We love Age of Empires

If anyone has Age of Empires: Age of Kings for the DS, can someone give a layout of any basic strategies I should play out for the Yashima mission of Minamoto Yoshitsune? I've been stuck on a week or two on this. In a very rare moment, I somehow got lucky one time and was able to build castles on the west side near the bridge and even completely raze the town near the first town centre, but then I didn't retreat my archers and Minamoto Yoshitsune fast enough and the Emperor's troops came in and surrounded Yoshitsune and killed him off. And after retrying loads of times, nothing like that has happened since. Please help!
And is there any specific thing I should do to increase unit caps? :O

It's killllllllling meeeeeeee! I can't work out how to use the Time Shift function in the fourth campaign of Age of Mythology the Titans.  I have to destroy the Ordin's Tower or something, and i have to replace the enemy's temples with mine, by shifting the buildings. I know how to shift my military units, but that's it.  Couldn't figure out how to shift citizens or buildings.

If anyone knows how to do this can you let me know please! :)

anyone else miss the original AOE2: AoK in-game soundtrack? Because I found some youtube videos with them, done via Piano and such

http://youtube.com/watch?v=om51eR-C2hU

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uKjpIZTVlEU

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3vrfr-_sco4

Well, ok, not exactly what I was looking for, but those are pretty good. But, you guys know what I'm talking about, when you start up a mission, and that slightly eery music comes on? Anyone?

The name's TheCommander315. Or TC315. Commander. CDR_Idiot (as per my ESO name). Whatever!
My AOE history goes back to the time when I was about 10 or 11 and played Age of Kings for a bit. I never really got to play it much anymore (ESRB, I curse thee), but I got back to it after turning 14. Then I got AOE3 and joined ESO and the rest is history.

Fave civs: 
Spanish, Germans (3)
Byzantines, Chinese (2)


PS: I'm not sure if it's against LJ policies or anything (you can edit my post anyway, I'm assuming), but I modded the Language.dll file in the AOE2 folder to be a bit wittier. You know the drill if you want it.

I like to set up Home base 1 around as many trading posts as possible, walling in the city, and have the settlers on various tasks.

Let's say: Four wood, Four gold, Four hunt, Four herdables.

If I run out of all possible places to gather in the main colony, I would have some Settlers go out, find a reasonable place to set up shop, wall it off, and Gather from there. Excess Settlers can work on Mills and Plantations along with Jobless ones at Home Base 1.

After that, it's all about switching the Trading Posts to what resources you need.

I like to, if I have all on the map, put one on each resource, and if there are more than Four, Switch those to the resource I need the most. That way, I have an unending source of Food, Wood, Coin, and Experience. I would suggest putting an Outpost and 10 troops around each one for extra protection of your infinite flow of stuff.

Also, when walling off the colony, I suggest putting up as many Outposts as you can, and get some use out of the Market if need be.

But that's just me.

Sorry for the Extreme alliteration. I couldn't help it.

Have any odd stories about your AOE experience? (both in game and out of game, of course, though I doubt there's much in the latter)

Well, I was playing the 2nd Barbarossa mission (where you attack Poland and Henry turns on you). Well, so I'm fighting the poles, while holding off Henry's attacks, then out of nowhere, the game tells me "Henry the Lion defeated"

And I'm like, 'wtf?' as I had been on the defensive entirely, except with sending rams against the Polish castles and siege workshops

It turns out the designers, for this particular level, didn't have the Poles or Henry ally once you had to fight them both, because as it happens in most other levels, your enemies are all alied

Well, seems the poles sent their forces in, rams, mangonels, huskarls and all, and destroyed Henry. Nice play guys. You should've allied with him when you had the chance, suckers.

A few minutes later, I destroyed their last castle and siege workshop. Level finished in 35 minutes. Weird weird weird.

So. Any odd stories from your game experiences?

I just beat the Attila campaign without cheating. I find it kinda sad that I never attempted most of these missions all these years without cheating, because damn they're easy.

I expected the last mission to be hard ,and to at least conform to what the hints said. Not once did any of the allied cities send forces against me when I was attacking one of it's buddies. Something else I find strange is the 2nd Genghis campaign, in which the Kara-Khitai send a whole buncha guys at you, even on standard, yet playing missions that are supposed to be hard turn out to be quite easy (the last three Attila missions, Genghis in china, etc). Comments?

Also, anyone else think they should've added the Slavs as a civilization in AOE2? Would've helped in the Barbarossa and Genghis campaign, and would've made for some good 'battles of the conquerors' missions in the expansion, with, say...Alexander Nevsky (battle at lake peipus). Thoughts?

I purchased Age of Empires III a long while ago, I haven't played it because i need a video card the problem is i don't know what kind of graphics card i should get. I don't really know a lot about video cards, please tell which ones i should get!

Ok. So my story with AOE is that when I got AOE2 and the expansion seven years ago, I cheated. A lot. I didn't stop until I played Galactic Battlegrounds (AOE's bastard brother) a few years ago, in which I gave the finger to it's campaigns, but did relatively well on the standard maps.

Well, now that I got a new computer this last summer, I've been playing AOE2 without cheats so as to redeem myself. And you know what? It's fun. So far, I've gone through 5/6 of Attila w/o cheats, 4/6 of El Cid's, 3/6 of Genghis', and I completed Joan's campaign!

It may not seem like much, but actually doing all that much cheat free, after 7 years...it's kinda cool.

Yah. Just felt like sharing that.

you ever want to kill time, and so you go and play a standard game on any of the AOE games, or AOM?

Well, I did last night. I had never played any of the custom game scenarios that game with conquerors (go figure, I've had it for 7 years), so I decided to play sherwood forest death match post-imp. so I'm thinking 'well, this should be fun.' so I'm mongols, I got huns and turks as allies, with byzantines, franks, celts, and goths as enemies (allied), with the chinese by themselves.

so it's standard, the CPs make their walls and castles, etc, but then the quadruple alliance (except for franks, they were bordering with the chinese and were fighting them) pounds on the huns. so I go in with my 40 manguadi, fend off the enemy...

well, an hour game turned to 3 hours, eventually ending at 8 hours. as crazy enough as that was, it was really weird too. the chinese destroyed the franks, then sent their army against mine inside the hun fortress. kicked their ass, destroyed their army, then they quit. they weren't even invaded...at least, not that I know of. the byzantines might have sent troops in, but the enemy is stupid and just gets slaughtered by towers.

anyway, the final score was 183k something for me, with around 11,000 kills. I was surprised enough after taking a break at 3 hours and getting 5,000 kills. there was just so much death. the enemy peasants kept getting mowed down, they kept sending troops, they were mowed down...just, so much death.

anyway, so yah. has that happened to anyone, where a standard game takes way longer than expected?

Does anyone when or why MSN cancelled it's online AOE multiplayer? I put in AOE2, went to go start playing online for the first time in years, and I get a 'sorry, blah blah blah, you can't play AOE2 online no more, sucka' and I'm like 'wtf bitch??'

well, it wasn't exactly like that, but you get my point. granted, MSN won't support the gaming anymore, but there was some other site, but it required a patch and all this other stuff which I figured would be too much of a hassle. but yah, anyone know why?

Hi everyone my name is Catherine and I have had Age of Empires 2 since a long time I think it is a great game and that everyone should have it. As for Age of mythology , I am not that keen on it but it does seem fun sometimes, I don't have the game but I do have a free trial which when I am bored I do play it and it does seem fun at the time. What i like about age of mythology is the gods and their powers that is a good bit about it. Age of Empires is better suited to me the Age of mythology. I have completed all the campaigns and sometimes i do them again, I also know all the cheats for Age of Empires 2 but i don't use them any more I have learnt to play the game without cheating it is just through hours of play. I can beat my friend at the game but i don't play it online at the moment because the computer is being fixed. I am on a tempory computer that I can't load games on to so I am not playing it at the moment. I sometimes play the game while I am at my friends house.
Hope you add me
Catherine

Apparently there's already some discussion about what the next AoE game should be, provided Ensemble Studios wants to make one. Basically people seem to have four different ideas:

AoE4 set in the 20th century (possibly followed by an AoE5 set in the future)

Pro: It would be a logical continuation of the series.
Con: You could argue whether that time of history could even be called an age of empires. Incorporation of modern warfare would probably take the game even further away from its roots.

AoE4 that goes from the time of AoE1 to AoE3

Pro: It would be as much fun as all the previous games together?
Con: There are already similar games, e.g. Empire Earth. Furthermore, the inclusion of too many eras of civilisation might happen at the expense of detail.

Remake of AoE1

Pro: It would allow the developers to go back to the roots of the series.
Con: Essentially it would still be the recycling of an old idea.

AoM2

Pro: Chance to take the series in a different direction.
Con: Apparently AoM is less popular than the main AoE series, so why make a sequel? Also, given the nature of the game, it would be difficult to find a logical continuation.

Personally I think that the first option is most likely, but my preferred choice would still be a remake of AoE1, because it covered my favourite period of history and I would like to be able to play that again. (And while AoE2 is still good to play today, AoE1 in its current form unfortunately can't hold a candle to any modern RTS and gets annoying quickly.)

does anyone have a link where you can download age of empires 3 for free?