Age of Empires 3: Unleashed detailed installation guide tutorial

You have downloaded the mod archive and wonder where do you extract it to?
Archive's contents should be extracted directly into the game's root folder, merging folders and overwriting files. If this is not clear enough - continue reading:

First of all you have to figure out where your game's root folder is. Usually it is something like "D:\Steam\SteamApps\common\Age Of Empires 3\bin", but if you have no clue how to navigate the windows explorer there are two other very easy ways:
1. Right click on the game's shortcut file (it's usually on the desktop), and click "Open file location" - and it will lead you directly into the game's folder.
2. If you're using steam, go to "library", find "Age of Empires 3: Complete Collection", right click it and select "properties". A small window will open, there go to "local files" tab and click "browse local files".

After you've done this, make sure that the folder you're in has "data" and "art" folders, as well as agey.exe file.

Once you have that checked, you can start extracting the archive, it is extremely simple, but I, nevertheless, will explain it in detail, I will even highlight 2 ways of doing it:
1. Open the archive, right click on any file there, a context menu will open, where you need to click "select everything", then simply drag the files into your Age of Empires 3 root folder, eventually a window will pop up asking you whether you want to merge folders and overwrite files, answer "yes to all" to both prompts.
2. Copy the mod archive into your Age of Empires 3 root folder, then, right click the archive and select "extract to current folder", eventually a window will pop up asking you whether you want to merge folders and overwrite files, answer "yes to all" to both prompts.

That's it! Provided you have done everything correctly the mod should be working right now! The mod overwrites original "The Asian Dynasties" expansion, so to start it - simply start the game as you would normally start "The Asian Dynasties" and enjoy a world full of possibilities!

Other possible issues:

If you get a "corrupt archive" error - simply redownload the mod. If that doesn't help - update your archive explorer software. (shouldn't be an issue on Win10 machines).

P.S.
The mod always must be installed into the original game folder, otherwise it will not work.
To uninstall the mod you'll have to wipe the entire game folder and reinstall the game, otherwise you'll be facing weird things.
If you think you'll ever want to come back to the original "The Asian Dynasties", simply back up (copy and save elsewhere) your game folder.

I hope this guide was helpful!

If you happen to have further issues with the mod installation (or some of the mod features cease to work) feel free to post your issue in the comments here, I will try to answer and solve the problem as fast as I can!