Secrets of The Alpha Age of Mythology Uncovered

0:00 Intro
0:54 Myth Units
3:49 Unused Animations
4:53 Titans
6:51 Cast Attack
7:15 God Powers
13:53 Buildings & Mechanics
15:25 Ships
17:20 Gods
18:53 Relics
20:11 Military Units
21:14 Weather and Nature
22:06 Intro Cinematic
22:48 Campaign
25:22 Extras
This is the ultimate compilation video of all the unused units, animations and features. Some of the animations and the models here had never been shown anywhere else. Special thanks to everyone who has documented the alpha/beta features.

[@alexanerose4820]

Archivers like you are the unsung GOAT of the gaming community As a completionist, you have my thanks

[@InternetMameluq]

Yes, I'm sure the future of gaming will in part be determined by forgotten gems lost to time... I wish the devs saved more of their work, because I'm certain some of it could have gone to use rather than waste.

[@CoffeeSuccubus]

This game was so ambitious. If the devs had an extra year, they'd add even more fun stuff than it already is. I am not saying that AOM is a bad game fuck, no. What we got, is amazing. I just want even MORE stuff. THIS stuff looks so cool regardless.

[@Casketkrusher_]

Ambitious is the right word, probably most stuff didn't even work on a gameplay perspective (or hard to execute in development), there's a reason they didn't use this build and did a downgrade on most things. But what you said what we got is amazing, I still remember seeing AoM at E3 2002, I was mindblown and bought it day one, many many hours been pumped into this game, I hope we will see some more of Retold soon.

[@freddyulmer6136]

This makes me even more excited for Retold! The fact that there were so many other cool god power ideas and even more animals that they just decided to omit opens the possibilities to what else they could think of and implement 🤩

[@Aegis_Mind]

I recall thinking it was weird the leviathan had a detailed mouth texture (noticed when enlarging) but it makes sense after seeing that unused animation.

[@TheMedvedable]

Believe it or not, I was the one that collected and posted the original archive on AoMH that most of the screenshots and concept art in your videos came from, and even when I thought I knew everything that was cut, I still learned an incredible amount of from your video, great work! It's really cool to see my discoveries + some of the scans I made of the old strategy guides show up over a decade later in these videos. I still have the original archive fully intact on a hard drive if you feel like your research was missing anything from back then, I know the sites I used for hosting it all are long since gone. Also, have you thought about creating a mod to reimplement the alpha/beta content back into the game? I once wrote out an outline for a total conversion mod that would try and bring back as much of this content as possible, but I could never find enough people in the community interested in getting it made, but it's always been a dream of mine.

[@moddingaom5622]

Thanks for that archive! It's been super helpful for this video. The archive and the marketing beta CD were two of my main sources. One of the modders in the community actually recreated all the alpha buildings and uploaded them to Steam Workshop. I recently uploaded the "AoM Super Extra" mod which adds the existing beta units, AOE III forests, and some of the SPC units and buildings. You can feel free to check it out. Some of the God Powers and Myth Units can't ever truly be implemented. But I partially created them for this video.

[@steve1204]

i would like to see the archive if possible

[@polomarco7575]

​@@steve1204yeah me too

[@Stelphy876]

Wow the game was really supposed to become next level with so much more depth. I really hope they can add things to AoM Retold. Thank you so much for sharing this thorhough documentation

[@aaron_the_order6589]

It's honestly a bit disappointing how there's no like official alpha gameplay of this build The only alpha builds they are aoe 2 and 1

[@kwiiin_]

Thank you, this was a pleasure to watch! I'm still sad the Chinese units are just reskinned existing ones and reused scrapped ones. They deserved better. :(

[@JaylukKhan]

What units were they reskinned from?

[@matthewsteele99]

@@JaylukKhan hoplite for halberdier

[@muramasa870]

I hope they gonna develope them from scratch for Age of Mythology Remake

[@JaylukKhan]

@@matthewsteele99 I've noticed the jiangshi has thd ssme attack as the shade.

[@giannisgiannis870]

Chinese units are the stronger

[@zonetropper]

Rebellion is basically "go on strike" xD Sounds like an interesting godpower and not really broken from the initial description. In practice however it would not affect lategame if there is fishing ships and water on the map and your gold mining is replaced by Trade Caravan trains. If Red tide had the potential to kill all the fish, that would mean Sekhmet would just turn the water maps into ground maps with less terrain to build or fight over or find resources in. The norse version of the pirate ship is in AomEE. Don't remember when it was added however. I suppose in the last patches...

[@AetherXIV]

incredible presentation, thank you!

[@ThePaganwicca]

Thank you very very much for exploring all these things and sharing your discoveries with us

[@Giorgos-ee5kn]

I really don't know if the already legendary AOM would be even more great with these old versions . There will never be such a classic game like AOM and AOM Titans. Also, i don't expect the new AOM to be great to be honest. Nowadays the games have a different kind of mechanics etc, no near the old vintage we loved.

[@alfredlaalpacadeageofempir9215]

>0:54 Myth Units. >3:49 Unused Animations. >4:53 Titans. >6:51 God Powers. >13:53 Buildings & Ships. >17:20 Pantheon. >18:53 Relics. >20:11 Combat. >21:14 Ambient & Nature. >22:08 Campaign. >25:22 Extras.

[@Ianarius]

Idk why when I want to use the chapters it doesn't work on my videos...

[@Mousymusic]

KALOS KALOS

[@Neockoen]

This is not only interesting to see what was abandoned in development, but also a small sneak peak into what they might add in the definitive edition. The unique farms for each civilization would be cool

[@RenegadeFury]

Thanks for making this, it's so cool to see the earlier builds of the game. Seems Ensemble made the right decisions on what to keep in the final game. I'd love a playable earlier version though.

[@mr.wololo9927]

I have often look in the internet for the original story planned for AOM but could only find a few scenarios like the one mentioned here. I never scoured the game files (original game or rerelease) for any information, cause I don’t know how. Thank you for the video

[@kiasu4ever]

Fantastic video - thanks for your hard work on digging through the game files to find these nuggets of unused content!

[@kyrtuck]

I love learning about the production history of games and hearing what didn't make it to the final version. Thank you for this!

[@MeReNDeRo89]

It would be interesting to hear something from the developers of the original game. Who knows what they can share to us. It's still amazing that there is people so passionate with this game and the other AoE games. Thanks for this video!

[@MattPritchardOfficial]

Work on Age of Mythology didn't begin until after Age of Kings Shipped. There were two parts to it - the Bang (!) engine, which was Ensembles first 3D engine, and was intended to be a somewhat general purpose engine, not limited to RTS games. An evolved version of the Bang engine was used for AoE III. The other part was the game itself. The state of 3D graphics at the time was very much in flux and responsible for the some of the technical decisions in the game, DirectX was only at versions 6 and 7 at the time, and AoM supported now obscure 3d cards like Matrox and Premedia with as little as 8 Megabytes of video ram. Features like hardware compressed textures (DXTn) could not be relied on, so a DXTn-like system was implemented on the CPU, along with indexed 8-bit textures for things like UI elements. To save space, a horrible hack was used on 3D data, reducing precision.

[@hasankhaddam540]

Truly a wonderful video. Thank you for all the research you did, and all the text you had to write ti make this video possible. This much effort should not be given for free, that's a lot of work that you did ! Well done man !!

[@inkaymr4919]

That's very cool! Thank you for your hard work compiling and sharing all this!

[@charleslavoie7622]

That was awesomely informative ! Thanks, man ! It's crazy to think what could have been, and what ended up being !

[@Mousymusic]

Malista

[@cnquistador]

Thanks for all your hard work! This was a fascinating look at what could've been. Side Note: I like the idea of paying favor to use god powers, that might've been a good middle ground between the "one use only" system of the original game, and the Atlanteans being able to use god powers multiple times.

[@blitz-idv2330]

Impressive video and information. It's amazing how much the game changed from what they originally intended , I wonder if some of the scrapped content will be implemented in the eventual remake

[@warriorman1708]

So far as I know, another thing it was in the Beta-Version from the Titans was, that Kastor was supposed to be evil and fight with an atlantean Titan. I noticed this from the Backcover and from the Trailer of this Game. Here is the Trailer: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iIndpYuGhdirlbc

[@BasileusHorus]

16:13 I would love to see and play this feature: not only looks more historically accurate, but also will cause a better management of resources and would be funny see infantry fighting against each other on Ships snd once defeated, you'll earn a new ship that depending on damage, can be repaired or will sink into sea.

[@maestrulgamer9695]

15:50-This is actually a really cool idea! 23:30-Would be also nice if we could get to play thought what Arkantos did in the past.

[@Adefesio94]

24:42 AOE II Byzantines wall skin.

[@Aegis_Mind]

Glad you covered the bridge. I wondered what that was about in the editor.

[@MrAbgeBrandt]

Amazing stuff! I've always been more of an AoE2 and SWGB player, but I played AoM a lot as a kid and love seeing this old content found and preserved!

[@klavicus2276]

rewatching this six months later and i now hope so much the devs of Retold will look at this footage and think about adding and changing at least a couple of things mentioned in this great video.

[@tahususu98]

this very game is way ahead of time and we're all glad to grow up with it, thank you so very much to uncover the magnificent facts behind our very screen

[@dragonrykr]

It's amazing how a lot of these features are present in the AOM Expanded Mod!

[@Mousymusic]

Malista

[@IWouldLikeToRemainAnonymous]

Great work man!

[@yagodesantiago]

Nice video man!! Must have taken a lot of time to gather all this info. Absolutely amazing. Love from Spain 🇪🇸🫶🏻

[@moddingaom5622]

It took multiple years :D

[@Followtheham]

Great video!! I loved all of it, but rly focused on the shipyard and different ship types for some reason... It sounds super interesting and would be a awesome thing to think of for AOM RETOLD, among the other stuff also ofc!!

[@purgejmi]

This is awesome. I hope they add some of these units, ideas and additional features to the new version of the game.

[@nicolasmora9331]

Incredible research! Thank you, much love for this game

[@cano3391]

I watched whole video and it was really enjoy to watch. Made me feel nostalgic. It happens when i see old footage about aoe too.

[@DashMatin]

thank you for this

[@ScaryMaskLP]

Once again thank you for the great video. And I think it's a shame that some things have been taken out, e.g. all the relic designs. I know the remaining 11 still exist in the vanilla version. I also know that some more animations have been taken out. I don't know if I got this from you or from AoM Heaven. Anyway, I found out that the Valkyries have another battle animation or the Theocrat has a LOS animation, like the Oracles. Also, the minotaurs have a second death animation and Circe has a melee animation. I also found out that General Melagius has a second animation when he is revived, however this animation is very slow and Melagius has black hair there, probably he should be a bit younger at first. And the second thing I found out was that originally the priests were going to be both melee and ranged, kinda like the Immortals from Tale of the Dragon. Anyway, the ranged animation for the priests is originally the melee animation. They ranged animation looks similar to Setna's. Also, some textures, animations, etc. from the deleted content are still included in AoM Vanilla, you just have to add them. For example Gargarensis, Kemsyt and Kamos Recover Animation or the Beta Relics. Apep, the Griffin, the Golem, the Regent/Misenus and more are also still available in the vanilla version. I wonder what else is there.

[@CptnGummy]

Great video ❤🎉

[@lorddervish212quinterosara6]

Great video man

[@Ianarius]

Thank you for this video!!!

[@devangnivatkar2649]

Great video!

[@dragonrykr]

Rebellion sounds like an epic god power. I'd love it if it made a reappearance.

[@DowaHawkiin]

The multiutility ships made their way into Rise & Fall. It was such a cool concept.

[@msonisama8656]

Now just have to have patience for Age of Mythology Retold

[@alpergames_aom1]

Perfect video👍

[@klavicus2276]

damn there were some really cool ideas which i hope will make it into retold (and thought out more). also i personally like the old norse style with the favour, farm buildings and siege units, also jormun-elver wasn't such a joke visually back then.

[@VITAS874]

It's made for balance. Egypt then will be more difficult to play

[@TheOuroboros]

Really good job man, was a fun and interesting video, maybe some of this stuff will be reused for Retold :p

[@vacciniumaugustifolium1420]

I think they will entirely rebuild the game and not just rework what exist, just like they did With Aoe I-III

[@raynightshade8317]

Rebellion turned into Pestilence

[@Poemwriter_Angelo]

Wow. I never knew this. I really enjoyed playing this as a kid. I always enjoyed playing as the Greeks the most. Followed by Egyptians.

[@Casketkrusher_]

The beta looks fantastic!

[@arispatolus]

First of all, thank you for the amazing job you did collecting and posting all this info. It's truly amazing to see how this game changed throughout the years, truly a shame early alpha/beta builds are impossible to find, unlike AoE/Tribes and AoE2 builds Are you going to focus on other games' alpha versions as well?

[@moddingaom5622]

I think I will do videos about mods for a while. tracking down various alpha and beta units for AoM took too much time.

[@Mousymusic]

NE

[@FanoBraus]

good job!

[@eriksen59]

I love your content

[@bloopboop9320]

15:33 "Ensemble is changing the way naval combat works." He said calmly.

[@ZS-rw4qq]

Navy actually sounds pretty cool, especially if they planned for a ramming or boarding mechanic

[@majmage]

Wish my CDs weren't stolen, I worked at MS Games around that time and had stuff for Starlancer, AOE2: Conqueror's, Mechwarrior 4, Rise of Nations, and a few others. Most I had full releases. Some I had betas. And I might've had an alpha in there too, not sure. I guess if people just like seeing the early/placeholder versions of things, probably there was a lot of fun stuff to uncover from those early builds, but for the most part it's just like "we haven't finished Campaign X yet" or "mission 4 has a game-ending bug, we need a new build", that sort of thing haha!

[@moddingaom5622]

It's always interesting to hear from people that worked for Microsoft around that time.

[@steve1204]

So do you have acess to a functional build of the alpha? Where did you find some of these screenahots and clips? Any way you can upload all the screens to one place?

[@moddingaom5622]

Marketing Alpha of Age of Mythology is a rare copy of the game. Some of the fans purchased it from ebay or other resources. Online version is still available on betaarchive.com, I believe. But I don't think it's playable, and I shared most of the interesting info on models and textures already. Screenshots, and the clips are quite old. They come from various fansites and fan archives. Most of them were recovered using the internet archive.

[@InternetMameluq]

Wow, great, I just hope you get enough attention for this video as it deserves. That was a real blast from the past for me! I wish the game had some of its more radical ideas pan out. Something I never liked was the unique usage of the god powers; I'm guessing hte balance was too difficult, but I feel like the game became too similar to AOE at the end.

[@immi9957]

Thank You.

[@donaldpetersen2382]

Wow those pronunciations were a real treat

[@Tucher97]

To be honest, I never thought of units loading into the Leviathan's mouth, I figured they were sitting on its back. Also that removed naval system would be really awesome though very different compare to most Age of games. Though the odd part was all Civs had an archery range and stable so it makes me wonder what sort of units will come out of them, it be weird to build an archery range for just axe throwers or slingers. Though I assume Egypt and the Norse were gonna use basic bow and arrow units but units like the javelin thrower (I forget names sorry) for the greeks came out of the archery range so I assume the egyptions were gonna have slingers as the anti archerer as well as norse the axe throwers being anti range.

[@moddingaom5622]

Yes, they all had ordinary archers, and spearman. Some of the units we have now, were introduced much later.

[@Tucher97]

@@moddingaom5622 I am glad for the change because a lot of them would really blend together, but at the same time missed, though the norse axe thrower being a hack damage rather than piercing is strangely terrifying than one would think. But at the same time I wouldnt mind an AOE game where everyone has as basic infantry and basic counter units.

[@RPBiohazard]

The underwater kraken seems broken but so cool

[@imafreakinninja12]

This was made around the time Mattel was making the new He-Man line where they modeled the sorceress after Isis. She and the way Ensemble drew Isis look very similar.

[@pantslesswrock]

THAT LEVIATHAN BOARDING ANIMATION IS SICK

[@hannibalburgers477]

Siren probably worked like Priests in AoE

[@lanrowin]

I hope in the age of mythology retold they will put some of this stuff back into the game.

[@saico4307]

amazing

[@hellodean4]

I hope they bring a lot of this stuff to Age of Mythology retold! Or to an expansion for it after the initial release.

[@Ragnarr_Jarl_Jomsborg]

They should involve if not even hire you for the Remake of Age of Mythology.

[@raynightshade8317]

To bad Jormund Brood was not workable cause it fits way better than the mini snake we get

[@gonzalot.605]

Hopefully AOM: Retold can implement some of these ideas.

[@etilpoh]

where do you find all this info?

[@moddingaom5622]

From multiple resources, including old articles and the marketing CD of the game.

[@kemo8381]

1:25 so that's why scorpion man costed wood even tho it's a melee unit it was a ranged unit at first

[@Error-xr2wl]

Could you please upload the Alpha/Beta to a site like aom heaven? Please

[@jamesmattila-hine1133]

I like to think the Siren acted as a unit that drew fire towards it. In myth it lured people so I think this would make sence

[@davidquezada50]

Wish the cut content came with the remastered.

[@TitioVlad]

Particularly i like the idea of gigantic (normal-scale) ships. But if scale was a thing, then it should also be applied to buildings.

[@Rare.99]

such an underrated game!

[@jamielishbrook2384]

One of these alpha units would make it into the DS version of this game. Namely the roc was turned back into a combat unit in order to better fit the turned based nature of the DS title.

[@idontlikerome2744]

Wait wait hang on just noticed something, the Valkyrie Reginleif is Amelia Black from AoE3?

[@moddingaom5622]

Yes, she is!

[@ollyclass]

I'd imagine the siren would work like a monk from aoe turning enemies to your side.

[@danhammie]

I love the game now but wow alot of stuff could have been amazing compared to what we got

[@sobanali3223]

Can I make my custom units? And their animations?

[@moddingaom5622]

Yes, you can.

[@sobanali3223]

@@moddingaom5622 can you give a litle details? I'll be grateful :)

[@moddingaom5622]

@@sobanali3223 This PDF summarizes everything about modeling. aom.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=11367 There are other tutorials on Steam as well.

[@sobanali3223]

@@moddingaom5622 Thank you so much

[@AltijdHard_403]

4:17 So there was a Roc nerf but they didn't implement it? Man Rocs are so OP in ranked...

[@ghanimkanugrahan7948]

18:49 u cannot said her name on KZbin?

[@skeletonchampion2885]

Maybe some of these ideas will return in remake or AOM 2 or whatever they planing to call it.

[@the_investor9836]

AOM is my most played game of all time.

[@shizu181]

Roc take off and landing to gather units should be in aom retold, this is one of the most abused myth unit.

[@maurogigliotti1911]

I WANT IT ALL

[@noammeitzar5873]

They should've made more gods and minor gods as titans, like they did with Kronos Gaia and Prometeus

[@jefflokanata]

When I read gaming magazine for the first time I saw Age of Mythology , I thought it will be some kind of city building .. because in the screen shot , there was some decoration that organically improve when the age is advance . and i am kinda ... dissapointed

[@DaDunge]

3:00 It's a shame that Age of Mythology that gets so much right still has a Kraken that is a giant squid. The nrose Kraken was actually descibed as soemthing like a mix of a whale and a crustacean. Only in later medieval english tradition did it get mixed up with the giant squid.

[@blackrdknight]

Good video and something i'm into very much. One sad thing is that you used an AI voice... :/

[@moddingaom5622]

I need to create a soundproof set up for voice recording. :P

[@jamieleepescini2675]

I feel like that rainbow bridge was used for a cheat code of a flying purple hippo who sh!ts rainbows.

[@InternetMameluq]

11:35: Doesn't a cheat unit leave that rainbow behind them? Edit: hippo

[@LAITO1222]

😢I'm just a little disappointed with the amount of things we can use in single player mode, in story mode there's so much