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June 30, 2007

Age of Empires III

I have grown cool about the whole euro scene for a while now. Part of the reason is the weariness of an grognard (been there, done that), and part of it is just my fickle and changing interest is solidly back on miniatures. I still show up to the Friday night euro night mainly for social reasons, so I tend to play old favorites with occasional new releases thrown in (With Chris LaRue and Chris Farrell in the game group, there's no lack of the new stuff). None of the newish release (for me this means Puerto Rico and after) have made much of an impression.

...until now, and from an unlikely source of Glenn Drover.

First I heard of Age of Empire III is when I saw it on the shelf of local store (Game Kastle). It has that Eagle game "look" to it, and then the credit was unmistakable that it's done by the same designer who did all the Eagle titles. I was never a fan of his design: from old Ameritrash like Risk clones (Attack, the American Civil War, etc.), to botched remakes (Conquest of Empire). There were signs of change when Age of Mythology was release after Purto Rico became a standard of "serious game". It is an evolution that is encouraging although that particular game did not pass the test of time.

Make no mistake, although AoE3 has tons of plastic bits, it is NO risk clone, it is a Euro to the core. In fact it's a rare euro indeed since it is strongly themed where one do get a sense of building up a colonial empire.

MECHANICS
AoE3 uses a blend of many systems. You name it and it's probably there. Many mentioned that there are Caylus-like systems (don't know since I have not played that one), there are scoring from majority control, there are assigning your resources to different "stages" to perform different actions a la Aladdin's Dragon, etc.

Every turn each player gets 5 colonists (your basic worker bees). Each player then takes turn to assign these colonist one at a time to various "Event box", one can:
1. change the turn order (one have to actively spend workers to change the turn order)
2. go to the dock to get shipped out to the new world (there are limited berth on how many colonist total that can ship out per turn. Colonists can go to ANY area that has already been explored.)
3. grab one of 4 trading goods (building up sets of 3 or 4 identical trading goods is the only reliable way to make money turn over turn.)
4. bid on a merchant ship- (A merchant ship is a reusable wild card in calculating sets of trade goods).
5. Get in line to buy a capital building- (These are like the buildings in Puerto Rico
6. Setup discovery party- (these guys goes off to the new world to explore undiscovered regions, which grants a one time $ & VP. It also opens up the area for future colonists).
7. train specialists- (One can upgrade a regular colonist into specialists who can perform better in one of the many tasks. So a soldier can get you additional $ upon discovery as well as gives you muscle to fight a war, and a Merchant is better at bidding for a merchant ship and it also give you $5 if it moves to the new world, etc.)
8. start a war- seldom used, but allows one to use his soldiers to reduce enemy presence in the new world. War is relatively limited both in frequency (in our game it's only used in scoring rounds, or if someone ran out of constructive things to do), as well as effect (one solder gets to kill one dude, done).

After all the players have assigned their colonist, each event box is then resolved in order. At the very end of the turn, income is collected and special capital building generated events are carried out. If this is turn 3, 6, or 10, then victory points from the new world regions is scored via a simple majority control scheme.

This is pretty much it. The mechanics and its interaction might sound pretty intricate, but after about a turn you get the hang of it, and is very elegant compare to many Euros like Puerto Rico.

GAMEPLAY
The goal of the game is to get VP, and the ways to get that is:
1. Majority control of regions in the new world during scoring round
2. Make discoveries
3. Some capital building gives you VP
4. Some (expensive age III) capital building gives you bonus VP for having something else (i.e. one building gives you 1VP for every 2 colonist in the new world, a big boost for someone going with a colonist heavy strategy).

Of all these ways to get VP, the most efficient is probably through majority control, since colonist generally do not go away once landed (other than through infrequent wars), so a colonist that landed in Age 1 can potentially score you three times.

The most inefficient way to get VP is probably through exploration, since you have to build up a large enough war party to over come likely native resistance, and at the end of the exploration, all the explores dies so they aren't really reused. One can get lucky since a few of the discovery tiles gives you HUGE amount of VP, but like roulette, not something you should build a strategy on.
The good thing about exploration is that the other roads to VP can get one locked out (i.e new world could've already been thoroughly dominated by your opponent, and you might not have enough $ to buy capital buildings), in such cases exploration can be the "default" cheap way to get some VP, and hope you get lucky. After all the onboard region have been explored, one can even explore "offboard" regions which in reality never really runs out (i.e. One can always go "discover" Japan for some quick gain in $ and VP. I am sure my Asian studies PC police would have a field day with this..)

The capital building is the tough one. These are the stuff that at simple glance is not REQUIRED to get VP, but by having a cache of them will give you bonus which can eventually build up. All the building are divided up according to age (first 3 turns are age 1, turn 4~6 are age 2, age 7~8 are age 3), with progressively more powerful bonuses accompanied by more expensive cost. Someone can do a thorough study of the cost/benefit ratio of each of the buildings, but the ones tied to your winning strat are must haves (i.e. if you are the king of trade goods, then you need the capital building that gets you 1VP per trade good). The cool building cost you a good $20, which is a hefty chunk of change that you need to save up for.

Money: The only real important use of $ is the acquisition of capital buildings, and the way to get money is:
1. Through sets of trade goods
2. sending merchants to the new world
3. small amount comes from bidding on turn order, and
4. some capital buildings themselves.

How to acquire money is a sub game that can consume a player, but one should be careful not to spend too much energy on it while neglecting the true worth of money: Acquire useful capital buildings.

THE FLOW
The game is quite long (about 2.5 hours for 4 players, and three of us have never played the game), but does not drag. There are always meaningful decisions to be made, and even if one's fallen behind on the power curve, one can always go exploring and pick up VP that way. The end of our game shows that the person who went for the "build missonary and then make babies like crazy in the new world" strategy won out big, but that being the most "efficient" way to victory, I can see that if more people put more emphasis on that facet of the game, it'll naturally balance out.
It is one of those "avoid the crowd" game (i.e. if everyone is following strategy X and therefore competing for the same stuff), so being a contrarian is a viable road to victory. It is also a game where one can relatively easily shift between strategies so one is not locked in by bad decisions made early on (one exception maybe that one have to make sure to save up $20 so one can get in on the age 3 capital building race, since those are game winners).
As I mentioned earlier, the game is heavily themed, and does not feel tacked on at all like other Euros. One begin the game with a steady flow of options, and an empty new world. One gradually build up economic infrastructure (the trade good aspect is probably the most abstract of all the subsystems), build up colonist for the new world, build up exploration party, etc. As the game goes on the new world gradually gets filled up, then you start to see jostling for position in the different colonies, and near the end game (or scoring rounds) war gets declared to curb opponent's influence in the new world. All feels very logical, while not a simulation, one FEELS that on an abstract level approximate running a colonial empire better than most of the competing games out there.

FINAL WORD
The best euro-type board game in the last two years. Strategic game play coupled with straight forward and elegant mechanism. Definitely one to stay in the fickle Soong household.

Posted by msoong at June 30, 2007 08:46 AM

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