Age of Wonders 3 is free

It's free, you can literary just download it and see for yourself. To answer your question, it's a solid game, though I don't know how it compares to its predecessors as I haven't played them. I spent almost a year playing through the campaign, scenarios and random maps (the maps can be randomly generated, just like in Heroes III) before dropping it, so you're at least getting a few hundred hours of fun from it. Also, it's fucking free.

Paradox does the same thing with every game they put out. Never buy a Paradox game until the sequel comes out. That way you can buy the old one with over $100 in DLC for like $20.

Haven't tried AoW3, but Master of Magic > AoW2

>Problem is it's just a hook to get you to buy the DLC.
Good thing I can pirate it then like with CK2

ey ey ey time is money, user.
But seriously it's installing right now and I mainly made this thread just so other anons wouldn't miss getting free games

i will stay for potential discussion

>i will stay for potential discussion
My man, Yea Forums is not a place for discussion, just shitposting done by underage retards and /pol/tards looking to indoctrinate those underage retards into following their ideology.

Pretty sure threads dying, hoping some anons got the game though.
t. OP

>Is the Vanilla game good enough?
Its a combat only game. There's no 4X dynamic, its purely about building an army, moving it, and fighting. Expanding and developing cities is very short and basic.
The combat system is very good, the hero building is fun. It feels good to build your hero up, it feels great to get that new unit. Balance is alright.
In multiplayer, there are NO SIMULTANEOUS TURNS. When one person is fighting (and its combat like in Heroes of Might&Magic, rather than combat like in Civilization), the other person has to wait. There can be multiple fights per turn. Fights can last 10 minutes or more. This game gave me appreciation as to why Mount&Blade doesn't have co-op multiplayer with the strategic map.

tl;dr good HoMM style game, modern and good looking, well made, easy 50 hours in singleplayer if you are a fan

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Played it on release and enjoyed it. Well except for end game tier 3 spam.

>In multiplayer, there are NO SIMULTANEOUS TURNS
Oooof, that's a pretty big negative. How did this happen?

I enjoyed AoW1 quite a bit. Then I tried Wizard's Throne and it just seems so weird, the scale of everything is way off, everything is huge and odd looking. Is it worth playing or should I just skip past to Shadow Magic?

If your end game is just monotonous armies of the most expensive units, you must not be playing very well.
If you are getting to that point, that means you could've won earlier, and didn't capitalize on the opening. Be more aggressive. Its both more fun, and objectively stronger.

Looks like a shitty dumbed down version of AoW2 with one third of the races

I only really played single player and spent more time on exploring dungeons.

Wizards Throne is AoW 2 right? I played that and Shadow magic, loved Wizards throne I'd say u should give it a chance

it is good, only that i cant improve myself in playing this. I am really a dumb

Combat happens on a tactical map, and takes a long time, and nearby heroes can join in.
If the game kept going, then when you start a combat everybody else around would rush to join the fight. So the game pauses for your fight basically.
Other players can still do shit that doesn't require action points, like prepare spells, build units, start building something in town, manage inventory, etc. But they can't act until you are done acting.
This is why my Civilization V group ended up dropping the game. We were used to simultaneous turns, which with host ping advantage, and with the desync crap, was already nerve wrecking in Civ5, but it is still much better than waiting for a LOOONG time, especially as the game develops, for fights to end. If one player is sieging a town with 3 heroes, and there's 3 heroes in town defending, and they all have their spells and want to give it a big think on how they play it, you can go have lunch while you wait. I remember reading on a forum when the game was fresh how one guy had his HDD shut down, because the game code didn't inform Windows that there is something going on and he had a 20 minute timer to shut down if idle.

This is how I remember it, someone who played MP more recently can correct me if I am wrong.

but most games are already free my dudee

>how one guy had his HDD shut down, because the game code didn't inform Windows that there is something going on and he had a 20 minute timer to shut down if idle.
lel

It's better than the civ franchise you faggot, get it ASAP.

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well, in AOW3 you make decisions that ALL matter, not some filler crap wether your town should buy a granary or well. you know, things you got muncialities for.

That's kind of a flimsy excuse, you can have simultaneous turns that switch off if you get close enough to an opponent. This would speed up the game when you are nowhere near each other, but also not give any player an advantage. Oh well, at least it won't impact my enjoyment of SP, if it's any good.
I remember the Endless games' doing something like that if you went to war with another player.

>one guy had his HDD shut down, because the game code didn't inform Windows that there is something going on and he had a 20 minute timer to shut down if idle.
Oh bother.

When is EU V coming out then?

I am fine with the game being purely about combat (even terraforming with magic is about combat), what bothered me was the start-stop-start-stop loop in multiplayer. When we got to the point of screaming "OH COME ON" when one player starts a fight and you wanted to do something first, we dropped it. It makes you dislike your friends that you are playing with, when they hit the pause key on you.
Its fine in singleplayer, like I said, I have 58 hours in it, maybe 10 of that is trying MP. Might even revisit it now that there's discussion with the free game.

Never you fool.

Victoria 3 and EU5 are exclusive to Epic's first party console they are releasing in 2030, along with Bannerlord and Knack 3.

>Knack 3
Bros, no...

Downloaded it, tried it, wanted to like it because I love HoMM and King's Bounty (even if the later is mediocre I had a lot of tolerance towards it).
Couldn't even finish the base campaign. Boring story to start with, ugly design, tedious... I know it's too soon to judge but some games just push me out like that.

I think you are misremembering HoMM's campaigns if you think this is bad or unengaging. It is, at least, on par.
Actually the only good and memorable HoMM campaign were the Wake of Gods player made ones, and they were mostly non-conventional and memey, like the peasant start, or the Sandro one where you start with just 7 skeletons and Armageddon, and no city.

I actually don't remember most of the stories in HoMM. Only Heroes V story because it reminded me of Diablo a little bit and the Necropolis story in VI. I also remember VII because of how terrible it was.
But I mentioned the story because if the game doesn't look interesting to me in general the story could've been a saving grace.
KB didn't have a good story either, but it sucked me in much faster. Maybe I lost patience over the years after playing too many mediocre games so my judgement is skewed.

can we talk about AoW2 instead
why is it so perfect
why is the art so great
why is the music 10/10

>I also remember VII because of how terrible it was.
Someone actually played VII? How bad was it?

>Maybe I lost patience over the years after playing too many mediocre games so my judgement is skewed.
I know that is the case with me. As the meme goes, I blew out my dopamine receptors. Probably not literally, but I've taught myself to expect payoff faster, and not get invested without being fed breadcrumbs to pull me along.
Bad video games literally ruin good video games.

I remember something about the Necropolis campaign hero being a living elf or something? And her mother/aunt/soap opera leading her, and betrayal, and turning undead or something?
I played it for like 4 hours in 2 sessions, and I had crashes to desktop, my turn wouldn't end so I had to close the game, then my save got corrupted and gave me some Windows error, stupid shit I don't expect even from /agdg/ prototypes.

Good grief. Why did it all have to end like this?

AoW1 was better.

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In what way? I've only played 2

MoM was better

Are the dlc free too? If not, shit vanilla game. Incels would love it though.

what do incels have to do with this? Granted, Necromancy is Always fun in vidya.

I don't know, played 2 for like 10 minutes and didn't like it lmao

The same can be said about the 3rd part. Especially the soundtrack.

It's more like Heroes than Civ.

Played for an hour.
It has that pig-disgusting 2010 fantasy aesthetic and everything was an unckear mess.
It was shit.

don't play on Shitch lmao.

Show us your heroes!

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What about Shadow Magic?

hard to find a good halfling necro portrait, also they are leaders, not only heroes

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>Goblina
>With a JUST hairdo

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>Played for an hour.

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AoW2 is the worst game in the series.

And what do you think of Shadow Magic?

Had it on GOG for years. Still got the Steam version. Don't feel like buying the expansions for now.

It was cool, but AoW2 is a straight-up upgrade. Even if there are no Lizardmen anymore (we can blame Nimue for genociding them). Then we have Shadow Magic which is even better.

AoW3 is good, yet not as good as the previous games. The changes and little content for factions (seriously you can't go and fill up the roster with class units), the lack of any visible differences between class units (racials don't count), and classes being a poor substitute to wizards from the previous games and the magic stuff (instead of making the classes more into sub-classes) is also kind of a big meh. Oh and making Undead into class-based units instead of a playable faction is a fucking insult here.

AoW Shadow Magic was fucking good.

>Worst

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Better than AoW2 in every way. Still worse than AoW3.

>Still worse than AoW3.

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Yeah, it's fun. Some of the stuff from the previous games are locked to DLC, though.

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>yet not as good as the previous games.
That's funny because the instant I start playing SM I am hit right in the face with how much less interesting progression and research are and how blatantly inferior the combat is compared to AoW3's. That's not mentioning AoW2 having one of the worst map generators of any 4X game.

>Tigran Succubi
>Orc Succubi
>Draconian Succubi
>Human Succubi
>Elf Succubi
>Goblin Succubi
>DWARF SUCCUBI
>HALFLING SUCCUBI
>FROSTLING SUCCUBI
We're lucky the Archons aren't around in their living state. Archon Succubi would feel...WRONG. Especially when put next to priests and shit.

At least it has much more stuff for other factions. If AoW3 had as many non-class units as the previous game then it would've been better. Not to mention at least more factions.

>Oh and making Undead into class-based units instead of a playable faction is a fucking insult here.
There are multiple necro races that are individually more interesting to play than the undead faction ever was.

>At least it has much more stuff for other factions.
Doesn't mean shit when the vast majority of those units do far less. The key thing AoW3 is missing is a transport unit like the airship.

I miss the archons bros...

>There are multiple necro races that are individually more interesting to play than the undead faction ever was.
As in the Archon Revenants? I have mixed feelings here. Would've been fun to play an Undead Dreadnought with skeleton/zombie Musketeers.

Yeah, yeah. I see, but still...

Too bad. Enjoy the asshole undead versions of them.