Age of Wonders 3 SG

[MJW (ya that one)]

Oh, what I did was allow my cities to fall, beeline to the capital city to kill the AI and then recapture them. I don't think it's worth it to have 30+ units squatting when you only lose a city 5 turns or so.

It must have been horrible to reorganize everything without unit cycling...

I don't see being frontloaded for rouges matters if the game is over in the first 50 turns like this one...

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh, what I did was allow my cities to fall, beeline to the capital city to kill the AI and then recapture them. I don't think it's worth it to have 30+ units squatting when you only lose a city 5 turns or so.

Huh. While I can't argue with your results, surely having to recapture everything is ultimately less efficient than paying a little extra to garrison your holdings? Even though no structures are lost, you'll be befit of their income for several turns and have to occupy your forces with extended mop-up operations.

I don't see being frontloaded for rouges matters if the game is over in the first 50 turns like this one...

True, we had this game won before T60. I imagine that Rogues are quite powerful on small MP maps as well. But a lot of our early success also had to do with the broken diplo system, specifically AI readily lapping up peace treaties. I don't know if we could have survived the running dogpile we were under circa T20-T50 otherwise. Having about a dozen Horrors certainly sped up the end-game as well. A Rogue who isn't fortunate enough to have a Giant or Dragon city is going to have to conduct some very bloody end-game city sieges. Totally doable, but I imagine you'd lose units much more frequently.

Rogues do hard-counter Dreadnaughts though, I'll give them that. Their most basic class unit can do 90 damage to a Juggernaut without even needing any promotions.


Warlords are easily my favorite class though. Manticore Riders are a good candidate for "best unit in the game", and they can build entire armies of them. Berzerkers, Phalanxes and Warbreeds are all amazing as well, Warlords have the best economy hands-down, and their Ultimate Spell is completely ludicrous (and can be exploited with a Water Adept leader to fill the seas with T4 naval units).

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well looking at the replay we had enough power to obliterate everyone but Henna without the 30ish garrison units so I did indeed waste time moving them out during my last turnset. They would be 100% overkill against everyone but Henna and you just moved them back. Lame. That replay-graph also shows how much bigger our domain was...

You can take out that city that Henna snipped, this turn, by summoning a 'fantastic creature' just outside our nearest city and just walking in.

[NobleHelium]

• The strategic AI appears to not understand how to build roads, which is an issue considering how massively important mobility is in a game where every unit has the equivalent of the Commando promotion.

Well it just doesn't want you to use their roads to your advantage.

Thanks again, everyone! Special thanks to the developers, one of whom may or may not have been reading this thread

[Bacchus]

Cool! I'm glad the Dire Penguins showed up for the final battle.

To add to Bob's thoughts (which I overwhelmingly agree with), I felt like the game is really in need of a better army manager and at the very least army naming. On large maps, with large empires, the vast majority of the turn is spent on managing logistics and supply, not actually battling. You have multiple streams of units, with multiple destinations and you really need some in-game tool to help you manage this. If you could at least specify what each army is meant to do by naming it, that would be a help.

I would agree that AI's most glaring weakness is in the use of AoE, both offensively and defensively. I'm not sure what went wrong there, but on multiple occasions it falls into glaring mistakes, burning his own troops, healing the opposition or missing obvious optimal spots for where to aim the spell. There is clearly some problem with the calculation it makes.

I don't think unit variety is so bad, but the end-game really does call for some more options than are on the table. I assume there will be an expansion, and this is an obvious area to address.

Sorry again for being unable to quite complete my last turnset

[Bobchillingworth]

One of the devs stickied a link to this thread in the Steam forum. Awesome

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well the exp pack will come in mid-September. Probably the biggest feature they will add our the halflings. There're infamous pony rider will return but will be neutered by the fact that you will still have to build two buildings like a tier two unit. Their real strength is that it will make a non-cav unit tier two so you get two useful units on a war hall instead of one. Good but not great. In AoW1 I've read somewhere that the best counter to a pony rider is other pony rider.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well the EXP pack hits tomorrow in case anyone cares...

[MJW (ya that one)]

A new exp pack will soon appear.

There will be enough changes to run another SG or try the new PBEM mode.

[Bobchillingworth]

Dang, is the PBEM mode going to be an expansion exclusive?


I'll purchase it on sale someday. I suppose I'll likely be interested in a PBEM at that point.