Age of Wonders 3

[SCO]

The previous two games had *no* domain around cities without towers and even then only if the wizard was parked in one (AoW1 had a 'cast wherever you already explored thing).

So this looks like a bit of 'streamlining' already, since apparently you need never worry about your leader not taking part in defensive battles.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

All wizard towers spread the domain if the wizard is present in one. Not that it matters that much since your heroes spread the domain as well around them and they do all the main fighting.

Edit: Eh, I failed a reading comprehension check, you wrote the same thing.

 

[Spectacle]

Seems like there are are other leader classes beside Wizard in AoW3 though, so the spellcasting domain system might be completely different.

 

[catfood]

http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=36,5659,0,60

Shit is already bad. Stack size has been decreased from 8 to 6. Some people in that thread make a very good point that having a smaller stack just means that low level units will be even more useless than before. There's also a TS dev guy there who talks about this decision. Conclusion?

Yes, our goal is to streamline play.
We want to make AoW3 more enjoyable to play than AoW2:SM.

Yeah yeah, out of context, the quote is a lot longer and has a lot of info, but that's the gist of it really.

Nibbling two slots from a stack gave us a nice balance between stacks still working as a party/small army, while at the same time making tactical battles more intense and easier to take in.

MOAR XTREME battles!!!! Really, someone found them to be difficult to take in previously?

 

[Spectacle]

Fuck...


Why do they do shit like that? Is there some dude out there that thinks "8 units is too hard to keep track of, with 6 I can more easily enjoy myself".

 

[Cyberarmy]

Yay... good news...streamline woohoo...
If they decreased the stack size, I guess they are decreasing unit types for each faction too.

Edit: To help us of course, we need easy time selecting units for our armies...

 

[Azira]

 

[Excommunicator]

The visuals are very good. If they had surfaced in an unidentified screenshot somewhere on the internet I would have immediately thought Age of Wonders.

I actually don't see the point of a hard limit on a stack size. It always annoyed me that you were limited to 8 units even if they were lowly peasants or little goblins. I would much prefer a soft limit which alters things like movement speed, morale, wage cost and various other things (such as how many of those units can participate in combat at a time i.e. based on leadership) particularly when groups go past about 10 or 12. Age of Wonders always had the right battlefield mechanics to make battles between dozens of units a very interesting prospect, and that's even more valid with the squad idea I hear they are now using.

 

[spectre]

Riddle me this, your typical rts designers see no problem in the player controlling lots and lots of units, in fucking real time.
Switch to turn based, and suddenly players are drooling idiots incapable of manging more than 6 units. In turn based mode, for crying out loud...

I'm getting a buttful of hurt over this one. 8 was a nice number, allowing to split it nicely into two fireteams for nice flanking and ambushing. If number 8 ever needed anythig done it's to raise it to 12, which is the sweet spot for me. But six? bah.

 

[General Maxson]

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Well, the important thing here is if the ganging up is still possible. If yes then I suppose 6 units per stack is not so bad. If no then indeed.

 

[kris]

Riddle me this, your typical rts designers see no problem in the player controlling lots and lots of units, in fucking real time.
Switch to turn based, and suddenly players are drooling idiots incapable of manging more than 6 units. In turn based mode, for crying out loud...

I'm getting a buttful of hurt over this one. 8 was a nice number, allowing to split it nicely into two fireteams for nice flanking and ambushing. If number 8 ever needed anythig done it's to raise it to 12, which is the sweet spot for me. But six? bah.

I just played shadow magic recently and I directly felt the 8 stacks were a bit small. and I would have preffered to have them as regiments over single guys. So yes, I agree on this notion, it should be 12 or more.

 

[Raghar]

Do you mean 24 units were too small?

 

[Malakal]

Limiting squad size (it cant even be called "army") is ridiculous. Eador does it way better with leadership limiting the number of troops you can have. Learn from the masters people...

 

[Borelli]

In AoW if i wanted you can have several 8-unit stacks in combat at the same time, i'm not exactly sure when 2 large groups attack each other on strategic map who gets in who doesn't but it is very easy to get at least 24 units on each side. As long as strategic map takes into account surrounding stacks and sends them also into combat the 8>6 reduction won't hurt TOO badly.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Limiting squad size (it cant even be called "army") is ridiculous. Eador does it way better with leadership limiting the number of troops you can have. Learn from the masters people...

Agreed, I liked the Eador system because it meant a more realistic and sane combat: Hordes of level 1-2 units and a few elite level 3-4 units along with the hero. All AOW games made early game units useless at a certain point

Also this could be done so that races that fight with quantity instead of a quality get more of a boost in numbers, along with some sort of gang-up/flanking rule to promote some extra advantage to numbers and to weaken heroes. Fighting Goblins (large horde of little ornery guys) should be in very different numbers than fighting a army of elves (small armies of weak but elite magical ubermensch). For example:

Highmen: Elites. (they are pretty much angels after all)
Elves: Elites
Halflings: Horde (imagine a entire army of peasants deciding to wield pitchforks and slings)
Dwarves: Normal Numbers

Humans: Horde (from events in the original AOW, humans seemed like this big sudden fast-reproducing horde of locusts)
Frostlings: Unsure.
Lizardmen: Normal.
Azracs/Nomads: Both seem to fit horde for me.

Undead: Horde
Orcs: Normal (Orcs in AOW are lazy)
Goblins: Horde (Goblins gonna goblin)
Dark Elves: Elite

 

[Monkeyfinger]

My approach in the older games was usually:

Make a medium sized army out of indy units recruited from the map + level 2 units built by races that have good level 2 units
Expand and hold territory with that army, a couple heroes, and some flying summons
Dump most gold into one city, getting infrastructure for level 4 units (as well as production buildings in SM)
Make 6-10 of these level 4 units, meet them up with the heroes, maybe add a couple level 3s with utility skills like bard's skills and leadership
Go bust all the enemy's heavily fortified cities

Nowhere in this process did I ever have armies of 18 or greater. Early on, heroes do most of the work, with the lesser units grouping up in at most 2 stacks to hold an important city or chokepoint. When higher tier units come into play, waiting until you can make 18 of them is a horrible idea, because that also gives your opponent time to mass up full stacks in all 7 hexes of his capital, making it an enormous pain in the ass to break.

When I think about how age of wonders games actually play out, having 8 units per stack doesn't seem to add much.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

They're dumbing it down too? Is there anyone left who will not betray us?

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I think that AOW seriously needs some extra stuff to weaken heroes and high-level units. For example, the player should get the opportunity to make larger armies in general - Mostly the player just has two tight stacks with heros and level 2 to 4 units, depending on need and income. Meanwhile the AI has large ginormous armies it doesn't know how to use and that only exist to get roflpwned by heroes, heavily-fortified cities* and battlemap-wide spells like Holy Wrath**.

I would love to see somesort of ganging-up attack or flanking rule where I can make all my seven goblins surrounding a hero/high level unit fuck him up with sheer numbers and attacks from every direction.

EDIT: More specialized heroes would also help. For example, I like the idea of having a Epic General-style hero whose abilities are directed towards making my units badass, think Commander from Eador Genesis except not lame, or having a rogue-hero who walks around with a stack full of units capable of concealment/invisibility and go around sabotaging and spying the enemy on his own domains instead of attacking them outright.

BTW, why there are no proper sieges in AOW series? I rather like the idea of starving out the enemy or trying to slowly destroy his fortifications. Of course, sieges should't be straight matters, there should be ways lots of factors could affect it.

*In SM a properly-developed city makes for great turtling, depending on race. Dwarf Rune Masters + Cannons + Enchanted Walls + Regenerating Gates Spell = Lulz. Syrons could also make some lulz turtling thanks to the hilarity of having a bunch of Lightning Catchers hurling lightning at the enemy combined with some Giants to play Beef Gate with their lightning melee attacks, which stopped a entire army dead unless it had ridiculous numbers, heroes or high-res units.

*Nerfing that stuff is also a good idea. In SM with a good mage hero and a maxed out wizard, you could cast something like 3 spells like Earthquake, Holy Wrath, etc. It got ridiculous when you got a hero with resistances/immunities/regeneration to attack a enemy stack, send down ULTIMATE DOOM on their heads and flee.

 

[Borelli]

Low level units being in groups Master of Magic style, it would be a big overhaul but totally worth it imo.

 

[kris]

Do you mean 24 units were too small?

Did I play another version than the one mentioned... The limit was 8 units.

 

[Cool name]

@ kris:

Each stack had a limit of eight units. I do believe you were able to attack with up to three stacks at the same time however.

 

[Niektory]

I think you could even attack with 6 stacks if you completely surrounded the enemy but I'm not sure.

 

[Raghar]

No, limit was 3 stacks for attacker, and 3 stacks for defender.

 

[catfood]

I am fairly sure that all of the stacks adjacent to the attacked stack could enter battle. That is 7 stacks x 8 units each = 56 units max in one battle.