Age of Wonders III (PC)

After 11 years, Dutch developer Triumph Studios has brought out the third installment in the Age of Wonders series, a 4X turn-based strategy game in the vein of genre titans like Might & Magic and Civilization, though that doesn’t mean it won’t end up becoming a classic in its own right. The massive scope of the game easily guarantees over 50 hours of turn-based strategy, much of it at a very high level.

Storyline

Age of Wonders III features a classic high fantasy setting – the Elven Court is at war with the superior forces of the Commonwealth Empire. This alliance of humans and dwarves is now attempting to conquer the last remaining corners of the continent of Athla. The game’s two campaigns spanning five different maps give players the chance to determine the fate of the world’s races and eliminate their enemies. The storyline is actually pretty irrelevant, and you’ll probably forget about it after the mission briefing is over. But this doesn’t hurt the game itself, which is all about building towns, exploring the map, and training units to bring your enemies to their knees.

Gameplay

As I mentioned above, the scope of the game is enormous. There are over 250 different units in all, as well as countless spells, weapons, armor, and building types. Despite all this, the game is actually pretty accessible due to its intuitive controls and straightforward graphical user interface. After the first map, players new to the genre will understand how things work just as well as hardened veterans do.

Of course, that’s where the training wheels come off. After the second map, even veterans will recognize that the “hard” setting could easily be called “nightmare”, “torment” or “ridiculously hard” in other games. The saying “save often, save early” is as old as the computer gaming industry itself, and you should definitely take it to heart playing Age of Wonders III. There’s nothing more annoying than having to give up a nine-hour session because you overestimated yourself and couldn’t be bothered to save regularly. After learning this painful lesson myself, I had to completely rethink my strategy, and wouldn’t you know, the map was all of a sudden relatively easy to master. But even on easy, if you don’t think strategically and use careful tactics, you’ll soon find yourself overrun by enemies.

Sometimes the AI is really clever and will immediately exploit even the slightest weakness or the smallest mistake. On the other hand, this is also where I can offer the first bit of criticism. Even when they have superior numbers and are clearly at an advantage, sometimes the enemy retreats for no apparent reason. Of course, if they didn’t do this, they could destroy several towns and units in just a few moves, maybe even decide the game in their favor. I guess that if the developers had made the AI a bit more aggressive, or more “clever”, the game would have probably been more frustrating than fun. So then again, this keeps things fair, and the balance is well justified.

The hours fly by as you wait glued to the screen to see what your enemies’ next moves will be – you’re usually fighting against several allies of the Coalition or the elves at one time. While all this is going on, you’ll already be planning your tactics for the next few rounds. The goal of the game is have you working out a new strategy move by move, rethinking your approach, and constantly applying what you learn, and this is something the game succeeds at from the get-go. Sometimes it would have been nice if training your units and building up towns and infrastructure went by a bit faster so you could get down to attacking your enemies, which is what all that is for anyway. When your army is big enough and you’ve learned a bunch of combat spells and global spells, you can start conquering the map. The way things normally go, your enemies will have been really busy building up a powerful force of their own, so you’re not likely to have an easy time taking over.

Personally, my favorite way to play is to first conquer a part of the map, expand the towns there to the last buildings and start reviewing my troops before attacking the enemy. Of course, on many maps this can be the absolute worst strategy, but there’s nothing nicer in Age of Wonders III than seeing two huge armies clash in an epic battle and tear each other to shreds.

The combat system is extremely diverse and comprehensive, which is mostly because there are so many creatures, units, and spells at the player’s disposal. Each race has tons of ranged and melee units to choose from, and you can also research and create special units and powerful monsters, which are really expensive, but at the same time are almost always worth the mana and gold they cost. When you attack an enemy unit, you have two options: you can either let the computer automatically determine the outcome and receive the results immediately, or you can lead the troops yourself on a separate map. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages. I should also mention that the hex map plays a role here, meaning that all enemies adjacent to the unit being attacked will automatically join the battle and will have to be defeated as well. Of course, the same goes for your own troops and their allies.

Before a battle begins, a box will appear with the options “manual” or “automatic”. It will also give you an assessment of how the battle is likely to play out, but unfortunately you can’t really count on the projected outcome it gives you. Whether this is just bad programming or they did it on purpose, these pre-battle estimations leave a lot to be desired. So you’d better make sure to regularly save your game before decisive battles. At the same time, this is the only disadvantage of letting battles be automatically determined – the obvious advantage is that it’s much quicker and more convenient to resolve them when you clearly have greater troop strength.

Choosing to control battles manually leaves a lot of room for tactics, as you’ll be able to control the features of each individual unit. Usually the outcome of a manually controlled battle is significantly better than an automatically determined one. Nevertheless you’re still going to have to be very careful and keep your eyes open, because it’s here in direct combat that the AI is particularly strong and knows exactly which units you’re going to need to use to win. It’s going to go after your heroes, for example, in order to win the battle, and the game as a whole.

Some heroes can come back from the other side, but others can’t. If one of these heroes dies, the game is over. But this isn’t a drawback – not at all. Like in Heroes of Might and Magic, you have the option of placing your units on the battlefield yourself. The AI doesn’t pay any mind to the characteristics of its units, however, and places them on combat map in an arbitrary fashion. So you’ll sometimes find ranged units and siege weapons in their front lines where they’ll be wiped out right at the beginning.

Another thing that doesn’t make much sense is that units that have already lost individual soldiers still deal the same amount of damage as units at full strength. Still, once you’ve taken in these quirks of the game, huge battles and minor skirmishes alike are a whole lot of fun and make the game last a good bit longer, all things considered. All in all, the turn-based battles are a well-done component of a game that’s already a very tactically oriented game.

Graphics

The graphics in Age of Wonders III are also pretty impressive. Maps and units have been designed with a lot of care and attention to detail, and even if it’s not exactly necessary for the game itself, you can zoom in close enough to get a good look at the individual units. Even so, the perspective is clear and manageable at all times. Well-animated magic effects in the combat view are also a major plus to the game’s graphics. They decided to leave off on putting in intricately rendered cuts scenes for the storyline, which really isn’t that big a deal anyway. Hero and town menus have been kept simple, but they’re still pretty impressive because of how useful they are.

Sound

It shouldn’t take too long to describe the sound of Age of Wonders III. The storyline is read by professional speakers who do a very good job of providing the briefing for each mission. At the same time, this is the only spoken part of the game. Combat sound effects and the effects accompanying magic spells fit individual units and heroes well. The music is nice and doesn’t get annoying, even when you play for a long time.

Official Gameplay Video