Search
Recent Forum posts
Palmyran Guide links to wrong page ... (6 replies)
Posted 5 hours ago by Fisk
RockNRoR : mod to improve AI and add ... (233 replies)
Posted 6 days ago by chab
Map options (New)
Posted 2 weeks ago by alemanparsons
Remove / copy map (New)
Posted 2 weeks ago by alemanparsons
Change missionary attributes (1 reply)
Posted 1 month ago by Fisk
David Saga II Three Roads to Hebron ... (19 replies)
Posted 1 month ago by EarlSmithIII
Designer Bio: PhatFish (1 reply)
Posted 1 month ago by Zarrr
Why am I getting a low disk space message ... (New)
Posted 2 months ago by St_Ives
Another Christmas gift (5 replies)
Posted 2 months ago by Fisk
Broken images on AoE Heaven (4 replies)
Posted 2 months ago by Grandy02
Latest Files
Poll
Advertisement
Random Screenshot
  • sargon4.jpg
  • History Tidbits
    Loading Quotes...
    HeavenGames
    News Archive 1998 January – March

     

      News: February 10, 1998

    Age of Empires GameCenter’s
    Game of the Year

    Let Your Voices Be Heard
    GameCenter
     has chosen Age of Empires as the Game of the Year for 97! – Go here to check out what they have to say and Vote for Age of Empires as your Favorite Game! – The Archangel

    New-look AOE Heaven
    Love It or Hate It? 
    What do you think? The last few days, AOE Heaven has gone through a few changes. Including multiple logo changes (yeah…what’s up with THAT Archy?), a seperate page for just the news and a different name for this “central repository”. Hmmmm could this be in preparation for the big “happening” near the 15th? Let us know what you like/dislike with the new arrangment! – Vidguy

    Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down 
    AOE Heaven’s Town Center now has a new rating system for the links there. Check it out to see if your second or third favorite site has made it to the Iron Age or if they are still stuck in the Stone Age. Notice I said “second or third favorite” because we all know which AOE site is your favorite now….don’t we! – Vidguy

    News from the Zone
    Talk to the big guy(s)!
    Chat with Bruce Shelley and others on the Ensemble team. It’s on the Internet Gaming Zone February 23, 6 p.m. PST! Don’t miss this great opportunity. For more information go the the AOE page at Microsoft.

    Strategy Tips 
    Housing Developments
    I’ve noticed a lot of players (even good ones) tend to group their houses together 6-10 at a time in a square or rectangle pattern.  I think this is a bad idea.  Once in the iron age, heavy cats will take those house clusters down in seconds.  I always look to take out house clusters first when I enter an enemy town, costing my enemy valuable time to rebuild the houses before he can add military units.  I also always build my houses scattered throughout my area, with only 2 or 3 ever right next to each other.  – NebHusker

    Very good points! I think there are too many wannabe condo developers out there. It just doesn’t cut it when there are Heavy Kitties in the game. Think of it as giving your villagers prime acreage lots! – Vidguy

     

     

     

      News: February 09, 1998

    Age of Empires GameCenter’s
    Game of the Year

    Let Your Voices Be Heard
    GameCenter
     has chosen Age of Empires as the Game of the Year for 97! – Go here to check out what they have to say and Vote for Age of Empires as your Favorite Game! – The Archangel

    Zone Stats 
    Play with 6000 of your closest friends 
    – Average number of simultaneous users on the Zone at 2:00 AM PT: 900
    – (you can find an opponent any time of the day)
    – We’ve had over 6000 players connect and play simultaneously
    – Top 5 countries:  US, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany
    – Top 5 games: Spades, Age of Empires, Hearts, Backgammon, Jedi Knight

    Spades????? People will actually play Spades over Age of Empires???? Get real! In reality I guess that AOE is the number one “non-free” game on the Zone! Stats were gathered from the “In the Zone” newsletter. – Vidguy

    News from the Zone
    Talk to the big guy(s)!
    Chat with Bruce Shelley and others on the Ensemble team. It’s on the Internet Gaming Zone February 23, 6 p.m. PST! Don’t miss this great opportunity. For more information go the the AOE page at Microsoft.

    Strategy Tips 
    Scouts Dis-honor 
    This is called the scout rush.  We all know that to win you need to deny them the right to resources.  Killing villagers was the easiest way…until now.  If you destroy their Town Center they will just build another one.  But if you just deny acces to it they won’t do a thing.  All you should need is a Granary, and a Barracks in the Stone Age.  If you are far from stone you might need a storage pit as well.  Upgrade to Tool Age as soon as possible building only enough villagers to get stone and food.  You should have about 350 wood (No Storage Pit) or 450 wood (Storage Pit) by the time your start to upgrade.  As soon as you upgrade, put all your villagers on wood and just enough on food to get exactly 200 food.  As soon as you are in the Tool Age build a Stable and resarch Small Walls.  Build 2 scouts and send them looking for the enemy town center. With luck, they are still in the Stone Age.  As soon as you find their Town Center pull your scouts out.  Then select a villager and have him build a small wall around the town center, but stop as soon as the foundations are visible.  If you are playing the computer they will not attack the foundations, and they won’t build another town center because the first one wasn’t destroyed.  You can continue doing this with the rest of the enemy buildings, starting with the Storage pits and Granaries.  When I discovered this I was in we were both int he Bronze age and the computer had stone throwers.  They can destroy your foundations so the first thing I did was wall in the Seige Workshop.  After that I trapped a stone thrower because of minimum range 🙂  I then proceeded to wall of the rest of his buildings and it was easy to defeat him.

    NOTE:  This strategy is very difficult with a river with no shallows blocking you from your enemy.  You will probably have to sacrifice your scout. – Pter Banwarth

    So….we have the Archer rush, the Cav rush, and now the Scout rush. Someone once used a similar tactic to this on me. I was walled in defending with my heavy cats. All they had to do was get close enough to “see” areas within my town … then place “walls” around things such as houses. This laid the foundation only, but I didn’t have my big kitties on “stand ground”…they immediately attacked the “foundation”..and the splatter ended up destroying a bunch of my houses. Annoying little “feature” but it teaches you to use “stand ground” in defensive situations. – Vidguy

     

     

     

      News: February 08, 1998

    Age of Empires GameCenter’s
    Game of the Year

    Let Your Voices Be Heard
    GameCenter
     has chosen Age of Empires as the Game of the Year for 97! – Go here to check out what they have to say and Vote for Age of Empires as your Favorite Game! – The Archangel

    Lord Soth From ES Speaks!
    Over-graphics syndrome 
    You will see major improvements in 2 (probably everywhere you want), Graphically and in Gameplay. We dont have the time to do a 3D engine with the time allowed for 2, Sorry. But you will enjoy the new graphics and gameplay. And we WILL be the number 1 contender for the Real Time games. Technology doesn’t make a game, It helps it. A game is best judged as a combination of Graphics, Sound and Gameplay. We at Ensemble Studios dont feel we need to be in the Technology Race (example: Quake2, Unreal and Prey) to capture the audience (look at other companies, Blizzards Starcraft isn’t 3D. But you will buy the game because you know it will be a fun game). Don’t think that we wont do a 3D engine in the future, we want the best, and to get it you need to invest the time. You just wont see one coming from us this year. – Lord Soth

    This is interesting news that Lord Soth has posted in the forums here at Heaven. I don’t think we thought there might be a 3D AOE2, but I can’t wait to see what enhancements will be in this version of the game. Feel free to post YOUR wishlist in our forums, because as you see, ES staff DO read our site! – Vidguy

    News from the Zone
    Talk to the bug guy(s)!
    Chat with Bruce Shelley and others on the Ensemble team. It’s on the Internet Gaming Zone February 23, 6 p.m. PST! Don’t miss this great opportunity. For more information go the the AOE page at Microsoft.

    Strategy Tips 
    Oyyy-yo-yoyo your way to victory
    Ok, first off, using priests to defend your cities only ‘really’ works if you are egyptian with the extra +3 range.  Otherwise things like heavy cats will take out your priests.  For converting cats I use 2 spaced priests.  While the cat is lobbing rocks at one, I move it out of the way, and the other will usually have converted it.  Small #’s of priests are good for the following things: Spooking your enemy and healing your units.  They are not good offensive weapons.  You should generally refrain from building large #’s of priests because they get killed too easily.

    My favorite type of attack group consists of about 20 (the more the better) fully upgraded war elephants (only defensive upgrades work), about 10 fully upgraded heavy cavalry (cataphracts if you can afford it), and finally 2-3 priests… yes I know this adds up towards your pop cap, but using tricks you can get up ! ! to 60 units.  Use the war elephants as your main attack group.  Their high hit points make them VERY hard to kill, and when grouped in large #’s their trample damage counts for a lot.  Use cavalry as a quick attack group against cats and archers. Don’t bother with priests unless there is some extraordinary large # of ’em, then use cavalry against ’em. Only use the cavalry in this way, don’t bother attacking other units, even if they are attacked.  The purpose of the cavalry is to get rid of units that elephants can’t take care of.  OK, I know people like to use priests against war elephants, but even if they convert a few of your elephants, it will take a long time for 1 elephant to kill another, and by the time you take out your objective, your larger # of elephants will easilty take out the few that were converted (plus you can always use the few priests you kept in the rear to re-convert whatever was taken from you).  Finally your priests are mainly for healing your units a! ! fter the main melee.  For converting purposes, use them against infantry or cavarly while they are standing behind a bunch of your elephants (it’s practically impossible for most infantry or cavalry to get around 20 elephants in time to get to a priest).  This strategy works best in games that tend to go long, and it helps if you build a stable or 2 near the city you attack in order to keep replenishing your supply of units. – Kevin

    I hate the sound of those little grey haired guys with canes! Just ask Omnivac how much I hate ’em. BTW…him and I had a 3 hour and 52 minute marathon the other night!!!!! So what’s your online multiplayer record? Drop me a line and tell me a story….just make sure your nose isn’t growing when you do tell it! (vidguy@heavengames.com)- Vidguy

     

     

      News: February 07, 1998

    Age of Empires GameCenter’s
    Game of the Year

    Let Your Voices Be Heard

    GameCenter has chosen Age of Empires as the Game of the Year for 97! – Go here to check out what they have to say and Vote for Age of Empires as your Favorite Game! – The Archangel

    Age Strategy Tips
    Too Hot-Keys 
    Group, Group, Group, and even more Group, the excellent feature of multiple grouping allows for group us 5 to 10 depending on your computer. I set up 4 groups of 5 priest and strategicly place them around each other to convert incoming attacks. use horse archers and heavy calvary to protect them for their speed and range vs. both upclose and distance attacks from opponents. Many times I have place a tribe with no heavy transports just to wait until they moved in close and converted it (note that you don’t convert the units on the transport. Also this grouping allows for more than one conversion attack on those troublesome towers.  Another tactic is to find a town center and build a wall around it when you are pounding an opponent. They will more than likely not even notice that their villagers are dissapearing and cannot replenish them. Sometimes you don’t even have to finish the wall, just start it them send the villager off to do something else. – Michael “Draken” Aldridge

    Often you can live and die by your group hotkeys. Don’t forget them! Remember, it’s ctrl+(1-9) to assign a group number to units. (1-9) to select that group. alt+(1-9) to center the map on that group and shift+(1-9) to add that group to an already assigned number. – Vidguy

     

    Other Agetoons are here

    SPLAT! Been there, done that, hope to do it again sometime! – Vidguy

    A Blast From the Past
    Interface-lift

     

     


    This is couple of the early iterations of the User Interface of Age of Empires. There are a few different looking ones here on the “First Look Screens” page in heaven. This one looks pretty kewl but some of them seemed downright strange! Guess that’s why they have alpha and beta testing!

    “Retro” is all the rage these days, so we at AOE Heaven will bring you some of the gems from the early days of Age of Empires and Heaven. If you have any favourite’s from the past that you like be sure to drop me an email. Take a look at the Site Map to see what you are missing. – Vidguy

    Guestbook Entries 
    Kind words from great Agers
    Figured it was about time I signed the book… I visit the page every morning, to see the news that ArchAngel lovingly writes for all of his villagers. Keep up the excellent work, and… Nomad Rocks! -The Lone Axeman

    Thanks Axeman! So if Archy “lovingly writes”, wonder what kinda style I have….hmmm…don’t even wanna go there! – Vidguy

    AOE Heaven has become one of the sites I hit on a daily basis – you guys have done a great job and most of my strategies that I use are ones I read about here. Keep up the great work! BTW – Love the AoE toons. – Mitch Lavender

    These comments always make us Angels all warm and fuzzy inside. Feel free to read or comment in our guestbook anytime. – Vidguy

     

     

      News: February 06, 1998

    Age of Empires GameCenter’s
    Game of the Year

    Let Your Voices Be Heard

    GameCenter has chosen Age of Empires as the Game of the Year for 97! – Go here to check out what they have to say and Vote for Age of Empires as your Favorite Game! – The Archangel

    850,000 Units of AOE Sold!
    Microsoft today announced that Age of Empires has been the best-selling strategy game in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France since its release in October 1997. To date, customers have acquired more than 850,000 units of the popular title in 55 countries, and Age of Empires is ranked the No. 1 selling PC strategy game in the United States by PC Data. These facts establish Age of Empires as one of the hottest new PC games during a period when sequels have dominated the best-seller lists.

    This may be news to some, but to the rest of us Agers, we already new that it is the best game in the world! Read the entire press release here. – Vidguy

    Tournament
    Kooky’s AOE Tourney about to start
    Hi, it’s me Kooky from Kooky’s AOE Page. I have started a tournament at my page and I was hoping you would post a little message about it on your news page. It would be really helpful as I need as many players as I can get.–Kooky

    I just did! <grin> Kooky has a nifty little site here. Be sure to stop by if you think you are the next ALexander the Great! – Vidguy

     

    Other Agetoons are here

    This is funny! Like who the heck actually trains Clubmen anyways? <ducking>
    – Vidguy

    Gamecenter Praise 
    Age of Empires Heaven  « VITAL!
    The epicenter for the AoE community and home to The Granary and Hemlock strategy page!

    This was found in the Gamecenter Underground Links section. Nice words from a great site! Finally, some other Angels get the recognition that they deserve! Hat’s off to all the Angels that help make this site the best AOE Site on the net. Ok…so I’m a little biased <grin> – Vidguy

    A Blast From the Past
    Naked Units 

     


    Here are some of the first units developed for the game prior to it’s release. Notice that the Chariot and the War Elephant are very plain. If you ever get a free moment stop to admire the detail of the Chariot Archer in the final release of the game. From the plumes on the horses to the detail of the armour, it’s a sight to behold. I do think that this ballista looks pretty cool though!

    “Retro” is all the rage these days, so we at AOE Heaven will bring you some of the gems from the early days of Age of Empires and Heaven. If you have any favourite’s from the past that you like be sure to drop me an email. Take a look at the Site Map to see what you are missing. – Vidguy

    Guestbook Entries 
    Kind words from great Agers
    I only have the trail version now but with all the help I can get here now I really want the full game.  Thanks for your rants for us teens. I hear enough of that garbage in my public school. – Chris Weingartner

    Rants? What rants? We have rants on AOE Heaven? – Vidguy

    The Absolute best site ever seen dealing with any game! AoE is one of the best games ever. Strategies and tips are the best. Help Forum is indispensable. – Eugene Godwin

    These comments always make us Angels all warm and fuzzy inside. Feel free to read or comment in our guestbook anytime. – Vidguy

     

    Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

    Advertisement
    © HeavenGames. All Rights Reserved. Please read our Disclaimer & Privacy Statement. © Microsoft Age of Empires.