Amazon.com: Age of Empires III: PC: Video Games

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It's the dawn of a new age in real-time strategy (RTS) games. A brave New World is rising--a hostile yet beautiful world, filled with innovative gameplay, new strategic scenarios, eye-searing graphics and much more. Welcome to a world called Age of Empires III.

Campaign
In this action adventure tale of historical fiction, players take on the role of Morgan Black and his family, struggling against the hostile wilderness and a mysterious cult that's crept in from Europe.

In a series of 24 scenarios divided into three acts, Morgan Black and his descendants help the Aztecs resist conquest by Spanish conquistadors, pit the French against the British in the French and Indian War and help Simon Bolivar lead revolutions in South America.

Multiplayer
Whether you're searching for a quick game or hoping to talk strategy with friends online, Age of Empires III's Multiplayer site is your community destination.

Here, you can play with persistent Home Cities that gain power and strategic options the more games you play, compete for a spot on dozens of ladders, help organize your clan or chat after a game -- all without leaving the multiplayer portal.

Fans of Age of Mythology's Quick Search can still look for games swiftly, while players looking for something specific can browse game lists to find the set of options that matches their tastes.

New Feature--Home Cities
This revolutionary new feature to the RTS landscape is incorporated into all aspects of Age of Empires III -- from Campaign to Multiplayer -- and is unlike anything you've experienced before.

Much like the persistent character from a role-playing game that encourages you to keep playing, your Home City is an important support system to your efforts in the New World. During a game, your Home City can regularly send you supplies or military reinforcements.

You are the leader of your colony, but your success brings glory back to Mother Europe. The more games you play, and the better you do, the more powerful your Home City will become. Every few games, you gain the ability to both upgrade and customize your Home City:

Upgrade your city by unlocking new types of soldiers or buildings, or improving those you already have.
Broaden your tech tree in whatever direction most fits your play style--invest in warships, native alliances, cavalry, artillery or economy.
Customize your Home City by changing the appearance of buildings, the weather or even the types of people who walk, work and perform in its streets.
Throughout a game, as well as in between games, you can visit your Home City to watch its citizens go about their lives, get an opinion on how you're doing, plot your next move or just marvel at the beautiful sunset.

Full 3-D Graphics, Destructible Environments and More
We first set out to reproduce the rich detail of Age of Empires II: Age of Kings. As we strove to make the fascinating Age of Empires III time period come alive, that goal quickly evolved: We at Ensemble Studios wanted to create the best-looking game ever. From the stunning water effects to the hundreds of units battling on-screen, you'll feel like you're a part of the action in the New World.

Tone mapping--This photo imaging technique balances the colors in a scene on the fly. The end result is a rich, warm game where bright colors are vibrantly rendered alongside darker counterparts, such as shadows.
Lighting and shadows--The sun is always shining in Age of Empires, so it's important that lighting and shadows be an awe-inspiring experience. Units and buildings cast shadows according to a real sun position, and even cast shadows on each other. High Dynamic Range rendering allows us to represent the shiny glints of sunlight that bounce off highly reflective surfaces.
Bump and specular mapping--Water glistens like water. Metal shines like metal. These advanced techniques serve to provide an extra level of rendering detail heretofore unseen in real-time strategy (RTS) gaming.
Water--We felt that portraying stunning, realistic water effects in the game was so important that we devoted a programmer to it full-time. You'll find the water rich with details like foam near the shore, accurately modeled water motion, flotsam in rivers and realistic water colors. Plus, reflections change with the viewing angle, the angle of sunlight and the motion of the water. The overall effect is breathtaking.
Cliffs and Riverbeds--Instead of just stretching terrain, we built a system to attach geometry to the terrain map to allow for realistic overhangs and steep cliffs, from areas like the American Southwest. This effect is supported on random maps too.

Civilizations

British Quick access to Settlers gives the British one of the strongest economies in the game. The ability to upgrade two key units -- the Musketeer and Hussar -- make the British military formidable in the late game. The British Home City emphasizes improvements to technology and naval warfare.	Dutch Although Dutch Settlers are limited and costly, their civilization makes up for this economic disadvantage by building Banks and generating coin automatically. The Dutch Home City emphasizes upgrades to defense and economy.
French Although the French economy starts slowly, the Coureur unit, a Villager with strong fighting skills, makes the French difficult to attack early. The French also have the strongest cavalry unit in the game -- the Cuirassier. Plus, the French are experts at allying with the Native Americans.	German The Germans have fewer Settlers and therefore a slower economy. Fortunately, both the Settler Wagon and Uhlan cavalry spawn for free from the German Town Center. Plus, the Germans start with the ability to send Mercenaries from their Home City (long before other civilizations can).
Native American European civilizations can learn new technologies and gain troops by forging alliances with the Native Americans. A British player who allies with the Iroquois is essentially playing as two civilizations: the British and the Iroquois.	Ottoman For the Ottomans, Settlers spawn automatically from the Town Center. Building a Mosque and conducting research help keep that Settler production steady. Befitting their position straddling Europe and Asia, the Ottomans have more unique units than any other civilization.
Portuguese Starting the game with two Town Centers, the Portuguese can quickly produce Settlers, control territory or support their allies. The Spyglass ability allows the Portuguese to easily spy on the enemy. The Portuguese also have a strong navy, strong light infantry and the best Dragoons in the game.	Russian Starting the game with extra resources but fewer Settlers gives the Russians the flexibility of focusing on economy or an early raid. Russian infantry, individually weak, are trained in blocks at a faster rate, providing the Russians with the opportunity to overwhelm their enemy with greater numbers.
Spanish The Spanish have a strong military, with both hand infantry and cavalry. Flexibility in early shipments from the Home City give the Spanish the option to attack early or set up for a strong, late economy. Spanish Home City improvements benefit soldiers, buildings and naval units.

Combat
Age of Empires III gives players an amazing amount of control over their side of the battlefield.

More to command -- Not only are you in command of large and diverse armies of infantry, cavalry and artillery, but also Native American warriors, mercenaries and tall ships.
Multiple formations -- You can assign different formations to your army for different strengths and weaknesses, or have the game automatically choose the most appropriate formation. Examples include:

Volley -- ranged infantry, like musketeers, take turns firing at enemies ahead of them.
Charge -- your soldiers walk, then run into combat. Cavalry wield sabers, and musketeers fix bayonets. This formation does tremendous damage but makes your soldiers more prone to injury.
Bombard -- your soldiers protect the cannons, while the cannons shell enemy ranks. Available only when you have artillery in your army.
Battles are easier to follow -- You can still command individual units. But when the units fight in formation, you'll be able to tell exactly who is winning the fight.

Real-time physics -- Infantry struck by cannon fire will be thrown like rag dolls, perhaps even over a cliff and into the water. Cannonballs bounce and ricochet.
Detailed destructions -- Shingles, shutters and whole towers may fly off a building and interact with the terrain, such as crashing into nearby water. This next generation effect is done on the fly so that each building always has a unique destruction, no matter how many times you see it.
Unique animations -- With hundreds of unique combat animations, you'll never see the same battle twice.

Product Description

This newest version of the Age of Empires, Age of Empires III places you in the age of exploration and conquest roughly 1500-1850. You're now a European power, and it is your task to explore, colonize, and conquer North and South America.

Main Features

Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation

Manufacturer Part Number: G10-00025

Manufacturer Website Address: www.microsoft.com

Software Sub Type: Strategy Game

Software Name: Age of Empires III - Complete Product

Features & Benefits:

Engage in epic strategic battles:

You control the action as you experience a new level of exciting combat with realistic effects. You will engage in battle with blades, gunpowder, or both

Develop and strengthen a unique, customized Home City:

The Home City represents your capital back in Europe and plays a supporting role in your attempt to control the New World.

Explore a vibrant New World:

Take advantage of colonial era elements, perhaps establishing alliances with Native Americans, finding new resources in the Amazon rain forest, and more.

Experience stunning graphics:

Witness new lighting effects and shadows while immersed in a world that feels bright and sunny, yet which has a softness and depth that is revolutionary to PC games.

Discover culturally diverse civilizations:

Play as the British and have a stellar economy, play as the French and easily ally with Native Americans, or play as the Spanish and have more support from your home country in Europe.

Game Rating: T - (Teen) - (13+) - Blood,Violence

Language Support: English

Platform Support: PC

License Type: Complete Product

License Pricing: Standard

License Quantity: 1 User

235 Reviews

5 star:		(80)
4 star:		(56)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(32)
1 star:		(33)

Average Customer Review

3.5 out of 5 stars (235 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

315 of 338 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A successful installment in the Age of Empires Saga, October 18, 2005

By	JD (Provo, Utah USA) - See all my reviews

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

When I sat down with Age of Empires 3 I was hoping for a little more - something new and refreshingly different (ala the Lord of the Rings RTS for example). There is a new feature, the Home City. The rest of Age of Empires 3 is the same as the previous games at heart, with some new makeup and some new units. Don't get me wrong, this new Age of Empires installment is fun and just as addictive as its predecessors, but also feels tired at the same time. If you still enjoy the previous Age of Empires games, you will likely enjoy this one equally.

It has been some time since I played the previous Age of Empires 2 but I remembered a simple, relatively clean interface. In Age of Empires 3 I was a little taken aback by the clutter of information, and juggling Home City shipments (and Deck Building) with what was happening on screen requires a lot of micro-management.

This new installment has some great civilizations and in this regard, the units are new and refreshing. In an Age of exploration and the shift from archeic weapons to gunpowder, you have a variety of new units, and a few units that are unique to each civilization to help set them apart. In addition each civilization has its own unique advantages (and disadvantages) that set it apart from the rest. This is primarily done via a new feature: the Home City and the shipments you are allowed to send from it. I liked the idea of the Home City, but wasn't overly impressed with some aspects of its implementation.

The new units are fun and consist of both modern (for the period) and archeic units giving you some flexibility in what you want to field - however don't expect their power to be equal. The cannon physics are really well done, you can track cannon balls throughout their flight and watch the havoc they bestow upon enemy buildings (which now fall apart in peices instead of as a whole) or the holes they punch in rows of infantry. The charachter animations on most units are really well done, and occasionally you will see them adjust their weapons for long range of short range combat (they throw burning items at enemy buildings instead of firing their highly ineffective muskets). I beleive that musketeers can also fix bayonets to make them more effective at close range, although I didn't notice a signifigant difference, mine continued to fire their muskets regardless of the range of the enemy.

There is another new feature in Age of Empires 3 in the form of an Explorer. He is a powerful unit you can use to explore the map (although any unit can still do his job). The Explorer can take damage, and fall in battle, but doesn't die. He can be rescued and revived. The Explorer has the special ability to deal with treasure guardians in one shot, but a hardy group of soldiers can also take down the treasure guardians without too much difficulty. The Explorer can retreive treasure found on the map and can also build Trading Posts (settlers can build them as well) - this is how you interact with the Native Americans. Building a Trading Post near a Native American outpost forges an alliance with them and you are then allowed to train Native American warriors which are useful because they don't count against your population limit - but they do have a population limit of their own (15 seems to be the norm). In a bizarre twist, the Native Americans are not hostile to these new invaders unless they are allied with one of your enemy players - intersting.

In summation, I did enjoy trying out Age of Empires 3. My initial impression was that the civilizations and corrosponding diversity in units and Home City shipments helped add some variety to the Age of Empires format, but also meant more added juggling. Even with the new ability to zoom in and out a little, I still found it difficult at times to juggle my units. In combat, my nicely organized ranks merged into one wave of units that were impossible to divide up and thus made tactics difficult. You can assign numbers (via Ctl+#) to a group of units to help this, but I didn't find anyway to assign formations to the units (you could do this in Age of Empires 2). When left idle long enough - seeemed to take a long time - my units did auto-arrange themselves into formation, but didn't maintain that formation during attacks. I wish they would have borrowed a little from another RTS game that allows you to train units in groups that are then treated as one unit. This would have made Cavalry and Infantry units that much easier to manage, especially in large numbers. In addition, in that same RTS game you can assign different unit types to merge together and form a new formation of units that is again treated as one unit. This greatly simplifies training units and then moving them about the map and maintaining formations for attacks.

I do look forward to spending a lot more time with Age of Empires 3 as I'm sure there is a lot that I haven't noted in my initial observations. I think the game is true to its heritage and I think that Age of Empires fans will flock to this new installment. However, I don't think that Age of Empires 3 delivers enough new variety in either design or implementation to steal away the fans of other RTS games that are working to reinvent and revitalize the genre.

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155 of 178 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lackluster, but not without potential, October 20, 2005

By	Pecos Bill (Gaithersburg, MD United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

I agree with the other reviews citing this as being something of a letdown at first glance.

Edit for graphical update:
I originally found the graphics on this game to be lackluster. My system couldn't run it in remotely full detail and still be playable, so my game didn't look anything like the screenshots. So I did what any good gamer would do: bought a new system. Incredibly, even on a brand new fully speced out Alienware system with AMD 4000+ 64-bit processor, 2 gigs of RAM, and dual video cards (SLI, PCI Express) I *still* couldn't run the game in high resolution, high detail. It looks pretty but it chops when I try to scroll the screen. I think something is just plain broken with this game. Other games run awesome on the new system, but not this game.

Conclusion: you will never, ever play this game with it looking as good as it does on the screenshots. Yes, those are some mighty pretty trees but it's not going to be as pretty when you adjust down to Medium or Low quality textures because no reasonable computer system can have smooth gameplay with high resolution and high texture detail.

By comparison, LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth was quite attractive, even on my older computer. They aimed a bit lower but spent more time making lower settings look attractive and it paid off better in the end. I think the AOE3 team spent too much time perfecting high detail settings that most people can't use and not enough time on low/medium detail that most people will be forced to use.

Anyway, gameplay-wise, one bit of good news is the "home city" concept where you build your "decks". I'll disagree with another reviewer who suggested that AOE3 was designed for "spread sheet gamers" -- gamers who figure out how to win by calculating times and values on a spread sheet ahead of time rather than making tactical decisions on the fly.

Spread sheet gaming worked in AOE2 because you knew who and what you were facing. If you were the Spanish fighting the Goths, you knew exactly what you were up against. You knew every civilization advantage and weakness and could plan your strategy ahead of time accordingly.

In AOE3, this "deck building" concept amounts to a customization feature. When you see I'm the British, you still won't know exactly what to expect. Did I build my deck for lots of early, free troops? Did I build my deck for an early economy? How much effect did I add to my navy? You can't plan your spreadsheet if you don't have all the data, and you'll never know exactly what your enemy has in his deck.

I can also have multiple decks and I don't have to decide which I want to use until my first trip to the home city. Thus if I decide to wait, I can see your rush coming and pick my "counter rush" deck.

So in conclusion, while the gameplay itself is pretty much old-hat, very familiar from AOE2, I have hopes that this deck building system will give the game more longevity. The consistant winners won't be the spreadsheet readers, it will be the people who can quickly adjust their tactics on the fly based on what unpredictible thing the enemy is doing, as a result of this deck building system.

Hopefully, anyway. It's going to take a good bit of online gaming to find out how that really pans out.

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82 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Age of Ennui?, October 20, 2005

By	Matt Cameron (Malden, MA) - See all my reviews

Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars

Ensemble gave the venerable AOE series a makeover, a tummy tuck, and some clip-on nails. All of which makes it great for a one-nighter, but doesn't leave me wanting to take it home to meet the parents.

Here are some things that I like:

1) There's a catchy Howard Shore-y orchestral soundtrack with lotsa gypsy violin and choral drama.
2) There's some tasty eye candy--including llamas, coffins, fancy new buildings, and cannons that actually make people fall over--textured so ridiculously well that my computer couldn't handle it after I'd built things up a bit in the field and I had to take it down a notch. Best RTS graphics ever, though. That was obviously where most of the work in this project went, and it's undeniably gorgeous.
3) There's a passable (if totally, cartoonishly ridiculous) multi-generational campaign. This really goes more into the "what I didn't like" side of things, but I should mention that I kind of grudgingly enjoyed it at the time.
4) Even after all the hype, I like "Home Cities." They're good for continually helping to cheerfully remind you that you are merely a capitalist tool beholden to soulless imperialist overlords. You've gotta love the nerdly RPG-ness of it all (not that I'm complaining, but since when does an RTS award *experience points*, anyway?), as well as the fact that your hard work moving clumps of poorly-organized troops around in some of the lushest 3D RTS graphics to date is summarily dumped into an account that goes toward purchasing sweetly anachronistic "cards." Plus there's that wonderful experience of having the simultaneous feeling that you're getting something for nothing ("13 musketeers from London? Sure, I'll sign for that!") and that you've somehow "earned" your booty by... well, doing whatever it is you do in this game to earn XP. Kill and break stuff, I guess.
5) Small thing, but I LOVE that the resource gatherers work all day and all night without ever having to physically deliver their goods back to the town center! This moves things along quicker and makes them much easier to manage. So thanks for that.

Some things that I don't like:

1) The campaign. I really do appreciate the attempt to create an entirely new work of interactive "historical" (well, kinda) fiction, but it really didn't seem to have much to do with anything. You have to at least appreciate the attempt, but it was disappointing to have such an otherwise potentially great game marred by this overserious, all-too-easy series of quests. This 3-part story arc would have been fine as some kind of secondary isn't-this-fun campaign, but I was surprised and disappointed when I realized that I'd just finished the solo game over the course of a couple of evenings without doing anything even remotely historical. Sure, I met George Washington and Simon Bolivar and helped build some railroads, but the thrust of the story is mostly taken up with finding the Fountain of Youth and/or stopping various stock villains from doing same. (Yes, even up to the Jacksonian era.)

2) The familiarity. I immediately slipped into this game like a comfortable suit. A comfortable suit that I'd been wearing for 10 YEARS! Isn't there *anything* different we can do with this genre? Sure, the Home Cities are fun, the native alliances can mix things up a bit, and everything's generally more detailed. But nothing really feels much different. By the third title in a series like this, I would expect an experience as different from AOE as Civilization III was from its grandfather. But maybe that's just me.

3) The subject matter. OK, sure, it's impossible to do a historically accurate game set in the colonial era without offending somebody, either by sins of comission OR omission. To take only two examples: We all know that the plantations you have to build to provide a solid economic base for your battles would *never* have been staffed by happy white "settlers," just as we know that establishing "trading posts" with native tribes wasn't quite as easy as sending a single white man over to the nearest village to throw up a handy wooden shack. Of course I wouldn't *want* to play a completely historically accurate game in which "settlers" were cheap, black, and periodically arrived on very uncomfortable ships before being worked to death. (Some parts of our history--slavery, the Trail of Tears, the Starr Report--are best left un-re-enacted.) But... but. I don't know. I guess it's just that this game portrays a wildly different version of American history that I very much wish were closer to the truth. (The closest we get to anything like history in American-Indian relations is when our heroine's elderly native companian observes that he has "learned not to trust American promises," although this is thrown in so obtusely at such an unexpected time that you might miss it if you're not really paying attention.) It might be better to sell this as some kind of counterfactual "allohistory." Really, the most fun you could ever possibly have with this game would be watching Noam Chomsky play it. (Actually, that would probably also be about as much fun as anyone could ever have with Noam Chomsky, doing anything. So it works out.)

4) The interface. It's just not what it should be, which makes the kind of nerdly micromanagement of troops that RTS players live for nearly impossible. Instead of expertly managing formations and putting together killer unit combos the way you can in, say, "Rise of Nations," you pretty much have to form whatever CTRL groups you can and throw everything you've got at the enemy all at once to see what sticks.

What this genre needs is the be-all, end-all, nail-in-the-coffin masterpiece that will conclusively demonstrate the full potential of the "Dune II"/"Command + Conquer" style RTS in such a way that no one will ever want to make one again. (The so-called "Mozart effect" in opera, or the "Beethoven effect" in symphonies--no significant works in those genres were written for a very long time after each composer's death.) AOE3 is entertaining enough (and very nice to look at) but it isn't that game.