If there is a second season of expansions and dlc, what would you like to see? What do you think Triumph should focus on?

[Triumph Jordi]

Well they could have made some more extensive testing before releasing a half baked game. Alot of stuff was snubbed out of prior entries. (War coordination, empire mode, Item forge etc) I am not gonna pat them on their back for fixing their game and charging me for stuff they should have included.

Just going to correct some stuff here, but none of those examples were ever a launch feature of previous entries either. Empire Mode is present in various base game systems of AoW4, War Coordination for Vassals was added in Golem Update and you're getting the Bounty System with the Wolf Update and similarly Item Forge was part of a Update for AoW3 just like how it was added in the Golem Update alongside Empires & Ashes.

Age of Wonders 4 is a far bigger beast then 3 or Planetfall were. We pick content and systems that are core to the experience of the game and make sure those are refined. You cannot expect everything that was added through updates in a previous game to be present in the base game of a newer entry. That kind of exponential growth would kill the industry.

Definitely agree about game would only benefited from more time in development, but when you say "charging me for stuff they should have included" what are you referring to exactly?

More time doesn't always result in a better game. More time wouldn't have fixed the Graphics Driver issues as we're dependent on Manufactures for that. More time wouldn't have resulted in the Watcher AI changes as those required Player Feedback & Saves. More time wouldn't have gotten Dragons or Lizards in the base game. It's always interesting to hear people say X could have used more time in development, cause I wonder what they think the difference would be.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

And I am kinda pissed off that they seemed to have forgotten about their prior games (if the dev team is even the same), as there were plenty of improvements missing. And yes I was disapointed with the prior games too, to some degree, but due to extensive updates and even overhauls the games became a lot better. So i am kinda stumped to have to repeat the same process over again, providing they will even fix it to my liking. Right now, I believe not, because people seem to be overall satisfied with the game. Shame for me and other players but whatever.

That's sort of just the nature of the beast, nothing you or I can do will ever change that. Games aren't made in a vacuum and they're not always made to be the previous entry but better. Each and every game has its own goals that it wants to achieve and the choices we make are all in service of that goal. The choices we made during development were made to create a game capable of reaching, enticing and engaging an audience that has never played a 4X game before. It wasn't made to be the most in-depth, complex 4X strategy there ever was, it was made to be a toolbox for people to be able to tell their own stories using their interpretation of Fantasy staples or their own Characters.

lets not pretend that at release game didn't have issues that could have been fixed if you had more time to play test.

More time to develop wouldn't have resulted in more time to test, especially not the things you mentioned below. More time to develop is like time leftover at the end of a test, you just go back and erase or redo a potentially correct answer. We would have ended up reworking features, rebalancing things, adding new stuff, removing other stuff. In the end you kinda just end up in the same place with a different end product. Sometimes you just got to say "we're done" and get it out there.

There was issue with research flow, when you could get a ton of tomes pretty easily. (did no one play tested past turn 40 or something)

That simply just wasn't a problem/concern for our User Research Session or the Closed Beta. Stuff like that only becomes noticeable when the game is in the hands of certain sub-types of players and those weren't present during that point of development.

And yes I agree it is always interesting to see how people (be it devs or players) share their perspective. For example, I'm still trying to wrap my head around how Pantheon is a substitute for Empire Mode. As a player I see glorified faction selection list (talking about Pantheon Leaders part here) with randomization element thrown in to the mix.

The Pantheon isn't a replacement or a substitute for the Empire Mode. The Empire Mode is unique in a way that's only possible in a game like Planetfall. What the Pantheon is, is a evolution of the core tenants of the Empire Mode applied to a game as a whole. The DNA off the Empire Mode can be found in every aspect of Age of Wonders 4, the mix & match nature of the Tome system, the Realm Creation & Realm Traits providing tons of varying experiences, the Pantheon XP & Unlocks rewarding you for every game you play with something new to try out and indeed the Heroes from your Past Games supporting you on new conquests creating a continued narrative.

Besides, there's cool stuff coming.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

What happened with shift in direction when it comes to water combat? At release it seems you were going in one direction (like specialized units for water), but in one of the updates you went what from the outside looks like the opposite direction (land units are main naval units). Why the shift?

Dedicated naval units just didn't allow us the visual nor the gameplay space to do much interesting. We shifted so we could do unique boat visuals per unit type with improved & refined animations and effects.

And even though clipping is a current issue, some way to reflect item upgrades ingame for helmets, boots, and cuirasses without needing the "adjust appearance" button.

I've answered this before but this is just too minute detail for the scale the game is played at, especially on things that have rather small gameplay effects.

Rework of the old cultures to make them as appealing and unique as the new ones

We are aware there's a couple of cultures that are currently lacking. We'll look into updating some of these when and if the plans for that align.

More coherent infestations with units that have a commom theme : for instance dragon lairs with no dragons seems a bit strange and for most of them it's an assortment of different units that have little in common.

All of the Nodes & Infestation Defenders are already set up to be thematic. We use a very flexible tag system to fill up spawnsets based on Map Location, Type of Node/Spawner etc. A Dragon Lair f.e. should only take units that have the Dragon Type/Tag. Nodes in the Deserts should commonly have Defenders that use Fire Damage etc.

speaking of ancient wonders I would like to see them expanded a little more with more branched choices and outcomes, multiple combats etc a little bit like planetfall sites.

We specifically moved away from the Multiturn Events that the Planetfall Anomalous sites had because in the end these are not games where you want or should park a stack in one place for turns on end.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

like with the sieges?

I don't think you can really compare the two as a Siege is much more involved and uses a different time scale. Medium & Large Anomalous Sites could easily take 10 Turns, while a Siege is generally no more than 5-6 with you having control over the duration through Siege Projects. During a Siege you're also constantly evaluating whether there's benefit to continuing it or engaging with reinforcements/approaching stacks, so you're still interacting with the Stack/Units. A Anomalous site you'd just park a Stack on and it was basically locked in for the duration of the event with other uses.