|
madmac posted:Humans are so good now it doesn't really matter. Halberds have Polearm+Overwhelm, Human Archers get Spirit Damage at Gold, Their Tier 2 Cav evolves, Knights got buffed, Human Shark Assassins are crazy, ect. Almost everything they have got buffed in the last patch. Humans are great. Between starting units, evolve and empire quests it's possible to have a full stack of knights bulldozing through the map quite early in the game.
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 14:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 13:26 |
|
|
The one thing I need to learn is timing when it comes to building new cities and when to produce units/build city improvements.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 15:30
|
|
|
This last game I had one of my larger secondary cities dedicated to building settlers. I don't like to build them in main city because I need that population and production time. I've been playing as a goblin expander though, so I might be getting more out of my new cities than other builds.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 15:48
|
|
|
Gerblyn posted:What? o_O Playing with my brother, he is defending his city with a reanimation shrine and it gets critical dispelled. His leader is in the fight and gets stunned, hp loss, mana loss, the whole deal. It makes building a reanimation shrine in a city kind of a big liability.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 16:37
|
|
|
What specializations do people like in single player games? Explorer and partisan seem more like MP specs and mastery level specs don't seem too worth it at times.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 16:39
|
|
|
Rascyc posted:What specializations do people like in single player games? Explorer and partisan seem more like MP specs and mastery level specs don't seem too worth it at times. Take three apprentice level specs for the extra mana income and versatile spell selection is generally my choice. It gives a big boost early when it counts. Creation apprentice gives bless and heal, water gives a nice ice nuke, fire gives a solid nuke a solid summon in hellhounds. Air can give you a decent scout and suffocate isn't bad. Getting 50% more mana income from nodes for free is pretty huge though especially early. Even a warlord can use it to spam hellhounds or zephyr bird scouts, etc. An early advantage snowballs quickly into midgame dominance and knocking out opponents before they can get on their feet, which is very important in SP against the AI since over time it will always outproduce you. The only minor downside is you are largely at the mercy of the RNG for what spells you actually get to use. If you pick a master spec those high level spells won't show up early as your book is more likely to give you what you are looking for in a more focused build. Carnalfex fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Oct 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 16:50
|
|
|
Rascyc posted:What specializations do people like in single player games? Explorer and partisan seem more like MP specs and mastery level specs don't seem too worth it at times. Explorer is almost a mandatory pick for Rogues in any type of game, for anyone else it's pretty eh. Pick it if you want super-pumped irregulars, otherwise pass. Partisan is strange and I don't think anyone has come up with a really good strat for it yet. Folk Hero is great for fast starts and Partisan is good for giving you invisible scouts, but otherwise... I think Masteries are a lot more worth it now then they were pre-patch, if still build specific sometimes. If nothing else having access to an elemental summon is a big deal for a non Druid/Sorc in long games. (And still useful to them, sometimes.) They're all really powerful Tier 3 units and having a summon strong enough to build armies around adds a lot of utility to any class. Creation Mastery is still something only Theocrats take, though Adept is good for anyone. Destruction Mastery is worth considering just for the spell damage passive and the utterly insane single-target nuke I've forgotten the name of. 15 Strength check or die instantly for 20 mana? Ignores resurgence? yes please. Fire Mastery gets you Hellfire, which is pretty much broken vs the AI and extremely powerful even in multiplayer. Water Mastery gets you an incredible AOE nuke matched with an equally incredible AOE heal and being able to spread Wetlands makes this a really good pick for Goblins. Earth Mastery gets you Earthquake, which is sort of a poor mans Hellfire but easier to exploit in conjunction with floating and flying units, especially for Sorc/Druid. Also a really strong City Attack spell I think? And earth elementals which deserve special mention for being super-tanky and having in-combat regen. Air Mastery is something I haven't used in forever and can't even remember what the Mastery Spells are...I know Haste and Seeker got mega-buffed, though. Wild Mastery is almost as incredible as Wild Adept, which is saying a lot.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 17:12
|
|
|
Wild Magic adept gives you Summon Lesser Elemental, which is my single favorite sphere ability. It gives you one of six solid tier 2 units relatively cheap, and each of them evolves into an excellent tier 3 unit, two of which are only available this way. Earth Elementals are tanks with Regrowth, 40% physical resistance, a stun, and eventually Tireless, Spirit Elementals get a heal and ridiculous melee damage and Blight Elementals inflict a ridiculous amount of debuffs. Frost and Air Elementals are pretty similar, making GBS threads stuns and the least resisted damage types, while Fire Elementals are target killers with Sprint and every fire debuff. It also gives you Swap Position, which is pretty ace since it always swaps units of the same tier. Why yes, that is a cannon on the wall, and the only T3 units I have outside the wall are Earth Elementals. Sure would be a shame if the cannon happened to be out here instead! Otherwise, I will usually pick an elemental major sphere because I really love the tropical/arctic/blight empire spells (and the Earth Elemental from Earth). Air minor gives you Seeker, which is a great buff for some class units (Dreadnought/Theocrat in particular) and Zephyr Birds, Creation minor has Heal/Bless, Earth minor has Stoning, Stoneskin and Fire minor comes with Fireball and Summon Hellhound. Each also gets a Domain Spell to make cities happy, with Life and Earth in particular being really good. Water and Destruction minor I don't find to be very exciting. Expander just gives a few really good boosts that are very subtle, while Explorer is mostly good for rogues, since it lets irregulars keep up with cavalry.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 17:36
|
|
|
madmac posted:Air Mastery is something I haven't used in forever and can't even remember what the Mastery Spells are...I know Haste and Seeker got mega-buffed, though. Air Mastery is pretty good. Air Elementals are easily the best elemental type, they have the same 40% physical resistance as Earth Elementals but also get Inflict Stun baseline (!!!) and top it off with Static Shield at gold for all the stuns. With 36 moves, they also have the highest movement out of all elementals. Wind Ward is pretty ridiculous, -8 damage to every ranged attack basically makes 90% of ranged units deal 1 or 2 damage per hit. Haste is Haste, it's insanely good. I really like Air Mastery when playing Warlord. Hasted Warbreeds or Manticore Riders are basically unbeatable. Wind Ward plus Relentless Army is also an absurdly strong combo. It forces the enemy to deal no damage or suicide into your melee units. Not that Wind Ward is bad by itself, Warlord has a heavy melee focus in the late game so you can spam it and not care about the downside. On top of that, The Warlord also has zero summons so getting the best Summon Elemental spell is quite nice.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 17:42
|
|
|
I also need to play more carefully with my heroes. Forgot Fire Elementals explode just as I used three heroes to flank and kill it, and the blast took them all out.  That's a lot of experience and gold down the drain.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 19:01
|
|
|
Ojetor posted:Air Mastery is pretty good. Air Elementals are easily the best elemental type, they have the same 40% physical resistance as Earth Elementals but also get Inflict Stun baseline (!!!) and top it off with Static Shield at gold for all the stuns. With 36 moves, they also have the highest movement out of all elementals. Wind Ward is pretty ridiculous, -8 damage to every ranged attack basically makes 90% of ranged units deal 1 or 2 damage per hit. Haste is Haste, it's insanely good. As an added bonus if you are a dwarf or elf player, air mastery lets you turn the world into an icicle and be happy about it while everyone else is sad!
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 19:10
|
|
|
To my surprise, some independents grabbed a city from my alliance guy. Took a quick look and  Didn't know the shrimpy little bastards can grow parties that big out of nowhere. Dunno where they came from.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 19:52
|
|
|
Thanks for the specialization suggestions, a lot of those posts changed my mind at how to go about selecting my initial hero.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 20:25
|
|
|
Fewd posted:To my surprise, some independents grabbed a city from my alliance guy. Took a quick look and Attacked by independent knights? How does that even happen? Aggressive camps never spawn knights that I have seen. Is that from a neutral city? I've never seen them leave their own borders. He must have really offended them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 20:40
|
|
|
Carnalfex posted:Attacked by independent knights? How does that even happen? Aggressive camps never spawn knights that I have seen. Is that from a neutral city? I've never seen them leave their own borders. He must have really offended them. It was near a corner of a map and there was no neutral human cities anywhere nearby, just one goblin city. No underground entrances either. It's around turn 110 though on a very large map. Maybe they can just spawn inside fog of war or something.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 20:51
|
|
|
Carnalfex posted:Attacked by independent knights? How does that even happen? Aggressive camps never spawn knights that I have seen. Is that from a neutral city? I've never seen them leave their own borders. He must have really offended them. Maybe some AIs units that have deserted?
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 20:51
|
|
|
How does figuring out if a city gets a harbor or not work? Does it have to be built directly on a coast or is there a certain range it needs to be in? edit: Also, any tips on making the game a little slower? I'm starting a human theocrat campaign and I kind of want to take my time with it. Business Gorillas fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Oct 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 21:48
|
|
|
Business Gorillas posted:How does figuring out if a city gets a harbor or not work? Does it have to be built directly on a coast or is there a certain range it needs to be in? The central city tile must be directly adjacent to a water tile to build a harbor. For slower games you probably want to turn down the difficulty a bit. Squire is the AI that will literally do nothing, it turns the game into SimCity. Knight is the easy mode, it will let you figure out the game slowly but might still mount an attack or two. If you're at all familiar with 4X or strategy games, you can probably start on Lord right from the gate.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 22:29
|
|
|
I find Empire Building to be much slower than the Standard game. The AI seems to suffer a bit as a result too, as without the initial foothold, the difficulty setting's multiplier takes longer to kick into gear. You can really chop an AI off at the knees if you so desire, or you can just let it go and it can evolve naturally while you do whatever you want. I wish there was something in between Empire Building and Standard Game. I think I just need to mess with the settings, like turning off roads and stuff.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 22:29
|
|
|
Ojetor posted:Air Mastery is pretty good. Air Elementals are easily the best elemental type, they have the same 40% physical resistance as Earth Elementals but also get Inflict Stun baseline (!!!) and top it off with Static Shield at gold for all the stuns. With 36 moves, they also have the highest movement out of all elementals. Wind Ward is pretty ridiculous, -8 damage to every ranged attack basically makes 90% of ranged units deal 1 or 2 damage per hit. Haste is Haste, it's insanely good. Concidentally I'm playing elven warlord at the moment for which Air Mastery goes even better due to Arctic Empire. I can just turn the world into a frozen forested hell nobody else likes. Something I also just took note is how the radius of X Empire spells grow over time, and any new settlements you make start from the current radius value instead of starting to slowly spread the climate from a zero value. And it also affects fortresses. So once you got a massive radius on your X Empire, you can go build a fortress next to your "friend" and poo poo bad climate all over him  Don't have your own climate spell? Tough poo poo I guess, welp gotta go, bye.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2014 08:25
|
|
|
I know a lot of people will hate playing this way but I've found my favourite way to play is extra large random map, adventure mode, few resource structures. These games are lasting a week but I like to get really invested in my empire.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2014 10:34
|
|
|
Carnalfex posted:Playing with my brother, he is defending his city with a reanimation shrine and it gets critical dispelled. His leader is in the fight and gets stunned, hp loss, mana loss, the whole deal. It makes building a reanimation shrine in a city kind of a big liability. ah, like that... Yeah, I guess that would happen. I'll look into fixing it!
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2014 12:28
|
|
|
Fewd posted:Concidentally I'm playing elven warlord at the moment for which Air Mastery goes even better due to Arctic Empire. I can just turn the world into a frozen forested hell nobody else likes. I do this as a Goblin Rogue with Destruction mastery. I poo poo Blight everywhere which combined with the Rogue line of spells puts most armies at -1000 morale. Which mean the flip neutral and take the city with it. Then I bribe/intimidate the newly independent city to joining my empire. Pretty much exactly how I imagine an archetypal thief operating. "Oh, I hear you guys are independent now. That can be risky, this is a bad neighborhood. Bad things can happen to people who don't have the right friends to protect them".
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2014 14:30
|
|
|
Gerblyn posted:ah, like that... Yeah, I guess that would happen. I'll look into fixing it! Thanks Gerblyn! You are the best dev. Has anyone messed with the map editor? I don't seem to be able to find any golden realms stuff in it, even though I have the xpac. Nevermind, found it. Carnalfex fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Oct 17, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2014 17:07
|
|
|
New dev journal up. http://ageofwonders.com/dev-journal-first-necromancer-units/
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 18:33
|
|
|
Still looking great. I can't wait for this expansion evet though it's probably a while away.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 18:44
|
|
|
Definitely liking the aesthetic direction of the necromancer class and its units so far.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 18:45
|
|
|
These look fantastic. I love the shovelstaff. They look really cool from a mechanical standpoint, too.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 19:39
|
|
|
Corpses as a resource.  Bonus points if they have some kind of "Fling Dead" skill/unit like the Meat Wagon's of Warcraft 3.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 19:40
|
|
|
Ahh, I wish the camera was a bit more zoomed in during battles so you can appreciate the textures more.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 19:46
|
|
|
Yeah, totally agree about the ability to create a corpse somewhere being a cool idea since they seem to have a fair amount of abilities that use corpses. Also machines/sorc summons don't leave corpses at all right? So some way to make a corpse on demand would be pretty handy for sure.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 19:57
|
|
|
A support unit cart that can create one of two every so many turns seems a decent idea. Maybe add a weapon and make it a necromancer machine unit.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 20:00
|
|
|
That does sound cool. A shambling amalgamation of parts would work for that kind of a unit too, just rip off a chunk and toss it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 20:08
|
|
|
Will Gluttons drop a corpse for every enemy they devoured that didn't survive their belly?
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 20:12
|
|
|
Wrapped up the Halfling hard campaign; the last level was good fun. Starting with 4 mid or high-level heroes makes a big difference. One thing that I don't think gets enough praise is the storytelling. Sure, the overall plot is rather run of the mill, but I find that the descriptive writing, the painted scenes, and especially voice acting really sell it. So many TBS strategy games would skimp on those, but AoW 3 has really delivered. All three narrators have rock-solid delivery. I also like the ranged combat items that were added in Golden Realms. Before, I felt that investing in ranged damaged was a waste and heroes who couldn't afford to mix it up in melee were kinda sub-par. Now, I built two of my campaign heroes to be ranged attackers and they kicked rear end. The sorceress was able to dish out 3x13 ranged Seeker attacks with Spirit Breaking and Stun while still casting Static Discharge at level 12, and even level 9 Ernest was dealing some serious hurt with a Keeper's Longbow and a mythic-quiver.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 20:17
|
|
|
These weekly dev journals are fantastic. Gerblyn, whoever had the idea to do these really understands how to keep fans excited. I wish more people that didn't have the game could find them more easily than just word of mouth from other fans.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 20:47
|
|
|
Is it intentional that Goblin Swarm Darters have built-in Seeker (doesn't show up anywhere in the unit info) and ignore range and LoS penalties? Because 
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 20:51
|
|
|
Yes. Swarm darters are amazing
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 20:56
|
|
|
Pellisworth posted:Is it intentional that Goblin Swarm Darters have built-in Seeker (doesn't show up anywhere in the unit info) and ignore range and LoS penalties? Because Completely intentional, yes. That's also why they have like, 5 HPs. Swarm Darters are insanely strong if you can protect them, but unlike Longbows they tend to fall off later in the game where blight resistance is prevelant and high defense negates most of their physical damage. Most Goblin units are pretty underrated just because hardly anyone plays them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 20:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 13:26 |
|
|
Pellisworth posted:Is it intentional that Goblin Swarm Darters have built-in Seeker (doesn't show up anywhere in the unit info) and ignore range and LoS penalties? Because Well it makes sense. They are shooting living mosquitos at people.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 21:08
|
|
