Aug 05, 2008 Age Of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties - Expansion Pack. Brand: Destineer. Platform: Mac OS X, Mac OS X Intel. 4.0 out of 5 stars. Playable Asian Civilizations - Command one of three fierce Asian civilizations - the Indians, the Chinese or the Japanese each with its own unique armies led by powerful warrior Monks. Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties brings a new twist to the popular real time strategy game Age of Empires. Unlike its predecessors, Age of Empires III features a rich, non linear storyline, which ties into the gameplay quite nicely, whilst enhancing the game's depth with the addition of the different dynasties of Asia. The Asian Dynasties is an interesting expansion for the Age of Empires III, a popular series. In which, you can develop the Japanese, Chinese, and even Indian civilizations your way. It takes place in the Far East where you will engage in a fight for supremacy and evolution. That battle spans from Europe, America to Asia.
While The expansion pack for Heroes of Might and Magic V is just a visual rehash of the original, Age of Empires 3: The Asian Dynasties (TAD) shows just how add-ons can be done, bursting with rich gaming pleasure and significantly enhancing the core Age of Empires III engine.
There's more going on than I usefully have room to list here, but the handover to a new development team (Big Huge Games in this case) has allowed the series to be treated to a fresh, yet reverential, set of eyes, ears and hands. Thus Wonders make a return, spicing up your end game options, the clever deck system gets a few race-based twists that make you rethink their usage in a way best described as 'completely' and a hundred other smaller tweaks, tinkers and amendments make it play like an almost totally new game. Plus it still looks beautiful.
Excitingly for this old codger, TAD also sees a return to the 'stealth education' mode of the original AOE, providing as absorbing and interactive a history lesson as you could ask for. Play the game alongside an open Wikipedia browser, looking up the character and location names as you go, and you'll see the developers have done a pretty accurate job of recreating events that shaped these three nations in the past.
TAD is pricey for an add-on pack, but if you can stomach the cost, there's plenty of succulent, meaty goodness to be had from TAD. Plus it will big up your brain, and that can't be a bad thing for a pony.
(from Wikipedia)
The gameplay of Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties follows a similar format to the original game, Age of Empires III. Rather than introduce new methods of gameplay, most changes were focused on introducing new content to the game.
Export is a special resource, only available to the three Asian civilizations, and is used to hire foreign troops and research technologies from the consulate, where the player can choose a foreign ally or, for the Japanese, isolationism. Export is generated automatically when the villagers are gathering, but its gather rate is much slower than other resources, making it challenging to afford a large foreign army. Export Rate / Experience points are also generated by other means (like sacred cows for Indians) and are specific to each civilization.
Three new civilizations are added in Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties. Each Asian civilization has monks, instead of explorers as in previous games. These monks have the ability of ‘Stun’ instead of ‘Sharpshooter Attack’ (as for European powers) or ‘Nature Friendship’ (as in the War Chiefs).
There are six new native civilizations available for hire in The Asian Dynasties. They are the Sufis, the Shaolin, the Zen, the Udasi, the Bhakti, and the Jesuits.
Campaign
There are three new campaigns, one for each new civilization. Furthermore, these campaigns return to the historical, civilization-based single-player campaigns, which are different from the past campaigns in the Age of Empires III series. Each campaign consists of five new scenarios. They are the first campaigns in the Age of Empires III series to not revolve around the fictional Black family.
Wonders
In Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties, the three new civilizations must build a Wonder to advance from age to age, instead of advancing from the Town Center. Unlike previous Age of Empires games, the player does not achieve victory by building a wonder. Players can choose from a selection of wonders, each having benefits unique to their civilization. Once built, this wonder provides an initial bonus of units or resources, while continuing to provide a benefit to the player’s civilization. This initial bonus becomes larger, depending on which age is being advanced to. Since the wonder is a building, players can assign different numbers of villagers to build it, which affects the speed of advancement. Wonders that are destroyed cannot be rebuilt.
Requirements
- Age of Empires III must be pre-installed.
- Min OS: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
- CPU: PowerPC G4 / G5 or Intel @ 1.2ghz (although realistically you need a dual G5 or above)
- Ram: 512mb
- Graphics: 64mb
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Screenshots
Downloads
Updates The Asian Dynasties expansion to version 1.0.1 with fixes and balance changes