Agreed on the possible bug. I’ve taken as a result to running the campaigns with the seals objective turned on. I often have found myself facing the one remaining hold out who I’ve been at peace with the entire campaign, we’re both good, I’ve dumped a ton of dough and mana on them, yet nothing changes their mind even though at this point I own the entire map. I could steam roll them of course, but it takes time. More fun to force them out of their domain to defend seals or lose.
I tried the seals goal, and that didn’t click with me. Maybe they will fix the ally thing at some point. I wonder if they even know its a bug. If is not a bug, I sure would like an explanation as to the mechanic.
Diplomacy in this game feels like a total dud to me. Sure, you can be at peace or try to get allied, but why? In something like Endless Legend, I can establish trade routes, research and commerce agreements, etc. There’s reasons and advantages to cultivating a friendly relationship. In AOW3? Meh, might as well just punch 'em in the mouth, especially since the tactical combat is so well done.
It’s possible that I feel that way in most games, regardless of the quality of their diplomacy implementation.
I just use diplomacy to maintain peace until I want to go to war with that other player. If alliances worked there would be times I’d take advantage of that to take it to another player or speed up the time to victory.
It may be tough to balance it though. If the AI frequently allied against you it may get frustrating. If you’re always able to ally against another AI the game may get too easy. In any case, right now the only value to diplomacy is delaying war. Maybe it’s worth trying to set up teams like others have mentioned so leaders are always at war. Then at least we kind of know how things stand and maybe would provide the most balanced game.
I think my main ask on diplomacy is that it just behave remotely rational. And by that I mean program it so it looks at the stats of the party offering an alliance and weigh in the decision that they have 6 stacks at your border, 10k in money more than you, 10k more mana than you, and cover 2/3’s of the entire map. These are all data points the game has, just asking they make use of them. Because only an irrational actor would ignore the overwhelming power bearing down on them and refuse an alliance.
Alternatively, if we were to stick with this path of not forming alliances with the human, so be it, then my request would then be for the AI’s to show some sense and form alliances with each other against the human a la the same thing that happens in every Risk game, when the balance of power gets out of whack everyone gangs up on the strongest player until the balance is restored. Again, this is data the game has, count up units, quality of units and map coverage, when it reaches a tipping point that is about where the rest of the AI’s are in total make all of them form alliances against the human. Sure some would then start bitching about the AIs ganging up on them, but the nice thing is it would alleviate the inevitability of the back end of the campaign. Shogun 2 did something like this which everyone loved to complain about, but the idea was still sound enough, it was called Realm Divide, and when it kicked in the human was in for a tough ride to victory as everyone turned against them. It made for the best middle to late game of any TW CA has made to date imho.
I sort of thought it was meh at first too, but it grew on me because it creates an additional tension to the campaign. The human and the AIs are now forced to make choices, defend the cities or go after the seals, and most of the time you don’t have enough to do both, and even less often do you have enough to defend your cities, defend the seals you’ve got and attack the seals the AI’s have possibly jumped on.
For me this tension meant the AI could no longer camp in their main city and just wait for the inevitable, which is frankly just a bit of a stale formality when we’re talking the last remaining AI. Better to put it all in play and mix it up a bit. Or at least that’s been my experience.
The unity victory condition on the other hand I pretty much hate. I have to assume the devs were just being funny calling it unity, because the second you start down that path it turns into all out war with waves of stacks magically teleporting w/in striking distance of your city. Heck, I’ve even be ok with it if they just had to legitimately get around the map like I do, but no, I had one successive turn after another where they just magically appeared. That’s just BS.
Those are Independent armies resisting your building of the Unity Towers. It was probably considered unfair to force the AI into attacking a heavily defended and reinforced city. I haven’t seen it, but presume the AIs face similar onslaughts?
I have to agree, to the point where I don’t even give it much of a glance, and leave the game run as Age of Wonders: Total War. Admittedly, I think I have to go back to Civ IV to think of a game that actually had a diplomacy system in a similar vein that I liked.
One aspect of the game I believe I under-utilise is the arcane forge. By the time I build one, I’ve managed to clear out a number of dungeons and have my heroes equipped with equipment that is miles better than what I can possibly make with the piddly 5 points given to me. It doesn’t really make much sense to me, especially given the cost of production.
Seeker Helmets.
And a counter to RNG giving you 50 pairs of boots but no damned armor and the like.
Weapons are almost never worth it, but other slots are either rare, or not much better than what you can make.
Yes, I like how you can tailor your equipment to how you expect to use that hero.
Appropriate?
Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.
-Will Rogers
You know I do wonder if the AI’s are getting hit, I was too busy being annoyed by the unit spam at my door step turn after turn.
Oh, the AIs definitely get hit with the waves of independents when they complete a unity tower. In fact the independents captured the AI’s unity tower city the first couple of times I played with the Unity victory on (this was probably on Lord.)
It just dawned on me (yes, I’m slow) that in the majority of battles it’s not whether you’re going to win them, but if you can win them without losing a unit. That changes once you’re butting heads with another player, but there are still a lot of battles where you know you’ll be victorious.
That’s not to say the battles aren’t fun, because they still can be challenging to win without loses, but it does take some of the tension / excitement out of it. I think the game could benefit from a high ratio of meaningful battles.
Not sure if it is because they’re new, but I really like the Tigrans.
I lose units all the time. All the time. All the damn time (I tend to attempt a lot of fights my units are bit low level for, mostly for loot or outposts). Keeping all your units isn’t a necessity, and I couldn’t imagine trying to play in a way where I felt some weird compulsion to keep them all alive. Nearly everything is expendable in my world (entire stacks not withstanding), except for specific strategically placed units or something. I only really get uptight about high level heroes, but even then I’ll recruit another one some turns later anyway. It’s a blue moon anything survives anywhere near long enough to achieve Elite rank in my world.
If you play on Lord rank or lower you should feel free to blast through the early turns (I don’t know the exact turn threshold) by throwing your units to the wolves left and right as you see fit–assuming you have satisfactory gold income–because as of patch 1.5 you will now recruit tier 1 replacement units early in the game much like new heroes (they’ll just show up outside your city and you’ll get a message informing you they’d like you join if you have the gold, and it’s typically a discounted rate compared to building them outright, plus there’s no production cost, and they’re available that turn.). This should help with early exploration, expansion and treasure hunting for lower difficulty levels.
I wouldn’t stress too much over saving the lives of every unit. If you’re doing this, it probably means you need a bigger army, and if you can’t afford one, it means you need to allocate your units better, or figure out a way to either cut costs or increase income through vassalage or by placing forts on mines all over the place or something. You can also consider selling excess mana to other factions for gold. I haven’t done this much since 1.5 dropped, but the exchange rate for this used to be pretty great.
I didn’t mean to imply that I felt I HAD to keep everyone alive. It’s just that I don’t feel like I’m going to lose the battle so it’s just a matter of if everyone will stay alive. I’m sure it all depends on the settings - there are so many to tweak a lot of us probably have very different experiences. I’ve been playing at Lord difficulty.
I just finished my first Eternal Lords game and took a unity victory. The AI went for the seals so I though I’d try something different. I did have to take 2 of his seals so he wouldn’t win quicker than I could. After I took the second one he surrendered. It seemed kinds weird since I never even threatened any of his cities.
I have to echo what someone said above. I didn’t like the random enemy spawn as I got close to the unity victory. I played 1 out, but then I just autoresolved them after that. Luckily I had set up some good defenders. Way too many attackers. I’m not sure I’ll go for that victory condition again.
That being said, the rest of the elements added by Eternal Lords was good - the Tigrans, Race Governance, all the new stuff.
Oh, yea that’s an interpretation of your words I hadn’t made. It could be settings, sure. But when I say I tend to blow through a lot of units, it’s typically because I don’t spend a whole lot of time trying to build city upgrades or rank them up before putting them in harm’s way. I’ll have them out there clearing treasure sites, outposts, and monster hideouts pretty quickly, but they don’t always last very long. When I’ve got a few ragtag teams going, I tend to expand wider sooner, and get more early loot and territory in the process.
However, if I turtle some, and slow things down until I’ve had a chance to upgrade my cities so I’m pumping out ranked-up units before sending them off (and I’m talking ranks here, not tiers), the units themselves will live a lot longer, at the expense of early expansion/loot. And in those cases, yea, my ranked-up units tend to be pretty invincible against even-tier foes. At least the way my games usually end up going. Both systems are viable, and I’m sure better players than me are capable of striking a better balance between these two extremes, but for me it’s either lots of low-ranked fodder early on, at the expense of city upgrades, or it’s hearty units that can persevere, at the expense of early expansion. I’m really bad at finding a consistent workable middle ground, but both of these work for me, depending on how I need my game to go at the time.
I also just completed my first Unifier victory (Goblin Necromancer on Large map vs. 5 King AI), but will probably be turning them off in the future.
The AI doesn’t seem to understand them at all. Four AIs built a beacon before I could afford to, but it was a waste of their resources as none of them ever reached Champion level with a second race so they never threatened to actually achieve victory with them. And they also never made any attempt to take mine out. I could understand not managing to mount an attack against my homeland (which was on an island in a corner of the map), but the second beacon was built in conquered tigran territory in a city that shared a common border with my biggest remaining rival. He had multiple stacks of heroes, manticore riders, and warbreeds camped on a seal two turns march from the beacon but never even attempted a move against it.
The attacks from independents meant that defending them at least wasn’t automatic, but they still weren’t much of a threat by the time I could afford to light the beacons. A grab bag of three stacks of T1-T3 troops vs. an equal number of better-quality troops with veterancy, building, and research bonuses, behind stone walls with city enchantments makes for a one-sided slaughter, and most of the attacks didn’t even kill a single unit. I’ll probably stick to seals in the future, as the AI seems to understand and pressure those pretty well, and the lack of overwhelming defensive advantage that a well-prepared city gives you makes things much more interesting.
The AI is pretty good at seals. I’m convinced that they intentionally made it so that the AI doesn’t go after them until you do, or until some silly number of turns has passed, though. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.