Mr_Stibbons plays Age of Wonders 3

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Sapphire Archipelago part 3

So, in my pursuit of winning this mission with minimal risk, we've left a large amount of the Archipelago unloved and unlooted. It takes a bit of finesse to remedy this, since Isabella's oversized navy is still lurking around, and we need to sneak troops out of the combat zone.

The first area we encounter is pretty much straight west from the teleporter island, and has a neutral giant's keep and plenty of goodies free for the taking. Not much that's going to be useful in future missions, but I'll probably be sending some scouts this way when I replay this mission for the good campaign.



Yet more west is another, less mountainous island with a fairy dwelling on it. There's a fire immunity charm just lying around.

The krakens on this map have hostile flags, but are strangely docile. So far, I haven't had any problems with them.



The old man commando squad would like to be flying north, but they have to break south when Isabella attempts to break containment.



While there, they clear out the nearby dungeon, and encounter plot.

Bormac: Thank you for freeing me, my bum was getting sore… Hey… you look familiar. Are you related to Julia?

Sundren: She is my mother. My father is King Saridas. And you are a Dwarf. Tell me, who are you, why do they hold you here and what do you know of Isabella and the Commonwealth's plans?

Bormac: I am Bormac Orcbane. I lead a small clan beneath the Rockwall Mountains. We're no part of the Commonwealth and they haven't told me their plans etiher, so I don't know anything about them. I was locked up because I … displeased a certain Dwarf woman. I need to get back to my clan.



What? He looked suspicious.

He actually drops the rifle that he would normally have after we kill him. I'm sure there's no way for this to have repercussions later.



Back to looting. On this western island, we come across an unlooted ziggurat, and it pays dividends. In addition to a much needed third flying mount, we also pick up this rare weapon, providing a nice damage boost and giving Sundren the ability to pretend to be a horned god and Call Lightning.



Then the fire giant brigade goes exploring in a suspiciously well defended tomb. Sadly the rewards aren't worth the effort. We get some boots, which are very defensive, but come with a serious drawback of 60% blight vulnerability. Heroes tend to have much lower resistance than defence, so elemental vulnerability is a bad deal.



In the interest of securing as much loot as possible, I research Ultimate cartographer, which reveals the entire map. This points out a cluster of small islands that I had completely forgotten about. It also reveals that rather than being surrounded by impassible mountains, actually Isabella's capitol is on the other side of a giant wall of volcanoes, which is certainly something I didn't expect.



Groshak and Reskar head to the northeast island, but they find that the Ziggurat I spied earlier is already cleared by someone. If I'm lucky, then Isabella will drop some decent loot.



Rather than declaring this a write-off, we go raid a nearby pirate's nest. This is the last kind of spawn site in the base game, and it will throw out hostile warships and amphibious units to make travelling the waters even more of a pain. They tend to spawn adjacent to coastal mountains, making them even more frustrating to deal with.



Not to be left out, Sundren takes as many amphibious units as we can use and is trying to attack a Kraken invested sunken city. This is easier than it could be, because the baby krakens really rely on their bonus damage to ships and transports to be dangerous.

However, something weird happens- Sundren gets hit by the swallow whole ability on the elder Kraken, which will normally take a unit off the battlefield until the Kraken dies, and I immediately lose the battle. I still had every other unit in my stack alive, but I am kicked out to he strategic map and everyone apparently died. I didn't lose the game, so I'm really not sure what happened.



Being fairly sure that was a bug I reload, and manage to do the battle without getting Sundren swallowed, picking up a pretty nice armour item, research, and a not terribly impressive secret spell.



With everyone running about Isabella makes another attempt to free herself, with some relatively elite units. She also breaks out the Moving Target spell, a rather silly buff that gives a massive defence boost for a few turns.



We of course respond by mind controlling them and using them to deal with the shadow stalker that Isabella sent.

Do you know how hard it is for bows to take down an incorporeal target with +8 defence? Let's just say it's a very good thing that attacks always do at least one damage.



So the last thing to take a look at is this little cluster of islands. There's a pair of sunken cities, and a couple pirates nests that need to be cleaned out and Sundren is the one to do it.

This first one gives us a reasonable sword, which isn't exciting but still an upgrade over the butter knife that Groshak has.



The pirates here favour flying units and scouts over regular ships, and don't offer any resistance to Sundren's crack stack. This is the first time I've seen pirates spawn scouts, but they do have a tendency to produce wights, because more undead is something everyone needs.



They also give out pretty junk items. Ok, so an ranged stun isn't that bad, but heroes have so many things to do with their actions at this level. I'd be better off with attacks or busted spells. And this was the better item, the other nest just gave a redundant ranged weapon.



I lost the fairies in the second pack of Krakens, but said city also offered an efficient way to replace them-summoning a dragon. This scores me a ring of free movement. A little redundant with the set of flying mounts I've collected, but the Cockatrice is useful enough that I might kit someone out with the pair.



With that, the signal goes out to put Isabella out of her misery, I've had way too many turns to build up my forces. I tend to build a ton of succubi on this map, less because they're an effective combat unit or there's lots of neutrals to mind control, but simply because they're the cheapest flying units available-griffon spires are expensive, but in mirror matches you can keep enemy class buildings, which saves on infrastructure costs. Having anything to fight off independents or stragglers in a timely fashion is more important than an optimal strategy.

Sundren: We have finally rid this place of Humans. Now, I will take the fight to the commonwealth itself!



And that is that. The genocide of the Sapphire Archipelago is complete, and Sundren is feeling . . . good. Disturbingly, the killing did get easier, and she's ready to do whatever it takes to win this war.

Mechanically, I think I've complained about this mission enough that you all know the gist. This really suffered from the nerf to transported units early in the games lifecycle, and it's a frustrating mess if you try to do it "Fairly". Even the cheese strategy is only fun for so long before you get frustrated with all the ships.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Wild Magic

Welcome back to Age of Wonders. This map looks a lot like the commonwealth mission five map, but with the addition of Sundren's arrow moving to Karunn province. We've now gone to all but two of the labeled locations on the map, and will be starting the actual war.



Kaerunn province: Our plan is risky. With the help of Groshak's Orcs, we intend to restore an ancient wonder that will grant our troops rapid access to the heart of the Commonwealth Empire.

Crafted by the Father-Giants, before the arrival of Elves, Teleportation Gates were used to travel vast distances instantly.

The commonwealth has no regard for old things, sometimes even using the standing stones to create the buildings of their sprawling empire. But with time and ingenuity the Teleportation Gates can be repaired.

Our maps indicate that a gateway in Kaerunn province can be reactivated, allowing our forces access to the Commonwealth capital, Stronghelm city.

Kaerunn Province itself is a dangerous land. In the Age of Wizards, this land was rich. No single Wizard held the territory for long. The Wizards blanketed the countryside with so many enchantments that their erratic power can still be triggered today. Arcane monsters and outlaws roam the wilds, while the Commonwealth lords keep to their cities

Taking this land will not be easy, but Groshak is eager to prove himself. The Orc exiles that the Commonwealth bullied and cast out will very shortly have their revenge.

As has been established repeatedly in the game, the Elven court stands no chance against the commonwealth in a fair battle, not that Sundren will admit it at this point. Thus their plan of attack is a decapitation strike on the commonwealth capitol, to end the war before it can truly begin.

It's plausible. The lack of unity of the commonwealth has been a recurring theme, and with the capitol taken and the emperor slain, it's likely that less loyal areas of the commonwealth would capitulate to the court, or devolve into infighting.



So, as part of our little comando mission, we start with a quite sizeable force, with some low tier high elf rogue units, some basic draconian units and a draconian shaman, two orc apprentices two orc black knights, and a phantasm warrior unit. We've just teleported into a dense forest, in the corner of the map. Towards the edge are several orc and goblin neutral villages, and an expendable scoundrel unit gets sent over to make contact.

The rest of our army goes to the northeast, encountering a familiar enemy faction.

Colm: Elven Court troops! How did they get into Kaerunn without us knowing?! To war men! Send messages to all our allies! We mush push them back.





Colm, you may remember, was the traitorous general that betrayed Leonus in commonwealth mission five. What's he doing here at the same time? Well, the loyalist timelines diverge at some point, so what happened in Edward's campaign can't be taken as facts anymore.

We can't start the assault this turn, but there is a tempting wizard tower that we can throw our heroes at while our troops march out of the forest.



Two t4 units make the tower pretty dangerous to attack, so this takes a bit of fines. Reskar baits out the king serpent, letting Sundren and the calvary surround it and take it down, though they both get stunned by it's passive. Thunderstorm gives everyone a large shock vulnerability, makes the stuns go off more commonly.

Then Grosak flips the dynamic around and stuns the Eldritch horror, while the other cavalry unit rushes the apprentice unit to prevent them from laying into one of my stunned units.



Next couple turns are just mop up, Sundren flanks and kills the horror, apprentices are run down, the usual. We manage to befriend some of the baby serpents, which will be a serious asset if they can evolve. For loot we get fancy shield, and enough research points to research wisps, apprentices, and phantasm warriors on the spot. Now we just need the mana to cast our summons.



Advancing towards Colm's city triggers a pair of war declarations from a pair of familiar faces: Svengir and Drugal from the third commonwealth mission. Since these two rebelled against the commonwealth at the beginning of that mission, we can probably assume that the divergences from the rebel and commonwealth timelines occurred back in Nirvenkiln. Edward must have failed to retrieve the mcguffin and thus not given these idiots the idea to steal it and declare independence.



Colm's city, as benefits the first city in this mission, stands no chance against your starting army-it has no walls and is mostly garrisoned by low tier human units with the addition of some berserkers. Taking it without casualties can requires some careful management, but using your heroes well and it isn't really a problem.



As our first city, it's pretty tolerable. Certainly better than the barren lands of last mission, which a pop growth site and a production site nearby.

We also get so see just how messed up Kaerunn is. In addition to the scattered blighted plants, whole areas are frozen or scorched, even now.



Sundren and Groshak are advancing along the east road, and quickly encounter Colm's throne. The garrison is slightly larger, but lower quality than the last garrison, and the city itself is much nicer, with an incredibly valuable sunken city in it's domain.

Of course, I've sent a third of my forces in the other direction, which could be a problem.



Reskar and his draconian troops have been mucking about the starting area waiting for quests to spawn. The one that spawned was a bit of a doozy though. Someone at least knows what kind of firepower high level heroes have available, and we've got a few befriended animals to help us out.



To hack through the swarms of units guarding Colm's throne, I take advantage of the superior range on Call Lightining to pick off some isolated units. Ideally this would cause the AI to try and charge, but that doesn't seem to be happening this time.



So after I reach the end of my patience, I make my move. Sundren swoops in on one flank, while Groshak and the black knights charge the other. Sundren gets into a bit of trouble, but teleporting apprentices bail her out.

Reskar: I have never liked people like Colm. Only taking care of themselves and never thinking about others. I'm sure we made Athla a better place by killing him.



While most of my troops are out of moves and sitting on our new acquisition, Sundren and Groshak decided to take the opportunity to remove this pirate's nest before it becomes a problem.

This was a bit of a mistake. Grohak and Sundren both have abilities that reduce the upkeep of units in their stack, and by moving them out here, I can't pay next turns mana upkeep. This will cause a random summon unit to poof, losing me a phantasm warrior unit.



Further in the bad news department, Reskar's attempt at dragon-slaying doesn't pan out as planned. After throwing my entire army into the beast, it survived with a single hit point.



The dragon splatters a unit of scoundrels across the swamp, and then its pack of wyverns ravage my troops, killing another scoundrel unit and badly injuring Reksar and my flamer unit. The flamer dosn't survive the mop-up, and the infantry is likewise defeated.

On the bright side, I get some orc priests to make up my numbers and the loyalty of a new city.



Up north there's little more than wetlands, but there are some valuable pickups.



Back on the main front, we've regrouped into a mobile force, and are busy "negotiating" with an independent village.

None of these places have mana nodes, so we're no closer to getting our summoning engine back online.



. . . one of these days, we'll be in a timeline where Sulthor does more than die tragically. It won't be this time though, as he is regretfully taking up arms alongside the other commonwealth lords. Probably shouldn't be invading his lands.



In the south, we come across the final player on this stage, unique in that she hasn't immediately declared war on me. This grim-looking high elf theocrat is apparently fine to sit this war out.

2-1 odds that she's sitting on the teleporter we need to secure.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Wild Magic part 2

So, as the only enemy within spitting distance of us at this point in the game is Sulthor, so our first priority will be to put him out of his misery.

He's left himself and a mob of weaker units just outside this fortress here, and we can have Groshak and Sulthor take them on.



The main force of the enemy here is a mix of orc archers, irregulars, and scouts, which isn't much of a threat. We're able to kill two units on the approach, while Sulthor and his cavalry is on the way over. Then Sundren gets a critical call lightning wiping out three units.



The shamans manage to befriend the crows that were harassing them, and after that it doesn't take long to wipe the stack, with Sulthor dying last to thunderstorm bolts.



Just up the road is Sulthor's throne, and despite the negative prognosis Sulthor and Groshak are going to be launching an assault now. Next turn that extra stack to the east can reinforce the city, making an attack pretty much impossible with the troops we have here, and I don't want to be wasting time shipping Reskar's stack up here, and the few black knights I have around this area aren't relevant in siege units much.



The first step the this battle is to kill the nightshade fairies defending the centre, as they're the single most threatening unit here by a fair margin. A timely crit from Sundren lets me pull this off without wasting extra moves from other units.



After that thunderstorm is dispelled, Sundren gets worn down fighting off the enemy cavalry while be shot from the other battlement. I throw the boars in front of the rampart as a distraction, while having the shaman unit teleport onto the ramparts to get a better shot. (Sorcerers have an upgrade that gives all support units phase).

From here its an exercise in shooting the rest of Sulthor's orcs off the field. Sundren uses a small amount of the remaining mana to use quick dash on herself-this lets her get her HP up without ending her turn.



Sulthor gives us our first real Orc city, and since I haven't really got into this race (somehow) I might as well give an overview. Orcs get an extra point of melee damage and five extra hit points, but lose a point of resistance, and theoretically lose a point ranged damage. This wasn't a terribly good combination, so in a later patch they gained victory rush, which heals them for six whenever they win a battle. The combination tends to make them very good in the early game, when five HP matters and their low resistance doesn't matter, but once stuns and mind control abilities come into play that resistance penalty hurts.

I tend to think of Orcs and Dwarves have a pair-both lack an archer unit worth a damn, have excellent basic infantry as compensation and have a unique infantry unit at T3, which encourages similar strategies, though Orc cavalry isn't hamstrung by an arbitrary movement penalty, and is actually very good.



Sulthor had another city over in the mountains, which is easy enough to knock over, just some priests and spearmen.

Orc priests are pretty useless as support units, but their curse de-buff and triple channel attack make them good at killing units, replacing useless razorbows. Spearmen are a surprisingly decent unit for an orc ranged units, as they get sprint for mobility, shields to keep them alive, and war cry which can make them useful at melee for a turn. Orc implalers are also pretty good, since they have all the same advantages as the infantry.



There's also a goblin village up in the northwest, which decides to be hostile to me and the is immediately skooshed under the heels of my backline cleanup squad.



At this point, I really haven't got a an enemy to attack. Both of the two remaining enemy factions seem to be stuck at the other end of the map, which leaves an annoying neutral faction and an awful lot of rough terrain between us any any objectives.

So Sundren and Groshak are crossing the mountains, recruiting some free ogres, and acquiring loot.



Down south, after sneak past a pack of hostile spiders, we come across another hostel goblin village, and overthrow it on general principles.



Sundren heads south, triggers a quick chat with Awanesse. Despite my previous suspicious, there's no indication that there's an objective down here, so we're going to be ignoring her and getting on with this mission.



Reskar hits a secret sanctum, losing most of his little cleanup force. But we do get an air elemental summon spell, which for the sake of variety we'll be leaning on instead of the usual t3 sorcerer summons. Still, this was the last major site to take out on this half of the map, so Reskar is ditching the remaining troops over here and fly east to link up with Groshak and Sundren.



It takes a couple turns for Sundren and co to get over the spiderweb mountains extruding from Awanesse's domain. This terrible terrain is going to be a problem if we don't crush the dwarves in one thrust. The biggest reason to attack Awanesse is to just make your logistics easier.


Past her though is an undefended Archon necropolis, which since we're evil, we'll be taking it over.




Another direction that we could have gone is up this river-it's flanked by impassible mountains for some reason, and leads to a blighted area full of spiders and pickups.



In addition there's another sunken city in this little lake here, and we have enough flying and amphibious units that it's easy enough to overwhelm the defenders. Sadly there isn't much in the way of decent loot-A kraken that can't get anywhere relevant, and an combat spell that heals all summoned units, which I'll never use.



Sundren: You are a worthy ally. I am sure my father will bestow you with honours and lands to rule for the Elven Court.

Nothing much to the south but some bandits.



And just past the Archon city is the enemy! Finally!

Time to slaughter.



Drugal is pretty much screwing over his ally here, as his stack isn't on the city, and thus triggers a field battle instead of a siege. They are also really trying to bulk out their armies with junk like prospectors, grimbeak crows, and subpar dwarf units. This makes them rather vulnerable to being blasted with lightning,, and being one-shotted by ogres.



The rest of the defenders of this city are a little more optimal in unit composition, but they're still mostly t1 units while I'm packing an army of overlevelled heroes and T3 units, so this isn't a battle.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Wild Magic Finale

Welcome back. As this mission has proved to be more than a little boring, we'll be polishing it off post haste.

Heading east from our conquest at the end of last mission, we come across another city under Svengir's flag, a dungeon from which to acquire extra troops, and a clearly labelled Kobold cave.



Next turn the dungeon is looted, adding some human cavalry and dwarf firstborn are added to our ranks, while some wisps are moved up to go poking in the kobold cave.



Exploring the cave reveals that it is full of kobolds, as could be expected. My scouts hide on the edge of the mountains, as next turn four full stacks of kobolds spill out of the cave, and run to their deaths against my spearhead army. Good Xp, and the cave has some gold, research, and building supplies to loot in it.



Slightly to the south, we also come across a settlement of Drugal's where the a large force of his has gathered. Like before, the dwarfs have bulked up their forces with some pretty junky units, but there are still enough of them that I don't want to go picking a fight right this moment.



The city on the horizon turns out to be Svengir's capitol, and he himself is in residence. This should enable this game to end quickly.



Now, there is a large force here, but they're also pretty weak units on average. As a holding action, Reskar summons a unit of ancestral spirits on the otherwise empty left flank. This is a combat spell that summons for a single battle a unit that's similar to phantasm warriors. They're tough enough thanks to incorporeality to keep everything on this flank busy for a turn or two while also taking them all off guard mode.



Svengir himself wastes a turn trying to dispel Groshak's thunderstorm, and burns off half of his health in a critical failure. This is why I have a tendency to ignore dispelling, it's just too inconsistent.



On the third round, my ancestral spirits have died, but that leaves the dwarven defenders clustered where they can be punished by Call Lightning. Reskar jumps the battlements to engage the mob, while Sundren and the air elementals sweep over the right flank. Air elementals are pretty decent unit with a teleport and inbuilt inflict stun. They synergies quite well with Groshak's lightning storm ability: it gives all units 40% shock vulnerability, which the large amount of shock damage and inflict stun can take advantage of.



After that, the storm passes, but Svengir's forces are spent, and my ogre mercenaries have smashed through to front gates. This is the final battle of Svengir the golden.

Three down, one to go.



Next, our heroes break south to provide the edge needed wipe out Drugal's armies. This isn't a hard fight by any stretch of the phrase.



Drugal does have a couple actual dreadnought units here, but they aren't much of a problem when they get stunned.



The troops that toppled Svengir scythe south, mopping up Svengir's now independent domain.



Our heroes advance across the deserts and swamps, plundering some tombs along the way.

Scouts reveal another major city of Drugal, guarded by cannons and flame tanks. This isn't his capitol though, that's underground.



Now, these big scary dreadnought units might be a problem, but the combination of their innate shock vulnerability and the thunderstorm penalty makes it very easy to stun them all. Drugal even makes are life easier for us by breaking down his own walls with his flame tanks, letting me charge right up, and crush them.



The real enemy is down underground, where Drugal has some more cites with actual real units in numbers that are flat out nowhere near enough.



The forces here get swept aside. I take the opportunity to show off Shock Missile, a rare secret damage spell. It isn't much more powerful than any other variety, but it looks pretty enough.



Just past that little city is the teleporter that we've been looking for! Sweet! Firstborn come with tunnelling abilities by default, so we can just walk right over and claim it, crossing off another mission objective in a timely manner.



Before we wrap up the mission, Sundren takes a taskforce to hit a Ziggurat in the desert, getting a nice hammer and a spare manticore to upgrade somebodies mount.



With that, the rest of my armies fall on the last bastion of Commonwealth power in the region, and effortlessly sweep them aside.

Groshak: Great! The local Commonwealth leaders have been vanquished, and we have found the teleporter to Stronghelm. The invasion can now begin!

… I really dislike this mission. It's terminally boring-there's no real thematic hook, no interesting mechanical gimmicks, and no major story or character beats. It really feels like they just threw in a mission to fill in the campaign outline before the finale. It's disappointing, but at least the mission isn't very difficult.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Fury of the Ancients

It's time for another end of this game. The elven court has their teleporter, and is ready to launch their surprise attack on the capitol of their enemy. The commonwealth forces are rallying to beat the elves back form Kaerunn, leaving the capitol lightly defended.



The genocidal policy employed in the Sapphire Archipelago is being expanded upon. The elven court is going to do their best to restore the world to that idyllic state it was in when the old king Inioch ruled, before humanity came from across the sea, no matter how much blood needs to be spilled to do that.

I do think that Sundren is being a little optimistic in their plans-taking one city won't make an entire race submit to genocide, but this is also a game, and no one really wants to play the mop-up game. She is also drinking the fascist kool aid, where the enemy is simultaneously strong and weak-to strong to battle head on, to weak to survive this decapitation strike. We will see how accurate those beliefs are.



Sundren: I will not let you down, father! With the combined power of our armies the Commonwealth doesn't stand a chance.

Like the finale of the Commonwealth loyalist campaign, this is a big team mission, with four elven court factions against four commonwealth factions. To our immediate north Sardias has several cities.



As he mentioned there is an army of orc mercenaries to the south, that will be providing some minor assistance.



Meanwhile, Julia has taken up a position at our rear, with some quite valuable territory, but she's unlikely to contribute much in the way of troops.

It is a little odd that we start with such large cities, when according to the fluff the elven forces are arriving into enemy territory by teleporter.



Just across the river, we have our first contact with Leonus's troops. We start with a fairly large army of mixed elven, orc and draconian units, but most of the it is low quality. we're also going to be short on money for the first little section of this mission and will have to rely on loot to keep our troops paid.



To compensate for our lower quality army we still have our full compliment of heroes unlike the commonwealth finale. I'll be keeping them together as a highly mobile independent strike force for as long as possible, using them to steal lightly guarded territory before the commonwealth factions start gearing up and putting larger armies into the field.



For instance, to the northeast here, Leonus has a variety of lightly guarded holdings that the hero squad can take easily.



My attentions are drawn away from the north front by the appearance of goblin troops sworn to Yzzo the rat start showing up near my outlying cities. I don't actually have the budget to do anything with these cites at this point, but losing them would hurt morale, so elements of my starting troops are going to be removing them.



Leonus has a point here-the Court has gambled everything on this strike, and if they fall here the entire royal family, and much of their armed forces, will be captured or killed.



We respond to Leonus' taunts by taking two more cities.

Sundren: This teleporter pad doesn't seem to be functioning properly. It doesn't look broken however, maybe there is something blocking it in one of the nearby cities.

A mild gimmick of this map is that there are far more teleports and hast berries on it than on many normal maps. There are also a couple teleports that start deactivated, and become activated as you conquer certain cities. This should reduce the amount of logistics we need to wrangle.



Meanwhile, we've rallied an actually decent army to assault a city of Leonus' in the middle of the map. The headliners are the two draconian flyers and an orc shock trooper unit. These are the Draconian and Orc racial t3 units respectively.



Cleaning out the last of this cluster of cities wakes up the teleporter we saw earlier, but it's a destination, not an entrance, so we can't use it.



Meanwhile, there's another deactivated teleporter to the southeast of our start position, which we stumble upon in our search for Yzzo. I might have messed up the mission triggers, since this is an entrance, but it doesn't activate.



Sundren: Yzzo, you'll pay for what you did to my brother! I know his death was your doing!

Yzzo: I'll pay? Your pathetic Elven Court failed to stop me last time. What makes you think this time will be any different.

It seems that any guards that he had on this city were sent out to harass me, which leaves this area quite lightly defended, and my backline cleanup crew are able to walk in.



Due to our crippling economic problems, Sundren and co are being pulled off the conquest train to do some quick plundering of the surrounding countryside. In the process Reskar keeps some spiders as pets, which does actually nothing to help our economic issues.



Our real army is headed south, and encounters a large amount of enemy resistance. Yzzo has quite the fortified city nestled into this blighted mountain, and it would have been quite easy to ignore it. The only way over here is to march through a one tile wide marsh path between the sea and the mountains.



As everything is turning to assault Yzzo in the south, I throw a couple scouts east to take a look at whatever else is around. There's another one of Leonus' cities, then what looks like a river across the majority of the map, patrolled by ships under Baradir the bald. Past the river, we can see the edge of his domain.



To make sure the assault on Yzzo goes smoothly, the hero brigade flies south to assist. This reveals three more stacks of troops behind the ones I could see. I have a sinking feeling that I'm going to be losing a lot of troops next time.

See you then, for far too many goblins.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Fury of the Ancients part 2

Picking up where we left of, there are an awful lot of goblins here to kill. Thankfully they tend to get all cluster up on the walls and be vulnerable to lightning strikes. Yzzo did manage to dispel thunderstorm, which will make this a little difficult.



I then make a rather major blunder-I fly draconian flyers over the walls to support Reskar, and get one unit wiped by a combination of swarm darter fire and being charged by beetles. Oops.



The battering rams that I started the mission with are proving unusually effective, as they have an innate immunity to blight, and thus are very resilient to the goblin ranged attacks. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the rest of my army, and swarm darters are taking their toll.



By the time the heroes sweep to the centre and silence the goblin darters with a lightning blast, three more units have gotten shot off the field: a longbow unit, the orc apprentices, and orc shock troopers.

It's not quite a Pyrrhic victory, all of my heroes are still in the field, but it's a dear one, and we still have another equal sized force to defeat before we can advance.



It took all of the movement points of my heroes to get to that battle, so it'll be a turn before we get into the second half of this engagement. Meanwhile, some backup troops are marching south along the other side of the wall of impassible mountains to steal some extra cities. Hopefully with such a large host currently engaged in the defence of the northern pass, the rest of Yzzo's territory is guarded by a skeleton crew.



Another thing to explore is a small teleporter in the wilderness around Leonus' old territory. It does lead further east, to an area with a small number of treasure sites, the ring of mountains around it make it less than useful for logistical purposes.



Alright, let's do this thing. We're putting our loaded hero stack in the hot seat adjacent to two of the enemy stacks while the normal unit stack is only adjacent to one, to hopefully keep them safe. It's also rather fortunate that the two big beetle units are stuck at the rear of the enemy formation, and should take a turn or two to engage us.



The AI does show a bit of sense, in that the heavier elements of the centre stack charge my weaker flank, while the irregulars try and distract my heroes. I end up sacrificing one battering ram, since it's almost dead and I have no easy way to repair it, to break up the enemy assault force.



Come my second turn, I've lost my battering ram as expected, and the goblin force is taking longer to chew through than expected. To compensate for this, I have Groshak break out Mass Stasis, which slows or immobilizes every enemy unit on the field. Even though they resist it, the beetles wont have enough speed left to get to anything but my virtually unkillable heroes, giving me time to wrap up this battle favourably.



By the time the enemy cavalry reaches my lines, they're all that's left of Yzzo's army and are easily flanked and crushed.



We did lose a hunter unit to Yzzo's spells, not that I could do much about that, and a high elf swords unit to the same.



Just past this little fortress-city is a patch of haste berries, which the flying squadron uses to leap themselves past the marsh deeper into Yzzo's territory.

We can also see a ruined human city just past the impassible mountains. It's only reachable by sea or teleporter, and there's no sites near it to encourage rebuilding there, so that's about all I'll be doing with it. Not even sure where the other end of the teleporter is.



The next of Yzzo's cities is less defended than that mess, and can be easily taken over. So far none of his cities have had much in the way of valuable sites under their control, which is making me feel a bit unimpressed.



Pushing further east through the swamp, we get appositive identification on both Yzzo himself and his throne city. Unless an army appears from nowhere, the treacherous goblin isn't long for this world.



Firstly, Sundren kicks the bastard back to the void herself.



We clean up some of the outlying territories. Now I need to march these elves out of the swamp for a half dozen turns, which will be tedious.



And then we take a very, very nice throne city, ending Yzzo's sorry existence. The combination of a dungeon for the production boost, a cleared ziggurat providing extra gold, and a heart of the blight giving a happiness boost, should make this one of our premier forward bases.

Three to go.



I also finally identify where the teleporter to Leonus' old territories is. Well, I didn't find it, but when ordering troops over there, the pathfinding went through the teleporter by itself, conveniently revealing it to me.

Sundren: This must be the teleporter connected to the pad I found in Leonus' city!



I didn't know that a flock of magical crows were terribly effective as an excavation crew. Well, you learn things every day.

This teleporter is the exit of the deactivated pad near our base, which is fantastic news. The jump transports troops across half the map, or more accounting for how broken the terrain in this mission is, and it'll let use deploy units form the home cities to the front lines easily. Now I just need to find room in the budget for some road connections through the swamp, and we're in business.



To get that room, the hero squad does some extra looting, and as hilarious as overrunning the commonwealth with an army of penguins would be, this is getting sold, so I can afford more practical infrastructure projects, and start recruiting more potent troops to replace the ones I lost at the start of this update.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Fury of the Ancients part 3

This mission opens with my allies actually taking a relevant action-Julia assaults Leonus' port city. She fails, but does cull the garrison enough that it's unlikely these troops will start running about and causing trouble.



Out of curiosity, a scout unit is being sent to explore the territory north of our starting position. Up here we find an neutral archon dwelling, as well as several nice treasure sites. If you like playing more slowly, sending troops up here fore resources and settling extra cities could be quite profitable.



The rest of our scouting is taking a look at the mountainous territory for General Baradir. Most of it is pretty clean, but what jumps out is the massive amount of guards holding the fortress dominating the river crossing. That's three stacks of t2-3 warlord units, sitting in an actual sensible formation. They also have the advantage of holding the river: I will only be able to engage with two of my own stacks without flying units. Really I'd prefer to just find away around this chokepoint instead of going through it.



Down a little bit south is another city, this one near another nonfunctional teleporter nearby. It'll be a long while before we'll be in position to take this little outpost though, and longer before we find the exit to the teleporter.



After a couple turns of build up we finally have a force in place to finish off the city that Julia attacked earlier in this mission using a mess of most good racial units and a spider queen that was mind controlled earlier.



Because of that massive force of high quality unit, I don't want to have my heroes running about Baradir's territory unsupported anymore. Instead, they're going to fly north, take this city from Leonus, and hopefully link up with some of my actual troops. In the process, I mind control a musket unit, which should help if we need to defend this city.



I'm simultaneously trying to marshal a force down south in Yzzo's old territory with the teleporter we unearthed last mission, and we get into a bit of a skirmish with the dwarves while doing so.



However, at this point an opportunity presents itself: past this river, Baradir has more cities that aren't as heavily defended as his strongholds in the mountain. He's got a pretty reasonably powerful navy that could be a problem, but we can just fly across with the hero death squad and start taking more cities.



On the plus side Baradir hasn't fortified this city, so we don't need fight through walls. On the other hand, Baradir has whipped out the berserk spell, and it's causing problems. As you might expect, anything hit with this spell will at the start of their turn attack the nearest unit, friend or foe, and hit them. Thankfully your troops are smart enough not to retaliate against the berserked unit, but because the attacks happen during the start of your turn, every unit is off guard.

In this case the berserk is tolerable, because Reskar's regrowth and healing lets him tank the attacks from the berserk flyers, and berserk only lasts two turns.



Now though, I'm in possession of a quite reasonable city, and have lines on more of Baradir's territory.



We actually manage a pretty impressive run here-note the haste berries behind Sundren. After smashing aside this little stack, we can back up onto them and get all our movement points back.



Then after finding two other cities just to the east, and bounce off the these berries here, eating another weak garrison.



And still have enough movement points to make a quick jaunt north and adding yet another city to our growing empire, this one with a cleared ziggurat, if not much else.

There's also a another ziggurat that you might be able to see in the top left-we'll be ignoring it. At this point my heroes have enough loot to not really care about more stuff for them, and it's a bit out of the way.



Those cities seem to be the end of Bardir's holdings north of the river-to the east, we meet again with Leonus. He is showing off a much more potent force than previously, with some actual dreadnought units and knights.



Some ancestral spirits are summoned to distract the majority of the garrison. A thunderstorm is called to hopefully help stun the flame tank.



Sadly, the thunderstorm is dispelled, and my flyers are hit with a speed penalty sever enough to keep them out of the fight. On the plus side, we're able to clean up some of the muskets and engineers in the initial assault on the battlements.



Sundren get's pretty beat up taking on the enemy knights thanks to being charged in the flank, but the flame tanks shock vulnerability let's Groshak easily stun lock it, and engineers can barely hurt Sundren.



After that, we clean out some of the treasure sites to the south to get the infusion of funds necessary for the final push.



We also free a pair of human knights, which provide reinforcements that I'm otherwise not going to be getting on this front because of Baradir's navy.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Fury of the Ancients part 4

Last time on Age of Wonders, our all star hero squad rampaged around the territory north of the river, winning five cities from Baradir and Leonus in short order. This one is going to start with the assault on Baradir's southern holdings by troops which have rallied around Yzzo's old territory and the teleporter in it, and mostly consist of building the groundwork for our final victory next update.



I have a bit of a brainfart, and accidentally bring along a builder unit to the site-it's fairly common for units to get stuck in stacks if you forget about them. Anyways, I end up losing said builder in the first round when a unit of swordsmen go berserk. Better than a real unit I guess, though I never do get around to building another one.



My only real siege unit are a pack of hunter spiders. Thankfully, dwarves have terrible ranged options, so with one webbed up, it is simple enough to force the dwarves to engage via shooting them with longbows.



The only nexus of resistance is the one unit of monster hunters holding the left flank. Dwarf monster hunters get actually dangerous crossbows, and this unit has a shrine buff giving the regeneration and the killer instinct buff giving the bonus damage against common races. It takes several turns before they a forced down by massed fire, and they easily cut down the infantry that mounted the walls.



This opens up one part of the last unlock able teleporter in this mission, and gives us a pretty useless city. Thus, because money is still tight and I am evil, this city is being plundered for a quick infusion of cash.



Up north we grab a unique spell city quake, which is useful tor cripple ciites, but not for taking them unless you get overly lucky, which is a bit of shame. In this mission I'm going for the throat more than I'm bothering with economic harassment, so this is just a waste of magic.



Most of my production has been going to reinforcing battlegroup south, which has found a lightly defended path of advance through the massive amounts of impassible mountains that are dominating the back of Baradir's territory.



After their looting was completed, Sundren and co continue their advance through the norther territory. Seeing Leonus' territory, and the careful sculpting of the terrain, it seems they have finally found Stronghelm. So close, but it will be some time before it's reckoning comes.



In the central front a pile of spare units descend upon the city just before Baradir's impenetrable fortress. Not terribly precise, but hopefully I have the numbers that even if the stacks defending Baradir's central chokepoint counterattack I can do a crippling amount of damage.



This city doesn't even have walls, which is fortunate, because of the amount of mounted archers defending the city could inflict a brutal punishment upon my units if they were hiding behind stone walls. Outside we can rush them hard enough that they only get a couple turns of fire.



Bardir doesn't try to retake his old city, but our path to the north is obstructed briefly by our final opponent on this map, Brenn Grimdaughter, a dwarf theocrat with some relatively high tech units. Both Leonus and Baradir are crippled after their previous losses, so Benn will provide the bulk of the opposition to our final advance on Stronghelm.

The extra knights really help with the battle against these stacks.



With the dwarves army vanquished, Sundren and co advance south, quickly finding Brenn's territory. We also see what looks like the other end of the mountain teleporter. More frustratingly, it's becoming obvious that there's no way to outflank Bardir's capitol and the useless chokepoint. We'll have to knock down the front door somehow.

Sundren: There's an army guarding the teleporter, no doubt to stop us from using it!



I take out my frustrations on a mostly undefended city he owns to the south, setting Bardir back to nothing but his capitol.



Though I didn't indend for this, it seems like my victory in the south has had some unintended positive results: One of the stacks guarding the chokepoint has gone independent because Baradir can no longer pay their upkeep. This reduces the amount of troops I have to battle in any fight, but they'll also start to move around randomly, and thus can surround the fortress with more stacks than before.




The teleporter has a stack of theocrat units and a flame tank on loan from Leonus defending it, and is cut down easily. Now reinforcements can head directly to the final area of the map.



There really isn't much more to the map-I grab ultimate cartographer on a whim, and we discover that the last corner of the map is mostly desert and mountains. Brenn has three cities and a capitol, and Leans only has Stronghelm left under his control.



The southern battlegroup continues it's advance, and finds Brenn's territory just as lightly guarded as Baradir's.



The heroes launch their attack on the another of Brenns city, encountering slightly higher amount of resistance, which are overpowered by the nonsensical power of my heroes.



Unlike the rest of her territory so far, Brenn's capitol is no pushover, with five stacks of actually powerful units. The reinforcements I've been mustering in the background will be needed to try and crack that garrison.

So we'll be stopping here for now, and next update will be about the final stand of the commonwealth.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Fury of the Ancients finale

Objective one on our epic battle lighting round: Baradir's chokepoint fortress defending his capitol. Due to the desertion of two thirds of the garrison, we only have to fight one stack of high quality warlord units and we've managed to flank around the fortress and brought in flying reinforcements.



Since we attacked with the shadow stalker and succubus, the majority of Baradir's force is away from the majority of my armies, with only a single warbreed able to attack. The manticore riders get delayed for a turn by a succubus curse.



The end result is a bit of a slaughter, as a series of very tough units slam into a front line of ocrs that cannot take more than a handful of hits, while my back line unloads missiles into the enemy. The warbreed get charmed, and killed by their own troops, but my succubi end up on the wrong end of a phalanx, while another is held up and murdered by a shadow stalker.

Since this entire battle takes place on the outside of the fortress, I end up wasting my spider queen because it scaled the walls at the back of the fortress. It doesn't matter though, as we have enough troops here to grind down Baradir's guards.



Sundren: So this is Stronghelm. I can't believe my eyes…

Saridas: Let's press on Sundren. I met your mother here during the Shadow Wars, this won't be the first time Stronghelm is conquered by Elves, but it will be the last!

The next target is is Stronghelm itself. Like in the commonwealth final mission, Edward is standing by his emperor in the last stand. Stronghelm actually has a fairly significant garrison, so it'll be a couple turns to work out the logistics.



Bardir's final stand is an afterthought, and he is easily overwhelmed.

Saridas: Baradir has fallen! Taking away his military might and strategic insight will doubtlessly weaken the commonwealth's power.



Pictured: Age of Wonders logistics.



After wrangling my armies into a neat four stacks, we march on Stronghelm.

Leonus's defence has a weaker centre full of spy drones with a pair of more potent flanks. Correspodingly, when attacking with four stacks in a siege battle, my centre is very strong, and will be the most likely place to overcome the walls.



The biggest obstacle to the advance is the pair of cannons on the left flank that Edward is looking over. With the amount of units that I'm moving up, its impossible to keep them spaced enough, and the cannons do terrible amounts of damage.



The assault is performed by Sundren, Groshak, and my champion draconian flyers, who overwhelm one of the central battlements, and provide cover for my assassins to scale the walls.



Reksar and a pack of shadow stakes are given this task, overwhelming the guards and slaying Edward. The lack of elemental damage in this Stronghold garrison are making them suffer.



In the end, Leonus himself is visited by a team of assassins as his troops are routed.



The right flank holds longest, as it wasn't facing much opposition, but the remaining units aren't capable of turning this slaughter around.



Balance and peace through slavery and genocide. This is the world that you are building.

Both Saridas's commentary before the battle and some stuff later on imply that Stronghelm is razed canonically, and I follow through, as it's not a super valuable city.



Now, we don't win when we take Stronghelm, and do have to take on Benn's capitol to finish this mission. I probably should have taken her on first for dramatic reasons, but this is actually better defended than Stronghelm-Benn actually has an economy to build up with, whereas most of Leonus' cities are right outside our starting position, and he's been stuck on two cities for half the mission.



Unexpectedly, one of my expensive and powerful shadow stalkers gets killed in one shot by a shrine of smiting. So unexpected, that I didn't get a proper screenshots.

This happened because shrines of smiting get bonus damage for each devout unit on the battlefield, and Brenn has about three whole stacks of them, and her one shrine's damage output is absurd. This helps to prevent the tendency of late game armies turning into t4 spam, as there's a certain optimal ratio between shrines and other units.



Obviously, this shrine needs to die, and we do our best to accommodate by rushing it with Sundren and stunning it, while the rest of my army advances.



The other benefits are bards gaining a taunt ability that make the enemy run at you, which is good for shutting down support units, or baiting more important units into traps, but is useless here because of the widespread spirit immunity among the theocrat lineup. Assassins gain pass wall and life steal, both very hand in siege battles, and shadow stalkers gain the shadow step short ranged teleport and frost aura, which does retaliation damage with a freeze chance on anything which attacks them.

Dark pact isn't a terribly common option, because the deal isn't great. Really the massive research cost and increase in upkeep is really only useful in the super-late game when you're throwing stacks of shadow stalkers into the meat grinder.

Julia: Grimdotter falls to our might. It seems her dark preaching couldn't saver her from her fate. None can withstand the High Elf army and its allies.



Celebrations of Victory: Humanity's time is over, and those that remain will be controlled. The cowering flocks of slaves remaining will be distributed among the most valiant of the Elven Court. Let them choose mercy or justice, I am done with them.

I will have to watch the spread of power carefully, but I am confident in my network of spies. I have instructed them to detain any who harbour signs of sedition, Shadowborn or otherwise. Perfect, unyielding allegiance to my Father is the only acceptable attitude-all other thoughts lead to destruction. If I have to, I'll hold public trials and remind the people of the constant threat of terror that comes when they trust their neighbours more than their ruler.

My Father is proud and my Mother stands tall by his side, but there is something missing. Her eyes search the horizon sadly, as if an old friend were suddenly taken from her. Nevertheless, we are a royal family once more. We will create the perfect society. Now commences the Age of Wonders.

Now, it may seem rather odd to the uninitiated why the elves have such a grudge against mankind, when dwarves and goblins also make up large portions of the commonwealth. It all comes back to the fall of the first elven court, where the arrival of humanity on Athla led to the death of old King Inioch. The dark elves, and the elven court under Sardias, have always wanted to rewind history to that time, and to do that they need to get rid of and marginalize humanity, the ones who ended the age of wonders back in the first game.


deaden people's hearts.

They march on Sylvanus itself. There are no hiding places left.

My father and mother disappeared years-ago. I am all that's left, Queen of the High Elves, leader of the last Empire.

This mission works pretty well as a finale- there are enough mechanical gimmicks with the teleporters, allies, and terrain to keep things interesting without being overly complicated.

All in all, I don't quite like this campaign as much as the Commonwealth campaign. It's a bit more straightforward in being the evil campaign, and less of an understandable tragedy. Sundren dosn't really feel like the same character in both halves, it's a bit like a switch is flipped in mission four, and she turns from a young, idealist to a genocidal tyrant.

So, with that, we've beat the main game twice, and this could be a good stopping point. So i'm going to open a vote, partially because I'm getting a bit concerned about the lack of comments in the thread. Either we can continue with the main game, or we can take a detour to some of the DLC content, so I can talk about new stuff, and come back to our main story later.

[] Torchbearers

[] Golden Realms

 

[Grey Rook]

Which is which? Though personally, I'd vote for the DLC so that we can get to see some new stuff.

I would comment more, but I don't know anything about this game. It has been interesting seeing you play it, though.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Golden realms is the name of the DLC

 

[Sigvrd]

I'm voting
[X] Golden Realms.

 

[Chandagnac]

So, with that, we've beat the main game twice, and this could be a good stopping point. So i'm going to open a vote, partially because I'm getting a bit concerned about the lack of comments in the thread.

Click to shrink...

Sorry. I haven't been posting because I don't feel I have very much to say other than "I'm enjoying this. Keep it up!"

I've played through both Torchbearers endings to the main Age of Wonders 3 campaign (they're basically the same but with slightly different starting positions), but I haven't played through the evil campaigns. Thank you for doing that. I'm glad to have seen both of those endings. I will say that I much prefer the story of Edward's slow descent into evil: almost like a Greek tragedy, it's the story of a great man brought low by his own hubris. All of his decisions make sense and seem in-character, though it's obvious that they're going to lead to bad things happening. On the other hand, I thought Sundren's transformation from idealistic young princess to genocidal maniac was much weaker because so much of it came out of seemingly nowhere. There was no subtle corruption as a result of her making bad decisions which seemed like a good idea at the time; instead of slowly slipping down the slope into evil, she gleefully leapt into the abyss, cackling all the way. It seems a shame that there's no real depth to Sundren's evil path.

They could have made Sundren's speciesism a bit less blatant. Maybe she decided not to join the Torchbearers because she was loyal to her father, and becoming a rebel was a massive step that she didn't feel ready to take, and because humans had basically taken over the Sapphire Archipelago and made the elves a minority in their own land. Maybe (parallel to some real-life racists), she didn't want to kill all humans, she just wanted to send them back where they came from; that's still racist, but it's easier to imagine how she might convince herself that she was doing the right thing. Then, later on, she might think that the Commonwealth had to be fought – it's at war with the Elven Court and there can only be one winner – but maybe her attitude would be "This is an unpleasant, but it's necessary" rather than "Rawrr! Destroy the Commonwealth! Elves are the master race! Rawrr!" Maybe portray Sundren as still being a bit young and innocent, basically the puppet of her father and other members of the Elven Court who have imperial ambitions and want to subjugate the other races. Maybe she'd be wistfully hoping for a new isolationist period in which the elves would be left alone, until it became apparent that her father and Werlac and people like them had just used her to build a new and horrible empire. I dunno, I'm just brainstorming ways to make the 'loyalist' Sundren campaign more of an interesting tragedy. What do you think?

Anyway, because I've already played through the Torchbearers endings, I'm going to vote for...
[x] Golden Realms

I've played through the first Golden Realms mission and actually found it quite boring after a while. Probably my own fault; I spent ages expanding across the map, building dozens of cities and a vast army that steamrollered over everything in its path. The story didn't really grab me, so I started playing Eternal Lords instead (and enjoyed that a lot more). I'm interested to see what you make of Golden Realms. Especially the missions that I never bothered to complete.

 

[Ehorin]

[x] Golden Realms

 

[mr_stibbons]

So, last time on Age of Wonders, our two protagonist's took a dark path that led to their fall to a cabal of dark gods. Today, we're going to embark on a much lighter side story, following a new race in a land distant from the previous conflicts. This technically follows after the good ending of the main game, but is sufficiently remote that you don't need to have beaten that to understand what is going on.

Golden Realms is the first of the two major expansion packs realized for Age of Wonders 3. The headline feature was the addition of the halfling race, but also included some new mechanics applied to all races, new neutral monsters and sites, and a new neutral dwelling faction. This includes a three mission campaign, which I'll be covering here.

Spoiler: Family Feuds

Nearly sixty years ago, a terrible crime was inflicted on the Halflings of Athla, and without other recourse, they fled the mainland to a distant land across the sea. But now trouble has found them once again, and many of them are sick of running.

Where this campaign takes place in reference to the campaign in the main game isn't ever made clear, though it seems to be fairly large as it can fit in multiple large campaign maps, is I like to think of it as fantasy south america, or australia, as it's a small continent covered in mountains, jungle and a giant river.



With three such conflicting personalities, the council quickly descended into chaos, with arguments and recriminations coming from all sides. Fearing our squabbling could erupt into civil unrest, Ham Binger proposed a contest: the first family to successfully settle the mouth of the Serpentine River and build a realm large enough to protect our people, shall lead the three united Halfling families.

Three guesses to who is actually in charge around here, and it's not our protagonist.

As that narration implies, our objective for this mission is to build up five cities to Metropolis status: the highest tier of population. If you are familiar with this game, you'd probably be aware that that's going to take about seventy turns or more, which would be a long boring time to just build up peacefully. No one will be surprised when complications are about to arrive.



Ernest: Greetings, Ham. It is good to see a friendly face in these dark times. I am eagre to get started, we need to resolve the question of leadership quickly. The competition is giving our enemies time to organize against us.

Ham: That is true, but we must be united as a people before we can fight as a people. The one who is victorious here will lead us through difficult times, they mist prove themselves before taking on so grave a responsibility.

There is one other thing you should know.. When we fled New Heartwood, Karl Hushwick, a former Keeper college of mine, stayed behind. He hired Naga mercenaries to help defend us there, but I've heard reports of Naga moving in the area to the South east. It is strange, I see no reason for them to be here, so I need to go and investigate.

Ernest: I understand, send word if you discover anything of importance.

Come sister, it's time to show everyone what Thislewoods are worth!

Allie: I share your enthusiasm, Ernest, but we must be cautious. I doubt that these lands are unpopulated, and whoever lives here might not approve of our using their homes for this game.

Ernest: Well, we'll deal with them when we find them. There is no time for delay, we must find good location for new settlements if we are to win this competition.

This mission starts innocuously enough. We start with a fairly well positioned city for future growth, a stack and a half of halfling units including two heroes, and a settler.



Allie is a sorcerer, and has left us a wisp and a unit of halfling apprentices, so we break the wisp off to go scout and hunt for treasure. Inside our starting domain is an inn full of off class halfling units. Our budget is limited at this point, so I pick up a single bard, and may be returning later as my economic situation warrants such.



So, the racial traits of halflings are +1 ranged damage, -1 melee damage, 20% physical damage vulnerability, and are lucky, which gives all attacks against them a chance to miss. Now, I'm not a fan of miss chances and dice rolls in principal, but there is an interesting dynamic here. The actual miss chance is dependant on what the morale level of the handling unit is, maxing out at 25%. This means that abilities that effect morale become more important, and with enough effort you can hit quite reliably, or be a pain to hit. Adding more interaction to a non interactive mechanic makes it much less of a pain than you would expect.

So how do those work out? Obviously you want to be heavy on the ranged units, because melee isn't going to cut it. Halflings are also in theory fragile because of their damage vulnerability, but that will generally be balanced out by their lucky ability, and with morale buff you can actually get a net gain in durability. Another thing to keep in mind is that halflings are only vulnerable to physical damage, against elemental damage they have has as much health as any other race, and a miss chance.



Now the halflings have never been a terribly martial race. In previous games, they were a bit of a running joke because of how poor most of their lineup was. In this game this trend has been reflected in the less formalized nature of the units available to the halflings. Their army is a mix of various militia groups organized in a rough semblance of the army structure preferred by other races.

For instance, their pikeman equivalent, farmers, taxes some durability for the ability to laugh a volley of chickens across half the battlefield once per fight.



Another more mechanically interesting example is the handling support unit, brew brothers. They have a useful healing ability that also improves morale, but instead of the usual magical ranged attack, they throw cleavers for incredible amount of damage, but with a shorter range than other ranged attacks in the game.



The last unusual unit that I'm going to spotlight here is the halfling archer equivalent, jesters. These loons shoot fireworks at their opponents, which is a single shot ranged attack that does a mix of physical and fire damage. Now, that's not a good start, but it has a couple advantages. They have no range penalties, and inflict a dazzled status on the target and everyone adjacent to the target, which leaves them unable to retaliate against anyone. Sadly, the combination of an archer chassis and 20% damage vulnerability leaves jesters rather difficult to use.



Another new feature is the addition of new types of plants to the terrain. Like the old haste berries, there are now bountiful melons, which heal units, lucky clovers, which grant lucky until the next battle, and flowers of solace, which prevent negative morale penalties until the next battle. Though this little area does provide a good spot to plant our settler.



While Allie explores to the south, Ernest is going to take his stack with actual warlord units and clear out this monster spawn site up north. Yes we are playing as a halfling warlord, and yes it's OK to laugh at that statement.



The eldritch pit is a new spawn site in the expansion that spawns a variety of eldritch and blighted monsters like blight-tusk boars, watchers, and shock serpents. Actually attacking the place means contending with a map covered in shocking tendrils that damage units that move over them. The AI is generally quite averse to walking through the shock tendrils, but I have seen it happen.



Clearing it out, we conveniently get a brand new type of loot, a quiver. These take up your shield slot and give a bonus to ranged damage, which is a nice way to break up the invulnerability of kitted out heroes. Of course this only makes shooting heroes an even more dominant option.



We make our first settlement in the mountains near the various plant life, and Allie clear out some lesser spirit elementals. To fill out the roster of neutral units, the expansion added lesser elementals, and blight and spirit elementals in addition to the normal fire, air, ice and earth elementals.



Allie: Brother, the Draconian might have cities and fortresses here we can use for ourselves. Taking them from her might give us the advantage we need to win the competition.

Ernest: I'm lath to divert too much away from our expansion effort, but you're right, this war could be a blessing in disguise. We should start building up our armies immediately.

Yeah, keep in mind that this campaign doesn't have any moral alignment suggestions. Malzua here is our first real enemy on this map, though she isn't much of a threat at this point.



Ernest: You may wait on your Allfather for as long as you wish, Mister Peacock. Us Thistlewoods prefer to get things done for ourselves.

Rodger: You blaspheme so casually Ernest, but do not worry, the Allfather has already forgiven you. The people need faith in these dark times, faith that I can provide.

Ernest: And when I win, I will be happy to let you minister to the people, but we need a warrior to lead us Roger, not a priest. And I intend to prove that!

We also formally meet the first of our competition, the handling theocrat Roger, just across the river from our capitol. We aren't' at war, but if you believe the stated mission objectives we need to keep ahead of him economically.



Allie takes her stack, reinforced by fairies from the enchanted spring, at engages Malzua's forward stack. She only has the three units in the area, and while one is new, it's a fairly small force

Malzua has her hands on a feathered serpent, an interesting new t3 neutral unit that functions as both a healer and as a flying beater.



I rally up some extra irregular forces via raise militia, and explore to the southwest. We find a friendly fey dwelling, which will be joining us soon enough.



To the east, Malzua has a fortress blocking our further progress, covered by some of her sorcerer summons and a pair of apprentices. We will need some more troops to clear that path, so we'll be killing time clearing sites.



To end off this update, we settle another cit to the south, where it can take advantage of all the population boosting melons to grow quickly.

Economically Halflings have the advantage of, what else, more happiness in their cities, both a 50 point flat bonus, and subtly having two types of favoured terrain, forests and plains. This gives them an early to mid game advantage in multiple areas, but with enough investment in terraforming and happiness structures, any race can reach the highest happiness level, and then the halfling bonus stops being relevant.

 

[Chandagnac]

Aw. Now I want to play Age of Wonders 3 again. (I've most recently been playing Tyranny, an rpg which I really like and actually prefer to Pillars of Eternity, also by Obsidian Entertainment.)

So, the racial traits of halflings are +1 ranged damage, -1 melee damage, 20% physical damage vulnerability, and are lucky, which gives all attacks against them a chance to miss. Now, I'm not a fan of miss chances and dice rolls in principal, but there is an interesting dynamic here. The actual miss chance is dependant on what the morale level of the handling unit is, maxing out at 25%. This means that abilities that effect morale become more important, and with enough effort you can hit quite reliably, or be a pain to hit. Adding more interaction to a non interactive mechanic makes it much less of a pain than you would expect.

So how do those work out? Obviously you want to be heavy on the ranged units, because melee isn't going to cut it. Halflings are also in theory fragile because of their damage vulnerability, but that will generally be balanced out by their lucky ability, and with morale buff you can actually get a net gain in durability. Another thing to keep in mind is that halflings are only vulnerable to physical damage, against elemental damage they have has as much health as any other race, and a miss chance.

Click to shrink...

I've often found Halflings in AoE3 to be annoyingly tough thanks to their Lucky mechanic. Sometimes, a 25% miss chance seems more like a 50% miss chance. So many times, I only needed to hit once, but I didn't hit at all... grr...

Now the halflings have never been a terribly martial race. In previous games, they were a bit of a running joke because of how poor most of their lineup was.

Click to shrink...

In previous games, I think their crappy lineup was supposed to be balanced by how cheap their units were. Theoretically, a halfling player should have been able to field more units, outnumbering their opponents. But it rarely made a difference.

In Age of Wonders 2: the Wizard's Throne, the first mission of the Circle of Water (only the third or fourth mission in an entire campaign consisting of more than 10 missions) is annoyingly difficult because you have to play as Halflings, your enemies are Humans and Orcs (pretty tough), they start with lots of cities and they can build up vast armies before you're in a position to do anything. You have to move across the map at breakneck pace and conquer multiple cities very quickly to have a chance of winning (which probably implies that you need to have played the map before and know where everything is), and even then the mission usually bogs down into a long, boring slog as you fight against endless stacks of humans and orcs, winning battle after battle... but their reinforcements keep coming and you only have a single pitiful stack of halflings...

*Thousand yard stare*

In fact, for that mission, I fully recommend you turn the cheats on. (Press CTRL + SHIFT + C, then freemove. It's a godsend.) I've played that mission half a dozen times and never achieved any real success without cheating at least a little.

I much prefer Age of Wonders 3 to Age of Wonders 2 because when I've played AoW3 I've never had to cheat. Occasionally I've had to restart a mission because I made a mistake or because I let the enemy build up too much (like when I played 'The Sapphire Archipelago' for the first time), but I know I could have won if I'd made better choices. AoW3 rewards clever play: to win, you need to use good tactics and strategy. AoW2 is just unfair. All too often, AoW2 deteriorates into the kind of painfully slow, boring slog that I've described above: a war of attrition that goes on forever. (Actually, I really enjoyed Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic, but some of the later missions take hundreds of turns to complete even if you're playing well. I just couldn't be bothered.)

 

[mr_stibbons]

Apologies in advance for all the transcribed text, the expansions have a tendency to be a bit more verbose than the main game-the writers were probably bored.

Spoiler: Family Feuds part 2

Ernest: Hello Camille, it has been a long time since we last spoke. You are making good progress I hope? How many cities do you have?

Camille: I am indeed making good progress. I know you believe it is you who should lead us in these times, but I think in the end the people will see that someone with a little more … finesse is needed in these troubling times.

Ernest: Finesse is fine in peace and politics, but it has little place in war Camille.

Camille: An attitude typical of your family, Thislewood. Let us hope we never have the opportunity to learn how wrong you really are. Best of luck, Ernest.

Welcome back. Poking around both runs into our third competitor, Camille the rogue. She's much less confrontational than Roger, though she's got a pretty good set of cities already. Her not answering Ernest's question is both a way to estabish her shifty rogue nature and a way to avoid having to dynamically change her dialogue.



We also find a sneaky city controlled by malzua down in the southwest corner of the map. We'll be visiting this later in the update, but for now the scouts are turning around before someone notices them.



The main event today is the assault of Malzua's fortress blocking access to the peninsula here.



Casualties are heavy. Draconian apprentices get fire bombs which chew up my tightly backed forces, and the node serpent jumps out to devour a band of halfling adventurers.



A night watch unit also falls to the serpent before the the monster falls, and a charmed unit of orc impalers is burned to a crisp by firebolts. In the end fairies mount the ramparts to outflank the apprentices while the rest of my forces unload into them.



The fey dwelling we encountered last update gives us a quest to vassal them, slaying a bone dragon flying around their territory. Which is a little rough, so the fairies are throwing in two free units to sweeten the deal. You can see the marker to left of the shot.

Our scouts get rerouted north to kill the dragon, finding a legendary armour item just sitting around on the beach. And then they get eaten by wild pack of serpents. I'm really not doing to well on troop conservation at this point.



My surviving scouts head across the river to the south of the rest of our territory. The map might be hard to understand from what we can see, but basically there's a giant river meandering from the southeast to the mouth were us and Rodger have our capitols. This reveals some free loot and another city controlled by Malzua.



Edward and Allie push east, moving into more unclaimed territory with loot to be had. This is actually a very nice spot to plant a city with the flow rock quarry and great farm, and we'll be getting on that.



And just east of Malzua's city on the other side of the river, we find an unguarded treasure trove. This actually gets revealed by a scrying pool by our start location, but I neglected to pick it up the first time. Later this could make an alright spot for a city with the heart of the tropics and forge.



After that, nothing much happens for several turns before a task force is finally assembled to go kill a dragon. A major part of this effort is the halfling irregular unit, halfling adventurers. As with many halfling units, these guys are a little unorthodox-instead of the standard one shot weapon used by other irregulars, they have three shot slingshots, and work like a budget archer unit-their damage is lower than other archers (but higher than razorbows), unless they can take advantage of their monster slayer or animal slayer abilities. The end result is still a unit much more combat capable than normal irregulars, and will be the ranged backbone of early game halfling armies.

They are particularly noticeable while we're playing warlord because we can pump out free units of them with raise militia. This seriously helps out the generally weaker warlord early game because of the better return on this spell.



Another noticeable synergy as a halfling warlord are halfling monster hunters. These guys exchange their dinky crossbows for the jester units' fireworks, which is far better on a platform that doesn't get killed by random crits from ranged attacks. Because of the large amount of water on the map, as well as some other meta game calls, monster hunters are going to be one of the primary units I'll be using on this map.

The dragon does a number on out taskforce before it goes down, and the survivors get attacked by the stack of serpents from earlier, and are wiped. The free fairies do escape, and we still have the dwelling vassaled, so it's not the end of the world.



After that little fiasco, we get another nasty surprise as some of Malzua's troops sneak into my southern city. We do have enough troops around to kick them out, but it's a little embarrassing to get a city taken like this.



The counterattack plan relies heavily on yet another warlord unit, mounted archers. As halflings have bonus ranged damage, they already are an upgrade on a powerful warlord unit. In addition, halflings get +2 resistance on their mounted archers as a bit of gravy, and these ones are benefiting from a stable of vigour, granting fast healing, free movement, and high morale, bumping lucky up a stage.

One of the major changes to golden realms is the addition of Mystical City Upgrades. These are a set of special buildings that are unlocked by having certain sites present in the cities domain-the stables of vigour for instance are unlocked by a spring of life. These special buildings generally provide extra abilities to units of a certain type produced in the city, though there are stranger ones. This it one of the more clever bit of game design in all the expansions, adding variety and depth to the city building while still keeping the focus of the game on the battles and the strategic maps. There are a few ways to think about this mechanic-either go out of your way to settle cities near sites that provide buffs to your race and classes' dominant units, or settle cities for economic benefits and vary your lineup to take advantage of whatever sites are available. I would go so far as to say that this feature is the best addition in the entire expansion.



After kicking out Malzua, my scouts push into the far southeast of the map, finding several more cities controlled by the sorcerer, as well as one of Camille's cities oddly far from her starting location.



While all this excitement is going on back in the west, Ernest and Allie have been searching around this peninsula and providing a steady supply of loot. We discover the Rodger has been expanding along the north edge of the map on his side of the river, and doing quite well for himself.

Ham: Greetings Ernest! I should inform you that one of the other halfling families already has three large cities. Be careful not to fall behind!

I am not concerned, for reasons that will soon become apparent.



He also has another city on the end of this bit of land, though it seems Malzua isn't happy with him as she's provided a dread omen on the settlement.



Malzua has bigger problems than Rodger however, as the dragon slaying taskforce regroups, reinforces and pays a visit to her southern city.



This battle unsurprisingly turns into a ranged duel, and I use a basic water damage spell to alpha strike off one of the flamer units, turning the numbers in my favour.



In short order, the enemy is overwhelmed by concentrated fire, since I literally have no units without ranged capabilities, and the AI is oddly poor at focus firing in this battle and because of the blessing of the scarlet destroyer, there are a plethora of fireworks as the outnumbered draconian are shot off the walls.



Ham: What? I'm so sorry Camille, I'm afraid it's too late for us to save your city, but I do know who's responsible for this despicable act! Roger! is this who you think to win the competition? Through sneak attacks and mercenaries? The competition is to unite the Halflings, not break them with treachery and murder!

Roger: The competition is no longer relevant, the Allfather has chosen me to lead the Halfings, through his Emissary, Karl Hushwick. The Naga were just the tools he provided for me to fulfil His divine will. Even the heathen Draconian now fight under my banner.

The Allfather revealed to me that He will return to us through the Sacred Seals of Power. Hushwick already makes preparations for the holy ceremonies! Join us or die, it matters not. I will lead the Halfling on the path to paradise.

Camille: This is why you burned Cresendale? Why you killed my family? Some madman's dream of God's return? I will see your head on a spike for this peacock. The people will curse your name and your god when they hear what you have done! Ernest, I concede to you, lead the Halflings against this traitor! I will follow you to the afterlife if it grants me revenge.

Ernest: I accept Camille, Peacock will pay for this, I swear it to you.

Seriously, there was no way on earth the developer would have you sit around and make five metropolis with a single unimpressive enemy. We'll be back next time with a more standard affair of murder and conquest.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Family Feuds part 3

Ernest: I cannot leave, Ham. We are in a civil war and as you said, the Halflings must stand united. Allie, I mark you as my second, take small force and accompany Ham to the ruins of New Hartwood. Find Karl, find out what he's going, and stop hum. I will remain here and defeat Rodger.

Allie: Of course brother, we shall serve at once. And be careful Ernest. I know you believe you are ready for war, but it is our people you are fighting against as well…

In a rather unusual display of video game intelligence gathering, we aren't going to wait to kill the obvious dupe before trying to deal with the man behind the man. So while the two of us are dealing with the civil war, we're sending Ham, Allie, and some backup upriver to engage the mysterious Karl Hushwick.



Mechanically, this trigger happens when the turn time reaches 25 regardless of what else is happening. Allie is headed off with Ham, and she disappears from the map, and is replaced by Camille, who comes with any gear and levels that she acquired as an AI, though her points need to be reset. Her capitol is razed, and all her holdings and units turn independent, just like if she got herself killed and her throne taken. And lastly, Rodger and Malzua make an alliance, and Roger has an army of Naga spawn in.



Now, as you may recall, Ernest and Allie were cooling their heels by an outlying one of Rodger's settlements, for completely co-incidental reasons, and with his treachery revealed, they are going to be conquering the place.



While overruling the barricades around the city, one of our champion jester units is killed by a critical hit. They explode violently.



Ernest: Cheese plate? Party? My lady, this isn't a party! This is a civil war to decided the fate of the halfling race! Not a society soiree!

Clarissa: Not a soiree?! Nonsense, look at all of you standing here! I bet you've all been waiting for my pheasant Vol au Venn!

Ernest: What? No, no Vol au Venn! And if you've come for a soiree, why did you bring War Golems?

Clarissa: What War Golems? My good man, these are the family Party Robots! My Great Uncle Danforth built them to serve Nibbles and Dips.

Ernest: But they're ten feet tall! They look like they could knock down walls!

Clarissa: Well a proper party requires a proper amount of Nibbles, and why on earth would you like to knock down walls!

Ernest: Well, umm… Let me show you! the party is over this way.

Really, this exists to remind you that despite the massacre of cities and civil war, halflings are still not the most serious people



Clarisse joins us as a new dreadnaught hero, and she brings with her her party brigade, two jesters, some brew brothers, and her two units of Party Robots. This is a special unit that only appears in this specific campaign mission. Like they're appearance suggest, they are variants on the normal dreadnought golem unit, but because this is an older mission they're based on the pre-rework t3 golems. Compared to their equally rare old counterparts, they're down a bit of health but get the same heal as brew brothers and the ability to shoot fireworks.

Now, because the devs of this game cannot stop patching it party robots were eventually brought into the main game in a sense -halfling dreadnoughts make prototype party robots, which are T2 units and don't get the firework ability until gold medal, instead of golems. They still heal, which is never a bad thing to have, and it give a slightly better early game for dreadnoughts but is less useful late since the heal doesn't work on machines.



Clarisse is going to take the party brigade back west, to cover my new settlement from Rodger, who's been marching a variety of troops around the area. There is a small garrison already, but they almost wipe themselves out fending off the first stack of raiders



At the same time, Ernest and Camille are embarking, to take out Malzua's city across the river. This will require tangling with a couple naval units, but we have enough monster hunters and fairies to break through them

Also, I only discovered now that there's a special map for fighting in harbour!



At the same time in the south, the forces that took Malzua's city are breaking east, finding loot to shore up our ailing economy, and hopefully being capable of converting some of Camille's old territory to our side.



In response to these moves, Rodger sends some of his fresh mercenaries to assault the shores of our capitol. I'm not terribly concerned, as these troops neither fly nor have ranged attacks.



One new feature that was introduced in golden realms that gives me no end of headaches is the introduction of city defence buildings. Buildable after a siege workshop has been completed, these annoying things will make an attack on a random enemy unit outside the walls i at the start of every defender turn after the first. Each race has a different version-the halfling one, which I started the mission with in my capitol hits the target three times with a swarm of killer bunnies that have a chance to reduce morale.

This, combined with multiple units of monster hunters that get bonus damage, is more than enough slaughter all the naga that attempt to rush the walls.



With the capitol defended, measure are taken to further reinforce it's defences, and Clarisse is directed further east. Meanwhile Edward and Camille make landfall outside of Malzua's warded city, and pick up some choice loot.



Malzua has fortified her city with the draconian defence structure, the firestorm pillar, which drops an AOE fire attack on the head of it's target. It has to be centred on a unit, which makes it easy enough to mitigate. She also has built a flowstone citadel, a mystic site granted by flow rock quarries. This boosts the health of machines made here, and causes the damaged walls to regenerate in sieges.

The actual garrison is sparse enough to be easily overcome despite these advantages, and I wasn't planning on knocking down the walls in the first place



Down in the south, the task force kills some wisps and gets a peace treaty with one of Camilles old holdings. At this point the terrain is broken enough that all non-amphibious units are being shipped north to provide reinforcements to other fronts, as they simply cannot keep up with the monster hunters and fairies.



A settler also makes it's way from my home territories to Cresendale, Camille's old capitol. The bonus population and structures from settling ruins makes a good site into a great one.



Just as Cresendale is being rebuilt, Rodger has amassed another naga army for a repeat performance. While the prognosis looks grim, there is still only a single flying unit and a singe ranged unit on the other side of the enemy lines, and most of my army has ranged attacks and monsters slayer.



The primary threat is the eagle rider that Rodger has sent our way, the halfling t3 unit. Attempts to burn it down before it can engage are not terribly successful, but it is successfully seduced after it's initial attack, stalling it's advance.



The majority of the Naga forces are crashing onto my left flank, with one unit of infantry surviving a turn on the walls. The right flank is in a better place, with lucky cribs sweeping away the enemy crusaders in a single round.



Then the Naga do the the Naga thing and everything starts to go haywire. The basic Naga that Rodger is using are functionally t2 infantry and pike units, with a slight frost weakness, regrowth, amphibious and the slip away ability. This heals the unit 15 hp, and then randomly teleports them to an empty space within a few spaces. And if you are desperate, that can move them past city walls with a lucky rng. This means in addition to the naga infantry that were on the walls last turn murdering some of my adventurers, there is also a unit of pikes on the wrong side of the gate.



I run my converted eagle riders into the flank of the pikes, while the rest of my units try and deal with the Naga on the battlements or the ones trying to break down the gate. This proves to be a wise decision, and Rodger dispels the seduction, and I'm forced to finish off the now unfriendly eagle riders on the next turn. Then the remaining Naga are shot down, save for the one unit that get's seduced by my other nymphs.

 

[Chandagnac]

And lastly, Rodger and Malzua make an alliance, and Roger has an army of Naga spawn in.

Click to shrink...

mr_stibbons, what do you think of Naga in Age of Wonders 3? For me, they're my least favourite Dwelling race. I have a lot of reasons. Maybe they're not all good reasons, but...

Uh, these are my reasons:
1. I don't like their general aesthetic. I think they look out-of-place next to all the other creatures in Age of Wonders 3. Some of them have weird faces and I can't decide if they're wearing masked helmets or not. Most of them look very top-heavy and I can't see how they don't just fall over.
2. They have a lot of self-healing abilities which make them annoying to fight. (However, this is somewhat balanced by their lack of ranged attacks. Ranged attackers are the kings of Age of Wonders 3.)
3. Even in a world of magic and monsters, I don't think their 'slip away' ability makes much sense.
4. They stole one of the Orcs' racial units. (In previous Age of Wonders games, the Glutton was the most powerful Orc racial unit, equivalent to a tier IV.)
- I think the Orcs lost something with the move from Age of Wonders 2 to 3. Now, they're just proud warrior race guys, which seems to be a fairly standard depiction of Orcs in fantasy these days, ever since Warcraft did it. Yes, they can become sorcerers or theocrats and all sorts, but the trade-off for that was they lost something unique and interesting. In Age of Wonders 2, Orcs had some weird mutations or dark druidic magic or something that turned some of them into twisted Abominations, huge Gluttons, or musclebound Warlords. I liked that Orcs were a very mutable race. (Although I can't remember why that was. Either because of selective breeding or Orcish magical traditions. Maybe.) I thought that made them interestingly different.
5.

Spoiler

Also, I got very annoyed by Karl Hushwick's tendency to spam Naga Gluttons in the final mission of Eternal Lords.

I run my converted eagle riders into the flank of the pikes, while the rest of my units try and deal with the Naga on the battlements or the ones trying to break down the gate. This proves to be a wise decision, and Rodger dispels the seduction, and I'm forced to finish off the now unfriendly eagle riders on the next turn. Then the remaining Naga are shot down, save for the one unit that get's seduced by my other nymphs.

Click to shrink...

So, was that the end of the battle? Nicely done.

I recently replayed the first mission of Golden Realms (after you got me hooked again). Anticipating Roger Peacock's sudden but inevitable betrayal, I guarded my throne city with a full stack of horse archers, jesters, and adventurers. I fought off the first wave of naga attackers without much difficulty, but then I was attacked by two full stacks of nagas, some cherubs, and Roger Peacock himself. That was a more interesting fight.

Spoiler: Notes

Also, I was surprised when Malzua gave up on turn 56. The last time I played through this mission, she didn't give up until much later, when she only had one city left. Was that supposed to happen?

EDIT:

Now, because the devs of this game cannot stop patching it party robots were eventually brought into the main game in a sense -halfling dreadnoughts make prototype party robots, which are T2 units and don't get the firework ability until gold medal, instead of golems. They still heal, which is never a bad thing to have, and it give a slightly better early game for dreadnoughts but is less useful late since the heal doesn't work on machines.

Click to shrink...

I really like what the recent patch did to Builder units. I remember back when they weren't very useful, but now they have lots of different uses:
1. Build roads (and bridges)
2. Build forts
3. Build watchtowers
4. Build sea forts (to help you lay claim to resources out at sea)
5. Tunnel through dirt
6. Repair machines (if you create your Builder unit in a city that has a Master's Guild, that is)

When I play Dreadnought characters, I usually have difficulty repairing my machines out in the field, so I take a Builder unit along for that purpose. (Also, it's nice to be able to replace watchtowers after the AI razes them.)

 

[mr_stibbons]

mr_stibbons, what do you think of Naga in Age of Wonders 3? For me, they're my least favourite Dwelling race. I have a lot of reasons. Maybe they're not all good reasons, but

Click to shrink...

I'd say that I dislike the Merfolk the most because so much of their lineup is existing units that could already be acquired in other ways. I also dislike the archon dwelling because of across the board dedicated to evil, needing heal undead to stay alive, and mostly being standard units only zombies

The Naga really aren't high on the list but I don't actively dislike them, gluttons are underwhelming and get hard countered by several tricks, and their units are all fairly simple, but I don't share your grudge about stealing units or your trauma. They're middling. I do wish that slip away didn't cross impassable terrain, that always seems silly and it can randomly decide battles.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Family Feuds part 4

Last time, we spent an awfully large amount of time fending off amphibious assaults on our capitol. Now I am bloody sick of doing that, and am launching an amphibious assault on Rodger's capitol, and intercepting some more Naga heading upriver along the way.



Rodger isn't completely monofocused, and deploys some exalted to attack my lightly defended settlements. I'll have to divert some troops to retake this little town.



Then I realize that my assault on Rodger may have been premature, as a large army of Naga and transports sail right into us. I have no bloody clue why Rodger didn't attempt to attack here, as it lets me eat some of the attack force for basically free, before taking on the rest of it. I could try to retreat, but I'd just be wasting time, as I think my monster hunter heavy army still has enough of an advantage to wipe this army right here.



Roger predictably runs his naga right at me rather than falling back a grouping up with the majority of his army. This enables me to bombard the three Naga units here with a volley of fireworks and arrowfire, shredding them quickly.



Our first point of contact is at the north end of the lines, where naga and embarked cavalry engage my ships. I divert some monster hunters to distract the naga, which buys me a turn, but my embarked farmers are eventually dragged under.



To the south, my own charmed naga engage the enemy naga, with assistance from embarked mounted archers. The backstab ability on naga infantry comes in handy here, and the supporting fire from my monster hunter brigade helps shred the enemies main strength.



Given a couple rounds, we're able to fend of the majority of Rodgers army with minimal casualties, leaving Peacock himself all alone in his back lines.

Whew. I was expecting that engagement to shred my assault force, but the army is mostly intact, and can keep moving on Rodger's capitol



Clarisse and co get rerouted to retake my old territory, while I successfully complete my first empire quest. These are one of the last major features of golden realms, a set of global objectives that provide some kind of bonus for the first player to achieve a non combat based task. This one gives the first player to have seven towns under their direct control with 100 extra happiness. Some other ones are being the first player to research a top level technology, which gives you two random secret spells, being the first player to reach pure evil and pure good, granting a small stack of units, or being the first player to control a hundred units, which promotes everything for free.

These quests certainly add some variety to gameplay, and do an alright job of encouraging players to think about things besides murdering their neighbours.



One of the tricks I'm going to be using in this engagement is to pre-heal my units. The nourishing meal ability that brew brothers and party robots have doesn't restore HP, it increases HP. You can use it on full health units to give them +15 hp before battle. This little trick means we can use the extra space in siege battles to give fragile jesters the chance of not getting killed instantly.



The attack force was mostly made up of exalted, with a trebuchet and brew brothers. This gives us a serious advantage, because our party robots are immune to spirit damage, which gives us a critical advantage in the melee.



In the end, I lose a single unit of jesters to repeated trebuchet attacks, but it'm easily able to overwhelm the exalted with my walking nibbles dispensers, and a bit of supporting fire.



Next up on the list, is the final battle against the treasonous Rodger Peacock.

I probably could use more troops, and he's out of Naga, which reduces the effectiveness of my monster hunters, but I still should have enough ranged dominance to be victorious.



Primary problem number one is, once agin, a shrine of smiting on the battlements. This proves to be less of a problem than anticipated due to a somewhat ridiculous string of lucky procs. Seriously. Two shots missed, and then two of the three targets in it's AOE missed.



Because it's on the front of the battlements, this lets two of my new Naga infantry units mount the walls and engage it.

Another problem is the eagle riders that have landed in the middle of mounted archers. Both of my seduction attempts fail, which is probably par for the amount of success I've had earlier. This forces me to waste basically the entire flank trying to kill the Eagles.



In the centre, some of own monster hunters are converted by Rodger, and being unable to reach the Evangelists, i cut them down. This is a bit of a blunder, as I still have enough cp to cast dispel on the converted hunters, which could have flipped the monster hunters back.



On the right flank, things are going really badly. I hoped that my mounted archers could focus down Rodger's single adventurer unit even with the wall advantage, but Rodger heals them up, and then sallies with exalted, sweeping my units off this flank.



In return, I've started to dominate the right flank, and my Naga have even scaled the walls to engage Rodger's evangelists. I'm slowly getting ground up by the killer rabbits though.



The forces that sallied move up to engage my army in front of the walls, for fairly brutal results. Evangelists are better melee units than you might expect.



After the evangelists are cleaned up, the Naga squad close in on the adventurers and Rodger himself. Rodger does better than expected, killing one unit with ranged attacks. The other is forced to Slip away to stay alive, but my archers are able to kill the adventurers, and despite what looks like some decent loot and annoying lucky rolls, Rodger can't beat a T2 pike unit in hand to hand.



Hoo. Roger is defeated. I cost me a medium size army, but he's beaten. This should give us some breathing room as we hunt for loot and grind down Malzua. See you next time.

 

[jenalysis]

If anyone is interested in this game, it's 75% off the base game, 50% off expansions (and the expansions are necessary) on Steam until Friday 1pm ET.

It's a fantastic game and this is a good AAR.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Spoiler: Family Feuds finale

So, last time around we defeated the traitorous Rodger Peacock, and we begin our next update with the reminder that we have two enemies in this game. An airborne attack force flies across the river at the eastern edge of our territory and is defeated only with heavy casualties.



More to the south, some scouting forces pokes into one of Camille's old cities that's been overrun by Malzua after her defeat. Facing down the Eldritch horror sitting on the settlement, I end up spinning up a quick death march to evacuate my scouts. I won't be able to advance in this direction, and I also learn that I really need to be hitting the books so I can bring some comparable units to fight the horrors.



To accomplish this, a backline cleanup taskforce is assembled to hit some tombs and clear quests.

To fill out the numbers of the taskforce, I make some farmers with the pillar of the stylites mystic city upgrade. This gives pike units +2 spirit damage and projectile resistance, and is tied to the common and easy to clear ancient ruins site. I suspect this is a deliberate attempt at a stealth buff to pikes-in general, no one builds an expensive war hall for the ability to buy more specialized infantry, they do it for cavalry or as a stepping stone to get t3 units. Pikes are only made if you are simultaneously in need of chap units mid-late game and are against lots of cavalry/flying units (Or you play goblins and have butchers). Easy access to a relatively powerful stylite buff tips the scales in favour of pikes a bit more.



Camille heads south across the river, and hits up a ziggurat for loot. Sadly we get a less than impressive magic hat, when I already have two high quality pieces of headwear. I need different loot.



After that she is jumped trying to cross the river back, and I'm forced to reload an autosave, because there is no way I can fight a force of that quality. If I didn't have enough mana to death march her back onto the land I might have had to redo an hour of gameplay. Instead Camille is going to fall back and try to link up with more troops, and stay away from that flying death stack patrolling the river.



After the reload, one of Rodger's old cities decides that it does like us quite a lot, and offers to be our vassal. Might seem strange, but because we have so many handling cities we have large positive relationship modifiers with the now independent city, so it hands itself over in short order. It also didn't have the garrison I expected-I could have taken it with the survivors of the final battle with Rodger.



With my forces in retreat to the south, the only logical move is to launch an assault to the north, finding the city hinted at by earlier attacks. The garrison is rather formidable, and it takes a bit of calculation to get my army in without being fried by warding runes.



Despite the odds looking favourable, Malzua intervenes. First turn she casts mass curse, debuffing my entire force, and second turn she wipes our or close to it three units with a well placed cosmic spray. At this point the odds have turned.



Despite a heroic last stand on Ernest's part, the attack is a disaster, and despite heavy casualties Malzua is victorious. I'll have to do the thing I hate to do and stop attacking for a bit while I rebuild my forces.



Next turn Clarisse and some of my reinforcements attack a stack of summons in the northern meander of the river. I'm not sure if this was an attack force, or a force sent to refill Uarr Hin's garrison.

I've brought in a fresh eagle rider to the battle, the t3 handling unit. Rodger was making these guys in his capitol, and now I have them. Halfling melee units are, well not the best, but to compensate Eagles get a bit of extra movement compared to Flyers, and they get a special wing beat attack. This is an AOE attack on the three spaces in the eagle riders front arc for normal attack damage and no retaliation. Generally you want to keep these guys in the back until lines clump up or you can sic them on enemy support units with their high speed.



Stymied on all fronts, I have one resort. It's time to Do. The. Thing. The thing that has been brought up several times in discussion of the game, but that I haven't had a chance to show off-Manticore spam.

This strategy is one of the things defining the metagame of Age of Wonders 3. It is a generally accepted axiom that in a long grinding game, there is nothing better to be doing than making manticore riders out of every city you can. The greater mobility and lower price point of these compare to other producible class T4's, combined with their relative simplicity to use and the multiple powerful upgrades that can be stacked on them like thoroughbred mounts and marital arts, is just more effective than the other classes options. With the economic advantages I have over the sorcerer I really can't lose at this point in the game.



We also get in another skirmish, where Camille is able to catch out Malzua and send her and one of her horrors to the void.



With Malzua in the void, our second attack on Uarr Hin can proceed without curses and spell shenanigans. We still need to overcome a pair of Eldritch horrors, and much of our army has been hit by warding runes on the way in, but things should be fine. Aand who decided that warding runes triggers after the city borders grows? That's a hell of a negative play experience.)



It takes a bit of work, but victory does come with some good micromanagement.



To the north, there's a little treasure trove loosely under Malzua's control.



With that dealt with, our next objective is to the south, where Camille and some of our brand new manticores get brought to bear against a Halfling city.



Overwhelming force is more than enough to overwhelm the defences.

Manticore riders are the only T4 units that are racial units, and after some dawdling, the devs added a special bonus for every race to the unit. The handling version get the same wing beat attack that eagle riders have, rather logically. It adds some useful flexibility to the unit when battling against multiple weaker units, and is defensively one of the better options, along with the elven inflict stun and the dwarven access to defensive strike.



Ernest: It is done. Roger lies dead and the Draconians are defeated. The lands are safe and the Halfling people are united once more. I can only hope that Allie and Ham are as successful in their endeavour.

Camille: You should got to them, they will need your help. If what Ham said is true, then they will need all the aid that we can offer them. I will remain here, and pick up the pieces. I have taken my revenge, but there is much left to be done.

Clarisse: Dear Lord, my head! What did I DO last night? You chaps sure know how to throw a party!

Ernest: Are you okay Clarissa? You're looking a little green.

Clarisse: Ah, nothing a hair of the dog can't fix. Still, must be off! The hounds will need feeding, they get awfully fussy in the morning. Toodle-pip!

Ernest: Err… Yes! Toodle-pip!

Camille …

Ernest …

In an unusual display of civility, Malzua actually will surrender without having to completely defeat her. What exactly the trigger is I'm unsure of-I think it requires reducing her to 1-2 cities and defeating Rodger, but it may be tied to controlling specific cities instead of a number. From a story perspective it works-neither side is very invested in the conflict, they aren't agents of a greater superpower, and the halflings have bigger priorities. Accepting surrender makes sense, and cuts off the last three to five turns of grind from the map.

Also, say goodbye to Clarisse. Sadly she and her party robots will not return. I hope you didn't load her up with your best gear.



I will know the truth of this. I will raise an army, and move to offer support. The Halflings have stood isolated for long enough, it is time for us to take back our place in the world, before one of our own plunges it into chaos.

I have to say I really like this mission-the map is unique yet resonant, and is an interesting hybrid of a pure water map and a normal map. There's a lot of twists, triggers and polish. A lot of effort went in to polishing the first map of the expansion pack. The plot is a bit less deep than the better parts of the base game though, without much complexity of themes or characters. The underdogs are going to race for the magic mcguffin and try to save the world. It works for the smaller amount of space available though.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Last time we finished winning the civil war for New Aldor, but today we're engaging in non linear storytelling, and winding the clock back to follow the expedition of Ham Binger and Allie Thislewood that set out on turn 25 of that mission.

Now, as you can see from the mission title, things are getting a bit literary. Now, I haven't read Heart of Darkness, or even watched Apocalypse Now, but the allocution here is really only valid at a surface level. Sure, we are emissaries from "civilization" heading upriver to investigate the madness of an ally of ours, but both of those pieces are critiques of the existing power structures at the time, European trading companies or the American military. In this story, the Halfling refugees are as archetypical an underdog faction as exists, which muddies the critique.



Hey, remember the Oscillator Gem? That magical mcguffin that Edward found in Nirvinkiln back in the commonwealth mission two, and mysteriously vanished from the plot between mission three and four? That wasn't a plot hole at all, Laryssa hid it with the Halflings of new Aldor before heading to mission four. Now we're going to follow up on that plot, finally.



Allie: But Karl stayed behind to guard what was left and now… What has happened to him? What could have driven him to turn against us?

Karl: I don't know. He refused to leave, said he had to save as many of us as he could. Many people owe their lives to what he did on that day. But his heart turned dark. Evil. I suppose I was so used to keeping secrets, that I was blind to what he'd kept hidden from us…

Allie: Well, we're back now and we're going to get to the bottom of all this. We'll save our settlers until we can set up base camp in the ruins of the colony, then spread out and search the jungle for him.

Ham: Yes, you're right of course. We need only follow this river a little further, the ruin of the three outposts tat formed the New Heartwood colony should be visible from the water.

We start with two heroes, three settlers, five assorted Halfling units, and some wisps. Our first objectives to head upriver until we find the ruins of new heartwood to settle and make a base camp.



Heading off the path can both give some bonus resources but there's also a good chance you get attacked.



After a little sail, you'll see a couple actually guarded sites, which are actually worth disembarking your army to go looting.



Allie: Not completely empty, some buildings still stand. We can rebuild, Ham. New Heartwood isn't dead yet.

Allie: Everybody ashore! I want troops to search the wreckage for survivors, I want builders clearing rubble to make space for new houses. And keep your wits about you, this jungle is not safe.

And just around the bend, we find the idyllic ruins of new Heartwood. This will be our main base for the rest of the game, and it's completely safe to run your settlers there as fast as possible.



Heading southwest from the protective ring of mountains around your landing you'll find a small peninsula that can be exploited for loot, and possibly settle cities once New Heartwood is fully settled. This also brings in an important piece of information-the Naga are not a horde of mindless monsters. They co-existed peacefully with the halflings before.



Ham: You did it. You gave them their homes back. Thank you Allie, I shall not forget this. We should be safe enough now to build up our forces and plan our expansion into the jungle.

Ham: The temples and ancient ruins of these lands hold many secrets. If we secure them, they should allow us to build powerful new structures in our cities. This could be the advantage we need for the coming battle.

Allie: Such sites have powerful guardians, we will need stronger armies if we are to defeat them. For now let us enter the jungle. Karl may not realize we have arrived ye, we must move quickly while we have the advantage.

Settling the ruins of New Heartwood gives us a plethora of free buildings, which compensates well for both the time we've wasted getting over here and the relative lack of production boosting structures. There are three cities, new heartwood itself and the hill and harbour districts.

As Ham mentions , there are also some very powerful sites sitting on the edges of our territory, a wizards tower and a lost city. If we have the troops to clear them at some point, this will give us the opportunity to play with some of the rarer mystic sites.



Allie: We are indeed Halflings my Lord, not all of us fell 57 years ago. Our race lives on. We have business to the east, and come seeking allies. There is a great evil that…

Bolmor: Whatever it is, it is not concern of mine, Halfing, if that's truly what you are. Stay away from my lands, and I'll stay away from yours.

Heading east through a teleporter disguised as a cave entrance we encounter a dwarves druid who is rather insistent on maintaining his neutrality. Like in older missions, we can choose to declare war on him for his territory, or we can leave him be. Since we are playing a rushy class on a fairly open map, and he is fairly out of the way, I am going to elect to ignore him.



All that moving southwest will accomplish is some loot, as Bolmor is to the west, and there's a line of impassible mountains to the south. Thus after shoring up our economy we break east along the river, taking a small fortress along the way.



Allie: They are our enemies, they murdered our kin. They deserve everything they get.

Ham: There are families here, innocent children, did they deserve it too? This… this slaughter is not who we are, it is an atrocity. A disgusting atrocity

Scouting in this direction reveals an independent orc city along with a short scene about our as yet unmet rival. This is another thing that breaks with the Heart of Darkness allegory, as Karl does have a sympathetic motivation for his atrocities and mad attempt to gain ultimate power: this is the second time in his lifetime that his home has been burned to the ground and his race nearly exterminated.



Ham: What you intend to do is madness, Karl! You have no idea what horrors you will release upon the world by unlocking those Seals. You're playing with fire while the world is soaked in oil.

Karl: You gave me the Gem to keep us safe. Ham, don't you remember that? "To protect the land from a terrible evil". Well that is just what I intend to do, the power of the Seals will be all the protection we shall ever need, and I will not allow you to interfere with that!

Come the next turn we encounter the man himself. His Naga Matriarch mind controls the scouts that hit the trigger.



Ham: You… You were the one! You gave the order to sack New Heartwood! You made a grave mistake staying here, we'll make you pay for what you've done!

Jurwac: Make me pay? And what are the lives of your stinking kind worth? A few eggs and bushels of wheat? A copper coin and a song on a lute? Go back to your farms, Halflings, ad leave war to those who understand it.

Karl isn't our immediate problem. Just east of the New Heartwood we meet Jurwac the loyal, an orc warlord. I do like his title -the loyal. Who or what is he loyal to? He doesn't seem the magical type, only an agent for another greater power.

Because of the land connection between our territories we need to handle him first. It's also important to remember that Karl and Jurwac are also at war, which will make it easier to keep away from Karl.



To accomplish this, Allie and Ham will be making landfall just outside of the ring of mountains around new heartwood, picking up some loot along the way.



Karl's Naga head upriver, refusing to play along with my desires to ignore him for now, and attempt to cross the mountains to raid my territory, but I have been building up a stack of apprentices to fend them off. This won't be the last amphibious raid.



Meanwhile the bulk of my army is launching our first invasion of the mission. Jurwac has clearly seen this coming, and it looks like he's been raising militia to prepare for the attack. This leaves him with a lot of extra ranged units than a more sensible orc lineup.



I manage some shenanigans by throwing a unit of pony riders alone into the right flank, and manage to distract two archer units and the units of infantry for several turns, while the rest of my army focuses on the left flank. Allie teleports up across the battlements to disrupt the groups of irregulars while the rest of my army starts shooting them to pieces.



Then, resistance happens. Allie gets taken out by a series of critical hits from black knights and spearmen, while a unit of farmers is cut down breaking down the gates. This does let me rush through with phantasms, a griffon, and Ham, while shooting down multiple spear units.



At this point, the decoy ponies have been taken down, but i have my ranged units mounted on the enemy walls, which lets us crush the remaining orcs.



This does leave me short on troops, and we stupidly get our brand new city taken by independents the next turn, but we do get the good news that some reinforcements have arrived. Reinforcements that apparently include at least one shadow stalker.