One of the best Games ever - Age Of Empires(AOE)

Hi all,
First of all, i am a devout fan of AOE. I sincerely feel this was, is and will be one of the best strategic games ever made. Although I started playing single player games like when i was in 9th Standard, I developed real interest only when started playing Multiplayer games with friends during my graduation years.

Whenever i played single player games during my school, the usual situation was i would easily win when the difficulty level was set at normal or medium and i would lose very badly when it was set at hard.(Ignoring Very hard which was one of the levels) This became very common and my interest waned because of this. I should also say this was not the only factor. I was more interested in playing(and watching) cricket and running(athletics). I spent most of my free time playing(and watching) cricket then. It was my favorite past time. During my graduation years, chances of playing cricket were very rare as most of my friends with whom i used to play, were either busy when i was free or had already started working. I had to find other avenues to venting my frustration which which used to pile up alarmingly because of the thorough bombardment of boring lectures which were thrown at us by our lecturers. That was when i started playing AOE again(That required some forcing from Slasher(Charan). Shyam and Slasher were always speaking of the game and strategizing which acted as a catalyst).

AOE is very similar to Chess. I found this similarity when i started playing AOE. Although its a different thing altogether that i stopped playing it, the desire to play well and win in Hard and Very hard was always there and the game's similarity to chess acted as a catalyst. During my graduation, Slasher(Charan) rekindled my interest. He's really good in this game. I can safely say he's the best among us.(when i say 'us', it means, yours truly, Shyam(Srinidhi), RK(Vinay), Aht(Ahtesham), DragonKnight(Sudheesh) and Shivu). The position of the Second in the list will be closely fought by Aht and Shyam. The list goes like that. One would be surprised when they hear Shyam never had actually heard of AOE(possible never played any computer game) before Slasher introduced the game to him. Then, he became a addict of the game. Slasher then forced me to play the game. I did not stop after that. We played 2 times a week atleast and we would have played more if some of the guys had more download limit. We would play even during our semester exams.( For those guys who did not believe my last sentence, just see my 6th 7th and 8th semester marks(thats when i started playing))

Coming to the similarity between AOE and Chess, this would be pretty obvious when one plays the game. Playing a random map, with a human opponent who is competent and winning will be one of the most satisfying things and believe me, you'll get one of the best sleeps of your life that night. Just like chess, its a mind game. One has to out think his opposition. Strategical planning is given utmost importance. Brute force of the most powerful army will be brought to dust if not planned properly. The basic nuances of the game is really thought of very well. Say for example, the most powerful soldier in the game, the Egyptian War elephant (damn costly though), is very weak against the weakest soldier in the game, the pikeman(the cheapest unit). If one thinks he's invincible because he's attacking with a horde of most powerful unit in the game, he's in for trouble. Not just this, take Cavalry against infantry or archery against infantry, many things even out. In a multi player scenari0, where the players have teamed up, the game will be very enjoyable. The players can strategize and attack. Numbers matter but having variety in the army and knowing how many units of one type to attack with(which one can learn only by playing more of this wonderful game), usually is the deciding factor in a evenly contested match. Selection of civilization too plays an equally important role. Many people complain that strategic games are time consuming and boring. Actually one can finish a 8 player game in say 3 hours(believe me after some practice, one can finish single player V/s computer game with hard difficulty level under an hour) and its very far from being boring. If and when well contested, it'll be one of the most thrilling, fascinating games one would have ever played.

Coming to specifics, I usually played with Britons initially. The long bowmen rock!!! But the interest to learn playing with another civilization made me change to Japanese. The Samurai is cool too. As of now i have the civilizations i have played with and competitively at that are Brits, Japs, Aztecs and Spanish. Currently i am playing with Spanish and i am simply not able to let them go as their cavalry is really good. One of the other reasons might be "More GOLD"(Typical working class mentality eh?).

Cheerio.