The deafening success of the online multiplayer strategy Clash of Clans, which even years later brings developers millions of dollars every day, does not leave indifferent gamers, game fans or developers who are jealous of Supercell's black envy. Something similar was tried to create in the corporation Microsoft, meet Age of Empires: Castle Siege – an attempt to reach the pedestal. 
Age of Empires: Castle Siege is a multiplayer online strategy game from the category of Clash of Clans (hereinafter CoC) and the like. The gameplay is almost entirely copied from CoC and Dominations from Big Huge Games by Brian Reynolds (chief designer of Civilization II, Rise of Nations and FrontierVille). According to the canons of the genre in Age of Empires: Castle Siege, you have to develop your own civilization out of 6 available: Britons, Franks, Saracens, Byzantines, Teutons and Kievan Rus. The beginning is the Middle Ages. 
Each civilization is partially unique: unique structures, units and leaders are available. Leaders have their own characteristics. During the game, the nation can be changed without damaging the civilization. In addition, you can build and use the advantages of other nations, but this requires flags that are captured while attacking opponents. 
As in Dominations, you can fight real opponents on the network, this requires the nth amount of food. You have 15 seconds to study the enemy base and assess your capabilities. With the help of research, this time can be increased in the future. For winning a battle and successfully repelling an enemy attack, you are awarded crowns a la medals in Dominations. There are many types of combat units in the game, they differ not only in the amount of life, attack and defense, but also in specifics: some are better when attacking defensive structures, some are better to rob and destroy storage facilities. Units are trained in units of 8-16 units, with the exception of siege weapons, in various barracks, shooting ranges and workshops. 
New types of units are available after upgrading the corresponding structure. It takes time and resources to improve. The last in the game are 3: food, wood and gold. The first two are accumulated in farms and sawmills and stored in storage facilities. Gold is the most valuable resource, it is given as various bonuses for completing tasks, though not a lot. The rest of the gold that you need to build and develop civilization can be bought in the inner store – 'redneck' in one word. Gold is spent to speed up construction, improvement of structures and research. You can do without it, but in this case it is very uncomfortable to play, since there is no economic balance in the game as such: it will take a whole day to collect wood to build a first-level barracks. Imagine what will happen next? In Dominations, for example, you can do without crowns and at the same time it will be no less comfortable and interesting to play. 
If we talk about graphic design, no one has 'surpassed' Dominations, and Age of Empires: Castle Siege looks more like CoC and looks quite simple. But with the sound in the game, everything is in order – the thematic background and sounds create the effect of a medieval atmosphere. 
To play Age of Empires: Castle Siege, you need Internet access, at the start of the high-speed Wi-Fi connection, during the game you can get by with a slower GPRS. The game is distributed for free, but let me remind you once again that it is monetized aggressively, which, personally, disgusts me. If you are tired of CoC or waiting for the Enlightenment in Dominations for a whole week, try Age of Empires, maybe it will hook.
