Price : $39.99
I grew up with Age of Empires and have played every game in the series to death. I remember standing in a long line in the cold to pick up a Boxing Day special for AoE3 at Future Shop and then spending more than what I saved taking my parents out for breakfast as bribery payment for getting me there at an ungodly hour and then waiting for the store to open. It provided me with years of quality entertainment so I think it was a good investment. I achieved the rank of Major (above average) in the online competitive ranking system but had to let it go when more important life issues came up and haven't been able to justify the time commitment to play competitively since.
For those who have never heard of the series, Age of Empires 3 is a real time strategy game set within 1500 - 1800 in "The New World" (North / South America). The original AoE3 allows you to choose between 1 of 8 different civilizations while the War Chiefs expansion adds 3 more and the Asian Dynasties adds another 3. Each civilization has unique strengths and weaknesses that will greatly affect how you play the game but the basic gist of it is "gather resources from the map, build up a base to create military units and then use your military to burn down everyone else's bases and kill all their people." That is every RTS in a nutshell but Age of Empires 3 has a few things that make it stand out as an RTS title.
The first is an Age of Empires hallmark, being able to advance through the ages. An 'Age' in Age of Empires represents a significant advancement in history and technology. There are five ages (Discovery, Colonial, Fortress, Industrial, Imperial) Someone in the 'Colonial Age' can build basic military units and research basic upgrades while another player in the 'Fortress Age' will have everything from the Colonial Age plus advanced and specialized unites, new buildings, and better upgrades available to them. Each age builds upon and improves the units, buildings, and upgrades presented in the ages previous. Advancing to a new age is an expensive and time consuming move to make, and knowing when to make it is key to victory.
The second is a unique 'card' system whereby you can build a deck of shipments to send from your home city to your settlement in game. As you earn XP by exploring, building, and fighting you will earn the ability to send these shipments. The cards (shipments) in your deck can be anything from a squad of military units, extra villagers, unique technologies, extra resources, permanent unit buffs, or free buildings. There are different tiers of cards that correspond to the different ages; so a Colonial card can be sent once you reach the Colonial Age but a Fortress card can only be sent once you reach the Fortress Age. The higher the card tier the more potent / valuable the effects (usually). This ensures a wide variety of strategic options are available to you and so you can build as many decks as you have strategies to try out.
Here are some basic strategies to give you an idea how this works:
An aggressive 'hit them hard right from the start' strategy will rush to the Colonial Age and use military shipment cards combined with all the units you could build in the meantime to give you a formidable and quite possibly game winning force at the 5 minute mark at the expense of your economy.
A counter-strategy for this would be to send free guard tower buildings and crossbow units in addition to what you were able to build before your enemy attacks. (Crossbows are the early cost effective counter to building destroying spearmen)
Alternatively you could linger in the Discovery Age before advancing to build up your economy, send food and gold cards when you reach the Colonial Age, and jump straight into the Fortress Age to get elite military units and cannons while everyone else is still mucking about with spearmen and crossbows.
Your civilization bonuses, the map, and which civilization you're playing against are all factors to consider when deciding which strategy to implement. You can have as many decks as you like but you can only choose one to ship from when you claim your first shipment.
Age of Empires 3 features a strong "rock / paper / scissors / lizard / Spock" approach where everything is good against something else but can be countered by a different unit or strategy. Musketeers are a tough all-round balanced unit with a melee bonus when engaging cavalry but get torn to shreds by skirmishers and cannons. Skirmishers get a damage multiplier bonus against heavy infantry (muskets, spearmen) but will quickly fall to a hussar's saber or be blown away by a cannon ball. Cavalry will demolish artillery and light infantry but need to watch out for pikes, spears, and ranged cavalry which have significant damage multiplier bonuses against them. Add to that basic structure all of the unique units that come with which civilization you choose, the unique units that come with allying with indigenous peoples, and which cards you play / upgrades researched and you have yourself a very complex game of attack, counter attack, and counter-counter attack.
Knowing what counters what is essential when it comes time to engage your foe's military. "But isn't that all the time?" you may ask. No. Another key element of a good RTS is importance of raiding and harassing your enemies before going toe to toe with them directly. Killing enemy gatherers means they can't get as many resources which means they can't produce things as fast which means when it comes time to crush them they will not be able to resist you. Denying a gold mine or huntable animal herds early in the game will force your opponent to improvise or fold as you keep up the pressure and slowly strangle them for resources. Of course even here you have to be careful not to allow your enemy to kill your raiders or allow an opening into your own vulnerable economy.
Where AoE3 mixes things up a bit is that there are treasures scattered throughout the map that your explorer can claim and specific locations along pre-determined trade routes and indigenous villages where you can build trade posts that net you new bonuses or abilities. The treasures can range from free resources to free units to permanent buffs for your explorer and can shave precious seconds and sometimes minutes off a strategy if collected. They are guarded though, so you will have to weigh the risk / reward ratio. Your explorer has a massive damage multiplier against treasure guardians and a 'snipe' ability that will kill a single treasure guardian in one shot but it has a long recharge time. Depending on your Civ and the cards you send you may be able to rack up a lot of treasures to give you an early game advantage. (Spain is a natural treasure collector)
The trade posts cost a heft 250 - 200 wood to build but if placed on a trade route will produce bursts of XP to speed up your shipments. Upgrading the trade route at any trade depot along that route (even if you are not the one to do the upgrade) will speed up the bursts of XP and allow you to get bursts of a chosen resource instead of XP. Placing a trade post at an indigenous village will allow you to train their warriors and unlock special technologies that would otherwise be unavailable to you. Some cards can be used to specifically enhance or get free indigenous units. Depending on the map you the indigenous units can be your key to an early victory! Even late game they can provide an edge over your opponent.
Great Plains : A large wide open map with plenty of bison but few trees and scattered gold deposits. An ideal map for raiding. One long trade route that runs down one side of the map with Lakota and Comanche villages (melee and ranged mounted warriors with cavalry tech).
Yukon : A winter map split by a river with crossings on the top and bottom. On the right side are all the players with a trade route along the river and on the other side are valuable treasures, plentiful resources, and Cree and Nookta villages (powerful sniper and powerful building destroyer / cavalry killer)
Amazonia : A tropical map cut down the middle by a large river well stocked with fish with players taking positions on opposite sides. One side has a trade route with three nodes while the other side has three villages that could be Carib, Inca, or Zapotec. Claiming the river is essential for victory.
How does it compare to Blizzard's genre defining StarCraft 2? I would say that the RTS formula isn't as refined or as well packaged as SC2. Managing four resources (food, wood, gold, XP) at various points around the map as opposed to managing 2 resources that come gift-wrapped as part of natural base expansions means that you have more things to be aware of and divide your attention. There are a lot more options and possibilities in AoE3 (civ bonuses, cards, unique units, more techs, raiding) which, on the one hand give the game tactical and strategic breadth while on the other hand make it a bit unwieldy to play by comparison. AoE3 does not have the sort of 'micro' game that SC2 has. Your military units (with the exception of your explorer) do not have any special abilities, just raw attacks with varying damage multipliers according to who is attacking what. While 'micro' in SC2 is a professional skill in and of itself that can change the entire outcome of a game the 'micro' in AoE3 is still important but more simplistic and not quite as game changing.
SC2 hits the sweet spot between simplicity, depth, and what I'll call 'potency'. Three very unique and diverse factions (Terran, Zerg, Protoss) with 15-18 unique and diverse units each has been the foundation of a lean mean and powerful RTS engine that is currently driving International E-Sports. AoE3 is not as simple and its depth is in different locations. 13 different (but often overlapping) civs with dozens of units or variations of base units shared between them feels 'muddy' when compared to SC2's 'clarity.' The end result is that AoE3's RTS engine isn't as 'potent', as in, AoE3 struggled to become an E-Sport and has never really been mainstream while SC2 defines both E-Sports and mainstream gaming.
Personally, I love AoE3. I love all the choices, I love the overlap, and while the engine is older and isn't as refined or well packaged it still runs great.
The expansions (The War Chiefs + The Asian Dynasties) added a few things to original AoE3 to mix it up a bit. The three Native American civs added (Iroquois, Sioux, Aztec) are *very* different from the European civs from the original using a completely different building, units, and card set with 'big button' technologies that get stronger the longer you wait before using them, reusable cards, and dance circles that allow you to pick an buff (free XP, stronger units, everything trains faster, etc) and become more potent the more villagers go to dance there (up to 25). The Asian civilizations (China, Japan, India) are also suitably different from the European civs utilizing, another completely different building, units, and card set with wonders that give buffs while standing, and the ability to recruit powerful mercenaries by offering a small percentage of all items gathered in exchange.
Deck sizes were increased from 20 to 25 with adjustments made to existing civs to balance things out. Spies and Mercs can be hired from a saloon building instead of only being available through card shipments. Europeans Civs can declare independence instead of advancing to the Industrial Age which turns all of their villagers into colonial militia and they can build powerful colonial units and a powerful new colonial deck but can no longer gather resources. The new 'trade monopoly' victory condition and timed 'treaty mode' (no attacking for X minutes after start) were added.
The original game and expansions each have their own campaigns which are 'ok'. Definitely not the caliber of storytelling you'd get from a Blizzard title, but still alright. The original campaign recounts the connected story lines of a family of explorers and adventurers in The New World. I played through them all a few times and to be honest I only really remember about 5% of what happened beyond just blowing up the bad guys and feeling satisfied with that.
AoE3 is a solid and sometimes complex RTS with a lot of depth to explore. I don't know what the online community is like right now but it is still a $40 game so I suspect the community is alive and well. The game is great for LAN parties and has been integrated into STEAM which makes finding other players easier. If you're into RTS (or would like to be) then keep an eye out for this title.
No comments:
Post a Comment