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Age of Wonders 4

Erik189

Literate
Joined
Mar 20, 2023
Messages
5
no such thing existed in PF
It actually is. In single instance, but still it exists. No wonder you missed it. Your every second post in this thread oozes hate to PF like if you were tortured to play it for all day long. I mean are you alright? What's the matter of making yourself coming back to something you hate so much?
Anyway, next time you for some reasons have to play it again you should try getting all possible AI+difficulty mods, only choose galactic empire mode and most important somehow forget about AoW3 entirely cause it differs.
You won't believe but most mechanics and all that kinda staff according to you "only good on paper/in theory" works surprisingly fine or even great on practise when you try playing game at least a bit seriously.

Anticipating misunderstanding I love both AoW3 and PF and used to think 3 is much better, but after a while realized they are conceptually different and PF can be not less as fun and interesting too. Ofcourse PF could be made way better but its definetly not 100% decline as you see it.
Neutral faction alliance? That's not a choice.
Can tell for sure despite how many hours you've played, you have a lot things to learn/discover... incredibly alot.
yes am pretty much just reged only for this lol
 

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
8,388
Location
Kelethin
I can't believe there's finally a replay battle button. It only took them 24 years. The battle maps look less dumb and copy paste too.
 

Suicidal

Arcane
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
2,317
Waaait a minute, so the landmarks don't unlock special buildings/unit upgrades now? Like, at all?

Huge fucking :decline:
This mechanism was only added with the expansion of AoW3, it wasn't in the base game, so there still is a flicker of hope.

Why would they remove something they added in the previous entries only to add it back again in the expansion? Landmarks gave bonuses to produced units in Planetfall from day 1, so if this is absent from AoW4 it's unlikely that they will re-add it. Maybe they only will if enough people complain, but it seems like they have other design goals for landmarks this time.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,732
Pathfinder: Wrath
All the dev diaries make me more confused than anything ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hopefully this doesn't turn out to be a chaotic mess.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,777
It actually is. In single instance, but still it exists. No wonder you missed it.
Citation needed. I assume this was something added late into the game's lifecycle?
Your every second post in this thread oozes hate to PF like if you were tortured to play it for all day long. I mean are you alright? What's the matter of making yourself coming back to something you hate so much?
Strategy is my favorite genre, I love AoW series and I'm an active user of this forum. These things, in some almost eerie way, prompt me to participate when the topic gets active. I hope I was able to solve this particular mystery.
Anyway, next time you for some reasons have to play it again you should try getting all possible AI+difficulty mods, only choose galactic empire mode and most important somehow forget about AoW3 entirely cause it differs.
You won't believe but most mechanics and all that kinda staff according to you "only good on paper/in theory" works surprisingly fine or even great on practise when you try playing game at least a bit seriously.
Oh god, are you one of those 3-4 crazies (a militant arm of 50ppl-strong PF fanbase, if you will) that scoured the internet posting "PF is gr8, sectors require more iq than rick&morty" whenever someone wanted to discuss how to fix/improve the game? I distinctly remember one annoying guy that spammed literally every steam thread with shitposts about difficulty mods that make the AI and the game 12/10, instead of 10/10 that it was in its vanilla state.
Can tell for sure despite how many hours you've played, you have a lot things to learn/discover... incredibly alot.
Care to explain how is that a choice in a way that pertains to the discussion you quoted from?

Why would they remove something they added in the previous entries only to add it back again in the expansion? Landmarks gave bonuses to produced units in Planetfall from day 1, so if this is absent from AoW4 it's unlikely that they will re-add it. Maybe they only will if enough people complain, but it seems like they have other design goals for landmarks this time.
PF did that tbh, cosmic happenings came back in one of the paid dlc and I think they also made a low-effort attempt at making the landmarks a bit more varied and spicy near the end of the dev cycle. At one point, I actually HOPED for them to sell stuff that should be in from day1 so that some of the missing stuff gets back into the fold. Alas...
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
29,855
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Your every second post in this thread oozes hate to PF like if you were tortured to play it for all day long. I mean are you alright? What's the matter of making yourself coming back to something you hate so much?
This is nothing. I don't think AoW PF has soured him like the later HoMM entries did, especially 4. Zboj Lamignat am I right about Homm?
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,777
I don't know what you're talking about, fam. Homm4 all the way, fighting heroes and mutually exclusive dwellings are the way of the future.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,732
Pathfinder: Wrath
PF has its strengths but it has mostly weaknesses. The race/secret tech combos don't work very well in the majority of cases. The sector system is a bit befuddling and it forces the map to be almost featureless. There are more map features near your starting city in AoW3 than there are in all the sectors around your initial landing spot in PF.
 

chuft

Augur
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
519
PF actually has lots of map features. The problem is a lot of them are old Imperial defenses and only give a defensive effect in that sector or the ability to cast defensive ops in one of your sectors. These don't help at all unless you are on the defensive which you rarely are. So capturing them is not very exciting. Mostly you do it to soften up a landmark or enemy city before you try to clear it because otherwise the independents defending the landmark/enemies in the city benefit from the defensive features. And you have to occupy the features to maintain control if you don't control the sector.
 

Erik189

Literate
Joined
Mar 20, 2023
Messages
5
Citation needed.
Not made you curious enogh for finding it yourself? Pitty. Elysium Parks allow you produce Roys and Emmas. You know them from very first campaign. Hey I didnt say it would be any good/useful one but it exists! :D

Strategy is my favorite genre
Then you must see how PF was obviously inspired by Endless Legend, while AoW3 feels like something closer to homm/disciples for me. If playing casually AoW3 has its adventure vibe while PF is just Civ style filling map with your armies and colour and "Oh look some unit constructor!" If playing seriously they are similar but the deeper you look more differs you will find. Balance, ecomomics, victory achieving concepts are not the same. So how can you just compare amount of buffs and other debatable futures? Leave it to 4th part, seems it will need it lmao.

are you one of those 3-4 crazies
Expecting you to react like that. Again no. Its the first time and I actually no idea why feeling need to kinda protect PF. Anyway that proves am not only one who able to made it playable. Though there is probably no 4x-like game I could play without difficulty mods. Btw doesnt vanilla aow3 bots are eaven weaker? Not to mentioned still figuring out what's the best map settings to set.
And yes again PF has tons of problems from gamma to.. sectors? dont mind them by itself, its economics overall which is honestly horrible. Well as 4x fan I eventually adjust to it and even did some math finding best development ways like if it wasnt ever needed at all. But yea it should be pure nightmare for others, so inconvenient annoying and boring, basicall only gives you bigger army maintance.
Care to explain
You was talking a lot about synergies or combos creation so.
Well, firstly neutral facions often has the most powerful and useful upgrades only comparable with basic top tier ones, not to mention their availability and cost. NF units can be if not as important part of your army composition than at least something you temporarily/additionally needed cause for example you dont have snipers or melee at your own or need more healers etc. They also can be bought instantly as emergency army, sending troops to your enemies etc. Thus they are anything but not some meaningless guys.
When creating combos neutral faction is mostly what you start From. Like Psi-fish are absolutely OP with any psi factions, Autonoms with machines, Forgotten with entropy, Spacers have bitty but strong options too and so on but Growth are shit

And here we comes to overall combo creation concept which is not straightforward damage/unit type buff stacking. Guess everyone tried to combine prometean and lasers realizing its kinda imposible, along with lots other such missed opportunities. Yes it doesnt work. And I believe was done on purpose but thats ok. You dont need it, crazy 1 damage type stacking is not even most efficient thing imo. AoE/multitarget damage + max debuffs way better. Depending on sec tech and other factors you can focus on defence/range kite/melee rush/heals or debuffs.

Making combos is more about being creative and result something good and fun out of what you have available. So instead of fire + lazers it will be jetpacks + Phoenix Walker. That is a thing. There were plenty of good examples and thoughts from other people in this thread. As addition do you know Echo Walkers are potentialy good artillery? Yes you read correct. Despite some intersting options for them as melee fighters there is another thing. Clones share all abilities meaning things like Positron Arc Storm will be twice as good. So Echo Walkers + vanguard Miniaturized Missile Array + Autonoms for debuff and if you get assembly Echoes somewhere could benefit from network buffs on top of it. Debatably effective but surely interesting.
Need more smth stright op? Kir'ko+Celestian+Psi-fish, one of all three t4 required, havent tried yet though. Does it competitive enough to AoW3 synergies for you?

In practise its often hard to perform exact combo or not win before its finished, especially if you dont know what neutrals you'll get. Also the most op thing right now is landmark stacking(even same ones do stack) so if you planned specific units you may ended up building others for which you have too juicy landmarks. But still I believe one able to make something good and more important fun out of any possible scenario. I mean even Dvar+Xeno is ok now, what can be worse?

It was said PF moved focus to race instead of class. Not really. You have your sec tech as core thing, 2 weapon trees depending on starting race which also cannot be changed and race tree with units which you can forget about as soon as u find another race city. Or you can use techs/units from several race trees. Additionally in Gal Emp mode you can get some techs/units/spells from any other factions even some fauna ones for even more crazy combos. For not being too op there are planets with tough conditions. Also dont know is it a bug or feature but when you convert enemy units through syndicate slavery, heritator spell etc. you get unit with its upgrades and Even can use these upgrades on same units if it makes sense.
So see nothing special about syndicate purifiers, dozens of such things and you can turn Heritor or even Xeno low tier units into slaves too if want.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,732
Pathfinder: Wrath
It becomes very obvious very fast that trying to combine mods for damage isn't going to work out very well or at all in the vast majority of cases. It does work out for defense, ironically enough. Assembly + Paragon mods can stack absurd defenses very early f.e. However, nobody has said that there are *no* good combos, just that they are very rare and hard to find. Also, they prefer to be called involuntarily employed, thank you very much.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,777
Elysium Parks allow you produce Roys and Emmas.
Tying their recruitment to what is, if I remember correctly, t3 landmark is questionable design, but cool nonetheless.
Then you must see how PF was obviously inspired by Endless Legend, while AoW3 feels like something closer to homm/disciples for me.
"Obiously inspired" by EL? Wat. The reasoning here is what, regions, which don't really work like sectors at all? And AoW, as a series, doesn't have much to do with those games you mention. It was "obviously inspired" by other classic fantasy TB titles and then slowly drifted towards including more and more 4X elements while retaining strong focus on the wargaming aspect. Not that it has anything to do with the discussion at hand.
Expecting you to react like that. Again no. Its the first time and I actually no idea why feeling need to kinda protect PF.
Uh-huh. I guess I'll take your word for it. In case you were one of those guys after all, my personal advice would be to stop shitting up the steam boards 24/7 after the game releases if you want to help AoW4 break the magical threshold of 300-400 concurrent players over an extended period of time.
You was talking a lot about synergies or combos creation so.
No, it was a direct reply to a poster trying to make it a part of the equation while at the same time disregarding the randomness factor and downplaying the perk choices in AoW3. Which I saw as and disingenuous take.
When creating combos neutral faction is mostly what you start From.
As long as you luck out on getting the one you want at the point where it matters. In other words: very rarely.
Which is kinda besides the point, anyways. I literally never approached a game like that and had zero problems winning maps on highest diff both before and after the patches made ai less retarded. Nor was I feeling like I'm missing an important part of the puzzle. Which is a point that was specifically made already.
Of course, no one is saying that you cannot approach the game in the same way and get good results. Which is a point that was specifically made already.
Stuff about mods
Sigh. I see that you like talking to yourself and I reeeally don't feel like repeating myself and the same points for the n-th time. Yes, mods are a rich system that lends itself to a lot of, potentially interesting, theorycrafting. There was no denial of that at any point.
It was said PF moved focus to race instead of class. Not really.
Um, trying playing a couple of games with only racial units in AoW3 and then do the same in PF. Like already mentioned a couple of times (see the pattern here?), it's zero problem in the latter and often you won't even feel like you're missing anything (see the pattern here?), while in former you are severely crippling yourself, to say the least.
So see nothing special about syndicate purifiers, dozens of such things
I've explicitly stated what is special about syndicate promethean combo. The fact that it's a super rare instance where stuff like race-specific quirks of secret tech units, mod modifiers and underlying faction mechanics gel in satisfying way that feels natural and progresses so as the game goes on. Something that can compete with AoW3, where shitload of race-perk-class combos worked like that. Despite "dozens of such things" being available, I'm still waiting for more examples other than "if I put t3 thicc dicc mod on a t2 pussy unit it turns it into a completely different unit omg I love PF so much".
 

Erik189

Literate
Joined
Mar 20, 2023
Messages
5
Mixing AI/difficulty balance with features and mechanics design, mixing setting with gameplay, sort of quibbling around about post replies(?) and other, made me sick by suspicions to ended up finding that huge indeed aow3 vs pf steam thread. Funny how its head post almost repeats my recent words here, must be collective insanity.

As result not interested in this particular discussion anymore.
But at least I get this, thank you. Apparently I misunderstood it somewhere before.
Yes, mods are a rich system that lends itself to a lot of, potentially interesting, theorycrafting. There was no denial of that at any point.
Summary: PF is shit. Bring us climate wars back!
and all da else ofc

For real I'd rather open space for some further aow4 stuff.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,777
I think mods are a significant factor behind PF being shit, yes. It's obvious that enormous amount of dev time went into them, which could, to some extent, explain the plethora of missing features and decline of others. At the same time, the mods themselves don't mesh with the reality of how the game plays all that well and they fail to make up for all the missing stuff. They could easily make a fantasy spin on them for AoW4, but it seems like the decision was to drop them like a hot potato, instead.

Back to the topic of AoW4: I did some more reading and my enthusiasm is waning more an more. Apparently you cannot choose the map size you want when starting a new game and it's hard decided by the number of opponents you pick. Wtf. Also, supposedly there is not even an option to choose the world threat and all the rmg options are basic af.
 
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chuft

Augur
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
519
Planetfall increased the control over map options from AOW3. I always specifically exclude the furries for example from possible NPC races. Very concerning if they decrease map options in AOW4.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,732
Pathfinder: Wrath
A friend of mine accused me of degeneracy when I sent him a screenshot with the furries from PF.
 

Erik189

Literate
Joined
Mar 20, 2023
Messages
5
Accumulating disappointments, am I the only one who totally obsessed with narrative unit descriptions? Considering rather.. poor campaigns it was like 90% of immersion for me and I havent seen them in aow4 anywhere yet. :cry:
How can it be they cut them too?
 

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