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AoW3 is great but also an incredibly huge game. By all means play it but you probably won't really get a proper feel for them in a short time.
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 14:52 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:34 |
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aow3 is the same type of "fantasy" setting as 4 but planetfall is probably closer in terms of features to the new one than 3 at least based on what ive read/seen. with such few days left before 4 though i would just recommend 4 or planetfall if its like 80% off or whatever their all good games
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 14:55 |
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I guess this is the place to ask: looks like a lot of the DLC features are faction pieces: are they doing/have they historically done the Warhammer thing with DLC races where they can show up as AI with their DLC features even if you don't buy the DLC? I'm not hugely interested in using some of the preannounced DLC faction parts myself but if their availability for opponents is only for DLC owners then they might still be worth buying the season pass for if the math works out. (or, well, not refunding it before Monday I guess since I already bought it on Steam) also this looks real good, I've honestly bounced off the first three games but I am ready to be hurt again
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 15:07 |
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ninjewtsu posted:The release is in a few days (may 2nd) so uhhh idk but both aow3 and planetfall are extremely good games tbh i went back to aow3 recently and this one looks much better, aow3 is interesting but feels very unfinished if you want to play it like a traditional 4x. Or underdeveloped might be the better word, compared to the systems shown off in this one.
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 15:28 |
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Dallan Invictus posted:I guess this is the place to ask: looks like a lot of the DLC features are faction pieces: are they doing/have they historically done the Warhammer thing with DLC races where they can show up as AI with their DLC features even if you don't buy the DLC? historically, if you don't have the dlc it doesn't appear in your game if you play mp with someone who owns dlc then the host's dlc state decides what spawns in the world, and your dlc state determines what faction creation options you personally can pick
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 16:14 |
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ninjewtsu posted:historically, if you don't have the dlc it doesn't appear in your game Thanks for the info, I feel a lot better about biting the bullet for it all then. OwlFancier posted:tbh i went back to aow3 recently and this one looks much better, aow3 is interesting but feels very unfinished if you want to play it like a traditional 4x. Or underdeveloped might be the better word, compared to the systems shown off in this one. And also about this because this was EXACTLY my problem with AoW3, there was a lot of cool stuff there in the tactical combat and RPG side but I wanted more 4X (better diplomacy, better internal empire management) than was present.
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 18:20 |
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Yeah the combat side is fine, good even, but the strategy side kinda kills it because that's what affects what you bring to the combat. You need systems to encourage you to field a varied and limited army because that's when combat is interesting, and AoW3 doesn't really have those. It lacks diminishing returns or tradeoffs or interesting development of land you hold.
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 18:23 |
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Dallan Invictus posted:I guess this is the place to ask: looks like a lot of the DLC features are faction pieces: are they doing/have they historically done the Warhammer thing with DLC races where they can show up as AI with their DLC features even if you don't buy the DLC? If you don’t own the DLC, the content won’t appear at all. I can’t confirm it right now, but I think that Ninjew is right about being able access DLC content via multiplayer though. Personally, if I could change one thing in AoW3 it would be the damage previews. Like: 2 x 4-6 physical 1-3 fire 1-3 ice Such a mess of info, I don’t really know what we were thinking at the time.
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 18:47 |
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OwlFancier posted:Yeah the combat side is fine, good even, but the strategy side kinda kills it because that's what affects what you bring to the combat. more than that, kinda inherent to the whole premise of these games is that good strategic play is never taking fights you aren't certain you'll win, but risky fights are what make for interesting tactical combat. i don't know how you'd go about solving that problem but it's the biggest thing holding the series back imo
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 19:18 |
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Well I think that's what the constraints are for. Ultimately you want scarcity of resources and to make snowballing as little of a thing as possible. Things like city defences can help, making a smaller empire harder to conquer outright for a larger one, thereby meaning it can continue to pose a threat as you may choose to leave it alone and simply defend against it rather than trying to wipe it out immediately. What's been shown suggests a lot of environmental threats and logistical challenges to going on the offensive, and a fairly firm restriction on direct city control and productvity for large cities, all things that would have the effect of slowing down the snowball and giving more opportunities for retaliation by other factions. Players might play optimally by only picking fights they can win easily, but the game can ensure those opportunities come up as infrequently as possible.
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 19:28 |
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In Planetfall, only picking fights you overmatch is a slower growing strategy compared to being willing to lose units to secure high quality sectors and cosmite income early, and in AoW4 where unit production doesn’t compete with building production, deliberately challenging harder fights may be even more advantageous.
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 20:17 |
Mzbundifund posted:in AoW4 where unit production doesn’t compete with building production so glad they made this change.
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 20:25 |
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I hope this thread has just as many ridiculously in-depth balance discussions from Gerblyn et al. (but no pressure) It was weirdly comforting to me to know that stuff was being examined at such depth to try and keep it reasonably fair, even if I was never good enough at the game for it to matter.
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 20:31 |
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maybe the way i should put it is that if you're doing well on the strategic map your armies are bigger and beefier so tactical combats are less challenging, ultimately becoming trivial in most scenarios pvp plays out in the no risks taken scenario until one player has safely built up an overwhelming advantage over the other. unless someone rushes, which pretty well forces the issue in such a way that either the rushed player is caught off guard and immediately defeated, or is able to scrape together enough stuff to make for an actually interesting fight (rush more rush always) i should mention that in the previous thread i had said that no one rushes anymore in the pf mp community and i have since found out that that is outdated information, and some very skilled players are primarily rushers, though that's still a minority as far as i can tell OwlFancier posted:Well I think that's what the constraints are for. Ultimately you want scarcity of resources and to make snowballing as little of a thing as possible. Things like city defences can help, making a smaller empire harder to conquer outright for a larger one, thereby meaning it can continue to pose a threat as you may choose to leave it alone and simply defend against it rather than trying to wipe it out immediately. i should maybe also mention that a lot of age of wonders snowballing comes from the rewards you get for clearing neutrals off sites (invest resources into military -> military cleans out sites -> get more resources to invest again feedback loop) so unless they've removed that aspect of the game it'll probably still be pretty snowbally that being said i don't necessarily think snowballing is bad, the way this rewards players for early militarization (and thus engaging in tactical combat, The Fun Part of the game) is pretty cool ninjewtsu fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Apr 28, 2023 |
# ? Apr 28, 2023 20:47 |
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ninjewtsu posted:more than that, kinda inherent to the whole premise of these games is that good strategic play is never taking fights you aren't certain you'll win, but risky fights are what make for interesting tactical combat. i don't know how you'd go about solving that problem but it's the biggest thing holding the series back imo At least for casual players, a big part of the learning process is figuring out what kinds of opponents will gently caress your guys up and which won't. Once you get a rough idea of that, the next step is to learn how not to rely on doomstacks because it's way more efficient to send the bare minimum out exploring for cool poo poo and the same for harrying the AI. All that to say that being able to produce units at the same time as buildings is really nice because it gives the player a little more leeway to take risks as you mentioned. I guess we'll see how that plays out but I'm hopeful it helps.
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 21:38 |
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Zore posted:Yeah, the system is pretty different overall from 3. A lot of those changes seem great. The limiting cities, temp healing, 3v3 max stacks, and production splits seem laser targeted on AOW III gameplay decisions that were optimal but unfun. Glad to see Gerblyn still around too. Guess I will pre-order!
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# ? Apr 28, 2023 23:14 |
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I've watched a lot of the streams and love what I see so far. My only complaint is that I'm not playing right now!
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 00:15 |
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Smiling Knight posted:A lot of those changes seem great. The limiting cities, temp healing, 3v3 max stacks, and production splits seem laser targeted on AOW III gameplay decisions that were optimal but unfun. I've never liked the "pull in nearby armies" thing specifically because of the snowballing issues mentioned already I realize it theoretically means you can have bigger interesting fights, but that's never how it played out for me in the past Plus it's another mechanic you can use against the ai that it usually can't use as well as a human But a *lot* of other changes in this game seem like deeply considered mechanical changes to address various long standing issues, so we'll see To be very clear, I do not expect an AI that can play at a perfect level and defeat me without cheating, if it puts up enough of a fight that it generates interesting combat on a regular basis while playing through a single map, that's all I ask With the huge variety in realm creation I'm hopeful that I can play through an endless series series of interesting engagements over time, fingers crossed
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 00:26 |
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I just went ahead and picked up the Premium Edition. I’m gonna buy all that dlc anyway lets be real here.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 03:01 |
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Captain Oblivious posted:I just went ahead and picked up the Premium Edition. I’m gonna buy all that dlc anyway lets be real here. Yeah, same. Triumph has always delivered on DLC and I can't really play AoW3 without Eternal Lords.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 03:07 |
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As a person who is used to Owlcat sorts of releases (massive game ending bugs and major features simply not working), what's the track record on these as far as bugs at launch?
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 07:02 |
Guildenstern Mother posted:As a person who is used to Owlcat sorts of releases (massive game ending bugs and major features simply not working), what's the track record on these as far as bugs at launch? Super solid normally, and features and balance just get better and better with the add-ons.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 08:11 |
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OwlFancier posted:Combat is like HOMM but you can't stack a thousand peasants into one tile to make a single super peasant. This is what I was wondering about. If I like Heroes of Might and Magic III, would I like this game? It seems like the answer is yes.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 09:11 |
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I said come in! posted:This is what I was wondering about. If I like Heroes of Might and Magic III, would I like this game? It seems like the answer is yes. They have some similarities but a lot of differences. You're really best off watching some gameplay videos to evaluate for yourself.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 09:26 |
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Captain Oblivious posted:They have some similarities but a lot of differences. You're really best off watching some gameplay videos to evaluate for yourself. Fair! and with the game just around the corner, this will be easy.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 09:37 |
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Captain Oblivious posted:They have some similarities but a lot of differences. You're really best off watching some gameplay videos to evaluate for yourself. Master of magic is a better comparison
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 09:51 |
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I said come in! posted:This is what I was wondering about. If I like Heroes of Might and Magic III, would I like this game? It seems like the answer is yes. I mean, I'm a huge Heroes of Might and Magic III fan, and I've loved AoW since the first released 6 months after HoMM3. But there are some real differences between the games. Towns are less static in AoW, and there are no unit "stacks" like in HoMM. Do watch some gameplay videos as Captain Obvlivious suggested.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 09:53 |
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Guildenstern Mother posted:As a person who is used to Owlcat sorts of releases (massive game ending bugs and major features simply not working), what's the track record on these as far as bugs at launch? 1) Age of Wonders IV Premium Edition Splicer fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Apr 29, 2023 |
# ? Apr 29, 2023 09:58 |
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Their support is also about as close to perfect as you can ask - they do regular, substantial balance updates based on community feedback, their DLCs always add cool fun stuff, and none of the balance/mechanical/ui updates are tied to DLC There's usually some random bugs and quirks around launch, but nothing like the *checks notes* last 6 AAA PC games this year
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 11:35 |
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Also picked up the Premium edition because Triumph have a great track record and AoW3 and Planetfall were excellent titles.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 11:39 |
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I said come in! posted:This is what I was wondering about. If I like Heroes of Might and Magic III, would I like this game? It seems like the answer is yes. I would say it's more like a combat focused 4x. If you've ever played Gladius the warhammer 40k one. Or kinda like civ, except you go onto a HOMM style battle map rather than fighting on the world map.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 12:21 |
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The Venn diagram of people who enjoy HoMM and AoW is practically a circle so regardless of their many differences, it's probably going to be enjoyable. This is maybe weird but I would also like to see Triumph's take on the King's Bounty games.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 12:56 |
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Turin (YT rts guy) is streaming possibly the first public 1v1 pvp game of AoW4 in about 5 hours with I think Italian Spartacus. Hope one of their heroes gets captured and sent to the other's dungeon for maximum affable trash-talking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-AGZcLg-0Y
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 14:32 |
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victrix posted:Their support is also about as close to perfect as you can ask - they do regular, substantial balance updates based on community feedback, their DLCs always add cool fun stuff, and none of the balance/mechanical/ui updates are tied to DLC Because I do.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 15:39 |
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I've been curious about this series for the past 20 years (holy gently caress) but somehow never got around to playing any of them. My budget was always limited and there was always a lot of games competing for my time whenever one of these came out and then I sort of forgot about them later. I'm going to pre-order this and plan to play it day one so I don't miss out again.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 16:03 |
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Adam Bowen posted:I've been curious about this series for the past 20 years (holy gently caress) but somehow never got around to playing any of them. My budget was always limited and there was always a lot of games competing for my time whenever one of these came out and then I sort of forgot about them later. I'm going to pre-order this and plan to play it day one so I don't miss out again. If your budget is particularly limited the older games are feature compete and dirt cheap. I was able to get Planetfall for a fraction of 4's price a few weeks ago and it has eaten up all of my free time. Edit: AoW4 looks easier to get into and learn. This might just be personal, though. I grew up playing MoM and AoW1 and 2 so the things I see in 4 make more intuitive sense while in Planetfall I keep having to read every single statblock and mod because everything is so asymmetric and isn't a genre I'm savvy enough in to just know how things might work. It has really grown on me but the initial few games were rough. I bounced off completely when the demo first came out. KPC_Mammon fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Apr 29, 2023 |
# ? Apr 29, 2023 16:07 |
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victrix posted:I've never liked the "pull in nearby armies" thing specifically because of the snowballing issues mentioned already I was focusing specifically on the elimination of the 4 stack v 3 stack problem. I know we had to house rule or gentlemen’s agreement that one, and even versus AI on harder difficulties they’d often have cities defended by five or six stacks you’d have to hack through piecemeal. I hope the devs have continued to iterate on campaign map design, the III and Planetfall campaigns I would describe as serviceable but not too tier.
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# ? Apr 29, 2023 16:36 |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgj1s6-EKnY&t=50s potatomcwhiskey's review in the first 2 minutes then goes into gameplay Gyoru fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Apr 30, 2023 |
# ? Apr 30, 2023 01:53 |
Marbozir really likes it too, says it's the best 4x from the last few years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfzdGiflPaU
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# ? Apr 30, 2023 02:12 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:34 |
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By far the best reception for the game so far (judging by preview/review view counts, at least) seems to be in Russia.
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# ? Apr 30, 2023 05:00 |