Age of empires 3 on a macbook?

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hi, first of all sorry if this has been answered i did a quick search and didnt find anything that gave me what i needed.

im getting my macbook for xmas and its the black c2d with 1gb ram 120gb hdd (basically the stock black one) and im wondering if AOE3 will play on it, i know im not going to have the graphics turned right up etc, but if i turn the effects down abit will it play well? or would i be better getting AOE2 for mac?

also (probably a daft question) will i be able to play against my friend whos on a PC online?

lastly, does AOE3 cost anything online?

thanks alot

louie
(excited future mac owner)
 
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I have a feeling that Gameranger (used for AOE2, so I'm guessing it's still used for AOE3) isn't compatible with PC users...I could be wrong there though. Haven't played AOE3 yet, but it seemed fairly graphically intense. If it's Universal Binary, my guess is that it should work OK if the graphics are turned down a little.

I'm yet to try a universal binary game on my macbook, so I'm not really sure of the 'limits' yet. I've tried a few PPC ones, which ran much better on my 3 year old iBook.

Check the Gameranger site for details of whether there are any costs to play online. As far as I know, AOE2 didn't have any - I don't see why they should introduce a payment system for the newer game.

I'm sure others could clear this up better, but I hope this helps for now.
 
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thanks ill have a look about, i think im just going to go with AOE2. how do you think that will run?
 
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There is an AOE3 version for Mac.
Link
I don't know about the graphics. I have a feeling they wouldn't be too horrible with them cranked down a bit, bit I can't say for sure. The online feature should still work because it is within the game, so there shouldn't be a problem with connecting to the AOE servers.
*Not 100% sure of anything*
 

eric


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jeff, looks like that link was specific to your session (didn't work for me anyway)...

you can just search store.apple.com for "age of empires".

i'm guessing that this (bolded) will be the killer:

System Requirements
Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later
1.4GHz or faster PowerPC G4 or G5 or Intel Core processor
512MB RAM
3D graphics card with 64MB VRAM
Internet access or LAN for online play

i can't even get simcity 4 to run very well at all (extremely slow). AOE 2 would probably work a lot better. i'm thinking of trying to find that for myself too.
 
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yeah, I think AOE2 works fine. I put the settings on highest on my macbook, and everything ran fine. Just make sure you get the patch to update it, as without it, some multiplayer games can crash unexpectedly.

I have a feeling though, that since you're playing on a macbook, the screen will stretch from 4:3 to 16:10 (I think that's the macbook ratio...not 16:9). I don't recall having black borders at the edges of my screen - and I'm pretty sure AOE2 didn't have widescreen support. It's not really noticeable though.
 
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ok thanks again mate. is there anyway i can play it so its not fullscreen? so its just in a window? (im not sure if you can do this on windows either) like my girlfriend can have world of warcraft in a window rather than fullscreen.

thanks again for all your help
 
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I don't think you can play in a window. I haven't played it in awhile so not sure. AoE2 will run easily on your Macbook. Can I give you a bit of advice? If AoE3 can run on your Mac I'd buy that instead. I found AoE2 a bit underwhelming.
 

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