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The Fate of Emrilia
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Scenario, Mechanics Overhaul, New Content, Items, Units
File Size
Posted
Updated
14.777 MB
Dec 19, 2019 @ 2:06pm
May 11 @ 2:22pm
101 Change Notes ( view )
Required DLC
This item requires all of the following DLC
Golden Realms Expansion
Eternal Lords Expansion
Required items
This item requires all of the following other items
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WoodChip
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The Fate of Emrilia

Description
This is the chance I've been waiting for. The recent escalations at Bravestone and the failure of the contract to reestablish the Commonwealth have weakened the position of the other sorcerers. People live in fear. Traders from the south spread the rumor that the royal capitol is under siege and is about to fall. It is whispered that a black rider roams the country, leaving a trail of death and self-proclaimed prophets never tire of announcing that the volcanic eruptions in the west are a sign that the end of the world is imminent.
Calls are getting louder for a savior, a strong leader who will restore the human kingdom to its former greatness. Now guess who that will be?
I will be the one to unite the fragmented realms under my banner. Like Merlin in the old days of the Wizard Kings, I will rise to rulership over all of Emrilia. My teachers said I was too weak, too young, too inexperienced. Now they're all dead and I'm still alive. I have mastered all spheres and unleashed the power of the elements. Who should be able to stop me now?

- Excerpt from Elizabeth Windborn's diary, found on her corpse after the great battle at Ancient Quaddog.


Introduction
  • Welcome to the Fate of Emrilia, an AoW3 scenario project with focus on asymmetrical gameplay, custom leaders and heroes, individual starting locations and spellsets, new unique gameplay mechanics, boss monsters and special units, hidden secrets and a beautiful, natural landscape.
  • The main feature is the combination of emergent storytelling elements with scripted storylines, resulting in truly interactive multi-character narratives. The scripted storylines of each of the leaders take place in parallel during a game session. In addition, there is a well-elaborated background lore, which can be discovered while playing the mod.

Content Overview
There are three map files included in the mod
  • The "Enhanced Edition" map is the most advanced scenario.
  • The "Reforged" version is a remake of the map that I worked on from december 2023 to may 2025.
  • "Whispers in the Void" is the first free-for-all battle arena for Age of Wonders III.

Choose your side
  • The eight competing leaders are not just avatars, but real characters and bring their own origin stories, motivation, character traits, and view of the world with them, which is also reflected in the gameplay.
  • Please note that the level of difficulty depends on the chosen leader. For starters, I recommend choosing Elizabeth.
  • Scripted events make the leaders interact. They greet each other when they meet for the first time, insult their competitors and comment on their actions.
  • Special scripts allow AI-controlled leaders to use an extended spell set, to use terraforming and to pose a real challenge to human players.
  • Several triggerable events can change the aligment of the leaders and influence the satisfaction of their subordinates.
  • The death of each enemy sets off special events that affect the further course of the campaign.

Master asymmetrical gameplay
  • Each leader has special gameplay mechanics that go far beyond the class and race-specific traits of the base game. For example, magic-talented characters like the sorceress Elizabeth Windborn have more spell points than their competitors, the goblin leader Gryx has a never-ending supply of servant creatures and Sedna's cats refuse to cross water.
  • Each of the leaders has their own, specially defined spell set, a different starting level and is in possession of starting items that require the development of special tactics.
  • The eight starting positions differ considerably from each other and contribute to the unique feel of each leader.
    (More details on this can be found in the character introductions in the gallery.)

Explore a vast, authentic world
  • The landscape of Emrilia was created with a high focus on credibility. Climate zones are realistically distributed on the map. Animals live in suitable habitats and settlements are preferably located near natural points of interest, trade routes are guarded by toll castles.
  • The volcano in the northwest of the map has been active for some time, so multiple volcanic eruptions can occur over the course of a game session.
  • New unique items, many of them with unique properties, have been placed in suitable places on the map.
  • Global events like a frostling invasion, the rise of terrors from the depths or an attack of the fire giants will occur during a game session.
  • Each structure on the map has its own adventure set and each tavern has an individual list of units that can be recruited.
  • Several independent factions are fighting for the supremacy in Emrilia. The Naga reward those who assist them in feeding their ever-hungry god. Bandit gangs send brigands from their mountain fortresses and set traps for careless treasure hunters. The indomitable merfolk regularly send troops to defend their dominance over the seas and giants guard the country in anticipation of an as yet unknown enemy.

Customize your game
  • In the reforged version, the level of difficulty and time limit can be selected. As soon as the fortune teller appears, choose your answers wisely - or ignore him and use the default settings.
  • Provoke the shadows that gather at the rune stones of the dark gods to further increase the difficulty level if you still find the mod too easy.

... and determine the Fate of Emrilia
  • Epilogues tell the progress of the story after your victory. Experience 8 (enhanced version) or up to 79 different endings (reforged version)



Requirements
  • The "Golden Realms" and "Eternal Lords" addons are required. Furthermore, the creation of the Enhanced Edition of FoE would also not have been possible without the magnificent assets of the Decodence Map Pack.

Quality
  • The mod has been in development between June 2019 and May 2025.
  • Due to file errors, both the enhanced version and the reforged version remain incomplete. While the enhanced edition contains most of the story elements, the reforged version has much more detailed and sophisticated gameplay. A combination of both versions would come close to the originally planned vision for the project.
  • Each version of the mod was tested for stability before release. However, the test conditions only included the FoE mod and the Decodence Map Pack. Occasional crashes cannot be ruled out, especially when using additional mods.

Special Thanks
  • Again, special thanks go to Captain Adele Morgan for her support and endless patience.
  • Further thanks go to Ialocin for a very inspiring discussion about whether and how turn based strategy can tell a good story.
  • Finally, my thanks go to all players of both the original FoE mod and the current version. This project would never have gotten so far without you.
Popular Discussions View All (7)
99
Apr 21 @ 10:19am
Feedback - Reforged Edition
Sire
66
Feb 23 @ 7:19am
Feedback - may contain spoilers
jaersavo
9
Aug 28, 2024 @ 10:07am
Riftwalker's Guide to Emrilia (Reforged Edition)
Sire
372 Comments
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Gladen May 15 @ 1:35am 
@Woodchip

I hope you will manage something.

Having an massive map is a huge undertaking and finding a broken text in a script where it leads can be time consuming. Hopefully you have a system.

In general the mod editor behaves the same way. It shuts down on to many faulty messages like broken links and double resources IDs. But the thing is that bugs triggers in a level editor oddly enough making the level editor some of the best tool to debug a created mod. But it also creates a load on the memory.
WoodChip  [author] May 14 @ 2:55pm 
@Gladen: Thank you for checking :) Your observations match that the last file I can open does not trigger any errors (‘script error in line 5’) when loading the map. I will check if I can restore a working version of the map. This will probably take some time.
Gladen May 13 @ 10:04am 
@WoodChip

I have a view of why that map cannot be opened. After creating several campaigns and mods, I have bad news

Your map(s) have extreme visuals that test the game engine. For example, a chaos rift is constantly on the abyss layer, together with a giant eldritch horror floating in the air. Chaos Rift can crash games in tactical battle. Imagine that on a layer alone on XL maps

I presume there is also a mod, and just by firing up the debug editor, I can notice abilities are broken, along with script errors. The level editor is constantly loading errors, and it takes in mod errors as well. With more errors, more memory is used, and if there are too many, it will simply stop working. If no errors are present, there are no memory issues, which became apparent to me when making campaigns

It's unfortunate that it led up to this point that the editor broke, but remember. If you potentially fix the errors inside the mod editor, you might be able to open the map in the level editor
WoodChip  [author] May 13 @ 8:29am 
@xist: I was actually considering whether it would be possible to split the map into one subfile per leader. The problem is, however, that even if the memory problem could be avoided in this way (which is unfortunately not even guaranteed), maintaining of so many files would be extremely time-consuming and ineffective. So unfortunately, although not without hesitation, I decided against this attempt.
WoodChip  [author] May 13 @ 8:28am 
@xist: To be honest, I don't know exactly what the problem is. The error occurs when saving the map files; only part of the data is saved. This bug has occurred in both the Enhanced and Reforged versions since an early phase, but could always be avoided by restarting the editor. At some point, something seems to happen that causes the bug to occur even if the map files have not been changed at all and even retroactively affects earlier versions where the bug did not occur before. The latest file I can still open and save is half a year old, before I added the events. I therefore assume that the number of scripts is crucial.
xist10 May 13 @ 6:52am 
Thanks for the information.
It's a shame that this ends here, but if you lost your files...
Thanks for the 2 incredible maps.
Something I know from other games.
Would it be possible to reduce the mod scope by seperating it in submods ?
So units in mod 1 and 1 submod per map ? - or is the problem for the engine the number of mapscripts ?
Akidson May 10 @ 9:47am 
I've been following the progress on the Reforged Edition since its beginning. That's heartbreaking news💔. At least we still have the Enhanced Edition - the best Age of Wonders 3 map ever made!
Sire May 7 @ 5:37pm 
Shame that this is the end of the mod, but perhaps as one door closes, another opens. Best of luck with your future endeavors!
WoodChip  [author] May 7 @ 2:23pm 
Hello everyone - unfortunately I have bad news. While I was working on the files, another memory error has occurred. Like last time, the error corrupted not only the current version, but strangely also earlier mod files. All files can still be opened and the map can still be played, but it is no longer possible to save changes.
It seems that at this point the engine is no longer able to handle the addition of further features. I have considered various solutions, but have not found any convincing ones. As a consequence, this means - unfortunately - that I have to leave the project unfinished.
I'm sad that many of the quests and features that were already planned will no longer find their way into the mod, but on the other hand I'm glad that the mod is at least fully playable and experienceable in its current state. I've had a lot of fun forging the Fate of Emrilia over the last 6 years and exchanging ideas with you. Many thanks for all the advice, hints, feedback and inspiration!
WoodChip  [author] Apr 20 @ 4:44am 
By the way: The next update is expected to be released in May and will restore and expand Life's Maw, the pale witch, the Nereus and Nereide quests and the he-who-hungers mechanics :)