Age of Wonders 3

[hoverdog]

Never really cared about the story/lore of the AoW games, for me they were all about building shit and conquering shit.

Yup. Master of Magic had no background story whatsoever, and nobody cared.

 

[Tomipapa]

Also, Julia in the pre-made character screen! Wonder what happened with Merlin.

Julia and Merlin are in the campaign, but they are no longer protagonists

How's the campaign gonna be, did they say more? I remember it was going to be more instyle of AOW1 campaign, with multiple scenario choices and multiple endings and whatnot. Are we going to pick/make one character and then go forth through the entire campaign slowly levelling him up, get one char which we constantly changes through the campaign (AOW2, where you swap spheres every three scenarios) or we're going to pick multiple characters with small campaigns, like in Shadow Magic?

I'm thinking here Sundren/Edwards are the new campaign's equivalents to Elric/Talic or are we going to play with a single, but somewhat modifiable character?

Sundren/Edward will be your main characters in the campaign, you can't modify them or make a custom one. Your main character stays with you on every map, he/she write the journals between the maps, but sometimes he/she is not the actual leader just a hero and the leader is one of your allies you make during the campaign. Thanks to this you are not restricted to play only one class in the whole campaign, you can try the other classes units, skills, spells .

 

[G.O.D]

Never really cared about the story/lore of the AoW games, for me they were all about building shit and conquering shit.

A bit of backstory after beating a map or chapter is fine. But I don't like it during the time when playing a map. Though from what I have read it seems to be the standard in the community.
Like hoverdog said - It worked fine in MoM, and it was great. I never understood people playing strategy games for story. Story and events hold back core strategic gameplay.

 

[Tigranes]

What a box art.

Don't get me wrong, I always thought all strategy games should pay homage to the Leviathan...

 

[Space Satan]

A new glorious age of culling and purging inbred elven scum is approaching!

 

[MrBuzzKill]

I never understood people playing strategy games for story. Story and events hold back core strategic gameplay.

I disagree

Never really cared about the story/lore of the AoW games, for me they were all about building shit and conquering shit.

Not so for me. When I was playing AoW, I got really immersed in the story. So much in fact that I couldn't wait to beat a level just to read the next bit of plot. I think the writing there was brilliant.
Here's one of my favorite texts from there (AoW story spoiler):

Spoiler

I'm really curious what happened to Meandor and whether we will see him in AoW3, what their relationship with Julia will be, and whether Inioch will ever appear again.

 

[G.O.D]

I never understood people playing strategy games for story. Story and events hold back core strategic gameplay.

I disagree.

I wrote "A bit of backstory after beating a map or chapter is fine". Where did I say it was bad? In fact AoW is indeed wel written.
What I am talking about is scripted events during actual gameplay (example: lol you walked into a trap, here is a doomstack, deal with it), and scripted story.

Games like AoW, HoMM and Disciples all use scripted events and story in their campaigns, which i could do without. I don't hate it, but prefer what MoM does for example, where victory completely depends on skill, and is not influenced by scripted bullshit.

 

[octavius]

I never understood people playing strategy games for story. Story and events hold back core strategic gameplay.

I disagree.

I wrote "A bit of backstory after beating a map or chapter is fine". Where did I say it was bad? In fact AoW is indeed wel written.
What I am talking about is scripted events during actual gameplay (example: lol you walked into a trap, here is a doomstack, deal with it), and scripted story.

Games like AoW, HoMM and Disciples all use scripted events and story in their campaigns, which i could do without. I don't hate it, but prefer what MoM does for example, where victory completely depends on skill, and is not influenced by scripted bullshit.

Problem is that when the AI is as bad as it is, especially on the strategic level, then balanced, generated maps don't work well for single player. For the AoW and HoMM games maps with story and scripted events certainly are much more fun than randomly generated maps, IMO.

 

[G.O.D]

I never understood people playing strategy games for story. Story and events hold back core strategic gameplay.

I disagree.

I wrote "A bit of backstory after beating a map or chapter is fine". Where did I say it was bad? In fact AoW is indeed wel written.
What I am talking about is scripted events during actual gameplay (example: lol you walked into a trap, here is a doomstack, deal with it), and scripted story.

Games like AoW, HoMM and Disciples all use scripted events and story in their campaigns, which i could do without. I don't hate it, but prefer what MoM does for example, where victory completely depends on skill, and is not influenced by scripted bullshit.

Problem is that when the AI is as bad as it is, especially on the strategic level, then balanced, generated maps don't work well for single player. For the AoW and HoMM games maps with story and scripted events certainly are much more fun than randomly generated maps, IMO.

I see your point. It's not terrible, but just don't care much for it (story and events), and agree with Suicidal's statement. It is unfortunate that the AI is as dumb as it is, which is one of the main problems.
Scripting is just a bad design decision in these games, IMO. With custom content you can get around the dumb AI to some degree but that involves gimping, which I think is at least more fair, and thus adds fair challange.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

What I am talking about is scripted events during actual gameplay (example: lol you walked into a trap, here is a doomstack, deal with it), and scripted story.

That can be annoying, but if it doesn't influence the gameplay (like when you walk into a certain place or meet a certain unit, a bit of text appears to describe what happened in greater detail), I welcome the "fluff".

 

[octavius]

The whole debate about story/scripted events is kind of moot, since I'm sure AoW 3 will include a random map generator, so it will be like AoW2/SM and most of the HoMM games, where you can choose between heavily scripted story maps and randomly generated war maps, and everything in between.
I like the idea of randomly generated maps, but in practice scripted single player maps (mostly user made maps outside of the campaigns) work much better in AoW:SM due to the poor AI.

 

[G.O.D]

Fair enough. I actually agree with most of your arguments, except for some details. There is no harm in discussing the concept though.

 

[Zeriel]

I don't remember the original AoW using much in the way of scripted spawns. It was fairly straightforward. I mean, I'm sure they were in there technically, but it never was that noticeable to me. AoW 2 was just a bad game overall in singleplayer.

 

[Tomipapa]

 

[G.O.D]

 

[Space Satan]

I would prefer tigrans over greedy obese degenerades

 

[MrBuzzKill]

It bothers me whenever devs ask players to write a piece of plot for them... I don't trust those bastards. (the players, I mean)

 

[Malakal]

I would prefer tigrans over greedy obese degenerades

But dwarves are already in right?

 

[Space Satan]

I would prefer tigrans over greedy obese degenerades

But dwarves are already in right?

And we should not double the scum

 

[Tomipapa]

The Sorcerer class page is revealed with spell and unit info and a couple of screens:
https://ageofwonders.com/classes/sorcerer/

 

[KoolNoodles]

Sure is easy on the eyes. The more I see in that regard the more I can imagine playing many hours. Let's hope the gameplay is also good(and the few videos etc. seem to bear that out). CAN'T FUCKING WAIT.

P.S. Hobbits will be in an expansion, obviously.

 

[Space Satan]

they said necromancers are set for expansion

 

[garren]

Hobbit necromancers?

Sweet.

 

[thesheeep]

Wait, what? No halflings? :O

 

[catfood]

Wait, what? No halflings? :O

The halfling DLC is going to be just $7.99!!