How did you find out about aoe?

[momuuu]

I'm curious how you guys found out about the aoe series. How and when did you find out about it, why did it appeal to you? What was your first game like? What was your first online game like?

[momuuu]

I'll start: I visited a friend's house, he was playing aoe2. My parents got me Aoe2 for my birthday I think. First game wasn't that succesful. It took me quite a long time to figure out that you had to click on villagers to build shit, while I was looking for a menu with buildings instead (probably because I played lego rock raiders as my first "rts", and didn't speak english back then). I had a lot of fun playing it in single player mode, using all sorts of cheats. I'd always play on team islands and wall my island up, with alternating towers and shit. I also used control groups because my cousin once showed me how to do that, and 8 year old me figured that'd be pretty efficient. I never got to play that game at any serious level, I'd normally just have fun and never improve because I used cheats all the time.

I knew about aoe3 right when it released. One of my best friends had gotten it for his birthday, but I didnt have any occasion to get it for. My cousin pirated it for me and installed it on my computer so that I could play it anyways. I continued to play with cheats on, not getting past easy for the longest time. When I saw the younger brother of that best friend beat moderate AI, I got triggered to improve and stopped playing with cheats. I remember in my first online game, a 2v2, my mate claimed that players could easily beat a few expert AIs. It scared me, as I couldn't even beat a single AI. It turned out that was mostly a lie though, and I actually did quite well and improved quite quickly. One of the other moments I remember was the magical moment where I realized you could save your second shipment until age 2. Once I discovered mr milo's FF build I unnoobed and quickly climbed up to 2nd luitenant if I recall.

I also played aoe1 a little bit. I was looking at the store, and saw this cool looking game for 5 bucks. I never realized it was aoe1 until I installed it and saw similair logos. It was pretty enjoyable, but I dont recall having played it a lot.

[noissance]

I played age of empires rise of rome first, and I liked the different swordsman units. My first game was descent series, then I played doom, and then later I saw aoe 1 being played at a internet cafe. I also played aoe2 on the zone a lot in FFAs, but my skills have depreciated greatly. I liked AOM a lot, and after that I saw this game on sale at walmart. I really like this game, but ive been stagnant in the MS-LT level. I did get to rank 30's on my old account, but I used ottomans and spain a lot (vanilla), giving inflated score. Got this game on steam on christmas and ive played it casually ever since.

[benj89]

back in 1998 I believe, father was addicted before I was. He could play campaigns for hours and I just watched him, until I started playing all the Aoe 1, 2 and their expansion. Spamming firing ballista or priest was even more fun than cuirs!

stopped for few years, played nilla vs comp in 2005-2006 a bit but not extensively. received twc in 2007 as well as internet (yea.. didn't have internet before 2007 that's sad), and somehow went on eso I couldn't believe it was possible to play the game I love vs another irl person who could be outside of my house or even outside of france.
I remember the first game, see the loading, a treaty on some twc map I can't remember the name of it, and I just didn't believe the other guy was real. I thought it was just a CPU with a made up-name, started to talk to him and he was actually real! (I believe he was brazilian) I had to stop sport at the same period, and played it extensively for the next few years. I still don't get how I can enjoy this game so much compare to any other game I tried. Not sure what makes it so unique, there was one RTS version of LOTR which was pretty cool too, but aoe was just better.

[momuuu]

I quit aoe for a year. Played a dozen of rts games, if not more, but nothing could compare to aoe3. Not really sure why either.

[JoeEnders]

My older brother introduced me to AOE II when I was about 7 or 8. A few years later I heard about the Age III release and had to buy it, the rest is history.

[Method_man714]

Basically Jerom wanted to tell us how he got into aoe

[aaaron3000]

Bought AoK when I was a kid in probably 2002? Got the Conquerers separately a while later. Probably my most played game ever in total. I didn't play multiplayer much because I was on dial up, but went on the Zone a few times. Was never even close to being good at the game, but I got interested into custom campaigns. I remember when AoE3 was only a rumor and then it was announced, got it soon after but never played it as much as AoK. Fast forward to after graduating from college, I enjoy messing around with AoK HD online games and I love the challenge of multiplayer strategy games. I picked up AoE3 on steam sale last yer (never had the disk version of TAD and who wants to bother with disks anymore?) and after watching some of Zuta and Interjections youtube vids I realized how interesting the competitive multiplayer can be. I am quite a bit better at AoE3 1v1 than AoK, but I play both online now, more AoK for just fun noob level team games. I will never be very good at RTS, since I am old now and never practiced multiplayer when I was younger, but I've been playing the series for almost 15 years and it's still my favorite.

[pecelot]

Nice stories so far!
I actually don't know where my father got AoE2 from, but it seems he was and maybe still is a RTS fan, playing occasionally. So he introduced me to the game — a pirated AoK when I was 5 or 6. I remember I had 5 pirate CDs of that, but only 1 or 2 were working — the others would stop during the installation process at 67% when the militia unit was displayed on the screen and had one or two little holes in them. So much nostalgia.
Then I played with my older sister, playing on team islands and Black Forest, also campaigns, but mostly Joan of Arc and Saladin's ones. When I was playing them again in 2014 from scratch, I couldn't recall half of the missions.
It was really fun, but I actually couldn't play that much because my older sisters would sit on the computer and like I said the game was pirated. Then I somehow got to know that AoE3 will be released and my mother bought me it on my birthday in January 2006, as I mentioned in the other topic. It was really cool, I played extensively on Caribbeans, Amazonia and New England with Ports. Frederick the Great was my great nemesis, he trash-talked every game and pissed me off. I remember once walling the whole trading route on New England and protecting it with Guerreiros and organ guns. It was epic! But ofc it was on sandbox difficulty, I climbed up to the medium level, but then got rushed on Caribbeans by the almighty German and got scared of AI.
In 2007 I got TWC on my birthday again, 2008 and TAD was an identical story. I used to play Iroquois and Japanese respectively in the new expansions. Campaigns were fun back then, and they still are! I created my ESO account 2006 and named it after my current nickname I later forgot, so no ESO for me till 2015.
In 2009 I came across complete collection of AoE1, AoE: RoR, AoK and AoC and played AoE1 for the first time. It was kinda funny, I loved the music (I generally love AoE music, can't really decide which is my favourite!). But as a slowpoke I didn't install AoE: RoR or AoC.
I played occasionally for the next couple of years, having one-month periods of time when I was really interested in playing and then switching to something else, like FIFA (Manager) or Civ2. Later on, I discovered AoC YouTube videos, especially ZeroEmpires's ones. I get a feeling I described it somewhere else, sorry then if I repeat myself and it gets a little bit off-topic, so I'll just finish it here. :)

[Zhanson10]

Nice stories so far!
I actually don't know where my father got AoE2 from, but it seems he was and maybe still is a RTS fan, playing occasionally. So he introduced me to the game — a pirated AoK when I was 5 or 6. I remember I had 5 pirate CDs of that, but only 1 or 2 were working — the others would stop during the installation process at 67% when the militia unit was displayed on the screen and had one or two little holes in them. So much nostalgia.
Then I played with my older sister, playing on team islands and Black Forest, also campaigns, but mostly Joan of Arc and Saladin's ones. When I was playing them again in 2014 from scratch, I couldn't recall half of the missions.
It was really fun, but I actually couldn't play that much because my older sisters would sit on the computer and like I said the game was pirated. Then I somehow got to know that AoE3 will be released and my mother bought me it on my birthday in January 2006, as I mentioned in the other topic. It was really cool, I played extensively on Caribbeans, Amazonia and New England with Ports. Frederick the Great was my great nemesis, he trash-talked every game and pissed me off. I remember once walling the whole trading route on New England and protecting it with Guerreiros and organ guns. It was epic! But ofc it was on sandbox difficulty, I climbed up to the medium level, but then got rushed on Caribbeans by the almighty German and got scared of AI.
In 2007 I got TWC on my birthday again, 2008 and TAD was an identical story. I used to play Iroquois and Japanese respectively in the new expansions. Campaigns were fun back then, and they still are! I created my ESO account 2006 and named it after my current nickname I later forgot, so no ESO for me till 2015.
In 2009 I came across complete collection of AoE1, AoE: RoR, AoK and AoC and played AoE1 for the first time. It was kinda funny, I loved the music (I generally love AoE music, can't really decide which is my favourite!). But as a slowpoke I didn't install AoE: RoR or AoC.
I played occasionally for the next couple of years, having one-month periods of time when I was really interested in playing and then switching to something else, like FIFA (Manager) or Civ2. Later on, I discovered AoC YouTube videos, especially ZeroEmpires's ones. I get a feeling I described it somewhere else, sorry then if I repeat myself and it gets a little bit off-topic, so I'll just finish it here. :)

Pezet I hate u. That was my tp I clicked on it and it bugged out and let u have it.

[P i k i l i c]

Wow, interesting. My story is also a bit similar to the other ones. First I saw AoE II be played by a friend and I found it awesome, but I forgot more or less through years, until I saw a random AoE III video on youtube which made me think it was even better than AoE II. I downloaded the 3 trial versions of AoE III and I really enjoyed it. Few weeks later my parents bought me Aoe III Complete Collection on my birthday, 2011 if I remember well, very cheap on eBay lol.

I started to play vs moderate AI with Ports and didnt even use their civ bonus. I built mills in age I, because I thought that as you invest in sth, the gather rate would be better than with hunts. I also usually stopped villager production at ±30 settlers
I started to find the game less interesting and it happened me not to play for months
However I was looking for strategies on Google and with all I learnt from the forums, I started to be able to beat hard and even expert AI sometimes, which made me really glad

At this point I was no more scared to begin to play online. My first game on ESO was 9 months ago, a 4v4 on Bayou, and I remember the opponent team resigned in age I because it lagged very hard
As I discovered online play, I found the game even more interesting and I was happy to see that I improved each time I played, and quite faster than by playing skirmish

[iNcog]

I got bit by the RTS bug as a kid when I found some Total Annihilation CDs (which was randomly shipped with my parent's computer). Most of the games I had played at that point were flight simulators (CFS1 and CFS2 I had spent hours on).

Anyway I played TA to death as a kid, vs the computer of course. My mom got me AOE1 and I played a little but wasn't a fan of the 2D graphics. TA was in 3D and so were the Combat Flight Sims, so this to me was a crappy game. Never asked for AOE2 either because it was "only" 2D.

In like 2005 or 2006, I stumbled upon the AOE3 and was so happy since they had finally made AOE into a "real" 3D game. There was a demo too, which I downloaded and tried out (I was 13? 14?).

HOLY SHIT this game was AMAZING. The demo was so good that I went and begged my mother to buy me the game (cost like €40 or something). I remember waiting for it to come in the mail; I am talking about waiting for the mailman to arrive. Then I finally got the game; boy what a fucking blast it was.

It looked really good, units went into formations, you had cannons, you had 8 different civilizations and SO many cool maps (TA had like 2 civs lol, which were the same in a lot of ways too). You could level up your home-cities and stuff too, which meant SO much content. I spent so much time playing on maps like New England and Amazonia. I remember being "challenged" by the medium computer and being happy when I beat it. At those times, I treated RTS like you would a tycoon game, playing very relaxed, building up your base and army at your leisure. I didn't like Russians because they had bad units, I didn't like Otto because I couldn't make "only" 30 villagers (thus not wasting population space) and their units were weird. I wasn't a fan of civilizations without musketeers either.

So many good memories. After that, I laid off the game a bit, did other stuff. Then I had some good grades in like 9th grade or something and my parents got me a laptop with internet access (july 2007). My first idea was to load up AoE3 and become the #1 player in the world.

Fun shit. I joined agecomm, met up with goodspeed, we all made A414A together with a guy called tommo92 and a bunch of other cool people. DaOoof is one of those people btw. Dragon as well was there, though he was a lot less cynical than how we know him today. We spammed AgeComm, we spammed A414A forums, we talked and had fun. I remember 8 player obs / FFAs (sometimes more, so we had to have two parties), where I was generally able to beat everyone except for goodspeed, who just crushed us all.

Fuck lol, AoE3 has given me memories which no other game probably ever will. Love the game to death.

[pecelot]

Pezet I hate u. That was my tp I clicked on it and it bugged out and let u have it.

lol u mad?????

edit:

I started to play vs moderate AI with Ports and didnt even use their civ bonus. I built mills in age I, because I thought that as you invest in sth, the gather rate would be better than with hunts. I also usually stopped villager production at ±30 settlers

So what did you do with the covered wagons?
Haha, me too, I usually stopped at like 25—30 vills.

[momuuu]

I made 30 villagers exactly, put 10 on food 10 on wood 10 on gold. Then I'd make 50 ruyters, 50 skirms, 50 halbs and 5 falconets and crush the AI.

[pecelot]

wow, such a symetry, I'm impressed then, I was a bigger noob it seems
I used to split my army into two groups, one with a lot of soldiers and the other one with 10 mortars and some pikemen to protect them which would sneak behind AI's base and start sieging its buildings

[blackwidow]

My bro, GS :3

[momuuu]

wow, such a symetry, I'm impressed then, I was a bigger noob it seems
I used to split my army into two groups, one with a lot of soldiers and the other one with 10 mortars and some pikemen to protect them which would sneak behind AI's base and start sieging its buildings

I've always had a small amount of OCD, and that shined through in games like age of empires haha.

[P i k i l i c]

So what did you do with the covered wagons?

Haha I built the TCs but I trained settlers only from my 1st TC

And at least you guys had siege units.
About my army, I trained cassa/goon but without hit and run

[yemshi]

In rember sitting behind my brother who was the playing the TWC campaign and asking him why he'd make skirmishers and not musketeers.
His answer was: They are better. I was confused and really wanted to play myself, so the first thing I did was asking him if could play it (answer here being no) and then 1 year or so later bought it myself. My first acc was made years after that though.

[pecelot]

Hm, I was suspected of it as well, but I did other typical things, like researching all technologies, gathering all resources on the map etc. Actually, my army wasn't random as well, there were groups of 50 guerreiros, 30 halberdiers, 10 mortars and so on. But Dutch with 150 military pop can allow themselves to make even more symetrical compositions xD

[legion]

I actually got my first Age of Empires 1 disc from a cereal box when i was around 4. I think it was just a demo copy but from then on I have been AOE obsessed.

[iNcog]

i actually let my siblings play aoe3 a little, it would have to be their first computer game

i wish i hadn't introduced them to computer games, because now they like to use the internet and that makes my connection laggy

[CelticCrusader]

For me it all started back in 2000, my parents got a new computer and aoe1 came with it(along with other games i totally forgot about). As i was only 10 it was confusing at first, but engaging and i couldnt stop playing it. I then went to console gaming for a number of years. In 2007 i found my aoe1 disc looking dusty in a cupboard, and decided to have a game. Then i was playing it all the time.

I thought wow this game is amazing, and thought they must have made a sequel to this. So i searched online and found out about aoe2 and 3 and all these expansions. Instead of going on to aoe2 then 3 i skipped 2 altogether and bought aoe3(i did by 2 later ). I have yet to find another game that i enjoy as much as aoe3. My first online game was last november, i re bought the game on steam sale, as my disc broke, and decided to finally play online. My first game was a 2vs2 and we won because one of the other players was unresponsive lol. Now im trying to improve but hit a wall at sergeant level. Life at my age tends to get in the way of game time sadly :(

[Goodspeed]

My dad was subscribed to one of those PC magazines which included CDs with software tools and game demos. The demo version of AoE1 was on one of those, so I played it loved it and then got the complete version on my birthday. That was in 1997 or '98 when I was 7 or 8 years old. I then played AoE2 and AoE3 immediately as they came out, but only single player until AoE3.

[yoqpasa]

My parents gave me aoe2 when they bought our 1st PC in 2001