Age of Empires III

Jannissaries were the best thing in that entire game. A large enough group of those = movable castle

 

a full group of peasants building castles at top speed and 2 or 3 groups of Jannissary's hopping from castle to castle, all the way to the enemy.

 

Just got mine today, Collectors Edition with tons of stuff. Nice hard cover artwork book, poster, making of DVD, soundtrack on CD, large source book style manual plus the normal manual and keyboard layout. Put the kids to bed tonight and then go kill me from Frenchies...

 

I finally got the demo to work. The issue was simple to fix but immensely annoying. Freaking Microsoft is hell bent on fixing the resolution & refresh rate, so the default is 1024x768 @75Hz. You have to change it or play in windowed mode. Here's the walk thru:

My monitor's defaults are 1680x1050 @ 60Hz. The idiot at MS tech support said that's impossible. he'd never heard of a widescreen LCD and thought I was making it up. He also insited that my monitor would do a higher refresh rate at lower res. It's not a CRT. Idiot.

 

gotta say it. this game is really a disappointment.

first off, in the standard map collections, you can only have two teams. or free for all. wtf? to get different numbers of teams you need to make your own maps? lame!

8 players max. lame. age of mythology (titans?) even had 12 players.

so far, the ai sucks. me and my friend played it cold against 2 moderate compueters (2 on 2). no problem at all (having no idea how anything really works). tried to 2 on 3 moderate. even bigger stomping. 2 on 2 hard (thought it might be tough). again, no sweat.

i think the game must be designed to be played against humans via the internet. there's a weird sort of rpg'sh angle with this whole "home city" thing. your city gains experience as you play and actually gives you additional capabilities -- which is almost like having a character in a game like diablo. the more you play, the tougher your city becomes and the bigger the advantage you get. i don't know how the ai deals with that. i suspect they just get level 1 cities (yes, cities have levels). also, there's this really stupid system for customizing your city by placing props in it. very much like mmo's where you customize your avatar.

the game play is not very advanced. the graphics are nice, tho. the ai sucks.

empire earth 2 did this as well. they tried to get clever and blew it. rise of nations and empire earth are still the best rts games i've played.

gas powered games is working on an rts, tho. it should be good. gas powered games makes dungeon siege and the guy behind it is the guy behind total annihilation (probably the best rts of its day, feature-wise). called something like star commander... it should be good.

 

I think I may pass on purchasing the full game. I re-installed AOK, and despite it's age, it's a better game. Problem is, my AOK expansion is h4x0red, so I cant install the last patch Ensemble released for it. I heard it dramatically improves AI.

Also, I missed AOM completely. Is it worth getting? What's it like by comparison?

 

aom/aot is pretty good. it's got a cool aging up system where you select a different god to worship (choice of two). so each age up you customize your civ a bit (each god grants different powers). also each civ is TOTALLY different. the ai's not so good, tho. with the titan expansion pack, it's all about racing to nukes... i mean, titans.


too bad about aoe3. i could really use a new rts. i wish somebody would just make a state of the art game of the rts genre and not try to reinvent the thing. give me 12 or 16 slots instead of 8. give me random generated maps instead of scenarios. give me unique civs and a good ai that doesn't cheat (make them smarter rather than giving them a handicap on resources or damage). give it good graphics. i don't need an rts/rpg hybrid or any other gimmick.

 

Bought AOM/AOT today and gave it a whirl. Overall, I like it, but I think I like WC3 better.

Nothing touches starcraft, to this day. Damn I wish they'd at least update it, even if they arent going to make a sequel.

 

exactly. if you liked starcraft and wc3, you might look at "armies of exigo". they take the basic rts game and just refinish it. unfortunately, the ai scheme is REALLY fucked up. it's either a push-over or invincible. there's no inbetween. they either keep to themselves, or throw a serious rush on you right off the bat.

wc3 never did much for me cuz of the downward spiral of experience. there are too many powers you need to activate by hand in order to be effective. i just don't car for that kind of playing. and once you get crushed, you're doomed cuz not only is your army gone, the one that killed it is even tougher.

i really like lotr: the battle for middle-earth. the ai is a tad weak, but the game gives you the opportunity to recover from near destruction like no other i've played. i don't like a game where 20 minutes in, it's clear what the outcome will be. it's like the rest of the game is pointless from then on. on a two person team, i've seen literally the last building of a team-mate under serious attack and been there as we recovered to stomp them. that turning tide thing is tough to find.

 

I know what you mean Nut, and in WC3 you're right, but I've come back from 1 worker drone and one hidden building to win in SC too many times. Some of the best times Ive had gaming, pulling off that coup. So much sleight of hand and shell games, and timing your one chance countersrike perfectly and lucking out some when you guess right on a strategy. So much fun.

Then theres the stupid luck games... Got wiped as zerg in a 2v2 one time and was left with a single spore colony on my ally's base and 2 lurkers. Snuck the lurkers into the enemies' bases and wiped out their economies through constant micro management. Gave my partner time to tech up and take them out. Funny stuff.

What I miss though was getting good enough at the game that I could announce what I was doing to everyone in the game and still win. My favorite was self imposing unit limitations. Nuthin like telling an enemy "For this game, you have been selected for DEATH BY FIREBAT" and then pulling it off as 70+ firebats flooded his base early in the game. Did that with goliaths one time too, which is a serious pain.