It’s not a matter of obligation, it’s making sure that units in the game serve a purpose. You already found such a use in your Warhammer example: garrisoning cities. Cheaper units serve a use in that game because you can’t afford to garrison everything with. I think Warhammer would be pretty boring if the concept of infantry was obsolete past the early game and instead battles were fought with nothing but dragons and Cathay balloons. That’s the kind of space that previous Age of Wonders game occupied, IMO, where in the end you were really just building stacks of your best 1-2 units and nothing else.
The idea for me is to make sure that units provide useful utility. Maybe that utility is garrisoning cities, maybe it’s the ability to detect hidden units, maybe it’s the ability for small units to use cover, or maybe it’s unique things like infantry being able to carry medpacks or repair kits that still make them useful. Stuff like that.
I feel like I’m being mis-understood a little, so let me clarify - I don’t want to not have a reason to use older/early game units, like I have said I think it’s fine for garrisons, extra armies defending critical resource nodes maybe, that sort of thing - I just don’t want them to still be a backbone unit in the late game. If it’s a good idea to have one or two early units in the army (I’ve had examples of this in very recent posts), all the better, but don’t give me a lateral upgrade from Swordsman into some mid-tier unit that is not really better just different, that’s not what I’m looking for in a game like this.
Why are we skipping the solution already implemented, in my mind with massive success, in AoW: Planetfall?
Why do we need to reinvent the wheel? The mod system addresses this issue in a very major way, and although we are talking about adjusting it (I think mod slots for most units should be reduced from 3 to 2, and also the powerful “spell ability” mods should be further limited to “spellcaster” units), it’s still a very elegant solution to the unit obsolescence issue.
BBB, I forget, did you skip Planetfall? Or just not like it?
It is essential to this discussion IMO. The design evolution of Planetfall from AoW 3 is quite significant.
Yeah I disagree MASSIVELY. The wrong direction for the series full stop. Too much micromanagement, I don’t want city buildings cluttering an already cluttered map, and also you reference a problem (Infinite City Spam) already solved by Planetfall.
Also, this idea of unlimited stack sizes, etc. The stack limit is fundamental to AoW. It sounds to me that you want a different 4X, not an AoW game.
In fact, I think most of BBB’s suggestions boil down to “make AoW less AoW and more like a different 4X”. I am not on board with that.
I think the suggestions of the Explorminate Article, along with some of the suggested tweaks and focus areas we have discussed, are the way to go.
Expand and enhance Empire mode. Add Seals Victory back in. Keep the mod system but streamline and refine it. Those are the ideas Triumph should be looking at, not reinventing the game to be Age of Endlessness.
I like the mod system as well but there have been a lot of complaints about it, here on Qt3 and elsewhere. I agree with you that I’d like to see the system stay and just be tweaked in the way you described.
Wildly, I had the same thought at a few points while reading @BloodyBattleBrain theorycrafting - I don’t think it was his intention, but I can see where @Sharpe is coming from here.
I feel in hindsight my tone was a bit hostile to @BloodyBattleBrain. I disagree with the direction of changes he is proposing but I do appreciate his efforts to engage meaningfully in a discussion to improve the franchise.
I do feel like the evolution of design in Planetfall is the right general way to go (sectors, mods, etc.) but I think there is a lot of room to discuss how to refine that evolution as well as further evolve the core design.
There is one thing we haven’t talked about yet which is the exploration sites. I LOVE clearing out the exploration sites but it is true that with a hard 6 unit limit on what you can take into the sites, the sites in specific strongly incentivize stacks of tier 2, tier 3 and sometimes tier 4 units. Taking tier 1 units into exploration sites is a recipe for attrition. I wouldn’t mind a broader range of exploration sites, with some suitable for clearing by weaker stacks. Or if the sites are kept high level, there should probably be fewer of them.
In Planetfall, you start with a size 3 city. Was that a change from the first release?
IIRC, I guess I came to Planetfall a few months after release. What was the big update that improved the sector system? Tyrannosaurus? About 4-5 months after release? That’s where I came in, IIRC.
The city site discussion is interesting. Way back in the days when the Kohan games were a big deal on this board, there was a “lively” discussion as to the Kohan 1 system of settles vs the Kohan 2 system of fixed city sites. I strongly preferred the system in 2.
In terms of AoW, I would be perfectly fine with a return to the city site based system. I mostly played AoW3 with settlers turned off (they did include that as an option, which was good.) In fact, I think the biggest change I would like would be a reduction in exploration sites and resource sites and an increase in pre-built city sites. Planetfall did feature a type of city site with the Settlement system (you could buy a village or settler unit with Influence from a pre-established location - you could also conquer the settlement if you chose.) There’s an argument that future games should have toggles to turn settlers off and to increase Settlements, which would address BBB’s issue here. (I tend to like toggles rather than hard limits, but that does require more coding.)
