Age of Mythology

• 1. Introduction

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  Age of Mythology arrived in October 2002 carrying a question that no strategy game from Ensemble Studios had asked before: what happens when you take the bones of a proven series and fill them with gods, monsters, and the supernatural? The studio that built the Age of Empires franchise had spent years reconstructing history. This time, they walked away from history entirely. Instead of armies rooted in documented events, players would command forces blessed by Zeus, Ra, and Odin. Mythological creatures and god-granted powers would sit alongside the familiar economics of gathering food, wood, and gold. Within four months of release, the game had sold over one million units and gone platinum. Four Austrian researchers would later use its artificial intelligence as a laboratory for studying how emotions affect competitive play. A full remaster, Age of Mythology: Retold, launched on the 4th of September, 2024. The questions worth carrying through this story are these: why did Ensemble Studios bet on myth rather than history, how did that bet reshape the rules of their genre, and what did the game become over the two decades that followed?

• 2. A Studio Bets on Myth

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  Ensemble Studios began building a fully three-dimensional engine at the same time they were finishing Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. They called it the BANG! Engine, and they announced it in January 2001 as the foundation for a project codenamed RTSIII. The decision behind RTSIII was a frank one: the team feared becoming stale and repetitive if they remained anchored to documented history. Moving into mythology freed them to work with new ideas and concepts without the obligation to historical accuracy. The codename RTSIII was eventually shed for Age of Mythology, and a trial version was released after the full game was announced for September 2002. That trial version included five scenarios from the campaign and two random maps. Players could only select Zeus in the trial, but the full game offered nine gods. One of the thorniest problems during development was the balance of god powers, which by design were meant to feel special and decisive. It was concluded that limiting each god power to a single use per game was the cleanest solution. The development team also put an unusual emphasis on hands-on testing. Greg T. Street credited the game's eventual popularity in part to the hours the team spent actively playing rather than relying on what he described as advice from a faceless drone in another building.

• 3. How the Game Actually Works

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  Four resources govern every decision in Age of Mythology: food, wood, gold, and favor. Stone, which appeared in earlier Ensemble titles, was dropped entirely. Each culture gathers favor differently: Greek players send villagers to pray at temples; Egyptian players construct monuments; Norse players fight and hunt animals or keep heroes active. Favor cannot be traded at the market, where all other resources can be exchanged. Players advance through four named ages, from the Archaic Age up through the Classical, Heroic, and Mythic, and each advance requires spending resources and constructing a specific prerequisite building. Selecting a minor god at each age transition grants new technologies, myth units, and a unique god power. Minor gods like Bast and Aphrodite sit below major pantheon choices such as Zeus, Ra, or Odin. Combat follows a rock-paper-scissors structure: infantry beats cavalry, cavalry beats archers, and archers beat infantry. That same triangular logic governs the three naval unit types. Heroes stand outside this structure by being highly effective against myth units, which in turn deal large damage against ordinary human units. Heroes can also collect relics, which deliver economic or military bonuses when deposited at a player's temple. Population capacity maxes out at 300, with the Town Center providing 15 slots and each additional house adding 10 more. A Wonder, once built, triggers a ten-minute countdown; if it survives, its builder wins.

• 4. Fall of the Trident

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  The campaign, called Fall of the Trident, consists of 32 scenarios, considerably longer than the campaigns in the previous Age of Empires games. Arkantos, an Atlantean admiral, is drawn out of his homeland when a cyclops named Kamos raids Atlantis to steal a trident from a statue of Poseidon. He recovers the trident but is then dispatched by the Atlantean council to assist the Greek king Agamemnon in the Trojan War. Alongside the heroes Ajax and Odysseus, Arkantos helps end the war through the use of a Trojan Horse. The antagonist who will haunt the rest of the campaign, Gargarensis, is a cyclops warlord who appears in Ioklos commanding enslaved citizens at a dig site that conceals an entrance to the underworld of Erebus. The larger threat only becomes clear when the goddess Athena visits Arkantos in a dream during the Egypt sequence and explains that Kronos, one of the Titans imprisoned by Zeus, is manipulating Poseidon and Gargarensis to find the Tartarus gates and break them open. The campaign leads through Egypt, where Arkantos helps a Nubian leader named Amanra reassemble the body of Osiris, and then north to the frozen Norselands. There the centaur Chiron sacrifices himself to hold off fire giants, and the dwarven brothers Brokk and Eitri arrive with fragments of Thor's hammer just in time to seal a Norse gate. Arkantos ultimately defeats Gargarensis on Atlantis itself, sacrifices his life to destroy a colossal statue possessed by Poseidon, and plunges the city beneath the ocean to seal the final gate forever. Athena revives him and elevates him as a god. A separate official campaign, The Golden Gift, was released as a free download from Microsoft's website and followed Brokk and Eitri as they raced to forge a golden boar for the Norse god Freyr, only to have it stolen by a character named Skult.

• 5. Stephen Rippy's Score

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  The official soundtrack was released on the 22nd of October, 2002, through a label called Sumthing Else. Stephen Rippy and Kevin McMullan wrote the score. Rippy named Peter Gabriel, Tuatara, Bill Laswell, Talvin Singh, and Tchad Blake as sources of inspiration. The work pushed Rippy into territory he had not previously explored; one example he cited was writing for a seventy-piece orchestra and then flying out to Washington to record it. Jay Semerad, reviewing for Music 4 Games, called the soundtrack an experience that should not be missed and named it one of his favorite soundtracks of that year. He singled out the ney flute, tabla, and toy piano as instruments that produced innovative analog and synthesized electronic effects. His only reservation was that some background melodies were bound to a simple harmonization and lacked bold or innovative purpose. Other critics noted the same tension: IGN described the music as great, if repetitive, while Game Revolution said it really showcased Ensemble's continued attention to detail. The sound team's work extended beyond the orchestral score; Game Revolution also praised the audio snippets recorded in various languages.

• 6. How Critics and Players Received It

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  GameSpot named Age of Mythology the best computer game of November 2002. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences nominated it for Computer Game of the Year and Computer Strategy Game of the Year at their 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. Graphics drew consistent nines out of ten from both IGN reviewer Steve Butts and GameSpot reviewer Greg Kasavin; Butts specifically praised the differences between armies and environments, while Kasavin pointed to bright colors and carefully detailed animations. PC Gamer reviewer William Harms was particularly struck by the animations, describing in his review how a Minotaur's club strike sent an opponent flying, skidding on the ground, and bouncing back into the air. The campaign drew more divided responses. IGN found it meaningful and nearly flawless as a single-player experience. GameSpot was more skeptical, calling the story not incredibly engaging, though they noted that strategy fans would head for the random map mode regardless. PC Gamer's reviewer praised many well-crafted missions and moments of genuine comedy, but criticized a recurring tendency toward excessive base-building, arguing that the mythological setting lent itself to more imaginative mission design than the developers ultimately delivered. Computer Games Magazine placed the game fourth on its list of the best computer games of 2002 and called it an amazingly well-balanced game. In the United States alone, it sold 870,000 copies and earned $31.9 million by August 2006, making it the country's tenth best-selling computer game between January 2000 and August 2006. Combined sales of the base game and its Titans expansion reached 1.3 million units in the United States by that same date. The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association awarded the game a Gold sales certificate for the United Kingdom, indicating at least 200,000 copies sold there.

• 7. Expansions and the Long Tail

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  Age of Mythology: The Titans launched on the 30th of September, 2003, adding the Atlanteans as a fourth playable culture along with several new units including titans themselves. Critics and fans received it with enthusiasm, though ratings averaged slightly below those of the original. That same year, Eagle Games released a board game adaptation titled Age of Mythology: The Boardgame. A Nintendo DS spin-off, Age of Empires: Mythologies, developed by Griptonite Games, carried the mythology-based gameplay into the portable space. A decade later, SkyBox Labs developed Age of Mythology: Extended Edition, which bundled the main game and The Titans expansion, added Steamworks integration, Twitch support, an enhanced observer mode, native HD widescreen, and improved water and lighting; it launched on the 8th of May, 2014. A second expansion, Tale of the Dragon, was announced on the 18th of September, 2015 and released on the 28th of January, 2016. Co-developed by SkyBox Labs and Forgotten Empires, the latter of which had previous experience with new Age of Empires II expansions, it introduced a fifth culture, the Chinese, with major gods Fuxi, Nüwa, and Shennong. The remaster, Age of Mythology: Retold, was revealed on the 25th of October, 2022 and released on the 4th of September, 2024. It was built inside the version of the Bang Engine used for Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, and all units and animations were remade from scratch. Four Austrian researchers, Christoph Hermann, Helmuth Melcher, Stefan Rank, and Robert Trappl, used the original game's AI in a study on whether adding a simple emotional model to a bot-script improves playing strength; the neurotic bot they tested won against the game's default AI approximately twenty-five percent more quickly than the aggressive bot did, and the team planned further experiments pitting it against human players.