Age of Empires, 2, and 3 coming in new Definitive Editions

With the new patch? That should be interesting.

Mexico civ coming next week. Looks cool.

Watching that makes me feel like this is a cross promotion with Forza Horizon 5. :)

Replying in the DE thread since this is about AoE3. @tomchick

Like I said, they are getting ever bolder, ever more colorful with new content. It’s for you to judge whether that’s a good burst of creativity, or wasting ideas enough for five civs on one.

Swedes & Incas are kinda obvious: an aggressive civ with a house that auto-gathers for AoE3 veterans, a defensive civ for hypothetical AoE2 converts. The US just gets loads of new stuff, like immigrant cards in place of settler cards that let you mix-n-match other civs’ abilities, two cards as each age-up bonus, decoy Quaker Guns.

Then the African update is like a full expansion, adding over a dozen maps, some very powerful minor civ allies (which the two playable African civs can choose to ally with as age-up bonuses). African Livestock Markets make you keep cattle for their unique Influence resource (for hiring natives and mercenaries), or sell them for wood and money. Ethiopians are infantry-heavy and has the biggest mortar, while Hausa fields armored knights. Hausa Universities gain XP trickles from proximity to certain other buildings, and train Griots - bards who can switch between buffing units, buildings and debuffing enemies.

They have also added the Empire Wars mode to good effect, a sped-up game where you are constantly getting more resources. (The new maps & modes are free updates.)

This month’s Mexico boasts two unique revolution options for each age starting from age3, and allows you to return to Mexico after a revolution, which means seven options for each age. They even have a special Maya revolution exclusive to the Yucatan revolution in age4. The civ is extremely versatile in age-up options and two different heroes (a general & a healer), but less flexible in its unit roster such as dirt-cheap peasants armed with hoes and pickaxes, expensive strong musketeers, and Hacienda which is a combined econ building that can raise & butcher livestock on full-auto with a card.

To be fair, AoE3 was trading in the human wave stereotype of 20th century. The AoE4 bad-ass version is closer to history - for the majority of the gunpowder period, Russian soldiers were known for their toughness.

If only SWBG had an update, we could see these AT-AT look this good in a regular game.

Apparently Age of Empires 3 never had co-op before now?

You’ve always been able to be allied in a comp stomp skirmish, but no specific coop content until now. They added something to AoE2 as well a year or so back.

Ah ok, that makes sense. Come to think of it, not many RTS games have co-op campaigns. Actually, none that I can think of right now.

Plus, “India” in the base game is being renamed to “Hindustanis” and that faction will be rebalanced. $10 for the expansion.

Amazing and wonderful that it still gets more content. This will bring it up to 44 civilizations, 26 of which have come since the release of HD edition in 2013. Also happy for Memb that his viewership seems to have gone up since T90 moved to Facebook. He has been grinding away at streaming AoE for a long time.

@legowarrior Battle of Africa 3 (3v3) tournament announced for June. I always enjoy the team tournaments, so should be entertaining.

Rage Forest 3 tournament semitfinals this weekend.

Red Bull announces Wololo Legacy tournament, with competitions for AoE1, AoE2, and AoE4. I imagine the folks over in the ESOC forums are super salty that AoE3 was ignored.

Don’t forget that other red headed stepchild, AoM.

Battle of Africa 3 finals are going on this morning on membtv’s twitch channel, and probably T90’s Facebook as well. Should be really good. 3v3 team games.

Age of Mythology lives yet… Prostagma!

Nice! I think it’s supposed to have a good single player campaign too. My days of playing multiplayer RTS are past.

Yes!!! Paging @legowarrior

Funny thing happened the other night with my 9 year old. She was watching a youtube video that was playing themes from video games, and one of the songs was the AoE2 theme. She was like why would someone play a game from 22 years ago. So I had to explain, because it is one of the greatest games ever. She wasn’t having it though, and insisted that being from 22 years ago how could the graphics be any good. So, I’ve failed as a parent. Forgive me

Is there some event going on today? I wonder how they are going to map the controls for AoE2. I guess they watched enough of Dave playing with the controller that they decided to make this happen. lol

Oh, today was the 25th anniversary? Time flies

Some mobile game coming as well:

I would totally play an Age of Empire themed tower defense game on my phone. If this one isn’t tower defense, I hope they do one eventually.