I had the exact same error message but in Windows 10. It seems about half the help threads are about this issue. Theres a tool dedicated to Age of empires 2 and its called AoE2Tools. It seems to only happen the first time you run the game, I believe once you get it up and running once, it doesn't happen again.

In my particular case it was initializing to 1280x768, which my machine did not like much.įor some reason it initializes to a resolution some video cards have problems with if you have a widescreen monitor (I have the 24' widescreen at home and had this problem) I actually got the error on my own machine when I installed the demo and I've found I think two work arounds on my own machine to fix it.ġ.) Delete the file NewProfile.xml in your /Age of Empires 3 Trial/Users/NewProfile.xml directory.ġA.) Set your screen resolution to 1024x768, then rerun the game.Ģ.) Open NewProfile.xml and fine the line that specifies the optiongrfxres and change the res to say 1024x768. I believe the problem has been fixed since the demo was put together so it will work in the full version of the game. This error which some people have reported seems to happen mostly if you run a widescreen monitor.

Age of empires initialization failed