Adding a unique chapter to the Age of Empires series. By relying on the空白 of recorded history, it allows for limited but meaningful imaginative expansion. I imagine many historians would be quite delighted to engage in such speculation.
Another advantage: establishing a new starting point for the Age of Empires series.
The old mechanics and style of the Age of Empires franchise may no longer fully satisfy players born after 2010. A major innovation is needed.
Why not start a new series? For example, name it “Age of Primordials” or “Dawn of Civilization.”
Currently, RTS games on the market are largely mediocre. While Age of Empires was developed in the same era as Warcraft, it still far surpasses the various RTS titles available today. Therefore, if developers were to create a new series from scratch, it would likely be poorly designed—especially in terms of visual style.
Alternatively, it could be approached similarly to Age of Mythology—as an expansion of the Age of Empires universe.
In fact, I believe the reason Age of Empires II has endured for so long lies in the unique appeal of its visual style. You can compare it to any other RTS released in recent years, and you’ll feel the difference. It’s something you can sense intuitively, but can’t quite put into words.
Now unless you believe Malazan to be a good substitute for history, we didn’t have empires in those days. In fact, we barely have any real understanding of those elder days, it is only in the last couple of centuries that we have managed to peer into our deep past beyond the classical era. And from that, we have an idea of the past that may still be very wrong. All this is to say, we have barely started understanding history, nevermind pre-history and our primitive past.
Then there is the issue of variance. The whole point of exploring different ages is that of change, usually due to technology. And that, is very likely also extremely limited by our understanding. Archaeologists seen to think Handaxes were practiced for millions of years, for instance. Bows and Spears coming in much later. How do you differentiate one age from the next when we don’t have a meaningful grasp of that era? More importantly, how do you design riveting gameplay with such fundamental lack of information?
Empire Earth worked because it limited those primitives stages to very limited capacity, and travelled quickly through stages of technological advancement to create distinct and unique gameplay.
While Empires: Dawn of the Modern World does not venture far into our cryptic past, I found it more exciting than most AoE games due to its willingness to explore vastly different time periods. From medieval times to the modern period. It has a much more engaging tech advancement and gameplay experience than AoE’s current age ups consisting of slightly fancier buildings and pointier sticks.
Precisely because the Stone Age isn’t fun, I don’t play AoE1 much.
A game based solely on the Stone Age for Age of Empires… well, there weren’t “Empires” back then, so as Croissantini says, it wouldn’t make much sense.
There wouldn’t be enough material for Landmarks to differentiate civilizations in a cool way.
There would hardly be any unique units or even unique technologies.
There wouldn’t be any Wonders.
The first civilizations with notable characteristics of forming stable states really appeared 5,000 years ago (3000 BD), with Babylon, Egypt, Caral, and China. Before that, even 100,000 BC, is pure speculation.
Well, nothing stops any company from making games set in that era, but for an RTS… there’s not much to adapt.
Could it be because there were no empires at that time?.. The oldest empires in history are Egypt (5000-30 BC) and Sumeria (3500-2100 BC), and those are already in AoE1/Return of Rome…
Of course, I couldn’t have said it better myself…
Yes, the Empire Earth saga had several interesting ideas to try and surpass Age of Empires:
EE 1: Covered as much as possible with 15 ages, from the Stone Age to the space age… a masterpiece, but it covered too much.
EDotM: Covered the most popular ages in history (Middle Ages, Napoleon, World Wars)… an interesting but more focused experiment.
EE2: Repeated the EE1 formula, but without the Stone Age or space age, attempting to innovate with territories.
EE3: Simplified everything to 5 ages like Age of Empires III and is a mix between RoN and WC3… not a bad game per se, but a bit weak.
Yes I support this idea. The first age of empires was set in that era, why not go back to it’s roots. it is a different kind of game-play too. Instead of having farms from age 1 make it difficult to obtain for example in age 3. It will be an interesting concept. Food is only accessible through hunting and gathering at the beginning and afterwards in mid game you can develop agriculture or go for fishing in order to sustain your empire. Another option would be to raid the opponents granaries or trade for it. After age 3 when you become agricultural society you can trade back the food for the other resources that are scarce. This gives me another idea for having multiple paths, you can either be an agricultural society with farms or be nomadic society with cattle and sheep and raiders.
I’m happy as long as it’s modern (all of the 20th century until the mid-21st century) and then Age of Empires VI is in the “relatively distant” future (22nd to 26th centuries) (2100-2500)…
Sorry I should say it would be very boring or it would be complete fantasy. For 100,000+ years ago you’re talking pre bow and arrow. Like guy with stick vs other guy with stick vs guy with rock.
This being AoE, I assumed some amount of consistency with history.
We could start playing as a single cell organism better. Then evolve into a creature, then a tribe, then a civ.
The timeline that you’re talking about sounds great but for a survival game, maybe something like Farthest Frontier. The first age of empires should be treated more as a proof of concept IMO. There’s nothing really to take from there. And its timeframe we could say it starts roughly at 12000BC. Not 1M years ago !
For an older setting I posted a concept for the bronze era that I liked here. I could see it going even beyond 2500, but 12000BC? we go back to cavemen and mamooths.
