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The Battle's On

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: August 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I recently purchased this game, and while my computer isn't fast enough for me to put the graphics on high detail, I still enjoy the game tremendously. I have not even begun to scrape the surface of all that this game holds. I've played as two different civilizations, but there is a total of 8. With each civilization, I've gotten a different experience, unique, and with different challenges. The maps are still beautiful, even though I don't have the graphics on full. I'm running the game on a Celeron D processor, 700+ MB-RAm, Nvidia 5500 256 MB PCI video card, and 2.80 GHZ. Sometimes it gets a little choppy, but most times it runs just fine. If you have a better system, you should have no problems running the game.

Overall, this game is fantastic. I've been a huge fan of Age of Empires ever since the original one came out, and as each successor has come out, I have never been dissapointed.

If you are familiar with the first two games (AOE 1 & 2), you'll find that you can dive right into the action of this one. You can play a random map, a scenario, create your own scenario, and play multiplayer. On a random map, you start out with a town center, some villagers (or settlers, as they are called in this game), and an explorer. The explorer can be used to explore the map, and where in AOE 1 or 2, where you once would have found ruins or relics, you can find treasures. But be warned, these treasures are often guarded. The treasures can help you build your colony.

One main difference between this game and its predessesors is that you have a home port from which you can get units or supplies. During game play you will earn experience points, which, when you have enough, can be used to purchase supplies, etc. from the home port. Depending on what civilization you are playing as, you will find that the "deck" of "cards" varies at the home port. An example of a British card would be 2 settlers, which can be sent one time. An example of a German card would be 8 Ulhans, a mounted, armed unit. The more you play, the more points you get, and you can earn new cards to put into your deck.

I could ramble on and on about the features of the game, but the best way to learn is to do often times, and I strongly suggest that if you like this kind of real time strategy game, you should purchase it. I sincerely doubt that you'll be dissapointed, but don't take my word for it. Find out for yourself! : )

A smashing success!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: October 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

My review is about single player skirmish mode - playing only against the A.I. I am quite late in joining the Age of Empires games. I've never played AOE 1 or 2. I have played Battle for Middle Earth 1 and 2. BFME 1 was TOO slow in gathering resources and limited in placement of buildings the visuals and sounds of both were terrific. BFME 2 was a big leap in the right direction except it didn't have Rohan's unique buildings and no make-your-own Hobbit Heroes. I also wish the maps had more variety to them! I have given up playing BFME 1 and now only play BFME 2. I also had played both Star War Battlefront games (FPS) but as they play sooo fast I have given up on them as well. I like a game where you can build up your city into something beautiful to look at (yet not taking forever to do so) before the fighting action begins. Microsoft calls this technique Turtling. So I guess I'm a Turtler! This game allows for Rushing (quickly attacking soon in the game) and Booming (Economic build up) techniques as well.

I have an AMD Athlon 64 processor 3200+ with 1GHz of Ram and a 7600 Tforce Nvidia Card.

I just bought AOE 3 after reading many reviews. It is everything I thought it would be and more! The sounds and visuals are great. The towns build up nicely as well as the armies. I like the enemy coming on taunting you when the AI notices that aren't keeping up in one area or another in military, commercial or progression in age. The maps are numerous and have a great variety. The boats and ships look great and actually fish with nets - the whales and fish are seen too! The larger ships can open with a broadside or one even has a large destructive cannon which blows apart enemy building that are near the water.

The language (most of it is in it's own native tongue) is non-offensive even for the younger ones. You have 8 different nationalities to play from each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Add this to the 12 or so maps and you really do have an almost endless variety of play in each game. The natives and mercenaries (as allies) also add a unique touch. The trading posts along the roadside also bring in income. You can select pay ment from travelers either in food, coins, lumber or even add wealth to your home city. If my villagers are lacking in one of these resources I collect this type of resource at the trading post. The battles are fun as well as fighting the wild animals and outlaws scattered over the map. The market is useful in buying and selling either food, coin or lumber so that you can acquire more of whatever resources you might be lacking. This game also allows you to play on sandbox, easy, hard and difficult levels which is really important for me as the game will be either laid back or fierce or somewhere in between. It also has a handicap level for each side as in BFME 2. You also receive shipments of various goods and men from your home city throughout the game. After each victory you can unlock more types of shipments. An icon in the upper screen allows you to note any idle villager so that you can assign him to some work.

I have tried to use the make-your-own-scenario map maker (real neat to add whatever initial resources you want on the map and give it it's physical look), but so far I have only been able to get my side to act normal in the game. The A.I. enemy team will react to my explorer or other members of my side and shoot at them, but otherwise they just stand around their townhouse and not gather in anything or build up anything. There is nothing in the manual about the scenario map making, so for now its by trial and error.

This is a great quality game which will give people like me hours upon hours of great fun. I don't see myself getting bored with this game for a long time. The variety of teams, maps, and settings make this game really re-playable!

Equipment

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: January 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

To play this game in it's full splendor you need an nVidia 6800 or 7800 video card. It is the card they designed the game for and I have a 6800 and it makes the graphics smooth as glass. For slower machines get the 7800 because the Video Card takes a bunch of work off the processor and RAM. This game has less capability than AOE 2 but it is still fun.

It's kinda like crack

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: August 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is not a perfect game. It is unbalanced and at times over reliant on youu being able to micro the hell out of your villagers rather than creating any viable military strategies. Yet, for a period of about 2 months I did nothing but play this game. I would play alone. I would play with my roomates, then alone again. Once one of my roomates was bitter when I played alone, after saying earlier that I would play with him. It was collective addiction. All of us were addicted and obbsessed with the game. We would play till the early morning and also between classes, when we had 20 minutes or so to spare. This game consumed our lives and a soundtrack of power metal and elegies to the greatness of this game filled the air. We would speak of the intensity of addiction. We would mention all of the times that we thought about the game in the least opportune moments. I would lie to my girlfriend that I had essays to write in order to get another few hours to play the game. In fact, I would sneak out of her room at 12 in order to play the game till 4 or 5 in the morning.

The funny thing is that not all of us were even that good, but we were still addicted. That alone demonstrated the levels on which the game could be enjoyed. One of my roomates loved to cheat at the game and would always want to play multiplayer games with cheat codes. Another one played only one map, over and over again at the same level of difficulty. The third liked to tinker with every single team and see which was the best. I just stuck with one or two teams and tried to beat expert.

Speaking of which, expert is really hard in this game, but it is beatable with enough effort. A lot of things are hard, but all of them can be overcome with enough perseverence. I liked to play with one of my roomates against 5 hard enemies, fortunately though our internet connection was powerful enough to handle the intensity of such a battle.

All in all, I recommend this game, but I warn you. It could consume me, so it could just as easily consume you. You have been warned.

Disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: December 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

A step down from Mythology.
I bought this having seen the great trailers and game footage. The graphics seem to be good, but on my fairly new computer (1Gb Ram and 4 month old video card) I had to run them at about half their potential to keep the game from stuttering.

The Gameplay sadly is unoriginal and features the uninteresting fight for North America.

Stick with II and Mythology, until you can get this for about $10, because that's what it's worth.

Great Fun, Great Graphics, Great Sound

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: May 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I don't pretend to be a Gamer, but I love these new developments in the system. A word of Warning, you need a High End Graphic card, and if you look at the Back of the AOE 3 pack, it will tell you what you need just in case you need to upgrade that as well.
Whatever the case, if you like AOE 2, then this will be a blast, its fun for many levels of gamers, lots of detail, lots of sound, very cool interactions.
Some Parents may not like all of the detail in the graphics, but thats a parental decision, however, I find the amazing package as basically great fun, and each game you play builds on a larger "Game", and you can progress your home City.
Very Cool in a Major way.
May 22nd: I have been using the game rather intensively, and the detail at a medium graphics settings has been amazing. The interaction, as well as the ability to zoom into events, and see action, such as a cannonball hit a building and then see the actual inside of the building, makes the whole experience rather more fun. Kind of presses me to get the NVIDIA card upgrade. If you don't, then you might get some video display issues after the game is shut down. However, since I am running a large number of programmes, this may be an issue for people running many apps. If you have a dedicated Game PC, with more than 1 gig of memory, the issue might be of less concern, however the rendering in full graphics mode is still restricted to a high end NVIDIA card, where you probably are looking at a price tag of 200 dollars US or so. But the issue is not so much the price tag, but can the card do what the specs require, and once again, the back of the AOE 3 box will tell you the requirements.
JUNE 1: A cool, but maybe minor element, is: when you play a good game, your Home City raises in levels. As your City raises, it can get more fun things, for example, the resources of a level 11 city is different than a level 30 city, and I must admit, even at the easy level I play, picking the "Cards" for each addition is kind of a good extension of the AOE 2 concept. The whole experience just gets better the more I play it.

Good to okay

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 18
Date: October 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Much in common here with AOE2, which can make things dull--but the home city and native alliances add enough of a twist to provide a fresh challenge for those who were tired of the same old strategies in AOE2. Not sure I'm happy to have spent 50 bucks on the game--with hindsight, I would have waited a year to get it at discount.

Graphics are state of the art--but there's a price to pay with frame rates.

Better graphics, same game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 18
Date: November 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

If you have played any of the previous versions of this game or similar versions (like Age of Mythology), you won't find anything much new in this latest version. Yes, the graphics are impressive, but the game play is basically the same. The only real new thing is the concept of a home city, but I didn't feel that really added much new to the game. Fighting battles amounts to pointing large groups at each other and letting things go... not much tactics or challenge there really. The game felt like it was aimed at a much more arcade type user vs. an experienced gamer. If you are an experienced gamer... look elsewhere, you won't find any challenge here and you will be bored as soon as the eye candy wears off (which is quickly). Good game I guess, just know what you are buying. My son (who is 10) will enjoy this game for a few days. :-) I got tired of it after two hours.

Entertaining, good graphics, but hardly original

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If you are a strategy fan, as I am, AoE 3 will not disappoint. The game's easy-to-use interface and variety of new units and concepts makes it entertaining for hours on end, even for seasoned AoE fans. The "home city" idea really lets players explore the strengths and weaknesses of each civilization (plus resource/unit shipments are great), and some of the new resource exploitation features - i.e., being able to create plantations to permanently produce coin - are greatly appreciated for those of us who have run of out precious resources many times before mid-battle in older AoE versions. Being able to create many new military units in multiple batches - i.e., 2 or 5 at a time - is a plus, but the cumbersome limitations on the number of some units are irritating at times. Trade routes and the markets are all greatly improved over similar games I've played. The campaign mode is fairly interesting though disappointingly short, with a curious twist at the end that leaves you wondering.

The graphics are unquestionably the biggest improvement in this game, most especially the weapon effects and the water quality. But all in all, the game is hardly revolutionary or super-original for those already well-accustomed to the AoE series, and thus the 4 stars instead of 5. It is a great way to get introduced to the series if you're a novice and it will provide entertainment if you've followed the series for years, but if you fall into the latter group, do not expect to have your socks blown off.

AOE 3: An New Game to Conquer

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: January 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Set during the Era of Colonialism, you will play as one of eight European empires seeking to establish a foothold in the New World. Be prepared to face fearsome enemies from overseas, befriend or besiege Native camps, secure trading routes, contruct powerful fortresses, and enter the world of AGE OF EMPIRES 3!

I've been playing the Age of Empires (AOE) series since the first edition came out. AOE 3 easily provides the best graphics out of any AOE game (or any Real-Time-Strategy game that I've ever seen). Gameplay is very similar to the previous versions, so you'll truly have no trouble mastering the interface as long as you've played AOE (1 or 2) , Age of Mythology, or any similar game. If you've never played an RTS before, don't worry, the gameplay is very simple. Just spend five to ten minutes looking over the game manual, and/or use the "Learn to Play" mode.

I had NO TROUBLE AT ALL installing and running AOE 3 on my PC. It hasn't crashed yet. Then again, my computer is only about a year old, so be sure to look over the system requirements a couple of times.

The most interesting part of gameplay is when you increase the level from Easy to Moderate, your allies as well as your opponents increase in skill level, meaning that if you have the same number of allies as enemies, you'll have the same odds of winning on both levels. In the past, this has prompted me to play games without any allies at all.

The most dissapointing part of AOE 3 is the limit on the playable empires. In previous games, there's been well over fifteen playable empires. In AOE 3, there are only 8, and they're all European. I guess the designers were forced to do this to make the Imperialistic Era more realistic, but I always found it cool to play as the Chinese or the Aztecs.

New features to master include the concept of "Home Cities", forging alliances with Native Americans, controlling trade routes, and finding treasure. All of these addd to an overal new experience using a very old (but successful) backdrop.

Have fun!

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