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So how do multiracial empires and armies work in this game? It seems like the inherent alignment of most races is gone to match the decoupling of cultural orientation, so there's nothing stopping you from, say, taking over a foreign city and then pumping out Elven Longbowmen with Orcish Greatswords as their front liners. Speaking of Elven Longbows, a 9 damage triple-shot with an arcing path that ignores range penalties is pretty loving crazy good. A question: are passive stat bonuses like Armored or racial modifiers baked into the displayed attributes of a unit, or are they an additional effect? Ie, looking at the wiki, a Dwarven Axeman has a displayed value of 11 armor, along with the Armored passive and an inherent +1 Armor for being a Dwarf. Are those already included in the 11 displayed armor value, or is it just the racial bonus baked in (meaning 13 actual armor), or is it neither (14 armor)?
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Sep 25, 2014 06:35
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Yeah, what made me wonder was mostly that Armored units didn't seem to have higher defense values than other equivalent units so the bonus would actually be a debuff in practice. I guess I was right!
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Sep 25, 2014 08:06
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Gerblyn posted:The rule is, if the bonus would always be applied (like with Armored) then it will be already calculated into the unit's data sheet. If the bonus is only applied in certain situations (like with Orc Slayer or Charge) then it won't be. That's perfectly rational, sane, and easily-parsed way of revealing information and I'm frankly surprised that it's the route chosen by a game this involved. I guess I still have scars from Paradox games.
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Sep 25, 2014 08:35
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Do any of the other races have an equivalent perk to Longbows in terms of standing head and shoulders above any other analogous unit? As a general question, I'm having a hard time managing race/class interactions. Even if you start out going for an obvious combo like Elven Archdruid for bonkers Hunters, you're going to end up with a hodgepodge of random races in your empire unless you decide to go full  and migrate everything to maintain racial purity. Chances are that whatever random cities you acquire aren't really going to mesh with your gimmick or they're going to have the wrong kind of terrain preferences for what you're trying to do or something. I get a little overwhelmed trying to deal with so many different possible combinations, especially when I have several full rosters of units to pick from.
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Oct 30, 2014 05:42
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madmac posted:Now that you mention it I think hero skill picks might be the most consistently infuriating thing about Youtube AoW 3. I may have to put together my own quick guide on why Holy Crap Theocrat Heroes Are Not Bad Are You Insane? and Stop Building Your Rogue Heroes around the Stupid Blowpipe, Seriously. Please do this thing. I have some pretty huge choice anxiety trying to figure out how to build my heros in this game. How often is it worth it to get the +Stat purchases given how their price scales? Also, Greblyn, is there any chance you guys could add a little more oomph to the visual and audio effects of a hero firing a musket? It's a bit incongruous at the moment when he lets off a little 'pop' and then a whole units of dudes falls over dead. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 18:57
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Arrrthritis posted:Depends on the hero and the abilities they have available. Sorcerers/Theocrats/Druids I invest much more in the army skills/spells/ranged, Warlords/Rogues/Dreadnoughts I typically build for melee & army skills (with a bit more ranged focus on the dreads b/c holy poo poo i love rifles) I was looking at that because the Prototype Rifle owns bones, especially on a unit who will likely have another powerful ability they can be using on their off turns, but I was wondering how much help I was really going to be getting out of +1 on a 30 damage attack that I use once every other turn. Thanks a bunch for the tips, madmac!
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Nov 3, 2014 19:39
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Kajeesus posted:Remember that all hero ranged attacks are items that can be gotten by killing enemy heroes (or your own heroes) or made at an Arcane Forge, in a pinch. Ranged heroes should eventually have a longbow and a musket at the least. Seriously though that Blowpipe is terrible. Does it have any redeeming qualities over a Longbow?
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Nov 3, 2014 19:58
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Unrelated: I just got a unit of Human Archers to Elite and holy poo poo Blessed Arrows is a hell of a perk. Congratulations on getting bleeding wounds, literally half the other racial units in the game!
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Nov 3, 2014 20:26
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I am an EVE player and that level of autism is flabbergasting to me.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:25
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Lobsterpillar posted:Pretty much the only tier 1 units I ever build are archers, engineers and hunters. I don't think I've ever felt a need for the tier 1 infantry or even the pikemen (except halfling farmers because that chicken adds a lot of versatility) Dwarven Axemen and other not-lovely T1 Infantry seem pretty useful as cheap buffers and movement blockers; park them right in the enemy's face, turn on Fortify instead of attacking for the +2 defense and flanking immunity, and now for one turn of production and 4 upkeep the enemy either has to waste a bunch of action points on a T1 unit or deal with a bunch of AoOs trying to move around you. Piles of cheap units are also potentially great for setting up flanks, either for each other or your more powerful units. Lastly, action points are one of the most valuable resources in the tactical battles and even a T4 only gets three of them. Throwing away a unit of T1 infantry can definitely be worth making sure your enemy's MVP unit doesn't get to do anything on their next turn.
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Nov 7, 2014 05:08
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Regarding Elemental and Stardock, it came out here a year or two ago that the man behind that studio is apparently a massive shitler, so rejoice in that you now have a better option in the same genre.
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Nov 9, 2014 23:11
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Chiming in to second that gently caress yes Mighty Meek Swarm Darters are completely bonkers. +18 damage per tier difference on a T1 racial unit that ignores range and terrain penalties is monstrous. Even if they die the turn after you cast it on them, one round of attacks probably blew up something important and gets you a better damage/mana ratio than casting a conventional nuke. EDIT: on another note, what's the schtick for human racial T1s? They seem to be pretty generally mediocre, rather than having the defined strengths or outright gimmicks of of something like Orcs or Goblins. Civic Guard are particularly boring in being an irregular that doesn't have any interesting fringe benefits. I guess they'd be pretty cool on sea maps? Voyager I fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 21:59
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So am I missing something, or is the Civic Guardsman's schtick just being the yardstick by which every other racial irregular does something cooler? I mean, poo poo, at least Prospectors can dig. Messing around a bit with Orcs made me develop an appreciation for Spearmen, since it turns out that the Orc racial bonuses along with their shields bring them a lot closer to being on par with ordinary T1 infantry in a standup fight and Sprint is an absolutely amazing ability on a unit who primarily exists to set up flanking opportunities. An irregular that can soak up a charge without folding, then push their "No, flank you!" button and setup a dunk for your own cavalry or whatever really does just kick a whole lot of rear end considering how much you pay for them. I guess that's your compensation for Razorbows apparently being a practical joke at their own expense?
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Nov 11, 2014 04:19
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Interesting bug I just discovered. I was attacked by a stack of independents including a pair of Nightmares. Both of them managed to kill themselves via retaliation attacks against a unit with Instant Wrath running. After I won the battle both of them were alive on an adjacent hex on the campaign map as if they had instead retreated, each at a sliver of health. Apparently there's some kind of broken interaction between their Lifesteal and Instant Karma. It looks like it triggers the return damage and kills them before their lifesteal is applied, but the health they get from lifesteal is still recorded somewhere so they will miraculously be restored to life after the battle. Regarding Orc T1s, Greatswords are obviously a standout and probably their iconic unit, but it seems like you wouldn't actually get many chances to use them. In the early game you're probably hard expanding and living off the units you get from clearing neutral camps, they aren't suitable for garrison duty, and the classes you'd generally pick Orcs for should have better core melee units available by the time you start gearing up for a proper army. Being offensively oriented makes them especially prone to obsolescence since they won't even serve especially well as buffer units compared to something like Dwarven Axemen. They're still objectively good units for what they are, it just seems like they won't see many moments of opportunity outside of a bleedingly fast-paced game or maybe as roster gap fillers if you pick up an Orc settlement as someone who lacks for beefy frontliners.
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Nov 11, 2014 17:12
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Each race has a pretty well defined schtick for their T1 racial units, but I guess the issue is that there isn't really a phase in the game where you'll be fielding an army consisting of specific T1 racials. Your early game army is going to be your starting stack, bolstered by quest rewards, inn units, and whoever the bandits had tied up in camp. It's workable, but it means you can't really execute on any particular plan for the early game since you can't control your army composition or even what races your cities are going to have. By the time you are ready to start pumping out your ideal units, they probably aren't T1s. Ranged units are better off because they don't have to trade punches with giants to do anything in midgame, they make good cheap wall ornaments, and they tend to have less direct analogues to compete with.
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Nov 11, 2014 18:10
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It's cool to see them making racials more distinctive, but there's still the issue where the class/race overlap and the grab-bag nature of early game armies means that racial unit themes see limited time in the spotlight. That defensive strike ability on Dwarven infantry is going to be outrageously powerful maybe beyond what the developers are anticipating. It means you can use Dwarven infantry to make a flanking attack that turns the enemy around without provoking a retaliation (which is often preferable to trading blows directly with larger foes, even at 3:2 or even 2:1) while also putting them safely in fortified stance for the next turn. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Nov 15, 2014 |
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Nov 15, 2014 02:29
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madmac posted:Tier 1 Archers and Irregulars are definitely the most useful, but that's half the Tier 1 units right there. Tier 1 swords are almost never optimal to build but they work if you need a quick blocker and don't have anything better available. To be fair, Tier 1 Archers often have similar pricetags to T2 units and are much harder to get 1/turn out of low-development cities. What kind of map setting do you use where you produce an active, dynamic T1 racial phase of the game? PS what is your steam name?
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Nov 16, 2014 21:42
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I like the sound of the new Invoke Death; a short-ranged ability that is basically a high-damage attack with the potential to instakill. The low-odds, high-stakes design being bandied around before seemed frustrating for both players.
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Nov 21, 2014 19:04
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Delacroix posted:Sorcerors lategame are utterly infuriating. They only need to build enough upgrades to get a tower in conquered city, sit the barest of bone garrisons (say, two T1 melee units ) at the back and let chaos rift and tower attacks do the heavy lifting. Yeah I'm not overly fond of playing 3+ rounds of tower roulette while my troops go dig some settlers out of the furthest corner of the map. It'd be cool if there was a capture mechanic for non-combatant units a-la civ, though I suppose that might make for too big of a swing from a successful capture.
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Nov 23, 2014 20:47
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How does reducing the number of neutral settlements work out? It seems like it would do a lot to prolong the early game / expansion phase since you would have to work much harder for each city and would also lend more weight to your own race choice since you couldn't rely as heavily on finding settlements of other races to fill out your weaknesses. (alternatively: you wouldn't have the problem I had on my last game as a good-aligned Orcish Theocrat where every neutral city on my side of the map was Halflings that didn't fit into my face-punching Crusader army at all but I couldn't just their civilization and replace them with proper musclebound Ubermensch so what the hell do I do with this empire?)Hey Madmac, do you have any suggestions for integrating Halfling units slapdash into different styles of armies, because it seems like they really don't perform well outside of their specific racial gimmicks. I guess a free T3 is a free T3 but man are Eagle Riders underwhelming on their own. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Nov 23, 2014 |
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Nov 23, 2014 21:59
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Oh, I get that. It just means Halfling units make for pretty unexciting quest rewards since they rely on morale stacking and other Halfling tricks to do their jobs and stay alive, but you may not have access to those and probably aren't going to build your army around the Eagle Rider some city quest gave you or whatever so you just end up with a unit that isn't very good compared to what it could have been.
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Nov 23, 2014 23:42
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Yeah, having to manually verify every "continue existing movement orders" command you have queued up makes the function effectively worthless since it takes longer to find the hotkey than it does just to cycle through them like any other idle army and double-click where you want them to go. Having that process remain automated, perhaps with the rider that seeing an enemy interrupts them and asks for manual attention, would make managing intra-empire movement much less tedious; right now it's a pain in the balls for no real reason.
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Nov 24, 2014 20:38
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madmac posted:I think Icecapers are the T1 Irregular, though. That was their role in SM and it's pretty much exactly the same unit. They didn't mention an active ability, so they may indeed be a T1 archer, perhaps with an evolution path as another unique Frostling kicker. I bet they'll be pretty obnoxious with seeker enchantments since literally every Frostling character will also be an air master. My only concern with Frostlings is that, if they're too heavily pegged into playing around a specific racial mechanic (such as Halflings and their Lucky/Morale and other supporting interactions) then their units won't work well when they get handed to you as part of your early-game hodgepodge.
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Nov 29, 2014 02:36
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Frozen Flame sounds like it could be the basis for some outrageous combos with a captured Goblin town and a Theocrat leader. Quad-channel Mighty Meek Swarm Darters would be pretty much peak  (preferably tied to a sled team of Martyrs to keep them alive through the enemy's next turn)Honestly just "hey, here's +4 damage split between two diametrically opposed elemental types PS you have 3-4 damage channels now" is kind of a blank check for all kinds of shenanigans. gently caress me that's a good spell, Greblyn please let it into release in that form so we can enjoy it for at least a little bit. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Nov 29, 2014 |
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Nov 29, 2014 17:42
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Impermanent posted:The issue with "growing tall instead of wide" is that height in an unconstrained resource whereas width isn't, metaphorically speaking. There is a natural constraint to how wide a given civilization can grow in AoW3 - the other players. Giving users the option to grow tall instead of wide lets them bypass what is ultimately the core mechanic of the game, that land means power. This is what ultimately lead to many of the problems inherent within the Civilzation V games and part of what caused Civilization: BE to get such bad press from most users. One of the issues with AoW III is that cities equal power as much as land does. A city with access to good resources is better, but just their base output is enough to contribute and it's pretty hard to find a truly bad place to found a city in this game. This also means that running out of space isn't that much of a mitigating factor because you don't actually need land to build useful cities.
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Dec 2, 2014 02:29
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Yeah, his guides are a better reference than the community wiki. How does that happen? Reading effortposts from goons who know too much about [Game] instead of listening to pubbies bitch about dumb things is pretty much what makes this forum worth reading.
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Dec 6, 2014 04:57
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It depends on the unit. Melee T1s struggle because they have to trade punches to function and the game will quickly move past a point where they will be able to survive doing that. Irregulars have a place as cheap flank generators and most of them have some kind of kicker that makes them worth taking a second look at, and the good T1 archers are some of the best racial units in the game, though they often come with a pricetag closer to T2 to reflect their quality. Swarm Darters and Longbowmen are viciously good units and Human Archers get a really really good perk at gold. The game will probably move past T1s by the time you start gearing up to produce an army, so T1 melee units that are competitive amongst their peers but ill-suited to surviving against higher-tier opponents don't really get a time to shine (though frankly, I can probably think of situations where trading a 50 gold melee unit to soak up some Dragon's AP for next turn would still be worth it).
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Dec 7, 2014 05:54
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Clearing out player controlled bandit camps would be pretty 
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Dec 8, 2014 22:34
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Impermanent posted:I feel like Gerblyn is a one-man army of talent and game design that makes Age of Wonders III as good as it is. It's not about peace, it's just that it's much more focused on large-scale empire management (which includes military buildup) rather than tactical combat. In that regard it's much deeper and more developed than AoW, but that's not an indictment of either game since they aren't trying to do the same thing. If you Civilization and other 4x games with more abstract combat Endless Legends seems like a great pickup. I haven't played enough of it to say anything concrete about balance but the races tend to have very strongly defined gimmicks that make them play differently from each other beyond one having +Science and the other having +Industry. It actually breathes a lot of fresh ideas into the formula.
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Dec 11, 2014 00:03
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Thyrork posted:I think it helps to use Something Awful as a resource, as long as you apply a pinch of moderation to what you take in and what you discard as "Like, your opinion, man." There are some serious rough edges with the balancing in Endless Legends. Like I said, I haven't played enough to know how big a deal that is, but I can think of a few specific examples I've noticed already. Quite a few of the factions, if you were to recreate them with the custom faction editor, come in having a whole lot of points left over. the Broken Lords, who are souls trapped in suits of armor powered by money and draining the life force of the living, only use 55/80 points, for example. However, from playing a game with them they absolutely didn't seem weak, so it feels more like a case of the point buy system not having its costs balanced appropriately (but when has that ever happened?). I've also stumbled across some garbage units and abilities. Shields, for example, come with useful stat boosts, but their Block ability offers an absolutely trivial amount of protection (the best shields in the game will have something like +8 when even units who aren't trying terribly hard to be defensive can easily be well into the 100+ range). Similarly, the Broken Lords have a cavalry unit called the Ryder that ends up being severely underwhelming because it's on-hit life drain effect, meant to be a defining aspect of the unit, does an even more pitiful amount of damage and healing, to the point where it might as well not exist. These aren't game breaking issues since you still have a fully functional game left when you just don't use the items and units that are bad (how often do you build Razorbows?), but if they're letting things that obvious slide through I wouldn't be surprised if there are deeper issues that I merely haven't uncovered yet. It's still a really good game, especially since competitive balance isn't generally a super high priority in that kind of 4x, and the fact that manual combat isn't really the core of the game the way it is with AoW III means you don't lose much autoresolving things in multiplayer.
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Dec 11, 2014 04:48
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It helps that, while SA is the worst place on the internet, it's also pretty honest from what i've seen regarding game development. 
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Ojetor posted:The did say next year in that one podcast that was posted a few pages back no? I'd expect it around late January at the earliest. "A month and a half" seems like a pretty optimistic estimate when they haven't even started teasing us about 'coming soon' and the like.
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Dec 14, 2014 23:38
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I don't understand the compulsive need some nerds feel to have cleavage shoved in their faces at all times, even during activities are completely removed from anything sexual or erotic. I mean, for gently caress's sake dude, you're on the internet. If that's what you're hankering for it's really not hard to find without doing the digital equivalent of asking for your chess pieces to be modeled after furry strippers.
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Dec 16, 2014 22:21
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Can you guys make nexus shitlord honeypot thread as a followup to this discussion?
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Dec 17, 2014 19:19
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Pretty sure cat person riding a chariot pulled by giant tigers is the only acceptable followup to the predecessor unit of a cat person riding a giant tiger.
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Feb 6, 2015 22:28
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a!n posted:That raises the question, what would the Archon dwelling need to not suck? Right now being undead means they come with some pretty heavy baggage that none of the playable classes or races are equipped to deal with and there's nothing particularly amazing or unique about undead units that makes them worth the hassle. Presumably they'll mesh a lot better with a Necromancer's army, though it would be nice to see them integrated better into more than just one class. To go into further detail: their basic units are basically just ordinary T1s and T2s with minor perks that can't regenerate. The only real standout is Casters getting frost bolts and being the only thing that can heal you other undead units (with the caveat that they can only heal undead units, because of course we couldn't have an Archon unit that's generally useful). Titans are just a big old beatstick, and while Projectile Resistance makes them harder for T1 archers and irregulars to focus down it's not enough to make them worth the difficulties when there are so many other units that can fulfill the same role without needing a bunch of unimpressive T2s dragged along just to keep them moving. I guess Wraiths and Wraith Kings are cool because Incorporeal is a very powerful trait that most classes can't get access to, but again they're held back in their ability to be an independent stack of floating arrow-resisting city flippers because they can't regenerate in the field. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 18:22
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Can we buy it yet???
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Mar 11, 2015 20:37
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madmac posted:Nah. They just don't think Total Awareness is as good a buff as what the other races got, because they don't understand how good it is, as far as I can tell. I mean these are the same sort of people that complain that Longbows aren't good enough, so I assume it's just a touch of elf supremacy as work. How do you not get that passive immunity to flanking attacks is one of the most ridiculously amazing abilities you could ever give to something in this game? Do they just autoresolve all their fights or something?
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Mar 18, 2015 23:18
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Carnalfex posted:The secret to autocombat is never ever ever bring cavalry. It's okay, the autocombat AI is pretty good about self-correcting that issue.
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Mar 18, 2015 23:41
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Gerblyn posted:The bonuses you get at level 5 or typically so powerful they almost break the game in half, level 5 elf lets all elven support and archery units fire without line of sight or ranged penalties, for example.  Can't wait to play as Elven Hitler.
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Mar 19, 2015 21:02
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Captain Oblivious posted:How do you even win a siege as the attacker at that point How do you win a siege as the defender against that? All your walls do is make it harder for you to reach them.
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Mar 19, 2015 21:56
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