Disciples III: Renaissance

Overview

Disciples III: Renaissance is the third full game in the Disciples series. Developed by Russian outfit Akella, Disciples 3 introduces a new 3D battle system and improved graphics via the 'Virtual Dream' engine developed by .dat. The game is turn based and focuses on base building, exploring and combat. The game features three factions, each with their own unique campaign of six individual chapters.

The Factions

There are 3 factions in Disciples 3: Renaissance unlike in Disciples 1 and 2 (Disciples 2 got expansions that added a fifth faction, The Elves).

The Empire:

The Empire relies on heals double attacks and poisons. Lambert is their main campaign hero.

Legion of the Damned:

The Legion relies on Polymorph, Petrify and Demons. Haarhus leads The Legion in their campaign.

Elven Alliance:

The Elves relies on archers(comes with single and double attacks) Healing and Magic. You control Arion in the Elven campaign.

Each of the factions has its own campaign, the developers recommend that in order to best understand the story players should start with the Empire campaign first, Legion of the Damned second and the Elven Alliance last. You are however, free to choose which order you play them in.

The Global Map

For every chapter of the campaign there is a map upon which you play the game and move your units. Like combat this is turn based. Each of your leader units has a movement allowance for each turn upon which to explore, fight, gather resources, complete quests and so on. There are also traders and settlements for you to upgrade and improve your armies.

Only your main campaign hero and additional leaders can navigate the global map. All other units need to be assigned to a hero or leader’s party in order to move.

Victory in each chapter is gained by building your army and completing quest objectives.

Cities and Guardian Nodes

Cities: In Disciples 3 these work as a base for healing your army and hiring new units. Your faction leader can also purchase items from the city store. You can capture cities by defeating its garrison. You are also able to garrison units in your own cities.

You also start each chapter with your own capital city. In addition to what a normal city provides, here is where you can build structures to improve your units. Your capital also has a special guardian unit assigned to it to assist in defending the capital if attacked.

Guardian Nodes: These nodes are essentially control points on the map which upon securing (typically through fighting it's guardian) grants you control of the surrounding area and any resource producing buildings on it.

Resources

In Disciples 3 there are 3 main types of resources, gold, stone and mana.

Gold: Used for hiring leaders and party units. It can also be used for buying items, runes, potions as well as building structures in your cities and even resurrecting your units when they are in one of your cities.

Stone: Used for building structures in your capital.

Mana: Used for researching and casting spells, each faction has its own specific mana type.

Resources are gathered in a number of ways. Your Capital produces a small amount of each resource per turn, the buildings you control out on the campaign map also produce resources, such as mills and mana mines. Resources can also be found through normal exploration.

Units & Upgrades

Your units gain XP through victory in combat. As they increase in level they are able to upgrade automatically in

to more powerful units so long as the necessary building exists in your capital.

In a number of cases you must choose between building options as to what a unit upgrades into when it earns enough XP. For example, The Empire starting healer units are acolytes, you must choose to either have them become clerics or priestesses, each of whom have differing stats and abilities.

Your leaders do not upgrade in this way, rather they simply gain points to assign to their stats as they level up and benefit from the acquisition of better armour and weapons. Leaders also have a skill tree to which you can assign points to in order to gain a variety of special skills and attribute increases.

Items

Disciples has many items some gives you more damage others give you initiative and some gives temporary effects.

Equipment:

Equipment items can be worn by the party leaders to give boosts to various stats and attributes. These consist of helms, bracers, shoulder guards, leggings, armour, weapons, boots, spheres, rings and amulets. These can be purchased with gold from traders out on the campaign map and from stores in cities. They also exist as rewards for successful battles.

Each of the faction heroes in the game has their own special equipment which cannot be bought via traders or stores.

Consumables:

The great magic schools particular to all the races of Nevendaar have produced great master lore craftsmen who create many items and artifacts that can be acquired either at specialized shops or that must be wrestled from powerful guardians when those artifacts have been empowered with advanced and rare magic. From curative potions to scrolls, spheres and talismans, all that is valuable in combat is welcome gratefully by the troops.

Artifacts:

The characteristic powers of these artifacts provide a variety of effects both supportive and aggressive. Spheres and talismans will either cure, heal, revive fallen comrades or bless them to grant superior abilities or may also paralyze foes, slow them down, freeze them in their tracks, cause great fear and confusion, rain fire or otherwise be empowered with an almost endless possibility of battle spells. Other items, such as the staves, exclusively used by mage Leaders and Lords, grant spell powers that might otherwise be reserved to schools of magic only available to other races.

Banners etc:

Other valuable objects exist in the land of Nevendaar that have no particular power of their own but that may be symbolically powerful to some groups or that may simply hold great value to merchants and collectioners. These are good finds when the realm’s coffers are low and there is an immediate need for gold. Most shops will show interest for these valuables and will pay a good price to acquire them.

The Battle System

The battle system is now fully 3D rendered. Where you could only before have 5 units in Disciples, now you can have 10 units at a time, not including your hero. The battle system is now more like Heroes of Might and Magic since you can move your units around the map.

Battles in Disciples III play out on a hexagonal grid, where each unit takes it's turn to move and carry out a single action, be it attacking another unit or using a spell, potion etc. Victory comes from wiping out all of the opposing units. Victorious units will normally gain XP upon winning unless they either had maxed out their level for the current chapter to they died and were not resurrected during the battle.

There is also an option to retreat from battle should things take a turn for the worse, although it takes 2 turn for this to take effect. Victory also enables you to recover loot from defeated enemies once you return to the global map after the battle. Should you not wish to fight the battle manually, the game also features an auto-battle option.

This time around there are also runes around the battlefield, for example: A magic rune is in the middle so you should move your mage on top of it to boost his magic damage. This will give you more possibilities than ever before in a Disciples game.

Multiplayer

Disciples III was released without any online multiplayer, however it does have a hot seat mode allowing for two players to play via one computer.

System Requirements

For Windows: