Age of Empires is a historical real-time strategy series developed by Ensemble Studios in 1997 that has gained immense popularity over the years with gaming enthusiasts. The current edition, Age-of-Empires 4 has recently been released by Relic Entertainment entailing a powerful game plot that is a combination of exciting real-time strategy and a historical context. After its release, many other games like Age of Empires surfaced, some of which had the gaming enthusiasts raving about the similarities and gaming experience. While not all these games have been impactful enough to be termed ‘big’ but here’s a list of some noteworthy mentions that are true Age-of-Empires alternatives.
Age of Mythology
Developed by the creators of Age-of-Empires, the title features a spin-off series with a mythological backdrop. Contrary to the historical context of the Age-of-Empires, Age of Mythology occurs in Atlantis emphasizing the popular legends of those times and various Egyptian, Greek and Norse myths. Every player can select a civilization from these three and play to move on to the next age. You’ll like the game because the game plot is similar AgeofEmpires where you conquer other civilizations and manage your resources. With each unlocked level, you’re granted special powers and abilities.
Anno Online
As part of the Anno series, Anno Online is a free browser-based game, crafted by Ubisoft entailing a gameplay focusing real-time strategy. This addictive title allows you to construct cities, grow economies, and manage trade. Apart from these, you are also engaged in exciting aspects like battles, travel, exploration and business. In line with games-like AgeofEmpires, your aim is to construct an empire and grow the estate to make it strong enough for taking on opponents when required.
Availability: Browser
Starcraft 2
One of the most popular games like Age of Empires around, Starcraft II, is a sequel to the famous space-centric RTS game, Starcraft-wings of Liberty, which was designed and developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The backdrop features a 26th-century science fiction game-universe that involves four different species battling it out for dominating the universe. This inter-galactic battle play has an immersive gameplot, multiple expansion packs, and exciting characters. Players can choose to take up any of the three species, Terran, Zerg or Protoss.
Availability: Windows and Mac, Browser
Rise of Nations
Consisting of an addictive gameplay and exciting features, the game crafted by Big Huge Games is a highly ranked title amongst best video games ever within the category of real-time strategy. Packed with high-end vfx and gripping action scenes, Rise of Nations, has gained considerable likeability from gaming enthusiasts across the globe. The title includes 8 ages of world history and 18 different civilizations. As with other games like Age of Empires, the goal of the player is to grow and tackle the opponents more efficiently and conquer their land in order to move on to the most modern age, to get special powers like better weaponry and capability to annex more land to build an empire. Similar to Age of Empires like games, it allows you to annex territories that is the area near the player’s settlements and build property within this zone or in your friend’s territory.
Command and Conquer
Command & Conquer is an exciting title that takes some elements of gameplay from Westwood’s strategy based Dune 2. With this new game, Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliances, you are required to select your specific area in the game world where you can construct your own estate and grow it to make it powerful enough to take over the other opponents. The game plot merges the campaigns of different groups in the primary storyline, which is the highlight of the game. The strategic aspects and riveting gameplay are similar to free online strategy games like Age of Empires including amazing characters and faction that remind you of the conquer & build sequences in the original Age-of-Empires.
It’s a great military strategy game packed with brilliant MMO elements. The gameplay includes features like setting up your own military base and building structures to strengthen your territory for greater defense. As you take on enemy camps in battles, you must win and take over your opponents in order to move up higher levels.
Empire Earth
As indulging and interesting as the Age-of-Empires series, Empire Earth is a real-time strategy game based on historical events. The backdrop features an era spread over 500,000 years of world history. The title starts with a pre-historic sequence ending at the nano age. You can assimilate resources required to build and grow cities by adding citizens to your civilizations and annex land by battling other settlements.
One of the best games like Age of Empires comes equipped with a comprehensive map editor for you to build your empire in your preferred design. With two intriguing features like the ‘Morale’ system’ and the ‘Hero’ system, you have the option to choose between the two heroes; Strategist Heroes who fix the surrounding structures can overpower opponent’s units while Warrior Heroes who help boost morale can snag a win over the enemy as they have greater attack power.
Availability: Windows
Empire
An awesome free to play game, Empire is a popular title amongst other free games like Age of Empires that entails a real-time strategy based gameplay with multiplayer options. Crafted by Good Game Studios, the backdrop is set in a medieval era, where the players gradually construct their territory from scratch and transform it into a thriving settlement. The goal is to make your estate so powerful that the enemy would think twice before launching an attack. Similar to Age-of-Empires, the features include constructing castles, trading resources, building an army, and conquering other areas. The game allows you to create a position, devise your own combat techniques, and concoct defense strategies for moving on to advanced levels.
Availability: Browser
The Settlers
The Settlers is another browser-based free to play game created by BlueBite featuring a ‘real-time strategy’ game plot similar to Age-of-Empires like games. The exciting title entails a historical world where you have to gather resources and engage in built-in missions to construct your specific medieval estates. It also allows you to annex territories and explore the other areas in the game world. Just like Age-of-Empires, the game has different levels that you can move through, bandit camps to cross, special powers to collect and multiplayer options where you can take on other opponents to expand your kingdom.