(This is for Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, primarily, but I could technically play the original Age of Wonders game too.)

So, since I randomly felt like checking out the Age of Wonders community website, and saw some moderately surprising recent progress(and realized that Triumph Studios is not actually gone, which I thought they were for whatever reason), I thought I would ask the relevant question here.

"Does anyone play, or has anyone played and enjoyed the Age of Wonders games?"

If so, I thought it might be fun to get some games going with some fellow DLP'ers. I haven't played it online with any regularity for nearly seven years, but I am interested in trying out the Strange Lands and MP Evolution mods. Or even just the standard game(presumably with the UPatch installed).

Real-time games would be preferable, of course, but I could also do PBEM if necessary, even though I've always done real-time before.

Lastly, this is not for old players only, and if anyone new to the series is interested too, then I'm sure [we] can get you up to snuff(more or less) in a timely manner.

 

Really? Huh, I'm honestly surprised that not even one other person on the forum has played the game(or at least one other person that checks the Games subsection). Ah well...

 

I've heard of Age of Wonders a couple of times before. but I've never been able to find out how the game works. I've heard it described as a RPG/strategy hybrid. Is it a turn-based strategy game like Civilisation, or is it more like Warcraft 3, with its blend of RPG and RTS?

It's an old series - what makes you continue playing it?

It's relatively cheap on Steam - I might start playing if you can convince me.

EDIT: I hope you don't mind the questions.

 

I would love to do so, and I will later(probably just edit this post, if you haven't posted yet), but I'm just checking DLP quickly, and have a long day ahead of me before I can probably check again. So, I'll be back in probably around twelve hours.

---------- Post automerged Nov 1st, 2011 at 01:20 AM ---------- Previous post was Oct 31st, 2011 at 08:36 AM ----------

Sorry, about the delayed response. I got home late from doing work, and then a mix of being tired, and...blah. Anyway, I'll come up with something similar to what I was talking about with my friend, and try to type it up in the thirty minutes between two of my classes tomorrow. Otherwise, well, it may not happen again, unless I feel like it despite being tired from working.

 

TL;DR Get the game, because it's fun .

Anyway... I have some time at the moment, so let me see what I can come up with. This would be a bit easier, if like the friend I referred to, you had at least played the original.
(Note: Unless you really want to play the campaign for the second game, there is no real reason to get it, when Shadow Magic is a standalone expansion that expands upon it. Either get just Shadow Magic, or possibly get the original game too, if you are interested in it.)

Also, all of this could be further researched by checking the site linked in my first post. They have game guides, an online copy of the game's manual, and various other resources.

First off, I should clarify that when I said "Real Time" I had meant "in Real Time," since it does also have a multi-player option where after you finish your turn, it forwards the game file to the next person in a "Play By E-Mail"(PBEM) format.

The game is a turn-based game(or TBS/RPG perhaps), but instead of the fully player-by-player turn format, you can also opt to play in "Simultaneous" mode(the standard for online play), where every is doing their turn for the 'game day' at the same time, and it transitions to the next game day either once everyone ends their turn, or after an optionally pre-set time limit is reached. Tactical battles, as opposed to auto-calculated ones, will pause an existing turn timer while they are fought out.
When I first played, the 'House Rules' were a five, then later three, minute turn timer, for non-battle actions... the last time I played, it was two minutes. That said, I don't mind scaling up, or even playing without a turn timer initially.

Okay then, at it's core, the game is a TBS type, which is sadly a dying breed, with the exception of the oh-so-similar, but not necessarily un-entertaining, Civilization games. The game goes day by day, with unit production and spell research taking a certain amount of turns(modified by production capability of a town, and amount of magic points dedicated to research rather than mana stockpile generation, respectively). Units also have limited movement range, although the common minimum is usually around six spaces, and up to twelve, before roads or dense vegetation changes things. Combat also is turn based, with one side taking an action for all of their units(Defender goes first), then the other, and back and forth.

The main RPG elements come in two ways. First off, the fact that you get heroes that can reach up to thirty levels, and can either increase their stats or learn new abilities, with each level up. Although when playing competitively online, I admit that it's somewhat rare for a Hero to get beyond the mid-single digits, due to several factors. The second, and lesser(although still valuable) portion, is that all units can gain ranks to silver and gold, at each rank gaining some extra stats(atk/def/hp at silver, and dmg/res/hp at gold), as well as potentially gaining new or improved active and passive abilities.
It's worth noting that, in the original game, your main leader unit was more or less a standard Hero as well, except losing them meant you lost. In the second, and in Shadow Magic, they transition to being a Wizard, whose primary purpose is to ensure you have magical domain by guarding a Wizard Tower in one of your towns. When in a town with a Wizard Tower, all other sources of magical domain that you own will radiate magic domain around them(to a particular distance relative upon the location/unit), in which you can cast global, enchantment or combat spells.
Also, as long as you still own a Wizard Tower at the start of your turn, your Wizard will re-spawn at the start of the turn if killed they had been killed the previous one, albeit having lost some reputation(primarily used to determine the chance of a Hero randomly offering to join). Statistically, Wizards are about equivalent to between the two middle-tiers of units(between Tier 2 and 3), although certain mods change this drastically.
It's a transition, but it was also always potentially a huge risk using them to fight with in the original game.

Hmmm, there are fifteen different races(with Shadow Magic's three new ones), five each of 'good', 'neutral' and 'evil' alignments, with one each of 'pure good' and 'pure evil' out of those. You can usually use units one core-shift along the scale from you... unless you select the Anarchist negative trait at game creation. Each race has their own particular quirks and specialties, as well as their own selection of units.

There are also six schools of magic(seven if you count the standard-available "Cosmos" spells), including the standard four elements, as well as Life and Death, and you can either select a Specialist in a school, thereby getting all spells from it, or use custom selection. If you use custom selection, you can divide six points between the six schools, with a maximum of four points in one school, determining the amount, and level, of spells you can get from particular schools. Each school has some form of unit enchantment, combat magic, unit summons, domain-wide spells and utility over-map spells. Each school also has a "[School Name] Mastery" spell, which transforms all magic nodes on the map into your type, as well as gives you domain around them. Of course, said spell takes a lot to research, and several turns worth of casting points to actually cast.


Aiyah~ I could talk on and on, but it would probably go into specifics that don't really hold much weight without some actual knowledge about the game itself. Rather, I would be willing to answer any other questions that you may have about the game.

As for why I have kept playing it over the years, well... I like the art style and flavor text lore for units, the game-play, the music and the map editor. Also, as of Shadow Magic, they allowed you to directly install tools to modify the game resources, thus enabling very easy self-modding of the game.
Of course, a few people have worked to modify portions of the executable itself, but what you can do with changing the Custom Resources alone, be it simply modifying what abilities units have/learn, and their parameters, or even adding new units and unit graphics, is quite expansive. Especially with how accessible it is. I've certainly messed around with it before. That, and the map editor is both easy to use, but can allow some beautiful and/or complex creations. I've dabbled at various times with the map editor... but I never did finish my most involved piece of work.

Anyway, I already have two friends which will both be playing the game again soon, so if you want to start up as well, then...


---------- Post automerged Nov 3rd, 2011 at 12:32 AM ---------- Previous post was Nov 2nd, 2011 at 02:01 PM ----------

...I guess I should add that when I was talking with my friend later today, he stated the intent to simply torrent the game. That being since it isn't a game that requires a CD-Key, and online play was done via TCP/IP or LAN anyway. Yes, the game came with the option to install Gamespy, and some people originally used it(myself included), but it was as a chat room to gather, before people would then decide on a Host, who would give his IP address for the other players to join.
(The create game function in Gamespy didn't work properly with Age of Wonders)

Now though, with IRC, Ventrilo, Teamspeak, and such things being so common, no one seems to use Gamespy to gather for games anymore, from what I can tell.

Of course, there is nothing bad about getting it via Steam, though, aside from the inability to play without Steam, which doesn't really matter to some people. I still have my game disc, from when I bought it when it came out in... 2003.(and the discs for the previous games as well, which are from 2002 and 1999)

Oh, and while some of the information is a little suspect, here are the Wikipedia pages, which give a relatively decent synopsis of the functionality of Shadow Magic and the original(the page for AoW 2 is comparatively empty):
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic
Age of Wonders

The latter link may not be completely relevant to Shadow Magic, but the general gameplay ideas are still accurate. Minor differences include that Magic works very slightly differently, hero level ups are different(this was actually kind of disappointing...), and there are no Altars in Shadow Magic(but there are plenty of other neutral structures). Towns also work both similarly and quite differently between the two, but it doesn't mention the relevant point. The only difference with towns, from what's stated, is that in Shadow Magic, you can capture an unoccupied town, even if it has a wall, with a non-siege/flyer/wall-climbing unit.

 

I've heard of this before. Haven't played it yet though. Is this game like Civilization 5?