| “ | All players start with huge stockpiles of wood, food, gold, and stone and then fight to the death. | ” |
| —Age of Empires II description | ||
Deathmatch or Death Match is a common game type that starts all of the players with a large quantity of resources.
Age of Empires
In Age of Empires, Deathmatch (DM) is a game type where all players start with 20,000 food, 20,000 wood, 10,000 gold, and 5,000 stone. It is mostly played with Iron Age start setting. The high resources allow the player to quickly expand the empire, with a strong army and workforce. Epic battles will take place and the winner is usually the one who can, despite the high starting resources, create a grand sustainable economy while overwhelming the opponent with hordes of warriors.
Age of Empires II
In Death Matches, military production is more important than economy early on
In Age of Empires II, all players start with 20,000 food, 20,000 wood, 10,000 gold, and 5,000 stone. The default starting Age is the Dark Age. However, the most common setting is to start in the Post-Imperial Age with all technologies researched. The large amounts of starting resources allow for a big army to be trained right away. Producing those military units quickly is key to winning a game. Often, the first fights are decisive. Building up an economy becomes relevant only when the match is not over before the initial resources start to run out.
For Death Match games, there is a separate ranking in online play.
Age of Mythology
In Age of Mythology, all players start with 15,000 food, 15,000 wood, and 15,000 gold, as well as 100 favor (200 for Zeus players). It is highly recommended to advance quickly, create sizeable defenses and armies, and attack with superior forces. Also, as players begin with complete favor, it might be a good idea to train sizeable amounts of myth units in the early game to overwhelm unprepared foes. In addition, all players are given a slow favor trickle, to promote mass production of myth units.
Technologies are also given for free automatically on Age advance, in order to push for the offensive focus of Deathmatch games. Age advance is almost instantaneous after selecting a minor god. It is also worth noting that Omniscience is disabled.
Unlike other game modes, god powers cannot be immediately used, as all god powers will have a countdown at the start of the game, or after each Age advance, for god powers granted by the major gods and minor gods, respectively.
Age of Empires III
In Age of Empires III, all players start with 20,000 food, 20,000 wood, and 20,000 coin. Like in the previous installments, it is advised to advance and field large armies quickly to prevent being overrun by the enemy. Deathmatch games can be played on any setting, although players are restricted to the Industrial Age and cannot advance to the Imperial Age (unless the player sets it at Imperial/Post-Imperial Age).
Deathmatch can only be played with Classic rules, i.e. no Treaty period and no possible Trade monopoly. The map will be revealed at the start of a deathmatch game (no black areas on the map, but the fog of war still in effect).