tbh i dont recvall at all aow1 and 2

from some point of view the tactica ai is pretty impressive at first, i hardly saw games where the ai keep the troops withouth uncovering them, and/ or charge like this

but its pretty straight forward, basically it seems to do well a couiple of thing just ignoring many others...

also the strategic ai is very weak and very exploitable

dunno if you guys tried this, i just had 1 stack (very weak like 3 archers or so) and i moved them to empty cities

when ai is going invade city A i bring them just in the area of influence of city A not inside, thats enough for ai to move back adn move towards city B (Still empty)

then after ai move there i move the stack to B influence

etc etc, basically ai never try to really go all in, they just keep moving like a horse chasing a carrot...

very stupid

The new FE game for next year looks upgraded graphically. and I suspect it will be more polished.

I'm just hoping that you can make a sandbox game out of it somehow, or that stuff can get backported to LH.

i dont understand the AI complaints to be honest. yeah its FAR from perfect : it makes stupid errors, its exploitable yada yada.

still with all that said and done it has both the best tactical and strategic AI in a Fantasy turn based strategy title since the civ 4 mod fall from heaven.

i must have played ~1000 hours of master of Magic, ~1000 hours of Fall from Heaven and ~100 hours each of AOW2, Legendary Heroes, Warlock.

AOW3 i have now played for maybe 15 hours but in that time i ve seen quite a few impressive things i didnt experience in any of those games before, here s just 3 examples out of the top of my mind.

1. proper use of dispel when i thought i had the enemy with a dominate =/

2. proper use of damage spells to finish off badly wounded troops of mine the AI couldnt reach otherwise

3. they mount some proper offense and defensive actions on the world map and punish you for not defending your cities that are behind the frontlines

dont misunderstand me for claiming the AI to be really clever because its not but  it seems to at least grasp the basics / play the same game as you. that was partly my experience in FFH (depending on how the random maps turned out - sometimes they gimped the AI too bad) and to be honest never my experience in warlock, MoM, AOW2 nor legendary heroes. each of these games i still love but mostly because of fighting the environment (exploring the map, dungeons, WILDLANDS) - not fighting the other AI civilizations.

btw city management in AOW is different - that the AI doesnt build every single building cant be hold against but speaks FOR it because there s no point in doing so . you dont understand AOW/waste resources if you "fully develop" cities. if for example you want a Research city in AOW3 you only have to build 2 buildings and then shift production to research.

at first i thought this was pretty dumb and shallow but thinking about it, is having 8 different buildings that serve exactly the same purpose really more "complex" or just fake complexity ? i now think its the later.

anyhow i m loving AOW3 already. it does have some balance issues atm but with those patched out and a proper Expansion or 2 i can see it becomming a classic like for me MoM and FFH are.

there s one thing i like a lot more in FE:LH though: Exploration. doing quests, finding loot and fighting the various Monsters/wildlands is a lot less interesting in AOW3. especially because by the time you find the hard Monsters you already have far stronger armies.

so in my experience i think AOW3 is more of a strategy game because the main fight is against the enemy AI civilizations and you field alot more Units / need to defend your territory more. in FE:LH i mostly used 1-3 armies lategame and never bothered defending my territory. another difference is that in AOW3 you still lose Units later on - even Tier 4 Units can and will be killed by the AI. when i m rolling my 1-3 armies of doom in FE:LH lategame they are pretty much invincible.

FE:LH to me is more like a RPG, explore, collect loot, Level up your Champions , build an uberfortress of doom that builds ubertroops of doom.

Warlock is similar to FE:LH in that regard. great fun to explore, collect loot, Level up your Lords, collect all the Special resource perks and build ubertroops of doom that the enemy just cant touch.

personally i m really glad that there s now 3 decent Fantasy TBS titles and find stupid fanboy wars trashtalking the other titles pretty sad.

when i get bored of AOW i can check out warlock 2 - when i get bored of that there hopefully is the new Fallen Enchantress game out and when i get bored of that its time for the first AOW3 Expansion. couldnt be better. especially since Warlock 2 and AOW3 are supposedly made with modding in mind.

i didnt mean the AI spamming disjunction – i mean proper use of dispel during combat. basically I charmed an enemy tier 3 unit and his reaction was dispelling the charm and charging this tier 3 unit into my hero killing it and I ve seen quite a few similar encounters along those lines.

granted I was careless – but only because spending 1000s of hours in games where being “careless” was rarely a problem before.

and so far I have  seen quite a few times that the AI uses damage spells where it makes sense – like finishing off a wounded unit in combat or hitting the stack with almost dead units outside of combat with nukes.

both are good examples of the AI R.E.P.E.A.T.E.D.L.Y. using spells to their advantage – whereas as far as I remember in the other similar games the AI uses spells more or less at random – and just to be clear, I m talking about the AI Factions, not random monsters.

of course monsters use the given spells/abilities they have frequently.

at the end of day it doesn’t really matter, believe me or not. what I just wanted to say is that the AI in AOW3 is progress – nothing more, nothing less. if one used silly numbers I d put the AI of AOW3 at a 3-4/10 whereas Warlock, Legendary Heroes, MoM and AOW2 are somewhere between around 1-2/10. ( oh and to put things in perspective, I absolute loved all those games despite that. I love them over games where I d rate the AI much higher. probably the AI in these games is so “weak” because of one of the aspects I love about those games: lots of different spells, units, races, items etc. )

a 3-4/10 isnt a great score, it means there s lot of rooms for improvement and lots of exploits that make the Ai look bad - by all means point them out (preferably on the AOW forums so the developers can try to fix em)

I don’t wanna be involved in any AOW3 versus FE:LH fanboy wars as I like both games – just finding it hilarious at the moment that AOW3 gets trashed for all the wrong reasons, i.e. stuff that it does cleary better than FE:LH (AI, waging wars with other civilizations, unit variety) whereas nobody complains about the the things that FE:LH really does better than AOW3 ( world exploration , interesting loot, quests ).

the way I see it between the 3 “modern” fantasy TBS:

Warlock: AI civilisations are pretty much useless filler. the fun in the game is exploring the world, the different planes, collecting tons of different units, building great cities, collecting all those special resource and experience perks and creating a “task force of doom” to clear the planes with for even more loot. if you want a challenge, play the armaggedon dremer DLC where you can fight some superpowered elite units. Warlock has a lot of charm but at the end of the day its much more of a RPG than strategy game.

AOW3: fighting AI civilizations is the meat of the game. huge battles/sieges, some annoying guerrilla warfare too ^^, exploration and loot play a very minor role, city managing is streamlined (not in a bad way though, once you think about it the “simplicity” makes a lot of sense ). and once you get over your first impressions there s lot of variety to be had between the different classes, races, independents etc. playing a warlord is fairly different to playing a rogue and even between playing a goblin rogue and say highelf rogue there s quite a few nice differences.

Legendary Heroes: a good mix between AOW3 and Warlock. I personally think in all the things warlock does well Legendary Heroes is just as good (although doing things different enough to like both games) but in Legendary Heroes AI civilization play more of a role than in warlock – although not as much as in AOW3.

MY personal preference right now is AOW3>FE:LH>Warlock but I admit AOW3 has a "new guy" bonus and i d rate all games as good and can understand anyone who has that order switched up differently – what I don’t understand is people seriously claiming one of those games to be great and another of them “shit”. smells of immature fanboy crap – sorry

Anyways I m outta here, looking really forward to the next Elemental game (and Worlds of Magic and Warlock2 when its more reasonably priced considering its Warlock 1.2 in terms of content ^^) but meanwhile I m having a blast in AOW3 – not because its “better”  but refreshingly different. and I can only recommend any fan of these types of games to at least give it a chance with an open mind. playing the game like you would play LH doesn’t work (well) – just like someone coming from AOW to LH might overreact and trash the game because he didn’t really get it / the differences yet.

Good things in AoW that were better in FE:LH

1. Graphics style

2. Optimization

3. Multiplayer

4. Minimum range for ranged attacks

5. LOS attack penalty

6. Flank bonus

7. Superior Charge bonus

8. Opportunity Strike

9. No unit order in combat

10. Vastly more interesting Siege battles

11. Multiple Group combat engagements.

12. More interesting decisions for conquest

13. Units gain more than just HP when they level up

Good things in FE:LH that were better than AoW:

1. Unit, Hero, Faction customization***

2. More interesting abilities

3. No secondary resource for spells(extremely limited)

4. Far better UI

5. More interesting Weapons

6. More in depth city management

7. Meaningful weapon upgrades.

Add these to Elemental, without taking away anything, and you'd have a hell of a game.

Unfortunately, SD being brilliant as they are, are taking away all that made Elemental unique.

The game seems to be exceptionally well-received for a game in the genre. The first patch that fixes some urgent isues is on the way:

http://ageofwonders.com/forums/topic/v1-08-beta-patch-test-branch-for-steam-users/

It will for instance fix the disjunction spamming by the AI.

Nice video from one of the developers about how to use the editor:

http://ageofwonders.com/all-about-the-age-of-wonders-iii-level-editor/

ABC review:

http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2014/04/07/3979689.htm

They give it a 9/10

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/04/04/age-of-wonders-3-review-sleep-when-youre-dead/

4.5 out of 5.

http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/ageofwondersiii/2319/review.html

8.5 out of 10

What the f... is Age of Wonders 3 video by Total Biscuit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJdvh0iOD7g&feature=player_embedded

well ppl who does review cant really play games for 50 hours b4 writing...

i have to say in the first couple of hourse my first impression was something like 9+, it seemed really nearly perfect, so polished, so deep, so everything

ofc reviews reflect this initial shining of the game

Well, the AI of Fallen Enchantress was not perfect either when it just came out. It took several updates before it got better. And LH came out much later than that.

AOW 3 did not have one update yet. It is not really fair to compare the AI between AOW 3 and LH in its current state.

That said, I think the AI of AOW 3 is actually very good for a release version, especially the tactical AI.

Just like Fallen Enchantress and LH, they will keep updating it based on feedback.

The first official patch has been released (1.09):

http://ageofwonders.com/v109-update/

And a couple of new reviews have come in:

http://www.pcgamer.com/review/age-of-wonders-3-review/

8.3 out of 10

An intersting one from Tom Chick at Quarter to three (we all know him from his elemental review...). He speakes in superlatives. He is very positive, but finds the late game to be tedious, an often seen problem in tbs games:

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2014/04/08/age-wonders-iiis-evocative-intricate-lovely-world-without-end/

three out of five stars.

I have never seen a TBS game that has AI that is as mature as in AOW 3 on release.

You know what's funny? There is even discussion about whether the AI should auto-dispel some spells in tactical and strategic combat even though people generally agree it is the best thing to do, albeit annoying. Concensus seems to be that the AI should not immediately cast disjunction on some spells.

People apparantly prefer the AI to be a little less good because it then is less annoying as well. The developers are really pondering over this one. They are trying to find a good balance here.

You probably have the same complaint about the strategic gameplay and victory conditions on AOW Shadow magic. And yet it is a game played for more than 10 years by a very large community. Map making and multiplayer gave it that much replayability value. There is no other game I can think of that has a similar track record.

AOW 3 seems at least as good as Shadow Magic was, so I'm not worried about the endgame, as long it will be fun to play for the better part of a game.

AOW3 doesn't have much depth (outside of the tactical battles). It's about as complex as the old warlords games but without the careful balance those games had.

The AI cheats on every level (income, units, what it can see) same as AOW2SM but at least it does something while it's cheating. AOW2SM ai just sat there.

I still find it baffling AOW2 is so beloved by some people. The only thing going for it was it was pretty and had such a huge menagerie of races and units with SM. Mods did not fix that game.

I really wish I could customize which cheats an AI could have.  That might solve some of my issue with the game- I really can't stand certain types of cheating, but am ok with other types.