Age of Wonders 4 Announced (Master of Magic like 4X Fantasy Strategy Series)

Blake00

Blake00

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Triumph Studios have recently announced what many had hoped for, a return to their mainline Age of Wonders fantasy 4X strategy series with AoW4! For Age of Wonders fans as well as many Master of Magic fans who feel AoW has been one of the best ‘similar to MoM’ series out there this is exciting news. What’s also interesting is that it sounds like they may be using a Warlock series multi worlds via portals system too. AoW2 Shadow Magic did something similar with one dark world similar to Master of Magic, however this time it sounds like there will be many different worlds much like in the Warlock games! I’m going to need to update my Age of Wonders Section at Blake’s Sanctum ASAP as here I am still not getting around to properly playing Shadow Magic when I’ve then got AoW3, Planetfall and now AoW4 to come too lol! Once day I’ll get to them all.. one day haha!

Here’s the trailer below as well as a video showing the full announcement show and extra gameplay. Oh and they’ve started making some really cool dev diaries on steam too.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1669000/Age_of_Wonders_4/


 
Blake00 said:
Triumph Studios have recently announced what many had hoped for, a return to their mainline Age of Wonders fantasy 4X strategy series with AoW4! For Age of Wonders fans as well as many Master of Magic fans who feel AoW has been one of the best ‘similar to MoM’ series out there this is exciting news. What’s also interesting is that it sounds like they may be using a Warlock series multi worlds via portals system too. AoW2 Shadow Magic did something similar with one dark world similar to Master of Magic, however this time it sounds like there will be many different worlds much like in the Warlock games! I’m going to need to update my Age of Wonders Section at Blake’s Sanctum ASAP as here I am still not getting around to properly playing Shadow Magic when I’ve then got AoW3, Planetfall and now AoW4 to come too lol! Once day I’ll get to them all.. one day haha!

Here’s the trailer below as well as a video showing the full announcement show and extra gameplay. Oh and they’ve started making some really cool dev diaries on steam too.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1669000/Age_of_Wonders_4/


Click to expand...
I think I still have the CD-ROM of Age of Wonders 1 (or 2) on my shelf. I don't even know if it'll run or install on my current machine... :p
 
Patine said:
I think I still have the CD-ROM of Age of Wonders 1 (or 2) on my shelf. I don't even know if it'll run or install on my current machine... :p
Click to expand...

Yeah I still have my AoW 1, 2 and Shadowmagic boxsets and CDs in a cupboard. They work on my ageing Windows 7 PC but am not sure about newer stuff. The copies sold on GoG & Steam maybe patched.. dunno.

Meanwhile I've been reading their dev diaries on city management.. crazy how many systems are in play when developing a city in AoW4.. lots to think about! I'm a bit of a sucker for those excessively spreadsheety 4x games but they'll need a good tutorial to make sure they don't scare off the casual player. I like that you can automate your city construction to a particular build priority (food, money, magic etc) though or turn your own cities into vassals giving you 2 different ways to lower the micromanagement.. that way someone could totally play games where they just go all OCD on their capital and not worry about the rest (Disciples style)

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-8-cities-and-expansion.1572753/

Once again there's some absolutely gorgeous shots in the article...



 
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I pre-ordered. :mischief::crazyeye:

I have AOW Planetfall on my Xbox and that game is a blast, but I missed so much the fantasy theme. I'm already tired of wait until May (waiting this, waiting LP on console, waiting fixes on PC, waiting to change my life...) :p

I watched all the streams but kept from read the dev diaries bc I want to do it closer to the release

edit: nothing will ever top the red dragon menu from AOW1 and that game soundtrack
 
More footage of the lovely worlds they've created...

 
Please give us your opinion on this launch day... Steam reviews are pretty bad concerning performance and crashes, but I'd like to know how the game feels after a week or so...

I'm not into heavy speadsheaty games like EU4, so let us know where this stands for complexity compared to CIV 6/Old World and EU4 for example...

I agree that the graphics look absolutely gorgeous ! But I,m pretty much at exactly the recommended system specs on the steam page, and people with way higher specced systems talk about under 10fps performance, so I'm wary !
 
Yeah there's no way it'll run on my old rig so it'll be a while before I can play it sadly.. which is fine with me as I usually prefer to wait until a game has finished its full development cycle and had all the patching and DLCs done. When I saw how complicated the game appears to be in their dev diaries I figured things might be a bit rough on first release, but Triumph are good and will get it all patched up and polished in the weeks and months to come. It's backend certainly seems more spreasheety then previous games which I kinda like, however I guess it really depends how much ease of use systems they've put on top of it all to ensure no one gets bogged down. I'll have to go check out some of the big reviews and post them here.
 
I've played uhhh, 20 hours since release, and absolutely love it.

No bugs or crashes for me. Some UI things that could use a patch to tighten them up, is all. Not that I'm denying some people have had problems, but it's at Very Positive on Steam, and there was a hotfix about 24 hours after release.

My three favourite surprises so far are the massive unit variety, the pretty graphics, and the very active diplomacy. I knew about other features such as the custom factions, but these other things were surprisingly good.

It's not like Civ where people will ally with you and then just sit there until you win. It's very interactive, like playing a board game with real people. One might have a grudging non-aggression pact that is very fragile, another might have a strong alliance because you're no threat to them, another might be looking to backstab you.
 
That sounds really good! And it can only get better from here! :)
 
Same thing here…Played about 10 hours so far with the first world so pretty much tutorial mode at easy level, and loving the experience so far !

As @Niallism mentions, not a single technical problem for me either, game runs smooth, graphics are beautiful, game is engaging, diplomacy seems quite engaging and has many many options, lots of units and unit types that actually means something in combat, very fun tactical map for manual combat that can also be put on auto resolve for fight you don’t want to handle by yourself (which is a very good idea because some fights are not worth the time by being so evidently one-sided) along with a nice option to actually see an auto resolved fight in real time which has already helped me understand a few things about how to use the tactical map

So far I have only good things to say about this game, it looks extremely deep with all kind of complex systems, yet at the same time I’m not completely lost because of the intelligent tutorial and my general experience with this kind of game.

I’ll come back after I’ve played a lot more to give comments on AI and end game/victory conditions, but I can already vouch that for tactical combat the AI seems very good even at easy difficulty !
 
Hello folks,
I've been playing this game and I'm also enjoying it far. It clearly takes a lot of inspiration from other major 4X games out there at the moment. I've not dabbled too much with the extensive customisation yet (played one game as feudal humans and my second as the paladin humans) but I'll take a deep dive into it at some point. It's good to see reviews are mostly positive, though some people seem put off by the extensive customisation and think races lose their uniqueness because of it. Not sure I agree so far, see how it goes.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear
 
The_Reckoning said:
what do you think? I've been resisting it buying it so far after reading that the AI isn't aggressive and doesn't try to conquer its neighbors... is that true?
Click to expand...
Hard for me to say at the moment...

Played only 3 games so far, the tutorial game at easy by default, and the first two story realms.

While it IS true in those games that they did not attack me but had fun pillagin a lot, on the other hand it IS a story realm where you enter VS IMMENSELY stronger adversaries that have tons of armies while you have... nothing.

So I'm thinking that for the moment, this is probably by design, because they would have wiped me from the map within 20 turns with their 6-7 hero-led stacks of 6 units armies, VS my single one ! The story realms are very much quest driven and seem to leave you time to build
up your strength. I play them at normal difficulty, and while the first one was a breeze, the second one has me working hard to build up my armies...

So... I honestly think that a cogent and fair answer to that question will have to wait on me going in full sandbox mode, outside of story realms.

I also think that normal difficulty will be too easy, simply because regular monster stacks on the map just won't attack you even if you're standing beside them. I have a feeling that only playing on slightly higher difficulty than normal will change that. For the moment, only infestations and
avowed enemies will attack you. I will also get back to you on that in a few weeks when I've had the chance to play a little more and confirmed these feelings.

This IS a complex game all in all and I'm very sure that after three small games, I haven't even come close to understanding everything and be able to offer expert advice.

One thing I will allow myself to say though: I AM HAVING A BALL SO FAR ;-)
 
Yeah hopefully all that customizability leading to good scaling and configuring for those that want a bigger challenge.
There's a funny review on steam where a guy gave a thumbs up and just wrote something like "I turned of megafauna for a challenge and now my powerful stack of tier 3 units are being eaten by friggin penguins!" haha (he used a different F word lol).
 
AI seems a bit puzzling. In my first game, I invaded my neighbour but they had a huge army and repelled me, so they are definitely good at making units. I've read people saying that the AI will never take on a fight unless they have an overwhelming advantage, but in my current game I had some raiders/demons (the enemies with the red banners) often attack my cities, laying siege and attacking with roughly 50/50 power. I aggressively settled my AI opponent and they were so annoyed by it they immediately declared war but that's where I stopped my latest game. Remains to be seen if they'll send anything my way!

Kind regards,
Ita Bear
 
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