Overview
Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery is a strategic board game for two to six players (with the expansion) about the discovery and colonization of the New World in the late 15th Century. Glenn Drover, he of Railroad Tycoon fame, is the designer, publishing the game under his new company label, Tropical Games. Each player will take on the role of a colonial power, exploring and exploiting the New World for colonization and commercial opportunities. Players gain victory points (VPs) for discoveries, colonies, income, and capital buildings. The winner will be the one with the most points at the end of the game. Playing time will definitely vary depending upon the number of players; with fewer you can expect ‘bout 90 minutes to a couple of hours but our six player sessions have came in around the 3-hour mark and our five player games take about 2.5 hours. NOTE: There are several others who have said their 5-player games are taking only two hours, so it may just be that our group is a bit slower in playing (we tend to table talk a good bit).



Out of the Box
The game comes in a very large box, similar in size to the Railroad Tycoon box; it’s a little on the flimsy side, but it holds everything comfortably. There’s literally a plethora of components: a game board, lots of playing pieces (300 in the standard game, 360 with the expansion), 10 plastic brown merchant ships, 90 plastic coins (50 silver, 40 gold), 46 trade good counters (11 commodities), 34 Capital Building tiles, 16 Discovery tiles, 16 Discovery cards, and a rulebook. The first thing that you’ll probably notice is the plastic playing pieces; I have the expanded version (allowing for a 6th player) and there are 60 playing pieces in each of 6 colors (red, blue, yellow, green, orange, and black). Some folks have expressed their preference for wooden blocks, but I really like the plastic pieces and I think they enhance the theme. As far as nations go, red is supposed to reflect England, while the French are blue, Spain yellow, Portugal green, and Holland orange. If you have the extra playing pieces (either black or white), the designer (in a post here on BGG) gave the Italian states and Denmark as potential Colonial powers.

The game board is fairly large and displays several event boxes, along with a turn order track, a time track, and a map displaying the New World territories awaiting discovery. The map is nicely illustrated and adds to the theme, but I think the territories should be a bit larger as they can get crowded in games with more players. There’s also a small victory point track, added just before publication, which goes around the edge of the board. You can tell the VP track was a last-minute addition, as it is very small and can be hard to read. The counters and tiles are made from good stock but the Discovery cards are sort of on the flimsy side. The numbers on the trade counters do not show value, but rather reflect how many of each type are available. The merchant ships are nicely done and look very cool. The coins are also well done and very thematic; it would’ve been nice if they could be stacked though. The rulebook covered the rules pretty thoroughly and was well illustrated with several examples of game play. As a whole, I was pretty much pleased with the components, as I thought they enhanced the exploration/colonial theme.



The Specialists
While 30 of the 60 playing pieces of each set are your basic Colonists, the other 30 are comprised of four types of Specialists broken down as follows: 10 Missionaries, 10 Soldiers, 5 Captains, and 5 Merchants. Specialists are earned (or purchased) either by placing a colonist in the Specialist event box or as a benefit of owning certain Capital Buildings.

Specialists have certain advantages when placed in certain event boxes during the course of the game. Missionaries have extra value only when placed on the Colonist Dock; when they arrive in the New World, they instantly produce an extra colonist in the territory in which they are placed. Soldiers have extra value on both the Colonist Dock and the Discovery Box. Once placed in a colony from the dock, Soldiers can be used during the Warfare Phase to remove an opponent’s piece; also, when used in a successful expedition, Soldiers generate extra plunder. Captains are handy in both the Discovery and Merchant Ship event boxes as they are worth two Colonists each when placed in either. Merchants also count as two Colonists when placed in the Merchant Ship box; they also generate a one-time income of $5 when placed in a colony from the Colonist Dock. Specialists, except for Soldiers, were not meant to be limited in number; once placed within a colony, you may replace them with normal Colonists and return them to your general stock.



The Capital Buildings
The 34 Capital Building tiles are divided among three different types as follows: 11 First Age buildings, 13 Second Age, and 10 Third Age. There are usually 5 Capital Buildings for sale each turn (some turns there could be less than 5) and their cost is dependent upon the Age. Age I buildings cost $10, in Age II it’ll be $14, and Age III buildings will run you $20. You purchase buildings by placing a Colonist within the Capital Building event box. Buildings that are sold each turn are replaced by buildings of the current Age; when a new Age dawns, all buildings still left for sale from the prior Age are discarded and replaced by 5 new buildings of the ascending Age.

Capital Buildings’ powers can vary; as a rule, they generally get a little bit stronger in each Age. Some will increase your income and some will give you victory points, while others will allow you to place specific Specialists or extra Colonists each turn. While the Age I & II buildings are more slanted towards income and Specialists, the Age III buildings are more focused on victory points.



Set Up
Find a large table/playing area (this game can take up good bit of space) and unfold the board in the center. Randomly place a face-down Discovery tile in each region, except for the Caribbean; place the corresponding trade good counter in each region as well. Place 5 random Age I Capital Building tiles along the top of the board. Place 4 random trade good counters next to the Trade Goods event box. Place a Merchant Ship in the Merchant Shipping event box. A Merchant Ship will also be place on the turn 1 space (under Age I) on the time track. If less than 6 players are playing, yet another Merchant Ship will be placed on the Colonist Dock; it will be placed on the space whose numerical value equals the number of players multiplied by 2. In effect, this will limit the number of colonists that can be deployed each turn; for example, if 4 players are playing, a Merchant Ship will be placed on the ‘8’ space on the dock, meaning that a maximum of 7 Colonists (not counting possible effects of certain Capital Buildings) can be placed in the New World each turn. Shuffle the Discovery cards and keep them within reach.

Each player will select a color to play and take the appropriate pieces, along with $10 in coins (Gold = $10, Silver = $1). All players will give up 2 of their Colonists for administrative purposes; one will be placed at the start of the scoring track while the other will be randomly placed upon the Turn Order track. Players will receive extra money determined by subtracting 1 from their turn order position; hence the first player will receive nothing while the sixth player will receive $5 (NOTE: There is an alternate starting ruleset, involving an auction, for advanced players included in the rulebook). Each player will set aside 5 Colonists in preparation for placement during the first turn. The first player on the Turn Order track will begin play. The game starts with the Caribbean having already been discovered (hence no Discovery tile) and ready for colonization.



Game Play Summary
The game is played over 3 Ages comprising of 8 turns, with the first two Ages having 3 turns each and the last Age having just 2. At the start of a turn, each player, in turn order, will alternate placing one Colonist or Specialist in an open space within one of the Event Boxes (Initiative, Colonist Dock, Trade Goods, Merchant Shipping, Capital Building, Discovery, Specialists, and Warfare). After each player’s available pieces have all been placed, each event box is resolved. Then each player’s income will be determined, followed by Capital Building benefits. This will be followed up by refreshing the trade goods, buildings, the merchant ship, as well as the turn order. Each player will set aside 5 Colonists for placement in the upcoming turn and the turn marker will be advanced one space. The Colonies are scored after each Age; the rest of the scoring will not be tallied until the end of the game.



Placement & Resolution
The first phase of your turn is placement, during which you will, in turn order, place 1 Colonist or Specialist in one of the following event boxes (listed by order of resolution): Initiative, Colonist Dock, Trade Goods, Merchant Shipping, Capital Buildings, Discovery, Specialists, and Warfare. Within the Merchant Shipping and Discovery event boxes, there is no restriction on the number of Colonists/Specialists placed; in all others however, only one piece per space within each event box is allowed. Players will alternate placing a piece until all available pieces for that turn are used.

The Initiative box is numbered from 1 to 6 and pieces put there must be placed, from left to right, in the first vacant box; this will decide the turn order for the following turn. Upon resolution, you’ll also receive money equal to the numerical value of the space on which you placed your piece; for example, if you put a Colonist on the ‘3’ space, you’d get $3.

The Colonist Dock has spaces numbered from 1 to 11, along with a couple of spaces labeled ‘X’ and ‘Y’ (these two spaces are only used when certain Capital Buildings are in play). As stated above, the actual spaces available will depend upon the number of players. When placing a piece, you must put them on the first available number, in ascending order. Pieces placed here will deploy to the New World when resolved, in placement order. The first player to place 3 Colonists/Specialists within a colony claims the trade good indigenous to that region.

The Trade Goods box consists of 4 spaces; when placing you must put your piece in the first vacant box, going from left to right. This box is resolved in placement order, with the first player selecting his/her choice of trade goods, and so on.

The Merchant Shipping box is more like a pool; if you want to place there you just put a piece anywhere within in the box. When resolving, the player who has the most Colonists (remember, Captains & Merchants count as 2 when placed here) wins the Merchant Ship. Ties will break in the favor of the player who is earliest in the current turn order.

The Capital Buildings box consists of 5 spaces; as with trade goods, you place your piece here, from left to right, in the first available box. This box is also resolved in placement order, with the first player buying the building of his/her choice, followed by the second player, and on down the line. Unlike trade goods, buildings must be purchased and the price depends upon the Age in which it is bought. Note that some buildings will give you immediate benefits upon purchase.

The Discovery event box is similar to the Merchant Shipping box in that it’s more like a pool and you can place your pieces anywhere within the box. However, you’re not competing against your opponents that also place there; basically this is a holding area for expeditions into undiscovered regions. When this box is resolved, each player having placed there decides, in turn order, whether or not they wish to go on an expedition. If they do not elect to, their pieces will stay there for another turn. If they choose to go, they must decide which region they wish to explore and how many of their Colonists/Specialists within the box will go. Once they choose a region, they flip over that region’s Discovery tile and, if they have sent enough pieces (must be equal to or greater than the number of natives on the tile), they successfully discover the region and it’s open for colonization. They take the number of coins shown on the tile, in addition to the extra plunder if they sent any Soldiers on the expedition. They’ll put the tile aside and will count the listed victory points at the end of the game. The conquering nation will get to keep one Colonist in the new region, but all other expedition pieces will return to the general stock. If the expedition fails (i.e., the natives outnumber your expedition), then the tile is flipped back over, and all of your expedition pieces are returned to the general stock. Once all New World regions have been discovered, you break out the Discovery cards, which are just like the tiles, except you cannot colonize these regions.

The Specialists box consists of 5 spaces, 1 space for each of the 4 specialists, and 1 listed as Training. When placing here, you can put your Colonist on any open space. When resolved, you get to set aside the specific Specialist(s), in which you’ve placed a piece, for use in the upcoming turn. If you placed on the Training space, you can pay $5 and set aside the Specialist of your choice.

There are 4 spaces in the Warfare event box, and if placing there, you must put a piece on the first open space, from left to right. When resolving, you must decide if you wish to have a Battle or War. In a battle, you choose a colony in which you have Soldiers and declare the opponent you wish to fight. For each Soldier within the colony, you may remove one of your declared opponent’s pieces from the colony and return it to his/her general stock. If your opponent also has Soldiers in that colony, he/she will do likewise unto you. If you decide to declare war, you must pay $10 (war is costly) and when you declare an opponent, you will fight him (as described above) in every colony in which either of you have soldiers.



Income & Refresh
After event box resolution, each player, in turn order, will receive their respective income. This income is due solely from their trade goods. Any 3 trade goods will generate $1 of income, while a set of 3 will give you $3 and a set of 4 will grant you a whopping $6. Any Merchant Ships you might have collected can be used as wild cards, but you can only use 1 ship per set.

Capital Building benefits will follow the income phase, and will also be done in turn order. You basically collect or act on whatever the building tile bestows. As stated previously, some buildings give you immediate benefits that are enacted upon purchase.

The rest of the turn is basically refreshing and administration. Capital buildings will be refreshed to 5 and when a new Age dawns, all previous Age buildings are discarded and replaced with 5 new Age ones. Any leftover trade goods are placed back into the trade goods pool and 4 new ones are randomly drawn and a new Merchant Ship is placed on Merchant Shipping. Each player will set aside 5 new colonists to place in the next turn. Transfer the pieces played on the Initiative box to the same positions on the Turn Order track; players who did not place on Initiative will keep their relative position among others that also did not place a piece there. Advance the turn marker one space. All the event boxes should be empty of pieces, with the exception of the Discovery box and possibly the ‘X’ and/or ‘Y’ space on the Colonist Dock (due to Capital Building benefits).



Scoring & End Game
Colonies are scored at the end of each Age. Only colonies where at least one player has at least 3 pieces are scored. The player with the most Colonists/Specialists in a colony will receive 6 victory points, while the one with second most will receive 2 points. If there’s two players tied for first, each will get 2 points. No points are awarded if 3 or more are tied for first or if there’s a tie for second. To track the score, each player’s Colonist will be advanced along the scoring track.

The game ends after the completion of the Third Age (aka 8th turn). Once the colonies are tallied, the rest of the VPs are calculated. These points are earned through Trade Goods, Discoveries, and Capital Buildings. First you get points equal to the income you received, through trade goods only, on the 8th turn. Next you count the VPs listed on all Discovery tiles and cards which you’ve collected over the course of the game. Finally, add up all the VPs due to any Capital Buildings you may have purchased. Advance each player’s piece along the scoring track as you score and the one who finishes with the most VPs is ‘Master of the New World.’ If there is a tie, the first tie-breaker is the number of colony VPs earned in the last Age, followed by gold, and then, if needed, the number of trade goods.



Observations
Age of Empires III is a game that’s all about decisions, some of them agonizing, as you’ll have lots of choices to make in the course of one game. Do you focus more on Colonization or Discovery? Do you invest heavily in Capital Buildings or Trade Goods? Do you build up your Economy, allowing you to purchase future buildings and Specialists, at the expense of having your colonies collapse? Which Specialists will best serve you? For what it’s worth, in my experience thus far, I’d have to say that no one strategy will win the game; you’ll more likely have to diversify your strategy in two or more areas. In all of our games to date, with the exception of one, the winning player had at least a moderate presence in the colonies.

That’s not to say that this game is all strategic, as you’ll find yourself making tactical moves in reaction to the moves of your opponents. It’s usually not a good thing to let one player dominate in any one area of the game. For example, in a couple of our games, one player has made a run on the Merchant Ships; in both games, other players saw the danger in that and beat that player to the punch in purchasing the Capital Buildings (Privateers & Navy) capable of enhancing that strategy. Likewise, in other games, when one player was becoming too influential in the colonies, the other players, through either warfare or colonization, brought things back to a more equitable balance.

I also think the game is a bit more strategic with fewer players and a bit more tactical with 5 or 6. With 5 players, and especially 6, the game plays tighter as resources become scarcer and competition is fiercer, as there’s not much breathing room. With fewer players, each has a better chance to focus on his/her particular strategy with less interference from his/her neighbors. To me, this is a rather appealing aspect, as I find the game plays different depending upon the number of players.

While there’s a bit of randomness in the game, I’ve found it doesn’t really bother me much at all. This comes in the form of the Discovery tiles and cards, as well as the random drawing of the trade goods and buildings each turn. The randomness of discoveries bothers me not at all, as I see that as one of the most thematic parts of the game; explorers never knew what they were going to find when they were traveling in undiscovered territories. And if you want to make sure you don’t fail, have at least 5 Colonists when exploring the New World (tiles) and 6 when exploring elsewhere (cards). With trade goods, you can offset a bit of the draw by quickly colonizing those areas which contain a desired trade good, as well as grabbing a Merchant Ship or two to use as wild cards. If there’s a strategy you’re pursuing that relies on a particular Capital Building, you can help yourself out there through proficient use of the Initiative track, as well as conserving your money for those times when it could possibly appear.

As touched on briefly a bit earlier, there were a few nitpicky things I found. While I like the components in general, enlarging the scoring track and the size of each region would’ve improved the game, and the card stock could’ve been a bit better as well. The scoring track is hard to read and we stopped using it after the first game; now we use an improvised scoring track that we made up via PowerPoint. The region size doesn’t bother me quite as much, but there are several regions, primarily New England, Virginia, and Florida, that are small and narrow and can get busy quickly. I recommend using sleeves on the Discovery cards, which should help keep them from getting prematurely worn. The large game box is also sort of on the flimsy side and while mine arrived in very good shape, I’ve read where some folks’ boxes got dented or crushed a bit in the shipping. After seeing a post by another BGG member, I bought a compartment container at Lowe’s to keep all the pieces in. It holds all the pieces comfortably (excluding the board) and, as it fits perfectly in the box, allows me to stack other games on top of it without denting in the box top (NOTE: My case is slightly different from the one pictured below, but you'll get the idea). One last thing on the components that I’d like to mention concerns the coins. After our first session, we’ve played where the gold coins count as $5 instead of $10. This has made it quicker and easier for us to handle money, as we don’t have to distribute such large numbers of the silver ($1) coins. From what I’ve read, several others are playing like this as well, so I’d recommend giving it a shot and seeing how it works with your group.



Conclusions
This is not a game that I was predisposed to like. When I first heard of the game, I couldn't see buying a board game based on a computer game; that just sounded backwards. Even the name sounded quirky to me…a board game with a ‘III’ designation when there was no previous ‘I’ or ‘II’ version??? But after I read some previews on it, my interest was piqued enough to download the rules. After reading through them, I knew this was a game that I just had to try.

All things considered, I think Age of Empires III is an excellent game. There are lots of decisions to make, ample ways to score, multiple paths to victory, and a decent bit of theme to boot. The game can take a little while to play, but there’s such little down time that the time flies by and I never realize how long we’ve been playing. The randomness is not overwhelming and much of it fits with the theme. While it might be a bit on the heavier side, there’s lots of player interaction; most that I’ve introduced this to got into the flow of the game within a few turns and either enjoyed it or were at least intrigued by it. Another plus is that its designer has been very responsive to posts asking questions about the game here on the ‘Geek. As always though, the bottom line for me is that I have a lot of fun playing this game. Age of Empires III has skyrocketed into my personal top 10, all the way up to #2, and I currently rate it an "exploratory" 9.