What do people here think about Age of Wonders 4?I played it recently and found it pretty fun, the race customization stuff was really engaging for me, as coming up with neat ideas for factions and their quirks and then playing them out worked pretty well.My only major criticism is probably the ultimately simplistic tech progression and the fact that barring the final tiers of magic tomes, you can basically unlock every magic tome if you play long enough. I feel that opposite element tomes/affinities ought to start blocking each other after signifigant enough comitment to a element.
Stellaris slop of no campaign and every race becoming the same via tomes
>>1814887>giving a shit about campaigns in a 4x gameWhat?
>>1814891The early AOW games had great campaigns.
>>1814895Fair 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.
>>1814895no it didn't. most of the campaigns sucked ass minus the necromancer.
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.
>>1814887It has a campaign, it's just not very good.
>>1814793clash 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 geniusat 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.
>>1814793It'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.
>>1814793I 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.
>>1814971M8, 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.
>>1814971I 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 upoh wow right, their undead spearmen are marginally more vulnerable to spirit damage than my own ordinary spearmen! such depth, such gameplay, incredibleaow4 is the definition of paraslop and I couldn't be more salty because I expected more
>>1815055Depending 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 moreyes, that's what I'm complaining about, you don't "design" shit, you pick a culture and slap visual/gameplay attributes on iton 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 reasonindustrious will always be stereotypical fantasy dwarves, despite being spider riding moles or actual dwarvesin other words they went balls deep on one end but stayed conservative on the otherI 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 menot 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
>>1815083I agree that the culture customization ought to have more options as well.
>>1815092yeah, I'd be happy even with just cosmetics
>>1815083>>1815092To 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 timeim not a fan of the race system in general and just stacking more buffs changing your race into an abomination is always the end goalrally of lieges could be okay but it mostly gives free city units which have very few race transformations applied meaning they are uselessin fact i disable free cities almost every time because they just make the game worselack of proper story campaign hurts a lot and the separate "story" missions are awful5/10 i keep trying to replay it all the time but the fun just isnt there
>>1815396Spider 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 damageIs like that´s the weakness for being undead or something similar...
>>1814926I 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.
>>1814926The 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.
>>1814793Good-I like customizing things-Leaders keeping transformations is neat-Dragons-Teleportation optionsBad-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.
>>1815910The 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.
>>1815910Its 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 damageDamn, ghosty boys sure for the dev teams panties in a twist.
>>1816744>sure GOT the devs teams...My bad
>>1815497primal culture is absolutely busted with spider mountsadd glade runners to that to fix your awful cultural ranged unit and you are good to goalso im not a fan of the way mammoth/elephant mounts move
>>1816688Phantasmal 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 badWithout 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?
>>1817277Has 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.
>>1814971Wrong. 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
>>1815146I 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
>>1817331With 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.
>>1817351I 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.
>>1814887I'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.
>>1817351reaver sub-culture could be the easiest to intergrate my manorder + 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 3materium + 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
>>1817613That 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 40Really 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
>>1815963I 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 weakThey'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.
>>1817991Yeah 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.
>>1818157Its now basically expansion victory but far harder because instead of choosing where you defend you have to defend random areas on the map
>>1818328Use 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.
>>1819057question is, can you mod a pirated aow4?>just buy i-not paying for slop
>>1819220It's on gogwhich means it's on free-gogThere's no drm... or there shouldn't be.
>no frostlingsno buy
>>1819408>BUT MUH TRONSFMARATITATIONS ANON NOOO YOU CAN DO ENYTHING JUST BUY EKSPENSION PISS ENON PLSyou aren't missing a thing
>>1817613What 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>MateriumI just remembered, there's no major transformation for Materium.And frostling is a minor transformationAnd 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 playI AM VERY ORIGINAL1 - feudal elves (feat ARCHERY)2 - barbarian orcs3 - literally just highmen4 - LITERALLY just Dark Elves5 - Chaos Dwarves (Reavers)6 - Evil Syrons (Mystic)7 - Swamp Primal Lizardmen8 - Human Industrialists9-0 - kill myself
>>1819440>Materium/Materiumsounds 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/Astralsounds good>Materium/Shadowsounds 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
>>1819479I’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
>>1820177Same 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
>>1820177I 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.
>>1820392perfect opportunity to bring back blighted terrain
>>1819479>>1820392relentless 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 thoughWould a kind anon be so nice and report this bug on discord?
>>1821816Report it on their website if you don’t use discord
>>1814793Age 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 tortureWhat is in the game that merits the title
>>1822263The 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.
>>1822263there are wonders and it takes ages to clear them allas in, it's tedious, not actually difficult
>>1818328This 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
>>1823025You 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 thinkingglad 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 themDiplomacy's a joke.
The game is fine. Needs some more fetish mods though before it achieves 4x perfection.
>>1823615>The game is fineif by fine you mean flaming dumpster, then yes
>>1823654>flaming dumpsterNow there's an idea for a new tome with a summon for a blight and fire damage dealing fighter unit.
>>1814793You 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.
>>1823680True, 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 tomeyes, 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!
>>1823813Imagine playing an Age of Wonders game and being upset that it rips off existing fantasy franchises.
>>1823691Sort 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
>>1823850they really should've expanded upon the empire mode and unit editor from planetfall, magehaven mechanics would tie in so well>>1823830that's not the point anontriumph is trying to do everything and nothing at the same time design-wisethey 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/crossbowmanall 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
>>1824017Are you aware of how often you use the word "like"?
>>1823922I 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?
>>1824188its okay for a bit but becomes extremely bland quickly
>>1824181>I don't understandI can see that>it's not replaced by just adding more generic units, it's replaced by enchantments and transformationsit's more of a sidegrade reallyyou 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 classyou can't have one shield unit with spell tempered shields, and the other without itI 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 saidI 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 itcome to think of it, battlemages are even worse in that regard, how many racial mage units are there? ten?>If anything AoW4 is less repetitivelucky you, I feel like it's the exact oppositeit doesn't follow that exact formula sure, but you are really gimping yourself if you don't follow the current metaI 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 atmSo 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
>>1824178Are you aware you’re a massive faggot?
>>1824244Brother, phantasms were nerfed in the latest update earlier this week. Repent your astral ways and combine materium and order for the new meta
>>1824252>>1824574don'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
>>1814926In 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
>>1824858Oh 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.
>>1825162Eh, 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.
>>1814793I 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 metaSo 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.
>>1826191Teleporters 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
>>1829122Is there even going to be more dlc for the game?
>>1829842Probably. 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.
>>1829872I 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
>>1830265anon... that is Lithyl Nightweaverdid you even play any of the story missions?
>>1830323Oh 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
>>1826978I 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
>>1830637I 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
>>1814887Ok boomer
>>1814793I 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 oneGood 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.
>>1831768For starters try this. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3291809332Just browse the steam workshop, you'll find plenty of mods out there to scratch the itch.
>>1830265Hey anon we still have Sundrenhope it goes for us better than for merlin x julia hahaha
>pick unicorn mounts as my racial>not all my heroes have mountsFrustrating.
>>1832767>Have flying unit>They have to 'embark' when they cross a small riverBizarre.
>>1832769I just want to conquer everything with my rainbow trailing horses. Is that too much to ask?
>>1832769Flying units don't embark though. You probably had a non-flying unit in the same stack.
>>1832767>>not all my heroes have mountsat least they brought back the item forge, even if they locked it behind yellow mananot sure why they didn't just copy planetfall and let us go wild with them from the start but ok
>>1832767They should if theyre of your race and arent starting with a weapon that closes the mount slot like a polearm or magelock
So of all these presence traits for worlds which ones are fun or a chore?
>>1834006I found the demon prince quite hard because I spawned right next to him and he declared war on turn ~25pretender kings are fun, they start at war and you can mostly build peacefully while they duke it out
>>1834006The ones with two dueling factions are goodThe ones with one jacked faction are bad (you get fucked if you spawn near them)
>>1834006Depends 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.
>>1817446>Who gives a fuck about campaign? It's fucking 4x.Check out Age of Wonders 1.
>>1834006I 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
>>1814793It'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>>1834393Maybe 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
>>1836341They 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.
>>1837159The 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 vassalsthat's exactly the reason for their 'schizophrenia'you just happen to pass their numerical thresholds that make you liked or dislikedit's not... the best system out there
>>1837159The "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)>>1836958Yeah 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?>>1836341Season 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, feudalWhat do you think theyll add next? Chaos/shadow?
>>1837230I think they'll expand existing cultures like they did with Mystic
>>1814793I'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.
>>1837232Hope its Dark next, they feel the most lackluster to me.
>>1837211It’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
>>1837308I'd say Feudal is worse right now, but yeah Dark could use an update as well.
>>1837548I 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
>>1837589The 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?
>>1814793I think that evil bitch with a stupid hat is a filthy dirty little cocksucking whore that needs some of MY fat COCK
>>1837543Don'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.
>>1837676She gets corrupted by Cthulhu and turns into a creepy bug monster in the latest DLC.
>>1837765Not in my games
>>18147933 was fucking boring and had a bunch of noisy bullshit.
>>18378043 did feel like a butchers jobCan'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 PlanetfallLolwhat? 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?
>>1837933Play Age of Wonders Shadow Magic for peak and then try whatever you want after that
>>1837933I 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!
>>1837610Dark 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
>>1837970I 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.
>>1814887So would I enjoy this game if I have 200 hrs in stellaris but have never played custom empire, only randomly generated ones?
>>1834321What’s your point? I wouldn’t touch a campaign in a 4x game. Only old farts care about that scripted shit.
>>1837933If 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.
>>18379861 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.
>>1837970Put 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 lowThe 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.>>1838220It 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.
I bet I'm gonna reinstall planetfall only to find it actually was shitI'll be back shortly
>>1838220The 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.
>>1838220I 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
>>1838220Its great. I love it comfy soundtrack.
>>1838220empire mode made planetfall far far far above anything aow 4,3 and the others could offer better
>>1838643Doesn't 4 have the same thing?
>>1838644God 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
>>1838220Just 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 offThey do make great governors, but so do the Abyssal rulers and you can’t have more than one dragon so…
>>1838807>Idk whyBecause 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"?
>>1838853Well 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
>>1838853Clearly 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.
>>1838807blow it out your ass
>>1819408Did 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.
>>1838971You 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 topicsWell, 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 itjesus I have a problem.
>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 itI kinda feel like this is a small oversight.
>>1839227That'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 PFit's the closest we ever got to alpha centauri 2, and it was somehow unintendedno wonder people prefer it over 4
>>1839227fabricate 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 gameI 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"
>>1838850Great for industrious rulers and warmongers that get piles of items from prospecting and murdering heros respectively, decent in combat but eldritch are stronger
>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 changedSo you made a boring customizable game that you can't even fully customize anywayDefinition of half assing it
I wonder if I can play multiplayer with a GOG copy
>>1841150you can but it requires you to make a paradox account.>multiplayeranon please for the sake of your sanity don't do this to yourself.
>>1841164poor optimization or is it just unfun? cause seeing people chain together tomes and transformations sounds fun. Hotseat doesn't seem to be buggy
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
>>1841355I 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
>>1841355I always play with normal research speed, I just turn off score victory because it's too arcane and seems to favor the AI.
>>1841355slowest researchmakes 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
>>1841698My favorite combos for each class:>Halfling Necromancer>Frostling Sorcerer>Tigran Rogue>Goblin Warlord>Orc Theocrat>Elf Archdruid>Dwarf Dreadnought
>>1841705Also 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 troopsWhat am I supposed to do, bait the enemy into my allies?
>>1841865>What am I supposed to doUse the bounty system.
>>1841866Yeah 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
>>1814793it'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
>>1834321called it>>1837974i think so yeah
>>1841698human theocrat, for that knight&crusader roleplay
>>1841945>faggots that think AOW2 is the best fighting faggots that think AOW1 is the bestThey're both wrong, obviously Planetfall is the best.
>>1842080Planetfall really isn't that good
>>1842096It 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>probablyPlantefall 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)
>>1842134Even with scattered posts about other games in the series, this thread is still moving really slowly.
>>1842207Cannons 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.
>>1842531Assuming 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>>1832856Flying units dont 'embark' true but you still need to research water travel for your flying units to go over water for some stupid reason
>>1842546Maybe 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!
>>1842546I 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.
>>1842701Phantasmal 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.
>>1842207Get the choosen uniters or that other shadow one that gives you a wisper stoneAs for warspoils don't waste them on useless shit(diplomacy or capture units) use it to make cannons2 iron clads,2 cannons/magelocks, 2 pyre templars can and will annihilate anythingBurn and bomb the ground with ironclads,lure tge eneny close for the tenpkars to cut them to pieces and use locks to finish them offOrder ftw
>>1842806>tenpkarsTemplars*
The bonuses Hard AI gets are insane, it pops down an outpost and 2 turns later it’s a City with 4 population
>>1843144mod the bonuses out or stop playing a shit game
>>1843246it 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
>>1843274I'd say based, had you used anything other than the current meta
>>1843308I 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
>>1842591>you still need to research water travel for your flying units to go over water for some stupid reasonLMAO, 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
>>1844622i fixed itThe 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
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.
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.
>>1846660Depends as a human i only absorb elves into my empire everything else gets exterminated
>>1846660If 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.
>>1846660Early 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.>>1846824It has sort of a campaign through the "story realms", but it's not very good.
>>1846824It'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.
>>1846660If 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.
>>1843144Even 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.
>>1824188When 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=3023411279https://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 breachFucks sake, this'll actually take hours irl just fucking spamming end turn
>>1847438I'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.
>>1847438Sometimes zooming all the way out seems to help like to where its a map view.
>>1847438Yeah 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.
>>1846660It'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>>1847442if you zoom out into the tactical map turns go way fasterthe slowdown is caused by the AI spamming tier 1 units and moving them one at a time
>>1814793game runs like shit, the map stutters and the combat gets even worsetoo bad, because I'd like to give the game a proper go
>>1847792Oops I was in the wrong thread.
>>1847786I 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 somethingWhat?
>>1848357one of the devs when someone asked about the new dlc he replied about "bread crumps"
>>1848362You mean bread crumbs? Still doesn't make much sense to me, but at least it actually means something instead of "break crumps"
>>1848365that sorry since i'm leaning german i all but forgot english
>>1841698dwarf 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.
>>1848780Eh. 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 thingCertainly, 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.
>>1848874I 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".
>>1848916Making 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.
>>1837765Eh, still would
>>1848940I'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 headTalk 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 4back to playing empire mode in planetfall again I guess
>>1849149Anon, did you forget to take your meds today?
>>1849160>nothing of value to sayKYS :DD
>>1848975>but that doesn't change the gameplayEverything 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 itI get it that you don't.
>>1849378Go make a CoE threat already you sad turbosperg. This thread is for discussing AoW.
>>1849389>he lies>he insults>he deflects>and most importantly - he damage controlsGood talk.
>>1849394Sperging 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.
>>1849394Fag 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
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…
>>1851051They 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 campaignwhat the fuck do you expect retard and go play aow1, 2, shadow magic.
>>1851103Yeah their youtube just posted to watch their socials this week for news
>>1857413so season pass 2?
>>1857542Maybe. 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.
>>1857548How was Lamplighters League? It looks interesting but I didn't even hear about it till after it was out.
>>1857577No idea, I haven't played it. Nor did anyone else, apparently.
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?
>>1814793Victories 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.
>>1857662AoW1 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>>1857577It 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
>>1848780QRD me on why Conquest of Eo can be better than AoW4?
>>1858078It'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.
Tome Mayhem and Tome of Fertility sisters... it's so over
>>1857699>AoW2 is mechanically just more polishedFor 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.
>>1859063Your 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.
>>1858897Affinities for Men:Order, Materium, ChaosAffinities 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.
>>1814962I 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.
>>1861695Any idea what the dlc is even about? Or is it a second season pass?The forums are also very quiet about it
>>1862165There 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.
>>1862165I'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 passThat'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 andThat'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?
>>1862508Creeping is all but mandatory in the start of the game anontry not to lose many units anon as T1 units got buffed and they scale a lot better>what to builddepends 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 goldFood well you need it to expand your empire important early useless laterDraft is well how fast you recruit units more draft faster unit buildCity Happiness well the higher it is the more all around bonues you get but it's capped to 100+>AllianceWell 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 conditionsthere are simple>Victory PointsYour 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 victoryHard 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>Tomesexperiment 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
>>18625081. 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.
>>1814793I 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?
>>1862522Personally 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.
>>1862728
>>1862940nice, was betting on giants being a leader typemaybe they will add Mab as one
>>1862940>out now...?Ways of wars looks like a mix of japan and vampires/blood magicI'm more interested if they add anomalies or empire mode
>>1862940>giant kingsAhahaha, yesssssss.
>>1862954>empire modedon't give me hope
>>1862940Looks 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.
>>1862940Assuming this is real, here's what I'm assuming:>Herald of GloryConsidering 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 WarLooks 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 KingsObviously 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 ProphesyThis 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 realActually, scratch that. I'm convinced that it is real considering the silhouettes on the preview match the figures in each picture here.
>>1863160So 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
>>1863164The 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.
>>1863167So basically>1 costume dlc>2 New culture, 2 more races, new tomes, new event chain>Giant Rulers...dwellings?>New culture, story, prophecy eventsSeems slim for new mechanical offerings, but maybe they're holding back.
>>1863174The costume DLC also has a new racial mount and a new culture trait, but basically yes.Also I don't think Ways of War has 2 new cultures. They only mention the Oathsworn which looks like an Asian inspired faction.
>>1863174All the changes in mechanics happened in free updates for the most part, could see something similar if that is to happen.
>>1863178>Also I don't think Ways of War has 2 new cultures.That was just me fucking up the formatting, it was supposed to be 2. as in, the second dlc in the pack. But yeah, Oathsworn is obviously just the Asian culture pack. With Asian Tomes added, apparently.
>>1863174>>1863181The store page seems to hint at a new governor progression mechanic.
>>1863178>Oathsworn which looks like an Asiantime to make a big black and gay samurai champion who leads asian elves i shall name him Yasuke
>>1863181True, the DLC basically funds the big patches but even so, it's listing all the things you have to pay money for. Like, compare Giants here as compared to Dragons from the last pass. Dragon Expansion gave us Dragon Rulers, Lizardmen race, and 2 tomes. Giants lists new ruler type...and what it offers beyond that is extremely nebulous. And the Dragon DLC was considered pretty lame to start with. We will see I guess. For sure the game is in a place now where some types of new content (like races) is pretty meh just because we already have so many, it's weird that Ways of War is the only DLC that mentions new tomes, though, some paths currently have way more tome offerings than others.
>>1863184Interesting
Some additional details from Steam>Ways of War Features:The Oathsworn Culture, based on unique warrior codes that provide rewards to those strong enough to adhere to their ethos. Swear the Oath of Righteousness to focus on annihilating evil, the Oath of Strife to wage war only against the strong and worthy, or the Oath of Harmony to try and avoid war whenever possible.>Intrigue Events that threaten your empire, focused on dishonorable crises like betrayals and assassinations.>Two new forms, allowing players to lead empires of strong Simians and lumbering Ogrekin.>Four New Tomes, granting rulers the arts of Discipline, Shades, Calamity, and Prosperity, each adding new units alongside spells of inner strength, outward destruction, and more.>So Much More, from new mounts to new music, new ancient creature lines, new realm templates and an interface skin and beyond!
>>1863247>adding ogrekin with the japan factionYomibros..... we're back.....
>>1863249Good to see a fellow Dominions chad.
>>1862808You can get teleporters up pretty early if you're focusing on research, and some gold wonders are definitely harder to take than others. Lost Towers are always a pain in the ass whereas Father Oaks are practically unguarded.It also depends on your faction and your personal playstyle and what you focus on. Personally, most if not all of my magic victories have been achieved before I had even crossed the province threshold to be able to start building the beacons. Pic related is from a game I finished recently, two turns before I achieved magic victory.
>>1863184>Major Ambition>Hero leads a full army of Female Units.
>>1814793>Tech Question:As I will never buy WinX+Window7 compatibility fix available, or at least possible to run it on Linux?
>>1863408I'm not a tech guy, but AoW4 is a DX12 game which isn't suported on Win7 afaik. There may be some workaround but nothing that I'm aware of.It works fine on Linux/Proton though.
does the AI still cheat by spawning with item sets instead of acquiring them naturally? that one really ticked me off
>>1863827Yeah AI heroes get items depending on how late into the game it is, rather than getting them naturally from exploration or crafting. I don't think that's likely to change.
>they finally added a rogue-ish tomeIT'S ABOUT TIME
>Ways of War stream>"Ways of War comes out the same day as the American election, so if you don't want that kind of stress why not play video games? Specifically our game, other games coming out by Bioware you should definitely not pay attention to."kek
on one hand the new hero class system seems kind of neat, on the other if there is no way to change the class its going to completely fuck up how I like to play.also not surprised they seem to have completely got rid of the summons and such but still somewhat disappointed
>>1863827I don't give a shit since it means those items are soon mine for forging>>1865418I'm concerned too. I hope multiclassing can be done with Mage/Support
>>1826246Oh so the game is the same uninspired shit then
>>1814793>monk unit with fistsI will now play your gameOn an unrelated note, how do you best make use of shield units? Are they supposed to be at the very front attacking, at the very front using Shield Wall, or behind a polearm/fighter/shock unit and using Shield Wall while the polearm/fighter/shock unit attacks?
>>1814793It's an ok game, 7/10 with friends. 10-12 years ago I would've gone crazy for a game like this (leaving graphics aside) now it's just fine, play acouple of games and uninstall because the AI is completely retarded.
AoW 4 was nearly broken at the release (broken diplomacy, crappy AI) but still it was good. Now they fixed all that and it's very good.
>>1865960>>1865967They mentioned offhand during the preview stream for Ways of War that they're making changes to the AI, so I hope that means we'll see some more improvements on that front soon.
>>1865932IMO shield units should be attacking if>they can finish off a weak unit>they can get a full attack in (i.e. they don't need to spend actions walking up to the enemy)Otherwise, they should either be guarding or (depending on the unit) using special abilities.Also some shield units auto-guard after attacking, which makes attacking a no-brainer since it has no downside.You don't want to put them behind anything since their main purpose is to sooak up hits. If you want to have your other frontliners benefit from the guard bonus, just put them next to eachother.
>>1865932Depends on what you need at that specific moment and what units you have access to.Shield Wall benefits others slightly more than it benefits the shield unit itself (by one point), but shield units also get +3 def against non-flanking attacks for having a shield in addition to a higher base defense value that comes with having the shield unit flag.If your army relies mostly on ranged damage, just keeping them up front using shield wall is good for as long as you can keep the enemy from just going around you. If you have shield units at the same or higher tier as the rest of your front liners, they should be attacking and using their high defense to soak up retaliation attacks. The only time I would think using them solely for their shield wall aura would be beneficial would be for a tier 1 or mystic culture shield unit to help a high tier unit soak up a hard hitting retaliation attack.
this confuses the dev
Is every culture gonna get a subculture eventually?I hope they do.
>>1866311they said they were working on more and we likely would have had one for the next dlc if it wasn't for the hero overhaul taking a lot more work than they expected
Seems like Chosen Destroyers if Chosen Destroyers wasn't all massive downsides for minimal benefit. From what I can tell the rewards for high devotion seem to be somewhat minimal though.
I hope they take inspiration from some of the culture rework mods people have been making. The Barbarian one even got featured on their Twitter so its a possibilityhttps://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3301727339
>>1814793Play Age of Wonders 1 campaigns for the real soul.>>1814891Fucking yes, Age of Wonders was about that. And also PBEM and map creations.
Personally I actually like AoW4's campaign because it lets me play using My Dudes instead of some stinky premade faction I don't want to play.
>>1866859well yeah, for a 4x game, I'd rather make my own faction than play some boring CIV clone where you can count the differences between factions on one finger. But Age of Wonder 1-2.5 weren't 4X games. They were war games. A fantasy one at that. Age of Wonders 1 is unfair, but imagine being able to customize everything, not just your Hero!Age of Wonders 4 is based on Age of Wonders 3 and Planetfall. Especially the latter.Planetfall did a lot of things right, I do like the factions there, like I like em in Endless Legend. Better combat too.But the previous games don't cease existing just because the new game is getting updates and they aren't.If I want to play Sandbox 4x I play 4, if I want a bit more of a premade narrative that has more uniqueness I play PF
>>1866859I like the campaign and story stuff I just wish there was more of it and the story quests had an even bigger impact on the match, like the oasis mission where you're encouraged to ally with everyone and Edward attacks with a billion dreadnoughts
Do units and items have lore/flavor descriptions in AoW4? I'm sort of on the fence of buying it, and was wondering if even the generic ones have descriptions.
>>1867090There is lore, but, since most units are from previous games the lore for them is the same, which is why, I think, there’s no unit or item lore, there is lore for new stuff that matters for this specific Age of Wonder, but it doesn’t cover every new thing. There is a mod that gives you a unit lore encyclopaedia
>>1867090>Do units and items have lore/flavor descriptions in AoW4?nojust pirate it, not worth the money and we are facing paradox levels of dlc squeezethey even removed unit modding
>>1867166>>1867334How lame! Thanks for the warning, I will not purchase this sadly.
>>1867090The only lore bits are from>campaigns (intro and outro voiced)>premade faction descriptions>unlocking tomes (voiced)It doesn't have unit lore like previous games
>>1866859Yeah. Giant frost-goatmen lead by a dragon rock.
>>1867090No lore to that effect. Due to the nature of the game, and different combinations of cultures and leaders and magic, you can't have a strict, coherent lore for units save for whatever is considered canon in the campaigns.Also enemies on the world map are procedurally generated, so enjoy seeing space creatures hanging out with unicorns and fire demons for no reason
>>1869438>Also enemies on the world map are procedurally generated, so enjoy seeing space creatures hanging out with unicorns and fire demons for no reasonAside from cultural units (who may or may not have transformations applied) wildlife tends to spawn in thematic groups. Like you've got undead groups, demonic groups, fey groups, etc.
>>1869464Not him but I’ve seen some weird indie armies that are complete “random bullshit go.” I assume because they just don’t have enough units of that theme to maintain cohesiveness as the world threat increases so you get horned gods thrown into any vaguely related army. It gets even worse when random unit enchantments get thrown on to them
>>1869438>you can't have a strict, coherent lore for units>but you can have strict, coherent unit rosters for any variation of a particular culturefunny how that works
Late game combat sucks. The ai just used a billion buff units and spells that take like half the health of my entire army turn 1. How does one deal with this suffering?
>>1870149autoresolve
>>1870149Use a billion buff units and spells that take half their health first. Also, use strategic spells instead of just tactical ones. Some of them are extremely powerful, especially when cast multiple times.
>>1870215That’s too tedious tbqh>>1870208Yeah I guess I’ll just keep doing dis
so "IF" there is a season 3 it will be chaos themed and vampires would be almost guaranteedIF
Reseting a hero doesn't let you change classRIP my prefered hero set ups
Signature skills also don't seem to change with class, so mages get the same options as warriorskind of lame
Higher tiers of signature skills seem to depend on having higher empire affinity rather than just being able to take them sequentially when you levelodd choice but I guess it makes sense in a weird way
If I didn't misunderstand heroes start out with all cultural skills without having to spend any points on themAnd magic skills for mages and ritualists can be upgraded so for example lightning evocation can have increased damage and sundering defense/resistance for another skill point and supposedly other boosts as wellSo that and the above posts were all the stuff I found interesting from the stream
Oh, and you can now only get affinity points from tomes and culture so no more points from leader signature skill or governor bonuses from heroes
There any mods or options to customize my units? I don’t want women warriors for one of my factions, doesn’t for the vibez. Also what if you want Amazonian bitched
>>1870460Go beg Triumph to add more pronoun options just for you.
>>1870472I’m ok on that front.
>>1870317On the one hand I hope there will be a S3, but at the same time I'm not sure this is the kind of game that can sustain an endless DLC model like typical Paradox games, at least not if they don't add some kind of long-term pseudo-campaign like Empire mode. Doesn't have to be Ampire mode specifically, just something that's not generic skirmish matches on randomly generated maps. No matter how much culture/tome/unit variety they add, it's not going to make a huge difference in the long run if you're just doing a million generic skirmish matches.
>>1870515I agree, it's obvious Triumph wanted to continue supporting the game post Season 1, and it does seem like they have some genuinely strong ideas for worthwhile expansions, but I hope they don't end up regretting it when they want to move on to Planetfall 2 or Overlord 3 :'( and Paradox sends them back to the DLC mines
>Wanna play Reavers>No Whispering StoneWhat the fuck, this is the worst.Also, how do I get good at this game? All I know is how to make AESTHETIC factions and heroes.
>>1870982Be agressive, B E agressive.Early game you need to just go mad fighting as many fights against infestations and wildlife as you possibly can, without losing too many units. Your heroes are going to be the most important component of your armies, so you want to stack XP on them as much as possible. Of course, the resources you get from cleaning up the map also help. Taking your nearest independent city ASAP is a big deal as well. No need to spend 20 turns trying to convince them to let themselves be absorbed by you through a Whispering Stone if you can just rape them and force them to join you.Magelock units are quite strong since they got reworked (and Magelock heroes are just plain OP), but they suck in autoresolve which can make the Reaver early game a pain in the ass if you do a lot of autoresolving. So either do your battles manually, or rely on overpriced Mercenaries and Tome units.
>>1870982Reavers are supposed to be conquering. You don't need no whispering stone.
>>1870982Chosen Uniter as well as Silver Tongued gives you a free whispering stone
>>1814793Loved the first game back in the day but couldn't get into the sequel. Are High Men still around? No High Men, no play.
>>1871950>Are High Men still around?They've been called the Archons since AoW2 and got fucked over pretty bad in the ending to Shadow Magic, where they went on crusade into the Shadow World and that faggot Merlin locked the door behind them. In AoW3 all Highmen still remaining had become undead. In AoW4 they haven't shown up at all so far, the original Highmen/Archons are coming back in the Archon Prophecy DLC. It won't be out until Q3 2025 though, so it's going to take a while.
Is AOWIV worth getting with a discount? I kinda wanted to play this game, but I know races are just cosmetics and you can make lizard race the same as humans which turned me off. Is this even a big deal?
>>1872018It's a big deal only if you think it's a big deal. AI-controlled races will always use their default traits (unless you make custom races and let them use those) so it's not like you're going to be up against lizards-who-are-basically-humans in random matches, but on the other hand they'll get transformations applied during the match depending on their rules so they won't look like "standard" lizards all match long. For some people that may break the fantasy, for others it doesn't.
>>1872018Why would that be a turn off? It's more customization, it's there so you can do shit like make humans with arctic adaptations and blue skin and call them Frostlings.
>>1872010>MerlinGood thing that shithead got what he deserved.>Urrath did nothing wrong>Merlin is a bitch
>>1846788elven comfort women
>>1863316They actually mentioned Dominions in a recent stream when talking about the likelihood of underwater cities, it's over waterbros....
>>1874009Haven't seen that, but yeah Dominions is a good example of how awful it is to balance underwater empires vs land empires.
So pantheon items that gave you unique skills now have the skill tied to the item instead of your character but now you can make copies of the item or improve it in the item forgethere is also now a sword and crossbow option for skirmisher heroes
>>1875632Ok, update to this, items that can't have active abilities like orbs either had their item type changed or the ability removed
Many spells and abilities apparently got updated graphics/animations
I'm excited to see the AI improvements. Seeing skirmish units actually try to skirmish in the dev stream was cool.
2 new traitsone that focuses on bounties and makes at least one always availablethe other gives you a higher hero cap and gives them bonus skill points when they get higher renown (so up to +4?)
Confirmed that dragon starting affinity decides class, however signature skills/affinities give significantly more customization options
>>1875686I'm at work right now so I can't watch the stream, but is there any info on how much you can push characters outside of their starting class with signature skills and such? Like if you pick a dragon type that has a support class by default, can you still make them into a viable melee monster or are you stuck playing your giant dragon chad as a support cuck?
>>1875688Dragon are stuck with mostly their starting class skills but through affinities you can make your support into a tank or have a tank that throws out magic boltsyou just won't be as good at the stuff affinity gives as you would be if you specialized
>>1875694I don't like it. I'm okay with the class system for champions/wizards since you can just pick a different starting weapon if you want a different class, but for dragons it's big gay since your type isn't just some weapon you happen to wield.
>>1875688>>1875694I should add that it seems starting affinity doesn't do much other than decide class and breath damage type. You can change basically everything except class through signature skills/affinities including breath type
It's fucking annoying that you still can't continue to play after victory. Last time I played at release and it pissed me off as well. I never cared much for arbitrary victory in most strategy gamesAlso>I defeat last enemy as my Chaos Dwarfs>Click an option to go back to menu since I don't have any other option anyway>Screen turns black save for small info that game is saving something>It takes a while so I go afk and after coming back after like 10 minutes it's still stuck there>I decide that I need to kill the process in task manager since it will clearly not load back to main menu at this point>After launching game again I can see that I got all those dozens of Pantheon points, but my leader didn't join the Pantheon for some reason>Clearly it would happen if game managed to exit campaign properly I think.>But why was it stuck? It was trying to save the game, but I used all available save slots already. Maybe it didn't have the room to make this last save. This would make sense>So the solution should be to delete even one old save file, reload, win again and exit>Instead I quickly press that big red button and delete entire session accidentally, while still being in menu, instead of reloading first>oh shit>fuck>I'm retarded>I quickly search %temp% and potential save file folders, but can't find anything anywhere>I'm almost ready to give up, but I finally find that you actually can get access to your Steam Cloud folders through web browser>Some AoW4 save files from today are there and I can download them>After putting them in proper save file folder and launching game they actually show up in game, but incorrectly categorized and most are corrupted>Except for one>This one is actually my autosave from last battle>It fucking works>I save the game properly now, it creates new Session tab, Game exists properly now, Chorf joins the Pantheon and I don't even get duplicate Pantheon pointsThis was a close one
I'm trying Story Realms for the first time finally. I want to kill off elf bitch as well, it will fit my character and there is an achievement for this as well. Do I have to do this before killing off Yaka? Because I'm afraid that victory screen will show up the second I defeat him.
>>1875999Yes the realm will end if you defeat Yaka first
>>1876007Very well then
>>1875999you don't actually have to kill her for the achievement, just declare war on hershe is also usually harder to kill than Yaka too
>>1876026Yeah I saw achievement pop up, but I will destroy her now anyway.
>>1874047Why isn't waterwalking the default state for units in this hyper-high fantasy wizard game? Literally like normal land battles but on the water with different environment hazzards.You can avoid realism and its cumbersome need of a radically different combat system to accommodate an afterthought ship combat that other 4x games suffer from.
>>1876096>Literally like normal land battles but on the water with different environment hazzards.That's literally what naval battles in AoW4 already are. Units that can't float or swim take a minor defense penalty for having to use a boat, but otherwise every single unit functions exactly the same way on the water as they do on land.
I got her. Funnily she was eager to whore herself out to me and become my vassal too. I wonder if there is some additional dialogue for such ending as well.
>>1876115>a minor defense penalty for having to use a boat,Lose the damn boats and I'm good. Or put them on boogie boards like planetfall. Sick of staring at boats
Any mods worth checking out? Any better off avoiding? I can see a lot of tome mods was released
>>1876623Everything that's QoL.>Better Camera Views, Nicer Vistas, 10% flatter camera angle>Tactical Camera Zoom>SkipIntro>Smaller Combat Banners>Less Visual Clutter>Ui Scaling adjustment>Action Points Explained>Skills Reordered
>>1876623Age of Fashion (plus submods for DLC you own) for better visual customization.
>Set up a game in desolate ashlands full of undead and other monsters>Set all other factions to be evil, but don't put them in one team because I don't like that it disables game features like grievances. I don't mind evil infighting either.>Made up some Paladin crusading faction for my playthrough>Skaven turn out to be good so I won't even get additional Imperium for crusading them with my trait, they want to be my friends and Karissa wants to get into my pantshuh
>>1880163>Karissa wants my order dickOpposites attactsAll order guys are made for chaos girls
>Decayingwhat an absolute fucking cancer
>>1880163It's the revolutionary diplomat personality, for good guy chaos dudes. Why they wouldn't set Kruul and Karissa to something else manually I'll never know (although for Karissa that may be intentional, judging from the empires and ashes mission)
>>1876623Late game culture units (and extra late game culture units) if you want to be less dependent on times for some unit identity
>>1880309In AoW2 Karissa also fought on the side of the good guys despite being evil herself.
>>1880365I never played any of the AoW games except for 3 and 4, I just know that Karissa is extremely easy to befriend in the Sehiran Oasis story realm
Holy shit this Kruul is so annoying. Ranged units literally don't work against his troops and his barbarian rats are hitting like trucks.
New dev diary came out with more info on the new hero system. Picture related is the tl;dr version.It all sounds good in theory, but we'll have to see whether it's an actual improvement in practice.
>>1881949why is it that whenever they make changes to wizard king it is always a nerf>+2 mana per conduit instead of the flat +10% and casting points are now locked behind skillsfuck off
>>1882217MPfags swore by wizard king and said they were the most powerful by far
>>1882225ah yes, the same people that could not grasp that letting your opponent stockpile thousands of mana meant they had that much to use against you when you try to siege themtruly the greatest minds of our generation
>>1881949They better make Dragon Lords actual monsters in combat. Currently a Legendary Dragon is better than a Dragon Lord
>>1882217Because in a game where everything is about magic, being able to outcast everyone else just by gaining a few levels was broken. And then you add the ability to multicast spells on top of that, Wizards were just oppressive. It's simply not good game design if one class is the best combat class, the best caster class, and the best strategic class all at once. There has literally never been a reason to play a Champion over a Wizard at any point in the game unless, it was purely for roleplaying reasons. With the changes, Wizards are still the best casters in the game as they should be, but not to the point where they overpower every other area of the game.>>1882244In addition to the other new stuff they get, Dragon Lords now get a free stat boost with every signature skill they take which supposedly allows them to keep up with buffed high tier units and fully requipped heroes much better.
>>1882258>enough casting points to maybe get 1 or 2 more spells per battle that is made redundant or even irrelevant by various empire upgrades, units and items>the ability to cast an additional spell in a turn once IF the leader is present>oppressivehave you perhaps considered that maybe you are just bad at the game and should shut the fuck up instead of making the game worse for the rest of us?
>>1882265Casting points aren't just for battle. They're also for casting strategic spells, many of which have high casting costs, and having more casting points is never redundant.Being able to cast an additional spell is also great for early game farming and expansion, which is why it's considered a strong ability.Really it sounds more like you're the one who is bad at the game.
>>1882281>too stupid to realize you can get tons more casting points from sources other than WK but thinks the minor edge they get without any planning makes them OPtell me, is breathing difficult for you? maybe you should just stop
>>1882265>>enough casting points to maybe get 1 or 2 more spells per battle that is made redundant or even irrelevant by various empire upgrades, units and itemsmore casting points is never irrelevant nigga wtf do you mean. casting more spells is always good and relevant, especially for map spells where the difference between finishing an entire spell in one turn vs needing to wait another turn can be game defining. if you personally ignore strategic spells and don't abuse double-casting with hero stacks that's fine but at that point you're barely making use of Wizard King's potential and should probably just use a dragon beatstick on autoresolve instead
>>1882288Once again, having more casting points is never redundant. More casting points is literally always better, and it just so happens that WK gets a lot of casting points completely for free on top of what you can get from other sources.Once again, it really seems like you're the one that's bad at the game, on top of being a salty little bitch.
>>1882289>>1882294do you both play mystic exclusively as well then?now I know this might be a surprise for you morons but there are other ways to win the game than simply stacking as many casting points as you can>if you personally ignore strategic spells and don't abuse double-casting with hero stacks that's fine but at that point you're barely making use of Wizard King's potential and should probably just use a dragon beatstick on autoresolve insteadcrazy how that is actually an option now isn't it?
>>1882300>there are other ways to win the game than simply stacking as many casting points as you canWhich doesn't at all change the fact that having more casting points is literally always better.
>>1882302Sorry I forgot how much of a brainlet I was dealing withyes, big number goodother numbers big also good you fucking faggot
>>1882303You've more than established that the only brainlet here is you, dude.
>>1882305sure buddy, whatever helps you sleep at night
>>1882300>>1882303>>1882265>has never played against an actual opponent>has the dumbest possible opinions, based on nothing at all>"EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH ME IS BAD AT THE GAME!1111"Sit down, kid.
>>1881949I personally think this is a good change as I found myself often making lance heroes with killing momentum as often as possible because it just provided the best of everything, then maybe a hero for Sheppard. And of course I would always grab Restoration or any summon signature skill whenever it showed up without looking at anything else. But I think creating these "restrictions, with options" will make heroes stand out more like they explained in their dev diary and it makes sense that heroes would adhere the same general functionalities as normal units but better. Hopefully everyone else likes it too and there isn't so much pushback that the devs end up reverting it and wasted all that time and effort on this new system.Ambitions might get annoying if someone has one that's hard to achieve and I'm trying to close out my game in the mid-late stage but at that point just ignore it.
>>1882492if 20 casting points is all it takes for you to lose then yeah, you aren't good at the gamebut go ahead and pretend you know anything
>>1882855Yeah, let's pretend that +20 casting points is the only advantage a Wizard King has, that surely convinces me that you know what you're talking about.
>>1882865how bad are you that they are getting notably more than that?or do you mean the once per combat extra spell? wow so op
>>1882868You're just an entire circus, aren't you?
>>1882872I'm sorry you can't even pretend to know how the game works anonbut let me ask you an actual questionif your opponent picks mystic do you cry and shit yourself?if they take gifted caster, powerful evokers, casting reserves or death casting do you immediately rage quit?what about tomes of amplification or corruption? do they make you cry?because if you are fine with those maybe you should stop acting like a little bitch about WK
>>1882877You truly have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Have you ever tried playing against an actual opponent? Even once?Out of all those things you mentioned, most aren't unbalanced at all, and only one is as oppressive as a Wizard King (arguable even more so). Do you know enough about the game to guess which one?
>>1882890>You truly have no idea what you're talking about, do you?could say the same about you really, and I would actually be rightbut I find it funny that you cry about how casting points are game defining and more means you win regardless of all else, only to then claim that every other source of them is no big deal. now for your other question, if I assume I were talking to an actually intelligent person and for some reason they didn't mean mystic then my next guess would be a certain tome
>>1882903Still on the casting point strawman, huh?Well, at least the fact that you're trying so hard to dodge the question proves that you have no idea, so your opinion isn't worth anything.
>>1882909You don't even know what a strawman is or you have the memory of a goldfisheither way I accept your loss
>>1882916>>1882865lmao
>>1882855Wizard King gets +5 casting points every two levels, so more than 20 outside of very short games, and this is completely free and passive.Comparatively, Eldritch Sovereign gets a maximum of +20 casting points split between two separate hero skills, requiring them to spend two of their levels to get the full 20, as opposed to just getting the casting points for free.Wizard King also gets +10% mana income which is, again, passive and free. Being that AoW4 is so magic heavy, having extra free mana to cast spells is not an insignificant thing at all.Overchannel is also a very strong ability for early game expansion. Again, AoW4 is very magic heavy, so being able to cast an extra spell per combat is a huge boon. When you're farming indies early game where combats typically only last a couple of turns, being able to cast an extra spell per combat nearly doubles your spell output, which increases the effectiveness of your army.Wizard King has long been considered the best ruler chassis for a reason, and you clearly do understand on at least some level why what they get is so good since you're throwing such a fit about it.>>1882877>because if you are fine with those maybe you should stop acting like a little bitch about WKThe only one acting like a little bitch about WK is you. You're literally throwing a tantrum because of the proposed changes of less completely free mana income and having to invest skill points for casting points like Eldritch Sovereign already has to.
>>1882962>Wizard King gets +5 casting points every two levels, so more than 20 outside of very short games, and this is completely free and passive.This is why I keep saying you people are bad at the game. If you are just sitting around with your thumb up your ass while your opponent is grinding levels that is very much a skill issue on your part.>Comparatively, Eldritch Sovereign gets a maximum of +20 casting points split between two separate hero skillsthey also get imperium from it which is easily the most valuable resource in the game. not the best argument but at least you are getting closer to one>Wizard King also gets +10% mana incomeand champion gets +10% gold, +20 stability and draft. things that will carry you much further if you aren't stupid but I realize I'm asking the impossible there>Overchannel is also a very strong ability for early game expansionso is having more troops? I won't say it isn't good but you people really over rate it>Wizard King has long been considered the best ruler chassis for a reasonMostly by theory crafting retards who likely don't even play the game because in practice it really isn't as amazing, but if we want to pretend that casting points alone win you the game there are other options more deserving of being at the top of the shit list
>>1882980>Mostly by theory crafting retardsThis is hilarious coming from someone who admits to never having played a multiplayer match, and thus hasn't got a single clue about how actual players play the game. You're so high on huffing your own farts that you think beating the braindead AI makes you the sole authority on the game, and autistic enough that you're willing to shitpost for hours on end just rather than simply acknowledge that you're a scrub.
>>1882988>admits to never having played a multiplayer matchplease point out were I said that
>>1882990It's been brought up twice in this thread and you dodged the question both times. That's clearly an admission.
>>1882993It has also been brought up several times in the thread that you are a moron
>>1882980>and champion gets +10% gold, +20 stability and draftAll generally easier to acquire and/or less impactful than mana. Stability in particular means very little outside of huge positive or negative values, and the draft bonus only applies to your throne city.>so is having more troops?Having more troops and casting more spells are not mutually exclusive, and casting more spells does not delay or otherwise hinder your ability to create more troops. Creating more troops however DOES hinder your ability to build province upgrades, since both use gold and troops have gold upkeep.>but if we want to pretend that casting points alone win you the gameExcept I didn't and I never did. In fact, I laid out exactly why ALL of the bonuses they get are good. Are you genuinely stupid?
>>1882995higher stability also gives you +mana, the +10% from wk is just as easy to overcomeI counter your "argument" with summons, if you need me to explain more then you really have nothingwith both of those out of the way it means the only notable thing wk has going for it is casting points
>>1882994>dodges the issue again, can't come up with a proper reply so just repeats meaningless insults like an NPCI accept your concession.
>>1883005I get that you are trying really hard for some kind of win but it is getting a bit pathetic
>>1882998>the only notable thing wk has going for it is casting pointsYou keep falling back on this strawman. Is that really your only argument? Because it only proves that you have no idea what you're talking about.
>>1883008well if you could prove to me that they have notably anything more than that compared to others I might care what you have to say but after several hours you still have yet to do so
>>1882998+20 stability only gets you +5% income>I counter your "argument" with summonsWhich are produced with mana and casting points, on a completely separate queue from city units, and using a completely separate resource from city units. i.e. a big advantage for wizard kings.
>>1883009If you think double casting isn't notable, you simply haven't played the game. That's not even a legitimate opinion, that's just severe brain damage.
>>1883010fun fact, stability stacks, making it far easier to reach the +10% mark. Another fun fact is that 10% applies to everything not just mana. please tell me you already know this and are just acting stupidyes, that mana that is also used for combat spells, going to hard on one will often make it harder to do the other. funny how similar it is to gold now isn't itand thank you for once again making it clear that wk's advantage is casting points
>>1883018Fun fact, stability is the least important stat in the game. As long as it's not negative, it literally doesn't matter. Any other bonus is better. The only reason to care about stability at all is if you're trying to play neutral High eco.
>>1883023>this 5-10% global increase doesn't matter but wk's 10% mana totally doesanon? you have a brain right? maybe at least a few braincells floating around somewhere?I ask because I genuinely don't know any more
>>1883025Play the game, scrublord.
>>1883018By the time you can get enough stability to stack it to any reasonable degree, that starting +20 isn't really going to matter much. Stability doesn't stack infinitely. Once you hit the third tier any more is redundant.>and thank you for once again making it clear that wk's advantage is casting pointsYou don't even know what you're arguing anymore. First you're trying to insist that everyone else is insisting WK's only advantage is casting points, and now YOU'RE trying to insist that WK's only advantage is casting points. You're just reaching in random directions desperate for a win in an internet argument that was started because you were fucking crying that WK is now going to be SLIGHTLY less strong.
>>1883031that +20 is the difference between +5% and -5% you don't need it to stack infinitely to benefit from it>You don't even know what you're arguing anymoreplease don't project at me. I've been fairly consistent the entire time with what I've been saying; If casting points are the main advantage of what WK gets, (which through all the garbage you've been spouting at me I believe we at least partially agree on) then it doesn't really matter because there are much bigger offenders when it comes to casting point gain. Having to constantly make it clear that casting points are the main thing they have going for them may have distracted you from the rest. So basically, why you all bitching?
>>1883038>if casting points are the main advantage of what WK getsYou really are a clown. No matter what anyone tells you, you just sit there going on about casting points.>there are much bigger offenders when it comes to casting point gainNews flash, unlike city stability, casting points DO stack infinitely. You've been told this before.>So basically, why you all bitchingNeed I remind you again that this entire argument started over you fucking CRYING over a minor nerf to WK and then screeching at anyone who told your dumb ass that WK has always been considered the strongest ruler type and thus a minor nerf was justified?
>>1883040there you go, keep bitching about my bitching that's sure to prove you are so much better than me
>>1883043I'm glad you've realized how much of a fucking idiot you've been, even if you're choosing to double down on being a clown instead of accepting it gracefully.
>>1883046you call me a clown yet you've been trying to argue with me for several hours now.why? because you wanted to be "right"?. You could have stopped responding at any time or simply ignored me from the start as you had no logical reason to keep going. But you did anyway, and you kept going and going and going. You kept trying to prove me wrong but you couldn't "prove" anything because all we were arguing about were opinions.So I have to ask. How desperate are you?
>>1883049What a pathetic attempt to try to turn this around. This is a discussion board. It's literally here for having discussions. I was eating soup while carefully explaining to you how much of an idiot you are, and right now I'm playing videogames while carefully explaining to you how much of an idiot you are. You may not have noticed, but you've also been sitting here arguing for several hours now.>You kept trying to prove me wrongI told you why WK was strong and has always been considered the strongest ruler chassis and you're the one trying to prove ME wrong. The entire thread is telling you that WK is strong and you're the one trying to tell everyone else that they're wrong.It's very ironic that you accuse anyone else of being desperate.
>>1875990kek excellent
>>1883052And we keep going it seemsThe entire thread though? Now that would be a sad state if there are only 3-4 people here.I at least had the excuse of defending my point but thank you for the "n-no u" it is always fun to see.
>>1883059>but thank you for the "n-no u" it is always fun to see.Likewise.I personally liked the part where you tried to shift to acknowledging that you're an idiot who I shouldn't be wasting my time arguing with as your argument. Pretty funny to see, honestly.
>>1883061Funny coming from someone regurgitating the forum metamust be nice having people think for you instead of forming an opinion yourself
>>1883062So wait, are you now trying to go with "other people have this opinion, that makes it wrong" or what?
>>1883065just saying, I could have gotten the same opinions browsing the forums if I wanted toso what was the point of anything you said?
>>1883066Actually, no, I think if you did that you'd have just started trying to argue with everyone that they're all actually wrong and that you're the one who's right based on your complete lack of experience. Then once that failed you'd start spiraling out in random directions with random arguments in an act of pure desperation. You know, kind of like you've done here.
>>1883067are you seriously projecting at me again?is this all you can do when you lose track of what is being said?
>oh hey lots of new discussion, I wonder if something happened>it's just one hyper-autists screeching about how wizard kings aren't good for 11 hours haha oh wow
>>1883267
So which chink subculture are you anons gonna play first?I'm gonna pick harmony because heal slutting order/shadow undead is awesome
>>1883837I haven't decided yet. I like Oath of Strife best from what I've seen since I like aggressive factions like Barbs or Reavers, except their mechanic of only getting benefits when they're outnumbered sounds really lame. So maybe I'll try Oath of Righteousness first.
>>1883837Harmony looks like it can be part of a ridiculous healing build>new mount option gives grace>harmony passive is healing when on low HP>tome of discipline transformation increases healing received>tome of prosperity's everythingJust hope that the enemy can't regularly apply decaying. Now with that being said, I will go strife first because I want to play Yomi
>>1884040How would you build Yomi in AoW4?Ogres with Oath of Strife is obvious, though I don't know which traits would be best. Probably get Fire and Necromancy as your first tomes. Tome of Beasts wouldn't entirely be out of place either, since Dai Oni can summon wolves and Namanaris have some nature magic. You'd have to conquer or vassalize a Goblin city to get your Bakemono chaff as well.
>>1883837Harmony is pretty solidI think righteousness is either going to get nerfed or strife is going to get reworked though+5 damage for just earning enough good boy points versus +5 for shooting yourself in the foot diplomatically and then you might not even get it because you aren't out numbered just doesn't compare
>>1883837Gotta pick Strife for Burning Blade Clan Orcs
>>1884464The damage bonus for Righteousness only applies on non-flanking attacks.Speaking of going to get nerfed though, does Living Shadows sound fucking nuts to anyone else but me? This is like a hard counter to ranged heavy armies, especially if you took Quick Reflexes, too.
I wanna play AoW4 like it's a Civilization/Stellaris, but I'm constantly reminded that it's an Endless game instead.
>>1884665>that it's an Endless game instead.Hey now, AoW4 isn't THAT bad
>>1814793TIGER UPDATE IS NOW AVAILABLE ON BETA BRANCH ON STEAMIncludes the Hero Skill rework and other stuff:>Bloghttps://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1669000/view/4521143557837292336?l=english>Patch Noteshttps://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/discussions/2/4692280570914418719/?snr=
>>1885078>Mortal Champions>No longer grants cities +10% Gold and +20 City Stability>No longer grants the Throne City +20 Draft>No longer grants non-Hero Units +20% Experiencefugg, I liked that
I feel like this might be a bit much for something you can get by level 4That is if we go by old hero standards anyway.A lot of the new stuff seems crazy compared to what we used to get
Does anyone actually play this game in multiplayer?I don't think I'd want to, but it feels irrelevant to play dressup with my heroes otherwise. Then again, the amount of mods you'd need to disable match up to be able to play multiplayer would be no different from games like Stellaris.
>>1885166>Does anyone actually play this game in multiplayer?No one does, but if you want to give it a try it is best to play with friends if you can.Doing so makes it easier to sync up mod lists and time schedules.
Terraforming blasted hellhole is really satisfying. I think I will even choose that terraforming related trait for my next playthrough and base campaign around it.
>>1885166Yeah. If you want to get into multiplayer and don't have friends who are into AoW there are several Discords where you can find matches.https://discord.com/invite/age-of-wonders (official)https://discord.com/invite/S8rgKX7https://discord.com/invite/wXvfEsmdv9
>>1885253I love terraforming spells, but the terraforming society trait isn't that good IMO, since it wants you cover multiple terrain type instead of just changing everything into your ideal terrain.
Is this a good alternative for someone too ADHD and anti-social to git gud at dominions?
>>1885680Maybe? They're not really the same at all.AoW4 should offer a better singleplayer experience though.