I played 40 turns of a random map with an Orc Dreadnought. It actually felt like way more turns than that, I think because I have such a lot to do each turn - which is kind of refreshing in a TBS as a lot of these games I end with a lot of "filler" turns where I'm just moving or waiting for things to build.
Anyway, the random map part is looking fairly nice, there's obvious clusters of resources that'd make good city sites, but also some that are just out on their own. The change from one climate to another can be kind of abrupt, but generally terrain seems relatively consistent - mountain ranges, rivers, and so forth, including natural passes through the mountains which is a nice touch. I've got the underground turned on, but after exploring 2/3 of the map have yet to find an entrance to it, which is a departure from most of the preview videos I watched where they seemed fairly common. I'm not really sure what else to say about it - what people are looking for - other than I'm pretty happy with the way it's turned out.
On the AI, it's kinda derpy. It does some things quite well - it's certainly expanding its empire effectively, and it does very well at exploiting flanking in the tactical combat. But it's also a little prone to leaving things undefended (possibly over-extending as it land-grabs); in fairness, so am I, but at least I know what I'm letting myself in for when I do that. Although the AI I'm at war with does have close to 3 full stacks defending their leader and throne city, while the one leaving it undefended is at peace, so maybe it's just quite trusting. In tactical combat the main AI issues I'm seeing is it's a bit too keen to leave the safety of its city walls. It's supposed to make an assessment of your ranged strength vs its ranged strength and if it's massively outgunned then hey, may as well charge you, but I think that threshold needs tweaked a bit as there were times that I would definitely have stayed behind the walls and it came running out. Or it ran out with cavalry units *and* ranged, when just the cavalry might have been more effective (tie us up while the ranged guys shoot from relative safety). The other issue is that it's all about damage all of the time - it doesn't prioritise keeping units safe much, and will happily suffer attacks of opportunity just to deal a bit more damage to you.
If they fixed those two issues, eh, it'd still not be anything special, but it'd probably be roughly comparable with the competition (some of which admittedly set a very low bar indeed - I'm looking at you Warlock).
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Topic: Age of Wonders III - Patch 1.09 is Available (Read 37905 times)