Age of Wonders 3

[Absinthe]

Also I think rogue vs rogue is the worst matchup in the game cause the only thing that can fight shadow stalkers are other shadow stalkers and shadow stalkers can barely damage each other cause they're immune/resistant to their own elements. I love playing theocrat vs rogue cause the laser shooting shrines can oneshot those cunts.

Fire, Shock, and Spirit channels all work at 100% against them, so mixing in T2 priests helps.

Both systems are alrite, AoW3 combat is way more predictable, while AoW1-2 is more risky and random. AoW1-2 hit mechanics leads to high defence units being practically unkillable by weak attack units tho, which further empasizes the difference between unit tiers. So in AoW1-2 high tier units are killing machines that can destroy endless waves of tier 1 units without getting a single point of damage and in AoW3 high tier units can be easily overpowered with few t1s

Actually in AoW 3 there are a number of high tier units with excessively high defense and resistance scores which combined with their monstrous hitpoints make the low damage values of T1 and T2 units too insignificant to be practical. Dreadnought class in particular has a lot of units with very high defense scores. This is also a problem with multi-channel T2 supports which seem to be balanced more for percentile resistances than flat resist scores, so once a tri-channel support attempts to hit a unit with 12 resist it does -6 damage on what was probably normally a 10 damage attack.

 

[Valky]

I played a little bit of AoW1, the one thing that stuck out to me was that it felt like an extremely s l o w l y p a c e d game, unless I was doing it wrong. Turn count through the roof on the few campaign levels I played. How is AoW3 compared to the other entries in the series, now that all of the expansions and stuff are finished and released?

Bonus question, how does Fallen Enchantress compare to this?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Fallen Enchantress compare to this?

Better hero customization in return for bland everything else.

 

[The Red Knight]

I played a little bit of AoW1, the one thing that stuck out to me was that it felt like an extremely s l o w l y p a c e d game, unless I was doing it wrong.

Are you playing on highest difficulty and getting into trench warfare with AI tier4 unit spam? Rushing is generally pretty viable, and especially on smaller maps you may even accidentally kill an enemy wizard too fast without really getting to see the map you're playing on.

How is AoW3 compared to the other entries in the series, now that all of the expansions and stuff are finished and released?

AoW3 has slower city growth/building (but IIRC that can be adjusted somewhere to your preferred playstyle; in AoW1 you just upgrade/install the few units you need, and in AoW2 it's very easy to max all cities inbetween recruiting units), and respawning wandering independents, but in my experience the tactical battles tend to be faster (less units per stack + no cheesing flying or high defence for infinite damage avoidance from previous games; also nerfed one-man-army heroes). It's completely devoid of soul though.

I don't do multiplayer so no comment on that.

 

[Valky]

I think I'm just playing on a standard difficulty. The combat plus map exploration and unit growth just takes so long.

Shadow Magic versus 1?

 

[Citizen]

I played a little bit of AoW1, the one thing that stuck out to me was that it felt like an extremely s l o w l y p a c e d game

Do you even P O N Y R U S H ???

 

[Zeriel]

I don't really get it. If anything AoW1 was the game where you just got your main leader levelcapped and then used him to one shot everything in the game, almost entirely avoiding settlement/unit building once you were strong enough. And until your hero is level capped, you enjoy soaking up every last bit of XP on the map to level him.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

AOW1 is fast paced as hell. Not much building, and a lot of murderizing.

 

[The Red Knight]

I think I'm just playing on a standard difficulty. The combat plus map exploration and unit growth just takes so long.

If you don't enjoy the combat you could try auto-resolving your way through less important battles (it's also calculated differently so it can sometimes be used to get better results than you would in a tactical battle). You don't have to focus on upgrading units (more on just keeping medalled ones alive), it will happen naturally or you'll find an arena.

Shadow Magic versus 1?

AoW2/SM:
~ worse music (you can add AoW1 music to it though), worse campaign, worse screen resolution and UI,
~ map scripting (more plot-heavy maps) and more background map objects, IMHO uglier units,
~ random map generator,
~ more granular city upgrading/growth limits per city but in practice it's heavily underused so instead of cities having different and fixed sizes on maps like in AoW1, they will all look the same eventually,
~ shadow realm with permanent haste and debuffs for most units instead of deep caves,
~ worse city/tower battles (especially that you can just punch the gates a few times to bring them down without any wall crushing ability) and dungeons with a few props in the open in the middle of the battle map instead of underground fog-of-war corridors) - makes visiting these faster though,
~ AI worse at casting enchantments,
~ has dragons and catfolk instead of lizards and azracs (+ a few other races like wtf syrons and shadow demons), less uniform looks of armies of different races,
~ shipyards moved into cities (but AI cannot into naval warfare so it doesn't matter), there's building new cities instead of new watchtowers, cities also have buildings letting you teleport between them and craft custom artifacts,
~ leaders don't level up and have to stay in wizard towers (also respawn on death if you have at least one such tower in one of your cities),
~ more RPG elements (e.g. random fetch/kill/raze/conquer sidequests from city shrines) and city upgrading (AoW1 is almost solely focused on army movement and combat), doubled stat limits,
~ most ranged attacks let you move at the same turn at the cost of less attacks being made (e.g. archer shooting one arrow instead of three after moving to the side because of the enemy unit hiding behind a rock) so that may make the combat a bit faster for you (no need to optimize your positioning to not waste archer turns),
~ up to 8 players vs 12 in AoW1.
~ from cheesing, instead of making uber immortal leaders (bonus points for siding with lizardmen in the campaign and crippling the AI by casting flood), flying ships or carrying a doom priest with you between missions, you can take your sweet time at the beginning to craft all the artifacts you may need (boring).

Both are worth playing, though (and you may find the combat different enough to like it more in the sequel), and AoW2 has better mod/total conversion options (especially that Age of Glorantha mod).

 

[Galdred]

I think I'm just playing on a standard difficulty. The combat plus map exploration and unit growth just takes so long.

Shadow Magic versus 1?

Why would you grow units? A decently well built hero can solo the whole map. Remember you have unlimited retaliation attacks (unlike 2 and 3), so you can just send your melee hero into the fray, and wait for the opponent to kill themselves on him.
I think I had life stealing on my warrior (I had 1 melee hero and one caster iirc, but that was more than 10 years ago), to regenerate some hitpoints in case I got a lucky hit.

 

[Lacrymas]

The campaigns always suffer from this. Once you get good heroes going, you just mop up the map and skip the whole unit producing business entirely. It's kinda boring tbh.

 

[Norfleet]

The campaigns always suffer from this. Once you get good heroes going, you just mop up the map and skip the whole unit producing business entirely. It's kinda boring tbh.

I think this is a direct artifact of stack size limits. Because you can only use an arbitrary, fixed number of units per stack, regardless of what they are, a sufficiently potent stack will steamroll all opposing stacks it encounters, rendering the production of other stacks largely redundant. Thus it always tends to be better to invest in one, maybe two doomstacks than is to produce an actual army, because no matter how many scrub units the AI can shit out, it will just all be flattened by your one deathstack. It's like when it's 5 Tigers vs. 5 Shermans every time, instead of 5 Tigers vs. 50 Shermans.

 

[cvv]

Occasionally you still need production even in late game since the AI knows perfectly which of your towns are unguarded and loves to send tier-3 flying units there.

 

[Lacrymas]

I think this is a direct artifact of stack size limits. Because you can only use an arbitrary, fixed number of units per stack, regardless of what they are, a sufficiently potent stack will steamroll all opposing stacks it encounters, rendering the production of other stacks largely redundant. Thus it always tends to be better to invest in one, maybe two doomstacks than is to produce an actual army, because no matter how many scrub units the AI can shit out, it will just all be flattened by your one deathstack. It's like when it's 5 Tigers vs. 5 Shermans every time, instead of 5 Tigers vs. 50 Shermans.

That was a problem with tier 1 and 2s at the start of AoW3, but I think that kind of thing is fixed now with the introduction of race bonuses and hero "auras" that boost lower tier units relatively more than high tier ones. However, that is fairly absent in the campaign, where Sundren can level up quite a lot, has 20 defense and does like 40 damage per attack on the third map already. The AI doesn't have enough time to produce tier 4s to counter the absurdly powerful heroes (of which you have 3 most of the time).

 

[Norfleet]

Occasionally you still need production even in late game since the AI knows perfectly which of your towns are unguarded and loves to send tier-3 flying units there.

That's a circular piece of logic, "You need production to protect the towns that produce the production you need, without which you wouldn't need the production".

 

[Norfleet]

I'm playing the AoW 3 campaigns right now on the hardest difficulty. The AI definitely cheats like an asshole

Sir, just what exactly do you think the hardest difficulty is?

 

[cvv]

I'm playing the AoW 3 campaigns right now on the hardest difficulty.

Suicidal AND a masochist.

 

[Valky]

I never had the mind set to play Age of Wonders like that. I always invest in my army and have the hero as a support at most, because often losing that one guy means losing the map, so I focus on the units because they are replaceable.

 

[MilesBeyond]

I find AoW 1 a lot more fun if I make my heroes and especially leader into support units. Focus on spellcasting and abilities like leadership. They're still overpowered but they aren't as overpowered. You at least need to invest heavily in research before they can solo armies.

 

[Absinthe]

I think I'm just playing on a standard difficulty. The combat plus map exploration and unit growth just takes so long.

Shadow Magic versus 1?

They're just different games, really. They're both worth playing, but for different reasons. AoW 1 has better writing, soundtrack, campaign, and overall atmosphere by far (the best of the entire series), but there's very little empire development going on there. It's a lot more combat focused on the whole. Shadow Magic has a worse soundtrack than AoW 1 or AoW 2 (AoW 2's soundtrack was fairly decent, but the tracks SM added to that were just lame), but it has better empire building, emphasizes competitive balance more, and adds to overall strategic play. AoW 3 removed most of the unique racial units, has lazy writing, somewhat underwhelming music (don't ask why, it has the same writer and musician as AoW 1), killed most overland spells outright, removed unit enchantments (last expansion's specializations added some empire and city enchantments to buff all your units), has neutered spheres and traits (now called specializations), but focuses a bit more on competitive gameplay.

Generally speaking AoW 1 and Shadow Magic are the best for different reasons. AoW 3 is alright if you have all the expansions, but there are weird imbalances between specs and races.

That was a problem with tier 1 and 2s at the start of AoW3, but I think that kind of thing is fixed now with the introduction of race bonuses and hero "auras" that boost lower tier units relatively more than high tier ones. However, that is fairly absent in the campaign, where Sundren can level up quite a lot, has 20 defense and does like 40 damage per attack on the third map already. The AI doesn't have enough time to produce tier 4s to counter the absurdly powerful heroes (of which you have 3 most of the time).

The campaign is completely fucked anyway. Courtesy of AI cheating like crazy you cannot build up unless you want to get your ass handed to you, so it's all about rushing the enemy while his pants are down and taking advantage of the fact that the AI is pretty shitty at handling combat. But yes, AoW 3 is a callback to AoW 1 in how god-heroes will stomp everything with a quickness.

I never had the mind set to play Age of Wonders like that. I always invest in my army and have the hero as a support at most, because often losing that one guy means losing the map, so I focus on the units because they are replaceable.

Stomping enemies with heroes is more about pumping up defense and resistance scores, honestly. Once your hero is an unkillable juggernaut swinging some life stealing weapon with first strike and tireless you just send him into the fray and watch armies break upon him. There are usually also some easy buffs you can throw on heroes to make them harder to kill.

I find AoW 1 a lot more fun if I make my heroes and especially leader into support units. Focus on spellcasting and abilities like leadership. They're still overpowered but they aren't as overpowered. You at least need to invest heavily in research before they can solo armies.

I honestly found it annoying how instead of doing hero classes in AoW 3 they just gave heroes leader classes with access to that leader's combat spells. It just cheapened the class system to me, that I could just throw Sorcerer heroes into my armies to cast all the Sorcerer combat spells, and so on.

 

[Lacrymas]

Both Heroes 4 and AoW had the problem of unkillable heroes once you are past the first map of the campaign. I finished Sundren's campaign (Der Elfenhof in German, something like the Elven Court in English?) yesterday and I'd say it was quite a miserable and somewhat boring experience, the heroes were practically unkillable by the middle of the second map and it was just a matter of clicking end turn and wrecking everything on your way to victory. I started the second campaign (Der Staatenbund, something like the Confederacy or Commonwealth?) on hard and I like the concept of actually building diverse armies and conquering with them before the heroes are retardedly op on the first map, but I know it will devolve into that later. Are the halfling and necromancer campaigns better in this regard?

The game isn't balanced for absurdly high level heroes and I wish they had done something about that in the campaigns.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I find AoW 1 a lot more fun if I make my heroes and especially leader into support units. Focus on spellcasting and abilities like leadership. They're still overpowered but they aren't as overpowered. You at least need to invest heavily in research before they can solo armies.

I've been making multiplayer maps for AoW1 (which are being played in PBEM too) where every player has multiple Spellcasting V heroes that can't be developed into fighters because they're already at level cap with little or no points spent on combat skills.
It really improves the game a lot and makes you realise how absent magic is in a normal PBEM.

 

[Absinthe]

That was a problem with tier 1 and 2s at the start of AoW3, but I think that kind of thing is fixed now with the introduction of race bonuses and hero "auras" that boost lower tier units relatively more than high tier ones.

Racial governance bonuses and alignment specs do a lot to keep lower-tier units relevant, but using heroes to pump up a low-tier stack is a bit of an unusual move when they can also contribute to a high-tier stack. A Manticore Rider stack with a Warlord hero for instance will ensure that the whole stack has Strong Will all of a sudden, covering one of their bigger weaknesses. And the basic problem isn't solved that easily. While you can pump low tier units, most of these will also pump high tier units which can level out the arms race again, and the bigger reason why you wouldn't spam lower tier units is the lack of production overflows, honestly. If you can crank out a T3 in one turn or a T1 in one turn, you'll probably spam T3s just because they are more powerful, unless you have a special purpose in mind, like a Rogue's Assassin stack for sneaking around.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Lol aow3 doesn't have productino overflow? There's an aow2 modified .exe that does that.

 

[Absinthe]

It doesn't have research overflows either. There are research overflows for reward pickups, but not for regular research. Shit like this has a pretty bad effect on your teching habits or desire to build low-tier units.