Not agreed that unranked is for non-serious play. Unranked is just another format you can test strats, play with friends or just trying to quickly find players for a 4v4, but for conquest victory the goal of the game still try to win, at least you need to try your best, or it is bad behaviour which can make your teammate frustrated. Unranked is not meant to be simcity, and only ranked for trying to win. This idea is wrong. You can do city simulation with AI that’s fine. But when playing multiplayer with real people you need to try your best. Both unranked lobby and ranked aim is to win, while having fun. And also losing can be fun too, not just winning. It is the playing process. The new fancy DE stuff just make the process not fun anymore
Yes. For example Mexico stuff, revolts, USA highlanders, Chinese immigrants giving free TP all the time, 3 gatling shipments, Ottoman lame units, nizam+siphahi shadowtech, french nats, napolean, Argentina revolt, brazil revolt, south africa, italy FI, promotion and deflection units, malta teleport and big guns, trainable merc spam, chinacos in late game, or ship xxx units for xxx you have, many civs have this stuff, african units clone itself, artilleries shadowtech, fast speed musk, 48 range mortars, etc…i can go on and on, they are really lame.
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Technically it’s only lame to win if you choose high-winrate civs.
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Like in aoe2, in which DE introduced a lot of stupid fancy stuff, although not as gimmicky as aoe3, but the community soon realised those things are too broken and unbalanced. Sometimes too op sometimes completely useless. And the devs reverted some of the stupid changes.
Also in aoe2 the devs tried to change the Chinese starting 3 vills, and it is really bad, so they reverted the change.
You see reverting bad design is not impossible. Just in aoe3 devs don’t want to do it because they want aoe3 to go down this direction
Yes, AoE 2 is more difficult to be able to change some things and the devs don’t want to touch it much…AoE 3 is more flexible with changes, they can allow themselves to touch and innovate more things, even as a testing ground for things that they would like to implement in AoM Retold and AoE 4…
We should prioritize what the new players need. The lobbies are slow for low-level games and make it impossible for new players to hide out in noob games. I sometimes wait 30 minutes to fill or find a noob game.
All the unbalanced gimmicks that are available make it a nightmare. Many don’t come back after getting defeated for unexplained reasons over and over.
I am stuck on noob level because I only play once a month.
I really am avoiding going online these days and will perhaps drop the game totally.
It will become like the old AOE3: only for pros.
Back to AOE2 where I can at least make several plans for what is about to hit me.
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I agree with you. Even for higher level players, gimmicky stuff sometimes make players want to quit, and potentially never comeback.
Because when they added the Asian civilizations they opened Pandora’s box. They added mechanics, cards and units that would alter the future of the game forever and all out of pure greed.
If the original developers, instead of adding Asia, had added more Native American civilizations and improved the revolution system to function as an alternative fifth age, the game today would be much more balanced and would enjoy a larger fan base.
Although this is just my particular theory and I could be wrong. 
It would be weird to have an AoE without Asian civs. One can argue that TAD wasn’t executed properly but AoE3 should have never focused solely on the Americas anyway as it limited the game too much. AoE is about covering all of the world, not just one hemisphere.
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Thankfully, whenever my discontent towards the company’s ill treatment of the game and its “player community” (as if it is one coherent group) accumulates to an unacceptable level, threads like this pop up again reminding me that the “player community” DESERVES ill treatment.
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For me the game should never have lost that limitation, in any case if the name did not adapt to the concept they were using, they could have simply given the game a unique name.
Because this is Age of Empires 3.
My brother in Christ, if you want to play a “every civ is the same besides a very meta bonus and thus I can show off my impresive gamer skills”, return to Age of Kings.
I agree with you that civs that lean too much on the “borrowing units” mechanic are pretty much dumb and literally go against the spirit of my first paragraph. Malta is a pretty good civ that gets dumbed down by the “thongues” mechanic, as is the “foreign” units both in Mexico and in the USA.
However, this problem is literally a contradiction with your gripe that all civs are OP in very diferent ways and the whole point of this game is to make the most of your unique gimmicks while reacting or preventing the enemy to use them.
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dude if you want balance and the civs being the same just play chess instead (even there white has 55% winrate)
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Except for some mechanics from Japan, I don’t see anything wrong with Asian civilizations. The consulate is a good mechanic, and the Asian wonders too.
African civilizations are well designed, it’s just that they are a little difficult to learn, especially Ethiopia.
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I disagree. For me the wonder system is horrendous and the consulate it is terribly integrated into the game.
Ironically, I think African civilizations integrate the consulate into their Age UP system and the game almost perfectly.
Although I could be wrong, I don’t have this DLC and I’m only saying this from what I’ve been able to see.
Because? Although it has been argued that it does not make sense plotwise, it is an original way to advance in age. It could be reworked as some have said, but the system works well.
It is because many misunderstand what the consulate intends. The consulate functions as a second metropolis (so to speak), while the influence functions as a local or secondary currency.
They don’t intend exactly the same thing.
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Precisely because it is different from the system that other civilizations had, for me the game needs a single system, not several. It also makes me see Asian civilizations as civilizations from another game.
It doesn’t matter what the developers wanted, the concept is basically the same and the modern version is far superior and better integrated into civilization.