Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs

Great expansion pack to a fantastic game, I must have spent over a thousand hours back in the day playing online quite competitively. The balance issues that troubled the game after its release were sorted out pretty well long ago, only problem today is it has to be played with the other expansion, because the War Chiefs lobby is dead nowadays.

War Chiefs is a great expansion to the basic game. It adds many new features like new civs and continues the amazing gameplay for even longer.

A fun expansion all around. It continues the great gameplay of the base game with great new civilizations. And even though those civilizations may have a bit more historical inaccuracies than others in the base game, it was a good attempt nonetheless. And although the single player campaign is worth playing here and definitely fun, the biggest advantage to this expansion pack is still being able to integrate the new components into the base game.

Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs has one important thing to add in the series: The American Indians as a whole civilization and a campaign with them. But my problems with the game doesn't really change (see my "Age of Empires III - Review").

This adds a lot to the game, but I can't give it anything higher than 1 point above my original review of AOE III because a lot of the things introduced here should have already been included. In a colonial american game, should native american civs have been there already? You shouldn't have to pay extra! They did a nice job of making the civs unique, however, I still prefer the european races because they are BETTER. I mean, sure, you can have your barracks that shoot (Exactly like the russian civ in the original) but it doesn't make up for the fact that you can't build forts, which become even more powerful in the expansion as you can now have as many as you want via the alternative option to going Imperial age, revolting. Now, I know your colonists are already pretty gross... No, not that kind or revolting. Revolting basically shuts down your economy, meaning that if you do it without at least 2 forts and 5000 of each resource, you're an idiot. It turns all your villagers into militia, which I actually found pretty useful in 1v1. For the cost of the age up price (1000 of each resource) you instantly have a huge army. Since you are cut off from your home city, your cards are replaced with 4 new ones: The ironclad, a combo between the frigate and the monitor, a medium shipment of militia, 4 Gatling guns (Which can also be trained at foundries) or a fort wagon. That's right, as soon as you age up, you can have infinite forts. Kinda makes the native american tribes pale in comparison, right? In addition, the europeans get 2 new buildings. Native embassies (Basically an easy way to train native soldiers) and a saloon, which lets you train mercenaries. The war chief game also adds 2 new campaigns, but once again, it's predecessor had lots more than that, and those were actually historically accurate. At least these campaigns don't have magic in them like that "Fountain of Youth" s*** we got in AOE III. Or at least not as much magic. The game also adds a new ability called stealth. Sounds pretty cool. So, stupidly, I bought a "shipment of some stealthy sneaky spies" Excited, I cloaked by guys, planning to send them into his base and assassinate his leader (Which was a faulty plan anyways, they still haven't made the enemy AI smart enough to not send their explorers on suicide missions, ransom them back, or make any attempt to rescue them once they've gotten killed by a stray kitten) Turns out "Turn invisible to enemy sight" means "Turn invisible until you walk within the line of sight of any of his units" So apparently at the generous price of only walking at half speed, I get to turn invisible until I reach the spot where I would have been spotted without the cloak anyways. All in all, if you got tricked into buying the original AOE III, this may alleviate your pain, but only slightly. Personally, I wouldn't pay any more than $10 for this. Luckily I was not fooled into buying their second expansion which looks like it, once again, was just adding civs that were already in AOE II and ITS expansion, both of which could be found at the dollars store, sometimes packaged together.