Author: Fred Wan
Editor: Howard Ha
Publish Date: Saturday, February 15th, 2003
Originally Published on Neoseeker (http://www.neoseeker.com)
Article Link: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Games/Reviews/ageofmythology/
Copyright Neo Era Media, Inc. - please do not redistribute or use for commercial purposes.
Age of Mythology (AoM) is MicroSoft’s latest real-time strategy game. Built on the Age of Empires game engine, AoM combines the resource management aspects of Age of Empires and adds a new twist—gods and creatures from classic mythology. Together, the solid Age of Empires resource- and technology- management mechanics, combined with the influence the gods have over the flow of the game, lead to a fast-paced game with a multitude of strategic possibilities.
Play Modes:
AoM supports several modes of play. In addition to a 35-mission long story/campaign mode, AoM allows you to play skirmishes as a single player vs. the computer, on a LAN, or online on the ESO (Ensemble Studios Online) server provided.
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Faction Overview:
Players can select from three distinct civilizations in AoM: the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Norse. Each of the three plays differently, and “feels” different during the game. The Greeks have the most “regular” building and unit options of the three, and have expensive but powerful units. The Egyptians, conversely, have a very wide tech tree, allowing them to eventually research the precise solution to whatever problem they encounter. The Norse, finally, are unusual in that their military units, not their workers, build their buildings, which leads them to sprawl all over the map. Overall, while all of the factions can use any strategy, the Egyptians are defensive, the Norse offensive, and the Greeks are “balanced”. However, these basic tendencies are greatly modified by which gods you choose to worship during the game.
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Deities, and Gods
The greatest innovation of AoM is the inclusion of deities and gods into the mechanics of the game. Each civilization, at the beginning of the game, must choose one of three deities to worship:
Greeks: Zeus, Hades, Poseidon
Egyptians: Ra, Isis, Set
Norse: Thor, Odin, Loki
Each god offers special advantages and abilities, as well as unique units and technology upgrades, to research. However, because you can only choose one of your faction’s 3 deities, you already have a great deal of customization—choosing one deity automatically means giving up the other two, and the advantages they provide. Choosing a deity to complement your playstyle, or shore up weaknesses in your strategies, adds depth to the game.
For example, Thor has a close mythological relationship with the Norse dwarves. In the game, this causes him to start with 2 dwarves rather than 2 villagers. Since dwarves are extra-good at mining gold, and not so good at harvesting lumber or food. This makes it easy for Thor to play a “heavy spending strategy”—or, he can get by with fewer gold miners than players of other deities or civilizations.
However, although the deity mechanic lets you customize your civilization selection, the deities alone do not provide enough variety to make the game truly unique. What AoM does to add to the strategic aspect of the game is to create entire pantheons, or groups of gods, for each civilization. As the game progresses, you get to choose minor gods to worship alongside your deity. Like the deity himself (or herself in the case of Isis), minor gods provide you with specific units, special abilities, and upgrades.
AoM adds a great deal of depth to the game by forcing players to choose between the gods. During each of the game’s four Ages, or levels of development, you will choose one god to worship. In the first age, the beginning of the game, you choose the deity that you will follow as a whole. During each succeeding age, you will choose one additional god to follow, adding his or her strengths to your civilization.
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There are three gods to choose between for each faction, at each Age after the first. What makes the choice interesting, though, is that you get three different gods at each Age, and again, choosing one god effectively means turning your back on the other two. Complicating matters is the fact that, even though each faction can choose between three gods, each major deity only gets to choose between two. Therefore, you need to be even more careful planning your strategies—certain combinations of gods and deities simply cannot happen during a game.
For example, the Greeks have the following gods to choose from during the Mythical (final) Age:
Artemis, goddess of the hunt
Hephaestus, god of the forge and labour
Hera, the queen of the gods
Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades are all allowed to choose Hephaestus as their god for the Mythical Age, but while Poseidon and Hades have to choose between Hephaestus and Artemis, Zeus must choose between Hephaestus and Hera. So, by choosing Zeus, you effectively eliminate your ability to choose Artemis from the moment the game begins. Since Artemis offers significant upgrades to your archers, you need to make tradeoffs.
Often, you can choose a particular “line” of deity and gods to super-enhance some of your troops. On the other hand, since AoM uses a unit counter model (more on that below), doing so leaves you vulnerable to your opponent(s) countering your troops. Choosing whether to focus all your research and god bonuses on, for example, cavalry or spreading out and diversifying adds a lot to the game, and greatly enhances its replay value.
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Mythological Powers and Myth Units
A further strategic implication of your choices of deities and gods is the mythological powers each one provides. Each member of your pantheon provides you with an immensely powerful ability that you can use at will. The catch: each ability can only be used once per game. Selecting your gods to provide abilities that are useful during a particular game, and knowing when to use them, is a very important part of your overall strategy.
For example, Zeus lends you his “Bolt” power, which calls down a lightning bolt that instantly kills any targeted unit, irrespective of its cost or power. You may want to use it during an early rush, in order to kill off 1 extra defender to tilt the odds in your favour, or you might want to save it for late game, in order to eliminate a big, powerful enemy unit.
Although your deity is probably the most “powerful” member of your pantheon, his or her ability is actually going to be the weakest mythological power available to you during the game. The gods you acquire during the game become progressively more “powerful” as the game progresses.
While Zeus offers you Bolt, Hera, one of the gods Zeus allows you to choose, provides you with the ability to call down a Lightning Storm. She fires multiple lightning bolts down upon the area you select. While each bolt is not individually fatal, you get several seconds of cover during which she keeps firing.
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The same principle holds true for mythological units—the early ones are not as powerful as the later ones. Myth units are special units that your gods provide to you as reinforcements. Each one has a normal attack as well as a special ability that is automatically triggered whenever the unit has an opportunity to use it. For example, the Norse goddess Freyja, who is available in the 2nd Age, provides you with the option to recruit Valkyries, cavalry units who can heal your other units. On the other hand, the Egyptian god Horus, who you may select in the final, Mythic Age, provides you with “Avengers”, which are very fast, tough, and powerful melee units. Their special ability, “whirlwind attack”, allows them to attack every enemy adjacent to them simultaneously—which they do frequently, and with devastating results. Mythic units are very powerful—far more so than an equivalent cost worth of human units, and their special abilities make them more interesting to watch, too.
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Heroes, and other Human Units
What prevents mythic units from overrunning the game is AoM’s unit counter system. Each kind of unit counters (defeats) a certain other category of unit, and is in turn countered by yet another group. The basic engine works as follows:
Infantry counters cavalry
Cavalry counters archers
Archers counter infantry
Alongside this rule is another:
Mythic units counter human units
So, if two armies of approximately equal resource cost fight, and one army is the “natural counter” to the other, it will win, and by a large margin. So, as mentioned above, mythic armies tend to dominate over human armies.
However, every faction has the ability to hire hero units. Heroes in AoM are essentially normal human units specifically designed to defeat myth units. So, when faced with an opponent who is massing mythic units, you can build heroes to counter them.
Unit counters are an important part of AoM—unlike WarCraft (the standard to which most current RTS’ are compared), there is not very much in the way of micro management you can perform to enhance your armies’ performance in combat. So, macro management—strategy, army composition and manoeuvring—become vital.
Sound & Music:
AoM’s musical score is somewhat laid back. In contrast to WarCraft, which is exemplary case of the music enhancing both the story mode and multiplayer games, AoM’s music is “just there”. While the voices are done quite well for the story mode, and the voice acting and dialogue communicate the message effectively, AoM does not have particularly strong music or sound effects.
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Graphics:
AoM does a very good job of making units look visually distinct from each other—which is critical because battles can involve dozens of units per side. Likewise, unit upgrades change the way units appear, which is a handy way to determine at a glance what armies both sides are fielding. The same holds true for buildings—as you advance through the ages, the graphics for each building are modernized and updated.
One area where the graphics fail to impress, however, is in the area of god powers. Surprisingly, the majority of god powers are not visually majestic—even though they have tremendous effects on game play. Although a few powers, such as Thoth’s Meteor ability, do look quite good, most of the god powers “look” rather quiet—which is odd for, well, god powers.
On the other, the mythic units are quite impressive looking, and the animation for their special abilities is both appropriate and, in place, humorous. Watching a Norse kraken wrap around and sink ships is quite gratifying. Likewise, watching Ares’ Cyclops pick up and throws human units at each other is downright funny, in a blackly humorous sense.
Controls:
AoM uses the standard RTS point-and-click system. I find that the basic engine works well enough, with the usual assortment of set and customizable hotkeys for constructing units and buildings. However, I have two major reservations about the engine for the game:
While the overall controls of the game are fairly good, the pathing issues seriously hurt the fun factor of the game. While I am sure that a patch will eventually solve this problem, it is a severe damper on the enjoyability of the game as a whole.
Overall Thoughts:
Age of Mythology is an enjoyable, engaging RTS. The pacing, and the complex resource engine—there are 4 resources (Food, Lumber, Gold, and divine Favour) to manage, make for a very “strategic” (macro, or overall control) game. Age of Mythology, while not as fast-paced as say, WarCraft, yields very satisfying games.
Specific Points of Interest:
Overall Rating:
70%--for a RTS, pathing problems are intolerable. Once a patch comes out to address this, however, I would up the rating to 85%. A good, solid, methodical game.
Overall Score: 85%
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