Scythe
25-02-2006, 08:14 PM
Video games today are big business.
Millions are spent in research, design and development, not to mention the advertising campaign aimed at convincing gamers that this game is a ‘classic’. One of the results of this is what’s sometimes called the ‘blockbusterisation’ of games today (at least by me), of which Age of Empires III is a perfect example. I’ll explain what I mean at the end of the article, but first the basics.
Age of Empires III (http://www.ageofempires3.com/) is the latest in a series of real-time strategy (RTS) games from Ensemble Studios (http://www.ensemblestudios.com/), a company owned by Microsoft (insert anti-corporate hate slogan here). The first two games (unsurprisingly titled Age of Empires I and II – obviously the millions in funding doesn’t go to the naming staff) focused on the ancient history of war, from the time of the Mesopotamians through to the age of chivalry and the beginnings of gunpowder warfare. Each game began with players choosing their civilisation, and advancing to more advanced Ages (Dark Age through to Imperial Age, for example) through the collection of resources and researching of more advanced technologies. Villagers are used to mine resources, construct buildings, protect their towns, and armies are trained to eventually put your enemies to the sword while their buildings collapse in flaming ruins around them. Fairly typical day at the office, really. Both games were extremely successful, and their fans naturally expected the next in the series to be quickly forthcoming. What they got was something a little different, a game called Age of Mythology, which took the same gameplay mechanics of Age of Empires and put them into a world of Greek, Egyptian and Norse mythology, complete with Gods, Heroes and monsters such as the Hydra and the Cyclops.
Now, several years later, Ensemble Studios have chosen to return to the real world (more or less), with Age of Empires III. Instead of Europe, the action has shifted to the Americas during their period of colonisation. Players can take on a variety of civilisations, all of which had some role in colonisation and empire-building, from more well-known, such as the French, the British, the Portuguese and the Spanish, to some whose roles may not have received as much popular attention, such as the Dutch, the Russians, the Germans and the Ottomans. Once again players use villagers (or their equivalents) to gather several different types of resources, construct buildings, advance to later Ages, and train armies to put their opponents to the sword (and the rifle) while their buildings burn down around them. The flames look a lot more realistic, though.
Graphics
Overall, I’d have to say that the graphics were the high point of AoE III. All the maps are viewed from an isometric perspective (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection), which means you can look down on your forces scurrying about like ants, which provides an overwhelming sense of power and control. Or maybe that’s just me. In any case, drawing on graphical developments pioneered in Age of Mythology, AoE III allows the viewpoint to be rotated through a full 360 degrees, allowing battles and environments to be viewed from any perspective. It is also possible to zoom in and out, letting players view the action up close, or zoom out to gain a tactical overview of the area. A mini-map is provided on the bottom right of screen to let the player gain an overview of the entire map, although it only reveals areas that friendly units have already explored.
There’s no doubt that the improved graphics were always intended to be the main selling point of AoE III, and they certainly do a good job. Many of the environments are reactive and individually modelled, for example allowing buildings to be destroyed in unique ways, depending on the kinds of damage inflicted. Formerly all buildings or a particular type would run through a standard series of animations when destroyed, but now blowing apart a tower with cannon fire looks different to watching it being burnt down by soldiers with flaming torches. I’ll admit there were even occasions when I prolonged a game solely so I could park my naval fleet offshore and bombard an enemy town, just for the sheer amusement of watching bits and pieces of their buildings flying off under a rain of cannon fire.
All of the sprites in the game are detailed, from the sailing galleons with their protruding cannons, to the neatly ordered rows of riflemen in their pretty coats. You can see the spurts of smoke from every rifle shot, and watching ranks of enemy soldiers fly about like bowling pins after being struck by cannon fire produced more than the occasional evil chuckle.
One of the bigger changes in AoE III is the introduction of Home Cities, which I’ll talk about a little later. The development team has obviously spent quite a bit of time and effort in detailing these cities and making them as faithful to the historical period as possible. During campaigns, players can customise their cities by purchasing upgrades and changes to their city’s appearance, such as adding colourful bunting, new types of strolling entertainers and citizens, or changing the colour and style of the major buildings. At first glance there seems to be a wide variety of these options, but under the surface they boil down to just a few. For example, it’s possible to change the dominant colour tone for the major building in each part of the user’s home city. There are at least five to eight choices of colour scheme. What that means is that many of the configuration options are to do with colour, but since a building can only be one colour at a time, it in fact boils down to a single upgrade with multiple choices.
I played AoE III on an AMD Sempron 2800, running at 2.0GHz, with 640MB of RAM and an ATI Radeon 2600, all of which were above the recommended specs. The software was Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and the latest updates, and DirectX 9.0c. I was able to run it passably at 1024x768 resolution with most of the graphical bells and whistles, including reflective water effects, although I did experience some drops in framerate during large battles and when multiple additional programs were running in the background. Overall, I’d recommend having at least 1GB of RAM to be sure that there aren’t any problems.
Controls
The controls remain close to the standard used in most RTS Games, with the left mouse button being used to select units or objects, and the right to direct them to a location or to attack an enemy. Units can be directed to patrol, guard specific areas, or move to a location and attack anything encountered along the way. Military units can be assigned general behaviours, from extremely aggressive to passive, which influences their behaviour. Military groups also form up automatically into formations that are appropriate for the types of units involved, with close combat units up front, followed by riflemen, and the cannons and heavy artillery bringing up the rear. This might not seem like such an achievement to those new to the genre, but those of us who played Starcraft and the original Age of Empires may remember how different things once were. I still remember directing into battle the Roman Legions, the most disciplined fighting force of the ancient world, and watching them charge at the enemy in a mob with about as much coordination as a bunch of rioting soccer fans. Buildings are constructed by directing one or more villagers to start construction of a particular building. Once built, further upgrades or units can be produced by clicking on the on-screen buttons when the building is selected.
Nearly all of these functions can be directed through the use of keyboard shortcuts, which can dramatically reduce the amount of time needed to produce new units or upgrades. And when those damn poncy French are knocking at your front door with a couple of regiments of riflemen and a few cannons, every second counts. The controls generally function well, although learning the multitude of keyboard shortcuts can take some time. However, once learnt then become almost unconscious.
Sound/Music
For a game that’s all about the crackle of rifle fire and the boom of cannon, I was expecting more from the sound department. The music just didn’t sound as deep and moving as it could have been for a game designed to have an epic scope, although a couple of the tunes were catchy. Mostly it simply faded into the background, which I suppose is an advantage in a game which can take a long time to play.
In terms of sound effects, it’s again a case of a couple of standouts against a background of mediocrity. Cannons and rifles sound great, and really evoke the feeling of battle. Normally sounds of battle can only be heard when the player is directly viewing the action, but cannon fire is so loud it can be heard as a distant booming even when you’re managing your city on the other side of the map. Apart from those, however, the sounds are basically the same as you encounter in any RTS of this type. Clashing of swords, bird calls, the lapping of waves on beaches, and so on.
There is one more thing I need to mention. At several points in the game I encountered a very annoying bug. Keep in mind that I was playing with the latest patches available at the time, and that a search of the appropriate message boards revealed that others were having the same problem. While playing, the game would catch for a moment, then return to normal speed. However, the sound would be stuck in a repetitive loop, constantly repeating the last sound produced. This can get really annoying when the last sound was a cannon or the sound of someone dying a particularly gruesome death. Re-loading the last save doesn’t work, so the only way to fix it is to exit the entire game and re-load. Hopefully this will be fixed in subsequent patches, but it’s something to watch out for.
Re/Playability
For fans that have played other RTS games, AoE III should be simple to learn. Most of the standard control conventions remain the same to the previous incarnations of AoE, with the only real changes being the use of Home Cities, Heroes and native allies. For those new to the genre, playing the single-payer campaign on Easy will let them get a feel for how things work before they consider exploring the complexities of multiplayer.
Speaking of the single player campaign, it follows the story of several generations of the Black family as the struggle against a secret society bent on gaining access to the fabled Fountain of Youth. While it’s set against the background of the colonisation of the Americas, the makers were very careful to avoid anything even remotely politically touchy, so the plot skips anything to do with the Conquistadores, the War of Independence or the U.S Civil War.
Another area where political correctness and a desire not to offend makes itself felt is in the use of ‘native allies’. These are villages of Native Americans of various types that can be employed as allies by the various sides. They provide skills and resources that are not normally available, and can be gained by building a trading post in each native village. Your opponent can kill natives allied with you and burn down your trading post, but they cannot destroy any of the native villages completely.
Probably the biggest change from previous AoE games is the use of what are called Home Cities. Each civilisation has a home city from which they operate, and from which the receive resources and upgrades on a regular basis. Each enemy killed or building destroyed adds experience points, which add up until the home City advances a level. With each new level new ‘cards’ are unlocked, which represent shipments of resources, troops or technology from the home city. By picking and choosing what resources you wish to send to your troops in the field, players can customise their civilisation to fit their troop style.
The other major change comes through the inclusion of ‘Heroes’, significant figures who lead your civilisation. In the single-player campaign these Heroes are mostly members of the Black family, as well as their allies and companions, but in multiplayer they are figures related to the civilisation from which they come. Heroes have certain special abilities, such as the ability to gather items from special treasure sites scattered around the maps, they regenerate health on their own, and they cannot permanently die, instead falling to the ground to write in pain until there are no more opponents nearby.
I only have two criticisms regarding the playability of AoE III. The first is the same problem that seems to keep recurring throughout this review: nothing really feels fresh and original to someone who has played these types of games before. The single player plot had potential, but there simply wasn’t enough character development. Players of the Warcraft and Starcraft series will know that it’s possible to develop character in an RTS game, even if the characters are only tiny sprites on a screen, but that simply wasn’t done enough here. There comes a point in the last chapter of the plot where an important secondary hero character dies (I won’t reveal who). Their death basically comes out of nowhere, and, judging by the setting and music, it’s supposed to be a traumatic event. I found myself sitting at the computer thinking “yeah, okay, so what’s the next mission going to be?” There just wasn’t any emotional impact. Even the Home City, one of the more innovative concepts, seems to be a way of taking the tendency people have of using cheats to immediately create more units and work it into the game mechanics, since reinforcements from the home city simply emerge from buildings in your town, with no explanation as to how they arrived.
The second criticism may have more to do with my playing style than the game design; however I felt it was worth mentioning. No matter which civilisation I played, none of them seemed to differ radically from any other. They mostly had the same types of basic units, the same types of cannons, and so forth, with the exception of the occasional ‘unique’ unit. Apart from the building architecture, all the civilisations just felt the same to me. As I said, though, that might have something to do with me adopting the same style of play each time.
Multiplay/Co-op
I’ll be honest: this is the weakest area of this review. I’ve spent some time playing multiplayer against the computer, but I’ve only spent a very limited amount of time competing against other people, and that was over a LAN, since I need to preserve my broadband bandwidth to feed my German acrobatic midget pr0n obsession. So, if anyone wants to write something about their experiences playing AoE III online, it can be added to this review (with full attribution, of course), and I’ll even +rep you in thanks. You can’t ask for more than that, can you? Well, actually you could, but I’m not rich enough to fork out for beer and strippers, so you’ll have to be happy with +rep.
Anyway, on to multiplayer. There are two basic types of default multiplayer game: Supremacy and Deathmatch. In Supremacy, players begin with nothing, and must gather resources and build their civilisations in order to defeat their opponent. In deathmatch, players begin with many resources and race to see who can build their armies fastest. Amounts of resources available, total numbers of units, victory conditions and so forth can all be modified to suit the player’s tastes, as can the number and skill of computer-controlled civilisations.
In online multiplayer, it’s possible to build and save your Home City, and to advance both your Home City and your Player Level, which allows people to challenge others of a similar level of experience and to customise their Home City to their style of play. Like most multiplayer RTS games today, it’s possible to chat and form alliances with other players, although these are usually more alliances of convenience, and usually result in one ally becoming an enemy right when their entire army just happens to be sitting next to their ‘ally’s’ Town Centre.
In terms of AI for the computer civilisations, it’s about what players will have come to expect. The computer sends out a few scouts to explore then entire map, then they steadily build up an army until it’s ready, after which they mount a direct attack. No feints, no ambushes, no real tricks at all. It’s a matter of brute force assault, which can be fun, but which can get tiring after a while.
Overall
I like RTS games. Something about watching hordes of soldiers fanatically sacrificing their lives at my command appeals to me. I may have to seek professional help about that at some time in the future, but that’s beside the point.
Despite this, I simply could not become enthused about Age of Empires III. There’s no single issue I can point to and say “this is why I didn’t love it”, it’s just an overall feeling of blandness. I almost had to force myself to finish the single-player campaign, and while I enjoyed multiplayer, it wasn’t enough to keep me coming back. It’s not that I dislike the game; it’s just that, to someone who has played numerous RTS games before, there just didn’t seem to be anything new. It felt like Age of Empires II given an update and a new coat of paint. This is what I was referring to when I mentioned the ‘blockbusterisation’ of game making at the beginning. Video games are becoming more and more like Hollywood movies, with big money spent and big rewards. What that means is that, in a choice between a risky new product and a revamping of a tried and tested formula, a company will always go for the sure thing. That’s very much the case here. There’s nothing wrong with AoE III, it just doesn’t really show us anything radically different from what we’ve seen before.
For anyone who hasn’t played an RTS game before, go out and get a copy of Age of Empires 3. It’s a nice, player-friendly introduction to this type of game. For those who have played every RTS from Starcraft forward, buy it if you like the pretty graphics, but don’t expect anything radically different or exciting.
Millions are spent in research, design and development, not to mention the advertising campaign aimed at convincing gamers that this game is a ‘classic’. One of the results of this is what’s sometimes called the ‘blockbusterisation’ of games today (at least by me), of which Age of Empires III is a perfect example. I’ll explain what I mean at the end of the article, but first the basics.
Age of Empires III (http://www.ageofempires3.com/) is the latest in a series of real-time strategy (RTS) games from Ensemble Studios (http://www.ensemblestudios.com/), a company owned by Microsoft (insert anti-corporate hate slogan here). The first two games (unsurprisingly titled Age of Empires I and II – obviously the millions in funding doesn’t go to the naming staff) focused on the ancient history of war, from the time of the Mesopotamians through to the age of chivalry and the beginnings of gunpowder warfare. Each game began with players choosing their civilisation, and advancing to more advanced Ages (Dark Age through to Imperial Age, for example) through the collection of resources and researching of more advanced technologies. Villagers are used to mine resources, construct buildings, protect their towns, and armies are trained to eventually put your enemies to the sword while their buildings collapse in flaming ruins around them. Fairly typical day at the office, really. Both games were extremely successful, and their fans naturally expected the next in the series to be quickly forthcoming. What they got was something a little different, a game called Age of Mythology, which took the same gameplay mechanics of Age of Empires and put them into a world of Greek, Egyptian and Norse mythology, complete with Gods, Heroes and monsters such as the Hydra and the Cyclops.
Now, several years later, Ensemble Studios have chosen to return to the real world (more or less), with Age of Empires III. Instead of Europe, the action has shifted to the Americas during their period of colonisation. Players can take on a variety of civilisations, all of which had some role in colonisation and empire-building, from more well-known, such as the French, the British, the Portuguese and the Spanish, to some whose roles may not have received as much popular attention, such as the Dutch, the Russians, the Germans and the Ottomans. Once again players use villagers (or their equivalents) to gather several different types of resources, construct buildings, advance to later Ages, and train armies to put their opponents to the sword (and the rifle) while their buildings burn down around them. The flames look a lot more realistic, though.
Graphics
Overall, I’d have to say that the graphics were the high point of AoE III. All the maps are viewed from an isometric perspective (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection), which means you can look down on your forces scurrying about like ants, which provides an overwhelming sense of power and control. Or maybe that’s just me. In any case, drawing on graphical developments pioneered in Age of Mythology, AoE III allows the viewpoint to be rotated through a full 360 degrees, allowing battles and environments to be viewed from any perspective. It is also possible to zoom in and out, letting players view the action up close, or zoom out to gain a tactical overview of the area. A mini-map is provided on the bottom right of screen to let the player gain an overview of the entire map, although it only reveals areas that friendly units have already explored.
There’s no doubt that the improved graphics were always intended to be the main selling point of AoE III, and they certainly do a good job. Many of the environments are reactive and individually modelled, for example allowing buildings to be destroyed in unique ways, depending on the kinds of damage inflicted. Formerly all buildings or a particular type would run through a standard series of animations when destroyed, but now blowing apart a tower with cannon fire looks different to watching it being burnt down by soldiers with flaming torches. I’ll admit there were even occasions when I prolonged a game solely so I could park my naval fleet offshore and bombard an enemy town, just for the sheer amusement of watching bits and pieces of their buildings flying off under a rain of cannon fire.
All of the sprites in the game are detailed, from the sailing galleons with their protruding cannons, to the neatly ordered rows of riflemen in their pretty coats. You can see the spurts of smoke from every rifle shot, and watching ranks of enemy soldiers fly about like bowling pins after being struck by cannon fire produced more than the occasional evil chuckle.
One of the bigger changes in AoE III is the introduction of Home Cities, which I’ll talk about a little later. The development team has obviously spent quite a bit of time and effort in detailing these cities and making them as faithful to the historical period as possible. During campaigns, players can customise their cities by purchasing upgrades and changes to their city’s appearance, such as adding colourful bunting, new types of strolling entertainers and citizens, or changing the colour and style of the major buildings. At first glance there seems to be a wide variety of these options, but under the surface they boil down to just a few. For example, it’s possible to change the dominant colour tone for the major building in each part of the user’s home city. There are at least five to eight choices of colour scheme. What that means is that many of the configuration options are to do with colour, but since a building can only be one colour at a time, it in fact boils down to a single upgrade with multiple choices.
I played AoE III on an AMD Sempron 2800, running at 2.0GHz, with 640MB of RAM and an ATI Radeon 2600, all of which were above the recommended specs. The software was Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and the latest updates, and DirectX 9.0c. I was able to run it passably at 1024x768 resolution with most of the graphical bells and whistles, including reflective water effects, although I did experience some drops in framerate during large battles and when multiple additional programs were running in the background. Overall, I’d recommend having at least 1GB of RAM to be sure that there aren’t any problems.
Controls
The controls remain close to the standard used in most RTS Games, with the left mouse button being used to select units or objects, and the right to direct them to a location or to attack an enemy. Units can be directed to patrol, guard specific areas, or move to a location and attack anything encountered along the way. Military units can be assigned general behaviours, from extremely aggressive to passive, which influences their behaviour. Military groups also form up automatically into formations that are appropriate for the types of units involved, with close combat units up front, followed by riflemen, and the cannons and heavy artillery bringing up the rear. This might not seem like such an achievement to those new to the genre, but those of us who played Starcraft and the original Age of Empires may remember how different things once were. I still remember directing into battle the Roman Legions, the most disciplined fighting force of the ancient world, and watching them charge at the enemy in a mob with about as much coordination as a bunch of rioting soccer fans. Buildings are constructed by directing one or more villagers to start construction of a particular building. Once built, further upgrades or units can be produced by clicking on the on-screen buttons when the building is selected.
Nearly all of these functions can be directed through the use of keyboard shortcuts, which can dramatically reduce the amount of time needed to produce new units or upgrades. And when those damn poncy French are knocking at your front door with a couple of regiments of riflemen and a few cannons, every second counts. The controls generally function well, although learning the multitude of keyboard shortcuts can take some time. However, once learnt then become almost unconscious.
Sound/Music
For a game that’s all about the crackle of rifle fire and the boom of cannon, I was expecting more from the sound department. The music just didn’t sound as deep and moving as it could have been for a game designed to have an epic scope, although a couple of the tunes were catchy. Mostly it simply faded into the background, which I suppose is an advantage in a game which can take a long time to play.
In terms of sound effects, it’s again a case of a couple of standouts against a background of mediocrity. Cannons and rifles sound great, and really evoke the feeling of battle. Normally sounds of battle can only be heard when the player is directly viewing the action, but cannon fire is so loud it can be heard as a distant booming even when you’re managing your city on the other side of the map. Apart from those, however, the sounds are basically the same as you encounter in any RTS of this type. Clashing of swords, bird calls, the lapping of waves on beaches, and so on.
There is one more thing I need to mention. At several points in the game I encountered a very annoying bug. Keep in mind that I was playing with the latest patches available at the time, and that a search of the appropriate message boards revealed that others were having the same problem. While playing, the game would catch for a moment, then return to normal speed. However, the sound would be stuck in a repetitive loop, constantly repeating the last sound produced. This can get really annoying when the last sound was a cannon or the sound of someone dying a particularly gruesome death. Re-loading the last save doesn’t work, so the only way to fix it is to exit the entire game and re-load. Hopefully this will be fixed in subsequent patches, but it’s something to watch out for.
Re/Playability
For fans that have played other RTS games, AoE III should be simple to learn. Most of the standard control conventions remain the same to the previous incarnations of AoE, with the only real changes being the use of Home Cities, Heroes and native allies. For those new to the genre, playing the single-payer campaign on Easy will let them get a feel for how things work before they consider exploring the complexities of multiplayer.
Speaking of the single player campaign, it follows the story of several generations of the Black family as the struggle against a secret society bent on gaining access to the fabled Fountain of Youth. While it’s set against the background of the colonisation of the Americas, the makers were very careful to avoid anything even remotely politically touchy, so the plot skips anything to do with the Conquistadores, the War of Independence or the U.S Civil War.
Another area where political correctness and a desire not to offend makes itself felt is in the use of ‘native allies’. These are villages of Native Americans of various types that can be employed as allies by the various sides. They provide skills and resources that are not normally available, and can be gained by building a trading post in each native village. Your opponent can kill natives allied with you and burn down your trading post, but they cannot destroy any of the native villages completely.
Probably the biggest change from previous AoE games is the use of what are called Home Cities. Each civilisation has a home city from which they operate, and from which the receive resources and upgrades on a regular basis. Each enemy killed or building destroyed adds experience points, which add up until the home City advances a level. With each new level new ‘cards’ are unlocked, which represent shipments of resources, troops or technology from the home city. By picking and choosing what resources you wish to send to your troops in the field, players can customise their civilisation to fit their troop style.
The other major change comes through the inclusion of ‘Heroes’, significant figures who lead your civilisation. In the single-player campaign these Heroes are mostly members of the Black family, as well as their allies and companions, but in multiplayer they are figures related to the civilisation from which they come. Heroes have certain special abilities, such as the ability to gather items from special treasure sites scattered around the maps, they regenerate health on their own, and they cannot permanently die, instead falling to the ground to write in pain until there are no more opponents nearby.
I only have two criticisms regarding the playability of AoE III. The first is the same problem that seems to keep recurring throughout this review: nothing really feels fresh and original to someone who has played these types of games before. The single player plot had potential, but there simply wasn’t enough character development. Players of the Warcraft and Starcraft series will know that it’s possible to develop character in an RTS game, even if the characters are only tiny sprites on a screen, but that simply wasn’t done enough here. There comes a point in the last chapter of the plot where an important secondary hero character dies (I won’t reveal who). Their death basically comes out of nowhere, and, judging by the setting and music, it’s supposed to be a traumatic event. I found myself sitting at the computer thinking “yeah, okay, so what’s the next mission going to be?” There just wasn’t any emotional impact. Even the Home City, one of the more innovative concepts, seems to be a way of taking the tendency people have of using cheats to immediately create more units and work it into the game mechanics, since reinforcements from the home city simply emerge from buildings in your town, with no explanation as to how they arrived.
The second criticism may have more to do with my playing style than the game design; however I felt it was worth mentioning. No matter which civilisation I played, none of them seemed to differ radically from any other. They mostly had the same types of basic units, the same types of cannons, and so forth, with the exception of the occasional ‘unique’ unit. Apart from the building architecture, all the civilisations just felt the same to me. As I said, though, that might have something to do with me adopting the same style of play each time.
Multiplay/Co-op
I’ll be honest: this is the weakest area of this review. I’ve spent some time playing multiplayer against the computer, but I’ve only spent a very limited amount of time competing against other people, and that was over a LAN, since I need to preserve my broadband bandwidth to feed my German acrobatic midget pr0n obsession. So, if anyone wants to write something about their experiences playing AoE III online, it can be added to this review (with full attribution, of course), and I’ll even +rep you in thanks. You can’t ask for more than that, can you? Well, actually you could, but I’m not rich enough to fork out for beer and strippers, so you’ll have to be happy with +rep.
Anyway, on to multiplayer. There are two basic types of default multiplayer game: Supremacy and Deathmatch. In Supremacy, players begin with nothing, and must gather resources and build their civilisations in order to defeat their opponent. In deathmatch, players begin with many resources and race to see who can build their armies fastest. Amounts of resources available, total numbers of units, victory conditions and so forth can all be modified to suit the player’s tastes, as can the number and skill of computer-controlled civilisations.
In online multiplayer, it’s possible to build and save your Home City, and to advance both your Home City and your Player Level, which allows people to challenge others of a similar level of experience and to customise their Home City to their style of play. Like most multiplayer RTS games today, it’s possible to chat and form alliances with other players, although these are usually more alliances of convenience, and usually result in one ally becoming an enemy right when their entire army just happens to be sitting next to their ‘ally’s’ Town Centre.
In terms of AI for the computer civilisations, it’s about what players will have come to expect. The computer sends out a few scouts to explore then entire map, then they steadily build up an army until it’s ready, after which they mount a direct attack. No feints, no ambushes, no real tricks at all. It’s a matter of brute force assault, which can be fun, but which can get tiring after a while.
Overall
I like RTS games. Something about watching hordes of soldiers fanatically sacrificing their lives at my command appeals to me. I may have to seek professional help about that at some time in the future, but that’s beside the point.
Despite this, I simply could not become enthused about Age of Empires III. There’s no single issue I can point to and say “this is why I didn’t love it”, it’s just an overall feeling of blandness. I almost had to force myself to finish the single-player campaign, and while I enjoyed multiplayer, it wasn’t enough to keep me coming back. It’s not that I dislike the game; it’s just that, to someone who has played numerous RTS games before, there just didn’t seem to be anything new. It felt like Age of Empires II given an update and a new coat of paint. This is what I was referring to when I mentioned the ‘blockbusterisation’ of game making at the beginning. Video games are becoming more and more like Hollywood movies, with big money spent and big rewards. What that means is that, in a choice between a risky new product and a revamping of a tried and tested formula, a company will always go for the sure thing. That’s very much the case here. There’s nothing wrong with AoE III, it just doesn’t really show us anything radically different from what we’ve seen before.
For anyone who hasn’t played an RTS game before, go out and get a copy of Age of Empires 3. It’s a nice, player-friendly introduction to this type of game. For those who have played every RTS from Starcraft forward, buy it if you like the pretty graphics, but don’t expect anything radically different or exciting.