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Sandy Petersen 🪔 Profile picture
@SandyofCthulhu
Mar 18, 2025 • 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, 2025
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.
3/
Read 5 tweets
Sandy Petersen 🪔 Profile picture
Oct 21, 2025
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
Oct 20, 2025
Why make orcs? What is the advantage? It's not just because they're evil - Sauron can get all the evil humans he wants. Here are the reasons I've parsed by reading LotR and making logical biological deductions from this.

Humans breed extremely slowly. Elves and dwarfs are even worse. We know that orcs "multiply" over a course of only a decade or two, so what's happening? Well, we know orcs are smaller than humans. Chimps, which I think are comparable in size to orcs, have a gestation period 5 weeks shorter than humans, and orcs might be shorter - a deer is even larger, and has a gestation period 3 months shorter, so it's not size that matters. Since orcs are specifically and magically bred for war, my guess is they are even shorter. In fact, let's take a page from the Hildebrandt brothers and assume that orcs breed and grow similarly to pigs.

If this is the case, orcs have a gestation of about 3 months, and grow to 120 lbs (a typical size) in another 3-4 months. Orcs might grow faster than pigs, because they are more carnivorous, and thus are getting more protein & fat in their diet. Now, not everything about the orc-pig comparison is in the orc's favor. Adult hogs are MUCH bigger than orcs, so they can give birth to litters. I imagine most orc births are to a single child - which is then taken to warrens of multiple orc-spawn raised by a few caretakers. I do not believe orcs have any kind of family life or even a nuclear family.

So - an orc mother gets pregnant, has a kid 3 months later, nurses it for 3-6 weeks, then abandons it. It reaches adult size in another 3-6 months, gets some military training and it's off to the war. That is a FAST-breeding creature. No wonder they felt that the Age of Men was over!
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And it's even worse from the human viewpoint, because of the numbers of orcs that can fight. In a human society, typically no more than 10-11% are in the military. In a modern society it's even less. The grossly over-militarized society of Imperial Japan had less than 5% of the population in arms. Now, in older barbaric societies, such as gauls or vikings, there was a higher percentage, but it still isn't amazingly more than 30% or so. Children don't fight till they're 15 years old or more. The elderly don't fight. With vanishingly few exceptions, women don't fight. Essential workers don't fight except in extremis - it's a loser's mentality to send farmers & miners & tailors to war, because it eats your seed corn (so to speak).

But orcs? They're only children for a few months. If they even HAVE elderly, they are probably few in number, and act as caretakers of the young. I believe orc females look exactly like the males - the same size, the same look. They are as flat-chested as chimps or gorillas. Similar voices. They dress the same. I suppose if you pulled off their trews you could tell which was which but yuck.

So basically 80-90% of an orc population is able to fight. If you have a population of humans equal in size to a group of orcs, then the orc fighters will outnumber the human warriors 3, 4, or even 8 to 1. Just like we see at Helm's Deep, where the fortress is full of the old, the crippled, the women, and the children, with a much smaller part being warriors.
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You might argue - well, orcs need lots of food to multiply so rapidly, to which I answer, "Yup". I imagine orcs REALLY QUICKLY outbreed their food supply, like rabbits, bullfrogs, brown recluse spiders, or aphids. And then they have to come raiding down out of the hills to get more food - which is exactly what we see the orcs do.

BUT in some cases, the orcs get a powerful, magical master - such as the Balrog, the Witch-King of Angmar, or Saruman, or Sauron. In this case, these wise and potent leaders are able to organize a system to breed up the orcish numbers to almost inconceivable numbers. Think of Saruman needing to chop down Fangorn to fuel his furnaces, or Sauron raising vast crops of coarse vegetables in Nurn to feed his hordes.

This isn't needed for humans - we grow in numbers too slowly. It takes 50-100 years to double for us.
3/
Read 4 tweets
Sandy Petersen 🪔 Profile picture
Aug 24, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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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