Age of Wonders 3

[Spectacle]

The siege system was one of the best and most unique parts of AoW 1/2. wtf are they doing messing with something that works so well? Clueless morons.

 

[visions]

Yeah, Dragons in AOW were very cheesy. Flying + Unlimited Range Attack = It can pretty much rape whole stacks by itself. I'm currently AOW Cult Campaign and I'm on the first level of the Dark Elf maps, and HOLY SHIT, my cities are all getting taken by the Elves and their golden dragons. Lots of archers don't even annoy them, Lighting doesn't bring flyers down in AOW1 (what a goof, Triumph!) so Storm Priests won't cut it, unless a city has two ballistas or more its goodbye and goodnight the moment a dragon shows up. One of my heroes and his stack are all running around to and from to kill those pesky dragons and recover my cities, but there are always MORE! What the fuck!

First time I played the campaign on hard with the keepers (didn't complete that run though, ran out of steam around the 3rd elves map) I had a similar problem with black/red dragons. But instead of having to run around the map, my leader had the town gate spell, so I just teleported my leader to where the trouble was, which was admittedly cheesy. I tended to have the town gate spell precast in advance a lot, in case of emergency.

On my second hard keeper run which I completed I didn't have this problem anymore, not even sure why. Maybe I didn't let the games drag out that much to allow
the AI to spam all those dragons. I also tended to have around 4-6 ballistas around my more important cities. Two seems a little shabby. But I never played that far in the cult campaign, so I don't know whether the scenario you're in started with the elves having all those dragons or you've let the game drag on too much. I'm kind of jealous that you're able to lose your cities to the AI though, maybe the Cult campaign is harder?

The time I completed the Keepers campaign I very rarely lost important cities and now I'm playing it again, having taken the lizards path and it's the same, the AI can rarely conquer my cities.

The concept of sieges is the same, it’s all about breaking through the wall and getting to the defender. We have changed the layout of siege maps, with the clashing armies standing opposite of each other and the wall in-between. The advantage is less longwinded treks around walls for multi-army attack and more realistic looking towns.

Regarding the walls though, if the AI is going to be as thick as it is in AOW1, not making walls breachable/destroyable only by units specialized for that seems to be the better way though. So many times I've seen the AI come with decent stacks towards my cities but bothering to only bring one or two rams that get easily destroyed by my archers/ballistas. Sometimes it builds shitloads of catapults though, I don't know what this depends on. At times it barely builds enough wall crushers to supplement its armies, whereas at times it builds catapults everywhere. I've seen either behaviour on separate plays of the same campaign scenarios by the same enemy. Maybe it depends on the AI behaviour style and maybe those are sometimes randomized in the campaign? But in anycase, it is often frustratingly incompetent when it comes to threatening walled cities.

Of course the better solution would be to make the AI smarter so the walls do not have to be nerfed (especially considering that more than 10 years have passed), but if the AI is not going to be smart enough to handle walls being a serious obstacle, having the walls destroyable by anyone is the better solution. But in any case, I don't see how the above quote neccessarily implies that the walls will be destroyable by just anyone.

 

[visions]

The siege system was one of the best and most unique parts of AoW 1/2. wtf are they doing messing with something that works so well? Clueless morons.

AoW 1 and 2 already had quite different siege systems. I used to prefer AoW1's system which makes more sense but the AI tended to be too lousy using it. Of course incline would be taking the system from AoW1 and making the AI better against walled cities. Which should be expectable in theory, given that more than ten years have passed. But utter DECLINE happened in the meantime, so I'm not really expecting it.

 

[visions]

Heh, I love Dwarfs and Giants.

Interesting that you say you found the Valley hard with the Elves on normal. I didn't find it particularly hard on hard but maybe I got lucky. The humans killed off the Undead and Dark Elf leaders early in the game with the Air Galleys they started with when I played it, so I only had to defeat the Humans and Highmen. My leader had Spell Casting V, Water Magic ( with the Healing Water spell) and some points of Marksmanship though, with which I was able to take down the Air Galleys, although the fights against them with my leader were very close.

First time around on hard, in addition to Hall of Heroes, I also had trouble with the first Dwarf map. I didn't know where the city I was meant to reach was, expanded a lot in the underground and depths, and found myself struggling against hordes of Orcs. By the time I discovered the city with a flyer, it was occupied by the Orcs' dragons (one or two) iirc, so I also had to send a proper army there. The second time it was a breeze though, as I knew where the city was and had taken eagle riders with me from the previous map.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

So reading through this thread made me get AoW:SM on GOG.

I really like it. Just doing the tutorial campaign, but I do enjoy it. Is there a regular skirmish-type sandbox mode, too?

 

[Malakal]

So reading through this thread made me get AoW:SM on GOG.

I really like it. Just doing the tutorial campaign, but I do enjoy it. Is there a regular skirmish-type sandbox mode, too?

Yes but not very many custom maps, gotta download user made content for that.

 

[visions]

I remember I managed to kill the Highmen, but then the Humans came at me with hordes upon hordes of Cavaliers, Salamanders, Ballistas, Green Wyrms and Air Galleys. I think I even saw some Basilisks there. In stacks upon stacks. I had to grind through something like two or three stacks per turn to try and reach human cities. That was on normal difficulty, I shudder on what the Sapiens will use in Hard.

They didn't wield any lizardmen against me, I managed to get to the lizard cities before them IIRC. I divided my forces in two at the beginning, sending some over the water, so I reached the couple of lizardmen cities that I remember quite fast. I actually killed off the humans before highmen. I conquered their island, so their leader was in the undeground city under the island with his last troops. Then I made a bunch of Air Galleys in the recently conquered cities and sent them in to take out the human leader, to give him a taste of his own medicine. Felt good man.

How did your eagle riders bypassed the pissed-off in between the mountains? I do remember that mission was quite hard, because Orcs and Goblins went at you from underground while you were busy searching and regrouping dwarves.

I remember I saw a "pissed off" or two over the mountains, maybe I was close enough to see them yet not close enough for them to attack. I think I saw them but they didn't attack me, so I went around them. I do remember losing one eagle rider but I think that was earlier in the map. Killing off the goblins was always easy on that map but the first time around the orcs gave me some serious trouble. The second time around, I managed to mostly avoid the orcs though. In general, I try to avoid wasting my troops in unneccessary battles, so I try to pick my fights carefully.

 

[Malakal]

Undead as a race never made sense really, undead as a status works just GREAT. Imagine class + race + special combo we could get out of this. Undead orc priest? Yes please!

 

[Papa Môlé]

Glad I didn't let myself get psyched up for this game.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Codex, I am disapoint. I don't see Codex going after news or fighting the good battle in forums.

Here's some Community Questions and Anwsers in the forums:

http://www.ageofwonders.com/aow3live/topic/community-qa-part-i/

Currently focused on Eador, can't think of any other fantasy strategy game.

 

[KoolNoodles]

Codex, I am disapoint. I don't see Codex going after news or fighting the good battle in forums.

Here's some Community Questions and Anwsers in the forums:

http://www.ageofwonders.com/aow3live/topic/community-qa-part-i/

I really want this game to be good, but then, I don't even post on here that much, and I'd actually have to think about things to make any worthwhile posts on their forums, and for what? It's not a kickstarter, I doubt they would listen all that well or that the input would be carried by the mob. So...wasted effort I guess. I mean, what can be said? AoWSM was great, just improve on the formula and update the graphics? That won't fly. For every new sequel/reboot of a classic there's a dozen newbie developers trying to put "their" shitty stamp on it. It makes sense though, nobody wants to re-write Shakespeare, they all want to BE Shakespeare. Problem is, nobody even comes close in game development.

 

[cvv]

Is Incline only what comes from Kickstarter?

The HOMM genre incline is epic and it developed entirely independet of Kickstarter. I still don't understand what happened.

In the dark ages we got one game per couple of years, now it seems everybody and their mom is making a tactical fantasy strategy.
On Christmas I bought Warriors of the North, then Ubi announced (and delayed) an expansion to HOMM6,
then the new Eador was announced, then some new AoW trailers popped up, and everyone is like "hey you MUST play Genesis and AoW:SM"
but I still wanna replay my HOMM3 Complete I bought on GoG last summer. And 2013 has just started.
Are you kidding me? What's next, Disciples 4?
Shit if only those games weren't such a ginormous time sink...

 

[Kem0sabe]

After the of the HMM and Disciples series i thought the genre was all about dead, good thing i was wrong.

 

[Trash]

Absolutely adored the sieges in AoW. Fucking shame and one hell of a shit decision to tamper with their mechanics. That whole 'two armies with a wall in between' idea is utterly shit

 

[cvv]

BTW, is this Disciplines good?

Which one?
The first one is

The second one is

The third one is

 

[MetalCraze]

Disciples (any) is a very mediocre game (3 is shit even). Combat is extremely dumbed down compared to AoW. There's no maneuvering, no positioning, just 6 units per side standing in front of each other and you select which one is to lose HP from your attack. That's it. It's like playing a boring blobber.

 

[861129]

There's some nice grimdark atmosphere/art style to be enjoyed in the first two, though.

 

[cvv]

Disciples (any) is a very mediocre game (3 is shit even). Combat is extremely dumbed down compared to AoW. There's no maneuvering, no positioning, just 6 units per side standing in front of each other and you select which one is to lose HP from your attack. That's it. It's like playing a boring blobber.

And yet, somehow, the static combat in D2 is still parsecs more entertaining than the one in D3 with all your maneuvering and positioning and shit.
You know why? Partly because it's hitting the sweet spot between too short and too long, so it never feels neither skimped, nor grindy.
D3 is shit because its grid based combat is too long and grindy and you get hopelessly bogged down in it. (The same goes i.e. for Fallen Enchantress or HOMM VI).

D2 not "dumbed down", silly, it's just done in a different scale than AoW and is a fantastic game in its own right.
Definitely worth the few shekels it's on GoG.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Disciples 2 is for players who want to explore large, pretty looking isometric maps with lots of stuff on them. There is no tactical combat, just third rate JRPG combat.

 

[Raghar]

Disciples 2 is for players who want to explore large, pretty looking isometric maps with lots of stuff on them. There is no tactical combat, just third rate JRPG combat.

WTF are you smoking?

 

[Malakal]

Disciples 2 is for players who want to explore large, pretty looking isometric maps with lots of stuff on them. There is no tactical combat, just third rate JRPG combat.

WTF are you smoking?

He's right, combat is pretty horrible and extremely grindy. You lose your main army you may as well reload.

 

[cvv]

He's right, combat is pretty horrible and extremely grindy. You lose your main army you may as well reload.

1. He isn't right and neither are you.
2. If D2 combat is grindy for you, then combat in AoW, Homam, KB or FE must be Torments of Hell for you. Why do you play these games?
3. D2 is much more RPGish than Homam or KB. Your army is your party. Of course if you lose your party in a RPG you gotta reload. Sheesh.

 

[Mangoose]

D2 not "dumbed down", silly, it's just done in a different scale than AoW and is a fantastic game in its own right.
Definitely worth the few shekels it's on GoG.

Uh, no. It's not done in a "different" scale. It's done on too simple of a scale. I'm sorry, tactics without maneuvering and positioning (OR a resource/mechanic to take its place) is tactics without depth and complexity. In other words, dumbed down.

When you change scale, you subtract certain aspects of the old scale, substituting in new mechanics to maintain complexity and depth in the new scale. You don't just have a "different scale" with less mechanics and nothing new to justify the change in scale.

And yes, I consider typical RPG blobbers to be too simple when it comes to the actual event of combat.

 

[cvv]

Ok, not to hijack Cow's thread, I'll just say those final words of wisdom - grid based combat is bad if done bad (D3) and static combat can be fantastic if done well (D2).

Hang on haters....

Ok, keep talking.

 

[Raghar]

D2 is something like chess. Why are you complaining about abstraction in D2, when you accept abstraction in chess?

Then again perhaps your RPG remark meant something like P3 FES, or Nocturne.