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The term Age describes the periods of player civilization advancement in the Age of Empires games. It is a system of tiered advancement in which each tier offers increasingly powerful units and technologies. Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, and Age of Empires IV feature four Ages each, while Age of Empires III and Age of Mythology feature an extra fifth (the latter since The Titans). In Age of Empires III, the final Age can only be reached in a Supremacy type game.
Advancing to a new Age opens up new units, buildings, and technologies for each civilization. Ages enable many new powerful options to the researcher, both in the short-term and long-term. However, they usually come at high resource costs and research times, and shouldn't be mindlessly researched.
In all main Age of Empires games, including each expansion, the player is able to choose which Age to start from at the beginning of a game (including the Post-Imperial Age in Age of Empires II and Age of Empires III).
List of Ages
Age of Mythology is based only partially on real history. However, the civilizations, technologies, and units seem to take place mostly during Antiquity.