Hey everyone! I built aoe3database.com, a free, unofficial reference for Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition. You don't need an account.

Everything is read from the game files (version 100.19.18309): 699 units, 164 buildings, 2,509 Home City cards and 1,446 technologies for all 24 civilizations, plus 150 maps, 43 native settlements, 30 revolutions, hotkeys, taunts and all 64 cheat codes. Nothing is typed in by hand, and the descriptions are the game's own text.

The part I most want you to test is the math.

• Counters: which unit beats which when both sides spend the same resources. It uses every unit's HP, attacks, damage multipliers, resists and cost across 123 regular units of all civs. The fight is worked out with Lanchester's square law, after the side that shoots further gets its free volleys while the other walks in.
• Civs ranked by their armies: right now Chinese, Spanish, French and Italians are at the top, and Indians, Japanese and Inca are at the bottom.
• Builds for every civ: Colonial rush, Fast Fortress, Boom and Treaty. Each one has the army mix, age-ups, the cards to send in order, and a full deck you can open in the deck builder.

Honest limitations:

• The counters use base stats, so there are no upgrades, splash damage, micro or abilities.
• Range and speed only count for the walk-in. Kiting isn't modelled.
• The civ ranking only looks at how cost-effective the armies are. Economy and map control are left out.
• The builds are not pro build orders, only what the numbers favour.

I fully expect it to disagree with the real meta in places, and that's exactly where I need players.

Also on the site:

• Deck builder: 25 cards, max 10 per age, like in the game. You can start from the game's own decks and share your deck as a link.
• Unit vs unit calculator: pick two units, their upgrades and how many of each. It shows the damage per hit, the walk-in under fire and who is left standing.
• Live ranked ladder stats, refreshed hourly from the game's leaderboard, with a player search: type any name to see its rating, rank and top % on every ladder. As I write this, 1v1 Supremacy has 4,965 ranked players and 2,889 of them played in the last 7 days. The median rating is 1052, and the top 10% start at 1535.
• Every unit, card and tech with its exact stats and effects, plus unit IDs for scenario and modding work.

What I'd love from you:

• Which counter or civ ranking is clearly wrong compared with your games, and why?
• Anything broken, a wrong number, or something missing? Every page has a "Report a mistake" button at the bottom that comes straight to me, or just tell me here.
• What would make you actually keep this open while playing?

Screenshots: the civ ranking, the counter grid, Chinese builds, the deck builder, the unit vs unit calculator and the ladder with player search.

Thanks for trying it!

just looking for friends and people to chat with when im bored. I work remotely so i typically have a lot of down time.

I have been seeing more and more people go fully Royal Horsemen as a strategy in the past weeks. I thought that was weird, but seeing the over-1900 stats that they have, it is understandable. Then I checked the latest release and their base stats have been increased by 300. Which could explain why we see more people going with this strategy. This makes them too strong to counter, in my opinion. What do you guys think? Should the recent upgrade they received be revised?

Mexico should get a San Patricio card that gives Regulars and adds them to Forts. It's consistent with some of their other Harbor cards and references an interesting tidbit of history. For those who don't know, the San Patricio Brigade was a group of Irish-American soldiers in the Mexican-American War who defected to the Mexican army over anti-Irish and anti-Catholic attitudes in the US military.

That's it.

Hope the community likes the drawing, also which CIV should I draw next??

What are your thought on the Sentinels ? Do they Need / could they get a buff ?

I think it’s Kinda sad that a Special Unit only trainable by one civ is skipping their Production to get Bow Pikes. Would love to See some Sentinel Play, but they are Kinda Bad ?
Granted, im neither good Not do I play high ranked, but in Most of the Videos im watching they simply getting skipped.
What are your thoughts on the Unit ? You think they should be better, or are they Fine as they are ?

This fixes the issue that if you select the Tokugawa skin for the Japanese explorer, you just get one monk and the game would eventually crash.

Hey fellas! I finally got to 1400 Elo in 1v1 and I immediately started facing the dominance civs in this stage! So I wanna know how to win against such weird unfamiliar builds like the US Highlanders into Fast IV or the Ottoman FI turtling these shitty stuff I don’t know about it! Especially that I play mostly standard/booming

So what’s your advice to stay in that position -perhaps improving- while keeping my sanity?

I'm having a hard time finding videos about United States builds that are relevant after the highlander, chinese immigrants, and cowboy nerfs. I also noticed that the capitol EXP was nerfed a while ago too. The highlander attack is 30-40s slower, cowboys are weaker, and because I've seen some FI builds rely on the capitol EXP, those builds are slower too.

From what I can tell, the dutch FF is still ok, and the 10/10 Spanish Immigrants FF is also still ok, but what else is there? I'm mostly looking for non-FF builds for variety. For context, I play mostly 2v2, but also some 1v1.

Hi all,

I often play 2v2 with my friend. After games we lost we always look back at the recordings to see what we could have done differently.

Now we had the idea to ask AI for feedback on build orders or strategies. So I’ve made this website last weekend together with Claude that is public with daily limits.

It parses the recording gives an overview of everything that occurred, units produced, age up times, cards sent, unit movements, … which units kills who is unfortunately not part of the recording.

This is all then processed and sent to Deepseek v4.1 flash together with some game knowledge for analysis. Which is then shown in the feedback tab.

We also lookup each players game history and ELO evolution which you can also review.

The Steam sign-in is there to rate limit: the AI model behind the feedback isn't free, so it's 5 uploads and 3 game questions per day per account. If you want more, message me on Discord (Busulle).

Good to know: a recording only holds the commands players gave, so the site can't show kills or scores, and some things are estimates (it says where). Chat is never shown.

It's a hobby project running on a home server, so be gentle. There's a "Report a problem or an idea" link on every page, and I'd love to hear what's wrong or missing.

Link: https://aoe3.udonitus.com/

I only realized when creating this post that https://aoe3explorer.com/ also exists. I thought I had something new lol.

Confiscation is Danes card that gives 300 resources per enemy shipment. If your opponent hits age 2 before you and send a shipment right away, if you then send confiscation, you won’t get any benefit until he gets his next shipment, which can be minutes away. Arriving fast means if your opponent hits age 2 a little faster, Danes still get early benefit from sending confiscation.

i have noticed that the collection rate on european mills and plantations is higher than collection from rice field or african fields

i also noticed that on the wiki for african field it says that all civs have 10% slower collection rate on it.

is this 10% on the wiki the same thing i observed? or is the 10% an independent modifier?

if its independent, is it additive like the other modifiers? or multiplicative?

is the lower yoeld feom these different kind of noneuropean farms technically equal due to no walking on the other farms ?

New player here! I've been playing the game for a month now, and it's pretty fun. I've just reached 1100 Elo, which I think is pretty good for a new player.

I'm currently only playing the Ottomans to master them. In one of my games, during an Ottoman mirror match, the other player had the Silk Road card. I've never seen anyone use it besides him since then. Most other players just go for Capitalism (me included), so I was wondering: is Silk Road bad, or does it require a specific strategy to be worth using?

Thank you!

Hi all!

I've gone back to playing AOE3. However, I am only playing Vanilla (Warchiefs + Asian Dynasties), rather than DE, as I don't have Steam.

Does anyone know how the AI functions on Skirmish, particularly in team games?

I have repeatedly lost in a 3v3 on Northwest Territory (Aztecs + Iroquois and Sioux allies vs. British, Dutch, and Spanish) because I gave my enemy 20% handicap. The reason is, every time I played a team game with no handicaps on either side (I always play on Hard), my team steamrolls the enemy. I recently resigned a game (Orinoco, 4v4 no handicap) because it was so easy, the enemy never even attacked our bases, while my allies kept on raiding theirs.

Why is it that the 20% difference is like oceans of difficulty harder? I am so confused about how the computer handles all this. I want to play a game that is decently challenging, but not unwinnable. I got so frustrated in the 3v3 that I sat there not knowing what to do, because the AI keeps pumping out army after army and eviscerating my troops (he relies a lot on artillery), game after game, and especially due to the weird design of the map where I am at the front base and therefore all 3 enemies will attack my base!

Please help. Thanks.

Maybe this is just a stupid question but if we can't use the flairs of the new civs (poles, danes), it means there are no active mods in the reddit of aoe3?

Hello AOE3 redditors!

A few years back I made a georeferenced AOE3 world map using ArcMap, and since the new DLC came out a few people were asking for an updated version, and tonight I am happy to deliver 😊. I also am sharing some screenshots that suggest three maps we don't have: Balearic Islands, Gibraltar (Spain screenshot), and Ural Mountains (Yamal screenshot). I hope they keep adding maps as this has been a fun project to keep up with (+Oceania civs/maps would be siccc!). Enjoy!

Jaegerchere's Website: https://jaegerchere.com/
First Challenge: https://jaegerchere.com/forums/t/c0131f14-6047-4f40-b930-e175ecf5987f
Treaty Nation League 2v2: https://jaegerchere.com/forums/t/7c192f58-c616-4670-b859-2484ca7a155a
Full Team Registration: https://discord.gg/Ua2JJ2yN