Eternal Lords or Golden Realms DLC?

[mrg211]

I have a few bucks and I am trying to decide between the two expansions. I can only buy one. Looking for a list of pros and cons vs each other to help me decide. Thanks.

[MrNo]

Eternal lords is better.

- both give a new campaign
- Golden realms gives the halfling race, eternal lords gives the frostling and tigran race
- both give new map features
- eternal lords gives the necromancer class
- eternal lords gives racial governance (basically increasing rewards to a race the more of that race you have)
- both add a new victory condition

Now, I may be a bit biased when I say that halflings are a waste of the game's memory and would be better served as more adorable tigran units, but I'm gonna go ahead and state that Eternal Lords comes out on top there. It's also marginally more expensive, for the same reasons.

[Red Bat]

Well Realms adds a few new things other than what the person above me said. But as much as I like the Halflings, they can't really carry it into being a better purchase.

The Necromancer class is pretty unique and is a lot of fun to play. Frostlings and Tigrans both have a selection of racial units that I find more interesting than most of the other races. Personally I think Necromancer or Rogue Tigrans and Sorceror Frostlings are some of the more fun class/race combos in the game.

By contrast, the Halflings get some gimmicky racial units that you'll rarely use, a unique Golem for the Dreadnaught, Rogue units that are more ranged focused, and the "Lucky" trait, which is going to factor heavily into your strategy. Certainly a fun race, but... Not as cool as the Frostlings or Tigrans, and not as cool as the Necromancer class.

[Hasefrexx]

I'm not sure what's wrong with halflings, it's one of my favourite races... Although I like tigrans more. So I'll go on and recommand eternal lords too.

[MrNo]

The lucky mechanic upsets me a lot. One of those cases of: Whenever I play them, it destroys me. Whenever I face them, it destroys me. I'd be much happier if that mechanic were changed to be less all-or-nothing.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

I don't really like the Halfling aesthetic much. A bit too heavy on the joke units. Plus, on the gameplay side of things, their racial units just lack any kinds of cool abilities.

Compare Tigrans: Very fast, quite fragile, utilising high-risk high-reward tactics where some of their units weaken the enemy with bleeding attacks and others finish them off with their bloodthirsty ability. Unit abilities like Pounce, Guard Breaker, their Tigran's Sun Disk and their support's shapeshifting all offer some unusual tools to bring to bear as well.

Frostlings rely on ice attacks as their name suggests. They're not particularly fast, not particularly fragile but not particularly strong either. What they are is masters of crowd control, with a great variety of weakning and disabling abilities. The Ice Queen lowers frost resistance and breaks guard, the White Witch uses her ranged attacks to weaken the enemy, then the Snowscaper freezes them or the Harpoon Thrower pins them down, whilst the Mammoth Riders trample the remainder. They are also masters of synergy: their support Ice Queens rush in to freeze and disable, but the Royal Guards keep them safe. The White Witches counter their weakness to fire.

These new races are among the most interesting and fun to use in the game because of that.

Meanwhile, the Halflings get luck, which is completely random. It's not interesting to use: all you can do is raise morale and hope for the best. Their units are all pretty run-of-the-mill, except the Jester perhaps who at least has an interesting ranged attack. The farmer can throw a chicken?

Compared to a stock race like Humans, the Halflings are "The same except worse unless they get lucky." That's not really that much fun to play.

That said, I still recommend getting both expansions if/when you can, because the other stuff added by the halfling expansion is pretty good: extra magic, the Seals of Power victory conditions, the Naga dwelling (easily the coolest minor race) and various new locations, treasures, and a fun new campaign.

Both expansions are also required for many of the best mods.

Final note: Perhaps the best expansion feature is the Mystic City upgrades. This lets you build special structures in your cities if you have cleared treasure sites in your domain. These structures then offer upgrades for your units, or let you build new ones, or give various abilities to your cities. This has a big gameplay impact, since it makes city location much more important and can give you a pretty big advantage if you get the logistics right to produce your units in cities where you can give them big bonuses.

Fortunately, it doesn't matter which expansion you get: either or both will enable this feature.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

The farmer can throw a chicken?

To be fair, getting a ranged attack that has a higher range than most other ranged attacks, does more damage than their melee, has no LOS or range penalty, and lowers enemy action points; kind of puts their pike unit well above other pike units and is an above average racial unit overall. Admittedly they are below average after they use it, but it's still a unit with pike square and first strike so it's not like it's dead weight afterwards. 2 Farmers can sometimes kill off a weaker irregular or summoned unit with just the chicken toss, and effectively stun a more powerful unit. Lots of utility gained by a joke attack.

It's a shame the rest of their racial units are below average (except maybe Adventurers) and farmers arguably don't benefit from a treasure site building as much as the other races counterparts would.

[~ Fabulous ~]

eternal lord unless you like leprechaun instead of thundercats

[Thimple ThighMan]

Tom Chick @ Quartertothree, who is (was) renowned for being ultra critical about his games reviews, elevated his praise of AOW3 from 3/5 to 5/5 for Golden Realms:

https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2014/10/02/golden-realms-fulfills-promise-age-wonders-iii-adds-hobbits/

Mainly for implementing the Seals victory condition though, which meant less 'mopping up' of the map after it was clear you had won the game.

As already stated here, it also introduces the 'lucky' mechanic.

I believe you could quite easily rename that mechanic to 'miss' and it would be doing the same thing as Fallout 2 or Planescape Torment, but makes more 'sense' the way AOW3 implements it.

Note, 'sensible', not 'realistic'. Realism in fantasy games, yeahhhhh.

In Fallout 2, you could fire a shotgun at someone inches from you and 'miss'. Riiiiiight... ;)

The trigger jamming, though, well...OK then.

I find the Halflings add a nice touch to the game that the rest of the races don't have. But if you don't understand probability, then they might grate on you a bit.

Overall though, I think you'd get more out of Eternal Lords, where you can also play as a Necromancer which has some new mechanics introduced, such as not 'breeding' your population per se, but 'converting' others instead for example.

Shame you can't get both, as they really refine the game immensely.

[neil]

I would say........ get both
But that's just me
lol
:-)

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Originally posted by Red Bat Media:

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

The farmer can throw a chicken?

To be fair, getting a ranged attack that has a higher range than most other ranged attacks, does more damage than their melee, has no LOS or range penalty, and lowers enemy action points; kind of puts their pike unit well above other pike units and is an above average racial unit overall.

Yeah, you have a point there. The chicken is pretty good.

Part of it is that... well, if I can win the game because my units threw chickens at the enemy... I'm not sure I feel very accomplished. Chickens lack a certain "cool" factor. :-)

[Thimple ThighMan]

Breedable weapons are kinda cool? Certainly coop anyway. ;)

[MrNo]

I once tried a strategy of abusing Partisan Army with those chickens. Throwing around stacks of halfling farmers and a few irregulars; the farmers throw, everyone retreats, rinse and repeat. It worked out... about as well as any gimmick does, in the long run. But it was fun. Against the basic resource node defenders, it worked quite well.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

Originally posted by Red Bat Media:

To be fair, getting a ranged attack that has a higher range than most other ranged attacks, does more damage than their melee, has no LOS or range penalty, and lowers enemy action points; kind of puts their pike unit well above other pike units and is an above average racial unit overall.

Yeah, you have a point there. The chicken is pretty good.

Part of it is that... well, if I can win the game because my units threw chickens at the enemy... I'm not sure I feel very accomplished. Chickens lack a certain "cool" factor. :-)

Nah, we clearly need cow catapults and pig trebuchets.

[BBB]

@mrg which did you get?

[mrg211]

Went ahead and got both =P Thanks guys.