Age of Wonders 3

[Norfleet]

Thankfully, I have the Call Hero spell. Unfortunately, it never fucking works. It always just says 'no hero available'. Whats up with that?

It means that every hero in existence has already been hired and/or killed by somebody. Call Hero can only call heroes that haven't already been hired, placed on the map as part of the campaign, or killed off. This leaves a relatively small selection, particularly in campaign.

 

[Raghar]

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?

I pretend it's random and do my stuff. AoW2 SM is crazy difficult anyway (if you play blind without reloading).

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?

You didn't experienced situation when you didn't have money for hero, and then hero was nearby and decided your faction is scum and blew up one city and your most important units? Well, that spell works DIFFERENTLY in AoW than in other games. It only summons random neutral hero that can be hired if you have enough money. Obviously with combinations of certain races of heroes there can be issues.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

I am not playing SM, just the basic AoW2, Wizards Something, whatever its called.

I love AoW but one of the gripes I have with the first two so far is that the late game can become pretty tedious when its already sure that the AI doesn't stand a chance but it'll still take many turns until you finally beat it.

That tediousness is elevated by my two issues above. A massive map on which I have to beat all the factions rather than just a couple. And for a war on several fronts, I only have one hero, which sucks because it limits my ability to cast spells. If I sent my one hero down into one direction, chances are I'll get fucked in the other. I mean, its all managable, not too difficulty, just a bit too tedious, at least in the long run.

One problem could be solved by an ability to ask AI for surrender when odds are overwhelmingly in players favor, which sounds lame but wouldve surely saved me many hours of tenseless turns trying to wrap things up.

One seems to be simply not well thought-out design. I appreciate the change to have domains which limit your spell casting abilities because it adds tactical choices, however, it makes the heroes much more important now. But then they should have made it so that the player can summon heroes if he needs to. Otherwise the death of a hero is too limiting, leading to a guaranteed reload.

Edit:

Ha, looks like Surrender was added to AoW3? Anyway, the issue was apparently that the the AI factions did not like one of my alliance partners. Once I got rid of him, they were willing to ally again.

However, there seems to be an odd bug with diplomacy that my offer sometimes doesn't seem to register. It neither gets accepted nor declined, I just click on the button and nothing changes.

 

[Sloul]

It's the issue with AoW 3, everything is about damage dealing and this is even more true for Spells. The most damage you can apply early, the easier the fights get.

 

[the_shadow]

It's the issue with AoW 3, everything is about damage dealing and this is even more true for Spells. The most damage you can apply early, the easier the fights get.

Sounds like most RPGs and strategy games.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Maybe I'm just bad at the game, but I'm generally too mana and casting points-starved to be throwing out too many nukes in combat. Although I generally do prefer direct damage to buffs or debuffs.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

I liked summoning units in this game, they seemed super OP. Node serpents and eldritch horrors are crazy good

 

[Raghar]

Hey so I have started playing this game again, I only touched the version at launch for like five seconds

Anyway, is it normal that I employ what I call "Magical Artillery Canon" tactic? I often start battles (especially city sieges) by just blasting my enemies from afar until I run out of spellpoints or the enemy attacks first. It feels a little gay, honestly, but it has been helping me win hard fights.

So you send one hero with army to one side, second hero to other side, and third army doesn't have caster, thus it needs to finish stuff properly.
Considering you can get two spells out before they are in melee with you... Well, if you play the golden realm expansion you'd sweat bit more.

 

[Suicidal]

It's the issue with AoW 3, everything is about damage dealing and this is even more true for Spells. The most damage you can apply early, the easier the fights get.

Isn't this the case with every AoW game and every combatfag TBS in general?

 

[Citizen]

Isn't this the case with every AoW game and every combatfag TBS in general?

First AoW game is not about the damage, it's about attack + control spells/effects. Why would anyone put points in damage spells or stats if you can hit in melee with both lightning + freeze effects and cast chainlightning with stun effect? When the enemies are in 3 turn freeze state or entangled, you don't really need damage. High attack + control beats high damage everyday.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Hey so I have started playing this game again, I only touched the version at launch for like five seconds

Anyway, is it normal that I employ what I call "Magical Artillery Canon" tactic? I often start battles (especially city sieges) by just blasting my enemies from afar until I run out of spellpoints or the enemy attacks first. It feels a little gay, honestly, but it has been helping me win hard fights.

In city sieges it's pretty normal, yes. Don't know why you find it weird though.

In open field battles not really - if you start throwing spells without moving the enemy will come to you. Unless you're not playing the latest version or playing cracked - at various stages the AI had some pretty serious problems with being super passive during tactical battles.

 

[Suicidal]

Isn't this the case with every AoW game and every combatfag TBS in general?

First AoW game is not about the damage, it's about attack + control spells/effects. Why would anyone put points in damage spells or stats if you can hit in melee with both lightning + freeze effects and cast chainlightning with stun effect? When the enemies are in 3 turn freeze state or entangled, you don't really need damage. High attack + control beats high damage everyday.

So instead of doing as much damage as quickly as possible you apply as many crowd control effects as quickly as possible. Your methods may different but your end goal is still the same - fuck up the enemy army as much as possible as quickly as possible, which, again, is true for every combatfag TBS.

Also, it's not like AoW3 lacks other types of spells apart and direct DPS is the only option, that's just hyperbole. Personally when I played I used in-combat summoning spells more than damage spells and in the early game some buffs are really good in certain situations, like casting that 80% physical resistance shell on your unit and placing him in a chokepoint so that enemy's melee cannot do shit to him while your archers fuck them up. A much better use of your mana than just doing 20 damage once. In the end it all depends on the situation and what class you're playing.

 

[visions]

Yeah, control is where it is in AOW1, especially because all units can strike back as much as they're attacked, which leads to a single leader with the first strike/cold strike deadly combo soloing entire armies.

Magic was generally weaker in 1, tho.

Was there any other way to get first strike on your leader in AOW 1, other than carrying an item that gives you first strike? I don't remember.

 

[Citizen]

Was there any other way to get first strike on your leader in AOW 1, other than carrying an item that gives you first strike? I don't remember.

IIRC, no. But freezing + lightning + extra strike does the job.

 

[Absinthe]

Hey so I have started playing this game again, I only touched the version at launch for like five seconds

Anyway, is it normal that I employ what I call "Magical Artillery Canon" tactic? I often start battles (especially city sieges) by just blasting my enemies from afar until I run out of spellpoints or the enemy attacks first. It feels a little gay, honestly, but it has been helping me win hard fights.

Exploiting the AI is pretty normal, especially in "PBEM" mode multiplayer. If you use Chaos Rift or Call Beast Horde (or have a Sorc hero or Lord of the Deep use Thunderstorm) though, the AI will rush out of the gates instead of waiting around as you blast them. If you really want to go damage crazy just take Destruction master for Storm Magic, although it's slow to research. If you want blasting spells in non-caster specs like Warlord and Rogue, consider going Fire master or Water master. Usually Water master goes with Goblins though, since they really love wetlands terrain.

If you really want to exploit AI combat, try dragging out the fights so you can get all your units to max out their exp in combat, cheese the enemy AI patterns so you have as few as possible of your units die, and drag out fights so you can use healers so everyone exits every fight at full health. Game breaks in half this way. Also, for necromancers, it's popular to carefully stack Inflict Despair until the enemy hits -100% spirit resistance and then use a Death Bringer for guaranteed Inflict Ghoul Curse. You can recruit some quick T4 units this way.

I liked summoning units in this game, they seemed super OP. Node serpents and eldritch horrors are crazy good

Pro tip: As a Sorcerer you should always try to build a city in the range of a wizard tower ruins for the Arcane Catalyst building. With a Wizard's Academy and Arcane Catalyst, any unit you summon there will be summoned at veteran rank (and if it dies you get a free random lesser elemental until the end of combat). Overall though, summoning units ends up inferior to building them in a base. The sorcerer tends to fall off in the lategame because his summoning speed can't keep up with the next guy cranking out class T3s and T4s from his cities, although at least the sorc doesn't have it as bad as the Arch Druid, thanks to Age of Magic. Basically Sorcerers are very dependent on racial T3s and dwelling units. If you want stronger armies, you are probably better off picking your race with an eye for their racial units and taking Grey Guard adept or an alignment master specialization.

Not sure how good it is in the scheme of things, but Keeper of the Peace master is an interesting pick in particular since the Arch Angel summon is a support and thus gets all the support-boosting Sorcerer upgrades (phase, projectile resistance, inflict stun) as well as the extra level-up from a Wizard's Academy (add an Arcane Catalyst and they start as veterans with inflict daze on top of their inflict stun, and if they die they will make a lesser elemental and still resurge after the battle). Since spirit immunity is the most popular kind of immunity in the game though you might want to add Wild Magic adept for the Degenerate debuff (the other Wild Magic adept spells are not bad either).

 

[Raghar]

Try to win without exploiting AI. It's really shitty to abuse rather primitive AI.

 

[Absinthe]

That's asking someone to mentally handicap themselves and play worse than they can. If you don't want to exploit shitty AI you're better off playing multiplayer, although Triumph has somewhat obnoxiously tunneled all multiplayer (including "LAN" and "PBEM", which have no business requiring Triumph servers) through their own servers as a DRM crippleware layer. Not sure they won any sales with that, especially as they pissed off their GOG customers, but hey. Anyhow, also, in "PBEM" mode being the guy who doesn't abuse AI will put you at a severe disadvantage. Honestly Triumph should have made the AI open to modding. And it's not just about the need for better AoW 3 AI in general. A lot of mods are also crippled by the fact that if they attempt to create clever, unusual, or new mechanics, the AI will be completely unable to use them intelligently, resulting in a lot of good ideas going down the drain.

For what it's worth, there is a singleplayer and PBEM balance mod that changes mechanics to limit AI exploitation among other things.

 

[Raghar]

That's asking someone to mentally handicap themselves and play worse than they can.

Better using proper tactics, than putting difficulty to legendary.

A lot of mods are also crippled by the fact that if they attempt to create unusual or new mechanics, the AI will be completely unable to use them intelligently, resulting in a lot of good ideas going down the drain.

Well, AI was designed for a game, not for mods. Obviously, AI can't handle something mod creators should write into theirs own game. Not even Total War mods were able to change AI for theirs own.

 

[BING XI LAO]

The only way to make a truly interesting multi experience is to have so many options as to create a truly unpredictable environment (again, see Dominions). Many other examples of good, asymetric and inbalanced games have already been made, could you please name an interesting 4x you deem balanced?

Surely Dominions, which I haven't played properly but understand is absolutely superb, has had many cases of balancing with OP things being nerfed? At least, so I would assume.
Balance isn't a bad thing as long as it's understood that features/mechanics are more important than balance, and that it's generally better to balance by exaggerating differences, adding mechanics, adding costs and downsides to things. Balance by nerfing a strong point/strong mechanic being the worst, last-resort method. Just because balance is impossible to attain doesn't make it a bad thing to work towards as a lower priority from gameplay diversity (which hugely aids balance anyway).

 

[Matalarata]

Dominions

Dafuq, talk about necroing an OT post. Re-read the discussion buddy, it's not about balance per-se but multiplayer balance in specific. Which means, evening out races, civs, spells whatever in order to make each option viable against each other option.

Dominions, which you should really, really, really try, has had a gazillion balancing tweaks and patches but no one ever attempted to make the various nations or schools/paths of magic equal in a MP environment. And that's why Trump won we love it.

with OP things being nerfed?

Uh? No! Usually, when something isn't exactly fun to use or isn't well implemented lore-wise, they tweak things around but that's exactly the point. There are rituals to plunge the world into darkness forever (fucking every nation that needs eyes to see), another makes every living unit age 10 times faster (fucking humans and short lived beings). A ritual freezes all the seas in the world, U playin' Atlantis? Tough luck. Blood mages can corrupt the Astral plane itself and basicaly forbid everyone else in the world from performing ritual magic, else your mages will be besieged by horrors.

Immortal casters are a majestic Pita. Imagine a lich advancing alone vs a whole army and infecting everyone with an eldritch plague. Your soldiers killing it only to see him raise and attack again and again, turn after turn, repeating the same while they fall like flies to diseases. Archangels able to literally traverse the whole world in a single turn and raiding unsuspecting players with no warning whatsoever. Leave any kind of serious blood power alive into midgame and prepare to be fucked by an endless stream of demons! But you don't give a shit 'coz your undead neighbour lost control over the Eater of the Dead and you have this thing:

Spoiler

Rampaging on the other side of your lands.



You can forge artifacts to fly or sail armies over whole provinces, instakill even Demon Princes ( Dominions is beyond the concept of "tiers", those things are as nasty as they sound), turn diseases into magic gems, fool your enemies into thinking your army is twice its size or half as much. Summon a fucking invisible shadowy servant, a small stealthy undead, and give him a magical charm spreading plagues wherever it goes, your enemies will need a patrolling army to find it and it'll be long gone when said army arrives, killing pops by the thousands in a nearby province.



...does anything I said even remotely sounds balanced to you?


edit: although yes, I'm not denying there have been balancing patches or nerfing of strategies. Mainly though, we' re talking spells or strats that exploited the system in unwanted ways. For example, Dom5 nerfed some pretty big spells, by tweaking the system of battle itself. Hard to explain more since you don't know the game but if you're interested, try googling for "Rain of stone nerf".


Edit2: because I just found this image and I think it's hilarious. Here you can see how the various Dominions nations relate to each other, through the 3 ages you can play in-game. As far as I know this is 100% legit (except for the "headcanon" arrows) with no attempt at sarcasm whatsoever. This is mainly about fluff but, still, you'll get the point, it's about depth, complexity and the game being a labour of love:

Spoiler

 

[BING XI LAO]

Dominions

Re-read the discussion buddy, it's not about balance per-se but multiplayer balance in specific. Which means, evening out races, civs, spells whatever in order to make each option viable against each other option.[/spoiler]

Good balance shouldn't mean evening things out or making each option viable against each other option. For example, counterpicking is an absolutely fundamental part of DotA2 which is relentlessly rebalanced and very competitive. Nation counterpicks are a thing in AoE2 as well. But sorry if I'm trying to drag on a necroed argument on a minor detail, I should stop.

And I must admit there's a lot of bad balancing out there, the type that homogenises and equalises, more than there is good balancing. And even good balancing is less important than having a broad array of features..... speaking of which.

Dominions sounded like you were describing a big FEAST to me, and I'm hungry. I'm just not sure I can stand the UI. Does Dominions 5 have easier to use controls? Should I buy it or wait for Dominions 6?

 

[Matalarata]

DotA2

That's a different kind of... ahem *game*. Again, re-read the conversation. I already explained why 4x, by their nature, are aleatory and hardly the kind of game to play MP to begin with. Of course if we talk Street fFghter then, yes, every character must be balanced against each other ffs!

Dominions is an exception of sorts, you need a specific kind of gamer to play it. One undaunted by obscure mechanics, auld school interface, micromanagement and an almost endless depth. It creates an unpredictable environment, no better way to say it. Every other 4x I played, both Mp and Sp (and I played a lot) doesn't even come close.
Unfortunately for you, no, the UI received no major updates, although there have been some QoL features (Auto-research for newly recruited mages in Dom4, Multi-provinces movement in Dom5). The interface does grow on you though. For example, nowadays I only start losing hairs and having nightmares around turn 60. Used to be around turn 12 when I started...

In any case, since it apears you have little or no knoweledge of the game, I'd say you should simply head over to the related thread to ask info or directly over the MP subforums, where multiple games are currently being played. In case you want to get the gist of it, here:

Dominion 5 Mod Inspector

You'll find the thousands of units and spells and the hundreds of artifacts and rituals you can play with. I'm not even joking with numbers.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I already explained why 4x, by their nature, are aleatory and hardly the kind of game to play MP to begin with.

I constantly play multiplayer AoW, people play multiplayer Dominions.... how could playing a deep strategy game against an AI that can't be programmed to understand half of it, possibly compare?

Of course if we talk Street fFghter then, yes, every character must be balanced against each other ffs!

Why? I don't know much about Street fighter or similar games, but googling found me this https://www.ssbwiki.com/Character_matchup_(SSBM)

Balance done right doesn't mean homogenising, and multiplayer isn't totally about balance or avoiding luck: if you want to see all the possibilities a game has to offer, playing vs humans is better than vs AI

 

[Matalarata]

.. how could playing a deep strategy game against an AI that can't be programmed to understand half of it, possibly compare?

4x were born as single player affairs. Disregarding Mp balance allows for deeper and different strategies. You can have underpowered civs performing very well in specific circumstances or being exceptionally good vs a single different civ or strategy. In a Sp environment you can, for example, have a niche unit that gives you an advantage in early conquest without having to endlessly fine tune the balance between the number of cities you can realistically conquer before said advantage wanes. All examples I already made, if you bothered to read the thread.

In a Sp environment you can simply program an asymetric AI and have it play by different rules. This nowadays means half-arsed mechanics, like AI getting money out of thin air and consequently invalidating a good portion of tactics (blockades, hampering of commerce) but there are examples of it being done well (MoO, and MoM with the restoration patch, for example).

Why?

Because that game was born a multi player affair and, as such, they endlessly try to properly balance it so that each choice is viable. The fact you can find a fanmade matchup document for such a game aptly proves my point. Balancing 4x for Mp is pernicious because:

a) It seriously reduces the diversity of tactics and strategies you can include.

b) It's an ultimately pointless affair. Dafuq, they can't even manage to balance Street Fighter properly, imagine what they do to poor, poor 4Xs (half joking here, I know the point of fighting games is not to have each character balanced vs the others. Even they learned the lesson.)


And again I ask, could you name a 4x game that you deem "balanced"? Even those on the other side of the barricade concluded that AoW isn't. Have you got an example you can bring to the table? Because there are generations of players that still love and play daily things like MoM and MoO (unbalanced monstruosities...) in single player while last time I checked only a small % of players actually play 4x in MP. But we must all live in your boring and gray world 'coz banalance!

Dominions

Dominions is an exception of sorts, you need a specific kind of gamer to play it.

It creates an unpredictable environment, no better way to say it

It's also exceptionally complex and deep. When you have hundreds of thousands of variables to take into account, it's normal that an AI just won't cut it. Dominions is like a board game, with such complexity it needs cpu assistance to be played. Really, comparing it to anything else is pointless and, again, it's an unbalanced clusterfuck! It goes beyond concepts like OP or UP, people play it for totally different reasons than AoW, imho.

 

[BING XI LAO]

You can have underpowered civs performing very well in specific circumstances or being exceptionally good vs a single different civ or strategy.

This is also true in 'balanced' games.

Balancing doesn't mean making all factions/sides the same. Where did you get that idea anyway? It's complete retardation.

Sneer at DotA all you want, I admit it's not very patrician, but it's a pinnacle of multiplayer compeition AND asymmetric design (in which heroes you choose at the start of a match). Same with AoE2, that has a reasonably strong competitive scene and some nations will always have inherently good matchups against others. Starcraft, not that I care much about it, has three totally different factions after years of competitive multiplayer and balancing.

In a Sp environment you can, for example, have a niche unit that gives you an advantage in early conquest without having to endlessly fine tune the balance between the number of cities you can realistically conquer before said advantage wanes.

Fine-tuning the strength of a niche unit is bad because...?

In a Sp environment you can simply program an asymetric AI and have it play by different rules. This nowadays means half-arsed mechanics, like AI getting money out of thin air and consequently invalidating a good portion of tactics (blockades, hampering of commerce) but there are examples of it being done well (MoO, and MoM with the restoration patch, for example).

It's still just AI. I still haven't seen an AI that can handle naval invasions competently. Playing against AI endlessly, after trying out the game enough to understand most of it, and using ''deep and varied strategies'' against a fundamentally gimped and uncomprehending opponent, is just weird.

Balancing 4x for Mp is pernicious because:

a) It seriously reduces the diversity of tactics and strategies you can include.

Bad and incompetent balancing, which nerfs strengths and buffs weaknesses, does that. And I admit that bad balancing is common.

But competent, properly executed balancing does the opposite. It nerfs a strong choice by making its weakest point weaker, and buffs the weak choice by making its strongest point stronger. Or it nerfs something, not by making it directly weaker, but by introducing an entire new mechanic or choice that counters it.

AoW2 has many units knocking about that are bland, weak and trash. If I were to release a balance patch, and maybe I will, I'd balance them by giving them niche abilities or giving them skewed statistics.

b) It's an ultimately pointless affair.

Balance can never be achieved, but you can get closer to it and even expand the features of the game in the process. Just because a thing is unattainable doesn't mean it's wrong to work towards it.

And again I ask, could you name a 4x game that you deem "balanced"? Even those on the other side of the barricade concluded that AoW isn't. Have you got an example you can bring to the table? Because there are generations of players that still love and play daily things like MoM and MoO (unbalanced monstruosities...) in single player while last time I checked only a small % of players actually play 4x in MP.

Considering I said in my first post ''balance is impossible to attain'', my answer is no.

But we must all live in your boring and gray world 'coz banalance!

I have many times seen balance being the motivator for adding a new mechanic to a series, or for making unused/unuseable choices relevant - effectively restored to a significant position in the game.