Age of Empires Mobile brings the storied RTS to your phone screen this summer

Free-to-play spin-off mixes series’ base-building, resource management and battles into an online multiplayer experience

Unsure that touchscreen controls on a tiny phone screen is the best way to play a real-time strategy game? You’ll have an excuse to say “I told you so” or be proven wrong this summer, when veteran PC RTS series Age of Empires comes to mobile.

Age of Empires Mobile - Gameplay Trailer on New Year New Age Livestream

Age of Empires Mobile is far from the first attempt to translate the 25-plus-year-old historical strategy franchise to phones, following the short-lived free-to-play spin-off Age of Empires: World Domination - which released in December 2015 and was shut down less than a year later - and even pre-iPhone attempts to port Age of Empires 2 and 3.

The developers at current Age of Empires bastions World’s Edge and Tencent studio TiMi - who previously brought Call of Duty to mobile, as well as creating Pokémon MOBA Unite - revealed Age of Empires Mobile during today’s New Year, New Age stream, showing off its mix of real-time base-building, resource-gathering and PvP combat.

While ostensibly close in gameplay to the PC originals, Age of Empires Mobile will also have some notable differences - many familiar from other mobile games. You’ll be able to assign over 40 heroes such as Joan of Arc, Caesar and King Arthur to lead your army, gaining them levels, using their unique skills in battle and activating team bonuses with particular combinations. The game will also be a free-to-play title, with the ability to buy in-game items that speed up how fast your villagers gather resources and complete tasks such as building or researching technologies.

Image credit: World's Edge/TiMi

Combat will allow players to take each other on head-to-head by besieging their opponents’ settlements using war machines, breaking down walls before sending in foot troops just as in the PC games. Combat will be affected by terrain, with marshland slowing down your units while wooded forests might present an advantage from springing an ambush. There’ll be the opportunity to form alliances with other players too, if you feel like teaming up to gank someone together.

Four playable factions - the Byzantines, Chinese, French and Romans - were revealed in the gameplay trailer, which does look mostly like the Age of Empires we know, even if seeing Hannibal with a star rating like a Genshin Impact pull is a bit surreal.

Age of Empires Mobile is expected to hit iOS and Android later this year, with its App Store page estimating a release date on August 19th. Before then, you can register for it to download when it’s ready.