African Royals Review - 6/10

[The_Eradicator [BZH]]

I think that the game looks beautiful, but also feels quite rushed and is not worth the money for the content provided. Do you guys agree? How would you guys rank it and why?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x0mX1veDB8

[ConMeo]

10 euro is a good bargain for two new civs that we’re completely designed from scratch

[The_Eradicator [BZH]]

Age of Empires 2 offers campaigns for the same price. No, it's not a good bargain at all.

[DerRitter]

Originally posted by The_Eradicator BZH:

Age of Empires 2 offers campaigns for the same price. No, it's not a good bargain at all.

The AOE3 DE team is not comparable to the AOE2 DE team at all- one has been screwing up alot, while the other seems to almost never miss a mark. Shame too, because I generally find 3 to be more interesting to play.

[SchnitzelTruck]

Meh, everyone is always doom and gloom about new things. I dont care about knee jerk reactions. Watch everyone's opinions change in a year and consider this DLC to be pretty solid.

[exotic handjob]

I feel like unless I was really black or african while being really proud of my ancestry, everything from the obnoxious loud camel rider hero who speaks loud in African language and the tribal crap in every portion: tribal huts, fields that only '2' villagers can use, that magically can generate coin, granaries and 'random' things like 'universities' that attempt to to make the civ gather rates increase 'if you are near them', add up but it is too much different and the annoyances of it make it almost like learning a totally new game. Who knows, it could be better, but it feels like one of the most unique civs ever with a lot of diverse things adding up; and I'm pretty sure it's not realistic or based on Africa really for half of this stuff, mountain monestary, universities, what? I'd rather wait for a more dedicated player to find a way to use this civ first (it could be underpowered, or even better? who knows..) At least with Incas, Sweden, USA, I played them one time and you could already sort of get the timings right, know what's going on, if you are good at the game already, but this is like 'wtf is this crap' while a tribesman with a blaring loud voice blasts in your ears every time you press the mouse button. There is clearly a unique set of things to do and it might appeal to some people to use them, but if they are simply 'balanced', then it's still better to use other civs that are easier or that I tend to do best with, like once learning the US civ.

Even understanding, this is the easiest/simplest age game in the series, but there are already native civs that are easier to understand, if the goal is to make some annoying ghetto-voice spamming tribals language spam in your ear and maybe provide a 'rush and spam merc cards' civ, where this 'influence' thing (sort of like Japan's foreign embassy resource) can be used to spam certain mercs and units in to reinforce a spam of units, then maybe it is the civ for you.

It feels like to me even if I play this game, these civs are probably underwhelming and the stupid complexity of it like having 'mountain monestaries' where ♥♥♥♥♥♥ go to pray and granaries that can make your fields that only '2' villagers can use, and all these random things, sort of add up to make it seem like not only is it not my civ, not my culture, not 'a' good culture that I want to be part of, but even 'if' it was balanced I do not want to learn how to build tribal huts and do it properly. Maybe someone else will make a strat and I will try it later but I don't even feelthat usual RTS mastery where you like a civ that's the best and you want to at least become pro at it, get the build correctly. African civs just seem like a worse, more complex version of the other existing native civs like the Sioux, that could replace them if the goal is unit spamming and winning by skill/micro. It feels like I'm trying to learn how to play AoE1 or some new game with new buildings while all this annoying 'tribal' stuff blaring in my ears; and all this fake stuff ilke 'universities make peopel more productive' and buildings that try to serve multiple functions. It's different, but it's too different. No clue how like these '2' person fields scale in economy really or why it's there if it just requires more work to get like 10 people working, for example. If another civ were on point they'd just demolish this civ and anyone who's learning it, while they just try to spam out annoyingly strong african units that just go around being spazzy, but it wouldn't stop a dedicated player who plays as their favorite civ I think. Anyway that's my rant, brb of sleep

decided I would post my conclusion today: the extra fields are just extra work to build and assign, but once all is setup, the civ sort of just gathers at the same or worse rates anyway; atleast once granary, mountain monestary, and the other crap is set up too.
tldr: the field gather rates are the same once you apply allthe bonuses, like granary, etc., the build rates take 2x to 2.5x as long though.
the cattle are the only thing that really can give you a boost of extra food or wood/gold.
the rest of it sucks or is the same once you put inthe xtra work to set up all of it, like mountain monestary, granary nearby, etc.
mostly extra work for same result and it's not that OP even if the cattle gives you some extra resource.

[Rhalius]

Overall it is a good expansion, I enjoy the new maps but seriously wish we'd get new large maps because the small map size of the default size is a problem. I want more space.

The new civs look good, but like the America civ, they are too bloated with stuff. They want to cram too much in there. It could actually use less units. Do they all even have a purpose?
I also feel like they get way too much of the Europeans. Why do all civs with fully unique roster keep getting stuff from the non-unique European civs? Let those have something at least.

The new tribes on the map also give too much compared to what you can normally get at trade posts, they seem to have double the content. I'd advice lowering this to be in line with others.

We certainly get plenty for the price. I just feel the nations and tribes are too bloated.
And yes there are no campaigns unlike AOE2 DE's expansions. But those don't have fully unique civs. Just some unique techs and one unique unit. Two at most. And they mostly use the same assets. Neither of the two DLC's offer new architecture styles even.

[jameslloydwilliams]

crashes a lot on start up with this new update

[Darth.Malal]

just wait for aoe4 dont buy aoe3de dlc , not worth ur money, the server too is bad, u cant reconnect if u are disconnected once

[JeffreyFo]

Originally posted by The_Eradicator BZH:

Age of Empires 2 offers campaigns for the same price. No, it's not a good bargain at all.

AOE2 DLC also barely adds new factions. A lot more work goes into a new AOE3 faction than a new AOE2 faction. Frankly, having new unique factions is way more valuable than a fairly standard singleplayer campaign.

[TÂY SƠN - BÌNH ĐỊNH]

I gave it a 10.

10 US Dollars. LOL

[The_Eradicator [BZH]]

Ahahahah 10 dollars good one! Here in Taiwan we get the games at a cheaper price so I really gave it a 6 XD

[Bloodyroot]

I just played against Ethiopia and found it to be too op... Its not balanced and this makes the game not challenging. Please fix this issue

[Rhalius]

Balance will be adjusted over time, I just hope they will adress how bloated the factions and mercenaries are.

I feel like they could have made a third faction with that extra content just by giving the two new factions just a regular sized roster and not giving each african tribe so many units and techs.

[The_Eradicator [BZH]]

They are very well designed indeed. BUT The Kongolese would have been nice too. They had a very strong kingdom during that time.

[The_Eradicator [BZH]]

Well a campaign reflecting their strugles could have been interesting. I would have liked to know more about them, too in AOE3.