>>2158824
buy ad

>>2158829
ok i bought one and made this thread now what

Thrones of Blood and Wanderer pack look interesting, as usual the last item is too vague to judge accurately.

>>2158842
Also a big boo to no new water/ice content.

Tome of Blood Rite: Perform forbidden and dangerous rites on your units to bleed your enemies and strengthen your allies.

Tome of Torment: Torment your enemies by turning their very actions against them and make your units empowered by pain.

Tome of the Crimson Reign: Embrace a forgotten and corrupt magic that empowers your high-tier units and has your faction embrace an ancient form of undeath.

>>2158824
Whats the new society trait do?

>season pass
>single player game
>>>reddit

>>2158824
Story pack sounds boring, I don't bother with campaigns and only play skirmish anyway. Workshop has tons of tomes too. Sounds like a nothingburger dlc
Nomads are a culture so they are the most important by default
Vampire will be a leader after all, maybe it's for the best. Looks like you will have World of Darkness/Warhammer Fantasy style bloodlines so that's nice

>>2159031
I agree, though I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and point out that both of the previous packs were deliberately obscure about what the final story pack would contain. The Eldritch Ruler in the first pack and the Architect Culture in the 2nd one were not advertised up front. I'm sure the Archmage pack will likewise holds some surprises though that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be something I'm interested in.

>>2159056
What's left even? I feel like we are nearing the end of the tank. The video implied Merlin is going to be front and center so it's a safe bet the two story missions are his redemption arc but as for content Im rather stump. They claim they did Vampires because of the communities so what other things are the fans asking for that isn't in the game?

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I bullied by friend into buying me a copy. How's the desync in multiplayer? we're gonna play with culture unit mod and region packs. AnyWays to avoid desync?

>>2159076
Water content for sure. And maybe some trolls/fairies. But I don't think they can milk this game much longer without touching diplomacy.
I won't be buying this one because for some fucking reason I her a random crash ever since Ways of War came out. Graphics start glitching, then the game gets rekt. Good game though. My favorite in the series.

>>2158824
if you give actual money for this paradox tier dlc shitfest you're a fucking retard
creamapi exists if you really want to throw money at tr*umph, or play multiplayer
>>2159150
it's not atrociously bad but it's getting progressively worse with each new game

>>2158824
i wonder if we can make V.V, Therese/Jeannete and Damsel?
And ofc the giga chads themselves Strauss and Jack

>>2158824
This games DLC is a joke, it's just surface level stuff that doesn't really fundamentally change anything and isn't worth the price they're charging for it. They truly learned fast how to be just like Paradox.

Pretty much, they make whole 40 dollar dlc pacs of TWWH3 tier dlc. They just add a new resource, tie recruitment or building to it - and call it a day.

>>2158824
Thinking about trying out this game, since it's on sale.

I've noticed it doesn't have a DLC unlocked like other paradox games.

What's all you Anons thoughts on it

Nevermore Cream API works for it.

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>>2159350
The base game, and faction creation is the main draw of the game. This is really a turn based RTS, and relies on build variety. IMO, you will be funneled into a certain type of build just to be viable but there are enough strong effects for you to exploit in every tome. You want to make busted units with your tomes, and destroy your enemy. If you don't, the AI/Enemy will get their own busted shit and fuck you up. The other victory conditions simply aren't more viable than military. The DLCs got fully paradoxitized, and are predatory and super expensive for what you really get. Cream API it.

Multiplayer is broken, don't even bother. Just go up against super hard AI, and see if your faction can hack it. Story maps are really challenge maps, and not tutorials.

I love the game, simply because of the build variety and role-play.

>>2159150
>>2159177
Wow. I was pleasantly surprised. I played with mods and over 40 turn on simultaneous turns, we desynced twice and it took 30 seconds to get back to where we were. I know they can happen during battles which would make you replay them which sounds gay but thankfully haven't experienced one of those. This is leaps and bounds from what I'm used to in total war wh3

>turned based real time strategy

>>2159391
I see, sounds pretty fun desu.

Does the AI ever manage to hold up late game or does it turn into a push over like Stellaris?

The battles also look rather fun as well.

>>2158824
>Vampire leaders

Finally I can properly recreate the Calabim in AoW4

>>2159391
>a turn based RTS
It's hard to believe how utterly retarded the average /vst/ poster is. How is it possible that a genre which, at least on the face of things, requires somewhat above-average intelligence compared to other game genres attracts these kinds of people?

>>2159460
nta, but Age of Wonders has been described as a turn based RTS for decades.

It's a reflection of the fact that compared to other 4x games, Age of Wonders is very fast paced and overwhelmingly military focused. The gameplay loop, even in SP is very similar to what you would expect in RTS MP games. You snowball as fast as possible and crush your enemy, farting around is pointless and usually self defeating.

>>2159508
Calm down faggot.

>>2159465
The AI can just give up and just turtle on their last settlement. What is okay-ish about this, is that diplomacy is pretty good, and the values that determine what the AI faction will do are plain and easily readable. So if an enemy AI is turtled up, and you no longer want to go to war with them you can gift them stuff; and get a truce to go do some other shit.

The AI, and infestations can be very aggressive mostly early game. From my experience, the has the ability to snowball too; but it can't outsmart you. So it typically gets recruitment cheats to fill out some armies.

>>2159621
I find that the AI cheats make them most threatening early and sometimes mid game. At some point late game the player will stack so many buffs that they can basically defeat infinite AI stacks and then it's game over barring time limits or alternate win conditions.

>>2159676
Pretty much. And this is totaly solveable, if Triumph just gave AI a build template to make their units somewhat competant with their own tome buffs they would stand a better chance late game. So far, no matter what "build" the AI hass - it just spams armies and low tier units at late game more than early game which is hilarious.

>>2159465
My most fun fights are the early and mid game. Late game is fun solely to see what busted tech tree options I can combine to outpace the AI, though, with the last free patch, you can actually give your custom factions set research paths, either for delicious lore flavor OR to try and give it as many meta picks as you want for a tougher opponent

You mentioning Stellaris makes me remember AoW4 fulfills an EXTREMRLY similar itch for my dumb brain. I like making custom faction shit, building make believe civs, and making them fight. Unlike Stellaris, I can directly control fights here if i want and it's fun flipping auto resolve defeats into victories

There's someone in here that believes that AoW has been described as a turned based real time strategy game for decades and that's fucking hilarious.

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>>2159843
That's me, and I look like this.

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>>2159391
>a turn based RTS
Can I get your context? As it stands you basically said the game is like bright darkness

>>2158824
1400 hours of ganeplay. After Archons the game has been crashing again and again due to some weird graphics driver error. I love the game but God damnit, they need to get their shit together. Can't even play now and they aren't doing anything about it.

>>2159855
based fat retard

>>2160189
It is straight up an incorrect statement, but this:
>>2159545

really, it's a statement about the games pacing. We know it's a 4x game. it's really a community joke, so if your autism can't handle it I understand.

>>2160235
So wouldn't the statement that makes more sense be AoW4 is a more fast pace 4x game that you are suppose to gain a victory in under 100 turns? Also it can't be too common for how little it's used.

>>2158824
>season pass
>Dog shit siege mechanics not fixed
>karma system not fixed
>awful clothes and mounts
at least they have the troon pronouns working, right sisters?

>>2159001
>People around here still think having a multiplayer-focused strategy game is a "good idea" given the poor standards gamers had over 10 years ago to the present days.

>>2158905
If you have 1 of all affinity then you gain mana and T3 Tomes have no requirement, and if you have 2 of all affinity then T4 tomes have no requirement or something like that.

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>>2158824
Give me a list of the best mods. And which ones to avoid. I honestly love bloat

>>2161444
Am I missing the edge to that? I'm pretty smooth brained but I feel having 1 of everything at start slows you down real bad in research and events, however starting a bit more even means by the time you could get the bonus you likely be already in tier 3. Finally I can't see the edge for all that work to get a good tomb as a side bar, ie Devastation build around with a side teleport spells.

>>2161547
Most of the Culture Base mods

>>2161686
the current edge is that you can't even declare your tomes ahead of time in the ai tome path with it because it doesn't accept that society trait as a prerequisite

i tried making two builds with it without actually playing any yet but it feels janky, maybe the good old "1 of each of the melee elemental damage enchantments" approach would work with it

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>>2161686
Long before this trait I already had this ruler, you can in fact just start with the bonus already going

>>2159162
>Water content for sure.
oh you mean that thing they said they were not gonna do?

>>2161992
>still no lesser tide spirit summon
>they even nerfed it before giving it
reeeeeeeeeeeee

>>2161968
I've tried a few but I feel like all the time wasted for it to be "useful" is just making problems for you and it's just not a good feeling. Astrological Diviners is like a mini game that has you watch your turns and get bonus for being timely with how you build and draft, and Swift Marchers is giving you an early speed edge if you watch your mana. But Empire of the Cosmos is just a massive bloat slow down of all you magic for mediocre resource bonuses and a chance to skip a tome that you are not really skipping for how much it slows your research and imperium unlocks. It just never felt fun and by mid game I was just done with it for the slog it was.

>>2162280
I haven't tried it, but Empire of the Cosmos sounds like the kind of build that only works if you have something very specific and normally not possible in mind. And even then only like, in MP because in SP skipping a tome in your epic build is an almost meaningless effort.

>>2162320
more like in sp you just use the map rule that lets you ignore tome affinities if you want to make a build like that

>>2162322
it's slightly different as that rule still requires the amount of level tomes (2 tier 1, 2 tier 2, etc) while Empire of the Cosmos ignores all restrictions. Meaning if you have all elements after the first 6 research you can jump straight to tier 3. In that example however you will be so slow with that level of research that it's going to take 8~12 turns to get one T3 tomb spell learned. I can only think of 2 T3 spells that would be worth that much slow down of research (Chrono Gate and Wrightborn) everything else is not worth such a serious slow down to skip the 8(ish) turns and tome skips.

I guess that's a question to ask: In this experiment with the trait, what T3 spells would you see as worth jumping the line and waiting 8+ turns for?

>Nvidia drivers update
>Game went from running fine to crashing every few minutes and having all sorts of visual garbage bugs
T-thanks. Can't even refund it since I've played the shit out of it.

>>2163991
I always have to refresh mods when I update the game, they usually fixes my bugs and crashes

it crashed a bunch of times for me too lately and i've never used any mods

>>2163991

Revert your drivers dummy

>>2165155
Didn't work. I've tried it all. No dlc for me.

>>2165644
i'm sure they'll fix it by the next update, a lot of people are complaining

>>2165932
Not sure about that. One of the Triumph guys on paradox forums said it's not happening because they don't know what's even failing and it's supposedly not on them

>>2166032
>only thing that changes is their updated
>suddenly a crash every hour
yeah that sure doesn't sound like their fault

>>2166033
In my case it started happening after I got Windows 11. I had literally zero issues before upgrading. Wouldn't even have upgraded if not for a delete system 32 tier fuckup.

>>2166038
well the absolutely only thing that changed is i bought the dlc and tried some games with the janky new society trait, i had zero crashes before and get about one per hour or two

and no, i didn't update my drivers or windows or anything else

>>2161219
>>People around here still think having a multiplayer-focused strategy game is a "good idea" given the poor standards gamers had over 10 years ago to the present days.
what?

>>2166044
don't touch the schizophrenia

>>2166043
Are you talking about the Graphics Driver error that causes visual snow and glitches or a different one?

>>2166048
just the random crashes that started happening this patch

>>2166062
After Archons I can't even play for 10 min without the game shitting itself. Even creating a faction. Is anybody else having this bug? When I get to select your ruler the game just breaks because of that "Age of Wonders 4 has shutdown due to an unexpected graphics driver error. (0x887A0006)"
It's infuriating.

>>2166067
no, my crash is during play

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>>2164901
>>2166033
>>2166043
>>2166062
>>2166074

>gets excited seeing thread has 10+ replies
>It's just fags complaining about crashes

Ummm.. USER ERROR!

>>2166129
Maybe we'll stop complaining when they actually fix their shit. Online got fucked since day one. And now SP crashes every now and then too. It's a good game but God damnit, get your shit together.

>>2158824
You know what they could do? A very simple thing.
Release a culture unit DLC for all existing cultures that adds extra stuff that would fill up some gaps in the cultures and adds even more flavor to them.
Like adding werecreatures to the Primal culture. And depending on your totemic spirit you follow, you get a Tier V werecreature that fits in (like if you are playing Primals that follow the Sylvan Wolf, then you get a Werewolf, but if you follow the Glacial Mammoth then you get a Weremammoth and so on).
I mean for some reason the Primal cultures having access to werecreatures would make an insane amount of sense.

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I want to start playing this game since all the streams I've seen looked really cool, though I have some concerns/questions:

>Some of the reviews mentioned the main focus is combat and expanding really does fuck all, is that true

>I've heard the game is pretty samey, meaning it doesn't matter what race you play it's all basically the same, is this true as well?

>I've seen "build variety" mentioned quite a few times but I know from expereince some games may have 400 different weapons, 800 pieces of armor and 1200 different skills but only a small handfull of them are actually viable, does that apply here?

DLC isn't an issue as I already have most of it, I guess got it a long time ago but don’t even remember buying the game. I pretty much only play Rimworld but want another game to play alongside so I don't burn out (again). I was gonna play osu since I love rhythm games but anytime I try and pick up one of those "skill" based games I invest a shit ton of time and effort into being good, end up still being shit then drop the game, so I figured I would skip the whole process and just jump straight to dropping the game. Thanks for asking.

>pic unrel

>>2166430
Races do not have race attached to them so yes they are the same technically.

HOWEVER

You can give them traits, society traits and culture. So if you want to have good pacifist feudal orcs who are weak you can have that. And if you want dark and evil butchery elves who can't use magic well you can have that. And if you want to have steampunk cannibal halflings you can have that. The sky is the limit.
Faction creation is 50% of the game for me. And it's pure Kino. You can further customize your faction by choosing different tomes of magic. Want to make Sauron? You got it. Want to make Zelda? You got her. Want to make Dracula? Well shit, you can, but he won't be an official vampire unless you buy the DLC. Which leads me to the second topic: DLC.

With each DLC update they also release a free update that has been changing the game a little bit more overtime. The free game without the DLCs has changed a lot and they've added so much more to it. But they're still fun if you want to get them.

Do you want pike and shot and fukken tanks? Empires and Ashes. Wanna be a Dragon? Dragon's Dawn. Are you a furfag who really loves animals? Primal Fury. Are you into tentacles ravaging a cute forest Elf? Eldritch Realms. Are you a fukken weeb? Ways of War. Wanna have giants? Giant Kings. Want to Paladin around? Archon's prophecy. Each one of them brings something new to the table that the devs weren't going to do in the base game but did because the cash kept flowing. It's honestly not bad. Especially if you get them on a discount. Last DLC sounds like it's gonna be pretty Castlevania inspired so I'll support them one more season. Triumph is pretty cool and the devs know their shit. I wish more games did this "Hey, liked our base game, we'll keep releasing expansions as long as people keep buying" without ending up like the fucking Sims.

The biggest downside was that worlds were samey and random. Now they aren't, or not so much.

Also game has mods. Tons of them.

>>2166430
my take on your questions
>main focus is combat and expanding really does fuck all, is that true
It's more one needs the other. Expanding is 100% needed to get the game going, if you don't have three cites going and growing by turn 25(ish) you are fucked in MP or higher difficulties in SP. That's more of the thing is you can't max mirco to win. Focus on just army and neglect cites and exploring? You're fucked. Focus on cities but neglect army and exploring? You're fucked. It's why the game feels as fast pace as it does, you can't let any of the 4 fall behind unless you play single player and usually on easy.

>it doesn't matter what race you play it's all basically the same, is this true as well?
That's the issue that the races can be turned into anything you want. So you can take the Orc "skin" and give them stats Elves have and their are no aliment issues so you can have Honor bound paladin Goblins. There is a lot of play diversity it's just very easy to make everything what you want (Dark Orcs, Ninja Orcs, Steampunk Orcs, etc)

>400 different weapons, 800 pieces of armor and 1200 different skills but only a small handful of them are actually viable, does that apply here?
Yes and/no the heroes matter a lot and the gear can reflect that. However their are some OP heroes such as Warrior that eat up others such as Battlesaint, so while all that gear can help different classes you'll likley just go for the gear that makes the OP classes work best.

This game worth it? And what DLCs should I pick up?
I need a new strategy game now that TWW3 is kill

>>2166692
It's a paradox game, try pirating to see if you like it first before blasting your wallet on the numerous DLCs.
But yes, it's addicting, clocking a thousand hours on Steam are rookie numbers.

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>>2166692
I think it's worth it. The combat is fun and the strategic map mechanics are generally good and not a horrible pain in the ass like some other strategy games. For me personally, I also just like that you can be an all wizard faction, because I like wizards and magic and stuff.
None of the DLCs are really necessary, I'd say. It's not like TWW where you have some DLC locked units for factions, and all of the base game mechanics changes that come with the DLCs are released in free updates that come alongside the DLCs, with the DLCs themselves essentially just being content packs. Personally I'd just play the base game first and see if you like it, then look through the DLCs and see if any of them have content that interests you. Or pirate them.

So do Oathsworn just suck or something

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>>2166692
Do you like creating fantasy civs to smash into eachother and make them fight?
That's kind of the main appeal to me

For everyone else, post your rulers, factions, or naming gimmicks you're proud of

>>2166857
Like really what am I missing with oathsworn what's their deal?

>>2166857
>>2166972
Oathsworn tier3 unit gets a new ability at Paragon and Everyone else also gets a bonus up to +5 damage. Their special buildings raise draft and gold that are both useful to building armies really fast.

My main problem is that Righteous and Strife subcultures are mostly redundant to High Culture, Primal - Ash Sabertooth and now Architect since they also raise the affinity damage with less restrictions. Harmony is still special with it's enpahsis on healing

>>2166692
>And what DLCs should I pick up?
All of season 1 pass is awesome. Dragon Dawn and Primal Fury is ideal if you can't afford them all.

Season2 is okay, but someone has to come last and that's Giant Kings and Way of War. Archeon Prophesies is awesome though.

I need a diplomacy victory condition.

>>2166430
Game is like fully turn based Total War in terms of pacing and focus. It's mostly about battles with campaign existing to add context to them, so campaign map is more 4x like and more indepth than in HoMM, but it's still gamey and not really simulationist. You need to be aggressive and try to win instead of only fucking around like in Rimworld

I think playstyle variety is great. "Cultures" are the closest thing to a faction here and they change your playstyle a lot.
You further personalize them with Species (Forms) traits like in Stellaris
And Society Traits
And with your ruler type (Champion, Wizard King, Dragon, Eldritch Sovereigns (Cthulhu), Giant King and soon Vampire) - Those aren't actually classes which are a separate thing, you can have a Wizard Champion and a Warrior Wizard King.
And then by picking different tomes of magic (tech tree)

But yeah, in general playstyle will always be focused on battles and war no matter what you pick. Faction creation and roleplay is a big part of the game. I love to set up my playable faction, then make enemy factions and make a thematic custom realm. Actually pisses me off that you can't continue to play after you win your game.

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There not being any mechanical difference between purebloods and hybrids is disappointing

>>2167130
They always stream when I'm away, fuck. That's the burger life for me
>Dark rework
Bitchin'

>>2167152
That's not a dealbreaker for me but still a minor letdown. Was wondering if there'd be mechanical buffs to either
So just a guess, pure vamp has most of the exclusive/weird vampire cosmetic options that might clash negatively or overlapping textures with existing stuff?
And hybrid will have less of that but the broad selection of all previous humanoid ruler options, just with vampire teeth slapped on?
That itself wouldn't be too bad. More visual design freedom compared to dragons, giants, and tentacle rulers at least

>>2167152
>>2167173
>Yaka is "pureblood" WK
>everyone else is a filthy hybrid
it all makes sense now

>>2167152
I wager it was looking over the popular mods are the ones that unlock the outfit/looks from Wizard King to Champion/leader and vice versa they just cut out the middle man and just made what they intended from it and an alternate for the people that just want a certain look/roll play.

Anyone else stills plays planetfall from time to time?
I like how the gameplay discourages war

>installed the game today
>picked some storm dudes
>set difficulty to easy
>dropped into game
>already have a city
>told absoultely nothing except "entering battle, here's your hero etc"
>click city
>told nothing about what the fuck am I supposed to be doing
>just satrted moving around the map and queuing some stuff up

Did I miss a tutorial or is it the paradox standard where you're just dropped in game and expected to figure everything out?

I'm not complaining though, the few battles I've done are fun

>>2167771
There should be a tutorial story map called "Fields of Rebirth"
Also I thought most UI elements you click on for the first time prompt a pop-up explaining it. They might all be getting queued in the question mark menu near the end turn button.

>>2163822
i don't think it should make you slower, the speed is based on only when you get the tome, not its tier, right?

>>2167630
i completely skipped it because it looked especially ugly

>>2167771
>conquered 2 cities
>absorbed another one
>expanded a bunch
>lost a good hero
>recruited a bunch more

Damn this game is fun. I have like 3 other heroes that I need to figure out how to make them so they can explore, I'm also dangerously short on combat units so I need to rush those. I will figure it out tomorrow though.

Why would you pick mortal champions as your ruler type?
>myh RP
weak

>>2167933
Minor boost to relations with free cities helps slightly if you're playing vassalmancer. I think Command is also better than people give it credit for, especially early on when you don't have much mana or good spells to use with Channeling Ritual.

>>2167933
>easier time vassalizing free cities
>minor governor boosts to growth/farms so your starting city grows quicker
>XP boost if I remember right
>command ability is legit fucking good in combat
>muh RP
I still think it's the weakest too, but there's clear benefits

Is AoW 4 good now?

>>2168403
Always has been
>B-but
Always has been.

>>2167130
>still no reaver rework
>still no flametanks
talk about disappointment...the new season also didn't mention any new dwelling, and we can't spread holy ground either...also no invasion scenario/alternative Military win either, i want to build up my forces and pit them against the incomming urrath forces and the 1st empire that defeats them wins the game like in planetfall, guess the new vampire hunter unlocks is going to make a ton of bloodborne fans happy.

How do you determine when to auto or manual combat?

>>2168653
You know that you can click autoresolve always and then only decide to actually play battle if results are not to your liking? I'm not even talking about savescuming, it's an actual qol they put into the game

>>2168689
Yeah I know, I just started playing the game and was curious as to when manual battle would be better than auto.

>>2168653
check if you lost units, 99% of the times when you lost a unit in auto-battle you will no in manual battle

>>2168698
Manual battle is almost always better than auto unless you are utterly overwhelmed with doing tactical combat yourself. Usually auto battle has more losses in units or just hitpoints than you taking care of your units in manual battle.

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>hero cap is full
>no idea where any of them are at
>game isn't prompting me to move them
>assume since I have them governing a city they're locked there and can;t be move
>turns out 3/4 of them are in the same fucking party

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What's your favorite culture?

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I have no idea I'm even doing.

>fairly certain I'm building too wide (annexing new places any time it's avaliable)
>cities constantly shitting out whatever building I put so I'm just going for defensives+teleporters now since I have no idea what anything means or what I actually need (I'm concerned with the "you didn't build this t5 so now you auto lose on turn 127" type shit)
>4 armies (each with a hero) none of which seem particulary strong (all under 1000 points)
>got pulled into a war with some underground molepeople
>absorbed and vasillized two of the mole places I captured since I didn't know what else to do
>had to save scum becasue one of my armies got jumped and I couldn't manual combat (they had like 60 units and I did zero damage)
>heroes constantly asking to change ambitions
>barely explored anything
>only on turn 88

I'm starting to get a bit annoyed, every turn is just a constant stream of stuff and I have no clue what I'm even supposed to be doing. Any time I've done manual combat it's an absolute slog because nobody does any damage and it seems like every enemy unit can attack 20 times. I maybe shouldn't have gone in completely blind. My only experience with 4x is 14 hours in Civ 6 and 64 hours in Stellaris which isn't really a 4x. I fell like though this is one of the games I'll actually put some hours into instead of dropping it before the 20 hour mark. The only other actual game I've recently put real time into is Rimworld.

>>2169095
Feudal for the archers and Oathsworn for the oath buffs

>>2169066
On the top menu, left half, there is a row of symbols. Those open information tabs. One is a hero tab, another is an army tab. You're welcome.

>>2167908
iirc it's based on three things, affinity, research income and order received.
Skills in a newly picked tome increase in research cost, about 25% a book, however they have a base line amount of required research points and your affinity effects the speed as well, it's very comparable to the Imperium tree. So say you have 5 in Shadow and a high research, you are likely learning other Shadow spells very fast but say you switch over to even a low level Order tome, well now the times are nearly twice what you saw with a comparable Shadow tome because you have no order until you read that tome, so the slow down anon is speaking of it likely referring to having lower affinities to get to that extra book, the only way I can think to "cheat" around that is to have a game with a crystal free city and get their first artifact asap but that's going to lead to early game mana issues unless you take other modifiers.

You can always tell how shitty something is in this game by how much you have to build the map around it, in order for it to work.

>>2169095
Feudal aristocracy to have dudes that keep up with my dragon from the get-go, Harmony oathsworn since diplomacy is my go-to playstyle

>>2169099
I'll say that AoW4 is among the more forgiving of 4x and 4x-style games. Usually damage isn't an issue unless you're heavily outmatched in unit tiers/levels or hero gear, and just to get the stupid question out of the way when you engage the enemy you're using 2-3 AP to attack with non-shock troops and troops that lack a single attack ability right?

>>2169095
for fun I enjoy Reavers and Tribal.

Reavers are just a great "fuck you, it's mine" flavor of play that it's satisfying late game to dominate the board. I like Tribal for the ability to just shoot stability high thanks to the special resources they have and the terraforming city structure, usually I go Spider or Mammoth.

Metawise nothing beats the Barbarians in speed and output, it's the easy mode of a game win.

>>2163822
>Empire of the Cosmos ignores all restrictions
It does not. Affinity only. Meaning you still need 4 tomes (24spells) read before you can gain any benefit from that part of the trait. It verges on garbage for what it demands

>>2169161
>You can always tell how shitty something is in this game by how much you have to build the map around it, in order for it to work.

This, Empire of the Cosmos is going to sooner make you lose than anything else if you don't have the map settings leaned to your favor.

>>2169162
>I'll say that AoW4 is among the more forgiving of 4x and 4x-style games
It is for single player for sure but in MP it's like fighting games where you have to lose lot before you get good at anything.

>>2169227
nah, you just play with people that are also beginners

>>2169099
You should be annexing provinces any time it gives you the option. Every new province gives a small stability penalty, but it's not generally worth worrying about too much. When you get your city to tier 2 you get access to the tavern and bath house buildings which increase stability, and when you get your city to t4 you get stability per population.
As for what buildings you need, it depends on your playstyle and needs. Food helps your city grow faster, production helps your city build faster, draft helps you recruit units from the city faster, knowledge helps you research faster, and gold and mana are fairly self explanatory. Defensive structures are only useful if the city gets attacked, so you can get away with neglecting them a lot of times beyond building walls, which ensures any attacking force has to spend a couple of turns to sieging before they can launch an attack.
For your armies, you want to be fighting neutrals as often as you can to get levels on your heroes. Just clear out every resource node and bronze infestation, and when you get a little more powerful bronze ancient wonders are also typically fairly easy to clear. It does help to look at what units they have too, so for instance if you see one with two lightbringers (which can mind control your units), you might want to save that one for later when you can kill them faster.
Keep in mind most units in the game can make a number of attacks equal to their actions points, so if you spend two AP to run up to an enemy you'll only get one attack while they'll get three attacks next turn since they don't need to move. In general it's better to let the enemy come to you, or at the very least advance slowly.

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>>2169162
>when you engage the enemy you're using 2-3 AP to attack with non-shock troops and troops that lack a single attack ability right?


Not sure what you are saying but I move my units in range and attack with whatever they have, whether it be a lightning skill or a melee skill.

>>2169265
>Keep in mind most units in the game can make a number of attacks equal to their actions points
>In general it's better to let the enemy come to you, or at the very least advance slowly.

>>2169331


Ah I've been rushing the enemy, guess that explains what I've been doing wrong.

>>2169331
Some units can attack multiple times in a turn. Look at the AP cost for your units' basic attacks; some of them will be a single orb with two empty orbs, and others will be a single orb with three partially filled orbs. These units have repeating attacks, and will do significantly more damage if you don't spend your AP moving and instead hold still. This is how your opponents get a pile of attacks.
The output difference is really obvious if you're trying to use battlemages or archers. If you move them constantly they suck, but if they stay in one place they shred

>>2169095
Mystics, always and forever. I love casting spells, and all me boys love casting spells too.
All three subcultures are really good but Summoning school Mystics are my favorite, since I like having a backline of mostly cultural battlemages and supports with a frontline of mostly summoned units.

>>2169095
Probably still High as my fav. Order can have many things, but just recently did they get more than one Spirit Battle Mage

>>2169066
>turn starts
>only the ruler stack is highlighted
>the rest of the heroes and stacks are going to move automatically at end round button unless i cherry pick each single stack
but why...

>>2169573
Might have auto explore on, the little star button on the top right of the army panel. If you click on an individual unit's portrait, it also allows you to move that unit or units independently of the rest of the army to separate the army.

>>2169099
only consider not annexing if you're already at -5 stability, because once you get to -10 you get a big hit to your resource production in that city, to the point you're making less overall than you did without the province, however if you're not using your whispering stone you can just plop it into your own city to improve stability and get around that (you should be doing this all the time desu, there are production bonuses when stability is high, and that's the low-key real reason why conquering free cities is better than wining and dining them)

heroes asking to change ambitions is a good thing, it just gives you an option if you'd rather do that with them than what they're already doing, you can decline

if every turn is overwhelming, consider playing a map that has lower intensity, like it's really overwhelming if you have regenerating infestations and other shit like that turned on

>>2169601
it more like "auto-move". don't like it
AND THEY STILL DIDN'T FIX THE KARMA SYSTEM
:/

>>2169095
i don't really have one, i have some un-favorites though, fucking hate primal for their stupid ticking buff mechanics (and i hate that they did that to paladin too), and i also don't like architects though i may begin to in the future since so far i was just turned off from them by their lame unit lineup and haven't explored the strategic stuff they offer

i enjoy playing feudal, dark, barbarian, high, and oathsworn in general, those are all good to me

i'm ambivalent about industrial because i don't like most parts of it that much but the scouts are so good if you want a ton of useless junk items for your dragon hoard, i've been kind of coping my way out of that by taking barbarian for savage strikes with my dragons these days though since that's a pretty good benefit for a dragon too

i'm also ambivalent about reavers, i fucking love magelocks but i don't like anything else about them that much

>>2169633
now that i think of it, it's funny that the two i'm ambivalent about, industrial and reavers, are the ones i tried and succeeded in making tier 2 units the core of my build, magelocks and halberdiers are really good

I would like to see High, Barbarian, Industrious, and Reaver get subfactions too. I doubt they will but it'd be nice. I wanna really like Reaver but I feel it's my least favorite culture at the moment aside from Dark and Dark is getting fixed.

>>2169621
>consider playing a map that has lower intensity

I'm literally playing the beginner map on easy. I wouldn't say it's overwhelming just a lot. It's like that friend about the thing they're passionate about and they just start firing on all cylinders. It's interesting but you're thinking "damn slow down a bit and let me catch up".

>>2169812
play a custom map with high world threat, regenerating infestations, umbral abyss, etc.

when you fail go back to the easy map and feel like it's simple and almost empty

>>2169633
I don't think I actually hate any culture, but there are some I like more than others, Let me see..
>Like
Barbarians, Feudal, Oathsworn, Mystic
These are all pretty straightforward factions that do exactly what they say on the tin and don't require any weird self-dickpunching to get around their limitations. All the other ones I have some level of reservations with:
>Dark
They're just shit. Presumably the rework fixes that.
>High
I like the theme of High, and I like playing them sometimes, I just think the concept of "unit is garbage unless you awaken it" is kind of tedious and underwhelming, especially in the late game where you are still relying on making sure someone has given every dude in your army a peptalk in the last two turns to keep them from going back to suck mode, forever. Unless you go pure Evil as High there is never any relief from the constant awaken spam.
>Primal
Part of me loves Primal, I love the theming, I love choosing my animal mascot and optimizing my climate bonuses, I even kinda respect their mid-lategame with a strong T3 pikeman and a combat bonus that actually kinda works when your units are tanky enough to not just die in one round. OTOH, I fucking hate how miserably weak they are early game, how nerfed their racial support is unless you embrace summon cheesing, their stupid racial quest that requires you to try and rush to claim a bunch of spirit havens that are randomly placed directly next to your enemies. I hate their stupid racial building chain that just gives you food. I've played a lot of Primal and I think the only time the early game isn't a miserable slog is when you completely ignore your earlygame racial units in favor of summons and/or a powerful ruler like a Dragon or a Giant.
continued next post...

>>2169839
>Reavers
Reavers have a cool theme and cool units, but I've always felt their intended gameplay loop kinda just doesn't work. The game wants Reavers to be this hyper aggressive faction that rolls over Indies early game to amass plunder and uses that plunder to continue snowballing, when in reality they are like pathetically weak until at minimum T2, even Primal feels more capable at T1 sometimes. I find the best way to play them is to mostly ignore their mechanics, and that's not a good sign. Also golems are still kinda just shit even after several rounds of buffs and Reavers without golems just doesn't feel right, IMO.
>Architects
I have two gripes with Architects:
1. They are OP as shit late game, like not even in a sweaty MP way, I mean they can literally just infinitely stack increasingly huge bonuses on all their armies, forever,
2. Their army feels gimmicky for the sake of being gimmicky. It's not a bad roster at all, but every unit just seems built from the ground up to be completely different from every other culture, and they're built around gimmicks that don't even start to come together until you've got at least a couple stacks of affinity. It's a very gamey feeling set of units compared to every other culture.

>>2169839
i like dark for the warlocks and knights, sure the weakness thing is a meme and the stability stuff is stupid, but the units are enough for me

the knights are pretty hilarious with some heroes with decisive command pumping them

>>2169095
Even though they feel like the OP hottest shit of the moment that utterly break the lategame, I have enjoyed Architects greatly. Their mechanics are entertaining enough I can see myself still playing them after a little nerf action. I just have to keep coming up with Greek names for new rulers

Reavers feel weak until Magelocks and Dragoons. I am satisfied with wizard guns enough to bear their burdens of sucking ass early game

Primal also sucks, but I have had unique fun combining their terrain/terraforming gimmicks with map conditions or giant King rulers to boost these literal fucking cavemen with strong economy growth. At least their spears are sweet ass jumping men

Vanilla cultures, I enjoy Industrious the most so far. Prospecting is amazing, bolstering is free buffs, solid crossbows and fuckoff shield units. Only downside is I hate how the Bastion helmet looks on anything not a dwarf, so I am encouraged to pick dorfs for Industrial factions forever

Oh right, I forgot Industrious. Industrious is OK. Good early game, explosive economic growth, only real problem is that the Bastion is just not solid enough to build your late game around. That and I always just want to play them as Dwarfs and nothing else.

Love this real-time turn based RTS strategy game, but I hate the IU

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Liking the game a lot so far. One thing I am confused about though is how the AI is so strong sometimes. I am doing a campaign on the realm called "Paradise" something. I think its from the Asian culture DLC or whatever. Anyway, it has like 3 AI that seem super juiced up. They have units with gold level xp medals and shit. I know in games like this, the AI has to cheat but it what way does the AI cheat? I just like to be aware because I don't want to be surprised by the AI literally hacking and fucking me over. Like I started a siege battle against a city the AI had no units in and within one turn like 2 armies showed up magically from the fog of war that I checked a turn before. Maybe I am gaslighting myself though but I can't prove it.

>>2169882
>Only downside is I hate how the Bastion helmet looks on anything not a dwarf
This literally makes me not want to play industrious ever because everything just looks fucking retarded wearing their dumb helmets. Its my favorite culture also but I never play it because I love making weird custom races but industrious never looks good on any of them. How could that ever be fixed? lol

>>2170107
Maps with preset scenario factions have those scenario factions start stronger than everyone else.
I don't personally know in what ways the AI can cheat, but I believe it's mostly resources and getting free points for score victories Gryffindor style. I know they used to be able to pull full stacks of heroes out of their asses, but that got patched out ages ago. It's more likely the reinforcing armies were in the underground layer or came out of a teleporter. You could always reload an autosave from a few turns prior and look for the armies. It's also a good idea to keep a few scouts nearby when sieging so that you don't get jumped like that.

>>2170111
I HATE that fucking helmet, but I can tolerate it on dwarves since it looks the least ridiculous then
I think there is a fair chance that Industrial may get different looking T3 unit options whenever they get their rework/update. Problem is the culture was one of the most well liked right out of the gate at game launch, so it may take a few more updates before that happens

After seeing the dev stream, I am at least looking forward to new Dark. The subculture we've yet to see sounds perfect for my death/decay nature shadow gimmick

>>2170168
Ah. I see. What are ways to go about victory also? I have played two previous campaigns and won both via beating the fuck out of everyone else. In my current campaign, with these juiced up AI, I don't think a war victory is feasible. I think thats the hardest part about this game for me is that I don't know how to win and what ways to win. To me, everyone is an enemy which is why I don't want to make allies because eventually I will have to fight them right?

What's your favorite ruler type?

>>2170208
One of the icons at the top left of the screen (I think it's the one that looks like a chalice but I don't remember off the top of my head) opens a screen that shows you all of your possible victory conditions and their exact requirements for the current map and everyone's approximate progress towards them. The game does have allied victory by default, so anyone you have an alliance with will win alongside you if you or they trigger any victory conditions, or if you simply kill everyone that isn't in an alliance with you. Just make sure you form any alliances you want before you go triggering victory conditions. Magic and expansion victories both trigger a countdown to victory at their final phase and anyone that isn't in an alliance with you will immediately declare war on you to try to stop the countdown. You also can't form an alliance with someone if doing so would immediately result in a military victory and end the game due to them being the only remaining enemy.

>>2170200
>>2170111
>>2169882
appearance alterations can delete helmets, i often let it happen with draconic vitality for my industrious orcs or whatever

>>2170249
champion and dragon, can't really get into the other three

>>2170249
Giant King. But Dragon and the default Champ/Wizard pair are also fun. Eldritch Horror is ok to mix things up once in a while but they're a little too one dimensional for me.

>>2170249
Eldritch Sovereign. I like the theming and they work great with my favorite faction, Mystic Summoners, since they give access to three additional magic origin units (including a mythic unit that isn't total dogshit, which the Astral tree normally lacks) in addition to being a magic origin unit themselves. I've also always found the dumb requests that free cities make of you to be very annoying, so getting the ability to spend a couple of thralls to effectively decline their dumb request and still get positive relations out of it is very nice.
My only gripe is the limited customization options, especially when it comes to colors, of which they only get like five to choose from for fuck knows what reason.

>>2170249
Giant King. They are really flexible to make lore for in my opinion. I also like Champion. My least favorite is wizard king. Maybe I just don't understand their advantages too well but it just seems like you make a wizard king when you just want to blast spells off. They don't do anything else well right?

>>2170361
Wizards are just there in case you want to be really gay

>>2170361
>They don't do anything else well right?
Not really, but spells are most of the game, being the best at casting spells automatically makes Wizard Kings top tier rulers.

Also it's a small thing, but Wizard Kings, unlike champions can be a different race than the faction they rule, which can be cool for customization and RP.

It's also just sort of the classic playstyle, rulers in the old school Age of Wonders games were all distant, immortal Wizard Kings by default.

>>2170278
You have jogged my memory on this, this is correct
This probably happened for other cultures, but I played a bunch of architects of different size with different research paths when they were released. Eventually they had enough stacking TF spells that the T1 gladiator helmets were gone. I only noticed this since I actually thought those helmets were kinda nice

Helpful, but it's an unintended solution that won't really change how I play, just a happy coincidence if it does happen. Bastion helmets at least don't trigger me to the point I feel compelled to steer my research to remove them ASAP

>>2170456
no, that was introduced in the worst game in the bunch, in the first and best game they were the equivalent of champions, so that's really the most classic sort of ruler

Do all faction cities progress the same? I just started playing but I've been rushing mage tower, stability items and such but if I play a completely different faction is it the same? Wouldn't that kill enjoyment of replayability, I mean I'm sure building up your city isn't the main focus but it's a thought.

>>2170560
Faction city building is pretty basic bitch, since the exploration and combat are much more focused on compared to city building
Different cultures have a resource building chain replaced with something different that gives an extra resource, it is not too special
Each culture gets an actual unique province improvement once your city is tier 2, and an actually culturally unique building once tier 3
Your biggest difference between factions is going to be your starting unit roster, their combat gimmick, and unique features like prospecting or collecting astral echoes or war spoils
Buildings don't feel entertaining to me since they're not really visible outside of your pimpin wizard tower. Province improvements do feel nice though, as they ARE visible, and may get arranged and re-arranged as better unique ones are unlocked

I assume I'm about finished with my first ever run. I have all my hero parties set on auto, just clicking whatever for production since everything is well defended, stable and there doesn't seem to be anyone who is against me. I'm basically 3rd place for everything. The map has been fully explored (that beginner fields one) and I'm not even sure what else to do in the game. For some reason the only T4 unit I can produce is that Ironclad one which is completely useless. I guess I missed something somewhere. Should I keep playing out the run or just surrender? I'm on turn like 130 and feel like the game is done.

>>2169095
I just started the game two weeks ago and went with Reaver because I like the idea of a pike and shot faction. Ended not engaging with the war spoil mechanic at all and ended up becoming The Empire from Warham instead.

>>2170682
That's unfortunately pretty typical. Reavers could really use a complete rework of their War Spoils mechanic.

>>2170640
I don't see why you wouldn't just play it to completion at that point, especially since you'll be nearing the turn 150 turn limit, since I'm assuming you didn't turn that off.

>>2169633
>fucking hate primal for their stupid ticking buff mechanics (and i hate that they did that to paladin too)
It's not as bad on battlesaint at least since you can potentially build stacks very fast, you choose when to activate it and it doesn't need to be at full stacks to activate, and it primarily heals which you usually want to wait a turn or two to do anyway.

>>2170640
>For some reason the only T4 unit I can produce is that Ironclad one which is completely useless.
Higher tier units mostly come from tomes and rally of the lieges (which get them from vassals and ancient wonders), have you checked your spell book and rally screen? Anyway if you're behind I'd just start declaring wars and seeing if you can win anyway. When I played my first campaign it said I was behind militarily but when I tried to fight I easily destroyed the ai.

>>2171042
>rally screen

I usually ignore that since I have my own units.

Are the reviews about every race just being a cosmetic and playing the exact same way true? I could understand 1-2 reviews but there multiple, there's also a ton of reviews with 500+ hours praising the game as the greatest thing ever.

>>2171056
idk hth

>>2171061
>hth

?

>>2171064
hth but idk either

>>2171056
Races are basically cosmetic chassis where you slap 2-4 traits on them to make them distinct. But an elf and human with the same traits will basically be the same as one another. The key differences come from culture and tomes where you get your unique things.

>>2171072
>tomes

Are there unique tomes or is it always the same pool you get to choose from? I know most games that offer "ton of options" most of those options do fuck all and there's only a handful of viable choices making everything the same no matter what.

>>2171083
I mean each tome is unique. But there's only so many in the game - it's a decent amount and they're spread through the various affinities though.

>>2171050
Well there you go, "I have my own units" is a mental block you should really try to get rid of to enjoy this game more, especially since having vassals is so encouraged.
Point still stands for tomes, though if you have a problem with the rally I could see you also having a problem with the units from tomes that need to be summoned through spells.

>>2171130
It's only my first play through. I realize now a few mistakes I made (maybe):

>To many cities (I had 5-6 and they were annoying to manage)
>Not using the rally
>Spreading my empire development skills out too much (I realized it directly ties into the signature skills)
>Not exploring enough before picking districts (there was a gold wonder not far away but even at turn 130 I still can't annex that area)
>Realizing very late I had like 4 heroes in one party when they all could have had their own army)
>Not making armies early enough
>Not just spamming lower tier units and instead waiting for higher tier units
>Not battling neutrals enough early (I am battling them now but the rewards are shit at this stage but would have helped earlier)
>Not clearing wonders earlier
>Spending too much time on a "war" underground (while I was running around trying to find cities to conquer with all my armies I could have been expanding)

This is just what I've perceived to be mistakes and will correct (maybe) on my next play through.

>>2171056
Races called Forms are identical to how they work in Stellaris. You pick what you like visually and then apply traits. They come with some default ones, but you can change them.
From Culture comes bulk of the variety - unit roster, how they function, campaign map features etc
>>2167092
or watch some faction and realm creation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO55RBA0bGM

>>2171083
Everyone gets access to the same selection of tomes, with the exception of the mini tome that comes with your culture. Tomes of tier 3 and up have affinity requirements that need to be met in order to take them, so for instance anyone COULD theoretically take the Tome of the Astral Mirror, but being a tier 4 Astral tome you need at least 6 points of Astral affinity to take it, so not every civ will be able to take it. In this way it encourages you to have focused builds instead of being able to just hop all around the tree grabbing all the meta tomes.
>>2171130
Personally I play in kind of the same way. I rarely ever use rally of the lieges because I prefer to keep my armies limited to my own racial units and specialized summons as opposed to mixing lesser races and random units into them. I started playing back before they made vassals actually do shit instead of just sitting around pissing in their cities and doing nothing, so I've always hated them and seen them as being huge wastes of time, imperium, and other resources that they often cost you with their petty demands you have to listen to or lose relations. For the longest time I stopped taking vassals entirely and would just raze or migrate any cities I captured, and doing so has its own benefits like more cities under your direct control and more money from all the razing.
Vassals are definitely actually useful nowadays and it's good to try out various different play styles, I just want to say that not playing the vassal game is a valid and viable way to play.

>>2171179
>Personally I play in kind of the same way. I rarely ever use rally of the lieges because I prefer to keep my armies limited to my own racial units and specialized summons as opposed to mixing lesser races and random units into them.
That's fair enough but I was talking more like the non racial units that your vassal just happens to have since high tier units tend not to be racial (I know you know this but I'm writing more for the new anon here). I recently had a playthrough where I got acces to a reaper pretty early from my vassal for example.

>>2171153
Don't worry about it too much, we're here to have fun after all.
>Not exploring enough before picking districts (there was a gold wonder not far away but even at turn 130 I still can't annex that area)
What do you mean by that? Did the ai take that land? Most new players make the mistake of thinking you can't annex wonders with outposts because you can't build one on top of it but when you make a workcamp in the outpost you get to annex one province, which CAN be a wonder so you can just plop one down next to a wonder and take it that way.

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>>2170640
>>2171153

I somehow won. Holy fuck.

>>2171201
Nice one anon, you made a pretty cool leader too.

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How hard is the campaign in this game supposed to be? I just did the gildercoil mission on the volcano map and HOLY FUCK was that hard. I attempted it three times. First time, I was absolutely raped by Karissa and the other guy. I didn't realize doing their quest would just give you them as a hero. I spent so long in that fucking Volcano man. Are the other campaign quests this hard? I feel like I did the intro mission campaign and the one with the islands and then they dump that super hard stuff on me. Am I just shit? II also play pretty heavy RP I guess. Like I will build the rulers I make to be in accordance with what I think represents them etc.

Any must have/try mods? So far I've just grabbed all the popular tome and map region mods off the workshop.

>>2171269
Are the tome ones any good? Only thing I dislike about mods in games like this is that the mods are usually overpowered as fuck.

>>2171271
So far I've only had two pop up from "Anya's Arcanum" and they seem to integrate well with the rest, could really pass as vanilla tomes. Nothing overpowered about them.

>>2167173
As long as Age of Fashion delivers we're eating good.

Eldritch are kind cool but also disappointing in terms of design though. I just wanted to be a hentai monster.

>>2171268
I got filtered hard by season 1 Grexolis. Veterans will remember. Basically a guy from bumfucknowhere triggered magic victory and you were utterly fucked unless your army was heading his way and close enough.

>>2171301
Are most campaign missions like that? It seems like you have to go into them with a gameplan geared to fuck over whatever giga AI is in the map. Like, is it prudent to make a race that counters whatever the strongest AI on map is?

Why is the hero customization so lacking? No way to change the color of the tatoos, no way to change the mohawk/bear color and the armor color does fuck all.

>start second scenario
>have to take down yaka
>few of his armies come into my territory
>they're already really strong at not even turn 20

>trying to attack city
>low risk battle
>defeat
>reload save
>low risk battle
>defeat
>reload save
>low risk battle
>defeat
>reload save
>low risk battle
>defeat
>reload save

I'm about done with this fucking game

>>2171476
>have 3 stacks on city
>bring in another hero
>still lose with auto
>shuffle the hero to a stack without one
>win

Alright what the fuck, I could have done manual combat but I have no idea what I am doing I really don't understand the auto combat win/lose decider though.

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>>2171476
>>2171479
I see why it was so hard now, that was the ONLY victory condition. I assumed you had to keep going.

>>2170816
Yeah, it's a bit pointless but it might just be my play style. I only go to war against another faction when my forces are already buffed to hell. You don't get war spoils from killing neutral forces, and by the time I start fighting against other players, there was no real use for the war spoil.

>here bro, you said you'd protect me in this defensive pact right?
>okay but if you accept, you'll get a -40% modifier to your imperium
>why? well, the people attacking me have a grievance on you because you're stronger than them
>no, nothing else, that's it, you literally never interacted with them
why is the diplomacy system such complete dogshit

>>2171476
>>2171479
auto-battle isn't random, if you reload without changing anything you are going to get the same results

>>2171479
>I really don't understand the auto combat win/lose decider though.
The autocombat actually just literally plays out the battle using AI control on both sides, there's no complicated tricks or calculations going on behind the scenes.

>>2171479
If you press the "watch replay" button on the results screen, you can watch the battle the AI fought for you in autoresolve and see exactly what it did.

Why is chaos the only relevant path for a dragon? Stacking huge crit chance is the only meaningful thing in their trees. It doesn't even matter if you're playing a spellblade or warrior, or even something janky like an elementalist. You just always want that crit chance because what else are you going to do with your dragon? Not hit things hard for no reason?

>>2170516
yeah, the game could really use appearance control for your army, for example why the fuck are my elves who are supposed to all have the same pitch black hair color randomly sporting red and blonde hair even though i explicitly set it to black? i fucking hate it

>>2172079
>>2170516
oh, and it also sucks that when i set alterations to not be visible they're still visible in other players armies who have my species, including my own vassals, that should really be fixed too

>>2172061
Last time I did a dragon I did shadow and I thought the lifesteal it gave was pretty good

>>2172122
doesn't match up to getting up to 100% crit on everything including your breath

is shadow dragon's life steal even any better than the one you get on random rings you can wear?

>>2172145
I don't know, but hitting your breath attack or your tail swipe and getting all your health back is pretty good.

>>2159391
I really fucking want AOW style faction creation and heroes and what not mixed with Total war style battles. I find the battles the weakest part of the game.

How Min/Max'y do you have to be to play this game? I like designing my own races and such but I know some of them are probably hot garbage. Is that okay? I still want to win sometimes I guess even though I only play against the AI.

>>2172176
pretty sure they nerfed how that works in the latest patches, only letting life steal happen once and not for every target? maybe it's an exception for dragons though

anyway, either way i'd rather hit for 150 and kill practically everything than for 75 and still leave most things alive

>>2172243
>have to
you'll only have a hard time if you set difficulty to high and make the map inconvenient for your build

you know, the same shit as in practically every other single player experience

>>2158824
I only got this game because of the recent buzz over the new content. Thought I'd like it, but honestly after 70 hours it just feels like a tedious slog. I don't feel like the choices are rewarding enough. I feel like I'm adding up a bunch of mini buffs that I don't even notice because half the time you can just auto the combat. There's some cool ideas, but after playing a bit of the first AoW I think I'll just play the old games instead. I also don't know how you anons stop yourself from just replaying the same way every time. I find it tough to care about the town buildings, so I often ended up building pretty much everything each time.

>>2172362
Literally a you problem. You are an autistic min maxer unfortunately. Its terminal.

>>2172362
Desu I don't know why you'd want to just autoresolve every combat, the combat is the best part.

>>2172362
>I don't 'get' game
If it doesn't click for you, that's fine
The buildings in the town are an afterthought to me. At least province improvements are visible. I'm playing this to create whatever race of midgets I feel like multiplying for the week and help them dominate tall folk. Different research paths give me different ways to make enemies explode
>playing AoW1
Another game I love, just for different reasons
What do you like about that one so far?

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Why can I never change the base color of my armor? I know it's supposed to match your city colors but why? Can I change my city colors, what determines it?

>>2172407
I just looked at color mods and everything is so out of date it's not even worth using.

>>2172362
i actually have the problem of needing to somehow stop myself from trying to make all sorts of different builds constantly just because, and instead enjoy a few games of the builds i actually like

what's a better way to make halflings, the halfling form that has a few vaguely unique features or humans with spawnkin that get to wear shoes

>>2172449
Spawnkin gives you really terrible gorilla proportions instead of just making you small in addition to just being pretty bad statwise, so never spawnkin

>>2172379
I find the combat is best early game before there's too many units.

>>2172396
AoW1 leans on comfy fantasy tropes. The combat feels more satisfying to me. I was sold as soon as my halfling flattened a goblin with his sling. I like dungeon crawls in crpgs like Baldur' Gate. AoW1 feels like a dungeon crawl. AoW4 feels more like Civilization.

>>2172494
Big 3x3 battles can be a little overwhelming sometimes but I still think they're fun to do. I really enjoy the combat mechanics in this game.

Really love how the AI just materializes these fuck huge armies out of nowhere and you just instalose combat. Should have listened to the god damn negative reviews

>>2172518
>let me just camp my units in enemy territory and wait for my other units to arrive

Yeah I'm dumb

>>2172518
Dumb bitch plap plap plap

If I got a hero/skill that can summons does that hero party need to have an open slot in their party to use the summon on the battlefield or no?

>>2172541
No, you can summon as many extra units as you are able to, there's no actual in-combat unit limit, only the initial overland map army limits.

>>2172561
i think there technically is a limit, it used to come up in some of my more ridiculous mirror battles in the early days of the game, maybe it's 30 or something

>>2172518
You need to be scouting, bro.

>>2172711
Engage in the game? Heavy voice: NO

>>2172518
Whatever bullshit upgrade you can get tge AI can get as well.
Just on the influence tree alone there are three buttons that summon armies instantly and Imcan think of at least 4 spells that summon whole armies instead of a single unit.

Can you force game to spawn only player created races?
Or create ""canon"" races that always spawn instead of randomized?

>>2172752
Yes , on custom map advanced settings there are options for these things.

>>2172755
even for free cities and other lesser races?

>>2172763
You can force race skins (ex humans ands elves only) and cultures but not combos you made because those include leader and tomes

>>2172765
that is lame then

>>2172767
It took you three posts but you managed to get dissapointed , well done!

>>2172768
I expect nothing so I wasn't disappointed

>>2172771
Clearly you expect something if you keep posting google-worthy questions

>>2172775
I expect some not cringe person to respond and I was let down
Clearly the world end soon, now fuck off

>>2172781
That's what google is for

I read in a combat guide about "stacks" pretty much a bunch of heroes and their parties together. Am I supposed to be moving my heroes and their parties in a group around the map? I've been having them all spread out exploring and clearing shit but in the few hours I've played that's fucked me over quite a few times. Am I just supposed to be using a single scout or w/e to move around the map and keeping my armies together as much as possible?

>>2172942
To add on, I also read that your cities are supposed to be constantly shitting out units what are you meant to do with those units when your heroes parties are full? Just move them near your hero stacks and replace stuff as needed?

>>2172942
Stack is just another term for army. A stack would be one of your groups of 1-6 units represented as a single piece on the strategic map. Early on when you're just farming marauder guards and you aren't at war with any major civs you don't really need to stick together and imo it's better to spread out so each of your heroes gets their own supply of marauders to eat for exp. You should always try to have someone at least sort of nearby to your cities to help defend against possible attacks, because free cities and infestations will be attacking you pretty much all game. When you're campaigning against an enemy civ you usually want to group up 3 of your stacks to use as a main fighting force, while keeping a stack or two at home for defense or out continuing to explore and gain exp. It's a good idea to keep a couple of scouts nearby to your main armies to watch for counterattacks, and just building a few scouts early on and having them auto explore the map is helpful for having general map knowledge later on.
>>2172943
Personally I only really recruit as needed. You shouldn't need to be pumping out units non-stop unless you plan to be at war with the entire map at once.

>>2172943
>>2173226
You do need to recruit an awful lot if you play multiplayer and autoresolve every battle against the AI. Otherwise you only really need as many units as you have heroes to lead. Maybe a few more to guard your cities if there's a den you can't clear just yet or a resource/node you want but have no hero nearby to claim.

>>2172242
Give me
>Skyboxes
>Larger amount of units (editable on faction creation)
>Big units are still single units.
>Proper sense of scale.
>More kino scenes for castles and sieges.
>Better effects. Dlc stuff is way better than vanilla.
That's it. I don't need more.

>>2172518
This really annoys me even if they do it legit. I don't like how it fits with the three stack army limit. You end up in situations where it just gets tedious unless you're not taking any losses at all. You basically end up doing hit and runs or tagging along a pile of spare units all the time. I mean not a problem if you outright stomp them but that's rarely happening in my games.

I bought the game and dlc and now I can't decide what to play help me

>>2173490
Well how do you want to win and whats your fantasy for your ruler?

>>2173490
You're telling me your inner child doesn't want to play with the cool dragon? Pick industrious dwarves and smaugmaxx.

>>2173490
>race
human
>origin
champion
>class
warrior
>culture
feudal

yup its gaming time

>>2173517
This but unironically. King Arthur's here to bring peace and prosperity to this world, motherfuckers.

>>2173517
>>2173558
This but playing with slithers/dragons to larp as a Targaeryan and make use of that xp bonus

>>2173558
What race would le frence from the Monty Python be in this scenario? High frogs?

>>2173508
>>2173515
>>2173517
I made some samurai ogre people with a mortal champion ruler. Not sure how well the combo or samurai work but it's OK so far.

I love vampire shit

>>2173569
>Your summon is a hamster and your castle smelt of elderberries
>High Frog at a Nature focused King Arthur

>>2173676
vampires don't poop

>>2174230
what do you think black pudding is

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This was fun. I'm still playing on easy, was considering stepping it up to normal but I'm not sure I understand the game enough.

Can girl vampires drink their own period blood and have the same effect as normal blood?

>>2174450
Corpses don't menstruate, bwo.

At what point do you guys start making tier 4 and 5 units? I hate the influence upkeep.

>>2173558
>King Arthur
why do people simp for this legendary failure?
>fucks and impreg his sister and makes incest baby with her
>get cucked by his best "friend" lancelot
>one of the most loyal knights tries to defend his king's honor and gets killed by said best friend
>arthur allows lancelot safe passage after he cucked him and killed his most loyal knight with no consequences
>loses his kingdom
>gets killed like the worthless dog he is in the end by unga bunga niggers
>in the end he achieved nothing
Playing as Merlin i at least get i but arthur? No

>>2174604
Usually I make a couple for my leader's stack and that's about it. Might add a few to other armies if I have a second front or imperium to spare. It also kind of depends on which ones you have. Mirror Mimics are pathetic if they don't have a t4/5 to mimic, so I'd usually never recruit one except maybe to go after powerful gold ancient wonders and infestations, for instance.

>>2174671
>>fucks and impreg his sister and makes incest baby with her

If anyone is gonna fuck your sister may as well be you.

Can those Tier 1 and 2 units be leveled up to tier 3 and 4?

>>2175098
No, but getting experience levels on a T1 buffs their stats to where they can typically take on units a tier higher than them comfortably, whilst still being very cheap. They miss out on any special abilities that a higher-tier unit has, and if that high-tier unit is also allowed to get enough exp the gap gets much wider (which is why they need far more exp). Or you just get the Mighty Meek enchant and have your T2s rip apart even T5s, but that can need some investment for a full build.

Otherwise, some animals, most dragons and elementals have the 'evolve' tag that lets T1s turn into T3s (dragons go from T3 to T5) if they get enough exp.

>>2175098
Not unless they have the evolve ability. Slithers feudal knights and a good number of druid beasts do this.

I am doing a map that has a bunch of gloom rifts in it for the first time. I found a gloom infested city in the rift but the units inside of it seem jacked. What do you get from killing these guys? I have my hero and a stack of Militia men but I doubt I can take them. If I leave them, they will just grow uncontrollably right?

>>2175372
That sounds like an 'umbral dwelling' which is like a free city (doesn't expand like a normal faction but does send out armies) but full of gloom monsters. If you siege and conquer the city it will be destroyed and under it will be a sanctuary spot you can claim to build a special gloom outpost that can claim up to 3 regions in the Abyss. The resources in those regions are jacked compared to the ones on the normal map, and the sanctuary regions will protect your units from attrition and let you replenish so you can explore the Abyss more and defeat more marauder stacks for more loot.

There can also be gloom monster infestations in the abyss which work the same way as normal infestations, and also have sanctuary spots under them.

>>2158843
Ice builds are already super OP

>>2166430
IMO it feels a lot like Conquest of Elysium with a tech tree and diplomacy

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choco angelic women my weakness.
>>2175372
having an umbral city vessel is better since they can expand to get all the resource node and magical item.

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>make my goblinoid race specifically non-green because I hate green goblins and orcs etc.
>hmm leafskin kinda seems cool. I wonder if it will put leaves all over my race or something.
>it just turns them baby shit green
FUCK!

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>>2175556
yeah but sucking off eldritch terrors sounds fucking homosexual.

>>2175613
Trick'd
You can preview how enchantments and transformations will look on the unit tab of the encyclopedia, and you can toggle their visuals off somewhere I don't remember, I think in your spell book

>>2175098
>>2175288
an all of the little t1 elementals

>>2166430
>>Some of the reviews mentioned the main focus is combat and expanding really does fuck all, is that true
i know it's way too late to answer properly, but this myth irks me, so here's my answer to it

early game economy is like 90% from running around and killing neutrals, mid and late game economy is when your cities dominate it instead, so you're fighting in order to build up your infrastructure that will carry you afterwards

>>2158824
The paradoxification of strategy games is a travesty.

>>2175623
Yeah it's in the spellbook under active spells, there's a little eye icon and if you click that it disables the visual effect.

How do I actually win in other ways besides killing every other ruler on the map? I am finally playing as a "good" ruler and I wanted to try specifically not killing everyone. But ultimately I do have to kill everyone if I want to win right? Even in my normal game here, 3 of the 6 rulers are evil. So I may have to kill them anyway I imagine. I am at turn 60 I think. I believe there is also score victory but when does that trigger? Is score victory the most common way to win?

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Holy fuck this game man. I tried a silver ancient wonder with 2 skulls of difficulty and fucking lost. It was "Cursed Barrows" and it had 2 fucking mythic units in it. A death titan and Mythic Dread dragon or something? I had my champion and 3 paladins, war banner and a tier 2 ranged arrow unit. I was close but died because the enemies can spawn near infinite skeletons but I can't bring my second army stack in? What is even the point of doing wonders then? Never doing one again unless its bronze. I can only imagine the hell that is the gold wonders. It only ever seems worth it to do these if you have insanely strong units already anyway. The one stack limit fucking sucks. FUCK!

I've just started playing the game and doing the story realms. All my runs, the 3 I've done so far, I've gotten pure good. I feel like playing an "evil" race then all the NPCs will gang up against you, is that true?

>>2176573
They are mid-game Wonders that confer powerful bonuses. The troop limit is so you can't cheese the fight with a bunch of garbage troops of course.

>>2176651
But then the wonder cheesed me with a bunch of garbage skeletons. Crazy. Maybe its just that one kind of wonder that fucks like that. It was cursed barrows. The death titan was breaking coffins and letting out more skeletons. Also, I was getting morale fucked by some enemy in there. My champion actually routed due to massive morale loss.

>>2176691
filtered

>>2176388
The game has allied victory enabled by default, so if you ally a bunch of rulers you can all win together. If you open the quests panel at the top of the screen it shows you all your possible victory conditions and their exact requirements for that specific map.
>>2176573
Ancient wonders can be annexed to your cities and provide some resources including imperium, which there aren't many sources of, in addition to the prize you get for completing the battle. Some ancient wonders provide special units that you can recruit via the rally of the lieges as well.
Just bring someone with a strong army and pay attention to the enemy army composition and the battlefield effect. iirc with the undead one if you break the coffins that are all over the arena, it'll spawn undead at that location, so you want to avoid using AoE attacks and taking poor accuracy shots with your ranged units.
Also not all ancient wonders are created equally. Even within a certain metal grade some are easier and some are harder.

>bloodless units can now bleed to death
power creep

>polearm unit whose signature ability is having higher than normal upkeep cost
>crappy skirmisher that can only use its ranged attack once every other turn instead of a real ranged unit
>support that deals a whopping six less damage than every other support in the game for no good reason
>suppressing barrage as your starting spell which deals an absolutely pathetic 10 base damage with an equally pathetic 30% percent base chance of immobilizing enemies, while also being more expensive than other comparable early game spells like devout radiance or fulmination
Why the fuck did they give Reavers such a terrible early game?

>>2176848
I thought they are shit early because they can snowball with their special resource? Or maybe not.

>>2176388
It will depend on your settings but usually by turn 100 at least one AI in my games starts doing one of the alternate win conditions. From my experience, the victory conditions in order of frequency are(assuming all are active):
>Special conditions - Either story or from real traits. Usually will happen by accident even if you aren't aiming for it, earliest I had was winning peace in 30 turns
>Seals - AI is actually fairly active at progressing this one
>Military - Both the standard kill'em all and if allied victories are on somehow the other AI is allied with the world
>Expansion - By the time military is wrapping up you can normally be ready for this as well
>Magic - You kinda need to aim for it
>Score - Its the fallback for a reason

Keep in mind even as a non-aggressive ruler, theres specifically some ruler behavior types that refuse vassalage and alliances, and I also think that if there's only one ruler not in your alliance they'll also refuse or are biased against alliance talks

What are the best classes, especially for godir? I've noticed that charge warriors on mounts just tear shit up.

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So this game is a mix of Heroes and Civ?

>>2176848
This is bait right?
>polearm unit with the stat of a tier 2 unit but you get it tier 1 and it's 2 gold cheaper than it should be
>skirmisher with a built in immobilize and mark for the culture that gets damage bonus from marking targets
>support that can outright steal units, as well as blind and mark enemies
Literally one of the strongest culture unit rosters in the game, they shit all over most others
They even gave matchlocks a single action attack because brainlets kept complaining

>>2177059
Warriors have always been top tier
Ritualists used to be hilariously OP for the summoner mystics but got hit with the nerf bat and had all their things distributed among a bunch of new classes
Rangers are normally pretty shit but kit them up with a bunch of tier 4 equipment and I actually think they're one of the best classes just because of how oppressive they can be with their ranged firepower - so they're good companions to Giant Kings
Dragon Lords are always strong
I've never really been impressed with Elderitch Sovereigns, feels like they get shut down hard by control loss immunity

>>2177199
>Elderitch Sovereigns, feels like they get shut down hard by control loss immunity
This, I tried one and was completely unimpressed.

>>2177094
Pretty much

>>2177199
>>2177265
I've found them to be decent controllers that later on evolve into nasty late-game artillery units with some control/disruption on the side if you pick Elementalist. Otherwise warlock for doubling down on debuffs and some summons maybe can work. The last round of hero skill reworks were not kind to them though, I agree. Also hoping we get some new head/body options in the next expansions, they have way too few. Really just feel like a wizard-king sidegrade unless you go full Abyss magic and then grab Tome of the Archmage to turbocharge them.

don't like giants and eldritch sovereigns because their customization options suck

dragons and humanoids are cool because their customization options are good

>>2177199
>>2177265
Control loss immunity is only a problem if you spec into the Mindbreaker signature skill. Madcaster and Fleshweaver don't rely on control loss effects and their only other control loss ability, Delirium, can still be used to hit someone with max stacks of both sundered defense and resistance even if they're immune to the insanity effect.
With the right build they make powerful long range battle mages and most of their forgotten tome abilities are pretty good.
They bring some decent strategic map utility as well, able to boost an army's movement rate, a city's draft, and your research, in addition to providing two army damage spells, one of which being able to hit multiple armies at once and both of which dealing percentage based damage instead of flat damage like other army damage spells, as well as a small handful of pretty good summons, including a mage bane which if I'm not mistaken is the only way to actually get one. You also get the special ability to decline free city requests in a way that still gives you positive relations with them, in addition to being able to being able to literally just tell them no if they try to declare war on you.
Personally, I'd say it's best to just build them taking their special innate abilities and ignoring their class abilities for the most part.

I am afraid to play the campaign in this game. The volcano level to get the gildercoil thing almost fucking broke me. It seems you have to go into the levels knowing exactly whats going to happen. I hear it only gets harder from here on out too. FUCK! I should at least try though. The difficulty skulls on the campaign missions scares the fuck outta me though.

>>2177577
it's not that bad, some maps are just checks to see if you realize you can go for win conditions other than conquest

>>2177592
Ah yeah I normally have issues with that. Killing everyone has always been the way I felt I have to use. I shouldn't rely on score victories though right? Like in most games, you could win well before score victory if you knew what victory was within your grasp?

>>2177196
Mercenaries have the exact same stat line as every other t1, just with the addition of high maintenance to ensure that you have to pay a premium for a unit that isn't sub-par and a push ability that would only be helpful if you actually had a ranged unit to push enemies off of, and even then only if that ranged unit relies on a 3 ap ranged attack because any other ranged unit can just take one step back and take a 2 ap attack round.
Their skirmisher is simultaneously a shitty ranged unit and a shitty melee unit, only being able to take a ranged attack every other round and having around 20 less hp than your average t1 melee with no shield or polearm bonus to boot. The damage bonus from marked would be good, except that with no proper t1 ranged unit and a support that deals ~33% damage less than everyone else's you're missing out on a shitload of damage by default, so your damage bonus is really just working to overcome the damage you aren't dealing.
Their support's ability to steal units is incredibly limited early on since it requires war spoils which requires you to pick fights with free cities or empires to get more of, and Reaver's t1 is barely strong enough to pick fights with fucking marauders. Their blind only has a base 60% base chance of actually proccing, meaning on average you're only applying it about half the time and, unlike marked, their army doesn't really benefit at all from applying blind. At best, you can blind an enemy ranged unit so that it doesn't eat your essentially pure melee army alive, so again all you're doing is working to overcome your army's built in shortcomings.
Magelocks and dragoons are both pretty good, but I'm talking specifically about their early game, and you're not guaranteed a magelock or a dragoon at the start of the game unless you take specific culture traits.

What are some early game pitfalls one should know about when playing this game? Like I just learned recently that buying population with your imperium points is apparently a bad idea. However, why is it a bad idea? It was never explained to me why its bad.

>>2177874
each extra province decreases stability. You need some higher tier buildings to offset that.
(unless of course you play undead and ignore stability)

>>2177859
>Mercenaries have the exact same stat line as every other t1
Now that's just not true. Compared to the other racial T1 Polearm units (not counting Foedal Militia since those are crap), Mercenaries have +10 HP and +2 Defense. Polearms are also a very good unit type in general, so the fact that some shield units (which suck outside of specific skills like Barb Shield Bash) have base stats that are close to the Mercenary's is fairly meaningless. The pushing effect of Drive Back might be situational, but it's also one the hardest-hitting single attacks on a T1 racial, outside of the Honor Blade which is in the same boat of being a T1.5 with increased upkeep.

>>2177894
I'll be fair and say I missed their extra defense and I thought some other t1's also had 75 hp, but with that in mind the only t1 melee they have 10 hp and 2 defense over is Mystic's arcane guard at 65 and 1 defense. Every other t1 melee has 70 hp and I'm pretty sure 2 defense. Honestly, I'd argue that any other t1 melee is in a much better position polearm or not simply due to having a supporting army that isn't pathetic. Ranged damage is really powerful and greatly benefits your melee front line by peeling models off either the enemy front line, meaning your front line takes less retaliation damage from the enemy front line, or the enemy backline, meaning your front line doesn't get shot to shit, and Reaver's t1 army is almost entirely lacking in ranged damage. With no ranged support your mercenaries have to simply grind through the full strength enemy front line while taking full damage from the enemy back line the entire time, so they're going to be taking a lot of damage compared to anyone else's t1 unless your ruler is pulling overtime. Keep in mind also that having the shield property gives you +3 defense against non-flanking attacks passively, so any shielded t1 effectively has 5 defense compared to the mercenary's 3 as long as they're not being flanked. The damage from the shove attack is decent, but it only beats out their normal melee at 1 ap, such as if you had to run a long distance to get into melee, and if you did you're just hindering the rest of your army by pushing the enemy further out of range.

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>>2171476
>>2171479
Master manual combat, the real enemy of this game is the auto battler AI. The game gets much easier if you play manual and you start to feel like a god with the shit you can pull.

>>2174449
iirc what changes is how much the AI "cheats" they start with more resources, more units, higher levels, even more cities and the like as well as how aggressive they are with the over map and 4xing things. Unless you set the programing to "forgiving" they don't fight any different in combat, an easy AI will put up the same amount of fight as hard, they just lack more things to throw at you.

>>2178059
That screen shot actually makes me think I should also play manually more. God damn! I think the main reason I don't fight manually as much is because the big siege battles stress me out badly.

>>2177969
the shove ignores 50% of armor meaning it can do actual damage in the late game unlike basically every other t1 infantry

>have 14 hours in game
>on 3rd scenario
>wow this feels the exact same as the last 2
>close game with no intention of reopening it

It was fun while it lasted

>>2178231
based retard

As someone who dislikes taking vassals and using rally of the lieges, I absolutely hate that all but two of the order empire tree's skills are based on you taking vassals and using rally of the lieges. It's especially annoying for oathsworn of strife, since taking vassals is an oath breaking action you basically get nothing out of that one point of order you're forced to have.

>>2177874
it's presumed you have a plan for your empire tech tree and that you should be spending it on that instead

desu you should be even more frivolous and just buy pantheon heroes with it

>ai declares rivalry on you
>instantly gets his leader killed afterwards
>you now can't rival him back because he's dead

>>2178281
you still get units in the rally from wonders, so not all order in useless without vassals

>>2178281
just play an aristocracy build with heavy rallying and work off the habit

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Why does this game stress me out so badly. I don't like not knowing how dangerous or not dangerous the AI is sometimes. I always feel under leveled and have a fucked economy where losing an entire stack of dudes sets me back so far that I feel like surrendering. Like I can't ever take a major loss otherwise its game over. Really enjoying the game though. Some of these campaign missions are hard as hell though. I am on the mission with the undead elves in their world and one lifeless woman south of me wants to fuck me up. Her husband wants to fuck me up and some woman living under ground wants to fuck me up.

What's the best culture if I want some aggression in my play style?

>>2179235
Easily barbarians. Their outposts rocket you around the map and their shield dudes having a stun lets you roll up on people hard.

>>2179232
Go and meet your Archon designated woodelf wife(ally) and focus on sundrens missions and go full doomguy on the spider bitch.

>>2179238
Hmm.. wasn't aware there was even a wood elf. Maybe they are the first ones I met there. When I log on I will check. The lifeless woman south of me wants to dunk on me and I am not sure why considering she gave me the quest to try and release her husband. Seems weird. I did do sundrens missions of dunking on her brothers ghost though. What I want to do is focus on the spider woman underground but the lifeless BITCH is knocking on the door. I was considering dunking her first just to get her off my back.

So am I playing them wrong or does primal as a culture suck?

>>2178059
>Master manual combat, the real enemy of this game is the auto battler AI. The game gets much easier if you play manual and you start to feel like a god with the shit you can pull.
The cost of playing manual is that it's a huge timesink. You'll restart the same battles a dozen times trying to win when severely underpowered or against enemies with bullshit traits like charm/brainwash. It turns the game into a bit of a slog compared to just absorbing your losses and focusing on economy.

>>2178281
Even with zero vassals you can still get really good units in your rally from claimed wonders and such, so it's not a complete loss in that regard. But yeah I do agree that the empire trees could use a balance pass. Order, Nature and Chaos all have issues IMO. Part of this is also due to pacing issues, i.e. nodes that typically unlock past the point where they would've been good.

>>2179239
Yeah there is another woodelf that insta allies with you and she doesn't like either melendis or meandor
As for meandor try not to go to war with him you don't even need to fight him but you will need to meet him at least.
After that and doing sundrens mission you get a "vision" that's fake from the spider elf focus your attention only to her and once you beat her meandor is free from her corruption and he will contant you and you can finish the story map there.

>>2179248
Primal the worst-designed culture in the game, especially now that some of the more basic ones (like Feudal and soon Dark) don't suck anymore. They've got some neat gimmicks but those all have activation conditions that keep them from being genuinely good. For example their T1-2 roster is mediocre at best (T3 is solid though) which means they have a weak early game, which is a pretty big deal for any culture. Their gimmick is supposed to help them with that, but it takes more effort to kick in than any other faction's gimmick, so in effect their early game is just weak. Compre how it takes several turns on average to build up enough primal rage stacks to activate the ability, compared to something like High's awakening which you can activate on turn one. The same goes for their terrain gimmick. It's not bad and has some sweet potential synergies, but needing to expand onto those totem things in order to get the most out of it restricts your expansion options in a way that no other culture has to deal with and opens you up to being fucked by map generation RNG. The one thing they're good at is their sacred animal summons, but that's been nerfed so you can't drop them on top of the enemy anymore and even if it wasn't nerfed it's still not good enough to make up for being subpar in all other areas of the game IMO.

It's definitely possible to build around their weaknesses to some extent, but compared to other cultures they're just not good.

>>2179259
Uh oh. I am already sieging his wife's throne city(undead woman in the south). Is he going to get pissed at me if I kill his wife?

>>2179264
Don't primal cultures have some sort of super eco strategy involving giant lords and the terrain changing stuff?

>>2179326
nah, even he understands that bitch should have stayed dead

>>2179328
Yeah but that's the only viable way to play them.

Favorite hero class?

>>2179508
don't really have one

i prefer spellblade on dragons

elementalist is okay for champs/wizards i guess

i like rifle rangers too

warrior is effective but boring, deathknight is similar

ritualist and battlesaint are annoying

warlock seems pointless

>>2179508
I like the idea of battlesaint but not really sure how to build them

>>2179326
No he doesn't care about her, considering the lore about her, she's a monster you can not blame him
Somethings should stay dead she is one of them

>>2179508
My favorite hero class WAS mage. I don't like elementalist nearly as much. They're missing some of the good shit that mage could get, and I don't like a lot of the things they've gotten instead. Also, needing to spend one level to unlock your basic evocation and then another level to make it not dogshit is rough early game, especially when mage just unlocked the good version with one point and then could spend one more point to make it even better, like how it still works for spellblade.
>>2179511
>warlock
I haven't played a whole lot with warlock, but hex pact is pretty good. With a range of 8 you can pop it on the strongest unit of the enemy's army turn 1 and start weakening them. Warlock's main thing seems to be shitting out negative status effects, which is pretty good. Honestly going forward I might start using warlock instead of elementalist.
>>2179512
I haven't played battlesaint a whole lot either, but my last game I had my ruler as one and went with the warrior path and the upgrade that gives 1 fervor when attacked, and they were able to do a lot of work with just that. I'd put him in front to build stacks of fervor, then activate warrior's fervor to get his HP back and a gain a bunch of strengthened and just go to town.

>>2179776
it is annoying that more and more of the skill trees are pure filler choices

Beta patch and patchnotes are out
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/gargoyle-update-open-beta.1863843/

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>>2179894
>mystic summoners
Holy fuck that nerf bat hit them hard
RIP