Just make everything optional, that's the key. Don't need to put a million things in the game, just make everything in it optional and easy to fine tune. (Also put Dark Elves in the game this time!!)
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Yeah, clicking constantly hoping that finally two half developed characters stop talking to each other so that you can start playin... Yawn. (As a filmmaker I can tell you that dialogue doesn't develop character, action does. But I am actually speaking more about Planetfall right now, I don't even think I ever started the AOWIII campaign)
Of course when the Dark Elves cast their spell of flowers, the world slowly becomes covered with black and purple flowers and slowly poisoned by them. A sort of death so beautiful that can't exist in the real world. At that point everyone with some reason left would stop fighting each other and turn against the DEs but it would be too late. But the DEs would also have poisonous flowers of all kinds that they could deploy from the begnning of the game... and black towers that are invisible unless you approach them from very close. that's AOW IV the way I see it. Dark Elves and their slaves that's all I see.
Now after playing 200 hours of Planetfall I have some more ideas about AoW IV.
First and foremost, dont change much, add things! (for example tigrans, Drows, merfolk aso). I want almost the same game as nr III since it was a beauty. The changes I would like to see is the following.
1. More destroyable object, both on the strategic map and the battle map. Use some of the good ideas from Planetfall with hazards, blowing up objects and so on.
2. Allow 5 specialization slots. In III you could only have 3 specialization slots and it felt a little. At least let the player be able to be master in 2,
3. Allow the units to equip some magical objects that suits the unit. In AoW I often had hordes of magical objets that I just sold (especially on huge maps). Instead you can make it so that for example an infantry unit could have an armor, sword and shield slot available and for example a dragon could have a ring slot available.
4. More units with evolve. Since this can unbalance the game if connected to a certain race, let it only be with neutral settlements. From the AoW III i loved the feathered serpent and convinced a good steam modder to make an Elder Feathered Serpent.
5. Let independant cities be able to upgrade with the surrounding objects.
6. Let the builder be more of a factor. Maybe allow it to build Lumber mills (for production) small farm (for growth) aso.
8. Let all specialization have a tier 4 summon creature. As it is now, players allways choose the mastery after which specialization has a tier 4 summon since it is the strongest build. Maybe and Elder fire elemental or something?
9. Let there be height for ranged units on the combat map. If your unit stands on a small hill, it can actually shoot longer.
10. Allow the UI for more than 10 combat abilities. It is so frustrating that as soon as you have to many abilities it creates a problem.
11. Allow for small combat spells to be cast and attack. Maybe have a skill connected to the hero. As it is now, you never use the small combat spells since your hero to more damage with normal attacks anyway. Why sacrifice mana and a turn to do less damage?
12. A more usable forge. Allow the tech tree to unlock certain forge abilities.
13. Take a good look at the modding community on steam. If there is one place to get ideas its there, since when the players feel something is missing, some good modders make it into a mod.
First and foremost, dont change much, add things! (for example tigrans, Drows, merfolk aso). I want almost the same game as nr III since it was a beauty. The changes I would like to see is the following.
1. More destroyable object, both on the strategic map and the battle map. Use some of the good ideas from Planetfall with hazards, blowing up objects and so on.
2. Allow 5 specialization slots. In III you could only have 3 specialization slots and it felt a little. At least let the player be able to be master in 2,
3. Allow the units to equip some magical objects that suits the unit. In AoW I often had hordes of magical objets that I just sold (especially on huge maps). Instead you can make it so that for example an infantry unit could have an armor, sword and shield slot available and for example a dragon could have a ring slot available.
4. More units with evolve. Since this can unbalance the game if connected to a certain race, let it only be with neutral settlements. From the AoW III i loved the feathered serpent and convinced a good steam modder to make an Elder Feathered Serpent.
5. Let independant cities be able to upgrade with the surrounding objects.
6. Let the builder be more of a factor. Maybe allow it to build Lumber mills (for production) small farm (for growth) aso.
8. Let all specialization have a tier 4 summon creature. As it is now, players allways choose the mastery after which specialization has a tier 4 summon since it is the strongest build. Maybe and Elder fire elemental or something?
9. Let there be height for ranged units on the combat map. If your unit stands on a small hill, it can actually shoot longer.
10. Allow the UI for more than 10 combat abilities. It is so frustrating that as soon as you have to many abilities it creates a problem.
11. Allow for small combat spells to be cast and attack. Maybe have a skill connected to the hero. As it is now, you never use the small combat spells since your hero to more damage with normal attacks anyway. Why sacrifice mana and a turn to do less damage?
12. A more usable forge. Allow the tech tree to unlock certain forge abilities.
13. Take a good look at the modding community on steam. If there is one place to get ideas its there, since when the players feel something is missing, some good modders make it into a mod.
Just look for popular mods to get idea what people want, also return shadow realm and its ihabitants. (i am ok with bug races, fantasy or sci-fi)
They remember about Shadow World in AoW SM and remake it but it doesn't mean that it's good idea or people love it. Personally for me the absence of imbalanced shadow and lozal Zergs with Protosses in AoW is a serious advantage. If there were not Shadow Magic but whatever else magic fans would remake that.
This is one of the reasons why mana doesn't have much value on random maps. There's a lot of good damage improving enchantments including small ones like Star Blades but they're not very appealing if you can just shoot. Protection spells like Bless, Healing and etc. will be always usefull. And if you've more than one hero in the battle only one can cast a spell each turn.
Total bullshit. In later game the cast queue is always full with casting something important or disunctioning something unpleasant to add there unit summon. I understand that in 500 turns long game with Big Palace in every one of 158 cities and 100500 cast points this can be usefull but I like to play with 2 Keepers spheres not because of Angel summon. It just is not very important when it becomes available the game is near finished. The longest game I ever had was 164 turns long (Dragon Throne scenario with it's complex landscape) and I actually fifnished it by killing 2 last enemies in the capitals on 163th and 164th turns.
There's height in Planetfall but I can't say that I like it because it's often hard to understand where unit can move because of height differences.
This is one of the reasons why mana doesn't have much value on random maps. There's a lot of good damage improving enchantments including small ones like Star Blades but they're not very appealing if you can just shoot. Protection spells like Bless, Healing and etc. will be always usefull. And if you've more than one hero in the battle only one can cast a spell each turn.
Total bullshit. In later game the cast queue is always full with casting something important or disunctioning something unpleasant to add there unit summon. I understand that in 500 turns long game with Big Palace in every one of 158 cities and 100500 cast points this can be usefull but I like to play with 2 Keepers spheres not because of Angel summon. It just is not very important when it becomes available the game is near finished. The longest game I ever had was 164 turns long (Dragon Throne scenario with it's complex landscape) and I actually fifnished it by killing 2 last enemies in the capitals on 163th and 164th turns.
There's height in Planetfall but I can't say that I like it because it's often hard to understand where unit can move because of height differences.
At least in multiplayer games It isn't. Those lvl 4 summons are only seldom used in games, because they appear in your list only shortly before the game is finished. Lvl 4 summons (other than class related) are gained from crypts/libraries or they don't even see the end of the game in most rounds.
You do know, that you can use all abilities no matter how many of them your hero knows? Just open up its overview with clicking on its face and click on the ability you want to use. I agree it would be easier not to have to do this, but it is rarely the case anyway.
Eh... no. There are uses for all of the spells given the circumstances. If your hero does more with direct attacks, use them, if not use the spells. They are options nothing more. There is no need to mix magic with martial attacks within the same turn. Heroes are more than powerful enough as they are.
I believe that Planetfall failed regarding several things. First of all it is supposed to be a SCi-Fi title but it's about units merrily walking around on planets, where they appear to be able to breathe and interact with enemies like they would on Earth. Planetfall was basically a fantasy game with a generic 'space' setting that doesn't work too well and doesn't feel sci-fi at all. It's worst defect is that it completely misses the part where the player interacts with the environment and find things never seen before (a random unit creator for aliens maybe instead than having the same ones over and over in every game?). The simple fact that roads build themselves everywhere and there is no organic interaction with nature shows the terrible direction the franchise could end up taking also for the regular fantasy series. Please developers do not go that way. A fantasy/medieval game is something where units must create their environment and discover a new unexplored world (wella a sci-fi should be like that too but it's too late for that). I want to build roads, I want to discover things I have never seen every time! If at the beginning of a game a leader can be randomly created, enemy races can too and that would be so much more interesting than just adding glasses or hats to a leader.
I don't think Planetfall failed and it's not Sci-fi it's cosmic fantasy. And in fact it has excellent setting with attempts to transfer traditional AoW races in space settings.
I never demand from a game to have some mechanics or have not. And that's why I don't consider pretesions like "I could cast global unit enchantments in AoW2 but I can't do that in AoW3. Bad game!!!!" valid. But Planetfall being not bad game at all has it's own very speciefic problems:
1) It has no custom maps. And RMG is not enough. In fact before all DLCs every generated map looked the very same. Even AoW3 with it's water zones provided more structure. DLCs added some variations but this don't solve the problems. And while AoW3 had some custom maps with the game and now there're 139 custom maps in Steam workshop. Planetfall has nothing at all only RMG. And that's my first wishes. The game must be shipped with custom maps and RMG should have more options f. e. I want to have a regulation of how players will be placed. In AoW3 and Planetfall teams are always groupped but it's bad decision for 1 human vs teamed AIs. And I don't expect that competitive AI which can provide a challenge in 1 vs 1 game will appear in the next years. And I want RMG templates f. e. "teams divided by a river", "Central high value cluster", "X Humans vs huge AI empire" (in fact Planetfall has something like this) "Starting big empires of N cities" and etc. I'm not fan of HOMM but AFAIK even HOMM 3 has templates for RMG.
2) Cosmite as a extra rare resource which limited ability to build high level units and upgrade them was good idea. But AI builds very few T3 units so in AoW3 player could face T4 units while having no ones here it's normal to have T3 armies and AI still sends hordes of bees, archers, and other T1-2 trash that dies from the one burst from Baron or laser tank.
3) While defending cities AI just runs forward so the player should only stay outside defence canons' range. Which ruins the whole city attack battles. In AoW3 AI at least understands to rely on long range units which have a wall as a high ground and attack without huge advantage can be hard.
4) Precise population control works while you have just few cities but it's necessary for effictive playing so everybody turns off auto on the 1st turn and assignes all colonists to food and etc. When you have 10 cities this thing becomes annoying. I guess it was taken from Civiliztion like ruined diplomacy (WHY it was needed?? Anyway everybody plays with fixed teams) but as I understand there're less settlements in Civilization.
One combat-related thing that was improved in Planetfall AI keeps ti's armies groupped in all prev. games it could be easilly catched off-guard. But because AI in Planetfall doesn't produce a lot of high level units it's armies are not compact and the player with T3-armies can always kill then part by part.
Veteran system in Planetfall sucks. It's castrated and boring. It's questionable if AoW3 should have infinite championship levels (very few starting units can reach very high ranks) but it provided interesting features on elite rank for many units while Planetfall usually gives HP and precision. +1 Range for Vanguard's laser tank on elite is something outstanding.
I don't talk about PvP because with it's mechanics of big armies and a lot of battles (especially AoW3) AoW always will be a game for long playing.
I never demand from a game to have some mechanics or have not. And that's why I don't consider pretesions like "I could cast global unit enchantments in AoW2 but I can't do that in AoW3. Bad game!!!!" valid. But Planetfall being not bad game at all has it's own very speciefic problems:
1) It has no custom maps. And RMG is not enough. In fact before all DLCs every generated map looked the very same. Even AoW3 with it's water zones provided more structure. DLCs added some variations but this don't solve the problems. And while AoW3 had some custom maps with the game and now there're 139 custom maps in Steam workshop. Planetfall has nothing at all only RMG. And that's my first wishes. The game must be shipped with custom maps and RMG should have more options f. e. I want to have a regulation of how players will be placed. In AoW3 and Planetfall teams are always groupped but it's bad decision for 1 human vs teamed AIs. And I don't expect that competitive AI which can provide a challenge in 1 vs 1 game will appear in the next years. And I want RMG templates f. e. "teams divided by a river", "Central high value cluster", "X Humans vs huge AI empire" (in fact Planetfall has something like this) "Starting big empires of N cities" and etc. I'm not fan of HOMM but AFAIK even HOMM 3 has templates for RMG.
2) Cosmite as a extra rare resource which limited ability to build high level units and upgrade them was good idea. But AI builds very few T3 units so in AoW3 player could face T4 units while having no ones here it's normal to have T3 armies and AI still sends hordes of bees, archers, and other T1-2 trash that dies from the one burst from Baron or laser tank.
3) While defending cities AI just runs forward so the player should only stay outside defence canons' range. Which ruins the whole city attack battles. In AoW3 AI at least understands to rely on long range units which have a wall as a high ground and attack without huge advantage can be hard.
4) Precise population control works while you have just few cities but it's necessary for effictive playing so everybody turns off auto on the 1st turn and assignes all colonists to food and etc. When you have 10 cities this thing becomes annoying. I guess it was taken from Civiliztion like ruined diplomacy (WHY it was needed?? Anyway everybody plays with fixed teams) but as I understand there're less settlements in Civilization.
One combat-related thing that was improved in Planetfall AI keeps ti's armies groupped in all prev. games it could be easilly catched off-guard. But because AI in Planetfall doesn't produce a lot of high level units it's armies are not compact and the player with T3-armies can always kill then part by part.
Veteran system in Planetfall sucks. It's castrated and boring. It's questionable if AoW3 should have infinite championship levels (very few starting units can reach very high ranks) but it provided interesting features on elite rank for many units while Planetfall usually gives HP and precision. +1 Range for Vanguard's laser tank on elite is something outstanding.
I don't talk about PvP because with it's mechanics of big armies and a lot of battles (especially AoW3) AoW always will be a game for long playing.
OK I didn't mean to imply that Planetfall is a complete failure. Certain things I like, for example the battle system is fun. Still to me the strategic map feels cold and uninteresting. The fact that you can't really interact with it by building cities and roads wherever you like, takes away from realism and immersion. Sure, the fact that a player ends up with regions instead than simply an area of influence around a city is fine; but if that means that I can only build a city in the center of any given region then I feel that I am losing a strategic option in favor of what is only an esthetic gimmick. Maybe the right compromise would be if players could build cities wherever they liked inside a region in order to claim it (with a fixed minimum distance between them).
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What ideas do you have to make each class plays more unique?
(Sure I want races to be more unique too. But in every game you gets many cities of different races but can only have one class so classes are better place to put more interesting gameplay mechanics)
Theocrat should choose the deity he worship, each with different bonuses. Maybe have unique resource used for his abilities (faith) depend on the number of his followers? Focus on conventing both enemy units in battles and population of other cities. Or if you want something really unique: theocrat can only have one "holy city" and can't build or absorb any other. But cities that adopted his religion acts like vasals. Would be very hard to balance but could be really interesting.
Archdruid focus even more on catching and evolving poke.... I mean animals.
Warlord definitely should have unique resource like "command" or "honor" or something, earned by fighting. Spending mana to use his abilities don't make much sense. He could turn his units into elite version, where they gets improved stats and become +1 tier unit. Warlord don't have any 4th tier units but could turn any 3rd tier into 4th tier.
Drednought shouldn't spend mana to use his abilities. Just like with warlord this makes no sense. Maybe just use gold? Or go in different direction and make this class using magitek machines instead of steampunk. And give steam tanks, canons etc to races like dwarves or humans.
Not many ideas for Sorc, Necro or Rogue (other than installing spies in enemy cities by the last one).
And what new classes we could have? Diplomat? Something economy-based? I think it would work better as perks than classes. Maybe alchemist? Or something related to the Shadow World?
(Sure I want races to be more unique too. But in every game you gets many cities of different races but can only have one class so classes are better place to put more interesting gameplay mechanics)
Theocrat should choose the deity he worship, each with different bonuses. Maybe have unique resource used for his abilities (faith) depend on the number of his followers? Focus on conventing both enemy units in battles and population of other cities. Or if you want something really unique: theocrat can only have one "holy city" and can't build or absorb any other. But cities that adopted his religion acts like vasals. Would be very hard to balance but could be really interesting.
Archdruid focus even more on catching and evolving poke.... I mean animals.
Warlord definitely should have unique resource like "command" or "honor" or something, earned by fighting. Spending mana to use his abilities don't make much sense. He could turn his units into elite version, where they gets improved stats and become +1 tier unit. Warlord don't have any 4th tier units but could turn any 3rd tier into 4th tier.
Drednought shouldn't spend mana to use his abilities. Just like with warlord this makes no sense. Maybe just use gold? Or go in different direction and make this class using magitek machines instead of steampunk. And give steam tanks, canons etc to races like dwarves or humans.
Not many ideas for Sorc, Necro or Rogue (other than installing spies in enemy cities by the last one).
And what new classes we could have? Diplomat? Something economy-based? I think it would work better as perks than classes. Maybe alchemist? Or something related to the Shadow World?
I hope they keep the vassal mechanics that were introduced with AOW4, I love being able to go to war in order to bring another player under my wing as an ally instead of simply wiping them out of the game.
I agree, and if you vanquish an enemy player its army doesn't just disappear. An enemy nation doesn't just disappear because you kill its leader and conquer its capital. The remaining units should be randomly hostile or neutral or in some rare situations friendly and prone to be bought as mercenaries.
as a fan primarily of AoW3 and Shadowmagic
3 map levels is awesome
Wizard towers, allowing the vision, power and
..and ... casting.
How i would have loved the growing caster power from many towers as per aow3 (elf temple, or just the grand something end of building tree building)
Teleporters too.
And do away with annoying zones. ICS, a city every 5 hexes is fun. Like my underground cats, tigrans doing surprisngly well underground.
Spreading out while blocking surface contacts.
A sorcerer/wizardking whatever should be able to field sizeable armies of nothing but summoned things. Like 3 gold dragons in a single round! While also having a view of the world entire. Instead of a pitiful trickle.
Also undead. Not so much on race, but on race in addition to being a race too. And made by having the animate ruins spell.
And then anyone can use those automaton like undead.
I miss altars of storm/holy/fire(?), shrines of law, magic, nature and war.
Also bring back utility boost spells. Fire aura, stoneskin etc. That are cast outside of battle and can be used to alter units.. like having caravans roll over lava being immune to fire. Or fly for that matter.
3 map levels is awesome
Wizard towers, allowing the vision, power and
..and ... casting.
How i would have loved the growing caster power from many towers as per aow3 (elf temple, or just the grand something end of building tree building)
Teleporters too.
And do away with annoying zones. ICS, a city every 5 hexes is fun. Like my underground cats, tigrans doing surprisngly well underground.
Spreading out while blocking surface contacts.
A sorcerer/wizardking whatever should be able to field sizeable armies of nothing but summoned things. Like 3 gold dragons in a single round! While also having a view of the world entire. Instead of a pitiful trickle.
Also undead. Not so much on race, but on race in addition to being a race too. And made by having the animate ruins spell.
And then anyone can use those automaton like undead.
I miss altars of storm/holy/fire(?), shrines of law, magic, nature and war.
Also bring back utility boost spells. Fire aura, stoneskin etc. That are cast outside of battle and can be used to alter units.. like having caravans roll over lava being immune to fire. Or fly for that matter.
This will probably never happen, but I'd like to see a return to the original Age of Wonders.
Basically I'd suggest taking Planetfall and making the following changes to it for AoW IV:
- Make relations and alignments meaningful with regards to using another race's cities and units.
- Make cities more simplistic, none of this city building simulator stuff. Stick to the basics.
- Give cities a static size again, this makes them important map objectives and cause for conflict.
- Remove zones, anything I capture should be granting me resources. Domains were even worse.
- Please bring back the combination of race + magic, don't ever add a class system again!
- Make every race have fully unique units and T4 (which Planetfall somewhat did thankfully).
- And the most obvious... RETURN TO A FANTASY SETTING! This little test was nice, but it's not AoW.
Most other systems can stay, mechanics like moving and attacking with ranged units are a welcome addition for expanding combat.
The original Age of Wonders is a great game and really just needs a few things added from the newer ones to be a great success.
Basically I'd suggest taking Planetfall and making the following changes to it for AoW IV:
- Make relations and alignments meaningful with regards to using another race's cities and units.
- Make cities more simplistic, none of this city building simulator stuff. Stick to the basics.
- Give cities a static size again, this makes them important map objectives and cause for conflict.
- Remove zones, anything I capture should be granting me resources. Domains were even worse.
- Please bring back the combination of race + magic, don't ever add a class system again!
- Make every race have fully unique units and T4 (which Planetfall somewhat did thankfully).
- And the most obvious... RETURN TO A FANTASY SETTING! This little test was nice, but it's not AoW.
Most other systems can stay, mechanics like moving and attacking with ranged units are a welcome addition for expanding combat.
The original Age of Wonders is a great game and really just needs a few things added from the newer ones to be a great success.
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IMPROVED SEA SYSTEM and HERO SYSTEM
Beside an improved "sea" system (ports producing gold, ships becoming indispensable since flyers cannot stay airborne forever etc...)I would like a more realistic system regarding heroes. In all Total War games heroes are not bought but are soldiers who distinguished themselves on the battlefield. Their look should be 'randomized' but any unit has a very small chance to be promoted to hero by distinguish himself on the battlefield. Another thing that I like a lot about Total War is that most personality traits and skills a hero gains are not chosen by the player, but they are random or depend on what a hero has done. A hero who wins several battles with cavalry units would become a cavalry expert etc, one who stay inside an important city with an university would have a chance to improve his city managing skills and his presence would improve the city output... There are also negative bonuses that can be acquired by heroes who do nothing or are to far away from cities for too long... Alcoholism, depression etc... The problem with the system as it is, is that players have the tendency to make all heroes alike, and it is just not very realistic that they become whatever you want them to.
Beside an improved "sea" system (ports producing gold, ships becoming indispensable since flyers cannot stay airborne forever etc...)I would like a more realistic system regarding heroes. In all Total War games heroes are not bought but are soldiers who distinguished themselves on the battlefield. Their look should be 'randomized' but any unit has a very small chance to be promoted to hero by distinguish himself on the battlefield. Another thing that I like a lot about Total War is that most personality traits and skills a hero gains are not chosen by the player, but they are random or depend on what a hero has done. A hero who wins several battles with cavalry units would become a cavalry expert etc, one who stay inside an important city with an university would have a chance to improve his city managing skills and his presence would improve the city output... There are also negative bonuses that can be acquired by heroes who do nothing or are to far away from cities for too long... Alcoholism, depression etc... The problem with the system as it is, is that players have the tendency to make all heroes alike, and it is just not very realistic that they become whatever you want them to.
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What I respect in Triumph Stidious they never listen to fans and their stupid ideas bringing every time a totally new game.
Because of? Seriously because of what? Is there any difference how you get your strongest unit?
The only reason to fight for a big city is it's size. But territorial control introduced in AoW3 made cities different and introduced such thing as finding good locations for the new settlements. And if you want some resources you should invest something not just send a bird or other cheap unit. And that's made AoW3 much more interesting than prev. versions.
OK. Let's do some changes. In fact it's practically what "New Arsenal" mod does. Insert racial T4 unit and may be remove class T4. Will you be happy?
The problem that if you speak about different gameplay you speak about classes. In fact AoW 1/2 unit system was just a shuffling of more or less similar units. And every race was played more or less similar. Planetfall partially avoids this problem because of it's setting and some races can be totally living beings other cyborgs and etc. And they have very speciefic technologies which can be very good for other races and can be totally useless. And what is class? Planetfall uses classes but names them "secret technologies".
Because of? Seriously because of what? Is there any difference how you get your strongest unit?
The only reason to fight for a big city is it's size. But territorial control introduced in AoW3 made cities different and introduced such thing as finding good locations for the new settlements. And if you want some resources you should invest something not just send a bird or other cheap unit. And that's made AoW3 much more interesting than prev. versions.
OK. Let's do some changes. In fact it's practically what "New Arsenal" mod does. Insert racial T4 unit and may be remove class T4. Will you be happy?
The problem that if you speak about different gameplay you speak about classes. In fact AoW 1/2 unit system was just a shuffling of more or less similar units. And every race was played more or less similar. Planetfall partially avoids this problem because of it's setting and some races can be totally living beings other cyborgs and etc. And they have very speciefic technologies which can be very good for other races and can be totally useless. And what is class? Planetfall uses classes but names them "secret technologies".
Aside from the fact that you have a fairly hostile tone and seem to be someone who only plays AI, based on your earlier comments, allow me to enlighten you...
Also let me preface this post with the fact that I am a modder for AoW 1, and I can change both the units as well as many game mechanics through hex editing.
My mod has a focus on balancing all races and is built for PvP tactical combat in multiplayer LAN (which we often play), but I've also improved the AI a bit.
There is a big difference between having every race copy/paste each other for all unit tiers and having unique units in T3/T4 or even T2 and T1 if possible.
I already stated that Planetfall corrected a lot of this problem, this was mostly aimed at AoW III. Still, the racial rosters could definitely be improved more.
The system in AoW III where you go around fighting a bunch of independent units just to gain resources and are forced to place cities in the most "optimal" location is not interesting or fun. Planetfall at the very least has a better system with it's sectors, which I would prefer over domains any day. That being said, it's much more interesting when players can fight each other over multiple different resource types and city sizes. It promotes more strategic movement and more conflict.
The only thing that you do in Planetfall and AoW III is fight a bunch of independent units, expand your domain/sectors and then try to conquer the AI's cities. There is no fighting over specific resources or sectors unless they contain a very special landmark. In AoW 1 every resource is important, if I have a Fire Node in the middle of the map I am forced to defend it or lose my mana income. Losing a T4 city is a very big blow, because suddenly you can't produce T4 units (or faster T3/T2) anymore. While the newer games introduced "production" as a resource, I still very much prefer the old system of static city sizes and unit production times. Growing every city to max is just not interesting at all, it's merely a waiting game before they all reach the same level and do the exact same thing. Once again, Planetfall has improved this compared to AoW III by letting you make specialized cities.
The Class comment is also aimed at AoW III (what a surprise on the AoW III forum!). I absolutely hate them and think they ruined the game. Everyone can just play the same class in multiplayer and the same units are spammed by all of them, wow such diversity. At least in the older games each race had a unique roster of units. Planetfall has improved a lot upon this though and Secret Tech is NOT the same as Classes. If anything Secret Tech is equal to the Specializations (a.k.a. magic spheres) and is a big improvement.
I've posted before in the Planetfall forum regarding which systems from the other games I would like to see in AoW IV, I'll repost an updated version below.
What I would keep:
- From Planetfall: Unit modding system, unique races (reminds me of AoW 1), combat system, sectors (if I had to choose between sectors or domains), the tech tree (no randomly unlocking spells!), the city building (assuming we will never get the AoW 1 cities back), better unit abilities and hit/miss chance in combat.
- From AoW III: Underground & Depths layers and the fantasy setting (please bring back the original 12 races), world events (better than Planetfall) and the strategic map (it's much more clear!).
- From Planetfall: The sci-fi theme (fantasy is just more appealing).
- From AoW III: Morale bonus/malus for winning fights, losing a hero, etc. (these were removed in Planetfall I believe).
- From Both: The Flanking & retaliation costing action points mechanics (I think it's extremely unfun and makes combat boring).
- From AoW I: Race relations & alignments (they were much more important), more units (it had 12 per race), storm altars, unique unit art (not a static picture of the model) and fixed size cities (this will probably never happen).
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