1661

If you have Golden Realms there’s no reason not to install it, it makes everything better.

1662

With Eternal Lords I’m well on my way to a Unity victory. I’ve yet to have to fight a war - my army is strong enough that the AI factions request a peace treaty almost as soon as we meet. All my combat has been with independent spawn nodes or quest-related. I just let independent cities become Vassals until they eventually ask to join my empire. I love that the new expansion adds a means for a peaceful victory in a game so focused on warcraft.

I’m playing as a Frostling Theocrat, by the way.

1663

Good luck with that. I just finished a game on one notch above average (lord?) in a similar vein. Theocrat, peaceful approach, a continents map even, with a continent all to myself. I focused on getting my relationship high enough with two races and maintaining peace with the other AI factions. Then I started construction on a pair of unity towers for the victory condition. I made sure the cities where I was building them were heavily defended.

The AI factions all came down on me like a bag of hammers. I handily lost the game. It was awesome.

-Tom
1664

Thanks for the warning. I’m playing on Normal, so may have a bit easier time of it.

1665

You people are weird.

In the frolicking meadows of the Age of Wonders, there is only war.

1666

I’ve been watching some Let’s Plays and I’m curious if there is a setting for showing hexes on the strategic map. I kind of strongly dislike that all terrain is path-able but I guess that’s a minor issue.

1667

Yes, there’s a setting for turning on or off the hexes.

1668

This may be one of the strongest endorsements I’ve seen yet for AoW3. The thought of a 4x-ish game where the AI is capable of maintaining peace when war would serve no purpose is tantalizing enough (as opposed to the multitude of games where the AI will declare war on you for no reason, or when it’s obvious they’re outmatched and already fighting wars on two other fronts), but for that same AI to also be capable of banding together to defeat the player when the player approaches victory…? That seems like the elusive AI trifecta of stable/logical diplomacy, intelligent long term strategy, and aggressive responsiveness when the player approaches victory.

I don’t know if I’ve ever lost a 4x-ish game when I was on the cusp of victory. That does sound awesome.

1669

I’m glad to hear the AI is good at dealing with the Unifier victory as it is with Seals victory. It’s still not nearly aggressive enough on the strategic map, but then an overly aggressive AI isn’t going to be a lot of fun for people who don’t play extremely aggressively themselves.

I think it’s more that AOW3 rewards an extremely aggressive playstyle much moreso than most 4X games do. Which is fine; I’m still an incredibly happy customer.

1670

If you want instant and long-lasting world-wide aggression, just set a Seals victory for 150 points (or whatever the max is), and clear one seal. You don’t even have to stick around to defend it. Just clear it and go on your merry way. Then watch every faction in the entire game, enemy and ally alike, declare war on you within a turn or two and lose their minds in a frenzied race to capture all the other seals while systematically wiping you and every other faction off the face of the map.

If I had one complaint about this, it’s that this is also a pretty good way to trick the AI factions into biting off way more than they can chew, as they will start clearing seals they aren’t prepared to defend, but that won’t stop them from trying their best to do so, subsequently causing half the factions to lose entire armies trying to defend and reclaim seals from respawning elementals–or at least distracting them to such significant degree you can start land-grabbing without much resistance everywhere else. Eventually, you can return to those seals, and at the base of each one will be a nice little pile of treasure waiting for you from all the dead AI heroes who perished trying to maintain control throughout the game.

This isn’t quite as common when you set Seal victories to 30-36ish points (because if you don’t act quickly, someone is going to win that game faster than you think), but you’ll still get a healthy amount aggression.

1671

I love Endless Legend, but with this expansion Age of Wonders has finally pulled ahead- if not in style, then definitely in substance. A fantastic time for fantasy strategy games.

1672

Oh, and that isn’t meant to say anything bad agout the aesthetics of Age of Wonders 3- I think the game is simply beautiful! Seriously, try a battle at a Frostling capital. I’m just bowled over by the creativity of the science fantasy world in EL. Man, those Cultists of the Eternal End… So great.

1673

1674

Trebuchets can go a long long way to evening up the odds attacking a walled city. 4 or 5 of those with some strong supporting troops, coupled with the spell that takes away the field of vision penalty and they just start taking out the AI enemy bit by bit.

1675

I take it back about forming alliances, been trying all afternoon, doesn’t much matter what I offer them, they only get as close as throwing me sweet nothings about how we’re close to a deal but no cigar.

Next step, to work on attacking the weakest of the four until they are battered down and see if they then have a near death epiphany and decide alliance is preferable to oblivion.

1676

Hahaha, okay, Tigran Mystics are amazing. The panther shift is incredible.

Maybe it’s the game settings – strong guards, normal everything else, 4 players (me & three kings) on a large no-underground map – but Tigrans feel horrendously overpowered to me right now.

Also, playing evil may be a bit overpowered right now as well. I haven’t even bothered to terraform or build any kind of happiness improvements, and my entire empire has been cheerful the whole freaking game.

Regardless, I’m amused. Sphinxes get better the more of them you have, and Mystics are seriously the best support unit in the game oh my god. Tigran Arch Druid is pretty great; Hunters get the ignore LOS thing and bleed (better than you’d think!) and shaman get a dire bear shift. I haven’t summoned hardly a thing and I’m hugely far in the lead.

1677

So my game is down to me and the last AI. We were friends the since we met but I could never get them to agree to an alliance because they said they were focusing on a stronger ally. I declared war, defended against a 3 stack attack on a walled city and took one of his cities. I did some scouting and the 3 or 4 cities I scouted out had multiple stacks with some strong troops. She probably has 60-70% of the land, so I would have an up hill battle.

I don’t think I’m going to finish this one out and just say I took 2nd place. Now I think I can appreciate installing Golden Realms and the Seals of Power victory condition. So I think my 2nd game back will be with the expansion installed so I can see if I can avoid needed to take a bunch of cities defended by multiple stacks.

I think I didn’t expand quickly enough and I don;t think I was smart managing my income. I need to pay greater attention to what roles I want the cities to actually be.

There are so many skills that a single unit can have that it is pretty time consuming to evaluate an enemy army. There are the native skills themselves, ones acquired from leader attributes, from spells, from some map features. There is so much to digest.

1678

It’s been a long time since I played, so how does one raze a structure? I have a quest to raze a watchtower, and I’ve defeated the army inside it, but can’t find a command to raze or destroy it. I would have thought defeated the army would do it, but the quest is still active.

1679

There is a little icon when you click on the structure on the map, next to the little picture in the middle of the screen. If that makes sense.

1680

It did, thank you.

And with this expansion, AoW has overtaken Endless Legend as my favorite fantasy 4X. It ranks up there with Civ IV+BtS.