Age of wonders

[Lord_Davinator]

I've been playing Aow2 for a while but the game just crashes on me after I play for like an hour or so... which is really bothering... any ideas on what the problem might be?

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Lord_Davinator
I've been playing Aow2 for a while but the game just crashes on me after I play for like an hour or so... which is really bothering... any ideas on what the problem might be?

I have the same problem with Shadow Magic. I've updated all the drivers, turned off some options on the setup screen, etc. etc. etc. I still end up looking at my desktop every hour or so. Any advice would be welcome.

@ Victor Galis- There is a way to limit what level a hero can reach in the random scenario setup. Don't let them progress past level 10 or 15 or so and that should restore some balance.

Despite the crashes (which never happened to me with AOW2, by the way) I'm really enjoying Shadow Magic. MUCH better than AOW2 for my money.

[Traianvs]

What is Shadow Magic??
Is it an expansion pack for AoW2?


At first I really hated AoW2 because it played so differently from the first one; but then I started up my original one ==> the original was so slow, graphics so unappealing, I couldn't do anything fun with my cities except for upgrading and building walls, grunts were dead too quickly, heroes were overpowered

AoW2 had some worthy additions in unit types (I just luuuurrrve the glutton ) but in the magic area it still had the same problem: there were only just 1 or 2 combat spells for every sphere... lots of global spells but who the **** uses spell ward or some sphere mastery etc, okay some can be useful but to cast them you need the maximum casting level which takes ages to research; the game is often over before you get there, and even then your wizard has quite soem turns in which he can't cast spells (valuables such as healing, enchanted sword, dark gift, stoneskin..) so basicly you never use them!



It's still fun though, just takes a while till you get used to the different strategies; the campaign btw was not really good imo; scenarios kicked ass!


btw about every unit being able to kill doors.. low level units get butchered by archers before they can do heavy damage to the door anyway; you still need powerful units to capture a well defended city..

You see in AoW1 all you had to do is mass build archers to defend your city and only a few units could fly over it or get past the walls (catapults and battering rams get archered before they can damage a wall) so it was pretty lame... this measure has countered that.. besides one thing I love about AoW2 is the better ranged weapon system, it's really based on height, obstacles and range etc unlike the system in AoW1 which was pretty rudimentary and quite boring

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Trajanus
What is Shadow Magic??
Is it an expansion pack for AoW2?

Shadow Magic is a recently released stand-alone that builds on AOW2. Most importantly (IMO) it adds a random map generator. There's also a new campaign that I have found MUCH more enjoyable than the one in AOW2 thus far. AND you can customize your wizard such that they have spells in more than one convocation... that is, you get six picks, and can pick four in Earth and two in Air... etc. etc.

This is what AOW2 should have been.

[General Ludd]

The msot disapointing thing about shadowmagic for me is the lack of any really good epic scenarios. I remember there was a really great one in AoW1, I think, that was max size and had a full underground aswell as surface map. There's only one XL map in Shadowmagic, but most of the map is used up with water and mountains, and the underground is nothign more then a few 8-tile long tunnels for geting under the mountains.


EDIT: And the map generator is not that good. Better then the one for HoMM, maybe, but still not good.

[Traianvs]

what you need to buy AoW2 again to be able to play it??

so basically it's a bit of a ripoff

[Victor Galis]

So Shadowmagic is based on AoW2?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Stuie
Shadow Magic is a recently released stand-alone that builds on AOW2.

Stand-alone, that means I don't need AoW 2 to play it? Cool.

Originally posted by Stuie
There's also a new campaign that I have found MUCH more enjoyable than the one in AOW2 thus far.

Excellent. Maybe I need to look for a copy

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Trajanus
At first I really hated AoW2 because it played so differently from the first one; but then I started up my original one ==> the original was so slow, graphics so unappealing, I couldn't do anything fun with my cities except for upgrading and building walls, grunts were dead too quickly, heroes were overpowered

The original has more tactical options, that's why I liked it a lot more than HoMM. I also like it much more that I get to retain my spells, heroes, and magical items across entire campaigns instead of losing them in the middle somewhere.

[Hommer]

The Shadow Magic have the terrible option:

No tactical combat in Network multiplayer games!

Very annoying.

But in single player or hot-seat it is good enough; better than original Aow2. But it have AI anomalies.

[Main_Brain]

I remember that in AoW2 we continuously forgot to set set tactical combat to always. Very annoying.
You had the option to set tact. combat to never there too. so nuttin new.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Victor Galis
So Shadowmagic is based on AoW2?

Yes. It's the same game engine with a bunch of enhancements thrown in (including an editor and random maps).

And you DO NOT need AOW2 to play it. I got rid of AOW2 months ago because it never lived up to my expectations. Seems like AOW: Shadow Magic might.

@Osweld - some of the best "Epic" maps for AOW1 were made by fans. I'm hoping we see some good stuff on the net now that an editor is included.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Stuie


@Osweld - some of the best "Epic" maps for AOW1 were made by fans. I'm hoping we see some good stuff on the net now that an editor is included.

I don't know, there was one XL map that it came with which was really nice, the map was 'realistic' (ie. not symetrical, or built with 'gamey' things like 5 windmills clustered together) and had a wide range of scenery, all the races, ect... it was a great map to play on. I wish Shadowmagic came with a map like that. So far, "midwinter" I think it's called is my favorite, not a large map, and only 4 races, but all the snow slows things down a bit and there is room to improvise your own scenario in it with roleplay.

[Jon Miller]

where do I fine shadow magic

Jon Miller

[Victor Galis]

Hmm... I get a strange urge to go out and buy Shadowmagic even though I just paid to register EV Nova and am still paying the monthly payments to DAoC... hmmm...