I’m not a huge gamer. But I recall greatly enjoying Age of Empires – setting peasants to work tilling fields, digging for gold, building cities, catching fish; while armies defended the homeland and/or went out raiding & conquering & pillaging.
(Sidebar: what category does this fall into…sim? role-play?)
So what’s out there now that I’d like? (I’ve got an iPhone and a Mac).
I’ve been told that the various Warcraft iterations were generally enjoyable. Starcraft and Starcraft 2 were fun for me.
E(x)plore, E(x)pand, E(x)ploit & E(x)terminate.
I’m not the best guy to give you advice on the best ones but that tag might help you research some.
Age of Empires falls into what’s called RTS, which stands for Real-Time Strategy. Real-time as opposed to turn based, so you do not get unlimited time to make up your mind with a move like in games such as Master of Orion or Civilization. Enemies swarm and attack you and you have to click around and gather your troops and order them to defend, though most games have an auto-attack option and you just need to place them where you want.
If you like AOE, definitely get the expansion pack Rise of Rome, I think it was only like $5 last time I heard on Steam. There’s always the sequels: Age of Empires 2 and Age of Empires 3. They’re set in different time periods.
From what I remember, AOE was very slow paced. Buildings take forever to kill, not to mention walls, and regular campaigns against the computer could take hours for a single map.
The most famous RTS now is probably Starcraft. If you’re used to the pace of AOE though, Starcraft and especially its sequel SC2 is much faster. Those games are also better storyline wise. AOE didn’t really have a story, you learned some history about opposing ancient tribes and went through a campaign raising one tribe out of the stone age. Rise of Rome has you leading the Romans in a time of conquest. However, Starcraft tells an epic spacefaring story about 3 races and a battle for the universe.
You know what used to love to do?
Play these games and cheat my way to winning (never online…always in campaign) because I am just godawful at them, but I loved the thought of them, and loved how the story/battles all played out.
If I ever get a half decent desktop again I very well might just do that with Starcraft 2…
AOE was fun because of the map maker. I’d make a giant map of all trees, and start mine and the computer’s bases on the opposite side of the map. After like 2 hours of tree chopping, we’d have these giant armies smash into each other. Hilarious fun
From reading the Wiki article linked above, it seems the grandaddy of this genre is Sid Meier’s Civilization; and when I went to the App Store and searched “RTS”, there it is – Civilization V.
Anybody played it? Recommend?
I liked Rise of Nations best.
Civ is much different from AOE. Civ is turn based, but it does have the historical “feel” of AOE to some degree. You may enjoy Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 4 which are slower, historical RTS games, but they’re still a lot different from AOE.
I’d actually recommend checking out the enhanced edition of Age of Mythology, which was Age of Empires With Gods and Mythic Units. You could also try Warcraft 3, which was great, though mostly for the custom maps. I really don’t want to advertise myself, but I’m doing an LP of it so if you want to check out some gameplay here’s my channel, I’m pretty early in, but you can see how it sort of plays.
There’s also Starcraft 2, but it’s much, much quicker paced than the other games that have been mentioned.
Civilization is turn-based, not RTS. I love it, but it’s probably not the game you’re looking for.
I haven’t played Civ 5, but that series is explicitly not RTS.
R = real time.
RTS games tend to be less involved. That’s not a bad thing. Some hardcore turn based games can take weeks to play (or a decade!) RTS generally take a few hours max, have fewer resources. AOE is a little bit more in the involved direction, e.g. food is a spendable resource, and comes from multiple sources. Warcraft and Starcraft are the most popular examples, although WC3 is a bit more in the RPG direction in some parts (smaller armies, more stats). Some people don’t like that, but I liked that one the best. Less twitchy reflexes needed.
4x I’d say is a specific category in (often, not always) turn-based mode.
Age of Empires II was re-released last year as AOE II HD on Steam. Included with that was the Conquerors expansion, which added a few play improvements and civilizations, and a professionally re-done player-created expansion called The Forgotten, which did the same. While the original AOE II is no longer supported by Microsoft for multiplayer, you can still find enthusiast servers to play on if you want to die quickly and gloriously, or you can play on the Steam servers with the HD version.
In my opinion, having been an average player of AOE II since its release, it’s exactly what you’re looking for. It blows the doors off the original and has stood the test of time very well. AOE III looks amazing but has a very different feel and its play mechanics are something I never really got used to.
Pretty much any RTS designed in the 90s, but, especially, in my opinion, C&C through RA2 (but mostly RA), Age of Mythology, Star Craft, and, possibly, other AoE iterations. I liked the original AoE, but hated all of the sequels.
Hmmm, you might also enjoy the total war games, specially if you want to dabble with turn based strategy a bit.
The game is split into two main parts. The world campaign is turn based and you play on a world map where you move armies around, engage in diplomacy, send out spies and assassins, build up your cities, etc. Then, in combat, the game switches to a real time game, similar to combat in Age of empires. You control thousands of men on the field of battle and you need to outmaneuver your opponents by using terrain like hills or forests or rivers to secure your flanks, hide units, protect ranged infantry, etc.
Best of both worlds. I’d recommend Total War: Rome II emperor edition, or Shogun 2, depending on which settings appeals to you most.
0 A.D. is the game for you. It doesn’t get more Age of Empires-y than that.
I might have to give it a shot. The price is certainly right. 
I used a play a Star Wars version of AoE that was fun. I can’t remember the name of it.
Galactic Battlegrounds. I still have it on disc.
So based on all the valuable feedback above, I decided to go with Age of Empires II HD, which meant that I downloaded Steam (I didn’t want to “join the community”, I just want to play a freakin’ game…but OK), ponied up my $19.99 and bought the game.
Which installed, clean as a whistle. It appeared in my library But when I click on it, I get a message saying “not available on this platform”. I went to the support site, and discovered that this means that it’s not compatible with my operating system (OS X 10.10.2)
Seriously? They couldn’t have caught that in advance? I think that deserves a hearty “fuck you, Steam”.
Welcome to Steam. Half the time I buy a game, I have to open a problem ticket with them to get permission to install it.
Sadly, that’s where all my favorite games live…