July 21, 2026
Empire strikes back... in the comments
Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)
Fans are fighting over whether the game was wrong all along
TLDR: The article argues that Age of Empires doesn’t really portray how actual empires work, because real empires rule over other peoples rather than just fighting neighbors. Commenters immediately split between “fair historical point” and “please relax, it’s a game,” with jokes and eye-rolls doing almost as much damage as the arguments.
A history writer tossed a flaming torch into the Age of Empires fandom by arguing that the famous game series doesn’t really show empires at all. His point was simple but spicy: an empire isn’t just Romans, Mongols, or Persians on a map — it’s a system where one group rules over and squeezes resources from other people. That kicked off a classic comment-section civil war: is this a smart historical reality check, or are we all wildly overthinking a game about building farms and sending cavalry at your neighbor?
The loudest pushback came from players saying the title still makes sense because the game shows the road to empire, not empire management itself. One fan argued that in Age of Empires II, the winner basically becomes the empire at the end, with the final stage literally called the Imperial Age. Others rolled their eyes and said the complaint misses the point entirely: the game has population caps, no seasons, and no day-night cycle either, because it’s obviously trying to capture the feeling of historic conflict, not simulate every messy detail. Then came the counter-punch from readers annoyed by the “it’s just a game” crowd, with one commenter calling that kind of shrug-off thinking childish. And of course, the jokes landed too: the biggest crowd-pleaser was the deadpan line that “Age of pre-empires” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Brutal, tidy, and extremely internet.
Key Points
- •The article uses the announcement of *Age of Empires IV* as a starting point to argue that many strategy games do not model empires in a historical sense.
- •It defines an empire as a state in which a core population rules over and extracts resources from a distinct peripheral population.
- •The article traces the concept of empire to the Latin *imperium*, emphasizing rule or command exercised over others.
- •It argues that monarchy is not a requirement for empire, citing republican Rome, post-monarchical France, and democratic Athens as examples.
- •The article states that empire has historically been a dominant form of large-scale political organization and that many modern states developed from earlier imperial structures.