Age of Wonders 3

[cvv]

I was waiting for a sale like that. It was often -75% for the vanilla but with the expansions you'd pay 20+ bucks and that was too much. This is perfect, thanks for the heads-up.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

Is the Complete STEAM version worth picking up for £6 / $7.85 ? (-84%) (WinGameStore pcgames5off for -5%)
Incline / Decline please.

You get the Windows/OSX/Linux release with all the DLC that was released excluding the pre-order scenario.
I've already played it of course and can run the GOG Windows release through Wine.

The battles are the strongest part of the game - flanking, unit types, resistances, leveling up, etc.
The overland map, management & research aspects felt a bit lacking.
Some of the scenarios felt like they had to be rushed through in order to establish a foothold.
No shadow realm whatsoever.

Age of Wonders always feels like it gets 80% right and 20% wrong which isn't quite enough to reach classic status.
Played all the usual suspects like Civilization 4 Complete and Warlock (1+2) but I've yet to try Endless Legend.

Tried Eador:Genesis?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Is the Complete STEAM version worth picking up for £6 / $7.85 ? (-84%) (WinGameStore pcgames5off for -5%)
Incline / Decline please.

Vanilla is pretty meh, full package is imo worth it even at full price. The game is declined in some ways compared to previous titles and has bad production values, but combat wise it leaves other current gen strategies in the dust and is actually a good deal better in the combat department compared to modern "tactical" games (I know that doesn't say a lot when the most recognizable tactical game is an utter shitstain of nu-xcom, but still). In fact, it also beats quite a lot of modern crpgs when it comes to coming up with different "party" builds, combos, synergies etc.

You should try Endless Legends too btw, but it's a different kettle of fish.

 

[mwnn85]

Tried Eador:Genesis?

I've very briefly tried the campaign mode of Eador: Genesis & New Horizons - the former was given away for free on GOG.
I was only getting to use the trash Tier 1 units so I can't form a concrete opinion - I know it's well received around here.
I'll get around to that again eventually.

Decided to indulge. WinGameStore are legitimate.
With the promo code (-5%) it came to £5.93 with PayPal's conversion.
I avoid all the bank's expensive currency conversion fees then - they take the piss when you use a debit card.
Got my single STEAM key instantly.
According to this comment from a reddit topic I've started - if you own the base game and buy this - you'll just get what you don't own.

Looks like a solid Linux port - straight 60 fps with everything on full - even on my old potato Phenom II X4 955.
Far nicer than running through WINE with it's crap DirectX 9 performance.

I can start the game running by AoW3Launcher.sh without STEAM running but that only lets me play the original game.
Launching through STEAM shows everything; it must check for ownership of the DLC using STEAM.
Some screenshots

I'll have to try registering a Triumph account to see if that lets me use the DLC offline.
CreamAPI/SmartSteamEmu doesn't exist on Linux as far as I know - else I use it for Total Warhammer!

 

[BING XI LAO]

*I HATE DOMAIN OF FIRE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!

The real killer in that mission is Domain of Fire AND Damnation Domain (which prevents nonmagical healing). They are a strong combo! Lowlevel troops and machines will gradually get shredded, I think I ended up using only the toughest bastards like Chaos Lords(fire immune), Reapers, etc.

 

[BING XI LAO]

One day I'll play a game with a Wetlands domain spell active. Gradually turns dry land to sea (leaves cities alone but does destroy some other stuff, can't remember what exactly)

Actually that would be a cool idea to make a custom map unique. If I can get an AI to cast Wetlands, and their dominion gets spread according to the actions of players having control of certain on/off switches. And I would give each player that spell that temporarily turns water to ice
Gotta be something cool I can do with it

 

[mwnn85]

I'll preface this by saying that I don't particularly have a hatred for STEAM when it's used as a content delivery platform but I prefer to be offline if I can.
I was curious to see if it's possible to turn the Linux release into a completely DRM-free / offline version.
And it is.
You don't need the STEAM client running or a Triumph account.
So the shit excuses that Triumph came up with are a load of bollocks.

You can even add in the pre-order scenario taken from the GOG release:
https://imgur.com/a/Yk8ZNz8

You basically need the GOG installer for the pre-order map: setup_age_of_wonders_iii_elven_resurgence_scenario_1.802_ (24203).exe (or the 1.801 file)
Plus a cracked libsteam_api.so taken from Celeste.LINUX-TiNYiSO and possibly other releases.

You just copy the DLC files into the right place and replace the STEAM library with the appropriate file.
Seems to work on Empire & Medieval 2 as well.
I don't own Shogun 2 or Fall of the Samurai as the SEGA jews won't release a digital gold edition at the right price!
I'm not giving them £17 for a 8 year old game - bad enough getting screwed on Total Warhammer DLC.
Those russians figure out everything...

 

[Raghar]

You know I have Shogun 2 gold edition for about 11$?

 

[mwnn85]

You know I have Shogun 2 gold edition for about 11$?

From g2a or kinguin or somewhere?

The only place I've seen it is here:
https://www.game.co.uk/en/total-war-shogun-2-gold-edition-207009
https://www.game.co.uk/en/total-war-shogun-2-gold-edition-207009
SEGA seem to think it's still worth £70 or £17 when at -75%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/201270/Total_War_SHOGUN_2/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/201271/Total_War_Shogun_2__Fall_of_the_Samurai/

 

[cvv]

So after being p. entertained by having to set up a Triumph account - that's so 2002 - I started playing and so far it's pretty great. Why exactly I was putting this game off? I think it has some balance problems initially so I thought to wait a bit and then I forgot. But yeah, this is right in my ballpark. Especially the combat is fantastic. Got my ass handed in the first tutorial battle lol, damn blight goblins one-shotting my units. Right there I realized this is much deeper than it seems. You have to actually use your brain, what a fresh take on gaming.

The only thing that baffles me is this - I bought the Steam Collection Edition from the WinGameStore for 8 bucks (what a fucking steal) but when I checked how much it is directly on Steam I couldn't find it. I guess it's not being sold in my region? Where does it even come from mwnn85? Is it some sort of special 3rd world edition or what?

 

[mwnn85]

The only thing that baffles me is this - I bought the Steam Collection Edition from the WinGameStore for 8 bucks (what a fucking steal) but when I checked how much it is directly on Steam I couldn't find it. I guess it's not being sold in my region? Where does it even come from mwnn85? Is it some sort of special 3rd world edition or what?

It seems like it's a special retail / third party deal according to the STEAMDB:
https://steamdb.info/app/226840/subs/
https://steamdb.info/sub/64197/

It's legitimate (as are WinGameStore) but as to why it's not offered on STEAM directly I've no idea.
Not region locked either - only the Russian version is.
The DLC content alone on STEAM is £15 + £6 for the base game = £21 total.
I got the lot for £5.93.

Are we getting completely bent over when buying from STEAM or are they selling at a loss?
I'm facepalming at the idea of people buying directly from STEAM and getting the shaft - but what's anything worth at the end of the day? (..only what people will pay for it)

For anyone who owns the main game - buying this just gives you the bits you're missing - but at the price of one expansion - so it's a no brainer!
You don't get an extra / gift copy of the main game unfortunately - the key gets eaten by STEAM.

It's really is worth looking around everywhere and checking out the STEAMDB, ggdeals, cheapshark, gamedeals (reddit), etc.
Fanatical Star Deals can either be brilliant or shit. (4PM UK TIME)
GamesPlanet does Flash Deals as well.
I'll post on gamedeals if I see something really good as I'm a bit of a bargain hunter.

 

[MilesBeyond]

So after being p. entertained by having to set up a Triumph account - that's so 2002 - I started playing and so far it's pretty great. Why exactly I was putting this game off? I think it has some balance problems initially so I thought to wait a bit and then I forgot. But yeah, this is right in my ballpark. Especially the combat is fantastic. Got my ass handed in the first tutorial battle lol, damn blight goblins one-shotting my units. Right there I realized this is much deeper than it seems. You have to actually use your brain, what a fresh take on gaming.

The game didn't really put its best foot forward. I remember when it was initially released, all the class units were basically identical. Since then, patches and DLC have really varied things up a lot, and there are fairly noticeable and substantial differences between, for example, a High Elf Warlord and an Orc Warlord. On release, it felt like the game had become so class-focused that races were now an afterthought, and it took a bit for that to get fixed.

 

[Absinthe]

More or less. Orc Warlord is a shit combination though, despite how fitting it seems. It's probably the worst Warlord race possible. It's just a crippling overspecialization into the Warlord's strengths (melee physical damage), where their upsides don't help, but their downsides do hurt. The only real perk I can see to it is that you can use Raise Militia to spawn one of the strongest T1 irregulars. It seems like Orcs are just a fucking weak race overall. They make bad Archdruids, bad Warlords, weak Dreadnoughts, subpar Rogues... I think Theocrats are the only class that could leverage Orcs well because they add a spirit damage channel and turn the priest into a healer as they collect on Tireless Crusaders and bigger Martyrs. Maybe Necromancer works too, on account of getting heal undead and life stealing along with bigger attacks. Lastly you can try Sorcerers, where the only real perk to being an Orc is seeing how far you can leverage Bestow Curse, that and the fact that Sorcs are more reliant on racial bruisers to make up the bulk of their army as they summon their class units. In the scheme of things though, Orcs tend to be somewhat underwhelming even if you want physical damage. Humans make giant knights with their racial governance bonuses while their T1 and T2 units become automatic elites with their Racial Governance 4, Tigrans have athletics and pounce and can inflict giant fire damage with their T3's ranged attack, and Halflings have ranged attacks plus lucky which allows them to shrug off anything. The biggest thing the T3 Orc Shock Trooper has going for it is Tireless and maybe Fearsome.

And you forgot to mention the specializations. Specializations and spheres are now the same thing, and while specializations still matter, they are now very underwhelming, giving fewer and weaker powers than before. The new specializations from the expansions are stronger, but on the whole the state of specializations in AoW 3 is really lackluster. AoW 3 also removed all unit enchantments and the majority of overland spells.

 

[Raghar]

It's legitimate (as are WinGameStore) but as to why it's not offered on STEAM directly I've no idea.

Steam would lose A LOT of money when it would offer it. So no, steam would get money on steam sales, and people who want to buy for full steam price, they can do.

Shogun 2 total war had similar deal. Dunno if you can still find it. It might be valid for limited number of sold copies. Basically if you want to pay for game, always look at other sources. (And remember, credit card frauds are not fairy tales.)

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

AoW 3 also removed all unit enchantments

Still pissed about this. It was one of the best uses of magic, did they think it was cheesy or something? Any human player knows to dispel magic before fighting super-heroes up to the gits in boosting magic. I've even seen the AI doing it in AOWSM.

 

[MilesBeyond]

AoW 3 also removed all unit enchantments

Still pissed about this. It was one of the best uses of magic, did they think it was cheesy or something? Any human player knows to dispel magic before fighting super-heroes up to the gits in boosting magic. I've even seen the AI doing it in AOWSM.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this one either. IIRC from dev posts over on the Triumph forums, the reason it was removed was because the AI can't deal with enchantments intelligently. In AoW 1 and especially 2/SM, enchantments broke the AI a little. First, because they couldn't figure out how to intelligently apply them, so they'd be liable to plunk enchantments down on random garrison troops in some backwater outpost that no one cares about. Like I said, this was particularly bad in SM - in AoW 1 you at least had to have a hero within 12 hexes to enchant a unit, so there were middling odds of it landing on a relevant unit. With SM's domain spread, it would eat through the AI's Casting Points like nobody's business, for almost no return. And that leads us into the second and much larger issue: It created an exploit where if you waited until the end of the turn to attack the AI, they had probably burnt through most of their casting points on unit enchants, potentially turning extremely difficult battles into cakewalks.

Now, I'm sympathetic with the problem. I think as a gamer, it's easy for us to underestimate the difficulty of programming a reasonable AI. The first issue in particular - I can't even begin to guess how I would teach a robot to say "Okay, this Pony Rider is being used to scout so it's a good candidate for Haste, while that Pony Rider is going to be going on the offensive so we should give it Enchant Weapon." But I don't think Triumph did a great job in this instance. IMHO a Master of Magic style system where combat casting points are independent from overland casting points would be better. That would undermine a little the strategic need to hedge your overland casting so that you don't end up getting ambushed later in your turn and can't use magic to deal with it, but I think it would be a very worthwhile trade. Even something like letting the AI cheat even further and not spend Casting Points when they cast overland unit enchants would be better, although certainly not ideal.

I will say one thing in its defense: Because unit enchants are combat only, we get some bomb-ass spells that would be laughably overpowered if they were global. Things like the T1 Warlord spells Last Stand and Lion's Courage are more powerful enchants than most of what's available in AoW 1 or SM. But it's small consolation and I'd definitely take weaker global enchants.

Also it means there's no Enchant Weapon! Enchant Weapon has been my Old Reliable since the days of the AoW 1 demo. A powerful boost for a reasonable price that's always available no matter your spheres. AoW 2/SM even made it apply to ranged attacks (though they also made the research algorithm real wonky so it wasn't quite as reliable. But still). An AoW game without Enchant Weapon is like an FPS without some sort of shotgun.

Also unit enchants were just plain fun. It kind of bred a sense of attachment to your units. "Who has distinguished themselves enough in this battle to be worthy of a Blessing?" That sort of thing. I remember one campaign map in AoW 1, I think it was the third Orc mission, where you have a big Goblin town right next to a Colisseum. It was great fun to just churn out a stack of Goblin Spearmen, upgrade them all to Gold Medal at the Colisseum, then slap Stone Skin, Dark Gift, and Enchant Weapon on them and have this elite squad of trash mobs that could take on just about anything. Granted, yes, that's time and money and mana that would have been much better invested in getting a single Karagh and buffing it up, but that's not as fun, damm - well, okay, that was a lot of fun too. Also boo on Triumph for not having the Karagh in AoW 3. What a great unit.

AoW 3 might actually be my favourite game in the series but complaining about things you hate in games you otherwise love is so much more fun than complaining about games you hate.

 

[Absinthe]

Still pissed about this. It was one of the best uses of magic, did they think it was cheesy or something? Any human player knows to dispel magic before fighting super-heroes up to the gits in boosting magic. I've even seen the AI doing it in AOWSM.

One of the problems I heard was over-enchanted doomstacks plowing through everything but just removing all enchants was a boneheaded way to address it. They should've put more sensible controls on enchanting. And one result of this was that the reduced mana sinks meant a lot of players would end up sitting on ludicrous amounts of mana after a while (this also made shit like Disjunction spam more popular when you're just sitting on mana to burn), which Triumph later chose to address by inserting a maximum mana cap that you have to raise by teching casting points or building facilities. This kind of god-awful bandaid design really blows my mind. In the latest expansion they added new mana sinks in the form of the new unit-buffing city & global enchant combo they added to alignment specializations.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this one either. IIRC from dev posts over on the Triumph forums, the reason it was removed was because the AI can't deal with enchantments intelligently. In AoW 1 and especially 2/SM, enchantments broke the AI a little. First, because they couldn't figure out how to intelligently apply them, so they'd be liable to plunk enchantments down on random garrison troops in some backwater outpost that no one cares about. Like I said, this was particularly bad in SM - in AoW 1 you at least had to have a hero within 12 hexes to enchant a unit, so there were middling odds of it landing on a relevant unit. With SM's domain spread, it would eat through the AI's Casting Points like nobody's business, for almost no return. And that leads us into the second and much larger issue: It created an exploit where if you waited until the end of the turn to attack the AI, they had probably burnt through most of their casting points on unit enchants, potentially turning extremely difficult battles into cakewalks.

That one's easily remedied by splitting up combat and non-combat CP, which also fixes a longstanding complaint of summoners: If you're summoning shit, you can't cast anything in combat.

Now, I'm sympathetic with the problem. I think as a gamer, it's easy for us to underestimate the difficulty of programming a reasonable AI. The first issue in particular - I can't even begin to guess how I would teach a robot to say "Okay, this Pony Rider is being used to scout so it's a good candidate for Haste, while that Pony Rider is going to be going on the offensive so we should give it Enchant Weapon."

You don't need to devise super-intelligent AI that always applies enchants in the best way. You just need an AI that avoids applying enchants in retarded ways. It's easy to note that if an army is being used for defensive purposes and is too far from the front, it probably shouldn't get enchanted. And you could just put Haste on both pony riders without any problem. Haste is a perfectly good enchant for combat anyway. It allows the pony rider to reliably charge someone from behind. You can also probably draft 3 lists of enchanting behavior "defender, attacker, scout", throw in a few basic checks (melee vs ranged, etc.), and you'll probably end up with acceptable if somewhat suboptimal unit enchanting habits.

But I don't think Triumph did a great job in this instance. IMHO a Master of Magic style system where combat casting points are independent from overland casting points would be better. That would undermine a little the strategic need to hedge your overland casting so that you don't end up getting ambushed later in your turn and can't use magic to deal with it, but I think it would be a very worthwhile trade. Even something like letting the AI cheat even further and not spend Casting Points when they cast overland unit enchants would be better, although certainly not ideal.

Agreed, on both points.

I will say one thing in its defense: Because unit enchants are combat only, we get some bomb-ass spells that would be laughably overpowered if they were global. Things like the T1 Warlord spells Last Stand and Lion's Courage are more powerful enchants than most of what's available in AoW 1 or SM. But it's small consolation and I'd definitely take weaker global enchants.

Don't forget Savage Rage: It gives a monster or animal +5 physical damage (opening a new damage channel if need be), Charge, First Strike, Armor Piercing, Overwhelm, and Wall Crushing as a T2 spell costing 7CP. But then there are trash enchants from specializations like Fire Halo (+2 fire damage to all attack types and +100% fire resist, not worth casting unless you really need fire immunity or you're exploiting its hidden interactions with stuff like fire/frost/shock/spirit aura or Thunderstorm/spells and even then the value isn't that great) which you get from Fire Mastery or the two unit enchants from Keeper of the Peace master which feel like they should've been combined into a single spell, honestly.

Also it means there's no Enchant Weapon! Enchant Weapon has been my Old Reliable since the days of the AoW 1 demo. A powerful boost for a reasonable price that's always available no matter your spheres. AoW 2/SM even made it apply to ranged attacks (though they also made the research algorithm real wonky so it wasn't quite as reliable. But still). An AoW game without Enchant Weapon is like an FPS without some sort of shotgun. Also unit enchants were just plain fun. It kind of bred a sense of attachment to your units. "Who has distinguished themselves enough in this battle to be worthy of a Blessing?" That sort of thing. I remember one campaign map in AoW 1, I think it was the third Orc mission, where you have a big Goblin town right next to a Colisseum. It was great fun to just churn out a stack of Goblin Spearmen, upgrade them all to Gold Medal at the Colisseum, then slap Stone Skin, Dark Gift, and Enchant Weapon on them and have this elite squad of trash mobs that could take on just about anything. Granted, yes, that's time and money and mana that would have been much better invested in getting a single Karagh and buffing it up, but that's not as fun, damm - well, okay, that was a lot of fun too.

I'm also annoyed they removed mass battlefield enchants, so you won't be casting enchants late-game because when you can only cast 1 spell per turn the more powerful spells just take priority. Mass Bless can't be obtained without lucking out on a random spell pickup. And random spell pickups can be stupidly powerful or stupidly weak depending on what you get, even among spells of the same tier, let alone stuff like the Sage empire quest which can get you anything from True Resurrection (which lets you rez enemy units at 100% health and permanently add them to your army) to Great Immolation which will randomly immolate your own units and costs 25 CP (50 if your hero is not in combat) to boot.

Also boo on Triumph for not having the Karagh in AoW 3. What a great unit.

AoW 3 is lacking nearly all the fun racial units from AoW 1 & 2. It's part of what made it so damn dull on launch. They started changing around racial T3s to make it a bit better but there's still so much missing compared to the previous games.

AoW 3 might actually be my favourite game in the series but complaining about things you hate in games you otherwise love is so much more fun than complaining about games you hate.

Really? AoW 2 still has a lot more fun spells and units and AoW 1 has the best campaign by far.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I remember hearing the Planetfall devs, or maybe it was during AoW3 development, casually describe raiding income structures with summoned fliers as 'griefing tactics'. It would take some effort to describe just how much contempt I feel for these fags. Actually the guy that said that was literally a lisping faggot.

Being concerned that AI isn't good at a complex strategy game... wtf? What do you expect? Congratulations on making a game that's complex enough for AI to struggle compared to a human. Why is it such a concern that you should gut a mechanic over it? Unit enchantments weren't a problem, raiding income structures weren't a problem, flying units being immune to groundbased melee wasn't a problem. And while we're at it, AoW1's physical immunity units weren't a problem, and flying units with unlimited ranged attacks weren't a problem either. Did you lose a dozen warlords to a single dragon? Boo hoo, faggot, make some archers instead.

I guess it would have been fair to make unit enchantments cost extra maintenance if you stacked multiple of them on a single unit, though

What level of soytardism do you have to be on to think raiding income is 'griefing' and should be removed from the game, or that melee walkers should be able to attack flyers, or that transports should be auto-generated, god it all makes me mad. And in Planetfall apparently only one faction has stealthy scouts. I didn't play aow3 much but didn't they gut domination/seduction too?

Really the only solution is to acknowledge the franchise has been conquered by the normies and retreat to dom5. Although I do play aow2 and aow1 PBEM a bit still, go post on the GoG forum for the series if you're interested.

 

[Absinthe]

AoW 3 has Domination and Seduction (and Charm), but they nerfed Seduction from a 3 turn duration and cooldown to unlimited duration usable only once per combat because people were using it with Wild Magic master to subvert enemy units and then sacrifice them to Unstable Transformation. That was deemed too strong. (Sorcerers can still do this though, since their T4 Eldritch Horrors have Domination which is still a 3/turn CD with 3 turn duration.) But a major shift is that there is no Drain Will anymore, so if a unit has mind control immunity there's no getting around it without using Inflict Ghoul Curse or True Resurrection (This isn't the rez you get from Life mastery - it's a far more powerful version you can only get as a random spell reward). The main weakness of domination abilities now is that they don't work on undead (unless you're specifically using Control Undead) or machines or enemies with mind control immunity or strong will (which is mind control immunity and +100% spirit resist) or 100% spirit resist (as mind control is a spirit resistance check), which means you can't use them well vs Necromancers (everything is undead or a machine) or Dreadnoughts (all machines) or Arch Druid units (mind control immunity on all animals and monsters) or Theocrat units (all class units are immune to mind control and/or 100% spirit resist). Btw the T4 Sorcerer summon has 60% spirit resist so while mind control is possible, it's pretty fucking unlikely to work. There are a lot of units you just can't really MC. And Warlord heroes can give their entire stack Strong Will. But most racial units are very susceptible to MC.

 

[sser]

Has anyone played this multiplayer? Kinda curious how that would be. I guess once one player goes to a battle the other just gets up and goes to make a drink or something.

 

[BING XI LAO]

When playing a live game I think player versus indie battle are sometiems set to be automated.
In PBEM it's the other way around

 

[Raghar]

It's actually quite easier to make AI for complex games. For simple game a person with calculator can calculate most efficient solution. For complex games there are more variables.

Putting all enchanted units into one stack has small drawback of opponents perfectly capable attacking rear cities with flying units and while one powerful stack can break enemy city, enemy can take 3 undefended cities at the same speed. Frankly screaming murder about SP about big stack of doom of enchanted units. Well AI can do it as well. And when AI has access to more mana nodes earlier, it would have two stacks of enchanted units. Stacks of doom are used to break fortified defenses, or to allow clicking on only 6 units instead of 18.

What I was trying to solve was how to handle properly fog of war, how to estimate where is that unit when it's hidden again in fog of war. AoW3 developers basically don't really try. They send units to attack undefended cities even when they are under fog of war and they had no scout near. And when you switch garrison cities around AI switches targets, and then... Basically I try to avoid that to not abuse AI, but skilled player need to do that anyway, to avoid losing skills and to play properly. And there are also moving brigands, and garrisoning city before they conquer empty city is a must.

In recent patches they added try hard mode for AI. You can see AI is doing what DS players called try hard, and is moving three stacks together as a stack of doom to its target, slowly. While player kills AI reinforcements and is conquering cities left and right.

Then we seen the MASSIVE failure of AI diplomacy in custom scenario mode, where AI is attacking the weakest (AI has contact with?), and in some situation basically kills all its own chance of victory even when AI defeats its opponent. What would happen when you and your stronger opponent would gang on weaker opponent and your stronger opponent gets larger/more rich chunk? Obviously your bigger opponent would become even more able to attack you and slice you to pieces.

When you and weak AI are basically in war against rest, alliance practically never happen.

 

[Absinthe]

AI is a cheating bastard in AoW games, which causes its own slew of problems, since they will aggressively snowball given time (this turns a lot of single-player missions into a race against the clock because any time you try to settle down and build up the AI will leapfrog beyond you so the game actually becomes much harder) and you can't pull the economic warfare tactics that multiplayer thrives upon. Capturing someone else's resources, forcing their army to waste time instead of capturing more resources, inflicting losses on city happiness and economy, and so forth is an integral part of the game, but against the AI that really doesn't work well. At least the AI doesn't maphack.

 

[vota DC]

Has anyone played this multiplayer? Kinda curious how that would be. I guess once one player goes to a battle the other just gets up and goes to make a drink or something.

Hotseat is great, but exploration and concealment aren't working if others see you playing.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Really? AoW 2 still has a lot more fun spells and units and AoW 1 has the best campaign by far.

Yep. Short answer is that AoW 3 has best combat, and at its core AoW is all about the combat. I think I spoke too soon as I'd still consider 1 my favourite, but it goes back and forth a lot. 1 has the best atmosphere. Not just of the series, but of any TBS I've ever played (and I've played just about every major one). Gameplay-wise it leaves a fair bit to be desired, but the mood and setting easily make up for that.

I remember hearing the Planetfall devs, or maybe it was during AoW3 development, casually describe raiding income structures with summoned fliers as 'griefing tactics'.

Hmmm. If it's Planetfall then I can't comment as I haven't been following it super close (just don't have the time these days). If it was AoW 3 then that was a reference to a specific exploit in SM which is actually the reason why they made fliers land at the end of their turn in 3. In SM, you could park a flier above the structure (on the tactical map) and it would simply be unkillable. I can't remember if it was untargetable or if it could be targeted but everything would always miss, but either way it was impossible to deal with. You could conjure up a bunch of Zephyr Birds, fly in and take all sorts of structures and even cities (IIRC), and there was just nothing they could do about it. If they tried to retake it, you could just park your bird in the right spot and then they'd be forced to retreat.

Now, I think that like the unit enchantment thing, it wasn't necessarily the best response - I feel like there would have been ways to eliminate exploits like that and others without forcing fliers to land like an HoMM game. Unlike the unit enchantment thing, IMHO it really doesn't make all that much of a difference. The maneuverability afforded by flight still gives substantial enough strategic and tactical advantages that being at risk of melee attacks from ground troops is way less of a nerf than you'd think.

I remember before AoW 3 was released (or right when it came out, I forget which) and it was confirmed that all attacks connect, fliers would land at the end of their turn, and unit enchantments would be combat only, I was real disappointed. The first one ended up being IMHO the best change they've ever made. The second was lame but mostly forgettable and didn't make nearly as big a difference as I expected. Still salty about the last one but you can't have everything.

It would take some effort to describe just how much contempt I feel for these fags. Actually the guy that said that was literally a lisping faggot.

Huh. You might want to cultivate some outside interests.