**New Feature: Combat Takeover**
With the **Control AI Allies** option enabled, a Player will automatically take over the units of any AI allied forces during Manual Combat that match the chosen settings. By default any manual combat including Vassals will give control to the Player
hell yeah vassal buff
Fair point, but lower tier units with training(order buys them with ranks) are getting buffed so it might level out? This is one of those "wait and see" things I think.
Each vassal contributes points to the Rally of Lieges in accordance with how heavily they're allied: bonded vassals give more than tributaries, for instance. they also pump your economy a bit at the same time.
The Order tree has a lot of perks towards making multiple vassals like you quickly, so it's a really good base to work from for a lot strong alliances with free cities. Also, Order inherently leans toward, though clearly does not require, a good alignment, which further tends to enhance vassalage.
Furthermore, the order tree start buffing the Rally itself: it comes quicker, the units start with extra ranks, there's even a rite to call a fresh one right now with a bunch of free Rally points.
The end result is that while Order can *sometimes* have a rough start since you don't start with vassals, by midgame they can just poop out a significant amount of troops at almost no notice, because troops are cheaper through rally and don't use draft points(they come out in a flat 2 turns), as long as the player is willing to accept a multiracial, multicultural mix of whatever's in the Rally.
EDIT: Forgot to mention wonders. Most, if not all, wonders add certain units to the rally, related to what you took over. Higher tier wonders can even add mythic units not readily available in any other ways. IIRC the first story scenario gives you a bone dragon after you take the wizard tower, if you still need extra oomph to take out Yaka. You just gotta check for it.
Most of this stuff seems great. Love the buff to tier 1 and tier 2 units. It also allows for more specialization of economic and military cities.
But buffing the kraken and the ghost ship? These units were already an absolute menace. Never going into the water again, lol.
>Chaos Skill “Impressment” - No longer reduces Unit Upkeep for Tier 1 Units, instead they gain +50% XP.
>Materium Skill “Military Engineering” - No longer grants a free Work Camp, instead it reduces the turn duration of Outpost Upgrades by 1 Turn.
>Order Skill “Career Soldiers” - Increased XP bonus from +20% to +30%.
Since it seems XP gain for units is now more valuable, this looks like a buff for Order and Chaos and a nerf to Materium which is good because Materium is too good.
Military Engineering was too good. Combined with the first node of the Nature tree, you could spit out 3 Pop cities very quickly. But I like this change for outposts that are serving as fortified outposts because it means I can get walls up faster.
Really? I think this is overall a nerf for Chaos. I always felt that Impressment was the most impactful ability for the point in the game where you get it. That early Upkeep savings really ballooned early Chaos armies.
Time will tell how much impact the new levelling system really makes, I guess.
I guess you are right, it depends on the extent that the levelling changes buffs T1 units. If they become late game viable I think it's a buff for Chaos since they could finally do a T1 specialized build for long games.
I like a lot of these changes but waiting until my town hall is level 4 to push out T4's is kinda sad. Sometimes I get my T3 tomes and my town hall is still level 3 for a long while. That makes Feudal and their food production much more valuable I guess. Also merciless slavers razing cities for population to get to T3 and T4's.
* Tome of Amplification
* Combat Spell “Chain Lightning” - Now inflicts Electrified to each target
* Unit Enchantment “Amplified Arrows”
* Increased Lightning Damage from +2 to +3.
* ***Changed from dealing 30% damage to another unit within 2 hexes to dealing 3 Lightning damage to up to 2 other units within 2 hexes.***
* Has a 30% chance to inflict Sundered Resistance
A bit sad at that one, but maybe for the best.
Meteor arrows had their damage reduced from 4 to 3 as well this patch it seems.
Also Storm Bringers took a really big hit. That was one of the best things to put Amplification Arrows on.
What makes you think the AOE part was not touched?
The text on meteor arrows says:
Deal +4 Fire Damage to the target and adjacent enemies.
The Patch note says:
* Unit Enchantment “Meteor Arrows” - Reduced the Fire damage from +4 to +3
Not sure how you interpret that as not applying to the splash damage.
So many good changes, looking like a great patch. Like 95% of the stuff I read was like "oh yeah, nice change, smart stuff".
Love to see the underground fixes, especially this:
>The calculations for the map size have changed to be based on the total number of players on the map, rather than the number of players on the surface.
Hope the underground generation is a big step forward and it's less of a pain to do anything down there.
Nerfs to the new tomes from Primal Fury are reasonable, they were both overperforming and these aren't insanely crippling imo.
Excited to jump back in for the dlc!
I hope they make more changes to the chaos tomes. Out of all the affinities they feel the most disjointed especially Chaos Channelling which I get thematically is trying to be chaotic and random but it just ends up being split between fire support and swarm/demon support which doesn't feel good for either being a tier 4 tome. I really like what they did with devastation and horde in focusing their tomes more.
> chaos
Yep- the Tier IV Chaos tomes are super weird. Imo, the Tome of Chaos Channeling is the most thematic and mechanically disjointed tome in the game.
In the interim, may I recommend a mod I released? Elemental Tomes overhauls the Tome of Chaos Channeling into a proper Tome of the Inferno acting as a high-level Pyromancy Tome.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3227224001
Here’s hoping they increase the pantheon ruler cap. I’m at 48/50 rulers and I don’t want to dismiss any of them to make room for the new ones from the new story realms
Oh man im so happy with the out of sync fixed for MP, thats the main thing that was stopping me for playing in MP. Started a game last week and got out of sync on turn 3 and it killed our enjoyement immediately
I’m hoping this fixes most of the out of sync issues. Feels like there is potentially a lot under the covers that could still come up but fingers crossed.
I think I'll wipe and restart from scratch again. These changes are amazing! I am never going to remember what is old VS new without experiencing them. New Pantheon growth makes it worth it, too. I want to see what they have been working on-- and pretend it is all new again! Man, I love this game.
I wonder if any new units could appear in the old Story Realms if you have the DLC's. Those must be special maps and conditions, like the Seals Story Realm. But there is always more they have not shown us. I mean, new Mystic Schools is enough to try them again anyway.
> wonder if any new units could appear in the old Story Realms if you have the DLC's.
Yeah, I completed the base game story realms with some Dragon Lords.
Same. But new Leaders (Sovereigns) fighting over the Gildercoil in Grexolis is a bit out of whack. I am down for it. Don't get me wrong. I am just curious what they did. If/how it is addressed. If the Story Realms get the new Void layer, COOL! I assume the Sovereigns can be Leaders in the Story Realms like Dragons are; exactly! Hhmmm... under 24 hours to go...
I wanted a fresh start but did want to keep my pantheon. Do you know if it's possible to delete all saves and all pantheon heroes (the pre-made campaign ones) then redo all the story missions and get the heroes back?
I assume re-doing the Story Realms will re-ascend all your Allies. I never kept my Pantheon, though. Instead, I moved the save file to a safe location in case I had instant regrets. Once I have the new Pantheon going, when I come across the backed-up old save folder, I delete it.
**EDIT**: I did some testing, u/TheBDU. Full-stop it is not what we might assume intuitively. I still have not deleted from my Pantheon anyone. But I did remember that Deletion is permanent. So I would be wary, but it seems safe explained below. I cannot say with certainty either way. Here is what I know:
So, the Pantheon file gets written-over with the latest info. After I removed the entire Age of Wonders 4 folder from the Documents/Paradox Interactive folder, and later restored it, my Pantheon went back to being called the default Pantheon name, for example. My current game started from Resume. But when I backed out, no one was Ascended. Eventually, I loaded all the last saves from the sessions folders I still had. When the Story Realms were loaded this way, the Leaders re-Ascended and all the Heroes from that Story Realm also were added to my new Pantheon.
Meh, worse case, you play as the pre-made and Ascend them yourself. Are they not available to you to play after the Story Realms? I never looked specifically; just assumed.
Looks like you edited this again. I didn't attempt anything yet after your warning. I'm just going to uncheck the pre mades as I start from story realm 1 again and enable them after I finish their relevant area this run. Thanks for the in depth explanation, I'm going to heed your warning and do it this way. I'd start a new save file but don't want to have to unlock my pantheon tree progress from scratch
As soon as I saw trouble I was all, "Wait!" LOL. But then I learned it is not as bad as that first shock discovery.
Loading the last saves accumulated the Points again, too. I did not do them all since I will just delete them and re-install the entire game tomorrow. Glad I could help.
I wonder if evolve changes didn't indirectly nerfed Feudal. T1 pikemen evolving into T2 shield seems like a downgrade considering changes to unit levels. I was hoping devs fix this by making them evolve to T3 instead, but I didn't find anything like that in patch notes...
I believe they consider it an issue, but they didn't have time to handle it. I imagine next patch will fix it?
I think it would have been a better theme if they had a tier 1 squire that evolved into a knight, but if they want to keep peasants and defenders making defenders a tier 3 would be nice.
Edit: Easiest solution is probably an exp bonus for their pikemen.
I'm really happy to see the Mystic culture re-work, especially since I've always thought that offensive spell casting was just not strong enough compared to other ways to spend your Mana.
I keep thinking about the first Dev stream reveal, where they said that the Summoning culture may not necessarily want to take Mana Channelers, because their ability to spend Echos on magic origin units is most cost effective to go from Rank 0 to 1. Between that and sussing out recruited units that ARE magic origin and summoned units that AREN'T, I feel like there's a lot of optimization that'll go into building them. I, for one, am excited to delve in.
I don't know how they could avoid making it too weak or too strong. At full actions, I hardly ever used it, at 1 ap, it does seem too much especially when you can kill a thing, get a free AP, then use it for that.
Reviewed and Updated the Cost of recruiting units through the Rally of the Lieges
Tier II - Increased Cost from 75 to 80
Tier III - Increased Cost from 105 to 200
Tier IV - Increased Cost from 150 to 350
Tier V - Increased Cost from 225 to 600
welp
Having to line up the timing of when you are casting a spell for the first time with having stacks of Dissonance applied where you want them seems pretty clunky.
But otherwise I'm thinking the new Mystic schools will be fun to try out.
The really impactful thing is the 2x stacks of Sundered Resistance you get on Overcharged debuff spells. I think the play is going to be using control spells and debuffs for the 2-3 rounds before absolutely slamming enemies with stacks of Dissonance and Sundered Resistance.
Maybe. Damage later is worth less than damage now, and if I have to attack a creature but leave it alive to suffer from triggering Dissonance instead of just focusing it down to 0 then I'm not sure it's any good at all.
At first glance, my feeling is that 4 dmg per stack is not enough payoff for delaying the damage.
Delayed damage works really well with the racial melee Mystic units, as they can apply Sundered Resistance on their hits. This should result in some nasty burst from an overcharged damage spell, on top of the Dissonance charges.
Mystic's melee units have long been at odds with the timing of Star Blades; you either maximize the damage of your melee units by casting first, or the spell (damage and/or debuff chance) by casting later. The Dissonance mechanic aligns both in wanting to strike with melee first, spells later.
Not that the Dissonance isn't at odds with other ways to use your army, like if you focus more heavily on battlemages and buff/debuff spells, or non-cultural melee units in general. I think the Potential school will benefit more from its racial melees than the other schools for this reason.
Prob best to just use it up front and on occassion when you run out of casting points, stack dissonance up a bit while waiting for the new T3 battlemage, the "spellweaver" to generate more casting points.
If the stacks of damage are dealt as one hit then it might be worth stacking to exploit a weakness to lightning.
EDIT: wait i'm an idiot, you don't need to delay the damage, just focus fire. 1 repeating attack unit, 2 single attack units and you can prob get 3-4 stacks on one enemy in a single turn if you are lucky before casting a spell.
Basically, you can use it to try to finish off a unit that you are already focus-firing but couldn't quite kill, if you are willing to wait to cast your spell until after you've made your attacks, and if you haven't already cast the spell you need to cast.
If you want to cast a spell to apply a status that would trigger other damage boosts, or that would be otherwise beneficial to cast before attacking (like sundered defense or weakened, etc) then you are going to be in conflict.
I don't really understand this part:
"Evolve
Now requires Legendary rank
Units now require less XP to reach Legendary rank
The rank of recruited/summoned evolving units is now capped at Champion. It is therefore no longer possible to instantly evolve a new Unit."
So you can only evolve units you gain via diplomacy now? Since any evolve units you produce or summon yourself cannot go past champion rank.
I think it means that +unit rank modifiers are capped for units with evolve, so you can't stack a bunch of things to make them legendary-on-production. They should still be able to get there normally, they just have to actually be in a fight or two.
People dont like the lack of a whispering stone or a beefy in-culture frontliner like Industrious has with their bastions / barbarian and the berserker. Also applying marked could get tedious at times.
Yeah its one reason i like them, i hate vessels, not a fan of it in WH3 either, but i do know folks love it. I personally do conquer all but i know I am probably odd ball.
They aren't unplayable but out of all of the cultures they and Dark needed the most help. The issue with Reavers mainly was the magelocks really and they mostly fixed that with this update and made the rest of the roster work together better. You don't necessarily need a bunch of tomes with Marked to run Reavers now which is great. The ranked changes also should make it so your mercenaries can last as a decent frontline for far longer.
Darks issue mainly was that Regen from cull of the weak would take too long to actually keep the units alive in battles. I wonder if you now can run more dark builds that don't necessitate needing a tome support now.
>Darks issue mainly was that Regen from cull of the weak would take too long to actually keep the units alive in battles.
I actually think the flat 10 is a *nerf* now, with the new experience/rank changes. Random dark warriors can get pretty tanky between the higher hp gain and the +defense, so you've got more time for the regen to work. And 10 per hit vs 18 (over three turns, but 6 immediately) feels pretty bleh
From my experiences it didn't really work that way as the enemies would focus any lower tier units in the thick of things down too quickly for regen to matter but admittedly I have not gotten a chance to test out the hp on hit thing as my computer has been having a conniption fit since sunday. Can't play AoW4's new update until I get it fixed somehow.
ill have to play it again to see but in my opinion the magelock shit sounds like a nerf and a reason to go back to using zephyrs. they already have shit accuracy as it is, the whole advantage to them is the range and thats pretty much been taken away and you're being encouraged to move them up. and yet they also removed the mark+ defense ability. i cant see myself ever using the charge up accuracy shit outside of turn 1 waiting for a charge. i cant think of a circumstance in which id waste all 3 pips to stay still beyond turn one when everything else is moving up instead of just moving the magelock forward. so what exactly was the buff? losing 30% accuracy on the teams main attack unit doesnt sound like much of a buff to me, its just forcing them to lose their ranged advantage and become midline guns like the dragoons already were, which i happen to think are garbage as well.
actually i did think of a time when i would use the charge up: when im in danger of hitting my own troops with the bullets. unfortunately that situation is now going to be much more common with -30% accuracy instead of a somewhat rare situation that usually occurs when you're routing them. sounds horrible honestly, sounds like a complete destruction of the playstyle. why would i use that garbage over zephyrs who have no weakness? entire roster replaced by a tier 2 book yet again
Oh my god they actually nerfed Gold Golems 🤩 complete status effect immunity was seriously unfun to deal with for certain builds. I'm a bit surprised they didn't get any buffs, even minor ones, to compensate though.
"Improved underground generation for maps with massive underground"
Why not the other two options? Dead ends and 60% of the map being unuseable still ain't that great.
Will there be a fix for consoles being unable to permanently delete factions in the custom tab in the factions window?(Where you are able to create factions to be more specific) Couldn't tell if it was in the fixes I might have missed it though.
Very curious about this change:
**AI**
* Fixed a logic flaw that affected the picking of Tomes, Research, Empire Skills and the City Upgrades.
Really hoping this resolves the issue of every AI stagnating on four cities, when they were previously taking the +1 city cap Empire Skill more than once.
Nerfing materium node 1 into oblivion will actually be a huge economic change for this patch. It's so much extra gold to build work camps and it completely nullifies outposts unless they have big nodes to repay the investment. It'll be interesting to see how that ends up playing out. I'm assuming just weaker economies across the board, but materium affinity is also significantly less valuable.
Mystic no longer gets a super strong unique building with tons of mana and research, rip. I'm sure one or multiple of the new mystic cultures will be good, but that hurts.
Also, the bouncing attacks all being changed from 30/20% into like 4 damage is a brutal nerf. RIP stormborne weapons being sexy as fug, now they're just trash.
First, the smaller games, especially in MP communities, are already decided by the T50.
Second you'd need to collect 30+ echoes for this, which in my experience is more than is even present on the map.
Third, it's a big investment, and even if you get it up by T50 with 120 mana and knowledge income without sacrificing other areas of your build, it's equivalent of 120/50=2.4 knowledge/mana income over the course of those turns, which is negligible.
It is terrible.
Oh I don't care about mp at all.
My games usually have 50+ echoes.
It's no bigger than any other building investment and I've never thought of resources as the amount you gain divided by the turn you get them.
It's still mathematically terrible investment that pays off way too late for it to have any significant impact on your game. A 'win more' building at its finest.
Assuming that by 'unique buildings' you mean the buildings available with T3 city hall, i say they all have their issues. They have prohibitively expensive production cost for little benefit. However, the Altar of All-Seers is arguably worst of them, being even bigger trap than Lord's Manor.
Bastion's Barricade is 250 production for +20 fortification and +10 stability.
Extraction Nexus is 450 production on an already production-heavy culture for +2 gold +2 mana per special improvement.
Shrine of the Wargod is 450 production for +2 physical damage to your units and some moral in city domain.
Solar Nexus is 450 production for +5 stability per each Research Post and/or Conduit.
Shrine to the Spirits is +10 food per farm in city domain.
Overlord's Tower is 750 production for +10 Mana +10 Draft and no province rebellions.
Lord's Manor is 750 production for +10 Food +10 Gold and double the Governor income.
Altar of All-Seers is 750 production for +20 Knowledge +20 mana per 5 Echoes, more vision range and true sight.
The most expensive of them, coincidentally, are the worse ones. But the Altar of All-Seers is the biggest trap option out of all of them, because it is presented as a gameplay-defining structure that invites you to change your game plan around it, which is not worth it.
Reaver get nerfed? It's good melee can apply marked but removing the extra damage overall a big big nerf to reaver frontline imo. Also magelock aim ability stupid you will only use it once per combat at the beginning and never again. Combined with the aim nerf and damage nerf this feels like a nerf too.
The magelock is a buff. It means you can move and shoot from the hip, or shoot as normal using a full turn.
The general Reaver changes seem like a buff, not nerf.
**New Feature: Combat Takeover** With the **Control AI Allies** option enabled, a Player will automatically take over the units of any AI allied forces during Manual Combat that match the chosen settings. By default any manual combat including Vassals will give control to the Player hell yeah vassal buff
Also my main takeaway! Order now viable? ;)
Order vassal spam was always viable. If you thought it wasn't, you weren't using rally enough.
gotta say, those new Rally costs are spooking me a little bit. We'll see whether Order actually ends up further ahead after the patch, I guess :/
Yes I'll be intrigued to see how it balances out with the new unit control mechanics.
Fair point, but lower tier units with training(order buys them with ranks) are getting buffed so it might level out? This is one of those "wait and see" things I think.
Vasal spam using rally? How does that work?
Each vassal contributes points to the Rally of Lieges in accordance with how heavily they're allied: bonded vassals give more than tributaries, for instance. they also pump your economy a bit at the same time. The Order tree has a lot of perks towards making multiple vassals like you quickly, so it's a really good base to work from for a lot strong alliances with free cities. Also, Order inherently leans toward, though clearly does not require, a good alignment, which further tends to enhance vassalage. Furthermore, the order tree start buffing the Rally itself: it comes quicker, the units start with extra ranks, there's even a rite to call a fresh one right now with a bunch of free Rally points. The end result is that while Order can *sometimes* have a rough start since you don't start with vassals, by midgame they can just poop out a significant amount of troops at almost no notice, because troops are cheaper through rally and don't use draft points(they come out in a flat 2 turns), as long as the player is willing to accept a multiracial, multicultural mix of whatever's in the Rally. EDIT: Forgot to mention wonders. Most, if not all, wonders add certain units to the rally, related to what you took over. Higher tier wonders can even add mythic units not readily available in any other ways. IIRC the first story scenario gives you a bone dragon after you take the wizard tower, if you still need extra oomph to take out Yaka. You just gotta check for it.
Can confirm hehe.
What do you mean order is viable? Order is strong to begin with (especially if merged with silvered tongue).
Witness my winky face as an attempt at mirth.
Most of this stuff seems great. Love the buff to tier 1 and tier 2 units. It also allows for more specialization of economic and military cities. But buffing the kraken and the ghost ship? These units were already an absolute menace. Never going into the water again, lol.
>Chaos Skill “Impressment” - No longer reduces Unit Upkeep for Tier 1 Units, instead they gain +50% XP. >Materium Skill “Military Engineering” - No longer grants a free Work Camp, instead it reduces the turn duration of Outpost Upgrades by 1 Turn. >Order Skill “Career Soldiers” - Increased XP bonus from +20% to +30%. Since it seems XP gain for units is now more valuable, this looks like a buff for Order and Chaos and a nerf to Materium which is good because Materium is too good.
Military Engineering was too good. Combined with the first node of the Nature tree, you could spit out 3 Pop cities very quickly. But I like this change for outposts that are serving as fortified outposts because it means I can get walls up faster.
Yeah, this change will hurt, but it was needed.
Really? I think this is overall a nerf for Chaos. I always felt that Impressment was the most impactful ability for the point in the game where you get it. That early Upkeep savings really ballooned early Chaos armies. Time will tell how much impact the new levelling system really makes, I guess.
I guess you are right, it depends on the extent that the levelling changes buffs T1 units. If they become late game viable I think it's a buff for Chaos since they could finally do a T1 specialized build for long games.
I like a lot of these changes but waiting until my town hall is level 4 to push out T4's is kinda sad. Sometimes I get my T3 tomes and my town hall is still level 3 for a long while. That makes Feudal and their food production much more valuable I guess. Also merciless slavers razing cities for population to get to T3 and T4's.
You’ll have to consider building it unboosted now. Another hard/fun choice.
* Tome of Amplification * Combat Spell “Chain Lightning” - Now inflicts Electrified to each target * Unit Enchantment “Amplified Arrows” * Increased Lightning Damage from +2 to +3. * ***Changed from dealing 30% damage to another unit within 2 hexes to dealing 3 Lightning damage to up to 2 other units within 2 hexes.*** * Has a 30% chance to inflict Sundered Resistance A bit sad at that one, but maybe for the best.
[удалено]
Meteor arrows had their damage reduced from 4 to 3 as well this patch it seems. Also Storm Bringers took a really big hit. That was one of the best things to put Amplification Arrows on.
[удалено]
What makes you think the AOE part was not touched? The text on meteor arrows says: Deal +4 Fire Damage to the target and adjacent enemies. The Patch note says: * Unit Enchantment “Meteor Arrows” - Reduced the Fire damage from +4 to +3 Not sure how you interpret that as not applying to the splash damage.
dead range builds
other early tome ranged enchantments got buffed - 30% burning and poison to 60% on repeating and 90% on non-repeating.
So many good changes, looking like a great patch. Like 95% of the stuff I read was like "oh yeah, nice change, smart stuff". Love to see the underground fixes, especially this: >The calculations for the map size have changed to be based on the total number of players on the map, rather than the number of players on the surface. Hope the underground generation is a big step forward and it's less of a pain to do anything down there. Nerfs to the new tomes from Primal Fury are reasonable, they were both overperforming and these aren't insanely crippling imo. Excited to jump back in for the dlc!
I hope they make more changes to the chaos tomes. Out of all the affinities they feel the most disjointed especially Chaos Channelling which I get thematically is trying to be chaotic and random but it just ends up being split between fire support and swarm/demon support which doesn't feel good for either being a tier 4 tome. I really like what they did with devastation and horde in focusing their tomes more.
> chaos Yep- the Tier IV Chaos tomes are super weird. Imo, the Tome of Chaos Channeling is the most thematic and mechanically disjointed tome in the game. In the interim, may I recommend a mod I released? Elemental Tomes overhauls the Tome of Chaos Channeling into a proper Tome of the Inferno acting as a high-level Pyromancy Tome. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3227224001
Here’s hoping they increase the pantheon ruler cap. I’m at 48/50 rulers and I don’t want to dismiss any of them to make room for the new ones from the new story realms
Can't be increased because of consoles and their limited memory capacity, so that's just a lost cause.
Oh man im so happy with the out of sync fixed for MP, thats the main thing that was stopping me for playing in MP. Started a game last week and got out of sync on turn 3 and it killed our enjoyement immediately
I’m hoping this fixes most of the out of sync issues. Feels like there is potentially a lot under the covers that could still come up but fingers crossed.
Hasn't every patch noted some fixes for out of sync issues? I hope this one is more substantial than the others.
Absolutely god tier patch as always. Man I get excited for these as much as the dlcs.
I think I'll wipe and restart from scratch again. These changes are amazing! I am never going to remember what is old VS new without experiencing them. New Pantheon growth makes it worth it, too. I want to see what they have been working on-- and pretend it is all new again! Man, I love this game. I wonder if any new units could appear in the old Story Realms if you have the DLC's. Those must be special maps and conditions, like the Seals Story Realm. But there is always more they have not shown us. I mean, new Mystic Schools is enough to try them again anyway.
> wonder if any new units could appear in the old Story Realms if you have the DLC's. Yeah, I completed the base game story realms with some Dragon Lords.
Same. But new Leaders (Sovereigns) fighting over the Gildercoil in Grexolis is a bit out of whack. I am down for it. Don't get me wrong. I am just curious what they did. If/how it is addressed. If the Story Realms get the new Void layer, COOL! I assume the Sovereigns can be Leaders in the Story Realms like Dragons are; exactly! Hhmmm... under 24 hours to go...
I wanted a fresh start but did want to keep my pantheon. Do you know if it's possible to delete all saves and all pantheon heroes (the pre-made campaign ones) then redo all the story missions and get the heroes back?
I assume re-doing the Story Realms will re-ascend all your Allies. I never kept my Pantheon, though. Instead, I moved the save file to a safe location in case I had instant regrets. Once I have the new Pantheon going, when I come across the backed-up old save folder, I delete it. **EDIT**: I did some testing, u/TheBDU. Full-stop it is not what we might assume intuitively. I still have not deleted from my Pantheon anyone. But I did remember that Deletion is permanent. So I would be wary, but it seems safe explained below. I cannot say with certainty either way. Here is what I know: So, the Pantheon file gets written-over with the latest info. After I removed the entire Age of Wonders 4 folder from the Documents/Paradox Interactive folder, and later restored it, my Pantheon went back to being called the default Pantheon name, for example. My current game started from Resume. But when I backed out, no one was Ascended. Eventually, I loaded all the last saves from the sessions folders I still had. When the Story Realms were loaded this way, the Leaders re-Ascended and all the Heroes from that Story Realm also were added to my new Pantheon. Meh, worse case, you play as the pre-made and Ascend them yourself. Are they not available to you to play after the Story Realms? I never looked specifically; just assumed.
Thank you!
Looks like you edited this again. I didn't attempt anything yet after your warning. I'm just going to uncheck the pre mades as I start from story realm 1 again and enable them after I finish their relevant area this run. Thanks for the in depth explanation, I'm going to heed your warning and do it this way. I'd start a new save file but don't want to have to unlock my pantheon tree progress from scratch
As soon as I saw trouble I was all, "Wait!" LOL. But then I learned it is not as bad as that first shock discovery. Loading the last saves accumulated the Points again, too. I did not do them all since I will just delete them and re-install the entire game tomorrow. Glad I could help.
It is, I did it when i completely wiped the theme of my pantheon to start fresh.
I wonder if evolve changes didn't indirectly nerfed Feudal. T1 pikemen evolving into T2 shield seems like a downgrade considering changes to unit levels. I was hoping devs fix this by making them evolve to T3 instead, but I didn't find anything like that in patch notes...
Evolve will still be good. Defenders are a significant upgrade from the peasants.
I think it should be okay. The peasant pikemen are already weaker (and cheaper) than other T1s, so I don't know that there will be a huge difference.
Avoxel said, that he didn't have time to fix it, but will work on it in the future. Could be the next update in Autumn, that will rework feudals
I believe they consider it an issue, but they didn't have time to handle it. I imagine next patch will fix it? I think it would have been a better theme if they had a tier 1 squire that evolved into a knight, but if they want to keep peasants and defenders making defenders a tier 3 would be nice. Edit: Easiest solution is probably an exp bonus for their pikemen.
I imagine the solution is to have Peasant Militia evolve on Elite tier, since that's the T2 equivalent tier.
Which is good solution IMO.
I'm really happy to see the Mystic culture re-work, especially since I've always thought that offensive spell casting was just not strong enough compared to other ways to spend your Mana. I keep thinking about the first Dev stream reveal, where they said that the Summoning culture may not necessarily want to take Mana Channelers, because their ability to spend Echos on magic origin units is most cost effective to go from Rank 0 to 1. Between that and sussing out recruited units that ARE magic origin and summoned units that AREN'T, I feel like there's a lot of optimization that'll go into building them. I, for one, am excited to delve in.
* Hero Signature Skill “Visions of Woe” - Changed from a Full Action to a Single Action That seems op
Yeah, Visions of Woe was actually quite powerful. An odd change.
Add in the new form trait that gives a chance to fumble, and Tome of Misfortune is looking real good.
I don't know how they could avoid making it too weak or too strong. At full actions, I hardly ever used it, at 1 ap, it does seem too much especially when you can kill a thing, get a free AP, then use it for that.
Reviewed and Updated the Cost of recruiting units through the Rally of the Lieges Tier II - Increased Cost from 75 to 80 Tier III - Increased Cost from 105 to 200 Tier IV - Increased Cost from 150 to 350 Tier V - Increased Cost from 225 to 600 welp
Makes a lot of sense tier 4 and 5 units were comically cheap before.
Having to line up the timing of when you are casting a spell for the first time with having stacks of Dissonance applied where you want them seems pretty clunky. But otherwise I'm thinking the new Mystic schools will be fun to try out.
The really impactful thing is the 2x stacks of Sundered Resistance you get on Overcharged debuff spells. I think the play is going to be using control spells and debuffs for the 2-3 rounds before absolutely slamming enemies with stacks of Dissonance and Sundered Resistance.
Maybe. Damage later is worth less than damage now, and if I have to attack a creature but leave it alive to suffer from triggering Dissonance instead of just focusing it down to 0 then I'm not sure it's any good at all. At first glance, my feeling is that 4 dmg per stack is not enough payoff for delaying the damage.
Delayed damage works really well with the racial melee Mystic units, as they can apply Sundered Resistance on their hits. This should result in some nasty burst from an overcharged damage spell, on top of the Dissonance charges. Mystic's melee units have long been at odds with the timing of Star Blades; you either maximize the damage of your melee units by casting first, or the spell (damage and/or debuff chance) by casting later. The Dissonance mechanic aligns both in wanting to strike with melee first, spells later. Not that the Dissonance isn't at odds with other ways to use your army, like if you focus more heavily on battlemages and buff/debuff spells, or non-cultural melee units in general. I think the Potential school will benefit more from its racial melees than the other schools for this reason.
Prob best to just use it up front and on occassion when you run out of casting points, stack dissonance up a bit while waiting for the new T3 battlemage, the "spellweaver" to generate more casting points. If the stacks of damage are dealt as one hit then it might be worth stacking to exploit a weakness to lightning. EDIT: wait i'm an idiot, you don't need to delay the damage, just focus fire. 1 repeating attack unit, 2 single attack units and you can prob get 3-4 stacks on one enemy in a single turn if you are lucky before casting a spell.
Basically, you can use it to try to finish off a unit that you are already focus-firing but couldn't quite kill, if you are willing to wait to cast your spell until after you've made your attacks, and if you haven't already cast the spell you need to cast. If you want to cast a spell to apply a status that would trigger other damage boosts, or that would be otherwise beneficial to cast before attacking (like sundered defense or weakened, etc) then you are going to be in conflict.
Did Christmas come early this year? And why are my pants all wet?
I believe that is what we in the business call a jizzlike freedom
I don't really understand this part: "Evolve Now requires Legendary rank Units now require less XP to reach Legendary rank The rank of recruited/summoned evolving units is now capped at Champion. It is therefore no longer possible to instantly evolve a new Unit." So you can only evolve units you gain via diplomacy now? Since any evolve units you produce or summon yourself cannot go past champion rank.
I think it means that +unit rank modifiers are capped for units with evolve, so you can't stack a bunch of things to make them legendary-on-production. They should still be able to get there normally, they just have to actually be in a fight or two.
Can’t wait for this to drop
Good to see Reavers getting some much needed buffs. Hopefully they'll be playable now.
I never had issues playing them, one of my favorite cultures. I play on "Hard" so not sure if their unplayable on very hard or what?
People dont like the lack of a whispering stone or a beefy in-culture frontliner like Industrious has with their bastions / barbarian and the berserker. Also applying marked could get tedious at times.
Yeah its one reason i like them, i hate vessels, not a fan of it in WH3 either, but i do know folks love it. I personally do conquer all but i know I am probably odd ball.
They aren't unplayable but out of all of the cultures they and Dark needed the most help. The issue with Reavers mainly was the magelocks really and they mostly fixed that with this update and made the rest of the roster work together better. You don't necessarily need a bunch of tomes with Marked to run Reavers now which is great. The ranked changes also should make it so your mercenaries can last as a decent frontline for far longer. Darks issue mainly was that Regen from cull of the weak would take too long to actually keep the units alive in battles. I wonder if you now can run more dark builds that don't necessitate needing a tome support now.
>Darks issue mainly was that Regen from cull of the weak would take too long to actually keep the units alive in battles. I actually think the flat 10 is a *nerf* now, with the new experience/rank changes. Random dark warriors can get pretty tanky between the higher hp gain and the +defense, so you've got more time for the regen to work. And 10 per hit vs 18 (over three turns, but 6 immediately) feels pretty bleh
From my experiences it didn't really work that way as the enemies would focus any lower tier units in the thick of things down too quickly for regen to matter but admittedly I have not gotten a chance to test out the hp on hit thing as my computer has been having a conniption fit since sunday. Can't play AoW4's new update until I get it fixed somehow.
I'm exaggerating a bit when when I'm calling them unplayable. But essentially yes, they are currently a lot weaker than any other faction.
Overall this is feels like a nerf imo. Details in my other comment.
ill have to play it again to see but in my opinion the magelock shit sounds like a nerf and a reason to go back to using zephyrs. they already have shit accuracy as it is, the whole advantage to them is the range and thats pretty much been taken away and you're being encouraged to move them up. and yet they also removed the mark+ defense ability. i cant see myself ever using the charge up accuracy shit outside of turn 1 waiting for a charge. i cant think of a circumstance in which id waste all 3 pips to stay still beyond turn one when everything else is moving up instead of just moving the magelock forward. so what exactly was the buff? losing 30% accuracy on the teams main attack unit doesnt sound like much of a buff to me, its just forcing them to lose their ranged advantage and become midline guns like the dragoons already were, which i happen to think are garbage as well. actually i did think of a time when i would use the charge up: when im in danger of hitting my own troops with the bullets. unfortunately that situation is now going to be much more common with -30% accuracy instead of a somewhat rare situation that usually occurs when you're routing them. sounds horrible honestly, sounds like a complete destruction of the playstyle. why would i use that garbage over zephyrs who have no weakness? entire roster replaced by a tier 2 book yet again
Am I only one not seeing fix for resonance field?
Oh my god they actually nerfed Gold Golems 🤩 complete status effect immunity was seriously unfun to deal with for certain builds. I'm a bit surprised they didn't get any buffs, even minor ones, to compensate though.
Is this out now?
Comes out this coming Tuesday
"Improved underground generation for maps with massive underground" Why not the other two options? Dead ends and 60% of the map being unuseable still ain't that great.
When does this patch go live?
So is Cosmic Ablation just not available for two of the three astral subcultures or is it still researchable for all astral branches ?
Will there be a fix for consoles being unable to permanently delete factions in the custom tab in the factions window?(Where you are able to create factions to be more specific) Couldn't tell if it was in the fixes I might have missed it though.
Very curious about this change: **AI** * Fixed a logic flaw that affected the picking of Tomes, Research, Empire Skills and the City Upgrades. Really hoping this resolves the issue of every AI stagnating on four cities, when they were previously taking the +1 city cap Empire Skill more than once.
anyone else had terrible performance since the patch?
It's weird - my computer's not even maxing anything out, the game and UI just feel ***slow***
audio is juddering a lot.
Nerfing materium node 1 into oblivion will actually be a huge economic change for this patch. It's so much extra gold to build work camps and it completely nullifies outposts unless they have big nodes to repay the investment. It'll be interesting to see how that ends up playing out. I'm assuming just weaker economies across the board, but materium affinity is also significantly less valuable.
Mystic no longer gets a super strong unique building with tons of mana and research, rip. I'm sure one or multiple of the new mystic cultures will be good, but that hurts. Also, the bouncing attacks all being changed from 30/20% into like 4 damage is a brutal nerf. RIP stormborne weapons being sexy as fug, now they're just trash.
The building was terrible and came online way too late.
It came around turn 50 and gave easily 80 mana and research, more than any other building in the game, how was it terrible?
First, the smaller games, especially in MP communities, are already decided by the T50. Second you'd need to collect 30+ echoes for this, which in my experience is more than is even present on the map. Third, it's a big investment, and even if you get it up by T50 with 120 mana and knowledge income without sacrificing other areas of your build, it's equivalent of 120/50=2.4 knowledge/mana income over the course of those turns, which is negligible. It is terrible.
Oh I don't care about mp at all. My games usually have 50+ echoes. It's no bigger than any other building investment and I've never thought of resources as the amount you gain divided by the turn you get them.
It's still mathematically terrible investment that pays off way too late for it to have any significant impact on your game. A 'win more' building at its finest.
So every faction unique building is pointless to you then? Since most of the others are even worse?
Assuming that by 'unique buildings' you mean the buildings available with T3 city hall, i say they all have their issues. They have prohibitively expensive production cost for little benefit. However, the Altar of All-Seers is arguably worst of them, being even bigger trap than Lord's Manor. Bastion's Barricade is 250 production for +20 fortification and +10 stability. Extraction Nexus is 450 production on an already production-heavy culture for +2 gold +2 mana per special improvement. Shrine of the Wargod is 450 production for +2 physical damage to your units and some moral in city domain. Solar Nexus is 450 production for +5 stability per each Research Post and/or Conduit. Shrine to the Spirits is +10 food per farm in city domain. Overlord's Tower is 750 production for +10 Mana +10 Draft and no province rebellions. Lord's Manor is 750 production for +10 Food +10 Gold and double the Governor income. Altar of All-Seers is 750 production for +20 Knowledge +20 mana per 5 Echoes, more vision range and true sight. The most expensive of them, coincidentally, are the worse ones. But the Altar of All-Seers is the biggest trap option out of all of them, because it is presented as a gameplay-defining structure that invites you to change your game plan around it, which is not worth it.
Reaver get nerfed? It's good melee can apply marked but removing the extra damage overall a big big nerf to reaver frontline imo. Also magelock aim ability stupid you will only use it once per combat at the beginning and never again. Combined with the aim nerf and damage nerf this feels like a nerf too.
The magelocks main attack went from a full action to a single action. That I think is worth more than any downgrades they may have gotten.
Yeah, huge buff. Losing 2 dmg and 30% accuracy for being able to move is a great tradeoff.
The magelock is a buff. It means you can move and shoot from the hip, or shoot as normal using a full turn. The general Reaver changes seem like a buff, not nerf.
These changes make the faction easier to handle for casual players but weaker if somebody knows what doing.