History VideoGame / AgeOfEmpiresIII

''Age Of Empires III'' is the fourth installment (counting the SpinOff series VideoGame/AgeOfMythology as another series) in the VideoGame/AgeOfEmpires franchise.

The game of the series, simply called '''Age of Empires III''' was released in October of 2005, and is set during TheColonialPeriod, with seven European civilizations (Spanish, British, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian and German) and the Ottoman Empire as playable civilizations.

Among the features of the series' gameplay, there's the Hometown, which sends shippings such as troops, technology or resources, and the addition of 12 native tribes and trade routes. In order to be able to send shipments, the player must gain [[RPGElements experience points]] which are obtained during normal gameplay. Also, unlike the previous games, all the civilizations are completely different, and have more twists than in previous games. And, like ''Mythology'' and their Gods, in order to advance to another age, the player must choose a Politician.

''Age Of Empires III'' series of video games is the fourth installment (counting the SpinOff series VideoGame/AgeOfMythology as another series) in the VideoGame/AgeOfEmpires franchise.

* SymbologyResearchFailure: The Chinese "Confucian Academy" Wonder can ''automatically produce heavy siege weapons''. Riiight.

''Age Of Empires III'' series of video games is the fourth installment (counting the SpinOff series VideoGame/AgeOfMythology as another series) in the AgeOfEmpires franchise.

* MisplacedWildlife: Averted hard. With the series set in Asia and the Americas, it has lots of different species which are specific to some few maps each. Although a few slip-ups do appear in Asian Dynasties, if only regarding treasure guardians. These are as follows: Black panthers, tigers and giant pandas in Japan, snow monkeys outside Japan, any monitor lizards dangerous to humans in any of the levels, none of which are on the Komodo islands where the actual dangerous ones live, as well as snow leopards outside the Himalayas, and lions in China. (Although fair enough, lions did live in China until only a few hundred years before the game takes place.)

* MisplacedWildlife: Averted hard. With the series set in Asia and the Americas, it has lots of different species which are specific to some few maps each.

** The cheat code "sooo good" causes a little WebOriginal/TeenGirlSquad-style message to appear whenever a unit is killed, such as "musketeer'd!" or "imperial howitzer'd!" All with a badass bugle sound included.

The game featured a SinglePlayer campaign made of three acts, (''Blood'', ''Ice'' and ''Steel'') which follows the story of the Black family on their travels against their antagonists, the Ossus Circle, and with [[PublicDomainArtifact the Fountain of Youth]] as a key plot point across the three acts. The acts are narrated by Amelia Black, the protagonist of ''Steel''.

** Some campaign maps have a cap on the amount of experience you can [[LevelGrinding gather]], such as the sixth mission in ''Ice'', where [[spoiler:Kanyenke and John tries to gain the favour of the Lakota Tribe Chiefs]]. Other campaign missions, by way of being {{timed mission}}s, don't let the player to level up a lot, such as the first and sixth mission of ''Blood'' and the first and seventh mission of ''Ice''.

** Anything dealing with the very existence of the Circle of Ossus in ''III''.
*** The main reason for the Great Siege of Malta, as seen in ''Blood'', was [[spoiler: so the Ottoman Turks could get info on the Circle of Ossus, the Fountain of Youth, and the New World]].
*** The SevenYearsWar in ''Ice'' was [[spoiler: an attempt by the Circle of Ossus to obtain the Fountain of Youth by using the Russian Czar to conquer the Americas for them while the Western colonial powers were killing each other]].

** Some campaign maps have a cap on the amount of experience you can [[LevelGrinding gather]], such as the sixth mission in ''Ice'', where [[spoiler:Kanyenke and John tries to gain the favour of the Lakota Tribe Chiefs]].
** Other campaign missions, by way of being {{timed mission}}s, don't let the player to level up a lot, such as the first and sixth mission of ''Blood'' and the first and seventh mission of ''Ice''.

** Some campaign maps have a cap on the amount of experience you can [[LevelGrinding gather]], such as the mission in ''Ice'' where [[spoiler:Kanyenke and John attack (and ultimately destroy) Warwick's fortress]].

* AnyoneCanDie: Armies aside, a fair amount of main and supporting characters bite the dust across the campaigns. Here's the countdown: [[spoiler:Delgado and Alain Magnan in ''Blood''; Stuart Black, John Black and Warwick in ''Ice''; Cooper and Beaumont in ''Steel''; Kuechler in ''Fire''; William Holme and Custer in ''Shadows''; Mototada and Ishida (among many other daimyoes) in ''Japan''; Jinhai in ''China''; and Edwardson in ''India'']].

** Guess people assume Confucian Academy is the exact carbon replica of universities in China...

** The cheat code "sooo good" causes a little TeenGirlSquad-style message to appear whenever a unit is killed, such as "musketeer'd!" or "imperial howitzer'd!" All with a badass bugle sound included.

* {{BFG}}: The Monitor, and the Ottoman Great Bombard. Guaranteed to ruin ''someone's'' day when they start firing. Ottoman [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abus_gun Abus guns]] are portable cannons and the only infantry to deal siege-type damage.

* {{Pirate}}: Lizzie's pirates, and The Woukou pirates in the ''China'' campaign and many scenarios.

* ShootTheMedicFirst: Priests, missionaries and surgeons. But their abilities are generally insufficient for actual combat, so whoever has them should really just keep them out of the way.

* IveFallenAndICantGetUp: In spite of the GameplayAllyImmortality, the explorers and explorer war dogs, after they lose their hit points, can't fight, and need allied forces around them in order to stand up and keep fighting.

* DidNotDoTheResearch: As usual in the AOE series, mostly [[RuleOfThree averted]] in this game: the civilizations are designed to fight the same way their historical counterparts did. The Aztecs have no cavalry or gunpowder weapons. The Sioux have no siege weapons, and rely pretty heavily on their cavalry. The Japanese in ''The Asian Dynasties'' do not hunt wild animals or raise domesticated ones for food, keeping with a historical prohibition on meat. There are some exceptions, though:
** The protagonists in ''Ice'' discover an ''[[BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy Insidious Russian Plot To Take Over America!]]'' based on striking while the British and French colonists fight each other. Russia and France were allies in the SevenYearsWar and the Pacific coast was nearly unknown.
** In another example, the Seven Years War in the same campaign supposedly "spreads to the colonies", but it actually started with Britain and France in the colonies and spread to Europe.
** Also, the Russian troops controlled by [[spoiler:the Circle of Ossus]] in the final level of ''Blood'', which takes place in South America.
** The British never actually manage to take Breed's/Bunker/Something Hill in ''Fire'', assuming the (rebel) player wins that mission. Justified in that a mission where FailureIsTheOnlyOption would be a bit of a bummer, strategic success or no.
** The game's "History" section is mostly accurate, but there are a couple of screwups; for example, in the article on Privateers, it claims that Captain Kidd was originally a privateer sent to hunt Blackbeard before turning to piracy himself. Blackbeard didn't start pirating until several years after Kidd's death, and many modern historians believe that Kidd never became a pirate in any case.
** The Aztecs in the sequels have sheep from the beginning, without the need of a technology. Considering there were wild turkeys in the original game, it wouldn't have been hard to make a domestic version and give it to the Aztecs as a replacement.
** In the cutscene at the end of the ''Blood'' campaign, TheNarrator says that because the Europeans are carving out empires in the New World, the Ottomans are as much a relic of the past as the Knights of St. John. The Ottoman Empire reached the height of its power in the mid-1600s, about a century after the events of the campaign, and remained a major power up until the Napoleonic period. Furthermore, around the time of the campaign, only Spain had a New World empire to speak of.

* SoYouWantToLiveForever: The Circle of Ossus is devoted to finding the Fountain of Youth in ''Blood'', whose water is said to give eternal life to those who drink it. This plot was revisited in ''Steel''. [[spoiler:Morgan has found that the "Immortality" granted by the Fountain of Youth is no myth, as we find out in the closing cutscene of ''III''.]]

* CripplingOverspecialization: Averted for AOE standards: the ranged units get alternate attacks for melee (Musketeers get [[BayonetYa regular bayonets]], Russian [[RedShirtArmy strelets]] get [[AnAxeToGrind AXE BAYONETS]]) and those are just the especially notable ones.
** However, there are a lot of units with a low base attack damage but high multipliers against certain unit types, meaning that they're pretty rubbish against anything but those specific types. Culverins, for example, are nearly useless against anything but ships or other artillery.

* LargeHam: Almost all of the AI "players" except for Queen Elizabeth and Hiawatha have traces of this, but the Aztec's Cuauhtemoc stands out. A ThirdPersonPerson with a raspy voice and a lot of ego, he has such gems as:

** Not to mention the Elmeti, who speaks Italian in a very over the top manner.
-->"SI?!"
-->"ALLA BATAGLIA!!"

* MsFanservice: Isabella, the Spanish PlayerCharacter, while she doesn't dress {{Stripperiffic}}, she does have a [[EverythingSoundsSexierInFrench sultry Spanish]] voice. She tells you to "[[OrgasmicCombat Quit]] [[FetishFuel playing]] [[CombatSadomasochist so]] [[SexIsViolence rough]]" when you're in the middle of kicking her ass and that she "[[DoubleEntendre can't handle all these men]]" when she requests your help in battle. She likes to call you [[{{Dominatrix}} "pet"]] as an ally. In addition, [[http://s267.photobucket.com/albums/ii319/THE_faethin/?action=view¤t=IsabelAoE3.png her picture in the game's encyclopedia]] [[HistoricalBeautyUpdate looks quite lovely]] compared to the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_de_Castilla historical paintings.]]