I agree with a lot of what you're saying, jaundicejuice. To me, it feels like AoW3 took the best ideas from Civilization, Elemental, Warlock, and maybe even Eador, while retaining what makes Age of Wonders so good.
It's small things like if an enemy unit moves by a tile, or tiles occupied by your units they'll automatically attack the enemy unit for a small amount of damage. I learned, the hard way, that ranged units will do a melee attack if they're within a certain range of an enemy unit rather than a ranged attacked. If I hadn't mashed through to the attack so quickly I might've noticed what the tool tip was saying, I blame my Civ V habits.
The combat preview window isn't infallible; I've experienced several occasions where it omitted attacks or incorrectly calculated the damage dealt. It doesn't always take into account special skills like backstab, for example. It's about as reliable as Civ's, I suppose. As always, look before you leap.
Re: ranged opponents and attacks of opportunity (or whateve AoW3 calls them): ranged units will only be able to attack you when you move
if they have a melee attack, otherwise you're free to move around them as much as you wish. Trebuchets, for example, are formidable opponents at range, but largely defenseless in melee
There's three things to keep in mind regarding attacks of opportunity:
- They consist of a single attack from all melee attackers that you walk in front of
- They use the same stamina as a normal attack (10?).
- Any unit that cannot attack normally (i.e. disabled or out of stamina) will not be able to perform attacks of opportunity
- Bonus tip: From my experience, flying units largely avoid attacks of opportunity because they fly over their opponents. I think the one exception would be moving while already in front of a non-flying, melee enemy. (IDon't know whether this also applies to floating units.)
Of course, there could be a spell or trait that completely changes the way this stuff works... some of the higher-level magics and traits that I've seen are starting to make me think that will occur.
As far as empire building and management goes, the tech tree seems kind of limited but it looks like the emphasis is on combat with this game. I haven't quite figured out the economy, it looks like you have to have settlements with bonus tiles or have cities spend turns generating income so you can't just spam buildings and units.
I haven't yet figured out a good balance between building, recruiting, and expanding either. I think every Elven campaign level so far I've begun by overexpanding and crippling my economy, then being plagued by a lack of soldiers, inevitably bottling up and turtling for 10 to 20 turns while barely surviving the enemy's superior numbers/strength, until inevitably building up a superior force and slowly conquering the entire map. It's fun, but I feel like I'm doing something wrong.
The one thing I'm realising is proper research is key to progression in the campaign. I have generally neglected researching higher tier units, instead favouring empire upgrades and spell capacity, which has drastically hurt my offensive capabilities. (Though I suppose my crippled economy wouldn't allow me to use them, anyways...)
In spite of these problems I am really enjoying the Elven campaign. Each level has given me different tools and required different approaches to complete successfully and I'm starting to feel like I'm learning how to succeed at this game. There have been a few surprises in the campaign as well - you'll know them when they happen!
I wonder how different the Dreadnought campaign is...
