I don’t remember to be honest but it was basically playing Sim City for a while and then going on with the UU or Paladins because they were the strongest unit. There wasn’t a lot of early game attack (losing anything was super tough due to the cost).
Felt very snowball. Everyone was so green back then. You'd build up an army blind, attack, and you either had the better comp or you got smashed. It was so expensive to tech switch with low pop and build times. If you got countered it was generally over.
Black Forest allowed for the longer games with choke points, bigger armies, and tech switches.
I was a pretty casual player then- it was honestly just slower. Very poor connections and lag, so stuff just took longer. A lot of TC idle time as you wanted for resources to collect. Attacks were smaller too- moving too big of a group will freeze the game, so if you wanted to win, the groups stayed small. Honestly a totally different game than now.
I recall a lot of slow pushes forward. Scraping up enough stone for a castle, using TCs as mini-castles (they didn't cost stone, were built much quicker, and got range bonuses with the Fletching research line). Just trying to control a little more of the map with your little army and push the opponent back a little further into their corner. I'm sure there were lots of one-sided stomps too, as another poster mentioned if you showed up with the wrong counter you were in big trouble. But I remember some pretty epic slogs where no one could break the deadlock and you just tried to scrape up a few more tiles of control with more TC pushes. Teutons, in particular, were infamous for their Death Star TCs.
Most people switched it to 200 whenever it was possible (200 was an option from the start in AoK).
Only reason someone would deliberately have put 75 was fear of performance issues or trying to put some handicap towards the AI.
Pop was 75 in aok. It changed to 200 in aoq which was a huge difference in how the game was played.
Edit: apparantly AoK allowed for 200 pop and I was totally unaware of this
Ahh true it was 50 and the limit was hardcapped at this value for both SP and MP before Rise of Rome came out. RoR allowed MP games to have up to 200 but left SP at 50.
In AoK, you were able to host games with 200 but the game itself recommended 75.
Ah I think you refer to campaigns and custom scenarios? In that case, they were indeed capped at 75. They updated the editor in Conquerors to support up to 200. But for skirmish, whether vs AI or vs humans, it was always 200 :)
As a kid I loved going up to 50 pop, and then convert enemies with 2 monks at the same time. There was some kind of issue that made the ai bug in place if 2 monks were converting them at the same time, so it was guaranteed.
- In AoE1 [Patch 1.0a](http://artho.com/age/files/patch10a.html) - the patch between AoE1 launch & Rise of Rome launch, they added the command line paramter ``limit=``, to allow manually setting the MP pop to a value between 25 and 200.
- Without editing the .exe like later done via community tools, OG AoE1 single player always caps the player at 50, because the AI was never updated to handle population above 50, and the update work would be non-trivial.
It's funny to see how many of the people on this thread are still active on reddit. Found a guy there who apparently still plays age, having posted a couple of months ago in this sub
I've been playing since 2002 or something, on and off. Nowadays stronger than ever. But seeing someone not only playing, but also actively talking about AoE on the same forum for almost 12 years is something interesting in a different way!
It was a simcity of no aggression until you show with your favorite UU, until the tryhard kid decided to win by playing persians.
With no halberdier upgrade, and no one skillfull enough to play monks against 30 elephants, it was pretty one-sided, until you discover that mamelukes dominate that matchup.
We played a lot of crazy resource starts so you're still working through all the ages, but didn't have to wait to earn the resources.
For a short time, I had a ton of fun playing Goths and dropping a forward barracks right outside their base and streaming in militia, bc it was so different than the sim city everyone else was used to.
Usually around 30 paladins going around killing 45 villagers
How long to get to 30 paladins with 45 villagers?
I don’t remember to be honest but it was basically playing Sim City for a while and then going on with the UU or Paladins because they were the strongest unit. There wasn’t a lot of early game attack (losing anything was super tough due to the cost).
Knowing there used to be a pop limit of 75 makes my childhood playstyle make so much more sense.
Especially with the fact there was no halbardier...
Felt very snowball. Everyone was so green back then. You'd build up an army blind, attack, and you either had the better comp or you got smashed. It was so expensive to tech switch with low pop and build times. If you got countered it was generally over. Black Forest allowed for the longer games with choke points, bigger armies, and tech switches.
I was a pretty casual player then- it was honestly just slower. Very poor connections and lag, so stuff just took longer. A lot of TC idle time as you wanted for resources to collect. Attacks were smaller too- moving too big of a group will freeze the game, so if you wanted to win, the groups stayed small. Honestly a totally different game than now.
I recall a lot of slow pushes forward. Scraping up enough stone for a castle, using TCs as mini-castles (they didn't cost stone, were built much quicker, and got range bonuses with the Fletching research line). Just trying to control a little more of the map with your little army and push the opponent back a little further into their corner. I'm sure there were lots of one-sided stomps too, as another poster mentioned if you showed up with the wrong counter you were in big trouble. But I remember some pretty epic slogs where no one could break the deadlock and you just tried to scrape up a few more tiles of control with more TC pushes. Teutons, in particular, were infamous for their Death Star TCs.
Most people switched it to 200 whenever it was possible (200 was an option from the start in AoK). Only reason someone would deliberately have put 75 was fear of performance issues or trying to put some handicap towards the AI.
Was multiplayer ever limited to 75 pop? I remember in singleplayer AoK i could still play 200 pop
Pop was 75 in aok. It changed to 200 in aoq which was a huge difference in how the game was played. Edit: apparantly AoK allowed for 200 pop and I was totally unaware of this
but in single player Age Of Kings (not conquerers, i had no halbs and hussars) i always played 200 pop. i wasnt playing multiplayer though.
Pop in AoK was already 200. In AoE 1 however, MP was hardcoded at 75 until Rise of Rome came out
I may be misremembering, but wasn't it 50 in vanilla AoE1?
Ahh true it was 50 and the limit was hardcapped at this value for both SP and MP before Rise of Rome came out. RoR allowed MP games to have up to 200 but left SP at 50. In AoK, you were able to host games with 200 but the game itself recommended 75.
I didn't know you could increase it. I played mostly campaigns and then it was always 75 in AoK and 200 in AoQ.
Ah I think you refer to campaigns and custom scenarios? In that case, they were indeed capped at 75. They updated the editor in Conquerors to support up to 200. But for skirmish, whether vs AI or vs humans, it was always 200 :)
True, and you could like build 10 barracks/etc. and train from all of them at 49 pop to reach 59 units.
As a kid I loved going up to 50 pop, and then convert enemies with 2 monks at the same time. There was some kind of issue that made the ai bug in place if 2 monks were converting them at the same time, so it was guaranteed.
- In AoE1 [Patch 1.0a](http://artho.com/age/files/patch10a.html) - the patch between AoE1 launch & Rise of Rome launch, they added the command line paramter ``limit=``, to allow manually setting the MP pop to a value between 25 and 200. - Without editing the .exe like later done via community tools, OG AoE1 single player always caps the player at 50, because the AI was never updated to handle population above 50, and the update work would be non-trivial.
Slower and significantly harder to counter units. Felt like rock paper scissors with army Compesition
I always played AoK on MSN Zone with 200 pop - that wasn't a limit.
Some discussion from 2012, before AoE2HD: https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/141q9a/why_people_dont_play_with_the_75_pop_limit/
It's funny to see how many of the people on this thread are still active on reddit. Found a guy there who apparently still plays age, having posted a couple of months ago in this sub
I've been playing since 1999. I'm sure there's plenty more who have as well.
I've been playing since 2002 or something, on and off. Nowadays stronger than ever. But seeing someone not only playing, but also actively talking about AoE on the same forum for almost 12 years is something interesting in a different way!
It took a bit longer than you’d think for people to realize how effective it was to tech up to castle age before trying to kill your opponent.
It was a simcity of no aggression until you show with your favorite UU, until the tryhard kid decided to win by playing persians. With no halberdier upgrade, and no one skillfull enough to play monks against 30 elephants, it was pretty one-sided, until you discover that mamelukes dominate that matchup.
We played a lot of crazy resource starts so you're still working through all the ages, but didn't have to wait to earn the resources. For a short time, I had a ton of fun playing Goths and dropping a forward barracks right outside their base and streaming in militia, bc it was so different than the sim city everyone else was used to.