In What Age of Wonders is Superior to EWOM

Black-Knight

Join Date 09/2009

+15

In What Age of Wonders is Superior to EWOM

elements that make aow superior to elemental:

1 Movement: units MOVE in that game! they don't just go by 2 or three squares. in one turn one has the impressin to accomplish something and there isn't that horrible frustration to keep clicking over and over on that end of turn button. For example a hero with 30 movement points can move by 10 hexes on a road (one road hexe costs 3 points). Boats too can move by 10 hexes, since their speed is 40 and one hexe of waters costs 4 movement points. A decent speed also allows the AOW community to have a succesful Play By Email mode. While in EWOM it would make no sense to keep sending turns to the other players after having just moved by a couple ofd squares and done nothing most of the time. In fact the whole ratio between movement and speed of unit creation is different and more fun. One can move and actually accomplish something during a turn, AND units can be built much faster. That is another element that nerfes heroes, since armies are really built by the dozen in AOW and no hero can possibly hope to take one city single handed. Heroes are still very useul, but they are not invincible as they are in the latest EWOM versions, and armies can quickly become huge!

(to be honest I yet have to understand how movement works in elemental! entering a wood tile should cost 2 movement points, I believe; yet with the last one movement point left, a player always seem to be able to enter a wood (another bug?)... Units "eject" from cities... (EJECT? What are they falling airplanes?) jumping a few tiles away... hey they do "eject" after all ahahaha!)

2 Not just any spell can be researched. One is forced to research only the spells that the whimsical book is in the mood to offer every day. that forces players to make compromises and adapt to the situation, thus forcing to vary one's strategy. That gives variety to the game experience since you cannot just research in every game the same sequence of spells, but you have to make a strategy (sometimes researching stuff you don't need just to make space on the book). In AOW spells are very useful, so a strategy can really vary a lot depending on what you can get.

3 MULTIPLAYER God I pity those people who consider themselves players of strategy games but have never experienced a turn based game against other human players. The excitement to open your turn every day (in Play by email) and see what the enemy has done! In AOW there are units that move faster through woods, other than can pass mountains, others that are very weak but can fly high and explore the enemy territory, and some that are invisible in woods! All that is useless against the AI, but when you are playing a person, the spirit of competition gets very high and there are lots of tricks one can apply to win a war! Also each race has specific abilities, like the elven cities that are invisible in the woods and finding them can simply drive you crazy. The fact of seeing the enemy is so important in warfarewhile gainst the AI that is useless! But in AOW sometimes I reached an enemy capital by moving through thhe enemy blind sposts, calculating the view range of each enemy towers and approaching by stopping my armies each turn is some blind corner. SEEING THE ENEMY IS ESSENTIAL IN WARFFARE!
Of course the teleport function would spoil all that, since in Elemental any lousy player could just teleport back is ubestack even at the last second. But in AOW teleport is optional, so we can have a realistic warfare experience, in which visibility movement and speed are often more important than sheer strenght!

I have recently re installed AOWSM and I'll keep you posted on other things that I find so exciting in that game. Maybe that will be of some help to the Stardock team, who don't seem to know that game too well...

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Can you mention any one bug in Age of Wonders Shadow Magic version 1.3? Because I have played it A LOT for 10 years and I couldn't... But it is true that the AI doesn't build pioneers and is unable to use boats either in a strategic manner (neither does the AI in EWOM). Those things would be nice but since there is no need to spam pioneers like in EWOM that is really not a big deal.

Regarding the two previous installments of AOW, in terms of gameplay they weren't perfect yet, but their systems worked. And bugs were very rare. Anyway I am not writing this post to put down EWOM in any way. Any ambitious and original project like that needs to be commended, I just believe that by observing certain aspects of AOW we could get a better game.

I completely understand your point. My issue is simply that, while AoW is an interesting war game, EWoM can be much more. As I have previously stated, most of the systems in AoW are designed to facilitate the game's warfare and not to expand its qualities as a 4x game. In all honesty, my comments in this thread were not designed to discuss the relative merits and flaws of AoW or EWoM, but to simply point out that a direct comparison of these two titles does neither justice.

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I just recently learned about a game called "Battle for Wesnoth". It is a freeware wargame, and to be quite honest as a fantasy wargame is just amazing. The graphic is just 'cute', but it is extremely deep in terms of strategy and gaameplay. Also the combat system is quite original because it doesn't give the typical three values offensive-defensive-movement that wargames usually implement. Instead each kind of units has a fixed damage value that it inflicts upon a succesful attack, which is calculated based on the defender percentage to be hit on that particular terrain, so there is no perfect unit, but just units that are more effective against a particular enemy. Also it is possible to choose wether attack in melee or by missiles. Everyone should check it out.

The reason why I mention it is because that is a real wargame: a map divided in hexes where you can move and resolve the combats without opening into a tactical map.

Age of wonders is not like that. Age of Wonders is a 4X game with all the possible depth a 4x game can offer and strong RPG elements, since you do identify a lot with your avatar. It does not have a very complex city building system, true, but it is not retarded either, as for example the one in Disciples. After playing it extensively I have to say that to me that is the perfect multiplayer 4x game. I never had so much fun with any other game. So if EWOM had been fun as a single player game I would say, who cares, but since it isn't quite working, I insist that a lot should be learned from AOW.

AOW is fun and you have he impression to accomplish stuff each turn, which is not happening here, where you keep pushing the end of turn button every ten seconds.

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StevenAus22

Join Date 06/2010

+110

Yes, I mentioned Wesnoth a while back too, in this post. I think the latest Wesnoth-XP executable (found here), which works with any 1.8.x version of Battle for Wesnoth, with the settings I mentioned provides a good mix of strategy and some luck, without being "all or nothing" as the vanilla game tends to be (for example, needing 1 damage to kill a powerful unit and missing all three times at 70% chance to hit, when if you could get a partial hit based on getting at least at least 1 roll (out of 3 done for every attack) at least for one attack, you wouldn't have a problem). I haven't tested the other alternate way of calculating damage. Let me know how it goes for you if you try it! (I just wouldn't want to take on a Squid with 10 attacks and all attacks doing a minimum of 1 damage. )

Best regards,
Steven.

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Quoting Trojasmic,

reply 6

I just can't get past the bad graphics in AOW. What am I missing?

AOW had good graphics for its time. AOW:SM has much better graphic and IMO better that Elemental. At least for me AOW:SM looks better.

I agree with the OP points about AOW:SM vs. EWOM. In fact I would like to add the following:

AOW:SM is better than EWOM in:

AI is better

Tactical Combat is a lot more fun (more abilities/powers that are fun to use)

Movement as OP said is much better.

UI is a bit better in some areas bit EWom is getting better.

More than one Race and they are all DIFFERENT to play.

The Worlds at least on the Large and X-Large maps seem more Epic and bigger. (I don't play small or medium maps so I can't say anything about them)

Multiplayer is pretty damn good and fun. You have all the SP game in a MP environment, which I prefer. They did not take any thing away from the game just to make SP faster.

Also in MP you can have Simultaneous turns or traditional turns.

Can create Heros and Magic items which is fun.

EWOM is better than AOW:SM in:

Modding. AOW has a decent map creator and the unit creator while a bit of a pain to use is not that bad (I have added over a 1000 units to the game since 2003.)

I am a big fan of the Unit creator in the game. I loved this feature in GALCIV2 as well. They just need more options in EWOM.

I really like the cloth map feature.

The Quest generator is nice they just need to add fun quest.

And that is about it so far.

I had hopes that Ewom would replace AOW:SM as my main fantasy Turn-based game but it does not even come close to matching or surpassing that game. However I am hoping that FE does. But we will see.

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Quoting kenata,

reply 20

While I agree that the 2 move points in EWoM is a bit too slow for my tastes, I think your other points about AoW:SM are less than on point. To this day, I feel like AoW:SM is the weakest of the AoW series. Honestly, the random spell thing was super annoying, and while you may have a point that it forced you to tailor your strategy, it was also possible to find yourself severely outmatched simply because of luck. Comparing Elemental and AoW:SM seems a bit unfair to both games as they are really two very different titles which simply share a common ground. The AoW series are war games first and foremost with all other aspects being simply tacked on for good measure. This is vastly different that EWoM which attempts to be more of a fantasy simulator than a strict war game. Thus, any comparison is basically a matter of gamer taste.

Well I disagree with you on AOW:SM being the weakest of the series. Personally I think it is the best and IMO the best Fanasy Stratagy game to date. And yes I have played a lot of them. Also I perfer the random spell thing but then again I like random luck to play a role in games, makes them a bit more fun.

Now I think comparing the two games is a natural thing to do after all they are both spirital successors to MOM (however AOW:SM is much closer than EWOM.) Personally in my AOW:SM SP and MP games the RPG element was a lot more exciting and fun than it is in EWOM. Exploring was more fun as well. Now with AOW:SM the RPG portion comes from the scripted events that you can add to a map. Most of the maps I play on have many of these events.

Also While the AI is not the best I have been able to make it very challanging with how you arrange the AI factions and the Independant faction. My maps are very deadly. Escpecially with all the new units.

Oh and to address the post about the cities. AOW:SM actully have more city options than EWOM but EWOM can arrange the buildings on the map. I think Iperfer the AOW:SM city options.

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The key difference is fun. AoW:SM is great fun to play. Elemental in my opinion is a chore.

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Hi guys, sorry to totally necromance this thread, but I thought some of you might be interested in this.

Over the past year I have written a piece of software to enable the Age of Wonders play by email mode to work automatically with modern email accounts like Google Mail, Windows Live and Yahoo. It's basically a system tray application that acts like an email client but only for PBEM games, it spoofs an SMTP server so that the game's original email sending code can still work.

Here are some videos which explains how it works really well;

http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=173302036046975

You can download it from here;

http://aow.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=1122

It's been tested by Triumph Studios themselves and they've even linked it on their Facebook and Twitter pages

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Haha, good necromancy. I tought this conversation was still going while reading it. I din't look at the small '2011' and only looked at the '.. februari' part.

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So how FE is compared to AoW?

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There will be another beta of FE this thursday (they say). This new version is said to bring lot's of changes, so at the moment, I'll wait for that patch to begin comparisons. Otherwise all the diferences we came up with will just be for nothing.

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Age of Wonders Shadowmagic is the worst POS fantasy strategy game to date . The AI is horrible and the pathing even worse for it. Besides this is just a BETA it's not the finished product. It will be 10x better than AOW:SM ever was or will be. They also ruined it by patching for multiplayer instead of fixing the AI in the single player game in which the MAJORITY of gamers TRIED to play it. It's way down on my list of fantasy strategy games and not even on any of my hard drives anymore. But, of course NOTHING has come close to beating Master of Magic (MOM) of any of them either. HOMM II was pretty good and HOMM III not too bad but still not as good as good ole MOM.

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Hmmm I played MoM and found it quite boring. It lacked the polish of Civilization. AoW and AoW2:Shadow Magic where both a blast to play for me.

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I like AOW. Played all the release content, then a handful of mods. Now I'm playing HOMM and enjoy it enough to at least play through all of Heroes Chronicles. As I play HOMM, I began wondering if HOMM influenced WOM more than MOM did.

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Quoting Bellack,

reply 30

this is what I had to do as well to get around the bad ai in aow:sm, I would commonly make the underground & shadowrealm 30-50 independent areas where I would divide up one or two factions & make it so that they had to really do some traveling to connect with the other 'minor factions', then the rest of the 'Major factions' would have to compete against this new 'goblin' infestation coming up from underground caves all over tha map plus each other. Made it much more entertaining

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Quoting Alfdaur,

reply 37

Hmmm I played MoM and found it quite boring. It lacked the polish of Civilization. AoW and AoW2:Shadow Magic where both a blast to play for me.

Yep that's the way I found AOW and AOW:Shadowmagic. AI was so simple it was boring. Something you could never do in MOM but could EASILY do in AOW:SM was make an alliance and then march 3 STACKS of units over to the AI's capital doorsteps then declare war and win every single time. Most stupid AI design of any game I've ever seen.

The key point of ALL strategy games is CHALLENGE, when a developer or designer throws CHALLENGE into the wind then the game(s) are going to be terrible and just a simple waste of time playing and learning them like the Age of Wonders series. Even the HOMM series II & III has more challenge than the AOW series. But, I suppose if you like playing ROMPER ROOM easy games like Age of Wonders one would definitely find it FUN. lol

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You know what else you could try; save the game, exit, edit the saved game, delete all enemy units, load the game, CRUSH the enemy. The AI will never see it comming. Stupid AI.

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Quoting Black-Knight,

reply 26

But it is true that the AI doesn't build pioneers and is unable to use boats either in a strategic manner (neither does the AI in EWOM).

The community patch/mods fixed that though, it would have been nice to see fixed in an official patch but they haven't worked on it in years, modders never left it though Shadow Magic has extremely dedicated modders to this day.

Quoting Black-Knight,

reply 24

I believe that the apparent simplicity of Age Of Wonders depends on the fact that everything seems to go so freaking smooth in that game... battles are fun, the magic system is brilliant, you still get to customize your wizard quite a bit. Also the cities are quite well thought, and everything is FUN! Elemental for me is superior only for the graphics of the units (the map I am not even sure), but hey AOWSM is almost 10 years old.

You can say all that again.

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Quoting Femmefatal48,

reply 41

Something you could never do in MOM but could EASILY do in AOW:SM was make an alliance and then march 3 STACKS of units over to the AI's capital doorsteps then declare war and win every single time. Most stupid AI design of any game I've ever seen.

That was the Diplomacy AI, the Diplomacy in Shadow Magic in general sucked, but it was really easy to get stuck in permanent war so you must have had a specific exploit routine that got around that.

I couldn't make peace in my last playthrough, everyone randomly attacked me and was determined to destroy me, I'm playing with the community patch though.

Quoting Satrhan,

reply 42

You know what else you could try; save the game, exit, edit the saved game, delete all enemy units, load the game, CRUSH the enemy. The AI will never see it comming. Stupid AI.

Yep.

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Quoting leeboy26,

reply 32

The key difference is fun. AoW:SM is great fun to play. Elemental in my opinion is a chore.

Truth.

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AOW:SM was soooooooooooo BAD even the developers and publisher ABANDONED it. Nuff said.

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