Been Wondering 4 Ages (Age of Wonders 4 Thread)

[warty goblin]

Yep, it's time to get your Wizard King on. This released yesterday and as far as I can tell it's flat out amazing.

The big change from Age3/Planetfall is that instead of choosing a race and a archetype, you choose a race, a culture type, then make your leader (who doesn't have be the same race) and then essentially all the archetype stuff is rolled into tomes of magic. You research through and unlock new, and higher tier tomes as you play. But this isn't locked in at start of game, you can switch from pyromancy to cryomancy if you want.

The customization is through the roof this time. Basically they made an entire RPG system for your civ, complete with permanent enchantments. My orcs now have a crusty stone shell that makes them tougher.

There's a lot going on, but it feels very approachable. Like, you can just start by picking some stuff that looks cool, and it will probably be fine. If you want to min max your heart out, you absolutely can, but it's quite functional to just go with the flow.

So anybody else playing? Got a coolest setup?

[Eldan]

Not yet, but I plan to as soon as I get some time.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, I've started up a game. Playing with Industrious Orcs with Runesmithing/Fabled Hunters going up the Materium and Nature tomes. Seems like a good combo so far. Not been able to put too much time into it yet though, have just started to get stacks of tier 3s.

Something I found fun was choosing all the realm traits first and then thinking of a faction design that'll be fun to play on that realm. My current one is a megaforest with ruined cities and powerful wildlife.

Just hoping tier 5 units are going to be more of a centrepiece unit for armies like Planetfall and not something you spam like 3.

[Zombimode]

I've skipped Age of Wonders 3 since I felt it wasn't as much about wizards as I expected it to be for an Age of Wonders title.

This seems to have changed in Age of Wonders 4: it's all wizards all the way down.

Which is good :smallsmile:

It's on my whishlist. I have no idea when I get to play it. It may be years...

[SerTabris]

I've skipped Age of Wonders 3 since I felt it wasn't as much about wizards as I expected it to be for an Age of Wonders title.

This seems to have changed in Age of Wonders 4: it's all wizards all the way down.

Which is good :smallsmile:

It's on my whishlist. I have no idea when I get to play it. It may be years...

Having gone back to 1 and 2 recently, I feel like if the pattern continues the significance of wizards might keep being an odd game/even game thing. (As long as we just count Shadow Magic in with 2.)

[GloatingSwine]

I've skipped Age of Wonders 3 since I felt it wasn't as much about wizards as I expected it to be for an Age of Wonders title.

This seems to have changed in Age of Wonders 4: it's all wizards all the way down.

Which is good :smallsmile:

It's on my whishlist. I have no idea when I get to play it. It may be years...

50% wizards, 50% rising up against the wizards (but still doing magic). You have two ruler types, Wizard Kings who get more mana income and Champions who get more gold income. Though sometime soon they'll have to share with dragons.

[warty goblin]

Got further with my very organized orcs this morning. Being the goody two shoes that I am, I'm already a beacon of moral perfection. I've been so peachy in fact that I've got a city of mildly evil mole people to join me. Now we go truffle hunting together and watch puppydogs frolic on the sun (headcanon).

I'm currently plying my charm on a minor city of evil cannibal elves. They declared war on me, but I stomped both their raiding parties, and my reserve mole hero launched a counter attack, which had them sueing for peace as soon as they made landfall. Now I've got open negotiations, and can start to win them over. Soon they too will join us in watching puppies playing- no, bad elf! We don't BBQ puppies!

Next up, dealing with the actual enemy faction who is clearly spoiling for a fight. I think I'll be forced to stomp on him.


Also, hero building is awesome. I've got an armored orc stomping around with a greatsword that constantly oozes blood. Truly the ways of the Orc Warlord (the AoW1 unit and my GOAT for best unit ever) are still alive and well.

Also also, I really like the quests in this. They're simple, but there's always some interesting choices, ways to spend different resources or gain them, it's remarkably thoughtful about how to integrate quests into a strategic game.


This is uh, this is really good. Like scary good.

[tyckspoon]

Got further with my very organized orcs this morning. Being the goody two shoes that I am, I'm already a beacon of moral perfection. I've been so peachy in fact that I've got a city of mildly evil mole people to join me. Now we go truffle hunting together and watch puppydogs frolic on the sun (headcanon).


This activity may not be as wholesome as you would like to imagine :smalltongue:

[Lord Raziere]

I'm curious about this game, I've played Civ 6, you think I'll like this one?

[KillianHawkeye]

I'm curious about this game, I've played Civ 6, you think I'll like this one?

It's a little bit like Civ in a fantasy setting, but it has tactical turn-based combat and a lot more dangerous neutral units on the map. I'd say it's more similar to Humankind than Civilization, with a similar district system for city development. The biggest difference is magical research instead of science/culture, and the ability to cast spells in combat/overworld, summon fantastical creatures, et cetera.

Really, I'd just say watch some YouTube videos if you're not sure.

[Resileaf]

I would call it a mix between Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic.

[warty goblin]

I'm curious about this game, I've played Civ 6, you think I'll like this one?

If anything I'd say it's closer to Stellaris than Civ. There's a huge amount of up front customization of your civ, it's chock full of quests and events and general genre stuff (but fantasy instead of sci-fi) and it's a lot more sandboxy than Civ.

The big difference is that Stellaris always feels like a really good event generator tragically welded to a bone dull actual game, and I find Civ 6 to be a fundamentally incoherent mess that badly solves non-problems other games figured out better solutions for years prior, but AoW4 actually works very well at all its levels.

It's sort of that simple, it just works. Customizing your civ is both visually interesting and meaningful in the game, the city progression is easy to grasp but still flexible, fairly deep and a lot of fun, the leader RPG system is actually quite good on its own, combat is probably the least aggrevating TBS tactics thing I've played in ages, and it's very, very fun altogether.

[Lord Raziere]

I mean if you think Civ6 is an "incoherent mess" compared to this, it must be good, because I like civ 6 compared to Stellaris, I could actually finish games of civ 6, and love customizing my civilization, stellaris customizability with like, actual play that is better than Stellaris sounds like what I'm looking for.

[GloatingSwine]

Apart from designing custom factions that can reappear in future games, Age of Wonders is basically nothing like Stellaris.

It's a much more immediate game in terms of deciding to do a thing and having that thing happen and make a difference. There's usually at least one significant thing happening every turn, as turn based games should be. (fight something, expand a city, complete a building, etc).

[Eldan]

That's one of the biggest drawbacks with Civ for me, coincidentally. Okay, it's the year 1850, I'm at peace with everyone who's left alive, I'm an economy faction. I have nothing to do except click on "build next building" for the next 24 turns, so I'll mostly be staring at an empty screen and wait for the next turn to load.

[GloatingSwine]

I've not gotten to that point yet in 4, but in Planetfall if you're ever allied with all living factions you just win immediately.

In general though the fact that there's loads of stuff scattered around the map for heroes to do means that you're very rarely just sitting doing nothing on your turns. Sites like spawners and ancient wonders also have difficulty tiers meaning that there are some you're going to want to come back to with later game armies.

Edit: Also one of my favourite things is the end of the dedicated builder/worker unit. No settlers, no colonisers, you do that with heroes now.

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah I've been playing this, as industrious goblins with like, chaos magic.

its fun! diplomacying a free city state into integrating was well worth it and much easier than expected, I've only won one battle through manual means, all else have been auto battles on everything that feels even a bit low risk or safe, but I like there is an option for tactical combat regardless. its easy to get a very good alignment. also I realized that you can just order a bunch of improvements to your city or a bunch of soldiers then let it create while you go off and do other things. currently at war with undead/vampires, but haven't really gotten around to attacking them for real yet, since there are so many random monsters to kill and resources to gather from them.

but yeah I see why this is better than Civ 6 or Stellaris: things are actually progressing at a good pace rather than taking forever. I'd love to get a sci-fi version of this game, just like, this game with like, Stellaris civ customization options.

[GloatingSwine]

A vision of the future:

https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/964462/ss_a89b5ab839d0e2dbd489431703fb676738e797d9.1920x1 080.jpg

Edit: Additionally anything that summons units into battle is very valuable for manual resolution. Even if it summons something weak it's likely to distract the enemy and waste a turn and it can pin archers and casters just by standing next to them.

[warty goblin]

Glad you are enjoying! I'm having real trouble keeping my morning play sessions in time bounds, because the one more turn is very strong with this. I just started researching T3 spells, and they look stupid cool.


There sort of is a sci-fi version of this, the previous game in the series, Age of Wonders Planetfall. As the title suggests, it's still about conquering individual planets, rather than a galactic scale interstellar empire. Backstory is the interstellar empire collapsed, now go have fun in the ashes. Customization is a bit more restrictive than AoW, you pick a faction and a specific technology tree, so you can be space explorers who focus on alien bioweapons. The faction list is a lot of fun, you have normal sci-fun humans, but also communist space dwarves, bio-tech amazons (complete with attack T-Rexes with frickin' laser beams), post colonial insectoids, interstellar organized crime, space cyberpunk liches, and in the DLC you get stealth lizards and full on feudal knights in mech suits.

It's quite good, but I think it's probably the least accessible of the three modern AoW games (3, Planetfall, 4). Partly because the sci-fi setting is just less instantly comprehensible than fantasy, and partly because it introduces a lot of mechanics that 4 really refines. There's a lot of these (territory management for instance) but unit management is the big one.

Planetfall gives every unit three slots for research researchable mods, which can drastically alter their performance. You can have versions of the same base unit with different mods, and while this shows up on the name, there's no visual indication that these are your acid damage helicopter gunships and those your electricity damage helipcopter gunships. Or, unless you click on them, that this stack of creeps has explosive rocket ammo for their rifles and instead of being a pushover will absolutely blow your face off.

There's a ton of really cool depth to the system, and lots of fun options, but it's a management nightmare. AoW 4's unit enchantments are maybe slightly less deep, but infinitely more legible.

Bottom line, I'd say stick with AoW4 for a while. If you really like this style of game and are up for more overhead, Planetfall is worth a whirl.

[GloatingSwine]

There are a couple of things I think Planetfall does better. Status effects and debuffs were more reliable, I'm hearing they drop off in utility later on in games in 4.

I also liked some of its information presentation, having shading on the ground for the number of AP you'll have left at different hexes in battle was really useful.

[warty goblin]

There are a couple of things I think Planetfall does better. Status effects and debuffs were more reliable, I'm hearing they drop off in utility later on in games in 4.

I also liked some of its information presentation, having shading on the ground for the number of AP you'll have left at different hexes in battle was really useful.

I'm not dumping of Planetfall, it's a really well made game and one I like a lot. The tactical combat is I think some of the strongest in the series*, as you say the information presentation is excellent in a lot of places, and I really like its goofy but also dark as hell sci-fi setting. But the mod system, while excellent in a lot of ways, is also hard to track in ways I think a lot of players might get kinda overwhelmed by.


*back when I first played the original Age of Wonders and realized it had things like cover and projectile modeling, I fantasized about a sci-fi version. Imagine my joy when they actually went and made that.

[Cespenar]

I was a bit afraid of the initial low ratings on steam, but turns out there were some bugs and they hotfixed them quite quickly.

Haven't started yet, but my only hope is that it doesn't devolve into day in day out tactical battles like most of this genre.

[The_Snark]

Haven't started yet, but my only hope is that it doesn't devolve into day in day out tactical battles like most of this genre.

The auto-resolve is pretty forgiving in my (admittedly limited) experience; it gives you the option to go back and fight the battle manually if you don't like the auto-resolve outcome. The tactical combat is my favorite part of the game, so I haven't used it a lot, but it's nice to be able to skip over battles that I know I'm going to win decisively and save myself the 5-10 minutes it would take to do it by hand. (There's a fair bit of these in the midgame, since the map is dotted with small independent armies which are designed to be beatable for early-game players - far too many to actually get all of them in the early game.)

[Razade]

I know one of the guys who worked on the game and showed him this thread. He really appreciated everyone's kind words, and wanted me to say thank you for playing the game they worked so hard on.

[Resileaf]

I haven't played yet, but the hard work shows. It really looks like incredible fun!

[warty goblin]

I know one of the guys who worked on the game and showed him this thread. He really appreciated everyone's kind words, and wanted me to say thank you for playing the game they worked so hard on.

That's awesome, let him know I think I'm going to love this game for years.

Fought my first siege today. I like the siege mechanics, definitely a solid improvement over Age3's insta-assaults, without being too much of a management burden.

I know a lot of players don't like the multi-stack battles, but I love em. Really lets the wars feel like proper big fantasy wars rather than a pub brawl with delusions of grandeur. Hordes of units charging in, giants and golems and spells and catapults and everything. It's what a fantasy battle should be.

[Eldan]

Alright. Broke down and bought it anyway, despite not really having the time for a game like this. Dicked around in the tutorial level a bit with industrious order dwarves, enough to get the controls and basics of gameplay down, then got my army wiped in an unlucky battle with some spiders. Looks nice, will definitely play more when I have more time, need to build a more interesting race to see what can be done with this. Outproducing enemies and forming shield walls is nice for a tutorial, but I don't want to do it for a longer game.

[warty goblin]

Wrapped up my first game this morning. It was the tutorial realm on mega-easy, so kind of a pushover, which made the endgame less than satisfying. But at least it didn't take a long time. Nice thing about the win conditions is that they literally come with a timer.

Next up I'm thinking barbarian humans, going as hard for a low budget Conan ripoff vibe as possible.

[Sloanzilla]

It's very well done. Do wish there was a campaign- campaigns are usually fun ways to get into a game. I rarely redo them after a first try, but they often offer a good tour of a game's mechanics.

[Artanis]

Me: "Hrm, scout getting ganked. I wonder though, maybe if I do manual battle, I'll be able to kill something with spells."

several minutes and four hundred mana later...

Steam: "YOU GOT AN ACHIEVEMENT!"

:smallbiggrin:

[Sloanzilla]

Is there any way to clear the rubble from a destroyed city? The computer built a city kind of close to my main city. I sacked it. Now it's city rubble tag or whatever is keeping me from using that property for something else.

There's a steep learning curve here. I kind of like it though- has that "I have no idea what I'm doing" new game smell.

[Artanis]

Maybe one of the terraforming spells? Earth Shatter will make the 'uninhabitable bedrock' portions of the Underground usable.

[warty goblin]

Got my Nature + Chaos barbarian game going. Pleasantly different than my orc game, with lots of summoned animals and animalistic barbarians. The casualty rate is frankly alarming but they're barbarians so dying heroically and on fire in combat with demon piglets is, I assume, what they want.

Also Nature lets you expand scary fast. I got some nice fertile plains with rivers, and the various farm buffs mean I'm annexing stuff left right and center.

[GloatingSwine]

If you want to cut down on casualties and you're going Nature then don't overlook the Vine Prison spell.

It summons 5 vines randomly over a 3 hex radius area, and the AI hates them. It will drop everything it's doing to murder these vines as soon as you summon them. (I expect that will get fiddled with in a patch, but even so they count as pinning for ranged units so they shut them down or force them to move, and they take a reaction attack when they try to).

[Cespenar]

Played it an okay amount, and it seems really polished and overall pretty good. The autobattler feels well balanced too, which is a sneaky but important point in the long run.

The one thing that I'm not liking is the lack of a proper story campaign and also how you can't pass heroes from one map to the next. That had always given a nice D&D/Birthright-ish continuity feeling to your feats in the earlier AoWs IMO.

[warty goblin]

My increasingly feral barbarians are now at war with impolite toads. God I love this.

[Sloanzilla]

Finished my first game. I won, but have no idea what was really going on. There's a really complicated diplomacy mechanic that I sort of just ignored. The magic system is a lot of fun. The city expansion stuff got a little confusing. I could build a farm, but then I needed to tear down a farm to build an abbey. Also, you can't just take cities without spending imperium, so make sure you have some before you take a city.

[warty goblin]

Finished my first game. I won, but have no idea what was really going on. There's a really complicated diplomacy mechanic that I sort of just ignored. The magic system is a lot of fun. The city expansion stuff got a little confusing. I could build a farm, but then I needed to tear down a farm to build an abbey. Also, you can't just take cities without spending imperium, so make sure you have some before you take a city.

Also make sure to pay attention to the city cap. It's a soft cap, so you can have 4/3 cities, but the economy penalties get harsh. My first game I think I went to 5/3 or briefly 6/3, and had to release a couple as vassels because they were quite quickly bankrupting me. Which is fine, because vassels give you quests and stuff so are fun to have around.

[Sloanzilla]

Also, I agree that the Vine Prison spell is a pretty big game changer - at least at this time.

[Eldan]

Alright, after screwing around a bit last weekend to learn the basic rules, I upgraded from order dwarves to something less boring, hunter goblins with a fertility cult. Chaos/nature magic is a lot of fun, especially when combining vines and tons and tons and tons of skirmishers with mobility bonuses and poison arrows.

[Sloanzilla]

Agree- the new vassal system is very well done

Is there any way to switch from melee to missile in combat? I noticed, for example, that if you have a two handed weapon, you can't use a horse. But I was hoping for some way to switch weapons at least.

Love the game.

[warty goblin]

Agree- the new vassal system is very well done

Is there any way to switch from melee to missile in combat? I noticed, for example, that if you have a two handed weapon, you can't use a horse. But I was hoping for some way to switch weapons at least.

Love the game.

I believe you just get a main weapon or weapon+shield, so no switching out between a bow and a warhammer. There's a fair number of utility items that grant a ranged attack though.


Finally crushed the toads this morning. They had been giving me some real issues with mega-buffed Awakened units, which just massacred my warriors and other T1s. Fortunately I then got berserkers, who, yes, struggle with anger management, but are just crazy good shock infantry. Turns out being a poorly adjusted rage beast with a giant axe has some upsides re: the bifurcation of intransigent amphibians. The final battle was a big six stack slugfest, but good morale on my part, and early toad casualties let me sweep the field with minimal losses.

Next up, I've got a so far notational war with some elves to mop up, and a second alliance to make.

[Eldan]

Finished the first story mission, and I guess my first full game, as orcish angels powered by dark magic. Very weird civ, I just made shock troops and then got every tome that looked like it had useful racisl or unit enchantments. Flying runic dark knights absolutely tear through everything on the charge, and thanks to my commander, they were warded and regenerating, too.

[NRSASD]

This thread inspired me to play Planetfall again, thanks! Playing Empire mode, had an objective to kill a player within 20 turns. Had to pull off some absolute chicanery to make it happen, but on turn 19 I took their capital after a risky march through the mountains and an 8v12 battle. I was Vanguard fighting Dvar and man that battle was bloody. 3 of my 8 survived.

[warty goblin]

Wrapped up my human barbarian game with an accidental area control victory like two turns before my planned diplomatic victory. I liked that neither of these caused the AI to get all aggressive, which made it feel much more like a joint win.

If the last game was sword, this time I'm going sorcery. Mystic elves with a wizard king leader, and absolute gobs of magic focused stuff. I also scooped up a hero who gives a big bonus to Materium, which is extremely handy for giving me an actual physical economy. This plays really differently from the human barbarians, which pretty much just ran up to stuff and snacked it in the face until dead. This is lots of buffing, and all the combat casting, to the point where auto-resolve often givese pretty bad results because it just isn't unleashing the torrent of mana that I am. I've got a huge tactical casting point pool, and I can drop two spells every turn from the first turn. It's great.


I also cranked up the world weirdness. Provinces mutate randomly, I've got enhanced creep stack sizes, and constantly reoccurring lairs. Basically everything wants to kill me all the time. Keeps me on my toes, particularly the mega powerful dragon lair next to one of my cities, and about which I can do nothing.

[Eldan]

Get a bit of dark magic, if you want to do a lot of combat casting. There's an ability on the tree there that gives you +5 combat casting every time something dies. It's especially brutal against nature enemies, who spawn vines like crazy, each vine defeated gives you five points.

[Sloanzilla]

The only thing I dislike about dark magic is that there's an additional souls requirement for certain spells, so now you have to keep track of three casting resources.

The barbarian/chaos/fire direction has been the best for me so far. Just do a lot of damage, burn stuff, move on.

[Artanis]

I've been having success with Materium and Life. I love the 'immovable object' gameplay that Life can bring, and Materium has Lava Burst and Golem Assistant :smallbiggrin:

[The_Snark]

The only thing I dislike about dark magic is that there's an additional souls requirement for certain spells, so now you have to keep track of three casting resources.

Only the necromancy tomes involve souls; if you avoid those, you can dabble in dark magic without having to worry about the third resource. I think this is a pretty good deal for a magic-focused empire, since the Shadow affinity tree has some great buffs for them - there's the one Eldan mentioned, there's one that reduces the upkeep of all summoned units... I think the necromancy stuff kind of wants you to go all-in on it if you go for any of it, they build on one another nicely but if you only have one or two then it'll be a struggle to use it.

[GloatingSwine]

I've been having success with Materium and Life. I love the 'immovable object' gameplay that Life can bring, and Materium has Lava Burst and Golem Assistant :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, Golem Assistant is great.

Anything that puts new units on the battlefield that can soak damage that doesn't stick between battles is massively useful. Doesn't matter how good the things are, they just have to be a thing the enemy can swing at.

[Eldan]

Man, how does one ever clear gold level wonders? I've encountered three now, and they all ate up my armies like candy.

[warty goblin]

I think you pretty much need to bring some high tier dudes of your own. They are pretty much supposed to be mid to late game challenges, so rolling in with a bunch of T3 and a couple T4 units isn't unreasonable.

Now the Gold tier infestation next door can eat me. Literally, as the spawn is guarded by a dragon mega-stack that could chew up both my armies at once. But it's going to be a real bother, because fending off its creeps takes a dedicated stack, and I'm going to need that stack for the inevitable war with jerks next door.

[Cespenar]

Yeah, Golem Assistant is great.

Anything that puts new units on the battlefield that can soak damage that doesn't stick between battles is massively useful. Doesn't matter how good the things are, they just have to be a thing the enemy can swing at.

Definitely. I took a lot of mileage from the t2 Houndmaster and Unleash the Hounds(?) siege project similarly as well.

@Infestations: Infestations aren't as dangerous as they allude to be. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in my experience they only pillage one of your improvements and sit on it. They don't really take over your cities. So that's barely like a 5% hindrance on a big city.

[warty goblin]

@Infestations: Infestations aren't as dangerous as they allude to be. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in my experience they only pillage one of your improvements and sit on it. They don't really take over your cities. So that's barely like a 5% hindrance on a big city.

I definitely just had some Infestation monsters lay siege to one of my cities. Maybe this is because I'm playing with pretty much maxed out infestation settings, but they are definitely a problem. Not a lose me the game problem, but because they're set to spawn in on any unoccupied territory, they pop up a lot, and the Gold level ones produce some fairly significant stacks. My main stack can beat them down no trouble, but it takes a main stack to do it, which means I'm not out clearing Wonders or resource sites, or dealing with the war with the jerks next door when that inevitably kicks off.

On the upside I'm absolutely reaping XP for my leader. Finally got a magic orb, so she's riding around zapping stuff from a bone wyvern like a magic boss.

[Eldan]

Just started my third proper game, and my mystic frog hero just got gifted a unicorn mount pretty much out of nothing by an event. It looks utterly ridiculous and I love it.

[Sloanzilla]

Again, FWIW, this game is a lot of fun. Couldn't get myself to go to bed last night because I was working my way through Story Board 3.

[Cespenar]

I definitely just had some Infestation monsters lay siege to one of my cities. Maybe this is because I'm playing with pretty much maxed out infestation settings, but they are definitely a problem. Not a lose me the game problem, but because they're set to spawn in on any unoccupied territory, they pop up a lot, and the Gold level ones produce some fairly significant stacks. My main stack can beat them down no trouble, but it takes a main stack to do it, which means I'm not out clearing Wonders or resource sites, or dealing with the war with the jerks next door when that inevitably kicks off.

On the upside I'm absolutely reaping XP for my leader. Finally got a magic orb, so she's riding around zapping stuff from a bone wyvern like a magic boss.

Interesting. Maybe they attack the nearest province, and if nothing else is nearest, they attack the city itself?

Because I had an unchecked infestation which produced some pretty powerful stacks as well, but all they did was pillage and sit on my improvements.

[warty goblin]

Interesting. Maybe they attack the nearest province, and if nothing else is nearest, they attack the city itself?

Because I had an unchecked infestation which produced some pretty powerful stacks as well, but all they did was pillage and sit on my improvements.

The city was two provinces from the spawn, with only a single occupied province between them. That was a wonder province, so the AI might have had special rules about sacking it, which left the city as the closest valid target.

Anyway, my usual strategy of being a goodie two shoes has netted me alliances or near alliances with all but two empires. Conveniently I'm already at war with everybody else, so I think this is going to be a pretty quick stomping.

By and large I think this is a substantial improvement over AoW 3, but I really miss the Seals victory condition. The magic victory thing is close, but because you build them in annexed provinces, you just plop th down in your most protected areas and kinda coast to a win. Sure the AI will declare war on you, but it's much easier to deal with that when holding territory in your core. And I've seen the AI build the first stage, but never the second or third, which is again disappointing because the AI was pretty competent at going for the Seals.

The other thing I wish the game did was give the races a bit more individual flavor. Something like race specific T1 or T2 units would pretty much do the trick here. As it is playing Mystic feels really different from Barbarian, but Elf feels interchangeable with Human.

[Artanis]

The city was two provinces from the spawn, with only a single occupied province between them. That was a wonder province, so the AI might have had special rules about sacking it, which left the city as the closest valid target.

Anyway, my usual strategy of being a goodie two shoes has netted me alliances or near alliances with all but two empires. Conveniently I'm already at war with everybody else, so I think this is going to be a pretty quick stomping.

By and large I think this is a substantial improvement over AoW 3, but I really miss the Seals victory condition. The magic victory thing is close, but because you build them in annexed provinces, you just plop th down in your most protected areas and kinda coast to a win. Sure the AI will declare war on you, but it's much easier to deal with that when holding territory in your core. And I've seen the AI build the first stage, but never the second or third, which is again disappointing because the AI was pretty competent at going for the Seals.

The other thing I wish the game did was give the races a bit more individual flavor. Something like race specific T1 or T2 units would pretty much do the trick here. As it is playing Mystic feels really different from Barbarian, but Elf feels interchangeable with Human.

I've personally seen the second stage, and I've heard on the forums about an AI actually winning a magic victory (due to an apparent bug, but still).

[Cespenar]

Yeah, I've seen the AI reaching the second stage as well.

Also, I've taken a city with a Seed on top of my own seed as well, and the ending counter moved to 2, funnily enough.

I haven't pursued that quirk though. Would be funny if it worked.

[warty goblin]

I'm pleased to say I think I've lost my Mystic elf game, or at least failed to get myself in a position where I can win. I've got a 4-way alliance going, but it's starting to fracture, and I don't think I'll be able to beat down the other AI quickly enough. Simply put my nearest neighbor has really tough armies that I can beat, but only at losses my miserable economy cannot absorb.

I could go for a magic victory. But I only have two cities, and as soon as I get close to that my allies will declare war and stomp me.

This is excellent, because I like games I can lose. Time i think to throw I the towel, and start a new round. I'm leaning towards something really evil, going for undead or demon transformations.

Edit, started over as Dark Cannibal Raider ratfolk on a blasted and mostly uninhabitable misery of a world. Fertile land is pretty rare, so the supplemental protein provided by every other physical creature will come in right handy, and my all evil all the time strategy means I won't end up playing a very slow diplomacy game. The only pauses will be delays due for grinding my enemy's bones for meal.

[Sloanzilla]

I'm about to lose as well, but I made a mistake by forming an alliance. The AI then picked a fight with someone right while we were in the middle of another war. And that someone ignored the original fight picker to attack me. Typical.

It does seem like the AI hates attacking my cities though. It just sort of mills around with 400 stacks of 6. I have no idea how it produces as much as it does without going broke.

[Cespenar]

I almost lost my try of Story World #2 on Hard as well, where the computer players kinda grew out of proportion and had like 12 fullstacks each on turn 30-something, and my allies didn't want to attack the enemy for some reason, despite outnumbering them. They moved each stack forward one turn, and then back the next turn, ad infinitum.

Fortunately, after I did some hit-and-runs, the enemy AI malfunctioned and left its (albeit level 16) ruler alone just with one fullstack on one of the turns. I managed to turn the game around after that blunder.

[warty goblin]

Got absolutely crushed in my evil rat game. Turns out the neighbors don't take too kindly to cannibal rats obsessed with pillaging and also necromancy. Weird. Was a pity too, because when my swarm army tactic worked it was really cool. There's a signature ability you can get if you've got enough Dark affinity that lets you summon 3 T1 undead units in battle, which is just awesome.

Not totally sure what to go for next. Maybe feudal something?

[Artanis]

I've found that Feudal is the best "normal" culture. Not a lot of weird stuff going on the way there is with Dark or High, just guys who do exactly what they look like they do. It also has some great econ with specific hero abilities that boost governor income.

[Sloanzilla]

Thank God for saving in combat. I'm in my third of three 18 stacks attacking. Computer sure knows how to produce troops!

[Zevox]

So this thread inspired me to look into this game, and after learning that it actually has a console version (my PC could never run it), I picked it up yesterday and started playing. And the fact that I was up two hours longer than I intended to be last night ought to be a decent sign of how I'm liking the game so far.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the console version does not force me to play with a mouse-style cursor, but has worked everything so that I'm selecting things the way console games normally do in menus; a highlight that moves in whichever direction I push on the control stick. This is immediately so much nicer than the few other PC-style strategy games I've tried console versions of in the past - even at times the buttons I need to hit to enter sub-menus or view tool-tips become confusing. I've also encountered a weird bug at times where it jumps between selections oddly, skipping an item in a list and forcing me to come back to it from the other side - consistently so, too, it's not a random thing, some menus just do that at particular points. A bit more annoyingly, for some reason before I acquired them it really liked to display the description of some chaos abilities when I was trying to look at a couple of early abilities on the nature tree. Not sure if that one's a console thing or just a universal bug, but it was weird.

Anyway though, minor stuff like that aside, definitely liking this. As someone said earlier in the thread, it's like Civilization crossed with Heroes of Might and Magic - so, Civ but better, as far as I'm concerned. Especially with how it handles the combat, I love going to the separate arena for a turn-based engagement like that. In Civ 4 I avoided combat like the plague; in Civ 5 I did it sometimes, but wasn't eager to; in this, I might just want to go for it as my first choice of win conditions.

Been playing on the initial starter map, with the pre-gen Elf race/hero, going heavy on nature magic. Doing fine - I'm sure I could've done better, but first time playing this game (and series), so of course I'm just feeling out how things work. I'm on turn 47, have the map explored, and just founded my fourth city (though one of them was a vassal I integrated). The starter map only seems to have two other civs, one of which (some kind of necromancer, human I think) has hated me from the moment we met, while the other (frog-people) seems to like me despite a technically more neutral relationship score. So I'm thinking forge an alliance with the latter and conquer the former for a military victory. Conveniently enough, they seem to hate each other too.

[Eldan]

Is there a way to transfer equipment between heroes? I've been looking for it, my main hero carries six weapons and the others don't have any.

[Sloanzilla]

Just unequip it. I believe the unequip roster is shared

[Zevox]

Hm, is the AI hard-programmed to not accept an alliance if there's only one faction left in the game? I defeated that necromancer faction before securing the alliance with the frog-people, and now one of their reasons for not accepting an alliance is, strangely enough, "there are too many alliances." Even though there are none.

If they won't take an alliance, guess I have to change my win condition. Well, or go evil and declare a war on them, but I've been playing a highly good-aligned faction, so don't want to do that.

[warty goblin]

Started a new run as High Elves, with a lot of Nature research for that traditional elf feel. All was going well until I ran into these psychotic evil halflings, who have no respect for borders and keep running over my territory to found cities behind me and gobble up all the best provinces. I'd declare war, except there's a zillion of the little bastards, and they've sort of got me surrounded dye to all their sneaky city building. But I did gank their tresspassing leader, so that was fun. And as soon as I get some more units built it's go time.

Or it would be, except that the rest of the world is descending into a global war. I have two allies, who between them have declared war on everybody except the bloody halflings, but including each other. So I'm going to have to break one of my alliances at minimum, and I'm kind of tempted to declare war on the halflings, see if I can sucker both of them into joining me, then bow out and remain neutral in their stupid fight.

[Zevox]

Wrapped up my own Elf/Nature first game. Since getting an alliance with the frog-people to qualify for a military victory wasn't working, I switched to an expansion victory. Not surprisingly, this meant the frog-people declaring war on my shortly after I lit the beacons. More surprisingly, they never really tried to stop me. The few forces they sent my way were bogged down fighting one of my vassal cities that happened to be in between us, so the only fighting we did was when they tried to kill my scouts I'd had watching their cities.

Emphasis on "tried," because they kept sending groups of only 1-3 units after them, so I would just do the fight manually. A few castings of Animate Flora (and sometimes Animal Totem) later, and their forces were dead and my scout untouched. Animate Flora in particular is just so fun that way, turning plants in the terrain into decent units - nature really is fighting against my enemies for me. Heck, I beat two of their heroes that way. They did eventually wise up and send a full 6-unit army against one scout, at which point I let them have that with an auto-resolve, but the other two scouts they never learned their lesson with. So, really I just needed to defend my beacons against the automatic spawns that tried to attack them, and honestly I was surprised those weren't more frequent. I was over-prepared for them.

Next game, I'm definitely going evil and aiming for a real military win.

[Sloanzilla]

My tried and true strategy for bypassing the computer's doomstacks of 4500 units.

1. Send one fast group of 6, just out of reach. Get him to follow me. Run to somewhere underground.
2. Send the rest of my army in from another angle. Attach the city when his 4500 stacks chase my first group.

[Zevox]

Started up my second game, this time with something much less traditional than Elves using nature magic: Halfling Necromancers. The undead hordes shall sweep across this world, even if they are only waist high!

I've gotten a decent start going. I went and conquered a free city east of my starting position early, razed it, and reanimated it as my second city. I've got a burgeoning alliance with another necromancer faction, and a free city of my own people just south of my initial city that's ready to integrate once I can afford it (and increase my city cap). And I've already had another faction declare war on me: some good-aligned "ashen fae" who were quite quick to expand. They had two cities northeast and southeast of my second city, neither of which was their throne city, which turns out to be underground.

Had a harrowing time conquering one of those cities, too: I sent just my faction leader's army since it seemed weakly guarded, and while she killed the troops there easily enough when they attacked her, they did so before she started a siege. She lost a unit and took some injuries in that fight, but with the city otherwise unguarded and only needing two turns to breach the walls, I went ahead and besieged it anyway. A turn later, almost two full armies were on her back, attacking. I didn't think I was winning that one when I saw it, but playing it out, I managed to pull it off. The armies were mostly tier-1 units, including three scouts, and they sent the scouts and two shield units ahead of the rest of the force, which was most archers. Between that and judicious use of spells every turn, I was able to smash those initial units, reanimate most of their corpses as zombies, and crush the archers that were behind them. Plenty of injuries, but I only lost one unit; though it was one of my most valuable, a bone golem. Still, a more than fair trade to wipe out two full armies and capture that city. My second hero's army got a good shot at their other city, too, and has left it to burn to the ground, since I'm at my city cap for now.

The one concerning thing is that I'm pretty much smack in the middle of the map. So if I get too much attention all at once, defending myself from everyone will be... challenging. I'm hoping forging that alliance will help mitigate that.

[Sloanzilla]

How does the "scout prospect" feature work? It doesn't seem to be the mechanic for digging underground

[Artanis]

How does the "scout prospect" feature work? It doesn't seem to be the mechanic for digging underground

When you have a scout selected, various nearby provinces (usually highly-rocky ones) will be highlighted orange. You move the scout there and click on the terrain, and there'll be a 'prospect' button. You then can't prospect that province again for a while.

[Zevox]

So, I may have hit a point in my current game where I basically can't lose, unless I'm ganged up on by the other factions. And I don't mean because I'm about to win in some way, either - I actually really need to pick up the pace of killing things if I want my military win rather than a score win...

But basically, my Halfling Necromancer faction has been dabbling in Astral magic on the side, and now that I've got all the Shadow magic tomes and have ridiculous research income, I've picked up some higher-level Astral magic. And I believe I have a combo that means I don't need to worry about enemies winning via expansion or magic victory, ever.
- Spying Shadows: The last Shadow magic empire progression bonus, reveals the full world map and gives your throne city infinite sensing range.
- Astral Shattering: High-tier Astral magic spell, targets an enemy province, destroys its improvement and removes one population from the associated city, plus spawns a powerful army of astral monsters (not under your control).

I just had the Dwarf faction in my current game start the countdown to a magic victory on the turn I finished researching Astral Shattering. Located one of their improvements for it, cast the spell, and it worked. Broken Heart of Materium, instant Astral monster army to terrorize the locals. So, yeah, that shuts down the magic and expansion win conditions cold, meaning I can only lose if my enemies kill me. Which, with me and my ally being the two most powerful factions on the map at this point, seems unlikely.

Have to say, I really like the Shadow magic stuff for necromancy. At this point, my faction has been turned entirely undead (which results in them having more health and auto-healing when they attack), my melee units automatically weaken anyone who gets close them and deal bonus damage to anyone with a debuff on them, and my necromancer units can revive anyone who falls in battle for me (including my heroes!) once per battle. Plus the ice magic side of the Shadow magic spectrum does work nicely with the necromancy thematically as well. The undead don't have any reason to care if their cities spread arctic terrain just by existing, after all - why shouldn't they turn the world into a frozen wasteland devoid of even plant life while they're culling all other life? The race transformation, unit enchantment, and city enchantment magic stuff in this game in general is just really cool, I already liked it with the Elf nature game, and this necromancer one is just really driving home how fun it can be.

I do wish that it was easier to gain souls, though. All the cool necromancy stuff is tied to them instead of mana, but I have to be pretty selective about what I spend those on, since it takes a really big battle to earn a decent haul of them - and even then I don't think I've ever seen more than 80 or so at once. One Well of Souls per city just isn't enough passive income, especially when it felt hard to justify building them early given how long they would take and how little they'd provide, and Harvest Population feels like a bit of an emergency spell, not a general use thing, since you do still want your cities growing. (Plus it's high-tier magic, takes a while to get to.)

[The_Snark]

Yeah, I haven't played with necromancy much but souls seem like a much more limited casting resource than mana. One of the higher-tier tomes has a siege project that gets you a decent amount of souls, which seems worth using, but that won't come into play until late, and enemy cities are not an unlimited resource... Reading the summary, I'm unclear on whether Harvest Population can target your vassals or not? If so, that seems like a solid use for it.

[Artanis]

So, I may have hit a point in my current game where I basically can't lose, unless I'm ganged up on by the other factions. And I don't mean because I'm about to win in some way, either - I actually really need to pick up the pace of killing things if I want my military win rather than a score win...

But basically, my Halfling Necromancer faction has been dabbling in Astral magic on the side, and now that I've got all the Shadow magic tomes and have ridiculous research income, I've picked up some higher-level Astral magic. And I believe I have a combo that means I don't need to worry about enemies winning via expansion or magic victory, ever.
- Spying Shadows: The last Shadow magic empire progression bonus, reveals the full world map and gives your throne city infinite sensing range.
- Astral Shattering: High-tier Astral magic spell, targets an enemy province, destroys its improvement and removes one population from the associated city, plus spawns a powerful army of astral monsters (not under your control).

I just had the Dwarf faction in my current game start the countdown to a magic victory on the turn I finished researching Astral Shattering. Located one of their improvements for it, cast the spell, and it worked. Broken Heart of Materium, instant Astral monster army to terrorize the locals. So, yeah, that shuts down the magic and expansion win conditions cold, meaning I can only lose if my enemies kill me. Which, with me and my ally being the two most powerful factions on the map at this point, seems unlikely.

There's a couple province improvements - Spell Jammer and Sanctuary - that shut down all enemy magic (including tactical spells!) in that city's domain.

[Cespenar]

Played a bit with necromancy -- feels a lot weaker (or more balanced, depending on PoV) compared to the other colors.

[Sloanzilla]

My ranking so far:
1. Nature
2. Chaos
3. Blue - whatever it is called
4. Life
5. Industry or whatever it is called
6. Death

[warty goblin]

Nature is really strong. Particularly early on getting that extra food is super helpful.


Started a game as Mystic desert cats, but with only 4 AI and higher starting distances between factions. I also cranked up infestations, demons, and mana nodes. I was going for a sort of remote, magical desert feeling.

What I got was wall to wall monsters. There's enough void spaces between domains that it's pretty much impossible to keep the monster spawns cleared out. I found some city ruins in a really primo but out of the way spot and rebuilt, and the monsters conquered it! I had two nearly full stacks with heroes defending, but they simply crushed them through attrition.

At this point even if I wanted to declare war on the AI, I really can't. For one thing I can't spare the units. For another any army I sent would be pretty much ground up by the time it got there.

This is weird and awesome.

[Zevox]

Yeah, I haven't played with necromancy much but souls seem like a much more limited casting resource than mana. One of the higher-tier tomes has a siege project that gets you a decent amount of souls, which seems worth using, but that won't come into play until late, and enemy cities are not an unlimited resource... Reading the summary, I'm unclear on whether Harvest Population can target your vassals or not? If so, that seems like a solid use for it.
Hadn't thought of that, but I tried it today. Nope, not Harvesting vassals.

I did find another source of souls though: certain Wonders, the ones look like bone temples I'd say, give souls per turn based on how many hero corpses are in your mausoleum. Problem of course being that if you don't get lucky and have a lower-difficulty one of those near your start position, that could be closed off to you for a while. And you still need to start killing enemy heroes quick to make them work even then.


There's a couple province improvements - Spell Jammer and Sanctuary - that shut down all enemy magic (including tactical spells!) in that city's domain.
Ah, yes, I ran into one of those once. Still, unless the AI builds one in all three cities they're building the win condition buildings, they can't hope to pull off a win with those. And I doubt the AI is that smart.


Played a bit with necromancy -- feels a lot weaker (or more balanced, depending on PoV) compared to the other colors.
Eh, it definitely has some stupidly powerful stuff. There's a top-end spell that will revive all dead friendly undead in a battle with 50% life and raise all dead foes as zombies, and it's not even too expensive on souls. And since your whole faction can be undead by the time you get it, it basically makes losing battles impossible. Granted though, the scarcity of souls does make a lot of things awkward for them throughout much of a game.


My ranking so far:
1. Nature
2. Chaos
3. Blue - whatever it is called
4. Life
5. Industry or whatever it is called
6. Death
Astral and Materium, respectively. And what you called life is actually Order, while what you called death is actually Shadow.

Haven't played nearly enough to comment on which magic types are strongest, I mostly have experience with Nature and Shadow, with some dabbling in Order for my first game and Astral for the second.

[SerTabris]

Calling them Life and Death makes me wonder if someone's played the prior games, as that's what their analogues were there. It makes sense that those have changed, since starting with AoW3 they've been shifting away from having innate moral alignments for things (like races or kinds of magic), while in AoW2/SM Good-aligned people liked Life wizards more and Evil-aligned people liked them less (and the reverse for Death wizards).

[Sloanzilla]

meh, close enough. Angel stuff= life, Zombie stuff= death. You knew what I meant.

though I do like the "tyrant knight" twist that order takes a bit- and the fact that you can go evil order and actually get a buff.

Also, FWIW, angelic molemen are the cutest things ever.

[Zevox]

The main reason I brought up the name difference on Order and Shadow is because the game does have a system for opposing magic types causing diplomatic penalties between factions, and if you call those Life and Death, you may give the impressions those are each other's opposites, when they're not. Shadow is opposite Nature, and Order opposite Chaos.

[Zevox]

Huh. So, I won my military victory in that Halfling Necromancer game, but I'm actually not entirely sure why? I still had one non-allied faction yet to kill at the end there, and was still a few turns off from declaring what I was expecting to be a short war with them. Maybe it's because they forged an alliance with my other allies? Everyone else was trying to band together when the Dwarves (who I just finished off a couple of turns ago) started their magic victory countdown timer, but I refused this particular faction's requests for treaties specifically because I wanted them to be my last victims.

Weird, but I'll take it I suppose. Time to set this game aside for a bit, since it's Street Fighter 6 launch day.

[Sloanzilla]

Materium has kind of grown on me. There's an awesome spell where you can pull a unit in like the guy from Mortal Combat. That said, it is a little heavy on golems and earth elementals. It would be cool to have some "siege" unit that you could use for non siege battles. Like an onager or cannon for regular combats.

[The_Snark]

The second DLC might include something like that, it's supposed to be themed around technology and I expect it will have the gunpowder stuff that was present in past games but conspicuously absent from this one. In the meantime, some of the Materium tomes have some pretty solid ranged units, like the Zephyr Archer or the Transmuter.

[Cespenar]

I've gotten some good mileage from some tier 3? materium siege spells. The one that spawns superballistas and the one that straight up disables all towers/battlements etc. work pretty good.

[Artanis]

Materium has kind of grown on me. There's an awesome spell where you can pull a unit in like the guy from Mortal Combat. That said, it is a little heavy on golems and earth elementals. It would be cool to have some "siege" unit that you could use for non siege battles. Like an onager or cannon for regular combats.

Zephyr Archers with the +range enchantment come kinda close, but yet, lugging around a bolt thrower would be pretty cool.

[Sloanzilla]

How has anyone beaten Story #5?

I found some suggestions online saying to go underground and just push for a magic win, but the angel guy just has enough of a lead that he gets the magic win first.
I made a very solid nature army and was pushing forward, but he still placed his third Order wonder in well before I had the strength to get to him.

[warty goblin]

Wrapped my Mystic desert cat game with a magic win. I never was able to retake my fourth city from the monsters, but the absolute hordes of monsters I mulched up got my leader up to level 15. A level 15 hero is terrifying. I went magic, and had a wisp familiar and could summon a t3 elemental and a t3 animal, then reset my cooldowns and do it again. Also all my magic attacks were auto-crits.

And by endgame my entire race was ethereal and also coated in magical gold. That made me realize I was essentially a mythical being. Like, the ethereal gold that was the body of an ancient ascended mystical race is a totally legit quest item or plot point in an rpg or novel.

[Sloanzilla]

What about this upgrade for shadow?
1. An additional mechanic where you can create skeletons on your front line and/or
2. More mechanics similar to the bone golem, where you can use your skeletons as a base to make other units.

This game kind of reminds me of the whole Awaken Online series.

[Zevox]

I'm not going to pretend I know whether Shadow magic needs a buff just based off one play through, but if it did, I would think that increasing the amount of souls they get would be the way to go. Its the scarcity of those that feels like their big limiter, at least to me.

[warty goblin]

There's already a Shadow hero power that lets you summon 3 undead in tactical combat. They're only T1, but that's still huge, since it's another half a stack of completely free canon fodder the enemy has to contend with.


I'm not going to pretend I know whether Shadow magic needs a buff just based off one play through, but if it did, I would think that increasing the amount of souls they get would be the way to go. Its the scarcity of those that feels like their big limiter, at least to me.

It looks like they're substantially rebalancing the soul economy in the first major patch towards requiring fewer souls and more mana. Seems a fair trade.

[Zevox]

It looks like they're substantially rebalancing the soul economy in the first major patch towards requiring fewer souls and more mana. Seems a fair trade.
Ah, so Shadow magic will require a mix of souls and mana, rather than just souls? Yeah, that sounds like a good way to work it. I know I frequently had a huge excess of mana in that play through, and that despite learning some Astral magic to spend it on.

[Sloanzilla]

In terms of game balance, sure, but I just think having ways to use my bone resources to construct other stuff would be fun!

I'm about to win my first Shadow game. I can't see a situation where one would win by conquest where one couldn't previously win through another method, but I'm insisting on conquest.

Is there any point to that expensive Beacon city development that gives you 20 construction points, but has no other purpose? Not the unity one, the one that just lets you build it at the end.

[Sloanzilla]

yeah, I agree shadow has a lot of summoning options.

I'm talking about "replenishing your troops on the front line" options. That used be what was so good about necromancer in the previous game. You just kept moving forward.

[Zevox]

Played through a game on the first story map today, using Leonel with a heavy focus on Materium magic. Had intended for them to minor in chaos magic, but that map is too small for that to have ever really become a thing. I wound up finishing it on something like turn 32, actually, only feel like I saw the low-level Materium stuff, so I'll need to bust that faction out again at some point. Materium sure does give you a crap load of production though, holy cow. Especially with prospecting (probably helped that there were mountains all over the place in that map).

Started on story map 2 with Order Orcs (with minor nature leanings due to their culture)... which may have been a slight mistake, since it seems like that map is low on free cities, and it seems like a lot of Order benefits focus around giving you benefits with those. But oh well, I should be fine, I only set the difficulty to normal.

Question for everybody: how do you like to set up your heroes? Is there any reason for them to ever not be mounted? Any weapons/skill trees seem sub-par/overpowered compared to the rest? I've dabbled in most of them at this point, and was actually surprised to find that the sword-and-shield setup doesn't seem inferior to the rest, since triple-attacking means quite a bit of damage, and they are pretty tanky, so the retaliation strikes aren't such a problem. And crossbowmen surprised me with how much damage they can put out when flanking despite only getting one shot. Which means most things actually seem pretty good to me, although I probably like mages the best on the whole. Still having a hard time justifying using a staff on a magic hero over the orbs though, particularly since it disables mounts (and it's a little weird to me that it's the only weapon that does so, I was actually expecting sword-and-shield would too).

[The_Snark]

Question for everybody: how do you like to set up your heroes? Is there any reason for them to ever not be mounted? Any weapons/skill trees seem sub-par/overpowered compared to the rest? I've dabbled in most of them at this point, and was actually surprised to find that the sword-and-shield setup doesn't seem inferior to the rest, since triple-attacking means quite a bit of damage, and they are pretty tanky, so the retaliation strikes aren't such a problem. And crossbowmen surprised me with how much damage they can put out when flanking despite only getting one shot. Which means most things actually seem pretty good to me, although I probably like mages the best on the whole. Still having a hard time justifying using a staff on a magic hero over the orbs though, particularly since it disables mounts (and it's a little weird to me that it's the only weapon that does so, I was actually expecting sword-and-shield would too).

Most of the big two-handed weapons disable mounts, I believe: staffs, greatswords, polearms, and so on. Many of these are quite good - I'm fond of the weapons that turn your hero into an ersatz shock unit - but if you're not using one of them then no, there's no reason not to use a mount. Basic mounts don't give you a lot, I've found that the extra movement often goes to waste because I generally want my heroes to stick close to the rest of my (non-mounted) army, but free movement is free movement.

Staffs tend to be better than orbs at inflicting status effects, while orbs are better for pure damage... under optimal conditions, anyway; like you noticed with crossbows, only having one shot means you have more freedom to reposition without losing damage. I prefer them over orbs, myself, they feel a little more flexible and if all I wanted was damage I'd probably use a bow instead.

As for how I like to build my heroes... If I'm using armies that are heavy on ranged units, I like to have at least one tanky melee hero to help hold the line; if I'm using melee-heavy armies then I tend to go with... well, support heroes or melee heroes with shock weapons, honestly. You might think I would opt for ranged heroes to provide supporting fire, but whenever I try that it doesn't feel as impactful as I'd like; ranged heroes don't do that much more damage than ranged units, whereas melee heroes are noticeably beefier than most melee units. That said, I like to build all my heroes in the course of a game differently, so I often end up with one melee, one magic/ranged, and one dedicated support.

[Sloanzilla]

When possible, I go with a ranged hero with killing momentum, then get every single summon monster option made available to me.

The no mount if you have a big staff thing is annoying. I can carry a staff and ride a horse in real life.

[Eldan]

I like strong troops, so I've been skilling heavily into Support and Battle Magic.

[Cespenar]

I've tried almost all types of items on heroes, and they all seem to work to some extent. The support tree seems a bit sneakily OP if you do the math and sum the bonuses, but eh.

As you would expect, though, the x3 attack melee builds win out on personal dps eventually, when buffs and traits pile on.

[Zevox]

Most of the big two-handed weapons disable mounts, I believe: staffs, greatswords, polearms, and so on. Many of these are quite good - I'm fond of the weapons that turn your hero into an ersatz shock unit - but if you're not using one of them then no, there's no reason not to use a mount. Basic mounts don't give you a lot, I've found that the extra movement often goes to waste because I generally want my heroes to stick close to the rest of my (non-mounted) army, but free movement is free movement.
I don't think that's entirely true - I know I had a shock unit who was mounted in my Necromancer game. But I did notice in my current one that a hero I just recruited who started with a greatsword has his mount disabled, so I guess there are some non-staff weapons that do that.

By the way, are there spears that heroes can wield? I think spearman is the one unit type I haven't seen heroes be able to become, which seems an odd omission if it's really not an option. Well, besides skirmisher, but I'm not sure what you'd give them to make them that, those all seem to be unique units.


Staffs tend to be better than orbs at inflicting status effects, while orbs are better for pure damage... under optimal conditions, anyway; like you noticed with crossbows, only having one shot means you have more freedom to reposition without losing damage. I prefer them over orbs, myself, they feel a little more flexible and if all I wanted was damage I'd probably use a bow instead.
Eh, unless the status effect is something huge, like stun or freeze, I'd much rather have damage potential + mobility, personally. Though honestly after a certain point my magic heroes are hardly using their actual weapon, between summoning and AoE abilities.

[Grim Portent]

Picked this up the other day, a bit surprised I've never played the older games in the series, it's right up my alley.

Finished three games so far, the basic map and the first and second campaign missions. First game I was chaotic barbarian humans, wound up going really heavy on fiend summoning towards the end. Second I was Shadow/Order elves with a preference for the cold. Played really cautiously in the first campaign mission, when I could probably have just rushed through it, but I did get to try out the terraforming spells a bit to turn half the map into ice and snow. Third I played Life/Chaos human barbarians, went Animal-kin and Super-Growth, called the race Jotunbrud and drowned the map in a tide of big beefy guys and animals. Chose to ignore all the side quests in mission 2 and just exterminated the toadmen when they were called to fight me.

I'm really liking this game, though much like other similar games I tend to drag things out rather than going for the finish when I should. I always want to try and get something big and cool for a dramatic final showdown, rather than just getting it done.

[The_Snark]

I don't think that's entirely true - I know I had a shock unit who was mounted in my Necromancer game. But I did notice in my current one that a hero I just recruited who started with a greatsword has his mount disabled, so I guess there are some non-staff weapons that do that.

I know there's at least one lance weapon that works like a shock weapon but is mount-compatible; it's slightly lower in damage than its equivalents. I have not seen any higher-tier weapons that work that way, but there's a lot of higher-tier equipment I have yet to see, so it could easily exist.


By the way, are there spears that heroes can wield? I think spearman is the one unit type I haven't seen heroes be able to become, which seems an odd omission if it's really not an option. Well, besides skirmisher, but I'm not sure what you'd give them to make them that, those all seem to be unique units.

There's a couple of polearms, which do in fact tend to make the hero work more like a spear unit - first strike, extra retaliation attacks, stuff like that. I don't think they're available as starting items, though, so you have to get lucky and find one in the course of play. Finding good items is very RNG-dependent in this game.

[Grim Portent]

So far the weapons I've seen are;

Incompatible with mounts


Two handed axe/hammer/sword
Crossbow
Staff


Compatible with mounts


One hand and shield
Orb
Bow
Lance


Not seen polearms other than the lance yet, but it's still early days for me.

Mounted feels better in general to me than unmounted, especially if you get a tier III mount, but the unmounted weapons don't feel underpowered or anything. Staves in particular feel like a good competitor with orbs, and I haven't been dissapointed by the heroes I had with crossbows by any means. Two handed feels like it's worse than lance though, because they're basically the same and there's no real disadvantage to being mounted.

[Zevox]

I'm really liking this game, though much like other similar games I tend to drag things out rather than going for the finish when I should. I always want to try and get something big and cool for a dramatic final showdown, rather than just getting it done.
Yeah, I have the same tendency. Who wants to end the game without getting to the cool late-game stuff, you know?


I know there's at least one lance weapon that works like a shock weapon but is mount-compatible; it's slightly lower in damage than its equivalents. I have not seen any higher-tier weapons that work that way, but there's a lot of higher-tier equipment I have yet to see, so it could easily exist.
Loading up that file, the weapon in question was a tier 2 lance called Giant's Bane. Heavy charge, 27 base damage, bonus damage to large targets.


There's a couple of polearms, which do in fact tend to make the hero work more like a spear unit - first strike, extra retaliation attacks, stuff like that. I don't think they're available as starting items, though, so you have to get lucky and find one in the course of play. Finding good items is very RNG-dependent in this game.
Ah, nice. Guess I just haven't gotten them yet. Though they may perhaps be available as a starter weapon for certain setups? I know I noticed that my options for those changed a bit between my last two games. When I set up the Materium lion-people I made my starting hero a crossbowman, but there was no crossbow option as a starting weapon for my Order Orcs.


So far the weapons I've seen are;

Incompatible with mounts


Crossbow


Crossbow is definitely compatible with mounts, both of the crossbow heroes I've had so far were mounted. Looking at one of them from the Necromancer game now, it's even a heavy crossbow, so I'm not sure what kind of crossbow wouldn't be mount-compatible.

[The_Snark]

Ah, nice. Guess I just haven't gotten them yet. Though they may perhaps be available as a starter weapon for certain setups? I know I noticed that my options for those changed a bit between my last two games. When I set up the Materium lion-people I made my starting hero a crossbowman, but there was no crossbow option as a starting weapon for my Order Orcs.

Yeah, your choice of starter weapons is influenced by your culture if you're a champion (wizard-kings choose from a set list regardless of culture). Some Industrial societies get crossbows instead of bows; dark and high cultures get lances instead of greatswords/greataxes; arcane cultures don't have a ranged physical option at all. The elemental affinity of your staff/orb choices also changes based on culture - high gets spirit, dark gets frost, arcane gets lightning, and so on. And then there's a few differences that appear to be purely cosmetic, like barbarians getting axes and greataxes instead of swords and greatswords.

None of the cultures in the game so far have pikes or spears as a starting option, although I can't be sure that it's not available some other way - I know the pantheon system offers the ability to unlock new starting equipment setups, if nothing else.

[Grim Portent]

Crossbow is definitely compatible with mounts, both of the crossbow heroes I've had so far were mounted. Looking at one of them from the Necromancer game now, it's even a heavy crossbow, so I'm not sure what kind of crossbow wouldn't be mount-compatible.

I must just be misremembering then. I've not made a martial ranged leader yet, and the heroes blur together so an archer or a crossbowman kind of blend together to me. So far I just kind of use the heroes as mooks+ rather than trying to do much special with them, whereas I feel attached to my leaders because I have ideas for them going in.

So far I don't think I have found any weapons that have different mount options than the others of the same type, and tbh it would be weird for them to vary like that. A lance is a lance, so to speak, they share animations.

I do wonder why they made some weapons not work with mounts but didn't also make those weapons beefier in some sense. As far as I can tell the only reason to use two handed weapons is if you find a really good one that's better than any combination of lance/mount or one handed/shield/mount you have available. Well, also for style points. Sometimes the mounts don't work so well aesthetically with some characters after all.


None of the cultures in the game so far have pikes or spears as a starting option, although I can't be sure that it's not available some other way - I know the pantheon system offers the ability to unlock new starting equipment setups, if nothing else.

I unlocked the Tyrant Sword and Shield from pantheon, it's just the normal sword and shield but you get Intimidating Aura instead of a mount. Seems to be broadly the same with the other pantheon unlocks, they're slight tweaks of default packages, replacing a trait or adding something minor rather than wholly new options. Though in theory trading off a starting mount for a passive ability is a pretty good deal, mounts are easy to get after all.

[The_Snark]

I do wonder why they made some weapons not work with mounts but didn't also make those weapons beefier in some sense. As far as I can tell the only reason to use two handed weapons is if you find a really good one that's better than any combination of lance/mount or one handed/shield/mount you have available. Well, also for style points. Sometimes the mounts don't work so well aesthetically with some characters after all.

Two-handed weapons are slightly beefier than lances: a basic greatsword deals 23 base damage compared to a basic lance's 21, while the Godir Greataxe that wizard-kings get deals 21 but has a chance to inflict bleeding, the big two-handed mace that arcane cultures get access to deals 20 plus Sundered Resistance, and so on. You could argue that's not worth giving up the extra movement from having a mount, and maybe you'd be right, at least at this tier of equipment - extra movement on a shock unit is quite nice. Once you reach higher tiers, the special abilities tend to be more impactful, so it's harder to compare directly.

[Sloanzilla]

the other thing with mounts is that you can't fly across lava or astral if I'm not mistaken, so some of the barriers in the game can't be bypassed with flight quite as easily as in AOW 3.

[Grim Portent]

Found my first polearm. Also my first tier IV item.

Melenis' Glaive, grants first strike and killing with it creates a zombie for the rest of the fight. Base damage of 11 physical/11 frost. Guessing the first strike is a feature of the weapon class.

If I weren't doing a wolf cavalry swarm thing I might try it out, but as is I need my mounts and have no undead related stuff going on.

[Sloanzilla]

YES, that Glaive almost let me survive an encounter with the Story #5 boss.

Almost.

[Zevox]

Found my first polearm. Also my first tier IV item.

Melenis' Glaive, grants first strike and killing with it creates a zombie for the rest of the fight. Base damage of 11 physical/11 frost. Guessing the first strike is a feature of the weapon class.

If I weren't doing a wolf cavalry swarm thing I might try it out, but as is I need my mounts and have no undead related stuff going on.
Nice. Found my own first tier 4 weapon, which conveniently enough for the current discussion is a Greataxe that diables mounts - and possibly a story thing, given its name references a story character:

Yaka's Fury. Charge Strike, base damage 16 Phys/16 Fire. A 3-hex line is hit for 50% effectiveness, sets affected tiles on fire.

So basically, enemies in the three tiles directly behind your target relative to the tile you attack from take 50% damage from the attack, and all four tiles are set on fire. It's, uh, really good. I can probably credit it as the reason that two of my heroes survived a disastrous attempt at attacking my foe in story map two where their two armies wound up fighting five full enemy armies (meaning the heroes and a couple of their units walked away while none of the enemies did). I don't know what a tier 4 lance would look like, but this sets a high bar for one to meet.

[warty goblin]

Details on the DLC dropped today. Highlights include lizard people as an appearance option, a couple new tomes and the ability to play as a dragon lord as a leader. Awesome.

[Grim Portent]

Details on the DLC dropped today. Highlights include lizard people as an appearance option, a couple new tomes and the ability to play as a dragon lord as a leader. Awesome.

Customisable dragon lords is one of the best things that can be added to any game as far as I'm concerned. :smallbiggrin:



I just got a Feudal culture hero who allows his assigned city to recruit trolls and ogres, thanks to a trait called Friend of Ogres. I wonder if there's any other similar traits. As is I can now recruit Ogre Butchers and Brewers, both tier II, River Trolls (tier III) and Swamp Trolls (tier IV), using draft like any other unit. City I've assigned the guy to is still young and has little by way of Draft production, so actually making an ogre/troll army is going to take a while, but it's the first example of Rally units being recruitable normally that I've seen.

[Eldan]

Very meh on more races, though, I never cared for more cosmetics in games.

[Sloanzilla]

Will there be a few more story worlds?

[Zevox]

Finally wrapped up that Order Orcs game on the second story map. Oh boy, that took longer than I thought, given how quick the first one went. The enemy there really knows how to pump out armies, and with her territory in the opposite corner of the map from mine, I basically had to slow conquer and annex all of her land until I was finally in position for a full assault on her capital. Without capturing one of her other cities as a forward base I could never restock my forces after losing units in a reasonable amount of time, and she had too many forces for me to just send a few armies and target her capital for a quick win.

Have to say, I found Order a little iffy. Some of it is quite cool, like how they get better healing than other factions, up to and including actual resurrection; the Zeal/Condemned combo to deal big damage is neat; and the Shrine of Smiting is an insanely OP mythic unit if you've already Angelized your faction. But a lot of their empire track is really niche. Stuff that improves relations with free cities might usually be fine, but is much weaker if there aren't as many of those, and that's probably the best of it. The improved Rally of Lieges stuff is heavily dependent on you getting good units from your vassals/wonders, and only kicks in every 15 turns; the one bonus that gives you extra grievances with factions opposed to your alignment is bizarrely niche; and the capstone is just sad. Oh cool, all my units get some potent new buffs! ... wait, no, it's not all of them, only those with the max experience rank. Which, even though Order gets some ways to gain free experience ranks, that's still a crazy prerequisite to get anything out of that final bonus. I didn't even wind up taking half of those because of how little they mattered to me in this game, it was sad.


Details on the DLC dropped today. Highlights include lizard people as an appearance option, a couple new tomes and the ability to play as a dragon lord as a leader. Awesome.
Neat, though I don't know that I'm interested in spending extra on stuff like that for this game, personally.

Also, looking at their DLC pricing, something strikes me as odd. The expansion pass is $50. But this upcoming DLC is $10, and the expansion pass is slated to include only four such expansions. Unless at least one of those is going to be double the price of this one, some basic math isn't adding up there. And normally these passes are a bit cheaper than buying all of their contents individually, too, so it even just being the same total cost would be a touch odd in itself. :smallconfused:

[Sloanzilla]

Agree that the Order Empire improvements aren't really that great, but Order does pretty well for itself overall.

[Grim Portent]

I feel Order's gimmicks work best outside of the story missions. Vassals aren't a big thing, what with the frequency of locked or quest related diplomacy.

I'm on mission IV, which has a strong undead theme and seems to reward being either Order or Shadow, both in events and just general mechanics. The spirit damage is coming in pretty handy, but all the Vassal stuff is basically useless.

As is, the best army I've got is my all troll one, rather than the ones made of actual Order or Culture units. 4 legendary River Trolls who get +50% evasion from the Order perk and a Swamp Troll with 60% chance to inflict weakened on attacks is actually pretty tough, especially with a support specced hero leading them.

Theoretically the spell that gives an army free rank ups would let you mass transform evolving units, which is a big saving on Draft in exchange for mana. Not sure which faction has the best evolving unit though. Current game I can turn a 6 stack of tier one pikemen into tier 2 defenders. 480 mana in exchange for saving 400 Draft. The time involved in casting the spell makes the pace little better, depending on provinces, but it is something.

[The_Snark]

Also, looking at their DLC pricing, something strikes me as odd. The expansion pass is $50. But this upcoming DLC is $10, and the expansion pass is slated to include only four such expansions. Unless at least one of those is going to be double the price of this one, some basic math isn't adding up there. And normally these passes are a bit cheaper than buying all of their contents individually, too, so it even just being the same total cost would be a touch odd in itself. :smallconfused:

Two of the planned DLCs are smaller $10 things, like the one that's about to come out, while two are $20 and presumably include more dramatic changes than the little ones.

Bit more information on the patch that'll be dropping at the same time as the DLC; along with the change to the soul economy that someone already mentioned, units that you summon in tactical combat now have a duration. This seems like a solid nerf: the signature hero skills that summoned elementals or animals or undead hordes always felt like they were just better than most of the other options, since they gave you free expendable units (often quite good ones, too). If those units only last ~4 turns or so, then summoning them all on turn 1 of the battle when nobody is in range will result in wasting half the duration just getting to the enemy, while summoning them once the fight has begun means you're losing a turn that you could've spent attacking or something. Still worthwhile, probably, just... less of a shoe-in.

And Vine Prison is getting hit pretty hard, its vines will have a 1-turn duration. Can't say that's undeserved. I think it will still be an OK spell, messing up an enemy's charge/forcing their archers to scatter is still pretty solid for a low-tier spell (especially if the AI still loves killing vines). Not sure how it will impact other spells/units that summon things, Vine Prison and the hero skills are the only ones I've seen much of.

[Sloanzilla]

Yeah I have no major problem with either of those nerfs (summoning or vine prison). I kinda wish the summoning nerf would come with a flip side that allows you to move then summon.

I'm hoping there will be some AI tweak where you get to defend your cities now and then. My favorite part of AOW3 was defending a city with a handful of units. As it is, I rarely ever wind up using the various battlement additions.

[Zevox]

Two of the planned DLCs are smaller $10 things, like the one that's about to come out, while two are $20 and presumably include more dramatic changes than the little ones.
Ah. That makes more sense - but also makes me that much less likely to buy these things, at least the larger ones. $10 for an expansion that interests me isn't too bad on its own, and maybe this Dragon one could manage that much interest out of me, we'll see once I can actually see it in action; $20 is a much steeper ask, and you'd need a lot more to justify it. And looking at the themes for the future expansions, they're much less interesting in a vacuum than Dragons, at least to me.


Bit more information on the patch that'll be dropping at the same time as the DLC; along with the change to the soul economy that someone already mentioned, units that you summon in tactical combat now have a duration. This seems like a solid nerf: the signature hero skills that summoned elementals or animals or undead hordes always felt like they were just better than most of the other options, since they gave you free expendable units (often quite good ones, too). If those units only last ~4 turns or so, then summoning them all on turn 1 of the battle when nobody is in range will result in wasting half the duration just getting to the enemy, while summoning them once the fight has begun means you're losing a turn that you could've spent attacking or something. Still worthwhile, probably, just... less of a shoe-in.

And Vine Prison is getting hit pretty hard, its vines will have a 1-turn duration. Can't say that's undeserved. I think it will still be an OK spell, messing up an enemy's charge/forcing their archers to scatter is still pretty solid for a low-tier spell (especially if the AI still loves killing vines). Not sure how it will impact other spells/units that summon things, Vine Prison and the hero skills are the only ones I've seen much of.

Yeah I have no major problem with either of those nerfs (summoning or vine prison). I kinda wish the summoning nerf would come with a flip side that allows you to move then summon.
Yeah, I feel similarly. Sure, those things definitely could use toning down - the summoning abilities on heroes really are just blatantly better than every other option, giving you free tier 3 expendable units (or three tier 1s for the necromancy one) in every fight like that is crazy potent. But if they have a time limit, especially a sharp one like, say, 3 turns, it'll be tough to figure out when to summon them if you still can't move + summon. Potent as it is, it is a major action economy loss, so doing it sometime other than the fight's beginning is going to be questionable. Or perhaps allow the summoned unit to do more on the turn they're summoned? Probably don't want to give it a full turn, but maybe two actions, with half its normal movement range?

And vine prison nerf is fair, honestly. It's a cheap spell you can just recast next turn if you want it to keep going.

[Eldan]

Just had my first magic victory. Turns out it was disappointingly easy. All three improvements were at the heart of the realm, surrounded by my armies and the other nations never even... got near. Turns out they tried besieging my outlying cities first and what I could summon in one turn (3-4 Earth elementals, plus a lot of battle magic) was for the most part enough to keep them away.

Definitely need to turn up the difficulty.

[Grim Portent]

Managed to wrap up mission IV, took a few attempts. Bit of RNG for the map layout, bit of trying different builds.

Wound up winning with a Shadow/Astral summoner necromancer theme. You can churn out lots of Phantasmal Warriors pretty easily if you focus on magic, and Wightborn effects them, so getting a kind of ghost army thing going is pretty quick. Was able to make a stack of 4 phantasms and a banshee in 3 turns towards the end, and a Living Fog in a bit over 1 turn of production, so anytime I suffered meaningful casualties I just dropped a few more units into the armies and kept pushing.

EDIT: During one of my attempts at IV I tried out a materialist faction, and found they have a neat skill for their heroes that makes them BIG. Disables mounts but makes them tougher and stronger. I kind of want to try a heroes only game mixing that with Super Growth to see if it stacks for giant sized heroes. Needs the 5th level material Tome of the Creator, but in the name of a stupid gimmick I feel it might be worth trying to do a life/material run specifically for humungous heroes.

[Zevox]

I've been slowly working through story map 3. I definitely picked the right one to try Chaos magic on: the map forces you to always be at war with everyone, and Chaos magic is the "choose violence" path for sure. Cheaper units, more benefits for looting provinces and razing cities, bonuses for killing things, and all of the damage bonuses you could ever want. Just need to accept that your units are going to be on the expendable side, because bonuses to defense and health are for the weak.

So far I've taken out three of the five factions you need to beat, although only one through direct conquest, two were through their respective side-quests. Now I've got some free cities to chew through to get to the remaining two, but the pace should pick up, as I'm getting high-end stuff now. My rat-people are now part demon, and I'm summoning demons that I can have kill each other to turn into Balors to fight alongside them. So stuff's gonna die.

Also, I got a greatsword with a build-in 50% crit rate (by looting it off the corpse of a fallen enemy, naturally), and that hero is a murder machine the likes of which I have not seen before in this game. One-shotting units is a thing he can just do if they're tier 1, and he's not that far off doing it to tier 2s too. He's pretty nuts.

[tonberrian]

God I've gotta get this game. Loved Planetfall. Just waiting for a sale.

[Sloanzilla]

finished Story #5!

Keys:
Nature- for a variety of reasons.

Set up your cities so that there's just a single chokepoint for angelboy

Play defensive in an offensive way. Get him to send his doomstacks at you on your terms

Keep him from a magic victory with summoning. The computer doesn't always remember to use a spell jammer. Even if he does, sometimes you can chain summon and get a unit there. He also doesn't seem to ever fix it once you raze a magic build.

[Grim Portent]

Finished story V last night, was unable to drive into the main enemies forces, there were just too many and I was running a trait that stops you from having more cities, but one of the allied AIs went for a Magic Victory after we'd killed the enemy faction closest to them.

Was really not a good map to try Chosen Destroyers on, only managed to raze one city so the economic buffs never really got to take off.


I'm a bit confused by the ending. I'm not familiar with any of the older games, so I don't know if there was a reference to something from it, or if it's just that the rest of the story is going to come out later with updates and DLCs.


The story does fill up the pantheon quite a bit, so all the characters can show up in my other games now, as rulers or heroes. Did have a weird thing where Ydgaard Worldbender offered to join me as a hero in a custom map where he was already the boss faction of the map. Probably going to toggle them to rulers only to stop that.

[Zevox]

Completed story map 3 with my Chaos faction today. Holy cow, is Chaos' damage output insane. You get bonus fire damage, bonus blight damage, bonus physical damage, bonus crit chance, and units that just plain hit hard to begin with like the Berserker. Those Balors are no joke either, that high-damage three-column AoE of theirs that also inflicts defense debuffs is a crazy alpha strike, and following it up with a big damage fire move that turns enemies into tier-1 demons under your control if it kills them is ridiculous. I had two of them in my faction leader's army alone by the end, and that was devastating. In fact, the damage output I had was so high that the hero summoning abilities just felt too slow. I had one on almost every hero, but just stopped using them after a point. Taking turn 1 to summon a unit meant them not being in position to murder things on turn 2, and that just doesn't fly when you're killing as fast as a late-game Chaos army does.

The Houndmaster is a pretty surprisingly potent early unit, too. Decent crossbowman who also gets a free expendable tier-1 shock unit in every fight, and that shock unit also inflicts defense debuffs and a debuff that the Houndmaster himself specifically gets bonus damage from? You could probably make an army of just those and it would be pretty good until really late-game things start showing up, honestly.

I also had a pretty funny sequence happen near the end. I had besieged the last enemy throne city, but they had a full six armies sitting in it (I had six of my own at the siege), so I'm expecting a real fight when the breach happens. Meanwhile, I have my other couple of armies march up to the one other city this enemy faction has to start a siege there - it won't finish until after I've won (there's two turns left on the throne city siege at this point), but eh, may as well, right? Well, once that siege starts my enemy starts moving armies out of his throne city and to a teleporter he has, so I figure, okay, he's sending reinforcements, smart move, fair play. Except he sends all of them. He empties his throne city entirely to try and save his second city, and all of them go through the teleporter. Well, I lift the siege on the second city and start withdrawing my forces, and then have a scout that I have got an destroy the teleporter - Chaos gets to do that in one turn instead of two. So his armies are trapped too far north of his throne city to do anything while mine just walk in a take it the next turn. Meanwhile, they do catch and attack my other two armies - and make the mistake of sending their faction leader. One battle later, it's over. (Somewhat surprisingly, I did win that battle, not just kill their leader, despite only having two armies to fight his three. Helps a lot that one of them included a Balor and I had the "Summon Avatar of Chaos" spell to bring in a copy of my faction leader.)

So, I now have only one magic type I've never used as my primary one (though I've used it as a secondary a couple of times): Astral. So that's what I'm doing story map 4 with. Astral Goblins with a minor in Shadow magic, to be precise - figure I'll grab some ice magic for them along the way.

[Eldan]

Just got through story three with a Materium army.

Turns out that Level 4 and 5 damage spells just wipe armies before they get to your side of the map.

[Grim Portent]

I just finished a game with high Astral affinity, to polish off the achievements for getting each of the tier 5 tomes.

Astral magic is pretty good, though a lot of it is utility magic rather than face melting magic, but the battle mage units for the Mystic culture plus the enchantments from Astral tomes deal a very nice amount of damage, plus getting the ability to reposition with a teleport is sweet.

I definitely felt at my most epic with Chaos though. Having a chaos lord running around with a bunch of high end artifacts chainkilling enemies and summoning demons with every kill is just extremely potent feeling.

[Grim Portent]

I got an Ancient of Earth/Supergrowth combo going on and it makes heroes phenomenally huge like I had hoped. On a long legged human race it made the heroes shoulder high to Fire Giants, and they were all 150+ health absolute beatsticks. Movement animations get a bit slowed down and look weird at that size though.

[Sloanzilla]

I don't want the game to be any easier, but the final stretch of any game is kind of a slog due to the computer's psycho unit production powers. Even on normal, it will easily have 3 times as many troops as me. Most of my non magic victories end with either
1. I make a doomstack of 18 T3-5 units and grind my way through 5-6 of the computer's stacks of 18 units; or
2. I get tired of #1 and just win a Magic victory.

The computer is far more defensive than it was in AOE3, where my main strategy was to get a fast single stack behind its supply lines and ambush its units as it was bringing them to the front.

[Lord Raziere]

came back to my first game with goblins I lost because all my resources just somehow started running out while the other nation was just somehow produced more armies than me.

then second game, I went full dark affinity fully, became a dark elf who used necromancy and void powers, using my own populations to sacrifice to summon undead hordes, shadows and reapers to usher in an age of shadow, attaining victory. I mostly just played defensively, became undead, made my shadow seeds and I won by magic victory. I went super-evil in the process though. oddly enough I got all my new cities through alliances and vassals then replacing their population with my dark elves.

I think my problem with my previous playthrough was splitting my affinities between Chaos and artifice rather than focusing on one. hyper-focus on dark got me much better results.

[Zevox]

Wrapped up story map 4 with my Astral Goblins. Not too difficult. Astral magic definitely means massive mana and research generation, but more lacking food and production. Getting my cities off the ground was the biggest challenge, but once they're there, things go wild. I had over 1000 research per turn towards the end there and was sometimes completing multiple researches in a single turn (because I was picking up extra tier 3 tomes after getting all of the Astral tomes). Granted, a couple of wonders were helping there, but that's far from being the majority of that.

It was also a run where I made hefty use of Elementals, without specifically planning to. Had the ability to summon tier-1 Storm and Ice Elementals, brought a few of them in for my early armies, and got them prompted to their tier-3 counterparts, so they stuck around for the whole game. Along with a tier-1 Fire elemental I got randomly from a pickup that also promoted and lasted the whole game. Was pretty nice, kind of makes me want to see if there's a way to build things such that you can do whole armies of just Elementals, using as many types as possible.

So, that means I've used all of the magic types as my primary now - but there is still the nagging point that I only got halfway up the tomes for Materium, because that was the run I did for story map 1, and it was very short. So doing another Materium run for story map 5. Got to see what those high-end tomes are like.


came back to my first game with goblins I lost because all my resources just somehow started running out while the other nation was just somehow produced more armies than me.

[...]

I think my problem with my previous playthrough was splitting my affinities between Chaos and artifice rather than focusing on one. hyper-focus on dark got me much better results.
Eh, it doesn't sound like it. Running out of resources sounds like more of an over-extending issue, or a "not having good city locations" issue, than a "not picking the right tomes" issue.

Enemies out producing you will be normal though, the AI just gets to do that, it seems. It becomes extremely obvious if you form an alliance with one and get a vision pact with them, so you can see everything they can see. They just always have a lot more armies than you.

[The_Snark]

It was also a run where I made hefty use of Elementals, without specifically planning to. Had the ability to summon tier-1 Storm and Ice Elementals, brought a few of them in for my early armies, and got them prompted to their tier-3 counterparts, so they stuck around for the whole game. Along with a tier-1 Fire elemental I got randomly from a pickup that also promoted and lasted the whole game. Was pretty nice, kind of makes me want to see if there's a way to build things such that you can do whole armies of just Elementals, using as many types as possible.

There's five types of elementals in the game, I believe, but one of them (water) doesn't appear in any of the tomes; I once got one from the trait that gives you a random magic-origin unit in your starting army, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a wonder (probably one at sea) that lets you recruit them. For a maximum elemental game... I think you'd want Evocation and Pyromancy for tier 1 tomes, then Terramancy and Cold Dark for tier 3; that gives you the ability to summon lesser fire and storm spirits, and then you can summon the bigger snow and earth spirits without needing to level them up. Or you could just get four tier 1 tomes, I guess, but that's probably suboptimal.

[Grim Portent]

There's also a Materium spell that gives all elementals Resurgence, so they come back if killed in battle provided you win the fight.

There's definitely potential to an elemental army, you can definitely pull off fiends, astral and beast based armies and the same principles should apply.

[Sloanzilla]

hah, I currently have an army of angelic frostling toads

take that, stock fantasy tropes!

[Eldan]

Wait, you can promote units? How?

[Zevox]

Wait, you can promote units? How?
I know, I was surprised (and confused) the first time it happened too. Definitely something the game could use to mention somewhere in the tutorial.

Anyway, turns out that some units (not all, or even most) automatically promote to a higher-tier unit upon reaching a certain amount of experience (shown by the medals they get). You can see this in the tooltip for their rank when you inspect them, which lists the benefits of each rank up. For instance, the Copper Golems my current Materium army is using can evolve to Iron Golems if I get them to "Champion" rank (the fourth tier medal). Elementals are another example. I know I had some tier 1 spearman in my Order Orcs game (Feudal culture units) promote to tier 2 shield units as well, that was the first time I saw it.

[Grim Portent]

Wait, you can promote units? How?

Only a few can, they need to have the Evolve trait. When units with Evolve get to the right rank, generally Champion I think, they turn into a different unit.

Most intuitive ones are the various lesser elementals that turn into the tier 3 full elementals, goretusk piglets turning into goretusk matriarchs, spider hatchlings into adult spiders and so on.

Seems to be very rare among culture units. Feudal spearmen can become the tier 2 sword and shield unit, but other than that none come to mind, not that I would necessarily remember them anyway.

Now the new dragon units, Slither Hatchlings, Wyvern Fledglings and Young Dragons, turn into adult versions of themselves as well.


EDIT: Finished the new story map. Managed to ally with all the dragon lords and wrap it up by turn 50. It was weirdly easy to do so. Other than the dragons there's only 2 random AI empires, and there's no need to fight anyone at all outside of the random marauders and ruins.

Early days so far, but I wasn't particularly impressed by my own Chaos Dragon Lord, but then 50 turns isn't long to get things really going. At the same time, he was over level 10 and still feeling a lot less potent than a wizard king or champion with good gear at that level would. Going to give a Shadow Dragon a whirl and check out the necromancy tweaks.

[Sloanzilla]

has anyone else had a bunch of graphics driver crashes lately? Trying to figure out of it is a patch issue or internal to my computer

[Grim Portent]

I have made a materium dragon lord with all the length sliders set to minimum, and the physique slider set to maximum. He is a chonky little guy and I love him. Gave him a feather crest on his head and neck and he makes me think of some kind of overweight fancy chicken.

Character customisation is probably the best thing about this game. 10/10 for fat dragons.

[Zevox]

has anyone else had a bunch of graphics driver crashes lately? Trying to figure out of it is a patch issue or internal to my computer
I've had trouble with the game crashing on me for a while now, but I'm on the console version, so probably different there. Fortunately the generous autosaving has kept it from being more than an annoyance.

Wrapped up story map 5 with that Materium army today. And dang, Materium late-game stuff gets fun. Iron Golems were already so good that I made them the backbone of my army's melee troops, and then you get the ability to make them auto-revive? Damn. And the Gold Golem is possibly the only tier 5 unit I can recall that you get to recruit at your cities, and is a dang good one. Zephyr Archers feel like they're probably the best archers in the game, too, and those tier 4 mages with petrify are no joke either. The style sure does contrast nicely to Astral magic too - where my Astral Goblins struggled to get their cities going but had amazing mana and research, Materium gets their cities going scary fast, but does struggle on mana and research. Their low-tier units do feel kind of weak, but perhaps that was just the map - starting with random tier 3-5 monsters in a lot of the world's monster stacks was rough to deal with. And those Melt Armor and Lava Blast (?) spells are fantastic too, help make up for the crappy low-tier spells.

Though honestly, the biggest problem on that map was my allies gobbling up all the territory super quick. I had to rush to found my third city in between some outposts my allies had also recently set up, then spend some Imperium making sure it would claim some key provinces before they did. Greedy bastards made four cities each really early and I barely got my third out. At least it did wind up with enough space to grow to 16 population before running out of new provinces to claim.

Oh, and this was my first Magic victory (did Expansion in my first game on the tutorial map, and military - or story-specific - on the other story maps), and it seems strangely easy? The AI did not do much to try and stop me, even though it could've. Also, isn't it just the Expansion victory, but better? Researching to a tier 5 tome is definitely easier than taking all the territory you need for Expansion victory, and they're both "build 3 province improvements, start 15 turn timer to win, defend improvements until it finishes," but for the Magic victory you get additional bonuses from the province improvements and your magic is super-charged once you start the victory timer, where for the Expansion victory those are strictly about the win condition. Feels like they should rework one of them somehow.

The story does kind of end abruptly and confusingly though. I really can't tell what them opening that vault actually did. Or what our little surprise reveal actually means that character was doing the whole time. Plus, it kind of ends with the villains victorious, which seems odd? Just weird all around.

Anyway though, got that done just in time. Final Fantasy 16 is here, so I'll be putting this game on the back burner for a while. I do expect to come back to it though, this is good. Probably basically replaces the Civilization series entirely for me.

[Sloanzilla]

I kind of wonder if maybe Lost Wizards were originally supposed to be the Tier 5 Astral summons. Odd that they don’t have one.

Haven’t downloaded the expansion yet as I’m still getting the hang of everything. Like the patch changes with one exception. Pylons/pillars should last for 5 rounds, not 3, since they are a defensive unit.

[Sloanzilla]

Don't know if anyone is still playing this, besides me, but there's a major update that solves most of the game's problems.
The computer is kept a little in check now in terms of overproducing units. Magic Victories are now very hard (so hard, in fact, that I think it probably is an overcorrection). There's an advanced logistics so that movement is a little less awful. Entrances to the underworld are clearly marked. Spell research is slowed down, so you can't get flaming/frost/poison/electrical arrows in the same way now.

Replayed last night and it is a lot better.

I still don't like the siege mechanics, though I get why they did them the way they did. But if I've got an army of teleporting flying units, I should have to wait 13 turns to slowly wear down your walls, or whatever.

[Eldan]

Hm. Maybe I'll play another game. I must admit I was kinda bored after winning once with each... what are they called? Axis? Element? ALignment? Energy?

[Sloanzilla]

It is less replayable than AOW3 for some reason, though certainly a better game. Just seems to bog down now and then.

[Zevox]

Don't know if anyone is still playing this, besides me, but there's a major update that solves most of the game's problems.
The computer is kept a little in check now in terms of overproducing units. Magic Victories are now very hard (so hard, in fact, that I think it probably is an overcorrection). There's an advanced logistics so that movement is a little less awful. Entrances to the underworld are clearly marked. Spell research is slowed down, so you can't get flaming/frost/poison/electrical arrows in the same way now.

Replayed last night and it is a lot better.

I still don't like the siege mechanics, though I get why they did them the way they did. But if I've got an army of teleporting flying units, I should have to wait 13 turns to slowly wear down your walls, or whatever.
Eh, I don't know. That update happened in the middle of a game I was playing, and I wasn't thrilled with how much slower research suddenly was personally. It also sabotaged my "use all the Elementals" theme by making it require a minimum of 3 affinity points to pick up tier 3 tomes, so I couldn't get the tome you get the full-size Frost Elemental from without grabbing two additional Shadow tomes I had no other use for. The markers on Underworld entrances were nice I guess though.

[Sloanzilla]

Mixed feeling on the research. I kind of feel like the original intent was "you can specialize in one affinity and dabble in others" not "you can have T1 archers get +4 damage to every single element pretty quickly."

[Artanis]

Mixed feeling on the research. I kind of feel like the original intent was "you can specialize in one affinity and dabble in others" not "you can have T1 archers get +4 damage to every single element pretty quickly."

Oh yeah. As much as I love archers in general in these kinds of games, that was pretty ridiculous.