Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs Preview

I am a big fan of real-time strategy games, and have been for as far back as I can remember. One of my favorite games is the Age of Empire series, and each time I play a game in the series it takes me back to the first time I played the original game. Last year Ensemble Studios released a new game in the series entitled Age of Empires III, and I had a blast playing with its new features such as the unique Home City, and many other things. Well the developers are now working hard on giving you an expansion entitled Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs. Read on to find out more about this game and why you should purchase it when it is released.

If you remember, players in Age of Empires III got to take command of various European nations as they try to take over “The New World.” This expansion lets you take command of three Native American civilizations as they try to prevent their lands from being taken over from these invading European nations. Each nation provides its own unique units and powerful “WarChief” units that will do great damage to their enemies. The three new nations available to play with are the Iroquois Confederacy, Sioux Nation, and Aztec Empire.

This beta version of the game allows players to play only one of the three new nations and that is the Iroquois Confederacy. This nation has a very diverse unit mix that even incorporates a couple of European-inspired units such as the cannon. What is really nice about this nation is that it plays similar to that of the European nations, so it makes coming into this game a breeze.

There are a couple of other things that make the native nations unique. For instance, the WarChief - unlike the European Explorer - actually grows in power as you progress in the game, which makes him a very valuable commodity later on in the game. The Home City idea is still present with the Native American Nations but it is implemented slightly differently, in other words given a new name. It is now called a Tribal Council, and will still give you various economic and military shipments to help you in your exploits.

One of my favorite new additions is the fire pit, and it is exactly what it sounds like. You create a fire pit in your village and it will give you various powers and abilities. When you first start off in the game you will only have a few dances you can do, but as you dance you will unlock more that will be very helpful to you, the more dancers that you have the more effective the improvements are. What is really good is the WarChief dance that will allow you to resurrect your dead WarChief once more. The trade off to the fire pit is that you have to assign builders to do the dancing that could be gathering resources for you. Either way it is a great addition to the game that is very fun to see in action.

One new feature that is available to the European Nations only, is that you can now incite a Revolution instead of going to the Imperial Age. When this choice is made all of the settlers instantly become Militia and they can train even more units as well as other military units as long as they have resources left, but you can no longer create settlers. Your new Home City now only sends you these things: Militia, Guns, Ships, and Fort Wagons. This is a great way to help pump up your military action to squash the enemy. Just make sure you have enough resources left over in case you don’t win quickly and are in for a long fight.

Since it is using the same engine as the original game, I can say without a doubt that Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs looks really good. It is amazing to see how far graphics have come in real-time strategy games throughout the years. It used to only be the first-person shooter games that had the eye-popping graphics but now it is the strategy games that are starting to set benchmarks. Everything in this game is looking fantastic and it is pure bliss to run it on your computer while you are playing it.

I can’t wait until Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs is finally released later on this year. It will provide many more hours of enjoyment. How long that wait will be.