I would like to know how you play this game.
Let me tell you how I play it, so you understand what I mean with the question. It will also explain why I am wondering that.
I always assumed that there was one "right" way to play a turn based strategy game: you try to find the best strategy and win the game. I thought that this was what almost everyone does.
Now in the release version of AoW3 there is a broken mechanic that makes it impossible for me to play the way I used to play AoW2, but surprisingly not many people notice or care, which must mean that apparently most people enjoy totally different parts of the game than I do.
My logic is: I want to build an army that is as strong as possible. In order to do so I have three resources that I can use:
1. Gold, which can be used to purchase units and items from the item forge
2. Mana, which can be used to summon units or enchant heroes
3. Experience, which strengthens units and heroes
So in order to build a strong army I need as much of these resources as I can get.
To maximize gold income I need to capture structures on the map and plunder vaults. That's an interesting task because I need to choose which structures are worth a fight and a detour.
To maximize mana income I need to capture structures on the map and build buildings in the cities. Again I need to choose wisely which structures to attack and which buildings to build in which order.
Now here's the problem: in AoW2 you needed to choose which army to attack and which of your units should deal the killing blow. The stronger the enemy the more xp you got, and if you managed to assign the killing blows correctly you could get the most useful units to level up. If you didn't, you would have a whole army of units that almost made a level.
In AoW3 however you get experience points for every action you perform during combat. That means that in order to get more experience points you just need to do more in combat. Now it is completely trivial to find the best strategy: attack the weakest army you can find and keep the fight going on as long as you can while activating as many skills as you can.
Let's say you kill a tier-1-unit with 32 hp in one melee blow. Your hero gets 5 xp from that.
Now let's say that in the next fight you face another tier-1-unit with 32 hp and have two units use entangle on it. While the unit is entangled you shoot it from a distance without a line of sight so you get a -75% damage modifier and deal only 1-3 damage per shot. (That example is not completely fictional, that's how I played the second map of the campaign until I was too frustrated to go on playing.)
Realistically you can entangle the unit 10 times (it only has to work every other round) and shoot it 16 times. Now you get 5xp for the killing blow + 15 times 6xp for the shots + 10 times 6xp for the entangling attempts (you get xp no matter if it worked or not).
So if you finish the fight quickly you get 5xp and if you spend about 12 rounds doing completely useless stuff you get a total of 155xp. That means that you get a bigger reward for fiddling around with a tier-1-unit than quickly killing 6 tier-4-units. That's what I meant when I said that the choice is trivial. The most effective way to get experience is to pick fights with the weakest enemies because they won't disturb you as much while you dance around them.
That leads to the second problem: not only that the search for the best solution is boring, the solution itself is also really annoying. I don't want to spend more time in fights than necessary.
Hopefully that explains why it's impossible to play AoW3 the way I want to: In order to build up the strongest army I have to perform the same tedious tasks over and over again. Getting there is neither a mental challenge nor a challenge of my skill, it's just boring.
So back to my initial question:
How do you play AoW3? Most of you can't play it like me or the forums would be filled with complaints about the xp system.
I assume that there are many casual gamers that mostly read the story and look at the beautiful map, but I expected that to be a tiny minority.
Others use auto-combat on every fight, but again I assumed that most people would want to play the strategy part of the strategy game themselves, not have the ai play it for them.
Let me tell you how I play it, so you understand what I mean with the question. It will also explain why I am wondering that.
I always assumed that there was one "right" way to play a turn based strategy game: you try to find the best strategy and win the game. I thought that this was what almost everyone does.
Now in the release version of AoW3 there is a broken mechanic that makes it impossible for me to play the way I used to play AoW2, but surprisingly not many people notice or care, which must mean that apparently most people enjoy totally different parts of the game than I do.
My logic is: I want to build an army that is as strong as possible. In order to do so I have three resources that I can use:
1. Gold, which can be used to purchase units and items from the item forge
2. Mana, which can be used to summon units or enchant heroes
3. Experience, which strengthens units and heroes
So in order to build a strong army I need as much of these resources as I can get.
To maximize gold income I need to capture structures on the map and plunder vaults. That's an interesting task because I need to choose which structures are worth a fight and a detour.
To maximize mana income I need to capture structures on the map and build buildings in the cities. Again I need to choose wisely which structures to attack and which buildings to build in which order.
Now here's the problem: in AoW2 you needed to choose which army to attack and which of your units should deal the killing blow. The stronger the enemy the more xp you got, and if you managed to assign the killing blows correctly you could get the most useful units to level up. If you didn't, you would have a whole army of units that almost made a level.
In AoW3 however you get experience points for every action you perform during combat. That means that in order to get more experience points you just need to do more in combat. Now it is completely trivial to find the best strategy: attack the weakest army you can find and keep the fight going on as long as you can while activating as many skills as you can.
Let's say you kill a tier-1-unit with 32 hp in one melee blow. Your hero gets 5 xp from that.
Now let's say that in the next fight you face another tier-1-unit with 32 hp and have two units use entangle on it. While the unit is entangled you shoot it from a distance without a line of sight so you get a -75% damage modifier and deal only 1-3 damage per shot. (That example is not completely fictional, that's how I played the second map of the campaign until I was too frustrated to go on playing.)
Realistically you can entangle the unit 10 times (it only has to work every other round) and shoot it 16 times. Now you get 5xp for the killing blow + 15 times 6xp for the shots + 10 times 6xp for the entangling attempts (you get xp no matter if it worked or not).
So if you finish the fight quickly you get 5xp and if you spend about 12 rounds doing completely useless stuff you get a total of 155xp. That means that you get a bigger reward for fiddling around with a tier-1-unit than quickly killing 6 tier-4-units. That's what I meant when I said that the choice is trivial. The most effective way to get experience is to pick fights with the weakest enemies because they won't disturb you as much while you dance around them.
That leads to the second problem: not only that the search for the best solution is boring, the solution itself is also really annoying. I don't want to spend more time in fights than necessary.
Hopefully that explains why it's impossible to play AoW3 the way I want to: In order to build up the strongest army I have to perform the same tedious tasks over and over again. Getting there is neither a mental challenge nor a challenge of my skill, it's just boring.
So back to my initial question:
How do you play AoW3? Most of you can't play it like me or the forums would be filled with complaints about the xp system.
I assume that there are many casual gamers that mostly read the story and look at the beautiful map, but I expected that to be a tiny minority.
Others use auto-combat on every fight, but again I assumed that most people would want to play the strategy part of the strategy game themselves, not have the ai play it for them.