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.
Age of Empires
Bungie chose Ensemble Studios to develop "Halo Wars", an RTS game based on their "Halo" series. They said that one of the reasons they chose to work with Ensemble was because of the "Age of Empires" series. They also noted that Ensemble was the perfect choice "to realize the original vision of "Halo"", which started life as an RTS.