Well boys and girls, gather around, for I have had the lucky chance to play aom, and boy is it a different game.
While I was wondering around the AOM booth, I ran into who else, but Sandy Paterson, Bruce Shelly and the founder of ensemble studios(name slipped my mind).
After to talking to Sandy for awhile, then playing a scenario and talking to Bruce, I started to just click around and explore everything. Of course you must realise that the game is not complete, so if I say something in here and it isn't in the final version don't sue me!!
My initial thoughts about the game was that it was stunning, I really don't like 3D RTS games, but wow AOM is looking very nice, the units, buildings, interface, and the god powers all look amazing. What I got to play were 2 scenarios, one where I played as the Greek, and one as the egyptians. I don't know the specifics on everything, as both scenarios started me off in either the 3rd age or the last age. From what I played I can tell you that this game is gonna be very good. Its very complex, so many different routes to take with gods, and so many ways to use the god powers.
Basically Aom is ALL about territory, its all about expanding and talking over enemy land. I think this is great as it doesn't allow players to turtle, you HAVE to attack at some point in time or you will be killed. The reason for this is that, inorder to raise your population limit, you must find settlements and build a town center ontop of them, the more settlements you have, the higher your pop. So you can see how the more you take map control, the more units you can build. Also another thing I thought was interesting was that you can trade with yourself. If you find a settlement and you build a TC on it, well you can build a market far away from it (for more gold) and trade with that TC, you can do this with any TC, so this also pushes you to conquer the lands around you inorder to acquire more settlements~~which will help you gather more gold from trade. Also the farms are done perfectly, when I first heard they were gonna be unlimited (as in never run out of food) I was worried, but now i realise that it adds different strategy to the game, if your enemy cant take down your TC, he will raid you and destroy your farms, setting you back some. Of course from what I was talking to Bruce about, he said that the farms don't cost a lot, but it will set you back if your farms get destroyed. Oh, this game is very very complex as I've stated before, but in a different way, there are a lot of ungrades and technologies to get in aom, and tons of units to upgrade, so it adds depth to the gameplay, makes it that you have to know what your doing, and what your going to be doing. Ok now im just gonna go from civ to civ and give my thoughts on them.
Norse:
Good civ, the resource cart that they get at the beginning of the game isn't to powerful, it allows them to do just what they are suppose to do; gather resources as fast as possible and use them for military. You must remember that the norse get favor by killing enemy units, so if your gonna be norse, its almost as if you have to attack early and hard. The norse are the only units in the game that get a military unit in the first age. This allows them to rush, hit enemies and gain favor, and build all over the map (since military units can build military structures). I like the norse, well what I have played of them anyways, as they are all about attacking and being aggressive, they aren't a defense civ, gotta keep them on the offense. I didn't get to play much of the norse, but from the units I saw and played they are looking sweet as a good rushing civ. Another interesting think that Bruce mentioned was that it really is risky to rush someone in the first age (if your norse that is) cause all the other civs are booming to the second age, so if you don't hit them early and fast, you will be set back.
Greek:
Wow, the greek civ is looking very nice. One thing I liked about the greeks was that their scout is pegasus, the flying horse. Well early on, say the first age, you could park pegasus right over your enemies woodies or goldies (workers) and totally monitor their movement, but only draw back is that pegasus cant attack, at all, but the only units that can kill it are ranged. Greeks are a good civ from what I've played, they get good units, and good myth units aswell. From what I played the myth units are really killer. They aren't overly powerful, but they are like beefed up soldiers. Also since I played the Greek the most I tinkered with their god powers, for zues and Poseidon (not sure but I think it was those 2 gods) anyways Zeus gives you some powerful stuff early on. In the first age you get a lighting bolt, its instant death to any unit, but can only be used once, just like any other god power. So you have play smart, and use it only when you have to, cant be wasted. Other powers that I used were multiple lighting attacks, they weren't overly powerful, but it can help you in a losing battle, only thing is that it can kill your units aswell as the enemies so gotta be careful. Then their was the mighty meters shower...this was fricking awesome. I was being attacked by the norse with a big army (compared to my small army) so I just clicked on my meteor button and bam, killed have of the norses units, and I won the battle. Of course I lost some units to the landing meteors aswell, but I received less damage then the enemy units did. Oh if you didn't know the greeks get favor by praying to their gods, and the only way to do that is to build a temple and place villagers around it to pray, well its more of a balancing issue, see if you have 10 vils praying to the gods, thats 10 vils not gathering resource, so its a give or take, either get favor faster and lose res gathering or get res faster and lose favor. Ahh my favorite god power (so far) besides the meteor shower was the curse. Nothing is better then going into battle totally out numbered and winnig the battle. I had 3 Minotaur attack about 15 egyptain soldiers, well I just cast curse on them and nearly half of the soldiers turned into pigs. But besides the fact that I defeated the enemies army, but the pigs I can take home and use as food. (How sugarbeansing awesome is that?!?)
Egypt:
didn't get to play them a lot either, but from what I did play and see, they are shaping up to be a great civ aswell as the others. The pharaoh at the begging is very nice, it speeds up the production of any building. I liked this as it gave my TC a boost that made my vils pop out like choson legions (hehe old skool). The pharaoh can fight, but he can also, later on, but morhped into a myth unit, of course it all depends on which gods you choose. Not a lot to say about them since I didn't experience or play to much with them. It seems though with the pharaoh, that you could get a quick second age time allowing you to rush your enemies faster and killing them . The egyptian god powers were cool (from what I played with) sand storm was a good quick killer, but one of their best would have to be raising dead troops from the ground. This power allows you to raise up an army of about 15 troops, and use them in combat, of course there is a time limit on how long you have them till, so if you use it you gotta attack.
Of course with the good...has to come the bad, and here is what I thought should be taken out of aom. I know most of you have been wondering if the TC, and such buildings will fire arrows etc. Well I think this is stupid, but the TC fires automatically at any enemy units, without having villagers or military units garrisoned inside (I just realized that I didn't check if you could garrison--Duh!!). The towers, and forts--equivalent to castles do the same. This isn't such a bad thing really, just kinda odd, if their is no one inside the TC it shouldn't fire in my opinion that is. Some units were overly powerful, such as the greek medusa, man she can really hurt you bad. Say your the greek, and you think your awesome cause you have a big *** giant on your side...2 even. Well here comes an army of soldiers and what is in the middle of them? 1 or 2 medusas and bam! the medusa has just turned your giant to stone. Ya that sucks all that favor and gold/food down the drain... of course they aren't over powered, since it takes them a couple of seconds to actually preform the stoning, giving you some time to hack them to pieces.
Oh, last night another thing popped into my head, while playing the scenario, I called upon the god power nosgoth (dont know how to spell it, but its a huge dragon) and it was for the norse. Anyway after you call him, he is there until he dies, which is very cool. Well, he has a massive fire attack from the sky, since he flies, and i was killing some vils by trees, and what do ya know? all the trees got knocked over. I'm seeing tons of strategy with this, cuase other units can knock trees over also, so know you HAVE to protect not only your vils, but the land you conquer over. Also you can kill enemy hunt (deer, moose, bears etc) I like this, allowing you to totattly hurt your enemy early on, not sure if you can attack the animals with your scout (I think you can though).
Regarding how the multiplayer will work. I talked to Bruce and Sandy and they both said that they are not going through the zone, they are doing their own in game matching service (of course this was known) they said it will have all the features of the zone (friends list, zm etc) with adding new features to it to add some spice to the game environment. Hehe I kept asking them both about rated or a ladder system, but got no answer from either of them (they said they didn't know ). Hopefully, the ingame feature will reduce lag, and will also reduce the time it takes to find a game, and find a worthy opponent.
I know I've forgot some stuff, cause Im still confused/excited that I played Aom today. Anyways if you guys have questions, Ill see if I can answer them, if not sorry.
[This message has been edited by Zen_Ninja (edited 05-25-2002 @ 02:27 PM).]