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Age of Wonders 4

Joined
Jun 6, 2010
Messages
2,386
Location
Milan, Italy
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.
 
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Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,732
Pathfinder: Wrath
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

Scholar
Joined
Sep 18, 2021
Messages
1,069
Location
Germany
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

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,498
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.
 
Joined
Jun 6, 2010
Messages
2,386
Location
Milan, Italy
Well, melee units are a LOT more durable, generally speaking. And they can get some substantial damage absorption, self healing and more, if you choose to focus in that direction.

I'm finding plenty of uses for them in my games. Usually armies that have a bit of everything work better than the hyper-self-selected ones, in my experience.
Which is not to say that ranged damage (both as archers and casters) doesn't usually dominate most battles.
 

vota DC

Augur
Joined
Aug 23, 2016
Messages
2,318
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.
They also get +10hp, still I don't know what I am supposed to do with my nightmare mounts and High culture since the only mounted unit doesn't have melee.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
Most reviewers probably don't have any experience with the previous titles and don't know how stripped bare this game is, so this seems like the Second Coming of Christ.
That's pretty much a certainty. The idiot comparing AoW 4's graphics to Warhammer with an entirely-too-zoomed-in camera was a clear example of this. And even a half-assed derivative of a classic with shitty modern design decisions can look great if you have no experience with what's actually out there.

I call that bribed reviewer.
They basically are. Getting pre-release copies is a way to get those Day 1 review clicks which translates into money, but you tend not to get pre-release review copies if you write negative shit about the games you review, so it really turns into a money for positive review exchange.

I had problem with getting into that even when I got it for free. It looks like the bad design they did in AoW3 1.0 version. They had special units for character classes. But, each species had basically the same units. Then they diversified these units in patches, so elves got awesome T1 archers, and few other stuff. And they also created variants for each class units that allowed each species to have it's type.
Actually, I'm pretty sure High Elves had Longbows from the start. They also had Phase on Unicorn Riders from the start. In patches they started adding more unique things to other races eventually. Some of it got silly though, like adding Razorbow Projectiles to Orc Razorbows and giving them unique Throw Javelin abilities on certain class units so that they would still do pretty much the same ranged damage as another regular archer, despite their racial ranged attack penalty.

After first DLC, the game was actually well balanced, and felt right.
The patches did improve things, but it's not that well-balanced. Rogues and Theocrats are actually overpowered if you go to town with their Charm abilities to recruit free armies. Necromancers are even worse in this respect, since you can stack Despair until they achieve 100% spirit weakness, which is autofail (no roll) for spirit-based abilities, like Inflict Ghoul Curse. The PBEM Balance Patch (which is an unofficial mod) aims to fix a lot of this shit, along with the exp grinding, although I'm a bit disappointed they wrecked Earth Elementals for being an actually strong summon.

I'm also not a fan of how the patches took away the ability of The Wild Hunt to give boats floating, which was pretty much the only way Archdruids achieved strong lategame since their summons and class units weren't strong enough, unless they just pick Human race for their ridiculous racial T3 Knights. And it's a bit sad they nerfed the Warlord's ultimate global spell from making any units you summon into instant-elites (any summoned units that already exist when you cast Global Assault still become auto-elite though).

Even if they FUCKED UP in original design, and just patched it gradually in several patches 2 years later. Luckily these NEEDED changes were applied even to base game, not DLC only patches.
They did, but they failed to buff the existing specs to be more competitive with the 2nd DLC's specs in particular. That one had some bad shit going on in its specs that they never fixed either. Grey Guard has the ludicrously overpowered Cardinal Culling spell which they didn't really nerf, but instead just moved from Grey Guard Adept to Grey Guard Master. Keeper of the Peace Master has a bunch of trash spells you do not want (but it's still strong for the ability to abuse independent cities along with the global buff). And existing elemental specs just became undesirable compared to alignment specs that provided global buffs. The mana node thing helped a bit, but considering that AoW 3 took the unprecedented step of nerfing Alter Mana Node spells to only work on unaligned nodes (because they plain didn't like the aesthetics of all nodes in a player's empire being of one type) compared to previous games, there wasn't too much to be obtained from that anyway (PBEM balance patch fixes this, along with nerfing Cardinal Culling).

The Necromancer class also has powerful shit going on that other classes don't get, like Power Ritual giving all undead (which is pretty much everything for necros) +2 phys +2 blight melee damage or the Embalmer's Guild replacing the undead's fire weakness with a fire resistance bonus (in addition to free bonus max health) for all ghouls you create or the Cathedral of Bones giving all undead your city produces a free morale rank, just because. They never really gave other classes comparable stuff to balance it out.
 
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ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
21,297
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.
Yes but modders didn't have to approach higher ups with crack and hookers to ask for permissions and then also wait few months until it is translated into such unimportant languages like German or French.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,777
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.
Stay positive, I guess. PF released with basically an identical season pass/roadmap and a plethora of glaring issues and all the patches and dlc did sweet feck all to address them. They just focused on technical issues (although stuff like endless end turn or game getting stuck on opponent moving animation in combat are still in the final build, afair) and providing more content for people who already liked the base game. But even then you have to remember that final AoW3 expansion had more content than all PF dlc put together.

On a side note, once you try getting even a bit into details, some of the stuff that crops up is really amazing. Like, one of the controversial things in PF was clear division of unit attacks into 3 1ap attacks per turn vs. 1 1ap attack vs. 1 3ap attack. This didn't work, because outside of some artillery units, the first option was almost always hands down superior. However, PF at least had the good conscience to adjust most buffs/mods/etc so that multiple attacks would get a smaller boni than the single big ones. No such thing in AoW4, so whatever enchantment you cast, multiple attack units are getting p much 3x the benefit compared to the others. Kinda important thing to forget about, no?

So, yeah...
incompetent design.
 

Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,498
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.
Stay positive, I guess. PF released with basically an identical season pass/roadmap and a plethora of glaring issues and all the patches and dlc did sweet feck all to address them. They just focused on technical issues (although stuff like endless end turn or game getting stuck on opponent moving animation in combat are still in the final build, afair) and providing more content for people who already liked the base game. But even then you have to remember that final AoW3 expansion had more content than all PF dlc put together.

On a side note, once you try getting even a bit into details, some of the stuff that crops up is really amazing. Like, one of the controversial things in PF was clear division of unit attacks into 3 1ap attacks per turn vs. 1 1ap attack vs. 1 3ap attack. This didn't work, because outside of some artillery units, the first option was almost always hands down superior. However, PF at least had the good conscience to adjust most buffs/mods/etc so that multiple attacks would get a smaller boni than the single big ones. No such thing in AoW4, so whatever enchantment you cast, multiple attack units are getting p much 3x the benefit compared to the others. Kinda important thing to forget about, no?

So, yeah...
incompetent design.
No other choice than to be positive, the latest fantasy stuff i had fun with is EU4 mod anbennar, tried spellforce conquest of EO but by the end i got fed up with the repetitive combats you cant even autoresolve. Dont see anything else upcoming.
 
Joined
Jun 6, 2010
Messages
2,386
Location
Milan, Italy
For what is worth I made an attempt to argue on the Steam board of the game that maybe the approach "Letting the player unlock everything of every school in every single playthrough, no matter the starting point" is not for the best.
More in general that more choices in the game should be mutually exclusive (as example I mentioned buffing weapons with both Ice and Fire magic). The result has been some agreement and as usual some people pretty fucking rabidly over-defensive.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/discussions/0/5294588689506569000/

In the end no matter how much shit I can give to some of you drooling autistic and eternally unhappy morons, turns out there's people I can stand even less for their manifest inability to show any critical thinking, around the internet.
 
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Blutwurstritter

Scholar
Joined
Sep 18, 2021
Messages
1,069
Location
Germany
Well, melee units are a LOT more durable, generally speaking. And they can get some substantial damage absorption, self healing and more, if you choose to focus in that direction.

I'm finding plenty of uses for them in my games. Usually armies that have a bit of everything work better than the hyper-self-selected ones, in my experience.
Which is not to say that ranged damage (both as archers and casters) doesn't usually dominate most battles.
Its mostly the tier 3 chargers from the cultures that seem underpowered, especially when compared to some of the tome tier 3 units. Take the Materium tier 3 Zephir archer or the Nature Glade runner. Same upkeep and price as the Berserker. All three have the same amount of 90 hitpoints. The berserker(or Feudal Knight or Dark Knight for that matter) just got 1 point more in resistance and defense with 3/3 vs 2/2 for either archer. That's silly no matter how you look at it. The Zephir archer even got the Slippery feat, meaning that he can move away without triggering attacks of opportunity. I would even say he has more survivability than the berserker simply due to that feat. Damage potential without any enchantments is 14*3=42 vs 24-38 if fully charged. The berserker gets primal strike so he can go up to 32-51 on the first attack but that is still underwhelming vs fairly consistent 28-42 damage while staying out of range. And it gets much worse once you take the enchantments into account that add a constant value of damage. The same goes for applying status effects that can trigger with each attack.
At the same time you have an insanely powerful tier III Shield unit, the Materium Golem, also at the same price as the chargers. The only weakness it has is lightning damage, but that is easily offset by full immunity to status effects, which is insanely good considering all the stacking effects and the conditional damage that only kick in if the unit is affected by some negative effect. The culture tier III chargers are in a pretty bad spot considering the alternatives.
 

Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,498
For what is worth I made an attempt to argue on the Steam board of the game that maybe the approach "Letting the player unlock everything of every school in every single playthrough, no matter the starting point" is not for the best.
More in general that more choices in the game should be mutually exclusive (as example I mentioned buffing weapons with both Ice and Fire magic). The result has been some agreement and as usual some people pretty fucking rabidly over-defensive.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/discussions/0/5294588689506569000/

In the end no matter how much shit I can give to some of you drooling autistic and eternally unhappy morons, turns out there's people I can stand even less for their manifest inability to show any critical thinking, around the internet.
Who would have thought arguing with
eb9bca7c4d93de3a099d814d8eb077c9cce9f208_full.jpg
アンジェル on steam forums ends up being disapointing to you...You can even have better quality discussions here with bing xi lao.
 
Joined
Jun 6, 2010
Messages
2,386
Location
Milan, Italy
Who would have thought arguing with
eb9bca7c4d93de3a099d814d8eb077c9cce9f208_full.jpg
アンジェル on steam forums ends up being disapointing to you...You can even have better quality discussions here with bing xi lao.
Still, I'm somewhat impressed that their strongest argument to "You shouldn't probably be able to master pretty much every single tome on a single scenario" is "You should win your games faster to not let it happen".
As if the problem would be strictly how many turns it takes, rather than the fact that it's possible at all.
 
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 10, 2018
Messages
7,704
Location
澳大利亚
Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In
For what is worth I made an attempt to argue on the Steam board of the game that maybe the approach "Letting the player unlock everything of every school in every single playthrough, no matter the starting point" is not for the best.
More in general that more choices in the game should be mutually exclusive (as example I mentioned buffing weapons with both Ice and Fire magic). The result has been some agreement and as usual some people pretty fucking rabidly over-defensive.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/discussions/0/5294588689506569000/

In the end no matter how much shit I can give to some of you drooling autistic and eternally unhappy morons, turns out there's people I can stand even less for their manifest inability to show any critical thinking, around the internet.
Who would have thought arguing with
eb9bca7c4d93de3a099d814d8eb077c9cce9f208_full.jpg
アンジェル on steam forums ends up being disapointing to you...You can even have better quality discussions here with bing xi lao.
Nigger, I made 15+ high-quality maps for AoW1, organise most PBEM games and made an overhaul mod which includes some indepth hex editing. I am the peak Age of Wonders Codexian. Sorry that I don't put much effort into critiques of your Stellaris/Civ6 "Age of Wonders" goyfeed abortion.
 
Joined
Jun 6, 2010
Messages
2,386
Location
Milan, Italy
Nigger, I made 15+ high-quality maps for AoW1, organise most PBEM games and made an overhaul mod which includes some indepth hex editing. I am the peak Age of Wonders Codexian. Sorry that I don't put much effort into critiques of your Stellaris/Civ6 "Age of Wonders" goyfeed abortion.
That doesn’t save you from being a rabid sperg.
 

vota DC

Augur
Joined
Aug 23, 2016
Messages
2,318
Who would have thought arguing with
eb9bca7c4d93de3a099d814d8eb077c9cce9f208_full.jpg
アンジェル on steam forums ends up being disapointing to you...You can even have better quality discussions here with bing xi lao.
Still, I'm somewhat impressed that their strongest argument to "You shouldn't probably be able to master pretty much every single tome on a single scenario" is "You should win your games faster to not let it happen".
As if the problem would be strictly how many turns it takes, rather than the fact that it's possible at all.
Also movement cost for a floating unit Is 5 each square instead of 2 now, game Is purposely slower than Aow1. At least five times slower.
 

Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,498
For what is worth I made an attempt to argue on the Steam board of the game that maybe the approach "Letting the player unlock everything of every school in every single playthrough, no matter the starting point" is not for the best.
More in general that more choices in the game should be mutually exclusive (as example I mentioned buffing weapons with both Ice and Fire magic). The result has been some agreement and as usual some people pretty fucking rabidly over-defensive.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/discussions/0/5294588689506569000/

In the end no matter how much shit I can give to some of you drooling autistic and eternally unhappy morons, turns out there's people I can stand even less for their manifest inability to show any critical thinking, around the internet.
Who would have thought arguing with
eb9bca7c4d93de3a099d814d8eb077c9cce9f208_full.jpg
アンジェル on steam forums ends up being disapointing to you...You can even have better quality discussions here with bing xi lao.
Nigger, I made 15+ high-quality maps for AoW1, organise most PBEM games and made an overhaul mod which includes some indepth hex editing. I am the peak Age of Wonders Codexian. Sorry that I don't put much effort into critiques of your Stellaris/Civ6 "Age of Wonders" goyfeed abortion.
Well i can understand you are telling us with your own words you have a strong emotional attachment to the franchise, this isnt the case for me. One amongst many similar titles and the AOW 4 isnt any worse than them.There's still people talking about build and strategies, art is still good, we are not at the level of a CIV5-6 with buffoons characters.
 

Ibn Sina

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Jul 12, 2017
Messages
999
Strap Yourselves In
At the moment, the game is really barebones. Not enough content to justify that price.
 

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