>>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

File: fuck you.jpg (1.07 MB, 2560x1440)

1.07 MB JPG

>play hermit kingdom
>the fucking AI:

>>1899824
The AI in general has an odd tendency to try to build very close to you in order to try and lock you in, deny you resources and/or get close to you to be able to more immediately spawn swarmstacks of tier 1/2 units

File: 1455011995868.jpg (180 KB, 780x481)

180 KB JPG

>>1899824
You know what to do

Just got a 100 euro gift card for the PlayStation and this game seems like the only decent strategy on that store. How does it play on console? Should I get it or buy some other ps slop instead?

>>1897884
multi-player balancing kills yet another potentially great game

>Harmony oathsworn becomes the bloodiest run that ends in me being overlord of 3 other empires
I just wanted to punch infestations and be the diplomatic one for a change. On the bright side getting the early hero with cult of personality was a good idea and a materium dragon lord is still a fun beefwall.

>>1900608
I remember doing unlimited cloning works with the ultimate astral combat spell on my leader, since the clones can also cast it, I actually lost track of who the real one was
I come back to learn they nerfed so you can't have fun just watching clones of your most likely strongest hero just clean house

wait a minute, i remember your heroes could pick the enchantments as skills. I dont see it in the skill tree. how can I give my heroes bloodfury weapons?

>>1900986
A lot of them have been moved to Signature skills but I think Bloodfury weapons has been removed from heroes completely

>>1900379
You can't have mods on console so I reckon buy it for PC or get something else. The controller works well with it if you insist

>>1891488
It's too far removed from the original Age of Wonders 1. Have a soft spot for that game. It was THE game of my childhood.
>>1892396
Still love first one. I know that aow heavengames people moved to a discord, still perhaps making maps and stuff there.

>>1892405
Original Warlords games and Disciples still get discussed from time to time and especially first two Warlords games were crazy simple.

>>1901039
Yeah but the new Disciples games suck and there are no new Warlords games.

Is underground start (and underground cities in general) a meme?

>>1899927
I don't see a reason to play this over AoW3 because of shit like this. AoWPF was unplayable in MP due to desyncs and AoW4 just looks like a rehash of PF mechanics but probably with even less interesting takes on the whole thing.

>>1901848
Yes, but it's also very comfy and thematic if you're playing something like goblins.

>>1901856
Play it and find out yourself.

>>1901860
I played enough PF single player to know it's just a rush to top tier tanks then running over everyone who has less than you. Paradox has nose dived things ever since they took charge.

>>1901867
>Says he hasn't played it
>Says he won't play it for reasons that he'd know aren't a problem if he had played it
This is why pirating exists. You can try things and not fall for your own preconceptions.

>>1901848
Kind of. It used to be overpowered, then it was underpowered. Currently it's okay if suboptimal IMO. The main issue is that unless you're playing Spider Primals, underground start is a sidegrade at best that you have to pay for, when you could instead take something that actually helps you.

The only real advantage of underground empires is that they're easier to defend, but this isn't really a game that rewards defensive play.

>>1901867
>I don't see a reason to play this over AoW3
>I played enough PF single player to know it's just a rush to top tier tanks then running over everyone who has less than you.
This is silly when you consider that the "top tier > everything" meta was at its strongest in AoW3. PF limited it and in AoW4 building stacks of top tier units is downright stupid.

>>1902030
there's even an entire tier 1 build that can stay relevant even in Multiplayer games, Order Necromancers (because skeleton mages are funny) or Chaos Necromancers if you prefer melee (or do both)

The multiplayer argument would be more convincing if the netcode isn't complete utter shit that desyncs constantly and causes turn resets every so often.

how do you finish a game? i always get burned out around turn 60

>>1902030
>This is silly when you consider that the "top tier > everything" meta was at its strongest in AoW3.
They were showing signs of moving away from it as early as the second AoW3 add-on, the one which implements unit specials for resource buildings.

>>1905882
set game speed higher, use smaller maps of 4-5 players.

>>1905882
Play smaller games.
Alternatively play a different civ. Personally I abandon a lot of games when I'm trying out a new civ and end up not really caring for them.

uh i havent played in a while but i got the new expansion pass and started the game up and saw that a bunch of characters suddenly have capes now when they didn't before. Also factions/characters i had previously completed and are in my pantheon are now back in the default pool again. Wtf happened did my save fuck up or something? I know for a fact Karissa the Red didn't have this ugly ass cape

>>1906226
Got any mods installed?

>>1906228
not a single one. I assume in everyone else's game Karissa doesn't have some retarded cape on?

>>1906258
Let me check.

>>1906258
>>1906259
Yeah she has one on mine as well, but I honestly can't remember if she used to have it or not.

>>1906261
thanks for looking, they must have patched it in. Can't have a woman with bare shoulders in 2024 i guess. You can see in old release articles (garbage like "top age of wonders 4 factions ranked") that she didn't have it

>>1906278
Weird, there are other women without them.

The people who wanted to play melee characters with magic skills and were upset at the new class system can now breathe easy once again with the current beta patch.
>Added new Hero Class: Death Knight - A Hero Class that specializes in high damage Melee attacks, backed up by Debuffs and summoned Undead units.
>Added new Hero Class: Spellblade - A Hero Class that uses both Melee and Magic attacks to deal magic damage from a distance and physical damage when the enemy gets close.

>>1906226
The 1.2 patch mentioned fixing an issue where wizard kings had a duplicate empty cape option, so it might be related to that.

>>1906226
I didn't notice this before since I never play with the premade characters, but yeah it looks like a couple of them got a random cape added. Seems unintentional to me. You'd have to be a complete brainwashed retard to blame this on current year shit though, especially considering that other characters with bare shoulders like Serena and Nimue are completely unchanged while a completely covered male character like Dafal Dea got a cape added.

File: 20241128201108_1.jpg (358 KB, 1920x1080)

358 KB JPG

>stop having a stronger military than me unless you want to go to war!
Seems like not the smartest thing to get uppity about

File: 1724794210707327.png (117 KB, 737x587)

117 KB PNG

newfag to the series, how'd you rank the moment to moment combat in comparison to the rest of the game?
I've been trying to get into more 4xish fantasy shit, but games like homm tend to make me want to just auto-skip combat with how 90% of it feels decided before the battle (via stacks / resource snowballing) so I just treat it like Civ's 'combat' could be I'm just really retarded and don't have AI to punish me otherwise
Or it was either this or Kings Bounty

>>1906531
AOW has a heavy focus on the tactical fights, autoresolving everything is missing the point

>>1906534
that's good to know, I do like tactical combat and think to myself 'might as well play something else' if I auto-resolve
It's just so many games "combat" end up being
>hit them with range + get strong guy to other side
>my stack/comp is bigger & better, you should have built up more
and both suck all the fun from actual tactics

>>1906531
The battles are good but I end up autoresolving 90% of the time anyway, simply because it's so much faster. If I did every battle manually games would last three times as long, so I only do important battles manually. Apart from issues with specific units and abilities the autoresolve in this game is quite good compared to most similar games, because it actually simulates the battle instead of just doing some spooky RNG math to determine the outcome.

>>1906543
Not sure what you're asking for with "actual tactics." You can boil any engagement down to things like muh hammer and anvil, muh ranged superiority, muh superior forces, muh number advantage, etc. even in real life. Unless you're talking about stuff like asymmetrical warfare and guerilla tactics which isn't really feasible in a game of this scale.

There's a lot more to battles in this game than just who has the highest stats, especially once you factor in magic, but if you're demanding a highly complex battle system you need to go look for some autistic warfare sim, not a 4X game.

>>1906498
A few of the personality types have this trait. Yeah it doesn't really make sense but for the sake of variety I think it's a good thing. If having a big army would make opponents too scared to attack and everyone is just a bunch of opportunists preying on the weak, that would be more realistic but probably also pretty boring. It would work in a more economy-focused game like Civ, but not in a war-focused game like AoW.

>>1906567
I suppose complexity in moment to moment decisions, not necessarily from breadth of options during or prior to said combat.
Like if the situation will always play out the same 90% of the time save for things like
>a tree is randomly placed in front of a ranged unit
then is me clicking through all the steps worth while?

>>1906567
>the autoresolve in this game is quite good compared to most similar games, because it actually simulates the battle instead of just doing some spooky RNG math to determine the outcome.
The game also gives you the option to replay the battle with manual control if you don't like the outcome the autoresolve gives you, which is VERY nice.

>>1906613
Unit abilities and magic shake things up a lot. Fighting a bunch of dragons is going to play out differently than fighting a bunch of battlemages. Which faction you play also matters a lot in how you approach battles, for example the Dark culture is very limited in terms of defense and support, so you either have to kill shit fast or find other ways to keep your dudes alive, while the Industrious culture is very defense oriented and likes to let enemies take the initiative in battle while they take a defensive stance.

There's definitely variety to be found, but like I said if you're demanding highly complex battles this probably won't be an enjoyable game for you. AoW's combat is deep for a 4X game, but that's a low bar to clear since most 4X games have incredibly boring combat.

>>1906635
No that all sounds great, waiting for the dl to finish
>but that's a low bar to clear since most 4X games have incredibly boring combat.
I think that's the bar I've been trying to clear by barking up the wrong tree (looking into Total War games and homm and such), so thats why this game caught my eye

I'm always finding myself severely outclassed in damage in this game, including by neutral mobs. Is it simply a matter of stacking as many enchant spells as I can afford onto my troops?

>>1906769
>Is it simply a matter of stacking as many enchant spells as I can afford onto my troops?
That's certainly part of it but a lot goes into what makes for an effective attack. The obvious thing is just the base damage dealt vs enemy defense values and (if relevant) resistances. Naturally if you're using physical attacks against units with high defense, or lightning attacks against units with high lighting resistance, you're going to do less damage than you'd expect. This creates a lot of opportunity for counterplay. For example, the magical damage types are mostly associated with specific empire alignments. Order focuses on holy damage, shadow on frost damage, chaos on fire damage, etc. So if you're fighting an enemy with lots of chaos tomes, it can be a good idea to look for ways to get more fire resistance.

But there are also factors that aren't immediately obvious. Like how the number of models you have in a unit really matters in AoW4. When you take enough damage you lose models, and when you lose models you lose the damage output of those models. So for example a swordman unit with 4 models that loses enough HP will lose one of its models and thus lose 1/4th of its damage, while a dragon unit with only 1 model that loses HP will still be one model until it hits zero HP, so it still deals full damage even if it's almost dead. Among other things, this means that if you have a shock unit with multiple models, allowing it to take damage before it gets to attack hurts you both directly (lost HP) and indirectly (lost damage).

>>1906794
Sounds like stacking your army with single-entity units would give you a big advantage against armies with multiple models.

>>1906794
Another thing is attack types. A shock unit that attacks once for lots of damage should be handled differently than a shield unit that attacks 3 times for a little damage. The former wants to move up to an enemy and smack them. If you try to do that with the latter type you miss out on a lot of damage since the movement replaces up one or two of their three attacks. So for them it can be better to let the enemy come to you, so you don't need to move and you can use all three attacks on your turn. Or you can walk up to the enemy and instead of attacking enter defense mode, so you take less damage and you force the enemy to either walk away (using up their own actions and taking an opportunity attack), or to hit you for reduced damage and then eat the full 3 attacks next turn.

Without knowing the specific situation it's hard to say what's going wrong, but in general if you don't fully understand what's going on it helps to take a moment to inspect the enemies and look at their stats and abilities to see if there's anything to explain the difference. Also, think about how you approach battles. Ideally you don't just want to be trading hits until one side is left standing (though to some extent this is unavoidable), but to minimize the amount of damage you take through positioning, CC, (de)buffs, and by getting your own damage in first to reduce enemy model counts.

As an aside, the game has (IMO) an issue where offense and defense are too tied together. For example I mentioned that you might want to get fire resistance against a chaos enemy, but most of the fire resistance stuff is also chaos-aspected, so you end up literally fighting fire with fire. This applies in other areas of the game, like if you play Primal Mammoth you get bonus frost damage, but you start on snow terrain so you'll also face more enemies with frost resistance. This isn't necessarily a big deal but does play into how you go about maximizing damage.

>>1906801
All else being equal yes, it's preferable to have fewer models per unit. It's part of the reason why Giant Growth is such a good transformation, since it reduces model count. A tried and true strategy is to take a culture with a good early game unit which has the optional mount trait (like Barbarians), and putting them on an elephant or mammoth mount which also reduces their model count. Add Giant Growth on top of that and you can make your unit quite sturdy. Conversely, Spawnkin increases model count so while it does give a few decent benefits, it also results in your damage falling off quicker when you take damage. Either way, a lot of high-tier units only have a single model, which is mostly to emphasise their status but it also gives them a tangible advantage in battle. But of course there are lots of other factors that go into this. A single model unit with crap stats is still a crap unit. Plus, many single-model units have large size, which makes them more vulnerable to polearms and ranged attacks.

>Cult of personality nerfed and the stronger hero classes are getting nerfed in the beta patch
I can't say I'm too surprised but it also feels like cult of personality nerfs were a slap on the wrist at best and defender is probably going to try to be in defensive mode anyway so its not as major of a nerf

in other news pyretemplar is still broken and beats any t5 in a 1v1

Do you guys have any recommended builds? Preferably ones to conquer the map with.

File: file.png (335 KB, 720x593)

335 KB PNG

>>1907870
You don't really need a great build to beat the AI, even on max difficulty. You just need to know how to scale fast which can be done with any functional build. A lot of "gitting gud" at AoW4 is less about finding the perfect build and more about getting a feel for the pace of the game and how to get shit done fast.

If you're looking for build inspiration, maybe try something like this. Between the Dragon Ruler, the bonus hero, the tough as nails troops, and the summonable golems, it allows you to do your early game clearing with relative ease and keep the tempo going with plenty of self-sustain. It's worked very well for me, though it's a very defense-minded build so if you don't like that kind of gameplay maybe it's not ideal. Most of the elements here are flexible and not strictly necessary, so you can switch out parts of the build you don't like without invalidating the build itself.

maybe I've just learned to play this game aggressively, but going for any victory other than military seems like a massive slog. You need several strong standing armies spread out across the map to guard objectives as well as your cities, and everyone wants a piece of you. Why not just kill your opponents one by one? Even when guarding your non-military win conditions, the best defence is to simply annihilate the player threatening to send armies to harass you. What's your preferred win condition and what's your playstyle? is military victory easy mode or is it a result of how I play?

>>1908770
Depends on the size of the map really. On small to medium maps, yeah military victory is the way to go. On bigger maps though, expansion victory is usually easier. Magic victory is the worst in most cases IMO, but it depends on where the gold wonders are on the map.

>>1908770
It does depend on how you play, in addition to map size like the other guy said. Personally I've always found magic victory to be generally theeasiest/most attainable but I tend to focus heavily on research and spellcasting. I also hate dealing with vassals with their constant petty concerns and requests, so I'm consequently never within range of an expansion victory.

How do I make a good retaliation rush centric army? What tomes will I need?

>can't arrange your units before the battle starts
I don't think this semen slurping game is for me

>>1909007
The armies are spaced far enough apart that you have at least one full turn to position your units how you need to before any attacks can be made. Do you really need more than that?

>>1909039
NTA, but some units have buffing abilities that require all three pips, so if you spend one turn to position, you might miss an attack opportunity on the second turn against faster move-speed opponents.

File: file.png (181 KB, 429x293)

181 KB PNG

MY FULL HEALTH LEVEL 4 POLEARM NIGGAS.................

>>1909043
>you might miss an attack opportunity on the second turn
???
Like what?
You can use your buff on turn one, just move everyone else into position and use it. The end result isn't really any different than if everyone started in position for it, other than losing a couple hexes of movement from having to position, but even the fastest units aren't going to be able to move far enough to be able to make an attack on anything on turn 1.

>>1909052
I guess their time in this Age of Wonders™ is ogre.

>>1909053
>just move everyone else into position and use it.
But then the buffing unit will be out of position. I agree that it is a niche case and I personally don't mind not having a setup phase since it speeds up the combat, but it definitely can matter.

>>1909055
>But then the buffing unit will be out of position.
Again, like what?
You move everyone around the buffer, have him buff, and then either end your turn or move everyone else forward.
You lose a couple of hexes worth of turn 1 movement on the people who had to move a couple hexes to get into position but that's it, and again even assuming you were just going to use your entire turn's worth of movement to charge straight forwards as far as possible you're still not going to be within attack range of the enemy until at least turn 2.

>>1906805
How do we feel about finishing off one unit vs damaging multiple units to kill models? I know that a dead unit deals zero damage, but sometimes I see units down to a single model only deal 1 damage and it makes me wonder if it would have been better to just kill off more models one other units and let any sort of lingering DOT finish off any units

>>1909065
Nearly dead units still block movement, have an active ZOC, and have the capability to apply whatever status effects they have. Killing units also lowers enemy morale.

>>1895925
It's annoying but the way the game works, numbers are not that much of an advantage. Your three unit doomstack can defeat infinite chaff losers without breaking a sweat.

Honestly, past the early game the AI usually can't really do anything to you unless you had a shitty start or your build just kinda sucks.

>>1905882
I just don't play on huge maps, 4-5 players. By the time I'm burnt out usually it's just a quick sprint to finish the game.

Can I toggle transformations pre-game so not everyone is some hideous chimera by turn 30?

File: 1733426069118181.gif (386 KB, 128x128)

386 KB GIF

>make a civ of dark elves with nightmare mounts and dark culture thinking I'm just going to fucking blitz people with t1 shock cavalry
>the only t1 mounted units dark cultures get are archers

I wish units with heals improved the army's regeneration in the world map.

>>1909605
kek literally the first race i made, boy was i disappointed.

what the fuck happened with infestations and free cities?? unaffiliated free cities and infestations on the complete opposite side of the map are sending raiding parties to my cities in the first couple of dozen turns. Loving having to fend off several 800 strength armies in addition to enemy players at turn 20

>>1909973
Just lower the world thread if you can't handle early infestations.

>>1909616
You don't really need regeneration if you have healers in the stack. Just give wounded units temporary HP at the start of every battle and you can keep rolling even if you're at 1 HP. Regen is way more valuable if you DON'T have healers.

File: file.png (1 KB, 64x64)

1 KB PNG

>>1909605
sike bitch you thought

>>1909605
The T3 Dark cavalry is pretty decent, though arguably if you're going with a fear build using nightmare mounts you're better off with a more defensive faction instead of going balls to the wall offense with Dark. At least that way you have a better chance for the morale penalties to stack up before you simply kill everyone.

File: 1733613403805203.jpg (74 KB, 607x558)

74 KB JPG

>>1891488

How to unlock casting during the first turn in battle?

>>1910444
It's in the astral tree.

what's the formula for experience? i remember it was

2+2*tier

and why is experience wasted when i solo a stack?

>>1910473
2+2*tier sounds about right, but I've never really looked into it very deeply.

IIRC you only get the full amount of experience if the number of units you have in the fight is more than half of the enemy units. So if the enemy has 6 units, you need to bring more than 3 (i.e. 4 or more) for optimal XP gains.

this oathsworn culture shit is ridiculously broken
>tier 1 shit units hitting for 20+ damage every swing + first strike

File: 20241210070620_1.jpg (813 KB, 1920x1033)

813 KB JPG

>chosen destroyers

>playing reavers
>subdue unit
>don't really want it
>dismiss
>get nothing for it
should at least give a minor production boost to a city
taking slaves and shit

>>1911240
While there is nothing wrong with headcannon, you really shouldn't expect gameplay benefits from it.

>>1911240
At least they fixed it so you still get XP for captured units. Used to be you didn't get any XP for it so it was a net loss to capture units.

I'm always outscienced by AI, even when I base every build/tome/province decision around increasing research, come the end screen I'm still behind...

>>1911474
Are you talking about actual research output or about magic score? Because magic score is bullshit and seems to depend more on how much mana you've got than on your research.

>>1911479
the score - I don't know how to judge the AI's research output, but it makes more sense if what you said is true and "research score" doesn't only take into account your research for some reason

>>1911496
I don't think anyone fully understands how the scores work exactly and the game doesn't make any attempt to explain it properly. It's going to give weird results in many cases, not just for magic. I usually just turn off score victory in the advanced map settings.

>>1911474
Are you expanding beyond your base three city limit?

iirc elf mages and archers were pretty strong in aow3 but is there a similar good ranged combo in this game? the many different choices are dizzying

>>1913212
Ranged is kind of in an awkward place IMO. Archers were really OP on release so they got nerfed. Right now the damage is still pretty good but they're really vulnerable to getting locked down by melee units, so even with a range focused strategy you'll still want at least half your stack to be melee just to keep them safe. Which I guess makes sense but it does mean that going 100% ranged isn't really viable.

The only exception to this (somewhat) is skirmish units. They've got ranged attacks and aren't worthless in melee, plus they take ranged enchantments well so they fit right in with your ranged strategy. Skirmish units are pretty strong in general and some like Mistlings are among the best units in the game for their tier. Main issue there is that autoresolve doesn't always use skirmish units very efficiently.

>>1913212
Elves by default get increased ranged accuracy and increased magic damage on their racials, so mystic culture (which gets mages instead of archers) + elves (or really whatever the fuck you want, just throw arcane focus and keen-sighted on them) is pretty good for shooty shooty.

why is there no culture with a T3 archer
>dragoon
skirmishers don't count

>>1913742
Magelock Cannon counts as an archer and Oath of Harmony gets Peacebringer which is a mounted archer.

>feel like playing AoW3 every time I open up AoW4
>finally open up modded 3 to see if it's just rose tinted glasses or if I actually enjoy it more
>enjoying it more right up until 4 goblin scouts take my capital on turn 10
Well there's definitely some upsides and some downsides

>>1913742
Because archers are big gay. Battlemages are where it's at.

Is there a mod to increase unit health across the board for AoW3? I hate how fragile troops are especially early game

>>1914249
You will spam your T4 and you will like it

Can we have a thread about AoW3?

>>1920921
Why are you asking for permission? Just make one, you'll see if there are enough people to post in it soon enough.

>>1920921
No

>>1921537
Explain this then >>1926618

>>1926711
Clearly that's the king of 4chan, he can veto your thread.

File: 1717330725137527.jpg (309 KB, 1920x1080)

309 KB JPG

RETVRN to modded 3

>>1927205
>AoW3 with all DLC still goes for $17+ on sale while Planetfall is $25+
That's a little steep for a 10 year old 4X game
What mods you running?

>>1892396
I hate, loathe and despise homm and it's clones
>>1892809
Tallfaggotry is the bane of 4x, one of the reasons homm is so shit and the very reason why so many new 4x games are shit.

>>1927275
Chivalrous Intentions, the Ayalin Premium class mods, AI Unshackled, and Attack Protocol. That last one turns indie camps into absolute menaces

>>1891488
Bring back the Lizardmen!

>>1932186
Lizardmen were included in the first DLC.

>>1932347
Wtf, I didn't know that...
Well, does it have campaigns?

File: file.jpg (466 KB, 1920x1080)

466 KB JPG

>>1932551
The game itself has sort of a campaign, but it's more like a handful of story maps that tell a story when played in succession. Some of the DLCs also add more story maps but the Dragon Dawn DLC (which includes the lizardman race) doesn't. It does have a playable scenario (Ashen War)
though that's not the same as a story map and not part of the game's storyline.

so giants should be coming out some time in feb?

>>1937222
Nah the release date says Q2, so that's probably April.