Age of Wonders 4

It's a 4X game set in an established fantasy multiverse. The primary distinguishing feature is the sheer amount of both customization available for your factions well split between both pregame faction building and ingame faction evolution. These options are incredibly well done and provides an immense amount of variety whether you're optimzing your factions internal synergies, putting together something for thematic effect, or trying to adapt to a rivals strategy. I've heard some people try playing it more like a roleplaying game. I can see the appeal as you can set up your little fantasy kingdoms each with their own very distinct themes and put them all in the same world and then run your heroes around engaging in quests, cleansing dungeons, and otherwise focus on thematics. However, there is an issue with this approach and that is that the games victory objectives are 4X style and despite there being 4-7 of them depending on the world you created, most of them practically come down to gaining control of as much of the map as possible (whether through diplomacy or conquest) and the AIs are all playing to win in this context. As such, although you can give the AIs different personalities, you cannot rely on them to play their setting roles as they determine the most effective way to pursue the objectives. I don't consider this a huge limitation but it seemed worth mentioning.

I was rather critical of this game near release. It did not impress me at all. It had a couple of issues with the AI, which seemed unable to put up much of a challenge, and quite frankly there did not seem to be a lot of features that, as a player, I might have been interested in. But I must be completely honest: they have turned that around almost miraculously. I cannot really think of another example like it, other than No Man's Sky. Every new season has added very interesting mechanics, features, content, and things to explore and play around with. Not only that, but alongside every new DLC, aspects of the game that are considered weak or lackluster by the community are reworked and brought up to par with the rest of the game, which is excellent. We've gotten complete overhauls to the hero system, to unit experience and veterancy, and a new rework of the Empire Tree is due to arrive soon, alongside all the excellent reworks pertaining to cultures. As a result, no piece of content in the game becomes irrelevant, and everything feels fresh. Alongside all of this, there are also smaller tweaks that, while too focused to be called reworks, continue to improve and iterate upon the game's systems. Overall, playing this game feels excellent, and every new DLC feels like a treat. The developers are very proactive and passionate about the game, and it shows. I very highly recommend it.

HYUP

Ótimo

It’s a lot like Civ, but instead of Gandhi coming at you with nukes, you’ve got Saruman sacrificing a portion of his orcish population to summon a Balrog on your capital city, Frodo’s halfling horde has taken over half the map and converted it to The Shire, Gimli just cast a spell that turned his dwarven kin into half-dwarf/half-naga creatures to better control the underground rivers, and you’re just trying to spread the good word of the Eldritch Horror known as Gandalf the Maiar with your army of religious zealots who will covert or crush all nonbelievers.

I had this game since release. I never really played it much. Gave it a shot but it didn't grab me. I still kept it though. For whatever reason, I decided to play it again this past week. Keep in mind that I haven't played it past an hour since release. Now that I have a bit of time under my belt, I would dare say that this is one of the greatest 4x strategy/RPG hybrids I have played. I am playing on a mega map with 9 factions with mega cities and I am having a BLAST. If you like strategy and RPG games, you should giver this one a try. Now I want all the DLC but... YIKES.

Bot says AMD USERS ITS ALWAYS YOUR GRAPHICS DRIVER just so happens to occur every time there is a new DLC. Then you go to the forum and see bot Joddi say the same thing honestly its seems to me this is just a bug that they refuse to patch so they can rush out the dlc get people to buy it and then after enough people complain a month later they will fix it. Once again its that time of year where they release a DLC that causes all AMD users to crash followed by having to wait for the patch to fix the game, i have no mods currently running reinstalled the drivers verified the integrity of the game files and completely changed my AMD Adrenalin setup to the supposed specs required, at this point its just frustrating I love the game series but its really annoying to know that i have to wait like a month or two after almost every DLC update to be able to play again. Operating System: Windows 11 CPU Brand: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G with Radeon Graphics RAM: 63 GB Video Card: AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics Primary VRAM: 495 MB