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Sonisi
Sep 25, 2008
I loved these games! Spent far to many hours playing shadow magic. Usually abusing the item creation forge to make my hero a flying unstoppable death machine.

I really like the idea of linking cities etc a bit more rather than conquering a city and forgetting it. As long as we can still sneak/teleport in raiding parties to raze cities we had no ability to keep.

Oh and cast world spells, take over all mana nodes, turn them to my race type and set the ground around them on fire. Yes please.

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Mr.48
May 1, 2007

Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:

Maybe the best compromise is just to have both. Obviously heroes will just be single units and shouldn't be affected much by HP loss, but maybe have most of the more powerful buildable units just be represented by a single unit and not lose effectiveness with HP loss, while a lot of the more generic units like archer squadrons be represented by groups of units that do get weaker with HP loss. MoM already kind of did this with the generic soldier unit, didn't they?

Although I do get that may go against your planned aesthetic of trying to make the player feel like they're in command of larger armies.

This seems like the best solution. In fact, it would enhance the feeling of commanding a massive army, because having units not lose effectiveness as they get hit makes them seem more like a single unit rather than the unit-formation they are supposed to be and reducing the perceived scope of your army.

toasterwarrior
Nov 11, 2011
Am I mistaken, or is that music in the video a remix of one of the tracks in AoW2? I'm getting nostalgic just from listening to it (and watching the video, of course).

Blisster
Mar 10, 2010

What you are listening to are musicians performing psychedelic music under the influence of a mind altering chemical called...
Well that video got me pretty excited. Really glad that stuff like the purify spell is in, affecting the strategic map by raising mountains and stuff like that is one of my favourite parts of AoW. I hope the ridiculous spells that flood the world and the like are still in.

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

For multiplayer, are there going to be any better options for keeping the pace up in this game? The problem with earlier AoW game's multiplayer was that even though they had simultaneous turns, tactical combat still bogged thing down a lot. Mostly hoping for a more robust quick combat system, maybe that allows you to have a small degree of control like choosing to retreat if things start looking bad, telling heroes what kind of spells they should/shouldn't cast, stuff like that. Also, IIRC in AoW2 if another player was involved in Tactical combat, nobody else could be doing ANYTHING. AoW1 wasn't like this, so definitely hoping for more like AoW1 here.

I'm sorry to say that this is most likely still going to be the case. There's a whole raft of technical and design issues that arise if you allow one player to do things in the world map, while another is busy fighting in tactical combat. I wasn't at Triumph for AoW1, so I have no idea how they managed to do it there.

On the up side, quick combat is much better, since now the game actually runs through the full battle with AI controlled armies, rather than fudging it with invisible dice rolls like it did in AoW2. So the results it gives should be much less slapdash, and you have the option of watching a replay of the battle so you can see what happened.

As for your other suggestions, I haven't actually coded any retreat behavior into the AI yet. Theoretically, I should be able to add something like "If you lose half your units/army HP, try and get out", maybe link that condition to how much HP the enemy army has left somehow. Limiting spell use would be easy to implement code wise, but the interface might be a bit of a nightmare to design.

Anyways, I'd best run cos I'll be I am late for work. I'll write all your suggestions down in an e-mail and send it round the designers to see what they all make of it.

DatonKallandor
Aug 21, 2009

"I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."

Mr.48 posted:

This seems like the best solution. In fact, it would enhance the feeling of commanding a massive army, because having units not lose effectiveness as they get hit makes them seem more like a single unit rather than the unit-formation they are supposed to be and reducing the perceived scope of your army.

Fantasy General did it that way - most units are squads, each member of the squad attacks, so deaths reduce damage output but units that aren't squads don't lose power (and there's a few squad based units that are such badasses they fight ever harder as they lose people, leaving you at a net no-loss in power) - and it was great. Still the best fantasy TBS of all time, with the best combat mechanics.

Gwyrgyn Blood
Dec 17, 2002

Gerblyn posted:

I'm sorry to say that this is most likely still going to be the case. There's a whole raft of technical and design issues that arise if you allow one player to do things in the world map, while another is busy fighting in tactical combat. I wasn't at Triumph for AoW1, so I have no idea how they managed to do it there.

On the up side, quick combat is much better, since now the game actually runs through the full battle with AI controlled armies, rather than fudging it with invisible dice rolls like it did in AoW2. So the results it gives should be much less slapdash, and you have the option of watching a replay of the battle so you can see what happened.

As for your other suggestions, I haven't actually coded any retreat behavior into the AI yet. Theoretically, I should be able to add something like "If you lose half your units/army HP, try and get out", maybe link that condition to how much HP the enemy army has left somehow. Limiting spell use would be easy to implement code wise, but the interface might be a bit of a nightmare to design.

Anyways, I'd best run cos I'll be I am late for work. I'll write all your suggestions down in an e-mail and send it round the designers to see what they all make of it.

That's good stuff, I think better quick combat is probably the more important part to solve anyway. A lot of the issues before was that you could have high value units (like heroes or tier 4 units or high ranking units) that you'd really want to not die, but quick combat was mostly random so you didn't really have any control over who lived or died. Anything you could add in to help give control over that would be great.

I have no idea how your AI works, but I would imagine there are probably different AI profiles for different types of units, like, Melee, Ranged, Spell Caster, Healers, Siege, Fliers, and such like that? What would probably be more than sufficient would be if for Hero units you could manually change the AI profile between those categories, and also toggles/sliders for the stuff like you mentioned (get out if HP/Army drops below %, go nuts with magic -> don't use any magic, etc).

You could also have something like, when you are about to get into battle and get the 'Do you want to Retreat, Manual Combat, or Tactical Combat?' window, you could have a dropdown (or maybe separate buttons) for, fight defensively (units start to pull back if life less than 50% and army starts to pull back if more than 50% of units are retreating), fight normally (pull back units if their health drops below ~30%), or fight aggressively (units never retreat), etc' which would tell all units that they should try to retreat if their HP starts getting low, or something like that. That'd be really simple GUI wise and would give you a bit more control over the fight.


Just some ideas anyway. It's pretty secondary stuff for most people I know, but anything you could add to make autocombat nicer would help speed up a lot of things, especially multiplayer.


DatonKallandor posted:

Fantasy General did it that way - most units are squads, each member of the squad attacks, so deaths reduce damage output but units that aren't squads don't lose power (and there's a few squad based units that are such badasses they fight ever harder as they lose people, leaving you at a net no-loss in power) - and it was great. Still the best fantasy TBS of all time, with the best combat mechanics.

Fantasy General is the game that the Elven Legacy series is basically a spiritual successor to right? I really liked Elven Legacy, I should really try out Fantasy General at some point.

Gwyrgyn Blood fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Mar 27, 2013

Taerkar
Dec 7, 2002

kind of into it, really

It looked like that the combat system takes a fair amount from AoW 2/SM in regards to movement and attacks. Guys that moved got less attacks than those that didn't. Is this correct and does it affect ranged attacks as well?

Also, who was casting the spells in that battle? The main hero that wasn't in the battle?

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

You could also have something like, when you are about to get into battle and get the 'Do you want to Retreat, Manual Combat, or Tactical Combat?' window, you could have a dropdown (or maybe separate buttons) for, fight defensively (units start to pull back if life less than 50% and army starts to pull back if more than 50% of units are retreating), fight normally (pull back units if their health drops below ~30%), or fight aggressively (units never retreat), etc' which would tell all units that they should try to retreat if their HP starts getting low, or something like that. That'd be really simple GUI wise and would give you a bit more control over the fight.

Turns out there's an issue here for Play By Email matches, since the defender would never get a chance to make those choices (because only the attacker would actually be playing at that moment). I'm not sure how it'll pan out, maybe they'll decide to dump player driven quick battle config, or simply disable it for PBEM games...

Anyways, the retreat stuff was about what in line with what I was thinking. Spell casting is a whole other kettle of fish, someone suggested a system where the quick AI will only use spells if the pre-battle prediction detects a loss. Issue there being that one player's side will think "Oh, I might lose, I'll use spells!", which means they win. Logically, therefore, the other side should also choose to use spells, even though they're predicted a win, otherwise they'll lose. So the whole system breaks down. These kind of things where the AI plays chicken with itself are gonna be the bane of my existence when I go back to work on it :suicide:

Regardless, we must have a system to stop quick AI using spells, since it would be really annoying if you were trying to cast a spell in the world map, but couldn't because the tactical AI kept burning through all your mana/casting points.

Taerkar posted:

It looked like that the combat system takes a fair amount from AoW 2/SM in regards to movement and attacks. Guys that moved got less attacks than those that didn't. Is this correct and does it affect ranged attacks as well?

Also, who was casting the spells in that battle? The main hero that wasn't in the battle?

Yeah, a unit starts with 3 action points, as they move those action points get used up (though you can't use up your final action point by moving, so you can always attack once). Repeating abilities (Melee Strike, Fire Arrow, etc) will get one use per action point, single use abilities (Gas Breath, Heal) will either need only 1 point or 3, depending on how powerful they are. You'll see when a unit is selected that the ground lights up different colors, these mark how many action points the unit will have when it moves to that location.

Another thing to note is that a unit's action points recharge at the end of their own turn; so when the dragon is retaliating, it's using up points which would otherwise be available to it next turn. If the dragon had retaliated 3 times, then it wouldn't have been able to act in its own turn at all. I'm pretty sure that's how it worked in AoW:SM as well though...

The spells were being cast by the leader, who wasn't in the battle, using up casting points from the same pool that is used to cast spells in the world map. The hero has his own pool of casting points and own selection of spells, but casting a spell counts as a 3 point action, and the hero chose to attack instead. Another thing that wasn't mentioned is that heroes have classes too. The one in the battle was a Warlord, so he had access to Warlord specific spells that the player as a Theocrat wouldn't otherwise be able to use.

Gerblyn fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Mar 27, 2013

victrix
Oct 30, 2007


Michiel van den Bos' music is so good, thrilled that he's composing again. The AoW1 soundtrack owns.

Also if this game sucks I am going to be so loving pissed :mad:

I've had enough with 4x games burning me with their shittiness over the last few years.

Korak
Nov 29, 2007
TV FACIST

victrix posted:

Michiel van den Bos' music is so good, thrilled that he's composing again. The AoW1 soundtrack owns.

Also if this game sucks I am going to be so loving pissed :mad:

I've had enough with 4x games burning me with their shittiness over the last few years.
This a thousand times. I don't know how people keep messing up 4x games so badly but its been one constant in the gaming world for the past few years.

KnoxZone
Jan 27, 2007

If I die before I Wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Does the main hero need to be in a wizard tower to cast spells in faraway battles like in 2/SM?

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe

KnoxZone posted:

Does the main hero need to be in a wizard tower to cast spells in faraway battles like in 2/SM?

At the moment, no, they can cast spells anywhere. We're playing round with different ideas with it though, like maybe have it so the leader can only cast spells in their own domain or where another hero is present. There's also thoughts of having the leader use a different pool of casting points in battle, so that spells cast their don't interfere with spells cast in the world map.

victrix
Oct 30, 2007


Let me in the beta :ohdear:

I wasted hours of my life writing up ultra detailed feedback for Elemental and Fallen Enchantress :suicide:

Never again

Granted I might get in the beta and have the Eador experience, where the sequel has a worse UI than the prequel :doh:

Maybe I should just watch and wait... then I could have the Master of Orion III experience...

I'm still suffering from post-lovely-4x-stress disorder

Fintilgin
Sep 29, 2004

Fintilgin sweeps!

KnoxZone posted:

Does the main hero need to be in a wizard tower to cast spells in faraway battles like in 2/SM?

That threw me for a loop the first time I tried out SM. I was just running my wizard around with my army.

Taerkar
Dec 7, 2002

kind of into it, really

How about having there be benefits to being in a tower compared to wandering around. A balance between going out and getting XP versus staying home and supporting the troops in the field? More casting/research in the tower? Stronger spells? Limit what spells can be cast to support other battles when they're not in a tower, etc...

Gwyrgyn Blood
Dec 17, 2002

Gerblyn posted:

Turns out there's an issue here for Play By Email matches, since the defender would never get a chance to make those choices (because only the attacker would actually be playing at that moment). I'm not sure how it'll pan out, maybe they'll decide to dump player driven quick battle config, or simply disable it for PBEM games...

Anyways, the retreat stuff was about what in line with what I was thinking. Spell casting is a whole other kettle of fish, someone suggested a system where the quick AI will only use spells if the pre-battle prediction detects a loss. Issue there being that one player's side will think "Oh, I might lose, I'll use spells!", which means they win. Logically, therefore, the other side should also choose to use spells, even though they're predicted a win, otherwise they'll lose. So the whole system breaks down. These kind of things where the AI plays chicken with itself are gonna be the bane of my existence when I go back to work on it :suicide:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in previous games, wasn't only the attacker able to retreat anyway? I guess there's still the question of unit self preservation when possible. But I would assume the defender would always operate in aggressive mode since he can't retreat units anyway. So basically:

- Defensive: Units retreat if their life drops below 50%, army retreats if overall strength drops below 50%.
- Agressive: Units will try to self preserve if their life drops below 25%, but won't retreat.

And you could come up with more granularity if you felt it was needed.

For spells, honestly I think just being able to tell a spellcasting hero if he should not cast spells would be fine. Easy to do and solves the real major problem anyway, which is heroes wasting their spellpoints and mana on battles where they don't need to. It'd probably be good to just make it a toggle on the battle mode selection screen.

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe

Taerkar posted:

How about having there be benefits to being in a tower compared to wandering around. A balance between going out and getting XP versus staying home and supporting the troops in the field? More casting/research in the tower? Stronger spells? Limit what spells can be cast to support other battles when they're not in a tower, etc...

Well, thematically a Wizard's Tower doesn't really make sense in the game. Half the classes aren't actually magic users, after all. I'm not sure where the design is at with regards to giving a benefit to keeping a leader home. One game mode idea is to have the player lose if their leader is killed, so it might come down to simply keeping your leader at home because it's safer. At one point we messed around with the concept of having heroes have in town abilities, a bit like specialists in Civ, but I think the idea was dropped because it went against the idea of what a hero is really suppsed to be about.


Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in previous games, wasn't only the attacker able to retreat anyway?

No, that's completely correct. I've had a long day and that didn't occur to me at all :doh:

Unit self preservation is tricky to do for the AI. There's a saying "The best defense is a good offence", and it's hard for the AI to make judgement calls for when that's the case. You don't want the AI to stop a unit from attacking, if that leads it to lose the battle (and that unit). On the other hand, you don't want the AI to suicidally charge with a half dead swordsman, when the battle could easily be won by the other units in the field.

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

For spells, honestly I think just being able to tell a spellcasting hero if he should not cast spells would be fine. Easy to do and solves the real major problem anyway, which is heroes wasting their spellpoints and mana on battles where they don't need to. It'd probably be good to just make it a toggle on the battle mode selection screen.

We're thinking of having a global toggle, so PBEM players don't get screwed over.

victrix posted:

Let me in the beta :ohdear:

I wasted hours of my life writing up ultra detailed feedback for Elemental and Fallen Enchantress :suicide:

Never again

Granted I might get in the beta and have the Eador experience, where the sequel has a worse UI than the prequel :doh:

Maybe I should just watch and wait... then I could have the Master of Orion III experience...

I'm still suffering from post-lovely-4x-stress disorder

I have literally no idea how our beta is gonna work, but I think a good start would be to make yourself known as a poster on the official forums, since there's a good chance that beta testers will be chosen from among people there:

http://www.ageofwonders.com/aow3live/forums/

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

Oh yeah, have they said anything about modding capability? Mods sure added a lot of life to Shadow Magic, so it'd be good to see full support for them in AoW3.

Forgot about this post til just now :shobon:

We're definitely going to release the Level Editor so people can make their own scenarios and campaigns. The editor will let you create new items and heroes as well. With regards to modding other areas of the game, we're definitely trying to set things up so it can be modded, but I have no idea if/how/when modding tools will be released.

victrix
Oct 30, 2007


Gerblyn posted:

I have literally no idea how our beta is gonna work, but I think a good start would be to make yourself known as a poster on the official forums, since there's a good chance that beta testers will be chosen from among people there:

http://www.ageofwonders.com/aow3live/forums/

I appreciate the offer, but I'll wait for some sort of submission form or something. I've kind of had it with official game forums, they're almost universally terrible :v:

Gerblyn posted:

We're definitely going to release the Level Editor so people can make their own scenarios and campaigns. The editor will let you create new items and heroes as well. With regards to modding other areas of the game, we're definitely trying to set things up so it can be modded, but I have no idea if/how/when modding tools will be released.

This is a pretty big deal though, HoMM5 suffered badly from its difficult editor. Easily shared maps make these games so much better.

Space Pussy
Feb 19, 2011

Wow, game looks great and very Shadow Magicy. Hopefully this can balance poo poo-stain which is Elemental/Fallen Enchantress.

Gwyrgyn Blood
Dec 17, 2002

Gerblyn posted:

We're thinking of having a global toggle, so PBEM players don't get screwed over.

Well for me, I'd probably just assume any time I get attacked that it's probably okay to use magic, because it's not too often you get attacked by something far weaker than you. Plus, you get all your spellpoints back when your turn comes around again anyway.

Though I guess you could do some scummy things like send in a single unit first and make the enemy caster waste his spellpoints, then attack with your actual army. I guess that's what the pre-battle prediction stuff you were talking about would be useful for.

So then I guess I'd say, any time I get attacked it's okay to CONSIDER using magic, depending on if the attacking army looks super weak or not.

Kanfy
Jan 9, 2012

Just gotta keep walking down that road.
Looking forward to this, hopefully it'll be as good as the previous ones.

My only real concern is getting people to buy it, it's a fairly niche series with the last installment released many years ago. I hope you have a good marketing department because too many good games get trampled by better-known franchises.

Mr.48
May 1, 2007

Gerblyn posted:

We're definitely going to release the Level Editor so people can make their own scenarios and campaigns. The editor will let you create new items and heroes as well. With regards to modding other areas of the game, we're definitely trying to set things up so it can be modded, but I have no idea if/how/when modding tools will be released.

Really hoping you will let the editor change the names and stats of regular units and not just heroes. Thats really been the catalyst for the explosion of great mods for games like Mount and Blade.

Thyrork
Apr 21, 2010

"COME PLAY MECHS M'LANCER."

Or at least use Retrograde Mini's to make cool mechs and fantasy stuff.

:awesomelon:
Slippery Tilde

Gerblyn posted:

We've released new gameplay footage!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-26-new-age-of-wonders-3-gameplay-video-shows-empire-building-and-leader-classes

I'll be around for a little bit tonight, otherwise I can try and answer any questions people have tomorrow.

Woo! This game looks so dang nice in this early state. Dropping this into the OP.

Space Pussy posted:

Wow, game looks great and very Shadow Magicy. Hopefully this can balance poo poo-stain which is Elemental/Fallen Enchantress.

Elemental, What a disapointment. Im amused to see a similar map in the video when you pan out enough. Hopfully AOW3 will be what i wanted from Elemental.

Also replaying AOW1 has been fun, if alittle bit crashy, autosaves to the rescue!

Gerblyn posted:

I'm sorry to say that this is most likely still going to be the case. There's a whole raft of technical and design issues that arise if you allow one player to do things in the world map, while another is busy fighting in tactical combat. I wasn't at Triumph for AoW1, so I have no idea how they managed to do it there.

On the up side, quick combat is much better, since now the game actually runs through the full battle with AI controlled armies, rather than fudging it with invisible dice rolls like it did in AoW2. So the results it gives should be much less slapdash, and you have the option of watching a replay of the battle so you can see what happened.

I had a friend muse on a really simple win for this, How about optional spectator mode? At least this way you can egg on the bad guys while your buddy gets horribly crushed by a giant bone dragon. :smug:

KnoxZone
Jan 27, 2007

If I die before I Wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Gerblyn posted:

At the moment, no, they can cast spells anywhere. We're playing round with different ideas with it though, like maybe have it so the leader can only cast spells in their own domain or where another hero is present. There's also thoughts of having the leader use a different pool of casting points in battle, so that spells cast their don't interfere with spells cast in the world map.

This is spiffy. I always hated having my main dude shackled to a town in order to be useful.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Gerblyn posted:

I'm pretty sure that's how it worked in AoW:SM as well though...
Yup

Gerblyn posted:

Another thing that wasn't mentioned is that heroes have classes too. The one in the battle was a Warlord, so he had access to Warlord specific spells that the player as a Theocrat wouldn't otherwise be able to use.
This sounds baller. I always wished the hero classes in SM were a bit more differentiated.

How will leveling work? Same as SM, where you choose from one of 3 randomly offered?

Gerblyn posted:

I have literally no idea how our beta is gonna work, but I think a good start would be to make yourself known as a poster on the official forums, since there's a good chance that beta testers will be chosen from among people there:
I want to be in the beta more than life itself, but not enough to post on a game's official forums for anything other than technical support and modding queries.

Splicer fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Mar 27, 2013

Mazz
Dec 12, 2012

Orion, this is Sperglord Actual.
Come on home.
So reading through this thread, I definitely plan on picking up the series on GoG (the steam pack seems to actually cost more then GoG, but I do like having my games on Steam when I need them so we'll see).

As for other games like HoMM and MoM, are they worth grabbing for the $3-$9 dollars? I'll probably grab Master of Magic for the hell of it, but there are like 9 HoMM games and 2 packs (that seemingly include games and not expansions), and I have no idea where to start. Also, is Eador: Genesis the original of that series and the Masters of the Broken World a re-release or a new game? I couldn't outright tell being new to all of these.

Sorry if this is making GBS threads up the thread, I didn't find any other threads to ask this stuff :smith:.

Mazz fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Mar 27, 2013

Gwyrgyn Blood
Dec 17, 2002

HOMM2 and 3 are the only two really worth playing IMO. 2 is the most charming, nice graphics and music and all that. HOMM3 has more and better gameplay features and stuff, but it's crazy ugly so I can never get into it myself.

Eador: Genesis was the original game, to which Master of the Broken World is a remake to. Masters is mostly a remake, so the gameplay isn't changing too much. It's still looking pretty rough in beta right now and the full version comes out pretty soon, so you might want to wait and see on that one anyway. You won't go wrong with Genesis if you pick it up though, it's a lot of fun.

bamhand
Apr 15, 2010
If you get HoMM 5 Tribes of the East is all you need. There is a map pack or something that you can download that gives you all the content from the previous expansions. I personally like HoMM 6 a lot but I think most people prefer 5. And 4 is garbage. Skip 4.

Mr.48
May 1, 2007

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

HOMM2 and 3 are the only two really worth playing IMO. 2 is the most charming, nice graphics and music and all that. HOMM3 has more and better gameplay features and stuff, but it's crazy ugly so I can never get into it myself.

You are a crazy person, HoMM 3 is loving beautiful, and is the best of the series by far. HoMM 4 is the ugly one with the wonky 3d models (although it had a few interesting features).

Long story short, just get HoMM 3, its the easily the best heroes game and has the largest custom map and modding community (I will probably start a Heroes 3 mod thread soon).

Nicke
Mar 10, 2004
I hope the campaign works more like AoW 1 than Shadow Magic. In AoW 1 you had to make some tough decision regarding what you wanted to transfer over to the next mission, while in SM you could on the first mission research pretty much every spell and craft godly items that would last the rest of the campaign. It killed pretty much all progression.

Gwyrgyn Blood
Dec 17, 2002

Nah HOMM3 is pretty ugly, it starting into the prerendered sprites stuff and it's just all very bad looking. HOMM2 looks a lot better, it has a very charming and clean hand drawn look to it.

Edit: I'm being a bit harsh on HOMM3 I guess, I don't think it looks as good as HOMM2 and some units look really terrible, but it's not really that ugly. The map screen is better than HOMM2 in some ways as well.

Gwyrgyn Blood fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Mar 27, 2013

Mazz
Dec 12, 2012

Orion, this is Sperglord Actual.
Come on home.

Mr.48 posted:

You are a crazy person, HoMM 3 is loving beautiful, and is the best of the series by far. HoMM 4 is the ugly one with the wonky 3d models (although it had a few interesting features).

Long story short, just get HoMM 3, its the easily the best heroes game and has the largest custom map and modding community (I will probably start a Heroes 3 mod thread soon).

I'll probably grab 2, 3 and 5 at this point since I can always justify spending 6 dollars on a video game and not some lovely fast food meal or single drink at a bar it would undoubtedly go to instead.

God drat it, I went from having no games to play to like 10 in the last week. I was already unproductive enough.

Is there any storyline poo poo you miss by skipping the first (and maybe the 2nd)? I always hate jumping into a series of games without starting from the beginning, but I have no idea how these are connected.

Mazz fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Mar 27, 2013

bamhand
Apr 15, 2010
2 and 3 are kind of connected, and 5 is a reboot so it's connected with 6? But really no one cares about the plot at all. Just build armies and battle dragons.

Mazz
Dec 12, 2012

Orion, this is Sperglord Actual.
Come on home.

bamhand posted:

2 and 3 are kind of connected, and 5 is a reboot so it's connected with 6? But really no one cares about the plot at all. Just build armies and battle dragons.

Sounds good, I conclude my making GBS threads up the thread.

Gwyrgyn Blood
Dec 17, 2002

I wouldn't worry about missing story, the games are all pretty self contained. Plus, if you wanted to do everything chronologically anyway, you'd need to play the regular Might and Magic games in there too, which just turns into a big mess timeline wise:

HOMM1
HOMM2
Might and Magic 6
HOMM3
Might and Magic 7
HOMM3: Armageddon
Might and Magic 8
HOMM3: Sword of Frost

Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep
HoMM 3 was the best before HoMM 5 got Tribes of the East and the unnoficial AI patch.

HoMM 5 with both is the best HoMM ever.

Mr.48
May 1, 2007
Also, the campaigns are not really the important part of HoMM games (I cant even remember any of the story-lines). Its all about the crazy custom maps and playing against your friends.

^^^^Maybe if you compare it to vanilla HoMM 3, but the insane level of modding is what really puts HoMM 3 over the top for me.

Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep

Mr.48 posted:

Also, the campaigns are not really the important part of HoMM games (I cant even remember any of the story-lines). Its all about the crazy custom maps and playing against your friends.

^^^^Maybe if you compare it to vanilla HoMM 3, but the insane level of modding is what really puts HoMM 3 over the top for me.

Yeah, Ive played lots of HoMM 3 but never got into the mods at all. I just remember one big mod that added a whole lot of crazy stuff I didnt really enjoyed.

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Mr.48
May 1, 2007

Elias_Maluco posted:

Yeah, Ive played lots of HoMM 3 but never got into the mods at all. I just remember one big mod that added a whole lot of crazy stuff I didnt really enjoyed.

The problem is that the majority of the really ambitious mods came out of non-English speaking communities, and took a bit of fiddling to get working. I will try to put together a HoMM 3 mod thread sometimes soon which will hopefully make it easier for people to get into that sort of thing.

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