Age of Wonders 3

[Monkeyfinger]

http://www.ageofwonders.com/aow3live/users/lennart-sas/replies/

Lennart Sas, the lead designer of the AoW series, posts on the new forums for the game and talks a bit about specific design decisions. Some interesting things:

You choose your race and class. All races have access to all 6 classes: Sorcerer, Archdruid, Theocrat, Rogue, Dreadnought, Warlord.
Your low level units are determined by your race and town upgrades. Your high level units depend on your class, not race.
For example, if you pick a theocrat, you have access to the evangelist, the martyr, the crusader and the exalted as your high level units. The appearance and the stats of these units vary based on your race but their basic function is always the same.
Naval combat is different. In addition to the ships fighting, all units aboard transports get their own little combat boats which they can use ranged attacks and abilities from.
Domain affects more than just spellcasting radius now. It provides resources, and it acts as a border for leaders for whom you don't have open borders or a war, sort of like civ4 culture.

 

[catfood]

Naval combat is different. In addition to the ships fighting, all units aboard transports get their own little combat boats which they can use ranged attacks and abilities from.

Sounds p. cool actually. Here's hoping they get naval combat right. Very few games have.

Domain affects more than just spellcasting radius now. It provides resources, and it acts as a border for leaders for whom you don't have open borders or a war, sort of like civ4 culture.

I'm curious if you can still capture resource buildings like in the previous games, or if they've moved completely towards a Disciples/Civ route where you only get access to resources inside your own territory.

 

[Excommunicator]

Your low level units are determined by your race and town upgrades. Your high level units depend on your class, not race.
For example, if you pick a theocrat, you have access to the evangelist, the martyr, the crusader and the exalted as your high level units. The appearance and the stats of these units vary based on your race but their basic function is always the same.

I'm not sure I like that idea.

 

[kris]

Your low level units are determined by your race and town upgrades. Your high level units depend on your class, not race.
For example, if you pick a theocrat, you have access to the evangelist, the martyr, the crusader and the exalted as your high level units. The appearance and the stats of these units vary based on your race but their basic function is always the same.

I'm not sure I like that idea.

I think it is pretty good, especially cool to have race specific units that is different depending on your other choice. Gives more combinations on what you can get.

although I would like to see some race specific "better" units too.

 

[Groof]

http://www.ageofwonders.com/aow3live/users/lennart-sas/replies/

Oh, nice.

More on the class units:

Class units are built out of the race’s base mesh + class appearance + any enchantment fx. Functionally they inherit their race’s base abilities and stats. Class units’ clothes are also branded with player ID coloring to match the appearance your empire, giving a consistent look throughout.

Sounds potentially pretty cool.

 

[Malakal]

Thats more like it. Class + race was a staple of rpgs for ages now, no idea why its not more common in strategy games. Makes for interesting builds.

 

[Borelli]

I don't like that goblin crusader will be the same as human crusader or to be more specific, i don't like that 2 theocrats will have the same units. In AoW universe wizards are seen as gods so a holy warrior of a fire wizards should be different in both feel and gameplay than a holy warrior of an earth wizard. Think how in Dominions the spell "bless" gives different bonuses depending on your main wizard's stats.

Your low level units are determined by your race and town upgrades. Your high level units depend on your class, not race.

This means that no matter how multicultural your empire gets (and multiculti is something that both MoM and AoW support) your high level units will always be the same? Sounds bad to me.
Technically AoW2 also had wizard "classes" in a shape of earth/water/fire/air/life/dark but the names of these new classes don't say anything about their elements (aside from the archdruid) so i am interested to see how will that work out.

 

[Excommunicator]

That's what I was thinking. You'll also end up with much more interesting units and designs when you build them around the racial identity rather than a general class that has to be adapted the same way to each race.

Besides, AoW 1 & 2 had far more than 6 races.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

AoW2 had 12 races I believe (up to 15 in SM?), but let's face it - they weren't that much different and what difference there was didn't really influence the game much since you still stomped everything with heroes and used you armies mainly to hold you territory. Plus perhaps the cavalry units (pretty much the same for all races) to scout and harass.

 

[Trash]

Haha, we can thank Notch for this one.

 

[General Maxson]

He really is a bro. Maybe he lurks on the Codex? :D

 

[SCO]

Besides, AoW 1 & 2 had far more than 6 races.

DLC

AOW was more guilty of this, SM lessened it because of better magic as well as movement points serving as stamina stopping a hero from soloing a whole army. Too bad SM had the Item Forge, the epithome of Munchkinery.

Item forge takes too long to get and build a worthwhile item, even with production resources around. While spamming seducing/dominating/enslaving/entangling units and scouting and ambushing enemy heroes is faster and funner.
Call hero with these tactics is also awesome, if you have the mana and the spell early.
Eventually, once your hero gets good enough defence/resistance/spellcasting (around level 10, level 5 if you savescum), it's often a good idea to send it out alone, morale permitting, since xp is awarded on kills.

BTW; if you're replaying AoW2/SM, like i am, protip: you can keep moving along your route on next turns by pressing M, select the next party by pressing ';' or '.' and end the turn by pressing ctrl+enter (i guess so it doesn't accidentally get pressed).
The 'M' shortcut has the slight flaw it doesn't stop and warn you when a new unit get uncovered by fog of war, pity - pathfinding also has the small problem that it won't ever go into unexplored areas if you're trying to go into explored areas (even if it's one dark square of distance away, obviously on a plain, also remember, fog of war and unexplored are different things, like the infinity engine).

 

[Akarnir]

I'm super exited by this. Age of wonder was a classic, and not an outdated one. Now they seem to have some good ideas but...

As far as the art style goes, meh. It's uninspired, semi-cartoonish crap. Been there done that.

I've seen this landscape countless time. It's bland. Models are bland, not much details, watered down version of overused fantasy material.

It doesn't look like anything. It's certainly not authentic, yet it's not even out of the ordinary.


I hope they don't apply this to gameplay and story as well.


Seriously, this reminds me a lot of when they switched to 3D for the heroes of might and magic. A beautiful and rich 2D world, that really had an authentic feel, no exaggerated landscapes, not high fantasy, JRPG architecture, something down to earth. Then a soulless 3D enviroment crap.

 

[SCO]

Those shadows... this has got to have a night day cycle.

 

[KoolNoodles]

Just looks too samey to Civ5/Warlock. Not that I mind that style, but it doesn't really fit AoW and I've seen enough of it. Hopefully those are early screens and they had in more "junk" to give it a better AoW feel. At least you can say it's not bad to look at, just a little boring.

 

[SCO]

Haven't seen a screen with the unexplored cover yet.

 

[Suicidal]

Looks great to me, don't know what are you guys complaining about. It looks exactly like AoW, except in 3D - I recognize the town, the watchtower, the narrow bridge and dungeon/boneyard on the other side of the forest, they look the same as they did in AoW:SM, except in 3D.

The only thing that bothers me is the "high-level units won't depend on race" thing. Hope they change that.

 

[Spectacle]

Looks great to me, don't know what are you guys complaining about. It looks exactly like AoW, except in 3D - I recognize the town, the watchtower, the narrow bridge and dungeon/boneyard on the other side of the forest, they look the same as they did in AoW:SM, except in 3D.

I agree, this looks like AoW, and very nice to boot. It seems that complaining about "bland" graphics is the new way to gather KKK.

The only thing that bothers me is the "high-level units won't depend on race" thing. Hope they change that.

I hope they keep it, this sounds like a great feature. There are a lot of race/class combos, and each will enable different tacitcs as you combine the abilities of your high and low level units.

 

[Akarnir]

Looks great to me, don't know what are you guys complaining about. It looks exactly like AoW, except in 3D - I recognize the town, the watchtower, the narrow bridge and dungeon/boneyard on the other side of the forest, they look the same as they did in AoW:SM, except in 3D.

I agree, this looks like AoW, and very nice to boot. It seems that complaining about "bland" graphics is the new way to gather KKK.

No, I'm not a brofist whore (you can check by my highly unpopular other posts). This complaint is coming from someone who is genuinly worried about the 3D transition. Because I was there when Heroes of Might and Magic was butchered. And it was awful. Now this new artstyle doesn't really have much personality. It's pretty bland (look at the houses), they aren't taking any risk here, and go for simplistic and overused 3D models (I'm pretty sure those cliffs have been used somwhere (=a lot of time) else).

And that's without mentioning the textures.

I would be glad if they prove me wrong with the new pictures. But for now, it's nothing really out of the ordinary (current ordinary = shit).

At least they aren't being over the top, it seems. The unit look pretty old school, humble and believable stuff, and map layout looks cool.

 

[Suicidal]

The only thing that bothers me is the "high-level units won't depend on race" thing. Hope they change that.

I hope they keep it, this sounds like a great feature. There are a lot of race/class combos, and each will enable different tacitcs as you combine the abilities of your high and low level units.

I just think it would be better if we had access to high level units from both race and class. I think it would be pretty dull if you played the religious class and would get the same crusader, priest, angel units no matter which race you went with. What about the grim reapers, kragoths (or whatever they were called, the goblin super-units), trolls, orc warlords, phantoms and etc. AoW SM provided a lot of high level units for each race (3 from level 3 barracks, 1 from the race's special structure, 1 super-unit + high tier war machines IIRC). I don't know yet how will they implement the leader classes, so it's to early to complain, but they might potentially kill off a lot of race variety. In all the AoW games the low-tier units are quite similar between races.

 

[Malakal]

What bothers me more is how small the magic domain is. In previous games it extended quite far, now its very close to the castle. This also leads to my suspicion that maps are smaller due to 3D...

 

[Suicidal]

What bothers me more is how small the magic domain is. In previous games it extended quite far, now its very close to the castle. This also leads to my suspicion that maps are smaller due to 3D...

I don't know if they're keeping the same mechanics, but in AoW 2 and SM towns only extended your domain by a lot if they had a mage tower built. This one doesn't look like it has a mage tower.

 

[Zeus]

I want to go to there.

 

[Tigranes]

How much $ does Notch have? Does anyone know the story? All I know is I should have been playing Minecraft like everyone else, because suddenly one day this dude is like some kind of traveling wise old Gandalf except he's loaded with cash not magic.

The art style does look poor, but that's not such a huge deal for me with this kind of game.

 

[Spectacle]

Minecraft has sold for at least 100 million USD. Exactly how much of that has has ended up in Notch's wallet is unknown, but likely most of it.