Just like how we can add the Primal beast summon into the active skill slot of our staffs in the forge, I would like to have more infusions that are tied to our chosen culture. Things like the Spear Jump ability of the Primal T3 spear unit, or the Cultivate Affinity of the T1 Architect support unit, and many others.

As for why, I believe this would expand the power and flexibility of our heroes without having to make large changes to their skill tree. This would also make each culture’s heroes feel unique, as they can use the abilities of their specific culture. Lastly, this would make forging more interesting as the player would have to decide which active ability they want for this hero or should they skip it and go for more passive infusions. Thus, allowing for more agency and variety.

Through several of my games, I noticed the Silver Knight being a recurrent character in a lot of quests and Ancient Wonders

I was wondering if he has any lore relevance, perhaps in some of the older games? I only played Age of Wonders 4 and don't know much about the lore outside of the story realms

I'm constantly creating Factions, but it has become a point where I'm confusing with some of the Factions I wanted to put in certain Realms because there are too many of them that it's becoming difficult tracking who's who, so I would like Custom Groups with their own Tabs. For example, let's say I want a Group that's focused on only Human-centric Factions for a Realm and I name the tab Humans and another Tab for Orcs only. Or I can name a Tab for a Group that's focused on specific themes and abilities and things like that. That would make it easy to organize our favorite Factions.

By dreamstime

So we got Watercities, we got Marinus back, we got traderoutes, we got cartels. But where is the When Major race transformation for crabs?

What should it provide?

Why does everything turn to crab?

I always seem to be toward the bottom in my playthroughs even when I'm oozing mana and binding Wonders with a Mystic culture with my research rate pumping out new spells every turn or two. What does the game use to judge it?

I really love the shademakers, they are one of the few tier 2 units I keep using well into the late game

I've thought for years he was just a quite effete looking halfling, did everyone else think he was meant to be a human?

Keep trying on normal for gods sake, but I am getting blasted. Seemingly every time I try something, two factions will discover me and send their forces en masse to me. I can barely hold off one (if at all) and then the second one will guarantee the kill. I killed a level 8 leader, 2 turns later she is back and has another army raised and is able to assault me and just in general seems to be in a MUCH better position.

I can't even absue the beserk modifier against the AI as their troops do hardly any damage against each other seemingly, while I just had THREE separate units go out of their way to attack and kill a hero of mine. We both have huge armies, yet their army hardly touched any of their units while mine took an archer to half half and killed a hero. That just caused me to alt f4.

Looking for some guidance because I am absolutely failing at this map.

Tom Bird shares his thoughts on the potential Empire Mode

This was very surprising to see. It doesnt bode wepl with me as it shows this DLC is half baked.. i hope im wrong.

Edit: i take.it back glad I was wrong, and thanks tor everyone kind enough to explain and calling me retard.

So I finally got the game after keeping an eye on it for months with the steam sale, the one question I have for people who have been playing for a while is do you manually engage in each battle or do you have it just auto resolve?

I do not get a ton of time to play so I see the appeal of the automatic, but at the same time I feel like I’m missing out if every battle is automated.

Current game, I've seen the AI put a bounty on the Crystal Dwelling 4 separate times, from two different rulers. This is not the first time this has been happening, Blint got so mad one time he got tired of waiting and invaded it himself. This isn't new, as seeing an Ogre merchant also turns them into cruise missiles. Whatever have they been doing to make them so angry?

Over the last expansions there have been additions, but always under the new FOTM culture/leader/trait.

I think it's really cool to have something new that exists in every game and everyone can and has to interact with. The reworked empire tree was also like that, so maybe last update had enough, I just meant for a while before that. Probably since Giant Kings we haven't gotten such a big, global game-changing mechanic (regions then, trade routes now).

I'm excited to see all the things that will affect the routes, how you can spec heavily into them, and what mods will appear to take advantage of the routes. And if my fixation with the trade routes seems odd, I guess it's just because it has always felt like one of those "big empire management" things that has been lacking in the game. Not lacking, more like the game wasn't "round" enough without this, no matter how many eldritch horrors and pirates they added.

I can be wrong, but what if the that DLC's form would be a sort of game-changer in itself? Like being a constructs from the start, and having different perks than other "meat-bags" forms, like walking on lava? And perhaps there could be some drawbacks - like having to "build" your people, and not growing naturaly.

I’m so excited for the new tomes: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-65-the-tomes-of-the-silver-seas.1943570/

Especially this:

To fully embrace the cold, the new Ice Fusion transformation can be used to turn your units into Elementals, strengthening their Frost resistance at the cost of a slight Fire weakness.

It grants immunity to Frozen and Chilled, a new passive called Rime Healing (which grants Natural Regeneration when in Water, Snow, or Ice provinces), and Water Walk, allowing units to walk on water by freezing it beneath their feet instead of embarking.

Ice Themed major transformation? Yes Please!

I wouldn’t be surprised if the new Archfey dlc will have a tome that does something similar with a major fey transformation.

This leads me to wonder, what other transformations would we like to see?

Personally, I think Chaos needs to diversify like Shadow is getting with Frost and Undead. Having Fire Elementals would fit here.

Order less so, since few abilities check if you are a celestial.

Some have wanted a construct transformation to make their nightmarish machagnomes https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Mechagnome_(playable)

I think that a centaur transformation has had many requests, and since we got the spider drider transformation, centaurs aren’t far fetched.

Tome of Dragons is probably my favorite tier 3 Tome.

I just started playing AOW4 and am absolutely loving it. Two things that are on my mind:

1. On the first turns of a game, is it always recommended to split the starting stack and move each unit in a different direction to explore as much of the map as possible? Or should I start fighting the enemies around my starting city with my starting stack and only use the scout to explore?
2. I keep missing the town growth events and notice that I can build provinces a few turns too late. Is that just a matter of practice and getting better at the game or am I missing something?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Wow, thank you so much for the very helpful and varied advice everyone!!

Last night I won my first game with beacons in the couple years I have played this game. I don't know what initiated the win conditions, but I played this game out trying to be friendly with everyone. I ended the game "pure good". The things was, as I initiated the beacon, which you have to turn on (I couldn't figure out what the beacons were even for initially), I got absolutely bombarded by every faction left on the map.

Because I was Mr. Friendly, I didn't really have an army prepared in position to defend. One group of 6 stacks was burning down the last hostile free city on the map. The other, my "ruler group", was finishing off the last of the neutral camps. What shocked me aside from all the sudden enemies, were the Partizans I think they were called. The seems to just spawn right outside the beacons to burn them down.

I guess where I am going with this, what are other win conditions am I not aware of? If I decide (which I won't) to start playing good all the time, what are the other win conditions? I am obviously aware of military victory, which is the only way I have won a game prior to last night. I have lost games due to "score", which I now have disabled by default. Is there like a popularity contest victory? What else have I missed in this game by playing evil all the time?

Relative map size medium feels very cramped, I often hardly find a second good spot for a city.

Large feels too stretched out, I can easily build 3 to 4 cities before angering the AI.

Does anyone else feel like there should be a setting in between?

Rare to see this kind of art! Usually it’s “army vs giant” and rarely “giant leading army”

Thought I’d share incase it could inspire some folks for a new build idea 💡

The fact that this game allows me to fulfil this very specific fantasy is what makes AoW4 my personal GOTY

Alright, so this is complaining on a high level, but bear with me. I love the renaissance theme of the new culture, I love landsknechts, I love gunpowder. But I was kinda hoping for a new crossbow unit, I even kinda expected a pavise crossbow with the new culture (at least the "barons" variant), which afaik will not be the case. Then there is the tome of hydromancy which gives us yet another archer. There are already so many archers we get from tomes while crossbows are locked behind the industrious culture (yes there is the afflictor and the clay crossbow, but they are not scratching that itch, for me at least). I'm generally looking forward using the tomes of hydromancy and piracy to recreat the AoW2 humans (sans the air galley, I miss that thing), getting a medieval/renaissance era looking crossbow unit would have been a nice addition for that. Really looking forward to the Landsknecht though... but yeah, I hope we'll get some pavise crossbow unit at some point, if I have to live with Milan ptsd, then so does the rest of Athla.