Dev Diary #17: Post-Launch

[Kitschy]

Someone already mentioned this and for some reason I can't find that post, but TLDR it would be great to have a trait that gives normal extra mounted units that is not a special mount.
I would even go so far and suggest that this trait should make Mystic Spellbreaker, Hound Master and Wild Speaker in to mounted units instead of making them permanently mounted, so that would give more different options to the player.

And one more thing about mounted units, it would be interesting to see scouts getting a secondary preferably combat use and not just scouting.

 

[Maethendias]

Part of the issue is that it varied by your gameplay settings.
Because the souls per kill carry so mcuh weight comparted to all the other methods, if you play with harder world settings you can get mroe souls, if you play with harder AI settings you can get more souls, and if you go to war a lot you get mroe souls, if you do diplomacy you do less.
The result of that is that to make it work it pushes you into a playstyle while allt he toehr books allow you to choose without losing power.

you are LITERALLY playing a horde of undead... WHY would you go diplo and not fully lean into the fantasy in the first place lol
the difficulty part is actually true i guess, playing easier world difficulty (while being significantly more boring imo) DOES pretty much half the soul gain globally simply by virtue of there being only half of the independent armies on the globe as a whole

tho, then again.... the game is already really easy just on normal settings as is, and thats coming from someone that usually sucks at civ games

 

[Yarri]

What's broken about it?

And forgive me for assuming that "impossible to play multiplayer" is an overreaction. I've seen a few too many non-ironic "unplayable!" overreactions on this subforum to still take them seriously...

I do not claim to be a regular of this forum. If you played PVP enough, you wouldn't have this question. If you want to experience pain, I invite you to a duel. As they say, it's better to see once than hear a hundred times.

 

[Scorpio_Shirica]

Some great changes. Kinda bummed underground appears to be staying in its currently dismal state however.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

you are LITERALLY playing a horde of undead... WHY would you go diplo and not fully lean into the fantasy in the first place lol

No, YOU are playing a horde of murderous undead. I might play a number of different things that do or do not align with that.
Even Chaos , the "war" affinity makes you less warlike than how you consider shadow should be played.

 

[Jandos]

Some great changes. Kinda bummed underground appears to be staying in its currently dismal state however.

Same with naval battles.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

That's a good first step for more mounted units, but I think a full class of light cavalry would be very nice to see added to the game. Possibly with a third tier 2 unit on all cultures, so there's room to give a light cav unit to most of them.

Say light cav is fast, low armor, moderate resistance, evasion to ranged attacks from moving, gets a weak base attack, but strong flanking bonuses.

 

[SerahCornelia]

Please, add something more proper than this for colorblind mode

 

[Sadorhael]

I love the content for the DLC!

Does anyone know how you will be able to recruit dragons (tier V)? And devs with insights on this? Will it be through the Rally of the Lieges after having conquered some high tier Ancient Wonders (seems like a fair route to me)? Or through some late game Tome? Don't need all the details, would just be great to know the sort of "general route" here.

 

[Angel Horn]

Please, add something more proper than this for colorblind mode

View attachment 991220View attachment 991221View attachment 991222View attachment 991223

Isn't that already colorblind mode?

 

[SerahCornelia]

Isn't that already colorblind mode?

I guess that is something someone would think who is not affected. I cannot really blame you since you cannot understand the differences for real. But it is about more than that and so far only Valorant stands out in regards of good accessibility.

 

[Mesudaraon]

I am happy that new balance patch and DLC is coming soon. However, changes made to Shadow affinity and specifically to necro build are not buffs but rather mostly nerfs and I think devs overestimate the value of souls in terms of costs. Nerf to souls earned per hero level to 6 for each hero was unnecessary. 30 gold for 6 soul is basically 50 gold for a skeleton, which is already what a normal pikeman unit costs (under these calculations Bone Golems which are a Tier II unit cost 180 gold!). Making necromancers cost 25 soul and 70 gold doesn't elevate them from being a trash unit within a trash tome. Tome of necromancy is still the worst tome in the game, being far worse than every single tier I and tier II tomes out there. Wightborn is still one of the worse major transformations in the game (only better than Astral Attunement). Reaper is still one of the worst tier V units, on top of having a souls upkeep. Only good changes were changing the combat spells to mana, since combat AI liked spamming soul spells for some reason, which often prevented you from ticking the box for using spells for autocombat if you didn't want your souls to be used.

Furthermore, there was still no mention of more colours during faction creation in the dev diary and in the community stream, despite the fact that it was the 2nd most voted suggestion (1st one was getting rid of city ruins) in the forums. It is annoying not being able to use black & red, black & purple and most of the typical "evil" faction colour combinations. Yes, there are mods that add more colours, but why is this left to modders when it should've been a core game feature in the first place.

There is also no mention of how late game tomes and research is going to be dealt with in the future. At this point it should be obvious to anyone who played more than 100 turns game why this is a big problem and there have already been a lot of topics posted about this issue.

 

[Leyrann]

you are LITERALLY playing a horde of undead... WHY would you go diplo and not fully lean into the fantasy in the first place lol

Because I want to play the scary-but-Lawful-Good undead that make sure the frail mortals who can't easily be revived are safe?

I do not claim to be a regular of this forum. If you played PVP enough, you wouldn't have this question. If you want to experience pain, I invite you to a duel. As they say, it's better to see once than hear a hundred times.

Sorry, I don't usually play games with a single-player focus in a multiplayer setting.

You also completely failed to answer my question even in the most basic of ways, instead deciding to give an angry response and... challenge me to a duel? "1v1 me bro"? I thought I'd escaped that when I stopped playing League of Legends.

If you don't tell people what the problem is, people don't know what the problem is. So I ask once again: What's the issue with Blaze of the Horde, presumably specific to multiplayer?

 

[Critical Ethics]

Someone already mentioned this and for some reason I can't find that post, but TLDR it would be great to have a trait that gives normal extra mounted units that is not a special mount.
I would even go so far and suggest that this trait should make Mystic Spellbreaker, Hound Master and Wild Speaker in to mounted units instead of making them permanently mounted, so that would give more different options to the player.

And one more thing about mounted units, it would be interesting to see scouts getting a secondary preferably combat use and not just scouting.

@Lord Sheogorath suggested splitting mounts off into their own trait, with unit costs increasing for no mount/basic mounts for optional units/fancy mounts. I don't hate the idea but trying to balance around unit costs alone would be difficult, there needs to be other opportunity costs involved. Having a generic mount as a body trait that makes cheap mounted units could be good though. Or one that gives the mountables generic mounts and something banal but useful like +damage or something.

@Xartharos mentioned a Nomad culture or society trait which would also fill the "generic mount" gap, though there'd need to be something to compensate for taking both Nomad and an exotic mount trait "wasting" part of each.

@TheDarkMaster suggested adding a t2+ cavalry unit to the game as base culture units which I'd also like. I think only Dark has anything like that as a base right now?

 

[Kitschy]

@Lord Sheogorath suggested splitting mounts off into their own trait, with unit costs increasing for no mount/basic mounts for optional units/fancy mounts. I don't hate the idea but trying to balance around unit costs alone would be difficult, there needs to be other opportunity costs involved. Having a generic mount as a body trait that makes cheap mounted units could be good though. Or one that gives the mountables generic mounts and something banal but useful like +damage or something.

@Xartharos mentioned a Nomad culture or society trait which would also fill the "generic mount" gap, though there'd need to be something to compensate for taking both Nomad and an exotic mount trait "wasting" part of each.

@TheDarkMaster suggested adding a t2+ cavalry unit to the game as base culture units which I'd also like. I think only Dark has anything like that as a base right now?

Ooops, yeah my bad it was from another thread.
Here's the original: link

What I DO want is a normal horse mount option if I just want a mounted theme faction. (The closest right now are wolf-mounted furies and they're anti-synergistic but I don't care, I'm not riding a spider or a flaming horse.)

I absolutely agree with you on this - "Having a generic mount as a body trait that makes cheap mounted units could be good though. Or one that gives the mountables generic mounts and something banal but useful like +damage or something."

The way they are trying to add more permanently mounted units feels kinda meh imo.
First more player choice (as in faction creation choice - normal trait or society trait) would be better.
Second, all the units who will be permanently mounted are solid units to begin with they don't really need that flat buff of extra mobility and extra HP (I assume it will be +10 HP).

---

Does anyone know how you will be able to recruit dragons (tier V)? And devs with insights on this? Will it be through the Rally of the Lieges after having conquered some high tier Ancient Wonders (seems like a fair route to me)? Or through some late game Tome? Don't need all the details, would just be great to know the sort of "general route" here.

You are a dragon, well your ruler is (probably heroes will be too). (you can see that from the first screenshot)

 

[Xartharos]

@Lord Sheogorath suggested splitting mounts off into their own trait, with unit costs increasing for no mount/basic mounts for optional units/fancy mounts. I don't hate the idea but trying to balance around unit costs alone would be difficult, there needs to be other opportunity costs involved. Having a generic mount as a body trait that makes cheap mounted units could be good though. Or one that gives the mountables generic mounts and something banal but useful like +damage or something.

@Xartharos mentioned a Nomad culture or society trait which would also fill the "generic mount" gap, though there'd need to be something to compensate for taking both Nomad and an exotic mount trait "wasting" part of each.

@TheDarkMaster suggested adding a t2+ cavalry unit to the game as base culture units which I'd also like. I think only Dark has anything like that as a base right now?

Regarding the combo of a supposed nomad perma mounted culture and exotic, although i can see how it can be seen as "wasting" a trait, i would say i disagree with that notion, because of the following comparation, currently i think feudal and dark are the only ones who have t3 mounted units by default there is also tyrant knight as perma mounted, we could say if you get the exotic mounts trait for those cultures is a waste since they already are mounted but to me i see as empowering them since the exotic mount trait comes with some goodies, nightmare comes with terrifying aura, i believe, which eliminate the use of a tome to get an enchant, spider come with 2 or 3 goodies which currently make it really op, wolf also comes with some 2 or 3 goodies with teamwork and upgrading attack or critic, i dont remember well about them, unicorn comes with phase through

i mean at the end exotic mounts can be seen as mayor upgrades to mounted units allowing some extra play or freeing up certain enchants or hero skills, although i do agree we should put all exotic mounts in some level plying field so every exotic is desired

I love the content for the DLC!

Does anyone know how you will be able to recruit dragons (tier V)? And devs with insights on this? Will it be through the Rally of the Lieges after having conquered some high tier Ancient Wonders (seems like a fair route to me)? Or through some late game Tome? Don't need all the details, would just be great to know the sort of "general route" here.

arent dragons already in the lieges ??? i could have swore they were
if not it might be similar to reaper, balor or other mythic which require a tier 4 book or tier 5 book from the dragon tomes that will release

 

[Sadorhael]

Regarding the combo of a supposed nomad perma mounted culture and exotic, although i can see how it can be seen as "wasting" a trait, i would say i disagree with that notion, because of the following comparation, currently i think feudal and dark are the only ones who have t3 mounted units by default there is also tyrant knight as perma mounted, we could say if you get the exotic mounts trait for those cultures is a waste since they already are mounted but to me i see as empowering them since the exotic mount trait comes with some goodies, nightmare comes with terrifying aura, i believe, which eliminate the use of a tome to get an enchant, spider come with 2 or 3 goodies which currently make it really op, wolf also comes with some 2 or 3 goodies with teamwork and upgrading attack or critic, i dont remember well about them, unicorn comes with phase through

i mean at the end exotic mounts can be seen as mayor upgrades to mounted units allowing some extra play or freeing up certain enchants or hero skills, although i do agree we should put all exotic mounts in some level plying field so every exotic is desired

arent dragons already in the lieges ??? i could have swore they were
if not it might be similar to reaper, balor or other mythic which require a tier 4 book or tier 5 book from the dragon tomes that will release

I hope it's not too bound into the Tomes - especially not a Tier V tome that would make it exclusive, but that may of course be an option. Currently, you are only allowed to recruit Bone Dragons through Ancient Wonders (unless using a mod).

 

[Sadorhael]

Ooops, yeah my bad it was from another thread.
Here's the original: link


I absolutely agree with you on this - "Having a generic mount as a body trait that makes cheap mounted units could be good though. Or one that gives the mountables generic mounts and something banal but useful like +damage or something."

The way they are trying to add more permanently mounted units feels kinda meh imo.
First more player choice (as in faction creation choice - normal trait or society trait) would be better.
Second, all the units who will be permanently mounted are solid units to begin with they don't really need that flat buff of extra mobility and extra HP (I assume it will be +10 HP).

---

You are a dragon, well your ruler is (probably heroes will be too). (you can see that from the first screenshot)

I know. But I sincerely hnope you may recruit dragons as your creatures as well, even independently of what physical form you choose to be as a ruler. Anything else would be weird.

 

[Maethendias]

No, YOU are playing a horde of murderous undead. I might play a number of different things that do or do not align with that.
Even Chaos , the "war" affinity makes you less warlike than how you consider shadow should be played.

if you dont want to play undead like they would play, and instead make the game harder on yourself
why are you complaining that the game is harder now...

 

[Ferrus Animus]

if you dont want to play undead like they would play, and instead make the game harder on yourself
why are you complaining that the game is harder now...

Maybe youa re playing them wrong and it working is just a bug?
Seriously, not being conductive to different playstyles in a game like AoW4 is pretty much a massive design issue.