I believe damage is not reduced with number of figures. Which means single, large units differ from multi-figure units in appearances only on that front. A fair number of people have complained about this mechanic.
EDIT: beated By BTF!
I’ve not played the campaign, well, actually I started it, didn’t like it that much and abandoned it to play the randomly created ones because I could tailor it to what I enjoy. More broadly speaking though, I play campaigns in strategy games that have them if they’ve provided sufficient narrative to make them of interest. But that rarely happens.
Strategy games are often the most interesting for me exactly because they don’t attempt narrative or character development and leave that to emerge though the playing of the game. Game genres that attempt a story line or character arc are often so laughably bad at it by comparison to cinema and literature it’s painful to even watch them try.
My conclusion I’ve just realized is I have no counterpoint for you whatsoever on this, haha.
Chaplin
1803
I know it’s a small thing, but is there anyway to speed up the mouse-wheel zoom on tactical battles. It feels like I have to do multiple complete spins just to move the camera a fraction. I remember this bugging me before and they mention it as a bug years ago. Did it never get fixed?
That doesn’t seem right - when I use the mouse-wheel it zooms in and out very nicely. Maybe check your mouse settings?
kerzain
1805
I have the same problem zooming in tactical battles, always have. I’ve never found a fix. It makes using the mouse-wheel to zoom completely useless in that mode. Works fine on the Strategic map.
robc04
1806
Damn the AI leaders are stuck up assholes! I can never get one to accept an alliance. I’m trying to avoid having to fight the remaining two after I eliminated one. I have no idea how I stack up against either one yet.
robc04
1807
On my 3rd try I finally won a game of AoW3 on Lord Difficulty after installing Golden Realms. I attacked one AI and she surrendered. The next one surrendered too. After that I grabbed 3 of the seals, so of course the last AI declared war. Since I had 3 out of 5 I had a head start. He brought 3 or 4 stacks to one of the seals after grabbing the remaining 2 and we had a big rumble. My Eldrich Horrors saved the day, dominating 3 or 4 of his units, and using their breath weapon. He had a bunch of those shadow things that were pretty tough, but the breath weapon and some chain lightnings thinned out the herd. After that battle he surrendered too.
Alstein
1808
Has anyone else noticed a large increase in loading/turn times with this expansion? Is that being addressed in beta patch?
Squee
1809
They seemed a bit longer, but when I started playing again with 1.5 and EL I changed from simultaneous to classic turns which slows it down more, so that might be it.
Gotta say, while AoW3 may not be my favorite fantasy strategy game but it’s definitely up there. AoW3 and EL are duking it out for the throne now. My last real remaining grumble about AoW3 (Barring smaller scale things like the alignment weirdness with vassals) is I wish it had better/more diplomacy options. AoW’s always been more war game than anything, but I’d still like to have diplomatic shenanigans come up more often. They’ve already worked on it a bit by rejiggering the way AI handles diplomacy and by adding the alternate victory conditions, but 90% of the game is still war.
They’ve really improved the game quite a bit though. When it first came out I was disappointed pretty badly, but they’ve been doing a hell of a job. The changes added in 1.5 to improve the diversity in the starting races helped, too. To the point where my first 1.5 game was as the elves and I sort of glazed over the fact that they can’t be flanked. For some reason I thought defensive stance prevented flanking in AoW3, but either they changed it or I was mixing that up with some other game. Either way, in my next game as goblins I had some nasty surprises when I had to deal with flanking again. But on the flip side goblins’ new(ish) unique racial unit of the butcher is quite nice. His lifesteal makes him relatively durable, especially for a goblin, and gives the goblins a pretty solid melee dude.
Actually, huh. Just looked it up on the wiki, defensive stance DOES prevent flanking it claims. So either they did change it or I’ve got space madness and thought I had a unit in defense when I didn’t, which is certainly possible. Was a fairly large clusterfuck of a melee during a siege with 24+ units. Does look like the wiki isn’t fully up to date though, doesn’t mention the elf no-flanking thing.
MikeJ
1810
Some units have a ‘Guard Breaker’ property that can take a defending unit off Guard. Maybe they hit you with that?
fdsaion
1811
Elf support units only. It’s labeled “Total Awareness” and there’s probably other non-elf units with that too.
ShivaX
1812
Could be you ran out of action points and didn’t have any retaliations left?
Squee
1813
That’s possible. It was a relatively low-tier goblin on goblin fight though, and I don’t think any tier 1-2 goblin units have that.
I don’t think so. Even if you run out of retaliations you still get the defensive bonuses from guarding. I most likely just did something stupid like forgot I attacked with a unit I had intended to guard with or something.
And unrelated to this, but the necromancer is pretty fun. It’s not up to the gold standard necromancer in a strategy game (MA Ermor in Dominions 4) but so far it’s a kick. It’s quite possibly overpowered though, having nearly unlimited cannon fodder every combat (With cadavers and lost souls) is ridiculously powerful in AoW3’s combat system.
robc04
1814
I think I’ve found my stride now on Lord difficulty getting my second win in a row. I definitely appreciate the Seals victory condition, so I don;t have to try and eliminate every player.
I nailed one AI player pretty hard. I had peace with him, scouted out some of his land with open borders. I made an army of assassins and parked it outside 1 city. Then I moved two other armies near different cities. Made an agreement with another AI to attack him and took him out in a turn. The assassin army was nice because they could all climb walls, so they went right in. Boom, he surrendered to me.
I kept the peace with the other two, using open borders to scout their turf. They started fighting each other, but neither would make an alliance with me. I think Triumph made it impossible to get an alliance. My relationship was over 700, I offered a couple hundred gold and mana, plus dozens of mana and gold per turn. No dice. I’m too weak. That’s why I beat your asses punk ass bitches!
I was actually a little behind with the seals since the AI grabbed one first. About 5 turns later I went and grabbed two, and later a third, but I lost one when the elementals came back since my army there was weak. Another AI surrendered to me and I ended up winning the seal victory, but only by 2 turns.
I’ve been playing as the humans this entire time, just changing the classes. I kinda wish I mixed it up more because I think I’m getting AoW 3 fatigue. I think I must have played 5 games, medium map on Lord difficulty over the last week or so.
robc04
1815
I’m trying to figure out what settings may increase my enjoyment. I don’t want to decrease the map size. If I decrease the resource and treasure structures, cities won’t generate so many resources and maybe slow down production - leading to smaller armies. I’ve been playing with defender strength set to normal, but the fights against the guards become trivial once you get a decent main army. The toughest ones can be a hurdle, but it’s easy enough to avoid them or wait until you’re really ready.
The AI seems fairly easy to manipulate with some gifts, making peace, getting open borders, scouting their land and then attacking them. I can see why some people like just making everyone always at war, but I like having some diplomatic options. I wish alliances were feasible (for me).
I’m not exactly sure what I wish were different, other than cutting down on the combat. Early battles are usually pretty fun, then most neutrals become a cakewalk, then usually a handful of some tough ones against the AI player. It’s a good game, but I don’t think this would ever become a favorite. The volume of tactical combat slows down the game too much and it has a hard time having enough battles at a good level of challenge.
Looks like the latest patch 1.55 is out on GOG and Steam now! Everyone should be able to play together again in PBEMs now, I assume, as well!
I was just about to ask this question when I did a search and found I already asked it over a year ago. Never got a response. Anyone?
robc04
1818
Has anyone been able to make an alliance with the AI? They always say they want to focus on stronger allies, never make any other alliance and I win the game so I couldn’t of been that weak.
It’s been so long since I didn’t set up teams I don’t even really remember if I ever did or not. I always set up teams, else I feel like it’s too easy to play one side off another or bribe my to peace. Teams simplify things, though I do sometimes miss the dynamics of diplomacy.
I haven’t been able to make an alliance since the 1.5 patch that coincided with the Eternal Lords expansion. It used to be pretty easy to bribe a faction into allying with you in the past, but the tables have turned. They made some changes to the rules for it, and I’m at the point where I’ve given up even trying. I don’t know what the requirements are now, but they seem absurd. It wasn’t often I ever bothered going for an alliance (or alliance victory outside of a team game), but without a better understanding of precisely what I need to do to pull off an alliance I’m just going to assume they’ve either got super strict rules, or they’re broken. Or I’m just blind and missing something really obvious.
At the moment this just seems like one annoying quirk that doesn’t show up often enough to bug me, but just enough to make me wonder what I’m doing wrong.
