Realtime strategy games the dizzying pace of professional StarCraft or stumble into the arcane lore of Total War: Warhammer and you might get the impression that the entire genre is comprised of systems-driven time sinks, where it takes hours of research on a community wiki to even understand how the menus work.

With its straightforward, pared-down mechanics, Age Of Empires 2 is a sharp contrast to that uninviting stereotype. There are only four resources (wood, gold, food and stone) and the research tree, such as it can be called, consists wholly of material upgrades for your military and agriculture. If you want to increase the productivity of your empire in one of the other best RTS games, you might need to fine-tune your citizens' wages or cultivate and implement a new form of government. In Age Of Empires 2, you must build a wheelbarrow.

But despite its simplistic central design, no two matches or missions are ever the same, and the scope for experimenting with different strategies is boundless. Stronghold and Medieval: Total War may seem like Age Of Empires II's nearest mechanical relatives, but it perhaps has more in common with Portal or the original version of Resident Evil 4, games that give you only limited tools (blue and orange portal; gun, knife, and grenade) and challenge you to adapt their uses to ever- more-complex scenarios. It takes maybe ten minutes to learn how to play Age Of Empires 2, but given how each mission introduces new premises and twists – you know exactly how to build a successful town, but now you have to do it on a map with no lumber, while fending off waves of enemy cavalry – it still feels deep and unpredictable, even for those who have been on board since 1999.

This all hints at the secret of the game's longevity. Now 27 years old, it has stayed alive partly owing to expansion packs, an HD remaster in 2013, and 2019's Definitive Edition. But its enduring popularity (averaging around 28,000 concurrent Steam users per day, Age Of Empires 2 still has more players on Valve's platform than the Definitive Editions of Age Of Empires 3 and 4 combined) is largely the product of its visual design, its soundtrack, and how Ensemble Studios blends historical fact with high drama in the superbly written campaigns. Compared to some of its RTS contemporaries, the true beauty of Age Of Empires 2 lies in everything outside of the core mechanics.

Strategy Refined

More so than in the late '90s, we now have an accepted genre of 'cosy games', games that let you feel peaceful and at ease, or have the same inviting effect on your imagination as indulging in hobbies or crafts. While training an army and viciously pillaging the lands of rival nations is the ostensible 'point' of Age Of Empires 2, aesthetically and in practice it becomes more like a model or diorama builder, an exercise in 'cosy' creativity. Given the fastidious level of detail in the units and buildings, and the natural splendour of the mission maps, with their forests, rivers and sweeping, snow-covered plains, one of the greatest pleasures in Age Of Empires II comes from ignoring the objectives you've been set and instead pouring your resources into designing idyllic medieval towns.

Once you've raised a monastery, a fishing village and a row of houses, the game starts to feel more like a hybrid of strategy game and city builder, a tangential link between the all-out brutality of Warcraft and Command & Conquer and the pastoral harmony of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. You can sit and admire your individual villagers going diligently about their work, listening at the same time to the pleasing, rhythmic chop-chop sound of axes in the forest. War is inevitable, but the world of Age Of Empires 2, teeming with wild animals and natural wonders, gives you something to explore and indulge in beyond bloodshed.

That sense of scale and grandeur – the feeling that you're laying the municipal and cultural foundations of human history, not just tearing it all down – is accentuated by Stephen Rippy's score, particularly tracks such as Shamburger and T Station (strange, non-sequitur song titles are one of the composer's trademarks). Using contemporary medieval instruments and slow, emergent melodies, Rippy's music adds mystique and gravity to even minor accomplishments, the launching of a new fishing boat accompanied by the hopeful lilt of a wooden flute, the slow unveiling of an impassable cliff face given dark foreboding by thudding tribal drums.

The broader sound design, meanwhile – the dozens of different noises that variously signify the recruitment of a fresh soldier, the beginning of a major battle, or the arrival of a new villager ("hee-haa") – serves a thematic purpose as much as a practical one, helping to create the sense that these seemingly disparate moments in your empire's history are actually all parts of a single grand composition. As you train more knights, sow more crops and crush more enemies, you create an unusual kind of music in turn, the different chimes pops and alerts merging into a literal rhythm of progress.

Between the missions, Age Of Empires 2 offers a different perspective on history, one that switches from a broad- scale view of nations and regimes to a closer focus on the experiences of individual people. Attila's campaign, for example, is narrated by a Frankish monk, traumatised from witnessing the brutal battle tactics of the Huns. The history of Saladin and the Saracen empire is recounted by a nameless Norman knight, who becomes lost in the Egyptian desert while fighting the Crusades.

Ensemble goes to great lengths to preserve and present factual minutiae – take the third mission in the Joan Of Arc story, where you come up against three British strongholds, recreations of the castles oJargeau, Meung-sur-Loire and Beaugency that were captured by the French during the 1429 Loire campaign. But this scrupulous attention to historical fact is balanced by rousing voice performances, and cutscenes that evoke the melodrama of national myths and legends. "A blue wolf took as his spouse a fallow doe," goes the opening line to the Genghis Khan campaign. "They settled at the head of the Onon River to raise their offspring. And there were born the Mongols." You can pick up a lot of knowledge from playing Age Of Empires II, but it's wrapped up in big, bold tales of adventure.

Almost three decades since the game was released, however, its most striking aspect is its violence; the tragedy and brutality that run through every mission. RTS games always involve killing thousands of enemy troops and civilians, and sacrificing thousands of your own in the process, but when so much of your time here is spent nurturing your nascent townships and carefully organising your armies and villagers, the death and destruction hit that much harder. The first hour of a campaign mission might be spent arranging your knights into divisions, assigning each battle group a complement of monks and repair workers to support them on their expedition.

One misjudged offensive later, all that remains of that lovingly fostered band of brothers are their skeletons, and the skeletons of their horses, which you have to watch sink gradually into the blood-soaked soil. And when you successfully ambush an enemy battalion or invade a rival city, the effect is reversed: CPU opponents will often insist on fighting to the last unarmed citizen, forcing you to wipe entire cities off the map if you want to win the game. The savagery of a victory becomes just as hard to reconcile as the bitterness of a defeat.

Face the consequences

You also have to face the consequences of destroying the environment. At the beginning of each mission, the map is bristling with green, virgin forests. By the time you've finished building your barracks, your archery ranges and your sorties of trebuchets, however, the world around you is reduced to yellowing waste ground, pockmarked by dead stumps. If you overwork a patch of farmland, you'll hear the sound of sand falling from between a person's fingers, signalling that the once- fertile soil has been ploughed into dust.

Tear down a rival nation's wonder – a great cathedral or marble temple – and you'll hear the sound of a lightning bolt, implying a terrible act of devastation that will echo through the epochs. Considering it belongs to a genre that normally encourages total annihilation, this more layered illustration of violence, against both people and the world, is another reason Age Of Empires 2 still stands as a wonder itself.

Barring remasters, rereleases, and some middle-budget efforts that appeal to nostalgia, RTS games still seem to be out of favour in 2026. Their fall from prominence, relative to their '90s heyday, is perhaps partly the result of drilling too far into their niche appeal, the realtime strategy canon becoming increasingly dense and systems-driven until nobody but die-hard devotees could keep up. In the context of that shift, even though it's pushing 30 – a crumbly age within the world of video games – Age of Empires 2 feels modern, its accessibility and its mix of tines, timbres, and styles of play suggesting that, far from a relic of the past, the RTS genre still has swathes of uncharted territory waiting to be discovered.

This article originally appeared in issue 422 of Edge Magazine. For more just like this, consider subscribing to get the full mag delivered to your door every month.

Using Age of Empires 2 barracks, you can build up your armies with new soldiers ready for war, but barracks take up a lot of space and resources. Assuming you've already got some workers gathering basic resources, such as wood, your next priority should be getting your army start - those workers aren't going to protect themselves, and your enemies aren't going to conquer themselves either! However, Age of Empires 2 is pretty complicated, with lots of menus, sub-menus and UI elements, so knowing exactly how to build your barracks and what to do with them can be confusing. With that in mind, here's what you need to know to begin building barracks in Age of Empires 2.

How to build barracks in Age of Empires 2

To build barracks in Age of Empires 2 you need to select a villager and choose the barracks from the Military page of the villager’s Command menu. You’ll also need 175 wood, and a 3x3 area to place your barracks and start building your army.

1. Select a villager: Do this by manually finding and selecting a villager or by cycling through your villagers with up on the D-Pad.
2. Open the Military page of the Villager’s Command menu and select Barracks: Hold RT to open the radial villager Command menu, then press Y to switch from the Economy page to the Military page. Use the left stick to highlight Barracks and then press A to start placing.
3. Place and build your Barracks: Now you can move around your territory to find a spot for your Barracks. Press A to place the barracks and construction will automatically being. If you want to speed up the construction of your barracks, you can assign more villagers to the job.

With your Age of Empires 2 barracks built, you can now use them to train up infantry units and bolster your army. You’ll need to spend food and gold to both train and improve you soldiers, with upgrades costing far more than training. Train units by selecting your Barracks, holding RT to open the Command menu, then selecting the unit type you want to train.

Starting in the Dark Age, you’ll have access to only the humble Militia fighter, but you’ll be able to upgrade to the Man-at-Arms and other specialized units as soon as you reach the Feudal Age and beyond. With infantry units being your primary forces in Age of Empires 2, it’s essential that you have a good number of barracks, and the resources to support them, so that you can have a large army. Barracks are also essential for Archery Ranges and Stables, so you’ll need them to get other armed units too.

If you've been checking out Age of Empires 2 on Game Pass, why not take a look at these games like Age of Empires to see what else can scratch that strategy itch.

Age of Empires 2 voice and narration is on by default, which can be a bit jarring when you first start the game, but you can soon disable it via the setup menus. This menu narration is a great accessibility feature, especially since Age of Empires 2 is quite heavy on reading and blocks of text. However, if you don't need text-to-speech narration reading everything, you can customize it so that certain aspects are still narrated, or you can turn it off entirely, so are the menus you need to look in to turn off Age of Empires 2 voice narration.

How to turn off narration in Age of Empires 2

When you first boot up Age of Empires 2 and are presented with the ‘Setup’ menu, turn off narration by switching off the Narration option at the top of the list. This will entirely turn off all text-to-speech voices reading out information to you in Age of Empire 2.

If you later decide you want to switch narration back on, or only want certain aspects of Age of Empires 2 narrated, open Settings (menu button on Xbox controller, Esc on PC keyboard) > Options > Audio. You’ll see a list of audio options, including Menu Narration, Game Narration, Tooltips Narration, and more that you can individually configure to suit your narration and accessibility needs. You can also adjust the volume of the text-to-speech voice by changing the Narrator Volume setting. If it’s the voice over and character dialogue that you want to adjust, turn down the Voice Volume setting instead.

If you've been checking out Age of Empires 2 on Game Pass, why not take a look at these games like Age of Empires to see what else can scratch that strategy itch.

Age of Empires 4's first major update Festival of Ages is coming next week, and it's bringing a slew of content with it. 

Seasons make their debut with this update, with Season 2 set to start in the next few months. They'll include Ranked Seasons to accommodate competitive multiplayer, and special Seasonal Events that will have rewards for unique, rotating challenges. 

The first Ranked Season will last for 12 weeks. Players will need to complete five placement matches to determine their rank. Then, they'll need to make their way up from Bronze to Diamond, with the goal of the eventual Conqueror rank. When ranking in a specific placement, players will receive Monuments for their Town Center, coat of arms, and portraits to appear via their player profile. 

The update will also introduce a content editor, which will launch in beta but will allow players to create their own maps, change up individual options to their liking, and balance units in ways that they prefer. There's even a way to weave together entire mods. 

Developer Relic Entertainment debuted a number of the coming updates in a trailer as well as a special livestream, which you can see below. 

In addition to seasons and the new content editor, the game will receive a few quality of life improvements and balance changes. There aren't further updates on those just yet, but they'll be forthcoming when Season 1 arrives. 

For Age of Empires 4 players, these updates and changes should offer plenty of reasons to come back to the game. More details will emerge in the coming days, but there's already a wealth of goodies to keep your eye on. 

Unsure if this strategy staple is your cup of tea? Be sure to check out our full Age of Empires 4 review. 

Try out these Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition cheats if you're desperate to emerge victorious with copious money and food, or even a Shelby Cobra. Sure, using these cheats isn't exactly fair, but it can be good to try them out if you're done playing the hard way and just want to screw around with an invincible empire. What's more is that these cheats work with the original Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings, Age of Empires 2: HD Edition, AND Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition, with a few variations that we've made clear below. Here's a full list of Age of Empires 2 cheat codes you can use to ensure your civilization's survival.

All Age of Empires 2 cheat codes

Below you can find all the Age of Empires 2 cheats in the whole game and their effects - and if you need a refresher on how to apply them, just scroll down or use this link to leap straight to our section on how to use cheats in Age of Empires 2!

The Age of Empires 4 spring update roadmap has been revealed and it includes the likes of a content editor and ranked mode, alongside quality of life improvements. 

Revealed via the official Age of Empires website, developer Relic Entertainment and World’s Edge gave fans a roadmap for the upcoming 'spring update' - now known as Season One. Although the roadmap doesn’t include a release date just yet, the developers did say: "We can share that it’s not too far off and that there will be the opportunity to preview it in the near future if you own the game on Steam."

So what can fans expect to get out of Season One? Well, according to the post, a new Content Editor will be added to Age of Empires 4 which will allow creators to make and share their own content with the AOE community. Not only this but Age of Empires 4 will also be getting a number of in-house mods and tutorials to help budding modders get started. 

Also being introduced in Season One is a 1v1 Ranked Ladder mode which will see players pit against each other to earn exclusive in-game rewards such as Monuments, Player Profile Portraits, and Coat of Arms items. The new ranked mode was previously previewed at the end of January and has since gone on to receive a number of small tweaks before it rolls out fully in the upcoming season. 

Some other features announced as coming to Season One include Hotkey improvements, which will soon enable additional categories within the hotkey menu, bind other commands to the 'ALT' and 'Shift' keys, and other improvements. The developers acknowledged that they are aware of how important editable hotkeys are to Age of Empire players, and revealed that they expect to "introduce fully remappable inputs in Season Two."

Finally, the post revealed that new quality of life improvements (such a Global Build Queue and the Patrol move) will also be introduced in Season One along with the MegaRandom map, a new Art of War challenge, difficulty tuning across campaign missions, and more. 

Getting ready to jump into Season One when it eventually releases? Take a look at our Age of Empires 4 tips and tricks before you get started. In the meantime, you can also check out our pick of the best games like Age of Empires.

Age of Empires 4 could be testing for an Xbox launch, it's been revealed.

Over the past weekend, the Twitter account below, which trawls the Xbox database for codenames and other product information, revealed a product codenamed "Cardinal" had been added to the Xbox database. The account claims that this codename is actually related to Age of Empires 4, meaning an Xbox-related version of the new strategy game is currently in the works at developer Relic.

However, this isn't a guarantee that Age of Empires 4 will eventually see a launch on Xbox consoles, if this Cardinal codename is even related to Relic's strategy game in the first place. The game could simply be undergoing internal testing at the developer, and might not be intended for a public release on the Xbox One/Xbox Series consoles.

If Age of Empires 4 does make the jump from PC to Xbox consoles however, it wouldn't be the first Xbox-published, PC-exclusive game to do so. Last year in 2021, Asobo's Microsoft Flight Simulator arrived for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, but not for Xbox One. It could be the case that the two new-gen consoles see an Age of Empires 4 release, but the last-gen Xbox One is sadly left out.

If you're unfamiliar with Age of Empires 4, it's the latest in a very long line of tactical strategy games, which have always launched exclusively for PC. The new game arrived for PCs worldwide as of October 2021, and while you wait why not check out our pick of the best games like Age of Empires for all platforms. 

You can head over to our upcoming Xbox Series X games guide for a full look at all the future titles confirmed for Microsoft's new-gen console.

The updated Age of Empires 4 roadmap shows over 100 balance changes coming in a major update this winter, with World's Edge and Relic Entertainment eyeing highly requested features like AI difficulty settings and old-school cheats for future updates.

The massive strategy game's first big patch is still in our rear-view mirror, and the next one seems considerably bigger. It's led by over 100 balance tweaks, in-game player scores, and several UI and visibility improvements. Plenty of bugs will be squashed in the winter update, too, but the balance stuff is the real draw. Where else are you going to find patch notes like this: "French Hulk ship tweaked to no longer rule the high seas." Great, now I'm laughing at the idea of a French Hulk and can't even appreciate the fact that "crossbowmen, spearmen and elite crossbowmen will pose a greater threat to cavalry."

Age of Empires 4's spring 2022 update is focusing more on user-generated content, including a way to share and play creations, as well as the first ranked seasons. Each season will last 12 weeks, resetting the competitive ladder at the end and dishing out loot throughout. 

Longtime fans may find the game's more distant goals more exciting. The Age of Empires 4 team says it's looking at player feedback on series staples like a global build queue, taunts and cheats, hotkey changes, AI difficulty ("specifically making the easy AI less aggressive"), and other quality of life features like waypoints. World's Edge and Relic didn't share specifics, but did stress that they're "exploring" and "looking into" ways to fold in features like this in future updates. 

Here are some Age of Empires 4 tips to help you dominate whatever battles you choose to fight, and 10 games like Age of Empires to play when you're done with the new release.

Need some Age of Empires 4 tips? This real-time strategy game can be quite challenging to get into, especially if you’re not that familiar with the genre yet. There’s a lot (and we mean a lot) of micro-management and know-how involved.

So if you need some Age of Empires 4 tips and tricks, we’re here to help you out. From learning the most important hotkeys to understanding the counters, this is how you win the game.

If you’re looking for some guidance on your very first steps (such as prioritizing food or gathering sheep with your Scout), you should check out our Age of Empires 4 build order guide as well. We can also help you work out how to rotate buildings in Age of Empires 4, too. 

Learn the Age of Empires 4 hotkeys

Real-time strategy games are all about speed and efficiency. If you want to win a match, it’s therefore wise to learn the Age of Empires hotkeys. Instead of moving the camera back to your Town Center manually, you can go there at once by pressing a button. And instead of manually selecting idle Villagers, you can select them all at once. 

These are some of the most important Age of Empires 4 hotkeys to memorize:

• Go back to the Town Center: press H
• Select all units on screen: control + A
• Select all idle Villagers: control + . [dot]
• Select all idle military units: control + , [comma]

These are just the default settings though; most hotkeys can be re-mapped according to your own preference. 

Create unit control groups to better control them

Besides using the pre-assigned navigation hotkeys, you should also create control groups for your combat units. You don’t want to manually select your troops during a battle, especially when they’re all mixed up. 

Start by clicking a unit (click twice to select all units of that type), then hold the control button while assigning a key (any number on your keyboard from zero to nine). If you need to select that unit again at any point in the future, you can simply press the corresponding number. If you need to focus on that unit (move the camera), press the corresponding number twice.

As these hotkeys will likely vary depending on the game, look at the little unit icons on the left side of your screen to see which key belongs to what type of unit. It can still be handy to create a pattern for yourself though, such as always putting your bowmen on the lower numbers.

Move units with the mini map

Another great way to improve your speed, is to make use of the mini map. Select a unit (use the hotkeys), hold shift, and then click on a location on the mini map in the lower right corner of your screen. The unit will start moving to that location, without the need to go over there yourself. 

To name an example, you can use this method for your scout just after starting a new game. That way, you can focus on building your Village while the scout uncovers the map and picks up some sheep. 

Use Rally Points for new Age of Empires units

What to do if you’re waging war on the east side of your town, but the barracks, stables, and other military units are on the west side? Or if you want your new Villagers to start gathering wood as soon as they arrive? It takes a lot of time to pick up fresh units and assign them to their tasks manually, so you should use rally points instead.

To create a rally point for fresh military units or Villagers, click on the building that spawns them (such as the Town Center or the stables), and then right-click on the location where you want them to go. Every new arrival will automatically move to that location and, when applicable, start fighting or working right away.

If you use a rally point on a resource (sheep, gold veins, trees, etc.) the line will be blue if the resource is indeed available for Villagers to work on. If it’s not, the line will be yellow. 

Learn the Age of Empires combat counters

Quick unit management is great, but it won’t help you secure a victory if you use the wrong counters. Age of Empires has three main land unit types, and they all hold an advantage over one of the others. Here’s how it works:

• Spearmen are great against cavalry.
• Cavalry is great against archers.
• Archers are great against spearmen.

Just remember that as the enemy units advance, so should yours. Longbowmen can take down spearmen with ease, but if the spearmen are upgraded to heavy-armor infantry, you’ll need crossbowmen to defeat them.

You can win Age of Empires with economy and defense

We’re pretty sure that you can’t win Age of Empires 4 without having some kind of army. However, that doesn’t mean you always need to play aggressively. Obviously, if you go for the ‘destroy all enemy landmarks’ victory, you’ll have to defeat the enemy at his core (by burning down the Town Center and every additional Age landmark). But this isn’t necessary for the ‘Sacred Sites’ or ‘Build a Wonder’ victories.

If you prefer to advance your civilization, you can aim for a Wonder (available in the last Age) and defend it for ten minutes. Economy and defenses are key here. If you enjoy territory expansion, you can explore and capture Sacred Sites. This type of victory allows you to find a bit more balance between aggressive and defensive playstyles. Neither requires you to wipe the enemy off the map.

Protect your Villagers!

Age of Empires 4 Villagers are either not very smart, or just extremely dedicated to their work. Fact is, they won’t flee when the enemy starts killing them. As this bravery may disrupt your entire economy and thus weaken the army, it’s much better to call the Villagers inside the town gates when you’re under attack. You can click the default hotkey ‘G’, or manually select Villagers and click the ‘seek shelter’ action.

On top of that, it’s usually worth the investment to research textiles (also in the Town Center menu) to make your Villagers stronger. You can get the first Villager upgrade after reaching the Feudal Age. 

Replace lumber camps

This may seem a bit specific, but the lumber camp walking distance issue is often overlooked. At the start of the game, you probably placed your first lumber camp right at the edge of a forest. However, as the Villagers keep chopping away, the walking distance to the nearest trees will slowly increase.

You should therefore try to check on all your lumber camps from time to time and build new ones right next to the remaining forest (you can’t move them). Of course, you won’t face this problem with your mining camps or farms.

Hopefully these tips will help you secure your next Age of Empires 4 victory!

How to rotate buildings in Age of Empires 4 is one of the biggest questions on the player forums right now. The game doesn’t mention building rotation in the tutorial, so it’s no wonder that many people are searching for the answer while they consider the best Age of Empires 4 build order.

Here’s everything we know about how to rotate buildings in Age of Empires 4. Is it possible, why would you want to use rotation, and are there any workarounds? We've also got some more general Age of Empire 4 tips to help you out with everything else. 

How to rotate buildings in Age of Empires 4

Let’s start with the bad news: it’s currently not possible to rotate your buildings in Age of Empires 4. If you open the settings and scroll through the ‘view and map controls’ page, you’ll only find keys to rotate the camera, but not buildings.

The next question, of course, is whether you can turn a building by rotating your camera. We’ve tried this potential workaround, but unfortunately, your building will still face the same direction. 

How to (somewhat) rotate your house in Age of Empires 4

Although it isn’t the same as a full rotation option, we did notice that you can change the look of your houses a little if you place several next to each other. As demonstrated in the picture, you can choose to move your garden to the other side. If you want to do this, just hover a little to the left or right before placing the house.

Why rotate buildings in Age of Empires 4?

As some of you may be wondering why the lack of rotation options is even a thing, here’s your answer: it’s purely cosmetic. Age of Empires works with a grid pattern, so every building fits within a certain number of squares on the map. You don’t need rotation, but it can appear rather unnatural if all your buildings look exactly the same. 

Is Age of Empire 4 adding a rotate buildings option in a future update?

There aren’t any official statements on adding a building rotation option in a future Age of Empires 4 update. However, as some players are clearly missing the option to turn their buildings, it’s not unlikely that this will be added in a patch later on. The fact that you could rotate buildings in Age of Empires III, strengthens this possibility.

And that sums up everything there is to know about rotating buildings in Age of Empire 4. Keep an eye out for future updates!

Finding the best Age of Empires 4 build order is hard. You need to gather resources, explore the map, and build an army before the enemy attacks. If you’re not fast enough or prioritize the wrong buildings, your empire won’t last long.

Whether you’re new to Age of Empires 4 or just need to freshen up your real-time strategy skills, you can use this guide to get a good start. Follow the steps as described below, and you’ll have your early empire up and running in a matter of minutes. 

Do keep in mind that the best Age of Empires 4 build order also depends on your strategy, your civilization, and circumstance. The build order as described below is created with a standard map, standard opponents, and the ‘beginner’ civilizations in mind (such as the English and the French). Feel free to change things to suit your personal playstyle! And if you're looking for help knowing how to rotate buildings in Age of Empires 4, we can help you there too, or with some more general Age of Empire 4 tips. 

How to start in Age of Empires 4 and your first build order

1. Start Villager production.
2. Get all Villagers to collect food from sheep.
3. Start uncovering the map with your Scout.
4. Bring back three or more sheep.

Your first priority when starting a new game in Age of Empires 4, is to produce more Villagers. More Villagers means more hands to gather resources, and thus gain an advantage over your enemies. Note that your Villager supply is limited by time rather than resources: it’s easy to get more food, but you can only gain one Villager per 20 seconds. This is why you should click the Town Center and make a queue for extra Villagers as soon as the game begins.

Next, use a hotkey to select the idle Villagers waiting for your first command. Every second they remain idle is a second wasted, so get them to collect food from the nearest sheep as quickly as possible. 

While waiting for your first new Villager to arrive, use the Scout to uncover your surroundings. Your goal (for now) is to spot a gold source and bring back at least three sheep. Be sure to use the hotkeys to switch back and forth between the Scout and the Town Center without wasting time. 

Best Age of Empires 4 Dark Age build order

1. Build an extra house.
2. Build a mining camp.
3. Start mining gold (two Villagers).
4. Put three more Villagers on food.

We’re only 20 seconds in the game at this point, but you’re already about to reach your population limit. So, as soon as the first new Villager arrives, make him build an extra house. This will expand your population limit to 20, which is enough to get you through the Dark Age.

As advancing to the Feudal Age requires gold, the next step is to select a new Villager and have them build a mining camp at the nearest gold mine (aided by the one who just built a house). 

It takes roughly 10 seconds for one Villager to mine 10 gold. Given that you already have 100, you don’t need any other Villagers at the mining camp for now. Put the next three arrivals on food supply (the sheep brought back by the Scout).

Advance from Age of Empires 4 Dark Age to Feudal Age

1. Build a lumber camp.
2. Start gathering wood (three or four Villagers).
3. Build a landmark (at least one Villager).

With 10 Villagers gathering food and two gathering gold, you’ll soon have enough to build your landmark. Although you don’t need it to advance to the Feudal Age, use the waiting time to build a lumber camp next to a forest and get the wood supply going. We only have 50 wood left from the starting supply, so it’s important to build the lumber camp before adding new houses. 

Do you have 400 food and 200 gold yet? Then use one Villager to start building the landmark to reach the Feudal Age. More Villagers would speed up the process, but it’s best to use them for your wood supply instead. That way, by the time your landmark is ready, you’ll have enough wood for military buildings.

Best Age of Empires 4 Feudal Age build order

• Build another house.
• Build a mill next to berry bushes.
• Build army buildings, start queuing military units.
• Build farms.

Build a second house to avoid the population cap, and then use any additional wood to build a mill. If you place it next to some berry bushes, you can use the rest of your wood on military buildings (as opposed to farms). After all, the enemy may be planning an early attack and you don’t have any protection yet.

If your landmark is done, the Feudal Age offers several options for your first army. Don’t have a military strategy yet? Then you can just choose the Barracks and get some Spearmen. After you create the spearmen queue, you should build some farmland next to your mill. 

Best Castle Age build order

You’ve got a steady food, wood, and gold supply, and your army is growing. From this point onwards, your Age of Empires 4 build order depends on your chosen strategy. Do you want a massive army? Or a smaller, highly specialized one? Do you wish to start raiding, or do you want to build a keep and play more defensively? It’s all up to you.

To give you some ideas on what to do next, the following build options are almost always handy:

1. Advance to the Castle Age using 1200 food and 600 gold.
2. Get upgrades for the army.
3. Start mining stone.
4. Start building walls and fortresses.
5. Add a few more houses.

General Age of Empires 4 build order tips

Finally, three final rules of thumb to always keep in mind while working on your Age of Empires build order:

• Always minimize walking distance. This is why your first food source are the sheep right next to the Village, and why you should always build a mining camp or a lumber camp before you start gathering.
• Age of Empires IV is a war game, but it’s difficult to get a proper army in the Dark Ages. This is why following the right build order to reach the Feudal Age is so important. A technologically advanced army is often a winning army.
• You need to stop producing Villagers at some point. If you have all the resources you require, every additional unit you get should be military. The exact number of Villagers needed depends on your strategy; if you focus on growing economy and defenses, you’ll need more.

Now that you’ve got a head start, it’s time to invade some civilizations. Good luck!

My favourite way to play Age of Empires 3 was from behind a wall. Besieged and outnumbered by an expert-level AI far more capable than me, I'd try and hold out until the enemy broke against my defenses, their best men dashed by gauntlets filled with cannonfire and musket-shot until I could build a large enough force to muster a counter attack. Imagine my delight then, when Age of Empires 4 not only validated my defensive mindset, but expanded upon it.

For those as defensively minded as myself, the long-awaited sequel is like a toy box overflowing with possibilities. The varied ways in which I can keep my foes at bay while helping my civilization thrive seem almost too many to count. Take, for example, the imposing city walls. In previous games they were largely inert, a huge but simple suit of stone armour around your vulnerable city. In Age of Empires 4, they're a vantage point upon which you can position your infantry, thinning out approaching foot soldiers in the event of a siege.

If the enemy does make it inside your walls, then you can flee back to your keep (likely leaving your archers to be cut down by rampaging infantry). Years ago, Age of Empires 2 established castles as a major threat to anyone fighting beneath, but Age of Empires 4 lets you turn them into defensive juggernauts. Cannon emplacements are one thing, but I'd rather drop a pot of boiling oil on my unfortunate enemy. And that's only after they've made their way past my network of outpost towers, kitted out to not only take potshots at the approaching foe but also raise the alarm throughout the city, bolstering defensive efforts throughout my kingdom.

My defensive efforts don't just help me out while I'm hiding behind my walls. If I do decide to engage my enemy upon the field of battle, I can adapt certain units to help look after themselves. Playing as the English, taking my longbowmen down from their dutiful patrol atop my city walls might have put them under threat of being routed by a cavalry charge. This time, however, each of them can build Palings – a wall of sharpened stakes – in front of them. Posted up behind these Palings, they're safe from any incoming horsemen, who'll be damaged and stunned if they come into contact with my pointy new defenses.

War Always Changes

This (arguably cowardly) approach suits me perfectly, but what really impresses me about Age of Empires 4 isn't the way that it caters to my playstyle, but to a whole bunch of different ones. More interested in fighting than building up a city? The Mongols can pack up their caravans and move on whenever they like, gaining resources by sacking enemy buildings rather than farming or foraging. Want to harass and hurry your foes, rather than engage them in open battle? Stealth forests let entire armies sneak by unseen before springing a trap on unsuspecting foes. Fancy trying to snatch a victory without loosing a single arrow? The Delhi Consulate can build scholars from Age 1, letting you make a rush for the game-winning sacred sites before your enemies can react.

Much of Age of Empires 4 is a charming modern recreation of Age of Empires 2. Its medieval setting does a lot of the heavy lifting on that front, but around the edges of those established ideas are a number of new ones. Many of the most interesting concepts are tied to specific civilisations, like the Imperial might of the Chinese, or the Rus' affinity with the wilderness. Others, however, are hidden in upgrade paths or attached to specific units, or are simply nestled quietly around the map, letting those who go looking for them find unique ways to build their own empires.

Still aren't sold on AoE 4? Here are 10 great games like Age of Empires that you should try today. 

History will not judge my military tactics kindly, but it will mark Age of Empires 4 as a benchmark for real-time strategy games in 2021. The highly-anticipated PC game will remind you just why you loved the series so much, and then overwhelm you with a generous amount of missions, scenarios, and multiplayer options like your rich grandma handing out gifts at Christmas. 

If you're new to the series, think of it as a management sim, but one where the aim is to save your people from invaders or to crush whole nations beneath your mighty fist. Control freaks, step right up because you are about to live your best life. You'll have worker townspeople at your disposal to build up settlements and collect resources, and an army - complete with specialized units and siege weaponry - to command. You need food, gold, wood, and stone to purchase everything you need, collect or trade enough and you can advance your civilization through different historical ages, offering more advanced technology. Winning is about using all of the above as efficiently as possible depending on the enemy, the map, and its resources and landscape. Maybe you'll terrorize the local populace with endless legions of archers and swordsmen, or maybe you'll work on your defenses and focus on building a "Wonder" to prove your people's dominance.

Empirically brilliant

There are eight different civilizations to play with, either in campaigns or in Skirmish mode against other players, and each has been meticulously designed to offer different gameplay experiences. My personal favorite is the Mongols, who can earn resources by burning down enemy buildings - rather than focusing on just building out a base with numerous farms and mines and mills - and travel with their own sheep. The Mongols are also impressively mobile, able to pack up the settlement's buildings to move to a more strategic location.  The Rus, or Russians, have Warrior Monks, the Abbasid Dynasty have camels and a House of Wisdom that can be expanded with extra wings to grant new research options, and the Dehli Sultanate has elephants. Elephants! Each civilization has beautifully detailed differences in their clothes and armor and architecture, so even if you're playing as the boring old English there are tiny visual treats to savor.

The single-player missions work as both a gentle onboarding process for the modern military tactician and are satisfying in their own right. An overall goal, like breaching the Great Wall of China, is broken down into smaller objectives. There's advice but minimal hand-holding, and even in the early levels it's easy to make a bad call - wasting resources building things you really don't need, a mistake which can leave you with nothing to bolster your army with when the enemy attacks, or taking too long to launch an attack and instead, having to face the enemy unprepared as they turn up and start bashing down your walls. It can be frustrating to see your army massacred because you ignored the suggestions, but it's also a hard lesson in military common sense. 

If you want to just go wild you can choose from a bunch of scenarios in the Skirmish mode, playing against the surprisingly canny AI or other players. You can also create your own scenarios, tweaking everything from resources to map size to difficulty. After a few punishing defeats, I spent many a happy hour on a resource-rich map I designed for myself - with no enemies at all on it - so I could enjoy building a perfect settlement and maxing out all the tech trees. Watch your back The Sims 4, I have a new stress reliever.

History in the making

Age of Empires 4 takes its history seriously, but that never gets in the way of satisfying gameplay. When you're playing through the campaign missions you'll get a mix of videos, some that look like tourist board b-roll overlaid with line drawings, but that really highlight the mark that battle left on the world. As you're playing, there's an almost ASMRish narrator giving historical context to your victory. While you can skip through any of the introductory videos, and ignore the extra ones you unlock by playing, they are a beautiful feature that makes you feel smarter just by existing. As a onetime British schoolkid, I already knew plenty of the stuff about King Henry and the Normans but genuinely wanted to know more about the Russian battles and Genghis Khan. 

Everything is a delight to look at too, whether you're zoomed out as your huge army marches across the map, or focus in on a single worker casting their fishing net from the shore of a lake. It's like having an incredible selection of toy soldiers - the kind you might get for your birthday if you were the heir to the throne of a large nation - and watching them come alive. The only time it looked even slightly awkward in all my adventures was watching a huge battalion of knights trying to make their way across a small stone bridge, as their AI brains struggled with the logistics of keeping the formation I'd asked them to march in. Honestly, though, I imagine it would be a struggle for even entirely sentient soldiers. 

Age of Empires 4 is a game that I know I'm still going to be playing months and even years from now, and not just because developer Relic has said it wants to expand the number of civilizations in the future. There's so much depth in the gameplay, so many tactics to experiment with, so many weird scenarios I can build for myself in Skirmish mode, that it's hard to imagine ever getting bored of it. History, carnage, and teeny weeny elephants, Age of Empires 4 has it all. 

Age of Empires 4 was played on PC with a code provided by the publisher.

The Age of Empires 4 stress test is coming this weekend, and it's your best chance yet to try the game for free ahead of its proper launch.

The developers at World's Edge unveiled all of the details for the upcoming stress test on the official site for Age of Empires 4, including when you can play: the Age of Empires 4 stress test will begin on Friday, September 17 at 10 am PDT / 1 pm EDT / 6 pm BST and end at the same time on Monday, September 20. The full game launch will follow on October 28.

World's Edge wants to get as many players in as possible to put the game and its servers through the wringer, so you won't need to sign up ahead of time to play. All you'll need to do is download the stress test client on Steam or grab it via the Xbox Insider Hub app. The only requirement to participate is that your PC meets the minimum system requirements, which you'll find below.

Age of Empires 4 minimum system requirements

• OS: Windows 10 – 64 bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-6300U or AMD Ryzen 5 2400G
• Memory: 8GB
• Graphics: Intel HD 520 or AMD Radeon RX Vega 11
• DirectX: Version 12

Players will be able to try out the Abbasid Dynasty, Chinese, English, and Holy Roman Empire civilizations during the test. The content of the test will be focused on multiplayer, though you'll also be able to play through the tutorial mission or face off against the AI in custom lobby matches if you want to get some practice in first.

The full version of the game will also feature more than an hour's worth of mini-documentaries on trebuchets, medieval surgical procedures, and more. In the meantime, why not download and play one of the best games like Age of Empires.

Age of Empires 4 will feature mini documentaries about the history of its multiple civilizations.

Dubbed "Hands-On Histories" by creative director Adam Isgreen during today's Xbox Gamescom 2021 showcase, the three to five-minute videos explain the technology and culture of the medieval world. In today's show, which was shot at Warwick Castle, the focus was on the trebuchet, which formed a key part of siege tactics for a number of the civs available in the game, flinging everything from blunt weapons that could break down castle walls to beehives and bodies to sow chaos behind enemy lines.

Isgreen says that in total, there's more than an hour of these historical clips dispersed throughout the game, which he describes as "another way that [developers Relic Entertainment and World's Edge] are bringing history to life." The collection of videos "go all over the place," tackling everything from the physics of flaming arrows, to Mongolian music, to the brutality of medieval surgery. 

This isn't the first time a historical game has tackled its subject matter in extra detail. The Assassin's Creed series has been offering its Discovery Tours - combat free explorations of its world - since Origins, but we've not seen this kind of full-motion video approach before.

Age of Empires 4 is set to release on October 28, and is coming to Xbox Game Pass on day one. You'll be able to pre-order the game right away, and Isgreen says that there'll also be more information about the game at tomorrow's Opening Night Live showcase, so stay tuned.

Planning your next epic campaign? Here's our list of the best strategy games that you can play right now, or perhaps 10 of the best games like Age of Empires to download today.

An enemy appears in my settlement in Age of Empires 2. It's not a foot soldier or a scout, it's a villager who's trying to build near my resources and start mining my plot of gold… The cheek of it! After swiftly getting rid of the invading villager, the enemy team isn't happy and their focus is now fixed on me. Before I know it, soldiers are appearing, and boats are attacking my fishing ports. At this point, I'm still building up my defenses and I'm not in the best position to be taking on enemy forces, but luckily, I'm not playing alone. An ally army comes to my aid controlled by none other than my dad, and together, we make quick work of the opposing team. 

Age of Empires 2 was the first strategy I can remember playing as a kid, and with a love of history, it was a great gateway into the genre. I used to play it with my dad and sibling in the early '00s, and some of my fondest childhood memories come from afternoons playing the classic RTS. I would marvel at the small units hacking away at wood, mining for stone, or farming for food. It gave me a sense of satisfaction to see my buildings develop and grow as I advanced through each Age, and while I was still quite young and new to strategy, I can remember feeling so supported by my family. And that's really what I loved most about the experience – the way it brought the little Wald family unit together and encouraged us to work as a team. Fast forward to 2021, and I'm once again rediscovering Age of Empires 2 all over again. 

Camaraderie through the ages 

My dad has been playing video games since the late '70s, and his love of gaming had a great influence on me when I was young. Over the years, he's introduced me to so many titles and genres, and it's thanks to him that I first dived into real-time strategy experiences like Age of Empires and StarCraft. Like many others over the past year, I haven't been able to spend much time with my family in person. With distance and lockdown between us, my dad and I have been turning to online games to help us stay connected and spend some time together when we otherwise can't. So, when we recently realized that the definitive edition remaster of Age of Empires 2 is on Xbox Game Pass for PC, jumping back in together was a no-brainer. 

Even though it's been many years since I returned to the world of Age of Empires 2, playing it feels very much like riding a bike; I can still remember how everything works. If you're not familiar with the game, you choose a civilization that you try to expand and develop throughout the ages, from the Dark Age with huts and wooden buildings, right up until the Imperial Age with advanced stone constructions. In order to advance, you have to meet set requirements such as having a certain amount of resources, or different buildings in your settlement. 

While it's dependent on what game mode you choose, as a general rule, you can achieve victory in one of two ways: Either you destroy all of your opponents' constructions and wipe out their settlements, or you build a Wonder – the most advanced and resource-intensive building that you'll gain access to when you reach the final age. If you manage to build a Wonder and ensure it remains standing for 200 years, you'll win. 

It took me a little moment to get back into the swing of things, but the minute I clicked on a villager and began building, I was transported right back to my childhood and a feeling of comforting nostalgia washed over me. It felt all the more special since I was revisiting the game with the very same family members I'd played it with way back when. Watching your very own little civilization develop and grow is still just as satisfying as it ever was, and when you're not being attacked or waging war on your enemies, Age of Empires 2 is actually a very relaxing game to play. Since you do spend a lot of time building up your civilization to take on the opposing enemies, there's plenty of downtime to talk to your teammates. In between managing my villager units to gather resources and developing my land, my dad and I would talk about anything and everything just as we would if I was visiting in person. 

Returning to the game at an older age has also given me a newfound appreciation for the tactical side of Age of Empires 2. Since I was so young when I originally experienced the RTS, I was more reliant on my family to help me win. I never really got a firm grasp on how to be the most efficient at resource gathering, or work out a solid strategy to take on the enemy. Now that I can hold my own, we've been ramping up the difficulty on the opposing AI teams to give ourselves more of a challenge. It's been really rewarding to recapture the sense of teamwork and camaraderie I remember feeling all those years ago, and now I feel like I'm contributing to our victory. 

It didn't take us long to get back into the groove of building up our settlements and rallying our forces together, and with every session, we keep getting better and better. From wiping out the enemy to building a Wonder and protecting it with our collective forces, everything started to flow like a well-oiled machine. We may have initially returned to Age of Empires 2 out of a sense of nostalgia, but it transformed into something much more meaningful. The historical strategy game has become a platform for me to hang out with my family, and it's amazing to think that after all these years, it's still bringing us together. 

Here's our pick of some of the best strategy games you can play right now, as well as 10 games like Age of Empires you should play today.

Age of Empires 4 will release on PC and Xbox Game Pass for PC later this year.

While a specific release date has yet to be confirmed, a recent presentation by Relic revealed it's coming this fall – or Q3, for those of you living in the southern hemisphere.

To mark the news, Relic shared a number of new video teasers that give us a hint at what's to come, including naval combat, four historical campaigns – one of which is a Norman campaign – and asymmetric factions. Here, take a peek at this all-new gameplay trailer, where all footage has been captured from the in-game engine:

The presentation also confirmed that a closed beta will be available ahead of release.

We also got a brief snippet of a Chinese civilization too, which shows a Feudal Age battle: 

"The Chinese civilization is immense and resilient, with the potential for tremendous growth and advancement throughout the game," the video description teases. "With a strong focus on expanding their empire, they are capable of developing massive armies with their explosive strength."

Last but not least, we also got a few seconds to admire an advancing naval attack:

In an interview with GamesRadar+ at the end of 2019, creative director Adam Isgreen told us that the reason the team is going all out is because it knows that it has a responsibility not only to portray history accurately, but authentically, which means Age of Empires 4 will invariably end up introducing new areas of history for some of the playerbase. 

"I love that responsibility. I want that responsibility. I want Age of Empires 4 to be a trusted source of history. I think we can do that justice; I would be over the moon if people were like, 'man, this is legit!' because there's been some shaky history in the previous Age of Empires games," Adam Isgreen said at the time. 

"Age of Empires 4 is very much a celebration of all of history – not just the wars and the people, but the technology and spirituality too. We've gone to great lengths to make sure that our history is accurate to the places."

While Age of Empires 4 is still a little ways away, here are 10 games like Age of Empires that will make the wait a little easier. 

Adam Isgreen has just had the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders. The creative director of the Age of Empires franchise would never admit it but, after spending five years nursing the nostalgic tendencies of a passionate community, he's clearly excited by the prospect of giving the series a long-overdue overhaul. Age of Empires 4 has finally been revealed after years of work behind the clouded fog of development, and now the game is looming large on the near horizon. Age of Empires 4 is a monumental undertaking that is attempting to usher the famed real-time strategy series into a new age. 

"Generally speaking, the longer a genre exists, the games that are responsible for taking it forward tend to make it more complicated. With Age of Empires 4, it was important for us to be like, 'okay, how do we back away from that?'. We do not want to take on all of the complexity that we see in RTS games today," Isgreen explains. "This is a fresh start for us. We want to modernise the series and that means we are going to do things differently."

But not too differently. "But this is still going to be an Age of Empires game," Isgreen laughs, holding his hands out in front of him as he does, as if to make a direct plea to the dedicated Age of Empires community to step away from their keyboards. It's clear that World's Edge, Relic Entertainment, Forgotten Empires, and a medley of other partner studios across the globe that have been drafted in to work on Age of Empires 4 are eager to deliver the sequel many have spent over a decade waiting to play. 

Learning from the past

Isgreen knows what it takes to make an authentic Age of Empires game. He's seen Forgotten Empires get elbow deep in 20-year-old source code for months now, all in an effort to get Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition out of the door. "There are two things that you learn from opening up 20-year-old code. The first is that it's almost like speaking a different language; people didn't think about coding in the same way that we do today. It's been a lot of  'What the heck were they thinking… why would they do it this way?' and I guess that's because of the tools of the time."

"The second is how passionate the community is; we always want to do right by the players. Community is a really important aspect to us for all of the Age of Empires games. When we broached the subject with the community of doing Age of Empires 2 as a Definitive Edition we were like: 'We're going to crack [the code] open, what do you want us to do with it?'" 

As you might expect, "nothing" was the answer. "Everyone was like, 'Don't touch the combat. Don't. Please don't change it!' So we were like, 'Okay, message received," Isgreen tells me. "The feel and flow of Age of Empires 2 was absolutely the centrepiece, so we decided to build up everything else around it. The core of it was untouchable for the community – the time to kill, the flow of it, the pace of it, it's all so important to the game. We weren't going to mess with that," Isgreen tells me, explaining that the goal was clear for the team. "So our challenge has been taking all of that nostalgia and making it real. So people are like, 'Oh, yeah, this is great. This is totally what I remember!' and it's totally not what you remember," he chuckles, explaining all of the work that's gone into improving everything around the core systems and mechanics. "It's got all this extra stuff around it to make it feel, look, and play like a great experience today."

In many ways, Microsoft's approach to revitalising Age of Empires 2 is also deeply reflective of its approach to Age of Empires 4. It isn't enough to simply build upon what has come before; Age of Empires 4 needs to harness the spirit that made the series so beloved to begin with, using it to drive the series forward into a new age entirely. 

Evolving play

"We've taken a lot of creative steps to take Age of Empires into modern gaming," says Isgreen. "It's been 13 years since the last Age of Empire game so we have a lot of catching up to do. We're doing things that no other RTS game has done before..."

It's difficult to get a real sense of this now, but you can see hints of it Age of Empires' evolution in its debut trailer. The scope and scale alone is impressive, with Age of Empires 4 clearly taking a fresh look at everything from the miniature of city building to the mass deployment of troop battalions. While Isgreen wouldn't be drawn on whether Age of Empires 4 would feature Total War-style unit selection systems, the neatness of movement – not to mention the appearance of what appears to be leader units – would seem to indicate that the chaos of box selecting entire armies is a thing of the past. 

Microsoft is also keeping its lips locked on the civilisations we should expect to see in the game, as well as what the four core resources to be used across all civilisations will be, although he has confirmed that Age of Empires 4 won't necessarily stick to the four-age rule that has been prevalent in previous instalments. There is, however, much eagle-eyed fans can learn about changes to the core systems and mechanics by studying this early look at the game's first two civilisations – the English and Mongols. 

"The English intentionally play a lot like what you'd expect of something from a previous Age of Empires game," Isgreen tells me. "The Mongols do not; they play completely differently. We have this wonderful spectrum of civilisations, and that's so there is always a super-accessible way that people can get into it […] there's going to be this wonderful spectrum of different ways that you can enjoy Age of Empires. We could never do that before."

While Age of Empires is being created across the globe by a number of partner studios (with Microsoft overseeing development from its newly created bloc, World's Edge), it is Company of Heroes and Dawn of War developer Relic Entertainment at the frontlines. Isgreen tells me that Relic has been hard at work engineering a brand new iteration of its Essence Engine to support the ambition behind the mechanical and system-end evolution – though knowing when to pull back or to push ahead is still a matter of contention for the studios. 

"Relic has done very different things in the RTS space in the past, but it understands that this is an Age of Empires game. The feel and pace of it is all there; you can build big cities, you can wall them in – and you can have fights on the walls now. All of that is really cool and it is so important," says Isgreen. " But it's funny, because Relic was, in some ways, more conservative than us [at World's Edge] at times. They were like, 'But this is different than what has been done in Age of Empires before!' and we were like, 'It's cool, it's cool. We're going to do it…" 

"It's wonderful that we're working with a partner like Relic and we have this wonderful relationship with them – I adore them to death – but it's been great to have those discussions with them," Isgreen continues, explaining that Relic have had more than a few 'oh my god!' moments throughout development, but that it ultimately takes bold decisions to make bold strides forward. "They are the ones that are like 'is this too different' and we're like, 'That's okay! It's a different game, it's brand new.'" 

Embracing history

Age of Empires 4 is still extremely early in development. Isgreen wouldn't even be drawn on a prospective launch window. That's because there is still a lot of work to be done, and that makes sense once you hear how much time and dedication the team has put into research. 

"We're doing something very different with the campaign… I can't talk about it, but it's really crazy-cool," Isgreen tells me as we ask for a little hint. "I can say that we will be bringing history in a fun and exciting way to people – the way we coined it for Age of Empires 4 is 'humanised histories'."

The painstaking research going into Age of Empires 4 is a little astounding, and it's something the team is only too happy to shout about. "We're not interviewing University of Washington professors on Mongolian history," laughs Shannon Loftis, studio lead at World's Edge. "We are going to Mongolia [...] Relic went everywhere, all over the world, when it became time to start researching the civilisations we're going to have in the game at launch. It was so important to be authentic. "

"The level of detail we've gone into with the civilisations is beyond…" Isgreen says as he jumps in, trailing off as he gathers his thoughts. "I've made a lot of RTS games in the past and this is beyond anything I've ever seen in an RTS game."

The reason the team is going all out is because it knows that it has a responsibility, not to necessarily portray history accurately, but authentically – Age of Empires 4 will invariably end up introducing new areas of history to investigate for some of the playerbase. "I love that responsibility. I want that responsibility. I want Age of Empires 4 to be a trusted source of history. I think we can do that justice; I would be over the moon if people were like, 'man, this is legit!' because there's been some shaky history in the previous Age of Empires games," laughs Isgreen. "Age of Empires 4 is very much a celebration of all of history – not just the wars and the people, but the technology and spirituality too. We've gone to great lengths to make sure that our history is accurate to the places."

The studios coming together to build this ambitious new RTS are eager to push Age of Empires into the future, taking the foundations of past instalments and building lovingly on them to create something that is at once fresh and exciting. It's the return of an Age of Empires we've long been waiting for.

While this revival is still a number of years away, here are 10 games like Age of Empires you can play and enjoy today.

It's been over two years since Age of Empires 4 was first announced. Let that sink in for a second. It was revealed with a minute-long teaser trailer, and since then Microsoft has been tight-lipped as to what we should expect from the long-awaited revival of this legendary strategy series. 

The curtain was pulled back today, as Microsoft revealed our first look at in-engine gameplay – showcasing British and Mongol armies going to war – and GamesRadar+ had the opportunity to sit down with Adam Isgreen, the creative director of the Age of Empires franchise. Our first question was, of course, where in the hell has the game been these last two years! Isgreen was only too happy to answer. 

"What we decided on pretty early was that we were only going to show what we knew would deliver and that was kind of our mantra. So everything you've seen in here today – and we've hidden a whole bunch of little things in here that people will find as soon as they start to go through the trailer frame-by-frame," Isgreen laughs, explaining that the trailer has been captured from an early pre-Alpha build so we shouldn't look too closely. "But it's so important to us that everything you see in this trailer is stuff that you will see once the game lands."

"And as we go forward and start to show more – and there is a whole bunch of things we have not shown yet, and not just civilizations, but aspects of the game that people don't have any idea about yet – all of it's real, none of it is fake," Isgreen tells me, pulling attention to the army sizes, the battles atop walls, and numerous quality-of-life enhancements. "None of it's not going to be there. We don't want people to be like, 'oh, what happened to that Falcon that was circling around the Mongols; I can't believe they took that out!' Nope, it's all in. Wall combat as well, it's all in there – it's all in the game and it's all working, as of right now at least.  As we continue through development and show more of it, it's our promise that it is all real. That's one of the reasons that it has taken so long to show anything new, we want to guarantee that we always show real gameplay."

Age of Empires 4 doesn't have a release date yet, but it is expected to launch for PC towards the tail end of 2020. We'll have more on the upcoming strategy game soon, and we can already confirm that it's looking bloody wonderful. Age of Empires 4 was built in a new engine for PC (sorry folks, it doesn't sound like a console version is currently in the works), with developers Relic Entertainment and World's Edge – a new internal Microsoft studio, created to help make this game the best that it can be – as well as numerous other partner studios, all coming together to ensure that this is a series revival worth remembering. 

While we wait for the new game to release, here are 10 games like Age of Empires you can play today.

The Age of Empires series has long been a nostalgic favorite for RTS fans, with armies spanning many civilizations and periods of history. Judging by the 10 million views on the official Age of Empires 4 announce trailer from Gamescom 2017, it's safe to say a lot of folks are hyped - but Microsoft didn't have anything to show for it at its Xbox E3 2019 press conference, instead offering a trailer for Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition with remastered graphics and audio. That doesn't mean Age of Empires 4 is suddenly vaporware - Microsoft just wasn't ready to show it at E3 2019.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Microsoft's executive VP of gaming Phil Spencer said "We'll talk about it more this year" when asked about Age of Empires 4 and its developer Relic Entertainment. "Relic's great as a studio, we're making good progress with it," said Spencer. "It was cool for us to be able to have such a full show, and have some things like Age 4 that have been announced but haven't been shown in a while, other things that maybe aren't announced, to still be able to have those continue to drive excitement both through the year and potentially even next year's E3. But we'll talk more about Age 4, yeah."

When pressed for more info or any further announcements on its progress, Spencer said "I want us to make sure we're doing that in the right context. The thing I would say is, we've been incredibly impressed by Relic's capability. Obviously they're somewhat local to us being in Vancouver, and we know the studio. They did the best job of, 'here's what we think Age should go to.'"

Spencer also referenced Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition, which gives the 1999 RTS a fresh coat of 4K paint and an entirely new campaign called The Last Khans. "We are learning a lot revisiting Age 1 and Age 2," said Spencer. "As those communities grow again, as those communities continue to exist, they have large player bases, and there's a lot of feedback. So we're really getting good insight, even here as we're putting Age 2: DE, which is playable on the floor, from those communities about things they'd like to see in Age 4, and that's important for us."

While we wait for AOE4, here are 10 games like Age of Empires you can play today.

After taking Age of Empires Online for an initial spin, we briefly removed our strategizing caps and stroking (followed by an audible “Hmmm”) beards to give you our first impressions. The short version? We were pleased with the game's offering of tiny, clickable men and assorted elements lifted right out from underneath World of Warcraft's colossal nose. Now, though, our gushing fountain of praise has dried up a bit. What changed, you ask? Simple: time.

Above: I've got 1... 2... 3... 99 problems! Hah, isn't that - hwablarhgughwhyyyyyy

No doubt about it: Age of Empires Online makes a great first impression. For the low, low price of zero dollars, cents, arms, legs, or firstborn children, you get hours-upon-hours of RTS goodness with a chewy MMO metagame center. We're not kidding about that “center” bit, either. Your persistent city is a massive undertaking rooted in a multi-tiered talent tree, equippable gear, and so many quest-givers that you'll begin to see glowing exclamation points every time you blink. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. For some of the best goodies, you can throw advisors (one per Age) into the mix. Meanwhile, there's also crafting – Farmvillian real-time micromanagement tendencies and all – to consider, seeing as you can mold your materials into all manner of marvelously murderous implements.

And that's not even to say anything of the quests themselves, which gleefully give your favorite bits of the RTS genre's Stone Age a modern makeover. Put simply, if you've played a previous AOE game, you'll be right at home here. Four resources that – presumably through some dark science – come together to give your units life, multiple ages to progress through, and meticulous base-building are all present and accounted for. Really, the only thing that isn't a direct blast from the past is the candy-coated art style. Honestly, we didn't mind it, but if you like your bite-sized battles gritty and worthy of the occasional maniacal cackle, you might feel a bit out of place here.

Above: This, of course, ended with the world's largest group hug, followed by hours spent complimenting each other’s outfits

At first, then, AOEO's a dream come true. It was only after experiencing the wear and tear of long-term battle that we began to see some cracks in its armor. For one, quests start off slow, and – even once they build up steam – fail to really go anywhere interesting. For every one hilariously oddball camel race, there are ten same-y slow-paced battles that require more attrition than anything else.

Also dragging down the ground level experience is some seriously heinous pathfinding AI. Units require constant micromanagement or else they'll break formation, scatter to the winds, and wildly hack their way into an early grave. Let's say you've told your army to attack a specific unit. The second that unit dies, each individual member of your army will then turn their attention to, well, anything really. A couple might go chase down a random peasant while totally ignoring the three men with giant clubs who are pulverizing their kneecaps into a fine powder. Others might charge, say, a house rather than rattle their sabers at the tower that's transformed them into arrow pincushions. Modern RTS games have developed so that your units have a sense of priority. In AOEO, the second you give the leash the tiniest amount of slack, your units make a mad dash into Death's sweet, sweet embrace.

AOEO's MMO side, too, grates over time – especially in regard to PvP. Don't get us wrong: it's an excellent idea, and there are enough items, units, and buffs to unlock that you'll be chomping at the bit to chase that carrot on a stick for quite some time. Predictably, however, it leads to all kinds of multiplayer balance issues. Happily, potentially tide-turning one-and-done items aren't usable in PVP, but talent tree choices and equipped items carry over. The end result? A very mixed bag. We fought our share of matches on even footing, but we also marched to battle against opponents whose units simply steamrolled ours. A good piece of equipment, especially, can be a serious difference-maker, and sometimes there's simply no accounting for that.

Above: Our entire argument for why “Rise of the Planet of the Elephants” would have been a much better (albeit far shorter) movie

That, mind you, is operating under the assumption that you've purchased a premium civilization. If not, well, you might just want to stick to solo questing. Even then, though, AOEO practically taunts you with what you're missing, briefly dangling extra powerful units over your nose and then immediately yanking them away with an “Unlock this unit yourself with a premium civilization!” caveat. But that's hardly all you'll be flushing down ye olde toilet if your miserly ways get the better of you. Free players have no access to advisors, limited equipment and tech tree advancement, and less robust PvP options – among other things. On one hand, AOEO's bevy of quests makes the free route an excellent value, but if you plan on really digging in, premium's your only option.

We must add, however, that – in spite of current warts – we're incredibly interested in watching this game evolve. We imagine balance will be artfully woven into some beautiful shape (perhaps a tasteful ice swan) once a good many players reach the level cap, and we hope booster packs will give the quest designers a chance to retch violently and spew out some extra creative juices. At the end of the day, though, we can only report on the game as it is now, and we don't feel that all the pieces are in place just yet. Still, free is an attractive price for a quick peek, but if you're hoping to spend ages with an RTS, you could do a fair bit better than Age of Empires Online, at least in its current state.

Aug 19, 2011

A few of us at GR are huge RTS nerds, and a few of us are MMO nerds, and yes, there is some crossover. We’re of the firm belief that any genre could be made into an MMO, and we’re dismayed that nearly every MMO out there is an RPG. We’ve pondered how it could be possible to make an MMORTS, and it hasn’t been easy to imagine a persistent world populated by players all fighting each other for world domination – especially since there’s the huge hurdle of how to deal with a player’s base when they’re not logged in. Age of Empires Online tackles this problem by not actually tackling it at all, and the result is a game that tenuously connects itself to the MMO moniker. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all – it’s just different from what we expected from an MMORTS, but then that’s because we favor multiplayer over single-player in RTS games.

See, AoEO (you can totally sing that acronym) is almost entirely single-player and co-op instance-focused and does not really exist in a massive, persistent world of players interacting with each other. It does bring in every other element from MMOs, however, like a persistent “character,” quest givers, loot, crafting, a trade-based economy, and PvP arenas. The difference from a typical MMO is that everything is discrete, separated by a world map that you simply navigate by fast-traveling to locations that then begin a standard RTS map.

Your persistent “character” is your capital city, a place that looks like a typical base in an RTS match, except your buildings are permanent and you won’t get attacked there. So it’s kind of like a SimCity, but you don’t have to worry about how you place stuff or whether the people are happy – you simply purchase and place buildings to increase your options, and you can also play with purely cosmetic structures like bushes and statues to make a visually pleasing home town. There are also quest-givers inside your capital city, so clicking on one allows you to choose quests to take on. Some quests are tied to a specific location and can be tackled by “beating” a map, while others are continuing quests that can be accomplished alongside main quests. For instance, a supplementary quest might be to kill ten elite units, but you can fulfill this goal while taking on any other type of quest, since elite units might show up anywhere.

So AoEO essentially takes a standard RTS campaign and reworks the interface into a city you can develop, and allows you to choose missions in your own order instead of a linear progression. It also provides loot and other rewards for completing missions and allows you to build up a meta tech tree outside of the standard one you’ll progress through in a single mission. For those who have played StarCraft II, this RPG-ish element will be familiar. However, what’s quite new in AoEO is that you can trade with other players, visit each other’s capital cities to purchase goods (if you build a shop in your capital and another player buys from it, you reap profits), and join up to tackle co-op missions.

So far we have seen two playable races: the Greeks, and the newly revealed Egyptians. We played as Egypt because we like their aesthetic better, but of course they also have access to different units and tech, and because of their different starting region, they spend time doing quests in North Africa instead of Europe, at least initially. Speaking of aesthetics, we’re not sure how we feel about the new look for Age of Empires. The Age series has always gone for a more realistic look compared to say, Warcraft or Command & Conquer, and while Age of Empires III already started to go to a more stylized look, AoEO takes it to a whole new level. Clearly the cartoonish art style serves two purposes: it allows for crisp graphics while not being too taxing on a PC, and it allows the game to age without looking dated so quickly. We’re fans of Warcraft’s cartoonish look, but we must say that AoEO’s look goes a bit too hard into the Disney end of cartoon for our tastes. Again, though, we’re still not sure how we feel about it, as the look could grow on us (and it’s certainly vibrant and colorful).

The actual core gameplay will not be alien to any RTS player, and especially not to AoE veterans. Once you begin a mission, the MMO aspects fall to the wayside and you’re building workers, harvesting familiar resources, building appropriate buildings to unlock higher tech levels, and scouting through the fog of war. Egypt reminds us of Age of Mythologies with its priestesses who can empower buildings to produce faster, and watching workers gather bright red berries from bushes takes us back to the good old days. Nothing seems to have changed if you’re a newbie to the game, but there are two factors that will have an interesting effect on missions as you become more advanced.

One is the metagame, where you go up your overarching tech tree and equip units with items that will give them bonuses. So how you play a mission, if you’re playing smartly, will depend on what strengths you have invested in at your capital city. The other cool factor is the availability of consumables, which are limited items you have during missions that can be spent for temporary bonuses. So in a pinch you can select your melee fighters and use an item that heals them instantly, potentially turning a loss into a victory. These two elements alone could make the missions have considerable depth beyond regular RTS gameplay.

Now, it’s possible that when you read MMO before, your brain started thinking about a subscription fee or microtransactions. Age of Empires Online isn’t doing either of these. It will be digitally distributed and free to play. The catch is that not all features will be available to those who play for free. Things like custom PvP matches, the highest level of the tech tree, and a bunch of other options will become only available after purchasing an upgrade to a premium account. Later on, there are also plans for booster packs of additional content, but you won’t be paying for extra items or in-game money. We don’t yet know how much the premium content will cost.

Any time a developer goes for an MMO and doesn’t try to copy World of Warcraft we’re all for it. For the hardcore multiplayer RTS people out there, Age of Empires Online might not be for you, since the majority of its content focuses on battling AI and socializing with other players. However, the truth is that most RTS players are actually interested in single-player experiences, so AoEO has the potential to fulfill a completely untapped market by drawing those players into the compulsive loot collecting and character progression that makes MMOs so popular. We’re still hoping there will be some type of content added that ensures a deep multiplayer experience.

Jan 26, 2011

Learning about ancient myths and religions was one of our favorite times in high school and college. It was like being taught history, except it’s full of minotaurs, fertility gods, and people with cat heads. When the more sterile, history-based series Age of Empires sired a spin-off titled Mythologies, we were all aboard. Now the portable, turn-based strategy version of the series has its own Mythologies, which we accepted with open arms.

The title eases you in to its play style slowly, with the first few missions being more or less training exercises. You must set up towns, mine gold, create farms, and build up your defenses to defeat your opponent on the other side of the map. You need to raise an army quickly but at the same time start building for the future. The strategy elements of the game are deep, though once one learns a proper build order, there aren't enough reasons to deviate from it.

To help you out, you have both gods and demigods on your side. Though the previous game on DS also had hero units with their own special abilities, you can now activate god powers, such as locusts that plague your crops or lightning that crashes down from the heavens themselves. These powers add more depth to the strategy of battle, but some feel stupidly overpowered and cheap. Thankfully, they're limited to one use per battle.

When it comes to the story, it's fine enough, though we’d suggest the developers made a mistake by just making it up on their own. While the previous title took some very interesting chapters from history and added a little drama to them, this time they avoid the actual myths and instead take famous mythological figures and make them the stars of a new story, one for each of the three cultures. The plot’s pretty bland with the normal "battle underlings until you reach the shadowy head boss" narrative.

Graphically it's a bit of a mixed bag. The characters and battle animations that take place on the top screen look great, but after watching the same animations a few times, you'll start pressing the button to skip all that and get the results. Meanwhile, the isometric view of the battlefield isn't as confusing as it could be, but some units are big enough to obscure others, plus you may end up attacking the wrong unit.

Ultimately we were pretty pleased with the AoE: Mythologies, but it let us down in too many ways. The gameplay gets a little too frustrating, the graphics too soulless, and the story too weak to keep us going in for too long. It has all the qualities myths are made of, but we’ll need a little more grandeur before we can declare it a true legend.

Dec 30, 2008

Did the Spanish Armada get eaten by a giant beetle? Was Waterloo won when Napoleon found himself scythed into chunks by the talons of a sphinx? Did Cromwell seal a decisive victory at the Battle of Naseby by the tactical deployment of a minotaur? No, and if you’re like us, you think that the world is a slightly sadder place for it. Similarly aware that pikemen are less fun than eagles that shoot lightning, THQ and Griptonite Games have decided to ditch the historical stodge for the latest Age Of Empires game. Instead, they’ve created a game based on units raided from the fevered imaginings of nutbags across the ancient world – namely the Egyptians, Greeks and Vikings.

Like Backbone Entertainment’s 2006 DS game Age Of Empires: The Age Of Kings, Griptonite aims to take a PC RTS (in this case, Age of Mythologies) andtrim away the flab to reveal a leaner, turn-based core that feels as snappy and handheld-suited as you’d expect from a post-Advance Wars strategy game. Since Backbone was nice enough to let Griptonite have its game code, we expect that most features of that earlier Age Of Empires DS game will make a reappearance. One thing that won’t be coming back, say the devs, is the confusion between your units on a cluttered battlefield. Although this is apparently solved by sharper graphics, we suspect that it’s also a touch easier to differentiate your basic units from towering, bright-red scorpion men.

Just as in Age of Kings, the game helpfully displays the stats of potentially warring units before combat begins, giving you a prediction of the outcome. Where the previous game had an earthly advisor inform you of the likely result, Mythologies has its soothsaying delivered by a talking falcon. We approve of this change, and wish that we had a talking falcon at all times.

Strategy’s an oddly under-represented genre on the DS, and Mythologies is shaping up to fill the gap nicely. Even more importantly, you can command giant beetles.

Aug 4, 2008

Nov 1, 2007

After two years on shelves, Age of Empires III was beginning to look like it was locked in predictability. So The Asian Dynasties expansion from developer Big Huge Games (best known for creating Rise of Nations) arrives at just the right time, like new menus showing up at your favorite Chinese place just when you're getting sick of the same old sweet-and-sour chicken balls. New civilizations that play unlike any of their predecessors, a host of revamped features, and a return to AoE's past with the revival of Wonders spice up the core gameplay in a much-needed way.

As expected from the title, Asian Dynasties moves the focus of the RTS series from the European settlement of the New World to the Far East. So say a sad sayonara to the Cherokee and Aztecs and a sunny konichi-wa to the Japanese, Chinese, and Indians. Each new civ is represented in three abbreviated five-scenario campaigns telling the story of the Japanese shogunate in the 16th century, a Chinese fleet that discovers the west coast of North America in the early 15th century (don't laugh - the 1421 theory is pretty popular these days), and the Indian rebellion against the British in the 19th century. The new civs are more than fresh faces, too, although they also look a lot different than their European and Native American rivals thanks to unique visuals. You certainly haven't seen the likes of the Chinese flying crow, Japanese samurai, and Taj Mahal-like Indian temples elsewhere in the AoE III series.

Playing any one of this trio is like learning a whole new game. The Japanese have quasi-mystical shrines that summon animals for food and mobile armies based around daimyo generals able to receive home-city shipments and train soldiers. Indians buy villagers with wood instead of food and send huge elephants into the field of battle. And the Chinese field whole mixed-unit armies through the War Academy building, which really helps when you need to fight fast.

Other across-the-board tweaks impact on all three civilizations. The biggest of these is the new Export resource. It is collected automatically based on a percentage of the traditional wood, food, and coin, and is then utilized to order help from European allies. Store up enough Export, build a Consulate, and you can soon be whistling up armies from the Dutch or English, or buying units and weapons. What's more, foreign armies count as just a single unit against your unit cap, meaning that you can add an entire army of redcoats with just a single available space.

And old-timers should be happy about the return of Wonders. This blast from the past makes its first appearance in AoE III, with their construction now being a prerequisite for age advancement. Basing historical ages on building the likes of the Great Buddha or the Confucian Academy seems artificial in addition to the usual resource demands, although you can't argue with the flavor they add. Each of the 15 Wonders (five per civ) grants powerhouse abilities like boosted attack damage and hit points (the Indian Tower of Victory) or the ability to instantly heal all units (the Chinese Temple of Heaven). These historical and mythological elements add character and tactical considerations to the choice of what Wonder to build and when.

About the only thing that this expansion doesn't get entirely right is multiplayer. The new Regicide and King of the Hill games are been-there, done-that, and new maps like Honshu and Silk Road are merely variations on old themes (even if the latter's focus on controlling trade depots is sort of nifty). Still, you can't complain too much because the new civs and gameplay features mix up the old multiplayer maps so much that it's like playing online for the first time.

Ensemble Studios' RTS sequel Age of Empires III is getting a new expansion in the shape of The Asian Dynasties, which is due out this autumn. In development at Rise of Nations dev Big Huge Games, as opposed to Ensemble, the expansion introduces Asian civilizations and players will get to command and conquer and expand empires in the Eastern world.

New content includes "several new gameplay elements," Microsoft has told us, that include new ways of winning and trading, random map styles that feature remixes of classic Age of Empires game styles, and 15 new Asian "Wonders."

Brian Reynolds, CEO and creative director at Big Huge Games, has said the studio is honored to have the opportunity to develop Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties with Ensemble Studios and is confident "that the innovation of both teams will deliver an exciting experience for fans of this franchise."

He continued, "We feel that the in-depth experience of Big Huge Games in the real-time strategy genre, combined with the solid reputation of the Age of Empires franchise, will result in something fresh and unique for gamers."

May 21, 2007

Exploring the new world was one of Columbus' greatest feats, but it was the colonization of that land that brought about a new era in civilization. And it was that era that was chronicled in Ensemble's Age of Empires III as you took on the role of a mighty European power. Now it is time for the tables to turn as the balance shifts to three Native American tribes and you lead the WarChief to victory.

Each of the three new tribes, the Iroquois, the Sioux and the Aztecs bring a new style of play to the table rather than simply mimicking an existing power. The Iroquois will be the most familiar to existing players, as they have allied with the Americans and as such, use a few European units. The Sioux have the advantage of heavy cavalry and a maxed out population meter. Rather than worry about support, a Sioux player can immediately start building his war machine. Infantry is the name of the game for the Aztecs. They start out weak, but in the latter half of the game a skilled Aztec player can wreak some havoc.

The WarChief is the new leader unit, replacing the explorer from the original. Because the WarChief grows more powerful with time, players tend to be conservative with his use early on. Taking out an enemy WarChief is a great way to cripple an online opponent.

Two single player campaigns provide plenty of strategic practices, but it's the online component that really makes The WarChiefs shine as a few new features make the old feel new again.

Players who can run the map well will like the Trade Monopoly win condition which allows you to attempt a victory by holding more than half of the trading posts on a map. Another new twist is the Revolution option. This can only be done by the European powers, but it allows a civilization to instantly turn military. All setters turn to militia, only military units can be sent from the home city and it is impossible to gather resources. Done at the right time, revolution can quickly change a losing position into a winning one.

Real-time strategy on the DS? Hrm … probably wouldn't work all that well. The lack of a mouse to move around the battlefield swiftly and control all those units would be a pretty frustrating setup. It's a good thing that Age of Empires' immigration to the DS came complete with a genre switch, then. The Age of Kings retains a lot of similarities to its PC forebears, but with a console-friendly, turn-based setup.

The idea is this: play as one of five famous rulers - Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, King Richard the Lionhearted, Saladin or Minamoto Yoshitsume - and their related civilizations as you work through the game's single or multiplayer modes. Build towns, harvest wheat, mine gold, train warriors, research new technologies and overrun your enemies. For such an easy, pick-up-and-play game, Age of Empires is incredibly deep. More so than the system's current strategy king, Advance Wars.

Even if you're not a strategy buff, Age of Empires' excellent interface and fantastic tutorial mode eases you into the action so smoothly that you'll be overthrowing empires in no time flat. But that's not to say strategy masters have to suffer through a watered-down experience. It's just that rarely is such a deep game so user-friendly.

And the information packed into the game! While it doesn't have much of an effect on the actual game play, it's worth noting that there are pages and pages of historical information on every ruler, civilization and pretty much anything else in the game. You could literally spend hours sifting through it all, were you so inclined.

If there are any problems here, it's a combination of the somewhat messy map screen graphics and the less-than-precise, touch-screen functionality. When you get four or five units set up on or around a few structures - say you're laying siege to an enemy village - it's often very hard to tell exactly what's what, and even more difficult to choose the proper unit with your stylus. In fact, as you play, you'll likely find yourself putting your little plastic pointer away and just using the regular button interface, which works just fine.

The original Age of Empires sold a gazillion copies by ushering in the idea of epochs in real-time strategy games (where you slowly move your civilization through a series of technological ages). Since then, Age of Mythology and Age of Empires II each offered incremental changes, and Age of Empires III keeps the streak alive. That's both good and bad: the gameplay is accessible, easy to learn and very polished, but too often Age III has a "been there, done that" feeling.

The single-player campaign, which spans 24 scenarios and three acts, tells an uninspired story of New World conquest as various European factions slug it out for supremacy. The dialogue serves no other purpose than to tell you what to do, and the cut-scenes prove fairly pointless.

So what's truly new? An entirely new 3D engine makes Age III look better than most strategy games - lush and vibrant environments populated with well-animated soldiers spruce up the uninspired gameplay. Better still, the new physics engine can throw enemy soldiers into the air with a well-placed cannot shot. Cruel and awesome.

As you explore and conquer the world, you can request supplies, units and other bonuses from your Home City, your European headquarters. It's a nice a feature, but hardly the revolution that it was supposed to be. The only other major gameplay innovation lets you ally with Native Americans and recruit from their ranks. Unfortunately, the scenarios far too often follow the "build base, attack enemy" dynamic that has plagued the earlier Age games. Poor AI and pathfinding still remain, too.