Image via Microsoft
Okay, so I didn’t go clinically insane, if that’s what you’re wondering. However, I have definitely spent long hours of my day pondering over why my Age of Empires strategy sucked to the point where it has frustrated me at times.
You may be wondering how this all started. Well, let me take you down the rabbit hole…
It all started with my uncle
I have an uncle, like many people happen to have, and when he was younger, he played the original Age of Empires. Now, I’ve never been one to play strategy games. I’m more of a fan of titles like Call of Duty, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, etc…
My uncle comes up to me one day to ask me (randomly, I might add) if I’ve ever played Age of Empires. I obviously tell him that I haven’t.
A few minutes later, he asks me for my laptop and opens up Steam, buys Age of Empires for me and says that he’ll buy it himself that night so we can play together. Now, I’m in a state of confusion because I have no clue what just happened, but I guess I have Age of Empires 2 now.
Indeed, later that night, he sends me a message saying that he’s got Age of Empires 2 and that we should play together. This was my first experience in getting completely and totally obliterated in a video game.
And it didn’t stop there. No, no, no. I was getting destroyed in Age of Empires left and right.
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No matter what strategy I employed, what fortress defenses I built, what front assaults I made, I always managed to have my entire army get mercilessly butchered by him.
Re-Evaluate, Re-Strategize, Fail Again
So, the next day, I spent a while playing against the computer trying to figure out the best strategy to use against my uncle in Age of Empires. I was bent over my laptop, frantically trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.
So, that night, it was time for redemption.
And my redemption was a miserable blowout. I failed so hard, I sat back in awe, staring at my screen as my uncle sent me “LOOOOL” text after “LOOOOL” text. He was gloating. I knew that much.
I watched as his armies decimated my entire fortress, killing off every last thing I had in my defenses. I couldn’t react as I watched my city’s walls fall to the ground, my catapults get catapulted, and my villagers get war crime’d.
Success? Maybe? Come on, just once?
Yeah, no. I have not won a single Age of Empires game against this man. I have tried and tried, but I think at this point, he is definitely magic or something.
I have gone mad trying to figure out a single working strategy and it has possibly driven me insane. I have renounced playing strategy games for fun. I will embark on a quest to figure out how to defeat him, but it will take boatloads of time.
Unfortunately, I was defeated miserably.
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
