Yeah...it's been a while for this announcement. Well, AoMH and PAoM unfortunately didn't get that many entries, so Xiph and I weren't sure what to do. We finally just decided to cut the number of prizes to be given out in half; these are the five winners and which prize they got:
Canadian Gamer - a...Canadian gaming site - has recently reviewed AoM; we haven't seen reviews in a while. Anyway, they gave the game a score of 89% - here's a snippet:
"The latest title from the experienced team of developers at Ensemble Studios is a continuation of their best-selling Age series. Age of Mythology (AoM), while retaining the core gameplay of its illustrious predecessors, adds a number of key, innovative features in the hopes of offering the series' fans a genuinely unique experience. Does Microsoft's latest effort succeed in providing a breath of fresh air to a genre desperately in need of rejuvenation? Read on to find out."
Due to some technical difficulties you are currently stuck with Angel Jayhawk, rather than Angel Zen for making important messages.
Today's message concerns the seraph of this site. I know you've only recently got used to having Luke around as a seraph, but all good things must come to an end. Poor old Luke is suffering from some Real Life™ problems that are likely to keep him away from Age of Kings Heaven for longer than he'd like, and as he doesn't want you to feel ignored he's suggested someone that will make sure you aren't.
Now before you say: "No, not again, not another new Seraph!", I'd like to say you already know this person, and, if I'm not mistaken, appreciate him. Here's what he has to say about himself:
Hi people,
It seems no sooner then I let my guard down than an event of such enormous magnitude happens that it cannot be ignored. It traverses all human borders. People of all ages, races, nationalities, sex, disability, political philosophy, time period, and hair color will both hear of and be touched by this singular defining event of a decade, and perhaps even of the generation.
I am talking of course of my appointment as the seraph of this site. ;-)
In all seriousness however, I was contacted quite by surprise and offered the opportunity to do this for a friend; I was both willing and able to accept and get this chance.
Presently I am a 23 year-old programmer/developer for Microsoft and living in Ontario; of course I enjoy writing, playing the guitar, watching movies, listening to all kings kinds of music, juggling, reading, and of course designing for the AoK genre. From spending so much time on the computer, I have developed the "Surfing Shoulder," a condition not just incurred by my self but many others and is somewhat similar to “tennis elbow”.
I plan on working to the best of my ability to keep the site functioning smoothly and providing the services that make it unique and interesting. “More” of the good stuff especially things relating to design and preparation of projects dealing with AoK. I believe this is an intricate part of the community and helps to keep things interesting and up to date. Not only will this allow me the opportunity to, perhaps, become more then just the “Trick Master™” but it should be a lot of fun.
So please welcomePhilip Dunscombe as the new seraph for Age of Kings Heaven, and please give him your full support.
As for Luke, he'll stay on and will try to help Philip as much as he can, and maybe, just maybe, you'll see Luke appear in places a few sites removed from Age of Kings.
Angel Jayhawk, for the Heavengames Executive Committee
Cherub Sunshine has written up an article in our Game Help section detailing the gathering rates of the Villager/Gatherer/Laborer. It lists how quickly each unit gathers each resource, as well as helping you out in optimizing your economic micromanagement. If you need that extra push in your economy, take a look at this article to help you out. Here's a snippet:
"One of the biggest parts of Age of Mythology's gameplay, happens to be the micromanagement. Most cases, AoM players will just create their own micromanaging techniques, based solely off of experience; without really considering the numbers and data that could be used for effective economic optimization within AoM. One of the key pieces of data used for optimizing your AoM economy, happens to be the resource gathering rates of villagers."
I've put together a gallery of my own with some not ready for release skin mods, featuring Manchurian Riflemen and British Troops wearing a Boar War style uniform. With each unit mod, I've also put together a battle scene to show off each unit. One scene recreate a battle during the Opium War, the second recreates the Battle of Isandlwana. Here's a link to my personal gaming website.
Today, GameSpot released six more movies, along with thier video interview with Rick Goodman from yesterday. I cannot comment too much on these movies, as you must have a GameSpot Complete account in order to view them. I assume they are of good quality, looking at the sizes. Someone who has an account be sure to report to us about the finding!
Josey narrowly defeated Gary in PAoM's Pledge Your Allegiance Tournament. Both players did incredibly well throughout the tournament, congralations guys! Here's a brief little writeup of how both of the final games went:
Game 1 (Josey=Set, Gary=Thor) had a very interesting specific layout, with a sort of islands configuration with a middle neutral island with one of Josey's settlements. Very quick, we saw a big naval battle, which eventually turned in favor to Josey, but Gary went quicker to Heroic in order to pump out counter to Kebenits. This didn't work, and after a real meritory attempt to sneak build behind Josey island, Gary couldn't gain the seas back and forgot to scan the beaches of his island.
Game 2 (Josey=Odin, Gary=Isis) was very quick, as Gary tried one of his favorites strategies, the villager rush. Watch how Josey could handle the early pressure and micromanage enough to go to classical and defeat this rather unusual army.
MacGamer reports that Dungeon Siege has now shipped for Macintosh and an be found in stores. To read about it, and get some more stuff specifically for the Mac version, get over there.
Wow, this is so new that GameSpot has not even updated it on their News or Preview pages. Much much thanks to MurphGuitar for letting us know about this! The preview itself is excellent, pretty much blowing out all other previews in terms of actual facts. It goes very in-depth on some specialties of each civilization:
...But there are some more unusual secondary units, like a surgeon that can raise mortally wounded troops to fight again and the English citizen units, which can build spike traps that are invisible to enemies.
...It's not necessarily that the English ships are all stronger, but there's always the ability to designate one as a flagship, which essentially makes it a superunit. If the enemy concentrates fire on the flagship and sinks it, the English player can move the admiral's flag to another vessel, which might help balance out uneven numerical odds.
This however was not the only update at GameSpot. They also have four new screenshots (they are missing some older screenshots though). They can be found here. And for those lucky enough (or with enough money) to have a GameSpot Complete account, there is a Video Interview with Rick Goodman, which can be found here
The second season of the RTS League for AoM has just started, and all of the participating clans have been announced. It seems there's going to be some pretty tough fighting between the clans, as there are several extremely skilled clans such as eX, Olympus, and PorT. Check out the official site for more information, and post in the forums to comment on this season's leagues!
This isn't exactly AoM news, but I bet it will interest you guys nonetheless. Microsoft has announced the development of an MMORPG Norse Mythology-based game - Mythica - where people take on the life of a fallen hero that attempts to be a god in the afterlife. Sounds like a lot of fun, here's part of the news article from The Adrenaline Vault:
"Microsoft Game Studios on Friday announced the in-house development of Mythica - an online PC game that uses so-called Private Realms Technology to merge the "depth and sophistication of a single-player game with the social experience of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game." Mythica is scheduled to arrive on store shelves in 2004. Players take the role of a fallen hero who has ascended to the afterlife as an immortal seeking to achieve godhood in the Norse realms."
Rise of Nations Heaven is pleased to announce the opening of a brand new section in our screenshots gallery. This new section features modified versions of the skins for the units in the game and even has these skins available for download in your own version of Rise of Nations. The Mod Gallery is open for submissions, so be sure to send us samples of your own special versions of Units for consideration as new additions to the gallery. Resident history buff One_Dead_Angel, has made the gallery's first submisions with 3 new skins for the German Tiger Tank.
Original :
Modified :
To use these files, all you need to do is download them into your Rise of Nations/Art directory. Make a copy of the original skin (kingtiger.png) and rename the downloaded file with the original name (kingtiger.png).
You can check out the Mod Gallery here. Be sure to click on the thumbnails to get views of the units from each angle.
I was looking at the E3 website today to see if GSC Gameworld were going to be appearing and whether there was a sneak preview on what might be unveiled. We Can now confirm that GSC have their stand at E3 and that they will hopefully be debuting one of their products at E3 as it is marked as one of the stands with "A First Look". Might this be the time when we see more of Cossacks II? To see the full list of exhibitors click HERE
I needed something to read for a trainride and picked up the US issue of PC Gamer, May issue. Somewhat hidden inside it between the nuclear Mayans of Rise of Nations and the reportage about GTA Vice City I found a small reportage from AIAS. Namely, a few quotes from Chris Taylor himself. And one of the seems to pretty much confirm that there is a sequel in the works!
Dungeon Siege 2 will have a maximum party size of six, down from eight. Also, according to Chris Taylor: "We got schooled in the economics of development...We have to use this engine again."
Chris also had some oppinions on MMORPG games...
Gas Powered Games head Chris Taylor on the upcoming MMORPG games: "It is clear that there will be some disasters."
...and on the winner of four prizes, Battlefield 1942.
And best of all, Battlefield 1942 - a PC-only title - beat out GTA: Vice City, Animal Crossing, Metroid Prime, and Ratchet & Clank as the Overall Game of the Year. Congratulations to the Digital Illusions team. As Dungeon Siege's Chris Taylor said, "I wish I'd made that game."
For anyone interested in the rest of the article, you can find it on page 30 of May's issue of PC Gamer.
Cherub Kumar Shah has started up the Deathmatch ladder in our DM forums just now, so all of you DM-lovers can have a ladder to play in like the RM'ers. We seem to have quite a few skilled DM players frequenting our forums, so competition for the top ranks should be just as fierce as it is with our other ladder. Just check out signup thread and get yourself signed up for our DM ladder!
reyk and CheeZy monkey from Dragon Gaming Design Network have announced in our forums the creation of an entire patch for the AoM Scenario Editor; changing some 300 components of the editor. It was a pretty impressive task to undertake, and it's a pretty impressive product. If you're into scenario design at all, definitely download this. Here's just a bit of the list of its changes:
Map Editor Patch core:
28 new waterbodies 24 new forrests 19 new cliffs
8 editor/game hacks -ability to zoom in more -5 graphical unit tweaks in the editor -ability to flip/tip over units in the editor - And more...
MFO has news that Zero Gravity is holding a Clan Ladder that starts on May 3rd, pitting teams from various clans against each other to win cash prizes; 300 bucks in all. Sounds like a nice thing to do if you're in a clan, here's the scoop:
"Clan Wars is open to teams only. so if you just by yourself then go find some freinds and join when you get em. Teams can have as many players in them as you like but each match can only be a 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4 only..... Clans can enter as many teams as they want but you can double up your members. eg have players as members of more than 1 team (please note the $50 prize for each member of the winning team is limited to 3 members, so if you have 4 people in your team only 3 of them will receive their $50"
Then check out the cool thread made by StArLiGhT_Dr3aM; it lists the top 20-ranking players in DeathMatch on ESO, and explains the civilizations they use and the way they play. From what it seems, a lot of those 20 have rather varied strategies, which goes to show that you can win so many ways with DM; just like with RM. Here's what he has to say about Thump_St and IamHope (Hope_, eX_Hope, or however you recognize him from the forums and our ladder):
"Thump_St - Generally a norse player, but (if my knowledge on identifying smurfs is correct) he has been training himself in egyptian. Thump likes to overpower the initial army with extremely expensive and heavy units. He exploits rams and jarls as norse to the fullest, but i believe he's working on an isis castle rush at the moment.
IamHope - Generally full out Odin player, he uses massed jarls and rams and likes to overpower early. The way to beat him is to survive to the 20 min mark, because he doesn't do dm style economy as much as other dmers. Mass anti-calvary units, and wall of tc's from rams. When building up tc's make sure your villies are protected.
Smailio of Gameplay UK (an online retailer) posts a “review” (not “preview”) of Rise of Nations and awards it 9/10: “Its almost like Microsoft has literally created a Frankenstein (and I wouldn’t put it past them) made purely from parts of other games. Only this is no monster, it is truly a superb example of how to make an excellent strategy game that has tremendous scope, but never becomes vague or uninspiring.” Here is the article.
TheBlackKnight of the Gaming Network has been one of the more active and successful online Rise of Nations Preview Beta players. Rise of Nations Empire has an exclusive interview with TBK where he shares some of his strategies and techniques.
That is to say software pirates' ability to pirate MS software. Smarte Solutions' software protection methods are being put into Microsoft CDs (this includes future ES games), so as to combat piracy and save the company huge sums of money; something that's always good. Yar yehar me hearties, thanks to PAoM for this booty of news ;-) ...
"Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft has licensed Smarte’s SmarteSECURE™ and SmarteMASTER™ piracy management software for protecting Microsoft® PC-based games and applications. The two companies will also collaborate on the development and marketing of additional software security solutions for Microsoft platforms and applications. In addition, Microsoft will designate Smarte Solutions as a preferred independent software vendor (ISV) for protection of Microsoft's intellectual property. "
Vance Hampton from Ensemble notified me recently that ES's Age of Mythology website has gone through a redesign of its layout. Personally, I like this new layout a lot better, it looks really cool. Be sure to take a look at the site.
The top 20 best-selling games list has been released for March, and both AoM and AoK are on it. But the strange thing is the fact that AoK - ranked 17 - is outselling AoM which is ranked 19. Interesting. Here's the list:
1 Command & Conquer: Generals - Electronic Arts $46 2 The Sims Deluxe - Electronic Arts $42 3 Delta Force Black Hawk Down - Nova Logic $39 4 MS Freelancer - Microsoft $47 5 Shadowbane - Ubisoft $40 6 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield - Ubisoft $47 7 Battlefield 1942 - Electronic Arts $47 8 The Sims: Unleashed Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts $28 9 MS Zoo Tycoon - Microsoft $26 10 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell - Ubisoft $47 11 Sim City 4 - Electronic Arts $48 12 Battlefield 1942: Road To Rome Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts $19 13 Master of Orion 3 - Infogrames Entertainment $46 14 Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 - Infogrames Entertainment $28 15 Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault Spearhead Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts $21 16 Warcraft III: Reign Of Chaos - Vivendi Universal Publishing $44 17 MS Age Of Empires 2: Age of Kings - Microsoft $24 18 Mall Tycoon - Take 2 Interactive $20 19 MS Age Of Mythology - Microsoft $45 20 MS Zoo Tycoon: Marine Mania Expansion Pack - Microsoft $29
TOAO_Tarzan announced that the TOAO Clan is hosting a small tournament. Only 32 participants are allowed, so sign up while you still can. See the rules and regulations here for more information.
Rob Fahey of EuroGamer previews Rise of Nations, here's and excerpt:
Rise Of Nations is shaping up to be the most interesting strategy game we've seen in a very long time - which is really saying something, given the glut of quality RTS titles on the PC in the past year.
Microsoft and Alienware in conjunction with GameStop.com present the Rise of Nations Alienware Area-51 Hybrid Sweepstakes. To enter, just go here The lucky winner of this contest will receive a brand new Alienware Area-51 PC. System Specs :
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 2.53GHz 533MHz FSB w/ 512KB Cache Intel® 845GE-Chipset Pentium 4 Motherboard w/1AGP/1PCI DDR 512MB DDR SDRAM PC-2700 120GB Seagate Barracuda ATA V 7200RPM 8MB Cache PROMOTION - FREE PlexWriter 48/24/48A CD-RW - IDE - Black 1.44 MB Floppy Drive - Black NVIDIA GeForce™ FX 5600 256MB Dual Monitor Sound Blaster® Audigy 1394 - 5.1 Microsoft Internet Keyboard - Space Black Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 - USB - Standard Color Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
This is one cool little PC. You can find out more about it and even see a few photos at the Official Alienware website. Good luck everyone.
Yesterday [24-Apr-03] TotheGame.com posted a number of screenshots from the new AoW: Shadow Magic but as of this morning (forum time) they have been removed at the request of Take-2, the game's publisher. Forummers were however quick to report the news, and to speculate on what they thought were some things they could deduce from the shots, among them the addition of a Random Scenario Generator indicating three new races, plus images of structures and units not previously seen.
Before they were removed, Triumph Designer Lennart Sass had this to say
It’s quite funny that the news broke this way after months of silence.
Some comments: AoW:SM is a stand-alone game. We didn’t call it AoWIII because it does not use a new engine. And we didn’t call it AoWII:SM because it would imply that it's an add-on that requires the original AoWII. You can see this game as an GTA: Vice City or a Stronghold:Crusader. In terms of content and gameplay additions this project is *much* closer to a full-sequel then an add-on. This is AoW on steroids, refined and polished.
You have already discovered quite a few things from the screenshots. Of course there is much more to the game then meets the eye and you’ll be able to read all about it on the website which will be online soon.
We really tried to take care of the hardcore fan-base with this project, so you’ll see quite a few of your suggestions implemented.
Can’t give you an exact release date, but it looks like it’s more toward the end of summer then the June date that has been appearing on some sites.
Thanks for all your input, it's very much appreciated!
The speculations on the contents are of course for the most part unconfirmed, but elsewhere in the On Mods, Tools thread Lennart pointed out
Many additions have been made to the editor. Users are able to restrict city buildings, turn off item teleportation, city growth, etc. And users will have access to a large part of the game's resources.
It has also been reported that at least the UK edition of the hardcopy PCGamer has promised some screenshots in the next edition. It appears then that the expected flood of official announcements are indeed forthcoming and the game is on track for release. It goes without saying of course that HeavenGames will do its best to keep you up to date when any official announcements are made.
STRONGHOLD HEAVEN Castle of the Week - Belvoir Castle Posted 4/25/2003 @ 8:31 AM EST by GillB
This week's castle, courtesy of Sulis, is Belvoir Castle in Israel, the Star of the Jordan, which is the first datable true concentric castle, built shortly after 1168. Find out more about it here and play its associated map (for Crusader only), downloadable from here.
Celois has posted a helpful thread showing forumers how to edit AoM's files to add and edit your own hotkeys for things in the game that you can't change or even have; such as age advancement and flares. Here's a bit:
"Stop Command Locate the following line: map ("q", "game", "uiStopSelectedUnits") Change the q to anything you wish.
Hide/Show Interface Locate the following line: map ("control-arrowdown", "game", "uiMinimizeMainBackground") Change the control-arrowdown to anything you wish."
"IMPORTANT! The ESO servers will be down for maintenance Thursday evening, April 24th, between 11pm-1am PST. If you experience ESO disconnects during these periods, please try again after 1am. Thank you for your patience."
Just a quick news post: ESO.com has patch 1.05 available on the site itself so people can download it manually; if they're having problems downloading the patch in the game.
Lord_Tiberius has started a thread in the AoE III Discussion forum about what livestock and agriculture would be like in a new game.
I think that more livestock should be avaliable. One of the ideas I thought of in another thread of the forum would be to have buildings, like Sheep Paddocks, that were buildings that cost wood to build and produce sheep for the slaughter. This would be especially good for the nomadic peoples who didn't farm. I also think there should be more animals to choose from - each yielding more food, but again the building costing more resources:
Sheep Paddock (nomadic tent on area of grassland) - produces sheep (approx food value: 150 food each) - cost: 250 wood
Myth_Pharoah - scripter extrordinaire - has joined AoMH as an Angel to write much-needed scripts for the site. Right now he's working on a project that I'm sure all of you gamers will definitely love, expect it by the end of next month. Congratulate him in this thread.
Congrats Mythie, I hope you like your new big wings!
Matei has posted an nice article in our new Deathmatch Forum; a page of pointers for those that are just starting out in Deathmatch. And if you're someone like me, those tips will definitely help out getting used to the very different playing style. Here's a snippet-let of the thread:
"1) Advance through the ages quickly, so you're in Mythic with your chosen god path by 1:30 or 2:00, but look at what minor gods the enemy is choosing and try to select yours to counter his bonuses; take into account the myth units and god powers as well as the upgrades you get from your minor gods, and remember that you get *all* their myth techs for free, even their most expensive ones, so don't be afraid to look for "super-combos"
2) Make lots and lots of military buildings, starting in Classical or Heroic hopefully; try to build them a bit forward but don't waste walking time and make sure they don't get killed; usually you should have at least 6 of your main kind of building, though I'd be more comfortable with 10 or 15 even; then make lots and lots of units, but try to do this smartly and waste none of them"
According to PAoM, It turns out that the Atlanteans settlement bonus is not the ability to build settlements anywhere, as the PC Gamer magazine said. It is something else, though it's not known exactly what the bonus is. Guesses? Yours is as good as mine.
MacGamer has declared this week as "Dungeon Siege Week", to celebrate the game's release on the Macintosh platform. Dungeon Siege related stuff will be posted each day, and so far there's an interview and a contest up.
The interview is of Phil Sulak, Vice-President of Westlake Interactive.
I understand that Dungeon Siege was a bit of a challenge to port. Why is that?
I've worked on a lot of games in my time, and I can honestly tell you that Siege was the hardest Mac port I've ever done. Normally, a game port is difficult due to messy or "hacked" code, but that wasn't the case with Siege. Overall, the engine is fairly well thought out, and isn't terribly messy. But it's extremely complex in terms of allowing the Gas Powered game designers to have a maximum amount of flexibility in building and controlling the game world.
GPG's coders used every PC and C++ programming trick in the book when building the game engine. To say that the engine is heavily C++ "template" driven would be an understatement. C++ templates can be very tricky to work with and aren't very "portable", meaning that template code isn't be easily moved from one compiler to another. Virtually every class in the engine utilizes templates in one way or another. If you ask 5 Mac game programmers "What's the most difficult C++ code to port from the PC to the Mac?" 4 of them will probably answer: "Template code".
To win the contest, and a copy of Dungeon Siege for the Mac, you are going to have to take a quill in your hand and write a few poetic lines. Find out more about it on the contest page.
The team over at Rise of Nations Oracle have created a brand new interactive tech tree for Rise of Nations.
Rise of Nations Oracle has just recieved and published the technology tree that's been in the making for a few weeks. It's exclusive content to our website, and includes statistics and requirements on buildings, units and technologies in the Rise of Nations beta build three. It also allows viewers to see what Unique Units each civilization has access to and the graphic icons that represent each item.
It is some really nice work by those guys so head on over and check it out by clicking here.
PAoM's forumer Cybershadow_101 has spotted an article in the magazine PC Gamer about AoM: The Titans. Apparently, the article explains that the Atlanteans will be able to place their town centers anywhere without the requirement of settlements and will be able to re-use god powers. Interesting bit of information, I wonder just what else we will learn in the future that will set the Atlanteans apart from the other Cultures.
AoMH has been getting quite a few strong requests from the community to open a Deathmatch forum so that that community can have a place to meet and discuss things. So, considering the fact that we are a community site, it's been decided to open one.
There is one stipulation, however. AoKH's DM forum encountered several enormous problems with its community in regards to the forum's Code of Conduct; if there is a repeat of those problems on this forum we will have no choice but close the forum down.
Moderation has been somewhat strained recently, and it was apparent that another moderator was needed to take up some of the work. So, PW_DarkKnight was selected and promoted to Cherub, due to his mature and helpful posting around the site. He'll be helping out in other areas of the site as well, such as content.
Congratulations and welcome, buddy! If you want to give him your own congratulations, just head here.
For all those people who missed it, we've added the full text from the MSN Zone chat with Brian Reynolds. You can check it out from our events page by clicking here.
Expert Hope has created his own database of top-quality expert recorded games for everyone's enjoyment and learning. It's a pretty cool site, be sure to check it out and comment on it here.
Microsoft Game Studios today announced that Rise of Nations has gone gold and is scheduled to ship to stores on May 20 in North America. Virtual field commanders will soon get the opportunity to "Conquer the World" in single player, or lead their troops into battle online with this revolutionary real-time strategy (RTS) game from Brian Reynolds. To celebrate this milestone, gamers will be able to chat live with Reynolds on Zone.com today, April 22, at 5pm PDT. For more information on the chat, visit http://zone.msn.com/zzzz/zzzzreynoldschat.asp.
That's right, it's official. The game should be hitting store shelves in the not too distant future so mark the date for your local area and get ready for some fun with a great game!
STRONGHOLD HEAVEN Crusader: Home and Away - a scenario design competition Posted 4/22/2003 @ 1:03 PM EST by GillB
For nearly two hundred years Europe was involved in a war far from home, a war to liberate the Holy Land from the infidel scourge. By the thousands people departed their homes in green Europe to travel east to the tans of the Levant.
Wars raged for centuries, wars in Europe and wars in the Holy Land.'
Welcome to the Stronghold & Crusader Design competition! What we ask of you is to create a map representing the time of the Crusaders. Recreate Crac du Chevaliers in Syria, or create a scenario based on Richard the Lionheart's involuntary stay at Trifels. Let your imagination run wild, as long as you can link the story to the Crusades, either at home...or abroad.
There will be 3 categories for both games. Best eye candy map, best military and best economic. You may enter one map for Stronghold and one map for Crusader, a maximum therefore of two entries. Alternatively, one map from either game. The choice is up to you.
The deadline for submissions is 6th June 2003, 11pm EST and further details can be found here.
Brian Reynolds, president of Big Huge Games, has stopped by our forums to make a few comments on the concerns a few people have voiced regarding rushing in Rise of Nations.
The lowest-common-denominator rush of "Take a Military, build a Barracks, start churning out military units" is really easy to do so it should be really easy to counter. But we intentionally tuned it to work if the opponent has done -nothing- to prepare, because we figure that's the lowest-common-demoninator boom strategy (completely ignore military and defense) which is also easy to do, and equally pernicious to the game if not easily counterable. You can view the rest of his comments as well as voice a few of your own over in this thread. While I am at it, I would like to say "thank you" to all the BHG developers who drop by our forums to read the topics and provide some great feedback to the fans. We're glad to have you here.
The Legion Clan "Random of the Destiny" Tournament has ended, with Denis winning first place, RCF_Player winning second place, and Chichiri winning third place. Congratulations to all three!
"Thus Chichiri, Denise, RCF_Player and L_Clan_Capoch have reached the semifinal. And the intense duels for a title of the champion have begun. As a result of final fights Denise has won the first place in the Open AOM tournament of the Legion Clan - "Random of the Destiny". RCF_Player has taken the second place. And Chichiri on the third place."
Over the last few days, we've had a few reports of people who have bought new copies of AoW2, patched them to version 1.2, then been unable to get them to work. After patching, the game stubbornly persists in asking the user to insert the original CD even though it is in the CD drive. Triumph's Josh Aow has been made aware the problem, and posted earlier today
I've looked into the issue, and it appears that a new batch of AoW2 CD's have been produced, which are incompatible with the old patch. We will let you all know a solution as soon as possible.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
Suspect CD's have been reported purchased locally in Windsor Ontario, and in Oregon. At this point that's about all we know. You can find the complete thread here in the AoW2 Technical Help Forum.
DailyGame has started a series of 4 interviews with Korey Krauskopf, the Test Manager for the Roleplaying, Adventure and Technology Studio at Microsoft Game Studios. The first part was posted a week ago and dealt with how games are tested at Microsoft Game Studios.
"How many testing teams are there for Microsoft Game Studios? What genres does each focus on?
Many. Unfortunately I couldn’t give you an accurate count, as I’m mostly focused on the teams in my studio, not the ones in the other studios. As for genres, we seem to cover all the major ones, but the focus is now more about making the best titles in the world than about covering a genre. This may sound a little PR-ish, but that’s the honest direction we are all pushing in."
The second part was just posted and deals mostly with the XBox, and the differences between testing games for PC and for consoles.
"You’ve tested RPGs for PC. How do you think RPGs differ for consoles, and what are your thoughts about the future of RPGs on Xbox, a console that is arguably “lacking” in that category?
When designing for a console, you have to always think of the interface and how all the goodies you design will be found, used and managed. Just like with an RTS or an FPS, when you have an RPG you are limited by the buttons and triggers available, as well as the resolution of the display. Designing for a PC gives you a much broader toolset for input, so you'll find PC games naturally gravitate toward more complete control, simply because it's possible."
None of the parts mentions Dungeon Siege directly, but it can still be an interesting read, as the same procedures are practiced for all Microsoft games.
"After a successful beta test of the SecureChar system on standard DS content, Team Elemental has decided to take down the SecureChar servers until we could run Elemental content on them. We expect the next round of SecureChar to begin with the Alpha testing of Elemental. All beta applications will be returned to the pool of applicants, with those who actively participated in the SecureChar beta being pushed to the top of the list. If you haven't already, sign up for more beta opportunities at SecureChar.net. Thanks to all those who participated in our beta for making it a resounding success."
As stated, there will be more testing - next thing up the Alpha test of the siegelet itself - so if you feel like helping them hunt down the bugs, follow their tip and sign up!
A tad old, but Shadows of Winter has posted a new shot out of their intro movie.
"Here is another test shot from the Shadows of Winter intro movie. The woman in this scene is being chased through Ilgarin Woods by the soldiers of Duke Ghen."
The picture looks very nice, and is definitely worth checking out if you haven't done so already!
SWO has posted a short tutorial on how to use the Node Matcher utility. For those unaware of it, the node matcher is a tool built into the siege editor that can greatly speed up the tedious task of finding the correct node to use next.
Dungeonsiege.com has released another piece of music from Dungeon Siege for download. This time it's entitled Chamber of Stars, and I'm sure that everyone who has finished the single-player story has a hunch of where it's played.
The Ogre of the Oracle Network has created a distinctive Rise of Nations ICQ skin. Full instructions and the free download are available at RoN Oracle. Check at out here.
Back in late March IGN published their predictions on “The Big Games of 2003” – RoN has now been added to the list! The article includes a short summary of RoN among others.
Today is your last day to get your AOMH/PAOM Easter Egg contest entries in. Be sure to mail them before midnight to have the chance to win an AOM t-shirt or poster. Unfortunately, thus far, we've received less than ten entries, which is pretty sad considering the thousands of visitors between AOMH and PAOM. All that you have to do to enter is find the five hidden Easter Eggs on PAOM and AOMH, for a total of ten, and email the links of the pages you found them on into us. The easter eggs could be on any of the pages of our two sites. Let's see some more entries!
Though there's not all that much information to take from the currently released x-pack screenshots on the subject of buildings, I've created a page of the buildings that were seen has been made in our x-pack section. A total of seven buildings could be made out, go check them out.
Along with a buildings page, I've compiled the five (including the one "hint" screenshot with a Titan rampaging around) screenshots on their own X-Pack screenshots page.
BBC News has written an article about "easter eggs" - extras that aren't listed in the manual that are found through continued exploration of the software - in computer games and other software. It's a cool article, talking about the various different eggs in software that programmers put in, and they even mention Age of Mythology: "For example, in Age of Mythology some of the Norse Herser units have very strange names such as Refreshingbeverageblender."Thanks to SesameSticks for spotting this :-)
Larmir posted a thread in the Scenario Design forum saying the AoK Punk Articles section is back up.
I'd like to hmm...announce to you that the old and big AoK Punk articles db is back with articles pertaining to tons of subjects split into 5 categories. Quite a few of those are old now, but some are always nice to know. So, head to AoK Punk and click on Map Design to visit our map design section.
There are some excellent articles inside, including Map Design, AI, and ModPack articles. If you're a designer, be sure to check it out.
At Long last, here's another Nation profile. After covering the Inca, it seems appropriate to understand something about the civilization that brought about its end, the Spanish. Not only did the Spanish conquer the America's but they could probably be considered the world's first global super power! So let's see what the Spanish are about! Ole!
Here's an excerpt:
The Reconquest of Spain in the 15th century A.D. by the Christian Kingdoms saw the unification and raise of Spain as a world power as it extended its power through the exploration and subjugation of the New World. In Rise of Nations, this gives inpsiration for the power of discovery.
Check out the article here, and if you missed the other Nations, you can check out the full list here!
Just a reminder to everyone that tomorrow is the day that the winners of the AoMH/PAoM Easter Egg Hunt contest will be selected and announced. If you haven't found all 10 of the Easter Eggs in AoMH and PAoM (5 for each site), be sure to get your finds sent in before the selection; you could very likely win an AoM t-shirt or AoM poster.
The MSN Zone has scheduled a chat with Brian Reynolds Tuesday, 22 April, 5:00 pm Pacific Time (currently GMT-7 hours under Daylight Savings Time). Here's the event notice but go to the Zone Theater for the actual event.
Ohlhelm of RoN Zone (German) has posted an article on RoN’s weapons of mass destruction and their use. Four screenshots illustrating a nuclear detonation and its aftermath accompany the article.
Spotted this in those nice ads that are all around Yahoo.com: USA - a cable channel that has made a number of loosely historically-based miniseries and movies - is showing a miniseries called Helen of Troy starting tomorrow at 8PM EST. As the name indicates, the miniseries will take place during the events of the Trojan war, so those of you that like history/mythology (and hey, if you're playing AoM, that's more than likely :p ), be sure to see the show.
Beloyar started a thread in the Age of Empires III Discussion Forum a while ago about Campaigns that could be featured in a new game.
In the game's campaign screen, there should be an interactive map of Europe, for example (and other parts of the world). Europe is divided into small sections/regions. Each region is controlled by a certain civ, based on a particular year in history. You choose a region for yourself and, using the appropriate civ, start your campaign of European conquest against other regions controlled by AI. If you win a battle, you control a new region, and the interactive map should remember your victories and paint the new region your color.
The next time you load the game, your changes should be remembered, so you can continue your campaign. The computer civs should also try to attack your regions to take them back.
That and many other ideas for campaigns can be found in this thread.
Archaeopterix has posted a very nice and detailed thread about almost any question you might ask on military upgrades in the Classical Age; be it when you should make each upgrade to how they work, and anything inbetween. Here's a snippet:
"Each Weapons Upgrade adds +10% to the attack of a unit. Including the Mythic-Age technologies that would make the attack of a fully-upgraded Ulfsark 9 * (1,1 ^ 8) = 19. But as we know, the fully-upgraded Ulfsark has only 16 attack. How does the Weapons Upgrade system work?
The formula to calculate the new attack works as follows: New attack = Old attack + Base attack * Upgrade. In example the good old Ulfsark: New attack = 9 + 9 * 0,1 = 9,9 (10). The next upgrade will make it 9,9 + 9 * 0,1 = 10,8 (11). The fully-upgraded Ulfsark will have 9 + 8 (9 * 0,1)=16 attack."
I had heard of Wired.com before like I'm sure most fans reading this post right now have, but had only visited it once. Yet, I just spent the last hour reading their articles. It all happened with an innocent link about visual effects in the new Matrix movies on one of my "daily" sites. Even now I'm in the middle of reading another one of their articles, and seriously considering subscribing to their magazine if I'm missing articles online. I would recommend to all "more-than-casual" fans to look at their January five page article about MMO economy (specifically Ultima Online). Here's an exerpt:
Take a moment now to pause, step back, and consider just what was going on here: Every day, month after month, a man was coming home from a full day of bone-jarringly repetitive work with hammer and nails to put in a full night of finger-numbingly repetitive work with "hammer" and "anvil" - and paying $9.95 per month for the privilege. Ask Stolle to make sense of this, and he has a ready answer: "Well, it's not work if you enjoy it." Which, of course, begs the question: Why would anyone enjoy it?
The five pages cover a lot surpisingly. It is a very nice read along with many of the other articles. I suggest the new Matrix one for those Matrix fanatics.
Nox of RoN Eden (French) announces a limited-time “Easter Egg” contest running from today till midnight Tuesday, April 22nd (current France DST, GMT+2). Easter Eggs have been hidden throughout the site -you’ll have to check all the pages, and each contains a letter revealed when you move your mouse over the egg. Compose all the letters and you’ll have the secret word necessary to submit. A random drawing will be held in case of multiple correct entries.
The prize – one RoN Beta!
This contest is open only to residents of France, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada.
Cherub Sunshine (with the assistance of yours truly) has finished AoMH's expansion pack section. Even though it seems as though a couple screenshots and a press release do not give that much information, there's apparently a lot to glean off of them. The section has some basic known and speculated information on the x-pack, a unit list, Titan/Atlantean Mythology, and Atlantean History (all of which is taken from Plato's writings, so they're obviously not definitely true). Looking for some information on either Atlantis in the x-pack or Atlantis in history or mythology? Then check out our new section. Special thanks go out to Celois for writing up a very nice list of the things he spotted in the four release screenshots of the x-pack.
By the way, you might notice that the Game Info menu on our sidebar is considerable smaller. Just click whatever section you'd like to access, and more links will dropdown from the menu. It's a neat little script Sunshine wrote up.
Greg "DeathShrimp" Street has replied in a forum thread concerning the Throwing Axemen change made in the patch, and the lack of a change for Norse Jarls; which the thread creator believes are overpowered. According to the designer, Jarls are fairly decently balanced, for several reasons. Here's what he had to say on the subject:
"I think it's pretty obvious that 1.05 took a little longer than we had planned. We wanted to fix some of the Loki problems and then give ourselves more time to see what that did to the Norse in general. We already started looking at the effectiveness of infantry well before 1.05 actually came out, and didn't think it was feasible or even fair to delay that patch (since it fixed so many problems in addition to balance).
So on to the Jarl. The Jarl himself is a balanced unit. That is, he is cost effective against what he is supposed to be and gets beaten cost effectively by what he is supposed to. We knew he was a risky unit because he is a powerful and expensive unit. Powerful and expensive units can be balanced, but still really hard to counter. Byzantine Cataphracts were a great example of this in AOK. Sure, they were really expensive, but that's small consolation if you are getting creamed by them in Age4.
The problem, we think and as you point out, is not the Jarl, but the Hoplite (and possibly Ulfsark) that are supposed to counter him. We consider units that are Gold heavy to be more expensive than units that are Food heavy. This strategy works integrated over all four Ages, but of course the value of different resources change over differnt Ages. Food is very precious in Age2 and 3 but rarely limiting after 40 minutes or so. If I had to guess (and this is only a guess because our tests aren't finished, but I am trying to be honest) the Hoplite and Ulfsark probably need to drop their Food cost by 10 or so."
RoE Design Studios has been working on a full-conversion modification for AoM. From the looks of it, they're changing the three civilizations in the game to the Underworld, Chinese, and Celts; they seem to be doing a decent job at it. For more information, check out their forums and their AoMH forum thread.
RoN Insider interviews Tim Wallace, a CG Supervisor at Blur Studio, the makers of RoN’s opening cinematic. Images and concept art accompany the interview.
The Fenris Wolf has created a forum thread listing all of the Atlantean units he could find in the recently released screenshots. There's quite a few good ideas in the thread, head down there to discuss!
Age of Mythology Heaven and Planet Age of Mythology have decided that it’s time to have a little organizing and friendship between the sites, and they’re starting out with a nice Easter Egg Hunt. What the heck does one do in an easter egg hunt on the internet, you say? Well, all you need to do is find the pages that contain the AoMH/PAoM Easter Egg Hunt icon (excluding this page) - 5 pages in AoMH and 5 pages in PAoM - and send the URL’s of those pages to feedback@planetageofmythology.com. On Easter Sunday (20th of this month), the names that found all 10 pages will be thrown into a hat and ten of those names will be drawn. Each winner will win either an AoM t-shirt or AoM poster, who wins what will be randomly chosen.
Well, what are you waiting for? Look for those pages!
Mike "Archangel" McCart has posted the readme file to patch 1.05, listing all of the changes that it will make to AoM. Without further ado, here it is:
============================================================ ====== Age Of Mythology(tm) v1.05 Patch Release Notes ============================================================ ====== If you are encountering out of sync (OOS) problems when playing multiplayer, go to http://www.windowsupdate.com and ensure that you have the latest updates. Specifically, downloading and installing the Microsoft Processor Driver Version 5.1.2600.1152 for the AMD Athlon is known to fix potential out of sync problems. Also, if you are having trouble connecting to ESO or to games and other users, please check out the Age of Mythology FAQ on http://www.eso.com . ============================================================ ====== Patch 1.05 - fixes an exploit, a crash, a few ESO issues and some balance concerns. ============================================================ ======
CLIENT FIXES - Fixed an exploit that allowed Armory techs to be researched twice. - Fixed some minor localization bugs. - Fixed a crash caused by alt-tabbing out of the application. - The "Nomad" random map now correctly fires the "Ceasefire" god power at startup. In specific, god power triggers now work properly in multiplayer scenarios and random maps. - Detailed help text can now be provided in user-created random map scripts. The "detailsText" attribute is now supported in random map XML files, and allows plain-text setting of the detail help for that random map. - Unit Balance Adjustments (NOTE: Save games from all previous versions will not be affected by the balance changes. Recorded games from all previous versions are still supported and will replay as before): * Fixed a bug in which Flaming Weapons made Hammerships 10X too powerful. * Norse no longer get bonus favor from Longboats (this also means they don't contribute Favor for Loki's free summoning). * Throwing Axeman attack dropped very slightly (-0.5). * Valkyrie costs slightly more (+5) Favor. * Fire Giant normal attack does less damage, but his special attack does more. * Kraken normal attack does much less damage, and is -100 hitpoints. * War Elephant attack (+2) and hack armor (+5%) increased. * Priest does more bonus damage (+2) versus Myth Units.
NETWORK AND ESO FIXES - Added better diagnostics when establishing the initial ESO connection. This includes better error messages on what to do to solve common ESO connection issues. This should immensely help players using routers/NATs. - Added improvements in establishing connections to other players. - Fixed the “Drop Trick” bug. Players that force a disconnect early will not be allowed to upload stats. - Fixed the Vote dialog to expedite a no-consensus situation (related to drop tricking) and to drop poor connections faster. - Renamed ESO chat channels to be category based. ESO will also remember the last chat channel you were in and, if possible, return you to that channel on relogin.
This week's castle is Dover in Kent. Overlooking the English Channel, it's one of the 'great' castles and the first built to a concentric plan in England, 100 years before any others. It was used for military purposes up to and including the 2nd World War.
Thanks to Sulis for telling its interesting story. His associated download will be available soon ... watch this space!
The World Cyber Games has released the news on what prizes they will give to their finalists; An awesome computer and monitor. How's that for a cool prize? Here's the full scoop from the site:
"A chicken in every pot? No, a computer and monitor for every finalist! Every competitor who makes it to the WCG 2003 USA Finals will get to take home a new computer with an NVIDIA graphics card, and a Samsung 19" Flat CRT Monitor - for a total prize value of $2,000 per finalist! And, of course, the winners at the WCG 2003 USA Finals also get a free trip to Seoul, Korea for the WCG Grand Final and a chance at a $400,000 prize pool!"
What with the expansion pack officially announced and people actively discussing it, it's only natural that a new forum is opened to house such discussions Expansion Pack Discussions will be your place for talking about Age of Mythology: The Titans.
Future ES Games was previously the place for that, but now it's for any future Ensemble game besides AoM:TT; be it AoE 3 or something else.
Yeup, the official Microsoft site has released four screenshots of really cool scenes in AoM's x-pack, featuring the Atlantean culture and the Titans in all their glory.
I think we can glean quite a bit of information from them if they're looked at long enough, and people have already started to, such as this detailed thread by Fish. Here's what Celois thinks from the information released:
Textures -New swamp type terrain -New swamp like green water (?) -New Thick stalky trees -New 'thin' snow terrain with dead looking leaves -New very thin trees.
Myth Units -New Sea shell looking sea myth unit -New treant type myth unit -New armidillo/dinosaur myth unit
Buildings -New floating building whos purpose looks similar to Underworld Passage. -Temple is still there -An new military building that looks like an stone longhouse.
Units -New 'elite' looking like cavalry (Reminds me of cataphracts) -New Archer unit that looks similar to an toxote -New Melee unit that looks sort of like an small colosus. -New Melee unit that carrys 2 swords -New Melee unit that has an huge shield and carrys an trident/spear -New Unit with an cart that can build and gather resources. Prehaps able to drop off resources immediantly? -New spearmen type unit with no shield and looks very very bare. Carrys 2 wooden spears.
Features -So far it appear that every non-myth unit can be turned into an hero.
Unsorted -New flying unit. Possibly an human or myth unit. -New titan unit.
Keith Pullin of Computer & Video Games previews RoN. Here is an excerpt:
After playing the beta version for a good few days now, we think we may have discovered a depth that only the Total War series of games can claim to equal.
Big Huge Games has just released a brand new behind the scenes look into the units in Rise of Nations. In the article they go over the processes they used to create the units and bring them to life in the game.
After the unit was modeled and textured it was animated. Each one would have several attack, death, move, and idle animations. The "idle" animations play when the unit is sitting around doing nothing, and were usually the most fun since this is where we could add some character to the units. For example, a modern infantryman might start smoking, or a merchant might have a tussle with his mule, or you might even find an out-of-work peasant lying down on the grass, laying down on the job! Try looking for some more--my favorite is the salute that the Mamelukes, an Egyptian mounted gun unit, performs.
My personal favorites are the German Barbarian's Sword Dance and the spitting Camels. Check out the full article to learn more about the units and even get a glimpse into the high tech motion capture techniques used by Big Huge Games.
The upcoming AoM patch "should be available this week." According to Archangel, a readme will be available tomorrow morning (CST) on the details of the patch.
Archangeldropped by our forums to give us a wonderful bit of news about the AoM Expansion Pack. New features include the Atlantean culture, a 12-scenario campaign, 12 god powers, 18 human units, and 10 myth units. Here's the press release:
Remember the Titans! Age of Mythology Expansion Pack Available This Fall
Microsoft Game Studios and Ensemble Studios today announced that the Age of Mythology: The Titans expansion pack will be available in stores this fall. Gamers will soon be able to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, controlling the power of Titan gods such as Atlas and Cronus in the new expansion.
Age of Mythology: The Titans adds a fourth culture, the Atlanteans, to the existing Greek, Egyptian and Norse mythologies. A new single-player campaign will add yet another chapter to the franchise's expansive folklore with the addition of 12 new scenarios. Atlantean players will be able to call upon the might of the Titan gods multiple times throughout the game, and may also upgrade human units to heroes. The expansion pack will introduce 12 new god powers, 18 new human units
This week's castle, courtesy of Sulis, is Belvoir Castle in Israel, the Star of the Jordan, which is the first datable true concentric castle, built shortly after 1168. Find out more about it 
This week's castle is 
