I do want that hodgepodge! Fighting regular elves and dwarves is cool. But it would be even cooler if those dwarves occasionally turned out to be bandy-legged, obese undead raiders in service to a necromancer. Not always, maybe not often, but sometimes.
I hope there’s room for classic versions of each race, but also the occasional “wtf is that” variation for opponents.
I think this is where I’m at, the more I think about it.
What was ‘races’ before, it’s now ‘factions’. One of the features of said factions, mechanically speaking, are the traits you pick.
In other words, in AoW1 or 2, you chose the Orc race to play a melee-centric game.
Now you choose a faction with the barbarian trait and the ruthless trait to play a melee-centric game.
It’s the same. What mechanically made races different before has been moved to the traits I explained: form traits, culture traits, society traits.
There are even starting tomes that are equivalent to picking undead in another fantasy game.
Or before you took the lizardmen who were amphibious right? Now you pick the body trait for amphibious.
Well explain that to everyone else, because it sounds like folks aren’t happy with it (it’s too similar to what Stellaris did, which ultimately created a bunch of confusing opponents that you couldn’t tell what you were up against by glancing at them, I think is part of it).
I personally think the system is going to be a lot of fun, and unlike Stellaris a lot more intuitive given it’s a fantasy setting and also we aren’t talking about “goverment types” and other sci-fi/civilization stuff but rather “Ice stuff” or whatever. Also, Stellaris has the problem where there are about 20 factions on a map, vs. Age of Wonders 4 having maybe 3-5 other AI factions to keep track of. So no, this isn’t specifically my concern, but I would like to know more about it - and like I said, the basic “form type” I would like to know if there is more to it than “2 traits” or if that’s the extent of what “being an Orc” means at a base level.
This is exactly me, and it’s concerning enough to move me into the “wait and see” camp, whereas for an AoW game I’d normally preorder. The problem is, it’s hitting exactly that same issue that Planetfall had: readability.
I feel like the faction variety in terms of abilities and perks won’t make nearly as big of an impact as the tomes a player/AI picks up through the course of a game.
I think it would make sense for the look of AI races to vary a bit within reasonable parameters. As for picking society traits, tome and such, I hope they follow some kind of self-reinforcing theme, again with reasonable variations. As the game rolls on, they will be continuing the customisation process with new tomes and society picks - if they are to be effective, they need to pick effective combinations, while hopefully sticking to some kind of recognisable theme.
I don’t mind having 4 completely unique opponents each game, and having to learn what their properties are. I don’t like having to click on each enemy unit to see what its properties are.
Is it possible to select three regular type opponents and one AI to be different? In other words you can choose each enemy type separately when starting a game. Or is it that the AI is set to all classic precreated by Triumph or all will be random? I would think that as long as you can choose there shouldn’t be so much angst.
This is a good point. A limited number of opponents makes it easier to digest opponents that may not always be the same. A game like Stellaris has too many so trying to remember who is what is tougher.
I believe in prior AoW games you could select your opponents, including custom opponents you created and saved. I expect AoW4 will continue that.
THis is how I feel as well!
Well consider this angle: cool unique racial units.
You know what made Dark Elves cool and fun to play? Spider Queens, Shades, Incarnates.
If Dark Elves are just a skin laid over other units? That’s pretty lame.
This extrapolates to every race in Shadow Magic. Everyone had cool, unique units and stats. You could tweak those units with your own flavor via magic and the like, but Shadow Demons were nothing like Halflings at the end of the day who were nothing like Tigrans.
Now arguably AoW3 already destroyed these cool units anyway, but I’d take the position that it’s a negative. I enjoyed AoW3 a fair amount, but nothing like I enjoyed Shadow Magic. At the end of the day Race Riding Racial Mount is lame compared to Sphynxes. Fairy Dragons and Gluttons. Class-based Race Unit is also not that exciting, though at least the uniqueness of each race came through a bit. Your Orc Crusaders felt different than Goblin Crusaders for the most part.
I was just thinking about it while taking a shower and I can better articulate what I’m thinking.
I know they call races factions now, but they didn’t historically. Also it’s kind of silly since Orcs are literally a different species than Elves or Archon. So for brevity I’m using the older terminology and considering “faction” to be your leader/wizard and the unique stuff they bring to the table. So when I say a Leader has variation, I mean all the stuff they bring to the table: spells, tech tree, units, whatever.
AoW2/Shadow Magic: Race variation = extreme. Leader variation = minimal.
AoW3: Race variation = minimal. Leader variation = moderately high (each class is varied, but similar to each of the same class in many ways)
Planetfall: Race variation = extreme. Leader variation = moderate (6 options all mostly end up samey, but each is pretty unique on it’s own)
AoW4: Race variation = minimal (to potentially non-existent). Leader variation = seemingly very high?
What I enjoy is the race variation. Women riding laser dinosaurs? Shadow Demons? Give me all that stuff.
Having leaders make meaningful changes is also a huge plus, but I don’t think it can overcome the first part if that part is weak. Planetfall’s mods were hell to me. Oh you get one-shotted by some Tier 1 units because it had a end game mod that you didn’t realize. Made every fight unfun because anything could be nearly anything.
Flamethrower Dwarves vs Flamethrower Humans is… not interesting. It’s okay and kind of a neat thing, but they don’t really feel all that special. And that’s even considering that in Planetfall each race was pretty diverse and those two example units would generally be pretty unique.
At the end of the day I want Shadow Magic/Planetfalls races with AoW3/4’s leaders/factions.
Lots of cool units, lots of cool things that make my faction cool and unique compared to similar factions.
And for me a couple of traits isn’t that cool. It sure as heck isn’t as cool as a Drone Carrier or Red Dragon.
Your Comparison doesn’t quite hold up as you’re not including culture into your consideration. I’m not familiar with anything pre-Planetfall but if you want to break it down into Race & Leader like you do, then you should consider Race to be the Form + Culture.
A Culture alone determines your Starting units, provides culture research, unique World Map and Combat Gameplay and Cultural Structures. The Culture Traits then add short & long term bonusses to that and can be used to strengthen or diversify your gameplay. Form determines the look of your Units and the Form Traits any Form difference you’d want them to have. Those can have an affect on the World Map such as post combat healing, during Combat such as additional damage when standing adjacent to each other or affect your starting conditions such as your adaptation or choosing to use an exotic mount type.
Your Ruler variance is then further the Ruler type you pick, the Tomes you research/unlock and your progression through the empire tree.
If you go with Randomly Generated AI Rulers then Form Traits will still be locked but all other steps such as Culture and Tome are randomly assigned. If you stick with the premade Rulers then those are already chosen and set.
During a Game the AI’s behaviour and progression is determined by their Personality, which is based of the Combination of Affinities they have at the start of the game. A personality determines which Victory Condition to focus on, which Tomes they’ll research, how they develop their cities etc. There 19 different personalities that AI Rulers can have and several of these have overlapping Affinities. So High Elves would all have at least 2 Order as base affinity, that gives them 4 likely Personalities to have meaning the High Elves of one game can behave differently from the High Elves in another game.
I think the mutations would be cool if that was like a separate field of research/magic, and races started out similar but evolved over time due to things weighted by the leader, but something fringe could pop up rarely.
I’m hoping the races aren’t too generic.
And for me the mods solved a problem that ruined my enjoyment. I hate getting later in the game and having a bunch of trash I’ll never build again and therefore being stuck only building limited top-tier units. Hopefully the typewide enchantments in this game solve both our problems. Lower tier units can still be viable but it’s less cognitive overload when all you have to know is that all of their archers fire super ice arrows rather than having to worry that each individual unit might be different.
That’s exactly what Jordi mentioned. The tomes you research open up new buildings as well as potential global or unit-type traits/skills. So while the AI will progress down whichever path the generic race is designed there is variation (and I assume weighting by the AI based on what it thinks it needs or what synergizes with its other options) as the game progresses. So while Elf Faction A is going down say, the warfare/archer/air magic path Elf Faction B is going down the nature magic/fantastic beast/archer path. Both fit within the classic theme of fantasy elves but there is some variation. Then if you enable the AI to have a broader pick of things you can get Elf Faction C dark magic/poison/undead path. These are just example options I made up, I don’t know which specific ones are defined as classic elves but I’m sure they exist in the framework of the game, you don’t get ~100 different tomes without hitting a bunch of the major themes.
It sounds like what we think of as race is really just the culture we are facing (something @ShivaX can appreciate, being such a fan like he is of a certain sci-fi series!) with a shape (form) and some common traits to bind them. I think everyone wants the same thing, it’s just that the jargon is changing a bit.