The 8 Historical Strategy Games of 2005 Ranked on Hype
Old gaming magazines are excellent at preserving excitement, but excitement is not the same thing as truth. A preview can freeze a moment when an unfinished game still contains every possibility, every promised feature still works perfectly and every carefully selected screenshot appears to show the future. Twenty years later, that same preview can become unintentionally revealing. We know which promises survived development, which games arrived late, which releases became classics, which ones disappointed and which projects never reached a shop at all. That makes issue 7 of Dansk PC Gaming World from 2005 particularly interesting. Its page about “Historiske strategispil” historical strategy games presented eight numbered titles that the magazine considered important enough to watch, with Age of Empires III standing at number one.
The magazine introduced the category by saying that historical strategy games were not disappearing and that antiquity and the Middle Ages were the main focus of the genre. Even that description was already rather loose. Age of Empires III covers the early-modern and colonial eras, Anno 1701 is built around the seventeenth century, and Civilization IV carries humanity far beyond either antiquity or the Middle Ages. The list was less a tightly defined genre ranking than a collection of historically themed strategy projects that happened to be attracting attention around E3 2005.
The eight games were:
- Age of Empires III
- Civilization IV
- Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War
- Anno 1701
- The Guild 2
- Heart of Empire: Rome
- Sparta: Ancient Wars
- Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion
The numbering naturally looks like a ranking, although the page never explains a scoring method or explicitly says that number one is objectively the best game. Most of the titles were unfinished, several were more than a year from release and the magazine had clearly seen far more of some projects than others. It is therefore fairest to interpret the order as a ranking of editorial excitement: the games that looked most promising, carried the strongest names or produced the most impressive demonstrations. Judged on those terms, the list makes historical sense. Judged by the games that people eventually received, it becomes a remarkably uneven monument to hype.
1. Age of Empires III
The list itself offers almost no argument for placing Age of Empires III first. Instead, it simply directs readers to the main article beginning on page 16. That article continues for four pages, making Age of Empires III one of the issue’s major attractions. The amount of space is important because the list and the feature effectively support each other: the game is number one because it is the issue’s great strategy spectacle, and it receives four pages because the magazine has already accepted it as the great strategy spectacle.
Those pages make the source of the excitement obvious. The headline presents Ensemble Studios’ conquest of America as a new era for PC strategy, defined by luxurious graphics and a world governed by physics. The article describes reflective and flowing water, wind that controls the direction of smoke, detailed snowy landscapes, bump mapping, dynamic shadows and a DirectX 9 presentation that looked extraordinary in 2005. It recounts a demonstration in which a cannonball travels through a forest, breaks trees, bounces onwards, strikes a settlement and sends soldiers and pieces of architecture flying. Other sections discuss formations, hundreds of units, trading posts, alliances with Indigenous peoples and the persistent Home City system, through which experience earned during missions or multiplayer matches unlocks new opportunities. This is not a four-page assessment of artificial intelligence, economic balance, pacing or campaign quality. It is a four-page guided tour through Ensemble’s technology and feature list.
The editor’s closing comment is almost a miniature explanation of the first-place position. He says that 2005 will be a great year for strategy fans and that Age of Empires III stands high on his personal list. He acknowledges that everyone is talking about the new graphics, adds that the game also contains new ideas and describes it as both a familiar old acquaintance and something refreshed by role-playing elements and tactical combat. That is an honest expression of anticipation, but it is still anticipation. The article appears to be based on a controlled presentation of an unfinished game, at the exact moment when spectacular physics, brand recognition and promises of innovation were most powerful.
The finished release was not considered a disaster by the wider press. Age of Empires III launched on 18 October 2005, and GameSpot records a review score of 8.2 alongside a Metacritic average of 81. It was polished, visually advanced and successful enough to receive expansions and remain part of the franchise. If the only question is whether the magazine selected a major, professionally made strategy game, first place is defensible.
My own judgement is much harsher. I grew up with Age of Empires, and the original game remains one of my favourite PC games. Its ancient setting, music, atmosphere and direct progression from a primitive settlement to an organised civilisation created something that later entries never replaced for me. Age of Empires II is not a bad game, despite my opinion going against the usual consensus, but I never found it as likeable as the first. It feels more defensive, competitive and dependent on build orders and micromanagement. Many players consider that extra depth the reason it is superior; for me, it placed more distance between the game and what I loved about the original.
Then came Age of Empires III. To put my opinion less diplomatically, I thought it was dog shit. The Home City and card system, shipments, colonial focus and altered rhythm did not feel like a satisfying continuation of the game I had grown up with. The magazine was mesmerised by exactly the things that mattered least to me: water reflections, smoke, destructible scenery and technical spectacle. Those features could make an impressive E3 demonstration, but they could not recreate the soul of Age of Empires I. The four-page article therefore explains why the magazine placed it first, while simultaneously explaining why that placement means so little to me. They saw the future of graphics. I eventually played the game underneath the graphics.
2. Civilization IV
Second place went to Civilization IV, but its treatment could hardly be more different. The magazine gives it a short paragraph saying that Firaxis was doing everything possible to fulfil the fans’ high expectations. Most of the remaining space is spent naming the Gamebryo engine and other games associated with the technology. There is no four-page celebration of its systems, artificial intelligence, diplomatic possibilities or extraordinary replay value. Compared with the visual theatre surrounding Age of Empires III, Civilization IV almost appears on trust: Firaxis knows strategy, the audience expects something great, and therefore the game belongs near the top.
In hindsight, that trust was more justified than the larger campaign of excitement above it. Civilization IV launched on 25 October 2005 and became the critical giant of the list. GameSpot records a Metacritic average of 94, placing it in the territory of universal acclaim. Its turn-based 4X design, flexible technology tree, multiple routes to victory, diplomacy, moddability and enormous replay value made it one of the defining PC strategy games of its period. If this page were reconstructed according to the reception of the finished products, Civilization IV would be the obvious number-one choice.
I have never played it, so I cannot pretend that its reputation is one of my own gaming memories. I know what the series represents, and I can recognise the enormous difference between its documented reception and the small magazine paragraph, but I do not have a personal campaign, civilisation or late-night “one more turn” story to contribute. The fact that I never played it also prevents me from replacing one form of hype with another. Its status is supported by an extraordinary critical record, but that does not automatically mean it would have suited me. A deeply layered turn-based strategy game might have absorbed me, or its interconnected systems might have produced the same feeling of complexity that later kept me at a distance from The Guild. I simply do not know.
What can be said with confidence is that the magazine placed the eventual masterpiece second and devoted most of its attention to the engine rather than the design. That is perhaps the purest demonstration of how difficult it was to preview strategy games from screenshots and presentations. Age of Empires III immediately displayed its technology. The real strength of Civilization IV only became undeniable after people could spend dozens or hundreds of hours playing it.
3. Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War
At number three, the magazine selected Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War. Its paragraph leans heavily on pedigree: the people behind Empire Earth had spent roughly a year and a half developing a new strategy game focused on antiquity, now featuring famous figures such as Cleopatra and Caesar. The expected release was the fourth quarter of 2005. Once again, the placement was based on names, ambition and an unfinished project rather than a product that could be reviewed.
The idea was certainly easy to sell. Rise & Fall attempted to combine a conventional large-scale real-time strategy game with direct third-person control of heroic characters. Instead of only directing armies from above, the player could enter a battle personally as a historical hero, fight enemies and turn a strategy game temporarily into an action game. Naval battles, large armies and the reputation of Empire Earth gave the project enough material for an exciting demonstration. On paper, it looked like a title capable of changing the genre.
Development became far less triumphant. Stainless Steel Studios closed in late 2005, and Midway San Diego took over the nearly finished project, delaying it until June 2006. GameSpot’s contemporary report described both the studio closure and the handover to Midway’s internal team. The eventual game received a GameSpot score of 6.6 and a Metacritic average of 64. Critics often admired the attempt to blend action with strategy but found that neither side of the design reached its full potential. The magazine’s third place was therefore a ranking of what Rise & Fall might become, frozen before the development crisis and the more ordinary finished result.
I recognise the game, but I never played it, and it was never really my type of strategy game. Its mixture of hero action and large historical battles does not awaken any hidden nostalgia for me. Looking at it today is still fascinating because its entire journey captures the vulnerability of mid-2000s PC development: a celebrated studio name could put a game near the top of an E3 list, then the studio itself could disappear before the project reached players.
4. Anno 1701
The fourth entry was still known during development as Anno 3 before becoming Anno 1701. The magazine described it as a “best of” the historical ideas from Anno 1602 and Anno 1503, with simplified controls and new construction options. Unlike several projects on the page, this preview was reasonably close to the finished reality. Anno 1701 arrived in late 2006 and was positively received, earning a Metacritic average of 79. Critics praised its attractive presentation, accessibility and detailed production chains, even when they found parts of its economy demanding or slow.
Fourth place consequently looks sensible. The magazine was still judging a project more than a year from release, but it had chosen an established series whose developers understood its audience. Anno 1701 did not become the critical phenomenon that Civilization IV became, nor did it depend on a collapsing studio or vanish entirely. It delivered a polished historical economic strategy game that broadly matched the promises used to advertise it.
My personal connection remains weak. I only briefly tried one of the later Anno games, not Anno 1701, and the series has never become an important part of my gaming history. I understand the appeal of carefully constructing settlements, balancing production chains and watching an organised economy develop across islands, but understanding an appeal is not the same as feeling it. Anno 1701 may be one of the page’s fairest placements, yet it still passed me by.
5. The Guild 2
The magazine placed The Guild 2 fifth and described plans for a dynamic single-player campaign, a polished combat system and a nonlinear history that the player could influence. It also noted that the game used Gamebryo, the same engine mentioned in the Civilization IV entry. The wording matters: there were “plans” for these things. Nothing in the paragraph could establish whether the campaign was genuinely dynamic, whether the combat felt polished or whether the many interacting systems created freedom rather than confusion.
When The Guild 2 finally launched in October 2006, its ideas remained distinctive. It combined business management, medieval social climbing, family dynasties, politics, crime and role-playing inside a simulated town. Few other games attempted the same mixture. However, its execution produced a Metacritic average of 61. Contemporary reviews repeatedly identified bugs, technical problems, repetition, slow pacing and excessive micromanagement. One critic described it as ambitious and complex but lacking the fun factor; another effectively compared the experience with medieval air-traffic control. The polished combat and cleanly realised nonlinear adventure suggested by the preview were not what most players received.
This is one entry I can judge from more than a score. I played both of the first two Guild games, but I never properly connected with them. They offered concepts that sounded like they should fascinate me, yet playing them felt too difficult and too complicated. I never felt that I was making clear progress or truly understanding what I was supposed to do next. Instead of systems combining into a living medieval world, they often felt like layers of work standing between me and the interesting part.
That does not mean the games had no value. Their uniqueness explains why they developed a loyal audience despite the problems, and some players loved exactly the depth that pushed me away. Nevertheless, my experience lines up remarkably well with the eventual criticism. The magazine imagined complexity becoming a dynamic story under the player’s control. I experienced complexity as an obstacle that prevented the story and progression from taking hold.
6. Heart of Empire: Rome
The sixth entry is where the list stops being merely debatable and becomes a perfect historical artefact. Heart of Empire: Rome had only just been presented. The magazine says that, as a Roman senator, the player would protect the welfare of the population in ancient Rome, and it confidently prints an expected release in the third quarter of 2005. That tiny description was enough to place the project above Sparta: Ancient Wars and Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion.
The game was intended to be a large Roman city-building and political simulation from Deep Red Games, the studio behind Tycoon City: New York from the magazine’s separate building-and-life-simulator list. Players would construct Rome, manage supplies and different social classes, sponsor gladiatorial events and chariot races, gain influence with the Senate and move from a distant overview down into detailed city streets. It was exactly the kind of enormous promise that looked impressive in screenshots and feature lists.
It never came out. After multiple delays, Heart of Empire: Rome was formally cancelled in February 2007. Contemporary reporting noted that both Paradox Interactive and Deep Silver had abandoned publication of the project. The preserved announcement and feature list can still be read in WorthPlaying’s cancellation report, but there is no finished game whose quality can be compared with the magazine’s sixth-place confidence.
This does not prove that the magazine was foolish. Preview writers cannot know that a project will collapse almost two years later. It does prove that the page cannot reasonably be treated as a ranking of games. It ranked concepts, demonstrations and publisher promises, one of which never became a commercial product. Heart of Empire: Rome is the clearest evidence that the list measures 2005 hype rather than lasting achievement.
7. Sparta: Ancient Wars
At number seven, the magazine used the development title Sparta: Ancient Wars, while the finished game became better known as Ancient Wars: Sparta. Its paragraph is hardly an editorial assessment. Most of it consists of a quotation from Torsten Hess, described as someone associated with The Settlers, saying that he had not worked on another project with comparable ambition and looked forward to presenting it to an interested audience at E3. In other words, the evidence for including the game was the producer explaining that his own game was ambitious.
The finished release arrived much later than the printed “2006” estimate, reaching PC in April 2007. It allowed players to command Spartans, Persians and Egyptians, customise warriors with collected equipment and fight through historically inspired real-time campaigns. The result earned a GameSpot score of 6.3 and a Metacritic average of 59. Reviews commonly found moments of tactical interest beneath a slow, generic or derivative RTS structure. The historical setting and equipment ideas were not enough to make it a major new competitor to the established giants.
I never played it, and I cannot attach any personal judgement to its mechanics. Retrospectively, seventh place was not wildly unfair—its critical response was one of the weakest on the page—but the magazine had no meaningful basis for knowing that. The entry contains almost nothing except E3 ambition. It happened to land near the bottom, but it reached that position through publicity rather than analysis.
8. Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion
The final position belongs to Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion. The magazine gives it one brief description: the add-on is structured like the campaign in the main game but places the barbarian peoples under the player’s control. There is no great declaration of ambition, no long technology demonstration and no four-page tour beginning elsewhere in the issue. Because it was an expansion to an existing game rather than a mysterious new project, it apparently offered less material for speculation.
That lack of novelty made it one of the safest products on the page. Rome: Total War had already established an exceptional foundation, and Barbarian Invasion expanded it with a later historical period, new factions, new units, religion, night battles and the challenge of either defending the divided Roman Empire or bringing it down. It launched in September 2005 and earned a Metacritic average of 82, making it the second-highest-rated finished release on the list behind Civilization IV.
I have never played it, just as I have never played the Total War and Sparta titles on this page. It therefore has no secret personal claim to a higher position. However, judged through contemporary reception, placing it eighth looks almost backwards. A substantial expansion to a proven, acclaimed game was buried beneath delayed, troubled and even cancelled projects because it generated less speculative excitement. The magazine was attracted to promises of what strategy might become and underestimated the value of a strong game simply doing more of what already worked.
Was the Magazine’s Ranking Correct?
If the page is interpreted as a list of the most exciting E3-era prospects, its order is understandable. Age of Empires III had the famous name, the four-page feature and the technological spectacle. Civilization IV carried the authority of Firaxis. Rise & Fall had the Empire Earth connection and an unusual action-strategy hybrid. The lower positions contained more specialised games, an expansion and projects with less visible marketing power.
If the list is interpreted as a prediction of finished quality, hindsight produces a very different order. Aggregate scores are not objective truth, especially when comparing turn-based 4X strategy, real-time warfare, economic city-building and an expansion pack, but they provide a useful record of how the releases were actually received.
| Magazine Rank | Game | What Eventually Happened | Retrospective View |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Age of Empires III | Released October 2005; Metacritic 81 | A strong critical success and understandable headline choice, but its first place was driven heavily by graphics, physics, pedigree and a four-page preview. Personally, I thought it was dog shit. |
| 2 | Civilization IV | Released October 2005; Metacritic 94 | The clear critical winner and the strongest candidate for retrospective number one. I never played it. |
| 3 | Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War | Delayed to June 2006; original studio closed; Metacritic 64 | Far too high in hindsight. Its ambition survived more clearly than its polish. I knew of it but never played it. |
| 4 | Anno 1701 | Released late 2006; Metacritic 79 | A fair prediction. It broadly delivered the polished economic strategy experience that had been promised. |
| 5 | The Guild 2 | Released October 2006; Metacritic 61 | The preview’s promised polish became bugs, repetition and overwhelming micromanagement. I played it but never felt that I properly progressed. |
| 6 | Heart of Empire: Rome | Repeatedly delayed and cancelled in 2007 | Impossible to rank as a finished game because no finished game was released. The strongest proof that this was a hype list. |
| 7 | Ancient Wars: Sparta | Released April 2007; Metacritic 59 | The weakest reviewed completed game, although the magazine’s paragraph offered almost no evidence beyond developer ambition. |
| 8 | Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion | Released September 2005; Metacritic 82 | Much too low by eventual reception. A proven expansion was less exciting to preview than several uncertain new projects. |
Based only on contemporary critical reception, a rough retrospective ordering would place Civilization IV first, Barbarian Invasion second, Age of Empires III third and Anno 1701 fourth. Rise & Fall, The Guild 2 and Ancient Wars: Sparta would occupy the lower positions, while Heart of Empire: Rome could only be listed last as a cancelled project. That reordered list is not my personal ranking—I have not played most of these games—but it demonstrates how little the magazine’s ordering corresponded with eventual results.
Four Pages of Age of Empires III, One Sentence for Barbarian Invasion
The imbalance in coverage may be more revealing than the numbers themselves. Age of Empires III received four pages filled with screenshots, technology explanations and carefully staged examples. Readers were shown water, smoke, snow, physics, formations, Home Cities and alliances. The main feature framed the game as a new age for strategy before the finished version could be tested. Barbarian Invasion, which would become the second-best-reviewed release on the page, received one small sentence.
That does not prove that Microsoft purchased the first-place position, and there is no reason to invent a conspiracy when ordinary magazine economics explain the pattern. A major sequel from Ensemble Studios offered recognisable branding, dramatic screenshots, access to a presentation and a list of new technologies that could fill pages. An expansion to an existing strategy game was familiar, easier to understand and consequently less useful as a vision of the future. Editorial hype does not require corruption. It only requires an exciting demonstration, limited preview access and a publication that needs something spectacular to show its readers.
The irony is that those four pages now document the wrong question. They ask how realistically smoke moves, whether cannonballs destroy trees and how impressive the water looks. They do not ask whether the new systems preserve the character of Age of Empires, whether the Home City improves long-term strategy or whether the campaign remains memorable after the novelty has faded. For someone like me, who loved the atmosphere and direct design of the original Age of Empires, those missing questions were the important ones.
A Historical Strategy List That Barely Matches My History
This page intersects with my gaming life more than the magazine’s separate list of building games and life simulators, but not by much. Age of Empires is deeply important to me, yet the specific sequel placed at number one is the entry I reject most strongly. Age of Empires I remains one of my top games. Age of Empires II is respected rather than loved: not bad, but more defensive and micro-focused than I ever found equally likeable. Age of Empires III moved so far from the things I valued that its technical achievements could not rescue it.
I never played Civilization IV. I knew of Rise & Fall but never tried it because it was not really my kind of game. My contact with Anno came only through briefly trying a later entry, not through Anno 1701. I played both of the first two Guild games but found them too complicated and difficult to enjoy properly. I never felt that I understood the route forward. Heart of Empire: Rome never gave anybody the chance to play it, while Ancient Wars: Sparta and Barbarian Invasion also passed me by.
That personal history is why the page feels so strange. It is supposedly a list of the historical strategy future from a period when I already cared about PC games, yet most of that future never became mine. The magazine’s number one actively disappointed me, its eventual masterpiece remained unplayed, one selected game disappeared before release and several others became names I recognised without experiences attached to them. The list is not wrong because it differs from my taste, but it is a reminder that magazine history and personal gaming history are never identical.
Final Thoughts
This page from Dansk PC Gaming World is not valuable because it correctly identified the eight greatest historical strategy games of its time. It is valuable because it preserves the machinery of anticipation. Famous studios rise to the top. Spectacular graphics consume entire features. Technology that can be demonstrated in seconds receives more attention than systems that require fifty hours to understand. Developers speak confidently about ambition, editors repeat plans for polished combat and dynamic campaigns, and release windows are printed as though development will obey them.
Some of those predictions survived. Civilization IV became far more acclaimed than its small paragraph could communicate. Anno 1701 delivered a respected continuation of its series. Barbarian Invasion proved that an expansion in eighth place could be stronger than most of the mysterious new games above it. Age of Empires III was well received by critics and clearly impressed many players, even though it failed completely for me.
Other predictions collapsed under reality. Rise & Fall lost its original studio and arrived late to mixed reviews. The Guild 2 transformed promised complexity into an experience that many people found buggy and exhausting. Ancient Wars: Sparta drifted into 2007 and struggled to distinguish itself. Heart of Empire: Rome never arrived at all.
The four-page Age of Empires III article therefore belongs inside this retrospective, but it should not replace the list. Its purpose is to show why number one seemed so obvious in 2005: reflective water, physical destruction, tactical formations, role-playing progression, the Ensemble Studios name and the comforting promise of an old friend returning in modern form. Twenty years later, those pages cannot make me like the game. They can only show me how powerfully a demonstration once sold its promise.
As a prediction of my own taste, the list failed. As a ranking of finished quality, it was badly distorted. As a time capsule of E3 2005 hype, however, it is nearly perfect. It placed four pages of possibility at number one, reduced one of the strongest finished releases to a sentence at number eight and found room in between for a Roman empire that would never exist.
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