Every time I see halflings in a game like this I have flashbacks of Master of Magic from Microprose. Still an excellent game in my mind. But the game had Halfling slingers, an easily built ranged troop. Upgraded and built for elite status, you could group a stack of them and they were like a train of destruction that could take down near anything, most things with one hit. Unbalanced as all hell but man it was fun to play with them.
IN the first Age of Wonders, Haflings slingers got an extra shot, so 3 instead of 2 like every other racial ranged unit. They were, on occasion, quite powerful.
When I saw them in AoW3, I was scared the Slingers were gone, but Adventurers more or less do the same thing, and are actually, imho, more interesting. You can use them to very great effect against wild animals etc.
I was somewhat sad to see that the early Pony rider Cavalry from AoW1 didn’t make the cut. I did push for it though :(.
I sketched out a mod for Haflings that would have made them more interesting, but I find any sort of programming hard so it never got finished. Essentially, it would have doubled down on their tricksy nature, and the difficulty of actually beating them, but leaving them quite ineffective at actually beating anyone else:).
Regarding the Empire building mod, it is a very fun mod, with one criticism, which is that the AI will focus almost exclusively on the new units. Playing against an Orc AI, and you will see many Goliaths, but few Shocktroopers.
I recommend combining it with the extended settings mod, and slowing research right down and buffing independent defenders, but be careful with that last because it hurts the AI to a degree.
As far as class/race starter combos go…
Orc/Warlord is incredibly straightforward. Orcs are the least tricksy of races, but real good at hitting things and taking a punch. This combo sucks at ranged and excels at melee. Just run your big beefy dudes at the enemy, and if you can avoid whatever their tricksy nonsense is, you’ll win handily.
Elf/Warlord is similarly straightforward. More ranged, less melee/beef, but still about smashing the other guy in the mouth.
Goblin/Theocrat is a personal favorite. Gobs are relatively weak but numerous, and Theocrat plays to the “numerous” strength while mitigating the “weak” drawback (mostly because Crusaders are the beefiest beef that ever beefed, even Goblin Crusaders, and they’re a cheap and readily available T2). Theocrat ain’t that tricksy, but it plays more to a “boom/turtle” style than a “rush” style.
Rogue is probably the tricksiest base class. Any Rogue leader has to rely on abusing mismatches between his/her goofy units and abilities; you can’t just run a bunch of dudes at the enemy and hope to win (Shadow Elementals notwithstanding. Oh, did I mention that their weak Brigand T1s can evolve into Shadow Elementals? Because that’s awesome.)
Dreadnought is moderately tricksy. You get some mightily abusive units (Flame Tanks, Cannon) that have significant drawbacks. If you can work around them, you can do some silly things, but machine-type units are a pain in that they don’t naturally regen so you have to keep Engineers or appropriately specced heroes around.
Neither Sorcerer nor Druid is all that tricksy, like @Scotch_Lufkin said. You just summon your big stompies instead of building them like a Warlord or a Theocrat (or a Rogue) does. As you would imagine, there are some fun spells to sling in there.
None of the base races are terribly tricksy. Dwarves and Orcs are the most straightforward, Humans and Dwarves are nice in that they get support units that can heal so you don’t have to rely on heroes to provide healing, Elves shoot the bejeezus out of everything and are poncy, Goblins also shoot the bejeezus out of everything but are green and numerous, and uh whatever races I’m forgetting do other things.
I wouldn’t recommend any of the expansion races/classes (halfling, tigran, frostling, necromancer) until you get a feel for the rules, unless diving into the deep end is your thing, in which case have fun! They are all tricksy.
Thanks again, guys. I want to work my way up to necromancer (I heard Frostlings and Halflings make good ones) but learning the ropes first seems necessary. I plan on watching @Scotch_Lufkin’s video today for tips.
I kinda liked the Goblin Dreadnaught with Water as a starter. Cheap Musketeers to startm and then machines that give you some quality to go with your quantity. Water is good for goblins cause they like mud.
Was that before the (much needed) Musketeer nerf? Because they are sadly (not really, heh) no longer the Swiss Army knife of murdering everything with neither conscience nor remorse.
I still haven’t played a full skirmish map of this. I’ve played the first 4 or so missions of the campaign. Every time I roll up a skirmish map my hero gets killed and I ragequit. It’s an excellent game though.
Yeah you have to protect your heroes in tactical and prioritize defensive upgrades for them, especially early. The AI loves to gun for them, to the point of selling out its own units into untenable positions to damage/kill them.
There’s also a gameplay option that gives heroes resurgence in all combats (if you win, they come back if they died during combat).
Ha, thanks! I hope it holds up okay… Maybe I should make a new one with the expansions/patches…
The combat section is the most useful I’ve seen in any video. And yeah, the whole thing seems to hold up. If you do another one, I think you should feel free to focus on advanced tactics/strategies.
Link?
I got to say, I’m glad after all this time since release they put out another patch, not because I was thinking the game needed much fixing, but because the announcement prompted me to dive back into another campaign in this really rather brilliant game.
It reminded me of a couple things, first, how much more I like this than Civ these days (for me this is so much better it only makes me further regret picking up Civ VI), and second, that this game has so far really stood the test of time as I immediately went straight into that one more turn mode.
I do not suggest playing the campaigns in Age of Wonders 3. It’s a fantastic skirmish game, but the campaigns are mediocre IMO.
Got to agree on that one, I nearly stopped before I even started by making the mistake of playing the campaign first as what I thought would be a solid way of learning the game. It’s most certainly not. The campaigns, at least in my view, turned out to be rather arbitrarily hard and gave me the impression of being more like puzzles that forced you down a certain path that if not followed resulted in quick disaster.
This was feedback I gave to the dev team, both that and their campaigns in general still need some work, but also that the first one should specifically be a made as a tutorial.
P.S. The devs are some of the most fantastic I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering, I mean who personally responds to steam forum posts? answer: this dev team And I’m talking consistently and quickly, hell, I posted a question just yesterday about PBEM and got a response directly from the devs, this is for a game released years ago at this point.
Once you’re comfortable with how quickly things can go south if you play badly, I recommend the Eternal Lords campaign. Imho it’s the best one.
Golden Realms campaign is pretty good, but mission 2 can be frustrating.
Orc Warlord is in some ways a noob trap. You have tonnes of melee damage, little range and poor resistance to anythign that isn’t physical damage, and there are many many sources of non physical damage. Be careful or your tough Orcs might get shredded, very quickly, by a bunch of Undead or even just a bunch of Goblin darters.
A solid starter combo is actually Orc Theocrat because Theocrats have lots of healing, Orcs heal more if they win a fight and start with 5 bonus HP, and Theocrats also have lots of tools to mitigate low resistance.
Basically they hit hard, and can take a punch normally, but now they can be healed quickly (= more fighting) and take less damage (=resistance boosts).
Take creation adept and get heal and bless. That combo makes your t1 infantry very tough indeed, and your Crusaders arguably the best in the game (Dwarves are pretty good too though).
Get mark the heretic asap and watch your stacks melt the independents. Downside is not so great mobility until you get Exalted and Shrines.
What’s are good settings for a noob skirmish? Map size, # of opponents, etc.?
Medium/surface only/4player/Knight AI is what I’d suggest.
Great points from @BloodyBattleBrain there too. Enthusiastically agree with everything they said.
I’m going to spin up yet another game of AoW3 tonight and play around with Theocrat, one of the classes I’ve barely touched. I love AoW3 so much. I really hope they are working on Age of Wonders 4. :)