http://www.tothegame.com/screenshot.asp?screens=10533
Holy crap!!! The “Shadow Realm” is separate plane, just like in MoM!
Also, shot #6 is of the random map generator…
And the three news races are “Nomads,” “Syrons,” and “Shadow Demons” …
Okay, I’ll stop now. I’ll just say the thing looks fucking beautiful.
[size=2]R.I.P. HoMM[/size]
Not nice. Not nice at all.
I will bide my time under the guise of a AoW2 fan. When Heroes V comes out and it is spectacular, you will all come crawling back. Crawling, I say!!! CRAWLING!!!
OMFG, that looks AMAZING. It’s getting closer to MOM2 all the time! YEAH!! When can I preorder my copy?! Gamestop has it listed for release on 6/2/2003. That can’t be right, can it?
[quote=“Tyjenks”]
Not nice. Not nice at all.
I will bide my time under the guise of a AoW2 fan. When Heroes V comes out and it is spectacular, you will all come crawling back. Crawling, I say!!! CRAWLING!!![/quote]
Tyjenks, you really have to set some time aside one weekend to play multiplayer AoW2 with us. You will never go back!
Losing Phil Steinmeyer was the first blow to the HoMM franchise, but Gus Smedstad picked up the torch and did an amazing job with HoMM III. Now he’s gone. How many saviors can be waiting in the wings at 3DO, huh? Huh?
At this point, no amount of sticking fingers (mine or anyone else’s. I have tried both) in my ears and "LA, la, la"ing seems to be helping. It worked all the way up until the first expansion (The Gathering Storm). Then the cold, hard, sad truth set in. The Winds of War expansion is like alcohol and salt poured on the razor wound in my scrotum left by HoMM IV and TGS.
Gus leaving was definitely the deathblow. OK. No more HoMM lamenting. AoW2 expansion, Empire of Magic, and now Majesty 2. I must buck up.
Thanks Jason. I just completed some steps there. I need to play, but my wife working Sundays and me with a 2 year old are obstacles I thought I could get around. Not quite that easy. I would love to and once I find a window I will give you guys a holla. Crappy cute little, smart, lovable kid. :)
What really bothered me about AOW2, enough to be a game killer, was when I learned the AI would never use ships AT ALL. If they fix this issue in the expansion I’ll buy it, otherwise no way. I believe this was a conscious decision on the developers part so I’m not holding my breath. Am I alone in this?
Not at all. You’re absolutely correct. The AI will also never use Pioneers to build new towns. The AI can be very aggressive, but overall it fails to make any constructive use of all of the strategic and tactical options built into AoW2. I actually stopped playing the campaign after the fourth or fifth mission because the AI was boring me to death.
Usually, when I become aware of AI limitations in a strategy game, I start to lose interest in it. But AoW2 overcomes this failing for me because the multiplayer aspect is truly great. The options available to the player go deep and wide, and there’s so much in there that even now I’m still discovering new little combinations and tricks. When you throw a bunch of human players into the mix, all of those options multiply and interact in really great ways. Wrapped up in such a beautful wrapper, and set against the backdrop of classic high fantasy narrative, the game is a winner.
We can hope that Triumph is spending some time and effort to improve the AI for this expansion. I can’t imagine a computer player being able to put up a convincing fight on a random map without a major AI overhaul. But I won’t care that much, as long as I can still find people to play against online. That’s where the AoW2 magic is at!
Maybe I should start trying to find humans to play against in these games because like you I lose interest real fast when AI limitations become apparent in strategy games. It’s just that I’ve had such bad experiences trying to set up games and having disconnects or rude players, etc., that I gave up on MP games. My dream is a good AI player that’s always there for me when I want it.
I will bide my time under the guise of a AoW2 fan. When Heroes V comes out and it is spectacular, you will all come crawling back. Crawling, I say!!! CRAWLING!!!
As someone who works with several ex-NWC computing employees, I can safely say that this will happen. Sad, 'cause I love tribes, but also inevitable, given 3DO’s ability to turn everything they touch into shiznit, no matter how long it takes.
I want the dirt on what went down. Are those recently “ex” employees? How much do they know? When did they know it? Is Trip Hawkins Steve Jobs and Bill Gates lovechild? Was Gus Smedstad a foot fetish freak? Was there ever hope for HoMM IV? At what point did they know it was going south? Did they feel pressure because of 3DO’s other stellar titles like…um…let’s see…High Heat? Were they ever asked to add an Army Men town?
Enough already. I do wish I could learn the facts behind the release and the reasons for the deafening silence which eminated from NWC and 3DO once we had all put HoMM IV in the top ten for a few weeks.
Seems there’s no Water Sphere this time around, but twice as much Air :shock:
http://www.tothegame.com/sshotfeat.asp?screen=933&pic=6
But I won’t care that much, as long as I can still find people to play against online.
Where do you find those opponents? I went over to Gamespy on several occasions, but every time the AoW 2 room would be empty.
Eirik
This looks amazingly sexy. Is the Shadow plane just a mirror image of the surface, but darkyr (insert own ablaut)? I don’t even want to see what kind of crazy, five-year running PBEM maps Lutes can make out of three strategic levels.
By the way, the pictures have supposedly been taken down, but you can still see them by fiddling with the url: http://www.tothegame.com/sshotfeat.asp?screen=933&pic=x, where that last x is the picture number. You can go from 1-13.
By the way, anyone who wants in on some AoW2 multiplayer, Jason and I have been having some great little games on Sunday evenings. The first game was on a huge continent that Jason had designed, forded by rivers but no bridges. We never finished that map and I think Jason would have eventually won, but at the end of the game, I lead a surgical strike team of my best warriors past all of his heavily protected frontier cities and struck deep in the heart of his territory, razing two of his cities to the ground and destroying everything I came across. So though Jason would eventually have won, I think, I did some temporarily crippling damage to him at the end.
And our game last Sunday has similarly been great. We’re playing “A River Ran Through It”, a very uniquely balanced map that put Jason at the top corner of the map with a huge amount mana income and a wizard’s tower, but no gold and only one city. I started off near a lot of weak cities to conquer with lots of mines and treasure troves to explore - but mana income was weak. There were two other AIs in the map as well: an aggressive halfling wizard and a subterranean, incredibly strong fire wizard who ended up taking my “alliance” a bit too seriously and got bitch slapped. Lutres and I had a small, midgame showdown when I caught one of his rogues spying on me. He eliminated an entire stack, including my hero, but then we called a truce when I amassed a gigantic army right on his border. I then eliminated the subterranean fire wizard and, now, according to our truce guidelines, we can go to war after five turns have passed. So we’ve been having a lot of fun and anyone who wants to join in is welcome.
Damn, the screenies were pulled by the pub. I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer to get into this lovefest.
Tyjenks, you really have to set some time aside one weekend to play multiplayer AoW2 with us. You will never go back!
I’m on your email list for those matches but your timing has been terrible! 
How about a weeknight?
How long does a game of MP AOW2 take? It’s a game I’d love to try in multi some time…
It depends on the map size, but even a small map can take quite a while. I think Doc and I are about halfway through the game he described; it’s a small map, and I think we played for like five hours last Sunday. We saved it so we can continue later on.
So it does require a sizable time investment. I actually really like that though, because it adds to the “epic fantasy war” feel. With simultaneous turns there’s nowhere near the degree of waiting that accompanies a traditional turn-based multiplayer game, but when two other players engage in tactical combat, you can pretty much take a break (although you get to watch the fights).
It looks like we’ll be having a game this Sunday at noon EST, Xemu. If that amount of time isn’t too daunting and you want to give it a whirl, let me know.