Age of Wonders 3

What Sulm said. They go after them, but not until later.

The defensive spells for cities, like wall of thorns or whatever, poisonous air, etc. are all pretty weak. Or at least by the time Im researching them, they are damn near useless against upper tier enemies. Not to mention that they are dispelled quickly, though thankfully, they are changing that I see/hope. Attacking a city, I really feel like I have no disadvantage. I would love to see an accuracy penalty like what was said. It would make walls worth more than just an extra expansion grid space. I ran up against one AI Script that apparently thought it was funny to nuke the shit out of my units with Wrath of God. It was cute in the Elven Court Campaign, but this AI Script in the normal game just kept nuking me 2 times per round anytime I got near. Just merced the ever living shit out of me. I was lucky that I had seven 6 deep armies to march up against his ass before I losing too many units.

I dunno, I find Poison Domain quite useful - certainly one of the better debuffs I've seen. I think the issue with sieging is that the computer will never guard cities with an appropriate garrison to make walls useful. My average army stack will have 3-4 ranged units, which means when I attack cities, the enemies will *always* leave their walls. And why shouldn't I use so many ranged, t1 Hunters are quite good. My average city garrison is 4 hunters and 2 Gryphon Riders. The computer on the other hand likes melee units, which aren't terribly useful to take advantage of their city walls. As is, walls give a -75% penalty to ranged shooting over them while also giving defenders +2 range, so they are already useful - the AI just needs to be taught to take advantage of that /shrug

Oh, and you want to see annoying? Elven ultimate spell gives all units (permanent) floating. Earth Mastery gives the spell Earthquake - 60 damage to all walls, 40 damage all ground units. Round 1, all t1 units dead. Round 2, all t2 ground units dead. Round 3, all t3 ground units dead. Not *as* useful on the defensive (killing your own walls isn't too good...) but damn, incredible on the offensive.

I did run into one city that had 4 trebuchets and a bunch of mages behind a stone wall that could have complicated things if my mage hero hadn't had Chaos Rift... it's pretty much GG once that thing is cast if your opponent can't dispel it. Funny thing was the AI cast it on me first but I had enough to disjunction it .

I've been finding myself missing the mage towers, casting system, item design and top tier unique racial units of the old games more and more. Of course balance would be harder if we could teleport armies, cast multiple spells in a turn, design truly powerful items and combat other races specific niche units without a 1:1 response of our own but it would sure be a lot more fun in my opinion. As it is I feel like I'm playing a Civ/Total War lite in a fantasy setting that is quite enjoyable short term but somewhat generic in it's systems while its predecessor had a distinct feel all of its own (and its own problems of course).

Some quality of life improvements that I would quite enjoy would be a pre battle staging phase so that we can arrange our forces, a leader toggle for our armies, slower population growth (city spam is very easy), a slower/more expensive but more diverse and powerful item creation system, a faction hero/item menu, more diverse rewards from nodes and dungeons (if i see one more blowpipe/crossbow/bow/zap/spirit/wand...) and an AI that is more willing to explore and level up their units in harder difficulties. Newly conquered cities need to rebel if you don't keep a significant force in them... I think I even razed one without a single unit in it and there was no issue. Also some node diversity would be stellar, I'm a bit tired of seeing the same dungeon room... mining area... power resource template over and over. I got excited when I went to an ice node until I noticed it was exactly the same just translucent and white.

By the way is there a point to morale if you don't use pure Good/Evil units? There don't seem to be many of them available at any rate. In my game I've been rolling pure evil Orc Warlord and killing everything in my path and none of my units or cities seems to give a damn, everyone is happy all the time. Perhaps it is mainly terrain based? Most of my world is pretty liveable and I have a unique node that eliminates blight penalties.

You know, I noticed that after conquering a city I can just absorb or w/e and move the fuck on. Dont have to keep units in it, or its radius. I havent found a point to staying good or evil. Or either there is one and its so insignificant that I dont even care to find out. I have never had a city revolt for any reason, even after trading back to back with 2 other NPC's over and over. I really would like a more visible way to see how terrain around a city is helping its growth. Something more akin to how Civ displays it, maybe?

I enjoy the game, but it could take a lot of queues from Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic and be a stellar ass game "to me." Though, maybe thats how they wanted to release it. Simple enough to understand the mechanics, and then an expansion or some big DLC will implement some of the more advanced features I see everyone asking for, everywhere.

Good evil is mostly a diplomacy thing. Morale is almost entirely terrain/city (de)buffs.

How does this compared to Warlock 2? I never played any of the older games (warlock or AoW). I'm really liking Warlock 2.

Gask_sl said:

I did run into one city that had 4 trebuchets and a bunch of mages behind a stone wall that could have complicated things if my mage hero hadn't had Chaos Rift... it's pretty much GG once that thing is cast if your opponent can't dispel it. Funny thing was the AI cast it on me first but I had enough to disjunction it

.

I've been finding myself missing the mage towers, casting system, item design and top tier unique racial units of the old games more and more. Of course balance would be harder if we could teleport armies, cast multiple spells in a turn, design truly powerful items and combat other races specific niche units without a 1:1 response of our own but it would sure be a lot more fun in my opinion. As it is I feel like I'm playing a Civ/Total War lite in a fantasy setting that is quite enjoyable short term but somewhat generic in it's systems while its predecessor had a distinct feel all of its own (and its own problems of course).

Some quality of life improvements that I would quite enjoy would be a pre battle staging phase so that we can arrange our forces, a leader toggle for our armies, slower population growth (city spam is very easy), a slower/more expensive but more diverse and powerful item creation system, a faction hero/item menu, more diverse rewards from nodes and dungeons (if i see one more blowpipe/crossbow/bow/zap/spirit/wand...) and an AI that is more willing to explore and level up their units in harder difficulties. Newly conquered cities need to rebel if you don't keep a significant force in them... I think I even razed one without a single unit in it and there was no issue. Also some node diversity would be stellar, I'm a bit tired of seeing the same dungeon room... mining area... power resource template over and over. I got excited when I went to an ice node until I noticed it was exactly the same just translucent and white.

By the way is there a point to morale if you don't use pure Good/Evil units? There don't seem to be many of them available at any rate. In my game I've been rolling pure evil Orc Warlord and killing everything in my path and none of my units or cities seems to give a damn, everyone is happy all the time. Perhaps it is mainly terrain based? Most of my world is pretty liveable and I have a unique node that eliminates blight penalties.

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one of the programmers mentioned that there is currently a bug wrt to item drops:

The RNG is too clever for it's own good in this case. It tries to match the value of your reward to the strength of the enemies you defeated. There is randomness there, but due to the limited variety in defender strengths, some items never get picked. We have a case to try and fix it, hopefully for the next patch. You're right about it being a pity, we have over 100 items and only 10-20 ever seem to drop. I was playing on one map and I managed to get 3 shields of static shield (they drop from Pirates nests on the water).

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Final 2 cents: I find that I enjoy the early game quite a bit as that is when tactics matter most, it is also fun to go item hunting in the "dungeons"... I really wish they were crawls with final bosses instead of just a room with the exact same mobs per difficulty level each time. Still it is fun to get some quirky loot here and there. Mid to late is when the game becomes a bit of a drag due to the tier IV unit spam; tactics cease to matter as everyone just rolls flying cavalry or other units that are immune to mind control and are highly resistant to stuns and other effects. But even if they weren't the AI is able to cheaply dispel any buff/debuff immediately afterwards so all you are left with are heals, DD, and dooms day spells like Chaos Rift because Disjunction is too expensive to cast usually.

The game would really benefit from unit restriction options, slower research and a minimum duration for certain status effects (or more spells per turn), also a way to debuff willpower like in AoW2 would add some spice to things. You had no guarantee of success and it could cost you some units to pull off but when you did it was exciting and great fun.

Gask_sl said:

Final 2 cents: I find that I enjoy the early game quite a bit as that is when tactics matter most, it is also fun to go item hunting in the "dungeons"... I really wish they were crawls with final bosses instead of just a room with the exact same mobs per difficulty level each time. Still it is fun to get some quirky loot here and there. Mid to late is when the game becomes a bit of a drag due to the tier IV unit spam; tactics cease to matter as everyone just rolls flying cavalry or other units that are immune to mind control and are highly resistant to stuns and other effects. But even if they weren't the AI is able to cheaply dispel any buff/debuff immediately afterwards so all you are left with are heals, DD, and dooms day spells like Chaos Rift because Disjunction is too expensive to cast usually.

The game would really benefit from unit restriction options, slower research and a minimum duration for certain status effects (or more spells per turn), also a way to debuff willpower like in AoW2 would add some spice to things. You had no guarantee of success and it could cost you some units to pull off but when you did it was exciting and great fun.

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Dungeon Crawls would be really freakin sweet, actually. Take your units through a dungeon, fighting different shit and coming up against some kind of boss with a unique ability at the end? Yes, please. A game inside of a game inside of a game. ;D

Yep, this game suffers from a horrible "end game" (and I put that in quotation marks, because you reach "end game" fairly fast unfortunately). Tombles has posted a new script he's adding that will reduce some of the t4 unit spam, though how much I guess we'll see when it's in. Research is also being slowed, though early tester feedback says it's barely noticeable compared to now =/ Everything is just too fast in this game. You can run through the research tree pretty early leaving you with every spell/passive affect possible for you. Cities grow WAY too fast, contributing to both fast research and t4 spam. There's no constraining effect to expanding (other than defense, but even then you can leave cities empty for some time safely...) so it's best to spam as many cities as possible for the passive incomes.

T4 unit spam just gets ridiculous - hell even when not spammed. I just took a city that had (among other units) 3 Dreadnaughts and a Flame Cannon defending, and I lost WAY too many troops taking it. And the shitty part is while the computer can build as many of those in their cities as they want (and can afford) I'm limited to summoning 1 Horned God at a time, usually taking 3 turns. So yeah, I find little balance in this game, while at the same time the game moves FAR too fast. Even so, I do find it enjoyable, and if they can actually fix some of this shit I think this is/could be one of the better 4X games I've played. Or may just have to leave it to modders - Fall From Heaven 2 was the best "game" I've ever played to date.

First patch is outFirst official update (v1.09) released! | Age of Wonders IIIHappy to see this, we'll see what it actually does:

Increased the research costs of skills to slow down progression through the skill tree.
Increased cost of racial tier 3 unit building to 300 gold and 100 mana.
Decreased the base production of cities.
Fixed issue with 'Libraries' and 'Observatories' generating too much knowledge.

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That patch makes it playable on my monitor. Any tips for making things more enjoyable? Gonna pick it up I think.

Sweet, awesome that it already has some support to refine the experience, I hope the research time nerf is sufficient to draw games out a bit more on the large maps.

Gilgamel_sl said:

That patch makes it playable on my monitor. Any tips for making things more enjoyable? Gonna pick it up I think.

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Wait till the first expansion or major DLC comes out, as it stands AOW3 is much like CIV5 at release; the potential for a good game exists but for now it is a flawed mess that focused more on making every race blandly equivalent to one another rather than fun. The first few hours are great until you see the man behind the curtain and realize that every fight is more or less the same, with the same enemies and takes place in the same locations over and over. The 1 spell per turn rule is the main culprit for the lack of variety in this game, stemming from that they have had to neuter everything else; melee vulnerable fliers, lack of over world spells/buffs, loss of meaningful terraform abilities, lack of unit special abilities, pointlessness of in combat buffs vs another faction and weakened hero and item crafting. Nothing takes the magic out of gameplay quite like removing double attack, walk through wall, domination, break will, net, ensnare from items and leaving in their place spread sheet tweaks like +1 resist or +20% FR.

Changes to research time, building, expansion are well and good but they wont solve the problem that once you get tired of the tactical combat in this game then there is nothing else to approach for entertainment value. They neutered the systems in pursuit of multiplayer balance and you can feel it once you have played for several hours. It's a shame because I really enjoyed the game when I started and now I can't start a new match without getting bored after a few node clears. Unique encounters, more unit specials, varied locations, and a pre battle phase would go a long way toward improving the tactical game. But something really needs to be done about the strategic game to add variety and re playability, a large issue is that you can conquer anyone other then the "special" races like dragons/fae and get nothing interesting for it just another flavor of manticore rider or spearman. More quests, dungeon and node variety, diverse races that have their own feel to them and resources you can interact with beyond walking over or plopping a city down next to would be steps in the right direction.

Hopefully AOW3 will get its equivalent to Gods and Kings or more relevantly Shadow Magic.

Game is still getting love from the devs, might be worth a look/second look at this point. Figured a the latest patch from may, and today's dev blog are enough to warrant a bump

Update V1.2 is here! | Age of Wonders III

Development Update and Return of Journals | Age of Wonders III

So this is on the daily deal steam summer sale 50% off. Is it worth throwing the extra couple bucks at it for the extra campaign in the deluxe version?

I dunno, didn't do any of the campaigns. It's not a bad game, it's just... it's not a good game. I'd sooner go back to playing Civ4 FFH2. It's very blah, and some of the systems are self-defeating, like city buffs/combat buffs and disjunction. It just needs something to make it more exciting or interesting, and I don't know what that is. Maybe map terrain that actually matters. Rivers aren't much of a barrier, and mountains aren't a barrier at all. No matter what map I play on, it always feels like the same map.

I played fallen enchantress a ton and loved it. I bought this game and probably played less than 3 hours and got super bored. I don't know what it is but it just feels kind of.........bleh?

Anyone still play this? I've finally managed to start a game after picking it up during the steam winter sale, and was curious how the game plays with all the changes over the last year. I guess patch 1.5 came out last week, and this in part due to something else happening next month?