Great video, some great points and hopefully Triumph can tweak some of your concerns.
I was wondering if the dreaded Doomstacks make a return from 3? They were skillfully modded out of 3, which made the game way more playable imho. But question is, does the AI again use them. To people who don't know; Doomstacks are stacks with the maximum of 6 units all the highest tier. The AI loved to build those, which frankly destroyed the game because of the large difference between those and the lower tier units.
What I saw from the gameplay video when Tombles got attacked by the undead stacks in the underground, is the way you attack changed? In AoW 3 you had to touchan army with multiple stacks to make them fight, but here the second undead group was behind the main attacking party and still was invloved. Is the yellow outline the range in where you need to position stacks to participate in attacks, a bit like in Warhammer 40k?
Does the main map feel big or small. I know you played the majority on smaller maps, but did you try out the biggest map? And how did that play?
First few questions, when I think of more, I'll let you know. Thanks in advance!
Thanks! I hope they can shore it up. I've said this before, and I mean it with every fiber of my being: if Triumph released the game I played last week RIGHT NOW, it'd still be the best fantasy 4X game I've ever played. Another couple of months of polish might just knock it out of the stratosphere. And I don't say that lightly.
Doomstacks are way too expensive in AoW4. Sure, you can have one or two, but they get really expensive to maintain, especially on smaller or middle-sized maps. Most particularly because a lot of the best units cost mana and mana can be in short supply if you're using enchantments and conjuring units. I simply didn't see them as being as bad as AoW3 to any degree. And trust me, those doomstacks ruined AoW3 for me, too.
I'll have to watch Tomble's video. I'm sorry, but I don't quite know what you're talking about. I was playing the game, rather than watching gameplay vids. I know, I know...I'm spoiled.
The map, when on the largest settings, feels absolutely gigantic. With both the regular Earth and the underground, it takes the first half of the game to fully explore the map, and that's with flying enchantments on your scouts. The maps get really, really big. Not the biggest out of any 4X game I've played, but big enough that I got a bit overwhelmed, honestly.
But I don't like my 4X games to be monster games that take 30 hours just to finish one game. For example, I played a bit of both and completed 4 full games in that 50 hours. 2 of which took about 15 hours each. And I also experimented a bunch, too.