Age of Wonders 3

[<3sRichardSimmons]

So I've been playing this recently and really enjoying it. I bought the base game at launch and barely touched it, bought both dlcs and played about 10 hours and then forgot about it, can't quite remember why. Now clocked another 25 hours on it and don't plan on stopping anytime soon. I've put well over 1000 hours into AoW1 (it single-handedly destroyed my GPA for my second semester of college), and it still stands as one of my absolute favorite games of all time. Played AoW2 and SM considerably less (life alignment at the time wasn't great for vidya), but still enjoyed them.

The good:
+Class/Race system actually has quite a bit of depth and allows for some fun and non-intuitive synergies
+Hero ubermenschen a la AoW 1 are back, albeit a bit less OP
+Turtling has been made completely non-viable (I know, it's because the AI cheats, but turtling is cancerous when viable in a 4X, so I'm pretty okay with it)
+ COMBAT! This is the best combat that's ever been seen in a AoW game (well, haven't played Planetfall). By a country mile. In concert with the race/class synergies the game offers TONS of tactical depth. I can't oversell the combat in this game. It is superb.
+UI/UX is possibly the best I've ever seen in a 4x or tactics game (with one MAJOR exception that is listed below). All information is cleanly and immediately at your finger tips. You can examine any unit or ability with a simple click or mouse over.
+ A lot of effort has gone into making the cheesier tactics of previous entries non-viable (e.g. no more sniping off isolated "adjacent" hex stacks for capital cities, no more preventing the enemies doomstacks from attacking your cities by garrisoning them with one T1 archer

The as-of-yet-neutral:
/Campaigns are pretty meh so far (Mission 4 in Elven Court and Mission 2 in Commonwealth). The biggest problem is how railroady they feel. Each mission clearly has a correct 'path' to take (M2 of Elven Court being the biggest offender so far) that basically amount to corridor level design in a 4x. It's not great, but I'm partially willing to forgive this because the scenario maps I've sampled seem a lot better. Hopefully this is just a result of the campaign being intended as a tutorial, and later campaigns/scenarios open up more.
/Random teching works ok, but it feels a little clunky and unnecessary, especially combined with the dumbed down specialization system.
/Shit snowballs super fast. I mean, it's a 4x so that's partly to be expected, but the last 1/4 of any given map is just a slog of auto-resolve, speaking of which...

The bad:
-What the fuck is up with auto-resolve? I've had hilariously easy battles I managed to win without a loss be outright defeats in auto-resolve and vice-versa. Something is very wonky with the computer's calculations, and I've learned to only use it when I get the "Very-likely victory prompt".
-Graphics/Music. I mean... they're fine. But they're nowhere fucking near AoW1 or 2. The 3D did them no favors, and I think it was ultimately a huge mistake. Possibly the biggest one this game makes. And the music is just the most basic, non-memorable shit possible. I mean, I'm sitting here typing this all up after having played the game for 25 hours in the last week, and I can't remember a single theme from AoW3, but I can remember multiple pieces from AoW1.
-Unless I'm missing something there is no control over unit pathing. This is mind-boggling to me. In a game that puts so much emphasis on ease of control of tactical combat I cannot fathom how no one on the dev team though "Hey! Maybe we should let the player decide what route their units take to their objectives". On rare occasions the game will force your units to take the worst possible route, despite the fact that there are other paths available. It is absolutely infuriating and idiotic.
-Strategy/Empire spells have been nerfed to shit and mostly relegated to high-tier research no one will see on a normal map. I get that they were OP as fuck, but I'm never going to back lobotomy as a legitimate treatment.

All in all very fun game and I'm having a great quarantine time. Any Codexian recommendations for user maps/campaigns/mods? Thanks.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Yup, it's a great game.

I would drop the vanilla campaigns if I were you, they're super bland and overstay their welcome. Both add on campaigns were really fun afair, this coming from someone who usually avoids campaign in such games. Don't really have any recommendations for user made content, I just played shitload of RMG - it works really well.

 

[catfood]

Yeah, if there's one thing this game does well it's the random maps.

 

[Lacrymas]

What lets down the campaigns, at least the originals, is how overpowered your heroes become, so it's a matter of auto-resolving combat. There is one Commonwealth map which if you don't metagame it's fairly tough. It's when the dwarves betray you and you have 1 city against 3 empires. The heroes can decimate half the map but then the dwarves start pumping out tanks and cannons. You *have* to have a good army then You can restart and build up before they betray you and it's a walk in the park but it wasn't intended like this.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Oh, also vanilla campaigns don't use dlc improvements afair, so no extra buildings unlocked by treasure sites etc. Which is yet another reason to avoid them.

 

[catfood]

What lets down the campaigns, at least the originals, is how overpowered your heroes become, so it's a matter of auto-resolving combat. There is one Commonwealth map which if you don't metagame it's fairly tough. It's when the dwarves betray you and you have 1 city against 3 empires. The heroes can decimate half the map but then the dwarves start pumping out tanks and cannons. You *have* to have a good army then You can restart and build up before they betray you and it's a walk in the park but it wasn't intended like this.

It was the same in AOW 1 where if you pumped your hero's def and res to 10 you can basically mow down the entire map unless the opponent has lots of lvl 4 units.

 

[visions]

Ballistas were also fucking scary for heroes in AOW1. Even with Def 10, they could fuck you up if the enemy army had a few of them. Ballistas are the main thing I'm afraid of with my leader/heroes when I play AoW 1 campaigns.

 

[Absinthe]

The good:
+Class/Race system actually has quite a bit of depth and allows for some fun and non-intuitive synergies

Also non-intuitive anti-synergies. Don't do Orc Warlord. It overspecializes into shit the Warlord doesn't need more of (strong melee physical attackers) at the expense of not having anything the Warlord does need (good resist scores, elemental damage channels, good ranged attacks, and supports with healing abilities). So it's actually bad. Orcs are pretty much best with Theocrat (which has mind control immune units, spirit damage, and gives supports healing abilities). I'm also disappointed so many fun racial units from the previous games just got moved to dwellings or made into monsters.

+Hero ubermenschen a la AoW 1 are back, albeit a bit less OP

Eh, you can still do OP with them. Upgrade their defense and resistance a lot, give 'em life steal, first strike, and tireless and they can pretty much demolish anything. Although usually people use 'em more to buff stacks. I'm also honestly a bit annoyed that heroes are just leader classes. If I stick a Sorcerer in my army I can have access to all the Sorc's combat spells, which rather cheapens the class system. I'm also annoyed you have no ability to select what heroes you get. Necromancer is guaranteed to get a necro hero as their first pick (because they need them in order to be able to heal a second stack of units) but aside from that everyone will only get what the RNG spits out. At least you get a different class if you keep asking for a different type of hero.

+Turtling has been made completely non-viable (I know, it's because the AI cheats, but turtling is cancerous when viable in a 4X, so I'm pretty okay with it)

Turtling is still possible, especially in multiplayer. And AI cheating is pretty much the worst way to solve turtling. It also ruins a lot of strategic depth since against a cheating AI economic warfare stunts aren't anywhere near as useful. I don't see a problem with permitting turtling so long as it is punishable, and it usually is punishable in these games because if you cede map control other players will be getting fat exploring the map and probably end up collecting more bases and dwellings.

+UI/UX is possibly the best I've ever seen in a 4x or tactics game (with one MAJOR exception that is listed below). All information is cleanly and immediately at your finger tips. You can examine any unit or ability with a simple click or mouse over.

When it comes to in-game encyclopedia the UI could honestly use a lot of help.

+ A lot of effort has gone into making the cheesier tactics of previous entries non-viable (e.g. no more sniping off isolated "adjacent" hex stacks for capital cities, no more preventing the enemies doomstacks from attacking your cities by garrisoning them with one T1 archer

There are other cheesy tactics though. Necromancers can stack despair on a target to give it -100% spirit resistance before using Inflict Ghoul Touch (at -100% resist you auto-fail checks) to guarantee that they will be added to their team post-fight. There are generally a lot of ways to use mind control abilities to harvest powerful units before you should be able to get them. If a hero wants to join your army you should really consider the possibility of just attacking them and charming/ghoul cursing them into joining your forces anyway. Saves money. In manual combat against NPCs there are many ways to ensure everything leaves combat with full health and ridiculous amounts of exp. Playing normally to win is honestly not recommended; instead, you should take circuitous routes to max every unit's experience gain and get as many healer turns as you can.

The as-of-yet-neutral:
/Campaigns are pretty meh so far (Mission 4 in Elven Court and Mission 2 in Commonwealth). The biggest problem is how railroady they feel. Each mission clearly has a correct 'path' to take (M2 of Elven Court being the biggest offender so far) that basically amount to corridor level design in a 4x. It's not great, but I'm partially willing to forgive this because the scenario maps I've sampled seem a lot better. Hopefully this is just a result of the campaign being intended as a tutorial, and later campaigns/scenarios open up more.

AoW 3's base campaign is pretty much trash. The expansion's campaigns are better. Triumph really put their worst foot forward on AoW 3.

Random teching works ok, but it feels a little clunky and unnecessary, especially combined with the dumbed down specialization system.

Random teching actually really annoys me. It turns out there is some kind of order to it (slots that are reserved for leader spells, slots for general/specialization combat spells, general/specialization strategic spells, and so on, plus the need to research some spells of a lower level before unlocking higher ones I think) but the random research is a serious detriment to strategic play. There are a lot of limits to how well you can plan out ahead if you have to gamble that certain research options even appear when you need them. Similarly if you're playing Warlord with Air Adept, starting with the ability to summon a Zephyr Bird vs not even being able to research Zephyr Bird makes a massive difference and that kind of shit also affects how much you want a spec. Another nuisance is the lack of research overflows. And on that note, the lack of production overflows sucks too. Make a base big enough and you can crank out a T3 unit in a single turn. You'll probably not make a T1 or T2 again if you only get a single unit per turn anyway.

The bad:
-What the fuck is up with auto-resolve? I've had hilariously easy battles I managed to win without a loss be outright defeats in auto-resolve and vice-versa. Something is very wonky with the computer's calculations, and I've learned to only use it when I get the "Very-likely victory prompt".

I've had it cost me a stack with two heroes in it with the very likely victory prompt. But I was expecting that. There was a bard or two in the enemy stack of scoundrels and I had an orc shock trooper and some melees in mine. Lo and behold they MC'd the shocktrooper and obliterated my stack in auto-resolve. To be honest you should completely ignore the prompt and pay more attention to the conditions of the fight yourself.

-Graphics/Music. I mean... they're fine. But they're nowhere fucking near AoW1 or 2. The 3D did them no favors, and I think it was ultimately a huge mistake. Possibly the biggest one this game makes. And the music is just the most basic, non-memorable shit possible. I mean, I'm sitting here typing this all up after having played the game for 25 hours in the last week, and I can't remember a single theme from AoW3, but I can remember multiple pieces from AoW1.

The weirdest part is it has the same musician as AoW 1. The DLCs actually added some slightly better tracks (some of them remixes of AoW 1 tracks).

-Unless I'm missing something there is no control over unit pathing. This is mind-boggling to me. In a game that puts so much emphasis on ease of control of tactical combat I cannot fathom how no one on the dev team though "Hey! Maybe we should let the player decide what route their units take to their objectives". On rare occasions the game will force your units to take the worst possible route, despite the fact that there are other paths available. It is absolutely infuriating and idiotic.

You can order them to move segment by segment. There's no need to make them use up all their movement in a single command, where pathing can do stupid things.

-Strategy/Empire spells have been nerfed to shit and mostly relegated to high-tier research no one will see on a normal map. I get that they were OP as fuck, but I'm never going to back lobotomy as a legitimate treatment.

The alignment specs introduced some more empire spells, but strategic spells are pretty much gone, yeah. They also killed enchants. And all this shit also had the result of a lack of mana sinks causing players to sit on ridiculous amounts of mana before long, which also led to global spells being even more useless because cheating AIs sat on even more mana and would just disjunct everything all the time with their spare mana. They eventually addressed this with the further lobotomy of implementing mana caps in a patch. Alignment specs also annoy me though in that they tend to be much better than non-alignment specs making your spec choices lopsided. And because the alignment system in AoW 3 sucks and forces you to make stupid tactical choices sometimes. And back to the thing about enchants, making enchants combat-only also means a number of enchant spells (like Fire Halo) are rather useless and a waste of a spellcast. And then there's stupid shit like Mass Bless being a secret spell (that anyone can randomly find and only randomly find) while Creation Master is stuck with blessing individual units. Plus you don't really get good summons like you used to. A lot of specialization spells from previous games got moved to secret spell (random pickup) and class spell lists, which I think is just a generally shit approach. In fact in AoW 3 I find that they generally took the approach of trying to take shit out of specs/races/etc and handing them to NPCs, making them class-specific, or nuking them outright. Just a lot of gutting.

And AoW 3's "everyone can move on all tiles" thing also completely fucked the point of naval units. Now naval units are the only units that cannot move on all tiles, making them automatically rather undesirable. Arch Druid used to be able to give them floating with his ultimate spell, but they nerfed that in a patch after it turned out Arch Druids began playing flying dutchman and attacking people on land with loads of fast moving galleons, resembling a Dreadnought only with units that move fucking fast and float over walls. I also miss being able to do shit with transports.

Beyond that I'm also annoyed with Triumph's DRM scheme. GOG forced them to lift the DRM for single-player at least, but every single multilplayer mode that isn't hotseat is firmly locked behind a DRM-wall. You know it's DRM when the game even wants you to connect to the internet and log in to Triumph servers for you to play "LAN" modes and is shamelessly giving you a link to buy AoW 3 if you don't have a registered Triumph account. That shit is also set up in a way to make the game nigh-impossible to resell. Everything not GOG (including physical copies) is mandatory Steam-ware to boot. That shit honestly fucking annoys me. I don't buy games from the DRM-free platform just to get DRM anyway for half the game's functions.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Plus you don't really get good summons like you used to.

Wait, what. Summons in AoW3 are amazing. Even the plain tier0/1 ones are often very potent in early game combat (wisp, lost soul) and getting evolving serpents and spiders (and spiders are generally great even in baby form) in the first few turns is lololo gg more often than not. The summoner classes (druid, sorc + necro to a lesser extent) have nice, steady power curve and are very begginer-friendly. If you mean that summoning playstyle is largely locked behind a class then sure, but I like this change. And a lot of mastery sphere summons ain't bad either.

Magic is kinda boned, yeah, it's definitely one of the biggest problems and almost the same issue as decreasing stack size to 6 - you just won't use many cool, niche spells/units, because there's just no time/place to do it. It's kinda weird that they didn't see and amend it as it's not that hard to patch in and would improve the game a lot. Boats, "flying" units and streamlined movement rules are decline, but I got used to them. The stack size and casting changes still hurt.

 

[Raghar]

They didn't want to have powerful spellcasters, they reduced number of casts to one per turn per side, instead of one per turn each caster.

 

[Silly Germans]

The racial reskin mod is great.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=519678240
Also the racial reinforcements mod,
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=517485312&searchtext=racial
The racial heritage mod is also good
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=534176740&searchtext=racial
and last but not least the racial watch towers mod
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=528300861&searchtext=racial

These mods make the races more varied and a lot of atmosphere. The mods add a few
units but none of them are broken. If you like more variety and diversification of the
races go for it.
There is also a PBEM balance mod but i have never tried it. Might be worth a look if you
want more balance or if you want to play online.

 

[cvv]

The mods add a few units

How? They add units to the current buildings or there are new buildings too?

 

[Silly Germans]

I think the racial hertiage mod also adds buildings. It actually gives you two "paths"
of buildings. You can either build the good alignment buildings or the evil alignment
buildings, each giving other boni and other units, which have the corresponding alignment.

I don't remember whether the racial reinforcements mod added buildings. But most of the
units are recruited in the normal buildings.

Id recommend to check the mod pages for details, it has been more than 2 years since i
last played it.

 

[Absinthe]

Wait, what. Summons in AoW3 are amazing. Even the plain tier0/1 ones are often very potent in early game combat (wisp, lost soul) and getting evolving serpents and spiders (and spiders are generally great even in baby form) in the first few turns is lololo gg more often than not. The summoner classes (druid, sorc + necro to a lesser extent) have nice, steady power curve and are very beginner-friendly. If you mean that summoning playstyle is largely locked behind a class then sure, but I like this change. And a lot of mastery sphere summons ain't bad either.

I'm referring to specializations, not leader classes. Elemental is as high as it goes and a number of elementals aren't that playable either. The alignment specs do have a T4 summon each (and only T4) but among them the Fallen Angel is really only good for shafting low-tier units and Manticore Riders, as everything else seems to have a lot of immunities, percentile resistances, and generally high defense and resistance scores, drastically lowering its ability to do any real damage or inflict any real effects. It flat-out needs to be flanking high resistance enemies (ideally you should also curse these enemies) in order to do damage. Keeper of the Peace's Arch Angel is a lot tougher and does better damage... except against Eldritch Horrors, machines, theocrat units, and anything with Strong Will (which is everything if a high-leveled Warlord is leading a stack or an Arch Druid has cast his ultimate global spell), and almost no one goes Keeper of the Peace master since a good alignment largely requires a shitty playstyle that hurts your ability to get racial governance going unless you also get Creation Adept to spam Cleanse the Land for alignment points, and Keeper of the Peace master has two shitty unit buffs as its combat spells along with the T4 summon and global buff. It is a workable spec though, since Keeper of the Peace master gives you faster independent city/dwelling action. Grey Guard gets one of the better T4s with its Chthonic Guardians which do raw physical damage and can cast Cardinal Culling (a ridiculously stupid attempt at punishing stacks of a single unit which did not work, but did produce an overpowered spell) in order to nuke physical resistance scores and beat the shit out of most things. Generally speaking however, elemental specs are very underwhelming in summons, creation/destruction get no summon at all, and typically Wild Magic Adept is where it's at to get a proper summon spell out of your specs seeing as T4 alignment summons are typically waaay too late and slow to research for comfort.

Magic is kinda boned, yeah, it's definitely one of the biggest problems and almost the same issue as decreasing stack size to 6 - you just won't use many cool, niche spells/units, because there's just no time/place to do it. It's kinda weird that they didn't see and amend it as it's not that hard to patch in and would improve the game a lot. Boats, "flying" units and streamlined movement rules are decline, but I got used to them. The stack size and casting changes still hurt.

I don't get it either, honestly. AoW 3 feels half-assed and even willfully half-assed in a lot of regards. With all the DLC and patches it went from "painfully bland" to "reasonably fun", but you still have a lot of dumb issues with specialization spells, alignment system, balance, and more. At least Creation Master's Bane of the Unnatural spell now works on non-devout units (doesn't work on magical origin units, undead, or machines though), after a patch. The whole class and spec system feels somewhat uninspired to be honest. They could've integrated it much better, but instead you have class buildings stapled on top of race buildings and class units stapled on top of race and a lot of shit that reasonably speaking shouldn't be spells being implemented as spells (Treasure Raiding, Corpse Looting, Poison Mastery, The Draft, Inspire Loyalty, Scorched Earth, and so on) anyway because they've got spellcaster mindset and treat all leader classes as flavors of spellcaster. Incidentally, I really think The Draft and Inspire Loyalty should change names. You can tell that in the last DLC they were feeling a bit more daring with alignment specs giving global unit buffs and T4 summons and Necromancers getting better shit like buildings that integrate better and strategic spells like Power Ritual (+2 phys and +2 blight melee to everything undead, contrast Rogue's Poison Mastery which is +2 blight melee damage to only infantry, cavalry, and irregulars). But they never bothered to get the rest of the classes and specs in-line with that kind of power. They only gave some slight automatic upgrades to specs (the mana node ones) now that that getting automatic abilities with the spec was a thing.

I'm also annoyed that researching city enchantment spells that makes the city and all units in its domain happy with a certain climate only affects units while they're in the city's domain, so the moment they step out (or it gets disjuncted) they're all massively demoralized again, instead of also removing that climate from all your units' and cities' disliked/hated list altogether (like having Heart structures does). This would've been really fucking easy to fix, but it isn't.

They didn't want to have powerful spellcasters, they reduced number of casts to one per turn per side, instead of one per turn each caster.

Well, that was also done to prevent stunts like instantly nuking an enemy leader to death before it can move, but there were better ways of handling that (like, if you're going to be hamfisted about it, doing only one damage spell per turn instead of only one spell per turn). Incidentally, for a while you could use Wild Magic Master's Swap Location spell to swap heroes, which was of course used to nuke enemy heroes by developing a hero with escape abilities, swapping it with enemy hero, nuking enemy hero to death with your own dudes, and quickly getting your own hero out of there in the same turn. You can also nuke enemy leaders with Destruction master's Disintegrate spell if you get lucky, but it's blatantly designed for that kind of purpose and is the biggest reason Destruction master seems worth considering.

 

[Absinthe]

So, Orc Sorcerer seems like a decent combo. Sorcs are usually not hurting for ways to do elemental damage or ranged damage, and the Orc Priest's Bestow Curse has strong synergy with most Sorcerer units and abilities. For the most part it looks like a Sorcerer would just want strong bruisers out of racial units, which the Orcs provide. The downside is that Sorcerers have no healing to offer Orcs, unless you count Harmonizing Energy. Orcs can heal themselves a bit with Victory Rush and Life Stealing from Shadowborn Master though. Alternatively you can get Creation Adept for cheaper heal spells, but that's not as reliable if you're not doing auto-combat. For the most part it looks like you'd have to lean on heroes and maybe the Arcane Item Forge to add healing abilities to stacks. A fast Arcane Item Forge does give you a random item through the Empire Quest.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Orcs are meh tier because of the resistance penalty, which is always bad. They make ok theocrats, but eh, who doesn't. Same situation as with frostlings - many interesting combos in theory, but in practice the penalty is just way too universal and easy to exploit.

The ranged penalty isn't gr8 either for early game, I just like my seeker-induced creeping too much.

 

[Absinthe]

When it comes to Orcs, really you just lean on heroes to cover their resist/healing issues. Sorcerer and Arch Druid heroes can give +1 resist and +40% spirit resist. Warlord can give Fast Healing and Strong Will. Theocrat can give Fast Healing and +1 resist and use Bestow Iron Heart to give another +1 defense, +1 resist, and Strong Will. And Shadowborn master gives +1 resist, +20% spirit resist, and Life Stealing to all your Orcs. Dreadnought also gets Guardian Flame and gives the stack +1 resist. Generally Arch Druid, Theocrat, and Warlord heroes all work to help your Orc stacks heal and withstand resist checks. Generally the best heroes for Orc stacks are AD and Theocrat because they can get two healing abilities in addition to giving the stack +1 resist and fast healing (AD also offers 40% Spirit resist, Blight resist, and Frost resist to all units in stack), but to a lesser extent you can also use Dreadnought (Bestow Guardian Flames at level 3 in addition to +1 resist) and Warlord (grants Fast Healing and Strong Will to entire stack). Sorcerer and Rogue, on the other hand, offer no innate heals but can cast healing spells (Harmonizing Energy and Quick Dash, respectively) from level 1, so if you're willing to burn mana and load them up on casting points they can keep stacks healed, assuming you're not using auto-combat. Sorcerer does offer +1 resist and +40% spirit resist so it does make a decent enough leader for Orc stacks. Necromancer though is basically garbage, offering only +20% fire and spirit resist to your stack.

With Arcane Item Forge you can load multiple healing abilities on any hero though, but you pay a lot of mana to build those items and you have to rush an Arcane Item Forge (but at least you get a free item from the Empire Quest for doing that, in addition to high research speeds). Still, does solve a stack's healing problem. Aside from that, Creation adept could be used to give you a much cheaper healing spell to keep your stacks going, along with Bless (unit enchant: +2 def, +2 resist, +300 morale) and a City Enchantment which combined with Cleanse the Land makes it easy to make any city Cheerful.

Anyway, really, the short of it is, use Shadowborn master (or Grey Guard adept) and use Heroes to cover the Orcs' weaknesses. Really the perk of Orcs is just that they have cheap heavy-hitting bruisers and they heal 10 after every combat. Orc Spearmen, Greatswords, and Black Knights are pretty strong units for their cost. Shock Troopers aren't amazing but they still have Tireless and Overwhelm.

As for Frostlings, they can at least use White Witches to give themselves +80% fire resistance, for +40% resistance total, so their supports do cover that weakness (and can be necessary for that reason). Other than that though you may want to use heroes to give them +1 resist and maybe fire resist (Dreadnought hero provides both +40% fire resist to stack and Guardian Flames - you can also use Necromancer but it only gets your stack +20% fire resist and +20% spirit resist). If you throw in Shadowborn master or Grey Guard adept you can get them an additional +1 resist (although that's usually not a priority). Frostling Mammoth Riders are heavy hitting monsters and with RG2 their Royal Guards make a solid combo with White Witches. One really nasty stunt you can pull with Frostlings is to use Wild Magic adept with elite Ice Queens to Degenerate an enemy for 100% guaranteed frozen condition (if the Ice Queen is not elite, use an Ice Scaper). You Degenerate first, then move in the Ice Queen for her -40% frost resist aura, then use -100% frost resist to inflict guaranteed Frozen condition (resist checks are 100% auto-fail at -100% elemental resist).

So overall Frostlings are pretty solid imo. Just use Dreadnought heroes to fix fire resist and provide slight healing. You can also use Theocrat heroes for their massive set of resist-pumping buffs (Bestow Iron Heart, Touch of Faith, +1 resist to entire stack passive, and casting Divine Protection) and multiple abilities to heal stacks (Fast Healing to stack, Bestow Iron Heart, and Healing). Aside from that you can just use White Witches for fire resist (and healing if Theocrat or Necromancer) otherwise. You'll just want an alignment spec to cover Frostlings' fragility a bit, like Grey Guard adept or Keeper of the Peace master, and a source of healing (heroes or class or even shit like Creation adept or Water mastery). You can also use Air master to cast Wind Ward which typically devastates any form of ranged damage enemies might do (800 research Tier V spell though), including fire damage.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Sure, all of that is true. The obvious problem is that you're burning mana, in-combat turns and other actions/resources to fix something instead of, for example, summoning moar creatures. And while you're buffing, enemy is debuffing. And turning negative fire res into holyshitimded fire res is way easier than shenanigans you've described to lower frost res.

 

[Absinthe]

Eh, you really don't need to burn a lot of mana (unless you're using the Arcane Item Forge for some reason). You do burn the first turn of combat having White Witches use Bestow Frozen Flames on Royal Guards and Royal Guards use Pledge of Protection on White Witches (they can also use it on Frostling hero units), but usually engagement doesn't happen until the second turn of combat, especially if you move your units around to prevent the enemy getting an easy attack. And after that your Royal Guards should be easily something like 13 def units (higher with alignment spec buffs) with life steal (assuming you have RG2) that hit for a lot of damage and have 40% fire resistance. The negative Frost Resist stunt has the unusual benefit of hard CCing an enemy unit for 2 turns without giving it any chance to recover, unless it has frost resist (which is rare) or is an immune unit type (ie. elementals), and all it really requires is an elite Frost Queen (the Ice Scaper is only necessary if you want to do it with non-elite Frost Queens) and a Degenerate debuff, plus the Frost Queen will hit reasonably hard and freeze something, which is a decent use of a spell.

Really, as long as you have White Witches you can make any unit you want get +80% fire res (for +40% fire res total). And as long as you use Dreadnought heroes you can give entire stacks +40% fire res passively (and another +1 resistance, along with a bunch of slayer abilities, and then if you feel like it the Dreadnought can spend a turn in combat to use Guardian Flames for another +40% fire res and heal), so you won't need to burn either turns or mana.

On a side note, I've been fiddling with the use of Trebuchets as ranged damage dealers for Orcs. It seems to work much better defensively than offensively, but it does work, and it helps that Sorcerers can use Harmonizing Energy to heal machines. Fuck Razorbows. Just use Spearmen and Trebuchets, especially if you're doing a Grey Guard Adept + Creation Master Sorcerer. Other than that, Orc Priests tend to make good enough ranged damage dealers against shit that doesn't have high resistance or ridiculous immunities (in particular blight immunity).

 

[Citizen]

Frostlings are pretty solid imo.

Chad_AoW1_frostlings_VS_virgin_AoW3_frostlings.jpg

 

[BING XI LAO]

 

[fantadomat]

VS Sexy AoW2 frostling!

I really can't say if those are her nipples or the dress colours,really good painting.

 

[Citizen]

VS Sexy AoW2 frostling!

No dire penguins = no play

 

[Absinthe]

AoW 3 has Dire Penguins. You can randomly summon them as Arch Druid and there is another secret spell that specifically summons Dire Penguins which you can find if you are unlucky (Dire Penguin summon is fucking garbage).

 

[Raghar]

AoW 3 has Dire Penguins. You can randomly summon them as Arch Druid and there is another secret spell that specifically summons Dire Penguins you can find if you are unlucky (Dire Penguin summon is fucking garbage).

Dire penguins are awesome.

Edit: You'd see theirs awesomeness when you'd be on map, there is an ocean next to other city, and an army of dire penguins would be able to conquer it with some help of few spells, and with 4 surviving out of 6.