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Dev Diary #19 - Dragon Dawn: Lizardfolk, Tomes and Units

Hello everyone! My name is Luis and I am a designer at Triumph. I got the privilege of being the main designer for Dragon Dawn, our first content pack. In this dev diary I will go over the new Lizardfolk form and the new tomes of magic, as well as their units.

Lizardfolk​

Lizardfolk are very thematic for the dragon themed dlc and we knew people have been wanting them since the game was announced, so we are very excited to give players access to this new form.

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By default they have a new body trait that is going out with the free Wyvern Update, the Poisonous trait. This has a 30% chance to Poison melee attackers and also gives them a bit of Blight resistance. Lizardfolk also come with the Cold Blooded mind trait, which reduces the morale they lose in battle.

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There’s a lot of ways to customize your Lizardfolk with a variety of heads and decorations, from snakes to crocodiles to chameleons and others, so you can make what your heart desires.

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Tomes​

For the first time we will be doing mixed affinity tomes, and you can expect this trend to continue as new content and expansion packs come out.
For Dragon Dawn I wanted the tomes to represent the power of destruction and creation that is often associated with dragons so both new tomes come with the Chaos and Nature affinity.

Tome of Evolution - Tier I

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As the name suggests this tome is all about evolving units and comes with two units that benefit from this.

Slither Hatchling

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The slither hatchling is a skirmisher that counts as an animal and a dragon unit, so they have the Low Maintenance most animals have as well as the damage increase granted by Draconic Rage (this triggers when a dragon unit drops below 60%hit points). They can also apply Poisoned with their ranged attack and their melee attacks deal extra damage to Poisoned units!

Of course, this is the Tome of Evolution, so when they reach the champion rank they turn into a Tier 3 unit, the Slither.

Slither

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The Slither is a Tier 3 unit and has all the benefits of the Hatchling, just stronger. It also has the Slip Away ability that triggers once per battle when it takes fatal damage. This makes the unit quickly escape to a nearby hex and regain15 health.

Wyvern Fledgling

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The Wyvern Fledgling is a fighter unit and a strategic summon from this tome. It is a very simple dragon unit that can evolve into a random Tier 3 Wyvern. That includes the Fire and Frost Wyvern but with this pack we also introduce the Golden and Obsidian wyvern which this unit can also evolve into!

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Unit Enchantment - Rapid Evolution Enchantment

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To make sure you can evolve your units, we added an enchantment that only affects units that can Evolve. It grants XP gained from combat as well as giving Tier 1 and 2 units Resurgence, meaning that if they die in battle but you are still victorious then the unit comes back with low hit points after battle.

Minor Race Transformation - Draconic Vitality

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So other units benefit from this tome, we have a minor race transformation that takes the concept of growth causing units to benefit more from their unit ranks more. Draconic Vitality grants +3 Hit Points per rank the unit has and makes them look more reptilian and spiky.

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Tome of Dragons - Tier III

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The second tome you can unlock is all about the power of and acquiring Dragons and turning your units into Draconians.

Young Dragons

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Young dragons are Tier 3 Fighter units. While they may look like their adult counterparts they don’t yet have their elemental breath weapon or the extra damage on their claws. Once you research this skill you will be able to draft the Young Frost and Fire Dragons in your cities. Gold and Obsidian Dragons are new in this content pack and you can also get their young versions as long as you meet certain alignment requirements. When these units reach champion rank, they evolve into their Tier 5 adult forms.

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Unit Enchantment - Flamer Focus

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The flamer focus is a reference to the Draconians from Age of Wonders 3, the Flamer unit had a Fire Bomb ability which this enchantment is recreating for Age of Wonder 4. It applies to Battle Mages and grants a full action ability that deals damage to a target and half to adjacent units while also applying Burning and Bleeding to those affected.

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Major Race Transformation - Draconian Transformation

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The draconian transformation turns your race into Dragon humanoid hybrids. The Dragon type grants all racial units Draconic Rage, increasing their damage when they are under 60% hit points. This transformation also gives Burning Immunity and Natural Regeneration which causes units to recover hit points up to the amount they started battle with.

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This is a brief view of what you can find in the tomes. The Dragon Dawn content pack is coming out on the 20th of June and I hope to see your Lizardfolk and Dragon Lord creations and mighty dragon armies!
 

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Please choose a direction when it comes to giving forms starting traits or not! I'm comfortable with all units having starting traits, I think there is some fairness behind the argument that something as big as an orc should probably work differently than something as small as a goblin in some way. There's also much to be said for leaving it to the player to setup what this looks like.

What I am not comfortable with is locking starting traits behind a paywall. I really do hope the base races will eventually get starting traits as well, or that starting traits are removed from lizardfolk. There should be greater uniformity here. Otherwise, super exciting!
 
Please choose a direction when it comes to giving forms starting traits or not! I'm comfortable with all units having starting traits, I think there is some fairness behind the argument that something as big as an orc should probably work differently than something as small as a goblin in some way. There's also much to be said for leaving it to the player to setup what this looks like.

What I am not comfortable with is locking starting traits behind a paywall. I really do hope the base races will eventually get starting traits as well, or that starting traits are removed from lizardfolk. There should be greater uniformity here. Otherwise, super exciting!

I'm sorry, what?

How are they "locking starting traits behind a paywall"? Either you buy the DLC and everyone in your game can have it, or you don't buy the DLC and no one has it.

Also just to be clear: the Lizardfolk have access to the exact same traits as everyone else.
 
How are they "locking starting traits behind a paywall"? Either you buy the DLC and everyone in your game can have it, or you don't buy the DLC and no one has it.
Actually, it's even LESS "locking starting traits behind a paywall". Neither Poisonous nor Artefact Hoarders are actually in the DLC, they are in the free Wyvern Update and will be available for everyone. Whats behind the paywall, are the Dragon Lord ruler type, the Lizardman Form, four prebuilt leaders, the Tomes of Evolution and Dragons, the Wyvern Fledging and the Slither Hatchling and Slither, the Young Dragons, the Obisidian and Gold lines of Dragon and Wyvern, the Ashen War realm and associated Presence Trait, and that's it.
 
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...they are in the free Wyvern Update and will be available for everyone.

Ooohhh, I totally missed that part, thanks! Yeah if it's available to everyone that's cool. I just thought that Paradox was trying to cash in on people wanting starting traits to be a thing by requiring people to buy the DLC if they want to play that way.

The lack of consistency feels odd still, but it isn't as bad as I thought. Simply giving orcs a slight boost to melee combat (being big) or goblins a little extra resistance to blight damage would make more sense. Or something like that. Having Lizardmen be literally the only form with any starting traits at all feels wonky. Just not quite what I was thinking Paradox was trying to do.


Edit, wait:

"Whats behind the paywall, are the Dragon Lord ruler type, the Lizardman Form..."

Okay, now I am confused again. The Lizardman Form, which is currently the only form to have starting traits iiuc, is only available in the DLC. I'm confused again. Am I missing something here, I don't see how that works with what you said before? That brings me back to the impression that Paradox is using the split in the community between starting traits (as in inherent form traits that are unalterable) and not having them as a way of trying to take advantage of a part of the community that feels left behind, even if it leads to inconsistency.

They kept saying that they tried locking forms, but it didn't fit the underlying theme and philosophy of AoW4. Sure, that has its perks, all up for that. But why the inconsistency now where lizardmen get basically free bonus traits, they insisted they were avoiding that.


If this makes my position more clear, and setting aside the fact that I am flipping the most vocal parts of the community in each split: imagine if in order to have units on the board that you can order around, you had to get a DLC. But only Prussia could do it, nobody else. Each DLC released, a new nation can do it. Wouldn't that seem exploitative towards a part of the community (in this case the majority) that wants full control of units on the board?

Well, there's a minority in this community that was very disappointed that forms had no inherent buffs or debuffs, it was all selectable by the player. Triumph said that it was not consistent with the design of the rest of the game. Okay, that makes sense. So why are they now adding one that does start with an inherent buff simply for picking the form? And why only one? Are they going to implement that as a feature or not? It makes even less sense to only do it for a few DLC forms, when physically goblins, elves, and orcs are as different as night and day. Unless I am completely misunderstanding what they are doing.
 
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The Lizardfolk form does NOT have starting traits that the other forms does not. Their DEFAULT body trait is Poisenous, just like all current forms have a default trait, and just like with all current forms, it can be swapped out for another if you wish.
 
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The Lizardfolk form does NOT have starting traits that the other forms does not. Their DEFAULT body trait is Poisenous, just like all current forms have a default trait, and just like with all current forms, it can be swapped out for another if you wish.

Ohh, okay! I've honestly only been in this screen like twice, I've completed one game and I want to focus on finishing my AAR, and I am waiting for the DLC to drop before doing the next one. This picture from a JumboPixel review confused me:

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I don't remember it looking like that, is it a UI update?


Anyway, huge relief, I had completely the wrong impression. I'll probably use the "poisonous" trait a lot with goblins then.
 
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