Video Game / Age of Empires I

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The first game of the Age of Empires series, simply called Age of Empires, was released in 1997. It offered 12 ancient civilizations (Assyria, Babylonia, Choson, Egypt, Greece, Hittites, Minoa, Persia, Phoenicia, Shang, Sumer and Yamato) and was set between the Stone and Iron Ages. The campaigns were set in Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Babylon and Yamato.

An expansion pack, Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome, added the Roman Empire and 4 related civilizations (Rome, Carthage, Palmyra and Macedonia). The campaigns were set in Ancient Rome, where the player, depending on the campaign, will side with Rome itself or with their enemies.

At E3 2017, the Definitive Edition was announced, an Updated Re-release that was released on February 20, 2018. The game received a drastic art style change as well as a reworking of some of its campaigns. In 2023, the game would receive another remake, this time in the form of an Expansion Pack for Age of Empires II's Definitive Edition named Return of Rome. This version of the game ports the original game to the AoEII Definitive Edition engine, adds three new campaigns (Sargon of Akkad, Pyrrhus of Epirus, and Trajan), and a new civilization for multiplayer (the Lac Viet) alongside balance adjustments.

Age of Empires I (and its expansion) features examples of:

• Aggressive Play Incentive: The third mission of the trial "Rise of the Hittites" campaign has just one patch of gold ore — across an ocean and solidly in enemy territory. The only way to collect some before it's all gone is to move quickly, ignoring fortifications and non-critical technological advancement in favor of aggressively disabling your immediate neighbor (without time for a thorough cleanup) and launching the first ships you can build to establish a foothold.
• Animation Bump: It's minor, but units introduced in the Rise of Rome expansion have smoother animations than units from the base game.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: There's a 50-unit cap which isn't affected by converting enemy units. Having such a low unit count means the highest tier units (Legionaries, Cataphracts, Centurions) move out of Awesome, but Impractical territory, meaning that such units need to be as good as possible in spite of their cost. On the other hand, the AI can and will fill the map with Catapults and Ballista Towers to compensate for the strict population limit by the time you have access to those high-tier units. If you didn't have anything that can outrange those towers (most civs in this game don't) you should rush early-game or might as well restart.
• Arrows on Fire: Alchemy, which gives a damage bonus to all ranged attacks (including the fire ships) except for the slingers and changes the relevant projectile sprites to burning equivalents.
• Artificial Brilliance: AI ranged units will try to move away from melee enemies before resuming the attack. Not much use for a catapult trying to run from a horseman, but an archer can and will kite your infantry, and unless you have an opposing archer to Draw Aggro and make him stop, just one lowly bowman can get a whole squad of your axemen killed. It reinforces the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, making cavalry (even the lowly Scout) that much more important overall.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • One of the greatest threats your army will face is your own catapults; since they avert Friendly Fireproof, a badly-aimed rock will kill your men just as dead as the enemy, and the damn things will launch at anything hostile that they see. Some players even forgo them entirely in favor of ballistas, which lack the splash damage but still deal considerable damage and don't kill your own units.
  • The units' pathfinding AI has a lot of problems. They can even kill themselves because they chose to go through the worst path possible.
• Artistic License – History:
  • Zig-zagged. The civilizations are designed to fight the same way their historical counterparts did. The Egyptians, for example, are good at farming and have powerful chariots and elephants, but no access to decent siege weapons and infantry. The campaigns follow historical events closely, and there's a decent amount of history which can be learned from the games. Being an RTS game, it doesn't strive to emulate the actual scenarios perfectly, however.
  • The Age System (Stone Age, Tool Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age) is mostly accurate to how major civilizations developed, however Japan (or Yamato, as it's called in-game) has the Yayoi period where Bronze and Iron were introduced and used both at the same time in Japan, effectively meaning the Bronze/Iron Age overlapped. Minoan civilization had also been extinct for centuries by the time the Iron Age began.
  • The Egyptian architecture set has a pyramid as a wonder, while the Mesopotamian set has a ziggurat. In real life the Great Pyramids at Gizeh were built a whopping 1500 years before the Iron Age and Mesopotamians and Iranians started building ziggurats in the Bronze Age. Of course, being able to build these wonders in the Bronze Age instead of the Iron Age would make Egyptians and Mesopotamian civilizations insanely overpowered.
• Art-Style Clash: The Definitive Edition, which came out two decades after the original game, gives the game a graphical overhaul which notably changes the Digitized Sprites to actual 3D models. However, cheat units still use their old graphics from the original game, giving them an "out of place" look.
• Awesome, yet Impractical:
  • In Rise of Rome, the Sacrifice tech allows Priests to instantly convert enemy units by killing themselves. The strict population limit is what makes it very impractical. Add an expensive price tag of 600 gold to another already gold-heavy priest. It's far more practical to use regular conversions then just to have them killed.
  • Catapults. People just simply avoid them because they can do more harm to you rather than the enemy. Thanks to its stupidity, they will be happy to try to launch a boulder at a single villager and hit your entire army.
  • The high-tier upgrades for some units dive into this, as they require resources in the thousands range when the 50-population limit makes the resource gathering rate very low.
• Badass Preacher: Priests. A good player can beat a match by just using an army of them. Egyptian Priests are even more dangerous, because they get a +3 range bonus that stacks with Afterlife, which also gives +3 range.
• Bad with the Bone: The villagers attack enemy units with big bones until Iron Age where they use pitchforks instead. (the change is only aesthetic though)
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Axemen are the backbone of most armies, since unlike their Clubmen predecessors, their attack is superior to that of mere villagers, and unlike Swordsmen, they don't cost any gold.
  • Bowmen don't get much in the way of upgrades, but unlike their Improved brethren, they don't cost gold to produce, making them a decent choice for spamming ranged attacks even at advanced ages.
• Cap Raiser: The various economic technologies increase both resource gathering rate and carrying capacity for wood, gold, and stone.
• Carry a Big Stick:
  • If you are desperate enough to send villagers out to fight from the Stone to the Bronze Age, you will find them wielding a giant bone.
  • The only military unit available in the Stone Age is the Clubman, a warrior armed with a spiked club. The only advantage he has over villagers is that he has twice their health points, but since he can't gather resources you have no incentive to train them until the Tool Age, when you will upgrade them to Axemen as soon as possible.
• Cast from Lifespan: Priests in the expansion get the Martyrdom technology, which allows a conversion to be automatically successful provided you sacrifice the priest.
• Classic Cheat Code: E=mc2 Trooper and Photon Man.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Your AI allies in the random map. The diplomacy mechanic is so flawed that they demand resources from you every few minutes. If you don't, they will declare a war against you and join the enemy's side. Sometimes they even do this out of nowhere if the game stretches on too long. And no, extorting resources from them is ignored at best. Later games fixed this with the "Lock Teams" function and making giving resources optional.
• Color-Coded Armies: Each of the eight possible army teams is associated with a color, in order: blue, red, yellow, brown, orange, green, gray and turquoise.
• Combat Chariot: Chariots are a type of cavalry that can be trained starting at the Bronze Age after the Wheel is researched. There are two types of chariot units: Chariot (a melee attacker trained at the Stable) and Chariot Archer (a ranged attacker trained at the Archery Range). Both Chariot units excel in countering Priests because of their increased conversion resistance. The Rise of Rome expansion allows Chariots to be upgraded to Scythe Chariots in the Iron Age, which grants them trample damage.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard:
  • One of the game's pre-scenario hints for the first scenario in the Glory of Greece campaign, "Land Grab", says "Attack only when you are truly ready; the Dorians are well-prepared for an onslaught.", which could be easily interpreted as "take your time to build your economy before attacking". Maybe it's sufficient on lower difficulties, but on Hardest this is the worst thing you can do as the Dorians will very quickly upgrade their Clubmen into Axemen and send them your way before you can establish your position (and if you attempt to go after Tyrinia first, the Dorians will quickly join in the melee with the intent to melt you). What you should do instead is interpret "when you are truly ready" as "as soon as the scenario begins" and rush them on the spot without even making a Town Center first so that they don't get the chance to become a threat. Just make sure you don't lose all your Villagers, or else you'll have a different problem on your hands.
  • "The Battle of Tunes" in the First Punic War campaign suggested that Long Swordsmen are one of Carthage's best units, alongside Fire Galleys and War Elephants. Carthaginian Long Swordsmen don't have any civ-specific bonuses at all, and units such as Horse Archers and Phalangites are more useful.
• Crutch Character: Tool Age units (Axemen, Bowmen, Scouts, Slingers) are useful in said age, but lose power quickly when Bronze Age is reached and they cannot be upgraded^note the Improved Bowman is not in the same line as the Bowman because it costs gold instead of wood, and prior to Definitive Edition, you needed the Axeman upgrade in order to research Short Swordsman. DE removed these pre-requisites, meaning Short Swordsmen are immediately available upon reaching Bronze Age. Very useful for spamming and if you're low on gold, though.
• Damage Is Fire: When buildings take enough damage, they are set aflame, even when they aren't being attacked by weapons that would allow that to happen. Being on fire doesn't cause additional damage, though, it is simply a visual indicator that significant damage has been dealt. Averted with the stone walls: early release pictures of the game showed them on fire, but this was changed in the final release to show gradual degradation instead.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Ballista Towers, though not at first. No matter how cool they look, the upgrade costs a small fortune and the ballista bolts they fire move much slower than arrows; even with Ballistics, there's a good chance whatever they're firing at will move before the bolt hits. However, when they're massed, their bolts are enough to even slice Armored Elephants like butter, compounded by the fact that buildings are easily massed, while units (and especially the expensive Elephants) can't, due to the 50 population limit.
  • Triremes suffer from the same issue as Ballista Towers with the additional drawback of costing population limit. However, their huge power spike compared to War Galleys outweigh the downsides.
• Digitized Sprites: Every unit and building sprite was rendered from CGI models.
• Distinction Without a Difference: The game has one cheat code for losing instantly and one cheat code to kill all players' units. Because losing all of your units always results in a defeat, both cheat codes are basically the same.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The game lacks many of the gameplay refinements of the sequels, only a few of which were fixed with Rise of Rome:
  • You cannot queue unit production prior to the expansion. You also cannot create units and research technology of different types at once; this was retained until the sequel.
  • Double clicking a unit will not select other nearby units of the same type. This is added in the expansion.
  • The only buildings with the ability to attack enemies are towers; the concept of garrisoning does not exist yet, so Town Centers cannot defend themselves, and there are no large, expensive defensive structures capable of firing multiple projectiles at enemies. Return of Rome allows Villagers to garrison inside Town Centers and towers, but this doesn't add arrows or increase the building's attack.
  • Units cannot walk over farms. Since players are expected to mass them for food production, this causes bases to be severely cramped and difficult for units to move around. This was changed in the Definitive Edition. Also, a single farm can be used by multiple villagers, though only one will collect food from it.
  • All human soldiers and non-Temple technologies have a food cost. Later games have human soldiers that don't cost food, usually archers.
  • There is no in-game tech tree or description for each civilization. Until the Definitive Edition, this information could only be found in the manual.
  • Civilisations are solely distinguished by numerical bonuses and the availability (or lack thereof) of common units and technologies. Team bonuses were only introduced in Return of Rome, and there are no unique units or technologies.
  • Most unit upgrades completely change that unit's name (for example Scout Ship-War Galley-Trireme). This was retained in Age of Empires II for most non-unique units; starting from Age of Mythology, different upgrade levels change only a unit's rank (represented by an adjective) while keeping the original name.
  • You don't start with a scout unit, so you are forced to rely on one of your villagers to explore the map. It takes an age upgrade and building a Stable to get the first good scout unit.
  • You don't have the ability to directly buy resources - trade units only gain gold in exchange for food, wood or stone.
  • Granaries are not only drop-off sites for non-animal food, but also used to research fortifications.
  • Economic technologies are researched at the Market instead of drop sites (this is reused for Age of Empires III, where resources don't need to be dropped off).
  • All units are male; it's not until Return of Rome that Villagers can be either male or female (with no functional differences) like in later games.
  • All civilizations speak the same Simlish language, and all civilizations with the same building style have the same Wonder, rather than each having a unique one.
  • All wild animals provide meat (herdable livestock don't exist yet), not just prey but also predators, and predators attack all units on sight, even siege engines. It's not too rare to get the "unit attacked" chime and when you center on it, finding an almost undamaged hoplite beside a lion's or crocodile's rotting carcass.
  • Started the game and skipped the intro expecting to hear the franchise's iconic theme at the main menu? Nope, this game uses a completely different theme - though what is now recognized as the series' theme existed in the game, here it's just another late-in-the-playlist track, "Gray Sky" or "New Technology", which otherwise only plays a snippet during the intro cutscene and one campaign FMV. The Definitive Edition has changed the menu music to the main series theme.
  • The game also does not feature any voice-acting and all details related to the campaign storyline are found in the instruction tab at the start of every scenario. The Definitive Edition does add a narrator to these instruction tabs.
  • A more minor example comes thanks to the Gold Edition, which packed the base game and the expansion onto a single disc. The original game's soundtrack was replaced entirely with new music for The Rise of Rome, while the Gold Edition features a selection of tracks from both with a completely new track order. This meant that there were four tracks each from the base game and the expansion that never play, so if a Gold Edition player gets their hands on the non-Gold Edition of the original game or Rise of Rome they'll have a completely different soundtrack. This also applies to the Definitive Edition as it plays remakes of all the base game and expansion tracks in their original order.
    • In tandem with the above, the original Loss and Win tracks were redone with The Rise of Rome and are the default in the Gold Edition even when selecting the original.
  • There are several units whose production is unlocked by researching upgrades that are otherwise unrelated gameplay-wise, and also provide additional effects apart from unlocking the unit, such as needing to research Wheel (which makes Villagers move faster) to unlock Chariots. Age of Empires II does have Chemistry, which increases the damage of ranged units alongside unlocking gunpowder technologies, but save for that exception, all technologies that unlock units have no additional effects.
  • Advancing in Ages simply requires the player to click on a button in the Town Center. This was retained in Age of Empires II before Age of Mythology introduced mutually-exclusive age-up options that a player needs to choose between.
  • There is no formation system in this game. As a result, your army will march like a complete mob and will bump into each other a lot without any proper micromanagement. This wasn't added in Definitive Edition, only added later in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - Return of Rome.
• Easy Level Trick: In "Oppression", the sixth scenario of the Yamato campaign, the goal is to destroy an enemy Government Center guarded by a large number of siege engines while they ask you for a huge sum of gold every few minutes. The quickest way to do this is to send a few villagers to draw fire near the building in question. Thanks to the catapults' Artificial Stupidity and massive splash radius, they will fire shots that hit their own Government Center while being easy for your villagers to dodge, and will win the scenario for you.
• Edutainment Game: The first purpose of the game is entertainment, but there's plenty of historical information available: the campaigns in the first game dealt with the history of four civilizations - Egypt (the tutorial), Greece, Babylon, and Yamato. While the missions themselves certainly sacrificed historical accuracy for gameplay, the mission intros gave decent background information. Rise of Rome's campaigns covered the history of Rome from both Rome itself and their enemies.
• Enemy Exchange Program: The priests can convert your enemies' units. Their priests can convert yours too. And priests can convert other priests.
• Firewood Resources: Wood and Stone, the eventual series' staples.
• Foregone Conclusion: One mission in the expansion has you playing as Hannibal, bringing the elephants over the Alps. You know how it's going to end, even if you win, and the victory text basically says, "Well, you'll be remembered as a genius for this tactic, at least."
• Friendly Fireproof: Catapults and Catapult Triremes avert this; they'll damage anything in the area of effect radius. Played straight with the Ballistae, Ballista Towers and bolt-firing Triremes, as their projectiles don't have any Splash Damage.
• Gaia's Revenge: The "Gaia" cheat lets you play as the neutral animals and gives you vision around every tree. Very limited, however, since you're put in control of units designed to be killed by villagers.
• Gladiator Revolt: One scenario in the Enemies of Rome campaign depicts the War of Spartacus. In the original version, you play as Crassus and starts at the Bronze Age, while the Slave Army has post-Iron Age tech. In Definitive Edition, the tables are turned, making the scenario a bit more appropriate: this time, you play as Spartacus with the small base while Crassus has the post-Iron Age army.
• Glass Cannon: Siege weapons, which can be devastating if used correctly, but require constant support from skirmishing units and priests to heal them.
• Gold-Colored Superiority:
  • Inverted for the "Swordsman" line of unit. The first one is the Short Swordsman, who wears a gold-colored helmet. It upgrades into the Broad Swordsman, which wears bronze-colored armor, and its next upgrade, the Long Swordsman, wears iron armor.
  • Played straight for the Cavalry's upgrade, the Heavy Cavalry. Both the rider and the horse wear golden armor.
  • Return of Rome redesigned the final tier units that look identical to their previous form ^note previously they were only denoted with a fiery background in their portraits, but they look identical on the map so that they would have gold in their designs. Heavy Cavalry, which was previously gold, was changed to wear silver armor instead.
• Guilt-Based Gaming: If you quit in the middle of the game, your side loses and you get scolded. It doesn't help that there's creepy music and a creepy skeleton in the background, while the Definitive Edition rubs salt in the wound by voicing the bad endings.
• Guide Dang It!: Want to know about the civilization tech tree and bonuses? Don't have an external guide or expect such information to be in the game? Good luck remembering them. The Definitive Edition included an in-game tech tree to fix this.
• Hero Must Survive: Some unique units trigger your defeat when destroyed.
• Historical In-Joke: One mission in the expansion involving Archimedes includes a one-time appearance from a unit called the "Mirror Tower," which fires lasers at enemy units. Archimedes supposedly found a way to harness the sun's energy in a similar manner. Sadly, the only way you can ever get a hold of a Mirror Tower is by using the Scenario Builder.
• Horse Archer: Come in horse, elephant and chariot varieties. Horse Archers are fast and hit the hardest, but they could not take damage well. Elephant Archers are slow and bulky, allowing them to tank and shield fragile units. Chariot Archers are weaker than Horse Archers, but they could be accessed an age earlier for civilizations that have them, resist Priest conversion, and cost no gold.
• Improbable Infant Survival: The BabyPrez chat unit, which is an infant on a tricycle, is the only unit in the game that doesn't die when it's out of HPs.
• Instant-Win Condition: Possessing all artifacts or ruins, or having a Wonder survive, for "2000 years", or about 20 minutes in Real Time.
• Inventing the Wheel: Wheel is a literal technology researchable from the Market, which improves your villagers' movement speed and allows the training of chariot units. Though, you can only research the Wheel at the Bronze Age instead of the Stone Age (as the trope suggests).
• Isometric Projection: The map is diamond-shaped, unlike many contemporary games. The practice was carried on in the sequels, though in them you can rotate the map.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: If you lose or quit a campaign scenario in The Rise of Rome, a short description of the consequences of your failure will be displayed - including a Bond One-Liner ("report to Catapult Unit XIV where you'll get another chance to have an impact on the Carthaginians"). Definitive Edition adds loss messages for the original campaigns.
• Lead the Target: The "Ballistics" upgrade allows your units to shoot at where the target will be, instead of where it is now.
• Low-Tech Spears: Stone Age Villagers hunt wild animals by throwing spears at them and likewise use fishing spears. Note that these are the only times spears are used before the Bronze Age in-game.
• Made of Explodium: Birds fly around randomly on the map, and if you ask a villager to attack one, it explodes harmlessly. It's... weird.
• Marathon Level: A few, but The Great Hunt is probably the most notable.
• Mid-Season Twist:
  • Age of Empires:
    • Glory of Greece ("Trojan War"): Greece defeats Troy. This is the last mission set in mythical times.
    • Voices of Babylon ("I Shall Return"): A new dynasty emerges.
    • Yamato, Empire of the Rising Sun ("Mountain Temple"): The Yamato defeat the Izumo.
  • Age of Empires - The Rise of Rome ("Alesia"): Julius Caesar turns his army on Rome itself.
• Mighty Glacier: War elephants and the Hoplite line are durable and deal lots of damage but move very slowly. The Persian and Greek civilizations, respectively, get bonuses that make those units slightly faster than standard infantry, turning them into Lightning Bruisers.
• Misplaced Wildlife: This particular installment is really bad at this.
  • There are American bald eagles and alligators, despite being set entirely in the Old World (though a relative of the latter could have been seen by the Shang, and people frequently confuse crocodiles for alligators) and while lions, gazelles and elephants fit in the Ancient Middle East they are a very weird vision when you are playing a campaign set in Europe^note https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/lions-europe/ Save for Greece]]; they only went extinct there around 100 AD or Japan. They are a carryover from early game development, when the game was entirely set in the Middle East and Greece, before ES/Microsoft realized that they could make more money in East Asia if they also used local civilizations. Return of Rome replaced the alligators with crocodiles, but nonetheless neither has any business being in the Alps.
  • The Egypt campaign features whales in the Nile.
  • All the elephants (wild and tame) are African, but Asian ones would be more familiar to most civilizations in the game.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Arrows will fly perfectly straight through their entire flight.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: The BabyPrez cheat unit, which is an infant on a tricycle, does not die when it's out of HP, it just falls off of the tricycle and cries, though it still counts as a dead unit.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: Ballista bolts fly so slowly that one unit under constant micromanagement can never get hit by them. The AI knows this, and will cheerfully dance its units around all projectiles including arrows.
• Paleolithic Pioneer: The time period in this game spans between surviving as hunter-gatherers in the Stone Age to the rise of the Roman Empire in the Iron Age. Every game starts at the Stone Age, during which players must gather resources and develop their civilization until they are ready to advance into the Tool Age, where development and warfare are more defined.
• Perspective Flip: An interesting case of this in Definitive Edition. In the sequel, there is one mission where you play as the Huns during the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields. Definitive Edition has reworked the last mission of the Imperium Romanum campaign so the map, positions, and teams are all the same, only this time you're playing as the Romans instead of the Huns.
• Power-Up Letdown: It's hard for some players to tell if the Ballista Tower is actually a good upgrade, since its projectiles are stronger but slower than the Guard Tower's arrows.
• Primitive Clubs: The Clubman is a Stone Age Barracks unit which uses a club in order to attack opponents.
• Remixed Level: In Definitive Edition, the Roman campaign mission The Coming of the Huns was completely revamped to become nearly identical to the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields mission of the sequel's Attila the Hun campaign, except with a Perspective Flip as you are playing as the Western Roman Empire.
• Retraux: Classic Mode in the Definitive Edition allows players to change the graphics and music to that of the original Age of Empires, though it is restricted to random map modes.
• Savage Setpiece: Elephants can be safely ignored unless they've been attacked by your side. Averted with the stronger Elephant Alphas, which will attack anything and everything even if not provoked.
• Shoot the Medic First: Even if you can out-damage the healing, you don't want the enemy Priests alive long enough to convert your units.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: The Yamato campaign is probably the worst, but all four campaigns have issues with this, even the tutorial campaign.
• Scratch Damage: Any damage is divided by 5 against buildings, so most attacks that aren't from siege weapons will only deal 1 damage.
• Screw the Money, This Is Personal!: Tributing an enemy AI will trigger the following line:
  "Your petty offering will not sway my determination to crush your empire."
• Shout-Out: "I'll be back" and "I shall return" are the names of some levels.
• Siege Engines: Catapults and ballistae, as well as their fancier upgrades.
• Speaking Simlish: Units all speak in one fictional language, regardless of civilization, compared to later games that gave more accurate voice clips based on the civilization. "Rogan?" (one of the possible clips a villager uses when selected) and "Wololo!" (one of the priest's clips when converting an enemy) in particular became an ongoing joke.
• Spiked Wheels: Scythe Chariots in Rise of Rome. They cause splash damage around the Chariot when it attacks.
• Splash Damage:
  • Catapult units have a huge and deadly area of effect radius that doesn't tell friend from foe. It's not advisable to send melee units to attack along with them unless you want to see many of your own soldiers killed. Averted with the Ballista, making it a better option for a joint assault.
  • The war Elephant do this thanks to their tusks.
  • The Scythe Chariots from Rise of Rome deal splash damage when attacking, thanks to their Spiked Wheels.
• Sudden Name Change: Both units from the "photon man" and "e=mc2 trooper" cheat codes are called "Nuke Trooper" in the original game. In the Definitive Edition, the "photon man" cheat unit is renamed "Laser Trooper" to differentiate it from the other Nuke Trooper.
• Suffer the Slings: In the expansion, Slingers are available from the Tool Age and onward. They receive bonuses against archers and base defences, with the latter making them mildly successful at raiding, but become obsolete almost immediately since they receive very little in the way of useful upgrades once the Bronze Age is reached.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Infantry > Cavalry > Archers and Siege Engines > Infantry.
• Technology Levels: Stone Age (Paleolithic/Mesolithic era), Tool Age (Neolithic era), Bronze Age and Iron Age, in that order.
• Units Not to Scale:
  • This is quite visible when putting units inside Transport Ships; each embarking unit may be the same apparent size as the transport, or even larger.
  • Non-Wonder buildings are a lot shorter than units.
• Villain Shoes: The Rise of Rome has an entire campaign titled "Enemies of Rome" where the Carthaginians, Macedonians and Palmyrans become playable.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Villagers, clubmen, bowmen and war elephant riders are shirtless.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: Food, Wood, Stone and Gold. Food and Wood are required from the get-go, Stone is used for walls, watch towers and slingers starting in the Tool Age, and Gold starts becoming important in the Bronze Age.