Basically I want it to be massively good for single player; similar to the original game with - larger world - more items - better ai - updated graphics (does not have to be fancy 3d; just a bit more resolution than what we have today) - random events might help in some cases - more heroes more spells more more more

Better AI and the ability of modmakers to easily add races instead of designing race replacement... basically more toolset and modding tools.

And an optimized engine. AOWSM should not lag modern machines by any stretch of the imagination. Yet it does.

All other content related issues will be easily solved by the community so I'd rather a terribly balanced product released with the above features over a well-balanced game that lags and limits the player and designer.

[This message has been edited by Sarcose (edited 11-12-2012 @ 08:00 PM).]

Better AI and the ability of modmakers to easily add races instead of designing race replacement... basically more toolset and modding tools.

Modding & editor of course.

It will be Cool to add a Weather therms in different turns, one turn day next turn night one turn shiny other rainy and that also have effect on morale of troops.Also it will be cool to add terrible storms alike you have in AoW 1 with capturing altars. New Races more magic creatures, more spells (also old ones) better city sieges different city environment, city management, Defensive options what wall you want to build moat or spikes. New types of terrain keep old ones. more map objects and diversity just not to see same places more than 1000 times. 2D like AoW2. more items and more abilities. more heroes new classes. Maybe aiding a new level who'd be interesting perhaps something above earth or beneath water surface. BIG Campaign with old and new characters. Bigger Maps 500x500 so that teleporting have better importance. Maybe adding a new recourse iron or bricks wood or something.Leadership that can effect how many unit you can lead in a company example if you have leadership that gives you attack and defense bonus fom 1-4 on 4 and 5 level above you have ability to take additional unit in your party mmmm just not to react too much i will be content to have 10 or 12 units places of now 8. and bigger combat and siege maps. additional level of units level 5 monstrosity...New Music of Michiel Van Den Bos.
anything else hmmm?

Great ideas. After spending more time digging around these rather quiet forums i see some ideas were implemented in a lot of mods. A couple more:
- more specialized and varied hero classes
- would be cool if enchantments on magic items were tied to your magic spheres so for example a Life Mage couldn't make a Life Stealing blade. This goes along with the important idea of having to make tough choices and avoiding an end game where no matter what you start with, you always end up with everything.

The Feel of AoW 1, including all races playable on a map not just 8 out of 12 . Easier modding tools, i.a:buildin editing(resizing) of new hero pictures,leaders and items. Bigger maps with all terrain available for all 3 lvls also no weird shadow lvl only . And ofcourse graphically enhanced with Good AI.
What it comes down to for me is this: AoW 1 with updated tools,graphics and races from AoW 2-sm and better AI.

Greetings to Age of Wonders community! AOW is definitely my favorite computer game since it have been released more than 10 years ago. May be, some of you even remember my maps, which I've sent here very long time ago ('Ancient Europe' for instance). So I'm still alive and strongly inspired with rumors being discussed here. Just like all of you I'm looking forward AOW-3 and have some ideas which I'd like to share:

In general, I suppose that AOW-SM basics (combat mechanics, magic system and so on) is OK and revolutionary changes are not wellcome. AOW-SM principles could be taken as a base, which should be developed further. Here are some features taken from other TBS, which I'd suggest to introduce in order to increase the 'strategy depth', sorry for long post:

1. More pronounced hero classes: warrior (priority - combat stats), commander (army stats improvement), cleric (healing, protective spells), mage (destructive / summon spells), ranger (movement bonuses and concealment for army) and so on. Also the racial factor is important here. For inctance: 'cleric' heroe for undead would be a necromancer with curse magic and necromancy ability: rises skeletons form corpses or curses enemy unit, who becomes zombie (low livel) or mummy (high level) after being killed in the battle. Commanders and warriors of different races can have different priorities too: i e attack for orcs and defense for dwarves.

2. Alternative upgrade for veteran units: when some unit achieves gold medal, it is transformed to higher level one with slightly different appearance. Player should chose the upgrade form regarding to his requirements. For instance, human swordsman can continue his swordsman career or become a master of mace, with lower attack but with sufficiently greater damage vs skeletal or heavily armored units.

3. More pronounced terrain effect: some races should be strongly terrain-dependent (snow, desert, swamp, caves and wastelands). With bonuses and penalties for combat stats depending on where they stand - on friendly terrain, neutral or hostile. For example lizards should suffer in snow and desert, but be maximal effective in swamps. So all terrain changes (spells, paths and so on) should be precisely balanced.

4. Items improvement: various item sets with collective bonuses; racial items giving additional bonus to the hero of some specific race.

5. Max number of playable sides in multiplayer = number of races. And good old AOW-1 races back ) Lizards and azracs are definitely more adequate than draconians and tygrans (IMHO) Generally, races should be more individual.

6. Improved skill system, 'rock, scissors and paper' principle: Classic example: pikes are effective against cavalry, but not effective against skeletons. Small and nimble units have additional chance to avoid damage from boulder or huge club. Some of goblins hate halflings and inflict them more damage. And so forth...

Thank you for reading )

Thanks for sharing those ideas - they make a lot of sense. Also, I am not a fan of Syrons and Shadow Demons. The whole trippy, space, bug theme doesn't feel right. I have only messed around with Dwigg's mod once, but his version of those two races seem much more interesting.

I always turn them off but kind of annoying when I play Dwarfs and my starting hero is a Syron - just doesn't make sense to me. I wish if you turned off a Race, it would turn off those race's heroes.

Another cool mechanic might be an assassin hero who can sneak up on and challenge other units 1-on-1 (again borrowing a mechanic from Dominions).

Concerning dwarfs and syron hero I think that the 1st hero should be of that race the player starts with. Or just possibility of hiring 'native' hero might be higher. I never could get it why the undead usually start with goblin hero or vice verse and so on.

One more suggestion: the experience system. Unit / hero should gain experience not only for killing, but for any inflicted / taken damage (killing could provide additional exp). Small amount of exp one gains for some abilities usage (like healing) during a battle and a minimal value (1 point?) just for participating in a combat. For some creatures / hero classes this minimal rate can be increased by special ability / (item?).

I'd have to agree with that. In fact, I'd be tempted to say that there should be map editor settings regarding what heroes are available - running from 'all heroes available' through 'only heroes from races that are on the map' through to 'only heroes of races that the player has in their empire'. Being able to individually disable certain heroes from appearing may also be useful.

I hope they will improve the AI, make more quests, heroes more interesting, better and improved spell and skill system etc.

And I hope they will continue their system of units and combat. One here asked for rock scissors.. sorry but most games have this, so let them make AoW as we all know and love it. T

Of course they still can improve units stats etc. - would be nice and interesting.

I hope they will keep the things we love and improve the things that can be made better

Maybe the could even let you customize your troops. (research and) select some things like weapons, armament and so on. Could be worth a try.

I would buy an AoW 3 at any time

A few spells distributing "strike" abilities would be nice. Particularly cold strike. I want my undead to have a chilling touch .

[This message has been edited by Acheron (edited 11-30-2012 @ 06:19 PM).]

1. Customization of which Heroes/Items/Spells/Talents are active or available randomly like in the later version of Heroes 3. It might actually be better though to allow those for customized choices or choices out of a custom set, but to ban them appearing randomly anywhere else in the game. However, it would be great to allow things normally banned to be upgraded if the basic thing is attained first by a map-specific customization. Also certain spells or Talents could be banned from ever appearing on research lists globally or to not be available for pre-start choices or researchable Skill List of certain player(s).

2. Really thorough Quest customization & Quests tab, control over spawned creatures and location. So you could customize (for both Quests on the Quests tab or Quests gained from visiting a Quest Start Object):

- Objective (Specific, random, random choice out of a custom set, possibly with the ability to set percentages for each possibility)

- Time limit (from day Quest starts, or actual Day no.)

- Spawned creatures/armies if applicable, ability to set absolute or relative location, check for free tile, also same mapmaker choices as with objective.

- Reward choices. Specific, random, semi-random out of a set. The reward options could be:
a) Gold (including possible range)
b) Mana (including possible range)
c) Spell(s) (including the ability to limit spells to a set and set percentages for each possibility)
d) Creatures (including the ability to limit the possible outcomes, possibly with the ability to set percentages for each possibility, also the ability to give race-specific units of a certain level). The ability to choose where the creatures would appear at (eg. nearest settlement or nearest hero-led army to where quest completed, settlement with most population, earliest built settlement, possible race(s) including starting race, possible alignment(s) including starting alignment, specific building(s) required etc). Also the ability to set creature reward to match the settlement race, hero army leader race or player race, eg. 3 level 2s for example.
e) Free Item, Item Upgrade or Hero Spell (random choice of a certain strength, type (including possible magic type(s) and/or magic level(s) for random Hero Spell, random choice out of a custom set, including possibility of setting percentage chance of each, and ability to set criteria (including hero's pre-existing skills such as Spell-Casting) for which hero gets the bonus).
f) Level ups or a straight experience gain for hero (including no. of level ups/amount of experience and criteria for hero selection, eg. lowest level, highest level, race(s), alignment(s), completely random hero).
g) Free building at a settlement (nearest to where quest is completed/random settlement/earliest built/most population etc., also race(s) required including starting race, alignment(s) required including starting alignment, building(s) required). Also ability to restrict what cost/type of buildings can be built.
h) Free hero (specific, random, random of a specific type, random of a specific race, random of a specific alignment, or random from a custom group of heroes) including the ability to set criteria for where the hero appears.
i) Free increased external income (mana or gold), possibly lost if Capitol is taken.
j) Free hero/wizard Stat/Skill/Talent boost (eg. +2 Resistance, Magic Strike, Conqueror), with the ability to define criteria for who gets the boost. Possibly the player could have a choice from a limited selection.

3. Ability to match a random something with a particular player's starting race, alignment, or Primary Magic Type (in the case of spell-related randoms, Cosmos or one of the Specialist magic types), or the starting alignment of a particular settlement. So, for example, you could set a close neutral settlement to each player's starting settlement that always matches each player's starting race or alignment, or a Magic Node or Defined Spell Reward for any Quest/Event/Map Site that always matches the Primary Magic Type of the player affected.

4. Accurate percentage function, so 50% really does happen approximately half the time, etc.

5. Plenty of heroes for each race so most games can be played with heroes of the player race.

6. Lots more choice than simply Guardian strength for map site and settlement guardians, including the ability to set criteria for what creatures (including race, alignment, level, type of unit (melee, shooter, flyer, healer, spell-caster, status inflictor etc.)). It would be an awesome boon to also be able to create x possible sets of guardians, and either have equal chance of each set, or custom percentage chance for each specific set.

7. Item Forge Upgrade Item Ability & Quest/Event option/reward for upgrading items with criteria on which item gets upgraded.

8. Item Sets which give additional bonuses when you have the whole set and possibly combine into one "Item", which still takes up all the slots of the individual items, but which can be Teleported for a cost due to the most powerful item. Would be good if item sets or individual items in a set can't be created in Item Forge (so only one-off items in Item Forge).

9. Custom branching campaigns with rewards for completing specific scenarios, and the ability to delete rewards based on scenario choice (eg. defecting), see the official campaigns in Heroes 2 and the Roland/Archibald betrayal options.

10. Time limits for maps or campaign scenarios

11. a) Carryover restrictions from current campaign scenario on Spells/Talents/Items and what Percentage of Gold or Mana is added to next scenario's start amounts. So no more prolonging the first map of a campaign to research every Spell and Talent. Combined with the ability to decide which things appear in each campaign map, you can also determine which of the above types of things can be passed over. For these things, I don't think it would be good though to say "You can keep this Item, but not this Item" - much better to restrict what appears in each scenario and that will determine the things that can be carried over.

11. b) Hero carryovers from and hero level restrictions for current campaign scenario. For example being able to say "Specific Hero Jim and x highest experienced heroes carry over", or simply, "x highest experience heroes carry over" makes sense since you often choose to promote certain specific individuals of merit, or the strongest (ie. highest experience) heroes to lead your armies. Hero Placeholders would exist for heroes in subsequent campaign scenarios.

11. c) Creature Carryover Customization. The ability to set what creatures can carry over from the current scenario, and how many of them (would be explained at start of campaign scenario). For example: "highest level creature, of player race of current scenario with most experience". Or "the 2 High Priests with most experience plus the 3 Swordsmen with most experience".

12. a) Global and Player-Specific Random & Custom Starting Bonuses with option for AI players not to get starting bonuses Random would be based on Alignment/Race/Primary Magic Type (such as in Heroes 3), and Custom would give the ability to have three possible starting options for each specified player or globally, including all the customizing ability available in the rest of the game. Also specific campaign scenarios could allow more than one playable side, and these could have different starting options. So you could have the starting options for a standalone map or a scenario of a campaign be "Hero Myname" or "Random Hero of Starting Race" or "+200 Gold" or "4 Level 1 Creatures matching starting race". CPU players would either randomly pick a starting option or be set by map-maker to not get a starting bonus.

13. Global/Player Specific Alternative Victory/Loss Conditions with optional standard victory. Also One Player Maps. One player maps allow campaign scenarios when you race the clock to build an army and complete one or more objectives. Some examples:
i) "Defeat Heavily Guarded Independent City/Lose if not achieved before Day 50 has ended"
ii) "Defeat all Independent Dragon Stacks on map"
iii) "Flag All Nodes/Lose if not achieved before Day 45 has ended"
iv) "Flag all Income Locations"
v) "Own All Settlements + Flag All Income Locations/Lose if John the Ranger dies or if not completed before Turn 100 has ended"

14. Slight incremental stat bonuses for maximum level non-hero units.

15. One-time Stat, Talent, or Skill boosting locations for hero or the controlling wizard. May be guarded as in point 6.

16. Wizards that can level vicariously (based on what their armies achieve, or simply getting experience from casting spells in battles in their domain).

17. Be able to set specific players to be Human Only, Human or CPU, or CPU Only.

[This message has been edited by Steven Aus (edited 01-15-2013 @ 04:27 AM).]

Just throwing it out there, but what about 'negative' rewards? These are rewards that don't benefit you directly, but hurt your rivals, for example, if I successfully complete a quest, my reward can be a negative effect on my enemies, e.g. reduced mana income for x turns.

Good idea!

Very cool spells like in MoM that change the world!

@Steven Aus: Good ideas, but I think a new AoW will be easier and less complex: It will be a casual game

[This message has been edited by vicbrother (edited 01-16-2013 @ 08:46 AM).]

What makes you think that? I daresay strategy gamers don't want less complex games, the only type of complexity that should be bad for strategy games is complexity for complexity's sake.

Are you coming to this conclusion based on the 3D images released last Christmas, or various TS tidbits that have been released?

If it's a casual game, I don't think it is a true sequel in the AoW series.

[This message has been edited by Steven Aus (edited 01-16-2013 @ 10:56 AM).]

I don't think it will be a casual game. I suppose the base version can be "stripped down" a bit compared to AoWSM, but there probably will be several DLC packs that bring back some complexity, add new races etc.

I don't like the DLC-based business model that much, but that's how the gaming industry works these times.

@Steven Aus: The time goes on and modern games are easy to learn and have a easy UI too. Triumph is a bussiness company and can not live by us, "the longer as 10 years players", alone.

You say complexity, I say depth. :P

Now, obviously there are limits, but I think strategy games in general and turn-based strategy in particular is one genre where the trend to decrease complexity is largely bucked - strategy gamers appreciate complexity on the whole, as long as it's not too much to track or complexity for the sake of complexity. There have been a few coming out that are simpler than many of those in the past, but by and large they seem to be some of the less successful ones.

Games like AoWSM and Master of Magic still remain among the benchmark-setters for fantasy 4X games, with strong followings - if Triumph themselves end up falling short of producing a worthy successor, that would be incredibly disappointing.

Yes, good point. Depth is "easy to learn but hard to master", the ultimate goal of any quality strategy game.

When will triumph announce AoW3??????

Quoted from IMPSOLARIVS:

When will triumph announce AoW3??????

The date of the announcement wasn't announced

but it was announced that an announcement is going to be announced!

The most important thing for me is a proper campaign what sees your heroes progress throughout (instead of resetting on each map). I was really interested in Warlock...started the game up, saw there was no campaign and tried a skirmish. Quite 5 minutes later as I didn't have the motivation to even learn the game without a proper campaign.

What I'd *love* is for AoW3 to take the single player to a new level and essentially just have a single giant map. Like Lords of Magic (if I remember correctly).

[This message has been edited by Decado (edited 01-24-2013 @ 12:48 PM).]

"but it was announced that an announcement is going to be announced!"


Soon....

I would really like to see some sort of forced march option,we all experienced - am missing just few more steps to conquers that city,mine whatever...since its used in real life military warfare,it would be appropriate to have it in this game,too.Of course penalties will be there for using it,fatigued soldiers will have reduced stats,maybe even reduced moment in battle or lower number of retaliation strikes when attacked.Full day rest would be required to get rid off those penalties.

Another interesting idea is to give low level units option to form groups,squads or whatever you like to call them.That will make them more interesting to have later in game,when more powerful units are present.Squads will have stats increased,maybe some additional ability,higher HP for sure but also some penalties,in speed for example,single soldier should be faster then group,imho.My proposal would be to have one veteran unit as pre-request for creation of the squad,so you cant simple start building them once you build some city improvement.

Every city should have some very low - zero level units defending it,some sort of peasants and simple folks living there,to prevent single unit from taking the empty city without a fight.To me,it make sense,people living in the city defending it from the conqueror.

Food as resource would be nice to have,imho.That will add some realism to the game.Wondering parties far from your cities should have problems getting food.So they will need to conquer enemy cities or at least pillage them for food if they want to avoid starvation and deserters.Another option will be having food supply wagon in your army or units that are hunters that will produce some amount of food daily.Undead and animated units like golems wont need food so that will make them play differently,they dont need gold either,so it would be logical they spent mana for upkeep.Also it would make sense that animals and various wood creatures dont want/need gold for upkeep,only food.More resources would be good to have like somebody before me suggested,but i think food is a must.

Master of Magic had food as a resource, but it was done more as a limit to the total army size you could have - but abstracts out how individual armies are supplied. Worrying too much about the food supply of a particular army could be a case of increasing complexity rather than depth, though.

What might serve is a requirement where armies need to have clear lines of supply to food-producing structures that can sustain them (cities, windmills, and any new structures that fit) - if that line is cut by enemy armies too close to the supply route, morale drops until supply is reestablished. To take into account raiding, sitting on a farmland tile might also deny the food produced by that tile to the enemy while providing it to your army instead. (This would also make it possible to try to starve out an enemy army inside a city.)

Bring back some of the mechanics from AoW1. AoW2 and AoW:SM became too much about "Find the head of the snake, then cut it off" all too soon because there was no option to disable leaders and heroes could not cast spells on the strategic map, only in combat.

Between the three AoW games (1, 2, SM), I will always load up AoW1 in preference to the other two for just those reasons even if some other things were well implemented in SM.

I'd also like to see nodes play a more significant part in again, because the city building aspect and mana from buildings rendered nodes all but irrelevant in AoW2 and AoW:SM, whereas they were very important in AoW1 as they should be.

I would like to see more realistic sea-battles, where you can fire ranged weapons from the deck and swimmers do not walk on the water.

So you can load your ship with cannons or regular units which can enter and seize an opposing ship.

or something like this...

I never played either of the originals so I'm interested. I played a ton of Age of Empires but had moved to other genres when AOW came out. Did the series always have "hero classes" like the new trailer suggests or is that something new to this third edition?

Well, heroes having classes has been around for a while (or is it the whole time?) in AoW. However, the Leader having classes is new (previously it was always a "Wizard").

You know what would be the best idea? Reverse compatibility with other AoW game-scenarios. (damned, they could even use UP1.5 ideas and I - for my part- wouldn't mind at all)

Here's for hoping thoe blue names are lurking on the forum :thumbsup:

There have been a lot of good ideas on this forum, and I find myself not actually having much to say, particularly because I trust Triumph Studios own innovation impeccably.

Nevertheless, if I can list down the main, if rather general, things I'm hoping to see in this AoW3...

1. Random events. A lot. In fact, scripted events too.

I've played through all of the AoW campaigns at least 3 times each (in the cast of AoW1, FAR more than that) and I sort of consider the single-player story-driven campaign to be my main focus when I look back on my experiences in Age of Wonders (though of course, the vast number of scenarios, player-made scenarios, modpacks and my dabbling in multiplayer all contribute as well). Scripted events, times when it felt like a mission was UNIQUE, always got to me. Get to this location, find this awesome hero, do the best you can with minimal resources, branching pathways, storms and other dangers, sudden refugees or deserters joining your ranks. Spirit quests and alliances, quests to complete to earn the alliance of another empire... all these things are so...satisfying to complete and probably - alongside the combat and spell system - the main parts of AoW2/SM that I preferred to the original game, though I like many other parts of the original game that weren't exactly kept up in its sequels.

It makes it feel...alive, I suppose. It's not just a map that you go through, its a sequence of cause and effect situations...heck, even choice-based outcomes. It feels like it has more RPG elements to it, which I suppose I'm a sucker for. I suppose that's what I'm looking for, to put it into a single phrase. RPG qualities. It doesn't detract from the multiplayer or anything if its optional or campaign-only, either.


2. Variety. In spells and units.

In the case of variety of units, the original AoW always amazed me on that level, particularly all of the unique things to free from dungeons or hire or rare (if sometimes useless) spells from wizards towers. Mermaids, Druids, etc. The later games had a bit thereof, but it seemed to run out of surprises to throw at you VERY quickly. By half-way through the campaign of Wizard's Throne or Shadow Magic, you'd seen every unit in the entire game countless times (okay, save for the Syrons in Shadow Magic, which I really liked how they were sort of built up), but by the same point in the first game there were still many more enemies and allies to find and see. Secret spells and secret units, I guess. They add a sense of achievement as well as excitement into the game...and the larger scale they are, all the better (within reasonable moderation). I'd love to suddenly find some spell deep in a vault that suddenly causes the terrain within your domain to shift wildly, desert and snow and grass and wasteland and everything in between, water and mountains and more, all suddenly rising and falling and being created and sapped away within your land.

3. Story.

I'm already liking the sounds of having 2 main stories driven by groups. I'm not hoping for a retelling of Age of Wonders 1, but I am hoping for a story that's somewhere closer to AoW1 than to AoW2/SM. In truth, I found both AoW2 and Shadow Magic to have good plots and a great progression, through playing through the races and magics bit by bit in both cases and building to a finale, a climatic moment....

But....I still am always more compelled by the original AoW campaign, choosing your side from the beginning and then choosing from branching path to branching path, choosing allies and choosing your final sides, all the while each mission being book-ended by compelling, well written expository journals that never once feel contrived or silly. Quality of writing is an element here (I feel that the whole "Julioch" thing in AoW2 was a bit of a deus ex machina and a last-minute villain), but so it the element of choice - which goes back to what I was saying about RPG qualities.

But...perhaps more of an RPG focus has already been solidified, with the RPG-inspired 'classes' for leaders, after all.