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Tigran Arch Druids also get shamans that transform into bears. As if shamans weren't scary enough already.
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Apr 4, 2016 09:17
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For anyone who might have seen it on steam on sale for -75% and wondered if we A) had an SA thread for it and B) if it was worth it. Yes, very much so, but get the collection instead at 50% off. Eternal Lords is worth the difference alone.
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May 25, 2016 11:19
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^ This is a good and fun TBS game, one of the best out there. The music is stunning, the graphics are charming, the game is massive in scope and scale at this point, and there's even a healthy modding community if the (literally) hundreds of hours of core content aren't enough for you.
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May 25, 2016 11:22
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I just bought it off gog on a whim having liked 1&2 and it's been two nights in a row where I've glanced at the in game clock and it's suddenly 2am. Ratios and Tendency fucked around with this message at 10:42 on May 29, 2016 |
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May 27, 2016 08:06
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Ugh, was just about to buy the DLC on Steam and the sale ended. Is there anywhere else that it is on sale?
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May 27, 2016 21:07
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I think these came from Reddit somewhere, but I couldn't find a source: City build trees:  Dwelling trees: 
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Jun 1, 2016 23:23
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I made those  Not sure if they're the latest, reddit never updated the link I think The latest versions are up at the database http://aow3db.tumblr.com/index
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Jun 2, 2016 07:50
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Sweet, thank you  I couldn't find a simple building tree for the game and it was driving me kind of crazy. For as simple as the city trees are, I have a very hard time parsing the in-game linear list of buildings into the actual tree that it is. I wish the in-game build menu used a tree instead of the list really.
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Jun 2, 2016 18:24
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I think this might be the best game ever.
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Jun 9, 2016 13:40
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Ratios and Tendency posted:I think this might be the best game ever. Yeah, shame the goon community has been siphoned off to Total War: Hammer (self included)
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Jun 9, 2016 17:21
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Ratios and Tendency posted:I think this might be the best game ever. Im just waiting for the summer sale to get it
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Jun 9, 2016 17:31
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Triskelli posted:Yeah, shame the goon community has been siphoned off to Total War: Hammer (self included) I'd be up for some PBEM games.
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Jun 11, 2016 13:37
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Triskelli posted:Yeah, shame the goon community has been siphoned off to Total War: Hammer (self included) Not me! Because my PC can't handle Total Warhammer  (I'm currently playing Stellaris instead)
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Jun 11, 2016 17:09
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a few weeks ago some guy from the OF asked me to play a game and i said sure because i wasn't really doing anything. got my stream all nice and set up and everything, and an hour later he gave up because we couldn't get a game to go. i love this game to bits but the netcode and overall multiplayer quality of life are kind of really bad, which makes it difficult for me to play this game more when i'm really only interested in playing it against humans. i desperately hope that triumph's next game is better handled wrt multiplayer.
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Jun 12, 2016 03:31
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I said it like 20 times in this thread but I'll say it again - if there's another strategic map with neutral AI foes, I want the ability for other players to hop in and control them. Playing 1v1s with a friend where both of us can take an active part in dicking each other over with neutrals would be so much fun. Also Auto-resolve is anti-fun. Either the fights are too lopsided, or there's too many of them that are too meaningless. Fights with a narrower power gap are just plain more entertaining, whether you are slightly weaker, stronger, or nearly even. For sure too many knock down drag out deadlock fights can be draining as a player, but too many auto-resolve fights made me lose interest in many campaigns once snowball status was achieved.
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Jun 12, 2016 06:02
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ninjewtsu posted:a few weeks ago some guy from the OF asked me to play a game and i said sure because i wasn't really doing anything. got my stream all nice and set up and everything, and an hour later he gave up because we couldn't get a game to go. It seems that even during the course of the development for PBEM they learned a lot, so i look forward to it. victrix posted:I said it like 20 times in this thread but I'll say it again - if there's another strategic map with neutral AI foes, I want the ability for other players to hop in and control them. Playing 1v1s with a friend where both of us can take an active part in dicking each other over with neutrals would be so much fun. I actually learned to love playing out fights once i started to snowball. Using a 5 time champion Elephant and his other champ elephant buddies to take out an entire enemy faction is probably my highlight of these.
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Jun 12, 2016 06:29
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Yeah, Multiplayer was cool but it was also clearly an afterthought that became more popular than expected. Support was sometimes difficult to get working and a lot of mechanics that weren't particularly troublesome in SP became huge issues in any kind of competitive environment, even down to core rules like the Adjacent Hex rule. I'd love to play an Age of Wonders game that was designed with multiplayer in mind from the ground up, even though I get that the MP community of a fairly small game is basically a niche within a niche.
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Jun 14, 2016 14:54
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Yeah, I don't really give a poo poo about multiplayer. I'm glad other people like it, but the base appeal of these games to me is not playing on a timer and having long down periods which is something literally no turn-based multiplayer game has ever solved. Also simultaneous turns are terrible and so kludgy in practice (WRT unit sniping and the like). I mean, most of the fun of the game is the tactical battles and you basically don't have any that aren't scout v. scout or massive 7 doomstack battles when playing multiplayer. And I honestly don't find either of those interesting at all, the smaller-medium scale battles work much better. Zore fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Jun 14, 2016 |
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Jun 14, 2016 15:17
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one of the bigger problems for me is that whoever wins the first non-scout-war battle basically wins the whole game, but it takes 1-3 hours to get there
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Jun 14, 2016 16:56
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Its why I hope if there is an AOW4 it includes quick skirmish. Similar to how xcom 2 does it where you get a pool of points to spend on building an army that you then take into a fight with another player who has similar rules.
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Jun 14, 2016 17:34
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ninjewtsu posted:one of the bigger problems for me is that whoever wins the first non-scout-war battle basically wins the whole game, but it takes 1-3 hours to get there Pff, what are you kidding me? You're talking 5-8 hours minimum to build up a real honor guard.
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Jun 19, 2016 05:56
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LonsomeSon posted:Pff, what are you kidding me? You're talking 5-8 hours minimum to build up a real honor guard. what's funny is that those players don't even exist on the OF anymore (i'm sure they're still around doing their single player thing or just playing with their immediate friends) the same goes for the live MP folk too, actually. the OF is now totally dominated by Professional Play By Email Players
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Jun 19, 2016 16:26
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ninjewtsu posted:what's funny is that those players don't even exist on the OF anymore (i'm sure they're still around doing their single player thing or just playing with their immediate friends) In a way, I'm not too surprised. PBEM was the dominant mode of play for AoW 2 for like 10+ years, those weirdo live MP dudes and and their trivial concerns never got much respect.
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Jun 19, 2016 16:38
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Charm/Dominate/Convert builds and Necro anythings are utterly destroying PBEM. There's a hundred (ok fourish) mods trying to fix it, and they all boil down to fiddling the chance for success and/or pushing the hero skills into later levels, both of which completely miss the point to hilarious degrees. (not a PBEM player, just an amused bystander/single & co-op player)
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Jun 19, 2016 18:32
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I'm a member of a forum that centers around PBEM games of Civilization 4 and it's mod(s) (just Fall From Heaven 2 now). I no longer participate in the games, but the PBEM format has a lot of good features. You have a lot of time to take your turn before you send it to the next player, and you don't need to organize the people to be on at the same time. Since we have players from the Americas, Europe, China and Australia, that would be really challenging, but it's no problem with PBEM. So it doesn't surprise me that the OF people converged on PBEM in Ao3 as well.
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Jun 19, 2016 19:09
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Splicer posted:Charm/Dominate/Convert builds and Necro anythings are utterly destroying PBEM. There's a hundred (ok fourish) mods trying to fix it, and they all boil down to fiddling the chance for success and/or pushing the hero skills into later levels, both of which completely miss the point to hilarious degrees. Glad to hear Necro is doing so well considering the huge amount of moaning we used to get about it being underpowered. I always believed in the little guy  The mind-control thing isn't really surprising though. I wanted to have the whole "Keep a mind controlled unit after battle ends" thing removed from the game, but too many people like the feature. It's not really balanceable imho, at least not in PBEM. The ability to go into a battle and reliably come out with more units that you started with just breaks the whole game economy. Modders should be able to fix it though, if I recall correctly you can set up the mind control effect in a particular way to cause mind controlled units to die at the end of combat.
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Jun 19, 2016 21:16
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Gerblyn posted:Glad to hear Necro is doing so well considering the huge amount of moaning we used to get about it being underpowered. I always believed in the little guy The other problem with Necro is that if you get a Necro hero you're now basically playing whatever you were playing and also a Necro (all of the above also applies to mind control heroes, but less so) Gerblyn posted:The mind-control thing isn't really surprising though. I wanted to have the whole "Keep a mind controlled unit after battle ends" thing removed from the game, but too many people like the feature. It's not really balanceable imho, at least not in PBEM. The ability to go into a battle and reliably come out with more units that you started with just breaks the whole game economy. Modders should be able to fix it though, if I recall correctly you can set up the mind control effect in a particular way to cause mind controlled units to die at the end of combat. My pet "the problem with mind control" is that there's no reason ever not to use it. There's no downside to getting a mind-controlled unit over building one. My pet general solution would be to have mind control add a debuff to the unit that interacts with your economy and research levels, semi-resolving the side-stepping issue. My (partial) pet specific solution would be to add a multiplier to the unit's upkeep for a set amount of time, so that mind control is still gated behind your economy, you just pay by installments rather than a lump sum. That is, unfortunately. not moddable, as there doesn't seem to be a way to set a time limit on a tactical debuff.
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Jun 19, 2016 22:24
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Splicer posted:But that's half the fun of it! these would all still be unbalanced because you're procuring on site, and aren't gated by research or city buildings or production, just whatever you happen to be strong enough to take on. it'd be less dominant but still strategically absurd thus, gerblyn's plight of "this game would be way better balanced without mind control" vs "everyone wants mind control to stay in because it's fun"
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Jun 19, 2016 22:48
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and of course, if you nerf mind control a ton, then units like the bard or evangelist, who are still struggling to be considered worthwhile to build even in mind control's current state, just become totally worthless and need to be rebalanced.
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Jun 19, 2016 22:49
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Tangent: AoW3 is on sale on gog.com for their summer sale, but there's no 'all in one' pack, so you have to add the game and both dlcs - plus the deluxe 'upgrade' shows up as a separate dlc. Not really a huge big deal, but I could see it being just enough of a nuisance to stop an impulse buyer from getting the whole thing. Also the top reviews on the AoW3 page are whining about issues that were resolved literally years ago, whereas the EL reviews are far more positive. So uh. Yeah. Talk to sales guys, make combined edition or summat.
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Jun 19, 2016 23:03
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ninjewtsu posted:these would all still be unbalanced because you're procuring on site, and aren't gated by research or city buildings or production, just whatever you happen to be strong enough to take on. it'd be less dominant but still strategically absurd 1) resource cost 2) procurement location 3) opportunity cost 4) research/building gates Mind control needs to be balanced by thinking of it in the same terms and applying analogous limitations. Pay by installment is a possible solution for 1), as would dropping the unit on the map post battle as a green purchasable unit as per friendly fallen empire units holy crap that's a great idea. Certainly not moddable though. 2) would probably be fine as-is assuming 3 and 4 were dealt with. 3) is a doozey. Summons eat your casting points, building units eat your production. Mind control has no real analogue and I can't think of one. 4) is also a doozey. A vague idea I had was somehow gating mind control behind the highest unit you'd produced so far. With the green purchasable above you could gate it so that t3+ flat won't join you if you've never built a unit at least as good as them. Again, not moddable. Those specifics are just me randomly spitballing on my phone, my point is that mind control balance is treated as if it's an ability like heal or berserk, when it's actually a production route and requires production route style structuring. Units like bard and evangelist would obviously need to be reworked, but charm etc's strategic benefits having strategic offsets would allow its tactical worth to be better quantified. e: strategic is the big map yes? Always get the two mixed up, last paragraph won't make a lot of sense of I've got it wrong. Splicer fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 00:24
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Splicer posted:3) is a doozey. Summons eat your casting points, building units eat your production. Mind control has no real analogue and I can't think of one. it most certainly does! the answer is "number of casts of mind control ability your army has per battle" times "number of battles your army participates in this turn." or, if you have ghoul curse, "number of enemies faced" times "ghoul curse's chance of success" when using hero stacks (highly mobile and, after some leveling/equipment, certainly strong enough to handle pretty much any fight) this number becomes quite high, which is a big problem when coupled with aspect #2. the thing to keep in mind is that the closest analogue to how conversion works is summoning, which shares a lack of restriction in procurement location, as well as the resource cost not generally being a huge deal (though certainly a bigger deal than conversion cost is) to summon a t2 unit, lets just say summon eldritch animal is fairly representative of the kind of power gains you'd expect form conversion, costs 70 cp. which means that for the vast majority of the game, you'd be getting one roughly every 2 turns or so. let us suppose that you are trying to convert a group of 3 bleak warg, using ghoul curse since we're kind of talking about necromancer conversion. ghoul curse has a strength of 11, and bleak wargs have a resistance of 9, so the chance of this succeeding is 60%. but you can do that to all three bleak wargs, so it's a pretty good chance that you'll get at least one of them. suppose that you get into 2 fights with the same army in the same turn, and you can pretty quickly see how even if you put some kind of gold cost on them, it's still unbalanced by the fact that in just a couple of turns a player could have an instant army. i'm not even so sure that it wouldn't be worthwhile if you charged double what the unit's normal cost would be, the advantages of having a large army in a short time at the enemy frontline are just too great. ultimately, while there's potentially some possible combination of restrictions that would limit conversion enough to make a conversion-centered strategy not hilariously overpowered or underpowered, the inherent strengths that conversion has make devising and implementing any such system of restrictions very likely far more effort than it's worth. a far more likely result is "conversion is still overpowered, but now mildly more annoying" (probably what happens if you try to induce a gold cost or in some other way economically hinder conversion) or "conversion is absolutely worthless" (probably what happens if you try to mess with the probability of successful conversion). i guess in short, you're correct that there are 4 aspects to consider. but you can only really effectively alter one of them (resource cost) without having to redesign the entire system, and only having 1 aspect to work with just isn't enough. ninjewtsu fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 02:53
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I finally got around to finishing Golden realms and just now finished the first map of the Eternal Lords campaign. I just want to say that Bone Collectors are possibly my new favourite unit.
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Jun 20, 2016 03:44
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ninjewtsu posted:it most certainly does! the answer is "number of casts of mind control ability your army has per battle" times "number of battles your army participates in this turn." or, if you have ghoul curse, "number of enemies faced" times "ghoul curse's chance of success" ninjewtsu posted:the inherent strengths that conversion has make devising and implementing any such system of restrictions very likely far more effort than it's worth. a far more likely result is "conversion is still overpowered, but now mildly more annoying"(snip) but yes, my main argument is not that retained unit mind control can be balanced in this game (though I think it could be), in a way that would still be fun (though again, I think it could be), or that it's possible and/or worth the effort at this stage of the game's development (them's the big ones). I'm saying that retained unit mind control is a unit creator first and a combat ability second, so if you want it balanced in this or any other game you need to think of it as the former and incorporate equivalent restrictions, ideally during initial game planning. This is why the current mod approaches of fiddling the probabilities and kicking the can a bit further down the road are doomed.
Splicer fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 08:35
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Splicer's pretty much hit the nail on the head. Having units that make units breaks the economy, since there aren't any systems in place to really prevent you from just grabbing a ton of those units and the using them to get a ton more units, except gold upkeep. Compared to the time and effort needed to summon units or build them in cities, the advantage is massive and most likely insurmountable. We've had some other ideas to fix it, but they're all fiddly, unfun or annoying. The most balanced approach would be to somehow enforce a "A mind controller can only control one unit at once" rule. So, the system would know that a bard had mind controlled a warg, and if that bard then used mind control to grab another unit, they'd lose control of the warg somehow. Maybe the warg would immediately die, or it would vanish at the start of the next turn on the world map. I doubt it would work in practice though, it would be too hard for players to keep track of which unit was mind controlling which other unit if nothing else. The solution also doesn't really do anything for Ghoul Curse either, though I'm not sure if that's as much of a problem. A simpler solution would be to have mind controlled units get a debuff called something like "Shaky Loyalty", which means there's a 20% chance the unit will vanish at the start of each turn on the world map. If the unit was still around after 5 turns, then the debuff would disappear and he would be yours forever. Unfortunately, neither of these things can be done using modding tools, they'd both need code support which I'm not really in a position to do right now.
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Jun 20, 2016 09:00
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Nordick posted:I just want to say that Bone Collectors are possibly my new favourite unit. Banshees were always my favourite necro unit. That huge rear end "Everyone is debuffed though the floor now" AoE is just so satisfying. A good tactic is to jump them over city walls during sieges, debuff all the defenders, then let them absorb the defenders melee hits while the rest of the army approaches. They'll usually die in the process, but you can always bring them back with a reanimator. Gerblyn fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 09:04
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Gerblyn posted:Splicer's pretty much hit the nail on the head. Having units that make units breaks the economy, since there aren't any systems in place to really prevent you from just grabbing a ton of those units and the using them to get a ton more units, except gold upkeep. Gerblyn posted:A simpler solution would be to have mind controlled units get a debuff called something like "Shaky Loyalty", which means there's a 20% chance the unit will vanish at the start of each turn on the world map. If the unit was still around after 5 turns, then the debuff would disappear and he would be yours forever.  Anyway yeah, there's potential fun-but-unfiddly ways to approach balancing something like this, but for anything really comprehensive you'd probably be talking expansion level changes to the way the game works.e: if any kind of recently converted debuff was added I would consider it a personal favour if it was called "Unruly". Nordick posted:I just want to say that Bone Collectors are possibly my new favourite unit. Splicer fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 10:13
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Kill dude, raise cadaver, unstable transformation, dragon eats everything, win!Splicer posted:But then I'd be sad that my boars ran away If you love someone, you should set them free 
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Jun 20, 2016 10:43
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Splicer posted:Age of Weeble-Wobbles. Awesome! Splicer posted:I just wish they could feed bone each other, turning into adorable little cadavermaris. Yeah man I hate it when my cadavers can't gently caress in order to gain power (I know what you really meant).
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Jun 20, 2016 10:52
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If there was coding involved for the Unruly debuff, I'd suggest making it a mortal malus for X turns because low moral units can desert anyway? If the undead need something similar, I'm honestly not sure what to suggest. Probably; Gerblyn posted:A simpler solution would be to have mind controlled units get a debuff called something like "Shaky Loyalty", which means there's a 20% chance the unit will vanish at the start of each turn on the world map. If the unit was still around after 5 turns, then the debuff would disappear and he would be yours forever. That.
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Jun 20, 2016 11:42
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