Age of Empires (1997-2022)

One of the first Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games I played growing up was strangely Age of Empires III (2005). Maybe it was my age or the era of history that it depicted but before I played its predecessor Age of Empires II (1999), I had several years in number three. Many people associate the series with the second game because of the accessibility and common appearance on dad's old 1998 Dell. While this wasn't my experience, clearly a game that focused on the Colonial/Imperial ambitions of the 16th-19th century rather than the pure conquest and domination aspects of the 12th-15th century (like number two) made enough sense to me. This is even more obvious in both the remake of Age of Empires III (2020) and the recently released Age of Empires IV (2022). While both will always have a place in my heart as a historian, the Third game helped me understand a lot about pre-modern history. An aspect of my studies that I still use every day in most of my fieldwork here in the United States.