My boss gave me a copy of Age of Empires III for Christmas so that he'd have an opponent to play against online. We played AOE II with a few other cow-orkers a couple of years ago and had lots of fun, but I hadn't played in a long time, so this seemed to him like a good excuse to get me started again. Unfortunately for me, I get addicted to real-time-strategy games rather easily, and I've been playing AOE III too much recently. So far, I'm undefeated against my boss (maybe not the best career move, but wtf), and I owe my quick startup in gaming strategy to this book. It does a better job of outlining the differences between the various civilizations than the AOE III manual, and it provides some useful tips for getting a strong economy going quickly at the beginning of a game.