Stellaris slop of no campaign and every race becoming the same via tomes

>>1814887
>giving a shit about campaigns in a 4x game
What?

>>1814891
The early AOW games had great campaigns.

>>1814895
Fair enough I guess, I never played them so I can't really comment. My first age of wonders game was planetfall and it didn't really have a campaign either.

>>1814895
no it didn't. most of the campaigns sucked ass minus the necromancer.

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The reaver culture is absolute fucking kino to play. Especially when you stack buffs to ranged units. Just fucking shooting your enemies with cannons and muskets feels extremely satisfying.

In my last game I tried the umbral realms stuff and ended up conquering the abyss with faith, steel and gunpowder. My reaver legions just shot cthuhlhu in his ugly face and colonized his eldrich realm.

>>1814887
It has a campaign, it's just not very good.

>>1814793
clash of clans tier graphics aside, the customization is actually really shallow
races are ultimately irrelevant and there's a pathetic attempt at meta progression that makes the previous game's empire mode look like the work of a genius
at least let me edit units again goddamnit

I like it but it does feel like it needs a lot of work to be an actual good game.

>>1814793
It's an extremely shallow game with very little replayability due to the fact that there are actually no substantial differences in the races and everything revolves around Tomes, which by themselves are alright, but Tomes alone are certainly not enough to carry the game. I could not recommend playing or buying this to anyone, you're better off with virtually any other game of its kind than this, including this series own previous entries.

>>1814793
I think it's quite good and very fun, /vst/ loves to be overly critical of newer titles while turning a blind eye to the flaws of the older ones because it's cool to hate on new things.
But I would say that I wasn't a fan of the way they locked a lot of things behind meta progression and unlocks which was a really poor way of artifically padding replayability.

>>1814971
M8, you can design the races from the ground up to play very differently from one another.
How much they differ from each other is basically all up to you.

>>1814971
I agree that races aren't hugely impactful since they mostly amount to a stat bonus here and there, but you'll still notice the difference in actual gameplay. More importantly, you're completely ignoring that the cultures essentially replace the role of races in the older games, defining what units you get, what unique buildings you get, etc.

>>1814976
>M8, you can design the races from the ground up
oh wow right, their undead spearmen are marginally more vulnerable to spirit damage than my own ordinary spearmen!
such depth, such gameplay, incredible
aow4 is the definition of paraslop and I couldn't be more salty because I expected more

>>1815055
Depending on the racial perks you pick your spearmen could be able to pass trough each other in combat, be immune to poison and do poison damage to everyone who attacks them at melee range, regenerate health every time magic is cast on the map, ride fucking velociraptors as default and what have you.

The racial perks aren't all just minor stat adjustments, depending on what you pick they can heavily influence your playstyle. You can stick with the more simplistic "race does 10 percent more magic/ranged/melee damage" stuff or you can pick some other perks that more radically shift the gameplay of your race.

Of course, like the other anon said, it is the culture you pick that influences your gameplay even more, but with the race customization and culture picking, you can make extremely distinct races from one another. One race I made was a bunch of spider worshipping primal bug people that rode on the backs of massive spiders, and the way they played was fucking nothing alike than my later race of reaver birds who I had statted out to maximize their effectiveness in ranged combat.

The spider cultists played most optimally by just spamming the basic starting unit because they had the fucking spider mounts, with few support units along the way, and basically were geared towards overwhelming the enemy on every side while they were stuck in place because of the web flinging ability of the spiders. The birds on the other hand, were all about just fucking shooting at people at long range, while their polearm dudes were in place to keep the enemy from reaching the gunline.

>>1815072
>Of course, like the other anon said, it is the culture you pick that influences your gameplay even more
yes, that's what I'm complaining about, you don't "design" shit, you pick a culture and slap visual/gameplay attributes on it
on one hand they gave us absolute freedom (:D:D:D) with races because not all orks are equal in aowerse, but cultures didn't get the same treatment for whatever reason
industrious will always be stereotypical fantasy dwarves, despite being spider riding moles or actual dwarves
in other words they went balls deep on one end but stayed conservative on the other

I don't know what happened during development, whether some internal corpo shit, or forum autists complaining as they usually do, but the overall philosophy feels very disjointed to me
not that I don't enjoy the game, but it really feels like it's trying to be aow, homm, stellaris, and warhammer at the same time

>>1815083
I agree that the culture customization ought to have more options as well.

>>1815092
yeah, I'd be happy even with just cosmetics

>>1815083
>>1815092
To be fair they've already been diversifying cultures more. Just look at Mystic now vs Mystic at launch. I just hope they can do the same for the other cultures (except Primal which kinda already had that when it came out).

mounts are still op to this day as has been the case since launch so they should be separated from the race creation so i would pick something other than spider mounts every time
im not a fan of the race system in general and just stacking more buffs changing your race into an abomination is always the end goal
rally of lieges could be okay but it mostly gives free city units which have very few race transformations applied meaning they are useless
in fact i disable free cities almost every time because they just make the game worse
lack of proper story campaign hurts a lot and the separate "story" missions are awful
5/10 i keep trying to replay it all the time but the fun just isnt there

>>1815396
Spider mounts aren't that good unless you play every battle manually, in which case who cares, anything will work. The autoresolve AI tends to be really bad with mounts that give active abilities, especially on ranged or support units. In most cases, Athletic is better than any of the mount traits because it benefits your entire roster. The only mounts that are potentially OP are the Elephant and Mammoth mounts, because of how they interact with multi-model units. A melee unit with Elephant mount and Supergrowth transformation is ridiculously efficient.

>>1815055
>undead spearmen are marginally more vulnerable to spirit damage
Is like that´s the weakness for being undead or something similar...

>>1814926
I ended up trying them with chosen uniters and tome of faith with a fatass commander that looked like fryer tuck.
One of the funniest runs I've had.

>>1814926
The change to how Magelock rifles work turned the regular ranged units from kinda crappy to actually good, and turned ranged heroes from rather niche to amazing damage dealers. I didn't particularly like Reavers before the update, but now they're one of the more fun cultures in the game because you can actually play their early game as intended (i.e. an aggressive faction with relatively inefficient frontline options but great firepower). They're still one of the weakest factions in autoresolve though.

>>1814793
Good
-I like customizing things
-Leaders keeping transformations is neat
-Dragons
-Teleportation options

Bad
-Limited colour palette
-Shit diplomacy
-Largely boring/ineffective spells (largely, not entirely), especially on the world map
-Blatantly cheating AI
-Limited racial transformations
-Dull victory conditions
-Dragons have fuck-all spells to buff them, I never checked but I wouldn't be surprised if young dragons with buffs were just better.
-Slow world movement
-Appalling range on ranged units. I guess for balance but goddamn.

>>1815910
The big thing about Ranged units is that literally right before the patch that came with the Reaver DLC got released they were stupidly powerful with the right culture and damage tomes; like you could destroy armies with almost thousands more power than you with a decent number of Glade Runners that had the right buffs.

>>1815910
Its great how you can actually use pike and shot style formations while playing as the reavers. I ended up running really well working armies that could stand up to numericially superior forces rather easily by just having the combo of 3 mercenaries, one overseer and two magelock units in each of my standard "garrison" style armies.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised for them to nerf phantasmal warriors but I hate them for it anyway. And of course they don't buff anything else to make up for the fact that they nerfed one of the main reasons to take that tome in the first place.

>>1816688
>nerf phantasmal warriors
>Nerf armor, hp, and damage
Damn, ghosty boys sure for the dev teams panties in a twist.

>>1816744
>sure GOT the devs teams...
My bad

>>1815497
primal culture is absolutely busted with spider mounts
add glade runners to that to fix your awful cultural ranged unit and you are good to go
also im not a fan of the way mammoth/elephant mounts move

>>1816688
Phantasmal Warriors are still good even with the nerf, just not hands-down the best T1 unit in the game to the point where it can compete with T2s and T3s. Them being nerfed makes other summons like elementals a lot more viable as a starter pick, and Phantasmal Warrior still has the advantage of scaling with your racial transformations. Besides, even if the summon was completely removed Warding still isn't bad since pretty much everything it unlocks is useful in some way. Except maybe Static Shield, I usually skip that one.

>>1816855
>even if the summon was completely removed Warding still isn't bad
Without the summon it becomes the worst book in the game as the only other thing carrying it is warding staves.
otherwise it offers:
>the worst hero skill in the game
>no special improvement
>static charge
which I doubt anyone uses more than once to see how bad it is
>mark of invuln
you likely get more use out of as an emergency status clear as otherwise the only use for it is to save a unit in a fight you've already won
>runes
which while not exactly bad isn't much of a selling point on it's own

"New DLC when?" we hear you cry. We asked Twitter, but all it replied was "Grok grok grok"
Any OG players know what this means?

>>1817277
Has nothing to do with the games as far as I know. Grok is Musk's attempt at making a ChatGPT alternative for Twitter, because he's big mad at the dudes who made GhatGPT.

>>1814971
Wrong. Traits, culture, ruler type, and tomes completely change each playthrough and the various form and mount options really make even randomly generated factions varied and fun

All the races have default traits, just keep them if you’re too lazy to mix and match

>>1815146
I think the only one that might be hard to split into sub factions is Reaver but I think every other culture could def be split into three pretty easy like mystic was and it’d add way more variety. I hope they make feudal lore interesting too

>>1817331
With the reavers I could see there being potential in splitting/adjusting them in such way that you'd have one sub type that specializes more in slave taking and using the units you can forcibly recruit after battles etc, because as it is, I never see any reason to make use of those units. The stock reaver units, once you get to tier 2 are simply enough to fill out your roster so well that there is hardly any real point in making use of slave armies.

>>1817351
I think reavers sub cultures having different tier 3 unit if they do that like they did mythic culture would be cool. Dragoons are ok but I think that’d be an exciting change maybe have a shotgun unit for one and a battle mage unit of some sort for the other.

>>1814887
I'm excited to get this game once the next set of dlc arrives.

Who gives a fuck about campaign? It's fucking 4x. Also they went the customizable route so you could literally just do all that shit yourself if you wanted race specific trates.

>>1817351
reaver sub-culture could be the easiest to intergrate my man
order + materium you get flame tank(tank being a mech an all) no dragoon,a wisperstone but no warspoils pretty much the og dreadnaught from aow 3
materium + materium no dragoon but the engineer from aow 3 returns this time it's a tier 3 support, this sub-race being full contructs focused
chaos + materium the one we already have

>>1817613
That would be a pretty good setup

Im enjoying it, my biggest complaint so far is that magic victory is basically the hardest to get and the hardest to defend, and that you can very easily get fucked by a gold infestation spawning near your start. They shouldnt wake up till like turn 30 or 40

Really enjoying astral summoning and materium/chaos construct reavers the most. Getting Overcharge on a magelock cannon or dreadnought is insane.
Also did an elemental build with druidic terraformers recently, stone spirits alongside wind ragers are unkillable all game long

>>1815963
I feel like world spells are weak too but combat spells are insanely strong. Late game astral is especially nuts, you can copy one of your units every turn, wipe all buffs/debuffs, get an aoe nuke that is also a summon, combat spells are nuts

>>1817994
>world spells are weak
They're strong as long as you have enough casting points to spam them. As a Wizard King you can potentially spam enemy army spells so hard you rarely have to fight any actual battles. Not to mention anything that lowers enemy status resistance before a battle is super good if you use CC spells/abilities in combat.

>>1817991
Yeah they kind of ruined magic victory as a viable option. It used to be basically the same thing as expansion victory so it's good that they changed it, but with how random wonder placement can be it turned into a real pain in the ass.

With mods it's a great 4x harem simulator, what more could you ask for?

>>1818268
>what more could you ask for?
AI that doesn't create 3x 6stacks of tier 4-5 legendary rank mythic units within 3 turns from it's last remaining besieged city.

>>1818157
Its now basically expansion victory but far harder because instead of choosing where you defend you have to defend random areas on the map

>>1818328
Use the fair play AI mod. Doesn't help with free cities or marauders unfortunately, could tweak realm creation settings though to help with threat progression.

>>1819057
question is, can you mod a pirated aow4?
>just buy i-
not paying for slop

>>1819220
It's on gog
which means it's on free-gog
There's no drm... or there shouldn't be.

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>no frostlings
no buy

>>1819408
>BUT MUH TRONSFMARATITATIONS ANON NOOO YOU CAN DO ENYTHING JUST BUY EKSPENSION PISS ENON PLS
you aren't missing a thing

>>1817613
What do you think about industrial rework:

Materium/Materium: Like what we have now focused on production. Maybe add a special production building.

Materium/Astral: Gets bonus to enchantments and is more rune smith focused. Tier 3 unit is some sort of runesmith or forge lord that buffs constructs and has some sort of spells


Materium/Shadow: Sauron style evil industrial. -10 Alignment. Special unit is some kind of artillery piece either like a mortar or grapeshot cannon.

>>1819408
>frostlings
>>1819440
>Materium
I just remembered, there's no major transformation for Materium.
And frostling is a minor transformation
And I can't have angelic undead anymore. Pretty sure that was a thing in AoW3

>make one faction for each culture
>not sure what to play
I AM VERY ORIGINAL
1 - feudal elves (feat ARCHERY)
2 - barbarian orcs
3 - literally just highmen
4 - LITERALLY just Dark Elves
5 - Chaos Dwarves (Reavers)
6 - Evil Syrons (Mystic)
7 - Swamp Primal Lizardmen
8 - Human Industrialists
9-0 - kill myself

>>1819440
>Materium/Materium
sounds fine but industrail culture is one of the strongest one there is and giving them more sounds a bit unfair to others(looking at you feudal)
>Materium/Astral
sounds good
>Materium/Shadow
sounds fine but for M/S a "alchemist" unit ranged support unit he throws vials(bombs) that give enemy units random debuffs to keep in with the "industrials with 0 morals" would fit more? or a world spell about pollution,like feymist but the opposite where feymist buffs all units but toxic pollutions hurts all

>>1819479
I’d say the problem with the tonic thrower is that it’s p similar to the book of alchemy afflictor unit but your idea combined with fumigation is p cool, maybe they could have a map effect ritual where a cloud of pollution slowly spreads from the cities reducing vision and giving some sort of debuff to armies. Maybe the tier 3 is p much just a mustard gas mortar but would need to be different than the afflictor which is tier 2

>>1820177
Same guy forgot to add:

But I think tying in the tier 1 tome of alchemy and the tier 4 tome of severance to the Evil industrial faction would be cool

>>1820177
I think that a province improvement along the lines of feywater pond or the altar of marching gloom, that would spread a sort of industrial pollution and miasma around themselves would be really cool. Some sort of toxic factory type of thing that just taints the land gradually on a certain radious around itself.

>>1820392
perfect opportunity to bring back blighted terrain

>>1819479
>>1820392
relentless industrialists but in AoW is a cool idea

Found a strange bug...if you start a story realm(voiced or not) background portal music still plays on top of the normal game music this only happens in story realms though
Would a kind anon be so nice and report this bug on discord?

>>1821816
Report it on their website if you don’t use discord

>>1814793
Age wonders
>no half long slinger
>no goblin bomber
>no solid gold metal dwarf
>no orc assassin that can bypass fortifications
>no elf nymph that seduces you with her huge tiddies
>no dark elf mistress that seduces you by cocknball torture

What is in the game that merits the title

>>1822263
The different cultures need a major overhaul along these lines to become more interesting/fun/silly.

Shadow affinity seems really incomplete, every other affinity seems like it has a firm path to victory if you go all in on it. Shadow is just vassal stuff but weaker than order, and you can murder heros for knowledge. Theres no vision range victory, the whole rogue/assassin aspect is missing except as a shit hero ability

I pirated it and got a good 30~ hours of enjoyable gameplay from it before it started to get repetitive and boring. Overall, I would've been upset if I paid for it.

>>1822263
there are wonders and it takes ages to clear them all
as in, it's tedious, not actually difficult

>>1818328
This is easily my #1 complaint and I want it resolved before anything else at this point. If I wiped out the enemy and there's no reasonable way to come back, I should just be granted a quick win. I don't want to have to park a 3 stack on his last (empty) city because by the time I get through his 200 fortification Capital he'll have another triple stack. How come the AI gets that advantage but if he wiped out all of my troops and besieged my last city I have literally no options to get units outside of hero recruitment and rally?
Also does anyone here used Forced March? I can't bring myself to use it unless I'm far enough down the chaos tree because outside of the damage, no healing for 2 turns is really really rough. I want to know if there's some element to it I'm missing that makes it worthwhile.

Is there any way to clear gloom from a province? It seems a bit silly that I can gloom pall an entire nation into submission

>>1823025
You can cast a Terraforming spell (downpour, revitalize land, etc.) on a tile to clean it including the umbral gate entrance thing (won’t remove it but will change province type.) In terms of stopping the spread you want to destroy the gloom province improvement in neighboring enemy cities and I think umbrall dwellings spread gloom until you destroy them

>playing the "campaign"
>frognigger settling all over my shit
>can't declare war on him because ????
what a horrible game, what were they thinking
glad I pirated it

>>1823580
>Can't tell your alliance members to not fight eachother when you're all involved in a war against the map's big bad
>You lose rep if you don't go to war against either of them
Diplomacy's a joke.

The game is fine. Needs some more fetish mods though before it achieves 4x perfection.

>>1823615
>The game is fine
if by fine you mean flaming dumpster, then yes

>>1823654
>flaming dumpster
Now there's an idea for a new tome with a summon for a blight and fire damage dealing fighter unit.

>>1814793
You know, whenever I play this game I neither feel like a powerful wizard or like I'm facing off against powerful wizards. Frankly, I felt like I had a greater influence on the world playing SMAC and that just had terraforming and flooding the world.

>>1823680
True, the game could use some more ruler on ruler interactions/vignettes; would make it more interesting. Although it's pretty easy to make an overpowered ruler, especially with transformations and ascended traits now being a thing for pantheon rulers.

>>1823677
>a new tome
yes, that will surely fix our fundamentally flawed game! ANOTHER unit that is either completely bland and uninspired or a complete ripoff from an existing fantasy setting!

>>1823813
Imagine playing an Age of Wonders game and being upset that it rips off existing fantasy franchises.

>>1823691
Sort of wish they had a Magehaven hub where it was just a rip off of Mii Parade from the Wii where you just see your pantheon wondering around and have your online friends pantheon wondering around too. Really like the pantheon and ascended ruler stuff as a system hope they do more more with it even if its silly or dumb

>>1823850
they really should've expanded upon the empire mode and unit editor from planetfall, magehaven mechanics would tie in so well
>>1823830
that's not the point anon
triumph is trying to do everything and nothing at the same time design-wise
they give you a pack of starting culture units and let you fill in the proverbial gaps with tome units, which can be wildly different or just ten variations of the basic archer/crossbowman
all those units needed to be designed, modeled, paid for, and on top of that take your computer resources, in order to do what the previous game already did with less units and templates

Am I the only one that feels like the story realm like slideshow lore art is the worst part of the game? Like I mostly like the art direction it just comes off as just sort of cheap in a way the rest of the game doesn’t really feel. It just feels weirdly half done, like I don’t mean they have to animate it all but idk just feels like it feels rushed and limited but I guess maybe that’s where they decided to save money lol

>>1824017
Are you aware of how often you use the word "like"?

>>1823922
I don't understand what you're trying to say. Most units in the game don't need to be completely redesigned because they all use the same skeleton, at least the humanoid units. The only units that need to be completely made from the ground up are non-humanoid ones. Also while Planetfall's unit mod system was great, it's not replaced by just adding more generic units, it's replaced by enchantments and transformations.

Also not sure what you mean by "ten variations of the basic archer/crossbowman". Why is it a bad thing that almost every faction has a basic ranged unit available? All previous games had a similar thing where factions had access to the same basic units at the lower tiers, just with very slight stat variations. If anything AoW4 is less repetitive with this since they don't have every faction go by the same swordman-archer-priest-light cavalry-siege engine route.

So is this game any good?

>>1824188
its okay for a bit but becomes extremely bland quickly

>>1824181
>I don't understand
I can see that
>it's not replaced by just adding more generic units, it's replaced by enchantments and transformations
it's more of a sidegrade really
you know how you could take your basic vanguard trooper, slap on a jetpack, armor, and that aoe/fire damage thing?
and then make another trooper template with extended range and pure damage mods, and get two units that served somewhat different purposes? we can't do that anymore because transformations affect your entire race (which is fine and thematic by itself), but enchantments ALSO affect every single unit of its class
you can't have one shield unit with spell tempered shields, and the other without it
I know it's not a game ruining thing, but the loss of that flexibility annoys me to no end
>Why is it a bad thing that almost every faction has a basic ranged unit available?
that's not what I said
I meant why do we need a basic archer, and a zephyr archer, and a glade runner, and an alchemist, and whatever else? why not give you a ranged unit template, and let you pick and choose equipment and abilities, the way you can do in the item forge? btw fuck them for fucking scrapping the forge as a concept, and double fuck them for making it cost goodboy points after reintroducing it
come to think of it, battlemages are even worse in that regard, how many racial mage units are there? ten?
>If anything AoW4 is less repetitive
lucky you, I feel like it's the exact opposite
it doesn't follow that exact formula sure, but you are really gimping yourself if you don't follow the current meta
I honestly feel zero need to build anything else than supercharged phantasms atm

>>1824244
>you are really gimping yourself if you don't follow the current meta
>I honestly feel zero need to build anything else than supercharged phantasms atm
So what you're saying is that you're a complete scrub who can only play by using the units that the internet told him are OP. Thank you for letting me know that your opinion has no value.

AoW never should have moved away from races being the focus and main difference between players

>>1824178
Are you aware you’re a massive faggot?

>>1824244
Brother, phantasms were nerfed in the latest update earlier this week. Repent your astral ways and combine materium and order for the new meta

>>1824252
>>1824574
don't care, still playing SM over this goyslop

Romance between rules dlc when?

Eldritch mindbreaker niggas are so fun to use in battle, I cant even bring myself to try the other specs

>>1814926
In the last patch did they fix the AI reaver factions? 90% of the time the AI would get stuck at level 2 or something and just never do anything along with bad armies. Like they were afraid to do anything cause of the auto resolve power.

This game feels better to play on large maps to me, medium is just too crowded especially with free cities spawning in your asshole

>>1824858
Oh so you never actually played the game huh? Just read what was op a few weeks ago and copy and pasted to slander. You sir are a gigantic faggot

Need boob slider.

>>1825162
Eh, I dunno. Early game is more fun on big maps, but the later on it just gets too tedious. I almost exclusively play on medium-sized maps with a max of like 4 players, just to make sure I don't have to spend 15 turns to reach an enemy.

>>1814793
I wish there could be a thread about this game without the same subhumans spamming identical factually incorrect complaints that then get picked up by idiots that didn’t play the game.
Its all so tiresome

>>1824252
>the current meta
So what are the best builds atm? Playing the game again after last playing it when the dragon DLC released. Im still going to play my frost/necro mystic character first since i love that theme but i am curious what combos people have found to be really strong with all the new books.

>>1826191
Teleporters fix this to a degree, and you get them decently early. Its fun establishing an outpost with teleporter and zipping in a whole army, especially as an astralfag with the teleporter skill for full heals and extra movement

I wish score were more transparent. I could be rampaging across the map and lose 5 points, meanwhile bint the underachiever farts in his capital and gains 50.

I want next dlc to focus on order and give order/astral and order/nature tomes. Maybe some sort of celestial magic to synthesize with the supreme magic order hero skill/untit enhancement

>>1829122
Is there even going to be more dlc for the game?

>>1829842
Probably. Nothing concrete has been confirmed as far as I know, but the devs have said that the first set of DLC sold well enough for them to continue developing the game. Either way I wouldn't expect anything significant before Q4 at least.

>>1829872
I agree except I expect an announcement within a few weeks regarding a road map

The "Evil Queen" character used in the intro cutscene and promo artwork for the game release gives me a boner, why isn't she a named character in the game god damn it

>>1830265
anon... that is Lithyl Nightweaver
did you even play any of the story missions?

>>1830323
Oh yeah, I forgot Sundren was cosplaying as her before she came back as big bug lady. Didn't play the previous games and sort of dazed out on the story missions a bit though I liked the Empires and Ashes and Eldritch Realms stuff

>>1826978
I can only assume it counts gold/mana made and spent because Ive had games where I was just gaining a shitton of mana faster than I could spend it and was going crazy in score

>>1830637
I just lost a game where I lost to score victory despite having an insane economy and the strongest military ranking. I wish it was more transparent in the actual score calculations. Like this was a very large map and the winning ai player was on the opposite corner of where I was and I thought I'd win score victory as I was on a conquering rampage and had massive mana and gold accumulation

>>1814887
Ok boomer

>>1814793
I haven't played AoW3 in a long, LONG time, but if I remember right you could get your units to a point where they were immune to certain elements.
That seems to be missing from this one (barring major transformations that outright give immunity).
And item crafting is a miss..

>>1831497
>you could get your units to a point where they were immune to certain elements. That seems to be missing from this one
Good riddance really, Goblins felt like shit when half the units in the game were immune to poison, so there needed to be units that can pierce it.

>>1818268
>With mods it's a great 4x harem simulator, what more could you ask for?
What mods? You have my interest.

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>>1831768
For starters try this. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3291809332
Just browse the steam workshop, you'll find plenty of mods out there to scratch the itch.

>>1830265
Hey anon we still have Sundren
hope it goes for us better than for merlin x julia hahaha

>pick unicorn mounts as my racial
>not all my heroes have mounts
Frustrating.

>>1832767
>Have flying unit
>They have to 'embark' when they cross a small river
Bizarre.

>>1832769
I just want to conquer everything with my rainbow trailing horses. Is that too much to ask?

>>1832769
Flying units don't embark though. You probably had a non-flying unit in the same stack.

>>1832767
>>not all my heroes have mounts
at least they brought back the item forge, even if they locked it behind yellow mana
not sure why they didn't just copy planetfall and let us go wild with them from the start but ok

>>1832767
They should if theyre of your race and arent starting with a weapon that closes the mount slot like a polearm or magelock

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So of all these presence traits for worlds which ones are fun or a chore?

>>1834006
I found the demon prince quite hard because I spawned right next to him and he declared war on turn ~25
pretender kings are fun, they start at war and you can mostly build peacefully while they duke it out

>>1834006
The ones with two dueling factions are good
The ones with one jacked faction are bad (you get fucked if you spawn near them)

>>1834006
Depends on how much of a challenge you want. Stuff like Demon Prince or Archon Prophet can be quite tough if you get stuck in an early war with the scenario faction, while Pretender Kings or Ashen War aren't really more difficult than a default map because the OP factions spend most of their time fighting eachother.

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>>1817446
>Who gives a fuck about campaign? It's fucking 4x.
Check out Age of Wonders 1.

>>1834006
I liked Pretender Kings, Ashen War (Dragon Dawn DLC), Druidic Alliance, Iron Emperor, Domain of the Frost Kings and Artisan Kings.

I remember not liking the Librarian for some reason can't remember why haven't played that in a long time.

Demon Prince is fun like once, its the HARD map so it feels good winning just sort of a Slog to play through so fun once or maybe twice but that's it. I didn't like Primal dispute as its way too low player count.

I think the best might be Artisan Kings. Its islands and everyone just gets one big mega city. I played it about a dozen times and its just fun I think because your playstyle can change so much with megacities and the two stronger rulers make it at least seam like a challenge if you've been playing a lot.

Next favorite is Ashen War. Has 6 dragon rulers split in two so you can get some replayability picking one side or going alone. Just had fun fighting so many dragon rulers on one map doing it alone.

Pretender Kings is fun because its simple. Its sort of over too quickly once you pick a side but its a fun simple set up.

I never play Archon prophet, I just don't like that she has every single free city at the start, its just lame

>>1814793
It's good, but it could be SO MUCH better with the unit artifact system from AoW:PF. Unfortunately the devs went full retarded and literally said their motivation for not having that was that they "didn't want casuals to get confused".

>>1834009
>>1834055
>>1834169
>>1834393
Maybe ill try one of those next map i play. I wanted to do a updated run with my shock cav focused order/chaos character since they added those new books and traits since i last played them.

Any Season 2 DLC plans for this game or is it done

This game isn’t perfect, my creativity is not fully satisfied… but I like it. A lot. But there’s still plenty of fantasy archetypes they haven’t given us the option to play as… for example Shadowy, changeling Puppetmasters. Eldritch rulers with Devious Spies on a world that is ALL you favoured Primal Terrain seem like the closest thing. Yes there’s stuff like Incite Revolution, but I am still not feeling the Morgawr playstyle like in Endless Legend or hell, even the Forgotten all stealth army from the same game. Feytouched Mist build is not enough

>>1836341
They annouced before the last dlc launched that they would be making another seasons worth of content.

I kind of wish they never opened Pandora's box in regards to Opposite-Affinity tomes. I feel like that's the one line they shouldn't have crossed. In Empires & Ashes they mentioned that they were debating making the Tome of Severing Materium/Astral instead of Materium/Shadow but decided against it for that reason. The Tome of Cleansing Flame isn't too bad but I'm worried future tomes will just become "catch all" tomes that cover the strength of both affinities and replace all weaknesses. Plus for thematic reasons it's always neat having some kind of dichotomy.

My game crashed mid battle while I was on an Ashlands map. I think it’s because it was so laggy the game engine couldn’t handle the memory leak

Don't know if it's just my current playthrough, but I get the feeling this game's AI is slightly more schizophrenic than what I'm used to in games of this genre. One turn they'll send a compliment, then the next they'll send an insult, then they'll propose a pact, then they'll break it... Feels like they don't have a very long memory and are just reacting to what happens on the fly.
Also, I beat one of the leaders but the city cap fucked me over so instead of going over it or just razing everything I decided to vassalize all of the cities, which ended up as individual states. This resulted in everyone else getting mad (not because of the conquest, but because I got more vassals) and repeatedly sending me salty remarks every turn one of the vassalization processes ended.
Other than that, it's pretty fun.

>>1837159
The AI personalities they added have pretty strong likes and dislikes, which can cause significant relationship swings. If you're doing things they like and things they dislike (for example, having a large army and winning fights, while also having lots of vassals with good diplomatic relations) it can cause your relationship level to go up and down quite quickly.

There's already a basic "memory" system (as in, relationship modifiers linger and only get weaker over time), but I agree it would make more sense if relationships were normalized a bit more. For example, if they already like you they shouldn't get mad just because you've got better research or more vassals than them. But of course direct actions should have a big modifier regardless. Like they shouldn't care too much if you're turning your enemies into vassals, but they should still get mad if you're "stealing" their vassals.

>>1837159
>but because I got more vassals
that's exactly the reason for their 'schizophrenia'
you just happen to pass their numerical thresholds that make you liked or disliked
it's not... the best system out there

>>1837159
The "Deceptive Spy" are the worst of them at least with the warlords you know where you stand with them(pretty much at war 30+ turns later)
>>1836958
Yeah the game has optimization issuses and no changing the settings to low does nothing i read from a forum user that somehow in low settings the game ran worse than ultra like how on earth does that even happen?
>>1836341
Season 2 is comfirmed since the game and the dlc sold very good

So for dual cultures we have primal as everything, reavers, astral/shadow mystic, feudal
What do you think theyll add next? Chaos/shadow?

>>1837230
I think they'll expand existing cultures like they did with Mystic

>>1814793
I'd love to try this out. Right now, I’m all about mastering the controls in Gates of Pyre—it’s totally giving me those StarCraft vibes.

>>1837232
Hope its Dark next, they feel the most lackluster to me.

>>1837211
It’s Ashlands and the unit enhancement screen specifically that are the worst offenders. If you don’t mind the lag, most PCs from a few years ago can handle default high settings, as long as you never set foot in an Ashlands or specific Wonder maps

>>1837308
I'd say Feudal is worse right now, but yeah Dark could use an update as well.

>>1837548
I mean is it? It had the lords and the formation, you could just expand their speciality. Dark has cleaving magic knights, city stability and that’s it, it doesn’t have an Alignment agenda like High Culture.
Feudal has an identity in its basic nature, but Dark just.. doesn’t offer anything. Barbarians have their outposts and buffs and crit build, Industrious is also kinda lacking, buts its solid in combat… Dark can’t stand on its own

>>1837589
The Feudal formation stuff is okay, but the lords are a net downgrade since their effect isn't that good and it effectively costs you a level per hero.

Saying that Dark is just knights and stability shenanigans is a plain lie. Sure it has those things but it can also auto-apply weakness since the Eldritch update and has a source of "free" damage and lifesteal for their melee troops. And why should Dark have an alignment agenda when alignment manipulation is already High's party trick?

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>>1814793
I think that evil bitch with a stupid hat is a filthy dirty little cocksucking whore that needs some of MY fat COCK

>>1837543
Don't think I came across any ashlands yet, but the game lags really hard on the faction/leader creation screen too for me, especially if it's an eldritch ruler.
When the game starts shitting itself it also seems to last until I close and reopen it. It usually only happens on that creation screen but one time it happened completely randomly when I was just playing normally.

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>>1837676
She gets corrupted by Cthulhu and turns into a creepy bug monster in the latest DLC.

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>>1837765
Not in my games

>>1814793
3 was fucking boring and had a bunch of noisy bullshit.

>>1837804
3 did feel like a butchers job
Can't remember anything from playing Planetfall

All the races even look the same like they used the same character models or something. I used to love Age of Wonders III and the dragon race but then they turned them into scaley humans.

>>1837880
>Can't remember anything from playing Planetfall
Lolwhat? PF is fucking amazing. The unit upgrades, the gameplay variety with all the ways you can go through the trees. 4 does feel like just 3.5 after PF, but 3 was great.

Haven't played any AoW games, whould I try this one? What AoW games like?

>>1837933
Play Age of Wonders Shadow Magic for peak and then try whatever you want after that

>>1837933
I never played any before 4 but love it, I've sunk over 1100 hours into it. I've heard the story is better in previous gamers but I just love this game's freedom and general ideas. Plus I used to like Civ games, like played 3-6 and I hated 6 \(well not actively I just didn't get into it like other Civ games) and this game feels that 4x void for me. But what I really like is the combat and interactions with all the different damage types and affinities. If I was like 20 years younger I know I'd be spergging out even harder and writing little bios for all the custom factions I make which the game lets you do....I love 4!

>>1837610
Dark is probably my favorite to play after industrial especially with the latest update where range attacks apply weakness stacks. So with Dark if you go shadow you can get Cull the weak damage, cruel weaponry +40% damage agaisnt low morale enemies with Joy Siphoners,, and youj can get Soul Collector and get 20% damage on soulblound units. Oh and you get the best single t2 battlemage for single targets that can apply sundering curse with no miss chance. If you add some Materium in there say with Tome of Enchantment at t1 and Tome of Severance at t4 you can do some wild damage. Plus Dark Knights are cool

>>1837970
I just found out recently that Dark scouts get camouflage and extra sight radius in enemy territory (kind of wish it was easier to see what each culture scout does what) and I think that's a cool facet to help make Shadow/Dark be the affinity related to information gathering + denial, wish we'd see more of it or perhaps expanded upon.

>>1814887
So would I enjoy this game if I have 200 hrs in stellaris but have never played custom empire, only randomly generated ones?

>>1834321
What’s your point? I wouldn’t touch a campaign in a 4x game. Only old farts care about that scripted shit.

>>1837933
If you don't mind older games, go play Shadow Magic. If you do, start with 3 and follow with Planetfall. Imo, 4 is really just 3.5 for the people who are tired of playing 3 over and over again. I think you'll appreciate 4 more after you've played 3.

>>1837986
1 shouldn't be that low and 2 is easily my least favorite one, but other than that I can agree with this. If they added something comparable to PF's unit modding to AoW4 it would be the best one. Transformations are cool but they're not nearly as impactful or as versatile as unit mods.

>>1837970
Put the brand of wrath on Slithers and the tome of roots poison spells and you have a self boosting unit doing +60% against units it first spat on to poison and weaken. Those absolutely wreck everything.

Is Planetfall that good?
I played 3 many years ago but didn't think much of it at the time, and now I'm having fun with 4, but never touched the rest of the series.

>>1838081
>1 shouldn't be that low
The graph would've looked too much like a straight line then, lol. Just pretend that the bottom is not 0, but like 25-35, and 1 sits at like 80.
>>1838220
It really is. I ignored it for way too long because of sci-fi and weird fucking colour palette, but eventually the same friend who first introduced me to AoW SM convinced me to try it out (I just changed hue and reduced saturaton in nvidia settings for the first like 10 hours to cope with the psychedelic colours and then slowly brought them back to original values), and yeah, it is THAT good. The replayability is through the fucking roof because of the unit item system.

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I bet I'm gonna reinstall planetfall only to find it actually was shit
I'll be back shortly

>>1838220
The only thing that's weak in PF is the campaign. Not as bad as AoW4 but close. And I guess some people simply don't like the b-movie sci-fi setting which is fair enough, but doesn't impact the gameplay.

>>1838220
I only played 4 and bought it on steam sale and refunded it, the colors and art art are weird and when I tried creating a leader it only had African head shapes and faces for some reason which is an instant refund for any game

>>1838220
Its great. I love it comfy soundtrack.

>>1838220
empire mode made planetfall far far far above anything aow 4,3 and the others could offer better

>>1838643
Doesn't 4 have the same thing?

>>1838644
God allmighty no.
the "Pantheon" is just unlockables cosmetics and nothing else, now it does save the transformations of leader but other than that nothing.
it's just cosmetics and some traits

>>1838220
Just played it, it's average.
Guns are fun and all that, but there really isn't anything special or amazing design wise to really throw it over 4

Can the planet fall fags plz make their own thread? Idk why but AoW 4 threads are constantly run off topics by faggots pushing other games

How are Dragon rulers? Compared to the rituals and artillery and mind control and cooldown refresh that Eldritch Rulers have, Dragons seem to be far more late game viable. It seems that without an Item Forge they kinda fall off
They do make great governors, but so do the Abyssal rulers and you can’t have more than one dragon so…

>>1838807
>Idk why
Because there's so little to talk about regarding the game itself?
What do you really say? "If you use X culture, it could be a good idea to take X tome along the way to the end"?

>>1838853
Well we could be showcasing Patheons, but because only the rulers are saved you aren’t shown the full story of the build, which does suck

>>1838853
Clearly you haven’t played the game, there’s a shit ton to talk about like if the next DLC is going to be Angelic order which seems to be likely given the ER story maps and the fact order only has 2 dlc tomes so far T2 Order/Materium and T3 Order/Chaos. I’m hoping for a good Order/Astral Tome because the Tome of Supremacy’s supreme magic goes well with caster focused builds.

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>>1838807
blow it out your ass

>>1819408
Did older AoW games have more independent ice stuff? In AoW 4 you only get 2 ice-themed tomes which are actually shadow tomes so if you want to make a snow nigga empire you have to get into necromancy/tentacles as well.
I took a look at Steam's Workshop too, but could only find one mod that added 1 more ice tome.

>>1838971
You could grab just the two ice tomes and nothing else shadow, but it might make your build a little awkward I think.
The game definitely needs more tome flavor and variety, though. Fire is the same way where you can't really get fire magic without also getting chaos and demon shit.

>>1838807
>Idk why but AoW 4 threads are constantly run off topics
Well, for one reason, it's because imo they really touched something divine with PF. And it's really disappointing how much of that cool stuff is missing from 4 literally because the devs went "hurr durr that was too complicated for casuals", so naturally people come here and compare these two games. 4 isn't a bad game at all, but after PF it just feels way too underwhelming.

/thread thanks PF Fags!

>see people giving praise to PF
>hmm let me add to wishlist and pick it up when it goes on sale
>I already own it
jesus I have a problem.

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>other empire vassalizing a free city in your place gives 15 grievances
>another cunt sieging and razing another one you were just a few turns away from vassalizing gives 10 (after the act is done)
>also, you can do fuck all to stop him other than declaring "unjustified" war before he finishes burning it
I kinda feel like this is a small oversight.

>>1839227
That's what you deserve for being a pe*ce cuck

>>1839227
>not fabricating grievances first thing when you meet an ai empire

>>1839066
>they really touched something divine with PF
it's the closest we ever got to alpha centauri 2, and it was somehow unintended
no wonder people prefer it over 4

>>1839227
fabricate grievances anon

>get fucked by the winter toll as chosen destroyer and lose all my armies defending against it RIGHT as Im about to finish the game
I hate this stupid fucking meme so much, at least you can build melee against autumn toll. Winter toll is just "you guaranteed lose 4 units to finger of death at start of combat"

>>1838850
Great for industrious rulers and warmongers that get piles of items from prospecting and murdering heros respectively, decent in combat but eldritch are stronger

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>No real factions or race with any uniqueness to them apart from visual difference
>However you're still stuck with base unit visuals that cannot be changed
So you made a boring customizable game that you can't even fully customize anyway
Definition of half assing it

I wonder if I can play multiplayer with a GOG copy

>>1841150
you can but it requires you to make a paradox account.
>multiplayer
anon please for the sake of your sanity don't do this to yourself.

>>1841164
poor optimization or is it just unfun? cause seeing people chain together tomes and transformations sounds fun. Hotseat doesn't seem to be buggy

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I don't know if it's bugged right now or because of some specific combination of traits on my faction, but Explosive Manifestation apparently costs 0 mana so you can just spam the shit out of it in every combat with no concern for long term sustainability.
Dropping a tier 3 unit that gets 3 action points on turn one with a 10+10+10 damage AoE on top of the enemy army every turn is honestly nuts.

>>1841273
>poor optimization or is it just unfun?
Bad netcode. The game itself is fun in multiplayer as long as you're not playing with super sweaty min-maxers, but there's a good chance you'll have to deal with desyncing issues.

Do you guys play with fast Research or Faster Research (25/50% cheaper tomes)? Faster research against AI just seems like a ticking clock until they pull a Wonder/Science victory but Fast research I tend to always pick because my time builds are usually very long due to theming so it helps me set up quicker

>>1841355
I was playing way more slow, like biggest map size, 9 players, no score victory on Brutal or Hard. I messed with research and growth a few times by slowing them down so it would feel like marathon mode or whatever the slowest civ speed was. But it just gets too grindy. So now I just play like with regular score or maybe slow (200 turns.) I haven't done a magic victory since they first reworked it and every time the ai does in my game they lose their binding on the wonder super fast

>>1841355
I always play with normal research speed, I just turn off score victory because it's too arcane and seems to favor the AI.

>>1841355
slowest research
makes racial units more usable and reseach buildings more important

Please give me a good combo for AoW 3. So far I have:
>Goblin Warlord
>Halfling Dreadnought
>Tigran Rogue

>>1841698
My favorite combos for each class:
>Halfling Necromancer
>Frostling Sorcerer
>Tigran Rogue
>Goblin Warlord
>Orc Theocrat
>Elf Archdruid
>Dwarf Dreadnought

>>1841705
Also I should mention that, despite not being my #1 pick for any class in particular, my favorite overall race in AoW3 is the Draconians. They work well with basically any class except Warrior or Dreadnought.

So the ai starts to cheat at Hard, but it’s still smarter/more confident/aggressive than Normal Ai?

>>1841830
>o the ai starts to cheat at Hard,
It is blatantly cheating even before that.

>>1814793
>What do people here think about Age of Wonders 4?
I stopped after 2

God help you if you don’t have a warlord as your ally. No other Personality does anything. You are sitting there in no man’s land fighting a guy with 3 times the military and economic power you have while your ally, who could body them does nothing but build troops
What am I supposed to do, bait the enemy into my allies?

>>1841865
>What am I supposed to do
Use the bounty system.

>>1841866
Yeah I figured it out

Played with Immortal once, full Nature build, was very fun. Now I can also lead suicide charges with massive armies without fear of losing the game, like the AI

>>1814793
it's a great game, but this thread is probably going to be hijacked (if not already) by faggots that think AOW2 is the best fighting faggots that think AOW1 is the best

>>1834321
called it
>>1837974
i think so yeah

>>1841698
human theocrat, for that knight&crusader roleplay

>>1841945
>faggots that think AOW2 is the best fighting faggots that think AOW1 is the best
They're both wrong, obviously Planetfall is the best.

>>1842080
Planetfall really isn't that good

>>1842096
It is through.

I get that some people don't like the sci-fi theme or the aesthetics of the game, but mechanically it's the best AoW game.

>>1841945
>probably
Plantefall faggots are ruining this thread for fun, idk why they don't make their own and contain their shitty opinions there

So the play with Reaver culture, no matter the tome build, no matter the race, no matter the difficulty, is to just build a big enough army of magelocks that the AI can’t bully you, while you farm war spoils, which you desperately need for vassals?
Or rather, better question, how do you beat Hard+ AI without Immortals? You need to go to war with them so you can steal cities or you will never have a chance to win an expansion or Wonder victory (very unlikely the ai wins a war victory, at least)

>>1842134
Even with scattered posts about other games in the series, this thread is still moving really slowly.

>>1842207
Cannons are awesome too. I usually have 2 or 3 mage locks but usually bring an overseer and 3 melee units to build marked stats up. Having a magelock lord is cool in a stack can do insane damage

Trying a summon focused build. Did people find the elementals or the more astral units better into late game? And which of the tier 5 summons work the best. Really never played them as the focus before so not 100% on the best books to grab outside the obvious ones.

>>1842531
Assuming you're talking about mystic summoners, I would just go full astral, maybe drop tome of warding for tome of pyromancy if you really want the fire elementals. Elementals are nice for their expendability since you can summon new ones at t1 for cheap and immediately use your echoes to evolve them, but that's most important for your front line units which astral's shock elementals already cover.
All of the astral tome summons are pretty good though, and every astral tome gives at least one. A number of astral tomes also give pylon special improvements for the mana you'll need to sustain large amounts of summoned units.
Eldritch sovereigns are also a great choice for mystic summoners, since they give you 3 additional magic origin summons in addition to being a magic origin unit themselves.

>>1832769
>>1832856
Flying units dont 'embark' true but you still need to research water travel for your flying units to go over water for some stupid reason

>>1842546
Maybe ill try that with the eldritch lord. I was thinking of just using a mage lord. Kinda not used to thinking of them for builds!

>>1842546
I haven't played recently (like, I played after Eldritch Sovereigns, but not any recent patches).
Why would you recommend skipping Tome of Warding? Phantasm Warriors get your racial and unit transformations so you can end up with beefy boys. Beefy flying boys or whatever.

>>1842701
Phantasmal warrior is really only great if you've got some great combination of racials and transformations. Unless you're going out of your way to empower them, I don't think they're really all that great, and they did get a minor nerf recently too. The rest of the tome of warding is also pretty shitty, consisting of two minor defense buffs and two tactical spells you will literally never use.

>>1842207
Get the choosen uniters or that other shadow one that gives you a wisper stone
As for warspoils don't waste them on useless shit(diplomacy or capture units) use it to make cannons
2 iron clads,2 cannons/magelocks, 2 pyre templars can and will annihilate anything
Burn and bomb the ground with ironclads,lure tge eneny close for the tenpkars to cut them to pieces and use locks to finish them off
Order ftw

>>1842806
>tenpkars
Templars*

The bonuses Hard AI gets are insane, it pops down an outpost and 2 turns later it’s a City with 4 population

>>1843144
mod the bonuses out or stop playing a shit game

>>1843246
it didn't help them, cause i rushed their stupid melee army with magelocks and cannons and they died to flanks. Beating a guy who was tagged nr 1/2 in military as number 6/7 felt good

>>1843274
I'd say based, had you used anything other than the current meta

>>1843308
I mean, i did it before with Primal Crocodile Eldritch Rulers, but that was in the mid game and I was already massively expanding. It’s my first time playing with Reavers

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>>1842591
>you still need to research water travel for your flying units to go over water for some stupid reason
LMAO, reminds me of Hellsing

Welp. My session keeps crashing while it’s trying to parse through the AI’s turn. I have a FreeGoG copy, so I don’t know if it’s because of that, or because of just how many units the AI is bringing to a fight in Ashlands terrain.
But I do know it crashes on the AIs turn. I could try declaring war on the AI to force him to do something else

>>1844622
i fixed it
The Dragon Ai was allied with the Eldritch Ai. The Eldritch AI lost their Throne City to the Toll of Seasons and had it occupied (this doesn't turn it into a free city, because they are a special type of marauder camp, but it doesn't raze it either, because of how the Scourge sieges the city to leech you of population). So the Dragon AI launched an attack against the occupied city, only the occupied city belonged to his ally meaning he couldn't attack it, which broke the game.
So i opened the debug/cheat menu, gave myself infinite movement, won the 2000+ strength fight myself and left. since human players aren't forced to declare war to "attack" occupied cities under Toll of Seasons.
So if you game ever crashes while you have toll of seasons on, it could be because of that

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i understand not giving me pantheon points because i "cheated" to fix a game breaking bug the ai caused, but not even letting my poor Clan Leader join the others in my Pantheon?? some bullshit. But i have a plan to farm pantheon points

Wish we had future plans, starting to get annoying, like we had a full year at launch in May 2023 Laid out and the last of that released in June so a quarter of a year has passed almost and nothing. Hope its not dead. I'd dig around the Discord but I hate that Jordi guy literally the worst Diversity Hire I've seen in a Euro company

>>1846641
>Hope its not dead.
Doubt it, but I know what you mean about the lack of announcements. Same situation with gal civ 4.

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Does anyone actually absorb enemy cities into their empire? Seems like not a great idea with such a low city cap. I prefer to destroy everyone who isn't me.

>>1846660
Depends as a human i only absorb elves into my empire everything else gets exterminated

>>1846660
If I need the city pronto. I usually just mass vassals

Does AoW4 have a campaign and how good is it? I am not interested in playing over and over in skirmish mode.

>>1846660
Early on it can be worth absorbing them, but generally I either vassalize or raze them, depending on whether I'm trying to be good or evil.

>>1846824
It has sort of a campaign through the "story realms", but it's not very good.

>>1846824
It's not much different than skirmish other than it has minor narritive trappings and unique quests to each story realm that integrate into that narritive. Not a bad way to roleplay a certain kind of ruler/faction in the different story realms as they allow for solving objectives in different ways. Story isn't terribly interesting, nor characters, but they can give you a decent framework for some roleplaying.

>>1846660
If I need the city, sure. I tend to get kind of autistic about the city cap instead of just quickly putting down a few to hit it early game, so I often poach my third or fourth city from a minor faction.

Otherwise it mostly depends on my morality and my alignment. Law vassalizes, chaos burns down.

>>1843144
Even on Normal they can be pretty annoying, though I might just suck. Every time I try to rush them early on they wipe me easily.

>>1824188
When I first bought the game I was super into it for a couple of weeks and then I lost interest after playing the campaign and trying out all the major tome paths, etc.

Every DLC I come back and play it again for a little bit but the spark isn't there. There's something about this game that just fundamentally doesn't feel satisfying to play, even a billion patches later. It's got all the tedium of late game Age of Wonders gameplay where you just want it to end without most of the fun bits.

theres some cool mods on the workshop, thankfully, since Skymods exists, owning a GoG copy isn't a problem
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3023411279
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3268269508&
this guy made more culture units, for instance

>reach late game
>turn times take fucking forever
>finally reach some cuck's capital to finish out the game
>6 turns to breach
Fucks sake, this'll actually take hours irl just fucking spamming end turn

>>1847438
I've noticed that just right clicking every couple of seconds speeds up late game turn times for me. I think the slow ass unit movement animations are being rendered even if the units are off screen, and the ai tends to move each unit in a stack individually instead of just moving the entire stack at once.

>>1847438
Sometimes zooming all the way out seems to help like to where its a map view.

>>1847438
Yeah like the other anons said it's because the game wants to play all the movement animations for enemy turns. I think it does skip animations that are far enough away from the viewscreen, but if even part of a unit's path comes close to the viewscreen it'll animate the whole thing. You can (usually) speed it up significantly by either zooming in on some fog of war, or zooming all the way out to the map screen where it doesn't render units at all anymore.

>>1846660
It's a good idea to nab another t3 culture unit like Industrious culture. That and the RP of colonizing another race and using them as expendables.

>>1847438
>>1847442
if you zoom out into the tactical map turns go way faster
the slowdown is caused by the AI spamming tier 1 units and moving them one at a time

>>1814793
game runs like shit, the map stutters and the combat gets even worse

too bad, because I'd like to give the game a proper go

>>1847792
Oops I was in the wrong thread.

>>1847786
I never had combat stutters and I’ve been playing since launch. End turn times on 9 player very large maps after turn 100ish can drag tho

so the only "lead" to the new dlc we have is some comment about "break crumps" or something?
maybe they are bringing back mermaids as a dwelling and general warer dlc?

>>1848054
>some comment about "break crumps" or something
What?

>>1848357
one of the devs when someone asked about the new dlc he replied about "bread crumps"

>>1848362
You mean bread crumbs? Still doesn't make much sense to me, but at least it actually means something instead of "break crumps"

>>1848365
that sorry since i'm leaning german i all but forgot english

>>1841698
dwarf dreadnought for armormaxxing

>>1848054
>maybe they are bringing back mermaids as a dwelling and general warer dlc?
devs hate water content for some reason so I find a water-based DLC unlikely

Didn't want to make a new thread, but conquest of eo is getting new dlc with a rng map (they sold out T_T ).
>Make your own fun and tailor your adventure to your desires!
If devs are going to keep this garbage trend up with their RNG pornography, I'll fork money for a glass greenhouse where I can keep an actual sandbox in without cats shitting it up and ditch vidya altogether.
Fucking cucks.

>>1848780
Eh. CoE was an okay game, but its main problem was that it had zero replayability. Yeah you can play as a different class but that didn't shake things up enough to be worth replaying the single map it has over and over. I agree that having multiple hand-made maps to play would be superior to just a generated maps. but at least it adds some replayability in that you don't automatically know where everything is at the start of the game. Besides it's not like generated maps are a modern thing, many strategy and 4X games have had random maps for decades.

>>1848799
>it's not like generated maps are a modern thing
Certainly, procedural generation in games has been around for ages. The best, in my opinion, example of it is daggerfall, which was quite impressive FOR THAT TIME and in the context in which it was made.
But what's your point?
The N'th 4x game in a row with a RNG map isn't that exciting to me, really.
It's not replayable? Now that's just dishonest. All it takes to reaffirm that assertion it is to scroll through the global achievements stats.
There are multiple classes.
Multiple win conditions.
Multiple starting locations.
Multiple tower rooms.
A wide variety of spells that aren't just "bigger damage numbers", but are each a 'feature' of the game onto themselves.
Each of those things considerably alters the game-play and thus the play-through.
And I don't get all the "fans" of the game who never actually gamed the damn game, because all the fun and ridiculous shit you can do in it becomes possible only when you become familiar with the huge and awesome map that ha ton of character.
It's kind of funny that a lot of faggots who want RNG maps seethed about the RNG locations of the demon lords.
The actual flaw of the game is that there's nothing to use half of the cool shit that's in it on, as once you get the ball going you run into the goalkeeper right afterwards. Instead of being an obstacle to you scoring a point, the goalkeeper just falls face flat on the ground and the game ends.

If I'm in a mood the play RNG slop there's AoE4 already.

>>1848868
>But what's your point?
I think his point is that the concept of having a randomized map in a strategy game isn't a new or crazy concept and it's a pretty simple way of adding replayability.
He probably didn't realize he was talking to a schizo sperg with an irrational hatred of randomized maps though, so you'll have to cut him some slack.

>>1848871
>the game needs a RNG map because it has no replayability
I think his point is that the game is actually quite replayable and that the anon making that statement is a drooling retard who doesn't know what he wants and just vomits whatever his NPC brain absorbed somewhere through osmosis.
Furthermore, the game would benefit more from pacing better the rich features it already has instead of diverting their already limited resources into a fad.

>>1848874
I don't know it sounded like he knew exactly what he wanted. You just can't accept that someone wants something different than you, especially when it comes to your sperg rage about randomly generated maps which, once again, are not a new thing or a "fad".

>>1848916
Making a claim that a game isn't replay-able when it is makes one, at the very least, a liar.
Now I don't know what shithole you are from, but where I'm from we frown upon lying and liars. Now one can't really stone them half-dead like in good old days, but as an upright person of good character I must call out their bullshit at a minimum.
As a good person though, I'm gave him(you) a benefit of the doubt and assumed he's a retard who can't construct a proper argument since he simply doesn't know better, but now it seems it's a mix of both. Sadly, being a lying retard doesn't excuse one from a beating and since I can't carry out this act of justice in person, I'll settle with simply pointing out this wicked act.
Hey, I don't judge preferences in games. If you like RNG slop you can slurp it till your belly is full and it leaks out of the ass. It's an AoW4 thread after all, but what's with the meandering and general faggotry?

>>1848874
>Making a claim that a game isn't replay-able when it is makes one, at the very least, a liar.
But it isn't?

You can play three different classes that all have one unique gimmick, but that doesn't change the gameplay. Oh boy you use skeletons instead of goblins it's like a completely new game! You can choose a different starting location but it's still the same map with the same features and everything is in the same location except you, so it only affects the very early game anyway. You can go for a different victory but 99% of the game will still play out the same way. Even the AI opponents are more like scripted story villains than actual 4X AIs. I'm not saying CoE -needs- a random map, but it does need something that makes it worth playing after the first time, and an RNG map is one possible example of that.

I get it, you're the mega-autist who's obsessed with CoE and always uses the AoW4 thread to shitpost about it because you're painfully aware that bAoW4 is the superior game and that if you'd make a separate thread about CoE, nobody would post in it. But just because your autism has led you to hyperfocus on this one already forgotten game doesn't mean everyone else should just blindly worship it.

>>1837765
Eh, still would

>>1848940
I'm not even the original guy you were replying to, I just think you're being a schizo sperg having a mental breakdown over something as basic and innocuous as randomized maps.

>>1849125
>he be mad bro
>the words on screen scream in my head
Talk about being mental.
Do you start to cry and call the police when someone presents you an argument?

>>1848975
>Oh boy you use skeletons instead of goblins it's like a completely new game!
for a moment I thought you were talking about aow and realized just how little options we really have in 4
back to playing empire mode in planetfall again I guess

>>1849149
Anon, did you forget to take your meds today?

>>1849160
>nothing of value to say
KYS :DD

>>1848975
>but that doesn't change the gameplay
Everything might feel the same if you stomp on easy difficulty though I wouldn't know.
I've finished impossible runs on Demonologist and Necromancer (others on regular) and both where extremely different to play.
You could sell me, that Alchemist and Artificer are samey, but you didn't because YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.
Not only is starting location altering the difficulty of the run, available reagents and so forth, but also the rooms you could possibly unlock first which can have a large impact on how you play the game.
Now the opponent towers do have THE SAME LAME final room battle and they should have obviously worked both on that and the interactions with other circle mages, but instead they pander to people who aren't even playing their game.
>I get it
I get it that you don't.

>>1849378
Go make a CoE threat already you sad turbosperg. This thread is for discussing AoW.

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>>1849389
>he lies
>he insults
>he deflects
>and most importantly - he damage controls
Good talk.

>>1849394
Sperging out for two days over a DLC you don't like for some failed game nobody cares about in a thread about a completely different game isn't a "talk", it's a mental disorder. Get help.

>>1849394
Fag you've been owned, please fuck off with your shitty DLC for some other game you fucking schizo. Its this guy and Planetfall fags every thread

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so the Late Game Culture Units mod has been very fun! Having 4 tier 1 units, an extra culture type, end game tier IV culture units that can visibly change the outcome of a losing battle has been very pleasant.
I want to try a Slowest Research play-through now, I couldn't see the appeal before, but with such a boost in roster size im down to try it

I think an announcement soon the official account is starting to post on socials again…

>>1851051
They said they'd reveal more news after summer and next week is the official end of summer (sept 21) so that makes sense.

>>1814887
>no campaign
what the fuck do you expect retard and go play aow1, 2, shadow magic.

>>1851103
Yeah their youtube just posted to watch their socials this week for news

>>1857413
so season pass 2?

>>1857542
Maybe. All they really said is there will be more content to come. Technically they could just release a patch and call it content, but that doesn't seem likely. The first season pass sold better than expected, so it's entirely possible there will be a second one.

After a bunch of recent flops like Lamplighters League, Millennia, Life By You, and the ongoing VtMB2 clusterfuck, Triumph is also Paradox' only consistently profitable third-party studio so it makes sense for them to invest in that.

>>1857548
How was Lamplighters League? It looks interesting but I didn't even hear about it till after it was out.

>>1857577
No idea, I haven't played it. Nor did anyone else, apparently.

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Want to play either AoW1 or AoW2, and i've been having trouble deciding which to buy.
Why does everyone say that AoW:SM is the best in the series? I've looked it up and 1 seems better in all aspects.
Could anyone explain why shadow magic is so loved over 1?

>>1814793
Victories feel too samey for me, and the game isn't trying to be subtle with how generated the enemies are, idk at least add consistency or flavor instead of random shit.

>>1857662
AoW1 has a good campaign, a lot of visual charm and a solid soundtrack, but AoW2 is mechanically just more polished. For example AoW1 had some balance issues and gameplay exploits that where improved in the sequel. The reason most people prefer SM over 2 is that it's basically the same game except with new content added. Aside from the campaign, SM has everything that 2 has and more. Plus the actual campaign of SM is better as well. AoW2's campaign is fine gameplay-wise, but it has my least favorite storyline in the AoW franchise.

>>1857548
>I now get to witness Triumph/AoW4 getting squeezed to death by Paradox because everything else happened to flop
>>1857577
It honestly wasn't THAT bad. It wasn't great but it managed to do it's job. I got bored of walking around the in-between combat sections

>>1848780
QRD me on why Conquest of Eo can be better than AoW4?

>>1858078
It's a lot more of a linear, story-based and event-based game. If that's appealing to you it's worth checking out. You'll probably get a decent 20-30 hours out of it.

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Tome Mayhem and Tome of Fertility sisters... it's so over

>>1857699
>AoW2 is mechanically just more polished
For example?
Having your heroes be immortal beings that cast spells from everywhere seems off to me, idk.
Also, I kinda liked the busted spells from the first game, like flood and the one that makes you fly.

>>1859063
Your heroes aren't immortal wizards, that's just your leader. Lorewise, AoW2 is when wizards were at peak power so every leader is a powerful wizard of some kind exerting their power though a wizard tower rather than personally going to battle (the power scale goes 2/SM > 4 > 1 > 3, though this isn't necessarily reflected mechanically). Heroes in AoW2 are more similar to the ones in AoW1 except they toned down some obviously OP stuff like Lightning Strike+Life Stealing and Dominate spam.

And indeed terraforming spells like Flood which could instantly kill entire armies with no possible counter unless you have enough Air or Water magic (for Wind Walking or Water Walking) were nerfed or replaced because they were too oppressive. A single spell that basically invalidates 4 out of 6 magic spheres simply isn't good design. Besides, Wetland essentially still does the same thing as Flood, it's just slower and can only affect land inside your domain, so it's more of a defensive "get out of my swamp" spell than a general "fuck everyone" spell. AoW2 also has more varied faction mechanics, more spells and units, and improved combat mechanics. Stuff like being unable to attack walled cities without siege engines was arguably more realistic than the approach that subsequent games took, but it made for a bit of an awkward gameflow.

>>1858897
Affinities for Men:Order, Materium, Chaos
Affinities for Women: Astral,Nature,Shadow

Age of wonders 2 sm was such a mess of balance and ideas. But it had so much charm and the humor was quite silly and did not feel like it took itself seriously.

I miss the racial units of that game, you had small variations that made them feel pretty damn different, like sure you had Archer elf and useless farmer halfling, but you also had maggot spitting poison that turned into better units and the wierd orc tentacle hentai dude.

With those games it was up to you to make stacks of units with the strength of the different races, or accept some of your guys would be weaker than wood elf archer.

With aow4 the combat system feels so wack and wierd. Sure aow2 had wierd random dice rolls that could fuck you, but with the new one it feels like the complete opposite where damage is dealt perfectly, and even weak units if they don't get damaged do trillions of flanking damage. They did a lot of good with ruler magic and customization, but honestly i would have preferred going for a more single unit design with random dicenwhen it came to combat.

>>1814962
I agree with you. I got the same sentiment on Immortals too.

Looks like the puzzle thing that's been going on for the last few days translates into NOVEMBERFIVE. Could be the release date for the next DLC.

>>1861695
Any idea what the dlc is even about? Or is it a second season pass?
The forums are also very quiet about it

>>1862165
There have been no hints at all as far as I can tell, since the units and tomes in the puzzle have all been existing ones. I think all the units shown have been T3, but I doubt that's meant to be a hint.

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>>1862165
I'm honestly not expecting anything super big, the 4 DLCs from the "1st" season were planned alongside the game but since they only had the green-light for more DLCs for a few months I doubt they have had enough time to devise and develop a lot of brand new expansions. I'm sure we'll see new forms/customization, another base game culture getting subcultures, and probably 1 DLC big enough to be considered an expansion. But I'm not expecting "2 big Expansions and 2 big Content Packs with various free reworks over the course of a year" to happen again. Of course I'd be very happy to be proven wrong.
I think a lot of people online are talking themselves into "2nd season pass that's 5x bigger than the first one with 100 new tomes and 200 new cultures and subcultures and 500 new forms and water rework and underground rework and and and and and" and if Triumph doesn't meet these baseless sky high expectations they'll be disappointed.
At least November 5th isn't very far away, love how Triumph never keeps us waiting too long between DLCs.

>>1862388
>2nd season pass
That's not unreasonable considering the first one did better than expected. Not to mention it fits the MO of their publisher.
>that's 5x bigger than the first one with 100 new tomes and 200 new cultures and subcultures and 500 new forms and water rework and underground rework and and and and and
That's just you being schizophrenic and hearing things nobody ever said.

I finally got around to buying this game and pirating all the DLC like I do with most paradox games, I just finished the intro/tutorial map with 2 opponents and am still kind of confused about how to play, it doesn't help that googling most information is super out of date.
1. I understand the game's combat up to the point you get an initial 6-stack with your main leader and are running around killing neutrals like Warcraft 3 creeping, but I don't really understand what I'm supposed to do once I've got my first completed hero stack or how many army units I should be building over the course of the game. In my tutorial game I basically stopped paying attention to my military once I got my first main stack full of tier 5/6 units and I just used that one to kill everything, even Gold wonder ruins. I made like 5 or 6 scouts and put them on autoexplore but last that point I was really just randomly queueing up units to AFK on my capital. The times I was declared war on I managed to negotiate a peace without them actually reaching me besides a few scouts and outposts. I had an Alliance with the good guy NPC and with only 3 players total I mostly just sat in my turf building.
2. I got pretty confused on win conditions and some seem vastly more difficult than others. I was ahead on score all game but 150 turns seems like an insane timer. I was partway through both the Magic end and was almost done building all 3 Beacons for the Expansion victory, but then on like turn 80 or 90 the guy I made an Alliance with killed the remaining enemy (I set a couple bounties for his cities but otherwise didn't do much) which ended with me winning.

My Tome selection was pretty messy, I basically just picked everything with buffs or healing until midgame I got railroaded down the full-nature-path with my T5 one being the Age of Nature one. I took both Fertility and Glades which was probably a mistake since you can't stack meadows and forests. How important are major transformations?

>>1862508
Creeping is all but mandatory in the start of the game anon
try not to lose many units anon as T1 units got buffed and they scale a lot better
>what to build
depends on what and how your play,as Reaver or industrual you need golds lots of it but builds some mines and with them you don't need mana much but if you go full summoning you ofc mana
>what does production/draft/food/city happines do?
Production well makes building faster to build and excess production gives you gold something like 20% production turns into gold
Food well you need it to expand your empire important early useless later
Draft is well how fast you recruit units more draft faster unit build
City Happiness well the higher it is the more all around bonues you get but it's capped to 100+
>Alliance
Well this is a war game sooner or later you will get into war either by you or them and "allies" have the nice habit of waging war and draging you into it
>Win conditions
there are simple
>Victory Points
Your overall performance in the game there are many many factors about it, like economy, diplomacy(vasals), wars and so on, if you set the limit at 150 turns at turn 150 the game ends and if you are number 1 you win
>Magic victory
Hard to do but i like it more than VP so get 3 gold wonders and annex them via city or outpost, defend them and reseach your world ending/saving spell
>Tomes
experiment with it that's the "meat" of the game
>How important are major transformations?
They are a double edged sword since they give you bonuses but also debuffs example: Angel transformation gives you flying resistance to statuses but also debuff you with ice and poison now you might think "hey this is bad!" except angels get immunity to "insanity" which redends most Eldrich sovering and chaos main debuff and insanity is insaninly good

>>1862508
1. Depends on the difficulty and on how late into the game it is, but in general your primary focus should be on your heroes, and getting as much XP and equipment for them as you can as fast as possible. They start out strong and outscale everything in the game. Exactly how you use them is up to you. A full stack of heroes is the strongest army there is, but personally I like to give each hero their own stack of units so I can move in different directions at once.

For the early game, you typically don't have fixed armies, with units joining or splitting off from their stack as necessary to maximize the amount of ground you can cover. Ideally you'll want to be in a fight at least once every turn and get as much XP as possible on your leader, and on any heroes when they join, but of course this depends on things like the map layout. There won't always be something in range to fight. For the late game, you'll usually want to have multiple armies, with each army being 3 stacks of units that stay within reinforcement range of eachother. Use summoned units to reinforce stacks when necessary.

2. The win conditions are one of the game's weak points IMO. Score Victory is obtuse nonsense that I always turn off, it's not always a good indicator of how well you're actually doing anyway. Military Victory is straight-forward, just make sure that all enemies are dead or vassalized. Expansion Victory is okay, it's mostly an "I'm already winning but I don't want to spend the next 50 turns mopping up the map" option, which all 4X games should have IMO. Magic Victory is similar to Expansion Victory, but in practice Wonder placement is too random so unless you're lucky there's a good chance you'll be able to get an Expansion Victory before you even have the option of trying a Magic Victory.

>>1814793
I still prefer old AOW and AOWII cause it didn't feel like civilization, plus, awesome campaing spells and terraforming.

Anyone got the leaked image of the seaspn 2 expansion pass?

>>1862522
Personally I find magic victory much easier than expansion victory. Distance between gold wonders doesn't matter too much at the point of the game where you can actually go for a magic victory because of teleporters. The bigger problem is which gold wonders your map has.

>>1862777
> The bigger problem is which gold wonders your map has.
If you're at the point where you have teleporters it really doesn't matter much which wonders there are, unless you really suck at combat. But expansion victory is easier than wonder victory simply because it allows you to grow naturally and win with a consolidated empire. Wonder victory forces you to spread out and build/capture cities where the gold wonders are, which gets more awkward the bigger the map is. It's not getting the wonders (and definitely not holding the wonders) that makes it more tedious, it's the fact that you have to go out of your way to do it while expansion victory will always happen naturally as you expand and conquer. You just need to build the beacons.

Magic victory used to be the easiest one, but ever since they changed it to the wonders version it's just a worse version of expansion.

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>>1862728

>>1862940
nice, was betting on giants being a leader type
maybe they will add Mab as one

>>1862940
>out now
...?
Ways of wars looks like a mix of japan and vampires/blood magic
I'm more interested if they add anomalies or empire mode

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>>1862940
>giant kings
Ahahaha, yesssssss.

>>1862954
>empire mode
don't give me hope

>>1862940
Looks pretty cool. Seems Order/Chaos focused which makes sense since they didn't really get shit in the first season. And Giant Kings is obviously the standout.

>>1862940
Assuming this is real, here's what I'm assuming:

>Herald of Glory
Considering the fact that it says "OUT NOW" and "INSTANT UNLOCK", as well as the relatively short time between this and the next one, I think Herald of Glory will be less like a full-sized DLC and more like a gimme for people who buy Season Pass 2, so they don't have to wait until november before they get anything. Probably just a few new units or maybe a new tome.

>Ways of War
Looks like sokme kind of spooky ninja culture. The name of the DLC can be interpreted in many ways, but I'd guess that it refers to alternative ways to wage war, i.e. a faction that focuses on espionage, which would fit well with the spooky ninja theme and people have been requesting something akin to the AoW3 Rogue faction for a long time.

>Giant Kings
Obviously just Dragon Dawn except themed around giants. Giant rulers have been something people have been requesting for ages as well for some reason. A new leader type, a giant-themed tome or two, couple of new units, bish bash bosh. The only thing I'm wondering is how much they'll be able to differentiate a giant-themed tome from existing "giant" options like Supergrowth and Ancient of Earth.

>Archon Prophesy
This one sounds the most like a story DLC, continuing the plot of the game and bringing back the old Archons somehow to deal with the infestation shit from Eldritch Realms. They would be kind boring as a form option since they're basically just pale humans, but then again they spent a lot of time in the void so they could've been mutated or whatever. Maybe this'll include a new culture as well, though I'm not sure what kind of culture would fit the Archons since High culture already fits them quite well. But again, it's been a long time since AoW:SM fucked over the Archons, so who knows what could've happened.

Of course if I'm right about all of this it also means we'll only get 3 "real" DLCs in this pass, which would be a bit disappointing.

>>1863065
>Assuming this is real
Actually, scratch that. I'm convinced that it is real considering the silhouettes on the preview match the figures in each picture here.

>>1863160
So herald of Glory is mostly aesthetics, that's lame. Pegasus mount is cool though. Still this seems smaller than the first expansion pass so hopefully it's cheaper

>>1863164
The Steam page just went up. Looks like this expansion pass is $10 cheaper than the first one.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3181480/Age_of_Wonders_4_Expansion_Pass_2/

>Age of Wonders 4: Herald of Glory
>Begin your next journey now with Age of Wonders 4: Herald of Glory. This pack is available instantly when purchasing Expansion Pass 2* and includes unique items to assert your dominion over the Astral Sea.

>Age of Wonders 4: Ways of War (Releases on November 5th, 2024)
>Achieve perfection in battle with the Age of Wonders 4: Ways of War content pack. Embrace the Oathsworn culture and devote yourself to their warrior's code. Deploy disciplined monks and shadowy assassins. Investigate mysterious happenings that see your fellow Godir replaced by demons and dragons. Lead two new forms for your factions: the hulking Ogrekin or the strong Simians. This content pack contains a new culture, new tomes, new wildlife units and a new type of narrative event chain.

>Age of Wonders 4: Giant Kings (Releases Q2 2025)
>Restore the Elder Giants to their rightful place as masters of the Astral Sea, in the Age of Wonders 4: Giant Kings Expansion. Explore the ruins of their fallen empire, seek out forgotten crystal magic to empower your armies, and delve for forgotten treasures deep beneath the earth. Contains a new giant ruler type, dwelling and hand crafted regions to explore.

>Age of Wonders 4: Archon Prophecy (Releases Q3 2025)
>Take command of the forces of light, in the Age of Wonders 4: Archon Prophecy Expansion. Join the celestial Archons as they strike back against Urrath’s corrupt forces. Consult the oracles and glimpse the hidden prophecies that shape the fates of the realms, and become the master of your own destiny. Contains a new culture, story content and prophecy events.

>>1863167
So basically
>1 costume dlc
>2 New culture, 2 more races, new tomes, new event chain
>Giant Rulers...dwellings?
>New culture, story, prophecy events

Seems slim for new mechanical offerings, but maybe they're holding back.