The graphics for this game are stretched wide to fit my monitor and everything looks funny. This happens with other older games without a 1080p resolution option too. I tried using the NVIDIA control panel to make it so the aspect ratio is maintained but that did not help me. I tried other settings in the NVIDIA control panel as well. Perhaps it's my drivers?

Damn, I'd kill for this game to be given a HD treatment similar to Age of Empires 2.

AoE2 got a HD treatment? Really?? Wow. Nice to know this. Thx!

So did AoE, the Definitive Edition. Just been playing that, really nice, so many memories. They haven't however ironed out some of the bugs with pathfinding, and large numbers of units doing one task, but still highly addictive.

Wait, that AOE HD got released? I knew it was coming but not yet. Where did you get it? It's on Steam, along with the expansions and some fan made add ons, most of which are great, and some, well not so much. :P

Unless I'm mistaken it's windows Store only. So it might as well not have been released yet.

I noticed. I'm there right now. Looks buggy as hell, in progress, and the reviews reflect as much.

Maybe the problem is that your monitor is set to Full or Stretch Display and it overrides your driver's settings.
You should at least try to change it to Aspect Ratio in the monitor's menu. It might work.

I checked out my monitor's settings and it only lets me choose widescreen or 4:3... I seriously hope my monitor's settings aren't taking over. I didn't try the patch yet but I will.

I did but it turns everything into 4:3. :(

Ok now I am confused. Isn't the game originally in 4:3 aspect ratio (ie. non-widescreen), and you were complaining that the game is stretched to your widescreen monitor (e.g. a 4:3 image is stretched to 16:9), making everything look distorted?

Or is the problem now that also newer widescreen 16:9 games are shrunk to 4:3? Ok that's odd then if your monitor doesn't have some kind of "auto option" to select the correct aspect ratio.

What monitor is it anyway, and how is your PC connected to it (VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI...)? I've had a bit similar aspect ratio issues mainly with TVs, trying to find the correct setting that would choose the correct aspect ratio automatically. With PC computer monitors and laptops, for me it always seems to be about the graphics driver settings, I have to tell the driver to keep the correct aspect ratio, and it works. I don't even know if my laptop screen has any options to manually set e.g. the aspect ratio.

With many graphics drivers, the option to keep the (4;3) aspect ratio seems to appear only if you are in an actual 4:3 aspect ratio. So if you are in e.g. 1920x1080 (16:9), the option for keeping aspect ratio may be hidden in the driver options, while with e.g. 1024x768 (4:3) it becomes visible. So you actually have the resolution first to a 4:3 resolution before you can even change the option.

I tried the patch and it fixes the game for me. :) But unfortunately, all other similar games(4:3) still look stretched out and I've found no way to fix this.