I guess they will launch it at the next E3 ;)
E3 has started
All producers of games will be there, and of course also Ensemble Studios. Their new titles have been announced at the E3:
"Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, the sequel to the surprise strategy hit of 1997. Microsoft also announced that there will be an expansion disk for AoE1 out in time for Christmas."
So, we finally have a release date for the expansion set! You can get more E3 news at the Gamesmania main page and many other game pages.
ION Storm's new strategy game is finished
Dominion: Storm Over Gift3 is finished an will ship to retailers worldwide in June. The people from ION Storm have liked Age of Empires very much, and several times challenged the employees of Ensemble Studios - with varying success :) Read the news archive for more about that.
Gamesmania has a free demo of this game available.
New link
I have added a new link to an AoE page with a nice futuristic layout.
AoE2 database updated
The latest suggestions include:
- Archers would recieve the shield bonus that the infantry has when in this formation.
- A tower is built, empty and with no attack, and so you fill it with archers
- Real keeps and castles of different types.
- "conversions" as an option in the pre-game setup
- an animal trainer/tamer
- release the game first, then an editor (or documentation about the resource files)
I have also improved the script, so the AoE2 database overview page shows now the time of the last update of the specific sections.
More about keeps and castles
I have posted some new ideas (inspired by other ones) at the AoE2 wish list. I am interested in other people's thoughts about how keeps and castles should be implemented in the game. Personally, I would like them to form a real entity, instead of just walling in some buildings and putting some towers next to them.
AoE expansion set?
Gamecenter has a short story about an AoE expansion set:
"Inside word says Microsoft will release the expansion this winter
during the holiday shopping frenzy. If all goes as planned, the expansion will start at the rise of Rome and boast new civilizations and campaigns."
Thanks to Dean for the link. Before AoE was actually released, an expansion was already planned; however, with the early release of the sequel in mind, that project was put on ice. For a while, Ensemble had even intended to release all the specifications of the internal file formats so players can make their own campaign (with new units, tilesets etc.). This has never fully happened, although most of the data structures have been decoded anyway.
The E3 that will start soon (May 27) may tell us more. Will we see an AoE add-on, an AoE2 prototype, or both?
ICQ swallowed by AOL?
A disquieting rumor at news.com would mean the end of ICQ as we know it:
"America Online is expected to buy Israeli Internet software company Mirabilis for $300 million in cash and stock, according to a published report." I was willing to pay for ICQ, but if I get spammed with advertisements and/or included in AOL, I will certainly abandon it. It is a pity, ICQ is great for finding people to play AoE with, and now it ends like this :(
Problems with this server
This server had been unavailable at times yesterday, I hope that these problems are fixed now.
New poll: the future of the IGZ
The new poll is about disabling the automatic ladder feature at the Internet gaming zone (IGZ) because then, the incentive to cheat is no longer as strong (there will always be cheaters, though). An alternative would be a ladder that requires reporting a match in the old fashioned style.
Either way, it will be frustrating for honest players and the IGZ staff. How can people be proud on records in a ladder that they have gained with cheating? And even worse, they also spoil games of players that just want to play for fun. The ability to change the diplomacy status to enemy is required, so this feature cannot be taken away from the game (if a player's connection is broken, you have to reorganize the game, and it will usually become a FFA game).
New AoE2 fact sheet at Ensemble's page
Michael was the first one who sent this in: There is a new "fact sheet" (press release) about the features that AoE2 will have.
Go to the about section of Ensemble's AoE2 page to read it. There is not a lot of new information, though, if you have read the "known features" section of the AoE2 database. The information about the system requirements are more detailed now (a P133 will be needed to play, which is ok in 1999). Boarding parties seem now to be part of the sequel, and 640 x 480 will not be supported (not a bad choice). Anyway, the game will be released in a year so do not rely too heavily on the facts there, they may change often.
More cheating in the zone :(
Unfortunately, there seem to be more stories like this every day:
"Last night, while my regular partners were
either in bed or elsewhere, I decided to play under a new name in the
ranked rooms, in the hopes of making a fresh start. (...)
I noticed that one of my partners came into my town with 10-12 clubmen. I first thought, "What an idiot for wasting all that food", but then suddenly realized that he had switched diplomacy and was attacking my town center, still in Stone Age."
Warlust
I guess you can imagine how the story ended. I think that the automatic ranking feature should be disabled, because there are too many cheaters now. There is still Kali as an alternative. Because you cannot change your identity there, there is an effective way to ban cheaters by their serial number.
Non AoE stuff
I have posted a bit many stories about topics that are not directly related to AoE during the past two weeks. I will focus on AoE in the future, since Microsoft's fate does not have to do much with AoE (they marketed the game, but they did not produce it).
New fun scenario
There is a new single player fun scenario at that page. It is not easy, so save early, save often :)
"Smoking gun" in Microsoft's memos
Check out this article from news.com, it contains dynamite. This is from a memo of a M$ employee: "It seems clear that it will be very hard to increase browser market share on the merits of
[Microsoft browser] IE 4 alone. It will be more important to leverage the OS asset to make people use IE instead
of Navigator." No comment needed.
New links
I have updated the links page with a few links to pages that are worth a visit
M$ vs. DOJ
Today, a lot of stories about this battle could be read at CNN. Microsoft is trying to focus the attention of the public on meaningless details like letting companies replace the startup logo etc. while the truly important issues of the lawsuit (Microsoft killing/swallowing/dismantling hundreds of small companies with unfair business tactics in order to expand their monopoly) is left away. Only few people realized that the delay of three days for Win98 was a gain for Microsoft; they were given extra time and could blame the DOJ for the delay.
Cheaters in the zone
Maniac sent this in:
"It's unfortunate that people are starting team games of AOE on the Zone for the purpose of deceiving and cheating.
I joined a game with three other players - two of which purposely played on opposing teams, just to change deplomacy for the purpose of defeating their unknowing
teammates, having planned this "switch" in advance as they are apparently not skilled enough to win on their own - thus improving their rankings."
This is a very old problem, and the only way to solve it is not to play in ladders where every game is automatically recorded. Kali is a better place for playing against people that you do not know, because there are less cheaters there (because people will not register for the purpose of cheating).
Decoding resources from Starcraft
Krank has sent in this information:
"I follow the forums for starcraft fairly closely and you simply could
not believe the outright hatred for hackers on these sites. I realize
that flame wars are nothing new but this extends to a whole new level.
Several so called trainers and cheats for battle.net have been infected
with viruses similar to the trojan horse and publicly given out. Any
programs from "Adam" should be avoided at all costs. Any ways, I think
Blizzard is trying to "appease the masses" beleive it or not. Most
people are worried about Starcraft turning into Diablo (Diablo is
virtually unplayable on battle.net w/o trainers w/the public).
Personally I believe that Blizzard should leave these sites alone but
the squeaky wheel gets the grease I guess :)"
The site that is threatened by the SPA, Starhack, offers only resource file extractors (like the ones available for Age of Empires) and battle.net tools. No program there can be used for the purposes of cheating. Instead, they may allow people to introduce their own graphics in the game etc. when finished. I do not see any problem in this. Blizzard had tolerated this for Warcraft 2. I cannot understand why they did not react yet and issue a public statement. Ensemble supports add-ons from players, as long as they do not include copyright infringements.
AoE2 suggestions: editors
Many people ask for unit/graphics/sound editors for the sequel. I agree that the ability to customize these things is pretty cool. However, writing nice GUI applications for that purpose will be time consuming for Ensemble. I would rather have an open resource file format so people can build their own editors. People can now introduce their own graphics and sounds to AoE, but it has taken some time until someone started to reverse engineer the .drs files (I had finished Steve Chen's work, and it was quite easy - I wonder why no one did it before).
The scenario file format is not available yet since it is too complicated to be reverse engineered by a computer geek :) It would be nice from ES to release the file format - even though it is a bit late now. Anyway, for AoE2, the efforts to build editors etc. should be better coordinated. There are plenty of editors available for Starcraft now, even battle.net servers - this proves that such programs can be written quickly. I have started a new thread in the AoE2 wishlist: do you want a fully functional editor from Ensemble or tools written by players?
Again bad PR for Blizzard
I know that this story is not quite new, but it fits in here: the SPA (software publishers assocation) has threatened to sue the people who tried to decode the battle.net protocol and Starcraft resource file format. It seems like Blizzard is trying very hard to get the worst PR possible. They had congratulated the programmers who have decoded Warcraft 2; why do they do the opposite now? I hope that ES is going to encourage people for adding their own programs and features to AoE2.
Mordor running again
The European mirror server is now running again, so people from Europe can go there. It should not go down anymore in the future. Otherwise, you can still go back to this server :)
AoE2 database updated
The new suggestions include:
- different, upgradable formations for each tribe
- different kinds of priests
- archers hit your own troops as well
- advanced unit commands/formations like hiding or preparing the battleground with traps
- salvaging resources of destroyed buildings and dead units
- chariots/cavalry that can overrun people
- different kinds of ships (small fast ships vs larger ones like in Warcraft 2)
A message log will be part of the game, so you can check back what happened a while ago.
Patch with installation program out
You can download it from or go to the patch page for alternative links.
Microsoft Age of Empires 1.0b is an upgrade of Age of Empires 1.0 that includes the 1.0a patch, along with several enhancements and bug fixes. These changes include:
Bug Fixes
- Infinite Resources During High Latency -- Buildings no longer return more resources than they originally cost if you press the DELETE key several times during high latency.
- Multiple Town Centers During High Latency -- You can no longer build multiple Town Centers if you delete your Town Center in the Tool Age or Stone Age and then quickly build several new ones during high latency.
- Way Points -- Villagers no longer complete tasks at a way point that is not at a work site. The way point or villager must be at the actual work site (fishing spot, building site, etc.) before they can work. For example, you can no longer use way points to construct a building on the other side of a wall.
Version Compatibility
If you are playing a multiplayer game, all players must be using the same version of Age of Empires.
If you are playing a saved game, it must be from the same version of Age of Empires you currently have installed.
For a complete description of all the patch improvements, please read the readme file.
Note that this is the patch for the English, German and French version of AoE; for other versions, try Microsoft's AoE download page later. The patch comes with a fast installation program, so installing it should not be a problem. You do not need the 1.0a patch for it.
Busy week, Mordor down
I did not have time to update the page earlier; and Mordor is still down so I cannot update it. I hope things will get better next week.
AoE2 database is now fully searchable!
Head over to the AoE2 database to find out whether your favorite feature will be included there! All you have to do is either to select a topic or to type in the keyword in the search form. You can also use it to find out whether your suggestion is in the database - if not, go to the wishlist and post your best ideas (check out first whether they are new).
I will update the "known features" section soon - there are some cool things from the suggestions that have already been implemented and to which you can look forward to.
Mordor still down
Daemon or not daemon, that's the question - and of these daemons caused Mordor to crash. So please tell people to go to this site, because the server will be down for some time until the administrator has time to fix it. Daemons are one of the programs that you run with an & behind the program name; if you forget that ampersand, the system will hang if the daemon gets exorcised, uhm, crashes :(
DirectX 5.2 out
Microsoft does not tell us exactly what has changed but says that some new features are added and bugs were fixed, including a DirectPlay fix in this install.
Someone said this (I agree): "u will still need windows 95 , so 1 giant bug left ..." Microsoft had better abandon the useless Windows 4.x line (including Win9x) and focus on Windows NT as long as they still can. Otherwise, they will suddenly find themselves overtaken by a new OS - which I would not mind :)
New scenarios
New single player and single player fun scenarios have been included in the scenario section.
This account had been cracked
This seems to be a bad day. Mordor (the European mirror) is down, and this page had been replaced by a page that redirected you to some Starcraft page. Whoever did it has used a Gamesmania account and overwritten my index.html file. Probably he did no longer have an account at this server, but has used it only for cracking other pages.
IGZ team beats OGR staff
"AGE OF EMPIRES: IGZ 7, OGR 0!
Well, they knew we'd have to publicize the score of our latest triumph. Yep, it's true -- the Internet Gaming Zone team destroyed Online Gaming Review employees 7 to 0 in a battle for supremacy in Age of Empires. We beat them in single-player matches, we beat them in team matches, and now we wish we had beaten them in our new Rated rooms. They put up a valiant fight, and the games were fast and furious."
Starcraft commercial in German TV
Blizzard seems to have started a huge advertising campaign for Starcraft - I have never seen a commercial for a computer game at a German TV station yet. The commercial was only some 7 seconds long and did not even show a screenshot of the actual game.
AoE2 database updated
The AoE2 database contains now all inventive suggestions, ideas and rumors that people have posted during the past two months. I have selected the best ideas among hundreds. It is a must for everyone who is interested in AoE2! Please read the section about a specific topic before posting new suggestions at the AoE2 wishlist. Let you inspire by the ideas given in the database, maybe you have an improvement or a better idea!
New campaign
The new campaign is about the super units of the different tribes and can be found at the campaign section.
Spank Leonardo di Caprio ;)
This story made its way from Ensemble Studios over id software to the Kali mailing list :)
Barrett Alexander (Bear)'s .plan file has been updated.
Director of Business Development id Software
Here is a summary of the update made:
(By the way, these are MY opinions, expressed as such.)
April 29, 1998
This is so funny I had to update now (I've got more coming on the
DIVX issue later).
Sean over at Ensemble sent me this link to vote in "The Most
Beautiful People" by
People Magazine online. Here's the link:
http://www.pathfinder.com/people/50most/1998/vote/index.html
Besure to cut and paste this exact line into the "Or type in your own
choice" box:
Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf
Then you can check out how bad Leonardo DiCaprio is getting spanked.
Enjoy!
Hank, leading the list, is now even officially listed. No one knew about him before but he is going to win the contest ;)
|
September '97 - April '98
|
Back
Main -
Downloads -
FAQ -
Forum -
Interviews -
Links -
News -
Rise of Rome -
Scenarios -
Strategies -
Tips -
Units