I suspect pretty much everyone would like this.
I’d be curious to know which strategy aspects you bounced off, and why.
And, oh, obviously the thread title will get reworked on Thursday.
I can’t speak for Abrandt but I feel like the strategy layer in Planetfall WAS better than prior AoW games b/c it was a bit more abstract and streamlined (the sector system is almost board-gamey, in a good way) and didn’t require micro-management of the strategic layer (the micro was in the tactical battles). I definitely felt you could specialize cities for strategic purposes better in Planetfall and that could be used to shape your overall strategy. City build queues were smaller but still important and by selecting sector exploitations and specializations, the player could shape their economy and army building capabilities significantly, without the repetitive city building queue micro of prior AoW games.
So applying the strategic layer concepts of Planetfall is a win IMO. Also, as we have discussed previously, I would like the tactical map and mod system to be somewhat streamlined as well (although only modestly).
Here’s hoping.
And I’d take this an set it on fire. ;)
Please have more intuitive complexity than the Cosmite in planetfall.
I do think the fantasy setting will help with this.
Planetfall’s stuff was potentially good, but I think it needed a lot of refinement.
Yeah, in Planetfall, cosmite turned out to be the ur-resource. There was no way to get more than what you could find/mine on the map and your capitol, no way to convert resources, no way to invest in more production (other than the very limited series of capitol upgrades). It became a thing for me to plan my cities and expansion almost entirely around cosmite as it was too damn rare and powerful.
Adding some layers and options to that would be good.
A lot of what Sharpe said. In games that have a strategy layer and a tactics layer I need the strategy layer to be really engaging for me as the tactics layer in such games are never enough to keep me engaged for long. City management in previous AoW felt like it was never very interesting and scaled up poorly. Like the standard issue with too many cities in a 4X where you just build all the things anyway. The sector system worked for me in a lot of ways in Planetfall. Avoiding city spam while still encouraging expansion is a big one. Each sector had attributes that made them somewhat unique without being overwhelming(more of that please!) making the exploration portion more interesting. And they were a smart way to facilitate building out your cities in a unique way and in a way that was tied to the map(map layout/geography mattering is another big strategy turn-on for me).
I also really enjoyed the unit customization of the mod system and the hero weapons, but would also like it streamlined or enhanced in some way. Haven’t done a deep dive on my thoughts on that, but I think I always kind of fell into using the same mods over and over, with a few wholesale swap outs as I got higher tier mods. Part of that was that you could unlock a lot of mods but their effect wasn’t necessarily very intuitive. This is an area where I think the known fantasy setting would just sort of help out for free. You aren’t inventing weird sci-fi names for things and I’d have a pretty good feel for what would be different between a longbow or a shortbow or what a ring of invisibility might be do.
Aside from that, I’m always interested in whatever they can do to make the tactical battles snappier and tactically interesting. Multi-stack battles turn after turn were where the game starts to really drag for me(I know it’s primarily a tactical focused game so I’m not asking them to go crazy here). Planetfall battles were interesting based on what type of stack the enemy had vs yours, but if you ended up fighting similar enemies over and over again there wasn’t all that much different in how those would play out, but that feels like a constant challenge with these types of games.
Edit: Oh! I also really liked the idea of the big meta-campaign thing they added, but felt that each map within took too long to play. That idea with more available smaller maps or quicker-to-achieve victory conditions would be cool. I especially liked some of the mapwide modifiers you’d run into there as they could really change how things played out.
Interesting thoughts. Thanks guys.
24 hrs!!!
For me, the fun part of these games is questing and building up your hero’s power, and coming up with fun overpowered units.
The tactical battles are the least fun part for me.
You may be the first person I’ve heard/read say that.
Of all the games, if you liked having a buffed hero party, I’m guessing AoW1 was your favourite?
Although in AoW3 you could get some very nice items.
Hero upgrades are the most fun for me as well in AoW, followed by city building/map management. I liked HOMM4 for the heroes, too, so my taste is highly suspect!
Tick tock.
Curious noone has mentioned races and classes as things they like or dislike.
Are these just considered part of the background now?
Thats me as well - I love upgrading heroes, units and so on!
I like them, and I like getting to choose the combo of the two things. And adding more of those things is a pretty straightforward DLC path that adds longevity to the game.
Same, I thought it was pretty cool and I think it would fit great in a future AOW fantasy game.
I like the races in the AoW franchise, lots of fun variety. I would love to see them make each race even more unique yet again than AoW3 did though, like really dig into asymmetry instead of trying to balance every race to the same level. I like how Master of Magic has some races that are just better than others, but are more expensive and require a bit of game knowledge to take advantage of, for instance.
Every bit all of this!!!
I want my damn Lizardmen back.
I love the races in AoW as well. Especially the weird ones that aren’t in most franchises. I don’t think they can ruin it by expanding into too much variety.
Planetfall had excellent asymmetrical races.
AoW 4, no surprise. May of this year? Surprise!