Came to this after the latest AoW4 dlc dropped. Playing AoW4 has me feeling the good vibes and wanting to learn the history of what I've been enjoying Thanks for this

The best and most compreensive guide for the entire age of wonders franchise. Thank you.

I love that every Age of Wonders has it's own charme thus keeping AoW 1 and 2 still nice games to play though these days there are a couple of modern entries :D

@MauveButterfly

Жыл бұрын

I had so much fun while capturing footage from the original Age of Wonders for this video. It's still a great game!

In new DLC AoW4 now also has shadow realm. It's called umbral abyss.

I was looking for a video like this for a long long time. Thank you man

@MauveButterfly

Жыл бұрын

Glad it was useful.

Age of Wonders 1 design of having static city placements, the unit being broken into tiers, the design of the auto combat all and other things, all seems lifted from the Warlords game series, especially Warlords 3.

BTW Rogue class in AoW 3 is replacement for Dark Elves their base units like Succub and Shadow went there. AoW 3 introduced new mod system so they can be used combined and it was one of the most important things in the seria.

Thanks for the video. I’m 400 hours deep in aow4 and its my first game in the series. Cool to see how it developed. I also like “story”. Didn’t know there was one outside my own head cannon.

i was looking for a video like this one to understand where Age of Wonders 4 is coming from. I started with this franchise by playing Planetfall. It became one of my beloved games. And I think, at this point in Aow4 development, Planetfall's gameplay is more exciting than in Aow4.

@MauveButterfly

4 ай бұрын

I feel like a lot of fans of the franchise dismiss Planetfall since it's a sci-fi spinoff from the main series, but I honestly think that Planetfall has the best gameplay of any AoW game to date.

I think the best part in AoW1 was its writer Rayb, who did commit a lot of work into it. The story, the multiple ending campaign, the immersion, the unit descriptions, the timeline of war and events even some short stories of goblins and trolls. Gameplay was solid, in the campaign that had its own rules so you got not too op in the first maps - and multiplayer came with leader off, too, played both with super heroes with its many strikes and leader off mp one of the better AoW, while metacritic user score says its the best.(i think 9,1) I played much more Shadow Magic, though - and while its a great game, especially the magic system was done well and its 15 races and unit models/abilities, the immersion and story/campaign part is completely lack luster - and its because Rayb had not enough time to write anything good. The dude was even involved in campaign developing and A.I. you can google him up answering question about the A.I. in AoW1 together with Josh Farley. But the game never got any PR, i got it on release for 10 bucks in a store and never heard of that game and it was 1999 or 2k.

@MauveButterfly

11 ай бұрын

The story/campaign is definitely the best part of the 1st game, and it's the best writing in the entire franchise. It's a shame that we probably won't ever see something like that again given the direction the series has gone.

To correct on the point in 7:21 Age of wonders 3 did have i think one or two levels in the campaign that featured a second underground layer similar to the depths in age of wonders 1, in fact, Age of wonders 3 allowed you to make multiple layers of either the surface or the underground, which is something i found interesting.

@MauveButterfly

Жыл бұрын

Multiple surface layers? I admit I've never looked in the editor, but it's interesting that they'd let you do that. 99% of my experience in AoW3 is with random maps which didn't allow that, so I guess I missed that feature.

@X_mezo_X

Жыл бұрын

@@MauveButterfly True, the random map generator didn't include such feature, so i can understand it not being known by many people who don't use the map editor, it's rather interesting how differently AOW3 Editor handled cave entrances and exits, as they served more like teleport gates rather than being automatically connected to one another like how it was in AOW2 Editor.

Thanks for the video!

Very helpful and educational video. Especially helpful since a lot of people are flocking to Age of Wonders IV and, hilariously, describing it like a "mix of Heroes of Might and Magic, Civ and Warcraft 3" without realizing the rich heritage behind the series. Map-wise I think Age of Wonders 2 and Shadow Magic were definitely the pinnacle of the series, all the wonderful graphical detail and hand-placement of secrets, quests and hazards made exploration so fun, not to mention the accompanying music. It's no surprise the community went bananas with the map editor. I'd like to see AoW4 city-building, tomes and battle mechanics combined with that approach to handmade maps. Perhaps a Shadow Magic-style standalone expansion to AoW4 with a balanced set of well-defined races, a real campaign and a good map editor?

@MauveButterfly

Жыл бұрын

Given the improvements made in the random map generator, I'd be surprised if there'd be a lot of interest in handmade maps at this point, unfortunately. Even the story maps are random now. As someone with a lot of 4X experience, the games I'm more likely to reference when describing Age of Wonders 4 are Warlock 2, Eador: Genesis, and Thea: the Awakening. Pretty much everyone from outside of 4X just sees everything as a Civilization clone though. Also, Warcraft 3? Really? Why? Because there are fantasy races?

@MauveButterfly

Жыл бұрын

To go back to the Civilization point, when Age of Wonders 3 first came out there were people accusing Age of Wonders 3 of copying Civilization V by having a hex grid on the overworld map. Age of Wonders has been using a hex grid since 1999, while Civilization started using it in 2010...

@isitanos

Жыл бұрын

​@@MauveButterfly If they brought the map generator to the level of roguelikes like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, now we'd be speaking. That game's levels are fun to explore despite being randomly generated. The key is the placement of handmade areas or "vaults" that have their own internal procedural generation to vary things up. If they used that to create mini-dungeons underground and interesting set-pieces on the overworld, I probably wouldn't miss fully handmade maps that much. But yeah, Warcraft 3 is kind of a WTF reference. It's disappointing to see people's lack of culture sometimes. Though at least they're discovering the series somehow so it can't be all that bad.

@MauveButterfly

Жыл бұрын

@@isitanos I haven't played Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, but what you're describing sounds like the vaults of Tales of Maj'Eyal, so I think I get how it works. That kind of a system might make for a more interesting underground layer. That's an interesting thought.

I’ve tried AoW3 but couldn’t really put more than 60 hours in ut, was disappointed. But I loved Planetfall, it got rid of every single hatred AoW3 aspect (random starting conditions, completely unintuitive research mecganic, way too much micromanage with builders, very clunky battles where you could lose entire starting army against wisps on mana node, not being able to retry battles and just absolutely ugly art styles, yes art style in previous games was better). I loved Planetfall and I enjoy AoW4, was good to know the game backstory, as I enjoyed AoW4 scenarios much more than entire campaigns in other similar games (And AoW series aswell).

@qq_02

3 ай бұрын

This is why the AoW series has such a following. In broad strokes, they are all Age of Wonders games and recognizably so, but they ae individually so different that there is no consensus about which is best or which is worst. There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to which ones you like or don't. To me AoW3 is probably where the series peaked (I would say AoW1 if it had random map generation), Shadow Magic and Planetfall are great, with 4 being oddly dull. The maps have become so sparse, so the early game drags on as much as AoW3's late game tends to. The inventory system feels clunkier than ever, even compared to the mods in Planetfall. City building is overcomplicated while the combat feels so uninspiring and close-quarters (similar to Endless Legend) that most of the time I to use autocombat, something that never used to be the case. I guess that is good for Multiplayer, but I don't do that much.

@IamSpiritAlpha

3 ай бұрын

@@qq_02 yeah indeed AoW4 is very lacking in gameplay perspectives compared to previous games I agree, but couldn't really get into AoW3 personally, and I'm not so hardcore fan to play first games, as they're too old for me lol.

The best and most improvement in diplomacy in AoW 3 was ability to set predefined teams without editing the map manually. Diplomacy with AI in AoW PF absolutelly annoing. AI constantly would send idiotic messages and acts really stupid anyway it can pay for peace and proclame war the next turn. And personality traits lead to stupid decisions. In AoW 1/2 you can choose good race then genocide other good race and you still will be good. X) That's rather strange logic. And Archons being pure good the same bastards as Undeads. They hate practically everybody. And yes Undeads as just pure evil race which likes goblins more than humans it's really strange. Deads are deads they equal in death. They should hate everybody living including orcs and goblins as fantasy undeads do or don't care about anybody. Many combat enchantments in AoW 3 are very strong and their effect lasts for several turns. They can't be unit enchantments as they were in AoW 1\2. Technically AoW 3 for now is the only game which doesn't allow permanently improve the units with spells or augmentations. Or there's mechanic of enchantment but it last for very few strategic turns and doesn't consume mana and not widely used in vanilla game. Technically it's possible to give permanent enchantment to the unit I saw it in some mods. I suppose this was made because AI in AoW 1\2 doesn't understood how to use the enchantments so human had huge advantage in units' stats at least for main armies. It takes time to enchant units one by one and it consumes all mana. AoW 3 suggests more strategic spells. And if you play AoW 2 on Win 10 you can get normal fps with HW acceleration. I see that all game videos are made with SW render. Press F9 to show fps. Load the scenario then press Ctrl-R to disable HW render. Then do it agian to anable it. This will increase fps about 2 times. Then Alt-Tab the game and restore this will give even more fps just don't touch the engine anymore. Races in AoW 3 are more developed than in AoW 2. The difference between SM and WT is huge. There're big changes in unit's stats some units moved f. e. unicorn and fairy from life magic were switched by their tiers. Many races have specifiec machines not only cannons. 2 Gates for each wall instead of 1. New structure in the cities. Flying range units have limited number of shots in SM which was huge problem before. But SM can run WT maps. So for now there's no need for WT except playing it's campaign.

AoW 3 has 2 map layes for generated maps up to 3 layers on some campaign maps and I don't know how many layers on custom maps. I saw a couple of maps with 5 layers. In fact even 2 layers XL map is too huge. Planetfall suppose exploring planet surface but there are so many objects on the maps that there's no need for underground layer. AoW 3 has 6 minor races which have unique tech tree in their dwellings and AoW PF 7 minor races available for iteraction and hiring their units. AoW 1 combats system looks like attempt to improve combat system from Master of Magic which cumpletelly sucks. AoW 1 allows many more units in the battle and 2 strikes instead of one should make a battle faster and more reliable since there's no armor but only chance to hit. Yes it's better than in MoM but it sucks too. And low tier units useless. Action points and limited retalliation in AoW 2 made things better I think that AoW SM is the 1st mature game in the seria but compared to AoW 3 combats still suck. And noobs who can't deal with "fragile" units and whine suck too. With good skill AoW 3 allows to keep units from dying even better than in SM where random strong hit can be fatal. In AoW PF shooting is rather predictable since really low chances to hit like 40% or less are relatievelly rare unlike AoW 2 where shooting with 25-30% or couple of leprehauns unable to hit eache other were common things. AoW 4 changed the very base rule of armies entering battles from 7 armies aroud hex to up to 3 strongest armiesfrom both sides in the range of 3 hexes from the attacked. This doesn't allow attack 4 vs 3 anymore.