Age of Empires III Review
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About.com Rating
Each Home City has what is called a deck that begins with 15 cards and can be expanded to a maximum size of 20. These cards are used from the Home City screen to send troops, supplies, or improvements to your colony in times of need. Cards can only be played after a certain amount of experience points are earned. You will notice small numbers float above buildings when they are completed or whendiscoveries are made.
These are experience points. The end game summary will tally all of your earned XP points and then calculate if your city has gained enought for an increase in level. Determining which cards to play is based and limited by the current Age your colony is in. For example, in the Discovery Age one card may have the ability to send 300 units of food from your HC to your colony while in the Colonial Age it there may be a card that send 600 units.
The concept of the Home City is a great addition and gives some extra incentive and objectives in playing. Not all is lost in a defeat if you can still muster some experience out of it to increase your Home City's level. Higher level cities yield a wider variety of cards that can be placed into your deck for future games and different strategies.
Graphics and AI
Ensemble Studios developed a brand new graphics and physics engine for Age of Empires III and the result looks very impressive. The color, shading, and detail are very nice and add a realistic feel when you're watching troops march into battle.
The reflective nature of water, the crest of waves look fantastic in pitched naval battles. The graphics engine is rendered fully in 3D so those older graphics cards may have some trouble displaying everything smoothly even at lower graphics settings.
The in-game physics involved with explosions and warfare are excellent. Cannon and musket fire leave faint smoke trails that fades to the ground after firing. No two explosions seem to be the same, instead of seeing the same flash of fire over and over again that can be in a lot of other games, Age III physics let you literally tear a building apart. Portions of buildings will collapse under intense bombardment, and pieces of the structure fly through the air and fall to the ground with every impact.
During game play, the AI for your civilization is somewhat improved over Age of Empires II, but still has a few holes. For instance, villagers will chop down one tree after another with in a group, but after the small area has been cleared they will just end up standing around waiting for orders. The same scenario occurs with miners and hunters. It would be nice to have a feature that looks at your current resource pool to determine what resources are in most need or those needed to advance to the next age, then send idle villagers off to perform those tasks. The military AI also leaves something to be desired, the units do fall into marching order but mixing groups of units will have your horses waiting for your artillery moving at the slowest speed. This is where the military grouping mentioned previous comes in handy, assign the groups by unit speed instead of mixing infantry, artillery and cavalry together.
The single player modes contain 5 difficulty levels from Sandbox to Expert. The Expert setting is sometimes too hard for even the best players while the Sandbox setting too easy for the worst players. It will take a few tries to figure out which one equals your ability, but all are good for practice before venturing online for multiplayer games. The friendly AI in single player skirmishes is improved over previous titles. Allies will send in troops and reinforcements quicker when you're either attacking or being attacked.