Age of Wonders 3

I haven’t been playing scenarios - the random map generator is pretty good and it seems less puzzle-like to me.

How is the diplomatic AI? Has it improved much? I was just tired of being the most powerful empire, owning like 50% of the map, and the next largest most powerful empire would refuse to ally even if your faction was like 1000. It just forced you into conquering all their cities.

Allying is basically broken. Then again, trying to ally with others is playing AOW3 wrong ;)

Yeah, random maps are the way to go IMO.

Do you just always do a conquest victory? Doesn’t that get dull after a while? You get to the point where you know you are going to win and you slog through a conquest? Id much rather have a spell of mastery mechanic, which I do not think exists in AoW3.

Wrapping up a conquest vic isn’t that sloggy in AOW3 unless you’re doing something silly like playing a large 6p FFA or something. And no, I don’t really consider turtling up and hitting Next Turn 30 times to be much of an improvement of a win condition.

The Seals victory works pretty well though, and the AI is reasonably competent at it.

I found that the opponent AI is pretty good at surrendering when you hit the mop-up point.

I like the surrender mechanic because it speeds up the snowball, which is great, but at the same time it’s so powerful that once you smash your first opponent the game is basically all over but the crying.

Doesn’t help I’ve been playing the Empire Building mod, which makes heroes a bit over the top at high (12+) levels.

“Do you just always do a conquest victory? Doesn’t that get dull after a while? You get to the point where you know you are going to win and you slog through a conquest? Id much rather have a spell of mastery mechanic, which I do not think exists in AoW3.”

Use the seals victory. Creates much more tension because you’re playing against a clock and the AI advantages are actually tangible and important (namely tonnes of extra units so it can physically capture and hold more of a limited resourse than you can). Plus the AI knows how to play this mode.

The main problem with Empire mod is that it actually confuses the AI. Having 2 building trees is fine for Human players because you’ll spec one city to do one thing and the other to do another. The AI will make the same choice for every city.

Plus there’s so much more going on in terms of city improvement that the AI just doesn’t know what to do.

Try the same settings map with and without this mod enabled and you’ll note the difference in the AI’s ability.

It’s sad because it is one of the best designed and conceived mods out there, and one that is clearly for singeplayer.

On the subject of mods, try ‘The old man and the sea.’

Yeah, the AI ain’t great at it. It already tends to dramatically overbuild its cities, and Empire Building just makes it worse. The AI also doesn’t understand heroes at all, and doesn’t seem to really be able to take advantage of the high-level stuff that makes them absolute monsters.

It’s been a lot of fun to mess around with after some stupid hundreds of hours with the vanilla game, though.

Saw Old Man and the Sea featured in that dev blog, been meaning to try it out. Maybe that’ll be my next game.

I’m a game testing the Dark Elf mod I am working on, huge settings (extended settings mod - awesome. Also, research to 4005 of normal, city growth requirements the same) few cities, few dwellings, everything set to far, resource sites to few, start position set to far and it seems like alot of fun.

Scouting and watchtowers really come into play here because the distances are vast! Few cities means you need to be careful with units etc.

I’m not using forts either but did allow settlers, so the AI is quite expansionist.

I can recommend these settings for someone wanting a slower game where even 1 or 2 t3 units really make a difference.

Ohhh that sounds awesome! Can link mods? How far along are you in your mod?

All racial units in except the T4.

About half a dozen abilities to create and/or tweak.

Racial governance to be done.

Class variations (abilities and/or unit types) to be done.

Icons need doing.

It’s playable but not polished, some imba, some boring stuff, lots of playtesting and changing stuff to look for the fun.

It’s hard grindy and quite boring, sometimes frustrating work, but when it comes together it is fun.

Well I am IN when you get a little further along and I love the long distances and strategic setup you mentioned.

Very cool, @BloodyBattleBrain!

So you’re testing with those settings in the vanilla (ish) skirmish mode? Interesting! Mod link to “extended settings”?

I’ve long thought that overland speed in AoW3 is too fast. That’s an interesting way to deal with that.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=523178481&searchtext=extended

Titanic map settings and slow research…:O.

@inactive_user you could just mod units to have less speed. That would actually be pretty easy, but time consuming to do.

Heh, true. And if that had more direct relevance to the job search, maybe I would ;)

@ Adam, I might make that mod myself. You’re not the first to mention overland speeds being too much. Reducing mp would require rebalancing alot of stuff though, but it would have the (desirable for some) effect of making every map bigger, and tactical maps well (but would shift the emphasis onto ranged units?)…

Oh gosh, I didn’t even think of tactical speed being affected. That’s balanced pretty carefully right now.

Hopefully it wouldn’t be too tough to mod an ability that gives +8 tactical speed or whatever, then give that to everything while nerfing their “native” speed. There are already abilities that affect overland or tactical exclusively, so hopefully that’s a flag easily set.

Terrain costs might also be an issue. 6 to move through rough terrain could lead to bad outcomes if units are only moving 14 or whatever to start with.

Modders better than I (not that that means much) have come up with 2 solutions:

modify the unit requisites (infantry, cavalry etc) to have an effect on movement, and modify terrain so every terrain costs slightly more.

The latter wouldn’t affect combat speed.