Age of Wonders 4

[Galdred]

I see buildings as another mini-game inside a game.
Same like tactical combat, if I am orchestrating global economy of a whole kingdom, I don't want to suddenly change my mindset into leading an army to win a local battle to gain +10 food.
Or being annoyed every 5 turn by a diplomatic message, because dwarfs want to trade they Seafaring technology for my Midas Spell.

This all elements have its place in 4x games,

NSFW

Buildings need to affect directly the main game. Building walls reduce amount of enemies that can attack your town here, and you expect attack from this direction - thats good. Or building watchtowers grant you Fog of War vision over a critical area. You dont need watch towers everywhere.

While, building Blacksmith to gain +1 Armor for all infantry build in all towns... is a hassle. Do you need it.. Yes i do. But its boring obvious choice. Like build as often and as many farms as possible to boost food and pop grow or build as many roads as possible, make me a crossroad with roundabout on every single tile including water one, to gain this sweet Trade profits.

is building a roads fun to you in 4x games? No because it feel like work. You just need them, but there is no decision here to make. Why would You like to not build a road? [because your settlers are better to build a farm now, is not a good design]. This lead to stuff like automatic Former/settlers, because you cant be bothered.

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Do you fight tactical battles to kill scouts you catch on main map?
no. I even with premeditation dont face equal forces, because i can't be arsed to show my tactical "genius" of casting fireballs on multiple units in radius. And i like 20 to 1 win ratio.

In games like Fantasy General where the whole game is a tactical combat - I do enjoy telling my dudes to bash with others.

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i dont like diplomacy at all... tech trading (whoring) spoil lots of games. And reading emissary message makes me cringe (except A.C.).

I would prefer if all factions were in permanent war with each other. And negotiation are done by not eradicating the weaker race, or teaming up against the current strongest faction.

That is kind of my issue with the game, and why I loved AoW 1 the most:
The strategic play and tactical battles clash against each other. It takes too long on the strategic map to move between 2 interesting battles, and your objective, as a king, is to make sure no tactical battle is interesting because you have overwhelming forces.
It was not the case in AoW 1 because empire building was much more limited, and the missions were more "scripted". I remember AoW 1 as a sequence of hard battles, with some limited management that was focused on getting more units out.
The weird issue I have is that I didn't feel the same with Master of Magic or even Warlock 2.

 

[Axioms]

Putting aside whether AoW1 was harder because people were less experienced at 4x, I have long contended that you shouldn't have both a complex combat system that you transfer to from the main map and detailed empire management.

You are crippling both aspects mechanically and also creating a flow/zone issue where you break up the player's mood and focus which pulls them out of the game.

AoW games, especially 4, have many other issues but this I think is a fundamental one.

 

[Suicidal]

Putting aside whether AoW1 was harder because people were less experienced at 4x, I have long contended that you shouldn't have both a complex combat system that you transfer to from the main map and detailed empire management.

You are crippling both aspects mechanically and also creating a flow/zone issue where you break up the player's mood and focus which pulls them out of the game.

AoW games, especially 4, have many other issues but this I think is a fundamental one.

As someone who has recently played through the 1-3 AoW games in order, is currently playing through Planetfall and has yet to play 4, I can say that AoW 1 is the easiest game in the series as far campaigns are concerned. Most maps took me under 20 turns and some I beat in like 10 turns because the AI, in its infinite wisdom, often decided to parade their main hero with a small retinue just outside my territory.

In later entries not only is the AI more competent but also there are less units that can steamroll everything on the map and the AI doesn't know how to deal with. Also the campaign missions put you in unfavorable positions more often.

In AoW 1 the only somewhat difficult mission was the one in the middle of the campaign where there is a huge 2-floor cave network and the orc enemy starts spamming red dragons after some point.

 

[Lacrymas]

For the couple of you who still care -

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I guess it became "sells well, people don't play it" game?

But hey, archons return as a meaningless skin that you can slap on your "faction", yaaaaay. Also, uh, chinks? I can't wait until do the needful saar folk become demographic that devs try to cater for. Building designated shitting districts in your cities sounds like crapload of fun.

 

[Lacrymas]

Steamcharts say 2k people play it on average, so yeah, it's not massively popular in terms of people actually playing it.

 

[Suicidal]

Steamcharts say 2k people play it on average, so yeah, it's not massively popular in terms of people actually playing it.

That's still more than all the previous AoW games combined. It's just not a popular series for some reason.

Also, sad that they decided to milk this game and not AoW 3. I haven't played it yet, but it seems less fun than 3 or SM conceptually. Maybe I'll change my mind once I try it, but I doubt it.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's bad and literally unplayable in both single and multiplayer/PvP due to horrendous balance issues.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

When did the modern trend of make your own garbage story start? This game is fun but not having a campaign really isn't doing it for me these days. Everything feels like a mish mash of randomness without any fucking coherence. So many fucking games do this type of shit these days, I'm getting pretty sick of shit like this at this point. AOW4 is more fun to play (atleast when it's not being a slog) than AOW3, but somehow AOW3 is overall more memorable, here I close the game and instantly forget everything cause nothing is meaningful..

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Man, I really don't give a shit about the "story campaign".
My issue with the game remains that "factions" have no identity and in the end everything plays basically the same, upgrades the same, ends in the same place.

 

[Zeriel]

For the couple of you who still care -

I wish I could say I do. I used to be such a huge fan of Age of Wonders... and Triumph. But nope.

 

[cvv]

Man, I really don't give a shit about the "story campaign".
My issue with the game remains that "factions" have no identity and in the end everything plays basically the same, upgrades the same, ends in the same place.

Well in real life men and women are exactly the same and all races are exactly the same. So the game is reflecting that.

Or would you rather perpetuate harmful stereotypes? Hm? Hmmm?

 

[Axioms]

What Age Of Wonders, and stuff like Crusader Kings 3, fail to understand is that you can't just rip narrative out and then have nothing to replace it. And you can't remove interesting faction variance without anything to replace that either.

Much like a Paradox GSG AoW4 is stuck with factions that don't play materially differently from each other moment to moment. You are clicking 99% of the same buttons but maybe for each faction you click one button more times depending on the faction.

Maybe this stuff would have been impressive 15 or even 10 years ago but today you look back at how games were 20 years ago and how they are now and the level of progress is embarrassing. Literally the only thing that has changed is the production values of the art and music and UI. Meanwhile UIs also have nothing going for them but production values and in some cases with the games that have all made those bland rounded corner matte single color mobile UIs even the UIs have essentially gone backwards.

Just swapping in a couple 3D models and then adding the +5 dragon mana button or w/e is not "new content"...

 

[Dr1f7]

shadow magic mogs the shit out of this game lmao

 

[anvi]

I am the biggest AOW fan in the world. I love 2 and kind of 3. But I didn't even try this. (or the sci fi one)

 

[Lacrymas]

Sci-fi one is better.

 

[Zeriel]

shadow magic mogs the shit out of this game lmao

Yeah a lot of the "technology has advanced stuff!" is also trickery of the old games not really being fully compatible with modern hardware. Playing AoW 1 or AoW 2 on a computer of the time with a proper CRT, is it actually THAT much more ugly than modern AoW? I'd argue no. Sure, in some regards the art is more technically advanced, but in some regards the old art was better. So the one major selling point you'd have is not even a true win.

But normies will play old games on new hardware that makes it worse than it did back then. It's sad that we can't even have a proper comparison because of that effect.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

AoW 1 and 2 are one of those well-coded games that scale to modern resolutions, widescreen included, with no third party fuckery needed. While everything looks tiny in 1, 2 actually looks p great imo. The issue is that 2 has problems with randomly getting super choppy on w10 and I never found a fully working solution for it.

 

[Zeriel]

AoW 1 and 2 are one of those well-coded games that scale to modern resolutions, widescreen included, with no third party fuckery needed. While everything looks tiny in 1, 2 actually looks p great imo. The issue is that 2 has problems with randomly getting super choppy on w10 and I never found a fully working solution for it.

It may look "okay", but I would argue it looks exponentially better on CRT. As does anything from that era. There simply is no getting around the "native resolution" weakness of LCDs.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Like I said, you can run them in native just fine, if you wish. 1 doesn't look too good (shit's too tiny), but due to its style it's also one of the games that look nice running with integer scaling. 2/SM is a completely different deal, tho. When I run it 1280x960 on a full hd screen (centered, not stretched) it looks much better than it does on my old games-dedicated 1024x768 monitor imo and is more comfortable to play as well.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

That's still more than all the previous AoW games combined. It's just not a popular series for some reason.

He was being optimistic with 2K, but yes, it is more "popular" than 3 was and the peak suggests that it sold much better as well. Proper AoW ain't coming back. This, coupled with the fact that it's a worse game than PF, also seems to support that the sentiment that I always laughed about: one of the big reasons for PF poor reception might've indeed simply be the fact that it had the sf setting, not that it was a huge decline from 3.

Also, sad that they decided to milk this game and not AoW 3. I haven't played it yet, but it seems less fun than 3 or SM conceptually. Maybe I'll change my mind once I try it, but I doubt it.

This isn't a AoW game, period. It's pretty much a full-on 4X game, combined out of modern 4X ideas plus some paradox sauce (the way "factions" work, empire mana etc.). Even if you're fine with that, the main issue is that the entire non-combat part is just really bad, featureless and dry and loses to pretty much every other game in the genre, including other modern ones that are already kinda shit. The combat is better than average, sure, but also worse than in 3 and PF. So, what's the point, really.

 

[Dr1f7]

shadow magic looks great

new game looks shit. modern devs have no taste

 

[Blutwurstritter]

It's bad and literally unplayable in both single and multiplayer/PvP due to horrendous balance issues.

Single player is not perfect, but certainly not unplayable. None of the AoW games are particularly well-balanced, not that it matters much for the single player experience. I am rather impressed how "unbroken" the game is, given the ruler options and the tome system. This could have turned easily into a much bigger mess.

The part about multiplayer seems to be true, the forum is full of complaints about it. Apparently it runs horribly and is unstable. Anyone interested in MP should probably avoid it, or make sure to check the forum first. There are also already a couple of balance mods from the mp community, but I haven't checked them out. It seems that basic properties for balance can be modded fairly easily.

 

[Lacrymas]

Unless they heavily overhauled and improved the AI, singleplayer is still unplayable.

 

[anvi]

Is it the same engine as aow3?