Winter Wonderland

Winter Wonderland is a single-player random map for Age of Empires III, and was released as a free download on the official website to celebrate Christmas. The map is a festive-themed variant of Great Lakes, with decorated trees, wrapped gifts, and red-nosed reindeer.

The map is still available for download from the official website. However, it does not appear correctly with The WarChiefs or The Asian Dynasties installed as these expansions remove the festive-themed objects from the game. A fixed and updated version which includes the removed content can be found here.

As the map is essentially the same location as Great Lakes, it is surrounded by Saguenay to the north, Great Plains to the west, Carolina to the south and New England to the east. The map has large numbers of stray Sheep dotting along the lake as well as herds of Moose and Reindeer to hunt.

Overview
Winter Wonderland is similar to the winter version of Great Lakes. The large lake is nearly frozen (there is just a small pool of water left in the center.) Fish can no longer be found swimming in large numbers and a navy will not be needed. Players can move their units across the frozen part of the lake but Settlers, Coureurs, and Villagers cannot build on top of the frozen lake.

Regardless, there is a circular trade route that has six trading sites. Control of this trade route will be difficult but necessary as the generous awards it offers to the players.

Natives that can be found in this map include Huron, Cree, and the occasional Cheyenne. In the vanilla version of Age of Empires III, Iroquois and Lakota natives take the place of Huron and Cheyenne.

History
"The five Great Lakes – Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario - span over a 1,000 miles of the border between the United States and Canada. Water flows west to east from lake to lake, dropping 170 feet at the Niagara Falls between lakes Erie and Ontario before flowing into the St. Lawrence River and out finally to the North Atlantic. The names of the Great Lakes varied over the years from simple or colorful names or names that referenced Native American tribes nearby. Lac de Chat (or Lake of the Cat), was a French name for Lake Erie, probably in reference to the wildcats found in the area; the name "Erie" refers to a tribe of Native Americans that lived in the area. Lake Michigan had an unfortunate early name, "The Stinking Water Lake," but later came to be called Michigan after the Native American name for the lake, "michi gami.""

Trivia

 * Winter Wonderland maps are approximately the same size as the Large version of Great Lakes.