You've landed on the New World. Ready to stake your claim? So is everybody else. So have some before you. Many will follow after you. How do you attain satisfaction, wealth, and power? Then manage to keep it? It takes lots of strategic thinking. If you think other are standing idylly by, you're wrong. It's going to be rough and nasty. Crush your enemies with devastating cannons, rifled, infantry, and your naval fleet. Build a thriving empire with a booming economy. Form strategic alliances with Native Americans. UNIVERSAL BINARY - Works with both Intel and PowerPC Macs GameSpy Top 5 Game of the Year 2005 award System Requirements (tentative) - Macintosh computer with a G4/G5 or Intel processor running at 1.4GHz or faster, Mac OS X v10.3.9 or higher, 512MB RAM, 64 MB Video Card (with support for hardware T & L). 56K dial-up Internet access or LAN for online play
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Summary: The Perfect Time Waster
Comment: Age of Empires 3 is an awesome game with it's high-resolution graphics, new game-play, and deep story-line, but it IS NOT just a game. This is where spare time is meant to go. Microsoft has had some great ideas in the past, but the AoE series are honestly some of the best games I have ever played. This game will have you playing non-stop and I personally guarantee you will love every minute of it!
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Summary: A&E III
Comment: anyone how liked A&E II will love this game It works grate on the MAC with the improved graphics are grate!
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Summary: Terrible, worse than the last edition!
Comment: This game is not an improvement over the previous edition. I would not recommend buying this.
Reasons why it sucks:
-The graphics aren't that great.
-You can only see a small area of the playing field at once.
-You have to build up civilizations over time, you can't take full advantage of their attributes immediately.
-I hate the card system, it's lame.
-You can't double-click to select all the units of one type in an area.
-No real improvements over the last game, just different. As in crappier.
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Summary: Excellent But Archers on the Plains of Abraham?
Comment: This is an excellent strategy game. I am very interested in colonial and Eighteenth Century warfare so I enjoy the era and the animations of musket loading pioneers and soldiers. It mimics linear tactics although it is not an exact reproduction. The naval warfare is also good although you will not see ships in linear formation.
There is a definite improvement over Age of Empires II in that there are very real differences between the cultures that require differing strategies when playing different nations. I really like how they were able to make it so that particular nations have an edge in certain periods. For example the Spaniards and the Ottomans are stronger in the colonial age while the other nations such as the British and French begin to excel in the fortress and industrial ages. There are more nation specific technologies than in the earlier version and there is no denying certain what I would call basic technologies to certain nations to create variation.
I like buildings that will produce resources continuously such as mills and plantations, and factories, rather than relying on mines that are eventually "dried up." The shipments from the home cities is an interesting feature although "additions" to those cities seems to be little more than "decorating."
My quibbles with the game have nothing to do with game play but more to do with historical accuracy. One of the British special units is the longbowman, also featured in the earlier AoE2. The computer will continue to produce this unit well into the industrial age of the game because it remains cheap and effective. I want to battle against redcoats, not medieval yeomen! Pikemen and halberdiers are other soldiers that will be produced "years" after the socket bayonet made this type of unit worthless in real European warfare.
I wonder at some of their choices of colonizing nations--the Turks never colonized America--but perhaps they were already planning their later versions such as the Asian Dynasties. The Swedes might have been a better choice than the Germans; I don't think much of Frederick the Great commanding armies of swordsmen rather than musketeers (fusiliers). I also think Louis XIV would have been a better representative of France than Napoleon for the colonization of America.
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Summary: Age of Empires didn't get worse; other games got better
Comment: I think this is a really fun game. It has lots to do and some nice improvements over Age 2. The reason people don't seem to be liking this one so much is that it's nothing revolutionary. Age of Empires 2 was far better than other games in the genre, and AOE 3 isn't, but it's still a great game that's well worth the money.