I bought SM today, but I am a hardcore fan of AoW 1. It's the oldest of the three and I believe the learning curve was easier. However manypeople get discouraged by the difficulty of AoW 1. It's pretty hard on you when you just start out. I am a veteran so I don't find it that difficult. You just have to know how to play it. Kids nowadays are too spoiled with easy games. The Witcher 2 got nerfed in difficulty too. I liked the challenge.

What can I tell about age of wonders 1? It has an incredible beautiful soundtrack! The soundtrack alone is worth more than the $6,- of 3% during this promo. I heard it's more story driven than the sequels too.
It has a lot of charm and the units are all described with beautiful hand drawn images.

If you really want to get a good objective opinion, I'd suggest sending a PM to Davespice. He's the creator of the Age of Wonders Email Wrapper. A tool used nowadays to play Play by Email games. He can pinpoint exactly the pro's and cons of each game.

Basically what I gather: Shadow Magic is the more popular version, but among the die hard fans, they prefer AoW1 and claim it to be superior. I will try out shadow magic in the coming days.

I had to reread this four or five times! My eyes do not deceive me! Welcome to the dark side Senteria. No more cute and cuddly AoW1 monsters for you. :)

Re: AoW1 vs. AoW:SM - Personally, I couldn't get into AoW1. But AoW:SM grabbed my attention quickly. I don't know why. The multiplayer in AoW:SM is a ton of fun and the pacing of a PBEM game (in either) suits us folks with jobs and lives.

Thanks for your opinion Senteria. Difficulty doesn't bother me and I'd prefer a game be more on the difficult side and with a learning curve as opposed to easy to pick up and beat. Without AI overly cheating to make things more difficult thru no fault of the player.

For example, I think Eador was a bit unforgiving when I first started playing it. I didn't really understand it and it took a few attempts at starting up the game to finally get the hang of it and now I love it. But its not really difficult in that it just requires a bit of patience and you can't just go gung-ho into every battle. Then again, there's been a handful of games I've played where I've met the enemy early and their hero is WAY more powerful than me in the early game so there's a bit of cheating going on at times I think.

At this point I'm leaning towards getting 1 and 3 before the end of the sale. Just hope there aren't any other really good sales for the next few months :) as I'm getting King of Dragon Pass too,

I've played all the Age of Wonders game and I prefer Shadow Magic for the following reasons:

Combat is quicker, since you don't need to spend one turn each combat positioning your units. Downside is that sometimes some of your units start combat as sitting ducks.

AI is generally better. Ship AI is poorer, though, and AOW1 did have different behaviour for various races.

I prefer the Wizards sitting in their towers in SM to the leaders in AOW1 who were out fighting. If you killed the enemy leader all his units turn neutral and you can recruit them, which sometimes felt too cheap.

Heroes are not as invincible in SM as they were in AOW1.

SM games are generally quicker to play than AOW1 games, due to combat and exploring ruins and such being quicker.

I just tried out SM and it looks interesting. I did the tutorial and most of the time I already knew a lot from AoW 1. However I find the camera in manual combat to be annoying. It's also more unpredictable and it seems you miss a lot. I guess I have to get some practise in.

I think AOW1 is a better game but I liked AOW2:TWT campaign.

I have all three. I played AoW2 campaign long ago (I guess in times it was released...:)), never played SM and now I'm playing AoW1 campaign. I can tell that I like AoW1 even more than AoW2. It has the feeling of polished perfection. And its soundtrack is completely amazing (even compared with beautiful AoW2's one). Maybe it has quite a bit less options in building, spells and units but nevertheless - I like the first game in this series more.

I played all three games and am most addicted to Shadow Magic.

AOW1 is an amazing game, but combat is slow and sometimes silly. The sound track is great, but the gameplay has improved with AOW2 and SM. Wizard towers are really nice and makes global and overland spells very interesting. City upgrading makes more sense and the overall pace of the game is faster than in AOW1.

AOW1 is also really annoying in that you need a battering ram (which moves slooooow) to capture a walled city even if it has no defenders.

Getting your leader killed in AoW1 is Game Over. In SM, you will respawn if you have a wizard tower under your control.

All in all, AOW:SM rules

As far as I'm concerned, Shadow Magic is the best game in the Age of Wonders series. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is better than Master of Magic like some folks claim, but it's a good game in its own right.

I can't really claim to have a definitive answer, but I say to get both 1 and 3. I've played more than halfway through the AoW1 campaign and it feels great when you finally start to figure out how the game works. I haven't had time to get far in 3 yet. (2 is supposed to be good too, but AFAIK it's sort of a bridge from 1 to 3, and you won't really miss much except for additional campaigns if you skip it.)

It can be discouraging to not know what to expect on some maps where you start out at a serious disadvantage. In cases like this, you have to figure out a few ways to secure some income and start snowballing, and scouting in the wrong direction can potentially leave you without enough troops. The relatively brief time I've spent on AoW3:SM gives me the impression that it's an even bigger issue there.

In AoW3:SM, there are in-game dialogs and more hidden role-playing objectives that give you power spikes you might otherwise lose the map with. I feel like AoW1 is more winnable using vanilla strategies that don't depend as much on the scenario, while the initial prompt is still sometimes crucial to knowing what to expect.

AoW3:SM also introduces some extra features and more city management, opening the door for potentially longer games depending on whether you have the ability to force an endgame in the short term. I tend to prefer AoW1 for now for that reason - the already long game length at least feels a bit more controlled, and there's more than enough richness without the city-building mechanics layered on top.

You mean AoW2:SM. Triumph Studios is currently working on AoW3.

Hmmm. I think of it as 3 because GoG sells the three of them separately, but are you saying that SM is best thought of as "AoW2 part 2" or something? AoW2:WT is labeled that way, while SM is just "AoW:SM"

Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is the third entry in the award winning fantasy strategy series. This fan-favorite enhances the series' praised fusion of empire building, role-playing and tactical combat with the eerie Shadow World and battle with races never before seen, across new and diverse landscapes.

I naturally think of it as 3 because of that, but if the fan base thinks of it as a subsequel, then I guess I should conform.

SM is the third game, but it's really just an enchanced version of the rather incomplete (no boat AI was inexusable) Wizard's Throne, so maybe we should label it AoW 2.5? ;-)

This is another vote for SM. It's just got everything, and after all, in a game like this, don't you want everything? :) I'm not saying that the other games don't have their place in my heart, but when I want AOW, I want Shadow Magic!