Let's Play Age of Wonders III: User Input Required

We have a consensus on True Sight and Healing, then.

Speaking of wide bases - the way that Age of Wonders handles the 'infinite city spam' strategy that exists in 4x games is that population grows based on existing population rather than number of settlements, barring infrastructure and sites. As a result, additional settlements are worth making when one can't spend gold quickly enough or when there are sites to take advantage of. We will want to build settlers at some point to take advantage of the two gold mines and magma forge between Lizardheim and Liarsberg.


The battle to capture the Draconian town is hard fought. Stacked behind their walls, we have no choice but to allow them to get the first shots off on our units. A bold charge through their barricade allows us to close on one of their fireball flinging Flamers, and a Flashbang from Warbob Sexlizard disables the other temporarily, allowing us to avoid serious area of effect damage. Nevertheless, a group of Chargers, enchanted by their Elders, scores a lucky blow on our own Draconian chargers, and the first unit is lost to us on our campaign. Once in melee range, however, our numerical superiority allows us to flank the defendants and slaughter them with minimal damage received in return.

The town is ours, and will be absorbed into our empire. It, too, may now be named.

To its north, our Spy Drone sees two roving bands of rogues. There must be a camp nearby, and an active one at that. We cannot leave our newly captured city undefended until they are dealt with, lest our town be snatched away from under our noses.


One of the two groups dares to enter the borders of our newly acquired town. In the narrow confines of the mountain pass, we can only fight them with a single stack a time. This proves to be no problem, and they are quickly eliminated. The second group is still somewhere to the north of our town, but we cannot see them at this time.

Our Spy Drone has met a friendly dwelling of Fae. Dwellings are similar to settlements in that they can produce units and expand our zone of control. Unlike settlements, however, dwellings can build only the upgrades unique to their race. Units produced at dwellings tend to be stronger than the basic units able to be built in ordinary settlements, but weaker than the units available with technological advancement. At the moment, we are too far to capture this settlement if we choose to enlist them with warfare, and we ask for 500 gold for the honor of joining our empire, a price which we cannot afford.

To the west of our settlement is a Boneyard, a site which spawns undead menaces known as Archons. Like the eldritch pit and the bandit camps, it is worth dealing with this threat swiftly. Unlike the other two camps, it is both well defended and can spawn some truly dangerous groups that even our whole army would have trouble facing. It is best to deal with it before it does so.


This battlefield has a very worrying effect - any living units that die will be reanimated as Archons and join the battle as enemies. We will need to be very careful to protect the lives of our troops during this fight, as things can quickly swing against us if we lose a stack of troops.

The battle starts with the undead spellcasters cursing several of our soldiers. This severely reduces their movement speed and gives them a chance to fumble their attacks. These spellcasters are especially dangerous to our Draconians, because they fire bolts of frost.

They march their infantry forward, while their archers focus on Imane. We manage to destroy one group of infantry and our rocket launching jesters have suppressed one of their mages. They strike back by destroying an unlucky group of Draconian Crushers, which will join the fight as undead on the following turn. Luckily, their casters had to approach in order to kill the Crushers, which allows us to remove all three of them, leaving them with only their archers, and now two units of infantry. On the following turn we are able to finish them, losing no additional units but taking heavy damage on our Hatchlings.

Our victory is rewarded with two magic items, which grant Warbob Sexlizard additional damage on melee attacks, magic resistance, and bonus damage to any other undead we may encounter.

We have finished research down the Dreadnought unit path up to Musketeers. We can continue down this path by researching the ability to produce Golems, or diversify.


Lizardheim has finished the Warbob Sexlizard Hospital at Lizardheim. We may now build either the Siege Workshop to further our production, or a Laboratory to improve our research.

Finally, our newly captured (unnamed) town needs to set its production as well. It already has a Builder's Hall completed, so we can use it to construct a group of settlers to found a new settlement in between our three existing ones to take advantage of the magma forge and gold mines located there or we can construct local improvements.

There is an independent controlled Inn to the west of our army. This will allow us to hire additional units (albeit at an increased gold cost to what they would ordinarily cost to build) to supplement our army which has now been reduced to eight units, but we would need to first defeat its denizens, a group of Halflings which should pose no problem.

Our Spy Drone has found the source of the bandits - a camp to the west of the fae dwelling. Without the ability to board ships, however, it is quite far away.


So options -
1) Where should our army go?
2) What should we research?
3) What should we build in Lizardheim?
4) What should we build in our new city?
5) What should we name our new city?