Age of Empires III "Demo FAQ/Walkthrough"

By Mykas0
Mykas0 [at] gmail.com
version 2.0
18-4-2006

BE SURE TO READ THIS FIRST PART! You can read this faq as long as you
don't change ANY part of it (including this small introduction). Also,
you can print it but only for use at your home, you may NEVER sell
this stuff or else you will make me really mad and maybe I won't work
anymore! Finally, if you want to use this faq on your site you have to
mail me and ask me for it, I will almost surely grant it to you! =)

0. Introduction
1. Main Features of this demo
2. Shortcut keys
3. Campaign Mode
4. Skirmish Mode
5. Bugs and glitches
6. Frequently Asked Questions
7. How can I surpass level 9 in the demo?
8. Codes
B_END. Special Thanks
END. Contacts

0. Introduction

I've got to admit that I am not a big fan of this type of game, but I
really enjoyed playing Age of Mythology and its expansion, so I thought
about giving this one a free try in the demo. Since I was feeling like
writing a faq and I had some free time, I've chosen to write for this
game, but please understand that I'm not a pro in this type of game.
However, I'll try cover as many aspects of this product as possible, and
hopefully all your questions will be answered in this guide.
Also, this guide now tries to cover as many aspects of version 1.1 of the
demo as possible, but don't forget that in such a version you can only do
some few new things, and the interface has only been slightly changed.

1. Main Features of this demo

Like said in the first menu that you will find in the demo itself, in this
version you can access Campaign and Skirmish modes:

- In the first, you can get to play 2 "levels" of the third part of the
story and see 3 different cutscenes;

- On the Skirmish mode you can choose to play with the British or with the
Spanish in 2 different scenarios (Texas and New England) in 1v1 battle,
but you can also level up your Home Cities, improvements which will be
kept for the next time you play, even in the demo;
- On demo version 1.1, you can pick the option "Learn how to play", in
which you will be able to pick from 2 options and they will (in the
first) tell you how to play the game and (in the second) let you play a
single scenario where you will be guided to the victory. Since those 2
options can be easily understood and everything, they won't be covered
in this faq. However, if many people asks for it, I'll also cover it in
here.

If you get into the Multiplayer mode you will get a notice saying what
new things this game will feature when the final version is released. To
exit, just click "Close" on the lower right corner.

On "Help and Tools", clicking "About" or "Scenario Editor" will just take
you to a single screen where you will be able to read more information,
but by clicking "Options" you will be taken to the menus where you can
change most of the settings available in this demo, an option that you
should explore if you feel like changing some things.

2. Shortcut keys

These should be used while in the middle of playing a level, most people
(like me) hardly ever use them but more advanced players seem to like
them, so that's why I've chosen to include them in this faq.

Basic ones:
SPACEBAR – Center View on Selected Unit
ALT – Display Details on Selected Unit
H – Toggle Home City Screen
/ – Cycle Explorers
' – Cycle Ships
. – Cycle Idle Villagers
, – Cycle Idle Military Units
; – Cycle Wagons (Covered Wagon, Fort Wagon, Outpost Wagon, Factory Wagon)

Finder keys (selects the next "unit" of that type):

T – Town Center
CTRL+A – Artillery Foundry
CTRL+B – Barracks or Blockhouse
CTRL+C – Church
CTRL+D – Dock
CTRL+D – House or Manor House
CTRL+F – Fort
CTRL+I – Mill
CTRL+K – Bank
CTRL+L – Plantation
CTRL+M – Market
CTRL+O – Outpost
CTRL+P – Trading Post
CTRL+Q – Field Hospital
CTRL+R – Arsenal
CTRL+S – Stable
CTRL+V – Livestock Pen
CTRL+W – Wall
CTRL+Y – Factory
CTRL+Z – Capitol

Bulding keys (select a Villager, use them to build a "unit" of that type):
A – Artillery Foundry
B – Barracks or Blockhouse
C – Church
D – Dock
E – Town Center (this is for the Explorer only)
E – House or Manor House
F – Fort
K – Bank
I – Mill
L – Plantation
M – Market
O – Outpost
P – Trading Post
Q – Field Hospital
R – Arsenal
S – Stable
W – Wall
V – Livestock Pen

3. Campaign Mode

Here you will be able to play Act III, and you will start by watching a
cutscene that goes by the name of "The Old Coot". Eventually you will
reach the first level, called "Race for the Rails".

"Race for the Rails"

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Build Trading Posts on all the sites along the Trade
Route
SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: Ally with any Native Americans in the area (200 XP
each)

You should start by going left and slightly down with one of your units
(maybe Amelia, since she can also build Trading Post) to reach your first
Native Americans camp in the area, where you should build a Trading Post
to ally with them. Then, have some more units follow the rails until the
find their first place to build a Trading Posts, which obviously they
should use. Then, get all your units back to your camp and start building
an army. Its extention is up to you, but be sure to take as many people as
you can. While doing that, have Amelia circle the map in a clockwise way,
until she finds the end of the railroad (where she can build another
Trading Post nearby) and have her build a Trading Post in there, then
continue going clockwise around the map and you will find the second (and
last) Native Americans camp. When you feel like you're ready, call for the
Minuteman in the Town Center and advance for your enemy, following the
rail road. Eventually you will find the Trading Post that they capture,
which you should destroy (be careful, as it is protected by a fair ammount
of enemy soldiers) and then build your own Trading Post in there. If you
did everything I told you, by now you should have completed this "level".
Well, it wasn't that hard, was it? ;)

Then you get to watch another cutscene, "Beaumont the Prospector" and
eventually you will reach the next "level":
"Hold the Fort"
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Survive until Cooper's men arrive
(later) Destroy all Mexican Army's Town Centers
SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: Upgrade both Trade Routes to Trains (300 XP)

Here, start by sending all your heroes to the south gate, and start
upgrading the routes to trains. Beaumont is just a NPC, but you should be
able to use the other men to protect that game, task which you should keep
on doing until the men arrive. However, be sure to use some of your units
to upgrade the 4 huge white empty spots to Trading Posts, in order to get
more beneficts from the rails. When the reinforcements finally arrive, use
all the Imperial Life Guards to attack the purple Town Center, destroying
it along with the entire town. Then, advance with those some units to the
orange Town Center, which you should also destroy, and then do the same
thing for the entire town. Now, you should use the rest of the
reinforcements to march for the red Town Center and aim specifically for
their town center, ignoring the rest of the town. By doing so you will
easily destroy it, causing you to win this "level" as easily as the one
before it.

Now you get to see the "A Risky Decision" cutscene, which is the final one
in this demo version of the game. Now, if you still feel like playing the
game, it's time for you to check the "Skirmish Mode".

4. Skirmish Mode

There isn't much I can say about this section, except that the first time
you enter it you will be able to create your town, and from there on you
will also be able to do it BUT you will have some slightly more trouble.
So, when entering it for the second, third, forth (and so on...) times you
will be able to see this:
- Manage Home Cities
- Choose New Cards
- Build a Deck

|Play| |Back|

"Manage Home Cities" lets you select, create or delete cities.

"Choose New Cards" allows you to acquire new cards by using the points you
currently have.

"Build a Deck" lets you see what cards you already have, and add/remove
them from your deck.

"Play" takes you to the next screen, while "Back" obviously takes you BACK
into the main menu.

By pressing "Play" you will be taken to the next screen, where you will be
able to pick the color of your team, and the computer personality, apart
from more options like the Difficulty, the Game Speed or even the scenario
you want to play in. Then, you will finally start playing and from there
it's up to you and your own strategy. Don't get me wrong, but only you can
know what options you've chosen, what units you like more, what scenario
you picked, your favourite difficulty mode and so on...

However, some people started sending me a couple strategies, so they will

probably get published around here if I get more of them:

Strategy by MEGAginge:
"
I have a decent skirmish strategy that seems to work very well with the
British, even on hardest with slight modification.

This is pretty much exactly how I have been playing it:

Send your hero out to rush their TC, they cant do much about that - even
on moderate or hard. withdraw him when hes close to death, at which point
keep him near the indian camp.

How I did it was simply take the default wood, build a market, use the
market to get the resources u need for the first wood upgrade. send
everyone wood hunting, every time u have 150, build a manor house. every
time u level, order more wood or 2 villagers (Assuming age 1)

U will easilly have 30 villagers before u could have 15 if u went for

food. After you have about 12 on wood, send the rest deer hunting, send
any sheep u find back to the TC. Make sure to do the very cheap first
level hunting upgrade also from the market. I sent my hery.

At your next level up after having 6+ on hunting food, take the 300 food
bonus, and immediately research to age 2. have your hero build a trading
post by the indians, as well as 1 of the 4 post points.. while this
upgrade is taking place. you should have well over 1k spare wood at this
point, so np. As soon as u hit the second age, use the market to get the
resources you need to upgrade the trading post, and have it producing
gold. At this point you want to spawn about 5 settlers to go gold mining
as well as sending 2 or 3 of the wood gatherers onto that task. upgrade
their mining ability.

Now, if your english, get a stable and an archery range. balls to the
barracks. You can pump out about 5 longbowmen probably... so do so. dont
use them yet. u should b close to leveling by now, so get 6 more
longbowmen when you do.

At this point you may need to make a mill, depending on how your food is
going. Consider spawning about another 4-5 settlers too, but most likely
you have plenty of wood and gold, only food is an issue. you could take a
second trading post, and switch them both to food production to help this.

Back at the indian base, do the upgrade to get 1 siege unit for every
2mins of play. assuming its taken you 12-14mins to get here, thats 7. get
them to meet the longbowmen, and add 5 or 6 hussars to that.

send this force in, and its game over - unless your very unlucky.
"

5. Bugs and glitches

This is a list of bugs and glitches that I've found in the demo so far, so
perhaps (and hopefully) those will be corrected in the final version!

- The chariots/guys which follow the trading route always continue their
path, even if they find a circle point where they should head back;

- The trains seem to slow down the game when they are reaching the end of
the line, and they can continue their way after reaching the end of its
path;

- Some treasure guardians will sometimes run from you and have all their
hitpoints back, making them really hard to kill with few units (this
seems to have been fixed in version 1.1 of the demo);

- Sometimes your units (or, most likely, the enemy ones) won't do anything
at all or, even worse, do things they weren't supposed to;

- "Garrison Unit" option doesn't seem to work;

- You can't delete unfinished buildings, which can be really annoying

sometimes (this seems to have been fixed in version 1.1 of the demo);

- When you call for units by using a card, sometimes they won't show up,
this seems to be more frequent with some units than with others;

- Units can cross others, which is really obvious when all your units
seem to be able to cross a train;

- The Iroquois Axe thrower unit is invisible except for their axe;

- Outlaw rifleman and pistolers have 0 attack;

- Using the trainer, you can keep on advancing, eventually reaching a

point in which lots of new cards would be available. Some of them
can't be normally used, like the one to get a Factory, but this can
be corrected to a point by using an unofficial trainer;

- The pirates are extremely glitchy, they don't attack when you attack
them and the way they move is extremely strange;

- Sometimes it turns out impossible to finish the level, even if you

already completed all the objectives, but this bug appears to be
quite rare (this seems to have been fixed in version 1.1 of the demo);

- Sometimes almost all the sounds stop being heard, and there's no way
to fix it, I guess.

6. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: When will the final game be released?

A: Latest information say 25th of October for the USA and 11th of
November to Europe, but they may still change it.
Q: My unit appears to be stuck in the scenario, what can I do?

A: Nothing really, except for killing it.

Q: Are there any cheats in the demo?

A: Yes.

Q: I am having problems with the demo, what should I do?

A: Check the "Readme" file where you installed the game, that has the
solution to some problems and hopefully it can solve yours.

7. How can I surpass level 9 in the demo?

If you keep on playing the demo, eventually you will find that you can't
level up your city above level 9. This is impossible to do "normally",
but by using a certain "trainer" you can do it. So, you can currently
search for a Trial Enhancement on, for example, Google.com , and you
may find some interesting programs that allow you to bypass that strange
level 9 of the demo.

8. Codes

As I was James McCrickerd, appears that some of the cheat codes from the
final version of the game actually seem to work in this demo version. The
following ones actually worked in the version 1.1 of the demo, but I
couldn't try it in the first version of it, but they probably also work in
there.
So, here comes the list of codes. In order to use these, simply press
ENTER in the middle of the levels and input the text (without the quote
marks) in that text box.

---- "A recent study indicated that 100% of herdables are obese"
Fattens all animals on map

---- "Give me liberty or give me coin"

Gives 10,000 coin

---- "Medium Rare Please"

Gives 10,000 food

---- "<censored>"
Gives 10,000 wood

---- "Nova & Orion"

Gives 10,000 XP

---- "X marks the spot"

Reveals map (fog of war still there)

A special thanks to the people who submitted these codes to Gamefaqs.com ,

they are also credited in the next section of this guide.

B_END. Special Thanks

I want to thank these people:

- Everyone who likes my works here on gamefaqs, it's for those people
that I like to work in this type of project;

- People who rejected to go out with me these days, this way I stayed
home, played this game and took the time to write this faq;

- Rchosen and Zoobaz, for information on how to pass above level 9 in

this demo version of the game;

- Ryan Murphy, Thijs Wezendonk, Ian Jackson, Johan Dagman and everyone
from the boards for more bugs;

- James McCrickerd, for telling me that some of the codes from the final
version could be used in the demo.

- mrxedo, LilPros and Bloody maces for submitting to Gamefaqs the codes
used in this guide.

- Everyone who sent strategies, they will be credited in its proper

section, just near what they contributed;

- BethanyM and CjayC, for inspiring me to continue.

End. Contacts

If you want, you may see my web page, just check it at the HTML
address www.geocities.com/Mykas0/ .
My e-mail is Mykas0 [at] gmail.com , use the following subject or I will
NEVER reply.

Subject: "AOE3 DEMO" for asking anything or providing me some information

Thanks and until the next version!!!!!!