Age of Wonders 4

[cvv]

It's not -75% off yet, why did you wake me?

 

[Mortmal]

It's not -75% off yet, why did you wake me?

I paid full price for it, and it's not good enough. Just torrent it; morally, it's like I've already paid for both of us.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Good. They can eat shit. They C&C4'd the series.

That is nonsense. C&C4 was utter garbage. AoW IV is a decent game, just too barebones for now. I'm pretty sure it will follow a similar road like AoW III, which got better and better with dlcs and mods. Its still possible that it turns out fine. But this will take at least another year or two.

 

[Lacrymas]

Even if all gameplay-related issues are fixed (they won't be), AoW4 still lacks the content AoW3 has. AoW3 has 4 meaty campaigns and a bunch of scenarios before getting into random maps. It also has much more interesting race/class customization than AoW4.

 

[anvi]

And AoW3 itself is lacking a lot of good stuff from the previous games.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

And AoW3 itself is lacking a lot of good stuff from the previous games.

The difference is that AoW 3 is not fucked by design while AoW 4 is

Making faction generic and the fact there is lack of strong ammount of campaign just kills it

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Why would they give them a bigger budget when the game barely holds on to 1k players.

It vastly outperformed PF, and they supposedly were happy with that one as far as sales performance goes. Then again, they might be looking at it from a perspective of their in-house interactive screen saver catalogue, thus making a correct decision for the wrong reasons (the right reasons being that the platform of vanilla aow4 is obviously unsalvageable).

 

[Lacrymas]

The girlfriend/wife of the AI programmer at Triumph told me Planetfall sold about as many copies as AoW3, so it's not like PF is some kind of under-performer in the sales department.

 

[Raghar]

And AoW3 itself is lacking a lot of good stuff from the previous games.

The difference is that AoW 3 is not fucked by design while AoW 4 is

Making faction generic and the fact there is lack of strong ammount of campaign just kills it

AoW4 is MORE fucked by design than AoW3 with its multicultural classes and well... They actually added difference for units based on species later in the patch when people were complaining. AoW3 was better in the end than Planetfall in the end.

 

[just]

so how is this game now? did they fixed everything? did mods fixed it?
it's -30% now, yes or no?

 

[Tweed]

Are there any mods that make races matter yet?

 

[just]

what about aoe3?
any other games with enjoyable single player campaign

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

AoE3 is a very good game if you buy it with all dlc, I'd even say close to great. Campaign-wise it's not the most amazing thing in the world. Vanilla campaigns are boring and lack a lot of the mechanical improvements from the dlc. Add-on campaigns are good, but very short. Once you get into playing single scenarios, though, the game is amazing and worth investing couple hundred hours into. It also has rmg that works way better than PF and 4.

When it comes to 4, if you don't know 3/PF and won't suffer from a contrast effect, it mostly depends on what you're expecting. It's not an AoW game anymore, it's a bog standard 4X with fantasy coating and LOTS of mechanics "borrowed" from modern, popular titles instead of following up on its own identity. The main issue, from that perspective, is that as a 4X it's just extremely dry, featureless and lacks any sort of flavor. The tactical combat is still ok and the biggest pull, but also got worse than previous entries, so why bother.

 

[Lacrymas]

While AoW4 has/had a loooooooooot of problems, and I do mean a lot, the biggest ones are/were balance and AI. You couldn't play singleplayer because the AI was so weak and braindead even on the hardest difficulty, there was no point, and the balance was so bad multiplayer wasn't an option either even if you found a person who would play along with your unreasonably long list of banned stuff because the pacing of the game was off as well. Since there was no map size option, you either met each other on turn 2 and fought your last battle on turn 8 or you didn't meet until turn 30-40+ and the game was unnaturally drawn out even though someone has snowballed beyond reason and has already won, they just don't know it.

Even if the AI is fixed, there is almost 0 singleplayer content in this game, you realistically only have RMG and that gets old very fast in a flavorless game such as this.

 

[cvv]

Even if the AI is fixed, there is almost 0 singleplayer content in this game, you realistically only have RMG and that gets old very fast in a flavorless game such as this.

Aren't there single handmade maps, what used to be called "scenarios"?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

No, PF and AoW4 both lack this unheard of feature. Everything, including "campaign" maps, is rmg.

 

[Zeriel]

so how is this game now? did they fixed everything? did mods fixed it?
it's -30% now, yes or no?

Like all modern "decent" games it is fun for a day and loses all staying power and becomes utterly forgettable.

 

[mediocrepoet]

so how is this game now? did they fixed everything? did mods fixed it?
it's -30% now, yes or no?

Like all modern "decent" games it is fun for a day and loses all staying power and becomes utterly forgettable.

This. It was a huge disappointment.

 

[Fedora Master]

It seems like there's a lot of depth to it, what with the many customization options , but there really isn't

 

[Zeriel]

so how is this game now? did they fixed everything? did mods fixed it?
it's -30% now, yes or no?

Like all modern "decent" games it is fun for a day and loses all staying power and becomes utterly forgettable.

This. It was a huge disappointment.

I can't say I was disappointed after AoW 3. If anything in some ways it was surprisingly good. But it does represent the same trend of evolving away from what made AoW AoW and into something different and forgettable. If it didn't have the AoW legacy to live up to, I'd probably be kinder to it. Same feeling I had about the Doom 2016 reboot. If it had been "Hell Assault Shooter" I would have praised it on its own terms, but it is no Doom.

 

[mediocrepoet]

so how is this game now? did they fixed everything? did mods fixed it?
it's -30% now, yes or no?

Like all modern "decent" games it is fun for a day and loses all staying power and becomes utterly forgettable.

This. It was a huge disappointment.

I can't say I was disappointed after AoW 3. If anything in some ways it was surprisingly good. But it does represent the same trend of evolving away from what made AoW AoW and into something different and forgettable. If it didn't have the AoW legacy to live up to, I'd probably be kinder to it. Same feeling I had about the Doom 2016 reboot. If it had been "Hell Assault Shooter" I would have praised it on its own terms, but it is no Doom.

Dunno. AoW4 was my first AoW game and I was mostly looking for a fun fantasy 4X. It seemed like it was going to deliver but ultimately didn't.

It's just too shallow, all the customization stuff is basically cosmetic. Definitely wasn't worth the price.

 

[Lacrymas]

It seems like there's a lot of depth to it, what with the many customization options , but there really isn't

There could be some depth if they took balancing extremely seriously, but I don't think they have or will.

 

[Zeriel]

so how is this game now? did they fixed everything? did mods fixed it?
it's -30% now, yes or no?

Like all modern "decent" games it is fun for a day and loses all staying power and becomes utterly forgettable.

This. It was a huge disappointment.

I can't say I was disappointed after AoW 3. If anything in some ways it was surprisingly good. But it does represent the same trend of evolving away from what made AoW AoW and into something different and forgettable. If it didn't have the AoW legacy to live up to, I'd probably be kinder to it. Same feeling I had about the Doom 2016 reboot. If it had been "Hell Assault Shooter" I would have praised it on its own terms, but it is no Doom.

Dunno. AoW4 was my first AoW game and I was mostly looking for a fun fantasy 4X. It seemed like it was going to deliver but ultimately didn't.

It's just too shallow, all the customization stuff is basically cosmetic. Definitely wasn't worth the price.

Ah, okay. You're going to have a very different experience going into it than someone who has played them since the first one in the beginning of the 2000s, for sure. In that case I'm surprised you're disappointed! But I can also get it in the sense of it having no singleplayer campaign at all. ...Then again, a lot of strategy games are like that, Civ and Endless Legend, for instance. If anything story-based campaigns are rather archaic by now. And yeah, the customization, it's very cosplay like. I miss the races having defined and strong identities from AoW 1 & 2.

 

[mediocrepoet]

so how is this game now? did they fixed everything? did mods fixed it?
it's -30% now, yes or no?

Like all modern "decent" games it is fun for a day and loses all staying power and becomes utterly forgettable.

This. It was a huge disappointment.

I can't say I was disappointed after AoW 3. If anything in some ways it was surprisingly good. But it does represent the same trend of evolving away from what made AoW AoW and into something different and forgettable. If it didn't have the AoW legacy to live up to, I'd probably be kinder to it. Same feeling I had about the Doom 2016 reboot. If it had been "Hell Assault Shooter" I would have praised it on its own terms, but it is no Doom.

Dunno. AoW4 was my first AoW game and I was mostly looking for a fun fantasy 4X. It seemed like it was going to deliver but ultimately didn't.

It's just too shallow, all the customization stuff is basically cosmetic. Definitely wasn't worth the price.

Ah, okay. You're going to have a very different experience going into it than someone who has played them since the first one in the beginning of the 2000s, for sure. In that case I'm surprised you're disappointed! But I can also get it in the sense of it having no singleplayer campaign at all. ...Then again, a lot of strategy games are like that, Civ and Endless Legend, for instance. If anything story-based campaigns are rather archaic by now. And yeah, the customization, it's very cosplay like. I miss the races having defined and strong identities from AoW 1 & 2.

No, I prefer not having story campaigns for my strategy games.

I think the main issue was that I expected it to have more serious faction identity, but the ability to mash it up, like in something like MOO2, but what I got was more like Battles in the Lands of Generica.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

I do miss hard movement limitations. It's a feature that I really would like to see again. It was a mistake to give all units the ability to traverse water and mountains. The lack of this restriction does take away options to define and differentiate units and races, and reduces the importance of the underground. It also makes map design more boring and guts the importance of abilities that affect mobility and of spells that terra-form the map. It was really noticeable when I played AoW 1, AoW:SM and AoW III back to back. Both, AoW III and IV, would be better if they had it.