As Aristotle already pointed out in his discourse on logic - the argument from authority is of the weakest kind (and here I use him as my authority  

If the game has so much depth why cannot see it?

I do not trust review till I know the person has a clue what he/she is talking about. I expect them to beat game at the highest difficulty, play numerous games of multiplayer, in other words, invest a good number of hours. Nowadays it seems most of reviews are really first impressions.

Regarding AOW3 - look there are so many classes, so many heroes, so many building, all shiny - game must be deep. 

My experience: I played two campaign maps - easy. I tried then random map - highest difficulty settings. Strategy: rush t4 research, city rush (in every place possible) building temples + building allowing you to build t4s, rush AI with your troops. Easy win. So what's the depth? I did not even use the heroes much, nor spells, nor there is any real diplomacy. Opponents to me also are just different t4, their races/classes did not mean anything. 

So what's this depth? 

There's a topside and an underground layer.   I can't believe you didn't know that.

So the game has to be tuned to find the right balance after release. Wow, now that's news for a TBS game.

It's actually always the case unless you have unlimited amounts of money to do a year of beta testing with large groups of players. All the variables for depth are there. The right balance however has yet to be found.

The state the game is in now, the polish, the graphics, the music, the game systems, multiplayer, the tactical combat system, the level editor, the random map generator, all this tells me it has a bright future. It's just a lot further ahead than its competitors on release.

Do you remember how Civ 5 was when it came out? Or Elemental? Or even the first version of MoM?

People forget very easily. Yet I've played every one of them a lot and had a lot of fun.

On the whole, let's not forget that this game has just been released. A fairer comparison would be to Elemental - War of Magic, not the current Legendary Heroes, which many people seem to be doing. They've said on their forums that they are going to be releasing expansions and updates too, so we'll wait and see how that goes. Considering that this game is just released, it's not in a bad state at all - balance needs a bit of work, but largely ok.

As it stands though, the game's tactical combat is vastly superior to LH's. Graphics too appear to be somewhat better (newer game so no surprise). There are also some unique units of which no equal exists in LH. Certain things like walls make a difference, unlike in LH too when taking cities, although higher tier units negate this advantage for defenders. The AI is also better overall at using tactical spells and dispelling things.

Edit: I should also mention that the AI is also pretty decent for an AI at figuring out which cities to defend and so on. It does get exploitable with time, but it's better than most 4X AI.

LH does have a better city building, questing, and customization (something I really feel that should be kept in the next Elemental). It seems AoW is a tactical combat oriented game with strategy as a sort of a backdrop, which LH is focused on strategy without a really interesting tactical combat. Most people in this thread unsurprisingly value strategy more than good tactical combat. I suspect that this may be the reason why GC3 had such hostility to any talk of tactical combat.

My biggest disappointment was that the game was not in 64 bit. I think neither game did a particularly good job of making each faction feel unique and alive though - something that Alpha Centauri set the gold standard for.

It will be interesting in the coming years to see how both titles evolve. Equally interesting will be seeing how the modding communities of each game pan out, especially once Triumph releases their modding tools.

I'd rather not go into comparing like that.  The AOW3 budget > WOM + FE + LH + GalCiv III.  To put things in perspective, the WOM team was 6 people. Total. 

I don't think AOW 3 and LH are that similar.  AOW and Warlock are more comparable.

very cool

Well not for WOM it wasn't.  That game will haunt me forever.

It is an apples to oranges comparison, but seeing that other people were doing so on this thread, I decided to jump in too. Triumph's gamble here may have paid off - sales apparently exceeded their expectations.

I suppose you are right though that Warlock 2 may be the right comparison. But Warlock 2 has much more city building mechanics - versus AoW3 where the tactical combat is clearly the center of the game. In that regard, AoW can be regarded more like the Total War series than anything else.

Crazy.  I figured the GalCiv3 budget was at least equal to AOW3.   Notch really did a moneyhat.

As for AOW3, I'm starting to like it a bit more now, is I'm accepting that it's not what I wanted and I had a heavy dose of nostalgia goggles (AOW1 was my first commercial PC game)

@ten9 you misread my post I think?

I'm not down on this game (which I do own). The comparison with the old Warlords series wasn't a negative one, I liked those games.

On the other hand, maybe in hindsight, it brought you a lot of good as well. Seeing where you are now with the company. But of course I can't tell for sure.

Just to clarify my position. I love TBS games. I love what you guys have done with Fallen Enchantress and LH. I still play Fallen Enchantress. And I love AOW 3 as well. They are just different games with a different emphasis.

Amazing what you guys have done with such a limited budget.

I think you can let the ghost rest in peace now.  You planted a wonderful seed, and the tree looks to be growing quite big and healthy.  You also got to teach the entire industry how it should handle "failures", and distinguished yourself and your company in the process.  And personally, for what it's worth I am quite impressed with what your little group has accomplished.  From what you've told us, the WoM team just needed a bit more organization/direction, and time (with beta testers).  It was a lesson well learned.  Out of curiosity, if you don't mind me asking how long were those 6 folks working on WoM?

That's really not the point I think.  Sure there will be patches and add ons, but if the basic game mechanics do not appeal then it's unlikely those will make a difference to those of us who wanted something different.

So yes, AoW3 is what it is, if it appeals to you great, I hope it gets the support and makes Triumph plenty of cash so they can make AoW4 or whatever they want to do next.  I just don't feel this game is at all revolutionary, nor is it much of an improvement over SM.  My gut is telling me that the 10 year gap is really what has people excited, if this had come out 4 years after SM... well the excitement would not have been the same.

That's all to their credit, it is a very polished release.  A doubter might say that's because they didn't really change anything in 10 years, but hey, if you have a solid franchise no need to recreate it every time *cough*HOMMIV*cough*

Oh, I remember, it's why I never buy anything on preorder anymore, and rarely buy anything until at least the 1st patch or even add on has been released.  Only exception I've made recently was XCOM, and that was as good a game as anything I have ever played on release.

I just got a bit more into AOW III. I initially put the game aside in favor of GalCiv III.

I started playing the Campaing but got bored quickly. Really I have a hard time playing 4X campaigns.

I then Started a random map with 4 opponents in a medium map on King difficulty. I like it a lot more than campaign. Im playing Good elf sorcerer.

Just met an evil Orc that promptly DOW me the next turn. Lets see how that turns out

Well, im mostly kicking everyone's butt in my game. Thanks to the AI being a bit retarded

They keep sending small groups to harass me instead of making proper stacks of doom, That make them easier to pick up.  Many strategy game AIs seem to have problems with that.

I have played this game a few times now and I find it kinda bland. My problems with the game is that it seems to unfold in the same way every time with not that much fun to be had.

1. I upgrade my heroes a lot, but those are not really interesting or fun upgrades.

2. My level 4 unit is totally superior and when I get to it (not that far into the game really), I can just spam them as much as I can afford. This is the same no matter what the unit is.

3. There is no sense of danger from the world around me. I love increasing the difficulty in 4X games so that the world will often kill me. Works great in LH and Warlock, not here. I have seen a few dragons about, but mostly as quests and the dont do that much if I leave them.

4. The buildings are the same in all cities and I just build everything everywhere (or put on produce merchandise to finance my level 4 units)

What I like

1. Sieges and the battles. They are fun and have some interesting decisions although there is a lack of variation mayhaps. 

What the game needs for me to enjoy it

Upgrades that matter, a world that haunts me, varied cities, items that matter for my heroes, unique stuff that only shows up once in a while and change the game +++ more FUN

I will much rather play Warlock 2 Sandbox mode. Creating super units, planning my cities, choosing abilities before game start that actually matter +++

Interesting quests as well would be good. 

A DLC or two could save the day mayhaps

There is a new patch on the way. If you bought the game on steam you can participate in the beta. It is scheduled for release nect week, if everything goes well.

It should fix a lot of the level4 unit issues and balance issues. They also give a glimpse on upcoming new features concerning better empire building and dimplomacy.

http://ageofwonders.com/forums/topic/v1-092-huge-beta-patch-available-on-steam-2/

Now that patch 1.2 is out, the devs are posting development journals again.

The first one is about a new victory condition called 'Seals of Power'. It is meant among other things to make the endgame more interesting.

http://ageofwonders.com/expansion-dev-journal-seals-of-power-victory-condition/

It looks very interesting to me. What do you think?

Eh, I've decided to take a long term wait-and-see approach to AoW3, ever since the initial release disappointed me.  It's nice that they're adding new victory conditions, but to really grab me they'll have to flesh out the empire-building and diplomacy sides of the game.  I've heard they plan to do that though, so looking forward to where they take it.

I had to stop playing because of the game slowing down. Not because of graphics issues, but because AI was taking so long each turn to choose its moves. Unplayable...well unless you want to wait 3 minutes between each turn.

Cauldyth, I'm in complete agreement. If they don't add to those, I'll probably never buy an Age of Wonders game again. 

That is something that will be solved in future games when some of the tech Stardock does becomes more widespread (64-bit and multithreading)

It is the reason I am passing on the next Civ game- I don't think they'll change the engine.

The engine is already multithreaded. This was stated by the developers.

I think some of what you're running into then is the simultaneous turns, or the RAM limit slowing things down.