Fridge / Age of Empires III

Fridge pages are Spoilers Off by default, so all entries have been folderized and all spoilers removed. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned.

Index:

• Main
• Age of Empires I
• Age of Empires II
• Age of Mythology

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Fridge Brilliance

• The Black family must have tremendous military and political power, to the point of being practically a small scale version of an N.G.O. Superpower.
  • Even accounting for Gameplay and Story Segregation for building a civilization at every single level, based on the enemies they are fighting (the Circle of Ossus is well armed enough to occupy the Havana, and the Blacks are confident enough to launch an attack on an outpost of the Ottoman Empire away from their homeland) as well as the fact they have minimal oversight and orders from higher up suggests that the Blacks are an army onto themselves.
  • The mere fact that the nascent United States government was willing to grant a sizable sum of money to Nathaniel in order to set up Falcon Company, despite his Haudenosaunee lineage, speaks volumes as to the influence and reputation the Black family had garnered. It helps that he had an important hand in the Wars of Independence, as seen in Fire.
  • This is also something that can be seen in a subtle form throughout the campaigns: compare Morgan having solely his Knights of St. John in Blood and having to win the trust of the pirates, the Incas and the Havanians with the several allied factions Amelia has at her side during the timeframe of Steel such as the freaking United States government and the now-willing-to-help Incas and Havanians. Chayton doesn't make use of his allies gallery as often as Amelia did during his conflicts, but by then the Circle of Ossus practically ceased to exist, so there was no need for such a reinforcement call.
• Morgan Black is over 30 at the time of the Siege of Malta in 1565 (the "Blood" campaign). John Black, his grandson, is in his 20s during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). This looks like an evident case of Writers Cannot Do Math until the end of the campaign, when it's revealed that, while the Fountain of Youth was destroyed at the end of the first act, its water was still available, and Morgan (and probably Elizabeth) drank from it. Morgan is, in fact, still alive by the freaking 1810s, although as a very old man.
• Aztec pyramids double as fortresses in III as they did back in II. At first, it looks silly, but then you realize that the Mesoamerican civilization's pyramids are not simple step pyramids, but the average person will have difficulty climbing up the stairs. Add in archers barraging you with arrows, and it becomes an impregnable defense.
• John and Kanyenke's campaign is named "Ice". Several characters in "Ice", namely Kanyenke, Nonakhee and Washington, appear 20 years later in a campaign from The WarChiefs titled "Fire."
• The Consulate system for the Asian civilizations makes allusions to various periods of each faction's respective histories.
  • The Chinese Consulate can create alliances with the British, Russian, French and German civilizations. The end of the first Opium Wars had China signing several treaties (called Unequal Treaties) with these countries, beginning what was called the "Century of Humiliation".
  • The Japanese Consulate, in addition to being able to ally with the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese (which Japan interacted with the most during the Sengoku Jidai), can also opt to embrace Japanese Isolationism. This is due to how the civilization portrayed in the game is based around the Tokugawa Shogunate, to the point of them having an alternate age-up option named "Meiji Restoration", though it grants no benefits aside of aging up.
  • The Indian Consulate having an option to ally with the Ottomans may seem random at first glance. As it turns out, the Ottoman Empire not only maintained political influence over parts of India prior to the British East India Company's dominance, but even fought the Portuguese over regional hegemony several times, which also explains why the latter are a potential ally.
• Of all the Asian civilizations, the Japanese have high quality units as opposed to Zerg Rush for the Chinese. Guess which civilization have quickly industrialized and adapted western customs in the Age of Empires III timeframe?
  • It should be pointed out that it may simply be a reflection of how the Japanese are a small island nation while China and India are two of the world's most populous nations.
• In Blood, at the cutscene following the Inca Hold the Line mission, Francisco Delgado de León finds Sahin and his men surround him. The Ottoman proceeds to tell him about the danger the Circle of Ossus should represent for his Conquistador army, to which Delgado retorts with them not being a match for the Conquistador army's firepower. The first mission in Florida has Morgan and Lizzie's Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, who shouldn't be a match for both Delgado's forces and the Circle of Ossus, taking back the control of the sunken treasure ships, with an optional mission where Delgado must be killed proving Sahin's words.
• The theme for the Japanese civilization in the Definitive Edition is practically identical to their theme in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. The Japanese civ, at the timeframe of this game, takes place during the reign of Tokugawa Ieyasu, which isn't too far off from when the Japanese were depicted back in II.
• The European civilizations and their Revolution options:
  • Revolutions take place roughly around the same time as the Imperial Age (i.e. between the British annexation of the Falklands Islands in 1833 and the British annexation of Cyprus in 1914).
  • The French being able to revolt into Revolutionary France turns the settlers into Sans-culottes, improved Coureur des Bois units who, via the "Reign of Robespierre" card, have bonuses against enemy military units. And if that isn't enough, the "Guillotine" card gives them bonuses against Hero units, while "Storming of the Bastille" gives them siege-related bonuses.
  • The Portuguese have the highest amount of civilizations they can revolt into with 5 (Barbary States, Brazil, Gran Colombia, Mexico and Perú) which is fitting for the civilization that was really big into navigation and discovery.
  • Discounting the unfortunate implications, the Germans being able to revolt into Argentina can be explained by one of the founders of Buenos Aires being Ulrich Schmidl, a German Landsknecht who served on an expedition to the Rio de la Plata.
  • The two civs introduced by Knights of the Mediterranean, the Italians and the Maltese, can revolt into the Barbary States.
  • Italy was big on immigration to the Americas, which is reflected on the fact that they can revolt into Argentina, Brazil and the United States, countries whose Italian population and descent is still numerous.
  • Canada being a Revolution option for the French and British is reflected on them being a colony of the former before it was handed to the latter and their independence declaration in 1867.
  • In Definitive Edition, Chile is a revolution option only for Spain, being among the very last Hispanophone countries in the New World to win its independence until the Spanish-American War.
• The Italians in Definitive Edition's Knights of the Mediterranean being able to gain Settlers automatically every time an upgrade or tech is researched might seem like just a gameplay quirk to compensate for starting out with fewer workers than other European civs. On the other hand, it calls to mind how Italians have historically migrated in droves in search of new opportunities, whether for economic, cultural, or military reasons.
• Askaris, which are available from Somali and Sudanese settlements after a tech upgrade, are powerful European-style infantry which are much more expensive gold-wise than other native African units, with only the wealthiest civs being able to field them in sizable numbers. While this could be seen as being done for balancing purposes, it's also reflective of how much some European powers were investing into their African colonies, especially when it came to finding compliant locals to help maintain order.
• The Indians, unlike the other Asian civs, almost wholly utilize the European naval roster. While this might seem like an odd oversight at first, it's nonetheless reflective of how the Mughals historically had to rely on outside powers like the Ottomans (and later the British East India Company) not only for ships but also the officers to help manage them.
• After accessing the “Gun Running” big button tech, Native American civs can recruit outlaws, especially of the gunslinging Wild West variety, from Native Embassies for extra firepower. It’s a sly nod to how, more often than not, bandits and outlaws found common cause with natives against the encroaching tide of American expansion.
• The Home City system and its attached mechanics do a good job emphasizing how, compared to Age of Empires II, the various playable civilizations have already established themselves. You're not so much building an empire from scratch, so much as defending/expanding the claims of an existing one, though that doesn't stop you from rebelling and having your own go at it.
• Both Mexico and the United States, despite superficially resembling the European civilizations they declared independence from, rely on substantial citizen militias and irregulars (be they Insurgentes and Salteadores/Vigilantes, or State Militia/Volunteers and Sharpshooters respectively) supplementing a smaller core of professional troops (Soldados and Regulars). This stands in sharp contrast to the Europeans, which tend to rely more on Musketeers, Pikemen or Halberdiers as their mainline infantry, while being screened by Crossbowmen or Skirmishers. Then again, given their respective colonial conflicts, encounters with indigenous cultures, and experience in using the frontier against their foes, it makes sense why "standard" doctrines would be inverted. In addition, as fledging nations, it also reflects how their standing armies were very much a work-in-progress over the time period, compared to the generations-old martial traditions of their counterparts across the Atlantic.

Fridge Horror

• When the player gets to the Imperial Age, they get three new techs to research that tremendously increase the gather rates for all sources of Food, Wood and Coin. Sounds awesome doesn't it? The names of these techs are, respectively, "Large Scale Agriculture", "Deforestation" and "Excessive Taxation". These three issues became real problems during the late 19th century and the 20th century, the era in which the Imperial Age takes place, so, in a way, the player becomes the cause of agriculture spreading like wildfire, the loss of thousands of acres in woodlands, and crushing so many people under huge debts. "It's just a tech and it's just a game! I'm just improving my civ's gathering rates!", you might say. While this is absolutely true, not thinking about the consequences for these actions is exactly why many politicians of the 19th century were responsible for the problems caused by Large Scale Agriculture, Deforestation and Excessive Taxation.
• On a similar note: fishing boats can gather food from fish or coin from sperm and humpback whales. While gathering food from fishing site eventually exhausts the food from it, a whale as coin source is infinite! That's right: throughout a game, you can station a maximum of four fishing boats around a whale (and there is usually more than a single whale on the map) and have them gather coin uninterruptedly until you move them away from the coin source or they get destroyed. Needless to say, even though at first we thought we'd never run out of them, whales turned out to be a very finite source of coin as time went by.
• Carib settlements have a technology called "Ceremonial Feast" that transforms your Carib warriors in "Feast warriors" with twice the hitpoints. The most notable Carib "ceremonial feast" in real life was the ritual consumption of body parts taken from their enemies, which made Carib warriors especially feared. This may be the reason why Carib blowgunners are also the only Native American outlaw units in the game.
• There is a tied Inca prisoner in "The Lost Spanish Treasure" from Steel, set 250 years after the first one. We later learn that the Inca prisoners Morgan freed from the Spanish in Florida drank from the Fountain of Youth and barreled some to take home to Peru. For how long was that guy prisoner? And was he how Beaumont learned of the Incas taking the water?
• One of the possible treasures in skirmish is a pair of settlers tied down by outlaws. However the settlers can spawn as all female, leading to unfortunate implications as to why they're being held.
• While there is an historical basis outside the point, there's something really morbid regarding the German and Italian civilizations being able to revolt into Argentina.
• The mechanic of allying with minor civilizations seems fairly convenient, especially when all it takes is setting up a Trading Post at a Native/Royal House settlement that couldn't care less about why you're there, or otherwise doesn't consider you a threat. That it's useful for gaining access to new units and tech further adds incentive to secure as many as you can. Inevitably, however, this also involves playing various peoples against one another in any given region, even if some of them are nominally of the same group, whether as expendable pawns or compliant proxies. Not too unlike how European colonial powers, Asian civilizations, and even indigenous empires like the Aztecs were able to expand and consolidate their rule historically. Only this time, you're the one doing it.
• In African skirmish maps, among the various treasure guardians and outlaws are bands of "Colonials" - French-speaking looters, officers, swashbucklers and gunslingers in pith helmets and ragged uniforms, all of which are hostile even to other European civs. While they could be seen as a subtle nod to the infamous Congo Free State in Heart of Darkness, it also makes you wonder what drove them to that point in the first place...

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