All you MoM fans need to check out AoW:SM

Get to off-topic where you belong /kicks post

Hey its a free galaxy, chill!

even though i have absolutely no idea what he's on about.

Does he want his Mom? A home? What?

He has an Awesome new Home where he can live with his Mom, and thinks we'll love it?

Sorry bro, if it is not Space, I ain't all that interested.... oh yea.. or Sid Meier's Pirates (love that game to death x 2).

I've got all parts of the Age of Wonders series... The first was great, the second a bit less so, but Shadow Magic was a big improvement, luckily. Nice to see another fan of these somewhat obscure games.

I personally wouldn't say it blows Heroes of Might & Magic away... both have their own good and bad points... but I too prefer AoW to HoMM.

tired of these /"emote here" nerds

Age of Wonders were great games, i LOVED the combat in them. I only wish their was a sequel out.

I prefer AOW 1.
Was a lot better balanced than AOW: SM.
The best example:
In SM play halfling and build 3 leprechauns and send em vs one ork warlord.
Its really frustrating to loose 3 lvl4 units vs one single lvl3.
ANd such things happen all the time.

That's because the strategy is deeper than, 'I have 3 lv4 vs your 1lv3 so I win'. The different units have different strategic and tactical abilities which mean you can't (always) just build the most high level units and send them charging in.

First off halflings are weak to begin with. They're the finesse/challenge race. Regardless, the leprechaun is a special ops unit, not a tank like the warlord. If you use your invisible, phasing, sabotage units as if they were your high att/def units you''re going to have heavy losses.

Off coures i know that there are incredible differences in gameplay between the races.
And I know that a simple "I have more units" is not a safe win.
Oh by the way I played AOW 1 and AOW:SM on the highest difficulty levels and won with every race.
(Yeah I know I m a AOW freak)
However Considering that those little leprechauns take longer to build and are more expensive you should think that you win with 3 of them if one lvl 3 warlord attacks them (I was hiding in a forest).

Oh by the way I played AOW 1 and AOW:SM on the highest difficulty levels and won with every race.

So have I, Age of Wonders 1 & 2 and shadowmagic. The AI is rubbish compared to GC 2 AI. Love those games, they r equal to Heros of Might and Magic series, not any better or worse. Went into game today, u can pre-order Heros of Might and Magic V, so its out any time now. I wonder if it will stop me playing GC 2?

See I dont expect that one unit always wins because its a higher tier
They best example for good balncing are ghost in AOW 1.
Tier 3 and invincible to normal attacks. However a single tier 1 unit with magic/ holy attacks wins in many cases against a single ghost. However 3 ghost will always win against a single tier 1 or 2 unit.
In AOW: SM there are some (mostly ork) units that will win against even more and higher lvl units.

Yes 3 leprechauns may lose to a warlord in battle... however

If you're attacking a town with stone walls, 5 archers and it has a wizard tower that shoots.... it only takes 2 leprechauns to win the town... where 3 Warlords would fail.

Thats right.
I m happy that some units are better suited for town defense and some for open field fights.
But AOW:SM is the only game where a single Tier 3 unit kills 3 tier 4 units,
when the higher lvl units are able to attack and inflict damage to the lower lvl unit, so I dont count the ghost of AOW 1 because every unit (even one two tiers lower ) with magic /holy damage would most likly win while every unit without is screwed up. Call it a higly spezialised unit

I dont want to say that AOW:SM is a bad game or unplayable because of its balancing.
All I want to say that AOW was BETTER balanced and you might have lot easier game when playing ork than playing as hafling or frostling.

Example for good balancing in AOW:SM:
A multiplayergame vs a friend of me.
Undead vs elves.
Most fights: bone horrors vs iron maiden
Was quite interesting but after a few hours we stopped playing because there was no end in sight.
Everytime we fought in open field the bone horrors won, while fighting for towns the iron maiden won.

I actually thought the AoW:SM AI was pretty decent considering the number of varibles involves, as the number of special abilities and units were pretty large. Obviously it cheated like crazy and isn't the equal of GalCiv 2, but wizard spells aside, it's pretty good by genre standards.

BTW, I have all three (I lie, I just sold AoW2 on ebay), and I've never beat AoW:SM on the hardest setting, which I assume is against 7 emperors with alliances and pioneers off.

AoW:SM is a great game but it feels constrained compared to MoM (Master of Magic).

Because you have less options in AoW:SM it just didn't capture the magic of MoM.

Sammual

AOW:SM had potential, but the main and best part of MOM which was customisable wizard and wide varity of spells was lost.

Think Race customizaton in Galciv2 but worse by 100 times.

MOM did it best I think, followed by MOOII then Galciv (reasonable amount of abilities but all generic +X bonuses are boring).. then AOW2 (wizard skills that you could later research??? so much for unique game play).

Funny, I hated the AoW combat. Not the mechanic precisely, but the look and feel; The entire game has this wierd 'party of adventurers' look and feel to the units and combat and tactics. Heck, even the dragons looked small and scraggly.

I think that's why I liked MoM more. It was more epic. Sure, it was a unit of 4 or 6 vs. 1 which isn't exactly an army, but with their cute marches and clashing of arms and all that made it feel bigger. You as the wizard-warlord inparticular has a more epic feel to it, raising undead armies and managing a magical mideval empire, rather than the 'you are a level 20 wizard' or a powerful but mostly *local* spellcaster in AoW.

Needless to say, i'm much more a fan of MoM, still.

Good points Holocat.

Still I like the concept in AOW2 where you had "domains" in which you could cast spells to effect units though.

Making the Wizard King unit and actual unit, was an interesting idea, mooted by some fans of MoM, but the AOW 2 execution didn't really pull it off I think.

Dominions succeeded though. You could have combat oriented Avatars that were weaker in the spell casting aspect, but powerful fighters, or bookish avatars good in magic but with no combat skills.