Aquatic gameplay

[Uriak]

So, in the early playtest thread it was said that they didn't bother to play with the sea/aquatic units or areas. Often, in tile based 4X games the sea is a bit of annoying element : Needed to leave islands and continents, powerful for trades if existing, but requiring a whole distinct set of technologies, units and by it's very nature, not that interesting tactically.

In planetfall the devs did what they could to gently nudge the players into interacting with sea zones, they slashed the cost of creating and maintaining the aquatic units, they added specific resources nodes and exploitations, and had even some dwelling (for the psy fish sub faction) there, and tried to put hazards in the tactical maps. Even if the transports aren't liked much, they did allow to use land units in these battles. But it seems it still wasn't really compelling, and a thankless task for the players to really dip their feet in the water.

A very different example of handling water areas is from Dominion, where not only many factions could build underwater some would have to start there and many systems interacted specifically with this : from units requiring to be either amphivious, undead or enchanted to go in there, to weapons becoming rusty and mostly polearms being efficient there, and the many, many spells that would work differently. But that's pretty extreme and was based around the ideas those factions would simpley fight near the ocean floorts instead of using navies.

Water can stay mostly an obstacle, and serve as big divider (in the way mountains can be) but at the same time sea faring or underwater cities and creatures are quite a staple of high fantasy and even if Age of Wonder is not really an economic centered strategy game, historically coastlines have been super important.

What would be your favorite approach about it ?

 

[Chainlinc3]

I'm not sure I'd like actual underwater play, but I would definitely like the oceans to be more interesting.

The first, and major thing for me, is to make ships that are actually interesting. I never played heavily aquatic in Planetfall, but even when I needed to use the ocean, I preferred to just embark a land stack rather than build an ocean stack. The ships were beefy bricks, but not interesting enough to warrant working with their restrictions. I'd advocate two elements to solve this:

1. More diverse naval units. Make fleet composition something to actually think about. This feels pretty self-explanatory.
2. Naval units that matter outside the tactical layer. They're already going to hurt for being ocean-bound so they can't actually impact land armies and city sieges (I'm assuming we're keeping Planetfall's system where cities get built at an area's "center"). Give them extra juice. Maybe an intercept range, where they'll be given the opportunity to engage any land army transporting within X tiles. Maybe some sort of "artillery support" where they can provide tactical abilities to land battles in a radius. Heck, even if they can just establish and protect trade routes, they'd have a role.

The big issue with them as-is for me is that they feel like just a slightly more price-effective way of fighting on water, which is a bad deal when it comes at the cost of being useless out of water.

If you make holding water actually matter, then water becomes interesting. But when the game design itself basically just treats it as "inconvenient land," I'm not surprised that the players are uninterested. I'm hoping that they plan to do something with it this time.

 

[Technogremlin]

I dont like land units using their abilities on water. I thing they should just be mostly defenceless transport ships, so you have to use dedicated naval combat units to defend them.

going underwater would be cool too. the sea floor could be another map layer. that shouldnt be your main way of getting accross the water though

 

[Big J Money]

I think I'm definitely in the minority, but I tend to be fine when strategy games have a less involved naval system. Just being able to use the ocean to transport armies and land surprise attacks is pretty interesting to me.

Dominions has some really great and thematic stuff with regards to aquatic kingdoms, but they're also a static sprite-based game, so they're able to have dozens (hundreds?) of unique units in the game. And I believe it's a 2 person dev team, even.

For comparison, would you say that Civ V/VI have satisfying naval systems or not? I like the naval systems in that and in Endless Legend

 

[Wushuki]

I dont like land units using their abilities on water. I thing they should just be mostly defenceless transport ships, so you have to use dedicated naval combat units to defend them.

going underwater would be cool too. the sea floor could be another map layer. that shouldnt be your main way of getting accross the water though

The problem here is that often you are thinking: "Oh, it is only a short distance over the water, I don't need an escort, it looks safe." And then suddenly a single enemy tier 1 raven scout appears. Since you can't retreat your 18 unit steam tank army is instantly killed.

I think that what they did works out well, your land units can fight, but at a significant penalty. Naval units are cheap to support and air units are a bit weaker than other types because they are more versatile. This still means that if you intercept an enemy force on the water and you took the time to build a fleet to join your troops you are at a huge advantage.

 

[Chainlinc3]

For comparison, would you say that Civ V/VI have satisfying naval systems or not? I like the naval systems in that and in Endless Legend

I don't think I ever looked at navy in Endless Legend, but I definitely like Civ's naval game.

Here's the thing though: Compared to Planetfall, Civ has several key differences.

• Navy can attack coastal cities
• Ranged navy can use artillery to support land engagements
• Several late-game naval units have unique abilities to further assist in land combat by projecting power
• A deeper roster of naval units to work with
• Embarked land units don't stand a chance against dedicated naval units

The first four are the important ones in my mind. If those weren't true, then navy would be boring, and the last one would just be punishing players for not engaging with a boring system. But because they are true, navy has tactical depth and relevance, and that 5th item makes it mandatory to have a navy if you want to work with water.

As far as I am aware, none of those items are true in Age of Wonders 3 or Planetfall.

 

[Bankipriel]

So, in the early playtest thread it was said that they didn't bother to play with the sea/aquatic units or areas. Often, in tile based 4X games the sea is a bit of annoying element : Needed to leave islands and continents, powerful for trades if existing, but requiring a whole distinct set of technologies, units and by it's very nature, not that interesting tactically.

In planetfall the devs did what they could to gently nudge the players into interacting with sea zones, they slashed the cost of creating and maintaining the aquatic units, they added specific resources nodes and exploitations, and had even some dwelling (for the psy fish sub faction) there, and tried to put hazards in the tactical maps. Even if the transports aren't liked much, they did allow to use land units in these battles. But it seems it still wasn't really compelling, and a thankless task for the players to really dip their feet in the water.

A very different example of handling water areas is from Dominion, where not only many factions could build underwater some would have to start there and many systems interacted specifically with this : from units requiring to be either amphivious, undead or enchanted to go in there, to weapons becoming rusty and mostly polearms being efficient there, and the many, many spells that would work differently. But that's pretty extreme and was based around the ideas those factions would simpley fight near the ocean floorts instead of using navies.

Water can stay mostly an obstacle, and serve as big divider (in the way mountains can be) but at the same time sea faring or underwater cities and creatures are quite a staple of high fantasy and even if Age of Wonder is not really an economic centered strategy game, historically coastlines have been super important.

What would be your favorite approach about it ?

I would love to see a DLC that adds a "waterworld' realm, with lots of new water specific realm creation options where the overworld is 100% ocean.

All current races would have to start underground and develop new spells or infrastructure to go top-side and exploit the ocean floor/depths.

Meanwhile, a new race/form (or several) could be introduced that start top-side in the ocean, but require magic or infrastructure to go underground.

The new spells & infrastructure could also then be available in other realms with limited oceans, but they would less beneficial and perhaps require forgoing other land based infrastructure for game balance, providing a strategic choice with opportunity cost.


As far as the base game, I hope that oceans are largely just a barrier, with coastal provinces allowing for food generation and trade between cities, as well as providing limited military and transport options. A few classes of military ocean units can be fun, as long as they're not mandatory to prevent coastal raiding, i.e. we should be able to use flying or ranged/magical land based units to engage ocean units.


In general, I think a line of magic tomes focusing on water and the ocean would be great, where the magical victory involved submerging the entire realm under water.

 

[Holiness]

If you make holding water actually matter, then water becomes interesting. But when the game design itself basically just treats it as "inconvenient land," I'm not surprised that the players are uninterested. I'm hoping that they plan to do something with it this time.

It's more or less confirmed, that coastal sectors are just inconvenient and ineffective land tiles.

From what I recall, none of the tomes provide a unique water improvement. Where as multiple sources upgrade land ones. Mob camp for example. Specializing a city is also a thing, and you will probably special each city around an improved tome building.

The default sea buildings seem to scale on par with the default land buildings. This is a double failure. Not only is land more valuable by default (only place to attack or defend cities), the land buildings then get additional tome improvements.

I can think of a few ways to make coastal tiles relevant, but let's be real. It's not something they will implement cause the sea isn't a priority... it probably isn't even on their list of things to look at.

But increasing the default sea yields to be better than land ones is an easy fix to make them relevant.

They should also allow fisheries to count as adjacency bonus for all land improvements, that way a specialized city has a reason to build them.

The hardest fix would be making a naval stack relevant outside of the ocean, if the coast is to remain irrelevant. But they won't make the navy have a bombard, cause that's to much work. Perhaps navy units can disembark and become a skirmisher unit of various ranks? If land units can just embark or rafts, I don't know why boats can't just become a land skirmisher unit.

 

[Chainlinc3]

I don't know why boats can't just become a land skirmisher unit.

I agree with your post and your assessment of the likely future, but I've not seen enough evidence to convince me of that situation yet.

But I also now have the mental image of goblin-boats landing goblin-marines for goblin-black ops, and it's great.

 

[Uriak]

1. More diverse naval units. Make fleet composition something to actually think about. This feels pretty self-explanatory.
2. Naval units that matter outside the tactical layer. They're already going to hurt for being ocean-bound so they can't actually impact land armies and city sieges (I'm assuming we're keeping Planetfall's system where cities get built at an area's "center"). Give them extra juice. Maybe an intercept range, where they'll be given the opportunity to engage any land army transporting within X tiles. Maybe some sort of "artillery support" where they can provide tactical abilities to land battles in a radius. Heck, even if they can just establish and protect trade routes, they'd have a role.

The big issue with them as-is for me is that they feel like just a slightly more price-effective way of fighting on water, which is a bad deal when it comes at the cost of being useless out of water.

I see what you mean, you would say the #1 reason the water units are annoying is their non influence on land, then ? naval bombardement is appealing but that seems the realm of pretty high tech units (industrial or magic based)

If there is something important to be gained/or lost from the coastals areas, would it be enough ? I guess some reef/atoll based cities could be pretty cool, with specific bonus and being able to be reachable both by land and see units perhaps ? (but the tactical maps would end up being a mess )

At the same time, in planetfall, naval units being exclusive to water explained why there were few of them (even fewer for some factions with heavy flying rosters) and that's why they kinda had to play pretty similarish roles, even if they had pretty cool actions, actually. Addind a minimum of say 4 types could had been the beginning of a strategical army composition but then you kinda have to make them worth for this extra dev. In games likes Total annihalation, Sup com, the naval wings featured or mirorred a lot of the land components (light and heavy hitter, subs, AA., radar...)

To be honest in Planetfall, even if coast and rivers specific bonus were cool, they never played as much as deep role as Civ. I kinda think both are tied : the bigger the value of watery areas, the more important their interaction with units and spells become.

 

[Kitschy]

In Planetfall on islands maps I used navy quite a bit. You basically put most of your resources into ships, war-dec everyone then just intercept every army while they are trying to get to you.

Biggest annoyance was:

• heroes unable to command (or whatever it's called) ships
• inability to get NPC ships (paragon/spacers ships)

So imo it would be great if in AoW 4 heroes could be ship captains, especially when game has a society trait Experienced Seafarers.

 

[Holiness]

So imo it would be great if in AoW 4 heroes could be ship captains, especially when game has a society trait Experienced Seafarers.

Everything is pointing to Experienced Seafarers being a trap. Don't do it. Lol

 

[Kitschy]

Everything is pointing to Experienced Seafarers being a trap. Don't do it. Lol

Lol, exactly and that's sad.

 

[Chainlinc3]

If there is something important to be gained/or lost from the coastals areas, would it be enough ?

Rather than "something important to be gained/lost in the coastal areas," I think it needs to be "something important to be gained/lost by navy." A unique role that embarked armies cannot fill. I feel like even if coastal control is valuable, as long as the territory is ultimately tied to cities that the navy cannot assault, then the ocean will continue to just be "inconvenient land."

 

[Kelben]

I vaguely recall in Planetside, together with a DLC, they made improvement to water gameplay. A few sectors were attractive to exploit i think. I recall algae for food, there were corals (cannot remember) and other stuff.

Too bad they did not keep that at least or even improve upon it. Last dev diary about city building, there are 2 overview or rather large cities next to the coast and none has a water sector exploited... does not bode well.

 

[RMan89]

To be honest I feel like there are a few things in coastal/sea gameplay annoying for me, first it's the fact that, as someone mentioned earlier, sea units can't contribute land battles and especially city battles in any way, making them useless the moment battles move inland, second the fact that land units work almost the same on water as on land with some debuffs, which I feel is like a necessary evil, since allowing them to fight with full power is just not fun, since it would make sea units even more unappealing.
I feel like Endless Legend did made sea gameplay more interesting with the fortresses and coastal bombardment + the fact that land units were boarded on weak transport ships that had a weak attack instead of their normal attacks making sea units very useful vs them.

Ultimately I believe that the problem with sea battles is that they are a somewhat mediocre land battle mirror. I get a feeling that it would be appealing for me if sea units and combat were diametrically different from land combat. Coastal bombardment would be a good addition IMO. Another thing that would be appealing for me is if sea units would be, let's says less numerous and much more powerful, while land units wouldn't be able to use their abilities and attacks like in a land battle, while not suffering from slow movement compared to other naval units, which was a big turnoff for me both in AoW3, and Planetfall (since they slowed down the whole stack).
More diversity in sea units would be useful too. Right now I can think of at least a few roles for naval units, like a long range bombardment ship (with a full action attack), a troop transport (melee attack ship), a medium range attack ship with a repeatable attack, a fast attack ship with a powerful single attack...

 

[Knut Are Mykland]

I think it will depend a bit on the player. 2 fisheries gives you access to 3 buildings you can otherwise not build. +10 gold+15food+20 production.
We do not know if one of the tomes has a fishery province improvement. All of them are not revealed to the players.

Ancient seafarers might be ok if it also guaranteed at least 4 water tiles nearby. Typically a tile with a bonus resource gives you +10. Sea tiles might not have that and are therfore ignored unless you do ancient seafarers. Fishermans guild gives +12 yield spread on 4 resource types vs the typical +10.

Also it seems you can not ignore food in AOW 4 since 15 imperium only pays for 1 turn of food income.

My standard city will probably build 2 farms,2 quarries,2 foresters,1 conduit,1 research lab,1 mine ,2 fisheries. Only after the first 11 provinces will i begin to specialise my cities.

 

[Sollis]

I would like it if there were amphibious unit types that could act as raiders, boatmen or pirates. Basically skirmishers who have a boat that they carry on land, then deploy to cross bodies of water which also enabled the unit stack they were in to traverse bodies of water more effectively. I'd like it if most cultures had their own version of this type of unit, with maybe a few that had an alternative unit type.

Also - Experienced Seafarers might not be a terrible trap. Look at it again. I think most basic province improvements only offer 5 resources, huts offer 3. Experienced seafarers makes water tiles produce 11 resource units including 2 Draft and 2 Gold. That isn't nothing, Draft income doesn't come from any other basic province improvement without a tome. If the map you're playing on has islands - this may simplify the placement of settlements by making water tiles far more valuable.

Someone above discussed having underwater be another map layer where settlements could be built. The problem with this is that underwater wouldn't be viable for all factions. The game relies on your settlements being able to be attacked. Where underground works is that it doesn't differ so significantly from above ground play. The amount of work required to get underwater to function for all factions would be significant.

That said - I wouldn't say no to an aquatic settlement type that functioned on the above-ground map with kelp and coral forests etc.

It wouldn't be so much of a stretch to have an amphibious culture group compared with an underwater layer. However, this game appears to revolve around land-based map generation. An amphibious culture would need to be able to function passably without water in order for it to be viable, so I don't think it will happen, but I'm unsure how map generation works and whether or not we could expect a culture to be able to make artificial lakes or ponds for itself.

 

[Bankipriel]

My standard city will probably build 2 farms,2 quarries,2 foresters,1 conduit,1 research lab,1 mine ,2 fisheries. Only after the first 11 provinces will i begin to specialise my cities.

Do we know if there is a way to translate mana into infrastructure production? Perhaps a spell or two that increases/boosts building production?

It would be nice if we could specialize a city around mana generation without completely nerfing its ability to maintain competitive development.

 

[Holiness]

We do not know if one of the tomes has a fishery province improvement. All of them are not revealed to the players.

Do not kid yourself bro. We know of all what's in the their 1 tomes... the foundation of future tomes. And every basic province improvement has multiple improvements they can choose from from one of the tier 1 tomes... except the fishery. Dont delude yourself. If the fishery had a tome improvement, it would of been in teir 1. To let the player know, coastal gameplay is supported. Its not. The fishery is the red headed stepchild.

I LOVE playing naval factions in 4x games and trying to make them work. But I don't kid myself into thinking my playstlye is at all supported when it's clearly not.