TeAM YYePG

AGE OF EM
The definitive RTS gets redefined. We tell you how
PUBLISHER: Microsoft Game
Studios DEVELOPER: Ensemble
Studios GENRE: RTS RELEASE
DATE: Winter 2005
WORLD-EXCLUSIVE SCREEnS and details
>THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE YOU’RE CURIOUS ABOUT AGE OF EMPIRES III.
To date, nearly 16 million copies of the historically based real-time strategy
franchise have been sold to gamers everywhere. And while some dedicated
gamers are still happily gathering resources, establishing trade routes, and
skirmishing among the stone-age tribes and conquerors of the first two AOEs, many
more are ready to travel to the New World, meet new people…and destroy them.
Age of Empires III doesn’t alter what’s been working well for years (see Old World sidebar
below), but it does introduce some significant new features that affect gameplay (for an
overview, see the New World sidebar below). During our exclusive playtest and interview with
lead programmer Dave Pottinger, producer David Rippy, lead designer Greg Street, and senior
designer Bruce Shelley, we learned exactly how those features work—and how they’re redefining
this definitive RTS. /Jeff Green
44 > COMPUTER GAMING WORLD
The definitive RTS gets redefined. We tell you how.
OLD WORLD
�SAME
GOAL AS THE REST OF THE FRANCHISE:
Explore the map, gather resources, build a civilization,
and destroy everyone else.
�SAME
ORGANIZATION: There’s a single-player
campaign, a single-player skirmish mode, and multiplayer.
�STORY
LINE: It directly follows AOE2’s, beginning in
the 1500s; focuses on the European “discovery” and
colonization of the New World; and ends just before
the start of the Civil War.
�EIGHT
PLAYABLE CIVILIZATIONS: Spanish,
British, French, Portuguese, Dutch, German, Russian,
and Ottoman. (See page 51 for more on the civilizations.)
�FIVE
AGES (YES, FIVE): discovery, colonial,
fortress, industrial, and imperial. Why five instead of
the usual four? To break late-game stalemates.