I don’t know what it is about real-time strategy games. I think it has to do with me being a hoarder. Hey, I said hoarder! In any event, I have been known to spend the warmer weekends of the year scouring yard sales for things that remind me of my childhood. I clip coupons and buy things on sale. I can really relate to an RTS title because a big part of the game is amassing a stockpile of resources, which can be used to build structures and train units.
For those of you unfamiliar with the genre, allow me to present a brief overview. You start a game by selecting a civilization. In Age of Empires III, the emphasis is on colonial expansion, so the civilizations are all European, with the exception of the Ottomans. Naturally, each civilization has strengths and weaknesses, and each player can choose a civilization that best matches his/her playing style. This concept is not new to the genre at all, but many of the specific strengths and weaknesses have not been explored before. For example, every time a British villager builds a new house (which are needed to increase the total population), then a new villager spawns from the new house. This free villager is a pretty sweet bonus, but if you’re trying to build up an army, you’re only getting 9 population (instead of the 10 you should get from a new house). Conversely, the Dutch villagers cost coin to produce, as opposed to food. This presents a rather interesting dilemma: usually, it’s wise to focus on food gathering during the first age because the cost to upgrade to the next age is 800 food. If you’re going to play as the Dutch, you need to adjust your priorities.
There are a variety of maps to choose from, ranging from those with plentiful resources to frozen wastelands. The variety of maps coupled with the variety of civilizations equal a lot of potential options, but unfortunately, the manner in which the game is set up almost seems to discourage experimentation with various civilizations.
Once the game begins, you start out with a town center and a handful of villagers. You must instruct your villagers to begin gathering wood, food, and coin. Wood and coin sources are fairly straightforward, but there are several options for food gathering. You can forage for berries, hunt animals, or build a mill, which generates more food if more villagers are tasked to work on it. A new option in this game is the livestock pen. This building can generate sheep. These fluffy darlings come out looking sickly and emaciated, but if you task the sheep on the livestock pen, they will fatten up to almost three times their original weight.
As you gather resources, you can upgrade your civilization. This allows you to access new types of buildings and generate stronger units. The ultimate goal in the game is to defeat your opponents, who can be found somewhere else on the map.
This sounds like just about every other historical RTS ever. But it’s not! In Age of Empires III, each player is tied to a home city. This goes along with the whole colonial expansion motif. In any event, as you go about your business during the game by gathering resources, training units, and destroying enemy buildings and soldiers, you will gain experience. When you have filled your EXP bar, you can send one shipment from your home city to your new city. These shipments can be crates of resources, soldiers, or upgrades. They are sent to you at no cost; you get them for simply filling up the bar. As you play through more games, your home city levels up. This gives you the opportunity to add new cards to your deck; some of them are new options and others upgrade existing cards. For example, instead of sending 5 sheep to the new city, you can choose a card that will allow you to send 10. As you add new cards to your deck, you can begin to put together a custom deck with an emphasis on building an army quickly or alternatively, you could focus on economic bonuses that would enable villagers to gather resources at a much faster pace and thus advance to the next age quicker.
As I mentioned before, the game really seems to discourage experimentation with different civilizations. Because the home city levels up, thus giving the player access to better swag shipments, it’s difficult to gauge whether a civilization is a good fit with a player after only a couple of matches. To be fair, the replay value is ridiculously high- once you’ve unlocked all the good cards in one civilization, you’re going to want to move on to one of the other remaining civilizations. But you can’t really make much progress with one civilization or another if you’re switching back and forth.
The concept of the home city really brings the game to a new level, but that is not the only major change in the game. Each civilization begins the game with an explorer, who can do two things: collect treasure and build trading posts.
Treasure locations are scattered around the map and they are marked with an “X”. What- were you expecting something else? Treasure can be additional resources, experience, or a stray unit. However, treasure is usually guarded by wild beasties like alligators and bears or by outlaws and other assorted brigands. The explorer usually needs backup to defeat the treasure guardians.
Trading posts spots are also marked on the map. There are two types of trading posts- those on the trade route and those near a Native American settlement. Both types are probably equally advantageous. Building a trading post on the on the trade route gives you experience every time the trade caravan passes by- since there are multiple spots along the trade route, establishing a network can allow you to rake in a ton of experience. By building by a Native American settlement, you can train Native American units to fight alongside you and you can access special upgrades as well.
In addition to playing against the computer, you can take your game online in either a LAN game or via Ensemble Studios online. It is fairly easy to find a game to join, although it sometimes takes a couple of tries- I seem to have a talent for finding games that appear to have open spots that magically fill up when I attempt to join the game. My experiences playing with other people have been pleasant. They are not usually victorious, but I must admit that my opponents have been delightfully polite about knocking down my buildings and shooting my villagers. One of the biggest problems with ES Online is the lag. I have noticed considerable lag on more than one occasion. Hopefully, this is something that can be addressed and fixed over time because multiplayer has really become my favorite part of the game.
Another aspect of Age of Empires III is the campaign mode, which centers around the fictional Black family. The story begins on the island of Malta and quickly moves to the New World. The campaign features several generations of the Black family and involves their quest to stop a clandestine group from achieving their sinister goals. The campaign is so driven by its story that there are often at least two movies before every gameplay segment. The missions in the campaign are fairly typical- sometimes you have to protect a settlement before reinforcements arrive, or you might have to establish a settlement and build up enough of an army to destroy an enemy settlement. However, there were also a couple of mission types that were unique to the game- in order to get another character to help you, you have to impress them by racking up a crazy amount of experience. Personally, I found that type of mission much more enjoyable than the old standards.
In terms of visuals, Age of Empires III manages to dazzle, even though the graphics are not pushing the boundaries of technological. At any given time, there is a plethora of activity going on in the game and there is no noticeable slowdown. Also, the best improvement hands-down is that buildings now literally fall apart when they are being attacked. In Age of Empires II, a building would take a lot of damage before spontaneously igniting and then eventually imploding. All that has changed. In Age of Empires III, as soon as a building is attacked with artillery, pieces of the building begin to fly off of the building. The gaping holes that are left in the building remain there until the building eventually collapses in a fiery explosion.
The sound is also very well done. The music is always appropriate for the mood; they save the big Deus Irae-type choral segments for climactic battles and save the more subdued numbers for early in the game when the players are mostly focused on resource gathering. Sound effects are present, but they don’t overpower the game. The voice acting is quite well done and helps make the campaign movies even more enjoyable.
Age of Empires III had a lot of expectations to live up to, given the popularity of its predecessors. The home city concept adds a new twist, making the game slightly more interested than it had been before. If you’re a fan of historical RTS games, then you’ve probably already picked this up, but if you’ve been on the fence about whether or not to make a purchase, Age of Empires III absolutely deserves a spot on your desktop.
