Age of Empires
"Age of Empires", released on October 26, 1997, was the first game in the series, as well as the first major release from Ensemble Studios. It was one of the first history-based real-time strategy games made, utilizing the Genie game engine. GameSpot described it as a mix of "Civilization" and "". The game gives players a choice of 12 civilizations to develop from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. The expansion pack, "The Rise of Rome", published by Microsoft on October 31, 1998, introduced new features and four new civilizations, including the Romans. Although the two games had contained many software bugs, patches resolved many of the problems.
InnoGames
The company released its second game, The West, in 2008. That same year InnoGames moved to Hamburg-Harburg and hired additional employees. As the company continued to grow, they released their third game, Grepolis, on 2009. Since 2013, Grepolis is playable as an app for iOS and Android devices. Its first city-builder, Forge of Empires, was published in 2012. The game includes a journey through time that begins in the Stone Age and guides the player through the ages of human history. As of late-July, 2018, the latest era is the Virtual Future, but further extensions are planned. Forge of Empires was awarded the German Computer Game Prize in 2013 as the best browser game. Since 5 June 2014 the game is also playable as an app on the iPad. The iPhone version followed on September 2014 and the Android version on 25 March 2015. Following Forge of Empires' Android version in 2015, the German developer published its second city-building MMO, Elvenar in April