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Age of Wonders 4

Fedora Master

STOP POSTING
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Edgy
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Vine Prison is awesome. I thought it was a normal root spell, no, it creates a bunch of trash vines that fuck with the enemy AI by wasting their turns.

e:
1683459459758.png


:keepmyjewgold:
 
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Lacrymas

Arcane
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Sep 23, 2015
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Pathfinder: Wrath
Vine Prison is awesome. I thought it was a normal root spell, no, it creates a bunch of trash vines that fuck with the enemy AI by wasting their turns.
Oh, it does much more than that. I'm not calling it the best spell in the game for no reason. It's especially good against ranged units in specific. Since it has a chance to immobilize, it completely shuts down ranged units because they can't shoot or even cast spells while in melee range/in zones of control. You can beat armies twice your size by only using Vine Prison. It's *so* good in fact that I don't see a reason for Tome of Roots not to be your first or second tome pick.
 

Lord of Riva

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Strap Yourselves In Pathfinder: Wrath
Keep in mind that I may still have a partial view of the thing, but my main problem with transformations after a second game where I went for complete different faction and magic is... Am I missing something or there's no trade-off even worth considering and most of them are just a straight upgrade?

It's a straight upgrade.

as Lacrymas points out armies tend to become "rainbow" armies. Cultural units are outclassed by late game summons, period. And in the end it does not seem to overly matter what units you have, at least vs. AI just the Tier and that you have and can support enough stacks.

EDIT: quoted the wrong post
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
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Pathfinder: Wrath
The tier system is a failed experiment imo. Or at least it is in the way it's implemented. There's just too huge of a power divide between tiers. Planetfall was better in this regard because the higher a unit is, the more "supporty" it became. On top of that, it's very easy to get T3s in AoW4 by casually exploring the map.
 

Raghar

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Keep in mind that I may still have a partial view of the thing, but my main problem with transformations after a second game where I went for complete different faction and magic is... Am I missing something or there's no trade-off even worth considering and most of them are just a straight upgrade?

It's a straight upgrade.

as Lacrymas points out armies tend to become "rainbow" armies. Cultural units are outclassed by late game summons, period. And in the end it does not seem to overly matter what units you have, at least vs. AI just the Tier and that you have and can support enough stacks.

EDIT: quoted the wrong post
Since when different SPECIES are just cultures? That's like calling dogs a different culture of a rat.
 

Lord of Riva

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Strap Yourselves In Pathfinder: Wrath
Keep in mind that I may still have a partial view of the thing, but my main problem with transformations after a second game where I went for complete different faction and magic is... Am I missing something or there's no trade-off even worth considering and most of them are just a straight upgrade?

It's a straight upgrade.

as Lacrymas points out armies tend to become "rainbow" armies. Cultural units are outclassed by late game summons, period. And in the end it does not seem to overly matter what units you have, at least vs. AI just the Tier and that you have and can support enough stacks.

EDIT: quoted the wrong post
Since when different SPECIES are just cultures? That's like calling dogs a different culture of a rat.

Don't blame me, it's their system. The races, called forms, are just skins.
 

Raghar

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So some observations:
- low maintenance if it was AoW2 it would be likely reducing upkeep by -1 or -2 per tier. This reduces by 25 percents which causes problems AoW3 didn't have.
- banner flags are waving from left to the right, instead of front and back as a NORMAL cloth would do. Basically take a list of paper and try it.
- there is basically no campaign to talk about, just pre made settings of starting maps to conquer without a story that holds them together.
- horse tails touches ground.
- fairies are not cute.
- elves are looking weird.

Frankly something is missing in that.
 

Lacrymas

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Pathfinder: Wrath
Hot (?) take - cultures are pointless. I was trying to create a technologically advanced human faction that uses extensive animal labor and has sent one of their legions to colonize the islands of the second story realm, but the legion quickly devolved into all-animal armies and units that summon even more animals. The main problem is that there aren't a lot of synergy between cultures and tomes with the limited exception of race transformations. You can't really create a coherent faction, it's clown armies all the way down.
 

Longes

Augur
Joined
Jan 13, 2013
Messages
439
Hot (?) take - cultures are pointless. I was trying to create a technologically advanced human faction that uses extensive animal labor and has sent one of their legions to colonize the islands of the second story realm, but the legion quickly devolved into all-animal armies and units that summon even more animals. The main problem is that there aren't a lot of synergy between cultures and tomes with the limited exception of race transformations. You can't really create a coherent faction, it's clown armies all the way down.
On a technical level, cultures are actually just tomes with all the technologies pre-unlocked and a special tag.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
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Feb 15, 2012
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5,777
I had a lot of time over the weekend, so I've demoed it and played for a while. Did three games, as feudal, barbarian and mystic. Don't really feel like continuing, I'll maybe check back when the full edition is at -70%.

I think whocares pretty much nailed it. This game finishes the transition of AoW from a wargame/rpg hybrid with a rudimentary, but fun, strategy layer into a bog standard 4X with fantasy coating. Thus, the biggest issue and the proverbial elephant in the room are not cultures or lack of races (although it sucks, for sure), but the fact that the strategy layer and the entire 4X part is even more featureless, plain and boring than it was when the game was still AoW. Planetfall's biggest sin was that it took so many features away offering very little in return, but AoW4 takes it a step further and there's literally nothing. Not even the most rudimentary AoW stuff, like altering mana nodes. No special building unlocks, no upgrades affecting the strategy map, no cosmic happenings, no builder unit offering some basic tile development, no npc factions/dwellings, no corrupting farms/springs of life, strategic magic got neutered even further. All there is is the simplified SECTORS!!! system from PF and rudimentary adjacency bonuses for some of the special sector types, because I guess this became another mandatory thing to have in your game after nu-civ stole it from Endless Legend.

The city development is I guess kinda better than PF, mostly because there is something to build now and they backtracked on the genius idea of buildings having no costs and auto-garrisons. But, just like I thought, all those buildings are +5/10/15 and the "unique" ones are unique, because they give +10/5/15 instead. Buildings that do anything else are extremely rare and when they do, it's not interesting, either. Also, a lot of basic math/design problems, like tower upgrade that gives +2 mana per kept hostile hero when the basic shrine gives like +10, lol.

The economy seemed like something that might as well not exist. I was swimming in mana and gold despite just trying stuff out and clicking shit at random. There was literally never a time when I had to think which unit to train or building to produce due to funds. The random events all have options to pay couple hundred mana/gold to get a better outcome and it's like "lol ok why wouldn't I".

They talked about Free cities all the time in the streams, pumping it up with drums rolling. The reality: you meet a neutral city, you give them a "whispering stone", wait a while (might spend imperium mana or whatever to speed it up) and you can either integrate or vassalize them. Or just conquer and migrate your race. Like... ok? PF with its npc factions having completely unique unit/mod/spell sets shits all over this nothingburger.

And I think the worries about map size were very justified. In my first full game I was cornered by free cities pretty much immediately and the only place I could build my own outpost was in the freezing wastes on a shore, after which almost every bit of land was either taken or unreachable.

And yeah, you cannot select your res in options:lol: I chose Ultra in the settings and the game decided to set the res to 720p. I changed it to native through nvidia panel and the game was running butter smooth on my 3070, no freezes or crashes, either, despite the problems apparently mostly happening for Nvidida users. The loading times (both for game booting and saves) were improved a lot, probably the biggest qol change compared to the previous games.
 
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Erik189

Literate
Joined
Mar 20, 2023
Messages
5
All in all, the game is more "pop"
Exactly!
By trying to reduce threshold of entry they even made game totally inconvenient for normal strategic play. As evidence(of many) you always offered with hier tier books Only, while actually can open library and choose anyone. Encyclopedia has unnecessary duplicate of books list but no sorting for all spells, all transformations etc. And you cant access it at all while in combat. You sometimes have to read combat log for figuring what the heck that enemy spell just did.

Summarising impressions so far
- UI is horrible
- Balance is bad
- AI is the dumbest ever (no idea what is it doing except trying to make me laugh)
- Economics/macro management is weird
- Animations is descent but often look too fast and clunky
- Sounds is ok, but not AoW3 level imo
- Visuals is good (the only thing)
- Story/narrative is exist... debatably
- Map settings, rmg and stuff are also weird (but personally whatever)
- Overall little content (typical modern wait 10 dlcs for full version game)
- And that "rainbow army" concept with culture insignificance dont sounds promising and may ended up being awkwardly boring rather than diversified

This game definetly needs a Lot of work to become something. Has potential and still not as such bad as I expected but for now lets be honest candidate for the worst in the series.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
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Pathfinder: Wrath
Yeah, there's nothing to do on the strategic layer except cracking open ancient wonders I guess. Which are surprisingly boring too, the best you can hope for with them is a cool unit being unlocked in the rally of lieges. Even though they give more resources generally, you don't actually need those resources. Cities are industrial powerhouses and create much more than you can spend, especially mana.
 

Zboj Lamignat

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5,777
Looks like a remaster of the first game which was an excellent game.

Where is that coming from? That is absolutely, not even remotely, the case.
Maybe he's the guy who also wrote this steam review:

Do I like this? Do I not like this? I dunno, man... with the hours put into it so far, it feels like it gets boring very quickly.
The gameplay is pretty much a complete duplicate of the Total War franchise, with a bit of story elements thrown in. There are some cool graphical RPG elements, but it feels limited.
 

Raghar

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And yeah, you cannot select your res in options:lol: I chose Ultra in the settings and the game decided to set the res to 720p. I changed it to native through nvidia panel and the game was running butter smooth on my 3070, no freezes or crashes, either, despite the problems apparently mostly happening for Nvidida users. The loading times (both for game booting and saves) were improved a lot, probably the biggest qol change compared to the previous games.
I have borderless and windowed setting, thus it uses desktop resolution by default. But, it looks ugly, worse than AoW3, and shadows can flicker. Even Planetfall was let down in graphic fidelity and art style.

And on my Server SSD, loading times were practically instant even with AoW3. (Actually I mostly played AoW3 on HDD, and even there loading times were quicker than DeusEX HR.)

It feells like downgrade from previous games.
 

Fedora Master

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Edgy
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Hot (?) take - cultures are pointless. I was trying to create a technologically advanced human faction that uses extensive animal labor and has sent one of their legions to colonize the islands of the second story realm, but the legion quickly devolved into all-animal armies and units that summon even more animals. The main problem is that there aren't a lot of synergy between cultures and tomes with the limited exception of race transformations. You can't really create a coherent faction, it's clown armies all the way down.
Thats why I said it feels like Stellaris. Sure you got 345478 options but the gameplay will always be very similar to everyone else.
 

dsndo

Educated
Joined
Jan 25, 2022
Messages
87
Is Age of Wonders 4 woke? I was curious. If its actually good I might try it out.
It's woke in the same way that Humankind was, meaning that race is utterly meaningless. Anyone can become anything. Biological determinism is not a concept the developers are willing to entertain in their personal lives and that philosophy extends to game design decisions. There are no traits that are unique to races, because race is just a costume. Even the mind/body traits are largely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Being a culture of "Ruthless Raiders" doesn't actually require you generate most of your income from raiding more advanced factions, it's just a small bonus you get after winning battles. You will still make most of your money by building infrastructure. The end result is that all end-game factions play very similarly, have the same units and the differences mainly come down to which spells your heroes have access to. The faction customization is very superficial.

It's the same reason why Humankind developers were perfectly fine with civilizations morphing from Babylonian to Chinese to Celtic to German without batting an eye. In their eyes, the only differences between people is what regalia they wear. It's why they are genuinely baffled when they encounter racists, they truly believe that our only problem with other groups is that they have a different skin tone.

Aside from those complaints the map becomes an eyesore by the mid-game. It get completely cluttered with infestations, buildings, wonders and a slew of other elements that make the game look like a high budget mobile game.
 
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Lacrymas

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Pathfinder: Wrath
A lot of the choices in this game are superficial and the only ones which matter are the best ones because they are the best regardless of context. But I knew this would happen from the very beginning, it's a trend in this type of design. Because anyone can be anything, there is no reason not to be the best all the time. On top of that, being the best usually means "choices which give bonuses to the important aspects of the game", everything else literally hamstrings you for no reason because it gives weird bonuses to irrelevant mechanics or the bonuses are not relevant to how the game is actually being played.
 

Beowulf

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Mar 2, 2015
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A lot of the choices in this game are superficial and the only ones which matter are the best ones because they are the best regardless of context. But I knew this would happen from the very beginning, it's a trend in this type of design. Because anyone can be anything, there is no reason not to be the best all the time. On top of that, being the best usually means "choices which give bonuses to the important aspects of the game", everything else literally hamstrings you for no reason because it gives weird bonuses to irrelevant mechanics or the bonuses are not relevant to how the game is actually being played.

Yes, AOW4 seems to be designed with the purpose of letting the player to experience their race's great journey of ascendance in a single sitting, as to leave a positive impression even on casual strategy game players.
Hence the progress is so quick and you see same shit every match - steel skin, growing wings, becoming demons etc.

I had a glimmer of hope that this time the war part will be a little better, but no - highier tier units trump everything else and you can get them relatively quick, and - what's more game breaking - sustain using those high tier units in all your armies.
The tomes are also very uneven with some clearly worse than others, and it's only a self-imposed player limitation not to pick the best path each and every time.
The game also teases you with the promise that you can play however you like, but in reality the game favors the goody two shoes approach. This players freedom also clashes with some stories presented in the story realms, where you are expected to have some character traits, from the narrative standpoint, that is.
The battles themselves also tend to be very chaotic and the went with the DnD design philosophy, where units have some resistance pulled out of the ass, just to balance some system exploits.

But there are some nice things going for AOW4 - loading times are super quick, you can even load directly into your save from the launcher, which saves some unnecessary clicking. Once you configure it properly it runs well and looks okayish (albeit I'm personally not a fan of this type of fantasy rendition - a little bit too colorful and soft for my tastes). And the narrator voice, while obviously inspired by the LOTR movies, is top notch.
 

Lacrymas

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Pathfinder: Wrath
The AI also cannot into calculating the threat level of an army -
The AI attacked me in this case because it had a higher army power number, but it doesn't calculate that I actually have 10 (!) hidden units. 4 from Wildspeakers, 2 from Houndmasters, 1 from Dread Spider Matriarch and 3 from my heroes. Their entire army barely managed to damage only 2 of my units. The AI does ridiculous damage with its units, though, because it has access to more items than there are on the map and has end-game major race transformations on turn 38ish, so sending in my summons and pelting their units from range is the way to go. The AI attacks me with 3 other full stacks in the next turn btw because it somehow has 6 stacks near its throne city at exactly the time I besiege it.

Oh, and there's no reason not to pick summoning skills at level 5 with each hero.
 
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Lord of Riva

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Strap Yourselves In Pathfinder: Wrath
The AI also cannot into calculating the threat level of an army -
The AI attacked me in this case because it had a higher army power number, but it doesn't calculate that I actually have 10 (!) hidden units. 4 from Wildspeakers, 2 from Houndmasters, 1 from Dread Spider Matriarch and 3 from my heroes. Their entire army barely managed to damage only 2 of my units. The AI does ridiculous damage with its units, though, because it has access to more items than there are on the map and has end-game major race transformations on turn 38ish, so sending in my summons and pelting their units from range is the way to go. The AI attacks me with 3 other full stacks in the next turn btw because it somehow has 6 stacks near its throne city at exactly the time I besiege it.

I am not seeing anything wrong with what you have there. If the AI reacts correctly to hidden units (eg. it ignores them unless the Hero has true sight) that would actually be welcome but I doubt they do that. The reason you are getting attacked is because you are on their way to attack their city, the game dynamic plays like this, if you ever come into the situation to be besieged you will even react the same.

The Siege-wait time allow for reinforcements for quite a while, especially if you are able to summoning and a few full stacks are easily created, if you attack their throne city the AI is throwing everything it has at you.
 

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