Yep, they’re called “Cosmic Happenings” and you can turn them off on the “Advanced Rules” screen when you start a new map.
Do you mean on the cloth map? Enemy movement you can see shows up both on the regular view and the cloth map by default (you only won’t see it if you have “play movement animations” turned off under Options) … but there are a bunch of units that can hide in various ways. That may be what’s happening to you.
Yep, I do think Warlords are an example of AOW3 hiding its light under a bushel - it seems like it should be the most newbie-friendly class, but instead it’s best tackled after you have a bit of game experience under your belt.
(For anyone new to AOW3 reading the thread - the best class to start with is probably sorcerer. Just keep an eye on your mana income and mana storage capacity.)
Sorcerer is probably the best for new players, Arch Druid is probably a good one, too. I actually find Dreadnaught to be fairly new player friendly, too. I would argue Rogue is the MOST advanced though, to get the most out of it.
I love Dreadnought, but I’d probably join the crowd in recommending Sorcerer/Arch Druid to newbies. Theocrat wouldn’t be bad either, maybe better than Druid. To get the most out of Druid you have to babysit your animals until they grow up big and strong, but boy howdy do they grow up big and strong. Sorcerer is really “summon monsters, blow up enemies with lightning, profit” and Theocrat is awfully strong played simply with mostly Crusaders and strong supports – it ain’t that advanced to figure out what to do with a button that says “heal a friendly for 20.”
I do love Warlords too, but yeah, you have to play them a bit differently and understand unit strengths and roles a little better to reach their potential. The nice thing is that the Warlord unit variety makes them really, really good at countering whatever you’re seeing out there so long as you can get some elemental damage from supports or something.
But enough about newbies, let’s talk about Tigrans! I didn’t expect to love them, but guys they are so awesome I’m telling you.
[ul]
[li]Pounce is incredible. Cheetahs – t1 irregular – lack a ranged attack, but Pounce opens up new worlds of tactics for Tiggers. So awesome. Also you can Pounce over walls, which is so amazing for early sieges.[/li]
[li]Shredders – t1 archers – are great! No LOS penalty makes them again awesome at early sieges, and they inflict bleed. They’re like razorbows that don’t suck.[/li][li]Corollary: Playing as Arch Druid, my Hunters get the same LOS ignore and bleed inflict that Shredders do. They’re so awesome. I’m pretty much all hunters all the time right now, and it’s amusing as hell.[/li]
[li]Prowlers – t1 infantry – are hardcore ninja badasses. Improved Wall Climbing and Martial Arts are really nice things to have on infantry, who knew?[/li]
[li]Sun Spears or whatever – the t1 pikemen – are kinda only okay. They have Guard Breaking, which rocks, but their damage is uninspiring and they’re not really tough enough to go breaking guards all that often.[/li]
[li]Sphinxes – t3 racial irregular – are hilarious. Blow up all the things! They’re a lot squishier than beetles/knights/firstborn, but they’re very scary. Also literally scary, with a decent Cause Fear ability and Fear Strike at elite.[/li]
[li]The t2 support ladies look bad on paper; haven’t tried them yet. I suspect their real value is in the split spirit/fire ranged attack. Or maybe the werepanther shift rules and they work more like an irregular than a traditional support. Dunno yet.[/li][/ul]
Overall, Tiggers are fast as hell – Athletics giving them extra in-combat movespeed rocks – hugely damaging, and they die real fast. Tons of fun to play. Well done, Triumph.
ShivaX was telling me that shifting them into Panthers is where your heavy hitting units come from - they hit HARD and can take a beating. I haven’t tried them yet, myself, but I trust he’s absolutely correct.
robc04
1626
Regarding enemy unit movement…
I can see the dots pop up on the mini map if I’m looking at it, and if I happen to have the map focused on a location where movement occurs I see it, but my view doesn’t jump to enemy movement if they enter my vision during their movement. So I feel like I need to stare at the mini map to see if I can detect a dot popping up.
Is there a way to have the game focus on enemy movement turning their turn if you don;t happen to have the screen positioned there? I do have the Show Movement Animation option turned on.
fdsaion
1627
I think that might be another consequence of simultaneous turns?
rob, you can turn on seeing enemy movements in the same menu in the upper right during gameplay that let’s you toggle hexes on and off. I forget what it’s called, but it’s the top option. Give that a try and see if it’s not what you were looking for?
robc04
1629
I think that might do it, thanks! I forgot about those settings. I kept going to options.
robc04
1630
I took a big gamble and…
it didn’t pay off.
First, even though I know you get yourself into trouble by over extending your units in combat I still freakin do it. I’ll just move over there and try and take out that knight. Next turn the AI attacks your dude from every which way exploiting the flanking bonus. The AI is definitely aware of the flanking bonus.
I’ve been duking it out with 1 of the AIs, I’m friendly with 1 and I only just met one that isn’t interested in signing a peace treaty. Well, I took 1 of the enemy AI cities which we had gone back and forth a couple times with. I went to her more developed and defended one and she met me in the field. I was sloppy and took too many loses and out of my 3 stacks I had only 1 after that. She came out again with more troops and I decided to make a beeline for the city. The pre combat report said we were evenly matched. My leader was in the void from the prior battle, so he couldn’t help out with spells.
I went for it and they beat me my having 1 unit left with less than 50% of their HP. I was hoping to get the city and raze it, but she may have taken it back before it completed since she had those other troops close by that met me in the field. When I made that move I was thinking the raze would be immediate, but now that I think about it she probably would of had her turn to stop me I guess.
In any case it’s been a rough first game in my comeback after almost a year layoff. I think I picked Lord difficulty with a human warlord leader. Part of my problem is that I’m not familiar with the units and skills and using them intelligently. There are so many different attributes each unit has it’s not something I can look at once and just know what things do and what is good against them. I need to start taking notes in my obsessive compulsive way to help me remember.
Alstein
1631
I’ve never tried MP in this game before- how much time investment would this take- and would it be doable over two different computers?
I have like 300 hours in AOW3 and I still overextend in combat and get my dudes killed. Especially during Blood Moon (all units get +2 attack).
Stupid Blood Moon, grumble grumble…
I loaded this up last night and figured I’d start my first real attempt at a match (own the game and now all the DLC and never really played). Figured I’d set up a random map/leader and get back to it this weekend. Four hours later, my Dwarven Warlord is doing ok, but I’m sure I’m just around the corner from a good stomping. I’ve been building up my economic base going on the tips laid out in that tutorial series that was linked earlier and it seems to be working. Really enjoying this so far and am looking forward to getting back into it later on.
robc04
1634
Gylphs of Warding, that doesn’t sound like it’s going to make it easier to take her city.
Eh. It’s damage to your troops every turn they’re in that city’s domain. Just charge in from out of range in a single turn, no problem!
robc04
1636
I ended up taking 1 hit from it because my turn ended 1 hex in. Next turn took the city which happened to contain the leader and the throne. She won;t be bothering me any more. Thing is now I have peace treaties with the 2 remaining AIs. Wonder how this is going to play out.
ioticus
1637
After playing against one AI on Knight I finally won after 15 hours. It was mostly about fighting stacks of neutral wandering undead. Are there more types of wandering monsters than undead (this was a random map)? I expected more variety.
Yeah, there are a LOT of more types of random monsters, from Wizard-types to bandits and beasts.
ioticus
1639
Strange, I wonder why I saw almost nothing but undead?
Fickle Finger of the Random Numbers, I suppose. There are half a dozen different creature spawning camps - is it possible there was just an undead one (or two) near your cities you never found and so they just kept spawning those over and over again?
