Err... they were anything but mindless beasts. Go replay SM, there is a conversation there about it.
Kharaghs are astro-physicists or something iirc.
Concern about cultural units being same-y
- Thread starter ekulio
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Err... they were anything but mindless beasts. Go replay SM, there is a conversation there about it.
I don't know how you are arriving at this.
There are 6 starting cultures.
After that, you pick whatever tomes you want.
The 2nd dev diary was highlighting that each culture has a natural affinity, that forms the theme of that culture.
And each tome fits into an affinity.
So if you pick High, you start with 2 order affinity, and you can double down on this by picking order tomes.
Those tomes are entirely separate from the culture.
You can pick the same tomes as Barbarian.
Culture/race/form is a very very small part of what your empire is intended to be.
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Life Steal is honestly w/e on a unit with First Strike IMO.
Chicken's are w/e in general.
There are six cultures (feudal, barbarian, high, mystic, industrial, dark) and six affinities, but the starting units (the equivalent of racial units from AOW3) are determined by your culture.
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Great question! I am arriving at that from information available in the first dev diary.
After choosing your culture, it’s time to choose Society Traits. These traits represent the general philosophy your people follow, as well as how they live and govern themselves. Each of these traits is associated with an affinity, and I’ve listed a couple of the order traits below.
The Chosen Uniters trait is the epitome of Order as a force for diplomacy. It grants you 10 points of good alignment, which improves your diplomatic relations with the other (non-evil) factions that you meet, and grants you a bonus to income from Vassals, which are cities that join your empire via diplomacy instead of conquest.
You will note from the screenshot that the starting units are modified by this demo selection of "chosen uniters", providing shield units with +1 rank.
I think it is worth noting that there are indeed six starting cultures, and that two of them are not fully associated with just one affinity, and that you can start with multiple affinities depending on your choice of culture, society trait and tome. To say that there are no cultures or that cultures do not define what kinds of units you start with is flat out misinformation that runs contrary to what the devs have shown us so far in both the gameplay demo stream a few weeks back and the dev diaries.
There is a key difference between modified and defined.
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Ok, well that feels a bit like splitting hairs to be honest. What I am saying is that the concern that there are only 6 configurations for your faction feels (to me) overblown when there is the added layer of cultural traits that can mod your starting lineups stats.
I am well aware that Form Traits, Society Traits, and Tomes can shake up how you play a particular Culture. Either way, the Culture is there to determine what kinds of units you normally start with as a basis.
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I was kind of worried about this, but there isn't really enough info yet. I'm not really a fan of units just being containers for piles of endless modifiers, might as well just let us make units from scratch at some point.
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We're not splitting hairs. You said something that was straight up the opposite of the truth and caused everyone confusion about what point you were trying to make.
"Humans don't have two eyes they have two ears."
"Uh what? Humans do have two eyes."
"Well that feels like splitting hairs to be honest..."
To address the point I think you're trying to make, yes there are lots of different possible bonuses, but that doesn't make the units function differently. Not to keep banging on the Planetfall analogy, but it's like if all the units for each faction were the same types of unit and only the mods made them different.
I'm not saying they won't be different, but it feels like a step backwards.
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Ok well first of all I would like to invite you to chill out just a bit, but secondly I do apologize for the inprecision of my language and you are right that I misunderstood what the concern was here. It seems like a number of people are under the impression that there are 6 starting faction configurations and all I meant by my comment was that is not entirely true due to the presence of society trait modifiers in the faction creation piece. It is true that from what we have seen that seems like as if you were starting Planetfall with some mods rather than distinct units and if that is dissapointing to you than fair enough. Having said that I havent seen anything to indicate that culture changes your starting unit lineup either so I think thats where my confusion was coming from, so I apologize for any accidental misinformation I may have given and any ensuing pandemonium I may have caused by it.
I think cultures are as different from each other as races were in AoW 3, and each of them have 1 unique unit. The barbarian one called berserker(big axe wielding T3 unit from the video). The feudal culture has no big axe unit, instead it had 2 mounted troops, so one of it probably a T3(knight or heavy cavalry). Just as in AoW 3 where races have pretty much the same basic units(irregular/archer/support ect.) with 1 unique T3.
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In the announcement video they mention it changes your starting units, and although that could just mean which units are in your starting stack, we see that the shield units is called a "warrior," the support is called a "war shaman" and the irregular is called a "sunderer." Those are barbarian sounding names so everyone's assumption has been that those units are different for each culture. Probably the feudal culture has "men-at-arms" "priests" and "militia" or something.
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It may not "be the same," but I expect to be surprised and impressed by the tropes achievable with the tools available. Barbarian culture + tome of the horde + tome of monsters (not an actually revealed tome but, c'mon, you know it'll exist) will go a long way.You guys break my heart not knowing what the Karagh is.
It wouldn't make much sense as a tome unit (AFAIK) since those seem to be ostensibly summons and equipment/enchantment to improve your units, along with elemental/magic-based things.
It wouldn't make sense for dwellings, either, as Karaghs were a uniquely Goblin-derived unit. They're also mindless beasts.
Let me explain:
Way back when, the goblins were sort of... crap. They were weak, they were vulnerable to pretty much everything, and outside of underground they just couldn't contend with the other races. The other races had undead that could ignore their injuries, giants that could heave boulders, heavy armour and brute strength to overwhelm their foes, could cross water or freeze rivers or any number of other things. Goblins had... poison that was mostly derived from them living in cesspits and long sticks. So they had to get creative if they wanted to keep pace. They had to find bigger things. Stronger things. Things that weren't very smart - things they could maybe control. Giant insects, trolls, wyverns and wolves. But deep, deep underground, in the places where light has never reached, there was something even more dangerous and the Goblins were the only ones stupid (or crazy) enough to try to handle it.
Enter the Karagh. It is a grotesque gaunt-yet-fat mindless beast that roams the lightless caverns of the underground. When it catches a whiff of blood, the sound of voices, or any other sign that prey might be nearby -- does it hide and lay an ambush? Does it crawl across the ceiling? Does it have some special unique ability to cleverly wound its prey? No. It screams. It screams and howls and races through the underground paths faster than dragons can fly. All you get is the ungodly screams of some unthinkable horror in the dark echoing off the walls until it bursts from the darkness and savagely clubs or devours everything within arm's reach, killing in a blind frenzy.
It's not magic. It's not some special creation or have some sort of awesome clever ability. It's just a thing of horrors that only the Goblins could manage to capture. And when they need to, they point it towards their enemies and let it out - and hope that it doesn't think to turn around. It was the single coolest thing that Triumph came up with and, at least for me, it epitomized what made the Age of Wonders Goblins unique: the ability to use many, many other species to fight their battles for them. The Karagh filled out that roster by being a huge scary beatstick that was the undisputed ruler of the underground.
It's frustrating to me, then, that Triumph moved away from that into making the Goblins more generic so that they had similar stats to, say, an Orc or a Draconian - when really it should just be goblins using every tool in the box to get a leg up despite having a statistical disadvantage. They're the scrappy underdog of scrappy underdogs (lore-wise) and I really found that appealing.
Unfortunately with the desire to increase customization the strong theming of the Goblins was lost and in AoW3 they were practically interchangeable with other races until DLC gave them a few tweaks - but even then they never brought back the Karagh.
