Rob Zacny

Episode 255: Wizard

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Rowan Kaiser and Fraser Brown fill in for an ailing Rob Zacny and talk about Age of Wonders 3. After a dearth of fantasy strategy games over the years, how does Age of Wonders 3 set alongside the Warlock series and the upcoming Endless Legend? Listen in as the phrase "dire penguin" is said on the show for the first time ever.

 

Rowan's review at IGN.

Fraser's review at PCGamesN.

 

Listen here.

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Get better, Rob!

 

Wow, there's a 12-year gap in between Age of Wonders II and III?  With many of the same developers coming back together for a sequel?  I thought that only happened with Kickstarters!

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I'd be interested to hear Rowan & Frazer's opinions of Dark Wizard, which is/was a fantasy semi-4x semi-RPG for SegaCD.  The interface is a little (ok, very) clunky by modern standards, but I found it to be an excellent campaign.  These days you can find the rom (and apparently decent emulators) floating around, assuming you can't find the disk and the hardware.  I've got the disk and the hardware, so I play it the old fashioned way.

 

I mention Dark Wizard because it does have a strategy/tactics split, but the game is mostly tactical. The strategy level is mostly about how you split your forces; you can only fight in one territory at a time, the other border territories need to be garrisoned, and the strength of the garrisons determine how long they can hold out.

 

One of the things I really like about DW is that if you take all the tactical maps and overlap them, they map the entire theater; each battle is between two (or more) strong points, and the strong point you take this time (and the surrounding map) is the launch point for a subsequent attack.

 

I actually bounced off of Age of Wonders because of Dark Wizard; the graphics weren't as good (320x224 early 90s console graphics), but it was a much better strategy game.  I'm looking forward to trying AoW3 to see if that's changed.

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I have been playing AoW III and I am enjoying it a lot.

But I do agree with the points about the strategy par in AoW III, however, the thing is: strategy part in AoW wasn´t really that deep even in the original games, true it does more to get building done, but also it was just a matter of time until your towns grow enough to build anything around 1 or 3 turns. Build the Pioneer unit, never made much sense to me even in the first games, you almost don´t need to build new town in majority of the olders maps (except in the campaign, where there is a couple of moments where you must do it). Also in the older games you only need to take mines and other structures, they don´t even need be around the town.

 

In AoW II and Shadow Magic, they introduced the whole system of Wizard Towers, where you can only cast spell inside the area covered by them, but as the game unfolds, this didn´t matter you all ways end covering all ground you need. Now towns do have this new radious around them, which I enjoy, careful position of cities appear to have greater weight and also you don´t need to spam towns.

Another change that I loved is the return of your general as active hero, since AoW II your main leader as reduced to "stay inside a town with Wizard Tower and don´t answer anyone knocking in the door", now it´s more like AoW I, with him or her running around with the other heroes and units. Fun Fact, at the same time tha AoW II was moving your main hero away from battle, Heroes IV as literally taking you heroes out of their tents and high horses and putting them on the field (but it didn´t work very well for HOMM).

The improved customization options for the visual of character is amazing and had more options that I would have expected. On the level up, they are following similar way to the original games, expect that back there you had to choose between four random abilities or improvement of +1 to a main attribute, and now you do have more options to choose, still I agree that improvements could be done here.

Curious thing is: in the original games it was rather easy to build a overpowered hero, just get Chaining Lightning (mass stun) and the abilities to Double Strike and Lightning Strike (or anything that causes stun) this does not appear to be the case anymore. Heroes do appear to get powerful, but not so much like in the other games.

One thing that I really like in AoW, it was their visual design, which, like it was said on the podcast, have that colorful and classic fantasy themes and AoW III does manage to keep that feeling and theme very well. While I liked Warlock, I never enjoyed much the background or characters.

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OK, either Rob is having serious medical issues or he is in need of an intervention. What is going on here?

 

It's the former; check his twitter feed.

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 to return to an old old topic I picked this game up recently when it turned up on half-price on steam. Unfortunately, the AI is lousy – in particular, when it takes over one of my cities it does not think to raze it, sitting around instead until I can assemble an army to take it back. I agree with the thrust of the comments on the podcast – I may be missing some fine points but by and large my cities all feel the same. magic items for the heroes also seem more like chrome then something that it is really important to collect.

 

I'd like to play multiplayer but I have a feeling that as with most such games after a while the multiplayer forums will be full of hard-core gamers who have winning down to a science.

 

 where should I go to look for decent strategy guides (ones that do more than state the obvious)?

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 the main thing that is likely to keep me from playing this game any further though is just that the maps are so wide open. There doesn't seem to be any real way to play a defensive game  as noted here http://aow3strategyguide.weebly.com/open-vs-closed-games.html.  although I haven't played multiplayer yet it seems to me pretty likely in any battle you'll end up with a lot of big stacks walking into undefended cities and burning them to the ground (and once you know that one player has his two or three stacks of heroes and units engaged against an enemy, the temptation for a third party to walk into the undefended rear of that players Empire must be almost irresistible). Can anyone prove me wrong? I would certainly like to squeeze a bit more playing time out of Age of Wonders 3

 to return to an old old topic I picked this game up recently when it turned up on half-price on steam. Unfortunately, the AI is lousy – in particular, when it takes over one of my cities it does not think to raze it, sitting around instead until I can assemble an army to take it back. I agree with the thrust of the comments on the podcast – I may be missing some fine points but by and large my cities all feel the same. magic items for the heroes also seem more like chrome then something that it is really important to collect.

 

I'd like to play multiplayer but I have a feeling that as with most such games after a while the multiplayer forums will be full of hard-core gamers who have winning down to a science.

 

 where should I go to look for decent strategy guides (ones that do more than state the obvious)?

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I'd love to see a new podcast on this excellent game, now that it has benefitted from several patches and expansions.

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