Age of Wonders 3

[InspectorRumpole]

I hope all of you have submitted your feedback, so we can get a good game

 

[muds_animal_friend]

I was playing SM on this map with the Brave New World mod installed and it pretty much illustrates everything I want(ed) to see in AoW III: units at all tiers that are both varied and useful throughout the course of gameplay; diverse factions with personality; and an AI that puts me under constant pressure making large standing armies mandatory and gold management an issue (i.e. strategy is required).

Unit balance in AoW III is so poor at the moment that even the AI realizes it and is spamming nothing but big beetles and trebuchets in my current game because that's all that's required to win. Fixing unit balance would be a huge first step forward.

 

[octavius]

I was playing SM on this map with the Brave New World mod installed and it pretty much illustrates everything I want(ed) to see in AoW III: units at all tiers that are both varied and useful throughout the course of gameplay; diverse factions with personality; and an AI that puts me under constant pressure making large standing armies mandatory and gold management an issue (i.e. strategy is required).

Never tried the BNW mod, but the Fight for Light map is one of my favourite maps. I played it using my custom mod (based on Wizards&Heroes mod), and it actually took me longer to finish than most full games. You can even read my (PetrusOctavianus) review of the map there. I found the large Archon city hamstrung the Shadowgod too much. I'll have to try it with the BNW one day and see how different the experience is.
Which faction(s) did you play?

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Good review. It's certainly one of the best maps for single play and it isn't reliant on gimmicks or super neutral stacks either. My first game I played the humans and it's the only SM game that I ever conceded defeat in. The Shadow God actually took all the Archon cities plus my two cites on the east bank while the dark elves completely eliminated the dwarves. BNW changes the balance considerably so sticking six archers and a couple of melee unit behind walls is no longer a guaranteed win. It's quite tough making gains while fighting a two front war against an AI that's constantly fielding armies of wall climbers, phases, and flyers. I also tried the elves for a bit and eventually won a game as the dwarves. The one constant I found is that the halflings were basically a waste of map space in all three games. They never expanded much and the dark elves largely ignored them.

 

[KoolNoodles]

Was really not a big fan of BNW after a while, too many odd as fuck units and weird shit going on. Felt it got way too bloated as they just piled more and more junk on top. That said, many of the user-made scenarios got pretty good.

 

[sser]

Patch.

Spoiler

Change Log:

Compatibility
• WQHD / QHD (up to 2560 x 1440 / 2560 *1600) native resolution display support (the Black & White boxes and blurry text should disappear). Fix has been verified to work up to and including a resolution of 2560x1660.
• Fixed an issue for people using Intel HD Graphics - specifically for HD4000 and Surface 2 Pro - in combination with certain driver version, that caused a crash when opening interface screens - e.g. starting the game, opening options menu, skill book, etc.

Performance
• Fixed frame drop when armies were selected.
• Fixed decreasing frame rate occurring during extended play, particularly in longer battles.
• Fixed a memory leak when Windows was locked.
• Optimized a feature effecting maps with water, which should now show increased framerate.

AI Improvements
• Fixed some cases where the tactical AI would come out from behind the walls of cities and fortresses too soon.
• Stopped the AI spamming disjunction, so players can now use global magic more easily.
• Fixed an issue where the tactical AI would cast a resurrection spell on an invalid target.
• Made 'squire' AI easier to beat.
• AI settings for players were changed to compensate for this change, to keep the same level of challenge on normal difficulty.
• Using the 'restart' option in a campaign map now returns the player to the briefing, allowing map difficulty to be changed.

Scenario & Campaign
• Campaign: Heroes being mind controlled no longer causes you to instantly lose a campaign map if you rescue them by the end of combat.
• Campaign: Heroes which are protected by the 'resurgence' effect - e.g. the theocrat's 'rebirth' spell - can now die in tactical combat without causing you to lose the campaign map, as long as you win the battle that they die in.
• Blightmouth Crater: Closed a gap in impassable mountains.
• Blightmouth Crater: Removed two superfluous hearts of the blight.
• Blightmouth Crater: Fixed the behavior of independent armies.
• Elven Resurgence: Player 6 now starts with more gold mines, making the starting positions more balanced.
• 4th Elven Court map: Independents no longer interfere with one of the starting quests.
• 4th Commonwealth map: Fixed a message that missed an icon under specific circumstances.
• 5th Commonwealth map: A 'defeat leader' quest no longer reveals that leader's position.
• 5th Commonwealth map: Fixed a story message that had overlapping lines of text.
• 6th Elven Court & Commonwealth maps: Prevented story characters from dying when you are victorious.
• 6th Elven Court and Commonwealth maps: Added a few building upgrades to starting cities to give the player a better starting situation and more options.

Other Fixes.
• Fixed settings - e.g. graphics settings - not being saved when using the 'guest' profile.
• Fixed an issue when logging in with usernames of two characters.
• Fixed the stack confirm movement button being disabled in some situations when a stack was auto-moving.
• Fixed a rare crash caused by a player razing a city with a heart of blight, tropics, etc in its domain
• Fixed an issue where a backstab bonus wasn't being correctly applied. This led to situations where a unit could backstab a target without flanking it.
• Fixed a crash triggered by clicking on a "You lost your throne city!" event.
• Fixed a crash triggered by selecting a 'Egg has hatched' after loading the save game.
• Fixed the 'Remove army from event list' shortcut key function so armies are properly removed from the list.
• Fixed an issue where the 'Protect your leader and throne city' quest failed to complete on victory.
• The game now ignores controller input, to prevent camera drift when a controller is plugged in.
• 'Spring of life' now rewards units when explored.
• When creating a new custom leader, the field for setting a name is now left empty by default.

Balance:
• 'Shrine of smiting' is no longer 'Devout', nerfing 'Shrine of smiting' doom stacks which relied on stacking 'Devout' bonuses for the 'Smiting prayer bolts'.
• 'Shadow stalker' now does cold damage. This fixes an issue where rogues had limited options vs. blight immune troops.
• Increased the research costs of skills to slow down progression through the skill tree.
• Increased cost of racial tier 3 unit building to 300 gold and 100 mana.
• Decreased the base production of cities.
• Fixed issue with 'Libraries' and 'Observatories' generating too much knowledge.

Features:
• Added buttons on either side of the city name that cycle through cities owned by the player.
• We added a quick save option, bound under CTRL+S by default.
• Added extra text to the preview popup when attacking a city wall. Players can now see the hit points the wall have remaining as they plan their attack.

 

[KoolNoodles]

Good first step, but they REALLY need to improve performance. There is no reason why Civ5 can run fine on a Huge map with 100s and 100s of units and actions a turn, and this starts chugging(for me), with only 5 players and maybe 30 "units" moving about. There's not even a huge amount of background animation going on compared to Civ5. Only notice it on the bigger maps, but it sure is annoying, especially when the game doesn't even look any better.

 

[adddeed]

Is it out or what?

 

[Akratus]

Is this game any kind of incline? Because if Incline came from the Netherlands hell must've frozen over.

 

[J_C]

It might not be as good as its predecessors, but it is defnitely incline in this day and age.

 

[KoolNoodles]

I'd say it's just different and needs an expansion + some patches. The diversity is lacking a little from AoWSM, performance is an issue, combat needs some tweaking(though still solid TBS combat), AI could use a boost that's not just cheating, strategy layer needs some love though mostly falls into the same trap as older AoW games: namely it's a rush to high-tier units and late game becomes a slog.

The hero level-up system is great, classes is a neat(and different) idea but needs expanding on, not having to plonk a wizard tower everywhere to cast spells is a good change(adds a penalty without main caster now instead), but needs some tweaking. For instance, more global spells not revolving around cities would be nice. Also the way the disjunction mechanics are working is really annoying. Almost impossible to keep a spell up for longer than a couple turns. They either need to make the chance to dispell harder, or have some global spells simply be permanent(for instance, why would a "magic shield" spell on my throne city be dispelled? Its sole purpose is to prevent magic, at my center of power, and it goes poof in a turn).

They could stand to make races even more dissimilar. They could also re-introduce multiple casters per combat turn, but maybe have a penalty that scales per use(use less spells right now, or more over the course of the battle).

Those are just some things that patches/mods/expansions could help with, but the base game is pretty good. It's understandable to have some issues after a 10 year reboot.

 

[J_C]

Latest patch is out and it solved the optimization problem for me. :D

 

[cvv]

Is this game any kind of incline?

At this stage?
Strictly for the hardcore AoW fans, fullstop.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Is this game any kind of incline?

At this stage?
Strictly for the hardcore AoW fans, fullstop.

i'm definitely no aow fan, i played aow2 and found it "acceptable".
just came here to say i tried this and it seems *awesome*, a step toward having a new "fall from heaven".
only problem is i just can't have any real fun without undead, dark elves or demonic races, but i'm sure they've been took away from the game to be sold as dlc/expansion.

 

[KoolNoodles]

You are probably 100% correct in that assessment.

 

[Shannow]

Is this game any kind of incline?

At this stage?
Strictly for the hardcore AoW fans, fullstop.

Never played any of the old ones and I like this, so...

Anyway, some suggestions of what I'd like to see. (Disclaimer: I'm no strategy-fag, I'm a tactics- and RPG-fag and don't like managing more than 2-4 stacks, so my suggestions will mostly go in that direction.):

• Firstly I'd like to second many of the things that were already mentioned (More races [I want to play undead!], better/more loot from independants [no Diablo loot-farm, but slightly more], slower Tech-tree/city progression, less disjunction of stategic spells)
• I'd like to see a mechanic where having many cities, many races gives maluses to happiness and makes the populace more difficult to manage. At the moment I completely ignore happiness and only had one city that was close to rebelling.
• Crusade Kings/Eriador-type of story events that influence happiness, alignment, resources and troops.
• A possibility to increase city gold income apart from "merchandise". I'm always hurting for gold. So far summoning was the far easier route since I can influence mana-income via buildings.
• Being able to produce from cities like casting strategic spells. I.e. The possibility to produce several buildings/units per round if the production is sufficient.
  
• A leadership resource to prevent tier 4 doomstacks:
  A leader can only have his tier+1 tier-troops in his stack. I.e.: A tier 2 unit could have 3 leadership. So either 3x tier 1 units or 1x tier 2 + 1x tier 1 in its stack. Without heroes the highest tier unit would automatically be leader. Heroes would start with 5 leadership and increase their leadership by 1 on every level up (so a level 1 hero would have the same starting-leadership as a tier 4 unit = full stack of tier 1 units).
  Then have new tech-options: +1 leadership for every leader, +2 leadership for every leader.
  Or class specific tech-options: All animals/summoned units/irregulars/etc cost one leadership less. Tier 1 units don't cost leadership. Etc.
  Stuff like that.
• In addition to that I'd limit the amount of tier 3 and 4 units that a player can have. Perhaps also with tech-options of increasing the number. So far I simply don't see any downside to tier 4 doomstacks. If they're summoned the mana costs/upkeep are manageable. Time is the only constraint. This means that lower tier units become obsolete for the most part...

All in all I really like the game but it feels unfinished. I'd suggest waiting with a purchase until there's a package with all DLC/expansions that one can expect.

PS: Where are you guys getting Warlock 2 from? The release date here is tomorrow and on the high seas I can only see a leaked pre-order version...?

 

[cvv]

Is this game any kind of incline?

At this stage?
Strictly for the hardcore AoW fans, fullstop.

Never played any of the old ones and I like this

Which makes you an AoW fan

 

[Markman]

PS: Where are you guys getting Warlock 2 from? The release date here is tomorrow and on the high seas I can only see a leaked pre-order version...?

Warlock 2 is released in about 5 hours, but if you preordered it, you could play the game as "early access". I got my steam key from gamersgate, was 10 euros cheaper than on steam.
Only thing added in release version is Deluxe content and Editor plus some toggles for city limit and monster spawn frequency.

 

[Raghar]

Boys I have some serious big battles recorded there. Actually just two last battles from elven campaign 3. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt-ZMDL28eoJxyBMxtgsq_Ep8jXu0GxHL
So you'd been warned for spoilers.

 

[ricolikesrice]

is the elven campaign better than the commonwealth one ? after recently playing 3 missions of the later i can somewhat understand some complaints about AOW3 much better....

....when you re SWIMMING in gold ( over 1000 per turn as there s a city & ressources everywhere you go...) without having even discovered half the map and the AI does pretty much nothing except defend itself the game starts to feel like a chore where you just go through the motions and spam tier3/4 units and use auto-resolve to get it over with .... though maybe its my fault not rushing the enemy as quick as i can....

if i played nothing but these 3 missions i might have a very different picture of AOW3..... and can now finally understand people seriously enjoying Warlock 2 instead (sorry guys, thought you were on drugs before :p)

soooo... elf campaign the same or worth playing ? or better to ignore both campaigns and stay with random maps instead ? ( i really enjoyed the game in them )

 

[DeepOcean]

Is this game any kind of incline?

At this stage?
Strictly for the hardcore AoW fans, fullstop.

i'm definitely no aow fan, i played aow2 and found it "acceptable".
just came here to say i tried this and it seems *awesome*, a step toward having a new "fall from heaven".
only problem is i just can't have any real fun without undead, dark elves or demonic races, but i'm sure they've been took away from the game to be sold as dlc/expansion.

What? What sane developer would ditch undead, Conan the barbarian inspired slavers, giant smurfs from other dimension, egyptian cats, frostlings and dark elves but keep draconics? So it is only humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, draconics, orks and goblins? Now, this IS boring. I remenber of AoW 2 and I had great fun with it until I discovered that the way to win is to rush, I rushed every single map and didn't have any problem both on the campaign as on the skirmish mode. The Ai was way too passive...

The secret was to build a single army of level 3/4 creatures and as the ai had a lot of cities with shitty level 1 units, you could steamroll almost half the map before it could do something unless it was a campaign map where it started with lots of level 3/4. I liked more because it had gourgeous 2d maps and some units like the enslavers, nymphs, spider and etc were fun but it was a broken game and looking at this it is just an uglier version of AoW 2 without the interesting races and the same problems... It is funny that AoW 1 is ancient and looks ugly for the todays standard but it had two campaigns with interesting factions, a nice story and an Ai that could beat the crap out of you. Why is so hard in 2014?

 

[cvv]

It is funny that AoW 1 is ancient and looks ugly for the todays standard but it had two campaigns with interesting factions, a nice story and an Ai that could beat the crap out of you. Why is so hard in 2014?

I dunno bro, I'm starting to think our memories of great AIs from the 90s are a bit rosy. All those early 4Xs like Civ, MoM, Moo and so on were not terrible but not fantastic by any measure. Maybe we're just harder to please now, after so many games played, or maybe today's games are more complex (Civ5 is certainly a fuckton more complex than Civ1) and harder to balance.

 

[octavius]

It is funny that AoW 1 is ancient and looks ugly for the todays standard but it had two campaigns with interesting factions, a nice story and an Ai that could beat the crap out of you. Why is so hard in 2014?

I dunno bro, I'm starting to think our memories of great AIs from the 90s are a bit rosy.

Yes. I used to think the AI of Civ 1 and 2 was very good, and I never won Civ 1 on Emperor level, and Civ 2 I only won once through a combo of stealing tech to enabling nukes + build nukes + paratroopers.
Now I have no problems beating Civ 2 on highest difficulty.

The general AI in AoW2 was an imporvement from AoW1, but the AI could not use ships at all, so it was in many ways a broken game. AoW:SM reintroduced ships AI and has the better AI of the old AoW games IMO, but it is still the weak point of the game, and the AI is far too passive. Unlike games like Civ and HoMM you will never ever see one faction in AoW2/SM conquer another one, as long as the map is fairly balanced. That's why I never play randomly generated AoW maps, only scripted/story driven/heavily unbalanced maps.

 

[adddeed]

I find the Ai in AoW3 very competent and better than most other 4x games.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

so, when is the new content due? i grew tired of the present races already, a bit too samey, and i hate the randomized tech tree.
also: how moddable is this? it's written "fall from heaven 3" all over and i want it.