Age of Empires - The WarChiefs


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Game Description :
Developer: Ensemble Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Windows Mobile
Genre: Real-time strategy
Theme: Historical
Release Date: June 7, 2007

Synopsis:
The WarChiefs offers several enhancements on Age of Empires III, and as with any expansion-pack you must have the original Age of Empires III installed. The enhancement include three new playable Native American civilizations, new Home City cards, new buildings, a new single player campaign, new units, and several other enhancements. The three new native civilizations are the Iroquois, the Sioux and the Aztecs.

Plot:
Set in a very wide variety of countries and armies to take sides with, the game offers more than 40 real-historical armies. This version of The WarChiefs contains 5 extra countries, which are all Native American civilisations, with a new huge variety of gameplay.
The story based campaign mode on WarChiefs is very similar to Age of Empire 3 campaign, you are given a set of preset objectives, couch as destroying a building of the enemy base, sabotaging or slaughtering an enemy horde and capturing a village of the enemy to your advantage. There are three brand-new Acts, that divide the storyline into three completely different categories in each generation or time set.
Instead of playing as a standard civilisation period like the main game, you will be given a special civilization period that is only playable on there campaign mode, which will be wee linked with the storyline.
The game still offers the old cities from Age of Empires III, such as the English, Spanish Rodeleros, Spanish Lancers, German Ulhans and German War Wagons.
On WarChiefs, you'll have 10 extra campaign missions of all Indian/Native American countries with a brand-new winning mechanic. the set of the wild American field goes perfectly with the WarChiefs storyline.
Instead of going to the Imperial age like in the original, you may choose to have a revolution (which is cheaper, yet riskier). The plot of exploration fits the real time strategy perfectly, and the civilization is very well built.

Gameplay :
In WarChiefs, the gameplay goes exactly the same as in Age of Empires III, if you skip playing as a country such as the Native American countries, you start off every game with one Town Centre, a Town Settler, and 5 villagers. placed in a random map, you are allowed to find and gain resources such as food, wood and gold, in order to create an army to defeat the opponent.
There are five ages for players to develop their civilisations through the gameplay, starting from Discovery Age through to the Imperial Age, which are both for the new civilisations too.
There are a few new features in WarChiefs, starting from the "Revolution" mode, which allows your town to throw a revolution to change every unit and every building to a completely different country, which gives you a huge advantage since all your units including your settlers and your normal villagers will change into a war unit. Although the only disadvantage is, you won't be able to gather any resources anymore since all your villagers will be turned into a war unit. Which makes the Revolution mode very risky and cheap, and something you do in the End Game.
There are also 6 new maps including: Northwest Territory, California, the Painted Desert, Araucania (which have three varieties: Northern, Southern, and Middle), Orinoco, and the Andes. The new maps fits with the WarChiefs and the Native American feel, as there is a new victory condition, called the "Trade Monopoly", similar to the Wonder condition in earlier games, and several new units have been added; most of them are native unique units for the Native American civilizations while some are additions to the European military which were amazing.

Graphics :
Since WarChief was made 2 years after the original version of Age of Empires III, it could of have made much more improvements on the textures and the 3D characters, but still it fits perfectly for a game developed in 2005.
Textures are well-detailed and the characters and the buildings aren't as much of an polygon.
the 3D detention world fits perfectly for this game since the camera angle is stuck on the sky facing down, which provides a great look from above.
Shadows in this game are generated real time using a light source mechanic, which gives the whole wold an great view, even in night. The only thing I don't like about the graphics in this game, is that the colours hurts my eyes in any desert map, because the screen just get painted in reddish orange. Although in fact, the orange scale of the game fits perfectly with the WarChief Native American and the old western desert, I wouldn't give it a thumbs down just for my eye aching.
The new textures of the water in WarChiefs were far more beautiful than Age of Empires III, being able to see the fish and the wale made fishing much more interesting. The exploration of the sea is much better in WarChief than what I've expected. the animation of the sea battles, the ships and the canoes of the Native Americans were very smooth and satisfying.

Controls :
Back in Age of Empires III, they needed to add some hotkey commands and fix the bug issues of the map rotation, which were all fixed in the WarChiefs. New hotkey commands starting from patrolling an picked area or to take command in a stated order was very nice. The fact where you could chose the second command and not just the first command, which allowed you to gather more resources or give you a better understanding of your battlefield. It was the correct thing to implement because it made the gameplay very smooth, a huge step up. I give the controls a full thumbs up on WarChiefs, since you could use your keyboard for a full advantage now.



Ratings :
Plot : 9 / 10
Gameplay : 8 / 10
Graphics : 7 / 10
Controls : 10 / 10

Overall : 8.5 / 10 [A must Buy.]