Age of Wonders III marks the return of the legendary fantasy strategy series, renowned for bringing the sweeping scope of Lord of the Rings style fantasy conflicts to the turn based strategy genre. The series blends adventuring and RPG elements with carefully balanced strategy, tactics and empire building. The game provides an immersive high fantasy experience, in sessions played against human and AI players on maps that are handcrafted by the developers, procedurally generated or created by the community.
Age of Wonders III takes everything that makes the series great, and improves it for a modern audience. Building on the previous experience of creating Overlord, and using our in-house engine and toolset, Creator, we have re-imagined the Age of Wonders universe to create a more immersive and satisfying experience for players. This will be supported by an online system allowing users from across the globe to play and share content with each other.
In Age of Wonders III we make the player’s character – or Lord – pivotal and deliver an experience where the player can build a fantasy realm around this persona. RPG class archetypes are extrapolated to become rulers ranging from wood elf princesses, through Machiavellian rogues to ruthless warlords. Players with different classes progress through in-depth research paths containing unique skills befitting their class. The player’s decisions determine how his empire looks, how his people will feel and how his armies are specialized. A new diplomacy system makes rival lords bow out of respect for deeds of honor or shudder with fear adding to the role-playing element.
Age of Wonders III is the modern reimaging of a classic PC game that offers the player an engaging world and true depth in gameplay, brought up to speed with the current pace of life with a fresh look, modern feel, smooth interface and integrated online features.
Key Facts
Project Summary
• Genre: Fantasy Strategy
• Projected Release: Q1 2014
• Lead Platform: Windows
• Additional Platforms: TBD
• Players: 1-8
• Game Modes: Single player campaign & scenarios
Session based multiplayer, with internet, LAN and hot seat support
Relay – Play-by-Email – multiplayer
• Target Audience: Fantasy, strategy and RPG fans, in the 16 to 50 age range
What the AoW series is known for:
• Sublime strategy, featuring a large cast of fantasy races and locations, 4x strategy elements with endless combinations of tactics and combos.
• The simultaneous turn system allows for quicker (online) matches and broadens appeal.
• RPG features in a rich fantasy universe with developed back-story.
• Strong multiplayer features ranging from hot seat to session based online and play by email.
• High replay value through user created content and randomly generated scenarios.
• Dedicated community, some still active many years after last release.
Age of Wonders 3 Design Pillars
Pillar 1: Create an Empire in your own Image
Moving beyond the wizard characters of the previous games, Age of Wonders III’s all new Lord development system allows the player to create and play a rich variety of leader personae that form the heart of their fantasy realms. We take the RPG class archetypes – such as rogue, druid, priest, warrior and engineer – and extrapolate these to make them rulers of fantasy realms through the extensive skill trees associated with each class. In addition to the main classes, players can further develop their character using specialization classes representing various schools of magic or types of warfare.
Whether you play as a benign elf queen, a warlord or a necromancer; your character’s class picks affects your play style, the strengths of your realm, the types of units you can produce and in some cases even the flora and fauna of your realm. The focus on RPG classes makes the game more accessible to fantasy fans and creates a wealth of gameplay variations and DLC opportunities in the form of new classes and races.
Pillar 2: Explore, Expand and Exploit a Living Fantasy World
Rendered using Triumph’s 3D Creator 3.0 engine , the game world – as represented in both world maps and battle maps – is more detailed, malleable and alive than ever, marking a great leap forward from the game’s 2D predecessors. You explore a world filled with towering mountain ranges, high vaulted grottos and sweeping forests, harboring ancient treasure and legendary monsters.
• Explore a lush ancient world and uncover its many wonders. Parley with fantastical native creatures, or ruthlessly take their treasure.
• Cities increase in size as hamlets grow to become towns and towns become sprawling capitals. Wilderness is replaced by farmland, feeding your growing population. See class and racial traits represented in cities, forests grow in groves around Archdruid cities, while humanity paves roads across lush fields.
• Malleable World: As your empire expands, you conquer the wilderness and the world around you changes dramatically. The way you influence the world depends both on the class you play and the empire building choices you make. Players can bring life to barren wastelands, or transform lush forests to dusty deserts.
• Character Development: The look of the player’s avatar is now customizable. Heroes gain levels and have their own upgrade paths. The standard racial units can be upgraded by researching specific class skills. Irregular units can be transformed into religious fanatics by the theocrat class or stealthy brigands by the rogue. Each player class also features a set of unique class themed units, with distinctive models for each race.
Pillar 3: Conquer the World
The ultimate objective of the game is to crush the opposition. However, there are more roads to victory than just brute force. Age of Wonders’ signature strategic and tactical turn based gameplay has been refined, giving players a variety of ways to achieve that goal. As you try different races, classes and combinations of skills you’ll discover that certain combinations work better – or suit you more – than others. Playing an orc warlord gives you a straightforward answer to situations you encounter in a game, but playing a sly elf rogue could see you plot and scheme your way to victory.
• Expand your domain with the new territory system. Push your frontiers further into the wilderness by investing in forts and outposts or claim it by conquest. Found cities close to natural resources to claim mines and mana nodes. Expand your domain’s infrastructure by building roads, bridges and watchtowers. Create flourishing cities and build up the economy you need to raise your armies or power your magic.
• Enhanced Diplomatic Relations: Choose friends and enemies carefully. Play as beneficent lord or a traitorous rogue. Absorb the races of the world into your realm or mercilessly slay any peoples who oppose you, but beware: your neighbours are watching your every move, and going to far against their interests will bring their wrath down upon you. Trade and negotiate with other players – both human and computer controlled – or quest to win the favor of dwellings populated with fantastical creatures to have them join your cause.
• Knowledge is power: Choose your research strategy. Go for short term gain and get the jump on your enemy, tech up and rush towards that doomsday spell or develop a flexible strategy and be reactive. Multiple resource paths and class specialization create a wealth of skill combinations, suiting different styles of play.
Pillar4: In-depth Tactical Battles
Age of Wonders’ signature strategic and tactical turn based gameplay has been refined further, making the choices you make when you build, use and position your units matter. As you flesh out your strategy and learn to execute it smoothly, you’ll see yourself completing the hardest scenarios and climb the online ladders.
• In the all new Battle System, armies clash, monsters raid and cities are besieged, rendered in a fully 3D system that is streamlined to have shorter, more intense battles. Units operate in formations consisting of multiple figures with the number of units being an indication of hit points. This makes battles feel more as a clash of armies than of adventuring parties.
• The game is easy to learn, though hard to master, due to an intuitive user interface and ample player feedback.
• Automatic combat resolution now uses the same AI routines as the full manual combat system to determine the outcomeNot only does this make battle results more consistent, it also means that automatic battles can be stored and replayed later, allowing players to see the carnage rendered in the full tactical engine with every unit step and shot being tracked.
Pillar 5: A Franchise that engages players for years
The game features a wealth of replay value through procedurally generated scenarios, user created content, DLC packs and multiplayer features.
• Online multiplayer: Compete and test your skills in 1v1 to 4v4 and up to eight player free-for-all matches or Co-op vs. AI players. All these game modes can be played both live and as relay – Play be Email – matches, giving you the choice between either fast and furious matches or a more deliberate style of play.
• Varied session length: Players determine session duration through map size and number of opponents or disabling tactical combat to adjust to their availability.
• Endless replay with scenario generation: The Scenario Generator gives players access to an unlimited number of worlds, ensuring that they retain the sense of exploration. This preparation in anticipation for the unknown adds a challenging aspect to multi-player sessions, with advance knowledge of a map not being a factor. Generated levels range from small multi-player arenas to huge worlds.
• Runs on large range of computers: Scalable graphics technology allows the game to run on laptops and lower end desktops, while high end PCs have high resolutions with advanced graphical effects.
• Engage players with user created content: As with the previous games, we’ll encourage players to craft their own worlds – to be used in single player or multiplayer – with the tools provided in Age of Wonders III.
• Post Release features and premium content:. We have an extensive range of DLC packs planned, to keep players engaged well into the future. Future expansions will include: classes, races, city upgrades, units, heroes, magical items, spells, map locations, scenarios and story campaigns.
Minimum:
OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4 Ghz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ @2.6 Ghz
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: nVidia 8800 / ATi Radeon HD 3870 with 512MB or Laptop integrated Intel HD 3000 with 3GB system ram
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Hard Drive: 10 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible
Additional Notes: Open connection for online multiplayer. 1024x768 screen resolution.
Recommended:
OS: Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4 Ghz or AMD Phenom X4 9900 @ 2.6 Ghz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: nVidia Geforce 460 1GB or AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Hard Drive: 10 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible
Additional Notes: Open connection for online multiplayer. 1920*1080 screen resolution.
