Before the Age of Wonders 3: Eternal Lords Expansion is released on April 14th, we’ve decided to celebrate and start the open beta for the complementary v1.5 Update on Steam. Additionally we’ve launched Steam betas for Mac and Linux versions which will also accompany the Eternal Lords release. We’d love to hear your feedback – with your help we can make the game even better!

Note some of the complementary features of V1.5 latch into bigger systems of Eternal Lords, but on its own the v1.5 Update still constitutes a large list. Here are the key features:

Vassals: As your relations with Independents improve through better race relations and completing quests, you can convince independent towns to serve you as Vassals. Though they retain independence, Vassals have many benefits: they provide you with trade income, grow in population and maintain their own defenders. If they like you enough, Vassals will occasionally give you units for free, and you can demand tribute in the form of resources or units in cases of emergency.

Race Happiness: Relations are now tracked per race, making decisions about who you make war with much more important. Declaring war on an Elven city might give you a quick conquest, but don’t expect your Elven citizens to be happy about it afterwards. Something to take into account, as you can now expand your realm without warfare. In Eternal Lords, Race happiness will be further expanded with the Race Governance system and new victory condition.

Added diversity for Core Races: The Dwarves have doubled down on their defensive character, as well as the defensive strike ability that allows them to attack and guard in the same turn. Dwarven support units, such as Shamans and Apprentices, are now all armored. The keen senses of the High Elves, on the other hand, allows them to respond to attacks that would catch other races off-guard, all their support units now have the Total Awareness ability, meaning they cannot be flanked by attacks from behind. The Draconians have a host of new tricks, with the Charger being able to fly in tactical combat and the Raptor doing melee fire damage. These changes should make your choice of race more important than ever!

Diplomacy AI Improvements. The AI now uses personalities, with them adopting diplomatic, neutral or aggressive playstyles with accompanying alignment and specialization choices. The AI has learned more actions and feels less like a black box. For example there’s a set of new messages giving reasons for declined proposals. Settling near an AI’s domain, trespassing its domain or demanding a tribute are sure ways to provoke a response. Computer opponents now request alliances to take out a very powerful player and also learned new negotiating tricks like counter offering, demands and gifting.

Random Map Generator Overhaul: Features include overall more geography variation, carefully crafted starting areas that fit your race, better structure distribution with higher level pickups now having defenders. For sessions with fixed Teams, maps now have more balanced starting positions. Of course the RMG has been prepared for the many structures Eternal Lords will bring to the table on release.

New Hero Join Interface: you can now turn down heroes you don’t like, and when available, a new hero of another class and race will spawn in the next turn.

Selling Hero Items: Strapped for some quick cash? It is now possible to sell excess items from the hero inventory in return for gold and mana.

Improved Overview Maps: New Map Glyphs and Labels for cities make the Overview map a lot more readable.

PBEM BETA Last but not least; the new “asynchronous” Multiplayer Mode. In PBEM games, a player takes their turn in their own time and then uploads it to Triumph’s servers. Once it is uploaded, an email is sent to the next player in the game, who may then take their turn. This allows players to play when they like, without needing to set aside a large amount of time with other people to play a game. We expect the PBEM service to stay free, but this is pending bandwidth usage.

Now for the action

Mac

This is the first open beta for Mac. Please help us find any compatibility issues by posting in the dedicated Mac section of the Open Beta Forum

Linux

This is the first open beta for Linux. Please help us find any compatibility issues by posting in the dedicated Linux section of the Open Beta Forum

There is currently an issue with launching the game on 64-bit Ubuntu when clicking ‘Play’ in the Steam Client. The game won’t boot.

Workaround:

1. Find the AoW3 steam install directory (Steam Library > AoW3 > Properties > Local Files > Browse Local Files)

2. Type: cd <AoW3InstallDirectory> (Replace by the directory found at step 1)

3. Type: ./AoW3Launcher.run ./AoW3Launcher.sh

Have fun, and don’t forget to let us know what you think on our bug reporting forums!

Note for GoG users – sorry, but organizing an Open Beta with frequent updates without auto patching and without branch-selection is not currently not a possibility for us.