As I said, this is my review, which means that these are my own personal opinions of the game to date, based on my own experience playing the game and watching other people playing it competitively.
First I wanna start off by congratulating the developers. You gave us a new civ in only 6 months that contrary to pre-release popular believe, wasn’t ‘‘half-assed’’. USA is a very unique civilization that brilliantly adapts elements from Age of Mythology into an AoE 3 format, specially when it comes to ‘‘hero abilities’’ and age up options that unlock particular techs and bonuses. In addition to this, you came up with a very creative system of cards based on immigrants, representing the diversity of the country even more, and providing the player with different playstyle options. This variety extends even further when you consider that you guys added a niche but very viable playstyle that was only possible before with mercenaries with some few civs, but now with outlaws. As a player that likes to play more unconventional strategies, I really appreciate this. I believe that variability of choices when playing a civ is a trade mark of AoE3.
Overall I think that there is a clear attempt from the developers to provide the player with different playstyles, options, and of course a fun experience. This can be reflected by all the improvements you did on Age up politicians for Europeans, improving viability for mercenary use throughout all ages for Europeans civs and USA, buffing the power of previously underused cards to make them viable (by giving them extra features like the gather-yield, more amount, making them cheaper or infintie) and by implementing some suggestions from community feedback.
I think these are all applaudable efforts on the right direction. I believe that for one reason or another, some of these improvements got stuck in just European civs, without extension to civs that had for example access to mercs before, like Asian civs. They got stuck with TAD mechanics, not having infinite mercs cards, access to Age V mercs through any means (maybe the atonement card that unlocks a buyable upgrade later on?), not having Age II artillery equivalent treatment to their power (flamethrowers cards, cost or speed has not been improved to match their actual power like you did for example with Gatling Guns when USA released or with Leather Canons; Flail Elephant), not upgrading some trickle cards like you’ve done with Capitalism to make them more viable and usable (Sumpctuary Laws remarkably underwhelming and underused in all game forms).
I hope to keep on seeing these efforts extended into all civs. A big thanks devs! @InterjectionAOE @Ippert @Breadalus @tilanus