Problems in demo exist in regular game?
I downloaded and installed the demo in attempts to decide if I wanted the full game having heard often enough of D3 on the Age of Wonders: shadow magic forum.
A short list of the more serious problems I found in the demo so I can find out if they exist in full game or have been fixed.
750 thunderbird athlon with 384mb ram (issue with full 756mb ram detection on win98) Win98se. 7200rpm HDD with over a gig free space.
RMG buggy
1. It takes 10+ minutes to generate a map. Most of this time is drawing borders.(which it does twice for some reason) Especially as it gets closer and closer to the end of the bar. One time it froze up, I went to bed having it drawing borders and woke up 8 hours latter to the same. The program froze up requiring a hard reset.
Despite this it can draw horrible borders and other placement problems(first I didnt know what it meant by drawing borders till I saw it draw borders so bad) One map it made a land district for recruiting sea creatures. Units I purchased simply never appeared.(dont know if I still payed for em) Captains "drowned" the next turn instead of appearing.
But that was nothing compared to the latest map, land borders on what look like water, no idea where to click to go where. A mismatch of twisted borders, and drawn borders relating in no way to actual borders.
I'd look this up in bug reporting but thread too long to check it all out.(glanced through first page)
1.b
Its also placed me two spaces away from enemy cap with only one enemy on a medium size map.
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2. Enemy unit data needs to be readily available on map.
You can always check out your own unit data and usually check out enemy unit data on battle view (though sometimes units can be so close to each other you can't click on one since its like on the same square, a problem if a commander)
But I want to be able to check out unit stats for units I see names of in enemy domain. I'm sure the manual lists them all, but I don't want to have to memorize all those units or be forced to be continuously thumbing through a manual. Plus what if a mod changes the units? Then manuals no good for that.
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3. Useless scouts/too powerful hidden-invisable.
Scout units seem to give very little more information about areas they are on more then you can tell just by being next to the terrain.(maybe priest helps, some message of scrying sometimes)
But if units are invisable, hidden it seems no way to detect them. Ok maybe theres units that can do that.
But there should be a way for scouts to be able to search for such units with greatly increased risk of their own detection(but good odds of getting the information before they are killed)
Also a option to scout out land type with moderate risk of detection.
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4. Information in unit stats about what they cost per turn.
I understand each unit costs gold each turn to maintain right?(units with half cost from being holy so I can only assume) Does the actual game with patches tell you that in unit stats? If not, why not? Seems kinda simple to do.
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5. Dismissing troops.
There should be some option to dismiss troops who have gotten too injured or you otherwise don't need/want/can't afford.
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6. Targeting.
Needs to be some option to have troops target magic units. Also the options to have unit target specific troop types doesn't always seem to work, they seem to just go after closest troops they encounter along the way anyways unless they can fly.
6.b Would be nice to be able to order troops to either prioritize a target but get other stuff too or to avoid combat with other troops altogether and go around them specificially chasing target types if on field.
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7. Stay together
Options of having troops stay together would be awesome too. As I've seen faster troops will simply rush ahead from slower troops and split the army.
Options like keeping in a certain range of slowest friendly troops till withing reasonable enemy range of fire(where enemy isn't mostly missing in its range attack/spells would be nice.)
Keeping in range of friendly wizards spells and having wizards possible move a little bit so they they stay in range would be nice. There is a enchanting distance limit right?
What improvements have been made to unit command options?
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8.
Would be nice if spell caster AI was a little smarter,
Like having wizards not buff themselves with combat spells if nowhere in range of enemy. Or maybe thats because the army got too far ahead of them to cast spells on friendly troops or enemy. Also general options of commands of "buff friendly troops" "Buff self" "offensive spells" and so on would be nice.
Improvements to such in regular game?
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Questions
What I don't know of the game is volumes since the manual that comes with the demo doesn't tell you alot. I admit I combed through it by catagory and not read it line by line but I feel relatively certain it didn't answer these.
Of biggest interest/concerns is..
Q1. How does the game decide what order to put moves? If your moving troops out of a square and the enemy is attacking the square your moving from.. or to.. and another army is attacking the nation they are attacking from. How does it decide order of resolution?
Q2. Whats with indepedants numbers varying so much? They don't seem to move around since a nation could be surrounded by types totally different from it and I never see that nations type appear in the other nations from what I can recall. Do independant nation numbers ever change between the the time you give the order to attack them to the time you do?
Q3. Sometimes I'll get units without combat who develop wounds without disease. Why/how? Is there any way to mitigate disease risk other then feeding troops well? Is there any way to cure disease or for a unit to recover from disease like real people do?
Speaking of... Too much permanent stuff. Like there should be a blessing counter for curse.(I dont know if blessed units get cursed but thats not blessing I mean) I guess I understand permanent wounds but I kinda wish there was a little more ways you could fix those up too. I mean it is a world of magic after all.
Maybe a overland spell thats high end that could allow you to repair troops a bit each turn.
Q.4
Do spell casters need to be on a domain with a lab or something before they can pick up most recently researched spells?
Q.5
Can you change prophet unit latter on if your prophet becomes too decrepit?
So whats been fixed or improved from demo? What should I know that addresses my concerns or otherwise gives me reason to buy (or not) the game? Is there going to be an expansion?
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