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 AGE OF WONDERS III quote:“For example: as a Goblin Theocrat you can build your own holy empire, recruit little goblin crusaders or cute winged goblin angels equipped with flaming weapons, and wage war on your heathen enemies. We want players to be able to choose between lots of different play styles, without being restricted by fantasy clichés, like All Goblins Are Evil.”  Age of Wonders is a turn based & hex based fantasy strategy game, much like Master of Magic (That i have never played) or Elemental, War of Magic. (Which i regretfully have.  ) With some parts city building, some parts research, some parts diplomacy but mostly warfare on a strategic and battlefield scale. If you've played any Total War games, it could be seen as vaguely in the same region, just with turn based strategic combat as well as RPG elements, such as researching new magic, hiring & leveling heroes to be your champions and casting world ending spells. I hope everyone likes water as i raise the seas to drown the lowlands and starve the halflings! The games played on that aforementioned hex world, but it didn't just include an overworld! AOW had upto two undergrounds (and Shadow Magic had a whole other reality) that presented new options for attacking. Mountains and seas were also no barriers to the prepared, with mountain lowering spells being a forte of earth, freezing oceans being one of air, and waterwalking a common enough thing. Ocean and air battles were not exceptional events as you struggled to find alternative attack paths or prevent your opponents from exploiting such a weakness of yours. The game had a wide pallet of choices open to you, even if massed archers and siege were silly by comparison. AOW paints a typical but not dull fantasy world, from lizard men riding giant catapult turtles, to dwarven cities underground, to the classic dark elf vs wood elf tensions, to shadowy demons from beyond. Oh, and plenty of in-universe fun, the game is stiff in presentation, but its not lacking in appropriate humour. Originally the plot revolved around that elvish conflict, the council of mages and the greater wars of the world. This universe has seen and survived at least two apocalypses, one from the undead, and one from the shadow demons of beyond. Typical fare but well presented. The trailer does mention that its been at least two thousand years since this all happened. Heres Rock Paper Shotgun's announcement post on the new game. quote:
The website mentions a Autumn 2013 release date. lets speculate on how far it will fall behind! And just so your worries are unfounded, behold! Hexes!  Thanks Davincie.  Also from the website, backgrounds!   PREVIOUS TITLES, CLICK TO GO TO GOOD OLD GAMES.  Good news, all three titles are on GOG! Since their presentation of the games usually put the games best foot forward, i would highly suggest anyone with an interest to go their and take a look. Yes, i shamelessly cropped the images from GOG for this OP.  Personally? I rate this one the highest. AOW1 had the choice for your lord/avatar to be a fearsome meleé combatant, something absent in the sequels.  Age of Wonders 2 was... not as good as the first in this humble goons opinion. Shadow Magic really took this title and refined it into a good place. If you're curious in this series, i'd say skip this one in favour of the sequel. Theres a reasonable enough plot driving this game forward, as far as gaming plots go, with a few nice twists (such as the two elvish factions finally buring the hatchet for the most part) but Shadow Magic does wonders for the game.  Second place, and better then the second. Shadow Magic added three more playable factions, brought the story to a close in a battle between extra-dimentional horrors, a racist, magic hating human empire and the surviving mystical and mundane the player leads. It had some of the most brutal of maps but also the full scope of Wizard's Throne was realised with this game. The final level is loving crazy, Hoooleeei poo poo, if you've beaten this level legit, i tip my hat to you sir/ma'am.  The whole set is also available on steam! THE COMMUNITY http://aow2.heavengames.com/ An old but well loved website. From fan patches to new maps, it pretty much has everything nailed down. Is it also worth pointing out that the musical scores are really nice? The Uploader here got the order wrong, so heres the title then the start of the playlist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNgrThTHpdU And an hour and a half of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o-7rPnZhXo Ah, nostalgic. 
Shadowmorn fucked around with this message at Feb 9, 2013 around 00:16 |
| # ? Feb 8, 2013 00:45 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 07:55 |
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Irregularly updated wall of interesting things and early looks! http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...-leader-classes http://www.shacknews.com/article/78...nders-3-preview On Allignments: http://www.ageofwonders.com/aow3liv...ge/2/#post-1063 quote:Hi! Class doesn’t fix alignment. Of course it doesn’t!! Shadowmorn fucked around with this message at Apr 11, 2013 around 15:53 |
| # ? Feb 8, 2013 00:46 |
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Holy poo poo am I excited for this. The originals are right up there with MoM among my favorite games of all time.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 00:48 |
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Underwhelmed posted:Holy poo poo am I excited for this. The originals are right up there with MoM among my favorite games of all time. My inner child screamed at this announcement. I bought the original from GAME back when, it even came with that little tie in novel and the THICK manual that i devoured and sadly lost. 
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 00:50 |
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So excited for this. I love AoW1, and enjoy AoW:SM (never played two). Also, you should play Master of Magic. It is my favourite.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 00:51 |
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gently caress yeah. AoW 1 was a good game. AoW 2 was an even better game, and I spent a ton of time playing it. AoW: SM was fricking incredible, and had a huge amount of replay value. It had like 8 campaigns or some such, a crazy amount of civs (Shuriken throwing tiger people anyone?) and vastly improved AI. I am totally psyched about this and will be picking it up on release.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 01:04 |
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I remember, about a year or so back, I sent a big email to Triumph calling them jerks and to at LEAST make a Kickstarter for an Age of Wonders III because there's bound to be a fanbase out for the game! This was the response I got...quote:
I am so elated to hear about this. I hope they make a campaign as good as the first/third games. I can't wait to goblin the hell out of this game.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 01:43 |
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I played SM for an untold number of hours with my buddies. It got so crazy with some of the mega mods like Dwiggs. It was so satisfying to rampage through the map with a giant Balrog who could take out entire stacks almost single-handedly.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 02:01 |
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Whoa, glad I decided to check Games today. Love AoW 1 and Shadow Magic, so I'll be keeping a close eye on this. Though... what's up with those battle screenshots? It looks like they've switched to a HoMM style grid?
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 02:02 |
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Holy hell, I had no idea. I cannot wait! It's such a long time since the last one was out too, I wonder how different it will be? Considering the difference between 1 and 2 I'd be interested to find out. I really loved the campaign in the first game and it'd be brilliant if they try and merge the good parts of game 1 with the good parts of game 2. Bring back Lizardmen. Taear fucked around with this message at Feb 8, 2013 around 02:14 |
| # ? Feb 8, 2013 02:04 |
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I wonder if they're considering hybrid classes, so I can combine Dreadnought and Theocrat and get my Machine God Omnissiah on 
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:20 |
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I always hated how the industrial orcs from the first game got replaced by the generic tribal orcs in the sequels, so Orc Dreadnought here I come! It's been a while since a decent 4X game came out. Kinda sad that nothing has really touched MOO2 and the AoW series. I'm hoping this and Stardrive will scratch the itch. Edit: fired up AoW 1 cause of this thread and now it's 4 in the morning. Goddammit. Blisster fucked around with this message at Feb 8, 2013 around 10:09 |
| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:27 |
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Arrrthritis posted:I remember, about a year or so back, I sent a big email to Triumph calling them jerks and to at LEAST make a Kickstarter for an Age of Wonders III because there's bound to be a fanbase out for the game! This was the response I got... That's fairly impressive that they bothered to reply at all. Says a lot.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:40 |
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When I read the announcement yesterday I literally shouted "HELL YEAH" and fistpumped. This is the best gaming news in a long time and it came completely out of the blue. I haven't bought a physical game box in like 5 years but I'm sure as hell buying this one to put in my shelf next to my AoW, AoW2 and AoW:SM boxes 
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:42 |
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:I played SM for an untold number of hours with my buddies. It got so crazy with some of the mega mods like Dwiggs. It was so satisfying to rampage through the map with a giant Balrog who could take out entire stacks almost single-handedly. Haha back in the day Dwiggs was an internet buddy of mine and he used to send me early versions of his mod for testing and feedback. God I loved what he did to the Goblins.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 11:13 |
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So fucken excited.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 11:25 |
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Awsome, I loved Age of Wonders - something about the way you could stack perminant enchantments did it for me, it gave a real sense of unit progression. I Hope that they keep that in this game, I like haivng units with something of an individual feel to them.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 12:06 |
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Sweet. I was just wondering the other day why we haven't had a good fantasy TBS game in a while (other than Eador which is great). Now we get a sequel to the absolute best one with new mechanics which sound absolutely awesome.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 12:12 |
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Oh my god, I played AoW1 as a wee lad on a demo disk and I played it nearly non-stop for months. AoW2 really disappointed me with its lack of flavour text for units - That was part of my enjoyment! I loved stumbling across a whole new unit and clicking it to read up on what it was, what its backstory was etc. Thank god they brought that back for Shadow Magic. As soon as I get home, I'm firing up AoW1.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 12:23 |
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I played the hell out of Master of Magic, but I never got into the AoW series. I got Shadow Magic off GoG last year, but I guess I was suffering from the fact that I had no nostalgia glasses for the game, because I found it hard to get into. I guess I should give it another go. Also, the RPS article says 'RTS', I hope and assume that was a typo.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 13:23 |
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I've never played an Age of Wonders game but everyone's unmitigated excitement here and in the Steam thread had me intrigued. If my in-game Dreadnought actually has a swank manacle and cup of tea like in the trailer, no matter which race I choose (whatever races end up being in it), well, sign me up.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 13:26 |
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I'm surprised people haven't attempted to do a campaign like the one in the first game. It sounds like Triumph is going to be doing a similar style campaign in this game, with the starting choice being who your faction is, and subsequent choices being which races to recruit in your struggle for power. I hope so, at least, because the Age of Wonders 1 campaign is probably the fondest memories of a campaign I have in a video game*. *Until I learned to just give my hero wall climbing and life stealing.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 13:32 |
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This game looks great, and the release date isn't too far off. I really liked both Overlord games and that OP has a lot of specific stuff to love.quote:RPG elements sneaking their way into the RTS This is really cool for single player campaigns, I don't like it in multiplayer matches (heros in WC3) but for story stuff it's great. DoW2 comes to mind.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 14:28 |
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It's still a TBS you guys, RPS just messed up. Your main guy now has a bunch of classes to choose from. Warlord is basically living like you are a character from 300, Theocrat has you playing a violent pope, the rogue got compared to Qaddafi (dictator + skills to destabilise other countries) + you can choose from schools of magic to specialize. The game is on the Overlord engine which means its fully 3D now with terraformable terrain and hero customization actually showing up (frankly don't remember if it did in AOW2, dont think it did though). Auto-combat and a replay system are also build in. Random maps are also build in with hotseat or active multiplayer. Also play by email and normal multiplayer and it uses the real time turn system (idk what this is. guess everyone plays at once?). Also have a screenshot not in the RPS article:
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 14:47 |
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Holy poo poo how did I miss this. The AoW games were so amazing. I am super stoked for this.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 14:49 |
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See! hexes! hexes are GOOD! Also hexes mean "NOT RTS!"
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 15:06 |
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God dammit, I can see myself getting antsy during the wait, like I was during the run-up to XCOMs release. Pnly this time, its a whole 6 months or so?
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 15:06 |
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This is great, AoW:SM was awesome and I spent ages playing against my little brother. I really like the idea of angel goblins.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 15:15 |
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I hope they bring back the custom character creation from Age of Wonders 1 for this one. The original is still my favourite strictly because of that. It was so cool creating a fear resistant paladin or an undead fire-spitting wizard.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 15:17 |
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Davincie posted:Also play by email and normal multiplayer and it uses the real time turn system (idk what this is. guess everyone plays at once?). Yeah, everyone goes at the same time. It can descend into fastest click wins because of it but if i remember correctly, your orders entered a queue alongside everyone else and the CPU only ordered so many times per second so that you could fastest click win certain situations. Also going to nab that screenshot for the OP, look! Hexes!  TehGherkin posted:I hope they bring back the custom character creation from Age of Wonders 1 for this one. The original is still my favourite strictly because of that. Yup, its why AOW1 pulls ahead for me personally, even 'tho i loved the shadow demons of SM. 
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 15:56 |
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I fall into the AoW 1 camp, played that game endlessly, but never really got into the sequels. Hearing so much love for Shadow Magic is making me want to give it another shot. There was so much going for the first one though. The art style was whimsical as hell and still looks fantastic today, and the music really fit it perfectly. Even the story is awesome too. I mean sure, you can just be the good / bad guy start to finish, but you can also be the good guy who turns to darker and darker powers to defeat what you see as a greater evil, only to be redeemed at the 11th hour and fight back the very darkness you helped unleashed (among other outcomes). Also, I love how fast AoW MP games could be played. With auto battle and a small map, games could be a real fast affair, which still is kind of unique for TBS games. So yeah, can't wait for this.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 16:05 |
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So, I'm actually a programmer working on this game at the moment, so I can answer some questions for you if you have any. To be quite honest I'm not entirely sure what I can and cannot talk about, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't get back to you with a reply; it's probably because I'm asking my boss about what I can say. Anyways, I can confirm that the game is indeed completely turn based and that both the tactical and world maps are hex based. Arrrthritis posted:I remember, about a year or so back, I sent a big email to Triumph calling them jerks and to at LEAST make a Kickstarter for an Age of Wonders III because there's bound to be a fanbase out for the game! This was the response I got... We actually get a few emails like this I believe. Notable ones include the numerous death threats we received after we released pictures of minions clubbing baby seals in Overlord 2, the 9 year old girl who asked if the next Overlord could be a woman that has naked man slaves, and the guy who sent us 2 insane, expletive filled rants complaining about the random number generator in AoW:SM. We actually implemented a Mersenne Twister in response to that last one, though I don't think we replied to him.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 16:07 |
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Gerblyn posted:the 9 year old girl who asked if the next Overlord could be a woman that has naked man slaves Why didn't you do this?
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 16:10 |
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Shadowmorn posted:And just so your worries are unfounded, behold! Hexes! e: I tell a lie, I played the original king's bounty, but that's different. Oh hey this wasn't here a second ago: Gerblyn posted:Anyways, I can confirm that the game is indeed completely turn based and that both the tactical and world maps are hex based.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 16:13 |
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Geokinesis posted:Why didn't you do this? Apparently we considered having man slaves for OL2, Rihanna Pratchett (the writer) was very much in favour of it, but in the end it got dropped due to a lack time. Splicer posted:You are good people. First question: What's with the giant piles of weenies? I assume they're all "a unit" (as in, buying a weenie now actually buys you a squad of weenies)? Or is that just a promo shot and one archer still equals one archer? I would be happy with either, just curious. Yeah, most units now are represented by little squads rather than individual figures. Big things like Giants and Dragons are still single figures. Gerblyn fucked around with this message at Feb 8, 2013 around 16:18 |
| # ? Feb 8, 2013 16:15 |
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Also want to ad my name to the AoW music fans. Gerblyn posted:Yeah, most units now are represented by little squads rather than individual figures. Big things like Giants and Dragons are still single figures. Semi-related question: How close will combat be to the originals? Do we still have the 7 hex multi-stack system? e: Could I sound more entitled here? I'm just so excited and have been burned so much by nostalgia-ruining sequels the past few of years 
Splicer fucked around with this message at Feb 8, 2013 around 16:27 |
| # ? Feb 8, 2013 16:23 |
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Gerblyn posted:So, I'm actually a programmer working on this game at the moment, so I can answer some questions for you if you have any. To be quite honest I'm not entirely sure what I can and cannot talk about, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't get back to you with a reply; it's probably because I'm asking my boss about what I can say. Welcome, pull up a chair, enjoy Q&A sessions, and if you need some impromptu beta testers, keep goons in mind. Worked for Gaslamp Games after all!  Will the lord/avatar play a more direct role? AOW2 / SM's lord, while raining hell down upon your foes from your wizard tower was fun, didn't quiet have the satisfaction of taking to the battlefield and showing that you were also a badass of the sword in your own right. Silvergun1000 posted:There was so much going for the first one though. The art style was whimsical as hell and still looks fantastic today, and the music really fit it perfectly. Even the story is awesome too. I mean sure, you can just be the good / bad guy start to finish, but you can also be the good guy who turns to darker and darker powers to defeat what you see as a greater evil, only to be redeemed at the 11th hour and fight back the very darkness you helped unleashed (among other outcomes). God drat, now i just know im going to end up replaying AOW. I had vaguely remembered how awesome the campaign was but now that i dredge more of it up, it was really branching wasn't it? Like one of the first branches was (You're first choice) / Neutral. So you could keep being good and gather up an alliance of halflings, elves and dwarves. Or you could go for Neutrality and start with Elves leading Lizardmen and Syrons(?) by the end. All i really remember is, being evil and defecting to good got you an ending in which you were furious at the tiny trinket they leave you with.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 16:25 |
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If units are represented by squads, if a unit in that squad dies, what happens with regards to healing and unit firepower?
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 16:25 |
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Is Rhianna Pratchett writing for AoW3 too? Not her and her dad's usual cup of tea, but Overlord 1 & 2 had some great writing and if Terry could write serious stuff well (better than the usual comedies actually since I love Night Watch and Small Gods), she probably has the chops for it too. EDIT: Rihanna 
toasterwarrior fucked around with this message at Feb 8, 2013 around 17:21 |
| # ? Feb 8, 2013 16:25 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 07:55 |
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Splicer posted:Also want to ad my name to the AoW music fans. The same guy who made the original music is making the music for this game too. quote:Follow up question: How does health work for squads? I will accept "Would have to explain far too much about the battle system to give a meaningful answer" as a response. quote:If units are represented by squads, if a unit in that squad dies, what happens with regards to healing and unit firepower? We haven't quite figured that out yet to be honest. At the moment the number of figures simply reflects the HP that a unit has left (i.e. a unit with half health only has half its figures), but that leads to an issue where you instinctively feel that a unit with fewer soldiers should do less damage, which isn't the case. quote:Semi-related question: How close will combat be to the originals? Do we still have the 7 hex multi-stack system? The adjacent hex rule is still in, so up to 7 stacks can be involved in combat at once. There are also other changes to the combat system, for example flanking a unit will do more damage and let you get a free strike without retaliation. quote:Will the lord/avatar play a more direct role? That's the plan, yeah. We're still working out details on this though. toasterwarrior posted:Is Rihanna Pratchett writing for AoW3 too? Not her and her dad's usual cup of tea, but Overlord 1 & 2 had some great writing and if Terry could write serious stuff well (better than the usual comedies actually since I love Night Watch and Small Gods), she probably has the chops for it too. Nope, I believe we've rehired the guy who did the writing for the previous games. Which is a pity, cos Rhianna's actually a really nice person 
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 16:33 |
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