Age of Empires at 25: the strategy game that inspired a generation of historians

Many historians of a certain age admit that the game reinforced their passion for the past and got them into the field. Four of them explain what drew them in

My dad is the kind of man who will find a game he enjoys and stick to it. While I have always flitted about, hopping between different genres, he remains the only person I know who does absolutely everything it has to offer. When people ask, “who actually finishes these enormous games?”, I can respond with confidence that it is a geordie man in his 60s with a love of Lego and creative swearing. Age of Empires II had a grip on him for well over a decade.

The game came out in 1999, when I was five years old, and I am not exaggerating when I say that it was a permanent feature of our domestic life right up to when I moved out thirteen years later. The only thing that changed were the laptops he played on, which became progressively less bulky over the years. The sound effects, from the iconic “wololo” of the priests and the villagers’ warbles of acknowledgment as you sent them to chop wood, were the soundtrack to my childhood.