Age of Wonders 3

[Citizen]

 

[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 you can find if you are unlucky (Dire Penguin summon is fucking garbage).

Dire penguins are awesome.

Well, there's a random event ("Cosmic Event") called Rise of the Dire Penguins where a neutral Arch-Druid hero comes to assault people with a full stack of Dire Penguins. It's pretty silly.

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.

You could also just summon (lesser) elementals instead.

 

[Raghar]

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.

You could also just summon (lesser) elementals instead.

No, I can't when only summoning spell I found in ruins are dire penguins. Elementals, that's luxury, and quite upkeep costly early in game luxury.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Does someone know a way to get the AI to accept an alliance offer in diplomacy? Its easy to get open borders and peace pacts but I had no luck with alliance offers yet.

 

[Absinthe]

Either have a drastically superior military or bribe the shit out of them to make them love you. AoW 3 AI is set to be pretty resistant against alliances (especially if Allied Victory is enabled) so you can't just befriend your way to victory. Also, if you are playing campaign or scenarios, it's possible that their willingness to ally is entirely determined by map scripting and nothing you can do will change that.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Either have a drastically superior military or bribe the shit out of them to make them love you. AoW 3 AI is set to be pretty resistant against alliances (especially if Allied Victory is enabled) so you can't just befriend your way to victory. Also, if you are playing campaign or scenarios, it's possible that their willingness to ally is entirely determined by map scripting and nothing you can do will change that.

Yes, I've experienced that resistance. I'm playing large random maps with allied victory enabled but no fixed teams. The AI is quick enough to offer peace treaties and open borders but won't accept any offers for alliances, even offering up to 5000 gold + 1000 mana didn't help. I don't like the way I have to finish the game, which typically consists of placing my units around the capital of an ally and his leader followed by declaring war and killing them in the following turn. Searching for the leader can be a pain in the ass on large maps and I'd like to avoid that. But so far I had no luck in forming an alliance. I already had conquered most of the map and had the biggest empire, I even got some money from the AI to keep the peace treaty but they just won't accept an alliance. At the moment it seems like that only way to play and win with an allied AI is by setting fixed teams.

 

[Absinthe]

5000 gold + 1000 mana just isn't enough. You're going to need a lot more than that. Like 10k+ gold.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

It took me about 30000 gold and some 7000 mana to convince one AI. Judging by the diplomacy points and the final score screen, It seems that you need something on the order of 50% of their current score to get them to join an alliance, which can be a hefty amount especially on larger maps. This also seems to be the reason why they are much more willing to join when they are on loosing streak, having a low score. But at that point you can pretty much crush them anyways. All the normal diplomacy points that you get via having the same alignment, opening border, making peace etc, are negligible compared to the points obtained by giving them a golden shower once both players have more than just a small town. The hurdles/cost for forging an alliance with an AI that isn't grasping at straws seems not worth it at least if they game has progressed. I need to test if its more viable if you meet the AI early in the game before they could spread out and how the AI sticks to the alliance if they grow much faster than the player. But "forcing" an alliance with an friendly AI with a similar realm size is impractical.

 

[Absinthe]

Well, the whole point is meant to be that you cannot easily ally your way to victory, and it's succeeded in that. It's still possible to generate massive amounts of mana while sitting on your ass and use that to bribe people though. Also, I'm pretty sure alliances are cheaper if Allied Victory is disabled.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Well, the whole point is meant to be that you cannot easily ally your way to victory, and it's succeeded in that. It's still possible to generate massive amounts of mana while sitting on your ass and use that to bribe people though. Also, I'm pretty sure alliances are cheaper if Allied Victory is disabled.

They went a bit overboard with the requirement. I would understand it if the requirements were that high for the last AI, as that would be enough to prevent an easy victory. Especially at an point where I had for all intents and purposes already won. With more than >75 % of the map in my possession. I didn't have a single game where an alliance attempt was made by the AI or where it would accept an offer with reasonable conditions. But I always had the allied victory option activated. I'll test the next time without it activated. I like the game and I hope they return to it. I think its close to being excellent, all they would have to do is using the current state as starting point and improve/finetune some aspects further.

 

[Absinthe]

They went a bit overboard with the requirement. I would understand it if the requirements were that high for the last AI, as that would be enough to prevent an easy victory. Especially at an point where I had for all intents and purposes already won. With more than >75 % of the map in my possession. I didn't have a single game where an alliance attempt was made by the AI or where it would accept an offer with reasonable conditions.

Yeah, they may have gone a tad overboard. AoW 3 had a lot of heavy-handed design tbh, and a lot of it wasn't very fun precisely because of the restricting way it's implemented. Still, there are ways to generate a massive economy for bribing purposes. I think Warlords generate tons of mana pretty effortlessly because they're mostly a gold-based economy so unless they have specializations that cost mana or terraform obsessively they'll just end up accumulating massive amounts of mana without particularly trying, especially if you just get Expander and build cities. Triumph implemented mana caps to try to curtail the phenomenon of sitting on way too much mana (since AoW 3 mismanaged mana sinks with its reduction of overland spells, unit enchantments, summons, etc. while leaving mana generation largely the same - a situation which resulted in AIs with their cheating incomes having obscene amounts of mana and disjuncting literally everything the player ever attempts to cast), but, while I'm not sure, I think you can just keep gifting mana to raise a faction's favorability to you and lower the ultimate cost of alliance.

But I always had the allied victory option activated. I'll test the next time without it activated.

Pretty sure that the cost of alliance is cheaper when Allied Victory is disabled.

I like the game and I hope they return to it. I think its close to being excellent, all they would have to do is using the current state as starting point and improve/finetune some aspects further.

Pretty sure they're developing Age of Wonders 4 now, but they're too early in development for any press releases. There are some balance and content mods for AoW 3 though.

 

[Sunri]

This shit is cursed

 

[Sunri]

Bros I played AoW 3 when in came out, and I don't remember writing being that bad how did they get from good narrative with choices in AoW I to this fanfic shit in Sundred campaign, did they change writer? The whole thing doesn't make any sense both in the campaign narrative and how the setting moved with this stupid commonwealth somehow Draconians are threaded like shit, but goblins are part of it lol, and they gave me fcking saint goblin when they were evil morons in the last two games at least orc guy is angry asshole that wants to wipe out humanity they should just swap goblins for halflings, and it would be much better.

 

[Dwarvophile]

Bros I played AoW 3 when in came out, and I don't remember writing being that bad how did they get from good narrative with choices in AoW I to this fanfic shit in Sundred campaign, did they change writer? The whole thing doesn't make any sense both in the campaign narrative and how the setting moved with this stupid commonwealth somehow Draconians are threaded like shit, but goblins are part of it lol, and they gave me fcking saint goblin when they were evil morons in the last two games at least orc guy is angry asshole that wants to wipe out humanity they should just swap goblins for halflings, and it would be much better.

Yep. The necromancer campaign is ok though.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Vanilla AoW3 campaigns are ass, the glory days of AoW1 are long gone. That said, bot dlc ones are gud, though I'm not necessarily talking about writing here.

 

[Absinthe]

IIRC AoW 3 has the same writer as AoW 1, who was very much out of practice. Part of the problem was that AoW 3 wanted to open up race/class/alignment combinations so they started showing off unusual combos that go against type, but that also meant they started losing the thread when it came to the characterization of the races. Even with unusual racial combos, this was an avoidable problem, but another part of the problem was Overlord's writing style being implemented in AoW 3, which was honestly a terrible idea.

 

[Sunri]

I think gameplay also got worse siege battles changed to just one wall assault units always hit so you can just shoot at things without breaching the wall and without random chance to hit low tier units are worthless because now they always get deleted if they attack higher tier unit overall i have no idea what they were thinking when they made this no more unique units for different races which was one of the best things in previous installments and Merlin got cucked by BBC elf and turned into hobo

 

[Absinthe]

I think gameplay also got worse siege battles changed to just one wall assault units always hit so you can just shoot at things without breaching the wall

Walls were pretty screwed when they started doling out Wall Climbing to all infantry and made it a little too easy to shoot over walls in addition to the large number of units with Pass Wall, Flying, Lesser Flying, Floating, Phasing, Shadow Step, Improved Wall Climbing, etc. (and a Rogue hero can give an entire stack Wall Climbing). High Elves are practically a poster child for ignoring walls, since their archers' longbows shoot over them, their infantry climbs them, their Unicorn Riders phase past them, and their Gryphon Riders fly over them. High Elf Dreadnought is especially absurd, since you can just rush down cities with stacks of pistol-toting Unicorn Riders, but you don't need pistols for a Unicorn Rider stack to be good at taking cities. No one really uses Battering Rams atm, since their damage is underwhelming and the need to get walls down is too low. Even Trebuchets have become hard to justify under the power creep, especially since they can't move and shoot in the same round anymore. They nerfed that because getting kited by Trebuchets was too ridiculous for people but they didn't give the Trebuchet anything to offset its new weakness, so now they're damn awkward to use and everyone can just run outside of Trebuchet range if you're trying to attack with one. I wouldn't really contemplate using them unless you're playing an Orc (who have horrible archers, so Trebuchets tend to be your best ranged unit, especially defensively) or have a Rogue hero to cast Quick Dash on it (giving it +1 AP). A veteran T1 Dwarf Crossbowman with the first racial governance does as much damage as a T3 Trebuchet, and it's a much cheaper unit with far superior mobility.

and without random chance to hit low tier units are worthless because now they always get deleted if they attack higher tier unit

The defenses do make a lot of low-tier units jokes when put up against high-tier units, but if the low-tier unit hits hard enough, that's surmountable (Dwarven Crossbowmen, Elven Longbows, Orc Greatswords, Draconian Elders buffing each other, pikemen and anything with Polearm attacking mounted or flying units), but the major problem here is that high-tier units' defenses can easily leave low-tier units in the dust and you don't get production overflows to build multiple units in 1 turn, so in the end it's just better turn economy to crank out high-tier units. It also doesn't help that you can only have 6 units in a stack as opposed to 8, which also messes with massing weak units or even trying to squeeze them between higher-tier units.

overall i have no idea what they were thinking when they made this no more unique units for different races which was one of the best things in previous installments

Definitely one of the dumber decisions. They actually patched in more unique racial unit variations after the original release was heavily criticized for being so goddamn bland. Part of it was that they didn't want racial units stealing the glory from their new class units, part of it was probably balance concerns, and some part of it probably was that they are delivering on the Age of Wonders 1 High Men outcome where the Age of Wonders basically withers and wanes as the age of men rises, especially with the Shadow Magic ending where wizardry disappears because apparently it lets in the Shadow Realm. But the AoW 3 campaign was lousy.

and Merlin got cucked by BBC elf and turned into hobo

AoW 2 wrote itself into a corner with that one. Pairing the elven queen with the human wizard was always a problem matchup in the long run for her own story and the setting. I'm not convinced Merlin was a good character for the setting, but AoW 2's story was okay. Shadow Magic's story was pretty bad though.

but another part of the problem was Overlord's writing style being implemented in AoW 3, which was honestly a terrible idea.

Wasn't that good back in the days of Shadow Magic either, no one should have let Ray Bingham read Pratchett.

Yeah, the campaign was trash. AoW 2: SM was basically something you got for the multiplayer rebalancing. The Age of Wonders series has somehow very consistently declined in writing quality and atmosphere with every new game. Music's declined too, and AoW 3 has the same composer as AoW 1 also. I don't get it. All I can think of is that AoW 3 is considerably more uninspired and half-assed.

Wouldn't mind a new AOW going with a return to form to Tolkeniesque writing and a more somber feel to the graphics. AOW1 is just... right in its atmosphere and feel. I love how the campaign feels not just like some maps strung together but a CAMPAIGN, you can even bring units (not just heroes) from one map to another, and you got races onside through campaigns. An epic ongoing storyline. And the final map being a four-way war between the Keepers, Cult of Storms, the Undead and the Highmen-Human alliance was just perfect.

Skirmish Maps and MP are nice, but to me, the real meat of AOW1 are the god-tier campaigns.

Fuck, I need to replay it again

Agreed, man. Part of me wishes they'd done a sequel to AoW 1's Dark Elf ending where everything becomes super chaotic instead of this shit. AoW 3 actually does deliver better on AoW 1's High Men ending where the Age of Wonders wanes where all the more mystical races seem to vanish as the humans become ascendant and it's not entirely persuasive that this is a desirable outcome, but holy fuck did it drop the narrative ball on actually playing out these issues and conflicts with its cheesy writing and undercooked conspiracies. I suspect they should've basically ignored the existence of AoW 2 and made it a separate take on the post-AoW 1 High Men world.

Man, AoW 3 could've been good, but they cut too many corners and removed too much good shit from the series.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

I like to use the following mods, many are cosmetic but the first two improve the lack of racial units to a degree. I am satisfied with the variety of units with these mods and all dlcs.

• Racial Reinforcements - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=517485312
• Racial Heritage Mod - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=534176740
• Racial Class unit reskin - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=519678240
• Class Reskin Tweaks - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2097225210&searchtext=class+reskin
• Army of Animated Corpses - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=536763786&searchtext=army+of+animated
• Age of Wonders OST for AoW3 - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=683662118&searchtext=age+of+wonders+ost
• Clouds begone - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=540497296&searchtext=clouds+begone

I have been using the same installation for 5 years I think, so I could be missing newer mods.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Wait, longbows ignore walls? I always thought they just ignore range penalties.

Disregarding writing and campaign play (which is something I don't care about that much tbh), I really think AoW3 is 2 steps forwards, 1 step backwards type of thing. Well, maybe more like 1.5 step forwards. Sure, some of the simplifications compared to the previous games suck and I still can't get over smaller stack size, but going deterministic to-hit in combination with surprisingly rich morale system and all the race/class/spec/racial governance combos is yuge incline in my book.

Looking at AoW3's final form, I also firmly stand with the decision to focus on classes versus races, especially with how class units have a lot of quirks and differences based on race choices.

That being said, it's kind of a moot discussion since Planetfall made it very obvious that they aren't willing/able to keep the incline going and I really don't have much hopes for AoW4 (which is probably going to be their next game).

 

[Absinthe]

No, longbows don't ignore walls (until you get High Elf RG5 anyway, or just cast the Seeker enchant from Air Adept, which is rather underrated for this sort of thing), but they do make it much easier to attack defenders and hit harder. The major thing about High Elves is that the only unit of theirs that is trash when capturing cities before you knock walls down is their pikeman. Maybe the Storm Sister, but when they achieve elite their Inflict Stun is more important than their attack damage, and with RG3 they attack like longbows anyway and with RG5 they ignore all line of sight penalties like the archers will. The fastest way to capture cities with them remains the Unicorn Rider stack though. Just phase behind the wall.

I'd say AoW 3 was more than 1 step backwards, tbh. Removal of unit enchantments, removal of most overland spells, diminished specializations, uninspired specializations, reduction of unique racial units, poor implementation of alignment, a weaker Alter Node spell for no good reason, inability to capture individual structures other than watchtowers, all units being able to turn into boats (which fucks the appeal of aquatic units) instead of using transports, poor campaign, bad writing, and forgettable music are all AoW 3 specific problems where it was done better in previous games,

 

[Serious_Business]

Who plays these games for the story? Jesus. I'll admit the writing on the first game was cute, and the rest is bad, but it doesn't matter. Go read your book, etc. I disagree with the consensus here, too much nostalgia bullshit as usual ; AoW always was meant to be a more balanced version of MoM. The third game is the accomplishment of said balanced design. In that sense it's not flawed at all, if anything this series knows very well what it's doing. This applies to Planetfall as well. I would say the point of these games is to develop tactical battles on a strategic field, with an emphasis on the individual unit characteristics. Following that criteria, AoW 1 was atrocious in so far as the hero abuse made tactical manoeuvring and unit variety often pointless. The insertion of balance is there to keep the tension on the tactical scenarios and remove the more extravagant combinations of MoM (which admittedly are strategically a lot of fun, but on another level). As far as elements not being differentiated enough, the class system is more of than than any of the previous games. I'll agree that the specializations are not impactful enough, but the class-race setup is more than varied in itself.

 

[Sunri]

I played for the story.

 

[Sunri]

Dunno about the music AoW II was weakest, for me AoW III is chill, I wouldn't call it bland or bad.

 

[Sunri]

I just finished Sundred campaign damm what a let-down I didn't even face those shadowborns no final boss just beating 2 main leaders with MC and ending about Merlin confessing his everlasting love to Julia and then cucking the resolution to the conflict between elves and humans didn't make any sense so what that they made peace? We already had peace and after 300 hundred years humans started fucking things up, so there is no long term resolution at all lol