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Space Hamlet posted:My brother also proposed an alternate game mode whereby the game is won by controlling some capturable independent structures - probably gaurded by top-tier monsters. I like that idea too. In Dominions 4 this is accomplished by the thrones. Controlling the thrones gives you automatic victory after a few turns and each one gives a unique and usually pretty strong bonus on its own. I like this idea a lot as it gives people something to fight for.
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Apr 9, 2014 11:51
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Demiurge4 posted:In Dominions 4 this is accomplished by the thrones. Controlling the thrones gives you automatic victory after a few turns and each one gives a unique and usually pretty strong bonus on its own. I like this idea a lot as it gives people something to fight for. I kinda like the idea of having the structure do something ridiculously overpowered instead so you get the joy of completely curbstomping your opponents instead of automatic victory. Also maybe give a few turns to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
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Apr 9, 2014 11:56
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Wolpertinger posted:Wizard nukes. Capturable independent structures to win the game. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Sounds.. strangely familiar. Ooo, Alterative suggestion: A Tier 4 builder that builds your classes "Altar" of choice. I made the joke earlier of the dreadnought "Manahatten Project", but that would be fantastic. Since building sites, if captured, are destroyed outright, making it so a tier 4 builder takes 10 or so turns to assemble the doomsday altar, then the arming time on said altar... This could be a perfect way to an alternative ending.  As for getting a screenshot; Taerkar provides! quote:They were traveling south, mopping up the last of the scattered Halfling remnants, while I moved north with my riders, seeking first to claim that ancient weapon that blasted so much of the land here. See that scar of blight? Yep. quote:Death Storm, Global, Swallows the land in a violent storn of corruption, changing terrain blackened wasteland. Units within the storm suffer death-based damage. In the case of the Altar, its ranged is limited but after ten turns it naturally recharges without cost. Thyrork fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 12:10
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Thanks for the input! I'll also count a dev acknowledging the issue as a huge plus. Guess I'm going to cave come Friday.
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Apr 9, 2014 12:12
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Yes, the endgame is a bit of a slog. But not really more so than, say, a Civ game, and I tend to count games that I know are over as a win and move on to building the next winning position. It could really use improvement, but it doesn't ruin the rest of the game.
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Apr 9, 2014 12:25
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Thyrork posted:Ooo, Alterative suggestion: A Tier 4 builder that builds your classes "Altar" of choice. I made the joke earlier of the dreadnought "Manahatten Project", but that would be fantastic. So much nostalgia right now  .That altar thing definitely sounds like a good possibility. Having it be announced with a big countdown, force an epic final battle, the war will end, one way or another. And unlike civilization, all victories are military victories, so all the players can and will attack you with units, there's nobody who can't do anything but cry in the corner because they were developing for a economic/cultural/diplomacy/science win or whatever.
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Apr 9, 2014 12:25
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Map settings have quite an impact on how sloggy things get too, I think. Playing empire-building on a medium map with default opponents means everybody has a ton of space to expand and the endgame will take quite a while. Adding more players and playing on a small map like Corbeau suggested really focuses the game down a notch and with the new tech changes gives a much stronger sense of progression through different phases. Similarly a medium map on default settings with a few extra opponents can turn into a real knife fight. Ofcourse knowing how to win and proper scouting with that in mind helps a lot too, as someone else said: the game revolves around the King (the throne city) and the Queen (the Leader) and taking those off the board ends it for that player. Just conquering cities one by one can take ages but scouting those two out and focusing your attacks really cuts down on the time and can reduce the amount of slog or tier 4 slugfests some players complain about by a lot. Autsj fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 12:55
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Triskelli posted:I think adding vassalage would be a decent endgame expansion. Capture/kill/banish an Empire's leader in a way that prevents them from respawning at their throne and you can offer to make them your vassal in diplomacy, basically the same as Civ 4's version. The vassal gives some portion of its income to their liege, the liege gets FoV of their vassal, and the vassal recieves some happiness/moral hit for cities and armies. Liege and Vassal win together in alliance or elimination victories. The Vassal gets a chance to revive/summon/rescue their leader to rebel against their liege and recieve a substantial moral/happiness boost for the first few turns of the revolution. You can actually kinda do this already. Put the game on allied victory, beat up an AI enough and so far for me they have always agreed to a peace treaty + alliance. The only thing i dislike about the endgame so far is how samey the armies get. Wading through stack after stack of the same unit(Manticore Riders!  )gets a bit dry after a while. Though some global damage spells that alter terrain would be nice, it always feel awesome seeing how the map gets changed after a long game.
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Apr 9, 2014 13:31
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This game is inspiring to the point of frustration. At least the ideas i have from it will find other expression if anything else.  I find myself wanting to see the Undead introduced as the cold faction*, but a "necromancer" leader become something else since we have squishy sorcerers already. A Keeper of souls, rather then bones and zombies. An inheritor of the Archon's will to keep the undead settled. A holy warrior who clads him/herself in the memories and protections of the beloved dead, or the wrath of the vengeful ones. A third spoke of spirituality, one being faith in life and the other the arts of nature, found in age of wonders. In theocrats you go to save yourself, in druids you go to connect to the world, but in Keepers you go to your death and preservation. Men and women who ensure that the restless souls of the dead and the damned stay pacified to the best of their skills. Reapers who ensure safe passage on the river and that the rising undead do not snare you for their damned perversions or foul sorcerers whisper Faustian Bargans into your ear. And at the heart of their order, they kindle the wrathful spirits of the dead, giving them blessed relief so that they can pass on. Because so many died thousands of years ago and the spirit world still reels from it. Hey, if anything else, could make for some fun drama between the three of them. A Theocrat, Arch-Druid and Keeper of Souls walks into a bar... *Sorry fellow lovers of the frostlings, but when we are being brutally honest about it, they really are just colder goblins. 
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Apr 9, 2014 13:33
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As for Tier 4 spamming, I like the idea of just upping the building requirements. I don't think most of the Tier 4 units are crazy overpowered really, but something is off when the infrastructure requirements for pumping out Manticore Riders is vastly less then basic Tier 3 units. Mana Income definitely needs to be looked at, as it stands past the early game you will always have more then you'll ever need, which obviously has a lot of knock-on effects. Shadow Stalkers are awesome but I don't think they're a balance issue. (yet) They're annoying mostly because they pretty much force you to change up your army composition but they die really fast to Fire/Spirit/Shock damage, so... quote:Map settings have quite an impact on how sloggy things get too, I think. Playing empire-building on a medium map with default opponents means everybody has a ton of space to expand and the endgame will take quite a while. Adding more players and playing on a small map like Corbeau suggested really focuses the game down a notch and with the new tech changes gives a much stronger sense of progression through different phases. Similarly a medium map on default settings with a few extra opponents can turn into a real knife fight. This is true. Most of the endgame slog is the amount of time it takes to finish opponents after you're already snowballed to the point of being invincible, and playing smaller, more focused maps cuts down on that a lot. There's an issue with every game like this where some people want to play on the biggest possible map with maximum resources, turtle forever, and then complain that the endgame becomes a boring slog. I like the mega-alter of doom as an alternate win condition, though. It's still military focused and could lead to some epic closing battles instead of a long series of auto-resolved city sieges. quote:Sorry fellow lovers of the frostlings, but when we are being brutally honest about it, they really are just colder goblins. To be fair, 90% of what was cool about the frostlings were the monster units. You had Yetis, Wooly Mammoths, and Giant Ice Wolves and it was beautiful. madmac fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 13:44
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If anything, you could require a city to have a great palace before being able to research T4 units.
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Apr 9, 2014 13:51
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madmac posted:To be fair, 90% of what was cool about the frostlings were the monster units. You had Yetis, Wooly Mammoths, and Giant Ice Wolves and it was beautiful. Agreed, and if a cold themed undead was introduced, we could see these units make a return too! Great Undead Mammoths, preserved in cold. Giants of bone and ice. Arrrthritis posted:If anything, you could require a city to have a great palace before being able to research T4 units. That could be interesting. Not entirely sure how balanced, but interesting none the less.
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Apr 9, 2014 13:54
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Tibetan monk faction! (I know they're hardly the most warlike people lately, but...)
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Apr 9, 2014 14:01
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Just don't let them take Fire mastery.
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Apr 9, 2014 14:03
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Thyrork posted:Agreed, and if a cold themed undead was introduced, we could see these units make a return too! Great Undead Mammoths, preserved in cold. Giants of bone and ice. I think frostlings are kinda cool in that they're a fantasy staple (halflings!) but with a somewhat unique twist on them. Still they're not exactly a faction I care too much about. Frosty undead however, oh hell yes: Frosty undead dreadnoughts please. Gerblyn posted:We're working on fixing the end game balance now, after research we want to look at Tier 4s and mana income. Hey Gerblyn, if you guys are going to look at mana income take a look at mana node frequency for random maps, I swear I end up with more mana nodes than anything else if I set resource structures to few. Also, terraforming: I've been using a for fun a lot and it's actually a huge mana drain (not limited by casting points) for a relatively small benefit. Would be a shame if terraforming became completely prohibitive with a tighter mana-economy since it is cool to pretty up your empire.
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Apr 9, 2014 14:09
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quote:This picture reminds me that I wish the minimap in III would be a bit clearer, as it is it's really difficult to see terrain under fog of war at a glance and it gets easily mixed up with unexplored terrain, especially with desert. 
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Apr 9, 2014 14:15
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Any plans to add an undead race? Seems wierd that there's a bunch of status effects and attacks that only work effectively against what are essentially neutral mobs.
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Apr 9, 2014 14:25
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madmac posted:To be fair, 90% of what was cool about the frostlings were the monster units. You had Yetis, Wooly Mammoths, and Giant Ice Wolves and it was beautiful. Autsj posted:I think frostlings are kinda cool in that they're a fantasy staple (halflings!) but with a somewhat unique twist on them. Originally I was thinking that the undead race could be Archons expanded to a full faction, but the more I think about it the more having multiple undeads could be cool. Then the Archon special units could be given that passive that grants bonus damage to undead, continuing the fight even in death. So Archons, an Undead race, and a Necromancer class. You can never have too many skeletons I say. Splicer fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 14:28
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I think bringing back the Teleportation Gate from the previous game would go a long way to improving the endgame. I just did the final Commonwealth mission last night and it got to the point where I was clearly winning, but it still took 2-3 extra hours because I had dozens upon dozens of lone units rallying across the map to get to the enemy cities which were 10+ turns away. It drew out the game to an absurd length. On the plus side, doomstacks:
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Apr 9, 2014 14:31
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Ooh yes, I miss the Storm spells and altars from AoW1. Nothing quite says 'gently caress you and everything around you' than dropping a gigantic explosion of energy on an opponent's town AND loving over the terrain for their crops along with it. It was always hilarious to pop a Life Storm on an Undead town and watch them start rebelling when all those gloomy corpse fields were replaced with glowing-green flowering hills straight from a Saturday cartoon. Also, I was just playing AoW3 and my power flickered.. really need to get an UPS.. and when I started the machine, the Triumph launcher wouldn't let me through to the game. It'd give a quick flash of 'please wait while we connect to the server', close, then open itself back up. Currently in the process of redownloading the game and seeing if that fixes it.
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Apr 9, 2014 14:40
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Seeing as this is like the defacto AOW thread now, would anyone mind helping me out with an AOW:SM question. I have got a random scenario map game at the moment and my capital city is right next to a shadow portal. I sent my scouts inside and it looks like a cool crazy alien world in there. I would very much like to settle inside it and build a colony with which to expand. However, I noticed my units have some sort of debuff when they are inside the shadowland, and I am wondering if there is a way to combat this curse? I am very jealous of you all playing AOW3, I am going to wait until I can afford it until I make the plunge, I am loving how great AOW:SM is though. The game is what... 10 years old? It still plays brilliantly.
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Apr 9, 2014 14:56
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mitochondritom posted:Seeing as this is like the defacto AOW thread now, would anyone mind helping me out with an AOW:SM question. I have got a random scenario map game at the moment and my capital city is right next to a shadow portal. I sent my scouts inside and it looks like a cool crazy alien world in there. I would very much like to settle inside it and build a colony with which to expand. However, I noticed my units have some sort of debuff when they are inside the shadowland, and I am wondering if there is a way to combat this curse? There is a spell you can research that removes shadow sickness from the unit it is casted on, iirc the spell is a fairly early research. The game also has 2 races (Shadow Demons and Syrons) who are immune to the poison and nautrally inhabit the shadow realm, so you will probably find some of their cities around. Machines and some summoned units are also unaffected.
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Apr 9, 2014 15:00
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KnoxZone posted:On the plus side, doomstacks: Doomtrain  Thyrork posted:I find myself wanting to see the Undead introduced as the cold faction*, While I love this idea (cities that run cold with the wailing shrieks of the damned mixed with the howling winds of the barren tundra, furnaces that freeze over, the burning souls within providing no heat for travelers, cold discipline coming not from the fires of patriotism or love of emperor but instead through absolute mindlessness etc.) I personally fear the concept hews a little too closely to World of Warcraft as well as undermining the entire point of the Archon rising from their own graves only for some scrub undead from the hinterlands taking their spot as a playable faction. e: Splicer posted:So Archons, an Undead race, and a Necromancer class. You can never have too many skeletons I say. or hell yes skeleton frat party 
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Apr 9, 2014 15:01
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KnoxZone posted:There is a spell you can research that removes shadow sickness from the unit it is casted on, iirc the spell is a fairly early research. The game also has 2 races (Shadow Demons and Syrons) who are immune to the poison and nautrally inhabit the shadow realm, so you will probably find some of their cities around. Machines and some summoned units are also unaffected.
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Apr 9, 2014 15:01
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Drake_263 posted:Also, I was just playing AoW3 and my power flickered.. really need to get an UPS.. and when I started the machine, the Triumph launcher wouldn't let me through to the game. It'd give a quick flash of 'please wait while we connect to the server', close, then open itself back up. Currently in the process of redownloading the game and seeing if that fixes it. OK this is weird, it's still doing that. Won't let me through to the game actual through my own account, but it fires up well through the offline guest account. Sometimes it give me the 'server is busy' message when I open up my account settings, sometimes not. Tried reinstalling the game and restarting my machine, no dice. See, and this is why I hate non-Steam accounts for games. Edit: Went to Documents/My Games and deleted the AoW3 folder there, that fixed it. Lost my custom heroes and saves bt eh, hadn't gotten that far in any of them. Drake_263 fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 15:33
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Guys complaining about the endgame should try the beta patch. poo poo definitely improves
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Apr 9, 2014 15:34
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Space Hamlet posted:Some passing thoughts, for what they're worth: I would pay money for wizard nuke DLC. It gives you a sense of progression building this huge wonder up over time, and then for all the reasons you explained it would give the ending a nice climax and swift resolution thereafter. Another thing you could do is ape Heroes of Might and Magic's quest for the holy grail. Or yeah, you could have capture points. I would also really love to play as a necromancer or undead or both.  KnoxZone posted:The game also has 2 races (Shadow Demons and Syrons) who are immune to the poison and nautrally inhabit the shadow realm Okay now I'm just being unrealistic but can we play as those too? Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 15:45
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A return of the more cosmic races might let the genie out of the bottle as to what exactly the wizards merlin banished 2000 years ago have been up too. Unless that's covered in the campaign already. What im saying is, that'd be pretty great "in the future" content. 
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Apr 9, 2014 15:52
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Drake_263 posted:Edit: Went to Documents/My Games and deleted the AoW3 folder there, that fixed it. Lost my custom heroes and saves bt eh, hadn't gotten that far in any of them. I think you managed to corrupt your profile files, if you can recover deleted stuff, you can still transfer over save games into the SAVES folder. The have ASG and ACG extensions. Gerblyn fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 15:53
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I noticed something odd a while ago, and was meaning to ask about it. On the map, where it says whether you are on the surface or the undeground, there are two buttons, one for moving up, one for moving down. My question is, clicking either one cycles you to the other terrain layer, so why do you need an up and down button? Can you have more than one underground layer?
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Apr 9, 2014 16:23
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OwlFancier posted:My question is, clicking either one cycles you to the other terrain layer, so why do you need an up and down button? Can you have more than one underground layer? Yeah, you can have many layers. Theoretically you can have 16, though making that many could easily cause an out of memory crash.
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Apr 9, 2014 16:25
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Gerblyn posted:Yeah, you can have many layers. Theoretically you can have 16, though making that many could easily cause an out of memory crash. Huh, neat. I'm guessing that's theoretical or only in the campaign as the RMG doesn't seem to use it, ah well just wondered. Could be interesting having the undiggable rock get more dense the further down you go on a very small map.
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Apr 9, 2014 16:33
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OwlFancier posted:Huh, neat. I'm guessing that's theoretical or only in the campaign as the RMG doesn't seem to use it, ah well just wondered. Could be interesting having the undiggable rock get more dense the further down you go on a very small map. 
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Apr 9, 2014 16:36
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Splicer posted:Bottom layer is fire Oh yes, more lava the deeper you go. Bottom layer is demons.
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Apr 9, 2014 16:39
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I feel like AoW 3 is my ticket to a Civilization: Test of Time remake. All we need is 3 more Z-levels and comprehensive modding tools.
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Apr 9, 2014 16:42
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Anyone have any tips for Elf mission 3? Sundren is Level 17 Goblin Dude is level 12 Sorcerer Orc is level 8 (He also has 7 unused unicorn mounts) *EDIT* To Clarify, i can blitz most of the cities upto the mountain range. Where unfortunately the dreadnought just more or less laughs at my feeble attempts at invading him, since his first city has 2 stacks guarding it. If i wait to long he starts cranking out flame tanks, and then i basically have nothing i can use against him. UberJumper fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 16:42
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Gerblyn posted:Yeah, you can have many layers. Theoretically you can have 16, though making that many could easily cause an out of memory crash. Are there any plans to bring back tunnelling? I guess it was never TOO useful in the other games, but it was fun. Well, sort of fun. They're right about the end-game, I'm yet to actually finish a game because it always turns into a stalemate. Their big armies die to my big armies but I never quite have enough to push far enough forward and even if I do, they'll eventually get it back, so we just fight over the same two cities forever.
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Apr 9, 2014 16:53
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Tunneling is already in the game and lets you knock through soft walls, same as the earlier games.
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Apr 9, 2014 17:01
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I just noticed an interesting minor bug, when you're casting Invoke Extraordinary Mount, the target hex is not valid if you have six units in the stack already. I'm assuming the spell uses the same targeting logic for viable hexes as actual summon spells do, despite summoning in an item and not a creature.
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Apr 9, 2014 17:15
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UberJumper posted:Anyone have any tips for Elf mission 3? Any part in particular? Once you've united the goblins, you have a fair amount of cities, which are pretty easy to defend as long as you hold the mountain pass directly to the west. Keep a rear guard in case they send a small force through or around the mountains, and send your entire main force through the pass. The dwarf has three metropoles around a volcano and he will probably try to defend all three at once, which lets you take them one by one, while crippling his forces. The human has a couple cities in the valleys north and south of these cities, which are his only means of attacking you. If you take them, he can only attack you through the mountain river. After taking his three cities, the dwarf can only attack you from underground (two entrances) or through the river. I recommend going for the dwarf's capital first (right below the three cities), because nearby is a teleporter that takes you straight to the human's city. Unit-wise, stick mostly to the theocrat units and beetle/warg riders, with crusaders as a frontline and martyrs to keep your heroes alive. Research the Seeker spell and the Order upgrades that make your units Devout. Go easy on darters, even though against things other than dreadnoughts and dwarves, they're amazing, and prefer evangelists for healing. Get some trebuchets up, too, and lots of exalted when you get those. Once you take a dwarf city, you get access to the Firstborn, so pump those out. If you have a hard time taking the dwarf's capital, you can send some forces up the river and take the human's cities, which are significantly easier to take, as he is not a dreadnought. Note that your Tier IV unit, the Shrine of Smiting gets a bonus for every Devout unit on the battlefield, which all your non-hero units should be. If you attack with three stacks, they can easily do 100 damage per attack (half that against machines), and with the Seeker enchantment, they can attack over walls and at range with no penalty. If the dwarf keeps giving you grief, two shrines can take out even a juggernaut in a round or two. EDIT: Circle around the city with two stacks; one of the others should be less guarded. Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 17:16
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