Interview about Dwarves and the Underground

[Mcm1995]

I open this post to discuss the article that will be out tomorrow about faction creation and the underground.

From the information I have found in the description of the video, it seems that they will recreate the classic Dwarves, so what kind of culture will they have and what will be their starting volume, as well as what weapon the leader of the faction will carry.

 

[Holiness]

Seems a bit premature to start the thread now in my opinion. But my only concern is that so far, only one trait has been stated to give you can underground start. I hope there are more or a way to start underground anyway besides a realm trait that forces everyone underground.

 

[Shidan]

Seems a bit premature to start the thread now in my opinion. But my only concern is that so far, only one trait has been stated to give you can underground start. I hope there are more or a way to start underground anyway besides a realm trait that forces everyone underground.

They've confirmed in another thread that there is also a form trait that makes your race specifically start underground instead.

Dev Diary #4 — Realms and the Pantheon

Hello everyone, I'm Thomas Schuiten, a designer at Triumph Studios. Today in this dev diary I will give you some insight into the many Realms you can explore, and the Magehaven from which you do so. The fourth Age of Wonders brings the return of...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Guilu]

They've confirmed in another thread that there is also a form trait that makes your race specifically start underground instead.

That was already Holiness' point. That trait is the only way that we know of yet. There might still be spells similar to Domain of Earth, but they shouldn't affect your start.

I'm sure that by default dwarves have some kind of mountain bonus instead. Tigrans similarly have a "Desert Adaptation" trait. It's hard to tell what these will do without knowing how the game's economy works. I assume there's something analogous to Age of Wonders: Planetfall where every county contributed based on its biome, and Deserts and Caverns contribute less by default, or they come with a happiness penalty. That would not mean they are unsettleable, but that they are undesireable unless that location had good sites. If that's the route AoW4 takes, the underground would be largely uninhabited outside of specific concentrations of ruins and magical phenomena. Even for molepeople, they might only be equal to overground cities.

However, I think that's largely analagous to how the underground in Age of Wonders 3 works out. Outside of already settled cities, there's only a few places that have enough open space for sites to pop in and make it interesting to settle. With the underground entrances dispersed around the edges of the map, they typically feel like a hinterland to the overground, unless you're particularly lucky.

 

[Shidan]

That was already Holiness' point. That trait is the only way that we know of yet.

If so, my mistake. But to me it sounds like they were concerned the realm trait that applies to everyone was the only way for an underground start, so I was just trying to point out that is not true.

However, I think that's largely analagous to how the underground in Age of Wonders 3 works out. Outside of already settled cities, there's only a few places that have enough open space for sites to pop in and make it interesting to settle. With the underground entrances dispersed around the edges of the map, they typically feel like a hinterland to the overground, unless you're particularly lucky.

Important to keep in mind that world generation is totally different now than AOW 3's tile system. We have yet to see how the underground will look or function, especially with regards to open space given the regions system existing this time. I expect we'll probably see that in the new video coming up, but until then all we can do is wait and see.

 

[Technogremlin]

i think the province system will make the underground a better place to settle. in aow3, half the territory of an underground city could be taken up by useless cave walls, meaning less space where there could be resource sites. in 4, i expect there will be provinces that are entirely wall, and provinces that are mostly or entirely cavern, and the cavern provinces will have the same number of sites as above ground ones. therefor, if you only annex cavern provinces, you would have the same number of sites as an above ground city of the same size. although underground cities might still have a slight disadvantage due to less choice in provinces, and therefor less chance good ones will be near each other

 

[NarcomancerPL]

Idk I just hope I would be able to recreate Chaos Dwarfs from Warhammer in this game ^^

 

[Trunting]

I wanna see glimmering mushroom forests and giant spiders and in another layer, deep down at the core of the world: Dragons!

 

[Tank Hunter]

Culture will be industrious
2 standard dwarf traits are (?): Defensive tactics and Tenacious (??) (It wasn't shown in the game announcement, covered by the video of the crew)
Extra Society Traits will be: Great builders and Runesmiths (?)
First Tome will be: Tome of Enchantment (the other obvious choice is Tome of Rock).

(*) I am guessing with all of this, but based on the info we have seen to date

 

[Tank Hunter]

 

[Telenil]

View attachment 947848

Classic dwarves are mountaineering, cave crawling and poison protection #deadpan

 

[Tank Hunter]

Ok, so from the stream we now know more. To be fair, I got most of it right.

Basic dwarves start at Tough and Defensive Tactics however these were swapped out for Resistant and Underground adaptation.

They did indeed start with Industrious society with Great builders and Runesmiths, and took the Enchantment Tome.