The capital city offers layers and layers of customisation like this. My city’s many shops and crafting lodges held interest long after the steady stream of missions had started to feel like a grind. You can boost your troops’ performance in battle by equipping them with special weapons and armour pieces at your capital city’s armoury. Separate crafting houses for infantry, cavalry and naval units let you create new gear and one-shot consumables that can buff units in the middle of a fight, or even summon new ones to your town centre at a pinch. You’ll need to buy a civilisation pack to equip the most powerful elite gear.
The square of death wins every time.
While the idea of developing new armour and weapons for my warriors from my capital city was enticing, the incremental nature of each upgrade meant I never saw much effect from my meddling. A new bow might give my archers a little extra range, and new armour might make my spearmen 20% tougher, but this never changed their level of usefulness in combat. If new items gave units new abilities and new roles on the battlefield, the upgrade system has the potential to be much more compelling. As it is, your units may as well just be levelling up. They grow slightly stronger now and then, but never become more interesting to use.
As a result, AoEO feels like two different games that happen to share the same economy. Your capital city swells, earns money, generates items and lets you configure a complex, abstract build for your armed forces, but during the brief loading screen that separates the city view and a mission, that build degenerates into a repetitive, straightforward RTS. Build. Farm. Forage. Chop wood. Build barracks. Train army. Boxselect. Right click. Win.
The Egyptian civilisation doesn’t offer much more variety. Their units are a little cheaper and slightly more fragile, but while Egyptian axemen and camel riders look different from Greek swordsmen and cavalry, they all work the same way in a fight. The Egyptian healing and support units, (Age of Empires Online Gold)such as the Priestess of Ra and powerful War Elephants, are the only things that really set the two factions apart.
Build enough troops and victory is assured.
If you want more of a challenge – and you will – you can also face off against other players in one-on-one or two-vs-two games in Sparta. This unlocks at level seven, and gives you a new way to earn experience, and acts as a much better test of your army’s build. Writing this review during the beta period meant there weren’t many opponents to face, and battles were inevitably mismatched. These problems will be alleviated by more players, but others won’t.
