Windows Phone Thoughts: Conquer the world with Age of Empires

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Friday, August 13, 2004

Conquer the world with Age of Empires

Posted by Philip Colmer in "SOFTWARE" @ 09:00 AM


Game Scenario
For anyone who hasn't come across Age of Empires before, here is a brief rundown of the game. The theme is the rise of the first great civilisations over the 12,000 years that followed the last Ice Age. Your goal is to build your tribe into a mighty civilisation that can vie for world dominance, i.e. game victory. 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. Constructing buildings lets you train military units and boats to defend your civilization or attack enemy civilizations on land or at sea. Constructing buildings 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 build new buildings, create new boats and military units, and research new technologies. You can establish alliances with other civilizations, exchange tribute, and establish trade routes. Other civilizations are controlled by computer players. The winner of a game is determined by the victory conditions of the scenarios. You can play a variety of pre-designed single player campaigns, as well as single player random maps or scenarios.

PC Versus Pocket PC
"Age of Empires: Pocket PC Edition" is supplied on a flash memory card or it can be purchased as a download. Both cost the same amount of money but the storage card option is far and away the better choice if you've got an SD/MMC slot in your Pocket PC. If you opt for the download, you have to choose which bits of the game to install, depending on how much memory you've got available. With the storage card version, you need 10MB free to play the game and saved games get stored on the card automatically.

Either way, you get a conversion of the Gold Edition PC version. It retains most of the features and functionality of that version and incorporates both the original "Age of Empires" elements and the "Rise of Rome" expansion enhancements. There are some features, though, that have not been carried over in the conversion:
  • No support for more than one human player;
  • No support for "huge" or "humongous" map sizes;
  • No campaign editor. However, if you have the PC version of the game, you can use the PC campaign editor to create games and download them onto your Pocket PC.
All in all, then, a very faithful conversion. If you buy the memory card version, slotting the card into your Pocket PC causes the game to run automatically. It can also be started from the AoE icon.

Game Choices


Figure 1: Game options.

When you start a new game, you have the following choices, as illustrated in Figure 1:
  • Random map - a game based on a randomly generated world map. You can change the game settings and victory condition.

  • Campaign - a predesigned series of related scenarios that chronicle the rise of one of the mighty civilisations of antiquity.

  • Death match - similar to "Random match" except that you start with stockpiles of 20,000 food, wood, stone and 10,000 gold.

  • Scenario - a predesigned game that is not part of a campaign.
For random maps and death matches, there are a number of standard victory conditions: being the first player to control and hold all artefacts, control and hold all ruins, build and hold a Wonder or conquer all the enemy players. All players can pursue any of these conditions to try to win. The first player to be successful wins the game. Alternatively, it is possible to set a time limit for the game. When the time runs out, the civilisation or team with the highest score wins the game.

Team-playing is an aspect of the original PC version that sort of works in the Pocket PC version in that you can get some of the computer players to be on your team, but it probably worked better when you had human teams. Unfortunately, since this is not a turn-based game, it isn't possible to hand the Pocket PC around as each player's turn comes up. Unlike similar games of this genre, you just play as hard and as fast as you can, with the full knowledge that the computer players are doing just the same ... and possibly better :-)

Another option for ending the game is to define the score that must be achieved. In this mode, the first team that achieves that score or military conquest wins the game. Constructing wonders and owning artefacts & ruins all contribute to the score.


Figure 2: Playing a Campaign.

Electing to play a campaign takes you through a series of related scenarios. You must play the scenarios in sequence using the settings and victory conditions with which each scenario was designed. The list of scenarios varies according to the campaign you pick. Figure 2 shows the scenarios available if you choose the learning campaign - an excellent way to learn how to play the game. If, instead, you pick "Yamato Empire of the Rising Sun", there is only one scenario - the Assassins. Once you pick the scenario, the game goes on to give you your instructions, as shown in Figure 3. Those instructions will give you the background to the scenario along with your victory condition.


Figure 3: Scenario instructions.


Figure 4: Picking a scenario.

If you decide to pick a non-campaign scenario, you will be presented with the list shown in Figure 4. Choosing a scenario then takes you into the screen shown in Figure 5, which is also the screen you get to if you pick Random Map or Death Match.


Figure 5: Defining the game.

From here, you can change the game parameters, such as how many players there are, which civilisation they represent, whether they are in teams, or the game settings such as map type, victory condition, resources, etc.

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