I agree that AoW4 is a wearing game. I don't have the will to download aow4, and play it, just to check if the tactical combat is really as bad as you are claiming.
Below (1:12:00 , seems time stamp is not working on dex) is a showcase of a mod to AoW4. Where you create a skirmish combat of more or less equal forces (that you never achieve from normal strategic gameplay). Both dudes are from some community - so they know what they are doing - which is bad, because if there is one thing that i hate in games, it's meta knowledge that kill for me all the desire to play it. They pregenerate 3 full stack (=18 units), obviously mod have some rules that force you to take some lower tier units, or that you cannot cast some spells.
At first look, the presentation of the battlefield looks very inviting. Enough of diverse forces to be able to make some mistake/sacrifices. Yeah looks a bit unreadable when zoom out. But all in all, it makes me want to issue some orders.
This charm disappear immediately when you start the video. The video is speed up (2x?) as you can tell from the pitch of player voices. And it's still boring to follow. That tell you what a snail pace of this game is in multi. A chess game is probably more exciting. but its an issue from playing PvP, not the game itself. When i play in single, i enjoy the game vs AI, because all actions are taken immediately - and it really feels like a battle.
If you look past that, then you notice there are different spells being cast, there is a variety of different attacks going on (oh how i wish to have such sophisticated areal attack in aow1 (and AI)).
And most important, despite different level tier of units, there is no situation when one late tier unit, one shot another. Which is very good, it makes viable to cast debuffs/buffs. I encounter way too often when one elite unit just annihilate turn by turn my whole army (or vice versa, my late tier dragon on all possible steroids is killing all opposition in single turn).
Lacrymas is right: "lost any semblance of coherency and identity". But I still find hex-map minigame, more enjoyable in 4. AOW3 combat have stupidly powerful heroes melee charge, and make lower tiers redundant (i want my blocks of infantry!!).
I didnt play planet fall.
