The game

Aetas is a real-time strategy game the way they used to make them. You build up an economy, raise an army and use it to beat your opponent, while your civilization works its way from the Stone Age to the Industrial Age. Everything below is already in the game.

How a match goes#

You start with a town center and four workers on a map you've never seen before. The first few minutes are all about resources: wood from the forest, berries and later farms for food, and stone and gold from the ground. Your workers carry everything back on their own; you decide what they work on and what you build.

Before the match starts, you pick your people, and that choice changes how you play. The Franks put up walls and towers in no time. The Norse get rich on everything they tear down. The Greeks are at their strongest when their infantry fights shoulder to shoulder. The Mongols set up camp wherever they like, for free. The Arabs pay for whatever they're short of with gold. And the Chinese train their soldiers five at a time.

Every people also has a unit of its own, which takes the place of an ordinary one. The Greeks field hoplites early, the Mongols their horse archers, the Chinese their repeating crossbows. And as you upgrade your army through the ages, the units that come after it stay a little stronger than everyone else's.

And every people starts differently and misses something. The Franks already have a tower by their town center and their fort in the Bronze Age, but never musketeers. The Norse start with three spearmen and never build a fort. The Mongols start with extra scouts and never build a wall, a tower or a university. The Arabs open their market in the Stone Age. On top of that, every people has two technologies only it knows, from the Great Wall of the Chinese to the Berserkergang of the Norse. The wiki has the full list.

Once you've gathered enough, you advance to the Bronze Age, and after that it's choices, over and over. Everything you put into a new age is something you can't put into soldiers. Keep building and you'll have better troops later; attack now and you'll have more troops now. That's what it's all about, for seven ages.

Resources#

There are five resources: food, wood, stone, gold and iron. Berries run out, so sooner or later you'll need farms around your mill. Stone and gold are spread across the map, and the big deposits in the middle are worth defending. That's often where the first fight breaks out.

Iron is a bit different. You can see it on the map from the start, but you can't mine it until you reach the Iron Age. Handy, because by then you'll know exactly where you want to dig.

Short on something? From the Bronze Age you can build a market and buy or sell food, wood, stone and iron for gold. It's expensive on purpose: every purchase pushes the price up for everyone and every sale pushes it down, so it's there for emergencies, not as a way around gathering. The Arabs get the best deals, and they can build their market right from the Stone Age.

Your army#

You have infantry, archers, cavalry and siege weapons, and each is good at something and bad at something else. Spearmen stop cavalry, archers are strong against infantry, cavalry runs down archers, and a ram or cannon tears down buildings the rest can't scratch. Siege weapons in turn have a hard time against riders: a catapult without cover is easy prey for a few horsemen. So it's not about who has the most soldiers, but who has the right mix.

You can march your troops in formation, put them in groups and tell them whether to attack, hold their ground or stay out of trouble. Swordsmen move to the front and archers line up behind them on their own, and a mixed army marches together at the pace of its slowest unit.

Are your soldiers getting outdated? No need to throw them away. You can upgrade them on the spot to a better version, wherever they are, even in the middle of a fight. A spearman becomes a swordsman, an archer becomes a better archer.

Building#

You've got all sorts of buildings, from mill and lumber camp to university, fort and watchtower. Walls and gates close off your town. You draw a wall by dragging: it runs straight or diagonally, and with Ctrl held down you lay a ring around your town. Walls, gates and towers can even go on hills, right up against the rock. You can open a gate for your allies, for yourself only, or lock it completely. Careful though: if it's open, the enemy walks right through as well.

Watchtowers fire at intruders on their own. Your town center can shoot back too, but only if you have people sheltering inside.

The fort is a real stronghold. It fires volleys of arrows at several enemies at once plus a heavy bolt at the toughest one nearby, and soldiers inside shoot along. Without siege weapons you'll barely scratch it, and even those do less damage to it than to other buildings. In return every fort costs a good deal more than the last, and they have to stand well apart. Your siege weapons do have one advantage: catapults, trebuchets and cannons shoot further than towers and forts.

Maps#

There are nine kinds of map: plains, mixed, woodland, highlands, lakes, continental, rivers, mountain pass and desert. On Rivers the fighting happens at the fords, on Mountain Pass there are only a couple of narrow ways through, and in the Desert wood only grows at the oases.

On Highlands, ridges of dark rock run across the map. You can't cross them or build on them, so the passes between them are worth holding, or walling off. Mixed and Plains have scattered rock massifs, and Desert has mesas, never right next to a starting position.

Every map is freshly made, so no two matches are the same. But they're made fair: everyone starts with the same room around them and the same mines at the same distance. Campaign missions, the tutorial and the challenges keep their own maps.

Campaigns and historic battles#

Every people has its own campaign: eight missions based on real history, 48 in all. You hold the Roman road at Tours with Charles Martel, raid Lindisfarne with the Norse, build the wooden horse at Troy, free Börte from the Merkits, lure the Mongols into the valley at Ain Jalut and hold Ningyuan with cannon and muskets. Every mission has its own map and its own goals, and you pick Easy, Normal or Hard before you start.

Want something shorter? Under Battles you'll find six famous battles you can play on their own, from Cannae to the relief of Vienna. They're all open from the start, and one battle only takes a few minutes.

Playing together#

Up to eight players can play at once, friends and computer players mixed. Invite friends through Steam, put a password on your game or watch a match that's already underway. If your connection drops for a moment, you can just jump back in. If you're gone longer, the computer takes over for a while so everyone else can keep playing.

No time to finish? Save the match and play on another evening. The host loads the save in a new lobby, everyone gets their old spot back, and the computer plays for whoever can't make it.

With voice chat you talk to your team or to everyone, in the lobby and during the match. Hold a key to talk, or switch to open mic, and turn each player's voice up or down to taste. Someone spoiling the fun with their chat, voice, name or cheating? Right-click their name to mute or report them.

During the match you can send resources to other players, and make or break alliances, in the diplomacy window. Need a moment? Every player can pause the game three times, for up to a minute each.

You can watch every match back afterwards, which is great for seeing where it all went wrong (or for enjoying it all over again).

Ranked#

Want to test yourself against others? Tick Ranked when you host. The match then counts towards your rating and the leaderboard on this site. In the list of games, ranked matches have a gold star in front of the name. Ranked is humans only, with fair teams. A new season starts every month, so newcomers get a shot at the top too.

Your rating is your skill, and only ranked matches change it. Every online match, ranked or not, also earns you XP: for playing, for the time you put in and for winning. Giving up is always free. Leaving without giving up is not: it costs you XP in every match, and in ranked it also counts as a loss, with a little extra off your rating.

The leaderboard has a hall of fame with the top three of every past month, in the game and on this site. In the game there's also a button to see just you and your Steam friends.

The computer#

Playing against the computer? Pick from five levels, from Beginner to Merciless. Beginner and Easy play a simpler game and give you time to build up before they come knocking; Normal and Hard play by the same rules as you, and Merciless is Hard with a bigger income.

The computer builds a base that looks like a real town, in one of five styles: Citadel, Ribbon, Quarters, Outpost or Open Village, depending on its people and the land around it. It doesn't open the same way twice: one match it's a tower rush, the next an early cavalry raid on your workers or a long build-up. Before it attacks, it gathers its army just outside your base and comes in together, infantry in front and archers behind. Play alongside it and it warns you when something's coming, attacks with you and sends resources when you run dry. And when it has clearly lost, it offers to surrender: accept it, or play on and finish the job yourself.

Winning and losing#

In a normal match you stay in as long as you have a building that trains units: a town center, a barracks or anything else that turns out workers or soldiers. As long as one of those is standing, it isn't over. Not even if your whole army has just been wiped out.

Lost the last one, but still have workers? Then a clock starts: after a minute everyone can see your remaining people, and you have three more minutes to finish a new building. Manage it and you're back in the game. If you'd rather play it differently, pick Last standing (everything has to go) or the highest score after a time limit in the lobby.

Tutorial#

New to games like this, or has it just been a while? The tutorial walks you through the basics in a real match: looking around, gathering, building, raising an army and fending off a first attack. After that you simply keep playing on the same map.

Want more? Six challenges put you to the test for bronze, silver and gold: hold off a rush, break through a wall or build an economy against the clock. And there are 194 achievements to collect, for the campaigns and battles, medals, your people's own unit, special moments and a handful of secret ones.

System requirements#

Aetas doesn't ask much of your computer. Any Windows PC from the last ten years running Windows 10 or newer will do nicely. These are the same requirements as on the Steam page:

Java is bundled, so there's nothing else to install. You only need the internet for multiplayer, and for matches with eight players a 1920x1080 screen is recommended.

Saves, screens and languages#

Your saved games and your progress in the campaigns travel with you through Steam Cloud, so you can pick up where you left off on another PC.

The interface grows with your screen: on a 1440p screen it's a quarter bigger, on 4K twice as big, and you can set the size yourself. There's also a colorblind mode that recolors the players' units, buildings and the minimap.

The game is in English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian and Simplified Chinese.