One of the original developers of Age of Empires 2 has shared a story about how a last-minute decision caused the development team to add an extra civilization to the game’s The Conquerors expansion.
Sandy Peterson, known for being a level designer on DOOM, was tasked with designing an expansion pack for Age of Empires 2 back in 1999 when he worked at Ensemble Studios. Given free reign to choose any theme he wanted, he settled on “The Conquerors” and selected four civilizations to feature in the pack – the Spanish, Aztecs, Huns, and Mayans.
When the project neared completion, five weeks ahead of schedule, Petersen got a call from Microsoft asking him to add a fifth civilization.
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.
— Sandy Petersen (@SandyofCthulhu) March 18, 2025
The project went ahead extremely well. We were… pic.twitter.com/b7Af0djI8a
“Microsoft said, ‘We want you to add Koreans to The Conquerors pack.’” the designer wrote on X (formerly Twitter). The reason why? Because Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft was seeing massive success in Korea, selling 3 million copies alone, and Microsoft wanted a piece of the dough.
“Koreans, greatly to their credit, were not conquerors. They stayed in their lane. While they’re cool, they don’t fit the Conquerors theme,” Petersen replied to Microsoft. “Starcraft doesn’t have any Koreans in it, so those sales had zero to do with a Korean civ.”
Microsoft, however, didn’t back down. It tasked Petersen’s team with adding the Koreans to the expansion pack. The dev team then spent the next five weeks cramming the civ in, without a deadline extension or additional support from the publisher.
Petersen also claims there were three apparent mistakes Ensemble made during this rushed development. Firstly, the unique Turtle Ship unit wasn’t accepted by Koreans despite them using a “legitimate source.” Secondly, they called the Sea of Japan the “Sea of Japan”. In Korea, the sea is known as the “East Sea”. Finally, they mentioned a Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592, which allegedly got a Microsoft rep “arrested and detained for a while.”
Of course, Age of Empires 2 didn’t end up outselling StarCraft in Korea, and didn’t even hit the 3 million sales Microsoft had hoped.
Still, it’s always good to get an inside look at how game development works, even if it proves how decisions from publishers can drastically affect the workload of development studios beneath them.
Age of Empires 2 was remastered as a “Definitive Edition” in 2019. Since then, it has received frequent balance patches, new features, and more expansion packs. It’s quite a different game now compared to what it was in 1999.
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