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    Home Unlabelled Age of Empires 3 After 500 hours, here's my review of AOE3 DE (and why I prefer Age III over Age II)

    Age of Empires 3 After 500 hours, here's my review of AOE3 DE (and why I prefer Age III over Age II)

    August 25, 2021

    Age of Empires 3 After 500 hours, here's my review of AOE3 DE (and why I prefer Age III over Age II)

    After 500 hours, here's my review of AOE3 DE (and why I prefer Age III over Age II)

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 02:35 PM PDT

    I played AOE3 a fair bit as a kid and was excited to return to it when I heard they had released a definitive edition. After giving it a good run I decided it needs my review, because the game is severely underappreciated right now.

    CONS-

    • The Game has some bugs. I can't say if they'll still be around by the time you're reading this, but the main bugs I've run into involve 2 home city shipments that don't deliver properly. While not game-breaking, this can be highly frustrating, especially if you forget which ones are bugged.

    • The community is small. This isn't a particularly big deal for me, as I'm happy as long as there are enough players for me to find games, but for more community oriented player this could be a significant downside.

    • The voice acting of new civilizations is fine at best (Sweden) to atrocious at worst (Hausa, Ethiopia, and revoices for non-Aztec native civs). I've heard there are mods to fix this, I haven't used any.

    • Presently, the African civilizations are grossly overpowered. This is widely expected to be toned down in the upcoming patch, but it generally imparts the impression to me that the developers feel pressure to power creep in order to sell expansions. I personally don't feel they need to do that as long as the content is interesting (it is).

    • Units only have one type of armor. Units, with very few exceptions, either have ranged armor or melee armor. While this is great for simplifying the game system and making the units easier to learn, it means that most units completely lack resistance to one type of damage, and a lot of potential design space is lost. Also because ranged damage is a lot more common than melee damage, units with melee armor can feel a bit shafted by this system.

    PROS-

    • Major improvements over AOE2. I realize that this is the minority opinion, since AOE2 has a much larger fanbase. But I also bought Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition at the same time and tried to play them side by side. If you don't have a decade's worth of familiarity with Age 2 the differences in playability are massive. Economic busywork has been removed (no more reseeding farms, YUCK), villagers train more slowly and cost more so that much less of your game is spent constantly babysitting your town center. Animations are more sophisticated and the game has a physics engine rather than a series of precanned death / combat animations. This is especially satisfying when it comes to Age 3's artillery. Civilizations actually feel different and highly unique rather than all basically having the same 2-3 strategies.

    • Less punishing gameplay compared to Age II. The existence of the minutemen system and the ability to garrison far more villagers in your TC means that taking one bad fight or getting rushed don't automatically end your game- there is room for recovery and counterplay. Home city shipments have the same effect- battles don't snowball as hard because you can turn the tide with well timed reinforcements and mastering the home city system is a skill of its own. Some may prefer the tough-as-nails gameplay of yesteryear, but I prefer a nimble back and forth between the players.

    • Massive unit roster. There are so many fun and different units in this game that even at almost 500 hours invested I still haven't tried them all. Whereas in games like Civ or Age of Empires 2 a civilization might have 1 or two unique units, in Age 3, its common for European civs to have 3 or more, and nonwestern civilizations like the Aztecs to have entire rosters of unique units.

    • Native Civilizations. To me this adds a huge variety to the game by giving flavor to the different maps and adding some spice to your army compositions. For example, my main (the United States) has serious problems in their unit roster countering cavalry because they historically never used pikes and their Dragoon unit is complete trash. On maps with Zen natives, however, USA can ally with the Sohei Naginata to open up a powerful rush and anti-cavalry option. Unique technologies for natives also add a lot of variance for gameplay, with cool combos like Germany and Akan.

    • Home city system gives you more customization over your favorites civilizations. This opens up lots of different ways to play each different civ, and for me having more unique features per civ is a major advantage, adding depth to the game.

    • Clean and easily understandable unit counter system. Some like Spirit of the Law have said that that they find Napoleonic units harder to read at a glance, but Age III makes it a lot easier to understand what counters what if you understand their basic unit catagory. Light infantry loses to cannons and heavy cavalry, heavy cavalry loses to heavy infantry and light cavalry, heavy infantry loses to light infantry, and so does light cavalry. As long as you can figure out what quadrant a unit you're up against belongs to, you can counter it. By contrast, how do you counter a Woad Raider or a Cataphract? The answer is a lot more complicated.

    • The new civilizations are generally VERY unique, and often among the most interesting. This is certainly true for the USA, Inca, and Sweden, although I haven't had a chance to try the hated African civs yet.

    • The theme for Age 3 is very strong and immersive. Some of this is just personal preference, since the early modern period (IE renaissance and industrial) are much more fascinating and dynamic for me than the much more overexposed middle ages or modern periods. You're experiencing a huge and unprecedented Colombian Exchange, mixing new and old cultures, and irrevocably altering the world and seeing the dawn of liberalism, new philosophical movements and truly global empires.

    submitted by /u/SuperSelkath
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    Arguably the goat DE tourney is happening soon (August 30th opening)

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 10:03 PM PDT

    There are so many amazing storylines:

    Hazza is coming out of his brief retirement,

    Kaiserklein has a new laptop,

    SAMWISE12 rises from the dead,

    Soldier vs. his literal brother GiveUAnxiety,

    Breeze can't sign up because of his ban from ESOC (due to his toxicity),

    Don_artie the tactical genius returns

    Link to ESOC info & sign up thread:https://eso-community.net/viewtopic.php?f=466&t=23408#p550429

    submitted by /u/amorywest
    [link] [comments]

    Two memes in 5 minutes!

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 04:08 AM PDT

    In game experience points while killing or creating units not displaying

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 06:33 PM PDT

    In some maps the score get displayed but in most of the maps it's just not there. Is this a know glitch and is there a fix for this?

    submitted by /u/pogkaku96
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    Satellite Map of North Africa & Arabia

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 01:09 PM PDT

    Yes, I unironically train these guys in most of my games

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 03:58 AM PDT

    FOUND THE DAMN FIX FOR THE DOUBLE CLICK SELECTS ALL BUG

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 10:38 PM PDT

    Hello all,

    as mentioned above,and my previous post,double clicking a unit in anywhere on the map not only selects the same units in the screen but,it selects all of them in the whole map,goddamn bug was there for 2-3 month,searched too much but found nothing,deleting the game and reinstalling won't do shit either(excuse my language *cough*)

    Finally tried to delete all the profile data in the following path [ C:/Users/(YOUR PC USERNAME)/Games/Age of Empires 3 DE]

    AND IT FIXED,GODDAMN BUG NO MORE

    TL:DR;

    IF YOU HAVE THE SAME BUG AS MENTIONED,DELETE THE "Age of Empires DE" file in the Users/xxx/Games AND BOOM

    submitted by /u/cr1ms0nMarauder
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    Waiting for other players bug is great for match making

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 04:38 PM PDT

    So this has not been fixed since launch. Absolute waste of time having to waiting for Q only for this to happen.

    submitted by /u/wasdasda134sdasdasd
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    What is the best way to set AI for free for all custom scenario? 8 players.

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 11:43 PM PDT

    interesting Abun stun glitch on explorers

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 04:54 PM PDT

    Benefit of revolting from home city?

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 09:24 AM PDT

    I've never understood the benefit of revolting. I can see that the resource cost is lower than aging up to V and you can ship extra forts, but losing your ability to gather resources besides factories or trade posts seems pretty bad. Plus you can't upgrade your units to imperial status I believe. And it's not like the militiamen that your villagers turn into are very powerful. Can someone tell me what I'm missing?

    submitted by /u/Different_Chair_3454
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    I made an Ethiopian base tell me you guys opinion …. Age Of Empires 3 Ethiopians Base Design - Age of Design

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 11:13 AM PDT

    Haudenosaunee Fast Industrial vs Japan [AOE3:DE]

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 10:39 AM PDT

    Is this thing too bad for DE?

    Posted: 24 Aug 2021 02:53 AM PDT
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