I doubt it, since why would 3, with a brand new engine, have the same bug of certain tiles making flying units invincible? Also, the MPE mod fixed that issue; I think they fixed it by giving all flying units floating as well, or by altering the combat maps. Is Aow3 the one where holding a city automatically gathers the income from surrounding structures? I think that's what they were referencing - their limiting of raiding.
You've never played Alpha Centauri? When it comes to atmosphere it's a true classic, unless you're playing the expansion.
Eh #1 had bad knock-on effects, like the fact that you can apply on-hit debuffs from ludicrous distances. Sorcerers for instance can have their supports Inflict Stun from maximum distance across walls without issue. #2 is just a really shit form of balance and way to homogenize unit interactions further by letting everything hit everything and this kind of stunt generally reduces strategic depth. #3 annoys me a lot (and the new alignment specs are an annoyingly one-size-fits-all attempt to compensate). But you also missed out on #4, the lack of overland area spells. For instance the mind-games you can pull off with Mist Cloak are just gone. Instead the Rogue just has a city enchantment version of it (for friendly cities only) called Night Wish, which is nowhere as fun.
Economic warfare is fucked in a lot of respects now. At least you can fuck with city happiness. If you play a Rogue and use Incite Revolt with Rally of the Populace (Keeper of the Peace adept) you can actually inflict extreme happiness penalties (-1100 total) to enemy cities. Useless against Necros, but good against everyone else. Another way to ruin enemy cities and plague them with negative happiness is to use Earth mastery's City Quake.
I suspect they're only handing out the base game, but not either of the expansions that you'll want (or the Deluxe shit). Still, a freebie's a freebie, if you're okay with the godawful shit that goes on inside Steam and its subscriber agreement.
Is aow2's Wetlands spell different from AoW1's Flood spell?
That's odd, I don't recall AoW2 being difficult at all.
Yeah, base game is a bore. Used to be even worse before the patches. Most of the attempted fixes to vary up races, specializations, and add events and structures are included in the expansions. It's one of those games where the initial release sucked but instead of just patching it into something decent, they made you pay for expansions.
Never turtle in single-player. The AI cheats so if you turtle he will just out-build you then steamroll you. It's a major flaw of AoW 3.
Destruction Adept. Scorched Earth strategic spell. No idea why this stunt is classified as magic, but hey.
I suspected that the free game was a stunt to make you shell out full price for expansions. Game isn't much good without them.
Depends on the hero, your race, and the class. In general, your picks seem solid. A bit of res wouldn't go amiss either.
Regeneration only applies to hero and makes him full heal every turn on the strategic map.
3D doesn't really do anything for me either. You just get used to it, I guess.
I never played the campaigns, but in skirmish against teamed-up max level AIs defensive play suited me best.
Heroes are plenty resilient if you give them high defense and res. If you build armors they can become nigh indestructible. If you're having them melee Life Steal is a good addition on their weapon.
Both, but you may have to wait for a sale. Right now the latest stunt by Paradox seems to be to release the base game for free and wait for people to burn money on full-price expansions though, instead of doing sales. Odds are it's making them more money too.
Eador: Genesis and Master of Magic. Eador: Genesis has a fan expansion called New Horizons that is well received. Eador: Genesis is developed and modded by diehard Russian HoMM3 fans, but it isn't an idle HoMM-clone. It's a proper fantasy TBS in its own right. There's a 3D remake of Eador: Genesis called Eador: Masters of the Broken world but it's uglier and buggier and basically not worth playing. It does have an exclusive expansion that Genesis does not, but the New Horizons mod is agreed to be superior anyway. Master of Magic is pretty much the game that launched the fantasy TBS genre, and in a number of aspects it is still unsurpassed. No multiplayer though, sadly. There's also the Civ 4 mods Fall From Heaven and Fall From Heaven 2.
