it's always stumped me. The graphics were WAY better for Age 3, and man we put our heart and soul into that game. We always attributed it to the fact that vikings and samurai are sexier than hussars and musketeers. We actually set as a goal to win the E3 best graphic award for Age 3, a prize which was almost always won by a first-person-shooter. And we did it! Source: I was one of the main developers for both Age 2 and Age 3.
Sandy, I was extremely young when I played and I speak from what today you'd call single player? 3 seemed to be more like AoM and it works there beautifully but the campaign in 3 didn't live up to it. So it wasn't what we were expecting so kids stuck to 2 and AoM.
It is awesome that we can get insights like this in a youtube comment, this should be higher! Assuming you are authentic, on the internet anybody can say anything and I am lazy to investigate as almost anybody It is so nice to read the comments sometimes
It is not your fault Sandy. Age of Empires 3 did not "fail" because it was worse. It failed because it was released too late. The RTS was a dying and nearly dead genre in 2005. With the exception of Starcraft 2 nothing recovered. People lost interest in the genre as a whole and just stuck with their guns on their favourite game. I say fail in quotes because it didn't fail at least not as a quality game. Me, my brother and my dad used to play that game just about every day using LAN. We were pretty fond of the game and upon hearing the name we could separately recall very specific battles with detail it was a pretty important game especially to me and my brother growing up. So much so to this day if either of us are playing a RTS game and hear the guys say "hello" we think of: "Commandiment? I woll!" On the topic of graphics I am impressed how well it still holds today. A lot of 3D games of the time look quite bad now a days or at the very least dated. If that came out today nobody would say "That looks old" apart from the hud of course. Glad to see you comment I first time I saw you was from the video you did with Lindybeige a few years ago.
Tbh it was done so much better on the battle for middle earth games. Watching orcs go flying as you charge cavs or people when they hit by trolls and spells.
I personally liked the civilizations having the unit variety more specific. Getting a completely unique roster between France, Ottomans, Japanese or Russia adds more flavor to faction choice, and feels more historically authentic.
On top of that you know most of the times what those units do with looking at the model alone. There are exceptions like the culverin and oprichnik. Long range inf > short/ no range inf + ranged cav > melee cav > long range inf.
I will say this tho. Samurai Revolution is right: France is Hella OP. The Ottomans don't feel nearly as OP as France despite the fact that they're one of the strongest nations in the game (with good historical basis). I've played several matches against French AI as Netherlands (Personal fave) and sometimes even guard halberdiers will struggle vs Cuirassiers. And same goes for Ruyters. But at least the Netherlands have some of the best endgame siege capabilities in the game thanks to the coehorn mortars card. That being said, getting only 30 musketeers does feel a bit annoying since skirms are shit vs cav which is bad when playing vs France, Germany, Russia and India
@@KravenTheKnight The French Cuirassiers/ Gendarmes are easy to beat with the Dutch Ruyter, Spanish combo of Dragoon and Espada with 10 missionaries behind them, all musket type units and aoe melee units. I feel like Ottomans are indeed too weak. Their eco is slow and their military is expensive. Mortars are often not really worth it. Other horse arty will do the job most of the times and they can be used against units as well. When you play as the Netherlands you actually don't even need a barrack. Just train Ruyter and horse arty. The amount of each depends on what your opponent makes.
@@Vincrand well, against Aztecs, Japanese and Russians you definitely want skirms. And the Dutch skirms are pretty good because of the infantry combat cards. Plus they decimate Spanish rodeleros and pikes like nobody's business. That being said, I'll definitely take into account your advice and try to use more Ruyters and horse arty
@@Vincrand Yeah, I felt the counter system was fairly easy to understand, especially in terms of the time period. Light infantry counter heavy infantry because of their combat tactics and method of deployment but this can't be easily simulated in an Age game so you rely on damage modifiers to simulate combat advantages.
When it came out, it was probably the most beautiful rts game I've ever seen. I remember my jaw dropped when I saw those gigantic (relatively) and detailed ships in the water next to a beautiful new world coastline.
You're not playing as an Empire in age of empires 3, you're playing as a colony of an existing Empire. Which is why you dont build up a massive empire/city like in 2.
You don't even play an empire in age 2 either, you start with a *town center*. Playing a colony would actually make more sense to have 3-5 town centers and at most 3 forts/castles in a standard game. They could have easily reduced the "lore" of your actions without reducing the amount of buildings.
@@Tudsamfa you dont start as a colony but you can build up into something that feels like an empire. My AoE3 civ always felt like a colony no matter what.
@@Tudsamfa how do you think empires were made IRL? Having a town centre, having people who can fight/explore and having ships (if your an island) and having enough precious mines to trade with or buy better stuff with. That is how empires are built. Colonies are built upon existing motherland incomes from other colonies. Hence why GBE snowballed to 189 territories in just 20 years with Victoria. Better ships, better explorers, better navigation, better trained armies, better economy. = Bigger larger better empire.
@@Marine_Dynamite not everyone can afford mango grooves shipped from our homeland So we try some magic spells these days like Censored Lumberjack Woodstock
One big reason is also timing. AoE2 was released in the golden age of RTS, alongside AoE1, Warcrafts, Starcraft, Red Alerts, C&C etc. AoE3 was released in the era of Call of Duty, Battlefield, World of Warcraft and other "more straightforward" games. So naturally AoE2 got a bigger player base and that granted it a classic status, one which has grown old very well.
This is important context, 100%. Sales/players is always dependant on a number of factors like genre popularity at the time, competition, series fatigue marketing budget etc. Amazing how many games are ignored at launch and then later lauded as hidden gems
AoM is closer to AoE 2 than AoE 3 is to AoE 2 gameplay wise. AoE 3 is a great game on its own, but feels alien to fans of the franchise. I loved AoE 1 a lot due to its stone age Man vs nature setting, like you really feel like you accomplish something when you advance from the stone age. The primitive buildings, researching new techs, unlocking new units - It really feels like you've evolved from cave man to Paladin... AoE 2 fixes a lot of issues and gameplay problems like depletion of resources, better defenses, more counters and better graphics, but moved to a more settlement era. Its focus is a lot more on fighting than advancing compared to AoE 1, but still nothing too excessive. AoM Felt like the true AoE 3 for me, its kept a very similar composition and has similar progression strategies. The pace is pretty similar as well. The added graphics, god powers and myth units are just a cherry on top. AoE 3 felt like a completely different game though. You no longer start out lost on some continent needing to invent the wheel or discover fire, heck you don't even have to go about looking for resources, Farms and Plantations are infinite. Almost everyone has guns with 100% accuracy, forests don't block infantry(it no longer feels cozy) and buildings are only needed for unlocking units or upgrades. Its got its perks though, the amazing graphics, Home cities, naval warfare, unique abilities for some units, trade routes, tribes, treasures, etc. Like CnC4, they changed its formula too much from the original game, that old players found too awkward to get used too and new players didn't care too much for.
I thought the smaller towns were deliberate, actually? This is firstly because I think you're meant to invest in the home city, not the colonial town on the map, since it's the home city that you level up, upgrade, and customise over the long term - and secondly because, well, the whole premise of the game is that you're building colonies. Your town on the map is not supposed to hold a candle to the immense home city. So because AoE3 is trying to cultivate a frontier feel, it wants its towns to be smaller and less majestic. The contrast between the home city and the frontier seems really important to the game's effect, to me. So the game offloads some of the complexity of economic management to the pre-game, home city phase, so that the game part itself feels more like a military expedition from an established civilisation - and not like building a civilisation from scratch.
True, Aoe3 has not a real "metropolis" look. You can't even properly build a real city, unless you are in editor, as the buildings seem disconnected, and just "not cozy" enough.
I think that's true, but it's also something that cuts against the game, because it becomes harder to feel invested in the individual conflicts. And with investment in the home city, you pick a "main", which can cause the game to become more "samey" feeling than AoE2, doubly with the smaller cities and thus reduced emphasis on building placement and resource acquisition.
I feel like this is sort of what creates the effect mentioned in the quote of AoE "Not being an Age game anymore", but more specifically not an _empire_ game anymore. It seems more like AoE3 scenarios are explicitly single battles or events in your empire's history, rather than in AoE2 or 1 where a scenario might represent years of time or a random map might feel like you're playing out the entire lifespan of a civilization.
I've noticed that entertainment that start to go downhill seem to keep consitantly good soundtracks: Age of Empires, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, and LotR/Hobbit all had disappointing latter episodes/games/movies but the soundtracks stayed brilliant.
disagree, i enjoy it's gameplay since it's more relaxing than AoE2, where you have to constantly manage your army and economy in a tense environment where you can also run out of gold, rock or lumber easily as you get attacked every second and need buildings to advance to next age and tons of resources, you get no chance to win if your opponent reaches a higher age and attacks you, mechanics are hard as hell, the AI is almost impossible to beat in harder difficulties and most of players are just Rush abusive tryhards making the online play unpleasant, "gitgud" doesn't help either when most of pro people invade newbie matches... AoE3 has cool animations when moving, attacking, making a new formation or dying, there isn't something as overpowered as a castle which can be protected easily as well, walls are definitely op as well, you can just spam them everywhere in a second as the others struggle to destroy them and it's usually used to exploit the AI in campaigns such as Saladin and win unfairly, towers also have a limit in AoE3 so you don't spam them either making an impossible defense and the variety of units is fair enough, not so different than AoE2, people keep saying that AoE3 has repetitive designs... WELL then i guess the skirmishers, militia line, pikemen line, knight line, light cavalry line, and actually all lines are different in AoE2 right lol, they are both just different games with different features and gameplay, comparing them is hardly fair, i like both games but saying that only the soundtrack is AoE3 is good is not fair at all
It’s because the grind for home city cards soured initial multiplayer reactions to the game. You basically have to play at a disadvantage for a long time.
DivineFaithborn or you can put cheats to get XP in skirmishes and then get a lot or levels. But it’s still not a great solution, it’s a good one tho, that’s what I did to get to lvl 50 in just 20-30 minutes maybe I don’t recall exactly how much time it was
@@Pac0110 This solution doesn't really matter because it wasn't around for the first ~8 years of the game. By the time the XP cheat was a thing, people had already made up their mind about the game.
Exactly and the fact it hasn't had the same new expansion treatment that 2 got over the last decade would also not have helped there at all. That alone has helped age 2 grow much larger while 3 was left in a pretty rough state Unfortunately the time period does cause issues with many of the complaints due to counters making more sense if you follow more colonial era games.
Having Siege elephants and towncenter/castle on seashore made water maps for me very easy in Indian civ. I could throw any civ with siege elephants with actullay had cannons.
@@prathameshjoshi007 I'd love a day-night cycle... Make native water transports and boats be able to silently slip onto shore elsewhere, but it takes a bit of time. The maps could be made with 'harbours' in mind, where you have to/can hide things. Europeans have good vision during the day, but at night cheaper fleets can take on unprepared European fleets. I think of many of Thomas Cochrane when conceptualising this, as he did these manoeuvres both in Europe and as part of the fledgling Peru & Chili & even Brazil.
@@viniciusschadeck4992 nah the game was fun. People who like aoe2 are too biased. I honestly didn't like aoe2 at the time, and didn't play it much. So coming from AOE1 to 3, i enjoyed it a lot, though i still preferred the first one.
i think having the civs entirely diff is actually a strenght, cuz it makes the games less repetative. i always felt like aoe2 civs needed al ittle more destinction
When I started AOE3, I learned 1 civ (Germans) and was too intimidated to try out any of the others for quite awhile. Maybe for advanced players its better, but less desirable for new players (I do love the game now that I know all the civs!)
The main reason I don’t like aoe2 is the fact that all civs units look like European units. It’s just kinda weird to me playing Chinese or Koreans but having soldiers that look like knights.
I think AO3 tried too hard to be WC3 especially in style. What I loved about AOE2 was the feeling of putting together a giant army, whereas AOE3 always felt like you were putting together skirmishes.
Imagine trying to be wc3 but having a shit ass unit battle ai. It feels so clunky to let all your units even attack or not wasting all shots on the same enemy unit. Even games like cossacks did so much better with that and it came 5 years earlier.
I have come to the idea that AOE3 would be more popular than AOE2 with few tweaks, for example, unit shipments was a big mistake since it allows the enemy to rush you from nothing. There is no indication that unit shipments are coming, no buildings to construct; no counterplay thus. This is more important than map size.
so this literally means that aoe2 players are treaty/no rush players. if u cant handle early close map and just want to chill on ur own space for 6 hours, go play civ games i guess.
Yeah, one of my problems with AoE2 is the soundtrack. The soundtrack to the demos was awesome but not so much the full game. AoE had a great soundtrack but of course was just midis. AoE3 was just amazing with the music.
Yea... except for the fact that villager melee is stronger than their ranged, so if you want to kill anything with a villager you still need to use melee (manually)
I hated it in age of mythology too, while I get limiting them for balance reasons but the houses don't make sense in aoe3 where you have a hard cap on population that you will probably hit before reaching your house cap anyway
@@jaredfullmer7043 AoE2 limits it with stone supply. No stone in AoE3, so the Devs wanted to avoid you filling the whole maps with the (arguably quite strong in Industrial Age) outposts.
For me, the greatest part of AoE3 is how many unique units there are. Specially mercenaries. I always loved purchasing Elmeti, they were hella expensive but really cool cavalry and while playing I created my own stories like "These Elmetis are my special forces, they're here to lead the army now" Also I cared so much for my explorer. I treated him like everybody in the colony knew him and he was a wise leader who would risk his life por the town
Campaign kinda done it too. In American Revolution campaign bunch of hussars, cannon and one Haccapelite in front are arriving as reinforcements in fort-destroying mission, and its Haccapelite who make report to the main character, strengthening feel of him being officer in charge of that reinforcements. Same for me about explorer. He have name and he indirectly grows in power with home city (with unlocking of late shipments with buffs for him. Even more the case with War Chiefs that has some crazy upgrades in lvl 40 shipments) so playing different skirmish maps felt like his adventure with journey across all New World
me: there's artillery that makes men fly, artillery i don't usually build because i always keep a strong cavalry and weird bastard artillery added in the asian dynasties that i haven't experienced with that much
There is a cannon, a cannon, a cannon and da biggest and da baddest cannon of them all! (Ottoman big bombard). Also there is yet another cannon that is free and is produced by your factory. I must say that the iroquis light cannon is pretty much a blend of different guns with average bonuses, making it an easy choice to spam.
SotL finally getting into AoE3 gameplay mechanics is like... your crush who you thought never noticed you suddenly sends you flowers So many emotions, overwhelming
@@charleswest2314 oh, we will get there, some day. But now is the time for AoE3 to shine, with all its glorious 3d graphics, physics and home cities. Aztecs and Japanese #represent
Spain's prime was when both swords and guns were used. Best of both worlds, sort of. A conquistador with armour is way cooler than a Brit wearing a coat that is red. Yawn.
Ironically, Iroquois siege is even easier to distinguish in AOE3 compared to their European counterparts. Indians are two elephant siege units and a ranged elephant that doubles as anti-cavalry/anti-siege.
@@martytu20 that also don't have an animation for limber/fire mode. As a matter of fact, most of Asian Dynasties sieges suffer from a lack of animation between limber/fire mode, which is crazy when you think about it.
@@awellner3285 Yes they changed and no it isn't. Not the least because Iroquis isn't used to describe a race. It is used to describe an ethnical group.
I have to admit that I ended up liking AOE3 more because I'm not a particular skilled AOE2 player. I've played AOE2 since its release but I just don't have the skill to do all the micro and stuff. AOE3 seems more suited for a casual player, specially if you play mostly on single player. Also, I'm a history buff and a geography teacher, and I just love the insane effort they made to give us a very diverse set of maps and scenarios in AOE3. I'm just a sucker for all those maps.
It's so much easier to do Fast fortress in AoE3 than do Fast castle in AoE2. All you have to do is herd 2 hunt when aging up and send 700 coin after in AoE3. But in AoE2 dark age micro is 5 times harder than doing all the things above, you need to micro for wood at some point, lure the boar at some point, my brain can't really handle that much.
It's weird. I really fell in love with and played a lot of AoE3, despite the fact I grew up playing AoE2. The civs in 2 feel a bit samey, after playing a lot of 3. Everyone has the same villagers, same men at arms, same militia and even the same Dark Age architectural style. When it comes to 3, I like the unit variety, and even the special merc units only accessible through cards or a saloon, or treasures. The game *feels* like there's a lot more interesting stuff going on, like there's more to discover down the road, but I can understand how the strategy and competitive element suffers for it. I always hated the population cap and how limited armies were in size compared to 2, as well. I was always coming up with ways to push past the unit cap. As for the home city, it was nice watching it grow and change as I leveled up. I've always loved rpgs, so that element just clicked for me. The colonial setting, too, was a bit more interesting and fresh to me than medieval, at least when I got into it.
Most games don't allow that. I've heard the reason for this is that during playtesting everyone zooms out a lot, and then complains how the game is slow-paced, units are barely distinguishable and controls are inconvenient (as the result of camera being too far from action). But as soon as the zoom out is limited, all those complaints are gone. In other words, devs prevent you from ruining your own experience.
@@MysteryD I mean that they make the game better for the vast majority of players by not letting them ruin their own experience. It's a common practice in game development, not just about zoom out.
It´s sad to see that many people categorize AoE3 as the "black sheep" of microsoft RTS game... Even then they forgot about my beloved Age of Mythology ;_; .
A whole bunch of AoE 2 players started their AoE 2 gameplay as children playing on their father's plain non-gamer computer that could run AoE 2 no problem. It was a massive success because any computer could run it, from your dad's computer to a cheap computer that people in most nations can afford. Meanwhile AoE 3 came out in an awkward time where most casual gamers (even in "rich" nations) didn't have fancy graphics cards (or any cards at all) so it was slow. Graphics requirements got rid of a big portion of people that bought AOE 2 (gamers in less developed nations, casual gamers, and "children-playing-on-dad's-computer" gamers). When I was a kid I was a huge AoE 2 fan. When 3 came out I tried to run it on my family's computer and it literally exploded. I cried a lot that day.
I have the original box with me, so let's list the minimum system requirements for this 2005 game. Windows: XP - 256 MB RAM Processor: 1.4 GHz Hard Drive: 2GB Video Card: 64 MB with support for hardware transformation and lighting Other: Sound card & speakers/headphones Online/Multiplayer Requirements: 56K dial-up internet access or LAN. (I'm not a techie, so I'm not sure which things are the most draining for PC's at the time)
@@liamdell6319 "hardware transformation and lighting" There you have it. T&L wasn't standard for most GPUs back then. I remember having this issue with SW Battlefront. Met all the minimum requirements but wasn't able to play it due to my GPU not supporting T&L.
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p Well what really happened was that the computer bricked and I smelled smoke. The computer had to be thrown out. Might as well rename myself as "Exaggerator"
I'd argue Age of Mythology was always the age game that could benefit from a definitive edition the most. Aom 1 and 2 both have timeless sprites and Aom 3 uses less dated unit models. I love Aom's graphics and atmosphere to death, but I get the feeling its dated graphics turn new people off. The game even has a few cinematic units that show off how amazing the game could look if it was more detailed.
I personally loved the time period of AoE3 more and hope they explore it further. The home cards, music, combat, ragdoll effect from cannon shots , the ability to gain map based bonuses based on native alliances that let you blend your troops not to mention the music etc. all just come together to make a fantastic game. I think outside of a few minor issues or gripes the core issue was fan expectations and perhaps not liking range becoming the core focus(despite hand combat being in AoE3 a large chunk of units were/are based on range combat). Regardless of what people think im actually glad the devs took risk with this game and pushed for a less attempted time period for a RTS.
I really hoped Age of Empires 4 will sort of unite time periods of both previous games, sadly its more of a Age of Empire 2 2, with sliight overlap with early period of Age of Empires 3. But i guess its resonable, by numbers of AoE 2 and AoE 3 fans. (Different thing that AoE 4 still defeated by same AoE 2, so they will just stick to making AoE 2 DLC)
@@mantunguyen Probably. But AOE1 DE was really half-assed and Microsoft didn't even try to put enough effort into making it good. I'd say a lot of people would've played it had they added either unit formations, or gates. Ar at least market trading system like in AOE2. Once you run out of gold in AOE1, it's game over. those trash units don't stand a chance against gold units. Maybe chariots do, but that's all.
@@lolwalullalullol912 Unit formations or gates? What kind of cowardly nonsense is that. You actually need to develop SKILL and improve your micro--number your units if you want to focus on catapults in different parts of the map. You need to constantly scan the mini-map for backdoors and enemy attacks; walls aren't even ALLOWED in Age of Empires: Rise of Rome culture. That's weak to just build walls. Running out of gold means you need to use your gold carefully as the game goes on!! Defensive structures (i.e. towers on a hill, strategically placing legions in front in cho war, etc) can be used to wear down the other teams' gold units, trading amongst allies to ensure gold use, clicking coinage to ensure max gold mining, all of that stuff are all part of the strategy. (insert old man shaking fist at clouds saying "you millenials and your unit formations and gates") haha. And yes, scythed chariots are often upgraded for when gold runs out, but EVEN then if you don't use the map properly, you'll run out of wood. Heck, heavy catapults can even destroy forest so you can cut yourself a path and infiltrate an enemy's town, or even just destroy their trees to "scorched earth" their resources. Weak argument.
"Why is AoE2 more popular?" Back in the time when AoE3 came out. My PC wasn't good enough to run it. So I didn't play it. On the other hand even a potato could run AoE2. Now I have the same problem with AoE2 DE: my PC isn't good enough for it. So I had to skip it as well...
@tiestofalljays I don't think AOE2 vs AOE3 is necessarily the question of why AOE3 didn't succeed. The fact is that AOE3 felt lightyears behind some of the other RTS's of the time like Dawn Of War and Company of Heroes. Even older games did the time period better; I remember being disapointed with AOE3 because it really was nothing compared to American Conquest (2002!).
Totally my experience! I played the hell out of the AOE2 campaigns (even when I was terrible at it) and they're still some of my favorite pieces of history, supporting a lifelong passion for history. The AOE3 campaign felt like some cheap movie shit - some guy bouncing all over the place doing crap for no reason. Once I got bored with the campaign I stopped playing soon after.
I played AoE3 mostly as a kid and disliked the whole base game campaign. But I loved the Asian Expansion campaign because it felt more history related.
@@DrSonic-rl9lv chinese campaign was the shittiest one (no offense). They literally wasted the entire chinese history with some south american jungle fight crap. They could have the OPİUM WARS
It would be interesting to have you do some sort of collaboration with Samurai Revolution who is arguably the biggest AOE3 player on TH-cam. He is sort of like your equivalent to the AOE3 community, making videos that look at mechanics and such.
@@bitcoinfandom I was a big follower or inter and he use to work at bar but then quit to join the group of both aoe2/3 casters but then that folded so I'm presuming he went back studying and is busy. However I could be wrong with this assumption but he may also be working on aoe3DE being such a big influence on the aoe3 community.
Samurai rev it's not close to the level of analisis of Sotl, SR barely dominates the basics of the game. Some of the material of Sotl applies to all RTS, while SR videos just cover some very specific strategies.
I really like age of empires 3 because of the unique way the civilizations played. Which allowed you to come up with pretty unique strategies. I do agree with the units stopping to attack was bad, as well as not being able to tell what kind of buff/nerf they have vs other units was tough.
I would argue that your channel also had a small, but considerable, effect in AoE2's popularity. I, for instance, was already a fan of AoM and AoE3, but never cared much about AoE2 until I discovered your channel. The sheer quality of your videos, and the passion put in them, made me reconsider my views on AoE2. I still prefer AoM and AoE3, but thanks to you I learned to appreciate AoE2's gameplay and community a lot more.
Honestly because I understand Aoe2 so much more, knowing all this hidden info I'll probly never use due to not having the mental speed for it quite yet, I'm more likely to enjoy it. Though... Ain't my fave, tbh... I'm all about Empire Earth instead. xD
That's true, AoE2 was always my fav game while AoE3 and AoM are just casuals for me, but the content that spirit makes with AoE2 is impressive not only within Age, but in general . I recently started playing LoL, supposedly the biggest videogame, and I was confused on how there wasn't a SOTL-like TH-camr.
I think if it weren't for SotL, T90, T-West, pro streamers like Viper, Hera and a few others, AoE2 wouldn't have the popularity it has today. I don't know of any AoE3 content creators with that kind of following. There are also a lot of following in other languages with pro streaming in other languages (Spanish and Chinese for example).
@@fabriziomariano1332 Because LoL is very transparent when it comes to mechanics unlike AOE2. There is no question unanswered when it comes to gameplay in this game.
Same here :) ... AoM + Titans were my favorite and the after i start following TH-camr like Solt and T90 i had to reconsider AoE2, which now i think is the best :D with the ultimate gameplay for this type of games. Arguably even better the Star Craft
One major thing overlooked! Aoe 3 at time of release needed a much better pc, graphics card to even run, while my original aoe2 ran off the mother board itself; people didn’t have resources they do now in this day and age 😁
@@Lunethia Hey, Settlers 7 was made my AOE's lead dev! Bruce Shelby is I recall correctly. It was an amazing PC-tabletop game that would have done much better if it was released in and around the PC-tabletop boon. Alas, it has very little to do with the Settlers series.
As someone that is an avid Age of Mythology veteran, I can confirm that the reason the armies feel sluggish is mainly because the army will base it's speed on the slowest unit, for example an Egyptian war elephant. It's not difficult to get used to, often times you'll want to select your fastest troops first to get them out, while letting your slower troops skirmish with the attacking army. If you want to save your slow troops, have them on a retreat path while you fend off the attackers with your fast troops. There's a lot that goes into it macro wise, especially if you're retreating your titan from the battlefield and you need some troops to cover for it.
@@Appletank8sort of, while there are slow units (archers, elephants) the slowdown is usually worsened by "traffic" while moving too many units in the same direction. You can insert fast troops to defend the slow ones but they'll actually worsen the "traffic"
I always preferred Age 3, and I started with Age 1 back in the late 90's. So Age 4 was a massive disappointment for me, because it just felt like 5 steps back, and none forward.
I have played Age nearly every day for 20 years. The "The emotional commitment" you mentioned to city building and defending your personal investment is why I'm still 1620 ELO...
I really do hope you start making AOE3 videos in the future. There isnt many youtubers out there talking about this game, let alone of the quality of your videos. Its a new mindset that you have to have with AOE3. As you said there isnt much investing in what you build and its very fast paced. In deepth knowledge on what to use when and agains what makes the difference, thats why the civs are so different to one another. I believe the devs intended to have that focused, instead of the general knowledge that you need in AOE2.
yeah I really prefer he make a series to cover the mechanics of this game because Samurai Revolution as a youtuber is good and all but Spirit comes at these games with mathmatics in mind.
I loved how every civ in AOE 3 was unique and played very different from the others. They felt like distinctive civilizations this time. That was actually one of my favorite things about AOE3.
Also look at Starcraft. One of the things what made it great is the difference. So it's more of a personal thing. Some people like it if the civs are similar some like it if they are different.
Clearly, it would be the best. Especially for a **colonial** game where exploring and having limited manpower ressources to protect a larger area is essential.
Something that I love soo much about 3 is the little details. Like... They had unique voice lines for specific units, not just civs. The Swiss pikemen speak a different german than actual german units, with a specific voice. Same with lansquenetes. The Hakapell, the Elmeti, etc. All had unique voices and dialogues. It actually made them feel like real mercenaries, you can tell they're clearly from somewhere else, not from your empire. I also find it funny that, the heavier a unit is, the deeper the voice. Heavy cannons use really deep voices, while light infantry use more high pitched voices. It's funny but... It kinda makes sense? Like, just by the voices you can tell what kind of unit it is.
There are tons of details in AOE3, and like you said about languages, this is the first game that I heard Albanian language in any game (Stradiots talk albanian), they made their research . Also pretty much every unique upgrade have unique name with good correlation in real life event which makes this even more impressive.
I love how age 3 emphasis on history too. I play mostly as Ottoman. Ottoman is known as gun powder empire with strong cavs. But they were the sick man of Europe. So otto eco 🤢. Or how they depicted GREAT bombard fearsome but ineffective. But you take it lightly. I loved how they depicted Russia or India too.
One of the details is you get to know each unit by it's profile with time. For example let's use the musket/skirmisher comparison Heavy infantry comes in 2 flavors. Melee and ranged. Melee HI is simple to identify, if you see a guy running with fancy armor, melee infantry. If you see a guy with a gun, fancy hat and bayonet and a backpack, it's HI. Another thing is musketeer units always keep their guns in the shoulder. Compare that to Light infantry. Usually they hold their weapon with both hands instead of the shoulder. Also they are overall less chunkier. No hat, no big sword/bayonet, no backpack. You can also tell by the multipliers. If you see a lot of multipliers in the top and few in the bottom, it's light infantry. If it has very few multipliers on top but a lot in bottom, heavy infantry.
Coming from Aoe3 to Aoe2 I found many of the same intuitive struggles, but in reverse. It still hurts my head to think that 10 unarmed villagers slapping a stone tower is actually the effective and preferred strategy to destroy it?!
I love both games but i prefer aoe3 and the biggest reason is that in Aoe2 all civs looks EQUAL AF. In aos3 threaded units same to each other's yes but strategically talking aoe3 feels they have unique civs.
Really? You think someone bashing a wall with a sword or trying to pierce it with an arrow is more intuitive than someone burrowing the ground below it?
I think AoE2 is just simpler and easier to get a grasp of with so many overlapping units for the civs. I do like that AoE3 rewards you for playing a certain civ over and over other than you getting better with them. On another note AoM deserves a DE as well, it’s an amazing game and I love the mythological aspect of it.
See, this whole "play a civ more and it'll get better" is exactly what pushed me away from AoE3. I want to win becayse I'm better. Not because my civ just starts dtronger than the enemy's who didn't spend time leveling it up.
generally in aoe3, I feel like the devs were trying to mitigate unit micro where soldiers dodge arrows and whatnot and the mechanics really incentivize actually playing battles like real colonial era battles would go, with stationary line infantry, cavalry on the flanks, and canons in back (and melee infantry like pikes, rodelero, or natives in front as canon fodder lol)
I have to say that I prefer AoE3 when it comes to civ design. They feel very different from each other in a way that AoE2's never did. Just all the weird quirks some civs have when it comes to villagers makes them stand out a lot.
That’s why I enjoy it. Love the balance and stuff from aoe2 but the fact that every civ is very similar with their units, save for the unique unit, gets a bit boring after a while.
@@jacforse7642 I agree. Obviously there is a trade off in adding to the learning curve but I don't think the game would be remembered at all if it was a AoE2 reskin like the Star Wars RTS the uses the same engine.
I do appreciate Samurai Revolution's videos and how they help keep the AOE 3 community alive on youtube. Samurai Revolution tends to do more gameplay videos and potential macro strategies, while Spirit's videos usually focus more on testing and quantifying very specific mechanics in the game. Both are nice, but I would be really interested to see a Spirit video on AOE3 (that follows his usual formula since this is more or less a review).
There is some continuity between the games: The British still have longbows. The Turks still have bombards and Janissaries. Skirmishers and Halberdiers still make up a bulk of your army. Nobody ever picks the Portuguese. And the French still have the best Cavalry.
"Skirmishers and Halberdiers still make up a bulk of your army." Strange I would expected the bulk of all the armies (at least the European ones) would be musket infantry.
While I agree with the assessment, I think that accessibility not the only cause of AOE3 lack of favor with people. There are two , in my opinion, big points that I think get AOE 3 down: A) Age of empires 1 and 2 were a 90's franchise that could run on *any computer* made after 1996. Good pc, bad pc, windows 98, xp or 7, you could run it. Age of Empires 3 made all but the best computers of the era just *crawl*. Especially the naval battles which made your fps drop to single digits even after several patches, on lowest graphics, on a strong computer. This limited the fan base to people with new computers that could run the new game, which not all age fans could afford, especially outside of America and Europe's middle class. This alone was not enough, but with the after mentioned accessibility issues it could doom the game, and then we have problem B... B) The game fucked up it's own setting. Age 1 focused on antiquity - The Hellenic-Roman, Mesopotamian, Levantine and Far eastern cultures all got campaigns, scenarios, or civs to play as, and it ended with an expansion focused on Rome and late antiquity - which where Age 2 begins, focusing on the rise from the dark age to the high middle ages, and ends with an expansion that looked mostly towards the end of the era - the discovery of the new world. In short, massive variety of factions from all over the world, lots of historical campaigns, even if of dubious accuracy. By comparison Age 3, while continuing the timeline, going from the discovery of the Americas to the industrial revolution, suffers from being too focused not only on colonialism, but *American* colonialism. The default building set for everyone is north American log cabins, the settlers are all vaguely American, the campaigns are an assassins creed 3 esque story fictional story about secret societies and the fountain of youth and just...why. The 8 european factions, 3 native and 3 asians simply didn't hold a candle, no matter how unique, to the variety brought by age 2 (not counting HD) and it's 4 Western European, 4 Eastern European, 2 Mesoamerican, 4 Asian, and 4 Middle Eastern factions. that's 18 factions from across the world, with only 1 expansion. Even for Europeans the setting was limited: No English Civil War, no German war of unification, no napoleon, no 30 years war, no 7 years war, no great northern war, no fighting against the ottoman, again the nonsense with Germany being a thing before the 1870's, etc. TL;DR - It ran like shit when it came out, and the setting was done very poorly and focused too much on the US.
I remember having to buy a new graphics card to be able to play water maps on on AoE3 when it first came out, which was the first time I'd ever bought an individual component for a PC as I'd just played games on family PCs up to that point.
Your second point is exactly my thoughts. It is no joke that Age of Empires 1 is what started my love of history, and while AoE 1's history was tacked on at best, it still sparked my interest. AoE 2's campaigns were amazing to me as a kid, I played through them so many times, it was cool to learn about things across the globe. AoE 3 just dropped the ball tremendously, when I learned it was exclusively from a colonial perspective with a fantasy story about the fountain of youth I was immediately turned off from the game. That paired with it feeling like all the bad parts of Age of Mythology with none of the good parts just killed the game for me.
If you wanted a single player game in 2005 what you instead received was a game with a very strange campaign and random map AI that did not actively use its factions unique characteristics or units. WarChiefs and Asian Dynasties helped and give me hope for DE, but the original just did not offer much compared to the first two AoE games.
ConscriptDavid Agreed, Also the controversy of those fictional stories in single player adds up but never mind Let's talk about what really ruined this game popularity ! To make things worse Microsoft firing the team behind this game 'Ensemble Studio' and leave absolutely no one in game managements and remove all customer support emails leaving AOE3 Community on their own facing tons of bugs, lot of unfinished work, and hackers.. While this game had it's own T_ime to shine but unfortunately it stopped and lost it's most loyal people.. Well you can add this the to that list of 'cause of AOE3 lack of favor'
Finally some sense. Didn't play 3 until I was an adult for this reason, and by that time I was too interested in competitive multiplayer for it to stand a chance against 2.
I like both aoe2 and aoe3, but one of the first things that became appartent when I started aoe 3 was the diplomacy. Age of empires 3 didn't let you change allies, have a neutral statues etc. I am guessing it is due to team cards.
you'll be pleased to know DE now includes this as an option, ON by default i believe, for Free for all matches, and it works identically to aoe2 system as well, a very positive inclusion
First, and most importantly, the medieval brand is easier to sell, that's the most important thing. The medieval period has vikings and samurai and mongols and saracens and celts, the list goes on and on. The decidedly euro-centric initial offering of AoE3 made stuff *feel* very similar, even though they were very dynamically different under the hood. Second, the faster pace was really, really punishing on new players, a problem which was magnified by really poor game balance at launch. Very quickly skilled players gravitated to the Spanish, then the Ottomans and just started crushing people with hyper-aggressive rush tactics. This created a monoculture in the online community which really hurt the sense off variety and fun of the experience. AoK is very, very turtle-friendly, and while that doesn't work at the highest levels of play, it will keep you in the game long enough to get attached to the game. Third, the Home City XP grinding was a huge turn-off, basically locking people in even more into the flavor of the month metagame. If Ottoman were OP, you had to grind your Ottoman city, so you played a lot of Ottoman vs Ottoman vs Ottoman games so you could improve your Ottoman deck. Later releases helped a lot by fixing up balance and adding non-European civs, but by then it was kind of too late.
its easier to sell maybe back then. but by god that time period is so stale now. AOE3 was really fresh-maybe to fresh to ppl like those who are stuck in the dark ages. i dont mean to be rude but it feels fitting.
@@m00rtin4 I think you'll find yourself in the minority. I don't disagree with you, the medieval period is somewhat over-exposed, but AoE4 is re-visiting the period for a reason.
@@AaronMichaelLong Agreed, and the way games like Witcher 3, Skyrim, the Mount and Blade Series, and Kingdom Come blew up in popularity shows that the medieval/fantasy themes are pretty much timeless classics, and are certainly not going away anytime soon.
Yeah the stuff about getting attacked at the start just doesnt sound like a criticism. Im a starcraft player and you can get attacked like 3 or 4 minutes in, 7 minutes is pretty standard for powerful pushes. As for the civs being too different from eachother i also disagree. The depth that is added from completely different civs/races playing against eachother is way better than just 2 of the exact same thing fighting all the time.
@@bosha6654 I dislike SC2 in multiplayer for this reason. As a beginner/casual it's extremely annoying to get attacked 2min into the game by some shit and lose a bit later on because you can't fight back. Well that and the fact you fight diamond platinum players as a beginner too. Disgusting imo, the only good thing about sc2 are the campaigns and pve coop for me, I don't have the time to git gud, I just want to have fun and play peacefully.
There are two ways an RTS can handle civ differences. I call them the Age of Empires way, where they're mostly the same but with a few differences, and the StarCraft way, where they're entirely different. AoE3 definitely falls closer to the latter than the former.
@@jarekyan5528 Red Alert still shares some units and buildings: ore trucks, rifle infantry, power plants. In StarCraft, the economies are fundamentally different and there are no shared units.
when i play AoE3 i feel like an expeditionary captian out to set up a military outpost to dominate and tame the local land for a proper city to emerge.
Algunas razones que yo veo: 1) Para la fecha en que se lanzó AoE3, el género rts venía perdiendo fuerza. 2) La curva de aprendizaje es mucho más lenta que con AoE2, cada civi es distinta, cada carta es distinta y el orden en que las uses genera miles de alternativas de juego posibles. Dominar el juego requiere demasiadas horas de aprendizaje y jugarlo es más complejo que jugar al 2. (Aunque una vez que aprendes todas esas dinámicas, puede ser mucho más entretenido y es mucho más difícil caer en la monotonía). 3) Los gráficos no corrían en muchos de los computadores de la época. A mí recién ahora me corre el juego, de niño cuando se lanzó no me corría ni el demo. 4) La edad media es más popular que la edad moderna en el imaginario colectivo. 5) La campaña es entretenida pero no está a la altura de las de AoE2, principalmente porque no refleja hechos históricos (se farrearon una gran oportunidad teniendo las civis que tenían). Ahora en DE han sacado algunas "batallas históricas" y son geniales. Pero creo que las razones 2 y 3 son las principales de por qué la comunidad nunca se pasó del todo al AoE3. Por mi parte, me encanta toda la saga, incluido AoE1 y AoM (y Galactic Battlegrounds)
Holandeses y plantas los 6 bancos para oro infinito, 10 colonos en cada recurso y cuando las minas de oro y plata se acaben mandas a los colonos libres a los otros recursos, dos colonos para construcción 4 edificios de artillería y haces 50 cañones de campaña, y luego avanzas lento y contento contra el enemigo jajaja
@@kevinquintana3085es super fácil counterear a los holandeses, todo eso aunque parezca una "ventaja" en verdad no lo es, los bancos con todas las cartas y mejoras que le puedas agregar al fin de cuentas cuentan como 30 - 40 aldeanos que son justo la cantidad de aldeanos que les hace falta. El resto de civilizaciones tienen un límite de 100 aldeanos mientras que los holandeses tienen 60.
I understand where your coming from with the idea that AOE3 counters are less intuitive based on the way they look, but I feel that the argument is undermined somewhat by the fact that AOE3 actually tells you what bonus damage units have, as opposed to AOE2 where you are just given a description in the tech tree that says "Cataphract: Byzantine unique unit. Heavily armored cavalry," it's almost like there is a reason why TH-cam channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers exist just to try and explain what AOE2's mechanics actually are.
also the fact if you know anything about history the name is very intuitive. For example the skirmishers vs musketeers example. Musketeers were design to provide a mass of bullets down range and deal as much damage as possible before charging in with bayonets. The vast of majority of battles ended not because one side got shot to death but instead broke formation and fled due to a successful bayonet charge. Skirmishers on the other hand did not fight in line formations but instead spread out and out in front of the enemies and were intended to prod and eliminate enemies with more accurate fire. The same with cannons. When they actually entered the battlefield (not just as a siege weapon) they were designed to soften and break up enemy formations. As a result anti cannons became necessary which is where the culverin comes in. The culverin had a much longer barrel giving it unparalleled accuracy and velocity (increasing effective rang) and as we see on the game model has the capability of aiming far higher then any other cannons (that's what that brown this at the back of the barrel was for) allowing it to shoot far farther than the other cannons which were either locked into a horizonal fire or had a limited capability to aim up. This allowed it to hit the cannons in the backline of the enemies.
@@a-drewg1716 That's a lot of history about weapons and war in the colonial age for the average player to know for it to be intuitive, so for most players it's not.
@@a-drewg1716 that isn't intuitive at all lol most schools don't even touch on subject of what military was used in aoe3 period except "slow reloading rifles" and like half of units in aoe3 are just that
AOE II Skirms look like they would actually counter just about anything in the game. A shield with a spear that they can throw??? They look like ranged centurions.
I really like the 'feel' and immersion of AoE III, I get really pulled into the game and I end up feeling somewhat connected to the time period as a result. Having said that I would *hate* to play it competitively. All of the quirks and oddities make for a great single player experience- I like that my units get into specific formations, I like that it lets me feel like I am having proper pitched battles and I like that skirmishes for resources are common early on, but tend not to devolve into all out war until later, but all of these things are basically only possible in single player, and they happen because I feel the game is 'inviting me' to do them. Oh and as an asside, I think I actually like the time period more than AoE II, it feels less nostalgic but more 'gritty' and has more of an 'action' feel to it as though I'm playing a dangerous game of decision making, whereas AoE II feels more "grand strategy" like I'm off in the distance deciding thing. That's a very personal preference though, and it's some of the mechanics that hold it back from being quite as 'legendary' as AoE II
I only play multiplayer and I get into skirmishes over early resources (with larger battles happening later), depends how you play. As for unit formation and all the criticism of it being slow by the video, I like the formations and if you play enough you get good at maneuvering your inf, calv, and arty almost in the intended way as they would have during the historical era of line battles
My main issue with AOE 3 was the campaign. We played 1 scenario only, 1 civ. That was a serious letdown after AOE2. It felt more like devs were forced to do it without them wanting to.
@@EMDakka ...I kind of liked the cheesy fantasy story of AOE3, though. Maybe I'm in a minority, but I don't need every game to be a historical recreation. AOM also had a very silly fantasy campaign, after all.
The one thing I really liked about AoE3 was its campaigns. The storytelling was more engaging, and it felt like the devs had put more effort into building varied and entertaining scenarios. Even so, more than 20 years after first trying AoE2, I still find myself going back to it more or less regularly, while I don't particularly wish to do that with AoE3.
What you mentioned about counters is actually pretty important. I would say it gets even worse though in Empire Earth, where not only is there a complicated triangle of "Shock", "Pierce" and "Arrow" units (and oftentimes it's difficult to determine which unit is either of those) but when you get into ages dominated by gunpowder, tanks or most unintuitive of all, _mechs,_ you'll basically have no idea what the counters are. The worst part is that the game contains no in-game instructions, so someone who had the game back in the day would have to refer to their manual frequently. That being said, Empire Earth is still a pretty epic game... maybe you should --please do a video about it sometime--
EE1 (very complex) and EE2 (very very complex) are close to my heart. (EE1's soundtrack is rank 1 for me.) Of course, they were never near to Age 2 in popularity because ultimately the single player campaigns end, the skirmishes/random-maps against AI become boring, and people need Multiplayer. EE1 and EE2 are way more complicated (consequently, slow) for multiplayer.
It also had millions of sales and it was not a commercial failure and it was not responsible for Ensemble Studios going bankrupt as many people say. (This was for external causes as I understand it). Although it is not the most played, it has an active and stable community.
What's ironic about the Unit rooster is that the Total War series went the other way around. Medieval TW: Huge varity of Units depending on the Civ Empire TW: Everyone uses the same Line Infantry, Cannons and Cav, special units are the exeption.
What ETW doesn't tell you is how different those same-looking units are across civs. Russian line infantry being weaker shooters, have more members per unit, and do more melee damage, and get stomped every time by british and prussian line inf.
@@strangesignal9757 Love how ETW and AoE 3 agree about weak and cannon-fodderish Russian infantry. I guess this is reason Russian Empire won majority of its wars right until half of Western Europe came to rescue Ottoman Empire (previously scourge of Christian world) because it grinded down by Russia in dozen of wars and lose large swats of territory to it, so it was crucial to prevent Russia from claiming The Bosphorus and recreating Byzantine as puppet state (because otherwise it would became dangerously powerful). While having lower population than Britain (only island, without colonies) all way until very end of XIX century. This is all thanks to weak infantry, sure. Also love not less how in baseline AoE 3 campaign Russian army marched by foot across all Siberia, Aliaska and now planned to march across North America as well (that even small expedition still haven't manage to cross at the time of Seven Years War) just to attack British and French colonies at the East coast :D Only sacrifice of John Black stopped this hilarious threat. And in DE they changed Lakota campaign, yet highly weird base campaign remained intact.
@@AtticusKarpenter didn't even remember that comment lol When Peter the Great beat Karl XII of Sweden down to a pulp in the Great Northern War, many europeans regarded Russa as "the eastern Turks", as becoming the bogeyman of Central Europe, with massive manpower reserves and an increasingly professional army that could measure itself even against the Ottoman Empire (to which Russia would still lose some battles, like Peter the Great himself did). I don't actually know if ETW has Russian line infrantry be less accurate with their shot, but I do remember their melee stats being better. Anyway, on the subject of 3 years ago, the real reason AOE3 has more units while ETW has less, is because many units in AOE3 date from the 15th to the 17th centuries, like the German Landsknechte and the war wagons used by the taborites and utraquists during the Hussite Wars in the 15th Century, with plenty of mercenary units used in european battlefields until the 18th Century. Crossbowmen in particular only disappear from battlefields during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and pikemen became inceasingly irrelevant with bayonets and stronger anti-cavalry drilling for line infantrymen. Since ETW takes place in the whole of the 18th Century, where armies are no longer feudal and mercenary but professional standard armies, it makes sense they'd far less units.
One of the ways to micro in AOE3 is splitting snared units away from the rest of the group. This eliminates the slow of the group at the cost of that unit (usually).
You forgot one of the best features of AoE3: The Trading Post!. Not only does it make each maps feel more unique, it immerses the player in the role of a foreign colonizer as they meddle in local affairs and turn brother tribes against each other!
@@Tareltonlives I still have nightmares about the french campaign where you are escorting the damn king through an entire enemy base... Balance? Hahahahaha GTFO. Still a great game but boy did it not like you trying to survive in it.
games become accessible by being simple to start playing, but hard to master. AOE3 throws so many things at you with units that look pretty much the same that it was very annoying for me to play, even though i have already played AOE1, 2 and AOM at that point.
Initially I couldn't transfer to AOE3 easily as well, but after I really got into it, I couldn't stop. I've become really good in civilizations and metropolies, so I've come to love it. Now it feels natural the same AOE1 and 2 are.
As a huge history buff, I don't feel that either of the examples you made about AoE3's units not being obvious to figure out were difficult to figure out, but that, in itself, illustrates your point about the time period and game being less accessible. You don't have to know anything about history to know that a shield can stop an arrow, but knowing the nuances between light and heavy Napoleonic infantry requires an above-average knowledge not just of history, but of that period's military history.
And that's why I like it :) IT gets you to learn about an overlooked period of history; people go Egyptians-Greek-Romans-Castles-Tanks without thinking of all that cool history in-between.
To be frank, I really didn't understand that criticism. Like, just click on the unit and you can see it does X2 against heavy infantry. In AOE2, how am I supposed to know a cataphract is anti-anti-cavalry cavalry? AOE3 pikes will tell you they do 8X5 against cav. In AOE2, I think halbs do +32? Can't remember, cause there's nothing to tell you. In AOE3, if you don't know the puspose of your units, you're just not looking.
a shield can also stop a sword. mangonels and onagers were rarely used against infantry. pikes were heavy defensive units against cavarly and infantry. men-at-arms were heavy cavarly. etc
oh i have been waiting for a video like this for so long. The snare effect is always driving me crazy, not only when i'm taking extra hits, but also when i'm raiding and enemy villagers can't run and i kill them all without a sweat. AND NO HILL BONUS
From my childhood to adulthood I played all age of empires games. After having spent like literal thousands of hours (worth it btw), I can say that aoe3 is the best of them. Why? Matches are much faster, civs actually differ from each other (only Age of mythology had that to some degree), you could use different strategies, the graphics are awesome, the home city makes it much more strategical, the online ranking system was perfect for multiplayer (they Ffed that in definitive Edition) and it just feels like a game for more battle oriented players. While most play aoe2 like a sim city game.
I have to agree. Also, the soundtrack/music for Age of Empires 3 was absolutely out of this kaboodly world fantastic. Me being a music lover and history buff for the 12th to 19th centuries, I would literally cream my pants every time I played aoe3.
I agree, for these reasons: 1) Despite the civilizations being different, they are not really distinct enough from each other in the fact the units variety is so similar, they all are just different skinned versions of guys with muskets or guys on horses compared to something like Starcraft or AoM where the units are very distinct. 2) There are so many civilizations that having unique civs becomes a drawback having to learn them all, again compared to Starcraft or AoM where they are significantly different from each other, but there's only 3 or so to learn.
@@L3monsta there are actually a variety of unit designs such as the Cassador, Strelet, Ruyter, Cossacks, Oprichnik, longbowmen, rodeleros, doppelsoldners, Uhlans, Abus Guns, spanish pikemen, spahi, all the elephants, cuisassiers, steppe riders and actually all the chinese, japanese, indians and native american tribes that have different units lol, not even mentioning the mercenary units... the game wasn't supposed to be the same as AoE2, AoE1 wasn't the same as AoE2 either so of course you need to relearn about the units and features
Same. The muskets and whatnot just never really connected with me as much as just running up and hitting each other with swords and axes. And I like the pacing and variety AOM brings more than I do the uniformity and minor variations AOE2. But apparently hardly anyone else really likes AOM. I don't get it.
@@LegendKingY2j "AoE1 wasn't the same as AoE2 either" AoE2 took the AoE1 formula and enhanced it. AoE3 dropped the AoE1&2 formula to try something else. so your point is kinda moot.
AoM was great, it's main drawback was the most of the minor Gods and many of the major Gods were sorely imbalanced, competitively some choices were just *bad*, like Odin, Gaia, Set (after it was nerfed into the ground) or Atlanteans in general.
Good to see this game get some love. Personally however, the building limits were the thing that put me off most. It just feels so forced to not be able to build another tower, even though you have the resources.
If you can just spam towers, there is no point in defending your walls with all your army, just make an insane lot of towers and a litlle army of culverins and cannons and that's it, boring as hell. With a card u have 14 tower limit, that's enough to help a lot but not decide the whole match.
Definitely agree with the sentiment that in AoE2 you have more of a connection to your civilization due to building it up and it naturally makes the game tense in all the good ways which leads into a fun gameplay loop. For me I always preferred AoE2 because I find the historical time period it spans much more appealing and the game itself was very tightly designed and because of that has gone on for over 20 years with a constant playerbase. AoE3 was a good game, an interesting one to be sure, but let's face it: AoE3 was a follow up to one of the best RTS games and by extension best computer games ever made. It's hard to go back to something that is good when you're used to something amazing.
Oh man, I'd love to see Spirit's kind of dry and informative approach taken with mythology. "As you can see, the Jormund Elver is a cost effective sea serpent, but it is not efficient to use against War Turtles"
You missed a Major Factor!! At the time when Age3 was realeased, the 3D graphics required a great PC. Players going from Age2 to Age3 with the same PC struggled hard, as the game just would not maintain FPS. I remember loving the game but being seriously afraid to view any of the ships, as this would basically freeze my game, only moving small frame increments at a time. Now on a modern gaming pc, this problem has been solved, so the game feels much better! Effectively, I believe that age3 was just a little to ahead of it's time. And way to much of an increase in graphics from the previous titles.
Intresting, when it came out my grandfather had a super high speed computer for the time and I was able to play it when I would visit. It never even occurred to me that many people didn't have access to it. Probably why it's still my favorite. Also I'm not a great player so Age 3 was just the right difficulty for me.
The number ONE detriment to age 3, which kept me from playing it alot more (or even finishing it) are the fantasy-esque non-historical campaigns, they're not BAD, but a big appeal for me on Age of Empires games is the history.. that said, if im not misremembering, infantry comes out of barracks in batchs of up to 5 units at once, which i found AWESOME.
Interesting. History has always been my passion (Even got a History degree) but I never minded the non-historical Age 3 campaigns. I absolutely loved Age 2 for its historical campaigns, AOM for its take on Mythology and Age 3 for how it used historical myths to tell a fantasy story. What I didn't like was how the Asian campaigns tried to move back in the direction of Age 2 by being based on historical events (fictional for the Chinese) while also trying to make them dramatic in nature. The drama worked in the original campaign because you were following one family throughout the ages, in AD it falls flat because between setting the stage and introducing the characters you have little time to care about anything or anyone. And te missions are boring, which didn't help.
On the note that you mentioned about factions being wildly different, I have a game that I think might interest you that takes the Age 3 approach. It’s called War Selection. To put it short, you get a choice when aging up between how your faction specializes. So in the Stone Age you can pick between europe and Asia, and once again past that for each tree with it. West Europe vs East Europe and West Asia vs East Asia. And it goes even more when you get to choose a real country in the Industrial Age. So over the course of a single match you are watching your civilization get more and more exciting units and buildings along with your enemy, and it makes the game feel very immersive, reaching its final stage as every Industrial country playing wildly different from any other.
it's always stumped me. The graphics were WAY better for Age 3, and man we put our heart and soul into that game. We always attributed it to the fact that vikings and samurai are sexier than hussars and musketeers. We actually set as a goal to win the E3 best graphic award for Age 3, a prize which was almost always won by a first-person-shooter. And we did it! Source: I was one of the main developers for both Age 2 and Age 3.
Sandy, I was extremely young when I played and I speak from what today you'd call single player? 3 seemed to be more like AoM and it works there beautifully but the campaign in 3 didn't live up to it. So it wasn't what we were expecting so kids stuck to 2 and AoM.
My dad said the third game was "3D for no reason" and his computer could not play it as a result.
It is awesome that we can get insights like this in a youtube comment, this should be higher!
Assuming you are authentic, on the internet anybody can say anything and I am lazy to investigate as almost anybody
It is so nice to read the comments sometimes
its not always about graphics
It is not your fault Sandy. Age of Empires 3 did not "fail" because it was worse. It failed because it was released too late. The RTS was a dying and nearly dead genre in 2005. With the exception of Starcraft 2 nothing recovered. People lost interest in the genre as a whole and just stuck with their guns on their favourite game. I say fail in quotes because it didn't fail at least not as a quality game. Me, my brother and my dad used to play that game just about every day using LAN. We were pretty fond of the game and upon hearing the name we could separately recall very specific battles with detail it was a pretty important game especially to me and my brother growing up. So much so to this day if either of us are playing a RTS game and hear the guys say "hello" we think of: "Commandiment? I woll!"
On the topic of graphics I am impressed how well it still holds today. A lot of 3D games of the time look quite bad now a days or at the very least dated. If that came out today nobody would say "That looks old" apart from the hud of course. Glad to see you comment I first time I saw you was from the video you did with Lindybeige a few years ago.
Seeing units litteraly fly when you hit them with cannon was my favourite part when I was playing this game, 10/10
I loved the huge ships the most.
I rmb that AOE3 villagers dig it (taken place upon themselves) as well according to the official description.
Tbh it was done so much better on the battle for middle earth games. Watching orcs go flying as you charge cavs or people when they hit by trolls and spells.
Having a bombard hitting a group of infantry 😅 - amazing feeling
I bet you also loved the elephants in Rome Total War 1 ! :P
(because they were making the units fly as well)
:)
I personally liked the civilizations having the unit variety more specific. Getting a completely unique roster between France, Ottomans, Japanese or Russia adds more flavor to faction choice, and feels more historically authentic.
On top of that you know most of the times what those units do with looking at the model alone. There are exceptions like the culverin and oprichnik. Long range inf > short/ no range inf + ranged cav > melee cav > long range inf.
I will say this tho. Samurai Revolution is right: France is Hella OP. The Ottomans don't feel nearly as OP as France despite the fact that they're one of the strongest nations in the game (with good historical basis). I've played several matches against French AI as Netherlands (Personal fave) and sometimes even guard halberdiers will struggle vs Cuirassiers. And same goes for Ruyters. But at least the Netherlands have some of the best endgame siege capabilities in the game thanks to the coehorn mortars card. That being said, getting only 30 musketeers does feel a bit annoying since skirms are shit vs cav which is bad when playing vs France, Germany, Russia and India
@@KravenTheKnight The French Cuirassiers/ Gendarmes are easy to beat with the Dutch Ruyter, Spanish combo of Dragoon and Espada with 10 missionaries behind them, all musket type units and aoe melee units. I feel like Ottomans are indeed too weak. Their eco is slow and their military is expensive. Mortars are often not really worth it. Other horse arty will do the job most of the times and they can be used against units as well.
When you play as the Netherlands you actually don't even need a barrack. Just train Ruyter and horse arty. The amount of each depends on what your opponent makes.
@@Vincrand well, against Aztecs, Japanese and Russians you definitely want skirms. And the Dutch skirms are pretty good because of the infantry combat cards. Plus they decimate Spanish rodeleros and pikes like nobody's business. That being said, I'll definitely take into account your advice and try to use more Ruyters and horse arty
@@Vincrand Yeah, I felt the counter system was fairly easy to understand, especially in terms of the time period. Light infantry counter heavy infantry because of their combat tactics and method of deployment but this can't be easily simulated in an Age game so you rely on damage modifiers to simulate combat advantages.
I remember the biggest flaw during release of aoe3 was the performance. The game was years ahead in graphics and most computers could not run it.
My mums computer was struggling with dial-up internet. @@dominicbrunet3439
i was lucky enough to have a pc that could run it at max settings. it was a visual showcase for pc.
Mainly the explosions and naval. A later patch fixed up that performance, so the game ran fine minus the building damage.
When it came out, it was probably the most beautiful rts game I've ever seen. I remember my jaw dropped when I saw those gigantic (relatively) and detailed ships in the water next to a beautiful new world coastline.
You're not playing as an Empire in age of empires 3, you're playing as a colony of an existing Empire. Which is why you dont build up a massive empire/city like in 2.
I never thought about it, but it's a good reason for the scale of the game
That explains the Revolution mechanic
You don't even play an empire in age 2 either, you start with a *town center*. Playing a colony would actually make more sense to have 3-5 town centers and at most 3 forts/castles in a standard game. They could have easily reduced the "lore" of your actions without reducing the amount of buildings.
@@Tudsamfa you dont start as a colony but you can build up into something that feels like an empire. My AoE3 civ always felt like a colony no matter what.
@@Tudsamfa how do you think empires were made IRL?
Having a town centre, having people who can fight/explore and having ships (if your an island)
and having enough precious mines to trade with or buy better stuff with.
That is how empires are built. Colonies are built upon existing motherland incomes from other colonies.
Hence why GBE snowballed to 189 territories in just 20 years with Victoria. Better ships, better explorers, better navigation, better trained armies, better economy. = Bigger larger better empire.
What's wrong with Dutch villagers costing gold instead of food? I'm Dutch and I've been eating gold for years now :p
Greetings from a wood consumer
@@darthchocolatius3421 I imagine you're planting mango trees to eat the trees instead of the fruit
@@Marine_Dynamite not everyone can afford mango grooves shipped from our homeland
So we try some magic spells these days like
Censored
Lumberjack
Woodstock
Lol
How does it taste?
One big reason is also timing. AoE2 was released in the golden age of RTS, alongside AoE1, Warcrafts, Starcraft, Red Alerts, C&C etc. AoE3 was released in the era of Call of Duty, Battlefield, World of Warcraft and other "more straightforward" games. So naturally AoE2 got a bigger player base and that granted it a classic status, one which has grown old very well.
That's a good comment. I remember when I got AOE2 it was the same Christmas I got Starcraft: Brood War.
Yeah the RTS genre was fcked up by MMORPG, and MOBA later.
This is important context, 100%. Sales/players is always dependant on a number of factors like genre popularity at the time, competition, series fatigue marketing budget etc. Amazing how many games are ignored at launch and then later lauded as hidden gems
Yes exactly the golden era of RTS. Around CoD is the rise of FPS to mainstream and yes its much easier to learn and play than RTS from a kid pov
AoM is closer to AoE 2 than AoE 3 is to AoE 2 gameplay wise. AoE 3 is a great game on its own, but feels alien to fans of the franchise.
I loved AoE 1 a lot due to its stone age Man vs nature setting, like you really feel like you accomplish something when you advance from the stone age. The primitive buildings, researching new techs, unlocking new units - It really feels like you've evolved from cave man to Paladin...
AoE 2 fixes a lot of issues and gameplay problems like depletion of resources, better defenses, more counters and better graphics, but moved to a more settlement era. Its focus is a lot more on fighting than advancing compared to AoE 1, but still nothing too excessive.
AoM Felt like the true AoE 3 for me, its kept a very similar composition and has similar progression strategies. The pace is pretty similar as well. The added graphics, god powers and myth units are just a cherry on top.
AoE 3 felt like a completely different game though. You no longer start out lost on some continent needing to invent the wheel or discover fire, heck you don't even have to go about looking for resources, Farms and Plantations are infinite. Almost everyone has guns with 100% accuracy, forests don't block infantry(it no longer feels cozy) and buildings are only needed for unlocking units or upgrades. Its got its perks though, the amazing graphics, Home cities, naval warfare, unique abilities for some units, trade routes, tribes, treasures, etc.
Like CnC4, they changed its formula too much from the original game, that old players found too awkward to get used too and new players didn't care too much for.
Man, AOE3 was a massive part of my childhood....good times.
Also, the OST AOE3 was fricking fantastic.
Reading my mind dude!
Me to bro, loved that game.
Truth! the OST gives me chills.
@@wolfparkour what's OST?
@@shiaeliminator6484 the game's original soundtrack
I thought the smaller towns were deliberate, actually? This is firstly because I think you're meant to invest in the home city, not the colonial town on the map, since it's the home city that you level up, upgrade, and customise over the long term - and secondly because, well, the whole premise of the game is that you're building colonies. Your town on the map is not supposed to hold a candle to the immense home city.
So because AoE3 is trying to cultivate a frontier feel, it wants its towns to be smaller and less majestic. The contrast between the home city and the frontier seems really important to the game's effect, to me. So the game offloads some of the complexity of economic management to the pre-game, home city phase, so that the game part itself feels more like a military expedition from an established civilisation - and not like building a civilisation from scratch.
True, Aoe3 has not a real "metropolis" look. You can't even properly build a real city, unless you are in editor, as the buildings seem disconnected, and just "not cozy" enough.
Wow you nailed it
I think that's true, but it's also something that cuts against the game, because it becomes harder to feel invested in the individual conflicts. And with investment in the home city, you pick a "main", which can cause the game to become more "samey" feeling than AoE2, doubly with the smaller cities and thus reduced emphasis on building placement and resource acquisition.
Yes, this kind of relates to spirit talking about how this setting doesn't serve this particular series as well as a medieval or antique one does.
I feel like this is sort of what creates the effect mentioned in the quote of AoE "Not being an Age game anymore", but more specifically not an _empire_ game anymore. It seems more like AoE3 scenarios are explicitly single battles or events in your empire's history, rather than in AoE2 or 1 where a scenario might represent years of time or a random map might feel like you're playing out the entire lifespan of a civilization.
One thing that is definitely *not* wrong with AoE3: Its soundtrack.
I've noticed that entertainment that start to go downhill seem to keep consitantly good soundtracks: Age of Empires, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, and LotR/Hobbit all had disappointing latter episodes/games/movies but the soundtracks stayed brilliant.
disagree, i enjoy it's gameplay since it's more relaxing than AoE2, where you have to constantly manage your army and economy in a tense environment where you can also run out of gold, rock or lumber easily as you get attacked every second and need buildings to advance to next age and tons of resources, you get no chance to win if your opponent reaches a higher age and attacks you, mechanics are hard as hell, the AI is almost impossible to beat in harder difficulties and most of players are just Rush abusive tryhards making the online play unpleasant, "gitgud" doesn't help either when most of pro people invade newbie matches... AoE3 has cool animations when moving, attacking, making a new formation or dying, there isn't something as overpowered as a castle which can be protected easily as well, walls are definitely op as well, you can just spam them everywhere in a second as the others struggle to destroy them and it's usually used to exploit the AI in campaigns such as Saladin and win unfairly, towers also have a limit in AoE3 so you don't spam them either making an impossible defense and the variety of units is fair enough, not so different than AoE2, people keep saying that AoE3 has repetitive designs... WELL then i guess the skirmishers, militia line, pikemen line, knight line, light cavalry line, and actually all lines are different in AoE2 right lol, they are both just different games with different features and gameplay, comparing them is hardly fair, i like both games but saying that only the soundtrack is AoE3 is good is not fair at all
@@LegendKingY2j Very nice big long essay. Just, uh, one little problem. I didn't say that only the soundtrack was good.
I liked Age 1's and Age 2's music wayy more than Age 3's. Note: Age 3 as a game is my fav.
Underrated games tends to have epic soundtracks
Nice to see someone shining some positive light on AoE3! It's personally my favourite in the series and I think it's criminally underrated.
love your challenge run man!
It’s because the grind for home city cards soured initial multiplayer reactions to the game. You basically have to play at a disadvantage for a long time.
DivineFaithborn or you can put cheats to get XP in skirmishes and then get a lot or levels. But it’s still not a great solution, it’s a good one tho, that’s what I did to get to lvl 50 in just 20-30 minutes maybe I don’t recall exactly how much time it was
@@Pac0110 This solution doesn't really matter because it wasn't around for the first ~8 years of the game. By the time the XP cheat was a thing, people had already made up their mind about the game.
Exactly and the fact it hasn't had the same new expansion treatment that 2 got over the last decade would also not have helped there at all. That alone has helped age 2 grow much larger while 3 was left in a pretty rough state
Unfortunately the time period does cause issues with many of the complaints due to counters making more sense if you follow more colonial era games.
I really like the broadside cannons volley of a ship. Parts of enemy ship or building flying apart is really satisfying.
sadly is one of the few really good stuff in aoe3
Having Siege elephants and towncenter/castle on seashore made water maps for me very easy in Indian civ. I could throw any civ with siege elephants with actullay had cannons.
Naval combat in aoe3 looked so good.
@@prathameshjoshi007 I'd love a day-night cycle... Make native water transports and boats be able to silently slip onto shore elsewhere, but it takes a bit of time.
The maps could be made with 'harbours' in mind, where you have to/can hide things. Europeans have good vision during the day, but at night cheaper fleets can take on unprepared European fleets. I think of many of Thomas Cochrane when conceptualising this, as he did these manoeuvres both in Europe and as part of the fledgling Peru & Chili & even Brazil.
@@viniciusschadeck4992 nah the game was fun. People who like aoe2 are too biased. I honestly didn't like aoe2 at the time, and didn't play it much. So coming from AOE1 to 3, i enjoyed it a lot, though i still preferred the first one.
Hero: “every moment I live …is agony.”
Me at 14: Me too buddy , me too
Hahahah yeah man
Underrated comment lol
i think having the civs entirely diff is actually a strenght, cuz it makes the games less repetative. i always felt like aoe2 civs needed al ittle more destinction
When I started AOE3, I learned 1 civ (Germans) and was too intimidated to try out any of the others for quite awhile. Maybe for advanced players its better, but less desirable for new players (I do love the game now that I know all the civs!)
@@jamesgiles6134 Oh really? When I started AoE3 I loved playing around with and testing different factions all the time
The main reason I don’t like aoe2 is the fact that all civs units look like European units. It’s just kinda weird to me playing Chinese or Koreans but having soldiers that look like knights.
true
@@jamesgiles6134 Yea I actually like the faster gameplay too
I think AO3 tried too hard to be WC3 especially in style. What I loved about AOE2 was the feeling of putting together a giant army, whereas AOE3 always felt like you were putting together skirmishes.
Also bigger focus on "cinematic story" and introducing fantasy elements. Really didn't like it.
During Colonial times skirmishes ruled the battlefield
Honestly age 2 seems more a WC3; one fight does not impact as much as in aoe3...
The age game that actually competed with WC3 was AoM
Imagine trying to be wc3 but having a shit ass unit battle ai. It feels so clunky to let all your units even attack or not wasting all shots on the same enemy unit.
Even games like cossacks did so much better with that and it came 5 years earlier.
I think it’s because the map size in aoe 3 really sets it down, the large maps are too small, you and your enemy are always within reach of each other
this is def a big part of it
I have come to the idea that AOE3 would be more popular than AOE2 with few tweaks, for example, unit shipments was a big mistake since it allows the enemy to rush you from nothing. There is no indication that unit shipments are coming, no buildings to construct; no counterplay thus. This is more important than map size.
ANd a circle ..
so this literally means that aoe2 players are treaty/no rush players. if u cant handle early close map and just want to chill on ur own space for 6 hours, go play civ games i guess.
@@m00rtin4 I was talking about against the A.I. but i've modded the game so everything is chill now
It’s also worth noting that AoE3 has an absolutely beautiful soundtrack.
Yeah, I hope the new remaster music will be better than older ones.
Yeah, one of my problems with AoE2 is the soundtrack. The soundtrack to the demos was awesome but not so much the full game. AoE had a great soundtrack but of course was just midis. AoE3 was just amazing with the music.
Stephen Rippys other work is great too and he seems under appreciated.
@@Tareltonlives AOE2 soundtracks are bit boring for me
Muptop 😍
The most successful thing of AOE3 is that their villagers dont switch to melee attack while facing enemy
But they do switch to melee ...
@@Afriendlyhippo No, they shoot. Though, their guns make little harm to soldiers. But that makes sense.
Yea... except for the fact that villager melee is stronger than their ranged, so if you want to kill anything with a villager you still need to use melee (manually)
@@potatoesandducks958 yes. Basically it was a "task failed sucessfully", melee shoudn't be stronger than ranged.
yeah the Hoardings research in AO2 was weird. Like why the fuck would I have a village attack a building lol
The only thing I disliked about AOE 3 is the limit on towers you can build. But all in all its a great game
idk, i guess i could have also done with higher house limit. though i do enjoy small cozy towns
I HATE the limit on outposts. Limits on buildings of any kind are weird, but having one for strictly defensive buildings is so dumb.
I hated it in age of mythology too, while I get limiting them for balance reasons but the houses don't make sense in aoe3 where you have a hard cap on population that you will probably hit before reaching your house cap anyway
Most nations can increase this limit with a card. All in all the game let you focus more in unit defence than tower defence.
@@jaredfullmer7043
AoE2 limits it with stone supply. No stone in AoE3, so the Devs wanted to avoid you filling the whole maps with the (arguably quite strong in Industrial Age) outposts.
For me, the greatest part of AoE3 is how many unique units there are. Specially mercenaries.
I always loved purchasing Elmeti, they were hella expensive but really cool cavalry and while playing I created my own stories like "These Elmetis are my special forces, they're here to lead the army now"
Also I cared so much for my explorer. I treated him like everybody in the colony knew him and he was a wise leader who would risk his life por the town
Campaign kinda done it too. In American Revolution campaign bunch of hussars, cannon and one Haccapelite in front are arriving as reinforcements in fort-destroying mission, and its Haccapelite who make report to the main character, strengthening feel of him being officer in charge of that reinforcements.
Same for me about explorer. He have name and he indirectly grows in power with home city (with unlocking of late shipments with buffs for him. Even more the case with War Chiefs that has some crazy upgrades in lvl 40 shipments) so playing different skirmish maps felt like his adventure with journey across all New World
SOTL: Here is a field gun, a culverin and a horsegun.
Me: There is a cannon, a cannon and another cannon.
Lol, when I first played aoe3 I got whatever I thought looked the coolest and strongest, which was the cannon
me: there's artillery that makes men fly, artillery i don't usually build because i always keep a strong cavalry and weird bastard artillery added in the asian dynasties that i haven't experienced with that much
@@davidpriymak7394 I would call the great bombard huge ass cannon and I would pick Ottomans just to use that XD
I don't follow. Which one is the "another cannon"?
There is a cannon, a cannon, a cannon and da biggest and da baddest cannon of them all! (Ottoman big bombard). Also there is yet another cannon that is free and is produced by your factory.
I must say that the iroquis light cannon is pretty much a blend of different guns with average bonuses, making it an easy choice to spam.
SotL finally getting into AoE3 gameplay mechanics is like... your crush who you thought never noticed you suddenly sends you flowers
So many emotions, overwhelming
@@charleswest2314 oh, we will get there, some day. But now is the time for AoE3 to shine, with all its glorious 3d graphics, physics and home cities. Aztecs and Japanese #represent
@@charleswest2314 That's like 2nd base. You gotta start a bit slow, go to the movies, get some coffee.
same here man!
So we just gonna ignore the masterpiece that is AOM?
Prostagma!
Vooloome.
Age of Empires 2 and 3 are more clean, better controlls, overall better design. The AOM OG campaign though is to this day one of my favourites :)
Malista
@@Frrk Βούλομαι.
Izvoli
I actually enjoyed age 3 more also because I really like the era.
Spain's prime was when both swords and guns were used. Best of both worlds, sort of. A conquistador with armour is way cooler than a Brit wearing a coat that is red. Yawn.
x2
Same, I love line infantry more than medieval swordsmen, which seem a bit too generic to me
@@koopanique yup and big boi cannons in the battle field are satisfying. Expecially ottomans great bombards
I really like using ninjas and cowboys
"Stares in iroquois cannon who makes extra damage to infantry, buildings AND artillery and ships"
Iroqious is racist now, they changed their name in DE.
Ironically, Iroquois siege is even easier to distinguish in AOE3 compared to their European counterparts. Indians are two elephant siege units and a ranged elephant that doubles as anti-cavalry/anti-siege.
@@martytu20 that also don't have an animation for limber/fire mode. As a matter of fact, most of Asian Dynasties sieges suffer from a lack of animation between limber/fire mode, which is crazy when you think about it.
Not a bad thing, since Asian artillery have no animation idle time between limber/fire mode (except for the mortars).
@@awellner3285 Yes they changed and no it isn't. Not the least because Iroquis isn't used to describe a race. It is used to describe an ethnical group.
I have to admit that I ended up liking AOE3 more because I'm not a particular skilled AOE2 player. I've played AOE2 since its release but I just don't have the skill to do all the micro and stuff. AOE3 seems more suited for a casual player, specially if you play mostly on single player. Also, I'm a history buff and a geography teacher, and I just love the insane effort they made to give us a very diverse set of maps and scenarios in AOE3. I'm just a sucker for all those maps.
Same! I'm more of a causal gamer and historian.
Yeah aoe 3 seems more overwhelming at first but the learning curve is actually pretty small due to economy being so simple
I agree, love that it's not as dependent on microing every single ranged engagement to abuse archer mechanics
It's so much easier to do Fast fortress in AoE3 than do Fast castle in AoE2.
All you have to do is herd 2 hunt when aging up and send 700 coin after in AoE3.
But in AoE2 dark age micro is 5 times harder than doing all the things above, you need to micro for wood at some point, lure the boar at some point, my brain can't really handle that much.
It's weird. I really fell in love with and played a lot of AoE3, despite the fact I grew up playing AoE2. The civs in 2 feel a bit samey, after playing a lot of 3. Everyone has the same villagers, same men at arms, same militia and even the same Dark Age architectural style. When it comes to 3, I like the unit variety, and even the special merc units only accessible through cards or a saloon, or treasures. The game *feels* like there's a lot more interesting stuff going on, like there's more to discover down the road, but I can understand how the strategy and competitive element suffers for it. I always hated the population cap and how limited armies were in size compared to 2, as well. I was always coming up with ways to push past the unit cap.
As for the home city, it was nice watching it grow and change as I leveled up. I've always loved rpgs, so that element just clicked for me. The colonial setting, too, was a bit more interesting and fresh to me than medieval, at least when I got into it.
Worst part about Age of Empires III is the inability to zoom out far enough to where you feel like you can see enough of what's going on.
You can go into options and change that
Most games don't allow that. I've heard the reason for this is that during playtesting everyone zooms out a lot, and then complains how the game is slow-paced, units are barely distinguishable and controls are inconvenient (as the result of camera being too far from action). But as soon as the zoom out is limited, all those complaints are gone. In other words, devs prevent you from ruining your own experience.
@@DommHavai you mean, devs prevent me from purchasing a game
@@MysteryD I mean that they make the game better for the vast majority of players by not letting them ruin their own experience. It's a common practice in game development, not just about zoom out.
@@DommHavai Bro. My point is that you cant even zoom out far enough to easily select a 40-man unit. Fills the whole fucking screen.
It´s sad to see that many people categorize AoE3 as the "black sheep" of microsoft RTS game... Even then they forgot about my beloved Age of Mythology ;_; .
All four of those titles are classics. But people do have their opinions regardless. Let them. We know why we love the SERIES as a whole.
Press F for Arkantos.
F
I go back to AE2. I never stopped playing AOM
I agree, AoE 3 is sadly considered the black sheep when Age of Mythology is so much worse.
I think you missed out the fact AOE2 could run on most family computers so sold much better than AO3
A whole bunch of AoE 2 players started their AoE 2 gameplay as children playing on their father's plain non-gamer computer that could run AoE 2 no problem. It was a massive success because any computer could run it, from your dad's computer to a cheap computer that people in most nations can afford.
Meanwhile AoE 3 came out in an awkward time where most casual gamers (even in "rich" nations) didn't have fancy graphics cards (or any cards at all) so it was slow. Graphics requirements got rid of a big portion of people that bought AOE 2 (gamers in less developed nations, casual gamers, and "children-playing-on-dad's-computer" gamers).
When I was a kid I was a huge AoE 2 fan. When 3 came out I tried to run it on my family's computer and it literally exploded. I cried a lot that day.
I have the original box with me, so let's list the minimum system requirements for this 2005 game.
Windows: XP - 256 MB RAM
Processor: 1.4 GHz
Hard Drive: 2GB
Video Card: 64 MB with support for hardware transformation and lighting
Other: Sound card & speakers/headphones
Online/Multiplayer Requirements: 56K dial-up internet access or LAN.
(I'm not a techie, so I'm not sure which things are the most draining for PC's at the time)
@@liamdell6319 "hardware transformation and lighting" There you have it. T&L wasn't standard for most GPUs back then. I remember having this issue with SW Battlefront. Met all the minimum requirements but wasn't able to play it due to my GPU not supporting T&L.
@@FFFFFFF-FFFFFFFUUUUCCCC did it now? Like, literally explode? Or are you just making justice to your namesake? : p
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p Well what really happened was that the computer bricked and I smelled smoke. The computer had to be thrown out. Might as well rename myself as "Exaggerator"
We’re all waiting for Age of Mythology: Definitive Edition.
An idea for a fun conversation to have with friends - which are the games that deserve a remaster/remake?
Sad prostagma....
I'd argue Age of Mythology was always the age game that could benefit from a definitive edition the most. Aom 1 and 2 both have timeless sprites and Aom 3 uses less dated unit models. I love Aom's graphics and atmosphere to death, but I get the feeling its dated graphics turn new people off. The game even has a few cinematic units that show off how amazing the game could look if it was more detailed.
A lot of people out there who likes AoM about as much as AoE2 I think, it's just so much fun to play
If it's released, they better remove that idiotic Chinese expansion pack.
I personally loved the time period of AoE3 more and hope they explore it further. The home cards, music, combat, ragdoll effect from cannon shots , the ability to gain map based bonuses based on native alliances that let you blend your troops not to mention the music etc. all just come together to make a fantastic game.
I think outside of a few minor issues or gripes the core issue was fan expectations and perhaps not liking range becoming the core focus(despite hand combat being in AoE3 a large chunk of units were/are based on range combat).
Regardless of what people think im actually glad the devs took risk with this game and pushed for a less attempted time period for a RTS.
I really hoped Age of Empires 4 will sort of unite time periods of both previous games, sadly its more of a Age of Empire 2 2, with sliight overlap with early period of Age of Empires 3. But i guess its resonable, by numbers of AoE 2 and AoE 3 fans. (Different thing that AoE 4 still defeated by same AoE 2, so they will just stick to making AoE 2 DLC)
AoE1 fans: well i guess it's just me and my feelings
AOE1 is bigger than both AOE2 and AOE3 combined...
@@mantunguyen Probably.
But AOE1 DE was really half-assed and Microsoft didn't even try to put enough effort into making it good.
I'd say a lot of people would've played it had they added either unit formations, or gates.
Ar at least market trading system like in AOE2. Once you run out of gold in AOE1, it's game over. those trash units don't stand a chance against gold units. Maybe chariots do, but that's all.
AoE1 is better than AoE3. But AoE2 is the game.
There are at least a dozen of us. A DOZEN!!!!!
@@lolwalullalullol912 Unit formations or gates? What kind of cowardly nonsense is that. You actually need to develop SKILL and improve your micro--number your units if you want to focus on catapults in different parts of the map. You need to constantly scan the mini-map for backdoors and enemy attacks; walls aren't even ALLOWED in Age of Empires: Rise of Rome culture. That's weak to just build walls.
Running out of gold means you need to use your gold carefully as the game goes on!! Defensive structures (i.e. towers on a hill, strategically placing legions in front in cho war, etc) can be used to wear down the other teams' gold units, trading amongst allies to ensure gold use, clicking coinage to ensure max gold mining, all of that stuff are all part of the strategy. (insert old man shaking fist at clouds saying "you millenials and your unit formations and gates") haha. And yes, scythed chariots are often upgraded for when gold runs out, but EVEN then if you don't use the map properly, you'll run out of wood. Heck, heavy catapults can even destroy forest so you can cut yourself a path and infiltrate an enemy's town, or even just destroy their trees to "scorched earth" their resources. Weak argument.
"Why is AoE2 more popular?"
Back in the time when AoE3 came out. My PC wasn't good enough to run it. So I didn't play it. On the other hand even a potato could run AoE2.
Now I have the same problem with AoE2 DE: my PC isn't good enough for it. So I had to skip it as well...
I am actually surprised by that comment. Poor guy!! It's hard to think that anyone would lack the hardware to play AoE2 DE!
Company of Heroes has a similar feel to Age 3 but did it SO much better imo. They came out around the same time too!
@tiestofalljays I don't think AOE2 vs AOE3 is necessarily the question of why AOE3 didn't succeed. The fact is that AOE3 felt lightyears behind some of the other RTS's of the time like Dawn Of War and Company of Heroes. Even older games did the time period better; I remember being disapointed with AOE3 because it really was nothing compared to American Conquest (2002!).
It's time to upgrade your Pentium 3 PC mate
@@sarahd2623 I can't play DE either, you just have to be broke.
The music in AoE3 is amazing also.
Hate it!
Especially, the revolution music.
Nahh aoe2 music is like 100x better
@@wasitahmidhossainwasi6832 You're aware of the meaning of the word 'also'?
@@rookiedetective569 I remember of how years back I always went revolution just to hear the music
My main gripe with AO3 was the campaign wasnt actually historical, which is the part I loved most with AO2
Yeah I never did the aoe3 campaign. I know it was supposed to be fun with Ottomons invading, but I am just not interested in fictional history.
Totally my experience! I played the hell out of the AOE2 campaigns (even when I was terrible at it) and they're still some of my favorite pieces of history, supporting a lifelong passion for history. The AOE3 campaign felt like some cheap movie shit - some guy bouncing all over the place doing crap for no reason. Once I got bored with the campaign I stopped playing soon after.
I played AoE3 mostly as a kid and disliked the whole base game campaign. But I loved the Asian Expansion campaign because it felt more history related.
@@LMarcon11 yeah, especially with the indian campaign. I loved it
@@DrSonic-rl9lv chinese campaign was the shittiest one (no offense). They literally wasted the entire chinese history with some south american jungle fight crap. They could have the OPİUM WARS
It would be interesting to have you do some sort of collaboration with Samurai Revolution who is arguably the biggest AOE3 player on TH-cam. He is sort of like your equivalent to the AOE3 community, making videos that look at mechanics and such.
U seem to know aoe3; Do u know what happened to Interjection? I enjoyed his vids but there are no new ones
@@bitcoinfandom I do not know, sorry.
@@bitcoinfandom I was a big follower or inter and he use to work at bar but then quit to join the group of both aoe2/3 casters but then that folded so I'm presuming he went back studying and is busy. However I could be wrong with this assumption but he may also be working on aoe3DE being such a big influence on the aoe3 community.
Samurai Revolution is closer to T90, though. But hey, he likes samurais!
Samurai rev it's not close to the level of analisis of Sotl, SR barely dominates the basics of the game.
Some of the material of Sotl applies to all RTS, while SR videos just cover some very specific strategies.
I really like age of empires 3 because of the unique way the civilizations played. Which allowed you to come up with pretty unique strategies. I do agree with the units stopping to attack was bad, as well as not being able to tell what kind of buff/nerf they have vs other units was tough.
I would argue that your channel also had a small, but considerable, effect in AoE2's popularity. I, for instance, was already a fan of AoM and AoE3, but never cared much about AoE2 until I discovered your channel. The sheer quality of your videos, and the passion put in them, made me reconsider my views on AoE2. I still prefer AoM and AoE3, but thanks to you I learned to appreciate AoE2's gameplay and community a lot more.
Honestly because I understand Aoe2 so much more, knowing all this hidden info I'll probly never use due to not having the mental speed for it quite yet, I'm more likely to enjoy it.
Though... Ain't my fave, tbh...
I'm all about Empire Earth instead. xD
That's true, AoE2 was always my fav game while AoE3 and AoM are just casuals for me, but the content that spirit makes with AoE2 is impressive not only within Age, but in general . I recently started playing LoL, supposedly the biggest videogame, and I was confused on how there wasn't a SOTL-like TH-camr.
I think if it weren't for SotL, T90, T-West, pro streamers like Viper, Hera and a few others, AoE2 wouldn't have the popularity it has today. I don't know of any AoE3 content creators with that kind of following. There are also a lot of following in other languages with pro streaming in other languages (Spanish and Chinese for example).
@@fabriziomariano1332 Because LoL is very transparent when it comes to mechanics unlike AOE2. There is no question unanswered when it comes to gameplay in this game.
Same here :) ... AoM + Titans were my favorite and the after i start following TH-camr like Solt and T90 i had to reconsider AoE2, which now i think is the best :D with the ultimate gameplay for this type of games. Arguably even better the Star Craft
One major thing overlooked! Aoe 3 at time of release needed a much better pc, graphics card to even run, while my original aoe2 ran off the mother board itself; people didn’t have resources they do now in this day and age 😁
That was a real dark age
I still run AoE 2 HD on my 2009 laptop.
Yeah I remember we couldn’t do naval battles because our computers would just crash.
When I was kid I wished corpses disappear slower like AoE2. So it would feel that there was a fight
In my opinion, the reason is mostly because AoE2 is way more similar to AoE1 but more balanced, whereas AoE3 feels like an entire different game.
Basically Homm series but for RTSes
it's the same reason why the new settler games are all pretty bad, at least imo, it's just not the same game.
In addition, AoE3 has had more balance issues than AoE2 over the years, and I believe particularly at release.
@@Lunethia Hey, Settlers 7 was made my AOE's lead dev! Bruce Shelby is I recall correctly. It was an amazing PC-tabletop game that would have done much better if it was released in and around the PC-tabletop boon. Alas, it has very little to do with the Settlers series.
Teiii ! You're here too?
As someone that is an avid Age of Mythology veteran, I can confirm that the reason the armies feel sluggish is mainly because the army will base it's speed on the slowest unit, for example an Egyptian war elephant.
It's not difficult to get used to, often times you'll want to select your fastest troops first to get them out, while letting your slower troops skirmish with the attacking army. If you want to save your slow troops, have them on a retreat path while you fend off the attackers with your fast troops. There's a lot that goes into it macro wise, especially if you're retreating your titan from the battlefield and you need some troops to cover for it.
isn't this true for aoe2, also?
@@Appletank8sort of, while there are slow units (archers, elephants) the slowdown is usually worsened by "traffic" while moving too many units in the same direction. You can insert fast troops to defend the slow ones but they'll actually worsen the "traffic"
@@CP-mb7ly The mechanic I was mainly thinking of was how from AoE2 onwards, a control group of units only moves as fast as the slowest unit.
it was only mildly annoying, coming from starcraft. i was already used to group units by type anyway
I always preferred Age 3, and I started with Age 1 back in the late 90's. So Age 4 was a massive disappointment for me, because it just felt like 5 steps back, and none forward.
why? aoe4 looks like a modernized&improved aoe2
@@ertegi64366 That's why. He prefers Age 3.
I was expecting age 4 begin ww1
@@danielperezcardenas4074 I hope they do a 20th century age of empires
@@nathangoode1089 me too kid, me too
I have played Age nearly every day for 20 years. The "The emotional commitment" you mentioned to city building and defending your personal investment is why I'm still 1620 ELO...
Hahha I like to beat u
1620 Elo is huge if we talk about DE Elo
I really do hope you start making AOE3 videos in the future. There isnt many youtubers out there talking about this game, let alone of the quality of your videos. Its a new mindset that you have to have with AOE3. As you said there isnt much investing in what you build and its very fast paced. In deepth knowledge on what to use when and agains what makes the difference, thats why the civs are so different to one another. I believe the devs intended to have that focused, instead of the general knowledge that you need in AOE2.
yeah I really prefer he make a series to cover the mechanics of this game because Samurai Revolution as a youtuber is good and all but Spirit comes at these games with mathmatics in mind.
I wouldn't watch the videos. I think AOE3 looks so stupid, it's just not fun to watch.
AOM bruh!!! Always wanted to hear an aoe2 pro's thoughts on AoM
Yesssss! My most played game to date
Still sh*t game. Just kidding bro
Pro ? Lol
@@sciuresci1403 he literally makes money by playing AoE2 soo, he's not MLG but I'd say he's a professional AoE2 player.
agreed!
I'm waiting for Age of Mythology DE someday!
❤️
YES I want my historically accurate army of walking scarabs and crocodiles that shoot solar beams. While my hero shoots lightning at the enemy.
AoM is fine as is. Though I do enjoy AoK DE's crumbling buildings... mmm, so crunchy.
Someone clearly doesnt understand the meaning of the word “Mythology” lol
Gentlemen: I have news.
I loved how every civ in AOE 3 was unique and played very different from the others. They felt like distinctive civilizations this time.
That was actually one of my favorite things about AOE3.
until you realize that balance is non existent ...
@@yordanazzolin because they stoped patching it because of the lack of popularity
Also look at Starcraft. One of the things what made it great is the difference. So it's more of a personal thing. Some people like it if the civs are similar some like it if they are different.
Musketeer once said : Comondamen
yis
@@andreimoga7813 he wole
he men a saw
@@andreimoga7813 HE WISS
attackah
i hope they make bigger maps in AoE3de
like a whole observable universe.
Played MP test and sadly no
Whoops broke my NDA
Clearly, it would be the best. Especially for a **colonial** game where exploring and having limited manpower ressources to protect a larger area is essential.
I hope a few european maps are added.
Something that I love soo much about 3 is the little details. Like... They had unique voice lines for specific units, not just civs.
The Swiss pikemen speak a different german than actual german units, with a specific voice. Same with lansquenetes.
The Hakapell, the Elmeti, etc. All had unique voices and dialogues.
It actually made them feel like real mercenaries, you can tell they're clearly from somewhere else, not from your empire.
I also find it funny that, the heavier a unit is, the deeper the voice.
Heavy cannons use really deep voices, while light infantry use more high pitched voices. It's funny but... It kinda makes sense? Like, just by the voices you can tell what kind of unit it is.
There are tons of details in AOE3, and like you said about languages, this is the first game that I heard Albanian language in any game (Stradiots talk albanian), they made their research . Also pretty much every unique upgrade have unique name with good correlation in real life event which makes this even more impressive.
I love how age 3 emphasis on history too. I play mostly as Ottoman. Ottoman is known as gun powder empire with strong cavs. But they were the sick man of Europe. So otto eco 🤢. Or how they depicted GREAT bombard fearsome but ineffective. But you take it lightly. I loved how they depicted Russia or India too.
I remember the mortars had comically deep voices lol
One of the details is you get to know each unit by it's profile with time. For example let's use the musket/skirmisher comparison
Heavy infantry comes in 2 flavors. Melee and ranged. Melee HI is simple to identify, if you see a guy running with fancy armor, melee infantry. If you see a guy with a gun, fancy hat and bayonet and a backpack, it's HI. Another thing is musketeer units always keep their guns in the shoulder.
Compare that to Light infantry. Usually they hold their weapon with both hands instead of the shoulder. Also they are overall less chunkier. No hat, no big sword/bayonet, no backpack.
You can also tell by the multipliers. If you see a lot of multipliers in the top and few in the bottom, it's light infantry. If it has very few multipliers on top but a lot in bottom, heavy infantry.
Coming from Aoe3 to Aoe2 I found many of the same intuitive struggles, but in reverse. It still hurts my head to think that 10 unarmed villagers slapping a stone tower is actually the effective and preferred strategy to destroy it?!
10 workers with masonry experience and proper tools*
@@isawadelapradera6490 And still the knight beat the stone with a sword
😂😂😂😂😂
I love both games but i prefer aoe3 and the biggest reason is that in Aoe2 all civs looks EQUAL AF. In aos3 threaded units same to each other's yes but strategically talking aoe3 feels they have unique civs.
Really? You think someone bashing a wall with a sword or trying to pierce it with an arrow is more intuitive than someone burrowing the ground below it?
I think AoE2 is just simpler and easier to get a grasp of with so many overlapping units for the civs. I do like that AoE3 rewards you for playing a certain civ over and over other than you getting better with them.
On another note AoM deserves a DE as well, it’s an amazing game and I love the mythological aspect of it.
I want a AoM DE now 😭
See, this whole "play a civ more and it'll get better" is exactly what pushed me away from AoE3. I want to win becayse I'm better. Not because my civ just starts dtronger than the enemy's who didn't spend time leveling it up.
You know, I’m wondering... what are your thoughts on Age of Mythology?
AoM is by the best of the series.
Aom is my favorite
apart from the very unique civs, i also like the fact that they are a second factor to counter units
Pop cap is too limiting.
@@jcpkill1175 yeah the 250 pop cap is kinda bung
generally in aoe3, I feel like the devs were trying to mitigate unit micro where soldiers dodge arrows and whatnot and the mechanics really incentivize actually playing battles like real colonial era battles would go, with stationary line infantry, cavalry on the flanks, and canons in back (and melee infantry like pikes, rodelero, or natives in front as canon fodder lol)
05:36 there's a moonwalking Teutonic Knight. :P
I hope this bug never gets fixed. :D
@@Robert-vk7je Not a bug, unexpected feature ;P
Moon walking on farm is showing something that aoe 3 will never have :P
I have to say that I prefer AoE3 when it comes to civ design. They feel very different from each other in a way that AoE2's never did.
Just all the weird quirks some civs have when it comes to villagers makes them stand out a lot.
That’s why I enjoy it. Love the balance and stuff from aoe2 but the fact that every civ is very similar with their units, save for the unique unit, gets a bit boring after a while.
@@jacforse7642 I agree. Obviously there is a trade off in adding to the learning curve but I don't think the game would be remembered at all if it was a AoE2 reskin like the Star Wars RTS the uses the same engine.
Would have been nice if you had interviewed samurai revolution for this video. He's basically your counterpart for AoE3
He isn't. He's just some noob that makes AoE 3 videos.
@@gunther4150 bruh the hate without saying any reasons
@@gunther4150 If you want to talk shit kid,at least give your reasons
@@gunther4150 woah there buddy, why the hate?
I do appreciate Samurai Revolution's videos and how they help keep the AOE 3 community alive on youtube. Samurai Revolution tends to do more gameplay videos and potential macro strategies, while Spirit's videos usually focus more on testing and quantifying very specific mechanics in the game. Both are nice, but I would be really interested to see a Spirit video on AOE3 (that follows his usual formula since this is more or less a review).
Man I remember my cousin gifting me AOE2 when it came out in 99, it blows my mind that people still nerd about it, such a timeless classic.
There is some continuity between the games:
The British still have longbows.
The Turks still have bombards and Janissaries.
Skirmishers and Halberdiers still make up a bulk of your army.
Nobody ever picks the Portuguese.
And the French still have the best Cavalry.
"Skirmishers and Halberdiers still make up a bulk of your army."
Strange I would expected the bulk of all the armies (at least the European ones) would be musket infantry.
@@jliller dutch doesnot have any musketeers. They can only train skirmishers,pikeman,halberdiers in barracks.
Sioux have better cav than the French.
ports are semi common in aoe3
Nobody picks the portuguese ? Do you play mp on aoe3 ?
While I agree with the assessment, I think that accessibility not the only cause of AOE3 lack of favor with people. There are two , in my opinion, big points that I think get AOE 3 down:
A) Age of empires 1 and 2 were a 90's franchise that could run on *any computer* made after 1996. Good pc, bad pc, windows 98, xp or 7, you could run it. Age of Empires 3 made all but the best computers of the era just *crawl*. Especially the naval battles which made your fps drop to single digits even after several patches, on lowest graphics, on a strong computer.
This limited the fan base to people with new computers that could run the new game, which not all age fans could afford, especially outside of America and Europe's middle class.
This alone was not enough, but with the after mentioned accessibility issues it could doom the game, and then we have problem B...
B) The game fucked up it's own setting. Age 1 focused on antiquity - The Hellenic-Roman, Mesopotamian, Levantine and Far eastern cultures all got campaigns, scenarios, or civs to play as, and it ended with an expansion focused on Rome and late antiquity - which where Age 2 begins, focusing on the rise from the dark age to the high middle ages, and ends with an expansion that looked mostly towards the end of the era - the discovery of the new world.
In short, massive variety of factions from all over the world, lots of historical campaigns, even if of dubious accuracy.
By comparison Age 3, while continuing the timeline, going from the discovery of the Americas to the industrial revolution, suffers from being too focused not only on colonialism, but *American* colonialism. The default building set for everyone is north American log cabins, the settlers are all vaguely American, the campaigns are an assassins creed 3 esque story fictional story about secret societies and the fountain of youth and just...why.
The 8 european factions, 3 native and 3 asians simply didn't hold a candle, no matter how unique, to the variety brought by age 2 (not counting HD) and it's 4 Western European, 4 Eastern European, 2 Mesoamerican, 4 Asian, and 4 Middle Eastern factions. that's 18 factions from across the world, with only 1 expansion.
Even for Europeans the setting was limited: No English Civil War, no German war of unification, no napoleon, no 30 years war, no 7 years war, no great northern war, no fighting against the ottoman, again the nonsense with Germany being a thing before the 1870's, etc.
TL;DR - It ran like shit when it came out, and the setting was done very poorly and focused too much on the US.
I remember having to buy a new graphics card to be able to play water maps on on AoE3 when it first came out, which was the first time I'd ever bought an individual component for a PC as I'd just played games on family PCs up to that point.
Your second point is exactly my thoughts. It is no joke that Age of Empires 1 is what started my love of history, and while AoE 1's history was tacked on at best, it still sparked my interest. AoE 2's campaigns were amazing to me as a kid, I played through them so many times, it was cool to learn about things across the globe. AoE 3 just dropped the ball tremendously, when I learned it was exclusively from a colonial perspective with a fantasy story about the fountain of youth I was immediately turned off from the game. That paired with it feeling like all the bad parts of Age of Mythology with none of the good parts just killed the game for me.
If you wanted a single player game in 2005 what you instead received was a game with a very strange campaign and random map AI that did not actively use its factions unique characteristics or units. WarChiefs and Asian Dynasties helped and give me hope for DE, but the original just did not offer much compared to the first two AoE games.
ConscriptDavid
Agreed, Also the controversy of those fictional stories in single player adds up but never mind Let's talk about what really ruined this game popularity !
To make things worse Microsoft firing the team behind this game 'Ensemble Studio' and leave absolutely no one in game managements and remove all customer support emails leaving AOE3 Community on their own facing tons of bugs, lot of unfinished work, and hackers..
While this game had it's own T_ime to shine but unfortunately it stopped and lost it's most loyal people..
Well you can add this the to that list of 'cause of AOE3 lack of favor'
Finally some sense. Didn't play 3 until I was an adult for this reason, and by that time I was too interested in competitive multiplayer for it to stand a chance against 2.
I like both aoe2 and aoe3, but one of the first things that became appartent when I started aoe 3 was the diplomacy. Age of empires 3 didn't let you change allies, have a neutral statues etc. I am guessing it is due to team cards.
you'll be pleased to know DE now includes this as an option, ON by default i believe, for Free for all matches, and it works identically to aoe2 system as well, a very positive inclusion
@@Mythic1560 Except that AI doesn't know how to use it , different from AOE2 randomly "set me to neutral" AI. I miss that.
I love the how you can customise your civ on AOE 3
First, and most importantly, the medieval brand is easier to sell, that's the most important thing. The medieval period has vikings and samurai and mongols and saracens and celts, the list goes on and on. The decidedly euro-centric initial offering of AoE3 made stuff *feel* very similar, even though they were very dynamically different under the hood.
Second, the faster pace was really, really punishing on new players, a problem which was magnified by really poor game balance at launch. Very quickly skilled players gravitated to the Spanish, then the Ottomans and just started crushing people with hyper-aggressive rush tactics. This created a monoculture in the online community which really hurt the sense off variety and fun of the experience. AoK is very, very turtle-friendly, and while that doesn't work at the highest levels of play, it will keep you in the game long enough to get attached to the game.
Third, the Home City XP grinding was a huge turn-off, basically locking people in even more into the flavor of the month metagame. If Ottoman were OP, you had to grind your Ottoman city, so you played a lot of Ottoman vs Ottoman vs Ottoman games so you could improve your Ottoman deck. Later releases helped a lot by fixing up balance and adding non-European civs, but by then it was kind of too late.
This should have more likes.
its easier to sell maybe back then. but by god that time period is so stale now. AOE3 was really fresh-maybe to fresh to ppl like those who are stuck in the dark ages. i dont mean to be rude but it feels fitting.
@@m00rtin4 I think you'll find yourself in the minority. I don't disagree with you, the medieval period is somewhat over-exposed, but AoE4 is re-visiting the period for a reason.
Aaron Long Remember when they teased it was going to be early 1900s warfare in their trailer like 10 years ago? I woulda said fuck that entirely
@@AaronMichaelLong Agreed, and the way games like Witcher 3, Skyrim, the Mount and Blade Series, and Kingdom Come blew up in popularity shows that the medieval/fantasy themes are pretty much timeless classics, and are certainly not going away anytime soon.
Oh man, a lot of the reasons that you're mentioning are reasons that I actually like AOE3!
Same!
t. console peasant
I love the time period. It's one of my favourite things about the game. For me the colonial period is one of the most interesting periods in history
Yeah the stuff about getting attacked at the start just doesnt sound like a criticism. Im a starcraft player and you can get attacked like 3 or 4 minutes in, 7 minutes is pretty standard for powerful pushes. As for the civs being too different from eachother i also disagree. The depth that is added from completely different civs/races playing against eachother is way better than just 2 of the exact same thing fighting all the time.
@@bosha6654 I dislike SC2 in multiplayer for this reason. As a beginner/casual it's extremely annoying to get attacked 2min into the game by some shit and lose a bit later on because you can't fight back. Well that and the fact you fight diamond platinum players as a beginner too. Disgusting imo, the only good thing about sc2 are the campaigns and pve coop for me, I don't have the time to git gud, I just want to have fun and play peacefully.
"When my town is attacked, I want to defend it because I made it"
Persian douche: ""We" made it"
Personally I love aoe2 but aoe3 I think is way more fun I love the single player spent many hours playing was very fun.
There are two ways an RTS can handle civ differences. I call them the Age of Empires way, where they're mostly the same but with a few differences, and the StarCraft way, where they're entirely different.
AoE3 definitely falls closer to the latter than the former.
having civs pretty much the same SUCKS lol
I call them the Red Alert way and the Warcraft way :P
@@jarekyan5528 Red Alert still shares some units and buildings: ore trucks, rifle infantry, power plants.
In StarCraft, the economies are fundamentally different and there are no shared units.
when i play AoE3 i feel like an expeditionary captian out to set up a military outpost to dominate and tame the local land for a proper city to emerge.
Age2 was my first age of empires i played but once age3 came out ot instantly became my favourite. Can't wait for definitive Edition
Algunas razones que yo veo:
1) Para la fecha en que se lanzó AoE3, el género rts venía perdiendo fuerza.
2) La curva de aprendizaje es mucho más lenta que con AoE2, cada civi es distinta, cada carta es distinta y el orden en que las uses genera miles de alternativas de juego posibles. Dominar el juego requiere demasiadas horas de aprendizaje y jugarlo es más complejo que jugar al 2. (Aunque una vez que aprendes todas esas dinámicas, puede ser mucho más entretenido y es mucho más difícil caer en la monotonía).
3) Los gráficos no corrían en muchos de los computadores de la época. A mí recién ahora me corre el juego, de niño cuando se lanzó no me corría ni el demo.
4) La edad media es más popular que la edad moderna en el imaginario colectivo.
5) La campaña es entretenida pero no está a la altura de las de AoE2, principalmente porque no refleja hechos históricos (se farrearon una gran oportunidad teniendo las civis que tenían). Ahora en DE han sacado algunas "batallas históricas" y son geniales.
Pero creo que las razones 2 y 3 son las principales de por qué la comunidad nunca se pasó del todo al AoE3. Por mi parte, me encanta toda la saga, incluido AoE1 y AoM (y Galactic Battlegrounds)
Holandeses y plantas los 6 bancos para oro infinito, 10 colonos en cada recurso y cuando las minas de oro y plata se acaben mandas a los colonos libres a los otros recursos, dos colonos para construcción 4 edificios de artillería y haces 50 cañones de campaña, y luego avanzas lento y contento contra el enemigo jajaja
@@kevinquintana3085es super fácil counterear a los holandeses, todo eso aunque parezca una "ventaja" en verdad no lo es, los bancos con todas las cartas y mejoras que le puedas agregar al fin de cuentas cuentan como 30 - 40 aldeanos que son justo la cantidad de aldeanos que les hace falta. El resto de civilizaciones tienen un límite de 100 aldeanos mientras que los holandeses tienen 60.
I understand where your coming from with the idea that AOE3 counters are less intuitive based on the way they look, but I feel that the argument is undermined somewhat by the fact that AOE3 actually tells you what bonus damage units have, as opposed to AOE2 where you are just given a description in the tech tree that says "Cataphract: Byzantine unique unit. Heavily armored cavalry," it's almost like there is a reason why TH-cam channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers exist just to try and explain what AOE2's mechanics actually are.
Bingo!
also the fact if you know anything about history the name is very intuitive. For example the skirmishers vs musketeers example. Musketeers were design to provide a mass of bullets down range and deal as much damage as possible before charging in with bayonets. The vast of majority of battles ended not because one side got shot to death but instead broke formation and fled due to a successful bayonet charge. Skirmishers on the other hand did not fight in line formations but instead spread out and out in front of the enemies and were intended to prod and eliminate enemies with more accurate fire. The same with cannons. When they actually entered the battlefield (not just as a siege weapon) they were designed to soften and break up enemy formations. As a result anti cannons became necessary which is where the culverin comes in. The culverin had a much longer barrel giving it unparalleled accuracy and velocity (increasing effective rang) and as we see on the game model has the capability of aiming far higher then any other cannons (that's what that brown this at the back of the barrel was for) allowing it to shoot far farther than the other cannons which were either locked into a horizonal fire or had a limited capability to aim up. This allowed it to hit the cannons in the backline of the enemies.
@@a-drewg1716 That's a lot of history about weapons and war in the colonial age for the average player to know for it to be intuitive, so for most players it's not.
@@a-drewg1716 that isn't intuitive at all lol
most schools don't even touch on subject of what military was used in aoe3 period except "slow reloading rifles" and like half of units in aoe3 are just that
1:48 That Aztec on the piramid tumbling down the stairs
Not really uncommon nowadays
th-cam.com/video/H9RORvsolp0/w-d-xo.html
They NEVER skip leg day
loool
You mean walking down?
AOE II Skirms look like they would actually counter just about anything in the game. A shield with a spear that they can throw??? They look like ranged centurions.
I really like the 'feel' and immersion of AoE III, I get really pulled into the game and I end up feeling somewhat connected to the time period as a result. Having said that I would *hate* to play it competitively. All of the quirks and oddities make for a great single player experience- I like that my units get into specific formations, I like that it lets me feel like I am having proper pitched battles and I like that skirmishes for resources are common early on, but tend not to devolve into all out war until later, but all of these things are basically only possible in single player, and they happen because I feel the game is 'inviting me' to do them.
Oh and as an asside, I think I actually like the time period more than AoE II, it feels less nostalgic but more 'gritty' and has more of an 'action' feel to it as though I'm playing a dangerous game of decision making, whereas AoE II feels more "grand strategy" like I'm off in the distance deciding thing. That's a very personal preference though, and it's some of the mechanics that hold it back from being quite as 'legendary' as AoE II
I only play multiplayer and I get into skirmishes over early resources (with larger battles happening later), depends how you play. As for unit formation and all the criticism of it being slow by the video, I like the formations and if you play enough you get good at maneuvering your inf, calv, and arty almost in the intended way as they would have during the historical era of line battles
Honestly I love them both. The Holy Trinity: AoE2, AoE3, and AoM! (Never forget AoM)
@arega stevano Age of Mythology
Age of Mythology has a good mix of both.
My main issue with AOE 3 was the campaign. We played 1 scenario only, 1 civ. That was a serious letdown after AOE2. It felt more like devs were forced to do it without them wanting to.
@Kevin Bjork the non historicality (sp) is whats the deal breaker. =/
@@EMDakka I enjoyed the asian civ campaigns. they were historical
@@themasteronhigh1665 The Asian campaigns had the Chinese fighting the Aztecs in Mexico lol.
@@EMDakka ...I kind of liked the cheesy fantasy story of AOE3, though. Maybe I'm in a minority, but I don't need every game to be a historical recreation. AOM also had a very silly fantasy campaign, after all.
I enjoyed the campaigns but would've preferred them to be more historical
The faction difference is the thing that makes me prefer AoE 3 than 2
The one thing I really liked about AoE3 was its campaigns. The storytelling was more engaging, and it felt like the devs had put more effort into building varied and entertaining scenarios.
Even so, more than 20 years after first trying AoE2, I still find myself going back to it more or less regularly, while I don't particularly wish to do that with AoE3.
What you mentioned about counters is actually pretty important. I would say it gets even worse though in Empire Earth, where not only is there a complicated triangle of "Shock", "Pierce" and "Arrow" units (and oftentimes it's difficult to determine which unit is either of those) but when you get into ages dominated by gunpowder, tanks or most unintuitive of all, _mechs,_ you'll basically have no idea what the counters are. The worst part is that the game contains no in-game instructions, so someone who had the game back in the day would have to refer to their manual frequently.
That being said, Empire Earth is still a pretty epic game... maybe you should --please do a video about it sometime--
EE1 (very complex) and EE2 (very very complex) are close to my heart. (EE1's soundtrack is rank 1 for me.) Of course, they were never near to Age 2 in popularity because ultimately the single player campaigns end, the skirmishes/random-maps against AI become boring, and people need Multiplayer. EE1 and EE2 are way more complicated (consequently, slow) for multiplayer.
0:28 I remember playing AoE 3 when it first came out on disk before steam. It often peaked well over 10k sometimes 20k
It also had millions of sales and it was not a commercial failure and it was not responsible for Ensemble Studios going bankrupt as many people say. (This was for external causes as I understand it). Although it is not the most played, it has an active and stable community.
What's ironic about the Unit rooster is that the Total War series went the other way around.
Medieval TW: Huge varity of Units depending on the Civ
Empire TW: Everyone uses the same Line Infantry, Cannons and Cav, special units are the exeption.
What ETW doesn't tell you is how different those same-looking units are across civs. Russian line infantry being weaker shooters, have more members per unit, and do more melee damage, and get stomped every time by british and prussian line inf.
@@strangesignal9757 Love how ETW and AoE 3 agree about weak and cannon-fodderish Russian infantry. I guess this is reason Russian Empire won majority of its wars right until half of Western Europe came to rescue Ottoman Empire (previously scourge of Christian world) because it grinded down by Russia in dozen of wars and lose large swats of territory to it, so it was crucial to prevent Russia from claiming The Bosphorus and recreating Byzantine as puppet state (because otherwise it would became dangerously powerful). While having lower population than Britain (only island, without colonies) all way until very end of XIX century. This is all thanks to weak infantry, sure.
Also love not less how in baseline AoE 3 campaign Russian army marched by foot across all Siberia, Aliaska and now planned to march across North America as well (that even small expedition still haven't manage to cross at the time of Seven Years War) just to attack British and French colonies at the East coast :D Only sacrifice of John Black stopped this hilarious threat. And in DE they changed Lakota campaign, yet highly weird base campaign remained intact.
@@AtticusKarpenter didn't even remember that comment lol
When Peter the Great beat Karl XII of Sweden down to a pulp in the Great Northern War, many europeans regarded Russa as "the eastern Turks", as becoming the bogeyman of Central Europe, with massive manpower reserves and an increasingly professional army that could measure itself even against the Ottoman Empire (to which Russia would still lose some battles, like Peter the Great himself did). I don't actually know if ETW has Russian line infrantry be less accurate with their shot, but I do remember their melee stats being better.
Anyway, on the subject of 3 years ago, the real reason AOE3 has more units while ETW has less, is because many units in AOE3 date from the 15th to the 17th centuries, like the German Landsknechte and the war wagons used by the taborites and utraquists during the Hussite Wars in the 15th Century, with plenty of mercenary units used in european battlefields until the 18th Century. Crossbowmen in particular only disappear from battlefields during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and pikemen became inceasingly irrelevant with bayonets and stronger anti-cavalry drilling for line infantrymen. Since ETW takes place in the whole of the 18th Century, where armies are no longer feudal and mercenary but professional standard armies, it makes sense they'd far less units.
One of the ways to micro in AOE3 is splitting snared units away from the rest of the group. This eliminates the slow of the group at the cost of that unit (usually).
Ive switched between both the games over the years but i always felt aoe 3 was more fun.
True
You forgot one of the best features of AoE3: The Trading Post!. Not only does it make each maps feel more unique, it immerses the player in the role of a foreign colonizer as they meddle in local affairs and turn brother tribes against each other!
I would always upgrade it to the iron horse and build a city around it because I loved the train going around and bringing goods. :)
"AoE2 is more accessible"
Yeah, going into a new player MP lobby and dying in 10mins sure is accessible and player-friendly
When you get into it with the single-player :P defensive strats just work far better.
I know, right? Or trying out the AI campaign and getting crushed in 10 minutes?
@@Tareltonlives I still have nightmares about the french campaign where you are escorting the damn king through an entire enemy base... Balance? Hahahahaha GTFO. Still a great game but boy did it not like you trying to survive in it.
games become accessible by being simple to start playing, but hard to master. AOE3 throws so many things at you with units that look pretty much the same that it was very annoying for me to play, even though i have already played AOE1, 2 and AOM at that point.
I see a "Low Elo Legend" video soon. Blinking at T90, i found your next target :D
Initially I couldn't transfer to AOE3 easily as well, but after I really got into it, I couldn't stop. I've become really good in civilizations and metropolies, so I've come to love it. Now it feels natural the same AOE1 and 2 are.
As a huge history buff, I don't feel that either of the examples you made about AoE3's units not being obvious to figure out were difficult to figure out, but that, in itself, illustrates your point about the time period and game being less accessible. You don't have to know anything about history to know that a shield can stop an arrow, but knowing the nuances between light and heavy Napoleonic infantry requires an above-average knowledge not just of history, but of that period's military history.
And that's why I like it :) IT gets you to learn about an overlooked period of history; people go Egyptians-Greek-Romans-Castles-Tanks without thinking of all that cool history in-between.
To be frank, I really didn't understand that criticism. Like, just click on the unit and you can see it does X2 against heavy infantry. In AOE2, how am I supposed to know a cataphract is anti-anti-cavalry cavalry? AOE3 pikes will tell you they do 8X5 against cav. In AOE2, I think halbs do +32? Can't remember, cause there's nothing to tell you. In AOE3, if you don't know the puspose of your units, you're just not looking.
@@jeremyjean13 Or how literally every infantry unit deals extra damage to the Eagle line, for no non-balance related reason whatsoever.
a shield can also stop a sword. mangonels and onagers were rarely used against infantry. pikes were heavy defensive units against cavarly and infantry. men-at-arms were heavy cavarly. etc
Please consider making AoE3 videos, jut please. Your 2 videos are flawless, we need you on 3 as well, please!
oh i have been waiting for a video like this for so long. The snare effect is always driving me crazy, not only when i'm taking extra hits, but also when i'm raiding and enemy villagers can't run and i kill them all without a sweat.
AND NO HILL BONUS
Snare effect can be managed by sacrificibg the unit that gets snared first.
@@sohamdas7314 i know, and i do it all the time, but it's horrible and completely avoidable. Just get rid of it.
From my childhood to adulthood I played all age of empires games. After having spent like literal thousands of hours (worth it btw), I can say that aoe3 is the best of them. Why? Matches are much faster, civs actually differ from each other (only Age of mythology had that to some degree), you could use different strategies, the graphics are awesome, the home city makes it much more strategical, the online ranking system was perfect for multiplayer (they Ffed that in definitive Edition) and it just feels like a game for more battle oriented players. While most play aoe2 like a sim city game.
I have to agree. Also, the soundtrack/music for Age of Empires 3 was absolutely out of this kaboodly world fantastic. Me being a music lover and history buff for the 12th to 19th centuries, I would literally cream my pants every time I played aoe3.
@@prussianeagle1941 true That. I like the revolution theme and the main menu one. Awesome music. I like the OSTs from all the games though.
I hate that you can’t make a huge army though. I think aoe2 is the best in my opinion. I do like aoe3 but not as much.
I LOVED Age of Mythology with its radically different factions. however, I found it really hard to get into AOE3 for some reason.
I agree, for these reasons:
1) Despite the civilizations being different, they are not really distinct enough from each other in the fact the units variety is so similar, they all are just different skinned versions of guys with muskets or guys on horses compared to something like Starcraft or AoM where the units are very distinct.
2) There are so many civilizations that having unique civs becomes a drawback having to learn them all, again compared to Starcraft or AoM where they are significantly different from each other, but there's only 3 or so to learn.
@@L3monsta there are actually a variety of unit designs such as the Cassador, Strelet, Ruyter, Cossacks, Oprichnik, longbowmen, rodeleros, doppelsoldners, Uhlans, Abus Guns, spanish pikemen, spahi, all the elephants, cuisassiers, steppe riders and actually all the chinese, japanese, indians and native american tribes that have different units lol, not even mentioning the mercenary units... the game wasn't supposed to be the same as AoE2, AoE1 wasn't the same as AoE2 either so of course you need to relearn about the units and features
Same. The muskets and whatnot just never really connected with me as much as just running up and hitting each other with swords and axes. And I like the pacing and variety AOM brings more than I do the uniformity and minor variations AOE2. But apparently hardly anyone else really likes AOM. I don't get it.
@@LegendKingY2j "AoE1 wasn't the same as AoE2 either" AoE2 took the AoE1 formula and enhanced it. AoE3 dropped the AoE1&2 formula to try something else. so your point is kinda moot.
AoM was great, it's main drawback was the most of the minor Gods and many of the major Gods were sorely imbalanced, competitively some choices were just *bad*, like Odin, Gaia, Set (after it was nerfed into the ground) or Atlanteans in general.
I definitely agree. The home city aspect is easily one of my favorite parts of the game.
Good to see this game get some love. Personally however, the building limits were the thing that put me off most. It just feels so forced to not be able to build another tower, even though you have the resources.
At least we can edit the xml files of the game and change the limit.
If you can just spam towers, there is no point in defending your walls with all your army, just make an insane lot of towers and a litlle army of culverins and cannons and that's it, boring as hell. With a card u have 14 tower limit, that's enough to help a lot but not decide the whole match.
Definitely agree with the sentiment that in AoE2 you have more of a connection to your civilization due to building it up and it naturally makes the game tense in all the good ways which leads into a fun gameplay loop. For me I always preferred AoE2 because I find the historical time period it spans much more appealing and the game itself was very tightly designed and because of that has gone on for over 20 years with a constant playerbase. AoE3 was a good game, an interesting one to be sure, but let's face it: AoE3 was a follow up to one of the best RTS games and by extension best computer games ever made. It's hard to go back to something that is good when you're used to something amazing.
I would love to be in the universe where Spirit of the Law is a AoM youtuber
Thats also the universe with 11 9/11s and giant telepathic spiders
Oh man, I'd love to see Spirit's kind of dry and informative approach taken with mythology. "As you can see, the Jormund Elver is a cost effective sea serpent, but it is not efficient to use against War Turtles"
You missed a Major Factor!!
At the time when Age3 was realeased, the 3D graphics required a great PC. Players going from Age2 to Age3 with the same PC struggled hard, as the game just would not maintain FPS.
I remember loving the game but being seriously afraid to view any of the ships, as this would basically freeze my game, only moving small frame increments at a time.
Now on a modern gaming pc, this problem has been solved, so the game feels much better!
Effectively, I believe that age3 was just a little to ahead of it's time. And way to much of an increase in graphics from the previous titles.
Intresting, when it came out my grandfather had a super high speed computer for the time and I was able to play it when I would visit. It never even occurred to me that many people didn't have access to it. Probably why it's still my favorite. Also I'm not a great player so Age 3 was just the right difficulty for me.
True, this is one of the main reason.
The number ONE detriment to age 3, which kept me from playing it alot more (or even finishing it) are the fantasy-esque non-historical campaigns, they're not BAD, but a big appeal for me on Age of Empires games is the history..
that said, if im not misremembering, infantry comes out of barracks in batchs of up to 5 units at once, which i found AWESOME.
Yeah only the Japanese and Indian Campaigns in AoE 3 were good which is very sad as they could have followed the Napoleonic Wars
Interesting. History has always been my passion (Even got a History degree) but I never minded the non-historical Age 3 campaigns. I absolutely loved Age 2 for its historical campaigns, AOM for its take on Mythology and Age 3 for how it used historical myths to tell a fantasy story.
What I didn't like was how the Asian campaigns tried to move back in the direction of Age 2 by being based on historical events (fictional for the Chinese) while also trying to make them dramatic in nature. The drama worked in the original campaign because you were following one family throughout the ages, in AD it falls flat because between setting the stage and introducing the characters you have little time to care about anything or anyone. And te missions are boring, which didn't help.
Khan Khomrad The Chinese just want you to think they didn’t invade Aztec lands for their gold.
bruh the aok and aoc aoe2 campaigns were only loosely based in real history and are filled with myths and straight up falsehoods.
I do agree-that weakest part of AoE3 vanilla is the campaigns. They're a lot better in the expansions
On the note that you mentioned about factions being wildly different, I have a game that I think might interest you that takes the Age 3 approach. It’s called War Selection. To put it short, you get a choice when aging up between how your faction specializes. So in the Stone Age you can pick between europe and Asia, and once again past that for each tree with it. West Europe vs East Europe and West Asia vs East Asia. And it goes even more when you get to choose a real country in the Industrial Age. So over the course of a single match you are watching your civilization get more and more exciting units and buildings along with your enemy, and it makes the game feel very immersive, reaching its final stage as every Industrial country playing wildly different from any other.
Sounds like AoM.