Age of Wonders 4

[Lacrymas]

IIRC you can get that from random events (when they decide to give you a gift), right? It's a bit different (and better, imo) in PF since you get a quantifiable resource you can exchange for specific units at any time you want.

You can also get them by demanding tribute.

 

[Reality]

I tried to make a gimmick charather around the vassal demand tribute army thing and I think I came up with a few conclusions

A: You can do it twice in a row safely if you've raised their happiness enough
B: The army ONLY depends on what their city size is (outpost,village,town,city,metropolis) - Whether it actually has Barracks/Warhall/T3 doesn't matter

So Rogue Leader + Keeper of Peace

Send Settlers on to Farms / Pumpkins > Build ONLY Storehouse > Auto Produce on Housing to raise population until Metropolis > Release own city as Vassal > Demand a 6 Unit army guranteed to have at least 2 T3 (sometimes better) every 3 Turns.

Even though it was a gimmick, it probbably broke my record for "most Orc Shocktroopers on Turn 30"

I experimented with Storehouse+Public Bath+Hospital, but all that really does is prevent a Rebellion on the 3rd Demand Tribute (and with this much free stuff, just capture and re-vassalize)

Also Demand Tribute from Dwellings is CRAP, I think it's strictly a "divide gold amount (370)" into as many unit as possible, which pretty much gurantees 4 Unit army of T1 and T2 stuff ... it is kinda okay on Giants/Fairies because they are forced to give you 2 ogres / low tier fairy are still usuable, but Dragon/Archon/Naga just waste your time hard

 

[Blutwurstritter]

I tried to make a gimmick charather around the vassal demand tribute army thing and I think I came up with a few conclusions

A: You can do it twice in a row safely if you've raised their happiness enough
B: The army ONLY depends on what their city size is (outpost,village,town,city,metropolis) - Whether it actually has Barracks/Warhall/T3 doesn't matter

So Rogue Leader + Keeper of Peace

Send Settlers on to Farms / Pumpkins > Build ONLY Storehouse > Auto Produce on Housing to raise population until Metropolis > Release own city as Vassal > Demand a 6 Unit army guranteed to have at least 2 T3 (sometimes better) every 3 Turns.

Even though it was a gimmick, it probbably broke my record for "most Orc Shocktroopers on Turn 30"

I experimented with Storehouse+Public Bath+Hospital, but all that really does is prevent a Rebellion on the 3rd Demand Tribute (and with this much free stuff, just capture and re-vassalize)

Also Demand Tribute from Dwellings is CRAP, I think it's strictly a "divide gold amount (370)" into as many unit as possible, which pretty much gurantees 4 Unit army of T1 and T2 stuff ... it is kinda okay on Giants/Fairies because they are forced to give you 2 Trolls / low tier fairy are still usuable, but Dragon/Archon/Naga just waste your time hard

Does casting Iron grip or other stuff that raises happiness enable you to make more demands? Or does happiness not matter at all.

 

[Johannes]

Excuse me? Even before the massive incline of dlcs, stuff like Explorer? Hello?

I hope you will forgive me if I don't find stuff like this terribly interesting:

Nah that is really cool if you use irregular units a lot, allows you to run all over the map. Much more gamechanging than getting a rando new spell

Aren't irregulars mostly just shitty scouts? From the description of the skills seems like sphinxes are irregular, but the movement speed bonus doesn't affect them and IIRC they were flying so they'd get nothing useful from the terrain movement bonuses as well. Were there other high tier irregular units?

Apart from Assassin and Monster Hunter, there's the Warlord starting spell Raise Militia. This allows you to spam the basic Irregular of your race for 30 mana each, without having to use your cities time to make them. So you can use them as decent scouts with those perks, and to support armies too naturally, though the quality of those units varies by race.

Best is the human one, which has half the upkeep of other t1 units, and gets a net from racial governance. Upkeep vs upkeep those guys are a match for any of the big units, and you can spam them, also in a single turn to defend whichever town you need.

Lower tier units often have good in gold/mana cost-effectiveness (if there's room in your stacks), but you don't want to waste the turns in your towns making smaller units than the biggest one they can make in a single turn.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

AoW III can play quite differently depending on your map settings. Using strong defenders and high amount of spawn sites plus the "Attack Protocol - Roaming Army Overhaul" mod, puts a lot of pressure on, and you won't have the leisure to tech quickly. I've just finished a map as orc warlord and had to keep pumping out tier I units for a long time just to avoid getting killed by roamers, until I switched gradually to orc cavalry as all purpose unit. Some AI's were even killed by roamers. I didn't build a single manticore rider in a 80 turns game since all my towns were constantly pumping out Black knights, which is possible with an evil warlord conqueror economy. Holding towns vs roamers/enemies would have been hard if I had tried to construct buildings first instead of pumping out units.

The exploration of the map, neutral enemies/threats, cosmic events, treasure sites, etc, really keep it interesting. I hope they strengthen these parts of the game, so that they remain important and don't become irrelevant once you enter late-game.

 

[Lacrymas]

The devs confirmed the campaign is going to use RMG. I can't say I'm shocked or surprised.

 

[Lord of Riva]

The devs confirmed the campaign is going to use RMG. I can't say I'm shocked or surprised.

Eh, the AOW 3 campaigns weren't really that good. RMG is fine, it's what most people play anyways.

If they concentrate on content instead, I would think thats a good approach.

Not gonna lie, I am looking forward to this, even though I found Planetfall really not that well made, especially the sector system which they sadly seem to keep.

 

[Johannes]

AoW III can play quite differently depending on your map settings. Using strong defenders and high amount of spawn sites plus the "Attack Protocol - Roaming Army Overhaul" mod, puts a lot of pressure on, and you won't have the leisure to tech quickly. I've just finished a map as orc warlord and had to keep pumping out tier I units for a long time just to avoid getting killed by roamers, until I switched gradually to orc cavalry as all purpose unit. Some AI's were even killed by roamers. I didn't build a single manticore rider in a 80 turns game since all my towns were constantly pumping out Black knights, which is possible with an evil warlord conqueror economy. Holding towns vs roamers/enemies would have been hard if I had tried to construct buildings first instead of pumping out units.

The exploration of the map, neutral enemies/threats, cosmic events, treasure sites, etc, really keep it interesting. I hope they strengthen these parts of the game, so that they remain important and don't become irrelevant once you enter late-game.

Isn't a lot of that making the game harder for the AIs than it is for you? So while it makes the period where you're mostly against the neutrals, longer and harder, once you get over that the actual citybuilding AIs should be pushovers. They're bad/lazy about clearing even usual strength indy defenders.

 

[Lacrymas]

The devs confirmed the campaign is going to use RMG. I can't say I'm shocked or surprised.

Eh, the AOW 3 campaigns weren't really that good. RMG is fine, it's what most people play anyways.

RMG really, really isn't fine. The one in PF is shockingly bad, it creates this flat and incoherent color diarrhea with resources and landmarks strewn about randomly. It's probably the worst RMG I've ever seen, but the maps being samey with no setpieces or logical distribution of features is always the case with random generation.

 

[Lord of Riva]

The devs confirmed the campaign is going to use RMG. I can't say I'm shocked or surprised.

Eh, the AOW 3 campaigns weren't really that good. RMG is fine, it's what most people play anyways.

RMG really, really isn't fine. The one in PF is shockingly bad, it creates this flat and incoherent color diarrhea with resources and landmarks strewn about randomly. It's probably the worst RMG I've ever seen, but the maps being samey with no setpieces or logical distribution of features is always the case with random generation.

Could be, the sector system did stop me from playing Planetfall so I it may be bad in AoW 4. It was fine, mostly, in Aow 3 though, i had 1-2 shit maps there as well.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

AoW III can play quite differently depending on your map settings. Using strong defenders and high amount of spawn sites plus the "Attack Protocol - Roaming Army Overhaul" mod, puts a lot of pressure on, and you won't have the leisure to tech quickly. I've just finished a map as orc warlord and had to keep pumping out tier I units for a long time just to avoid getting killed by roamers, until I switched gradually to orc cavalry as all purpose unit. Some AI's were even killed by roamers. I didn't build a single manticore rider in a 80 turns game since all my towns were constantly pumping out Black knights, which is possible with an evil warlord conqueror economy. Holding towns vs roamers/enemies would have been hard if I had tried to construct buildings first instead of pumping out units.

The exploration of the map, neutral enemies/threats, cosmic events, treasure sites, etc, really keep it interesting. I hope they strengthen these parts of the game, so that they remain important and don't become irrelevant once you enter late-game.

Isn't a lot of that making the game harder for the AIs than it is for you? So while it makes the period where you're mostly against the neutrals, longer and harder, once you get over that the actual citybuilding AIs should be pushovers. They're bad/lazy about clearing even usual strength indy defenders.

I usually use medium map size with 8 players and fixed alliances, so you will meet the AI fairly quickly, fighting them and neutrals. The spawn sites are heavily fortified and it is unlikely to clear all of them before you meet other enemies. You also need to clear sites to get the benefits, which is taxing against strong defenders. The AI does a bad job at clearing that is true, but its not really reliant on the resources from sites on higher difficulties and the AI handles some race+class combinations better than others. Warlord and Dreadnought with Dwarfs or Humans seem to do fairly well at all stages no matter what. Druid, Theocrat and Rogue are also usually fine, but Necro and Sorcerer AI seem to have trouble at the beginning sometimes. I would not say that it is much harder to win with these setting, but it prolongs the parts of the game that I find most enjoyable. You have to be more careful with the fights you pick and keeping units alive is harder. The game-flow can be changed by quite a bit using the options.

 

[Reality]

AoW 3 Random Map Generator is great

Planetfall is kinda average, it pales in comparision to AoW 3, but really it's about mid-average as far as random maps go

AOW : Shadow Magic RMG is borderline unsuable... It churns out nearly blank and featureless maps on the regular.. Still remember " starting area with only 2 points of interest, a mountrain range with only a 2hex exit (haha picking a race without flyers), finding the enemy on the other side with also just their city and only 2 indpenet gold mines/nodes of their own.

Heroes 3 RMG is Good when used with Templates, but it's really REALLY bad when used raw from the top option of the vanilla game (so makes Planetfall / Civiliztation etc look good) I'll never forget having a starting region, having fun clearing easy stuff in the first game week, and then "haha 1 tile break out of starting region requires fighting an angel stack"... Literally a RMG that made turtling until I had 4 weeks of units to play the game.

 

[Johannes]

"haha 1 tile break out of starting region requires fighting an angel stack"

Isn't that literally how the most popular HoMM3 multiplayer map works? Jebus Cross.

But yes it's retarded in my view also.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Alliances are much more useful than you make them out to be. Apart from the mods, getting allied faction units for good boy points is a way of quickly growing your army since they spawn instantly inside your main city, ignoring any production queues, and I often ended up in situations where I had good boy points to spare, since they're just another resource you "harvest" and there are structures on the map and society upgrades that increase your good boy point income. It's even more useful if your faction or tech has upgrades that synergize with the allied units. For example, imperial spearmen are very good if you have energy weapon tech, so you can give them shit like static shields and then use them as a melee tank stunbots. Forsaken/forgotten (I forgot what they're called) have those tanky little golems that shoot entropy bolts and can be used as an AoE artillery, that I often get no matter who I'm playing as, and they're even better if you have entropy damage tech. I was often in situations where I could buy 2-3 tier 3 allied units before I could even research tier 3 units of my own faction, which is a pretty big power spike. Would be nice to at least have the option to capture neutral cities and build their units normally, but I already said that I also think that this system could have been implemented much better.

Similarly to most mods, even if good on paper, I have never felt the need for npc units. Even the one I got from quests I just used for scouting or cannon fodder duty. Furries and mad max guys I just don't see fitting in anywhere. The rest can synergize, but you have to luck out on getting the right one at a point where it matters. The more you are advanced in your own tech tree, the less likely it is that you will find any of the npc stuff useful. The last note is actually a good point, though. I think you can get npc t4 way before you can get your racial one without extreme tech rushing, so that can be a significant power spike.

I agree that they may have nerfed T4s too much in PF. I wouldn't call them meh (they're still very powerful units), but the effort it takes to get to them often doesn't justify it. They should have either made the units weaker or not made it harder to afford them, but they did both. I hope that in 4 they will revert only 1 of those changes and not go back to how it was in AoW3.

I think the cosmite upkeep was not the worst idea in the world, but it hardly matters when the units themselves don't matter much. I typically detest highly arbitrary design in games (one of the main reasons I hate nufiraxis so much), but even something as low iq as simply going "max one t4 per stack, now feck off" would be ok in my book, provided they would be fittingly cool/powerful and obtainable at a reasonable stage.

The devs confirmed the campaign is going to use RMG. I can't say I'm shocked or surprised.

Eh, the AOW 3 campaigns weren't really that good. RMG is fine, it's what most people play anyways.

AoW3 dlc campaigns were good and, tbh, better than story campaigns in p. much every game of this kind since the decline has set in. To say that PF's "campaigns" were an enormous decline in comparison would be a severe understatement.

It's also a weird point to make, since these two things are not at all mutually exclusive. AoW3 had hand crafted campaigns and scenarios plus rmg that worked better than PF.

Also, they least the could fucking do was actually allowing the community to make proper maps for them.

 

[Lord of Riva]

AoW3 dlc campaigns were good and, tbh, better than story campaigns in p. much every game of this kind since the decline has set in. To say that PF's "campaigns" were an enormous decline in comparison would be a severe understatement.

It's also a weird point to make, since these two things are not at all mutually exclusive. AoW3 had hand crafted campaigns and scenarios plus rmg that worked better than PF.

My argument is certainly not conclusive and the issue is multivariabled. I barely play the campaigns in these games (specifically, I like SP games in general) and focus mostly on the PVP RMG aspects, so while my argument is in preference of one feature, it certainly does not mean that criticisms of this not valid.

If great SP and MP content is doable, thats what should be done as I have an interest in the series and want it's success.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I also rarely play campaigns in this type of strategy game and vanilla AoW3 campaigns were... not stellar (don't think they're horrible or anything, just kinda boring), but this series has a strong tradition of hand-crafted, story- and progression-driven campaign play and I strongly oppose taking features away. Particularly in case of PF, a game that strips a lot of stuff its predecessor had and offers very little in return. Plus, both dlc campaigns in AoW3 were imo genuinely enjoyable and a big step in the right direction, which makes this even more disappointing. And you have to remember that PF had a total lack of hand crafted maps, not only campaigns, but also no scenarios and no user-made content. This will almost certainly be exactly the same.

 

[Lacrymas]

The majority of people not playing campaigns and scenarios is extremely bizarre to me because I've always loved them since I was a kid. Turns out I'm the deviant one, lol.

 

[Lord of Riva]

The majority of people not playing campaigns and scenarios is extremely bizarre to me because I've always loved them since I was a kid. Turns out I'm the deviant one, lol.

I'm not even sure what the reason is, I relly like strategic SP games Story focus or not. But games like these, from 4X to HoMaM and AoW are full on MP titles for me with campaigns as an afterthought.
Most likely because when I was young we met and played all those games over LAN, it's prolly just nostalgia.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

The majority of people not playing campaigns and scenarios is extremely bizarre to me because I've always loved them since I was a kid. Turns out I'm the deviant one, lol.

I'm not even sure what the reason is, I relly like strategic SP games Story focus or not. But games like these, from 4X to HoMaM and AoW are full on MP titles for me with campaigns as an afterthought.
Most likely because when I was young we met and played all those games over LAN, it's prolly just nostalgia.

I've never touched multiplayer in HoMM or AoW although I've been playing these series for over 20 years. I still think of them as predominantly single-player focused games and not as first-and-foremost multiplayer titles. There certainly are dedicated multiplayer communities, which is great, since they keep these titles alive, but do/did these games really sell because of multiplayer? I always thought of the multiplayer people as a small group with long staying power and an inclination to form online communities and thus having a disproportionately large online presence, but never as majority of players.

 

[Raghar]

The devs confirmed the campaign is going to use RMG. I can't say I'm shocked or surprised.

That's very courageous of them. Typically a campaign needs handcrafted map.

 

[Suicidal]

~1 hour new gameplay vid with a dwarven faction underground

 

[Rahdulan]

Ah, choose your pronouns.

 

[Modron]

Ah, choose your pronouns.

And body type, on a related subject whatever happened to the inclusive bioware developer troll?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

"Blackwell can annex its first province".

SECTORS !!!!

 

[Geckabor]

~1 hour new gameplay vid with a dwarven faction underground

This was actually quite a fun watch, now I'm cautiously optimistic. Once again, heroes kinda seem OP though.