Age of Empires III

aka: Age of Empires 3, AoE III, AoE3, Rocket
Moby ID: 20055
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Age of Empires III is the third installment in the series of real-time strategy games. The main idea of the gameplay remains unchanged: with the limited amount of resources and a handful of settlers, you must think about the expansion of your colony. Besides the strong economic thread, you should also think about the development of your army. Like in the previous games your people start in an early part of humanity's history and progress to new ages (up to the industrial age) with better weapons and other possibilities.

The game offers you a complex single-player campaign that is divided into 24 missions and three acts. You take the role of Morgan Black and his family which struggle against a mysterious European cult. You can also challenge yourself in the multiplayer mode where you can command one of the eight European powers (from French to Russian). A new addition to the game mechanics is the home city in Europe which regularly sends supplies or military reinforcements. It is persistent and after multiplayer successes you gain the ability to upgrade it through a tech tree.

Spellings

  • 世紀帝國3 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 帝国时代III - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

239 People (212 developers, 27 thanks) · View all

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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 83% (based on 92 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 91 ratings with 5 reviews)

The best RTS since WarCraft II

The Good
The graphics are colorful and varied, animations uniformly excellent, sound effects wonderful -- especially the female German villagers, and the cannons firing in quick succession. Multiplayer is really where this game shines.

The gameplay is extremely well-crafted and well-balanced. There's eight different nations, from the English, who breed like rabbits, to the Dutch, who accumulate vast wealth thanks to their bankers. All the nations are distinct from one another, and there's all sorts of play styles for different personalities. The Russians are for unpredictable wildcats, the Ottomans are for those who prefer blitzkrieg, and the Germans allow you to hire great numbers of powerful mercenaries. Of course if you want to hire ronin (masterless samurai) you'll have to go with Portugal.

One last thing: AoE3 uses the Havok physics middleware package, so when you blast apart a windmill you'll see individual beams of wood go flying. This also applies to humans: fire at a crowd of pikemen, and they'll be airbound in a no time. It's a very nice touch to this already spectacular game.

The Bad
Single-player's only really value is to prepare you for multiplayer, and it doesn't do a very good job at that. Anyone who takes this game semi-seriously will make mincemeat out of you if your only experience is against the computer.

The storyline is instantly forgettable, but no worries, the developers surely developed this game with one thing in mind: massive multiplayer matches.

The Bottom Line
Pretty well a flawless game. Fortunately for me, I didn't waste my time on the previous installments of the Age of Empire series, nor any RTS since Warcraft 2, so when people tell you that AoE3 adds nothing new to the genre, they are both lying (Home Cities, for example) and suffering myopia from being too close to the genre. If you haven't played an RTS this is where you begin.

Windows · by Chris Wright (85) · 2007

Show me an AOE fan that actually likes AOE 3? I didn't think so.

The Good
Hmm...probably difficult to make a game better than Age of Empires 2...oh wait...they did. It's called Age of Mythology. So I wonder what happened in "THIS" Age of Empires?

Anyway, I've asked around most of me buddies about their experiences with Age of Empires 3 and comparing it with my own. Let me tell you, just mentioning the name put a frown on ones face.

But before I drop the bomb, a brief head-up on the changes to AOE 3.

Yep, they changed 50% of the gameplay. Though I do admit, it is quite creative on some ends. The most noticeable change unit creation and age advancement. You don't build units, you order them from the motherland. So you've got this first main map where the standard game, and you have the motherland screen which...uh doesn't do anything really. Age advancement is an interesting twist, you get to choose what kind of "style" of advancement you want, represented by founding fathers. You advance an age, you can choose 1 out of 2 founding fathers per age. Each gives you a different additional bonus. Plus you get native American Indian allies...though there doesn't seem to be any technology advance for Indian genocide though.

Other that that, the game is somewhat the same...somewhat.

But probably the best thing I like from Microsoft games...(unlike their operating system), haven't found one single dang bug! Yipee!

The Bad
Don't we just love the bad. But firstly, do you know how overrated this game is? Checkout all those idiot commercial reviews, can't seem to find any commercial website that bad mouths this game...yep, in the end it always leads to player reviews.

Point of clarrification...the game isn't bad. Its very playable. But again, since its called Age of Empires III and the blokes who are most likely to play it are the fans of the previous AOE, you HAVE to compare it with the greatness of AOE I and II. And when you compare it, what do you get? Another total disaster. Here we go...

Graphically mediocre. For 3D graphics, I would expect something new...sheesh, Age of Mythology had a better impact the first time around when I first played it. This game is graphically ho-hum.

Unit limitation is probably one of the most irritation features. There are some units you just can't build, you can order only so many times from the motherland. Another irritating feature is the limited number of towers. Dang, I used to have like 20 or more towers in AOE 2, and that was minimal. Now your forced with 5 or so towers...can't build more.

Naval combat is somewhat improved, unfortunately the game suddenly becomes very slow when a ship sinks. I have to move my screen out of view of the sinking ship to have the game run smoothly again.

But for me personally, the most major let down isn't the gameplay. It's the story. In AOE I and II, they did a hell of a job teaching you history through a semi-fiction story. In this game, its practically all fiction. I didn't learn any new historical facts, just a bunch of knights following a stupid myth to the Americas...in addition to some Saracen knights also stuck there (since when did Arabs go to the Americas during the crusades?). Really...

The Bottom Line
Well, if your AOE fan...avoid this game at all costs! If your not, its a good strategy game.

In my book, Age of Mythology is AOE 3.

Windows · by Indra was here (20756) · 2005

Nothing new under the sun

The Good
It's almost identical to Age of Empires II, which should be something good, because that was a great game.

Nice gameplay, very nice graphics, nice music.

The Bad
It's almost identical to Age of Empires II, which is really sad, because the game feels like an expansion pack.

Same gameplay, same mechanics, same music.

The Bottom Line
The third edition of Age of Empires sticks religiously to its winning formula, in detriment of creativity and innovation.

There's a common phenomenon taking place these days, regarding the creative path game developers are supposed to follow ... or not follow at all.

The first example of how a mercantilistic approach, biased and conditioned by marketing charts and sales numbers can put the entire game industry at a stall is Half-Life 2. After seven years of long wait, Gordon Freeman came back to defend his crown in the sequel to the "best videogame ever" with nothing more than ... better graphics. Not an ounce of creativity, not a twist in the plot, not even new weapons. Absolutely nothing but state of the art rendering and lightning. What was the result? A lenient, inaccurate and deceptive battery of reviews, serving buyers a mediocre game in a silver platter.

The second example packs a number of titles, including the the latest of the NBA Live series, Football Manager series, Battlefield 2, The Sims 2, Unreal Tournament, etc. The common denominator? Better graphics as the main and only added value. The result? Great sales at the expense of creative stagnation.

Not every game should "reinvent itself" each and every year, but most of these games seem nothing like very good graphical patches for the prior version. That's all. The code remains almost intact, ideas are still nowhere to be found and innovation is just "commercially too risky".

Many of these games i speak of wouldn't even be on the map if it wasn't because someone took a little leap of faith and tried something more or less new. Now that they're in the comfort zone ... why fix it if it keeps selling well?

Expect nothing else from Age of Empires III that you haven't seen in Age of Empires II. I commend the people who worked on those very nice graphics, but i'm utterly disappointed at the rest of the people at Ensemble Studios for delivering nothing more than a campaign patch, with some new levels to play.

After SIX years, one would have expected a little more than just revamped new levels.

Windows · by Sebastian Cardoso (48) · 2007

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Engine

Age of Empires III uses a modified version of the Age of Mythology engine.

Physics engine

The Windows version uses the Havok physics engine. Few modern Mac titles use it because of its licensing fee. MacSoft gutted Havok from the game and substituted it with a significantly less expensive technology called PhysX, developed by AGEIA for its Mac port.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2005 – #5 PC Game of the Year
    • 2005 – PC RTS of the Year
    • 2005 – Best Graphics of the Year (PC)
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • 2006 - Best PC Strategy Game in 2005 (Readers' Voting)
  • Golden Joystick Awards
    • 2006 - Online Game of the Year
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 04/2006 - #1 Strategy Game in 2005 (Readers' Vote)
    • Issue 02/2006 - #3 Strategy Game in 2005
  • Puget Sound Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication
    • Early January 2007 - Distinguished Award for Technical Writing and Editing (for the manual and quick reference card)

Information also contributed by Scaryfun and Sciere.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by UV.

Macintosh added by Jeanne.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Silverblade, Maw, Zeppin, Litude, Paulus18950, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, piltdown_man, Flapco.

Game added November 16, 2005. Last modified March 6, 2024.