Of course, if your opponent suspects that you’re trying to fast Castle, they may dial back on the archers and have a horde of those anti-cavalry spearmen upgraded and waiting for you… and maybe the civilization they’re playing gives those spearmen a powerful bonus. Or you could forgo this Feudal tête-à-tête entirely by throwing down some cheap but fragile walls, rushing the construction of defensive towers near your key resources, and just trying to survive while you beat your opponent to the third age, the Castle Age, where powerful knights can be unleashed to crush Feudal units. Just don’t overcommit and build too many, or you’ll fall behind in the economic and technological race. But you should probably have spearmen ready too, because while they get picked apart by archers, they scare away the scout cavalry your opponent might otherwise roll out to run down your skirmishers. You could prepare for this with skirmishers, a cheaper unit that shreds archers but is about as effective against most other units as wishful thinking. Which wood source will be easiest to defend? What resources are your opponent prioritizing, and what does that tell you about their intended line of attack? An early pivot to wood and gold, for example, would suggest that your opponent plans to rush you with archers in the game’s second age-the Feudal Age. With four resources to collect and four ages to advance through, tasks and decisions rapidly pile up. It’s also fun to play both in single-player and multiplayer, at any level, so it kind of just ticks all the boxes.” The random map generation also contributes to even the same always having different factors affect how the game will play out, so no game is ever the same. When asked what keeps him coming back to AoE2, he said it “ has so much depth in terms of civilizations, maps, and approaches to the game, that it simply never gets boring. Viper also won the tournament’s previous installments and was never seriously challenged in this incarnation, sweeping the best of seven finals and going 14-2 across four rounds of play. Ørjan Larsen, better known as TheViper, is probably the game’s all-time greatest player and inarguably its winningest, with his Hidden Cup 3 victory putting him over $100,000 in lifetime prize money.
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It’s also complicated enough that pro players are still developing new strategies today. It’s simple enough to learn that a new player could hop in and defeat a low-level AI within an hour. Its most unique feature, the need to progress through four ages to access new troops and techs, is compelling but hardly unheard of in the genre. Its 35 civilizations offer unique units and subtle bonuses, and players have to balance four resources, a web of units with varying strengths and weaknesses, and technologies that eat resources but provide long-term benefits. On the surface, AoE2 is a typical RTS: establish an economy, build a base, destroy the opposition. Competitive players loved its strategic depth, while creatives appreciated its ability to serve as a historical playground, and together they played a large role in saving the game from obscurity. Instead, thanks to a passionate fandom that includes YouTubers, pro streamers, and modders, it hung around and became far more popular than AoE3 and the Mythology spin-off that followed. It was a hit, but there was no reason to think it wouldn’t eventually face the same ravages of time as its predecessor. AoE2 topped 1999’s sales charts, was lauded with a plethora of Game of the Year awards, and was popular enough to justify spinoffs ranging from a collectible card game to a turn-based Nintendo DS title to a bizarre, dumbed-down cell phone version. Its 2018 Definitive Edition was nostalgic but clunky, of interest only to long-time fans willing to tolerate its eccentricities. It was well-received, but shoddy pathfinding and limited strategic depth kept it from aging gracefully as the genre evolved. The original Age of Empires was released in 1997 after being marketed, somewhat disingenuously, as Civilization meets Warcraft. But what is that appeal? What fanbase existed to justify revisiting AoE2 after all these years? And what does AoE2’s continued success mean for the upcoming Age of Empires IV ? Age of Empires II -a 21-year-old real-time strategy game-has been revitalized by the release of 2019’s Definitive Edition, which sought to modernize the title while still retaining its fundamental appeal. Compare that to 2018, when the first Hidden Cup drew in just 6,000 peak viewers with a purse of less than $1,500. On March 22, 2020, nearly 58,000 people watched the finals of Hidden Cup 3, an Age of Empires II tournament with a $56,830 prize pool.