Age of Wonders 4

[Skorpion]

Multiplayer retention rate for previous age of wonder were extremely low. Even if it sell good, its not sure people will stay. Look lacymas already shelved it.

It's not only multiplayer retention, it's retention in general. PF has had 300-800 average players since its release.

Planetfall lol, regardless of gripes towards this game I think we can all agree its far better than that abortion was.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I did not play nearly enough to form a final opinion, but at this moment I would not agree, no. AoW = primarily combat. My initial impressions are that combat in PF was better.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'd also say the combat in PF is better in most aspects. The combat in 4 is all about baiting the AI and abusing summons (incl. vine prison), especially on higher difficulties where the AI gets high tier units and enchantments basically from the get go. Maybe it's different in multiplayer, I wouldn't know.

 

[Sarissofoi]

Played some story and non story missions and its not bad(for current time) but its not good either.
UI is quite atrocious. Races mean nothing, the differences in traits or cultures are minimal. Its just tiresome in long run.
Maybe mods will save it but tbh I doubt it.
At some point I caught mayself thinking:
"I could be playing Eador Genesis or Age of Wonders 1 or Master of Magic"
Sigh.

 

[Mortmal]

Played some story and non story missions and its not bad(for current time) but its not good either.
UI is quite atrocious. Races mean nothing, the differences in traits or cultures are minimal. Its just tiresome in long run.
Maybe mods will save it but tbh I doubt it.
At some point I caught mayself thinking:
"I could be playing Eador Genesis or Age of Wonders 1 or Master of Magic"
Sigh.

It's nostalgy speaking, the game is not worse than those previous old games,it's just that you played many of them before and there's no longer the wow factor. No real feeling of discovery as pretty much everything i seen in AOW4 i seen before . It picks plenty of things from HOMM, AOW , even the overland map remind me of fallen enchantress.Not much innovation but more streamlining, like casting enchantment once for all your army. Better graphics and effects , nothing ground breaking.When playing it brings back old memories , it isnt a bad thing.

 

[mediocrepoet]

This may be written off as basically strategy game LARPing which is weird, but I tend to have a general race/leader theme in mind and then pick tomes and traits based on that, including whether they're likely to do good or evil things during the game. As a result, I do think I'm getting a bit more mileage out of the game than some people who just pick whatever they think is most powerful. i.e. Dwarven smiths don't do nature magic, nor do arcanists, necromancers, etc., etc.

I had a good time with my pink bannered and haired halfling barbarians that completely dominated a map. YMMV. I'm still going to go try some other stuff since I've been on a strategy kick lately, but this game does scratch a certain itch that most games haven't in a long while. I do wish it was deeper and don't disagree with many of the criticisms, but it doesn't necessarily mean the game isn't fun, depending on what you're looking for anyway.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

It's nostalgy speaking, the game is not worse than those previous old games,it's just that you played many of them before and there's no longer the wow factor. No real feeling of discovery as pretty much everything i seen in AOW4 i seen before . It picks plenty of things from HOMM, AOW , even the overland map remind me of fallen enchantress.Not much innovation but more streamlining, like casting enchantment once for all your army. Better graphics and effects , nothing ground breaking.When playing it brings back old memories , it isnt a bad thing.

It's very in-your-face worse than AoW3 and, at the very least, different enough from 1 and 2/SM for direct 1:1 comparisons to not make much sense.

It just removes/simplifies stuff or moves it around for no apparent reason. Overland enchantments affecting all units in certain categories was already a mechanic in 3. It just wasn't as overused or used for stuff it shouldn't be used for.

 

[Lagi]

When I get good at game dev I promise I'll make a successor to AoW2, don't worry guys. Because Triumph sure as fuck won't.

Give us an AOW1 successor with a non-linear campaign.

I love the idea of campaigns that are more than a collection of scenarios strung together, its something lacking in general.

doesnt look like something 1 dev can achieve.
not only he need to do the engine, invent game mechanics, create interesting units concepts (like flying bomber, or digging mole),
he need to do all the assets terrain, buildings, units (3d? 2d?), portraits, UserInterface, sounds, musics
AI - and multi implementation - maps
and on top of all that he need to create non linear campaign, with w3 quality at least I presume.... so handful of retards on codex can complain that magic spheres are IMBA.

 

[Lagi]

When I get good at game dev I promise I'll make a successor to AoW2, don't worry guys. Because Triumph sure as fuck won't.

you want to do it from scratch = to make money?
an interesting option is open source engine, that extract all the graphics from source material. And later maybe some randoms from internet can create some bits of code/assets that improve the game.

 

[Zed]

I have no issues with bugs so far but it seems a little too easy to me. Played some AoW2 a long long time ago and I don't know what I'm doing but it still seems to work out fine.

 

[Sarissofoi]

Played some story and non story missions and its not bad(for current time) but its not good either.
UI is quite atrocious. Races mean nothing, the differences in traits or cultures are minimal. Its just tiresome in long run.
Maybe mods will save it but tbh I doubt it.
At some point I caught mayself thinking:
"I could be playing Eador Genesis or Age of Wonders 1 or Master of Magic"
Sigh.

It's nostalgy speaking, the game is not worse than those previous old games,it's just that you played many of them before and there's no longer the wow factor. No real feeling of discovery as pretty much everything i seen in AOW4 i seen before . It picks plenty of things from HOMM, AOW , even the overland map remind me of fallen enchantress.Not much innovation but more streamlining, like casting enchantment once for all your army. Better graphics and effects , nothing ground breaking.When playing it brings back old memories , it isnt a bad thing.

Dont give me that shit. Unless you try to tell me that game isn't good to old standards then sure.
UI is shit, like try to fast check and equip your heroes or try to sell some spare equipment. Or city UI. Its all shit. Like the guys who done it never played any game before.
And sure it take and mix plenty of stuff and some of it is quite good but the problem is that they don't really work well together or aren't done well. Like that Vassal levy system - great idea but with how race works and how same units are its not useful at all. Like it would make perfect use to levy some strong ORC troops when you play as some weakling race but in AoW4 its all minor bonuses and race play same so why even bother?
And there is plenty of other things.
Like battlefields are all premade and sure I love fighting on the same 6 maps all the time. Not even mention that they are mostly all cluttered with shit. The only 3 armies(with 6 units) rule make that you can't really spam armies or low tier units to overwhelm enemy - unless you summon units by skills. So its always quality>quantity. You can't even reinforce these three armies with your other spare ones(so no "we have the reserves' battles).
Other is how all enchantments just stack one on top of each other - same for race modification. No sense of uniqueness at all.
And the maps even if they look fine have terrible readability.

 

[Lacrymas]

Ah, yeah, vassals. They are such non-entities I forgot to mention them. They are literally pointless. It seems like they are trying to "compensate" for the city limit, but it doesn't need compensating because the economy is so straightforward and a non-issue even with few cities. They don't give you any unique troops you wouldn't otherwise have access to (unlike dwellings in AoW3 and minor factions in PF) and once vassalized are almost non-interactive. So ???

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Yeah, the free cities "mechanics" are massive wtf, like I said. How on earth does that fly when compared to the previous games is a mystery of modern marketing and gamer cranial capacity proportions. And the rally of lieges is a textbook example of just switching around something that absolutely did not need switching around and reporting job well done to your manager. Same with that tree. Why are those branches not a part of standard cultural research (that otherwise have literally 3 projects each, pathetic lol)? Probably just because a modern paradox game needs empire mana to check the high iq gaming quota and then you have to have something to spend it on.

 

[Mortmal]

Played some story and non story missions and its not bad(for current time) but its not good either.
UI is quite atrocious. Races mean nothing, the differences in traits or cultures are minimal. Its just tiresome in long run.
Maybe mods will save it but tbh I doubt it.
At some point I caught mayself thinking:
"I could be playing Eador Genesis or Age of Wonders 1 or Master of Magic"
Sigh.

It's nostalgy speaking, the game is not worse than those previous old games,it's just that you played many of them before and there's no longer the wow factor. No real feeling of discovery as pretty much everything i seen in AOW4 i seen before . It picks plenty of things from HOMM, AOW , even the overland map remind me of fallen enchantress.Not much innovation but more streamlining, like casting enchantment once for all your army. Better graphics and effects , nothing ground breaking.When playing it brings back old memories , it isnt a bad thing.

Dont give me that shit. Unless you try to tell me that game isn't good to old standards then sure.
UI is shit, like try to fast check and equip your heroes or try to sell some spare equipment. Or city UI. Its all shit. Like the guys who done it never played any game before.
And sure it take and mix plenty of stuff and some of it is quite good but the problem is that they don't really work well together or aren't done well. Like that Vassal levy system - great idea but with how race works and how same units are its not useful at all. Like it would make perfect use to levy some strong ORC troops when you play as some weakling race but in AoW4 its all minor bonuses and race play same so why even bother?
And there is plenty of other things.
Like battlefields are all premade and sure I love fighting on the same 6 maps all the time. Not even mention that they are mostly all cluttered with shit. The only 3 armies(with 6 units) rule make that you can't really spam armies or low tier units to overwhelm enemy - unless you summon units by skills. So its always quality>quantity. You can't even reinforce these three armies with your other spare ones(so no "we have the reserves' battles).
Other is how all enchantments just stack one on top of each other - same for race modification. No sense of uniqueness at all.
And the maps even if they look fine have terrible readability.

It's nostalgy i tell you, have a look at this weird forum thread, 70 pages of people being butthurt about age of wonder 3 and it's terrible gameplay too .
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/age-of-wonders-3.80326/page-70

 

[Fedora Master]

I finished the second story realm and already don't feel like playing anymore. It really is appearance over substance with PDX now. These games are like those cakes that look huge but instantly deflate when you cut into them.

I remember feeling pretty damn clever in AoW1 when I took a Frost Queen and used her to freeze my way across the sea earlier than the map would otherwise have allowed. Is something like that possible in this game? Hell no.

 

[Mortmal]

I finished the second story realm and already don't feel like playing anymore. It really is appearance over substance with PDX now. These games are like those cakes that look huge but instantly deflate when you cut into them.

Second story realm with the siren ? It's super easy, just a tutorial to tell you to ally the free cities so they overwhelm the last faction. Third one is already a bit more challenging and interisting , i got surprised by AI fielding massive armies and sending them to me once i apporached their capital, that never happened before. AI in combat is surprisingly good too, if you do autocalculate and then watch a replay it's quite impressive what it is doing with units.
Now not everything is perfect, the vassal system is just a way to get cheaper slightly different low tier troops, not so usefull as you can only attack with 18 units at once, summons are better by far if you have the mana, depending the random maps maybe in some case you wont.

 

[Fedora Master]

I finished the second story realm and already don't feel like playing anymore. It really is appearance over substance with PDX now. These games are like those cakes that look huge but instantly deflate when you cut into them.

Second story realm with the siren ? It's super easy, just a tutorial to tell you to ally the free cities so they overwhelm the last faction. Third one is already a bit more challenging and interisting , i got surprised by AI fielding massive armies and sending them to me once i apporached their capital, that never happened before. AI in combat is surprisingly good too, if you do autocalculate and then watch a replay it's quite impressive what it is doing with units.
Now not everything is perfect, the vassal system is just a way to get cheaper slightly different low tier troops, not so usefull as you can only attack with 18 units at once, summons are better by far if you have the mana, depending the random maps maybe in some case you wont.

Allied AIs never help you, especially if the map has water. I played that realm multiple times to see if things go differently. Which they did, once, because Nimue got a shitty spawn and failed to expand at all.

 

[Mortmal]

I finished the second story realm and already don't feel like playing anymore. It really is appearance over substance with PDX now. These games are like those cakes that look huge but instantly deflate when you cut into them.

Second story realm with the siren ? It's super easy, just a tutorial to tell you to ally the free cities so they overwhelm the last faction. Third one is already a bit more challenging and interisting , i got surprised by AI fielding massive armies and sending them to me once i apporached their capital, that never happened before. AI in combat is surprisingly good too, if you do autocalculate and then watch a replay it's quite impressive what it is doing with units.
Now not everything is perfect, the vassal system is just a way to get cheaper slightly different low tier troops, not so usefull as you can only attack with 18 units at once, summons are better by far if you have the mana, depending the random maps maybe in some case you wont.

Allied AIs never help you, especially if the map has water. I played that realm multiple times to see if things go differently. Which they did, once, because Nimue got a shitty spawn and failed to expand at all.

It did really, they gathered troops by the capital, not sieging themselves but assisting in the siege fight. They even took some of the other cities earlier by themselves.

 

[Beowulf]

I finished the second story realm and already don't feel like playing anymore. It really is appearance over substance with PDX now. These games are like those cakes that look huge but instantly deflate when you cut into them.

Second story realm with the siren ? It's super easy, just a tutorial to tell you to ally the free cities so they overwhelm the last faction. Third one is already a bit more challenging and interisting , i got surprised by AI fielding massive armies and sending them to me once i apporached their capital, that never happened before. AI in combat is surprisingly good too, if you do autocalculate and then watch a replay it's quite impressive what it is doing with units.
Now not everything is perfect, the vassal system is just a way to get cheaper slightly different low tier troops, not so usefull as you can only attack with 18 units at once, summons are better by far if you have the mana, depending the random maps maybe in some case you wont.

The second one is just a tutorial to tell you that you can't really play how you want in that case. I played through the first story realm with some high and mighty and so sweet that you can get diabetes Elves, so I created an evil race of necromancers for the second realm. Guess how allying with factions having opposite alignment goes.
As for tactical battles I agree, the AI does a decent job. But in late game battles I can hardly tell what's going on with so many stacking buffs, debuffs and summons.

Edit: In my playthrough they fought with Nimue as well. Just did a poor job with it.

 

[Fedora Master]

I finished the second story realm and already don't feel like playing anymore. It really is appearance over substance with PDX now. These games are like those cakes that look huge but instantly deflate when you cut into them.

Second story realm with the siren ? It's super easy, just a tutorial to tell you to ally the free cities so they overwhelm the last faction. Third one is already a bit more challenging and interisting , i got surprised by AI fielding massive armies and sending them to me once i apporached their capital, that never happened before. AI in combat is surprisingly good too, if you do autocalculate and then watch a replay it's quite impressive what it is doing with units.
Now not everything is perfect, the vassal system is just a way to get cheaper slightly different low tier troops, not so usefull as you can only attack with 18 units at once, summons are better by far if you have the mana, depending the random maps maybe in some case you wont.

Allied AIs never help you, especially if the map has water. I played that realm multiple times to see if things go differently. Which they did, once, because Nimue got a shitty spawn and failed to expand at all.

It did really, they gathered troops by the capital, not sieging themselves but assisting in the siege fight. They even took some of the other cities earlier by themselves.

Never happened to me. The Frog guy always stayed passive and did absolutely nothing, even after his "Yea imma join you now" event.

 

[Mortmal]

I finished the second story realm and already don't feel like playing anymore. It really is appearance over substance with PDX now. These games are like those cakes that look huge but instantly deflate when you cut into them.

Second story realm with the siren ? It's super easy, just a tutorial to tell you to ally the free cities so they overwhelm the last faction. Third one is already a bit more challenging and interisting , i got surprised by AI fielding massive armies and sending them to me once i apporached their capital, that never happened before. AI in combat is surprisingly good too, if you do autocalculate and then watch a replay it's quite impressive what it is doing with units.
Now not everything is perfect, the vassal system is just a way to get cheaper slightly different low tier troops, not so usefull as you can only attack with 18 units at once, summons are better by far if you have the mana, depending the random maps maybe in some case you wont.

Allied AIs never help you, especially if the map has water. I played that realm multiple times to see if things go differently. Which they did, once, because Nimue got a shitty spawn and failed to expand at all.

It did really, they gathered troops by the capital, not sieging themselves but assisting in the siege fight. They even took some of the other cities earlier by themselves.

Never happened to me. The Frog guy always stayed passive and did absolutely nothing, even after his "Yea imma join you now" event.

Then its bugged and broken , or maybe you need to have the ratmen allied too at same time for them to start moving since the balance of forces is considerably in your favor by then.

 

[Sarissofoi]

I played Siren story map on hard difficulty and pissed the rat guy where befriending the frog one. The Frog gathered like half dozen to dozen stacks and marched on the Vivian and fought pretty well against her taking like two cities, where the rat one gathered similar amount to march against me. Beat him and taken out all his cities on surface and forced him to submit. The Siren was already half beaten especially that I wiped out like two 5+ stack armies and Frogman was keeping her busy so I just taken her Throne city.
AI get much more aggressive and useful(as ally) when you increase its difficulty. TBH there should be at last two settings for it(how good it play and how aggressive it is, maybe with ability to setup some other extra bonuses for it). If you play it on Easy(which is default difficulty) or Normal its more on passive side. And it don't get any boosts so AI sit on its ass because enemy scare them and they have no weight to throw around.
So bump that difficulty if you want some useful allies.
Other setting that may interest you is game speed. It slow down research and buildings but not units(well by proxy units too as you have less developed cities) so you can have more time to slug around with lower tiers and you can't research everything in one game.

It's nostalgy i tell you, have a look at this weird forum thread, 70 pages of people being butthurt about age of wonder 3 and it's terrible gameplay too .
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/age-of-wonders-3.80326/page-70

Listen man. Its not nostalgia.
Nostalgia is all about feelings, when you did something long time ago and say "That was the shit, they don't do it like that anymore.' but can't really compare.
I can. I have all these games sitting on my drive right now and I can check them and see them by their worth.
AoW 4 is simply not that good game and some choices are straight detrimental to a game. What is so hard to understand?
>list things that are bad
>some double mortadella man moan about nostalgia
ffs

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

It's nostalgy i tell you, have a look at this weird forum thread, 70 pages of people being butthurt about age of wonder 3 and it's terrible gameplay too .
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/age-of-wonders-3.80326/page-70

It's the cycle of (neckbeard) life.
I remember people being baffled at what stinking pieces of shit Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 were, and now that enough years are gone a lot of people remember them fondly because they became part of their childhood memories. Even here in on the Codex.
Same with the recent thread about the Dark Alliance games.

I also remember when I played the Age of Wonders in the past and the ongoing sentiment was "Well, at least they are trying to add more things, but Jesus Christ, how comes no one can actually do better than Master of Magic in this genre?"
Eador was also generally dismissed as a half-botched attempt, but now it's apparently a beloved classic.
Spellforce: COnquest of Eo was criticized for feeling a half game (and it was indeed sold at half the price and with a single map because they ran out of money).
And so on.


It's true that this new game has some massive blind spots. Above all, races/cultures hardly having a distinct feeling past the couple of starting perks (which can eventually be obtained by other means like mutations in some cases, anyway). The mutation system is another one.

But you know people are starting to stomp their feet and throw a tantrum "just because"when the complaint becomes "the UI is complete shit", which is not just false in general (there's room for improvement on a couple of QOL details but overall I'd say it's actually GENUINELY good), it's also especially hilarious when you can stop living in your rose-tinted memories, launch right now your copy of Shadow Magic on GOG you didn't even click on once in the last few years (because you didn't, be honest, no matter how much you cry about loving it more now) and realize what a fucking mess *that* UI was in terms of readability and practicality to reach functions comfortably.

I'm not even talking about what I remember, because I actually tried this the other day for a direct comparison.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Never happened to me. The Frog guy always stayed passive and did absolutely nothing, even after his "Yea imma join you now" event.

Conversely the Frog guy made my victory basically trivial by being the one that curb-stomped Nimue's main army/biggest city and by the time I was there in her territory to "join the fight" I had just to clean up what little was left.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Never happened to me. The Frog guy always stayed passive and did absolutely nothing, even after his "Yea imma join you now" event.

Conversely the Frog guy made my victory basically trivial by being the one that curb-stomped Nimue's main army/biggest city and by the time I was there in her territory to "join the fight" I had just to clean up what little was left.

That sounds nice. I've played that map a few times, if that fucker does anything at all it's just to choke me into a tiny area and then threaten me and eventually declaring war because he's given me no room to grow at all and it's fucking with his lebensraum. Dickhead.