Age of Empires III The War Chiefs: A nice but minimal expansion

UPDATE 1/3/2008 - Please Note: I have moved this review several times back to its proper location and Epinions keeps on misplacing it in the wrong categories. I am moving it this one last time and then I REFUSE to move it anymore. If you come across this review under the wrong topic, I assure you that it was originally placed under "Computer Games" and I apologize to the readers for any inconvenience.

The only expansion I have bought for AOE III so far is The War Chiefs. It was worth the $19.99 I paid for it at Game Stop but it didn’t “expand” a whole lot in the game. It did add a few hours of single player story to the game and introduced some new units but the only major addition to multiplayer was three new civilizations you can choose from; the Sioux, the Iroquois and the Aztecs.


AOE III The War Chiefs

Note: Before reading this, I would recommend reading my previous review on Age of Empires III so you will understand this piece better.

The War Chiefs expansion adds three native civilizations to the game. Each civilization has its unique strengths and military units. They all share certain common units and buildings but you will learn quickly that you can not play them the same way.

Instead of having a home city like the other civilizations in the game, you have a tribal council for these native cultures. You can still build decks of cards and receive shipments to the battlefield but they are somewhat different than the others. You also can not customize the home city/tribal council for these cultures.

One common building for all the native cultures is the Fire Pit. The fire pit is used to perform ceremonial dances which provide different benefits to your people. These benefits can call forth powerful warriors, increase experience points, and enhance your explorer as well as other things.


Sound and graphics

There are a few musical additions and some different voices for the War Chiefs but nothing especially stands out as significant. The graphics are exactly the same with the exception of the individual home city/tribal council of the new civilizations. There are no real enhancements from the expansion as far as sound and graphics are concerned.


Continuing the story line

In single player campaign mode, the expansion adds two more generations to the story line beginning with the son of the narrator from AOE III. The story begins during the American Revolution and continues through the early 1800’s to the beginning of the gold rush. The expansion adds anywhere from three to ten hours of campaign mode to the game (depending on your game skill and the game speed) and the story line continues to be as interesting as AOE III.

During the course of the campaign you will meet some memorable characters such as General George Washington, Colonel Sven Kuechler and General George Armstrong Custer. None of these can be played but they do add some hint of historical reverence to the game.


Multiplayer and skirmish additions

Revolution!

One major change in the game is the ability to revolt from your home city. You can now call for a revolution and sever the ties with your home city to become your own nation. If you choose to revolt it costs a lot of resources and all of your villagers become colonial militia. Which means your army will get considerably larger very quickly but you can no longer collect resources from labor. If you have trading posts on the trade route you can still receive resources from trading and if you have a factory you can make resources at your factory, but you will no longer be able to create villagers to gather resources.

You will still receive shipments but these now come from your new home city and the only things you can have shipped are, colonial militia, ironclad ships, fort wagons (build forts that can train all your regular military units) and Gatling Gun units. Unlike the other cards these are unlimited shipments, which means you can ship them over and over as you gain more experience. When the game is over you will revert back to your original home city and continue gaining levels for that city so you’re not starting all over with a new home city, the revolution only takes place on that particular battlefield during that single skirmish.


Native embassy

One of the new building types is available for all civilizations. This is the native embassy. As your explorer travels around the map he will come across small native villages that have a place to build a trading post. If you build a trading post here, you will not receive experience points or resources from trading but you can employ the native warriors of that village to fight for you and they do not count against your population limit.

Once you established a trading post on a native village, you can then build a native embassy that allows you to train all native warriors from all of your native villages from one building.


Saloon additions

The saloon is where the rough and tough of the old west can be trained. Outlaw riflemen and pistol packing bandits can be trained and used with your regular military. The War Chiefs expansion adds to these four new units; Fusilier, Elmeti, Ninja and L’il Bombard. All of the units trained at the Saloon are mercenary units.


Replay value

After playing the campaign addition, I found that the multiplayer and skirmish editions were decent enough to elicit another few weeks of fun out of the game. It isn’t the greatest expansion but it does add some value to the game. Multiplayer mode is definitely the attraction, so if you are into multiplayer RTS games, you will probably have fun for a good while with this game.

Personally I do not play RTS games online much so I don’t think I will be playing this one much longer. I am ok with that; I got about 48-50 hours into the game total so I feel that I got my money’s worth. The great thing about games these days is that once you get bored with a game you can take it to Game Stop and trade it in for a discount on a new game. So replay value isn’t quite as big a deal to me as it used to be.


Conclusion

The expansion is decent but not great. It does add value to the game and a little more playing time but nothing really big or much different. I am just glad I got the expansion at a discounted price because there’s no way I’d pay $39.99 for this expansion if I knew what it was all about before hand.

If you can find this expansion for under $20, it isn’t a bad deal but don’t pay full price.


Thanks for reading,
Gr8ful ;-)