Yes, the moment we’ve been waiting for the last 18 months is finally here. Imperial Ages is launched and can be played at www.imperialages.net.

Play The Game

What is Imperial Ages all about?

It’s a free strategy browser game, set in the medieval ages, that allows you to build an empire, train armies, wage war or trade resources with other players.

You start with one small village, and gradually you grow it to the empire status, either by building it up peacefully, or through wars of conquest. Every 4 months or so, you’re able to get your civilization to the next age, which means that most of the troops are upgraded to new ones, you get new buildings and new features that allow you to better manage your empire and give you new options in war.

3 Ages, 4 civilizations, 120 military units, A Quest For Glory.

Read The Story or Play The Game

Some screenshots can be seen here.

What should you do in these first few days? Probably get your resource production up and prepare for the end of the protection period (7 days from the date you started on).

And a few words about the 4 civilizations, so you know which one you should pick:

Papal State – powerful units, but expensive. Good wall protection. Offensive civilization.

Hanseatic League – powerful units, but expensive. Good wall protection. Defensive civilization.

Mongols – weaker units, but cheap. Offensive civilization.

Valachia – weaker units, but cheap. Defensive civilization.

One final word here. Please tell your friends about the game. The more players we get from the beginning, the better the experience will be from the start.

You can follow the latest news on the blog, or you can ask for help or information in the forums.

Raywall gave me the OK, so the official launch is tomorrow morning at 10 AM Server Time (GMT+2). Below is the time in a few other time zones.

GMT time is 8 AM, March 26.

Countdown clock to the launch here (click)

More at the time of the launch.

Hi guys. Unfortunately we got a bit of a problem with one of the options players will have at registration, in which corner of the map they will be able to register. It wasn’t in the Alpha, so it wasn’t tested. Right now, we’re looking at a day of tests and fixing tomorrow, and the official launch on Wednesday (hopefully). I’ll post again tomorrow and let you know more precisely.

Sorry for the delay again, Raywall is doing everything he can to make sure the game will go as smoothly as possible once we launch.

Just wanted to remind everyone that the alpha test of Imperial Ages will end tomorrow, so we have a few days to get everything ready for the official launch Monday, March 24. We’re comfortable enough with the current version of the game and the major bugs that are solved to call it a Beta version.

If you log in right now you can see the improved upper part of the page that will be part of the beta. The building queue has also been implemented and you can see what you are currently building in the left sidebar. You can build a resource and a normal building at the same time.

The ingame alliance forums are also up, but will go through a major redesign in the near future, probably after the beta is launched. I’m talking about graphics and functionality.

The VIP system will not be in place when we launch the beta, but it will be finished in the coming weeks, and those that will want to use the comfort features of the VIP package will be able to pay for a 3 month subscription through PayPal. We’re looking at something like $7.99 right now for the 3 month VIP package. The game can be played easily even without the VIP, this is a free game after all, but the VIP will give you some options like no ads, the ability to have a logo or banner in the player profile, an extra building in the queue and so on. We’re hoping to make it well worth those few dollars if you decide to pay and support the game.

I for one will work on the game manual in the next few days and hopefully have it finished by Monday, though the Easter feast, drinking and recovery period will make it a bit hard.

We had a meeting today, me (Alex), Mars and Raywall (he came to our city) and decided that after 18 months of development, Imperial Ages will finally be launched on March 24, 2008.

The current Alpha round will end Friday, March 21, most probably, and we’ll have 2 days to prepare for the launch of the Beta round.

The Beta round will be the official launch of the game, and it will last for 12 months until the game is restarted again. Normal speed, 3 ages, new military units every 4 months and new buildings. There will be a lot of improvements and features added along the way and probably some bugs that will be fixed.

One thing that it’s not going to be ready for the official launch is the VIP system – the part where people get some cosmetic and comfort related bonuses in game in exchange for a few dollars a month.

That’s about it folks. We’re really excited to be so close to launch and can’t wait to see it happen.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe by email or RSS to the blog so you can get the latest updates on the game. You can find both options in the blog’s sidebar.

Raywall and Tony, our two programmers, finally returned from their trip and after three weeks of doing nothing on the game we’re ready to start again. The bugs will start being solved again and the work on the final version of the game will continue as normal starting from this week.

Unfortunately, our two programmers are being sent by the firm where they’re working to another country for the next 3 weeks. Since they are working on the game in their free time, that means that the game development stops until the end of the month and all submitted bugs will not be taken care of until then. Really annoying but we can’t do anything about it.

The game will keep running in this period as it is right now. The programmers might log in on the forums to answer questions from the hotel, but there will not be any bug fixing.

Hey guys. I’m glad to announce that tonight we’re launching the new alpha version of Imperial Ages. Raywall and Mars worked hard on this version and you’ll see a new and hopefully improved upper part, a new map, troop consumption (tomorrow).

The new upper part allows for less scrolling and you can also see the new game logo in the upper left corner.

Those with large armies will have a small problem here, as troops didn’t consume any gold until now. So in around 24 hours from now, all troops will consume gold, and if you don’t have enough gold in the village, troops will begin to die once the treasury is empty.

In the next 24 hours those with big armies will need to either send the troops in other villages when they’re not using them so they consume the gold from there or upgrade the gold fields in villages with armies.

If you don’t take some kind of action to save your troops you’re going to lose them as they will leave if they’re not paid. Sorry for this, but this is an alpha server and we need to test the new version and prepare for the official launch (in a few weeks we hope).

That’s it for now, the new version will be up in a few hours. Please let us know in the comments what you think about the new look when it goes live.

The players that helped us test the game complained that the game header is too big and they have to scroll the page down every time they take an action. So I’ve made the header zone smaller(about 130 px smaller) so now you have to scroll down just in a few situations, and only if you don`t have at least 1024*768. Unfortunately you still need to scroll the page in the village unless your monitor resolution is 1280*1024 or higher.

These are the modifications made on the game interface:

– New Logo – We have a new logo made from 2 crossed swords and a shield, This logo will represent from now Imperial Ages and we already use it on our laptops(using stickers) and on the coffee cups.

– New Game Header – We liked the knight very much, but since he occupied too much space we decided to let him go. Instead we’ve put a dark zone in which special type of messages will appear.
– Map Redesigned – The map was the worst part made by me for the game. It was made in a hurry because we needed a way to see the map and i didn’t have the time back then to implement something more complex. It was a simple map made using table cells. Now we have a new map, which looks really great, occupies less space(although it shows almost the same number of villages) and now has a Map Legend, making it easier to see your villages, Villages of the alliance members, Alliance Allies villages, the villages of those that are at war with you and so on.

– There are other minor changes in the game interface, but most of them can be seen only by those who take a look in the game code.

All these things are done but need to be implemented in the game by Ricko.

Things I need to finish in the near future:

– Large map. A way to see the entire map in one glance. Probably it will be huge(maybe 800*800 pixels) and it will give you the possibility to customize the map. For instance you`ll be able to chose the colors for your villages, your alliance villages, allies, neutral and so on. Of course you`ll have a fixed number of colors you can choose from.

– Village Variations – Now there is just a village you can have. When we`ll launch the game or even sooner you`ll have around 10-15 different villages(different resource order) which you can conquer.

– A few extra buttons for the game interface, some small modifications to the layout.

– A WordPress theme for the blog, which will be available to download for free to everyone.

– Wallpapers with our new logo.

If you’ve logged in today, you probably know that the Alpha Server was restarted with a new game version. The users remain, but you’ll have to start from scratch with the buildings again. It’s still a speed round, so it shouldn’t be too hard.

What’s new:

• most of the bugs reported so far have been fixed (we hope),
• grammatical errors fixed (most of them),
• the battle should be more stable,
• the general can recover from injuries,
• loyalty regeneration for cities,
• you can click on a city on the map and send resources from that window
• player/village profile
• you can click on a soldier icon in the camping ground and see its stats

Also, the map is much smaller. The first version was 401×401 squares, and this one is 51×51, so it’s easier to get to other players.

If you see bugs, please report them in the forums or at the Report a bug page, linked from the game.