Reminiscence: Age of Empires III

Not too long ago, I dusted off my Mac trial of Age of Empires 3, and took it for a spin. Good game, shame Ensemble got axed, because they made great real time strategy games. The fact that only two civilizations existed on the trial didn’t faze me that much; I’m a fairly avid British (in the game) player, and prefer the musketeers anyway. Of course, I wouldn’t mind playing as an Ottoman, but alas, we can’t have everything in a trial, right?

In my opinion, Age of Empires 3 was one of the best RTS games that Ensemble Studios ever made. (Ensemble’s swan song with Halo Wars wasn’t a bust, though it was less accepted than the Age of Empires series. If anything, it was a hit, showing that RTS can be played on a console, though controls had to be dumbed down to circa Age of Empires 1) Although I’m not too much of a fan of the five ages, nor the audacious prices for those four upgrades, that is often offset by the possibility of infinite resources, brought on by mills, plantations, trading posts and trading routes, and the much-prized factory, as well as the fact that each object of value holds immensely larger amounts of resources. The concept of the explorer, as well as the home city, provided a feeling of independence, as well as flexibility, from the run-of-the-mill civilizations that we were typically limited to; think of them as a bit of RPG play in RTS.

Now, before I get to a flashback story, I would like to warn you that I’m not a very skilled player in RTS-type games. Case in point: in almost every game on the Age of Empire series, and definitely on every game in the Starcraft series, I have resorted to cheats (hey, it’s a game, might as well have fun with it, right?). Only recently (say, a few years back) have I relinquished my childish ways to devise some basic strategies in these games. I’ve seldom lost a game; having said that, I seldom play on difficulties higher than easy.

Back then…

Not too long ago, I actually had the full version of Age of Empires 3 (long story, involving a Mac/PC transition). I often utilized the British as my civilization of choice. The home city made it so I couldn’t change civilization without changing home cities and all of its benefits, so I was stuck with it, more or less. More maps, more players, more campaign, it had it all. By the time I headed off to the multiplayer section of the game, my home city deck was quite lethal, armed with a factory and a fort, as well as numerous military reinforcement cards, as well as a cute team card that made building houses infinitely faster than it already was (and they were pretty easily built to start with). To my surprise, there was an option to use cheats in multiplayer games; I opted not to, because it could get messy. REALLY messy.

After a few games with computers (I couldn’t fathom playing against players, I’d be obliterated!), I made a 4v4 game, four computers versus four players, playing on medium difficulty. It was the highest difficulty I played on as of yet, and it was the first time fighting on that difficulty. I can’t remember what civilizations I played with or against, but I think one of the allies was Russian, and one was definitely Ottoman (details later).

It was a little exciting, and I had a slight tremor of nervous jitters. This was going to be a challenge, undoubtedly, but I wouldn’t know what I was in store for. And I didn’t.

The onset of the game was pretty modest; everyone had mere settlers, and were gathering resources. Us four were lined up from south to east, and the enemies were lined up north to west. I was second from the left on our turf. This map was not water-friendly, which was a blessing for me; that meant that I didn’t have to spend on water-borne improvements. I don’t believe there were trading routes, and Native American settlements were, as usual, scattered in the middle of the map between us. I was building houses as I went, because Britain had an interesting special ability that made every built house spawn a subsequent settler. It made it easy for me to build up a thriving economy early. After a while, my Ottoman friend, who was stationed to the left of me, walled off his section of land. He was turtling; so be it, it couldn’t hurt us to.

Fast forward a few minutes, we were all about evenly paced. Each of the allies was more or less in the Fortress Age (3rd), and had some sort of basic military being built up. That was when the enemies decided to do a little skirmishing.

Every now and then, the computers would harass us with a small army of 10-12 infantry, with the occasional odd soldier here and there. That wasn’t too bad; we held off these assaults with a relative ease. I’m not the type of person to raid and rush, so defense was a viable and effective tactic here.

What was bad, however, was the fact that the computer directly opposite from me decided to build a fort. And not just a fort anywhere on the map, oh no. It decided the best place to employ it was (rather intelligently, I must grudgingly admit) right in our/MY front yard, just short of our settlements, so that a few feet from safety was certain death. Those damn cannons tore into my infantry like a hot knife through butter, and the constant stream of units that reinforced the fort weren’t that much more of a help neither, nor were the spawning units from the fort itself. My Ottoman friend did little to help, and my other two allies were occupied with their own little battles; I was alone on this one. So I thought, ‘to hell with it.’

I burned as much resources as I could to constantly distract my assailing enemy with infantry, all the while struggling to build some artillery to back them up; most of the latter were unceremoniously destroyed in the fray. The fort, despite taking damage, stayed virtually unscathed, thanks to my failing efforts to remove it. This struggle for survival lasted a good half hour before some of my other allies pulled enough units together with my own to remove the damned piece of engineering prowess from the face of the map. Thank goodness; that fort was a douche.

Notably peeved and still packed with plenty of resources (see how infinite resources can help?), I went all out on building and upgrading musketeers. I had a platoon of 100 imperial-grade badasses in no time at all. Enemy skirmishes were little threat now to any of us, as we had developed a substantial army of sorts. Plus, most of us had established our own forts near our bases, which bombarded any infantry tormentors and scouts. Quid pro quo, bastards, quid pro quo.

As a team, we three decided to attack the westernmost opponent first; I sent 50 musketeers to their deaths as my first wave, supplemented by various cavalry and infantry from my other two friends. Halfway through the destruction, which went fairly well despite strong defenses, the Ottoman player had finished his grand scheme: to amass a line of Great Bombards, one of the strongest artillery units in the entire game. Once those beasts marched into the fray, that first opponent was run to the ground. Literally.

By the death of my first victim, I was running out of musketeers (they don’t make efficient building-breakers, and so succumb to defensive structures fairly easily). No problem; I sent another 50 musketeers to replenish my army. We attacked, en masse, the second opponent, the harassing scumbag that I had to deal with half an hour earlier. That douche didn’t last long at all; my musketeers and my allies’ cavalry troops destroyed all of the units, while the Great Bombards ripped their town center, towers, buildings and any significant infantry to shreds. By the way, the piece-by-piece destruction effects by Ensemble really shone here. It was sexily satisfying (but not overwhelmingly orgasmic). Okay, maybe not, but it was certainly exciting.

From there, it was just a mighty sweep over the last two computers. There was a bit of automation of continuously pumping out musketeers while resupplying the in-battle infantry unit, but hey, it worked. It was the most amazing sensation ever, to see one grand conglomerate of an army march from one end of the map to the other, leaving death and destruction (some of it its own) in its wake. In the end, I must have killed 300 units alone, though I probably lost just as many musketeers, if not more. That red number on my part wasn’t much of a fault by me; for the duration of the destruction, I represented the main force of the allies’ army (infantry cost the least resources and population, cavalry cost so-so, and artillery pack in the pounds), so it made sense that I lost the most troops. But hell, it was all worth it. By the end of the game, the statistics looked like a godsend, just so bloodthirstily beautiful. Shame I didn’t save it.

…and here we are.

Alas, with Ensemble but a mere memory of its former self, RTS games just seem harder to come by. The sparse genre really fizzled out without the Microsoft-based studio, but fortunately Blizzard keeps it afloat with its timeless (and occasionally disgusting) Starcraft, and Sid Meier’s Civilization series is not too shabby either (once I understand the game mechanics). An Age of Empires game is in the making by Microsoft, made partially by the same people who worked in Ensemble. However, this game will be an online game, and will apparently be a bit MMO as well as its trademark RTS. Will that be a genius stroke for Microsoft, or a great faux pas for RTS? Only time (~1 month, give or take) will tell.