I told my friend to get me a really fun strategy game, he gave me the expansion (all of them) and the original "Age of Empires III"
It's quite fun even though it's old, you know what they say, "The oldest games are the best" to some gamers.
The good thing better then starcraft,
1. You can handle to 75 troops, and unlike SC, the troops reorganize into neat squares of units to units
2. Heroes are really recognizable, and they have better and unique abillities
3. Upgrades are in one building.
4. You can actually make your troops higher in rank, increasing their attacks.
5. An alive campaign
The Bad part,
1. You die easily, Period. I died so many times just from one tiny mistake.
2. Without Expansion, it's not fun, whole entirely
3. Riflemen are kinda overpowered a bit ( Kills calvary too fast)
4. Instead of 2 resources, there is 3.
5. The campaign are LONG you will probably take 5 hours on 1 part.
6. Most annoyingly, the supply thing, there is still 200 supply, not to even mention that many heavy weaponry requires 4 or 6 supply.

Out of all the bads, the game was really fun until the end. and I think people will like this game.

1. You can handle to 75 troops, and unlike SC, the troops reorganize into neat squares of units to units
They also go into many other shapes too.

2. Without Expansion, it's not fun, whole entirely
I disagree with that in all it's entirety

3. Riflemen are kinda overpowered a bit ( Kills calvary too fast)
That is mainly their point.

4. Instead of 2 resources, there is 3.
Which makes it better in my opinion, but it's a step down from the 4 resources in the first 2.

5. The campaign are LONG you will probably take 5 hours on 1 part.
Which give it a deeper in depth feel.

6. Most annoyingly, the supply thing, there is still 200 supply, not to even mention that many heavy weaponry requires 4 or 6 supply.
And that matters how, if you keep sending units at the enemy, you should never hit the limit.

AoE 3 is a good game. Everything is so lovingly detailed. Really helps to get into the whole atmosphere.
But imo AoE 1 was the best, followed by AoE 2. You had the feeling that much more passion went into these. 3 seemed to be just a quickly thrown together sequel to ride on the success of its predecessors. You don't even get video sequences, just some hand-drawn slides.
I also loved how you could gain encyclopedic knowledge about everything. It was almost like a fun history lesson.

Also I didn't know StarCraft's campaigns weren't alive. I always thought they were very immersive with their brilliant voice acting (same for AoE though) and stunning video sequences.

And as Derqua said, you don't need the expansion. But having it is nice, as it adds gameplay.