Age of Wonder 4: what i would keep and trash from AOW3 and planetfall.

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This is a typical game for me, I like to play largest maps with 12 players where everyone has adjacent neighbors. There are no camps/teleports and my bronzemark was food which I annexed at size 12 i.e. quite late (science sector first, residential sector next). Amazons don't need food early due to racial bonus. Yes, having more difficulty levels than current 5 would be a perfect solution indeed. With the mod I use there are 9 levels with 4 new levels above existing extreme. This game is rather easy because of animals and ascended teachers, I lost my previous game at this level. AIs have colonies everywhere and huge armies everywhere too.

the issue is that, even with alot more ressources the AI will still mod poorly and use barely any T3&T4.
also they will never attack you with sizeable army unless you get near their frontier and will always scatter their troops in fight so that you get an unbeliveable advantage by regrouping your troops. or attracting them out of their city defence with a spell.
 
the issue is that, even with alot more ressources the AI will still mod poorly and use barely any T3&T4.
I recently was told that it is caused by wrong setup of game phases which are used by AIs. https://steamcommunity.com/app/718850/discussions/0/5185299686158995830/
Basically AI does not start modding tier 3-4 units until turn 90 which is too late. I am surprised there is no mod which tries to fix it.
also they will never attack you with sizeable army unless you get near their frontier and will always scatter their troops in fight so that you get an unbeliveable advantage by regrouping your troops. or attracting them out of their city defense with a spell.
This is not my experience. I have 5 neighbors and am attacked by all of them in my current game, they try to use 3 stacks armies as triangle often, though it is AI with 4 times more cosmite/energy than vanilla extreme AI.
 
Indeed, in previous page (i think), i did say there are some factors that influence why the AI is as it is (without any mod). Which i found rather weird.

There is no mod trying to fix it so far because it's not that simple, there are other factors, and i suspect hidden factors which modding tools cannot access.

I'll list what i found so far.

The AI has different definition of game phases (as said by those posters in steam forums), late game is turn 55, i was told that some people said there is phase(s) later than late game, but i suspect they have either mod it themselves and forgot that they did or download a mod which include new phases there. Because my purely unmodded planetfall so far only has 3 definition of phases for the AI. Start game, at turn 1 - 30, by 30 the game define it as mid game, turn 55 is defined as late game.

However, there are other more complex factors involved in AI decision as to why the AI doesn't mod their tier 3 and 4 units, and why they produce them in a so small number relative to time passes, and relative to other players the AI consider as threats. First of this factor is unit priorities, by default their unit priorities regarding tier of the units are set to be the same from tier 1, 2, 3, 4. Then other factor in their decisions is heavily influenced by other players's military capabilities the AI deems as threat, this players include other AIs, not just human player. It is often the player the AI met first, this is why if you team the AI, they become dumber, because they even consider some NPC as threat (including NPC they are actually at peace or friendly terms with), where NPC faction military power is stagnant. FFA AIs, make the AI better, i've already theorize this long ago (at vanilla planetfall), before i even check the modding tools, now after delving deeper, it confirm my suspicion.

The AI will only produce units, in repeating cycle of a set, each set is determined by a value of combat power limit set (fortunately this value can be modified in modding tools), until each of their stack has a combat power relative to those factions's best stack (or overall best stack) the AI deems as threat, this also confirm my long ago theory that is this is the reason why AI stacks even at turn 100+ only stays at 1k-1,5k combat power. I've seen 2k+ long ago but rare and only turn 80+ that these rare event happens.

There is also other constraint factor, that is the resource the AI is allowed to allocate to produce those units. By default it's very small, no wonder that is why when the AI produce T1 and T2 units they are modded, but when it is T3 and T4, they are totally unmodded (fortunately this limit can be modified). But because the modding tools doesn't allow to peek deeper let alone change further than this, it's making it quite hard for modders to see and understand how all the important variables that influence AI decision beyond what the modding tools allows affect each other and ultimately affect AI's decisions.

Other notable factor is victory types heavily influence AI plans, from my experiences, most games often set a general base plan for their AIs, then modify this and there for specific goals for specific victory conditions, that is not the case here, at least from what i've found in the modding tools. To illustrate what i mean, for example, if you disable doomsday and enable domination, then the AI plan for the murderous type of goal is active, but they will so neglect their research thus actually unable to murder anyone, so to provide the best AI, players need to enable all victory conditions. In my unmodded games, AI often race for doomsday victory at turn 50-70 (i never disable any victory conditions), these always happens before i checked the modding tools, now i understand why.

Regarding AI decisions on upgrading their units's mods, they have priorities too, i haven't check them deeper though.

The tools also allow to dictate the AI in a quite step by step way, especially strategically, like setting a complex plan for them, this will require time to experiment for us modders to actually create good result regarding improving AI performances, because these resources cannot be peeked and delved deeper too, so it's going to be quite tricky endeavour to combine quite a simple set of instructions to make a complex bigger instruction.

I did an experiment to see how far the AI can be pushed, sometimes, the AI do succeed in what i told them too, but sometimes they stray in a very unexpected results. When they do succeed, they manage to produce 5-7 bombardons, 7-11 harriers, several other T2 and T1 at around turn 20-25, mods wise they use a mostly T1 mods with a little bit of T2 (which is intended as i haven't modified any resources related to AI unit mods), not counting those units they purchase from NPC, but disabling NPCs factions make this result more constant, which is why i'll test it without any NPC for now. And this is the interesting thing, their primary priority is not capturing colonies nor sectors of human players, but to hunt down the human's players best stacks, this result in the human player cannot defend their colonies and forced to be nomads, then i try making sector garrison nonexistent (which also affect the AI, but when they are too superior in everything and leave no hole in their territory unchecked, no garrison is no big deal for the AI), it's even very torturing for the human player, as it's a free territory for the AI. That is just one AI, imagine surrounded by multiple of these psychos. When they stray, they will just mass T1, and attack any hostile stacks without purpose. There is some hidden variables that influence their decisions here, which unfortunately the modding tools can't access, this is when it get tricky to make the result more constant whilst the modding tools only allow not so deep modification towards the value and the instructions are too few imo. And i'll tone down those psychos of course after i figure out how to make it more constant, this is just to see how far if they are pushed, if i tone them now, it will take me more turns to see and test them (even with console command a.k.a cheats), while i haven't much time nowadays.
 
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I, and at least one other person, have done this. I even made sectors as small as 7 hexes, just for fun.

I was experimenting with reducing unit speeds across the board, and reducing the sector size, so that it would take longer to traverse the map, hopefully leading to more discrete metropolitan areas, as opposed to having cities kind of bleed into each other as they do now.


It is a visual mess because everything is designed around larger sectors, but the principal is there.

Also, some other guy managed to make summonable units buildable, e.g. Valkyries, and it took me a while but I figured out how to do that as well.

Go on discord and chat in the modding channel there, the people there are far more knowledgeable than I am (I am an ignoramus :p)

Now, back on topic:

AI is crucial imho because most players are going to be single players, so whatever game systems are in place need to be handled by the AI, or you design the game in such a way that the AI plays by a different set of rules.

I would prioritise this over content as well.

If I were to make an AoW, I would:
.....

Yeah, i can imagine how it's a mess there.

Your ideas is very brilliant imo. They should get pinned imo (if possible), after all isn't that is the purpose of this thread to begin with, i mean collecting ideas to make the next AoW game better overall than all existing iterations.

Regarding modding for planetfall, i'll definitely lurk there, but i haven't really commit my time for planetfall's modding though, mostly now is just tinkering for personal fun, seeing how far the tools can be pushed

I just got an idea for you modders, why not make AoW fantasy settings in planetfall engine using the modding tools, it's should be possible looking at what the tools is capable of. But will require quite a big amount of modders of course.
 
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After tinkering a bit with the mod, i'm quite staggered by the possibility it can achieve.

Now i'm probably right that the reason why the dev decided to stay silent while there are many things people deems lacking for the current game is because of the possibility the modding tools alone provides

Here is the example:


1) can be partially achieved with the current mod tools. I mean there is currently two type of strategic buff towards stack, one is lasting until said stack enter combat, the other is duration based. The tools allows modification to the latter, for the former, it's probably possible but tricky. The only thing the tools can't replicate (as far as i know) the enchant system of AoW2 is it can't introduce strategic buff to single unit, however can still be achieved by the player by just making a stack has one unit

2) while i agree, it can be achieved with mod too

3) this is interesting idea, fortunately it can partially be achieved by the modding tools. I mean the tools can make building cost cosmite, but cannot make it has cosmite upkeep, perhaps there is a way on this, but if there is it will be tricky

4) whilst i agree, the tools once again can partially achieve it.

5) probably can be achieved too because there is some resources related to units's properties like "accuracy", but i haven't checked directly the tools relating to those properties

The points below number 5, is surprisingly can be partially achieved too. The tools allow quite a huge modification to what sector exploitation defaultly do, like specification buildings tied to them, and probably even change sector exploitation upgrades do.

How much a newly recruited unit rank bonus have certainly can be modified by the tools, i have tinker with this

Another surprising thing i found is there is a possibility that the size of a sector can be changed, like to total area (in hexes) it have, potentially making the map larger, haven't checked whether it clash with RMG resources properties though, if there isn't then yes the map can be made bigger. And even a weirder map templates can be made

In short, the mod can make the entire game truly a different game, or rather truly different experience for the players

My guess is, with planetfall, the dev take the opportunity to both try new things (sci fi settings) and to do some experiments. I guess there will be quite long time before the next AoW game because if i'm right the dev will see how far the community mods go, then collect all the data needed to make the next game better, this will take some time, because currently there aren't many mods with large or staggering scope (like the oftenly wished WH40k mod)
Yes but the thread is what we would like to be changed from the designers in AoW4. So the base game would have them from the get go and be balanced around them.
 
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This is a typical game for me, I like to play largest maps with 12 players where everyone has adjacent neighbors. There are no camps/teleports and my bronzemark was food which I annexed at size 12 i.e. quite late (science sector first, residential sector next). Amazons don't need food early due to racial bonus. Yes, having more difficulty levels than current 5 would be a perfect solution indeed. With the mod I use there are 9 levels with 4 new levels above existing extreme. This game is rather easy because of animals and ascended teachers, I lost my previous game at this level. AIs have colonies everywhere and huge armies everywhere too.

I see. But don't you want your first city to grow as fast as possible unless amazon's hunting food income from marauders makes up plenty of difference enough to delay the food sector?


Indeed, in previous page (i think), i did say there are some factors that influence why the AI is as it is (without any mod). Which i found rather weird.

There is no mod trying to fix it so far because it's not that simple, there are other factors, and i suspect hidden factors which modding tools cannot access.

I'll list what i found so far.

The AI has different definition of game phases (as said by those posters in steam forums), late game is turn 55, i was told that some people said there is phase(s) later than late game, but i suspect they have either mod it themselves and forgot that they did or download a mod which include new phases there. Because my purely unmodded planetfall so far only has 3 definition of phases for the AI. Start game, at turn 1 - 30, by 30 the game define it as mid game, turn 55 is defined as late game.

However, there are other more complex factors involved in AI decision as to why the AI doesn't mod their tier 3 and 4 units, and why they produce them in a so small number relative to time passes, and relative to other players the AI consider as threats. First of this factor is unit priorities, by default their unit priorities regarding tier of the units are set to be the same from tier 1, 2, 3, 4. Then other factor in their decisions is heavily influenced by other players's military capabilities the AI deems as threat, this players include other AIs, not just human player. It is often the player the AI met first, this is why if you team the AI, they become dumber, because they even consider some NPC as threat (including NPC they are actually at peace or friendly terms with), where NPC faction military power is stagnant. FFA AIs, make the AI better, i've already theorize this long ago (at vanilla planetfall), before i even check the modding tools, now after delving deeper, it confirm my suspicion.

The AI will only produce units, in repeating cycle of a set, each set is determined by a value of combat power limit set (fortunately this value can be modified in modding tools), until each of their stack has a combat power relative to those factions's best stack (or overall best stack) the AI deems as threat, this also confirm my long ago theory that is this is the reason why AI stacks even at turn 100+ only stays at 1k-1,5k combat power. I've seen 2k+ long ago but rare and only turn 80+ that these rare event happens.

There is also other constraint factor, that is the resource the AI is allowed to allocate to produce those units. By default it's very small, no wonder that is why when the AI produce T1 and T2 units they are modded, but when it is T3 and T4, they are totally unmodded (fortunately this limit can be modified). But because the modding tools doesn't allow to peek deeper let alone change further than this, it's making it quite hard for modders to see and understand how all the important variables that influence AI decision beyond what the modding tools allows affect each other and ultimately affect AI's decisions.

Other notable factor is victory types heavily influence AI plans, from my experiences, most games often set a general base plan for their AIs, then modify this and there for specific goals for specific victory conditions, that is not the case here, at least from what i've found in the modding tools. To illustrate what i mean, for example, if you disable doomsday and enable domination, then the AI plan for the murderous type of goal is active, but they will so neglect their research thus actually unable to murder anyone, so to provide the best AI, players need to enable all victory conditions. In my unmodded games, AI often race for doomsday victory at turn 50-70 (i never disable any victory conditions), these always happens before i checked the modding tools, now i understand why.

Regarding AI decisions on upgrading their units's mods, they have priorities too, i haven't check them deeper though.

The tools also allow to dictate the AI in a quite step by step way, especially strategically, like setting a complex plan for them, this will require time to experiment for us modders to actually create good result regarding improving AI performances, because these resources cannot be peeked and delved deeper too, so it's going to be quite tricky endeavour to combine quite a simple set of instructions to make a complex bigger instruction.

I did an experiment to see how far the AI can be pushed, sometimes, the AI do succeed in what i told them too, but sometimes they stray in a very unexpected results. When they do succeed, they manage to produce 5-7 bombardons, 7-11 harriers, several other T2 and T1 at around turn 20-25, mods wise they use a mostly T1 mods with a little bit of T2 (which is intended as i haven't modified any resources related to AI unit mods), not counting those units they purchase from NPC, but disabling NPCs factions make this result more constant, which is why i'll test it without any NPC for now. And this is the interesting thing, their primary priority is not capturing colonies nor sectors of human players, but to hunt down the human's players best stacks, this result in the human player cannot defend their colonies and forced to be nomads, then i try making sector garrison nonexistent (which also affect the AI, but when they are too superior in everything and leave no hole in their territory unchecked, no garrison is no big deal for the AI), it's even very torturing for the human player, as it's a free territory for the AI. That is just one AI, imagine surrounded by multiple of these psychos. When they stray, they will just mass T1, and attack any hostile stacks without purpose. There is some hidden variables that influence their decisions here, which unfortunately the modding tools can't access, this is when it get tricky to make the result more constant whilst the modding tools only allow not so deep modification towards the value and the instructions are too few imo. And i'll tone down those psychos of course after i figure out how to make it more constant, this is just to see how far if they are pushed, if i tone them now, it will take me more turns to see and test them (even with console command a.k.a cheats), while i haven't much time nowadays.

This does kind of line up with what I have witnessed in my games. So there was some kind of delay after all. I had a feeling. This is likely the reason why they tend to annex golden landmarks rather late into the game as well.
 
No, I don't want first colony to grow as fast as possible because size does not matter yet. Research and production are more important for capital, it spams colonizers, happiness events are generated more often at lower size. I started another game where I had to make food sector first and I am strugling with research (landmark was production so it is not that bad colony).
 
No, I don't want first colony to grow as fast as possible because size does not matter yet. Research and production are more important for capital, it spams colonizers, happiness events are generated more often at lower size. I started another game where I had to make food sector first and I am strugling with research (landmark was production so it is not that bad colony).


I see, some of my better games was the ones where i started next to a science bronze landmark. What about capitals if all sectors next to it and the adjacent sectors had no science bonus? Meaning the sectors will be level 2 at best? Such as getting a start in equator where land is mostly arid. Is science still that the best or simply just energy/prod?
 
This does kind of line up with what I have witnessed in my games. So there was some kind of delay after all. I had a feeling. This is likely the reason why they tend to annex golden landmarks rather late into the game as well.

Yes. Unfortunately changing the value of those game phases definitions does little to affect AI decision. Furthermore, there is no way to exactly know how that value is being used by the AI algorithm, aside from guessing, and trial and error. I mean for example changing the late game definition to be earlier does not always means the AI will be better, for all we know, changing it to later can actually make the AI better.

In my recent experiment, i change late game to 35, the AI is worse, currently i want to try whether it is possible to remove phases entirely, i'm being told the definitions cannot be removed, i'll see whether changing the value to negative disables it, i haven't got the time to try it though.

There are of course other factors like i said.
 
I see, some of my better games was the ones where i started next to a science bronze landmark. What about capitals if all sectors next to it and the adjacent sectors had no science bonus? Meaning the sectors will be level 2 at best? Such as getting a start in equator where land is mostly arid. Is science still that the best or simply just energy/prod?
I have it in my current game. I am on turn 50 and the capital creates 53 research at size 19 with residential sector built, it is hilariously bad game regarding research and it is actually my best research colony. AIs steal energy from me every 2-3 turns. I ignore everything else and research operational defense (secret state doctrine is not enough). I didn't attack anyone before turn 45 (wanted to see if AI is good that late) and ended sending 42 units in ball formation (I am Heritor Kerko with production penalty so I rely on NPC units and Drained) to poor dvar. I still have only 5 colonies but AI does not even threaten my colonies because they are close to each other and protected by fast units.
 
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To comment on the OG:
What I would keep:
  • From Planetfall:The modding system, covert ops, the XP system, strongly differing factions, the combat system, a truly limiting resource (e.g. cosmite), anomaly sites, landmarks, orbital relays (aka buildable teleporters), the unit conversion mechanisms, production (and research) overflow.
  • From AoW3: The Underground layer, the pretty overview paper map when you zoom out, builders, terraforming, the great variety between classes, the halflings, building structures wherever you desire, seal victories.
  • From both: Buildings that buff units produced in that city
What I would trash:
  • From Planetfall: Simultaneous research (economy or army? bah I research both at the same time - stupid idea imho), Cities only in sector centers.
  • From AoW3: T1&2 become more or less useless in mid-endgame, stupid mono-army stacks of fast T3/4 units killing everything (knights, manticores, exalted etc.), boring radial domain extensions.
  • From both: Guards on low level resource nodes - Spawners, landmarks, anomalies, shrines etc. are enough there are too many small scale repetitive fights imho.
What I'd like to add (which neither of them had):
  • Transports (like in AoW2/SM)
  • Spies (tells you what an enemy city is currently doing and gives to option to sabotage it)
  • Units that can shift/tunnel between layers (like e.g in AoW2/SM)
  • Strategic spells like "Enchanted woods" from AoW2/SM etc. imho they worked better than the sector specific void storm or domain wide operations/enchantments in planetfall/AoW3.
  • Play a wizard/theocrat class like the ones in AoW2/SM (sitting in a tower/temple) and a warrior class like in AoW3 (and AoW1) roaming the map.
  • Make playing "tall" instead of "wide" a viable option.
  • A battle reinforcement system (armies close by on the strategic map come to help in battle and arrive a few turns later on the tactical battlefield)
  • Give the option to promote, a limited amount of, normal troops that reach the elite rank to heroes instead of (or complementary to) heroes popping up randomly offering their service.
  • Have some units give tags to other units when killed (e.g. "monster slayer" (good) or "cursed by warlock" (bad))
  • An Arena mode (just make an army, fight another army on a tactical map)
 
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why does everyone always want to play tall

what about that playstyle is more appealing
Not more appealing per se but having more than one viable playstyle would make it less repetitive. The original winning condition "kill the leader and capture the throne" is already perfect for allowing both playstyles. Realistically though all AoW games could also have the winning condition "control 70% of the map" and a game wouldn't look any different because painting the map in your own colour is the by far strongest approach to play it.
 
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Your ideas is very brilliant imo. They should get pinned imo (if possible), after all isn't that is the purpose of this thread to begin with, i mean collecting ideas to make the next AoW game better overall than all existing iterations.


Thanks.

I just got an idea for you modders, why not make AoW fantasy settings in planetfall engine using the modding tools, it's should be possible looking at what the tools is capable of. But will require quite a big amount of modders of course.


You answered your own question there, it would require a tonne of modding!

why does everyone always want to play tall

what about that playstyle is more appealing


I'd rather manage multiple armies than multiple cities, especially with cities requiring more management as the game series progresses.

AoW1 1 cities were...simple, PF cities are....a whole game really.
 
In response to what the OP mentioned, and yes I know this thread is a year old but now this should be even more relevant than ever.

What I would keep:
  • From Planetfall: Modding system, unique races (reminds me of AoW 1), combat system, sectors (if I had to choose between sectors or domains), the tech tree (no random spells!), the city building (each city can have a specific focus), better unit abilities and hit/miss chance in combat.
  • From AoW III: Underground & Depths layers and the fantasy setting (please bring back the original 12 races), world events (better than Planetfall) and the strategic map (it's much more clear!).
What I would trash:
  • From Planetfall: Simultaneous research and the sci-fi theme (fantasy is just more appealing).
  • From AoW III: Morale bonus/malus for winning fights, losing a hero, etc. (these were removed in Planetfall I believe).
  • From Both: The Flanking mechanic (I think it's extremely unfun).
What I would like to bring back:
  • From AoW I: Race relations & alignments (they were much more important), more units (it had 12 per race), storm altars, and fixed size cities (this will probably never happen).
Everything else I am pretty much neutral on, they can keep or trash it or rework it into something better.
 
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