I have written several times in the Parallels blog about my most favorite game franchise of all time: Age of Empires (Here, here, and here). Since Age of Empires is a Windows game, when I want to play it, I use a Windows virtual machine (VM) in Parallels Desktop – and that is why I write about Age of Empires here.
“Parallels PC 的启动速度比实际的 PC 还要快，真是令人震惊。在 MacBook Air 上双击 Parallels 图标，6 秒就能打开 Windows。”David Pogue，The New York Times “纵观所有在 Mac 上运行 Windows 的方法，Parallels Desktop 是我最喜爱的，因为它的操作非常简便。. I have written several times in the Parallels blog about my most favorite game franchise of all time: Age of Empires (Here, here, and here).Since Age of Empires is a Windows game, when I want to play it, I use a Windows virtual machine (VM) in Parallels Desktop – and that is why I write about Age of Empires here.
The last few years have seen a real resurgence in Age of Empires. (“There likely has never been a more vibrant community around this 21-year-old game,” said Jonathan Bolding). Newly released versions of Age of Empires I and Age of Empires II, called Definitive Editions, have fueled this resurgence and I have really enjoyed playing them on my Mac with Parallels Desktop. So, when I was asked if I would like to play the about-to-be-released new Age of Empires III Definitive Edition a few days before its release, I jumped at the chance. Age of Empires III has some major differences from its predecessors, and the new Definitive Edition adds two new cultures, Sweden and Inca. The two new home cities for these new cultures are shown in Figure 1.
- On my MacBook Air, I’m up and running in Windows six seconds after I double-click the Parallels icon.” David Pogue, The New York Times “Of all the ways to run Windows on a Mac, Parallels Desktop is my favorite because it just works.
- Nick Dobrovolskiy, Parallels SVP of Engineering and Support, said the company is 'eager to try' the new app on the M1-equipped MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini.
We are proud to collaborate with Microsoft and officially support AoE III DE as a platform for playing this game on the Mac.
I used Age of Empires III Definitive Edition on two different Macs: a MacBook Pro and an iMac, both using the same Windows 10 VM. The machine specs and the VM settings are shown in Figure 2.
As expected for any game with “Definitive Edition” in its name, the graphics have been dramatically improved. (Figure 3 and 4).
On both the MacBook Pro and the iMac, the Age of Empires III Definitive Edition game gave me the warning that it couldn’t detect sufficient video RAM (Figure 5).
Undoubtedly, this is because Parallels Desktop allocates video RAM for the VM out of Mac system memory and it will provide the video RAM that an app needs (Figure 6), but the game had no way of knowing this. This warning can be ignored, and I detected no issues related to video memory.
Parallels Desktop Macbook Air 2020
At first launch, Age of Empires III Definitive Edition also checks the performance of the hardware, and Figure 7 shows the result of this performance check on my iMac. Please note the CPU score of “Very High” and the GPU score of “Ultra High”.
Because my GPU was rated “Ultra High”, for the Age of Empires III Definitive Edition screenshots (Figure 3 and 4) and the game play video (Video 1), I set all the graphics options to their maximum settings. As you can see in the video, the game play was fine, and the game never froze or crashed.
Now I freely admit that the Macs I used were high-end Macs. I would not recommend that you try to play Age of Empires III Definitive Edition, for example, on a four-year-old MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM. The suggested minimum requirements for a Mac to run Age of Empires III Definitive Edition are:
- Processor: Intel processor, Core i5, i7 or i9
- Memory: 16 GB or more
- Storage: SSD drive
- Graphics: AMD graphics card
These are my first impressions of Age of Empires III Definitive Edition after a few days. I look forward to many more days of playing both Age of Empires III Definitive Edition and Age of Empires II Definitive Edition. Watch for another blog post in a couple of weeks.
Age of Empires III Definitive Edition is available now on the Microsoft Store and on Steam. It is $19.99 and is a 34GB download.
Parallels Desktop Macbook Air Keyboard Cover
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