AoW2 online game this Sunday

Games
1

I know it’s very advance notice, but we need to plan a little ahead to get a game going. This Sunday, starting at 12 noon CST, we want to play an epic match of Age of Wonders 2 online.

Right now there are two of us (me and Paxton Mason), and we can have up to six more. Anyone who’s interested and has the time to spare on Sunday the 3rd of November, please post here. After we get a group together, we’ll work out who will host.

Thank you for your attention. We now return to the previously scheduled cacaphony of yawning.

2

I’m in. :)

  • Alan
3

I’m bumping this up to continue soliciting players.

There’s three of us so far, and we’ll be playing on a custom map adapted from a randomly generated Civ III map, with all of the resources changed to gold piles, magic nodes, etc. Each player will be able to fully customize his Wizard, and will begin with his Wizard and a one Pioneer unit, in a ship off the coast of the unexplored continent. So everyone will have to expand their empire from scratch. Oh, and the map will be available a day in advance so players can familiarize themselves with it.

We’re attempting a sort of multiplayer Master of Magic :)

Anyone else who wants in, let me know.

4

Last call…

There are four of us right now, but we’re shooting for six. If you to play, let me know today at [email protected]

Thanks

5

Just wanted to throw in another voice here. It looks to me that Jason has spent a lot of effort on converting this civ3 random map by hand. This will be a unique experience, so if you have a free afternoon, come try it out.

6

I would have loved to try my hand but for two reasons- different time zones and an inability to say to my family ‘Sunday’s mine, Daddy’s busy’.
-wistful sigh- I remember when time was an unlimited resource. Now it’s like the last gold mine on a depleted map.
Make sure you give an after report on the game.

7

I can’t join in unfortunately, but a quick note about AoW2…it’s now $29.99 at Best Buy. So those who’ve been waiting for the right price, that day may have come.

–Dave

8

After action report 1:

We didn’t manage to finish, but we did manage to build up a few nice empires. I started with the Tigrans in the southern area of the map, with Paxton in the west (with the Elves) and Jason in the north-east (with the Undead).

We set a 10 minute time limit as insurance, but turns typically took between 3 and 4 minutes each. Wizard customization on (allowing me to take Air instead of the default Fire). Exploration off. Initially we only allowed tactical combat vs. humans, but after an early game-ending accident (Jason lost his wizard to an auto-combat) and several dead heroes later, we recanted and opted for tactical combat all the time.

The early game was mostly about expanding like mad, somewhat reminiscent of Civ 3. Paxton took the early lead in empire building, no doubt due to the choice of the Expander trait. Jason opted for the resource route instead, building an early-game army of summoned spiders to assist in claiming resource piles. I lagged a bit in city-building due to map-geography issues, but managed to set up a fairly defensible position using mountains and rivers as a natural defense against early-game poachers.

During the mid-game, Jason went the summoner route and started cranking out spiders. During the later part of the session, he had progressed to bone dragons. Paxton chose to go with druids and unicorns. On several occasions, we were all reminded how disgustingly powerful those druids are with that ridiculous entangle ability. I chose to focus on climbing the tech tree and sprinted to level 3 units as quickly as possible.

The Elves and Undead went to war early on after Elven scouts discovered the Undead sending a large assault party towards the Elven capital. A haphazard defense was quickly thrown together, and the mid-game officially started. Garrisons started popping up everywhere and people have shifted into wartime unit production.

I only recently went to war (last turn) with the Undead due to a, uh, ‘diplomatic incident’ involving the accidental discovery of one of my scouting parties (8 hasted/concealed prowlers) outside the Undead capital.

Things are looking pretty tough for the Undead at the moment, with the Elves staging for a counter-attack along the western front. Meanwhile, the Tigrans are hastily gearing up for a blitz operation to hit the flank before the Undead can bring their summoned bone dragons to bear.

  • Alan
9

Yes, I fear the kingdom of the undead is teetering on the brink. I attribute my imminent defeat to unfair prejudice. We’re just a disorganized bunch of bumbling rotten corpses, after all, not expansion-mad efficiency experts like our pointy-eared neighbors, nor well-organized manticore aficiandos like our former “friends,” the tigrans.

The first act of the game was fun and had some nice diplomatic tension. Early contact and trade between the undead and tigrans established an uneasy peace, which began to ebb away as the tigrans refused trade offers and undead intelligence revealed the fraternization of elf and tigran units behind enemy lines. They formed an alliance against me relatively early in the game, which I attribute to the aforementioned prejudice. I mean really, I wasn’t posing a threat; I just think we’d all be happier buried in the same graveyard.

My best hero was, Grar, a level 7 orc warrior who managed to scoop up some great items and could strike down lesser units in a single blow, but he met a tragic end at the lances of some Iron Maidens in a bungled probe on the elf capital. Prior to that, The only real strategic success I had was raiding elven territory to raze their Life node, but even that turned sour, as the raiding party was promptly annihilated and the node was rebuilt WITHIN ONE TURN. If skeletons could cry, these eyesockets would’ve welled up, I tell you.

The other memorable moment for me was the little minuet danced between the elven heroes’ armies and one of my heroes and a bone dragon, which thanks to the adjacent-hex rule and the wizard domain aura generated by heroes, felt like a delicate stand-off. Ending, of course, with the unceremonious use of excessive druidic force, which reduced said dragon to a tangled heap of bones.

My biggest mistake was inadequate reconnaissance. I even warned Alan and Paxton ahead of time that there were no watchtowers on the map, so they should scout, scout scout – and then I failed to do so myself. I played a lot more impulsively than I should have.

All in all, it was quite fun. I look forward to seeing how long I can withstand the approaching hordes. But beware, foes of mine, that long after the dust settles… the undead will rise again!

10

The no-watchtowers thing is kind of cool. I would have preferred something with a underground map, but maybe that’s just me being nostalgic for MoM. Maybe I’ll convert one of those maps when I have Too-Much-Free-Time™. Jason’s map was cool, but those rivers drove me crazy! Thank goodness for the freeze-water spell.

More players would have definitely been better. As it was, I knew I was going to eventually have to go to war with either the Elves or the Undead, which ultimately limited my diplomatic options. I mean, hey, the shared ally map makes it hard to sneak up on aforementioned ally’s capital with large stacks of concealed units, uh, not that I would ever try such a tactic while the main Elven forces were halfway across the map…

By the way, you PBEM’ers have nothing to worry about; the Frostlings (my racial pick) don’t work like the Tigrans do. I’ll be forced to concoct some completely novel way to ambush you ne’er-do-wells. ;)

  • Alan ‘Itsatrap’ Au
11

3-4 minutes a turn plus tactical combat? How long did the game take?
I like hearing the after action reports, it makes a game seem like a real campaign. Good job, guys.

12

Our session on Sunday was a straight eight hours. I’d guess my time left to be relatively brief, but there’s no telling how long the showdown between Alan and Paxton will take once I’m out of the way. They both seem to have very substantial armies and solid empires.