Paradox Interactive Acquires Triumph Studios

[Gusington]

I didn't say that but I wish I did.

[ghostryder]

AOW3 felt like an unfinished series. It never approached what AOW2 brought to the table in both scope, races and options. You could say the graphics improved and the battles were more fun to watch but on the other hand you never defended four walls in a castle -- the layout only allowed frontal attacks and walls were merely 1 turn or 2 turn delays---in effect giving the impression they were props rather than castles. In every instance they were indeed props. A fatal flaw that simply made AOW3 nothing like the series originally brought to the mix- which in short was an expanded Warlords game.

They also dragged their feet big time in modding tools and the game never saw the wealth of mods AOW2 enjoyed. By the time the tools were available everybody had moved on to better and more complete games. It is the mods that keep AOW2 alive-and to this day there is no better LOTR mod even close to what Lord of the Rings in the Third Age - War of the Ring v1.3 bring to the table. par that with a downloaded soundtrack and you have the best LOTR game going- and one tough sucker to win. I sank over 300 hours into beating that mod--it was the most fun I'd had in ages.

If you own age of magic I highly recommend you give it a go. Read the readme for install instructions

http://aow2.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=386

[Boggit]

AOW4: ships with infinite bugs, and paid functionality which should have been in the original release, hidden in otherwise minimal DLC expansions, most of which will be cosmetic, some of which will provide equivalent functionality for the halflings and frostlings as for the elves and orcs, some of which will be pdfs of CRY OF JUSTICE (because I demonstrably liked the series at some point) or more likely the fantasy novels of George MacDonald since his works are in the public domain, and some of which will be licensed use of Sabaton performances from their albums. There will be 45 DLCs eventually, but you can buy the first three before their content is announced as a season pass, valued in its marketing by Paradox at the list price of the game itself but the season pass will be priced at 33% off.

Eventually most of the bugs will be fixed, except for some of the new ones added in by the major DLCs, some of which will break the game even without bugs, and at least two of which will feature alien invasions with ray guns and giant robots. This general stability however will be just in time for the announcement of the forthcoming AOW5. But fans will faithfully mod up AOW4 to be far superior to AOW5 for many years to come, until the cycle repeats as it ever must be.

Spot on! O0

Having invested a lot in DLC for various Paradox games, the never ending DLC is getting really stale for me. IIRC the last Paradox game I bought was HOI3 with all the DLC, only to see the release of HOI4 a year later. To be honest their continued iterations of the games that made them internationally known lack substantial originality over the original (pun intended ;D), and arguably gameplay of some older iterations is actually better IMHO than the new releases. If Paradox started doing something new and original, I'd be excited by them. As it is... ::)

[ghostryder]

I agree with the above--For HOI the 2nd is still the best. HOI3 was an awful mess when released-I was pretty amazed that in the end the game was pretty decent as at the time I thought nothing could save it
but buying all that DLC to get it there felt like I was bailing the game out rather than buying something that added something more to the game. HOI II is still the better of the two. I haven't touched HOI IV.

I think on the other hand all that DLC in CK2 was another thing all together. Of course that game was solid on release so it was like icing on the cake. As was most of the DLC for EUIV.

Vicky however seemed to get only two and was left drying on the shelf as was Rome--something I wish they would return to.

The only 'New' in the last decade is Stellaris--and even now after an expansion and a DLC it still has some major holes. It wasn't a mess like HOI 3 but it wasn't gold from the start like CK2. It seemed like chapter one in a book-- and we've made it to chapter 2 and we're not even half way through the book. I have sank many hours in it as it is well designed but you spend a lot of time looking at the screen waiting for something to happen--as if about a 1/3 of the content is there and your waiting for the 2/3 that'll make it a complete game. That kinda grinds my gears---

But getting back on point I do not think a bunch of DLC would ever save AOW3. As I mentioned--there no longer is 4 walls to defend and the one wall falls as if it's a prop. You cannot under estimate how much this hurt the game strategy wise. In AOW2 it is very possible to defend and win defending with a much weaker force using the walls--plugging the wholes as your range units widdle down the enemy. Now- with that removed the game is merely a research race--as the one with the strongest stack is always going to win.

[solops]

They also dragged their feet big time in modding tools and the game never saw the wealth of mods AOW2 enjoyed. By the time the tools were available everybody had moved on to better and more complete games. It is the mods that keep AOW2 alive-and to this day there is no better LOTR mod even close to what Lord of the Rings in the Third Age - War of the Ring v1.3 bring to the table. par that with a downloaded soundtrack and you have the best LOTR game going- and one tough sucker to win. I sank over 300 hours into beating that mod--it was the most fun I'd had in ages.

If you own age of magic I highly recommend you give it a go. Read the readme for install instructions

http://aow2.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=386

Clear this up for me, please. What do I need to play War of the Ring 1.3.... AoW2 or AoW Shadow Magic? I am not sure what Age of Magic is.
And if the mod is for Shadow Magic, is it compatible with the 1.5 patch?

[Pete Dero]

If you bought a Paradox game between 17th May and 6th July in any currency other than US dollars, you can get a free game or two DLCs.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-07-07-paradox-offers-free-game-or-two-dlcs-after-price-hike-kerfuffle
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/pricing-change-rollback-information-thread-latest-news-here.1031635/

[ghostryder]

You need Age of magic. This version introduced shadow magic- the underworld races. It also fixed many issues found in AOW2. Almost all mods require Age of magic. AOW2 simply died after it's release as it's just so much better. Many differences was the addition of siege weapons. On the flip side of too fast siege combat in AOW3 AOW2 was the opposite where sieges took forever. Shadow magic rebalances them to where they didn't drag on forever. With the host of new races and a much improved editor it's the only version to get.

I got my version on GOG. Buying the sountack off amazon is well worth it. With the mod and soundtrack it absolutely tranforms the game into a LOTR strategy game. The hardest part of installing the mod really boils down to renaming the resource file. You do this to use all the new units and resources created in the mod. Renaming it to .old so you can convert back to play the default game. You select the new resources file by running AOWsetup.exe. On starting the scenerio it is where you should choose the recommended options as well as the custom soundtrack files so they play when you start the game. Remember also to use 'O' once in the game to set options to not follow A.I. units---otherwise turns will take forever as the mod ups the units 100x. I'm serious. I never saw so many units in the game before.