Age of Wonders 3

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Zaskow

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Zaskow

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About this mod

The main purpose of this mod is fixing the most obvious balance problems of vanilla game. This version of balance mod is trying to fix most serious balance issues of PBEM game mode.

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Permissions and credits
What is the PBEM & Single player balance mod?
The PBEM & Single player balance mod aims to balance the game for PBEM and single play, that is to say to make it possible for any combination of class/race/specialisations chosen before the game starts to win a match if after the start of the match, the player makes good strategic and tactical choices. In PBEM games, it is a must-have to avoid one-sided games, and in single play, it significantly increases the fun of games through both balancing and the addition of synergistic abilities for some units (like Engineers and Halfling Brew Brothers). It is a mod mainly coded and coordinated by Zaskow, cbower and Hiliadan.
The mod has been developed with the AoW3’s community and changes are integrated only after a consensus is reached regarding the need to add these changes to the mod. It is thus not a mod based on the opinion of its developers but a real community mod. Changes that do not achieve their initial aims are edited or removed and the mod has already been through several iterations to, little by little, make AoW3 more balanced.
Why PBEM players and single players should use the PBEM balance mod?
Triumph does not balance the game any more. Its latest official patch, v1.705 (and 1.8 beta), does not bring any balance change and instead focuses on bug fixing. Triumph stated that they are happy with the current balance of the game. It is thus now the job of the community to balance the game and your best choice if you want a more balanced game is to use the balance mod!

The game suffers from several big imbalances that the mod corrects:
– Necromancers can win games in 10-20 turns by reanimating Death Bringers and Titans and Ghoul Cursing all the units of the maps with their heroes/leader and their Death Bringers with 100% chances of success thanks to Inflict Despair

https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLVegwVpl7gLENQGy5fjGryvor43W_GA3j
Illustration of why Necro is OP – Round 5 of the 2015 PBEM Duel Tournament – Hiliadan vs Eskild (who changed his name to Ezekiel later) – Necromancer Draconian mirror match

– XP farming is encouraged in the official version because touch abilities (Touch of Faith, Bestow Iron Heart, etc.) provide XP whenever they are used and the limits of XP each unit can yield when it is hit is too high, meaning that players have huge incentives to stall fights to use all their touch abilities and to limit damages caused to enemy units to harvest as much XP as possible from these units (this can also be seen in the videos above)

– Mind control abilities are too strong and can be accessed too early, making mind control strategies dominant and production/summoning strategies unable to compete

– Slayer’s Doubt and Stiffen Limbs last until the End of Battle in the official release, making high-level sites very easy to clear in early games

– Dreadnought and Halflings are too slow and too weak respectively making them uncompetitive. This (and the Necro) dominance can clearly be seen in the statistics of the latest 2015 PBEM Duel Tournament

– And many more smaller issues

If you are a PBEM player, you definitely need to use the mod. Using the exploits and imbalances listed above to win removes the fun of the game (it is too easy!) and being defeated by an opponent using them is equally not fun because there is nothing much you can do to win.

If you are a single player, you probably like to face some difficulty when you play a game. Playing an unbalanced game is like playing with cheat codes: you can win easily but it is not really fulfilling. The balance mod pays attention not to bring changes that can reduce the fun for single players (and if you find some changes remove fun from the game, please come discuss them with us so that we find solutions). Using the mod thus brings you the benefits of a more fulfilling game without any drawbacks. The mod also brings some interesting new synergies for otherwise weak units such as the Dreadnought's Engineers who can now build Roads and has an improved Flash Bomb (instead of its original Flash Bang, see screenshots) and the Halfling's Brew Brothers who now provide Bolster when they use Fortifying Meal (which replaced their original Nourishing Meal) and who synergize with Halfling's Farmers by allowing them to re-use the originally once per battle Throw Chicken.

See the latest changes in the mod in the the full detailed changelog on this dedicated GoogleDoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jgwAg70dwNm8i3nFJqt8hrnwpNmxudn2aSXuvDet-5w/edit?usp=sharing

Feedback welcome to further improve balance!

--- If you want to go further ---
You can report any bugs on the discussion about the mod on Triumph's official forum: http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/pbem-balance-mod/
You can participate to the balance discussion here: http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/balance-based-on-hard-data-from-the-pbem-tournament-continued/
And you can check news on the latest versions of the balance mod on the AoW3 community website, the Battlefield, in the news section: http://www.the-battlefield.com/aow3/index.php?page=gamenews
Full changelog and discussion here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1flsHncpzAmJa_2xMHZ6Tlp-mf69ej2mYrSGNc4V3_QA/edit?usp=sharing