I'm not sure as I always play LAN so the info was just stored on my PC. I usually play AoM now as I quite like the God powers in that game.

There was definately a level system though. You had to choose a name for your Home City before you could start playing and you got experience for every game you played. Everytime you leveled up you could choose a new card for shipment.

This is why I hated AOEIII, the whole "level your city" was quite a shitty idea. I want everything from the beginning, plain and simple. Yes you can get the workshop (or whatever that thing was with the heavy cannons) first time you level, but it should be available the minute I pick a new civ, not much later. The system was just broken. Levellng outside of RPG games is retarded.

i used to love age of empires,then i got rome total war...

I agree, it was really detrimental to the whole AOEIII experience and meant only the hardcore could enjoy the multiplayer. If you're gonna have levelling in an RTS it should really be limited to the heroes like in Warcraft.

^Unit experience in The Battle for Middle Earth was incredibly fun too. Like if you had troops that had killed many enemies, they were the battle-hardened elites of your army. I could hold off tons of rookie troops with a few fully upgraded and leveled regiments^^

I wish unit experience would be used more often in RTS games.

Yes yes that's what I meant. There shouldnt be persistent leveling. COD4 was absolutely ruined by the leveling mechanic as well, as well as many other games which followed the whole "let's make players EARN the stuff they use by playing more" mechanic. And yes, unit experience is fairly cool, however unless you have amazing micro, quite pointless in RTS games.

Coincidence ? (I don't think so)

Age of Empires® III: Complete Collection: Marches into Retailers September 15

http://gamerscoreblog.com/press/archive/2009/09/08/wer435.aspx

Oh no. So u mean this thread is based on press release info that MS laid out for a Age of Empires III compilation and has nothing to do with AoE 4?

Bummer. :/

nice find.
I think is true, Age of Empires was too big to let it die.

But a PC version is a must. Perhaps even only a PC version since don't see many people buying 360 RTS after so many quality failures. And they need a MS dx11 game to brand windows 7 with.

Uh, no, that's when its a bad example.  Because like with a lot of WCIII games, people then focus on building their heroes and not large armies.  It was more like a quazi-adventure/exploration game with everything RTS based supporting your hero.

This was also part of the problem with Age of Mythologies.  Yes, you could play the game normally and build large armies.  But it was also very unbalanced.  Most of the time, it was just safer to either win by turtling in a base and building a wonder or just rushing to a Titan and destroying everything.  Granted, I loved Age of Mythologies, but there comes a point when you have to say that its somewhat unbalanced.

The addition of 'unique' units in AOE3 kind of fused both ideas in one.  The unique units were like heroes, but weren't overpowered.  They could be killed by a small group of units, but their benefits for being in battle were great.  And while you could say that having to level a city makes the game detremental for the 'casual' player...when is an RTS ever been casual frendly?  Any game requires effort if you want to play it effectively, even AOE2.  I doubt you just jumped online and were a master with multiple classes overnight.  Even when playing the computer on anything above easy, you are going to need to play the game more than a few times, and in that time, your city will gain experience (and cards).  And by then, you will advance a city beyond level 20.  Its not hard to have 2 cities beyond level 40 if you are dedicated to the game.

In reality, the game that takes away all these variables is Company of Heroes.  No heroes, no experience, no classes.  Only 4 races and 'objectives' to obtain.  But since it seems the majority of people here are using AOE2 as their initial measure of the perfect RTS, I don't know how even Company of Heroes will fare in comparison.