Age of Empires

Age of Empires is a 1997 real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, in which players guide one of several ancient civilizations from the Stone Age through successive technological ages toward the Iron Age, gathering resources, constructing buildings and researching upgrades to build an army capable of defeating rival civilizations. Modeled loosely on the structure of Westwood Studios' earlier Command and Conquer and Blizzard's Warcraft games but set in a historical rather than fantasy or science-fiction world, it drew directly on real civilizations, technologies and military units from antiquity. Its commercial success established Ensemble Studios as a major developer and launched a long-running Age of Empires franchise that remained one of the most prominent real-time strategy series into the 2020s.