Introduction

Here's a step-by-step guide to playing the "deathmatch".  This is sure to be one of the most popular ways of playing Age of Empires, and with the single-player options provided for this format, everybody can enjoy the deathmatch, even without a modem.  Follow this guide, and you should be able to embarrass the computer at the "Hard" level, and even challenge at the "Impossible" setting.  This scenario pits Egyptian against Shang on a large inland map.  Difficulty was set to Hard, and Standard victory conditions were selected.


Stone Age

Create an extra villager, build a barracks and a granary.  Set the diplomacy to neutral.  Use the third villager to build extra houses.  Once the two buildings have been completed, advance to the Tool Age.  While your City center is progressing, use your villagers to explore the surrounding area.  If any stone or gold deposits are located, build a storage pit and start mining.  If you find the river's edge, build a dock.  Boats can be used to explore.


Tool Age

Create several new villagers and use them to create a stable, market, and archery range.  When two of the buildings have been completed, advance to the Bronze Age.  Start checking your buildings for research and upgrades.  Carry out all the research available, as resources in deathmatches aren't a problem.  Spare villagers can be used for farming.

Train some scouts at the stable and use these to explore further.  You should find an artifact and a ruin.  Return any artifacts found to your City center.  You may need to defend them later in the game.  Keep your scouts out on post duty and use them to explore further during any free moments that arise.


Bronze Age

Build a temple, government center, and academy; create more villagers and set them to farming and preferably gold mining.  When two of the three buildings are complete, advance to the Iron Age.  More research will now be available at all your buildings.  If you have several storage pits, you can do separate research at each one.  Carry out all research at the temple, but don't train any priests yet.  If you've researched the wheel at the market, start producing some chariots at the stable.  At the archery range, upgrade to the composite bow before training any chariot archers.  Build a siege workshop and start producing stone throwers.

As military units become ready, use them to form a ring around your city for a hasty defense.


Iron Age

War elephants and elephant archers should make up the bulk of your force.  You will also need some chariot archers to hunt down enemy priests.  Once you have researched everything at the temple, except Jihad, start producing priests.  Build triremes at the docks and use them to explore as much as possible.  Set the diplomacy to enemy, as you are now ready to start hunting your prey.

Use your scouts to find the Shang town center.  They will still be in the Stone Age or the Tool Age.  You can now form your army into four groups.  Priests in one, chariots in another, siege engines in a third, and your elephants in the fourth.  Lead all four groups towards the enemy camp with the elephants in front and the priests at the rear.  Combat happens at a frenzied pace, but there are ways to optimize your army's effectiveness.  Use the elephants as the vanguard to soak up the Shang attacks.  Chariots should be used on the flanks for quick response and to guard your priests.  Siege engines should focus on destroying enemy buildings.  Priests should be used to convert the biggest threats.  Use the priests to convert military buildings to your faith.  This provides you with a source of reinforcements and slows down enemy production of troops.

When using priests, remember that although you form them into a group to move them, they must handle conversions or healing individually.  Otherwise, they'll become fatigued from a single conversion and become vulnerable.  Once you have taken care of the military buildings, switch to mopping-up mode.  This can involve some extensive exploring of the map to find the odd storage pit.  In the process, you will probably find the balance of the artifacts and take control of all the ruins.  If you haven't the patience to do this, set your villagers to the task of building a Wonder.  Change the speed setting to fast and you'll soon see an impressive pyramid and the words "You're victorious!".

The two most obvious ways to cope with early assaults from neighbors are either to forgo some of your early research at the military establishments and produce some lower level troops, or to build sentry towers at strategic points encompassing the city.  These towers will attack enemies who come into range, but you can also click them like any other unit to pick out specific targets.  A less tempting possibility is to offer tribute.  This can be done from the diplomacy menu.  There is no shame in this, and in some scenarios, this is the only way to give your race enough breathing space to build up their empire.

Reprinted by permission of PC Gamer magazine, (c)1998.
