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[Teneb]

The maps weren't flat, AoW:SM even showed you the elevation numbers when using ranged attacks.

I thought you were talking about the campaing map on this point. My bad.

I can't really tell from the skill samples given, but is there any type of necromancy oriented class? I like the undead race from the previous games, and tend toward them in others (Warcraft 3's undead, Starcraft's Zerg, etc) due to liking the idea of turning dead enemy units against their creators, among other things.

Don't quote me on this (could be wrong), but I think Triumph said that their first DLC, assuming there will be DLC, would be a necromancer class.

[Mindmaker]

I thought you were talking about the campaing map on this point. My bad.

Well that too, although those were more aesthetical than actually influencing the game.
I mean that the whole map felt "uneven" and "wavy" (at least the random ones, pregenerated ones were more flat) rather than a flat map with a couple terrain features on top, not woven into the landscape, no gradual transition, but really the feeling like they were placed on top.

Hell I might be insane, but I'll take a couple of screenshots the next time I play to demonstrate what I mean.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   This is good! We have new players and old players on both sides of the discussion of whether its good or bad. From the sounds of it there is some contentions over what the designers did to try and improve it. I will be discounting the AI discussion from this whole thing though as unless you include the difficulty and map settings we don't really know how to judge what you say. After all I am a half decent (though lower half) strategy game player and the campaign's hard difficulty beat me which is fair and it should do so.

[timferius]

A question for those who've played the game a bit so far. Is it possible the AI issues can be tied to them being dumbed down for the first part of the campaign to ease you in? Someones comment about Random maps having a better AI kinda clues me in to this possibility.

[umiman]

A question for those who've played the game a bit so far. Is it possible the AI issues can be tied to them being dumbed down for the first part of the campaign to ease you in? Someones comment about Random maps having a better AI kinda clues me in to this possibility.

I haven't even played the campaign. Well, I tried, but I gave up when I saw how silly it was.

All my anecdotes were from random maps.

Of course, I'm on the "supernaturally talented and blessed by the gods themselves" side of the strategy gaming difficulty curve, so who knows. Maybe it's ludicrously difficult for the average, plebian, facebook-gaming-infected gamer.

All joking aside, it really is pretty bad. Like, Warcraft 2 skirmish mode on easy or Empire Total War on release. Functional but terrible. But like I said, I haven't tried the hardest difficulty, just the second hardest. Maybe it's completely and totally different on the hardest. Shogun 2 is like that, with legendary difficulty removing your minimap, your ability to move around the battlefield, real fog of war, etc.

[Biowraith]

I suspect that part of the strategic map AI issues is that they're off exploring treasure sites even once they're deep in war and really ought to be recalling their armies to fight you instead.  Hard to say for sure though since I can't see what they're doing all the time.

Although on medium difficulty (Lord?) I was at war with an archdruid AI who was also at war with another AI, and they were defending their cities relatively well.  Never attacked me, besides one Knight ninja'ing a new outpost, but I just got to do a full 7 stack battle in their throne city (4 of mine vs 3 of theirs, though they had 1.2 more stacks on the far edge of their city).  They didn't do too much derpy stuff in that battle, other than maybe bunching up a little too much (especially as I had multiple Flame Tanks and a couple of Juggernauts bringing the AoE hurt).  They actually managed to fend off an earlier assault with 3 of my stacks - I won the battle, but they still had a 4th stack at the back that I'd have had to kill to get the city itself, and the first assault had left me too weak to finish them off.

Meanwhile the AI at peace with everyone has covered a third of the map with cities and is running around with multiple Juggernauts of his own.

[Greenbane]

To be frank, the maps were also tiny on SM (except for sieges) and maps were always flat. Doesn't make it better though.

Tiny how?
It took your slow foot soldier 2-3 turns of walking to reach your enemy (if he didn't move), you could get 1-2 turns out of archery out of that.
Now it's that if you are in range to shoot an enemy with ranged attack, then he's in range to bash your face in.
There's also no room to back off, you're pretty much forced to engage your enemy head on.
It really feels like Fallen Enchantress in this regard, instead of AoW.

The maps weren't flat, AoW:SM even showed you the elevation numbers when using ranged attacks.

As for the combat system, I really don't see how the things you point out constitute stripping-down. Given that most units now visually represent more than a single person, misses are likely represented by lower damage due to distance, obstacles and such. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's frankly more realistic than having eight archers in a single archer unit miss all their shots while being in effective range.

You could of course explain it with multiple units, although it baffles me why they added them in the first place (except maybe to cut a piece of the popularity of multi-model units in other fantasy TBS).
Not realistic? Arrows aren't homing missles. If you want a more realistic representation of archers look at Dominions and maybe even Total War.

How's the flanking system, a new feature, somehow simpler than the flanking-less old games?

Together with unmissable damage it allows you to destroy most units in a single turn, making your units even more dispensable.
It doesn't make it simpler, but it certainly doesn't make up for all the stuff they removed.

How can AoW3's units be more generic than the previous installments'?

Models have less details in my opinion (well most games transitioning from 2D to 3D suffer from this), also theres a lot less flavour text in general.

Adressed your other points in the first quote.

Where to begin...

• In-battle movement isn't really dissimilar from the prequels. If a ranged unit can fire on a target, at maximum range, units on foot usually can't get to them on their next turn. If they can, it's perfectly viable to put a friendly unit in the way to either dissuade or opportunity-attack the approaching enemy. Cavalry and especially nimble units can probably close the distance in one turn and land a single hit, two if they're particularly advanced/buffed, but that's no different from AoW1 and 2. I remember being able to charge at will on the first turn of battles with my human knights in AoW2.
• No room to back off? There's as much room as necessary, and you can often create more space for a unit to retreat, again, by interposing another one in the way of the enemy, who will have to weather opportunity attacks if it insists on chasing down. There's enough room to maneuver, and in fact, maneuvering is actually encouraged in AoW3 due to the flanking feature you'd rather dismiss. In the old games there was little point in not charging head on and just piling on high-value targets. Flanking makes battles more tactical and brutal, making you think harder before committing expensive units. It's different, yes, and while you consider that a bad thing, I consider it an improvement.
• I don't understand your opposition to multi-model unit graphics. It's more sensible and epic, for lack of a better word, than having 20 guys fighting over a whole city and considering that a large battle. At least we have dozens of soldiers in action per battle now. It's no Total War, but more plausible nonetheless.
• As for archery, arrows aren't homing missiles, no, but it'd be particularly jarring if eight men in an archer unit fired at another eight in normal conditions and everyone missed their shots. Accuracy is well-represented by variable damage ranges depending on distance and obstacles. You bring up Total War and Dominions: in the former I've never seen a volley (be it of arrows or musket fire) miss anywhere close to entirely, whereas the latter has a one man = one unit scale so I'm not sure how it's a point of comparison.
  
• Regarding the units, really, I can't see how you'd consider them less detailed than those of AoW1 and AoW2. Let's leave it at that.

Overall, no offense, but I think you're either exaggerating your claims, nitpicking or holding AoW3 to an impossible standard not even the older games could reach.

[Mindmaker]

Overall, no offense, but I think you're either exaggerating your claims, nitpicking or holding AoW3 to an impossible standard not even the older games could reach.

If we go down this path I could accuse you of things like misinterpreteing what I said, comparing apples to oranges or even the typical "it's shiny!" approach of modern gamers.
Let's not, shall we? Adding "no offense" to something offensive is just silly.

Anyway, those had been my impressions until know and I might change them after I have played some proper games (would be a shame not to get my moneys worth, now that I bought it).
Still, I doubt it will be able to reach up to scratch the same itch that SM could, but maybe it can be fun in it's own way.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   I think any comments regarding there being multiple figures in a unit really should be dropped by everyone as a reason seeing as they are just a visual thing and have no meaning besides showing a rough estimate of how healthy your unit is. It sounds like some people are already planning to make higher quality single unit textures or something and have it as a mod so if it bothers anyone that much I advise you head over to the AoW forum and ask around.
   Anyway when talking about tactics I think people might not realize how powerful flanking is. It doesn't just add 2 damage. When you flank someone it adds 2 damage to all damage types. That means that a sorcerer apprentice that is flanking gets +2 fire, +2 ice, and +2 shock. This gets very powerful if with the right setup, just consider how there are various hero abilities that add +1 of a damage type to the stack he is leading. I don't know how many different ones you can get on a single hero but combined with any charging unit you can really stack the damage up if you plan things correctly.

@Mindmaker
   How is there less flavor text? Maybe I am missing some from the older games but there seems to be a lot of it kicking around. Can you please give some examples of where they are missing it?

@Greenbane
   I believe you don't mean offense but when you say "no offense" it generally comes across to people as meaning that yes you do but your sugar coating it. A better option is to instead say you disagree with their opinions. The way you worded your last sentence makes it sound like your directly attacking him and claiming he is trying to make the game look worse. I don't normally try to deal with this thread drama too much but since I did start this thread I feel somewhat of a need to keep it a little in check.

Edit: @Mindmaker
   I do agree with some of the things you have said but before we go to much more into argument maybe play a "proper game" whatever that means to you then you can give us your full opinion of the game rather than just the slice of the game you have experianced so for

@everyone else
   Same goes for you all, if you haven't played a couple games you probably haven't experienced enough to get a full opinion of how it works. You can't come in and say stuff about the AI not expanding enough, going to war properly, or anything of the sort unless you have played more than a game of it. Once does not a pattern make.

Also as a general announcement I find it very distasteful whenever a thread gets out of hand enough that Toady has to get involved so if I catch this thread going down the path of the flame war I will lock it for a bit to let tempers calm down and probably send a few PMs around. If you want to have a very heated argument with a specific person there is a whole system designed to let you talk amongst yourselves privately.

[Criptfeind]

I'm going to have to agree with Greenbane on the whole map size and time to melee thing. It's honestly ridiculous to say that it takes to short a time on average to get into melee range in AW3 because in the old games in absolutely perfect conditions (slow units and the opposition apparently only having ranged units) it takes a single extra turn.

Edit: On the multiple dudes thing. Yeah. I like it better. I also like that cover halves damage. On the other hand it might be because it's so much easier to tell how everything works and what is going on and why things are happening in battles, perhaps if that was in place along with miss chance I would like it just as much. Although probably not. I'm the type of person that would rather take ten 10s then ten 50% chances for 20

[Mindmaker]

@Mindmaker
   How is there less flavor text? Maybe I am missing some from the older games but there seems to be a lot of it kicking around. Can you please give some examples of where they are missing it?

Hero and Wizard descriptions for one, they used to be pretty good and entertaining.
And most of the units descriptions seem to be stories now instead of descriptions, those used to be pretty good as well.

And by "proper game" I mean one that I don't abort halfway in and sit out until the "You win!" screen.
In all fairness though, I haven't been commenting on anything I haven't seen yet.

Also I don't see the thread going out of hand. It's all fine as long as people don't get emotional and start making personal attacks.

[Greenbane]

Let's not, shall we? Adding "no offense" to something offensive is just silly.

@Greenbane
   I believe you don't mean offense but when you say "no offense" it generally comes across to people as meaning that yes you do but your sugar coating it. A better option is to instead say you disagree with their opinions. The way you worded your last sentence makes it sound like your directly attacking him and claiming he is trying to make the game look worse. I don't normally try to deal with this thread drama too much but since I did start this thread I feel somewhat of a need to keep it a little in check.

I don't use "no offense" lightly, but rather when I don't want a legitimate critical comment from being understood as a personal attack (offense) of some sort. I was not being offensive at all, but it seems by now people interpret "no offense" paradoxically, as a guarantee of offense regardless of the circumstances.

While my counter-arguments might have been incisive, I'm sorry if you felt personally attacked, Mindmaker. It was not my intention.

[Mindmaker]

While my counter-arguments might have been incisive, I'm sorry if you felt personally attacked, Mindmaker. It was not my intention.

I don't mind incisive arguments, but that last line just wasn't needed. It was a kind of "Stop being hysterical/unreasonable!", which I'm certainly not. Talking as if a stranger on the internet was an open book to you may come of as arrogant and condescending.
No offense taken, but I thought I'd rather let you know.

I could adress many of your points like the arrow thing (Rome Archers are only effective in masses, have 8/120 fight vs 8/120 and see how long they'll take and Dominions relies on massing units and even then you'll have turns when 40 archers they hit absolutely nothing), the room thing (in earlier you had a little room to back off, which was useful, while in the newer games the maps pretty much ends where you units start) and as far as movement vs. range goes I don't see much to deny, if you have the game still lying around somewhere you can reinstall and see for yourself. Yes, 36-40 MP cavalery could reach the backrow at it's second turn, but your slow 20-24 MP footmen would need longer which left ranged units with pretty good range some time to fire.
But we might be getting a bit too specific here.

Well anyway, I've seen a couple of good things as well.
The random map generation is prettier and a lot less messy and the game removed the annoyance of neutral units coming from nowhere and destroying your nodes (although I don't approve of them making the map features Civ-like, needing them to be in your sphere of influence.
Also there seems to be some interesting new map features.

[Greenbane]

Nevermind. Let's just agree to disagree. No point in arguing further about such minor details.

[Mindmaker]

That's pretty much what I suggested.