Greetings.

Here are the questions I'd like answers too about AoW 3. Got them after reading Senteria's excellent review over at Gamefaqs.

1.
Is there magical summons and is it a viable strategy to create a leader around summonings?

2.
Is the fort only a building that you have to garrison with troops or does it come with a defence of its own?

3.
How is the balance between rushing out lots of tier one or two troops versus building up to better units before making a serious push against the enemy?
This is important because that balance is one of my major gripes with AoW: SM. I've always found it hard to judge when to aggressively expand and when to build up.

4.
Can all units knock down gates?

5.
When heroes level up can I chose freely what abilities to get? Or do I get a couple of picks like in AoW: SM?

6.
How is unit experience handled? Like in the previous games where a low tier unit with a couple levels can still be effective?

7.
Is it a city spam game? I prefer not but if done right I can live with it.

8.
If I understand the research right it's built like a traditional 4X research tree? I can go heavily into one tree and just research the basics in the other trees or spread my research out in several trees?
If so is there significant gains with going with only one tree or does that make me open for a hard counter?
Is there a mana slider between pooled mana and research?

9.
During battles does one side move all troops and then the other side go? Does you move one unit and then the other side go? Initiative based? Something else or a combination?

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That's all I can think of right now. :)

1. You can summon units if you have researched the according spell. Spell researching is a bit random and it may last a while until you get good enough units.

2. The fort is only a building and if you don't garrison it it will frequently be taken over by raoming units.

3. Can't say that because I haven't played enough to judge.

4. I haven't seen any special gates until now, the normal wooden gates or wooden fences can be knocked away quite easily.

5. You get a somewhat overwhelming list of things to choose of. You can distribute 5 points per level up and ablilities may cost one to five points. You can also choose basic things like more HPs or better resistance or attack. Cost increase, e.g if you choos 5 more hp for one point, an extra 5 hp points will cost two points.

6. The lower tier units get levels fast, so that might be effective.

7. Can't really say, not as much as Civilization, more like the original MoM, depends also on whether there are already many cities or not.

8. There is no slider because research points are now apart from mana. You can build special research buildings in your cities.
What you get to research depends on class and looks also partly random to my eyes. You can follow a branch though, but the research costs increase for higher level spells/abilities.

9.The attacked party moves all their units first. Then it's your turn and you can choose any order to move your own troops. If your party gets attacked, it is your turn to move first.
What's a bit annoying about it: If you damage enemy units, their graphical shown numbers drop, but if a damaged unit gets to retaliate or attack, it will deal full damage, regardless of how many damage it has taken.
I think the depicted unit stacks are only some graphical gimmick, it's more like in the previous AoW-Games, where every unit was only one figure and therefore would deal full damage until it would be dead.

I'll do my best to answer some of your questions that I know I can answer.

1. Yes, you can summon creatures. You have a lot of different kind of summons, some strong some weaker. If you can build your hero around summons, I would not know if that is a viable strategy, though I have read people summoning a lot of creatures to get an army earlier on.

2.. As far as I know you can build a fort and a watch tower. A watch tower does what it has always done. Extend your view range. Whereas a fort can close the gaps between your influence area. This influence area is affected by towns. The bigger the towns the bigger the influence sphere. Forts can be build near resources as a way to collect them. they also come with a wooden defense I believe. Not sure though.

3. I've played AoW 3 like I play my AoW 1 games. I try to get a fair size army, but also through tactical combat I definately try to overwhelm my enemies. Though the balancing is a bit better. You will hear how much chance you have to win battles. Basically stripping the enemy from resources and towns is very effective. I have heard stories about people being met with a lot of resistance because they took a long time to advance. You can not sit still if you know your opponent has a strong realm and WILL get more income than you do (since it's an AI)

4. Not all units can take down gates. Some units have wall climbing. Some heroes have an ability that will make
your army get wall climbing, or you can cast it as a spell. When it comes to taking down gates... Only melee units can take them down I believe. My archers couldn't do it, but my swordsmen can. Of course cannons can do it as well as catapults.

5. You can freely choose in AoW 3 what your heroes will get. Just like in AoW. Some abilities cost more than others. And upgrading your stats starts with just 1 point, but will get more expansive each time you want to give the stat more points. They get 5 points to spend when they level instead of 10 like AoW 1.

6. Good question. I don't know that myself explicitly. What I did find out is that with units now showing as multiple units. When one of the group dies, you gain experience. I don't know how much though. In the first map I believe I got to level 5. Without going hardcore at the end game. People say the heroes level up a lot faster. I can't confirm that just yet. What I do know is your units have more than 3 ranks in ranking up. I believe up to 5 or 6. It's pretty nifty. It can (almost) make you care about that special unit. I do know that lower tier can still be effective on the battle field. Just not as much as higher tiers. :)

7. Not sure what you mean by 'city spam'. You can build towns from ground up now. But in order to get a full fledged town, it will take a while. The towns have a LOT of upgrades available to them in comparison to AoW 1, but critics find it to be too little in comparison with i.e. Civ 5. (not that I played it, just heard that quote somewhere if I'm not mistaken). Then again, Civ is more about building like a simulator than it is about combat like AoW.

8. The way research works is a bit different than AoW 1. It takes multiple factors into account. Something I forgot what it was. I just know that in the end game in the map you research things a lot faster. When it comes to spells you can research, they are unfortunately not catagorised in global, battle, etc. Though they are in your spellcasting book. Other than that, maybe someone else could answer your question. I am not sure I followed it correctly

9. Combat is a bit like we know it. Shadow Magic style combat, but you can move all your units, then the enemy, then you. The enemy will move all of it's units, that's for sure. Wether you want to or not is up to you. Units can exhaust from too much walking, and thus they have no strength to deal that many blows. Same with being surrounded. If a unit is being attacked constantly, you can't fight on your own turn with that unit. The flanking system is new and basically if the enemy is not looking at you directly, you can do a flanking hit which deals a lot more damage.

Hopefully I answered some of your questions. :)

Thank you both for the great explanations. :)
Here's follow up comments.

1.
I like this. It looks like going full summoner might be a choice for early and middle game expansion. Hopefully this makes a strategy where I expand with summons leaving my cities able to focus on getting to higher tier units quicker for middle to late game possible.

5.
Can I save level up points like in AoW 1 to get expensive abilities quicker?

7.
City spam is when you build lots of small cities early and fast in an expanding blob. In some strategy games that is almost necessary compared to a few well placed ones. The city spam strategy is usually the only way to go in games where very aggressive play style and special resources are big factors. For example every Civilization game is heavily geared towards this.

8.
A lot of games are loop sided regarding how much pay off you get for focusing on maxing a research branch quickly.
Basically many versatile cheap and not strong spells/technologies versus fewer but powerful spells/technologies.

Going only for one branch sometimes makes you very vulnerable to things that counters it. For example going exclusively for a Fire branch can leave you open for Ice counters. Some games have general research or abilities that can mitigate that sufficiently for making focus research doable.

So I guess what I'm getting at is how specialised and important research is. In the previous AoW games troops and not spells was my main focus. Spells was more like a general buff. Is research more important in AoW 3?
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I must say I'm liking what I hear about AoW 3 so far. :)

5. Yes, you can, but it would make sense only later since most of the abilities only cost 5 points at most and you will get 5 points for every level up. There are some talents that are more expensive.

8. I consider research quite important because you need certain things to research for building special units. Also, besides spells and special units there are also general improvements to be researched which might influence all you units or sometthing else in your empire.

Let's see if I can squeeze this in between my studies. (:

1. I think that can work out

5. Yes you can. You get 5 points every time, and although you can buy any skill you want in that level up window. Saving points can be a wise idea. i.e. you have 5 points. there are 3 things you want. Two are 4 points each and one is two. Now you can buy any of them every time you level, but by not spending that 1 point after having spent 4 points on something else. You have 6 next turn. This way you can buy the remaining two in the second level up.

7.Oh no, nothing of the sort. Building a unit that can make a 'base/town' takes at least 3 turns up to 8 or maybe more depending on the town size. It's also vulnerable and has to move all the way to a new place. The villages start very small anyway, so you can't do much with making new towns for a while. Building forts can be handy to gather lots of resources, but they need to be defended or behind your front lines.

8. All I can say is that from what I've seen most spells are quite useful, though some take a long time to research. Focussing on cheaper ones at the beginning might be handy to give you an edge early on. In the end it's all down to preference of how you like to play. Other than that, the answer of Mondkalb completes your question on #8 I think.

Thanks again both of you. Your answers made me come down from that fence and decide to buy it. :)

But there's always a but. Do you know if I can I get the boxed version in Sweden? Read somewhere that it is region restricted regarding in which countries you can buy it. Which also gives the question about languages but I prefer english so that wont probably be a problem.

I don't whether it will be available in Sweden, but all boxed versions are only playable through steam.

Guess I'll buy two copies then. One boxed (If available in Sweden otherwise I'll "cheat" and get it from another country.) and one from here. More money for Triumph to improve AoW3. ;)