Age of Empires III - Cheats and Gameplay Hints

Everyone knows that if you place the name "Age of Empires" in a title, it's going to be an instant success and so it happened to the third installment (not counting the expansions) of this monumental game: Age of Empires. The peasants are there but so are the parody cheats we all have come to enjoy over the years. Have a look:

Cheat mode:
Press [Enter] to display the chat window and type one of following codes to activate the corresponding cheat function.

Fatten animals on map - a recent study indicated that 100% of herdables are obese
10,000 coin - give me liberty or give me coin
10,000 food - medium rare please
10,000 wood -
10,000 experience points - nova & orion
Reveal your opponent's buildings and the map, not with line of sight - x marks the spot
Win single player mission - this is too hard
"Musketeer'ed!" when killed by Musketeers - sooo good
100x gather/build rates - speed always wins
Spawns Mediocre Bombard at Home City gather point - ya gotta make do with what ya got
Spawn The Tommynator (big red monster truck) at Home City gather point - tuck tuck tuck

Powerful heroes:
Note: This procedure involves editing a game file; create a backup copy of the file before proceeding. Use a text editor to edit the "proto.xml" file in the "data" directory in the game folder. Search for your hero's first name plus "SPC". For example, for "Amelia", it is "SPCAmelia". You should find something that looks like the following:




The XML tags of interests are as follows:

5.0000
7.0000
18.0000
850.0000
850.0000
24.0000

BuildingAttack
14.000000
Siege
3.000000


DoubleBarrelAttack
750.000000
Ranged
16.000000
3.000000
1.000000
GAIAEnemy


HandAttack
14.000000
Hand
1.500000


MusketAttack
16.000000
Ranged
16.000000
3.000000


Change the above values to create a super hero, as follows.

50.0000
70.0000
68.0000
99999.0000
99999.0000
99.0000

BuildingAttack
9999.000000
Siege
1.000000


DoubleBarrelAttack
9999.000000
Ranged
50.000000
1.000000
1.000000
GAIAEnemy


HandAttack
9999.000000
Hand
1.500000


MusketAttack
9999.000000
Ranged
50.000000
1.000000


Note: Do not set the any of the , , or values too high. This will cause your character to "jump" instantly from one spot to the next because their movement speed is so fast. This makes it difficult to move/track your character around the map. The or rate of fire should be set to a low value. This acts as a delay. The lower the value, the lesser the delay. Note: You can test your changes while the game is running. Just save the current game. Switch over to your text editor. Make changes to proto.xml. Save proto.xml. Switch back to the game, then reload saved game.

Invincible units:
Note: This procedure involves editing a game file; create a backup copy of the file before proceeding. Use a text editor to edit the "proto.xml" file in the "data" directory in the game folder. Find the heading for a unit in the file (for example, "Explorer"). Locate the area below the heading that starts with the tags. Add a new line under that area with:

Invulnerable
DoNotDieAtZeroHitpoints

Easy experience points:
To get easy experience for your home town, start a skirmish. Choose the sandbox difficulty setting and the smallest map. Win the game the fastest way possible. You will receive the usual experience, but can do this as many times as desired, resulting in lots of experience in a short amount of time. If desired, you also use the cheats to win the game easier.

To get easy experience for your home city, enable the tuck tuck tuck code. Get the truck to run over all your enemy's building. When they ask to resign, decline and finish them off completely. You should get about 1,000 to 5,000 experience points, depending on the size of their city or town.

Easy win:
Upgrade Hussars fully and make fifty of them, subtracting one for every other unit you want to take. They are skilled at siege and combat and should annihilate your opponent. Only do this if you do not want to use many cheats. It is a good idea to enable the speed always wins code, as fifty Hussars can take a long time to be created.

At the beginning of Skirmish mode, enable the tuck tuck tuck code. You will get a red monster truck by your Town Center. Use it to run over all your enemies and win. Note: The monster truck has no attack of its own. You must make it run over enemies.

Revealing the entire map:
Save your game and resign. The map will be shown to you as if you had lost. Then, just load the game and keep playing. Note that the map will be shown only between clicking to resign and choosing to quit. It will not continue like this when you start the loaded game.