Two hours in, I've finally completed the first campaign mission. Not the tutorial; there is no tutorial, just a series of clear hints as you play through either of the campaigns.

Still, two hours.

Ten hours later, I finished the second. Age of Wonders 3 does not scale well. I even had to restart 90 turns into the second mission, after realising the futility of my strategy. I can't tell you how sobering it was, having progressed so far only to wipe the board clean and start afresh. Days - entire days of my spare time - had just been wasted.

And yet, despite all this, deep down, I'm perfectly happy. This is despite the fact that during the entire reviewing process, I failed to get more than five hours sleep a night. It wasn't intentional. I'd often start playing just before 11pm or midnight, intending to squeeze in an hour before hitting the sack, only to realise it was almost 4am.

This is just how enamoured I've become with Age of Wonders 3. This kind of mindless slavery to the computer has only really happened once before, many moons ago when I was a small child transfixed to the screen by the sight of Archangels and Demons doing battle in Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - my favourite game of all time.

Age of Wonders 3, for me, has filled the void HOMM3 left. I certainly wouldn't say it's become my favourite game of all time, but it is without a shadow of a doubt very, very addictive.

Part of the appeal lies in just how easy it is to rack up turns waiting for things, whether it's just one more turn for that ultimate surround, one more turn for that godlike Shrine of Smiting to hit the battlefield or that Horned God summon to come into play.

The majority of research and production occurs fairly quickly too, with AOW3 built in such a way that you'll generally be waiting 2-3 turns for most major improvements, whether it be the latest global enchantment, unlocking a higher tier of cavalry or pikemen or just traversing the map.

It's an important element considering the high reward for expansionism. You're not overtly encouraged to bum-rush the Commonwealth or the High Elves into extinction, but it's not until you do that you realise how vastly superior a strategy it is. (There is an alternative - making a timed push with a series of high-tech ranged units, like those bloody undestroyable Shrines of Smiting - but it's much, much harder to plan and execute.)

And, while we're talking disappointments, the races feel a little unfinished. I understand the idea of Human Exalted being the top-tier flying creature, an angelic-like warrior that charges forward on the battlefield, but dwarves, goblins and orcs having their own winged creatures too? There's not enough variety between the races beyond a few changes here and there.

Luckily, the difference between the hero types themselves is substantial. Every town can summon creatures unique to each of the six heroes, although the specialist creatures have to be unlocked through research first (which is also used to unlock passives, combat spells and hero upgrades).

It really doesn't matter which hero you roll with: each has an arsenal that's remarkably formidable. I got the most experience with the Dreadnought's Juggernaughts: hovercraft-like battleships with an utterly absurd AOE special, and the Shrine of Smiting which is a wooden-tank like creation that becomes stronger depending on how devout your army is (which you can immediately increase with the right hero upgrade, thereby making the shrines OP as all hell. It's brilliant).

Rogue units can be incredibly devastating in sieges and at the lower levels, with their ability to automatically scale or even pass through city walls entirely. Being able to attack without retaliation is a massive bonus as well, especially considering the opportunity that it presents for flanking.

Flanking is a massive part of Age of Wonders, but then, the game effectively revolves around combat. As many as seven units can take part in a battle, meaning you can have up to 48 different army stacks in a single battle.

In practice, that means you can surround a single enemy with six armies of your own. The same rule applies to city battles, so you'll actually spend a great deal of time thinking and maneuvering on the map to get the most advantageous fight. It's especially important when sieging a city, since the AI often will have three or four stacks camped inside the walls whenever you come calling. But by dancing around the city, you can pick the stacks you want to fight. It's an effective, clever system.

Just as important is the leveling system for heroes and units. Everyone gains experience the longer they survive; units gain more strength, resistance, health and armour as they level up, while the growth of heroes is completely up to you. If, for instance, you decide to completely forgo any health upgrades, you can do that. If you want to turn your hero into a one-man wrecking ball, you can do that too. There's a wide range of upgrades to choose from and that doesn't even factor in the ones that you can unlock as you play.

The depth in the combat really ties Age of Wonders 3 together, so much so that it overshadows some of the other game's weaker aspects. The economy, for instance, isn't particularly nuanced. Each town generates gold, mana and knowledge according to its population and their mood; the happier the population, the more productive they are and vice versa.

Along with the two campaigns, there's a suite of scenarios and a random map generator to fascinate yourself with, as well as online and hot-seat multiplayer. The multiplayer was dodgy in my experience, with some instructions on the forums regarding port forwarding for those who were having issues. Even if that wasn't the case, multiplayer turn-based games can take a long, long time. Take the match between two beta-testers on the Age of Wonders website: that ran for an hour and a half.

It's best to think of AOW3 multiplayer like a large, heavy board game - a two, three or four hour commitment is recommended. Actually, if you played this once a week, on a lazy Sunday perhaps, it would probably work out quite well. But then there's still a good chance you'll run into the issues mentioned before and will have to resort to arcane troubleshooting methods that I honestly thought died out half a decade ago.

At the end of the day though, it really doesn't matter. If you enjoy Age of Wonders 3, you already have copious amounts of patience. The amount of time I've accidentally sunk into the game is proof enough of that - even though I was more a fan of the simpler, easier to understand HOMM series than Age of Wonders' tactical complexity.

And yet, with this latest, Notch-funded, iteration to the series, Triumph Games has completely won me over. The multiplayer could use some improvements under the hood and the races really could use some diversity, but the reality is I can't remember a single game in the last decade that has made me lose track of time as much as Age of Wonders 3 .

Surely, you've got to give a developer credit for that.

Rating: 9/10

Alex Walker is the regular gaming columnist for ABC Tech + Games. You can follow him on Twitter at @thedippaeffect.