While we are very busy with our next big strategy game, we still managed to find time for some Age of Wonders 3 spring cleaning. In addition to killing bugs and adding a bit of twinkling polish, we have added new water gameplay features for you to enjoy. Thanks to all you folks trying out the public beta for 1.8; we fixed one additional rare crash when moving an army over an ally’s structure in the same turn that you declared war on them. Grab V1.8 it now on Steam and GoG!

The new buildable water fort and water resource in action.

New Features

Added new Build a Water Fortress ability. This enables embarked Builder Units to create Fortresses on water and claim water structures more easily.

Added new Oyster Reef structure. Oyster Reef generate gold and population within your domain.

Tactical Combat

Fixed 2 issues where units could sometimes shoot through walls and other obstacles without a line of sight penalty. So your dudes and dudettes are safe behind their walls now.

Fixed an issue where entering combat would wipe extra move points gained from Death March. Allowing you to use Victory Rush to the fullest.

Mind controlled/ghouled units now always have 0 move points on the world map after battle. This is intended as nerf strategies based on unit acquisition in combat.

Mind controlled units can no longer retreat from battle. No more cheap summon stealing, sorry.

Chaos Rift, Great Immolation and Great Stoning now warn the AI that it needs to abandon siege defense during tactical combat. Charge!!!

Balance

If a summoned unit evolves, then the summoning spell will be cancelled, and the unit will become a normal unit with a higher mana upkeep. The mana cost is based on the typical cost to summon a unit of the unit’s new tier.

Fixed a bug in the random map generator when generating a map with teams enabled. Teams would always be generated counter-clockwise around the map, making it possible to predict the location of other teams.



Stability

Fixed a crash when clicking the ‘center’ button in the ‘structure captured’ popup after the structure was razed.

Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur when releasing a city or a dwelling as a vassal.

Fixed a bug where items being couriered would remain stuck in the hero inventory when an AI hero joins by surrendering.

Fixed a bug where AI attacked vassal city of friendly player.

Fixed a bug where unit buffs/debuffs from global spells would sometimes vanish without any reason

Human Crusader now has the right impact sound.

Fixed a crash when moving an army over an ally’s structure in the same turn that you declared war on them.

Multiplayer and PBEM

Fixed PBEM exploits. More information after official release, for obvious reasons.

Fixed hang in PBEM when one human player remained. Now you can end the remaining AIs rightly.

Fixed PBEM notifaction issue for other players turn.

Fixed PBEM issue where player was not properly notified of defeat. This prevents a dead state that has you staring at clouds.

Fixed PBEM issue when swapping slots in setup. So the host can now safely take slot 2.

Fixed PBEM issue when PBEM settings where changed before the session was launched. This could prevent a game from being launched, etc.

Modding and Tools

Fixed a crash when starting a map for which the first map layer was removed in the Level Editor.

Added mod support for charging mana to build structures and roads on the world map

Graphics and Glitches

Fixed popups being removed when they shouldn’t be. Should help when reading damage popups for spells in combat.

Changed the ‘Reaper Scythe’ AoW Item Visualization link from a spear to the ‘Necro_Scythe’ model.

Fixed the Imperial Hand Cannon visualization in Tactical combat.

Assassin’s Stiletto of Silent Murder now has correct weapon displayed.

Text and Localization

Removed the obsolete ‘Vanquish Evil Player’ and ‘Vanquish Good Player’ entries in the Tome of Wonders under alignment modifiers.

Linked text to fix empty table entries in the ToW under relation modifiers.

Fixed an incomplete description for the goblin military level 5 race governance skill. It now also states that the relevant unit types get +5 hitpoint.

Fixed an issue where terrain penalties would still be listed, even through they were disabled by the Bolster spell.

Enjoy!