Age of Wonders 3 - Anyone Following This Game?

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I discovered this on accident a few days ago. It will be released on Monday 03/31 but there are already plenty of videos and let's plays out from the devs and fans that were included in the closed beta.

http://ageofwonders.com/about-age-of-wonders-iii/



It's essentially a Civ 5 type game, set in a high fantasy setting with a separate campaign mode and battle mode, with battles playing out in a turn based style.

It also has plenty of roleplaying elements, with several story based scenarios to play through, a primary hero that leads your kingdom/empire and several lesser heroes that can also lead your armies. You can customize the race and look of your hero, and choose their class. Lesser heroes that you meet have predefined races and classes, of course. You can learn spells, find and equip magical items, even create magical items in some of your more developed cities. And of course all of your heroes and squads can level up as they attain battle experience.

It looks refreshingly enjoyable, and so far the reviews I'm seeing from fans are overwhelmingly positive. I enjoyed the hex based combat model of Civ 5, and it appears to be well implemented here, with factors like cover, ranged penalties, and attacks of opportunity all being tactical considerations. Each army can have up to 6 units, and I believe you can have up to 4 armies on each side in a single battle (I heard that it's up to 42 units total in battle, but it seems like it should be 48).

The replay value seems to be immense due to custom scenarios you can play with randomized maps and any number of details that can be customized to your liking. And you can fight against the AI or other players, or a combo of both if you like.

Although I haven't had much time to game in recent months, this is a title that I'm seriously considering picking up. Thought I'd share, and certainly I'm curious if others around here are planning to try this out.

EDIT:
Here is another video highlighting one of the game's 6 primary classes and some gameplay:

 

Part 1 was an excellent game, whether playing Scenario or Campaign mode. I thought the campaign was well done for the times. There are a ton of mods for Part 1. Part 2 and it's add-on Shadow Magic we're lacking in my opinion but also have mod support. I will probably buy Part 3 jut for the fact that I had a lot of playtime into Part 1.

 

I own all parts of the series, and consider myself a fan. Will be buying this one too.
Civ as a game type never spoke to me, unless it was in space like Alpha Centauri or Fantasy.

 

I used to play the first two games, and I've just managed to get them to run on my macbook. Furthermore, Thriumph Studios is located in my hometown and the director of marketing used to be one of my old bosses.

 

Cool Morgoth, so does that mean that you're likely to pick up the latest title? Or that you're going to steer clear? I imagine that level of background with the company means that you have strong feelings one way or the other.

I've been trying to figure out why this series has never really been on my radar. My understanding is that the original games came out around 10 years ago, if not longer. Other than Warcraft and Starcraft I just wasn't really that into strategy games back then. It was all about CRGPs.

It wasn't until I discovered Medieval 2 Total War that I became an enthusiast, but that was maybe around 2005 - 2006, and I didn't look beyond Total War for many years after that. I guess these games would have essentially been relics by the time I was looking for other alternatives. Anyhow, I'm pretty sure I'll be picking the third title at some point.

 

Oh yes, I will definitely pick this game up when I upgrade my computer.

 

If your ok with old graphics. Try part 1 as well. It's addicting.

 

Well, since I had some downtime due to strep throat, I decided to purchase. Actually got it just before the pre-order extras went away. I got a couple of hours in last night, and I'm enjoying immensely so far.

I found it very easy to learn, both on the strategic and battle map levels. I'm sure my Civ V experience combined with watching a few let's plays helped with that. The best part is that so far it's extremely stable, and if I have a question about something, typing in a phrase into the tome of wonders so far has yielded me the answer every time (rather a miracle these days).

The single player campaign story isn't anything earthshattering or original (what really is anymore), but it works and is handled well. I particularly love the voice acting done for the main protagonist (the female elven rogue, whose name escapes me). Also, the writing is very well done, which is always a concern, but particularly when the official language of the country where the studio is based isn't English. Happy to see that they nailed this, especially after seeing some of the posts from the devs that weren't exactly written in perfect English.

Combat is fun and rewarding, with plenty of surprises to keep it interesting. When I encountered my first machine of war in battle, I had absolutely no idea what to expect, and pretty much got my ass handed to me! My poor fairies!!

So far it's a nice balance of strategic depth, while not being overly onerous about it.

 

Marc, it is buggy? I se a patch already came out. Any comments on the patch? Does Part 3 have any scenario builder capability?

Come on Marc, give us the down-low...

 

You know, it certainly has a couple of bugs here and there, but so far those have all been rather trivial (in fact, I can't even think of one to mention). Really, what amazes me is how unbuggy the game is overall. If anything I would say what the game needs most is more tuning/balance of the units, which I know Triumph is committed to working on, and some of which was delivered in the recent patch. It rather seems that tier I units become all but obsolete once tier III and tier IV units come on the scene. I suppose that's to be expected to some extent, but a lot of folks feel that the gap is currently too great.

The bottom line from my perspective, in all honesty, is this game is about as close to a 10 as any game I can remember. It's truly captivating.

I don't believe the editor has been released yet, but it's in the works.

Oh, I thought of a bug... it used to be that AI defenders would run out from behind their walls prematurely sometimes during sieges. But that was addressed in the recent patch. And I guess there are some lag issues sometimes in mutiplayer, but I have only played single player thus far, so haven't encountered anything like that.

 

Hey Blades, thought you might like to check out this fan review from the Triumph forums. It's far more detailed than I have time to be, and it is written by someone who is clearly a passionate fan of the series.

Added in some colors to minimize the wall of text effect

 

nice game, got in on release. Yeah Steam.

 

Looked up the game on GoG to refresh my memory, then noticed that the screenshots looked pretty familiar. Then I looked at the icons on my desktop, and there it is, Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.

Haven't played any other AoW game, and not a lot of this one either, but it mostly reminds me of Heroes of Might and Magic. It's not really a game that draws me in and keeps me in, though it's amusing to play when I do play it.

 

I got it from release, and I wasn't too fond of the game back then. Races were quite unbalanced, some felt quite "generic" and the general motto was "rush tier 3 units or gtfo", so I dropped it for a couple of years. Got my greedy gaming paws on the second expansion (AoW3: Eternal Lords) and boy, how has the game improved. I highly recommend it!