Age of Wonders 4

[Fargus]

did people even play the campaigns in these games? I always just ran scenarios
same with homm3 etc..

AoW1 campaign was fun. Besides not having a campaign is just fucking lazy.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

did people even play the campaigns in these games? I always just ran scenarios
same with homm3 etc..

Some of us did play the campaigns and the scenarios. It turns out we are the deviant ones, though.

maybe I'll make a custom campaign for you guys. I've been wanting to work on my story telling

They retard-proofed that angle a well. Just rmg, made extra shitty just for you.

 

[Fedora Master]

Doesn't even run properly on my Ryzen 5 7600X/RX 6750 XT

 

[Absinthe]

There are no custom maps in AoW 4. No map editor so far. It'll happen eventually, probably in a patch.

 

[ArchAngel]

So, some new details!

• Looks like water gameplay (which was already fucked up in AoW 3 thanks to the removal of transports and nerfing of Wild Hunt, making naval/aquatic units undesirable) is virtually nonexistent in AoW 4.
• Unit enchantments are now applied globally to all units of a particular type with each unit automatically gaining the enchantment upkeep cost. This fucks up the mana management side of unit enchanting and unit upkeep. Normally, in AoW, you don't enchant fucking everything.
• There appears to be some "strong encouragement" to use a Paradox account when opening AoW 4. Apparently the game has difficulty starting if you don't use it.
• Story and flavortext are basically totally dead now. The RMG campaign substitute is not really making any attempt at a narrative and units do not have flavortext anymore (which I guess is almost an improvement on AoW 3's poor flavortext that actively undermined your ability to take the setting seriously).

Between this and there not being a campaign, who is this game really made for? All of this looks to me like the online PvP player is the target audience for AoW4.

Wait, there is no campaign?! LOLWTF
I rather go back to that 4x Spellforce game again, by now they patched it into something much better than this shit.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

There are no custom maps in AoW 4. No map editor so far. It'll happen eventually, probably in a patch.

Did not happen for PF, nor was added through modding, so wouldn't hold my breath.

 

[Absinthe]

I think PF was abandoned partway through?

But yeah, do not buy AoW 4. You're gonna have to wait for them to finish adding back normal AoW features, like campaigns, scenarios, map editor, unique races, maybe mod tools.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I think PF was abandoned partway through?

Not officially, no. They released all planned content and said "development finished", despite some serious bugs still being in. Whether the absolutely lackluster state of dlc and the game itself was caused by incompetence or lack of funding is up to you. It was probably both, anyway.

 

[Axioms]

Some poor bastard with a top helpful negative review on Steam was complaining about all the stuff they removed from AoW1 and all that and I was like well have you played Deity Empires? Many AoW1 fans say it is the closest modern game. Dude was like, nah I like eye candy. Bro no one is gonna make a high production value old style fantasy strategy game. You've gotta be out of your mind if you think/thought that would ever happen.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Can't help but notice you didn't mention what made it better than previous AoWs or give a lot of detail there.

Well, for one because I don't give a flying fuck, especially since as I already stated in the past pages I never thought particularly highly of the past releases in this series.
Age of Wonders has ALWAYS been a series that was "almost there" but systematically fell short in several areas.

Also, Leechmonger , you can lick my hairy balls, you fucking coward mongoloid.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Can someone confirm this?

 

[Fargus]

Some poor bastard with a top helpful negative review on Steam was complaining about all the stuff they removed from AoW1 and all that and I was like well have you played Deity Empires? Many AoW1 fans say it is the closest modern game. Dude was like, nah I like eye candy. Bro no one is gonna make a high production value old style fantasy strategy game. You've gotta be out of your mind if you think/thought that would ever happen.

I checked and it looks fucking awful. I love AoW1 sprites but this is just shite. I hope you're not the dev of it.

Also

 

[Axioms]

Some poor bastard with a top helpful negative review on Steam was complaining about all the stuff they removed from AoW1 and all that and I was like well have you played Deity Empires? Many AoW1 fans say it is the closest modern game. Dude was like, nah I like eye candy. Bro no one is gonna make a high production value old style fantasy strategy game. You've gotta be out of your mind if you think/thought that would ever happen.

I checked and it looks fucking awful. I love AoW1 sprites but this is just shite. I hope you're not the dev of it.

Also

Nah Deity empires is full of crap I hate. It has some cool ideas but then it is full of junk, too. And yeah it does look horrific. That's just the price of oldschool gameplay really. I didn't even crack 50 hours in DE myself. No idea about the DRM. Musta been added after I last played?

 

[Absinthe]

Can't help but notice you didn't mention what made it better than previous AoWs or give a lot of detail there.

Well, for one because I don't give a flying fuck, especially since as I already stated in the past pages I never thought particularly highly of the past releases in this series.
Age of Wonders has ALWAYS been a series that was "almost there" but systematically fell short in several areas.

Well that was some short-lived positivity.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Well that was some short-lived positivity.

I'm still enjoying the new one a lot, actually.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

On a side note, it's almost bizarre how many elements of both this one and Spellforce Conquest of Eo resemble each other so closely in terms of UI, combat, etc (far more than any other past title in the series or genre) despise the fact that both were developed basically in parallel and it's unlikely the two dev teams had many chances to copy from each other.

 

[Lagi]

Some poor bastard with a top helpful negative review on Steam was complaining about all the stuff they removed from AoW1 and all that and I was like well have you played Deity Empires? Many AoW1 fans say it is the closest modern game. Dude was like, nah I like eye candy. Bro no one is gonna make a high production value old style fantasy strategy game. You've gotta be out of your mind if you think/thought that would ever happen.

I checked and it looks fucking awful. I love AoW1 sprites but this is just shite. I hope you're not the dev of it.

Also

I just check some screens from DE. Funny enough i have it in my steam library.
problem with DE graphics is:
- color pallete - too saturated colors. Units are too dark, while all menus, UI, background are bright fully saturated to the max colors. Its hard to look at it. Units are gone on map, so the devs put an even brighter eye burning green circles under, so you can say where your units are.
- too synthethic, like straight lines for roads walls, UI separation elements.
- funny enough units sprites are decent (probably outsourced)
- different font size didnt improve estethics

look at this picture, why is it relaxing to looka at aow1 compare to DE? because colors are less agressive, proper size of elements, and nice ornamentation (I mean, Yes, terrain in AoW1 is superb, and this is a big quality difference - but if we exclude that).

now i want to do mockup for DE

pic

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

On a side note, it's almost bizarre how many elements of both this one and Spellforce Conquest of Eo resemble each other so closely in terms of UI, combat, etc (far more than any other past title in the series or genre) despise the fact that both were developed basically in parallel and it's unlikely the two dev teams had many chances to copy from each other.

Absolutely and positively bizarre. If only Age of Wonders Four was not the first game in the series and Eo could be obviously inspired by the previous part. Maybe it could even have been mentioned and discussed in the codex thread under such circumstances. Alas... :eerie and mysterious music inspired by x-files intro playing in the background:

 

[Fargus]

Some poor bastard with a top helpful negative review on Steam was complaining about all the stuff they removed from AoW1 and all that and I was like well have you played Deity Empires? Many AoW1 fans say it is the closest modern game. Dude was like, nah I like eye candy. Bro no one is gonna make a high production value old style fantasy strategy game. You've gotta be out of your mind if you think/thought that would ever happen.

I checked and it looks fucking awful. I love AoW1 sprites but this is just shite. I hope you're not the dev of it.

Also

I just check some screens from DE. Funny enough i have it in my steam library.
problem with DE graphics is:
- color pallete - too saturated colors. Units are too dark, while all menus, UI, background are bright fully saturated to the max colors. Its hard to look at it. Units are gone on map, so the devs put an even brighter eye burning green circles under, so you can say where your units are.
- too synthethic, like straight lines for roads walls, UI separation elements.
- funny enough units sprites are decent (probably outsourced)
- different font size didnt improve estethics

look at this picture, why is it relaxing to looka at aow1 compare to DE? because colors are less agressive, proper size of elements, and nice ornamentation (I mean, Yes, terrain in AoW1 is superb, and this is a big quality difference - but if we exclude that).

now i want to do mockup for DE

pic

I look at it and can't help but feel repulsed. It's not really about graphics, but just typical art direction of an autistic 4x indie game made by one man. Or the lack of any. Sprites are a bunch of still pictures bumping into each other and shooting magic "effects". I'ts disgustingly oversaturated like you said. I watched the trailer and both worldmap and combat terrain look hideous, unit sprites are not much better tbh. Interface is plain and ugly, just bare minimum. Compare it to Eador: Genesis which also has still pictures for sprites but doesn't look anywhere near as hideous. Quite alright actually.

Everything in AoW1 is beautiful and the visuals just don't age . It looks better than HoMM3 too.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Everything in AoW1 is beautiful and the visuals just don't age . It looks better than HoMM3 too.

Highly debatable and HoMM still retains it's unique perspective, while AoW went for the bog standard iso. AoW2, though, completely shits all over HoMM4 presentation-wise, and it came out only a couple months later.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

On a side note, it's almost bizarre how many elements of both this one and Spellforce Conquest of Eo resemble each other so closely in terms of UI, combat, etc (far more than any other past title in the series or genre) despise the fact that both were developed basically in parallel and it's unlikely the two dev teams had many chances to copy from each other.

Absolutely and positively bizarre. If only Age of Wonders Four was not the first game in the series and Eo could be obviously inspired by the previous part. Maybe it could even have been mentioned and discussed in the codex thread under such circumstances. Alas... :eerie and mysterious music inspired by x-files intro playing in the background:

I don't if it's just senile dementia kicking, the sad consequences of what being a fucking autistic social outcast does to your brain or what, but at times it feels that the more the years go, the more the average user on this forum comes off as a fucking retarded.

What part of my wording sounded confusing to you?
I played the older games on the series and I played plenty of other titles in the genre and I'm telling you these two games have plenty of UI elements that resemble each other to a degree that does NOT apply to the previous entries in the series.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Everything in AoW1 is beautiful and the visuals just don't age . It looks better than HoMM3 too.

It wasn't that pretty even by the time it released.
Microscopic sprites for units that were hard to tell apart from each other was a common complaint even back then, for instance.
The scenery looked nice and its art style had a lot of charm, though.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I played the older games on the series and I played plenty of other titles in the genre

Whoa whoa, amazing. I guess that's what helps you making all these posts that are extremely vague and devoid of any substance, but still manage to be so dumb at the same time. Eo combat is p much a carbon copy of AoW3 with the caveat of spell casting working differently, it's 100% obvious after playing a single encounter. None of the notable changes from 3 to 4 (temp. healing, dmg scaling with hp, rng for ranged) are in Eo. The latter was already in PF, and still did not get ported to Eo, since they correctly chose the better game as a source of inspiration.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Whoa whoa, amazing. I guess that's what helps you making all these posts that are extremely vague and devoid of any substance

Nah, that's just the lack of commitment to relentless autism.
That's precisely why to your disappointment you won't find me writing a fuckling essay about, say, how devastated I am that armies don't include an extra slot for units (especially in a game where SEVERAL concurrent armies can participate in a fight).
Also, congratulation once again for focusing on what the genre as a whole has in common and managing to ignore all the way these two specific games resemble each other specifically.

As they say in my country "A certa gente è più facile metterla in culo che in testa".

 

[Skorpion]

Well this thread is about what I assumed it would be at release. Focusing on a few things and endless ranting by people that dont own/havent played any of the shit they rant about but just go off what the journalists (that they purport to hate) say about it.
Fucking lol

Now back to my Dwarf Lord campaign, teir 5 tome unlocked and its time to destroy that cat bitch in the corner that doesnt like my altering of the landscape to my dwarfish desires!
Side note, no crashes in 12 hours of total game play 1080ti gpu win10 if it matters, nothing new or fancy.

TLDR: for me at least this game is hyper addictive as I easily create emergent stories in my imagination and this game is built for that, but I do miss a campaign :\