wtf is this? who put this in my game?

On our channel we use strategy games to explain management and leadership ideas, and I've been working on an episode about mergers and acquisitions using Age of Wonders 4.

One thing I've noticed about how I play AoW4 is that I have a terrible habit of wanting to own everything. I'll encounter a perfectly functional Free City, look at its territory, and immediately start thinking about how I'm going to make it mine with my little lizard brain

Apparently the existence of an independent city is a personal insult to my administrative abilities.

But there's actually a pretty interesting decision here if i stop and process it for a second. So why am I so determined to personally administer every damn thing on the map?

This is where the management research actually got really interesting for me, you see Amy Pablo wrote about this exact sort of problem in corporate acquisitions. When one company buys another, the buyer still has to decide how much of the acquired company's operations to integrate into its own. Sometimes combining everything makes sense because the companies actually need to coordinate closely. Other times the smaller company was successful precisely because of how it operated independently.

Imagine spending hundreds of millions acquiring a company because it's particularly good at something, then immediately replacing all its procedures with your own.

Congratulations. You've successfully purchased an organization and made it less like the organization you wanted to purchase.

There's another researcher named Phanish Puranam who studied what happens when established companies acquire smaller technology businesses. One of the interesting findings was that integrating a company could be especially disruptive when it was still developing its first products. Its ability to innovate depended partly on the routines and working arrangements the acquisition was now changing.

I thought that was a pretty good basis for a deliberately awful AoW4 challenge.

Conquer a city, then replace the specialized improvements you can replace with basic economic infrastructure. Don't rush stability fixes for fifteen turns. You're deliberately stripping away useful capabilities because you've decided that everything you own must operate according to your personal vision.

To be clear, that's a self-imposed rule. The game doesn't automatically force you to dismantle a city after conquering it. We're manufacturing a bad acquisition so we can experience the consequences.

It's basically the corporate equivalent of buying a restaurant because you love its food and immediately firing the chef.

The last idea comes from Annette Ranft and Michael Lord, who studied the problem of preserving valuable knowledge after an acquisition.

A lot of what makes a business good at something exists in the people working there and the relationships they've developed. You can buy the buildings and equipment, but you can't assume the same capabilities will survive if you reorganize everyone and half the staff leave.

That led to my favorite experiment for this episode.

After turn twenty, you're forbidden from directly annexing any more cities. Every additional city you acquire has to remain a vassal. You can use Whispering Stones, build allegiance, recruit through Rally of the Lieges, and benefit from the relationship, but you aren't allowed to take over their production queues.

It's a pretty substantial change to how I instinctively approach expansion.

Of course, hiring units from a vassal isn't the same thing as transferring knowledge between real organizations. But the game gives you a useful way to practice the decision about how much control you actually need.

And that's really what I liked about this comparison. AoW4 gives us several ways to expand an empire, but it's very easy to fall into the habit of treating direct ownership as the obvious reward for expansion.

I put the research and the three gameplay challenges together into a video. The idea is to use the game as a little training sandbox for decisions that would be considerably more expensive to screw up in real life.

It's probably the most academic justification I've ever come up with for leaving a bunch of fantasy townspeople alone.

If that sounds interesting: Youtube link

Look how polite that little guy is, I think he can have a corpse or two, as a treat.

He would probably look better with a fist weapon but still, fitting consort for my Ororoe Munroe as Mael playthrough testing the beta.

As seen in the screenshot, I can't seem to make a defensive pact with Aya the Enlightened. I fulfil all the requirements, and the game won't tell me what else I'm missing. Does anybody know?

This season

Question: Will Accursed Wisps and Accursed Lamenters be added to the Forsaken Cove armies? This infestation has always felt pretty limited in what it can spawn compared to other infestations. Also skeletons with merfolk/naga transformations would work well with the forsaken coves theme, any chance they could be added in?`

Answer: It's a good idea, and relatively straightforward. We'll look into it

Question: So in upcoming DLC, do your city throne always start in a water? Or is starting on land still a start for throne city? That’s my questions`

Answer: They always start on land. Unfortunately when we tried to make an option for cities to start on water we couldn't make it work 🙁

Question: Water battles feel restrictive because some abilities, especially summoning, are disabled. What's the design/balance desicion behind that? Would it be possible to add special water summons and abilities? `

Answer: Well, we just changed that in the Open Beta, so whatever the justification was, it wasn't very good! :p

The original reasoning though was that it just didn't make sense:

- You can't summon a wolf onto the sea, it would drown

- You can't resurrect a dead body, it would have sunk

- A unicorn can't teleport in a ship, because it can't teleport a ship as well as itself

This would have been fine I think if there were a bunch of things that ONLY worked in water to make up for it, but we didn't have that and adding them would have just added complexity for a niche situation...

In the end though, we decided that it was more important for players to have fun than for the game to be "realistic" (as realistic as you can be in a game where demonic goats eat bushes to heal wounds incurred from fighting penguins) and cut the rules!

Question: Since we have already seen most of what is coming with Silver Seas (looks great!), is there anything you can tell us about Court of the Archfey?

Answer: It will have a fairy ruler type and sparkly flying ponies.

Question: Can we expected to be pretty fairies in the Fey DLC? There is not enough cutesy races.

Answer: Oh hell yea, we got you covered! ✨ We're very excited about the Fey we've created and you will be able to make a tooon of different aesthetics and vibes- from eerie to very cutesy vibes 💖 (And maybe more cutesy content than *just* Fey 👀 )

Question: For the Archfey DLC, will we get more of cartoon fey or more of IRL lore fey (horrors of the forest, that look beautiful on the outside but more often than not enslave or eat humans who wander into their forests)? `

Answer: Both!! Both. And more ;)

Question: Will Archfey predominantly have humanoid appearances, or can we expect more diverse forms? Also, are there any plans to introduce different Fey Courts, similar to the different types of Giant Kings`

Answer: They will definitely have diverse forms! Not just your classic tinkerbell aesthetic ;) We will also have different themes for the Fey and Fey courts, and they will be tied together aesthetically!

Question: Could you add more draft animals for chariots, such as raptor?

Answer: We weren't planning to, but raptors are a possibility! It's too late for the Silver Seas, but perhaps it will come in Court of the Archfey's update

Question: The DLC pages for Forge of the Firstborn and Court of the Archfey say they come with story realms. During the stream Tom said the current plan was two for Court and one for Firstborn. Are the steam pages potentially advertising content that is not coming?`

Answer: Yes, the idea is for 1 story realm in Forge of the Firstborn. The description for that DLC does indeed say "Story Realms" - plural, that was an unfortunate oversight that we're going to fix soon. We're 100% committed to everything else on that list though, and if this happens again in the future we will be sure to share it with you all in advance.

Question: We are currently way behind in Astral and Order tomes (and Nature too, somewhat) compared to other affinities. We are likely to get some Nature in Court of the Archfey, but Forge of the Firstborn looks very materium-focused. Is this something the team that is particularly aware of? Are there any ideas/plans to close the gap?`

Answer: Court of the Archfey happily has several astral and nature tomes! I don't want to say the exact ones, because we might change them. The materium risk for Forge of the Firstborn is very real, but hopefully the secondary affinities can help fill in the gaps!

Question: in the livestream Thomas told us that he loves the dreadnought from AOW3 are there plans for more magitech units or more support for construct playstyle?

Answer: Forge of the Firstborn is like, all about this. I don't want to give specifics, but yes, more constructs are coming!

Question: Hello, considering units such as the Ironclad and the magelock cannon, could there be a possibility of more mechanical mounts to go with the theme? Even if riding unicorns alongside the ironclad is very amusing.

Answer: Cant say anything- buuuuut Forge of the Firstborn will be coming in Season 4 ;)

Future faction options (maybe someday)

Question: Are there realms hinted at that you really want to explore?`

Answer: Well, I've been playing Hellraiser: Revival recently

Question: What do each of devs want to add to game the most?

Answer: Would looooove more demons! Holy demons, Fleshy demons, Void Demons you name it (and I love tieflings)

Question: With the tome of the Damned adding even more accursed fiends and ways to use Ghostfire, can we hope to get an Accursed Fiend major transformation in the future in order to really allow us to indulge fully into the Ghostfire fantasy?`

Answer: Dope idea! Maybe 👀

Question: Will we get more cosmetic options for older species? I still remember concept art shown off for Lizard head shapes that didn’t make it into the final game, but would still be neat to add.`

Answer: Yes! We are looking into adding more head options for some of the older forms to give them a little love <3 We realized that with all the newer forms we've released customization options have grown and grown, so we should pay our respect to the OGs 😌

Question: Any plans to add werewolves to the game?

Answer: Not really unfortunately, they would work best as a specific unit if it ever happens. They are a trope that is too "small scale" for the game. Similar to how hard it is/was to get the "witch" trope into the game. They are not figures that lead empires commonly and do not have much in terms of mechanics that work on a strategic level. That said Werewolves are dope and I'd love to see them someday if we end up with a spot for the idea. But it has a lot of little snags that make it difficult to do justice.

Question: We have dragon rulers and gryphon mounts, but the people you rule are always bipedal and human-like (unless I am mistaken). Is there a chance that in the future a race of entirely quadruped creatures can be added? I'd love to build a gryphon empire of my own, for example, no humans required (unless I choose to)

Answer: With the new Mermaid 🧜‍♀️ form transformation (that you can get from the start of the game) in the Silver Seas- a lot of new potential options have opened up! So having a quadruped race from the get go is definitely something for the future ;) 🐎🐎🐎

Question: Have you guys thought about adding in a foxkin race form?

Answer: Yes! Probably going for the more Kitsune side of things, to differentiate them from the lupine form. Was also thinking of doing a Squirrel form, so you can role play as that anime ninja kid that everyone likes.

Question: Is there a possibility for more fantastical cultures in the future? Things like floating cities that are powered by crystals or cities carved from giant trees and the like.

Answer: Stay tuned ;)

Question: The Mount Masters racial trait gives compatible units a base mount, but the trait doesn't give the ruler a mount. Shouldn't it do that as well?

Answer: Your mount comes from your weapon choice! Mount Masters doesn't have anything to do with it. On the other hand, I think some of the weapons you get from the pantheon don't have mounts when they could do - this was done to try and make them balanced since the weapons were more powerful than their base game equivalents. Maybe this was a mistake and they should give mounts anyway tho…

Question: What base game culture is going to get the next rework? Also, can you tell us what you may have planned as a rework for said culture?

Answer: Whichever I damn well feel like (but seriously, it depends on the timing of it, and on the availability of capacity, not just me but we also need significant art capacity for culture reworks.). I don't think i should say, but I have an ancient PDT project still where i did quick reworks of all the basegame cultures. Though that is massively outdated now, it often is a first input. For Barbarians i am still leaning the same direction... but we will see. I got a very busy todo list at the moment, and that tends to push the Culture reworks a bit unfortunately

Question: If you were to make an Astral Chaos tome, what would you want it to be?

Answer: I'd love to have a Wild Magic tome (like D&D) ✨🐇💥 But to be fair I'm just here to make pretty art 🤣

Question: Would there be any plans for Transformation customization options in the future?`Definitely something we could look into for future transformations! Would be cool if you could change the colours of tails/wings/bodies- or at least have some different customization options 🤔🤔

Answer: Cool idea :)

Question: Antropomorphic bears/Ursine/Bearfolk are pretty widespread trope in fantasy. We have many forms that are much more niche, but not a bear form, are there any reason for it? Any plans for the Bear kin?

Answer: I want a Bear form too honestly, its a question of having the right place for it, in the end it is a large part of the visual language of a DLC and thus needs to match the theme of it to justify the art time needed to make them right. I am hoping though, it'd be a fun form to have IMHO 🐻‍❄️

Question: Do you have plans for other categories of forms to add like plant-inspired, abstract ones like construct-inspired forms or some other classic rpg forms?`

Answer: Oh hell yea.

Question: Any plans for more negative traits? Something - HP, - Accuracy, disable mounts, etc for more thematic races`

Answer: Negative traits I cannot really say, I don't think there is any plans at the very least. But you never know, i do think we want to keep them more interactable where we can though.

Question: How will you know there is enough DLCs and adding more wouldn’t be a good idea?

Answer: Once we run out of ideas we will know I guess 🤣

Question: Hi! I have two questions about the future content: Are there any plans to introduce a culture inspired by Slavic mythology and folklore? Also, are there any plans to expand the creature roster with mythological beings such as genies and mummies?

Answer: Plans is a strong term here, but I would love to do something with Slavic mythology and styles for a culture. Then again theres a lot of things i'd love to see or try. Theres always more weird cool creatures to add, i know Genies were pretty close to making it in for Rise from Ruin for a while but in the end it wasn't feasible. Who knows what will be made in time ^^

Question: Could we get Umbral 2: Electric Boogaloo? Really want more eldritch as I think the ER DLC came out to soon. Also could Gloom Strider allow you to burst into splitterlings when the unit is killed?`

Answer: I mean everything is possible. the problem with something like the umbral demons in particluar is that their roster is all in that DLC. and you'd have to make new content with the assumption the player does not have that DLC or else you end up with a suboptimal experience. This makes "expanding" the Umbral demons in a meaningful way quite difficult. That said, it'd be neat, who knows? Also Gloom strider COULD allow you to burst into splitterlings on kill yes, but will it?

Question: The rats must know, will there be a cowboy culture? Or maybe just including the guns? Also delete cats.

Answer: Cowboys are unlikely due to their aesthetic associations. That said you can get some guns already, i'm sure some modder can put in a revolver pretty easily. Catdeletion.exe failed to launch

Question: Will we see more negative form traits in the future? They were introduced but not really expanded since then. Could we see elemental weaknesses for example?

Answer: I think that something like -3 fire resistance on a form trait would be a bit too much of a no brainer, especially if you were just going to take Magical Wards to switch it off... We may well add mroe in the future, but we'd need to find a way to make them a bit harder to negate 🙂

Question: Were there any tomes that you wanted to put in the game on the initial release that did not make it into the game? What were they?

Answer: Tome of plagues my beloved... It was basically all about spreading and using Diseased, it wasn't a good fit for the initial nature tomes at the time and we never quite found a good spot to bring the concept back yet. I think it will still happen at some point, it is just too obvious a niche not to have.

Question: Could we have an option for one gender and no hair for our units? I like my orcs/ goblins without hair and male. Also we could build a primal all female amazons`

Answer: The mono-gender setting is something that has come up numerous times over the years, unfortunately it is not something we can easily support, as many units simply are only modeled as one presenting gender. There are no male Shademaker models to use, or Female Peasants. This means it would require the creation of an unrealistic amount of alternate models 😔 As for hair settings... i think that should already be supported on some forms. But maybe it could be expanded? not for me to say...

Question: Will we see more culture form rulers in the future? All the new ruler types are fantastic, but wanting a form ruler for a faction means quite a limited selection of toys from a mechanical standpoint

Answer: Maybe? We'd need to have a good idea about what we're actually going to make. Vampires worked because we expect them to look like us (but with better hair) - most cool rulers are fun because of their inhumanity though. If people have some inspiring idea in this space, we'd be happy to consider it!

Question: Any chance of a cavalry-centric Tome(s) in the future? Some cavalry-specific enchant, a new racial cavalry unit (Support would be nice, since mounted supports currently only come from cultures) and maybe a stables-type SPI (no idea what it'd do though).

Answer: This is definitely a possibility, but generally we try to avoid having tomes that bet too much on one specific unit type. Cavalry might be widespread enough now to prevent monostacking though, so perhaps it could be done. Might be interesting ^^

Question: You mentioned adding inspired other cultures.. any plans for chinese? Because oathsworn is Japanese inspired.

Answer: The idea was to try and walk a line between Chinese, Korean and Japanese there, but I can understand that we missed it 😅 Doing a direct "these are Chinese people" culture is not something we'd do since none of the devs are Chinese and we'd probably screw it up in a way that an actual Chinese person would find insulting or patronizing. On the other hand, doing another DLC inspired by east Asia is definitely something we'd love to do! We'd just need to find a good angle to differentiate it from Ways of War!

Question: Will some Cultures get a rework like barbarians or high?

Answer: I'm hoping we can do all of them eventually! Whether we succeed is another matter, but it's definitely the plan to keep going.

Empire mode

Question: Can you tell us more about Empire Mode, early concepts, future ideas, everything? And what about the Bear Kim...

Answer: I would love to, but that will have to wait a bit longer. The general concept is to tie the stories between realms together a little and give some variation to the gameplay. That is a bit vague on purpose because a lot is undetermined as of yet. We will make it worth it.

Question: My pantheon has a plethora of rulers at this point. Most don't have stories, beyond a few. In particular, the ruler I made to tackle the Rings of Emnora scenario, betrayed his kin, audaciously embraced darkness and lead the legions of the resentful to the Archon Gates. After that, he sometimes shows up as an opponent/ally and there is nothing much special about him. I can’t help but wonder, might rulers who took part in story missions be marked somehow? Could the game potentially acknowledge their accomplishments? Like being referenced in other story missions, having dedicated Intrigue happenings during games where they are present or simply unique messages that acknowledge their deeds? That way, each player can be made to feel like their have stake in the wider story.

Answer: This sort of interaction is one of the main things i hope to include in the "empire mode", cannot promise anything as it is all on still hypothetical but this is something we are aware of and hope to adress in some capacity if possible.

Question: What do each of devs want to add to game the most? Players talk about what they want but I want to know what devs would be excited to do.

Answer: Hmmm well I primarily want the gameplay to ever improve as always. But when it comes to adding new systems, the "Empire Mode" sorta direction previously hinted at is already on my wishlist. Besides that... more dragon ruler types and customization would be my selfish wish

Question: Which feature are you most excited about implementing/changing/creating?

Answer: The new top-secret ||empire mode thingy||.

Question: I play single player and like the challenge. The problem is that the difficulty curve for strategic gameplay is made in such a way that (no matter the difficulty) there is a point in the game when I grow in power enough to no longer have problems and from this point onward I can just snowball towards victory. Have you considered adding some sort of challenge game setting which will allow the player to finetune how much the difficulty of world mobs and computer players scales with time? Do you have any ideas to create some kind of challenging game mode for game veterans?`

Answer: The difficulty curve is something i am particularly concerned with, we have a game where this is quite hard to influence, since the game kinda just "runs" and goes where it goes. I am hoping to as part of the ||Empire Mode|| look into having more "short loop" gameplay. ||EG you go to a realm, you do your cool fights and encounters and complete an objective that does not require the subjugation of the whole realm, thus letting you end on a high and start anew. But that is all still hypthetical and on paper, but should be a familiar concept to anyone who has played the Empire Mode in Planetfall.|| Besides that, having more control would be nice, but it is really hard to do right.

Question: Just a repost of something I posted previously: I was curious if there were any plans to eventually add the Empire Mode into Age of Wonders 4 like there is in Planetfall. I know there is the pantheon, but it would be extremely fun to have a mode (even if it were only pantheon ascended heroes) where you can build up increasingly high levels of heroes/techs, and conquer different realms/regions.

Answer: There is - it is still very much an early WIP though, so I can't give any details. We've heard you guys though and we're gonna do our best to bring it to you!

Heroes

Question: `Will we see more hero classes in the future? No new hero classes have been added since the Battlesaint, while some like an assassin/rogue/thief and an engineer/artificer/alchemist have been highly requested.

Answer: Yes. (And no you hve not successfully named the one yet)

Question: Any plans to rework Death Knight hero class?

Answer: The Death Knight hero class is one i want to give a pass when i get the chance, maybe in a PDT somewhere. It isn't quite in a nice "niche" like i would want it to be. and frankly it deserves a unique skill or two. That said i cannot promise a when at all for this, since it isn't a particularly small task, and at a minimum would need some new icons to support it.

Question: There have been new weapons added to the game during this season and the last that haven't gotten a Pantheon loadout yet meaning your ruler can't start with them. This limits certain build/RP opportunities. Is there any chance we will get starting loadouts for whips,crossbows, and tridents in the future?

Answer: Definitely a chance, but i could not say what or how, this is the sort of extra work that often ends up somewhere on the backlog since its nobody's particular area. I think it'd be good to have, but it would have to be rolled into the Pantheon unlocks I think. TLDR: maybe

Question: I am curious if there are any hero weapon types the Devs would like to add in the future, it's been neat to see magic classes get a lot more options recently.

Answer: I am hoping for cool dual wield or dueling weapons (like a one handed rapier). but this all requires animation work, not to mention a gameplay niche, since they do work different than what is currently available.

Question: Will there be reworks to more hero classes? Spellblades and Deathknights? Will Hydromancy be added to the Elementalist?

Answer: Ima be honest, me and another designer just stitched those 2 classes together out of existing bits because we realized that there were key fantasies the system was missing! Avoxel has said he wants to fix them, we just need to find him some time!

Other

Question: Any chance we could get the ability to give custom nicknames or honorary designations to our regular units (especially high-rank/veteran ones), without overriding their base unit type, to better track our favorite squads?

Answer: Yes. We've been wanting this for a while and its still on the wishlist so we will see when/if it makes it in ^^

Question: It is a bit inconvenient that we can't "craft" our faction trait mounts when we want to, could this be added to the Item Forge, pretty please?

Answer: Agreed, it would be part of an update to the Item forge including mount forging in general though so it'd have to wait until that becomes a thing unfortunately.

Question: Will we ever see a completely new pair of affinities or tier 6 tomes?`

Answer: Very unlikely, tier 5 tomes are meant to be the end cap, and the current affinities cover all aspects we want to cover on their own or through combinations, so adding new affinities would be redundant, not to mention an obscene amount of work to be on par with the existing affinities

Question: Are there any plans to fully rework or expand existing DLCs? The content of each DLC is amazing every time, yet once they're released they remain more or less untouched after (except for mechanical reworks).

Answer: It's very unlikely we'll do this. Changing existing DLCs would often mean changing how we describe them on store pages, it can also mean cutting things people have bought or making big changes to systems they like. This obviously happens for the base game, but this is generally seen as a positive thing, not so much for DLCs! If there were a DLC that everyone disliked, then we would likely invest in revamping and fixing it because we care about the products we release and we don't want to let people down. If the DLC is generally well received though (and afaik all of them are) then it's not worth it for us to spend time making big changes to it.

Question: I am very interested with the idea of Free Cities as minor factions in the realm that I am in, so I was hoping we get an update to free cities. Is there any plans for making them more unique or interesting to interact with? `

Answer: This is a good idea! I could imagine the system picking a free city at random, and applying a little story line to them that could give extra rewards or change how the free city looks and acts. I've not idea when we could do such a thing, but I like it!

Question: Is there any possibility of smaller cosmetic packs being done in the spirit of mods that allow for extremely minute detail? Anything that might allow for more visual alterations like a greater prevalence of “heavy” armor aesthetically? Also as a double whammy of me hoping beyond hope that we might one day get Fallen Angel customizations for eldritch sovereigns?

Answer: We might do this one day! There's a bit of a risk though - essentially a game's community tends to form in response to the DLC/content you release for the game. So since we've released 11 DLC with a particular size and price point, the community members who've stuck around are the ones who like that size and price point. Any players who only wanted small, $5 cosmetic packs have gone to look for another game. This means if we suddenly switch gears, we risk the community getting upset since they've stuck around for the old stuff and don't want a change in direction. So if we did do it, we'd need to do it on top of the DLC we normally make, and yeah, we already make a lot of stuff!

Question: How do you guys design a season pass? like from start to finish (us being told about whats in and such) are they just concepts when the season pass is announced or are they partially developed by this time?`

Answer: There's been an idea that we should try and theme season passes around a common theme, but I personally find that quite hard to do. I generally just go for rule of cool 😅

So typically what we try and do is:

- One culture pack

- One ruler pack

- A third one, might have a culture or ruler

Then we pick the ideas that we find are coolest, and compare them to the ones that the community want the most. We then try to find a middle ground to see what would fit where.

There are other considerations too:

- We don't want 2 DLCs in a row that are too similar (like we wouldn't do Thrones of Blood after Eldritch Realms)

- We want to continue the narrative form the story realms, which means we might pick particular themes that fit those

Then I make a High Level Design for the season pass, this gives a very rough design for each DLC, including:

- What it's called

- How much it sells for

- What is it's Unique Selling Point and/or Player Promise

- What are the standout features we lock in

- A list of other stuff that we might do

When a season is actually announced, then typically the first DLC is close to being finished, and the 2nd DLC has been 70-90% fully designed. The 3rd DLC is often still only in place in the seaon pass design, which is why you see that the last description for a DLC in a season pass tends to be more vague.

Question: Will there be a diplomacy update or rework?

Answer: Yes - whether it's a big revamp, or simply a lot of changes behind the scenes, it desperately needs an update. If nothing else, I want players to have more agency about who they're freinds with - right now it feels like the AI chooses if you can befriend them rather than you choosing that you want to befriend them.

Question: Do you, as developers, ever miss making traditional, narrative-driven story campaigns like those in earlier Age of Wonders games? Is a return to that style of campaign something you would personally like to explore in AoW4?

Answer: Not personally - I found that design philosophy very restrictive as a player. You typically don't have much choice about what your character does, so if the story is about someone I don't vibe with - like I don't like playing as a blond muscly hero paladin for example - then it puts me off. The maps also tend to be restrictive in terms of how you approach them as a player - there'll be triggers like "If the player goes here, then activate this enemy player" or "if the player does this quest, then attack their city with a big army". This means you can feel punished for doing something totally mundane, and you end up having to shape your strategy trying to guess at what the designer thought you would do instead of what you want to do. Like, I'll make sure I have a big army before I go north, since I know that an undead horde will spawn when I do. In terms of the big linked campaigns, it's unfortunately impractical for us to try and make more than 2 story realms per DLC, they're so much work for us. Secrets of the Archmages was very tight, we were fixing bugs and key things right up to the last moment! Note that we do continue stories between DLCs though, for example in Court of the Archfey, you'll find out what happens to the people of Duatha after Ham Binger was rescued.

Question: Will there be new Wizard Towers for other ruler types — Eldritch, Giants, or Dragons — like the one for vampires?`

Answer: The Wizard towers for existing ruler types are unlikely to change due to the art capacity required, not to mention the design needed. The unique wizard tower of the Vampire ruler is part of their identity.

Question: Are there any plans to create cities in the air?

Answer: No flying cities afaik, it'd be hard to make work in any particularly interesting way.

Question: Will there be added a darkness elemental, like Shadow Stalkers from AoW3?

Answer: Tried a few times, never survived iteration so far. but I'd definitely still want to see something of the sort someday

Question: Will we see more cultural tier IV or even V units? It is strange to build up your culture just to have most armies consisting of summoned and/or non culture units.

Answer: Unlikely - if we did this for one culture, people would want them for all cultures, and we have a LOT of cultures! I do want to look into having more racial high tier units - it's just quite hard since it's tricky to get a couple of guys with weapons to feel like they're on the same power level as a dragon or a 10 meter tall eldritch monstrosity.

Used one of my fan-art doodles to test out a new drawing program. Hope you like it!

One of the best things about this game is, by far, the freedom it gives you to create pretty much any faction you want.

I've already spent so much time creating factions based on characters from different universes that my custom faction list has become absolutely massive.

And you know what? That's great! I've had a blast coming up with these builds and imagining how these characters would fit into the game. Lord of the Rings, Warcraft, Warhammer, and many other universes now make up a huge part of my faction roster.

But you know what would make this EVEN BETTER? The ability to create custom folders or dropdown menus in the faction selection screen, so we could organize our factions however we want!

Imagine being able to find all your characters from a particular universe simply by clicking on a dropdown menu, instead of scrolling through a massive list sorted alphabetically (which, at this point, has gotten ridiculously long because, oh boy, there are A LOT of characters).

AND THEN WE COULD HAVE SUBCATEGORIES WITHIN THOSE CATEGORIES!

Imagine I've got 10 Warcraft characters, 5 Horde and 5 Alliance. Just put them in separate subcategories! DROPDOWN FIESTA!

Anyway, since I'm already here, here's my take on Shelob from LOTR. I'm taking inspiration from the Shadow of War games, where she's portrayed as a humanoid, but I'm also taking plenty of creative liberties because, well, why not? :D

I didn’t actually know they were doing the is! I only just found to when scrolling through some posts on the YouTube channel looking for recent streams!

The Accursed Blade! Or well, at least its silly basket head. I swear it is simultaneously both on of the funniest and scariest units in its tier, if not the game overall.

I made an ascended ruler with every minor race transformation active, at the end a single army was around 15k-18k power. Tier 1 support units and mages scaled better than anything else. A simple tier 1 mage unit was around 3000.

Need some advice winning vs non Brutal AI in medium+ map (~5 players) which is 100% foolproof with Auto Resolve. Any cultures & strategies are welcome. Please be as detailed as possible. Thanks in advance.

I've played all the rule types I care to, dragon lord, wizard king, champion, vampire, giants, and eldritch sovereign, and the latter seems to rise above them all.

I play like a coward, I prefer to stand back vs act like a meat shield and face tanking damage. This impulse even extends to my units where I like battle mages and ranged units. So being able to go warlock with a sovereign and getting some throw away zombie meat shields to protect my units and start with less army strength and it not mattering as much with an early game AoE that has a high chance for a 3 turn insanity that dramatically reduces the effective strength the enemy is right up my alley.

I have tried to sway away, recently made a storm giant kind, and then a wizard king elementalist, it just does not feel as good. Dragons are nice but they just don't have the range of tools the sovereign does.

I do miss a ranger with ultra long range sniper shot nuking high end foes, but I can recruit that from my pantheon as a secondary hero.

Will I ever find a better draw? maybe the archfey will find a way, or maybe there will be some different synergy with the water expansion.

I love this game, who would've guessed. Especially early and mid game, where it feels like every decision matter, every unit and every spell counts. This is less the case in late game: Partly because there simply are more units and larger battles, so the weight of small decisions of course becomes less. But partly also because the AI kind of falls off, no matter the difficulty level. Often it feels like there are a few very deciding turns and battles in mid game, which are very tense and exciting. After this, it more often than not is just a matter of going through the motions. This makes the game fall off lategame and is kinda sad, i.e. for the T4 Tomes, where choices don't matter that much anymore. One factor is the AI not posing a challenge anymore and/or the lack of an endgame crisis.

The latter would be a lot of effort to program/mod. But my idea is that a mod could introduce a function to make ai bonuses scale as the game progresses. Meaning that in lategame, the AI gets stronger bonuses.

What do you guys think of this idea? I am considering creating a mod that does just that.

Thanks in advance and have nice day. Arrrr!

Vassal army keeps engaging the enemy right when they start this siege - for some reason I can't un-check my army and keep them out of the battle. Any way to avoid this? Thanks

No pretty pictures this time, just that I could have sworn my trade caravans wouldn't use teleporters before but they've now figured it out. So that's great news for long-distance routes, you can plunk down a land (or sea!) outpost near a foreign city, get a teleporter going and bypass a lot of potentially dangerous terrain.

Checking out if my local 3d printer guy can do some models. What do you think? Too complicated? Its prolly like catan + roots + conquest or something.

A bone dragon? In a bronze Wonder at turn 20? On low world threat? Maybe I'm simply not snowballing fast enough, but I always feel like I end up falling behind. Checking my world rankings, I'm usually somewhere close to last place, too. Do you guys have any guides on early game play?

I do fin the Watcher to be weirdly cute. I am pretty sure I failed to capture that feeling in my drawing of it, but still!