It's been a couple of weeks and way more than a couple of games since Pinkie Pie introduced the Mane Six to the joys of playing the classic real-time strategy title, Age of Empires II. Unanswered questions surround this mysterious game: where did it come from? Who made it? Why is there so much killing?
Never mind all that - Twilight Sparkle and her friends have a game to play!
NOTE: Though I've tried to make the story more about the relationships between the four gamers (no Rarity or Fluttershy, sorry!) than about the game itself, some rudimentary knowledge about Age of Empires II is required if you want to understand what is going on. I wrote this as a short-ish story so I'm not really going to go into technical details much.
=====INFO AFTER BREAK=====
References consulted while writing story:
ZeroEmpires (Commentary on Competitive AoE II matches)
wikiHow (5 Ways to Make Your Economy Boom in Age of Empires II)
Wikipedia (for info on Byzantines, Moon & Vikings)
Luttwak, E. "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" (Harvard University Press, USA), 2009 (Byzantine military strategy)
Youtube links:
Prologue - PakAttack95 (Youtube Channel)
Main Menu and Victory Music - mikec1000 Civilization Themes
Cover Image:
Wikipedia
Age of Empires II
Cutie Mark Vectors by Hawk9mm (deviantART page)
Accurate representation of when I play AoE.
EDIT:
To actually be constructive: I like how this played out. Was fun to read in the submission queue. Maybe because I'm a bit biased.
...
be strong, be strong, be strong
...
Dang it.
Hmmm AoE
Played it very interesting
Chinese cho know nou I think it is are OP just get 50 of them and anything will die instantly.
Remember spamming is the key and a pretty base.
Go Pinkie victory to the Vikings!
So Princess Twilight is a Sledgehammer player, while Rainbow Dash is a zergrusher. Makes sense.
Applejack is playing to maximize economy, while Pinkie Pie is... capable of doing just about anything at random.
inb4 Twilight sends her king out to explore the map because he's fast and has a large LOS and Pinkie kills him with some militia men
This actually happened to my brother.
3670144 Nah, this is just a normal 2-v-2 multiplayer game. I haven't seen many competitive games with regicide in them, so I'm not sure what people do with their kings...
3670216
Me and my brother have always played regicide. It's especially fun playing the Black Forest map, whipping out the seige onagers, and cutting a path in the forest, lining it with castles, watch towers, and walls and building a "bunker" there. Then, you use the trebuchet to cut a 1x1 path in the forest away from the bunker's main castle so the king has an escape route to run through.
Another fun thing is to build six or seven castles right next to each other, put a villager in each one so the flag is shown and put the king in one. Then randomly swap them out so the "treason" feature is useless.
What I would always do in the computer games is build an elaborate base with defenses and everything, and then shove my king in a watch tower in the middle of nowhere with an escape route build in just in case.
Pinkie pie, You are the true old god
Now I want a Pony story with the old gods amongst them... Loki would be a riot
Yeah Twilight, Byzantines FTW!
Great, now I want to play some Age of Empires.
I loved the Pinkie as a god scene, I think it would actually be nice if all the civilizations were written that way, with the nations obeying some higher power. Of course, Pinkie Pie's the only one who speak directly to them. Btw, I have played Age of Mythology, so I have an idea of what's happening, but are Twilight's boars any different from the one's next to pinkie?
I don´t know why, but I couldn´t stop laughing! I know thid wasn´t really a comedy of sorts, but still... I play lots of age of empires, and just reading this was something I really never expected to find
Amazing idea and story!
Cant wait to see where this goes!!!!!
YES!!! An Age of Empires crossover!!! This is the best idea I have ever seen!
It had better be well written man, it better be.
-Clay the Draconequus
LULZ!!
3671232 I flipin' wish I could!
All Hail the Eastern Roman Empire!
Despite how much I like the Byzantines.... The Vikings are the underdogs... and they are awesome!
3670253 REGICIDE IS DA BEST!!! And as for the other two things.... You witty piece of crap!!
3670216 Well, usually the player would put his king in the castle. However, in xTSGx's situation that is what someone would do if they wanted to take shrooms or krocadile...
TOMUCHYOLO!!! Btw: Really excited to see where this good story will go.
3670144 That's just sad...
3671261 Nah, it's just Pinkie being Pinkie. Stealing boar is a hilarious way of griefing when you watch competitive games...
Brings back sooo many fond memories!
On the one hand, bits of this made me smile. On the other hand, I am not sure if I'd be able to appreciate this much if AoE2 hadn't been such a large part of my childhood.
Waaaaaait a second... Light-years isn't a measurement of time! It's a measurement of distance! It's the distance light travels in one year, hence Light Year.
3670216
Got this game a while ago. My first skirmish (4v4, all CPU other than me) was Regicide.
Still haven't finished the game, though all the trees, stone, and gold have been mined and I have to buy wood and stuff from the market :P I did kill off the Aztec king, so they're out of the game, but the other three are still going strong.
My answer to all this:
The thing is, I think Twilight would prefer 4x or Grand Strategy. If I had talent, or more importantly an actual plot, I'd be inspired to write a spin-off where Twilight plays Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis. I think she would be the type to take a dynasty/nation from 867 to 1821. Regardless, I have enjoyed this story and desire more of it, keep up the enjoyable work.
3676678 She would, but multiplayer Grand Strategy, as you point out, is kind of difficult to write (especially with mechanics as complex as Crusader Kings II or - dare we even mention it - Victoria II).
I guess the easiest way to do something like that would be to have Twilight and others play a game that "coincidentally" turns out in the same way that real life history does...
3678547
Actually, in the intervening time I think I've figured out how to do it, and am going to see how it turns out. All I have to do is assign the starting nations.
I do like keeping Twilight as the purple power of the peninsulas, Greece and Turkey are peninsulas for the sake of alliteration, but the others... Dash is the Khazars, AJ Venice or Flanders, Pinkie... Karen? If I get ambitious, put Flutters in Ireland, and Rarity... Wessex? Worse case scenario I restrict myself to the "Interesting Characters" for 867.
>Looking at the Histories
>Not repeatedly clicking on the Vikings to hear their sound
[youtube=B-mMLa-smpE]
Do you even histories?
>Black Forest
>Byzantines
Mah nigga. And I don't see why you'd have a problem with the Goths, Twilight, considering the Cataphracts curbstomp infantry, Huskarl included.
You see, that's why you play regicide, Dash wouldn't be able to zerg rush in Regicide. The castle would mow down her militia men/Men-at-arms.
>inb4 sequel where they play a fourteen hour game of Empire Earth (and yes, I have played 14 hour long Empire Earth games before)
This brings back so much nostalgia, especially because me and my brother would always play a LAN game on Christmas Eve. *sigh* I wish we had kept that tradition going.
3680066. Oh man you played empire earth! wow... i used to play 4v4 empire earth all the time... and then there was that time we played against computer opponents with all pop caps removed... fun times
FIRST!!! Second time I've ever done that. Great update by the way.
Oh no! A fellow soldier died! Now there are less survivors...
oh well we can build new ones!
ALL HAIL PINKIE (and the Byzantine Empire)!
Rarity and Fluttershy should play Age of Empires in the sequel!
TOO FUNNY!!!
Please, please, please do the others from the god perspective? It's so interesting, and so fun!
Would anyone be willing to play a few games with me? Just shoot me a PM if you're interested!
Unfortunately, I can't play the Conquerors expansion pack, so I'm limited to Age of Kings...
In the castle age I bet Pinkie is gonna get a ton of priests to go and convert everyone so that all will worship the great and powerful PINKIE!!! Who's heard of Trixie, am I right or am I right?
-Clay the Draconequus
3695816
I'd be willing to as long as you are alright with a guy who can never beat a hard AI.
3697450
Fine by me! Anyone else?
3710801 I would love to, but I live half a world away so Steam generally doesn't work...
3711075
I don't suppose the old IP address connection...thing would still work?
3711114 Well I use WiFi, so I think you generally can't use IP Addresses for those.
3711186
I'm sure we can work something out....
3711235
You tell me the buttons to press and I'm in.
YOU REQUIRE MOAR
PYLONS.
3711235
3711186
Look up Hamachi, it's a program that lets you create pseudo-networks over Wi-Fi. This allows you to play games that usually require LAN and/or don't support WiFi over WiFi.
Edit: And also? I'm game.
Just played an exhausting 3-hour match against 4 non-attacking players.
I require this fic
Oh, AWESOME!!! Over the Winter break some fellow Brony authors shared Age of Empires II with me and it was a blast! I had the original version but hadn't played in eons.
I got addicted to this game real fast and I've totally tried most of the strategies the girls are going with. I tend to like getting my resources and getting to advance as much as possible before further developing other technologies. Once I get my trebuchets and some elite troops, I go full bore with artillery.
Team RD/AJ does have a good division of labor but it is pretty boring when your ally attacks an enemy before you can get in on the fun. What typically happens is just as I'm fortified and advanced to the place I want to be, and get my troops ready....the computer surrenders or my connection craps out.
But this story is really faithful to the game and to the girls. I can so see Pinkie being random and talking to her units, Twilight getting frazzled by having her plan not go precisely the way she wants, RD wanting to attack, attack attack and AJ building up resources to the exclusion of everything else.
I am soooo following this! XD