I'm a long-time Age of Empires player (not competitive). I'm not old
enough to have played the original game, but I grew up with AoE II
and III, bought AoE IV at release, and still enjoy playing all three
from time to time.
Over two years ago Age of Empires Mobile
was announced, and you can imagine my excitement. I signed up for the
beta but unfortunately wasn't selected, so I just patiently waited. Then,
a little over a year ago, the release date was finally announced.
I used to play Rise of Kingdoms, and RoK players had the awesome rok-calculator.com website. I thought, "I'd love to have something like that for AoEM."
That thought started everything.
With no prior knowledge of web development, I began building rough versions of the calculator using data I gathered during the Global Military Exercise (the "Final Trial") that I was lucky enough to be in.
By that time I joined a project called "The Legion", that ended up being the amazing Server 42. This is important because the leaders of The Legion had created a massive spreadsheet with tons of data about buildings and other systems, and they were kind enough to give me early access to it so I could work on my project, which allowed me to add some extra features.
The same day the game released, I also released the first public version of the website. AoEM's one-year anniversary is also AoEMCalc's.
Since then, I've been working on this project: gathering data, writing code, and doing my best to add localization. Over time, some community members made important contributions that I'm deeply grateful for.
I released a website that was completely FREE: No ads, no means of monetization, and Open Source. Why? Because I was not seeking revenue, recognition or any nonsense like that, all I wanted was to help the community.
AoEM Calculator was a passion project, and I was very happy to work on it.
However, the developers have done every possible effort to ruin the gameplay experience, and to drive away players like me in the process. By the time I'm writing this (October 2025) I can no longer stand this "game". For the past few months, I've had zero desire to even look at the code. The very idea of spending more time on anything related to AoEM feels awful.
"Why so bad?" you may think. Well, answer me the following:
...that the most effective way to earn points in PvP events is to simply zero other players (ruining their accounts in the case of F2Ps, due the awful recovery rates, expensive training, and terrible speed-up acquisition rate)?
...that ONE PLAYER with level 140 heroes can kill ENTIRE RALLIES alone?
...that every progression system can be skipped and maxed out in days by spending thousands of dollars, but takes SEVERAL YEARS otherwise?
...that some progression systems (Lv. 40+ Rings) are 100% paywalled?
...that a "kraken" player can solo zero a 100+ million power player, simply because he spent more money?
...for devs to stay silent about important events (like migration) that many players and servers desperately need?
...to scam beta players allowing them to spend and telling them that they can join global later, but then never let them and simply say "just create a new account in global"?
...for buildings and alliance territory to feel like chores instead of meaningful features in a strategy game?
...for the game to be obscure about how its mechanics work, have misleading descriptions and have outright false information in the user interfaces?
...for customer support to often LIE to players when asked for clarification?
...to release special bundles in third-party stores, not available in-game, ONLY for krakens?
...to ignore months of player feedback?
...that the only players that are ever listened from time to time are those in the 0.1% of biggest spenders?
...the fact that players who spent $0, $10, $100, or $10k on their accounts over time are all just as powerless against a kraken?
...to add an emoji so poorly made that it have rough edges and floating pixels, and expect people to pay $15 for its bundle (and call this to be the "1 year anniversary event")?
...to copy-paste a new skin, strip down its VFX, release it for full price and charge 3x for the original version with VFX, in the same event?
...to make a "pre-sale event" for skin currency, without any mention of how much the skin will cost once it's released?
...for the devs to spend time in preparing scams instead of implementing long-awaited features (1 year of beta + 1 year of global waiting for lineup presets for instance)?
...that the 1 year anniversary is only just spending, with packs whose value is even worse than their 6 month anniversary counterparts, and res-skins of events that we have regularly anyway?
...to introduce a composite gacha "feature" so absurdly aggresive in terms of odds and monetization that something this level is not even seen in full-on gacha games, in a game that is not and does not need gacha in the first place?
...that the partnered content creators and volunteer mods are ignored and mistreated to the point where they rather step down or simply quit?
...that "cosmetic" sets all provide ever-increasing troop stats and STACKS WITH EACH OTHER, regardless if they're equipped or not (and btw, for 6 months we were lied to and told they did not stack, when in fact they did), AND are NOT widely available (almost completely out of reach for F2Ps) AND there's NO CAP to the stats they provide?
I don't think so. And honestly, if you think that any of this is normal, you're part of the problem.
For context regarding some of the points above, and see how "wonderful" the 1 year anniversary event was, see THIS VIDEO.
The developers show no respect for the game, the IP, or the player base. Every update only raises the power ceiling further, adds even more aggressive monetization and widens the gap between krakens and normal players. There's no content, gameplay added to the game, just spending.
The community has been sending feedback for months: Normal players with proposals in Discord, via customer support tickets, and filling forms. Supercore players and "Top contributors" writing petitions in their privileged chats, and even content creators in videos and posts... Yet the developers still refuse to address ANY of the game's core problems (many of them I'm not even mentioning, as this is not the goal of this post).
Level 140 heroes completely ruined the game. The power ceiling reached insane heights, strategy died, and balance was lost forever. Instead of adding counterplay or strategic depth, the devs just keep stacking new progression systems on top of old ones, making it worse.
It was with the release of 140s that i decided to quit the game. However i kept playing for 2 reasons: (1) I promised myself to play at least 1 full year, hoping that maybe, just maybe the devs would improve things and the game could be saved, and (2) Sigarme's community is truly amazing, and i did not want to leave it.
However, that didn't happen. The "game" has only gotten worse with every update, and I can't stand it anymore. Which brings us here.
Age of Empires Mobile is garbage and shouldn't even be called "a game", Its developers are the worst of their kind, and spending any amount of time "playing" or creating content for it is simply not worth it.
At this point, I completely agree with what a redditor said here not long ago, and i quote:
After all, if the developers can get away with the insulting updates and events they do all the time, is only because people keeps burning their money to purchase terrible value packs.
I genuinely do not have any desire to continue working on AoEM Calc,
as mentioned. When the current Stellar Season ends the 27th I'll
uninstall the game to not look back, and I hope the game sinks
miserably before its second anniversary.
I am not planning to "pull the cord" yet, the domain and website will stay up for 1 more year, and after that I might move it to free hosting to stop wasting money. Until then you can still enjoy it at the address we all are used to.
All that said, I want to thank everyone who contributed with bug reports, feature requests and kind words.
And especially I want to thank Eds and Terendil for their amazing localization work, Kermani for making several features possible by providing data, and Sigarme for giving us curated, good quality content that actually helped us instead of printing useless videos for money, for building a genuinely nice community that kept me sane during this wasted year in AoEM, for always being in the side of the players, and for featuring my site back when it was still very small .
Do you know what happens when you keep adding broken "content" without fixing any of the game's problems, when you add more and more money sinks without any gameplay feature related to it, insult your players with scummy offers, ignore their feedback for months and listen only to the 0.1% of highest spenders, and when you straight up lie to your consumers?
Players quit. That's what happens. The dedicated, passionate players
that actually loved the game quits.
All that remains are bullies with money killing the handful F2P players
that are careless enough to keep getting wrecked over and over, and maybe,
smaller groups here and there that stay just to keep "playing" with the
friends they made, not for the game but for the people.
You, developers, with your ever-increasing greed, killed the game.
"Thank you" for tarnishing the Age of Empires franchise, which is all you have done.
Juan J. Miranda, the creator of AoEM Calculator.
October
17, 2025