Age of Wonders 3

First impressions? Looks like a buy to me but waiting til I here some firsthand.

I'm not going to write up a massive review, because there are plenty reviewers online that get paid to do that... But I will say that, so far, this is the true spiritual successor to Master of Magic, in every possible way I can think of right now.

This may end up being my #1 favorite game, and finely dethrone my childhood nostalgia for Master of Magic.

I am not sure when I'll get around to multi-player, but the YouTube videos I've seen make it look as expected for a TBS game.

Mixed first impressions for me - I like the depth of well, everything, the combat and building aspects. However, the launcher with it's unsubtle demands to make yet another online account is distasteful, and the way it overwrites the in-game graphical settings with the default the launcher thinks up every time you launch it is inexcusable.

At least inexcusable insofar as it doesn't work at 2560x1600 - text is extremely blurry and it draws giant black boxes around or over the top of tooltips. So every time I launch it I have to go through the crap launcher and tell it, no I am not making an account, and then change the graphic settings to a resolution that works.

velk_sl said:

Mixed first impressions for me - I like the depth of well, everything, the combat and building aspects. However, the launcher with it's unsubtle demands to make yet another online account is distasteful, and the way it overwrites the in-game graphical settings with the default the launcher thinks up every time you launch it is inexcusable.

At least inexcusable insofar as it doesn't work at 2560x1600 - text is extremely blurry and it draws giant black boxes around or over the top of tooltips. So every time I launch it I have to go through the crap launcher and tell it, no I am not making an account, and then change the graphic settings to a resolution that works.

Click to expand...

I have the same size monitor and I launch it in windowed mode. Granted, I have to resize it every time but its not to painful for me. I think the online account is mostly to deal with online play. You don't have to register a log in if you are playing purely offline. or so it seemed when I first started the game.

So if I understand correctly the campaign is just two races right? Is multiplayer the only area where you make your own guy? I thought the customization and making your own hero were the big draws.

Ok, one wrinkle in the design that has me frustrated for the first time... The random aspect of research. It is simply IMPOSSIBLE to rely on research to effectively specialize your lords spells. Its a slot machine with absolutely no direction past your lords class. And to a lesser degree I wish your heroes could gain their own off class spells via something other than level ups.

As it goes though, I have to say that so far I have found very little to be disappointed with.

I'm loving it, I jumped right in trying to clone my master of magic experience. I didn't touch the campaigns, whatever. I set the AI to the third difficulty, 8 players, large continents, random everything. Fire away and I wasn't disappointed at all. I like the variations on the hex based combat with the multiple action points and how they interact both offensively and defensively. The sound is great, been waiting a long time for a game to even approach MoM. My first game lasted about 20 turns before I learned some of the core concepts and just had to restart, having an absolute blast.

Invoke Extraordinary Mount is the most awesome spell ever.

Wrinkle #2... WTF is with the campaign forcing you to never allow a hero unit to die, but not forgiving the fact that its not possible for defenders to retreat?

Talk about a serious oversight.

Effectively, its unlikely there is ever an actual reason to risk losing a hero in ANY battle because its an instant loss the moment they die. They are pigeon holed in some distant city never to be touched in battle.

Considering this is a campaign ONLY issue, its a small one. But for all intents and purposes its ruined the campaign experience for me almost completely.

Time for sleep.

I'm a little disappointed. There's plenty of customization that's important, but I think the game is lacking in enough other areas to come off ruining my initial experience.

Race specific units have been underwhelming some are pretty op while others will never get touched because your class units are just better in every way.

The unit tree is pretty shallow even when combined. I had 3 races under my control at my first win (4 player) and I had 8? + 5 + 6 + 4 unique units? 23 unique (not just race mixing) units across 3 races coupled with poor unit design left me with maybe 7 units worth choosing from at end game. Playing as a warlord that's a pretty big deal that you don't have a lot of variety to handle certain race/classes.

Item crafting completely disappointed me in that you can't spend excess resources to go beyond the 5 point modifier. It's worse combined with the hero system being so limited and class determining everything. Why cant I make this rogue I hired a ranged character or craft a bow to force the issue (not as a useable item)

Why is every hero a calvalry melee?

Why does diplomacy bug out when I have an open boarders alliance with an AI then force me to tresspass through every area they (re)conquer after the deal is made but Original areas are okay?

This may change with class, but the good/evil doesn't have enough variety to give you breathing room. So if I do anything combative it's an evil action unless I kill an evil aligned entity. If I conquer a city my choice is limited to absorb good or raze/plunder bad. I can't vassal as a good action? Defend your boarders against a good player - bad, regardless of alignment. So I either let creeps run continually to offset the injustice of expansion/defense, bribe in diplo to raise good or terraform the world, otherwise im evil. Come on. Even Fable/ME/DA have a better variety.

Game is good, but it needs some patches or mods to hit its peak imo.

Welp, got my ass kicked in the tutorial. The orc dropped an attack out of nowhere on my border city where you pick up the draconian hero dude. Attacking army had a construct called shrine of smite, buffed it with instant wrath in the first turn and that was pretty much the end of the fight.

The Shrine is one of the OP units I was referring to.

Ran a custom game and the AI did 1 Hero and 4 shrines and steam rolled several stacks that got in its way.

Sulrn_sl said:

Game is good, but it needs some patches or mods to hit its peak imo.

Click to expand...

From what I understand, they are alredy planning on supporting modding. I am guessing they will integrate it with Steam Workshop as is standard these days.

The game is built ontop of Stardocks 'Elemental - War of Magic' game engine, and that game was designed from top to bottom to be modded with XML. So there is no technical reason it won't happen. My guess is they are just trying to make it as user friendly as they can, and to make sure its not to easy to break the game.

Ok, this might be obvious to some of you. But how do I move multiple armies together?

if you mean 2 stacks, one with 6 armies, they need to be adjacent to each other before combat starts. If you mean 2 small stacks into 1, just take one and right click on the other.

I mean two stacks of 6. Was hoping there was a way i could just move them together to save time. Thanks Byr

We all wish there was a way to do =/

Anyone found any good editor tutorials?
Maybe I am just not looking in the right places.

I have to agree with every one of these points.
Edit: After following the discussion, I have changed my mind on a few of them. The mechanics may be more sound then I had initially thought.