Overview

What is Microsoft Age of Empires?

is an epic real-time strategy game spanning 10,000 years, in which players are the guiding spirit in the evolution of small Stone Age tribes.

In depth

A closer look at Microsoft Age of Empires

Your goal is to build your tribe into a mighty civilization that can vie for world dominance. You begin the game in the Stone Age with a small tribe of men on an unexplored map. As you move your tribesmen over the map, you reveal different terrain types and locate sources of food, wood, stone, and gold, which villagers gather by hunting, fishing, foraging, farming, chopping trees, and mining stone and gold. You must gather enough resources and build enough housing to support your growing civilization.

Constructing buildings lets you train military units and boats to defend your civilization or attack enemy civilizations on land or at sea. It also lets you research technologies that benefit your civilization, such as increasing the resources you can gather or the strength of your military units. As you advance through the ages, you can establish alliances with other civilizations, exchange tribute, and establish trade routes. Other civilizations are controlled by human or computer players.

You can choose from one of several ways to win the game, including world domination by conquering enemy civilizations, exploration of the known world, and economic victory through the accumulation of wealth. You can play a variety of predesigned single player campaigns, as well as single player or multiplayer (up to 8 players) random maps or scenarios. Or you can use the scenario builder to create your own custom scenarios.

Verdict

Should you download Microsoft Age of Empires?

Microsoft Age of Empires runs on Windows 95/98/Me and is available under the Demo license — the installer is 24 MB. We’ve catalogued it under Strategy and War.

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