Customer Reviews
A good RTS
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.
Doesn't quite measure up...
Ever since Age of Empires II came out, those of us who fell in love with the game wished for a worthy sequel. Instead of producing one, Ensemble Studios wasted years trying to shove bizarre mythological monsters and fantasy down our throat. None of these attempts have sold well, and Ensemble finally decided to give us what we want, but the long awaited AEIII doesn't quite measure up to expectations.
Yes, the graphic engine has been upgraded and is now second to none and yes, the game play has been vastly improved. You will need a new $300 video card to play at the fanciest settings, and selection, repairs and technology upgrades are now a snap. No longer do you have fishing ships charging into a land battle because you tried to select a group of soldiers on the coast line. The game also returned to the historical plot that made AEII so educational and entertaining. Still, there are problems.
Good things were taken away from the old model. You can no longer garrison archers in towers to increase their power. The Captain Morgan story is historically inaccurate and insignificant. The American war of independence, the Civil War and Latin American wars are not even touched and the French and Russian conflicts are barely even mentioned. Instead the game wastes time on the Ottoman involvement in the New World (???). The game is also very short and will be exhausted in a few weeks even if played only occasionally.
An expansion pack is badly needed. I want the play the Civil War, the French-English conflict and other important upheavals in the New World. I want total historical accuracy so I can learn instead of wasting time on legends such as that of the Lake of the Moon. This could become a great game with the right expansion pack, but I fear Ensemble will give us more monsters and mythology.
Fun, but could be better
This game is pretty fun, but you might be better off buying Age of Empires 2. The graphics and sound in AOE 3 are great.
The instruction booklet is not really complete: it doesn't explain very well how to use some of the customizable features. My favorite thing in AOE 2 was the ability it gave you to generate a random map using any map-type. AOE 3 does let you do that, but it is more restrictive. For example, if you want to play on a huge map--which I always prefer--you only have a few choices of terrain types. Also, you can't have 2 players of the same civilization. Ie, you can't play as Spaniards and have a computer ally which is also Spaniards.
Also, although I haven't played all the maps yet, they seem to be smaller than in AOE 2, which is a disappointment.
Another complaint: What use is building a wall around a city if you can't build a gate? I can't figure out whether there is any way to build a gate or not.
Despite my complaints, the game is quite entertaining. But the little problems, taken together, make it worse than it might have been.
