The priest is a special kind of military unit that has the ability to convert enemy units to the player's civilization, and to heal allied units. These civilization-specific units are generally more powerful, but can still be vulnerable to certain units. Unique units are available for the Greek, Egyptian, Celts, and Persian civilizations, either from the start of the game or through advisor cards. As an example, a unit powerful against buildings can be weak against a certain kind of cavalry. All military classes are developed to maintain a balance on gameplay, and thus avoiding visible advantages between civilizations.
Resources could be traded, and also "spent" to train units, construct buildings, and research technologies.Īge of Empires Online includes five classes of military units: Infantry, archers, cavalry, siege weaponry, and naval units. Civilian units, called villagerswere used to gather resources hunting, fishing, farming, forestry, mining etc. To assure victory, the player had to gather and preserve resources to spend on new units, buildings and more advanced technology. The main gameplay revolved around the player developing a civilization from its birth to its peak and fall. Also, the game features a great quantity of new content, such as the ability to craft items with earned materials and trading with other players. The player possesses a capital city for each started civilization, that continues to exist when the player is offline. The game features much of the gameplay of the serieswith the addition of a massive multiplayer online gaming element. Age of Empires Onlinelike its predecessors, is a real-time based strategy videogame.
The game can be played for free in single-player and multiplayer mode with all online features fully enabled. InAge of Empires Online was reestablished using Microsoft's publicly released developer-kit for the game and is now hosted on a server emulator known as Project Celeste.
A Microsoft representative later announced on the forums that on August 22,the Games for Windows - Live Marketplace would be shut down, leaving the game only accessible by current or former players. On June 15, the premium content system was changed to offer the option to purchase all past and future content through "Empire points" earned in game, or by purchasing the points directly with real world money.
On March 27,the game premiered on Steam after a major overhaul patch which addressed complaints of an "MMO-like grind" and many other features, along with the debut of the Celtic civilization. The game was free-to-play -it was free for users to play, though premium content could be earned or purchased, such as access to special items and blueprints, and more quests and features. Age of Empires Online was a multiplayer online real-time strategy game developed by Robot Entertainment and Gas Powered Gameswhich released on August 16, The game was published by Microsoft.