Game Review – Age of Empires III

One of the greatest Real Time Strategy (RTS) makers, Ensemble, has done it twice in a row now. With the release of multiple expansions to this game, Age of Empires 3 has done a magnificent job of adding on to the series and going beyond those of other RTS games. Don’t get me wrong, I love Elves, Orcs, and Space Marines, but there is just something about the idea of playing through real history that just makes this game scream to make me play it. Now in the original Age of Empires (AoE) had you conquer Rome, and AoE 2 you have “1000 years to lead your people through the Middle Ages,” but now its time to come to the New World and battle each other country for control of the America’s in the newest sequel to the Age of Empires series.

This game is amazingly fun as the two previous games and of course Age of Mythology. Now the question is why should I buy this game if I have Age of Empires 2. After playing this game since its release, I believe that there are multiple reasons to buy and play this game if your a fan of the series.

• First, there are a ton of new units to combat with since the advent the gun and cannon in this time period as well as the Industrial period taking place during this time.
• Second, the game seems to be slightly faster paced in the fact that you can create groups of units instead of one multiple times over again.
• Also, the ability to have your home country send you supplies is so much fun.
  • A new addition to AoE 3 is that as you level up your home city you are able to “customize” it, but also build a “deck” of cards that you can use in game to gain an advantage over your opponent.
• Plus, there is a a slight advance in the aesthetics and graphics, such as high resolutions for those of us who use widescreen monitors to test and play games. Also the use of anti-aliasing is sort of nice if your looking to just stair at the game instead of playing it.
• Additionally, the new maps that inherently were released as to supplement the new setting of the game itself.
• Finally, the addition of a Trade Route in every map that delivers free supplies of your choosing, whether it be food, coin, wood, or even experience.

One of the thing that I think separates this game from the Warcraft series is that every time you play a skirmish in multiplayer or single player, the map is always different even if you choose the same map every game. The terrain is the same, and the idea of the map is the same, but it randomizes it so that a player cannot just master the map and know exactly were to go every game. For example, in one of my favorite maps, “The Caribbean,” there are two islands that have the separate teams on them and another smaller Island with the trade route. Now this is the main idea of the map, but each different time you play it, it randomizes the location of the islands and were the forests and silver mines are. This is probably the best feature in AoE 3 is that it can randomize itself to make the game interesting every time you play it.

Now despite the differences it has against other RTS games, it still keeps true to its nature and has multiple different strategies to play from. In my opinion, the Rush-Boom is the most effective at this time. Especially on the maps that have massive amounts of water separating the two separate teams. For this to work the best, it requires that you play as the British due to their manor homes producing settlers as well as your town center. In this strategy, you quickly advance through the ages and build a dock as soon as possible and begin to purchase Galleons. As you begin to create them, move them to the other island and begin to make your army. Raid the enemies town and boom, you win the game. Online, I’m able to use this strategy to 1v2 and sometimes 1v3 people depending on how skillful the opponents are. As for the classic turtle, in this game it’s broken to be honest. With the limit on outposts (towers) the turtle fails to defeat armies that are sent after you, and trying to wall off enough resources to last the game is just two slow especially against the British Rush-Boom. As for the straight boom, it is effective on large maps with multiple teammates to protect you. 

The Home city is a fun little addition to the game giving it a sort of RPG feel. The more you play the game, you gain experience in the game, hence the RPG feel. With this experience you level up and gain customizations to your city as well as points to buy cards for your deck. Upgrades to your city have no effect on the game play itself, but it is fun you get all the additions to the city. Currently, my highest city is with the British and its at level 33. Here’s a picture for those wondering.

The last addition that made a huge difference to the game was the deck of cards you could bring to a game. Whether it was upgrades to your buildings, changes to the ship cap limit, or free units being shipped to your Home City, they provided advantages for you to choose from. The ability to level up and buy new and different cards made this very interesting, and having only 20 cards in a deck also makes it difficult to decide which cards are going to be the best to take into the map your playing on. The deck also helps with the strategy your trying to play. With the British Rush-Boom I described earlier, it helps to have the Admiralty card and the 2 Monitor cards in the deck to have a bigger fleet and to have more monitors than you should. Should the original rush fail, having a larger fleet to control them building a dock to stop you is a plus and its also extremely easy to control your opponent when your stomping on them with 5 monitors using the long range cannon ability to crush their inland buildings.

If you don’t like RTS games, this game is obviously isn’t for you, but if you play Warcraft 3, StarCraft, Company of Heroes, or any other RTS games, you should give this game a try. Luckily for you, Ensemble will let you download a demo of the game to give it a try before you decide whether or not to buy it. Here's the Link.

Link to Demo for Age of Empires III provided by Ensemble.

Until next time, Mgrigs is signing out.