As I‘ve written in earlier blog posts, Age of Empires is my most favorite game of all time. So, you can imagine my dismay when Microsoft announced in 2008 that they were shutting down Ensemble Studios, the development studio for all the Age of Empires titles. It would appear that Microsoft has reconsidered the decision to end the Age of Empires line, as they’ve recently released two significant updates—Age of Empires: Definitive Edition and Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition.
Age of Empires is a civilization-building strategy game with few competitors. Last update 4 Aug. 2016 Licence Free to try OS Support Mac Downloads Total: 302,483 Last week: 147 Ranking #2 in Strategy Publisher Microsoft Studios. The Age of Empires Franchise represents the critically acclaimed, award winning Real Time Strategy (RTS) games with a legacy spanning over 20 years and nearly a dozen titles.
These updates improved the graphics quality and also moved to DirectX 11 as the graphics library upon which the games are based. I wrote about Age of Empires: Definitive Edition and Parallels Desktop in an earlier blog post, and in this post I will discuss Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition.
All the reports point to Age of Empires 2 DE not working with Steam Proton. I have checked with the WK developer and he said there is no intention to add the DE balance or Civs to WK. Voobly+WK is great on all Platforms and there are Open Source implementations of. This is an old question but everyone who answered it is incorrect (I’m googling for AoE on Mac so I came across this). I had to go to the Apple store to buy the game for Mac, because I used to use PC. Basically I fluctuated back and forth from Mac. Is a free, open-source, cross-platform real-time strategy (RTS) game of ancient warfare.
I won’t keep you in suspense any longer: because Parallels Desktop™ for Mac moved to Apple Metal and now supports DirectX 11, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition plays great in Parallels Desktop on my MacBook Pro. You can see this for yourself in this short video:
Video1: Some short gameplay of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition in Parallels Desktop
Of course, the most important variable in-game performance is the specs for your Mac. The basic specs for the Mac used for Video 1 are shown in Figure 1.
Note: There does appear to be a small bug in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. Its check for video memory in a Parallels Desktop virtual machine is incorrect, and you may see the dialog shown in Figure 2. Just ignore this warning as it does not appear to affect gameplay at all. (I have reported the bug to the Age of Empires team.)
The Age of Empires team has also announced Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition and Age of Empires IV. I will test them in Parallels Desktop as soon as they are available.
Let me know in the comments about your experience with any of the Age of Empires titles or other games that you play (or want to play!) in Parallels Desktop on your Mac.
Play Age Of Empires Mac
Download a free 14-day free trial to try Age of Empires and Parallels Desktop yourself to see how it works for your Mac set up!