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

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Some of these may have been mentioned already but here go some of the small but great improvements of Planetfall:

- Red movement in combat, making for more interesting decisions (as if there weren't enough already).
- Arial layer in combat, although it can be a bit of a hindrance when selecting units.
- Combat replay button ... a life-saver!
 
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Oh yes those are definetely. The current game needs lots of quality of life improvements. It have been asked numerous times if i remember correctly, since vanila.

Regarding the questions i asked, the first one regarding the sector boundaries, never mind that for now, i haven't really thought how, but for now it'll be too complicated.

Do we have any list already on the quality of life improvements we want for planetfall? Or we need to make a new one maybe

Anyway, what are you people take on these:

1) Relevancy of water regions currently, whether it needs to be adjusted for next AoW or not

2) About combat, what about multiple hexes size units? I mean units with more than one hex size, abilities and map will need to be adjusted for this of course.

3) I'll probably re ask this again here. About Resources, do you think we need more resources type or less? Or the current one is perfectly fine?
 
I think I wouldn't have minded some sort of 'luxury' type resource. Having everything require Cosmite makes it more of a limiting stat than an actual resource. There is nothing to trade. And it just feels a bit dull economically.
 
i don't think the type of gameplay that comes from "luxury" resources is ever terribly interesting so much as just more busywork, and imo if there's one thing PF should be trying to avoid at all costs it's busy work. cosmite being a limiting stat is a good thing - it makes each individual node a major strategic focal point and that's the primary purpose it needs to serve. i'd hate to see aow get mechanically bloated
 
I'm not sure why you would assume a luxury resource is going to be busywork, when Cosmite is just a limiting stat. Changing a name doesn't change the mechanics. :p

To me, Cosmite was too binary. I either had enough for units and mod, or I didn't. RNG potentially blocking you from fielding decent units is an issue.
 
if the idea is rename cosmite to luxury resource then i guess i don't care, but if it's the way they work in any other 4x like endless legends or civ it just seems like adding complexity without adding any real difference in decision making, i.e. busywork

the way you describe cosmite is also exactly how i would describe energy and to a certain extent tech, that's just kinda how resources work?
 
Another way to make water sectors more relevant is to simply increase the map size. This means..

Distance between continents must take at least five turns or more of travel across the water even as flying/floating units. And in addition there would be of course, excellent sources of energy/cosmite on islands. This in turn strengthens the value of having a navy.


As things stand from what I have seen in AoW3 + Its expansions and AOW: Planetfall.

Distances between continents and islands has always been one turn to very extreme and rare cases it's 3 turns. Thus in AOW, there is no need for a navy, water is something that people run in and splash each other with and run out.

Next and ship's lack of capability to deal pain to enemy cities is nonexistent. Unhappy modifier oh I'm so scared. I'm quivering in my invincible city unassailable to ships. yeah, just stay there in the waters where you can float impotently as I enjoy taking your cities on land. Ships need to be able to shell and take cities for me to be actually scared of them and build a navy.

Although consideration would be needed to be made because Extreme difficulty AI can poop out units instantly. There's no defending against a turn 30 navy rush. :p

Water in AOW series will never be relevant like it is in civ series. This is AOW's strength and weakness at same time.


Significant drawbacks to increasing map sizes? Turn times :p Units gotta process and move. Need to implement solutions that help speed this up is of paramount importance.


Probably rambling below:

Second: It seems to be a overall goal of AOW devs to shrink the map size. And devs of all other strategy turn based map games I've played to now.. their goals seems to align along with aow as well. Shrink the strategy map. There isn't very much to explore to be honest. Gone is the days when it would take me days and days to explore a entire world. I'm willing to be lenient on the devs for Planetfall's map sizes because it seems to be experimental game.

But if AOW4 maps is smaller than AOW3. I will be sorely disappointed and then skip on buying it's expansion packs and wish you all good luck on your arena sized 1v1 match games. There is no empires to build. No world to explore. Just look through a valley and it's done.
 
Regarding luxury resources. Personally i prefer a little bit more variety. But from what i understand planetfall simplify it to just energy, and possibly cosmite. If the luxury effect is to boost happiness, i believe it is quite redundant with the things already in game, like happiness booster buildings. As for Luxury as in "rare" resources, i like it, but then again, unless it's very interesting in terms of game mechanic, i think it will be very overshadowed by the focus of the game, that is combat. So any interesting idea regarding the luxury resources?

Regarding water relevancy. I guess yes the reason of it being less relevant now, is partially because of the smaller map size, although i'm not sure about the current map size, i mean i did have a feeling the largest map in planetfall is smaller than the one in previous AoW but i haven't really compare the size.

Personally i prefer larger map, perhaps to satisfy both sides, the game should just give new option of the largest map being as large if not larger as in the previous AoW series, i mean a new map size that is larger than the current largest, anyone who prefer this can enjoy it, those who don't can stick with the 2nd largest.
 
I think this might illustrate the weakness of aow3 and planetfall maps for naval battles the best.

land 1.png

The brown random shapes is the land masses/ islands.

It is labeled continent but in actuality they're really more of a large islands to me :p The black rectangle things is abstact standin for ships. And this is generally where they would be positioned if players bothered to even build any at all because the waters can be easily bypassed in 1 turn.

As the result, the boosted cosmite in waters do in fact encourage players to try and build some ships but they can just easily build flyers instead and call it a day. Reason: AOW Ships cannot hurt enemy cities + bombard land units. AOW ships is a joke. :p I mean.. haven't you seen how badly designed the vanguard ships is? Everything about them just offends my eyes. xD Looks like it was slapped together in five minutes and nothing else was considered further. Vanguard battleship just screams design failure. One good shot to its bow and it is out of commission.



Anyways, now lets look at land 2 picture.

land 2.png


Both images is of same size but i made lands smaller to help show how making distances between continents greater will naturally raise the value of having a deep blue navy. Red arrows showing many avenues of possible attacks. And red star in middle means attack can occur in every direction.

Its only then, having a navy becomes important and necessary. In addition they must be able to attack ocean based cities + cities built on the coast and bombard land units. It should be understood that making navy more important will slow down the game greatly because extra time will be needed to establish production harbors in order to crank out alot of ships in acceptable time frame and cost. This in turn will take the greatly needed cosmite from land units and put them into naval units.


And it is one of many reasons why balloning colonizer costs need to be removed. Completely unecessary and doesn't effects the AI anyways.
 
I think this might illustrate the weakness of aow3 and planetfall maps for naval battles the best.

View attachment 667777

The brown random shapes is the land masses/ islands.

It is labeled continent but in actuality they're really more of a large islands to me :p The black rectangle things is abstact standin for ships. And this is generally where they would be positioned if players bothered to even build any at all because the waters can be easily bypassed in 1 turn.

As the result, the boosted cosmite in waters do in fact encourage players to try and build some ships but they can just easily build flyers instead and call it a day. Reason: AOW Ships cannot hurt enemy cities + bombard land units. AOW ships is a joke. :p I mean.. haven't you seen how badly designed the vanguard ships is? Everything about them just offends my eyes. xD Looks like it was slapped together in five minutes and nothing else was considered further. Vanguard battleship just screams design failure. One good shot to its bow and it is out of commission.



Anyways, now lets look at land 2 picture.

View attachment 667779


Both images is of same size but i made lands smaller to help show how making distances between continents greater will naturally raise the value of having a deep blue navy. Red arrows showing many avenues of possible attacks. And red star in middle means attack can occur in every direction.

Its only then, having a navy becomes important and necessary. In addition they must be able to attack ocean based cities + cities built on the coast and bombard land units. It should be understood that making navy more important will slow down the game greatly because extra time will be needed to establish production harbors in order to crank out alot of ships in acceptable time frame and cost. This in turn will take the greatly needed cosmite from land units and put them into naval units.


And it is one of many reasons why balloning colonizer costs need to be removed. Completely unecessary and doesn't effects the AI anyways.
I don't see how the conclusion from last paragraph is related to rest of the post. I expected something like "that's why mods for ships should cost just energy and zero cosmite". If you claim AI is not affected by increasing cosmite costs of colonizers, it is a great reason to keep it as AI needs every possible boost to stay competitive with experienced players.
 
I don't see how the conclusion from last paragraph is related to rest of the post. I expected something like "that's why mods for ships should cost just energy and zero cosmite". If you claim AI is not affected by increasing cosmite costs of colonizers, it is a great reason to keep it as AI needs every possible boost to stay competitive with experienced players.


It is immersion breaking to see AI with 12+ cities and full stacks everywhere fully modded. And on top of it, this change was made because of online pvp. It was forced upon us single players who enjoys playing on enormous maps without our input. They didn't even have the decency to place a toggle on Ballooning colonizer cost Y/N as a option in the game upon planet set up. And then i get insults like this from the AI who place worthless cities inside my planned territory settlement but I can't place a colony in because of the ballooning colonizer costs.

I don't know about the online pvp players but if they fought the AI that I am currently fighting all the time in singleplayer they'll break down in tears and whine about unfairness.

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Balloning colonizer costs is world's most worst idea and only relevant if you're pvping against players online.


AI is sending waves of colonizers into that land and stealing a ton of land that I need to develop and expand because of ballooning colonizer costs.

Disgusting.

Of course i refused to sell the sector bases to the AI. They are SPITE BASES!


It is completely unacceptable for the colonizers to be expensive as they currently are. Restore them back to 120 energy per colonizer. Like today if devs can. Thanks. And make it a toggleable option.
 
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1. There is a mod which reverts colonizer cost back to what it was before that patch.
2. It does not require to be MP player to have easy time vs extreme AI. I actually stopped playing (especially in empire mode) because the game is too easy. AIs with 12 colonies still often die without giving hard fights because of weak armies.
 
1. There is a mod which reverts colonizer cost back to what it was before that patch.
2. It does not require to be MP player to have easy time vs extreme AI. I actually stopped playing (especially in empire mode) because the game is too easy. AIs with 12 colonies still often die without giving hard fights because of weak armies.

1. Yeah but the fact that it was a pvp balance change forced upon singleplayers.

2. I bet the reason is because everyone rushes the AI and kills them before they could even have stuff up and running. I meet pretty quite hefty armies often. And see fully modded T4s.


And most worst of it all. The balloning colonizer costs removed 3 Es from the 4E equation.

Explore, Expand, exploit, exterminate.

Now with the super ultra expensive through the roof pricey colonizer that's built with gold, silver, and diamonds, emeralds, and their seats in colonizers is lined with furs from minks that's only found on planet earth and then hunted and sent to whatever planet the colonizers built on, the Explore, Expand, Exploit has become nonexistent and now there is only exterminate.

Why explore, expand, exploit when the AI will do the first 3Es for you and then you do only the last E which made the games so friggin boring.

Having only exterminate is fine and all if I was playing a FPS shooter against other people. But its not acceptable for a 4x turn based strategy game.
 
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Larger map should indirectly lessen the emphasis on the exterminate aspect

Regarding colonizer cost, the "energy efficient assembly line" building is able to reduce the cost of colonizer too, but i don't know whether this still apply in the current version of the game
 
1. Yeah but the fact that it was a pvp balance change forced upon singleplayers.

2. I bet the reason is because everyone rushes the AI and kills them before they could even have stuff up and running. I meet pretty quite hefty armies often. And see fully modded T4s.


And most worst of it all. The balloning colonizer costs removed 3 Es from the 4E equation.

Explore, Expand, exploit, exterminate.

Now with the super ultra expensive through the roof pricey colonizer that's built with gold, silver, and diamonds, emeralds, and their seats in colonizers is lined with furs from minks that's only found on planet earth and then hunted and sent to whatever planet the colonizers built on, the Explore, Expand, Exploit has become nonexistent and now there is only exterminate.

Why explore, expand, exploit when the AI will do the first 3Es for you and then you do only the last E which made the games so friggin boring.

Having only exterminate is fine and all if I was playing a FPS shooter against other people. But its not acceptable for a 4x turn based strategy game.
1. I am SP and I was happy to get the patch. It felt like work micromanaging all those 50+ colonies.
2. I am sorry, you are playing far from optimal way. I've never seen a modded tier 4 AI unit in my 1600 hours despite playing the largest maps with disabled victory conditions mostly. I even tried to use mods which increase cosmite income and energy, still no success in meeting them.
 
1. I am SP and I was happy to get the patch. It felt like work micromanaging all those 50+ colonies.
2. I am sorry, you are playing far from optimal way. I've never seen a modded tier 4 AI unit in my 1600 hours despite playing the largest maps with disabled victory conditions mostly. I even tried to use mods which increase cosmite income and energy, still no success in meeting them.

1. Don't settle obsessively then? Try execrising restraint. I'm sorry but you did it to yourself. A dev had to step in and control your settling habits. At the expense of everyone else like me. Planetfall turned into civ5 where I settle the first 3-4 cities then be bored and blocked by cosmite costs on colonizers. I plan on applying the mod after i finish the current new haven planet game.

2. A radical idea? Maybe just maybe almost everyone else is doing it the wrong way? I see Modded t4s very regularly in my RMG Games. From what I can see, there seems to be a certain amount of criteria that needs to be met before the AI decide to start conquering it's golden landmarks + building modded T4s. And its almost always a AI that has succeeded in defeating all local threats and is in good position. Then it becomes bold enough to subjugate the gold landmarks and risk losing units in them. Maybe what I am doing is in fact the optimal way for the AI to succeed in its' current incarnation? It might be considered a insane idea. Idk.

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When me and green Kir'ko started fighting for dominance of planet with assortment of lackeys at both of our sides, green kir'ko definitely had alot of modded t4s.

And weaker AIs tend to have alot of t4s as well but they tend to be unmodded. Seems like the cosmite strain on it is quite real.

20200921202907_1.jpg


It might be the result of how I tend to play. I almost never get to declare wars but I almost always get wars declared on me. I do my best to state my intentions towards the AIs in every game I play. That way the AI can behave and response properly towards me. Unless I'm roleplaying a treacherous backstabbing bastard. Because of that I tend to encounter a pretty strong resistance. I don't just go lol. i'll just dow on a dime and blindside the AI completely. Even when it meant consequences of facing a prepared and strong resistance every time I start a war. But hey, that means I'll have alot of awesome battles. That's what AoW is all about. Awesome tactical battles.


20200914190535_1.jpg

If a previously +800 friendly AI start to let the relationship with me deteriorate on purpose or I start degrading the relationship first then both parties know we're coming for each other.

The planet ended in a battle between two alliances, The green kir'ko + red assembly vs me + Shakaran who has been losing cities to green kir'ko and then orange dvar who has been fighting the red assembly. I won :p

Tho, before me and green kir'ko started the war, both of us was jockeying for position control on maps and moved a ton of units around. Only victory condition enabled is domination because doomsday ends game too quickly for me.

I saw the map above, i have a question, what is ratio of the land : water there?

A land type of map in galactic Didn't manipulate the settings other than increase the map size from medium to large. Already completed planet molarix last month and moved to new haven.
 
1. Yeah but the fact that it was a pvp balance change forced upon singleplayers.


I'm not so sure about this.

The MP crowd tends not to have AI enabled anyway.

And MP games are constructed such that there is no real need for escalating costs, because, iirc, under the old system you didn;t build many colonisers anyway, because the return on investment on a city took too long.

Having more cities is really a single player thing.

And that makes me think this change was actually targetted at singleplay.

Btw, most Triumph changes are actually targetted at SP, for the simple reason that the VAST majority of players are SP players.

The most vocal are MP in general, and they are very useful for hunting out the worst balance offenders.

In my case, I have about 1,000 hours logged, of which maybe 20 are multiplayer. And I doubt I am unique.


Anyway, @Ericridge you are making alot of noise over something with a very easy fix, i.e. player made mod. Infact, this is one of those mods you could make yourself, after a couple of hours of experimenting.
 
And its almost always a AI that has succeeded in defeating all local threats and is in good position. Then it becomes bold enough to subjugate the gold landmarks and risk losing units in them. Maybe what I am doing is in fact the optimal way for the AI to succeed in its' current incarnation? It might be considered a insane idea. Idk.


Not an insane idea, the game allows for you to play it almost however you like, so enjoy yourself.

But why are you complaining when others play it how they like?

Also, if you want stronger AI, there is a mod out there, which I have used, and it actually works quite well, for amping up the Ai aggression and ability.