Age of Wonders Eternal Lords: Elsa's Dead, Frodo's Family & LionO has a Dream

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Age of Wonders Eternal Lords: Elsa's Dead, Frodo's Family & LionO has a Dream

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Oh man I'm loving this game. Couldn't get into Age of Wonders 1 or 2 but I found them waaaaaay late so it was hard. I'm the biggest Heroes of Might and Magic nerd ever though, and this is pretty much what Heroes VI should have been. If not for lack of town screens, this would be HOMM. It also reminds me of Total War, which I also love.

The graphics are incredible! And the game plays really fast and slick for how complex it is.

Had a blast playing my first random map, although a sneaky dwarf bastard took my capital while I was busy expanding, so... game over. :smith:

I'm used to having a few turns to retake your capital from HOMM, I guess I'll have to be extra careful about protecting it.

The character customization kicks rear end, I made a proper wizard dude with white eyes and posed him all like a crotchedy old wizard. Civilization made you pick premade characters, these are way better.

Just read they released a map editor; that's great. Counting down until somebody makes a Game of Thrones themed map.

Malek posted:

Sorry to jump back on this, but isn't there a "Tome of Wonders Wiki" yet?

I haven't found one yet and it was pretty awkward. I kinda expect everything to have a wiki immediately now, even if that's unrealistic. What is this, 2001? :cheeky:

I'd really like to look up all the spells and what exactly all those different traits you can pick 3 of to customize your dude do. I went with fire, more fire, and ... building? And that seemed good.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Apr 8, 2014

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 16:09

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:30

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Tomn posted:

I am reasonably sure the defeat condition is losing your throne city AND your leader - losing one or the other doesn't spell defeat until you've lost both. As long as your leader lives, you can fight your way back to your capital, and as long as your capital stands, you can fortify it 'till doomsday until your leader respawns.

I mean, granted, losing the resources and production of your capital early on is gonna kneecap you something fierce, but it still shouldn't be instant defeat unless your leader was also dead.

Ah yeah. That's another thing that's different from HOMM I just need to adapt to; in HOMM you had no "leader", just heroes. As long as you had one, you were fine. But yeah in this one you get other heroes, but they're not your "leader". I'll have to keep him alive too.

Thing is obviously your leader is gonna be your most powerful hero, right?

Would it be a smart strategy to keep your leader low level and safe at your home base, and instead use your hired heroes to level up and conquer people, in case you lose them?

It is nice your leader respawns after a few turns. If you lose another hero do they ever come back, or are they gone for good?

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 16:23

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Thanks everybody, sounds like I was just being too aggressive at first and spread myself too thin.

The spells in this seem really cool. I really love the summon mount egg spell; I managed to get a poison boar, a skeleton dragon and some kinda spider mount before I lost my game. Riding around on a giant spider or a bone dragon is :black101:

as gently caress, plus it actually gives you cool terrain bonuses and elemental resists and stuff? That's just too cool.

Oh hey another newbie question; So I'm playing this fire wizard and I have this spell that makes my town into tropical. There's also a spell that makes a target town really like tropical. I think I was already tropical to start with. Does that mean they didn't like that I was tropical, and if I cast that spell they'd have more happiness, or because they started there were they cool with it and that's more for terraforming other towns? Do different races have different preferences? I did notice elves could move through forests faster, which makes sense. How do I check if I'm already tropical, or does just having sand around imply that?

This game has some really cool mechanics and flavor. I just really wish I could look up all these little nagging questions on a wiki.

The in-game guide is decent, but doesn't cover eveyrthing. Also lack of a back button is killer.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 17:08

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Glad to get an explanation of the 12 spells page thing, that was my next question.

Next newbie question; what effects a stack's healing? Do they always heal at the same rate? Do they heal faster in-town, or in their favorite type of terrain?

OwlFancier posted:

Also if you capture the heart of a certain climate, your cities will loving love it and it gives you a neat buff. Climate hearts are super great if you can grab them, especially if you have the spell that terraforms the world to that climate. Just be careful as climate hearts can be razed, so guard them if you're using them.

This is really cool, heart of the desert? Love it. Thanks for the explanation!

I was playing humans who would probably prefer fields to the burning desert, so that "like tropical" spell would have probably been handy.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Apr 8, 2014

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 18:23

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

If you're taking suggestions, an ability to "refresh" a slot in your research book that you don't like for another one would be really cool, since it does cap at one page. Or alternatively let us have more than one page available at a time. Having to research a bad combat skill just for the chance at another one is lame, unless its a prereq which makes sense.

Fintilgin posted:

Do the bonuses that heroes give their stack apply across the entire army in a multistack battle, or just to the units that they brought personally?

How do multistack battles work? I heard about that, is it just like Total War where if you have an army right next to the battle, they get to join in? Or what?

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Apr 8, 2014

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 19:11

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

OwlFancier posted:

When you attack someone, the battle includes the stack you attack, and all stacks next to it.

They spawn on the battlefield based on where they are on the overworld. Try splitting a stack next time you attack and see, it's quite intuitive.

Cool.

Yeah this is seriously like my favorite parts of Total War and Heroes of might and magic put together.

If there were town screens I'd probably stop playing HoMM altogether, although town screens would also slow the turns down a bit. (Which is why HOMM VI didn't have them at first, but that was dumb and they patched them in)

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 19:14

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

Hey Gerblyn you have a typo in Freeze Water:
code:
<Cell>{freezewaterTurns}; 3 [turn/]</Cell>
Should be a colon not a semicolon. :I

Anyway, still mucking with pulling the rest of the data, but I have a decent start, shown with a template: http://age-of-blunders-iii.wikia.com/wiki/Water_Magic

Thank you so much for this, exactly what I need.

Ojetor posted:

You can get multiple researches in the same turn. The progress circle will be completely filled and if you click on it it will immediately be researched.

As a side note, a fact not many people realize: You can switch researches freely and your progress toward a particular research is saved. So you can be working on a long research, realize you need something else urgently (usually Disjunction) and switch your research without losing anything.

Do you mean the various Fire/Water/Destruction/etc Nodes? They all just provide 10 mana, but if you're an adept of that sphere they will provide 15 mana instead.

Oh that's really cool, and great to know.

I guess I should stop posting and just read the thread for awhile. Thanks everybody.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 22:44

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Space Hamlet posted:

Some passing thoughts, for what they're worth:

A quick-ish fix might be adding some super-late-game spells, roughly equivalent to Civ's nukes and/or paratroopers. Auto-razing cities on the strategic map might be a bit much (in practice I'm auto-resolving all my fights toward the end but in theory I shouldn't be) but free teleportation of certain stacks would really cut down on some of the tedium.

My favorite endgame in any strategy game is that in Rise of Nations - everyone races for nukes and then there's an orgy of decisive destruction, and the game is eventually won by whatever's left in the aftermath. Depending on how a game plays out, those nukes can function as a comeback mechanic, a final blow, or as a mutual slugfest. This feels like how a game about wizards building their power ought to end, as well.

My brother also proposed an alternate game mode whereby the game is won by controlling some capturable independent structures - probably gaurded by top-tier monsters. I like that idea too.

I would pay money for wizard nuke DLC. It gives you a sense of progression building this huge wonder up over time, and then for all the reasons you explained it would give the ending a nice climax and swift resolution thereafter.

Another thing you could do is ape Heroes of Might and Magic's quest for the holy grail. Or yeah, you could have capture points.

I would also really love to play as a necromancer or undead or both. :pray:

KnoxZone posted:

The game also has 2 races (Shadow Demons and Syrons) who are immune to the poison and nautrally inhabit the shadow realm

Okay now I'm just being unrealistic but can we play as those too?

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Apr 9, 2014

# ¿ Apr 9, 2014 15:45

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

OwlFancier posted:

I think it's because while the game is really solid and a pretty excellent example of how to do fantasy 4x combat, there's a bunch of stuff that would really improve the game and would presumably not be a huge amount of work.

It's both really good and really obviously improvable, so it makes you enjoy it, and also really want it to be better because you enjoy what's there already.

Its the uncanny valley effect. The more something approaches perfection / the ideal, the more its flaws stand out. The further away it is, the more its just "its own thing" and you don't compare every little thing, they don't stand out as much, even if "its own thing" is less good overall.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2014 18:38

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Another feature I would like is being able to have your hero's race not match the kingdom's race. I want to create a human wizard Saruman who leads an orc army! Or like an orc warlord who has enslaved the goblins or something. You can already hire heroes of other races to lead your armies (or wait, is that only other classes?) so it seems like it wouldn't be a huge change. You could probably already do this with the level editor too, if you set up custom scenarios. It'd just be cool if that worked in random maps too. But its minor. And it might effect balance in some way too, I'm not a master of all the rules yet.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2014 18:23

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

I keep losing because my HOMM tactics don't work so well in this game. I need to blend them with my Total War tactics.

I'm used to having my hero and a big death stack go around leveling up and getting treasure with ease while I just kinda explore with other heroes who have little army.

But this is more like Total War where bands of brigands or slaves will pop up wherever on the road or in one of my towns and start loving poo poo up.

I had to do a battle with nothing but a hero against a bunch of orcs.

Although come to think of it HOMM forced you to keep at least one unit with each of your heroes, so that's just me overly min/maxing. I probably need to just approach this less like a game and more realistically. Again, more like Total War.

Also I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I spent over an hour just playing with the character creator, re-creating all my favorite LOTR or warcraft or whatever characters, so I can now play as them or against them whenever I want.

Really enjoy having that as a feature.

I'd be cool if we had a proper wizard hat or if half the beard models didn't clip horribly through faces, though. :smith:

And customization options on different races are a total crapshoot. I guess its work for your artists to have to modify things to fit the different models, but you just kinda... didn't. And its nitpicking, but some of the "scenes" are really cool, but the lighting for them sucks, so you end up putting an Orc in like the forest or something just so that you can see his face without it being all discolored from some kind of fixed lighting.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2014 18:35

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

I would pay money for beard and wizard hat dlc.

Tomn posted:

Three general tips I find useful.

1) Expand, expand, expand. If there's an empty spot with enough resource sites to make a new city worthwhile, snag it as long as you have no other pressing needs. Don't bother building them up too much unless they're somewhere important - a builder's hall and a wooden wall are what I use for non-strategic cities, with produce merchandise after that. Defend them with a ranged unit or two.

2) Produce, produce, produce. Keep an eye on your economy, and whenever you feel you can afford to do so, buy up a new six-stack, preferably with a hero leading it. Try not to send out less than a full stack unless you're making scout forces or there's a pressing and urgent need, such as reinforcements for the front.

3) You don't need to conquer an enemy empire to beat them - just take their capital and kill their leader. It's easy to get caught up in a grand war against an entrenched foe, but sometimes it's worth remembering that a good decapitation strike may be it all it takes to finish an enemy.

I overdid 1 on my first game and got my throne taken while I was busy expanding, so its not ALL expand, expand, expand :cheeky:

# ¿ Apr 11, 2014 21:06

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Got this game as a gift for my roommate's birthday, and we played some together. Love that you can do simultaneous turns, its pretty much a must for turn-based game multi.

Also really love that you can watch your allies fighting, in HOMM you couldn't and that KILLED multi for me if you weren't playing hotseat. I like playing in teams, and when you're just sitting there watching your teammate do a battle unable to see what's actually happening its awful.

That said... is there a way to not spectate your allies battles?

Because sometimes he's doing a trivial fight and I'd really like to finish up my turn, but I get dragged into watching him and there doesn't seem to be any way to get out of it.

Its really cool you can watch; if he was doing a big siege I would absolutely want to watch him do it (and maybe offer some tips)

but other times it would go much, much faster if we could both do a quick battle at the same time. I have to watch him win, then he has to watch me win. It makes us use the "autoresolve combat" option way more than we would otherwise.

Am I missing a way, or is there none? If there isn't pleeeeeease add it.

Gerblyn posted:

No technical reason, but there are design reasons. For example, who would control the independents if there's more than 2 people playing? How do you prevent a person getting his friend to control the independents and suiciding them instead of fighting with them properly?

I know other people have brought the idea up, but I think it's status is still in the pie-in-the-sky phase. Since resolving the above issues could be a hell of a lot of work.

You could at worst restrict it to 2 player or 2 team games. :shrug:

It would be pretty fun.

Alternatively if somebody could "DM" the game and play as the independents... but that would probably take a lot of work on the back-end.

Gerblyn posted:

No, sorry! People have asked for it and there's a case to add the feature though.

Edit: I think you can sort of cheese around it a bit. If you start a match, then look at the custom leaders in the library, then leaders the AI has picked will not be listed. So if you look in the library and they're all there, you should be guaranteed that the AI is only using stock leaders.

You can at least always manually pick every AI's hero. But random is a nice option so it'd be cool if you could turn off custom heroes or turn off built-in heroes for random. (Maybe just have 3 random options; Random-All, Random-Custom, Random-Default) ?

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Apr 23, 2014

# ¿ Apr 23, 2014 22:15

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Wow that sure is a patch :stare:

That's awesome

# ¿ Apr 24, 2014 21:36

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Hey if you buy the DLC for this can you play with people who don't have it? Or are you stuck playing without the DLC with people who don't? Thanks.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2015 00:16

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Zore posted:

You can, and if they host the worlds will be generated with the DLC races etc.

You still can't pick the stuff on the leader you play (So if you lack Golden Realms you can't play as a Halfling) but you can pick up independent Halfling towns etc.

Awesome, then I can go ahead and buy the DLC now without worrying about my plebian friends being able to afford it or not :agesilaus:

I really love forgiving DLC models like that. I mean honestly it makes more sense, this is going to be a good advertisement of the DLC for them.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2015 00:31

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:30

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Thyrork posted:

I'd love for the next game or a big update to include a brawling "You have this many army points, spend them and deploy your custom army against others/the AI." mode.

X points, variable. Units cost X number of points reflected on their implied usefulness. You get 18 units maximum. Heroes are preset with some heroes at level 1 and some upto level 5.

Fights are two armies clashing with no army in the "center hex" and a soft-deployment phase.

You know, similar to x-com's multiplayer without all the issues.

No empire building, no overworld magic (so no leader, you just get the spells on your heroes), just two armies duking it out TO THE DEATH.

Mutators could exist for it too. You opt in to be behind the walls? Then your enemy gets to deploy last and gets a few free siege weapons. You opt to start surrounded? You only get six units to work with but you get the middle to fight from.

You could even go full crazy and include capture the flag/dominiation and reinforcement mechanics! (something dies? your reserves deploy a turn or two later, equal roughly to its points cost)

HOMM5 (and I think 6 and 7) has this and yeah, it'd be nice for AOW3 to have it too.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2015 19:01

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