Without the addition of that novel home city concept (more on which in a second) this would be a startlingly unoriginal creation.īefore I flesh-out those comments, pushing the critical bowie knife even deeper, here's some background and some basics. AoE3 looks and sounds fantastic yet its economics are dull, its factions are bland, and its combat is crude and fiddly. Somewhere along the line Ensemble seem to have lost sight of what's important in a real-time strategy game. I'm not some spoilt toddler that needs to be bribed with endless sweeties.' You don't need to let me flick to a 'home city' screen every few minutes so that I can select a free unit or resource windfall. Right now I feel like I want to say to AoE3 'Stop with the gifts! To win my heart you don't need to sprinkle every map with silly treasure troves. Being confused (it was the first time I'd ever been actively pursued) and being greedy I took the bars for a couple of weeks before guiltily asking her to stop.

She was, I guess, trying to win my affection.

Playing it I'm reminded of a girl at school that started giving me presents (chocolate mainly) on a daily basis. There's something rather childish, cynical even, about Age of Empires III.

Age of empires 3 gameplay