Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic

As a game, Shadow Magic is fantastic - it runs on the same system as AOW2, but with vastly improved mechanics and design. The main problem is that, as a program, it's broken on a modern system. On a new computer running i7 and a Geforce 1050 Ti, here are the main issues: 1. You MUST turn off Direct3D, or the frame rate is unplayable. The problem is that you don't just lose the eyecandies - you also lose all the overlay effects, such as visual display of attack range and area of effect, and the ability to zoom. 2. You must use Regedit to enable 1920x1080 (and potentiall other resolutions higher than 1600x900). Some people say you can do it by enabling compatibility mode - it doesn't work. 3. Oh, and opening the settings program resets it to Windowed Mode, so you'll need to go into regedit again if there was a setting you needed to change through that program. These problems are Shadow Magic exclusive - I had no technical issues with AOW2, so I don't know why they should appear here. The game does run, I suppose, and since I know how the system works I can do without the range/AOE overlay. But it's just sad that a fundamentally excellent game has such crippling technical issues.

Age of Wonders: Shadow magic is the stand-alone expansion to Age of Wonders 2. It is a fantasy turn-based strategy game similar to Master of Magic or Heroes of Might and Magic. You build and improve towns, raise armies, recruit powerful heroes, research and cast spells, and forge alliances or declare wars on your path to victory. With the introduction and summary out of the way, let me get down to the nitty gritty of exactly WHY Age of Wonders is such a fantastic game. I'm going to break it down into sections, as trying to tackle this game's excellence in one swallow is a difficult thing to do. As your ultimate goal in Age of Wonders is to defeat your enemies, I figured i'd get right down to where the tire meets the road and explain explain how the combat works in Age of Wonders. Combat: Unit groups with up to 8 units can occupy a single hex. When one unit group attacks another, any unit group adjacent to the defending unit's hex, will be pulled into combat as well. Thus, you can potentially have up to 56 (7 hexes worth - the defending unit, and all 6 surrounding hexes) total units in any particular fight. Combat takes place on a battlefield created to represent the hex occupied by the defending unit group. This means that special features of that hex on the world map are often present on the battlefield - giving one or both sides certain advantages or disadvantages. Units take turns moving and attacking in combat, and combat ends when either the attacking units retreat, or one of the two sides has been defeated. The ranged combat deserves special attention, in my opinion. A good deal of the combat (especially in the early game) revolves around maximizing your ranged attacks, and minimizing those of your enemy. Distance, obstacles, units with shields, and terrain height all play a very important part in determining how effective ranged units are. An archer poised on top of a hill behind an ally with a shield will be much more effective than he would in the open field. When an enemy unit is killed in combat, the unit that killed it gains experience. The units themselves have only 3 levels of progression: normal, silver, and gold, but special recruitable heroes have more in-depth progression, where you can select special abilities when leveling up. They can also be equipped with powerful artifacts to further enhance their power. With 15 races (with 9 units each), as well as a number of units which can be summoned with magic, battles remain relatively fresh even though the lower-level units across each race are pretty similar. Spells are another very important part of combat, but since their role is not limited SOLELY to combat, I figured they deserved a section on their own and would make for a nice transition into explaining the world map and economy. Spells: Spells are cast using one of the game's two resources: mana. You generate mana from buildings in your cities, special structures on the world map, from your recruited heroes, and even from your wizard himself. How many spells you can cast each turn is limited by your wizard's casting points - similar to movement points in that they are replenished each turn, but not carried over from one turn to the other. A second limitation to spellcasting is your wizard's domain. Your domain is the area in which your wizard can cast. At the beginning you will only be able to cast spells close to your main city, but as you erect new wizards towers and improve your old ones, you will be able to cast spells all over the map. Hero units also generate a small area of domain around them, allowing you to cast spells near them at all times. Spells can be used for virtually anything in Age of Wonders. They are divided into 3 categories: Combat, Enchants, and Global. Combat spells are only able to be cast once combat between your units has begun. They generally revolve around dealing and healing damage in combat, though there are still a number of spells with non-damage utility, such as destroying defensive gates during a siege or raising fallen units as the undead. Enchants can be cast on the world map or in combat and give buffs ranging from simple stat increases to bestowing an automatic resurrection should the unit fall in combat. Using your otherwise unused casting points to enchant your creatures in times of peace is a delicate balancing act you must learn. Too many enchants and the persistent mana cost will deplete your mana stores before you even go into combat - with too few, you have a massive bank of unused and relatively useless mana. Global spells are spells used on the world map, and are - in my opinion - the most interesting spells. You can summon units: from boars which you might be able to summon twice per turn, to black dragons which will likely take multiple turns to summon. You can cast global enchants which will provide bonuses to your domain. You can alter tiles on the world map, sprout poisonous gasses and plants, set forests on fire, raise and lower mountains, cloak your armies in mist, or slowly turn the world to wasteland. As you can see, spells comprise much more than blasting your foes with magic missiles in combat. I'm going to explain how city building and economy works, in order to hopefully better understand their impact. World Map & Economy: In most scenarios you start with a single city. It is important to know that cities are your most important resource, as everything you need to be successful in the game is made easier by having more cities. They produce mana, money, units, reasearch, increase your wizard's domain, and can even provide a portal through which your units can instantaneously travel from one city to the other. They are also defensive bastions allowing you to exert control over an area maximizing the strength of the units inside them. In most scenarios, your additional cities will be found on the world map. Sometimes these cities can be bought - if your race relations with that city are good enough. If not, the city must be conquered and converted to your race. You can also build cities of your own. When first created, they will require a great deal of protection, but the benefits you reap from them down the line are generally worth it. There are a number of other buildings outside of your cities which will help your economy along. Magic nodes will improve your research and mana generation, mines/forges/windmills will give you income, and there are other one-use resource locations which will give a boost to your research, or perhaps a free building in one of your cities. There are also areas which may be looted for artifacts, money, spells and mana, locations which will allow you to recruit heroes and supplementary units, and locations which will heal/hasten/buff your units - even provide them with much needed defensive walls to fight off larger numbers. One thing I must praise the economic balance in this game for, is how well it scales into late-game. Not only do gold maintenance for recruited troops and mana maintenance for summoned units help keep your wallets in check, but there are additional sinks for each of these resources. When it comes to mana, it is relatively easy to sink a good deal of excess mana into your army by summoning new units or blessing them with powerful enchantments. As far as money is concerned - anything in your city's production queue can be hurried (at an extra cost) to be built by the next turn. Even toward the end of the game when my cities covered the map was I unable to meaningfully use my income. How does this all come together? To give an idea of what is possible with this game, I'll tell you the situation I ran into the other day. I was playing a single player game, and had come up to one of my enemy's more powerful cities. At first I had no advantage, so I just kept my eye on his troop movements with hidden units and flying units with good sight. When I decided to focus my efforts on the city, my first move was to take a watchtower next to a bridge with a stack of 8 units. I knew he wouldn't be able to oust me from the watchtower with what he had in the immediate vicinity, and it gave me vision of his movements while also cutting off his one land-bridge to my territory. I then made a pioneer unit and created a city on the other side of the river, and protected it while I built a Wizards tower to extend my domain so that it covered his city. While I was building up this city, I researched and casted a spell called "Call of the Wild" which spawned a unit each turn somewhere in the woods within my domain. I used some of these units (specifically the aquatic units) to reinforce my watchtower position. The reason I used the aquatic units to reinforce this position was because the watchtower was along the river. I was able to keep the units adjacent to the watchtower (and thus brought into combat if it were attacked) while not allowing the enemy to attack any of my forces without giving me the advantage of the watchtower's defensive walls. The spell also spawns some flying units which I took behind his city to cut off as many reinforcements as possible. I kept them safe by ending their turn over water, and only attacking units who had no way to attack air units. Once my Wizard tower was complete, I was casting a poisonous gas spell over his city - wounding all of his non-mechanical units each turn, and slowly reducing his army to half of what it was. You must understand - had he left the city to avoid the poison, my watchtower army was only 1 turn's movement away from taking it, yet he could not reinforce his position because of my flying units. After about 10 turns of this, the other player abandoned the city. I took the city with a handful of poison-immune units, and rode down the rest of his forces with the rest of my army. All of this was done while simultaneously improving my empire's infrastructure since, while it was VERY mana-intensive, this maneuver barely cost me a dime. It seems every time I play this game, a different scenario of equal skill and strategy evolves during the coarse of the game. It is truly one of the great turn-based strategy titles of our time, and any turn-based strategy fan (or strategic gamer in general) would do well to give this title the $10 chance it heartily deserves.

The previous reviews did an excellent job of explaining the game and its many charms, so I will add one aspect that hasn't been mentioned. This is the netbook game I've been looking for. I've been playing turn-based games for more than 15 years (starting with HOMM2 and Panzer General) and it is my preferred game type. This game runs very smoothly on my netbook (Toshiba NB305), and looks great (it comes with the option of setting the resolution at 1024x600). Given the already mentioned highly addictive nature of game, I'm able to play in every room of my house (to my wife's slight chagrin) and in my car pool (when I'm not driving). For me this is gaming nirvana. I also somehow missed this game when it was originally released, but I'm making up for lost time.

Age of Wonders was a game that mixed a few concepts. Aside from being an excellent reproduction of Master of Magic it added beautiful elements like music and battles that tactically pleased. Nothing has been lost in its last adaption. Shadow magic is by far the best in terms of races and scope, availability and group play. Hot seat has been amplified with a working random map generator, and choosing your race has never been harder (many MANY options). The graphics also stand tweaked and pervade beautiful, story book maps across the screen. All this at a level that runs well on a netbook. Being a turn based game (mostly, but with the option of simultaneous turns) the game pits you as the wizard king of a nation. You customize your spells and start ruling. Town happiness and economy play a big role. If you are good then good will like your company, but if the Elves take an Orcish town then it means enslavement and possibly rebellion. For the imaginitive this provides good depth in your own personal world of fantasy ("And in the third year the orcs rebelled under the reign of Tobwa, but were silently crushed; their town razed"). I have only one silent plea for this game, and it is easily erased through excellent support from the game creators. The music is lackluster compared to Age of Wonders the first. It is plodding and unmemorable. However, with a little tweaking and use of the in game music box you can change it to whatever you wish! Props to them! For a ten dollar fee you can play a game on your own, with friends around your computer or around the world, or even a distant email buddy (email games!). This provides great re-playability and options for the price. It is pretty, it is fun, and it is deep. I highly advise this game.

Hands down, this is the best, epic strategy empire game in a fantasy setting. The most compelling aspect of game play is that magic plays such a fundamental role, and not just on the combat level, but also on a strategic level. Are you playing as elves? Want to make the whole world turn into a lush green forest, so you can have the best travel speeds for all you units? You can. The wide variety of units and races,the global spells, and the development of your wizards particular skills all lean towards a wonderful strategic game, to compliment the deep and satisfying tactical combat. Shadow Magic provides both. There are two things that give pause however, first is that the game can be difficult. It can be especially trying when just starting out. After you have yourself established, things get easier, but sometimes it's difficult to get the ball rolling. Secondly, as mentioned in the review title, this is a slower paced game. If you are are interested in a faster paced strategy game, look to something like Heroes of Might and Magic 4, the maps are smaller, and the strategies for success are simpler. If the idea of a magic heavy epic fantasy saga unfolding before you appeals to you, then you have found your next favorite game.