Age of Wonders III attempts to walk a delicate tight-rope – on the one hand, you have a pretty clear-cut turn-based strategy game centred on empire management. It’s not quite a 4X game in the same way Civilization is – it’s mainly about war and conquest, and there’s a fully realised tactical battle mode to support it. But still, there is a fairly robust empire element to it. Anyway – you build, conquer or absorb new cities into your domain, you develop them, and you fight other-such empires looking to do the same thing. It’s all resource management and build-queues. Simplez.
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On the other hand, you have a strong adventure-RPG element. The game map of Age of Wonders three isn’t just a blank canvas that you and the other AI factions simply draw all over – it’s alive. Resources aren’t built, they just exist, and it’s up to you to go find, secure and then exploit the various nodes scattered through-out the land. These nodes are often guarded by neutral NPC armies which you need to beat, and the fog of war means that you never know what’s around the corner. Abandoned Watchtowers can be taken to scout the area; monster dens will spawn armies of spiders, beasts… and flaming ponies, until you purge them. Items and units can be found, and there’s even an underground level (if it’s enabled) that provides further avenues for exploration and expansion.
It’s wonderful, it’s different... but it needs a little work still, I think.
Exploring your surroundings is very important. You need to find out where the nearest nodes are, for one. As your starting city grows in size, more and more of the surrounding area will fall under its control. As long as resource nodes are explored and not occupied, this means handy boosts to your economy. But you need to clear them out first. You also need to find plausible locations for a second city, because maintaining armies is costly. An alternative is to find neutral cities and do quests for them, thus absorbing them into your empire, or simply conquering them (not that easy a feat, in any stage of the game). Still, this all requires exploration, with a sizable army so you can meet any threat. That army will need to be replenished from time to time. You may need to bring a second army online to scout the other directions, and then a third for basic defence, but these all need paying for so you've really got to hurry up and get that second city.
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It’s all a bit... slow.
To be honest, this is just as much to do with priorities than it is anything else. Dropping into a game of Age of Wonders III for the first time is like being dropped into a magical wonderland of awesome, you just want to run around everywhere and see stuff, and let your city just churn away in the background. But then you realise that without troops your cities have zero defence capabilities and oh crap there goes my capital. F***ing Spiders. Eador: Masters of the Broken World faced a similar issue, as do all games with restricted movement. If you don’t keep your eye on the ball, you can get caught out. I’m still not sure whether simultaneous turns are a good or a bad thing yet, but it’s an interesting change to how turn-based is usually done, especially in multiplayer.
Apart from several random scenarios, we’ve also tried two of the story-based campaigns on offer as well. These are more guided experiences, with clear objectives, and maps designed to facilitate these. I probably should have played more of them before jumping into an Ultra-Large, Eight-Player mash up with continents and an underworld and everything ever. But hey, I’m hard-core. Still, these little bite-sized campaigns help you get used to Age of Wonders III’s weird pacing and they’re cool scenarios in their own right. Fundamentally though, I think Age of Wonders III can teach turn-based games, even ones like Civilization, a lesson or two in diverse empire mechanics.
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The idea of the ‘Empire’ isn’t tied solely to cities (Although it’s a big chunk of it, which does reign in the potential of the RPG/Adventure side of things). Resource nodes can be found in weird nooks and crannies, and these places may not be suitable for founding a village. What you can do though is plonk down fortresses, which bring the surrounding land under your domain, but don’t carry any population and can’t build anything. These structures can also be garrisoned with armies, so if you attack one you’d fight a normal siege battle. These controlling structures allow you expand and control areas, without actually ‘expanding’. Empire-management games always have issues with expansion for the sake of expansion, or just so you can increase your operating range, and it’s good to see a game that takes a smart approach to that problem.
Despite my personal issues with early pacing, I don’t mind declaring “so far, so good” on this one. At the end of the day, it’s all a matter of momentum, and once you get going these issues become less critical and tense. New issues can arise though, and I worry that there won’t be much to sustain the game in the ‘late-game’ phase, when all the mystery is gone and it becomes purely an Empire-vs-Empire slug match. Which is interesting in its own right but it always leads to the ‘critical mass’ problem, which primarily war-focused games like these (traditionally) don’t handle that well. Still, you shouldn’t be worried, and this is definitely one to look forward to!
Most Anticipated Feature: Seeing what a late-game looks like, and how it plays. When the mystery and wonder is gone, what replaces it other than war and strife?
