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Holy crap I watched the dreadnought trailer and this game looks loving amazing. Graphically it looks gorgeous and the combat and unit selection reminds me of the best of heroes of might and magic, and the surface/underground stuff is awesome too, as is the terrain modification. Seriously this seems to have everything I ever wanted in a hex based 4x game.
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Oct 27, 2013 21:03
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http://www.ageofwonders.com/german-press-tour-finished-new-footage-and-screenshots/ Possibly a more substantial news post, new screens and videos of gameplay, though mostly in German. I thought the interviewer said something about doing it in English because she doesn't speak dutch, but *shrug* I probably mistranslated it, my German's terrible. The combat looks really cool, from what I gather the direction a unit is facing and what it's adjacent to makes a lot of difference, the interviewer got her cavalry massacred because she ran them past some infantry, who all got opportunity attacks on them, while her archers got pinned down by some units facing them in melee, but attacking that unit from another direction made them turn away, allowing her archers to finish them off. It seems a lot more involved than traditional tile-based systems which I really like the sound of. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Nov 11, 2013 |
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Nov 11, 2013 22:08
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Those battle shots look so great, I love the graphics in this.
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Dec 12, 2013 21:37
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Huh, I just looked at the page this morning. I did notice the late March release, supposedly. Looking forward to it. Also, Night Wish had better be accompanied by kickass symphonic power metal. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 19:18
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victrix posted:Rogue seems like a really bizarre choice as an army leader I'm hoping you can play a rogue sort of like Lord Vetinari, Machiavellian dictator sort of thing. I think that's what they're going for but the unit list kinda looks more like the evil henchmen shopping catalogue.
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Jan 23, 2014 19:23
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Maybe the evil henchmen thing is fairly accurate? They're literally the bond villain class. All it needs is the ability to upgrade your soldiers with jackboots and matching jumpsuits. Edit: vvvvvvvvv Shadowmorn posted:Evil Genius, fantasy edition. Exactly! OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 19:27
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Mr.48 posted:So have we heard if they figured out how to make the attacking power of a squad go down as individual units are killed? I dont mean to keep harping on this, but 2 units hitting as hard as 10 of the same units would really bug me. I'd hope that'd be as standard... Maybe have a look at some of the interviews on youtube, they show combat and I think units get weaker as they take hits. As a bonus for Civ5 Japan it's cool, but as a normal mechanic I prefer weakening over time too.
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Jan 23, 2014 22:48
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Mr.48 posted:From their forums: It's a bit of a shame but I wouldn't call it dumbing down, it just changes how the game behaves. It could potentially be better, really, because it means weaker units can compete better with stronger ones, thus making the game a bit less like early HoMM games, where weak units were completely useless. I just have a preference for rotating my units out and dealing with an under-strength army. With everything else they have in the game I don't think not losing attack stats with hitpoints is going to ruin the game. Like I said, Civ5 japan is hilariously fun to play because you can just blitz through everyone giving no shits and taking all the casualties while everyone else is running away to preserve their precious elite units.
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Jan 24, 2014 10:34
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DatonKallandor posted:It is dumbing down, because the non-dumbing down version would simply be to use the whole thing logically in your game design. A unit that has fewer models with more hp per model (say a unit of 4 knights) plays differently than a unit of lots of weak dudes (1 Unit of 8 Swordsmen) which plays differently than an awesome single-model hero. You can even have units that have models but don't lose combat power because they're special. Or units that gain combat power as they loose models because they're special. It's a perfect vector of racial and unit distinction and deeper gameplay. This might be a personal thing but a unified model of either no attack loss with damage, or universal attack loss with damage, is far less confusing to understand than a per-unit model.
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Jan 24, 2014 22:32
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DatonKallandor posted:It absolutely is simpler (and there's nothing inherently wrong with that) - as long as you don't have visual model loss on top of it. Even then, it isn't beyond the ken of mortal man to learn 'attack stays the same as you take hits' or 'attack reduces as you take hits'. I'm not quite thick enough to have a consistent problem where I see pixelmans dying and this utterly shatters my comprehension of the game rules. I mean, I don't expect my units to start deserting and forming localised rebellions against my rule because I got their BFFs killed in my last battle. I don't expect them to start dying of starvation because there's obviously no visible supply caravans supplying them with food. A visual disconnect between mechanics and aesthetics is par for the course in games. It's easier to grasp 'hey my units are consistently behaving this way, also the game flat out told me that units don't suffer attack penalties from damage' than it is to model the animations just right so that each unit can perfectly convey its precise individual reaction to losing members. I'd like a damage reduction on hit model as well, but it's no dumber or smarter than the one the game's going to use, I just enjoy having to manage my units like that, but it does make the game somewhat easier, I find, because the AI generally cannot handle that mechanic properly, so proper handling on your part gives you a somewhat cheesy advantage. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 23:00
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Zurai posted:Eh, Civ4's AI handled managing damaged vs full strength units well enough. It knew to lead off with indirect attacks and AOE attacks when possible, use the units with the highest chance of surviving when attacking full-strength units, then when it had weakened all of your units it would pound you mercilessly. I played civ 5 and frankly, the AI is almost always either gunshy or suicidal, it can grasp the concept of retreating wounded units, but it almost always either throws away units when it shouldn't, or its desire to retreat prevents it from really pushing a front to make the progress which would justify its casualites. It has a lot of problems understanding when sacrifices should be made, so it makes them seemingly at random. Half the skill of combat in that game is knowing how to abuse the death spiral mechanic. It's a good mechanic, but it's one the AI really isn't very good at handling, and that is key to beating the AI. It also makes Japan one of the most consistently terrifying nations to square up against if they have a decent army. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 23:14
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Zurai posted:Note that I said Civ 4, not 5. 5's military AI is notoriously incompetent. 4's wasn't stellar, but it did know how to handle the death spiral. Naval invasions and the economy weren't its strong points, though. I haven't played 4 so I can't comment, but I do seem to recall it allowed you to stack N+1 units onto one tile, making it much easier to win by sheer numbers. AoW seems to be more balanced in the numbers department, so the AI's going to need drat good tactical skill to beat a player in that case.
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Jan 24, 2014 23:23
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Demiurge4 posted:Something I just realised, in the old games magical research carried over between maps which meant you were encouraged to finish researching before you ended the level, effectively making the player stall. This was rather awful so I'm wondering how this is implemented in the new campaign? Warzone 2100 does that, but the entire game is on a time limit, so while it's helpful to spend any spare time you have researching, it does have a limit, and you can speed up the game to make it go a bit faster.
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Jan 26, 2014 14:57
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I really like slow but beefy units so hopefully, AoW3 keeps some big mobility differences between factions. This might be an odd question but do the previous games let you build like, little forts or something? Basically one issue I take with HoMM is that you really can't protect your borders very well because everything is per-tile on the big map. You can run right past someone and they can't do anything if they aren't standing on a one tile chokepoint. How does AoW handle that?
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Jan 28, 2014 01:10
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Gerblyn posted:In AoW3, builder units can build forts to cheaply claim an area and its resources. The fort acts like a sort of half city, it claims an area like a city does, but has no production or growth. You can then send a settler to the fort and plant a city on it, and it becomes a city with walls. Actually that sounds like a big improvement, if stuff is tied to forts and cities you can defend those in order to control the area without having to field dozens of heroes. Also being able to sit on a few hexes at once is also a big improvement. It's the ability to run behind the border and snipe everything that annoys me about heroes of might and magic so hopefully with some choke pointing and fort placement it'll be possible to maintain some degree of control.
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Jan 28, 2014 12:32
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You know I completely forgot that while this uses a similar combat system to might+magic, it uses Civ5 style build-your-own-cities. OK with that and the zone of control for resources, that more or less alleviates my gripes. If I want to secure my borders I'll just build fortress cities on the outsides of the empire. 'nother question: Do cities actually occupy multiple map hexes? It looks like it in the videos because they have quite big graphics. Oh also, can you field armies without having to hire a new hero character to lead them? Or at least have standing garrisons in cities and forts without having to add another leader you need to manage?
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Jan 28, 2014 18:30
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Gerblyn posted:Cities occupy 7 hexes (1 in the middle and 6 surrounding it), though if you build next to the water the rules change a little. Sweeeet. I'm feeling a lot more comfortable with the game now, it looks like it's avoiding all the things I dislike about heroes of might and magic but keeping some of the things I do like, as well as introducing a boatload of other neat stuff. You said six units on one hex, and there was that thing earlier about adjacent hexes counting as one unit for the purposes of being attacked. So does... the game sort of pull together adjacent armies into one big battle or something? So you can field an actual army rather than you + half a dozen mooks? If so that's pretty neat.
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Jan 28, 2014 19:45
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Gerblyn posted:Well a dragon raiding your starting city would be a rather terminal surprise. I guess it's possible you could take it down with your starting army? You wouldn't have much of an army left afterwards though I would second the sentiment that a degree of unfairness can make for a fun game. Normalising the map is a good idea in general and if you have to pick one or the other, pick normalising, but if it can be optioned, the option for increased and possibly unfair randomness can be a fun one to play with. Turin Turambar posted:I, for one, appreciate the lack of marketing garbage. As someone who hasn't played (and barely heard of the AoW series) before this, while it may be unsurprising for people who know the series, it definitely looks like a big departure from the 4X-esque games I'm used to. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Feb 3, 2014 |
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Feb 3, 2014 20:03
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I think my preferred phrase is more 'fantasy kitchen sink' It basically throws in every fantasy thing it can, including the kitchen sink. Generic fantasy to me implies an absence of personality, whereas there are a lot of works which just steal fantasy tropes wholesale from everywhere but do it in a somewhat self-aware manner, and/or do it so well that it's still fun. Lord of the Rings is technically 'generic fantasy' otherwise, if only because of it being the fantasy equivalent of Seinfeld by now. It still has a lot of personality of its own and a pretty unique style. On the other end of the spectrum you've got Warlock Master of the Arcane, which also just cribs a shitton of dumb fantasy stuff but is does it and makes jokes about it, which is good fun and again, somewhat different from just unironically making something boring and void of personality. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Feb 9, 2014 |
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Feb 9, 2014 03:03
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Is it just me or does that reviewer sound utterly miserable at the prospect of a solid fantasy 4X and the possibility he might enjoy it? It's like the strangest form of bipolar personality disorder, or Marvin the robot trying to write a positive review.
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Feb 12, 2014 21:18
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You could also read some of what is classed as Sci Fi, because some of it is essentially fantasy with all the magic replaced with technobabble. But yeah I mean, fantasy does come in a sizeable range of styles, about the only thing they have in common is that people tend to use swords a lot, but specific works vary between relatively realistic and low-key, to completely off the wall in terms of fantastical stuff.
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Feb 13, 2014 14:28
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Demiurge4 posted:Necromancy seems weak and obsolete in a world where you can build massive flame thrower tanks. I mean use just imagine an army of ghouls and skeletons uselessly hammering on the armoured hull while a dwarf sits inside cackling as he spews superheated napalm everywhere. What makes you think you can't simply create zombie flame tanks?
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Feb 15, 2014 17:56
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Honestly the 'only' in 'only six races' seems odd to me. Six seems like quite a lot, speaking from what I'm used to with 4x games, even without classes on top of that. If a game gave me six races to pick from I'd call that solid, if it gives me that plus classes which add different units and abilities, that's pretty generous to me.
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Feb 15, 2014 20:13
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Raygereio posted:AoW1 and AoW2 has 12 races and AoW:SM has 15. Going from that to 6 is going to feel like a step backward of sorts at first glance. I do get that, it's just compared to contemporary games, six plus additional customization options is pretty drat good. A lot of things were easier back in the day.
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Feb 15, 2014 20:41
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Gerblyn posted:Elven cities like forests, for example, and tend to get unhappy if someone comes along with a huge tank thing and chops them all down. Can you replant/magically create forests, out of curiosity? I know you can tunnel through some of the underground, so I'm curious whether you can do other things to modify the terrain around your domain?
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Feb 21, 2014 00:17
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Gerblyn posted:Yeah, you can create most of the terrain types yourself except water, mountains and rock walls underground. You can also temporarily freeze water with magic to make bridges and things like that. Sweeeeeet. Ok that's pretty great, something I always thought was missing from Civ 5. Gonna build me a badass supercity with all sorts of neato terrain around it.
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Feb 21, 2014 00:52
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Gerblyn posted:I never considered this. I assume he has red/green color blindness? Does that mean he can't see the difference between red/orange/green at all? I'm dichromatic so in addition to being specifically red-green colourblind, I also have terrible colour acuity in general, basically any given colour may be any colour remotely near it on the colour spectrum, or green, or any colour near green. I expect your game to be fully compatible with my very individual visual sensescape within the week. (seriously though, just changing the shapes of the icons is fine, as long as you have distinct patterns of light and dark it's fine, and that'll work for any form of colourblindness, also most people figure out ways to work around it because colour grading things is a perfectly sensible way to do it for most of the world and you can't expect them to stop) OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 18:26
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It looks a shitload better than Eador, that's for sure. I tried to get into Eador but the constant restarting with every world and the really crummy numbers based low level combat kinda spoiled it for me. Neat idea, just suffers in the execution. That sort of thing is kinda why AoW3s conventional approach to things is appealing to me. I know that poo poo works. It seems like a game that glues together a bunch of stuff I like from a bunch of other 4x games, while omitting all the bits I don't like about those games. The odd thing is that it seems to be doing that while also still being a part of its own franchise which makes me kinda wish I'd played the older games instead of HOMM2. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 20:32
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Baron Porkface posted:I saw in the preview that it turns a turn for you to know if the enemy accepts a diplomatic deal, that's pretty obnoxious Seems fine to me, and a bit more balanced given how diplomacy can break the game in half in some other 4x games because you just make deals with everyone instantly. In multiplayer it wouldn't make a lot of difference and in singleplayer, the player really does not need more help negotiating with the AI.
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Mar 7, 2014 12:04
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Baron Porkface posted:Tell me more about 4x's where diplomacy breaks the game. Civ 5 is arguably a cargo cult simulator in that respect. Sell a bunch of worthless crap to the AI for useful Endless space I've never really gone much into diplomacy but again, alliances are very powerful. Any game really that lets you put material wealth into the diplomacy system is a bit broken by it, because the AI doesn't understand subjective value, and diplomacy usually affects pretty major things such as a player's entire economy, or their entire ability to attack you. Fallen Enchantress is pretty terrible for this because assuming you have a comparable military you can swindle the AI out of large amounts of money and resources. If you have more military than then then they will basically throw everything at you to stop you killing them, so you almost don't have to fight them, just be able to hurt them and they'll fund everything you do. There's not really a lot you can do about it, but slowing down the player's ability to conduct diplomacy would help a little. I am somewhat against games which turn diplomacy into purely balancing a pair of value bars, because then you're just clicking through all your stuff until you find something that increases the bar and you don't care about. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Mar 7, 2014 |
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Mar 7, 2014 13:18
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Splicer posted:OwlFancier said that Endless Space's alliances are too powerful because you can leverage them to exploit the AI's simplistic understanding of relative worth. This, basically. Alliances are good, but endless space becomes immesurably easier or more difficult based on how many BFF points you have with other races. Which doesn't really have either the benefit of being realistic, so I will forgive it, or compelling from a gameplay perspective, so I will enjoy it. It just feels... weird. And very much like I'm fighting a kinda stupid computer which is making decisions based on something I and any other human player would place absolutely zero value in, because diplobux can't be used to actually do anything in the game other than make the AI stupider. If you want an example of a game with interesting diplomacy that uses a transparent points-based approach, try the new Star Ruler 2 thread, they're putting in a really interesting take on diplomacy that's a bit like civ 5s world council, where proposals can actually bite you in the arse, and your diplomacy points can be spent to sway the outcome but where it's largely down to national interest. It comes across as both somewhat realistic and compelling which is great. But for a fantasy combat and strategy game it's not needed, this game obviously puts its resources in other areas and that's fine, I just think that having a really exploitable diplomacy system would detract from that a bit. Ideally there would be a super advanced and realistic diplomacy system, but if there isn't, I think it's better to just obfuscate it so that it is at least harder to exploit, and occasionally may throw out something that could make you think it's smart if you were feeling charitable. Better to be guessing in diplomacy than steamrolling it because you can see inside the computer's head. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Mar 9, 2014 |
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Mar 9, 2014 20:26
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Germany is fond of strategy games generally isn't it? It certainly makes a lot of simulators and management-heavy games. Also quite a few games I like. I should move to Germany.
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Mar 11, 2014 19:58
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Deltasquid posted:Gerblyn, on a rather unrelated note, who makes those archdruid/theocrat videos and so on? Is he Dutch? His accent bothers me because I can't quite figure out where it's from. Somewhere in England I think, he sounds northern to me but we have so many accents over here that it's hard to pinpoint people. I do enjoy his commentary on the videos though, nice speaking cadence makes it easy to follow.
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Mar 16, 2014 21:09
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boredsatellite posted:quill18 is uploading some Dwarven theocrat videos and is not frustrating to watch him play unlike the other people who are playing this game The German LPers aren't frustrating, just not very helpful because the extent of my German is being able to say things like 'the dog is on the wardrobe'. I had trouble finding many English speaking LPers when I did a quick search, and I caught a bit of his livestream the other day so it's nice he's youtubing it. It may be on his twitch archive too.
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Mar 18, 2014 05:49
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Daktari posted:For some reason it's annoying to watch people who play games like this on "normal" difficulty. The combat AI does look rather good, actually. They don't seem to fall for you sending all your tough and buffed units up front, they will try to find weak units to attack.
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Mar 18, 2014 16:54
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I still think the blindfold looks like a pair of giant shades.
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Mar 18, 2014 21:31
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Gerblyn posted:Yeah, straight shot can shoot through adjacent units. We used to have far more restrictive rules for LoS but they were frustrating and hard to understand. The core problem was that a player would see a shot was blocked but found it hard to see exactly where to move and not be blocked. So, it was trial and error, you'd move a bit, be blocked, move again, etc. We couldn't really solve that, so we just made it less punishing to the players, so straight shot can now shoot through walls and units with a heavy penalty. If you want to see what the Line Of Sight rules *could* have been like, then play Blackguards, which has extremely strict rules in that area. Doesn't mousing over the attack show its range? It seemed like it was doing that for the enemy units in quill's stream.
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Mar 19, 2014 17:53
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Gerblyn posted:Mousing over the ability icons just says something like "Range: Medium", unless you mean something else? Oh, I thought that's what the little white circles meant when you moused over the ability. It's a little hard to make out all the symbols with video compression though so the interface is kind of a mystery to me at the moment.
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Mar 19, 2014 18:11
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Darkrenown posted:Not sure if this was missed with the "Why watch streams?" chat. I did notice that quite often, when that happens, it did more damage to the player's army than they would have sustained otherwise. It doesn't make the hugest amount of sense for random monsters but it does make sense if whoever is controlling the enemy treats that unit as part of a larger whole, the point being not to ensure their survival but to dick over the player as much as possible and slow them down.
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Mar 25, 2014 20:08
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Darkrenown posted:I'm fine with random monsters doing it, so long as it is a case of maximising the dick-overing rather than not accounting for AoOs. I just haven't seen enough of it to say which it was doing, so if you're seeing the former that's good. A good example is when quill is fighting a queen spider, he laughs at it running through about 5 opportunity attacks, but it also eats his crossbowmen when it gets to the other end. Seems like the monsters are using XCom levels of AI dickery.
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Mar 25, 2014 22:18
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