Blog Your Current Game

[jmotivator]

OK, so yeah, maps can get sufficiently large...

9 Factions + Far Distance Between Factions = Very large map. I'm on day 70 on my latest campaign and I've uncovered about a quarter of the above-ground map.

My latest game will end up as a loss, I think, because I have not been a good minder of the economy. I'm starved for gold, and have been bad sticking to an alignment script so my alignment bonuses are all meh... I'm the worst barbarian ever.

But not going to lose because I'm a bad barbarian, I'm going to lose because I took on a a bunch of nitwits as allies. I swear, they just pick fights with everyone all the time, especially each other. I realize that there is a rather deep part of the game where-in you can pick and choose alliances based on faction traits to build tight alliances, but all my friends hate each other. One group of Mystic Dwarves have a long list of petty grievances with everyone to the point that I may just off them to shut them up... every turn they come whining to me about someone being too close to them.

It's like I'm on a cross country road trip with a back seat full of pre-teen children.

 

[jmotivator]

I watched the Spiffing Brit video on Age of Wonders 4 today and today I learned that there is a meta game....

Apparently you can unlock larger 12 player maps, faction traits and cosmetics through playing the game.



After reviewing the chart above there really are some over powered traits to unlock in that tree.

Probably the most broken is "Silver tongued" which makes all your trades with vassal cities cost Zero. You can just regularly fleece them for mana and gold.

This system has gotten me to start playing more small maps, though, and I'm kind of liking the experience. It's easier to focus on maps with 1 opposing NPC and 2 vassal cities.

I still haven't figured out how the Spiffing Brit unlocked 12-NPC maps, but maybe that would be too much....

By the way, one feature that I really appreciate in this game is that the Save Game screen groups your save by Hero and turn number, so you can play multiple maps on and off without intermingling your save files.

Also pretty cool is that any hero that you complete a game can be ascended which makes them a recruitable hero or opposing ruler in future play throughs.

 

[Redress]

I watched the Spiffing Brit video on Age of Wonders 4 today and today I learned that there is a meta game....

Apparently you can unlock larger 12 player maps, faction traits and cosmetics through playing the game.

View attachment 67447728

After reviewing the chart above there really are some over powered traits to unlock in that tree.

Probably the most broken is "Silver tongued" which makes all your trades with vassal cities cost Zero. You can just regularly fleece them for mana and gold.

This system has gotten me to start playing more small maps, though, and I'm kind of liking the experience. It's easier to focus on maps with 1 opposing NPC and 2 vassal cities.

I still haven't figured out how the Spiffing Brit unlocked 12-NPC maps, but maybe that would be too much....

By the way, one feature that I really appreciate in this game is that the Save Game screen groups your save by Hero and turn number, so you can play multiple maps on and off without intermingling your save files.

Also pretty cool is that any hero that you complete a game can be ascended which makes them a recruitable hero or opposing ruler in future play throughs.

I got a handful of Pantheon points, nothing unlocked but cosmetic stuff so far.

 

[jmotivator]

I got a handful of Pantheon points, nothing unlocked but cosmetic stuff so far.

Yeah, the traits and starting gear options are unlocked pretty far down the various trees.

I can't find on that page, though, where you unlock 12 faction maps...

Edit: Oh, nevermind, 12 faction maps is a Mod.

 

[jmotivator]

The first game of AoW4 that I have taken past turn 50 is now on turn 108. It's a stock large map and I am playing a Barbarian faction (this is the nice Barbarian faction game mentioned earlier)

This game really is fun. I'm at the point where I'm probably going to lose due to the previously mentioned pain in the ass ally, but not for the reasons you might think. That's probably for a later post after this game is completed. The after action report will be.. interesting.

Anyway, there are some pretty fun and underhanded things you can do in this game using some of the absurdly overpowered spells that you have at your disposal.

Generally I've found in this game that allies are mostly a burden if you stick strictly to behaving like a good ally. They will always pull you into wars you don't want, aren't ready for, but after the experience with the devilishly cleaver AI, I decided to take the gloves off and be as brutal to my friends as my enemies while trying to still maintain a semblance of being nice.

Enter the "Awaken the Forest" spell. I'd say that this spell is easily the most powerful/overpowered spells in the game.

This spell is overpowered because not only does a single cast convert a forest tile to an instant full stack of Nature troops (and yes it is possible to spawn Horned Gods into that stack!), but the spell can be cast literally ANYWAHERE you have vision.

You have an enemy sneak through into your territory while your main army is off fighting elsewhere? No worries, just cast Awaken the Forest and have an instant defense force. At higher level casting skill you can pump out a full stack every other turn.

Don't worry about upkeep either since you will mostly just be using the stacks as canon fodder to stall invasions until you can rally your cities. With this spell I have far less reason to keep the homeland heavily defended

Also, after several casts of "Awaken the Forest" I can then cast the nature spell to turn a tile into forest and reset my homeland.

 

[jmotivator]

Completed my first large map. How it ended was rather interesting...

Back when I thought I was going to lose, I had been fooled by an ally of mine by the name of Fangir. He was a dwarf faction that was focused on magic, and was mostly set up in the underworld, with a small toehold on the overworld around a cave passage in the south east. As an ally he was a pain in the ass. Every turn he was coming to me with a new grievance with me, which I paid off, or demanding I start a war with some faction I hadn't even seen yet. I would usually put him off as long as possible on the war declarations. and at least half the time he'd get his ass handed to him by mystery enemy and sue for piece and go back to bitching at me.

There was literally nothing I could do for his war effort even if I wanted to... my barbarian hordes had no territory in the underworld. The best I could do was float him some cash every so often, but I was a benevolent broke-ass horde at that stage of the game, so I was barely staying afloat by building city-based economies which was bad because as a horde I should have been making all my money pillaging...

So after his fifth defeat at the hands of mystery enemy Fangir broke our alliance, I can't blame him, and then a turn later finished all of the prerequisites for a magic victory. If he could hold out for 15 turns he'd show us all to be fools.

Lucky for him that the same reason I couldn't help him in his wars also made it practically impossible for me to intervene in his magic ritual, so I just went about my business trying to maximize my points so I could at least finish second place.

But my history with the idiot Fangir should have taught me not to worry, because the hapless fool ended up losing one of his conduits on turn 10 of his attempt, ending his hopes. A turn later he asked me for an alliance.

Being the benevolent barbarian I accepted since the added income from trade was welcome. I returned to annexing lands, killing marauding bands and building up my armies and heroes. I decided to focus on Nature during this period because most of the spells are just better than Chaos, in my opinion, at least in the early game.

I pushed to the Horned God summoning spell and decided it was time to start getting aggressive.

The biggest issue I had had with Fangir was his downright racist hatred of the frog people who lived in the south western part of the map. I had always defended the frog people, they were never aggressive with anyone, and always willing to trade with me. Even though I was in a longer continuous alliance with the frog people Fangir was always bitching at me about them... something about broken promises., maybe some stolen land... I don't know, I wasn't listening, and anyway it was also happening in the depths, so why should I care. They were like my children, kicking each other under the table at family meal.

All the time they were bickering I was clearing out my nearest rival in the north West (I was located in the middle of the map) with the help of another ally by the name of Xetevaca, a strange woman with a helmet that appeared to be in the process of exploding. She had her primary city underground as well, but had a fairly large area controlled above ground that cut through the middle of the lands of Fangir and the Frog people. She kind of kept them from breaking out in war since neither had an alliance with Xetevaca, so they had no way of marching armies to one another.

Then hell broke lose.

I started a turn with 20+ diplomatic messages, and the best as I could make out we had suddenly entered World War I with everyone starting wars with one another and many of them demanding I side with them, including Fangir and the Frog people.
The problem was that Xetevaca declared war with me for my alliance with Fangir (that son of a...) and had a very good army positioning on me. I was caught with my pants down. Xetevaca was also in an alliance with... the frog people.

I tried to thread the needle, because I was still well liked by the Frog people, by chosing to joing Fangir via the letter I received from him requesting a war with Xetevaca... I was already at war, so maybe I could placate Fangir without pissing off the Frog peop... crap...

The Frog People declared war on me. Now I had TWO major armies on my doorstep and my only friend was hapless Fangir....

(to be continued)

 

[jmotivator]

When war broke out the main force of my army was woefully out of place, deep in the North West where I had vanquished my primary rival of the early game. I was out of place because I was just being greedy, picking up all the various treasures and magic sites.

There was a large mountain range that cut east west across the western half of the map that was separating my army from the Frog People, so if I was going to conduct a campaign I'd need more heroes, and rally more troops. Luckily I could muster some armies pretty fast with Awaken the Forest, so I set about building all the units I could. My rough estimate was I could make about a stack every other turn. This meant I needed roughly 3 turns to may three good stacks. Since all wars are fought between 1-3 army stacks per side, one good set of three stacks could hold of a much larger force.

Luckily the mountainous terrain that was stymying me to North west was also a weak spot for my enemies since the mountain range ended in the east just west of another southern mountain range, making a nice choke point for the frog people if they ever wanted to break out, I dubbed it "Frog Gap".

I wasn't so worried about the Frog people in the short term. My primary worry was Xete's armies that held the ground on the other side of the choke point. I'd need to face her down in order to get a standing army to the choke point.

I started by sending some of my castle guard units out in 1s and 2s to start harassing Xete's farms and lumber mills to help divide her armies since, it would seem, Fangir's forces were bubbling out of the caves in the sounth East and giving Xete's forces something to think about.

Xete dedicated a significant for to Fangir's invasion.

While this bought me some time, it didn't appear to be enough time. I was 15 turns away with my main army, and my lands were largely undefended. I was 3 turns away from casting Awaken the Forest, which would bring me a single stack of troops. It looked grim.

Two turns later there was hope.

I had a handful of tier 1 units that were set to explore that were making there way around the map, and one of them had been exploring the north west. on the turn that I materialized my first stack of armies from the forest, I watched as that scout... started crossing the mountain range. It turned out that a section of the mountain that I had assumed was uncrossable ended up being just very hard to cross. I checked with my main army and it turned out that I could be across the mountains and in the heart of the Frog Kingdom in about 6 turns. To make matters better, there was unclaimed land across the mountain, so in 8 turns I wouldn't just bee across the mountains, but I could have a fort.

I just needed to get an army towards the center of the map to buy me some time.

I decided that the best way to waste time is to focus my efforts in the center of the map on prolonged sieges. You may call it cheating, but the AI tends to amass troops in advance of a siege and waits a few turns before they attack. If you have a sufficiently large army, even if they vastly outnumber you, they will wait until you've toppled their wall to attack you. At that point they will swarm you with repeated attacks, if necessary, but until the walls topple there is an uneasy peace.

So I consolidated my central armies around my two heroes in the center map, and had them lay siege simultaneously to the castles North West and South East of Frog gap. That would buy me about 8 turns in Fangir held out.

It was at this point that the Frog People started casting their Magic Victory spell. Crap.

The Frog People army was massive. They had spend 100 turns under my protection doing nothing but building and spitting out tadpoles. The nearest focus in their realm was half way across the map, south of Frog Gap. My army up there was not strong enough to break through, and my main army wouldn't get there soon enough. The only chance I had was the from people capitol.

By turn 10 into the Frog People magic gambit I was on their capitol doorstep knocking. I set up my siege, but it was going to take 10 turns, well past my deadline of 5.

It was at this point that I realized that the Frog People had a problem... they were low of resources. It turned out that all that time that I was pissed at Fangir for kicking the Frog People he was running a pillaging campaign of his own that was really sapping the frogs of money and mana.

Now my siege had all but broken them. They might not be able to afford their armies for whole 5 turns...

That is when I hatched my cunning plan...

I opened a diplomatic channel with the frog people and offered them a deal. I would become their overlord in exchange for sparing them. The Frog People accepted!

The war with the Frogs was over, they were now my vassal.. and not just any vassal, I was their overlord.

5 turns later, as their overlord, I took credit for their magic victory.

 

[jmotivator]

Epilogue:

Sometimes we can forget, in the moments of victory, that we didn't get there on our own.

Sometimes in not about the victory at all, it's about the enemies we met along the way...

The End.

 

[PoS]

I played a short game of AOW Planetfall, but I stopped and got a refund because I didnt like the races. Used the refund to get into AOW4.

After a few hiccups in the start, I began playing a kind of vampire lich hybrid human who's evil to the core. Lots of golems and gargoyle armies. Currently on turn 50 or so and am mopping the floor with the nearby kingdoms. Every time I sack a city, I raze it and then build another one in its place. It's okay I guess.

 

[Slartibartfast]

I finished up hogwarts and have moved onto Ghost Wire Tokyo. It’s fun.

 

[Redress]

I finished up hogwarts and have moved onto Ghost Wire Tokyo. It’s fun.

Does the "It's fun" refer to Hogwarts or Ghost Wire Tokyo?

 

[Slartibartfast]

Does the "It's fun" refer to Hogwarts or Ghost Wire Tokyo?

Both.

Hogwarts gets repetitive after a while though and ghost wire seems to have a more engaging storyline.

 

[jmotivator]

I played a bit of Diablo IV in the free server slam. Servers run great, but its been pretty meh. The drop rates appear to have been set to post release levels and the level cap is only level 20. Also, the more powerful classes in the last beta have been nerfed and the weak classes are still pretty weak, so you feel a lot more squishy.

Technically it's a success but as a game it needs more fun. I can't really judge the final product by this release since it's so limited, though.

 

[jmotivator]

I'm playing a new modded map in Age of Wonders 4. The mod increases the total possible opponents and the total starting possible distance between factions. I actually lowered the number of factions from my previous game from 9 to 8, and increased the distance to "Massive". This gave me a fairly nice sized map with some breathing room.

I decided I wanted to cheese this playthrough with some of the various overpowered options in the game so I decided to create a race of Drow, which means I am a Feudal dark elf race with Overwhelm and Spider Mounts and I start with the Tome with Spawnkin and a minor racial mod.

All of this other than the Spider Mounts is just gravy though since the spider mount trait is just insane. The one thing that makes spider mounts utterly insane is that the spider "Web" attack is already overpowered, able to lock whole armies in place and do considerable damage, and it applies to your scout units. So with the Spider Mount trait for faction's strongest unit until mid/late game is also your cheapest unit.

The funniest thing about this build is that the AI doesn't seem to know how overpowered a stack of spider-riding scouts is so you will usually take considerable losses in auto-resolve, but playing it out manually can often end in a flawless victory, even against Tier 4 units.

I'm on turn 10 I've already got a stack of neigh unbeatable veteran spider riders.

 

[PoS]

Did another playthrough of AOW4, this time I sort of set up my faction as evil dark elves. For some reason I prefer going the evil route, since all the good aligned decisions actually makes you poorer and forgoes stuff like rewards for the sake of charity, which is silly.

I was doing well before running up against a faction of good-aligned molemen, who for some reason were very good in regards to fighting. I had to replay a key battle three times, even though I had overwhelming strength, but for some reason the enemy units would always wipe me out. Took me awhile to figure out how to win using the magic victory, but I came through in the end.

 

[jmotivator]

Did another playthrough of AOW4, this time I sort of set up my faction as evil dark elves. For some reason I prefer going the evil route, since all the good aligned decisions actually makes you poorer and forgoes stuff like rewards for the sake of charity, which is silly.

I was doing well before running up against a faction of good-aligned molemen, who for some reason were very good in regards to fighting. I had to replay a key battle three times, even though I had overwhelming strength, but for some reason the enemy units would always wipe me out. Took me awhile to figure out how to win using the magic victory, but I came through in the end.

View attachment 67450125

Playing a good alignment helps with diplomacy and makes it a lot easier to win allied victories. Most of my non-cheesed wins have come from playing good and reaching allied victories. Winning an allied victory take a lot more time schmoozing and selecting the proper allies. Alliances of convenience rather than ideology are as problematic in the long run in AoW4 as they are in real life.

When I play evil I tend to play barbarian and sack cities rather than conquer them. With the permanent buffs you get in the chaos tree from sacking cities you can become absurdly resource-rich while the AI burns resources trying to rebuild all the time.

 

[jmotivator]

Really looking forward to the first DLC for AOW4 where they add Dragons and a Ruler type. That will be very interesting!

Then following that release they will add the "Empire in Ashes" DLC that sounds like it will add gunpowder back into the game.

I usually played gunpowder focused armies in the previous AOW games, so I look forward to revisiting that.

Now I'm thinking of a game, post DLC2, where I run a game with a dragon as my ruler and a strong focus on gunpowder units in my army. Man that will be steampunk as shit!

 

[PoS]

Playing a good alignment helps with diplomacy and makes it a lot easier to win allied victories. Most of my non-cheesed wins have come from playing good and reaching allied victories. Winning an allied victory take a lot more time schmoozing and selecting the proper allies. Alliances of convenience rather than ideology are as problematic in the long run in AoW4 as they are in real life.

When I play evil I tend to play barbarian and sack cities rather than conquer them. With the permanent buffs you get in the chaos tree from sacking cities you can become absurdly resource-rich while the AI burns resources trying to rebuild all the time.

Ah OK. I was never much of a negotiator myself. Whenever someone claimed my claimed territory Id declare war and raze their cities. Whenever I tried to keep to myself my cities would starve, and my gold flow went down. War is profitable.

 

[jmotivator]

Ah OK. I was never much of a negotiator myself. Whenever someone claimed my claimed territory Id declare war and raze their cities. Whenever I tried to keep to myself my cities would starve, and my gold flow went down. War is profitable.

It can be, but there are a lot of treaties and vasal bonuses that let you build rather strong economies without fighting. With the right vassal buffer cities you can save money on armies and let them soak up the damage. It's the EU NATO strategy.

Also, if you ever want to cheese out some easy wins just to unlock the meta skill tree here is by far the easiest way to get a "win":

1) Create a new 1-v-1 game on a map with distance set to "close"
2) Run to where the enemy is likely located (in 1-vs-1 they are usually placed symmetrically opposite to you)
3) When you encounter the enemy declare war immediately
4) Now go to the Diplomacy screen and sue for peace, offering to become a vassal to the enemy
5) You win an allied victory and get awarded a point to unlock a node on the meta skill tree.

Most of that skill tree is unlocking cosmetics, but there are a few rather powerful faction traits that you can unlock and some starting gear options.

 

[jmotivator]

I was planning on doing a full write up of my impressions of Diablo IV, but honestly I'm not sure the game really deserves a full write up.

That may seem harsh, but let me explain..

The game is boring. It's far more boring than the first two beta tests, and as my "Server Slam" review indicated, the Meh factor hasn't changed.

What is gone is the itemization. As promised the devs turns the unique drop rate back up so I have a fair number of them about mid way through the game, but what is gone, it seems, is the interesting uniques.

Gone are the crazy Binding of Isaac style synergetic uniques in favor of targeted skill incremental boons.

In the first beta there was a clear demarcation between Uniques-you-craft-from-Aspects, where aspects are the ho-hum incremental skill bonuses you earn from defeating dungeons, and the random loot drop items that seemed like proper uniques. The Scythe that triggers corpse explosion when touched with the blood mist skill doesn't appear to be in the game, or I haven't seen anyone get it to drop. They might have added it to a world boss or something to gatekeeper it for late game.

But worse is that all of the uniques that have dropped this far have unique abilities pulled directly from the list of Dungeon Aspects... so I have yet to get a unique that I could have crafted by 1) Conquering the 10 minute dungeon and then 2) Applying the aspect to a rare item.

It's boring, is what I'm saying...

Then there are the abilities. Blizzard has made the classic Blizzard mistake where in they assume that a skill or item that becomes popular in the meta for its power should be nerfed, rather than elevating the strength of skills that are less desirable. As such, most of the good skills in the beta have been nerfed to hell. Minions for a Necromancer are weak, draw so little aggro that they only pull attention off of you if you aren't attacking, and do little damage. You can choose to "sacrifice" all minions for small buffs instead, which is even less interesting. The universal weakness makes all skills seem sort of interchangeable and they all lack any real interesting synergies. In D4 the "synergy" is to take only skills in a certain family and then stack bonuses for that family of skills incrementally to stay ahead of the enemy who are all leveling along side you, the end.

It feels like they are punishing us all for not playing Diablo Immortal. "Oh YEAH? You don't want to pay to win? Then here is the slow trudgery you say you want!"

Maybe at some point the game opens up but that brings me to the last point....

The Map. The Map is small. Many were guessing that the full game would have new maps for each chapter, but so far I see no real chapter system and the whole game takes place on the same small map. All achievements in the achievements menu all relate back to just the zones in the current map, telling me it really is as small as I thought.

I won't say I'm really disappointed, you grow a thick skin to these shenanigans with Blizzard. I haven't read any reviews yet for the game, but I would assume that 2 days into early release I'm not the only one finding out the full release isn't much bigger than the limited beta release and in some important ways less than the beta.

 

[Redress]

Very, very early impressions of D4, from someone who did not do the betas. I have 2 characters to level 10, so this is very early. Necro = boring. Really boring. Sorc = decent to play, at least so far, doing an electricity build now. Controls are ok, but not as good as other ARPGs. Queue's suck donkey dick in hell, even when fairly short. I like this versions minimap. The world is too dark and visibility sucks too much. They put alot of work into making the world look decent, then obscured it all. Probably will put some more time into sorc today, and try another class.

Overall, the game is not bad by any means so far, but it isn't great either.

 

[Redress]

15 minute queue, counts down to “pending” in 20 minutes, stays at pending for 5 minutes, then back to 3 minute queue, counts down to pending again, where it has stuck for 10 minutes. Money well spent…

 

[Redress]

And still queued...

 

[jmotivator]

Very, very early impressions of D4, from someone who did not do the betas. I have 2 characters to level 10, so this is very early. Necro = boring. Really boring. Sorc = decent to play, at least so far, doing an electricity build now. Controls are ok, but not as good as other ARPGs. Queue's suck donkey dick in hell, even when fairly short. I like this versions minimap. The world is too dark and visibility sucks too much. They put alot of work into making the world look decent, then obscured it all. Probably will put some more time into sorc today, and try another class.

Overall, the game is not bad by any means so far, but it isn't great either.

I followed a similar path. I wanted to see if the Necromancer ever got any better so I played it to level 38 and it never did. After doing some reading on the Necromancer meta it turns out that all the best builds for Necro opt to sacrifice the minions for the bonuses. At that point you are just a slightly weaker sorcerer.

So I started an electricity themed sorcerer and I'm at level 18 now and it is somewhat better, certainly easier to clear weak enemies.

But it still comes down to those poor state of the uniques. How can their be an end game if the late game gear is just the same gear you have been crafting all game?

I hope something proves me wrong... but at the moment it's pretty bleak.

Also a huge complaint that has been gnawing at me is the abysmal lack of a character's casting resource that leaves them saying "Out of Mana!" every two seconds in combat. Seriously, whose bright idea was to have the play run out of mana after casting two spells? And there is no really good way to boost that mana pool either.

 

[PoS]

Boltgun: my son loves it, but I think its just okay. The problem is Im not a fan of the Imperium, so if I could play as Tau or Necron it would have been an awesome game...