Age of Wonders 4

[thesecret1]

So what's the verdict? Is it worth a playthrough? Or should I save myself the trouble and wait for DLC?

 

[Fedora Master]

So what's the verdict? Is it worth a playthrough? Or should I save myself the trouble and wait for DLC?

It's "fun" if you can ignore the glaring imbalance and braindead AI. So... exactly like every other game where Paradox is involved.

 

[Raghar]

So what's the verdict? Is it worth a playthrough? Or should I save myself the trouble and wait for DLC?

Can you pirate it? If yes they play it, at worst you'd lose 3 days by playing garbage. But it needs 3 DLC.

The worst offenders are, species nearly doesn't matter, and graphics is garbage. (Also it uses planetfall system of provinces.)

 

[thesecret1]

Can you pirate it? If yes they play it, at worst you'd lose 3 days by playing garbage. But it needs 3 DLC.

Of course I can pirate it, but I'd rather not waste my time playing dog shit, that's why I ask.

It's "fun" if you can ignore the glaring imbalance and braindead AI. So... exactly like every other game where Paradox is involved.

Is the campaign fun, at least? Interesting maps and setups, etc.? I was extremely disappointed with PF in this regard and haven't touched it since launch because of it (I hope this game at least has the underground layer).

 

[Fedora Master]

Can you pirate it? If yes they play it, at worst you'd lose 3 days by playing garbage. But it needs 3 DLC.

Of course I can pirate it, but I'd rather not waste my time playing dog shit, that's why I ask.

It's "fun" if you can ignore the glaring imbalance and braindead AI. So... exactly like every other game where Paradox is involved.

Is the campaign fun, at least? Interesting maps and setups, etc.? I was extremely disappointed with PF in this regard and haven't touched it since launch because of it (I hope this game at least has the underground layer).

There is no campaign. Only vaguely scripted campaign maps that still get randomly generated.

Also the AI is braindead.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AOW4/comments/13evvsz/did_a_test_of_the_ai_and_its_not_as_bad_as_i/

 

[Great Deceiver]

That read reminded me of HoMM 4 on release.

 

[Oreshnik Missile]

Does anyone like having "casus belli" in this game? That sounds like absolute braindead aping of shitlaris and civ6+++ whatever dogshit.
Since when do wizard-kinds need a casus belli, are you kidding me???

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Does anyone like having "casus belli" in this game? That sounds like absolute braindead aping of shitlaris and civ6+++ whatever dogshit.
Since when do wizard-kinds need a casus belli, are you kidding me???

I mean everyone gotta have bellies to feed unless they photosynthesize.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Can you pirate it? If yes they play it, at worst you'd lose 3 days by playing garbage. But it needs 3 DLC.

Of course I can pirate it, but I'd rather not waste my time playing dog shit, that's why I ask.

It's "fun" if you can ignore the glaring imbalance and braindead AI. So... exactly like every other game where Paradox is involved.

Is the campaign fun, at least? Interesting maps and setups, etc.? I was extremely disappointed with PF in this regard and haven't touched it since launch because of it (I hope this game at least has the underground layer).

There is one tutorial map followed by five connected story maps, called story realms, which is basically a short campaign. I liked them, they were much better than the ones in Planetfall. The story and lore is explained and actually works as a nice setup for the game mechanics, i.e. why you can create new races and transform them etc. I would recommend playing them. I didn't even realize they were randomly created, I thought the story realms were hand made.
I have finished the last story map yesterday and I think I will pause with the game for now and return to it again when the dlcs are out, but the game is playable and far from shit tier. Its fun while you explore the content for the first time. It still needs a lot of tuning, but considering the options that it offers, its almost a miracle that it isn't completely broken( or perhaps it is and I just failed to discover it).

 

[InD_ImaginE]

I "demo"ed this for few hours

Man what a downgrade from AoW 3. Races all play the same if you even have a shared Tome. Races doesn't matter at all too, no specific weakness or strength. Stating culture or whatever is just LARP inducing shit as the bonus/malus are so small they might as well not exist. Hero level up is pretty boring too

For this they also take away campaigns.

That this is fastest selling of the franchise is just depressing. Another series pretty much just died. Speel Force Eo is much more AoW than this game

 

[Absinthe]

Age of Wonders 3 took a lot of cues from Civ 5 for some daft reason. AoW 4 is now taking its cues from the less popular Civ 6. I have no fucking idea why they considered this a good idea.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Does anyone like having "casus belli" in this game? That sounds like absolute braindead aping of shitlaris and civ6+++ whatever dogshit.
Since when do wizard-kinds need a casus belli, are you kidding me???

Mindlessly porting over staples from p-dox design manual, which has somehow started as soon as p-dox took over. I've launched my private investigation into explaining the cause of this phenomenon, but did not reach final conclusions yet. Donate to my patreon if you want to help.

Age of Wonders 3 took a lot of cues from Civ 5 for some daft reason. AoW 4 is now taking its cues from the less popular Civ 6. I have no fucking idea why they considered this a good idea.

Did AoW3 copy nu-civ that much? There's wargs building galleons on the fly and maybe zoc replacing structure flagging for cities (although the latter is arguable, these mechanics work rather differently between the two games), but other than that?

 

[Absinthe]

Did AoW3 copy nu-civ that much? There's wargs building galleons on the fly and maybe zoc replacing structure flagging for cities (although the latter is arguable, these mechanics work rather differently between the two games), but other than that?

The UI takes huge cues from Civ 5, the independent city diplomacy (which is also implemented in AoW 3 through vassals and dwellings) is suspiciously similar to Civ 5's City State mechanic, land units turning into boats if you order them to enter water is another Civ 5 design decision as well, and I'm sure there are others.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

The whole set of mind traits for climate adaptions are underwhelming and the choice to make mounts a racial body trait seems out of place. As if they didn't know of a better way to handle it and simply decided to stuff these options in there. I hope they change how this is handled in the future. I also find myself always considering Prolific Swarmers and Rune Smiths when it comes to society traits. Perhaps I'm misjudging but they seem to be good choices no matter what.

 

[Lacrymas]

The mounts come with specific abilities, that's why they are body traits, it's not purely cosmetic. Spiders come with web, unicorns come with phase.

 

[Lacrymas]

I've been playing a bit of AoW3 recently and it's shocking how much better it feels right off the bat. You don't have 5 full armies on turn 7 and you can't just fill your cities with gold producing buildings to stop worrying about the economy on turn 10.

 

[Infinitum]

The whole set of mind traits for climate adaptions are underwhelming and the choice to make mounts a racial body trait seems out of place. As if they didn't know of a better way to handle it and simply decided to stuff these options in there. I hope they change how this is handled in the future. I also find myself always considering Prolific Swarmers and Rune Smiths when it comes to society traits. Perhaps I'm misjudging but they seem to be good choices no matter what.

Pretty sure upkeep discounts cap at 50% and the base ones also affect enhancements, so Runesmiths clash with the Chaos T1 discount and/or Zeal.

Playing the campaign maps on hard was a breeze up until the 5th one, where my first attempt ended when my entire army was ambushed by 2 heroes and a stack and a half of T3 units on turn 11. Good times.

 

[Suicidal]

Game's been out for a few weeks and modders are already starting to solve some of the problems the devs left behind.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973966349

 

[Blutwurstritter]

The whole set of mind traits for climate adaptions are underwhelming and the choice to make mounts a racial body trait seems out of place. As if they didn't know of a better way to handle it and simply decided to stuff these options in there. I hope they change how this is handled in the future. I also find myself always considering Prolific Swarmers and Rune Smiths when it comes to society traits. Perhaps I'm misjudging but they seem to be good choices no matter what.

Pretty sure upkeep discounts cap at 50% and the base ones also affect enhancements, so Runesmiths clash with the Chaos T1 discount and/or Zeal.

Playing the campaign maps on hard was a breeze up until the 5th one, where my first attempt ended when my entire army was ambushed by 2 heroes and a stack and a half of T3 units on turn 11. Good times.

I have to check for the cap. Sometimes its hard to tell due to the small integer base values. I'm also wondering if all boni are additive or if some stuff is multiplicative.

I regret not starting on hard, the maps are way to easy on normal and I was never threatened at all.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Game's been out for a few weeks and modders are already starting to solve some of the problems the devs left behind.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973966349

Yeah, but don't use it right now and until it's fixed, because it causes a 100% repeatable crash.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Game's been out for a few weeks and modders are already starting to solve some of the problems the devs left behind.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973966349

One of the user reviews mentioned that the devs said they did not have resources and time for item forge and a mod added it within one day of the release.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

After spending few days on this I feel like they have POTENTIALLY a great game here, Codex autistic screeching be damned, but they need to learn how to say the player "No" about "wanting to get everything".

Aside for the fact that "Cultures" are a bit bare-boned and in dire need of more units and mechanics making them feel distinct, most of the rest of the game's problems come from allowing everything and its contrary in every single playthrough.

Fine. You can pick just ONE Tier V Tome. That's a start but hardly enough. There should be a more meaningful limitation in the amount of Tomes you should be able to collect, overall.
More in general the game needs to make way more stuff mutually exclusive. Less buff stacking (why weapons can get at the same time ALL the elemental damage, for instance?), less mutation stacking, eventually maybe even some magic schools being fundamentally incompatible with each other (or if they want to go the extra mile with updates, having the same schools taking diverging and mutually exclusive branches).

EDIT: It also wouldn't be half bad to have an option "alternate but equivalent" to mutations for people who would like to maintain some "race purity" for their faction without having to gimp themselves in the process.
As a banal example: something like a powerful end game buff of some kind, that a player could cast only on non-mutated humanoids.

Conversely I don't feel like some of the recurring complaints going on for pages (like low tier units not being viable later in the game) have been entirely justified.
After trying three or four variations for my starting "build" it's also apparent that the "game's economy" can vary *wildly* depending on few apparently minor perks. I had a barbarian clan that snowballed in ridiculous ways, then just today in a more advanced scenario where I was supposed to be more experienced about the game's balance I found myself struggling with a Mystic culture was constantly short on money.
But anyway, that's just number tweaking rather than mechanics. Custom scenarios already offer quite a lot of freedom with this shit (the ability to significantly raise or lower upkeep cost and similar stuff). I don't think that's a FUNDAMENTAL mechanical problem with the game as some of the aforementioned.

 

[Lacrymas]

Except nobody is screeching. What I've been saying is that it's stripped bare and doesn't offer enough content for people who want to play it single player. Alongside glaring balance issues that were caught day 1 by many people independently, so I have no idea how their playtesters didn't notice them. And that cultures are superfluous. And that it's not possible to create a coherent faction because they all end up clownish very fast. And that unit variety is actually not as extensive as it seems at first glance. And that the AI is shit. And so on and on. Yeah, it has a bunch of issues. I personally don't think it's in a good spot right now, even ignoring the bugs. It doesn't offer anything that the previous entries don't, it offers very little on its own actually.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

I would like to see more culture units and a more sophisticated categorization of enchantments/transmutations in combination with exclusivity within categories. This would make different races more interesting since you could then specialize them instead of making always one Über-race that combines all boni. It just feels weird that you can stack "holy" buffs on your undead monstrosities or iron armor on top of leaf-skin, without any restrictions/drawbacks whatsoever. And there is basically no reason for it not to happen, given enough turns.
The same goes for the economy. At the moment its mostly a question of when and in which order you are getting things, but there is not a single "tough choice" to make. The guilds are also usually a no brainer and its either gold or mana, depending on your current requirement. The same goes for the tomes.

 

[Mortmal]

My impression is that ranged combat is too powerful and chargers somewhat underpowered. Its too easy to get shots off even if your ranged unit is initially threatened by a melee combatant. Tier II/III ranged units are so beefy that they can easily take the hit and fight back. The retaliation system also feels wonky. A single hit seems to be too little. I'm not sure why they switched from the AoW II/III system. Tying retaliation to action points and being able to drain them from units was a good mechanic that was fun to interact with, and a way to distinguish units by granting some tireless/unlimited retaliation.

Any melee units is not worth it if you can root and stun and just use ranged ones, i am never using chargers.Its a paradox game, after a few years ,after all the dlc it will be very good , if it's not abandonned. It requires ton of tweaking, still its fun and i've seen a lot lot worse than this. Nothing that cannot be fixed here.