Brainstrom on Age of Wonders "4"

[o8livion]

"carving out your own kingdom" -that's a nice phrasing. i would like to terraform mountains to form chokepoints and building towers to defend them.
and i give u a 100% props on the melee problem with planetfall. aow3 does it way better.

 

[Windscion]

In PF, defensive positions were weak. The russian space-dwarves with their ability to make bunkers looked awesome. Then the big leaping bugs come and knock them out of their bunkers, lol. I miss the ability to build bottlenecks, like AoW3 could do with cities and outposts. The sector system removes that ability.

 

[Mourioche]

I believe it’s time for more complicated city management. Rather than having one race for each city. Multiple races could migrate to a city. Having multiple races in a city should give many more options but control would be much harder as the unrest should raise via, terrain features or else.

I already play some games with that option, and city population growth like other, but when population get +1, the generated race is cyclically chosen by races present in city (in planet, it was on ES2).
I do not really like this.

In my opinion, a good manner to manage a multi racial population cities should be to consider that you have several cities superimposed in the same territory, one per race.
Example : A city with 10 dwarves and 2 humans : consider this like a city with 10 dwarves and another city with 2 humans, each one with its own growth system.

Some ressource can be used only by few races, or shared by some races.
Ex: Food, if races eat same food, but you can also have a race who eat something else, another ressource... in fantasy you can have a race who eat pebbles...
____You could have racist politic who give ressource priority to a race from an other, or not...
Ex: Religion building, can be shared if races share the same religion, but also is only usefull and built for/by race who follow that religion, not by others.
____In a "multi superimposed cities system", in your citiy you could build several building simultaneously, one per race, but also a race can help to build something for an other race... perhaps this could depends on relationship between races
This race agree to do this with the other race ?
This race understand how to help the other ? the understanding between races can growth other time if they coexist, some race can have affinities each other, others don't.
And for population growth... you could see some new population that appear because of mixed races
Ex : A citiy with elf and humans, you will be half-elf who could appear in your population after some time... a 3th race ?

It is a new system to invent !
And like you, i hope that a good system will be developped... it's time for this, like you said.

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

That sounds like a system better suited for a fantasy sim city.

Imho, the focus should be on exploring things, expanding (at swordpoint) exploiting and then exterminating them, all wrapped up in some fun magic and battle system.


In some ways I think AoW1 had the cleanest, simplest, easiest to understand and most meaningful city management of the series - there were a set number of cities and city sizes, and these never changed. Your city management options were upgrade/fortify/recruit/install unit/produce merchandise, and there were no city buildings.

Very very simple.

Newer AoW games all improve on this somewhat, but then also add complexity and mental overhead and sometimes micro, with less juicy decisions and fun.

PF actually imho has the best city management, because of sectors. Any future project should reuse sectors somehow, and keep the buildings to management number, and make the building choices in your cities meaningful. E.G. In AoW3 you were always going to get the builder's hall, no matter race or class.

 

[Mourioche]

This soon like too simplistic.
If i had cities to manage, i want to manage cities...
A city is something more than an outpost.

 

[Liberty_Valance]

I think one of the best ways forward would be to have the following system

The planetfall unit modding system by giving the average unit a primary weapon slot (similar to heroes) and an outfit system. Lemme explain.

Instead of making a million class/race units you could literally just have say core 3 units per race and then a token unit system.

So core units would be catagorized by the following
light units: (peasant) Able to equipt light/medium outfits/very good range weapons such as long bows/ light weapons/ light mounts
heavy (warrior) Able to equipt medium/heavy armour/poor range weapons/able to equipt heavy weapons/light and heavy mounts
support: (preist) light armour only/staffs/light weapons

Then you coud have token units such as beasts and things like seige weapons limit per workshop build 1 seige workshop you get a limited amount of seige engines max (2) until the player builds a second and so on increasing the limits.

This would minimise the work on a developers end while greatly increasing the player freedoms and wants of varied units and would have a very cool cultural merging, with the above example if a human faction occupies a frostling city and enabled mounts you could equipt you light human infantry on direwolves

This goes for classes too so preist could get access to healing/nature or necromantic staffs depending on class rather than building the exact same unit for every race.

This could litterally be an adavnce system with racial synergies where races could gain benefits or penalties on gear like dwarves dont suffer from heavy armour penalities or orcs gain a damage bonus with heavy weapons.

 

[o8livion]

because i planetfalled again: no integration of this stagger-mechanic.

 

[batman14]

Planetfall is intimidating for me by its amount of content and systems. I need 3-4h ahead of me to boot up the game - and as a father of a young child, it's hard to find.
So my plea is kinda unique, but I wish the next game will be streamlined, with shorter maps, better UI and tooltip, and not too different from previous iterations, so I can get to play without having to "learn" the game for 30h+.

 

[Tropical Sunset]

because i planetfalled again: no integration of this stagger-mechanic.

Stagger mechanic is one of the best things in the game.

 

[Tropical Sunset]

Planetfall is intimidating for me by its amount of content and systems. I need 3-4h ahead of me to boot up the game - and as a father of a young child, it's hard to find.
So my plea is kinda unique, but I wish the next game will be streamlined, with shorter maps, better UI and tooltip, and not too different from previous iterations, so I can get to play without having to "learn" the game for 30h+.

Easy solutuion:
Play on a small map with fewer opponents. You may even build teams before the match to decrease the difficulty.

 

[o8livion]

Stagger mechanic is one of the best things in the game.

stagger mechanic is one of the reasons why planetfall does not really feel like a successor, but a clone.
like diablo vs path of exile. yeah nice extras, and there will be players that chose one over the other, but in the end only one of them is the icon and the original.

 

[Tropical Sunset]

stagger mechanic is one of the reasons why planetfall does not really feel like a successor, but a clone.
like diablo vs path of exile. yeah nice extras, and there will be players that chose one over the other, but in the end only one of them is the icon and the original.

Units being blown to bits by barrages should lose movement/action points otherwise the suspension of disbelief suffers. Only having a "Dead or Alive" mechanic is outdated.

 

[ruzen]

I've been following this forum pretty much every week. Just to check out what's going on.
And I just watched the Sseth video on Age of Wonders 1
I'm more confident now that Age of Wonders 4 has to go to the grander magics and race relations.
Each Age of Wonders game (aside from planetfall) was a hit and has proven they are an all-time classic. But from the start, I felt streamlining race relations map-wise and party-wise was lackluster in AoW3. This video was a reminder to me, that this part was the glue that hold the whole game together.
Age of Wonders 3 race relations only serve as a "gaining bonuses" feature. It has to be a more ongoing organic thing. Like in Age of Wonders 1.

Check out the video it's amazing.

 

[Sarmatian]

Why would you say that only Planetfall wasn't a hit? Did it flop? I thought it sold rather well.

 

[coodav]

Planetfall is fine, it just wasn't finished. There are some oddities, particularly in the UI, that persist to now. That said, the game looks and works well.

And yes, I believe it sold fine. It just wasn't critically acclaimed as much as it could have been. There is good reason behind that, though the game did make bold moves that had mixed results. Damn it was close. Just a few final touches, and the game would probably have really been exceptional. Maybe in the next incarnation.

 

[Sarmatian]

Critical acclaim nowadays is harder to get by, as there are simply much more games. I've personally enjoyed it more than AOW3.

The only thing I disliked is 3 mods. There was already a rather large difference between experienced and green units in previous game. Mods added even more power to experienced units, and losing them meant it was really hard to come back from a defeat, especially for AI.

It also sort of blurred the lines, allowed everything to be efficient against everything else with the right mods.

Heroes, I felt, was where they should've allowed more customization.

 

[ruzen]

Why would you say that only Planetfall wasn't a hit? Did it flop? I thought it sold rather well.

It didn't flop by no means. But it certainly wasn't a hit! Especially when you consider the marketing was considerably bigger given that Paradox was the publisher. When you also add up the Steam market is now much larger than in 2014 and the pandemic was starting around 2019 you would think more people were playing games at home but it was a far cry from reality.

 

[TibblesTheCat]

It didn't flop by no means. But it certainly wasn't a hit! Especially when you consider the marketing was considerably bigger given that Paradox was the publisher. When you also add up the Steam market is now much larger than in 2014 and the pandemic was starting around 2019 you would think more people were playing games at home but it was a far cry from reality.
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AoW3 also wasn't a hit. These games are always niche.
Player numbers don't really mean much if you consider how many times AOW3 was given away for free on steam.
If they give away Planetfall a few times there will be a lot more players too. If they do that before an AoW4 it would be interesting to compare.

 

[ruzen]

AoW3 also wasn't a hit. These games are always niche.
Player numbers don't really mean much if you consider how many times AOW3 was given away for free on steam.
If they give away Planetfall a few times there will be a lot more players too. If they do that before an AoW4 it would be interesting to compare.

Of course, when I say "hit" I consider that game in its respective genre.
Player numbers say aren't everything. But they are quite important information. Yes, many games can sometimes be given for free but big amounts of a percentage of these players never actually install the game! There are many metrics publishers can examine better but we (the players) could have some idea but checking out the completed basic achievements. This is also a good metric for developers to figure out when people stop playing, etc...

AoW3's biggest competitor at the time was Endless Legend. Which was also a hit. (In the strategy genre) (and there were also a few medium-sized competitors as well)
But as years go by Steam player numbers (as a whole) grow significantly. So the numbers change respectively also. In my opinion, AoW3 was a superior game to Endless Legend but that only comes from my preferences.

But to actually consider something as a hit, classic, or else... it's just the numbers or the created buzz we have to observe. In Planetfall's case, there were almost no new games and certainly not hyped ones. There were only ongoing games and DLC from previous years in 2019. Which makes the case for Planetfall isn't well.

 

[coodav]

The only thing I disliked is 3 mods. There was already a rather large difference between experienced and green units in previous game. Mods added even more power to experienced units, and losing them meant it was really hard to come back from a defeat, especially for AI.

Yes, the snowball mechanic in this game is terrible. A surprise loss is typically curtains for you. The cosmite system did really contribute to the issues of this game, way more than it should have. Not sure exactly how they overcome this, as the battle between smooth, workable build caps is near-impossible to figure out. These games typically have one moment where power scaling gets out of control and that is it. This one seems the same, unintentionally.

Oh well. The elephant graveyard of video games is full of titles with the best intentions.