Age of Empires 3 - Demo is out

[Soriak]

http://www.fileplanet.com/156731/150...pires-III-Demo

Really looking forward to this game, the first 2 parts were awesome back in the day.

I just hope it'll be more than your average RTS-clone and bring new elements to the table. Upgrading your capital abroad to get certain benefits sounds like a good idea - though I have no idea what kind of benefits you get from it.

Anything that moves away from WC3s Heroes is a good thing in my book - it's ok to have "leaders," but once the only important thing is how well you move your hero and smash the abilities... lacks the kind of strategic element I'm looking for in an RTS.

Will post again once I'm through with the demo!

[Lord Thanos]

Cool, thanks for the heads up!

Trying to download it now

Your place in line: 423/425...

Guess am in for a long wait

[taebin]

Anybody have a FilePlanet login they mind sharing? Don't feel like paying $7 for a trial =\ Appreciate any help, game looks fun.

[Phoenix]

Download it straight from microsoft, no wait and and you get 300k down.

[Kirun]

Played it a few days ago. Not particularly impressed, especially with defensive structures. I hate playing RTS' where you constantly have to be on the offensive. I much prefer playing defense while slowly building up units and AOE III does an extremely poor job of allowing you to do that. Forts, which seem like they will cost a ton,(you can get a fort wagon which builds one for free once you advance to the industrial age, so I'm not sure of the actual cost, but the building itself is huge)do almost entirely nothing.

[Dyscord]

I like Dawn of War's offensive minded gameplay. But thats definately a different kind of game. The simple economy lends itself well to allowing you to focus on fighting instead of mining gold or chopping trees.

AoE though... is totaly about your economy. Hell in the nomad/first age you can't even build a troop producing structure. You'd think a game so focused around building up would better allow you to protect yourself against being rushed. Plus I can't stand the fact you can't garrision your troops in towers and forts. The fort was a potent defensive structure, but the outposts are just freebies to any small raiding force.

Plus the sound kept cutting out mid game (not the music).

Basically I was totally unimpressed.

Good things though were the 'card' system. You can get cards from playing the game. You get exp from trading and killing and building. Once you 'level up' you can play a card. These cards can send troops, settlers, forts, increase economy, raw resources, tons of stuff. Its an interesting system.

[titan_atlas]

Thanks for the download. Will play a bit more in next few days. Always bothered me that in the higher settings they would raid your base like 10 mins into the game. I don't even have enough resources for 5 troops and they got 100. I wish someone would address this inconsistency in resources these games seem to have.

[Usha Starchild]

I think I was the first person to D/l it when it came out lol. It still had no rating on FP.

Anyway I agree withthe above poster. Its very hard to play a defensive style game. The first part of the campain is really hard if you take your time moving. If you go fast its a cake walk. The second 2 parts were easy. I palyed on difficult setting too.

Now skirmish mode i put it on the hardest setiing and beat both maps a ton of times. Its VERY hard if you dont rush em in the beginning with ur hero. and attack the pesants soon as the town center pops up. U gotta keep them from colecting food. Soon as ur pesants are rdy send em down to help kill or collect the computers food. Yes you can colect their shipments as well. You gotta beat them to the 800 food for ur first civ up.I used my hero to kill and distract the pesants while i looted all their food with my pesants haha. back in the base u can make more.

After i got bored with all that I edited all the game files to make my explorer dog uber fast and powerful and made cows worht 89840923 food. U can change all sorts of shit in the xml files.

overall id give it a 6 or 7. But its beta.

[Soriak]

I don't think rushing will be that big a problem on bigger maps. Keep in mind the demo only has maps for 2 players, so not only is the run always short, but you also know where your enemy spawns.

I like the strategiv element of the train routes and I think they'll become very important. My games usually last rather long, since I hate rushing and never do it. On easy setting, the computer left my train stations alone - but on hard he targets them and it's difficult to protect them all and STILL have enough forces in the base to prevent an attack.

The ressources that come from train routes (I switch them from exp to resources - usually food) are a huge boost and once you have a factory - wow. Though I like to assign them to rockets, they're awesome.

1-10 they get a 9 from me for now... we'll see how large scale combat turns out. Especially once you have maps with some naval warfare too.

[McCheese]

I don't like it.

Maybe I'm just dumb, but RTS games are getting too complicated for me. I want to build up a base + troops and go at it. I don't like all these new bells and whistles that are being added.

[Celebrindal]

Shit doesn't run on Win2k. Fuck that.