Experience the Age of Discovery through amazing 3D graphics. Crush your enemies with devastating cannons and rifled infantry. Navigate your naval fleet to claim strategic waterways. Build cities with towering cathedrals, and forge a thriving empire with a booming economy. Your Home City This revolutionary new feature is unlike anything youve experienced before in a realtime strategy game. Much like a persistent character in a roleplaying game, your Home City is a support system that regularly sends you supplies or military reinforcements. As you get better, your Home City becomes stronger, allowing you to unlock new types of soldiers or buildings, broaden your tech tree, and customize the appearance of your city. You can even visit your Home City to watch its citizens, get an opinion on how youre doing, or plot your next move. Combat Age of Empires III gives players an amazing amount of control over their side of the battlefield. Youre in control of large and diverse armies of infantry, cavalry, artillery, Native American warriors, mercenaries, and ships. You can assign different formations to your army, like Volley, Charge, or Bombard, or have the game automatically choose the most appropriate formation for you. The realtime physics cause infantry struck by cannon balls to get thrown like rag dolls, perhaps even over a cliff into the water. Cannon balls bounce and ricochet. Shingles, shutters, and whole towers may fly off a building and interact with the terrain. And, with hundreds of unique combat animations, youll never see the same battle twice. Graphics Age of Empires III isnt just one of the bestlooking realtime strategy games ever, its one of the bestlooking games of any kind ever. Tone mapping gives scenes a photorealistic look by balancing colors in a scene. Units and buildings cast realistic shadows based on the suns position. Water glistens like water, foams near the shore, and reflections change with the viewing angle, the angle of sunlight, and the motion of the water. Steep cliffs jut from the terrain like paintings from the American Southwest. Singleplayer, Multiplayer, and Campaign There are many ways to play Age of Empires III. Play against the computer on random maps. Play multiplayer against friends online, or play the Campaign in which you take the role of Morgan Black and his descendants as they struggle against the hostile wilderness, help the Aztecs resist the Spanish conquistadors, pit the French against the British and help Simon Bolivar lead revolutions in South America.