1761

Fine by me. Triumph’s beta patches have been pretty solid.

1762

Good news! Tombles said that they would look into providing the structure information via a tool tip so the info can be viewed when not with your current vision. He said it bugs the hell out of him too. I hope they are able to do it.

Thanks FinnegansFather for posting support on the AoW forum!

1763

Those guys are good people, always eager to help out if it makes sense to do so. I suggested, for instance, they add colored beads to the unit information panel to indicate how many actions points units had, and they actually did it! Super damn cool of them.

1764

Their ability to sift through the truly heinous balance/gameplay/UI suggestions that clog up those forums and pick out the good ones for incorporation into the game is incredible.

1765

updating now

1766

No, don’t do that! Apparently saves in the beta branch won’t be able to go back to the normal branch when the patch is actually out! Also, any GOG players won’t be able to play since they don’t get betas.

EDIT: Or maybe I misinterpreted a dev post somewhere. Not sure. GOG player issue still there though.
EDIT2: Yep, misread dev. Proceed (unless we have a GOG player)

1767

Necromancer is blowing my mind. Feels like a different game, concept wise, and I don’t know what I’m doing. I tend to pay as a “good” character. Absorb/Tribute the cities I conquer, let the guards flee from the treasure site, etc… trying to do that as a necromancer just hasn’t worked out so well :) Going to try a new game tonight as a necromancer, playing them as mostly evil. See how that works out.

1768

I’m learning not to make a move on the seals of power just because the AI does. I need to make sure I have the troops to withstand the mayhem of everyone trying to kick the crap out of you. In most 4x games I try to build as few troops as possible so I don’t put a strain on the economy. That just doesn’t work out so well in AoW. If the AI goes for the seals before I’m ready I should use that as an opportunity to gang up on him I guess.

Also, Arcane Binding is a nice spell to have when trying to take the seals!

1769

Another possible reason to build lots of units - the Centurion Empire Quest, which I just won for the first time ever. Be the first to build 100 units, and all your units instantly level up … including your heroes. I’m generally a quality-over-quantity guy but that’s a pretty big inducement to go for quantity.

1770

Another possible reason is March of the Troll King. I’ll have more next time for certain.

1771

I’m sure having trouble putting together a winning game on Lord difficulty. This time I’m a human sorcerer. Early expansion went OK. I declared war on one neighbor and took an initial city and repelled his attempt to retake it. But just after I declared war, my other neighbor declared war on me. My troops main troops were all participating in the attack and they took a lightly defended city. Then they marched on to my throne city and defeat was predicted for me. Through some chain lightening cast by my leader who wasn’t present and my walls holding them off just long enough I survived what was probably my most exciting battle yet. He had summoned some spiders into my city, so it was hectic trying to kill off the spiders while also taking care of the troops outside - which included three heroes.

The guy I attacked won’t accept peace, even with some bribery. I want to reclaim the city I lost and go on the offensive against that enemy. I guess my lesson learned maybe is that I should have improved relations with the one neighbor before attacking the other. Maybe they would have attacked anyway.

1772

My MP games with BleedTheFreak and ShivaX are played on Lord difficulty. I’ve been pretty terrible at it, but they’ve taught me some things. In our latest game, I learned how fantastical vassal cities are, and have a couple of those now. Diplomacy is not my thing in AoW3, I’m always like, ‘I think I’ll just take your things’, but I’m discovering that is not always the best plan.

Also spiders suck balls.

1773

I usually have vassals, but when I can afford it I tend to peacefully add them to my empire. Maybe I do so too quickly and it saps my resources because now I have to protect them. I usually make sure that they have a lot of income coming in so when my cut goes to 100% it makes a big difference.

To those who have success on Lord or higher, do you need to make sure you’re only fighting 1 enemy at a time, or can you take on multiple enemies?

1774

Depends entirely on the situation. If you’ve out-teched the AI then you can do it pretty easily, last game I was at war with the last two enemy kingdoms at the same time since I was holding seals and I never was in any danger since I got to tier 4 before them and had big monsters and spells. One AI stole a back-line city that was lightly defended but I moved one of my stacks back and retook it and that was that. Same AI actually surrendered to me without me even looking at any of its cities, presumably because I killed all its armies. The other AI may have been attacking it too though, not sure.
If you aren’t ahead of the AI on research or are behind then obviously it’d be far more difficult. One thing I can recommend is make sure you summon critters. Usually you’ll end up with more mana than you know what to do with, so burning it on summoning cannon fodder and reducing your mana per turn on it is almost always worthwhile.

And one weird thing about vassals, they’re pretty bad if you’re evil. Last game since I was doing my normal no city founding thing I found an undead archon town. Conquered and vassalized it since I didn’t feel like messing with it despite going evil. Got tribute at one point and noticed it was piddling, checked on the town and noticed I had really bad morale there. Not only was I getting negative morale because the city itself was evil, I was getting negative morale because I was also evil, so I was only getting like 10% of the city’s income. Seems kind of silly that making vassals is almost entirely pointless if you’re going evil, especially since it was a minor faction city I couldn’t just migrate my civ in and make it a “Real” city. It was either sit around being a lump, vassal, or raze.

1775

Yeah, relationships with independents is a bit weird like that, where there’s two bonuses - one for the cities alignment, and one for your alignment. Good aligned cities get a bonus to everyone, while evil aligned cities get negatives to everyone. And then depending on your own alignment, there’s another bonus.

So an evil city will have -300 because its evil, then another -300 if you’re evil for -600 total (or +300 if you’re good for 0 total). It might make more sense if the own alignment modifier was based on the difference in alignment (so +300 if same to -300 if complete opposite).

1776

Does it help to terraform the land of your vassals - raise their morale so they make more income to share with you? I didn’t see where I could examine vassal morale.

1777

Been wondering that myself, robc04.

In other news, I just finished up a Seal victory with a necromancer against King AIs in a 2v2v2 team game. Necros are weird! Cadavers are a brilliant mechanic that make them feel like necromancers without the kind of snowball effect you get in HOMM or whatever when you can raise dead enemies as troops.

But I was soooooooo poor all game. I haven’t been this mana-rich and gold-poor since the big 1.4 rebalance, and I was spamming as much casting/summoning as possible while building as much gold infrastructure as I could. I wonder if going after the pop buildings was a dumb idea and I should worry more about murder? I dunno.

As usual, a couple cities with bonus buildings (focus chambers etc) cranking out T1s got shit done. Dwarf Crossbowmen with the Enchanted Armory and Focus Chamber bonuses are absurd. At one point at the end of the game I shot a Warbreed for 33physical 7shock.

Banshees are absolute all-stars. Wail is great, but even moreso their damage resistances (physical/blight) and damage profile (spirit/frost) are just awesome. Never regretted summoning more banshees.

Micromanaging the healing away of attrition damage is a pain in the butt. Reanimators are a must, and you need a ton of them. Fortunately Black Bolts is awesome and having more healers is never bad. And Cadavers are often great. They’re expensive, though.

Overall…necros are weird! Liked my Tigran Archdruid better overall – Tigrans are just crazy fun – but I did win on I think turn 71, just two turns later than my Tigran win and on a 2v2v2 islands map instead of a 4p FFA land map.

1778

I started playing this again over the weekend. I never did the official campaigns. I am doing the elven one, and am on the theocrat map where I face another theocrat and a dreadnaught. The problem is that the dreadnaught units just tear me apart. Even when I had superior numbers, the battles are not even close. Flame tanks can just aoe the crap out of me, and when they finally die, they explode. Then there are the juggernaut ship things… I can do OK when there are small numbers of them in an open field, but if they are in a city, behind walls… It is like shooting a fish in a barrel, and I am that fish.

Any advice?

1779

It’s a hard matchup, given machine immunity to spirit and poison resistance (theocratic and goblin specialties). This in the upcoming map might help out the early game of that map, since Rot does normal damage and reduces defenses and poison resistance.

Elven Court map 3: Nomlik now has Rot to counter the machines (you have to start from map 2 in order to get it).

On the current situation, juggernauts can only fire once every two turns, and do damage split 50/50 normal/fire. High fire resist basically halves their damage (36 to 18). It also can’t be used when its engaged in melee, and its melee attack plain sucks (ram is a single 18 damage attack). Their big AOE boom is only once per battle.

So you should have by the point they’re field juggernauts captured at least one dwarven city. Firstborn are fire immune. They’ll basically be taking no damage from the landtanks (average damage of 18 - 14 + 10 = 14 damage a shot, every two turns, is completely negligible). Even less with more theocrat buffs on them.

1780

I threw First Born at the enemy too.

But one important point: every campaign mission has you on the clock. It’s most apparent in the one where you start with a bunch of goblin cities versus a load of dwarves, but every map it’s true. The AI starts with a huge amount of income, and you start with very little.

You will not catch up by sitting around and playing defensively.

You generally start with a levelled up hero from previous maps, with some good equipment. You’ve got to leverage that asset by taking cities from the AI. I normally take as much army as I think will be useful and charge headlong into the fog of war toward the AI cities. Abilities like Seduce and so on will be a huge help.