Age of Wonders 3

[Zeriel]

Yeah, AoW 1's story fucking destroys everything that came after it. I really wonder how that happened, as far as I know it's the same writer, I guess they just decided generic pablum sells better or something.

 

[Forkrul]

I've never played AOW1. What is better about it than Shadow Magic? If it's just the story/campaign i won't bother, i'm more interested in the gameplay.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Yeah, AoW 1's story fucking destroys everything that came after it. I really wonder how that happened, as far as I know it's the same writer, I guess they just decided generic pablum sells better or something.

I remember him actually making a post over on AoW 2 Heaven when people were complaining about the decline in story and lack of unit descriptions in AoW 2. Basically it's twofold: He said his personal life went to hell and that severely impacted his writing, and he said that AoW 1 was kind of a pet project made over the course of several years without a deadline, which meant they had a lot more freedom in terms of fleshing out the world (this is also the reason why AoW 1 features so much hand-drawn artwork that doesn't appear in any of the other games). AoW 2 had a much, much shorter development cycle, and everything was kinda rushed.

 

[DeepOcean]

I've never played AOW1. What is better about it than Shadow Magic? If it's just the story/campaign i won't bother, i'm more interested in the gameplay.

If you only like to play random games with the ai on those sorts of games or multiplayer, don't bother, if you wanna enjoy a fun campaign with really cool missions not only in terms of writing, check it out. There are a few really well designed missions, I dunno if I was a shitty player at the time or what but AoW 1 felt like the most challenging of the series.

 

[Kabas]

Didn't manage to finish the first AoW, i remember how i got bored of playing the "hunt down the enemy leader with your uber heroes" routine eventually. And the whole development of cities stuff was a bit too simplistic for me.
Still one of the most beatiful-looking games i had ever played and with a good writing to boot, no regrets trying it.

 

[fantadomat]

I finished the first one with all the possible ways. It was pure fun for me.

 

[visions]

Hall of Heroes map in the Keepers campaign was fucking epic (in the snatch victory from the jaws of defeat sense) the first time I played it. When I found the hall of heroes, I think I had 2 cities left, one of which was about to fall in the next turn. Second time I lucked out and stumbled upon the dark elf leader in the underground, when he was the last enemy leader left, so I won the scenario by killing him. I even felt a bit disappointed that I could win by just killing all the enemy leaders instead of having to find the hall.

Also one of my fondest gaming memories is that in my first attempted (I didn't complete that run, got distracted by something else when I was almost near the end) hard run through the Keepers campaign, I had a no reload unless I lose policy and by chance I managed to carry one human knight through many scenarios w/o him dying, eventually he had around 150-200 exp. Not that it mattered once he got his gold medal but it was cool, I always used him in my leader's army. Eventually the carryover system passed him over and I wasn't able to take him with me to the next scenario but at least he never died.

 

[octavius]

I've never played AOW1. What is better about it than Shadow Magic? If it's just the story/campaign i won't bother, i'm more interested in the gameplay.

Gameplaywise I think SM is better, and I played AOW1 before SM.

AOW1 has better atmosphere and better campaigns, and the editor supports user made campaigns.
SM has better AI, better combat (no need to line up units which became very tedious and time consuming), is more balanced (no über heroes who can beat an entire faction single handed), and I like the wizard towers concept.

Due to how the AI works (or doesn't work) the only user made maps for AOW1 that are worth playing single player are the scripted story/quest maps, while for SM more symmetric war maps can also be worth playing.

 

[Silva]

Look, AoW gameplay is shit no matter the iteration. What saved the original is the production values and branching narrative of its campaign that made it feel like a RPG.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

What saved you from the dumbfuck tag is... I don't know, I lack the idea for a quick one-liner but you should really get one by this point. And preferably a one way-ticket away from non-retarded threads about good games like AoW series.

 

[fantadomat]

What saved you from the dumbfuck tag is... I don't know, I lack the idea for a quick one-liner but you should really get one by this point. And preferably a one way-ticket away from non-retarded threads about good games like AoW series.

Not really,the dumbfuck is extremely prestigious tag,even VIPs like DU have it.....and WE have it. He is more of retard or a village idiot.

 

[Lagi]

What saved you from the dumbfuck tag is... I don't know, I lack the idea for a quick one-liner but you should really get one by this point. And preferably a one way-ticket away from non-retarded threads about good games like AoW series.

isn't the purpose of such troll message is to accumulate parrots, from negative ratings?
I play board game's and collecting victory points is an objective in itself - it give the purpose to the whole game.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

SM has better AI, better combat (no need to line up units which became very tedious and time consuming), is more balanced (no über heroes who can beat an entire faction single handed), and I like the wizard towers concept.

AOW balance would be immensely boosted if it had a limit on attacks like the later games. Pretty much the only way to kill heroes on it was massed ballista/cannons, air galleys, Nature Elementals or ganging up on them with enchanted lvl4 units.

AOWSM totally has uber heroes, but attack limits mean heroes can't fight hand-to-hand against an entire army. Which means that being mobbed was the death of heroes, and it was easier to kill them due to the more powerful spells and remote casting.

 

[MilesBeyond]

I finished the first one with all the possible ways. It was pure fun for me.

I especially love the crossover endings - doing Undead as the Keepers, or Highmen as the Cult of Storms. I also really like that it keeps race relations from helping them in past campaigns, so you can be Undead and yet still have Halflings perfectly happy to trail along after you.

 

[fantadomat]

SM has better AI, better combat (no need to line up units which became very tedious and time consuming), is more balanced (no über heroes who can beat an entire faction single handed), and I like the wizard towers concept.

AOW balance would be immensely boosted if it had a limit on attacks like the later games. Pretty much the only way to kill heroes on it was massed ballista/cannons, air galleys, Nature Elementals or ganging up on them with enchanted lvl4 units.

AOWSM totally has uber heroes, but attack limits mean heroes can't fight hand-to-hand against an entire army. Which means that being mobbed was the death of heroes, and it was easier to kill them due to the more powerful spells and remote casting.

Meh,balance is boring for a single player game. There is no need for everything to be the same to have the same challenge fighting every race. I like having two heroes and bunch of dragons or other summoned final tier flying thing. I would rather have fun than balance.

I finished the first one with all the possible ways. It was pure fun for me.

I especially love the crossover endings - doing Undead as the Keepers, or Highmen as the Cult of Storms. I also really like that it keeps race relations from helping them in past campaigns, so you can be Undead and yet still have Halflings perfectly happy to trail along after you.

Absolutely yes!

 

[fantadomat]

Meh,balance is boring for a single player game. There is no need for everything to be the same to have the same challenge fighting every race. I like having two heroes and bunch of dragons or other summoned final tier flying thing. I would rather have fun than balance.

To me game balance is all about having sets of cool, different tools/abilities that cannot simply dominate without skill involved.
AOW heroes are pretty OP, customize your starting leader to have first strike and cold strike (Lightning Strike is ok, too), watch the entire enemy army kamizake itsef trying to attack your leader, getting frozen in the first strike and ending up paralysed.

Another balancing mistake is how Orcs are without doubt the most powerful race in the original game.

The game as a whole is not very hard,heroes were op in the second game to,just wait 500 days in the first scenario and watch everything fall in the next two scenarios. Still the games are fun. And that is all that matter to me. You could kill everything with every nation,spamming knights and witches as humans or dragons and summoned shit. Also i do love to own every single building on the map before finishing the scenario .

 

[Sloul]

What's the best mods for Aow 1?

 

[octavius]

Don't know about best or current, but Warlock's Mod was supposed to be good, but I never got it to work with my old Windows XP computer.

 

[MilesBeyond]

I remember at one point I somehow managed to screw up my installation of Warlock's and ended up with changes to the base game implemented but no new units or anything and that was like the optimal version of the basic AoW experience. I can't remember how I did that, though. I have, however, tried messing around with Zippy's Unit Editor to create a slightly more satisfying game (one where non-Orc Swordsmen actually have a purpose, for example). I've also had a similar experience with hex editing HoMM 3. The problem with most mods is that they change the game to a non-trivial degree, whereas I just want to fix a few things that bug me personally.

 

[octavius]

I used a custom mod myself for SM, to make the single player experience better, but I haven't played SM for years now.
In the meantime the 1.5 UOP was released, but I haven't tried it yet. Should be interesting to compare with the 1.4. Probably I'll make a new mod that incorporates the new units from 1.5.

 

[Great Deceiver]

There was a patch today that finally adds mouse cursor scaling - it's now possible to play in 4k without having to deal with a tiny cursor. Awesome, I've been waiting for this for a long time, ever since I switched to a 4k display I've had to resort to YoloMouse, which wasn't an optimal solution. Kudos to the devs.

Full notes:

http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/patch-v1-801/#post-270680

Tactical Combat

• Fixed an issue with the Oyster Reef Tactical Map where units were not positioned correctly on their hex due to them being placed too high relative to the water plane.

Balance

• Fixed necromantic circles spawning too close to other spawners, causing roaming unit hotspots.

Stability

• Fixed a rare crash that crashed the game when selling items.
• Fixed a crash that occured when opening a diplomatic proposal which included a structure – e.g. a fortress – that has been razed. The offer is now automatically declined and the razed structure is removed from the proposal.
• Fixed a rare crash in campaign when finishing a map with an active quest which had concealed units.
• Oyster reefs no longer appear in lava lakes in the underground.

Exploits

• When selecting ‘Give me a different hero’ on a ‘Hero Join’ event it was possible to kill the declined hero to gain XP and Items. This has been fixed by despawning the hero when requesting a new hero.

Linux

• Fixed an issue where keyboard shortcuts did not work in some Linux distributions.

UI

• Added support for cursor scaling on all resolutions. Should help people see the cursor when playing on high resolutions.

Modding
Added a workaround to allow people with high end PCs to run heavy mods.
Especially mods that increase the number of figures – characters – on screen, such as the ‘Regiments’ mods.

1. Create a text file called ‘Game.cfg’ in the user ‘Config/’ folder of the game’s user directory. E.g. ‘/Documents/My Games/AoW3/Config/Game.cfg’ on Windows.
2. Using a text editor – e.g. notepad – add a line saying ‘SHADER_SIZE=2’. This doubles the render call limit.

Please note that this is a workaround and not an officially supported feature. I.e. the game could become unstable and the workaround might still not resolve issues with many figures on screen.

Also, Triumph is announcing their new game in May and they've said it will appeal to AoW fans. I wonder if this has to do with a long-rumoured official MoM revival?

 

[Sloul]

It could as well be another game taking place in AoW universe.
They mentioned their interest for rpg in the past.

 

[fantadomat]

Will it be on mobile? How else could tencent make money of it?

 

[baud]

Will it be on mobile? How else could tencent make money of it?

Tencent just has a minority share in Paradox, no? So they don't care if it makes money, as long as it makes money.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Men, I am currently playing Age of Wonders 2 and I have two small questions it isn't really worth it to make an own thread about.

First, I am currently on a campaign map with a lot of guys, some of which seem to be my natural allies. Allied victory is activated. After making several alliances, two cancelled on me. I missed the reasoning of one, the other was that peacekeeping faggot Anon who said I am not really interested in peace, no fucking shit dude, I am trying to win this map. Although both guys keep their peace, they absolutely refuse to reenter any alliance which will force me to eventually conquer them all.

What I do not understand is how exactly the diplomacy AI works, how does it determine if and when to enter an alliance with me, under what grounds does it cancel the alliance and why on earth do they flatout refuse to ever reenter one again?

Second, I made the mistake of not reloading when one of my heroes died. This makes the game much harder due to the new domain rules. Thankfully, I have the Call Hero spell. Unfortunately, it never fucking works. It always just says 'no hero available'. Whats up with that?