When comparing 0 A.D. vs Age of Empires III, the Slant community recommends Age of Empires III for most people. In the question“What are the best LAN party PC games?” Age of Empires III is ranked 36th while 0 A.D. is ranked 40th. The most important reason people chose Age of Empires III is:
Age of Empires III features a new and unique card-based system that allows for you to deploy additional units and resources from your Town Hall. By eliminating enemy units and buildings, you are awarded experience, which not only goes toward your City Level (allowing you to purchase more cards out-of-match), but allows you to activate a card in-game. These cards can grant you additional soldiers, increase gathering speed of Banks and Workers, or even a fort that you can deploy anywhere in the map.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Free, Real-Time Strategy title actively being developed
Still currently in development, 0 A.D. is currently in Alpha stages and completely free. For those willing to wade through the multiple bugs, essentially testing the title, this game will scratch the itch of any RTS fan on a shoestring budget.
Pro Multi-platform support
The game will run on any Operating System, whether it be Linux, OSX, or Windows, which is great for people who dual-boot or use multiple OS's across their devices. No matter the OS used, one can install and play this game.
Pro Addictive Age of Empires style gameplay
This game can be seen as a spiritual successor to Age of Empires, thus it will provide similar gameplay to those who are familiar with the AoE series.
Pro Straightforward RTS gameplay
0 A.D. brings recognizable, straightforward, Real-Time Strategy gameplay to the players. With a mini-map in the bottom corner, resources shown in a bar at the bottom, and unit selection through double clicking, all of the major elements found in most RTS games is here, making for a very familiar game for those that are used to the genre.
Pro Code is open-source
Even if the current developer team chooses to no longer work on the game, others can keep contributing to the source code and modify it.
Pro Active development
By being in active development the game allows for frequent bug fixes as well as frequent new content. While it is still in alpha, the state of the game playability is pretty good with new features being added all the time.
Pro Card-based upgrades and reinforcements add more to each match
Age of Empires III features a new and unique card-based system that allows for you to deploy additional units and resources from your Town Hall. By eliminating enemy units and buildings, you are awarded experience, which not only goes toward your City Level (allowing you to purchase more cards out-of-match), but allows you to activate a card in-game. These cards can grant you additional soldiers, increase gathering speed of Banks and Workers, or even a fort that you can deploy anywhere in the map.
Pro Graphics-gameplay balance
It is difficult to find good real time strategy games with aesthetics. Its high resolution graphics combined with fairly good RTS experience makes Age of Empires III a rare gem. Its AI and gameplay may not be up to the mark when compared to its predecessor, but still provides you a fair challenge.
Pro Good selection of areas to play in
There are 8 (14 with the two extensions which are inside the "complete edition" Steam is selling) different nations that the player can choose to lead to victory, each with their own different looking areas to explore. This makes for a good mix of differentiation of play depending on what the player chooses to use.
Pro Wide selection of missions
Players will see many different missions ranging from rescue missions to defensive missions. What is even better is that many of these types of missions will be mixed together into one, so there is a varying structure to each making for a different feeling to each.
Cons
Con Currently in alpha
0 A.D. is an ongoing open source project that is as of yet feature complete.
Con Slow development
0 A.D. is an ongoing open source project that is as of yet feature incomplete. This game is still in Alpha version 23 Ken Wood as of September 2020.
Con Easily manipulated AI
During AI skirmishes, you can easily fortify your location with walls, cannon towers, and forts, ensuring that the AI continually sends large armies to their deaths. The AI will also only send their units to one certain spot of your base, thus you will always know where they will come from and which portion to build defenses at. Once your base is fortified enough, you can simply farm for experience, until no more can be gained, and then easily wipe your AI opponent out, making for one-note style of play
Con Strategy is highly lacking
Any hope of strategic depth in Age of Empires III is quickly dashed as many Multi-Player games quickly devolve into matches based solely upon amassing a large, singular army and throwing it at the enemy base ad infinitum. While the game does attempt to make terrain weigh in on how you can move your army, it serves only to restrict certain units from moving on it, and little else. Terrain does not affect sight or range of units, and acts solely as a placebo to make players think there is some strategic advantage if they don't know otherwise.
Con Could use better sound cues
Keeping track of ones units can become a difficult job (but a fun one) and having audio cues of when something is happening to your units could greatly help in this area, sadly there is very little of this in the game and could have been utilized better.