This game truly is disappointing. Easily the worst of the AoW series.

This game truly is amazing. Easily the best of the AoW series.

>>2154626
Super early game skellies aren't great, but once you have a basic souls economy rolling they become pretty spammable. The only limits are huw much mana you've got for upkeep and how many souls you want to save up for lategame shenanigans. But the best thing about skelies is how you can replenish them on the go without needing to waste time and mana on summoning spells. Once you get some good enchants on them (like Mighty Meek) they become quite good troops. And most likely the skellies you raise are not going to be of your own race because you're raising enemy corpses, so if you're going for a full skelly spam build that means you can pretty much ignore transformations until you get Wightborn.

>>2154626
This game truly is mid as fuck. Not great, not bad either, nothing special.

the ONE (1) thing this game does better than its predecessor is damage reduction based on the number of models, I'll give it that

>>2154626
didn't like at all
the fact they tried to implement that stupid faggot gay ass gender thingie and make it functional over THE KARMA SYSTEM, which is not working at all, is proof of their hate towards what the previous titles and the game itself
they also destroyed the concept of race and relationships, instead of making one race, lets say elves, and only making them to have a path of accession or transformation into an unique higher race for them, they did it for everyone. making transformation pretty much just another bland spell... SOULLESS

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A better question is why does this triangle head bitch make me wanna give her a dongle?

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>>2156660
Because your human feebleness cries out for the superior elven cunny.

>have an entire faction of cool crystal elementals
>can only get them if your map happens to have Zardoz on it
wtf Triumph

>>2154626
Skill issue

>>2154626
this game is the epitome of mid

>>2164686
hnnnng

>be me
>play aow1
>play aow2
>don’t play aow3
>dont play aow4
Feels good man.

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>>2168284

>>2177216
2/SM had many sexy ladies, 1 had some too, just low poly.

People here psyched for Thrones of Blood?

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Anybody got good Mods?

>>2193580
why isn't "single gender race" a vanilla option anyway?

>>2154630
which do you prefer?

>>2154630
Is it worse than AoW 3 spam high tier units the game?

>>2198267
yes, because now it's aow4 spam high tier-1 units the game

>>2193964
There is a mod that sort of allows it, "Culture Unit Makeover" but it is a bit janky.

>>2154630
That's quite an achievement, considering how abysmal 3 was

>>2168302
>be me
>play aow1
>play aow2
>try aow3 and it's shit
>but get players to try out aow2
>don't play aow4 at all, because i have still the same regulars to play aow2 with
feels even better, man

>>2183438
Yes!

>be me
>play aow1, gotyay
>play aow2, it's mid
>play aow3, it's real bad
>play aow4, build a bear races make me want to kms

Game is updated on gog-games dot to btw

>>2198267
AoW3 had good early game balance but terrible late game, where the only way to win was to summon spam units.>>2198267

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I am miffed that some mods are only on the paradox plaza, because of Steam bullshit and some mods are only on the Steam Workshop because of people being lazy.
How do I manage with shit like that?

>>2249808
Albert Einstein would download from both places.

Is this the general for AoW4? Why do you monkeys always fuck up the OP?

>>2156524
I'd say the system in AoW4 is more SOVL because it enables you to do a lot of RP stuff. Its only gay and stupid when you are dealing with min/maxers who take whatever tomes and transformations are the most powerful or busted.

What's a good first culture type to learn the game with?

>>2256167
Feudal Monarchy is the default for a reason

>>2255205
Nah, this is a leftover thread that was posted when the general was still active and which somehow never dropped off the catalog.

>>2255205
People just make a thread when they want to bitch or there's new content coming
The real general if anything, I'd say is on /civ4x/ on /vg/. I noticed the AoW4 posting there increased a fair bit once the actually active thread on /vst/ died
The free weekend was probably also a reason

Any general tips for a shitter? It feels like I never have enough of anything when playing these games.

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>>2257676
In general, two things you do in this game are acquire resources to get bigger/better units to acquire more resources.

So at the start of the game you want your starting army with your faction leader to go fight those little independent armies sitting on top of resource points. This gives you lebensraum, your leader experience, and your city an injection of whatever resource that point represented. You want to reinforce your starting army with units recruited from your city or summoned, a lot of tier 1 tomes start you off with a summon able unit. Ideally, you take fight after fight with either few losses, or enough healing in between so that there's no downtime, you're constantly beating up independents and collecting more stuff.

You'll get to recruit a second hero like 10 turns in. Make sure to give them an army too and go kill more independents.

Pay attention to the what province improvements are 'boosters' for city buildings, which cut the construction time and cost in half. The game wants you to have a 'balance' of provinces, but you can change these later. Being able to construct buildings quickly is another part of the snowball.

You start the game with only 1 city, but a city cap of 3. You should try to settle your next 2 cities as soon as you can, your second hero can help with that. More cities = more resources to feed your army.

>>2156660
>>2164686
>>2170445
>>2179698
Imagine spanking the title image woman's ass until it's light red and then fucking her silly

>>2258079
What are some of he better culture to learn the game with? Is the samurai one any decent or do I just stick with feudal?

>>2258217
I would say feudal and barbarian are the most newbie friendly cultures. Oathsworn aren't exactly complicated but they require you to play in certain ways to maximize their bonus' which can be quite limiting when you are exploring the game.

>>2258105
No one? Only I appreciate spanking a villainess? Hm.

>>2258217
Feudal Monarch is straight forward. Barbarians and their scouts can build outposts. Mystic - Summoning with a focus on animals is funny, your summoned animals from the spell count as magic origins.

>>2258217
Any of the base game cultures should work just fine, honestly. Personally I learned the game with Mystics. The DLC cultures all have some quirks which make them not ideal for learning.
The more important thing IMO would be to pick one affinity and go all in on that. The base game tomes for each individual affinity are generally designed to synergize with each other and make a well rounded build, and having a lot of one affinity means you'll be able to reach the good nodes on the empire tree faster and gives you a good chance of succeeding affinity checks.

Does CreamAPI still work for AoW4? I'm seeing conflicting information online.

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>>2262880
Answering my own question, yes it does.

>>2262880
>>2265182
The fuck you using Steam for, the game is on GoG.

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>>2156660
because it reminds you of a superior character

Is there anything worth crafting in the Item Forge? By the time I have a forge built and enough disenchant currency all my heroes are pretty much decked out anyway. Seems marginal.

>>2272472
Dragon claws and eldritch orbs are pretty rare, so the item forge is your best way to upgrade your dragon or ES. Also applies if you want a specific kind of normal weapon like a greatsword or a magelock. Sometimes you also just get shit rolls for loot and you have like ten bows and zero ranged heroes. With the item forge being moved down to requiring only the tower base, you could also potentially give your ruler a tier IV weapon super early on in the game, though it requires you to have found some high level shit to disenchant. Otherwise, you can craft trinkets with useful effects without having to rely on finding them, like umbral malady immunity on umbral abyss maps, or siege master for your main siege armies.

>>2154715
It's missing the Planetfall empire mode to be an amazing game.

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>>2258747
nah i get it man

>>2280182
i don't even know what that is becuase planetfall was so offputting in aesthetics that i skipped it, but i think what the possibly-related thing the game is missing is actual campaigns like what aow1 had

>>2258105
Which title image?

>>2197981
2

>>2154715
Fuck off avoxel.
>>2154724
>Might Meek
Dogshit in 4, go get your ass mangled online. Zero clue how bad shit is.

>>2156524
OG Triumph development team left after the Paradox acquisition while Planetfall was half done, which is why that game feels off.
4 is almost exclusively new devices or shitter interns now in higher positions despite having a severe lack of knowledge of the Creator Engine, which is why features and functions from previous games are straight up depreciated, because they don't even know how to do it.

Topping it all off, they are quoted saying that they do not focus on the strategic aspect of the game, instead ai.ing for casual approachability, aka barby dressup.

>>2299306
Oh, I see. I wonder where are the guys that made AoW1, 2 and SM.

>>2302726
Split off into different directions, one of the developers went off to make BG3 apparently, cast to the wind pretty much.

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superior engineering
how does one avoid this crap?

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happy new year fags

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>AoW1 orcs have kewl red dragons
>AoW2 orcs have Jabba the Hutt
Wtf were they thinking.

>>2312542
Watchers are great. Love those guys. Them and Astral Serpents. Astral affinity is the best.

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Is there something lewd in AoW4?

>>2313782
It contains depictions of blood

>>2313082
Yeah, it was a weird change.

>>2313782
It has bare shoulders.

>>2313082
Well, the red dragons are draconian-supreme tier critters, so the orcs needed something different.
Why it had to be jabba the hut, no idea, but they're surprisingly strong when they insta-gobble enemy units.

>>2314954
>draconian
Well, that's gay. Their infantry can't even fly despite having wings. While all lizardmen in AoW1 could swim. Why did they replace a cool race with a strictly inferior one?

Am I bad, or is Feudal (specifically Aristocracy)'s early game bad?

>>2315027
My guess is that they thought that dragonmen were more awesome than lizardmen, and in-universe then said that Nimue killed all the lizards because she's a fickle bitch.
But now thanks to AoW 4, you can have multidimensional lizards back.

>>2315064
just summon or rally troops for your heroes, you don't need to recruit them

>>2283805
The most arousing act on the planet, right there.

Is there a way to make my games slower paced? I feel like my gripe with strategy games is that the optimal way to play is just rushing to the endgame asap but that's boring and I want a comfy map painting experience with elves and giants and shit.

>>2317496
>comfy map painting experience with elves and giants and shit.
Play AoW1 instead. The custom fan-made maps could be extremely comfy.

AoW 1 finally clicked after trying several times to get into the series only to get filtered.
I had to stop playing because I kept ending up going to bed at 5 AM when I had to work shifts starting at 9 AM the same morning but it was great.
I kinda hate myself for cheesing AI with walls though, in 2 turns I turn every city into something I'll never lose.
Played half the campaign with the default Cult of Storms protag until I learned they're not a real character in the story and that creating your own character is more fun, re-rolled with some broken Death/ Air crap and my dude can solo most stuff after mission 3.
Music is great, atmosphere is great, writing is pretty neat and from what I've seen AoW2 seems to be better in every way sans plot.

>>2193580
I play with Late Tier Culture Units and thats it. Culture mods in general can be quite high quality, especially Von Schnitzel's

>>2317671
aow2/sm is worse than aow1 because you can found cities, if you play it with that turned off it's a similar game but it still has worse resource spread across the map

>>2317496
You could turn down the research and income rates I guess, but really unless you're playing online or on very hard you can play super slowly and suboptimally and still win games just fine, especially if you disable score victory. Low tier units are also in a really good place right now in general.
It's easy to look at the in-game player rankings and feel like you're being outpaced by the AI and that you can't keep up, but in reality those rankings are completely arbitrary and meaningless.

What difficulty do you guys plan on? I'm dipping my toes into Brutal, and I admit I'm getting filtered. Just got my throne city to T2, meanwhile nearby infestations and resource nodes are already sending out T4 and T5 units.

>>2320117
Brutal but no handicaps

>>2315027
Draconians ARE NOT lizardmen in the first place.
BRING BACK LIZARDMEN

>>2320964
They are back though
It just took all this fucking time until the 4th game to do so
It's not much of an accomplishment since it's trying to fulfill every fantasy trope you wanna do
But it was still cool that lizardmen ended up being 3rd most played race for the 2yr anniversary mark, so clear faves that the devs catered and listened to

So is it just me or do battlesaints kinda suck ass?

>>2322781
I like them as melee units. I've never liked melee heroes much because I feel like it's too easy to get focused down if you overextend even slightly, but the built in self heal helps a lot. Getting the self heal+ strengthened with only two points invested is also really good, the other melee classes take a lot of skill point invest to get anything really meaningful, I feel.
I'm not as fond of them as a support unit. I feel like it takes too long to generate fervor for the support side of the tree.

>>2323467
So just build them as a self sustain tank?

>>2323510
I don't really like using heroes to tank since they're already high priority targets and they're expensive to replace unless you can get resurgence on them, but you could probably pull it off pretty well if you can kit them out well. Mainly I just use them as a more survivable warrior.

Does this game have anti-player bias?

>>2324274
What does that mean?

>>2324285
AI that focuses unduly hard on the player, to the extent that it might make suboptimal decisions just to do so.

>>2324274
Sometimes it feels like infestations prefer to attack you over AI players that are closer, but it could just feel that way because you don't receive an alert or have any reason to notice when infestations attack AI players, which they definitely do.
I know AI players also like to build outposts right on the edge of your domain to try to box you in, but I've never really paid attention to whether they do it to others too.

>>2324274
yes, female dwarves can have beards

>>2322781
only reason i use one is because an ascended hero has that ascension trait that triggers regen on the entire battle with every support ability and battlesaint has a lot of instant cast support abilities

i don't think there's any reason to use a battlesaint as it is, a pure class devoted to whatever it is you're doing is going to do it better

Why is Astral the only affinity to not get any T5 units from tomes? Are they just buff enough to not need it?

>>2326512
Not only that, imo their selection of T4s is pretty weak. Mirror mimics in particular are downright pathetic, the game even considers 2 of them with backup to be bronze ancient wonder material.
I do think that's exactly it though. Astral gets a lot of good stuff in their tomes and they have arguably the best empire tree with unarguably the best capstone, so the lack of strong high tier units isn't really a significant problem.

What's the main drawback of playing a dragon?
Recommend a dragon build for first time plays pls

lay it out for me guys, why is this game such shit?

>>2326900
It's not

>>2326610
They don't really offer much outside of their strength in combat. They're really fucking strong in combat though.
>>2326900
I don't think it's shit. I like it quite a lot, actually.

>>2326533
>>2326512
especially since nothing forces you to play pure astral

>>2326610
spellblade for breath+physical attack spam or warrior for killing momentum, either way go full chaos for your dragon upgrades since it has the most critical hit increases, start with tail swipe and then get other shit, your goal is to do a lot of damage

load up your race with damage bonuses since the dragon will inherit them

you can go either reclaimer and equipment hoarder for big economy bonuses, or you can replace one of those two with vision of ruin

if you make it until late game your strongest spell will be call forth avatar of chaos, in the tier 5 chaos tome, all it does is summon your leader into a battle, but that means that in the late game you can win a battle which is theoretically something like two tier 1 units on your side and 18 tier 3+ units on the other

>>2327579
>>2326610
oh, and barbarian will produce more damage from your dragon while industrial will supercharge your economy bonuses, so probably pick one of those for your faction

>>2321071
Took them long enough, it has been decades at this point.

>>2326900
because it's just dumbed down planetfall with no empire mode
play SM if you want an aow game that's actually fun

>>2154626
anyone else experiencing weird visual glitches with text and overall temp increase in their pcs when playing this pos?

>>2330285
No, but I also clamp my game's framerate
Never let any game render at "unlimited fps" if you value your hardware.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHWAVZVRxWA
>Paradox 2025 highlights.
>AoW4 mentioned 7 minutes in as a "newly established franchise" with growing player numbers.
>They hope to continue support for a long time, typically 10 or more years.

How do we feel about 10 more years of Paradox DLC?

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>>2330285
I used to get visual glitches in the title boxes of certain windows in the strategic map, but that seems to have been fixed. I do get really bad flickering in the launcher though. Temps seem normal for running a videogame.
>>2330466
I like the game and all, but 10 years of DLC seems pretty excessive. I think the way Triumph handles the DLC, with free updates being released alongside them, is pretty good, but potential newcomers just see a giant wall of DLC that costs 5x as much as the game itself and get put off by it.

>>2330589
>10 years of DLC seems pretty excessive
Stellaris is in its 10th year now and apparently people still play that.

>>2330912
they mostly just complain about the dlcs being lazy

Am I the only one who hates heroes? I really wish there were something like the opposite of Cult of Personality so I could get away with using less heroes.

>>2330912
The trifecta of Stellaris, EU4, and HOI4 convinced me that nu-Paradox's DLC policy is a fundamental mistake, and their games are best rolled back to whatever the last patch before the first DLC was.

>>2332516
You can just not hire any if you hate them that much. Not like you need them against the AI anyway.

>>2332583
There are certain things only heroes can do though, like governing cities, exploring ancient wonders, and laying siege to cities.

>>2332757
Well you can always just take your ruler, unless you also want to have a wizardless playthrough

>>2332974
Obviously but that's the problem, since ONLY your ruler can do those things now. It doesn't matter how many armies you have roaming the map, you can only lay siege to one city at a time and ancient wonders can only be cleared if your ruler is personally there to do it. Summoned units, as well, can only be summoned around cities or heroes, which means you can't reinforce a heroless army out in the field with a summon unless your ruler happens to be nearby.

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Are vampires any decent or is their DLC still a skip?

AoW1 was famous for having broken things like leaders with First-Strike + Cold/Lightning Strike or Incarnates that destroy multi stack armies on their own.
Do the later AoWs have anything as OP as that?

>>2334969
lol no
everything after 1 was "balanced for multiplayer"

>>2334969
>>2334970
aow2/sm still had some shit like that, like for example the earlygame succubus rush

>>2334580
They're kind of a mixed bag but they're decent overall. The tomes are pretty good, too.

>>2335548
Guess I'll pick it up, nothing's coming out game wise that I want anyway.

rabbits

>>2334580
If you like undead, this and Archon prophecies is a must have. Otherwise, nah. Season 2 and 3 have been less hype than the Season 1 dlcs. Desert niggas and Spellforce city isn't as cool as Dragons and tanks

>>2339658
I like the rabbits, but at the same time I'm getting a bit tired of them just adding more and more animal people. I get that they're limited in their design space by needing humanoid bodies for the animations and shit to work, but I'd rather see more stuff like the Ogres and Syrons than yet another furry race.

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>>2339658
>they're actually adding rabbits
Nice. I've wanted rabbits since the very beginning but I never thought they'd actually do it, especially after they said they didn't want to do any more furries in Archon Prophecy.
>>2339784
The problem is always that furries are simply really easy to design as fantasy races, both in appearance and personality. AoW4 also has a unique situation in that the other most common type of fantasy race, the "human, but", is either largely covered by transformations or already represented in the game. The oni style ogres are cool, but things like that are generally a lot harder to come up with than "animal person".

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>No culture rework
Kinda expected it but I'd really like the remaining cultures that haven't been reworked to get something. Mechanically high/barbarian are good but kinda bland.

>>2339936
The cultures most in need of a rework right now (at least balance-wise) are Reavers and Primal IMO. I'd argue Primal is currently the worst culture in the game. They those are both DLC cultures, so I'm not sure if they're even on the list at the moment. You're right that Barbarian and High could still use a rework in terms of flavor and mechanical depth (and so could Industrious for that matter), but at least they're not as overtly lame as pre-rework Feudal and Dark.

>>2339955
I actually forget Industrious exists half the time.
Primal and Reaver are in dire need of reworks for sure but like you said as DLC cultures I don't know they'll ever be touched.

>>2339955
>>2339959
Reaver could use a rework, but I don't know that Primal needs a rework as much as it just needs buffs.

>>2339658
>bunnies
>jackalope horns even
Probably the one furry race I'd make more than one faction of. Every other fucking furry other than molemen I hate. Tiger men get a pass since they were previously in the lore at least
If I can't make convincing Mimiga I'll just settle to make Big Chunguses

>>2340556
>Every other fucking furry other than molemen I hate.
That's funny because the molemen are easily my least favorite. I like the frogs and goats myself. Undead goats in particular go hard.

>>2340339
Looking at the Beta patch notes, Primal did actually get some pretty substantial buffs it seems
>Quest reward buffs you whole army instead of just your Avatar
>Everybody gets a free terrain shifting spell at start of game now
>Primal Communion works on Mythic Units (all cultures get this)
>Only need three stacks to trigger Primal Fury instead of 5
>Shield guy gets a straight Heal 30 ability not tied to Primal Fury
>disengaging shot can go over obstacles, lol
>Charger gets a move buff and gains two stacks per attack
>Animist is finally unfucked, summon doesn't require Fury and starts with a one turn cooldown, heal now consumes fury instead of granting it but has a shorter cooldown

Is it enough? I don't know, but it's a good start.

>>2340905
Sounds good. It's not going to put Primal on my list of favorite cultures, but it should at least make their downsides more manageable.

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>>2340905
Earthshape should've always been a thing for primal. Those primal temples are too rng.

Blowgun unit still sucks. It needs a status effect on attack like marked, weaken or sundered defense so it could be a good combo unit with the rest of the army.

Protector heal for some reason doesn't have a cooldown or limited, so guess I'd have to playtest it to see what the catch is. Animist is okay, once per battle for the summon is a bit disappointing since it also still vanishes after 3 turns.

>>2340905
Though that said, it's overshadowed by the huge defense/resist overhaul in this patch, which basically qualifies all attacks as either physical or magic and then directs them to the appropriate defense stat to check against.

On paper this is probably a nerf to mixed damage channels like Primal Fury since you're not going to bypass defense with the elemental damage. But it impacts so many other things across the game that it's hard to gauge how it will shake out.

>>2340943
Yeah Blowguns have always been ass after like the first 15 turns because their damage sucks too hard for them to scale and they offer no unique utility.
> Animist is okay, once per battle for the summon is a bit disappointing since it also still vanishes after 3 turns.
Yeah it's kinda lame but it's still a powerful ability that you no longer have to cheese to get any utility out of. One summon for every priest on the field is nice, especially in early game battles.

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Also, thank goodness for xp rework. Evolve builds are very feast or famine if you don't get your battles, especially on High world threat and brutal Ai midgame empires. There's value in holding up your pets in the garrison till they evolve. Also, Aow3 exalted ranks are back! Lets fucking go!

Chaos reworks to push Magma Spirit and Balor down a tome tier are necessary. No reason a t3 unit should be at a t4 tome.

Defense and Resistance rework is fine. The latter is no longer the king stat in endgame.

I had a hankering for Ash sabertooth primal Chaos/Materium Fire playthrough again, so this beta is a kino time to play it.

>all units now have the same map speed
Ech. I get the their reasoning for this since it does make slower units more attractive, but it also sounds like dumbing down the game and removing mechanical flavor for questionable balance reasons.

>>2340943
>Protector heal for some reason doesn't have a cooldown or limited, so guess I'd have to playtest it
Just tried it, you can use it every turn, so yeah it's overpowered and likely not making it to live without a cooldown

>>2340896
I can elaborate more
I forgot about frogs since I didn't count them, scalie or whatever? Same with lizards. I did make a fun frog civ once and would again. Everquest opened the idea up to me as a kid. Lizardmen cruise by with a free pass since they were one of my favorites in AoW1 and thus pre-established.
The molemen in 4 just looked goofy to me, silly enough I made a challenge run based on that stupid ass Adult Swim show Saul of the Molemen I was also exposed to as a kid. Creating the most alien society of molemen I could come up with, amoral deep Dark dwellers, I created a wizard king named Saul to act as a moral man and educate them to greatness
I think I ended up making them wightborn and gave them something like Faetouched so they ended up looking really fucking spooky with glowing eyes in those skull faces

Now I'm thinking to myself a single line I will eventually make a faction around, Frogloks with Magelocks

>>2340896
According to the stats Triumph released a few years back, molemen are everyone's least favorite. They were specifically called out as being the least popular racial form.

>>2334970
That's depressing. I read a post by the AoW dev that they purposely made the game I'm balanced cuz its more fun and halflings/goblins are just supposed to suck.

>>2346703
That'd be funny if it was true, because Halflings are generally considered to be one of the strongest races in AoW1.

>>2347887
Dwarf leaders and heroes start with 1 extra damage, Cave Crawling and Mountaineering skills which together cost 20 skill points (2 whole levels) while Halflings get nothing extra over them. They have mostly the same race relations too. So why pick Halfling?

>>2340905
Giant king primal is gonna go hard I think with the terrain bonuses being so easy now.

why oh why did they have to remove unit templates
who in their right mind thought that you should be forced to have every single enchantment even on your tier 1 chaff?

Thoughts on the new content?
Nomads sound interesting, but I do wonder how well having to pack up and move every so often will work for them, since between free cities and other empires it already feels like you don't have a lot of elbow room sometimes. Also I feel like actually depleting resources in a game where resources don't normally deplete is likely to make them public enemy number one in every game.
The Astral Barrens sounds like a special layer of hell designed specifically for mystic culture enjoyers.

>I do wonder how well having to pack up and move every so often will work for them, since between free cities and other empires it already feels like you don't have a lot of elbow room sometimes.
like seemingly every other faction trait, this again depends on your map gen settings

>>2352746
I mean, obviously. But I'm assuming they won't be played exclusively with mapgen settings that are specifically designed to favor them. If nothing else, the AI certainly won't have that luxury.