Age of Empires 2...part 2

The year was 2000, I had just finished a long, tedious week of work.  Thankfully the hockey season was over and so I'd have the entire weekend off.  And even better, my parents were out camping.  I had just finished putting together my 5th computer, a K6-2 450Mhz beast with a motherboard that said VIAgra on it.  Windows ME had just been released and promised to be a step up from 98, with better drivers and added stability.  And the boot time was faster than anything else I had ever seen! 

So I called up my friends...about 6 or 7 in all to come over and enjoy and evening of cards, computer games and P. Jay's pizza.  It was quite a common scene at the time, as I often hosted these types of gatherings 2 or 3 times a week, much to the dismay of my parents.  But I knew, at that point, these days would be numbered, especially with the fall semester beginning in a few weeks. 

A few months prior, we had begun playing Age of Empires 2 on the LAN.  Prior to this, it was mostly Starcraft with a few others (Unreal, Warcraft 2) included.  But the summer of 2000 could probably just as well have been called Summer of AoE2.  When everything worked.  Which didn't always happen.  My early days running my LAN on a shoestring budget (when cheap hardware was vastly inferior) were often muddled with glitch after infuriating glitch.  Add to this my penchant to mix-and-match components with reckless abandon, combined with an inherently unstable operating system in WinME.  You probably get the picture.  Yet, in spite of it all, we still managed to play a few games of AoE2 that summer.

(If anyone wonders how I've stayed in IT this long, everything today is a piece of f'ing cake compared to the crap of yesteryear)

Here's where I actually start talking about AoE2.  It is a RTS (real-time strategy) game developed by Microsoft that is similar to that of Starcraft or Warcraft 2.  You start out with a couple of dudes and harvest resources and build structures.  Continue building stuff and make more dudes.  Upgrade your stuff, then fight a big battle.  Usually one or two big battles would decide the outcome of the game.

With this said, I actually disliked AoE2.  Probably more than what I had ever made it known.  This was likely because I was more enthralled by the joy of fixing computers and network problems that I was just happy to play ANYTHING at that point.  But why the hatorade?  Simply put, I never took the time (or had the motivation) to learn the basic strategy of the game.  Being mostly a Warcraft and Starcraft player at that point, I applied the same mindset to AoE2.  Big mistake.  For better or worse, no one else in our circle was extraordinarily adept at the game either.  So games ended up being 2+ hour stalemates where I would amass castles and hope that I could stave off an army of trebuchets.  In the end, the winner was often determined by the following criteria:

-Who had the most stable computer?  Often it was a war of attrition in which only a couple systems would not crash for the duration.
-Who would be the first to build a Wonder?  This was probably the biggest godsend of the game, as it helped end the long stalemates.
-Who could kill my castles?  Answer: everyone who could built trebuchets.
-Who could kill Alex's army of war elephants?
-Who could stop any army of warships?  As ships couldn't win games by themselves, this often led to more stalemates.

The list continues on.  Perhaps my friends saw the game a lot different than I did.  I realize now the error in my ways, and the fact that a little knowledge could have gone a long way into making the game more enjoyable.  Now that I look back, I can try and appreciate the game a little more.  The game has received so many great reviews over the years and I'm dying to know what I've been missing.  When I downloaded the HD version yesterday and played it for the first time in over 10 years, I tried to find some basic all-around strategy after going through the tutorials.  Some stuff I'm still completely in the dark about.  But I'm really hoping if we can try this game out again, the second time around might be a better experience.  The game has received so many great reviews over the years and I'm dying to know what I've been missing.