There is obviously quite a few similarities between these two games and after playing AOW for some time, I can't help but wish that some of the features from AOW were present in Legendary Heroes, and vice-versa.
What AOW3 has that Legendary Heroes should have:
- Item courier: one of your heroes has an item that your other hero needs? Just click on it and send it to the other hero through a courier that takes X amount of days based on how far away you are.
- Class-specific units: it would be great to see class-specific items, weapons and armor for each LH class that would be determined by which class your primary leader took.
- Independent Cities: much like Civ V, it would be great to see independent cities and have each of them provide unique items or weapons or other commodities.
- A plethora of mounts: I've already found over half a dozen different mounts, each with its unique look, feel and bonuses. I think LH only has, maybe, 4 different types? I want more. They add to the customization and personalization of our heroes.
- SPACE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK
What Legendary Heroes has that AOW3 should have:
- More diplomacy options. I like that AOW3 is very focused, but it's almost TOO focused on combat. Would be nice to see non-combative ways to win.
- More quests and the like: while each cave or mine presents as a mini-quest, it would be nice to see more over-arching quests that present like LH's do.
- Strategic resources: I want there to be resources required for some of the higher tiered units, much like LH does with some of its units.
As I play more, I'll come up with what else I see. Most importantly, however, is that the LH one's can be easily added through DLC.
So, anyone else?
Or do they?
Very interesting post. Comments below:
There is obviously quite a few similarities between these two games and after playing AOW for some time, I can't help but wish that some of the features from AOW were present in Legendary Heroes, and vice-versa. What AOW3 has that Legendary Heroes should have:
Agree.
Here are some more to add to this list:
Agree. On the other hand, I'd like to see certain resources be tied to certain cities.For me, and I'm obviously biased, I really really REALLY don't like lengthy tactical battles. Whereas, I think most gamers prefer in depth tactical battles. If a tactical battle takes more than a couple minutes, I'm unhappy.
I love tactical battles and I find empire building actually in both games quite boring ... For me battles and preparation for them is why I play both games. Building cities is like this: I am building +15 mana, b/c I need, and in this city +100% gold, b/c I need more troops. Sometimes I even do not know the names of buildings
I am also surprised that magic is such meh in AOW - global spells are immediately dispelled, and you are limited to like spell per battle till your heroes are really levelled. I like it way more that FE. In general surprisingly I feel distinction between factions/races way and its influence on a style of play way more in FE than AOW. In overall, I would just move tactical side of a game from AOW and add it to FE, that's in my opinion it is the only way it could be really improved from AOW.
My ideal would be something like Total war's series or dominions with the battles that are turn based. We do not have really any game were you can fight big epic battles with lots of troops (and which are turned based), but where the battles are the consequence of strategical choices.
If I could I would get rid of levelling of the units and champions - more you are invested and dependant on high level troops, more one-battle wars become.
But those of course, are my personal preferences
Brad,
In my second point, I was trying to say it'd be cool to see items, spells and units that only showed up depending on if your leader chose warrior, Mage, assassin, defender, etc.
Further differentiating the classes and adding weight to the choice you make. Very much like AOW's current class system.
In Master of Magic, I really enjoyed just clearing out the map of monsters and lairs, collecting experience and loot along the way. I play AoW and FE the same way, leaving the AI as "dessert" unless they get too annoying early on. In MoM, there were some very challenging fights against Demon Lords, Death Knights, and flocks of Sky Drakes. Even with a powerful army, there was a chance of death, even a complete wipe. I have never felt such things playing any other 4x game. The bosses in FE were laughably easy against my stack of doom and died in 1-2 turns. AoW doesn't really have any creatures that provide a challenge beyond the early/mid game which is unfortunate. Warlock at least had nice assortment of powerful creatures that requires lots of preparation and tactics to defeat without losses. The god slayer victory condition was pretty cool for this reason.
I gotta agree with Brad I like that I like the shorter tactical battles.
I do want more depth in TB's for the LH series, using some concepts from AOW, but I don't want the adjacent hex rule- as that leads to 40-60 min tac battles which are no fun. This is what made me realize that I don't enjoy AOW games anymore like I did when I younger, and why I wish I hadn't bought AOW3. I just prefer LH, despite its flaws.
As for couriers, if I was to implement it, I'd allow heroes to create a courier unit with items, and then transport the unit to the other hero so he gets the items manually, the courier would be a huge target for monsters and enemy armies though. Fairly low gold cost, like 10 for a foot unit, and 110 for a horse or warg unit. No combat ability at all.
I do wish we had more unique units and minor civs with unique stuff as well, but that sounds like the upcoming Stardock game. From the sounds of the new features in that, I'm really hoping that game does end up with a sandbox mode, or many things (Especially unique heroes) get backported into LH.
(someone really will need to make a unique heroes mod once that game is out- I wish I had the chops to do it myself)
I like shorter tactical battles, too. I'd like to see true line of sight and limited range with ranged attacks, like AOW, and deeper tactical considerations, but I don't like a battle lasting more than five minutes, ten if it's a "boss" or big faction fight.
Brad, what are the battles going to be like for Elemental 2015?
How far will LH 2.0 go in changing things? Will it mainly be bug fixing or will we see those UI updates previously talked about? What about more map stamps, or other additional content?
PS: can we please have 1.6 sometime soon?
I disagree. While LH has multiple win conditions, they are all a function/variant of the conquest victory.
So, LH is really a war game too.
Of course they function like the conquest victory, but how does the Master Quest fit into that variant of the conquest victory? You don't even have to have contact with the other civilizations to win this way. Similar to the spell of making. I would claim conquest victory would require you to have contact or met with other civilizations. It is conceivable that you can win the game without any civilizations having met each other.
In essence these are war games because they function like war games, you fight other civilizations. But the victory conditions do define what approach to one may apply to the game. In AoW, you must defeat your other major players through strength of arms or direct diplomatic accords. A basic definition of war game.
how does the master quest or spell of making Or alliance victories count as war?
With the spell of making, as soon as you start building the towers, everyone wants to go to war with you, so you need to have defeated them earlier, or have a high enough power rating to fend them off. Master quest, same thing. While you're busy with that, the other civs will take the opportunity to attack unless your power rating is at the top.
Well the alliance victory is only possible if you're power rating is above everyone elses. Other civs will not agree to be allies unless you're power rating is greater than theirs...So you have to spend time building up your power rating..which often involves defeating other civs so you can expand and increase your power rating which is ultimately a function of the military victory.
I disagree, Borg. I have played games where I completely ignore other factions and went through the master quest. Did not feel like a conquest game at all.
the Spell of Making is the same thing. It is NOT a war game.
I would like to see more diplomatic ways of winning in E15, though.
How did you keep your power rating up? Did anyone attack you?
Every time I've b-lined for the SOM victory, there were always several civs looking to take my lunch money.
I leaned my lesson. I always focus the first part of the game on the miliatary tech tree, so I can then comfortably focus on the SOM or Master quest.
Both games are war games, but you do not have to win via conquest. aka The losing civilization is laid to ruin. AoW follows more this mentality than LH, so much so it makes AoW seem more like a War Game, where the main focus is on tactical combat and domination of the strategic map, vs. LH where you do not have to seek domination of the strategic map to win. You need to be powerful, yes... do you need to lay every civilization to ruin to win... no. (Does LH encourage you to lay ruin to every civilization, of course).
I look at the spell of making as more of a research / production victory than anything else.
I look at the Master Quest as a wonderful victory condition in the 4x genre. It is not a conquest victory, it is not a diplomatic victory, it is not a production victory, it is not a research victory.
For me, tactical battles are the conclusion of everything else, and should be given the attention that they deserve. Most people revel in tactical game play, empire building can quickly grow old without it.
Tatty, how would explain the popularity of the Civilization series, then?
I have not played civ V very much, but I would say that both strategic and tactical walk hand in hand. I have no idea why it should be so popular, I find it boring, yet I very much like the Warlock series, which plays under the same principle.
I've had the "is LH a military driven game" conversation before in another recent thread.
While I agree that a military presence is required for every victory condition to be met (yes even the master quest needs some military), the miltary victory condition requires elements to varying degrees of teching, questing, and diplomacy to be successful as well. Thus, I do not attribute LH to being solely a war game. It requires mulitple facets.
I'd love to see a new victory condition introduced into the game, Cleasing the Land, whereby it is up to the player to clear the world of Elemental of all Wildlands. Naturally, for this to work the master quest would need to have it's wildland aspect removed or slightly redesigned so that it is not a wildland. This victory condition would be another that is not entirely dependant on warefare.
That said, I'd also really appriciate if you disable the Master Quest victory condiction, the Pit of Despair does not spawn onto the map. It wastes precious space.
About Soul Binding: I woudn't appreciate a soul binding mechanic at all. Having the ability to swap equipment to meet your empire's demands is, imo, paramount. Having a method of transporting equipment over distances should be possible though.
Suggestion: Is it possible to have a 10th unit automatically embedded into each city that is founded? The trick is that this unit would be the SAME unit in each city, effectively making the unit seem to exist in multiple locations. Any ability to move....and perhaps even attach it to a special building that you can construct in your cities, and voila: city to city transport of any item. The obvious prereq: Your heroes need to stop by your empire's closest city to drop off or pick up an item.....imo, way better than having to go the full distance and meet the other hero in the field. Thoughts?
About Independant Cities: Isn't there some way these can be coded into the existing game? Independant cities exist in the scenario. Could they not exist in the sandbox mode as well? Remove there ability to construct pioneers and give them some base amount of metal and crystal and gold to play with.
About mounts: Would love to see several more mounts to mount. Pretty please.
About tactical battles: Imo, you've really done an excellent job with the current length of the tactical battles. They are long enough to make you really need to think about how to defeat your enemy, yet short enough such that once you've done your thinking the enemy can be quickly dispatched. I'd love it if it wasn't so easy to kite melee opponenets....I've dispatched a juggernaut with an lone archer before. Siege warefare and Dynamic terrain is wishful thinking...
Lastly, thanks for your continued attention on LH. It really is shaping up to be a fabulous game.
ps. I'm probably in the minority, but I think going back to single tile cities in E15 is a step backwards. I love being able to design and develop my multi-tile cities in LH. So, that said, PLEASE allow us to rotate our buildings again in the 1.6 update.
I'd like to see cities in E15 remain multiple tile cities, too, but maybe in the way that Warlock handles them. I really don't want to see single tile cities , either. Seriously a step backwards. The other features look like a running list of lessons learned, but single tile cities are the only "feature" that doesn't sit well with me. Even Civ V handles cities like multi tile establishments with surrounding tile worker enhancements and wonders showing up around the city, not just inside the tile it occupies.
I hope you all seriously reconsider this plan.
also agree with Firefly on the soul binding stuff....
N/A
What a wonderful time to be a strategy game player...
If I want top notch city building with almost unending depth I can play Civ 5
If I want excellent strategic tactical battles with very light city building I can play AOW III
If I want a a combo of both of those games with added RPG like character development immersion I can play Fallen Enchantress
If I want to be forced into real time quick decision making but still feel like I'm playing a grand strategy game I can play Sins of the solar empire or Total War Rome II
So much to love now only if I had more time to game.
I'm on board with this - the AI for me is there to provide more of a backdrop to the eXploration part. I also personally like games where you can go the path of fewer more experienced/expensive resources vs masses of units - i.e. Tarth, but more-so.
I do like the quicker tactical battles, but at the same time I like the decisions I make in unit/character building to matter and provide variety.
For me the biggest difference between the two is the empire building and decision making.
I'm only on part 4 of the campaign, but I haven't had to make a settler yet. Cities are too easy to come by, are too generic, and other than gold and unit generators - very boring. Minimal decision making - hmm, my front line cities can churn troops - I'll build a couple +mana and +research then put it on +gold (and continue).
Even character building is relatively limited - lots of choices, but very few actual hard decisions. Few 'trees' per se, so you aren't giving up much by selecting this other thing.
Overall - it all seems very simplistic - hard decisions are few and even impactful decisions seem rare.
I have really high hopes for LH to continue post 1.6 (and all the mods to get updated).
I also have really high hopes for Warlock 2 as well. That was a fun game to explore/PVE and the individual unit upgrades were very cool.
World of Magic has potential as well as a MoM successor - but kind of skeptical the developer can pull it off. Funded it though, so we'll see.
Hmm.. What if We took the
City building with almost unending depth from Civ Series,
Strategic tactical battles from AOW3,
Rpg development and customized units from FE:LH,
All those into one game? I want to see it happen.
One of the things I like about the tactical battles in AOW3, is that if you really think your moves through, even with equally strong army's, you can win without losing a unit, or one at the most.
It's all in the movement.
The green, yellow and red hexes are a great idea.
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