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Theocracy doesn't necessarily have to mean that the magic itself is divine, merely that the strength of magic and authority was given by god. Ancient Egypt and modern North Korea both claim divinity, but say... Saudi Arabia and Papacy have varying differences.
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Apr 6, 2013 15:38
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Speaking from the perspective of someone who played them after the initial release and during the process of bugfixing: Campaigns quality Age of Wonders > Shadow Magic -> AoW2 There are a few factors behind that, but... AoW had the superior (but not perfect) character progression, strictly limiting you on what you can carry from mission to mission. The protagonist from AoW2 ended up going through all the schools of magic, which is great for experiencing everything in a single run, but not so great for establishing your own character. Shadow Magic had you playing different (but customizable) leaders for a series of missions, i.i.r.c. which was a nice middleground. The most promising but troubled feature of the latter installment(s) is the persistence of research of wizardly abilities and also, magical artifacts. There were too many boring powergaming options to dangle in front of my inner munchkin, such as delaying the end of a mission as long as possible to create a super-wizard. In terms of pacing, I'll never forgive how long the Dwarven campaign took me in AoW1. The sequels did the right thing by simplifying the number of levels available to the playing field, i.m.o.. And the best thing to reduce a tedious endgame happened in Shadow Magic... if you screwed up and took much longer to complete a mission than you should have, you can eventually build wizard towers with teleportation gates in your cities, so you can backline production right into frontline action, rather than have things dragged out by issues of logistics. It is still best to strike early and hard, of course, but I was hardly the best strategy gamer at that time... so that was a godsend. In terms of interesting worlds, Age of Wonders had the most fluff, all those dungeons, etc. AoW2 had a solid campaign, but one of the least exciting. In particular the water campaign and halflings went on a bit too long. Part of the problem was their short legs, another was the island theme and large map size (AoW1 had the halfling campaign small for good reason, imo), and the third was the heavy emphasis on stealth in the halfling army doesn't do much good when the AI sees everything and doesn't pretend otherwise. Shadow Magic had a more interesting plot than 2, the campaign maps were littered with little events and sidequests and things to explore and felt much more like a living world than a set of fairly dry missions. And I even enjoyed the limited involvement of halflings. Scripting wasn't restricted to just controlling the AI, but also making the world more engaging. The other thing skewing my impressions was that I felt AoW1 was pretty polished from a bug standpoint, but even up till Shadow Magic's release, they were ironing bugs out of AoW2 like poisonous clouds destroying bridges. Since Shadow Magic was based on the same engine as AoW2, it was had many fewer bugs at release... so things like no longer ruining missions by accidentally wiping bridges completely off the map made for a happier experiences, and made me more accepting of other flaws. I'd recommend playing them all, honestly, especially if you want to get into user scenarios. But if you're going to play just one, I'd run with Shadow Magic. LordSloth fucked around with this message at 20:10 on May 30, 2013 |
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May 30, 2013 20:07
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DrManiac posted:The entire series is on sale for 50% off at gog this weekend. Is the earlier games worth going through if you only played shadow magic? Age of Wonders 1 is a great game with a pretty different style than AoW2. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is primarily an improved version of Age of Wonders 2. Your call on AoW2, but AoW1 is sufficiently different enough to feel fresh rather than iterative. I generally rate the Halfling/Water Arc of AoW2 right alongside the Dwarven/good arc of AoW1, except the former is more required and the latter is optional. Given how I didn't like either for taking too long (short people are slow)... I personally would lose interest in AoW2 once I reached that early story arc. LordSloth fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 18:49
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Now that I think about it, there may be sufficiently interesting user-created scenarios for AoW2, but I never dived into scenarios much. Since I own all three, are there any fan scenarios that goons remember fondly as either quite good or hilariously awful?
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Aug 23, 2013 19:12
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Don't worry, word is dire penguins are still in, and even march in neat formations. http://www.matchstickeyes.com/2013/02/25/age-of-wonders-iii-qa-with-lennart-sas/ Now if I just could get some photographic proof...
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Aug 24, 2013 00:24
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...Age of Saint's Row... Anyways, if you check out that youtube link earlier, the High Elf rogue seems surprisingly clothed. I mean certainly the proportions are still what you'd expect, but
LordSloth fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Sep 20, 2013 |
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Sep 20, 2013 17:48
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One of the videos showcased it. The demonstrator built an "outpost" which is like a level zero city. It projected control around it and could be later upgraded into a full city. ...now whether the AI can easily steal an undefended outpost? Probably. But they didn't showcase outposts actually being attacked or discuss what happens.
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Oct 6, 2013 02:59
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The maps in the AoW series have always tended towards a lot of narrow passes. Without a major rethinking or at least some attention to the map generator, you end up with a couple possible scenarios. 1). You attack, using up your remaining actions. The defender retreats, unscathed, attacking you the next turn once they've had the opportunity to buff. Meanwhile, they're still blocking the path, particularly in the narrow twisting underground. If you attack twice but separately with two stacks, you lose the number advantage. If you attack once with two stacks, then next turn they re-engage with their most destructive spell saved up. 2). You attack, not using up all your remaining actions. The defender retreats, forcing you to attack again the same turn, possibly wasting many of your casting points and battlefield spells. I'm sure there are other ways around this that were considered, I've got no idea about them, but I expect there would be a domino effect of other gameplay changes required. When it comes to twitch streams and youtube recordings of them, I tend to watch between 25-75% actively, mostly leaving it on while multi-tasking or listening to the chatter, kind of like having a TV on with the news in the background, tuning in and out of focus. I'm not really spoiling much when Dwarven Theocrat Creation, Earth two is such a specific subset of a random map. (I'm probably going all goblin at first.)
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Mar 24, 2014 19:11
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Oh, and it's really great to know this isn't an Elemental, Master of Orion 3, or as perfomance impaired as Rome 2: Total War. Unlike your FPS or Football yearly releases, the genre tends to lead to pre-order trauma. Hearing someone play the game without the blind optimism of a preview or "early access fandom" or the despair of the disappointed is quite comforting.
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Mar 24, 2014 19:15
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SlyFrog posted:Do you think we actually play these games? Come on, we obsess over them, buy them, install them, fire them up a couple of times and half-rear end play them, and the begin to obsess over the next cool game that will be out and will be totally awesome. ... ... Does your steam profile look at all like mine, SlyFrog? That's truer than I'd like to admit. OTOH, I've netted like 90 days of play on Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, over 500 hours of AI War Fleet Command. ... And I still haven't played Dishonored or finished the new XCOM.
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Mar 24, 2014 21:20
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I forgot to ask an all important question for my roleplaying purposes: can I give all my avatars proper goony neckbeards, not just the (fe)male dwarves? Seriously, most of what I see in quills stream isn't anything that I wouldn't have gotten back in the day from poring over an old-school manual when I was supposed to be learning, waiting for the first chance to get home, do homework (or procrastinate) and get the game booted up. Some of those old-school manuals (see appendix F) and your imagination/creativity were much more spoilery than quill's stream. He's doing okay for his position (streaming multiple games), but not thinking several layers deep like I expect someone dedicated to the game would- I'm not sure he's even planning past what is currently visible in the spell research book. You know true OCD grognards will spend an hour looking over all the spells before deciding to go one or two points deep in a magic school. ... I may have owned the five hundred page master of magic strategy guide and read it till it wore out. I may also have not had my own personal computer at that age, making each efficiency more important than just diving in to 'try something out'.
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Mar 24, 2014 22:27
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... is that Will Ferrell?
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Mar 25, 2014 00:09
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It makes perfect sense if you understand every dwarf is a secret ninja, following a variant of "Conservation of Ninjitsu", or the law of Inverse Ninja strength. Either that, or every Elf is actually Sparta.
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Mar 31, 2014 15:37
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Available for DL now on GOG... though I'm currently stuck with a pretty low spec machine Edit: okay, link is up not yet working. LordSloth fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Mar 31, 2014 |
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Mar 31, 2014 16:57
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GOG: If reloading doesn't work, try https://secure.gog.com/account/refresh That worked for me
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Mar 31, 2014 17:23
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The concept/race section of the tome breaks down what each racial trait does for your perfectly. Like goblins get -5 hp, a few other traits, and what makes me want to try a warlord: +10% pop growth. Irregulars for almost free.
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Mar 31, 2014 20:41
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The change to attack and defense from AoW2/SM was pretty significant to making tier 1 & 2 units more significant. To go just to the core of the mechanics, disregarding some of the more advanced factors I can't yet speak to. You no longer miss. The base physical damage for all attacks is ten, with attack added and defense subtracted, and the damage variance of 20% is applied at the very end. Throw in directional facing for shields and flanking and guard mode, various traits and leader buffs, and low level units can hang in a bit longer with say monster slaying and superior numbers. The falloff is still there, but the low level guys remain a bit more useful to seed your army with - unless you're trying to fight orcish greatswords with elven archers instead of initiates. I also think this change makes health a lot more significant than it used to be. Orcish tier 3 non-class shock troopers have only nine resistance versus thirteen defense before their traits are factored in, but you'll be doing five damage at range, only ten close up with initiates, so that seventy health will still last an incredibly long while, and their overwhelm trait means that the shields on elven swordsmen are damned near useless as blockers except as speedbumps. Most particular of all is shields and flanking, which are two strength mutually exclusive options. If one of your units lets you set up a shield unit for a flanking attack, that is +4 damage difference on three attacks. Your units also get experience from more than just killing blows, so even when you're trying to send most of the experience towards your hero, your chaff isn't stagnating. LordSloth fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Apr 1, 2014 |
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Apr 1, 2014 16:53
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I do have a question for Gerblyn: Is the campaign designed with simultaneous or turn-based mode in mind? There were a few monster ambushes and maybe scripted events that made more sense in one mode than another in previous AoWs, but I don't expect it'll matter for too much more than immersion.
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Apr 1, 2014 17:03
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spider wisdom posted:Man I want the Tome of Wonders as a pdf (or better yet, a physical book) so I can read about units in bed. You can open it from the main screen, but oddly over half of it is unavailable outside of the campaign/scenario/random map. Makes it a little weird to check skills before setting up a character.
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Apr 2, 2014 06:58
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Daktari posted:Well, well, you don't use battering rams for city defense? I try to keep two in each city to avoid losing them to wandering dudes. Looking up spells and traits outside of game: The best resource I've found AT THE MOMENT is a series of pretty comprehensive YouTube videos by iHunterKiller. He has created a How to Play AoW3 series. In particular, the section on magic starts from video 11, Fire Specialization
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Apr 2, 2014 17:34
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I haven't had the opportunity to play with the dracs yet, so take this with a grain of salt. They have a couple of bonus that are easy to overlook unless you're looking at Race: Draconian. First, they all get fast healing for an additional six health per turn (but I don't now what the base healing rate actually is yet). Second, they get a rather small +3 magic per city. That is nothing compared to what a simple shrine can generate you, but I could see that easing the burden of getting more of those buildings or a summon up in the first place - although magic crystals are everywhere after all. Chargers are only a tier one unit with just enough move points to charge an archer and all tier one units sucked in AoW2, so I might just be having an incredibly low expectation to begin with compared to everything else. Maybe they didn't scale up out of uselessness as much as the other tier ones? I'll try a game with them this evening.
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Apr 2, 2014 23:06
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Kanos: What is good about Draconian Raptors? Maybe I'm overlooking something, but they seem to be some of the more lackluster cavalary? Perfectly servicable, no halfling pony rider to be sure, but.. same cost, and generally inferior (no phase, no armor, no overwhelm), the only advantage I can see is in their resist and fast healing.
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Apr 3, 2014 00:22
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Regarding draconian hatchlings: These guys are effectively what would be a 'level 0' unit in a previous game, particularly only useful in a empire builder start where it would take five turns and a helping of gold just to even enable regular level 1 units. You'll pretty much only see them if you have nothing to start with, or are looking to pad out your forces. If you already have other options available, they're a mistake. On the other hand, if you've got a second city up early, but building a second barracks would be a waste, then this'll give you something to pad out your defensive/exploration party while your core city spends gold on getting good unit production set up and coming out. Send 'em out to set up flanking or some other equally suicidal task. Compare them to elven initiates, goblin untouchables (maybe the most interesting level zero), orcish spearmen, etc and you get a better picture. A ranged attack of around 11 strength, while fire means it works well against low resist units, and I suspect armored/shield (though I need to verify) but still only just one spit. In this crappy grouping only, its advantages are fast healing, elemental damage, and the slim possibility it might become something actually capable later on, though it'd take some exceptional luck, or something silly like giving them the kill on a hero. Aside from health, its stats are fairly middle of the road, and if they do survive (especially unlikely), they'll be back up to full health in no time to be thrown back into the meat grinder. I'm starting to think that Draconians maybe do better than average within their weight class, but once they meet anything higher tier they get trounced due to their lack of defense. Crushers and Flamers are your barracks units... The hatchlings have 60% fire protection, making them a decent screen where you don't worry as much about the splash damage from the flamers, and the Crushers have orcish-levels of damage (12+ overwhelm with shields being extremely common level 1s), and projectile resistance to help against tier 1 archers with a physical component. It's when they go up against any tier 2 unit where they look to drop off faster with their lack of shields and armor and elven archer triple shots. The Charger is their only tier 1 unit that seems to buck this trend - it seems more like they're a more aggressive counter to tier 2 units where polearm/pikemen get to shine, but having charge and first strike is a weird combo. Maybe the charge will be good for close combat flanking? LordSloth fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 02:03
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Rogue Chat: Destruction magic, to make concealment more dickish and force them to defend their cities if they don't want burning heaps of rubble? That said, I'd really only take Adept on a rogue, since with explorer, you wouldn't have much for that high level combat magic boost to affect.
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Apr 3, 2014 02:16
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With a warlord, I tend to go for the storehouse first, spam irregulars with my starting magic. I'm pretty sure it's a horrible use of magic since I'm only getting the lowest of the low (don't even need a barracks to build them anyways) but hey, I like my gobbo untouchables, and there is no magic maintenance.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:29
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Autonomous Monster posted:I know that, rationally, III is probably the better game, but I always preferred II. I never liked the way that III normalised the factions (all units have one and exactly one upgrade). And Sorceress/Rampart lost druids and phoenixes! Beware unicorns.
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Apr 5, 2014 19:41
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Nope, you're fixed at six units a stack, maximum of seven stacks in one combat.
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Apr 8, 2014 13:36
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Speaking of Warlock 2: You shouldn't have one city by the time you step on the second shard. I usually start on my first settler by the third turn - and in fact dedicate my capitol to settlers. Once I hit the limit, then I start converting to special cities (easier to grow them then convert). Before popping down all the city sprawl but after clearing out the lairs on my starting shard, I start to look to opening up the second shard and settling down there. I still get bogged down, but those dragon shadows are generally pushovers. You absolutely have to get some research out because by god have you seen nightmare wolves? They make Snow Queens look like lightweights. It's like as if Age of Wonders 3 spawned three hostile golden dragons on your doorstep and told you to like it... but fairly accessible magic trumps anything AoW3 can offer, primarily because you're NOT dealing with stacks. So Warlock 2 doesn't have rough edges, it has jagged edges dripping with the blood of your heroes.
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Apr 14, 2014 04:57
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Wolpertinger posted:WARLOCK TANGENT Not exactly... 50 gold a settler is a pretty big cost when directly converting to freetown initially yields only 1 gold/turn, plus pop growth is slower for special towns. You don't keep your special buildings, and there is a possibility that special towns destroy resources... - they certainly don't harvest them. It just makes sense to grow a town normally for a while, you can make that money/mana back quicker. The main thing is that you may end up abandoning old shards entirely at some point. As to gods, just bring up your build tree and look at what options are available for holy sites, and restrict your choices to that (non-humans have a much less varied selection). As to Alliance, don't worry too much about that unless they're actually doing you good. I've had an allied AI demand stuff from me, march past my front lines, all the way to my capitol, issuing demands along the way. If there isn't another enemy they will look for the opportunity to backstab you. This sounds clever and all, but I still won after they got this large force past my front line, thanks in part due to the weird shard geography that pops up.
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Apr 14, 2014 08:10
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In theory you could build a hospital instead of branching into certain magic schools or classes. Rather limited in utility, but strong enough if you're forced to cycle back high health units.
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Apr 15, 2014 14:07
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