How is AOE3 not better in every concievable way?

[Franz Schubert]

Like literally, I see not one feature that stands above that of AOE3. Someone care to explain what I'm missing here?

[Mr_Cossack]

Then go play Age of Empires 3? Personally i prefer Cossacks over AoE series purely because i like my armies to be in the thousands and not just 200 units max.

I love both AoE series and Cossacks, apart from Cossacks 3 and AoE 3 being set in a similar time period and both being RTS, they are really nothing alike at all.

Like most games it comes down to your personal taste.

[Franz Schubert]

There just seems to be infinitely more nuance to AOE3's game mechanics than with Cossacks. The card decks, the map variety, the wood being limited, the herds, the unit variety, the time periods for aging up.

Just seems odd to me that the unit size alone is what's keeping people from just restarting the community for that game, instead choosing to buy this one, and playing it.

[Franz Schubert]

It'd be nice to get some input from some former AOE3 players with at least a few hundreds hours in it. I myself put in about 2 thousand, until the community kind of withered away over time. I've always wondered why no alternative would spring up, and finally one has, and it seems to be worse than AOE3 by orders of magnitude.

[Franz Schubert]

Originally posted by Zulgaines:

Cossacks is not Age of Empires or an alternative to it.

It looks like Age of Empires, it's an RTS with controls similar to Age of Empires.

That's about the extent of it.

How so?

[MagneticJerk]

Yeah, you don't need hundreds of hours in AoE 3 to see how they're pretty different fundamentally. AoE 3 doesn't have ressource consumption (food, ammo, salaries...), has a way lower pop cap (~200 per player vs. a global 10k limit for all players, which will be raised in a future update as well and can currently be increased easily by mods), no capture mechanics (every peasant, civillian building and piece of artillery can be taken over with military units, meaning guarding your city is very important), no scaling building prices (which do a lot to shift the focus to large-scale eco gameplay) and the unit balancing/combat mechanics follow quite a different logic as well.

They do share a similar basic style of controls and some mechanics, they're both branches of the AoE-style RTS games, but they differ wildly beyond that.

[Sukha]

Based on complexity AOE3 has Cossacks1/3 beat. The 2 games are very different tho, a fan of one might not necessarily like the other. You could compare AOE3 to SC2 more than this game, the unit cap and emphasis on micro/macro is almost identical exception being the aggressive expansions in SC2.
Capturing mechanics and the scale makes this game different, but its an old ass RTS on a new engine. By all means AOE3 is a more modern rts even though it was released earlier than Cossacks3. I loved AOE3 and was playing it semi competitively untill the balance just went all to hell with the expansions.
Now if they release American Conquest remake, we can have a talk about which game is better.

There is one point worth adressign though, the battles look and feel more authentic/realistic than in AOE3. AOE3 is arcadey in the way it handles battles, both gameplay wise and cinematically.

[USHiRi-CARROTTRiBE]

Originally posted by Literally Peter Gabriel:

It'd be nice to get some input from some former AOE3 players with at least a few hundreds hours in it. I myself put in about 2 thousand, until the community kind of withered away over time. I've always wondered why no alternative would spring up, and finally one has, and it seems to be worse than AOE3 by orders of magnitude.

I like AOE3 quite much since I found out the mod community where you can add bigger maps. I allways felt AOE3 was a downgrade from AOE2 in terms of the sizes of the maps, and that made me drop my interest totally.

Cossacks3 is´nt comparable to AOE3 right now since AOE3 is a tuned optimized vey streamlined product. I think Cossacks 3 will reach that status later this year or next with devs and the community.

Differences for me:
AOE3
+ easy efficient upgrade system, wildlife, small quests for units.
- Very small maps
- No formations
- buildings can be razed very quickly by regular soldiers with just a pike

Cossacks 1 ( 3 in some parts)
+ 1000 of troops, adorable graphics
+ More realistic proportions ( AOE3 is far better on scales than AOE1-2)
+ soldiers dont have hitpoints bars, they just die like regular people.
+ Big formations
+ Capture buildings,peasants with just 1 soldier ( allways loved this )

But to be honest it´s far more fair to compare AOE3 to American conquest or Cosacks 2
since they where later and better products than Cossacks 1. I think Rise of nationss gamemodes so much more interesting with area control over cities and the feel of a country than how it is in AOE3, I prefer that over AOE3 I think, but there is a place for both of them in my heart...but closest of them all is Cossacks :)

I think the time where you have to choose what game is the best is quite much over since now most people will buy them both

1000 of troops, Realistic with no HP bars, capturing:
Cossacks 2, American conquest, Cossacks

Civ building games with less troops but with deeper gameplay:
Rise of nations,Age of empire 2

[Andre B]

To be honest the macro requirement of Cossacks is 100 times higher than in Age of empires 3. And that is the biggest difference.

You have to constantly be making more workers, worry about balancing your economy while at the same time having super expensive upgrades to get at the right time, but like really super expensive.

There is never a time where you shouldn't be doing something.

Even unit producing buildings like barracks are super expensive, also unit upgrades are way more important in Cossacks than in age, a group of highly upgraded dragons destroy entire armies.

Age of empires 3 economy is much more simple to manage, and while the card system is cool, it doesn't really addd that much to be honest.

If anything i would compare Cossacks more to Supreme Commander than anything else, its a Macro game almost in its pure form.

[PikaTheChu]

It's just the scale, battles simply don't feel epic with 200 vs 200 units only and the micromanagement needed in AOE3 is higher, which is a nuissance for many people.

[Sukha]

What we need is AOE4 which combines AOE2 and 3 into one. We need Supcom3 that is a sequel to Supcom1 and not Supcom2. And finally we need Cossacks 4 that is basically American Conquest on a modern engine.

[Butterlord]

As someone who played AoE 3, I think Cossacks has a WAY better military aspect. In addition to being able to fight with troop caps in the thousands, there's also a formation system (requires you to build officers/drummers) that makes the massive battles play a lot more fluidly than AoE's battles imo. Not to mention the scale gives you tons of different tactical options during battles you simply don't have in AoE 3. Everything feels more realistic; units die quick, artillery can utterly decimate large groups of units in seconds and it's pleasantly fast paced.

I also like the economy aspects. True, it lacks the exploration aspect of AoE 3 where you can find random things with your settler in the first 5 minutes of the game (it was a minor gameplay aspect anyways), but it makes up for it with rescource variety. It also plays pretty much indentically in terms of economy, and while I can't say it's better than AoE 3 in that aspect I beileve it's just as good.

Also, the campaigns in Cossacks are awesome and way more in depth than the one AoE 3 campaign. Can't speak for the expansions though.

Only things AoE has over Cossacks imo:

-the awesome physics system

-General multiplayer experience.. Lobbies, cards, levels, victory screens (seriously bummed there's no victory screen whatsoever in Cossacks 3. I usually love reading about all those little stats, but Cossacks 3's games just end abruptly when they finish.)

-Nation variety is more unique, there more unique units in AoE 3 than in Cossacks, I beileve. Still love the units in Cossacks 3.

[Tchey]

Actually you should look at 0 A.D. too : http://play0ad.com/
Better than the Age Of... in my opinon, free and open source and Linux Mac Windows.

[USHiRi-CARROTTRiBE]

Originally posted by Tchey:

Actually you should look at 0 A.D. too : http://play0ad.com/
Better than the Age Of... in my opinon, free and open source and Linux Mac Windows.

And as for now very very laggy when you have to many units on the map, This game has allways been struggling with the laggy part. But then again if there is only 400 units on the map like in a AOE3 game perhaps it works quite okey. The lagg is there inevery version even though the game is very good in itself.

[Golden$Dragon]

Guys i think there is something very bad about cossacks 3 which is there is no voice acting for your units

[Scourge012]

Originally posted by Literally Peter Gabriel:

It'd be nice to get some input from some former AOE3 players with at least a few hundreds hours in it. I myself put in about 2 thousand, until the community kind of withered away over time. I've always wondered why no alternative would spring up, and finally one has, and it seems to be worse than AOE3 by orders of magnitude.

The games aren't all that similar. I hated AOE 3 for the same reasons you seem to like it. I hated the card decks. Why can't the factions just have uniques and bonuses? Why should I have to grind just to compete on the ladder?

It just really killed the series for me. Why AOE 3 was not a total flop is beyond me, quite frankly. I played it a lot back before it came to Steam, hoping I would finally have some epiphany on how to do my deck. I read guides...I played for 100s of hours. It just never dawned on me...this "nuance" was a "nuisance" for me.

Cossacks 3 is superior for me in every way. Was easier to "skill up." Still nuanced and strategic between civ choices (if poorly documented, so it's not really a plus over AOE 3 there). There's less imbalance here than in AOE 3. Seriously, I never got Prussia to be a viable faction in AOE 3. I just don't understand how you can look at AOE 3, look at this, and figure that Cossacks is the inferior one.