This past week has seen us giving the multiplayer mode in Age of Mythology a right old thrashing, and we thought it about time we covered this aspect of the game with a bit more depth. Also we have gone into the engine room of the game and had a fiddle with the game editor.

As we pointed out in our review and strategy guide there are a multitude of ways to play this game; the choice of gods and minor gods opens up a lot of different possibilities. As you would expect the multiplayer feature is no different. First off you can play with up to 11 other players or computer players. You can play against each other, in teams or against the AI opponents.

We had little trouble establishing our LAN based games - we recommend ensuring the usual pre-game shutting down of personal firewalls etc. is undertaken. You can elect to either host the game or join a game set up by another. At the set-up screen you choose the deity you want your people to follow and the terrain you will fight on. There is a great selection of terrain options to cater for all styles of play - including resource rich central islands, Mediterranean style maps and underworld scenarios. At this point you can also determine the style of play of your computer opponents from various options including balanced and aggressive.

Once the game begins there’s the usual mad dash of trying to orient yourself, determine the nearest resources and find your team mates. Depending on your opponents this initial phase can see you in combat sooner than expected, with your scout units skirmishing as they go about their respective duties. If you are up against a Norse opponent you can quickly find yourself under attack from their cheap start-up units. Ducking back into your town centre and relying on your bow fire and towers can hold them off, however this has the effect of slowing down your economic progress. Establishing a defensive force quickly was a priority for us in our games, as was maintaining a good level of food production to replace lost villagers.

When playing against the AI on ‘easy’ level, we found our opponents to be a push-over. On moderate level however (the next level up), we found the opponents quite tough so at this stage we can’t comment on how the AI plays on Hard and Titan levels (don’t want to embarrass yourself – Ed).

When not thrashing each other at multiplayer or crawling our way through the campaign we have spent our spare moments fiddling with the game editor. As a game editor this is the best we have seen bar none! It was extremely easy to use, well laid out and with an awesome amount of options for map designers.

You can begin with a blank design tablet or you can opt to amend an existing map. The killer for us was that you can dispense with most of the effort and instruct the engine to randomly generate a map in the style of your choosing. You can then tweak it to suit your liking.

There are some really nifty tools you can call on to massage and mould your map. One feature we particularly liked was the smoothing and roughing tool. With the smoothing tool you can take out the jagged corners and sharp edges and give your land forms a more natural feel. The roughing tool on the other hand gives you the ability to add some randomness to an otherwise too-uniformly shaped terrain.

There is a phenomenal amount of objects you can place about your map, including the usual array of units and buildings, right down to underwater seaweed and lilies floating on the top. A particularly nice effect is that once you place a free ranging object like the whales they will do just that and begin to swim about. You can also give units movement orders, effectively creating a living, breathing unit on the fly, plus you can field test everything as you go.

As you fossick about you will find some interesting little menus including one that affects the overall lighting effect for the map. You can choose to have your landscape bathed in early morning light, or if you fancy a more romantic feel you can choose dusk. The effects are quite marked and can give your maps a completely different feel.

As you would expect from such a comprehensive map editor you can add triggers and events, and you also have the option to add cinematics. You can make your map stand-alone or create your own campaigns. If you are the proud owner of this excellent game don’t forget to have a go at the editor!