I think Rise of Nations (an amazing spiritual successor to the original AoE games) fits their definition of empire a lot better. You create multiple cities in your “empire”. The ones at the core naturally grow larger and prosperous, while peripheral ones have specific uses like training a military or mining resources. You can also capture cities from neighboring civilizations.
Well, sure, and there's also a 200 population limit per player (in Age of Empires 2, at least). And no day-night cycle or seasons. These are clearly intentional choices to capture the vibes of economic and military conflict while massively compacting the scale of true historical conflict.
For those who aren’t aware, AOE2 is thriving today with a huge player base, fan base, ongoing development and large international tournaments (recent Red Bull Wololo tournament in London, for example). I play this game regularly with friends and love it.
Wow, that’s actually really interesting. I knew of other empires in this shape (to me the Kushan empire is the most obvious syncretic example) but I didn’t know they were all shaped this way. I suppose I always imagined empire being a bigger thing than kingdom but this definition seems more useful. It seems that other definitions don’t involve resource extraction necessarily but power over multiple nations. Still, it’s a useful frame.
In practice I suppose this must have been the case because you can’t easily impose monocultures especially when information travels slowly.
That makes me curious if military tactics of the time also had regional variation and if the relative strengths of various regions came from their awareness of certain tools being effective. Bringing in a foreign army with its foreign techniques might have been like bringing small pox to a population- they’d have no defense the first time around so if you’re fast you get them all.
> That makes me curious if military tactics of the time also had regional variation and if the relative strengths of various regions came from their awareness of certain tools being effective. Bringing in a foreign army with its foreign techniques might have been like bringing small pox to a population- they’d have no defense the first time around so if you’re fast you get them all.
I highly recommend...the author's blog for very in depth articles about this subject including
A funny quip to be sure. But one could be counter-pedantic and say the title never promises empires. It promises to take place in a time period where empires exist.
I will leave the following since so far all the commenters seem to have either not read the article at all, or to have at least skipped the following two sections:
>The third, predictable and annoying argument is “stop overthinking it, it is just a game.” Which is – if you will permit me to paraphrase C.S. Lewis – an unserious ‘boy’s philosophy’ unfit for adults. Video games are cultural products, like books or films or any other – and to say that those cultural products have no impact or importance is to argue against the historically obvious, given how frequently we find such things at the roots of important political ideologies, social movements, and wars.
>I bring this up not because I demand utter historical accuracy in my games – I will almost certainly happily play Age of Empires IV despite this. Instead, I bring it up because I find that this overly simplified view – sometimes, depressing, held to be the truth by some – in its errors, reveals some important things about empires, which again, I should note, seem to have been the dominant very-large-scale organization system for humans generally in the historical period.
First it tends to obscure the necessarily diverse nature of empires – as we have just laid out and perhaps more to the point, it obscures the power that empires derive from being diverse....
Videogames rely on gameplay more than storytelling or teaching history. It's not a novel or encyclopedia entry. It's not unserious to expect a videogame to be fun over having a deep exploration over the possible interpretations of one word in its title.
Plus, some films are like Casablanca. Some are like History of the World Part 1. Additionally, if someone relies on media like Age of Empires, The Empire Strikes Back, or the novel Empire by Gore Vidal to gain an understanding of what an empire is, just because the word empire is in the title of these works, there are bigger issues at hand...
I think annihilation is a property of how we played the game and not of the game itself. I get that the game was designed around it, but there's nothing stopping players in a Free For All from subduing an enemy into slavery instead of wiping them out, some may call this an ally. In fact, it's probably the optimal strategy, annihilating might be a pyrrhic victory, where one player is knocked out, and the 'victor' is left with half an army. The only winner in that situation are the rest of the players who are now better than the two players.
Except NvN games, I except FFA and 2v2v2v2 games to show elements of empires, it's only games with two sides where minmax becomes a viable strategy and damaging the enemy is the same as strengthening yourself.
That's how my friends and I play Civ. We had an issue in the beginning with players getting knocked out in the first day of a game that might go for 5 or more play sessions, so we devised a scheme where a player could be forced into vassalage. They can no longer win outright, they merely exist to support the conqueror. The conqueror gets to overrule any decisions made by the vassal, but there's a bit of a gentleman's agreement that this power should be used sparingly, since it's annoying to be micromanaged, and it slows the game to a crawl. In particularly aggro games, the same vassal might be handed back and forth between two players still in the fight several times, because as a relatively underdeveloped nation, they represent a fair peace settlement.
Civilization (at least 4) also has subjugation as an explicit mechanic where a mostly defeated AI state surrenders as your vassal and has to give you resources, vote for you in UN elections, fight in your wars, etc. but they otherwise continue to act independently.
It's not a great argument because the game takes place pre-empire, and the end of the game is intended to be when one player, the winner, is now an empire. This is evidenced by the final age in the game being called the Imperial Age. Most empires in history fought their neighbors in more or less the same manner as exhibited in the game before they became big and strong enough to be an actual empire.
I guess you could make an argument that the game doesn't transition into the most powerful player beginning to behave like an empire in the imperial age as you keep steamrolling your opponents until the end of the game, but it's a weaker argument and it's not clear why you would want to change the entire game's mechanics right before the game ends.
Am I misremembering things? I played a lot of AOE2 in college and in multiplayer games one of my gotos was to attack someone quickly and force them into an alliance where they sent me resources, and then continued to demand resources so they could never grow big enough to remove the alliance and attack, then coordinate through them to attack other people. Seemed like a pretty good approximation of empires to me at the time.
It's a good point, you can do that, but it doesn't contradict what I said. You start the game with about 3 villagers (give or take a couple depending on the civ chosen), one scout, and a town center. So clearly you don't start as an empire, a shack with no military has not ever been an empire. So the game is about becoming an empire. And I already said that once you become powerful enough to be considered an empire, the game does not transition into that player being able to behave like an empire, you just keep mowing down your enemies. So you can say the game doesn't represent empires well, but you can't say it tried and failed at it, because the game is primarily about before becoming an empire. Most games end in the castle age, and some end in the feudal age with just a few archers. This is even more clear when you look at competitive aoe because the games almost always end way before anyone becomes powerful enough to begin looking anything like an empire. The spirit of the game is really about pre-empire. But you're right the game has a bunch of mechanics that simulate empire especially later in the game with trade carts and trade ships so yeah, the later in the game you play the more valid the point is that the game poorly captures empires, but the heart of the game is about becoming one not being one.
It's not that deep. It's obvious that AoE marketed itself as an RTS game and not some kind of 4X game with complex diplomacy/subjugation mechanics. Competitive RTS games are at their best when each faction maintains some unique characteristics (as opposed to assimilating opposing faction tech), otherwise, you lose balance and/or strategy. At the end of the day, good gameplay should be prioritized over flavor.
ETA: To add, as a young nerd I did appreciate the history section of the game.
I think Rise of Nations (an amazing spiritual successor to the original AoE games) fits their definition of empire a lot better. You create multiple cities in your “empire”. The ones at the core naturally grow larger and prosperous, while peripheral ones have specific uses like training a military or mining resources. You can also capture cities from neighboring civilizations.
Well, sure, and there's also a 200 population limit per player (in Age of Empires 2, at least). And no day-night cycle or seasons. These are clearly intentional choices to capture the vibes of economic and military conflict while massively compacting the scale of true historical conflict.
The author addresses that.
For those who aren’t aware, AOE2 is thriving today with a huge player base, fan base, ongoing development and large international tournaments (recent Red Bull Wololo tournament in London, for example). I play this game regularly with friends and love it.
Wow, that’s actually really interesting. I knew of other empires in this shape (to me the Kushan empire is the most obvious syncretic example) but I didn’t know they were all shaped this way. I suppose I always imagined empire being a bigger thing than kingdom but this definition seems more useful. It seems that other definitions don’t involve resource extraction necessarily but power over multiple nations. Still, it’s a useful frame.
In practice I suppose this must have been the case because you can’t easily impose monocultures especially when information travels slowly.
That makes me curious if military tactics of the time also had regional variation and if the relative strengths of various regions came from their awareness of certain tools being effective. Bringing in a foreign army with its foreign techniques might have been like bringing small pox to a population- they’d have no defense the first time around so if you’re fast you get them all.
Altogether an enjoyable read. Thanks.
> That makes me curious if military tactics of the time also had regional variation and if the relative strengths of various regions came from their awareness of certain tools being effective. Bringing in a foreign army with its foreign techniques might have been like bringing small pox to a population- they’d have no defense the first time around so if you’re fast you get them all.
I highly recommend...the author's blog for very in depth articles about this subject including
- this one on mounted warrior cultures and how they often dominated https://acoup.blog/2020/02/28/collections-the-fremen-mirage-... - this long series on why the legion ended up dominating the phalanx https://acoup.blog/2024/01/19/collections-phalanxs-twilight-...
A funny quip to be sure. But one could be counter-pedantic and say the title never promises empires. It promises to take place in a time period where empires exist.
I will leave the following since so far all the commenters seem to have either not read the article at all, or to have at least skipped the following two sections:
>The third, predictable and annoying argument is “stop overthinking it, it is just a game.” Which is – if you will permit me to paraphrase C.S. Lewis – an unserious ‘boy’s philosophy’ unfit for adults. Video games are cultural products, like books or films or any other – and to say that those cultural products have no impact or importance is to argue against the historically obvious, given how frequently we find such things at the roots of important political ideologies, social movements, and wars.
>I bring this up not because I demand utter historical accuracy in my games – I will almost certainly happily play Age of Empires IV despite this. Instead, I bring it up because I find that this overly simplified view – sometimes, depressing, held to be the truth by some – in its errors, reveals some important things about empires, which again, I should note, seem to have been the dominant very-large-scale organization system for humans generally in the historical period.
First it tends to obscure the necessarily diverse nature of empires – as we have just laid out and perhaps more to the point, it obscures the power that empires derive from being diverse....
Videogames rely on gameplay more than storytelling or teaching history. It's not a novel or encyclopedia entry. It's not unserious to expect a videogame to be fun over having a deep exploration over the possible interpretations of one word in its title.
Plus, some films are like Casablanca. Some are like History of the World Part 1. Additionally, if someone relies on media like Age of Empires, The Empire Strikes Back, or the novel Empire by Gore Vidal to gain an understanding of what an empire is, just because the word empire is in the title of these works, there are bigger issues at hand...
Does this mean the Galactic Empire and the Imperium of Man are also not empires?
Because "Age of pre-empires" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Pretty sure there are campaign missions that answer the article's definition of empire, but lets ignore those.
A contrived and ahistorical definition of empire invented to support a particular modern worldview about supposedly oppressed peoples
I think annihilation is a property of how we played the game and not of the game itself. I get that the game was designed around it, but there's nothing stopping players in a Free For All from subduing an enemy into slavery instead of wiping them out, some may call this an ally. In fact, it's probably the optimal strategy, annihilating might be a pyrrhic victory, where one player is knocked out, and the 'victor' is left with half an army. The only winner in that situation are the rest of the players who are now better than the two players.
Except NvN games, I except FFA and 2v2v2v2 games to show elements of empires, it's only games with two sides where minmax becomes a viable strategy and damaging the enemy is the same as strengthening yourself.
That's how my friends and I play Civ. We had an issue in the beginning with players getting knocked out in the first day of a game that might go for 5 or more play sessions, so we devised a scheme where a player could be forced into vassalage. They can no longer win outright, they merely exist to support the conqueror. The conqueror gets to overrule any decisions made by the vassal, but there's a bit of a gentleman's agreement that this power should be used sparingly, since it's annoying to be micromanaged, and it slows the game to a crawl. In particularly aggro games, the same vassal might be handed back and forth between two players still in the fight several times, because as a relatively underdeveloped nation, they represent a fair peace settlement.
Civilization (at least 4) also has subjugation as an explicit mechanic where a mostly defeated AI state surrenders as your vassal and has to give you resources, vote for you in UN elections, fight in your wars, etc. but they otherwise continue to act independently.
Speaking for AOE2, the most popular AOE version,
It's not a great argument because the game takes place pre-empire, and the end of the game is intended to be when one player, the winner, is now an empire. This is evidenced by the final age in the game being called the Imperial Age. Most empires in history fought their neighbors in more or less the same manner as exhibited in the game before they became big and strong enough to be an actual empire.
I guess you could make an argument that the game doesn't transition into the most powerful player beginning to behave like an empire in the imperial age as you keep steamrolling your opponents until the end of the game, but it's a weaker argument and it's not clear why you would want to change the entire game's mechanics right before the game ends.
> is now an empire
wonder ful point
Oof
Am I misremembering things? I played a lot of AOE2 in college and in multiplayer games one of my gotos was to attack someone quickly and force them into an alliance where they sent me resources, and then continued to demand resources so they could never grow big enough to remove the alliance and attack, then coordinate through them to attack other people. Seemed like a pretty good approximation of empires to me at the time.
It's a good point, you can do that, but it doesn't contradict what I said. You start the game with about 3 villagers (give or take a couple depending on the civ chosen), one scout, and a town center. So clearly you don't start as an empire, a shack with no military has not ever been an empire. So the game is about becoming an empire. And I already said that once you become powerful enough to be considered an empire, the game does not transition into that player being able to behave like an empire, you just keep mowing down your enemies. So you can say the game doesn't represent empires well, but you can't say it tried and failed at it, because the game is primarily about before becoming an empire. Most games end in the castle age, and some end in the feudal age with just a few archers. This is even more clear when you look at competitive aoe because the games almost always end way before anyone becomes powerful enough to begin looking anything like an empire. The spirit of the game is really about pre-empire. But you're right the game has a bunch of mechanics that simulate empire especially later in the game with trade carts and trade ships so yeah, the later in the game you play the more valid the point is that the game poorly captures empires, but the heart of the game is about becoming one not being one.
Extremely interesting article. I didn't know empire had that meaning, thanks.
It's not that deep. It's obvious that AoE marketed itself as an RTS game and not some kind of 4X game with complex diplomacy/subjugation mechanics. Competitive RTS games are at their best when each faction maintains some unique characteristics (as opposed to assimilating opposing faction tech), otherwise, you lose balance and/or strategy. At the end of the day, good gameplay should be prioritized over flavor.
ETA: To add, as a young nerd I did appreciate the history section of the game.