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[Mindmaker]

I know and I never claimed it was.
Merely said that it was a honourable mention in grand strategy circles and then got in an argument about different game mechanics.

[Gervassen]

Its your opinion that the game is rubbish. I like that they don't have persistent unit enchantments as it means there is actually a decision to be made about them rather than just always enchanting your death stack as long as you have the mana. With the enchantments actually taking a turn to cast when you can only cast one spell a turn in combat the use of them is an actual tactical decision.

Yeah, and that awesome tactical decision is almost always... wait for it... wait for it... not wasting a single turn on most unit buffs now. It's better to be dealing damage than recasting a laundry lists of buffs in the heat of combat. They even neglected to add mass buffs for most spell types. The dirty secret is that the persistent enchantments were in-game originally, just like all its predecessors and its competitors since time immemorial, so the spells are still designed and balanced as though they are persistent on units. Very few spells like stoneskin have a mass buff version in the higher tiers acknowledging that it has to be recast on a lot of troops each battle... because the spells were designed to be persistent until late in Q&A when it was made more accessible.

You're ignoring the fact that all the other games in this genre have persistent unit buffs. You can't deny that the game has been streamlined and made accessible. And by accessible, I mean that entire spell categories now are more worthless than spending that turn dealing actual damage spells or fighting. The best choice is not to use large swathes of the spell selection. That is not a gripping tactical decision, I'm afraid. There is a good reason why persistent buffs have always featured.

 

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   I can't really change your opinion on this though as I am not very good at explaining this stuff and I could be wrong but I will note that I tend to use the buffs quite a bit myself, especially early game when I have less casting points. I also find it more useful for stacks I plan to get into multiple fights in relative succession as it reduces the wear and tear on them.

[Niveras]

Dominions is more like Risk. You build armies and conquer territory and try to push the other guys off the map. Any given map is generally considered to be the whole world, given horizontal-but-not-vertical wraparound. Combat itself is almost entirely hands-off; it is controlled by how you prepare (including simple [or complex] scripts for magic using units, equipment, selected units), but when combat actually begins between two armies you have no control. There is very little province management: there a couple things you can build in a province but unless the province is particularly valuable in some way, you probably won't build anything (instead using those resource to recruit more for your army). Army movement is largely one-province-per-turn with some restrictions. The magic system itself is incredibly broad and a lot of spells require the spellcaster to invest into multiple branches of magic (paths?) in order to use the spell.

AoW is narrower in scope. Any given map is considered just a "region". There's more empire management involved in that you have to collect resources separate from merely owning territory (as in Dom) and you can build and develop cities to improve their economic output and to recruit more advanced units, and you have direct control over units during army combat. While both the region and combat maps are tile based, movement varies by unit and is generally several tiles per turn. Magic is, I would argue, quite limited, since there are no cross-sphere magics at all: you don't have access to new or different spells just because you selected fire and death as opposed to fire and water, for example.

[Niveras]

Considering getting this from GOG (at 30% off, deluxe edition is $30), or waiting until the steam sale and hopefully a larger discount. I'm by no means hard up for money but $30 is pretty much the max I'll pay for a game (and I usually have a hard justifying that when 50% of my play time are in free roguelikes or cheap indie games).

.

Wow, I completely forgot I recently got XCOM: Complete, buried as it was at the very bottom of my games list. I think I'll load that up and wait on AoW3.

[Baijiu]

Speaking of X-Com, Xenonauts was just released so there's another purchase you have to hmm and haww over.

[Sergarr]

I think it is pretty indicative of the game's quality that the last post before necro was in April and the first post in this thread was in March.

[Kanil]

That it's a game not particularly popular on the B12 forums and doesn't lend itself to discussion with other people?

[Baijiu]

Well, I only played the game for about an hour before I quit. I wanted more high fantasy, a la Age of Wonders II, instead... I have to play as some steampunk dudes that want to subjugate the world OR, play as anti-steampunk treehugging elves. The storylines for the two beginning factions were just utterly uninteresting to me, probably because I'm not super into steampunk.

TLDR; If you like Steampunk, you'll like AoWIII. 

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   I like the game but it didn't have anything to keep me playing. If you can get it cheap then it is worth a play. Don't expect to play it for hours on end after you have done what there is to do the first time through. I must admit though that the multiplayer might be more addictive as I haven't played it.

[Retropunch]

Have the patches made much difference? It always seemed to me like something that could have been 'fixed' with a lot of big patch changes and unit differentiation.

[Biowraith]

They've added game speed/pacing options, which made a fair difference for me in that the slower speeds postpone the t4 spam long enough that other units are worth investing in for longer.

One of the more recent patches (might've been the last one) made a bunch of changes to units, adding abilities and such on a roughly racial basis: stuff like certain human class units were given Throw Net, Goblins got poison damage added to some units, that sorta thing.  I've been busy with other games lately though, so haven't checked it out properly to see how much of a difference it made.

There was an announcement a few days ago that they have a few new (or possibly/probably old) races in development, with one ending with 'ling' almost complete (consensus seems to be that Frostlings are more likely than Halflings).  Also "an exotic new dwelling, new monsters, music, classes and a new campaign in the works" and "new victory conditions and a new type of quest".  Not sure how much of that is free updates, dlc, or expansion.

[Retropunch]

hmm sounds interesting - may give it a look. One of my biggest problems was the lack of racial differentiation so I imagine that plus some extra options might make for a few fun games.

[Mephansteras]

Current thoughts from people on buying it for half off on the current steam sale?

Worth it? Or should I just hold off until some later sale when it might go down to 75% off (December, maybe).

[Mindmaker]

Have the patches made much difference? It always seemed to me like something that could have been 'fixed' with a lot of big patch changes and unit differentiation.

They made some changes about T4 unit spam, but then I got to the part where they capped mana (what a retarded "solution" to the infinite mana problem) and just uninstalled.
Maybe I'll give it another shot once it has more balance changes/additions I like.