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

Dwellings can be upgraded only to build units or give local bonuses. In the case of fairy dwellings, the upgrades give magic resistance to friendly units in the dwelling's domain (3 hexes around) and penalize the magic resistance of enemies in the same area. The dwelling can be upgraded to build 3 tiers of fairies (the units that we have supporting us now are tier 2), unicorns (cavalry unit that can teleport a moderate distance once per battle), and nymphs (garbage-tier melee fighter, but can convert low magic resistance enemies - temporarily for humanoids, permanently for animals)

Oh well forget that then, we don't need any local bonuses way up in the far corner of the map right now. Yeah, I guess let's have the fairies make some unit producing buildings in that case.

Much has happened with very little in the way of choices to be made. Lizardheim completed the world's first Great Palace and shortly thereafter became the world's first Metropolis, earning it two landmarks that make our city even more prosperous and productive than its infrastructure and culture already have earned it. With the city's development complete, we construct the Blast Furnace, and are now ready to begin construction of our mighty war engines. While waiting for research to finish on the Flame Tank designs, we construct two sets of Cannons - the first of our artillery pieces.


While our army hunts down the stray roaming monsters, a spy drone standing watch over the underground passage determines that neutral monsters can attack those in the entrance, and may be able to leave altogether. Given the small size of the animals and that Warbob Sexlizard's forces will excel at killing them, we split our army into two - Irane will take the fairies, two units of draconians, and the shock serpents that she has tamed and clear out a second eldritch pit to the northeast while Warbob Sexlizard will take the remainder of our forces, consisting of Per and a mixed bag of infantry, cavalry, and rocketeers, underground to clear out the monster den.

Imane, after clearing out the eldritch pit and its denizens, finds herself quite close to a handful of gold mines. She clears them out, and a second set of settlers is built in Warboburg. We will soon be adding an additional settlement to our mighty empire to take advantage of these mines.

The fights are fairly straightforward, but help reinforce the fact that these fairies that have joined us deal incredible amounts of damage if kept safe.

Underground, we discovered that the den was fortunately quite close by. Upon sparing the helpless creatures in the camp, our alignment was recognized as Pure Good. A pair of golden wyverns and a nymph immediately sprang to our service, appearing beside the holy form of Warbob Sexlizard. With the wyverns as scouts, we discover that it is incredibly unlikely that Wazuhl lives underground. Indeed, there is barely anything worth conquering in the depths without making an incredibly long trip up a channel of lava or embarking on ships and riding up a narrow stream.


Our exploration was cut short, however, due to some disturbing discoveries on the surface. Our Spy Drone flying over the neutral giant village encountered a roaming Eldritch Abomination, while one to the south west discovered another undead dragon and the Haunted Boneyard from which it must have originated. With the dragon and its carrion companions hunting down our drone, we will need to move quickly to put a halt to the spread of the undead to our west. Hopefully this should be the last neutral encampment on our western frontier, as our empire hugs the western edge of the map.

Near the undead lies a nearly helpless village of elves. They have asked our help in dealing with an incursion on their lands, which we of course offered to provide. Whether we will be able to reach them in time or not, however, depends on our priorities.

Also to our south lies a pirate base. The neutral raiders that call this base home are, fortunately, locked to the seas. While they may cause trouble for an army sailing across the lake, they do not pose much of a direct threat. Their proximity to Lizardheim has caused our people some concern, however, so they should be dealt with at some point regardless.


Worse still, we made contact with a faction of dwarves which have occupied a town of halflings dangerously close to our southern border. A dwarven Theocrat named Brenn Grimdotter, she is beset with ignorance. Jealous of the progress we have made and fearful that our discoveries may shine a light on the ignorance which she preaches, she has declared war on us as soon as we met.

Fortunately, with two highly mobile Spy Drones, we are able to keep eyes on Brenn's forces in the area and will know ahead of time before she is able to launch an attack on us. One of these Spy Drones will watch the settlement, while another will move to the east to see if we can find more of her empire, as well as the elusive Wazuhl.

With these potentially dangerous foes discovered in rapid succession, Warbob Sexlizard returns to the surface. Given that we will soon have our first machine units complete at Lizardheim, we leave Per in charge of our mixed forces and move Warbob Sexlizard ahead to take control of our mechanized forces. We begin construction of a Dreadnought's Forge in Warboburg as well to construct Draconian Engineers to support the tanks and cannons built in Lizardheim. We should soon have more than three stacks of units - a modern army under Warbob Sexlizard's capable command, a mixed force under Per Notchson, and an army comprised of natural forces under Imane the Nightowl.

Having finished research in flame tanks, only one technology remains in the Dreadnought unit path - the well named Juggernaut. The final word in artillery, its mortars have incredible range and deal massive area of effect damage. Any enemy that closes with it will find it difficult to pierce its thick steel armor, and once per battle it is capable of firing a devastating broadside which deals massive damage to all units within melee range. However, this would require a lengthy amount of research, when other options are available much more quickly. It will also require an additional building to be built in Lizardheim, and each Juggernaut is both very expensive to construct and takes twice to three times as long to complete as our cannons or flame tanks even when we can build them.


1) What shall we research?
2) Where should our main army move first?
We have three options available -
A) Move to our southwest first. This will allow us to rescue the elven village, secure our southwestern front, and possibly construct an additional settlement as well to take advantage of the bed of resources located there. The disadvantage of this option is that it will take the bulk of our forces away from the path along which Brenn can potentially attack.
B) Attack Brenn's closest settlement. A rich village surrounded by gold mines, we would both reduce the threat that she presents while also gaining resources for ourselves. The disadvantage of this option is that we will almost certainly fail the quest of the elves, and may find ourselves under attack by the undead - especially dangerous on account of the fact that there is an undead dragon roaming about.
C) Clear the lake of pirates, then sail to the elve's defense. The disadvantages of this route is that we will still need to move further west to clear out the undead camp, and that we may move right past the undead dragon which spawned from it.
3) Should Imane move south to reinforce the forces of Warbob Sexlizard once again in our war against Brenn, or remain in the north to guard Jazztown and our newly settled outpost from the Eldritch Abomination?

Surface map will be posted shortly.

1) Absorb Stackelburg and rename it
2) New Sexlizard
3) Pest Control Squad and Vision Range Upgrade (and Rapid Reload if it's any good, otherwise stick with Tunneling).
4) Leave the dwelling to produce income, unicorns are a bit too fanciful for a proper progress-oriented military. Unless we get some for free, of course.

e: dammit Sai

Part Two:

1) Research Expansionism and Rugged Pioneers if they're any use, and then sure Juggernauts why not.

2) (A) Secure our southwestern front! Wazuhl has yet to show any signs of an actual military offensive, surely these dwarves will be similarly cowed by our righteous might.

3) "Jazztown" is a valuable asset to Progress and should be defended from the vagaries of this abomination. Leave Imane on our northern front.

1) Expansionism and Tropical Empire (because it sounds chill and Warbob Sexlizard is clearly a very chill dude).

2) A

3) Have Imane guard Jazztown and the new settlement.

1) Expansionism and Tropical Empire (because it sounds chill and Warbob Sexlizard is clearly a very chill dude).

2) A

3) Have Imane guard Jazztown and the new settlement.

yez

We have explored only between 30-40% of the surface, but control most of what we survey. Thanks to our spy drones, and relatively dense civilization, we have not needed to build watchtowers to spot hostile movement.

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Spoiler

1) Expansionism and Tropical Empire (because it sounds chill and Warbob Sexlizard is clearly a very chill dude).

2) A

3) Have Imane guard Jazztown and the new settlement.

Tropical Empire is a spell that makes all of the land under our control become warmer. It comes from our Fire mastery. It is fairly expensive in upkeep, and does little other than make our Draconian cities slightly happier.

1) Research Expansionism and Rugged Pioneers if they're any use, and then sure Juggernauts why not.

Expansionism makes Outposts (the lowest level of settlement) build faster and grow more quickly. The bonus is lost when it becomes a Village.

Rugged Pioneers gives our settlers and builders higher hit points and more movement speed.

Oh right, we also have an outpost to name.

Tropical Empire is a spell that makes all of the land under our control become warmer. It comes from our Fire mastery. It is fairly expensive in upkeep, and does little other than make our Draconian cities slightly happier.

That is not quite as chill as I imagined. We should probably go with Expansionism/Rugged Pioneers and leave the piña coladas for another day.

Warbob Sexlizard swings by Lizardheim to collect the first of our mechanized armies, when our spy drones discover that Brenn has assembled a large contingent of halflings and dwarves and is moving north alongside a group of settlers. Warbob Sexlizard reroutes with Warbob Sexlizard's army to intercept them, but the cowards retreat back towards their city upon sighting our glorious forces.

While this is happening, Per Notchson is attacked by the undead dragon and its carrion companions. He is victorious, but our stalwart dwarven spearmen lose their lives to the foul creature. Nevertheless, his progress is otherwise unimpeded and so he is able to reach the elves in time to rescue their settlement. They reward his service with a unit of archers and their fealty. As we now have four different races under our control, we complete the Empire Quest for diversity, and a mixed group of priests (two human, one dwarven, and one draconian) join Warbob Sexlizard. We elect to wait a turn for a unit of musketeers and an engineer to complete, to make our tanks and cannons more effective, and Warbob Sexlizard now has two full stacks ready for combat. As Brenn flees before Warbib Sexlizard's power, we reroute the army to the south.

To the far east, we meet the last other rival in our battle for supremacy. It is a shifty eyed human archdruid. We complement her on her dreadlocks, and she promptly declares war on us and executes our scouts.


Our scouts to the southeast also finally discover Wazuhl's demesne. His lands lie on the opposite ends of the map from ours, making our meeting rather odd and his declaration of war largely unimportant.

Imane is able to hunt down the Eldritch Abomination. This thing is accompanied by four wisps, which are largely irrelevant, but is no easy foe for even a full army to defeat. Its melee attacks deal spirit and blight damage, it can spit lightning over a huge area once every round, and is capable of dominating creatures that come too close to it.


Fortunately, with two fairies and an excellent archer commander, we are able to bring it down while losing only our baby lightning snakes. We lose a lot of babies on the front lines; this is to be expected with effective baby use.

Per Notchson's forces move further to the west and defeat the undead menace, but we lose our halfling rocketeers and the newly enlisted elven archers to achieve victory. Our western shores should now be entirely safe - we certainly did lose troops that could have lived if Warbob Sexlizard was not needed to defend Warbob Sexlizard's empire, but Warbob Sexlizard should be able to engage Brenn on Warbob Sexlizard's own given the size of the army now under Warbob Sexlizard's command. Per Notchson will now roam about the western wildlands securing independently owned mana nodes while being reinforced from Liarsberg and our newly acquired, yet unnamed elven settlement.

Meanwhile, Warbob Sexlizard presses the assault.

With two full stacks containing numerous modern units, we will soon be poised to free the halflings from Brenn's theocracy.

Further updates to come.

Our spy drone sees that Brenn's settlers and their guards are separated from the Theocrat herself and her retinue, meaning that she has only ten rather than fifteen units defending the outpost.


We seize the initiative and storm the settlement.

Our cannons are able to make short work of their gate while damaging the light flying units perched behind it. Given the lack of area of effect damage in the enemy army, our units group up tightly, forcing their ranged units to do the same if they want to damage our forces. They make the fatal mistake of clustering behind a wooden wall.

With two flame tanks unleashing burning death in a massive area in front of them, we are able to torch the walls and those behind them over a series of two rounds, wiping out almost the entirety of their defensive force.

Our siege cannons pummel the far wall, and Warbob Sexlizard personally finishes the Theocrat with a bullet to the face. She will be reborn in her Throne City after a few turns and at a cost to their mana, but the warlord she had with her is lost forever.

The rest of their army is primarily melee ranged, and is annihilated by fire when they finally stream out from their shattered fortress.

Brenn's army is crushed beneath the steel tide of Progress, and we have not lost a single unit in doing so.

However, we have received troubling reports - Cerrin Treefolk, the mad archdruid, has completed two Empire Quests of her own. 'Sage,' the quest for completing a T6 research project (which the Juggernaut is for us) is one that we were only two turns away from completing, and means that she will have access to two bonus spells from the 'secret' list (which includes the invaluable 'Summon Dire Penguin' spell). While we don't know exactly what she discovered, it is likely to be Summon Horned God, which is a powerful melee unit capable of calling down lightning, to which our machines are vulnerable. In the same turn, she has also completed the Monoculture Empire Quest, meaning that she now has six settlements of one race. Clearly she is a genocidal maniac, and must be stopped.


Fortunately, Imane is still in the area. She is able to find the newly created outpost and capture it.

Now we have some decisions to make -

1) What shall we name our three-four newly attained settlements?
2) Where shall Warbob Sexlizard move Warbob Sexlizard's glorious army? Further to the southeast to battle the severely weakened theocracy and potentially the armies of Wazuhl, to the west to tame the land firmly under our control, or across the world to fight the army of the archdruid (most likely the strongest of our opponents)?
3) Shall we absorb, migrate, or raze the two settlements which we have captured from our rivals? Presumably we should retain the halfling settlement (even if we replace its current inhabitants), but the outpost in the northwestern edge of our territory may be difficult to hold.
4) We are running into constraints with our mana use. Constantly resummoning our fleet of spy drones and maintaining mana fuel cells over our core cities is expensive, and leaves us with little to spend on building our advanced buildings and units, to say nothing of combat spells. What should our priorities be with regards to spending our mana? Empire development, combat spells, spy drones, or constructing advanced units?

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Spoiler

Map of the entirety of the surface, of which we have explored almost half.

Edit: Put underground entrances on and added some spacing for clarity.

1.) I think it's time for our loyal generals to get their chance in the spotlight. The newly captured outpost will be called Imaneville, the elven settlement will be Monocleburg, and the Halfling Village will be called Brenn's Grave as an insult to the dead, ignorant fools who decided to stand in our way.

2.) Warbob Sexlizard should move southeast and attack the Theocracy while they're still weak.

3.) Absorb both settlements. We're not monsters like our opponents, and we refuse to sink down to their level. Be prepared to abandon Imaneville if a much stronger force attacks from the east, we can always recapture it again later, but losing about a fourth of our army at once would be real bad.

4.) Spy Drones > Advanced Units > Empire Development > Combat Spells. We still only have a vague idea where the rest of our enemies are, and we should try to know the layout of their land before just charging right in with our armies. Spy Drones can be moved further down on the list once we've explored more of the map.

1) I stamp all of Coldblooded's choices with my seal of approval, bar the last one. The poor halflings who inhabit the settlement are not responsible for Brenn's ignorance, and should not be mocked now that they have joined the forces of Progress (useless as they may be). Instead, follow your earlier statement and name it Perville, Monocleburg being a general Dreadnoughty name in the first place.

2) Crush the Theocracy so they will not threaten us again.

3) Agree with Councillor Coldblooded.

4) And agreement once again.

The poor halflings who inhabit the settlement are not responsible for Brenn's ignorance, and should not be mocked now that they have joined the forces of Progress (useless as they may be). Instead, follow your earlier statement and name it Perville, Monocleburg being a general Dreadnoughty name in the first place.

This is acceptable. Also I forgot about the settlement on the west coast. That one should be called San Salamandra, in honor of the legendary draconian missionary, Sammy the Salamander.

Short, but momentous update -
Brenn has surrendered! Wazuhl has proven to be not only tyrannical, but treacherous as well! Following the defeat of Brenn's main army, Wazuhl attacked a border settlement, capturing and preparing to raze it. In order to protect her people, Brenn begs to join our powerful empire. In her last public message, Brenn betrays the ignorance inherent in our opposition by misspelling 'fealty.'


Upon accepting, we discover that her throne city had been underground the whole time! In fact, it was literally half a turn of movement out of sight of our scout before we returned to the surface.


We immediately summon two scout drones and set them to exploring the underground, but we will need the assistance of dwarven prospectors to dig through the walls and discover what other secrets lie beneath the surface.

In Brenn's throne city is only one unit - a trebuchet, which we will leave there to defend against roving creatures. Brenn herself proves to be a capable supporting unit, if not an excellent combatant. She gives units under her command a staggering +200 to morale and can heal units at no cost every other round. She would be quite useful as a commander to any stack of units that we can give her.

While Brenn repented and joined our cause, not all of her people felt the same way. Too set in their ways to accept the ways of Progress, the two settlements of 'Adamant' and 'Mirefield' both choose independence and rebellion over accepting our rule. Adamant is quite nearby and easily captured by Warbob Sexlizard and Warbob Sexlizard's engines of war - the crusaders guarding the city test their faith against fire and cannon and are found wanting. The second city, Mirefield, is across a narrow strait making it two turns of travel from our main contingent, but with the outpost that Wazuhl captured even closer, we turn our attentions towards this greater threat.


Wazuhl himself is in command of this group, but they are both outnumbered and outclassed and should be annihilated once our main army engages them.

Meanwhile, Imane advances into Cerrin Treefolk's territory, and spots a village under the command of one of her generals - a human warlord armed with a stolen prototype rifle. Though he has a full stack of six units in the village, our units are primarily flying, meaning that we can ignore the walls and fight head on as though it were an open field. The attacks of our fairies, in addition to dealing elemental damage, cause Brain Rot, draining the spellcasting ability of the warlord and preventing him from enhancing his troops more than once or driving our troops berserk. It is nevertheless a hard fought battle, and we lose a golden wyvern and the draconian chargers which have been with us since they were hatchlings.

Upon capturing the city, we see that Cerrin's main army, consisting of no fewer than 11 units, is holed up in a city which shares a border with the newly freed village. Fortunately, with the loss of the chargers and the acquisition of a golden wyvern mount from her earlier exploration, Imane's army is now entirely flying (or floating, which amounts to a similar advantage). She and her forces abandon the village and flee into the mountains to its south, but vow to return once we have more forces available. Cerrin recaptures the village in our wake.

We are joined by our fifth hero - an elven sorceress named Lealia the Sheer. As she has joined us at Sexberg, it will be some time before she is able to catch up to the front lines and prove her worth, but she has a decent arsenal of potent lightning spells, if we ever have the mana to waste on them.

With research in Juggernauts complete and one turn away from completion of our Industrial Plant in Lizardheim, we will soon be able to build the final word in artillery. After researching Juggernaut construction, we immediately learn Reassemble. Perhaps the defining spell in the Dreadnought arsenal, Reassemble allows us to bring a destroyed construct back into the fight at 30% of its health. This means that we can use our warmachines very aggressively without fear of their permanent loss, as long as we retain enough mana to bring them back to life and do not lose them when they are out on their own.

Finally, we celebrate the construction of our Magic Item Forge by building a Friendship Gun. It is a rocket launcher that allows the wielders to charm enemies into joining us. It's rather expensive and has sadly low chances of success against high tier enemies, but it's surely worth making at least one.
(Other alternatives proposed by our magic item research team - Chicken of Seduction, a pot of poop that allows the user to dominate undead, a Picnic Basket that launches fireballs, and boots that make all units in the stack 'volunteers' that require half of their normal upkeep)

Here are the choices that we face -
1) Where should we assign Brenn? She can either
A) Catch up with Warbob Sexlizard and assume command of the secondary stack of war engines and support, leaving one unit to follow along on its own
B) Wait for a new army to be assembled from our heartland, and then expand into the underground, capturing independent resources and potentially clearing out bandits.
2) Where should we assign Lealia? She can either
A) Move directly to Imane and join her essentially as a potent supporting unit
B) Wait for a new army to be assembled from Sexberg and our heartland, and then lead a reinforcing stack to the northern conflict.
3) What should we research, now that Reassemble is completed?

4) Should Liarsberg and Warboburg make the heavy investment in an Industrial Plant (300 mana, 200 gold, and 4 turns of building) to produce additional Juggernauts, or should they restrict their production to lower tier units like flame tanks, cannons, and engineers?
5) What should our next magic item be? [The game lets you choose the sprite for custom items. Throw out suggestions for what you want the items to do and I'll see what's possible. They cost a fair bit of mana to build and take two turns to produce]

Small, unlabelled map of our half of the world -

1) B)

2) A)

3) Force Field. If that's not a good investment, Mana Fuel Factory. Also, what does Weapon Kit do?

4) Always invest in intense destruction

5) The Rubber Ducky of Animosity

Whomever holds it can goad an enemy within their line of sight into fighting them FIREBALLS

3) Force Field. If that's not a good investment, Mana Fuel Factory. Also, what does Weapon Kit do?

Force Field gives a friendly unit resistance to elemental damage. Mana Fuel Factory makes our machinery cost less gold. Weapon Kit is a combat spell that temporarily gives an Infantry or Pikeman unit three abilities - Throw Net, which immobilizes an enemy if it fails to resist, Sabotage, which can deals damage to a wall, gate, or machine unit in melee range, and Fire Blunderbus, which deals a small amount of damage in an area in front of the unit. It's not super useful for us because we don't have very many infantry.

Mana Fuel Factory it is then

B)
A)
3) Force Field as we're going to need protection from the lightning spells of our Archdruid foe eventually
4) We will turn the hills to gold! (maximum juggernaut)
5) Volunteer boots

Whomever holds it can goad an enemy within their line of sight into fighting them FIREBALLS

There's at least three different fireball-like abilities. There's one that shoots up to three smaller shots, one that shoots a single area of effect shot, and one that only damages one target but debilitates those in an area around it.

There's all kinds of weird effects in the item builder, too - like under the shield/quiver category, we can add damage of basically any element to all ranged attacks (it works for muskets, but is better for the multishot abilities)

can the crossed-out ability be simulated in any way?

There's no explicit taunt, but there's a fear effect, a dominate effect, and a 'disgusting' effect (makes them smell so bad, their morale and the morale of adjacent units is lowered).

Disgusting it is then. If it was possible, I would combine domination and disgustation to create Shrek.