Only One Transformation Allowed?

[GrandMajora]

Okay, so now I'm curious about these racial transformations. According to the devs, these transformations are permanent and irreversible. So I find myself wondering if these transformation spells apply to units individually, or if they affect your entire empire all at once?

Because from the looks of what we saw in videos and screen shots, it looked like the entire faction had been converted to Frostlings, Angels and Demons. Which would imply that we don't have the freedom to mix and match different evolution paths.

On one hand, I can kind of see the wisdom in that. As it would get both tedious and costly having to recast the transformation spell for every new unit you produce. But on the other hand, this wold also mean that you have to be very careful about which evolution path you wish to commit yourself to.

[zeshoot]

And that's a good thing imo. Looks like they are following AoW1 formula where Your conquered Gobbos town will rebel if You're one of 'good alignment' race. It was only a tiny part of AoW3 (revenans vs good/pure good, dragons vs evil) when Your units actually abandon You if the agenda doesn't match.
Having pure good/evil units in the same stack ain't actually a thing in most (all?) fantasy lores? Not to mention it breaks immersion (for me at least).

[Central]

i am not certain how it is handled, right now the "evidence" we have is pretty inconclusive.

at 35:01 of the gameplay reveal we see a unit on the left side of the screen which does not appear to have ice on his shoulders, although his body does look like it is made of ice.
the third unit in the stack at 36:05 also doesn't show obvious ice on his unit card, unlike the first two units.
so, it could be that those units i mentioned are transformed but that the transformation is less obvious, it could also be that we have to transform units manually.

[GrandMajora]

Speaking of racial transformations, I'm also curious as to whether or not certain cultures will impact the difficulty of unlocking them.

The developers said we have the ability to 'uplift' our faction from what it is at the start. So does that mean that even if I start out with Higher culture, I can still end up becoming Undead, or Demons?

Because if so, that would be both amusing from an out of game perspective, as well as awkward from an in game one.

I mean, who do you pray to, once you start seeing an army of demons unleashing holy wrath upon your city?

[Central]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Speaking of racial transformations, I'm also curious as to whether or not certain cultures will impact the difficulty of unlocking them.

The developers said we have the ability to 'uplift' our faction from what it is at the start. So does that mean that even if I start out with Higher culture, I can still end up becoming Undead, or Demons?

Because if so, that would be both amusing from an out of game perspective, as well as awkward from an in game one.

I mean, who do you pray to, once you start seeing an army of demons unleashing holy wrath upon your city?

dont see why it would impact it, there are plenty of examples of dark fantasy races which started out as some highly cultured "good" faction and than turned to darkness.
in fact most good fantasy writing has some background of dark races, some of which used to be highly cultured races.

a few reasons for a high culture turning to darkness :
-a tool of self preservation, joining darkness rather than being destroyed, this answered your question of who do you pray to? you pray to the darkness to show mercy and give you the same power that has nearly destroyed you.
-being so arrogant in their superiority complex that they treat "lesser" races in a terrible way, not seeing how darkness slowly corrupts them.
- hunger for power to preserve their superiority over other races makes them embrace powers which they do not fully understand, slowly being corrupted.

[Heron]

I wonder if we can mix transformations. Undead Frostling Toads with angelic wings charging gloriously into battle on their trusty unicorn mounts, that kind of thing.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Central:

dont see why it would impact it,

I ask, because the Undead have a weakness to spirit damage and spells, which is something which the Higher culture seems to specialize in.

Or I could be misreading the situation, and their spirit affinity might have stemmed from the tomes the developers chose to go with.

[Dark3nedDragon]

Originally posted by Central:

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Speaking of racial transformations, I'm also curious as to whether or not certain cultures will impact the difficulty of unlocking them.

The developers said we have the ability to 'uplift' our faction from what it is at the start. So does that mean that even if I start out with Higher culture, I can still end up becoming Undead, or Demons?

Because if so, that would be both amusing from an out of game perspective, as well as awkward from an in game one.

I mean, who do you pray to, once you start seeing an army of demons unleashing holy wrath upon your city?

dont see why it would impact it, there are plenty of examples of dark fantasy races which started out as some highly cultured "good" faction and than turned to darkness.
in fact most good fantasy writing has some background of dark races, some of which used to be highly cultured races.

a few reasons for a high culture turning to darkness :
-a tool of self preservation, joining darkness rather than being destroyed, this answered your question of who do you pray to? you pray to the darkness to show mercy and give you the same power that has nearly destroyed you.
-being so arrogant in their superiority complex that they treat "lesser" races in a terrible way, not seeing how darkness slowly corrupts them.
- hunger for power to preserve their superiority over other races makes them embrace powers which they do not fully understand, slowly being corrupted.

Given that Good alignment was separately defined from Order, I think the affinities and transformations will most likely be separate from actual Good vs Evil dichotomy.

I think other factions will probably dislike or distrust you based on your affinities in relation to their own, with a much heavier weight being the alignment of your faction. How would you quantify a Frostling Faction as Good or Evil specifically in their nature? A Good Frostling and Good Order would get along, and I imagine an Evil Order and an Evil Nature would. I wouldn't be surprised though if certain affinities were completely opposed, like Order and Chaos, even if they aren't of opposite alignments.

[Central]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Central:

dont see why it would impact it,

I ask, because the Undead have a weakness to spirit damage and spells, which is something which the Higher culture seems to specialize in.

Or I could be misreading the situation, and their spirit affinity might have stemmed from the tomes the developers chose to go with.

i actually missed that, you are right, from what we can see in the showcase there are traits associated with cultures and the high culture seems to do spirit damage.

at 6:04 of the gameplay showcase we can briefly see high culture highlighted , it shows that the awakened trait is part of that culture. to be specifically it says:
"Units are strengthened with Awakened, revealing their hidden potential"
in the second dev diary [www.paradoxinteractive.com] they say:
"High Culture’s defining feature is that their units can become “Awakened”, allowing them to channel Spirit Damage through their physical attacks!"
so in that dev diary they are explaining the power of awakened and once more confirming that it is a high culture power.

that could potentially complicate things a little bit, but it does not necessarily mean that it would hinder their development into those areas, at least not when you look at a lore explanation. in fact it might even boost their development when it comes to lore.

for example, if undead are weak against such powers than they will without doubt come across its strength against the undead in their studies of the powers they possess, their research into the subject would expose them to the powers of the undead more than other races would be exposed.
anything that holds power will fascinate at least a handful of people, if the right people are fascinated by what they see it could very well shape the future of their people.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Satan:

Given that Good alignment was separately defined from Order, I think the affinities and transformations will most likely be separate from actual Good vs Evil dichotomy.

Yeah, it seems like there are multiple ways to play Order. You can either go the diplomatic pacifist route, or the imperial expansionist route.

One of their unique troops is even called the Tyrant Knight.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Central:

i actually missed that, you are right, from what we can see in the showcase there are traits associated with cultures and the high culture seems to do spirit damage.

Another reason why I had to be concerned, was because in AoW 3, the Necromancer class can't take Life magic specialization at all. Apparently, healing magic doesn't work properly on the undead or something. So if the same holds true in AoW 4, then going Higher culture and turning everybody undead would have pretty significant drawbacks on your culture related units and specialties.

[Central]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Another reason why I had to be concerned, was because in AoW 3, the Necromancer class can't take Life magic specialization at all. Apparently, healing magic doesn't work properly on the undead or something. So if the same holds true in AoW 4, then going Higher culture and turning everybody undead would have pretty significant drawbacks on your culture related units and specialties.

in AoW3 you could still pick an arch druid elf, elves being weak to blight while the arch druid still had access to shamans which had poison bolts
so having a weakness to something did not rule out a race's ability to create units with said powers completely.

i guess we will have to wait and see where they take this, it could go either way.
with their focus on customization i would not be surprised if they would allow it, but we have already seen a few mutually exclusive things in the gameplay reveal to.

Edit: as you can see in the post under this one which quoted my original post i first mentioned that there has been no mention of cultural units so far, this is wrong.
they where mentioned in Dev Diary 2 [www.paradoxinteractive.com]
"If you’re more interested in using your Culture’s own support units, then the Staves of Mending enchantment will grant them extra healing powers, as well as making them cheaper to support."

[zeshoot]

Originally posted by Central:

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Another reason why I had to be concerned, was because in AoW 3, the Necromancer class can't take Life magic specialization at all. Apparently, healing magic doesn't work properly on the undead or something. So if the same holds true in AoW 4, then going Higher culture and turning everybody undead would have pretty significant drawbacks on your culture related units and specialties.

there is no mention of any culture specific units what so ever though. only starting units.
in the def diary it is even mentioned that:
"High Culture’s defining feature is that their units can become “Awakened”, allowing them to channel Spirit Damage through their physical attacks!"
no mention of any cultural specific units what so ever.

in AoW3 you could still pick an arch druid elf, elves being weak to blight while the arch druid still had access to shamans which had poison bolts
so having a weakness to something did not rule out a race's ability to create units with said powers completely.

i guess we will have to wait and see where they take this, it could go either way.
with their focus on customization i would not be surprised if they would allow it, but we have already seen a few mutually exclusive things in the gameplay reveal to.

If You can take high culture, being pure good alignment and then make it pure evil without issue then AoW4 would be most dumb fantasy lore ever. This should exclude You from taking total opposite path, like in AoW1-2. Archonts was kinda pure good culture in previous AoW, transformerd into pure evil, which completely f them up. But logically changed their stats, elements and alignment. I hope they hard lock any stupid combinations.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by zeshoot:

If You can take high culture, being pure good alignment and then make it pure evil without issue then AoW4 would be most dumb fantasy lore ever. This should exclude You from taking total opposite path, like in AoW1-2. Archonts was kinda pure good culture in previous AoW, transformerd into pure evil, which completely f them up. But logically changed their stats, elements and alignment. I hope they hard lock any stupid combinations.

High Culture isn't about being good, it's about enforcing order. Once again, one of the units they showcased in their dev diary is called the Tyrant Knight.

When picking your culture traits, they even have an Imperialist trait, which according to the in game description, says that it focuses more on expanding the glory of their empire.

From their dev diary regarding affinities:

"Of course, Order isn’t always about being nice to people! The Imperialists trait represents Order as a force of political and economic domination. It grants a bonus to Imperium income, which is vital for building an empire with many cities, as well as buying skills from the Empire Tree."

[Central]

there will be some exclusion based of culture, but i am not certain how far they will take this.

in the gameplay reveal they pick barbarian, the scions of evil, powerful evokers and runesmiths society traits are grayed out in the list. when they hover over scions of evil and powerful evokers we see that this is due to them picking the barbarians culture.

that being said, there is a mention in dev diary 2 which does kind of make me wonder if it would not be possible to transform into undead as a high culture:
"This means that, once we’ve done enough research into our starting tome, we could pick a Shadow Tome, such as the Tome of Souls to add a religious death cult feel to our faction. This would give us 2 points of shadow affinity that would allow us to get skill such as this:"
this is while they picked the high culture.

Enter for a round of speculation:
earlier in the dev diary they already mention that they picked high culture, in the thing i quoted they mention a death cult, i am not entirely certain how you would make a death cult without going undead transformation. so this does seem like a point in favor of being high culture and still going undead.
please not that while they mention a death cult they do not mention undead transformation, this is just speculation on my part

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Central:

"This means that, once we’ve done enough research into our starting tome, we could pick a Shadow Tome, such as the Tome of Souls to add a religious death cult feel to our faction. This would give us 2 points of shadow affinity that would allow us to get skill such as this:"
this is while they picked the high culture.

Yeah, the cultures seem to give you a bonus to 1 or 2 of the affinities. Barbarians, for example, give you a +1 to both Chaos and Nature affinities at the start.

Feudalism gives you +1 to Order and Nature, making it a contrast to Barbarians.

High culture gives you +2 to Order

Dark gives you +2 Shadow affinity.

Industrious gives you +2 Materium affinity

I don't know what affinity the icon for Mystic is called, but it also gives you +2 in it.