I’m curious to know how you came to know the game and end up here talking to strangers that you probably never knew personally.
In my case it was like this:
I was 13-14 years old over there in 2008-2009 and didn’t have a PC at the time, but I downloaded a lot of java mobile games, and by chance I came across this game, ‘AOE-3 Mobile’. He was very basic, but very immersive, the maximum age was age III (Strengths) and his campaign is the events leading up to the first mission of Morgan Black’s campaign. It had 3 playable civilizations (Sicilians, Ottomans, and Maltese knights if I’m not mistaken). It had no online or multiplayer mode.
Then I went to an internet cafe and all the PCs had AOE-2 (no wonder it’s so popular) installed and the gaming experience was amazing, at the time I thought it was 3D, but I didn’t like the absence of a metropolis and the lack of batch troop creation. So around 2010-2011 I got pirate AOE-3 and played the campaigns over and over again. Then I played in online mode and then almost in 2016 I bought it on Steam. Now I know that I will die playing this game.
My mother used to play Aoe2 (Age2x) a long time ago , Unfortunately that CD was lost for years until we fould it again last year March and later bought DE . She begin playing again and I soon picked up the game afterwards . I played the William Wallace tutorial and was immediately hooked to the game . I mostly played Random Map aganist AI while my mother ploughed through the campaigns .
As for AoE3 , she didn’t quite have a good impression of the game as it was too diffrent (one of those AoE2 purists lol) . I got it as a present few months ago . I initially was skeptical but overtime I began to love the new features and additions of AoE3 (Post Medivial Era , Home City Decks , Trading Posts & Native allies , Assymetric civs ,etc ) Now I mostly play AoE3 and sometimes revisit AoE2 .
My Mother is a history teacher and in 1998 her school gave her an AoE1 CD. The ministery for education wanted them to test the game and if it could be implemented into history class. She never had the time to install it, so years later my sister and i got her CD. In elementary school a friend of mine had AoE2 and in 2007 i bought my first game ever, AoE 3
My first experience with an aoe game was the demo of the conquerors, the first scenario of the Montezuma campaign. I absolutely loved that game, I never had a similar experience. I loved it so much I downloaded the demos for age of kings, rise of rome and aoe1, because i wanted more. Then I got the proper game and played it for so many hours. I loved the maps, I loved the campaigns, I loved being able to play as native americans (although the ones I wanted would come much much later)
Then, I remember the first time I saw the aoe3 trailer. I was AMAZED. The game looked so good, the physics were damn good and it had a setting I liked, being a product of colonization myself. The mechanics of the trade route and minor civs, shipments and a customizable city all make me fall in love with the game, so much so that I stopped playing aoe2 for years, practically until 2 DE came out. Even if my pc at the time couldn’t handle water battles or many particles, I found a way to disable them and keep playing it for so many years. It really has become, after playing all age of empires games one after the other (even aom and aoeo) in my favourite game no only of the saga but of all my life.
I got to know about age of empires back in 2004 when i was only 6 years old… my neighbor used to play age of empires 2 and i used to go and watch… then i started playing myself
Bought Age of Kings soon after it came out after I saw it on the shelf. When AoM was released my PC couldn’t play it so I was really distraught for a long while. Luckily by 2005 I had a better PC and bought AoEIII the day it came out.
Despite liking the Medieval era a bit better AoEIII had depth that AoEII lacked from cards to gameplay everything was just better for me with AoEIII so I’ve been with it since then. The game is still so innovative to this day. Love what Tantalus and FE has done. I’ll gladly support this game for the next decade if it meant more content. Top game of all time for me.
My dad get AoE1 and AoE2 with their expansion in a pack, he didnt know, just an offer. Then he played with my brother with one CD. I played sometimes with chinese haha
Later my brother asked for AoE3. With TAD they get a copy and let me with war chiefs. Then I started with germans sending infinite settler wagons (i didnt train villagers, I had 6yo), some time later I meet ottomans, the perfect ones. After that I started with azzys and if I played with my brother’s account I used Chinese, I loved Chu Ko Nu at that time. Hahaha. I dont have stopped playin this game since that.
So much nostalgia. I was exposed to AOE2 first when a friend from club had the disc and lend it to me. It was a great experience.
After a few months, we had a Robotics competition at the mall and there was a electronics store, which showcased the latest games and allow you to play on the PC on display there. The game which was on at that time was AOE3. It blew my mind. I fell in love with the ships and the the details. Someone had been playing the campaign missions and when I got on the PC, it was the final mission of act 1, the fountain of youth. Little me was having a blast and got scolded by my teacher for missing out on the competition lol
From there was when I delved into AOM which was another awesome game
In 2003, my dad’s colleague at office gave him a CD which had the demo of AoE2 Age of Kings on it. My dad brought it home and I played the demo to death.
Then in 2005, AoE3 came out and I found the physical CD at a shopping mall and begged my dad to buy it for me. He said he would buy me the CD as a present if I studied hard and got good grades. So I spent all year studying and getting good grades. I finally got to play AoE3 in 2006.
And I played continuously for 4 years. Between 2010 and 2017 I couldn’t play as much since I had lots of schoolwork and started grad school. But I started playing once again from 2018, both AoE2 and AoE3. It was a good time to start too, since the DEs came out and in 2020, with the release of AoE3DE, I have been playing this exclusively…
I got to know the Age of Empires saga via AoE1 when I was very young (can’t remember how old I was XD). I don’t know if I ever managed to reach the last age without cheating but making those units which had shiny upgrades was the best thing ever. I was also too bad to finish any campaigns but I just repeatedly played the first missions because that’s just what you did back then. I had fun replaying them in the DE version later when I actually had a functioning brain
I very distinctly remember playing on a random map and getting a seed that I really liked. So I kept replaying it that entire day and then the next morning I wanted to load it up again but couldn’t! I of course had no clue they were rng and kept looking for it for days
And I must’ve played this specific scenario a hundred times!
My most played game by far is Age of Mythology though, PROSTAGMA!
the way i got into the series was playing AOE2 (along with other games like worms) in my after school daycare when i was like 6-9, eventually i ended up wishing for the game for a birthday and my dad got me AOE3 instead, the mission on Malta was very interesting because at the time my family would often go on vacation to Malta. But safe to say i was in love with AOE 3 from the beginning, a couple years later i started playing online and that is how i actually learnt English. until then i had simply played the game through experience/those small icons you see in the UI.
My dad got me into AOE2. He just installed everything which came with the new computer back in 2001 I think and tried it by accident.
He fell in love with it and got me and my brother to play too. We’ve always played on Islands building Fire ships to patrol the home island for years and years on All Tech game mode. That’s why I’m probably the exception with liking both All Tech and Islands
. He meanwhile stopped playing it a long time ago because it was too addicting which I can definitely understand.
To be honest, I’m a bit in a torn relation with this game too because it can really get too captivating sometimes to the point that it’s unhealthy.
AOE3 specifically I started playing actually not when it first released. The graphics were too demanding for our computer so we had to wait a few years. To be honest, I first hated AOE3 due to all the strange limitations and the boring civ roster. I only recently started to like AOE3 due to the excellent Wars of Liberty mod as well as the African expansion pack and home city customizations for the Asian Dynasties and Native civs.
I am and will always enjoy those games in singleplayer. I really can’t stand the stress in multiplayer games and I don’t like early rushes and aggression. Weirdly I’m almost more interested in the build up phase than the actual fighting.
I’m hoping they will keep releasing for both AOE3 and AOE2 DLCs. I still hope we’ll see Oceania one day officialy in the franchise. Playable Kongo and Mississippi for AOE2 would be great too.
I didn’t get into it until 2006! A couple friends were talking computer games and they recommended I try AOE. I went to Staples and bought a AOE/AOE2 combo pack with Rise of Rome and The Conquerors for $10.
My first match was in AOE and I remember thinking it was pretty cool that you could hunt the lions. After getting frustrated that the AI would just build 1000 towers and go for a wonder, I pulled out AOE2 from the combo pack and immediately loved it. I played that for a couple months until I learned that there was an AOE3 and that I could play as the Germans.
I gathered $20 and bought it, and was enthralled after my first match (Germans vs French on Yukon). Shortly after, the warchiefs was released and I happily spent some birthday money getting the expansion. Ever since then, I’ve been completely hooked on AOE3!
My second-uncle (cousin of my father) copied games and had the trial version of aoe 3 back in 2005,and since he knew I liked human history,he gave it to me and then I ended up buying the game for Christmas 2005 and from there in 2006,aoe 2 and aom; in 2008 aoe 1;in 2009,aoe 3 the warchiefs and tad;then in 2011 I wanted to try aoe online but I could never make it work (I was able to play it recently in 2017 with project celeste);then between 2013-2016, aoe 2 HD with its expansions,aoe castle siege and aoe 3 wol and from 2018 aom EE and each and every one of the DE editions until currently ending with the highly anticipated aoe 4 in one week and half ago…
I was a kid, probably about 10 years old or so and my dad pc came with a cd with multiple demos, one of them was aoe1, I absolutely loved that game and imagine my happiness years later when I found out that there was an aoe2 and aoe3 had just launched.
The moment I saw this aoe3 trailer I was absolutely astonished by the visuals of the game and I did all I could to get just to find out I couldn’t run it cuz my pc had windows 98 . So I had to wait a few years more to be able to play it, and a few more years to be able to play it with good settings and without water maps freezing!!
I really have some good memories of this game and the saga in general, good old times!!
I started playing aoe2 in 2005 thanks to my father on windows 98 , then he bought the CD version game in 2012 and I started playing at the same time as him, I remember that he punished me because I had to use his CD key to be able to play online and suddenly he couldn’t play online because of me , then I took a big break because I did my school and I started playing again in 2015 with my friends, and I started playing competitively in 2018, and since then I have never stopped this game
I first became acquainted with the franchise in an internet café around 1997 or 1998 (I think) when I saw the people next to me playing AoE1. I am a huge history fan and immediately started searching for the game. I am not proud to say that my first copy was a pirate version of the game.
Some years later a relative from the US sent me the installation pack for AoE2 by mistake (I had asked for AoE1), but I liked it even more. I eventually got the Conquerors expansion, and loved it all the same. However, in hindsight I feel it was always more about the size and passion of the AoE2 gaming community than the game itself, since I always found it too ahistorical and too similar in civs.
Then in 2006 I heard that AoE3 had come out. By then I was already working on my own and was able to order online a CD of the game. I remember I had to buy a whole new gaming computer because the game would not run in my old one. This third entry had all I felt was missing from AoE2 and more and I migrated fully to the AoE3 fanbase.
My love affair with the game had a bit of a setback in 2007 when I bought my first house and had burglars come in and raid it only two weeks after moving in. I lost almost everything I had. My gaming computer all my game and musical CDs, my TV, my photographic cameras, and worst of all, my copy of AoE3. I stopped playing until TAD came out and I decided to repurchase the original CD and that expansion.
A few years later I bought the game yet again, this time on Steam, during a discount event to get the full version and finally have all three expansions. It was a bit of a mystake, since only three years later the DE came out… and I bought it too. It’s crazy how many times I’ve bought this same game, now that I think of it.
. So I had to wait a few years more to be able to play it, and a few more years to be able to play it with good settings and without water maps freezing!!
, then I took a big break because I did my school and I started playing again in 2015 with my friends, and I started playing competitively in 2018, and since then I have never stopped this game