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Rabhadh posted:Really diggin' that archdruid. Be pretty cool if all your cavalry was mounted on boars or something. Some good spell synergy too. The global spell that gives all units floating goes really well with the battlefield spell that halves all walking units movement speed.
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Feb 17, 2014 19:49
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I just found about this game and series a couple of days ago and seriously lamenting what I've been missing out years ago. How difficult is it to get into the older games?
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Feb 18, 2014 08:32
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boredsatellite posted:How difficult is it to get into the older games? Not remotely, they're excellent
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Feb 18, 2014 08:35
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They're super good, you can get all three on steam for 20 bucks, or just get the best one for 10. Shadow Magic is basically Age of Wonders 2.5, and it's my favorite, although some folks like AoW1 more. Everyone generally agrees that Shadow Magic is a straight improvement over AoW2 though, so if you only get one get Shadow Magic.
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Feb 18, 2014 09:38
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Which campaigns are the best? Or are they all good? I like the 4x genre, but prefer some kind of story in gameplay.
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Feb 18, 2014 10:46
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They're all really good.
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Feb 18, 2014 11:33
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Kalenden posted:Which campaigns are the best? Or are they all good? I like the 4x genre, but prefer some kind of story in gameplay. 2's campaign is fairly weak compared to the others, but still pretty good (It has some difficulty spikes at Fire1 and Death1, but otherwise it's good). Shadow Magic's doesn't hesitate to have NPCs talk to you about poo poo in-game, and I can keep replaying 1's over and over again. Replaying through the series, I think it's incredible just how much stuff I missed in shadow magic the first time around. I don't think I ever caught Bormac talking about Julia's boob-plate the last time I played it.
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Feb 18, 2014 14:15
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I'm pretty annoyed because I've somehow lost my copy of Shadow Magic entirely, can't find the CDs and it isn't installed or anything. Well, I've at least got AoW1 to play and I never really played the campaign for that. Kind of impressed that it seems to still mostly run fine on Windows 7, although I have to play it windowed or else the framerate goes super terrible (like, sub 1 FPS). I really like the music in AoW1 much better than 2/SM, but man the sprites are just so tiny, I wish there was a 2x size option so I could see the drat things. Also, did they change the to-hit formula between 1 and 2? I remember they changed the damage formula between the two, 1 is straight up linear chance and 2 works on a bell curve. I'm super excited about there not being a to-hit chance in AoW3 let me tell you, I hate how much units miss in AoW1.
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Feb 18, 2014 17:32
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I still have the AoW1 soundtrack in my game playlist AoW1, Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament. Ah I miss chiptunes.
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Feb 18, 2014 18:56
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Holy gently caress is shadow magic fun. Just did the tutorial and already sold.
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Feb 20, 2014 00:15
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Pretty curious as to how the overall flow and strategy of AoW3 is going to turn out, going back through a lot of the stuff we know about the mechanics so far. It sounds like there's a lot more focus on developing towns now in 3, which could be a good or bad thing. Getting town development to be anything other than a build queue is pretty tough, lots of 4x games struggle with making it interesting. Likewise, finding a balance between ICS and building vertically, and allowing for multiple kinds of strategies to be useful, seems to be something very few games manage. That's mostly rambling anyway, but I'd be interested to hear if there are anti-ICS mechanics in the game, or other stuff related to town development and expansion. We don't seem to have had any videos so far about town development at all I guess? Just got a brief look at it in the last video as far as I've seen.
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Feb 20, 2014 20:16
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To be honest, I don't think ICS has ever been brought up. The main thing getting in the way of ICS is that you need to have a few good structures, like goldmines or mana nodes, to make a city worth having. Without them, a starting city doesn't produce any gold or anything until it's developed, which can take a while. You also need to get an army over to the structures to clear them of guards before you can start gathering income from them. It's usually more efficient to explore and capture/buy independent cities that you find on the map. I'm sure you could make it a working strategy if you tried, but I don't think it would be the optimal approach.
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Feb 20, 2014 22:33
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Just don't want to go too far in the opposite direction either: Civ 5 had a problem with Infinite City Sprawl, but now it's punished so much people are sticking to 4-5 cities for the entire game on every map. Actually this is a good line of conversation, are there "citizens" of any sort or do cities automatically gather resources in their zone of control? And are there ways to expand those worked zones?
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Feb 20, 2014 22:56
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Gerblyn posted:To be honest, I don't think ICS has ever been brought up. The main thing getting in the way of ICS is that you need to have a few good structures, like goldmines or mana nodes, to make a city worth having. Without them, a starting city doesn't produce any gold or anything until it's developed, which can take a while. You also need to get an army over to the structures to clear them of guards before you can start gathering income from them. It's usually more efficient to explore and capture/buy independent cities that you find on the map. Oh and what happens if two players try to build forts right near each other to try and capture something? Like say two forts are both 3 hexes away from a resource, who gets it? I'm asking this half as a joke but I'm actually kind of curious. Triskelli posted:Just don't want to go too far in the opposite direction either: Civ 5 had a problem with Infinite City Sprawl, but now it's punished so much people are sticking to 4-5 cities for the entire game on every map.
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Feb 20, 2014 23:09
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Cities collect stuff automatically, and their domains grow as the cities grow in size. So an outpost has a radius of 3 hexes, a village has 4, town has 5 etc. You can also expand the domain with certain upgrades and spells. We tried out lots of different designs for making cities work, including civilization-esque systems, where different types of terrain would give different resources. In the end none of them worked very well, they all had balance issues and there complexity ended up distracting players from the main point of the game, which is stomping around with an enormous army of goblins, murdering elves. Now cities are relatively simple, they collect resources (gold, mana, research), define your territory and produce units. The buildings you put in them all generally help a city in one of those areas. The terrain they're in affects there happiness, which in turn affects resource production as well as chance to rebel or give you special bonuses. Elven cities like forests, for example, and tend to get unhappy if someone comes along with a huge tank thing and chops them all down.
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Feb 20, 2014 23:12
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Gerblyn posted:Elven cities like forests, for example, and tend to get unhappy if someone comes along with a huge tank thing and chops them all down. Which is an interesting conundrum for an Elven Dreadnought player 
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Feb 20, 2014 23:16
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Yeah that makes sense. I was under the assumption that cities would just passively produce gold after you founded them (like the previous games). I do kind of wonder then, what's the cost difference between making forts and cities? Is there a reason you'd want to use a fort over a city to secure resources, aside from price? A fortress needs a builder to be constructed (~50g I think), the builder spends ~80g to build the fortress and can be reused. A city needs a settler (~150g and 650 population, which is about 2 turns worth), the settler is used up once you build the city. Essentially, the fort is cheaper, eats up 1 turn worth of city production instead of 3 or 4, and doesn't stop cities from growing. It's also less of a big deal if you lose a fortress. Also, if you construct a city on a fort, the city gets free walls (worth 100g). On paper it's a great deal, though in practice I suspect most people go straight for cities. quote:Oh and what happens if two players try to build forts right near each other to try and capture something? Like say two forts are both 3 hexes away from a resource, who gets it? I'm asking this half as a joke but I'm actually kind of curious First come, first served. It's also very hard for one fort to take domain from another, so basically the losing player must capture the other guys fort to get the resources.
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Feb 20, 2014 23:18
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Gerblyn posted:We tried out lots of different designs for making cities work, including civilization-esque systems, where different types of terrain would give different resources. In the end none of them worked very well, they all had balance issues and there complexity ended up distracting players from the main point of the game, which is stomping around with an enormous army of goblins, murdering elves.  Gerblyn posted:A fortress needs a builder to be constructed (~50g I think), the builder spends ~80g to build the fortress and can be reused. A city needs a settler (~150g and 650 population, which is about 2 turns worth), the settler is used up once you build the city. Essentially, the fort is cheaper, eats up 1 turn worth of city production instead of 3 or 4, and doesn't stop cities from growing. It's also less of a big deal if you lose a fortress. Also, if you construct a city on a fort, the city gets free walls (worth 100g). On paper it's a great deal, though in practice I suspect most people go straight for cities. - Use a fort if you just want something cheap to gather resources. - Use a city if you have the cash to spend and you need another place to generate more military, OR you need to gather resources in a highly contested area and need a little more secure defenses. Forts being 'less of a big deal' to lose sounds kind of debatable to me though, if I'm understanding things correctly. Say I have an undefended fort and some jerk flies a Zephyr Bird in and captures it. He can raise it faster, meaning I'll probably have to haul a builder over there to rebuild it for ~80g. But if it's a city instead, it'd take longer to raise, so maybe I have enough time to get some units over there to retake it for free. Is that right or am I missing part of it?
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Feb 20, 2014 23:44
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Well surely the whole point of a fort is you leave a garrison in it?
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Feb 20, 2014 23:45
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I think people hear fort and think watchtower from the old games, as opposed to "cheap tiny city" which seems to be the intended effect.
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Feb 20, 2014 23:54
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I've been playing a lot of Master of Magic again lately to get myself in the mood, and being older and wiser really makes a difference when it comes to recognising how to play well (I haven't touched it since I was like, 16). There's a lot of cool differences on the races and many viable paths to take with the retorts and spell books. One way I like to play is to pick a race that has great basic unit stats with a life and earth magic archmage and use heroism to boost them even higher and go for a big early game expansion play. Another strategy is going for summons such as death or chaos magic which has strong early game summons, and pick an economy race like elves that give you power (mana) per population and build up for a late game strategy. Everything is viable and because it's MoM everything is also overpowered The trade off of course is that some of those races make for poor cities but I recognize a lot of the mechanics in all the AoW games. AoW3 seems to use a simple economy model, which is fine because it's combat oriented game. I was initially put off by the fact that every class could pick any race because it seemed bland. But now I think that if the races are at least just a little different it can make a huge difference in what strategies are available to the player like in MoM.
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Feb 21, 2014 00:00
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Is that right or am I missing part of it? It's more that you can quickly put a fort somewhere, collect the local resources, and if you lose it, all you're out is the 80g it cost to make it. Cities are a lot bigger investment, 150 for the settler, maybe a few hundred more on buildings. The original design idea was to use forts in places too remote for your empire to properly defend. You're right that cities take much longer to raze though, which gives you more time to rally and retrieve them.
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Feb 21, 2014 00:00
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Gerblyn posted:Elven cities like forests, for example, and tend to get unhappy if someone comes along with a huge tank thing and chops them all down. Can you replant/magically create forests, out of curiosity? I know you can tunnel through some of the underground, so I'm curious whether you can do other things to modify the terrain around your domain?
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Feb 21, 2014 00:17
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OwlFancier posted:Can you replant/magically create forests, out of curiosity? I know you can tunnel through some of the underground, so I'm curious whether you can do other things to modify the terrain around your domain? Yeah, you can create most of the terrain types yourself except water, mountains and rock walls underground. You can also temporarily freeze water with magic to make bridges and things like that.
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Feb 21, 2014 00:23
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Gerblyn posted:It's more that you can quickly put a fort somewhere, collect the local resources, and if you lose it, all you're out is the 80g it cost to make it. Cities are a lot bigger investment, 150 for the settler, maybe a few hundred more on buildings. The original design idea was to use forts in places too remote for your empire to properly defend. You're right that cities take much longer to raze though, which gives you more time to rally and retrieve them. Can you use that self destruct spell you mentioned on forts? Because if you left forts in places you couldn't defend, it could be risky because another player could snipe them, as opposed to having to send out their own builder to make one.
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Feb 21, 2014 00:33
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Gerblyn posted:Yeah, you can create most of the terrain types yourself except water, mountains and rock walls underground. You can also temporarily freeze water with magic to make bridges and things like that. Sweeeeeet. Ok that's pretty great, something I always thought was missing from Civ 5. Gonna build me a badass supercity with all sorts of neato terrain around it.
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Feb 21, 2014 00:52
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New dev diary, all about tactical combat: http://ageofwonders.com/dev-journal-tactical-combat-bonanza/ Question about how flanking works. If I flank a unit and only do 1 attack, does that mean the defender just loses an action point and doesn't get a single counterattack? If so, I guess that means you could attack something entirely without fear of counter attacks as long as you make sure each unit flanks and only makes one attack? And you could lock down a unit forever like that I guess since they won't be able to act on their next turn? Or can you activate guard mode even if you start a turn with no action points? And one comment, based on the screenshots in that diary. I feel like I'd like a really clear indicator of what counts as a unit's flank and front. You can tell from looking at the unit's facing itself, but that's not quite as easy to see at a glance as you might want. Maybe some sort pulse or thickened lines along the edges of the hex that count as their 'front'? And if a unit is defending, all of the edges would change obviously. I dunno, maybe my eyes are just drawn to looking at the hexes or something, but I feel like it'd be a lot more clear to be able to see that. Edit: Found the answer to one of my questions: quote:Guarding only requires one action point, so a unit can move full distance and still guard. Gwyrgyn Blood fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Feb 23, 2014 |
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Feb 23, 2014 02:15
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Single shot ranged units sound odd with this game's rules. Crossbowmen (and worse, siege units) are probably going to be zooming around like mongol horse archers if they can fire after moving maximum distance.
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Feb 23, 2014 03:29
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Snow Job posted:Single shot ranged units sound odd with this game's rules. Crossbowmen (and worse, siege units) are probably going to be zooming around like mongol horse archers if they can fire after moving maximum distance. Well we know that musketmen and cannons can only fire every other turn: it's still funny to see a bombard scooting to the far side of the battlefield and shoot off a round though.
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Feb 23, 2014 03:37
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Triskelli posted:Well we know that musketmen and cannons can only fire every other turn: it's still funny to see a bombard scooting to the far side of the battlefield and shoot off a round though. Unless what they actually have to do is give up actions to reload, or firing takes more than one action point for them, or both.
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Feb 23, 2014 03:51
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Snow Job posted:Single shot ranged units sound odd with this game's rules. Crossbowmen (and worse, siege units) are probably going to be zooming around like mongol horse archers if they can fire after moving maximum distance. Maybe so, but I would imagine that would be balanced with other factors. Say crossbowmen might have a shorter effective range. Or maybe they'd get 1 shot at 10 damage, but longbowmen would get 3 shots at 5 damage each, so their max damage output would be worse but their scoot+shoot damage output better. Prism posted:Unless what they actually have to do is give up actions to reload, or firing takes more than one action point for them, or both. Looks like from the previous videos that reloading is just a cooldown, not an active action, so looks like they will be able to scoot around quite a bit in this game. I'm not actually certain if there are actions that REQUIRE more than 1 action point or not, it wasn't really clear from the journal. Gwyrgyn Blood fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Feb 23, 2014 |
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Feb 23, 2014 04:02
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Question about how flanking works. If I flank a unit and only do 1 attack, does that mean the defender just loses an action point and doesn't get a single counterattack? If so, I guess that means you could attack something entirely without fear of counter attacks as long as you make sure each unit flanks and only makes one attack? And you could lock down a unit forever like that I guess since they won't be able to act on their next turn? Or can you activate guard mode even if you start a turn with no action points? The unit doesn't lose an action point as it turns around, it loses an opportunity to retaliate. So: A flank attacks B B turns to face A A normal attacks B B retaliates on A A uses 2 action points, B uses 1. But yes, if you can force an enemy to use up all its actions points by retaliating or opportunity attacking, then it can't do anything next turn, including guard. There's a special ability called Tireless, which means those sort of attacks don't cost AP, which counters this, though it's very rare. Gwyrgyn Blood posted:And one comment, based on the screenshots in that diary. I feel like I'd like a really clear indicator of what counts as a unit's flank and front. You can tell from looking at the unit's facing itself, but that's not quite as easy to see at a glance as you might want. Maybe some sort pulse or thickened lines along the edges of the hex that count as their 'front'? And if a unit is defending, all of the edges would change obviously. I dunno, maybe my eyes are just drawn to looking at the hexes or something, but I feel like it'd be a lot more clear to be able to see that. Yeah, I've been worried that sometimes the little formations of guys means its hard to see what's in front and what's behind sometimes. I'm not sure if your solution would be practical though, as you can see from some of the screenshots, there's a LOT of colored poo poo on the floor sometimes, it would be difficult to squeeze another indicator onto the ground and not have it get completely lost. Snow Job posted:Single shot ranged units sound odd with this game's rules. Crossbowmen (and worse, siege units) are probably going to be zooming around like mongol horse archers if they can fire after moving maximum distance. Yes they do, and yes it looks silly when cannons and trebuchets do it. Weirdly enough, we haven't had any balance complaints from the beta testers about it (we get a lot of balance complaints from the beta testers), so they're presumably not too OP. I personally like the idea of having cannons need 3 action points to fire, so they'd only be able to move one hex and still fire. However: 1) There are almost no other abilities in the game that need 3 AP to work. The only one I know of off hand is Phase (teleport), which only works when you have 3 action points, but always leaves you with one over so you can still attack after you use it. 2) The original design had some actions costing 1 AP, some 2 and some 3, but we had to take it out because it was confusing as hell. 3) It would be a huge nerf, and we may need to remove the cooldown to compensate, which would mess up the mechanics with engineers (Engis have an ability that resets the cooldowns on a machine unit, so it can fire more rapidly) 4) Cannons have an AoE, when you shoot at a target, you hit the 2 hexes in a line behind that target as well. It would be almost impossible to take advantage of that if the cannon could only move one hex and fire. Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Maybe so, but I would imagine that would be balanced with other factors. Say crossbowmen might have a shorter effective range. Or maybe they'd get 1 shot at 10 damage, but longbowmen would get 3 shots at 5 damage each, so their max damage output would be worse but their scoot+shoot damage output better. That is exactly how it works, a bowshot does 8 damage, a heavy crossbow does 16. Crossbows are better for flanking stuff, bows are better for pure damage.
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Feb 23, 2014 10:51
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Gerblyn posted:The unit doesn't lose an action point as it turns around, it loses an opportunity to retaliate. So: Separate question: Do opportunity attacks cost AP?
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Feb 23, 2014 14:00
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Gerblyn posted:2) The original design had some actions costing 1 AP, some 2 and some 3, but we had to take it out because it was confusing as hell. e: q!=e. I'll leave this here as a doublepost instead.
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Feb 23, 2014 14:10
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Splicer posted:So if Dude A gets single-attack-flanked by Dude B then Dude A spins around but doesn't do anything? And if dudes C through G do the same thing (run up, flank, single attack) then, assuming he's still alive, Dude A hasn't actually used any AP and can still beat the living poo poo out of one of these little assholes with his full turn? Yes and Yes. You can try the "everyone does a single flank attack once" thing, but it can mean sacrificing some of your damage to make sure each of your guys only hits once. It's often better to get each of your guys to hit twice, so you can spread the retaliations around and not waste as much damage output.
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Feb 23, 2014 14:34
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So one thing that wasn't quite clear: if you un up to unit and you have 2 AP left, do you automaticaly burn both those points in an attack or do you get to choose to only hit your traget once for whatever reason?
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Feb 23, 2014 15:38
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I think I've been sold on this game just based on how active and friendly Gerblyn is in answering all the questions everyone throws at him about the gameplay.
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Feb 23, 2014 15:49
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Rudi Starnberg posted:So one thing that wasn't quite clear: if you un up to unit and you have 2 AP left, do you automaticaly burn both those points in an attack or do you get to choose to only hit your traget once for whatever reason? Units can only act once per turn. If you kill the target with your first hit, the other AP are wasted. Ra Ra Rasputin posted:I think I've been sold on this game just based on how active and friendly Gerblyn is in answering all the questions everyone throws at him about the gameplay. You're welcome 
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Feb 23, 2014 17:04
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Gerblyn posted:The unit doesn't lose an action point as it turns around, it loses an opportunity to retaliate. So: quote:You can try the "everyone does a single flank attack once" thing, but it can mean sacrificing some of your damage to make sure each of your guys only hits once. It's often better to get each of your guys to hit twice, so you can spread the retaliations around and not waste as much damage output. The "all damage types +2" for the flanking bonus is kind of interesting as well, since that makes it sound like it'll be WAY better to spread to as many different types of damage as opposed to stacking up one specific type. quote:Yeah, I've been worried that sometimes the little formations of guys means its hard to see what's in front and what's behind sometimes. I'm not sure if your solution would be practical though, as you can see from some of the screenshots, there's a LOT of colored poo poo on the floor sometimes, it would be difficult to squeeze another indicator onto the ground and not have it get completely lost.
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Feb 23, 2014 18:16
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| # ? May 9, 2024 23:42 |
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Gerblyn posted:Units can only act once per turn. If you kill the target with your first hit, the other AP are wasted.
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Feb 23, 2014 18:17
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