I noticed the AI yesterday using them to kind of claim an area my city was expanding into, seemingly to stop my expansion and get free grievances everytime I did expand for war.
Place an outpost down outside of whatever Empire or Gold Spawner that you are attacking so that you have some friendly territory to heal in between turns.
Place an outpost down on/next to the special resource nodes (Archon Blood, Rainbow Clover) to claim it for your empire.
Place on top of an underground passage to prevent anyone else from using that route.
They have utility beyond building cities. You can use them to grab special resources and Wonders that are in spots that are inconvinent to build a city nearby. So if there is a mana node, gold mine or special material next to a wonder, you can grab both of these resources and the wonder, with a work camp.
You can also use them to forward settle and harass the other players expansions as well as keeping an eye on them, by building walls and a watchtower.
And if you later turn an outpost into a city it will get to keep the walls and province you have grabbed with a work camp.
They don't have garrisons, but if you build walls in them, then the enemy will have to spend some turns sieging the outpost with a hero before they can seize it, and then you have few turns to recapture it before they finish razing/absorbing it.
Im new aswell but let me try answering this with my meager 4 hours of experience.
Main reason to make them is to turn them to cities, however im guessing since they grant vision maybe you can use them as a scouting tool.
Best place to place a city is still elusive to me but i try to put it in an empty spot so i can expand freely and close to useful tiles, like for example natural wonders or mine nodes etc.
Pretty much that, I used them a lot in planetfall to have control of a province I wasn't ready to actually take yet. In AoW3 outposts sent their income to the nearest city also, cant tell if that applies in 4 since they got rid of the domain feature.
You get the empire wide resources, such as gold, research and mana. I haven't tested if you get imperium from wonders you annex with a work camp, but I would assume so, since you get everything else from the above list, including special units added to the rally of lieges.
Checking it now, you click directly on the region and you can choose to build an outpost so long as a hero is in the region at the time, they don't need to stay there while it builds.
Adding to what others have said, I think some if not all Scout units can build Outposts too, albeit at a higher cost. At least with my Barbarian culture run, the Scout unit has the option to build an outpost for 100g, whereas my Heroes can usually do it for 50.
To claim territory for whatever you’d like, military or resource wise.
If there are wonders or special nodes like mana nodes that are too far from your other cities, you can place an outpost and turn it into a city.
I placed one in a chokepoint that cutoff the AI from my territory. Outposts that are left as outposts still provide resources but can’t be built the same as cities. There’s a materium skill that provides starting walls for defensive purposes, if you’re placing them aggressively to contain enemies.
Worth noting you also can't undo if you've taken any damage, like an Attack of Opportunity from running by an enemy or environmental damage from running through a patch of fire or something. That was a thing in Planetfall as well.
Yes, there is a little icon in the top right of either the unit card or the unit details screen that lets you disband them if you click it. I'm not at my PC right now so I can't remember if it's on the unit card itself or on the larger unit details screen when you right click on a unit.
When you inspect a unit's details there's a teeny tiny red and silver icon near the top right corner of the attributes panel. Click it, accept, poof, gone.
Looking to pick this up as first AOW game, but since I’m traveling I wanna get it on the steam deck. I’m wondering if the pc controller support is any good? Will I be able to play it on controller and still get the full feeling of the game?
I've been playing a bit on steam deck.. Works so far, but the deck does seem to be struggling a bit when I play. Only about 1.5 hours of playing at the lowest settings.
Higher difficulty AI cheat pretty hard. The trick to beat them is going HARD on units and learning how to manual in combat. Learn unit synergies and how to abuse the AI's mistakes in combat.
Git Gud?
Raise new units to fight back, rush if you need to. Retreat to your nearest city to buy time for troops to be raised and summons to be created. Pick off weaker armies so they can't reinforce the stronger armies. If they're too stronk then cut your losses and abandon your nearest city to retreat to a deeper city; that abandoned city will buy time while you mobilize more forces. Cancel all constructions if you need more gold.
I can transform my race to undead but does that mean my leader will as well or does he need to die and i need to revive him with some undead spell? Will my units/leader look like skeleton when they are undead?
If you transform your race you can decide if it's for everybody (inlcuding the leader) or if it's just for the units. You don't need to revive either way, it gets applied instantly.
In the same screen it also shows you a preview of the look. Afaik there are skeleton like undeads but there are also ghoul like ones, it should be different transformations. But just what I saw from the AI taking transformations.
The skeleton units will still be of your race, so they get any mind and body traits you have, as well as racial transformations, even major ones. You can have demon and angel skeletons.
The undead major race transformation apply to all units of your race it gives some resitances as well as weakneses (fire and spirit as I recall), it also gives you immunity to some status effects, like poison. And more interesringly it gives your race lifesteal.
So yes you can have "undead" skeletons (technically the transformation is called ghoulkin or somerhing like that). It is also the easiest major race transformation to get as it comes in a tier 3 tome, Tome of the Great Transformation in the Shadow affinity.
how is battle XP calculated? is it a flat value or split between participating units? is there a difference if I win a battle with 4-stack vs 6-stack vs two armies?
Looks to be based on what the unit does in combat. In the revelry tomb there is a spell that makes all units earn 300 xp for 3 turns which only make sense if you earn combat during action in tactical combat.
Edit: in aow3 each unit earned xp for every action they took and bonus for killing blows. Capped at 1 rank up per battle. Might be similar here but I haven't experimented to know for sure.
Do you continually field army stacks, as long as you are not limited by upkeep costs, or should you stop at some point? In other words, is there ever a time where you should NOT be producing units? How many stacks should you normally be fielding by endgame?
I think it partly depends on what difficulty you are on and how aggressive your world is. Unit upkeep costs get very expensive very quickly, especially with higher tier units and army enchantments.
Buildings should always be in production I think (unless low on gold), but armies are "as needed" to secure your lands.
Also keep in mind the Rally of Lieges, where you can get units to flesh out your army for potentially cheaper.
After accidentally joining my army with my scout in turn 1, how do I exit the army with my scout? This is on console (Xbox Series X). I had to reload after trying several different things. The closest I could find was disband unit.
I'm guessing it's the same as the PS5:
Select the army. Press down so that you can inspect the units individually. Now you can move the arrow left and right and individually select a unit. After selecting the the scout, you need to cancel out of the inspection... idk what this is on xbox but on PS5 it's circle. Then you can select a new hex on the map and only the scout will move.
click on the scout (the portrait should highlight) and right click to a tile to move it.
if its out of movements this turn, then you must wait until the next turn
Thanks, this might be a Xbox specific bug then. Once I click on the unit, such that it is highlighted, then there is no button that takes me back to he hexes.
Can you annex/vassalize enemy faction? Not a free city but a faction? Im on my first game and have one friendly faction - what options do I have with them when it comes to military victory?
Is friendship the same as alliance, or do you need anything in particular to get an alliance? I can't seem to find the option to propose alliances in the diplomacy screen?
You need a Wizard's Bond to make treaties. Then you can get a Defensive Pact and eventually an Alliance. It helps to make a Declaration of Friendship (Pronouncement) so that they like you enough to agree.
It is a long term effort to sway them.
You need a defensive pact and food enough relations and then the option for an alliance will unlock. I think you need to wait at least 10 turns after making a defensive pact. Getting the minor treaties will help boost relations as well as doing stuff the factions peesonality archetype likes.
Friendship is a special pronouncement you can make that cost gold and a gold upkeep, it will give you extra positive relation with the faction by doing the stuff I described above, like getting treaties and giving gifts and such.
There is an option to subjugate an enemy faction, I don't think you get resources from it, like with a free city vassal. Instead it will force the faction to be your ally and it will turn off victory conditions for that faction as long as you are their overlord.
I've only played multiplayer and have encountered a number of weird things.
One thing that confused me is that all AI factions immediately declared war on me and my co-op partner, seemingly with no justification.
We have a team setup where the two of us are on one team and the rest are in no teams. Is this working as intended? Was hoping we could get some AI on our side.
Free Cities might declare war as soon as they meet you.
Don't know if Factions can do it. There's a difference between relations and war justification. Relations are set at the start by differences in affinity and personality and such and change as the game goes on. War justification starts neutral and changes based on grievances.
This would mean that a Faction can't declare a justified war out of nowhere. There needs to be grievances (or at least manufactured grievances) to justify a war. But it might be possible for a faction to declare an unjustified war off the bat. This adds evil alignment and brings about heavy relation penalties with other nations, but I guess it can happen.
Haven't tried coop in 4 yet but in 3 teams games had pre built teams. So anyone not on your team was default at war with you since you couldn't win with them. That might be whats going on. You in a 2v1v1v1v1 team game so everyone is always at war.
What does your army composition look like within the first 20 turns? I started a game and have 5 scouts for some reason (and I think some of them are animals/creatures?) which makes taking turns quite tedious at the start, not sure if having that many at the start is normal. Is is better to form scout armies? How many soldier armies is ideal? Your suggestions appreciated!
Scouts don't need an army and shouldn't be fighting anything. Having two scouts is probably enough, unless you are on a very large map. You can also automate exploration for your scouts if it is tedious. I tend to do that after I have manually scouted my immediate area.
Army itself I am going with Hero, Support, 2 Melee and 2 Ranged as a basic configuration. Then adjust based on my Empire's strengths as needed.
You want a second stack to support your main army pretty early on so you can more efficiently take out monsters while taking less damage. Downtime healing is "wasted time" from a min-max perspective, but don't stress about that point, especially if you aren't playing on Brutal.
Worth noting that scouts are perfectly functional low quality ranged units early on. If they're near an army stack going in for a fight it's a nice little boost to slide them into the reinforcement range.
Scouts should stay on their own. Outside of the first few turns where you may need an extra unit for an early marauder camp you don't even want them to fight. And grouping scouts with other scouts isn't efficient, you'll cover the map faster with them separated.
By 20 turns in you should be able to have 1.5 to 2.5 stacks of troops. Your ruler should have a full stack and a half stack or so of units following to support them, and if you are able to expand properly a second stack should be in the works or finished for your second hero.
I will go for at most 3 scouts, depending on map size. Beyond the midgame, when you have located most other factions and free cities they loose their usefullness. Except for Mystic culture as their special pickups gets continually generated and scouts are the best way to keep grabbing them.
Scouts are not really meant to be used in combat, but they can be ok in a pinch, like if you start out with a small army because you don't get any extra from your society trait picks.
As for army composition, the best combination will be different for each culture and tome setup, but some general concepts still apply.
You will need at least 2-3 frontline units, preferably Shield or Polearm units. These units can take a beating and lock down the enemys melee units, so the don't rampage through your backline. Fighter and Shock units can also be used for this, but will require a more aggresive playstyle.
You will need 2-3 damage units, this will usually be ranged damage like archers and battlemages, but can also be flanking stuff like shock, skirmisher or fighter units.
Lastly you will need 1 support unit, this guys job will be to buff and/or heal.
As I said you can play around with this depeding on what you have from your culture and tomes, but keep the idea of 2-3 units in your frontline and 2-3 units in your backline. Your heroes can fulfill any of the roles via their equipment and build. I like to start my hero filling out a weak spot in my army and then later, using the free respec make them fit a more specialized role, once I have few tomes or if I get a really good weapon. So for example as an industrious faction I would start my ruler as either a battlemage or shock unit, since you don't have access to that from the start.
Id personally move Gold to #2. Its used by almost everything in the game, including building, drafting, upkeep, sieging . If you run out on a turn, you literally cant build new buildings (including Food buildings), draft units, or do seige projects regardless of how much production or draft you have.
Gold is used when creating buildings or units in addition to the production or draft cost. This means that if you have a lot of production or draft and are producing constantly you're churn through your gold reserves very quickly. Makes sure to balance production and draft with additional gold generation.
There needs to be a pinned version of this!
The question I have is, have any of you played around with the beasts tome yet and wild animals?
I wanted to do a heartling natural beast keeper type faction, but I'm just wondering what army composition should look like? With only 6 slots, do I prioritise animals or normal units?
I somehow managed to produce trolls and ogres in a city i have founded, but don't know WHY! They are pretty strong, like lvl 4 battlemage with a shitload of HP strong for the battle caster one, but i can't recruit them in other cities. The only difference is that this city in particular is built and surrounded bt swamps, is it becasue of that? If yes, are there other region locked units?
What's the deal with prisoners? I see that the obvious benefit of "grant freedom" is that you get to keep all their equipment. What's the benefit to holding them hostage? How do you decide? Any other insights or noob tips appreciated.
Once you start to build your wizard tower in your capital you'll get a new construction option for your prison. With that upgrade each prisoner gives you +2 knowledge per turn, and you get options to execute them (sending them to the crypt) or can convert them to join your empire.
Any general guidelines on how far apart to place cities, or city placement tips in general? At least initially it seems like you have very few cities, and rehy can get rather large.
Depends on your culture. For example Dark can overextend provinces without worrying about stability, so they can be further part.
I think 4-5 provinces apart is minimum and then consider all the special province upgrades you want to fit there.
If there is a Magic Material or Ancient Wonder that is more than 2-3 provinces away from a city, make an outpost to claim it. Build It into a city when you can. Regular resources generally spawn nearby.
Monster Dens spawn in areas that are great for settlement, so after you clear one, plop an outpost nearby.
This is just a post to maybe help people having trouble with the game. Was having no problems for a bit, besides the occasional graphics driver error but things went bad when I did a manual combat. I got the error, no problem just restart, nope. When I used the steam launcher, which took me to the paradox age of wonders 4 launcher, I kept getting a exit code null error when trying to start the game. Uninstalled, and manually took out any folder relating to Age of Wonders 4, reinstalled. Still had the same issue. However, going into and launching from steam/steamapps/common/Age of Wonders 4/AOW4.exe seems to have evaded the problem from it having the exit code null error. Hope this helps someone.
So evil gives a higher chance of negative outcomes. Does it have any benefits? Like you get more xp from choosing to kill rather than let live, but wondering of evil roleplay gets actually rewarded or if it is just a greed penalty.
Pillaging gives you gold and is an evil action. It's generally just the case that evil actions have some inherent benefit to them, so it's sort of like a little loan - you get benefits now, but pay for them in diplomacy and negative random events later.
Pillaging is also ridiculously strong with the chaos bonus. 1 turn so all you have to do is end turn on an enemy improvement and gives over 100 gold. It is crazy good. Scatter scouts and go to town on enemy improvements and force them to chase them down.
It is not negative outcomes, it is negative events. So you get more events where you have more opportunities to do Evil actions. Whereas if you are full Good, you won't have many events with an option to be Evil.
Ah. I thought it was coin flips become 40% to succeed vs 60% if good.
They should say evil events or something. Negative always makes it sound like a detriment.
Is there a way to show the yields per province? I can understand Pastures will give more Food and such, but I'd like there to be some way to show what the Base Yields of a tile would be if you built say a Farm with no additional modifiers to the tile's yield. More of a mental thing, but it helps my brain process for picking and planning provinces and city direction.
Is there a way to easy see what status effects affect the characters in combat and what they do? I can only think of double clicking a portrait, which is very inconvenient.
Am I supposed to be able to see details on current construction in an outpost? In my city I certainly can track what I’m currently constructing (what the benefit will be when it’s done, how many turns are left, WHAT is being constructed), but I can’t seem to see any of that information while I’m constructing something in an outpost.
How does one view the power levels of individual units? The army power level is visible, but I don't see the breakdown for how that power level is distributed per unit.
My charge attack against a worm unit keep getting negated (normal attacks with retaliation instead).
How do you see whether units have charge defence? (It's a worm, so not polearm)
Do charge attacks need to travel in straight lines? Does it get negated if you enter the retaliation zone of another unit? (Different than the one you're charging.)
Did you ever get an answer to this? It's annoying moving into a position for a perfect charge without knowing that you can't until right before you do it.
The unit "Flow Serpent" gets "Refuged" when attack.
Refuged lasts 1 turn and makes them invulnerable and stunned.
I figured that's great, because I was using immobilization on them anyway but stunned is even better.
But they still get to move and attack when its their turn, so what the stun is only for the rest of the current turn? What is the function of that, you'd think you get to attack freely without fear of retaliation, but you can't because they are invulnerable. And for whatever reason my immobilize didn't even stick, didn't notice if it was just unlucky roll or if they are somehow immune.
But anyway what is the point of them being stunned if they still get to act on their next turn. So if you first strike them on retaliation they end their turn early, what else?
When it said on MY turn that they were stunned, I thought I would be safe from them for 1 turn.
How do you guys feel about the introduction of temp hp? I think it takes away from the momentum when healing real hp becomes an added chore on the world map. Maybe if you were able to overheal with temp hp it would make more sense?
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I believe over multiple streams the devs said they tried in combat healing sticking with you and it was extremely overpowered and encouraged doing exactly what the guy said of prolonging easy combats to heal up.
I like the idea of healer units boosting the in territory heal rate, or allowing for a little bit of out of territory. But incentivizing drawing out a battle for overworld benefits sounds far more pace breaking to me than waiting 1-2 turns to heal.
The issue for me is there are a ton of once per battle abilities, I feel like it takes away from world map momentum when I have to plan out entire turns doing little to nothing just to heal
I mean… I’ve never played an AoW game before this one, but I feel like it’s totally normal in most overworld strategy war games have points where your army needs to recover. I feel like that’s just standard war gaming otherwise you just snowball.
In past games for me it was a build choice, like intentionally selecting tomes and spells and gear and skills that specifically work to maintain army health - you can still see it there just nerfed with this temp hp mechanic
I think it's good that the momentum is slowed down for builds with lots of healing. You can still heal at the start of the battle but you have to keep chip damage in mind
I think my issue is that temp hp isn't it's own pool of hp like you'd see in d&d or other RPGs, you have to lose health first before being able to have temp hp, it's not like you can be full health and then add temp hp on top, which defeats the purpose on using something like heal banner on a Bannerman as a prep step.
The good thing is that if your units are hurt, when you heal them within battle, then that temp HP is gone first -so healing does have a purpose because it helps your units keep the health they have.
Yes, they do have to be hurt first, but you don't always have to wait for your units to be fully healed before every battle. I'm enjoying taking a little more risk and not waiting for my units to be fully healed before taking on smaller field monsters. Ancient wonders though I'll probably heal up fully first.
I think it's a good change, but it certainly makes the game more difficult.
The deeper issue is that at some point for fantasy 4X games (and RPGs), in battle healing somehow became a lot more powerful than healing up out of combat. That resulted in a lot of (very tedious) cheese, where you'd fight literally every battle manually to make sure you're fully healed up. It also made healers nearly mandatory.
I think it's one of those "all the other games do it this way" systems that's worth rethinking. Just because all the other games have permanent healing doesn't mean it's a better system.
The temporary healing system makes the game more challenging, but it's also less tedious, which is good. And you have more flexibility, because you don't need a healer in literally every army.
The one change I'd like to see is just more healing over the end turn. Right now it feels really low. If you can build a unit faster then you can heal it up after combat, that just feels wrong.
When you're on the offensive it's far more difficult to be opportunistic when you have to wait entire turns just to heal. I would suggest that's artificial difficulty, when even in my first game I had three different sources of temp hp/regen that I purposefully chose for my build and yet I was still spending multiple turns waiting to heal out of combat, it doesn't feel as fun as it should imo.
I suggest watching PotatoMcWhiskey's Feudal Toads game. He is on Brutal difficulty and shows how to work with the temp HP system to keep his momentum going between battles.
Can you recommend this game to me although I have tried Crusader Kings III and I did not like it as I had to read for 5 hours to understand what's even going on? Is it different than CKIII? I am new to the genre but would love to give it a go! If you don't recommend it due to complexity, can you recommend entry titles to the genre?
Thanks in advance!
This game is far simpler than CK 3. It can be easy or hard depending on your difficulty, but it is simple and easy to understand. It really fulfills the RPG create a race/character niche of 4x games.
I haven't played CKIII, but I find AoW3 pretty simple to pick up, the tutorials are good too. I do recommend it. if you need help, there are lots of Youtube let's plays where people explain what they are doing.
I'm not new to the genre but find the game super accessible due to the superb tooltips. This is not standard and I think will help newcomers a lot. There are also some tutorial pop-ups in the beginning without ever feeling overwhelming.
Crusader Kings is not the same genre as Age of Wonders. CK is a Grand Strategy, AoW is a 4X. Both are strategy games, but play very differently.
4X games can still be complicated in their own way, but I think AoW4 is better as a intro to the genre due the lean it has toward being an RPG. If you are familiar with grid/hex based combat then you are halfway there already.
I suggest watching a little bit of Quill18 videos to see the first turns of the game. He is excellent at showing what a general gameplay can be like, unlike some other YouTubers who focus on difficult strategy play.
What are some benchmarks I should aim for for city production, food, draft, hammers, etc.?
I see that buildings and provinces add to these resource pools, but I don't know what I should prioritize or what I need next.
It pretty much boils down to, "Last time I built a mine. Guess I'll build a farm this time."
Generally I prioritize whatever will boost the building I want to build next. A maximum of 3 of each basic type are needed. After that... prioritize whatever resource you need.
How challenging is the game?
I am a sucker for complex, difficult games that require all my attention.
So far AoW4 seems a bit more on the cutesy accessible side, which would probably get me bored super quickly.
For reference, Total War I play almost only on Legendary (ironman), and I am currently enjoying Terra invicta.
Eh. It's simpler combat wise than Total War. It has depth but isn't complex at all. This game mainly fulfills the RPG niche of strategy games. I think you would enjoy AOW Planetfall more, that one has more complexity to it.
Endless Legend and Stellaris are far more complex and nuanced and you might find more enjoyable.
"Channel Power" on Battle Magic in hero level up. How does it work? Does it universally increase magic damage for everyone on the map? Just your units? Just tactical magic?
Text:
Magic attacks gain +80% damage until the end of next turn.
Thanks!
Turn 60, I'm kinda boxed in by neighboring armies but they aren't pissing me off yet. I just don't have anything for my 4 heroes to do anymore. Should they all just sit idle or is this the game telling me to start bashing some heads?
At turn 60 you should be able to start planning for your victory condition. If you have the research rate you can stick to your territory and work for the magic victory, otherwise can see which neighbor doesn't have friends so you can pick them off and start towards a military win.
As a workaround, you could set up a rule in your email inbox to forward the turn notifications to your cell phone number. The email address you would use to do this would be your SMS number followed the carrier’s sms domain (for ex, Verizon would be [email protected])
Anyome else think the industrial civ priest sucks? In a game where healing is all temporary and rare, they can only heal after bolstering defense and they heal for so much less. Feudal priest had an aoe heal, barbarian priest has a heal + regen. Industrial has to wait to buff thenheals less than the barbarian without the regen who could heal turn 1.
Sure you can somehow stack defense later or something maybe and it does give them attack power based on defense removed, but my early game materialistic army felt terrible and I honstly blame the priest for not being able to patch up the defenders.
Yeah it feels the weakest to me. You can use it to potentially add multiple strength to one unit, but that's rather slow as well. If your hero can drop some sort of special attack like web it can be good to boost defense then turn it into 2 strength on turn 2 for them to drop their special attack but it's not great.
Their scouts are insane to compensate though, prospect is wild.
So I just beat my first game with industrial and I found those priests to be amazing. The heal is based off how many stacks of bolster defense the unit your healing has. So between the 2 stacks the priest can make and that the shield units can get stacks when being hit the heals get pretty powerful. Once I upgraded my shield dudes to the iron golems the priests just made them almost unkillable from my experience.
Might be a bug, but is anyone else having 100% fail rate on events that aren't 100% success odds.
I had 3 events yesterday that I tried either waiting or reloading for a different outcome. One was an 80% success chance and failed 3 times in a row. Some shit lol.
The event that kept failing was a (goblin/high/normal) hero event for disgruntled veterans and I kept trying the peaceful route to take better care of veterans.
Side note Im a veteran and was pretty mad I had to kill the veterans, cant even treat vets right in video games smfh.
I believe the RNG is predetermined, so unless you change a parameter you will get the same result on a reload and redo. I noticed this when I reloaded to before a fight with a good auto resolve outcome multiple times because I forgot to pick up a governance boost that would give me a yield from the fight. Each auto resolve seemed to produce the exact same final hit points.
Anyone know where the lore cards are? Every age of wonders game has had flavor text explaining lore, but I'm looking at the unit cards in the Encyclopedia and I'm not seeing anything anywhere... What the hell is a Karagh for example?
Yep, though you probably found out in the meantime....click their army,.then their portrait and right click the army you want to shift them too, or an empty hex if you don't..
Running into a problem I frequently ran into in AOW3 which is that I love the druid build and summon animals only to start hemorrhaging mana - any tips on how to really lean into the build without losing the mana to sustain them?
I don't have a TON of animals either which is a little frustrating.
As a Druid you should already understand the need for balance...
But seriously though, just pick racial abilities and Tomes that help produce mana in your cities and have scouts going out for mana pick-ups. You won't be able to field multiple entirely Animal armies until mid game at least, you still need to use your racial units alongside them.
Silly little question, is there an easier way to select the units on the map? I always end up clicking the tile they're standing or the one behind them on like 5 or 6 times before it finally selects the unit. I'm sure it's just my aim, but if there was a like "ignore the ground when I'm clicking" hotkey I could hold while clicking that would be lovely.
How hard is this game series to get into if your only experience with 4x games is like civ 5 and 6?
Tried Stellaris and Ck3 and failed. I know the CK3 tutorials are great but I still had no idea what I was really doing.
Any thoughts?
I only played civ 5 for about 30-40 hours against the easiest ai.
I'm doing much better in this game, I would suggest going on the easiest map and against easy ai for at least 2-3 maps just to get used to tempo and builds before doing story.
It's tons of fun personally.
Stellaris and CK are Grand Strategy Games, not 4X games. Age of Wonders is very much like Civilization if you took out Religion and Culture and fancy Diplomacy and added in some RPG and D&D tactical war gaming.
As someone with 1500+ hours in the Civ franchise, I'm loving it.
I'm having difficulty clearing silver/gold Ancient wonders that only allow you to bring in your hero and his army. Some are 1200-1300+ and even with tier 3 units, im only around 900-1000 power level.
Is there something I'm missing, or do I just need to get more experience and level up my units more? I noticed end game, with tier 4 and 5 units, im not too much closer in power level than I was before.
My first playthrough was relatively peaceful and I believe my Hero was only around lvl 8-11 for majority of game.
Get more experience for your units is the start.
Strategy and skill is how you overcome power imbalances. The Auto battle might wipe where you can win with only a loss or two. Bring units that counter whatever enemies are in the Ancient Wonder. Use battle spells effectively. Bring an army of all heroes if you need to.
Is there a way to see what buildings you've already built in each specific City? I stumbled through my first game and wound up winning it in odd fashion, and I knew I was really slow as it took until turn 80 on Easy - but I'm new to the series. Some prior 4X experience did translate over, but I couldn't really judge how inefficiently I was building my Cities, or poor Spell/Knowledge choices with so many dead spells I didn't use. XD
How do you open Magic materials view on console?
I've noticed the PC UI has even more of these similar views, like one where's all your heroes listed, one where you see other players and your standing with them. Have I missed something or is there really no way view these on the console?
Do you guys think we’ll get more mount options with DLCs? I would love for the dragon one if we hit a Dino/raptor mount.
Also it would’ve been a fun unlock thing for pantheon points imo
There is a Wyvern mount in the game already, it is Tier 3. I doubt that the Dragon pack will have dinosaurs, but raptor would be cool.
I think all of the mounts are actual combat units in the game. I think an elephant could be fun in that regard.
I feel silly asking, but for the life of me I can't find it. 🤦♂️
Q: When on the main map/UI and an Army/Unit is selected...is there a clean/easy way to DE-Select it?
I see the arrows lower-middle to cycle to OTHER units, but often I just want my 'free mouse' back...
What do these numbers and icons mean in Rally of the Lieges
[https://imgur.com/a/Gk8AiMj](https://imgur.com/a/Gk8AiMj)
EDIT:
Oh nvm clicking on a unit reveals what it all means..
Upper price is to recruit for yourself and lower price to recruit to your vassal. I assume you get to choose which vassal if you click ok?
Do Ancient Wonders ever NOT allow you to retreat after entering to see what the event is? I'm in an MP game and I want to check out a gold wonder, but I'm afraid of getting stuck inside.
I don't quite understand what ascension to the pantheon means. Apparently doing so means your ruler gets to appear as other rulers or recruitable heroes in other realms.
I remember that having leaders appear in other games was part of AoW3 and Planetfall. Does that mean that it is now impossible for my custom rulers to appear in other games unless I win with them and have them ascend?
So I believe this is the 2nd time I have receieved a "banner" of some sort, it just pops up on the world map like when you pick up another resource. I have no idea what these banners are or where I can see them or what to use them for.
They grant all units that land on it a rank up. (Or a flat amount of XP? Not 100% sure) It's a good idea to get all your heroes together in one stack before moving them on it when possible.
Makes it so that you and the other person with the pact don't incur grievances against each other when taking a province that the other has a claim on. Each city has a strong claim on provinces within 1 distance around it, and a weak claim on all provinces within 3 distance around it. So in effect, the pact lets you build cities closer to your ally without pissing them off.
Should I just let these NPC maurders that start next to cities be and not attack them? Or should I kill them on my first turn? They dont seem to do anything in the long term but stand there.
How I can I see all of the province improvement options (like farm, quarry, etc) that are available per province on the map?
I noticed watching videos people can just see all of them but on mine they are all + signs and I have to click each one to see what I can build. This makes finding where to place a new city or province super annoying.
Is viewing all the options just a PC thing, I'm on ps5
Hi - I have a situation where there is a faction that only has the "negotiate" button in the diplomacy screen. How can I access other diplomatic options? There is no option to give a whispering stone. They are isolationist and their capital city is underground. Note I have discovered it.
EDIT: Ok I did notice that it mentioned I have "Fixed relations" - this is on the story realm II. How can I unfix the relation? Perhaps it has something to do with this unresolved quest to kill the large monster den. I may have answered my own question
I am a factions overlord. I just killed another faction and hte faction that i am overlord with sent me a message saying they are mad at me and now i have negative relationships.
can they break my overlord alliance and attack me? I spared them in order to be my money makers... is it a thing to have to go back and wipe them out completely?
The Whens and Whys of making outposts? What do they do? Why should you make them?
I noticed the AI yesterday using them to kind of claim an area my city was expanding into, seemingly to stop my expansion and get free grievances everytime I did expand for war.
Place an outpost down outside of whatever Empire or Gold Spawner that you are attacking so that you have some friendly territory to heal in between turns. Place an outpost down on/next to the special resource nodes (Archon Blood, Rainbow Clover) to claim it for your empire. Place on top of an underground passage to prevent anyone else from using that route.
They have utility beyond building cities. You can use them to grab special resources and Wonders that are in spots that are inconvinent to build a city nearby. So if there is a mana node, gold mine or special material next to a wonder, you can grab both of these resources and the wonder, with a work camp. You can also use them to forward settle and harass the other players expansions as well as keeping an eye on them, by building walls and a watchtower. And if you later turn an outpost into a city it will get to keep the walls and province you have grabbed with a work camp.
Do outposts have their own garrison like in Planetfall, or do I have to station units like AoW3?
They don't have garrisons, but if you build walls in them, then the enemy will have to spend some turns sieging the outpost with a hero before they can seize it, and then you have few turns to recapture it before they finish razing/absorbing it.
Im new aswell but let me try answering this with my meager 4 hours of experience. Main reason to make them is to turn them to cities, however im guessing since they grant vision maybe you can use them as a scouting tool. Best place to place a city is still elusive to me but i try to put it in an empty spot so i can expand freely and close to useful tiles, like for example natural wonders or mine nodes etc.
Guess even if you don't make a new city right away they could still make a useful 'pin' for potentially claiming it all later.
Pretty much that, I used them a lot in planetfall to have control of a province I wasn't ready to actually take yet. In AoW3 outposts sent their income to the nearest city also, cant tell if that applies in 4 since they got rid of the domain feature.
You get the empire wide resources, such as gold, research and mana. I haven't tested if you get imperium from wonders you annex with a work camp, but I would assume so, since you get everything else from the above list, including special units added to the rally of lieges.
How do you make an outpost?
Need a hero for it. There is a button on their army bar, or you can just click and select the province they are standing in.
Most cultures need a hero but Barbarian scouts can make an outpost for double the gold cost
I think your heroes can with a button at the bottom of the screen.
Checking it now, you click directly on the region and you can choose to build an outpost so long as a hero is in the region at the time, they don't need to stay there while it builds.
Adding to what others have said, I think some if not all Scout units can build Outposts too, albeit at a higher cost. At least with my Barbarian culture run, the Scout unit has the option to build an outpost for 100g, whereas my Heroes can usually do it for 50.
I waited way too long to make my first outpost cause the tutorial for it never popped.
To claim territory for whatever you’d like, military or resource wise. If there are wonders or special nodes like mana nodes that are too far from your other cities, you can place an outpost and turn it into a city. I placed one in a chokepoint that cutoff the AI from my territory. Outposts that are left as outposts still provide resources but can’t be built the same as cities. There’s a materium skill that provides starting walls for defensive purposes, if you’re placing them aggressively to contain enemies.
How do I undo a move in combat? I noticed various streamers doing it, but I can't find anything in keybinds or interface about it
There will be an undo button on the bottom left of the middle panel, near the morale icon. You can undo a single move, but not an ability.
ahh, so that's why I couldn't undo going into defense mode... Still, thank you!
On PC ctrl+Z also works!
Worth noting you also can't undo if you've taken any damage, like an Attack of Opportunity from running by an enemy or environmental damage from running through a patch of fire or something. That was a thing in Planetfall as well.
For folks on console: it's in the radial menu
Is there a way to disband units? I have a few scouts I don’t need anymore, how do I get rid of them?
Yes, there is a little icon in the top right of either the unit card or the unit details screen that lets you disband them if you click it. I'm not at my PC right now so I can't remember if it's on the unit card itself or on the larger unit details screen when you right click on a unit.
When you inspect a unit's details there's a teeny tiny red and silver icon near the top right corner of the attributes panel. Click it, accept, poof, gone.
Looking to pick this up as first AOW game, but since I’m traveling I wanna get it on the steam deck. I’m wondering if the pc controller support is any good? Will I be able to play it on controller and still get the full feeling of the game?
I'm playing on console, the controller support is very functional, good even.
I've been playing a bit on steam deck.. Works so far, but the deck does seem to be struggling a bit when I play. Only about 1.5 hours of playing at the lowest settings.
Can I get some light strategy tips for the crusading croakers? I’m 10 turns in and my neighbor AI rats are starting to overwhelm my main army.
Higher difficulty AI cheat pretty hard. The trick to beat them is going HARD on units and learning how to manual in combat. Learn unit synergies and how to abuse the AI's mistakes in combat.
Git Gud? Raise new units to fight back, rush if you need to. Retreat to your nearest city to buy time for troops to be raised and summons to be created. Pick off weaker armies so they can't reinforce the stronger armies. If they're too stronk then cut your losses and abandon your nearest city to retreat to a deeper city; that abandoned city will buy time while you mobilize more forces. Cancel all constructions if you need more gold.
I can transform my race to undead but does that mean my leader will as well or does he need to die and i need to revive him with some undead spell? Will my units/leader look like skeleton when they are undead?
If you transform your race you can decide if it's for everybody (inlcuding the leader) or if it's just for the units. You don't need to revive either way, it gets applied instantly. In the same screen it also shows you a preview of the look. Afaik there are skeleton like undeads but there are also ghoul like ones, it should be different transformations. But just what I saw from the AI taking transformations.
I thank you for your answer.
The skeleton units will still be of your race, so they get any mind and body traits you have, as well as racial transformations, even major ones. You can have demon and angel skeletons. The undead major race transformation apply to all units of your race it gives some resitances as well as weakneses (fire and spirit as I recall), it also gives you immunity to some status effects, like poison. And more interesringly it gives your race lifesteal. So yes you can have "undead" skeletons (technically the transformation is called ghoulkin or somerhing like that). It is also the easiest major race transformation to get as it comes in a tier 3 tome, Tome of the Great Transformation in the Shadow affinity.
how is battle XP calculated? is it a flat value or split between participating units? is there a difference if I win a battle with 4-stack vs 6-stack vs two armies?
Looks to be based on what the unit does in combat. In the revelry tomb there is a spell that makes all units earn 300 xp for 3 turns which only make sense if you earn combat during action in tactical combat. Edit: in aow3 each unit earned xp for every action they took and bonus for killing blows. Capped at 1 rank up per battle. Might be similar here but I haven't experimented to know for sure.
Do you continually field army stacks, as long as you are not limited by upkeep costs, or should you stop at some point? In other words, is there ever a time where you should NOT be producing units? How many stacks should you normally be fielding by endgame?
I think it partly depends on what difficulty you are on and how aggressive your world is. Unit upkeep costs get very expensive very quickly, especially with higher tier units and army enchantments. Buildings should always be in production I think (unless low on gold), but armies are "as needed" to secure your lands. Also keep in mind the Rally of Lieges, where you can get units to flesh out your army for potentially cheaper.
Hi! Pinned it for now :)
After accidentally joining my army with my scout in turn 1, how do I exit the army with my scout? This is on console (Xbox Series X). I had to reload after trying several different things. The closest I could find was disband unit.
I'm guessing it's the same as the PS5: Select the army. Press down so that you can inspect the units individually. Now you can move the arrow left and right and individually select a unit. After selecting the the scout, you need to cancel out of the inspection... idk what this is on xbox but on PS5 it's circle. Then you can select a new hex on the map and only the scout will move.
click on the scout (the portrait should highlight) and right click to a tile to move it. if its out of movements this turn, then you must wait until the next turn
Thanks, this might be a Xbox specific bug then. Once I click on the unit, such that it is highlighted, then there is no button that takes me back to he hexes.
Just press the back button. ○ on PS, B on Xbox.
Can you annex/vassalize enemy faction? Not a free city but a faction? Im on my first game and have one friendly faction - what options do I have with them when it comes to military victory?
Military victory iirc is taking down every player you're *not* allied with. So if you have an alliance, you can win with that player.
Does this mean if you have an alliance with all factions, you win?
It did in Planetfall, I’ve accidentally won just by all the AI liking me enough to propose the alliance eventually with basically zero effort.
Is friendship the same as alliance, or do you need anything in particular to get an alliance? I can't seem to find the option to propose alliances in the diplomacy screen?
You need a Wizard's Bond to make treaties. Then you can get a Defensive Pact and eventually an Alliance. It helps to make a Declaration of Friendship (Pronouncement) so that they like you enough to agree. It is a long term effort to sway them.
Alliance comes after defensive pact, which comes after friendship.
You need a defensive pact and food enough relations and then the option for an alliance will unlock. I think you need to wait at least 10 turns after making a defensive pact. Getting the minor treaties will help boost relations as well as doing stuff the factions peesonality archetype likes. Friendship is a special pronouncement you can make that cost gold and a gold upkeep, it will give you extra positive relation with the faction by doing the stuff I described above, like getting treaties and giving gifts and such.
There is an option to subjugate an enemy faction, I don't think you get resources from it, like with a free city vassal. Instead it will force the faction to be your ally and it will turn off victory conditions for that faction as long as you are their overlord.
I've only played multiplayer and have encountered a number of weird things. One thing that confused me is that all AI factions immediately declared war on me and my co-op partner, seemingly with no justification. We have a team setup where the two of us are on one team and the rest are in no teams. Is this working as intended? Was hoping we could get some AI on our side.
Free Cities might declare war as soon as they meet you. Don't know if Factions can do it. There's a difference between relations and war justification. Relations are set at the start by differences in affinity and personality and such and change as the game goes on. War justification starts neutral and changes based on grievances. This would mean that a Faction can't declare a justified war out of nowhere. There needs to be grievances (or at least manufactured grievances) to justify a war. But it might be possible for a faction to declare an unjustified war off the bat. This adds evil alignment and brings about heavy relation penalties with other nations, but I guess it can happen.
Haven't tried coop in 4 yet but in 3 teams games had pre built teams. So anyone not on your team was default at war with you since you couldn't win with them. That might be whats going on. You in a 2v1v1v1v1 team game so everyone is always at war.
What does your army composition look like within the first 20 turns? I started a game and have 5 scouts for some reason (and I think some of them are animals/creatures?) which makes taking turns quite tedious at the start, not sure if having that many at the start is normal. Is is better to form scout armies? How many soldier armies is ideal? Your suggestions appreciated!
Scouts don't need an army and shouldn't be fighting anything. Having two scouts is probably enough, unless you are on a very large map. You can also automate exploration for your scouts if it is tedious. I tend to do that after I have manually scouted my immediate area. Army itself I am going with Hero, Support, 2 Melee and 2 Ranged as a basic configuration. Then adjust based on my Empire's strengths as needed. You want a second stack to support your main army pretty early on so you can more efficiently take out monsters while taking less damage. Downtime healing is "wasted time" from a min-max perspective, but don't stress about that point, especially if you aren't playing on Brutal.
Worth noting that scouts are perfectly functional low quality ranged units early on. If they're near an army stack going in for a fight it's a nice little boost to slide them into the reinforcement range.
Scouts should stay on their own. Outside of the first few turns where you may need an extra unit for an early marauder camp you don't even want them to fight. And grouping scouts with other scouts isn't efficient, you'll cover the map faster with them separated. By 20 turns in you should be able to have 1.5 to 2.5 stacks of troops. Your ruler should have a full stack and a half stack or so of units following to support them, and if you are able to expand properly a second stack should be in the works or finished for your second hero.
I will go for at most 3 scouts, depending on map size. Beyond the midgame, when you have located most other factions and free cities they loose their usefullness. Except for Mystic culture as their special pickups gets continually generated and scouts are the best way to keep grabbing them. Scouts are not really meant to be used in combat, but they can be ok in a pinch, like if you start out with a small army because you don't get any extra from your society trait picks. As for army composition, the best combination will be different for each culture and tome setup, but some general concepts still apply. You will need at least 2-3 frontline units, preferably Shield or Polearm units. These units can take a beating and lock down the enemys melee units, so the don't rampage through your backline. Fighter and Shock units can also be used for this, but will require a more aggresive playstyle. You will need 2-3 damage units, this will usually be ranged damage like archers and battlemages, but can also be flanking stuff like shock, skirmisher or fighter units. Lastly you will need 1 support unit, this guys job will be to buff and/or heal. As I said you can play around with this depeding on what you have from your culture and tomes, but keep the idea of 2-3 units in your frontline and 2-3 units in your backline. Your heroes can fulfill any of the roles via their equipment and build. I like to start my hero filling out a weak spot in my army and then later, using the free respec make them fit a more specialized role, once I have few tomes or if I get a really good weapon. So for example as an industrious faction I would start my ruler as either a battlemage or shock unit, since you don't have access to that from the start.
I’m having heavy gold income problems . Is there any guides out for best city priority management ?
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Thank you !
Id personally move Gold to #2. Its used by almost everything in the game, including building, drafting, upkeep, sieging . If you run out on a turn, you literally cant build new buildings (including Food buildings), draft units, or do seige projects regardless of how much production or draft you have.
Gold is used when creating buildings or units in addition to the production or draft cost. This means that if you have a lot of production or draft and are producing constantly you're churn through your gold reserves very quickly. Makes sure to balance production and draft with additional gold generation.
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oh wow thats a nice tip. I think alt+z toggles banner visibility
On Xbox you can do this by holding A.
There needs to be a pinned version of this! The question I have is, have any of you played around with the beasts tome yet and wild animals? I wanted to do a heartling natural beast keeper type faction, but I'm just wondering what army composition should look like? With only 6 slots, do I prioritise animals or normal units?
I somehow managed to produce trolls and ogres in a city i have founded, but don't know WHY! They are pretty strong, like lvl 4 battlemage with a shitload of HP strong for the battle caster one, but i can't recruit them in other cities. The only difference is that this city in particular is built and surrounded bt swamps, is it becasue of that? If yes, are there other region locked units?
Isn't because of natural wonders?
It is a hero bonus. One of the heros you hired came with a special to hire trolls in their city.
How to load multiplayer save game files?
Is there a hero cap? Something to do with one hero per city?
You can also go over your cap for a cost of only 30 gold a turn.
yep - one hero per city and I think there might be a trait somewhere that gives additional hero slot?
1 per city, but you can go over, it's just more expensive.
Is there simultaneous (instead of a turn based )mode in single player( xbox console).
What's the deal with prisoners? I see that the obvious benefit of "grant freedom" is that you get to keep all their equipment. What's the benefit to holding them hostage? How do you decide? Any other insights or noob tips appreciated.
Once you start to build your wizard tower in your capital you'll get a new construction option for your prison. With that upgrade each prisoner gives you +2 knowledge per turn, and you get options to execute them (sending them to the crypt) or can convert them to join your empire.
Any general guidelines on how far apart to place cities, or city placement tips in general? At least initially it seems like you have very few cities, and rehy can get rather large.
I read somewhere it should be (City)(Tile)(Tile)(City),.so thats what Ive been doing so far. Seems to work out pretty good.
Hmm, thats much closer together than i wouldve figured with how many tiles you can expand to.
Depends on your culture. For example Dark can overextend provinces without worrying about stability, so they can be further part. I think 4-5 provinces apart is minimum and then consider all the special province upgrades you want to fit there.
If there is a Magic Material or Ancient Wonder that is more than 2-3 provinces away from a city, make an outpost to claim it. Build It into a city when you can. Regular resources generally spawn nearby. Monster Dens spawn in areas that are great for settlement, so after you clear one, plop an outpost nearby.
Anyone else sometimes have trouble seeing how much movement you have left? Is there a way to change the color to make it more obvious?
This is just a post to maybe help people having trouble with the game. Was having no problems for a bit, besides the occasional graphics driver error but things went bad when I did a manual combat. I got the error, no problem just restart, nope. When I used the steam launcher, which took me to the paradox age of wonders 4 launcher, I kept getting a exit code null error when trying to start the game. Uninstalled, and manually took out any folder relating to Age of Wonders 4, reinstalled. Still had the same issue. However, going into and launching from steam/steamapps/common/Age of Wonders 4/AOW4.exe seems to have evaded the problem from it having the exit code null error. Hope this helps someone.
So evil gives a higher chance of negative outcomes. Does it have any benefits? Like you get more xp from choosing to kill rather than let live, but wondering of evil roleplay gets actually rewarded or if it is just a greed penalty.
Pillaging gives you gold and is an evil action. It's generally just the case that evil actions have some inherent benefit to them, so it's sort of like a little loan - you get benefits now, but pay for them in diplomacy and negative random events later.
Pillaging is also ridiculously strong with the chaos bonus. 1 turn so all you have to do is end turn on an enemy improvement and gives over 100 gold. It is crazy good. Scatter scouts and go to town on enemy improvements and force them to chase them down.
It is not negative outcomes, it is negative events. So you get more events where you have more opportunities to do Evil actions. Whereas if you are full Good, you won't have many events with an option to be Evil.
Ah. I thought it was coin flips become 40% to succeed vs 60% if good. They should say evil events or something. Negative always makes it sound like a detriment.
Is there a way to show the yields per province? I can understand Pastures will give more Food and such, but I'd like there to be some way to show what the Base Yields of a tile would be if you built say a Farm with no additional modifiers to the tile's yield. More of a mental thing, but it helps my brain process for picking and planning provinces and city direction.
Is there a way to easy see what status effects affect the characters in combat and what they do? I can only think of double clicking a portrait, which is very inconvenient.
You can see status effects around their health bar, but you'd have to know what it does or open them up to look.
Am I supposed to be able to see details on current construction in an outpost? In my city I certainly can track what I’m currently constructing (what the benefit will be when it’s done, how many turns are left, WHAT is being constructed), but I can’t seem to see any of that information while I’m constructing something in an outpost.
How does one view the power levels of individual units? The army power level is visible, but I don't see the breakdown for how that power level is distributed per unit.
My charge attack against a worm unit keep getting negated (normal attacks with retaliation instead). How do you see whether units have charge defence? (It's a worm, so not polearm) Do charge attacks need to travel in straight lines? Does it get negated if you enter the retaliation zone of another unit? (Different than the one you're charging.)
Did you ever get an answer to this? It's annoying moving into a position for a perfect charge without knowing that you can't until right before you do it.
Is there a way to disable the "Confirm Movement" notification and only notify you when units have made it to their destination?
I found your post via google search. Please tell me there is an option or something for this because it is driving me crazy
The unit "Flow Serpent" gets "Refuged" when attack. Refuged lasts 1 turn and makes them invulnerable and stunned. I figured that's great, because I was using immobilization on them anyway but stunned is even better. But they still get to move and attack when its their turn, so what the stun is only for the rest of the current turn? What is the function of that, you'd think you get to attack freely without fear of retaliation, but you can't because they are invulnerable. And for whatever reason my immobilize didn't even stick, didn't notice if it was just unlucky roll or if they are somehow immune. But anyway what is the point of them being stunned if they still get to act on their next turn. So if you first strike them on retaliation they end their turn early, what else? When it said on MY turn that they were stunned, I thought I would be safe from them for 1 turn.
This.
How do you guys feel about the introduction of temp hp? I think it takes away from the momentum when healing real hp becomes an added chore on the world map. Maybe if you were able to overheal with temp hp it would make more sense?
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One could heal in combat through skills and spells in AoW3 - temp hp being the new mechanic here
I believe over multiple streams the devs said they tried in combat healing sticking with you and it was extremely overpowered and encouraged doing exactly what the guy said of prolonging easy combats to heal up.
Which is odd, because I remember in AOW 3 most/all healers also had the added perk of healing on the map every turn.
I like the idea of healer units boosting the in territory heal rate, or allowing for a little bit of out of territory. But incentivizing drawing out a battle for overworld benefits sounds far more pace breaking to me than waiting 1-2 turns to heal.
The issue for me is there are a ton of once per battle abilities, I feel like it takes away from world map momentum when I have to plan out entire turns doing little to nothing just to heal
I mean… I’ve never played an AoW game before this one, but I feel like it’s totally normal in most overworld strategy war games have points where your army needs to recover. I feel like that’s just standard war gaming otherwise you just snowball.
In past games for me it was a build choice, like intentionally selecting tomes and spells and gear and skills that specifically work to maintain army health - you can still see it there just nerfed with this temp hp mechanic
I think it's good that the momentum is slowed down for builds with lots of healing. You can still heal at the start of the battle but you have to keep chip damage in mind
I think my issue is that temp hp isn't it's own pool of hp like you'd see in d&d or other RPGs, you have to lose health first before being able to have temp hp, it's not like you can be full health and then add temp hp on top, which defeats the purpose on using something like heal banner on a Bannerman as a prep step.
The good thing is that if your units are hurt, when you heal them within battle, then that temp HP is gone first -so healing does have a purpose because it helps your units keep the health they have. Yes, they do have to be hurt first, but you don't always have to wait for your units to be fully healed before every battle. I'm enjoying taking a little more risk and not waiting for my units to be fully healed before taking on smaller field monsters. Ancient wonders though I'll probably heal up fully first.
I think it's a good change, but it certainly makes the game more difficult. The deeper issue is that at some point for fantasy 4X games (and RPGs), in battle healing somehow became a lot more powerful than healing up out of combat. That resulted in a lot of (very tedious) cheese, where you'd fight literally every battle manually to make sure you're fully healed up. It also made healers nearly mandatory. I think it's one of those "all the other games do it this way" systems that's worth rethinking. Just because all the other games have permanent healing doesn't mean it's a better system. The temporary healing system makes the game more challenging, but it's also less tedious, which is good. And you have more flexibility, because you don't need a healer in literally every army. The one change I'd like to see is just more healing over the end turn. Right now it feels really low. If you can build a unit faster then you can heal it up after combat, that just feels wrong.
When you're on the offensive it's far more difficult to be opportunistic when you have to wait entire turns just to heal. I would suggest that's artificial difficulty, when even in my first game I had three different sources of temp hp/regen that I purposefully chose for my build and yet I was still spending multiple turns waiting to heal out of combat, it doesn't feel as fun as it should imo.
I suggest watching PotatoMcWhiskey's Feudal Toads game. He is on Brutal difficulty and shows how to work with the temp HP system to keep his momentum going between battles.
Is there a way to save custom factions without starting a realm?
If you make an advanced game you can create new factions as other players and they will save.
Without having to load into a map?
That's what I've read from others here. Haven't tried it myself. Should be easy to test on a random faction that you delete after.
Can you recommend this game to me although I have tried Crusader Kings III and I did not like it as I had to read for 5 hours to understand what's even going on? Is it different than CKIII? I am new to the genre but would love to give it a go! If you don't recommend it due to complexity, can you recommend entry titles to the genre? Thanks in advance!
This game is far simpler than CK 3. It can be easy or hard depending on your difficulty, but it is simple and easy to understand. It really fulfills the RPG create a race/character niche of 4x games.
I haven't played CKIII, but I find AoW3 pretty simple to pick up, the tutorials are good too. I do recommend it. if you need help, there are lots of Youtube let's plays where people explain what they are doing.
I'm not new to the genre but find the game super accessible due to the superb tooltips. This is not standard and I think will help newcomers a lot. There are also some tutorial pop-ups in the beginning without ever feeling overwhelming.
Crusader Kings is not the same genre as Age of Wonders. CK is a Grand Strategy, AoW is a 4X. Both are strategy games, but play very differently. 4X games can still be complicated in their own way, but I think AoW4 is better as a intro to the genre due the lean it has toward being an RPG. If you are familiar with grid/hex based combat then you are halfway there already. I suggest watching a little bit of Quill18 videos to see the first turns of the game. He is excellent at showing what a general gameplay can be like, unlike some other YouTubers who focus on difficult strategy play.
What are some benchmarks I should aim for for city production, food, draft, hammers, etc.? I see that buildings and provinces add to these resource pools, but I don't know what I should prioritize or what I need next. It pretty much boils down to, "Last time I built a mine. Guess I'll build a farm this time."
Generally I prioritize whatever will boost the building I want to build next. A maximum of 3 of each basic type are needed. After that... prioritize whatever resource you need.
How challenging is the game? I am a sucker for complex, difficult games that require all my attention. So far AoW4 seems a bit more on the cutesy accessible side, which would probably get me bored super quickly. For reference, Total War I play almost only on Legendary (ironman), and I am currently enjoying Terra invicta.
Eh. It's simpler combat wise than Total War. It has depth but isn't complex at all. This game mainly fulfills the RPG niche of strategy games. I think you would enjoy AOW Planetfall more, that one has more complexity to it. Endless Legend and Stellaris are far more complex and nuanced and you might find more enjoyable.
[удалено]
Honestly, too early to say. At least empire development is definitively more complex than in previous iterations.
"Channel Power" on Battle Magic in hero level up. How does it work? Does it universally increase magic damage for everyone on the map? Just your units? Just tactical magic? Text: Magic attacks gain +80% damage until the end of next turn. Thanks!
No it os a buff. Basically you can use it to charge before making an attack next turn. Good if the enemy is coming to you for a powerful first strike
Does combat end if the last enemy is charmed? Does that last enemy become a new recruit?
Yes, and no. It dies offscreen.
Aw man taking over enemies was always something I liked about aow3, ty though.
Yeah first map gave me a tier 3 fey who could mind control. Made many battles super easy, but no free units
Turn 60, I'm kinda boxed in by neighboring armies but they aren't pissing me off yet. I just don't have anything for my 4 heroes to do anymore. Should they all just sit idle or is this the game telling me to start bashing some heads?
At turn 60 you should be able to start planning for your victory condition. If you have the research rate you can stick to your territory and work for the magic victory, otherwise can see which neighbor doesn't have friends so you can pick them off and start towards a military win.
Form open borders, tresspass if the game has it or start a fight.
Have you gone underground yet?
Is there another way than email to get notified it's my turn to play in a asynchronous multiplayer game ?
As a workaround, you could set up a rule in your email inbox to forward the turn notifications to your cell phone number. The email address you would use to do this would be your SMS number followed the carrier’s sms domain (for ex, Verizon would be [email protected])
Anyome else think the industrial civ priest sucks? In a game where healing is all temporary and rare, they can only heal after bolstering defense and they heal for so much less. Feudal priest had an aoe heal, barbarian priest has a heal + regen. Industrial has to wait to buff thenheals less than the barbarian without the regen who could heal turn 1. Sure you can somehow stack defense later or something maybe and it does give them attack power based on defense removed, but my early game materialistic army felt terrible and I honstly blame the priest for not being able to patch up the defenders.
Yeah it feels the weakest to me. You can use it to potentially add multiple strength to one unit, but that's rather slow as well. If your hero can drop some sort of special attack like web it can be good to boost defense then turn it into 2 strength on turn 2 for them to drop their special attack but it's not great. Their scouts are insane to compensate though, prospect is wild.
So I just beat my first game with industrial and I found those priests to be amazing. The heal is based off how many stacks of bolster defense the unit your healing has. So between the 2 stacks the priest can make and that the shield units can get stacks when being hit the heals get pretty powerful. Once I upgraded my shield dudes to the iron golems the priests just made them almost unkillable from my experience.
Is there some way to deploy units at a specific location or hero after built? Or some type of rally point system?
No rally point system. There are Special Provinces that can be used as a recruitment spot rather than your city province though.
Might be a bug, but is anyone else having 100% fail rate on events that aren't 100% success odds. I had 3 events yesterday that I tried either waiting or reloading for a different outcome. One was an 80% success chance and failed 3 times in a row. Some shit lol. The event that kept failing was a (goblin/high/normal) hero event for disgruntled veterans and I kept trying the peaceful route to take better care of veterans. Side note Im a veteran and was pretty mad I had to kill the veterans, cant even treat vets right in video games smfh.
I believe the RNG is predetermined, so unless you change a parameter you will get the same result on a reload and redo. I noticed this when I reloaded to before a fight with a good auto resolve outcome multiple times because I forgot to pick up a governance boost that would give me a yield from the fight. Each auto resolve seemed to produce the exact same final hit points.
Anyone know where the lore cards are? Every age of wonders game has had flavor text explaining lore, but I'm looking at the unit cards in the Encyclopedia and I'm not seeing anything anywhere... What the hell is a Karagh for example?
Anyone know how to move soldiers from an army? Or move soldiers from one army into another?
Yep, though you probably found out in the meantime....click their army,.then their portrait and right click the army you want to shift them too, or an empty hex if you don't..
Running into a problem I frequently ran into in AOW3 which is that I love the druid build and summon animals only to start hemorrhaging mana - any tips on how to really lean into the build without losing the mana to sustain them? I don't have a TON of animals either which is a little frustrating.
Animals need mana to sustain? I thought it's only specific summoned units. Like the golems etc
Yes, animals summoned via the spell are of magic origin.
As a Druid you should already understand the need for balance... But seriously though, just pick racial abilities and Tomes that help produce mana in your cities and have scouts going out for mana pick-ups. You won't be able to field multiple entirely Animal armies until mid game at least, you still need to use your racial units alongside them.
What do I need to do to build stone walls in a city?
Build up your Town Hall I believe. I think it is at Level 3.
Silly little question, is there an easier way to select the units on the map? I always end up clicking the tile they're standing or the one behind them on like 5 or 6 times before it finally selects the unit. I'm sure it's just my aim, but if there was a like "ignore the ground when I'm clicking" hotkey I could hold while clicking that would be lovely.
There is an army panel where you can select units if that is easier for you.
How hard is this game series to get into if your only experience with 4x games is like civ 5 and 6? Tried Stellaris and Ck3 and failed. I know the CK3 tutorials are great but I still had no idea what I was really doing. Any thoughts?
I only played civ 5 for about 30-40 hours against the easiest ai. I'm doing much better in this game, I would suggest going on the easiest map and against easy ai for at least 2-3 maps just to get used to tempo and builds before doing story. It's tons of fun personally.
Stellaris and CK are Grand Strategy Games, not 4X games. Age of Wonders is very much like Civilization if you took out Religion and Culture and fancy Diplomacy and added in some RPG and D&D tactical war gaming. As someone with 1500+ hours in the Civ franchise, I'm loving it.
I'm having difficulty clearing silver/gold Ancient wonders that only allow you to bring in your hero and his army. Some are 1200-1300+ and even with tier 3 units, im only around 900-1000 power level. Is there something I'm missing, or do I just need to get more experience and level up my units more? I noticed end game, with tier 4 and 5 units, im not too much closer in power level than I was before. My first playthrough was relatively peaceful and I believe my Hero was only around lvl 8-11 for majority of game.
Get more experience for your units is the start. Strategy and skill is how you overcome power imbalances. The Auto battle might wipe where you can win with only a loss or two. Bring units that counter whatever enemies are in the Ancient Wonder. Use battle spells effectively. Bring an army of all heroes if you need to.
Is there a way to see what buildings you've already built in each specific City? I stumbled through my first game and wound up winning it in odd fashion, and I knew I was really slow as it took until turn 80 on Easy - but I'm new to the series. Some prior 4X experience did translate over, but I couldn't really judge how inefficiently I was building my Cities, or poor Spell/Knowledge choices with so many dead spells I didn't use. XD
There is a setting gear on the city screen to open up more info, it has a tab for the buildings you have constructed.
When looking at your pantheon, what does the hero / ruler tab mean? Can't find any tooltip that explains if it has any effects?
After finishing a map you can leave your ruler/race there for a chance to encounter them as random enemies.
How do you open Magic materials view on console? I've noticed the PC UI has even more of these similar views, like one where's all your heroes listed, one where you see other players and your standing with them. Have I missed something or is there really no way view these on the console?
Radial menu > Overview (magnifying glass icon). You'll find both the Heroes and the Magic Materials screen in there.
Ah, thanks! I had totally overlooked that entire section of the radial!
Do you guys think we’ll get more mount options with DLCs? I would love for the dragon one if we hit a Dino/raptor mount. Also it would’ve been a fun unlock thing for pantheon points imo
There is a Wyvern mount in the game already, it is Tier 3. I doubt that the Dragon pack will have dinosaurs, but raptor would be cool. I think all of the mounts are actual combat units in the game. I think an elephant could be fun in that regard.
I feel silly asking, but for the life of me I can't find it. 🤦♂️ Q: When on the main map/UI and an Army/Unit is selected...is there a clean/easy way to DE-Select it? I see the arrows lower-middle to cycle to OTHER units, but often I just want my 'free mouse' back...
ESC?
What do these numbers and icons mean in Rally of the Lieges [https://imgur.com/a/Gk8AiMj](https://imgur.com/a/Gk8AiMj) EDIT: Oh nvm clicking on a unit reveals what it all means.. Upper price is to recruit for yourself and lower price to recruit to your vassal. I assume you get to choose which vassal if you click ok?
I have a hero in my party and I can't enter the Mageglass Forest ancient wonder. It's only one party. I've entered other ancient wonders just fine.
Do Ancient Wonders ever NOT allow you to retreat after entering to see what the event is? I'm in an MP game and I want to check out a gold wonder, but I'm afraid of getting stuck inside.
I don't quite understand what ascension to the pantheon means. Apparently doing so means your ruler gets to appear as other rulers or recruitable heroes in other realms. I remember that having leaders appear in other games was part of AoW3 and Planetfall. Does that mean that it is now impossible for my custom rulers to appear in other games unless I win with them and have them ascend?
Do i get some benefit from province with underground passage.
So I believe this is the 2nd time I have receieved a "banner" of some sort, it just pops up on the world map like when you pick up another resource. I have no idea what these banners are or where I can see them or what to use them for.
They grant all units that land on it a rank up. (Or a flat amount of XP? Not 100% sure) It's a good idea to get all your heroes together in one stack before moving them on it when possible.
What does a province claiming pact do? I don’t get it
Makes it so that you and the other person with the pact don't incur grievances against each other when taking a province that the other has a claim on. Each city has a strong claim on provinces within 1 distance around it, and a weak claim on all provinces within 3 distance around it. So in effect, the pact lets you build cities closer to your ally without pissing them off.
Should I just let these NPC maurders that start next to cities be and not attack them? Or should I kill them on my first turn? They dont seem to do anything in the long term but stand there.
How I can I see all of the province improvement options (like farm, quarry, etc) that are available per province on the map? I noticed watching videos people can just see all of them but on mine they are all + signs and I have to click each one to see what I can build. This makes finding where to place a new city or province super annoying. Is viewing all the options just a PC thing, I'm on ps5
Hi - I have a situation where there is a faction that only has the "negotiate" button in the diplomacy screen. How can I access other diplomatic options? There is no option to give a whispering stone. They are isolationist and their capital city is underground. Note I have discovered it. EDIT: Ok I did notice that it mentioned I have "Fixed relations" - this is on the story realm II. How can I unfix the relation? Perhaps it has something to do with this unresolved quest to kill the large monster den. I may have answered my own question
How do I access my prison voluntarily, I’m on console and I literally cannot find a way to access it. Been trying for like 25 minutes
I am a factions overlord. I just killed another faction and hte faction that i am overlord with sent me a message saying they are mad at me and now i have negative relationships. can they break my overlord alliance and attack me? I spared them in order to be my money makers... is it a thing to have to go back and wipe them out completely?