Let's play Age of Wonders 3 together!

Do you glorious faggots want to conquer a fantasy world filled with elves, orcs, halflings, and more? Do you want to be a powerful sorcerer capable of wiping out entire armies with a flick of the wrist? Or perhaps a dashing rogue who can sneak over enemy walls and slaughter the guards? Do you want to do it while shitposting on your favorite board?

Well then, let's all play Age of Wonders 3!

First, we have to actually set up the game. In the interest of time, I've set the difficulty to "Lord" (the middle difficulty) and put up 6 players on a large map. Before we can select our race and class, (and our specialties) we need to select our map type and "game flow."

MAP TYPES
- Land (almost no bodies of water)
- Continents (land with some water in between)
- Islands (you better think about naval combat)

GAME FLOW
This is basically just the kind of stuff you start with, and it also affects what spawns on the map to a certain degree.

- Normal (Start with a moderate city and a small army)
- Battle (Start with a large city and a large army)
- Empire building (Start with a settler and a small army, no neutral cities on the map)
- Adventure (Start with a large army but no cities, lots of neutral cities on the map)

I'm going to decide our actions based on general consensus, although if these threads get enough traffic I'm going to base it on post numbers.

Go ahead and ask questions, I'm going to do some writeups on the races and classes.

Wiki for the game is here: age-of-wonders-3.wikia.com/wiki/Age_Of_Wonders_3_Wiki

Other urls found in this thread:

aow3db.tumblr.com/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Islands
Adventure

Adventure Island

THE RACES

Each race has some advantages and disadvantages, and liked and disliked terrain. All races (except goblins) HATE blighted terrain. They also have some race-specific units that would take QUITE A long time to explain in detail.

Draconians: Firey lizardmen. They have a lot of fire damage and good fire resistance. They're weak to frost. Very fast at healing.
Likes: Barrens and Lava
Dislikes: Arctic
Hates: Blighted

Dwarves: Very tough dudes. Very good at living and moving underground, they have bonuses to resistance and defense, as well as blight protection. However, their units are 10% more expensive to produce.
Likes: Subterranean and Mountiains
Dislikes: Tropical.
Hates: Blighted

Frostlings: Frosty dudes who live in the cold. They're extremely resistant to frost damage, but very weak to fire damage. Pretty much all of their units can deal frost damage.
Likes: Fertile Plains
Dislikes: Blighted and Subterranean
Hates: Volcanic and Tropical

Goblins: Their units are 10% cheaper and have 5 less hitpoints. Their population grows 20% faster, and are very resistant to blight damage. Many of their units can deal blight damage themselves. Also good at living underground.
Likes: Wetland
Dislikes: Arctic and Tropical
Hates: Volcanic

Halflings: Weak at melee, good at ranged, and rather weak to physical damage (The most common damage type by far). They make up for this with their "Lucky" trait, which gives them a chance to avoid attacks based on their morale.
Likes: Fertile Plains and Dense Vegetation
Dislikes: Subterranean
Hates: Arctic, Blighted, Volcanic

High Elves: Very good at ranged attacks, resistant to magic, and good at research. Their cities grow rather slowly, and they're somewhat weak to blight damage.
Likes: Dense Vegetation
Dislikes: Tropical and Subterranean
Hates: Blighted and Volcanic

Humans: No real disadvantages, actually. Their cities get a small production bonus, and they have the best cavalry in the game. Their units are also stronger and faster when embarked on ships.
Likes: Fertile Plains
Dislikes: Subterranean
Hates: Blighted and Volcanic

Orcs: DA STRONKEST BOIZ IN DA GAME. They're very good at melee combat, but less good at ranged combat. They have higher health, and are able to regenerate health after winning a battle.
Likes: Barrens
Dislikes: Arctic and Blighted
Hates: Volcanic

Tigrans: Literal furries. They have lots of fast units, and all of their units are able to move faster in combat. Their cities also earn a little bit more gold. Resistant to spirit damage, but weak to frost damage.
Likes: Barrens
Hates: Arctic and Blighted

Keep in mind that you can acquire cities belonging to other races and be able to their units at their cities. However, you can never produce the units of other classes this way.

Shit game to be honest. 1 and 2 were million times better. 3 is a completely different game with more unneeded focus on combat. Endless Legend is a much better modern MoM-like.

aow3db.tumblr.com/


Orc Rogue with Grey Guard Adept and Air Master, because Wind Ward + Smoke Screen + Orcs = Fun times.

THE CLASSES

These are a lot more detailed and have much more depth than the races, so I'm going to describe their abilities much more vaguely.

Arch Druid: Focused around summoning animals, but other than that, is a jack-of-all-trades. The animals that you summon through spells are random, but they're roughly all the same strength. They can do things like wreck city walls, summon things in combat, and do annoying things to enemy cities like kill population and reduce production. They also have many ways to boost population growth in their own cities.

Dreadnought: Focused around production and building MACHINES. They have things like tanks and cannons, as well as musketeers and engineers. They probably have the most AoE damage in the entire game. Their machines are tough, but have specific weaknesses that can be exploited.

Necromancer: Holy fuck this is a hard one to play. You don't have to manage happiness, but your units don't heal well, you can only grow cities by killing stuff in the beginning…please don't fucking make us play as necromancer. It's not fun.

Rogue: Stealth, mobility, and dicking around. They can get succubi to steal enemy units, and have some of the best morale/happiness manipulation available. Weak early game, but very strong endgame.

Sorcerer: Like the Arch Druid, Sorcerers are focused around summoning units, but their second focus is around magic itself. They have the strongest direct damage spells, and many of their units have good crowd control.

Theocrat: A very turtle-focused class with lots of defensive upgrades. It has an extremely strong endgame unit, along with tons of morale and healing effects.

Warlord: It has some of the weakest spells in the game, but can produce lots of unique units that are, arguably, much more powerful than the units other classes get.

I'm gonna say that this is set in stone since you're the only one to decide this.


I'll go with this (and the specializations) unless someone else objects within about two minutes.

Go with necromancer dwarves. Show us true autism.

Orc dreadnought with double destruction and expander. Show us an army worthy of Mordor.

Alright, Holla Forums, one last thing, what should we name him?

Honestly the 100% accuracy combined with basically similar health to damage ratios from 2 makes everything insanely squishy, anything that attacks anything else kills it.

Fuck, now you guys come out of the woodworks.

You guys fine with the orc rogue? I mean two people want orcs, so we clearly want orc *something.*

All right then, at least we'll get the traditional orc assassins.

You wanna name him then? Since you didn't to pick the class?

…does anyone want to name him? Otherwise, I'm just gonna name him "Cuck Faggot" just so we can start the game.

Fitting name for greenskin scum.

Sounds good to me

Cuck Faggot is actually pretty good.

you asked fo' it

Beautiful

CUCK FAGGOT, MY LIEGE! Our journey has led us to this far away, unknown land! Though we know little of our surroundings, we do not appear to be in any immediate danger.

Scouts report a gold mine to the north, a mana node to the east, and a stash of mana to the south. We should be able to take either one with minimal losses.

Additionally, a Human Archdruid named Cerrin Treefolk has offered to join us for the cost of 100 gold pieces.

What are your orders, sir?

I have two orders:
1. Claim the gold
2. Switch to JPGs since the PNGs take forever to load

Accept the human arch druid because you need a hero that can heal stacks.

Also start casting Grimbeak Crows (research it if you don't have it) and have them explore and loot pickups everywhere like a proper Rogue.

Additionally, it would be wise to begin research on technological and magical affairs. Though the our progress will be slow until we have a city, we should be able to learn basic things such as seafaring and basic spellcasting.

Basic Seafaring because we're on islands. Then learn how to suffocate.

Seafaring might be good for expansion.

Treasure Raiding is total shit.

I'd consider Rain of Poison Blades for now. If it unlocks Quick Dash, that will be good.

We have accepted her offer! We have begun casting Grimbeak Crows, and it will be available in two turns!


(this will make posts take slightly longer since I gotta convert them)

We have begun research on seafaring, sir!

Additionally, we have a dilemma. Should we let them flee, or utterly crush them?

(Also, how do you guys want me to do battles? I strongly suspect you want me to kill them, but should I just auto-battle them, or should I only auto-battle when you tell me to?)

Creep clearing generally isn't interesting enough to screencap, so only bother with it if you fight something anomalous or in abnormal terrain.

(got it, only when I fuck up the battles and need help)

Or if you want to show off a map effect, the game has plenty of tactically interesting modifiers. Also dragon fights are mandatory.
As for showing mercy or showing 'mercy' you have Grey Guard so you'll need freedom from the committee to regulate your alignment.

Understood. I'll prioritize remaining neutral for mundane tasks, and ask for your guidance on more important matters.

STATUS REPORT

We have cleared out two gold mines to the north, and have recouped our cost for hiring the human from them. Additionally, we discovered some abandoned maps which show that there is a high elf settlement across the sea to the west.

We have finished summoning our crows. Shall we send them to scout the elven city, or shall we send them elsewhere?

Furthermore, there is a camp guarding a stash of research to the north. Shall we prioritize taking that, my liege? Or shall we continue taking gold mines and mana nodes? We believe that we are more likely to take losses we attempt to clear the camp to the north, although we we most certainly be victorious.

(also I won't make posts for every single turn, only for turns with important shit, specifically the crows and the map we found)

Scout the city, it might be nice to enslave. As far as the camp goes, unless they fuck with us there's no need to bother until we get established.

The elven outpost of Torfinel has offered us a peace treaty for 199 gold. This would be a little less than half of our coffers. Is this offer acceptable, or shall we decline their offer?

(also seafaring is finished if you just want to sail over and attack them)

Reap the pansy ass bitches.

Elves stronk.
Take the treaty, and assimilate them peacefully, then burn the next town and enslave the populace to appease the Grey Gods.

Ah, a betrayal. Truly, they shall never see this attack coming. Quite brilliant, my liege.

In the meantime, you have an important decision to make. How shall you develop your personal skills, and how do you wish to develop the skills of your lieutenants, such as Cerrin the Druid's?

(tell me how to build them, what abilities you want to go for, etc. I could just go "ranger danger" on everyone if you want, but I suspect you want specific spells on some heroes)

Is Armor Piercing any good?

We want someone to heal the stack, so that. Otherwise ranger danger if she won't leave Cuck Faggot's stack and commander auras if she will.

As for elves, we are Cuck Faggot, so not championing multiculturalism and alternative values would be breaking character. Elffugees welcome.

Further, the Merfolk of Geatmere have offered us a bounty for the heads of some sirens, although I strongly suspect that this is beyond our capabilities at this time.

Ah, but my liege, it is WE who are the refugees. It is the elves who must be culturally enriched by Orcslam.

My liege, we have also discovered a hideout of racist, xenophobic Elvish Nationalists who do not wish to partake in cultural enrichment.

Further, we have met the leader of another faction, one who calls herself Awanesse the Custodian. She, too, appears to be an extremely devout elf.

Ingenious. In that case we shall send a crow immediately, to seek out the heart of Elfland and determine how racist the elfocrats are so we can demand appropriate reparations from them.

Indeed.

We have also discovered a fey dwelling who wish to make peace with us. This may very well be the heart of Elfland, if the Elves rever the Fey as much as legends say they do.

We should also decide on a new path of research soon, as we have just begun researching Quick Dash.

Isn't that a scene from some zombie movie?

V4 STRONG

Subjugate the hippie bitches.


Well if you mean Calais, France last year, yeah.

Oh, and Dispel or Ambassadors I suppose. Whatever's reasonably cheap to whip up.

Perhaps the elves are more peaceful and tolerant than we thought. Shall we accept their offer? Our forces are on the doorstep of Torfindel. If we capture without accepting their offer, it may cause them to withdraw it.

Research communism.

what are you a fagot

Ambassadors. Induce the green fever in the elf male and enrich from within.

Get rid of them. All of them.

...

...

"Refugees welcome!"

Fuck them up. Ranged then get those straggler kills up close.

Our forces are victorious, my lord! Shall we subjugate the elves, or shall we begin demographic replacement?

…Elf slaves are best.

Kill males, enslaves females.

Ensure a just proportion of orcs to elves, that is 100% orcs.

Elvish genocide it is, my lord!

...

How can they be opposite answers if there's no such thing as male elves?

Just migrate the refugees in, you psychotic bastard. We oppose genocide, remember?

RIP BIRDS


(Killing the males and enslaving the females would basically mean that there would only be orcs left eventually. Thus, I interpreted that as "migrate to orcs")

We're not genociding the females.

Well it all turned out well in the end. Justice prevails. Onto the next town, though we might want to negotiate some to avoid being labelled terrorists.

My liege, I have another matter which I wish to bring to your attention.

While in the process of sterilizing/killing the male elves, we gained intel about a lost library not far from the city. It seems to hold quite a bit of lost knowledge, although it appears to be considerably guarded. We believe that we could take it with ease, although we might suffer some losses. What are your orders, my liege?

Orcs are known to value knowledge, go for it.

Take it, we must find out what secerts it hold

Take it. The more forbidden the knowledge the better.

Take everything

So if where a rogue, can we get a merry band of misfits to cause havoc everywhere?

Hero squads are a thing, and rogue units are good at gorilla warfare and seduction.
Also orc succubi, Gork save us all.

Most of the tomes inside were nonsense such as androgynous pornography, but we did find one particularly valuable tome which taught us how to shape the very land around us.

We do need to select our research once again. Our alignment is dangerously close to slipping from neutrality, I suggest becoming more friendly with cities from here on out.

Furthermore, we have finally castrated and/or killed all of the male elves, and now have full control of the village. The only structure of note in the village is a single laboratory, which I have already ordered the now-eunuch elves to operate.

We currently have quite a surplus of gold, it may be wise to rush the production of some buildings. Currently, we are only able to produce spearmen and battering rams, so it is imperative that we begin expanding our arsenal.

I personally suggest building a builder's hall and a store house so that we can efficiently expand our military and economic capabilities. Whether you wish to rush them is up to you, but do keep in mind that this will cost more gold, and the populace will not be happy working overtime.

What are your orders, my liege?

Hall, storehouse, barracks. Research scales a fortune to actually get the alignment bonuses.

What other opponents are there in the area?

At the moment, we seem to be distant enough to not be threatened by anyone, although the area is not fully explored.

Our closest neighbor, Amonir, appears to have not had a reaction to the sacking of Torfindel. They seem to be offering us a quest to kill some monsters near their city. Though we could easily defeat them, it would take several weeks to reach them, and our own city would be undefended in the meantime.

There is also a cave leading to the underground to the south of our base, though none know what lurks there…

Completing this quest may help our alignment remain neutral, though.

I guess if they'll pay, then why not. We can always murder them later. Can we send a token force?

Absorb these peacefully so we can cast the the mystical illusion know only as #notallorcs.

If this token force can defeat the monsters plaguing them, yes. We could try to split our forces, sending only a few of our very powerful units while leaving our weaker units to defend against roaming brigands, although we may incur some losses.

And so, we meet another orc, though she follows the path of the druid.

Oh, Grelka, we hardly knew ye.

Looks like we will have to go interracial after all.

We have received a message from an envoy, claiming to represent Awanesse the Custodian. She wishes to sign a peace treaty, which would help to bring our alignment back into balance. However, if we wish to betray her, we cannot do so immediately. (aka we have to wait one turn before attacking her after breaking the peace treaty)

Take her as your First-Wife.

Scout her domain then betray and enslave her city.

...

No peace, after all, all high elf nations are natural racist, bigoted, and in need of cultural enrichment.

STATUS REPORT
My liege, things are going exceedingly well.

I took >>12095314's advice, and made peace with her hoping to eventually take her as our first wife. By the time your other advisors gave their opinion, the decision had already been made, I'm afraid. We could still make her your wife by force, if she will not submit willingly.

Our scouts have discovered a far-away Draconian outpost. They have made the following offer to us, although they are separated from us by water and many islands.

I took the liberty to hire another hero, an extremely devout Orcslamic cleric. He has already been trained in healing and support, so that we might be able to heal our troops while deep in enemy territory. Cerrin is now free to specialize in other things if you so desire her to.

The creatures plaguing Amondir, a pack of wisps, caught us by surprise, but we were able to rout them on the open sea. As a reward, Amondir have become our vassal and gave us a champion to join our army: a High Elf Griffon Rider.

Our storehouse is almost complete, and the barracks will be built soon after. At that point, we have two options: we can expand our military, or we can send some settlers out to found a new city. I suggest eventually having some cities on the coast so that we can build our navy, but the final decision is up to you.

Found a new city so our people can forge their harmony axes and summon their peaceful murderdemons far away from elven oppression. Orchamidullah.

We need to expand, for the Orcslamic people is need of land and resources to build itself into a Superpower to culturally enrich the non-green races.

We've begun recruiting orcs to begin a second migration. We must decide on a location soon. We could place it anywhere on these continents, or we could place it closer to our base to make it easier to defend.

Furthermore, we've discovered a Tigran metropolis FAR to the southeast. They are willing to sign a peace treaty with us, but doing so would empty our coffers.

Remove furries at first opportunity. No peace with the degenerate.

Also, we're now able to select a policy to improve either our military capabilities (making our Orcish Greatswords stronger) or our economic capabilities (making War Halls 50 gold cheaper). Further, we should give our elves in the Laboratory something else to do…they're starting to get antsy researching mundane things like dispels and "cloak and dagger."

Second location is ideal, there's even a shipyard, goldmines and mana geysers.

Might is Right, we must focus on military preparedness first, security then expansion.

We need to liberate these poor animals from the oppression and abuse of civilazation and life.

My liege, I would like to point out that the shipyard is merely a trading post that will provide no benefit whatsoever to our navy, but will be a great boon to our economy should we rid it of any brigands that plague it.


I suggest that we build our military's strength first, their forces are probably stronger than ours at the moment.

I have sent the settlers on their way with an escort, and begun replenishing our garrison. However, there is still the matter of research…

(Also, you guys are looking at the minimap too, right? Is that too hard to see, or should I do "world map" update posts every now and then?)

Damn fog of war, well secure the location and build the foundation of Orclandia

We now have an interesting situation. We have enough influence over Amondir that we can either pay them off to annex them into our empire, or we can demand that they give us tribute of either gold or units. If we demand tribute, they will not be willing to join our empire for quite a while.

(Also I'm just gonna do the research on my own if you guys don't have suggestions.)

Annexing them now and being done with it probably the most efficient route.

In any case, New Orclandia has been founded! We are now colonizing the natives!


It shall be done, my liege.

(Anyway, I'm going to bed, I'll start this thread up again tomorrow night.)

A true orc would play until he dropped of exhaustion. You are spending too much time around the elfin pansies.

Good job squire, you will make a good Orc Chieftain in the future.

Thread is still alive.

…should I have deleted it or something? I was just gonna bump it when I got home from work.

Anyway, I'm going to writefag some RP stuff up real quick, then do a status report. (Mostly, I want some kind of consensus on a gameplan from here.) Tell me if you want me to post it in this thread or start a new one.

This one's good. Game plan is culturally enrich the elves, ally with other orc, kill the last guy.

Alright, but we need to figure out all of the specifics. I don't want this thread to just be 'Holla Forums watches this faggot play AoW3.'

Anyway, writefaggotry coming up soon, which should explain what I'm talking about.

You should have made like a mini update do discuss today's strats or shitposted or something, it nearly fell off but for e74965.

Anyway, enrich the fairer folk and kill everything else. Seems pretty straightforward.


Fair enough.

(So I'm gonna try taking this in a bit more of an RPfag direction, if you guys REALLY don't want to do this just say so and we'll do this the way we've been doing it.)

STATUS REPORT

My liege, our empire has grown quickly in the past few weeks. We have successfully taken the city of Torfindel via cultural assimilation, annexed the city of Amondir, and founded the city of New Orclandia. Though we have made epic strides, our empire is currently directionless. The empire is currently caught up in a zeal to dominate the elves and destroy the other races. Our empire currently has not formulated a plan to do this, nor do we have the forces to carry out such military actions.

Torfindel has a very basic force to defend it, and is currently in the midst of recruiting laborers that will build forts, towers, and roads where you so choose, my liege.

Amondir is under our control, but is still populated by elves. You are currently garrisoned in that city while they replenish their forces. Should you so choose, we shall enrich the elves as we did to Torfindel. However, this may not be a wise decision, as too many evil acts without enough good acts could ruin you as a grey guard, whose powers are gained through strict neutrality. Furthermore, the elves do have certain units available that we orcs do not, such as griffon riders and storm sisters.

New Orclandia is currently a mere outpost under construction. Vervlukt's army is currently stationed there.

The empire currently lacks any naval capability whatsoever. It would be wise to build harbors at Amondir and New Orclandia eventually.

Scouts believe that Awanesse the Custodian, the Elvish Theocrat, has taken the Fey city of Fal-Lysse as her capital. We have made peace with her, though this is a tenuous peace at best, as rumors of the enrichment of Torfindel have slowly made their way across the land.

As our empire lacks organization, an advisory council has been formed by your most trusted men.

They are:

Al Gurd ibn Krugnash: A seasoned, bloodthirsty general who knows the ins and outs of war. Though reckless when on the battlefield himself, he is a master of logistics when in the war room.

Thellan: A brilliant elven arcanist who was deemed too valuable to execute after the fall of Torfindel. Instead, he was merely turned into one of the few elven Eunuchs who populate Torfindel. He is currently ==EXTREMELY== frustrated that he has received no direction from the leadership as to what he should be researching, and is pestering you as much as his handlers will allow him.

Gork: An bookish orcish runt whose bureaucratic skills landed him a job as your top economic advisor. His current advise is to expand mana production.

Grommal Ergmath: Your spymaster. The other advisors don't even know that he exists.

Cerrin Treefolk: The druid you recruited at the start of your adventure. Spiritually gifted, she will advise you as to how your actions will affect your oath of neutrality.

(You may talk to these advisors at any time. This is a way to ask questions about the game, such as what certain things do. This is especially useful for anyone who wants to participate but knows nothing about AoW III)

The council wishes to know how the empire should go about conquering the elves. At the moment, the only cities able to produce units of any substantial strength are Torfindel and Amondir, and their units are only so strong at the moment. We would need to develop those cities further to create stronger units.

What are your orders, my liege?


(was at work all day, didn't have time for a mini update, also didn't realize he was bumping it just to keep it alive,)

Build some public baths for Torfindel. Clean orcs move faster

It shall be done when we have the funds, my liege.

Surely there are some invaluable historical or natural sites we can raid for a quick shekel.

Indeed, there are, but on the way to such a site, Amondir was attacked by a group of brigands. They are currently holding the city hostage.

Shekels first, brigands second, then.

It shall be done. We have already raided a sacred site, and are on our way to reclaim the city. Unfortunately, it seems that it would have been wiser to simply retake the city, as the treasure in the ruins was…sparse, to say the least.

We have met a Draconian named Rautar the Vile. Interesting about him is that he is a necromancer, though we know not his strength.

Word has it that another hero has perished somewhere in the world, before even claiming a city to their name. (I hope I didn't make the AI too easy.)

Finally, we have discovered a nest of dragons to the north, who seem to be rather friendly with us. Also to the north is the town of Frostgate, which has been taken over by rouge undead.

Your orders, my liege?

Also, I forgot to mention: Awanesse is expanding considerably.

Let's not fuck with the dragons yet. If Frostgate isn't too hardened it might be a good pickup though. Still we also want to retake our clay.

Fortify our position, then expand.

Shall we fortify with the units we currently have available, or should we expand our infrastructure to build better units? I believe that our current arms should be enough to hold moderate forces at bay, but may not be enough to repel a large-scale invasion.

Focus on military infrastructure and production, take Frostgate, and prepare to repel elfers. Try to get a treaty with the necromancer as to not split our enrichment efforts. Incorporate elven archers into the army as morale enhancement. They're quite useful with wind guide as well, supplementing our shoddy ranged lineup.

I agree with this approach.

Understood, my liege. I'll be ready with a report in a few weeks.

As for taking frostgate, we have a few options. We could try a full-on siege, which would take months to prepare for, but almost certainly succeed.

However, we've also recently built a rogue's palace which allows us to build scoundrels, who can climb and sabotage walls, potentially allowing a more stealthy, but riskier approach.

We could also try a hybrid approach and train some scoundrels to break down the walls, then send in a main force.

OR, we could focus research on training better units, such as bards and assassins, who would be even better at infiltration, but that would take as long as the siege.

The hybrid approach sounds promising.

Hybrid sounds good, having a new set of scoundrel units will bolster our army and allow us to penetrate the cities hymen which is the walls

Hybrid sounds promising. We should also investigate the possibility of reinstituting our traditional orders of assassins.

We have met a new empire: that of Nomlik. We have not formed an opinion on him yet.

Further, we've found an interesting offer from Rautar. Shall we take it?

We should. This is what we wanted in the first place, and necromancers are a persecuted minority just like we orcslem. An alliance is natural.

It is done. Scouts have shown that only a small force is holding Frostgate, so we should be fine.

Excellent, if you continue this good work, you will get hte finest hor we can get.

SO BEGINS THE ASSAULT

THE FOOLS EVEN LEAVE THE SAFETY OF THEIR WALLS!

What shall we do with the liberated frostlings? Shall we incorporate them into our empire? Or shall we culturally enrich them?

Or perhaps we should have a…festival…

The festival sounds intriguing. Let it be done!

(that means burn it down and loot it)

Burn them to the ground. We only have one cock sleeve, and that is hte elfs

Burn them to the ground with our festivities

The traditional orcish festival of "take anything valuable and burn everything else" is going well, but we have received an interesting offer…

Do it.

Entire war caravan by their borders
Declare war

In due time, my liege, in due time.
(going to bed kinda early (for me), will start thread again in the morning)

Sleep Snug Slayer

Quick update while I'm at work. It's not certain how big of a war caravan we'll need to conquer her. It might be worth creating new colonies to fund the war effort.

(On phone, thus my ID is probably different, didn't think to tripfag)

No, I just meant that a new thread wasn't necessary.

We need more orcs in the world. Building more colonies will be good to improve our empire, but that will take time.

My liege,

While I prepare the report, there is one piece of urgent information I must deliver.

Rautar has declared war on Awanesse. We know not the strength of either side's forces.

STATUS REPORT

We have finished looting Frostgate, and now have a large surplus of gold.

Currently, we are recruiting forces to establish a base at the marked location. We could also re-establish a settlement on the ruins of Frostgate, although this is ill-advised as we currently lack the spell to allow us to endure the frigid temperatures.

We are able to train Bards and Assassins. Bards are able to charm enemy units, potentially taking them to our side, while Assassins are skilled at stealthily making their way through enemy territory. We may be able to use them to stealthily scout Awanesse's domain, such that we may be able to plan our assault more efficiently.

What are your orders, my liege?

Leave a token garrison at the 'Gate to keep away trouble. Organize Assassins to scout enemy territory.

So you do intend to rebuild it in the future, my liege?

Never say "no" to expansion; even a marginal habitation still provides some resources. Plus the more breathing space, the better. Speaking of breathing space, that winter spell looks easy to get. See if we can't pick it up in the near future. We can handle the mana upkeep if what I'm seeing looks accurate.

As you wish, I shall order the elvish eunuchs to begin research on that immiediately.

(Do you guys want me to post descriptions of exactly what we can research?)

Some interesting developments on the diplomacy front:

-Earlier, I mistakenly reported that Rauthar had declared war on Awanesse. In reality, he has declared war on Nomlik. The elvish translator has already been executed for his error.

-Nomlik, the goblin, has offered peace to us. This may help us keep us to our sworn neutrality. (Remember, we get a LOT of benefits from keeping our alignment neutral, and some downsides if we don't.)

-The dragons have offered us a quest to slay some giants. Our forces near Frostgate should be able to reach it in time. We are summoning a small force of scouts to patrol the area in their absense.

-A distant, insignificant Frostling village has declared war on us in retaliation to the sacking of Frostgate. We do not see any benefit to attacking them at this time.

Take a neutral stance, but monitor the war between the two, winner will weakened after the war and will be easy pickings. REMOVE FROSTLINGS!

Probably not a bad idea, I'd always assume that the people calling the shots don't know what the hell is going on.


I'd take the treaty but don't get drawn up into the goblin dumpster fire. Remove the giants and the animal Frostlings.

I took the peace since we can easily break it later with little penalty.

It may be wise to do so sooner rather than later.

!

Ooh, a happening. Anyway, make sure our clay won't get raped.

IT'S HAPPENING!

SIR! THE NECROMANCER HAS ATTACKED US WITHOUT WARNING! SHE AND HER ACCOMPANYING UNDEAD ARE EXTREMELY POWERFUL!

Our forces are as follows:

-You
-Cerrin Treefolk
-Two Orc Shock Trooper platoons (very tanky units)
-One high elf gryphon rider
-One storm sister platoon

What are your orders, sir!?

Ah shit, make sure our commanders survive, focus on taking the minions before the enemy skelemancer, use whatever spells and items our heroes have.

(also defenders can't retreat at all in this game)


Understood. Taking defensive positions.

Enemy banshee and bone collector down. Taking care of that dread reaper is going to be an absolute PITA.

The Skelemancer better drop some good stuff.

We are victorious, though we lost a single platoon of shock troopers. They shall be buried with their personal elvish concubines for the afterlife.

Seems a waste of personally good cock sleeves.

She did have some very good artifacts, though.

OH GOD DAMMIT MY GAME CRASHED AND NOW I HAVE TO REDO THE NECROMANCER BATTLE ALL OVER AGAIN

F


Nice


FUCK YOU SKELEMANCER CURSE!

dw, I actually got auto-battle to do it better this time

Also, my liege, the force which capture Frostgate has managed to capture an undead city of Villune, far to the north. As our experts have said that there is nothing of value to be gained from plundering it, we are already in the process of purging the city of undead and making it livable for a new Orcish population.

What is our policy on dwarves, my liege?

Raze and construct a new village to expand the Orcslem nation, there's some dungeons and ruins nearby, so they'll be useful for artifacts and realm bonuses, better clear that creep camp at the north.


If it ain't green, kill it, if it's an Elf, Cocksleeve time.

No need, we have already purged the undead and made use of what little is still in…usable condition.

(Keep in mind that you can instead choose to migrate people into a city rather than just raze it, which CAN be cheaper than just rebuilding a city in the long run.)

The order of the Green Blade has been reformed. Their first misson has already begun, my liege.

Extremely minimal losses. And this was on a mission with almost no preparation.

Razing cities is only good when you expect to lose them or are undead.

A strange man with an infectious grin appears in the thread for shenanigans.

Give me a status report, OP.
Or whoever is continuing this schlock.

Just purge and raze the undead city, can't let the ancestors know that we're raising Orc skellies.


Good, The Order of the Green Blade can scout enemy territory while being concealed.

There's building materials to the west. A perfect target for acquisitive tactics.

Currently, mister…what is your name, exactly? Anyway, the chieftain is currently in the field, I'll have to wait until he finishes raiding this…library of his to do a full writeup.


With all due respect, the undead in the city were actually goblins. We've already burned every last rotten corpse and rebuilt the…tainted buildings.


Understood, my liege.

Call me Ainsley. Mr. Harriott if you're nasty.
Well take your time, boi. I'm a patient man.

Poor Goblins, a bunch of green merchants, but even they deserve peace of death. And make sure you spare the Orc x Elf materials in that library, for research purposes.

Very well then, Ainsley.

STATUS REPORT

The empire is, at the moment, faring quite well economically. Currently, we are reinvesting our gold and mana back into the empire's infrastructure, as two of our settlements (Villune and Fust) have only been founded recently.

The empire's long term goal is to raise a force strong enough to invade Awanesse's domain and claim it and her elvish maidens for our own.

Our elvish eunuch-slave-researchers have been left largely to their own devices, researching whatever they see fit to benefit the empire (with lots of supervision by our Orcslamic clerics, of course.)

At the moment, they could be ordered to research:
-improvements to our navy (advanced seafaring),
-improvements to our magical capabilities (cloak and dagger),
-how to summon shadow stalkers (a very powerful endgame unit),
-make our irregular units stealthy in cities and ruins (urban cover),
-a spell to turn our entire empire to ice (this would destroy morale without huge mana investments),
-a spell to create a guild which steals gold from enemy cities (guild of shadow thieves),
-a spell to reduce enemy sight when within our borders (night wish)
-a spell to resurrect our lieutenants (resurrect hero)
-a spell to make troops faster in combat (haste)
-a spell to increase morale when killing enemy troops (sadism)
-a spell to turn our units to shadow, making them resistant to mundane attacks and able to pass through walls

Already, they have developed three spells of interest:
-Incite Revolt, which reduces morale in enemy cities
-Plague of Brigands, which causes hostile (even to us) bandits to attack the city
-Network of Scrying Eyes, which lets us see inside and around enemy cities.

While much of the overworld has been claimed by us and the other three empires that seek to dominate this region, there is also a vast, largely-uncharted underground which seems to be mostly unclaimed.

We do have more spells than these, and I will be happy to answer any further questions, such as troop placements and strength, what units our empire is capable of producing, and the like.

(forgot an image)

(If nobody's going to reply, I'm going to bed.)

Take a break for now, we can continue the Orcslem reconquesta of our forefather's land and clay from the non-Greenies tommorow.

...

...

(quick update on my lunch break)

A mysterious, hooded woman appears before you. Grey mist swirls around, until you can see nothing but her.

"Cuck…Faggot…" Your name escapes from her lips like the sound of a creaking door. "I've been watching you…and your desires of conquest have not escaped my notice." A massive, silver scale appears behind her. She reaches for your chest. Though you try to stop her, your arm simply passes through hers, and her arm passes into your chest, ignoring your flesh and bones as though they were not there. She removes your heart and places it on the scale.

"When you took the oath of the Grey Guard, you swore to strive for balance in all things, especially between good and evil." Visions of your past deeds, the rape and castration of the elves, appear before you. Your heart sinks on the scale, and more visions fly past you. Your troops growing restless. Deserting your army, and even openly rebelling against you.

"Your decisions will have consequences. If you succumb to your desires to spread Orcslam in the most violent fashion possible, it WILL lead to your ruin."

(Tl;dr our character gains huge bonuses from being neutral and has penalties for being good or evil. If we just conquer and kill everything, we lose those bonuses.)

So we need to find some candidates as vassals.

Send out the crows!

Fine, we shall strive for neutrality.

(If I decide to do another game I'll make sure to ban any alignment specializations unless everyone in the thread knows what that entails)

We can try for Lawful Stupid and Evil Asshole campaigns next time.

I'M HOME WE CAN START AGAIN

You wake up in a cold sweat

My liege, you seem rather disturbed from your slumber. Did you rest well? Are you ill?

In any case, we've spotted lots of troop movement from Awanesse. For what purpose, we do not yet know.

What are your orders, my liege?

Quite the interesting offer…

…is anyone still playing?

No one is playing AoW3, even when someone else is playing. Sad really. AoW3 is a good game.

Make peace with the gobbo, we can dominate them later. They're theocrats, so they only need to adapt the true faith and good.

You make me sick.

For the stance we went in the game we should have gone with shadowborn orc theocrats.

Personally I wanted to like it but it doesn't hold up to shadow magic at all. The map's rather messy, the (campaign) gameplay mostly revolves around plant more cities then him and hope you'll steamroll his T3 with more of your T3s (optionally end up in a attrition slog) and they streamlined or straight up removed a bunch of old features.

Elemental types having their own debuffs; for example even a single point of frost damage had a chance for chilled, smaller and in general shittier battles, many of the truly broken special unit abilities are now useless gimmicks at best; say how permanent invisibility is simply a strategic map concealment. And I still can't forgive them for making mountains passable, changing the archer mechanics or making walls a fucking ornament instead of something you actually need to circumvent.

And no route like the spooky route.

We have begun recruiting elves loyal to the Orcslamic cause. They shall be the ones to subvert and convert Awanesse.

It does suffer a bit from the Invisible War effect.

lewd/10

You can prevent city spam with one of the options when creating a game, but you shouldn't have to. Especially since there was the option to make forts, but forts were useless.

the focus was always on combat

(Yeah, this is why I *personally* consider AoW3 to be my favorite 4x. I do wish that the economic aspect was a little less simplistic, but not so involved like EV.)

My liege, we're beginning our offensive against Awanesse.

so how clean is multiplayer in this these days? i only played with a couple friends who both have shitty internet and there was always an enormous delay between giving orders and the game finally carrying them out, making scouting and manual combat a bit of a hassle.


i feel like youve only played when aow3 first released. this game does necromancers extremely well, or at least interact with the game mechanics in amusing ways such as being nearly impervious to morale, which is a huge deal.
im not sure city spam is particularly feasible any more either.
when city borders contant there are massive penalties to growth. a surrounded city does not grow, and a city that never had a chance to grow isnt going to be doing much besides hurting your morale when its captured.

STATUS REPORT

The offensive has been largely successful. We have managed to take:
Hallach: a Draconian city
Frasis: a Naga dwelling
Geatmere: a Merfolk dwelling
We canceled the assault on Fal-Lysse as it was more strongly defended than we thought.

Of particular interest is the fate of Hallach: Plundering Geatmere or Frasis yield little in the way of resources, and would irreparably damage our alignment balance. Plundering Hallach, however, would yield a treasure trove of resources. We could also absorb it into our empire, or release it as a vassal. Migrating to Orcs or High Elves is ill-advised, as those races loathe volcanic terrain.

I meant the OP should've picked the necromancer or at least the rogue for the shadowbros. And not that it's important but I only didn't finish the Commonwealth campaign, so I've got around to playing this game on at least three different occasions/versions hell, this thread got me replaying the frostling campaign againIt also reminded me of unit veterancy being shit in this one; ie only a handful of units get something fun and the rest is linear stat boosts

As long as you don't go full AI in a Civilization game tier and plant cities every two tiles it definitely is. What's not though is raiding improvements since domain auto cap, chokepoints since almost any unit can move on almost any terrain or all kinds of previously available strategic map shenanigans.


Are you for real? How simplistic do you need it to be and in what fucking galaxy is EU4 complicated? Full of arbitrary shit you need to play around, sure, but fucking involved?

take it

lets vassalize them

(Er, sorry, Endless Legend. Never tried EU4.)

I don't know how they managed but the AI is even shittier than it used to be. Related is the route his five or so full stacks repeated some three times now because he'd rather waltz thru goddamn mountain chains and glaciers (like they're nothing!) than face my defensive three stacks I keep moving around.

I'm taking bets whether he'll grow a pair and attack or will I have to eventually intercept him with my main army.

i dont recall veterancy bonuses being much more than resistances and stat bonuses in prior aow games. i remember the sphinx getting something but exceptions like that were extremely rare.
i guess youre not fond of the procs they dole out like candy? they seem like a pretty big deal.

its odd that frostlings would remind you that you dont like the veterancy in 3 when they get some of the craziest shit, like the mammoth rampage or white witches freeze.
you know, i really resent that they took away her freeze proc and made it into a "touch" just on behalf of some ridiculous synergy with sorcerers stun upgrade.

STATUS REPORT
Awanesse's forces managed to discover our Assassins and attacked them. After suffering heavy losses, we manged to rout them and counterattacked their capital. Though only a single assassin remained, we were victorious in the end.

Nomlik and Rautar are the only two remaining empires in the region. Nomlik seems to boast much more considerable forces than Awanesse ever did, and Rautar's military capabilities are completely unknown.

What are your orders, my liege?

why is your leader named cuck faggot

see

Shore up defenses to keep them from getting any ideas. Scout Rautar.

this

WE MARCH ON NOMLIK'S CAPITAL

The long war is nearly won, my liege!

We have successfully captured Nomlik's capital, and are pushing hard onto Rautar. We've got two of his cities pinned down, though we are not yet strong enough to make an assault.

Nomlik himself has fled, and his whereabouts are unknown. Rautar's whereabouts are unknown as well.

What are your orders, my liege?

Reinforcements have arrived.

OUR RUTHLESS ASSAULT HAS CAUSED EVEN THE DEAD TO BEG FOR OUR MERCY.

Nomlik has been found hiding out in some ruins. The heirophant has grown so desperate as to recruit the undead to assist him, though through a well-timed Incite Revolt spell, we've managed to even get THEM to rebel against him. Now for the final push, and this land is ours!

A final report, my liege.

After slaying Nomlik, his remaining forces retreated to his last bastion: the underground city of Weilow. Through magic, bribery, and arms smuggling, we were able to fund a rebellion which successfully overthrew his last remaining supporters. Rautar is ours, and Nomlik is perished.

You have managed to overcome each and every one of your foes, my liege. The peoples of these islands recognize you as their Emperor and Caliph.

HAIL CUCK FAGGOT!

No…

HAIL UNCUCKED FAGGOT, EMPEROR OF THE ORCS AND CALIPH OF ORCSLAM!

Well done, and nice trips

necromancer ai is seriously fucked. they are always so slow to advance, meanwhile dreadnoughts will have juggernauts at your door in 30 turns