Spending the Summer Indoors

Age of Empires III is another in the series of great games from the makers of one of the classic strategy games. I cut my teeth on Command and Conquer: Red Alert and soon after found Age of Empires I. While I have always stuck with Red Alert and never really moved on to the other C&C games, I have followed AOE through I, II, and now onto III. I've had this game for about six months now and have long since beaten the campaigns. Despite that, I have never tired of playing the skirmishes. For an experienced player, the easier opponents are easily figured out and beaten, but set to hard or higher difficulty, the AI of this game is still capable of destroying me every time. I find it endlessly fun to build and produce a civilization and prepare it for the coming battle. Although at lower levels of difficulty I can do the same thing every time and beat my opponent, in the upper difficulty levels, I must continuously change my strategy and adapt to that of the AI I am facing. Each game takes me six to eight hours to play and I sometimes find myself rearranging my schedule so that I might have that amount of time to sit alone with my computer. This is a great game and shows what one can do when one improves on an already fantastic series.

This game is played like most other strategy games and is a point and click (select and action). One must work to improve the civilian side of one's civilization while simultaneously building an army and making it battle ready. As with any other strategy game, the way this buildup is accomplished is up to the player and the circumstances of the scenario, but it must all be done before the other players in the game complete the same buildup - if one desires to with that is.

The overall game can be played in one of four different ways: a story-based campaign, a single player skirmish, a random map, or multiplayer (over LAN or online). The story based campaign is what changes most between strategy games. The different stories are largely unique to this game. Of course, this campaign is easily completed and cannot be changed aside from the difficulty level. Once one masters the AI strategy of a particular difficulty on a particular level, it will not significantly change. One need only muster the required resources to counteract the strategy of the AI, and one can easily beat it repeatedly. Of course, the strategy changes as the level of the AI increases, but this too can be learned and circumvented. The real joy of these games is playing the single player skirmishes. The custom settings available on these games allows for far more variability in the game play and the strategy employed by the AI and consequently the strategy employed by the player. One of the greatest customizations is the ability to change the number of opponents. Adding a second player makes the game wildly different from that of one-on-one type. The player must monitor and protect against an enemy on two sides. Now, rather than "knowing" the enemy as in one opponent games, it is possible for the player to make and maintain alliances as well as solicit and rebuff friendships. This new element is of course one of the many changes available in the skirmish games. It is also possible to place limits on resources and military strength. The third type of game play is that of the random game. This allows the user to begin the above skirmish with one click. The computer sets all the game parameters. The nice thing about this mode is that I often find myself shying away from those settings that I know will ensure my defeat. I am reluctant to play a game where I know I will fail rather than playing and trying to improve my game play to meet and defeat the new difficulties presented. It is in this random mode that I find myself playing with these particular limitations and while I am defeated more often, I also improve my abilities more so than in a regular user defined skirmish. The fourth type of game play is that of a multiplayer game. There is only one place that I have ever found this useful: college dorms. With all the down time one has while away at university, one must fill it with something - my floor mates and I often decided that rather then enjoy sunshine or fresh air, we would all rather sit in a dark room and play games against each other over the LAN. While current internet connections are broad enough to allow for game play, I find it strange to play against people I don't know. All too often people get upset and simply quit a game rather than losing or when offended by some of the taunts allowed by the game. In college, one can play with friends and do so in a friendly environment. Now, with college long gone, I don't really use this game mode, and I more than content with sticking to the others.

The game play itself is very similar to other strategy games. With the most basic settings, you are given a town center and a few peasant workers to begin with. From these humble beginnings you must build. And you must build quickly - at least as quickly as your opponents who are likely to attack early and hard. I find that early on is when I most enjoy the new nuances of this game. One of those is the ability to zoom in and out modestly while playing. The zoom does not go out to include the whole map but it does go in far enough to observe the working and fighting closely. Although this doesn't affect the game, it is quite fun to watch the workers as they chop, saw, and sow early in the game. It can also sometimes be necessary in that when one plays a game starting with minimal resources there is not much to do while the initial units build resources. Zooming in and watching them while they work gives me something to do while I am waiting to have enough food to support more workers.

The number of different units in this game is similar to those of AOE I and II. The player can build cavalry, soldiers, artillery, and naval units and each can build about 3-5 different units with different costs and skill sets. Each of these units can be upgraded and improved with the different research abilities within the game. These get more expensive as they become more useful and so the player must balance the need for more players with the need to upgrade those he already has.

This game adds prizes around the map that can help you early on and later in the game. These include small prizes of resources to help you early in the game and large hit point increases for your champion later in the game. All of these are protected by some sort of opponent. The opponent can range from a few wolves to heavily armed and defended cowboy raiding parties. It can be a significant risk to the forces of the player to attempt the recovery of one of these field prizes. Of course, the most difficult prizes to achieve are the most rewarding.

Another entirely new nuance in this game is the ability to call for shipments from the home world. One plays under the banner of a nation - England, Spain, etc. and one may ask that they send some necessary shipments to your colony. These can include resources, peasant workers, military units, and even structures to help in your war effort. The home world is user customized and the shipments that can be requested are customized as well. One must choose those shipments from a large pool because only 18 are allowed into the game once it starts. These can affect the entire strategy of the game. I sometimes concentrate far more on building resources when I know I will request shipments of military units and therefore do not need to build my own. The game keeps a running total of your experience points earned while playing and these are used to unlock better shipments. These points are also used within the game to allow the player to request shipments. The player must perform certain tasks (earn experience points) to be able to request more shipments. Everything one does in the game earns points, but razing the opponents building earns many more points than building a house of your own.

The graphics in this game are far improved over that of the last game in this series. The ability to zoom in requires that the game have significantly better resolution. There is also some more reality to game play itself. Trees can be seen falling down as they are either cut for gathering or knocked over by cannonballs. Attacking cities is also more realistic now as building, which previously caught fire to demonstrate damage, now show physical signs of that damage. A building hit by a cannon will have part of the roof and wall fall off rather than simply burning until it is suddenly gone.

The sounds are fairly similar to those in the previous games. Each unit will make some comment when you click on them. There are also sounds built in to warn you of attacks, the discovery of a field prize, or the arrival of new units. The battle sounds are also improved and sound fairly realistic (to me anyway...having never heard the battle cries of Indians as a cannonball bounces through their midst or those other "everyday" sounds in AOEIII).The sounds make the game more enjoyable, funnier, and are integral to good strategy and awareness in the game.

To give those out there some help in starting this game, the following are some of the strategies I personally employ while playing this game. Although they may not be the best, they will give the new player a starting point in this wonderful game. I have found that it is in my best interest to build and upgrade civil structures as early as possible and leave myself militarily open to attack until I have built enough resources to divert those monies toward building an army without significantly lowering my ability to continue scaling my civil production. Of course, this strategy might the exact opposite of a more aggressive player willing to attack with small forces early in the game. In that light, I usually build a wall around most of my city as early as possible so that I have some modicum of defense against anything that might be thrown at me. I also find that sticking with one or two types of units allows for a more efficient buildup of units and their abilities. I like to stick with long range foot soldiers and then maintain a small force of ~15 cavalry units in my camp in case I need to appropriate defensive forces quickly to an area where I have neglected to maintain a foot-soldier force.


Once one has mastered this game there is still something to do. I have never known anyone capable beating the highest levels of difficulty and because of that I have found this game to have endless replay value. Unlike first person games where a completed story is the end of the games usefulness, this game allows the player to continually modify game play and make it increasingly challenging. In the six months I have had this game, I have played 2-3 times per week and I have yet to find the game boring, predictable, or anything but pure enjoyment.