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Sandy Petersen 🪔 Profile picture
@SandyofCthulhu
Mar 18 • 3 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
In 1999, I was assigned to design the expansion pack to Age of Empires 2. I chose The Conquerors as the theme, and wishing to have 4 civs (as we had on Rise of Rome), I chose the Spanish, the Aztecs, the Huns, and the Mayans.

The project went ahead extremely well. We were almost completely finished, 5 weeks ahead of schedule as of January 2000. I was excited to move onto Age of Empires 3.

Then Microsoft called and we had an important conference call.
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Microsoft said, "We want you to add Koreans to The Conquerors pack."

I said, "Koreans, greatly to their credit, were not conquerors. They stayed in their lane. While they're cool, they don't fit the Conquerors theme."

Here was Microsoft's argument: "Starcraft sold 3 million copies in Korea."

Here was my counter-argument, which seemed pretty valid to me. "Starcraft doesn't have any Koreans in it, so those sales had zero to do with a Korean civ."

Microsoft: "But ... Starcraft sold 3 million copies in Korea."

I could see where this was going. Once someone simply repeats a previous argument, it's clear they are no longer functioning from logic or intelligence.
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So I went ahead and we crammed in the Korean civ in the last 5 weeks we had. No Microsoft didn't give us any extra time. We made what apparently were three mistakes. We used the wrong art for the turtle ships (we used a legitimate source, but apparently Koreans didn't like that source), we named the Sea of Japan "the Sea of Japan" (it's called that in every nation except one. Yup.), and we said there was a Japanese invasion of Korea from 1592-98 which for some reason in 2000 was controversial. A Microsoft representative in Korea actually got arrested and detained for a while.

And in the end, we didn't sell 3 million copies of Age of Empires 2 in Korea after all. Don't get me wrong, Age of Empires 2 sold super-well, and so did The Conquerors expansion. But Starcraft was impossible to topple from its Korean throne.
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More from @SandyofCthulhu

Sandy Petersen 🪔 Profile picture
Nov 29
When I was at MicroProse, Sid Meier ran an after hours game that worked like this. We all stayed in our offices, which had terrific intercoms. Sid & a pal were the referees. The rest of us were officers in either NATO or the Warsaw Pact in a division- level action in the Fulda Gap.

Higher commanders had to use the com to tell their underlings what to do. The underlings actually did things, and the refs gave them results or information.
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So I would order my cavalry squadron LTC to check out a hill I saw on the map, and then Sid told the squadron what they saw, and the LTC would get back to me with something like, “There’s a whole regiment of T-80s! We’re taking heavy fire, 4 Bradleys KOed, pulling back!” Then I’d have to figure my next action.

Meanwhile the Soviet player with the tank regiment was alerted he’d been spotted by ground units.

You may ask, “what about air recon?” Well, the opening of the battle was about a thousand Scuds hitting our airfields (props to the Russian player for thinking of this).

We still had helicopters but they were busy elsewhere. Also the Scud strike at least meant the Pact didn’t have any more to hit our command posts.
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Most of us at MicroProse were pretty hip to modern warfare. We’d done Gunship, Red Storm Rising, F-15 Strike Eagle, F-19x and so forth. So you can imagine we got pretty involved.

I wasn’t our division commander - but I was on his staff, so we were in the same office. It helped to have two of us coordinating our efforts. When I asked for helo recon, he told me he was using our 8 UH-1Hs on something else, so I sent in the cav on my own initiative.

I then asked the commander for artillery on that hill. He called the corps (represented by Sid) and made his case. He got something like 20-30 MLRS targeting the Soviet tanks and Sid said they were wiped out. I don’t know what he told the Russian player.
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Read 5 tweets
Sandy Petersen 🪔 Profile picture
Oct 21
I've posted this before, but why not again?

In 1997, I was the lead designer of Ensemble's next cool IP - "Sorceress", which was a magic-based real time strategy game. We'd moved quite a way along it. We had elves being produced from tree groves, wraiths created by transforming corpses, and so forth. It was rapidly becoming a whole game. But Age of Empires 2 was happening at the same time, and Ensemble Studios wasn't that big.

So every week, the management would come to me and say something like, "We need Don to switch over to Age 2. That's okay, right?" Well I'm a team player so sure take Don. But the hits kept coming. By January or February, ALL BUT TWO members of my team had been poached for Age 2. All I had left was me, a top programmer, and a top artist.

So I went to the company's suits, and said, "There's no way I can create an entire new RTS with three people. But I have a suggestion. When I was working on roleplaying games back at Chaosium, we found that each expansion sold something like 25%-35% as many copies as the original. If that holds true for RTS games, we could put together an expansion for Age of Empires on the cheap, taking only a few months, and a tiny team. If the expansion sold even 10% as well as Age, we'd make a mint."
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The management agreed - unlike many company "suits" they were smart, game-savvy, and forward-thinking. I then presented my core idea for the expansion: "After the ancient times, Rome took over. Rome's cool and pretty sexy. Let's base the expansion on Rome. We'll add Rome and three other civilizations, all enemies of Rome, like Carthage for example. We can also fix little balance problems that have come up since Age was published. Everyone will want the expansion for the new civs at a minimum."

Now my bosses were pretty excited. When they presented the idea to MicroSoft, the morons in Redmond poured ice water.

"Our experience has shown that game expansions don't sell."

But Ensemble's management already had fallen in love with Rise of Rome, and as I'd pointed out, it was a cheap experiment. So we went ahead without MicroSoft's approval (at this time, they hadn't yet bought Ensemble). Also, I think the goons at MicroSoft thought the expansion would just be a bunch of campaigns and scenarios. While scenarios would definitely be included, my vision was that it would contain something for everybody. New units, new technologies, AND new civs.

Even if you only ever wanted to play Hittites, say, you'd want Rise of Rome because it adds Slingers, Camel Riders, Fire Galleys, Scythe Chariots, Logistics, Martyrdom, Medicine, and the Tower Shield to your civ. The Tower Shield is particularly useful because Hittites rely heavily on archers.

And if you wanted to experiment with some of the new civs ... well then, the world was your oyster.
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As far as I can tell in my research, this is one of the first, if not THE first time that a computer game expansion had more than just extra scenarios or levels, but actually changed fundamental gameplay. So I'm willing to take credit for changing the nature of expansions forever. Even if we do find someone who did it first, I'm willing to bet that Rise of Rome did it bigger and I hope better. So if you hate expansions, blame me. If you like them, you can buy me a diet Dr Pepper some day at a convention when we meet.

Anyway, Rise of Rome proved a gigantic hit. We sold a million copies - compared to the 3 million copies that Age of Empires sold, that's pretty creditable. And since Rise of Rome cost only a tiny fraction as much as Age of Empires, it really made bank.

Plus it kept doing so. You see, Rise of Rome came out almost exactly a year after Age of Empires, and when it did, it BOOSTED Age of Empires sales. When people saw both games in the store, they naturally picked them both up.

Then, when the Gold Edition of Age of Empires was released, packaged with Rise of Rome, Microsoft got ANOTHER big boost in sales for both products. Rise of Rome was the gift that just kept on giving. It gave Microsoft three bites at the Age apple.
3/
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Sandy Petersen 🪔 Profile picture
Aug 24
Naysayers and party-poopers are always trying to explain to me why giant bugs can't exist. "Well akshually" they say. Well, I've spent a LOT of time studying insects and I WANT GIANT BUGS. Don't you?

So let's talk about how to make this happen. First off, giant arthropods have existed before. The best-known are Arthropleura (land) and eurypterids (sea), both of which got to about 10 feet long. But they're not elephant sized yet, so let's keep hammering at it.
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One of the most common reasons is because insects breathe via spiracles, which rely partly on tissue diffusion, which only is useful up to about 3 inches, which limits a spiracle-reliant creature to a width of about 6 inches.

However, there are arthropods which use lungs - scorpions & spiders. And ocean-dwellers don't use spiracles (they use gills). But even if we only discuss insects, these creatures have shown incredible adaptive powers. I am sure they could evolve an enhancement for their spiracles if they needed it. Perhaps a pump system to move air deeper for the spiracles. They already have it to an extent - many larger insects use muscle movements to aid breathing - look at how a grasshopper or wasp pulsate.

We still need another auxiliary system for a huge insect. But since insects have evolved cast systems, metamorphosis, hyperparasitism, and flight, I think they could figure this one out.
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The next reason given is the square cube law. You know - if you're twice as big in every dimension, you weigh 8 times as much. Well duh. But the square cube law applies to EVERYTHING, not just insects. And scientists seem to not fully understand its limitations as applied to animals. When I was a kid, it was common knowledge that brontosaurs couldn't walk on land because they were too heavy, and that Pteranodon was the largest imaginable flying creature. Now we know that sauropods far larger than brontosaurs lived exclusively on land, and we have fossils of dozens of flying horrors that could eat Pteranodon for breakfast - and quite possibly did.

Now yes, you can't scale an ant up to elephant-size. You have to modify its limbs and its structure. Either more limbs or thicker limbs. That's why an elephant is the exact same shape as a hyrax scaled up. (They're relatives!)

More cogently, it's been pointed out that arthropods have an exoskeleton meaning the mass of the exoskeleton would keep getting more. But insects could easily keep the exoskeleton at whatever thickness needed for protection, while evolving internal struts & supports. Ever eaten a crab? Did you notice the internal structures inside the crab to support its body & muscles?

I agree that a elephant-size beetle wouldn't have a shell proportionately as thick as a ladybug. But it could still be pretty thick, because one advantage of the exoskeleton is that it magnifies the mechanical advantage of their muscles, which is why an insect can be stronger than a similar-sized vertebrate.
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Sandy Petersen 🪔 Profile picture
Jul 25
How to balance unbalanced factions in a game.

I cut my teeth making Age of Empires' factions asymmetrical yet balanced. The most fun I ever had was developing Age of Empires III: The Warchiefs, which were also the very most unbalanced factions we'd ever created. I carried this love for asymmetry on after Ensemble Studios went kaput.

My game Cthulhu Wars is famously asymmetrical. (It's available on shop dot petersengames dot com, Noble Knight, and elsewhere.) The factions have different abilities, spellbooks, ways to win, and even monsters. Cthulhu has shoggoths, starspawn, & deep ones. Black Goat has dark young, mi-go, and ghouls. They don't even get Elder Signs the same way.

This gives the game a lot more replayability, because if you've mastered the tactics & strategy of, say, Cthulhu, but now ecide to play he Crawling Chaos

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The first step (for me) is to sketch out how the factions differ. In Cthulhu Wars, Cthulhu is the apex predator. Black Goat works more like a fungus infection - it can't really deliver a knockout blow, but it's really hard to eradicate. Crawling Chaos is a vulture - it preys on the vulnerable, strikes from surprise, and exploits every weakness mercilessly. And so forth.

So I gave Cthulhu units that help maximize battle power. Crawling Chaos got units that help him avoid the consequences of his actions - the hunting horrors fly out of nowhere to bolster his troops when ambushed. The flying polyps let him choose a unit to keep out of a fight. The nightgaunts let him abduct an enemy unit, removing it from the battle.

And the spellbook requirements also support this by encouraging the faction to do what he does best. Cthulhu wants to go into battle. Black Goat wants to spread out across the map. Yellow Sign wants to wander on his crazy pilgrimage around the world. And so forth.

This of course doesn't help balance the factions, but it gives me a sound basis for knowing WHAT I want the factions to do, and supporting that. I don't want to lose sight of the faction's vision.
[pic from Viktor Eikman] 2/Image
Once I have a set of non-symmetrical abilities and such created, my next step is to go straight to a playtest. Get some players, and let them have at it. I do not normally participate in my playtests. I just watch. This helps me stay neutral, watching Spock-like as the mortals interact.

When I see a unit or spellbook being exploited, I consider if this exploit makes the game "not fun" for other players. When I see a unit or spellbook that is getting ignored, I also make a note - it needs to be made more attractive. It doesn't have to dominate the game - it just has to support some viable strategies.

When I see that some faction is too powerful, I do NOT nerf that faction. Side note: at my companies, we always used the verb "to nerf" to describe watering down or weakening some game aspect to make it more fair. Like if catapult galleys were ruling the sea, we might nerf them by lowering their range, or making them cost +10 gold, or giving fireships a bonus against them or whatever. Any change that accrues to the disadvantage of a unit or faction or upgrade is termed a "nerf". Now you know.

But if I don't nerf someone that's too strong, how do I fix balance?
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Sandy Petersen 🪔 Profile picture
Jul 7
In 1999, my task at Ensemble Studios was lead designer for an expansion pack to Age of Empires 2. The previous expansion had been Rise of Rome, which made sense, because Rome followed the various older nations featured in Age of Empires 1. But there wasn’t any obvious super-nation after the middle ages, so we went with the generic “The Conquerors” as our theme. So naturally we wanted conqueror civs. Rise of Rome had 4 civs, so that’s how many we wanted - I chose the Huns, the Spanish, the Mayans and the Aztecs. I was super-excited to finally get Aztecs into a game. (And I don’t need any of you whippersnapper mansplaining to me that the Aztecs were bad guys. Buddy, I put them in the game BECAUSE they were bad guys.)

Anyway, The Conquerors project went super-smooth. Five weeks AHEAD of schedule, we were almost complete – almost unheard of in a software project. I was proud. The whole team was excited because now we’d be moving onto Age of Mythology or Age of Empires 3. So non-stop gaming development.

Then Microsoft called.
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Over the phone, in a big conference call in the company bar (yes we had one), the Microsoft goons said, “We need you to add Koreans to the Conquerors.”

Me; “Koreans, to their credit, didn’t conquer their neighbors. Nothing wrong with them, but they don’t fit the theme of The Conquerors.”

Microsoft goons (I don’t know why it took a whole team of them to talk over the conference call, but it did): “Starcraft sold 3 million copies in Korea.”

Me: “Starcraft doesn’t have Koreans, so that’s not why.”

Microsoft: “But Starcraft sold 3 MILLION copies in Korea.”

So yeah. I thought my counter-argument was pretty good, but when someone simply repeats a previous argument, they are no longer functioning on logic or intelligence. That’s a Pro Tip by the way – if you’re having a discussion and they repeat themselves you’re done. I knew MS would keep pushing this no matter what. To make my life easier, I agreed right away. I asked if we could have extra time to add a WHOLE NEW CIVILIZATION. “What? Of course not.” On the other hand I felt an obligation to try to get it done ASAP for my team, who were itching for a new project.
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So now I needed to design, test, and balance a whole new civ in 5 weeks. Luckily the other civs were done. One advantage of adding Koreans was that it gave us another use of the Far East architecture models, which made The Conquerors look even more world-spanning.

As always, I wanted to give the new civ an economic bonus, a military theme, and some kind of late game fun stuff. After careful consideration, I decided to make ALL their bonuses economic, though also military-related. My limited knowledge of ancient Korean told me that they had a lot of archers, and that even though they had gunpowder, they mostly used cannons, not muskets. I decided to focus on fortifications, like towers.

So I first had their Stone miners work faster. They could either use this to get more stone, or to send fewer to mine stone, freeing up villagers for other tasks.

Then, to encourage them to get archers & towers, I made all the archer armor & tower upgrades free. I was inspired to do this by my success with the Huns, who had no houses, so I was obsessed with the idea of free stuff. Now the Korean towers would always be maximally upgraded, which I liked. Plus thanks to their super-stone miners, they could usually afford it. I realized that in team games, Koreans would quickly eat up all their stone and then come eat their neighbors, but hey that’s part of teamwork, right?

I had their footmen (infantry & archers) cost 50% less wood. That didn’t affect the infantry units, except for pikemen, but I felt that an archer-heavy civ needed pikemen anyway. Now they could afford lots of archers, with maximum armor, but their archers weren’t actually any better, so that made for interesting gameplay.
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Sandy Petersen 🪔 Profile picture
Jun 20
How I created the Mayans for Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors. First off, I created them basically so the new building set for the Aztecs would be useful with more than a single civ. I didn't want the Mayans to have gunpowder or horses, so they needed some way to make themselves useful.

The Aztecs were already going to be the warrior tough-guy civ, so the Mayans needed to be a economic civ.

First off I created the Eagle Warrior to be the horse-substitute for both Mayans & Aztecs. This is a fast unit with a distinctive look (so you can tell it's not the same as other infantry). It's not as fast as cavalry, though so people with horses can still think they're cool. On the other hand, the eagle warrior isn't cavalry, so it gets infantry upgrades & isn't weak against pikes.

Eagle Warriors didn't have as much hit points as cavalry (since they're infantry) so I gave them a slight bonus against cavalry to help them compete one-on-one. They're a solid unit, which can be the backbone of your battle plan, but also which you can ignore if you have a better plan.

To replace the mounted Scout from other civs, I gave both Aztecs & Mayans a starting Eagle Warrior, which also had the side benefit of making them a little scary in the early age.
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But the Eagle Warrior, cool as it was, was shared between Aztec & Mayan so didn't make them distinctive. Because the Aztecs were so famous for their awesome infantry, I decided to boost the eagle warriors a bit for Mayans, and gave the Mayans a special tech which almost doubles the eagle's hit points. Ouch. The Aztec eagle warriors can still compete, because of the Aztec infantry edge (faster training & higher attack). So Aztec vs. Mayan eagles is almost a wash, but the Mayan eagles last a LOT longer against the Europeans.

Now that was taken care of, I decided to focus on archers for the Mayan main weapon. I had their archers be cheaper in the various ages AND their unique unit - the Plumed Archer - was one of the most interesting archers in the game. It was really hard to kill, for an archer, but had a weak attack. This made it able to kill things that are vulnerable to archers while it could last a long time against counter-archers.

I also chose to make Mayan skirmishers NOT be cheaper - so they were comparatively worse than their archers. The intent here was that they had good archers & eagle runners, and shouldn't rely on skirms. I hate civs that can do "everything" and didn't want the Mayans to be one of these.

Also I knew someone would complain about the fact that Mayans get access to crossbowmen. Tough. We're not going to make another whole new unit with identical stats to the European crossbow just for some kind of fake historical verisimilitude. Remember - our whole team was less than a 10th the size of Age 2. We had to pick and choose our battles.

Below are plumed archers from the Definitive edition which I think look cool except for their comically long and impossible feathers (can't think of a single bird besides Ostriches with plumes that big).
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Well as I said earlier, I wanted the Mayans to be economic. I'd already handled their military so while it wasn't maybe the mightiest or most interesting military in the game, it at least could hold up to an enemy. And perhaps with a good economy they could outproduce the bad guys.

I wanted the Mayans to have an economic bonus that kicked in RIGHT AWAY, at game start. Why? Because I wanted a first-time player to immediately see that the Mayans were cool and different. Also, since this was an expansion pack, I could rely on players not being total n00bs - they already know the game. For this bonus, I gave them an extra starting villager, which is, of course huge.

Immediately the hue & cry went up. "An extra villager is WAAAY too good, Sandy. What have you done?" It lasted one playtest. I still wanted the extra villager, but knew I'd have to somehow modify the advantage. What I came up with was starting the Mayans with 50 less food (it costs 50 food to recruit a villager). Now the first thing a player does when they start the game is immediately queue up some villagers in the town center. But the Mayans can queue up one less. But it doesn't hurt them because they START with one more, and can set the new guy to scout for berries, build a hut, or hunt a boar. It's a fun ability, and the 50 less food means if you don't use that extra dude wisely, you've lost any advantage in a couple minutes.

More to the point, players immediately "got" how good this bonus was, and it made the Mayans interesting and fun right away.
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