So yesterday I was on my old laptop watching tv and browsing around, thinking about how I have all these awesome old games that I don't play too often, and thinking about new games are sooo fastpaced and whatnot, and that I just wanted to sit back, relax, and build an awesome city.

My first choice for that kind of thing would have been Black and White (because the AI of the citizens is awesome, even if you don't do anything they will run around and do things!), but my laptop probably wouldn't run that too well. So I thought back further, and came to probably the first RTS I ever played. Thankfully I still have a copy of it (I think this particular copy came free in a Nutrigrain cereal box), so I installed it and enjoyed the semi-peaceful city building and economics.

For those that do not know AoE;

My favourite thing about this game is that it is so chill. You start the game with 3 workers and a townhall (playing on regular mode btw, not deathmatch), and it takes you friggin ages to do anything. Micro is highly beneficial but not required, making it very fun for any level of concentration.
After maybe 20 minutes of playing I had a nice town with lots of farms, 50 worker dudes, and some great walls and towers.

Of course, the NPC players were fighting with axemen and sending horseys around and whatnot (no match for towers), and I could happily build my city.



This is a far cry from modern RTSs like Dawn of War, Red Alert 3 and Starcraft 2, which all focus on early elimination and pushing yourself to the limit in a frenzy of slaughter.
The Age of Empires series is more like, medieval sim-city with armys and battle. Which makes it awesome



One of the best games I ever played, and I think there is probably a free download somewhere (LEGIT, not pirated. Like how there is a free download for daggerfall, etc). If you have not already played it, you must. Plus it will play on ANYTHING (sys requirements are probably only 5% of what your phone has! 90 MHz CPU, 16 MB RAM, 80 MB hard disk space, 1 MB GPU)

I only played the original Age of Empires a few times, when I was very young, so obviously everything about it to me seems legendary. I am to afraid to pick it up again as it will probably ruin my unrealistic memories of how incredible the game was.
However Age of Empires 2 was one of my favorite games, really nothing compared to it in terms of rts in my opinion, age of mythology just wasn't the same.

I found AoM to be quite fun, the city building was smoother and resource management was more fun.

Unit building was too easy though, compared to AoE, and it was a lot more about raising armies than about skirmishing. The skirmishing in AoE was what really sets it apart from modern RTSs.

I actually prefer AoM for city building. I installed that yesturday too :P

somewhat of a sidenote but are you aware of any games similar to age of empires? and please don't mention the starcraft or supreme commander type games. its not so much the RTS aspect I loved as it was the atmosphere, I was looking into total war, is this any good for a somewhat casual gamer?

I'm in the same boat as you, I don't know of any others that are really in the same style

I remember a game that was similar to age of empires as far as the atmosphere played out but I just can't think of the name.

Besides that, I LOVED age of empires 2 and still play it to this day with a group of friends.

Fuck you, was hoping for a sequel. /depressed
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Oh, you should try Caesar IV, or III since you're laptop isn't that good.

I think I heard of Caesar on Steam.

May be worth a look....



It pisses me off that Microsoft insists on having their own webstore, no way in hell I'm buying a game through "WindowsLiveGames" or whatever it is.

Rofl, it's not like if anyone even uses it.

Enjoyed age of empires II
but I was converted to the faster paced games by warcraft 2


as far as i know, theyv stopped those havent they?