Thank you soulsource for pointing out gcdemu. This was the first game I could point to where I felt I was really playing against the computer, and I still love it. It mounted it as actual media, Wine was happy, and the game was happy, and I'm so happy. I tried PlayonLinux, and tried to use their pol script.
I had tried mounting it manually, I had tried using tools to mount it, in Wine it kept changing the drive type back from cdrom to network drive, and the game would complain like the OP said. Content requires broadband internet to download. I've burned so many copies of this game because the original one would get scratched, the copy would get scratched or worn out, and I finally just had to resort to using an iso to keep playing it after all these years. Valid for pre-orders via Steam, Microsoft Store, and participating retailers. What said in the comment above made me almost cry. And, you can mount an iso of the disc in Windows using VirtualClone, and it works just fine on that OS. The first edition of AoE is too old for that kind of safeguard.
