How to play Age of Empires: Gold Edition on Mac

PlatformsComputer

Game summary

Microsoft's Age of Empires: Gold Edition is an epic real-time strategy title that collects the original Age of Empires and its Rise of Rome expansion set onto a single tactics-packed disc. Spanning more than 10,000 years of game time Age of Empires: Gold features three entirely new campaigns that showcase the bloody battles of Rome, in addition to four brand new civilizations with their own strengths and weaknesses and dozens of different scenarios. Whether you choose to win by world domination, economic victory, or a combination of both, the choice of how your rule the planet is ultimately yours.
First released: Sep 1999

Play Age of Empires: Gold Edition on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Age of Empires: Gold Edition on a Mac is through Parallels, which allows you to virtualize a Windows machine on Macs. The setup is very easy and it works for Apple Silicon Macs as well as for older Intel-based Macs.

Parallels supports the latest version of DirectX and OpenGL, allowing you to play the latest PC games on any Mac. The latest version of DirectX is up to 20% faster.

Our favorite feature of Parallels Desktop is that when you turn off your virtual machine, all the unused disk space gets returned to your main OS, thus minimizing resource waste (which used to be a problem with virtualization).

Age of Empires: Gold Edition installation steps for Mac

Step 1
Go to Parallels.com and download the latest version of the software.
Step 2
Follow the installation process and make sure you allow Parallels in your Mac’s security preferences (it will prompt you to do so).
Step 3
When prompted, download and install Windows 10. The download is around 5.7GB. Make sure you give it all the permissions that it asks for.
Step 4
Once Windows is done installing, you are ready to go. All that’s left to do is install Age of Empires: Gold Edition like you would on any PC.
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