Review: Age of Empires III

[Shockeye]

Paelos makes friends with the natives and gets his buckles shined.

[Hoax]

Might want to touch on the whole home city feature, having never played an AoE game I tried to ask some online buddies what made it better then either:

Total Annihilation
or
The Myth series

The only good answer that was come up with was that there was this persistant home city feature that nobody could really explain too well.

[Paelos]

It's impossible to put the whole idea into words, but I'll explain it like this:

Imagine your city as a character in an RPG that you create. You name this city, you name it's lead explorer. This city then exists outside your normal matches. In matches, you earn experience for doing things like killing enemies, gathering resources, finding treasures, making advancements, building buildings, destroying things, etc. This experience is tied to two things. In the match itself you see a bar next to your countries flag and a number. As the experience builds and the bar gets full, it adds a shipment to your match. The shipments come from your home city.

Now, experience also works to level up your home city. With each level, you have the ability to open up different and better shipments you can use in your matches. For example, you can get a shipment of free troops, or free buildings, or upgrades to your buildings, or resources. All these are free and based on the experience bar you see in your match. So to use something in a match, you first need to unlock it in your home city.

-Experience earns levels for your home city
-Levels unlock shipment options in your home city
-Experience in the match earns shipments
-Shipments that you've unlocked can be sent in matches
-The higher your home city level, the more shipments and better shipments you can send

[Margalis]

Wait, so you can have the leg up on other players by catassing? Am I understanding right?

[Fabricated]

Wait, so you can have the leg up on other players by catassing? Am I understanding right?

From what I've played of it I don't think so. Shipments can be helpful, but you can keep your opponents from getting lots of shipments by keeping them from gathering resources and keeping them from building trade posts.

[Paelos]

Wait, so you can have the leg up on other players by catassing? Am I understanding right?

The way multiplayer games are ranked, no. You don't see a lvl 25 city player against a level 5. That would be pretty bad because the 25 player could summon troops early and rush you to death. In reality it just adds a new dynamic to games. About the biggest span you'll see is 10 lvls.

[Hoax]

It is kind of cool but I dread to think of the potential balance issues, nice review now that you have added that information 

[Sky]

When will devs learn that old people play games, too? Pause and issue orders isn't optional. Multiplayer RTS? Hah. Maybe if I join up HA and slam some crank. Goddamned kids.

The shiny looked nice, though, wish Civ4 got that treatment.

[Paelos]

The shiny graphics features they added are fantastic. The building and unit battle physics are something I've never seen before in the genre, and it's a welcome change. Also, as a side note, water looks real in this game. I don't know how they did it, but it's very cool.

[Pococurante]

The shiny looked nice, though, wish Civ4 got that treatment.

Me too but I was surprised by the number of my friends who are pissed Civ4 has 3D.  But then they'd be just as happy with a burlap dropcloth felt-tipped into hexes so I ignore them... :)

[UD_Delt]

I've been playing AOE3 for about 2 weeks now. I'm mainly into the multiplayer games. I got into the original AoE when I was in college and become fairly competitive. I came 3 matches away from winning the tourny they had at the release of the rise to rome expansion for a free trip to rome. Once I graduated though I just didn't have the time (or the free T1 connection) so I only briefly played AoE2 and didn't get too far into the multiplayer there.

Multiplayer in AOE3 is a mixed bag so far. The biggest problem is that all of the maps are fairly small. They didn't include the option to use the huge maps I remembered. This means the mp games are very much about rushing. That takes a lot of the fun out of it for me as I prefer the booming style (fast advance, huge city, lots of villagers, pump out advanced units, then win). But if I'm trying to boom and I get rushed I'm basically dead which forces me into rush mode myself as it's nearly impossible to defend against a good rush right now without a counter rush. Unless you are good at micro management then it's possible to defend but I'm just not fast enough yet to individually control 10 troops while still keeping my econ pumping.

That also brings up the problems with certain civilizations. Some are more geared toward rushing and some are geared toward booming. The booming civs don't stand a chance in multiplayer. To give you an idea I have an 80% win percentage with ottoman (rush civ) and only a 35% win percentage with portuguese (booming civ).

Right now to be honest Ottoman civilization is too overpowered when it comes to rushing. It makes the game not even fun as once you know the strat it's impossible to defend against. Ottoman's bonus is that villagers have no cost. They are made slightly slower and until you research a couple tech's you can only have a max of 25. But that 25 is more than enough to win the game before it even really starts.

Here's the strat:
To start you have 6 vills. 5 on food and 1 builds 2 houses then moves to food. First 4 built on food. next 2 on gold. Send your explorer out to find the enemy and as soon as he does build a trading post at the nearest native america camp. Advance to age 2. after 12 vills. As soon as you advance pull 6 off of food and put em to coin. Pull 2 more off food and put em to wood. You should hit age 2 right around the 4-5 minute mark. The next villl put to wood and the rest to food.

As soon as you advance hit the trading post and pump out 5 indian units. Use these to harass the enemies villagers. You don't need to really kill anything just keep em moving and make it hard for him to harvest. Keep these 5 hit and running for the next few minutes.

Build a barracks as soon as you have enough wood and start pumping janissaries. At the same time you should have use the next card in Age 2 to get the 6 janissary shipment. Within a few more minutes you should have about 15 janissaries ready to roll into the persons town. Hit em hard and take out as many vills this time as you can.

Your econ is still pumping so while hitting them hard keep pumping the Jan's, hit age 3, drop an artillery and start making Abus guns. Take the next batch of Abus guns and Jannissaries in for the killing blow.

Most of the time if you use this strat he won't last past the first Janissary rush and it will be over around 15-20 minutes.

After a few tries using this I got bored. Its just too easy once you do it the first couple times and it's really hard to defend against with any non-ottoman civ (other than maybe French). Since then I've been trying to figure out how to defend with Portuguese long enough to leap someone who does an ottoman rush but so far I'm having no luck.

[Hoax]

/\
This is why Myth is still the only RTS that actually deserves the S, no offense to you I find these kinds of posts quite interesting just a problem I have with the way RTS inevitably works at the higher levels of competition.

[UD_Delt]

I agree but to be honest I expect the ottoman's will be nerfed in a future patch because of the strength of the rush.

It does really take the strategy out and make the game a bunch of people executing the best strategy and the winner is simply the most efficient with their mouse clicks.

[schild]

It does really take the strategy out and make the game a bunch of people executing the best strategy and the winner is simply the most efficient with their mouse clicks.

A hojillion number of Starcraft fans DISAGREE.

[StGabe]

Getting home city levels only gives you subtle advantages.  Also, with your levels you can personalize your city by building new buildings, adding new characters, etc.

I like the system a lot.  You get to create a "deck" of 20 shipments.  You still get shipments from in-game actions and at the same rate, no matter what your home city level, but the higher your level the more shipments you can choose from when creating your "deck" (and at higher levels you get slightly better shipments).  At most having a higher home city might let you ship in say 3 settlers instead of 2 or somesuch.  Nice but not hugely game-breaking.

The Ottoman strategy is a pain.  Although I"ve heard claims that it is beatable at higher levels of play.  But that's a balance issue that will hopefully be worked through.  Balancing a game like that is hard, but I don't think this one is so crazy that it can't be balanced.

That said, apart from the home shipments there isn't a ton of stuff that makes the game that much better than past AoE's.  I enjoyed more of the same with a twist but it's not an amazing leap forward.  I didn't even really care for the graphics that much.  The next Rise of Nations (Rise of Legends): now that looks like some sweet RTS action.

[Hoax]

Wake me up for Supreme Commander, or MythIII whatever comes first...  Actually I'll buy Dawn of War once its bundled and cheap because I love the WH40k universe.

[Paelos]

IMO RTS games need to work out an anti-rush multiplayer format. Like having certain uncrossable boundaries set up that don't clear for 15 minutes. I hate it when people say "rushing" is a strategy. It's not a strategy, it's the LCD of RTS gaming.

[Murgos]

I agree but to be honest I expect the ottoman's will be nerfed in a future patch because of the strength of the rush.

Paris hopes they patch this in soon...

[Fabricated]

It does really take the strategy out and make the game a bunch of people executing the best strategy and the winner is simply the most efficient with their mouse clicks.

A hojillion number of Starcraft fans DISAGREE.

They're all Koreans, who cares?

[Margalis]

Rushing is a real strategy. The way to balance is just to make starting game base defenses stronger than starting game offenses. There is a downside to rushing - if you rush and are repelled you lose a lot of ground to an opponent that is teching up.

Delaying attacks for 5 minutes would just mean that in those 5 minutes everyone goes through their practiced build orders robotically. In the end RTS games are mostly about honing a very efficient and streamlined build order and executing it, at least in the early game. So now instead of the perfect build order being hatchery, spawning pool, 6 zerglings it because hatchery, spawning pool, second hatchery, 10 hydralisks or something like that.

[Xilren's Twin]

In the end RTS games are mostly about honing a very efficient and streamlined build order and executing it, at least in the early game. So now instead of the perfect build order being hatchery, spawning pool, 6 zerglings it because hatchery, spawning pool, second hatchery, 10 hydralisks or something like that.

This is the primary reason I'm not a RTS fan.  The "strategy" part all seems to take place outside the game.  Seems very similar to the madness that is MtG Standard environment; a few people put together the most efficent deck builds and them any clown can copy it off the net and use it.  Sure, player skill counts some, but not nearly enough....

One other question; I haven't kept up with RTS's since Warcraft1.  Is the any randomness to the games that makes people significantly adjust their "strategy" on the fly, or it is always a matter of "ok, enemy is French, execute perfect build order Omega 6!" no matter that maps or the players?

Xilren

[Sky]

That's the problem with multiplayer in just about every single genre.

You just want to play some nice backyard football and Ray Lewis shows up to stomp you into pulp.

[Megrim]

Having played Star at a moderately reasonable level, i'd like to point out that anyone complaning about rushing is a caker.

 :-D

 - meg

[stray]

I think we had an argument about this before, sparked off by Dawn of War (which I have since changed my opinion on a bit). I said that RTS's do, in fact, have plenty of strategy. What they lack is any real tactical nuances (Unless you consider interface efficiency and/or "fast clicking" to be tactics....But I'm just talking about dynamics within a game itself).

RTS's let you plan out a general overall strategy at first, I think, but after that, it just becomes a game of "Simon".....Which can be fun on some level....But it has fuckall to do with what a strategy game should be about.

[Hoax]

Which is why I made the crack about MythIII and Supreme Commander.

Total Annihilation suffered from rushes, on some maps but they weren't nearly as devestating as in a game like SC.  Once you made it past the rush phase the game quickly became much more interesting.  With so many unit types the amount of strategies become astronomical.  Add to the that the much more varied maps, the odd resource placements and the galatic war which game meaning and persistance to your multiplayer games and its the only traditional RTS that holds up when you play it at the higher levels of competition.

Myth had no resource collection or unit/base building.  It was all strategy, and it had lots of blood.  I loved that game, really Bungie should be making the Gamesworkshop game, figure out some way to tie Myth combat into some kind of MMO persistance world interface with some type of general character customization, item selection and whatnot.

[UD_Delt]

Well as a good sign the Ottoman rush is no longer the huge concern it used to be. It's still a BIG problem for new players but for anyone who figures  out how to counter it they will almost always beat the Ottoman's in the third age. Countering does involve being able to micromanage your troops effectively. Since the Ottoman troops are slightly slower you can use just a few crossbowmen to hit and run and take them all down without much harm to your troops. Takes a good bit of practice but once you get it down you won't lose to Ottoman anymore.

The new tough civ to beat is French. They also have a good rush but defending their rush isn't as crippling to them as it is to Ottoman. But it does take a good player to put together an effective French rush and it takes an even better player to counter it.

The big difference is that a failed Ottoman rush cripples them just by failing the rush. Once they spend the resources on the rush it will take them much to long to get to the 3rd age so you can leap over them and then take them down quickly in age 3. The French on the other hand keep flowing nicely even after a rush as their rush is weaker but econ is better. To really counter a good French rush you have to first defend the rush then be able to immediately counter attack and take out a good few of their villagers to cripple them.

To me that's a good sign as the game is evolving strategies are changing and new civs are emerging as the most powerful flavor of the month.