My dad and I used to go around to my uncles house to play AOE when it first came out. When I came home from school, I drew strategy ideas for when we next went over to play it. 
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My first experience was with AoE1 back in 1998. My dad got a desktop computer (Win98) from his workplace, and with it came a CD-bundle with different software etc and a demo of AoE1 Got hooked on it, and managed to get the full version shortly after.
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Although I did play AoE, the most fond memories come from AoE2. Iāll always remember how epic it seemed listening to Wallaceās history and how deeply wounded and revenge thirsty I felt when Joan was burnt. Truly these games are the responsables for me liking history.
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AOE Trial, Reign of the Hittites. A friend found it on one of my MSN disks and introduced me to it. I loved Opening Moves and played it almost daily. The Battle of Kadesh was impossible and I played it for years before beating it. I got the game because I convinced my parents it was educational 
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I first played AOE at a friends,on his LAN, in the run up to GCSE revision, from then on I was hooked. After school or during the summer holidays/revision period I would text him on my Phillips C12 mobile phone to see if āthe coast is clearā i.e his parents are out so we could play. I bought ROR so we had another disc to play 2v2 on his LAN and Wavelan with a mate who lived across the road. I bought ROR even though I didnāt have a PC myself :). It was all about Choson Legions versus Centurions and non-attack times back then.
A few months later I then got my mate to build me a PC at a time when RAM was crazily expensive, paid Ā£150 for 128mbs and built an AMD K62 - 500.
I joined the Zone on 56k dialup with an ISP called Libertysurf where you got an hours internet free providing you had banner advertising at the top of your screen. After an hour the net would disconnect and you would have to redial. Hilariously, even in game the banner remained square over your resource tab and it weirdly meant you had to click below units to select them, I got quite good knowing roughly how much res I had despite not being able to see it :).
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Like Mageās dad, I got my first AoE Copy when I bought a Gateway computer in December of 1998. I was 25 and had learned computers with my commodore Vic20 and Apple II in school, but was just coming into the world of the āPentiumā. My roommate who was a lot older than me and I linked our computers together with a telephone cable from modem to modem and played AoE 1 against each other all the time! AoE II was so much nicer and was my favorite game for years and years. Glad to see it brought back in this way!
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AOE ROR Trial Version played multiplayer on MSN Gaming Zones made some good friends back then.
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Age of Empires II, I was about five or sixā¦ the game that really ignited my love for RTS and the Medieval Era, and in turn gaming and history in general. My dad got Age of Empires II: Gold Edition for me at some point and I played it on his old Gateway computer all the time. I still remember my naivety while playing, finding such wonder in the longbowmen of the Britons and the post-Roman power of the Byzantinesā¦ Now I canāt wait to actually play as the Romans in a game like this!
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I was around 10-12 years old and a friend of mine strongly advised me to buy Age of Empires II, Iāve found its Gold Edition in a newly opened mall and bought it.
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Was the first game I played, my uncle realized that I was watching when he played and saw that I was interested, one day he explained how he played and let me play for a while and I was surprised, I loved the game and I still play Age of Empires and collect them :#
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In 1999 in a GameStop store looking a game where you creates an army.
So I see the AoE Gold Edition box.
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@MageOfEmpires said:
My first experience with AoE, though, was pretty funny. I played for who knows how many hours vs the computer in Random Match. Every game I would get out-teched as I had club men and the comp would come crashing in with axemen and archers. I would get slaughtered. The next game, Iād have a ton of club men and hold off a few waves and theyād eventually come in with cavalry and better archers. Slaughtered again. It took many games and many hours before my child brain realized I could advance to the next age to access the better units. That was such a revelation for me and from that point on, I was hooked.
Oh god this is like reading about my own childhood. Had exactly the same experience. It took days (maybe more?) before I figured that out. I used to look at the tech-three foldout at night and just dream about the mysterious and magical and oh so golden units that it promised would be available later on. For some reason I had gotten it into my head that I had to beat the āfirst levelā of random map in order to get more units. Because we had played some C&C on my friends playstation (I think, a console at least) and in that game you got new units for every level. Beating random map in stone age was not easy though and we never got really far. At some point we figured it out by a fluke, and it was this amazing revelation. I can still picture in my head the exact surroundings of my TC in the game we figured that out, it has burned into my memory.
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I think my first AoE was the demo of the original one which was on some freeware CD disk. Later I found Rise of the Rome trial edition from some Win98 CD. I really like it, I think the mood in it is better than in AoE 2.
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Let me start of by saying that my english is far from good, and that I hope that even though my grammar might sound more like german with english words, I shall try my best to make this not an eyesore to the reader.
Iām actually not quite sure anymore when I played Age Of Empires I for the first time. I certainly was around the age of 8 or so, and certainly quite too young for a game like that, since I didnāt even know what the word āTutorialā meant. I just clicked the āRandom Mapā button, and I was already lost in the game, and I assumed that the gameplay was alot deeper than it actually was. With my brother, even younger than I was, right beside me, we argued about if units could die in the desert. For some reason one of us accidentally pushed the āDeleteā-Button, and for the rest of the game it was set that we would never move our troops into the desert again (āI told you so, look at the skeletons, that ought to mean something!ā).
For a short time we experienced the joy of seeing small fishing-boats travelling over a extreme tiny pond of water, until the AI attacked. At that time, I had like 4 houses and a barrack built, and since I didnāt know that something like āAgesā existed, I was completely overwhelmed by the AIās cavalry-units (I did posses around four or five clubmen at the time). Iām not quite sure any more how I was able to fend off the attack (I assume that the AI continued to destroy my buildings instead of killing the troops), but right after the attack my brother and I discussed how we are supposed to get horses. I came up with the theory that one was supposed to ācatchā horses in the wild, while my brother (younger and wiser than me) thought correctly by saying that I just didnāt build the right building yet. To conclude it: I lost that map terribly by trying to find non-existent horses while avoiding all desert-tiles while being completely unaware of the fact that one could advance into another ageā¦
That would conclude my first experience with any AOE-Title ever, and while I certainly see myself as a dumb, far-too-young kid trying to play a RTS-Game now, I also have to say that I kind of miss the time where I didnāt know anything about the game and where every step into the darkness of the fog of war seemed like an adventure to me.
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My first experiance. I was about 12y old. And a good friend of my parents was showing me his games. He opend up AOE! And i was already playing the settlers so i was in love on the first sight. We started playing and joking around. Trying out the car cheats and builing imense towns. I was staying 3 days with them and i played 3 days non stop that game.
The day i turned 13 i got a CD with AOE 2. I was the happies kid alive. Later i started playing 1 and 3. I think i have over 6000 hours in all those games.
I LOVE THEM!
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Christmas 1997 when I was twelve. I just got my new computer a few weeks earlier and the present from my godfather was AOE. At first I looked at it like it was some food that was long overdue. But then my godfather installed it on his portable and I became completely hooked ever since! I remember coming home, installing it there and then go through the fog of war to the place where there were berry bushes in the previous game. On that moment I realised that the random maps were indeed random every time you start a new game. Speaking of which ā¦ Now on my Win 10 PC with SSD and 1000x the performance of my first computer I almost donāt see āStarting a new gameā anymore, while twenty years ago it took minutes. Or at least it felt like minutes.
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My first time playing was on it class room on after school lan-party. Even thought I got destroyed by better players I still played hours after hours and Im still learning this wonderful game. I hope we can make IV as good as II
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The first PC in our house in 1998 and my first video game wasā¦ AoE! Immediately captured my heart. The introā¦ Played it then for hours with my brother next to me as Egypt on a random map. We found out so many things about the gameplay through trial and error. It was so hard but so incredibly beautiful.
First discovered the campaigns over a week later. Played them again and again without ever getting bored. There I was able to join my heroes from the Ilias etc. Simply AWESOME
Wololo!
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I played the original Age of Empires back in late 1999/early 2000. My older sister introduced it to me on our family computer (and only one at that time), and I used to play it 24/7. The funny part was that I was six years old when I started playing it (Iām almost 23 now) and I still remember almost all of the gameplay.
I really enjoyed the free-play style matches, and usually went with the Egyptians as my Empire. And if the game didnāt end with me destroy all opposing sides, it ended with me building a Giant Pyramid.
The main campaign was rather enjoyable as I remember one of the levels was simply leading a hero (I think it was Hannibal from Carthage) on a war elephant through a heavily wooded map to other side of it That one was interesting.
And, while I am ashamed to admit this, I loved the cheat codes of the early one. I mean, cars that shot rockets, laser-men, and priest who walked as fast as the Flash really cracked me up.
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My first PC GAME ever ! love it since first day with AoE 1
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