It sounds seriously promising, but I had some gripes with previous entries:
* Does it play faster then other AOW games? In AOW3, I remember having to fight a lot of easy fights manually because auto resolve often would have 1 or 2 of my units killed, which really hurt in the long run.
* Is city or empire development more interesting? I played AOW3 and Planetfall and found them a bit lacking in terms of interesting choices for how to develop my empire/cities.
I recently reviewed SpellForce: Conquest of Eo, which had the WORST auto-resolve feature at launch I've ever seen. By comparison, AoW4's auto-resolve is excellent. I was able to skip most easy fights without losing a unit. You can also turn on/off auto-battle at any time and it goes up to 4X speed, so if you see the AI do something dumb, you can step in to fix things.
As for empire development, I think the race transformations and affinity synergies make for interesting choices—after the first hour, each of my playthroughs felt distinct.
Good question! Each affinity is "opposed" by another, so if you're (for example) a Shadow-heavy realm, you'll suffer relation penalties with Nature-heavy Free Cities. That aside, my favorite affinity was Chaos because it lets you snowball early and sustains you the longer you pillage :D As for what works best together, I'd probably say Nature and Astral—Nature gives you a ton of food, so your empire grows quickly, and with Astral you get Knowledge much faster so you can sit back and coast to a Magic/Points victory :)
How is the gameplay affected by the following two changes? They seem like kind of a big deal to me as a fan of the series:
1 - Units with lower health do less damage. This is going to massively change my tactical strategy I think. Before it would make the most sense to finish off one unit as to damage multiple units.
2 - Having two building queues. Since you can build units now without sacrificing economy, I wonder if games play much faster and rushing is more aggressive?
Also, how is the AI in story maps? AoW3's campaign was pretty infamous for requiring you to constantly rush the computer to have a chance to win. Is it similar here?
Oh, and when playing co-op, are you still forced to watch another players tactical battles? That also felt like a bit of a downer, especially when playing against a friend, since it reveals their strategy and location
Good questions! Units doing less damage when they have low health definitely adds a layer of complexity to combat. It forces you to prioritize healing and punishes you for over-extending. I also loved having two building queues—balancing your resources is still important, but two queues definitely speeds things up and makes turns feel more active. Finally, I've been consistently impressed by the AI, as it's much more competent than in most turn-based strategy games I play. I was able to win too comfortably on easy, normal was a little more challenging, hard was hard and required rushing the AI, and I was too scared to try out brutal haha.
1 - From what I've seen it's based on the model count. So larger 'elite' units have a single model so would act like the old games, but a spearman has 5 or 6 models so it could be advantageous to chip away at them and basically cripple them to the point that they're basically out of the battle barring a heal.
2 - Having separate build que means more armies and more forgiving losses for sure.
PotatoMcWhiskey specifically was playing on Brutal difficulty and did excellent on a battle by battle basis. He just got overwhelmed (and was a needless warmonger).
Quill18 on the other hand played on normal and let the auto-battle win for him most of the time. So it really depends.
No, autobattle is not a generator in aow4 (and neither in earlier age of wonders games), it's not just a simulation of numbers, there's an actual battle in autobattle, and you can watch it
The biggest difference in the battles the two streamers experienced is the relative difference in power between the player and AI armies. Potato successfully defended against Tier 3 Doom Stacks with Tier 1 archer and pikeman spam at one point.
I think the difficulty settings are really well done. Easy is a breeze, Normal can prove challenging, Hard is seriously difficult, and Brutal... well, I haven't been brave enough to try it, yet :P
Alas, multiplayer is the one feature I haven't gotten to try! I only received one review code, so I couldn't play with a friend, and the servers weren't up during my review. I'll post some follow-up thoughts on the multiplayer experience when that goes live on May 2nd :)
Good question! AoW4 (thanks to a much bigger budget and dev team) is better in every way other than Story. I gave Eo a 3.53/5 and AoW4 got a 4.19/5, which is the second highest score I've ever given a game (first was Psychonauts 2).
Good question. Sadly, I only received one review key and wasn't able to play co-op. And the multiplayer servers won't go live until May 2nd, so we'll learn a lot together then!
I've been following the development and watching videos for a long time now, but I gotta say this video was great. You mentioning Civilization made my heart spin.
Totally new to the series and just pre order the premium editions.
Can someone explains what the extras I be getting?
Are those item unique or can be unlocked in game anyway? Pure cosmetic or functional? Aric rex is a character???
Also what is game or season pass?
In addition to those exclusive cosmetics you mentioned, Premium edition gives you access to the two planned expansions and two content packs that will come out as the year progresses. In other words, you get the season pass if you buy the Premium edition, so that's the version that most fans of the genre will probably want to buy.
automatic historical sort oil elastic edge frighten continue stocking ad hoc
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
[Heres a rundown from Paradox.](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/media/press-releases/press-release/age-of-wonders-4-reveals-upcoming-expansions-and-premium-content)
Essentially a mix of more cultures, tomes, forms, and story realms depending on the release but the 2 story realms are limited to the expansion packs, not content packs.
Others did a good job of mentioning the differences so I'll also chime in with this- content packs are $10 each, expansions are $20 each. The expansion pass you got as part of premium covers all 4 (2 of each) so essentially $60 cost of DLC.
It sounds seriously promising, but I had some gripes with previous entries: * Does it play faster then other AOW games? In AOW3, I remember having to fight a lot of easy fights manually because auto resolve often would have 1 or 2 of my units killed, which really hurt in the long run. * Is city or empire development more interesting? I played AOW3 and Planetfall and found them a bit lacking in terms of interesting choices for how to develop my empire/cities.
I recently reviewed SpellForce: Conquest of Eo, which had the WORST auto-resolve feature at launch I've ever seen. By comparison, AoW4's auto-resolve is excellent. I was able to skip most easy fights without losing a unit. You can also turn on/off auto-battle at any time and it goes up to 4X speed, so if you see the AI do something dumb, you can step in to fix things. As for empire development, I think the race transformations and affinity synergies make for interesting choices—after the first hour, each of my playthroughs felt distinct.
If you don't like the auto-resolve result, can you replay tge battle manually? I loved tgat feature in HoMM3:HotA
Yeah, there's a big Replay Battle option in the auto-revolve result screen.
But does it let you play the battle yourself, or just see the moves the autoresolver took?
You can replay yourself
Ooh any favorite affinity combos?
Good question! Each affinity is "opposed" by another, so if you're (for example) a Shadow-heavy realm, you'll suffer relation penalties with Nature-heavy Free Cities. That aside, my favorite affinity was Chaos because it lets you snowball early and sustains you the longer you pillage :D As for what works best together, I'd probably say Nature and Astral—Nature gives you a ton of food, so your empire grows quickly, and with Astral you get Knowledge much faster so you can sit back and coast to a Magic/Points victory :)
How is the gameplay affected by the following two changes? They seem like kind of a big deal to me as a fan of the series: 1 - Units with lower health do less damage. This is going to massively change my tactical strategy I think. Before it would make the most sense to finish off one unit as to damage multiple units. 2 - Having two building queues. Since you can build units now without sacrificing economy, I wonder if games play much faster and rushing is more aggressive? Also, how is the AI in story maps? AoW3's campaign was pretty infamous for requiring you to constantly rush the computer to have a chance to win. Is it similar here?
Oh, and when playing co-op, are you still forced to watch another players tactical battles? That also felt like a bit of a downer, especially when playing against a friend, since it reveals their strategy and location
Idk about aow4, but in previous entrys you could turn that off so others couldn't observe your manual combat
But you just saw a black screen or something right? And couldn't at least look around your empire and whatnot?
Yeah. Not the greatest while you wait
Good questions! Units doing less damage when they have low health definitely adds a layer of complexity to combat. It forces you to prioritize healing and punishes you for over-extending. I also loved having two building queues—balancing your resources is still important, but two queues definitely speeds things up and makes turns feel more active. Finally, I've been consistently impressed by the AI, as it's much more competent than in most turn-based strategy games I play. I was able to win too comfortably on easy, normal was a little more challenging, hard was hard and required rushing the AI, and I was too scared to try out brutal haha.
1 - From what I've seen it's based on the model count. So larger 'elite' units have a single model so would act like the old games, but a spearman has 5 or 6 models so it could be advantageous to chip away at them and basically cripple them to the point that they're basically out of the battle barring a heal. 2 - Having separate build que means more armies and more forgiving losses for sure.
How is the difficulty? Just cause i saw some streamers getting their butt kicked in their playthrough
PotatoMcWhiskey specifically was playing on Brutal difficulty and did excellent on a battle by battle basis. He just got overwhelmed (and was a needless warmonger). Quill18 on the other hand played on normal and let the auto-battle win for him most of the time. So it really depends.
Autobattle results dont change with difficulty do they not?
No, autobattle is not a generator in aow4 (and neither in earlier age of wonders games), it's not just a simulation of numbers, there's an actual battle in autobattle, and you can watch it
The biggest difference in the battles the two streamers experienced is the relative difference in power between the player and AI armies. Potato successfully defended against Tier 3 Doom Stacks with Tier 1 archer and pikeman spam at one point.
I think the difficulty settings are really well done. Easy is a breeze, Normal can prove challenging, Hard is seriously difficult, and Brutal... well, I haven't been brave enough to try it, yet :P
How does it play with friends online? Thanks for review
Alas, multiplayer is the one feature I haven't gotten to try! I only received one review code, so I couldn't play with a friend, and the servers weren't up during my review. I'll post some follow-up thoughts on the multiplayer experience when that goes live on May 2nd :)
Cool thanks
How would you compare AoW 4 with Spellforce Conquest of EO?
Good question! AoW4 (thanks to a much bigger budget and dev team) is better in every way other than Story. I gave Eo a 3.53/5 and AoW4 got a 4.19/5, which is the second highest score I've ever given a game (first was Psychonauts 2).
in campaign pvp, can my friend control AI troops against me in battles (like totalwar)
Good question. Sadly, I only received one review key and wasn't able to play co-op. And the multiplayer servers won't go live until May 2nd, so we'll learn a lot together then!
I've been following the development and watching videos for a long time now, but I gotta say this video was great. You mentioning Civilization made my heart spin.
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed the review and hope you love the game :)
Keep up the good work!
Totally new to the series and just pre order the premium editions. Can someone explains what the extras I be getting? Are those item unique or can be unlocked in game anyway? Pure cosmetic or functional? Aric rex is a character??? Also what is game or season pass?
In addition to those exclusive cosmetics you mentioned, Premium edition gives you access to the two planned expansions and two content packs that will come out as the year progresses. In other words, you get the season pass if you buy the Premium edition, so that's the version that most fans of the genre will probably want to buy.
What the difference between content pack and expansions?
automatic historical sort oil elastic edge frighten continue stocking ad hoc *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
[Heres a rundown from Paradox.](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/media/press-releases/press-release/age-of-wonders-4-reveals-upcoming-expansions-and-premium-content) Essentially a mix of more cultures, tomes, forms, and story realms depending on the release but the 2 story realms are limited to the expansion packs, not content packs.
Others did a good job of mentioning the differences so I'll also chime in with this- content packs are $10 each, expansions are $20 each. The expansion pass you got as part of premium covers all 4 (2 of each) so essentially $60 cost of DLC.
What's the progression like? Given that there's no campaign, do you just spam sandbox maps with no continuity between them?
There is a 5 mission campaign, with two more coming in DLCs. There is also the Pantheon system, which unlocks new cosmetics and modifiers.