Age of Wonders 3

[adddeed]

Doesn't run as well as it should considering the visuals. I have better looking games run better is all im saying.

 

[MilesBeyond]

It looks ok. It runs poorly however. However AoW1 and AoW2 are both visually superior, thatnks to the art style, the clean and uncluttered visuals, and the sharpness of the picture. AoW3 visually is messy, hard to differentiate things on the map.

I'd agree that AoW 1 is a better looking game, because its artwork is superb. Not so sure about AoW 2, though. I don't know if I'd describe it as something with clean visuals and sharp picture, that's for sure.

 

[SCO]

Shadow magic can look p. good on some official and fan maps.

Pity it has horrible mouse stutter in some conditions (the frames are queued into the graphics card without limitation and without frameskipping and the game runs at 100% processor all the time, which means your input latency can degenerate absurdly - it's not a case of being slow exactly, but unsynchronized).

 

[CRD]

shadow magic and the mouse movement in modern systems is just unplayable for most of the people, so it's time to let it go

As for AoW3 I didn't have or saw any problem with fps or bad performance.

 

[sser]

Expansions really livened the game up a bit. Playing through the Halfling campaign - still a very grindy experience which is a shame, but overall pretty fun.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Looking back on it, it's funny how much the things that I thought I would hate about AoW 3 are things that actually haven't bothered me or that I've even come to enjoy.

When I first heard about flyers landing at the end of their turn in combat, and all attacks auto-hitting, and players being limited to one spell per turn in combat no matter what I was like "Holy crap, screw this. If I wanted to play Heroes I'd be playing frigging Heroes, dammit!"

However, in practice, the combat still feels very AoW-y, and doesn't seem like Heroes at all.

Flyers landing actually hasn't bothered me at all. Flying still provides massive tactical and strategic advantages (especially with the flanking system), and it's a quick and easy way to get rid of most of the ridiculous exploits (some of which are inherently built into the "permanent flying in combat" thing - though others weren't).

I've actually really enjoyed the auto-hits. It heavily downplays the role of luck and heightens the need for skill, which as far as I'm concerned can only be a good thing. It also helped a lot to even out the gaps between tiers - lower level units tend to do much better against higher level units than they did in previous instalments. Hell, depending on circumstances sending a T4 unit against a stack of six T1 units can be a pretty close thing, and if you're playing against a human player it's often suicide. Compare this to AoW 1 or SM where a single T4 vs a stack of eight T1s was almost a sure victory. I mean there were exceptions, sure, but for the most part the tier gaps felt very large.

The one-spell-per-turn thing still frustrates me. I don't like it, but I understand why it's in the game and I agree with the reasoning - and moreover I can't think of a better solution (the reason it was implemented was because it was felt that being able to cast as many spells as you had spellcasters on a turn gave the defenders way too much of an advantage, which was bad for SP as maps could be broken by baiting the AI into attacking, and very bad for MP, where matches would often turn into big games of Red Rover where everyone was waiting for the other person to attack them so that they wouldn't have to face a magical onslaught). Which, I mean, at first I was like "So just limit spellcasting in the first round or first two rounds or whatever" but then I realized that this doesn't solve the problem, it only delays it.


The one thing I still really don't like about the game is unit enchantments being combat-only, but as I rarely see that brought up even by people who hate the game, much less those who love it, I'm resigned at this point to being a minority on the topic. Oh well.

 

[Irenaeus II]

I can safely say this is my favourite contemporary fantasy 4x game.

On your nitpick, maybe they could have made some spell buffs temporary (3-4 rounds or whatever).

 

[MilesBeyond]

Oh, yeah, I completely agree. In fact I'd go so far as to say that it's my favourite contemporary 4x game period (provided we aren't counting GSGs as 4x).

Making buffs more temporary could help, but the issue is more direct damage. I remember in Shadow Magic you could unleash a Hellfire or two and a bunch of Fireballs before the enemy could even move, and that was just brutal.

I'm also really interested in how concealment works vs AI in AoW 3. It's a unique system for sure. Having concealment work against AI in AoW 1 was too easy to exploit, having concealment not work against AI in AoW 2/SM was lame and really limited the game's versatility in SP. So AoW 3 went with this weird hybrid system where if your army goes from "not concealed" to "concealed" within sight of the enemy, it won't count as concealed for one turn, then for a couple of turns after that the AI is on "high alert" where it knows there's someone concealed nearby and will actively try to search them out, then the AI will be on "low alert" for a few turns, where it's got like some idea something's nearby but may have moved on? Then it goes back to normal. Also this is mostly with other AI players. Independents follow their own rules, IIRC depending on the type of independent. Wandering stacks/raiders I believe work on the same rules, but IIRC concealment doesn't work against independents set to some form of guard mode.


Anyway, it's a really interesting and unique system that makes stealth-related things a lot more fun than I ever thought they could be in a single-player strategy game.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Yeah that sort of spell barrage in AOWSM was fucking brutal. Three Holy Wraths or something and you kill pretty much anything not immune/tier 4/high-level hero. I do that a lot in SP when it starts to become a chore to destroy a huge empire. It was the AOWSM equivalent of nuclear bombardment.
You could do that in AOW1 actually but there wans't that much magic points to do it, units also had less HP.

Plus AoW 1 didn't have anywhere near the magical firepower that AoW SM or 3 do. A few devastating spells for sure but nothing on the level of Hellfire or Sacred Wrath or Chaos Rift or Destabilized Mana Core (I mean I know Sacred Wrath was in AoW 1 but as it hit your own units as well as the enemy it wasn't something you'd want to spam). AoW 1 you basically had Great Hail, Great Hail, and Great Hail. Though, I mean, who needs anything else? Plus you also had Flood. Flood was awesome. Ridiculous, but awesome. Man, Water magic was so ridiculously powerful in that game. I actually deliberately avoid using it just because it's so crazy.

I think its because in the originals, unit enchantments made even the crappiest hero jump at least a tier in power. In AOW the cheesiest of all was Stone Skin (+2 DEF was HUGE in 1), althrough Static Shield in 2/SM was also ridiculoustastic - hit a unit, get stunned. Thanks to spell-buying/selling, towers, quests, it made making a Uber-Hero easy and so you could have a Enchant Weapon/Stone Skin/Static Shield/Liquid Body/Fire Halo/Blessed/Death Touch enchanted demi-god. Let's not even get into the horrors of the Item Forge, which pretty much made Shadow magic campaign a cakewalk (try playing without Item Forge, just dungeon items and such) except for the last scenario (The Hive) - which also featured fantastic trolling by the devs when the All-Devourer dispelled all your hero enchants, all the time while also Forge Blasting, Plaguing and disrupting your stuff. All it needed was Spell Nuking with heroes and the trolling would have been complete.

IIRC it mostly came from them not being able to program AI who could use enchantments intelligently. I seem to recall that being a fluctuating complaint with the older games - because either the AI would end up not enchanting any of its units, or it would end up casting enchantments like crazy and you could just attack it at the end of the day when all its spell points were gone and not have to worry about magic in battle. And, I mean, I get it. I don't even know how you'd begin to go about programming the AI to make good use of enchantments because it would require some pretty in-depth situational awareness. If you want to see an array of some of the most baffling and seemingly random AI behaviour, boot up any fantasy TBS game and watch how the AI uses enchantment spells. It's hilariously awful.

Anyway, all of that is to say that at the end of the day, from a gameplay perspective I agree with their decision to axe global unit enchantments, and think it was the right move. But that doesn't mean I have to like it, haha

I think AOWSM may have been one of the most player-versatile TBS, but also featured a lot of cheese from it - dominating/ressurecting/raising from dead enemy heroes, anybody?

Ohhh man. I'm 99% convinced that the entire "Flyers landing at the end of turn" rule in AoW 3 stems entirely from Zephyr Bird cheese in SM. The hilarious amount of things you could do with that unit was just amazing. Technically any flying unit, but Zephyr Birds were cheap and potentially available at the start.

Incarnate cheese was also amazing. Better in the first with Physical Immunity, but still fun in the second.

 

[MilesBeyond]

I remember that! Good lord, that stuff was cheese. Flood was the "This is now a water map" spell, combine with Lizards and it was fun fun fun. Raze ALL shipyards in sight for greater trollololololololo.

My favourite part about it was cancelling it and watching the AI wander back out into the now "de-flooded" zones - only to drown when I cast it again. Also pairing it with three Earth spheres so you could use Lower Terrain to get rid of those pesky hills and mountains that can't be flooded.

The AI definitively could't into enchants - I remember seeing entire armies of enchanted tier 1 crap units and unenchanted heroes and leaders. Why every other swordman needs enchanted weapon, anyway? Then again the AI has mana out of its ass.

Yeah, the issue was more casting points than mana. Enchants are such a weird thing. Like I don't even know how I'd describe when to best use them. It's like there's a certain threshold where T1 units are the best choice, but that very rapidly falls off and you never want to enchant a T1 unit again for the rest of the game. That sort of concept in general is easy to teach an AI. The tough part is teaching it to recognize that falling off point. You could teach the AI to remove enchants on units it was no longer using, but like you said, mana was never the issue for the AI.

Ah yeah, Zephyr Bird cheese! Kill all ranged, leave bird, drawn ftw! Best way to stop a 8-Lord stack or huge army, ever!

Don't forget Dragon/Air Galley cheese on AOW1 too - Air Galley cheese was so bad that in the final Valley of Wonders scenarion in 1, all leaders often get killed by Air Galley Lithuanian Hitmen attacks. If you survive, then its just you vs King Joseph AND Gabriel.

AOW1 and 2 also had Air Galley Hasting, which turned Air Galleys into Airplanes. I think they got like functional 72 movement, you could simply fly across the map casually and leave the AI in the dust. They nerfed it in AOWSM because that was utterly hilariously ridiculous (also because they would become jet planes in the Shadow Realm, lol).

Incarnate Cheese? Pff, Reaper cheese ftw. Ever get approached by a huge, mighty, mega-epic army that could destroy Rome, China and the Hellenic Empire in a week, but they don't have any magic damages whatsoever? One reaper takes care of that. Reaper? More like RAPER!

I also remember casually blowing through armies with Red Dragons in AOW1 too. Althrough to be fair, Orcs in AOW1 were the Cheese Race - strongest level 1 basic infantry, strongest level 2 cavalry, Shredder Bolts, War-freaking-Lords and Red Dragons, they were just ridiculous.

The best Zephyr Bird cheese was the fact that if you position them over certain buildings in a city or watchtower, all ranged attacks would be 100% blocked by obstacles. You could just have your Zephyr Bird sitting there floating over your Barracks while 32 Centaurs fired non-stop, to no avail. IIRC using this exploit in multiplayer games would get you blacklisted - for good reason, haha

AoW 1 also had the legendary Free Moving Dragon Ship exploit - possibly the greatest cheese of all. It turns out that if you cast Free Movement on a ship, it gains the ability to travel on land, as well. As ships were significantly more durable than any land units (for the record, the Dragon Ship has 20 HP, which is more than all but a couple of level 4 units), and Free Movement and Dragon Ships were both level 2, it broke the game very, very quickly.

This works with any ship, and Wind Walking does it as well I believe, but it was known as FMDS just because those were the most common forms. Ballistas were ridiculously powerful in AoW 1 but were held back by being kinda fragile, and super slow. Ships don't suffer from either of those issues, but have the same power. Plus you could also set up a convoy of them as "land ships" to transport your troops quickly across the map.

They were literally a weaker, cheaper, and easier to mass-produce Air Galley that was available to all races. Unlike the Air Galley it was vulnerable to melee attacks, but with 20 HP that wasn't a huge issue.


Orcs were pretty amazing, though. I always felt kind of bad for them because the sheer power of some of their units meant that the others got left out. Orc Assassins and Doom Bats were cool concepts but you never built them because Warlords. Plus they were pretty awful in their own right. Doom Bats were the worst flyers in the game, and Assassins somehow were worse melee fighters than Halfling Rogues. Orc Swordsmen are one of the few instances, along with Dwarf Berserkers and Halfling Pony Riders, where enchanting T1 mobs was probably a better idea than enchanting heroes. I mean give them Enchanted Weapon and Stone Skin and for all intents and purposes you've got a stack of mini-Warlords.

 

[Raghar]

Ah yeah, Zephyr Bird cheese! Kill all ranged, leave bird, drawn ftw! Best way to stop a 8-Lord stack or huge army, ever!

That's because they didn't do it realistically. Normally when a flying unit just sits above soldiers while they are conquering the city, it's just a minor distraction because they are watching against strike from behind, but when they are unopposed they don't give a fuck.

They just should give a choice of engage with the unit, or lose the city. Or make a position which would represent dragging out major of the city and raping him, and keeping unit on the positoin for 4 turns would mean they conquered/damaged the city.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Ah, yes. The ever-elusive "Fantasy Officer Rape Simulator 2015"

 

[Norfleet]

Or make a position which would represent dragging out major of the city and raping him, and keeping unit on the positoin for 4 turns would mean they conquered/damaged the city.

That's how Total War does it, if the enemy can barge into the city and hold the capture point unopposed for awhile, they win, regardless of how many units you had left, so you cannot simply run in circles indefinitely to stall, unless you can keep them entirely outside of the city.

 

[Raghar]

Obviously, nobody wants a combat to end by an abuse of game mechanics. It has also the small problem of the allied army racing into the fortress, and be within fortress walls, when the weaker army accomplish it's conquer of mid, but doesn't manage to get both gates.

It was weird that the problem persisted for so long in AoW. (When there are so many solutions, that are easy to program by skilled game developers.)

 

[MilesBeyond]

Oh shit oh shit oh shit modding tools have just been released (for free). They actually seem quite powerful (relative to a 4X game, anyway) and it looks like there's a huge amount of things you can do. With enough work and commitment from the modding community I think this has the potential to rival Civ 4 modding.

Seriously, if this takes off, and if the community does a lot with it, I think it could cement AoW 3 as the greatest fantasy 4X ever made. $20 says that someone, somewhere, has already started work on a Master of Magic total conversion.

Unfortunately it would appear that GOG is, as usual, being a bit sluggish in adding the update. But as far as I'm concerned, this is the best news for AoW - and really, the 4X genre in general - in a long time. This kind of moddability is what gives games a depth and lifespan that extends far beyond the original product.

 

[Archibald]

Sounds good, when final turbo gold goty edition is coming out?

 

[octavius]

Can modders fix the AI?

 

[MilesBeyond]

Can modders fix the AI?

I don't see why not. That's actually the mod I'm most looking forward to - the eventual AoW 3 version of K-Mod

 

[Raghar]

Can modders fix the AI?

What was problem with AI? It did its stuff.

 

[MilesBeyond]

What was problem with AI? It did its stuff.

Well every AI can be improved. AoW 3 has hardly got the worst AI of any 4X game (that award of shame would probably go to Civ 5/BE, which yes, is even worse than games like MoO and MoM), but it's a far cry from what it could be

 

[octavius]

What was problem with AI? It did its stuff.

Haven't played AOW3, but I know from experience that poor AI is the achilles heel of most single player strategy games, especially Civilization and AoW, and to a lesser degree HoMM. From what I've heard the AI in AoW3 is on par with AoW:SM.
But of you are a casual gamer, or only play through the campaign, you may not notice it. I used to think Civ 1 had a great AI...

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I really like this game now, with both expansions and patched. Between this and Endless Legend the tb fantasy strategies stand strong and I don't care all that much about the ubi treatment that HoMM is getting. The combat is good and despite having less units in a stack it fixes the biggest flaw of the previous games which was the silly randomness. Flying units have declined, but they're still very useful and powerful through their flanking potential. The heroes are good too, with superior development system from AoW I and while very powerful, not insanely op as in the previous installments. I didn't play the game much on release or in multi (all the games are locked when I try), but right now I really don't see the tier IV spam everyone was complaining about. Even tier I units stay useful for quite a long time when properly used and levelled and tier IV stuff is too expensive to keep spamming it all the time.

Three things drag it down though:
1. Less of everything syndrome that plagues so many sequels of classic games. Despite adding halfings, frostlings and tigrans there are still quite a few races missing compared to previous games. It does have minor factions with their separate building and unit rosters which is a cool addition.
2. Graphics. It's another case of classic series that had wonderful, clear and functional 2d graphics changed into... that. I really can't see shit on strategic map sometimes, checking for stacks on the minimap or zoomed out cloth map despite the fact that they're waving those huge flags. And I think I already wrote that somewhere, but this leader generation thingy is really hilarious in a bad way, some of its creations are utterly prosperian. It's very well optimized at least, runs like a charm with everything on max and the loading times are really short.
3. Magic. Yeah, magic is a bit disappointing in AoW III. No crazy strategic map spells, very few options and most of them are boring city enchantments, like +1 domain radius or +100 happiness/pop growth. No strategic map unit enchantments either. In combat you basically just use the same buffs/debuffs all the time, with some of them much better than all the rest (like the blind debuff for example or the ranged unit buff that removes range and obstacle penalties and turns some units into absolute rapetrains).

 

[Raghar]

Heroes were OP because of theirs equipment that found when you searched whole map properly. But heroes should be OP.

 

[Forkrul]

I really like this game now too.

I don't really understand the love for endless legend though, i think the combat sucks.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

It sucks but it's not the meat of the game like in AoW. These games are basically opposites of each other and compliment each other very well.