Well, they tried but they couldn't do it. FE/LH offically better than AOW III an always will be. ) Developers are so scared they are deleting posts that are negative on Steam hahah. If you say anything against AOW III you are tagged a troll lol. Even Stardock fans aren't that bad. Or froggy Metacritic user scores have it at 77 now down from an origional 84 and most of the comments are about lame ai and no real depth or detail just pretty pictures. Hurray for FE/LH long live the PRINCE of fantasy gaming next to the KING that is Master of Magic.
I tend to not get obsessed and really bother about games I do not like.Spend your time doing something else.
Honestly, they are different games with a similar theme. AoW3 is still pretty good. It has it's flaws but so did Elemental. Personally, I prefer hexagon games and the combat mechanics in AoW3 are done much better. LH's strategic layer, though could still use work, is much better than AoW3.
Honestly, I don't think MoM is the ruler to be measured against anymore. If you play it again you will notice that LH has the feel of a modern day MoM. I look forward to seeing Elemental move to hex maps.
Personally I hate Elemental and Legendary Heroes. That's why I hang out here so much and mod it. I hate its existence so very much that I have to try and fix it...
I have had (still having) fun with AOW3 but it is nothing like FE. I have put 400+ hours into the various flavours of elemental, I will be lucky to clock up 50 on AOW3. Having said that I see AOW3 more like a successor to the original Warlords. Conquer city's or convince independents to join, build army and smash the opponent. I hardly ever bother with the tactical gameplay, usually selecting auto-result. The recent big patch did help but I am hoping they can improve the game more in the coming months.
LH wins far and away on strategy, AOW 3 wins on tactical battles. Too bad we can't get one game with both parts good.
If you are auto resolving battles in AOW3, I can understand why you are not enjoying it. If you take away the tactical battles there isn't much left.
LH is the better game, but AOW3 has Multiplayer which is why it might be lacking in some areas.
AOW3 does has a better way to start combat with more than one stack in a fight.
They also have a better town battle map method in AOW3, a part from this LH has better depth but only with the DLC, we are yet to see what happens to AOW3.
cheers
DM
@Illauna who said I wasn't enjoying it? to quote "I have had (still having) fun with AOW3".
Both games are fantasy but they are quite different games. LH just appeals to me more, by a long shot. AOW3 tactical side could be improved heaps. Allow us to put down the army, or at least rearrange. Allow the player to use more magic, at the moment magic is very mundane.
I'm just going to point out that Elemental has had 2 expansions so a comparison to a game that just came out is kinda unfair.
Yes, how could we ever compare the third Elemental game to Age of Wonders III, also the third game in a series? Totally unfair!
Expansions are not the same thing as entirely new games in a series using entirely new engines built by largely new teams. Its an apples to oranges comparison.
The Elemental series has received 2 major expansions plus a bunch of patches. AoWIII has received 0 expansions and recently released. Come on now.
Actually, if you want to get technical, I"m pretty sure they marketed and sold FE as a stand alone game, not an expansion to WOM.
Besides, it's absolutely fair to compare the two games. Does the fact that AOW hasn't received an expansion yet mean you are not allowed to compare it to anything? It's immune from comparison? Really?
Complaints about AOW3 is about the poorly implemented strategy part of the game - which is practically identical to AOW1 and AOW2. So I think it's very fair to compare LH to AOW3.
I mean, your argument isn't valid, I think. Let's say LH had most strategy mechanics unchanged from E:Wom, and AOW3 was a drastic improvement from AOW1. Would you then say "but AoW has had two sequels! E:wom only had two expansions so it's ok that they didn't change anything about it!"
If anything, AoW3 should have been MORE evolved from two sequels than E:Wom from two measly expansions.
Thats a marketing thing, not something that is relevant to this conversation. There was a PR reason to separate FE from WOM - WOM had stink on it in many people's mind because it was not a good release, so Stardock wisely released products that were not marketed with the same name. But technically they were expansions as they used the same engine, very similar mechanics, were developed by largely the same groups, and were developed in the same way as expansions would be. How they happened to be sold from a marketing perspective is wholly irrelevant to this discussion.
No, but I'm saying that we have to take reality into account when we compare the two. There is a major difference between a recently released game and a game that has had multiple expansions and multiple patches. The argument that AoW3 is effectively the same as an expansion because it happens to share the name as another game that was released over 12 years ago by a completely different company is fairly absurd to any not hugely biased party.
On most major projects, a MASSIVE part of the project will be taken up by developing the game engine. Not in designing the play mechanics of the game like you are talking about, but in getting everything to render right, getting the UI to work right, and all that basic stuff.
AoW3 could obviously not inherit its engine from previous iterations of the game. It had to redo that, which was undoubtedly a relatively large percentage of the time budget for making the game. The same is undoubtedly true for the making of EWOM - Stardock's time budget for making that game had to include a lot of time that was sunk into making the basic engine go, and not on details of what the players are actually doing strategically.
However, when you release an expansion, my expectation is that there would be a relatively small amount of time spent on engine stuff (since it is largely in place - improvements might be made though), and a relatively large amount of time spent on improving the game mechanics that you are talking about.
Therefore, I completely reject the statement that you are making. I would expect FE/LH to be vastly more evolved than AoW3 because expansions give developers time to concentrate on game mechanics rather than the engine, while the base game probably had a pretty big part of the time budget spent on the base engine.
PS - I don't even like AoW3 that much - I actually prefer LH. These comparisons are just way off base IMO.
Actually AoW is what brought me to LH . Tried it long time ago - didn't like it but now I'm back.
I do believe that both games have different approach - AoW is more about combat, when LH is more about building for me.
Also prefer much clearer UI from AoW, which give more detailed info about what your action will cause (especially what happens when your troops gaining xp), yet at the same time I prefer information panel about my research from LH, As a quite a few people said already combining both games in one would probably make 1 massive hit. That saying I do believe that AoW has a great potential (especially with few expansions and DLC's and of course MODS).
However please remember about new kids in the school - ENDLESS LEGEND and WARLOCK 2 (which is worst the first one IMHO) which can take a fare share of this market.
Actually looks like fantasy 4x games are gaining popularity right now.
What makes MOM stand out above any of the others is the unbalanced method which they used. Each faction was a little better than the last depending on how you started with death magic being one of the most powerful. The blue magic was pretty strong. But, things just stood out more and were more fearful to encounter like the Skydrake or a passel of paladins. I loved everything about MOM.....the music was ghey and inspiring, you got xp for you leader even if you didn't go out adventuring with them and the magical creation of items was the best I've ever seen next to the next greatest rpg game of all Daggerfall.
It had an underworld to begin with not another game you had to buy to get it. It had random map generator not another game you had to buy to get it like AOW:II or Shadowmagic. It is a simple game an easily played in a few hours not a few days like the AOW series. It had an ai that actually did something not run up and down the same road a 100 times. It actually used the magic in the game. It just did things I haven't seen in other games more recent. All I see in more recent games is a "delaying" action not a challenge.
One of the MAIN great things about MOM though was NO MULTIPLAYER balancing act that always ruins the solo single player game. I loved that most. ) MOM the greatest and always will be.( well until The World of Magic comes out)
AOW3 is probably going to kill Archon titans and bone dragons.. once those two is gone, its all relentless ICS from there on -.-
And it's not making triumph studios look good in my eyes.
http://ageofwonders.com/forums/topic/fun-is-ending-ugggguuuuuu-d/
I'm so glad that FE:LH don't have PVP.
Quoting willie sanderson, reply 17NO MULTIPLAYER balancing act that always ruins the solo single player game Too much stress on unsupported claim. I find things are quite conrary: multiplayer balancing leads to better experience in single mode.
Too much stress on unsupported claim. I find things are quite conrary: multiplayer balancing leads to better experience in single mode.
I also find multiplayer greatly improves balance. LH is not a balanced game. You can do a dozen strategies that would steamroll everything else and so many things are just broken balance wise, but it doesn't matter since the AI doesn't use them.
Nope UNbalaced is the way to go and leave OUT Multiplayer altogether. MOM proved it works and it's a lot more fun playing with unbalanced races than playing basically the same template just a different skin or look. I'll always want unbalanced and no multiplayer from now on. P) Multiplay ruins games variation of the factions makes them more fun and gives the game longevity like MOM.
Each to their own, but I do agree with this. While some basic balance is necessary (otherwise, the same races will always rise to the top), there's no reason to deny people the option to have things as unbalanced as they want. You want a good shot with Pariden? Take a huge world, few opponents, and ramp up the effect of magic. Want a tremendous challenge? Lower the effect of magic, choose a small world, numerous Empire opponents. Balance is a basic condition for setting up the dynamic, very necessary imbalance of gameplay.
I have seen a lot of so-so single player games that could have been great single player games, but alas, balancing for multiplayer just made it rather lackluster. So many good, creative, and just plain fun gameplay elements get removed from games all in the name of MP balance. Ugh, I despise multiplayer games...
+1
Personally I think LH really suffers from a lack of balance. Especially when it comes to scaling and PvE. Things that aren't balanced properly are usually too easy, simple, and uninteresting with a lack of diversity.
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