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Age of Empires III is a Eurostyle game by Glenn Drover, formerly of Eagle Games.
Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 2-3 hours
The Components
 Age of Empires III comes with a box full of high-quality components:
Board: A very large 4-panel board. The right-half side depicts various "event"tracks which are used by players to select actions during the main phase of the game while the left-hand side depicts the New World via 9 territories. The artwork is by Paul E. Niemeyer and is all attractive with a good period feel to it.
The utility of the board is also quite good. There are quite a few special cases in the game as to what things do, how much things costs, what points you get from things, etc., and almost every one of these is noted on the board*.
(* The one exception: there's no reminder of what merchants, missionaries, and soldiers do when they get to the New World, but as a singular omission, I won't complain too much.)
Plastic Bits: The game is absolutely filled with plastic bits. There are ten merchant ships, plus each color gets thirty colonists, five captains, five merchants, ten missionaries, and ten soldiers. Each of these six different types of figures is made from a highly detailed mold and is attractively reproduced.
The figures do cause some problems: it's sometimes hard to distinguish captains versus soldiers and colonists versus merchants if you're looking from afar, while things can also get a little bit crowded in the New World late in the game. To a certain extent this is a trade-off of style versus substance: the figures are much more attractive than tokens or chits would be, but on the other hand they do have some disadvantages. Your mileage may vary, but I think they look pretty nifty when arrayed on a board.
Coins: Gold and silver plastic coins, irregularly shaped and good looking as a result. Despite what the rules say, use the golds as $5, not $10. You probably won't run out, and it'll be much easier to make change.
Cardboard Bits: Most of the rest of the bits in the game are made of cardboard. You have 46 trade goods of 11 different types, each of which helpfully notes how many of that good exist, and 16 discovery counters, which note the challenges and rewards of discovering various areas. These are again attractive and easy to use. Finally, 34 capital buildings are divided among the three Ages, detailing what can be built when; they have text describing their abilities, sometimes supplemented by the rulebook.
Cards: Finally there are a handful of (16) cards in the game which are bonus discoveries once you finish up with the counters. These are medium-weight and show far away lands, with the standard discovery iconography.
Overall the components in Age of Empires III are great quality, beautifully produced, and quite easy to use. There are missteps here and there, but they are all minor, resulting in the game earning a full "5" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
The object of Age of Empires III is to earn the most points via colonization, discovery, and economy.
Setup: The board is laid in the middle of the table. Trade Goods are placed on all the New World territories, as defined on the board, and random discovery tiles are placed on each New World territory other than the Caribbean.
Turn order is randomly determined.
Each player takes his mound of plastic pieces and pull out five colonists for his first turn. He also takes $10+ silver (depending on his turn order).
Four trade goods, five Age I capital buildings, and one merchant ship are placed face-up on the board to be acquired in the first round.
Order of Play: On a turn, the following events occur:
- Colonist Placement
- Colonist Resolution
- Logistics & Cleanup
Colonist Placement: This is the main focus of the game. There are 8 action tracks where colonists can be placed, most of which have limited spaces, but two of which (Merchant Shipping and Discovery) have unlimited space.
Each player starts each round with five colonists, which on later turns may by supplemented by additional colonists or specialists due to previous placements or purchases. In turn order players place one colonist at a time until they're all placed. If a player has extra pieces, he may get to place a few colonists at the end after everyone else.
Colonist Resolution: After all of the placement has occurred, now all eight action tracks are resolved, in the following order.
Initiative. Each player earns an amount of silver equal to his location on this track (if he placed). The first player takes $1, the second $2, etc. This will also later determine new turn order, in the logistics phase.
(This is the one action track where players may only put one figure, max.)
Colonist Dock. This track has a limited number of spaces equal to two times the number of players, minus one (e.g., 7 in a 4-player game). In placement order the colonists are removed from these spaces, then each is put in a space in the New World which has already been discovered. On the first turn, this is just the Caribbean.
Throughout the game players may receive not just colonists, but also specialists, who can have extra, bonus powers at various places. There are three specialists that have a special effect on the colonist dock. Missionaries immediately give a player another colonist in the territory they land in. Merchants immediately give the player $5 when they land. Soldiers may be used for warfare after they land (through the warfare action).
There is one other special rule for colonizing: when a player gets a third figure in the same territory, he takes the trade good on that territory if it hasn't been taken already.
These placements will later determine majority control victory points.
Trade Goods. In order of placement, each player with a piece here takes one of the four face-up trade goods. These will later earn income in the logistics phase.
Merchant Shipping. This is a majority-control contest. Whoever has the most pieces here, with merchant and captain specialists both worth 2 and with ties being determined in turn order, gets the merchant ship placed on this space. This is a wild card trade good, as described in Logistics below.
Capital Building. In order of placement, each piece allows a player to buy one of the five face-up capital buildings. They cost $10, $14, or $20 depending on the Age. In the early Ages capital buildings give short-term bonuses or else give a specialist or colonist each turn. In Age III many of the capital buildings instead give bonus victory points depending on how a player specialized in various areas--much like the VP buildings in Puerto Rico.
Discovery. In turn order each player decides whether to send an expedition off to discover a new land or not. A player may decide how many of his people to send (though it'll usually be all of them), but he can only send one expedition each turn.
WHen an expedition is sent the player reveals a discovery tile on an undiscovered New World location (or else a card later in the game when the New World has all been discovered). The tile shows a number of indians, and if the player has that many people in his expedition or more, with captains counting for two, he triumphs. If he triumphed he then gets a few silver coins and also gets bonus silver coins if he had soldiers on the expedition. The tile also shows Victory Points the player will earn at game end.
The actual expedition force is returned to the supply (whether it succeeded or not), but in case of success the player starts a colony there with a single colonist.
When an expedition fails, everyone gets to see the tile, which will influence later expeditions there.
Specialists. There is one space for each of the specialist types (missionary, captain, merchant, soldier), plus a fifth space which lets the player who puts a piece there pay $5 for a specialist of any type. When this action track is resolved each player takes the appropriate specialist, for use only in the next round.
Warfare. There are four warfare boxes. Each time a player places a colonist here (not necssarily a soldier!) he is giving himself the ability to start a fight with his soldiers in the New World. A player may choose to either battle or war for each warfare box.
To battle a player initiates a conflict with one other player in one territory. To war a player pays $10 and initiates a conflict with one other player in every territory.
In a conflict each player kills a number of colonists belonging to his opponent equal to his own number of soliders in the same territory. A battle/war is just one such simultaneous back-and-forth barrage, though through placement of multiple colonists in the warfare box, battles can occur multiple times in the same territory.
Logistics & Cleanup: Finally a number of logistical things occur at the end of each round.
Income. Players earn income for their trade goods and/or "wild card" merchant ships. This is $1 for an unmatched set of three, $3 for a matched set of three, and $6 for a matched set of four. Each set may only have one merchant ship in it. Trade goods are kept and will continue to earn money throughout the game, usually in increasing amounts as the player puts together better sets.
Refresh Tiles. The number of capital buildings face-up is refilled to five, the number of trade goods is refilled to four, and the number of merchant ships is refilled to one.
Refresh Figures.> At the end of the round all figures should be removed from the various action tracks other than any pieces left in Discovery. (Many figures will have already been removed, such as the Colonist Dock figures who went to the New World.)
Each player then collects his new supply of figures, which is five colonists, plus any additional figures based on capital buildings. Players may have also collected some figures from using the specialist action this turn.
Change Turn Order. Finally, the turn order is switched, based on where people placed figures in the Initiative action. The first player there is moved to first place, the second to second, etc. Any players who did not place on the Initiative action are just scooted down the turn order below those who did.
Ending an Age: There are three Ages in the game. Age I lasts through the first three turns, Age II through the second three, and Age III through the last two. There are a few differences in these rounds.
First, for capital buildings, all old buildings that were unpurchased are discarded, and new ones are selected from the pile for the next Age.
Second, scoring occurs. This happens in each territory where a single player has at least three pieces. For those territories the player in first place earns six points and the player in second place earns two.
Ending the Game: THe game ends after turn eight and the final Age III scoring. Afterward players add on the points they earned from other things. This can include discoveries (which all have victory points) and capital buildings (which sometimes do). As already noted, some capital buildings also give variable points, just like the big buildings in Puerto Rico. Finally each player also earns their last-turn income in victory points.
The player with the most points wins.
Relationships to Other Game
At heart Age of Empires III is a role-selection game, where taking roles gives a player special abilities during his turn. The most popular game of that type is of course Puerto Rico, but AoE3 represents a newer style of role-selection game where players use tokens to claim multiple roles over the course of a turn. Caylus was the game that really kicked this style of play off, and it's since been seen in The Pillars of the Earth, which released around the same time as Age of Empires III.
However all of those other games center around resource management--gathering resources and turning them into victory points. Age of Empires III instead centers (largely) on usings its roles to support majority control, making it quite different from all the other games using this sort of multiple role selection.
To write it up like you'd see it on a standardized test:
Settlers of Catan : Puerto Rico :: El Grande : Age of Empires III
Age of Empires III is also notably the newest game by Glenn Drover. Drover got his start publishing very American games in the style of Milton Bradley's Axis & Allies and others. More recently he's been moving into Eurogames. His first such was the hybridized Age of Mythology, followed by adaptations of two Martin Wallace games: Railroad Tycoon and Conquest of the Empire. Age of Empires III is the logical next step. It's largely a Eurogame design, which means it's generally more analytic and elegant than American style games, but it still features solid theme, and it has more randomness, bothelements you're more likely to find in Anglo-American games.
The Game Design
Age of Empires III is generally a deep and interesting strategic game. You can identify several different major strategies that you could use. Colonizing the New World, particularly with the help of missionaries and capital buildings that support them is a very solid strategy, but collecting money, making discoveries, engaging in warfare, and building great economies are all great strategies as well. In the first game I played someone using the missionary strategy won decisively, while in my second game when I tried the same I lost by one point to someone who had gone on far more expeditions.
I found myself thinking about those games after the fact, guessing and second-guessing my decisions, and that was what ultimately decided me on giving Age of Empires III a top rating: there aren't just lots of strategies and lots of paths to victory, but they feel notably different and the decisions centering on them feel important.
As I've already alluded to, the theming is great. A lot of this comes out through the specialists. As players cursed missionaries while sending their soliders off to conquer the New World, a lot of the setting of the world really came through.
Overall, Age of Empires III is an interesting, strategic design.
If the game has a downside, it's that it feels like a slightly raw indie design. There are many different elements that feel complex when put together, and trying to keep in mind all those differences is a bit unwieldy. For example: the eight actions all work in slightly different ways, both in how you place figures, in where you place figures, in how many figures you can place, and in what order they're resolved. This does create some of the depth of the game, but on the other hand it feels like a bit more polish could have cleaned up those elements without any loss to the strategy.
I'll also comment briefly on the length: it runs about 2 hours for 3-4 players. Because of the threaded turn sequence, the game never feels slow, but be aware it's on the long side for a Euro design.
Overall, Age of Empires III is a deep, interesting strategic design with a lot of possibilities. It earns a full "5" out of "5" for Substance, particularly for those who like more in-depth and longer Euro designs.
Conclusion
Age of Empires III is a great new Euro-design by Glenn Drover. Like recent games such as Caylus and Pillars of the Earth it depends upon multiple role selection, but here they are instead used to fuel a majority-control game, really differentiating it from the crowd.
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