Dev Diary #20: Roadmap 2023

[Yoval]

I enjoy the current state of the game, and I am very wary of the following proclaimation:

One of our highest priorities is revamping the research system. Currently, it's too easy to acquire an abundance of Tomes, causing balance issues and often resulting in homogenous end-game factions. Our changes will limit players to a subset of Tomes and Affinities in a single session, encouraging more meaningful choices and stronger faction identities.

To the extent this issue of homogenous end game factions exists, it's certainly not in the ordinary matches I play, which typically end before turn 140. Players are given multiple off-ramps with different victory conditions to finish the game.

If some players want to create these sandboxes of extremely open-ended custom scenarios with 8 players, it doesn't seem like those conditions should be used as a platform to make serious changes to the game.

I think you guys are going to throw the baby out with the bath water or break early, mid, and the core game by making these proposed changes.

All that aside, my biggest concern is not limiting players to a subset of Tomes, it's the limit to Affinities in a single session.

Affinity points are useful in progressing through the empire upgrade tree and using imperium. Will this limitation mean that some branches of the empire upgrade tree will be entirely closed off? If so, that's a solution to a problem that I don't think anyone has. How is that even feasible, considering I can make a Dragon Lord with Astral Affinity, Choose Industrial, take society traits in Dark and Order, and then choose the Tome of Evolution? That would give me ONE POINT IN EACH AFFINITY. How does that play out? Are there going to be Affinity Restrictions at Faction Creation before the game session even starts?

In short, what do these Affinity restrictions look like, given there are so many different sources of Affinity Points in the game, and how will this proposal affect the empire upgrade tree? I know there's been a vocal minority that doesn't want Tome access in fabricated post turn 100 games (the squeaky wheel gets the grease), but has there been a huge uproar against having access to most or all branches of the empire upgrade tree?

Remember, the majority of your player base is satisfied and too busy playing the game to give feedback. Please do not make drastic game changes catering to those who are active forum posters. You're not talking about simple balancing changes here, some of these proposals are fundamental changes to the existing game design, and I sincerely hope they don't alter the game beyond recognition.

 

[Leyrann]

My one criticism is that there is still a pretty major part of the game that hasn't been included in the roadmap as something that needs work: the Pantheon system. As the meta-progression system that should incentivize long-term play, it fails at rising to the standards that Planetfall's Empire mode set.

That reminds me of an idea I had, tying this in with the wish for starting race transformations (most commonly undead), and probably something that should be added together with a bunch of other Pantheon content: Society Traits that provide the various major transformations on game start, one Trait for each transformation, which are unlocked through the Pantheon.

I'd estimate that giving up a Society Trait for a major transformation is more or less a fair trade (and if it's not balanced, it can come with a bonus or a penalty aside from the transformation), and by unlocking them through the Pantheon you make sure new players don't immediately go for an option that locks them out of certain aspects of the game, possibly without realizing that they're doing so. Similar to how most of the current Pantheon-unlocked Society Traits have major drawbacks, like Mana Addicts or Perfect Artisans.

I'm alright with a rigid limit on tomes if it isn't just 9. I feel like the player should be able to choose up to 3 tomes for tiers I-IV and one for tier 5 (like now)
Or maybe 3 tomes for tiers I-II, 2 tomes for tiers III-IV and one tome for tier 5.

I'm not a fan of putting the limits like that either, although I do think that this is a good target for actual unlocks in a game - I simply don't want it to be enforced. I'd much rather have a soft limit of some sort (see also below).

On the topic of tome limits, maybe you could put unlocking new tomes into the empire development tree. You could have a repeatable "rites" in the general section that would let you purchase tomes, one for each tier up to level three. It could increase in price like the city cap one, and maybe a cooldown to prevent mass buying tomes in one turn. Then you could have the tier four and five tomes have their own rites in their respective affinity branches.

I think that might be an interesting rework instead of just automatically acquiring new tomes every four researches.

I actually made a thread about giving Tome unlocks a cost yesterday, although I didn't go into a lot of depth regarding actual unlock mechanics. I think this is my favorite way to limit research. Combined with increased research costs to slow things down in general.

I enjoy the current state of the game, and I am very wary of the following proclaimation:

I agree this momentarily worried me as well, but I have to say, based on their past track record (and indeed the points they're focusing on in this roadmap), I'm willing to give Triumph the benefit of the doubt. They've gotten things I was worried about right before, so I trust they can do so again. Plus, I doubt they're going to straight up throw out one of the core design values of the game, namely the ability to customize your faction to the extreme.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

Umm did you not take into consideration why your sales were so good this time?

It's soleley, without any other reason because of the cuteness of the inferno puppy.

More serious: We don't know. People like different things about this game, some like the same things, some like especially a thing that for others is a flaw, jsut not one bad enough to not by.
It could also be factors outside of the game itself, like the marketing push, or the fact that over the past years gaming has become more present. And that 4X games and non-AAA games do get more attention.

 

[starkwolf]

I'm hoping that the pacing of the game in general is improved regarding tomes. If it takes a good portion of the game to get to your 5th tome, and you have affinity requirements (hopefully kept minimal) to get there, you should not need to go back so much to lower tier tomes. That's what I am hoping for.

 

[Leyrann]

Honestly, I wouldn't mind a few additional requirements to T4 and T5 tomes to give them more of a sense of mastery in that field, because to me it seems like that's how the system is designed to be - with T1-T3 tomes being regular progression, and T4 and T5 tomes being more like "let's milk this to the absolute limit!". This is also visible in, for example, the units unlocked by Tomes. Tomes usually unlock units one tier higher than their Tome tier, and T5 units (which are found in T4 Tomes) are actually very rare, and themselves very much occupy the same niche. Similarly, several major race transformations are found in T3 tomes, as are most terraforming spells.

So my suggestion would be:
First, keep the current Affinity and "2 tomes of the tier below" requirement. No changes needed there.
In addition, T4 tomes require a total of 8 (as opposed to current 6) lower-tier tomes unlocked.
Similarly, T5 tomes require a total of 12 (as opposed to current 8) lower-tier tomes unlocked.
Then, T4 tomes also require at least one T3 tome with that same Affinity unlocked.
And again similarly, T5 tomes require at least one T4 tome with that same Affinity unlocked.
And in fact, let's extend that just a little bit further - add the requirement that a T3 tome requires at least one T1 or T2 tome from the same affinity to have been unlocked already. Not all that steep a requirement, but just enough that you can't just 'enter' an Affinity at T3 with some signature skills and an Affinity governor and grab the high-tier Tomes that way.

Together, the idea is that this delays Magic Victory and turns it into more of an actual mastery of magic, and also encourages sensible combinations without actually forbidding any.

Speaking of, side note: I do think it'd be fun if a select few Tomes had thematic requirements. For example, Marching Winter would require Cryomancy, Pyromancy and Cryomancy would be mutually exclusive, Vigor would require Beasts, et cetera. But within limits, as it's really easy to get unreasonably restrictive with things like this.

 

[HoldOnB1Sec]

Can we expect crossplay to be released this year? On release it was said that crossplay would be launched in the following weeks but there's been no update (to my knowledge) about it.

Thanks!

 

[Flockingbird]

Our goal extends beyond providing a fun experience for role-players and tinkerers. We aim to cater to power gamers, strategy connoisseurs, modders and multiplayer fans; you, the core of our community!

The construction of these two sentences opens them to an interpretation that is surely unintended: that role-players and tinkerers are not seen as part of AOW4’s core community, and that the devs aim to cater to power-gamers for the rest of this development cycle.

It appears to view the player-base as being divided between two sets, with one preferred over the other.

I don’t believe this is the impression the devs want to make, and I believe it is an impression some will absorb nonetheless.

 

[Zogist]

Are you planning on opening the sea to allow underwater civilizations? Having angry sea invaders is a nice trope.

I hope you also include more ways to the research tree that varies based on the tomes selected. So, if you have a Chaos and Nature tomrs, you only see those branches and have them "dynamically" grow to show options that can be selected like a branching tree.

 

[Happyworld]

My number 1 wish for this game is a realm trait option that makes charm, seduction, dominate, healing and raise dead permanent like previous age of wonders titles. As this is only an option players that prefer the weaker version never have to be effected by it.

 

[Leyrann]

The construction of these two sentences opens them to an interpretation that is surely unintended: that role-players and tinkerers are not seen as part of AOW4’s core community, and that the devs aim to cater to power-gamers for the rest of this development cycle.

It appears to view the player-base as being divided between two sets, with one preferred over the other.

No, it is not. They're separated by a semicolon. While admittedly semicolons are a relatively vague kind of interpunction, they are only used for summations in exactly one case: when full sentences are used as a summation. With the usage in the sentences you highlighted, there was a summation separated by commas, followed by a semicolon. That can only mean that the sentence after the semicolon is a clarification of the previous sentence.

My number 1 wish for this game is a realm trait option that makes charm, seduction, dominate, healing and raise dead permanent like previous age of wonders titles. As this is only an option players that prefer the weaker version never have to be effected by it.

It's actually not too difficult to mod that (if you want to do it yourself: find the mind control that is used by Final Ultimatum, and change the Seduce status effect to apply that). I actually made a mod for it myself, although I still need to do some detail work before it's in a state where I can upload it.

Also, right now the only units to have such abilities are the Nymph (Seduce) and Lightbringer (Convert), which is far too few imo. Well, apart from the necromancy stuff but that just needs a general overhaul to be honest.

 

[Scorpio_Shirica]

I like the proposed changes to the underground coming sometime in the future... but why would you break the one positive thing they have going now with underground passages serving as chokepoints? This seems... counter to fun just to what, make them less defensive so they lose one of their few positives? And almost all the balance changes are nerfs, making it seem like the devs are simply trying to restrict the player because the AI competes badly even with a bunch of cheats. It all speaks to removing tools and fun from the player to... maybe help balance? Overall, a big disappointment with this game.

And the future promising even further restrictions, I cannot imagine the feedback will be very positive when this comes. I get a lot of people are upset with how loose cultures and races are defined now, but you aren't adding any culture specific flavors to the races or giving the cultures any unique identities by forcing these choices. Most people will only see that things they had are gone now... pandora's box was opened and trying to shut the lid on this seems... bad.

 

[Zastinx]

It's soleley, without any other reason because of the cuteness of the inferno puppy.

More serious: We don't know. People like different things about this game, some like the same things, some like especially a thing that for others is a flaw, jsut not one bad enough to not by.
It could also be factors outside of the game itself, like the marketing push, or the fact that over the past years gaming has become more present. And that 4X games and non-AAA games do get more attention.

Maybe so either way this is just catering to a loud minority that is constantly on the forums, most people never use the forum. "We aim to cater to power gamers, strategy connoisseurs, modders and multiplayer fans; you, the core of our community!" This whole thing here is just so cringe. Multiplayer fans listed there is just funny too as thats such a small amount of the playerbase even more so when it comes to competitive that's how they ruined Planetfall. If you don't agree with me we'll just find out whether I'm right or not via Steam Charts when this is implemented assuming a dlc isn't released same time with it otherwise it will probably take a little bit to show just because new content.

 

[Yoval]

I like having additive new content, and I think that's typically great.

My concern, again, is the official talk about limiting Affinities in single games. I like the fundamental mechanics of the game as they are, but I could learn to live with some Tome Limts, depending on how they are implemented (I don't think "exclusions" are the way).

However, to make a sudden change from an Affinity system where you get different points from Culture, Dragon Lords, Society Traits, and Tomes (many other sources in game) to a game where you will just be blocked entirely from some Affinities is nothing short of a different game than AoW4.

The game has been thoughtfully developed for years and has been well received and acclaimed for what it is.

I think that redesigning Factions and Affinities as an ad hoc response to some forum comments, made only within the last 2 months (there are always complaints) will disrupt both years of product development and the experiences of mainstream gamers. The paradox forum should not be a lobby platform to alter the entire game's design philosophy that we already purchased, post-release.

This may just be my second post of this forum, and frankly, I don't want to be posting or writing anything here. Having these essay contests isn't fun for me. I get that some players are on the forums as an extension of enjoying the game itself, but these sentiments need to be taken with a grain of salt. I purchased the game for what it is hoping for future additions, not redesigns. I was a fully educated consumer going into my purchase and saw the YouTube Developer pre-release announcements and playthroughs. I purchased the game as advertised.

The guiding hand of AoW4's ongoing development should not be extreme positions from a subset of the player base that posts on these forums as a routine part of their gaming pastime. The mod community can deal with that, and if we all wanted the tweeks, then we would all run the same mods.

The game has significant mainstream support and was well received in its current form. That's the game that I wanted to purchase and did so. Content Additions, AI improvements, and ongoing Balance for matters not functioning as intended are all great things.

That being said, changing the game's design philosophy post release "may" satisfy a vocal few at the expense of the mainstream that has embraced the title. There needs to be a baseline level of consistency; otherwise, why should I spend my time mastering a game now that is wholly different 3 weeks from now and worse, frankly no longer the game that I chose to purchase.

 

[Grathocke]

Happy to hear more water provinces are coming, as cities on islands were pretty much relegated to food production.

Food production wouldn't be bad if you could ship excess to other cities.

 

[Leyrann]

Food production wouldn't be bad if you could ship excess to other cities.

"Relegated to food production" isn't even true in the first place.

The Seafarer's Guild gives +3 each of food, production, draft and gold to every Fishery. Those numbers start to add up, and sure, you're getting a lot of food too, but you could use that to get more Fisheries, and thus more production, draft and gold.

Having said that, I do agree more variety for water would be nice.

 

[SHJones]

Hello Triumph devs,

I'm a longtime fan of Age of Wonders and would like to thank you all very much for investing so much passion and creativity into this series; it remains one of my all-time favorites. I wanted to add my voice to those who are excited about this roadmap and, in particular, the planned tightening of some of the game rules.

For context, I am probably not a "serious" player by the standards of the conversations I see on these forums - that is, I don't min-max builds or care much about rigorously optimizing my strategies. I like to take my time on each map, explore my options, and pursue the approach that seems best based on the circumstances and pressures the map provides. So far I'm enjoying Age of Wonders 4 very much, and I appreciate your willingness to take risks creatively and shake up some of the existing series paradigms.

For me, the main way in which the experience is lacking right now is that I rarely feel as though the decisions I make have much strategic weight - choosing one tome or another, for example, often feels like an exercise mainly in aesthetics, as there's little pressure from the game's systems to go in one direction or another. The result is that, from my perspective, this installment often feels too much like a purely role-playing sandbox experience and not enough like a strategy game that requires hard choices. I believe the ideas you're considering in this roadmap will potentially improve the experience a great deal, at least for me.

I know that there are many opinions about what the game should be, and I am very well acquainted with the challenges and pressures of game development from my own professional life. I'll therefore close by thanking you again for all that you do, and for your willingness to reassess the game's design and consider ways of tightening the strategic experience. Whatever decisions you make moving forward I reiterate that I'm very much a fan of Age of Wonders 4 and I look forward to seeing how things develop over the rest of the year. Cheers!

 

[Draxynnic]

For me, the main way in which the experience is lacking right now is that I rarely feel as though the decisions I make have much strategic weight - choosing one tome or another, for example, often feels like an exercise mainly in aesthetics, as there's little pressure from the game's systems to go in one direction or another. The result is that, from my perspective, this installment often feels too much like a purely role-playing sandbox experience and not enough like a strategy game that requires hard choices. I believe the ideas you're considering in this roadmap will potentially improve the experience a great deal, at least for me.

I think there's a bit of an "it depends" here.

In a vacuum, the choices are supposed to be fairly balanced, so that picking one over another isn't strictly better, but opens up different options. Although there are some synergies that can make certain combinations of tomes better than a random selection.

Realm traits or specific opponents, however, can adjust this and push you towards a specific direction in order to counter them. If you're worried about status effects, for instance, golems are immune to status effects so a frontline of golems would make it a lot harder to use status effects against you. If you have an opponent who relies a lot on spirit damage, Anointed People will make your racial units quite a bit more resistant to that. If you're expecting to face an opponent who has used or might use a major transformation that gives them vulnerability to specific channels, such as Angelise (vulnerable to cold and blight), Gaia's Chosen (vulnerable to fire and blight) or Wightborn (vulnerable to spirit and fire), you might want to look for ways to exploit those vulnerabilities without making yourself vulnerable to their strengths in turn.

 

[The Numi]

I'm super excited to see the next patch touching on AI, as it's a big important step from its release counterpart, and then seeing the big things addressed like research and things around tomes being looked at. Hopefully it'll be the right calls and curious to see how it shapes the game.

Happy to hear AoW4 been kicking off massively! Definitely hope it's warranted more love than previous titles and we'll see expansively more content than ever as well as focus on balancing, tweaking and changing whatever ends up not working with the design until it's a fantasy 4X like no other that's ever existed!

Also as for many people's concern regarding losing freedom and choice, I can definitely understand it, as an advocate for the current body and mind traits for forms to stay as they are. Playing the game a fair bit though I definitely feel my mind is changing that the game feels aimless in its direction when you play. Probably mostly cause AI proves little challenge currently and there's a lot that needs tweaking still, but I think it can be nudged a little further into promoting gameplay rules that restrict certain choices if you want to focus on that, but still offers freedom if that's not what you care for.

Right now the frame is very open and loose, which some may like, but while it may be fun having chess pieces move as you like and be whatever you like, I do feel that adding some rules to the game in how these chess pieces can be with also modular freedom is the better balance. Something the base game already had in some areas (e.g restricting T4 and T5 tomes to affinity points, not something I suggest to further expand on but just an example of hampered freedom) and greatly benefitted from it or I think the gameplay design could be an even further blob without rules to engage in, to strategize over.

 

[doubleskulls]

As a player new to AoW I'm really impressed by the work the team have done and the roadmap looks great.

I would say that providing a system where progress is more restrictive sounds great, but please please make sure its something that can be managed in the game options. Sandboxing is a lot of fun, and being able to create weird and wonderful combinations ought to be a style of play that is encouraged. Of course for more "competitive" 4x gameplay a more restrictive, balanced approach is entirely appropriate (especially for multi-player). With that in mind I think progress through the Tomes needs to be slowed down, and it would make some sense to make every Tome other than level 1 to require a least one Tome from the same affinity at the level below (e.g. you can only take a level 3 materium tome if you've got at least one of the level 2 materium tomes). At least to me, the Tomes do not feel well balanced today, so I think some work would be needed to make that a bit more even and not end up with meta where certain affinities have a big advantage.

 

[Matrasel]

On tomes and affinities:
There should be a limit of how many affinities you can take. Maybe 3 would be ideal for now, considering there might be other affinities in the future as well.

On top of this, a tome budget should be implemented.
No more than 30 cumulated levels on all your picks.

And finally, a multiplier on research cost, to make research meaningful in the game.
In the current iteration, making ANY research improvement is a net loss on that tile.

On the overall economy:
Mana income is poorly imbalanced. On some builds, you are mana starved in the beginning and you have infinite mana at mid to end game.
Mana/gold should be convertible at a set exchange rate, maybe via a market building and enchants in general should be expensive to upkeep (think multipliers on same type of enchants).

For the undead souls, you have little ways of getting them in the beginning and even less uses for them.
Is spamming t2 bone golems and a few underwhelming combat spells all I can do with them in the first 50 rounds?
Tie the souls into the undead city economy as well, as a band aid.

On city building and Improvements:
I spam farms because I want to grow my city large and 2-3 quarries to build faster. Everything else is roughly irrelevant.
Why should I ever build forests when I can build farms and quarries (except for niche wonder bonuses)? The Materium bonuses for building same type of improvements near each other are now irrelevant.

The special improvements should give to the tile the new property while keeping the original as well. It should also count as an extra improvement for bonuses.
Also, make it an upgrade option for the tile itself and not a building queue, which is already quite large as it is.

Why do the developers feel that the AI should build an outpost/city between my two major cities which also happen to be 20 provinces away from his closest city?
There should be a huge penalty the further away you go from your border when creating an outpost. I feel like 6 provinces away from your closest city should be the maximum range before getting penalties.

Outposts should be open for attack without having a war declaration and maybe for some races, not even incur a diplomatic penalty depending on the distance.

On the random map generator:
The randomly generated maps have very little variety.
The mountain pattern repeats itself and the players are ALWASY spawned in the same relative positions, one from the other.

There are too few interesting wonders. with little impact on your city building strategy. The unique units they give are often not helpful for your build and the other bonuses are cringe inducing (+5 fortify for each quarry????)
In previous iterations, the wonders would provide you with a building option that would give unique traits to units produced in there.

There should be a dedicated trait pick for the land affinity, for each playthrough, not competing with the two existing traits.
There is even room for improvement here, such as having unique buildings and traits linked to your land affinity!

Terraforming options should be a dedicated feature, away from the casting book, but still tide to gold/mana.
There should be a way to invest gold/mana into changing the realm, based on some building in the city, for example.
I would love to have this meta, landscape changing battle, between players!!!

Underground cities are now an option as if you want to add another handicap to your playthrough, on top of what you can pick from the game menu .
The caverns are way too tight for any suitable city and there are very few reasons to not keep above surface instead, even if THEY WERE a bit larger.

On leader and heroes:
All heroes and the leader are way more powerful than any unit on the field. At endgame, they get to be immortal and have resurgence as long as they win the fight.
There should be a hard cap on the number of heroes. I would say that 6 is a magic number, but feel free to disagree. Maybe tie this limit to traits and buildings?
If I see an "army" of 18 heroes, I know something went wrong.

Losing an invested hero in a battle is a devastating blow.
If your hero(es) gets captured or in someone else's crypt, it is almost game over for you, unless you have thousands of gold to recruit and equip in T3+ gear.
I feel that your heroes should have a respawn timer which can be influenced with traits/buildings, whenever you lose them after a battle. This timer should be long enough that it would cost you a city, for example, but not long enough that it is game over.

Why can I buy T4 best in slot weapons from the AI players (( ????? Does the AI play the next expansion version where they have access to the item forge?
The item forge is sorely missed!

On war and diplomacy:
Fighting a brutal AI is tedious and unrewarding.
They will come near you with the same strategy in all games, plant a hard to defend city near your border, start claiming your land which will inevitable put them in a war where they are unable to defend that city and lose it.
After that, they will ram you with +3def/res T1,T2,T3 unending stacks of units, which they lose, even though they have 10def / 3res T2 shield units, because it sucks at combat. The unfun part is that you have to defeat in some games ~40 stacks before you can even reach their cities!!! Thank God for the auto combat feature!!!

The city siege times on a well fortified city is absurdly high... No siege should last more than 3 rounds, under any circumstances. Staying in the same place for 9 rounds to take the city is a death sentence in a multiplayer game, for example.

In PvP, attacking a player army in a spell jammed city that may also have 1 or 2 city enchants is also a hard pass. Most win strategies are abusing various trait/enchant/spell combinations to decimate the opposing army in 1-2 rounds. There are no such thing as "fair" battles in AoW4 .
At T5 tomes, three spells of that type will devastate you withing 2 rounds. There are some absurd builds that can make you route before you even begin the battle...

All spells should have a balance pass on them!! NO!!! RESTORING ALL ACTION POINTS IN FIRST ROUND IS NOT BALANCED!!! and NO!! DISABLING ALL ENCHANTS IS ALSO NOT BALANCED!!! in a game where half of your unit is enchants!!!

Tone down the hero damage... When fully equipped in T3-T4 gear (God Hammer), your hero/leader can:
1) Sprint + phase to the enemy hero;
2) Strike him with 200 damage (due to combined effect of all minor race transforms, items that give you free strikes, traits etc);
3) Get one more action due to trait that activates on kill;
4) Blink to another unit/hero and kill that too in one strike;
5) Then cast a spell that restore all his movement points and charge again to kill another unit.
Repeat steps 1-5 for the remaining heroes.

Everything that you can do in first combat round that can lead to the opposing army instantly losing without them being able to react, should be a hard NO.

What diplomacy?
Every AI that is closer than 30 provinces to you, will start hating you like the devil himself!!!
They will abandon all common sense and do everything in their power to destroy you. They will abuse the diplomatic tools to do so as well ).
I guess it is working as intended?

The war justification system is interesting, but it also makes the diplomacy one sided. You can see it a mile away that another player/AI is trying to attack you.
There should be a much simpler way of initiating war and brutal penalties if you prolong the war without justification, for both sides.
The AI, once it attacks you, he either dies or you die (or become his vasal). A system resembling Stellaris would be interesting. The more you lose, the more your kingdom suffers and more inclined you are to propose white peace or even pay tribute based on the points accumulated.

End of feedback