Age of Empires

Gnomes are the basic creatures for your economy.

“Age of Empires is about building empires.”

~ Captain Obvious in his cameo in the William Wallace Campaign

“Too... many... farms...”

~ An AOE player on AOE's AI

Age of Mythology is one of the best mythical real-time strategy computer games. Its goal is to kill the enemy, creating first a powerful economy with a lot of gnomes (or workers) gathering resources for your god. Then He-Man gives you fabulous creatures. Your god is an important thing in Age of Mythology.

This is about the firsty game in the Age of series. Gameplay hasn't changed since then.

The game begins with all you need to start getting fun: three gnomes or more, a gnome center, a magician (also called priest), a superhero (known as a paladin) and a catapult. Then you will have a great time until the bling-bling runs out, as it is the most important resource and the one that your god likes most.

Some features

• Your god enables your warehouses to keep unlimited resources.
• Your god enables your gnomes to build by slamming the floor with a hammer.
• Your god enables your transport ships to transport 20 myth units each twice the cabins size.
• Your god enables your fishing ships to catch marlins almost as big as they are.
• Your god enables your buildings to create gnomes from thin air.
• Your god protects your boats when they catch on fire until they are actually destroyed.

How to win the game

Age of Empires: Lot of sweaty men.

The most common way to win the game is by killing all enemy's creatures. However, it will be sometimes a hard task because once you have shown the superiority of your army, the enemy starts to play "fags"; that is, scatter his creatures all over the map and you would have to seek them. Some of them may attack your cities and this is a bad situation.

You can also win the game by getting your god happy, which can be done in three ways:

• Building a monument for your god. Its cost is 1000 of each resource except food. Raising a monument is a slow task, as it is so big and your gnomes are so small.
• Collecting all the Bling-Bling on the map for your god with a magician. This is a very popular way to win the game because your god would be very happy with his bling-bling (He gets all the hot she-gnomes).
• Tickle him on the nose and make sure you give him some exercise just before his nap. He loves this, and it generally seems to make him sleep better.

If your god is particularly depressed, you have no hope. Except that's a lie, because there are still ways to win:

• Enter the win cheat, I'm not going to tell you that it is to press Alt-F4(or Control+Alt+Del if you are in linux) and take off all your clothes though, because that would make the game pointless.
• Ask someone with more gameplay talent than you to win for you.
• Time travel into the future to when you have already won.
• Beat the computer with hammer until it does what you want that or you'll have to buy a new computer that better responds to your demands.
• Release an enraged Afghan child smacked up on poppers upon the helpless population of the other players and listens to the crys.

The real winners, however, are the people who alt+F4 and find a better game to play.

Units

• Gnomes. The most important unit of the game. They are very hard-working. Although many AoE players think these kind of workers are weak at fighting, the truth is that gnomes are powerful warriors defending their town, so you mustn't attack them without a strong army, and you should never laugh at them because of their low-height. they WILL at all oppertunities stab you in the legs (exspecially if you are wearing Boots).
• Magician. The most important creature of the game. Usually known for his healing ability, he actually can cast many spells. For example, he can summon a Dark Hampster or convert an enemy's creature into a sheep. This spell is called polytranslocation.
• Trolls. The most important unit in the game. A game is simply no good without trolls. They are big and mean and ugly. They are good at defending bridges and get bonuses to hit billy goats.
• Lawyers. The most important creatures of the game. They bring the game to a complete stop with spells such as "Injunction" and "Red Tape"
• David Bowie. The most important unit of the game. Only available if you play the Britains, David Bowie flies up in the air and totally demolishes the enemy base singlehandedly with his Goblin Magic. Also can summon 1 Million clones of himself to even more demolish the enemy.
• Destroid Tomahawk. The most important unit of the game. Commanding a vareity of ordinance including lasers; plasma, fragmentation, nuclear, and high explosive warheads; vulcan cannons; partical beams; and rocket barrage technology. Heavily armored and environmentally sealed to survive underwater and even in the vacuum of space, this walking dreadnaught can leave a crater where once stood whole groups of Frankish cavalry or Koreon War Wagons. Rick Hunter himself piloted one to repel an uprising of Zentradi Woad Raiders on the way home from a date with Minmei.
• Any French unit (see also France). The most important unit of the game.Don't build these, lest you want to lose as they will immediately surrender to any attacking forces. High resource expenditure for little return, yet, still are the most important units of the game.
• The One-in-a-million True Kung Fu Genius. If you play the Chinese every millionth villager you crank out of your town center could be one of these. The only way he appears is if the enemy kills your villager thinking he is only a villager mining gold or wood or something. Killing the millionth villager unlocks his Chi and the One-in-a-million True Kung Fu Genius appears. The Chinese pretty much win at this point as he starts using the Buddhist Palm to punch holes in your buildings and convert all the enemy's kung fu masters to be his disciples. The One-in-a-million True Kung Fu Genius is the most important creature of the game.
• Russian Foot Soldiers. The most important unit of the game. Good cheap units. One food gets you 12, so you can crank out an awful lot of them. Use them to burn farms and flee, or to clear minefields (by having them walk into them). Use them in actual combat as a last resort as only every other soldier has a rifle, so that every other Russian who does not have a rifle, gets one only when a rifled Russian next to him stops for a ciggarette.
• Panzershrek. The most important unit of the game. Good at taking out Koreon War Wagons from the rear.
• Deutsche Pope (aka Benedict XVI). The most important unit of the game. Teutonic unique unit with full priestly power. He has a nice tall pope hat, and he is German. If you don't put him in your game you're toast.The most important unit of the game.

Yes, the game is so awesome that it has an infinite number of "most important units of the game" (The awesomeness mainly comes from the inclusion of Dwight D. Eisenhower).

Often Used Battle Stratgies

• Booming. Booming is a strategy where the player spends every available resource they can to get to the Castle Age, then lay out 3+ gnome centers, then breed gnomes like rabbits, or quite possibly like Your Mom. Your Mom get a +20% increase on the speed of her breeding gnomes. The advantage of course is that resource production is tripled or quadrupled by the added labor. Wages drop as demand for jobs rises. You can then run your economy with a virtual slave labor force.
• Rushing. Rushing is simply attacking early while the enemy still has his pants down from just starting to develop his own economy. Rushing is a dirty 49er tactic.
• Castle/Tower Rushing. Similar to Rushing above, this involves building a ring of towers and/or a walls around an enemy in order to make him walk farther to get to his wood.
• Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. This start involves legislating a law that causes half the villagers (both friendly and allied) to not show up out of the town center when you pay for them. You can easily negotiate this hurdle with your own villagers by having your own villagers that did show up do twice as much work, for the same 50 food it was required to summon them.
• Scorched Earth Policy. Best done with Russian Foot Soldiers, this start involves attacking and destroying all your Farms, your Mill, your Barracks, and anything else you own, to win the game.
• Bait and Switch. A technique to 'trick' the enemy into moving into an area only to get waylaided and destroyed. For example, you send a single unguarded trebuchet out, the enemy sees your unguarded trebuchet and sends 10 Frankish Paladins to intercept. When the Paladins get to the trebuchets, they see it was only an illusion created by an enemy magician, but before they can leave, the Engineer unit sets off the four charges of C4 that he laced the area with.
• The Juggernaut. A method of pairing large slow moving unkillable units with ranged units and having them charge, well, everything. Works well with Destroid Tomahawks.
• The Meatgrinder. The Meatgrinder involves building tons and tons of unit producing facilities, such as barracks, stables, brothels, etc. to cheaply crankout large armies to charge the enemies well placed machine gun nest. The units are never really good by themselves, but get a 100 of them going at the enemy for 1000 food, and you are rockin on human life/economic numbers game. This start is best used with civilizations that crank out lots of cheap units, such as the Mayans, Byzantines, Russians, and the Egyptians if they worship Isis.
• The Army of God. Train 50 priests, and charge them into the enemy, converting everyone to your side as you go. They can be used to heal each other when their health gets low. Beware of catapults however, for all it takes is a few well hurled stones and your army of old men with sticks will be annihilated, unless of course you convert the rock in mid-flight. It will still kill all your old men, but at least the enemy doesn't have the satisfaction of slaughtering a mob of defenseless old men. That pleasure, my friend, belongs to you.

The OWN age

This is the last age in every age of empires game. In this age your Dwight D. Eisenhower units get an extreme power-up that makes them possible to roundhouse kick 4 enemy buildings at the same time. The only way to beat the enemy once he's in the OWN age is get into the POWN age. This age is only accesable by buying it on e-bay. While in the POWN age your Dwight D. Eisenhower units can not only round house kick 4 enemy buildings, it also enables them to make a nice cup of tea. This makes sure you don't get completely dehydrated while being addicted to age of empires, so you still have a 10% chance to live when you finally kill your enemy.

Campaigns

The game features a number of campaigns based on the wars of famous historical characters:

William Wallace: The noob campaign which teaches you how to be a wild man in Scotland. The story is related to Braveheart, according to Bruce Shelly.

Joan of Arc: A French maid dusts the boots of the English, gets a midget onto the French throne, and rides her horse into Hitler's burning stake. Don't let the British rape Joan.

Saladin: Drive out the Americans from Iraq, and scream Allah-Allah in front of them.

Genghis Khan: Making the worst parody videos possible and then getting banned after alleged Copyright infringement.

Barbarossa: Barbarossa runs forth and back across Europe searching for his boyfriend Henry IV, only to find out that Henry was cheating on him. Twice.

The Conquerors expansion pack included a raised population limit and the following new campaigns:

Montezuma Montezuma must kill the Zuma game programmer, Chuck Norris to prevent Hernando Cortes from winning the game.

El Cid An anti-Islamic nobleman wants to kill all the rapists in Iraq. Not recommended for Muslims.

Attila the Hun Attila must defeat his big brother, Bleda, then slay all the Roman soldiers!!!!!

Some other, unimportant scenarios are all clumped into a giant Map of the World, including the Modernization of Japan under Nobunaga, the flight of the British who lost to the French at Agincourt, the Turks raiding the Byzantines and the building of a big ass tower close to the sea.

See also

• Age of Umpires
• Age of Vampires