Octopus Overlords

Blackhawk wrote:I'd get myself established, research a couple of upgrades while exploring nearby, gather up enough units to make one army to advance, and as soon as I did, I'd get steamrolled.

The campaigns actually play quite differently from the other game modes. You need to be hyper aggressive to win. Don't wait to build up, just push from the very start and build units on the go. Especially the first map on the elven campaign. It may feel uncomfortable but that's the way to win. You need to take out his cities before he can produce much.

If you're just starting the game and learning it, you'd be much better served to play some scenarios or random maps first before trying the campaigns. That or drop the difficulty down while you learn.

Well, that sucks.

I dislike when strategy games force only one winning strategy.

The game itself does not. But the campaign designers have set up some of the campaign scenarios to work that way for some reason. It's probably why I have not finished the campaigns.

Playing the campaign?? I don't play the campaign, just random and the game is plenty good.

Ah, but I like having some story. I may just have to stick with skirmishes.

It is strange, but of all of the genres I have played over the years, I find this problem (only one winning strategy/playstyle or the game becomes insanely difficult) in fantasy strategy games much, much more often than I do in any other type of game.

Lorini wrote:Playing the campaign?? I don't play the campaign, just random and the game is plenty good.

I only play the campaign. I finished the expansion campaign (which was pretty long), but feel like I have nothing to do with it now. I started a random game on large, but I was so much stronger than everyone else, I had no desire to finish it.

I need some suggestions for making random games more interesting.

Not at my computer right now, but can't you set the AI to teams? Likewise, what difficulty are you playing at?

I find at Lord difficulty, the AI clears things well enough but doesn't defend its holdings well at all. Also, they introduced a bug in either the expansion or last patch where the AI no longer casts battlefield spells except dispel. Devs are aware, don't know ETA of fix.

Whoops, new beta patch today, with the casting issue (and many others) fixed.

Well, the 1.7 patch came out last week and with that came the release of powerful modding tools for AoW3. This means that there will be no more expansions since Triumph always said that they would not release the modding tools until they were done with all the expansions/DLC. I checked the forums and Leonard Sas confirmed that they are working hard on their next project, which he says is a big one and won't be announced anytime soon. He also said it would be of interest to AoW players.

So, I think we will see the inevitable bundling of all the expansions and patches into an AoW3 GOTY edition at some point but the game is now done. We'll have to wait and see what they have planned next. In the meantime I'm sure we'll see some pretty interesting mods released for AoW3.

The base game is on sale at Paradox right now for $7.50. Or you can get the base game and both expansions for $12.50. Scroll down for the sale pricing.

http://www.paradoxplaza.com/age-of-wond ... ASTER.html

Elmo wrote:The base game is on sale at Paradox right now for $7.50. Or you can get the base game and both expansions for $12.50. Scroll down for the sale pricing.

I haven't been active in AoW3 for awhile, but allow me to simply state that for $7.50 everyone with any interest in 4X titles should own this game.

Zaxxon wrote:

Elmo wrote:The base game is on sale at Paradox right now for $7.50. Or you can get the base game and both expansions for $12.50. Scroll down for the sale pricing.

I haven't been active in AoW3 for awhile, but allow me to simply state that for $7.50 everyone with any interest in 4X titles should own this game.

Yeah, this was an awesome game. Got a ton of play time out of it, and it has a play by email system as well.

I wonder if that reduced price will make it's way to Steam?

When you buy it from Paradox you get a Steam key.

Zaxxon wrote:

Elmo wrote:The base game is on sale at Paradox right now for $7.50. Or you can get the base game and both expansions for $12.50. Scroll down for the sale pricing.

I haven't been active in AoW3 for awhile, but allow me to simply state that for $7.50 everyone with any interest in 4X titles should own this game.

+1 Age of Wonders III is a must-buy for anyone who is a fan of the genre.

Carpet_pissr wrote:I wonder if that reduced price will make it's way to Steam?

*Somewhere* I read recently that Paradox games are never on sale at the Paradox webshop and Steam at the same time. It's one or the other but never both. That said, I'm sure AoW3 will be on sale at Steam sooner or later.

Greybriar wrote:*Somewhere* I read recently that Paradox games are never on sale at the Paradox webshop and Steam at the same time. It's one or the other but never both. That said, I'm sure AoW3 will be on sale at Steam sooner or later.

Interesting. I shall wait, so I can use my existing Steam credit.

I purchased Age of Mythology Gold edition, but am worried about scratching it up now that it has been discontinued. I own Alcohol 120, but am new with the program and could use some help making a legitimate copy of the second CD. Anyone know the program well enough to help me?

Thanks in advance

Playing this right now. Just dragging the thread to the surface so I can find it easier. Will write some observations at some point.

I've been playing a medium sized map with underground on Lord difficulty, as the default difficulty was seemed to be too easy. I also jacked up the number of players to 8 from 4-5 as there seemed to be too much room to expand on a medium map.

Things seemed to be going well until a neighbour decided that I was the rock he was going to break his empire on. Despite having entire stacks of tier IV units, I managed to successfully defend myself. The only cost was every hero with stack I had, plus my leader.

Luckily my production levels were high and I had decent gold reserves, and managed to get back up to speed relatively quickly, except I was still using tier II and III units. I conquered another ai and eventually made another surrender. Not sure what causes a surrender vs. fighting to the death, although in this case I think he had no cities left and maybe only 1 stack of units? Not sure. He was also the same race as I was (Tigran. I was a warlord).

On the plus side, my necro neighbour wanted peace so he could work on another enemy, but on the minus side, 3 ai's decided to invade me at the same time and I lost some vassals and 2 strong cities (both of which I had taken from neighbours earlier).

I'm playing with Seals and Beacons on, just to see what it was like and to explore the mechanics. I'm slowly being ground down as I'm being out produced. I just can't keep up with my neighbours, despite catching and killing as many of their stacks as I can, I just don't have the gold income to pay upkeep on many more units. So I'm stuck with what I've got, and the ai just keeps building full stacks of tier III and IV units. I'm still stuck at II and III (mostly III) and have yet to build a tier IV unit.

One of the ai's that jumped on me when I was already hurt is about to win the Seals victory. I never made it into her territory, the fog of war is still covering most of her empire. I also never made it underground. I wanted to do so, but there was always someone to deal with above ground. So that means any ai's with cities underground are untouched, unless they are fighting down there too. They should be.

For my next game I'd probably try the same difficulty level, 1 or 2 fewer ai's so that it's not *as* crowded so war doesn't break out right away (the current game an independent city was captured by a neighbour before I could finish the quest they had given me. Like turn 5 or something crazy like that).

Not sure what race/class I want to play next. I like the sheer toughness of the orcs, which is somehow different than the hardiness of the dwarves. I'd like to try necromancy, but I still don't know how undead expansion and cities work. Undead combat seems to be as expected. I will say that having despair stack AND last 3 turns is a bit crazy. 3 turns and no stacking, or a maximum of 2 stacks and 2 turns would be better imo. Having defeated a much, much stronger army earlier in the game, I had high hopes when a Necromancer came calling with less units and lower tier units. He despaired everyone down the worst morale possible and proceeded to devastate even my best units as my damage was reduced to nearly nothing.

After multiple games, Dwarven Firstborn are still my go to tier III unit. I know what I'm getting and they won't be destroyed too quickly even if flanked. If they get to level they become serious beasts. I just don't have that much experience with other races. Tigran war breed are good, but warlords get war breeds no matter what race they are. I under estimated the prowlers in the early game. Their martial arts has a HUGE impact on how much counter damage they take at that stage.

Pounce is insane. Teleporting free backstab is great. I'm struggling to think of a standout Tigran unit. Sphinx are good, but they are not as hardy as I'd like. I expect and need tier III units to be able to soak up damage. They are too expensive and take too long to make to let them die fast if/when flanked. I never did get a Manticore Rider made.

You know it's odd but I just started playing AOW 3 yesterday for the first time in two or three years.
The list of stuff by the spammer will sure come in useful during the game.

I hate spammers.

This is a free giveaway on Steam for the next few days.