Age of Empires Castle Siege vs Clash of Clans

First off these are by no means ‘new games’ but they are constantly upgraded and new  releases and improvements ‘freshen’ them up from time to time.

OK I have been playing these two basically jumping from one to the other, primarily because I have chosen not to use in-app purchases (Gems/Gold) and have played the game ‘raw’, so to speak.

Lets take a look at the pros and cons of the two games. And which is best?

What I thought…

Clash of Clans – This is a game that needs a certain level of ‘town development’ and defences (walls, towers and Canons etc.) before you can really relax and not worry about being raided. To begin with I installed the game, played it, woke up in the morning to discover my town had been raided, however, unlike the old games of this ilk like Age of Empires Age of Kings you only lose a small proportion of your ‘loot’ and the town rebuilds itself instantly! These games require insanely long upgrade times as you progress. Clash of Clans is by far the worse. Clash of Clans does have a very simplistic feel to the game, very much a case of, rez one at a time units. Some have certain powers, for example ‘Goblins’ love loot in Clash and in AOE CS it is the ‘Raider’.

Age of Empires CS by contrast to Clash O C is a far more natural game. You rez groups of soldiers, you have rams, siege weapons – albeit squished down for mobile play. On a windows desktop or ‘full windows’ tablets, it really is not a bad game for free! But like Clash of Clans you really need to be prepared for the day or so upgrading. Again as time goes on, the developers assume you have ‘got into the game’, and have invested sufficient time whereby you will pay rather than wait. I simply save up by raiding other players (fun!) then upgrade turn it off and return in a day or two, and play something else in the meantime. It works. But sadly all game of this type suffer a high drop out. There are many abandoned villages in Clash of Clans usually full of tombstones (you will see what I mean when you play it!) where the creator of the town has not returned and clicked to remove them. They end up just a vault for lazy players. But spoils the game somewhat.

Cheats – By far the easiest way to at least get to a situation where you can take it easy is to intensively play both on a PC for the first few days. Using BlueStacks and an autoclicker software (software that allows your mouse to automatically click the game to keep you online) for android on a PC (to stop you logging off) and just stay online. The only problem is every 6 hours you need to log out for 10 mins exactly, but you may have to set an alarm ;). Age of Empires CS simply needs the Windows ‘Metro’ interface (not desktop) of Windows 8.1 and then you are playing it with a ‘big screen’, so the small units are easily manageable. Base design for AOE CS is curious and I have put a few screen shots below to give you an idea of how I built up in a week. Obviously this is ongoing. However, Clash of Clans takes many many weeks to get to a similar level.

Clash of Clans –

The Pros

• Very good ‘Clan’ messaging and chat service, this is not so in AOE CS!
• Very easy to play on small devices, even small screen android phones. But ‘cartoony’ compared to AOE!
• Large eco-system due to it being on Android and IOS (Apple) therefore huge clan base and millions of potential players, very well advertised on Television showing that they plan on developing this further and are not ‘going anywhere’, which is good for those who have invested heavily financially or given considerable time to it’s play.
• Lots of special seasonal freebies, clear trees and ‘gem boxes’, pumpkins, Christmas Trees etc, to build your gems up without purchase (takes time to ‘save up’).
• Good fun destroying a town as it is very funny to watch the overdone sound effects and wild units like Goblins.
• Goblins by far the best unit in early stages! Later, Dragons!

The Cons

• After initial early base building, the temptation to buy gems is high due to the endless build times! This is a Major Con! Hence the drop out. Makes more sense to add levels and make it quicker, but hey what do I know?
• Not enough Builders – only 2! This means to buy more builders requires either more ‘in-app purchases’, or save up 500 Gems! That’s like 4 weeks+ torture work without spending any!
• Offline being raided paranoia until base is built strong enough, see my screenshot to see where that point is – for me at least (you can copy it if you like it works pretty well).
• Flying units like ‘Dragons’ seem to have unfair advantage over any other unit. Just build a tonne of dragons and have a spell or two to make them heal in battle and be aggressive, and you can beat most towns! Needs to be a weaker unit.
• Clans can be very one-sided – you need to be in a clan to fill your clan castle. This is the only building that houses troops that will protect you offline. However, you need a ‘generous’ clan where you all donate gppd units (level 4+) to each other! And they are particularly hard to find. Small clans maybe a better choice here, and develop a good share partner. I have left a number of clans where I was donating and getting nothing back. Now I have found a fair one with a good clan leader. Not telling who though 😉 need to protect it – he donates high spec units to his clan and cares – as it should be! You will have to find your own!
• The biggest con by far is that you have to build armies and rob other towns to develop you own buildings and advance. However, the matching algorithm, by which the game matches you at a cost of gold for each scouting (same with AOE but it is food with them), matches you a lot with low resourced towns. This is very annoying – sort it out!
• Go to a clan war extra game built in that’s cool and of course the new edit base 3 saved bases tool, recently introduced.
• Free – but be prepared to take a holiday after level 8 Town Hall for anything you do!
• Below is Level 7 and it really is at this point (this is a ‘farming map’ so purposly vulnerable Town Hall. Its destruction offers an 8 hour protective shield so ideal for upgrading rather than league status. Be prepared to lose a few trophies but less of a headache to mange long term for me anyway as some do not defeat you even like this and you get theirs LOL.

Age of Empires Castle Siege –

The Pros

• If you have never played the original AOE PC games made by the then ‘Ensemble Studios’ (which I still have an love!) Then you will love this.
• Troops are cheap and fast to produce for battles unlike COC which cost a fortune and take forever!
• It has 4 builders compared to COC’s only 2. Thats really tight-fisted COC!!! Meaning you can really get going in AOE CS.
• The armies develop quick!
• The development space is prettier and feels less cramped.
• The battles are more realistic, with large armies advancing, real combat between attacking and defensive troops, the defensive troops you can create so do not need a ‘clan’ deal to fill your castle.
• Unlike Clash that has a mind of its own when you set the troops down, in AOE CS you can click a group of units and drag them to your preferred target and see a sweeping arrow appears – BRILLIANT!
• Twice the battle time compared to Clash of Clans, COC always seems like a bit of a panic tbh.
• Brilliant matching algorithm compared to Clash of Clans, it really does match you well! This AOE CS AI no doubt has its roots in their AOE history!
• Believable concept – it feels ‘historical’, the units and hero units were ‘genuine’ Kings or Warlords. So you can relate more to the game. It is not quite ‘Civilization V’, but is along those lines.
• Fast upgrade times even when more advanced compared to Clash!
• Upgrades sensibly priced! In COC the costs to do things are astronomical! In this game it feels a bit more realistic, but obviously they want you to buy gold from their market for real money for the impatient so still a bit of a wait. Made with Microsoft itself so a good quality product with beautiful buildings – see images!
• All these types of games copied ‘Age of Empires’ anyway. So Microsoft clearly have an advantage here with this style and the characters within it – probably copyrighted a lot of it already. If you have a vista laptop install AOE AOK instead! 🙂
• Free! Just be patient and play something else during upgrades.
• Below is Level 5 and achieved in just a few days compared to the WEEKS of work involved in Clash of Clans for the equivalent.

The Cons

• This is on Windows and struggles a bit to gain a footing compared to Android and IOS sadly.
• Not ‘Age of Empires’ in the true sense – be better to pay and get that than faff about with all this ‘gold’ nonsense! The Microsoft Zone 10 years ago with multi-player ‘Age of Empires Age of Kings’ was brilliant! They need the emulate that and charge for the game, as that would set them apart from the plethora of copycat versions of this inc ‘Clash of Clans’ ironically! (Although COC came first (there is a pun there) the whole rts genre of this type began with Microsoft.
• Can be a bit fiddly to drag your selected troops to the battle zones you choose on touch screens as you can accidentally pan the screen, sometimes results in panning the screen which is annoying in a panic melee.
• Can be a problem reported by many booting up the game. Often hangs on ‘loading’ requiring a reboot of the PC to have another go. Must be a bug or some issue the the XBOX gaming network. They do seem to get targeted a lot and hacked so bound to slow things down I guess.
• Addictive! I find hours pass and think what have I done with my life LOL – but maybe that’s a good thing and a pro+?

Above there are two variations on a design one is to protect the castle (traditional square box within a box) to gain crowns for the league, the other (chevroned)is with an exposed castle to ‘farm’ and get a ‘Peace Treaty’ when you castle is destroyed to prevent others attacking you. This same logic applies in Clash of Clans (see above final pointer) and there are many many designs to help guide you online. Just search for ‘Layouts‘ COC even has a layout editor to try things out in advance of your upgrades or ‘WISH LIST’.

CONCLUSION

My choice is ‘Age of Empires Castle Siege’ by a country mile, as a fan of the original Age of Empires PC games on XP 😉 this immediately felt right, compared to ‘Clash of Clans’ which to me is too much of a kinda money making knock-off. AOE CS really is active enough to keep you interested. Clash of Clans spends most of its time upgrading for days on end, and I am now boring of it slightly and pop in less frequently now. In time it will become probably just another ghost town that makes the creators of COC (Supercell) nothing at all, not even the necessary infrastructure of a player – they are important too.

DOWNLOAD LINKS

Clash of Clans – Free Download Android IOS Appstore
Age of Empires Castle Siege – Free Download Windows 8.1

Enjoy!