Just... I haven't gone for that option even once since they changed it. Capturing (and keeping) golden wonders on the other side of the map (or hell, even in other rulers' domains) just isn't worth it, at that point you could just as well win a domination victory...

Why not make it so that you need X points in wonders, (say, bronze giving 1, silver 2 and gold 3 or 4), before you can cast the victory spell (alongside the 3 required buildings). The spell in turn could also reduce your incomes (mostly mana and imperium) drastically to actually make casting the spell a decision to prepare for.

I play alot of stellaris (760 hours) and am familar with civ 6, even tho i dislike civ 6 at times. (i can't say why, but AOW 4 doesn't give me the same problems i feel)

Would AOW 4 be good for me? its between this and 3 rougelikes lol.

Edit: decided to buy this! will feedback if i like it or not!

They inevitably end up declaring war on me even though the risk is set at 10%. Is there a particular method to achieve it ?

I first played the game and went through the campaigns about 5 months ago but quit when I got stuck on Grexolis. I chose Artica which was just luck because I didn't know about the frost weakness. Even with that advantage I lost pretty badly around turn 70.

I considered lowering the difficulty but wanted to preverse some pride so I gave it one more shot as Arvik the Dark from one of the DLC and again I got lucky because necromancy was the core of my strat. I combined the cheap crap stacks of skeletons with the Lingering Mists spell from the Tome of Fey Mists which allowed me to counter Turiel's spam by splitting his armies. It goes without saying that I prioritized cold and blight damage. I think this combination is pretty good for Grexolis. I couldn't produce units fast enough in my previous run nor could I deal with the sheer amount of enemy units.

Anyway, I just wanted to put this thread out there. In case anyone ever searches for help on Grexolis maybe this strat will work for them.

Edit: I couldn't upload this pic with my normal browser. Signed on to another browser and it worked. The last 30 turns were spent going after the underground dwarf that the AI allies refused to finish off.

https://preview.redd.it/6pdq0l1s0end1.jpg?width=3317&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=992bd00c34f62517509b34e1e499fc0f84708c27

Is the perfectionist artisans worth it? I just wanted to really hone in on the subjugation theme by thinking we spend our gold wastefully on extravagant architecture. But if you got a better suggestion, let me hear it. Crossbow for large target on magelock later. Spiders for group immobilize, constrictors to pull targets into gun barrages, and slavers for the razing pop gains/ free captures on runners. Lupine for meme race name.

I had an auto-resolve where I lost a unit but absolutely trounced the AI with little HP loss in a fight the AI thought I should lose by 500 strength, I decided to watch the replay to see if I could save the unit and the game crashed and when I tried to auto-resolve again the AI crushed me. I've save scummed at least 10-15 times and I get the same exact result everytime.

So what's going on here? Why did the auto-resolve change permanently to such a drastic degree?

Not trying to min-max in any way. I just like having strong lords.

Having said that, how would you rank the hero, wizard king, dragon and eldritch sovereign in terms of combat prowess/battle influence come lategame?

Hi. I have AoW4 on steam, and I'd say there is a 30% chance when I hit the end turn button my game crashes, which is infuriating.

I brought this up to their QA people on their forums and I just got a generic answer about my processor being gen 14. I don't have this problem with any other software or game that I play.

I wanted to make a last attempt in hopes of getting some advice from players who have had this and fixed it in the past, so that I can play the game again.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

I'm currently playing a game with the Chatioc Influence and Distrusting Locals traits and on turn 43 no one has declared war on each other yet, presumably because everyone is too busy fighting the Free Cities. I can't afford to go to war with anyone because I'm currently at war with three of them.

On top of that I put Rrgenerating Infestations on and right now half of the map that doesn't have a city on it has Infestations everywhere. It's more of a hassle than anything, and I get so many items for clearing them that it's kind of annoying; every time I finish forging a max rank item I have enough stuff to scrap an make another one

Both of these options need median versions. Like "Free Cities are less common" and "toned down regenerating infestations" or something. A specific option for how many Free Cities there are would be perfect.

Show me your favourite builds currently.

Why do you like it?

Is there a theme/lore behind it?

Do you too enjoy goofy molekin?

Hi, anyone else experience with the Xbox OneS version of AOW4 the start up notification that confirms you are using a controller, thats fine ok (must be some kind of fix when porting games to console?), but then, if you let your controller die at any time during gameplay in game or even in main menu or viewing pantheon, the game becomes completly unresponsive to any input on controllers after turning controller back on. only fix is to restart game go back to dashboard and exit and relaunch.

this happen to anyone elses game? (again xbox one S version) Tia.

Basically title, I'm looking for a explainer that's been made that's fairly up to date in terms of mechanics and explanations. I've played inconsistently since DLC 1, (beat it then put it back down for a few months) and it feels pretty different. I've played a bit and have made it to the dread story realm 5 (which is its own mess - currently working on grinding through that mess).

If anyone knows where I can find a straightforward and relatively up to date write-up or YouTube video that would be great!

Does anyone else get this briefly when they boot the game? The text appears briefly against a black screen between the Paradox splash screen and the main menu.

Anyone know why this is happening?

The reason why I specifically claim "Against AI" is because a few times I read on this sub that it seems a problem against AI only.

I play on PC and my friend on Xboy and we startet over 15 matches in the past month, just one again and we get sync errors in the first 2-3 turns already with some gamebreaking bugs that forces us to leave the session like being stuck in manual combat, waiting for decisions but nothing happens or the game simply not letting you end your turn.

I LOVE this game but after like 500 hours, the replayabillity for me just kinda died because it's legit impossible for me to play with friends in the casual way we would like to play.

PLEASE finally fix this already very long existing issue already. I legit want nothing more but to actually play the game with friends bit it's legit impossible.

A little context:

Age of Wonders 1 was the first game I ever personally owned. At eight years old, I had a very specific way of playing the game. I would set up a custom scenario with low-level NPC races to fight, quickly find a high-tier city, build up an elite army of tier 3 and 4 units, and then proceed to comp-stomp my way across the land until I inevitably won.

I have tried to re-create this experience in every subsequent release but never really played for more than a few hours. AOW4 finally felt like the game I was going to really sink my teeth into. I mean, the idea of building up a custom faction and shaping them over the course of a campaign is such a cool RPG element.

What follows are memories from (checks Steam activity) a little over a year ago, so bear with me.

Anyway, I fired up the tutorial and set about building up my elite unit... except I was locked to tier 1 or 2 units. In fact I couldn't find a way to produce anything over tier 3 at my cities, and it took me hours (apparently, I played the tutorial for 13.6 hours) to get summoning magic to get to higher tier units. Problem was, even once I got them, the game had scaled the tier of EVERY unit on the map up to tier 4/5. I mean, even random resource pickups would have maxed out armies of tier 4/5 units. I decided to just rush the other rulers and finish the tutorial... but I had waited so long that one of them had recruited a Roman legion worth of units and killed me.

I haven't touched the game in over a year at this point, but the progenitor of this series still ranks as one of my favorite games of all time. So, before I wrote it off entirely, I figured I should at least ask people who have actually played the game: CAN I have the experience I'm looking for, or am I being naive? I know it sounds silly, given it's a 4X game, but I don't want to have to master my resource management and rush out armies to fight enemies of superior might, only clinching victory with my masterful tactics. I want to make a bunch of giant, demon, dragon, demi-god things and lay waste to my enemies as they flee in terror only to have their cities leveled by my equally, hilariously overpowered spells.

Hello I am the designer of the Dark/Order OP Inquisitor build. I have been trying Mystic for a long time now and finally nailed down the Potential school to a build I discovered. It so happens Arcane Focus + Powerful Evokers have great synergy due to battlemages and general spells being so powerful - duh - 15% magic unit damage + 10% damage spells. I made a wizard ruler and made him melee [pike] to do lightning blades + fulmination in combat, which triggers the Overcharged trait [+2 Sundered Resistance] and [Electrified] which adds 20%+ damage to my ruler and any melee spears and also makes magic units do more dmg. This combined with the Empowered by Magic trait [Strengthened] every time they get hit by magic, makes for some hard-hitting T1 units. This is turn 1, right off the bat.

It just gets better and better from there though we need to be careful not to lock any spells [like I did with Fulmination] too early and otherwise enjoy the high dps. I was hesitant to try Potential since I was too use to Star Blades, but now I think it's going be my favorite school.

Anyone else has a different build for Potential?

Doing the pretender kings mission and on day 10, with my first Daylight Spear produced, I am now rank 1 in military strength. Like wtf is the AI even doing, can it even create units? Is my game bugged? I estimate a victory in 10-20 turns on this supposedly hard map... Last match I had the biggest empire and strongest military at turn 20 against 4 Brutal AI opponents. It seems the AI is atrocious, way worse than even in Aow3 (which had bad AI).

So any tips on how to give the AI as much of an edge as possible? What settings favor the AI? Are there any mods that boost the AI? I'm about to give up on this otherwise fantastic game because the AI seems to be barely functional.

I get this modifier with some rulers, but with others not. No explanation as to why it's there for some rulers. Has anyone figured out what this is and why you get it? I've had this with factions without any clashing affinites.

I am curious to know on which realm do you usually play? How do you choose it?

I generally pick a random realm, because I feel that knowing in advance the characteristics of the field will influence too much how I build my faction

What about you? :)

So, I was about to siege an enemy capital, but my ally beat me there by a turn. They're not using any siege projects so it's a whopping 17 turns till breach. Any way I can take over the siege and add siege projects to speed things up?

99% of my games are new factions. I played with ToM when that DLC released and in hindsight didn't make that much use of it other than using Mistlings in one game. Great in the right build for sure. But I didn't really make that great of use for the mists. and it always seemed like there was a better spell to cast.

New player here. I’m very much enjoying the game (base only, no expansions) playing mainly as barbarians with a focus on early aggression.

My question: If I am engaging in early aggression, then is taking some shadow (either trait or a starting book) worth the investment so I can access the shadow empire trait that gives the knowledge payout for defeating enemy heroes?

Research doesn’t seem to be a barbarian strength, but taking shadow will come at the expense of some of the really effective stuff that chaos and nature bring to the table (e.g. book of horde/beasts, prolific swarmers, fabled hunters, etc).

Any thoughts/insight would be greatly appreciated.

Have the devs said anything yet about the future of the game? Starting to get a little concerned… seems like a long time with no news at all about the future of the game. I say this as someone who really hopes there is a more to come!