u/OkPresentation3329

I tried playing several versions of the AoW series - AoW3, AoW1, AoW:SM and I feel like something is missing in my understanding.

I have come from a long history of HoMM3 and I feel like in HoMM games I can do fine, but with AoW I feel completely lost. One of the few things I learned was to create multiple heroes with armies and attack together so I can have better outcomes, but trying a single player random map game was OK for a while, until I find the enemy CPU (Squire) and he is just sitting in town with an army I cannot defeat.

This was on AoW3 and at this point I felt very disillusioned because I spent so much time building an army and trying to defeat him only to find out all my efforts were for nothing.

What are some tips I can use to get better at the game? I feel like the easiest difficulty for me is too difficult, but it's not because the game is wrong, I think it's because I'm not playing it properly. Right now I want to focus to learn AoW:SM.

I'm looking to watch some school mystery anime, I've seen Another, I watched on recommendation one about a private school where they wore red uniforms in Western style and everyone was super competitive, I don't even remember the name, the protagonist was male and I didn't really enjoy the story. Another one was about school and gambling which I also didn't like very much and in both there was little mystery. I don't even remember their names.

What I'm looking for is a bit more paranormal, but maybe also more grounded in reality, not something too outrageous with giant robots or monsters. Preferably from the earlier era of 1995-2010 or something like that.

I didn't find a dedicated subreddit for either AoW3 or AoW in general or the one that was there seems pretty empty so I decided to post here.

I played HoMM3 since 1999 and I love it, but after 20+ years of playing it I can't stand it anymore - I'm not a professional, but I know the process how a game goes - you build your town ASAP and gather stuff in your starting zone ASAP and level up your hero ASAP and build a vast army ASAP and you go to find the enemies and defeat them ASAP. You can get spells like Dimension Door, Fly and Town Portal to help you travel faster and Expert Earth Magic to help Town Portal so you can choose what town you teleport to, the late game is you teleporting around, hunting enemy heroes, conquering their town and playing a game of cat-and-mouse to defeat them. At first it might be fun, you might not notice it, but I can't enjoy this routine anymore.

I tried several other HoMM-like games - Hero's Hour, Songs of Conquest, Siren-something, Heroes of Science and Fiction, Olden Era and I didn't like any of them. Olden Era feels to me like a big departure and its graphics look like a mobile game and puts me off. AoWSM has nice graphics, but I don't like the gameplay much. I hear AoW3 is not 100% 4x and is a bit more casual and simplified like HoMM so I was hoping it will help me get into it with less friction and complexity.

So I installed AoW3 in hopes that it's somewhat close to HoMM3 so I can replace it. I've been doing the first tutorial mission in chunks over a few days and I can't tell yet if I can replace it yet. I wish I can, but I feel I should stick to it and dedicate more time to get a feel of what the general gameplay loop is like, right now in the tutorial mission with some elf girl I feel like I'm still not entirely sure about many things, I did some combat encounters and I don't know if they are scripted to be easy for the tutorial or I just did really well in them, I built some things in town, but I still have no idea in what order to build stuff and what should I aim for. I learned that you need population, income and mana and I'm guessing the one that seems lowest to you is what you first focus on. But I feel there are more smaller details like morale and happiness that I'm still not sure how they work, how I feel about them and so forth. But I really wish I can replace HoMM3 with AoW3 as I can't stand HoMM3 anymore, I love it, but I just can't play it anymore.

I tried AoW1 and AoWSM but I didn't like the combat in SM because it felt like RNG and having 3 world - underground, sufrace and shadowrealm is too much depth for me to deal with.

I still haven't played AoW long enough to even have one finished game to compare both, but the first thing I can notice is that AoW has less stuff on the map and I don't know how I feel about that. Another one is neutrals being able to travel around, which is something I will try to disable at first because it creates more complexity for me and I don't think I want it at first.

I hear AoW4 is more like back to basics and returning more to the 4x genre and is more complex, but I can't run it with good FPS on my laptop with iGPU. In contrast AoW3 runs well and AoWSM didn't run good, maybe because I'm using Linux and I had some purple flickering artifacting in-game unless I do something very specific, like Alt-Tab or play in a window.

Another game I installed to try is Master of Magic Remastered but I haven't touched it yet, I did some research on it and I hear it's way more complex and I think I should get a good feel of AoW3 first before I try to learn that one.

I started using Linux full time with Mint, but I switched to Tuxedo OS due to it running on KDE. I recently was made aware of Slimbook OS, which on paper seems identical to Tuxedo OS, I read some of the reviews on DistroWatch and people are saying that it's very fast and stable.

I have been using Tuxedo OS now for close to a year and I can say it's also pretty fast and stable so I can't compare them both as I haven't tried Slimbook OS yet, but I'm curious if someone knows more about both or has tried them, what is your opinion?

What is the difference between both and which one is better? I know Tuxedo OS doesn't have a dedicated forum or Discord, but there is a subreddit where apparently people involved with the company respond to people, on the other hand Slimbook OS does have a forum of some sort, but it's a mixture of Spanish and English discussions thrown together without much rhyme or reason.

Before it was a gaming addiction combined with alcohol, I got rid of those a few years ago, but now what remains is that if I have free time, I'm on my PC or laptop, just watching videos, reading articles, movies, anime or something like that.

I spend 1-2hr every day running 4km or going on bars outside for body weight resistance training.
I hang out with friends between 1 and 3 hours a couple of times per week.

But if I'm not doing that and I have free time, I'm glued to my computer just doing useless things.

I wish I could spend that time at least learning some skill - language, coding, video editing, marketing, something I can use. But I can't get myself to start doing it at all.

And recently it started annoying me and pissing me off. I tried to picture my day without doing that and I literally can't imagine what else can I do. I can clean my home, cook or some other chore, but even that isn't long enough to take all of my time.

I feel like if I'm not on the computer on the internet, I will have nothing else to do and go mental.

I did have addiction to gaming in the past, but I think it disappeared on its own and I just feel like I need to spend my free time just being online, reading articles, watching movies, anime, TV series, chatting on forums, Reddit and stuff, still something useless that I find somewhat annoying.

But regarding games, I loved playing them as a kid, I even had trouble in school because of it when I was a teenager, I spent all my time thinking and talking about games, when I got back from school I played all the time and didn't study. After school that behavior continued, I got introduced to booze and even that became part of my schedule - drinking and playing games, it helped me playing FPS games to be better and enjoy them more and created a very bad habit where both became very interconnected. I stopped drinking a few years ago because it was ruining my life and I think as soon as I did that, I also got completely bored with playing games too.

Every time I tried to play a game, it felt like I'm doing some boring work or that I was being punished, I just wasn't enjoying it at all, I was just trying to play them out of habit, but unsuccessfully as I couldn't last more than 30-60 minutes in a game.

Now that gaming isn't a problem anymore, I'm trying to find a way to get off the computer/laptop and the internet for good unless I'm doing something for work.

Tuxedo OS is basically my first experience using KDE so I don't know if the problem is with Tuxedo, or KDE or Wayland or my laptop - ASUS Vivobook 16.

Sometimes I notice when I unplug my USB mouse the touchpad doesn't work properly.

For me it works like this:

- 1 finger - move the mouse around
- 2 fingers - scrolls content up/down/left/right/every direction based on the situation
- 3 fingers - opens links in tabs or closes programs/tabs

When this bug occurs 1 finger does nothing, 2 fingers works like 1 finger and 3 fingers works like 2 fingers. Yesterday it happened again and I was watching some TV series, I thought about restarting the laptop after the episode ended, but when it finished, the touchpad had recovered to its usual behavior. This has happened at random for several other times.

I don't expect a solution, more like some feedback from other people if this happens to them and where the problem could lie. I have hopes that if Tuxedo updates KDE to a new version (6.6 or 6.7) this problem might go away. Otherwise it could be just my laptop being ASUS and not Tuxedo.

I see some distros started releasing that update, when is it going to happen for Tuxedo OS?

Also KDE Plasma 6.7 is releasing soon too, but Tuxedo is still running Plasma 6.5, when is that going to get updated?