Age of Empires III - Economic Units
Ensemble Studios' Age of Empires III has gotten a great deal of attention recently. Much of that attention has focused on the way the team decided to make some radical changes to its tried-and-true gameplay. The most obvious new direction is a literal one -- crossing the Atlantic to focus on New World colonization and the Great Powers of the era who struggle with each other to claim the riches of this vast frontier. We've also gone into extensive detail regarding the game's innovative Home City system, the nations players can use and even profiled some of the game's military units.
Still, while all of those elements are important, Age of Empires III is, at heart, an RTS, which means that management of economic units is a key determiner of success or failure in colonizing the New World. According to Ensemble, one of the things the team wanted to do differently in Age of Empires III, was to make the eight civilizations more varied that in previous editions of the series. One of the major ways they did so was to vary the primary economic unit (the villager) among civilizations. Every civilization has some twist on how they manage villagers and two civilizations -- the Germans and Ottomans -- have a completely different villager unit. We're profiling these key economic units, along with a few others such as scouts and healers who don't pack much in firepower, but who can be just as important as any musketeer or Dragoon. [read full article]
Still, while all of those elements are important, Age of Empires III is, at heart, an RTS, which means that management of economic units is a key determiner of success or failure in colonizing the New World. According to Ensemble, one of the things the team wanted to do differently in Age of Empires III, was to make the eight civilizations more varied that in previous editions of the series. One of the major ways they did so was to vary the primary economic unit (the villager) among civilizations. Every civilization has some twist on how they manage villagers and two civilizations -- the Germans and Ottomans -- have a completely different villager unit. We're profiling these key economic units, along with a few others such as scouts and healers who don't pack much in firepower, but who can be just as important as any musketeer or Dragoon. [read full article]
