Age of Wonders 4

It makes me sad, but... I cannot recommend this game. 👎😔 Yeah yeah I know, I've played it for 500 hours. Actually it's much more than that (offline). So - here's why I did. You really can "create the empire of your wildest fantasies"! There are so many possibilities. If you have a favorite fantasy trope, or even a really weird OC, you can probably make it in this game. I've made shadowy spymaster dragons, deadly Nightmare-riding mongols, lush giantesses that love rivers and salad, bite-sized pike-and-shot dog people, cannibalistic tiger men, etc etc etc. Your identity is backed up by the mechanics, and it makes your characters feel real. The game's huge surface area and interconnected systems mean there are tons and tons of tricks and strategies to discover. It's genuinely exciting to read through the encyclopedia and realize some amazing new scheme. I love my action figures and I love making them 🤩🐲🦄 ...But despite that, it's a thumbs down. Here is my enormous just-barely-organized-list of reasons why. First off, the issue closest to my heart. THERE IS NO EMPIRE MODE. That alone has soured me on this game from the beginning. For those new to the series, Empire Mode essentially allowed you to have a cool personalized campaign with meta progress. Now it's gone! I get to make all theses amazing custom dudes, then I can't even take them on a campaign?? All I can do is drive them through one mission at a time and grind my stupid boring pantheon points??? Lame lame lame lame LAME. While I do play to win, personally? I could not give less of a crap about the winning itself. Ever finished a game of Civilization and felt sad that your journey was over? I don't want it to end! I wanna tell EPIC FANTASY STORIES across SPACE AND TIME and watch my guys become AMAAAZING!!! 😭 A match should be an episode in an entire anime series about my guy, not a frikkin one-shot c**ktease!! (Oh btw, if you hate pantheon points too, there's a cheat engine table that will give you as many as you want. Search it up and be free!) Quality control is extremely poor. Updates - even *paid DLCs* - often contain content that, out of the gate, simply does not function. I don't just mean stuff is bugged - I mean straight up, the feature does nothing or isn't even there. Most updates also break large swathes of old content, sometimes in baffling ways. Fixes take a long time to come if they come at all, and if you report something you'll often be told it's "working as intended" - even if that is a patently ridiculous idea. Most recently Triumph stated to bug reporters that it is not a bug that underground societies forget how to live underground when absorbed 😵‍💫️ I've completely given up on playing multiplayer, as fully half of my attempts have resulted in save-destroying desyncs. Overall, I get the impression that testing isn't a major priority, or if it is they ain't very good at it. They definitely prioritize making new paid content over maintaining what they've already sold you. Baroque DLCs and new features come through (partially broken) while enormous swathes of the game lie fallow or broken. My heart goes out to the Industrial and High cultures, which have scarcely seen an update *since the game released*. Big Total Warhammer energy. Oh, and those OCs you can make? Updates will totally break those too. Sometimes they become completely unplayable. Updates can wipe out your entire super-grindy pantheon upgrade tree, too. Models often are ugly, have ugly animations, clip for no reason (like the Simians, whose idle tail animation clips right through their legs), are hideously kit bashed together from old assets, or simply recolored WoW-style. Even though costumes are supposed to be modular, a great deal of them simply do not work together - I swear at least half of all outfits are completely broken for the poor neglected mole people. When the developers want to put a human-shaped helmet on a wolf or goat man, they don't worry about respecting your aesthetic - they just cut off his entire nose and call it a day. Got weird legs? Say goodbye to the bottom half of your outfit. Pants and shoes are for humies only. There are a substantial number of completely unrecolorable costume pieces too. Many of the unit transformations and enchantments just look straight up bad, like Draconian (turn snot green and gain rotting wings) Gaia (piles of sticks pop out of random body parts and clip through your clothes), Rock (same deal but with giant ugly boulders!), and Goldskin (makes your skin gold, but only like, 40% of it, and it's so patchy that it looks like a disease). At least you can turn them off now. Y'know. Since the players asked to be able to. Since everything is so ugly. (OK NOT ACTUALLY EVERYTHING BUT I'M MAD ALRIGHT?) It's a strategy game so I don't have to tell you that the AI opponents are terrible. Standard stuff: they're stupid, they're passive, they cheat, etc. If you want to fight players instead, well, like most PvP, it's probably going to be sexless and miserable. From what I've heard fights come down to speed contests as one side tries to be the first to one-shot the other. AND you'll desync. The tactical battles are fairly compelling but like many other grand strategy games, the autocalc will constantly kill your dudes, forcing you to manual tons of easy, boring fights until the tactics lose their savor. And as usual, the AI's goal in said fight is not actually to win or do anything that benefits them, but to hurt the player as much as possible. Developing your cities involves following a thoroughly boring and obvious algorithm where buildings, perversely, have lower and lower ROI per tier, so you should build just about every ♥♥♥♥♥♥ building before anything actually cool. A large number of special province improvements are just bad, so you don't have to worry about those. Information is often poor, with tooltips being ambiguous, absent, wrong, or simply missing important information like WHAT AN ABILITY ACTUALLY DOES. Oh, and if you saw they existed and were hoping to do Civilization-style peaceful victory types? Sorry. They suck. Hard. Not only do they take forever, they force you to play King of the Hill against the entire map at once, meaning you actually have to have a stronger military and FIGHT MORE than if you had simply conquered everything like a basic Gilgamesh b****. Overall, I want to love this game. It's a fancy game. I want to smoke this fkin game 🚬😮‍💨 but bro. I just can't do it. This game sucks. Sure, I'll probably keep playing it anyway, on and off - but it'll never be what I want it to be, and I wouldn't have spent over $200 to have this experience if I knew what I did now. 😞 The End 😞

I thought i purchased everything to date in the bundle i clicked on (120 AUD including the season pass) only to open the game to find out that there is an expansion pass 3 apparently....... for another 30 AUD.......... scummy business practice.... very scummy. Edit: not 30... the bundle I purchased for over 100 dollars only included pass 1... not 2 and apparently a 3rd.... 70 AUD each... buyer beware.

They changed their privacy policy. You cannot play the game unless you consent to them using your private data for targeted advertisement.

This is the best game that I don't play. I bought the game on launch, with all the passes, because I thought I'd no-life this game for the rest of the year, in '23. Sadly... I covet happiness via [i]beginning[/i] new games, and seldom ever play them enough to make a Twitch streamer blush. I always [i]WANT[/i] to buy all the DLC's, and I always [i]WANT[/i] to get really invested in this game. I don't even know all the updates and QoL improvements that have happened over the years. All I know is that this game deserves more love. [b][u]However[/u][/b] ☝️, I think the DLC monetization strategy of Paradox Interactive is [b]extremely hostile[/b]. Again... [h3]The monetization strategy of Paradox Interactive, across [u]ALL[/u] of their games, is [b]hostile[/b].[/h3] I own the first pass, and for me to scoop all the rest of the content available, today... it's $185 + tax. [spoiler]GTFOH![/spoiler] This company is [b]ALLOWED[/b] to get away with this nonsense with every single game they make. I will admit that the DLC for AoW4 looks to be the most compelling, compared to Across the Obelisk's trashy DLC, or the Prison Architect's nonsense they've pulled. I don't even play Europa Universalis games because of the DLC strategy of Paradox Interactive. Anyway... just because there's too much DLC, and it's [b]wayyyy overpriced[/b] I do not even recommend the game. I know that's unfair to Triumph Studios, but they signed the deal with Paradox to pump DLC until they've milked every last dollar out of their fans. So, I guess it's actually very fair. They knew what they were signing up for. This game [i]could[/i] be the 4x/strategy version of Baldur's Gate 3, IMHO. This game could be THE premier 4x game of all time, even, but it'll forever be marred by a paywall, complete with a mural of the Paradox Interactive CEO giving all of us the middle-finger.

Fun game with great replayability with the different culture/tome/leader combinations. but the multiplayer is a mess with frequent desyncs and it doesn't seem like the developers are trying to fix that at all.

For a Niche game series, Paradox loves to push DLC creep with prices well into what you can entire games for, with 100x the content. We're talking 20 dollars for a single new mechanic, reskinned outfits that are already available for unique NPCs in the base game, and a handful of "new" story chains. The fact that DLCs for this game that are nearly 2-3 months old, aren't going on sale AT ALL, says that Paradox sees this title as a "passive" income that they'll eventually see returns on in the near future. Paradox really knowns how to snuff out fun games.

别买，过一回合闪退一回合，4090+13900k+16*2芝奇皇家戟+ssd一直闪退，没招了

Сама игра довольно таки хороша, была таковой до не давнего времени. До того как разрабы начали подражать Симс, с его целой кучей платных ДЛС с прайсом как за саму игру. Так и ладно бы ДЛС были бы объемными, но нет, всунут одну расу, или парочку книг заклинаний и дерут за это как за полноценную игру. ПВП режим страдает от баланса, точнее его отсутствием, и по итогу задумка в разнообразие билдостроения своего народа превращается в одну-две рабочие. Так что по сути увлекает только одиночная игра, но как по мне, можно под 16 тысяч потратить и на что-то более интересное. Ну, или пойти на всем известные сайты.

Я играю в Age of Wonders 4 с 2023 года и наиграл уже около 170 часов. За это время я успел по-настоящему полюбить игру: мне нравится создавать свои расы, придумывать им историю, собирать разные комбинации томов и наблюдать, как фракция меняется по ходу партии. Поэтому мне особенно неприятно писать отрицательный отзыв, но последняя игра с друзьями меня окончательно разочаровала. Мы играли против двух ботов на очень высокой сложности и ещё четырёх на высокой. Два самых сильных бота по характеру должны были быть завоевателями, но за всю игру оба практически ничего не сделали. Первый играл за кочевников. Он просто ушёл в горы в центре карты, обосновался там и просидел почти всю партию. За всё это время он даже никому не объявил войну. Второй был демоническим военачальником. Он объявил войну соседнему боту только тогда, когда на того уже напал мой друг, но даже после этого ничего не захватил. Четыре бота на высокой сложности тоже почти не расширялись и не вели нормальных войн. Один из них всё-таки объявил войну моему другу, дошёл до его столицы и начал осаду. Я уже подумал, что наконец-то ИИ решил действовать. Но он проиграл сражение у столицы, после чего вся его активность закончилась. Больше он ничего серьёзного не предпринял. Я и раньше замечал, что боты в AoW4 ведут себя довольно глупо. Даже на очень высокой сложности ИИ обычно представляет угрозу не потому, что хорошо планирует, а потому, что получает огромные экономические преимущества. Но в этой партии особенно сильно чувствовалось, что у него вообще нет какой-то общей стратегии. Боты могут ругаться, кидать оскорбления, объявлять войны и изображать великих завоевателей в дипломатическом окне, но на самой карте они часто просто сидят на месте. Под конец я построил Маяки единства. Все оставшиеся боты сразу объявили мне войну, но за всё время на меня нормально напали только два раза. Сила их армий не превышала примерно 6000. Никто не попытался собрать действительно крупное войско, объединиться с другими ботами, захватить маяки или хоть как-то остановить мою победу. В итоге получилось не противостояние государств, героев, армий, а обычный покрас карты. Я развивался, захватывал территории и шёл к победе, а боты в основном просто существовали где-то на карте. Повышенная сложность даёт им больше ресурсов, но не добавляет ума, агрессии или способности доводить войны до конца. Но больше всего нашу партию испортили технические проблемы. Рассинхронизации происходили буквально каждые 2–3 хода. Два раза игра вообще откатывалась назад на 3–5 ходов, причём как-то криво: часть наших действий отменялась, а часть оставалась. После такого уже не понимаешь, в каком состоянии находится партия. Буквально один из таких откатов воскресил бота которого мой друг отправил в бездну и захватил тронный город пару ходов назад, а у моего друга половина армии которая подходила брать штурмом тронный город бота просто исчезла. Я играю с 2023 года и не помню, чтобы раньше рассинхронизации происходили настолько часто. Возможно, в этот раз проблема была на нашей стороне. Но не исключено, что после выхода большого количества обновлений и DLC игра стала менее стабильной. Точно утверждать не могу, но раньше мультиплеер у меня работал заметно лучше. Мне действительно обидно ставить игре отрицательную оценку после 170 часов. У меня была к ней определенная любовь, и я до сих пор считаю, что в AoW4 отличный конструктор фракций и интересные тактические сражения. Но последняя партия показала, насколько слабыми остаются стратегический ИИ и техническая часть мультиплеера. Если вам нужна песочница для создания необычных фракций, игра всё ещё может понравиться. Но если вы хотите играть с друзьями против ботов, которые будут воевать, захватывать города и действительно пытаться победить, то я не могу её рекомендовать.