Hello to all,

First of all, I want to express how amazing that game is compared with the turn based RTS games of Today!

I used to be apalled by its difficulty as a child but as an adult I realise the potential lies in levelling your hero and crush the unwavering waves of ennemies!

Sadly, given that the game is quite old and forgotten, questions arose in my chest as I was enjoying my game:


1) I fixed the 'scene- bug that'd happen from times to times (the game'd crash). But when I go back to the desktop and back into the game, weird greenish colours are displayed and make me leave the game. Has anyone experienced that before?

2)Does anyone know in which order one has to play the AoW installments? I got :

Age of Wonders 1
Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic
Age of Wonders 3

I finished for the 5th time in my life the first installment. Lorewise, which game should be the next one?


I thank thee for reading my message and wish you a great game!

Grayef

There's also Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne.
Only worth it for the campaign, though.

Also lots of excellent user made SP maps, especially for SM.

Correct, I just bought Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne, an hour ago. I mistook it with Shadow magic.

I used to dislike Age of Wonders 2 because of the improved interface and the new magic system but now I actually enjoy it, considering the campaign sounds more polished than in the first Age of Wonders.

For a canon lore accurate playthrough I recommend:

AoW1 - Halfling - Dwarf - Elf playthrough

AoW2: Wizard's Throne

AoW: Shadow Magic

AoW3: Campaign - Torchbearer route (not sure if Elven Court or Commonwelath start is more canon)

AoW3: Golden Realms

AoW3: Eternal Lords - Side with Werlac

Profit!

If you are into the lore I complied some links awhile ago that dig into it. Note: a couple of the links no longer work properly.

Timeline leading up to the first game:
http://aow2.heavengames.com/gameinfo/story/aow1timeline.shtml

A recap of the first game's plot, with several more links to short stories set during that time:
http://aow2.heavengames.com/gameinfo/story/aow1story.shtml

Another link to those short stories:
http://aow.heavengames.com/gameimages/protagonists.shtml

All endings to AoW1. The Halfling-Dwarf-Elf ending is the closest to canon:
http://aow.heavengames.com/gameimages/campaign_endings.shtml

Intro to The Wizard's Throne:
http://aow2.heavengames.com/gameinfo/story/index.shtml

Racial Description from TWT:
http://aow2.heavengames.com/gameinfo/races/

Racial Descriptions from Shadow Magic:
http://www.triumphstudios.com/shadowmagic/newraces.php

Brief Intro to Shadow Magic:
http://www.triumphstudios.com/shadowmagic/story.php

Recap of Shadow Magic and Timeline leading up to AoW3:
http://aow.triumph.net/lore-galore-age-of-wonders-world-timeline/

Forum post from Raymond Bingham (rayb AoW) exploring motivations of the Humans and Highmen:
http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=st&fn=29&tn=5537&f=29,5537,0,0&st=0

Another forum post that speculates on motivations of various factions. No developer confirmations of them, but an interesting read:
http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=st&fn=29&tn=5537&f=29,5537,0,0&st=0

Here is an AoW wiki with a lore section, but it is very incomplete: http://ageofwonders.wikia.com/wiki/AgeofWonders_Wiki

>when I go back to the desktop and back into the game, weird greenish colours are displayed and make me leave the game. Has anyone experienced that before?

The solution i use for this is to simply play in windowed mode, since you can stretch the window to fit your screen anyway. allows free alt-tabbing with no graphical error afterwards.

I think there is another solution but I can never remember it.

Occasionally, enabling resolution switches and pressing alt-enter a few times does the trick to remove rendering errors. There's probably an in-depth troubleshooting guide somewhere.