The Fans Who Kept Age of Empires 2 Alive

On March 22, 2020, nearly 58,000 people watched the finals of Hidden Cup 3, an Age of Empires II tournament with a $56,830 prize pool. Compare that to 2018, when the first Hidden Cup drew in just 6,000 peak viewers with a purse of less than $1,500. Age of Empires II—a 21-year-old real-time strategy game—has been revitalized by the release of 2019’s Definitive Edition, which sought to modernize the title while still retaining its fundamental appeal. But what is that appeal? What fanbase existed to justify revisiting AoE2 after all these years? And what does AoE2’s continued success mean for the upcoming Age of Empires IV?

The original Age of Empires was released in 1997 after being marketed, somewhat disingenuously, as Civilization meets Warcraft. It was well-received, but shoddy pathfinding and limited strategic depth kept it from aging gracefully as the genre evolved. Its 2018 Definitive Edition was nostalgic but clunky, of interest only to long-time fans willing to tolerate its eccentricities. AoE2 topped 1999’s sales charts, was lauded with a plethora of Game of the Year awards, and was popular enough to justify spinoffs ranging from a collectible card game to a turn-based Nintendo DS title to a bizarre, dumbed-down cell phone version. It was a hit, but there was no reason to think it wouldn’t eventually face the same ravages of time as its predecessor. Instead, thanks to a passionate fandom that includes YouTubers, pro streamers, and modders, it hung around and became far more popular than AoE3 and the Mythology spin-off that followed. Competitive players loved its strategic depth, while creatives appreciated its ability to serve as a historical playground, and together they played a large role in saving the game from obscurity.

On the surface, AoE2 is a typical RTS: establish an economy, build a base, destroy the opposition. Its 35 civilizations offer unique units and subtle bonuses, and players have to balance four resources, a web of units with varying strengths and weaknesses, and technologies that eat resources but provide long-term benefits. Its most unique feature, the need to progress through four ages to access new troops and techs, is compelling but hardly unheard of in the genre. It’s simple enough to learn that a new player could hop in and defeat a low-level AI within an hour. It’s also complicated enough that pro players are still developing new strategies today. 

A Professional Obsession

Ørjan Larsen, better known as TheViper, is probably the game’s all-time greatest player and inarguably its winningest, with his Hidden Cup 3 victory putting him over $100,000 in lifetime prize money. Viper also won the tournament’s previous installments and was never seriously challenged in this incarnation, sweeping the best of seven finals and going 14-2 across four rounds of play. When asked what keeps him coming back to AoE2, he said it “has so much depth in terms of civilizations, maps, and approaches to the game, that it simply never gets boring. The random map generation also contributes to even the same [map type] always having different factors affect how the game will play out, so no game is ever the same. It’s also fun to play both in single-player and multiplayer, at any level, so it kind of just ticks all the boxes.”

With four resources to collect and four ages to advance through, tasks and decisions rapidly pile up. Which wood source will be easiest to defend? What resources are your opponent prioritizing, and what does that tell you about their intended line of attack? An early pivot to wood and gold, for example, would suggest that your opponent plans to rush you with archers in the game’s second age—the Feudal Age. You could prepare for this with skirmishers, a cheaper unit that shreds archers but is about as effective against most other units as wishful thinking. But you should probably have spearmen ready too, because while they get picked apart by archers, they scare away the scout cavalry your opponent might otherwise roll out to run down your skirmishers. Just don’t overcommit and build too many, or you’ll fall behind in the economic and technological race. 

Or you could forgo this Feudal tête-à-tête entirely by throwing down some cheap but fragile walls, rushing the construction of defensive towers near your key resources, and just trying to survive while you beat your opponent to the third age, the Castle Age, where powerful knights can be unleashed to crush Feudal units. Of course, if your opponent suspects that you’re trying to fast Castle, they may dial back on the archers and have a horde of those anti-cavalry spearmen upgraded and waiting for you… and maybe the civilization they’re playing gives those spearmen a powerful bonus. 

It’s this kind of punch and counter-punch that gives the game so many permutations, and that makes anticipation as important as reaction. One of the most common mistakes new players make is to overcompensate based on what they see on the field rather than what’s likely to be present a few minutes down the line. They’ll build a dozen pikemen to counter the two knights that harassed their goldminers, then see those pikemen get annihilated by a flood of long swordsmen. Every civilization is at least somewhat flexible, but trying to abruptly shift the focus of your economy and military in response to an unforeseen threat is like trying to turn a cement truck on a dime. 

At higher levels, intense micromanagement is also crucial. There are all sorts of little tricks that can be used to get more out of your soldiers and villagers, and watching pros bounce around the map to execute precise movements at lightning speed is mesmerizing. In 1999’s official AoE2 strategy guide, only one of its 369 pages is devoted to explaining formations, which can change how a group of your units march into battle. There’s really not much to say: there’s a standard line, a staggered stance for reducing the impact of enemy siege weapon fire, a flank option that splits your troops in two, and a box formation that shields your slower, weaker units. In casual play, flank and box are novel but ineffective. The AI of individual units isn’t nuanced enough to understand your strategic intentions, and battles tend to devolve into a mess of units hacking at each other until one side emerges victorious. The old guide briefly suggests that the flank formation could be useful for sneaking a group of units past a battle to reach a priority target, then moves on.

Players, however, discovered that when the flank button was clicked at just the right moment, units would split up and avoid incoming siege fire. Foot archers could split, regroup, and split again while whittling down a mangonel, a unit that would otherwise massacre them. When this trick is executed well, it’s micromanagement poetry in motion. When it’s botched, it looks like a poet getting hit by a freight train. Both results can swing a battle, while even deciding to commit to the micro means the player’s attention isn’t focused elsewhere. There is always just a bit more happening in the game than you can effectively pay attention to, making time management an unspoken but essential resource. 

The Definitive Edition sought to eliminate the game’s most dated and least enjoyable micromanagement tasks, like the need to hop away from battles to replant farms or reassign villagers who were accidentally swept up in an army’s marching orders. Pro player Guilherme Pippi, aka dogao, pointed out that these changes have elevated players to new skill levels. “Strategies are still being developed every year, which is great. Now with the new [quality of life changes], more than ever you have to play as perfect as you can.”

YouTube Friendly Chess Matches

But while quick reflexes and effective actions performed per minute are crucial to top tier play, part of what makes AoE2 work is that much of the core strategy is fairly easy to grasp. Unlike, say, StarCraft, where sheer APM is paramount and the rules of which units counter which are beholden to the logic of the game’s fictional universe, it’s intuitive to even the greenest of Age players that they shouldn’t send their infantry chasing after highly mobile cavalry archers, or use those same fast but fragile archers to besiege a castle or attack powerful scorpion ballistae. Two rookie players can therefore have a strategic duel every bit as intense and rewarding as what’s seen in tournament play, just fought at a fraction of the pace and without the game’s more esoteric nuances. 

So while AoE2 can reach a frantic pitch, it also has a chess-like feel in the sense that standard openings give way to a more fluid midgame. When asked about that analogy, Viper said, “The openings can be quite similar, but as you transition out of that opening, the options are endless. I think with the current state of the game, where we had four new civilizations added [in the Definitive Edition], there’s still a lot of options to explore, especially in team games. The developers are constantly improving the game, and a simple [balance] change can flip the whole table on its head, which keeps the game fresh and fun to figure out. I just like that there are so many different ways of playing. Without getting too deep, the endless opportunities within the game makes strategy so interesting at a high level.”

Spirit Of The Law, an AoE2 YouTuber, interpreted the chess analogy differently. “The game is getting monthly updates that always include a few balance tweaks, so there’s definitely an ever-changing meta. It’s a bit like chess in the sense of having well-defined openings at high levels of play. There’s a random aspect to it that chess doesn’t have, though, and incomplete information about what your opponent is doing. The closest analogy would be a chess game where a few pieces have their positions switched randomly at the start, and you also can’t see your opponent’s first five moves.”

Spirit, not an elite player, is instead known for videos where he teases apart AoE2’s inner logic. He takes potentially dry information, like whether the oft-hidden math that powers the game makes it more effective to hunt deer with three villagers or four, and presents it in an entertaining, informative way to 235,000 subscribers. “I’ve always been a curious person,” Spirit said, “and I like to figure things out for myself. AoE2 is just right for me because as an intermediate player I often know where to look to find interesting things, but I don’t know enough to already have the answer. Very rarely do I go into videos knowing exactly what the conclusion is going to be.”

Some of Spirit’s most popular videos attempt to quantify the strengths and weaknesses of the game’s civilizations, each of which is built around a basic strategic concept while also containing less obvious nuances. There’s a level of subjectivity to these evaluations, but his videos are useful to new players overwhelmed by the options placed before them. “One edge AoE2 has over some of the other RTS games I’ve played is the incredible variety of ways every game can play out. [There are] over a thousand possible civilization matchups in 1v1 games alone, [so] I never feel like I’m playing the same match twice. I [also] like the series of trade-offs that need to be weighed every game. For example, expanding your economy is a big investment in terms of resources and attention, and if you’re too greedy it can come back to bite you. That said, if you’re too aggressive and focused on the short-term you end up way behind in the long run. It’s a fun balance to try to find each game, especially in multiplayer where you’re against someone else trying to think along the same lines.”

Spirit released his first YouTube video in 2014, Viper was uploading recorded games of elite play in 2012, and both were playing well before they became visible creators. That kind of passion for the game’s strategic and technical subtleties helped fuel the need for the Definitive Edition, but there’s also a chunk of players who rarely if ever touch ranked play, instead preferring casual matches with friends and the game’s single-player offerings. The Definitive Edition includes a staggering 136 solo missions across 24 campaigns, and fans continue to pump out more. The design work of Ramsey Abdulrahim, aka Filthydelphia, earned him an invitation to join the development team and make official campaigns. 

“In 2013, I got back into my old hobby of making custom scenarios. My work caught the eye of [the development] team, and I was recruited in early 2015,” Abdulrahim recalls. I jumped at the opportunity to work on my favorite game franchise with a team of true fans. I was actually overseas on deployment at the time—I am a captain in the United States Marine Corps Reserve—and began working on the outlines for the Francisco de Almeida (Portuguese) campaign while deployed!”

A Historical Playground

AoE2’s commitment to history—and its fans’ level of interest in it—is mixed. Campaigns based around historical figures like Joan of Arc and El Cid take understandable storytelling liberties, and Spirit added that fictional civilizations would have been just as appealing to him. “That said, medieval and ancient warfare games always felt particularly well-suited for a game with a lot of counter play—pikes beat cavalry, cavalry beat archers, and all that. The variety of units is more interesting to me than in later time periods.”

But there’s no shortage of fans who credit AoE2 for giving them a love of history, sometimes to the point of majoring in it, then credit that love of history for why they returned to AoE2 in 2020 over embracing a newer, more fantastical strategy franchise. Dogao called the historical touches “definitely” part of the appeal. “I started to like history because of AoE2. I remember reading [the in-game encyclopedia], then during school when the history teacher started classes about the Byzantine Empire, for example, I was already ahead of everyone else. So it helped me a lot in school, and it also made me curious to keep learning.”

AoE2 was the first place many young players heard names like Saladin and Barbarossa, and Abdulrahim’s return to AoE2 was driven by his desire to use it as a creative medium for introducing historical figures. “I’m a huge fan of history—largely thanks to this franchise—and the campaign team includes two historians so we’re collectively pretty passionate. We’ve introduced players to the histories of civilizations as diverse as the Magyars and the Malay. It’s really exciting to hear from players who never knew about Malian history or the Khmer until they played AoE2. In fact, until I began designing the Bayinnaung campaign, I knew nothing about Burmese history. But after reading books and doing research for the campaign, I learned so much. Bayinnaung’s life is almost unknown outside of Southeast Asia, so I am thrilled to have the opportunity to bring him to life to players from around the world!”

When not designing official scenarios, Abdulrahim produces unofficial, more experimental one-offs, like the RPG-esque “Haiku of the Ronin” and the puzzling “City of Peace: A Murder Mystery,” which is set in Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age. By pushing the game’s built-in scenario editor to its limits, AoE2 can be temporarily transformed into another genre that extends its modern appeal. “At its core, AoE2 is about building up a civilization and destroying your enemies, and not every story in history really fits that mold,” Abdulrahim said. “But the gaming community has always been open to different ways to play their favorite games. That makes this game a great medium to tell diverse stories.”

Whether you stay with AoE2 for the strategy or the creativity, it can become a significant time investment. Abdulrahim estimates that the average scenario takes him 20 to 30 hours to build in the game’s editor, plus hours of writing outlines and researching through books and academic journals. A typical Spirit video takes him eight to 12 hours, some can take up to 20, and in terms of personal gameplay, “Steam says I have 2200 hours played. You could add a few hundred more hours I played in high school on the CD version.” Viper “would have no idea” of the hours he’s put into the game, but “during my most heavy period of playing, which was from 2011-2014, I probably played on average about five hours a day, at least. I just never got tired and could go on and on.” Dogao, when asked about his playtime, just said, “Oh god, way too much.”

A Game Maintained By Its Fans, For Its Fans

All of this explains why the game is still played, but plenty of beloved old games are stuck languishing in obscurity today. AoE2 is unique in that its current development team, Forgotten Empires, started as fans working on a mod that added new civilizations and campaigns before they merged their efforts with Microsoft’s ongoing HD update of the game. After that 2013 release, they continued to produce expansion packs until their efforts culminated in the Definitive Edition. Matthew Turk, Forgotten Empires’ Community Manager, recalled their journey from enthusiasts to overseers. 

“Age of Empires was the entry point to the world of video games for many of us. There’s a level of nostalgia and respect that comes with that. [AoE2] has constantly evolved without the need for a core gameplay adjustment; there is always a skill to improve upon or moment in history to relive, and we all fell down the rabbit hole. Back in 2012, we started out creating a mod. It became so popular we [contacted] Microsoft to see if they were interested in some sort of cooperation. We were given a dev partner to help us out and we released our first expansion pack in 2013. During the following years, as we created more expansion packs, we were given more responsibilities and the chance to grow into full-time game devs. We’re incredibly grateful for the opportunity we were given.”

While 2013’s HD edition and its subsequent expansions were aimed at fans who had never stopped playing, the Definitive Edition has also tried to win over new converts and get returnees up to speed. This, according to Turk, is not an easy task. “The biggest hurdle we face is attempting to make the game accessible to new players while not lowering the overall skill ceiling. The additional features and tools we’ve added have been focused on helping new players dip their feet into the ocean that is AoE2. There are players who have been developing their skill set over the last 20 years; that can be extremely intimidating for new players. Increasing the tools beginners have access to is a bit of a balancing act. We wanted to try and flatten the learning curve a touch without taking away any necessary skills for higher ranked matches.”

The tutorial included in 1999 was barely adequate for its time, let alone for handling two decades worth of tricks and terminology. Spirit estimates that 20 hours of play are needed to pick up basic strategies and 50 to start grasping the finer points, although “[l]ike so many things it’s more about intentional practice than just putting in hours. It’s usually not just about knowing the right decisions, but also being able to think clearly and execute when under pressure.” Viper added that “three months with a focused approach to improving would make you a decent player” capable of serious competition on the ranked ladder. To expedite this journey, the Forgotten Empires team created an “Art of War” campaign voiced by Turk meant to teach AoE2 fundamentals. While its standards are harsh—Viper, the world’s top player, failed to clear some of its gold medal target times—they make for a decent crash course. A recent expansion to the Art of War included lessons on the flank dodge maneuver, meaning fans-turned-developers have officially codified a player-created tactic.

There’s also the issue of maintaining balance without getting bogged down in predictability. “We’ve been trying to make a larger portion [of civilizations] viable in competitive play,” said Turk. “Improving a civilization while maintaining its unique identity has been a challenge. Choosing to extend or increase certain bonuses creates a one-trick pony, creating an unhealthy state for the game. Our fandom has worked as our biggest strength. We have a great understanding of what makes AoE2 special and utilize that more than anything in our work. Each month two to three civilizations are in the spotlight and the focus is on bringing them towards the middle of the pack. Recently we’ve been experimenting with some less obvious bonuses—Khmer farmers not needing a drop off location for example. This worked well to complement their playstyle, without changing the civilization’s identity.”

As for the single-player side, the challenge Abdulrahim and his colleagues face is in making the huge number of missions feel varied. “This is actually harder than you’d think,” Abdulrahim said. “I’m genuinely surprised by how many players have the fortitude to play all [the campaigns], but for those players especially our goal is to avoid feeling repetitive. That can be a challenge, because you also want to maintain the core AoE2 gameplay. For example, in the Sforza campaign, you’re playing as an Italian condottiero [mercenary captain] so in the first two scenarios, you’re not worrying about collecting food and wood—you’re either getting paid by your employer or you’re extorting the Italian cities for the resources you need. Over the campaign you eventually transition to the more familiar building and economy management, in parallel with Sforza’s historical transformation from mercenary to duke.”

“I’m going to peel back the curtain a bit here, but there’s only four of us on the campaign design team and our approach has been to give full creative control on a campaign to each designer,” Abdulrahim explained. “This is a very different approach to the level design and narrative workflow everywhere else in the industry, but works well for our team. As the designer of the Ivaylo (Bulgarian) campaign, for example, I not only designed the campaign’s five scenarios end-to-end, but also wrote all dialogue and narration, provided the voice actors with instructions on emotion, timbre, etc., and gave the art team instructions on which images to create. From a creativity standpoint, it’s been an incredible working experience. One thing people may not realize is many of us—including myself—actually work on the game part-time. After my deployment, I continued to serve in the Marine Corps Reserve, and am currently a MBA candidate. For over five years now I have been working with this franchise while having a parallel career because it just doesn’t feel like work. It’s a passion!”

AoE2 has essentially become a game supported by its fans for its fans, and that kind of symbiotic relationship can give a project a long lifespan. Viper, who plays full-time, intends to keep playing “as long as it makes sense with my motivation and economically. At this point I’m more of a streamer and content creator, where competing is my second priority, [although] obviously the biggest tournaments have my full focus and commitment. Real life is becoming busier as I get older, but I am my own boss and can distribute my time according to my own needs. I just hope that Microsoft keeps investing, that the developers can keep improving and updating, and that we can continue on the path we have right now. The game has stayed alive for 20 years, I don’t see why it won’t survive many more. It has only been growing lately, and we’ve seen higher viewer numbers than ever.”

The Future Of AoE2, And Of AoE4

An RTS tends to die once there’s no longer a sufficient player base to justify continued balance tweaks, thereby locking a dwindling number of hardcore fans into limited tactical options. AoE1, for example, has a surface level similarity to AoE2, but for decades the only viable strategy on its limited pro scene was to rush to spam the game’s strongest unit. Turk hopes that continued interest in AoE2 can drive continued support. “Provided there are players that are driven to improve, we will continually see the evolution of strategy in AoE2. Players are constantly finding new ways to push their abilities to the next level. With the current level of ongoing support, civilizations that were mostly dismissed during competitive play are becoming more viable; each of these with a meta yet to develop. Who knows what bizarre openings, strategies, or even new skills will be born alongside them?”

Turk cited quick walling, the historically inaccurate but hilarious tactic used by dexterous players to make threatened villagers wall themselves in with palisades and houses, or even trap raiding units in a maze of nascent construction projects. Mechanically, that ability has been possible since 1999, but as a skill it’s still “reasonably new to the game.” And players are driven to improve: dogao, who offers paid coaching sessions, noted a recent spike of interest in his services from all levels of players. “The release of DE attracted more people, and those who already played got more interested in getting better because of the amount of tournaments we’re having. Basically, the first session is a test of their knowledge and skills so I can have a better picture of their level, and then I make a program from there.”

On March 29, while likely aided by players being stuck in self-isolation, the Definitive Edition hit a record 30,989 concurrent players. Combining the average player counts of the two editions available on Steam places AoE2 among the platform’s top 20 games, with around 40,000 players. This is quite the change from the HD edition’s early years: After its April 2013 launch it didn’t average 5,000 concurrent players until January 2015, and it took until January 2018 to briefly break 10,000. YouTubers have played a key role in bringing old players back into the fold, and both Viper and Spirit commented on the sheer number of fan-made tutorials now available. Spirit noted “I think it’s easier than ever for someone to pick up the game and become quite good in a short period of time. That said, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword, since that means the people you’re playing against also have access to the same tutorials.”

Viper also hopes to see more promotion of tournament play. “In terms of just promoting the game, I think that relies a lot on our tournament hosts, live streamers and Microsoft. I already think we do a good job [getting the word out], but there’s a limit to what we can do without full backing and extra support from third party brands and sites.” 

Dogao, who played through a qualification tournament to reach Hidden Cup 3, then impressed fans by making the semi-finals and taking a game off Viper, also hopes to see bigger advertising pushes. “Although the game is still growing, we barely see any [advertising] related to AoE2. Most of the people who started to play are the ones who used to play years ago, so I think something could be done to attract completely new players too. Unfortunately, the competitive scene isn’t big, you have the same 30 to 40 names competing at the top and these names barely change, so having more people taking it seriously, with more tournaments and prizes, are in my opinion the way to go for the growth of the competitive scene.”

While AoE2 focused sites like AoEZone have long promoted tournaments to fans, Hidden Cup 3 was the first competition to get even a modicum of broader gaming media coverage. Whether that coverage expands for next year’s edition remains to be seen, but dogao was happy with both the strategic depth of Hidden Cup 3 and his performance in it. “The new maps coming with new tournaments give a lot of room to develop new strategies and different civilization picks. All the training and effort made to accomplish a good result was worth it.”

The challenge with tournaments is that even fans with intermediate experience can get lost in all the terminology and assumed knowledge of the game’s finer points, while little details like viewers spamming “11” in chat, a reference to an in-game audio taunt that plays laughter, can completely baffle newcomers. Nili, a commentator and an excellent player in his own right, noted that what separates a top player from an intermediate one is not always visually obvious. “Everything is just sharper, cleaner, faster. A good player knows most of the game but can’t put everything on the screen. Differences are tricky to show. You can only show it with army [composition] and decision making, because ‘this guy macroed better’ or ‘[researching] Hand Cart [at this point] is better than [creating] four extra villagers’ isn’t that easy to see.”

Nili also noted that he “very rarely explains basic things.” Not only is that not his style, but it would be difficult to even find the time in the middle of a frantic match. This is a problem true of high-level play in any game or sport, but AoE2’s options for easing a casual enthusiast into the tournament scene feel limited. Matthew Turk lauded CaptureAge, a fan-made overlay used during Hidden Cup 2 and improved on for Hidden Cup 3 that projects a substantial amount of information in a clean, reasonably accessible way, saying “their work has quite literally changed the way fans and players interact with and understand AoE2.” Even reading the CaptureAge overlay requires a moderate amount of knowledge, but it could be a valuable tool going forward. 

What does all of this mean for Relic Entertainment’s upcoming Age of Empires IV? With limited information and no release date, Spirit summed up the fandom’s cautious optimism. “AoE4 has a tough order. I think it either needs to strongly appeal to AoE2 players and convince a large chunk of the base to switch over, or it needs to appeal to a different audience that doesn’t already play AoE2. As long as it does one of those two things, I think it’ll succeed. The interest from the gaming community seems to be there, and I’m definitely looking forward to playing it.”

Viper is also anticipating its arrival. “I care a lot about AoE4. I am looking to play it, and try to compete as well if it’s geared towards esports and competition. I obviously want to play the game as a worthy heir to AoE2, but if both games can be great and stay alive at the same time, that’s perfect. Coming into AoE4 as one of the successful AoE2 players could also bring a lot of hype, and it would be really exciting if I could reach a high level and compete with new AoE4 experts as well, being an old AoE2 professional. I am very excited for it!”

Until then, Viper will continue to compete in tournaments like Hidden Cup. The team behind Hidden Cup 3 was headed by T90, an AoE2 streamer and commentator who took the risk of going full-time two years ago and in doing so deserves significant credit for expanding the fandom. In a post-tournament interview Viper mentioned that, just a few years ago, the idea of dedicated game servers and high-profile tournaments with large prize pools was a pipe dream. The event then concluded with an exhausted but passionate looking T90, who had streamed for 38 hours over four days without losing a beat, thanking the community for their support. While fighting back tears, he talked about how he never thought that AoE2—and his career—would become what it has today. It may, in the future, become much more.