Age of Wonders 3

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Age of Wonders 3

Post by Avoraciopoctules »

http://www.ageofwonders.com/aow3live/

http://www.shacknews.com/article/78518/ ... -3-preview

http://www.incgamers.com/2013/03/age-of ... enart-sas/

http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/14/422100 ... -wonders-3

Looks like a new AoW game might be coming out in the not-to-distant future. I hope it turns out pretty decent. The last nice fantasy-strategy game I really liked was Conquest of Elysium 3, and I'd like try something with a little more direct battle control and production values than an Illwinter product.
Last edited by Avoraciopoctules on Thu Apr 25, 2013 8:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Foxwarrior »

Speaking of Age of Wonders, there was one huge glaring problem with the multiplayer: neutrals. Either you fight them in autobattle, in which case your leader is likely to die in a pointless and stupid manner, or you don't, in which case the other player is bored for several minutes every time you curbstomp some sad peasant.

Did Age of Wonders 2 fix this problem? Will Age of Wonders 3?
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

One interview indicates that play-by-email will be an option. So non-simultaneous play could take care of the problem.

That said, there definitely will be neutrals you have to fight. The gameplay video showed a battle with undead, who aren't a player faction.
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Post by Foxwarrior »

That's a rather Pyrrhic solution: solve the irrelevant fight time problem by making it so that a game of Age of Wonders takes a week to finish instead of two hours. I guess it's more appealing than it used to be now that I've become a hermit.

Undead aren't a player faction?
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

PBEM:
In addition to its single-player mode, the game features an email-driven campaign that works similar to its regular multiplayer, but slower. Once a player takes their turn, an email is sent to the other player, alerting them of a new round. According to Sas, it's the kind of mode meant for players who have 15 minutes here and there to play.

"These games going on for sometimes a couple of weeks," Sas said. "And play whenever you want — you might have ten games going on. It is old school, but [it works] for people who have busy schedules and can't commit to spending two hours a night."
Races:
AoW3 will ship with six player races, six player classes and at least six specialization “spheres”, which include magic. The initial races will be High Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Draconians Goblins and Orcs. It doesn’t mean the other races have all gone extinct and we hope to release them at some later stage!
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Post by Username17 »

Age of Wonders really never worked as a multiplayer game for much the same reason that Heroes of Might and Magic or Civilization didn't. Fundamentally, multiplayer games need simultaneous play or they never ever finish. So you can do it Starcraft style as a frenetic click fest with everyone giving orders simultaneously in a fast evolving environment, or you can do it Dominions style and have everyone give their orders and send them in to a central server which then tells you how those orders panned out. I really don't think that anyone has made a satisfactory option 3, and I'm not holding my breath for anyone to develop one in my lifetime.

Even Master of Orion 2 drags unacceptably in the 3+ player games when two players who aren't you get a battle phase.

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Post by Foxwarrior »

Oh, I never considered playing Age of Wonders with more than 2 players. That would be a bad idea, FrankTrollman, and I don't know why you suggested it. My problem is that the neutrals mean you get all the hideous drag problems in a 2 player game as well.

Maybe they should let the opponent control the neutrals in such fights...
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Recruiting as many races as possible into your army looks like it could end up looking pretty hilarious, depending on your leader class.

Image
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Post by Username17 »

So are they ditching racial alignments and the ethnic cleansing mechanics?

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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Your alignment is determined by in-game actions. You can be evil, but that means pillaging and ethnic cleansing needs to be done to get you the Evil Cred first. Goblins as a starting faction might tilt you towards evil, and Theocrat might tilt you towards good, but alignment is no longer fixed to faction.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Quoting a programmer who works on the game and posts on SA:
Well, thematically a Wizard's Tower doesn't really make sense in the game. Half the classes aren't actually magic users, after all. I'm not sure where the design is at with regards to giving a benefit to keeping a leader home. One game mode idea is to have the player lose if their leader is killed, so it might come down to simply keeping your leader at home because it's safer. At one point we messed around with the concept of having heroes have in town abilities, a bit like specialists in Civ, but I think the idea was dropped because it went against the idea of what a hero is really suppsed to be about.
On that note: Have you considered having the "Boring" skill-ups (attack, defence etc) run off a different track to the "interesting" things like Life Stealing, Round Attack etc? Raw number-go-up level ups are vital, but boring. If you either got to buy them from different point pools (so instead of 10 points per level you got 5 boring points and 5 interesting points) or just had the number-go-ups be a function of your race and class (Everyone gets 5 interesting points per level, but in addition to that Orcish Warrior chooses between +1 attack or +1 damage at level 2 while Elven Mage chooses between Movement and Defence at level 2) then you'd never feel like you were wasting a level on boring-but-mandatory things.
Just asked a designer about this, and he said that in a game like Diablo 2, stat boosts become mandatory since enemies are constantly becoming more powerful, so you have two sets of skill points, 1 for stats and another for abilities. In Age of Wonders this isn't the case, the only things that get more powerful over time are heroes. So we want to make it so the player has to choose between stat upgrades which boost the heroes survivability and basic combat strength, or utility abilities that give the player more options like fireballs or wall climbing.

Also, with regards to the optional spectator mode, it turns out the idea is so good that we implemented it weeks ago and I didn't realise. So, hurrah for us!
There's actually a very big difference that you might not realize. In AoW:SM, it was possible for units to miss, so low attack units were essentially worthless against high defense ones. In AoW3, this isn't the case, Attack and Damage have been merged into one value, a low attack unit striking a high defense one will always hit it, it will just do less damage.

Regardless, I guess if you want a hero that can go toe to toe with a dragon, then you're going to have to drop some points into damage and defense boosts. Or bring your own dragon to help
There's random variance of something like +-20% in the amount of damage done by any attack. There's also a debate going on about the whole "Using X damage has a Y chance to cause Z effect", like we had in Shadow Magic (where using lightning damage on something had a small chance of stunning the target, for example); It's not currently implemented, but it's possible it will be.
The idea wasn't so much to reduce random factors, more to stop a player performing an action that had no effect. Many people (like me) hated the way that you could go "Let's try this cool ability!" and just get a little boop sound as it did nothing. We're definitely keeping randomness, since we don't want combat to deteriorate into a determinate chess game where people can accurately predict exactly what the consequences of their actions will be.
I agree with you here, one of the issues I had with the hit/miss in AoW:SM was that often, you could only move 2 or 3 units per turn, and having most of them miss was just so frustrating. If you compare that to something like NWN, where your character will miss quite frequently, it doesn't have the same psychological effect because you're taking a swing once a second anyways. There's a similar thing in FFXIII; normally in JRPGs I never try to debuff enemies, but a Saboteur will just keep spamming debuffs, automatically ignoring the ones the monster is immune to, so it feels more like a matter of time rather than an exercise in futility.
There are definitely undead units in the game, but I'm not allowed to saying anything else about that I'm afraid.
Well, non-magical classes still get spells. They're just thematically less magical. For example, rogues get spells for gathering information and poisoning people, while dreadnaughts get spells that help boost war machines and things. They still cost mana though, and for all practical purposes can be considered to be spells.

As for your other question, we want the focus of defending your territory to be based around defending your domain, which means you'll mainly only need to defend fortresses and cities. There's a bit more to it than that, but I don't think that information's been released and I'm not at work so I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say
This. I'm pretty sure that alignment is entirely based on your in game actions, with some minor racial modifiers. AFAIK your choice of color has no in game effect.
Any word on figuring out how to make formations lose effectiveness as individual units die? Sorry if it seems like I'm harping on this, but this sort of thing bugs the hell out of me and is one of the reasons I decided not to get the new Eador game.
I batted some ideas round with one of the designers, and he agreed to look into it after alpha. I think it might be cool if we can use it to make weaker units more worthwhile, so you could have a big goblin squad which does damage comparable to a high tier unit, but rapidly weakens as it takes hits. We've still got a lot to do though, and at the end of the day the game could easily survive without the feature, so it's hard to say whether or not it'll make it in.
Last edited by Avoraciopoctules on Mon May 06, 2013 6:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Kaelik »

Honestly, even though it has been a staple of fantasy for years, I am fine with the end of races as a thing.

If you just start as a default race, as long as you have beginning customization, I don't object to being humans who then obtain the services of the undead/elves/dwarves/ect by converting/capturing their cities. Or if all races are mostly identical at the beginning of the tree, and then by the end you have access to all the races because you captured other cities.

But that thing where other races hate you because you are human empire, so you just raze their cities (or ethnic cleanse them out over time) has got to go.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Personally, I am looking forward to turning my Celestial Crusade into a Burger King Kid's Club of ethnic diversity. I certainly hope you can get most of the races in one empire without getting crippled by unrest.
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Post by Username17 »

Just asked a designer about this, and he said that in a game like Diablo 2, stat boosts become mandatory since enemies are constantly becoming more powerful, so you have two sets of skill points, 1 for stats and another for abilities. In Age of Wonders this isn't the case, the only things that get more powerful over time are heroes. So we want to make it so the player has to choose between stat upgrades which boost the heroes survivability and basic combat strength, or utility abilities that give the player more options like fireballs or wall climbing.
That's not encouraging. It's completely wrong. While individual units may not get better over time, the enemy armies still do. In the early game and in the late game an Elvish Swordsman is an Elvish Swordsman and a Nature Elemental is a Nature Elemental. But in the late game there are a fuck of a lot more Nature Elementals on the battlefield.

So basically they are keeping a bad advancement system because they are outright wrong about how the game progresses into the late game. That's not encouraging at all.

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Post by Whipstitch »

FrankTrollman wrote:That's not encouraging at all.

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Yeah, that's outright frightening stuff given how painfully obvious the dynamic is. FFS, just look at Heroes III. On top of having every army get bigger just as a matter of course, you also have two factions whose entire shtick is hitting a critical mass of demons or skeletons, two units that suck eggs in terms of everything but quantity. Your army -is- your build.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

If the enemy is fielding a huge army of skeletons and Demon Knights, wouldn't it be better to be a fireball-throwing wall-climber than to double your HP and melee damage? You're probably hurting more enemies that way.

If this is like the Age of Wonders 1 character development, you should have a lot of freedom of choice in developing hero units. I don't think it's gonna be like how your available upgrades were randomized each level in AoW2, you can buy up your hit rate every level if you want.
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Post by Username17 »

Avo wrote:If the enemy is fielding a huge army of skeletons and Demon Knights, wouldn't it be better to be a fireball-throwing wall-climber than to double your HP and melee damage?
In Age of Wonders, a "melee hero" is one who can regenerate, vampirize, or heal himself fast enough to keep up with the damage output of the enemy army. Fireball throwing heroes are basically shit worthless. If you aren't going to personally murder all the enemies, you should have a large leadership bonus and/or buff your units so that they can fight better and you can hide in the corner.

Increasing melee damage or armor value increases the relative rate at which you vampiric heal vs. the rate at which you take damage in combat. Age of Wonders has actually very few worthwhile hero builds compared to the amount of theoretical builds there are. It's very centralized, because there are a lot of non-hero units on both sides, so any build that is - for example - spending limited mana to incinerate enemy units one at a time is essentially meaningless. You have to be able to slaughter the entire enemy army by yourself or augment your army to win the battle for you while you hide. There really isn't any other way to contribute to major battles.

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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

I'll readily admit that I don't play much serious Age of Wonders.

But I've followed an LP of the first game, and the general consensus seemed to be that playing an air mage that just chucks chain lighting at fools was a really effective strategy.

And if tossing fireballs is specifically an ability that you pick up, it can't be all that expensive. Like 10 points at most, right? Something you could staple onto a buffer hero to make them useful after they run out of MP.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Thing with Chain Lightning is that it stuns stuff. The damage is just gravy.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

And I think it arcs even if you just target an empty square. You can target the edge of your range and hit people that are technically outside it. The main hero in the LP did that a lot, to take on enemy forces a round early and thus split them up more easily.
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Post by Whipstitch »

I find it funny that some people never quite seem to realize that action denial scales inherently though, and if anything a game where units are organized by the stack just exacerbates the issue. Hell, one of my more notable "lolwut?" moments came about when one of my friends actually had the balls to complain about how after HoMM3 the Berserk spell was nerfed or eliminated. Mind you, there's legit reasons to ignore the later Heroes titles, but the HoMM3 version of the Berserk spell was never a good idea in any context.
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Post by Username17 »

The HoMM3 Berserk, when cast at Expert Fire Magic caused a group of enemy stacks to lose their actions and stab each other. Many people accuse it of being the most powerful spell in the game, and it's hard to disagree.

Now, Heroes VI is a crime against humanity. But the fact that Berserk is nerfed from the madness that is Heroes 3 Berserk is not the reason.

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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

I don't know if we have a Dev Journal planned for the level editor or the random map generator. I can tell you that we're planning to ship with both of them though.
YES! My favorite tabletop RPG campaign map generator is coming out with a new edition! And it comes with a free game, even.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2013/06 ... wonders-3/
SS: Age of Wonders 3 is going to feature at least six races, six classes, and six specializations upon release. Given such varied options and potential, game balance can be a difficult thing to get just right. Allowing players access to incredibly powerful abilities can offer an exciting experience, but can also be very difficult to do in a game incorporating multiplayer. What is Age of Wonders 3′s strategy regarding game balance?

LS & AW: In Age of Wonders 3 we approach balance from multiple angles. There are initial spreadsheet checks and logic limitations (i.e. avoid units achieving full physical immunity through buffing). Next we have an in-game valuation system that puts a value to each game entity and of course there is iterative development with testing; including automated AI vs AI testing. But in the end nothing matches fine-tuning the game after release with the feedback from thousands of players.

That being said, we value variation and experimentation. AoW3 is a game strong on empire building where we encourage people to experiment and we actually welcome a limited amount of imbalances. E.g. in previous games Halflings were a bit underpowered, however some experienced players actually played with them because of the extra challenge they posed.
SS: AI is a subject near and dear to the heart of many strategy gamers. What elements of your AI design do you think help you stand out as opposed to other similar titles, and how is your AI strategy influenced by differences in the selected game difficulty level?

LS & AW: With all core systems now implemented and the game being close to Alpha the AI is currently our main focus in terms of programming. AIs have different personalities this time around. In the design phase, we addressed AI weak points from previous games, such as transport ship combat which was easy to abuse by human players. For higher difficulty logic, the AI will calculate through a larger amount of scenarios, which is made possible with advanced CPU power and multi-threading AI routines. Our main goal is to have AI players that provide a meaningful challenge and entertain the player.
LS & AW: Age of Wonders remains firmly rooted in the fantasy realm, with camouflaged rogue units infiltrating enemy domains and magical scrying to tell what’s going on at your rival’s towns. Adding a Civilization style espionage system currently doesn’t have a high priority.

We have improved the bartering system, with more trading options and we have increased interaction with independent towns and monster dwellings. In previous games there was an alignment check to determine whether or not an indie settlement would join you for the right amount of gold or if you’d needed to conquer it by force. We’ve now extended the interaction with these neutral settlements to include questing to gain their favor and rewards, which include cool rare monster units or monster mounts for your heroes.
SS: A lot of 4X and turn-based strategy games of all genres tend to reach a point in the mid to late game where gameplay becomes more about micromanagement and tedious mop up of your opponents than about having fun. What steps have you taken to keep the player engaged and interested in the later stages of a game?

LS & AW: It’s our goal to keep the games as exciting as possible in each phase. Each class includes powerful end-game skills resembling a nuclear option to make enemies bow down in submission. In a free-for-all game, enemy AIs can join forces and gang up against you in a last ditch attempt to thwart their impending annihilation. The game features high level exploration sites and monster dwellings reserved for late game uncovering.

Also don’t forget Age of Wonders has always been a game heavy on combat. The map is fully malleable and the end game might show a lot the towns in ruin and the countryside corrupted by blight or high-level magic. Subsequently the final conflict might focus on a couple of remaining developed hot spots. But beware; alignment is now fully dynamic. Scorched earth tactics might provide short-term gain, but will most likely work against you over long term.
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