2 questions about age of empires 1

[breadisfunny]

my first question is why does doing a google search of it bring up almost nothing on age of empires 1? aside from the fact that it was released and what type of game it is. i can't seem to find any information on it's inner working or questions about it. WHY IS THIS?
secondly everytime i start up age of empires 1 in the second campaign the a.i. seems to overwhelm me very quickly. (it's the greek campaign after the egyptian tutorial campaign) is it like warcraft 3 where you have to get a build order down and stuff to beat the computer on easy even during the opening stages? this is THE ORIGINAL PHYSICAL VERSION.

[Candy Cough]

It came out in 1997 wouldnt be suprised

[Doctor]

Been a long time since I played that game. I guess to answer your first question, AoE1 doesn't really have a "following" or even a fanbase, it never really did, so there aren't going to be any webpages dedicated to it. Second question...the AI may be overwhelming you because either 1.) it's coded poorly or 2.) you are building the wrong kind of unit to counter the enemies. Use cheat codes if you want to see the storyline, I can't recommend actually sitting there and putting 45m - 1hr per mission in a game as old as that. Either way good luck and have fun!

[May90]

secondly everytime i start up age of empires 1 in the second campaign the a.i. seems to overwhelm me very quickly. (it's the greek campaign after the egyptian tutorial campaign) is it like warcraft 3 where you have to get a build order down and stuff to beat the computer on easy even during the opening stages?

You mean the Land Grab mission, right? I consider it to be one of the hardest maps in the game. You start with nothing, against 3 opponents who start sending troops at you very early. Most people nowadays tend to do it by rushing the Red player (left corner of the map) right away and effectively killing the main opposition before it becomes too hard to handle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhREC60MMv0

If you play "legitimately", by killing the Yellow player and building on its place, then it is much tougher. What difficulty are you playing on? On Hardest, I would quickly build a couple of towers at the center of my base and add a few Archers to fend off troops. Once you've trained enough to consistently defend from attacks, you can start working on taking out Brown player. Red is the real problem, but once you've taken out everyone else, it is not too hard to just build a lot of Axemen + Archers and kill him. Here is someone doing the "legitimate" playthrough on Hardest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJAZGk-Qjr8

And you are right, the game is not very popular today. The thing is, it existed for only 2 years before Age of Empires 2 came out, so almost everyone moved there, and people play it a lot to this day (especially after the HD version came out). There was a small AoE 1 community on one of the AoE 2 forums, but, as far as I know, it died out a couple of years ago. I still play it from time to time, since it was the main RTS of my childhood, but you won't find many people to discuss it with on constant basis.

[breadisfunny]

i am playing it on easy and i tried to rush red and got steamrolled. couldn't get out units fast enough. i also tried going after yellow got yellow but then red attacked. it's the land grab mission i think.

[May90]

Well, on easy, I believe, all you need to do is build one tower and keep repairing it. Build it in the middle of your base, and make your base compact, i.e. make buildings close to each other, near the range of the tower. To get the tower, you need to be in Tool Age. According to Youtube videos, you start out with 300 Wood, 400 Food and 200 Stone. So, right after you've built the Town Center, order all your workers to collect food. At 500 Food, research Tool Age, and then immediately build one tower near the Town Center. Build houses around that tower, so it is not easily reachable by enemy melee units. Start gathering Wood and build farms for Food. Build Archery and start producing Archers. Once you've gotten 10 of them or so, I believe, the defense should be easy, so just pop out more of them, gather resources.

In general, it is a good idea to focus on Archers when playing against computer on maps limited to Tool Age. You will easily take down enemy Axemen and Archers, and Scouts, while potentially dangerous, aren't produced by computer that much to really worry about them. Although you do need a few Axemen to destroy enemy towers.

I take it you are just starting to play AoE1 and never played it before? Then I really recommend playing some melee maps at first. You can play with allies (4v4), which, with a proper player positions, will give you a lot of time to develop without being constantly harassed by enemies. The Egyptian campaign, while good for learning mechanics, lacks any really challenging missions, so it is hard to jump right into "real" campaign after completing it.

Anyway, don't panic. This mission is infamous for being very difficult.