OK so the main thing I see people asking for is Draconians, with some even suggesting they'd pay money just for access to a Draconian form and nothing else. Triumph tends to do expansions rather than tiny DLC offerings though, and there are a lot of historic staples of Draconian factions that don't translate well into Age of Wonders 4's mechanics.
I think the easiest way to give everyone exactly what they want, all at once, is to do an entire expansion themed around the Wizard King D-lister Tempest. I know he's not exactly a fan favourite, but releasing a whole bunch of extra stuff at once will capture Draconians better than just releasing an extra form. I'm going to go through a rough outline I threw together while rambling senselessly in the AoW4 Discord:
New Form: Draconians
Obviously they're not going to be able to fly or throw battle hatchlings at people anymore, so we can say their biology stabilized or something and now they have a lot less dragon features, as well as normal, non-shocktrooper childhoods. Basic Draconians can then just be regular lil guys with scales all over them, ready to pick up whatever racial traits they like. You could even make up some new traits for them, but we can save all the classic Draconian stuff for other mechanics.
New Culture: Blood
People love cultures, and they love suggesting cultures. One that springs to mind as suited to an expansion of this kind would be something Mesoamerican (continuing from Draconian culture in AoW3) with mechanics revolving around sacrifice and blood rituals, powered by either dealing damage or paying HP. We could make it Chaos/Astral or something. It'd also just be a neat aesthetic for tropical environments.
New Tomes:
Tome of the Dragon
A bunch of transformations and enchantments that let your units breathe fire, grow wings, etc. Able to turn just about any race into some weird scaly version of itself, but obviously also a way to make Draconians more like they were in previous games.
Tome of the Fleshweaver
More of a gross and scary tome, crucially having the option to make 'spawnlings' of a city's race; weak irregulars who can rapidly gain XP and mutate into a more regular unit. You could also have spells or buildings related to magically cloning populations or creating freaky meat-things, there's a lot of room to go wild with this one.
Tome of Winds
An air superiority tome that gives you strong flyers while messing with enemy flyers. Flying units are going to be very common on maps with large bodies of water/lava/void/whatever, so this is an easy counter that forces an enemy to find some other way to reach you, like actually building a navy.
Tome of Airships
Some people want airships, so let's throw an airship tome in here somewhere. You could add a bunch of stuff to it like skyport buildings that temporarily give units Flying and Fast Movement, or balloon bombs or something.
New Realm traits:
Floating Islands + Continents
Mechanically this is pretty much the same as lava islands, but it would look very different, and that would impress people. Especially once you add in the whole airships thing and start getting battles between sky navies. Maybe throw in some sky pirates while we're on this point, they'd work well on any map.
Shadowed
I don't know if this will be in the base game. If not, there could be a trait that gives the realm certain features inspired by the Shadow Realm from AoW2, like Shadow Sickness and maybe some mana shenanigans. The main reason for this trait would be the lighting, as some changes to the colour and intensity of the game's background lighting could give a realm a vastly different feel even with normal terrain.
Plot:
I don't want to be too specific here, because I know how much creative-types hate using what feels like someone else's idea. I'm just gonna throw stuff out there as more of a 'jam session' type of thing. Also, I have no idea how much this would interfere with bits of lore I'm not aware of.
Assuming Tempest isn't in AoW4 (not a huge assumption given how he's generally been more of a side character) we could bring him back and say that he spent his time in the Torment of Shadows trying to use what he learned with the Draconians to create a new servant race out of the weird entities punishing him. This would probably be extra bad considering those weird entities are probably partly the manifestation of his own personal flaws, so magically altering them cannot be good for his own health.
He shows up in an expansion-related Story Realm on some floating islands, and tries to abduct a bunch of Draconians for further spooky void experiments. The Draconians don't want to go down peacefully, and then the player comes in and does... Something. It doesn't matter what, really.
At the end of whatever chain of story realms there are, you run to meet Tempest in his own realm, where he has a bunch of very twisted Draconians on a floating shadowed continent where every single region has a Shadow Sickness debuff that Tempest's own forces are immune to (a callback to Draconians' historic immunity in AoW2). You have to stop him before he creates some sort of super-monster, or finds a way to corrupt every realm and make them largely uninhabitable to everything except his own forces.
I feel like this is enough to flesh out what I think would be a pretty well-liked expansion. Maybe it will help others visualize their own ideas of how to combine individual things they want into something marketable as a full expansion. All I know is that writing this helps ease the tension that comes with the hype and excitement of waiting until May
I think the easiest way to give everyone exactly what they want, all at once, is to do an entire expansion themed around the Wizard King D-lister Tempest. I know he's not exactly a fan favourite, but releasing a whole bunch of extra stuff at once will capture Draconians better than just releasing an extra form. I'm going to go through a rough outline I threw together while rambling senselessly in the AoW4 Discord:
New Form: Draconians
Obviously they're not going to be able to fly or throw battle hatchlings at people anymore, so we can say their biology stabilized or something and now they have a lot less dragon features, as well as normal, non-shocktrooper childhoods. Basic Draconians can then just be regular lil guys with scales all over them, ready to pick up whatever racial traits they like. You could even make up some new traits for them, but we can save all the classic Draconian stuff for other mechanics.
New Culture: Blood
People love cultures, and they love suggesting cultures. One that springs to mind as suited to an expansion of this kind would be something Mesoamerican (continuing from Draconian culture in AoW3) with mechanics revolving around sacrifice and blood rituals, powered by either dealing damage or paying HP. We could make it Chaos/Astral or something. It'd also just be a neat aesthetic for tropical environments.
New Tomes:
Tome of the Dragon
A bunch of transformations and enchantments that let your units breathe fire, grow wings, etc. Able to turn just about any race into some weird scaly version of itself, but obviously also a way to make Draconians more like they were in previous games.
Tome of the Fleshweaver
More of a gross and scary tome, crucially having the option to make 'spawnlings' of a city's race; weak irregulars who can rapidly gain XP and mutate into a more regular unit. You could also have spells or buildings related to magically cloning populations or creating freaky meat-things, there's a lot of room to go wild with this one.
Tome of Winds
An air superiority tome that gives you strong flyers while messing with enemy flyers. Flying units are going to be very common on maps with large bodies of water/lava/void/whatever, so this is an easy counter that forces an enemy to find some other way to reach you, like actually building a navy.
Tome of Airships
Some people want airships, so let's throw an airship tome in here somewhere. You could add a bunch of stuff to it like skyport buildings that temporarily give units Flying and Fast Movement, or balloon bombs or something.
New Realm traits:
Floating Islands + Continents
Mechanically this is pretty much the same as lava islands, but it would look very different, and that would impress people. Especially once you add in the whole airships thing and start getting battles between sky navies. Maybe throw in some sky pirates while we're on this point, they'd work well on any map.
Shadowed
I don't know if this will be in the base game. If not, there could be a trait that gives the realm certain features inspired by the Shadow Realm from AoW2, like Shadow Sickness and maybe some mana shenanigans. The main reason for this trait would be the lighting, as some changes to the colour and intensity of the game's background lighting could give a realm a vastly different feel even with normal terrain.
Plot:
I don't want to be too specific here, because I know how much creative-types hate using what feels like someone else's idea. I'm just gonna throw stuff out there as more of a 'jam session' type of thing. Also, I have no idea how much this would interfere with bits of lore I'm not aware of.
Assuming Tempest isn't in AoW4 (not a huge assumption given how he's generally been more of a side character) we could bring him back and say that he spent his time in the Torment of Shadows trying to use what he learned with the Draconians to create a new servant race out of the weird entities punishing him. This would probably be extra bad considering those weird entities are probably partly the manifestation of his own personal flaws, so magically altering them cannot be good for his own health.
He shows up in an expansion-related Story Realm on some floating islands, and tries to abduct a bunch of Draconians for further spooky void experiments. The Draconians don't want to go down peacefully, and then the player comes in and does... Something. It doesn't matter what, really.
At the end of whatever chain of story realms there are, you run to meet Tempest in his own realm, where he has a bunch of very twisted Draconians on a floating shadowed continent where every single region has a Shadow Sickness debuff that Tempest's own forces are immune to (a callback to Draconians' historic immunity in AoW2). You have to stop him before he creates some sort of super-monster, or finds a way to corrupt every realm and make them largely uninhabitable to everything except his own forces.
I feel like this is enough to flesh out what I think would be a pretty well-liked expansion. Maybe it will help others visualize their own ideas of how to combine individual things they want into something marketable as a full expansion. All I know is that writing this helps ease the tension that comes with the hype and excitement of waiting until May
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