Mr_Stibbons plays Age of Wonders 3

[mr_stibbons]

Welcome to a let's play of Age of Wonders 3. If you have no idea what this game is, well, that's half of the reason I'm doing a let's play in the first place. It's a turn based fantasy strategy game where you build up a civilization and slam it into other civilizations. A lot of people call it a 4X game like civilization, but it is closer to Heroes of Might and Magic or Total War, if Total War had turn based tactical combat.

The game was released in 2014 in a less than perfect state, but since then has received several major patches and two expansions, which really expand the depth of the game. I've managed to beat the game and all the expansions once on normal, but will be playing on hard during this LP unless I get hopelessly stuck. Without further ado, let's begin with the tutorial.


Unlike every other mission in the main campaign, the tutorial just shows up via popup in the middle of the briefing of the first mission of the first campaign. It's not part of that campaign though, even though you play as the same character, nothing carries over like it does in the campaign proper. This is both so you can skip the tutorial if you don't want to bother, and because the tutorial didn't actually exist at launch. It got patched in around the time the second expansion pack was released because the original tutorial sections were kinda terrible at explaining the game in any depth.

Spoiler: Tutorial Part 1

We will be controlling Princess Sundren of the elven court for this mission, and our job is to kill some goblins who are intruding on a historic site of the elven people. Guiding us through this little excursion is Werlac of Ilsidur, he of the creepy glowing eyes above. We also learn that Welac has some serious issues with goblins. A callback to if you played the first Age of Wonders, you may recognize the island and Elwyn from the first Cult of Storms mission. You know, the one where you assassinate her.



Our first order of business is the management of our starting town. Towns in Age of Wonders work similarly to how the work in civilization games, they produce resources from the territory around them, marked out in white, and use those to make units or upgrades for the town. There are three global resources that go to a global pool, and two local resources that only determine how well the city functions. The global resources are gold, mana(blue crystals) and research(white candles). The local resources are Productions(grey hammers), which determines how quickly cities complete build orders, and population(brown figure), which increases domain range and resource production when it hits certain thresholds.

Werlac "suggests" we make a store house to give our city more population. We comply, though honestly this map is so short and easy any investment into economy is a waste of time.



Once the boring job of feeding our populace is completed we can start to play around with our army. We have Sundren, two swordsmen regiments, two spell caster units, and a mission to stomp on some goblins at a local gold mine.



When we get there, another swordsmen unit and caster unit are waiting for us. They suggest the inspired tactic of "Drown them in bodies". (Also, for some reason the text is from the swordsman unit but it uses the picture of the casters. This is the quality you get in patched in tutorial missions) And now we transfer from the overworld game of turn based strategy on a hex grid to . . .



. . . The combat game of turn based strategy on a hex grid. If you have a problem with turn based strategy or something against six sided shapes, you may just want to leave now. Anyway, as benefiting the first battle of the tutorial we have the goblin vandals massively out numbered. Actually losing this fight is virtually impossible, only a matter of how flawlessly we can grind their lives into the dirt.

The elven forces advance through the mining compound, but pretty much everyone is still out of range. The flanking caster unit gets a single potshot off, and the goblins take their turn. In which they do nothing, despite having ranged attacks. Because this is the tutorial. There goes any chance of this fight being a challenge. Anyway, now that we are in range (And I have pictures) we can start doing real damage.



In this picture you can see both the movement range (Coloured hexes) and the shooting range (grey circles) of one of our caster units. What a unit can do in a given turn is governed by it's three action points, which are used to move, attack and use abilities. The different colours on the movement range show how many action points you have remaining, 3 for green, two for yellow and one for orange. Since the caster doesn't need to move to get her target in range, she can fire a serious barrage of lightning.



And Sundren can charge in to finish them off. Two to go.

The rest of the elven forces move in and fire some more ineffectual potshots from behind swordsmen units. Though perhaps Sundren shouldn't be sitting out all that way from the rest of my army. . .



Well, there go half of her hit points in one activation. Now would be a good time to point out that most ranged units only do half damage at long range. (you can see the dotted circles in the previous picture) When you, like Sundren, end your turn in a ranged unit's short range zone, you'll have a bad time. It doesn't help that Sundren has a weakness to poison damage, on account of being an elf.



The other goblin unit charges on of the swordsmen regiments. Whenever a unit is attacked in melee in this game it will make a retaliation strike if it's still alive. This isn't free damage though, for every retaliation strike a unit makes it will start it's next turn down an action point. A unit that makes three retaliation strikes will be forced to skip it's next turn, and won't be able to make any more retaliations. This rule comes back to bite me later in this fight, as this swordsman unit won't be able to reach the goblin casters next turn.



A major addition to the combat in this game is flanking other units. If a unit makes an attack from the back three hexes the attacker gains bonus damage on the first attack, and the target won't be able to retaliate against the first attack, instead it turns to face it's attacker. So not only are you doing more damage, you will also take much less in return. There are also some defensive abilities, like shields, which don't function when being flanked.



The real power of a well done flank, is that since a unit turned to face it's attacker, it will now be vulnerable to being flanked by the units that used to be in front of it. There's no limit to the amount of times this can happen, It's very possible for a swarm of weak units to take down a much more powerful one without getting touched by always attacking from a flank. The technical term is "getting surrounded" or "doing the flanking dance". The AI is very good at executing this, and will not miss opportunities to wreck any unit that gets overextended.



With that demonstration done, we finish off the last goblin with mages and Sundren. All we've lost was 3/5th of her health. Victory gives us a small pile of gold and a congratulatory speech from Werlac, who is sounding both increasingly evil and seriously peeved at goblins.

Werlac: "How does it feel Sundren, victory on the field of battle? I can see you have it in you to become a capable Leader. Those Goblins are nothing but filthy poisonous creatures, relying on weakening their enemies and spreading their blighted diseases. We had best rid ourselves of them entirely."



Moving on, we claim a watch tower a short ride up the road from our new gold mine, revealing a loose pile of crystallized mana, and an enemy spy drone. This, predictably triggers another rant by Werlac who has basically stopped pretending to not be evil and openly advocates taking over the world! Lovely fellow.

We're going to skip killing the solitary enemy scout for now, because our army is out of movement. Before we end the turn, we're going to do some magic. From the strategic map you can cast global spells that alter the map, buff every unit you own, improve cities, or summon new units. In this case we'll be summoning a basic scout unit, Grimbeak Crows, our equivalent of the spy drone we just saw. It takes forty casting points(the white stars) to summon them, and we only start with twenty per turn, so they will be available next turn.



Next turn comes around without any activity on behalf of the enemy scout. We summon up our own scout, which can be dropped in any hex beside one of our cities or Sundren, and reveal a neutral elven settlement. These are apparently the people who called us in, so let us see what we can do for them. Also note the pile of scrolls at edge of the fog of war, thats a research pickup.



It turns out they want us to kill some innocuously named wisps that are sitting on the local mana node. If we succeed the node will produce mana and the settlement will join our side. They do give us some helpful warnings about our targets, another example of the game being nice to you in the tutorial. No other independent quest giver in the entire game will give you any extra intel on whatever they just told you to kill.

Cont.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Tutorial Part 2

Before getting into our second fight we send a scout up north. It grabs the research pickup, and reveals that there's nothing but mountains and ocean up north. Werlac yells at us to research Seafaring since we are stuck on an island. It probably would have been a good idea to not start researching a combat spell I don't even use this entire game, because we'll be stuck on this island for a turn.



Onto the fight. Seven on two seems like pretty good odds, and look, The enemy only have sixteen hit points each. If you think this looks too easy, you're completely correct. It's important to note that Sundren is still low on health, but not as badly hurt as before. Damage carries over between fights, but units will heal a little bit of health every strategic turn.



Gotcha numero uno: Wisps are incorporeal. That gives them 60% damage reduction against physical attacks like Sundren's blowdarts and all of our melee attacks. So that 16 hit points is more like 40. It's not a crazy amount, but it's certainly frustrating, and a nasty surprise if you just looked at HP and charged in.



We have a counter to this incorporeal nonsense however: Sundren packed a set of acid darts which do poison and fire damage (somehow). These far more effective and leave the first wisp on their last legs. It shouldn't be too hard to finish these things off: half of our army is made up of casters who also do elemental damage.



Gotcha number two: Wisps are IMMUNE to lightning damage. All of our caster units are going to be spending the battle hitting things ineffectually with sticks. This is the point where some game dev with a sadistic sense of humour starts laughing. It's also the point where you realize that this quest exists to demonstrate just how lopsided a fight can get when one side hard counters the other one, and made you on the receiving end to make the lesson stick. I honestly forgot this this wrinkle when the fight started, so this was the point I started panicking.



So, we're forced to do do the one thing you aren't supposed to do to incorporeal creatures and start murdering them with swords. This is when we run into gotcha number three: Wisps have a static shield ability that does damage when they get hit in melee. So our dedicated melee units are losing to scouts. This isn't as bad as it could be, as this ability also has a chance to stun the attacker, making him loses his next turn. Thankfully that never triggers on us this fight. Nothing else can reach melee, so we move up and end our turn.



Not a gotcha, since you were warned by the quest text, but still annoying: This is one of the many neutral sites that have a combat enchantment cast on the side of the defenders. (Though really, who reads the quest text?) This one, recharging mana currents, does a small heal on magical beings at the start of each turn. Oh, but remember how wisps have no health and rely on damage resistance? Yeah, a small heal is enough to take them from one hit point to full health.



Then, because wisps can also teleport my trained elven killing machines get the tar kicked out of them by tiny fairies. You can actually see squads start to lose members as they take damage. This dosn't actually change any stats, it's just for visual flair. A squad down to the last man standing does as much damage as a full squad.

Not that that will happen this game. That squad of swordsmen is dead. I probably could have avoided this, but I got frustrated and stupid. Also probably underestimated the fragility of basic infantry squads.



Sundren is a bit luckier with the damage on her acid darts and clears out one pack of wisps in a single activation. After that, my remaining troops mob the last wisp and take it out. The casters are more helpful that I thought they would be: They have a degree of lightning resistance, so they don't take as much damage from the shock shield. For all my complaining, this isn't a hard fight. It would take a lot of bad luck and criminal negligence to actually lose, but it's set up to surprise you and you'll probably lose a unit if you aren't careful. Wisps are still annoying little things though, for cheap expendable scouts they can do a number on 'real' units.



As promised the elven town joins up with us. Since there's a watchtower sitting in their domain it get's automatically flagged and we get to look across the small slice of ocean between our location and the next island over. Werlac points out our next objective, a brigand camp. This works like the barbarian camps in Civilization games: it periodically spits out stacks of wandering monsters, has a permanent guard, and will give us some resources if we clear it out. Unlike Civilization, these don't randomly spawn anywhere you aren't watching, so they're much less of a pain in the ass.



As previously mentioned, we don't start with the ability to cross the water, so the camp will have to wait. On the upside, we have a whole new army to play with, made up entirely of new units. We have cavalry, pikemen two archers and an irregular. Since they're fresh we'll take 'em for a test run against the enemy scout we passed. (Also, this is another point of the campaign being nice to you. Normally when a neutral city joins you any guards they had vanish, but the campaign will occasionally let you take control of them. As a rule if a city gives you a quest due to the scenario script you can expect to keep any troops that they have.)



Now most of our troops can't quite make it to the spy drone, but this isn't the end of the world. A unit's speed on the strategic map is proportional to a unit's speed in tactical combat. This means that when the rest of the garrison is out of moves, our cavalry unit still has some life left in it. Another useful fact is that when you declare an attack on the strategic map any units adjacent to the target hex will get dragged into the fight, regardless of how much movement they have left. Put these two facts together and just short becomes close enough.



I'd love to show off our new units, but spy drones are literally made of paper and we have two archer units. The fight doesn't last a round.

(Also, Spy Drones explode when they die. Violently. They aren't quite as annoying as wisps when it comes to doing disproportionate amounts of damage in unwinnable fights, but it's something to keep in mind.)

-----------

Alright. I should have another update up by tomorrow. This is my first let's play though, and I'm open to criticism. I won't be going into as much detail for all future combats, by the way, but I took these a bit slow to explain the basic mechanics and because the second fight is evil.

 

[Creticus]

The Elves still haven't managed to bring Aldor back under control? Yeesh, I knew that AoW!Elves were prone to bureaucratic holdups, but this is ridiculous.

 

[mr_stibbons]

The political situation in AoW3 is . . . complicated. I'll get into it when the tutorial is done. As far as this mission goes, Aldor is a sparsely settled cultural heritage site, and the current crop of goblins have only moved in recently. This prompts the elves sending in the army aka the player.

 

[Creticus]

The political situation in AoW3 is . . . complicated. I'll get into it when the tutorial is done. As far as this mission goes, Aldor is a sparsely settled cultural heritage site, and the current crop of goblins have only moved in recently. This prompts the elves sending in the army aka the player.

Click to shrink...

That makes sense, though I was joking in the first place.

Regardless, the political situation in Age of Wonders was always pretty messy in a good way. Somehow, Age of Wonders 3 managed to top its predecessors in that regard, though I'll refrain from commenting further until you start the main campaign.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Tutorial

When we left off, we had acquired a second stack of troops through suspicious tutorial generosity and were stuck on the wrong island due to poor research priorities. Even with our research complete it will take some time for our regular force to cross the water. Embarking your troops takes all of their remaining movement with no exception, though they will provide their own boats through magic logistics. In the meantime, we have flying scouts. A quick flyby reveals a patch of nicer terrain surrounded by blighted wastes and a few guarded resource sites. We also can see that the goblins have put up helpful signs that seem to serve no purpose beyond enraging elves.



Sundren and co, who now fit snugly into a single stack of six, land beside the bandit camp on turn 4 but are out of movement, just like the garrison was against the spy drone. Thankfully, we can weasel our way out of this one too, to make sure this camp dosn't spawn backup for itself next turn. Another murder of crows is ready to be summoned, and they can drag the rest of forces with them.



Voila



The bandits don't have a magic spell helping them out but they do have some makeshift walls on their side. Funnily enough, because the crows lead the attack the bandits start facing them, ignoring the massive force coming in on their flank.



Bandit fences are a long way from sturdy, and Sundren is able to smash her way through in a single strike. The bandits rush over toward my actual army and turn 2 starts with me funneling my troops through the newly opened hole in their defences. After the first turn, it basically turns into a shooting contest, with my casters spend most of the fight trading bolts with the bandits.



The crows prove themselves not completely useless by coming in on a flank. They don't have great damage, but turning the scoundrels around opens them up to be shot to death by my other forces.



The casters get to work, blow away two of the bandits. You can kinda see the other corpse beside the swordsman behind the tent, the smoke effects from the campfires make this battle a bit hard to see.



The final surviving bandit starts running away but between my healthy supply of ranged firepower and the crows, they don't live long.



Clearing out the bandit camp causes a friendly high elf settler to spawn out of nowhere. Now the conveniently placed pile of resource sites and nice terrain makes sense. I order them to immediately set up a new city on this side of the map. We also get some extra loot from the bandit camp, a new item for Sundren and free a captive tigran archer. Next order of business is to clear out the sites around our future city so it can be productive. This is more of a formality, this settler never ends up building anything this mission, but it's a tutorial objective.



Werlac: The Tomb of Elwyn, there it is! Defiled and ransacked by those fool goblins. They have no right to trespass on this hallowed ground! They are still inside. It sounds like they are boiling soup from her bones, laughing and feasting. Kill them all!

Further scouting reveals the tomb of our grandmother and triggers a rant by our fascist uncle. Now, if you played Age of Wonders 1, this rant may sound a bit fishy. Although Elwyn is murdered by goblins, they're catspaws of the dark elves, not the humans. As far as I know, this isn't a retcon. Werlac is just taking a liberal interpretation of the truth. After all, if the humans hadn't killed old king Inioch and split the elf race it two, assassinating Elwyn wouldn't have been necessary. Really it's all the humans fault.



Meanwhile our second army was still at sea, and, due to a lack of decent landing spots, were going to have get off their boats straight onto a sheer mountain face and cross a small mountain range. They'll be there for a while, but on their trip they'll have the opportunity to pick up a refugee camp. This will send a bunch of population to our closest city.



Onto clearing out sites. First up is a Great Farm, which boosts population growth in nearby cities when cleared. We have the defenders brutally outnumbered, and there aren't any surprises coming this time around.



One of my casters moves up and fires a potshot, opening the way for Sundren charge the goblin archer in the flank. As you can see Sundren has two abilities that help her out in melee combat. Charge gives her 6 bonus damage if she moved more than three tiles before attacking while backstab gives another six bonus damage if she has a flanking bonus. If you can trigger both at once she will oneshot weaker units like archers and casters. Then the other enemy is blown away under a pile of lightning bolts and thrown daggers. Flawless victory.



The great farm gives us a small amount of gold for us to pick up, as well as a pack of tamed hunting tigers. I have no idea how this is happening, but I don't turn down free units. Sundren also picked up a new level during that fight. This lets us spend points on a fairly lengthly list of upgrades. Since any levels I pick up during this mission will be wiped, I just get a bunch of stat upgrades.



Next up, a water aligned mana node, guarded by two packs of dire penguins. As with the previous mana node, they're backed up by a free healing effect at the start of every one of their turns, but they aren't immune to half of our units, so this won't be as much of a problem. Keep in mind that we have two extra units hiding just off camera.



Learning from last time, we mow down the first dire penguin stack with casters and Sundren while keeping out of reach of the second one. Then we move a healthy swordsman unit just into charge range of the second pack. I don't have the patience to hunt penguins for five rounds, so I'm baiting them into my army.



The penguins take the bait, and get a ball of stripy fur into their rear for their troubles. Tigers have the same movement speed as Sundren or other cavalry, which makes them useful to make flanking attacks. The rest of the swordsmen cut down the penguins.



Scouting around, we find a cave entrance deep in the mountains, in addition to some free resource pickups. Despite protests that crows are not bats and don't do caves, I send them underground.



This triggers Werlac to reveal that there is a cave entrance sitting just a few tiles from our starting town that leads directly into the goblin territory. That would have been incredibly useful six turns ago, but now I'm worried that the AI is going to get a burst of competence and steal my starting town out from under me. (This would not be the first time I left my capitol unguarded and lost it.)



Exploring the eastern tunnels leads me to an openly hostile neutral town. Since all I have over there are scouts, we'll just leave them be. This dwelling is completely option to take over, and really out of the way, so this is the only point I'll mention it. It's possible that conquering it or waiting long enough for it to start talking to us would trigger additional dialogue, but I want to finish this mission quickly.

Cont

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Tutorial

We also pin down the location of our enemy' capitol, just southwest of Elwyn's tomb. Well we don't actually know that this is our enemies throne, but Werlac says it is, and he's probably right. Also, whoever wrote the script for this level really should have thought about the fact that it requires you to summon at least one scout.

Sign: Haha how easily the green turns to sweet smelling rot

Sign(at spring of life):Goblins' toilet. Free



Back to our actual objective for now. The goblins have shoved four units into the tomb, making this the most formidable enemy force we've encountered yet, though not by much. However, the tight corridors of the tomb will prevent us from bringing our entire army to bear: We can only bring six units into a fight in a site like this. We're leaving our fuzzy new recruits behind for this one, and bringing Sundren's trusty elven army down into the tomb. The town garrison is still climbing mountains, and weren't around for the fight.

Like previous neutral sites, the tomb has an enchantment benefiting the defender, and this one is a doozy. At the start of each enemy turn, one dead unit will be brought back as a zombie under the defenders control. This can and will turn your own casualties against you, so be extra careful not to lose troops. Zombies can't come back, though.



As with most fights we've had, on our enemy's first turn they run into our mages' sights, and on our turn we start blowing the tar out of them with lightning. Two goblin units go down on the first turn to ranged fire. This is key: we need to kill multiple units per turn or we'll be buried in zombie goblins. I also move one of my swordsmen units to intercept the unit of goblins moving down the side passage at the left of the tomb.



One gets back up, right on schedule. Zombie versions of regular units are slightly worse than their regular versions: they lose a point of defence, and are vulnerable to fire and light magic attacks. On the flipped however, they become immune to poison attacks and several effects. Also, they do get to take a turn on the turn they get resurrected, which can seriously hamper your plans if you forget that fact.



The goblin warrior move in to attack Sundren, and are then cut down by casters and swordsmen, while the other units, including the zombies open fire.



Caster unit number two soften ups the zombie goblins for Sundren to take down. Then I can use my last caster and swordsman unit to finish off the rest of the goblins before more zombies spawn.



. . . wait a minute, HOW ARE THOSE ZOMBIES STILL STANDING?

This is our first encounter with the morale system of Age of Wonders. Every unit has a morale level based on a variety of factors. Positive morale gives an increasing chance to do double damage critical hits, and negative morale give chances to fumble and do half damage. At this point, our forces are taking a large penalty to morale from being in blighted terrain, which everyone except goblins hate, and Sundren is taking another penalty due to the special ability of the goblin unit she's attacking.

Sundren's failure means we have to divert our third caster unit to finish off the zombies.



This means my only choice is to do my least favourite maneuver in this game, a full frontal slugging match. We manage to knock off the last goblin unit, and our swordsman gets a level of experience, but the retaliations take off half of its health. Generally walking into melee fights with the enemy is a costly tactic when compared to using flaking attacks or ranged attacks. Still, I don't want another round of zombies getting raised on me, so this is the lesser of two evils.



Clearing out the tomb transforms the surrounding terrain from it's blighted state back to normal.

We also receive a message from beyond.

???: Granddaughter, I am proud of you. Tumultuous times are ahead, but you will do well. Listen to your heart, for things are not as they seem. Look for the Good in unfamiliar faces, see the Evil in familiar places. My life ended because of treason from within our own ranks, don't let that happen to you. Farewell my child.

Werlac: Are Elwyn's bones safe again? I hope the Goblin's bite marks aren't too obvious to later scholars. We will send the storm sisters to close off and sanctify her tomb again. You are like your father, Sundren. Sardinias has never shied away from doing what needs to be done, no matter the cost. That kind of determination and strength is missing from Thannis, but you understand that one cannot always avoid the difficult decisions.

Make sure the goblins cannot return. Root them out and defeat them once and for all. If we stop now they will undoubtably fester until they erupt again, not unlike the insidious weeds they crave to eat. Mercy is postponed suffering, and you should grant them a merciful death now.

Find Ekko's capital, and defeat him!

We let Sundrens army take some time to visit the statue of King Inioch, Elwyn's husband, that overlooks her tomb. This is a shrine, a special map tile that will give a powerful bonus to units that visit them. They only can give a blessing once every few turns, so we have to be careful which units we send.



Time to finish this. Between our starting army, the garrison, and the free units from the farm and bandit camp we have enough troops to take Ekko's capital. Outside of his capitol there's a pillar of champions, a special pickup that grants a level of veterancy to every unit in the first stack to reach it. You can see from the screenshot that Sundren's army has picked up a fair few levels throughout the mission, so they will be the ones to grab it.



Werlac: Huh, this comes hardly as a surprise. Someone tricked them into coming here. Commonwealth humans, no doubt. They want every scrap of Elven land. Our proud legacy and our memories mean nothing to them. I am afraid we cannot reason with the Humans. We have been trying for too long to make them honour their treaties with us, but they are untrustworthy to the core. Just like Goblins.

Ekko: No, it was you pretty faced pointy ears yourselves…

Werlac: Silence! Your fate has been sealed.

Sundren, we cannot reason with cowardly liars, it leads to doubt and division where we should stand united. No High-Elf would ever allow this vermin to soil Aldor! I have already send some Trebuchets to shatter his city's walls. Use them to capture the city!

If something embarrassing is happening in front of the children distract them with siege engines.



Welcome to the first of what will be many siege battles. We outnumber Ekko fifteen to six, but he has the advantage of walls and a heavy beetle cavalry unit that is nastier than anything on our side. Unlike in the fight at the bandit camp, we can't batter down walls except with dedicated siege units, like the trebuchet. The walls also give a healthy range boost to any units on wall tiles, which means the attacker is going to have to take at least a turn of fire before they can retaliate.



I take the opportunity to try out one of Sundren's combat spells. This takes up her turn and costs both mana and casting points, but has unlimited range, pretty good damage, and ignores cover. The rest of my forces move up.

Ekko retaliates with his own magics, crippling my Tigran archers. I spend my second turn advancing again. The trebuchet starts working on the goblin walls, but it will take another shot to break through. I can try to do some damage with ranged units, but as long as the walls stand I'm only doing half damage to anything behind them.



On the enemy turn however, they make a surprising gamble. Perhaps recognizing that I have enough firepower to out-shoot them even with the penalty from the fortifications, Ekko charges out the front gates and unloads his musket into one of my longbowman squads. I'm not sure what that was loaded with, but he just killed five elves with one shot.



He's quickly backed up by his heavy beetle cavalry, which charge past my own riders to finish off the scattered archers. You can see the damage notice in the screenshot above: if a unit moves through a hex adjacent to an enemy unit which is facing that way, the unit will make opportunity attacks. These are always basic melee attacks with the flanking damage boost, and they cost next turn's actions just like retaliations. The goblins were also able to finish off my wounded tigran archer with ranged attacks.



On the left flank of the siege an heavy goblin pike squad heads out the gate. Of course, it just walked into range of Sundren's whole army, so they don't last long, especially with the bonus damage on ranged attacks that was granted from the shrine.



One of my infantry regiments moves bravely to flank the goblin beetles, but take a bit of punishment.

We then follow up with an melee attack by our irregulars. Irregulars are basically skirmish units, having average strength melee attacks and weak ranged attacks, but very low defences. Unfortunately, this wasn't the best choice of moves, as the goblins are able to wipe them out on their second retaliation, barely surviving what looked like a fatal attack. We finish off the crippled beetle riders with our archers, which is what I should have done in the first place.



We then finish off Ekko by sandwiching him in between my cavalry unit and our pike squad. Pike are basically like infantry, but have abilities that give them bonus attack and defences against mounted and flying units, like heroes. They give up some raw stats for this, making them a little specialized.

I use Sundren's normal ranged attack to finish off the archer unit that was previously crippled by her spell, leaving a single survivor, prey for my tigers. The goblin irregulars do manage to do some pretty good damage to my tigers, so I draft the trebuchet to even the odds.



This might look like the mission is over, with the tigers doing more than enough damage with flanking, but it's not to be. The goblins' aura of shitty morale strikes again, my tigers fumble, and get murdered in retaliation. I finish the job with another combat spell from Sundren, but still embarrassing.



Werlac: Finish what your parents started Sundren. Heat the Elven race, restore our ancient heritage, our birthright. The other races need to stop overstepping their bounds. If we don't make them uphold their end of the balance, chaos will erupt and harmony will be a lost dream. Let us return to the Court, you should not neglect the duties set out for you.
---

And that's the tutorial finally done. It doesn't have much relevance to the wider plot, besides doing some work on the character of Werlac. As much of a card carrying fascist that he appears to be, I can't help but be a bit disturbed by his behaviour in this starting mission. You have to remember that Sundren is still quite young and sheltered, and that combination of vile rhetoric, an engineered situation and his steady trickle of praise as she goes about killing goblins would be a quite effective way of making sure the young princess grows up to be a proper warmongering racist. It's slick, and simple enough that it doesn't have to be smart.

That aside, I'm opening up a vote. The original age of wonders has two different campaigns, that proceed basically at the same time. What do you want me to play

[] The Elven court: Politics, skullduggery, and elves and a character you've met already

[] The Commonwealth: Steampunk war machines, treasure hunting, and Law and Order. Also nobody you've met already

[] BOTH, Chronologically: The whole picture, from both points of view.
-[]Start with elves
-[]Start with Commonwealth

 

[Alex Costa]

Great to see a AOW 3 campaign

[x] BOTH, Chronologically: The whole picture, from both points of view.
-[x]Start with elves
-[]Start with Commonwealth

 

[Creticus]

I'll abstain from voting since I'm fine with whatever decision ends up being made.

Moving on, Werlac's claims are interesting considering that neither the High Elves nor the Wood Elves nor the Dark Elves have ever managed to elude internal conflict. For example, the human conquest of the Valley of Wonders was made possible by High Elf intrigue; Wood Elf fought Wood Elf under the Wizard-Kings; while the Dark Elf-led Cult of Storms was infamous for its infighting. It goes a long way to show that the High Elves have become pretty chauvinistic by this point in time, which makes them even better as a reflection of the Commonwealth.

 

[Grey Rook]

Hmm. Not too familiar with this series. Would you say that it is worth purchasing?

Anyway, I like the sound of the Commonwealth. I would request that you start with them and go with the knife-ears later.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Hmm. Not too familiar with this series. Would you say that it is worth purchasing?

Anyway, I like the sound of the Commonwealth. I would request that you start with them and go with the knife-ears later.

Click to shrink...

I'm a great fan of the most recent entry, It's got a good deal of depth in the gameplay and comes with a good deal of content and ways to play. If you are a fan of turn based strategy games, I would recommend picking it up.

Also, are you voting for just the Commonwealth, or both starting with the Commonwealth?

 

[Grey Rook]

I'm a great fan of the most recent entry, It's got a good deal of depth in the gameplay and comes with a good deal of content and ways to play. If you are a fan of turn based strategy games, I would recommend picking it up.

Click to shrink...

Hmm. I'll consider it.

Also, are you voting for just the Commonwealth, or both starting with the Commonwealth?

Click to shrink...

The latter. Start with the Commonwealth, and deal with the knife-ears afterwards.

 

[PotentialPlateau]

[X] BOTH, Chronologically: The whole picture, from both points of view.
-[]Start with elves
-[X]Start with Commonwealth
We need to find our son and get to the Institute and - oh wait, wrong Commonwealth nevermind.

 

[Creticus]

Hmm. Not too familiar with this series. Would you say that it is worth purchasing?

Anyway, I like the sound of the Commonwealth. I would request that you start with them and go with the knife-ears later.

Click to shrink...

I'd recommend it if you like turn-based tactical strategy games with slight RPG elements. Bear in mind that it's closer to the Heroes of Might and Magic series than the Civilization series - it's very focused on battles, while its economic elements are secondary to that.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Vote closed. Both starting with Commonwealth wins.

 

[Grey Rook]

I'd recommend it if you like turn-based tactical strategy games with slight RPG elements. Bear in mind that it's closer to the Heroes of Might and Magic series than the Civilization series - it's very focused on battles, while its economic elements are secondary to that.

Click to shrink...

Hmm. I never really got anywhere with the HoMM series.

Is there a demo anywhere so that I can try it out?

 

[Creticus]

Hmm. I never really got anywhere with the HoMM series.

Is there a demo anywhere so that I can try it out?

Click to shrink...

Unfortunately, no.

If you're interested in seeing what it plays like, I can only suggest looking at some of the videos that have been posted on Youtube.

 

[Grey Rook]

Unfortunately, no.

Click to shrink...

I see. Pity.

Thank you for your time.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Alright, let's start the steampunk pain train!

Spoiler: Northern Rebellion

All of the missions start with a map of Athla, so you can see what is going on in the wider world while you are going on missions. The Commonwealth is in red in the east while the Elven Court is in white in the west. You can see on this map that the Commonwealth is pretty busy: in addition to our expedition to quell a rebellion, the Commonwealth is moving into four other red stripy areas, representing frontier provinces that are in conflict with natives or in open rebellion. Really, this is the main reason that the Elven court even thinks that it can take the Commonwealth: while they have much more territory, manpower and industry, the Commonwealth is constantly being tied down by internal dissent and conflict.

There's also a mention of the Commonwealth providing a last offer of peace to the Elven Court. We'll be covering the events over there in the other campaign next mission, as well as some of the backstory behind the conflict. Suffice to say these two nations have been staring each other down for many years now, and both sides feel that full scale war is imminent.



Day 38 of our journey north. In the distance I see brilliant white mountains, tainted by columns of smoke rising from a city in ruinous rebellion.

Centuries past the Commonwealth drove out the Frostlings. Like the High Elves, they used archaic claims as an excuse for backwardness and savagery. My predecessors cleared away the mountains of ice and snow and brought civilization. Still, the land is full of ancient secrets.

A fanatical cult worshipping a frozen goddess has provoked an uprising. The people have cut off all tributes to the Commonwealth and razed a number of towns. Now ice encroaches over the fields, while monsters that have not been seen in generations have returned. No doubt the high Elves are behind these troubling events.

One unexpected twist in this mission is my duty to guard the Emperors niece, the Sorceress Laryssa. She dosn't seem to remember me, but we were friends when we were children. I remember long summer days in the Imperial gardens. She and I shared secrets, and dreamed of how we would serve the empire.

But now she is quiet and studious. All she will tell me is that she is searching for ancient artifacts in Briska.

My mission parameters are as follows:

• 1. Depose anyone claming to rule this rebellious territory
• 2. Rebuild the cities destroyed by the marauders.
• 3.Protect Laryssa with her search.

On the morrow, this Dreadnaught will restore civilization to a lawless land.

So, this is our first encounter with protagonist number two, Edward Portsmith. At the start of every mission the protagonist will provide some narration through their personal journals. From Edwards journal, we get introduced to a calm, professional man who's fresh out a military academy. He still has a stick planted firmly up his arse and believes the party line wholeheartedly. We'll see how these traits change throughout the campaign.

Also, take note of the oaths that Edward swears in the first slide. This really humanizes the Commonwealth, showing that it wasn't always the racist imperialist empire it often comes across as in the game, but started with ideals of equality and fair rule. Also, I really like that last line.

One interesting thing I want to point out is that we never really find out where Edward comes from. He's cleary from the upper classes, since he knew Laryssa in his youth, but other than that we know nothing. He may as well have rolled off a factory line. This provides a pretty large contrast to Sundren, who is defined by her status as the princess of the noblest family in universe. Edward is just a soldier, first and foremost.



Laryssa: I have a feeling that there is more to it than that. Where is this cult coming from? What is their agenda? And who is this Frozen Beauty? There must be another force at work here, I know this is your first mission since the Academy, Edward. Are you prepared for this?

Edward responds by reminding us that we had access to a help function.

Our starting forces roll in from a mountain pass that leads south off the map. I do like little touched like this, where every map show where your army came from in the lore. We start with two human settlers, Edward and Laryssa, both heroes, and five squads: two swordsmen squads, two Civic guard squads, and one archer squad.

If this didn't come a cross clearly in the last mission, each race in Age of Wonders has a set of units that follow a strict template. They have a tier "zero" irregular with a single trigger ranged attack. This means that no matter how many action points you have, they can only make one ranged attack. This encourages you to use their maximum movement each turn, using them as harassing and flanking units. Their very cheap to produce and requires no infrastructure. Once you make a barracks you can produce tier one infantry and tier one archers. Both of these units can be broadly broken into two categories. Infantry are split between squads with hand weapons and shields, which have higher defences, and squads wielding two handed weapons, which do better damage and bonus damage against pikes and shield units. Archers by contrast, can be broken into those with traditional, multi shot bowmen, and those that function like high powered irregulars with one super powerful shot. The next level of military infrastructure gives you access to tier 1 pikeman, a more specialized infantry, and tier two cavalry. In a parallel path, if you make a temple you can produce tier two support units which are basically archers that do elemental damage and have some powerful activated ability. Lastly, you have a single unique tier 3.

Each of these units differs between different races. As is fantasy tradition, the human forces are average to good across the board, with few standouts, but no real duds. Their irregulars, the civic guard, are a maybe a bit below average in combat, but have the advantage that their upkeep costs are halved. This makes them a pretty good option to bulk out stacks and cover areas far from your enemies. Their archers are the bog standard archers, functional but without any real selling points. Lastly, human long swordsmen are an example of the second variety of infantry, the ones with two handed swords. There also an "average" unit, but I find basic infantry as a rule are pretty ineffective and become obsolete the soonest out of all the low tier units.



Laryssa: We should find a place nearby to settle and build an army

Oscar: Ah, Leonus sent two young recruits after me, what a sad sight. Take your outdated vows and ideals elswhere; they will soon be forgotten, as will the Commonwealth itself.

Oscar, the villan, brings up a good point: Why is a recruit fresh out of the academy being charged with breaking a wide scale rebellion? Heck, why do we have civic guards and tier one troops in our starting force? This really shows that the Commonwealth isn't as unstoppable as it seems, and that it's resources are stretching thin.

It's probably possible to take this city with your starting force, but that would be a rough fight. We're going to play along with more tutorial stuff, mainly because it will give me a bunch a free units if we jump through a set of hoops we'd probably do anyways.

Edward deaths: 0



Tutorial objective the first is to found one city over the ruins we find a bit to the west of our starting position. Settling over ruins will restore some of the populace and buildings from the ruined city, which will give us a good headstart on our empire.

I also start up a research on the "great blacksmith" tech. This will cut the gold costs of armoured units by ten percent, making it easier to build up an army. This particular tech is a bit of a quirky one, because only certain races make wide use of armour. Humans have armour on every unit but irregulars and casters, but goblins, for example, don't have a single armoured unit, and the tech will do nothing if you're only playing as them.



Next we found a second outpost to the north. This one actually has a production boosting site in it's range, which will make it much more valuable in the long run. Settling it reveals a mana node guarded by a goblin caster and a bunch of kobolds, which we move in to clear out.



Also, it's not as snowy by the mana node. I'm not sure if this is an oversight in map design or if the mana node gives off enough head to melt all the snow in the immediate area.



This fight occurs mostly like previous ones have. Melee units advance to cover my ranged units, who start pounding the first wave of independents. We don't have the same level of firepower Sundren's army had in the tutorial, but we still manage to wipe two squads on our first turn by charging in my heroes..

As a dreadnought class hero, Edwards starts with a very powerful prototype rifle. It can do massive amounts of damage to weaker units, but can only be fired once every other turn. The cooldown rarely comes into play, between their powerful melee and spell casting abilities and any other gear you may have picked up, heroes rarely have cause to make multiple ranged attacks. This attack also gets me into so much trouble with low level heroes: because of the cooldown I find it much more tempting to close range before using it rather than making potshots and leave my hero too close to the enemy.



The rest of the fight goes fairly smoothly, with my two heroes taking a bit of damage, but no units lost.

With both of our outposts founded, Edward decides that we should scout out the forests to our west, in case they have any nasty surprises. We find both a camp of refugees hiding from the cultist government and band of orcish marauders. Time to clear out some bandits.



The second fight of the mission starts off on the really cool frozen lake battlefield, which you rarely get to see in this game. Laryssa has been left with the bulk of the army, since she needs to be kept safe, while Edward is advancing from the flank. Unfortunately, the band of orcs have some priests with them, who lay a curse on Edward, lowering his defences and morale.



Laryssa and two squads of civic guardsmen intercept the orcish irregulars, taking cover behind some ice floes. They wipe their targets in a flurry of crossbow bolts and lightning.



And here's where i make my first major fuckup of the game. I moved Edward in to take a musket shot at those archers when I really shoudn't have. In my defence, Orc priests got a damage buff in the latest patch, but I shouldn't have done that even if they hadn't been buffed. Between the flanking bonus and Edward being cursed he goes down in one action.

Edward deaths:1

Now, as you may have guessed by the counter, Edward isn't really dead. He will respawn in about two turns in my capitol, but while he's gone I'll be unable to do research or cast strategic spells. Really it's better that he died Laryssa, who would cause an automatic restart, or my archer unit, which would really cripple my ability to beat these tutorial fights.

I'm good at this game I swear.



Thankfully I summoned a Spy Drone before I got in this fight, so I still get to poke around the forest. We find our next two objectives easily. The orc marauders seem to have constructed a fortress deep in the woods overlooking a gold mine. There are also a fearsome pack of wargs loose in the forest. Both of these need to be eliminated, and the fortress and it's resources secured for our use.



Fortress first, because it's closer.

We're down a unit for this fight, so it'll take a bit of finesse. By "Attacking" with the spy drone on the other side of the fortress from the rest of my army, I'm able to distract the orcish archers and make it to the walls without taking fire. Any ranged unit atop fortifications gets a bonus to attack range, so advancing armies are normally going to be taking a turn or two of fire before they can retaliate. My spy drone retreats before it's health gets critical, and we're able to use our superior ranged firepower to draw out the orcish melee elements.



The orcish greatswords charge out into the bulk of my army and do an admirable amount of damage to my infantry before being shot down. Their pikes sally out a different gate, and get choked between their own walls and the piles of lumber the bandits left carelessly outside their fortification.

By this point however the orcish archers are no longer distracted and start to savage my civic guards. I order one of my longsword regiments to force the gate, and they are able to break through and flank the archers before the unit is wiped out. Remember, a unit one one hit point is infinitely more valuable than one that's dead.



I was hoping that the pack of beasts would be an easier engagement to win, but it turns out to be for not. Certain units in the game have concealment abilities, like the Yeti. When in certain types of terrain they can't be seen on the strategic map unless you are right next to them or have a mage unit around. When under your control you can either use this perform elaborate infiltration tactics, sneaking a concealed squad behind your opponents lines to take unguarded rear cities, or to ambush your opponent by defending with concealed troops. The computer largely plays fair with this mechanic, and will even start acting paranoid if it's seen concealed troops in an area before.

This setup for is pretty devious: two wargs is a pretty pitiful force, just pitiful enough to encourage you to split up your forces to get the tutorial done one day quicker.

Laryssa also leveled up in that last battle, and I give her the "charged army" ability. This adds a point of shock damage to all of the melee attacks in her stack. This might not sound like much, but attacks with multiple damage types have some quirks that make them better than they appear. For example, if you make a flanking attack the damage boost applies to every damage channel, not just the main one.



The one saving grace we have here is that we are picking a fight in a forest. The battlefield you fight on is determined by what spot on the strategic map the defender is on, and forest battlefields have large amounts of impassible terrain all over them. We can use this to our advantage, isolating the warg packs in chokepoints while keeping the Yetis out of reach of our army until we're ready to fight them.



I end up the victim of my own troops competence. The first warg squad, after a thourough softening up by every ranged unit I had available, dies to my swordsmen's retaliations. This gives the yeti's the opportunity to slam into my lines before I wanted them to. The second warg pack ran around my left flank, but I had my other squad of long swordsmen covering it. My spy drone moved in to harass the pack, letting my longsword squad cut them down. That left the other five unit's I had to deal with our large, white furry problem.



In the end, it comes down to how well a single damage roll by my longswords goes. If they can kill the yeti in one shot, everything's good. If not, they're dead men. Don't fuck up now.



Thankfully, the RNG is in my favour and the beast falls. My reward is the arrival of our rearguard and the siege equipment we'll need to break through the rebel walls.

We're out of the tutorial (for this path at least) and now some options open up. How would you like me to approach this map?

1.2- [X]Cut off the head of the snake: we can rebuild when the rebels are defeated.
1.0- [X]Rebuild the provence: We can build up our forces and crush them with overwhelming force

Vote weightings are based on my impression of the map from normal mode, and what I'd be doing if not at the mercy of my audience. Whatever has the highest weighting win's ties.

 

[Creticus]

[X] Cut off the head of the snake: we can rebuild when the rebels are defeated.

Generally speaking, an aggressive approach is the way to go in Age of Wonders 3. There are classes that take longer to ramp up, but they still need to expand in order to secure the economic resources needed to fuel their war machine.

Sometimes, this is very literal, as in the case of the Dreadnought.

 

[Grey Rook]

I am a compulsive nitpicker, so I must point out that you got East and West mixed up on the map.

Since I don't know much about how the game works, I'm just going to jump on the bandwagon and agree with Creticus: Go for a quick decapitation and rebuild after you've incinerated their corpses.

 

[horngeek]

[x] Cut off the head of the snake- we can rebuild when the rebels are defeated

I'm curious- what races are really seen in the Commonwealth? Or is it pretty much an all-human affair right now?

 

[mr_stibbons]

I'm curious- what races are really seen in the Commonwealth? Or is it pretty much an all-human affair right now?

Click to shrink...

It's actually fairly multicultural. The upper classes are dominated by humans and dwarves but there are large populations of orcs, goblins, and draconians living in "Commonwealth" territory. The elves used to be a part of it, but seceded to form the Elven Court. The halflings left as well, but I'm not sure when. When the base game launched it was said they had already left, but the first expansion implies they left after the events of this game and just kept their heads down

 

[Creticus]

It's interesting to note that there's still a small population of Elves in the Commonwealth, though it's unclear whether they're High Elves or Wood Elves. Since the ritual that reconciled Dark Elves and Wood Elves was a product of the Elven Court, it's probable that they're some of the last Wood Elves on the planet. Theoretically, they could be Dark Elves, but since Dark Elf culture is founded on opposition to human rule, that seems improbable.

Game-wise, the Elves of the Commonwealth are represented using High Elves, who draw most of their influence from the Wood Elves rather than the Dark Elves. Lore-wise, this is surprisingly appropriate because the Dark Elves are a trauma-induced splinter of the Wood Elves, which actually resulted in a darkly humorous moment in the original Age of Wonders when the Dark Elves had their expectations of what an 'uncorrupted' Elf would be like dashed by bumping into the incredibly isolationist realm of Sylvanus.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Welcome back to Age of Wonders! Last time around we completed the tutorial section of the first mission of the Commonwealth campaign, gotten a real army, and had our main character get burnt to a crisp on a frozen lake. Now, having scraped himself off of the ground and back into the saddle, he's going to link up with our rearguard and liberate the town of Frynam from rebelling ice cultists.

Spoiler: Northern Rebellion part 2

This is probably a good place to talk about our shiny new Dreadnaught army, and, by extension, the whole class system that I should have mentioned like, five posts ago.

Normally when you start a game of Age of Wonders you need to pick both a race and a class, just like DnD. Your race determines your starting race, and by extension your starting unit lineup. Your class determines what techs are available to you throughout the game. This will give you new units that are generally more expensive and powerful than racial units, passive buffs for your army and economy, strategic spells and combat spells, and a chain of special structures that builds class units and provides appropriate economic benefits. You can acquire units of other races by capturing their cities, but there is no way in the game to get wide scale access to another class' toys.

Edward is a Dreadnaught classed leader with access to steampunk magiteck and guns, and we've just been handed a small army of dreadnaught class units.



The cannon is our headliner, being the most powerful unit we've received by a good margin: if you play this map aggressively you probably won't be able to research the ability to make more on this map. Like a lot of dreadnaught units it's a bit of a one trick pony. It has terrible defences for a tier 3, mitigated by a bonus against ranged attacks, and no melee attacks, leaving it fish chum to a dedicated melee assault. But when fired the cannon has a whopping 30 attack power and hits 4 hexes in a straight line at long range, more than enough firepower to devastate stacks in a single shot. However, after the Cannon fires it has to spend a turn reloading, leaving it vulnerable.



That's where the second unit we have comes in to play. Engineers are the first unit that dreadnaught gets, and they bring along a bag of tricks for many situations and help keep dreadnought armies running smoothly. Offensively they've got blunderbusses for clearing out multiple enemy stacks at close range and flash-bang grenades that can be used to prevent ranged units from firing. Both of these attacks also have one turn cooldowns, though the engineers can make other attacks while they're cooling down. Most importantly, the unit has the ability to prematurely take off cool down the abilities of any friendly unit. This provides an obvious synergy with units like the cannon: one cannon and one engineer can do the damage of two cannons at a much cheaper price.



The last new unit we've received is the musketeer squad, who function very similarly to the cannon. They have a very high damage musket volley attack at range, but after using it they must spend a turn reloading or get reloaded by a friendly engineer unit. To compensate for their need to reload, they've got much better melee stats and defences than normal archer units, comparable to a basic infantry unit.

The main problem with musketeers is the combination of their reloading mechanics with their short range. If you fire an attack at long range, you take a large penalty to your damage output, but you aren't likely to have time to fire a second shot before enemy can close with your musketeers. Since you're not going to get that second shot off anyway, I find it pretty common that musketeers fire one volley at close range, hopefully taking down units, then spend several turns as melee troops. Thematically I love this, as it makes musketeers feel like napoleonic line infantry, who did behave like that in most major engagements due to slow reloading speed. Tactically though, they're a pain to use.

I'll discuss the rest of the Dreadnaught lineup as we get to them, but the same mechanical elements recur throughout it: Units that are super specialized to the point of being one trick ponies, brutally powerful ranged attacks, and multiple abilities with cooldown mechanics. As I said before, Dreadnaught armies lend themselves to an alpha strike style of combat that doesn't really exist anywhere else in the game. You'll find there will be one "Big turn" just before melee starts where you fire off all of your cool down abilities for massive damage. If your opponent can weather the storm on this turn though, you'll probably lose.



So how did that siege end up? Pretty badly. The cannon did great damage early, which forced the rebels to sally. However, I pulled off the dreadnought alpha strike about a turn too early, and left Edward staring down both an archer and priest unit atop the ramparts. He got pincusioned, and will be spending the next couple turns giving orders from a hospital bed. I also managed to lose an engineer unit due to overzealous use of their blunderbuss ability, and got my archers crippled by a magic volley of boulders form Oscar himself. We took the town though!

Edward deaths:2

In my defence, I was fighting this battle at 1:00 at night.


Edward: What do they care about?

Refugees: Freedom from the Commonwealth! Although, things are much worse now than before. I don't know why they want to secede. Maybe they think finding the treasure will make the region rich enough?

Edward: What treasure?

Refugee I don't know. But they are pretty sure they'll find it soon. Can't tell you much else, I just joined for the free feasts. Of course then the food ran out and the cultists sacked our city. Killed my buddy Sven. That's when I fled. How about that bread?

Edward: Of course, thank you.

So, we get some backstory on what these cultist/rebels are after, and how they gathered the popular support for their rebellion. It seems that with this strange treasure unaccounted for the rebels are feeling the pinch. They've moved from the velvet glove of unsustainable generosity to the iron fist.

We also get some subtle character development for Edward. Despite the refugee admitting to have joined in the rebellion Edward is willing to take him back into the fold. Is he really a much kinder person than his log entries indicate, or is he simply being pragmatic? Whatever the case, we won't be able to crush this rebellion with the troops we brought in. We'll have to rally Commonwealth loyalists, even those who may have ran with the rebels for a time.

Once this conversation completes we get our next supply of free stuff: one settler unit of refugees sheparded by two units of human priests. Priests are one of the few units in the human lineup that graduate from average to excellent, because they have healing abilities. Keeping HP up is critical to maintain expansion and growth, and having healer units makes that so much easier. Also, at the end of every strategic turn healer units will use their abilities to heal 10-15 hp on any unit's they're in a stack with. If you have movement left, try to shuffle your stacks up to get those free heals where they need to go.



Just to the east of the captured cultist city we find an area where winter has already started to recede. It also contains an absolutely fantastic spot for our refugee's to set up, once we spend some time to clear out the independents guarding those sites. All those production boosters combined with it's forward position means that this settlement will be our primary staging ground for this map.



We also found a cartographers tent, which reveals a major city under rebel control a short ways to the northwest of our starting location. We send the one spy drone Edward managed to make before his repeated hospitallizations upriver to check it out. The direct land route is blocked off by a ridge of impassible mountains. We can go around them by crossing the river and then crossing back, but it seems that Oscar has fortified his side of the bridge with a wooden fortress.

(Mountains with black fog of war above them are impassible mountains. Even mountain troops and flying units can't cross these epic peaks.)



I'm not going to be showing every fight from this point on, because these are long missions with a lot of easy and boring fights. Suffice to say that lots of cannon fire brought down the independents around these sites, getting our new outpost online. We also find some items for heroes in the flow rock quarry. Since Edward isn't around to lay a claim on them Laryssa picks up some extra armour, which should help keep her in one piece. In previous Age of Wonders games you could spend mana to teleport items around, but in this one you have a slightly more practical courier system, where items will arrive in a couple turns.

We also stumble across a small detachment of Oscar's men heading east from our new settlement. They appear to by heavily wounded already, and are taken out in two cannon shots. Still, this is a good sign that the AI is actually playing by the rules instead of pulling resources out of it's ass.



Continuing on east, we find some more friendly faces. A group of rock giants has set up their keep here, and have tried to stay out of this rebellion nonsense. However, their northern cousins the frost giants didn't stay loyal, and have thrown in their lot wholeheartedly with the rebels. If we can convince the frost giants to not be total embarrassments to giantkind, the rock giants will take our side against the rebels. Though I would question why the giants aren't going to help us fight their kin. Is there some sacred giant rule against killing other giants? Or are they just scared? Regardless of the reason this is obviously one of those special campaign quests, which means that all three of the rock giant sentries will be joining us when we conquer the frost giants.


Meanwhile, Laryssa has gotten herself out of the woods and is heading north. She runs into a lightly garrisoned fortress. Now, this is where I learned what playing on hard mode really means. Now I've said before that she isn't allowed to die, but on normal mode this actually means that you are not allowed to lose a battle that she is taking part of. Provided you win, any hero that dies will revive with about a third of their hp. In hard mode you don't get this grace period. If her HP hits zero for any reason you have to reload. On my first run through I charged her at this fortress and got her gunned down in short order.

Laryssa deaths:1

If there is going to be any reason that I'll turn down the difficulty, it's gonna be this. In some maps you've got three "must not die" heroes running around, and it could get frustrating real quick.



It's a good thing the AI can't learn from my reloads, because the garrison of that fortress panics upon seeing Laryssa's army. They book it north to another rebel town, and next turn we can walk in to their abandoned fortress. The surrounding area contains at tomb, which we'll leave alone for now, and a vetrancy pick up which is always useful. This get's Laryssa to level 3, where she learns a new combat spell to give her some direct damage options.



Meanwhile I'm in the process a gathering up another expansion army for Edward to take command of now that he's respawned. It'll consist of two archer units, a longsword unit, and a unit of draconian pikemen we freed from a local bandit camp. Turns out that bandits don't stand much of a chance against cannons. The bandit camp also contained a pair of high heeled leather boots, which everyone knows boosts a hero's defence. Edward grabs them, because Laryssa already has a pair of pants.



The next two turns pass without much happening, as both of my major armies have been slogging through swamps and forests to the frost giant keep. Giants as a rule are tier 4 units, the highest in the game, so I don't want to be engaging them with anything but overwhelming force. In the meantime, Edward actually stayed alive long enough for some research to get done. We finish our last project, and are almost finished researching Solid Engineering. This will improve the defence of all of our machines and armoured units thanks to our superior technology. It's a pretty nice tech: the bonus is small but will improve almost every unit a Dreadnaught wants to use.



To take the keep we have to take out two giants, primal beings who shaped the world of Athla, with two armies of mortal men and a cannon. Shouldn't be too difficult. Having learned my lesson from previous encounters I do my best to deny the giants targets. All they should be able to reach are one veteran swordsman unit and the cannon, both of which can survive at least one hit from the brutes. Then we provoke them with Laryssa's magic and cannon fire.

Giving the giants sacrificial units to attack is important if you want to bring them down. Units that end their turn without making an attack or using a special ability will automatically go into guard mode. Guarding units get a boost to their defences and, critically, face in every direction. This makes them unable to be flanked. Trying to take out giants in guard mode won't happen.



The giants take the bait perfectly, splitting up so each one faces half of my army. My cannon takes a bit of a dent, but in response I'm able to surround the giant with an archer, an musketeer squad, and both of the priests, all of which attack from flanking and short ranged. This cuts the the giant down in short order, and should provide an object lesson into how not to use your expensive tier 4 units.

Frost giants win the title for blandest tier 4 unit in the game. They're slabs of statistics with no special abilities besides frost immunity and a debuff that occasionally triggers on their melee strike. Really not a fan, they're just too tactically inflexible for such an investment.



The next one suffers cannon fire to face, after some musketeers soften it up. Then Laryssa finishes off the wounded giant. We have officially just won the mission.



And I don't mean that we've finished the quest. We just got a trio of stone giants, one of the most bullshit units in this game, and a giant Dwelling that can make more. The three giants could win this mission single handedly if you manage them properly.

An aside: Dwellings are the minor factions of Age of Wonders. They are special cities that can only be found on the map, not founded. They offer unique units outside of the normal class and race selections, which can be a nice way to add some variety to your armies. You can't usually use any dwelling units as the mainline of your forces though, because of the low production speed of dwellings. Unlike normal cities, Dwellings can't grow in population, expand their borders, or be founded in optimal locations, and can't keep up with highly developed cities. Getting two high quality production sites in this one is part of the game being nice in the first mission. We also don't have to tech up this dwelling. Normal giant dwellings need to first build an Ogre cave and defence structure before they can build giant recruitment structures.

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The rest of this mission has already been beaten, and I just need to finish writing it out. I've also taken the liberty to hide the earlier posts in the thread behind spoiler boxes, because the image loading was making things incredibly frustrating.