Most of the negative reviews are complaining about the game crashing on them, but I've been playing for almost three hours straight at the moment and I haven't had any issues. Worst I've seen so far is some minor visual glitches like a hero's weapon turning invisible until I exit the equipment screen. Still, caveat emptor I suppose.
i think that most people are just hating for no reason , for a 50 euro game in 2k23 i don t think you re getting less than people who bought civ 6 or humankind on release , plus that after 2 years this game is gonna be like twice better
Mostly technical issues, eating you CPU/GPU cycles in single and multiplayer as well, constant crashes etc.. usual shit. You can torrent it, this way you can at least beta test it for free.
Yeah? Meaning that in the imaginary but not infeasible scenario wherein the game was no longer crashing, it would be fun to play.
As opposed to a game which crashes frequently but still be bland without the crashing, or a game which does not crash but is unfun regardless.
Well you have to be blind then because with a 1070 and 3700x at 1440p the game is pretty much never running at 60 fps. The entire game stutters like a motherfricker when applying/dispelling buffs during combat.
I think it's a weird for a game that's essentially a static map to run like this.
idk but look at that 49,99 expansion pass. you know that it won't even last that long and they'll start releasing dlc that "doesn't count" for whatever reason.
If I have one complaint about the game, it's that easy mode is WAY too easy. Like it's not just easy but I literally can't lose. I realize I'm to blame for this myself, but I figured I'd start on easy to get used to the game. It's completely braindead this way. I hope that medium and hard actually provide a meaningful improvement.
For me, its one of the best and intuitive UsI i can remember from games of the last year. i do agree it could had helped having some graphic flavor, but i prefer a simple userfull UI than a nice looking one where i cant find shit
Yeah whats up with all those similiar souless interfaces and graphics? TWW3 interface looks similar, like fortnite dogshit, same oversatured colors art style also similar to league of legends or apex legends menu, I dont know how to describe? Why is that?
>It's fun if your rig can actually run it if you can't get fricked poorgay(or get a steamdeck)
If it works it works if it don't it don't, simple as that. What are you expecting to have for only $60...the nerves of those peoples...
>Basically a paid beta >Much better than Planetfall and feels more like an AoW game >That said, everything feels ultra homogenized and race choice essentially doesn't matter beyond aesthetics. >Shockingly shit performance to to the point that it's impressive. Somehow runs significantly worse than TWH3. I'm not getting any crashes though. >Porn modders are going to have a field day with this game. >AI is moronic
I have an RTX 3070 + Ryzen 5800x and while I can get a good framerate, the game completely rapes my GPU and CPU in the process. It also crashed after literally 15 minutes of playing it.
Fricking ridiculous how awful "AAA" games have gotten.
I can play planetfall on medium. Question. Can i run aow4? I wish i could because on paper (making own race, faction, leader) is my autismo wet strategy fantasy dream.
Crashes aren't my issue. It's just extremely bland and boring. Unfortunately I left the game open while I went to cook dinner and I've gone over the 2 hour mark so no refund. Will check back in a few months to see if it's gotten any less boring.
Fricking wild how much time I spent in AoW3 and yet it seems to be regressing as a series.
tbh the only performance issue I've noticed is the intro credits lagging a bit and taking time to render properly, but other than that the game's been working fine on my end.
Most of the mixed reviews seem to just be your average Steam complaints about how lame and cringe it is that modern games run shit on someone's NVIDIA 170 potato graphics card. Definitely do think some optimizing on cinematics and graphics loading could be done to alleviate it though.
>>Cant change your units look or add mods to them
That's what enchantments and transformation spells are for. They're the fantasy equivalent of Planetfall's mod system.
What's your cpu usage, cpu, resolution and fps like?
For me in battles it was 50% of my 5800x at 1440p while I had fps locked to 72 (with half vsync). Which is obviously insane. What's the CPU even doing?
>What's your cpu usage, cpu, resolution and fps like?
Around 40-50% with an i7-9700F. Standard 1920x1080 with the default game settings, and so far it's been running at a stable 60. No real major issues both in and out of battles.
>Unicorns leave rainbow trails
That's not gonna get old real fast at all. The shimmer from 3 was more than enough.
Other than that a bit more Planetfall feeling so far than I was hoping.
could see garbage optimization from mile away, why the frick does a civ type game with average graphics overloads you GPU/CPU 99% on static map and has requirements higher than cyberpunk2077. Those Black folk knew it too people were complaining about high requirements so they changed minimum just before premiere.
I've had two driver crashes in 4 hours so I assume it's once again morons not updating their drivers after the system tells them it was a driver issue.
On my old GTX 980 I had crashes of the display driver all the time. Unless I put it into debug mode, which disabled the native overclocking. Then it never crashed. No updating drivers helped. Sometimes shit is just weird.
Man this is Stellaris all over again. The customization is wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle. I can larp as ANYTHING but the actual mechanics are all +10% to whatever soulless modifier stacking. Actually fun and unique spells are few and far between.
Heroes are probably the worst offenders. Holy shit are those skills boring, I'm not even excited to level up it's so bad.
Thank you for your feedback. Paradox really appreciated your business, in the meantime (between one crash and another ) try to have fun!. But we promise our loyal customers and the franchise community that all technical issue will be soon fixed in the incoming patch (date yet to be released).
>fun and unique spells are few and far between
aow3 was like that too, it was mostly tactics game with buff spells nothing like Master of magic or even homm3 in terms of spells.
I really don't understand how you can lose so much creativity in game design when all the creative things were already done before and you would just have to adapt to the new game. It's like complex game design isn't allowed to be done anymore. Everything gets streamlined down to its blandest denominator.
The game wasn't even released and it was a top seller on steam. Why peoples buy games without first read a review or listening to the feedback the game is receiving? Too many people are stupid and with too much money to waste. Games publishers know this very well and they can't care less. They can make great games if they wanted, but why they have to?
i ended up taking tome of warding and being able to declare a unit as invincible for a turn has been pretty fricking insane.
I really don't understand how you can lose so much creativity in game design when all the creative things were already done before and you would just have to adapt to the new game. It's like complex game design isn't allowed to be done anymore. Everything gets streamlined down to its blandest denominator.
lots of babbys were saying planetfall was too complicated.
not sure why they dropped dots having secondary debuffs. maybe they thought debuffs in addition to lowering damage with figure deaths was enough, im not in love with that mechanic.
>lots of babbys were saying planetfall was too complicated.
lol frick no. The game's main criticism was that it was boring and in some way inferior as shit compared to AoW. In no way is Planetfall ""complicated"" unless you came from nipshit """"games"""".
Yeah I think so far 3 had better overall unit designs for the non-monsters. I miss my heavy cavalry with full armor.
Also missing some guns or other industrial bits like the landship, unless that's hidden as an upgrade somewhere.
AoW2's map graphics are just visual noise compared to AoW1. More detail, but none of the style.
>Do not trust your lying eyes!
Mmmm, no.
I will give you credit for not masquerading your opinions as "facts" using non-arguments like "cartoony" or "overdesigned", even when using such sophistry like "visual noise"
literally works on my machine. get a job, get a fricking PC. if I can live in a third world shithole and afford a pathetic 3060ti, you have no fricking excuses. your piss stained barely chugging 1050 is not relevant anymore in 2023 and it's time to come to terms with this fact
I've played for straight four hours, got no crashes and I've fun so far. It makes me wonder how long will the game take because so far I'm finishing my first tier III tome and preparing to wage war for the first time.
I liked 3 for being able to sustain like 12 domain/city defence buff spells and just slap down anything that wasn't 3-4 endgame stacks, but so far I haven't seen a single such spell. In fact they seem to have removed any sustain spells that target anything other than units. What gives? No buffing your territory/city, no debuff the enemies. Why would they rip these out even planetfall had a ton of them and they were great to add another level to the strategy.
Crisis averted esl troon we can shut the thread down now. the schizophrenic trannies that post actually submit steam review can get raped viciously but a pack of elephants
There's a setting you can enable on custom maps which makes you unable to settle new cities, but significantly increases the growth cap for your capital. Combine that with stuff like [...] and you can basically make a city the size of a continent.
Based, thank you so much. I might save up to buy it.
There's a setting you can enable on custom maps which makes you unable to settle new cities, but significantly increases the growth cap for your capital. Combine that with stuff like
There is, you have to unlock it first though. I think it's called perfected artisans
and you can basically make a city the size of a continent.
Well, first victory, played on normal, overall was pretty easy, last computer opponent just spammed massive hordes of units that only fed my army of balors. Wanna try necromancy and astral now.
I almost kind of miss the way you could run out a unit's action points from 3 and get constant flanking bonuses by alternating who attacks from what direction. Still loving the game overall though. Are calvary units different from shock units? Haven't seen any calvary yet, just shock units with big swords. And any tips on how to play as fast as possible, in AoW 3 I kept playing 200 rounds games on maps that were suggested to only take 40 turns.
Also piggy backing on these questions ,
piggybacking off this anon: when should I start placing cities generally?
I think you should try to place your first outpost on a resource node or near a wonder about 2-3+ tiles away from capital city. Then more stuff spread out a bit more. I think you want to hit your city cap as fast as possible. Cities being closeby isn't a huge problem so long as you don't surround your capital in every direction.
Bros how do I get more souls? The soulwells are paying out at a trickle and the mobs hardly give any souls, do I pretty much have to raze cities for the big payout and my skelly armies?
There's nothing wrong with the old AoWs at the end of the day, this plays like Planetfall but in the fantasy setting and with a different tech tree approach.
There's nothing wrong with the old AoWs at the end of the day, this plays like Planetfall but in the fantasy setting and with a different tech tree approach.
pretty much. I think so far I still prefer 1 and 3, but it's not bad either, just more Planetfall with some other bits. Units in particular seemed to be a bit more lackluster than in 3, which is a shame.
If you're not huge into it, obviously don't get it now and just pick it up later if you want to, as usual.
>plus that after 2 years this game is gonna be like twice better
But it will also have 50 DLCs by then
If they are going with the Planetfall route they will make few DLCs and then stopping before making the game too overconvoluted and bloated with mechanis. Paradox is only the pubblisher.
The thing I liked most about AOW3 was unit diversity and being able to get special cool units from non-playable settlements (fey circles that gave unicorns, dragon settlements, giants, archons...). The fact you can queue units separate from buildings makes it seem much more fun and not nearly as slow when building armies.
How good is 4 with unit diversity? How different is it from AOW3?
Can you make heavy infantry? Every vid and screen I've seen just has units wearing loose clothing or maybe some awkward fitting scale armor.
Is there actual cavalry? Again, haven't seen any.
What exactly incentivizes you to take the commander hero over a wizard king? Spells seem incredibly powerful, maybe even necessary. Every vid I've seen has been a wizard hero.
Visually the style seems to be more early medieval/fantasy stuff rather than the later things we saw in 3. Also pauldron core, but that's not strictly new. >Cav
Feudal and Dark get Knights, there's also one other knight. Beyond that, not much actual "charge in" cav beyond your hero. Scouts are the other cavalry unit, which are mounted archers. >commander
Far better looking armor/clothing options. And that aside you get boni to relations and gold, the Wizard gets magic mostly and can double cast once per battle. Depends on how your culture is set up otherwise on what makes the most sense to take.
tier 3 unit of every culture except barbarian is a cavalry unit
theres a tanky melee dude at tier 2 for every culture except barbarian who has it at tier 3 instead
spells are strong but i played wizard king once and struggled massively with economy compared to champion but thats just 3 maps so far so i cant say for sure
>only Dark culture has an actual full helmet
Guess i'm going dark,devoted to good and choosen uniters
Even the description for this combo is pretty neat
"even though these guys look evil as frick but they really want to bring in order,justice and goodness to all"
anyone know how to make new enemy leaders and or factions quick like in aow 3 and PF?
starting a new game and quiting it everytime gets boring really fast >crashes
i bought it from GoG and been playing it since 8 hours and not a single crash here,might be a steam issue?
Yeah that's what I thought I read or heard somewhere before.
Air Galley and Juggernaut when? Firing broadsides was way too satisfying for how situational it was.
Yeah that's what I thought I read or heard somewhere before.
Air Galley and Juggernaut when? Firing broadsides was way too satisfying for how situational it was.
>Empires and Ashes: The empires of mortals resurge after the devastation brought forth by the Wizard Kings! In the Age of Wonders 4: Empires and Ashes Expansion, players fuse magic and steel to unleash devastating war machines to drive the Godir back into the Astral Sea. This full expansion, slated for launch in Q4 2023, includes a new Culture, new Tomes of Magic, new Empire Building options and a new Story Realm.
While we're on that, Primal Fury better add centaurs and satyrs back in, along with some similar fey type stuff. I know it's just gonna be dog furries or something, but I want to believe.
>players fuse magic and steel to unleash devastating war machines
I bet 10$ that it will be boring magitech, mechanical golems and constructs
No Gunpowder units
Look like AI for neutrals and Godirs is different.
This is not very smart tactical moves, but better than regular "move in close group" behavior pattern.
>unreadable muddy mess problem
Only "unreadable" there is current buffs/debuffs since we have only icons but no list, so need to check stat manually every time.
You guys look like never play strategy games with your "muh unredable" homosexualry.
>take away the icons and the units are practically invisible >take away the icons
Yeah, you fricking NEVER played strategy games.
Go back to your /v kid.
you can easily see whats where in that screen unlike
And there they also split support/bm units so my cavalry can't block 2 of them and neither get bonuses from allied units on side.
without massive icons it barely distinguishable from background, i guess its still an improvement in aow3 icons were hard to see too and you had to mod them
1 year ago
Anonymous
>you can easily see whats where in that screen
Remove icons and you will se just nothing.
Go back kid, go back.
1 year ago
Anonymous
you should go back and see an eye doctor you blind homosexual
1 year ago
Anonymous
It's you that homosexual who cry about unreadable mess, so follow your advice.
1 year ago
Anonymous
one is easily readable while other is a fricking mess you disingenuous homosexual
1 year ago
Anonymous
And you only who have any problems with readability blinded braindamaged homosexual.
1 year ago
Anonymous
>backpedaling moron whos having problems seeing units in hoi3 is calling others blind
save oxygen and have a nice day homosexual
>completely misunderstands the argument >gets needlessly confrontational >delusional about his own hardcoreness >tells others to go back to Ganker
Pottery.
1 year ago
Anonymous
>in lack of argument went to greentext
I accept your admission of defeat
There was once a trend towards reducing UI and icons as graphics technology improved to make them unnecessary. morons like yourself are the reason why progress has gone backwards: now every game is full of them and UI/UX 'designers' get jobs adding even more.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Nah here is the real story:
Art director ignores needs of gameplay and has no zero plan for visual hierarchy. "More detail, everywhere!". Then last minute they try and use ui to compensate causing a huge shitshow of icons and hud.
only other 4x I've played for any amount of time is Stellaris and endless legends.
This feels like a cross between EL and HOMM been having a pretty good time so far.
So many cool non buildable units, looking through the encyclopaedia. Can't wait for roster increase mods and hero model/ability add on mods using them.
We don't know at this point. Could be they add different dragons for different affinities, like red dragon for Chaos, gold dragon for Order, bone dragon for Shadow, etc.
Well i feel like t4+ units useless same as in Planetfall since they come online too late.
And generally game dynamic the same - with start t1-t2 army clear guards around, w8 until required t3 and then steamroll enemies. More difficult since enchantment weaker than modules but anyway.
>There are mods already adding form/race specific traits that don't change with mind/body selection
Damn, modders are working fast on this one.
Makes me kind of excited to see what the modding scene will look like in a few months.
Waiting on the ones that add more hero skill options and hero transformations. Want to turn my lich hero into a reaper and similar for other builds. I imagine it would work around the mount slot. And I need an item market or forge mod.
So would it not be incorrect to say that this game would be good to start getting into making mods as someone who has never done such a thing before? Was mostly thinking of starting with new hero skills.
Old games don't like alt tabbing that much.
For some reason I could never quite get into 2, not sure what it was, but it didn't feel quite as right as 1 and 3 did.
Not necessarily. Shadow demons from AoW2 were insect looking race from other dimension, so they might come back in that eldritch dlc together with shadow realm.
It feels like content has been cut which is my main gripe. I'd rather have day one DLCs, you greedy homosexuals, than have to wait years for games to be complete. I ain't gonna live forever.
Basically, yeah. At least when going demon the game asks if you want to apply cosmetics to your main character, with undead your cute vamp waifu turn into an ugly ghoul.
>when going demon the game asks if you want to apply cosmetics to your main character, with undead your cute vamp waifu turn into an ugly ghoul
That's not the difference between demon or undead, that's the difference between champion or wizard.
Champions are of the same race as the people they're leading, so the same transformations apply to them. A wizard of a different race doesn't have to do that.
Yeah, this is boring. Unit variety sucks and spells/skills are mostly just low digit modifiers. They once again played it too safe and obviously a lot was cut and unfinished.
Fingers crossed for modding though, with a large scale roster overhaul this would be great, there's a solid framework to work upon.
AOW3 got an absurd roster via a big mod, even if a lot of it was recolours and flavours of existing units, if we're lucky someone is gonna go all in again
So far my only issue is that within the affinities themselves there isn't too much build variety, so mono builds are kinda boring. They should release an extra tome for each affinity tier.
Also I've noticed that you pretty much only benefit from recruiting units outside your culture once you unlock the ability to give anyone your cultural ability.
The espionage focus, intel and vision advantage (your units hidden + true sight), the debuff stacking, and emphasis on ranged attacks because of a weak frontline.
>The espionage focus, intel and vision advantage (your units hidden + true sight),
Mono dark but it's not as good. >the debuff stacking,
Things are surprisingly even debuffs wise I feel but I guess mono dark again. >and emphasis on ranged attacks because of a weak frontline.
I think green has the best ranged units.
But honestly it’s all very debatable because all the different "factions" you can choose from are a lot more interchangeable and harder to distinguish.
Welp. After playing the game for over 13 hours I just had my first CTD. I thought I was one of the lucky ones since theg ame ran almost perfectly on my rig, but I guess it was only a matter of time.
Still, one crash in 13 hours isn't that bad, especially since it autosaves every turn so I don't lose much.
Yeah I’ve had two crashes and both happened when the game was trying to load or execute something and I kept trying to put more orders in so I'm assuming it got overloaded and gave out. Nothing since I stopped doing that, feel like the crash claims are a bit over exaggerated.
It's fantastic, but the pacing could use a bit of finetuning IMO. It might just be an issue with my playstyle but I feel like building cities is too fast and recruiting units is too slow.
>but I feel like building cities is too fast and recruiting units is too slow
There's unique province upgrade where you get +5 draft per attached wood province.
But easiest way is just spam summons where you need instead of w8 3-5 turns for recruiting and another 8 turns for travelling.
So what happens to your rulers in the pantheon if you decide to edit them later? Will their pantheon version be updated? I noticed a lot of that shit is still buggy, like editing a ruler saves them as a copy.
>oh Chaos looks like it will have some sort of clown themed tomes huh >one (1) (uno) clown unit
Someone mod a new one using the reaper model with new textures please thanks.
What are some units with fun mechanics I can get? So far magebane antimagic, the little astral fricks that go invincible on hit, nymph seduction and gremlin turn around are stand outs for me.
The ones on top of the list are story realms, should say in the subtitle.
No, the 'story' realms are just random maps against a specific boss, nothing else. How I miss the writing of HoMM, it was so wholesome, starting each campaign and reading those walls of text.
I think they were going for a blank slate approach here, like you're meant to make up most of the lore of this world in your head. Not even units even have any lore tied to them. Only ancient wonders and other special map features have any world building, like archon blood pools.
Not sure if this was the right thing to do honestly.
>they just made Planetfall again.
Conquest of Eo, despite being a very cheap side project, somehow managed to do the whole freestyle map with an actual story, but this one didn't.
I think they were going for a blank slate approach here, like you're meant to make up most of the lore of this world in your head. Not even units even have any lore tied to them. Only ancient wonders and other special map features have any world building, like archon blood pools.
Not sure if this was the right thing to do honestly.
The reasoning IIRC was that few played the story of 3 to completion so they just made Planetfall again.
I miss the writing of AoW1. That was what really set it apart and made it good, and they ended up throwing it out to make a multiplayer MoM clone with AoW2. And then they decided to make it a generic fantasy 4X for AoW3. I'm glad the game is finally finding an identity again now, but I wish they would have included good writing in that identity. At least there's Songs of Conquest, which has a proper storyline, but it has comparatively very boring gameplay.
>the 'story' realms are just random maps against a specific boss
Have you actually played them? There's quite a lot of story and dialogue in these maps. The first one is painfully bland but it gets pretty decent after that. I admit, not on the level of HoMM but definitely a lot more than "just random maps against a specific boss."
Cultures would benefit a lot from having multiple fashion/armor selections outside of mounts so you can mix and match different shit and have more visually distinct units/cities. Like classic AoW3 Tigran-like Egyptian themes for High cultures or eskimo-type aesthetics for Barbarians. Maybe even have unique options tied to certain cultural choices and combinations.
Every culture having very similar visuals is probably what's lending to them feeling samey.
It baffles me that they made rescaling your guys arms and legs length an option but there's not much else. I guess they didn't want stuff getting in the way of gameplay modifications but most of them are some variation of glow and you can't see many combinations anyway.
The pros >Tomes are a VERY well thought out mechanic >Realm creation is best in class for 4X, provides a lot of replayability >both the tactical combat and the 4X are great and clearly had a lot of focus put on it
Cons >Spells are nowhere near as crazy as they could be. Similarly, society options aren't as crazy as they probably should be. They're statistically significant, but not a lot are truly unique. The society traits they put in the pantheon should honestly be the baseline >much, much lighter on the story than other Age of Wonders, which is a shame
>>much, much lighter on the story than other Age of Wonders, which is a shame
This and the lack of real "depth" to a lot of the races really just comes down to the weird wizard king battle royale thing they have going on with the Godir and the portal gate. Every race and faction is meant to have come from different worlds and realities, which while a fine explanation for the character creation and more open-ended race customization, does mean that a lot of the flavour text and lore behind a lot of the characters, already existing races, factions and creatures is just not there because every culture group shares fundamental traits with one another and those same creatures exist across every world.
Blame that on the lack of culture clothing and aesthetic options, I guess.
For some reason we can't have spooky porcelain-masked cultists or pompous and gaudy renaissance landsknechts as our Dark culture fashion choices. No, we gotta look like we came straight out of a budget Game of Thrones setpiece, complete with tacky raven feather capes.
>Rohan
Hey at least they picked a good one. But yeah there should be visual customisation options for your dudes. i.e. various degrees of armor for Feudal from what we got to full plate etc etc.
so they actually released this game with 4 dlc announced to be released in a year and theres even an option to buy them for premium price?
Not only that, influences played on more stable version of the game, fricking israelitedox needs to go bankrupt already.
The premium price is $20 cheaper than buying them separately.
I don't think it's a bad deal. It's just that buying the base game + the pass is asking for a lot of money up front without really telling us fully what's coming later down the line.
according to the guy in vid its 10$ cheaper, its pretty clear they hold out content and are selling full game for 90$ if you preorder and 100$ if you buy normally. Bad optimization, buggy release and fact they didnt even bother with campaign is slap in face for that sum of money.
How does any of this still surprise people? This exact shit has been happening for ages now, is it scummy? Yeah, but it's not new or surprising. Just don't buy it, it's that easy.
Wait and see? Play the other AOW games, or any of the games in this genre?
I doubt this one will go down the full Paradox route, it'll probably be a case like with the BT game where what was announced is more or less what we get. Or hell Planetfall for that matter.
>RX480 runs the game perfectly fine with no crashes
THE AMD MAN MARCHES ON
now for my thoughts so far >standardized promotions are boring as frick, getting even a shit unit to high rank in 3 would reward me with some cool ability >culture units are supposed to be blank canvases with some subtle playstyle flavoring so you can make them cooler with enchantments and stuff, but frankly they come off as bland and boring even if you make their sword glowing and their skin blue >gaining new damage types doesn't really feel impactful compared to previous titles, probably because playable races don't have elemental resists/weaknesses any more >city management is excellent and doesn't feel like an afterthought like in 3, my favorite addition was the separate unit queue >the AI is very competent, absolutely mogs Firaxis and Amplitude (not a high bar)
what they should do in the future >go full Stellaris on the race creator, add more slots, a points system and weaknesses you can pick >promotions overhaul to make them unique >more units per culture for variety, maybe even tome unit variants based on culture sprinkled around
thanks for reading my blog
Yeah it feels like the base of your faction is bland so your tomes influence them more and make up the difference but the tomes A)don't feel impactful enough and B)there aren't enough of them. Wow, each alignment has two tones and only a single capstone tome. Such variety. Totally won’t end with a load of identical mono affinity factions.
Yeah. The tomes in general would feel more natural if there were more of them to go around for each affinity (and maybe some crossover ones for combined affinities, like an icefire tome that contributes to both Chaos and Shadow affinities or an alchemy tome that combines Nature and Materium/Astral affinities) and more final ones so you have different end goals to aim for, instead of every Chaos road leading you to becoming demon worshippers or every Shadow tome leading to necromantic lichdom. And again, more cosmetic options, more race customization options that add different elemental defences and the like, and more cultural units + maybe some customizable leeway with individual unit selections + expanded cultural retinues where you can go all in with cavalry as a sort of mounted astral steppe culture or something.
Yeah more cosmetic and stat options for your race would help a lot. Also just some kinda gear option besides the enchantment one, which I suppose some tomes do, but still.
Add more actual customisation when that's gonna be the focus, as is it feels like 3 with only a few more options.
I think having units for each culture that have affinity requirements to unlock would be cool. Could add some flavor by having units that require multiple affinities to encourage branching in weird or interesting directions.
Personally i think they just need to either give one more passive/active ability to most of the culture units to help them feel distinct, or add more enchantments that add active abilities. There are some like mending staves and aspect of the root, but they are rare.
>no option to change resolution >no fullscreen >windowed is stuck on native resolution so it's pointless
what the frick
even console ports of japanese games do better
It's literally the same game except for tomes and predetermined factions.
Even the "story" of AoW4 is a continuation of 2 with the whole wizard kings coming back and shit.
It's similar, you still took and upgraded cities in 1, that was just updated and expanded on a bit in 3 and now 4.
Even now it's more of just a HoMM clone like those than a 4x game proper.
1 year ago
Anonymous
It's basically the warcraft 3 of 4X.
1 year ago
Anonymous
It's not THAT bad.
1 year ago
Anonymous
It's THAT good.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Are orcs noble savages now who dindu muffin now?
1 year ago
Anonymous
I mean, you can make them that way if you want.
Or you can just make dickass evil-loving barbarian orcs who worship demons.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Your orcs might be but that's not the point.
Age of Wonders is a 4X, but one that limits the scale of your economy and focuses on heroes and military.
Warcraft 3 was that but for RTS.
1 year ago
Anonymous
You could make an orkish theocracy already in AoW3. So yeah nothing stops you from turning orcs into celestials if you want.
Okay, how? If you boot up AoW1 now you'll see how similar all those games play.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Sure, similarities, like it is similar to HoMM.
1 year ago
Anonymous
I really don't get your point man. What is it that supposedly marked the shift to 4x in the series? Resource management, diplomacy? All that stuff was in AoW1 already.
Game sits currently at 80% very positive reviews. Tendency rising. Game is fricking amazing.Had 0 crashes in 6h. Yes some people have problems and it sucks for them. The game itself is good though.
>Yes some people have problems and it sucks for them.
Even if it's actual problems like with the small pool of cultures + cultural units and the lack of proper tome variety for each affinity?
>Industrialist orcs, materium/astral >tfw did the same but replaced astral with chaos for snow-dwelling industrialist semi-sorcerer orcs that primarily use fire magic
>Wizard King Halfling, Tome of Beasts >Feline, Wolf Mounts, Arcane Focus >Mystic, Gifted Casters, Mana Channelers >Nature Magic Victory
Dunno if I'm lucky or just a quirk of the default fey blessed fields tier 1 map but my immediate neighbors were all the cooperative sort so I just got into an alliance with them with my game just being fighting proxy wars for them and spreading my forest seed everywhere until it was time for magic victory. I don't think i even trained any actual units aside from the ones the intro/tutorial made me build.
On a related note how are the story realms and the ones that come with alternate win conditions like the frost realm?
>how are the story realms
first one is trivial difficulty wise where you are given overpowered buffs for free basically
second one is awful island map
third one is kino all out brawl with forced war on everyone
Starting affinity is important but not that much.
Yiu can start with 1 point in affinity, then take 2 tomes (+2x2) + build affinity root (+1) and you can take t4 tome.
I think the best way would be either to take advantage of the "magic origin" materium units like gargoyles, wind ragers, golems etc. Astral has quite a few buffs for magic origin units.
I think the best way would be either to take advantage of the "magic origin" materium units like gargoyles, wind ragers, golems etc. Astral has quite a few buffs for magic origin units.
been thinking about doing something like that, basically artificiers/enchanters using summoned units. mana generation, upkeep reduction etc from astral, golems, enchantments etc from materium.
I'm really liking that now to defeat a player you only need to capture/raze their throne city while they're in the void, instead of destroying every city of theirs. Definitely makes the conquest game much less of a slog.
>hmmm should I try the story missions >guess I might as well give it a go >first mission is super easy, guess that's the tutorial >try second >meet npc who's supposed to be my ally >aggro settles in my face despite grievance >not allowed to attack him because 'fixed relations' >ok maybe somewhere else >he's already got two cities where I would go next
ok guess I shouldn't bother with story again
Is it just me or do non-magic ranged units suck absolute balls?
Using them just feels like you're trying to XCOM without any of the actual benefits of XCOM.
Not just that, compared to battle mages who often have AoEs to compensate for missable ranged attacks and basically any hero unit who shoots shit, archers in general feel like you're banking on luck for very small benefits, and even then if they hit the cover the enemy is using will still be there, unlike with say Pyromancers who can just burn the cover away and leave the enemy exposed for attacks. Plus magic hits a lot harder pure than an archer with elemental buffs.
Yeah, I have no idea why you'd take them over battlemages beyond the early game.
Granted, I was playing shadow/astral so far and they absolutely focus their enchantments on battlemages and support casters, maybe the other affinities prioritise archers?
Every affinity has at least one buff for phys ranged units, i know nature's tome of roots gives the poisoned arrows but i don't think it has many more.
I got them to do AoE damage to units standing to the target with astral magic but yeah they're not particularly strong in the late game. Just replace them with watchers or other battle mages.
I'm not a wagie and it took me an entire day to finish one game with 2 AI factions. I don't see it happening unless you've done literally nothing else but play this non stop since release.
i'm really enjoying this game bros, theres something about it that is super appealing to me. i feel like i don't get aggressive enough early though and i'm falling behind in levels so the battles are getting rough. i think the godir ai is shockingly good for a game like this
>i feel like i don't get aggressive enough early though and i'm falling behind in levels so the battles are getting rough
For me it look like AI have cheats. For items and money at least.
There's no fricking way to get 15 items on turn12, and having 15 t1-t2 non-summoned units include 2 additional heroes.
the items are a bit of a stretch but the rest are easily doable
try starting as a barbarian with ruthless raiders
pic related was mine and pumped out units like crazy
If you get an event or reward that gives draft you can shit out like 4 t1s in a single turn, get more than one event/reward like that and it's easy. Not to mention summon irregular, chaos giving unifs from clearing infestations etc
Are there any terraforming spells? In AoE1 you could scorch like half the map and leave a brap cloud over the enemy city but I played one game so far and all I got from map combat spells was this dogshit lightning strike that did no damage.
I don't know what they were thinking. If they wanted to go full blank slate fantasy world they should have just let us drop magical atomic bombs freely.
Wasn't this whole series about magic and shit?
Eo hands down.
Spells are more fun, it comes with a story, the little dungeon CYOA segments are way better, unit variety is better and you get the satisfaction of leveling your little dudes up and picking their skills.
It's not entirely a traditional 4X though, you only have one "city" but you can move it freely. You won't be doing too much expanding, it's more explore and exterminate whatever you find for phat l00t.
>It's not entirely a traditional 4X though
It doesn't even have randomised maps as far as I know, there's just the one map you play on. Randomness and replayability is kind of a central pillar of 4X.
Eo hands down.
Spells are more fun, it comes with a story, the little dungeon CYOA segments are way better, unit variety is better and you get the satisfaction of leveling your little dudes up and picking their skills.
It's not entirely a traditional 4X though, you only have one "city" but you can move it freely. You won't be doing too much expanding, it's more explore and exterminate whatever you find for phat l00t.
they fricked up eo completely with patches taking all the creative strategies out to force some sort of vision of how you are supposed to play
Eo ubalanced as frick in all senses and at all stages.
No fun if you don't know how to break this game and get stomped by endless doomstacks.
No fun if you know how to break this game and stomp everything.
>Play third story realm >Beat first two lords easily using the mind quest thing >Suddenly the third and fourth lords jump on me with twice the number of units i have each
Damn. I think Ill have to try a different build and manage my economy differently. I picked artica and it didn't really work out.
Want to try stating your opinion using something other than internet meme jargon? Playing musical chairs with undefended enemy cities was an annoying issue in the previous games, but a garrison system is a braindead bandaid to stop it, the defender gets minimal control over the garrison composition and the only brainpower the attacker needs to do is check if his stacks' power rating is enough for the power rating of the garrison before attacking.
The current siege system works better, the siege projects offer the attacker various boons in exchange for an up-front commitment of gold, while the countdown gives both sides time to take actions and prepare for the fight.
>do the second story mission >spend some time building up a navy to mog siren in combat >realize im stuck in a corner and cant get my navy out >download cheat table
the U.I bothers me a lot and I find the map hard to read. I could see why people might be turned off by it. The way that information is presented and just trying to click the "right" spot could use some love.
>Get told terraforming sucks >Get T3 tome that turns land into arctic terrain >Also applies status resist down and frost damage to every enemy army in that province
So i have maggical cold nukes but this is bad?
Trying to understand why characters look so bad full of edges and aliasing, running on max settings, max AA, no dynamic res shit and still it looks bad
>there is no key binding for the sector build option pop ups like farm/quarry/mine >have to manually click the fricking tiny button o the top right corner
Game feels like a sidegrade in comparison to AoW3.
I like campaign map much, much more in here. I just know that if I tried to return to AoW3, way too many things would annoy me. City building, provinces, minor factions, recruiting units, reinforcements, quests and events, killing enemy heroes, looting them, reviving, diplomatic deals and casus belli etc almost everything I like more here.
Expect for trading
Faction customization really needs unique traits and units for Race Forms. Tomes being now possible to select during game and not on faction creator, make entire system much more engaging.
Transforming your race is fun as frick and I was surprised that you aren't chained to a single transforming and instead effects and VISUALS stack.
I wish there was more Godir forms and more cultures
Battles are fun again, but game is a bit no fun allowed here. Evolving and training units is limited. In AoW3 I could seduce/tame enemy unit during battle and it would remain mine on campaign map. And if it was stuff like a spiders, then evolve it through different tiers. Here I can't steal an unit like this and evolving has less tiers and less units seems to have access to such mechanic. This "should" be trivial for modders to fix.
Battle maps are less repetitive than in AoW3 I think. Although I don't understand why aren't they generated like campaign map ism
I have no doubt that after updates, those 4 dlcs and mods it will be far better than AoW3. It's a better base due to better campaign and faction creation at their core. I basically just want more of it.
But for now it's a side-grade.
Wish I could filter steam reviews for negatives that are only about content and not "it no run reee"
What're the predictions, will future DLC and patch updates make up for some of the missing content like choices feeling more meaningful, or more units to use?
I'm excited for this game but based on what I've read I'm worried it will feel like a dumbed-down version of AOW3/PF after 1-2 games
Hard to parse what is just hate from gamers and what is genuine criticism
There's some aspects that are a downgrade from PF, there are zero downgrades from 3 3 was really shit. Except maybe no "handmade" campaign but as someone who played all those campaigns, they sucked ass.
For the most part its an improvement, but its also got no updates/DLC whilst PF has a bunch of DLCs and updates so its at a bit of an advantage. My main complaints of "downgrades" would be first, low tier units feel less fun than PF, second, no "creates hazard" spells, i liked those and finally the lack of water based wonders/free cities and variety of aquatic units feels like a big downgrade compared to the rich naval combat of PF.
I hate how tomes funnel you into the same endgame options. Fire magic? Demons. Chaos jester shit? Also demons. Necromancers get a necromancy t5 tome, but the ice mage also gets the same tome. For how much the game tries to push customisation they seem to love forcing you into the same path with tomes.
If the game had some more tomes and the option to take negative traits... even if you didn't use negative traits but the ai did, that'd already add a lot more variety and opportunity for enemy exploitation.
I noticed that one of my opponents was going heavy into order so I countered, by also going order. The game just needs more stuff.
There could be a possibility for more customization in later dlcs like the spirit shrines from Age of Wonders 2, although I guess the spells and benefits they give have been taken over by the tomes.
Always liked the spirit of war, which gave you veteran units at the price of lower population growth.
Is there any bonus to building the same type of providence improvement on a resource node? For example building a farm with a sheep resource node or building a mine on a gold deposit? Or is it worth it to build what I need but prioritize resource nodes over providences without a node?
The node is just a bonus, i think they used to encourage you to build the same type there in planetfall, but now they have gone the opposite way, because it felt like you had no choice but to build that type. So just build what's good for you, but keep in mind some special improvements have adjacency bonuses.
I still built whatever could achieve the highest level in planetfall despite the node bonuses because the bonuses from having a lvl 5 building were so much better.
>Kill Sundren in the first story mission >She freaks out goes dark elf mode at me then fricks off to the astral sea
Use that spell from tier 2 tome to turn land into forest (or the one from the T4 tome itself, destructive regrowth) then use awaken the forest from tome of nature's wrath. Or just get rid of all the forests who cares point is easy way to get quick animal armies. Though quick cheap mass armies can be done pretty easily by chaos as well with spells like golden horde.
I don't think it's really all that different to modern AoW, they're pretty much the same game minus the customization options from 3 and 4. Plus it has an actual story to get immersed in. AoW4 has nothing in that department, you will play skirmish and you will like it.
1 is my favorite, it’s a classic with fantastic music, graphics, gameplay revolving around big armies and very powerful spells, with a huge variety of units. I can’t see anything wrong with the interface, but the game actually feels, in certain aspects, limited compared to future aow. In many ways they added complexity that made the game less unique. If I were you I’d start with 3 because it’s the one closer to 4 in every department and you may prefer modern gameplay design.
>try to make a hot female elf wizard >all faces look horrible
She looks okay in the portrait but as soon as you open the hero menu she turns into a hag.
i feel like the wizard king option is such a wasted opportunity because of culture limitations
your culture determines the units and the special buildings you get and you would almost always want the mystic buildings for mana generation
now my dumbass gobbos turn into spellcasters instead of being dumbass gobbos if i pick the mystic culture because i want the buildings for my spell caster leader
let me pick the culture and buildings separately triumph you homosexuals
If you're above your hero cap is it just the one-off gold payment you have to make to recruit them, or do they also cost a lot of gold upkeep? Should I go above the cap?
Had to go on a 1 week job travel the same week of release. Is it fun?
Managed to get aow shadow magic on my shitty work laptop, having a nostalgic blast with some unofficial 1.6 patch, making things a lot more interesting and varied.
I accidentally started a map on standard difficulty and could autoresolve everything for a while with the starting stack. So it's definitly a game that's better on harder difficulties. Pushes you into finding an edge and exploiting weaknesses.
I find that aow Ai can easily be steamrolled if difficulty is set low. Especially if you expand rush. Setting it higher makes for a more slow pace game, as the Ai get resource bonuses and usually a lot more troops than you.
Used to enjoy custom maps where you teamed up with Ai to fight an overpowered enemy by grinding it down over time.
I find that aow Ai can easily be steamrolled if difficulty is set low. Especially if you expand rush. Setting it higher makes for a more slow pace game, as the Ai get resource bonuses and usually a lot more troops than you.
Used to enjoy custom maps where you teamed up with Ai to fight an overpowered enemy by grinding it down over time.
I feel that with AI its inversion of Total War. AoW3 is easy in early game, but the longer I play the harder it's gets since AI starts shitting out doomstacks of units and it uses spells and abilites competently in battle so my armies are getting nuked with AoE spells. So far I have similar experience in AoW4.
Does the Ai spam tier 4/5 units of one or two kind like it loves in aow3 endgame? Kinda felt stupid to endlessly fight monotone doomstacks on single tier 4 units.
I remember aow1 solved this problem by making cities in different tiers. Some towns could only produce units up to a certain tier
I can't tell yet from my experiencein AoW4, but I think AI enemies will. There is nothing really stopping them or player from doing so. I can see neutral AI already spawning with 2 V tier units in a single army and you cannot enter a single relic with more than 1 army after all, and that requires doomstacking. Which is annoying, but it's clearly what devs intended
I don't understand this tbh and its this same issue I have with TW:W. In general I like my battles big with mostly normal, low tier units and few heroes and big guys here and there, even though they can drag in turn based games. Introducing additional unique resource(s) that are required to recruit high tier units would immediately fix doomstacking in a very natural way, but that would go against core game design. Relics/ruins/tombs only allow for 6 vs 6 battles after all. Transformations and enchantments improve lower tier units so they don't go completely obsolete, so there is this at least.
For me personally it reminds me of homm, especially 5/6 due to the colourful 3d. There are differencies obv and other influences. Instead of endless stacking you've got units with a mximum number of hp which functions in a similar manner: a unit at 50% hp would do half the damage in a similar way to losing half of yoour stack would lower the damage output in homm. Unit movement on the battlefield feels like modern xcom with the action points. Unit upgrades are very loose and tied to the magic side instead of the infrastructure building side. City function feels taken straight from civ five with the satisfaction of building farms around the city being the same. Leaning heavily into race/faction customization feels like stellaris with ck3 character creator if it didn't have dogshit models. Randomized research feels like research from stellaris.
tl;dr it is fun, but not all of the potential has been realized quite yet
Do you know how HoMM or similar games play? It's that but a bit different for all of the games.
Recommend just checking out any of the first three, maybe Planetfall (it's a bit more like 4) if you like space things.
>Do you know how HoMM or similar games play?
Not really? Would you recommend any of them?
For me personally it reminds me of homm, especially 5/6 due to the colourful 3d. There are differencies obv and other influences. Instead of endless stacking you've got units with a mximum number of hp which functions in a similar manner: a unit at 50% hp would do half the damage in a similar way to losing half of yoour stack would lower the damage output in homm. Unit movement on the battlefield feels like modern xcom with the action points. Unit upgrades are very loose and tied to the magic side instead of the infrastructure building side. City function feels taken straight from civ five with the satisfaction of building farms around the city being the same. Leaning heavily into race/faction customization feels like stellaris with ck3 character creator if it didn't have dogshit models. Randomized research feels like research from stellaris.
tl;dr it is fun, but not all of the potential has been realized quite yet
Thanks.
didnt test yet but assume its the same as planetfall
[...]
if you like space games you should try planetfall and if you like that then try this one
>Well, Age of Wonders in general, King's Bounty, HoMM of course. At least those just come to mind.
Which one would be best to try first? Should I just try AoW4? Or wait for performance updates? This game isn't fricked like other paradox games, right? >Nope, camera stays fixed
That seems rare in new games, good. Thank you!
join me in trying AoW1 brother
it's on gog and only 300 mb https://gog-games.to/
1 year ago
Anonymous
I'll try it when the links on the site work again. Hopefully it works this weekend, thanks.
1 year ago
Anonymous
The links for it don't work.
1 year ago
Anonymous
weird, that's the only time i've ever seen gog-games fricked like that
1 year ago
Anonymous
Same, it's the safelinking site being down. Some other links use a different site but the aow1 links do not. Is the game the same on gog as on steam? I know sometimes the gog versions are better due to compatibility or whatever.
1 year ago
Anonymous
The gog version comes prepatched for windows 10 I think. At least I didn't download anything extra. Playing in 800x600 and haven't had any issues
1 year ago
Anonymous
1 works out the box, 2 was a bit more janky I think but also still runs.
1 year ago
Anonymous
I know games back then didn't really have it but, is there a windowed option? I ended up getting it on steam but that was probably a mistake.
1 year ago
Anonymous
I know games back then didn't really have it but, is there a windowed option? I ended up getting it on steam but that was probably a mistake.
>windowed option
Nevermind, I launched the game on steam a second time and now it comes up with a configuration option. Silly.
1 works out the box, 2 was a bit more janky I think but also still runs.
That's good to know since I grabbed 2: The Wizard's Throne when i was getting 1.
If you are interested in 4 just play 3 then go backwards.
1 year ago
Anonymous
What would that do?
1 year ago
Anonymous
Unless you are used to old games interfaces and gameplay focus, you will probably hate it. Going backwards will make you enjoy the games from modern standards, to retro kino.
While AoW1 is simpler, it also has an epic emphasis. Think about Tolkien fantasy. 12 races, big armies, barely no research or improvements, spells that allow to raise the waters or forbid casting global spells. I like some of the later changes to the combat system, but they came at the cost of killing what made the game epic. And I’m afraid people who play nowadays prefer it that way.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Why would he go backwards when he could play the story campaigns in order?
1 year ago
Anonymous
Because the lore is completely irrelevant and improvised. It used to be a warhammer clone without the grittiness, then they killed some races to put new ones, and so one.
1 year ago
Anonymous
>used to be a warhammer clone without the grittiness
As it should be and should have stayed. But it also really doesnt matter that much either I agree.
1 year ago
Anonymous
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I assume it's just based on the difficulty of the modifiers. Like jumping from Fey-blessed fields (tier 1) to fallen kingdom(tier 2) scenarios I've gone from having a relatively relaxed 1-2 neighbors + free cities in my continent to influence to being cramped up against all the pretender kings, other empires and some free cities that for some reason are also vassals of some of the pretender kings so it's hard to expand without accumulating at least some grievances with those around me. Kinda wonder how rough the tier 4 realm is now although I guess the challenge in that one is more having a super jacked enemy and barely any resources to go around compared to the constant civil war
I really like the desert oceans maptype w/ desert climate and then having to terraform my island(s). Seems like it would be a fun multiplayer scenario if you have one guy build desert adaptation and the others each a different terraforming tome.
This build so fricking good in early game.
Leader shield, unit shield, healer, bm and archer.
Ranged have a lot of accuracy, bm have aoe nuke with reduce defense debuff, healer apply distraction when awakend, double shield frontline take a very little dmg.
i have very similar elves but i went for keen sighted since i focus on magic a bit more
im debating between mana addicts and perfectionist artisans though since lifesteal reduces the overall damage taken massively
In general it's depend on what you want.
For me i want heavy-archers armies with iron and later golden golems as frontline, so i take artisans for boosting early game, and stability always nice especially paired with champion instead of wizard king.
If you want heavy-magic, mana addicts + gifted casters in pair work very good.
Just get a shit ton of zephyr archers and aoe the frick out of everyone from 7 range.
i decided to make another spellcaster faction instead and went with archer focus for the high culture too
the archers didnt end up as good and the casters were mediocre since i had mana problems spamming to keep mana addicts in every fight
In my experience zephyr archers is amazing good.
I take dark ritual (aoe dmg+raise zombies) as lord skill and it's just crazy, archers kill 2-4 creatures in second round and i raise zombies as meat shield.
I keep my lord with sword+shield, but to be honest he didn't do anything aside raise zombie since btaale finish in 3d round.
Can this just not be run on potato computers? I keep trying to play and it seems to run fine on my tablet, not even getting hot but then it crashes to desktop out of nowhere
Irc every unit that dies in battle decrease the whole formation damage, so by having less units in formation your soldiers can be damage more without receiving penalty to damage.
>get earth shatter >ignore it because it's just 10 physical damage >eventually I start preparing spells before going balls deep into the enemy so I can release them all at once >cast earth shatter >it fricking obliterates everything inside that province >it's not even that expensive to cast
There must be a funny programming story behind that. God knows what moronic shit they made. Maybe they upload the saves and want to reduce limit the size of the stuff they store.
there should be a trait exclusively available to human men that makes halfling, dwarf, rat and goblin female leaders and free city mayors far more likely to cooperate with you.
Getting tomes is boring in this game. I miss when they were bigger with levels but you had to actually fine them instead of just unlocking them automatically.
giving AoW1 a try, it's actually pretty cool once I got used to the ui
the in battle spell effects are great
not sure which campaign I want to do first
Sundren >NOOOO YOU NEED TO CLEAR THE WIZARD TOWER BEFORE FIGHTING YAKA >NOOOO YOU CAN'T JUST DROWN HIS STARTING PHOENIX IN BODIES
I really like tome of the horde + beasts, it's just infinite tier 1 works
I was going to kill Sundren but with Yaka starting off with a phoenix I didn't know how much bullshit he was going to pull if I kept him alive so I ignored her
mystic has no real need for either, once you get past early game casting points aren't much of an issue, and if you need more combat magic their t3 caster has a repeatable use ability that gives you +10
because theres no need to reduce mana costs or get more casting points
mana addicts is completely superior to either of those and if you want to go full magic blaster instead of summoner its better to go for economy boosting second trait anyways since mana is not a problem as mystic
replace gifted casters with mana channelers and keep powerful evokers for saucy summoning. the shadow affinity is needed to unlock summon upkeep discount.
gifted casters is mediocre, 10 casting points is hardly anything in this game and the 20% mana discount on combat spells is barely felt either.
>make a race of feudal rats with a human knight dude >cast spawnkin >now i'm faced with the choice of turning my leader into a lame small guy or miss out on 20% damage
Tough choice but i just missed out on the damage.
Free Cities aren't very difficult if you've got a good strategy.
what if there is no city to conquer in the place that you want a city?
Walking like two more turns is much cheaper than forgoing potentially dozens of turns of pop growth.
I guess there can be niche cases where it's worth it, but the game has Adept Settlers and puts it on a bunch of the default nations as if it actually settling was something you were going to do.
Adept Settlers boosts your city cap, so it's good for conquering too, and the starting bonus is decent. But I think it's probably just on a bunch of starting units because it's good for newer players; it's versatile and can boost tempo a bit if you're suffering in that area.
Yeah industrious cultures are fricking strong when you know what you're doing with them.
Build up an army of tanky anvil/bastion units, carry a steelshaper and fill the rest of your army with mages/archers and you're clapping cheeks like it's Friday night at a gay bar.
>tfw High culture Order/Astral blending gives me fat fricking stacks of magic damage with Awakening + Lightning Blades and like a shit-ton of magical racial units that're not only faster to produce but are very potent with all the buffs I keep throwing around >especially when paired with Sneaky flank attacks that just delete shit when done right >also got Aspect of the Root for extra tankiness on Phantasm Soldiers so they refuse to die and can do AoE heals
Now this, this is gaming.
This is the first Age of Wonders game I've ever played and I'm enjoying it but I think I might be moronic, the AI always massively out-grows me and I generally struggle to unlock higher tier units. So far the only race I've managed to get to work was not-Skaven Chaos Barbarians going all-in on spamming the frick out of Tier I units. A lot of fun but man the limit of six units per army made that damn cumbersome to play at times.
you should have more armies than one
the way hero skills work you cant get buffs to all unit types early on so you can specialize hero buffs to ranged and melee for example and just run a full stack of archers in one and melee in the other
The thing it took me a while to get about AOW is that it is a turn-based RTS not fantasy civ
Playing tall is almost always the wrong choice, expand as much as possible so you can out produce your opponent
I haven't played long enough to find any easy doom stack builds I'm sure they exist, and battle tactics do make a difference but most games are won and lost on your production
One thing I kinda wish happened with transformations is that they'd stay permanent on any character/faction you ascend to the pantheon.
Feels weird going through all the effort to turn them into demigods yet when you next see them they lack all those traits.
whats magic victory like? you gotta build the seed, root, heart, and cast the spell, right, but i havent tried casting the spell because it said enemies will spawn next to the special province improvements to try to stop it and my armies were elsewhere
Pretty chill actually. It's like an enemy army spawns on ONE of the three building every 2-3 turns but since you get discounts and bonuses to your own spells you can say drop a full stack of animals on them. Playing on normal at least I didn't need more than 1 end-game stack to deal with each incursion. Also the AI freaks out and everyone somewhat friendly with you rushes to join your team for an alliance win.
Is it actually bad or just unoptimized?
Most of the negative reviews are complaining about the game crashing on them, but I've been playing for almost three hours straight at the moment and I haven't had any issues. Worst I've seen so far is some minor visual glitches like a hero's weapon turning invisible until I exit the equipment screen. Still, caveat emptor I suppose.
>t. works on my machine 🙂
I've had no issues so far and I've been playing for 3 hours straight and alt tabbing multiple times.
Does anyone know how to use abilities a hero has if it doesn't show up on the hot bar because there's too many abilities there already?
There is a mapped shortcut to hide the hero abilities, just press ALT- F4
This is the same for me. Game runs fine and plays as expected. I accidentally spent 4 hours playing last night so I think that's an endorsement.
i think that most people are just hating for no reason , for a 50 euro game in 2k23 i don t think you re getting less than people who bought civ 6 or humankind on release , plus that after 2 years this game is gonna be like twice better
>plus that after 2 years this game is gonna be like twice better
But it will also have 50 DLCs by then
paradox lives rent free in your troony head
>it's not worse than [garbage] and [utter garbage]
lol, zoomers
Mostly technical issues, eating you CPU/GPU cycles in single and multiplayer as well, constant crashes etc.. usual shit. You can torrent it, this way you can at least beta test it for free.
The technical part. It crashes on me but ignoring that the game is stupidly fun to play.
>It crashes
>but the game is stupidly fun to play.
Yeah? Meaning that in the imaginary but not infeasible scenario wherein the game was no longer crashing, it would be fun to play.
As opposed to a game which crashes frequently but still be bland without the crashing, or a game which does not crash but is unfun regardless.
It's ok, please keep submitting your crashes reports, this will speed up the process for a release of an hotfix, also try to have fun!
Yes. The crashes are not common and they will release a patch that fixes it. And before you end a turn you have to do a shitton of other things.
No crashes here, 5 hours and counting, rock solid fps too, and I don't have a good card, only 3070
>3070 isn't a good card
bro please
It works surprisingly well on my i5 4590 and GTX 960
No crashes, no fps drops during ~2 hour session
Well you have to be blind then because with a 1070 and 3700x at 1440p the game is pretty much never running at 60 fps. The entire game stutters like a motherfricker when applying/dispelling buffs during combat.
I think it's a weird for a game that's essentially a static map to run like this.
idk but look at that 49,99 expansion pass. you know that it won't even last that long and they'll start releasing dlc that "doesn't count" for whatever reason.
If I have one complaint about the game, it's that easy mode is WAY too easy. Like it's not just easy but I literally can't lose. I realize I'm to blame for this myself, but I figured I'd start on easy to get used to the game. It's completely braindead this way. I hope that medium and hard actually provide a meaningful improvement.
btw did the prices increase? i could swear yesterday it was ~60% of current price
Are you looking at the premium edition?
Normal edition was always $50.
Lol, so many prominent games launching broken recently. You got to love the industry
>recently
>recently
It's been practically standard since main way of distribution shifted from physical discs to online.
no shortage of broken games sold on CD. or floppy, for that matter.
True, but it seems to me like it got even worse in the past year or so.
Riglets, when will they learn?
Cracked version is already up on elamigos
I know, Razor1911 already released it, I just torrente'd it.
>Mixed reviews
Its so over 4xbros
Im not sure if i even want to pirate it at this point
What the frick phenotype is that, eastern European?
Possibly Turkish/Armenian/Georgian aswell.
Pre-Turkic Anatolian, looks like
So is it just a bit unstable? Is it fun?
>So is it just a bit unstable?
Before spending $112.99 you can just torrent the Premium Edition and find out, maybe it will work on your PC.
Yaka ain't shit.
I hate this soulless interface, but the art looks quite presentable for a 2023 Fantasy game.
For me, its one of the best and intuitive UsI i can remember from games of the last year. i do agree it could had helped having some graphic flavor, but i prefer a simple userfull UI than a nice looking one where i cant find shit
Yeah whats up with all those similiar souless interfaces and graphics? TWW3 interface looks similar, like fortnite dogshit, same oversatured colors art style also similar to league of legends or apex legends menu, I dont know how to describe? Why is that?
So what's yours /vst/ verdict?
Thanks for beta testing!
It's fun if your rig can actually run it if you can't get fricked poorgay(or get a steamdeck)
>It's fun if your rig can actually run it if you can't get fricked poorgay(or get a steamdeck)
If it works it works if it don't it don't, simple as that. What are you expecting to have for only $60...the nerves of those peoples...
It seems to be a driver issue, not necessarily an issue with how good your rig is.
Mine is 5 years old (picture related) and it runs the game fine. Framerate isn't amazing but I can still play normally with everything maxed out.
It's okay.
>Basically a paid beta
>Much better than Planetfall and feels more like an AoW game
>That said, everything feels ultra homogenized and race choice essentially doesn't matter beyond aesthetics.
>Shockingly shit performance to to the point that it's impressive. Somehow runs significantly worse than TWH3. I'm not getting any crashes though.
>Porn modders are going to have a field day with this game.
>AI is moronic
>Porn modders are going to have a field day with this game.
?
Base models are nude, underwear is a seperate model not "built in" to the model. like some games where the clothes and body are the same model.
This plus the models already having very sexualized proportions. Like, female halflings already look like something that could come from loverslab.
The halfling one is simple, you do not want to be accused of or make "e-girl" mods easy. You don't give them childlike proportions.
Lalafel want a word with you.
Tbh, Spellforce if it wasnt for the tower moving gimmick.
They are japanese and they took the alternative route of giving them downs syndrome
Potatoes are their own weird fetish. I don't think anyone thinks "child" when they see a Harvin or Lalafell
>>Porn modders are going to have a field day with this game.
sold
How's the balancing?
I have an RTX 3070 + Ryzen 5800x and while I can get a good framerate, the game completely rapes my GPU and CPU in the process. It also crashed after literally 15 minutes of playing it.
Fricking ridiculous how awful "AAA" games have gotten.
I can play planetfall on medium. Question. Can i run aow4? I wish i could because on paper (making own race, faction, leader) is my autismo wet strategy fantasy dream.
Probably not, this game is optimized like ass
my gpu and cpu get hot despite not being under heavy load. it runs fine for me who doesnt play planetfall on full settings, but its loud.
Crashes aren't my issue. It's just extremely bland and boring. Unfortunately I left the game open while I went to cook dinner and I've gone over the 2 hour mark so no refund. Will check back in a few months to see if it's gotten any less boring.
Fricking wild how much time I spent in AoW3 and yet it seems to be regressing as a series.
>Cant change your units look or add mods to them
This FRICKING SUCKS
tbh the only performance issue I've noticed is the intro credits lagging a bit and taking time to render properly, but other than that the game's been working fine on my end.
Most of the mixed reviews seem to just be your average Steam complaints about how lame and cringe it is that modern games run shit on someone's NVIDIA 170 potato graphics card. Definitely do think some optimizing on cinematics and graphics loading could be done to alleviate it though.
>>Cant change your units look or add mods to them
That's what enchantments and transformation spells are for. They're the fantasy equivalent of Planetfall's mod system.
What's your cpu usage, cpu, resolution and fps like?
For me in battles it was 50% of my 5800x at 1440p while I had fps locked to 72 (with half vsync). Which is obviously insane. What's the CPU even doing?
>What's your cpu usage, cpu, resolution and fps like?
Around 40-50% with an i7-9700F. Standard 1920x1080 with the default game settings, and so far it's been running at a stable 60. No real major issues both in and out of battles.
Yeah why the frick did they strip the mods mechanic out.
>Unicorns leave rainbow trails
That's not gonna get old real fast at all. The shimmer from 3 was more than enough.
Other than that a bit more Planetfall feeling so far than I was hoping.
could see garbage optimization from mile away, why the frick does a civ type game with average graphics overloads you GPU/CPU 99% on static map and has requirements higher than cyberpunk2077. Those Black folk knew it too people were complaining about high requirements so they changed minimum just before premiere.
my pc is 10 years old, i haven't crashed once or experienced slowdown after 4 hours of play. i'm not sure what garbage pcs these people have
I've had two driver crashes in 4 hours so I assume it's once again morons not updating their drivers after the system tells them it was a driver issue.
On my old GTX 980 I had crashes of the display driver all the time. Unless I put it into debug mode, which disabled the native overclocking. Then it never crashed. No updating drivers helped. Sometimes shit is just weird.
It's not garbage pc problem, its unoptimized game - it can crash and slowdown on best cards and run fine on ancient ones.
>start playing
>crash on first turn
It's over, isn't it?
Man this is Stellaris all over again. The customization is wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle. I can larp as ANYTHING but the actual mechanics are all +10% to whatever soulless modifier stacking. Actually fun and unique spells are few and far between.
Heroes are probably the worst offenders. Holy shit are those skills boring, I'm not even excited to level up it's so bad.
Thank you for your feedback. Paradox really appreciated your business, in the meantime (between one crash and another ) try to have fun!. But we promise our loyal customers and the franchise community that all technical issue will be soon fixed in the incoming patch (date yet to be released).
>fun and unique spells are few and far between
aow3 was like that too, it was mostly tactics game with buff spells nothing like Master of magic or even homm3 in terms of spells.
I really don't understand how you can lose so much creativity in game design when all the creative things were already done before and you would just have to adapt to the new game. It's like complex game design isn't allowed to be done anymore. Everything gets streamlined down to its blandest denominator.
The game wasn't even released and it was a top seller on steam. Why peoples buy games without first read a review or listening to the feedback the game is receiving? Too many people are stupid and with too much money to waste. Games publishers know this very well and they can't care less. They can make great games if they wanted, but why they have to?
that's literally Master of Magic. it's a tactics game with buff spells
you're coping. get some eyes, moron
i ended up taking tome of warding and being able to declare a unit as invincible for a turn has been pretty fricking insane.
lots of babbys were saying planetfall was too complicated.
not sure why they dropped dots having secondary debuffs. maybe they thought debuffs in addition to lowering damage with figure deaths was enough, im not in love with that mechanic.
>lots of babbys were saying planetfall was too complicated.
lol frick no. The game's main criticism was that it was boring and in some way inferior as shit compared to AoW. In no way is Planetfall ""complicated"" unless you came from nipshit """"games"""".
It has better spells than 3 and I think it beats 2 as well.
I haven't reached endgame yet (AoW 3 sucked at that so I'm afraid of what I'll find) but tactical combat and city management is super so far.
Source
Really? A basic b***h undead summoning spell? where's the good spell?
> Better spells than 3
Did you not play endgame AoW3?
meh , that's a combat spell. I'm not impressed.
how can you say that?
The mechanics mostly matter for the tactical minigame, but it's a good minigame when you have a reason to actually play it.
Yeah I think so far 3 had better overall unit designs for the non-monsters. I miss my heavy cavalry with full armor.
Also missing some guns or other industrial bits like the landship, unless that's hidden as an upgrade somewhere.
i told you so
3d is inferior medium for this type of games
cope
You'd have more of a point if you compared it to AoW1. AoW2's art style is visual cancer.
Dude
You are using nostalgia glasses to shit on a 20 years old game.
He ain't wrong, 1 looks a lot better than 2 on the map.
>Do not trust your lying eyes!
Mmmm, no.
I will give you credit for not masquerading your opinions as "facts" using non-arguments like "cartoony" or "overdesigned", even when using such sophistry like "visual noise"
he's correct and you're a moron
>I will give you credit for not masquerading your opinions as "facts"
Too bad I can't give you the same credit, you blind hypocrite.
>if you like something that's old it can only be because of nostalgia!
Why are morons like you allowed on the internet?
AoW2's map graphics are just visual noise compared to AoW1. More detail, but none of the style.
Dude
You are using nostalgia glasses to simp for a 20 years old game.
Soulless. It's beyond me how anyone can look at the top image and think it looks better
Not gonna lie I think I prefer the artsyle of AoW3 over 4.
Can you disband your armies? It's getting out of hand here after - each battle I'm getting a new unit and they eat through my gold and mana.
Answering my own question - there is this tiiiiiiny button that you can press to kill the units you don't want anymore.
great job anon
literally works on my machine. get a job, get a fricking PC. if I can live in a third world shithole and afford a pathetic 3060ti, you have no fricking excuses. your piss stained barely chugging 1050 is not relevant anymore in 2023 and it's time to come to terms with this fact
Yes , everyone must have a 306ti because you know, we are too fricking lazy to properly optimize our games, go frick off.
I have a better GPU than that but I don't like it running at 100% usage Black person, same with CPU
>30
So I'm looking at the battles and the world map and so on. Is the general gameplay literally just fantasy Planetfall?
My cursor keeps disappearing....
Disconnect the controller. If doesn't work, check if you have some virtual controllers.
I got two identical opponents in the first game, other players report the same bug.
At least no crashes or performance issues for me so far.
I love Shadow Magic but never tried AoW2. Is the campaign worth it?
I've played for straight four hours, got no crashes and I've fun so far. It makes me wonder how long will the game take because so far I'm finishing my first tier III tome and preparing to wage war for the first time.
Is it worth pirating?
Well, is the same game, is not that it ran better or something. It took 15 minutes to download, try it by yourself and find out.
I liked 3 for being able to sustain like 12 domain/city defence buff spells and just slap down anything that wasn't 3-4 endgame stacks, but so far I haven't seen a single such spell. In fact they seem to have removed any sustain spells that target anything other than units. What gives? No buffing your territory/city, no debuff the enemies. Why would they rip these out even planetfall had a ton of them and they were great to add another level to the strategy.
I think order has some city spells, would guess that material might have aswell, some affects might have been moved to special provimces?
Crisis averted esl troon we can shut the thread down now. the schizophrenic trannies that post actually submit steam review can get raped viciously but a pack of elephants
Is there a single city option that's not slash and burn? I prefer playing tall with one big city. Not that it matters because I can't afford it
There is, you have to unlock it first though. I think it's called perfected artisans
Based, thank you so much. I might save up to buy it.
If you would have to save up, literally just pirate it. They can make their money from rich countries.
There's a setting you can enable on custom maps which makes you unable to settle new cities, but significantly increases the growth cap for your capital. Combine that with stuff like
and you can basically make a city the size of a continent.
Well, first victory, played on normal, overall was pretty easy, last computer opponent just spammed massive hordes of units that only fed my army of balors. Wanna try necromancy and astral now.
how are you guys placing cities? i'm only starting out but feels like you should space them far apart since the annexation can get huge.
piggybacking off this anon: when should I start placing cities generally?
im on turn 34 with 4 cities and 2 vassals about to be 3 vassals
You should initiate first a special military operation, then start spamming missile fire, destroy everything try to annex, fail rinse repeat.
I almost kind of miss the way you could run out a unit's action points from 3 and get constant flanking bonuses by alternating who attacks from what direction. Still loving the game overall though. Are calvary units different from shock units? Haven't seen any calvary yet, just shock units with big swords. And any tips on how to play as fast as possible, in AoW 3 I kept playing 200 rounds games on maps that were suggested to only take 40 turns.
Also piggy backing on these questions ,
Shock can be cavalry, btu there are also cavalry mages, scouts etc. Its not a role, its a unit type.
I think you should try to place your first outpost on a resource node or near a wonder about 2-3+ tiles away from capital city. Then more stuff spread out a bit more. I think you want to hit your city cap as fast as possible. Cities being closeby isn't a huge problem so long as you don't surround your capital in every direction.
I'm not. Conquest only.
But Potato McSpuddy said it was heckin amazing!!! He wouldn't lie would he?
how are the mod tools? do you think adult mods will happen?
Doubt it
Skald sexo.
breasts too small
it's using my cpu instead of gpu
is this game good or what?
Did you like Planetfall? If yes then probably.
>start first story realm
>yaka discovers me after i gained demon powers
>walks into me by himself with his stack outside of reinforcement range
Game looks mildly interesting, I'll try it with the usual class and setup.
>Longsword
>Not an arming sword + shield
Poser.
he's a fantasy enjoyer, not some HEMA homosexual
Atleast they have an army skin color option
How did we go from this
to this?
Power leveling
What the frick I had no idea the steam workshop was out already and we already got a color mod, modderchads I kneel.
What a fricking joke
back in the day we'd just insert a new floppy disk
Delete some of your e-girl folder and you’ll be sweet
you monster
Bros how do I get more souls? The soulwells are paying out at a trickle and the mobs hardly give any souls, do I pretty much have to raze cities for the big payout and my skelly armies?
gotta break some eggs if you want to make an omelette
So in short stick with the old AOWs?
There's nothing wrong with the old AoWs at the end of the day, this plays like Planetfall but in the fantasy setting and with a different tech tree approach.
This
pretty much. I think so far I still prefer 1 and 3, but it's not bad either, just more Planetfall with some other bits. Units in particular seemed to be a bit more lackluster than in 3, which is a shame.
If you're not huge into it, obviously don't get it now and just pick it up later if you want to, as usual.
The game is great, it's just buggy release. They need our feedback on bugs, that just it.
couldn't fricking stand planetfall
It's kinda stupid that I'm playing a bloodthirsty orc warrior and they still refer to me as mage and there is "wizard's bonds"
It is just doing the thing from 2 where they tried to have wizards do everything forever.
cast me a spell, muscle wizard
This game is bland as hell. I cant believe i wasted my cash on another full price trash game after CoH 3. Im fricking dumb.
Care to elaborate?
If they are going with the Planetfall route they will make few DLCs and then stopping before making the game too overconvoluted and bloated with mechanis. Paradox is only the pubblisher.
look at any thread and its full of morons who spout about paradox dlc when the game isnt even made by paradox and the 4 dlc are already announced lmao
The thing I liked most about AOW3 was unit diversity and being able to get special cool units from non-playable settlements (fey circles that gave unicorns, dragon settlements, giants, archons...). The fact you can queue units separate from buildings makes it seem much more fun and not nearly as slow when building armies.
How good is 4 with unit diversity? How different is it from AOW3?
>How good is 4 with unit diversity?
Its so fricking barren bro. 5 Units per culture, 4-5 unique units per Tome path
how many units do you think aow3 had per race Black person?
6 plus their own unique upgrade with racial governance.
heres the fey recruitment landmark for aow4
Can you make heavy infantry? Every vid and screen I've seen just has units wearing loose clothing or maybe some awkward fitting scale armor.
Is there actual cavalry? Again, haven't seen any.
What exactly incentivizes you to take the commander hero over a wizard king? Spells seem incredibly powerful, maybe even necessary. Every vid I've seen has been a wizard hero.
Visually the style seems to be more early medieval/fantasy stuff rather than the later things we saw in 3. Also pauldron core, but that's not strictly new.
>Cav
Feudal and Dark get Knights, there's also one other knight. Beyond that, not much actual "charge in" cav beyond your hero. Scouts are the other cavalry unit, which are mounted archers.
>commander
Far better looking armor/clothing options. And that aside you get boni to relations and gold, the Wizard gets magic mostly and can double cast once per battle. Depends on how your culture is set up otherwise on what makes the most sense to take.
tier 3 unit of every culture except barbarian is a cavalry unit
theres a tanky melee dude at tier 2 for every culture except barbarian who has it at tier 3 instead
spells are strong but i played wizard king once and struggled massively with economy compared to champion but thats just 3 maps so far so i cant say for sure
>Can you make heavy infantry?
Check out the Dark faction units. And shock troops in general.
what is highest tier for race unit? Tier 3?
What's better than 1 beeg girl? 3 of em.
>Just finished a full (brief) campaign
>Game has only crashed on me when I tried to save my progress
Where are you guys seeing all of this crashing? I haven't experienced any serious bugs beyond save files not working.
11 hours played here 0 crashes
i blame toasters and tech illiterates
look at the response this fricking moron gave me. he thinks 3060ti is some top notch graphics card
You want me to update my GPU every year just so that the latest map game can run smooth?
Most of mine were doing affinity checks in random events. I had one on the screen to hire a new hero, too.
Apparently the game is only unstable on Nvidia 30xx cards. If you're on AMD or just have a card from a different series the game is mostly fine.
does multiple sources of lifesteal stack?
also does frenzy stack too?
Am I missing something? How do you dismiss a unit.
See
ty
How many passive regen enchants are there available? I wanna faceroll people through sheer temp hp without any spells or abilities on my part.
>only Dark culture has an actual full helmet
Guess i'm going dark,devoted to good and choosen uniters
Even the description for this combo is pretty neat
"even though these guys look evil as frick but they really want to bring in order,justice and goodness to all"
anyone know how to make new enemy leaders and or factions quick like in aow 3 and PF?
starting a new game and quiting it everytime gets boring really fast
>crashes
i bought it from GoG and been playing it since 8 hours and not a single crash here,might be a steam issue?
More like a "gaming rig bought in Target/Tesco 10 years ago" issue. My 7-years-old HP Pavilion can run it smoothly on the low graphical setting.
>they changed the underwear
🙁
>neither industrious nor dwarves have canons
rip
We can hope for DLC to add the dumb machines and guns back. Which is a bit sad.
The second announced dlc, Empires of Ashes or something, apparently adds gunpowder cultures
Yeah that's what I thought I read or heard somewhere before.
Air Galley and Juggernaut when? Firing broadsides was way too satisfying for how situational it was.
>Empires and Ashes: The empires of mortals resurge after the devastation brought forth by the Wizard Kings! In the Age of Wonders 4: Empires and Ashes Expansion, players fuse magic and steel to unleash devastating war machines to drive the Godir back into the Astral Sea. This full expansion, slated for launch in Q4 2023, includes a new Culture, new Tomes of Magic, new Empire Building options and a new Story Realm.
Hope they recycle the baron assets from planetfall. Loved those things. Or at least someone mods them in.
While we're on that, Primal Fury better add centaurs and satyrs back in, along with some similar fey type stuff. I know it's just gonna be dog furries or something, but I want to believe.
>players fuse magic and steel to unleash devastating war machines
I bet 10$ that it will be boring magitech, mechanical golems and constructs
No Gunpowder units
How fast would they slap down someone using assets from the gunpowder stuff from 3, or the Dvar stuff, for their mods because they have this planned?
Is there a unit out there with both the polearm and shield unit traits? I want to make the tanky shield wall to end all shield walls.
It will broken shield>pike>cav>shield counter balance.
Hope it doesn't take long for someone to make an item forge mod. Loved that thing in AoW3.
>unit page has no lore anymore
soulless
How would you know that they're soulless if the unit page doesn't give you their lore?
>FPS halved after I turn on Economic Overview
lol
Look like AI for neutrals and Godirs is different.
This is not very smart tactical moves, but better than regular "move in close group" behavior pattern.
so much for fixing planetfalls unreadable muddy mess problem
>unreadable muddy mess problem
Only "unreadable" there is current buffs/debuffs since we have only icons but no list, so need to check stat manually every time.
You guys look like never play strategy games with your "muh unredable" homosexualry.
take away the icons and the units are practically invisible and the treetops have the same color as the ground
it's a fricking mess.
>take away the icons and the units are practically invisible
>take away the icons
Yeah, you fricking NEVER played strategy games.
Go back to your /v kid.
you can easily see whats where in that screen unlike
without massive icons it barely distinguishable from background, i guess its still an improvement in aow3 icons were hard to see too and you had to mod them
>you can easily see whats where in that screen
Remove icons and you will se just nothing.
Go back kid, go back.
you should go back and see an eye doctor you blind homosexual
It's you that homosexual who cry about unreadable mess, so follow your advice.
one is easily readable while other is a fricking mess you disingenuous homosexual
And you only who have any problems with readability blinded braindamaged homosexual.
>backpedaling moron whos having problems seeing units in hoi3 is calling others blind
save oxygen and have a nice day homosexual
>completely misunderstands the argument
>gets needlessly confrontational
>delusional about his own hardcoreness
>tells others to go back to Ganker
Pottery.
>in lack of argument went to greentext
I accept your admission of defeat
There was once a trend towards reducing UI and icons as graphics technology improved to make them unnecessary. morons like yourself are the reason why progress has gone backwards: now every game is full of them and UI/UX 'designers' get jobs adding even more.
Nah here is the real story:
Art director ignores needs of gameplay and has no zero plan for visual hierarchy. "More detail, everywhere!". Then last minute they try and use ui to compensate causing a huge shitshow of icons and hud.
In your imaginary world of course.
They could fix it easily if they just made a mouse over pop up for the icons tbh.
So is anyone else not getting a mount when they chose Godir sword and shield?
And there they also split support/bm units so my cavalry can't block 2 of them and neither get bonuses from allied units on side.
only other 4x I've played for any amount of time is Stellaris and endless legends.
This feels like a cross between EL and HOMM been having a pretty good time so far.
>dark tomes can't get bone dragons or bone dragon mounts
why even bother
Dragons are part of the first DLC, which should come out 3 months from now.
So many cool non buildable units, looking through the encyclopaedia. Can't wait for roster increase mods and hero model/ability add on mods using them.
how to cheat pantheon?
>have to spec into dragon magic to get bone dragon instead of pure dark
ew
We don't know at this point. Could be they add different dragons for different affinities, like red dragon for Chaos, gold dragon for Order, bone dragon for Shadow, etc.
Ah. Adding assets already in the game to the rosters and packaging it as new content.
Don't be a moron. We already know about plenty of new shit that's part of Dragon Dawn.
Are there enough dragons in the game for each affinity?
I don't think so. Either they'll add new ones or they'll do something else. I don't know, I'm just guessing about what they might do either way.
Well i feel like t4+ units useless same as in Planetfall since they come online too late.
And generally game dynamic the same - with start t1-t2 army clear guards around, w8 until required t3 and then steamroll enemies. More difficult since enchantment weaker than modules but anyway.
in planetfall you didnt even need anything more than the arc weapon mods and then you just win with basic t1 or t2 units
>Human
>All Order tomes
>Everything is a 1 tile aoe buff or buff for standing next to each other.
>Form hexagon and win battles
Comfy.
I miss the little lore tidbits you got with units.
>There are mods already adding form/race specific traits that don't change with mind/body selection
Damn, modders are working fast on this one.
Makes me kind of excited to see what the modding scene will look like in a few months.
Waiting on the ones that add more hero skill options and hero transformations. Want to turn my lich hero into a reaper and similar for other builds. I imagine it would work around the mount slot. And I need an item market or forge mod.
I just hope they upload that shit somewhere other than just the workshop as the game gets more mods.
anime mods?
So would it not be incorrect to say that this game would be good to start getting into making mods as someone who has never done such a thing before? Was mostly thinking of starting with new hero skills.
Apparently it's by design very modular to make it as modding-friendly as possible
>only played AoW1 extensively
>figure I might try out the rest
>download AoW2 WT
>tab out
>that happens
frick that man
Old games don't like alt tabbing that much.
For some reason I could never quite get into 2, not sure what it was, but it didn't feel quite as right as 1 and 3 did.
>no bug people in any of the expansions announced
At least it seems like the last one will include Cthulu squid people
Not necessarily. Shadow demons from AoW2 were insect looking race from other dimension, so they might come back in that eldritch dlc together with shadow realm.
It feels like content has been cut which is my main gripe. I'd rather have day one DLCs, you greedy homosexuals, than have to wait years for games to be complete. I ain't gonna live forever.
Damn, the undead are really ugly in this game. Ugh, super powerful with their vampiric shit, but making everyone bald and ugly is not cool.
>Nooo why a bunch rotting walking corpses and litterall skeletons dosent look lik my beloved 2D anime vamp waifus
Basically, yeah. At least when going demon the game asks if you want to apply cosmetics to your main character, with undead your cute vamp waifu turn into an ugly ghoul.
Pretty sure there was a button to turn that off completely somewhere.
It didn't ask me. Maybe it asks if there's a conflict?
>when going demon the game asks if you want to apply cosmetics to your main character, with undead your cute vamp waifu turn into an ugly ghoul
That's not the difference between demon or undead, that's the difference between champion or wizard.
Champions are of the same race as the people they're leading, so the same transformations apply to them. A wizard of a different race doesn't have to do that.
Yeah, this is boring. Unit variety sucks and spells/skills are mostly just low digit modifiers. They once again played it too safe and obviously a lot was cut and unfinished.
Fingers crossed for modding though, with a large scale roster overhaul this would be great, there's a solid framework to work upon.
AOW3 got an absurd roster via a big mod, even if a lot of it was recolours and flavours of existing units, if we're lucky someone is gonna go all in again
i guess i now know why the unit icons are extremely large
Someone is already making overhaul mod. Freaking one day after the release. I guess he had early access to the game. Bless his soul.
>Wolfie
Guy knows his shit but doesn't give a flying frick about balance.
i hate myself
why am i so stupid at this game
why cant i like this game
i should good at this game
i should like this game
So far my only issue is that within the affinities themselves there isn't too much build variety, so mono builds are kinda boring. They should release an extra tome for each affinity tier.
Also I've noticed that you pretty much only benefit from recruiting units outside your culture once you unlock the ability to give anyone your cultural ability.
Cute witch, I see every female character is using that hairstyle, lol
Can I get the Syndicate Psynumbra experience in this game?
You mean the dark aesthetics, the debuff spam, the low tier unit spam, or..?
The espionage focus, intel and vision advantage (your units hidden + true sight), the debuff stacking, and emphasis on ranged attacks because of a weak frontline.
Yeah, you can.
>The espionage focus, intel and vision advantage (your units hidden + true sight),
Mono dark but it's not as good.
>the debuff stacking,
Things are surprisingly even debuffs wise I feel but I guess mono dark again.
>and emphasis on ranged attacks because of a weak frontline.
I think green has the best ranged units.
But honestly it’s all very debatable because all the different "factions" you can choose from are a lot more interchangeable and harder to distinguish.
Welp. After playing the game for over 13 hours I just had my first CTD. I thought I was one of the lucky ones since theg ame ran almost perfectly on my rig, but I guess it was only a matter of time.
Still, one crash in 13 hours isn't that bad, especially since it autosaves every turn so I don't lose much.
Yeah I’ve had two crashes and both happened when the game was trying to load or execute something and I kept trying to put more orders in so I'm assuming it got overloaded and gave out. Nothing since I stopped doing that, feel like the crash claims are a bit over exaggerated.
opinions so far?
It's fantastic, but the pacing could use a bit of finetuning IMO. It might just be an issue with my playstyle but I feel like building cities is too fast and recruiting units is too slow.
>but I feel like building cities is too fast and recruiting units is too slow
There's unique province upgrade where you get +5 draft per attached wood province.
But easiest way is just spam summons where you need instead of w8 3-5 turns for recruiting and another 8 turns for travelling.
So what happens to your rulers in the pantheon if you decide to edit them later? Will their pantheon version be updated? I noticed a lot of that shit is still buggy, like editing a ruler saves them as a copy.
I decide to w8 until some patches.
All those errors and bugs not critical but annoying.
>oh Chaos looks like it will have some sort of clown themed tomes huh
>one (1) (uno) clown unit
Someone mod a new one using the reaper model with new textures please thanks.
Does the game have a campaign at all? I don't see an option for it, new game is just a "make your own world" shit and a bunch of presets.
What are some units with fun mechanics I can get? So far magebane antimagic, the little astral fricks that go invincible on hit, nymph seduction and gremlin turn around are stand outs for me.
The ones on top of the list are story realms, should say in the subtitle.
No, the 'story' realms are just random maps against a specific boss, nothing else. How I miss the writing of HoMM, it was so wholesome, starting each campaign and reading those walls of text.
I think they were going for a blank slate approach here, like you're meant to make up most of the lore of this world in your head. Not even units even have any lore tied to them. Only ancient wonders and other special map features have any world building, like archon blood pools.
Not sure if this was the right thing to do honestly.
>they just made Planetfall again.
Conquest of Eo, despite being a very cheap side project, somehow managed to do the whole freestyle map with an actual story, but this one didn't.
Conquest of Eo did a lot of things really well. These guys deserve a main project budget.
AoW1 was the peak of that.
The reasoning IIRC was that few played the story of 3 to completion so they just made Planetfall again.
I miss the writing of AoW1. That was what really set it apart and made it good, and they ended up throwing it out to make a multiplayer MoM clone with AoW2. And then they decided to make it a generic fantasy 4X for AoW3. I'm glad the game is finally finding an identity again now, but I wish they would have included good writing in that identity. At least there's Songs of Conquest, which has a proper storyline, but it has comparatively very boring gameplay.
>the 'story' realms are just random maps against a specific boss
Have you actually played them? There's quite a lot of story and dialogue in these maps. The first one is painfully bland but it gets pretty decent after that. I admit, not on the level of HoMM but definitely a lot more than "just random maps against a specific boss."
In 3 you always start in top left, always get opponents in same locations
Cultures would benefit a lot from having multiple fashion/armor selections outside of mounts so you can mix and match different shit and have more visually distinct units/cities. Like classic AoW3 Tigran-like Egyptian themes for High cultures or eskimo-type aesthetics for Barbarians. Maybe even have unique options tied to certain cultural choices and combinations.
Every culture having very similar visuals is probably what's lending to them feeling samey.
It baffles me that they made rescaling your guys arms and legs length an option but there's not much else. I guess they didn't want stuff getting in the way of gameplay modifications but most of them are some variation of glow and you can't see many combinations anyway.
The pros
>Tomes are a VERY well thought out mechanic
>Realm creation is best in class for 4X, provides a lot of replayability
>both the tactical combat and the 4X are great and clearly had a lot of focus put on it
Cons
>Spells are nowhere near as crazy as they could be. Similarly, society options aren't as crazy as they probably should be. They're statistically significant, but not a lot are truly unique. The society traits they put in the pantheon should honestly be the baseline
>much, much lighter on the story than other Age of Wonders, which is a shame
You forgot
>non tome sourced units are bland as frick
That’s not an issue at all weirdo, normal spearman, archers and swordsmen are perfectly fine for tier 1 units in a fantasy game.
>>much, much lighter on the story than other Age of Wonders, which is a shame
This and the lack of real "depth" to a lot of the races really just comes down to the weird wizard king battle royale thing they have going on with the Godir and the portal gate. Every race and faction is meant to have come from different worlds and realities, which while a fine explanation for the character creation and more open-ended race customization, does mean that a lot of the flavour text and lore behind a lot of the characters, already existing races, factions and creatures is just not there because every culture group shares fundamental traits with one another and those same creatures exist across every world.
>open-ended race customization
Yeah except every feudal race is apparently Rohan and every artificer race is Vaulters.
Artificers being about big tanky beatsticks, something that isn't hard to come by, instead of artillery/ranged sucks dick.
Blame that on the lack of culture clothing and aesthetic options, I guess.
For some reason we can't have spooky porcelain-masked cultists or pompous and gaudy renaissance landsknechts as our Dark culture fashion choices. No, we gotta look like we came straight out of a budget Game of Thrones setpiece, complete with tacky raven feather capes.
>Rohan
Hey at least they picked a good one. But yeah there should be visual customisation options for your dudes. i.e. various degrees of armor for Feudal from what we got to full plate etc etc.
so they actually released this game with 4 dlc announced to be released in a year and theres even an option to buy them for premium price?
Not only that, influences played on more stable version of the game, fricking israelitedox needs to go bankrupt already.
The premium price is $20 cheaper than buying them separately.
I don't think it's a bad deal. It's just that buying the base game + the pass is asking for a lot of money up front without really telling us fully what's coming later down the line.
according to the guy in vid its 10$ cheaper, its pretty clear they hold out content and are selling full game for 90$ if you preorder and 100$ if you buy normally. Bad optimization, buggy release and fact they didnt even bother with campaign is slap in face for that sum of money.
How does any of this still surprise people? This exact shit has been happening for ages now, is it scummy? Yeah, but it's not new or surprising. Just don't buy it, it's that easy.
>game looks fun
>i know paraisraelites will ruin the game with expensive dlcs that should've been in base game and bugs that'll never be fixed
what do bros
Wait and see? Play the other AOW games, or any of the games in this genre?
I doubt this one will go down the full Paradox route, it'll probably be a case like with the BT game where what was announced is more or less what we get. Or hell Planetfall for that matter.
Play AoW 3 and you'll find out how this game will look like in a year.
Paradox is the publisher, not the developer. Triumph doesn't have a track record of exploitative DLC bullshit.
Also, all of the DLC they're planning to make for AoW4 has been announced in advance, so you know what to expect and whether or not you want it.
I just want some story content, don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing Stellaris and its emergent storytelling really works, but not here.
>RX480 runs the game perfectly fine with no crashes
THE AMD MAN MARCHES ON
now for my thoughts so far
>standardized promotions are boring as frick, getting even a shit unit to high rank in 3 would reward me with some cool ability
>culture units are supposed to be blank canvases with some subtle playstyle flavoring so you can make them cooler with enchantments and stuff, but frankly they come off as bland and boring even if you make their sword glowing and their skin blue
>gaining new damage types doesn't really feel impactful compared to previous titles, probably because playable races don't have elemental resists/weaknesses any more
>city management is excellent and doesn't feel like an afterthought like in 3, my favorite addition was the separate unit queue
>the AI is very competent, absolutely mogs Firaxis and Amplitude (not a high bar)
what they should do in the future
>go full Stellaris on the race creator, add more slots, a points system and weaknesses you can pick
>promotions overhaul to make them unique
>more units per culture for variety, maybe even tome unit variants based on culture sprinkled around
thanks for reading my blog
Yeah it feels like the base of your faction is bland so your tomes influence them more and make up the difference but the tomes A)don't feel impactful enough and B)there aren't enough of them. Wow, each alignment has two tones and only a single capstone tome. Such variety. Totally won’t end with a load of identical mono affinity factions.
Yeah. The tomes in general would feel more natural if there were more of them to go around for each affinity (and maybe some crossover ones for combined affinities, like an icefire tome that contributes to both Chaos and Shadow affinities or an alchemy tome that combines Nature and Materium/Astral affinities) and more final ones so you have different end goals to aim for, instead of every Chaos road leading you to becoming demon worshippers or every Shadow tome leading to necromantic lichdom. And again, more cosmetic options, more race customization options that add different elemental defences and the like, and more cultural units + maybe some customizable leeway with individual unit selections + expanded cultural retinues where you can go all in with cavalry as a sort of mounted astral steppe culture or something.
Yeah more cosmetic and stat options for your race would help a lot. Also just some kinda gear option besides the enchantment one, which I suppose some tomes do, but still.
Add more actual customisation when that's gonna be the focus, as is it feels like 3 with only a few more options.
I think having units for each culture that have affinity requirements to unlock would be cool. Could add some flavor by having units that require multiple affinities to encourage branching in weird or interesting directions.
Tbh that might be easy enough to add as a mod.
Personally i think they just need to either give one more passive/active ability to most of the culture units to help them feel distinct, or add more enchantments that add active abilities. There are some like mending staves and aspect of the root, but they are rare.
>no option to change resolution
>no fullscreen
>windowed is stuck on native resolution so it's pointless
what the frick
even console ports of japanese games do better
Conclusion: very broad, little depth.
AoW was better before it went 4X
what did he mean by this
It's literally the same game except for tomes and predetermined factions.
Even the "story" of AoW4 is a continuation of 2 with the whole wizard kings coming back and shit.
>It's literally the same game except for tomes and predetermined factions.
Nah, 1 and 2 are way less 4xy.
It's similar, you still took and upgraded cities in 1, that was just updated and expanded on a bit in 3 and now 4.
Even now it's more of just a HoMM clone like those than a 4x game proper.
It's basically the warcraft 3 of 4X.
It's not THAT bad.
It's THAT good.
Are orcs noble savages now who dindu muffin now?
I mean, you can make them that way if you want.
Or you can just make dickass evil-loving barbarian orcs who worship demons.
Your orcs might be but that's not the point.
Age of Wonders is a 4X, but one that limits the scale of your economy and focuses on heroes and military.
Warcraft 3 was that but for RTS.
You could make an orkish theocracy already in AoW3. So yeah nothing stops you from turning orcs into celestials if you want.
Okay, how? If you boot up AoW1 now you'll see how similar all those games play.
Sure, similarities, like it is similar to HoMM.
I really don't get your point man. What is it that supposedly marked the shift to 4x in the series? Resource management, diplomacy? All that stuff was in AoW1 already.
Just trust me.
>honeycomb is made of hexagons
>hexagons deposed squares as 4X grid king
woah
Reviews up to 80% positive, shit ass zoomzooms who can't google "how to update drivers" keep losing. Sad!
Game sits currently at 80% very positive reviews. Tendency rising. Game is fricking amazing.Had 0 crashes in 6h. Yes some people have problems and it sucks for them. The game itself is good though.
>Yes some people have problems and it sucks for them.
Even if it's actual problems like with the small pool of cultures + cultural units and the lack of proper tome variety for each affinity?
Sexoo
thanks doc
Why does a tree have breasts
Tell me what your first playthrough faction was.
Industrialist orcs, materium/astral
>Industrialist orcs, materium/astral
>tfw did the same but replaced astral with chaos for snow-dwelling industrialist semi-sorcerer orcs that primarily use fire magic
Dark human astral/shadow (with a dash of materium in the end-game)
Gifted casters/powerful evokers frost/lightning/summons
Wolf-mounted feudal orcs with elven queen.
yjk
But yeah nah had a similar thought with mono green elf queen and goblin or rat army, with a whole worshipping the forest goddess schtick.
>Wizard King Halfling, Tome of Beasts
>Feline, Wolf Mounts, Arcane Focus
>Mystic, Gifted Casters, Mana Channelers
>Nature Magic Victory
Dunno if I'm lucky or just a quirk of the default fey blessed fields tier 1 map but my immediate neighbors were all the cooperative sort so I just got into an alliance with them with my game just being fighting proxy wars for them and spreading my forest seed everywhere until it was time for magic victory. I don't think i even trained any actual units aside from the ones the intro/tutorial made me build.
On a related note how are the story realms and the ones that come with alternate win conditions like the frost realm?
>Feline wolf mounts
I did this as well, it just seemed funny.
>how are the story realms
first one is trivial difficulty wise where you are given overpowered buffs for free basically
second one is awful island map
third one is kino all out brawl with forced war on everyone
Built units are completely uninteresting and are all mogged by summons
>put enemy throne under siege
>their leader respawns inside, then runs out
>no battle or anything, walks straight out of the besieged city
Yeah, total bullshit.
We need to spent 4-6 turns for break walls when they just spaw, recruit 2 armies and walk away.
>put a city under siege
>3 enemy stacks just fricking walk out like nothing is happening
>still takes multiple turns to get into the city
And steam homosexuals all like
>whoa noob you should just have enough armies for intercept them
If you have enough stacks to fully encircle a city then you've pretty much won the game anyway.
How viable is it to go materium/astral in an even split?
Depends on that you want?
Astral have some good buffs for archers as example.
Cluesless about how the progression works in this game.
Well, you can try anyway. Aside materium's archers and astral buffs for them i didn't see so much synergy, but why no.
Well, I picked the Moonrock Dwarves, which start with those affinities.
Starting affinity is important but not that much.
Yiu can start with 1 point in affinity, then take 2 tomes (+2x2) + build affinity root (+1) and you can take t4 tome.
I think the best way would be either to take advantage of the "magic origin" materium units like gargoyles, wind ragers, golems etc. Astral has quite a few buffs for magic origin units.
been thinking about doing something like that, basically artificiers/enchanters using summoned units. mana generation, upkeep reduction etc from astral, golems, enchantments etc from materium.
I'm really liking that now to defeat a player you only need to capture/raze their throne city while they're in the void, instead of destroying every city of theirs. Definitely makes the conquest game much less of a slog.
So the DLCs are giving us the missing races/factions from 1,2 and 3 but is there anything new?
>hmmm should I try the story missions
>guess I might as well give it a go
>first mission is super easy, guess that's the tutorial
>try second
>meet npc who's supposed to be my ally
>aggro settles in my face despite grievance
>not allowed to attack him because 'fixed relations'
>ok maybe somewhere else
>he's already got two cities where I would go next
ok guess I shouldn't bother with story again
when do you usually build your second city?
I think around day 10? I'm not sure I'll have to see on my next realm.
Immediately.
never, I rush the nearest city state and replace the population
I finally found an optimization issue!
In the underground, the lava pool provinces tank my FPS to like half.
Yeah I don't know what's wrong with lava pools. Water doesn't have that issue.
My bet is on waving air from heat with bad shaders that tank the performance.
Is it just me or do non-magic ranged units suck absolute balls?
Using them just feels like you're trying to XCOM without any of the actual benefits of XCOM.
Feel much weaker than 3 that’s for sure.
Not just that, compared to battle mages who often have AoEs to compensate for missable ranged attacks and basically any hero unit who shoots shit, archers in general feel like you're banking on luck for very small benefits, and even then if they hit the cover the enemy is using will still be there, unlike with say Pyromancers who can just burn the cover away and leave the enemy exposed for attacks. Plus magic hits a lot harder pure than an archer with elemental buffs.
Yeah, I have no idea why you'd take them over battlemages beyond the early game.
Granted, I was playing shadow/astral so far and they absolutely focus their enchantments on battlemages and support casters, maybe the other affinities prioritise archers?
Materium has some good buffs for phys ranged
That makes sense. I assume nature also has buffs for archers since they focus on blight damage.
iirc nature has a solid archer unit, but it's more about monsters and spells
Every affinity has at least one buff for phys ranged units, i know nature's tome of roots gives the poisoned arrows but i don't think it has many more.
Nature is more about summoning/buffing animals and healing. One tome does give poison damage and the decay debuff to all ranged units though.
I got them to do AoE damage to units standing to the target with astral magic but yeah they're not particularly strong in the late game. Just replace them with watchers or other battle mages.
You should properly build them.
Can I spawn forests like in 2?
Yeah. Not until T3 nature tome though iirc. Generally terraforming and city/domain sustain spells got cut down hard compared to 3 & planetfall.
Forests and grasslands are each in T2 nature tomes, not T3. T3 nature just has a tome that benefits from being in forests.
It's samey and barebones as frick, played three characters and it all felt the exact same thing
Not saying you're wrong but I'm sure you had the time to play all three to endgame of course.
What do you mean endgame? I played the world and reached ascension
Wagie wagie
I'm not a wagie and it took me an entire day to finish one game with 2 AI factions. I don't see it happening unless you've done literally nothing else but play this non stop since release.
i'm really enjoying this game bros, theres something about it that is super appealing to me. i feel like i don't get aggressive enough early though and i'm falling behind in levels so the battles are getting rough. i think the godir ai is shockingly good for a game like this
>i feel like i don't get aggressive enough early though and i'm falling behind in levels so the battles are getting rough
For me it look like AI have cheats. For items and money at least.
There's no fricking way to get 15 items on turn12, and having 15 t1-t2 non-summoned units include 2 additional heroes.
the items are a bit of a stretch but the rest are easily doable
try starting as a barbarian with ruthless raiders
pic related was mine and pumped out units like crazy
But AI wasn't ruthless barb, it was mystik.
If you get an event or reward that gives draft you can shit out like 4 t1s in a single turn, get more than one event/reward like that and it's easy. Not to mention summon irregular, chaos giving unifs from clearing infestations etc
Are there any terraforming spells? In AoE1 you could scorch like half the map and leave a brap cloud over the enemy city but I played one game so far and all I got from map combat spells was this dogshit lightning strike that did no damage.
Yes but few and far in between and less impactful compared to previous games.
I don't know what they were thinking. If they wanted to go full blank slate fantasy world they should have just let us drop magical atomic bombs freely.
Wasn't this whole series about magic and shit?
I get the vague feeling the DLC plans they've shown aren't the only DLC they have planned.
I don't really feel like this is true, you can level mountains with spells
You can scorch provinces, demolish mountain ranges, freeze provinces, cover provinces in forests, create volcanoes.
>positive reviews
This game is a turd. I seriously dont get it. I expected so much more after the excited reviews.
whats better Spellforce conquest of eo on aow4?
Eo hands down.
Spells are more fun, it comes with a story, the little dungeon CYOA segments are way better, unit variety is better and you get the satisfaction of leveling your little dudes up and picking their skills.
It's not entirely a traditional 4X though, you only have one "city" but you can move it freely. You won't be doing too much expanding, it's more explore and exterminate whatever you find for phat l00t.
>It's not entirely a traditional 4X though
It doesn't even have randomised maps as far as I know, there's just the one map you play on. Randomness and replayability is kind of a central pillar of 4X.
they fricked up eo completely with patches taking all the creative strategies out to force some sort of vision of how you are supposed to play
Spellforce was more fun for me despite having just 1 map.
Eo ubalanced as frick in all senses and at all stages.
No fun if you don't know how to break this game and get stomped by endless doomstacks.
No fun if you know how to break this game and stomp everything.
How did she enthrall them?
Told them the humies and knife-ears were talking shit and didn't think they would find out.
lots and lots of yuri rape while the orc men watched
>white woman leading an orc faction
you just know
>playing third story realm as orc barbarians
>that b***h starts as my neighbour
im sure there are chinese cartoons just for this feel
>Play third story realm
>Beat first two lords easily using the mind quest thing
>Suddenly the third and fourth lords jump on me with twice the number of units i have each
Damn. I think Ill have to try a different build and manage my economy differently. I picked artica and it didn't really work out.
Are there not garrisons/militia anymore?
No, thank god
Cringe. Waiting on a mod to fix it I guess.
Want to try stating your opinion using something other than internet meme jargon? Playing musical chairs with undefended enemy cities was an annoying issue in the previous games, but a garrison system is a braindead bandaid to stop it, the defender gets minimal control over the garrison composition and the only brainpower the attacker needs to do is check if his stacks' power rating is enough for the power rating of the garrison before attacking.
The current siege system works better, the siege projects offer the attacker various boons in exchange for an up-front commitment of gold, while the countdown gives both sides time to take actions and prepare for the fight.
CRINGE
>do the second story mission
>spend some time building up a navy to mog siren in combat
>realize im stuck in a corner and cant get my navy out
>download cheat table
the U.I bothers me a lot and I find the map hard to read. I could see why people might be turned off by it. The way that information is presented and just trying to click the "right" spot could use some love.
I find myself trying to click on unit banners rather than their tile a lot tbh.
Thats a big issue and highlights well my issue. But this is everywhere
>Get told terraforming sucks
>Get T3 tome that turns land into arctic terrain
>Also applies status resist down and frost damage to every enemy army in that province
So i have maggical cold nukes but this is bad?
I made a combo where I saw enemy provinces with a nature global spell (tree sight) and then nuked them with astral bombing.
Frost is the only good one tbh. Just because it fricking sucks for everyone else and you can get immunity.
Trying to understand why characters look so bad full of edges and aliasing, running on max settings, max AA, no dynamic res shit and still it looks bad
>there is no key binding for the sector build option pop ups like farm/quarry/mine
>have to manually click the fricking tiny button o the top right corner
Game feels like a sidegrade in comparison to AoW3.
I like campaign map much, much more in here. I just know that if I tried to return to AoW3, way too many things would annoy me. City building, provinces, minor factions, recruiting units, reinforcements, quests and events, killing enemy heroes, looting them, reviving, diplomatic deals and casus belli etc almost everything I like more here.
Expect for trading
Faction customization really needs unique traits and units for Race Forms. Tomes being now possible to select during game and not on faction creator, make entire system much more engaging.
Transforming your race is fun as frick and I was surprised that you aren't chained to a single transforming and instead effects and VISUALS stack.
I wish there was more Godir forms and more cultures
Battles are fun again, but game is a bit no fun allowed here. Evolving and training units is limited. In AoW3 I could seduce/tame enemy unit during battle and it would remain mine on campaign map. And if it was stuff like a spiders, then evolve it through different tiers. Here I can't steal an unit like this and evolving has less tiers and less units seems to have access to such mechanic. This "should" be trivial for modders to fix.
Battle maps are less repetitive than in AoW3 I think. Although I don't understand why aren't they generated like campaign map ism
I have no doubt that after updates, those 4 dlcs and mods it will be far better than AoW3. It's a better base due to better campaign and faction creation at their core. I basically just want more of it.
But for now it's a side-grade.
there is a permanent mind control skill
Cool, I couldn't find it and was disappointed with Nymphs
Wish I could filter steam reviews for negatives that are only about content and not "it no run reee"
What're the predictions, will future DLC and patch updates make up for some of the missing content like choices feeling more meaningful, or more units to use?
I'm excited for this game but based on what I've read I'm worried it will feel like a dumbed-down version of AOW3/PF after 1-2 games
Hard to parse what is just hate from gamers and what is genuine criticism
There's some aspects that are a downgrade from PF, there are zero downgrades from 3 3 was really shit. Except maybe no "handmade" campaign but as someone who played all those campaigns, they sucked ass.
For the most part its an improvement, but its also got no updates/DLC whilst PF has a bunch of DLCs and updates so its at a bit of an advantage. My main complaints of "downgrades" would be first, low tier units feel less fun than PF, second, no "creates hazard" spells, i liked those and finally the lack of water based wonders/free cities and variety of aquatic units feels like a big downgrade compared to the rich naval combat of PF.
I hate how tomes funnel you into the same endgame options. Fire magic? Demons. Chaos jester shit? Also demons. Necromancers get a necromancy t5 tome, but the ice mage also gets the same tome. For how much the game tries to push customisation they seem to love forcing you into the same path with tomes.
>Fire magic? Demons
it's a bit odd that they remembered frostlings but didn't think up with firelings
Pity that there's no lore description for the various units.
But perhaps a Shadow Magic-like stand-alone for Age of Wonders 4 might bring that back.
Also, DIRE PENGUINS!
>Also, DIRE PENGUINS!
*holds up spork*
What about them? Use tome of beasts or just recruit a hero with a specific governor skill and you can build dire penguins in your cities.
Dire penguins are the best.
Simply the best.
If the game had some more tomes and the option to take negative traits... even if you didn't use negative traits but the ai did, that'd already add a lot more variety and opportunity for enemy exploitation.
I noticed that one of my opponents was going heavy into order so I countered, by also going order. The game just needs more stuff.
There could be a possibility for more customization in later dlcs like the spirit shrines from Age of Wonders 2, although I guess the spells and benefits they give have been taken over by the tomes.
Always liked the spirit of war, which gave you veteran units at the price of lower population growth.
Oh shit tome of pandemonium has a spell that forced the spawn of an infestation. That's pretty cool.
>Gain a new race trait via event that makes my people eat mana and gain stablity
Oh shit i didn't know events could modify your race
you get that one from stockpiling like 1k+ mana i'm pretty sure, i got it as well because my mana income went into the toilet and i overcorrected
Is there any bonus to building the same type of providence improvement on a resource node? For example building a farm with a sheep resource node or building a mine on a gold deposit? Or is it worth it to build what I need but prioritize resource nodes over providences without a node?
The node is just a bonus, i think they used to encourage you to build the same type there in planetfall, but now they have gone the opposite way, because it felt like you had no choice but to build that type. So just build what's good for you, but keep in mind some special improvements have adjacency bonuses.
I still built whatever could achieve the highest level in planetfall despite the node bonuses because the bonuses from having a lvl 5 building were so much better.
>Turn province into forest with magic
>Destroy forest to create army of animals and plants with tome of nature's wrath
>Rinse and repeat
Neat
how?
>Kill Sundren in the first story mission
>She freaks out goes dark elf mode at me then fricks off to the astral sea
Use that spell from tier 2 tome to turn land into forest (or the one from the T4 tome itself, destructive regrowth) then use awaken the forest from tome of nature's wrath. Or just get rid of all the forests who cares point is easy way to get quick animal armies. Though quick cheap mass armies can be done pretty easily by chaos as well with spells like golden horde.
I have decided I like spring
>slam pit
It's an unfortunate name for my town. Especially when the idea was to go for a Nature Goddess ruler kinda thing.
There should really be a plant people race
And maybe a seperate tree people race too
Well, between leafskin and gaia's chosen anyone can be a plant, I think mushroom people is what we need.
I didn't encounter any CTD in the tutorial game but had 3 in 5 hours in a custom game.
Play the beta, I haven't had a single crash since starting it
This is a supergrowth halfling btw.
I love the tiny head it makes them look like a cartoon muscle freak
what is the current version/build?
is there any patch?
There's a beta hotfix only for Steam.
never played this series
this worth getting or should I play 3?
It's fun, I've never played 3 but I think AOW4 is better than AOW Planet Fall.
Play AoW1, should be cheap as frick and it's a damn good game.
I'm gonna be honest I find it hard to get into games like that
not because of the grafix but generally just the out dated ui and control scheme
I don't think it's really all that different to modern AoW, they're pretty much the same game minus the customization options from 3 and 4. Plus it has an actual story to get immersed in. AoW4 has nothing in that department, you will play skirmish and you will like it.
>AoW4 has nothing in that department
there is a story actually you just dont play as a set faction
Well, I could give it a try since those games are tiny anyway. I'll try the tutorial and the campaign
1 is my favorite, it’s a classic with fantastic music, graphics, gameplay revolving around big armies and very powerful spells, with a huge variety of units. I can’t see anything wrong with the interface, but the game actually feels, in certain aspects, limited compared to future aow. In many ways they added complexity that made the game less unique. If I were you I’d start with 3 because it’s the one closer to 4 in every department and you may prefer modern gameplay design.
>
Its good, if 3 is on sale somewhere maybe get that but 3 is also harder for a new player to play. Unironically consider 2 instead of 3.
>try to make a hot female elf wizard
>all faces look horrible
She looks okay in the portrait but as soon as you open the hero menu she turns into a hag.
>tfw no breast slider.
at least some of the dresses are coomer material
Maybe a mod will come out.
ruthless raiders seems completely busted
game wont even launch aaaaaaaghhh you frickssss
Probably the coolest mountain start I've gotten so far. This is an almost perfect defensible location.
>pick lightless as a realm trait
>still sunny visually
Slightly disappointing but whatever. I'm ready to conquer the undead ridden desert realm
Honestly i'm actually really liking the story realm thing.
How many of them are there? I feel like it won't be enough.
IIRC they said there are only 5 story realms, with a few more coming in DLC.
I'm on the last one already? frick
i feel like the wizard king option is such a wasted opportunity because of culture limitations
your culture determines the units and the special buildings you get and you would almost always want the mystic buildings for mana generation
now my dumbass gobbos turn into spellcasters instead of being dumbass gobbos if i pick the mystic culture because i want the buildings for my spell caster leader
let me pick the culture and buildings separately triumph you homosexuals
i want to play!!! god damn it why wont it even run
If you're above your hero cap is it just the one-off gold payment you have to make to recruit them, or do they also cost a lot of gold upkeep? Should I go above the cap?
I can't wait for modders to bloat the shit out of this game. It will be glorious
it is time to frick
Had to go on a 1 week job travel the same week of release. Is it fun?
Managed to get aow shadow magic on my shitty work laptop, having a nostalgic blast with some unofficial 1.6 patch, making things a lot more interesting and varied.
I accidentally started a map on standard difficulty and could autoresolve everything for a while with the starting stack. So it's definitly a game that's better on harder difficulties. Pushes you into finding an edge and exploiting weaknesses.
I find that aow Ai can easily be steamrolled if difficulty is set low. Especially if you expand rush. Setting it higher makes for a more slow pace game, as the Ai get resource bonuses and usually a lot more troops than you.
Used to enjoy custom maps where you teamed up with Ai to fight an overpowered enemy by grinding it down over time.
I feel that with AI its inversion of Total War. AoW3 is easy in early game, but the longer I play the harder it's gets since AI starts shitting out doomstacks of units and it uses spells and abilites competently in battle so my armies are getting nuked with AoE spells. So far I have similar experience in AoW4.
Does the Ai spam tier 4/5 units of one or two kind like it loves in aow3 endgame? Kinda felt stupid to endlessly fight monotone doomstacks on single tier 4 units.
I remember aow1 solved this problem by making cities in different tiers. Some towns could only produce units up to a certain tier
I can't tell yet from my experiencein AoW4, but I think AI enemies will. There is nothing really stopping them or player from doing so. I can see neutral AI already spawning with 2 V tier units in a single army and you cannot enter a single relic with more than 1 army after all, and that requires doomstacking. Which is annoying, but it's clearly what devs intended
I don't understand this tbh and its this same issue I have with TW:W. In general I like my battles big with mostly normal, low tier units and few heroes and big guys here and there, even though they can drag in turn based games. Introducing additional unique resource(s) that are required to recruit high tier units would immediately fix doomstacking in a very natural way, but that would go against core game design. Relics/ruins/tombs only allow for 6 vs 6 battles after all. Transformations and enchantments improve lower tier units so they don't go completely obsolete, so there is this at least.
I've never played AoW and usually play space games. What game is this like?
For me personally it reminds me of homm, especially 5/6 due to the colourful 3d. There are differencies obv and other influences. Instead of endless stacking you've got units with a mximum number of hp which functions in a similar manner: a unit at 50% hp would do half the damage in a similar way to losing half of yoour stack would lower the damage output in homm. Unit movement on the battlefield feels like modern xcom with the action points. Unit upgrades are very loose and tied to the magic side instead of the infrastructure building side. City function feels taken straight from civ five with the satisfaction of building farms around the city being the same. Leaning heavily into race/faction customization feels like stellaris with ck3 character creator if it didn't have dogshit models. Randomized research feels like research from stellaris.
tl;dr it is fun, but not all of the potential has been realized quite yet
Do you know how HoMM or similar games play? It's that but a bit different for all of the games.
Recommend just checking out any of the first three, maybe Planetfall (it's a bit more like 4) if you like space things.
>Do you know how HoMM or similar games play?
Not really? Would you recommend any of them?
Thanks.
Maybe!
>recommend
Well, Age of Wonders in general, King's Bounty, HoMM of course. At least those just come to mind.
Nope, camera stays fixed
>Well, Age of Wonders in general, King's Bounty, HoMM of course. At least those just come to mind.
Which one would be best to try first? Should I just try AoW4? Or wait for performance updates? This game isn't fricked like other paradox games, right?
>Nope, camera stays fixed
That seems rare in new games, good. Thank you!
join me in trying AoW1 brother
it's on gog and only 300 mb
https://gog-games.to/
I'll try it when the links on the site work again. Hopefully it works this weekend, thanks.
The links for it don't work.
weird, that's the only time i've ever seen gog-games fricked like that
Same, it's the safelinking site being down. Some other links use a different site but the aow1 links do not. Is the game the same on gog as on steam? I know sometimes the gog versions are better due to compatibility or whatever.
The gog version comes prepatched for windows 10 I think. At least I didn't download anything extra. Playing in 800x600 and haven't had any issues
1 works out the box, 2 was a bit more janky I think but also still runs.
I know games back then didn't really have it but, is there a windowed option? I ended up getting it on steam but that was probably a mistake.
>windowed option
Nevermind, I launched the game on steam a second time and now it comes up with a configuration option. Silly.
That's good to know since I grabbed 2: The Wizard's Throne when i was getting 1.
If you are interested in 4 just play 3 then go backwards.
What would that do?
Unless you are used to old games interfaces and gameplay focus, you will probably hate it. Going backwards will make you enjoy the games from modern standards, to retro kino.
While AoW1 is simpler, it also has an epic emphasis. Think about Tolkien fantasy. 12 races, big armies, barely no research or improvements, spells that allow to raise the waters or forbid casting global spells. I like some of the later changes to the combat system, but they came at the cost of killing what made the game epic. And I’m afraid people who play nowadays prefer it that way.
Why would he go backwards when he could play the story campaigns in order?
Because the lore is completely irrelevant and improvised. It used to be a warhammer clone without the grittiness, then they killed some races to put new ones, and so one.
>used to be a warhammer clone without the grittiness
As it should be and should have stayed. But it also really doesnt matter that much either I agree.
I would literally never stop trying to impregnate you. Every day I would wake you up by coming in you and every night I would cum in you right before going to sleep, which I would do with my dick stuck inside you. I would take some viagra before bed just to maintain my erection so that you'll be ready in the morning when I thrust into you like an animal and slather you in kisses. Part of our wedding vows would be to have as many children as physically possible. I wouldn't even care if you are already pregnant, I'll frick you while you're pregnant and you'll get double pregnant. I'll fill you with so much cum every day that you'll look pregnant even when you aren't (which you'll never be after we're married) I would do everything in my power to make you as fertile as possible. I'd give you fertility drugs, I'd give you uterus massages, breast massages, I wouldn't let you go 5 hours without at least one spastic orgasm. I'll even bake you home made lactation inducing biscuits to help you get to a point of hyperlactation syndrome so that you'll be seeping out multiple quarts of milk per day. Which I will save and drink just so that I can tell you how delicious it is. I'll make you so fertile that triplets will be the minimum number you'll be carrying at any given time. I would literally never stop doting on you, I would respond to you every beck and call and I would cum inside you again each time you ask for something. You would be so pregnant all the time that you would literally not be able to stand up straight anymore even after menopause. Your spine would be permanently bent out of shape to accommodate a pregnant belly. Even after you can't get pregnant anymore I would just keep putting more eggs into you. I would clone you purely so that I can put fresh eggs from the clone inside you after you run out of them. You would have so much progesterone running through your veins at any given time that even the thought of not being pregnant would seem alien to you
That's kinda gay, Anon
how are the mod tools
didnt test yet but assume its the same as planetfall
if you like space games you should try planetfall and if you like that then try this one
anime~
What differs between different tiers of realms
difficulty
basically a barren shithole with a high level enemy with bonus cities compared to nice little safety bubble with good boys around you
I assume it's just based on the difficulty of the modifiers. Like jumping from Fey-blessed fields (tier 1) to fallen kingdom(tier 2) scenarios I've gone from having a relatively relaxed 1-2 neighbors + free cities in my continent to influence to being cramped up against all the pretender kings, other empires and some free cities that for some reason are also vassals of some of the pretender kings so it's hard to expand without accumulating at least some grievances with those around me. Kinda wonder how rough the tier 4 realm is now although I guess the challenge in that one is more having a super jacked enemy and barely any resources to go around compared to the constant civil war
I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm having fun.
But I know in a few weeks I'll become a gay trying to minmax the fun out of every created faction
epic
I really like the desert oceans maptype w/ desert climate and then having to terraform my island(s). Seems like it would be a fun multiplayer scenario if you have one guy build desert adaptation and the others each a different terraforming tome.
Game is fingerlicking so good. Can't stop playing. Pretty much everything I wanted and I'm not having performance issues like others it seems.
This build so fricking good in early game.
Leader shield, unit shield, healer, bm and archer.
Ranged have a lot of accuracy, bm have aoe nuke with reduce defense debuff, healer apply distraction when awakend, double shield frontline take a very little dmg.
i have very similar elves but i went for keen sighted since i focus on magic a bit more
im debating between mana addicts and perfectionist artisans though since lifesteal reduces the overall damage taken massively
In general it's depend on what you want.
For me i want heavy-archers armies with iron and later golden golems as frontline, so i take artisans for boosting early game, and stability always nice especially paired with champion instead of wizard king.
If you want heavy-magic, mana addicts + gifted casters in pair work very good.
Yeah, it's the plan.
i decided to make another spellcaster faction instead and went with archer focus for the high culture too
the archers didnt end up as good and the casters were mediocre since i had mana problems spamming to keep mana addicts in every fight
In my experience zephyr archers is amazing good.
I take dark ritual (aoe dmg+raise zombies) as lord skill and it's just crazy, archers kill 2-4 creatures in second round and i raise zombies as meat shield.
I keep my lord with sword+shield, but to be honest he didn't do anything aside raise zombie since btaale finish in 3d round.
Just get a shit ton of zephyr archers and aoe the frick out of everyone from 7 range.
Can this just not be run on potato computers? I keep trying to play and it seems to run fine on my tablet, not even getting hot but then it crashes to desktop out of nowhere
Did you update your graphics drivers? It's a hassle but it tends to fix the issues with new releases.
Yeah, it still just crashes. Put everything on lowest settings too
22 hours with old drivers 0 crashes
its your toaster
paradrone
your toaster can be heard from this far away
How much are you paid to shill this disaster of a game?
Dunno then, wait for a patch or just refund it.
Specs?
Processor 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz 2.42 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.8 GB usable)
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
It is a toaster because it's a tablet but it can run CK3
Why would you ever take any racial trait but the retaliation one if you're focusing on melee?
Waiting for the phalanx mod with combined shield&spear unit thpe that FRICKS
What does this mean for my units practically?
first get some cropping skill holy shit
i assume you mean the supergrowth number of units decrease which is nothing but visual
Irc every unit that dies in battle decrease the whole formation damage, so by having less units in formation your soldiers can be damage more without receiving penalty to damage.
What the frick happened to her
Torso reduction surgery.
spawnkin turns everyone into manlets
There is a transformation spell in tome of horde I think. It makes entire race smaller
>get earth shatter
>ignore it because it's just 10 physical damage
>eventually I start preparing spells before going balls deep into the enemy so I can release them all at once
>cast earth shatter
>it fricking obliterates everything inside that province
>it's not even that expensive to cast
Does this game jump the camera around each turn to each enemy? Spellforce Conquest Eo does and it's fricking annoying.
Is this game supposed to roll crits before hits?
I'm hitting low chance shots way too often and when I do they tend to be crits.
That was the case in Planetfall. Crits always hit and always inflict status effects unless immune, not sure if they toned it down in aow4 or not,
the game really likes dropping you in the middle of the map instead of the sides like in aow3
I want to fugg cover girl
I want to take turns fricking Karissa with other Orcs!
where would I find a better bow for my ruler? is it just rng what items you recieve from neutral camps?
You could try buying one off other factions.
This. It usually costs 150-250 for an item but it’s worth it they can have good shit and it outsourced searching basically.
>Increased save limit per session to 50
Thank God, but why won't they remove such limit completely?
There must be a funny programming story behind that. God knows what moronic shit they made. Maybe they upload the saves and want to reduce limit the size of the stuff they store.
if paradox had put the shill budget into QA maybe the game would've fricking worked
They can't, they're the publishers not the developers. Shilling is their main job.
maybe if they hadnt been sticking their ass into things demanding they put more clothes on the females they could have had more time for qa
Goddamn this spell is good. Really saved me this battle. Versing Order factions is a nightmare with all those buffs.
Is there a way to terraform uninhabitable provinces?
I've seen a few
materium can blast mountains
nature can grow fields
there should be a trait exclusively available to human men that makes halfling, dwarf, rat and goblin female leaders and free city mayors far more likely to cooperate with you.
>pyromancer inflicts burning with basic attack
>white witches dont slow
>evokers dont electrify
>cant enchant them to have it
come on
>play the game
>it's actually fun
I didn't expect this from an Age of Wonder title, I liked the first one but two and three were soulless.
It's a bit buggy but autosaves make the crashes only kind of annoying.
Try the beta; I haven't had any crashes since
Getting tomes is boring in this game. I miss when they were bigger with levels but you had to actually fine them instead of just unlocking them automatically.
giving AoW1 a try, it's actually pretty cool once I got used to the ui
the in battle spell effects are great
not sure which campaign I want to do first
Sundren
>NOOOO YOU NEED TO CLEAR THE WIZARD TOWER BEFORE FIGHTING YAKA
>NOOOO YOU CAN'T JUST DROWN HIS STARTING PHOENIX IN BODIES
I really like tome of the horde + beasts, it's just infinite tier 1 works
I killed both on my playthrough
I was going to kill Sundren but with Yaka starting off with a phoenix I didn't know how much bullshit he was going to pull if I kept him alive so I ignored her
Why would I not take powerful evokers and gifted casters as Mystic culture
If you arent spamming those units? If you plan to focus on tome units, summonsor spellguards for example
mystic has no real need for either, once you get past early game casting points aren't much of an issue, and if you need more combat magic their t3 caster has a repeatable use ability that gives you +10
because theres no need to reduce mana costs or get more casting points
mana addicts is completely superior to either of those and if you want to go full magic blaster instead of summoner its better to go for economy boosting second trait anyways since mana is not a problem as mystic
replace gifted casters with mana channelers and keep powerful evokers for saucy summoning. the shadow affinity is needed to unlock summon upkeep discount.
gifted casters is mediocre, 10 casting points is hardly anything in this game and the 20% mana discount on combat spells is barely felt either.
>make a race of feudal rats with a human knight dude
>cast spawnkin
>now i'm faced with the choice of turning my leader into a lame small guy or miss out on 20% damage
Tough choice but i just missed out on the damage.
What's the point of founding cities? Isn't it basically always better to conquer?
you cant conquer most cities at the start of the game
Skill issue
Free Cities aren't very difficult if you've got a good strategy.
Walking like two more turns is much cheaper than forgoing potentially dozens of turns of pop growth.
I guess there can be niche cases where it's worth it, but the game has Adept Settlers and puts it on a bunch of the default nations as if it actually settling was something you were going to do.
>Free Cities aren't very difficult if you've got a good strategy.
sounds like babby realm settings to me
if you dont take the sheep someone else will. finders sheepers you know?
Adept Settlers boosts your city cap, so it's good for conquering too, and the starting bonus is decent. But I think it's probably just on a bunch of starting units because it's good for newer players; it's versatile and can boost tempo a bit if you're suffering in that area.
what if there is no city to conquer in the place that you want a city?
>Paradox did it again
Did what? Why can't morons understand that Paradox (developer) is not this same as Paradox (publisher)
Holy FRICK Prospecting on Industrious Scouts is ridiculous.
Get 6 or 7 of them out and into mountains, your production and gold income is tripled all game and infinite items.
Yeah industrious cultures are fricking strong when you know what you're doing with them.
Build up an army of tanky anvil/bastion units, carry a steelshaper and fill the rest of your army with mages/archers and you're clapping cheeks like it's Friday night at a gay bar.
I run them the same, got the retaliation damage bonus racial talent and defence bonus and levelled my heroes as tanky melees.
They have first trike now and one shot melee enemies when they are attacked and have multiple retaliations.
Love it.
>make a red orc
>this is one of the first events
really makes you think
Does this game have now the usual paradox events?
it's not a paradox game, they just publish it.
Yes I know, you said that 50 times now. My question is “does this non-paradox game has paradox-like events now?”
Assuming you mean those "lol randum" events that CK3 has? no
and remove any sign of cleavage from it
No those are just from Planetfall.
>tfw High culture Order/Astral blending gives me fat fricking stacks of magic damage with Awakening + Lightning Blades and like a shit-ton of magical racial units that're not only faster to produce but are very potent with all the buffs I keep throwing around
>especially when paired with Sneaky flank attacks that just delete shit when done right
>also got Aspect of the Root for extra tankiness on Phantasm Soldiers so they refuse to die and can do AoE heals
Now this, this is gaming.
This is the first Age of Wonders game I've ever played and I'm enjoying it but I think I might be moronic, the AI always massively out-grows me and I generally struggle to unlock higher tier units. So far the only race I've managed to get to work was not-Skaven Chaos Barbarians going all-in on spamming the frick out of Tier I units. A lot of fun but man the limit of six units per army made that damn cumbersome to play at times.
If you have armies near each other you can have two more join in
you should have more armies than one
the way hero skills work you cant get buffs to all unit types early on so you can specialize hero buffs to ranged and melee for example and just run a full stack of archers in one and melee in the other
The thing it took me a while to get about AOW is that it is a turn-based RTS not fantasy civ
Playing tall is almost always the wrong choice, expand as much as possible so you can out produce your opponent
I haven't played long enough to find any easy doom stack builds I'm sure they exist, and battle tactics do make a difference but most games are won and lost on your production
Flexible racial trait shouldnt apply to heroes, its just too good rn. 0 reason to take something else
One thing I kinda wish happened with transformations is that they'd stay permanent on any character/faction you ascend to the pantheon.
Feels weird going through all the effort to turn them into demigods yet when you next see them they lack all those traits.
So does aow 4 have a proper campaing story?
Like AoW Julia keepers or Meandor seeking revenge?
whats magic victory like? you gotta build the seed, root, heart, and cast the spell, right, but i havent tried casting the spell because it said enemies will spawn next to the special province improvements to try to stop it and my armies were elsewhere
Pretty chill actually. It's like an enemy army spawns on ONE of the three building every 2-3 turns but since you get discounts and bonuses to your own spells you can say drop a full stack of animals on them. Playing on normal at least I didn't need more than 1 end-game stack to deal with each incursion. Also the AI freaks out and everyone somewhat friendly with you rushes to join your team for an alliance win.
how long does the spell even take to finish, and then you just win?
15 turns and yeah you just win