Microsoft AGE OF EMPIRES III USER MANUAL

0805 Part No. X11-35580

Safety Warning

About Photosensitive Seizures

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The risk of photosensitive epileptic seizures may be reduced by taking the following precautions:

• Play in a well-lit room.

• Do not play when you are drowsy or fatigued. If you or any of your relatives have a history of seizures or epilepsy, consult a

doctor before playing.

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Table of Contents

Getting Started

What’s New? 9 Installing the Game 9 Starting a New Game 10 Getting Help 11 Learning to Play 12 Setting Options & Using Hotkeys 13 Using the In-Game Menu 14 Saving, Loading, & Quitting a Game 15 Winning a Game 16 Improving Game Performance 17

Key Concepts

Choosing a Civilization 21 Colony Screen 24 Navigating the Colony Screen 26 Navigating the Home City Screen 29 Ways to Play Age of Empires III 31 Exploring the New World 33 Assembling an Army 34

Home City

What Is a Home City? 41 Managing Your Home City 43 Working with Your Home City 47 Your Home City’s Strategic Value 50

Single-Player Campaign

Morgan Black 53 Elisabet Ramsey 54 John Black 55 Kanyenke 56 Amelia Black 57 Pierre Beaumont 58 Starting & Saving Campaign Scenarios 59

Multiplayer

Making the Multiplayer Connection 62 Multiplayer Game Types 64 The Home City & Multiplayer 65

Economy

Finding & Gathering Resources 68 Villagers 74 Upgrading Your Civilization’s Units 79 Advancing Through the Ages 80 Forming Alliances with Native Americans 81

Military

Creating Military Units 85 Engaging in Combat 92 Choosing a Strategy 95

Civilizations

Spanish 100 British 101 French 102 Portuguese 103 Dutch 104 Russian 105 German 106 Ottoman 107

Buildings & Units

Buildings 111 Explorers 115 Infantry 116 Cavalry 119 Artillery 121 Civilian Units 123 Ships 125 Native Americans 126 Mercenaries 129

Credits

Once again, the Age of Empires® game series sets a new standard for innovative technology and gameplay in real-time strategy (RTS) gaming.

What’s New?

Age of Empires III includes several new gameplay features, such as:

The Home City Speciﬁc to each civilization, your Home

City gives you more control over how your civilization’s technology advances.

Single-Player An intricate storyline transports Campaign you back in time to an age of conquest

and intrigue.

Graphical A new display engine renders scenery Environment and action with lifelike detail.

Real-World The new physics engine adds an Physics exciting level of realism to the game—

ships can shoot holes in each others’ sails, cannon balls careen and bowl over infantry, and damaged buildings crumble to pieces without warning.

Picking up where Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings® leaves off, the latest installment, Age of Empires III, gives you command of a European power determined to explore, colonize, and conquer the New World.

Spectacular combat awaits you in a world with units like riﬂed infantry, heavy cavalry, and tall ships bristling with cannon. You’ll be captivated by breathtaking scenes of discovery and power: towering European cathedrals, courageous Native Americans, and massive armies bent on destruction.

Installing the Game

Insert the Age of Empires III installation disc into your disc drive, and then follow the on-screen instructions. If Setup doesn’t start automatically, complete these steps on Microsoft® Windows® XP:

1. On the

2. In the

click Add or Remove Programs.

3. Under

4. In the

click the CD or Floppy button, and then follow the on-screen instructions to install the game.

Start menu, click Control Panel.

Category View, under Pick a Category,

Pick a Task, click Add a Program.

Add or Remove Programs dialog box,

Starting a New Game

To open the Main menu, double-click the Age of Empires III icon on your desktop.

The Main menu provides the following options:

Learn to Play Learn basic gameplay principles

and experience what’s new in

Age of Empires III.

Single Player Play the Campaign or a random

map Skirmish; load a Custom

Scenario or a Saved Game.

Multiplayer Start a multiplayer game with your

friends using Ensemble Studios® Online (ESO) or a local area network (LAN).

Help and Tools Download game updates, get

information about speciﬁc units and technologies, create custom scenarios, adjust display and other game options, or view a list of those who worked tirelessly to create this amazing game.

Exit Close the game and return to Windows.

Getting Help

To get additional information while playing the game, go to the Stats tab, and then click the Detailed Help button. You can also use tooltips by placing your mouse pointer over an icon or unit to display a brief description of that item and its capabilities.

For updates and to interact with the Age of Empires III community, visit: http://www.ageofempires3.com.

Learning to Play

Setting Options &

The easiest way to learn Age of Empires III is by using the tutorials. You’ll master gameplay basics and learn about some of the new features in the game.

To learn basic and advanced features, on the Main menu, click Learn to Play.

If you’re a new player, click Master the Basics, and

then complete the practice scenario to learn the core game features.

If you’re a more experienced player, click Try

a Game to dive right in and ﬁnd out what’s new.

Using Hotkeys

You can conﬁgure Age of Empires III in many different ways. By using the Options screen you can ﬁne-tune such elements as in-game graphics, audio, and multiplayer settings.

For example, to improve the frame-rate performance, adjust the settings under Graphics Options. By selecting Use Low Poly Models and reducing the Texture settings, you can improve the game’s performance—particularly on slower computers.

Hotkeys allow experienced players to ﬁnd, build, and task units quickly and efﬁciently. For example, pressing the T key ﬁnds your Town Center. If you want to achieve proﬁciency with when to use hotkeys is critical. You’ll ﬁnd many useful hotkey combinations on the Quick Reference Card.

Age of Empires III, knowing how and

Using the In-Game Menu

Saving, Loading, &

At any time during gameplay you can pause the game and display the In-Game menu by clicking the Menu button (in the upper-right of the screen) or pressing F10.

The In-Game menu offers the following choices:

Player Options Fine-tune in-game settings.

Resign Leave the current game.

Player Summary Offer tribute and resources to allies.

Save Preserve the current game state so

you can reload it later.

Saved Game Start a previously saved game.

Restart Return to the beginning of the

current game.

Quitting a Game

Saving On the In-Game menu, click Save.

In the Save File dialog box, type a name in the Filename box, and then click Save.

Loading On the In-Game menu, click Saved

Game. In the Open File dialog box,

select the ﬁlename of the game you want to play, and then click Open.

Quitting To leave a game while playing, you

must ﬁrst resign from your current game. On the In-Game menu, click

Resign, click Yes, and then click the Quit button in the upper-right of

the screen.

Winning a Game

Improving Game Performance

The bottom line: You win by commanding more territory and resources than your opponents. Age of Empires III offers multiple variations on this theme, depending on how you decide to play.

Single-Player Campaign

To win, you must successfully complete all the missions in the Campaign.

Skirmish

In a single-player or multiplayer Skirmish, whoever conquers ﬁrst is the rules for a Skirmish—Supremacy and Deathmatch— each with different starting conditions. In Supremacy, you start with no resources; in Deathmatch, you start with a stockpile of resources and play at high speed.

While a Deathmatch always ends with either resignation or conquest, Supremacy offers a way to win without combat—Four of a Kind. You get Four of a Kind by building four Trading Posts either along a Trade Route or at Native American settlements.

winner. There are two types of game

Here are some suggestions for improving the quality and performance of Age of Empire III.

Install the Latest Device Drivers

Your computer’s graphics adapter (also known as a video or display adapter) is critical to a great Age of Empires III visual experience. For the game to run properly, you must ensure that your computer has the latest version of the graphics adapter’s driver installed.

You can obtain the latest driver from the manufacturer of your graphics adapter.

To learn who manufactured your graphics adapter

1. On the

2. Type

3. In the

the Display tab.

4. Record the name of the manufacturer listed under

Device, and then click Exit.

Go to the manufacturer’s Web site for more information on determining whether you have the latest driver version and how to upgrade should you need to.

Start menu, click Run.

dxdiag, and then click OK.

DirectX Diagnostic Tool dialog box, click

Install the Latest Version of DirectX

Installing the latest version of DirectX® can prevent performance problems with Age of Empires III and may also enhance the quality and performance of games on your computer.

To download the latest version of DirectX, go to:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/ downloads/default.asp.

Additional Suggestions

Shut Down Other Programs

Close any other open programs to free up more of your computer’s processing power.

Install More RAM

Random access memory (RAM) is your computer’s shortterm memory. Generally, the more there is, the faster your computer can process data. Your computer needs to have at least 256 MB of RAM to run Age of Empires III.

Upgrade Your System to a Faster Processor

To run Age of Empires III, your computer needs to have at least a Pentium 4 1.4 GHz processor. But the faster, the better!

Upgrade Your Graphics Adapter

You can improve your game’s video performance by installing a more powerful graphics adapter. The minimum recommended hardware is a 64MB graphics adapter with HW T&L (Hardware Transform and Lightening). HW T&L technology ofﬂoads some of the graphics processing from your CPU. This enables the CPU to process additional instructions, which causes the game to execute faster.

Your goal in Age of Empires III is to build a powerful empire capable of conquering any and all enemy civilizations.

You build your civilization by gathering natural resources, constructing buildings, creating an army, researching technological improvements, and advancing through the ﬁve Ages:

Discovery Age

Colonial Age

Fortress Age

Industrial Age

Imperial Age

With each Age advancement you can build different buildings, create more powerful military units, and research and acquire more valuable technologies.

You face many challenges. You can see only a small part of a land hidden in darkness. You don’t know where your opponents wait and how they plan to attack you. And you must overcome your greatest challenge: learning how to best adapt and grow the units and resources speciﬁc to your civilization.

Choosing a Civilization

You can choose from eight different civilizations (shown below in order of easiest to hardest to play):

Spanish

British

French

Portuguese

Dutch

Russian

German

Ottoman

Each civilization has its own strengths and weaknesses. For example, the British have a strong economy and can get Settlers quickly. You’ll ﬁnd the best British unit is the Musketeer, but if you want to leverage other units, such as the Longbowman, you have that ﬂexibility.

Although they don’t have as many villagers as the British, the French form alliances with Native Americans more easily. The French also have a special villager, the Coureur, that is more resistant to attacks.

If you play as the Spanish, you’ll ﬁnd that you get more resources and support from your Home City.

Try out the different civilizations to identify those that best suit your style of play and strategy.

Forming Alliances with Native Americans

Your playable civilization can also form alliances with the Native American nations in the New World:

Aztec Iroquois

Carib Lakota

Cherokee Maya

Comanche Nootka

Cree Seminole

Inca Tupi

By forming alliances, you gain their help during battle and can acquire extra resources such as Food or Coin. (You only battle Native Americans when they’re allied with enemy civilizations.)

You form an alliance by building a Trading Post next to a Native American settlement.

To ally with a Native American nation

1. Have your Settlers gather sufﬁcient resources to build a Trading Post.

2. Send your Explorer or Settler to ﬁnd a Native American settlement.

3. Select your Explorer or Settler and then click the Trading Post button on the Command panel.

You can now leverage military units and other improvements offered by that nation. (Trading Posts you build on Trade Routes will offer different beneﬁts. They generate experience points for your Home City and can create Stagecoaches and other improvements to enhance the ﬂow of commerce across their routes.)

The Home City

Adding a persistent Home City is a signiﬁcant difference in gameplay between Age of Empires III and other games in the Age of Empires franchise. Your Home City provides your colony with resources, establishes the improvements and units you can leverage, and gives you a level of control over your own destiny.

You grow your Home City over time through the acquisition of experience points, which you earn each time your civilization does one of the following:

Discovers Treasure.

Defeats enemy units (including Treasure guardians)

or buildings.

Builds or trains units.

Achieves certain milestones (most Treasures, most

kills, and so on) that garner postgame awards.

Completes objectives in the single-player Campaign.

As your experience points mount, your Home City level steadily advances. Higher-level Home Cities can provide more powerful shipments of units, resources, or improvements.

Your time spent in advancing the level of your Home City during the single-player Campaign will hone your skills for multiplayer games. By sticking with a civilization and learning the intricacies of its capabilities and limits, you’ll be able to take this knowledge and experience with you online to compete with other Age of Empires III players.

Age Advancement bar

Home City icon

Experience progress bar

Colony Screen

In-Game menu

Mini Map

Displays the entire game map.

• Chat

• Send Alert Flare

• Find Explorer

• Filters

Resource panel

Displays stockpiled resources and population.

• Current Population & Upper Limit

• Food

• Wood

• Coin

• Villagers

Current Unit

Command panel

Displays available:

• Units

• Buildings

• Commands

• Improvements

Stats tab

Command tab

Navigating the Colony Screen

If you’ve already played a game from the Age of Empires series, you’ll ﬁnd the

In-Game Menu

To pause the game and open the In-Game menu, click the Menu button (in the upper-right of the screen) or press

F10. You can select from the following menu items.

Player Options Fine-tune various in-game settings.

Resign Leave the current game.

Player Offer tribute and resources to allies. Summary

Save Preserve the current game state so

Saved Game Start a previously saved game.

Restart Return to the beginning of the

current game.

Colony screen familiar.

you can reload it later.

Resource Panel

Shows current stockpiled resources, number of villagers, and population limit. This helps you ensure that you’re not too low in one resource while spending too much effort gathering another. Unless you are stockpiling for a speciﬁc reason, such as advancing your Age, keeping your resources in relative balance is a good strategy.

Command Panel

Displays the available tasks, units, buildings, commands, and improvements for the currently selected object. For example, if you select a Settler, the Command panel will display buttons for buildings and improvements that your civilization’s Settlers can generate.

Stats Tab

Displays statistical information about the currently selected unit or building. For example, if you select an Explorer, the Stats tab will show such information as name, hitpoints (total and remaining), and unit classiﬁcation.

Tooltips

When you move your mouse pointer over different game units, a tooltip displays information about resource or unit statistics (such as name, hitpoints, cost, and so on). You can use tooltips to quickly ﬁnd information about practically anything that appears on-screen.

Age Advancement Bar

Displays the current Age and your civilization’s ﬂag.

Production Queue

Shows the units you have selected to train and their progress towards completion. Because units train over time, you’ll ﬁnd the queue particularly useful when your units are engaged in multiple activities that require quick action once they become ready.

Home City Icon

Toggles between the Colony screen and the Home City screen. You’ll need to go back and forth between your colony and your Home City to manage improvements and to identify and transport resources.

Settlement Mini Map

Provides a high-level view of the territory surrounding your settlement and lets you quickly locate the following items.

Town Center

Treasures

Explorer

Native American settlements

Trading Post locations

Resources (Food, Wood, and Coin)

Fog of War limits

Use the Mini Map regularly during gameplay to identify the next resource to acquire, to jump to a new location, and to locate your Explorer.

The Mini Map also acts as a control panel for both navigation and communications.

To quickly move your view from the Colony screen

to a speciﬁc location on the location on the Mini Map.

The Mini Map also includes buttons to ﬁlter its

display, as well as buttons for communications (Send Flare and Chat). The communications buttons allow you to interact with other players during a multiplayer game—to share information, discuss strategy, or just ask for help.

Mini Map, click that

Navigating the

Home City Screen

To view the Home City screen, click the Home City icon on the Main menu.

Home City Mini Map

Provides a high-level view of your settlement. The Mini Map works the same on the Home City screen as it does on the Colony screen; simply click anywhere on the Mini Map to go to that location.

Resource Panel

Displays your current stockpile of resources as they update. Check your available resources here as you choose from the units available for transfer from your Home City.

Shipment Panel

Displays the contents of your Deck.

Every Home City provides different improvements and resources (also known as Cards) from which you can choose. You manage these resources by creating a Deck of the Cards you want to use during that game.

The Shipment panel displays the contents of your Deck: the economic units, military units, and resources currently available for shipment back to your colony. Click the units and/or resources you want to select. If you lack sufﬁcient resources or population, or you haven’t yet reached the right Age, the game will indicate why the unit or resource cannot be shipped.

For more information about the Card and Deck system and how it works, see the “Home City” chapter on page 39.

Home City Icon

Toggles between the Home City screen and the Colony screen.

Ways to Play

Age of Empires III

Age of Empires III gives you several different ways to play:

Single-Player Campaign

Single-Player Skirmish

Multiplayer Skirmish

Single-Player Campaign

By accepting the challenge of the single-player Campaign, you enter into a historical storyline that spans multiple continents and generations.

Follow the adventures of three generations of the Black family as they explore the New World, meet famous ﬁgures from history, and battle a mysterious international conspiracy.

With different missions crisscrossing the Americas, you’ll face a series of challenges woven within a dramatic storyline. Varying levels of difﬁculty and choices in Home City upgrades make the Campaign an adventure you can enjoy time and again.

Single-Player Skirmish

When you don’t feel the need to explore an entire continent, you can always test your skills against an area (or map) in the New World.

You can set the following characteristics of your skirmish:

Your civilization.

The number of computer opponents and their

civilizations.

How the civilizations divide into teams.

The map on which you play.

The game rules (Supremacy or Deathmatch).

The starting Age.

The difﬁculty level.

The game speed.

Your player color.

Once you set up the Skirmish, click the Play button to start the battle.

Exploring the New World

The ﬁrst thing you should do is search for sources of Food, Wood, and Coin. You can explore the map by moving your Settlers and Explorers into the black area.

Gathering Food is important, as you need Food to

train (create) more Settlers.

Gathering Wood is important, as you need Wood

to construct buildings (such as houses, barracks, and others).

To select a unit

Click the unit you want to select.

–or–

Drag a bounding outline around the unit (or units)

you want to select. (This method also lets you select multiple units.)

You can tell a unit is selected by the circle around its base and the Health Bar indicator above its head.

Multiplayer Skirmish

You can also play against human and AI opponents over a local area network (LAN) or on Ensemble Studios Online (ESO). When playing online, you get access to the same online features you’ve come to love—taunt, ﬂares, and chat—while still engaging in a wide-ranging, winner-takeall battle across two continents.

You can choose from a couple different formats for multiplayer, each of which offers different starting and winning conditions:

Supremacy, where every player starts with nothing

and continues until ﬁnal conquest or surrender.

Deathmatch, a fast-paced game where all players

begin with a stockpile of resources.

To deselect a unit

Click anywhere else on the map terrain.

The selection indicators (Health Bar and circle) will no longer appear with the previously selected units.

To move a unit

Click the unit, and then right-click any location

on the map or on the Mini Map (in the lower-left of the screen).

The unit will move to that location.

Assembling an Army

Combat plays a major role in Age of Empires III as multiple civilizations struggle to control the New World. You’ll need to muster a military capable of defending your territory and taking the offensive as necessary.

Creating Military Units

Every civilization has slightly different military units and weapons, each with unique advantages and disadvantages.

Before you can create an army, your civilization must have advanced to the Colonial Age; only then can you start constructing military buildings, such as the Barracks and Stable. Each of these buildings creates (trains) different types of military units and weaponry.

As an example to get started, let’s ﬁrst construct a Barracks.

To build a Barracks

Click a Settler, click the Barracks button, and then

click a location on the map.

After the Barracks is built, you can create infantry units there. The speciﬁc infantry units you can create depend on your civilization.

Balancing Strengths and Weaknesses

One key to success in Age of Empires III is learning the different strengths and weaknesses for each civilization and then choosing the appropriate strategies and countermeasures during gameplay.

All military units relate to one another using a built-in hierarchy based on hitpoints, range, and speed.

In general, long-range units are better than short-range, units with high hitpoints are better than those with lower hitpoints, and fast units are better than slow units.

Also, slow units are generally beaten by long-range units, which in turn are generally beaten by fast units. And fast units are generally beaten by units with high hitpoints (unless the fast units run away).

Deciding which units to build is crucial. You should learn the strengths and weaknesses of every unit in your civilization, pay attention to which units your opponent builds, and build your army to counter their strengths. Above all, try different unit strategies to see what works.

To create an infantry unit

Click the Barracks, and then click the button for the

infantry unit you want to create.

After a few seconds, your infantry unit will appear next to your Barracks. As you advance through the Ages, you gain access to additional and upgraded infantry units with more capabilities.

Use the same process to create cavalry and other military units and improvements.

Understanding the Postgame Screens

After you ﬁnish your game session, you can view a series of postgame screens that compare your performance with that of your competition in the following areas.

Awards Factors the many different aspects

of how you play (units lost, resources gathered, total experience points, and so on).

Resources Shows how well you did in acquiring

different kinds of resources.

Economy Details how you spent your resources

during gameplay.

Military Shows how well you managed

your military both offensively and defensively.

Experience Details how you earned your experience

points (e.g., by ﬁghting or building).

Timeline Provides a graphical overview of your

performance in a variety of areas across the entire timeline of the game session.

Use this information to pinpoint speciﬁc areas you can improve. By examining your performance against the competition, you can learn to adjust your strategy for gathering resources, advancing through the Ages, or handling your military.

To quit a game and view the postgame screens

1. Click

2. Click the

Resign on the In-Game menu, and then

click Yes.

View Postgame button in the upper-right

of the screen.

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