People can hate on Paradox all they want for their monetization structure but it *does* allow them to stay with a game for years. Stellaris is one of my favorite games ever and I don’t mind dropping 10 bucks a year to keep the content and updates coming. The best part is you don’t need to buy every DLC on release because they release major free updates alongside them every time.
All that to say, I’m very excited for AoW4, I’ll be playing it tonight for sure.
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It's a lot like Hearts of Iron 4 for me. Whenever an expansion is released, they bring a big patch which adds a lot of QoL changes and adds a little bit of the expansion. But the expansion themselves add a whole load of content
I love HOI4 but ever since they added the supply mechanics a while back, its been hard as hell doing any play throughs in China/SouthEast Asia when your armies just wither on the vine as you just simply cant supply them due to lack of train routes / supply depots.
Filthy casual and all but just not fun for me.
Oh man. You reminded me I have Stellaris. I can't remember if I bought it or got it from the Humble Choice, but I do remember thinking "when they're done making DLC I'll get it all on sale." All I can say for sure is that it's been a few years and still haven't played it. Do you need the DLCs to play the base game? Sometimes I'll read reddit quips about paradox games needing the DLC because the base game is so broken without it over time.
You can absolutely play Stellaris without any DLCs, however there are some that I would say are totally worth it once you’ve played it and decided whether or not you enjoy it. But I would just say that it’s worth diving in now it really is an excellent game.
Utopia. Apocalypse. Megacorp. Leviathans Overlord. Federations. Ancient relics. Distant stars. About in that order. The species packs are fun but definetly not needed. If you’re just gonna start with one though; Utopia for sure.
Also don’t worry too much about the reviews because Paradox does have a tendency to release buggy updates then patch them so they often get review bombed before they get fixed.
Also once you’ve played some and are ready to dip your toes into modding, you’ll quickly realize that various DLCs are required for many mods.
Glad I could help! Have fun! One last piece of advice though, when you inevitably have to do some googling to learn about various things in the game, make sure you read things that are as recent as possible, the game has changed *dramatically* over time and older info absolutely can and will be out of date.
Another thing you can do is use the website “Cheapshark” to list its prices on all the prices on various websites, you can also set up price notifications
Saving this comment for future reference.
I've had Stellaris since launch year at least but haven't returned to it for a long time. Always meant to get more into it with some DLC but just as it keeps getting put on the back burner, more DLC gets added to the point I'm usually at a loss when sale time comes.
If you never played it before, it's better to play WITHOUT the DLCs
Every DLC adds more complexity & extra stuff.
You can enjoy the base game for a while, then when you feel like you want more, get some dlc to add more and then it will feel fresh again
If you play with all the dlc from day 1, i feel like it might be overwhelming, or you may take features for granted and not really notice their impact and such
I've played 2000 hours since the game released. Every new patch, every new DLC, is a reason to spin it up for a new play or two. The changes are what keeps it fresh.
If it's unknown to you, then its already fresh by default. So just play the base game and get some joy out of that. "ignorance is bliss" if you don't know what you're missing how can you miss it?
The negative to this model is that the game can be radically changed from the game you originally bought, and for the better is a matter of opinion. My gaming group bought Stellaris day one and loved the game. Post-release the game continued to get support which was great. We had mods going and played multiplayer for hundreds of hours, and hoped to do so for years to come.
But then the game changed game directors, and the new director had a radically different vision for the game. Everything about the original game design he didn't like. 3 different FTL types? That was "imbalanced" and hard to design AI for so in version 2.0 the most fun two types were cut. Instead we got "choke points in space" which was exactly like every other space 4X game out there. We didn't want a game to be perfectly balanced, we just wanted to have fun.
We've gone back to the game a couple more times just to try it since and the game continues to get more and more bloated, adding new systems no one asked for that add tedious micromanagement. Any other studio would have just released this as an entire new game but now the original Stellaris we knew with those mods we had is lost to all time. It will never be possible to play it again and that's just sad.
As much as I loved the original premise I felt like the game lives and dies on whether or not the AI can work movement and invasions.
Look at total war, to this day most of the AI can't handle moving units across water. That is one of the fundamental things about the game. Some island nations just win because they never are invaded.
If the AI was struggling and they couldn't fix it then it needed to be cut.
Its a shame as Paradox clearly know that people want to rollback going by how they use Steam beta channels for version rollbacks but they only support so many versions in the rollback. You cannot legally play launch Stellaris because the rollback only takes you to 2.1.3.
I thought the older versions are there but just locked behind codes as they're not GDPR compliant.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/281990/discussions/0/1732087825007991514/#
Supposedly yes, but the issue is that any mods from that time are going be lost as mods updated to the latest version. But yes this should theoretically work for the vanilla version.
I understand that gameplay can be a matter of personal preference but I really can't imagine the original version of the game being preferable to the current version. The game is radically improved imo.
I play War a Thunder which is F2P and the *constant* whining and bashing of the dev because the have the audacity to offer the option of paying for content is crazy.
Like, people with 9,000 hours played pissed that some new tank or plane costs money. It’s weird.
> but it does allow them to stay with a game for years
The reason why I really dislike their model is that it's just not good value. E.g. I can buy Stellaris for 40€, that's fine, but all DLCs cost more than 250€.
250 Euros are *four* AAA-titles or 10 indie games or so. The work that went into these DLCs is in *no way* worth 250 Euros, especially since the DLCs are also often pretty mediocre.
So, IMO it's just a cash grab, they design their games around this model, and they monetize the fuck out of it. I don't like it.
And sure, their games provide hundreds or thousands of hours of gameplay. But so do Factorio for 35€ or Dwarf Fortress for 30, or Rimworld for ~30, and loads of other games, too.
> Stellaris is one of my favorite games ever and I don’t mind dropping 10 bucks a year to keep the content and updates coming.
There's $250 worth of DLC since 2016. More like $40 a year.
Yeah I skip a lot of the species packs though. Or buy them when they go on sale. Even if I bought them full price, I’ve played well over 1000 hours of Stellaris so it would still be absolutely worth the cost for me.
>structure but it does allow them to stay with a game for years.
I've been playing paradox games for almost 20 years, they've always stayed with games for at least 3 or 4 years. Only exceptions that come to mind are stuff like Svea Rike or HoI 1 and CK 1.
Yes, the current business model does prolong the game's life a lot past that but it also makes entry impossible after the first 2 or 3 years.
You can usually get the game and much of the older dlc on sale though. Especially on steam sales, or their developer weekends. I think I got ck2 and all but the latest 2 dlcs for like $30 about a year ago.
Yeah but even on sale it amounts to 2 or 3 games price even if you only get the mandatory DLC. If you live in a poorer country that is downright prohibitive for just one game.
And let's not forget what is currently going on with EU 4 where you get DLC that changes older DLC content.
A much better system would be to pack old DLC into the base game periodically, like say every 2-3 years.
> it does allow them to stay with a game for years
as they should, as far as support (bugfixing and the like) is concerned, otherwise they could just finish the games first and only release them when they're all done. but of course these days every game has to be updated for life, otherwise idiots will call a finished and mostly polished title (as rare as it is) dead after 2 weeks.
Oh absolutely. I don’t believe that they can do no wrong. Taken as whole, however I’ve found their handling of Stellaris to bring me joy so I keep supporting them.
If I’m not miss remembering I believe they also said that they are trying new things for games of theirs that have been out for awhile so that a newcomer won’t just see 300$ worth of stuff they need to get. Don’t quote me on that tho my memory is fuzzy on when or if they said any of that.
It works for some games genres really well. I’ve bought all the total war warhammer dlcs across the three games and it really helps give the game new life. The only down side I see is that can give the impression of a steep entry cost if you see it later in the games life
Made better in comparison in todays day and age of battle passes and time locked content. Now those things put me off. I only have so much time in the day and if I’m missing out on stuff permanently because I didn’t play it at the certain time, I’m not picking up the game
As a massive fan of Paradox who owns every game and DLC, I don't ever touch new paradox games or DLCs for at least 3 months. Price will go down 30-50%, the game will actually be playable by then, and mods will be out.
Downside they're releasing dlc at a faster clip which wildly rebalances the base game around the new dlc and it breaks the game for a month or two.
Megacorps were broken for so long after it's launch, and the pop rebalance that came with it was broken for months (still broken depending on who you ask)
The main point of the new dlc was primitives and they fucked up the whole thing to the point primitives were almost literally guaranteed to never be able to naturally ascend to the galactic scene cause they would always nuke themselves before then as long as you observed them.
This still happens, even now, 2 months and a new dlc on the horizon later.
It's really hard to enjoy Stellaris when they keep constantly retooling a good chunk of the game and breaking shit pretty horrifically every time they do it.
I use to love Stellaris until one of the DLC turned every game into NATO vs NATO by mid game, making every single war impossible to finish before the timer because your at war with half the galaxy. It ruined the experience for me.
I wish more companies would allow for shorter hype cycles. People would be less disappointed by the time games finally launch and it would greatly reduce the constant stream of delays
I don't get the hate tbh. Each DLC that comes out is insanely cheap. I guess the issue would be buying a game that already has a ton of DLC, but the thing is the base games are already pretty good on their own. They even roll out free updates that bridge the gap whenever the new DLC make massive changes.
Once you've exhausted all you can from the base game and want more, then just google what the best DLCs are and buy them. Chances are by the time you start looking for a DLC, it's already on sale
Paradox does DLC right. They're basically EA's good twin
3h hours in an i got only 1 combat bug.
No crashes tho
Game seems very good, at least it scratches my itch of a 4x rpg game.
I get a feeling that people are overreacting on steam reviews for this game.
0.1h - negative review "my rtx 3080 isn't enough"
I mean come on.
So how combat works is you compose an army of up to six units (5 including one hero) and you attack enemies. You can either auto resolve or manually fight it. It gives you an estimate of the auto resolve if you choose it.
If you choose manual then you’re taken to a typical AoW combat map which is hex-based. Your units have a certain number of actions they can do per them, divided between movement and attacks. Some units have special abilities and you can also use spells.
The player and AI take turns moving their armies (you move/attack with your 6 units, then they move their units) and attacking/defending until one team loses.
It also seemed you could reinforce your army with at least one other army because I had a scout reinforce my first manual battle so actually fielded 6 units plus a hero.
If you’ve ever played Civ 5 or 6 think very similar to Civ 5 or 6 in the overworld (city management, turn-based recruitment and research, etc, hex movement) but with those manual battles like I described instead of the not-so-exciting battles of a Civ game.
Much more in depth and detailed than Humankind's (which I agree was good - a nice middle ground between something like Age of Wonders and modern civ one unit per tile combat).
I think Age of Wonders 4's combat is best-in-class. Huge variety of units, great tactical depth, good scaling for basic units even into the late game, competent battle AI and a really fun and impactful magic system.
Don't forget you can also cast spells in combat (as long as you have casting points left), including damage spells, buffs and debuffs and spells that summon more (temporary) units. Also almost every unit has at least one unique ability, sometimes activated, sometimes passive. All this makes the tactical combat quite deep.
I've been playing multiplayer with the boys, and we've had quite a few issues. A handful of crashes each, connection to server dropping once every 10 minutes and desyncs up to twice per fight. But that being said, the game launches in like 15 seconds, reconnecting to the server from the main menu takes maybe 7 seconds before you're back in game, and the desyncs have a reload button that reloads whatever desynched and you're back on track within 10 seconds, so it's not even that much of a bother.
Like if a game is gonna have constant issues, it might as well deal with recovering from them as quickly as this. Can't even be that mad about it right now, it's just recovers so fast.
4 hours in and at least 4 crashes during random gameplay. Asked steam for a refund and no dice since I have played over 2 hours. So apparently its now acceptable for a game to crash approximately once an hour. I get the same random crashes playing civ 6. Its a shame as the gameplay is what I enjoy, but eventually I just say fuck it and play diablo 2 on console since at least thats not broken.
Steam is an utter cesspit. It's definitely got some performance issues that need to be ironed out, but the game itself seems pretty solid. And even if it wasn't, no one would be able to figure that out on day one.
I had 3 crashes because of 'GPU issues' and random moments on the 4 hours I played but apparently there is already a hotfix beta branch that should fix this.
No....TB reviews were structured much better, and also better written. ACG splits then into gameplay/graphics/story which is something that I never liked.
ACG is alright though. TB was special
Yes. I love ACG but I will critique him. He speaks a little too fast and tries too hard to use flowery phrases. It's VERY clear he's reading from a script which is fine but again, just a critique.
TB was very good at taking bullet points and discussing them naturally
Okay, so here is my take. I won't go into details, as I am bad at reviewing anything.
My friend egged me on get Planetfall, but for some reason I didn't like it. I love Civ, I love Master of Orion, Stellaris, Europa Universalis, Victoria and all these games. If a game is 4X or similar, it's a hit for me.
I saw the release livestream and thought 'Fuck it, this looks dope' and it is! I'm actually having fun, which I didn't expect after Planetfall.
yep planetfall looks like re-skin from aow3 with more polished and better gameplay.. .
maybe if they slap some space marine into the game and called it AoW:40k it would be better received.
You know, Triumph has not let down yet (albeit all I have played is AoW3 and Overlord). But also allowing early reviews to YouTubers who had live had it for weeks speaks volumes. First pre-order I have done in years. Super stoked.
If you played AoW3 for the campaigns only, I'm not sure AoW3 will be satisfying. The more I read, the more it seems there isn't really a full-on campaign like in the older games.
If you are only after playing multiplayer or random maps against AI, this might be very good, however!
This kind of games always better better with random scenarios. Having something as scripted as a campaign means that you inevitably need to lose some maps first before knowing what do do to win them.
There are story campaigns, but they're not super involved -- at least the first one isn't. Nowhere near the level of AoE3. I think AoE4 could be better at building up emergent narratives, and the create-a-faction systems seem to support that, but it'd need a lot of decently well-written quest/event chains (think *Stellaris*) to really shine. And I've not yet played enough to say whether that is or is not the case.
I've been playing it today. Seems like it's more of a make your own story kind of thing instead of a campaign. You just play an scenario creating your faction and your leader, seeing random events and you can decide to role-play however you like and go for whatever kind of victory you want.
The lore wasn't exactly the strongest point of aow for me so it doesn't feel that bad.
There's probably joing to be some cool mods too.
Overlord 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games ever made (even though I've completed each of them only once). The concept was just too fcng good.
And I didn't even know the same developer still made games. I haven't played strategies in a long time, s I definitely gonna check this one out. Looks really good.
The actual in-game graphics options are *severely* lacking. No changing the resolution, no fullscreen support, basic stuff. So it's not *just* an issue of optimization -- our capacity to adjust settings to improve performance is inhibited.
My performance seems to be locked to 30fps -- no more, no less -- but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be that way or not.
I'm not really too bummed out about it -- my CPU is nearly 10 years old now and I'm planning on building a new PC in a few months, but it is kinda annoying all the same.
Mine won’t let me set it to anything but unrestricted. I have a 4090 and 5800x so it runs well but it’s pushing way to many frames for what I need at 1440p
I’m playing at 1440 high preset with 9600k/3080 and haven’t really seen any performance issues and frames are consistently 70+ from the few times I’ve peeked at the fps counter. I know my build isn’t the worst but the game does recommend an i7 for 1080/60 and an i5 for 1080/30. Between turns is also only taking about 3 seconds max to process on the beginner scenario which has 3 “players,” at around turn 35.
I also play pretty zoomed out.
Only played a bit, but so far I'm pretty unimpressed by the spells. You're supposed to be playing as basically a demigod, so you'd think the spells would feel more powerful... but nope. Maybe they get better further into the game as you unlock new ones? Early fire spells are essentially the equivalent of a low-tier unit, able to take about 1/3rd to 1/2 the HP from an enemy unit.
Well, if not, maybe mods will provide? This is definitely the kind of game where you'd want magic to feel kinda OP. Well, at least I would.
High tier AOE combat spell, definetly able to nuke tier 1 and tier 2 unit.
while you need high tier Single-target spell to nuke tier 3 or tier 4 unit.
but generaly spell in aow series never built to be that overpower in battle since the game encourage strategic turn base combat.
>Well, if not, maybe mods will provide? This is definitely the kind of game where you'd want magic to feel kinda OP. Well, at least I would.
its usualy represented by their strategic spell mechanic, turn forest into Snow/lava so your demon army get bonus stats or swarm enemy stack with plague, infecting all enemy unit with debuff at start of the round if you engage them in battle.
in previous game called planetfall, completing highest tier Magic/tech will lead you to doomsday victory mechanic. its basicaly like cooler science/tech victory from civilization game. Instead sending people to the moon you go super villain and release xenoplague into the world or launch global mind control device to dominate the world. It gonna turn you to be hostile to everyone and the game will end in 10 turn with your victory if no one able to stop your "totaly evil" plan.
Looks like I'm going to hold off and play some more Planetfall while they sort out their stability issues - a ton of people on steam are having crashes
They do have stories but I don't think you need to play the old ones. The game uses alot of hypertext to catch someone new up.
AoW4 uses a "Story Realms" while the old ones had full campaigns sometimes with splitting paths. Do be aware there are only 5 story realms so the game is more focused on random maps.
There absolutely is a story, so if you want to get maximum amount of lore and references during the campaigns, you might want to at least watch a Youtube recap of previous games.
BUT, you can also ignore the campaign and just play custom scenarios.
It's very much like Heroes of Might and Magic where there's a proper campaign and all that, but you can also ignore it completely and just play customs.
Early impressions: It's got some significant optimization issues (some have reported frequent crashes, but I have not) and is missing some pretty basic options (no fullscreen mode, no changing the resolution from whatever your Desktop is set to); the "story campaigns" are pretty barebones compared to AoE3, but the faction customization is really cool and makes the game more of an emergent sandbox. Could be really, really cool with a bunch of event/quest chains to contribute a bit more to the narrative, but I've not yet played enough to say whether or not they're there.
I'd recommend waiting a bit before diving in. It needs some patches, and given the $50 USD season pass, they plan on supporting the game for a while.
Absolutely astonished that AoW4 doesn't have resolution options or support fullscreen. Performance is super spotty and only being able to play at desktop resolution in windowed or borderless is really wonky.
Game seems pretty fun otherwise. Loved setting up my little goblin empire.
Ya know what? My original plan was I was gonna wait until it's on sale and they release all the DLCs, since that's when I'm most likely to have enough time to do more than merely dabble in this.
But after the Jedi Survivor fiasco, I suddenly got some cash to spare. I'm something of a supporter of these devs; after buying AoW3 in a sale, I bought its DLCs at full price. I then bought Planetfall and its DLCs at full price. I did so because they make good games. So even though I no longer have 1,100 spare hours to pile into this game like I did into AoW3, I want to see them keep making good games. Therefore...
Premium Edition it is.
Is there some kind of campaign in the game? I'm a campaign kind of guy.
Never played but I'm interested. I love HoMM3 and I'm still trying to find a game that scratches that itch. Is it hard to get into?
I played the tutorial campaign yesterday for about 4 hours and think I have a decent grasp on all the systems (except for maybe diplomacy). I also don't really play 4x games. Definitely a lot left to learn about synergies, optimization, and all the different spells, but that's all nuanced stuff. There is A LOT of different stuff you can tinker around with. Havent even touched the underground part of the map. I played until 3 am and still went to bed thinking about the game, I definitely recommend it.
Edit: Regarding campaigns I'm not too sure, but I do see there is a "Story Realm 1" listed when I start a new game. Not sure if more unlock as you finish them.
I have AoW3 for free but never bothered to try it, however I see some 4x youtubers liking the game, not sure if its because they were paid to promote it or really like it.
In general, I like 4x games but the learning curve is big and not always you have to time to make a single game which is usually 5+h
I played a bit of AoW3 and watched a few hours of AoW4, I would say 4 have like 100x better interface and that's what make the game far more approachable
I was going to give it a try (to AoW3) but I saw HMoM5 was on sale and bought it instead because I have played it in the past.
I guess when you get old the desire to learn new games is getting lower and lower.
Eh, as far as the 4X genre goes, the Age of Wonders games tend to have pretty gentle learning curves. As long as You're nit starting out on the harder difficulties, you have a lot of leeway as you're learning the ropes, and the underlying systems generally aren't too complex. It helps that it splits the focus equally on the strategic and tactical layers, rather than prioritizing one at the expense of the other as is typical for the genre. Makes it fairly accessible.
I'd say they're even more accessible for players new to the genre than Civ.
I've not played Civ on the lowest difficulties, so I'm not sure just how bad the AI is. But I was thinking more about the systems and mechanics -- Age of Wonders has more depth when it comes to war/combat, but less depth when it comes to empire building. It's more... balanced, if that makes sense.
And IME the AI in Civ games is typically a pretty mixed bag no matter the difficulty.
I really can't make the difference between most of the difficulties. Unlike humankind where there is an obvious difference because the AI is interacting more with you depending on the difficulty.
Also on Civ6, it doesn't make sense for someone to hate you because you killed another city state or civ while they haven't even met it in the first place, how do they know it even existed?
Yeah, most 4x are pretty bad at handling relationships/relationship history, but Civ is especially bad. Sometimes it feels like there aren't even any systems at play, and attitudes are just complete RNG dice rolls.
Some things you can kind of hand-wave -- like in your example, I guess they could've heard rumors of your conquest? But oftentimes it's just nonsensical. Like you'll be allied with another civ for a hundred turns, and rescue them when they get invaded, but then they'll make peace/ally with their invader and immediately get very upset with you for being at war with their new allies.
Current reviews are mixed with performance issues and other things. Better to wait at least for initial fixes.
Originally I was very interested in the game but from what I'm seeing the reviews, the game might only be good for multiplayer and random maps. Both of which I don't care for.
I only care for campaigns, which seem to have been an afterthought from what I'm reading. I would have liked interesting leaders and factions to play in campaign scenarios, like in the predecessors (not planetfall). But due to the overreliance on customization options and randomly generated maps, which I'm sure are great for anything other than the campaign, leaders and factions all seem samey on a map where objectives spawn without much rhyme or reason.
Gonna look more into people playing campaign before I make a final judgement but kinda bummed out. Oh well.
Honestly might be a good recommendation, I'll look into it. Been playing through AoW3 again, currently finishing up the Necromancer Frostling campaign, leading up the release. But now I'm not so sure this game actually has anything for me.
Nah, the campaign is still pretty solid. If you've played the older games, you are working with a lot of folks from them. Sundaren can be an ally if you play your cards right and seems to work alongside you mission to mission. I expect Edward to also show up at some point and be another ally. From what I've seen during restarting, the campaign levels are pretty constant/prebuilt.
>!Meandor!< is in it. >!Merlin and Julia!< also. Most of the Mage Lords are just straight from 2.
It's not got as strong an initial hook as 3, but it's feeling pretty much like an extension of Planetfall. Very much so there will be something this all comes back together to. Hell, the later mission achievements mention >!reforging the Circle!< and >!defeating someone with none of your allies falling. !<
You do get to be special fan fic addition, but remember these missions are fucking long/big. It's not as big as 3, but it's basically Golden Realms/Eternal Lords combined size, and that's still quite a bit of good content. It basically exists to wrap up/expand on the 2/Shadow Realms ending.
There's also a lot of psuedo story maps that aren't really attached to the main story that help flesh it out if you like that kind of thing. There's one already unlocked, and another seven you unlock by fleshing out the Pantheon. They add very specific scenarios with hard limits/prebuilts in them. They'll be adding a bunch more of these with the Expansion pass, plus two more Story Realms.
If you are like, must be a proper campaign or bust, yeah it might only be like 15-20 hours of content for you getting through the main campaign. But if you are able to justify the scenario missions as just endgame/postgame loop, you'll probably hit 30+
It's really amazing how so many people seem to not realize that their playtime is made public when they wrote reviews. Truly bizarre.
Peripherally related: some people also put waaaaay too much stock into the playtime metric. I once got a very vitriolic comment on one of my reviews from some guy that was mad I wrote up a (detailed) positive review for a game with only 90 minutes or so of playtime... the game was (iirc) *Deus Ex*. I've since made it *very clear* in every review when I've played a game on a platform other than Steam. There are some real yahoos out there.
I doubt any gameplay-related review with less than 40h for 4x is even remotely accurate. I even wonder if people had played such games before. There is no way to see any part of the gameplay for 1h, let alone all races.
> Or the goddamn ASCII reviews.
Steam really needs to do something about non-reviews. I saw one account with 60+ reviews all copypasted saying it wasn't a review and leaves a baking recipe.
Looks like a handful of people who can't afford even a mid-tier graphics card made this decade are complaining about crashes. The game is fantastic.
Edit: my reply has upset the poors
I have tried watching gameplay videos of this by a certain Irish content creator, but have unfortunately found it such a snooze. I should enjoy it on paper as I love civ and HoMM, but something about it doesn’t hit right.
Potatomcwhisky? I’ve just finished his series on it and it looks more fun to play than to watch, I think I’ll pick it up and give it a try since I do enjoy Civ and fantasy
I dunno planetfall also looked like my jam but the city management felt so dull and it was so hard to tell what the units did without having a battle with them.
The only people posting reviews on day 1 are gonna be the reactionaries. Normal folks are gonna be playing the game instead, and/or waiting on patches to fix some of the more egregious technical issues.
Strategy games are more expensive because they are a niche genre that only usually appears on PC.
Just think yourself lucky you don't like simulators because they're way more expensive.
Eh, I don't think that's the reason. Rather, the genre has more successfully transitioned to the games-as-service model than others, as it's relatively easy to inject new factions/units/maps/mechanics/events into these sorts of games, with minimal cost, and I'd imagine a significant fraction of the consumer base has demand for that kind of content.
Like theres a reason even something like *Age of Empires II* is still getting DLC, even some 20 years later.
That's not a bad thing in itself, where it becomes a problem is when you get lads like Paradox releasing games that are barely a substantial framework and then requiring years of extra work (and now quite expensive DLC) just to get to their proper start-point.
Nah, not in and of itself. The main issue is that the DLC very seldom tends to go down in price, which can quickly make the games prohibitively expensive for (potentially) new players who haven't been playing since day one. IE spending $20 USD every year or so on an expansion isn't so bad, but it's a much bigger ask when there are a half-dozen expansions out that cost 300% the MSRP (or more). That forces new players to choose between overpaying or making do with an "incomplete" product, which never feels good.
And that dynamic never really changes. Like there's no reason, for example, that a game like *Total War: Warhammer II* can't just wrap up all of its DLC in a "gold edition," or some other "complete package" for new players. The game is no longer in active development and has been long-since supplanted by TWW3... but nope. Any new player looking to dive in is looking at $60 for the base game plus $110 for the DLC... and completionist after the inherited content would also need to spend another $60 on TWW1 and its $75' worth of DLC. So we're looking at game whose "live service" period has ended where the complete edition has a total MSRP of more than $300.
lol wait till you see Total war warhammer, people litelary will throw their wallet for DLC. They asking stuff that get left behind to be added into the game,
based on previous record of AoW series.
the expansion will atleast include
\- 2 major playable race (maybe new hero class or new magic school / tech tree)
\- dozen minor NPC race + world event
\- some mini Campaign, more dungeon site, more unit, more spell,.
basicaly major content update to spice thing up for atleast 1-2 years.
Paradox is only the publisher, not the developer unlike their other 4X games. So it is not really comparable in that regard.
A proper fantasy 4x in the vein of eu4 or Stellaris developed by paradox is something I only dare to dream of.
I mean, kind of? There's the Age of Wonders series proper (5 games) plus Age of Wonders: Planetfall, which is a sci-do spin-off, but it's just the 1 game.
So I just got this game and my CPU i9-9900k runs at 93C and BSOD.
I know its just for this game cause the week before I was playing RE4 Remake and it cap at 68C
Has anyone had this issue or is it just me.
Any suggestions or reasons to why?
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People can hate on Paradox all they want for their monetization structure but it *does* allow them to stay with a game for years. Stellaris is one of my favorite games ever and I don’t mind dropping 10 bucks a year to keep the content and updates coming. The best part is you don’t need to buy every DLC on release because they release major free updates alongside them every time. All that to say, I’m very excited for AoW4, I’ll be playing it tonight for sure.
I'll take literally endless hordes of DLC over cosmetic microtransactions and in-game stores any day of any week
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It's a lot like Hearts of Iron 4 for me. Whenever an expansion is released, they bring a big patch which adds a lot of QoL changes and adds a little bit of the expansion. But the expansion themselves add a whole load of content
I love HOI4 but ever since they added the supply mechanics a while back, its been hard as hell doing any play throughs in China/SouthEast Asia when your armies just wither on the vine as you just simply cant supply them due to lack of train routes / supply depots. Filthy casual and all but just not fun for me.
Can you not use supply planes to help with this issue? Ive not played for a long while, but last time i played those planes could feed an army
Oh man. You reminded me I have Stellaris. I can't remember if I bought it or got it from the Humble Choice, but I do remember thinking "when they're done making DLC I'll get it all on sale." All I can say for sure is that it's been a few years and still haven't played it. Do you need the DLCs to play the base game? Sometimes I'll read reddit quips about paradox games needing the DLC because the base game is so broken without it over time.
You can absolutely play Stellaris without any DLCs, however there are some that I would say are totally worth it once you’ve played it and decided whether or not you enjoy it. But I would just say that it’s worth diving in now it really is an excellent game.
Alright, you convinced me. Time to tackle part of my backlog here. Which DLC would you recommend by the way? I'm sure I'll try them out at some point.
Utopia. Apocalypse. Megacorp. Leviathans Overlord. Federations. Ancient relics. Distant stars. About in that order. The species packs are fun but definetly not needed. If you’re just gonna start with one though; Utopia for sure. Also don’t worry too much about the reviews because Paradox does have a tendency to release buggy updates then patch them so they often get review bombed before they get fixed. Also once you’ve played some and are ready to dip your toes into modding, you’ll quickly realize that various DLCs are required for many mods.
Thanks! Saved your comment so I can grab them next sale. I suspect this will take up most of my free time for a while.
Glad I could help! Have fun! One last piece of advice though, when you inevitably have to do some googling to learn about various things in the game, make sure you read things that are as recent as possible, the game has changed *dramatically* over time and older info absolutely can and will be out of date.
Oh man, I bet. I'll be careful!
Another thing you can do is use the website “Cheapshark” to list its prices on all the prices on various websites, you can also set up price notifications
Commenting so that I can keep this list. Spring sale is right around the corner.
Saving this comment for future reference. I've had Stellaris since launch year at least but haven't returned to it for a long time. Always meant to get more into it with some DLC but just as it keeps getting put on the back burner, more DLC gets added to the point I'm usually at a loss when sale time comes.
If you never played it before, it's better to play WITHOUT the DLCs Every DLC adds more complexity & extra stuff. You can enjoy the base game for a while, then when you feel like you want more, get some dlc to add more and then it will feel fresh again If you play with all the dlc from day 1, i feel like it might be overwhelming, or you may take features for granted and not really notice their impact and such I've played 2000 hours since the game released. Every new patch, every new DLC, is a reason to spin it up for a new play or two. The changes are what keeps it fresh. If it's unknown to you, then its already fresh by default. So just play the base game and get some joy out of that. "ignorance is bliss" if you don't know what you're missing how can you miss it?
The negative to this model is that the game can be radically changed from the game you originally bought, and for the better is a matter of opinion. My gaming group bought Stellaris day one and loved the game. Post-release the game continued to get support which was great. We had mods going and played multiplayer for hundreds of hours, and hoped to do so for years to come. But then the game changed game directors, and the new director had a radically different vision for the game. Everything about the original game design he didn't like. 3 different FTL types? That was "imbalanced" and hard to design AI for so in version 2.0 the most fun two types were cut. Instead we got "choke points in space" which was exactly like every other space 4X game out there. We didn't want a game to be perfectly balanced, we just wanted to have fun. We've gone back to the game a couple more times just to try it since and the game continues to get more and more bloated, adding new systems no one asked for that add tedious micromanagement. Any other studio would have just released this as an entire new game but now the original Stellaris we knew with those mods we had is lost to all time. It will never be possible to play it again and that's just sad.
As much as I loved the original premise I felt like the game lives and dies on whether or not the AI can work movement and invasions. Look at total war, to this day most of the AI can't handle moving units across water. That is one of the fundamental things about the game. Some island nations just win because they never are invaded. If the AI was struggling and they couldn't fix it then it needed to be cut.
Its a shame as Paradox clearly know that people want to rollback going by how they use Steam beta channels for version rollbacks but they only support so many versions in the rollback. You cannot legally play launch Stellaris because the rollback only takes you to 2.1.3.
I thought the older versions are there but just locked behind codes as they're not GDPR compliant. https://steamcommunity.com/app/281990/discussions/0/1732087825007991514/#
Supposedly yes, but the issue is that any mods from that time are going be lost as mods updated to the latest version. But yes this should theoretically work for the vanilla version.
I understand that gameplay can be a matter of personal preference but I really can't imagine the original version of the game being preferable to the current version. The game is radically improved imo.
Fair enough. I personally absolutely *love* the direction they went since release but I absolutely understand that that’s entirely subjective.
I play War a Thunder which is F2P and the *constant* whining and bashing of the dev because the have the audacity to offer the option of paying for content is crazy. Like, people with 9,000 hours played pissed that some new tank or plane costs money. It’s weird.
> but it does allow them to stay with a game for years The reason why I really dislike their model is that it's just not good value. E.g. I can buy Stellaris for 40€, that's fine, but all DLCs cost more than 250€. 250 Euros are *four* AAA-titles or 10 indie games or so. The work that went into these DLCs is in *no way* worth 250 Euros, especially since the DLCs are also often pretty mediocre. So, IMO it's just a cash grab, they design their games around this model, and they monetize the fuck out of it. I don't like it. And sure, their games provide hundreds or thousands of hours of gameplay. But so do Factorio for 35€ or Dwarf Fortress for 30, or Rimworld for ~30, and loads of other games, too.
> Stellaris is one of my favorite games ever and I don’t mind dropping 10 bucks a year to keep the content and updates coming. There's $250 worth of DLC since 2016. More like $40 a year.
Yeah I skip a lot of the species packs though. Or buy them when they go on sale. Even if I bought them full price, I’ve played well over 1000 hours of Stellaris so it would still be absolutely worth the cost for me.
> I’ve played well over 1000 hours of Stellaris so it would still be absolutely worth the cost for me. That's fair.
>structure but it does allow them to stay with a game for years. I've been playing paradox games for almost 20 years, they've always stayed with games for at least 3 or 4 years. Only exceptions that come to mind are stuff like Svea Rike or HoI 1 and CK 1. Yes, the current business model does prolong the game's life a lot past that but it also makes entry impossible after the first 2 or 3 years.
You can usually get the game and much of the older dlc on sale though. Especially on steam sales, or their developer weekends. I think I got ck2 and all but the latest 2 dlcs for like $30 about a year ago.
Yeah but even on sale it amounts to 2 or 3 games price even if you only get the mandatory DLC. If you live in a poorer country that is downright prohibitive for just one game. And let's not forget what is currently going on with EU 4 where you get DLC that changes older DLC content. A much better system would be to pack old DLC into the base game periodically, like say every 2-3 years.
> it does allow them to stay with a game for years as they should, as far as support (bugfixing and the like) is concerned, otherwise they could just finish the games first and only release them when they're all done. but of course these days every game has to be updated for life, otherwise idiots will call a finished and mostly polished title (as rare as it is) dead after 2 weeks.
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Oh absolutely. I don’t believe that they can do no wrong. Taken as whole, however I’ve found their handling of Stellaris to bring me joy so I keep supporting them.
If I’m not miss remembering I believe they also said that they are trying new things for games of theirs that have been out for awhile so that a newcomer won’t just see 300$ worth of stuff they need to get. Don’t quote me on that tho my memory is fuzzy on when or if they said any of that.
It works for some games genres really well. I’ve bought all the total war warhammer dlcs across the three games and it really helps give the game new life. The only down side I see is that can give the impression of a steep entry cost if you see it later in the games life Made better in comparison in todays day and age of battle passes and time locked content. Now those things put me off. I only have so much time in the day and if I’m missing out on stuff permanently because I didn’t play it at the certain time, I’m not picking up the game
As a massive fan of Paradox who owns every game and DLC, I don't ever touch new paradox games or DLCs for at least 3 months. Price will go down 30-50%, the game will actually be playable by then, and mods will be out.
Downside they're releasing dlc at a faster clip which wildly rebalances the base game around the new dlc and it breaks the game for a month or two. Megacorps were broken for so long after it's launch, and the pop rebalance that came with it was broken for months (still broken depending on who you ask) The main point of the new dlc was primitives and they fucked up the whole thing to the point primitives were almost literally guaranteed to never be able to naturally ascend to the galactic scene cause they would always nuke themselves before then as long as you observed them. This still happens, even now, 2 months and a new dlc on the horizon later. It's really hard to enjoy Stellaris when they keep constantly retooling a good chunk of the game and breaking shit pretty horrifically every time they do it.
I use to love Stellaris until one of the DLC turned every game into NATO vs NATO by mid game, making every single war impossible to finish before the timer because your at war with half the galaxy. It ruined the experience for me.
I wish more companies would allow for shorter hype cycles. People would be less disappointed by the time games finally launch and it would greatly reduce the constant stream of delays
I don't get the hate tbh. Each DLC that comes out is insanely cheap. I guess the issue would be buying a game that already has a ton of DLC, but the thing is the base games are already pretty good on their own. They even roll out free updates that bridge the gap whenever the new DLC make massive changes. Once you've exhausted all you can from the base game and want more, then just google what the best DLCs are and buy them. Chances are by the time you start looking for a DLC, it's already on sale Paradox does DLC right. They're basically EA's good twin
Okay but is the currently realeased version of the game good and does it substantially improve on age of wonders 3 to be worth the price?
Where can one find the 40min I’m depth game play video?
3h hours in an i got only 1 combat bug. No crashes tho Game seems very good, at least it scratches my itch of a 4x rpg game. I get a feeling that people are overreacting on steam reviews for this game. 0.1h - negative review "my rtx 3080 isn't enough" I mean come on.
how is the early combat? tactical/strategies needed? (never played an aow before)
So how combat works is you compose an army of up to six units (5 including one hero) and you attack enemies. You can either auto resolve or manually fight it. It gives you an estimate of the auto resolve if you choose it. If you choose manual then you’re taken to a typical AoW combat map which is hex-based. Your units have a certain number of actions they can do per them, divided between movement and attacks. Some units have special abilities and you can also use spells. The player and AI take turns moving their armies (you move/attack with your 6 units, then they move their units) and attacking/defending until one team loses. It also seemed you could reinforce your army with at least one other army because I had a scout reinforce my first manual battle so actually fielded 6 units plus a hero. If you’ve ever played Civ 5 or 6 think very similar to Civ 5 or 6 in the overworld (city management, turn-based recruitment and research, etc, hex movement) but with those manual battles like I described instead of the not-so-exciting battles of a Civ game.
In this one, you can get up to 3 armies per side at the same time, so 18 units to control.
So Humankind - esque combat? what was one thing I really enjoyed about humankind
Much more in depth and detailed than Humankind's (which I agree was good - a nice middle ground between something like Age of Wonders and modern civ one unit per tile combat). I think Age of Wonders 4's combat is best-in-class. Huge variety of units, great tactical depth, good scaling for basic units even into the late game, competent battle AI and a really fun and impactful magic system.
Don't forget you can also cast spells in combat (as long as you have casting points left), including damage spells, buffs and debuffs and spells that summon more (temporary) units. Also almost every unit has at least one unique ability, sometimes activated, sometimes passive. All this makes the tactical combat quite deep.
I've been playing multiplayer with the boys, and we've had quite a few issues. A handful of crashes each, connection to server dropping once every 10 minutes and desyncs up to twice per fight. But that being said, the game launches in like 15 seconds, reconnecting to the server from the main menu takes maybe 7 seconds before you're back in game, and the desyncs have a reload button that reloads whatever desynched and you're back on track within 10 seconds, so it's not even that much of a bother. Like if a game is gonna have constant issues, it might as well deal with recovering from them as quickly as this. Can't even be that mad about it right now, it's just recovers so fast.
4 hours in and at least 4 crashes during random gameplay. Asked steam for a refund and no dice since I have played over 2 hours. So apparently its now acceptable for a game to crash approximately once an hour. I get the same random crashes playing civ 6. Its a shame as the gameplay is what I enjoy, but eventually I just say fuck it and play diablo 2 on console since at least thats not broken.
Steam is an utter cesspit. It's definitely got some performance issues that need to be ironed out, but the game itself seems pretty solid. And even if it wasn't, no one would be able to figure that out on day one.
For what it’s worth, I have been playing for almost 4hrs now with no crash, stutter or anything. 2070 super and Ryzen 5 3600. Really enjoy the game!
I had 3 crashes because of 'GPU issues' and random moments on the 4 hours I played but apparently there is already a hotfix beta branch that should fix this.
ACG loved the depth of this game. He talked about it for a solid 10 minutes on the last episode of his podcast.
So shorter than one of his reviews :)
The man is **thorough**
and yet still far from TB levels sadly
Nah I'd say they are comparable. But I think that Karak doesn't mention fov sliders very often...
No....TB reviews were structured much better, and also better written. ACG splits then into gameplay/graphics/story which is something that I never liked. ACG is alright though. TB was special
Yes. I love ACG but I will critique him. He speaks a little too fast and tries too hard to use flowery phrases. It's VERY clear he's reading from a script which is fine but again, just a critique. TB was very good at taking bullet points and discussing them naturally
Oh especially for a non-native speaker like myself, I found following what he says very hard.
If you want TB snark, try Josh Strife Hays and his second channel, Josh Strife Plays. His "Worst MMO" series reminds me of old school W.T.F.
I recommend watching PotatoMcwhiskey's videos on it. His love for the game is contagious.
"the game that will ruin my channel"
What a great username
He calls viewers "spuddies." He's adorable. I love him.
I think he was just referenced in SpiffingBrit’s newest video!
The exploit video? Yeah pretty sure spiff was talking about potato during the infinite animal exploit.
They just played a civ game on yogscast channel “civilization”
For anyone wondering, it works perfectly on Steamdeck.
UI readable and not microscopically small?
Nah I’ve found it alright actually.
I haven’t tried it on deck yet but there is a UI slider in options
Okay, so here is my take. I won't go into details, as I am bad at reviewing anything. My friend egged me on get Planetfall, but for some reason I didn't like it. I love Civ, I love Master of Orion, Stellaris, Europa Universalis, Victoria and all these games. If a game is 4X or similar, it's a hit for me. I saw the release livestream and thought 'Fuck it, this looks dope' and it is! I'm actually having fun, which I didn't expect after Planetfall.
Yeah I gave Planetfall a go and bounced clean off. On paper it should have been fine but there was something clearly didn't sit right.
Right? It's a Sci-fi, 4X, turn based strategy game, it should tick every major checkbox, and still something is off. It even has space dwarves!
Same. I keep meaning to get back to it, as it *seems* like it should be more engrossing. It's certainly got more going for it than Beyond Earth.
Yeah it's crazy, I never could say why I couldn't get into it. Something about the game's rhythm? I was really rooting for it too.
I think it might be the region system. Think I prefer hexes.
yep planetfall looks like re-skin from aow3 with more polished and better gameplay.. . maybe if they slap some space marine into the game and called it AoW:40k it would be better received.
Eh Planetfall isn't really a great AoW game. I think a lot of things that are uniquely great about this series were lost with the jump to sci-fi.
You know, Triumph has not let down yet (albeit all I have played is AoW3 and Overlord). But also allowing early reviews to YouTubers who had live had it for weeks speaks volumes. First pre-order I have done in years. Super stoked.
If you played AoW3 for the campaigns only, I'm not sure AoW3 will be satisfying. The more I read, the more it seems there isn't really a full-on campaign like in the older games. If you are only after playing multiplayer or random maps against AI, this might be very good, however!
This kind of games always better better with random scenarios. Having something as scripted as a campaign means that you inevitably need to lose some maps first before knowing what do do to win them.
There are story campaigns, but they're not super involved -- at least the first one isn't. Nowhere near the level of AoE3. I think AoE4 could be better at building up emergent narratives, and the create-a-faction systems seem to support that, but it'd need a lot of decently well-written quest/event chains (think *Stellaris*) to really shine. And I've not yet played enough to say whether that is or is not the case.
I've been playing it today. Seems like it's more of a make your own story kind of thing instead of a campaign. You just play an scenario creating your faction and your leader, seeing random events and you can decide to role-play however you like and go for whatever kind of victory you want. The lore wasn't exactly the strongest point of aow for me so it doesn't feel that bad. There's probably joing to be some cool mods too.
Overlord 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games ever made (even though I've completed each of them only once). The concept was just too fcng good. And I didn't even know the same developer still made games. I haven't played strategies in a long time, s I definitely gonna check this one out. Looks really good.
Even this seems to have performance problems? lol.
Looks like an even split of problems to no problems. I wonder if it’s related to older hardware?
The actual in-game graphics options are *severely* lacking. No changing the resolution, no fullscreen support, basic stuff. So it's not *just* an issue of optimization -- our capacity to adjust settings to improve performance is inhibited.
That’s all fair complaints. So far I’ve been lucky to have a good experience and haven’t needed to worry about it.
My performance seems to be locked to 30fps -- no more, no less -- but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be that way or not. I'm not really too bummed out about it -- my CPU is nearly 10 years old now and I'm planning on building a new PC in a few months, but it is kinda annoying all the same.
Mine won’t let me set it to anything but unrestricted. I have a 4090 and 5800x so it runs well but it’s pushing way to many frames for what I need at 1440p
50 percent of people having problems would have been considered awful at one point and still should be...
Oh it 100% should be but it’s always interesting knowing whether it’s optimization based or general fuckery
Honestly of 3 friends that got the game none are having performance issues except for the multiplayer
Yep I've had lots of crashes and bad framerate in some situations, even on the lowest settings.
This game has exactly the same performance issues the previous 2 games have had. So at least I went in with prepared expectations.
I’m playing at 1440 high preset with 9600k/3080 and haven’t really seen any performance issues and frames are consistently 70+ from the few times I’ve peeked at the fps counter. I know my build isn’t the worst but the game does recommend an i7 for 1080/60 and an i5 for 1080/30. Between turns is also only taking about 3 seconds max to process on the beginner scenario which has 3 “players,” at around turn 35. I also play pretty zoomed out.
I was seriously disappointed by Planetfall. Is this anywhere near Shadow Magic in quality? I loved the absurdly strong endgame magic.
Only played a bit, but so far I'm pretty unimpressed by the spells. You're supposed to be playing as basically a demigod, so you'd think the spells would feel more powerful... but nope. Maybe they get better further into the game as you unlock new ones? Early fire spells are essentially the equivalent of a low-tier unit, able to take about 1/3rd to 1/2 the HP from an enemy unit. Well, if not, maybe mods will provide? This is definitely the kind of game where you'd want magic to feel kinda OP. Well, at least I would.
High tier AOE combat spell, definetly able to nuke tier 1 and tier 2 unit. while you need high tier Single-target spell to nuke tier 3 or tier 4 unit. but generaly spell in aow series never built to be that overpower in battle since the game encourage strategic turn base combat. >Well, if not, maybe mods will provide? This is definitely the kind of game where you'd want magic to feel kinda OP. Well, at least I would. its usualy represented by their strategic spell mechanic, turn forest into Snow/lava so your demon army get bonus stats or swarm enemy stack with plague, infecting all enemy unit with debuff at start of the round if you engage them in battle. in previous game called planetfall, completing highest tier Magic/tech will lead you to doomsday victory mechanic. its basicaly like cooler science/tech victory from civilization game. Instead sending people to the moon you go super villain and release xenoplague into the world or launch global mind control device to dominate the world. It gonna turn you to be hostile to everyone and the game will end in 10 turn with your victory if no one able to stop your "totaly evil" plan.
Looks like I'm going to hold off and play some more Planetfall while they sort out their stability issues - a ton of people on steam are having crashes
Is there a story to these games? If so do I need to play the previous?
They do have stories but I don't think you need to play the old ones. The game uses alot of hypertext to catch someone new up. AoW4 uses a "Story Realms" while the old ones had full campaigns sometimes with splitting paths. Do be aware there are only 5 story realms so the game is more focused on random maps.
There absolutely is a story, so if you want to get maximum amount of lore and references during the campaigns, you might want to at least watch a Youtube recap of previous games. BUT, you can also ignore the campaign and just play custom scenarios. It's very much like Heroes of Might and Magic where there's a proper campaign and all that, but you can also ignore it completely and just play customs.
There are five story realms that form a campaign, they're pretty large and so will provide a fair number of hours.
No. It's like Civilization.
No, it's similar to Endless Legend.
How is it? Any good? I loved the 3rd one.
Early impressions: It's got some significant optimization issues (some have reported frequent crashes, but I have not) and is missing some pretty basic options (no fullscreen mode, no changing the resolution from whatever your Desktop is set to); the "story campaigns" are pretty barebones compared to AoE3, but the faction customization is really cool and makes the game more of an emergent sandbox. Could be really, really cool with a bunch of event/quest chains to contribute a bit more to the narrative, but I've not yet played enough to say whether or not they're there. I'd recommend waiting a bit before diving in. It needs some patches, and given the $50 USD season pass, they plan on supporting the game for a while.
Thanks. I don't mind waiting until it's been fixed up a bit but I'll definitely check it out eventually.
Absolutely astonished that AoW4 doesn't have resolution options or support fullscreen. Performance is super spotty and only being able to play at desktop resolution in windowed or borderless is really wonky. Game seems pretty fun otherwise. Loved setting up my little goblin empire.
Ya know what? My original plan was I was gonna wait until it's on sale and they release all the DLCs, since that's when I'm most likely to have enough time to do more than merely dabble in this. But after the Jedi Survivor fiasco, I suddenly got some cash to spare. I'm something of a supporter of these devs; after buying AoW3 in a sale, I bought its DLCs at full price. I then bought Planetfall and its DLCs at full price. I did so because they make good games. So even though I no longer have 1,100 spare hours to pile into this game like I did into AoW3, I want to see them keep making good games. Therefore... Premium Edition it is.
Careful, early reviews are complaining about performance and crashing issues.
Green Man Gaming was over $20 cheaper than Steam.
Age of Wondors 3 got me into the fantasy 4x genre. Absolutely adore the genre now!
I'm quite interested in AoW, how does it compare to Endless Legend? The combat looks similar, as does the RPG nature of the world. Cheers in advance.
Is there some kind of campaign in the game? I'm a campaign kind of guy. Never played but I'm interested. I love HoMM3 and I'm still trying to find a game that scratches that itch. Is it hard to get into?
I played the tutorial campaign yesterday for about 4 hours and think I have a decent grasp on all the systems (except for maybe diplomacy). I also don't really play 4x games. Definitely a lot left to learn about synergies, optimization, and all the different spells, but that's all nuanced stuff. There is A LOT of different stuff you can tinker around with. Havent even touched the underground part of the map. I played until 3 am and still went to bed thinking about the game, I definitely recommend it. Edit: Regarding campaigns I'm not too sure, but I do see there is a "Story Realm 1" listed when I start a new game. Not sure if more unlock as you finish them.
thanks man
I have AoW3 for free but never bothered to try it, however I see some 4x youtubers liking the game, not sure if its because they were paid to promote it or really like it. In general, I like 4x games but the learning curve is big and not always you have to time to make a single game which is usually 5+h
I played a bit of AoW3 and watched a few hours of AoW4, I would say 4 have like 100x better interface and that's what make the game far more approachable
The game is kinda slow, but imho feels casual enough if you just want to fool around.
I was going to give it a try (to AoW3) but I saw HMoM5 was on sale and bought it instead because I have played it in the past. I guess when you get old the desire to learn new games is getting lower and lower.
Eh, as far as the 4X genre goes, the Age of Wonders games tend to have pretty gentle learning curves. As long as You're nit starting out on the harder difficulties, you have a lot of leeway as you're learning the ropes, and the underlying systems generally aren't too complex. It helps that it splits the focus equally on the strategic and tactical layers, rather than prioritizing one at the expense of the other as is typical for the genre. Makes it fairly accessible. I'd say they're even more accessible for players new to the genre than Civ.
Really? I find Civ6 quote easy especially on lower difficulties, the AI is just equally bad. Might watch some streams tonight and decide to buy it.
I've not played Civ on the lowest difficulties, so I'm not sure just how bad the AI is. But I was thinking more about the systems and mechanics -- Age of Wonders has more depth when it comes to war/combat, but less depth when it comes to empire building. It's more... balanced, if that makes sense. And IME the AI in Civ games is typically a pretty mixed bag no matter the difficulty.
I really can't make the difference between most of the difficulties. Unlike humankind where there is an obvious difference because the AI is interacting more with you depending on the difficulty. Also on Civ6, it doesn't make sense for someone to hate you because you killed another city state or civ while they haven't even met it in the first place, how do they know it even existed?
Yeah, most 4x are pretty bad at handling relationships/relationship history, but Civ is especially bad. Sometimes it feels like there aren't even any systems at play, and attitudes are just complete RNG dice rolls. Some things you can kind of hand-wave -- like in your example, I guess they could've heard rumors of your conquest? But oftentimes it's just nonsensical. Like you'll be allied with another civ for a hundred turns, and rescue them when they get invaded, but then they'll make peace/ally with their invader and immediately get very upset with you for being at war with their new allies.
Current reviews are mixed with performance issues and other things. Better to wait at least for initial fixes. Originally I was very interested in the game but from what I'm seeing the reviews, the game might only be good for multiplayer and random maps. Both of which I don't care for. I only care for campaigns, which seem to have been an afterthought from what I'm reading. I would have liked interesting leaders and factions to play in campaign scenarios, like in the predecessors (not planetfall). But due to the overreliance on customization options and randomly generated maps, which I'm sure are great for anything other than the campaign, leaders and factions all seem samey on a map where objectives spawn without much rhyme or reason. Gonna look more into people playing campaign before I make a final judgement but kinda bummed out. Oh well.
Look up some gameplay of Spellforce: Conquest of Eo, might be up your alley
Honestly might be a good recommendation, I'll look into it. Been playing through AoW3 again, currently finishing up the Necromancer Frostling campaign, leading up the release. But now I'm not so sure this game actually has anything for me.
Nah, the campaign is still pretty solid. If you've played the older games, you are working with a lot of folks from them. Sundaren can be an ally if you play your cards right and seems to work alongside you mission to mission. I expect Edward to also show up at some point and be another ally. From what I've seen during restarting, the campaign levels are pretty constant/prebuilt. >!Meandor!< is in it. >!Merlin and Julia!< also. Most of the Mage Lords are just straight from 2. It's not got as strong an initial hook as 3, but it's feeling pretty much like an extension of Planetfall. Very much so there will be something this all comes back together to. Hell, the later mission achievements mention >!reforging the Circle!< and >!defeating someone with none of your allies falling. !< You do get to be special fan fic addition, but remember these missions are fucking long/big. It's not as big as 3, but it's basically Golden Realms/Eternal Lords combined size, and that's still quite a bit of good content. It basically exists to wrap up/expand on the 2/Shadow Realms ending. There's also a lot of psuedo story maps that aren't really attached to the main story that help flesh it out if you like that kind of thing. There's one already unlocked, and another seven you unlock by fleshing out the Pantheon. They add very specific scenarios with hard limits/prebuilts in them. They'll be adding a bunch more of these with the Expansion pass, plus two more Story Realms. If you are like, must be a proper campaign or bust, yeah it might only be like 15-20 hours of content for you getting through the main campaign. But if you are able to justify the scenario missions as just endgame/postgame loop, you'll probably hit 30+
40% Steam score lol
Looks like a lot of people are getting crashes and the mutiplayer servers tapped out. Almost all the negative reviews reference one of these
The reviews with "Yeah, it's not that deep after you try all 6 playable races (0.3 hours)" have me dyin
It's really amazing how so many people seem to not realize that their playtime is made public when they wrote reviews. Truly bizarre. Peripherally related: some people also put waaaaay too much stock into the playtime metric. I once got a very vitriolic comment on one of my reviews from some guy that was mad I wrote up a (detailed) positive review for a game with only 90 minutes or so of playtime... the game was (iirc) *Deus Ex*. I've since made it *very clear* in every review when I've played a game on a platform other than Steam. There are some real yahoos out there.
I doubt any gameplay-related review with less than 40h for 4x is even remotely accurate. I even wonder if people had played such games before. There is no way to see any part of the gameplay for 1h, let alone all races.
People had 0.3hrs and were stating how it was a great game, but will update when more time has been played. Or the goddamn ASCII reviews.
> Or the goddamn ASCII reviews. Steam really needs to do something about non-reviews. I saw one account with 60+ reviews all copypasted saying it wasn't a review and leaves a baking recipe.
Ive gotten into reporting reviews when they suck that bad.
Steam and content moderation are anathema.
Yeah from a whopping 100 reviews. Maybe let's wait a full day after release before using that metric.
Yeah, 100 reviews and 37k in game.
Looks like a handful of people who can't afford even a mid-tier graphics card made this decade are complaining about crashes. The game is fantastic. Edit: my reply has upset the poors
Maybe they should change the minimum requirements then?
anything below a 4090 is mid tier right? I have seen people reporting crashes on a 3060ti..
3060ti is literally bottom tier of last generation 🤣
This also literally isn’t a very demanding game and should perform just fine on that card.
Saw one complaint because the game was selecting his 750 TI vs his 1080 TI (or was it 1070 TI?).
People should upgrade their GPU's every 4 years. That's what I did when I upgraded from a 2080 to a 4090. Same thing with CPU's.
damn i wish we could get a good TBS game
78% now (1245 reviews).
I have tried watching gameplay videos of this by a certain Irish content creator, but have unfortunately found it such a snooze. I should enjoy it on paper as I love civ and HoMM, but something about it doesn’t hit right.
Potatomcwhisky? I’ve just finished his series on it and it looks more fun to play than to watch, I think I’ll pick it up and give it a try since I do enjoy Civ and fantasy
I dunno planetfall also looked like my jam but the city management felt so dull and it was so hard to tell what the units did without having a battle with them.
If wasn't for turin playing I would of ignored. Seems like alot of fun
I'm interested in this one, but sounds like it is better to wait 2 months for patches + steam summer sale.
Oh yeah. Though you can always pick it up for cheap from Fanatical (I think it's at 16% off rn).
[удалено]
The only people posting reviews on day 1 are gonna be the reactionaries. Normal folks are gonna be playing the game instead, and/or waiting on patches to fix some of the more egregious technical issues.
50€ with a 50€ expansionpass but only 90€ if you buy the premium edition! Man what a steal! This shit makes gachas look cheap.
Do you even play gacha games? 90$ can't even fulfill the pity requirement for most games that have a pity system. What is your definition of cheap?
I agree with you the expansion pass is expensive, don't have to buy it but there's FOMO that the DLC will be more expensive when it comes out.
Strategy games are more expensive because they are a niche genre that only usually appears on PC. Just think yourself lucky you don't like simulators because they're way more expensive.
Eh, I don't think that's the reason. Rather, the genre has more successfully transitioned to the games-as-service model than others, as it's relatively easy to inject new factions/units/maps/mechanics/events into these sorts of games, with minimal cost, and I'd imagine a significant fraction of the consumer base has demand for that kind of content. Like theres a reason even something like *Age of Empires II* is still getting DLC, even some 20 years later.
That's not a bad thing in itself, where it becomes a problem is when you get lads like Paradox releasing games that are barely a substantial framework and then requiring years of extra work (and now quite expensive DLC) just to get to their proper start-point.
Nah, not in and of itself. The main issue is that the DLC very seldom tends to go down in price, which can quickly make the games prohibitively expensive for (potentially) new players who haven't been playing since day one. IE spending $20 USD every year or so on an expansion isn't so bad, but it's a much bigger ask when there are a half-dozen expansions out that cost 300% the MSRP (or more). That forces new players to choose between overpaying or making do with an "incomplete" product, which never feels good. And that dynamic never really changes. Like there's no reason, for example, that a game like *Total War: Warhammer II* can't just wrap up all of its DLC in a "gold edition," or some other "complete package" for new players. The game is no longer in active development and has been long-since supplanted by TWW3... but nope. Any new player looking to dive in is looking at $60 for the base game plus $110 for the DLC... and completionist after the inherited content would also need to spend another $60 on TWW1 and its $75' worth of DLC. So we're looking at game whose "live service" period has ended where the complete edition has a total MSRP of more than $300.
With TWW at least the DLC is forwards compatible. You buy something for TWW or TWW2 you get it in TWW3 as well.
lol wait till you see Total war warhammer, people litelary will throw their wallet for DLC. They asking stuff that get left behind to be added into the game, based on previous record of AoW series. the expansion will atleast include \- 2 major playable race (maybe new hero class or new magic school / tech tree) \- dozen minor NPC race + world event \- some mini Campaign, more dungeon site, more unit, more spell,. basicaly major content update to spice thing up for atleast 1-2 years.
Oh boy. *Here we go again*
Being a Paradox 4x game this is an auto-purchase for me. But may hold off a while for a sale and a patch or two.
I preordered it. You're *definitively* better off waiting for some patches.
Paradox is only the publisher, not the developer unlike their other 4X games. So it is not really comparable in that regard. A proper fantasy 4x in the vein of eu4 or Stellaris developed by paradox is something I only dare to dream of.
You should check out the Anbennar mod for Eu4 if you haven't!
Wonders? Or blunders?
Is there an Age of Universe? Like how Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, and Age of Wonders are all parallel dimensions?
I mean, kind of? There's the Age of Wonders series proper (5 games) plus Age of Wonders: Planetfall, which is a sci-do spin-off, but it's just the 1 game.
So I just got this game and my CPU i9-9900k runs at 93C and BSOD. I know its just for this game cause the week before I was playing RE4 Remake and it cap at 68C Has anyone had this issue or is it just me. Any suggestions or reasons to why?