Old news: September '97


September 30

Demo is out!
News from Area S: The November issue of Computer Gaming World has a demo from AoE! It is based on an older version and might have a few bugs, but it's still worth buying the game mag :-)

Smog's page has moved
I updated the link yesterday. But:
Hello, it's Smog again. I have a new page at Next Level. My old server is very mad that I moved that they banned everyone from my old pages so nobody could get in and find the new address.
You will find Smog's AOE page now at http://games.nextlevel.net/~smog/AOE/

September 29

Upgrades page! I have started a page about all upgrades in AoE. So far, only the Tool Age is completed, but I think the page is still worth a look. Learn which upgrades you should get first and which ones are useless. That page also gives War2 players an idea about how many upgrades you can get in AoE - this is one of the most remarkable differences compared to War2. There are already 11 upgrades for the Tool Age alone!

September 28

AoE on warez :-(
Not yet in the stores and already warezed! This is bad news and might ruin ES. If you like the game and want to see a sequel, then buy it, don't steal it. I first wanted to conceal this information to reduce the damage but it is already published on Area S so it is known to most people now. If you have the warez version already, buy the game when it comes out. People who just want to preview the game can wait until the demo comes out. This should be in a few days. Software piracy has always been a huge problem for the game industry and causes costs that will in the long term reduce the quality and/or quantity of games released.

Contest at Heavenweb
The contest on Age Heaven is still up. Go to Age of Empires Heaven for the contest.

Dark Reign bug
OGR: Funny Dark Reign bug:
The difficulty levels are mixed up. "Hard" is actually easy while "easy" is medium and "medium" is hard. That's why you guys who have the game already did always win in the hard difficulty setting :-)
A patch to fix this will be released soon.

September 27

Demo: There seem to be two versions of a demo, an older version for the next issue of the "Computer Gaming World" and the official version that is derived from the release version. I will inform you when the demo comes out.

Age of Empires beta contest:

Heavenweb has a contest where you can win 10 betas of the game. The contest has just started, go to Age of Empires Heaven to participate:

You will see top secret graphics that have never, ever been previously shown to the public. These graphics which were originally prepared for Microsoft's Age of Empires and were obtained by special approval from both Microsoft and Ensemble Studios. The Contest will be based on these special graphics (You must guess Building Names, Cultural types, and Functions of each. Also there will be Special "Age of Empires Trivia Facts" Tie Breaker Questions). This Contest is not based on first submitted, first to win, its based on the number of correct answers (guesses) and the tie breaker questions in each 24 hour period (Each Contest form will be posted for a full 24 hours- not at a random time). Due to the limited number of available Betas, more than 2 daily correct contest winners will be decided by additional "Tie Breaker" Questions.

Even if you're not interested in the contest, please stop by and see the answers and graphics from each days contest. The art work supplied by EStudios is nothing less than amazing!! Plus you can see what types of buildings DID NOT make it in the final game.


Ensemble Studios has made a pretty cool Techtree page. It shows all available weapon upgrades, but there are some upgrades that are not on that page (yet).

You can get the demo of 7th legion, a game that has a setting similar to the one of AoE, at ogr.com.

I have put together a picture of all civilization attributes from the pdf file of the CD cover. After a lot of filtering and palette editing, I could finally compress it to 166 K. The picture size is 952 x 1179.

September 26

At Age of Empires Heaven, you will find some pictures of the charity tournament. They take hours to load, though.

Shlonglor is making pictures of all houses of all tilesets and Ages. You will notice that the artists at ES have truly done a great job and that all buildings of the same type have some common aspects through all civilizations and ages. So you will not have to print out all buildings in order to be able to distinguish them.

September 25

Matt Prichard:
Q: Have the units stats been changed from the beta version?
A: A couple minor treeks that were bugs (i.e. unit fire rates were not what what they were suppose to be).
Q: Do you know when the demo comes out?
A: 2 weeks probably.

By the way, the retail version has already been finished some days ago (I think it was September 19), and it could maybe even be available before October 31!

Smog has made a page with a listing of all built-in AoE taunts. You can use these taunts by typing a number between 1 and 25 when chatting in the game.

September 24

Now you're in for a real treat! I have made a page about the units where I analyze the strengths and weaknesses of all units. Even if you don't have the game, you will see how wonderfully balanced AoE is - there is no unit that has not its particular weakness. You will also learn a lot about the gameplay of AoE. The unit table is finished now, you can see the second part here.

The demo should be finished in about two weeks. Be patient!

Report about the charity tournament from ogr.com:

"It was dreadfully apparent that neither Romero or Wilson had ever played Age of Empires outside of once or twice, and both were aptly defeated by Shelley, with Wilson resigning first.
The second tournament -- Gods, Mortals, and a Beta Tester - was a bit more exciting."

Tim Deen, a programmer from ES, finally won the second match.

Area S: 7th legion is said not to have a demo version! This sucks; I will stick to AoE if I cannot test the game.

The Myth beta test subscription has started now! Unfortunately, only U. S. residents are allowed due to time constraints :-(

September 23

I have some new screenshots of the game.

Two buttons from pages about real time strategy have been added to this page, check these pages out!

September 22

Duh! Bruce Shelley has won after all ;-) It seems like the guy who informed Smog was not correctly informed himself. Loomer at Area S has got a mail from Matt Prichard himself:
Chris Roberts was a no-show. Johnny Wilson (editor of CGW mag) took his place. Bruce Shelley kicked butt and conqured all.

September 21

Bruce Shelley lost his own game :-)
Smog's AoE page has a report from the charity tournament. Chris could not make it to the tournament :-( so no one knows how good he really is ;-)
John Romero won and has proved that he is not only good at Quake, but also at strategy games. Congratulations, John!
The poll results: the an overwhelming majority voted that Chris Roberts would lose, but he could not attend the tournament. Only one guy actually voted for Bruce :-)

If you are looking for the tech tree, you will find it at my units page. Note that the unit table gives you also a good impression of the technological advancement through the game.
For people who want to see the full tech tree without having to download the Acrobat reader, I have put up a gif of the tech tree. Note that the gif is huge - half a meg or 2116 x 641 in size :-)

To make it easier for people to find out the system requirements, I have made an extra page for it. Note that I have added some non-official info, like how fast your computer should be for playing at the highest resolution.

I have added a new great AoE page to my links page.

September 20

Charity tournament: No one gives Chris Roberts a chance :-)
Well, we'll see. Check this page back tomorrow for news about the charity tournament.

More strategies: the importance of the ballistics upgrade and monotheism.

September 19

I have added some pictures to my strategy page and expanded the resource section so it covers now all types of resources. The most important thing is that two farmers on one farm do not increase the productivity. You have to build one farm for each farmer.

September 18

At Area S, you can vote for the winner of tomorrow's charity tournament (read the old news from September 11). I bet no one gives John Romero and Chris Roberts a chance - they will have to team up against Bruce Shelley to survive :-)
Of course Bruce can't finish them off with a quick strike because that would spoil the fun - so I expect a long match.
I thought why not vote for the outcome of the match? So here you can vote for the loser! Who will be the first one who loses his last man :-) I know this is not in the spirit of a charity tournament but the outcome of this bet is for more uncertain ;-)

According to Matt Prichard, the beta version will expire at the end of this year. The beta testers don't have to worry though because all of them will get a free copy of the game :-)

September 17

I have made a new button and a new banner in case you want to link to this page.

News for beta testers: undocumented log file on the HD.
A file called AOELOG.txt will be created to register your last AoE session. It looks like this:

>Log file C:\AOELOG.txt is opened
>>>>TIME>>>  Tue Sep 16 15:26:19 1997
   [    0.0 sec. elapsed]
>Logging to File  is now ACTIVE.
>Closing debug log file 'C:\AOELOG.txt'.
>>>>TIME>>>  Tue Sep 16 15:31:16 1997
   [  297.1 sec. elapsed]
>Log file is closed
Attempts to delete it are futile since it's recreated every time you run the game :-)
It may help you when you experience a crash with the game, but I have never tested that (having no crashes anymore). I think you can delete it once you get the retail version.

September 16

The demo should be released in a few days and will be available on this page for download! So check back this page regularly for the AoE demo.

September 15

I have made a page with all buildings, and like the units page, it includes now all hotkeys needed to construct the buildings and train the units. Thus, you'll have all information you need to play AoE on two pages!

September 14

News about the AoE demo from Rick Goodman: "The Trial version is nearly complete. We will put this into your hands in a few short weeks, or even days. It will offer a single campaign based around one of the 12 civilizations containing five scenarios. The first two scenarios are easy, the middle one is hard and the last two are for those who breezed through the entire campaigns of C&C and WC2 ... You will be able to play multiplayer games that support up to 8 players on the Zone, as well."

Archangel Michael has made an interview with Rick Goodman at Heavenweb. He tells us about the beta test and why the units have funny voices ;-)

September 13

Loomer on Area S said that the beta test will close in a week. All you guys who were lucky enough to get the beta, send your reports to ES now!

All you guys who did not get the beta, there is a chance to get a new beta version on Heavenweb. It will be a fair contest, there will be some questions you'll have to answer and the test will be running for an entire week.

September 12

A demo of Age of Empires is going to be issued soon. The exact release date of the demo is not known yet.

September 11

Ensemble Studios will celebrate the completion of AoE with the Age of Empires Industry Legends Charity Tournament. Age of Empires and Civilization designer Bruce Shelley will duel against Chris Roberts (Wing Commander) and John Romero (Doom and Quake) in a multi-player game. The event will be held on September 19 at the Hall of State in Dallas, TX. Money raised during the evening will benefit the Children's Medical Center of Dallas.

John and Chris will have to team up against Bruce to have a chance to win :-)
Playing a Quake duel afterwards would offer them a fair chance to retaliate...

One more screenshot about a funny bug has been added. You can see a catapult shot flying sky high out of the map :-)

September 10

Bruce Shelley has written why the 50 unit limit was set in Age of Empires. This has been one of the most discussed topics so far.

Shalrath has sent me some cool new screenshots.

I have finally replaced the War2 buttons (Back and Top links) by AoE units ;-)

September 9

On small land maps, there is a cheap "villager rush" strategy possible by choosing the Shang or Sumerian tribe. I hope this will be prevented in the final version of the game. Read more about it at my strategy page.

Two new screenshots give you an impression of sea battles in AoE.

September 8

The first AoE strategy page on the net is up!

I have taken my first screenshots from the game.

A link to Smog's page has been added.

September 7

I have added a unit table to the units page. This is not just one of those unit tables you may have seen at other pages, it contains all important information on one page (two pages if you print it out).

That argument about the beta reports is settled, I can post mine again :-)
After all, there are many pages with beta reports out there. To give a more balanced view of the game, I have now added Rick's comments. You'll see that most of the bugs are already fixed.

First impressions: I have come past the tutorial levels now and played the first real games :-) The units are very well animated, and the game demands a lot of planning. Food is particularly crucial. If they kill your farmers, you will be in problems. My favorite unit so far is the catapult, the animation is really cool and it knocks down buildings so fast! Of course you'll need some infantry to protect it. Something else that is cool is the combat engine: once my guys had a higher range but the enemies stood above a cliff and that's why they could fire as far as my guys. So you really have to take a look at the three-dimensional territory before attacking.

I am still playing the first few levels so I have not seen all the units so far ... unfortunately I have also to work a lot ... the game is certainly going to be a one of the best ones this year (the beta runs a bit slow, but I'm sure the full version will be faster). From what I've heard about Dark Reign and the like, AoE is far better. A reason to retire from War2 ;-)

September 6

Ensemble Studios has requested me not to post beta reports anymore since the danger that people prejudge an unfinished product is too high. I fully understand their concern; as a result of this, I have removed the beta report pages.

September 5

Finally, the beta CD arrived! I have sent a beta report to Ensemble studios, and they have already answered my mail and fixed most of the bugs! I don't think that many game companies react so quickly to the wishes of their customers. Big compliment to ES!

Messages that are older than a week are now archived in the old news page.

September 4

I've updated the tribes page with the final version of the technical attributes. Thanks to Edwin Carter for the information.

A page with all tech trees has been added! Again, Edwin is the source of my information :-)
You will see that some highly advanced units are not available for all tribes. For instance, a juggernaut is a privilege, not a right - only 6 out of 12 tribes can get them.

September 3

Edwin Carter has sent me his newest beta report and a tech table of the naval units.

September 2

Archangel Michael has made another interview, read it at my interview page.

Ensemble Studios has a page with screenshots from AoE.

I have made a page about the different tribes and their special abilities.

Your information is wanted! If you know something new about AoE or have interesting facts about the game, mail me and I'll put them up (of course you'll get credit).

September 1

Microsoft has made a picture with all units (23 K). It gives you a first impression of the combat in AoE. I've found it on the Ultimate Age of Empires page.

I have reorganized the page. Further adjustments, such as replacing my good old War2 archer, will follow.
I know I can replace the War2 archer by one from AoE, but what shall replace the ogre? ;-)

August 31

For all these players who don't know it yet, AoE features spawning: three players can play with one CD! This is great 'cuz I can play over LAN with the beta CD :-)

I have added a review of Age of Empires at the E3. Read what people said about Age of Empires in Atlanta.

The page with the interviews at the E3 that Shlonglor promised I would add is here: Interviews with top game designers in Atlanta.

August 30

Added links and a counter to my Age of Empires page. I'll add the hits from yesterday to the counter as soon as the statistics from the server are updated.

I have reorganized the links at the bottom of the AoE pages so these pages are now independant from the Warcraft page.

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