Age of the Ancients

Gather, build, advance an age — and hold the line

Age of the Ancients is a classic real-time strategy game. Your villagers hunt, fish, farm, chop and mine; your town grows from a single Town Hall into walled streets, mills, markets and a castle; and your army learns to keep a line while the other side is still counting.

Five resources, four ages

Food, wood, gold, stone — and crystal, a dull mountain stone that looks useless until the shaman makes it sing. Climb from the Dark Age through the Feudal and Castle Ages to the Imperial Age. Advancing costs food and takes time, and while it runs you are not building from it: every age is a real decision, and every age unlocks new buildings, troops and upgrades.

Turn the world against your enemy

Your shaman does not simply make you stronger. Crystal is mana, and mana buys rituals with a price and a risk. The Long Night calls the dark down on your enemies: their sun sets at once, their armies slow, their sky turns red and the beasts nearby turn on them — if it works. If it fails, the night falls on you. The Blood Pact asks for one of your own. Every ritual brings the world closer to waking up, and it never goes back to sleep.

Battle orders that are obeyed

Four stances — aggressive, defensive, hold ground, flee — and four formations — auto, line, block, loose. Your order takes priority over the automation. Send units into the Town Hall, a watchtower or an outpost and they shoot back from inside; unload them by type, and if the building falls, the garrison gets out alive.

Walls, towers, siege

Drag a wall line, set a gate that lets your own through, raise watchtowers that shoot, and improve building damage at the blacksmith. When it is your turn to attack, the battering ram and the catapult come for the stone.

A world with weather — and with fog

The map moves through spring, summer, autumn and winter, with its own light, sky and time of day. Fog of war is real for both sides: an unscouted deposit does not show up in your interface, and the enemy does not know where your units are. Build a harbour, launch fishing boats and carry your people across the water.

See it through their eyes

Select one of your units, press F, and you see the battlefield through its eyes. Right-click to attack or gather what you are looking at, left-click to inspect it.

Features

• Real-time strategy on its own engine
  
• Four ages · five resources · 16 kinds of troops · 32 buildings · 25 upgrades
  
• Rituals with a price and a risk, powered by crystal
  
• Stances and formations, garrisons that shoot, walls, gates, towers and siege engines
  
• Fishing boats, transport ships and harbours
  
• Seed-generated worlds on a 176×176 map — the same seed always gives the same world
  
• Four seasons, weather and time of day
  
• Fog of war for you and for the AI
  
• First-person view of any of your units
  
• Map editor with thirteen terrain types, from deep water to lava
  
• A full tutorial and a short controls tutorial
  
• Quick save, autosave and save slots
  
• Fully playable in English and Hungarian

Where development stands

Age of the Ancients is in development, and we say plainly what is finished. Skirmish against the AI is the full game today, with the human people. Two more peoples, the campaign and online multiplayer are being worked on and are not promised here — when they are ready, this page will say so.

Wishlist it, and we will tell you when the gate opens.