Age of Wonders 3

[Reality]

Research carried over in AoW 1, but since you don't have full spheres during campaign until done with the first two races , you can't stomp with magic until the third of campaign

You could stomp with carried over units though

 

[Absinthe]

AoW 3 needs research and production overflows badly. It also needs proper unit enchantments, better AI, and bigger stack sizes tbh. You can mod in overland spells and fix the exp problems, but these issues can't be modded conventionally iirc. And it definitely needs multiplayer that isn't just fucking DRM-locked. I don't buy games on GOG so I can enjoy fucking DRM in my games and it's a fucking travesty GOG lets them get away with this.

 

[visions]

You could stomp with carried over units though

That ruled though. Also when playing on hard in AoW 1, you don't have that much points to go crazy with carrying over units. For instance high level heroes could eventually get too expensive to carry over, so you'd have to leave old heroes behind and get new heroes at some point. I've played through the campaign in AoW 1 several times and I think this happened in most, if not all of my playthroughs.

 

[Lacrymas]

I just finished Sundren's campaign for the first time. I've always lost interest on the last map before, but the debacle that is AoE4 gave me enough motivation to get to the end. The dumbest thing is having to protect your heroes at all costs because if they die you lose immediately. Since I played it on hard, my heroes somehow didn't become freakishly overpowered. That's mostly due to me not exploring the maps fully because I couldn't let the AI boom too much and I wanted to win as fast as possible. It's only when you stack defense items that heroes become almost unkillable. Either way, the campaign wasn't as bad as I remembered it being, but it wasn't particularly good either. The only modicum of challenge was the last map because you start at war with 7 AIs that will spam out carpets of doom at around turn 35ish, but you also start out with 4 cities you don't have the money to fully develop, so you spend the first 15ish turns trying to get your economy going. I cornered the human king I had to capture on turn 20ish, so that wasn't a problem, but the dark elf one became insanely powerful and went around with 7 full stack armies around while his other full T3 armies went around capturing undefended cities. I managed to capture him too at the end in a 3v4 battle, but these particular armies had very few powerful units.
If the AI was competent, this would've been one hell of a mission and even in its current state it's probably the best map in Sundren's campaign. Mostly because you don't have to kill everyone this time. It would've been a bit tedious if you had to do that and would require a few restarts to get your bearings and figure out what the best course of action is. Developing 4 cities at the start isn't a good idea, if I were to ever play this again (I doubt it) I'd focus on one city and try to get as many enemy cities as fast as possible. I'm going to take a break from AoW3 for now because I want to try out Old World properly too, but I'll come back and finish Edward's campaign too.

 

[Raghar]

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.

This. It's funny how AoW3 and 4 are compared negatively to 1 and 2&SM, or rather: it's funny WHY they're compared negatively.

If you want to compare stuff like writing, charm, flavour then yeah, it's a competition. And 1 and 2 I think feel better in this department because each race choice locked you into a very specific unit set. AoW3 I think suffers specifically in the charm department from a serviceable but lackluster art direction which I think is the worst compared to the other 3 games in the series.

In terms of balance or design? I truly believe 3 and 4 are just much better games. In AoW1 it was a hero bulldozer and most of the stuff quickly lost its meaning as your hero gained levels. You reached a point where your hero with all the enchants and leveling buffs could solo almost everything. The difficulty curve I felt was insanely proportional to your hero levels and I never felt there's "other strategies" that would be remotely as good as just getting your hero pumped up.

From point of game designer. Basically if player needs attack in multiple direction, ONE powerful hero accompanied by army can likely devestate ANY enemy position, but there are also other directions of attack that need to happen fast.

So running with hero like a mouse in a labyrinth might be a gameplay for a game that's designed as a puzzle, but in strategy game the easiest way how to counter a strong army is attacking in multiple directions.

But of course, when player uses multiple armies, enemy might lose A LOT of units fast, and the map can be over far sooner.

In AoW2 and SM the heroes also could get absurdly powerful but they also introduced really powerful T3 and T4 units. Still like about 70-80% of the entire unit roster was completely useless and you would never ever build these units past the very early game. There's still some problems with that in 3 and 4 (probably unavoidable) but it's hugely lessened. A big chunk of the AoW2 spellbook was also, as far as I remember, effectively useless either immediately or very quickly as some spells had multiple variants that effectively meant "same shit but bigger numbers".

Well, a lot of machine gun was the same shit, just bigger numbers. At least until MG42. But DshK is still usable.

If you played Cave Wars, the first tech level of wizards were people with cap with a propeller on to of that that were fighting hand to hand... Against swords and muskets. Well, at least they didn't required resources. Then you could research into Tech 2 wizardry. And suddenly they could use weak spells. Still not good against tanks, assault rifles, or vampires, but it was helpful. They actually accomplished something.


Another important part of AoW was fight over mines and other non city resources. Cavalry and countering cavalry were valuable strategies, otherwise player would lose resources and then, only hero would remain.
And lets not forget about making some cities special, when enemy have cities that can produce T3 units and you don't, then the city on the border that CAN be upgraded to T3 if you survive long enough IS valuable.

Even in terms of the campaign there were some very glaring problems which later games avoided. For instance AoW2 (can't remember if this was also the case with the first one) inadvertedly rewarded turtle players who spent 300 turns doing the first campaign map - because research carried over. This meant that if you played optimally and fast you would start the 2nd map with the same character in a SIGNIFICANTLY worse position than a player who clicked the end turn button 100 times and raked in all the research.

If you rush too much, you lose resources, that's a definition of Rushing. It can be bit countered by expanding research in second scenario. But, it feels weird it doesn't allow to research fully.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to shit on AoW1 and 2. I love these games and played them to death back in the day. But the entire series is very strong, and each installment comes with its own flaws and improvements. Note that I'm not referring to Planetfall in this post as I think the game was quite experimental and should to be judged separately.

AoW2 actually had massive advantage over AoW4 in... Racial diversity.
There were different species that felt like different species with advantages and flaws. Theirs units were DIVERSE and vastly different from each other. For example, in AoW2 using elven archers two units and one unit to block entrance to prevent enemy to break gate and storm city, they were able to stop A LOT. On the other hand anemic skeleton archers... Yea, you need that ballista, or something that is decent at melee.

Games are moving away from diversity, and that hurts them.

 

[Lacrymas]

If I were to play AoW1 competitively, I'd just ban the use of heroes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Lagi]

If I were to play AoW1 competitively, I'd just ban the use of heroes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

no spells? no summons, enchants - what for you will collect mana resource? Whole spell research become pointless, if noone can cast them. no items, why would you clear dungeons?
some spells nicely counter boring doomstacks, like tornado when half of the enemy group is teleport away in stategic map.

you can said that about warcraft3, where gameplay could gain another perspective by not having to babysit your hero all time.

besides aow1 mods, nicely trim heroes power.

 

[Lacrymas]

Can't you cast spells without a hero present on the battlefield?

 

[Lagi]

Can't you cast spells without a hero present on the battlefield?

no, only heroes can do that, not even units.
Bing was looking if its possible to mod spellcasting for units. but its not possible (by hex editing).

you select spellcasting from right hand side, 1st position in list of skills.

Spoiler

 

[Pocgels]

I've heard people say this game is good with mods, what are the good mods?

 

[Lacrymas]

I've heard people say this game is good with mods, what are the good mods?

It's good without mods too, but they probably mean the balance patch I linked a page ago. It curbs some bonkers strategies like mass ghouling.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

I've heard people say this game is good with mods, what are the good mods?

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.

I've been using the Attack Protocol - Roaming Army Overhaul mod for a while now and it works nicely with the upper list.

The pbem balance mod is also often mentioned and I think one of the most actively updated mods, but I've never tried it and can't tell if it works with the former list of mods. But it might be worth a look, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=661597466