
Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing - cpeterso
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/12/28/age-of-empires-2-forgotten-empires/
======
thejj
I'd like to remind you that there's openage, a free engine for Age of Empires
2.

[https://github.com/SFTtech/openage](https://github.com/SFTtech/openage)

It will be the future if you wanna accomplish things the original engine is
incapable of doing, especially a sane mod API.

Help us make it more awesome :)

~~~
danso
Thanks for sharing! I actually thought this was going to point to 0ad
[1]...which because it deals with ancient warfare, I had just assumed it was
sparked by AOE2 community. Good to know of openage.

Out of curiosity...how much do _you_ still play AOE2? I guess that would
implicitly indicate how far along openage is...but I was also interested just
how much someone has to love a game to rebuild it from scratch :)

[1][https://github.com/0ad/0ad](https://github.com/0ad/0ad)

~~~
thejj
I'm not playing it much, i'm actually pretty bad at it, but it's totally fun.
We mainly play aoc in wine, which works very well on local LANs but is crappy
via internet, same without wine, which was the initial spark.

Nobody had suceeded in creating a clone with potential at 2013, so we took
chances and are still trying to do it the "right" way.

I think the last year I played about 40h of aoc, so actually not that much,
and haven't played aoe:hd yet.

------
pm90
AoE 2 in likely the most engaging strategy game I've ever played. I got rather
involved in it in college, but was surprised that there were certain "basic
strategies" that one had to follow to hope to even survive (e.g. getting to
castle age within a certain time for a certain civilization). With the voobly
client, its possible to challenge aoe players across the world for a game, and
its kinda awesome to cooperate and deal with the mess that comes from playing
an RTS game at that level.

Probably true for most strategy games, but aoe seems light enough
(requirements wise) and has a great enough balance (and the fact that the game
is almost freely available worldwide) enables anyone with a computer with a
decent internet connection to play.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> I got rather involved in it in college, but was surprised that there were
> certain "basic strategies" that one had to follow to hope to even survive
> (e.g. getting to castle age within a certain time for a certain
> civilization).

This is always going to be true for a strategy game. Heck it's probably true
in general for any competitive game that that there are certain things that
you just _have_ to do.

The more competitive the game is, the more obvious this is (which is why you
see more people complaining about this kind of thing for Starcraft than AoE),
but it's still always present, lurking in the background.

------
brownbat
Each entry in that series tells you something about the history of gaming at
the time. AOE1 made some great innovations in order to handle "1500 archers at
28.8kbps."[0] Conquerers was the dawn of expansions and ultimately DLC.

AoE Online had a bunch of interesting ideas, letting players customize their
civilizations ala MMORPGs or MOBAs. Interesting quests too, and good coop for
the story mode, something I've always wanted RTS games to pull off better.

They did not need to make it an actual MMO with central servers though, and
because it never attracted a playerbase / they couldn't monetize it, it was
killed off (meaning completely unplayable) in a pretty short time frame. This
seems pretty typical for games of today though, tying them to a central server
for an unnecessary social or data tracking layer, dooming them to die in a few
years when the income slows down a bit.

AOE2 was privileged to come from a time where installing a game meant you
owned it, and you could probably play it with your kids. Maybe you could even
take it apart and rebuild it better. We're living in a world now where a lot
of games are ephemeral, the world may have no idea what it's like to play them
after a few years, once the servers are shut down to run something newer.

[0]
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131503/1500_archers_on...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131503/1500_archers_on_a_288_network_.php)

~~~
TimJYoung
Re: owning the game - so very true.

I'm going to date myself here, but I remember picking out the box for AOE2
with my kids at CompUSA. We played that game a lot, and it was a wonderful
bonding experience that we still talk about.

~~~
TrevorJ
Oh man, my dad and I went to compUSA all the time when I was growing up. Great
memories.

------
johnloeber
I've played a great deal of AoE2. Here are some comments:

* The two new expansions are nice. The developers have done an excellent job at maintaining the balance of the game and not pushing any outlandish changes. (After all, the game thrives on a nostalgia factor.) However, it's apparent that it comes from a tiny dev studio. Releases are usually littered with bugs and playability issues. This is a great shame, because they manage to garner significant hype and excitement, only for the release day to be somewhat frustrating for most players.

* In fact, due to the small size of the dev team, there usually is a long turnaround period on fixing smaller gameplay issues. This means that most of the more invested players, who are more easily irritated than the casual players, use other, older, more established clients to play the game, where the new expansions are not available. Indeed, the new expansions, while very similar in spirit to the 13-year-old expansions, change the metagame so significantly that at the competitive level, only the 13-year old expansion is played. This deeply fragments the player base. The new expansions, and AoE2 on Steam in general, are mostly played by newcomers.

* It's very difficult to get the advanced players to take the expansions seriously because the competitive scene has been basically unchanged for about fifteen years. As such, the theoretical metagame has been nearly perfected, and the random components in game generation do not make a difference to the point of needing true _improvisational_ play. Competitive players have spent months, if not years, carefully practicing minutely differing iterations of the same game scenarios. I've seen professional players end games over early-game mistakes that an intermediate player might not even notice. I consider it a little similar to chess, in the sense that the metagame/opening theory is so well explored that the game can rarely be considered improvisational, but is more like a ballet performance: an extremely well-studied routine that has to be executed as perfectly as possible (which, by the way, means above 400 actions per minute for a top player). Considering the immense amount of study that has gone into the game, and the even larger amount of practice required to become truly good, it is clear that most competitive players would rather keep spending their time on the old game, as opposed to on the new expansions -- the latter would necessitate a great amount of exploration of new strategies, and a similarly enormous amount of practice.

~~~
Avalaxy
Regarding your last point: I really don't like that competitiveness. I don't
get the fun in repeating the exact same schedule over and over again just to
finish the game as quick as possible. I would rather prefer to build a nice
city first and take it slow, but with strategy games that almost never works
in multiplayer, which is why I never play them. I don't really get that
feeling with FPS games, they seem to be different every single time (although
for games such as counter strike that may not be true).

~~~
rexerexer
I can totally see where you're coming from but I think it's a differing view
on what it fundamentally means to 'build a nice city'.

In this competitive arena, your current 'city' is the culmination of each game
you've played under a certain set of meta-rules self-imposed in conjunction
with the nuances of playing as a particular civilization.

While an opponent may only see it for a fleeting moment, your actual, current
city is how, given specific starting conditions, under the constraints above,
your pre-game-plan and ruleset have been tweaked and optimized to the point
where they are not actively in need of changing.

The only resource that really matters is time. A nice city is one that cannot
be defeated by an opposing 'city' in any arbitrary amount of time and frees
you up to focus on the more reaction-dependent offensive strategy.

edit: Experience is mostly from Empire Earth, YMMV

------
JoshGlazebrook
Age of Mythology is still one of my favorite games ever. What made it fun is
not the real time strategy, but the custom scenario maps that people could
create. This wasn't just the terrain, but the mechanics of the maps
themselves. It was part "programming" as well as part design.

The multiplayer servers are still online, but the certificate expired years
ago. You can force AOM to connect to them with fiddler2, but you have to have
an existing account.

But now there is the steam re-release, and of course Voobly/GameRanger for the
original release, but the steam version is full of bugs that have not been
fixed in over a year.

~~~
frik
I prefer AoM too, it's IMHO the best RTS game of the AoE series. It was the
first 3D game of the series, nevertheless had a very nice graphics. The AI is
certainly the best of the series. And the random map generator was great too.
(as well as the music, etc)

AoE3 was great too (superb graphics and physics engine - very nice even
today), but I wasn't so fond of the timeframe and several design decisions (8
tower limit, no random maps, the trains concept.

AoE 2 has a buggy AI, it gives up way too often. It was an improvement in
every respect to AoE1.

AoE 1 was great for it's time. Less units than modern games, so every unit was
worth more. One could create unlimited amount of towers - I played tower
defence style gameplay in AoE 1 in 1997.

~~~
Mikeb85
AoE 1 endgame was basically just building 50 heavy catapults and a bunch of
towers.

AoE 2 at least had fairly compelling multiplayer with a variety of options.
Although town centre rushes were a dominant tactic in the original version...

~~~
frik
I almost exclusively play RTS in single player mode on random generated maps.

And the AI is very good in AoE/AoM series (well except for the AI bugs in
AoE2, in both the original as well as in the "HD" re-release). Whereas other
RTS games (e.g. EmpireEarth) cheat a lot, that's not very rewarding. The
developer at least tried to create an AI that doesn't cheat with resources.

Playing an RTS for several hours in multiplay against friends (LAN) is fun (as
long both are almost equal). Internet gameplay isn't that fun, when someone
suddenly leaves the game, or just doing a common rush strategy. Nowadays some
of them found their niche with League of Legends, etc.

For me, AI gameplay in single player is more fun.

------
fouadf
If you're a fan of age of empires 2, you should definitely try 0ad
[http://play0ad.com](http://play0ad.com) it's open source and multiplatform

~~~
jonbaer
0ad is excellent for quite a number of reasons, first is the history it
teaches you, the other is you can grab it @
[https://github.com/0ad/0ad](https://github.com/0ad/0ad) and
[https://github.com/0admods](https://github.com/0admods) and really tinker w/
the AI and build meshes,models w/ Blender, +1 for 0ad

~~~
pcr0
Just got the game :D

I'm curious though, where did you find the history lessons? The campaign
doesn't seem to have been implemented yet.

------
snydly
One of the greatest breakthroughs of my life was realizing that you only had
to type "cheese steak jimmy's" once, then ctrl-c, then ctrl-v as much as you
want. It was a great day.

~~~
skittlebrau
Strangely I am responsible for the name of this cheat code. It's an
accidental-turned-intentional misnomer for a place we used to eat a lot during
Age2 development called Fred's Downtown Philly.

~~~
artursapek
If you have written up any memories/folk lore from your days building this
game, I would love to read it (and I'm sure many others here would too).

~~~
skittlebrau
I have never written anything up personally, but I'm sure there is some stuff
out there to be found.

Get any two former Ensemble employees together, possibly buy them a beer, and
you will almost certainly get some stories that sound apocryphal but probably
actually happened :)

~~~
jsmthrowaway
Ensemble was a truly great studio. I hear people rag on AoE3 but I personally
don't think Ensemble ever missed. Once. Between you and Westwood, RTS was
pretty great for a long time.

Whatever you did for them, thanks for some really fun entertainment across
many years of my own life.

------
ndesaulniers
I still play a ton of Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, which is just a Star
Wars re-skin of AoE2.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Galactic_Battlegrou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Galactic_Battlegrounds)

~~~
tough_luck
So this is the game I played years ago. Thanks. I found demo of this game on
one of the cd that came with Digit mag.

------
xerography
_AoE II HD_ [1] and _AoE II HD: The Forgotten_ [2] are currently on 80%
discount holiday sale on Steam.

Offer ends in 29 hours and 15 minutes as of this writing.

[1]:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/221380](http://store.steampowered.com/app/221380)

[2]:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/239550](http://store.steampowered.com/app/239550)

------
andygrunwald
AoE is great. I was so happy after they released the HD release. The bad part
is that there is no native MacOSX version available :(

~~~
duhast
I'm playing it on MacOS using VMware Fusion. Works well.

------
cwbrandsma
As I'm reading this my 14 year old daughter and my 12 year old son are playing
a game while discussing strategies and having a blast.

------
OSButler
The thing I like so much about it are the different civilizations, which come
with their own unique language and music. It's a minor detail and helps a bit
with the immersion, compared to just a simple paint job to differentiate
between them.

------
tomphoolery
TIL people sitll play AoE 2! I used to play this game all the time at the all-
night LAN parties my friends hosted. It was great because the graphics weren't
so crazy that literally anyone could play it, so it always commanded the
largest amounts of players, other than Counter-Strike: Source.

------
rmm
Played a LOT of AOE2 back in the day.

However, I was always more of a fan of AoE1 RoR expansion. Anyone else?
Something about the brutal simplicity of it, made it much more fun for me and
my friends?

Would love to see that "HD'ified"!

~~~
Avalaxy
Oh yes, the villagers beating enemies with huge bones/clubs and the famous
wololo :-)

------
mrsuprawsm
I loved the original Age of Empires (+ Rise of Rome), I remember asking a
friend who was lucky enough to have a CD writer at the time to copy it for me;
probably the first game I ever pirated.

AOE2 HD on Steam is great fun, I've really enjoyed playing it over LAN with
friends (and online, although the competition is much harder).

Unfortunately a reasonable percentage of games run into unrecoverable issues
with the netcode - clients lagging out and going out of sync. It's a real
shame and I hope the devs get some time to focus on this, especially now that
2 expansions are out.

------
Merem
As someone who plays AoE2 from time to time on Voobly, I consider this and the
HD versions to be complete separate games, simply for the fact that said
expansions are for the HD release but not the original one (original mod
aside). So people like me are by these releases completely unaffected.

------
TulliusCicero
Neat. Man, I'd love to see this happen to Starcraft 1.

~~~
thegeekpirate
It's happening. And not only for StarCraft =)

[http://us.blizzard.com/en-
us/company/careers/posting.html?id...](http://us.blizzard.com/en-
us/company/careers/posting.html?id=150010X)

[http://us.blizzard.com/en-
us/company/careers/posting.html?id...](http://us.blizzard.com/en-
us/company/careers/posting.html?id=15000XZ)

~~~
svisser
Also for Command & Conquer: [http://openra.net](http://openra.net) (currently
C&C (Tiberian Dawn), C&C: Red Alert, and Dune 2000 with Tiberian Sun on the
way).

~~~
frik
I am a fan of C&C Renegade (the concept of 3D shooter and RTS gameplay is so
awesome) and C&C Generals. Would love to see some community projects around
them as well. Something like 0 A.D. for C&C Renegade and Generals (mind you
both featured the same game engine)

~~~
geltea
Checkout Renegade X [http://www.renegade-x.com/](http://www.renegade-x.com/).
Amazing remake of the original C&C Renegade. I still play every now and then
(ShotgunJH)

------
mgr86
I played a lot of aoe I and some 2 as a kid. Nearly 30 now and have not so
much time for gaming. But the online streaming community is impressive and the
skill level is high. Also there was a 120k tournament last year for a 15 year
old game. It's very impressive.

------
arjn
Have been playing AoE on and off for a while now. Still like the game. Wish I
had more time to play it. It has certain playing qualities that hold one's
interest over time. Even when compared to other more modern games.

------
Aqwis
One thing I'd like to see improved is the unit AI, which is frustratingly
poor. This would probably annoy some serious multiplayers, but that's not
necessarily a bad thing.

~~~
renekooi
The HD Edition has a new AI[0] that's much stronger than the old one. It's
built by Promiskuitiv and Archon, two well-known AI scripters in the Age of
Empires scene :)

[0]:
[http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/1/540744934...](http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/1/540744934297500960/)

~~~
Aqwis
As I understand it, this is a bot AI, and not a unit AI. Am I wrong?

------
Houshalter
I have just started playing AoE2 again. I have some complaints.

The units are so stupid and frustrating. They will casually walk into the
range of enemy castles and towers. They will chase units across the map if you
don't put them into defensive mode. If you do put them into defensive mode,
they can easily be take out by archers without fighting back. They will open
gates and let hordes of enemies into your town. They will stand there and
continue cutting wood while an enemy army approaches them and kills their
coworkers. The monks won't attack units unless you specifically order them to.
Etc, etc. It makes parts of the game very tedious and unenjoyable.

The campaigns are similarly tedious. At first it's really fun and challenging,
if you have the difficulty right. It's a challenge to figure out how to repel
the big attacks and build up very quickly.

But after building up, it's no longer a challenge. And to win, you just need
to spend an hour clicking through the enemies base destroying their
structures. Even though you basically won an hour ago.

The multiplayer is terrifying. I tried it once and within like 10 minutes my
opponent had surrounded my base with cannon towers and trebuchets. I haven't
played it since.

The AI scripting is really cool. It's super simple to learn, very easy to
modify other people's scripts, and very powerful. You can do a lot with just a
few lines of their domain specific language. And you don't need any
programming knowledge at all. And it's very extensive. There are tons of
variables and functions available that let you do all kinds of things, and
it's well documented.

But it's also extremely restricted. You can't do basic things like store
variables, compare numbers, etc. There are arbitrary limits on how many
conditions you can have in a conditional, how many lines you can have total,
etc. They are workable, but I have no idea why they are even there. The only
people modifying AI scripts in the first place are probably willing to accept
if the game runs a bit slower because of all the extra code they put in it.

There's also no way to speed up the game. You only get "slow", "normal", or
"fast". You need to use Cheat Engine to make the game run a hundred times
faster. This is necessary for testing those AI scripts, or getting through
those tedious offensive parts I mentioned above. They should have just let it
be an option in the game.

Same with other variables like population limit, that's restricted to 200 for
no reason. If I want a higher limit, I'll accept that the game runs slower.
Just let it be an option, even in a hidden menu with a big warning or
something. TBF, the new HD edition does let you go up to 500 IIRC.

~~~
BatFastard
Going from single player to multiplayer is like going from the pond into the
ocean. The real action happens in the ocean, but it is not for the timid. I
look at single player as just a tutorial for multiplayer.

~~~
Houshalter
Possibly. I don't really want to play against people who have been playing
competitively for 16 years. And I like messing around in single player,
building cool bases or trying different strategies. Not trying to be as
efficient as possible and micromanaging every single unit. Competitive
multiplayer games in general have never really been that enjoyable to me.

~~~
Houshalter
Ok I went back and tried another game just to see if my first impressions were
entirely wrong. This time there were a lot of noob maps and some less skilled
players to play against.

I joined a 4v4 map, and while I still didn't do great, I had other players to
back me up. I also didn't feel like I was the worst player in the game.

However just as the game was getting interesting (and I was probably about to
get crushed), everyone paused the game and kicked me. Possibly because they
blamed more for their lag, possibly because I wasn't that good of a player.
They didn't say. It was very discouraging.

But it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, and I might try playing again
some time.

~~~
aerovistae
What? They kicked you? There is no "kick" functionality once the game begins
on steam. What are you talking about?

~~~
Houshalter
I have no idea. the game paused and then suddenly i was on the main menu and
confused.

~~~
aerovistae
The game crashed. You were not kicked. The game is 16 years old, it happens.
Much less than it used to, and someday maybe it won't happen at all.

------
praetorian84
Can we get an AoE 4 already?

~~~
akerro
We're getting Cossacks 3 on Linux.

------
mhuangw
One of my favorite strategy games growing up. It also encouraged a healthy
interest in history that persists today.

------
verelo
I've wanted to play this on iOS for so long! Very frustrating to see it
Windows only still :-( If anyone from MS is here, please please please
consider compiling this for iOS, I know a lot of people who would buy it.

I believe OpenAge is cross platform, but sadly most friends all use the
version they purchased on Steam.

~~~
aerovistae
...iOS? Surely you mean OSX. This would be impossible to play on a touch
interface.

~~~
Houshalter
There was a mobile age of empires game made a year or two ago. I heard it was
shitty and only vaguely based on age of empires.

------
baldfat
I use to play AoE 2 as UConnBBall and wrote for MrFixItOnline. Sadly the
website just came down a few years ago. It was an awesome run with that game
for me.

------
rietta
Oh! I loved that game as a teenager. Actually, the first one even more so.

------
wnevets
I could never get into aoe2 after playing aoe rise of rome for so long.

------
bronz
Check out Feudal Wars. It's really cool.

[http://www.feudalwars.net](http://www.feudalwars.net)

------
necessity
As an active player since forever, Steam has ruined this game. It's full of
bugs from 1999 and a whole lot new ones -- currently the lobby won't list
games, you have to use a third party website. There is a pinned thread on
Steam's support forums for a variety of bugs that are common to a lot of
players (and the solutions don't always work), there are horrendous net issues
("Waiting for players", "Out of sync"), etc. I just don't play on Steam
anymore.

Voobly, an unofficial platform similar to Gameranger, + mod community and
tournament organizer, has a very active player base, including most of the top
players in the game. It has it's own HD patch and several improvements not
present in Steam. It's impressive how an unofficial, unsupported, free
plataform can be light years ahead of the billionaires at the Valve/Microsoft
partnership.

~~~
hmc2323
What's the website?

~~~
methyl
[http://www.voobly.com/](http://www.voobly.com/)

------
anfroid555
Number one choice for Erlang ide

