Age of Empires 3 Deal

I don't know what I have mentioned before, but I (and a group of friends) enjoy playing Age of Empires 2, on a fairly large scale. We have been considering going on to AOE3, but it is slightly expensive, and requires very fast computers. The other main flaw is the home city "feature" which makes multiplayer games grossly unfair, based on how much time you have spent playing, not skill. Anyway, the main point of this post is to point out that Circuit City has the collector edition for only $35 ( link, thanks Techbargains.).

On another note, AOE3 does have an interesting feature. The configuration and savegame files are based on xml, and are done  in such a way that it is fairly obvious what each line does. This makes hacking fairly easy, with only a text editor.  HeavenGames even has a utility which can generate fully unlocked homecities, which should make multiplayer much more fair.  HeavenGames is a great site, strongly recommended, if you are into RTS games.  ESO and Microsoft also have a couple sites, with demos,forums, patches, etc. If you are really dedicated, you might even want to try your hand at random map creation. One useful tidbit of information that is hard to find, is that savegames are now found in a sub directory of "My Documents" (under Microsoft Games/Age of Empires 3 if I remember right, I'm using Linux right now), so you want to put any adjusted home cities there.

For those less interested in games, I should have something else for the weekend. This blog has been a little game centric lately.