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Age of Wonders 4

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,754
The fuck makes just picking the tomes such a "great idea" versus affinity picks of classic AoW? :lol: It is way worse than PF's mods on the "great potential, meh execution" scale. At least mods were genuinely great and rich system on paper and you can come up with bazillion great and cool combinations. It's just that it didn't really matter in game.
 

Axioms

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
1,630
The fuck makes just picking the tomes such a "great idea" versus affinity picks of classic AoW? :lol: It is way worse than PF's mods on the "great potential, meh execution" scale. At least mods were genuinely great and rich system on paper and you can come up with bazillion great and cool combinations. It's just that it didn't really matter in game.
Tomes offer lots of flexibility and interesting decisions on what to take if the Tomes have affinity requirements. To get a fancy ice death ultimate tome you'd need to pick your way up the tree taking sufficient ice and death.

Tomes are more granular than the old system. You get 4 thematic spells per Tome.

In the original system you are much more limited in your options and you get fewer decision points. There's not really a a good way to do special theming either. You can't create a shadow fire earth wizard or w/e, even if you put points in 3 spheres, because there are not really combination spells.
 

Blutwurstritter

Scholar
Joined
Sep 18, 2021
Messages
1,053
Location
Germany
The fuck makes just picking the tomes such a "great idea" versus affinity picks of classic AoW? :lol: It is way worse than PF's mods on the "great potential, meh execution" scale. At least mods were genuinely great and rich system on paper and you can come up with bazillion great and cool combinations. It's just that it didn't really matter in game.
You are set in stone at the beginning of the game with sphere picks. Tomes on the other hand can be picked as you play and are less coarse-grained, making it more flexible.

I'd compare mods rather to the change of the enchantment system from single unit enchantments to whole unit type enchantment system. This is still one of the sorest points of the game. They went way overboard with the streamlining. They really should have kept single unit enchantments in the game and put some limits on the whole unit type enchantment stuff. It boggles the mind how they came to the conclusion that current system is fine, when it immediately makes highest tier units worse by the simple fact that they can't benefit from enchantments due to being mythic units. Plus favoring the stacking of enchantments that apply to the same unit type, which leads to a horrible mish-mash of thematically incongruous tomes.
 

Axioms

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
1,630
The fuck makes just picking the tomes such a "great idea" versus affinity picks of classic AoW? :lol: It is way worse than PF's mods on the "great potential, meh execution" scale. At least mods were genuinely great and rich system on paper and you can come up with bazillion great and cool combinations. It's just that it didn't really matter in game.
You are set in stone at the beginning of the game with sphere picks. Tomes on the other hand can be picked as you play and are less coarse-grained, making it more flexible.

I'd compare mods rather to the change of the enchantment system from single unit enchantments to whole unit type enchantment system. This is still one of the sorest points of the game. They went way overboard with the streamlining. They really should have kept single unit enchantments in the game and put some limits on the whole unit type enchantment stuff. It boggles the mind how they came to the conclusion that current system is fine, when it immediately makes highest tier units worse by the simple fact that they can't benefit from enchantments due to being mythic units. Plus favoring the stacking of enchantments that apply to the same unit type, which leads to a horrible mish-mash of thematically incongruous tomes.
The new enchantment system would be fine if not for the removal of per unit buffs. Why take one away? Let the n00bs do the simple thng and the elites use both.

So many decisions in AoW4 making it inferior to Conquest Of Eo sadly. Triumph? Meh. Total decline as a studio.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,754
You are set in stone at the beginning of the game with sphere picks. Tomes on the other hand can be picked as you play and are less coarse-grained, making it more flexible.
I know that, I'm asking where the incline's at. It just seems like a major, direct contributor to some of the biggest and most common complaints with the game: samey mish-mash every time, lots of options never ever getting picked and the only meta being: pick a unit (or unit type) and stack every possible buff on it.

I could name multiple points where 3 could use or just straight needed improvement. This is not one of them. It's just devs deciding "fuck AoW, let's do the popular thing".
I'd compare mods rather to the change of the enchantment system from single unit enchantments to whole unit type enchantment system. This is still one of the sorest points of the game. They went way overboard with the streamlining. They really should have kept single unit enchantments in the game and put some limits on the whole unit type enchantment stuff. It boggles the mind how they came to the conclusion that current system is fine, when it immediately makes highest tier units worse by the simple fact that they can't benefit from enchantments due to being mythic units. Plus favoring the stacking of enchantments that apply to the same unit type, which leads to a horrible mish-mash of thematically incongruous tomes.
This isn't really 4's innovation tbf. 3 already did that, it's just that it was more subtle and flavorful about it and you couldn't stack everything you wanted at the same time. Because giving a player such an option is, surprise surprise, a horrible idea. I've always assumed the thinking behind it was stopping the creation of uber units that would clear the entire map, easily one of the biggest design issues with classic AoW. So in 4 they came back to it, just... made it much easier and global? Yeah, this game was not designed with "let's evolve and improve AoW's formula" as a goal.

I'm comparing it to mods, because mods were obviously "the big thing" in PF, same as tomes are in 4. And mods are imo easily the more interesting and better designed system, not even close. It's just that they forgot about the part where you should also have a game where they would matter and you could have fun in.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,754
Tomes offer lots of flexibility and interesting decisions on what to take if the Tomes have affinity requirements. To get a fancy ice death ultimate tome you'd need to pick your way up the tree taking sufficient ice and death.

Tomes are more granular than the old system. You get 4 thematic spells per Tome.

In the original system you are much more limited in your options and you get fewer decision points. There's not really a a good way to do special theming either. You can't create a shadow fire earth wizard or w/e, even if you put points in 3 spheres, because there are not really combination spells.
I don't know what games you've played, but in AoW3 you obviously get (much) more choices per pick and deciding on your build is way more interesting, because, uh, there are actual builds instead of deciding which bonus you want to get first. Not to mention that there are more vectors for choices, because race matters quite a lot in itself, but then also comes with its own set of upgrades that you need to pick.

Again, even with the meaningless "if it wasn't implemented in a retarded way, it wouldn't be retarded, dabum-tss" assumption, I really fail to see what about this idea is so great that it would make an already amazing game like SM a 10/10 or whatever exaggerated claim you made there. I'm fairly sure that vast majority of people who actually played classic AoW a lot would not name this as one the ways to make the games much better. In fact, for anyone who played them it should be pretty obvious that implementing such a system could make its flaws more pronounced and worse.
 

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
8,294
Location
Kelethin
I love this series (1-3) but kind of hate it too for all the problems. I love the original, including overpowered stacks once you knew the game well. You get all the right magic buffs on a whole stack, fire halo, enchanted weapon, stone skin, dark gift, etc. They become super strong, especially when you have some heroes which have been pumped by killing little units the whole game.

I never saw a problem with it. After I've played a game over multiple days on a huge map, and I've done all that was asked of me... I want to finally get powerful and clean shit up in the end. So your single stack could take out waves of enemies with one autobattle click after another. All the way to the enemy capitol city and then you have to beat their turtling bosses. And you can just go in balls first and fight them and sometimes lose a lot of your precious heroes in the attack, but if you kill their boss in the home city, the whole game is won. Or you can do it by attrition, or with magic. Shadow Magic really improved the latter part which was fun. AOW3 takes all that fun shit away. No cursed woods, pestilence, none of the little fire storm buildings etc. No blasting enemy cities and armies with big spells. They took balance too far as well. I loved how in the original a single wraith could kill entire armies. But why not? It's a fucking undead scary wraith, and has physical immunity. It should be badass, and it was. All you need to do is l2p and you can deal with them easily. Put enchanted weapon on something tough and it will beat up the wraith like it's made from paper. You can even enchant catapults and shit. I loved the depth and intricacies. AOW3 just nerfed everything to be mostly the same which disgusts me.

And yet... I like it too. The battles are really good. And they improved the cities a lot in battles. The city walls used to be goofy 2D posing as 3D. Now it's actual 3D, you can stand units on the wall and defend it and there's better line of sight and stuff. The battles are awesome. And the extreme balance does pay off because there's not much either side can do to steamroll the other guy. You have to play out a real tactical battle. I just wish it was a bit less heavy handed with the wraiths and stuff. They still have some nice spells though. I love summoning hoards of beasts or undead every turn. Also there were bigger scenario/maps in the earlier games. And better. I had a bunch of feedback from playing AOW3 that I planned to maybe send the devs sometime but I never bothered when I heard about the sci fi one and talk of aow4. I figured my feedback would be out of date. But if they still use the same goofy engine then it's probably still all relevant. If anyone wants to hear it, here it is:

My feedback from playing AOW3, fan of the original and Shadow Magic:

1. The most weird and infuriating thing about this game is that it completely hijacks the screen and the controls constantly. CONSTANTLY. Every thing I am trying to do gets rudely interrupted. Finally decide where to spend points on a hero? Just as you are about to click it... Fuck you, we are closing that window and moving across the entire map because a wolf took a windmill.
Or you finally find the unit that was taking all your shit, so you get your army in place. You catch up, you are right next to it! Now at the start of next turn all you need to do is click your unit and click on the bad guy and life will be good again. Next turn starts, nope fu again, a bird attacked a watchtower so we need to move all your shit to there and the bad guy just runs away. Your throne city could be surrounded by enemies, and at the start of next turn it will still drag you away to a distant outpost being attacked by a pigeon. This whole thing is madness. Was this really what you had in mind for this game?
Possible solutions: There are a lot of things you could do to fix this but really... I think this game needs MTG style phases within turns. So the players get to do all their management shit at the start of each turn. And then there will be a battle phase.
Alternatively you could let the player choose priorities for the next turn. No matter what happens, all this snatching of the screen is weird and terrible, like a crime against gaming. At the very least you should have a pop up showing a battle that the player needs to deal with before they can do anything else. But it shouldn't close whatever the player was doing and drag their camera away and stop them clicking things. Events should show as pings on the map and the player should be able to just click the ping to go there and see. I don't need the screen being taken to a city across the world because it compelted a damn merchandise. Also stopping the player from clicking things because the controls are locked while something is happening, is just weird and wrong. I will split this in two.

2. The UI is treacherous. First off, I don't like playing any game where I can't just quit the game whenever I want. In this game if a battle is underway it stops you from doing anything. Even if you decide you want to reload a previous save or close the game or whatever, fu, this battle is playing out and you can't do anything. There is a button to surrender but it doesn't appear until your turn again, so you might have to watch 50 enemy units play out until you do that. But you can't even press escape and close the game or anything during this time. It locks up the controls and everything... You would have to End Task if you really need to go.
The player is deciding on what to spend those hero points on, you finally decide and start clicking on the thing, and the whole window gets closed and the game moves across the world because of some stupid event. This should NEVER happen. Learn how to make windows or don't make any more games, you lazy, programming noobs.
Also related to this, the player should be able to drag and drop things. The queue of units? If you want to move something up the queue you currently have to cancel everything, queue what you want and then queue all the other shit after it. You should be able to just drag the order... Even a Flash game would let you do that but Flash is far more powerful than whatever this goofy engine is.
Also, managing inventories of heroes etc is a so ridiculous. We should be able to see all our heroes and the inventories should be universal, and we should be able to drag what we want onto whoever... It is currently a joke. I can't even give an item from one guy to another in the same army. I have to click the item, then click a button to drop the item to the ground, then click the hero I want, click the item on the ground etc. And if a pigeon attacks while you are doing that? Well then that item is sitting on the ground because the UI and controls were taken away from you for this far more important pigeon. The whole thing could be done with a single drag and drop. Or right click an item, Send To Bob.
Other anti player eg's: You scroll down your hero list of skills and find the ones you want. But each one you click it moves the list back to the top so you have to scroll it again and again. Why am I the only person who brings stuff like this up? The game is a fucking chore to play because of things like this and it is completely unnecessary. Learn some QA.

3. Related to the above, managing cities is boring and a chore. I usually have a few cities producing units and then all the others I want to make a temple and then just mass produce mana / research. But I have to manually click all this shit on every city, one by one. The game could let players make a template build order and then apply it to multiple cities on one click. The idea of a template would be so helpful, but it would also highlight how cities are mostly the same... A problem that was supposed to be addressed with the various map buildings changing what you can build etc. But in reality it doesn't make much difference. Maybe if there's a Flowrock I'll produce some catapults from there. Some high production cities I'll use for making big units. But mostly cities are just bland copy paste nodes and not having a template is lame. What would I really like? I'd like cities more like Civ where you have some focused on farms or whatever. And really I'd like cities to do stuff for me instead of the other way around. If each city had a mayor or something and I want to say build roads from here to the following cities, and have him deal with it using a builder. Or build a stack of 6 archers and send them to the capitol etc. Civ let you send units and they navigate themselves. Or have units exploring etc.
Also related to this, Civ2 lets you trade maps. So if you explore a lot your map will be valuable. This game is crying out for map selling.

4. All the notifications should have options when you right click. Such as Don’t notify about this again.

5. The green “Click to end turn” appears when you moved your peeps, even if you have lots of important things left in the notifications, like a domain invasion, city join offer, or someone disjuncted my spell. That green button is a nuisance…

6. Exit game should exit the game not take you to main menu. Ideally there should be a button to do both... Does that need to be a DLC?

7. The trading sucks, and the diplomacy. It’s all so basic and undeveloped. If an AI is near my shit I should be able to threaten it and explain why. Likewise if I walk through an enemy's territory, they ask why are you tresspassing?! But you can't respond... Maybe I was fleeing from angry animals! Or maybe I go where I please and next turn I plan to take all your shit. Either way there should be some kind of communication between the players. Ideally in this age of real AI, the game AIs should at least have personalities like devious treacherous, trustworthy, etc. And the player should be able to interact with them, at the very least through RPG style dialogue options.
Currently they are basic and dumb. He wont sell me a cloak but will die next turn. And allies kinda suck, they just take everything you haven't got to yet. And in the end it turns out badly. AOW3 adding the team victory was a good idea... But I still don't like allies. The seals idea is better but I tried it once and didn't like it. I'd prefer some RTS style thing where the players team up to build a huge unit but the other players have a chance to disrupt it.

8. Magic needs to scale with the game and not be fixed numbers. You can't just have damage spells that do 15 damage and heals that do 20. Because 15 damage early game kills an archer but late game I have heroes with 180 hp. 15 damage or 20hp heal is a waste of a turn. Related to this, one magic spell per turn? So much for Age of Wonders. More like Age of Blandness, one spell per turn. This really sucks, it is a big deal. My hero heals a guy and now I can use no spells in the entire battle? Epic decline.

9. Armies need banners with logos on. Currently there are armies with red banners on a dark red background, or dark red banners on light red background... I can't tell! Give us logos. Also the flying numbers is a shitshow in battles. They obscure what's going on. Nice idea instead of a battle log but I need to actually keep track of shit so I can't just have numbers all over the place that disappear a few seconds later. Ideally I would like to see the HP of all my units in the battle in a UI so I can see who needs healing the most etc. 20 units with hp bars floating and then getting attacked by another 20 units with floating hp bars... You just can't see shit. Takes a lot of micro management and zooming in just to keep track of the basics like who is dying or not.

10. The 4X / tactical map side of the game is kinda weak. For a start it could do with some lore. I hate reading and stories... but this game basically has none at all. Instead of 100 dungeon nodes, maybe some could be hidden and revealed by quests or lore hints. Also if your ally dies, currently just a little popup says “Bob died" on this day. It could do something like, a note arrives, “If you are reading this Bob is dead, you were a good ally, I left you some gold in x location.” Or, “If you are reading this Bob is dead, you were no help at all and now I will return as undead for revenge!”
Cities still don’t feel different or unique. I only really make some cities that are just shrine cities that generate mana each turn, and some cities make units. That’s pretty much it. You should be able to build more interesting things and they should be more exclusive. So if you make a magic city it can’t make troops or something. They should look different too.
It also needs more than just merch, research, housing, or mana. There could be illnesses and some cities could work on medicine, etc.

11. Removing all the fun magic from the tactical map is just sad. If the magic in Shadow Magic was too powerful, it just needs some balance, not removing completely. How about have it so that cities could be built to do combat things. Like a city could be built to fire pestilence at attackers. It doesn't make units or anything else, all the citizens just prepare vats of pestilence for when it is needed. Then if you are attacked or you want to attack a distant enemy, you have this 1 city that can send a blob of pestilence anywhere on the map. But you only get 1 blob per whatever. Same with the large nukes and things. Limit them to one of each and have them be rarely used. They should be like the Tactical Aids in C&C Generals. The player should have a few defensive buildings/spells lined up for emergencies. Or for a big advance.

12. The scenarios in 3 are much weaker than the previous games. I'm not talking about campaigns, just the maps themselves. The basic scenarios. I loved the earlier games with huge maps and interesting events happening. Like a giant undead invasion coming through the middle of the map which is surrounded by mountains and protected etc.. Scenarios like that were far better than anything in AOW3. Also they were bigger maps too.
One big problem I've had in AOW3 took me a long time to figure out... I feel like the game forces the players together more than the previous games. In the earlier games I liked playing for a while before I even met another player. And when I do I get into battle eventually and might defeat him eventually. Then I meet someone else, and there are still more who I haven't met. And they were all at different stages of development. In AOW3 it seems like I find everyone early in the game and they all kill each other and are too much on top of each other. And by the time I get some units exploring, everyone is dead and there's just one or two big AI left who absorbed everything.
I found a solution to make huge random scenarios with more distance between players, fewer cities but more resources. It lets players spread out more which makes for better late game.

13. The random scenario maker is a game changer. If it wasn't for that I would probably only play AOW1 or Shadow Magic. But I've played all those scenarios so many times, I know them inside out. So being able to have new maps made on the fly is amazing. It does a pretty good job too! But I wish it defaulted more to what I said in the previous point. I also wish it could make some more interesting scenarios with giant events planned. A giant flood. An asteroid. An undead invasion, etc. AOW3 does have global events too but I don't like them. Armies of creatures spawn all over the place and attack everything. It's aritifical and annoying to have to defend every city. It would be better to have something more like the earlier games, a real event the players can work towards dealing with. And it makes interesting maps like the giant circle with undead in the middle.
Also the geography should play more of a role. Some cities should be surrounded by mountains, some should be on the coast, and these should be more key locations in terms of gameplay. Like some cities should be hard to attack because they are behind mountains. Currently it just takes 1 extra turn to walk over the mountain... I want to see larger more significant mountains, and characters on a mountain is weaker or something. And mountains could block line of sight of things like the previously mentioned pestilence. So a city could be good just because of the natural layout of the land, not just because of what gets built there.
Likewise cities on water should be a bigger deal. I don't even use boats currently. I hate that they require 1 less unit from the stack. I prefer to just have stacks that can fly or we walk the long way. But a city on the water should have a gameplay impact. If you build ships they should be able to help defend against land units. And attacks from the sea could be a problem too so it forces anyone with a city on the sea to consider how to defend it.

14. I don't like the good and evil thing. Evil is much better, you just attack every city and everything you can see, MINE ALL MINE! Get big and rich and strong. The good players lose alignment if you attack shit so you are supposed to flirt with them and then they gradually warm to you over time. It takes several turns until they offer you a quest or something and then several more to become a vassal, and several more before you finally get anything from it. And if you deviate you ruin your alignment. Meanwhile evil players are capturing the whole map... It also kinda sucks that the AIs only really judge you based on alignment. Another evil aligned AI will worship me. A good aligned AI will hate me even if we never met, and even if he is about to die to someone else and I would have been willing to ally. I like that it's like an ideology but it's based on nothing but a tick box at character creation. I wish these things were based more on what goes on in the game. And really, a game that's all about capturing cities and defeating all who are in the way, when anyone bitches at me for being evil it just seems silly.
Also, worrying about being a good guy means not slaughtering 1000s of little creatures at all the various treasure sites and missing out on having a high level hero. So it's a no brainer. It's not that strict, you can get away with a lot. But it's a pain to play goodies. It doesn't really make sense.

A lot of ranty feedback but it comes from a place of love. Also I think if you took the good bits from 1 and 2 and 3 and left behind the weak bits, and put it together in a decent 3D engine, I think it would be a killer game. I like all 3 games but all of them have things I miss from the others.
 
Last edited:

Axioms

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
1,630
Tomes offer lots of flexibility and interesting decisions on what to take if the Tomes have affinity requirements. To get a fancy ice death ultimate tome you'd need to pick your way up the tree taking sufficient ice and death.

Tomes are more granular than the old system. You get 4 thematic spells per Tome.

In the original system you are much more limited in your options and you get fewer decision points. There's not really a a good way to do special theming either. You can't create a shadow fire earth wizard or w/e, even if you put points in 3 spheres, because there are not really combination spells.
I don't know what games you've played, but in AoW3 you obviously get (much) more choices per pick and deciding on your build is way more interesting, because, uh, there are actual builds instead of deciding which bonus you want to get first. Not to mention that there are more vectors for choices, because race matters quite a lot in itself, but then also comes with its own set of upgrades that you need to pick.

Again, even with the meaningless "if it wasn't implemented in a retarded way, it wouldn't be retarded, dabum-tss" assumption, I really fail to see what about this idea is so great that it would make an already amazing game like SM a 10/10 or whatever exaggerated claim you made there. I'm fairly sure that vast majority of people who actually played classic AoW a lot would not name this as one the ways to make the games much better. In fact, for anyone who played them it should be pretty obvious that implementing such a system could make its flaws more pronounced and worse.
Tomes are widely considered even by critics to be one of the best features of AoW4. In any case we are talking about Tomes in isolation compared to the method in Shadow Magic. That races in AoW4 are a trash feature is a totally separate issue. If you are insistent on hating every single part of AoW4, a 4/10 game, that's only hurting you. Have fun with that.

One thing to note is that Conquest Of Eo has a sort of combination of the two systems. You still get 4 spells and you can find the pages during the game and you can get spells from every magic sphere. In fact you can get all 32 spell pages if you really went for it. Although you've already won at that point.
 

rumSaint

Educated
Patron
Joined
Sep 1, 2023
Messages
169
Location
Poland
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
Tomes offer lots of flexibility and interesting decisions on what to take if the Tomes have affinity requirements. To get a fancy ice death ultimate tome you'd need to pick your way up the tree taking sufficient ice and death.

Tomes are more granular than the old system. You get 4 thematic spells per Tome.

In the original system you are much more limited in your options and you get fewer decision points. There's not really a a good way to do special theming either. You can't create a shadow fire earth wizard or w/e, even if you put points in 3 spheres, because there are not really combination spells.
I don't know what games you've played, but in AoW3 you obviously get (much) more choices per pick and deciding on your build is way more interesting, because, uh, there are actual builds instead of deciding which bonus you want to get first. Not to mention that there are more vectors for choices, because race matters quite a lot in itself, but then also comes with its own set of upgrades that you need to pick.

Again, even with the meaningless "if it wasn't implemented in a retarded way, it wouldn't be retarded, dabum-tss" assumption, I really fail to see what about this idea is so great that it would make an already amazing game like SM a 10/10 or whatever exaggerated claim you made there. I'm fairly sure that vast majority of people who actually played classic AoW a lot would not name this as one the ways to make the games much better. In fact, for anyone who played them it should be pretty obvious that implementing such a system could make its flaws more pronounced and worse.
Tomes are widely considered even by critics to be one of the best features of AoW4. In any case we are talking about Tomes in isolation compared to the method in Shadow Magic. That races in AoW4 are a trash feature is a totally separate issue. If you are insistent on hating every single part of AoW4, a 4/10 game, that's only hurting you. Have fun with that.

One thing to note is that Conquest Of Eo has a sort of combination of the two systems. You still get 4 spells and you can find the pages during the game and you can get spells from every magic sphere. In fact you can get all 32 spell pages if you really went for it. Although you've already won at that point.
Tomes are great, but have one fatal flaw. You basically choose what is best at the moment instead going for one coherent thematic build, you can do it but it's kinda less effective.

Imagine MTG but you have no mana color. You would just go for best removal and creatures because why not. Here is the same, thus around midgame all builds look same'y, unless you force yourself into roleplaying.
 

Axioms

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
1,630
Tomes offer lots of flexibility and interesting decisions on what to take if the Tomes have affinity requirements. To get a fancy ice death ultimate tome you'd need to pick your way up the tree taking sufficient ice and death.

Tomes are more granular than the old system. You get 4 thematic spells per Tome.

In the original system you are much more limited in your options and you get fewer decision points. There's not really a a good way to do special theming either. You can't create a shadow fire earth wizard or w/e, even if you put points in 3 spheres, because there are not really combination spells.
I don't know what games you've played, but in AoW3 you obviously get (much) more choices per pick and deciding on your build is way more interesting, because, uh, there are actual builds instead of deciding which bonus you want to get first. Not to mention that there are more vectors for choices, because race matters quite a lot in itself, but then also comes with its own set of upgrades that you need to pick.

Again, even with the meaningless "if it wasn't implemented in a retarded way, it wouldn't be retarded, dabum-tss" assumption, I really fail to see what about this idea is so great that it would make an already amazing game like SM a 10/10 or whatever exaggerated claim you made there. I'm fairly sure that vast majority of people who actually played classic AoW a lot would not name this as one the ways to make the games much better. In fact, for anyone who played them it should be pretty obvious that implementing such a system could make its flaws more pronounced and worse.
Tomes are widely considered even by critics to be one of the best features of AoW4. In any case we are talking about Tomes in isolation compared to the method in Shadow Magic. That races in AoW4 are a trash feature is a totally separate issue. If you are insistent on hating every single part of AoW4, a 4/10 game, that's only hurting you. Have fun with that.

One thing to note is that Conquest Of Eo has a sort of combination of the two systems. You still get 4 spells and you can find the pages during the game and you can get spells from every magic sphere. In fact you can get all 32 spell pages if you really went for it. Although you've already won at that point.
Tomes are great, but have one fatal flaw. You basically choose what is best at the moment instead going for one coherent thematic build, you can do it but it's kinda less effective.

Imagine MTG but you have no mana color. You would just go for best removal and creatures because why not. Here is the same, thus around midgame all builds look same'y, unless you force yourself into roleplaying.
In my original post I specified that you should have to build up to fancier Tomes by taking thematically appropriate lower level ones. So to take Ash you'd get a Fire Tome and an Earth Tome to get a Magma Tome and you'd take Fire and Wind to get Ash and then you'd be able to take a Tier 3 Tome with a Volcano theme or something. Hence the claim that the OP was deriding that "the implementation is lackluster".

Also have you played Magic lately? Colorless can do anything and also every color can do anything. Literally every color has 2 and/or 3 mana board wipes but they have "thematic downsides" or some shit. Like getting a board wipe off doesn't ruin aggro decks regardless of if they can replay all the cards but for 2 more mana or w/e. Every single color has card draw now, too. Including Artifacts and even Eldrazi which are colorless but not artifacts.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,754
Tomes are widely considered even by critics to be one of the best features of AoW4. In any case we are talking about Tomes in isolation compared to the method in Shadow Magic. That races in AoW4 are a trash feature is a totally separate issue. If you are insistent on hating every single part of AoW4, a 4/10 game, that's only hurting you. Have fun with that.
So, care to explain how the AoW4's tome system would make SM a 10/10 game? One of SM's biggest issues is very similar to 4: stack enchantments, powerstack through everything. To me it's pretty obvious that tomes would only exacerbate this issue, but maybe I'm not seeing something.

If by "tomes in isolation" you mean that this mechanic could be great then, uh, I guess? I just want to reiterate that on the "yo, this is theoretically gr8 m8, it's just that the actual playing the game part fecking sucks" spectrum I still rate PF higher than 4. At the very least it actually mostly remembered about being AoW game, despite the cheesy sf spinoff angle.
 

rumSaint

Educated
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169
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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
Tomes offer lots of flexibility and interesting decisions on what to take if the Tomes have affinity requirements. To get a fancy ice death ultimate tome you'd need to pick your way up the tree taking sufficient ice and death.

Tomes are more granular than the old system. You get 4 thematic spells per Tome.

In the original system you are much more limited in your options and you get fewer decision points. There's not really a a good way to do special theming either. You can't create a shadow fire earth wizard or w/e, even if you put points in 3 spheres, because there are not really combination spells.
I don't know what games you've played, but in AoW3 you obviously get (much) more choices per pick and deciding on your build is way more interesting, because, uh, there are actual builds instead of deciding which bonus you want to get first. Not to mention that there are more vectors for choices, because race matters quite a lot in itself, but then also comes with its own set of upgrades that you need to pick.

Again, even with the meaningless "if it wasn't implemented in a retarded way, it wouldn't be retarded, dabum-tss" assumption, I really fail to see what about this idea is so great that it would make an already amazing game like SM a 10/10 or whatever exaggerated claim you made there. I'm fairly sure that vast majority of people who actually played classic AoW a lot would not name this as one the ways to make the games much better. In fact, for anyone who played them it should be pretty obvious that implementing such a system could make its flaws more pronounced and worse.
Tomes are widely considered even by critics to be one of the best features of AoW4. In any case we are talking about Tomes in isolation compared to the method in Shadow Magic. That races in AoW4 are a trash feature is a totally separate issue. If you are insistent on hating every single part of AoW4, a 4/10 game, that's only hurting you. Have fun with that.

One thing to note is that Conquest Of Eo has a sort of combination of the two systems. You still get 4 spells and you can find the pages during the game and you can get spells from every magic sphere. In fact you can get all 32 spell pages if you really went for it. Although you've already won at that point.
Tomes are great, but have one fatal flaw. You basically choose what is best at the moment instead going for one coherent thematic build, you can do it but it's kinda less effective.

Imagine MTG but you have no mana color. You would just go for best removal and creatures because why not. Here is the same, thus around midgame all builds look same'y, unless you force yourself into roleplaying.
In my original post I specified that you should have to build up to fancier Tomes by taking thematically appropriate lower level ones. So to take Ash you'd get a Fire Tome and an Earth Tome to get a Magma Tome and you'd take Fire and Wind to get Ash and then you'd be able to take a Tier 3 Tome with a Volcano theme or something. Hence the claim that the OP was deriding that "the implementation is lackluster".

Also have you played Magic lately? Colorless can do anything and also every color can do anything. Literally every color has 2 and/or 3 mana board wipes but they have "thematic downsides" or some shit. Like getting a board wipe off doesn't ruin aggro decks regardless of if they can replay all the cards but for 2 more mana or w/e. Every single color has card draw now, too. Including Artifacts and even Eldrazi which are colorless but not artifacts.
Latest MTG is a shitshow, so let's not bring it here... I stopped playing this crap some time ago and won't return, especially that WotC are leaning towards Commander now.

Anyways in case of AOW4 it lacks some schackles and downsides to your playing faction. Now everything is viable and everything seems like incremental growth, +2 fire dmg or +2 ice + +2 etc... Flattening map was also a decline, no more choke points. Naval is basic as it gets. Eh...
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
23,971
AoW4 got rid of concept of species, and that's like saying pigs are equal to cows. That's craziness that's pushed to our throat nowadays.
 

Axioms

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
1,630
Tomes offer lots of flexibility and interesting decisions on what to take if the Tomes have affinity requirements. To get a fancy ice death ultimate tome you'd need to pick your way up the tree taking sufficient ice and death.

Tomes are more granular than the old system. You get 4 thematic spells per Tome.

In the original system you are much more limited in your options and you get fewer decision points. There's not really a a good way to do special theming either. You can't create a shadow fire earth wizard or w/e, even if you put points in 3 spheres, because there are not really combination spells.
I don't know what games you've played, but in AoW3 you obviously get (much) more choices per pick and deciding on your build is way more interesting, because, uh, there are actual builds instead of deciding which bonus you want to get first. Not to mention that there are more vectors for choices, because race matters quite a lot in itself, but then also comes with its own set of upgrades that you need to pick.

Again, even with the meaningless "if it wasn't implemented in a retarded way, it wouldn't be retarded, dabum-tss" assumption, I really fail to see what about this idea is so great that it would make an already amazing game like SM a 10/10 or whatever exaggerated claim you made there. I'm fairly sure that vast majority of people who actually played classic AoW a lot would not name this as one the ways to make the games much better. In fact, for anyone who played them it should be pretty obvious that implementing such a system could make its flaws more pronounced and worse.
Tomes are widely considered even by critics to be one of the best features of AoW4. In any case we are talking about Tomes in isolation compared to the method in Shadow Magic. That races in AoW4 are a trash feature is a totally separate issue. If you are insistent on hating every single part of AoW4, a 4/10 game, that's only hurting you. Have fun with that.

One thing to note is that Conquest Of Eo has a sort of combination of the two systems. You still get 4 spells and you can find the pages during the game and you can get spells from every magic sphere. In fact you can get all 32 spell pages if you really went for it. Although you've already won at that point.
Tomes are great, but have one fatal flaw. You basically choose what is best at the moment instead going for one coherent thematic build, you can do it but it's kinda less effective.

Imagine MTG but you have no mana color. You would just go for best removal and creatures because why not. Here is the same, thus around midgame all builds look same'y, unless you force yourself into roleplaying.
In my original post I specified that you should have to build up to fancier Tomes by taking thematically appropriate lower level ones. So to take Ash you'd get a Fire Tome and an Earth Tome to get a Magma Tome and you'd take Fire and Wind to get Ash and then you'd be able to take a Tier 3 Tome with a Volcano theme or something. Hence the claim that the OP was deriding that "the implementation is lackluster".

Also have you played Magic lately? Colorless can do anything and also every color can do anything. Literally every color has 2 and/or 3 mana board wipes but they have "thematic downsides" or some shit. Like getting a board wipe off doesn't ruin aggro decks regardless of if they can replay all the cards but for 2 more mana or w/e. Every single color has card draw now, too. Including Artifacts and even Eldrazi which are colorless but not artifacts.
Latest MTG is a shitshow, so let's not bring it here... I stopped playing this crap some time ago and won't return, especially that WotC are leaning towards Commander now.

Anyways in case of AOW4 it lacks some schackles and downsides to your playing faction. Now everything is viable and everything seems like incremental growth, +2 fire dmg or +2 ice + +2 etc... Flattening map was also a decline, no more choke points. Naval is basic as it gets. Eh...
I mean my argument is specifically that Tomes, which take specific sets of previous lower level Tomes to make available, would strongly improve AoW2:SM, not that AoW4 is good, which it is not. In fact I don't own it because it looked like it had one or two good ideas and those ideas ended up not being implemented well when I watched people play or post guides so I decided not to give Paradox my money.
 

Axioms

Arcane
Developer
Joined
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Messages
1,630
AoW4 got rid of concept of species, and that's like saying pigs are equal to cows. That's craziness that's pushed to our throat nowadays.
I could care less about the biology/politics stuff. The problem is that from a gameplay perspective nothing matters and their's no restrictions. Now really strong restrictions suck, in my personal view, but having 0 restrictions is also terrible.
 

GloomFrost

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
1,085
Location
Northern wastes
AoW4 got rid of concept of species, and that's like saying pigs are equal to cows. That's craziness that's pushed to our throat nowadays.
I could care less about the biology/politics stuff. The problem is that from a gameplay perspective nothing matters and their's no restrictions. Now really strong restrictions suck, in my personal view, but having 0 restrictions is also terrible.
Can you not see that one is connected to another. Biology/politics used to DIRECTLY affect gameplay in AoW 1 and 2. And that was great Same thing happening everywhere. Take BG3 for example. A gnome barbarian with 20 strength, or half orc wizard with 20 wisdom or agile dwarf assassin with 20 agility. Everyone is is equal, no restrictions.
 

Axioms

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
1,630
AoW4 got rid of concept of species, and that's like saying pigs are equal to cows. That's craziness that's pushed to our throat nowadays.
I could care less about the biology/politics stuff. The problem is that from a gameplay perspective nothing matters and their's no restrictions. Now really strong restrictions suck, in my personal view, but having 0 restrictions is also terrible.
Can you not see that one is connected to another. Biology/politics used to DIRECTLY affect gameplay in AoW 1 and 2. And that was great Same thing happening everywhere. Take BG3 for example. A gnome barbarian with 20 strength, or half orc wizard with 20 wisdom or agile dwarf assassin with 20 agility. Everyone is is equal, no restrictions.
Yeah but I don't object to it on those grounds. Why bring in divisive stuff? The proper argument is that having everything be totally freeform is bad for gameplay. Even if the biology/politics part upsets you it only weakens your argument. Whereas the gameplay argument is powerful and has no baggage.
 

GloomFrost

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
1,085
Location
Northern wastes
AoW4 got rid of concept of species, and that's like saying pigs are equal to cows. That's craziness that's pushed to our throat nowadays.
I could care less about the biology/politics stuff. The problem is that from a gameplay perspective nothing matters and their's no restrictions. Now really strong restrictions suck, in my personal view, but having 0 restrictions is also terrible.
Can you not see that one is connected to another. Biology/politics used to DIRECTLY affect gameplay in AoW 1 and 2. And that was great Same thing happening everywhere. Take BG3 for example. A gnome barbarian with 20 strength, or half orc wizard with 20 wisdom or agile dwarf assassin with 20 agility. Everyone is is equal, no restrictions.
Yeah but I don't object to it on those grounds. Why bring in divisive stuff? The proper argument is that having everything be totally freeform is bad for gameplay. Even if the biology/politics part upsets you it only weakens your argument. Whereas the gameplay argument is powerful and has no baggage.
How does it weaken my argument? A huge Orc should be a lot stronger than a tiny hobbit. Its that simple. So gameplay wise An orc can hit a lot harder and take a lot more damage but theoretically hobbits could counter that by being good marksmen and using ambush tactics. So if you want an army for melee combat choose orcs if you like hit n run tactics choose hobbits. AoW 4 says NO nothing matters hobbits can be just as strong because would be racist otherwise. God forbid it would offend someone.
 

Edgetard

Educated
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Messages
176
Location
Hell
they got rid of species replaced them effectively with cultures and gave us fucking 6 of them at launch (aow2 shadow magic had 15) and 2 dlc (more to come)
I dont entirely hate it (cucking) but if you do this please have more then half of the equivalents to races it just seems lazy as shit
add to this provinces suck they take away interesting gameplay like checkpoint and so on
1 step forward 2 steps back as always with this dev
 

Axioms

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
1,630
they got rid of species replaced them effectively with cultures and gave us fucking 6 of them at launch (aow2 shadow magic had 15) and 2 dlc (more to come)
I dont entirely hate it (cucking) but if you do this please have more then half of the equivalents to races it just seems lazy as shit
add to this provinces suck they take away interesting gameplay like checkpoint and so on
1 step forward 2 steps back as always with this dev
See this is a good and non-political/controversial argument.
 

Serious_Business

Best Poster on the Codex
Joined
Aug 21, 2007
Messages
3,954
Location
Frown Town
The game kind of won me over after all. Won't say it's without flaws or superior to previous entries, but I like it now. The tome system is the closest the series ever got to MoM, when you think about it. I do think the flexibility it allows is more interesting than the rigid class-race of 3, although I still think Planetfall is peak dissymmetry design. Anyway it definitively is not the game that will convince you to like the series though, especially if you thought everything after the first was "decline". I won't get into that, because I like all the titles. The Pdox influence is very ambiguous in 4. It does give the game a better "flow" - I struggle to explain this notion, but all Pdox games have a very continuous, hypnotic flow, and I find that previous AoW games struggled with this, especially with the jump between the strategy and tactical layers. Now it feels all very seamless, without friction. The price is that the battles are simpler, but it's not that bad. What is bad is the dlc model. I don't care if these dlcs are good, I haven't gotten any yet, they by definition are going to be low-effort, low-investment, high-pricing, high-return "content". That's how the model works. It's paid fucking mods. I wish we could have finished games ; all these cries about "dead" singleplayer games make no sense. The rest is cow milking, of course. I do think Triumph, even if they look like utter little faggots, care about what they're doing, but the laziness will have to kick in at some point. Their indie spirit will only last so long.
 

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
8,294
Location
Kelethin
How far from AOW3 is AOW4? I thought I would never play it but kind of curious about what they did.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,754
On the surface they're both fantasy 4X with strong focus on tactical combat. In reality they're very different and most mechanics that defined 3 are gone, replaced by stuff from modern grand strategy school of thought plus very obvious paradox influence.
 

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
8,294
Location
Kelethin
Some indie company needs to make a real new AoW. Especially now that AI can do half the work.
 

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