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Age of Wonders 3

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thesheeep

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Is it just me or does this game have a serious balancing problem?
I mean, is there any reason to not go for the troops provided by your class? Other then maybe low-level units in the early game.
They synergize with your spells, are pretty strong all around, and if you don't build them, what did you pick the class for...

I didn't play for too long, but I don't know what the point of so many units is if you aren't using even half of them.
 
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Zboj Lamignat

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Yup, the implementation of the class and units systems is a bit flawed an only really works well with necromancers, who ghoulify all units and apply certain bonuses to them and later on can extend this ability to enemy units as well. Still, there are some interesting synergies going on, mainly connected to properly utilizing different damage sources and special attacks. Also, contrary to popular belief, some low level units are actually useful and scale quite well through the game, though bottom line is that once you unlock the tiers III and IV you're pretty much better off just spamming them all the time.
 

Zboj Lamignat

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Yeah, I'd even say it's much worse in the older games. With their rng driven combat and uber heroes the low level units were mostly cannon fodder with very few exceptions, like elven shamans.
 

MilesBeyond

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Is it just me or does this game have a serious balancing problem?
I mean, is there any reason to not go for the troops provided by your class? Other then maybe low-level units in the early game.
They synergize with your spells, are pretty strong all around, and if you don't build them, what did you pick the class for...

I didn't play for too long, but I don't know what the point of so many units is if you aren't using even half of them.

Depends on the situation, really. I personally find myself building the racial units a lot. With the possible exception of the Warlord, class units tend to be pretty specialized, and aren't ideal in every situation. I feel like especially at T3, most class units lack the damage output and/or survivability of most racial units (again, Warlord excepted). As a result, racial units tend to form my front line, as it were, with class units hanging around to do their own thing. I mean offhand the only T3 (non-Warlord) class unit I can think of that is a straight combat unit is the Exalted, and those are definitely on the squishier side of things. Plus most classes have abilities that go really well with racial units. Being a Halfling Dreadnought whose Eagle Riders are outfitted with pistols, for example, is just plain awesome. And the fact that a Draconian Rogue's Flyers get Backstab is immensely powerful, and one of the reasons why Draconians are considered the race that synergizes most with the Rogue class.

Lower tiers this is perhaps less the case, but I still end up producing more racial units than class ones just because class units require more infrastructure. Plus I don't think there are any classes that have units for every role.

Finally, I like to play with research speed set to the slowest settings, as I enjoy being able to savour each new thing I research and apply it to its full potential, so racial units are often available a fair bit before class units of a similar tier.

And of course, there's always classes like Sorcerer and Arch Druid, who have few class units and tons of summons instead, if that's more your thing.

I think that the only class where I would even consider building purely class units is the Warlord, and even then, using Mounted Archers or Monster Hunters for city defense gets expensive.

Yeah, I'd even say it's much worse in the older games. With their rng driven combat and uber heroes the low level units were mostly cannon fodder with very few exceptions, like elven shamans.

Ohhh yeah. Flanking I've found is another big change there. Means that even low damage T1 units can lay some hurt on high defense T4 units. Actually the tier difference is way better in this game - I'd say that, roughly, it takes two units of one tier to beat a unit of the next tier. Six T1s can usually reliably defeat one T4, maybe more. Definitely more if they're particularly effective T1s (Elven Longbows, for example. Or Scoundrels after Cruel Backstab has been researched).


Anyway, the reason I came to this thread in the first place is that after my latest game I wanted to express surprise. I think that AoW 3 is the only fantasy strategy game I've ever played where I actually find the Humans exciting to play. Well, MoM too, I guess. But their class units get a lot of cool abilities. I especially like how Human Assassins all get Swimming and Water Concealment. Roaming killsquads of them on water-heavy maps is fantastic, especially in multiplayer.
 

Raghar

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Ohhh yeah. Flanking I've found is another big change there. Means that even low damage T1 units can lay some hurt on high defense T4 units. Actually the tier difference is way better in this game - I'd say that, roughly, it takes two units of one tier to beat a unit of the next tier. Six T1s can usually reliably defeat one T4, maybe more. Definitely more if they're particularly effective T1s (Elven Longbows, for example. Or Scoundrels after Cruel Backstab has been researched).
They bit screwed up, when you have 6 units around one, how much flanking can you get? Common sense would says it would orient to defend well against most dangerous units, thus these will not get flanking, and only three possibly less dangerous would get flanking. But in AoW3 the answer is 6.

And the game is full of badly though stuff like that.
 

MilesBeyond

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They bit screwed up, when you have 6 units around one, how much flanking can you get? Common sense would says it would orient to defend well against most dangerous units, thus these will not get flanking, and only three possibly less dangerous would get flanking. But in AoW3 the answer is 6.

And the game is full of badly though stuff like that.

In theory I kind of agree. In practice, though, IMHO the unlimited flanking tends to significantly benefit lower level units over higher ones, and is actually an important part of reducing the tier imbalance, which IMHO was a major issue in AoW 1, SM, and MoM - and remains one in AoW 3, for sure, just to a lesser extent. If flanking attacks didn't cause the units to pivot like a pinwheel on coke, then T3s and T4s would be able to wade through much larger amounts of T1s and T2s, which IMHO from a gameplay perspective isn't ideal. From an atmosphere perspective, it can go either way. On the one hand, it's definitely a bit anticlimactic to watch your badass dragon get carved up by six Civic Guards (though if that happens you've only yourself to blame for your dragon's awful positioning, but you know what I mean). On the other hand, it means that AoW 3 is one of the few fantasy strategy games I've ever played where I find myself actually building and using tons of rank-and-file troops, rather than just sending out a hit squad of a few powerful units (the other being Dominions).
 

Archibald

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They bit screwed up, when you have 6 units around one, how much flanking can you get? Common sense would says it would orient to defend well against most dangerous units, thus these will not get flanking, and only three possibly less dangerous would get flanking. But in AoW3 the answer is 6.

And the game is full of badly though stuff like that.

I prefer when games allow me to pick which way the unit would be facing, without some automatic "face most dangerous" system.
 

MilesBeyond

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I prefer when games allow me to pick which way the unit would be facing, without some automatic "face most dangerous" system.

This is actually a complaint I have with AoW 3 - it does allow you to pick which way the unit faces without moving it, but the controls for doing so are clunky and counter-intuitive (you hold down the right mouse button on the hex that the unit is on and kinda vaguely move the mouse in the direction you want it to face?). It's a fairly important part of combat so making the actual task of doing it easier would be nice. It'd be really convenient if they added hotkeys, one assigned to each direction, to make facing painless. Hell, maybe they already have, I haven't actually checked.
 

exe

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How does the whole alignment system work? When I migrate cities to High Elves, will my inevitable evil alignment piss them off? Is there actually a way to get postive alignment except letting independents run away?
 
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How does the whole alignment system work? When I migrate cities to High Elves, will my inevitable evil alignment piss them off? Is there actually a way to get postive alignment except letting independents run away?
Vanquished an evil player: +400

Forged an Alliance: +100

Forged an Alliance with a Former Enemy: +100

Released City as a Vassal: +50

Signed Peace Treaty: +50

Made Peace with Independents: +25

Showed mercy to guards: +25

Made Independent City a Vassal: +25

Bought Favour with Independents: +25

Hunted down fleeing guards: -25

Broke a Peace Treaty with Independents: -25

Declared War on Independents of your own Race: -50

Declared War on Independents: -50

Attacked Hero that offered to join you: -50

Provoked a War by Trespassing: -50

Declared War: -100

Broke an Alliance: -100

Migrated City: -100

Started War against an Ally: -100

Razed an Occupied City: -150

Plundered a City: -150

Razed your own City: -200

Vanquished a Good Player: -400

http://age-of-wonders-3.wikia.com/wiki/Alignment
 

Norfleet

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Short version: No. Pretty much none of those actions are repeatables, or even things you'd probably want to do, while all the Evil actions are. Turn to the Dark Side. We have cookies!
 

Raghar

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How does the whole alignment system work? When I migrate cities to High Elves, will my inevitable evil alignment piss them off? Is there actually a way to get postive alignment except letting independents run away?
Try it. You can have plenty of time to test stuff. And there are tooltips which shows stuff. Only race modifier matters, and why would happy race protest against evil ruler who works for them hard?


(Also Great Deceiver put that stuff into spoiler tags. While which actions would cause some evil point is shown on tooltips in game, at least new players would be motivated to try weird stuff.)
 

MilesBeyond

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How does the whole alignment system work? When I migrate cities to High Elves, will my inevitable evil alignment piss them off? Is there actually a way to get postive alignment except letting independents run away?

Races no longer have alignment preferences, so being evil won't piss off High Elves.
 

MilesBeyond

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There are units (and ways to make units that aren't) that are dedicated to good/evil though.

True. Dwelling units, mostly. I think the game actually has two Hell Hound units for this purpose: One that's dedicated to evil, and one that's not (the former being ones that pop up in the wild; the latter being the ones you summon).
 

Zboj Lamignat

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With the Eternal Lords it's all about the three new specializations. Each of them gets a city enchantment that makes all the units recruited/summoned in a given city dedicated to an alignment and also gain a pretty significant bonus (neutral gets double critical chance, evil life drain and good gets mediation). Researching the spell also makes the ruler and all heroes dedicated to the alignment and later on there are more spells and upgrades to boost dedicated units. This at least gives the player something to consider, since previously going evil was a complete no brainer. Evil players can wage wars, migrate and conquer independents at will. Good players need to approach everything diplomatically (which usually translates into "slow") and migrating is a big no no. Even the basic good action - allowing fleeing independents to go - has an immediate disadvantage of depriving your parties of combat xp.
 

Norfleet

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Even the basic good action - allowing fleeing independents to go - has an immediate disadvantage of depriving your parties of combat xp.
The flipside of it is that it also deprives your parties of combat injuries and casualties, allowing you to expand faster and take more resources. If the map has a lot of them, this makes for a convenient source of early-game resources and experience without resistance. Once all the guards have been run off, though, there's basically no other opportunities to gain good points, since you can only make peace with someone once and whether or not you can is entirely decided by the AI (Hint: They won't), while you can burn shit as much as you want.

Didn't you also get good or evil points for slaying things dedicated to the opposite? Was that removed?
 

Zboj Lamignat

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It's a bit grasping at straws tbf, the stacks that want to run away are mostly a cannon fodder that won't kill any of your units unless you really screw up or have something weak to their attacks and wounds usually aren't that big of a problem for anyone outside the rogue, since you're probably getting that passive stack healing skill on lvl3 anyway. And getting those first few level ups on your ruler and first hero asap is really, really important.

I don't remember about killing, but there are certain spells that give alignment points on each cast.

Playing Gray guard is probably most fun, since balancing between good and evil deeds is less straightforward and his spells/skills are imo the best out of the three alignment specializations.
 
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Norfleet

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Ah, yes, I remember those. Performing positive terraformation makes you good hella-fast. I had over 9000 alignment despite being committing constant atrocities. It made me wonder "Just how on Earth can you manage to be EVIL, anyway?".
 

MilesBeyond

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It's a bit grasping at straws tbf, the stacks that want to run away are mostly a cannon fodder that won't kill any of your units unless you really screw up or have something weak to their attacks and wounds usually aren't that big of a problem for anyone outside the rogue, since you're probably getting that passive stack healing skill on lvl3 anyway. And getting those first few level ups on your ruler and first hero asap is really, really important.

Playing Gray guard is probably most fun, since balancing between good and evil deeds is less straightforward and his spells/skills are imo the best out of the three alignment specializations.

It's a pretty big decision (to let them escape or not) early game in multiplayer, where mitigating losses through tactical combat isn't really an option. Particularly if you're like me and play mostly Settler Only starts, where you've just got this tiny little army. Painless expansion is so important, but so is the juicy XP you'd get from running them down...

And yeah, Grey Guard is fantastic. Like you say, trying to maintain a neutral alignment is a lot more interesting, and Cardinal Culling in particular is just such a great spell. Introduced specifically to punish unit spam.
 
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This game is great, even if I am bad at it. Bought it a few months ago and have mostly been sticking with high-elf sorcerer builds in random-generated maps. My tactic thus far has mostly been `securing mana nodes and spamming phantom warriors, archers and storm sisters.

Hope this thread keeps seeing some activity, I'm interested to see what kind of builds the expert strategists of the Codex have in their pockets.
 

Zboj Lamignat

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Heh, I think elven sorcerer (or alternatively druid) is the strongest combo, especially early game and especially if you take basic air for the crazy op seeker enchantment. Having storm sisters with no range/los penalties that can stun with every hit... yeah. And that's a low level, spammable unit.

Game is really cool with the possible combinations you can come up with and make them work, leaves most crpgs (especially modern ones) in the dust when it comes to "party building". And some really, really varied strategies are possible. For example, mechanic wise, it has probably the best undead faction I've ever seen in a strategy game. Breaking the morale of enemy armies and then raping them with teleporting flanking "exploit despair" attacks from Lost souls that are level 0 units... yeah, who said low level units are useless.
 

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