I did not intend any sarcasm in by post! I loved AOE2 Age of Kings it is on top of my favorite PC games list, but AOE3 totally disrespected the series by forgetting what the franchise was based on in my opinion!
Age of Empires has always been a base building game at its core and when I played the demo I found that they did everything they could to handicap the turtle player. They limited the amount towers you could build, same with ships and castles. They introduced a pointless native civilization in the middle of the map that does nothing but clutter the landscape and too take focus away from your main city.
The zoom level was ridiculous, the ships where way to big in scale and you where limited to 7 IIRC, combine large ships with no real zoom control left me flabbergasted (wheres my navy? I don’t know I can only see one ship at a time)! The game card element seemed very gimmicky. The shipment concept which I thought was going to be the coolest part about the game, turned out to be another disappointment. Shipments come way to often to allow for real strategy, if shipments where a rare occurrence, say only 2-3 per game that would be a huge part of the of you’re overall strategy. The way shipments are designed now its more of an annoyance then anything, and never seemed to add the depth I was hoping it would.
If I had never played any of the previous Age games before, then I would have a different opinion I’m sure, But to me the game was a total lent down. I would like to add that I did exaggerate one part of my original post. I said that I wouldn’t buy it even if it was only $5, that was wrong I wouldn’t play it even if someone payed me $5! (No sarcasm)
I would also like to add that the only magazine that gave it a glowing review was PC GAMER, and I think that was because Microsoft bought their 92% (IIRC) rating by giving them the world exclusive demo. At that point I lost a lot of faith in PC Gamer, that and the fact that even though they gave Civ4 a great rating 94% the review was a complete mess and even mislead people on how the game mechanics work.
None of this hostility is aimed to-wards you Troy BTW, I really enjoy you’re posts and find that you have a terrific knowledge and insight for games and I always take the time to read you’re posts.