Playing A Game Age of Wonders III PC

Age of Wonders III is a feature-rich and fairly sophisticated take on fantasy-themed 4X, but it just didn't quite "do it" for me.

Like Warlock: Master of the Arcane, Age of Wonders is largely comparable to a fantasy-themed Civ V/VI, but with two significant differences: story campaigns! and tactical combat!

The combat was pretty fun at first, taking direct control of units in the battlefield for optimal positioning and ability usage. It can be a bit hard to predict the strength (or attack range) of enemy units, but this becomes clearer with more encounters and more practice.

Unfortunately, as a mission proceeds and army sizes grow, it becomes evident that this combat system doesn't scale well. Not just because of lengthy battle animations (which can be sped up), but also because of the number of micro-decisions and mouse-clicks involved in controlling each unit; encounters with large numbers of units get really, really dull.

This problem is probably at its worst when you're sieging an enemy town: you need big numbers to overcome the enemy's defenses, and you'll spend multiple turns just moving each unit, one by one, a few steps closer to those defenses.

The minutiae of tactical combat makes it feel less like a "strategy" game and more like chess. (I don't like chess.) So, much as I still like the spirit of the combat system, I eventually resorted to the auto-battle option just to keep things moving along.

Even then, though... well, I'm personally a big fan of the turtling strategy, and Age of Wonders doesn't seem super-cool with that. It worked great at first! because there are a ton of city upgrades to invest in, for boosting production and income and et cetera; and the tech tree, or rather spellbook, also has a nice handful of empire-upgrading options.

But there are no infrastructural defenses that can repel invaders -- you need to have units on a city to realistically keep it. And that, again, doesn't scale well: founding more cities leads to leaving even more units on the payroll, which makes it hard to afford standing defenders everywhere. Age of Wonders seems to lean more into the "best defense is a good offense" line of thinking.

At least in the campaign missions I was playing, there are no Civ-style peaceful victory conditions: no United Nations of Wizards, no magic space rockets. Just war.

Structurally, I'm really impressed by Age of Wonders III, and in a way it's the follow-up I've always wanted to Heroes of Might and Magic III (a childhood favorite). I think it could be a real treat for someone who's super-into turn-based combat strategy.

But my preferred playstyle doesn't seem compatible with the campaign, and I don't find the tactical combat interesting enough to keep working at it.

Progress: Gave up in The Elven Court: Promised Lands campaign mission.