Age of Wonders III

[Springheel]

http://www.triumphstudios.com/aow3_press.php

 

I am SO looking forward to this.

[Baddcog]

Screens look pretty cool. Just bought Overlord II a little while ago on steam, haven't played a lot but everything works pretty well. Don't know much about the studio but they seem to have their act together.

[SeriousToni]

I have never played Age of Wonders. Been a HOMM-fan all along

A friend of mine gave me AoW 1 and 2 to try it out. I don't know with which to start - maybe I wait until AoW 3 comes out, haha!

[Springheel]

I still have AoW2 installed, and play it from time to time with my daughter. It and Thief are the only two games I've maintained long-term interest in.

[SeriousToni]

Is it like in Heroes Of Might & Magic, that you better play in "Hotseat Mode" with someone else instead of a network game? I remember the rounds beeing very long (and the game itself) and it was terribly boring if you played via LAN since you just had to sit and wait for your opponent to finsish

[Springheel]

There are a few different modes; hotseat, pbem, and simultaneous turns over lan.

[SeriousToni]

Simultaneous turns? Well that sounds really hot

[i30817]

The game works by simultaneous turns by default in single player too. It's a bit gamey (you can often bait and 'disengage' or 'ambush' a patrolling enemy or capture a resource and retreat) and sometimes it offers a bit of rage when this (rather nasty) technique doesn't work due to popups.

 

As long as you don't savescum (like i do ;-; ) it's plenty challenging.

 

Combat screens are a bit-less-than-topnotch turn-based (topnotch would be something like JA2), but that part has been consistently better with small tweaks since AoW1, nothing revolutionary like interrupts or climbing thou (one to the improvements from AoW1 was that units no longer have unlimited counterattacks, and too many of these drain stamina in the next turn so building up a tank hero and sending him out to kill armies by himself is impossible from AoW2 on; another improvement is that elevation allows ranged attacks farther).

So i'm not worried about combat not being fun.

 

Hope they don't remove domination attacks altogether. Brainwashing a band of heroes is a bit cheap, but it took plenty of scheming to get right and it seems a legitimate way to play, even if it's forbidden in multiplayer.

 

I wonder if heroes-leaders are back in from AoW1 or they'll keep the domain concept or find a way to mix both (leaders leveled up on AoW1 as a normal hero, they didn't on AoW2 and AoW:SM).

Edited February 7, 2013 by i30817