{"id":1942,"date":"2013-02-18T16:01:07","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T23:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=1942"},"modified":"2013-02-19T07:36:52","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T14:36:52","slug":"forgotten-empires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=1942","title":{"rendered":"Forgotten Empires"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I loves me some old stragety video games.\u00a0 I particularly like Age of Empires and Age of Empires II, as they hit my history geek sweet spot in just the right way.<\/p>\n

So I was delighted to learn at the end of 2012 that an unofficial expansion pack was being worked on by some developers and programmers who are fans of the series.<\/p>\n

Here is their website.<\/a><\/p>\n

I was going to mention this a lot sooner but meh.\u00a0 For an unofficial project, this is astoundingly good.\u00a0 It adds 5 new civilizations with new sounds for all of them and completely new art for 3 of them.\u00a0 It’s an amazing accomplishment, I think.\u00a0 It’s so good in fact that I suspect that at least one of the people who worked on this project worked for Ensemble Studios on the original Age of Empires II and its expansion pack.<\/p>\n

There are screenshots on the web, so if you’re interested, just google them.\u00a0 They’ve truly done a wonderful job, and nothing looks rushed or odd.\u00a0 My personal favourite new civ is the Slavs, though the Italians have some nice architecture as well.<\/p>\n

My only gripe is that I’ve seen the game crash at least once each time I’ve played it.\u00a0 Not a huge problem, and it looks like there are 2 patches out now.\u00a0 I’ve been playing as the Slavs again today, so next time I play, I suppose I’ll be patched and seeing what kind of experience I have as the Magyars or Italians.<\/p>\n

I’ve read a lot of comments from people saying how Forgotten Empires has made them play Age of Empires II again.\u00a0 That makes me feel a bit like a dork because I’ve been playing it more or less regularly since it came out.<\/p>\n

I’m such a geek.<\/p>\n

Oh, and I was looking for a rather funny image that I saw many years ago that would have been pertinent and amusing.\u00a0 But I couldn’t find it.\u00a0 So here is a rather odd representation of Bootsy Collins.<\/p>\n

\"bootsy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Why this came up in the same search for said image shall remain one of life’s great mysteries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I loves me some old stragety video games.\u00a0 I particularly like Age of Empires and Age of Empires II, as they hit my history geek sweet spot in just the right way. So I was delighted to learn at the end of 2012 that an unofficial expansion pack […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[25,435],"class_list":["post-1942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-games","tag-age-of-empires","tag-strategy-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1942"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1948,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions\/1948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}