IMHO, I hope that ES balances the game so well that each nation will have their perks but not to an OP'd extent.

....Failing that - the British all the way!

Economic powerhouse and hopefully, ruler of the waves. I hope they get some decent naval research upgrades and such.

I hope that there will be more to my nation than just the free settlers!

theres no such thing as a "balanced game", one civ will always be better then the others till ES patch, after that another civ will be better and so on... i thing ottomans are looking pretty strong follow strong by the brits....lets wait and see

[This message has been edited by scentless (edited 05-19-2005 @ 05:43 PM).]

Ottomans is the best ! Ottomans FoReVeR ...

Balanced game:

Portugal is way to go.

They are like AOE2 Teutons.

Cant be rushed and strong economy.

(I am guessing here of course )

I suspect that russia will be the unbeatable boomer.. by having the fastest (?) production of villies.
Combine that with the infantry bonus.. for defending siad villies.

And once you have boomed across the map, and filled it with forts/towers noone can resist anymore

Im banking on the Spanish or the British.

The Spanish will get HC support faster which leads to a faster build up of what ever you may need specially in later ages as the HC shipments get bigger.

This British because of thier monster Eco setup...plain and simple.

Although the Portugal have a REALLY nice starting possition with two TCs.

Hell, I don't know...They all seem sweet IMO.

The Dutch!!! Rifled Skirmishers!!

And banks - bye bye relics!

From experience, I'd say it's whatever civ has the best economic and first-age bonuses. Military bonuses are really only secondary in good games.

I dont know how they are gonna make the Dutch strong :S
because in every civ description i saw some plusses and few minors.
But with dutch it says, expensive villies and bank generating some coins and no military bonus at all (at ageofempires3.com)

if a bank is cheap and it generate mmuch coin?

expensive villies, but maybe they also work faster.
maybe very good UU.

but i think they all are equal, but some civs will be good for rushing, others booming

Can't say now, everyone who says something is just plain retarded.

Why are you in here than?

ES will probably balance out each Civ as much as possible so that there is no All Powerful Civ" in this game. Kind of like what StarCraft was like almost.

...it's too early but i feel the Ottomans will be the strongest Civ. so, the frist patch it will be the frist Civ to be NERFED :P