Before Age of Empires hit the stores, Warcraft 2 was considered the ultimate, real-time strategy game. Now, there's a debate on whether Age of Empires will replace Warcraft 2 as being the best real-time strategy game. After I quit playing War2 and started playing AOE, I found that I could not go back to playing War2 ever again. Before I had AOE, I thought AOE sucked. I never knew that it could even come close to replacing War2. The following are some articles posted in the newsgroups concerning this AOE vs. War2 debate.

Subject:      WARII vs AOE?
From:         mr_natural@bigfoot.com
Date:         1998/02/14
Message-ID:   <6c50g2$6l4@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>
Newsgroups:   microsoft.public.ageofempires

I've been playing WARII for about 3 yrs and am looking forward to
StarCraft.  Then someone told me AgeOfEmpires was the tits!
Could someone who is/was a WarII fan give me their opinion?
If you don't like WarII forgive me butt I really don't want to hear
about it.  Thanks in advance.

Subject:      Re: WARII vs AOE?
From:         "Joe" 
Date:         1998/02/14
Message-ID:   
Newsgroups:   microsoft.public.ageofempires

Once you play AoE you will never want to play War2 again. AoE is simply THAT
much better.

Subject:      Re: WARII vs AOE?
From:         michaelpick 
Date:         1998/02/15
Message-ID:   <34E6BB74.5B8@compuerve.com>
Newsgroups:   microsoft.public.ageofempires

Salve,

WarII was our long-term-favorite, too. We are a group of five friends
who like network-sessions and started playing with C&C and Duke Nukem.
Two Month ago we met and Ralf introduces us to aoe. Incredible, even
with the Demo we playd two session about 7h each!

Now WarII is catching Dust, only my girlfriend likes to play it in
singleplayer mode. IMO WarII is sure a good game but a german
"Sprichwort" says: the better ist the enemy of the good...
I think the best advantage of aoe exist in its compexity in tech trees,
and for sure the many diferent civs, that gives more depht in
multiplayer than a struggle between Orks and Humans. =


BTW: a five player Networkgame runs well (ok...,good playable) on my
computer, a AMD486DX133-P75 with 24Meg Ram. (a PenII 266, 64meg Ram was
the initiator, very big map, heeps of units - full featured multiplayer
game, no computer enemies). With this 486 I=B4ve won even one game. =


Greetings from Cologne, Germany (2400 years old german city, we are
still advancing into iron-age) Michael Pick, cand.iur.

Subject:      Re: WARII vs AOE?
From:         "Scott Robert Ladd" 
Date:         1998/02/14
Message-ID:   <01bd3998$9f1f9020$3bd32dc7@animas.frontier.net>
Newsgroups:   microsoft.public.ageofempires

I played Warcraft 2, and still do -- but AoE has stolen my gaming time. The
two games have much in common; the basic mechanics are very similar.

Advantages of AoE over Warcraft 2:

- Ways of winning OTHER than conquest

- A richer environment (12 civs, more units, more upgrades, more choices to
make)

- Broader range of scenarios, and a powerful campaign/scenario editor that
lets you do most of the stuff the game designers can.

- Better graphics (albeit a minor point)

Where Warcraft 2 has advantages:

- Simpler game. When I'm in for a quick game, I play Warcraft 2 sometimes.

- Magic. AoE is historical to some extent, and it implements priests who
can convert enemy units or heal the wounded. I miss magic sometimes, just
because it's FUN.

- Plays on older machines. Warcraft 2 runs on my wife's 486/66/8MB; AoE
barely runs on my Pentium 166/48MB sometimes.