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[Muz]

Hmm.. on second thought, I guess I was expecting AoW3 to be more like Wesnoth with a strategic map. Wesnoth pulled off many different varieties of units right and spoiled my expectations of fantasy TBS unit types.

The unique race units defined the races in AoW 1 and 2. The goblins were weaker, but had poison. Archons could vertigo, d. elves had life drain. My sister had a thing for life drain and web, so she picked out dark elves most the time. I liked ranged units, so I liked the normal elves for their starting Marksmanship. Or if I wanted to harrass my siblings and play at a handicap, I'd go goblins for the cave crawling and laughably bad low level units.

MoM had a somewhat different approach IIRC because it took a lot of effort to unlock certain units, even though many of them were the same.

Moving from AoW1 to AoW2 was a shock mostly because they dropped the 'dungeon crawl' style maps and replaced it with the same style of maps where everyone attacked a central position. More tactics, faster to go through, but dropped the atmosphere. AoW3 looks like it's going for a Total War style of tactics... more about positioning and using the environment rather than using different unit types.

I guess I'll just wait around for AoW3 to get an expansion and fall into the bargain bin. Will just play Wesnoth and Conquest of Elysium until then.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   The thing is that stuff like that is a part of the races. Goblins are weaker (-5hp), deal with poison (Elite swarm darters and big beetle riders have inflict severely poisoned), and use blight with a lot of attacks as well as being protected from it (40%). The problem is that while nice its not as obvious and the actual poison only comes at elite rank. Elves are still the best at ranged as well. They get +1 ranged strength (and +1 ranged shock for some reason?) as well as wherever they have a bow its a long bow which from how I understand it never suffers a range penalty. That is very big but like the goblin its hard to feel. Because they wanted balance they probably went too far. I think if you play it a lot you will feel it but it isn't something that you would get right away.

[Greenbane]

   The thing is that stuff like that is a part of the races. Goblins are weaker (-5hp), deal with poison (Elite swarm darters and big beetle riders have inflict severely poisoned), and use blight with a lot of attacks as well as being protected from it (40%). The problem is that while nice its not as obvious and the actual poison only comes at elite rank. Elves are still the best at ranged as well. They get +1 ranged strength (and +1 ranged shock for some reason?) as well as wherever they have a bow its a long bow which from how I understand it never suffers a range penalty. That is very big but like the goblin its hard to feel. Because they wanted balance they probably went too far. I think if you play it a lot you will feel it but it isn't something that you would get right away.

Yeah, AoW3 might need some polish and honing, but it's not the Holy Grail dipped in chocolate and as I said earlier it was unrealistic to expect that. The prequels were also not Holy Grails either, and had flaws like any other game. And it's ultimately unfair to compare a game that just came out to those that have been continuously worked on for years on end (Wesnoth or Dominions) and to a lesser extent expanded predecessors (AoW2 Shadow Magic).

[Gunner-Chan]

I feel a bit torn on the racial differences. On one hand, they never were as big a deal as they could be in the previous games I felt, since most of the time they were still just reskins and slight restats. So it's not that different.

Though I do like how it makes minmaxing less of something you wanna try to do every time. Since it makes choosing race, class and spheres more preference than actual serious choices. And I actually like that.

But I also kinda wish there was more visible differences. And maybe some... Re-balances. Pretty much all the races are good and fun, but goblins got hit with the suck stick. -5 hp is a surprisingly huge drawback, and they don't get any real mutable benefits if you don't have an underground to go into. Some of their units at least seem to have taken a few points penalty in ways other races don't too, which is weird.

So I'm not really sure what I'd do with races if I was in charge. Maybe racial T4s and an extra T3 per race. And maybe another bonus or two each.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   I actually like the goblin archer unit. While elves have better ability to shoot at long range the fact that the swarm darters ignore any terrain penalties besides completely blocking makes them good for sieging.

[Teneb]

Goblins are only really good if there is a lot of blighted terrain around. I've had a quite powerful human army of mine perform horribly and desert due to everything being covered in blight.

While goblin blight damage is nice, some units (eldritch horror, for example) are completely immune to it, which takes away your whole advantage.

[thepodger]

The biggest crime is that there is no Goblin with a comedy sized bomb strapped to his back and I have a sneaking suspicion that decision was made by commitee to avoid controversy.  Because we have to be sensitive to the... modern short vertically challenged height diverse suicide bomber explosively extremist help me out here editor there's no politically correct terminology here the combustibly inclined demographic?

Also no nymphs.  Every race gets one of each class of unit, and the racial variants for each unit class are so marginal that they add close to zero tactical consideration.

The whole game feels too homogenized.
Anyone know about modding?  If the content is not locked down tight or they release tools the community will fix it right up I am sure.  There's nothing wrong here with the game, the engine, the mechanics, etc, its just a content problem that is easily addressed by the community.

[Nelia Hawk]

Also no nymphs.

they are in as fairy "special dwelling/town" unit ... i.e. in campaign mission 1.

[gimli]

Every race gets one of each class of unit, and the racial variants for each unit class are so marginal that they add close to zero tactical consideration.

The whole game feels too homogenized.

Well yeah, that + other "problems"....I wasn't even playing the game for 2 days now.  I never thought that I will get bored with an AoW sequel so "extremely" fast, or that I will whine about it so much..ah well in DLCs/exp packs/mods we trust! Especially in mods, but again I am not sure that what can we be modded at all..
PS.
I find it funny that most of the "big" reviews are praising the game, except for that Gamespot review, which I ageed with totally...tbh I expected much more, not just some
generic fantasy TBS. We got tons from those already..
PPS. I would ask for a money back if it would be possible, considering that I surely won't touch the game for a long time...at this point I am not even sure that DLCs can "fix" anything, I guess they will add some races and that's it. Perhaps a decent TC mod is the only hope for those who are annoyed with the game.

[Neonivek]

Well I remember one Heros of Might and Magic game where while there was a lot of variety in the races anyhow, they all followed a very similar pattern (a certain tier of unit was always a 2x2 unit).

However an expansion came and in it they added another path for every unit of the game to follow.

As well as a new race that just smashed the game's convention over the knee (had no range for example).

---

Anyhow...

The Lack of variety in Age of Wonders 3 might be something that will be fixed with sequels as right now they were playing it very VERY safe.

and now that they got the security of a "balanced" game. They can try to make an "interesting" game next.

[gimli]

The Lack of variety in Age of Wonders 3 might be something that will be fixed with sequels as right now they were playing it very VERY safe.

and now that they got the security of a "balanced" game. They can try to make an "interesting" game next.

It's funny, the core gameplay system + the basic idea of race/class combos looked extremely good "on paper". It had so many _fun_ possibilites, yet the v1.0 release feels dull and empty somehow.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   For those of you who want to be on the bleeding edge, maybe you just don't like the base game and want to see what direction its going, or you have the problem with higher resolutions and want the fix now here is a video by iHunterKiller showing how to play with the beta patches. Do note you can only play on the beta patches through steam. Also for those who want to start making your own maps and such here is a video for how to use the map editor by the same guy.

If you want to know the full extent of the beta patch as of this post here we go:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Change Log:

Fixes:
• WQHD / QHD (up to 2560 x 1440 / 2560 *1600) native resolution display support (the Black & White boxes and blurry text should disappear). Fix has been verified to work up to and including a resolution of 2560×1660.
• Fixed an issue for people using Intel HD Graphics – specifically for HD4000 and Surface 2 Pro – in combination with certain driver version, that caused a crash when opening interface screens – e.g. starting the game, opening options menu, skill book, etc.

Performance
• Fixed frame drop when armies were selected.
• Fixed decreasing frame rate occurring during extended play, particularly in longer battles.
• Fixed a memory leak when Windows was locked.
• Optimized a feature effecting maps with water, which should now show increased framerate.

AI Improvements
• Fixed some cases where the tactical AI would come out from behind the walls of cities and fortresses too soon.
• Stopped the AI spamming disjunction, so players can now use global magic more easily.
• Fixed an issue where the tactical AI would cast a resurrection spell on an invalid target.
• Made ‘squire’ AI easier to beat.
• AI settings for players were changed to compensate for this change, to keep the same level of challenge on normal difficulty.
• Using the ‘restart’ option in a campaign map now returns the player to the briefing, allowing map difficulty to be changed.

Scenario & Campaign
• Campaign: Heroes being mind controlled no longer causes you to instantly lose a campaign map if you rescue them by the end of combat.
• Campaign: Heroes which are protected by the ‘resurgence’ effect – e.g. the theocrat’s ‘rebirth’ spell – can now die in tactical combat without causing you to lose the campaign map, as long as you win the battle that they die in.
• Blightmouth Crater: Closed a gap in impassable mountains.
• Blightmouth Crater: Removed two superfluous hearts of the blight.
• Blightmouth Crater: Fixed the behavior of independent armies.
• Elven Resurgence: Player 6 now starts with more gold mines, making the starting positions more balanced.
• 4th Elven Court map: Independents no longer interfere with one of the starting quests.
• 4th Commonwealth map: Fixed a message that missed an icon under specific circumstances.
• 5th Commonwealth map: A ‘defeat leader’ quest no longer reveals that leader’s position.
• 5th Commonwealth map: Fixed a story message that had overlapping lines of text.
• 6th Elven Court & Commonwealth maps: Prevented story characters from dying when you are victorious.
• 6th Elven Court and Commonwealth maps: Added a few building upgrades to starting cities to give the player a better starting situation and more options.

Other Fixes.
• Fixed settings – e.g. graphics settings – not being saved when using the ‘guest’ profile.
• Fixed the stack confirm movement button being disabled in some situations when a stack was auto-moving.
• Fixed a rare crash caused by a player razing a city with a heart of blight, tropics, etc in its domain
• Fixed an issue where a backstab bonus wasn’t being correctly applied. This led to situations where a unit could backstab a target without flanking it.
• Fixed a crash triggered by clicking on a “You lost your throne city!” event.
• Fixed a crash triggered by selecting a ‘Egg has hatched’ after loading the save game.
• Fixed the ‘Remove army from event list’ shortcut key function so armies are properly removed from the list.
• Fixed an issue where the ‘Protect your leader and throne city’ quest failed to complete on victory.
• The game now ignores controller input, to prevent camera drift when a controller is plugged in.
• ‘Spring of life’ now rewards units when explored.
• When creating a new custom leader, the field for setting a name is now left empty by default.

Balance:
• ‘Shrine of smiting’ is no longer ‘Devout’, nerfing ‘Shrine of smiting’ doom stacks which relied on stacking ‘Devout’ bonuses for the ‘Smiting prayer bolts’.
• ‘Shadow stalker’ now does cold damage. This fixes an issue where rogues had limited options vs. blight immune troops.
• Increased the research costs of skills to slow down progression through the skill tree.
• Increased cost of racial tier 3 unit building to 300 gold and 100 mana.
• Decreased the base production of cities.
• Fixed issue with ‘Libraries’ and ‘Observatories’ generating too much knowledge.

Features:
• Added buttons on either side of the city name that cycle through cities owned by the player.
• We added a quick save option, bound under CTRL+S by default.
• Added extra text to the preview popup when attacking a city wall. Players can now see the hit points the wall have remaining as they plan their attack.

We hope we’ll this patch resolves some of the issues you might have encountered. We plan to roll this patch out to all our players early next week and we’re already working on the next patch, so please bear with us if your issue did not make it into patch.

Thank you for all of you feedback. With your input we’ll make the game even better!

-The Team @ Triumph Studios.

[gogis]

It makes me really sad that almost every TBS game going 3d nowadays. I am now spanking myself to spending money on this game, instead of Warlock 2, what a disastrous coinflip.
It's incredibly resource demanding, shallow and repetative.
I am not going into details, but I was replaying AOW:SM about two months ago, and trust me, it still much better game that this new sequel. So it's not rose tinted glasses case.

[nyulzsiraf]

I am thinking to buy this game, but I expected better reviews

[Biowraith]

For whatever it's worth, I'm at 74 hours logged and I'm still thoroughly enjoying it.  Not sure how to judge whether you'd be one of the players disappointed in the game or one of the ones enjoying it though (besides watching lots of gameplay videos or, ahem, trying before you buy).