The best mistake of the saga.
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Bruce Shelley was just one of the people who worked on the development of AOE3, so his opinion is just one of many. The lead designer was Greg Street for the Vanilla AOE3, and Sandy Petersen was the lead for The Warchiefs expansion.
Age of Empires III credits (Windows, 2005) - MobyGames
In this video Sandy Petersen explains some of the context in which AOE3 was born
Making Your Own Game! (1 of 3)
There are some interviews with the original lead designer on this page (Related Sites section)
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Oh don’t get me wrong, AoE 3 is my 2nd favourite Age game, I just think that Shelley interview was based on his disappointment with how the game turned out compared to the previous games because in the making of and preview videos, he seemed quite enthusiastic about it.
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Bruce Shelley didn’t say it was a mistake, just some of the ideas. The title is very click batey.
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Aside from the fact that AoE3 is my favorite credit has to be given to ES who didn’t want to make another AoE2. ES pushed the AoE franchise forward by innovating, not resting on its laurels, taking risks, and not being held hostage by a rabid fanbase who wanted more of the same. None of this can be said for much of the industry today.
Do I think ES made some mistakes with AoE3? Yes.
But they made a great game nonetheless. I never played a perfect game before anyway.
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Relax. We understand the context. You’re just contributing to the conversation.
The “mistakes” of AOE-3, are “innovations” in AOE-4. Even in some updates of AOE-2, and the latest expansion of AOE-2 there are some of those “mistakes”
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The only mistake with AoE III was when it came to the campaigns. They should have had a Napoleon campaign along with other completely historical ones.
If AoE III was just like AoE II but within the different time period, that would have been a mistake because AoE II would have still been more popular because of the time period it takes place in being more popular. With AoE III being so different, it was it is a attractive game to different kinds of people and had people playing it that didn’t like AoE II all that much. If AoE III had been just like AoE II but within the different time period, I wouldn’t have loved it, and I wouldn’t have been playing it at all after beating the campaigns, unlike AoE III that we have, where I played multiplayer a ton over the years after beating the campaigns. Thank you for making AoE III be so different from AoE II. I love AoE III and it’s my favorite RTS game.
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Yes, it makes it more fluid and you don’t have to make as many military buildings to create an army or have to wait so long to get it… it depresses me that they removed it from AoEO and 4 (although the latter has landmarks that allow batch training)…
Yes, I feel that the biggest flaw of AoE 3 is the original campaigns that feel more for AoM… I think that if they put in DLCs with only campaigns like Chronicles:BfG from 2 DE (something like Chronicles:Battle for Europe with 3 campaigns for Suleiman, Gustavus Adolphus and Napoleon), it will be great:
Civs that lack campaigns:
Dutch and Portuguese (although the latter appear in two historical battles) (they could remake Francisco de Almeida from 2 DE for 3, then you would fight against Spanish, Moroccans, Hausa, Ethiopians, Indians and Ottomans)…
Aztecs and Incas (they could remake Moctezuma and Pachacuti from 2 DE for 3 DE or make an Atahualpa campaign facing Pizarro, even recovering El Dorado from TF)…
Swedes, Italians and Maltese (although the latter can be readapted to the Blood campaign)…
United States, Mexico, Hausa and Ethiopians (these have historical battles so I don’t feel like they lack campaigns -although the US does appear in the Steel campaign-, but you can always give them more historical battles like The Alamo (1836) and Gettysburg (July 3, 1863) for the US, the Battle of Puebla (May 5, 1862) for Mexico, the unification of the Hausa kingdoms by Queen Amina in 1585, the British expedition to Ethiopia where they overthrew Tewodros II in 1868 and so on)…
Yes, if AoE 3 is a mistake, give me more mistakes like that and not cloned and bland games (cough cough AoE 4 and Mobile cough cough)…
That explains why TWC campaigns were more historical…Sandy Petersen made them more like AoE 2 ones…
Yes, it’s a shame really… even Sandy Petersen said that he loved making AoE 3 and that they knew they couldn’t beat AoE 2 but they kept going… I take my hat off because they made an amazing and beautiful game like AoE 3, but of course the classic fans of 2 didn’t want to understand it and left it there (at least the AoM players accepted it, and especially the new ones who joined the saga in 3 like us who never gave up)…
Yes, there is a lot of hypocrisy there… of course, since they didn’t know how to implement them well in AoE 3, they are “mistakes” but then they quickly go and sell them as “innovations” in 4… I don’t even get upset about that at this point, let them do what they want…
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And that’s one of my main issues with AoE 4, i.e. playing it safe by going back to AoE 2’s setting and making up for it by adding AoM and AoE 3 mechanics.
Each ES game build up on each other
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You mean there are traces of this mechanic in AOE-4, and it was considered in its development?
I think the same. There would have been no incentive for the game to be attractive on its own.
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In retrospect, it seems to me that it would have been safest if AoE 3 at the time of its release had an additional “safe” game mode for those who didn’t want new features in the AoE game series - without deck of cards and shipping. Then each side would be satisfied.
The next thing was the campaigns, which, as we know, tell a fictional story based on an era. I like it, but I also miss historical campaigns.
Also, it was a bad idea to base the game entirely on a colonial theme. Thankfully AoE 3 DE distanced itself from this.
Finally, I’ll mention that creating umbrella civs such as Germans civ in this era was a misunderstanding. Later in TAD DLC added another big umbrella civ - Indians civ.Probably if it weren’t for the fact that the game originally focused on a colonial theme, we would have Austrians civ and Prussians civ separate - it is obvious if it was Napoleon’s campaign.
After years of AoE 3 DE fixes the mistakes of the past. It’s definitely better than before. If only more changes, fixes, and new features were allowed, this game would be perfect. That’s why I have high hopes for the Baltic DLC… which must come!!!
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Before Season 1, the Burgrave Palace worked like a Barracks with Batch training.
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Same here. What truly makes AOE3 amazing for me is that is was the most ambitious game in the series and introduced so many new things, and why there’s a divide between Shelly and Peterson on the nature of AOE3. Shelly was more of the business manager side of things whereas Peterson was all about game design.
AOE4 took no risks, and it made for a very dull game. No matter how balanced or competitive it gets, it’s never interesting. It’s a corporate paint-by-numbers attempt at an esport RTS, whereas AOE3 is pure creativity.
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the way bruce shelley puts it here is in following context: with aoe3 we tried all of these new ideas, and i think it (those many new ideas all at once) was a huge mistake
translation, always read between the lines to actually understand whats being said
also recalling petersen reacting to aoe4 initial trailer on a nelly podcast by saying that they (microsoft/relic) are either geniuses for making aoe4 so similar to 2 or corporate cowards not wanting to lose the money
i’m fairly confident he at least tried aoe4 himself even if he said nothing to suggest that so far
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all i can add here is, the “mistakes” of aoe3 being back ported to aoe2 and added to 4 simply prove aoe3 aged like fine wine and the dev teams couldn’t ignore the positive aspects, but still wanted to cover up where those features originated to avoid needless anger of aoe2 purists and other folk that hates 3 for the sake of hating
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Given AOE4’s player base is less than half of AOE2DE, I think we can safely conclude it is the latter.
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should be fairly evident from the moment the 2019 trailer appeared, i was like, ok aoe2 style (which i really love, like i do with 3) but they’ll probably trim it to where there’s more downgrades than there are upgrades, sometimes being right causes me physical damage
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J’ai tenté de jouer à aoe2 et aoe4, bah je me suis ennuyé comme un rat mort, je préfère largement aom retold et aoe3
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Of course, and that makes each game unique…
Yes, you still have that mechanic in some lanmarks, Wynguard Palace and the English Keeps, Farimba Garrison, Khaganate Palace and some others that I’m missing…
I would have played it anyway, but I like AoE 3 better as it is, with its WC3 influences, even the decks have their touch and make sense in the context of the game…
Yes, a “continental blockade” mode (you can’t use decks in the game until the Imperial Age instead of being something that only gives you a 4 minute advantage in the Imperial Age)… I hope they put that mode in the Baltic DLC…
At least that was corrected with the expansions and the historical battles and maps…but they still have room to add DLCs like Chronicles and give campaigns to the civs they are missing (Dutch, Swedes, Aztecs, Incas, Italians, Maltese)…
Yes, Ensemble wanted to touch America to expand on what was already seen in The Conquerors, BHG directly wanted to revisit Asia because people asked for it… I think that if they had been allowed to continue with the game we would have seen TAR (Morocco, Ethiopians and Zulus) in 2008 and KotM (Italians, Swedes and Poles) in 2009 before focusing on Halo Wars and closing the studio to then create Robot Entertainment and focus on AoEO in 2011…
Yes, it is also understood that these umbrella civs are the Holy Roman Empire from the 15th to the 18th century (from Hussite Wagons to Frederick the Great) and the Mughal Empire from the 16th to the 19th century (Akbar and the Indian campaign against the EIC)… Italy is Venice with the Papal States from the Renaissance to the Risorgimento…
We’ll see what they bring us with the Baltic DLC: the 2 civs, the 15 missing European maps, 8-10 historical maps (the wars of succession, the Seven Years’ War and the European unification wars -Germany and Italy-, the Dano-Swedish wars and against Prussia, the French Revolutionary Wars and some more that I’m forgetting), some new mode and little else…
Yes, I know… I’ve been playing the game since it came out and it bothered me that they took it out, even though I liked that they reworked Wynguard Palace and that they added batch creation to the Malians’ Farimba…
Yes, they were too innovative with AoE 3, then with AoE 4 they went to the other extreme and were too continuous… that’s why now they use AoE 3 as a test laboratory and if they like some mechanic, then they put it in 4… I think they would still have to add more fauna and flora to the maps so they wouldn’t be so empty… you can’t have the same flora and fauna as AoE 2, when the latter is a game from 1999… they have to take the maps from 2 and then add fauna and flora to make it look like one from 3…
C’est pour cela que j’ai fait 2 top 3 de la saga…les jeux Bang (AoE M, AoE 3 et AoEO) d’une part et les jeux plus classiques (AoE 2, AoE 4 et AoE 1)…