OT, Stardock's MOM influenced game news

[WraithLord]

I can't stress enough how much I agree with you.

I'm not sure how many ppl are are familiar with AOW and AOW-SM. I found AOW not to be particularly balanced yet the races felt unique. On AOW-SM I felt as if the devs. have chosen a shortcut for balancing many more races than the original had by equalizing them, the result was extremely boring and repetitive.

[Torin]

I don´t see the point in unbalanced races.
Just move the slider of difficulty setting if you want a challenge.
In AOWSM you can start with a Pioneer only while AIs start with that and a town. Choose few heroes and nodes.
Anyways, Halfling are pretty weak in both installations. While draconians are dull and powerful, orcs are powerful too.
AOW:SM is like AOW2 but improved, overall better.
I find so annoying the sounds of the shadow world that I play my random maps without shadow.
Almost as annoying as the elephants and female sounds of Dom3.

[Agrajag]

To simplify things with an example, Torin, not aiming for balance can improve the thematic feel for game regardless of difficulty because:
(completely fictional example)
It is much more thematic that 1 elf can kill 10 halflings, rather than elves and halflings having identical stats but the AIs having 10x as many elves.

[Edi]

For the female and elephant sounds, see the soundpack thread in the maps and mods forum. For me, AoW2 and AoW:SM were rather bleh. Never did play AoW:SM a lot. Compared to AoW1 they sucked. Some graphics were prettier and some mechanics changed, but the spirit just wasn't there the same way it was in the original.

[sector24]

Edi said:
For me, AoW2 and AoW:SM were rather bleh. Never did play AoW:SM a lot. Compared to AoW1 they sucked. Some graphics were prettier and some mechanics changed, but the spirit just wasn't there the same way it was in the original.

I'm glad to hear you guys were disappointed with the later games in the franchise. I see references to AoW all the time on the forum and just assumed you guys liked the game, an opinion I could never support. But now that the truth is out we can all be best friends.

[Edi]

sector24 said:

I'm glad to hear you guys were disappointed with the later games in the franchise. I see references to AoW all the time on the forum and just assumed you guys liked the game, an opinion I could never support. But now that the truth is out we can all be best friends.

I loved the original AoW. Still have it installed.

AoW2 can best be characterized as an incomplete beta of AoW:SM, which was what they said AoW2 should have been. They didn't even port the original AoW2 campaign to SM, which just pissed me off even more because I had to play it on the original AoW2. I've played a few AoW:SM games with a friend on a couple of maps, but the spark just isn't there in that game. The only thing I unreservedly love about AoW2 and AoW:SM is the still art like the hero portraits. That and the move and shoot with missile units, which you didn't have in AoW1.

Can't speak for the others, there seem to be many here who like AoW:SM, but for me it will never be more than a shadow of what AoW1 was.

[WraithLord]

My gripe with equalized balance has nothing to do with difficulty. It has to do with boredom. Lets take the example of AOW-SM,
1. All races has same structures, temple, barracks etc.
2. All races has the same units tier structure, lvl1 with a melee unit, ranged unit < lvl2 < lvl3 < lvl4.
3. All races share the same economy model (gold). Most ridiculously even the undead do.

These are but a few that come to mind after three years I've stopped playing AOW-SM. I recall at the time discussing those issues at length and in much more detail at the AOW heaven forums.

Warcraft II and most RTS are also a good example. 2-4 races, if one race gets a flyer then all the rest must have a flyer, doesn't matter if its thematic or not. Same for stealth units, extra powerful thugs and so on.

I actually kind of like balance, but of a different kind - balance in which races that have different mechanics and concepts match a bit differently according to settings of the conflict. One in which race overall strength is non transitive, meaning race A is considered more powerful than race B, race B is considered more powerful the race C, however race C may be considered to be more powerful the race A because, say, it inherently contains many counters to race A.

I think balance is dominions is more akin to the concepts of balance that I like.

[lch]

WraithLord said:
I actually kind of like balance, but of a different kind - balance in which races that have different mechanics and concepts match a bit differently according to settings of the conflict.

That's why I loved C&C Generals: The nations played quite differently, but they could still all be played effectively.