>>1891488
Game is like Fantasy Stellaris. I like it but you need to have a lot of imagination to really enjoy this great game, and one more thing... I liked Planetfall better.

>>1891488
Pretty good. I like the ones with story missions though.

>>1891488
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SoEezHzfuI&t=4762s
This moron convinced me to play this game. I want to create my own Skaven empire! Well played Paradox, well played.

>>1891488
It's pretty good. The hero rework took me some time to get used to but I really like it at the moment. Most notably stuff like the Ritualist which I thought was going to suck is actually pretty good and balanced. I think melee dudes (both Warriors and Defenders) are still the strongest overall but not by a huge margin, and builds that were OP before the patch like Magelock heroes are a lot less broken without completely being nerfed into oblivion.

>>1891583
I didn't watch all of this but I just want to point out to new players to treat this as an impression of the game, not as a guide of some sort. He makes some boneheaded mistakes and completely misinterprets some of the mechanics.

Gonna jump back in with a trying before buying copy.

Played a bit just before ER but got annoyed at crashes, though I think that might have been me just corrupting my saves by Resuming from Launcher.

Already planning what I'll do for the story missions.

I'm thinking Barbarians with the monk tome for 1, of giving another whirl to the summoner mages for 2 (since I played before rework), necromancer run for 3 (I did reavers previously) and full high Crusade larp for 4. That or roll in with Industrious since I haven't really played that.

What's something interesting you can do with Feudal or are they just vanilla?

>>1891622
>What's something interesting you can do with Feudal or are they just vanilla?
Feudal are the most vanilla faction, but their thing is staying in formation and giving bonuses to adjacent units. Their default support unit is arguably one of the best racial supports in the game, and also works best when your dudes are in formation. There are some ways to build upon this, for example several physical traits can give additional adjacency bonuses and golem builds with Tome of the Construct also work best with tight formations. They're the only faction that has an evolving unit by default so I guess you could go into a full evolution build, but I don't like this very much. Though since Copper Golems can also evolve, I guess you could do something like Enchantment -> Evolution -> Construct -> whatever.

Rumour has it that Feudal is next on the list to get a rework though, so hopefully when the next DLC launches they'll become a bit more interesting.

Oathsworn Righteous and Strife are very bland and offer barely anything except an attack boost. Primal cultures are just better and more interesting

Harmony is the only innovative subculture because of heal slut builds

Tomes are alright; especially the t4 ones that give you several recruitable units. Something to be carried forward and reworked (i.e. Herald of War)

Ghostfire is unnecessary. They should've just made burning work on wet and frozen states

>>1891637
>Rumour has it that Feudal is next on the list to get a rework though
Boo

Reaver needs subcultures. Let me play gunpowder civilizations without all the le evil slaver addons.

>>1891691
I don't think they're going to do reworks of DLC factions any time soon. Besides, on a mechanical level Feudal and Dark are most in need of a rework at the moment.

Class rework fucking blows. Why not just make skills more involved and give more variety to pick from instead of forcing every hero to become an autistic savant at one niche and nothing else? Oh boy, next playthrough I get to decide if I want to hyper-focus on a 1-hex AoE arrow rain instead of a guaranteed high-damage single shot, wowee I feel like I REALLY have to STRETCH MY BRAIN and THINK about what I'm doing because of all the variety I have to choose from

I'm happily surprised to see that my campaign didn't break. Transition to new leader/hero system looks smooth so far, I merely got a free respec of all my characters.

File: legends.jpg (33 KB, 686x386)

33 KB JPG

>I'm Addicted to Age of Wonders 4
>#ad #sponsored

File: shills2.jpg (185 KB, 623x827)

185 KB JPG

Return to form all over again

>>1891821
PotatoWhisky is an obvious clickbait faggot. Oathsworn isn't that fun.

Legend of total bore is at least probably telling the truth but will go back to total warhammer for the grifterbucks

>>1891680
Harmony does have the more interesting combat bonus of the three, but I don't like playing as them because they get penalized too much for going to war. It makes thematic sense but the game is literally about fighting, and trying to bait the AI into declaring on you isn't fun.

Half-way through a game here. Are you supposed to get high-quality units through tome research/summons? It seems like the base units you have access to are fairly average.

>>1891919
Your culture units cap out at tier 3. You can use tomes or the Rally of Lieges to get tier 4 and 5 units, as well as a better variety of tier 1-3 ones. You can actually go a long way just using T2 and T3 units though, especially saince T4 and 5 have an Imperium upkeep in addition to a high gold/mana cost, so you won't be spamming them for most of the game.

Something to pay attention to for tome units is their race and class. If they're of your own race they'll benefit from transformations even if they're not cultural units, and their class determines what enchantments they can benefit from. This is another reason that T4 and T5 units aren't necessarily the best, since they most likely won't be of your race so they don't benefit from transformations, and most of them are of the Mythic class which don't benefit from enchantments either. There are exceptions to that though, for example Tyrant Knights are T4 racial shock units.

>>1891821
Having both of them say that makes me sure if it's just youtube clickbait headings or if it was part of the ad deal that they had to add "addicted" to the title.

>>1891989
i don't think it was because there were other shill videos that didn't use that title

File: 1698477581562242.jpg (31 KB, 1024x971)

31 KB JPG

Is planetfall better than aow4? Im playing the free weekend and im actually really enjoying the game so far, but i like the sci-fi setting more personally.

>>1892063
Planetfall has a more interesting setting and distinct factions/tech but is also a lot more restrictive in terms of what you can do with heroes + army upgrades than AoW4, with armies having templates of 3 unique "enchantments" you can apply to them, and you have to produce those as you research things from your specific faction + specialization tech trees. If you want other faction tech, you either gotta go to war with someone and steal their cities or pray you get relevant minor factions iirc

>>1892063
>Is planetfall better than aow4?
No. They're just different. Though AoW4 is more fun, I'd say we lost some good features from planetfall (Food sharing, dwellings as integral gameplay, individual modifications).

>>1892063
I like AoW4 is better overall, but it's not a clear cut. In terms of gameplay AoW4 is an improvement in most ways, but the lack of unit modding hurts AoW4's unit diversity a lot, despite AoW4's focus on customization. The lack of something equivalent to PF's Empire mode (the Pantheon is a shit replacement) also makes playing random skirmish matches lack a meta-reward beyond simply playing the game, which isn't the biggest deal but still feels like a loss in comparison. In terms of gameplay, AoW4 basically takes the PF formula and improves it. Combat feels much the same but it's faster and the AI is much better. PF's greater emphasis on ranged combat and cover mechanics is a matter of preference, I feel it makes combat slower and more static but I can see why some people might enjoy the more nuXCOM feel of it, especially with unit mods expanding your tactical options. The smaller province sizes of AoW4 makes the map feel a lot less empty and generic, though it also means that choosing how to expand your cities is a bit less meaningful. AoW4 has a much better graphical style and presentation. Both have shit stories and campaigns, but even so PF is less bad in that regard. PF's dwelling mechanics have their upsides and downsides. Integrating them into your empire felt more rewarding than AoW4's free cities and rally of lieges, but the way that being at war with one of them automatically made you go to war with every dwelling of that type on the map was retarded and they weren't as versatile as free cities.

They're both good games either way, and if you enjoy PF's pulp sci-fi setting it's definitely still worth playing over AoW4's kitchen sink fantasy blender.

>>1891488
Does no one care about the early games anymore? I see people talking about 4 and maybe comparing it with 3 or Planetfall but 1, 2 and Shadow Magic are forgotten.

>>1892396
I wouldn't say they're forgotten, they're just old and while they have good atmosphere and better campaigns than the newer games, they're much more basic in terms of gameplay.

File: 1700165112204502.png (218 KB, 318x401)

218 KB PNG

I havent had time to try it this weekend, but should I pick it up, or wait for a better sale?

>>1892417
You could wait for the Christmas sale, but I doubt it's going to be much better.

>>1892405
That's strange for me to hear. Usually when it comes to strategy games, they've become significantly less complex over time to appeal to a wider audience. 3 and 4 actually being less basic sounds promising.

>>1892430
Well the first two AoW games had a much heavier emphasis on the story and campaign, not so much the theme of customization and player options that the franchise started to embrace with AoW3 and was emphasised in PF and 4. AoW1's combat was also pretty simple and had some annoying quirks.

>>1892430
>Usually when it comes to strategy games, they've become significantly less complex over time to appeal to a wider audience.
Older strategy games were in most cases not more complex they just had very shitty UIs and were very underexplained.

>>1891488
>>1891583
Same video got me to give it a try
So far it's a hugely enjoyable sandbox, I must've spent half my time just creating custom factions from other franchises or my own headcanons, did one game with a bunch of custom factions and the way everything played out was just really fun
I can see it getting a bit old over time, because while there's a lot of available flavors, they're often not THAT distinct gameplaywise or take a while to become distinct through later customization at least, that might dissuade replayability for me
Also one campaign just became unplayable due to crashes and I wasn't able to find a fix, which kinda sucked

>>1892417
There's a GOG version, so it's very easy to pirate, but I bought the Steam version anyway to support them, just can't be bothered for all the DLC

The game is great, but I'm a little overwhelmed by the amount of options...or I'm just stupid. Prefer AoW2 or 3.

File: exp.jpg (380 KB, 1536x1224)

380 KB JPG

What do you guys think about the new and the upcoming dlcs?
Personal I don't care for asian fantasy so I'm not thinking about buying Wow. Now the two upcoming dlcs unlike Wow are marked as expansions instead of content pack so they should bring more continent and cost more, and Wow already up the price closer to the price of the season 1 expansion so I don't like that.
Giant Kings will bring new ruler type that from the sounds of it gives me an idea of maybe something like Dragon Lord but with the ability of wearing items. Might be cool but will have to see what else the expansion has to offer but right now there isn't a lot for me to guess.
It's already confirmed Archon Prophecy will bring back Archons as well as new culture. I also wonder if, much like Empires & Ashes did with Dreadnought, this expansion will try to be a callback to AoW3 Theocrat class. What's bother me is that the High culture already this spiritual righteous faction with ancient times inspired aesthetic so I don't know how they will make the new culture feel distinct and unique. Again we will have to wait and see.

>>1892778
I expect they'll give the new culture some subcultures like the WoW Oathsworn got, so only one of them will be spirit damage/holy theocracy flavored and others with some other gimmick

>>1892796
Speaking of I'm still waiting until they add sub-cultures to the base game cultures much like they did with the Mystic already.

>>1892806
Agree, especially Feudal could use it as part of an overall rework
Have the devs said anything about it being on their agenda?
I've only been into this game for like a week and pretty much everywhere I look people are clamoring for a Feudal rework

Any 4x game that allows city-spam is dead on arrival. Only AoW1 got this right, cities should be limited to what already exists in the map, if you can just build new cities whenever you feel like it the whole strategic layer and conquest planning goes out of the window.

This game needs 3 tweaks to be truly great:

>Hard cap on tomes, at most it should be 7-8 tomes otherwise it gets too open-ended and by turn 40 every faction is just a mash of different irreconizable mutants
>hard cap on heroes, idealy 3
>No city founding, you only get your initial settlement, everything else has to be conquered or acquired diplomaticaly

>>1892808
>Have the devs said anything about it being on their agenda?
i don't think so but the devs are very actively listening to the player base and add little things all the time that gets suggested to them

>>1892808
>Have the devs said anything about it being on their agenda?
All they have said on the matter is that we would have had a culture rework with the latest dlc if it wasn't for the hero rework taking far more effort than expected.
No word on which one they were reworking but everyone likes to assume it was feudal because it needs it the most.

>>1892809
are you me? those are the same problems I have with nu-AoW
Particularly I hate how the races are just a malleable thing that doesn't really matter outside of what quirks you pick for them
they're literally just a skin

>>1892933
Personally I like it a lot because it lets me create custom factions from human centric settings while still having racial differences

>>1892778
>>1892796
I'm expecting the new culture in Archon Prophecy to actually be adding subcultures to High. Eldritch Realms was advertised as having a new culture then they added subcultures to mystic

>>1892960
I'm curious how that'd work though. Would alternative "high" subcultures just be the Shadowborn/Grey Guards/Keepers of Peace from previous games but with a new coat of paint or something else?

>lock everything behind some retarded grind

who the fuck thought this was a good idea?

Haven't gotten a chance to play yet. Did they do anything that nerfs necromancy?

decided not to get this one right now. Its fun but after playing two games oiver the weekend, the game felt kinda samey.

>>1892933

Those seem to be the main complaints on AoW4, and the city-spam thing has been a major problem in 4x games since they started existing.

>>1892933
>Particularly I hate how the races are just a malleable thing that doesn't really matter outside of what quirks you pick for them
>they're literally just a skin
That's the point, you can turn e.g. the base goblin form into whatever kind of goblin you want from LotR to DnD to Warcraft.

>>1893406
It also means the setting has no identity of its own, truly soulless.

>>1893586
And it used to, in spades
I don't need to ape other settings for "my goblins"
I want my spiteful shit cowardly goblins who use poisons and suicide bombers
>bro just make them do that you can do it lol
It's not the same.

>>1893586
One man's soulless is another man's soul
I very much enjoy having the ability to make Asian samurai dwarves or heroic rat paladins if I so wish.

>>1891488
I like the new class system overall, but I feel like ES got fucked over pretty badly. Removing their casting points and imperium income skill entirely is pretty shitty, and arranging a bunch of independent skills into trees makes no sense at all and now means you can't just grab the ones you actually want for your build when you absolutely could before.

Are you supposed to pillage while your sieging? Having a 2nd triple stack running around pillaging the outer edges while you have a main triple stack focused on the siege countdown? Or do you just have a bunch of scouts pillage after you kill the final enemy army in the city but before you click on raze?

>>1894435
You should have little scout squads pillaging enemy lands always when you are at war while your big dick main army goes to town with the enemy Cities and his armies.

>>1894435
>Are you supposed to pillage while your sieging?
Maybe, you should at least raze or occupy the spell jammer and teleporters

>>1894450
You see, I'd do this but I'm too autistic about losing my own troops (especially my own racial units) that the idea said squads could get suddenly gangraped by a Mongolian horde of AI rank 1-2 stacks doesn't sit with me.

>>1894566
Nigga by the late game you can basically get the starting scout squads for pittance. 60 gold is nothing. Losing them won't matter.

>>1894566
Could use summoned units too. Elementals don't have feelings.

>>1892809
It’s weird. AoW3 had this as an option and there’s no reason why AoW4 can’t.
My personal way of doing it is Megacities.
It’s not the same but it’s not bad.
>>1893590
The lore of AoW came from missions writing. Admittedly the old games did that better. But the races were mostly not particularly special, I guess old humans had some gunpoweder and Azracs were kinda unique.
For me? I’m willing to take the tradeoff.
It’s neat for RP and I’m now actually playing every faction that comes out

>>1894938
>But the races were mostly not particularly special
Yeah I love the old AoW games but one of the worst aspects was how every faction was just spearman, swordman, archer, priest, light cav, siege engine. Sure they had some minor stat differences but it was basically the same lineup for every race until you get ot the top tier units, which was not only pretty bland but also resulted in some races being strictly superior than others because they all get the same units but for some the stat differences worked out much better. Like in AoW1 it's basically Halflings > Orcs > everyone else for most of the game.

File: AOW4_2024_11_14_07_28.png (483 KB, 637x432)

483 KB PNG

Playing the new DLC for the first time and i caught a hero with this ambition. Anybody play with it? Is the major one just 5 throughout the entire battle or does the battle need to end with 5 units routing.

>>1895284
Doesn't matter when they flee as long as you get 5+ in a single battle

how is the game now? felt kinda shallow at launch especially no real campaign but i saw they released a new season pass

>>1895476
More of the same but more variety. If you didn't like it at release, probably won't now. It's essentially the Stellaris approach to content.

Any mods to make the females less ugly in this?

>>1895492
They released new faces a while back. There’s two pretty faces for elves now and two pretty ones for humans plus some new Asian ones if you’re into that.
Also just make the legs longer, wizard king got some coomer outfits, as does the primal culture and the new one hit something p hot too.
As far as western games go, there’s really not much to complain about

>>1895492
>>1895567
Oh yeah also there’s a mod that straight up ports a Korean MMO model into AoW.
It’s a special ruler type that shared the dragon skills

>>1895492
lmao they're the prettier they've ever been in an AoW game, devs just used to be bad at making models in general.

do they still have the gunpowder culture from 3? the cannon was my favourite

>>1895760
Sort of. One of the DLCs has it, but it's more raider themed now.

Is the AI cheating even on easy and no handicaps? They just magically summon 6x2 or even 6x3 stacks out of thin air every turn when I'm starting my magic victory.

>>1894566
thats why Primal Culture best culture. Yeah sure, Strife Oathsworn have "the best damage scout" but you know what I have? A Crocodile, that I can teleport behind your units (in combat) every turn, that deals +10% damage with each attack, counts as both an animal and a magic unit and that inflicts Diseased on hit, making you take even more damage.
If you are reluctant to lose your units, even your scouts, Primal culture "Summon build" will make pillaging far less difficult

File: Screenshot (152).png (2.31 MB, 1920x1080)

2.31 MB PNG

>>1895778
bro, on Normal Difficulty the AI starts with basic seafaring bro
bro, you gotta keep "allied victory" on bro, cause if you don't, bro, you'll find out why they call them "demonic" warlords, bro

>>1895866
What a shame. I know making good strategy game AI is hard, but endlessly instant spawning full fledged armies is beyond the pale.

>>1895925
eh, you can still beat them, you only need the power of friendship until you get to like 3 cities and then you can win by yourself.
With the right build, solo runs are possible. If the AI cheats so much, it means its afraid of you

>>1895856
This.
Primal starting with a free combat summon that goes anywhere on the map is actually kind of broken, especially since it’s really strong in early game.
Tome of the tentacle is also good for this reason but the tentacle is stationary making it less of a nuisance.
Still, melee combat summons fuck up early game backline units hard

So how are the class reworks? Haven't played since guns came out. Planning to get back into it with a shadow-aligned summoning faction probably primal since it also gets a summon. I'm assuming I want a ritualist ruler, but what about ES vs WK?

>>1897224
Primal + tome of the tentacle starts you out with two combat summons.
Necromancy will let you be Sandro and quickly churn out skelebois .
The classes aren’t really relevant for that.
A ritualist will let you raise undead and start out with two additional zombies or a bone wyvern beeing essentially combat summons.
The class rework mostly separates heroes into 5 classes that can only use specific weapons and got seperate skill trees.
Defender gets retaliations and taunt out of the box, warrior is your Charge cruise missle either mounted or with a two hander (alternatively monk crit build),
Ranger is self explanatory but got some actually quite different options and also gets a skirmish build.
Mage is a blaster caster and Ritualist goes from full healer to zombie master

>>1891488
Age of Wonders ended with Shadow Magic. 3 was half-baked and unfortunately removed all the interesting bits with banality replacing it. 4 is just PDX DLC platform hell.
Give me AoW2 mod with few QoL things from 3 and how character creation was handled there and I'm peachy. 4 might as well not exist.

File: 3d4be49d2b01837ec1f8e9e0b(...).jpg (948 KB, 1023x992)

948 KB JPG

>>1892778
All I have to say is that the Giant Kings DLC better give me exactly what I want.

>>1891488
I don't care for the oathsworn

But the new tomes are great
And monkeys are great
And the hero rework is great

This game is missing the point. It's oddly "balanced". Add more gamebreaking stuff and enchantments at tome tier V, more unique stuff, more "one-of-a-kind" ancient wonders with "tier 6" creatures, and more specialization.

I'm not looking for a solid "challenging" 4X experience in this, but to roleplay a fantasy ascension story.

>>1897884
I do think they could go crazier with the tier V tomes, but MPfags are probably too influential.

But imo they're the lesser evil.
I don't want a game with fucked balance on all tiers.

File: file.jpg (2.1 MB, 1690x2200)

2.1 MB JPG

>>1897710
>monkeys are great
Truth.

>>1897923
I don't know how anyone can stand playing multiplayer. Besides having to wait for someone's turn to finish so you can start your own combat the thing desyncs every couple of turns

>>1898303
There's simultaneous turns, the problem is when someone's fighting manually everyone else has to wait.

>>1897884
This anon gets it. I don't want the endgame challenge to be dealing with spawned enemy AI armies every turn, but a fighting against a 1000 HP worldender dragon that takes 3 full stacks of tier 3+ units to kill.

>>1897884
Unfortunately because people like to dickride things that make them "have to consider their choices" and "prevents broken combos" despite said new things arguably being just as broken but now it's streamlined in a nice orderly tree for peak min-maxing/zero imagination choice making, you better believe they're going to put more and more restrictions and obligatory changes so you're pigeonholed into one specific dev-intended archetype and can only do what your niche allows you to do while everything else is either off the table or made garbage and a waste of resources to invest in. And if you want the privilege to be inventive or roleplay like you did beforehand, you better cough up the cash for new class DLCs or the like

After all the stuff they've added to the game over the last year or so my favorite is still my frost Necromancer.

Has the game been made better since release or is it all just more content with no system improvements or reworks?

>>1899406
They just completely reworked how leveling up heroes works vin the most recent major update. Opinions are divided whether it's an actual improvement because on the one hand it's much better on a systems level but on the other hand it's also a lot less freeform than the original mechanic. There have been other reworks as well, mostly small ones but also some more impactful ones, like how the Mystic culture got split up into three different subcultures.

All that aside though, if you didn't like the game at launch you're not going to be impressed by any of the changes since it's still very much the same game.

Just saved Raiden Beelzebul from her usurper as Zhongli Morax, too bad I could only vassalize Inazuma Castle instead of making her my wife while Guizhong watches on the side

>>1891879
Just rush paragon mass forgiving grievances and clearing infestations, then stack up on them for justified war. Also ally up with every nonevil faction, should be easy since you have bonus, then let them call you into wars