Are any of the expansions considered must-haves?
All of them. ;)
Second one (Necromancer class, Frostling race, Tigran race) is meatier than the first (Halflings, bunch of new treasure sites) but they’re both excellent and well worth the price.
First on (golden realms) does have the Seals of Power king of the hill victory condition however, which you might find a better win condition than murder everyone else.
Thanks. Since the votes are a split decision I might stick with just the base game for now and see if the DLC reaches 75% off in the summer sale.
After reading this thread I decided to try the game out again.
I
Am
Terrible
At
This
I quit because I was losing. On the easiest difficulty level. I am totally numpty.
What is a good combo for a builder to get started? I do not have the latest expansion.
After a year and a half away or so, I’ve been playing this like 4 hours a day for the last three days. God damn this is one fine game. Not much else to add. I finally managed to pry myself away from Halflings (favorite race, by far).
Working on some old tried and true Fiery Orc Warlord Nations and having a good old time.
I bought the Deluxe Edition, which includes a little of the DLC at the big discount price.
Yeah, I think that there are no games with better turn-based combat that AoW III. So many options and abilities, but they thematically make sense, so the player will easily remember them. So much personality. And I am only a hundred hours in, still much left to do, much to discover. :)
And the combat interface is the best I’ve ever seen, too.
I’m not opposed to this, but it makes no sense to me. If it’s a turn-based strategy game set in a fantasy setting, why not use the brand name they have already built?
It may be turn based, but maybe it’s a very different concept. If they wanted to make an economic game (something like a TBS Offworld Trading Company), calling it Age of Wonders wouldn’t be productive as it would set the wrong expectation. Perhaps their new game doesn’t have tactical combat at all or otherwise significantly differs from what Age of Wonders is known for.
Just be aware that the game with those two expansions is 100% better than without them. Without them you aren’t going to get a true sense of what a masterpiece the game became with them included.
Except they said that the new game was going to make AoW3 players very happy. I can’t imagine that would be the case if there was a huge divergence from that formula. Maybe they’re going to make a Overlord TBS? I’m very curious to see what they’re doing.
Epoch of Wonders?
Bueller?
I did forget they said that. Okay, maybe it’s the other way, and maybe it’s strictly a tactical combat game, a la some of Julian Gollop games? Saying “AoW3 players should be happy!” is so broad. :)
But if it’s a very similar concept, I agree with @Scotch_Lufkin that it makes no sense. That’s why I still believe it will be significantly different in some way, whether it’s gameplay, lore/world, etc.
I havent played it in a while but from what i remember.
I think warlord is the most straight forward, your goal is to get tier 3 or 4 units out. If you take the elf you get better ranged attack, but Orcs, Humans, and Dwarves have their strengths.
You need gold, research and cast the global/domain spells that help that.
You want full stacks for exploring, dont take on anything that is too strong early on. You can leave things unexplored for a while. Destroy thieves dens as soon as you can. I usually play where you cannot build towns, that might make it easier sinc eit will be one less thing to worry about and you have a limited number of cities on the map.
Leveling up your heroes is good, you can have more than on hero in a stack. You want to raise their spell casting skill (at least i did), then the other benefits.
The Sorcerer is also fairly easy from memory. You want to focus on summon and mana generation. You will be tight on money. The advantage is that you can summon your units right to you hero stacks.
There are some new players to Age of Wonders 3, so I’ll re-link my tutorial (it’s from the launch of the game, but most of the concepts are the same, just that with the expansions and some patches some new stuff has been introduced).
Hopefully that helps a little.
We did this a while back in the thread. I’ma pick one and say Elf Druid. Arguably the best T4 in the game, ridiculously good early unit (hunters), and leveling summoned beasties into their elder versions is great fun.
Do you guys play with City Founding turned on or off? I’ve had mine off since city spam was such a problem back at launch (before the 1.4 patch, one of the greatest game patches of all time), but I’m wondering if those initial problems have long-since been addressed and if it’s worth turning it back on for my next outing.
I did the same as you, but I honestly keep forgetting it’s a thing. My vote is leave it on and report back to how the AI handles it! :)