Age of Empires
Age of Empires is a series of historical real-time strategy video games, originally developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Studios. The first title of the series was "Age of Empires", released in 1997. Seven titles and three spin-offs have been released.
Age of Empires II
Prior to the completion of "Age of Empires", Ensemble Studios had signed a contract with Microsoft for a sequel. The design team chose to set "The Age of Kings" in the Middle Ages as a logical progression from the ancient era setting of "Age of Empires". The design team was conscious of attempting to capture the broad appeal of the first game without making the game's design too similar. Nonetheless, they attempted to appeal to the vast demographic who played "Age of Empires". "The Age of Kings"s design team intended to complete the game within a year by using code from the original and reusing the Genie game engine. Several months into the process they found they would not be able to complete a game of the quality they sought in that time. Ensemble Studios informed Microsoft they would need another year and instead created "", an easily developed expansion pack of "Age of Empires", as a compromise which could be released for Christmas 1998. To help meet the next year's deadline, additional programmers, artists, and designers were employed. To overcome another significant objection to "Age of Empires"—that of path finding—the team completely redesigned the game engine's movement system.