A look at the title of the game and its box-art may have led a long-time PC game consumer to think that this is a game akin to civilization- or empire-building games like Civilizations or Caesar.
After installing and playing the game, the realization that it is not really one might or might not have been disappointing to said consumer. Age of Empires is a RTS game, in which "Empires" are really nothing more than bases from which to build a powerful army with to crush the opposition.
However, there are some semblances of civilization-building, or more precisely, city-building, in this game. For example, upgrades that can be purchased to enhance a player's army are not restricted to just the offensive units in this game, much unlike many other RTS games at the time (if they have the game mechanics of purchasable upgrades at all). Upgrades can also be purchased for buildings and worker units, resulting in enhances to a player's economy that may give a much needed edge in his/her stratagem.
(Of course, there were other RTS games at the time that had a similarly designed mechanic, but here, it is tied surprisingly deeply into how the player approaches the game and the battles in it.)
The player starts by selecting one of twelve civilizations, for either multiplayer or the single-player campaigns (in these cases, only four civilizations have campaigns of their own). Depending on the settings for the scenario, the player may either have to build bases and armies completely from scratch, or starts at a certain level of technology.
Speaking of tech trees, any player's tech tree is split into four stages, called "Ages" (after the ages of humanity and of course as reference to the name of the game). To achieve the next Age, the player may have to fulfill certain requirements, like completing the building of several key structures and of course paying a fee to advance to the next age. Advancement is certainly not directly dependent on any factor of time, much unlike what a player would expect from a civilization-building game. This mechanic is definitely designed for an RTS.
A player can invest resources into any branch of the tech tree, provided the prerequisites for that branch are met. However, a bad decision can result in the player having an army or defenses that are just not adequate to protect oneself with as ultimately said resources are limited at any one time (even though the player can get more later). To make a good decision, the player will have to scout out the enemy and estimate what the opposition is planning to do in order to develop a proper counter-plan. The game does little to inform the player of this need, but does include a low-tier scouting unit whose role is not explained to the inexperienced player.
An RTS game would generally not be complete without a resource collection and expenditure mechanic. Age of Empires is no different. The resources in this game are the usual suspects common to RTS games with themes of archaic technology: wood, food, gold and stone. All of them typically have to be gathered by the usual suspects responsible for resource collection in RTS games at the time: the worker unit. In this game, they are called villagers, but they perform essentially the same.
To the developers' credit, the villagers use different animations for the collection of different resources, which add to the ambiance and immersion factor of the game. This reviewer had found observing them for the first time to be quite an amusing experience. It is a small disappointment, however, that the game does not encourage this, as the game can be punishing to those who are neglecting the true gist of this game: waging war.
With the exception of food, all resources have absolutely finite amounts in the map. Wood can apparently only be obtained from trees that will never regrow. Stone, being a mineral, can only be obtained from stone deposits. Gold is also a mineral, though it can also be obtained using another economic mechanic that will be described later.
It can be said that understanding the system behind the collection of stone and wood, and to some extent, gold, is very easy. Therefore, in matters concerning these resources, the player can divest his/her attention at securing their sources, which is a critical component of any strategy that a player wants to use for this game. But again, the player will have to learn this the hard way, especially when the single-mindedness of AI opponents in seeking out resources to fuel their war effort will inadvertently result in them sending over villagers to steal resources from locations that the player's own villagers are operating in.
Food can be theoretically obtained indefinitely, but the rate at which it can be gained is dependent on how players exploit the ready-made (i.e. natural) sources of food in the map, namely wild life and bushes of berries. Food can also be obtained from farming crops on farms, which provide unlimited food, but which take a far longer time to extract food from (thus requiring a lot more villagers working on them).
(Oddly enough, there is an overlooked graphical oddity associated with farming; villagers who have obtained full loads of food from farms would appear to be hauling chunks of meat.)
Collecting resources from all over the map can be daunting, and the player can only build so many town centers as they are terrifically expensive. Therefore, it is fortunate that the game allows the player to erect buildings that act like resource depositories at any location on the map as long as they are not too close to the resources themselves (for reasons of game balance and prevention of collision glitches). However, the player has to be build the right building for the right resource that is to be harvested (e.g. granaries can only receive food, for example), which can be quite a hassle when the player is frantically making decision after decision.
The last method to obtain food and the only other way to obtain gold require the player to take advantage of any water-ways in the map. The player has the ability to build water-borne forces in this game, and part of these forces are non-combatants like fishing ships and trading ships. Fishing ships can take advantage of fish shoals, which are (oddly enough) inexhaustible and can have food extracted from them at a faster rate compared to farms.
(That said, a player that starts close to such sources of food can gain economic advantages, such as being able to free up the early dozen or so villagers for the collection of other resources. These advantages may be perceived as unfair. Of course, this depends a lot on the design of the map in play, and most of the official maps fortunately provide balanced early-game economic opportunities to every player.)
Trading ships can ferry a hundred units of resources that are not gold, at any one trip, to other docks in the possession of other players and return to one of the player's docks with a shipload of gold, the amount of which (is at a minimum of 100 units of gold and) is dependent on the distance between the two docks. (The owner of the other dock does not appear to receive anything.) Considering that this may be a lucrative way to earn much needed gold, the AI that governs the ship's behavior is thankfully quite reliable in navigating the water-ways.
It also allows for the ever-gratifying tactic of naval blockades in maps that allow the creation of viable navies that are capable of stopping the trading ships dead.
Yet, this game mechanic can also be abused quite handily. Any player can actually send trading ships to the docks of any other player, including those of enemies. As a result, unscrupulous players would not take long to realize that leaving enemy docks intact if only for purposes of 'trading' can be a (rather dastardly) way to earn gold late in a game session. Fortunately, Ensemble Studios has thought of that, and provides a way for any player to forcefully destroy units in their own possession whose deaths otherwise require the harmful intervention of enemy players.
Not every map may have bodies of water that are suitable for establishing viable trading routes or for fishing. Yet, the game still allows the player to build docks in such maps where there are bodies of water that can accommodate the space that they need. Players who are inexperienced may end up making the mistake of investing in a navy where there is nothing to be gained from doing so. It's a minor complaint, but having a default restriction on navies attached to such kinds of maps would have been appreciated, even if it is a token design decision.
For a RTS game, Age of Empires does have a rather sophisticated (or complicated, if others wish to perceive it in this way) economy system. It does, however, appear to work very well and still fulfills its main purpose, which is to feed and nurture the powerful army that a skillful player will eventually raise.
Every player, regardless of the type of civilization selected, has access to the same general 'tiers' of units. These tiers are in turned tied to the mechanic of Ages in the game, i.e. the player will need to advance to the next Age to be able to access the higher tiers of units. Incidentally, higher tier units also happen to be upgrades to the lower tiered ones, so the player can have troops anywhere in the map being upgraded immediately as their relevant upgrade has been completely researched. This is not exactly a new game design, but the visual changes are a good cue to on-lookers that the tide of a battle may be changing.
The design of the units, for most of them, follows the principle of rock-versus-paper-versus-scissors. Therefore, it is even more important that the player learns how to scout out enemies quickly in order to train the right units to make an army that can counter opponents'. The game does at least inform the player of this mechanic through the descriptions of units, though it does not give hints that encourage the latter strategy.
To add some semblance of diversity to the tech trees of the civilizations, every civilization has a few unique upgrades or units that gives it a slight edge over the others. This edge is really only small, but experienced players can still get an upper hand by exploiting them while they are available and opponents had yet to develop a counter for them (and there will always be viable counters to them).
As mentioned earlier, there are upgrades not just for military units. There are also some for villagers (which generally enhance their resource collecting capabilities) and plenty for buildings. The latter, which include improvements to the toughness and weaponry of guard towers, particularly accommodates a defensive play-style, which is well and good for any player with this kind of inclination.
Strategy builds in this game unsurprisingly depend on the order of upgrades that the player would follow. Fortunately, the game does come with in-game documentation of tech trees in addition to that in the manual.
Ultimately, whatever strategy that a player would take, he/she will be building an army that is capable of crushing the opposition. However, Age of Empires changes that formula a bit by having units that are capable of changing the allegiance of enemy units and even buildings. This feature was an exceptionally distinctive feature of Age of Empires (though not necessarily an original one).
However, whether this feature was to the benefit of the game or not is debatable. This reviewer had found that an army of upgraded priests can rapidly defeat an unprepared player. Coupled with their ability to heal friendly units, they could be perceived as more than a bit overpowered.
In an attempt to tie in the theme of civilization-building to another tried-and-true RTS element of the time, the game designers have included a mechanic that can be used to win battles. This mechanic requires the player to commit to the building of Wonders, which are exceptionally large and expensive structures, and holding onto them for a certain period of time. Essentially, they are the equivalent of the 'super-weapons' that were typically prevalent in some RTS franchises of the time, except that Wonders are really literally game-ending.
While this is perhaps a cheesy way to win battles, this does gives players who have invested a lot of effort into building a powerful economy (and base defenses) to win the game instead of resorting to the usual method of total annihilation of the opposition.
To introduce some game balance and to minimize the processing load on the game, the game designers have included a 50-unit limit for each player (including any that may have been obtained through conversion). This mechanic is not a new one in RTS, but here, it does cause some thematic oddities, namely that a civilization could have an army of only several dozen individuals. Still, this is a typical trait of RTS games at the time and it is really a minor, easily-overlooked complaint.
A complaint that cannot be so easily dismissed however is the terrible path-finding scripts for units. The units under the command of the player simply cannot be depended upon to find their own way across the map. More often than not, they get stuck around terrain features and/or (proverbially) trip all over each other. Those that do get through, often go to where they should go to piece-meal - thus making waypoints (that can be laid down from the unit production buildings) quite a worthless feature.
AI-controlled players, on the other hand, do not have this problem as they are very much capable of holding the hands of every individual unit under their control. Compared to the units that had been left under the control of the player, they are fantastically more coordinated.
However, that is not to say the AI is plenty smart - far from it. The AI, as was to be expected from AI opponents in RTS games of the time, can be very short-sighted in its planning and often makes a strategic blunder or two that can be exploited. Whatever additional challenge to be had from ramping up the difficulty level of the AI merely resorts to another typical convention of the RTS genre at the time: letting the AI cheat. Having their difficulty at any level higher than Normal means that they get a continuous income of resources, pretty much ensuring that they will win any battle of attrition (that is, if the player is not wise enough to prevent a match from becoming one).
The graphics of the game mostly use 2-D hand-drawn backgrounds, with hand-made sprites representing units and buildings. For the most part, they look quite detailed and satisfactorily animated (for an RTS game of its time). For the best visual satisfaction - and for a generally effective strategy - this reviewer suggests having an army consisting of a myriad of units of different roles. That is because watching an army consisting of the one same unit type march across a map in perfect, robot-like unison can be awkward.
The audio design is as what can be expected from a game with themes of archaic technology and eras. Military units clash with each other to the tune of metal striking metal, war machines groan under their weight as they launch projectiles, dying units emit pitiful screams - the sounds of war are very much adequate in this game. Non-combat noises like those emitted by the economic activities of villagers provide a soothing (and sometimes welcome) contrast instead.
Unit responses can take a bit to get used to however. They are speaking in (expectedly) archaic languages, which can sound a lot like dribble. Oddly enough, regardless of the civilization in use, its units make use of the same set of sound clips, which is a bit disappointing.
While the game does have a single player campaign, it provides the usual missions that can be found in RTS games of the time - albeit against the backdrop of historical scenarios. Multiplayer, however, can be a more potent source of fun (especially for players who have been quarreling about which ancient civilization's army is able to crush the rest). That said, the multiplayer system in this game is satisfactorily decent, though it is not remarkable enough to make it stand out from its contenders in the RTS genre.
As its core, Age of Empires is really not that much more different from other RTS games at the time. However, if there is one game that can be described as a bridge of sorts between the fast-paced RTS genre and the relatively more deliberate civilization-building genre, Age of Empires was it.