I agree that the Alchemist’s items don’t feel the same as combat spells in AoW.
To shift the conversation, one thing that I think S:CoE does really well is tie the distinct types of crafting into the power curve. The crafting in S:CoE is, IMHO, just fun, and it feels pretty different to be crafting (semi-)permanent effects (glyphs), (mostly) one-use items, or troops. A lot of the power curve is building up (and exploring) the crafting. (The other main part of the power curve is troop & hero experience. Spell research feels to me to be subservient to these two issues.)
I think the lack of cities and having just one tower really helps. For my money, I love games where you have only one power center on the map; founding cities is fun, no doubt, but it’s really hard to avoid both the end-game choose-what-to-build chore and the division of player focus that comes from having a spread out geography. Imperialism and Eador: Genesis are other examples where I think the removal of focus on cities really helps the game shine.
Yeah, I absolutely love this - experimenting and finding new recipies is super satisfying, and some of the things you can build are just outrageously cool/powerful. Or were, I know a lot of folks thought some of it would get nerfed, which woudl be a shame if that happened, but I haven’t been following S:CoE for a bit.
This reminds me (and steering a bit back on topic) - in the AoW4 stream last week they had just their starting capitol the entire two hours they played - they didn’t seem to need to build other cities, at least for the first few hours, and it felt pretty good. I know you CAN build wide as an option, but I think I’m going to like AoW4’s approach to empire management in this way.
Yes, they aren’t exactly spells, I really just meant that they give you a larger menu of options within combat. And yeah, two of the three mage types don’t even get very many of them. I do think the lack of some kind of in-combat casting from the player character is notable considering you play a wizard!
And no, I don’t want AoW4 to be CoE, I just found the tactical combat more enjoyable in the latter than I have in any AoW game. I think they did a lot of smart things with their combat system that I hope other designers pay attention to. Certainly AoW combat is not the same and I don’t expect them to just lift the combat system from CoE either!
I’m really glad AoW4 is continuing to expand the strategy side of the game. For me, the strategy side could certainly lift the game way above CoE, but the tactical side could drag it down to where I just can’t stick with it. So that’s where my tastes are at. I hate tactical combat where it pops up and I groan because it’s a 10+ minute time commitment that won’t be worth that amount of time. My reaction to battles in CoE might be a bit of a groan if it’s the same stack fighting almost the same stack as last turn, but at least I can get it over with in a hurry.
Now, the autoresolve system in Planetfall that is moving over here is AWESOME. Love not having to autosave before I try to autoresolve.
Same - I think AoW4 having smaller maps is going to be a super good and underrated change. Every time I watch them stream I am pleased when they tackle a fight so I can watch them play it out, vs. my usual “just auto resolve so I can see more stuff in the game!” approach to watching games like this in a stream. I think that speaks volumes here. I suspect the smaller CoE maps is a big part of what you enjoy about them, as the combat is super, super similar to AoW3 otherwise.
This as well. I also love that whe can auto-resolve and then fight it out if we don’t like the outcome, without having to reload the game and then fight it out - this is especially important as I play games like this with @ShivaX and he will appreciate me not wanting to reload our save game when my beloed hero dies because I was too lazy to fight a battle out, haha.
I’ll just speak up here and say that for me tactical combat is the whole point of an AoW game, and where they’ve always shined. I love the strategic layer, but it’s always existed in support of the tactical combat. I can’t imagine auto-resolving any non-trivial fight in these games.
I’m really talking about non-trivial fights myself. Though sometimes the big complex siege battles with like 30 particpants can feel overwhelming and if I can auto-resolve and win even with losses, I’ll take it.
The non-trivial fights are the ones I do want to play! The problem with a tactical game with a strategic layer is that it tends to produce a really bad ratio of trivial/uninteresting to non-trivial/interesting fights.
I wonder if you could fix this somewhat by having armies be more concerned with self-preservation. As I understand it, in ancient or medieval warfare you wouldn’t usually have a battle unless both sides thought they had a chance to win or if they had to defend a vital location (or one side is surprised). Maybe you could have mechanism where an army that’s going to clearly lose a tactical battle gets pushed into a retreating mode unless they are defending a city or some other vital point. It would have to be a significant yielding of ground and time required to make the unit functional again so that forcing the retreat doesn’t feel pointless, but it could preserve forces for more significant battles.
There is a morale mechanic that can cause retreats in AoW4.
It isn’t quite what you describe, which I understand to be more like a tactical withdrawal on the defenders part.
In real life it made sense because even winning a battle was costly, and often the point of warfare was to capture territory.
In AoW you aren’t really fighting over territory, as in the territory is not the goal perse, but a means to an end, the end being to defeat the other player.
And winning a battle here is usually a net good.
If you retreat in AoW 4, by fleeing (i.e. not the attacker ability) you lose control of those units, and there is a 40% chance they’ll die.
I think comparing what does and doesn’t work for x and y’s take on mechanic z is worthwhile. And that’s really all we’re comparing between these two games. All of the structure around them we haven’t really been talking about here.
Pressure definitely goes up on higher difficulties. You’ll have circle mages after you from very early on. And for the most part you won’t necessarily lose battles because you’re rarely forced into a fight you want to avoid, except when circle mages are sieging your tower. Certainly can see how that would feel less satisfying to people, though.
Undead are about the simplest thing to deal with, so while your example is true, it’s also kind of the most basic instance of “use this damage type to defeat these stacks”. Something like demons have all a whole mix of resistances that makes fighting them less straightforward. BUT, the repetitive thing is true. I think it holds for both series but often in different ways, part of why I think the comparisons are valid and useful for potentially fighting a solution to some of the longstanding issues with the genre.
And like I said, I’d hate for Triumph to do something like play CoE and then scrap their combat for a clone of Conquest of Eo. But I do think Owned by Gravity did some really interesting things with that game that I think it’s worthwhile for other devs to see.
I was on the fence with some of the early info, and worrying it would be too much like Planetfall - but I think I will preorder. I just haven’t done so yet,
Not yet - but I would have already done so, and the deluxe edition at that, it’s just that I sold some paintings and I’m waiting for the checks to come in to use those funds to do it. No heming and hawing here, I’m planning on taking some time off work when I can finally play this.
