I´ve played only campaign so far, so not sure about scenarios...well, the AI(on very hard):even in neutral state, they´re useing covert operations to try to steal my energy xD, at war, if it attacks, it sometimes uses damaging strategic spells on my armies or colonies right before attacking, to soften them up; it uses a wide variety of in combat spells in ways that make sense...in combat it can make use of all kinds of mechanics: buffs, debuffs, stagger, its even good at aiming the AoE versions of thouse...it also seems better at keeping its units alive, not rare to find its main stacks having multiple max rank(xp wise) units, and also with the max number of mods. yes, it kinda can play^^
That being said, its choice of mod/unit combinations, and stack composition is kinda suboptimal imo, and it also is very late to build sector upgrades, and doesn´t seem to build the unique city upgrades enabled by rare landmarks(bronze, silver, gold) at all, which can give all units produced in that colony quite the edge.
Most important of all: even in campaign missions were the situation is clear, and me and the AIs are given infinite casus belli(reason for war) against each other, most of them stay in neutral state until I declare war on them, enabling me to take as much time as I want to prepare stuff they can´t handle, move it right up to their borders and stomp them one by one. Because of how easy it is to maintain neutral state with them, I estimate the difficulty of AI(very hard) opponents as "sitting duck".
The game has many mechanical improvements: rollover production and research, seperate military and society research giving us more choices, seperate in combat and out of combat casting points. production costs different form energy/gold/mana costs, buildings costing only production, not energy in most cases. colony/sector militia. I also like the sector system. The NPC factions are fun to interact with, better than independant cities or vassals giving quests. Greater variety of quests(produce, research, kill, clear lair).
No faction has a major mobility advantage in a specific terrain, they all crawl at the same pathetic speed until the terrain specific movement bonus and the movement bonus in owned sectors is researched, which are available to everyone equally...better overall balance, not that its an aspect I particularly care about, but I still can see it...
In my estimation AoW: PF is the better game for competitive multiplayer players.
On the lore and worldbuilding: In addition to the ones on towns and units, there are lore texts on rare landmarks(random out of 3 possible on each), and voiced over lore texts on the popups once a research is completed. awsome^^ . Doctrine descriptions also have a lore and an effect part, clearly seperated so that thouse who only care about the latter can easily skip the former...no wonder Mr.Bingham is busy.
Spoiler Alert:
The campaign...the individual missions are alright, but theres too many characters, with too little text and screentime each, for any of them to "come alive"...or maybe its that we decide who they are, rather then getting to know them...probably both...
Also, despite playing through all small campaigns, and seeing each of the final missions endings, I don´t have a clear enough picture of either of the "enteties" one can side with in the final mission, their motives; role and deeds before the cataclysm; and what they stand for, to decide which ending fits me best xD.
AoW3 is far better in this aspect.
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