Buy Age of Empires III Age of DiscoveryAge of Empires III Age of Discovery Product Description:
- Over 400 stunning miniatures
- Historically accurate money (gold Spanish dollars and silver pieces of eight)
- Easy to learn European Style game system
- Multiple paths to victory
Product Description
It is the late 15th century and a new age is dawning. While searching for a new trade route to India, explorers have discovered a new land. The first reports tell of strange creatures, exotic people, and fabulous wealth. Captains and adventurers flock to these new lands in search of gold. They are quickly followed by colonists, soldiers, merchants, and missionaries all seeking wealth of one kind or another. Colonies begin to spring up, and soon competition among the great nations of Europe begins. Take the role of one of Europes colonial powers and stake your claim in the New World. As the leader of your nation, there are many paths that lead to victory: Discover and colonize new lands; acquire trade goods that will build your economy; develop new technologies and infrastructure in your home country; build your merchant fleet to dominate the trade routes; and build your army to defend what is rightfully yours! The triumphant revel in riches and glory, while the vanquished become a footnote in the history books. It is an Age of Discovery...it is an Age of Empires!
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
By Charlie@AWS
I was invited to a neighbor's house for a night of board games. By chance, I got the opportunity to play Age of Empires III with the creator, Glen Dover, watching and giving advice. (major cool guy) The players were 30-50 years old and it was a rousing 2 hours of game play. Based on that experience, I purchased the game. My kids, 6, 8 and 11, begged me to play the game but I figured it was too complex for them to enjoy. Shame on me. Two months later, I agreed to try to walk them through it. They loved it.....every part of it. Each child chose a fundamental different strategy. One child loves discovery, one child loves declaring wars and the third child is trying to win with economic might. We've played it several times and the game is never the same twice. I like the fact that the game has a fuse; it's 8 rounds so it doesn't go on forever. It's a complicated game, so it is not for the fidgety. It takes time to explain, but my children really like the different pieces, roles and strategy. It's pretty funny watching them try to form alliances or think through ways to win.Being the OCD dad, we carefully count each piece before we put the game away, but my kids are troopers. At the end of the game, we have a quick 10 minute discussion about which strategies worked and what they would do different. It seems like a good game to teach strategy, planning and forward thinking. Mainly, it's nice to tear everyone away from their screens and play a game for two hours as a family.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
By Jason Croston
First and foremost, Age of Empires III the board game is NOTHING like the video game. They share a title, thats about it. The game is very easy to learn, and the goal is to get from Europe to the New World and come out as the strongest colonial power. That said, there are multiple routes to this goal. You gain 'victory points' for controlling the most land, for having the best economy, for developing your lands the most efficiently, for going out and exploring the rest of the world (India, Africa, Japan, & the Phillipines just to name a few). If you want to warmonger, by all means that traditional route is still open as well. Due to the varied strategies you could follow to gain these victory points, each game can be very different in outcome. Hence the title, this is one of the most balanced and interesting games I have played in a long time. While a love is history is nice, you do not necessarily need it to play this game as well. It would be great for both the casual gamer as well as the more experienced players. All in all, this is a great buy.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
By Wolfram Bosch
First off, this game is nothing like the computer game by the same name. At all. Which is a good thing, as I don't think that the computer gameplay would translate to the tabletop very well.This is a fun, exciting, well balanced, perfectly paced multiplayer game of imperialism, with lots of quality pieces and, most welcome of all, a minimal feeling of "blind luck" influencing events.I'll address the last point first: everything, from resources, to units, to turn order, can be bought. You decide what you want, and how important it is to you, and then make sure you get it. There's no waiting to get what you need if you want it. Luck does arise when resources are made available, and also by keeping certain aspects of the newly explored lands secret until you explore there. But this just keeps things exciting.The pacing is good too, which is a hard thing to get right in a complicated, 4+ hours game. It intensifies toward the end, rather than just become repetative. Part of that is probably from hardwiring a raising of stakes through the ages (more expensive/important buildlings and discoveries - similar to what Witches Brew does with its increasingly expensive & powerful cards); and part of the intensification is intrinsic to natural game flow.The number of things you can do per turn is staggering at first, but adds fantastic depth. The range of strategies you can use is vast. You can go for an aggression/warfare approach, concentrate on colonization, or stock up on merchant ships and depend mostly on trade; or any combination, plus a heavy or light dependence on important buildings, or on exploration... It keeps the game really fresh, and the player feels like he's in a toystore with too many toys to play with.All of these elements are elegantly abstracted and well represented by the high-quality game components, so you never get bogged down in bookkeeping.Adding more players makes for a better game, as this makes resources more scarce, and makes tge relationships between the different players' strategies demand constant monitoring. Also helpful for keeping the game fun is the taking of turns quickly. You will make errors in judgement, but that's half the fun. I'd even recommend setting a timer once everyone gets the hang of gameplay.This one is entering heavy rotation.
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