Age of Empires III: The age of colonies and continental trade

The game that single handedly hooked me on RTS games (real time strategy) was Microsoft’s Age of Empires. The game placed you in charge of an ancient civilization and progressed you through the ages and technological advancements to build up a grand army and become the supreme empire of the world. In other words, it was a bit addictive. Age of Empires III is much like the original game and the sequel, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings in that respect. However, being that it is so much similar may lower the replay value for many AOE fans.

I have a knack for buying a game that I have been looking forward to getting and am really excited to play, only to either be let down or beat the game in record time. AOE was one of the latter. I played the single player campaign and beat the game in less than two days. So, being the glutton for punishment that I am, I went out and bought the first expansion “War Chiefs” which I also beat in less than two days.

The game is fun and much more so in multiplayer mode, but the replay value is not as great as the original game was because it is just too much like the original and its sequel. The biggest difference is the 3 dimensional graphics which, although not bad at all, lack a lot from what I expected from a recent 3D title. Even though the graphics are 3D accelerated, you still end up viewing the game across a 2 dimensional map and therefore defeating the purpose of 3D. I mean, for heaven’s sake, you can’t even rotate the screen to change the view! This would have been the least of graphical improvements that I expected from Microsoft on this title.


Age of Empires III

The game is played almost exactly like its two predecessors; point and click with the mouse. In single player campaign mode you follow the line of a single family from the end of the crusades all the way up to the high point of the old west. The story line is good and the scenarios are done well, so the campaign is fun to play. However, once you finish the campaign it is unlikely that you will play it more than one or two times again.

In Multiplayer mode, you can choose your home city from the English, Spanish, German, Russian, French, Dutch, Portuguese and Ottoman civilizations. You can name your city whatever you like but by default it is usually the capitol from the time of the civilization.

Game modes include:

* Story-based campaign
* Single player skirmish
* Random Map
* Multiplayer over LAN or online

The various civilizations have different technologies available and different advantages but all are pretty much equally equipped to win in a skirmish.


Game play

The game is played by point and click. You must use your villagers to collect resources such as wood, food and metals to build buildings and advance through the ages. You create different military units from the various buildings; some buildings and military units are not available until you advance to the required age. There are five ages altogether and as you advance ages, you can also upgrade your existing military units to make them tougher and do more damage in battle.

In a standard skirmish match, the last civilization standing wins unless you set the game for other parameters. You can set the game to let you win by trade domination as well. If you control the majority of the trading posts, you can choose the trade domination victory as long as it was set at the beginning of the game. It does not come free, you have to pay a lot of your resources to start the timer and you must have control over a certain ratio of the available trading posts (a ratio of 60% or more – like 4 out of 7 if there are 7 available) if you lose trading posts and go below the ratio before the timer runs down, you will not win and those resources were lost for nothing.

The different military units include, musketeers, grenadiers, cannons, mortar cannons, howitzers (the 1770’s model), archers, lancers, pikemen, pistol packing outlaws, outlaw riflemen, spies, pirates, and several cavalry type mounted units. There are also ships available such as frigates, cavaliers and fishing boats. The largest ship is the Monitor which is armed with onboard mortar cannons that can be upgraded to howitzers. The Monitor is big and bad but it can be taken down easily by smaller ships because it fires slowly and is mostly used to bombard building and military units from off shore.

As you play you gain experience points for discovering treasures hidden around the map and for each kill, death, building built, and so forth. When you gain enough experience you can call for a shipment from your home city to the battlefield. These shipments can be coin, wood, food, military units, enhancements to buildings and units as well as many other things. Experience points gained in each skirmish determine how many customizations you can unlock to customize and decorate your home city (which, honestly, I have not found any purpose for other than something to do).

Experience points also go toward cards. Cards are used to call shipments from the home city and determine what can be called for. With each level you gain for your home city you get a certain amount of cards to pick but you can only use 20 in the beginning and up to 25 (at level 50) no matter how many cards you have available. You must choose which cards you wish to have available in the game before you start; this is called building a deck. It actually sounds much more complicated than it is in reality.

If you have played Age of Empires or Age of Empires II, you will understand this game almost immediately. It is also much like other RTS games such as Warcraft, Warcraft II, Warcraft III and Starcraft.


Graphics and sound

Graphics

The graphics are definitely "better" than the previous games; even better than in Age of Mythology which was another Microsoft title, released around 2002, along the Age of Empires line. However, the graphics do not strike me as anything but decent. You can't rotate the map or your view but you can zoom in and out. I would recommend playing the game at the highest possible resolution so you can see as much of the local map as possible because even so, you can't see very much real estate in one screen.

The buildings now take damage instead of just cathcing on fire. As you attack a building, it will still catch fire but pieces will actually break off and the building is left in shambles until it is repaired or destroyed.

Water looks more realistic than in the previous AOE games too. The rest of the map looks different than the previous games but not any better in my opinion. There are different types of trees but they look very similar to AOE II graphics.


Sound

The sounds are pretty good, battle sounds and explosions are realistic. The music is pretty good too and sounds like it spans the eras that the game covers, from pipes and drums of the Revolutionary period to the old time Bluegrass of the old west. There are even some classical scores that sound like they are from the era of Shakespeare.

Sound is striclty stereo but there is no need for surround in this game since you are looking down on the field from above. Surround is really only necessary in first person games. Overall the sound and music are pretty good and tastefully done.


Replay value

I have beaten the game's story-based campaign twice and really have no desire to play it again. I do however still like to play the single player skirmishes against the computer, but in order for it to be challenge I have to set the difficulty to “hard” which is not really that hard unless you play against more than one opponent. The highest difficulty setting is "expert" and I have yet to beat more than one opponent with that setting. With the difficulty set to "hard" I usually play against six or more which is extremely hard but any less and there really is no chance that I might lose at all taking almost all of the challenge out of the game.

I haven’t played multiplayer yet because none of my friends have the game and I don’t usually play online with strangers anymore (I can’t give them a hard time if I am winning like I do my buds :-). However, the online gaming experience is basically the same as skirmishing against the computer except that people are harder to beat and use better strategy than the computer’s AI opponents. If you like to play online this game may have some real replay value to it for you. Personally, I’ll go out and buy a second copy so a friend and I can play it over my LAN.


System requirements

* Windows XP or Vista (previous versions of Windows are not supported)
* Processor: Intel or AMD processor 1.4GHz or faster
* RAM: 256MB minimum (1GB or more recommended for Vista)
* Hard drive: 2GB free (4GB recommended for pagefile performance)
* Sound card and speakers/headphones for audio
* Multiplayer: 56k modem or LAN for online access
* Graphics: 64MB DirectX 9 compatible with hardware T&L

Note:The following graphics processors ARE NOT SUPPORTED by Age of Empires III

3D Labs Permedia 1

3DFX – All versions

ATI ES1000
Rage (all)
Radeon
Radeon 7000
Radeon 7000 IGP
Radeon 7200 (32 MB only)
Radeon 7500 (32 MB only)
Mobility Radeon 7000 IGP
Mobility Fire GL

Cirrus Logic - all versions

Matrox G100
Matrox G200
Matrox Millennium
Matrox Millennium II
Matrox Mystique

Geforce 2 (32 MB only)
Geforce
TnT2
TnT
nVidia Riva 128
nVidia Rica 128 zx

S3 Virge_VX
S3 Virge_MX/MV
S3 Virge_MX+
S3 Virge_MX
S3 Virge_GX2
S3 Virge_DX/GX
S3 Trio64V2_DX/GX
S3 Trio64UV+
S3 Aurora64V+
S3 Aurora128
S3 Savage 2000

Intel 945
Intel 915
Intel 810 / 815
Intel 845
Intel 850
Intel 865
Intel i740

Vanta

Rendition - all versions
Number9 - All versions
Oak Technologies - all versions
Chromatic Research - all versions
Tseng Labs - all versions
Neo-magic - all versions


Conclusion

The price of the game has dropped significantly since its release making it a decent purchase at around $19.99 at Game Stop. I paid $39.99 for it but I feel I got my money’s worth out of it just the same. I did find the War Chiefs expansion for $19.99 and it adds a few hours of game play to the single player campaign and three new civilizations to the multiplayer and single player skirmish games. I enjoy playing the game but it has lost the thrill I got out of it those first two days. Even so, I recommend it if you liked AOE and AOE II or RTS games in general.


Thanks for reading,
Gr8ful ;-)