I am a new user on the forums making this thread to share information about the beta, and so other people can do the same.
The very first time I visited AoE Heaven was around the time AoK was coming out. I read about AoK's beta units and downloaded the Hidden Units scenario. That got me thinking about hidden beta stuff in AoE, as well. I downloaded the Horse and Trade Workshop templates, and thought, maybe there was even more stuff in the beta. I searched old interviews, gaming sites, archives, and forums and found out some stuff about the beta.
I found that the final AoE was supposed to have 7 ages:
* Stone Age
* Tool Age
* Bronze Age
* Iron Age
* Republic Age (Language.dll ID 7066, also some SLP graphics)
* Imperial Age
* ???
I also remember reading about a road that would make units go faster when walking on it (probably the Build-Road, ID 5022 in language.dll). There's also another Beta Ruins, the Traitor, and the Space_Ship cheat (all in the Composite Editor, which is awesome, by the way), and the infamous Volcano. Hero_12 is just a placeholder. RoR heroes have internal names like Hero_09, which can be sometimes found in the Help box.
A really weird thing is that the very first time I installed AoE (around 1998), I could place a Black Rider in the editor. At the time, I did not know that you weren't supposed to, but I remembered it because it becomes a catapult when it dies, and because it disappeared from the list when I installed RoR. I don't know if it was the CD or what (maybe a corrupted empires.dat), because that never happened again after that.
Another thing was that Phatfish's beta that I read about mentions "Esteem" (post 46):
http://aoe.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/aoecgi/display.cgi?action=st&fn=4&tn=5607&f=4,5607,0,90&st=25
Search"Age of Empires" Esteem download, and see what the first result is.
Here are somereally old Age sites:
http://artho.com/age/
http://www.angelfire.com/fl/AgeOfEmpiresPage/
I also like the AoEBeta site:
http://phatfish.nl/aoebeta/
A year or two ago, I downloaded an AoK 0.9.7.222 Alpha Version, and was surprised by it mixing AoE, AoK, and strange beta stuff that looked different from both AoE and final AoK. The cartoon Berry Bush on the AoEBeta site is probably used as a placeholder, like AoE stuff in the AoK beta.
I was searching for "7 ages" AoE, because I remember the thing about the 7 ages and found this:
http://www.fragland.net/news/Empire-Earth-Interview/1243/
The very first time I visited AoE Heaven was around the time AoK was coming out. I read about AoK's beta units and downloaded the Hidden Units scenario. That got me thinking about hidden beta stuff in AoE, as well. I downloaded the Horse and Trade Workshop templates, and thought, maybe there was even more stuff in the beta. I searched old interviews, gaming sites, archives, and forums and found out some stuff about the beta.
I found that the final AoE was supposed to have 7 ages:
* Stone Age
* Tool Age
* Bronze Age
* Iron Age
* Republic Age (Language.dll ID 7066, also some SLP graphics)
* Imperial Age
* ???
I also remember reading about a road that would make units go faster when walking on it (probably the Build-Road, ID 5022 in language.dll). There's also another Beta Ruins, the Traitor, and the Space_Ship cheat (all in the Composite Editor, which is awesome, by the way), and the infamous Volcano. Hero_12 is just a placeholder. RoR heroes have internal names like Hero_09, which can be sometimes found in the Help box.
A really weird thing is that the very first time I installed AoE (around 1998), I could place a Black Rider in the editor. At the time, I did not know that you weren't supposed to, but I remembered it because it becomes a catapult when it dies, and because it disappeared from the list when I installed RoR. I don't know if it was the CD or what (maybe a corrupted empires.dat), because that never happened again after that.
Another thing was that Phatfish's beta that I read about mentions "Esteem" (post 46):
Search
Here are some
I also like the AoEBeta site:
A year or two ago, I downloaded an AoK 0.9.7.222 Alpha Version, and was surprised by it mixing AoE, AoK, and strange beta stuff that looked different from both AoE and final AoK. The cartoon Berry Bush on the AoEBeta site is probably used as a placeholder, like AoE stuff in the AoK beta.
I was searching for "7 ages" AoE, because I remember the thing about the 7 ages and found this:
I felt it was truly important that whatever was done, that the game must go beyond the frontier forged on AoE. Moreover, I was absolutely committed to the high level premise that such a game be more ambitious and encompass an even greater scope then its predecessor. But, how, I wondered, could this be done in a truly meaningful way? Then, a thought occurred to me... I remembered back to 1995. The original design of Age of Empires had been designed to cover not 4 but 7 Ages. Beyond the Iron Age, players could achieve 3 more Ages including the "Imperial" and "Republic" Age. These additional Ages were actually implemented and working in the game in April of 1996.That last sentence made me think, maybe somewhere out there, there's a beta with 6 or even all 7 working ages.