 Game Informer ranked it the 81st best game ever made in its 100th issue in 2001. They called it a cross between Warcraft and SimCity and praised its multi-player and its popularity among gamers. Game Revolution categorized the game as "a cross between Civilization II and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness", while GameSpot lamented that it was "a simple combat game rather than a glorious empire-builder", describing it as "Warcraft with a hint of Civilization." While Computer Gaming World's Elliott Chin compared the game extensively to WarCraft II, he said that it has "great depth, and when compared to its real-time brethren, it has to be the most sophisticated of the bunch". GameVortex wanted less of a combat-oriented gameplay, but praised the modes of play, commenting that "the random map generation [...] really keeps the game spiced up." GameSpot decried the level of micromanagement necessary to control the game (which was due to absence of production queues and low AI of the player's units) calling it "a poor idea", which "seriously diminishes AOE's enjoyability." GameVortex echoed this criticism, while PC Gameworld pointed out the subsequently released patches improving some of the faulty AI programming. Elliott Chin criticized the game's population limit, which he thought to be its "most serious grievance".
