When comparing Age of Empires III vs Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, 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 Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 is ranked 63rd. 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
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Good graphics and colorful visuals
Pro Fun campaigns for all three factions
There are three factions that the player can choose to play as (Allies, the Soviet Union, and the Empire of the Rising Sun), each with their own story which makes for plenty of gameplay and a different experience each.
Pro Has a co-op campaign
The main campaign was designed with co-op in mind which means you and a friend can play through the main story together.
Pro Long-lasting skirmish single player
Pro I still play this game due to the fun side game.
Cons
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.
Con Game is FPS locked
Framerate locked to the engine at 30 FPS.
Con Occasional pathfinding issues complicate unit placement
Due to slight issues with pathfinding, player units can become stuck at certain parts of the map, causing frustrating situations when those units are needed to be in a particular placement but were unable to do so.
Con AI opponents possess few strategies allowing it to be easily manipulated
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3's AI reuses a limited selection of strategies, which therein allows the player to identify what actions the AI will most likely be performing next. With this knowledge of what the enemy AI will be doing, skirmish matches and campaign missions will be easily beaten, providing little to no challenge for experienced players.