Age of Wonders 4

[Lagi]

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/age-of-wonders-4/




https://af.gog.com/en/game/age_of_wonders_4?as=1649904300

Spoiler

coming may 2023

trailer has some in game pictures

looks like there is still gold, mana and channelling points for your leader.
there is food (city grown), production (building structures), draft (hire unit faster) [ there are 2 separate queues inside cities for units and for buildings]

I have a wild guess that on top left we have global enchants (purple) and social influence (green) that grants you access to different units as the game go (there is turn counter on 2x screen at the bottom of my post); base on below statement:

Craft your followers by combining bodily forms, societal traits and arcane powers

after watching LP: purple on top left is research, green 2/2 are whispering stones (phones) that you drop on allied cities to influence them/

Craft your followers by combining bodily forms, societal traits and arcane powers. Build anything from a clan of cannibal halflings to mystic moon elves, or recreate your favorite fantasy tropes. Seek powerful tomes of magic to enchant your armies and see your people physically change as they morph into angelic beings or scions of chaos to face their enemies.

thats interesting appearently you made your faction from:
1. home land (grassland, underground, forest ..)
2. race
3. social traits (cannibals, moon folk ...)
4. type of magic you will use

sounds great on paper, but in practice it was a miss in AoW 3 IMO.

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I hope it would be good game, because the 3d graphic is readable as nothing before, and i think im going to buy new rig just to enjoy it full beauty.

full unit stack is 6 units... meh
you move all your guys then enemy... as before
there is miss chance for range units (you can friendly fire), melee always hit
reduction of figures in unit reduce the damage dealt ... yesss

as i see the biggest problem of aow3 combat is still there. Direct unit damage is too strong, and all play with buffs/nerfs/healing is less viable. why bother casting spells/using unit skills if unit die in 2 hits? this lead to shit like aoe healing for basic casters :-/

another issue seen on LP, late tier units make lower tiers redundand. On LP giant is tanking whole players party for multiple turns, while the tier 1 just die like flies. this will lead to making DoomStack of only T4 units (like in aow1 or aow3), which is lame (if you think different, then you are wrong)

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at the end i think this would be aow3 on steroids :-/

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Should've known.

 

[Suicidal]

That came out of nowhere.

Hope they will somehow integrate the unit upgrading system from Planetfall. Maybe in the form of strategic map enchantments that were in 1 & 2 but they removed in 3.

 

[Lagi]

here is a very interesting analyse of the series
https://explorminate.co/age-of-wonders-4-a-wish-list/

hope the devs read it

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looks like humans have giants, but this could be just added to faction unit, if you pick proper social and magic trait (or homeland).

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im super happy they dont waste efforts on animated trailer !! and the game graphic looks crispy AF.

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the game is in production since 2019 - its done at this point already

 

[Space Satan]

The have undead and necromancy. Enough for me to ry it.

 

[Lagi]

RATS !!!!

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and Frogs (not Lizards) !!!
and Moles? as a Race? how brave

 

[Suicidal]

Wonder how different the 2 Dwarf factions in this picture are. This idea for factions has a lot of potential. For all its faults, Planetfall had a very interesting faction system where your faction is determined by your race + tech choice + your minor faction ally and you could have hundreds of different combinations that would play at least somewhat differently. Hope what they're trying here is an iteration on that system. It was a huge improvement over the class + race system in AoW 3 because the class choice mattered much, much more than the race choice.

 

[Space Satan]

Ah, actual content is coming

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Well, I am sure I will buy it, be disappointed, abandon it, come back to it after 3 years of patches and xpacs, and then find it pleasantly enjoyable. That seems to be the Triumph way.

How many of the original AoW team are even left at Triumph now?

 

[razvedchiki]

dont want to nitpick but the grafics have a somewhat degraded quality, almost looking like a mobile phone game.
didnt the faction blender design deemed as a failure in 3?

 

[Morgoth]

dont want to nitpick but the grafics have a somewhat degraded quality, almost looking like a mobile phone game.
didnt the faction blender design deemed as a failure in 3?

Get glasses.

 

[Lagi]

didnt the faction blender design deemed as a failure in 3?

i think too it was a failure, because unit roster (despite the possibility to mix class with race) end up bland. Compare to aow2 f.ex.
hope here it would be better... maybe it's like communism - good on paper, but a billion of people need to die, before devs figure out it's a mistake.

 

[Tweed]

Wait, is this game going to have penis sliders?

 

[Space Satan]

Some info on races:

Races start living and you can turn them undead (various forms) using Shadow Tomes. The art team went as far as modeling bespoke skulls for toads and rats

We have a special class of spell called Race Transformations; which affect the entire race; their units, their cities with big changes.
Unlike regular enchantments, these cannot be undone.

 

[Space Satan]

could you try to resist the disease, and stop spreading this gender nonsense? or do you looking for it on purpose?

Enduring hardships makes one stronger

 

[Lagi]

Wait, is this game going to have penis sliders?

Space Satan is the spreader of mental disease and should be tagged with something like "rainbow man" in addition to already possessed Vatnik.

he screenshot on purpose the video when a game decoration was over dwarfs gentials

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7pKeH1cLb4&t=5m10s

 

[Lagi]

Some info on races:

Races start living and you can turn them undead (various forms) using Shadow Tomes. The art team went as far as modeling bespoke skulls for toads and rats

We have a special class of spell called Race Transformations; which affect the entire race; their units, their cities with big changes.
Unlike regular enchantments, these cannot be undone.

which is cool. Its like adapting your race to cold climate or other evolution shit... that should happen to snow orcs IRL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7pKeH1cLb4&t=36m0s

 

[Demo.Graph]

I watched the video.
Regretfully, it's likely going to be shit.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Well, I am sure I will buy it, be disappointed, abandon it, come back to it after 3 years of patches and xpacs, and then find it pleasantly enjoyable. That seems to be the Triumph way.

I had exactly the same thought. AoW3 actually grew on me with time and mods, but the release version was lacking.

On one hand I'm glad that Triumph tries new things, but on the other hand I would love to get a Best of Age of Wonders at this point, without any new mechanics. Just an improved version that focuses on fixing the problems of the former games. I thought they were just a step away from a great game with the final version of AoW3. Its a pity that they aren't picking it up from there, assuming that my impression of the trailer is right.

I liked the basic idea behind classes but it was bad decision to make them more important than races. There should have been more interaction between race and class pick. And perhaps some limits to race and class combinations, together with more unique units, skills, spells, etc, based on the combination. The choices become boring if anyone can be anything, and do everything. It all begins to feel samey without clear distinguishing features. Id rather have a small set of options that are actually different instead of tons of options that only vary in details.

 

[Saerain]

Man... The art style is going so HoMM 5-7. Age of Wonders used to be so much more classic/painterly high fantasy. Departed noticeably with AoW3 and much further this time.

 

[GloomFrost]

Got really excited there for a minute but then noticed that the game coming out on consoles as well....meh.... Expectations are very low but will see I guess.

 

[Lacrymas]

 

[covr]

I will play it on Xbox and have fun.

 

[Lacrymas]

Biggest issues from AoW3 I'd like them to fix - since you can pump up heroes' damage and defense, they got very broken very fast and trivialized most of the campaign, and that's not good I don't like it ;d Damage is all that mattered in battles and from what I can see it's going to matter even more now because they said model count affects damage. Hopefully they can do something about that. Races felt a bit samey and mostly cosmetic, but judging from the gameplay trailer they are going to be even more cosmetic this time around. I asked on their Discord if the races are just cosmetic but nobody knows for sure yet. High tier units completely replaced lower tier ones and that's sad.

 

[Reality]

Looks 3/4 planetfall to 1/4 Aow3 to me

HP numbers look whack In several places 60 HP support, 55 HP T1, 90 HP leader... That's 6 level up (15 points) in Aow3!

High tiers look important again which disappoints me because for all it's faults nerfing then in planetfall was great.