{"id":813,"date":"2007-12-06T12:54:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-06T16:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2007\/12\/06\/asian-dynasties-review\/"},"modified":"2007-12-06T12:54:21","modified_gmt":"2007-12-06T16:54:21","slug":"asian-dynasties-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2007\/12\/06\/asian-dynasties-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Asian Dynasties Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

My review of Age of Empires III: Asian Dynasties<\/a>\"\"<\/em> can be found on Gameshark<\/a>. Better late than never.<\/p>\n

The long and short of it is that the Asian nations are very powerful. Their explorers are better so they can get the early treasures faster. They age up with wonders, some of which have special powers, like the instant healing temple or the super fort.<\/p>\n

They are also very colorful. Indian swamis riding elephants, Mongol horsemen, cannons on elephants, samurais, sharp pokey things on elephants. All the time spent on unit and building design was well worth it.<\/p>\n

But it’s not as good as Warchiefs<\/a>\"\"<\/em> was.<\/p>\n

As I wrestle with 2007 – The Year of The Expansion, I realize that the ghost of Warchiefs<\/em> now hangs over how I look at expansions. It used to be good enough to get a new race, some new maps and maybe some interface changes. But Warchiefs (and Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots<\/a>\"\"<\/em> before that and the Civ IV<\/a>\"\"<\/em> expansions<\/a>\"\" most recently) have primed me to expect more twists from an expansion, something that alters how you see and play the game.<\/p>\n

Asian Dynasties<\/em> doesn’t quite do that. As I note in the review, it almost sits beside the core game – totally different rules and unique options for a quarter of the nations. It replaces as much as it expands, but doesn’t really force you to make new calculations if you are playing one of the older powers. It’s a good expansion – very good – but where Warchiefs<\/em> made me think of new ways for Russia to play, since I could be facing both a standard European power and the freaky Aztec army, Asian Dynasties just pokes the “cool stuff” button.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My review of Age of Empires III: Asian Dynasties can be found on Gameshark. Better late than never. The long and short of it is that the Asian nations are very powerful. Their explorers are better so they can get the early treasures faster. They age up with wonders, some of which have special powers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[29,59,108,6,41],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-d7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}