Dire Penguins : Waste of 40 casting points

[Gary]

Am I missing something or are Dire Penguins a huge waste of points. They have low defense, low magic resistance and can't even level up.

I'm playing a High Elf Druid and keep reloading trying to get something else because I don't see any good reason to have a penguin. I get that a few people think they're cute or funny. Ya great. haha.

Getting Summon Dire Penguin as your secret spell is such a let down.

Please, explain to me how they are good. If you dire.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

They're mostly a joke unit. And hey, it's your cheapest, weakest summoning spell. Count your blessings that there are a good few units that DON'T suck in that list.

They were good in AoW1 because they could swim and you could mass-produce them, but even there they sucked in combat.

In AoW3... well, they can still swim. That has its uses. And snow concealment on medal. And arctic walking. So they're pretty good scouts in arctic regions, actually. Plus life steal in combat. I'd say they're a lot better than a Warg at least. But worse than most other tier 1 animal summons.

That said, if you want to see some awesome penguins, try the ones in Planetfall. They not only looking amazing, but they are great units. I have lost more heroes than I care to admit to a sudden Penguin assault at sea.

[Gary]

Hmm, you said they get concealment on medal, but that was one of my points. I don't see any medal on them at all. I had one summon and rolled over it to see what it would get as it leveled up and realized it didn't even have a medal scale. Nothing.

I reloaded and got a baby shock serpent. Way better.

Unfortunately my comp won't run planetfall or I'm sure I'd be playing that.

I've never played the previous AoW games. is it worth going back? Do they age well?

Cheers

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

It does have a medal scale. But it's a bit hard to see until they get their first. Abilities can be found here: https://age-of-wonders-3.fandom.com/wiki/Template:Dire_Penguin

It gets concealment at silver and Freezing Touch on gold.

As for the older AoW games: they're a bit harder to run on modern machines but still have a lot of charm.

AoW1 is a bit rough but an old favourite of mine. I played it regularly until AoW3 came out. UI is pretty bad and balance is iffy, but the campaigns are a lot of fun and I still like the art style.

AoW2 can probably be skipped in favour of...

AoW shadow magic, which is kind of like 2.5. Some people consider this one to be the best in the series. It has more of a focus on magic than AoW3. It also has the most stuff in it, with the Shadow Realm dimension and a ton of races (14 I believe?) but no classes. I personally prefer the style of AoW1 and 3 more.

I wouldn't say any of these games are must-plays now that we have some great modern AoW games. But you can get them pretty cheap and they're worth checking out.

[Gary]

Cool, shadow magic is definitely the one I've heard praised the most. My first console was the 2600 so I shouldn't be too traumatized. A0W3 has become my most played game, before this it was Xcom (1) and before that L4D (1). I wish AoW3 multiplayer was better, it would still great to lan.

It's weird that I missed the penguin medal scale, I rolled over it too. I look again next time one shows up.

[pipo.p]

When in doubt about a unit, you have them all in the Tome of Wonders. It is accessible both from the strategic map and the tactical mode. Hover on the empty medal (recruit) above the stats, and all upgrades will be displayed in a tooltip.

[Red Bat]

Penguins are probably your best scout unit. You have serpents too, but you'd probably rather level those up and they don't have arctic walking. They also trade fairly well vs most tier 1 units while most other basic summons will typically get slaughtered and need to be babied a bit to evolve them into something useful.

Really most of the things you get from that summon are fairly bad. It's priced the same as the scout summon for other classes, so pretty much everything you summon is technically efficient at least.

What really makes them useless is when you use befriend animal on them and you aren't evil alignment. The ones you don't summon have "dedicated to evil" as a trait, so they typically desert pretty quick if you aren't evil.

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

It does have a medal scale. But it's a bit hard to see until they get their first. Abilities can be found here: https://age-of-wonders-3.fandom.com/wiki/Template:Dire_Penguin

It gets concealment at silver and Freezing Touch on gold.

As for the older AoW games: they're a bit harder to run on modern machines but still have a lot of charm.

AoW1 is a bit rough but an old favourite of mine. I played it regularly until AoW3 came out. UI is pretty bad and balance is iffy, but the campaigns are a lot of fun and I still like the art style.

AoW2 can probably be skipped in favour of...

AoW shadow magic, which is kind of like 2.5. Some people consider this one to be the best in the series. It has more of a focus on magic than AoW3. It also has the most stuff in it, with the Shadow Realm dimension and a ton of races (14 I believe?) but no classes. I personally prefer the style of AoW1 and 3 more.

I wouldn't say any of these games are must-plays now that we have some great modern AoW games. But you can get them pretty cheap and they're worth checking out.

AoW2 is probably the best intro to the series though, given that the first game isn't exactly the easiest to learn.

All of them except AoW3 seem to suffer graphical glitches if you alt tab out though.