I have played around with AoW 3, and so far it is a mixed bag.

Issues so far are:
1) Cannot get it to run under Win-XP SP3 32bit. Does work under Win-7 64 bit however.

2) There is NO manual. It is one of the annoying in game reference books. There is no way to play the game with the manual open, you have to stop the game open the manual. You can't see the map with the manual open. If you want to find something you can't just look at the other screen where the .pdf manual should be, you have to open up and dig through the menu entries to find what you want.

There is a search feature, but it isn't as useful as one would hope for. For example if you search for 'orc' you do in fact get 'orc', along with all the Sorcery entries too. In fact you get every entry with the letters orc in it (force, scorching, etc.). When going through the on-line help there are hyperlinks, so these are good, but there is no way to go back to the previous page, so it is a one way path down the maze and to go back one step you need to remember all your steps after you initially entered the maze.

There is no nice summary that I can find. For example what do all the icons on the map mean or the progression of buildings and what they allow you to build. They are all individually listed on separate pages in the manual.

On-line manuals may be useful for looking things up once you know them, but for learning what is going on I find them completely useless and utterly annoying.

If you don't like the text font or the text size is too small, there is no way to change it.

You can't open the help file when choosing what spell to research, which I guess is just as well since the spell definitions are pretty useless. Cloak and Dagger says it increases spell casting points, but by how much? Is it worth getting or not?

All in all a very bad user interface design for help.

3) Do you want to play a local LAN game, can't do that. You apparently MUST play an internet game connecting to the publishers website. No DRM? Single player it appears there is no DRM, multiplayer yes there is DRM. Was hoping for multi-player on a local LAN. Chances are I am going to take GoG up on their money back guarantee just for this reason.

4) When you zoom out you have high clouds floating over the map. How do you turn off the high clouds on the main map? It simply obscures the map and provides no useful input for game play. Extremely annoying and counter productive to boot!

5) There is no way to setup your troops before combat. So you enter combat with your troops randomly placed. This is worse than previous Age of Wonder games where you could initially place your troops.

6) The first two battles the enemy just charged me. The third battle they were in a fort, so of course they all ran out the front gate to charge me yet again, in a nice long line making them easy to pick off. If this is representative of the AI, I am not impressed.

Perhaps they have the on AI easy for the intro scenario, even though I picked medium, perhaps I wanted hard? What does hard really mean? What advantages does the AI get? The lack of real information is annoying. The AI does appear to want to concentrate their fire on one unit to eliminate it, so that is good.

So far I am not impressed, and am annoyed at the help system and general user interface. Perhaps it will get better as the game progresses, however the lack of local LAN play is likely a killer for me, as we get together to play games at a cabin, and there is no internet access there.

Hrm, though I agree on most of your points, my experience was entirely positive.

Lots of minor details, but none even dented it.
Overall, it feels like one of the few really polished releases of the last year. No server deaths, no login issues, no constant CTDs, no driver issues, no nothing. Told a colleague about it half an hour ago and he thought I was 1.4.th bullshitting him... sad state the industry is in really. :(

Anyhow, on to the points.

Manual
Neither did I mind this - I actually prefer having an expansive ingame reference over a pure "manual" because the latter is only useful once, right at the start - nor did I have any issues understanding anything. The only confusing part was range of attacks, and that was easily found via search.
The game is quite self-explanatory. But in any case, huge bonus points for the ingame reference, haven't seen one this extensive since Age of Mythology.

Local LAN
Yeah, that's just bad. I'm tempted to forgive them, but more because MMO-gaming and D3 have sort-of numbed me in this regard. It's somewhat consistent with what games have been doing for years though, although usually it was ok to simply register a serial somewhere and then play LAN offline.

Zoom out
Never minded this at all. Rather I think it adds a noticeable amount of atmosphere to the zoomed out view. :o
Though ofc, a setting would be good to accommodate everyone.

Setup troops
I rather like that this cannot be done. Gives more importance to having agile units or access to different kinds of movement replenish or sprinting.

Enemy AI
No clue. I think it's stupid, but until two days ago I was still playing Master of Magic, and it feels more advanced than that. It's target-priority is weird, it seems to always gun either for the archers (smart) or my hero (smarter), but do so in a really awkward fashion where it doesn't stick to the target properly.
Still, dangerous enough that I ended up losing more in manual combat than auto most of the time.

Quote: but there is no way to go back to the previous page, so it is a one way path down the maze and to go back one step you need to remember all your steps after you initially entered the maze.

Actually there is, although, granted, not really very noticeable: at he bottom of the page there is a back and forward turned corner on the book page to take you back, or forward again.

Also, about the AI leaving the walls, it is known and will be improved in a patch soon.

It's a great game and it has a great help system. Who needs paper those days? It's a waste of resources, especially for games.

Since we're on the subject, I'm really disappointed by the lack of async MP.

I may be off the note here, but wasn't this an advertised feature?
It sure as hell was one of the main reasons for me purchasing this game, given that almost all of my time spent playing AoW1 and SM was over PBEM.

PBEM was unfortunately postponed (there was an issue with the size of the savegames), but will definitely come in a patch soon!

Arh cool, cheers for the info. All is good with the world now. :)

Mmmh? I played AOW:SM recently, and the troop setup is automated. Can't remember placing my troops in AOW1 either (though it was a long time ago, so I might have forgotten)

What does hard really mean? What advantages does the AI get? The lack of real information is annoying.

^

I have never played a game where if you pick hard it will tell you all the disadvantages you will get and the advantages of the enemy. What did you want the game to do, have a big list of all the features on hard mode? Most games don't tell you anything if you pick hard, how hard it will be and I think that's okay.

Hard (as always) means AI has more resources and better units at hand. And AI was able to concentrate its anger on one unit from the times of HoMM2, so it's not so hard to design such AI.

Okay, I shall address each point where I can from my own! limited experiences thus far. Unfortunately, the chrome browser on ipad doesn't like gog.com so it's not the simplest thing to reply directly. This is for the sake of other users who might read your list and be horrfified as anything.

1. Well the pages on both GOG and Steam say it supports XP and they don't specify 64bit only so hopefully this is just a launch gremlin and I hope it is swiftly squished for you!

2. The lack of manual for those that still like such things is unfortunate, again hopefully triumph will release one . However I disagree with your assessment of the in game help and interface. In a fight I played I noted a red "Overwhelm ability" in the tooltip. I went into help, searched overwhelm, and voila, I knew to avoid sending my shieldbearers and pikemen against that unit without weakening the unit first! I have no issues with this, but then I don't have the luxury of a second screen.

What I might say IS a shame is the lack of links to the help page outside tutorial messages, from what I've seen so far.

3. This will likely never effect me but I can see how it would be a disappointment for some. Perhaps you need to be contacting triumph regarding this, perhaps this is a feature they intend to add but didn't have working correctly. Maybe they had to sacrifice LAN play to twisted demons to allow the game to come to fruition. Who knows, but I hope it works out for you.

4. If you zoom high enough it goes into a stylised fancy looking map aka fallen enchantress/elemental. I don't remember seeing clouds on this. Personally I like clouds, they give a nice sense of scale. But an option to turn them off would be nice

5. I don't believe you could do this in AoW:SM the only other AoW I've had a lot of experience with. I like how it gives you an additional decision to make with your first turn, I can see how this would not be to everyone's taste but it doesn't particularly bother me.

6. I've not played enough to comment on this to any real depth, however i'ves even units charge out, and also not in siege situations. Do bear in mind that if they have no missile units, or maybe feel your missile strength is superior, they might be forced to charge out or face being picked off, walls or no. Elsewhere in the thread it's acknowledged as a known issue so let's hope for a quick fix again.

Why would you be okay with games not telling you what difficulty does? I certainly want to know what different options in settings do and difficulty is one of them. Perhaps the most important. I even asked before what different options in SM means and no one was able to provide option, which is in no way good.
I don't think it's big deal and reason to dismiss the game on its own but it would be certainly nice to see it there.

I, unlike you, played many games where the dificulty is in some way described. Either with brief comment or with deeper explaantion.
It took a quick look through few game I have installed and some certainly provide info. See attachement. (I also checked Heroes 5 but tehy don't have any description and King's Bounty; in that one it decribes it nicely but it refuses to take screen)

Well, I can confirm the game works on Win XP 32 bit SP 3.
At lest Deluxe Edition does.
The game crashes to desktop after aprox. 1.5 - 2 hours of gameplay for me.

Sorry to hear that.
Best thing to do would be to post the issue on the official forums here: http://ageofwonders.com/forums/forum/help-support/general-tech-issues/
They should help you further.

Hi, scrubjay09 you make some great points, I noticed many of the same issues that you found as well as a few of my own.

I am also not liking the whole login thing myself for multiplayer when only interested in Lan and single player. The guest account is not a good idea, why are there no real profiles? On top of that the "Guest" profile does not really work, it fails to keep the user settings. Music levels so far seem to be the only option that is kept.

Lack of real numbers is a bummer especially when it just says "improves" but by how much? Is it better than the previous one, does it get better the more invested into that research path?

Troop placement would be great, at least allow us formations before we get into the fray. So far, each time a battle starts the enemy charges over to the edges where - oh look archers with nothing to get behind so my front line troops are easily ignored. I can understand this for an ambush situation but not for an organized attack. Additionally why is it the AI always gets to attack first even when I initiated battle?

There are more issues of course but overall AoW3 is looking pretty darn good so far. I am really hoping they will get a patch out before 30 days so that people will see the issues are getting addressed such as FPS lag - stuttering, optimization across multiple cores issue and general bugs.

I have been looking for a Master of Magic replacement and hopefully AoW3 will be that spiritual successor : )