Hello, soI am long time casual veteran of AoW series >)
after doing 160 h I feel like I am ready to pass on judgment and basically, I am astonished how good u made everything. let us start with
positives
man I love the spin on all the races and secret tech
Love that finally some eastern influence come to any western art form, I just fucking adore dvar, with their Slavic names, their accent finally not being Scottish and their general Russian like engineering look
love more cruel vibe than expected on kirko
love syndicate the most, for absolutely everything
kinda like amazons. horizon proofed that SciFi dinosaurs are cool and u further augment this idea
Like vanguard the look like whitewashed GDI from CC, that I miss very much
and absolutely love assembly for Frankenstein vibe
All the secret tech are vell realized as well and love their art all
customization is still awesome and it made me play dvar faster then I planned, I mean look at this amazing angry frown!
its just awesome how much planning it forces
because the economy is tight, bribing ai is not that easy and can be detrimental.
I absolutely love what u did with dwelling, their design, synergies, the fact they hate each other, so choosing which one to side on, can be a problem, if there is multiple faction present, the fact that I can just bribe them of the resource node, the fact that in 90% of cases they units are really boon, that their mods are worth getting etc. and that they extort you mercilessly if u ally with them, so again alliance has a cost and isn't simple decision. love it.
u are compelled to use ur core units to the very end, t3 and t4 are powerful but mostly supportive and expensive units so u don't want to overdo them. t1 unit can be super good if u mod them correctly, many times I have won with numerically and tier superior forces with my indentured t1 forces.
ur game is literally the first this isn't the case, with the interesting unit on water tile to fight with, and with barge system. technically it is similar to aow3 but give that in previous title embarking was massive debuff and most units were melee it didn't work there. here when most units are ranged it works perfectly
DA BAD
City & sectors
The ugly, neutral, or a simple suggestion
Disappointment
i Tried to be as constructive as possible. apologies for my poor written english, but i think im understandable. Hope u consider my feedback constructive, and that some of it make it into future patches
I would also like to congratulate you for fixing the 4 min turns in late game that happend day 1. didnt expect velociraptors t obe as fast but i guess jetpack works great on them
after doing 160 h I feel like I am ready to pass on judgment and basically, I am astonished how good u made everything. let us start with
positives
- Magic/operations system
- Hero streamlining
- -Fluff
man I love the spin on all the races and secret tech
Love that finally some eastern influence come to any western art form, I just fucking adore dvar, with their Slavic names, their accent finally not being Scottish and their general Russian like engineering look
love more cruel vibe than expected on kirko
love syndicate the most, for absolutely everything
kinda like amazons. horizon proofed that SciFi dinosaurs are cool and u further augment this idea
Like vanguard the look like whitewashed GDI from CC, that I miss very much
and absolutely love assembly for Frankenstein vibe
All the secret tech are vell realized as well and love their art all
customization is still awesome and it made me play dvar faster then I planned, I mean look at this amazing angry frown!
- Posters
- economy rebalance
its just awesome how much planning it forces
- The diplomacy
because the economy is tight, bribing ai is not that easy and can be detrimental.
I absolutely love what u did with dwelling, their design, synergies, the fact they hate each other, so choosing which one to side on, can be a problem, if there is multiple faction present, the fact that I can just bribe them of the resource node, the fact that in 90% of cases they units are really boon, that their mods are worth getting etc. and that they extort you mercilessly if u ally with them, so again alliance has a cost and isn't simple decision. love it.
- Unit variation
u are compelled to use ur core units to the very end, t3 and t4 are powerful but mostly supportive and expensive units so u don't want to overdo them. t1 unit can be super good if u mod them correctly, many times I have won with numerically and tier superior forces with my indentured t1 forces.
- supports are really good
- the balance between melee, range and air
- Sprint red move
- water combat
ur game is literally the first this isn't the case, with the interesting unit on water tile to fight with, and with barge system. technically it is similar to aow3 but give that in previous title embarking was massive debuff and most units were melee it didn't work there. here when most units are ranged it works perfectly
- Combat ai
- The good part of City revamp
DA BAD
City & sectors
- I played ur game 160 hours, and I am still not certain if resource overflow in cities exists or how it works. I know that knowledge overflow no problem but food? production? no idea!
- sectors are super unclear, again my GF summarized it the best, when she said, "when I see more of the same icon I build the matching exploitation and hope I'm doing the right thing". I think u should communicate this a little bit better, what does the 3 food grants u? is it better than 1 food? by what degree does it make sense to build food exploitation on a sector that does not have food?
- overview economical lenses
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...all-dev-diary-34-overview-map-lenses.1165005/
talking about this. if I unzoom to get to the lense, I can no longer manage a single city and have to zoom back. This is surprising oversight given the overall polish of the game
- i would kill in mid-game, for a UI element that allows me to check terrain features on a glance, so I can properly prioritize my research. so for instance, if I click the city somewhere I can see it has 3 times mountains, or 2 times forest. Now when I am at the point when I need to pick research option, I tediously have to count all my zones, and I think it can be very easily fixed by that
- On top of city UI element that will show that, I think that economy lense should aswell show terrain features better, right now u need to move your courser over specific sector and wait a sec or two to get a tab with the terrain features, I think this information should be easily accessible and see on first glance
- City UI
Later in the game or on big maps, I have often multiple cities to manage. your system promotes micromanagement, and I love it and did it, but then i use the arrows to change from city to city quickly. it doesn't seem to work well, looks like the order of city is randomized each time, furthermore, the system goes completely belly up, if I am absorbing any city, kicking me out of city UI. I must admit it looks small issue but is extremely aggravating
- food sharing
It is an amazing feature, but I think it should be streamlined. you have special mass city management window on the left side of UI, and I think u should squish somewhere there a button or toggle for food sharing, allowing to instantly recognize on a glance, if u share, take etc
- Marauders
well, there are whales and turtles in the water, there are blue and red rock boys, there are hopperhand aaand that's it? I know there are also a mix of core faction units, and NPC faction but it really feels like not enough, I sincerely hope that there will be more of them added in future.
- making buff sector features more visible
to be honest a lot of time, even when I have buff accessible within my own borders I simply forget their existence, and in many cases even when I remember about them, i have difficulty finding their location, cous they often melt with the environment, I think some steps need to be taken to make those buffs more visible, cause its kinda wasteful if u use them once, per game.
- Colour borders
on a similar note, some colour like dark green and blue melt with environmental amazingly easy, making in few of my session difficult to actually know where my borders are. the issue was so irritating that I just made my colour red on every commander I have.
The ugly, neutral, or a simple suggestion
- Melee warlord not tanky enough
I have considered on a few occasion making my main hero a melee character but each time I thought of it I just could not. Combat in AoW series is extremely volatile, and u can easily die. while the normal hero can die as well his or her loss is less painful when u can resummon him pretty much next turn, and choose the location of his resurrection, while commander has to stay dead for 3 turns, and comeback in HQ, which can be 10 turns away from ur combat operation. This issue stems I feel from the fact that u can make hero flank resistance, and give him extra 30 hp, and that's pretty much it. mod don't help that much, because u sacrifice around 60% of ur dmg output (give or take, u probably not gonna fill all 4 slots wit h30% mods) for around 4 extra shields. wich is not a 60% increase in survi no matter how u look at it. I understand of course the inherent problem, of increasing power of mods, that can quickly skyrocket some units or could be used on ranged heroes, which will defeat a purpose a bit. I understand this is a difficult thing to balance, but I think something needs to be done, to make melee on heroes slightly more viable, maybe an armour specific spot, in arsenal, that unlocks only if u have mele wpn equipped, maybe some kind of mod defence amplification when u have melee wpn equipped, I think something can, and should be done about it.
- Victory animation
I know this is not in-game cous its probable resources intensive but can u make some kind of animation for doomsday victories? similar to planetfall animation it could build up a loooooooooooooot of flavour. when I put my pyrX refineries to work I expected an explosion, same with psynumbar and void tech. the victory of course still feel cool but it simultaneously feels not cool enough. Hope u can scramble some resources between expansions to make those a little bit more felt like. I'm not expecting full CGI trailer but again, I feel like more could have been done, even this new fashionable kind animated wallpapers with corresponding them would be better, then simply flavour text.
- Speaking off animated wallpapers
I swear I saw them on streams, but in-game they are still images. disappointing . can u put them in-game?
- roads bridges and water sectors
While in general, I like the new automatic system of roads better, there are some cases when I miss my poor old builder. but honestly roads are generally fine, I would love to have the ability to build roads, other than by acquiring via my super scarce diplomatic resource forward base,
but sometimes it is not possible thou to politics of claim system. and keeping in mind, u have fine-tuned ur game economy, and gold is a scarce resource as well, I think u could implement a way to build roads, for some eye squeezing sum.
But the true reason for this point is actually bridges, and or some better way to embark ur forces. This issue happened to me, in few scenarios and vanguard mission 2, but literally drove me mad in syndicate no2. that mission was evil. sometimes between landmasses u have 1 sector of water creating "river" (putting " to distinguish it from river sector feature) This (many vulgar adjectives) river will cost my army 3 turns of movement EVRY (vulgar words) TIME even if I am the owner of said water sectors. While a lot of things in this section are suggestions and wishes, this I am ADAMANT. u srsly need to either give me the power to erect bridges within my domain or give me some kind of free embarking options.
- dwarf prospector
Probably expensive feature for one unit to develop but have u considered to add some kind of UI to mark prospected sectors? it gets messy fast, and eventually, I just stop using it, and its a shame, given its cool and unique feature.
- Encyclopedia Upgrades
- make it accessible from main menu pls!
- u need to hyperlink effects of buffs and debuff in description
3. i am quite sure u should put a list of possible hero equipment in there
4. I think in secret tech category you should colour code specific buffs that the unit gets for being of a certain faction. now that most of the skills are no longer behind exp gate, it much simpler to find those differences between each of them compared to aow3, but some color coding, like showing that amazon celestial brawlers have pterodactyl, and assembly one life steal, would be very neat, and help out in some armchair scheming of best combos!
4. I think in secret tech category you should colour code specific buffs that the unit gets for being of a certain faction. now that most of the skills are no longer behind exp gate, it much simpler to find those differences between each of them compared to aow3, but some color coding, like showing that amazon celestial brawlers have pterodactyl, and assembly one life steal, would be very neat, and help out in some armchair scheming of best combos!
- Assembly tactical combat abuse
while in general ai can be a terrifying opponent better in my experience than human players in many regards, it has some biases. specifically, it seems to be hard programed to kill units. this on itself is not an issue, and actually, give the dmg output of units, and the fact that loses of hp, doesn't affect it makes it valid strategy. Andofcoursmake even most mundane combat interesting, because ai will try its darndest to make your victory pyrrhic.
but when ai faces army of rever engineers u can easily abuse it. u run in the first turn as far as u can with them, and then spawn in front of you the spider assembly suicide unit. Ai will absolutely frenzy themselves, and prioritize them, probably thinking it commits some kind of lasting dmg to my stack. meanwhile, my troop al laughing their cogs off, and enjoy easy picking of spare parts, because ai in its frenzy completely opened up itself for those 2 worthless kills. while the assembly is the most reliable in reproducing this, I have used similar tacting, with pyrex pustules, xenoplaghe pustules, and particularly psyfish chrysalis, ai absolutely hate them and will commit to the ludicrous degree to eradicate them.
I think some small fine-tuning is in order, to ai be less abusive, and hateful of spawn tactics.
- some better way of acquiring item
I kinda get it that t3 and t4 items suppose to be rare but it's quite irritating honestly to clear the whole map and not get one u like.
I know its somehow tied to turn counter, so the quests after turn 100 from npc faction can provide them, and there four in few campaign missions I simply abuse the mechanic and prolonged the mission so I can have some shiny item in next one.
I think some way, of getting a t4 or at least t4 items, should be put in-game mechanically, other than landmarks that is.
- -QOL campaign change allows to carry over heroes.
To a degree, you already do that, with usually one hero plot-wise attach to you, but I think I should either communicate a bit better who goes on and in some cases maybe allow me to carry over my fav hero.it is a small thing I know, but it's quite irritation when I started assembly mission 2 with 3 heroes, while syndicate 2 I had only my warlord
- More customization for heroes
Again small thing, but in both aow3 and PF i enjoyed customizing my hero greatly, i wouldend mind a few more parts, particularly full bodies and legs. I am ofcourse aware those are prolly expensive feature but i hope u can sneak up a few in future
Disappointment
- More secret tech units!
While i do understand the geometric cost with such a thing, the general policy of making more mods, to make faction more significant then races wherein aow3, and a lot of other stuff, I must admit i was really heartbroken there is generally only 3 units per secret tech.
while higher on my list i also noted that few more marauders etc would not hurt, it would not be a heavy blow either if u didn't implement a single new one, but secret techs feel lacklustre with units! u absolutely MUST add at least one more unit per ST or maybe even two
i feel that phenix tech, void and xenotech are particularly hurt by it, phenixes should really get some kind of flamer unit between tank and troop, and xenotech, some kind of actually buildup troop between hunter and pustules. Void tech also feels bad, cous for most of the time, u just get ur cloners, both ships come very very late.
i hope u don't dismiss this as typical gamer WE WANTZ MOAAAAR. to a degree, it is that sure, but i would honestly prefer if u didn't touch any issues (besided maybe emberaking/bridges those are really annoying) and focus on new ST units if i had power to compel u to do so
i Tried to be as constructive as possible. apologies for my poor written english, but i think im understandable. Hope u consider my feedback constructive, and that some of it make it into future patches
I would also like to congratulate you for fixing the 4 min turns in late game that happend day 1. didnt expect velociraptors t obe as fast but i guess jetpack works great on them
Last edited:
.png){kind=avatar}
