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This game will rock

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 75 / 171
Date: February 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

For all those who do not yet know, Lords of the Realm III is set to come out at the beginning of Fall, 2003. My only recommendation to you: save your money and buy it on the first day it comes out!!!
The last of a long list of successful Sierra products should not disappoint Lords II fans and promises to introduce novices to a whole different style of PC gaming.

In most RTS games, you just defend yourself until you outproduce your opponent's war machine, which produces a very redundant style of play, that even amazing graphics or innovative scenarios cannot overcome.
However, in Lords of the Realm III, a total different dimension is introduced: you play in a field with 200 other AIs (knights, clergy, independant cities, etc.) and the point is to become the most influent, not the unrealistic "world domination" objective. 200 different players on the same map, wow! Can you even imagine an online multi player game?

In Lords III, instead of fighting against everyone else, you start out as someone's vassal and by completing his orders (conquer other territories, supply food and labor, and so on), you are yourself granted territory, armies, etc. This system allows you to be part of a greater plan and develop yourself in the shadow of a mentor, which is much closer to the truth of the Middle Ages!
Once you are influent enough, you can have your own vassals and direct them towards your enemy. I thought this was a great novelty that will make this new version of Lords incredibly interesting to play!

Another point is the enhanced AI for the merchants! You may be asking yourslef, "why the hell would a merchant be granted an AI?", well if you and other players buy too much from one merchant, he will gain enough power to establish himslef as one of the players, like the city of Venice for example! A merchant that gets rich is greedy and will seek to conquer territory and expand his influence. For this reason, merchants muct be used with great care and only when they are absolutely needed.
Furthermore, it is possible to bribe the merchant into not selling a particular type of good to one of your enemies, in order to weaken his position, but one must still beware of the consequences of enrichning the merchant...

Obviously, this is only a snapshot of the many features that we will al discover next September... Now all we can do is hope the day will come soon...
Overall, I think that this game will be a major revelation and will be a watershed in Strategy games.

I can't wait, can you?

The Gameplay

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 22
Date: March 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

First and foremost, the completely new gameplay of this compared to Lords of the Realm II is something to marvel at. Not having stone, wood and iron and instead only caring about crowns, troops, food and christianity is a pretty radical change of gameplay.

Once you conquer a territory, you must place a vassal (four options) on the land in that territory. This will determine whether the territory is used to recruit troops (this comes with a castle of varying size), harvest food to support troops, pay crowns to the treasury (this comes with a town hall of sorts in the county), or gain you favor in the eye of the church (eventually allowing you to start "crusades" on your fellow christian nations). This means that land is the most important resource. If you don't have enough land: for food, your troops starve; for taxing, you go bankrupt; for troops, enemies invade; for christianity, you lose favor with the church and eventually they will coerce your fellow nations into attacking you.

The other important aspect of this game includes chivalry, honor, and christianity. These are aspects of you, the noble, in the game. If you are chivalrous (you ransom off captured soldiers and nobles as opposed to executing them), the type of soldiers you get will be the courageous type, not the scoundrels you get otherwise. If you are honorable, mercenaries are cheaper for you to hire- keep in mind that you need to have a tax collecting vassal in one of your counties so that you have a towncenter from which to hire mercenaries. If you are christian, you gain favor from the Pope. There are more ways to become a christian noble than just designating certain counties for churches (some random events).

Lastly, the price- this is probably cheaper than expected because the creators wanted to pay us back for constantly delaying the release and because there are many other games coming out at about the same time.

Hope this review was helpful.

Solid game for gamers with a brain (not pudding)

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 20
Date: April 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

First: LORS3 is NOT Lords of the realm 2.

The game: - strategic map. You have to place vassals. Sounds easy and it is in the beginning cos you don't have much choices (yet). You have farmers (food), you have priests (relations), you have burghers (money -> mercenaries, relations and upgrading of castles) and you have Knights (armies). All of them are different and the deeper you go into the game, the more you will have. Managing and placing all these vassals is part of the strategy and get's more difficult with time. You have to think about your military strikes carefully and also keep an army or two to guard your backyard as he ai sees your weak points and attack them. The wrong strategy and you've lost very quickly.
-Combat map. Well it's not praetorians, but it's very well done. The ai knows very well how to attack your castle.

The very very bad: no printed manual. This is bad. However, it seems that almost nobody here has been able (or knows how) to download the manual from the homepage www.Lords3.com (just click on the link...yes, yes it works!). Plenty of information there. The Forums are full of nice people who take their time to explain the game (And it's not that complicated, fellows).

The very very good: the game is simple but difficult to master. Most of the player seem to stop after the campaign of Ireland. That campaign is actually the last part of the tutorial. The real fun begins later.

Don't resign until you've played the Black Prince scenario.

Better than #2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 32
Date: March 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is going to be GREAT!!! I only have Lords2 and that one is very addictive and fun. After a while Lords2 gets boring because nothing really changes, but i've been on the Lords3 website and it looks great.

better than age of empires

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 14
Date: May 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The best computer strategy game of the year. excellent graphics. scenarios are amazing! you should definitely buy this game if you liked the age of empires series, the 2 stronghold games and any other good medevil warfare game!

i love LOR and LORII !!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 15
Date: October 29, 2003
Author: Amazon User

man the only thing that sucks about this game is the time it took those guys to release the game!!!! this game is a kind of like the Total war series, except, this game is much more deep in the management part of the game...in other words, this isn't a game where you just build an army then pummel the other guy n2 pulp.....superb graphics from what ive seen, and a great buy because of its replayability! as i said before, the only thing that is bad, is the wait i had to endure for the game to be released!

IM HOPING FOR THE BEST!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 23
Date: February 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I own every single "Lords" game I, II, and siege pack. I also own Pharaoh which is also an excellent game. I play Lords of the Realm II Siege Pack every week and the sequal has to be much better (I have been waiting half of my life for it :p).

If this game is anything close to what I expect it to be it will be a huge hit in all stores and never be on shelves for more than a day. Also Lords of the Realm II Siege Pack (expansion for Lords II) Is THE best game for computer I have ever played, second total....... nothing beats Vice City (Grand Theft Auto),
well.............I hope this article helps someone find a good gift for their child or themselves. If you buy this game, believe me there will be no regrets, well back to playin Pharaoh(4th fav. game).

P.S. If you ever see a game that says sierra on the box, its worth it.

I think this game is better than some opinions mentioned

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 9
Date: April 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Hey, I love this game, multiplayer is cool...thats the best part of it and makes ya think when ya face real humans.

The Vassel System brings depth to the game, but in away takes away slightly. But, cool thing is theres between 2,000-2,500 vassels in the game itself...with certain strenghts and weaknesses.

The only negative is the interface...makes the game harder than it really is...its the stratigic interface thats hard, but once ya learn it your fine. So yes there is learning curves as well...

Battle interface is great...huge improvement over lords 2...

Sieges graphicly are good, but interface gets alittle clumsy there...when your men get in there castle gets kind of messy.

All I can say is take the time to learn the game and you'll love it, at first glance you might not like it, but once you get to play more and more as well as with multiplayer you'll love the game.

I'm an optimist

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 25
Date: March 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Since Lords 2 Royal Collection with Siege Pack is one of my all time favorite computer games I have always had high hopes for Lords 3. I placed my advance order in April 2003. On March 7, 2004 I was delighted to discover that it is finally going to come out March 16 for only $20.00. However, when I checked the Sierra website to see what they had to say I discovered that the stated minimum system requirements are Pentium III with 800 MHZ and they recommend a Pentium IV with 1.5 GHZ. Since this exceeds the capabilities of my computer system and I have no plans to update soon I am forced to regretably cancel my order. I gave it 4 stars anyway out of gratitude for Lords 2 and because I want it to be a successful game. I'm an optimist.

Not as bad as people make it sound.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 16
Date: April 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

One can not argue that this game is not a departure from Lords2. The food system, army recruitment, combat interface, and political systems all have received an overhaul, and there are also additional levels of complexity as well. The initial result might lead to the notion that the game is overly simplified, but the combinations of these systems makes for a new game play experience that is much more in depth than Lords2.

All of the economic element has been replaced by a system of vassals which you assign to units of land in your province called "parcels." Different types of vassals provide different yield from that parcel - knights recruit troops, bergers allow you to hire mercenaries and special units, and bring in coin, serfs provide food for your armies, and clerics make churches. The vassals themselves all come with advantages (and disadvantages sometimes) that separate them from other vassals of a similar type, and your conduct in game directly determines which vassals you have access to. The vassals also are unique, in that if you acquire one vassal, you may be depriving your opponent of that same one.

There are three values that your actions affect: christianity, chivalry, and honor. These can be raised or lowered by whom you attack, where your battles are fought, various decisions made outside of battle, and how many church parcels you have, among other things. The three values give penalties and bonuses in both combat and diplomatic relationships with the enemy, and play a large role in determining which vassals you have available to you, which in turn affects which type of military units you will have available to you and what kind of bonuses you can get out of your non-knight vassals. The result of this is that the way in which you conduct your military affairs has a large affect on your game play experience to a much larger extent than in Lords2.

The political system, while not vast enough to really warrant the name "system" in comparison with combat, for example, is more flexible than Lords2, and works well with the three "attributes."

There are some elements of the game that I can not fully describe in detail, as they are often more complex than they first appear, but there are more unit types, more seige engines, custom build castles, and medieval:total war ish battles in scope. The economics are simple in appearance, but the strategies that derive from them are quite numerous, and there is a bit of a learning curve before you can feel comfortable with the vassal system. The overland rate of movement of armies is pretty adequate, and directly affected by your country infrastruction as well as food supply, and the battles are set up so you can take part when you feel a need, or leave it to the AI when you are fighting on multiple fronts and focus on the important fights.

All in all, I think that the experience comes off as much more realistic in a refreshing sort of way. It by no means is as frantic as these modern quasi-strategy games like warcraft 3, and even if you're getting soundly trounced, makes for a reasonably long experience, so you don't really feel like you're in danger of things getting out of your control as much. Depending on what pace you like things to happen, there is also an option to choose "slow" mode, but on the normal mode, as a big fan of turn based games over RTS, I never found myself being pressed for time too much.

A few things detract enough to prevent a 5 star rating, but perhaps they will change:

You can't set up a game on x map with x number of computers. You have to play games out of the campaign, which essentially let you do the same thing, but it'd be nice to have some more custom game options.

Army movements sometimes are interrupted uncontrollably. You try and combine two armies that are pretty close by, and one of them is engaged by an enemy army from farther away, and they aren't allowed to combine first. You can not bring an army to attack a seiging force, or help the defending army, and if an enemy army makes for the castle, and you click to send an army into the castle to aid defenders, even if they're closer they some times will not go in the castle, or they may engage the enemy instead of going into the castle. It DOES prevent you from endlessly running away from the same enemy army and staying at a stalemate indefinitely, but it also can be a bit of a pain.

There's no easy way to select a specific army inside a castle. You have to double click all your armies one at a time in the troop selection screen sometimes, until you find the right one.

A couple other minor issues, but for the most part, this game is excellent, and seems to be criticized more for it's difference from Lords2 than on it's actual merit as a strategy game. At 19.99, it's definitely worth a try.

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