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They ruined the Age of Empires reputation with this.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 27
Date: August 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I played the original Age of Empires, both I and II, and their expansions, and for the time they were released, they were the best thing out, easily. For their time they were innovative, and brought new ideas, graphics and notions to the RTSs. However, this game does little that is innovative, and almost nothing that has not, by this time, been done in almost any other RTS. This game offers nothing new to the market.

Controls consist of simple point and click movement, and battles consist of nothing more than moving and clicking as well. There is simply NOTHING new here. For instance, Battle For Middle Earth II tryed to be innovative with adding battalions rather then units, and making battles consist of more then simply point and click. Age of Empires III however has the same controls and ideas that Age of Empires II had nearly 10 years ago.

In terms of Graphics, I really dont see what is so special about this game, Company of Heroes, Battle For Middle Earth II and Rome Total War, all offer better graphics than this game boasts, and all offer gameplay that is simply worlds away.

In terms of sound, this game also lacks for a good deal, with sound being rather bland and the music being rather forgettable.

The AI. Here is where I was really bewildered, the AI in this game is simply braindead. Even on the hardest setting, expert, and WITH a +50% resource bonus, the AI still seems reluctant to even attempt a large scalle attack against one's base. Why? I really dont know, it WILL attack, but with only the smallest of forces and only the most meager of strategies.

Bottomline: If you live RTS games, get Battle for Middle Earth II, get Rise of Nations, or even Company of Heroes, this game simply is outdated.

Needs quite a few patches

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: December 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

It keeps with the tradition of AOE but quite buggy. Walls don't work (Gates let enemy in, enemy can find wholes in walls). You sometimes have to tell your settlers more than once to do something. Boats won't unload via the Unload-all icon, you have to manualy unload 50+ units.

I'm sure once these bugs get fixed it will be an awesome game.

people, listen.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: January 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Age of Empires III is a good game. Don't hate it because you have a bad PC. Don't make a review like "Oh, it won't work, therefore it deserves 1 star!" If your computer can't handle it, go review your computer.

Age of Empires III takes place around the Revolutionary War. It has 8 civilizations trying to conquer the New World. There are many new concepts in this game, such as Home Cities and Native Americans. There are mercenaries here which are like normal units on steroids.

People here are saying the combat is too simplified. Not true. You need to memorize all sorts of units, not just cavalry owns artillary, etc;. You need to find out what kind it is so then you can own the opponant.

Its a good game. Very strategic.

Slightly Disappointed

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: January 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've been a fan of the AOE series since the first one. AOE III's biggest accomplishment is the graphics which makes it an excellent RTS. Unfortunately you would expect more from the game since the series is so old. The water's effects are great and so are some of the shadow effects in the game.
Other reviews stated that it runs really slow and you need a super machine to run this game. I would disagree with that since I have a fairly cheap graphics card, a GeForce FX 5500.

The sound is superb and details the activity going on around you. For instance, you'll hear the cannon's "boom" from a distance when you scroll away from the battle. The score is excellent at capturing your attention to events on the map. It makes up for some of the poor game play.

A big disappointing factor is some of the game play. The new "home city" feature is a great addition to the game but it seems to be layed out a little sloppy. It takes a while to find and learn some of the features on this screen. This is very different from previous AOE games since I became accustomed to researching items from various buildings on the map. The cards feature from the home city were a little annoying to me at first but I realized that this was a good attempt in simulating the support system from your European city (although it would have been cooler to see a ship come into your harbor).

Being a military guy, I was a little sad to see the advanced movement commands from AOE II go away. I probably haven't mastered the techniques yet, but the military seems to attack at will when I am trying to set up positions. I guess Ensemble was trying to create quick battles for online multiplayers.

Overall this game is really fun and a step up in the AOE series. Of course as far as some of the in depth game play it is a step down. Some of the things said in chat by the computer are pretty cheesy. Another cheesy aspect is the treasure and the treasure guardians. I really don't think bears just stand in the forest guarding tents of treasure. Also who needs a trained bear in their inventory. The dogs are kind of annoying too. Finally, don't expect any huge glorious battles even if the score makes you think there is one.

Home Cities

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: April 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This version of the Age of Empires series has some advantages
1. Nice Graphics, including 1600 x 1200 mode that looks nice on NVidia 7800 :)
2. The same nice set of options in previous games
3. More "realistic" than Age of Mythology. On the other hand, I don't think anyone's going to call it a simulation :)
4. Nice multi-player ability and re-playability. You can multi-player with a personal network, or across the Internet.
5. Excellent range of difficulty levels. Unlike the mistakes some titles make, there's a level in there for "all" gamers.

I would have mentioned the home cities as an advantage. You can build them up over time, and it seemed really nice at first to be able to "advance" your capabilities as you played!
However, it turns out home cities are a loss in my opinion. I'm a pretty heavy gamer, and multi-player is where it's at for me.
Unfortunately, I have multiple machines. I had to reformat my main gaming machine, and I also bought a new machine. Stupid as it may seem, your multi-player home cities are not saved anywhere I could find, and Ensemble didn't see fit to include any import or export so you wouldn't lose six months of city development. If they were worried about cheating, then encrypt it, but at least give me an export / import.

Since home cities were the main draw of this version for me, I wouldn't make this purchase if I had it to do over again. If you have simlar tastes, I suggest sticking with the previous versions until they start thinking a little more about the gamers that use their products and long-term playability. You shouldn't fall behind all your friends when you buy a new machine.

On the other hand, die-hard AoE fans will want it. It's pretty, and it's another version you can play if you get bored with the others.

A good RTS

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: February 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I liked this game, even thou it isn't great. The selection of units for each faction is average, but is bolstered by mercenaries and native auxiliaries. The games focuses mainly on musket armed infantry, cavalry and artillery. This is historically accurate. Although certain factions and the common pool units, do have effective non-gunpowder units.
Resource collection seems overly complex. This is why I never liked the original AOE games. Wood cutters will stop harvesting after a stand of trees is cut down. Even if there are more very close. Hunters and fishing boats need to be managed in the same way. I personally don't enjoy policing my resource collectors. It does allow for the strategy of crippling a user's economy by killing collectors.
This game has made resourcing a little more user friendly. You can create farms and plantations which harvest money and food. Also there is a garrison button on the town hall, which orders all your resourcers into nearby friendly buildings. These make resource collecting a little less involved than in previous AOE games.
There are no advanced tactical features, other than the paper-rock-scissors damage system. Maps have a fair amount of natural features, including water. They tend to only act as funnels, like in most rts games. Allowing alternate attacks, only by water. There are a few open maps. It's actually about half and half. The open maps use outpost and resource locations to drive confrontations.

Great game! Just don't use an integrated graphics accelerator

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: January 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I got this game because I bought a new computer, but I was hesitant because I bought a tablet with an Intel 950 chip. After reading some reviews about the chip and researching Intel's support page, I figured getting 2 gigs of system memory would solve any problems.

Unfortunately not. The default settings after install don't work, and you must go into the game to dumb down the graphics. If you try to up the graphics above the fail threshold you can't get back into the game as the main menu has 3d acceleration requirements and it crashes. I had to uninstall and reinstall 4 times to get a good setting.

Once I dumb down the settings the game plays great the story lines are fun and the new features are nice. I can only imaging how much more fun I could have if I had a dedicated video card! The only problem I still have is water battles. When a ship battles a ship the system completely slows down. What I do is move to another part of the screen and let them battle it out. (This problem does not exist when land units fight boats / boats fight land units-Only when boats fight boats).

I wish someone would have better support for this, but the game's support says to update the driver, and the Intel site tells me to contact the game maker! I sure hope I can run Vista on this new machine...

Informative feedback

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: January 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am a big fan of the Age series and seek to help future buyers get a clear view of what they will or will not buy. I will try (as best as I can) to provide informed and unbiased information about Age of Empires III. I will start with vary general overview information about the game and move into more specific information.

General Information

Age of Empires III is an RTS (Real Time Strategy Game) featuring the colonial era of the Americas. You get to choose from eight different civilizations to conquer the new world. This style of game involves building villagers to gather various resources (food, wood, gold) and using those resources to build military units (musketeers, cannons, cavalry, ships, and various others) to wipe out your opponent. You are limitted to the colonial era of play. You can not get to the World Wars or Space age like in Empire Earth or Rise of Nations. During the game you can advance to five epics, each unlocking new units and technologies but all within the colonial era. Combat is colorful and moderately easy to master.

Game Specific Information

The game play of Age of Empires III is similar to the game play of Age of Empires II in the way that it feels. The gameplay is a little slower paced then Age of Mythology where a good game 1 on 1 online lasted fifteen to twenty five minutes. Rushing is still a viable option, but so is booming and turtling. Some new things incorporated since previous Age of Empires games are the Home City system, a new resource (Experience), tough counter units (rock paper scissors effect), ability to ally with Indians, and tons of eye candy.

Home Cities

The Home City system is interesting and will help diversify your style of play from other players. In Age of Empires III you gain 'expierence' for doing just about everything. Once a certain level of experience is achieved in a game you get to send a shipment from your home city. Shipments could be free resources, free units, unique technologies, or team bonusses. Your home city gains levels after you get a lot of experience and for each level you get to choose a new shipment to add to your 'deck' of up to twenty choosable shipments for in game. You can build as many 'decks' of shipments as you like for different situations (water maps, team maps, rushing/booming strategies etc.) This really diversifies the different civilizations too, as each civ will have it's own home city with different shipments available.

The Experience Resource

The Experience resource is a large part of Age of Empires III. On each map there are trade routes where a player can place trade centers. Every time the merchant goes past your trade center you get a bunch of expeirence that goes towards your next shipment and home city level. You also get experience from building stuff, destroying the other guys stuff, and for just being in the game. So he who controls the map gets more experience and more shipments...

Unit Counters

The Rock, Paper, Scissors effect is crazy in Age of Empires III. Some units, like the skirmisher, will have a base attack of 12 with a x3 multiplyer against heavy infantry. This means that skirmishers do wimpy damage verses most things but lots of damage toward heavy infantry. So you really have to choose what units you will build carefully. If you build all one unit your whole army could be wiped out by a significantly smaller force of counter units. This makes it a little bit like chess and gambling at the same time. The general way it works is like this:

heavy infantry > cavalry + buildings
light infantry > heavy infantry
cavalry > light infantry + artillery + villagers
artillery > buildings + infantry

There are lots of exceptions but that's generally how it works.

Native Tribes

Allying with Native tribes adds anothe element to the game. These tribes offer unique units and techs that are quite helpful if utilized properly. Once again, this adds to the chess feel about the game.

Graphics

As for graphics, I suppose that is up to pure opinion. I was thoroughly impressed though and will state MY opinion that no such graphics have ever been seen in an RTS before. Impressive building demolishions, beautiful water relections, detailed landscape right down to turtles on logs, and infantry sent flying by a cannon ball are all to be expected.

System Requirements

As for the requirements to run the game... surprisingly small! I play the game on a K7 Athalon (equivalent of a 900mhz PIII) with a 64 meg video card and 256 ram and it works fine. I am well below the minimum required stats to run the game! (do not buy the game if you don't have the 64 meg video card though, it will not run at all) The offical minimal requirements are:

Windows XP
256 ram
1.4 Ghz processor
2 Giga bytes of space
64 meg video card

Simplifications

The game was simplified in several ways in comparision to other Age of Empires games. You no longer have to build resource centers. Combat is both simplified and more complex featuring less units but with more defined roles. The tech tree is also slighly more simplified. This makes it easier for novices to get good at the game by eliminating some of the micro-management. Some view this is as good, some as bad.

Online Play

This is where I think the game really shines. Playing Age of Empires III online presents a never ending array of challenges and scenarios as you play against real people at various skill levels with all sorts of strategies. ESO (Ensemble Studios Online) hosts all the online games and has both a quick search matchmaker and a custom game select option. There are, on average, 3000 people online at any given time. Playing online is also scary, because a lot of people are really good at the game and you will be well advised to check out the extensive strategy forums for the game if you intend to do well. (heavengames.com has extensive Age of Empires III forums) During online play you can choose 1vs1, 2vs2, 3vs3, 4vs4, or any amount of teams with the custom game option. Online lag won't be the result of a server but possibly the result of your opponent... or you. Sometimes the quick search option doesn't work until ESO resets their servers, but that should be fixed in a patch soon.

Strategy

As already stated, you can not just simply build a pile of one unit and expect to wipe your opponent off the map because the game features tough counter units. Which unit to build is only the tip of the strategy iceberg though! You also have to consider rushing (will my opponent sacrifice his economy for a large push at the start to wipe me out?), raiding, booming (building tons of villagers for an insane economy before building an army), or turtling (massing defenses and building up inside), all of which are viable. The different civs work in such a way that some are much better at a certain strategy than others. Add into the equation the home city shipments and it gets really interesting. Will you have special economy shipments (faster mills, better plantations, cheaper fishing ships) or bulk up on military shimpents? If you really get into the strategy aspect you will find it goes quite deep.

Summery

I would classify this game as a higher level RTS. The combinations of technologies, units, civilizations, maps, home cities, and online play spells 'much fun' in my mind. Despite my approval of this game I will note that it doesn't have any ground breaking 'new' inovations that makes it vary different from any other good RTS. It is much of the same old stuff but in a different form. If you haven't played the Age of Empires series before, or any RTS for that matter, this game will have a bit of a learning curve. As far as RTS's go, I think this is a good one. There's enough new gimicks (home cities, trade centers, Native tribes, etc) to make it feel different, but at it's core it's a 'gather resource, build an army, smuck the other guy' game. I like it though. Age of Empires is simple enough for the novice player and has enough elements to appease an expert player. I give it 8/10.

Greatest RTS of all time!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Anyone who has followed the Age of Empires trilogy from AOE 1 will know that the overall game play has really evolved since that first game. If you'd like to place yourself back in the time of exploration of the new world and fight amazing battles with brilliant graphics then this is the game for you. Ensemble Studios has really outdone themselves with this game; everything from the trees to the water to the units looks real. However, this game just doesn't look good it plays good. The game interface is really easy to master so getting into the game takes no time at all. For anyone who has never played the AOE trilogy before then I'll summarize what you do. There is a campaign which takes you through the Black families lives from the old world Europe to the New World. There is also a random map option which is very fun; you can play up to seven different computer opponents at a time (or as little as on for the beginner) also there are of course difficulty settings for the computers so no one should have a problem wining a random map game. The other great way to play this game is the multiplayer link which will take you to Ensemble Studios Online. Here you can play with up to eight human players in a game. ESO is defiantly my favorite way to play.
There are many ways to play this game so if you haven't bought this yet buy it now! You will receive hours of RTS (Real Time Strategy) enjoyment. [...]P.S. Michele Watson is not the writer of this review the writer is a gamer who knows what he's talking about.

Good Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: December 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Make sure you have a proper video card or this product will not work well, especially difficult will be naval battles which can freeze even the most powerful PC's with lower end video cards.

While it is very similar to AOE 2 it's just different enough to be worth adding to your collection. I give it higher playability rating then many of the others in this genre. I hope there are more to come like these.

Tom Anderson
Anderson Analytics, LLC

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