Secrets of The Alpha Age of Mythology Uncovered 

This game was so ambitious. If the devs had an extra year, they'd add even more fun stuff than it already is. I am not saying that AOM is a bad game fuck, no. What we got, is amazing. I just want even MORE stuff. THIS stuff looks so cool regardless.

Archivers like you are the unsung GOAT of the gaming community As a completionist, you have my thanks

This makes me even more excited for Retold! The fact that there were so many other cool god power ideas and even more animals that they just decided to omit opens the possibilities to what else they could think of and implement 🤩

Believe it or not, I was the one that collected and posted the original archive on AoMH that most of the screenshots and concept art in your videos came from, and even when I thought I knew everything that was cut, I still learned an incredible amount of from your video, great work! It's really cool to see my discoveries + some of the scans I made of the old strategy guides show up over a decade later in these videos. I still have the original archive fully intact on a hard drive if you feel like your research was missing anything from back then, I know the sites I used for hosting it all are long since gone. Also, have you thought about creating a mod to reimplement the alpha/beta content back into the game? I once wrote out an outline for a total conversion mod that would try and bring back as much of this content as possible, but I could never find enough people in the community interested in getting it made, but it's always been a dream of mine.

Wow the game was really supposed to become next level with so much more depth. I really hope they can add things to AoM Retold. Thank you so much for sharing this thorhough documentation

Thank you, this was a pleasure to watch! I'm still sad the Chinese units are just reskinned existing ones and reused scrapped ones. They deserved better. :(

I recall thinking it was weird the leviathan had a detailed mouth texture (noticed when enlarging) but it makes sense after seeing that unused animation.

Rebellion is basically "go on strike" xD Sounds like an interesting godpower and not really broken from the initial description. In practice however it would not affect lategame if there is fishing ships and water on the map and your gold mining is replaced by Trade Caravan trains. If Red tide had the potential to kill all the fish, that would mean Sekhmet would just turn the water maps into ground maps with less terrain to build or fight over or find resources in. The norse version of the pirate ship is in AomEE. Don't remember when it was added however. I suppose in the last patches...

>0:54 Myth Units. >3:49 Unused Animations. >4:53 Titans. >6:51 God Powers. >13:53 Buildings & Ships. >17:20 Pantheon. >18:53 Relics. >20:11 Combat. >21:14 Ambient & Nature. >22:08 Campaign. >25:22 Extras.

It's honestly a bit disappointing how there's no like official alpha gameplay of this build The only alpha builds they are aoe 2 and 1

This is not only interesting to see what was abandoned in development, but also a small sneak peak into what they might add in the definitive edition. The unique farms for each civilization would be cool

Thank you very very much for exploring all these things and sharing your discoveries with us

I really don't know if the already legendary AOM would be even more great with these old versions . There will never be such a classic game like AOM and AOM Titans. Also, i don't expect the new AOM to be great to be honest. Nowadays the games have a different kind of mechanics etc, no near the old vintage we loved.

incredible presentation, thank you!

It's amazing how a lot of these features are present in the AOM Expanded Mod!

It would be interesting to hear something from the developers of the original game. Who knows what they can share to us. It's still amazing that there is people so passionate with this game and the other AoE games. Thanks for this video!

The cyclop redesign was an homage to that old Simbad the sailor movie for sure. When the cyclop appears it is exactly what we have in aom, goat legs and all!

I love learning about the production history of games and hearing what didn't make it to the final version. Thank you for this!

Thanks for making this, it's so cool to see the earlier builds of the game. Seems Ensemble made the right decisions on what to keep in the final game. I'd love a playable earlier version though.

Fantastic video - thanks for your hard work on digging through the game files to find these nuggets of unused content!

16:13 I would love to see and play this feature: not only looks more historically accurate, but also will cause a better management of resources and would be funny see infantry fighting against each other on Ships snd once defeated, you'll earn a new ship that depending on damage, can be repaired or will sink into sea.

That's very cool! Thank you for your hard work compiling and sharing all this!

I have often look in the internet for the original story planned for AOM but could only find a few scenarios like the one mentioned here. I never scoured the game files (original game or rerelease) for any information, cause I don’t know how. Thank you for the video

Now just have to have patience for Age of Mythology Retold

Truly a wonderful video. Thank you for all the research you did, and all the text you had to write ti make this video possible. This much effort should not be given for free, that's a lot of work that you did ! Well done man !!

15:50-This is actually a really cool idea! 23:30-Would be also nice if we could get to play thought what Arkantos did in the past.

Thanks for all your hard work! This was a fascinating look at what could've been. Side Note: I like the idea of paying favor to use god powers, that might've been a good middle ground between the "one use only" system of the original game, and the Atlanteans being able to use god powers multiple times.

That was awesomely informative ! Thanks, man ! It's crazy to think what could have been, and what ended up being !

24:42 AOE II Byzantines wall skin.

rewatching this six months later and i now hope so much the devs of Retold will look at this footage and think about adding and changing at least a couple of things mentioned in this great video.

Impressive video and information. It's amazing how much the game changed from what they originally intended , I wonder if some of the scrapped content will be implemented in the eventual remake

this very game is way ahead of time and we're all glad to grow up with it, thank you so very much to uncover the magnificent facts behind our very screen

Glad you covered the bridge. I wondered what that was about in the editor.

Rebellion sounds like an epic god power. I'd love it if it made a reappearance.

The multiutility ships made their way into Rise & Fall. It was such a cool concept.

Amazing stuff! I've always been more of an AoE2 and SWGB player, but I played AoM a lot as a kid and love seeing this old content found and preserved!

Great video ❤🎉

This is awesome. I hope they add some of these units, ideas and additional features to the new version of the game.

Great work man!

So far as I know, another thing it was in the Beta-Version from the Titans was, that Kastor was supposed to be evil and fight with an atlantean Titan. I noticed this from the Backcover and from the Trailer of this Game. Here is the Trailer: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RXztXPPsx_U.html

Great video man

I watched whole video and it was really enjoy to watch. Made me feel nostalgic. It happens when i see old footage about aoe too.

I hope in the age of mythology retold they will put some of this stuff back into the game.

Great video!

Nice video man!! Must have taken a lot of time to gather all this info. Absolutely amazing. Love from Spain 🇪🇸🫶🏻

Great video!! I loved all of it, but rly focused on the shipyard and different ship types for some reason... It sounds super interesting and would be a awesome thing to think of for AOM RETOLD, among the other stuff also ofc!!

Thank you for this video!!!

thank you for this

Incredible research! Thank you, much love for this game

15:33 "Ensemble is changing the way naval combat works." He said calmly.

Really good job man, was a fun and interesting video, maybe some of this stuff will be reused for Retold :p

Once again thank you for the great video. And I think it's a shame that some things have been taken out, e.g. all the relic designs. I know the remaining 11 still exist in the vanilla version. I also know that some more animations have been taken out. I don't know if I got this from you or from AoM Heaven. Anyway, I found out that the Valkyries have another battle animation or the Theocrat has a LOS animation, like the Oracles. Also, the minotaurs have a second death animation and Circe has a melee animation. I also found out that General Melagius has a second animation when he is revived, however this animation is very slow and Melagius has black hair there, probably he should be a bit younger at first. And the second thing I found out was that originally the priests were going to be both melee and ranged, kinda like the Immortals from Tale of the Dragon. Anyway, the ranged animation for the priests is originally the melee animation. They ranged animation looks similar to Setna's. Also, some textures, animations, etc. from the deleted content are still included in AoM Vanilla, you just have to add them. For example Gargarensis, Kemsyt and Kamos Recover Animation or the Beta Relics. Apep, the Griffin, the Golem, the Regent/Misenus and more are also still available in the vanilla version. I wonder what else is there.

Wish my CDs weren't stolen, I worked at MS Games around that time and had stuff for Starlancer, AOE2: Conqueror's, Mechwarrior 4, Rise of Nations, and a few others. Most I had full releases. Some I had betas. And I might've had an alpha in there too, not sure. I guess if people just like seeing the early/placeholder versions of things, probably there was a lot of fun stuff to uncover from those early builds, but for the most part it's just like "we haven't finished Campaign X yet" or "mission 4 has a game-ending bug, we need a new build", that sort of thing haha!

THAT LEVIATHAN BOARDING ANIMATION IS SICK

Rebellion turned into Pestilence

The beta looks fantastic!

Wow those pronunciations were a real treat

The underwater kraken seems broken but so cool

damn there were some really cool ideas which i hope will make it into retold (and thought out more). also i personally like the old norse style with the favour, farm buildings and siege units, also jormun-elver wasn't such a joke visually back then.

Wow. I never knew this. I really enjoyed playing this as a kid. I always enjoyed playing as the Greeks the most. Followed by Egyptians.

Perfect video👍

good job!

First of all, thank you for the amazing job you did collecting and posting all this info. It's truly amazing to see how this game changed throughout the years, truly a shame early alpha/beta builds are impossible to find, unlike AoE/Tribes and AoE2 builds Are you going to focus on other games' alpha versions as well?

I love your content

To be honest, I never thought of units loading into the Leviathan's mouth, I figured they were sitting on its back. Also that removed naval system would be really awesome though very different compare to most Age of games. Though the odd part was all Civs had an archery range and stable so it makes me wonder what sort of units will come out of them, it be weird to build an archery range for just axe throwers or slingers. Though I assume Egypt and the Norse were gonna use basic bow and arrow units but units like the javelin thrower (I forget names sorry) for the greeks came out of the archery range so I assume the egyptions were gonna have slingers as the anti archerer as well as norse the axe throwers being anti range.

To bad Jormund Brood was not workable cause it fits way better than the mini snake we get

Hopefully AOM: Retold can implement some of these ideas.

Thank You.

I hope they bring a lot of this stuff to Age of Mythology retold! Or to an expansion for it after the initial release.

Wow, great, I just hope you get enough attention for this video as it deserves. That was a real blast from the past for me! I wish the game had some of its more radical ideas pan out. Something I never liked was the unique usage of the god powers; I'm guessing hte balance was too difficult, but I feel like the game became too similar to AOE at the end.

So do you have acess to a functional build of the alpha? Where did you find some of these screenahots and clips? Any way you can upload all the screens to one place?

I like to think the Siren acted as a unit that drew fire towards it. In myth it lured people so I think this would make sence

They should involve if not even hire you for the Remake of Age of Mythology.

amazing

This was made around the time Mattel was making the new He-Man line where they modeled the sorceress after Isis. She and the way Ensemble drew Isis look very similar.

Navy actually sounds pretty cool, especially if they planned for a ramming or boarding mechanic

Wish the cut content came with the remastered.

1:25 so that's why scorpion man costed wood even tho it's a melee unit it was a ranged unit at first

One of these alpha units would make it into the DS version of this game. Namely the roc was turned back into a combat unit in order to better fit the turned based nature of the DS title.

such an underrated game!

Particularly i like the idea of gigantic (normal-scale) ships. But if scale was a thing, then it should also be applied to buildings.

I'd imagine the siren would work like a monk from aoe turning enemies to your side.

where do you find all this info?

I feel like that rainbow bridge was used for a cheat code of a flying purple hippo who sh!ts rainbows.

Could you please upload the Alpha/Beta to a site like aom heaven? Please

Siren probably worked like Priests in AoE

They should've made more gods and minor gods as titans, like they did with Kronos Gaia and Prometeus

Can I make my custom units? And their animations?

Wait wait hang on just noticed something, the Valkyrie Reginleif is Amelia Black from AoE3?

Maybe some of these ideas will return in remake or AOM 2 or whatever they planing to call it.

Roc take off and landing to gather units should be in aom retold, this is one of the most abused myth unit.

Good video and something i'm into very much. One sad thing is that you used an AI voice... :/

AOM is my most played game of all time.

4:17 So there was a Roc nerf but they didn't implement it? Man Rocs are so OP in ranked...

18:49 u cannot said her name on RU-vid?

When I read gaming magazine for the first time I saw Age of Mythology , I thought it will be some kind of city building .. because in the screen shot , there was some decoration that organically improve when the age is advance . and i am kinda ... dissapointed

I WANT IT ALL

3:00 It's a shame that Age of Mythology that gets so much right still has a Kraken that is a giant squid. The nrose Kraken was actually descibed as soemthing like a mix of a whale and a crustacean. Only in later medieval english tradition did it get mixed up with the giant squid.

11:35: Doesn't a cheat unit leave that rainbow behind them? Edit: hippo

I love the game now but wow alot of stuff could have been amazing compared to what we got