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Xae posted:Did Bandits get a boost in the beta patch? I'm noticing a ton more creatures roaming around. I think they fixed a bug that was only causing low tier structures to spawn, including aggressive camps. So net result of more/nastier baddies if you have them turned on. Skippy McPants posted:Well, 4x stands for explore, expand, exploit, exterminate... so seems like a 4x game to me. HoMM was a 4x game too, it was just a different take on the genre than your Civs and your MoOs. That being said I would love to see more options in AoW3, like trading research or a tech victory a la spell of mastery. Game is good and more would be awesome. Carnalfex fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Apr 26, 2014 |
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Apr 26, 2014 17:46
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A friend of mine bought this game. He says he couldn't change the windowed resolution in-game, and had to switch to fullscreen to change the resolution and then back to windowed to get the resolution he wanted. The option was greyed out until he switched to fullscreen. This might be a bug?
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Apr 26, 2014 20:05
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AoW2 posted:A horned stallion appears fantastic,
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Apr 26, 2014 20:28
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Cardiovorax posted:gently caress you too, Triumph. gently caress you too. lol, where the hell did you find that?
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Apr 26, 2014 21:28
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Gerblyn posted:lol, where the hell did you find that?
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Apr 26, 2014 21:30
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Cardiovorax posted:The description for unicorns, from fairy cities. The final line is something like "sparkle, sparkle, twilight star," just to add insult to injury. Haha. At one point the unicorn concept was actually pink with a cutie mark, but my boss had it changed because it looked too girly. This was about 2 years ago though, before the whole Brony thing mutated into what it is today. Edit: You can still see the marks in the concept art, I think it was based on Rarity: http://s44.photobucket.com/user/War-overlord/media/presentation_High_Elves.jpg.html Gerblyn fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Apr 26, 2014 |
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Apr 26, 2014 21:44
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Deltasquid posted:A friend of mine bought this game. He says he couldn't change the windowed resolution in-game, and had to switch to fullscreen to change the resolution and then back to windowed to get the resolution he wanted. The option was greyed out until he switched to fullscreen. This might be a bug? You can adjust Windowed mode to anything you desire by resizing the window. Just click and drag the bottom right corner. Took me a while to realize.
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Apr 26, 2014 21:44
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I know I've said it before, but I want to see a "Doge" class that can buy and sell units from other players, with bonuses to gold.
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Apr 26, 2014 21:52
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Triskelli posted:I know I've said it before, but I want to see a "Doge" class that can buy and sell units from other players, with bonuses to gold. You know, now that I think about it, the main problem with an economic leader like that is probably developing a diplomatic AI that doesn't completely poo poo itself trying to figure out which of the Doge's offers are good ones. But I'd still love some manner of money-focused class.
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Apr 26, 2014 22:31
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Gerblyn posted:Haha. At one point the unicorn concept was actually pink with a cutie mark, but my boss had it changed because it looked too girly. This was about 2 years ago though, before the whole Brony thing mutated into what it is today.  Kidding aside, though, did you guys have any issues with performance or anything? I've been playing this game for a few hours and the GUI has been really sluggish on high graphics, which it really shouldn't be by any measure, considering the kind of games I can play on maximum graphics.
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Apr 26, 2014 22:32
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Cardiovorax posted:I have no idea what any of those things mean, so I choose to stay vaguely offended. You neither need nor want to know! Wrt performance, a lot of people get big improvments by switching off SSAO.
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Apr 26, 2014 22:40
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Yeah the game unfortunately needs a pretty beefy machine to run, despite appearances. I can't run it on my laptop AT ALL even with all graphics settings at minimum. But hey, at least I've got a copy of Shadow Magic I can run on it again.
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Apr 26, 2014 22:42
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Gerblyn posted:You neither need nor want to know!
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Apr 26, 2014 22:53
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Yeah the game unfortunately needs a pretty beefy machine to run, despite appearances. I can't run it on my laptop AT ALL even with all graphics settings at minimum. I wonder if this is related to certain hardware/drivers? I have seen it barely use resources and run like butter but I have only ever tried it on one machine...
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Apr 26, 2014 23:05
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Gerblyn posted:Haha. At one point the unicorn concept was actually pink with a cutie mark, but my boss had it changed because it looked too girly. This was about 2 years ago though, before the whole Brony thing mutated into what it is today. That ork art looks like it is straight out of Warhammer Fantasy. Now i want a warhammer themed AoW game.
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Apr 27, 2014 00:26
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UberJumper posted:That ork art looks like it is straight out of Warhammer Fantasy. Now i want a warhammer themed AoW game. I think that ork art IS Warhammer Fantasy orks. That album isn't 100% AoW3, heh.
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Apr 27, 2014 00:52
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At the moment I feel the game is solid, but there are a few really poor design decisions that are holding it back. One spell per turn, with no ability to cast unit enchantments out of battle, is just really poorly thought out. There are maybe 2-3 spells you actually use, and ignore the rest. This is such an obvious problem (as evidenced by this thread) that I don't know how it didn't come up in beta? Master of Magic (as usual) had this worked out perfectly. Do you spend your mana on summons, or do you spend it on buffing the units you already have? There were such a wide range of unit enchantments that you were really presented with interesting choices. AoW3 has a few interesting ones, but you'll almost never use them, because straight damage spells win out every time. Hopefully this will be addressed in an upcoming patch, because there is all this game content that is essentially useless with the one spell per turn, no persistent unit enchantments. So it's not a completely negative post, the class/race idea is fantastic, innovative and should be reason for pride on the part of the developers. It gives the game a lot more longevity.
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Apr 27, 2014 01:55
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Gerblyn posted:We were thinking that having a mana cap would encourage people to cast spells, since people often don't like the idea they're wasting things. It was suggested that you get a warning event when your mana overflowed, do you think that would help?  e: also the double-cost not-in-combat main hero casting making it literally impossible to cast spells through that route early game. Splicer fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Apr 27, 2014 |
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Apr 27, 2014 02:21
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Holding up MoM as having anything worked out perfectly is kind of hysterical. I mean yeah, I love the game too, but don't pretend the enchantments were anything but completely busted when used properly. Or that the AI could use them worth a drat. I still don't think strategic level buff spells on units are a great idea, they're another place for the AI to mismanage its resources and inefficiently buff the wrong units and use them in the wrong place. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I've seen it happen over and over again in every tbs for years. And I can see why they do have the one spell per turn limit in place, try playing a campaign or rmg game where you run around with a hero doom stack - once they get sufficiently leveled, you have a lot of spell firepower at your fingertips, and if you could unload it all at once, the fight would often go to whichever doom stack got first cast off. I do agree that the friction between nukes/healing/buffs/debuffs isn't in a great place, they should explore some other options there. I don't think the buffs/debuffs are useless if you're playing fast though - you usually don't have enough casting power to just outright kill enemy armies until you have a ton of high level heroes and/or very developed casting power on your leader. Anyway, some beta patch trip report: I played through a few campaign maps and a random map with the new beta patch, playing aggressively (I had the elf island campaign map wrapped up around turn 32). I barely fielded any tier 3 units - I had 3 involved in the final fight on the Isabella map, and in the rmg game I did eventually hit node serpents, but no constructed ones. By the time I built giants in the island map Isabella was already dead and there was one unconquered city left. The general flow felt pretty good - I had fun in some pretty close fights, using a mix of tier 1/2 units, even a large pyrrhic brawl that was like 12v15 of low tier units with no heroes present. The hero stack was unstoppable, but I think that's probably generally the case in the campaign if you're fast? I'll find out in the next few maps  The strategic AI was really weirdly passive in both games, I'm not sure if its because I'm still playing on normal or that's just how it plays. In the campaign it rarely attacked me, in the rmg game it started running away and razing some of its cities once I came near with any significant army. I need to play a few more games, but right now, at least if you're playing aggressively, it seems like you won't hit more than a handful of tier 3/4 cities that produce in any significant numbers with focused development - it actually feels easier to research up to tier 4, only an issue if you have t4 unit summons instead of t4 units that need structures built. But that takes enough mana income to support of course. I'll try upping the difficulty and see if the AI comes at me harder, if it did, the development through the tiers would be even better in terms of actual use, as you'd be forced to churn out units instead of straight teching/building. If not, while the general numbers on cities and spells feel fairly good, the strategic AI will need a kick in the pants to be more ruthless, or numbers tinkering won't mean a thing. Map size is still an issue too, but I think Gerblyn mentioned they're looking at adding speed sliders to build times/research costs/upkeep etc? Doing so might slow down medium and larger map power explosion once you hit X number of cities.
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Apr 27, 2014 02:23
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I agree re: spell limitations. I think you should be limited to one spell per hero per turn. Otherwise, I'm loving this game. I put a million hours into SM and already 70 into AoW 3. Good poo poo. Can't wait for DLC with new races. Who do y'all want to see added? I'd like to see Undead since they played a bit differently. Halflings were fun too
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Apr 27, 2014 02:24
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victrix posted:I still don't think strategic level buff spells on units are a great idea, they're another place for the AI to mismanage its resources and inefficiently buff the wrong units and use them in the wrong place. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I've seen it happen over and over again in every tbs for years.
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Apr 27, 2014 02:30
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Splicer posted:Someone a while back suggested units having an "enchantment slot", allowing you to cast one persistent enchantment per unit in the strategic view. Would that sufficiently limit the combo issues/potential damage the AI could do to itself? I suggested that If you're talking about army slot buffs anyway, not unit.And yeah, I think a single army buff over unit buffs would be more manageable, both in terms of potentially broken combinations, and in terms of AI capability. I could be quite wrong of course, their strategic and tac AI coders would know best. e: Single unit buffs would also limit power as well, particularly if they're somewhat high upkeep when used on the strategic map, but I still think per unit buffs aren't managed well by AI, shrug.
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Apr 27, 2014 02:31
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The thing I remember was specifically single-unit buffs, not army buffs. I liked it because it's the mana/casting point soak I'm missing (got some free points, mana income's high, I'll chuck Mighty Meek on the wolf that's following the druid hero around), which a costlier army buff might not work as well for, especially early game. e: It was Demiurge4 Splicer fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Apr 27, 2014 |
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Apr 27, 2014 02:36
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A lot of the single unit buffs are balanced around their duration right now - stuff like +8 defense or 80% physical defense or shock aura would be pretty busted if they were on permanently. Granted, no matter what they changed, if they added any sort of strategic level buff spells, they'd have to go over the whole spell system with a fine toothed comb, it wouldn't be a small task.
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Apr 27, 2014 02:54
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You know, I was pretty down on combat buffs at first but I'm finding myself using them more often the more I play. A lot of damage spells just aren't that great, honestly, with the one spell per turn/limitation the majority of them are only good for softening up big units or picking off injured ones. A once per turn nuke is a useful thing every hero should have in their toolbox, but in terms of force multiplication putting a huge buff on my best unit (or entire army) will usually yield better rewards over the course of the fight. That said, the really low-scale buffs like Bless or Stoneskin do get left out because damage spells tend to be optimal for early game creeping while larger battles reward the powerful or mass buffs more. There are almost no optimal situations for a small single-unit buff other then sheer lack of better options. Which can happen with Leaders, granted, I always love my empire upgrades too much and my Leader can spend most of the game with poo poo-all for Combat Spells.
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Apr 27, 2014 03:07
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I think it might help if spells leveled with heroes to some extent. Having, say, Bless affect an area based on the level of the hero casting it. So level 1-3 it affects one unit, level 4-6 it goes in a one tile radius etc with a scaling mana cost per unit targeted. That might help some of the more 'eh' buffs gain utility as the game goes on. +2/+2 is pretty significant if it applies to your whole force. Obviously this would only be for the more minor buffs. I think most of the other spells are actually pretty well balanced right now.
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Apr 27, 2014 03:14
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It has been said before, but having spells useable more than once in a turn would help with the "I never use X". In order to stop alpha strike nuke spam on one target, throw in the limitation that damage spells can't have the same target in one turn. The spell/combat turn limit could scale with casting skill. It would also allow you to effectively have permanent buffs on units by having the chance to cast them in every fight if you have income to support it (which you would need for permanent enchants anyway). It would certainly give spells more oomph and make caster heroes feel more castery. As it stands heroes with passive army buffs effectively give permanent enchants with no upkeep, while caster focused heroes don't have something equivalent even if they want to pay for it. Also, being able to chuck out two chain lightnings or disintegrates in a turn would be amazing (if you sank tons of points into casting skill). Say...you could only spend a max of X% of your casting skill pool per combat turn. 50%? 30%? Whatever. It keeps low level spells (many of which do not have a higher tier equivalent) viable and opens up the skinny all-in caster playstyle a little bit more. Combat focused heroes are already pretty decent, partly because items only give basic combat stats and not casting skill/mana/etc. edit: to not make the early game totally suck, the limit of how much you could spend per combat turn would need a minimum = the amount of skill you start with(15?), or you wouldn't be able to cast anything at all. edit2: This would also allow multiple heroes to cast per turn since non-leader heroes don't use your empire casting skill, they have their own skill limit. Carnalfex fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Apr 27, 2014 |
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Apr 27, 2014 03:51
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Oh man I need to start reading the description texts more closely. I just found out stone walls increase domain radius. 
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Apr 27, 2014 04:18
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What I wouldn't give for a way to restrict movement through my domain. The constant  TRESSPASSING alerts every turn, not to mention AI constantly spamming settlers right in between my cities, gets old fast. For all the warnings and notices tresspassing doesn't have a gameplay effect that matters at all other than AI relations, and it actually lowers your relation if THEY trespass against YOU, which you can't stop.Maybe don't allow tresspassing against major powers at all unless you have a treaty or are at war? That would fix all the problems at once while still letting you shortcut through neutral faction's turf. Perhaps concealment/invisibility could bypass this if you wanted to get fancy, making sneaky intel gathering and attacks more viable.
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Apr 27, 2014 05:16
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It's actually really bad that an enemy trespassing on your domain decreases relations. That kind of "relation meter" should be a way for the game to simulate for the ai how it feels about you. But as a human player with my own brain, the game shouldn't be trying to simulate how I feel about particular opponents.
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Apr 27, 2014 05:55
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I just always offer open borders with my peace treaties. It makes the AI more likely to accept and means I only get the notifications if its independants or someone genuinely invading.
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Apr 27, 2014 05:58
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I'm not really happy about any of those justifications for limiting magic so much. Magic is what what the game is about and what differentiates it from other Civ-likes, most of which do the city-building fighty parts better. It should be useful, present and powerful in every aspect of the game. As it is, it's more of an afterthought, which is pretty disappointing.
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Apr 27, 2014 12:15
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I can't think of another tbs that has better tac combat off the top of my head. Equally fun maybe - homm/kings bounty/eador come to mind. Econ/non combat objectives, sure, but that's never been aows thing. And magic is still extremely powerful, I dunno how your games go, but once I have sufficient income, I'm casting a spell every turn on the overworld, and using magic in every battle. And even with the one spell per turn in tac combat, I still find groups of multiple heroes to be superior to early game tier 1/2 armies. It isn't until later when you can fill the army with complementary t3/t4 units that splitting them up makes more sense. Random aside, I kind of wish cities had built in garrisons, with a size and strength dependant on the size class of the city in question and what upgrades it has. Would prevent the obnoxious wisps/cherubs/crows/etc sniping, and make well developed cities noticeably more formidable.
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Apr 27, 2014 12:39
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You're free to feel about that however you want, but when I compare it to the half-dozen cities, stacks and fights you'll have active in every turn from the mid-game forward, one spell a turn looks pretty anemic to me. It even more apparent when you compare it to a game like Dominions, which is really built around its fantasy mechanics, from step 1. I think the game's really made weaker for not taking the risk and doing something more with the mechanic.
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Apr 27, 2014 12:56
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Eh, Shadow Magic had persistent enchantments and one-spell-per-caster, and it wasn't particularly amazing. You just ran around with a stack of uber-buffed heroes and whoever had the first turn nuked the opposing army into the ground while the AI was capable of doing gently caress-all about any of it. I've been there, done that, fun the first couple times, then boring and routine. The one spell-per-turn limits leads to interesting tactical choices and less hero reliance, which is a worthwhile trade-off to me. Especially with the way heroes now provide unique leadership bonuses and spell access based on class, something the earlier games didn't have. Magic is still hugely powerful and versatile in this game even with the limitations. AOW 3 is actually a huge step up in the power of it's domain and city enchantments over the earlier games. The Ultimate Spells alone are flippin awesome.
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Apr 27, 2014 13:42
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Carnalfex posted:It has been said before, but having spells useable more than once in a turn would help with the "I never use X". In order to stop alpha strike nuke spam on one target, throw in the limitation that damage spells can't have the same target in one turn. The spell/combat turn limit could scale with casting skill. It would also allow you to effectively have permanent buffs on units by having the chance to cast them in every fight if you have income to support it (which you would need for permanent enchants anyway).
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Apr 27, 2014 14:10
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Splicer posted:What if spells were split into types (say, friendly, hostile, and battlefield) and limited to one per type per turn? I think the main issue with siloing would be: A: Incredibly unintuitive. Especially if spells aren't clearly labeled with which type they belong to. B: The new metagame would be forming Hero Triads, each one specialized in a different type of spell. Which would be a little weird, and even more unintuitive. Keep in mind that spellcasting still takes a turn, enabling more spellcasting just rewards stacking heroes to some greater or lesser extent.
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Apr 27, 2014 14:21
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madmac posted:I think the main issue with siloing would be: 
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Apr 27, 2014 14:27
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Hero stacks of doom seem to be the root of the issue moreso than single strong spellcaster heroes, seems like going at it from that angle might be easier than wholesale adjusting the spell system Not sure what the best answer would be though, as long as you can have multiple heroes in one army or in one battle via adjacent hexes, you can always have multiple casters present in a single fight, ignoring that your leader can also always cast on top of any hero present Come to think of it, what determines when heroes show up? I know in random map games you get one initial hero, and then others seem to show up sporadically. Is it tied to hero deaths? Empire size? Treasury? Random? The campaign is the realm of munchkinly fully kitted out and leveled heroes and I think that's fun, but scenarios and rmg games can have some pretty big power swings if hero distribution is uneven. Speaking of heroes, the xp/leveling mechanics can be abused with the right combination of disabling spells, retreating/timeouts and patience. I'm not sure if thats a loophole worth closing or not, but it definitely exists. e: Did the random loot get fixed in the patch? I remember there being a bug with loot generation, but I didn't see that in the patch notes. Was it fixed in an earlier patch that I missed, or is that still outstanding? victrix fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Apr 27, 2014 |
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Apr 27, 2014 14:30
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I'm actually wondering if heroes beyond the first secondary should be tied to some sort of mechanic besides RNG. Have a city upgrade (like a tavern or guild hall) and then you have to produce a new hero for a decently high fee, maybe? You don't build the actual hero, you just spend money trying to court one.
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