ok need a firewall exception than

@Death2Gnomes

That's triumph studios launcher way of saying that the server is down, sometimes not connected to an account or having no internet. Restarting the game AoW3 launcher often works

Not something related to the patch itself.

I wish I could remove the launcher completely.

got an error "couldnt get all the legal documents, please try again later."

Some items like staff with abilities can count as a inventory with the tag "use". Having it in the inventory counts as equipped. Having it in the weapon slot would make it bad.

Is not being to equip a specific weapon a bug? I'm in the main elven campaign, currently with Sundren, Bormac, Nomlik, Reskar, and Julia in my party. I got a mythical weapon called Divine Sceptre of Theologian, and I can't give any of them this weapon.

I get that, but that is a REALLY heavy-handed way to do it. Besides, there are ways to 'bypass' it, although you gotta figure out how. Usually beating them down a bit and/or casting a few spells that decrease morale do the job. Regardless, I still think this is an awful feature. Since it isn't a bug though, disregard my first question.

@urmom

Yeah, its game design. Developers don't like save scuming in their game 😄

Nevermind, I found the answer to my question. It turns out that it truly is baked into your save the moment you start a campaign.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/226840/discussions/0/490124466455989423/

@urmom

Well Root only effects movement and despite you trap them in net it only breakes their guard. It might be concident and numbers is never changing since its dependent on what I wrote earlier.

Units in guard mode raises resistance and units not in guard mode lower its resistance. And spiders are not super strong units with high resistance.

Units like a spider has no spirit resistance and charm is spirit bases conversion. That means the numbers wont change since the equation is the same in each save

In general, all conversation abilities are in fact quite OP and yeah they qualify as the strongest abilities in the game for a good reason. It has been yapped about since the game was released and well this is not a patch targeted agains balance.

In case I ever...create a "Unofficial Balance Patch" to compliment this patch I certainly would make the converation abilities way less powerful.

Oh and I actually ran into a situation where, for unrelated reasons, I had to restart my campaign, and after running into the same group, charming had 35% and 45% chance respectively, and the rooting ability had 50%. The rooting spell worked every single time first try, without fail, regardless of how many times I reloaded the save, whereas the charming didn't work a single time.

I was playing the campaign in the Archipelago map and ran into that group of spiders (two spider queens and one unit of small ones) at the very beginning in the forest. I kept trying to charm them with my heroes with had 20% and 35% chance respectively. Didn't work despite 20+ tries.

Eventually I gave up and was gonna kill them, and trapped one of them with the root hero ability, and suddenly charming worked. After the fight I tried reloading the save before the fight and trying the exact same combo... both the root ability and the charm afterwards worked 100% of the time for several tries. So what I'm saying is, the % that shows in the ability description seems to be bollocks. The percentage seems to be burned into the save somehow, and are actually set somewhere from when the game starts, until the ability is used, and not randomly.

No mods btw, I'm a new player with 60h of game.

@urmom

Im not sure exactly what you tried.

You reloaded the same turn 20 times and went into to the same battle with the exact same premises and conditions. Then umm tried to throw curse 20 times on the same enemy or what?

If its on strategic map you might get the same result due to being on the same random seed at the moment from your save. Without an clear example what you been testing its a bit hard to understand whats glitching.

I ran into a few situations where using certain % abilities worked first try despite reloading the save like 20 times, despite the description showing me I only had 50% chance the ability working.

@urmom

Umm any examples of particular abilities glitching?

Abilities depends on resistance and defence. Then strength of said abilities in use and unit in guard mode or not. Then intriguing morale with luck and fumble in a factor.

Making a flat "always" hit or a secondary inflict ability effect or not is not the aim of the mod unless it's considered an oversight from the developers that's a setting is missing or the state of ability is flat out wrong in comparison to other similar.

I do not experience any ability rng issues currently and consider the game to be somewhat fair sometimes and unfortunately very unfair when disjunct fail for the 4th in a row or when the units fail to convert the same unit over and over...

Im not planning to overhaul the game mechanics since this is not the goal of unofficial patch and obviously not what people want.

Does this fix the pseudo-RNG issues where %-based abilities seem to always work or never work depending on this glitch/feature?

New patch released with more fixes and updates. See changelog for update notes and also remember to read the F.A.Q in the discussion section for issues concerning OneDrive on windows 10/11.

Cheers

@Konec

Unless you combining this with other mods, it does nothing to antialiasing, sharpness, shadows or gamma. The only visual effect are seen on buildings, spells and units in case you are wondering whats different.

Game look a little different with this mod, feels like something about antialiasing sharpness, shadows or gamma. What it can be?

very good job, cheers

@all

I added a F.A.Q. Since this mod adds visual updates its highly likely that mods located in the document folder on OneDrive will not display some of the updates. Due to the modularity of clb files and to avoid conflicts with other mods. OneDrive problem is not unique for this mod and is generally a big problem for all mods uploaded with visual changes such a Age of Wordrobe, Army Banners, Decodence Leader additions, with more etc

The sooner people relocate their document folder from OneDrive to a place local on the harddrive less problems will appear with mods, this also true for people who uses mods on AoW4.

@Vorp

Thanks. Its only focus and future patches will continue the trend.

I really like this mod. Just bug fixes. So good, no biases!

New update. More fixes and visual effects done. Many effects are still created for the game but never used sadly. Alot of structures gain some cool effects that the developers intended to use on strategic map.

Some highlights is actually the Cherub, its visually very intresting now as a Theocrat unit unlike before when it was little bit dark and gritty. Phoenix gets more flames and Dwarf Firstborn gets its intended fire walk effect which they thought of but never linked it.

Hopefully I can discover more interesting concepts of the developers.

@Malarkey

Thanks.

@All

V3 is here. In general most focus is on adding correction of missing fx on abilities and correcting some the generic fx that was set as same for Curse, Taunt and Fear abilities.

A bug with the Fishing ability was fixed. Harpoon Throwers can finally gain 10 hp regerneration on water as intended since only units with Mariner could benifit from it, like Human Heroes or Leaders.

@Pimpin Pippin

Both mods do different things and do work together.

Unofficial Patch fixes stuff in core game mechanics that was missing, wrong or forgotten.

Pbem balance change alot of abilities, spells and skills. They have integrated two cosmetic mods racial watch towers and racial reskins into the mod which cannot be disabled in the mod.

The only conflict is that mod do fixes stuff simultaneously like martyrs gets quick learner here and nothing in pbem. Some heroes get different upgrades here and different in pbem.

Otherwise if you experience low quality icons and crashes it solely pbems fault

Thanks for this patch!
Can you please elaborate can this be used along with "PBEM & Single player Balance Mod"?

I have never used big mods for AOW3 before and now im interested in trying both yours for bug fixes and PBEM for some new balance experiences.
Thanks!

In general having more unit types also desires for more adaptions. Age of wonders 3 was actually supposed to have additional 3 unit types beyond supports, Pikemans, Infantry etc in post production.

In the game files it's clear that "Skirmisher" was supposed to be instead of Irregular since its written in the tutorial.

Two icons and banners was included for two unit types. Namely Battlemages and Crossbow. I'm guessing they saved those ideas for Aow4. I still consider these types to be a bit redundant with Support and Archer. Its also quite hard in aow 4 to tell the difference sometimes between Support and Battlemages since both uses buff/debuffs and combat abilities

@avenger711 the whole idea with auto battle is that there is no choice in pbem games. Pbem stands for "Play by Email" if thats unfamiliar. It simply a popular way for players to do their turns when they have time. Live games takes forever and it's due to 3D why things like turns take longer.

Aow shadow magic was a simpler time. I played it last month to play through the campaign for lore reasons. The campaign can be beaten by constantly spamming flyers to wear the enemy down since almost all races have flyers and cpu hardly build anything to counter flyers which is convenient. It could been improved in unofficial patches. Its certainly not without it flaws either. Just a product of its time just like AoW1

But the whole system of Aow style series what it became more of rock-paper-scissor while now it's slightly feels that they moving away from it by introducing more niched unit types in Aow 4

>Several mods for Aow3 made overhauls to become shadow magic balanced. Except they didn't introduce hit by chance for all melee strikes and ranged.

I consider them as noob whining. In average AoW 3 units are more fragile but it's necessary for game's temp. If units would kill each other for 3 turns the battles would last much longer. In AoW 2 you gan lose an important unit just because it got a couple of good hits and 1 HP unit can survive because of all attacks missed. You can do nothing with that. The last time I played it I remember losing 2 T3 Iron Maidens to 4 cannons' shots. But in AoW 3 since the damage is predictable the units can be saved more easilly. And good player has less losses despite the units been more fragile. AoW PF with long range units use hit chance mechanic but it's much more predictable than AoW 2 was.

And in AoW SM a couple of low attack but high def units like Leprechauns can fight each other for 10 rounds.

>The hit and miss mechanic is some of the most frustrating thing ever invented.

It inherited from Master and Magic where it works even more awful than in AoW 1 which tried to do something with MoM's problems. In AoW 2 it was enough smoothed to be suitable for big combats where good and bad hits mostly balanced but still AoW 3 would be better than AoW 2 only if it had only combat mechanics advantage.

AoW 3 was an improvment over AoW 2 in many ways. People who say opposite just don't remember what AoW SM was like. It was legendary game without fatal flaws which AoW 1 had but still had a lot of problems. AoW 4 was based on the previous games. Only HoMM III fans think that ideal game can be done without a lot of expirience and mistakes.

As an AoW fan since 2001 I preordered AoW 4 but at the release it was more like alpha-version. And I didn't face a lot of technical problems other people had. For some reason my RTX 3060 was the only RTX 3000 on which the game was stable. And only after second DLC-tied patch 6 months after the release the game reached the state which I can name "release ready". But at least we see that the developers care for their game and second season pass is used to further redising of weak points.

>But it's weakness I'd say is sieges battles

The changes to the sieges announced but the main problem is sitting for 5 or more turns under the walls. The enemy can bring the help from the other side of the map and why units like flyers or teleportes can't attack on themself? Why the hero is needed? Technically this makes a hero like a disposable ram unit in AoW 1.

What's more the siege itself is a weapon since it reduces the city income and block the internal building. Human can use it but AI has no idea about. And for now I play a game vs 4 teamed AI and have to protect the city. I do't build the wall intantionally so the AI could not lay a siege. Just attack immediatelly and die.

Speaking of autobattles in PvP I don't understand the idea in the 1st place. We have combat mechanic which allows huge battles with tens of units. No one TBS can do that. Then we press autocombat and have nothing. This eliminates all previous work on strategic map and etc. Why play it at all?

But if we play manual combat it's too long. Planetfall has idea of combat cards which can be used to take manual control when necessary. But the whole game disign must be changed; less combats and autobattles against treasure guards must be much more predictable. For now I can even in manual battle make serious mistake and lose a unit in early battle which is disaster. I f no AI improvements possible then starting army must be much stronger.

I played 1 vs 1 PvP in AoW SM back in time and it was possible to finish the game in a couple of hours. 2 vs 2, well it's problematic if you can't gather all the players next day.

People still play HoMM 3 not because it's so good but becaue it's very fast.

Age of Wonders 2/Shadow Magic is fun to some extent. But has very op units.

The hit and miss mechanic is some of the most frustrating thing ever invented. Sometimes a battle were decided as a loss since a stack of 8 units missed all their strikes against a stack of 4 that were much weaker. Several mods for Aow3 made overhauls to become shadow magic balanced. Except they didn't introduce hit by chance for all melee strikes and ranged. I honestly prefer the graze mechanics which is by far better system. At least some damage is better than no damage.

Luck mechanic and morale fumble/critical is of course both strengths and weaknesses. All in all not bad system. But it's very easy to be happy, almost too easy since its favoured of terrain, abilities and actual theme

Aow 4 has done alot of things right. Especially with temporary healing and shared xp. Several nifty and clever abilities. But it's weakness I'd say is sieges battles and making the game sameish. It's very difficult to tell what culture you are battling since Feudal and High overlaps with their rooster. Nothing is distinctive and the roles of unit types little are overlapping. But apart from that, it's quite entertaining but is already suffering to have a unofficial patch to be required. Even a mod to fix the ruins in Umbral layer to prevent a ctd.

It says alot about the game.

@avenger711 no problem when in manual control. In auto battles like most pbem games are PvP it's the same outcome. Engineers ran into battle = dies. Leaving cannons to be reloaded per turn getting the power down. That's how a.i works. A cannon would translate into power level as any T3, but once reload is gone of T1 engineer it's adequate to a T1.5 or T2.

Playing manual is very different in comparison to the main focus of pbem which was the initial focus of the balance mod. A Engineer and a spy drone can clear a ancient ruin under the right circumstance in manual battle. But not in auto battle. Removing the melee strike to prevent engineers attacking would solve half of the problem. The issue would be to prevent them fleeing or to make then a long ranged unit like musketeers to stop them from suciding which been the issue since they started balancing.

Auto battle can sometimes work in favour, since a.i does weird stuff. Single player is very different from pbem games.

Difficult to say a perfect, in my mind, "Set unit cost limitations on one team", "2nd team units delay to jointing battle", "Units queue orders" ...etc. are good rules.

I like turn-base/chess game, AOWs are not my best. AOW PF is a good try. But after tested AOW4, i don't think they have great effort on battle system improvements in future.

At the time being, the fantasy looks of AOW combining with the game system concept of "Sword of Suzuliana: For This Peaceful World" would be ideal to me.

In AoW 1\2 with 8 units in the army and very limited ability to produce the units huge battles with 4 armies attacking 3 were rare. (I think I never had one and I played AoW SM for years) AoW 3 reduced army size to 6 and gave more abilities to gain units. In such a situation 4 vs 3 battles becomes the problem since the attacker will have 1 more army. I supposes that's why the rule of neighboring hexes was changed and 3 vs 3 battles introduced in AoW 4. For PvP it's good for sure. And only 36 units - faster battles which is very important for AoW 4. But I'm not sure if we'll ever see AI making army grouping on human's level. In Planetfall and AoW 4 it's better than in 3 and old good 2D games but still not as good as I want.

>Dwarf is unbalance, because no weakness.

Expensive, slow, low damage, no way to make favorite terrain.

> expect more tactic battle improvements, but seems not happened on AOW4

In AoW 4 tactical combat is better. I had hard time in AoW 3 battles after playing AoW 4 for long time. Except city assaults. In AoW 3 they're best for now. Waiting for the next update where siege changes were promised something must be done with them for sure.
AoW 4 is very different on strategic level it's more like Total War with turn based combats.

>Charm & Dominate

Cheap and cheesy to boringness.

>dependent on a T1 Irregular early - mid - late game

Not a problem since cannon is very strong and kills everything without huge physical protection. With adequate repair speed Dreadnougt becomes playable. At least I don't feel that playing with it harder than with other classes. But all it's units have significant weakness and must be covered with non-class units. Something other classes should do in theory.

Just share about my experience of game balance :
(Solo play extreme setting 600% defender strength, with "Black Dwarves" & "Attack Protocol" mod.)

1. Lucky, Charm & Dominate is fine for strategic concepts, not prefer any balance mods.
2. All Jobs have their own styles, i am please of it. But Neco. is weak at the game beginning.
3. Dwarf is unbalance, because no weakness.
4. Ai too focus on Lv4 army, no economic builds, cause bankruptcy.
5. You can always attack the less units team to break the crowds. I expect more tactic battle improvements, but seems not happened on AOW4.

From An old player since AOW1

@avenger711 Karl is perma Undead from start thats like 20 turns ahead of everyone.

Even though Dreadnought is considered the weakest class in both vanilla & pbem balance mod. It is very likely they abandoned the idea of ever making it formidable. If they ever start working on it again they probably need to look into overhauling the Dreadnought completely and stop boosting other classes.

If they were not able to fix the Dreadnought initially it's probably never going to, unless they implement a mechanic to stop reloading late game to abandon the idea to be dependent on a T1 Irregular early - mid - late game. If that doesn't convince you why balance not gonna happen for 7 classes where evolve and mind control is dominant and so still is. It's not going to change if they make Engineers T2 and yet fill the same role. The whole structure of Dreadnought is sadly niched around 1 unit which is a design issue which I'm certain not going to tackle in this mod.

>Even though I like some changes to Dreadnoughts in the balance mod

Without these changes it's unplayable crap at all.

Serious balance problems affect single player anyway. Late game problems may not affect PvP but this doesn't mean that they should not be fixed.

I don't know how people treat Karl in PvP while playing with Balance mod but Necromant itself in PvP considered absolute IMBA. I don't like necro but when I tried it in single player it was rather unpleasant to play with for many reasons.

@avenger711

Not entirely true that they did not modify leaders in the balance mod. They do it in fact change several mounts of leaders from golden realms dlc. Which is ikely the crash

But well the arguably the strongest premade leader is still untouched. Karl the undead lich, as necromancers wasn't unbalanced already, they practically forbid him in tournaments telling any chance to this super OP leader would break singleplayer experience as the mod would not already broken singleplayer

Main reasons why balance is not focus in this mod is due to this mod primarily focused on singleplayer experience since balance is a subjective matter. Even though I like some changes to Dreadnoughts in the balance mod, it's still quite far from balanced and you can still snowball armies. The problem with balancing stuff is that it's very big shoes to fill in and claiming its a must have mod is simply bad mod practice when you also introduce bugs that was not part of the game to begin with

Heroes having predefined skills or equip in some way is a balance problem. Especially Tigran heroes: Arias and Zari have strong passive skill not available to their classes. Sheila is the strongest hero because of her Golden Wyvern. But she is The Spoiled for the reason. From other side Nyla has a panther mount which gives her only pounce since she's a predator herself. But I don't see it as a big problem for single player game. Shadow Stalker's imbalancy is more important. And even more important defective production system inherited from AoW 2 where it worked well but in AoW 3 all the cities are different.

I practically never use premade leaders and I see AoW 3 as very stable game which is possible but hard to crash. But Balance mod did nothing with leaders so I suppose it doesn't break anything and doesn't conflict in your mod.
Balance mod can be not ideal and I use some my own mods + Chivalrous Intentions but the game is better with it and there's no alternative.

@avenger711

Probably good idea with version handling to avoid confusing.

The conflicts with pbem balance mod could be rewards adjusted to a standard developer formula, yes. They also a applied different skills to certain hereos by removing their original ones they were designed around.

However, mods will ran fine and rewards will be overwritten in their higher priority one like "strong rewards". Despite that, I do not consider it to be well structured despite being standard or popular. The bugs they introduced in the mod themselves is severe if you prefer to play with premade leaders in pbem balance mod. It's rather simple fix, but they rather prefer to have crash to desktop instead as a solution by their own edits to leaders. So we'll its at your own risk to use pbem balance mod with this one.

The question in compatibility with "PBEM & Single player Balance Mod" which I saw as de-facto standart now. On the 1st look I don't see obvious conflicts but rewards can be affected.

>In the Title Screen it will still say "v1.802 - Build 123456"

In exe-file, the build number is generated automatically by compiler.

Using 1.804 number is not correct better use your own name.

@all

Updated to become 1.804

More bug fixes and missing visual effects on models done.