Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition

[Sarathiour]

Not a fan of further bastardizing the series. I’d be happy if they left AoM alone.
It’s enough that they changed the color palette/tint/textures/whatever.

Original AoM:

HD:

I prefer the original.
It looks like they improved the fidelity and texture resolution in the HD edition but I think the developers of today don’t understand that sometimes less is more. To me, the original is much nicer to look at.

I'm still extremely angry to saw how fucked AoM EE was : uglier, worse pathfinding, UI and selection issue, retarded balance change.

 

[HeroMarine]

DE artstyle is a bit flawed,

I played the original AoE2 for many years and some of DE (not that much honestly), but never noticed any problems with the artstyle of DE. What are you talking about specifically that's bad?

 

[HeroMarine]

You can only get one of them and you can only get it in Age 4 but it looks cool. Seems like they're taking more liberties with historical accuracy than with AoE2.

AoE3 was never even remotely historically accurate, even in the base game mercenary and rocket launcher were silly unit, indigenous unit were closer to some kind of mythos, and the two expansion get even more sillier. Non one can seriously complain that they are adding fun unit, which make the whole debacle of removing the dancing pit for Amerindian even more ridiculous .

AoE3 base game was pretty cool, but both expansions sucked ass.

 

[BING XI LAO]

DE artstyle is a bit flawed,

I played the original AoE2 for many years and some of DE (not that much honestly), but never noticed any problems with the artstyle of DE. What are you talking about specifically that's bad?

Hard to explain because I'm not an artist. Also I just played two games and really enjoyed them - it doesn't bother me much.

 

[HeroMarine]

Some people mentioned cartoonization and I hadn't thought about that. The colors are brighter and vivid, perhaps a tad unrealistic compared to the original, so maybe it's that?

 

[Ba'al]

Can you turn off the horrendous bloom in AoE2:DE?

 

[HeroMarine]

Can you turn off the horrendous bloom in AoE2:DE?

Go to settings and disable bloom.

 

[Ba'al]

Can you turn off the horrendous bloom in AoE2:DE?

Go to settings and disable bloom.

I see, thanks. I don't own the game and that was one of the reasons why.

 

[Young_Hollow]

You can only get one of them and you can only get it in Age 4 but it looks cool. Seems like they're taking more liberties with historical accuracy than with AoE2.

AoE3 was never even remotely historically accurate, even in the base game mercenary and rocket launcher were silly unit, indigenous unit were closer to some kind of mythos, and the two expansion get even more sillier. Non one can seriously complain that they are adding fun unit, which make the whole debacle of removing the dancing pit for Amerindian even more ridiculous .

The rocket actually did exist at that time, though historically, the Indians had it first and the British adopted it. I agree that most of the units, especially in the expansions are more myth than reality but the DaVinci Tank takes it to a more alt-history approach than the others, at least in my opinion. Obviously, its subjective but to me, some kind of native warriors (even semi-mythological ones) make more sense than something that was never seen on the battlefield at all. Its like some WW2 games giving 1945-era, barely produced weapons for you to play with, even though they wouldn't have been used in 99.9% of situations or less.

 

[Young_Hollow]

You can only get one of them and you can only get it in Age 4 but it looks cool. Seems like they're taking more liberties with historical accuracy than with AoE2.

AoE3 was never even remotely historically accurate, even in the base game mercenary and rocket launcher were silly unit, indigenous unit were closer to some kind of mythos, and the two expansion get even more sillier. Non one can seriously complain that they are adding fun unit, which make the whole debacle of removing the dancing pit for Amerindian even more ridiculous .

AoE3 base game was pretty cool, but both expansions sucked ass.

The campaigns did but the civs were much cooler and more varied. The Sioux was the most OP civ in pre-DE AoE3 competitive play. The others were also much more varied than the vanilla European civs.

Other than cartoonization in AoE2DE, units are much less distinguishable at glance than they were in AoC/HD. Both infantry and cavalry look more similar to eachother than they did previously. You can barely see the difference between Mangos and onagers or scorps and hscorps and basically everything else. Hell, the Karambit Warrior looks almost identical to villagers, which look similar to skirmishers and militia.

 

[Sarathiour]

Rocket existing is one thing, an artillery battery of them being a high-tier unit is another. Don't get me wrong, I think adding such unit is pretty cool, because it's a video game first and foremost, not a realistic simulation.

As for AoE 3, I never played seriously beside a few skirmish between friend, but I don't think it was ever balanced.

 

[Ryzer]

but I don't think it was ever balanced.

And that's a good thing!

 

[Young_Hollow]

Balance was a much messier thing in AoE3 than in any other RTS because unlike AoE2 with its standard economic system or SC with its simplified economy and RPS military counter structure, AoE3 civs with the expansions were much less similar to eachother in both military and economy. The Chinese were abysmally slow at everything for example while the Japanese could get free resources from dropping houses around the map. The American civs were based around Fire-Pit / Plaza and some Europeans like Russians, Ottomans and Dutch also had wildly different economies and viable build orders.

 

[HeroMarine]

I played AoE3 extensivelly between Nov 2005 (release)-April 2006 and it was a thing of beauty seeing the developers tune in the balance while I climbed up multiplayer ranks - it was my highest achievement during that period as I was 25, unemployed and waiting to start my master's. Coincidentally this was the time I got immersed in internet culture such as YTMND, 4chan.

The OP civs were first the Ottomans, then Germans with mercs, then French, then Spanish, then a cool balance when I was leaving the scene in mid 2006. Some strats for Russia, the Brits and Netherlands worked but the Portuguese always sucked, unfortunately, as they are the ones who colonized Brazil (my country). I tried to return to playing multiplayer with the expansions but they were pants-on-head retarded and I never played them more than a couple of months in multiplayer.

 

[Young_Hollow]

I played AoE3 extensivelly between Nov 2005 (release)-April 2006 and it was a thing of beauty seeing the developers tune in the balance while I climbed up multiplayer ranks - it was my highest achievement during that period as I was 25, unemployed and waiting to start my master's. Coincidentally this was the time I got immersed in internet culture such as YTMND, 4chan.

The OP civs were first the Ottomans, then Germans with mercs, then French, then Spanish, then a cool balance when I was leaving the scene in mid 2006. Some strats for Russia, the Brits and Netherlands worked but the Portuguese always sucked, unfortunately, as they are the ones who colonized Brazil (my country). I tried to return to playing multiplayer with the expansions but they were pants-on-head retarded and I never played them more than a couple of months in multiplayer.

I'm mainly an AoE2 guy and mainly singleplayer and mostly watch tournaments but as far as I understand it, ESOC became the hub of the MP community, presumably after the expansions were released and then abandoned. ESOC did make some balance changes, mainly regarding shipment cards and the MP community continued ''underground'' (like with AoE2, AoE1 and AoM) or without MS's support until MS took notice of the AoE series again in 2012 with the release of the Forgotten Empires mod for AoC.

Compared to what was out back then, the expansions were probably very alien and obtuse but I find them normal since I've never known AoE3 without the expansions.

 

[Young_Hollow]

Did anyone who got the DE test out the new patch? From the patchnotes, it looks like the whole game has changed: https://www.ageofempires.com/news/ageiii_de-update-13-27885/#

Some of the biggest changes:
-Ottomans completely overhauled with more military units
-Grenadiers completely overhauled and available to more civs
-Stuff like Feitorias and Flemish Revolution now exist in AoE3 with similar functions as in Aoe2
-Indians get rockets
-Every civ gets new cards and balance changes
-Chinese still look meh
-Dutch vills are now called Merchants

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I remember that this game had a really ugly problem with a patch that deleted your files (as in, your pc's files, not the games') and while the patch that followed claimed to "fix some things", the bug was never explicitly fixed (or at least mentioned as fixed in the patch notes). I assume it's safe to play now?

 

[thesheeep]

Did anyone who got the DE test out the new patch? From the patchnotes, it looks like the whole game has changed: https://www.ageofempires.com/news/ageiii_de-update-13-27885/#

Some of the biggest changes:
-Ottomans completely overhauled with more military units
-Grenadiers completely overhauled and available to more civs
-Stuff like Feitorias and Flemish Revolution now exist in AoE3 with similar functions as in Aoe2
-Indians get rockets
-Every civ gets new cards and balance changes
-Chinese still look meh
-Dutch vills are now called Merchants

I'd love to get back into the game...
Although I did like AoE4, I still much prefer the AoE3 mechanics (well, except the ghost walls ).

If only it had some replayable single player conquest style campaign.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

They should add Poland-Lithuania as the next civ. It would fit the setting. I also want Austria-Hungary. With those added a Conquest map of Europe would be great fun.

 

[Aghoric Visions]

I'm over here still waiting for Wars of Liberty to update.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

As part of the latest, massive update, AoE3:DE now has a free trial mode where you can use a limited set of Civs on a rotating schedule.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

New DLC by the end of the year that appears to bring Denmark and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth! Two nations that I've been advocating for. Very happy.

Spoiler