Age of Empires 3 Demo is OUT!

[HalfLing]

Running it on all very high/high 4x AA 1600x1200 here :)

Jake-

[noping]

which it had multi

[Ravensworth]

Well, with all the effects maxed out it looks nice but it's laggy. At least it is on my system which is getting a bit old. Radeon 9800 Pro and AMD Athlon XP 2400+. The game has one of those annoying "Runs great on Pentium 4" advertisments when you launch it. I'm sure that can be removed though. The game itself I'm not sure about. It feels like playing Age of Empires II with a lot of 3D eye candy slapped on (which really just makes it run slow). I think 2D sprites look a lot sharper personally. This is the very thing that will ruin Diablo III I bet. Anyway, the part I really don't like though is the toolbar; what is up with that thing? It takes up nearly half the screen! Please... :(

[nicedreams]

I wish all of these game sites would offer a torrent to game demo files.

[SidVicious]

Works fine here, it's great. :)

[theyarecomingforyou]

I'm deeply unimpressed. I was really looking forward to this but have found it to be very flawed. The interface doesn't scale, meaning that it takes up half the screen whether you run it at 1024x768 or 1920x1440... the whole interface seems very amateur... scrolling around the screen should be smooth but isn't... you can't zoom out very far, which will make it hard to manage large battles. It's annoying because I loved the original games.

All the videos and screenshots looked great but the demo was awful. :( I guess we've still got Earth 2160 and Civilization 4 to look forward to.

[TheTerminator]

ZOMG!!! DOWNLOADING NOW! :woot: :woot: :woot:

[TranceSphere]

I've got the same processor, and mine crashes too, what a disappointment!

586492721[/snapback]

Mine crashes as well :no:

[Ravensworth]

I'm sure I've seen that error before, and I'm almost positive it was also a Microsoft game. It may have been Age of Mythology. I don't remember what I did to finally fix it but I'll look around. Who knows, it might work again. :)

Edit: I'm trying to remember, I think it might have had something to do with my desktop resolution before running the game the first time. Try lowering it if you have it set higher than 1024x768 and see if the game will run.

Edited September 8, 2005 by Ravensworth

[Laughing-Man]

I'm deeply unimpressed. I was really looking forward to this but have found it to be very flawed. The interface doesn't scale, meaning that it takes up half the screen whether you run it at 1024x768 or 1920x1440... the whole interface seems very amateur... scrolling around the screen should be smooth but isn't... you can't zoom out very far, which will make it hard to manage large battles. It's annoying because I loved the original games.

All the videos and screenshots looked great but the demo was awful. :( I guess we've still got Earth 2160 and Civilization 4 to look forward to.

586492881[/snapback]

Yea I am not really impressed either. It feels like more of an expansion to Age of Empires 2 more then a sequel and it doesn't seem like it lives up to the high standard of AOEII. And the bloom effect is killing my eyes.

I thought Rise of Nations was way better then this and that game feels more like a successor to AOEII. I don't know what went wrong with this game, it feels like a new gamer's introduction to RTS games. From all of the screenshots and preview articles, I thought it was going to be alot more. I planned on buying this, but I am not so sure now.

Edited September 8, 2005 by jmole

[Sn4k36]

Won't run for me :(

I keep getting this error message and don't get what's wrong... everything it suggest may be wrong isn't.

586492731[/snapback]

Right click on your desktop and go to properties, then click on the settings tab, then click on the advance button, then click on the troubleshoot tab and drag the hardware acceleration slider all the way over to full

[Titan Crane]

Ok, decided to download anyway :p (i have the geoforce2 440mx 32mb) Got a warning about lacking system requirements when i started it up, but continued anyway and i was shocked at how well it did actually run. The scrolling was a little sticky (i decided to full on everything i could in graphics options :D ) but it still ran. Didn't keep it on for long, so no idea how it would run once the map had expanded more and more objects/people were onscreen. Tested it again with lower graphics options (but not too low to make it "2d"ised ) and it ran pretty well then too (less stickiness in the scrolling and it didn't lag as the map grew.) Good stuff.

[Mike Frett]

I absolutely HATE that HUD bar taking up so much space. I'm really unimpressed with this game, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World looks almost as good as this and plays much better, I suggest you guys get that game instead.

I'm normally a fan of the Empires series but this is pathethic.

[Alpha2004]

How do you find the next idle villager?

Oh and I spend a few minutes playing this, so I just want to know how to find out which building gets supplies from the home city...and if you can build specific buildings so that the units can deposit food into them...instead of all of em going to the town center.

Thx!

[Mystical112]

How do you find the next idle villager?

Oh and I spend a few minutes playing this, so I just want to know how to find out which building gets supplies from the home city...and if you can build specific buildings so that the units can deposit food into them...instead of all of em going to the town center.

Thx!

586493173[/snapback]

top left it shows grey villagers...

[Flash]

Thanks for the link, grabbing now

[Hidea]

7800 GTX, 2GB of RAM, and 4400 X2, will be put on a test!

[theyarecomingforyou]

I planned on buying this, but I am not so sure now.

586493102[/snapback]

Same. I bought AoE, the expansion (The Rise Of Rome) and AoE2; I was ready to buy AoE3 as well... I really don't think I will as the problems seem like too much to simply patch into the game

So much for trying to be the "Half-Life 2 of RTS games"... Dark Reign 2 did better at 3D and that game is 5yrs old!

[Nard]

score (Y)

[nazgul]

That interface is just... huge. Needs to at least have a way to scale it.

[thollian]

well it brings down XP....

[Pink Floyd Veteran]

downloading

will try this weekend

screenshots are nice

[Alpha2004]

Same. I bought AoE, the expansion (The Rise Of Rome) and AoE2; I was ready to buy AoE3 as well... I really don't think I will as the problems seem like too much to simply patch into the game

So much for trying to be the "Half-Life 2 of RTS games"... Dark Reign 2 did better at 3D and that game is 5yrs old!

586493248[/snapback]

Saying dark reign did better is an overstatement. However...AOE 3 does seem to be on par with Empire Earth 1 in terms of graphical useability.

Aoe 2 just plain sucked for me... The units all looked the damn same, and the interface felt clunky

[Long]

19 screenshots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ageofempires3/

[icecaveman]

What cows are fattening food and bisons are not? How can people say it's just AOE2 when everything is in 3D instead of 2D isometic sprites. And BTW it looks way better than WC3's cartoony textures.

Anyone noticed how to rotate the camera? There is an option to do it but I don't see it having any affects.