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Age of Wonders 3

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Absinthe

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You also get good alignment from Creation spells: Cleanse the Land (+25). Master Creation: Condemn Killing (+50), Temperate Empire (+25), Bane of the Unnatural (+25) Similarly there is evil alignment for Destruction spells: Scorched Earth (-25), Domain of Corruption (-25). Master Destruction: Blight Empire (-25).

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?".
I don't think Age of Wonders 3 has a very good alignment system, to be honest. The last expansion tried to make it count, though.

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.
Not the biggest fan. Storm Sisters get Inflict Stun on elite rank anyway so eventually the main contributions there are projectile resistance and phase. Sorcerers do benefit from not needing to fully level Storm Sisters though. That said, Warlords can level Storm Sisters easily enough between Conqueror and Global Assault (along with benefiting from the Elves' bonus resistance and superior ranged attacks) and Theocrats and Necromancers give Storm Sisters another level-up putting them 1 rank away from elite. In addition with Champion Military Racial Governance as High Elves you can give Storm Sisters +1 ranged damage and make them ignore range penalties (but they still take line of sight penalties unless you also take the Deity Martial Racial Governance). They do benefit from Static Electricity lowering enemies' shock resistance though.

Frostling Sorcerer is more powerful because their White Witches and Tier 3 Ice Queens are both support units. A couple of White Witches can outdo Storm Sisters by boosting each other's ranged damage in the first round plus they get a better bonus from Seeker (thanks to doing 2 damage channels). And an Ice Queen with Phase, Projectile Resistance, and Inflict Stun (which works with their Ice Nova, by the way) is rather painful.
 
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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.

I've been running Master Creation and Adept Greyguard.

Greyguard's ability for granting casting point whenever a magical enemy is slain I've found really helpful for a sorc. Once I get phantom warriors I pretty much spam them non-stop, and the extra CP makes it so I'm not completely dry when it comes time to throw out some chain lightnings.

I do prefer to have whatever spell school remains as a Master, just so I can enhance whatever nodes I find and ensure I have enough mana rolling in to produce apprentices, storm sisters, and phantom warriors. Air seems good for seeking, but I didn't find its other offerings particularly useful. Then again I am shit at this game.

Theocrats seem to be the most useful hirelings I've noticed. I'm tempted to make one of my own.
 

Zboj Lamignat

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Storm Sisters get Inflict Stun on elite rank anyway
Point being? You do realize doubling bonuses in this game (same with lucky, life steal and so on) are not wasted, right? That's exactly one of the reasons elves are so good.
Global Assault
Yes, it's a nice spell, just like most tier vii spells are. Don't really see a point of it in this particular comparison.
Frostling Sorcerer is more powerful
Wat. Elves get bonus ranged from the get go and synergize perfectly with all the sorcerer's lighting dmg and effects. And lighting dmg is so good because there's just not that much stuff resistant to it. And frostlings are kinda eh... in general due to the shitload of fire dmg sources that units/races/classes have with additional ways of lowering fire res availible.

Anyway, my point was to give a strong early game combo for someone who wants to learn the game and git gud. Can't see past elven sorcerers/druid with strong early game ranged units that scale well through the entire game and ready availible summonable tanks to protect. Add seeker on top of that and you're just waltzing through everything.

I've been running Master Creation and Adept Greyguard.

Greyguard's ability for granting casting point whenever a magical enemy is slain I've found really helpful for a sorc. Once I get phantom warriors I pretty much spam them non-stop, and the extra CP makes it so I'm not completely dry when it comes time to throw out some chain lightnings.

I do prefer to have whatever spell school remains as a Master, just so I can enhance whatever nodes I find and ensure I have enough mana rolling in to produce apprentices, storm sisters, and phantom warriors. Air seems good for seeking, but I didn't find its other offerings particularly useful. Then again I am shit at this game.

Theocrats seem to be the most useful hirelings I've noticed. I'm tempted to make one of my own.
Creation and sorcerer is a pretty weird combo, but whatever floats your boat:)

Air adept is definitely worth it for the seeker alone. Air master is not the greatest choice, although haste is pretty great.
 

Absinthe

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Point being? You do realize doubling bonuses in this game (same with lucky, life steal and so on) are not wasted, right? That's exactly one of the reasons elves are so good.
Some abilities stack while others don't in Age of Wonders. Lucky and Life Stealing are two mechanics that explicitly improve for multiple instances. Now there are some mechanics that don't mention it but stack anyway (backstab, iirc), but Inflict Stun doesn't. I just tested it, and you don't double up on the dice-roll, and you don't improve the resistance check for having multiple sources of Inflict Stun. It's just redundant and wasted. Don't get me wrong. It's still good to give your Storm Sisters Inflict Stun without needing to level them all the way to elite rank, but you won't benefit as much from leveling them and other classes can get Storm Sisters with Inflict Stun too.

Yes, it's a nice spell, just like most tier vii spells are. Don't really see a point of it in this particular comparison.
Just pointing out that Warlords can guarantee Elite Storm Sisters to pull this stunt off. In fact a Warlord with Deity Military Governance as High Elves can obtain Storm Sisters with Inflict Stun who ignore both range and LoS penalties.

Wat. Elves get bonus ranged from the get go and synergize perfectly with all the sorcerer's lightning dmg and effects. And lightning dmg is so good because there's just not that much stuff resistant to it. And frostlings are kinda eh... in general due to the shitload of fire dmg sources that units/races/classes have with additional ways of lowering fire res availible.
Maybe, but there are few things that resist both fire and frost. Usually anything that resists one is also vulnerable to the other. In addition White Witches can use Grant Frozen Flames on each other giving them another +2 frost and fire for 6 frost 6 fire total while the Storm Sister does 9 shock. They also have Inflict Chilling which lowers frost resistance by 20% whenever it triggers and they do two channels of damage while Seeker increases each damage channel by one and flanking increases each damage channel by two. Stunned enemies are automatically flanked, so a White Witch recruit with Seeker easily has an output of 9 frost 9 fire (and randomly lowers the enemy's frost resist) while a similar Storm Sister has an output of 12 shock damage. Suffice it to say that the White Witch is a heavy hitter with Inflict Stun. Not to mention how powerful the Ice Queen becomes with Inflict Stun, Projectile Resistance, and Phase.

Creation and sorcerer is a pretty weird combo, but whatever floats your boat.
It's not that strange. The Sorcerer's drawback is that he can't easily replace his big units and Creation Master's drawback is that it doesn't come with a summon. Resurrect alone is valuable enough to consider the pickup and with the addition of Necromancers plus the summons from Wild Magic Adept and alignment specialization masteries, Bane of the Unnatural is much more useful than before.
 
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Zboj Lamignat

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Some abilities stack while others don't in Age of Wonders.
They did stack and you got double tun chance but yeah, I've checked and it seems one of the new patches erased it. Pretty lame, since instead offering an alternative they just removed it, but it was crazy powerful so I get the sentiment.
Just pointing out that Warlords can guarantee Elite Storm Sisters to pull this stunt off.
Yeah, most tier 7 spells are great, but pretty often you don't even get to see them.
Maybe, but there are few things that resist both fire and frost. Usually anything that resists one is also vulnerable to the other. In addition White Witches can use Grant Frozen Flames on each other giving them another +2 frost and fire for 6 frost 6 fire total while the Storm Sister does 9 shock. They also have Inflict Chilling which lowers frost resistance by 20% whenever it triggers and they do two channels of damage while Seeker increases each damage channel by one and flanking increases each damage channel by two. Stunned enemies are automatically flanked, so a White Witch recruit with Seeker easily has an output of 9 frost 9 fire (and randomly lowers the enemy's frost resist) while a similar Storm Sister has an output of 12 shock damage. Suffice it to say that the White Witch is a heavy hitter with Inflict Stun. Not to mention how powerful the Ice Queen becomes with Inflict Stun, Projectile Resistance, and Phase.
Ok, let's put things in a simple manner: if there's one thing you don't want to be weak against, it's fire. There are three fire-themed races alone, and that's without mentioning all the spells, classes, summons/neutral units that give you fire damage. Any lame fire adept with basic spammable 7 mana spell will hurt your tankiest units like they were wet paper (pun intended). Cold resist, on the other hand, is very niche and pretty useless in most scenarios. This makes frostlings rather meh and definitely not something I would recommend to beginners.

Sorcerer is a very strong class, definitely a candidate for the strongest in the game, so yes, it will synergize and work pretty well with most races. That doesn't change the fact that just like goblins are a match for rogue or orcs for warlord, elves are a match for sorcerer. They are lighting-themed, magic inclined and ranged combat inclined. And yeah, lighting rules with sorcerer and lack of resists across the board. Suffice to say that no race resist lighting outside of halfings and their ridiculously good lucky status.
 

Absinthe

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They did stack and you got double tun chance but yeah, I've checked and it seems one of the new patches erased it. Pretty lame, since instead offering an alternative they just removed it, but it was crazy powerful so I get the sentiment.
Sound about right. AoW 3 originally had a tendency to let everything just stack.

Yeah, most tier 7 spells are great, but pretty often you don't even get to see them.
And when you cast a Tier VII spell it will probably be greater disjunctioned fairly quickly because no one wants you to keep those bonuses. Global Assault instantly levels all your units to Elite just by activating though. Even without that Warlords have Conqueror to make them gain exp faster and other abilities to give Storm Sisters resurgence or make them hard to kill.

Ok, let's put things in a simple manner: if there's one thing you don't want to be weak against, it's fire. There are three fire-themed races alone, and that's without mentioning all the spells, classes, summons/neutral units that give you fire damage. Any lame fire adept with basic spammable 7 mana spell will hurt your tankiest units like they were wet paper (pun intended). Cold resist, on the other hand, is very niche and pretty useless in most scenarios. This makes frostlings rather meh and definitely not something I would recommend to beginners.
While Frostlings have 40% fire vulnerability, the Winter Witches' Bestow Frozen Flames ability gives the target +80% fire resistance, so just buffing each other will give them 40% fire resist. Enemies only get 1 turn of enjoying the fire vulnerability at best. That might be enough if they can cast Hellfire I suppose.

orcs are a match for warlord
Not a fan. They're overspecialized into melee and a -1 resistance ensures you will wipe your army on the first Sorcerer to cast Static Electricity and make it stick. In fact, your whole army is bad against any magic, particularly mass magic. By contrast a High Elf Warlord gets better ranged attacks with longbows and +1 resistance makes your army much tougher against spells.
 
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vota DC

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Orc Warlord is good only if he reaches late game with tireless Warbreed and Manticore with guard breaker while High Elf Warlord is a lot better early game and late game still has a Manticore with inflict stun.
Orc should use Theocrat: Martyr with +5 racial hp to soak damage, Tireless Crusaders, their priest help to convert units because they can lower resistance from safe distance.
 

Renegen

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Did AoW3 improve significantly from release? I need a 4X game and I didn't like what this one offered years ago.
 

sser

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Did AoW3 improve significantly from release? I need a 4X game and I didn't like what this one offered years ago.

I find the campaigns to be way too harsh and poorly designed in general, but the skirmish mode is great.
 

Absinthe

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Did AoW3 improve significantly from release? I need a 4X game and I didn't like what this one offered years ago.
If you haven't played Eador: Genesis yet, I would recommend that one first. Age of Wonders 3 has currently added a few more races (Halflings, Tigrans, Frostlings) and added more race-specific bonuses and units to make the racial selection less horribly bland. New racial governance system also lets you upgrade your races in more unique ways. Random events have been introduced to break up a monotonous pace and Empire Quests now reward the first player to reach certain milestones, some of which are worth rushing. Necromancer class is a new addition that actually changes up a lot more than previous classes did. Elemental summons have been improved a bit and new specializations exist in the form of Partisan (rogue-lite), Wild Magic (spells with random effects, has a rather good summon as an Adept), and alignment specs (makes all your units dedicated to good/neutral/evil, gives empire upgrades, spells, and provides a Tier IV summon at mastery level). Alignment system is still trash but the new specializations at least offer you good bonuses. There are also bonuses added just for having specializations now and a spell to re-randomize your research list if you're unhappy with your current offerings. Other than that the new Seal and Unifier victory conditions have been added to Age of Wonders 3 and both expansions come with their own campaigns. Also there has been some slight rebalancing between classes.
 
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I think AoW3 in its final state is the best AoW and the best combat-oriented 4x out there at the moment. Endless Legend is better in some respects, but they both scratch different itches.

In my opinion, those two are the best modern 4x games overall and have been/will be for quite some time.
 

DramaticPopcorn

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I think AoW3 in its final state is the best AoW and the best combat-oriented 4x out there at the moment. Endless Legend is better in some respects, but they both scratch different itches.

In my opinion, those two are the best modern 4x games overall and have been/will be for quite some time.
On one hand, your post is awfully optimistic and hits all the right spots for me, but on the other hand, your username...
 

Absinthe

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Age of Wonders as a series has been drifting from interesting and unbalanced gameplay to insipid and balanced gameplay. Since launch, they've done some work on addressing the boringness. If you ask me, it could be better, but it's true enough that AoW 3 combat has balance and some variety going for it now. I still feel they under-delivered on the class system, wrote the cheesiest lore imaginable, and took out of a lot of the more interesting gameplay aspects from AoW 2, but the game is playable now. If you want to play online multiplayer though you will need to put up with Triumph Studios's DRM, even if you get the GOG version. They require everyone to connect through Triumph servers to have multiplayer, even for "LAN" and "Play by e-mail."
 
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Absinthe

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There were a lot of overland map area affecting spells in Age of Wonders 2, while AoW 3 features almost none. Wild Magic Master has one overland area spell and all it does is target a city to destroy roads and bridges plus randomly turning the domain's tiles into tropic, volcanic, arctic, and blight. Water Adept has another which freezes water tiles for 3 turns. And Creation Adept has Cleanse the Land which converts targeted area to temperate terrain. Druid has Wild Growth which turns affected tiles into Dense Vegetation. Dreadnought can cast Spelljammer which makes it impossible for enemies to cast in the nearest 3 hexes. I think that's about it. Naval combat is underwhelming now that all land units just turn into boats on water. So aquatic units now have the special distinction of being the only unit that can't move on all tiles. Unit enchantments with upkeep costs were also outright removed instead of re-balancing them. And while AoW 2 had traits and spheres, AoW 3 just has specializations which are a crippled version of spheres with the old explorer and expander traits added as specializations requiring you to research for unexciting bonuses now.
 
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Forkrul

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I love this game but i've been unable to have a close game against the AI (not too hard or too easy). On lord no one attacks me and on king everyone i meet declares war on me.

I wonder if there's any group of settings that can be used to adjust this. Or maybe i have to try setting teams to solve this issue.
 

MilesBeyond

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There were a lot of overland map area affecting spells in Age of Wonders 2, while AoW 3 features almost none. Wild Magic Master has one overland area spell and all it does is destroy roads and bridges plus randomly turning affected tiles into tropic, volcanic, arctic, and blight. Water Adept has another which freezes water tiles for 3 turns. And Creation Adept has Cleanse the Land which converts targeted area to temperate terrain. Druid has Wild Growth which turns affected tiles into Dense Vegetation. Dreadnought can cast Spelljammer which makes it impossible for enemies to cast in the nearest 3 hexes. I think that's about it. Naval combat is underwhelming now that all land units just turn into boats on water. So aquatic units now have the special distinction of being the only unit that can't move on all tiles. Unit enchantments with upkeep costs were also outright removed instead of re-balancing them. And while AoW 2 had traits and spheres, AoW 3 just has specializations which are a crippled version of spheres with the old explorer and expander traits added as specializations requiring you to research for unexciting bonuses now.

AoW 3 is my favourite of all the AoW games, but I do agree with the majority of your criticisms. I would love more overland AoE spells. AoW 3 has plenty of overland spells but they're mostly either single-hex or domain, and while that's not necessarily bad, it does lack the fun factor of the various Storms and (Un)Holy Woods and Spider's Curse and that sort of thing from the earlier games. Man. Nothing more satisfying than in AoW 1 dropping a Death Storm on someone and watching their units get wrecked and their lands turn to ash.

Embarkment (land units turning into boats) is something I'm so-so on. I do appreciate that it reduces the tedium of manually loading and unloading units, and I get that in AoW has a somewhat checkered history with boats in general (I remember back when AoW 1 first came out, "How do I get units off a boat?" was like every second thread hahaha), but I do think it robs the game of a few strategic considerations. That being said, I don't think it's terrible. The combination of taking an entire turn to embark and having slower movement once embarked means that amphibious units still have a massive mobility advantage over land units, and embarked land units are usually weakened enough from embarking that they're easy prey for aquatic units.

Overland unit enchantment is a sore point for me. I really miss them, and re-implementing them would make me love AoW 3 even more. I get that at this point that's more or less impossible - the fact that they're combat only means that AoW 3 has got some ridiculously powerful unit enchants (many of the T1 enchants are more powerful than anything seen in previous AoW games), and the ability to permanently apply them via global casting would just be insane. Still, though, I regret that it was implemented in the first place. It was mostly done because of the AI, and because in past games it was way too easy to exploit - wait until they waste all their casting points putting enchantments on some unit far away, and then attack, leaving them with no magic for the battle. I think an MoM style system where you have two pools of casting points - one for global and one for combat - would be cool, although that would undermine some of the strategic decisions that you have to make.

My ideal compromise here, actually, would be to allow two spells per turn in combat, but one of them can only be a unit enchantment. I definitely agree with the one spell per turn no matter how many casters you have thing, because in past games, and AoW SM in particular, multiplayer games would just turn into red rover matches. No one wanted to attack because the defender could just unleash armageddon in the first turn. But I don't think allowing a second spell, but only an enchantment, would break that.

The traits and spheres part I disagree with because the majority of what was in the traits and spheres have been migrated over to classes. In reality, choosing your class is more the equivalent of the traits and spheres of past games, while specializations confer additional customization beyond that. I would actually say that AoW 3 ends up having the most variety in terms of leader possibilities.

I love this game but i've been unable to have a close game against the AI (not too hard or too easy). On lord no one attacks me and on king everyone i meet declares war on me.

I wonder if there's any group of settings that can be used to adjust this. Or maybe i have to try setting teams to solve this issue.

Yeah, difficulty can be a sticking point. It's worthwhile to stick to the stronger combinations when first moving up to King (Dwarf Warlord and Dreadnought come to mind - though Dreadnought can be tricky and requires a lot of combat micro), and doing certain settings can make things easier. Island maps, for example, and starting further apart. Probably disabling independents, too. Increasing the map size without increasing the number of players makes it easier for you to expand without encountering much resistance, but it also means your enemies will be that much larger, so it's kind of a toss-up. Definitely disable Seal and Unifier conditions your first time around.
 
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Absinthe

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Embarkment still heavily discourages the use of aquatic units. And overland enchantments could have been implemented in more balanced and limited ways than just removing all of them. As for traits and specializations, yes, a lot of their abilities went to classes instead, but that doesn't make having underwhelming specializations a good idea either. Now, the expansion specializations are a step up, and the alignment-based ones in particular are the best, but those also suffer from the annoying issue that your alignment is largely determined by tactical decisions.

On another note, I thought I'd share an interesting video. It's a 1v1 multiplayer game of Rogue v Rogue mindgames.

 
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Forkrul

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Yeah, difficulty can be a sticking point. It's worthwhile to stick to the stronger combinations when first moving up to King (Dwarf Warlord and Dreadnought come to mind - though Dreadnought can be tricky and requires a lot of combat micro), and doing certain settings can make things easier. Island maps, for example, and starting further apart. Probably disabling independents, too. Increasing the map size without increasing the number of players makes it easier for you to expand without encountering much resistance, but it also means your enemies will be that much larger, so it's kind of a toss-up. Definitely disable Seal and Unifier conditions your first time around.

Good ideas. I always try different class/race/specialization combinations every match. Probably need to master one of them for taking on King.
 

Forkrul

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On another note, I thought I'd share an interesting video. It's a 1v1 multiplayer game of Rogue v Rogue mindgames.
That was good play. It looked very frustrating for the dwarf player.

I wonder if that strategy would work vs a Warlord since he has an empire upgrade that means his troops never desert.
 

Absinthe

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It's not an upgrade but a spell. If you're crippling his economy, disjuncting The Draft is probably a good idea. Warlords also have the Inspire Loyalty empire spell which makes all their heroes give stacks Volunteer (half upkeep cost) (probably disjunct this first) and War Effort empire upgrade which makes all cities produce +10 gold.

Also, usually Rogues can crush Warlords with Shadow Stalkers, since Warlords are painfully overspecialized into physical damage unless they make good racial choices or have Grey Guard Master to use Cardinal Culling on your stalker stack, in which case you might want to run Theocrat heroes to use Purifying Burst and cleanse the whole stack (but they could still use Purging Burst to deal spirit and fire damage to stalkers). Both Shadowborn Master and Keeper of the Peace master also add +2 shock/spirit (respectively) to their units. Keeper units also have a 40% chance of starting with an additional +2 spirit or +2 fire and the spec provides a Tier 4 summon with a very spirit-heavy attack (which you could stop with a Warlord hero with Blood Brothers to give your stack Strong Will and thus +100% spirit resist). Fire Mastery could also be used to Hellfire the field if they're fielding fire resistant units (in which case you're probably better off running the ordinarily fire-resisting Succubi instead and/or using a Dreadnought hero for +40% fire resist on the stack). I think with Creation Master they can also use Bane of the Unnatural to stomp your stalkers with high spirit and fire damage (until you tech Dark Pact and they gain Frost Aura anyway) but Warlords with Creation Master are very rare since they typically don't want or need the defensive bonuses Creation provides, and Creation lacks a summon. Halfling Warlords though will typically run either Creation adept or Keeper of the Peace adept just for morale reasons with Cleanse the Land (terrain penalties gone) or Bolster (ignore all morale penalties) respectively, plus Bless increases morale and makes the relatively squishy halflings harder to kill in the earlygame. So for Halfling Warlords Creation or Peacekeeper are pretty mandatory.
 
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Forkrul

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Ah it's a spell, my mistake.

I've been playing warlord frostling lately, just the preset guy that has air mastery and destruction adept. But he's good for frost weapons, as you say warlord has too much physical damage (although i think Shadow Stalkers have Frost res).

I might try my own Frostling Warlord next and try different specializations. Feel free to post some ideas for this.:)
 
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MilesBeyond

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Embarkment still heavily discourages the use of aquatic units. And overland enchantments could have been implemented in more balanced and limited ways than just removing all of them. As for traits and specializations, yes, a lot of their abilities went to classes instead, but that doesn't make having underwhelming specializations a good idea either. Now, the expansion specializations are a step up, and the alignment-based ones in particular are the best, but those also suffer from the annoying issue that your alignment is largely determined by tactical decisions.

On another note, I thought I'd share an interesting video. It's a 1v1 multiplayer game of Rogue v Rogue mindgames.



Yeah, I'd basically agree with what you're saying haha. And man, great video. Garresh is the bomb. IIRC he was the first one to figure out how Concealment worked in the game, or at least the first one to share it online. Rogue is far and away my favourite class.
 

Absinthe

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Ah it's a spell, my mistake.

I've been playing warlord frostling lately, just the preset guy that has air mastery and destruction adept. But he's good for frost weapons, as you say warlord has too much physical damage (although i think Shadow Stalkers have Frost res).
Shadow Stalkers have frost immunity, blight immunity, and 60% physical resistance. Heck, for overkill, stalkers with a highly leveled Warlord hero can get Blood Brothers (strong will) and Toughness (+20% phys resistance to stack) for that 100% spirit and 80% phys resist. The Warlord himself would only have 20% phys resist (and spirit immunity) though, but with a single Shadow Form he can join the rest of the 80% phys resist assholes. But yes, Frostlings do crap damage against stalkers who ignore all their cold damage (ice queens cannot debuff the frost resist of enemies with immunity) and are immune to things like frostbite, chilled, and frozen as elementals on top of that, but at least the stalkers can't hurt or freeze your units as easily as they do orcs, but with flanking and backstab they will hit fairly hard anyway, even more so if they have extra damage channels.

I might try my own Frostling Warlord next and try different specializations. Feel free to post some ideas for this.:)
Hm, Frostlings are weak against fire so using Fire mastery for Hellfire is probably not a good plan, although I suppose you could try Partisan + Fire mastery for a self-contained combo of stealth fire elemental for a hellfire nuke to soften up enemies before you hit them with your stack. Their damage channels are weak against necros and rogue stalkers, otherwise it does fine. Fire vuln is bad against dreadnoughts, shrines of smiting, dwarves, tigrans, draconians (at least they have 20% frost vuln), and fire mastery, of course. Creation mastery is typically not recommended as the only major benefits are Bane of the Unnatural and Resurrect, but Bane is actually rather strong against stalkers and undead (the bad frostling warlord matchups) plus Druids and Sorcerers, so I guess you can try to make it work if you want. In that case you might want to go Wild Magic adept for Summon Lesser Elemental, Warp Equipment (hits machines), Degenerate, and Swap Location, or Water adept if you just want nukes (rot is basically a physical chain lightning with a debuff on top that hits machines and undead) and the ability to march over water tiles. Rot is extra deadly against undead if your warlord is in the fight with bane of the unnatural because the spells will do bane's bonus damage on top of their regular damage, but this is probably a little overkill when you already have bane on warlord units to stomp their stack. If you choose to use sorcerer heroes with all their upgrades going into sorcery, charged army, and spells like chain lightning, then the nukes from water adept are probably a bit unnecessary.

I reckon my main suggestion would be Grey Guard master with Air adept. Air adept is all around strong for Frostling Warlords. Zephyr Bird gives you the flying scout you never had. Suffocate gives you a weak nuke which is still better than no nuke at all. Seeker works nicely with white witches or mounted archers (if you give a mounted archer frozen flames then seeker will boost all 3 damage channels, 4 if you also have a rogue hero for poison). Domain of Winter makes your cities like arctic terrain which is a nice boost to happiness (which in turn increases production/gold/research/mana). (If you didn't know already, no race likes a climate. They only dislike and hate climates.) Since your Ice Queens can turn terrain arctic by themselves you already have a synergy even without Arctic Empire. Grey Guard master by itself instantly gives your cities +50 bonus growth and +5 gold income, which is always nice, but more importantly it has Cardinal Culling to wreck anything with phys resistance (instead of shadow stalkers eating your stacks, your stacks now eat stalkers - stalkers still ignore frost but in turn their damage and frost aura is really weak against your units) and shield of dispassion makes everything harder to kill, including the ice queens who will probably jump headfirst into fights. With high morale the crit's not bad either. Chthonic Guardian also makes a solid unit to use against dreads (and they are monsters when elite with Instant Wrath and Total Awareness) plus their Rallying Cry gives your units more morale for crits and free guard at end of turn. Other than that you should either run a dread hero for +40% fire resist or a spell-focused sorc hero for loads of lightning damage to use against dreads.

The downside to the Grey Guard master + Air adept combo is probably the mana consumption between Scales of Fortune, Shield of Dispassion, Domain of Winter, and Zephyr Birds (not to mention Chthonic Guardian in the lategame). Domain of Winter should probably be removed later on when cities naturally have max morale anyway though. Not sure how that goes but you might want to consider putting your champion upgrade into economic for an extra 10 (15 at max city morale) mana per turn. The other downside is the nuisance that is maintaining neutrality. Strictly speaking you don't lose any bonuses if you cease to be neutral, it's just that morale suffers (which does hurt your crit chance which is boosted by Scales of Fortune), so your neutral zone is -199 to 199 and if you're willing to eat -200 morale then it's -399 to 399. Beyond that the penalties are probably too severe to handle though.

Well, those are my thoughts.
 
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