Age of Wonders 4

[Zboj Lamignat]

By my count a fully upgraded city would have 180 siege health - that's 18 turns before battle if you don't spend any money!

I thought waiting 4 turns on the bigger anomalies in planetfall was slow already

Cause it was! Textbook example of devs somehow failing to understand how their own game works on a p basic level. Another one were those npc faction "quests" that can completely disrupt your research for like 3 turns early game - really freaking dumb.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

With each of these revealed features I'm finding it harder and harder imagining how the game will actually play. I guess they did it again and made a game that's very different to its predecessors.

Does someone know if you can occupy, plunder or raze sectors? And how does migration work once you have taken a city. Are there any sort of "racial" relations and options to migrate still in the game, or were those options removed with the introduction of the custom creation stuff?

 

[Suicidal]

By my count a fully upgraded city would have 180 siege health - that's 18 turns before battle if you don't spend any money!

That sounds terrible but it's very easy to fix - just change a few numbers. Hopefully if 10+ turn sieges are the case, the devs will realize that nobody wants to park their army in one place for that long and change it in a patch.

So far I have mixed feelings on the sieges. On one hand, I don't like that random armies can no longer capture towns - this eliminates some of the tension.

On the other hand, I like that you are now able to destroy city walls before the fight even begins. I'm playing through AoW:SM now and base defense battles are hilariously easy to win. AI is too retarded to attack your towns properly and you can beat an army several times your size if you have a handful of ranged units on the walls. But for the player it's not a problem because you can do shit like: initiate the battle with a few heroes, bombard the enemy rangers with spells from your mage ruler and heroes, retreat, then attack with the rest of the army and win with minimal losses.

Being able to eliminate walls before the battle will hopefully make the AI a bigger threat to your cities.

If the games had AI that's not retarded this wouldn't be necessary but alas, this is the world we live in.

 

[Lord of Riva]

By my count a fully upgraded city would have 180 siege health - that's 18 turns before battle if you don't spend any money!

That sounds terrible but it's very easy to fix - just change a few numbers. Hopefully if 10+ turn sieges are the case, the devs will realize that nobody wants to park their army in one place for that long and change it in a patch.

So far I have mixed feelings on the sieges. On one hand, I don't like that random armies can no longer capture towns - this eliminates some of the tension.

On the other hand, I like that you are now able to destroy city walls before the fight even begins. I'm playing through AoW:SM now and base defense battles are hilariously easy to win. AI is too retarded to attack your towns properly and you can beat an army several times your size if you have a handful of ranged units on the walls. But for the player it's not a problem because you can do shit like: initiate the battle with a few heroes, bombard the enemy rangers with spells from your mage ruler and heroes, retreat, then attack with the rest of the army and win with minimal losses.

Being able to eliminate walls before the battle will hopefully make the AI a bigger threat to your cities.

If the games had AI that's not retarded this wouldn't be necessary but alas, this is the world we live in.

I would not be overly worried, there are techs in every tree to help with sieges and you can improve your "siege points" via tech and increase the amount of stratagems you can use as well. We will see.

 

[Lacrymas]

This just prevents random neutrals from attacking your cities I suppose? I'm not particularly keen on having every army with a hero, though, but I suppose we are at a point where that's unavoidable.

 

[Lord of Riva]

This just prevents random neutrals from attacking your cities I suppose? I'm not particularly keen on having every army with a hero, though, but I suppose we are at a point where that's unavoidable.

Random neutrals can attack your cities though, they do not need a hero for a siege.

 

[Lacrymas]

This just prevents random neutrals from attacking your cities I suppose? I'm not particularly keen on having every army with a hero, though, but I suppose we are at a point where that's unavoidable.

Random neutrals can attack your cities though, they do not need a hero for a siege.

Ah, then I was confusing 2 different things. I read/heard/imagined you need a hero to siege cities now.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Btw Zboj Lamignat, I made a thread about the awful RMG on their Discord and posted your screenshots. I was immediately assaulted by apologists and everyone saying how it's absolutely fine and it's just a tiny bit of the map, and it's the north of the map so it naturally transitions into an arctic biome. We won't be getting better maps, let me tell you.

It's just north of the map bro.

Just naturally transitions, like modern day americans bro.

Bro

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Btw Zboj Lamignat, I made a thread about the awful RMG on their Discord and posted your screenshots. I was immediately assaulted by apologists and everyone saying how it's absolutely fine and it's just a tiny bit of the map, and it's the north of the map so it naturally transitions into an arctic biome. We won't be getting better maps, let me tell you.

It's just north of the map bro.

Just naturally transitions, like modern day americans bro.

Bro

They should've added some intermediary biome types tbh. These transitions do indeed look quite jarring.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Transitions are not the biggest problem here. Yuge swaths of flat, featureless, ugly terrain with nothing on it bar completely random mob here and there are. And it seems they made the maps way more boring than they ever were, with POIs completely gutted and no neutral factions and their settlements.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

And I'm completely out of date with Stellaris, but why do they think this is the direction to go? Isn't "race = just pick a couple of traits at the start and go", like, the most common complaint about it?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

And I'm completely out of date with Stellaris, but why do they think this is the direction to go? Isn't "race = just pick a couple of traits at the start and go", like, the most common complaint about it?

On the contrary, it's one of its strong points with how many options you have. Not only for roleplaying, but also for coming up with various builds (ranging from simple synergies between government types and your primary species to stuff like engineering secondary species with specialized roles in your empire). Issue with porting this design philosophy over to AoW is that there are neither enough racial traits nor government types for that to work and I doubt that even the DLC will significantly change that.

 

[Delterius]

And I'm completely out of date with Stellaris, but why do they think this is the direction to go? Isn't "race = just pick a couple of traits at the start and go", like, the most common complaint about it?

I don't think I've ever heard that sort of complaint. If anything the fungibility of the system is the appeal. If I want to make psychic aquatic mermen I can, if I want to make crime lord fungi, I can. The reason why it sticks better than, say, Humanity's take on taking traits from IRL civs as you advance (rather than playing the Akkadians from start to finish) is because while there's a common galactic history to every playthrough, the galaxy itself feels more amorphous and versatile than earth's continents.

Maybe back at release stuff felt more samey (I barely remember pre-Megacorps Stellaris), but Stellaris DLC have only added to the differences of playstyle available with new civics, origins, and, more recently 'species traits'. Aquatics, Plantoids, Lithoids, Necroids, and such all have special forms of play that are tied to them.

The Stellaris fanbase practically worships the 'custodian initiative', which is what the caretaker team is called. Complaints seem to be more on the side of bugs, or features and playstyles needing a revamp. Like how recently they reworked the ascension paths and made cybernetic into it's own thing rather than a stepping stone to synthetic. Or how they made psionic a bit more reliable with it's options.

 

[Lord of Riva]

Btw Zboj Lamignat, I made a thread about the awful RMG on their Discord and posted your screenshots. I was immediately assaulted by apologists and everyone saying how it's absolutely fine and it's just a tiny bit of the map, and it's the north of the map so it naturally transitions into an arctic biome. We won't be getting better maps, let me tell you.

It's just north of the map bro.

Just naturally transitions, like modern day americans bro.

Bro

They should've added some intermediary biome types tbh. These transitions do indeed look quite jarring.

As TBS players we should all be used to these kind of abstractions by now. There is a case to be made by clearly distinctive tiles in a hexagonal-game board.

I saw Lacrymas Discord thread and he is right, as always when it comes to gaming, regardless of what I think on the matter, there is a bunch of apologists everywhere with no argument but "oh the devs are so great, they can't do something that isn't good".

In the end though the part of this which is a graphics debate strikes me as highly irrelevant, I play games like "Dominions", I can live with Jarring terrain changes.

 

[Raghar]

And I'm completely out of date with Stellaris, but why do they think this is the direction to go? Isn't "race = just pick a couple of traits at the start and go", like, the most common complaint about it?

I don't think I've ever heard that sort of complaint. If anything the fungibility of the system is the appeal. If I want to make psychic aquatic mermen I can, if I want to make crime lord fungi, I can.

I can't select the "one skin color only" choice.

Also it vital for roleplaying. C'mon, when game is badly designed, then at least it should do something.

 

[Zed]

Only a few more days until release.

If the reviews (from you guys etc, not media) are good I'll get it for sure. Haven't played a fantasy strategy game in forever.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Just demo it, since it's gonna be on gog, I ain't buying this shit.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'll definitely be demoing it. No-one in their right mind would day 1 purchase an AoW title.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I mean, r... right? Literally no one would be dumb enough to buy full dlc pack version of PF on release. That would be, like, really stupid.

Ha ha.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Flawed, but fun factor wins.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Flawed, but fun factor wins.

Looks comfy.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Ah, yes, a review that does not feature a single mention of how the fourth(fifth) game compares to the previous installments. Which is absolutely the most important thing to dwell on, since titles like these mostly live on a pre-existing fanbase.

But yeah, it has controller support.

 

[Suicidal]

Ah, yes, a review that does not feature a single mention of how the fourth(fifth) game compares to the previous installments. Which is absolutely the most important thing to dwell on, since titles like these mostly live on a pre-existing fanbase.

But yeah, it has controller support.

I don't think he played (or even heard of) those considering most of his complaints were about superficial shit like lack of voice acting for units.

 

[kangaxx]

This looks OK... never played any of the first three. What do you guys think?

 

[Sranchammer]

This looks OK... never played any of the first three. What do you guys think?

Perhaps play AOW: Shadow magic if you're interested in this first