Age of Mythology: The Titans Updated Impressions
Ensemble's Bruce Shelley recently showed us the latest version of this upcoming real-time strategy expansion pack. Get the details here.
The original Age of Mythology was a change of pace for the developers at Ensemble Studios. Instead of creating another history-themed real-time strategy game, the developer opted to use a setting based on ancient mythology--a setting that allowed it to draw upon classic Greek, Egyptian, and Norse lore and bring legendary heroes and monsters to life onscreen. The game also gave players the ability to customize their strategies by choosing to worship different minor gods, which would give them different bonuses and different special abilities known as "god powers." Age of Mythology: The Titans will refine the original game by adding an entirely new race, the Atlanteans, and introducing titans, which are new top-level units.
Ensemble's Bruce Shelley was kind enough to pay us a visit earlier this week to give us some background on Age of Mythology: The Titans and show off some of the game's new features. The expansion pack's story picks up where the original Age of Mythology left off, with the destruction of Atlantis. The campaign chronicles how the surviving Atlanteans were able to rebuild their civilization. Over the course of The Titans' 12-episode campaign, you'll become intimately familiar with the unique units and gameplay style of the Atlanteans.
The Atlanteans were designed from the ground up to be an easy race for new or casual real-time strategy players to use. First of all, the Atlanteans' economic and resource model is the least complex of the game's four races, as they do not have to build special resource-gathering structures. While the other three cultures need to build specific structures to collect each resource, the Atlantean citizens themselves are self-contained resource collectors, requiring no special buildings to deposit food, wood, or gold. No time is wasted in transit waiting for Atlantean citizens to drop off their loads, so their overall gathering rate is much faster than the other races' citizens. Furthermore, shifting production is as simple as pulling a citizen off one type of resource and directing it to another--you don't have to worry about building a new resource drop site. To balance out these advantages, Atlantean citizens are more expensive and count as three units against the population cap. While the Atlantean citizens will certainly help reduce micromanagement for casual players, their relative scarcity and value will make them attractive targets for enemies looking to wreak havoc on your economy.
The technology tree for the Atlanteans has been simplified to make it easier for players to remember where certain types of troops are built. The Atlantean barracks are where all basic troops like infantry and archers are built, eliminating the need to create a separate military academy and archery range, as the Greeks do. The "counter barracks," as their name suggests, house all the troop types designed to counter certain units. The Atlanteans' anti-cavalry unit, the katapeltes, is built at the counter barracks, as are the anti-archer and anti-infantry units. Atlanteans also create heroes differently from the other races. You can turn any Atlantean infantry units into heroes simply by expending a certain amount of resources. There's no need to bring them to any buildings or near any other units, so the conversion can be done anywhere, at any time.
Another distinguishing feature of the Atlanteans is that they are allowed to use their god powers more than once, unlike the other three races, which are limited to one use of each god power per match. The more-powerful spells will likely have fewer recharges than the less powerful ones, and Ensemble is adjusting the god powers and units from Age of Mythology's original cultures to ensure that all four races remain balanced. The Atlanteans will also have to endure lengthy cooldown periods between god-power castings.
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- GameSpot Score8.3great
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- Microsoft Game Studios
- Ensemble Studios
- Real-Time Strategy
- Release: Sep 30, 2003
- ESRB: Teen
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