Age of Wonders 3

[Humanity has risen!]

I have no problems at all with the framerate with all settings maxed, although I have a Radeon 7970.

Too bad the game is so ugly.

 

[adddeed]

Nah game looks great.

I have to play on medium settings though, using a 5770 and corei5.

 

[Markman]

Frame Drops, particularly when having an army selected removed.

I told you there is a problem like this! :D Haha, and it will be fixed.

Maybe for dudes that are FPS counting freaks and play with Fraps on.
I didnt notice a damn thing with vsync on, it holds steady 60 and goes down to 50 and up a few times.
Why is this such an issue for turn based games?You dont even need animations, its like extra fluff, I see it as a bonus they worked on pretty stuff but not a requirement. Its a turn based strategy game ffs. Hell, old RTS games like Age of Empires and Rise of Nations run at like 15-25 fps and raising game speed would increase the fps. Didnt see people bitch about fps then.

And @HHR, do us all a favor and stop playing this game. You sound like a dick with omg so ugly, omg no 4k rez.
I have a high end PC too and higher resolution is least of my worries about this game.
Gameplay, mechanics, balance, stability,funfactor etc. But nooo, fuck that, I'd rather bitch about some stupid technical issue just cause I feel like it.

 

[Malakal]

I've been playing this a bit on max settings. No slowdown or other issues. Gameplay seems almost the same as before. No miss works PERFECTLY since in situations when units would miss (like behind walls or obstacles) ranged units deal pathetic damage anyway and whole battles are way less RNG dependent. Graphics are ok, nothing spectacular. New borders system works really well. No real differences when it comes to AI. Good hero leveling system.

Overall its more of the same in a new engine and with certain noticeable improvements.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

So the KKK is that this AOW2 2 - solid game, but essentially a graphic overhaul with a lot of good ol stuff left out and innovations that could've been done, not done, lacking thus depth?

 

[J_C]

Frame Drops, particularly when having an army selected removed.

I told you there is a problem like this! :D Haha, and it will be fixed.

Maybe for dudes that are FPS counting freaks and play with Fraps on.
I didnt notice a damn thing with vsync on, it holds steady 60 and goes down to 50 and up a few times.
Why is this such an issue for turn based games?You dont even need animations, its like extra fluff, I see it as a bonus they worked on pretty stuff but not a requirement. Its a turn based strategy game ffs. Hell, old RTS games like Age of Empires and Rise of Nations run at like 15-25 fps and raising game speed would increase the fps. Didnt see people bitch about fps then.

And @HHR, do us all a favor and stop playing this game. You sound like a dick with omg so ugly, omg no 4k rez.
I have a high end PC too and higher resolution is least of my worries about this game.
Gameplay, mechanics, balance, stability,funfactor etc. But nooo, fuck that, I'd rather bitch about some stupid technical issue just cause I feel like it.

Oh shut up. Maybe I have a high standards, but I'd rather have smooth scrolling and smooth mouse movement, instead of a laggy one. Why? Because it is more pleasing to the eye. Game breaking problem? No. But which one you prefer, smooth gameplay all the way, or a laggy one. And it bothers me that sometimes the game runs at 40 fps, and sometimes just drops to 15. And I'm not talking about high resolutions, high quality textures, shadows or anti-aliesing. It is about lagging, which can make a game unconfortable to play.

Just to put this into perspective. One of my favourite turn based games is the first Eador. Look it up, it has piss graphics, but I love its simplicity. But it had some terrible lagging, which made it unbearable to control when moving the screen. Fortunately this have been solved. And it should be solved in AOW3.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

The main gameplay difference I've noticed so far is a greater emphasis on founding and developing cities which, coupled with a more useful random map generator, makes it play closer to a traditional 4x. Otherwise, it reminds me of AoW II with smaller army sizes, less factions, and existing factions that feel more generic. Army variety results more from units recruited in the "dwelling" type settlements/higher tier mage specialization units and less from faction selection. Overall, it's one and a half steps forward; one step back. Haven't played enough to get a feel for the AI.

Nearly forgot the most important new feature. Mages can be customized with both and monocle and a fedora.

Spoiler

 

[adddeed]

I'm enjoying it a lot. Took me a couple of hours to get used to the visuals. I played AoW1 a week ago and it's so clean visually which is great.

Why are half the games in the online lobby greyed out? They have that red circle no idea what that is.

 

[KoolNoodles]

I'm enjoying it a lot. Took me a couple of hours to get used to the visuals. I played AoW1 a week ago and it's so clean visually which is great.

Why are half the games in the online lobby greyed out? They have that red circle no idea what that is.

Password protection? Other than that there seem to be some connection issues with MP at the moment, I assume that would be it.

 

[adddeed]

Not the password, those green and red circle icons. So a lot of the games being displayed i can not select.

 

[Snozgobler]

I played the game a bit last night. I was surprised by the decision to make units visually lose members while still retaining full damage, it took me a couple of fights to note that this was what was happening.

Overall I enjoy the more controlled levelling up process for heroes with the point-buy system as opposed to the random options provided in AoW2.

I've not been playing for very long (just doing the first scenario in the Elven campaign), but I did note that my flying fairies weren't really "flying" because they could be melee'd by the enemy. I'd have preferred it if flying units could avoid melee units damage entirely.

Also, enemies don't really appear to use their defensive fortifications very well. I initially was using my rogue spell blind to attempt to remove any range and encourage them to come out and meet me in the open, but they started coming out on their own even with ranged defenders which made me scratch my head a bit.

Will play more tonight probably

 

[octavius]

So is the ships AI? Non-existant like in AoW2, or reluctant like in SM? Assuming there is sea and ships at all, that is.

 

[fastjack]

So is the ships AI? Non-existant like in AoW2, or reluctant like in SM? Assuming there is sea and ships at all, that is.

I don't know about the ai, but going to sea is handled a la civ 5 or rtw 2, wherein you move land units to the sea and they become ships and end their turn.

 

[Emily]

I dont remember that i played ANY game that had ship AI on even semi-decent level.
My bet would be to just play non-sea maps

 

[J_C]

I don't know about the ai, but going to sea is handled a la civ 5 or rtw 2, wherein you move land units to the sea and they become ships and end their turn.

What happened to the marauding galleys filling up the rivers in AOW?

I bet all these would-be invaders of sea-separated places have ever dreamed of something like this.

There are frigates and war ships in game.

 

[whatevername]

Compared to AoW:SM this game is a PIECE OF SHIT. Those who liked HMM6 or Elemental/FE will love it though.

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

Compared to AoW:SM this game is a PIECE OF SHIT. Those who liked HMM6 or Elemental/FE will love it though.

You are an idiot. The game plays great and looks great and sounds great so far. I think this might be a classic...

 

[Zeriel]

Compared to AoW:SM this game is a PIECE OF SHIT. Those who liked HMM6 or Elemental/FE will love it though.

I'm actually inclined to agree aesthetically. The gameplay is fine and basically AoW 2 over again--not as good as SM, but decent. Visually it's a huge downgrade, though, yet another example of why 3D is really hard to work in topdown/isometric. Blizzard is the only company I can think of off-hand that did it well, with Starcraft 2 looking closer to 2D than not.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

Visually it's a mess, yeah. I find i have to devote too much time and energy to make out what's going on, instead of being able to concentrate on the strategy.
It's really a major issue, at least to me.

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

Visually it's a mess, yeah. I find i have to devote too much time and energy to make out what's going on, instead of being able to concentrate on the strategy.
It's really a major issue, at least to me.

Is that some sort of assburger thing to find it hard to see things in this game? The only thing that was confusing for me is the middle mouse button and moving was turning the camera around in the position in the air rather than around the point it was looking at....

 

[Misconnected]

Is that some sort of assburger thing to find it hard to see things in this game?

At a comfortable zoom level where you can see all the units involved in a battle, you frequently can't distinguish which weapons they're armed with. There's more differences than just the weapons, of course, but until you've gotten a handle on those, the easiest way to tell what's what is to click stuff and check the info box at the top of the screen.

Blizzard, Games Workshop, and surprisingly few others have long mastered and still practice the art of communicating detail from afar and at a glance through exaggeration. Low resolution 2D graphics used to force everyone to try. But HD graphics with 3D vanity camera controls means developers are no longer forced to do this... So almost all of them have stopped, apparently never realising why they once thought doing things differently was a good idea.

 

[J_C]

Is that some sort of assburger thing to find it hard to see things in this game?

At a comfortable zoom level where you can see all the units involved in a battle, you frequently can't distinguish which weapons they're armed with. There's more differences than just the weapons, of course, but until you've gotten a handle on those, the easiest way to tell what's what is to click stuff and check the info box at the top of the screen.

I don't think this is as a severe problem as you say it is. There are only a handful of units, which are very similar to eachother regarding their looks. And in their case, I don't think it is too big of a hassle to click on them and check their discription.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Yeah, it's a shame that all tb strategies suddenly try to look like CiV or thereabouts. There's absolutely no added value from it, games like AoW2, HoMM3, PG2, HoI2 etc etc looked better, run better and, what's most important, were much more functional in their graphics.

Edit: Before someone spergs me, yes - HoI2 is not tb.

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

Blizzard, Games Workshop, and surprisingly few others have long mastered and still practice the art of communicating detail from afar and at a glance through exaggeration.

If you want things to look like world of warcraft, just say "I want and axe to be bigger than my character". I don't want things to look like cartoons just because your eyesight is poor, thank you very much.

 

[Galdred]

If you want things to look like world of warcraft, just say "I want an axe each of my pauldrons to be bigger than my character"