Age of Empires III

Delightful, disappointing, and frustrating��Age of Empires III in a nutshell. In many ways, AOE3 acts as a shrewd follow-up to developer Ensemble Studios�� acclaimed Age series, incorporating choice bits of Age of Mythology with the history-buff reverence of the Empires games. But in many other ways, it paints a clumsy and confused picture of what might have been.

AOE3 works hard to appease hardcore RTS players who hungrily tore into the previous games with spreadsheets and stopwatches. Effective strategies still involve carefully minding the +10 percent here and -25 percent there. You still have to micromanage your villagers, who require lots of shepherding even though they don��t have to walk back and forth to town centers (which are oddly treated as if they��re not superfluous). Your units still follow the same rock-paper-scissors dynamic, with added variations that come with unique units and later ages. You must still carefully mind your artillery while they limber, unlimber, and then limber again. And on water maps, well, you still have that much more to contend with. To summarize: old-school gameplay made for old-school players.

A valid approach, yes, but one that lacks key interface features. Too much information either goes unprovided or gets tucked into obscure places. Selected units are lumped under tiny tabs that offer no helpful information about who��s hurt and who��s set to what formation, which are crucial parts of combat management.

And where did all the hotkeys go? Ensemble expects you to play most of the game with tiny, inconvenient buttons. There are too many oversights, such as not being able to give units an attack order via the minimap. Of all RTS developers, shouldn��t Ensemble know better than to make these kinds of rookie mistakes? The difference between micromanagement and strategy usually boils down to the interface: A game like Rise of Nations is every bit as detailed, but its interface helps it rise to the occasion��while AOE3, sometimes a morass of barely assisted micromanagement, doesn��t.

Hit the Deck

The main innovation here is the ��home city,�� which gives Ensemble a chance to show off a completely pointless and noninteractive 3D city screen. Before each game, you build a deck of ��cards,�� each representing a gift (in the form of military units, bonuses, or even buildings) to your colony from back home. It��s a solid idea for number crunchers, and it really comes into its own once you start leveling up your city and tailoring a deck to fit your strategy. For some reason, you have to pick your cards before you know what map you��re playing��a strange design choice. After all, who��s going to bother wasting valuable deck space on cards from the harbor when the odds are against a naval map?

Other innovations include mighty forts and lucrative factories that can��t be rebuilt (position them carefully and guard them closely!), a trade route that provides income to everyone who controls depots along the way, and an explorer who runs around collecting resources while you��re in that dull early stage of waiting to get enough food so you can advance to the next age. One particularly clever touch: You can call dibs on Native American settlements, which let you recruit troops that don��t count toward your population limit. This comes in quite handy during endgame stalemates.

These deadlocks occur with surprising frequency, since AOE3 lacks the equivalent to big berthas, titans, or wonders of the world, nor are there any map-control victory conditions. To win, you��re forced to quite literally kill every last villager��and if you leave a player alone long enough, he��ll have a self-sustaining economy of plantations and factories, all entrenched behind well-guarded walls. Enjoy the standoff. In an effort to make all strategies (rushing, booming, or turtling) viable, it feels like Ensemble is saying, ��Figure out your own way to make the other guy call it quits.��

Skin Deep

A few smaller nitpicks come courtesy of AOE3��s beautiful visuals. Because the game looks so good, it calls attention to things you might not otherwise mind. Those tall wooden ships sure are majestic��until one of them parks with its bow through the ass end of another ship. Cavalry tilt at crazy angles going up slopes, shuffling and twirling all the while. Masses of infantry look impressive when arrayed in formation��but when a battle starts, everyone dissolves into an indiscriminate mass of guys wearing bright red, bright blue, or whatever other team color you picked. It makes for great screenshots but does diddly squat for gameplay.

Still, even a bad RTS from Ensemble is better than a mediocre RTS from just about anyone else. With the new lush game engine and the company's obvious enthusiasm for the subject matter, Ensemble knows how to make all those doppelsoldners, strelets, and culverins look sexy, even if you don��t know what they are. And that's half way toward making a really good RTS. But only half way.

Indian Giving

In addition to training new types of troops, you can buy unique bonuses when you befriend Native American settlements. Aztec chocolate provides an instant cash gift, Cree textiles reduce all wood costs by one-quarter, Cherokee basket weaving eliminates the wood cost for all food-gathering improvements, and the Lakota deliver up a whole herd of buffalo for good eating. The sporty Iroquois can teach you lacrosse (+10 percent damage for ranged units), and Seminole guerrilla-fighting triples damage to buildings. The Tupi coat arrows with frog poison (+10 percent damage for archers) and give you an animal lure that lets you train up to five pet cougars, all named Buttercup (we��re not making that up). But our favorite: the hard-partying Carib, who brew beer to boost infantry damage and play drums to terrorize enemy villagers (archers inflict double damage). Bottoms up!

Older school than it should have been.

Verdict: 3 Stars

Publisher: Microsoft Developer: Ensemble Studios genre: RTS esrb rating: T Required: 1.4GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 2GB hard drive space_Recommended: 3GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 128MB videocard Multiplayer: Internet, LAN (2-8 players)

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Computer Gaming World.