It seemed really bland so I never bought it.

i actually have no idea what i want. it was an okay game. i cant decide if i like it more than planetfall

>>1748582
I like playing the game because I enjoy the sandbox 4X formula, but the customization focus where everything ends up feeling generic indeed feels quite bland in the end. Races having actual differences instead of being just customizable visual canvas would have been nice for flavor.

>>1748579
>What do you want to see going forward?
The same thing I've wanted since the game fucking launched: For them to make the Pantheon system worth interacting with.

At least they made one step in that direction with the latest major update, since Pantheon heroes get to keep their transformations and even get a special bonus on top of it, but i'm still baffled by how barebones the entire system has been since launch. Even if it was just a reskin of Planetfall's Empire system it would still be an improvement over what we actually got.

>>1748579
Thats good to hear. I'm really satisfied with the game so I just want them to keep doing what their doing.

>>1748579
If we talk of year old games, then CoE takes the 'better AoW game' tittle, at least in my eyes.

Is it challenging compared to other 4xs?

>>1748917
CoE had some cool ideas like the necromancy crafting system, but it's bland as fuck and has zero replayability. Only one map to play, braindead enemy AI, no multiplayer, no empire building/management, etc.

>>1748933
>Only one map to play
That's a plus for me.
That map is pretty huge and was quite fun to explore.
I really don't get the replayablity argument, as I've replayed it 3 times (got too burned out to do alchemist run) and will do so again when (if) another DLC drops, as demonologist was pretty cool.

>>1748937
>I really don't get the replayablity argument
It's not that hard to understand.
- the game only one map to play
- due to being story-based and only having one map, the game always plays out the same way unless you fuck up
- all classes play the same way and learn the same magic apart from having a single unique gimmick each
- AI players mostly just act as a source of repetitive scripted events
- there's no city building or any management elements typical of 4X games
- there's no diplomacy to other than "do you want to piss off the AI? y/n"
- there's no skirmish mode
- there's no multiplayer

CoE would've been so much better as an RPG (or even a VN considering almost everything happens in text events anyway), because outside of the combat which is pretty decent, it lacks anything that makes 4X games worth playing.

>>1748998
CoE IS mostly an RPG. The 4x bit is just a paper thin disguise layered on top with you moving semi-disposable dudes instead of a party of named characters. Remove that and just leave the player moving one team of five heroes and nobody would have any qualms calling it an RPG.

>>1748579
>More water/ocean content.
>More planes (shadow , air , etc) , illwinter has spoiled me
>More empire management elements. It's too combat focused right now
>An expanded and harder way of getting a diplomatic victory
>More map interaction elements. Right now it has less things to do than vanilla HoMM 2
>Artifacts to affect hero appearence , so I can play dress-up

>>1749057
>More planes (shadow , air , etc) , illwinter has spoiled me
I have a theory that the next DLC will add the shadow plane and shadow demons.

>>1748924
No, AI is nonfunctional even by 4x standards. We're talking it camping its one army in front of my undefended capital while the bulk of my forces is ravaging it's core lands.

>>1748998
>the game always plays out the same way
Not at all unless we are playing here some sort of retarded generalization game.
>all classes play the same way and learn the same magic
Not at all. Same as above.
Pages from ruins are pretty random so the only pages player is certain to get are starting ones and those that one gets from quests. In 3 play-throughs got only slight overlap on some trivial shit. Not to forgot that spells and building can significantly alter the way player can approach the game.

There are multiple win conditions.
There are multiple starting locations.
As for the factions:
Alchemist relies on potions;
Runesmith relies on army;
Necromancer crafts his own army;
Demonologist relies on leveling his broken daemons;

>muh multiplyer
>muh skirmish
Then we kind of arrive at the semantics part to find out the fuck do you even mean with "replayable"?
CoE IS literally re-playable.
It sure as hell isn't the "play forever" 1000h game and it never pretended that it is one.

>>1749118
>CoE IS literally re-playable.
Every game is "literally" re-playable. That's just meaningless babble.

Either way, if you want to discuss CoE this badly, go to the CoE thread. Oh wait, there isn't one because everyone forgot about the game roughly a week after it launched.

>>1748579
We had active AoW threads for years until this game released. 1 year old and it almost killed the series, so much this is the first thread about the game in a month.

>>1748599
The biggest flaw of the empire system was that heroes would get eventually turn OP due to the leveling system, turning the game trivial. I think it's for the best they don't follow the same steps.

>>1749126
>starts a retarded argument
>backpedals
Fuck you too, buddy.

>>1749241
>We had active AoW threads for years until this game released. 1 year old and it almost killed the series, so much this is the first thread about the game in a month.
don't worry, redditors have taken the mantle

>>1748593
There are mods for that.

>>1748917
>CoE
What?

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>>1749538
Conquest of Eo.

A 3rd party Spellforce spinoff with some very minor 4X elements.

>>1748593
>Races having actual differences
to be fair, races DO have differences
it's just the player that can change that, AI generated orcs will always have the same traits (tough etc), regardless of cultural attributes or whatever they are called
underwhelming and pozzed, but still

>>1749542
the wizard towers beat my ass and i can’t be arsed to spend 30 turns prepping to assault one

>>1748579
3 was better

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>>1749542
I watched some gameplays, what a shame, CoE and AoW both have some good ideas but will we ever see a mix of both? The answer is always never.

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Shame there aren't more elemental Tomes, I wanted to make a threesome custom scenario with these three.

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>>1749542
>A 3rd party Spellforce spinoff
Having knowledge, that the studio behind it made Fantasy Generals it all makes sense now. I wish they had a larger team and thus - increased output.
Kind of funny, that the only SpellForce game I could get into wasn't really a SpellForce game but an AoW in spirit.

>>1749542
Can it be modded?

>>1750320
yes

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Just found this
Some guy nolifed several years of his life on shadow magic

>>1748593
There are no shortage of other 4X games where that's the case.

>Another Age of Wonders 4 thread
>Another bitchfest by people mad about fully customizable race traits.
>Another asshole highjacks the topic to talk about another 4x game
Can you people fuck off and play another game then? You're not getting what you want.

Shame aow3 is only 32 bit so you can stuff it only so much with mods before it breaks

>>1750735
>before it breaks
It crashes every 5-10 minutes or so in vanilla. Never figured out why. Had one laptop that could run it well, but it's just a vague memory at this point.

>>1750723
Especially considering it sold pretty fucking well. They definitely aren’t getting what they want, and I expect similar things for the planetfall sequel.

>>1748593
Yeah, AoW4 is absolute trash for this alone. All the culture and history of the races feels completely stripped out and gone.

>>1749585
>it's just the player that can change that
I know people keep bitching about this but I really do believe that it's the best of both worlds, because you know there's those people out there who would have asked for a "change traits of races" mod since pre-release if the game didn't have it. I don't know why whenever this complaint comes up no one mentions that the AI races have locked in traits though, it directly addresses this common complaint.
>>1748579
Going off of that one survey they posted on steam (which for some reason everyone in the Steam comments couldn't put 2 and 2 together and realize it was "what content would you like to see for DLCs 5-8") they did ask a lot regarding major popular fantasy IPs from Witcher to Mistborn and even some Sci-fi so who knows what we'll get. I personally hope they don't include any Sci-fi and would save that for Planetfall 2 but I could see a "Lazerpunk" culture being the next major expansion since it would be very eye grabbing.
Very excited to hear that Eldritch Realms is out as early as June, they had a pretty fast turn around time with these DLCs so they clearly were planned during development of the main game. Now that they have to come up with new ideas partially from scratch I wonder how long we'll have to wait in-between.

>>1748579
>What do you want to see going forward?
More tomes and minor transformations.

Also, either a new victory type or adjusting the Magic and Expansion victories, they feel very samey in the sense that you build something and then just tank. For me, it's usually more interesting to just go conquer everything.

Some sort of diplomatic victory type would be cool for Good factions.

>>1750932
>I don't know why whenever this complaint comes up no one mentions that the AI races have locked in traits
You think people here actually play video games?

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I'm shocked I won this

>>1750869
>planetfall sequel
>>1750932
>Planetfall 2

Did they ever confirm they are making a sequel?

>>1748579
What tomes do you guys think they should add that wouldn't feel like out of place mods (personally feel that way about fey mists). For me:
>astral/shadow tier 3 tome that has storm priests as a non-undead support from aow1 and black lightning like in 3. could be lightning/frost/blight damage
>shadow/chaos tome of rogues/assassination, add assassins as racial t4 skirmishers
>chaos/materium t1 tome of dunes that adds some sand abilities, tigran shredder as a skirmisher to round out cultures that dont have them
>chaos/order sun tome, fire/spirit aoe, throw a sphinx summon too
>nature/shadow tome of webs/spiders
>1 more astral/nature water tome so we can flood provinces with water again
>maybe a chaos/order tome for some warlord spells from 3

>>1748579
>Age of Wonders 4 is now one year old.
holy shiy, it's been a year already!

>>1750932
>I don't know why whenever this complaint comes up no one mentions that the AI races have locked in traits though, it directly addresses this common complaint.
Because it's irrelevant. The bonuses are so small nobody bothers to look up which ones AI has. And them being so small is as much of a problem as them not being tied to any race. In 3 you had three big game defining choices - your starting race, class and traits. In 4 it's reduced to only your class.

>>1751369
I really hope they do one on elementals like the one on golems. It's somethings that's disjointed because elementals are spread apart all sorts of tomes and they all fall off because they're mostly t1 summons.

>>1751458
>they all fall off because they're mostly t1 summons
They all evolve into t3 though, and with the right setup you can evolve them extremely fast. There's not much point in playing gotta catch 'em all with elementals, but having an elemental summon in your starting tome is a significant advantage.

Triumph seems very very tight lipped about eldrich realms
what gives?

>>1751491
they stole from every franchise and setting in existence so they don't know what else to add

>>1751588
bring back archons and shadow dreams? and make it a late game crisis.
shadow demons invade but archons try to stop them and you get to pick a side like in planetfall? or make it like CoE you have to kill some superunit and get some reward?

>>1751812
shadow demons*

>>1751812
>you get to pick a side like in planetfall?
yeah it's probably going to be like that
hopefully they won't lock it to a specific map

>>1748579
Man, I would kill for civ styled ingame editor for these games.

UnIronically, I want to play as fairies. How the fuck would I do this if I get this game?

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>>1753506
Fairies exist as t3 vassal units to recruit, but you can't be one yourself. Closest is nature affinity culture so you can get dilemmas giving you fairies

>>1753506
>>1753513
I guess you could play as skinny Halflings, use the Horde tome to make them even smaller and take one of the major transformations that give you wings. It'll look ugly as shit but it's the closest you'll get to having fairies as your main race.

But yeah you can hire several different types of fairies from magic sites, they're good midgame units.

>>1748579
Is this a joke?
AoW4 is like the most boring one. I played a weekend and had to go back to planetfall.
The map customization is limited to 4 choices and some condition flags. There is no way to bypass this with a mod or something to have more options.
You can't tweak individual settings like rather roads should exist or be banned or not. You can only determine a few options for map generation. You can't do something like a desert and tundra map with grasslands turned completely off.
Beyond the map generation, customizing factions is a headache without a cheattable or mod because points are limited and certain abilities lock out others.
It's a single player game, for multiple sure have the admin enforce limits but stop this shit with single player choices.
Moving past game initialization there is nothing to do beyond research and combat. There aren't spy and sabotage options. The AI on the hardest settings is still retarded and just cheats with extra resources spawning troops it shouldn't be able to afford.
Don't get me started on the underground.
Overall it's not a good game which is why I went back to planetfall.

>>1756569
Funny...people loathed planetfall now everyone loves it
Classic 4chin?
Also any insider anon know anything about eldrich realm?

>>1756569
Have you ever played planetfall on release?
The game was far more barebones than AoW4. It didn't have empire mode, you also only had fucking 3 default settings + 1 extra for deluxe version. The diplomacy model was also extremely simple and limited, it got scrapped and replaced with the current system in 1.3. The AI also got extensively reworked.
If anything, I'd say to give it time. When this season pass ends, they will give more effort in building the main game.

>>1756569
Underground in AoW 4 is a disgrace. Easily the worst implementation in the entire history of the series, its existence is an active detriment to the quality and state of the game with the way it currently works.

A little bump to precent this general from achieving (it was the last one on the catalog)
Damn this series is dead

>>1761459
People are waiting for eldrich realms,the game sadly does not have enough content,a lot of people including discord are hoping ER will have tons of content as the game even right now is bare bones

>>1758028
>Underground in AoW 4 is a disgrace.
>A feature that has been since the first game

>>1761783
Underground in AoW 1 was done very well, it was just another big part of the map. As it exists in AoW4 it's barely functional, it doesn't feel like another layer of a the map, it just feels like an afterthought, and half of the time, it breaks altogether. On that one story scenario with Nimue, for example, the Drowned Rats part of the map is blocked off entirely half the time since it auto generates lava around the entrance to their part of the map and you can't get to them to do their quest, and they can't leave their area, either. It's tacked on garbage in AoW4 and they need to either scrap it or bring it up to at least a decent level.

Is there even a point to the other victory types in this game outside of military victory? By the time you can successfully defend them, you have (and usually have had) enough military forces to wipe out your opponents anyway, so why bother?

>>1762123
Yes
To challenge yourself

Just picked it up during the sale and have been enjoying it a lot. Only mistake I made was playing a wood elf run before popping off as chaos dwarves

Newbie here I don't get why the empires dlc is twice the price of the primal dlc when they both add new cultures

>>1762309
The simple answer is the Empires & Ashes adds more stuff. Just read the store page for the details.

Triumph announced from the start that they will make two types of DLC. One is a content pack and the other is an expansion. Expansions have more content and also include story maps, but they're twice the price of a content pack. The next DLC (Eldritchy Realms) willl also be an expansion.

>NPC gets mad I went through his land
>Fucking kill em

>>1762123
There are a few campaign maps on hardest difficulty which just takes enormous amount of time with a lot of opponents, magic victory is much easier there and preferable.

How often should I be placing outposts

>>1762610
If you have to ask, probably more than you're doing right now. Outposts are part of the reason why Materium affinity is so meta right now. Getting the first Materium node ASAP is a huge deal. It makes outposts cheaper, it makes them build faster, and it immediately lets you claim an extra province when you build one.

There are 4 main ways to use outposts, more or less in order of importance:
>To claim spots where you want to build cities.
>To claim resources you can't reach with a city (yet).
>To give your troops a spot to regenerate without having to retreat to your own cities.
>To speed up the movement of your troops without needing roads.

For the last one, of course you could just send a fast unit ahead to build roads for your armies, but keep in mind that you always get a speed boost in friendly territory so even with roads, spreading your territory with outposts is still useful.

>>1762663
Oh, I forgot one point:
>To build teleporters away from your cities.

Of course you need to have unlocked teleporters first for this to work, and it doesn't work with SPIs like Chrono Gates since those can only be built in cities, but it's a huge deal for lategame warfare on big maps.

>>1762663
I do have to ask because I just started lol

>>1762663
Can you transform outposts into fast travel spots like in planetfall?

>>1763689
You can, if you've unlocked teleporters.

Should I play AoW 1, 3 or 4?

>>1764200
Yes.

Did they fix the game is it good now?

>>1764257
Depends on what you think was wrong with it before.

>>1764276
NTA, but my biggest issue with the game is the complete lack of any campaign whatsoever. AoW 1/2 campaigns were fun, so it's a huge step down.

>>1764321
No, they haven't fixed that at all, they have the self contained story realms, but they really don't compare to the AoW campaigns of the first three games.

>>1764321
They added two new story maps in the Empires DLC and that's it. After Planetfall and AoW4 I think the idea of playing AoW for the campaign is dead and buried.

According to Triumph's lead designer they don't want to waste time on making story campaigns anymore, because nobody played them in the older games. Which is such an absurd statement that I can't even imagine where he got that idea. Maybe spent too much time listening to obsessive multiplayer communities or something.

>>1764342
They should just remake Shadow Magic at this point if they're THAT creatively bankrupt

>>1748582
Dodged a bullet.
It's better than 3, but still leagues awar from what 1 and 2 was.

They drop a new DLC, I play for a couple of hours to see it's the same shit and wait for the next DLC.

>tfw you find the way to unlock the dlcs for free

discord new about ER apparently we are getting a new rule type(lovecraft) and culture too something akin to the scirn mind controllers of CNC3
Better start making R.J.Macready and H.P.Lovecraft rulers

>>1768251
Yeah there have been hints of insect and tentacle themes.

>>1768296
>>1768251
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!
SAVE ME BLACK CAT WITH FUNNY NAME!

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>>1751369
T5 Chaos/Astral tome that truly fucks the match with horrors beyond comprehension, like the Blood/Astral path in Dominions. And other stuff in general that would make even the small time evil factions go "what the fuck bro that's fucked up"

From the DLC preview stream (just adding the pregame stuff since I want to fit it into one post):

>New forms: Insect and Syron (Syron look kinda boring, but Insect is pretty cool)
>New traits: Ceaseless Cacophony (gives enemy melee a funble chance) and Empowered by Magic (gives units stacks of Strengthened when hit by magic damage)
>There are no new cultures
>Mystic now has three subcultures (similar to Primal): Attunement, Potential, and Summoning
>Attunement is basically the current Mystic except with some upgrades
>Potential focuses on casting spells and rewards not spamming one spell but using a wide variety
>Summoning focuses on enhancing Magic Origin units
>each Mystic sub-faction gets a different T3 unit, but otherwise their roster is the same
>Reaver T3 and Magelock have been buffed
>Magelocks can now move and shoot, but their shots are inaccurate if they move
>All Reaver melee attacks automatically inflict Marked
>All Dark ranged atacks automatically inflict Weakened
>They're considering adding subfactions to the other cultures as well but it won't happen any time soon
>Two new society traits for Shadow Affinity.
>Keepers of Knowledge: When you research spells and unlock tomes it enhances your relations with free cities, and you get bonus research for having open borders with other empires.
>Umbral Disciples: Devs didn't want to talk about this because it would be too much of a spoiler, but it lets you get an early start with the new Umbral mechanics.
>New T1 Tome: Tome of the Tentacle, focuses on damage and controlling enemy movement
>New leader type: Eldritch Sovereign, which is basically a Lost Wizard (T5 neutral unit), but as a player character.
>ES uses Thralls (a new resource based on how many units you beat in battle) to fuel unique spells.
>ES gets new/more unique signature skills than a Dragon.
>ES chooses a magic relic at character creation which gives them very long-ranged magic attacks and also determines their starting skill.

>paladin type facation
>Npc city has a spy in my area
Holy warfare it is then

>>1768976
so any end game crisis like the voidspawn invasion?

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/eldritch-realms-coming-june-18th-ft-umbral-abyss-dev-diary.1682793/

So after the patch will my current saved games not work?

I know that things like ruler creation and unit art-style are near the bottom of a list regarding the most important parts of a 4x game, but I have to say they really knocked it out of the park again.
I think the new map layer can be fun, I find myself longing for more PvE stuff as the game progresses that isn't just a resource node having a stack of 3 T5 units at max rank
Also excited to hear about XP changes, didn't expect it but was a nice surprise to see that's being improved

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2401860/Age_of_Wonders_4_Eldritch_Realms/

The DLC page is now fully up with pictures and full description

>>1748579
Did it revive age of wonders, there is no functional difference between playing orc, human, elf etc

New to this have the devs said anything about being able to share/download other people's rules?

>>1768976
>each Mystic sub-faction gets a different T3 unit, but otherwise their roster is the same
Does this mean I can opt out of a towel head in mystic culture now?

>>1769061
>https://store.steampowered.com/app/2401860/Age_of_Wonders_4_Eldritch_Realms/
>New Ruler Type
>New Mount Type
>Two new racial forms
>three new tomes
>shadow map layer
>New Global Events
>2 story realms
Seems a little underwhelming desu, no new culture AND only three tomes in particular. It does seem like the new ruler type has a bit more depth than the others, at least.

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Kind of sad they reworked Mystic to have a shadow crosspath option instead of making a new A/S faction but the lost wizard PC looks cool so w/e. The T1 tome seems really generic, you summon tentacles and you uhhhhhh summon tentacles. This tome seems a lot cooler in comparison
>>1769160
Yes, the T3 units that gets switched out is the one with the turban I hated this aesthetic so I never played mystic before

>>1769204
Not even a single new culture, 3 tomes, what the fuck

>>1769309
And I'm guessing these tomes are worse than the dozens of good modded ones

>>1769204
>>three(!!!) new tomes
feels like they really don't know what they're doing
they needed to unironically multiply the number of tomes in the game to give players actual options over the entire course of the game
instead they're just adding one or two here and there IF it has the good sense to be consistent with their latest dlc theme
reminder that each alignment has a whole 1 tier 5 tome

>>1769365
Yeah if you time traveled back to this games release a year ago and said that after a full year of DLC we'd have 11 new tomes and 2 new cultures (and 5 story missions) no one would believe it.

Granted, they've had to spend a lot of their time trying to unfuck their own mistakes, like expanding racial traits to make them feel even slightly relevant. Or pandering to five people who play MP by making insane system changes they have to soft walk-back later. I dunno, at this point I don't think this game will ever feel "fixed". There's just something inherently unsatisfying about playing it, even with all the new content.

>>1769553
>pandering to five people who play MP
They legit are a voiced minory that spam the discord about "muh MP,muh balance devs!"
Srsly mp player are the niggers of aow4
That aside yeah the dlcs did not bring anything that interesting or substantional like say PF dlc aka anomalies,voidbringer crisis or empire mode...there is season 2 now hope that one is better

>>1769846
This is probably cope but maybe they played it safe with the scope of season 1 DLCs because they didn't know if they were gonna sell that well

>>1769902
Hope they did sell well...but releasing ER in the same month as Elden Ring dlc,BG3's new big patch,Wotr dlc might not have been their best idea...

>>1770136
I'm pretty sure they did sell well, otherwise they wouldn't have announced a second round of DLCs.

Vassal system needs adjustment imo
>Can't use there land for beacon victory
>Can't use there wonders for magic victory
>Don't respond to war stuff within any reasonable time frame

>>1749840
I think it was probably the one where there’s 3 lost wizards and more shit constantly spawns, the trick to that one is to just focus on killing the original Lost Wizards not anything else because it’ll end the battle regardless of reminding enemies. If I remember right they have a mage bane or two that block combat spells from being cast so configure your party around that….or just cram like 6 heroes into an army for that one

>>1769846
I just visited the official forum for the first time in ages and the first post I noticed was:
>Depending on how the new Mystic lands Barbarian may still be the strongest culture, which it has been for a while after High got nerfed.

I think it's overdue for some small adjustments to shake up the meta.

Ritual of Alactiry - this is too good and probably the main source of issues with the culture, make it a 5 turn global cooldown rather than a 3 turn individual city/outpost cooldown.

Warrior - nerf shield bash to 60% or alternatively keep at 90% but don't make it enter defensive mode. Warriors are probably the strongest cultural t1, especially in auto, and medal rework is going to make them even more oppressive.
What universe do these people live in where any of this shit even vaguely matters? The biggest problem the game has is giving them a reason to play it at all, but we still got this level of "Need to nerf what his currently the best so we can nerf the next best thing after that" time-wasting.

>>1769553
A year ago i told people that in two years the game might have enough content for a real release, seems on track for ir desu. But i already accepted it wont ever reach aow3, im not sure ill give it a chance again.

>There's just something inherently unsatisfying about playing it, even with all the new content

The game is bland, thats it.

>>1771360
To bland for the sexpectations of shitChan, that´s for sure...

I wish furies were T1 so they would benefit more from tome of the horde and you could make an actual not-mongol horse archer spam horde

>>1771466
I don't like how Barbarian is supposed to be the orc stand-in but they don't have impalers or heavy cavalry from the earlier games. They're in a limbo between Barb and Dark

New player here, any tip for building a horde barbarian army? Should I keep building outpost or should I space them out to leave room for my city to expanse?

>>1771557
Depends on the map. On smaller maps you don't want to focus too much on developing your cities. Focus on clearing sites and then transition into killing enemies. On bigger maps you still want to do that but also leave room to properly develop your cities because they're going to be more important in the long run.

>>1771702
How many cities should I get in the early game? 2 or 3? I used to rush 4 cities in civ

>>1771721
Depends on the map but typically I conquer city 2 (with default settings you always start with a free city of your race nearby) and build city 3 ASAP.

>>1771721
The AI goes hard at forward settling once they find you so you should probably hit your starting city cap as soon as possible and get the 200 cost cap increase after your early imperium tree picks (unless you already have it from society traits)

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Have they buffed dragon lords to compensate for cucking them out of solo xp and their own aura? haven't played since they changed that.

>>1772565
No, wizard kings are the only leader type that's allowed to be good.

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>>1772570
Lame. What's even the point when champions are better fighters and wizard kings are wizard kings?

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>>1772592
Picture related.

Also, Champions are only better fighters once they get good gear. Dragons are still stronger than both Champions and Wizards in the early game.

>>1772593
Having tried making Dragons work for a while now, having a slightly better early game is completely overshadowed by your garbage econ. Dragons are just shitters in general, even their special tomes kinda suck.

Curious to see how the new Eldritch Abomination Lords still end up worse than Champions and Wizards.

>>1772640
I only made one dragon lord and the economy seemed fine, but then again it was industrious culture

>>1772593
Which is completely irrelevant since they are only slightly better early game, and Dragons fall off hard by mid game and are complete garbage by late game. It's actually unreal how useless they made them in comparison to Champion, and it's also ridiculous just how much better Wizard King is even over Champion. They have no idea how to balance them at all, which is why I have absolutely no faith the new Lord type is going to be anything but utter trash.

>>1772570
Champ is an economical and military powerhouse(extra draft and bonus XP) and if you have "mega cities" champs can shit out armies far far faster than wizard kang and dragonfags

>>1772640
Get dark culture, artefact hoards and them maintain a war with some AI to feed you heroes. Your economy will explode.

>>1772904
So the reason dragons have a good economy is stuff unrelated to the dragon itself?

>>1773160
You want to collect items for your hoard anyway, so why not capitalize on it? You get the most items from enemy heroes and dark makes best use of those. You can skip artefact hoarders if you don't need much mana anyway.

>>1773168
Eh, I feel like that has more to do with a specific synergy than it does a general endorsement for dragon lords. I really hope the new ones don't get cucked to death like the dragons did. Being able to use most of the items is already a good start.

>>1772814
None of which matters past the early game since Wizards can summon more shit to even the numbers and is way better in combat.

>>1773209
That "specific synergy" only works with dragons, so it's definitely a point in their favor. You can't get the Dragon Hoard feature it relies on without being a dragon lord. If you have a reliable way to get items, which you always do if you're up against AI, plus you have other ways of getting extra items like Industrial prospecting or tunring on regenerating infestations, you'll get lods of emone basically for free.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-31-eldritch-sovereign-and-tomes.1685857/

They posted their new dev diary on the new leader type & tomes

>>1774210
This new ruler type actually seems quite strong if that preview is anything to go by. They'll still probably be outscaled by Wizard Kings, but they look like they'll be extremely good for early and mid game.

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Gotta say, lads. I'm pretty hype for the new expansion. The umbral realm feels far more interesting and rewarding to navigate than the underground. The new leader aesthetically looks fucking rad and can actually boost his casting points so there's finally a ruler that's not an objectively bad wizard king.

It's a small thing but I really like his innate dominate ability. One of my favorite things from playing Age of wonders 3 was playing druid/necromancer and shopping for new units on the world map to add to my army. You don't really get to do that in 4 since they made necromancy cringe and druids don't even dominate animals anymore so it's a nice return to form. Let's me actually play with all those uncommonly seen t3 and possibly even t4 units with proper status shredding.

Would Giant/Titan rulers work or would it be too much overlap with dragons?

>>1774303
I'd argue that they'd overlap with champion more than anything. Sort of stepping on their supposed gimmick of being a martial powerhouse/city support

At least, I'm pretty sure he's supposed to support his cities, they really need to give his draft bonus to all cities rather than just his capitol

>>1774210
I really like the idea of adding a "counter tome" to this expansion, it's a good way to let players fight on the new layer without forcing themselves to align with the PvE armies residing in the layer. Hope we see more in future expansions.

>give my army of lizard people demon wings
Now this is a fucking game

it's dope they are introducing insect race in the next dlc
Kir'ko was my favorite faction in planetfall

>>1774745
>Kir'ko without psionics living in traditional human fantasy castles
maybe they'll throw in a funko-pop if ebough of us buy the dlc

>>1774957
>>Kir'ko without psionics living in traditional human fantasy castles
Don´t you mean the "shadow demons" for the game "Shadow Magic, of wich the Kir´ko for Planetfall were base on?"

>finish story realm
>Can now play as the evil fire lord in my own games
Fun

Sort of bummed we won’t get 4 new tomes in ER like we did in E&A plus no new culture but I’m excited for the crisis even system thing.

I really enjoyed Primal Fury tomes hope these are as fun

>>1774303
I want this so bad, maybe the ruler unit costs a lot of food to maintain

>>1748579
What's the value of guilds that aren't Scholar's? By the time I get around to building them, I'm not going to want to dedicate my time to getting even more food or production. Maybe draft could be useful and gold is always good, and the mage's guild can be nice for the bonus rank on supports but why would I ever choose something like food over that?

>>1777107
apparently they are changing how the "guilds" work making them move useful

>>1777107
I like having a Smiths Guild in one of my cities to pump out units, but in general yeah Scholars Guild is simply the best.

>>1777553
I prefer merchants guild or whatever the gold one is

I don't plan my cities in advance I just build whatever province improvements seem best at the time

>>1769251
>I hated this aesthetic so I never played mystic before
SIR! SIR! WHAT ARE YOU DOIN?

>new blog post mentions how small the dev team is
>Still seemingly more dlcs coming
Typical greedy corporations

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>Showed off the designs of creatures that didn't make the cut
>All of them look infinitely more interesting than what we actually got

>>1778663
>the thing the starts
why don't we wait here for a while...see what happens?

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>>1778675

>>1748579
Is this better than Planetfall?

>>1749057
>More empire management elements. It's too combat focused right now
Yeah, I could see some people hating it for thematic/ min-maxing reasons but I'd love a system where your heroes have personality traits that starts to cause conflict between them, like having one glory hound hero who's good at his job but gets real fucking mad when he's not allowed to fight in every battle and eventually rebels against you because he wasn't given the 'opportunity' he deserved would be neat

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>>1778677

>>1778678
I personally find it more fun but I was never big on planetfall to begin with. What about planetfall did you particularly like? I could comment on how that compares to AoW

>>1778682
i thought AoW Planetfall was very polished but dull, this looks like the same game but with fantasy skin and im not sure if should bother

>>1778686
In that case it sorta depends on what you find exciting. I'd say the game is definitely more polished/streamlined than, say, AoW3 in the same way you described(Improvements at the cost of sanding fun things down).

For me, the biggest thing in these games Is unit variety and you get way more here than in planetfall. Not the least of which is helped by the fact that you can't sit on the same t1/tt2 units forever like you can in that game.

>>1778686
One big thing this has over planetfall is having separate queues for city improvements and units
Also not being locked to a strict faction and having a ton of customization for it

>>1778678
no
City building is less interesting, and the tactical fights are boring. Unit building is just stacking buffs on top of each other

>>1778663
I would seriously enjow an update or even a smaller DLC purely dedicated to expanding the visual customization options of your ruler and empire that expands on vanilla and all other DLCs.
Plenty of mods do it already, so It wouldn't be a bad idea for the devs to make an offivial version.

>>1778678
I hate the cartoonish sci-fi setting of Planetfall, so yes.

>>1778678
I miss the unit mod system of Planetfall and prefer it over improving troops through tomes. Otherwise I'm liking AoW4 more.

Planetfall 2 when

>>1748579
I honestly think the whole every playthrough feeling the same thing would be better if they just made every tomb twice as large and gave you half as many. That alone would force way more choices on you

>>1748582
Yeah races just being cosmetic kinda killed it for me.
I think maybe I'll test the campaign at some point, but idk

>>1779696
I have like 40 hours and I still havent even touched alot of the tomes

For me it's shock units

do you guys play on classic turn based or simultaneous?

>>1748579
Really excited to hrab this once the summer sale hits

>>1780102
>simultaneous
always this one
faster and better

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-33-mystic-update.1687792/
The patch notes are up

>>1780233
First update since I got the game are they always this long?

>>1780316
Triumph likes to do a very large patch alongside a DLC release so that even people without DLCs get a general base game QoL update on non-DLC exclusive mechanics, so they really like to save their overhauls and "re-balancing all units" moments for these patches. This one does seem longer than the others though and that's probably due to the Mystic culture being separated in 3 subcultures alone creates a large list of things being moved around or getting minor +1/-1 reworks.

>>1780233
oh thank fuck they finally removed combat casting and replaced it with stuff I might actually use

>>1748579
No unit upgrades, to it's a clear downgrade from Endless Legend and Platenfall.

>>1748579
A new game that doesn't suck. Doesn't this game STILL have serious de-sync problems in multiplayer? I still rather keep playing planetfall.

>>1780615
Getting fixed next week

Why is the wiki for this game almost useless it's been out for over a year

>>1780700
Use this:
https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/

Best mods?

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>redownloaded the game
>there's an expac dropping in two days
Oh. Guess I'll uninstall it and wait a bit

>>1782583
Might as well leave it downloaded unless your desperate for drive space

>>1782583
As >>1782719 point out... Why? Also, unless you play with dark, mystic or reaver nothing is really changing

>>1782752
Did you miss the massive patch notes lol

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I've only played one Age of Wonders game, AOW3, and that was for 98 minutes 5 years ago according to steam. Honestly I can't even remember it.

Pitch me on the series. Age of Wonders 4 looks cool, is it fun?

>>1782966
You can be evil Hobbits

>>1782966
If you weren't interested in 3 you wouldn't be interested in 4

>>1782993
nta but what if I like 3 a lot and find it fun but wish it had more 4x stuff like more city management?

>>1782966
Play 3 again and if you can't get into that today you're not gonna be able to get into 4.

>>1783042
AoW4 is more or less like 3 but with district combinations and the production methods of AoW Planetfall.

Maybe you'll enjoy Endless Legend more, or if you just want a straight up City-Builder for a fantasy setting try Song of Syx.

>>1783045
oh believe me, I've played a lot of EL haha. I think the thing holding me back from getting AOW4 is the whole you can make anything in any way leading to basicaclly nothing having identity.

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I bought AOW4.

>>1783161
I get what you're saying with the races thing, but that's only an option you can take. There are still default race settings with their predefined traits and so. Yes, there aren't "Race Units" like there were in AoW3 and before, but that's more attacked to the classes, tomes as well as the leader type you play as.

What do >you
Want for the 2nd wave of dlcs
Also is it true that the Pantheon is capped at 50 because of consoles

>>1783172
maybe i'll just grab the base game since it's on sale rn and get the season pass down the road. Thanks anon. Also shoutouts to Triumph for actually still supporting AOW3 and taking the time to let me rename my account after I emailed them. I was genuinely surprised by that and really thankful to them, so I figure I can show that by buying aow4 lmao

>>1783161
>you can make anything in any way leading to basicaclly nothing having identity.
Yes that's what makes AoW4 something of a sidegrade comapred to 3. You get build autism but you lose out on flavor
>>1783192
rogue tomes (shadow + chaos), one of which has courtesan ambassadors
an aggressive diplomatic chaos society trait centered around liberating enemy vassals and turning them against the previous owner (AKA a good-aligned anti-order trait)
materium/order culture centered around vassalage and imperium

>>1783213
Based vassalage enjoyer

>small underground map trait
>big underground map trait
Ok but where's the no underground trait

The update is out

nude mod for halflings?

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>>1748579
>What do you want to see going forward?
Further cosmetic customization for factions and Rulers/Heroes, plus Culture-based Tome units.
More upgrades for Units.
More Tomes, both of singular and multiple affinities.
More Events related to the world, cities, factions and heroes that allow you to roleplay your Rulers more often and more variedly.
Overall, just more content to pad out the game.


>>1783514
Call me when the torrent for the new DLC is out. I'll always try before buying.

>>1783560
People use torrents in 2024?

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>>1783581
What do you use otherwise?

>>1783225
>play good character
>razing cities of other, filthier races is "bad" and "wrong" even if they're violent retards who start shit and give me free major war justification
>migrate any cities settled too close to me
>it doesn't matter how die as a result of the mass exile because I do other good things and the cosmos declare I'm a good boy who dindu nuffin
>vassalize the rest of their cities and leave them to their pitiful existence
I'm beginning to realize almost every good character I make is like this. I never absorb a city into my empire unless they're the same form at the very least

>>1783611
Cream Api

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sex with eldritch mommy

>>1783656
If you captured some of their heroes you can just release them at the end of the conflict for a pile of good boy points. Funny, however, when you execute a bunch for bad boy points and balance them out by releasing the rest. Got to get your hands on those tasty corpses.

>>1748579
Why even call it age of wonders at this point?
There is nothing left from the previous entries that ties it into the series:
>no halfling slinger
>no goblin bomber
>no orc cavalry
>no elf nymph
>at no point is Julia,meandor or enioch mentioned

>>1783814
it does feel like races have lost their charm now.
race is just a 'skin' now and bring no uniqueness.
as many have said before, there's little to no flavour now just amazing building potential.
it would have been nice if races were forced to have a set of traits and could have their own uniqueness to them, like if you play as goblins, they have bombers and so on....
they went the stellaris approach, it worked well there cause it was the first on its series but AoW had plenty of lore from its older games.

>>1783192
>What do >you
>Want for the 2nd wave of dlcs
The same thing I've wanted since the game launched: A Pantheon system that's actually worth interacting with after you're done unlocking shit. They've been adding stuff to it bit by bit, but it still feels like an afterthought to me that doesn't serve any real purpose. Planetfall's Empire Mode was the backbone of the (singleplayer) game to me, and I had hoped that Pantheon was an improved version of that instead of the pointless nonsense we have now.

I also hope they'll turn society traits into a point-based system like they have for racial traits. This will give them a lot more room to get creative with it and make deliberately under- or over-powered traits that can be balanced through cost.

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>>1783581
>>1783611

i dont get it how is the umbral stuff any different from just underground?

>>1783874
Most importantly, underground is supposed to function more or less the same as the surface, only more constrained by layout of the map itself. The umbral realm is has its own unique mechanics and doesn't serve the same purpose as normal terrain. They're the same in that they're both sub-maps that can only be accessed through specific nodes, but in terms of function they're quite different.

>>1783875
what is the umbral realm's function then?

>>1783880
They're basically mini-realms that are extra dangerous but have unique rewards. You can't really expand into them but there are unique sites, resources, and safe havens you can claim. And potentially you can ally with the umbral demons and get units from them.

>>1783043
Wrong. Just play 4

>>1783814
I’ve only played 4 and I’m getting close to the end of the first eldritch realms story map and I can say you’re 1000000% wrong about the game not Mentioning Meandor, Innioch, or Julia. I’ve got almost 1k hrs in on 4 if you’re going to whine at least be accurate

>>1783825
>it would have been nice if races were forced to have a set of traits and could have their own uniqueness to them
AI factions all have fixed traits depending on their race. It's only the player who gets to make "non-canon" races and you could simply choose not to do that if it bothers you.

>>1783192
I want more head, hair, outfit, and color options for all forms when you create a ruler. I want an expanded pantheon system and more stuff to unlock as this latest dlc only had like 3 weapons to unlock which I did instantly from my saved up points. Order needs a DLC to add a few tomes. I’d like to see the subculture changes mystic got be added to the other cultures like industrial and feudal especially. Feudal culture needs an overhaul as it’s too weak and boring as is. I hope to see a giant ruler option one day. I think expansion and magic victory are too similar as they are now and one needs to be something besides “defend 3 places from stuff for X turns”

>>1783192
Republic government type, having elections between your heroes like in Endless Space would be fun
More customization for rulers and units
A non combat racial trait (stuff like +5 food for halflings on pastures, but obviously customizable)

>>1783986
>I hope to see a giant ruler option one day.
Aren't giants supposed to have shaped the worlds or something? And they're enemies of dragons too I think. They certainly sound like lord material

>>1783977
Anon attempt to be the "cool age of wonders veteran" person, please understand.

just picked this up and doing necromancy since I liked doing it in aow3, but it seems a lot shittier and simplified. Is there no way to turn cities into dead? Or your racial units all into undead?

>>1784430
There is a greater transformation that turns your faction into undead.

>>1784430
As the other Anon said there's a way to turn your entire race into undead, but it's a tier 3 tome so you can't get it at the start of the game. It's the Wightborn spell from the Tome of the Great Transformation. All affinities except Materium get access to a major transformation option at tier 3 or 4. Several of the DLCs also add cross-affinity transformations.

Overall, the current options are:
>Order Affinity: Angelic Transformation (angels)
>Astral Affinity: Astral Attunement (ethereals)
>Chaos Affinity: Demonkin (fiends)
>Nature Affinity: Gaia's Chosen (plants)
>Shadow Affinity: Wightborn (undead)
>Dragon Dawn DLC, Nature + Chaos Affinity: Draconian Transformation (dragons)
>Primal Fury DLC, Nature + Astral Affinity: Naga Transformation (nagas)
>Eldritch Realms DLC, Shadow +Astral Affinity: Gloom Strider (umbral demons)

Unlike minor transformations, major transformations don't stack so you can only use one of them.

>>1784444
>>1784436
oh ok that works then, thanks. Is it going to also alter how my units look? Are they gonna all turn into skeletons or look like they're rotting lol

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>>1784737
It turns their skin black, their eyes purple, and makes part of their face transparent so you can see the skull underneath.
You can preview what transformations and enchantments will look like in the encyclopedia.

New Umbral units are fun, I'm enjoying the Umbral Mistress and Abductor being new higher tier units that aren't just "unit type but it has a higher inflated HP and damage value" and brings plenty of new skills to the table.
Making insanity guarantee to attack enemy units if at all possible over your own units was a change that was definitely needed, before the patch if I casted it on an enemy 90% of the time it just attacked my own unit, but now I'm making enemy heroes run across the Devouring Void to one shot their own archers.
Kind of wish there were more ways to interact with the Umbral Thralls, just seems like they're angrier vassals with even less ways to interact. But I'm enjoying taking on the Abyss.
Anyone have any tips of overmap movement in the beginning of the game? It feels like I just can never move fast enough and I'm not hitting objectives as fast as I could be. I hit a point where my empire starts to get exponentially stronger but that's around turn 60 and i know there are people closing out games at that point.

>>1784847
Yeah this dlc sure did add in a lot of "meat" to the game so to speak
I did a custom realm with high infestation,umbral demons,urrath's grasp,deamon prince and toll season with slow build and research.
And man do i struggle to say alive,the world actually feels like it's trying actively to kill me without a pause a true demon realm
I love it but the other dlc feel anemic expecally E&A who did add what?
Reaves and that dumb sigil crap other than that nothing noteworthy
Hope season 2 follows ER path

>>1784444
How many minor transformations can you stack realistically

>>1784956
all of them

The bug fucker on the first story map is a pain in the ass. Grinding through mounted bastions is a nightmare
>>1784941
>I love it but the other dlc feel anemic expecally E&A who did add what?
Not-dreadnought culture, 4 tomes and the most popular victory condition in 3?

>>1784959
>Not-dreadnought culture
Is fine but i do miss my flame tanks though
>4 tomes
Now that many hell mods add in a lot more anf usually more balanced too
>the most popular victory condition in 3?
Not in aow 4 anymore people barely even mention it be it in the aow 4 forums or discord or reddit

>>1784958
Pretty sure the upkeep would fuck you over

>>1784963
Which mods are 4chin approved

>>1784990
You could probably manage it with some combination of artifact hoarders, runesmiths, and pre-rework mystic culture

>>1784990
Transformations don't have an upkeep, only research cost. Enchantments, however...

>>1784990
Minor trabsformations are free and you can stack as many of them as you like
Enchantments on the other hand increases upkeep

>>1784998
lolimod

>>1785456
i wish that was real

>>1785040
>>1785160
Oh I didn't realize they were different categories

I really need to try out an evolution build with these new changes to the armory. With the draft buildings providing multiple ranks combined with the chaos tree giving a free rank to tier ones and society traits like scions of evil you should be able to instantly evolve slithers and animals built at your cities. Hell, for the slithers specifically you could get them to evolve extra early by doubling down with adept hunters

>>1785632
iirc the patch notes mentioned something about making it so that you can't instantly evolve units with free bonus ranks anymore, so don't get your hopes up.

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>>1785639
Lame... So do they just have a hard cap on how many medals they can get? Or is it some weird stop gap where you need to take them to a fight once for the evolve to trigger?

>>1785644
I believe they said you need legend to evolve now and bonus ranks can only get you to champion.

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>chosen destroyers is incompatible with relentless crusaders
lame

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>>1785648
Legend is only 5 ranks.

1 from the chaos tree

1 from scions of evil

1 from blacksmith

1 from armory

2 from smiths guild

and 1 from fabled hunters for slithers specifically

It SHOULD work.

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>>1785644
>>1785648
I just checked and yeah, that's exactly what it is.

>>1785655
Laaame

Is there any obligatory mod yet?

>>1786211
hmm...there are 2 story realm mods made by kaige which are great 1st is "return of the lich queen" you start of with many vassals and said lich queen will pick them off one by one the 2nd is "rip and tear" and it's pretty much what you think it is,you start with a -50% upkeep for you units but the world gets progressively worse with earch turn and there is a boss "ai".
There is some talk about event pack mod in discord so wait for it a bit

>>1786211
Age of Music of course

>>1783983
Yeah but that doesn't make the races feel any less interchangeable in practice. It's still 99% a visual choice with some suggested minor bonuses attached. It's by far the least significant races have ever been in AoW even compared to AoW3.

Having played with the sovereigns they feel a bit awkward. Thet have SO many abilities that the Ai doesn't really know how to prioritize them. The flesh specialization is also a trap as your sovereign loves to cast resurgence at the very start of the battle so your units will die without contributing much and take ages to heal.

>Just found the time to beat the first ER story realm
>I know I’ll make an eldritch sovereign that looks like a big pixie
>”there won’t be a lord like this!”
>a certain story lord looks almost dead on
>look at YouTube video…multiple YouTubers make it too
>god damn it

I wish you could tweak shit a bit after ascending a leader, because by the end my holy inferno draconic warriors are NOT "Human Paladins"

>>1786726
I know that feel, bro. There's a base game elf lady who almost exactly matches what I was going to make my elf lady (astral/shadow wizard king), and in ER they made an ordermaxxing eldritch lord which was my first idea when I saw they made customization options for that kind of lord

>>1786723
>The flesh specialization
what's that? The umbral disciples thing that gives your units umbral flesh?

are the mount traits actually worth getting? I got the nightmare one since it seemed good (im doing dark) but it seems like it's on units that don't really benefit from it much

>>1786922
Nah, for the sovereign specifically. At level 4 you can specialize him a variety of ways. The fleshsculptor one gives you exploding splitterligns as free summons and you can give your units a 40% damage bonus and resurgence.. At the cost of their lifespan becoming 2 turns before they die. That's a great ability and all when you can actually control when you cast it. The AI rushes to use it as soon as possible so it can really fuck up your creeping and xp

>>1786924
Mounts are very good, though they're a little less good now that lower tier units have much more health. Really though, you pick it up for more for the extra movement speed and less for the mounts unique effects. Juggling your units to pull your stack into as many fights as possible and moving individual pieces back to heal Is where mounts really shine.. On top of giving them more actual movement to sue in the combat layer.

Another secret benefit of mounts, at least the elephant/mammoth mounts is that they make your models so big it reduces their overall unit size... Which means you take less casualties and do optimal damage for longer so its a soft damage buff as well as the fat HP bonus.

FUCK infestations

I can't stop myself from just mass spamming magelocks. I love guns too much bros

>>1786847
You can tho

>>1787248
Average American player

>>1787248
Magelocks are a lot better since the update but unfortunately the autoresolve AI is still shit with them.

>>1787389
The best use of the reworked Magelocks is on hero units. They get enough accuracy bonuses that they don't need an action to aim all of the time, and the discounted shot compared to the old version works perfectly with Killing Momentum.

>>1787248
same but i'm european

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Is the game worth it? It should probably go on sale during the sale this week right?

>>1787725
Slightly cheaper getting steam key through indiegala

>>1787735
Oh shit thanks, I should look around for deals a bit harder. 50% off seems a good jumping in sale.

>>1787738
I don't think it's go down that low yet

bros how come my aow4 launcher is showing primal and not eldritch? I have eldritch downloaded and working

>>1787248
>2 magelocks
>2 ironclads
>2 templars
It's demon killing time

does the game have racial bonuses yet or is it still the same shit with visual only races?

>>1788942
it has default traits for each race so i dont deviate from that and act as if those are the actual racial bonuses. The ai doesn't deviate either.

>>1788959
I don't know why people say AoW4 has no Species Traits.
The default ones are right there. Only way to get different ones is with custom empires.

>>1788942
>>1788959
>>1789040
Gamers will optimize the fun out of their experience. Yeah, you can clearly see that the traits provided to a race are the ones intended for them but if it costs you literally nothing to swap relatively useless traits for much more impactful ones then why wouldn't you?

>>1788217
I guess they forgot to update the launcher. It should work fine ingame.

>>1789043
>you can clearly see that the traits provided to a race are the ones intended for them but if it costs you literally nothing to swap relatively useless traits for much more impactful ones then why wouldn't you?
It changes nothing then.

The only difference you'll see is that since players will optimize everything, rather than seeing multiplayer filled with nothing but Orcs or Lizardmen or whatever, everyone can play whatever graphically difference they want and still fit their playstyle.

>>1789043
because I have self control and care more about thematic shit than hyper optimizing. At most I'll swap one of the default traits to better fit thematically my "subrace" (e.g. dark elves vs elves)

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>>1789043
>b-but if I use this completely optional customization feature the game is less fun for me!
Then stop doing it, Mary.

Is it me or 3 feels so much better than 4 to play? I expected dlcs to add much ore than they did, it is absolutely laughable that there is still a single t5 tome for every affinity.

I want to see Terrrifying Gorging as a warefare hero skill.

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>>1789063
I don't disagree when it comes to the tactical combat but I do like the map layer for 4 a lot more. Separating unit and building production into different categories is a very nice change and I like the piecemeal expansion to secure specific resources or to create zones to give my units better movement. The imperium system is good and so is the way you recruit heroes.

I also deeply appreciate the varied ruler types, dragon lords and eldritch sovereigns are WAY cooler and more fun than everyone being effectively a warlord/wizard king(Though they need to figure out some way to mesh them with racial transformation desu. It's kinda obnoxious that they can't benefit from wightborn or the umbral one for example)

I think the biggest disappointment for me is the medals. In 3 every single unit had distinct upgrades and abilities as you ranked them up and now everything just generically gets more stats.

Also necromancy was WAY better in 3. The new version is a fucking crime.

>>1789063
In terms of how it feels to play, I definitely prefer 4.

But I agree that after 4 DLCs the amount of content still feels too low. I know objectively speaking the number of units, number of spells etc. isn't bad but since there are a lot of things that basically function the same the variety ends up being disappointing. E.g. units in the same role tend to feel very similar since even if they have a unique ability or different stats, they get the same XP upgrades, the same enchantments apply to then, etc. Adding two or three tomes per DLC just isn't enough to keep the game feeling fresh in the long run considering you go through like 6-8 tomes per game. It's hard to come up with builds that have meaningfully different gameplay.

My hope for the next round of DLC, aside from more tome variety, is that instead of adding more cultures they'll spend time reworking the old ones and making their respective differences more pronounced, not just in terms of units but also in terms of cities and economy. Shit like the Feudal governor bonus is pretty flavorful but it feels entirely irrelevant in practice, I would love it if they made stuff like that feel more impactful so that every factions has genuine gameplay differences beyond just what early game units they use.

>>1789077
>>1789081
I feel maps in 4 are much more cramped than in 3, i distinctly remember how humongous they were in 3 and it added a lot of scope and breathing room to each playthrough.
Every culture being distinct with their own complete unit progression up to and including t5 is also sorely missed. There is what, like 2-3 tomes that add t4-5 units you can produce in your cities instead of summon, which makes draft kind of pointless to build for unless you specifically going for these tomes.
Tomes themselves are also a design trap, not only in that you can see all of them in 3 playthroughs and clear inability of paradox to chum them out at fast pace, but relative power of them also varies wildly to the point there are clear cut shit tomes that barely give anything competitive, or even worse, interesting.
The unique resource paths like necromancy and umbral demons are very underwhelming too, they add more wheels for you to spin but don't really feel rewarding enough to bother, i played my first umbral tome campaign barely giving a shit about thrall generation and all the rituals you can do with them just fine, what supposed to be a cornerstone mechanic delegated to side thing you can do if you feel fancy.

>>1789109
>Every culture being distinct with their own complete unit progression up to and including t5 is also sorely missed.
You have no idea how disappointed I was to find out there weren't culture-unique mid-and-lategame units in aow4

>>1789109
>I feel maps in 4 are much more cramped than in 3, i distinctly remember how humongous they were in 3 and it added a lot of scope and breathing room to each playthrough.
There's a mod on the steam workshop that's made by the developers which allows you to make bigger maps than what's possible in the base game.

>>1789109
Thralls CAN feel fun later in the game when you can actually spend them consistently on stuff like the the speed ritual and I personally made a lot of use as a necromancer eldritch lord by swapping my souls and thralls around based on what I needed It's just that before then you barely get them so you don't really get much of a choice in how to spend them. It's a bit disappointing that their rarity makes spending them in events effectively a nonsense choice.

>>1789109
>with their own complete unit progression up to and including t5
If you're comparing to 3 though, 3 didn't have this either.

Is there any way you can increase your city cap past, like, 5?

>>1789184
Yeah but the Imperium cost keeps going up for each increase so in most cases it's not worth it.

>>1789081
I think the biggest thing the game needs right now is just more tome variety. Despite the amount of tomes in the game, the way the tome progression system works means you realistically only have 2-3 options when it comes time to select a new tome.

I've been playing 4 a bit, and while I enjoy it I find the combat gets kind of repetitive after a while. Doesn't help that peaceful expansion seems mostly impractical.

>>1789185
That's annoying. How are you supposed to take over the map, then? Just make vassals?

>>1789192
Yeah either make vassals or just raze the shit out of everything.

>>1789194
I'm going for a chaos barbarian run, so I guess Raze it is.

>>1789195
Make sure to pick up the raze bonuses on the Chaos imperium skill tree…the population one can be wild

Is it worth it to do things like immobilizing an enemy melee unit (spiders or earth spirits with their 2 hex range special abilities) and not moving your melee units within attack range, forgoing a turn of attacking them but also denying the immobilized enemy unit a chance to retaliate and attack their next turn? And along those lines, using a dreadnought or other knock back on an enemy melee unit to force them to use up an action point to get closer and have 1 less attack? Or is there some kind of benefit to not moving them around that makes it not worth the effort?

>>1789340
flanking an enemy does 25% extra damage

what tomes do I pick so my Industrious units don't get completely shit on by non-physical damage?

>>1789452
Off the top of my head you can get +2 resistance to fire, frost, and lightning from one of the t1 astral tomes as well as +2 bolstered resistance on support abilities from the same tome, a 50% damage reflection for non-physical damage from one of the astral t4 tomes, and +1 resistance on shield walls from one of the materium t1 tomes.

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>>1789540
thanks buddy that warding tome looks really good

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>bronze wonder
>
this game is really dumb sometimes

>>1789596
have you considered not being bad at the game?

>>1789596
>using some pre-made faction crap
>not using (You)r guys
not just shit at the game but a boring person too

>>1789767
I actually like some of the premade factions. Like the red haired slut who leads a band of orcs and canonically takes orc cock every night

>>1789569
Doubly so because having 2-3 astral is basically mandatory for non wizard king/eldritch sovereigns

>>1789787
more like her orc simps you mean
>takes orc cock every
you americans have an unearthly obsessions with dicks and dicks of other races

>>1789794
no i just think orcs fucking non-orc women is hot

>>1789807
right.....

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>>1789652
>>1789767
Is that army strength for a bronze wonder actually normal or does it scale with overall turn progress like marauders/infestations? also geez those infestation patrols sure like overextending outside of their domain just to rape me. I'm also not sure how I'm supposed to be balancing my search&destroy ruler party vs whatever's left behind defending my cities since even if I leave a 6 stack of tier I and II units they get demolished by the AI

>>1789863
Have leader throne tp always ready when you hit mid-late game. Also you generally want competent unit roster for like 3-4 stacks with heroes, as by late game you will always be fighting full reinforcement stacks of ai even on normal.

>>1789863
infestations scale with turns

>>1789863
You shouldn't really need to be babysitting your cities unless you're expecting an imminent attack. Any hostile action takes a couple of turns to complete assuming your city has walls, and infestations generally prefer to just pillage provinces, so you have a bit of time to respond to threats. Infestations also only start attacking your cities if their borders overlap with yours or when they send a raiding party, which the game informs you of, so you'll always be aware if your city is in danger from an infestation.

>>1790161
>Any hostile action takes a couple of turns to complete assuming your city has walls
worthless when it takes 7-8 turns to walk all the way back from wherever I currently am

>loved 3
>hated 4's aesthetics and goofy tone
What will I think of 4?

>>1789863
You could unironically solo all of that with a max level dragon lord

Do you guys think the DLCs will go on sale for more than 10-15% during the summer sale?

>>1790381
they are 24% off as a pack t. just got it
hope they improved the game from launch since i skipped all the dlc until now

>>1790500
NTA but there's been some decent improvements here and there. The game as a whole isn't really MASSIVELY different from its start, this isn't a Stellaris scenario, but they've been reliably putting out decent free reworks with each DLC
The one thing which gives me (some) hope is that in the latest DLC's patch they released a free update completely revamping the Mystic culture for free in the latest update and gave it more options making it actually competitive compared to the DLC cultures
I'm hoping that if we get a second round of DLC, they'll do similar stuff to the other base-game cultures and maybe also revamp stuff like the Underground layer so it's as interesting and actually worth exploring as the Gloom layer is

>>1748579
How's the multiplayer?

>>1790654
Decent since it has simultaneous turns but you NEED to have the option to view player battles from any distance on, otherwise there'll be a ton of sitting around doing nothing while a player fights an AI stack
I think they gave you the option to lend units out to co-op allies during battles in the latest update, which means you can actually regularly play co-op

>>1790658
And MP balance?

>>1790660
Vanilla stuff is decently well balanced, some of the DLC stuff is a bit OP. Mostly the new ruler types, each of which are basically a single super-unit that gets absurdly strong by late-game when you level it a bunch but costs a lot of gold or mana to maintain, and the new cultures which are typically more finicky than vanilla cultures but with some really stupid OP builds.

For example, max level Dragon Lords can solo 9 unit stacks but will cost you hundreds of gold over the course of a game if you don't build their horde up.
The vanilla lord types are sort of more diplomacy/economy focused, like the Wizard King get more mana production whereas its DLC counterpart the Eldritch Lord costs a ton of mana all game. The Champion gives you a bunch of income and stability boosts plus better relations with free cities, the Dragon Lord can let you terrify some free cities into submission in certain events but doesn't get any prebaked diplo bonuses.

Where the Dragon Lord is a combat monster that focuses on crazy AoE damage with breath weapons, tail swipes etc., the Eldritch Lord is a debuff monster that has like 3 different multiple use madness or mind-control abilities and can instantly put an enemy at max sunder with one ability, all just as battlefield abilities. They also get unique spells that let them do even more debuffing to enemy armies. But while that sounds OP, and it is in mid-game, in late game they're completely mogged by Wizard Kings getting to Overchannel late-game spells meaning they can cast late game battlefield wide spells twice on turn 1 and just nuke your army before you get to do anything.

1/2

>>1790660
>>1790671
IMO some cultures are also a lot stronger than others, but that includes some of the vanilla cultures. I mean Barbarians are by far the best expansion victory culture in the game since they can build cities with scouts and can use cities and outposts to refresh movement, Their units getting a bit of extra damage on the first attack lets you alpha strike really well with them too, and I find that a lot of the combat in this game comes down to taking the momentum in the early part of combat and not letting it go. Defensive doesn't work well.
Dark culture has some of the best units in the game since it has so much built in weaken and sunder, while comparatively I've always thought that Industrious was utter garbage because they play super defensively in combat and on the map but aren't actually good at it in either case. They're all about getting better defenses after taking hits then using spells or abilities to convert those defenses into damage buffs, but the very act of taking hits in the first place makes their rebuttal weaker. They would need an overwatch mechanic like in Planetfall to be truly good. But all these are vanilla cultures, so everyone has access to them, and late game it doesn't matter (much) anyway.

Again DLC cultures have a advantage if you know how to build them. I mean Reavers have THE best Free City diplomacy in the game if you build your culture right, as well as the best early game sieges and ranged firepower in the game. Primal has exactly (1) ultra OP variant, the arctic one, because it can stack a ton of production generation as there are several strong arctic tomes.

But the thing is, there's so much flexibility in culture builds and progression that a decent player can make anything strong. It's just that usually, the builds which are strongest the fastest are the ones you get from DLC.

2/2

>>1748579
How's the AI on this thing? Am I required to MP to get the most out of it?

>>1790672
Industrious is one of the best cultures in the game. Whilst much of its unit roster is sub-par, it is unrivalled in sheer economic output with its high production and prospecting scouts. More gold and faster building means your economy snowballs much faster than everyone else, and any unit weaknesses can be patched up with Tome units. Bastions, however, are frustratingly powerful, especially when mounted, and Industrious melee units taking damage to activate Bolstering is usually just a free thing, as they have such high damage resistances that they don't lose much hp, and then they get the buffs turned into either more resistance, or damage buffs with healing too. Take tome of warding or something and laugh as their cultural healer pulls off the best early-game heals and buff-stacking in the game, whilst also making them damage-resistant to magic so nothing can touch them. Add in a dragon lord to have a massive melee beatstick and later AoE's, and the prospectors fill the hoard to generate even more gold in order to snowball even harder.

Luv me Materium.

>>1790671
>>1790672
Sounds imba.