Age of Wonders 1

Yes, Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.

You're wrong though.

I have the boxed copy of the game. I have no idea why I bought it because I'm usually an idiot when it comes to these games and I have no idea what I am doing, but Age of Wonders is very easy to learn and it's great fun. I love the dragon in the "Start menu" how it reacts to your cursor movement. It's really well programmed too, you can run the game at pretty much any resolution you want, so if you have a larger screen you can see more of the game.

What sucks is that the developers didn't include a lot of useful stats in the game. You will have no idea how strong a certain spell really is or how much damage archers do. Luckily there has been an addendum published. The company that wrote the manual is out of business, so you will have to find the addendum floating around on the internet instead.

Have you played the 1.5 version of Master of Magic? I ask specifically for this number because community patches made the AI far less retarded than before. There is no other strategy game with magic as powerful and fun to use as in Master of Magic.

Are there any interesting mods for AoW? I'd love to mod some stuff in myself, but I suck at programming.

There's a couple of balancing mods

aow.heavengames.com/mods/index.shtml

but that's really it. There's some singleplayer campaigns/singleplayer maps on that website that are pretty good as well if you sort by rating/download amount.

We will never have genuinely good 2D art ever again, will we?

I miss actual artists being employed by this industry.

Truly sad.

Who needs professional artists that want real money when you have tumblr who will do it for scraps?

Really makes you think

HOMM made me realize how much of DOS and early Windows era strategy games appeal for me was in comfy ambience and art. There are some Ubisoft HOMM games that actually get close to nailing the mechanics, but it still doesn't matter because the overall package is so revolting.

There's just no other game where you can fuck around like this.

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Not as good as Majesty.

Stronghold and Majesty are some of my favorite strategy games. Majesty especially because it's such a unique approach.

AoW2 is damn gorgeous.

TAX COLLECTAAA

gets killed by a rat

The style reminds me of good classical fantasy. It looks so good compared to AoW3

HoMM2 is pretty comfy.

I like how HOMM2's art seems like it was designed to mimic playing a board game.

i wonder how that can be done whit 3D graphics?

I couldn't get into HoMM3 after being enthralled by HoMM2's artstyle. Things just looked too smooth and blurred even.

I played HoMM2 as a kid once when I was sick. I still remember the following painfully long night filled with HoMM2 themed fever dreams.

Also the music is 10/10

youtube.com/watch?v=TOPrjTrIlGw&index=7&list=PLEEBE8658092336F0

youtube.com/watch?v=YSmQQNKs5wY&index=12&list=PLEEBE8658092336F0

Just pretend AoW3 is a different IP and suddenly it's not so bad.

Don't get me wrong. AoW3 is a good game,but 1 manages to look better in many aspects.

the best.

The only good part of AoW3 is its character designer. Everything else is painfully average, which means it's a good game by today's standards.

What is miss of AoW1 also is the narration.

The main Dark Elf character is a power-hungry tyrant and it's amazing. Even though both endings are pretty dark it's lovely how he describes the other races and his evil plans. It's really well done in this aspect.

>TFW Inioch gets you killed

i miss when you werent born and shitting up the internet with your stupid opinions

Great argument

It's kinda shit though. The internet is a massive spoiler for games. It's too easy to discover secrets nowadays.

Have never played this OP, but I see it has a campaign which might be a good way of learning the game before playing skirmish scenarios.

How does the game compare to MoM and HoMM 3? Both of those games are absolutely excellent and among the most fun I've had with any game. MoM in particular is like a fantasy equivalent of Master of Orion, and if you've played MoO you'll know how drenched in style and comfy that game is (and 2).

Never played those, but the biggest downside of this game is that the highest difficulties are artificial as fuck. It's still enjoyable, though.

1: If you Leader dies you're dead.
2: Heroes die and can't be revived unless you're a necromancer, and still it's very hard to do so.
3:It's pretty much a game about armies.
4:Spamming works. but some troops will wreck entire armies and heroes if you don't have what it takes to counter them.

It's also nice that you can spend your crystals either to invest them into research or to save them so you can cast globals spells. You can also modify the terrain with some of said spells. Finally, there's pieces of lore and descriptions everywhere. Have fun. It's not a hard game.

If anyone can stomach 4x I find the Dominions series similar in some respects to the HoMM/MoM/AoW trinity. It generally consists of troop combat and magic, and isn't bogged down by tons of economic micromanagement like a lot of 4x games. If you check the general they probably have an old version you can download for free to try it out.

The civ variety is great too, there's a nation based on Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos, giant Jews who eat people, Aztecs, sneaky Norse elves, Atlanteans, undead nations that summon shitloads of skeletons/ghosts, etc.

Unfortunately a lot of 4x games have buffed CPU stats rather than better AI. Master of Orion 2 is my all time fav game but damn they're dumb even on impossible.

There is a cool mod for Heroes 3 that replaces the graphics with Heroes 2 style sprites. I don't think it's playable yet and it looks like they are trying to make it its own things instead of just a sprite replacer.

Still, it's pretty cool to conjure a blizzard, freeze a lake and cross with your army or to leave a trail of darkness behind you.

And now you can solo entire mission.

So, where does AoW sit in terms of MoM and HoMM3? Better or worse?

It's different. That depends on your taste. Units play a great role, but heroes can be truly overpowered depending on what you do.
I wish AoW had some good mods or something.
I tried to install Warlock's ruleset but apparently it doesn't work on 64x.

So, does Age of Wonders 3 have any good mods yet?

Not that I know, and it's 3dpd.

That's not master of magic. It's a different product.

I'm an idiot, I forgot the link.
heroes3mod.webs.com/

Seems to be abandoned.

As someone who loves both HoMM trilogy and AoW, Battle for Wesnoth feels good in all the right places.

Help, how do I learn to enjoy Wesnoth?

If you don't enjoy it then the game wasn't made for you, just stop playing it.

Also Eador Genesis looks decent, I'm planning on playing it sometime soon.

But I enjoy other games like it, just not Wesnoth. I feel like I'm overlooking something.

just stop playing it then

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We all know HoMM3 was the last game in the series.

just because ubisoft ate nwc doesnt mean homm 5 isnt the best homm in every way

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youre a fag and homm 3 offers nothing over 5 besides being completely broken.

Your shitty bait is just boring and predictable now. It wouldn't have lost its effect if you didn't do it every thread.

plugging your ears doesnt make it any less true

Here's your last (you), cherish the attention well

2 of the factions are completely trash, the units are boring and it tends to just be a numbers game, which ends up meaning the fights are boring. plenty of times there are units that just arent worth upgrading to which would still be the case in homm 5 if they didnt come with well thought out abilities.
building your hero is a broken affair all around. which some people dont mind, i can respect that.
you can say its a great game and overlook its flaws because of nostalgia, but to say its the best homm in the series is just flat out wrong.
even 6 offers more interesting combat, and thats the most important aspect of the game, its not like theres diplomacy to be had. it all revolves around the fighting.

Explain. It's not the bundled mod, but just the latest community patch. It continues the line of Insecticide patches.

some people come to rely on bugs, glitches or glaring balance issues. if you cant have flying galleons some would say its ruined because they dont find the proper game fun.

But the unpatched game was disappointingly easy. How can anyone find that fun?

I just bought MoM to play again from GoG. I am running into the same issue and am now highly confused. I can either

1. Play the game v1.31
2. Install insecticide 1.40n patch with ai and bug fixes
3. Install 1.5 fan patch with minimal ai fixes but many bug fixes
4. Install v2.8 caster of magic with apparently loads of bug fixes, ai and balancing changes

What do?

3.

Yes.

These comments bother me. I don't want some spergs definition of improvement, where gameplay is significantly altered.

I just want bug fixes, and fixes to AI only when it's doing something that shouldn't be happening (like not working as intended due to some setting that was clearly incorrectly applied by the producer and not picked up in QA).

Seems like 1.5 has even larger maps and a new difficulty setting, but for some reason only 4 player max…

You have four diplomacy gems in the game. How would you squeeze more players into it?

That patch is modular, meaning the more unorthodox gameplay changes are optional, applied only manually by you.

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MY NIGGER. I love AoW and Majesty both, but Majesty holds a special place in my heart. Although they are different genres.

corporations are people too

Wow, that loks actually better than AoW3.

zeus/poseidon is even more comfy.

I think old Runescape is a good example of a 3D game with a nice comfy aesthetic; though I won't deny there were lots of butchered models and I don't think they ever got terrain right either. I think it's a style that is nice and simple without being too MINIMALIST.