Need creative minds on new challenge ideas... (for streaming)

[BoinBoin]

As the title says, I'm running out of ideas on putting more challenges on my AoW4 stream to make it more entertaining. Any creative suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

Ever since the release of the game I been live streaming AoW4 and adding more and harder challenge to keep the stream entertaining and I hit a wall when I finished my last run...
It was one city challenge on brutal difficulty but I can only use scout/hero and starting units. No global summons, vine spells, alliance victory, spider body trait. If i get additional units from pickup/event I must disband them. (realm is 7 empires in default speed)

Since the run was a success (my homie and I didn't think it was possible at first...) the only way I think I can spice it up is by adding presence trait on the realm to make 1 of the empire stronger (like the one with "Pretender Kings") but after that I am out of brain juice until DLC release.

Any ideas and suggestions are welcome... this game is hella addicting and I want to keep streaming it.

[sandman25dcsss]

Have you considered special realm traits which give blindness, immortality, freeze, regenerating infestations, hostile free cities etc.?

[Aunty Herbert]

To me the good ole minmax philosophy still delivers a ton of challenges. Sure, you can get a magic victory eventually, but what is the mathematically possible least amount of turns to do it? How about an expansion victory? A military victory?
After that, identify the most important crutches and see how well you can do without. Expansion victory, but without Adept Settlers? How quickly can it be done with a different set up?

If that works well for your streaming depends a bit on your mindset. There is probably a very limited range of seemingly impossible tasks for yourself, that you can gloriously overcome.

But if you really get into that speedrunning/optimizing/finetuning/engineering attitude, you are provided with an infinite set of new tasks: I beat the game this way in x turns. Is it possible to do in x-1 turns?
If that sounds boring to you, then it will likely not be very helpful for your streaming, as people usually mainly watch your stuff to see you enjoy what you are doing.
But if you give it a try, you might find yourself holding the true Holy Grail of nerding out about bycantine aspects of obscure hobbies,.... and that is what we are all truely here for, ain't we?

A different but related idea is to identify the really broken underpowered parts of the game, and test around if you can somehow create a situation, where they are actually useful. For example, I think Fast Initiative must be the worst mind trait in the game, other than selecting a terrain adaption for a terrain, that can't be on the given map you chose.
Can you come up with a build, that makes Fast Initiative actually look good?

[Dynamo Rex (mrrexplorer)]

Originally posted by BoinBoin:

As the title says, I'm running out of ideas on putting more challenges on my AoW4 stream to make it more entertaining. Any creative suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

Ever since the release of the game I been live streaming AoW4 and adding more and harder challenge to keep the stream entertaining and I hit a wall when I finished my last run...
It was one city challenge on brutal difficulty but I can only use scout/hero and starting units. No global summons, vine spells, alliance victory, spider body trait. If i get additional units from pickup/event I must disband them. (realm is 7 empires in default speed)

Since the run was a success (my homie and I didn't think it was possible at first...) the only way I think I can spice it up is by adding presence trait on the realm to make 1 of the empire stronger (like the one with "Pretender Kings") but after that I am out of brain juice until DLC release.

Any ideas and suggestions are welcome... this game is hella addicting and I want to keep streaming it.

play pvp

[BoinBoin]

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

Have you considered special realm traits which give blindness, immortality, freeze, regenerating infestations, hostile free cities etc.?

hrm... I think i'll need to look through those hostile ream traits a lil more, cheers man

Originally posted by Aunty Herbert:

To me the good ole minmax philosophy still delivers a ton of challenges. Sure, you can get a magic victory eventually, but what is the mathematically possible least amount of turns to do it? How about an expansion victory? A military victory?
After that, identify the most important crutches and see how well you can do without. Expansion victory, but without Adept Settlers? How quickly can it be done with a different set up?

If that works well for your streaming depends a bit on your mindset. There is probably a very limited range of seemingly impossible tasks for yourself, that you can gloriously overcome.

But if you really get into that speedrunning/optimizing/finetuning/engineering attitude, you are provided with an infinite set of new tasks: I beat the game this way in x turns. Is it possible to do in x-1 turns?
If that sounds boring to you, then it will likely not be very helpful for your streaming, as people usually mainly watch your stuff to see you enjoy what you are doing.
But if you give it a try, you might find yourself holding the true Holy Grail of nerding out about bycantine aspects of obscure hobbies,.... and that is what we are all truely here for, ain't we?

A different but related idea is to identify the really broken underpowered parts of the game, and test around if you can somehow create a situation, where they are actually useful. For example, I think Fast Initiative must be the worst mind trait in the game, other than selecting a terrain adaption for a terrain, that can't be on the given map you chose.
Can you come up with a build, that makes Fast Initiative actually look good?

Well I mainly stream the game with one city challenge because I spend too much time on city management so I'm only able to do military victory.
But I think i'll try the "speed run" mindset in the future!

[BoinBoin]

Originally posted by Dynamo Rex (mrrexplorer):

Originally posted by BoinBoin:

As the title says, I'm running out of ideas on putting more challenges on my AoW4 stream to make it more entertaining. Any creative suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

Ever since the release of the game I been live streaming AoW4 and adding more and harder challenge to keep the stream entertaining and I hit a wall when I finished my last run...
It was one city challenge on brutal difficulty but I can only use scout/hero and starting units. No global summons, vine spells, alliance victory, spider body trait. If i get additional units from pickup/event I must disband them. (realm is 7 empires in default speed)

Since the run was a success (my homie and I didn't think it was possible at first...) the only way I think I can spice it up is by adding presence trait on the realm to make 1 of the empire stronger (like the one with "Pretender Kings") but after that I am out of brain juice until DLC release.

Any ideas and suggestions are welcome... this game is hella addicting and I want to keep streaming it.

play pvp

Sorry mate, I never do pvp in 4x, just not my cup of tea. Cheers for the invite though I might change my mind in the future.

[hilfazer]

Play on Relaxed difficulty and put that information in stream's title.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Feudal empire challange:
Rules:
You can only have your rulers army.
You can only have your capital.
Everything must be vassalized.
You can only get replacement troops for your ruler army via ledge of lieges(the vassal army reqruit thing)
To make it extra challanging you must convince every ai to become your vassal.

Kingmaker challange:
Have 1 ai win the game via militery conquest.
You are not allowed to wage offendsive wars.
Defending what you have is ok but you arent allowed to destroy the ai's enemies.
You must get them to destroy eachother until only one remains.

Adventure mode challange.
You need to get 6 heroes(5+leader), have your capital destroyed.
Then use only your 6 man hero party to destroy or vassalize the other factions.
You can only use the hero party.
Resurection on death shoud be off(Unless you use an ingame spell)

Force of nature challange:
You gotta play chosen destroyers and be at war with everyone the moment you meet them.

Stageplay challange:
You got to recreate the story of age of wonders 1, 2, 3 in 4.

I have a death wish challange:
Make costum realm:
Geograpthy trait: doesnt mater.
Clime trait: forming realm
Inhabitants trait: Dragon territories.
Presence trait: Archon prohet.
Misc trait: City states.
Misc trait: Bannerlords.
Misc trait: Might makes right.
Misc trait: regenerating infestations.
Advance setting:
Realm setup:
Player distance: Far.
Players: 9.
Game flow:
Game speed: slow.
Starting conditions: hard.
World threat high.
Victory: Score disabled.

For extra challange on these map settings:
All victory conditions off.
Hero resurgence off.
Combat:
Always auto and no retry/restart.

Still not challanging enough?
Control all 9 factions and make each faction different.

Being limited to auto resolve is really going to limit you.

[Aunty Herbert]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

To make it extra challanging you must convince every ai to become your vassal.

There are so many AI personalities, that prefer dying to being vassalized, this only would work if you handpicked your opponents.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by BoinBoin:

Need creative minds on new challenge ideas... (for streaming)
As the title says, I'm running out of ideas on putting more challenges on my AoW4 stream to make it more entertaining. Any creative suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

Ever since the release of the game I been live streaming AoW4 and adding more and harder challenge to keep the stream entertaining and I hit a wall when I finished my last run...
It was one city challenge on brutal difficulty but I can only use scout/hero and starting units. No global summons, vine spells, alliance victory, spider body trait. If i get additional units from pickup/event I must disband them. (realm is 7 empires in default speed)

Since the run was a success (my homie and I didn't think it was possible at first...) the only way I think I can spice it up is by adding presence trait on the realm to make 1 of the empire stronger (like the one with "Pretender Kings") but after that I am out of brain juice until DLC release.

Any ideas and suggestions are welcome... this game is hella addicting and I want to keep streaming it.

How about: no ranged attacks/damaging abilities, except the ranged is an extension of a melee damage ability? You would be still allowed to use ranged heal and buff spells, but your combat would be quite melee focused which can open up interesting new stuff.

[BoinBoin]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

Feudal empire challange:
Rules:
You can only have your rulers army.
You can only have your capital.
Everything must be vassalized.
You can only get replacement troops for your ruler army via ledge of lieges(the vassal army reqruit thing)
To make it extra challanging you must convince every ai to become your vassal.

Kingmaker challange:
Have 1 ai win the game via militery conquest.
You are not allowed to wage offendsive wars.
Defending what you have is ok but you arent allowed to destroy the ai's enemies.
You must get them to destroy eachother until only one remains.

Adventure mode challange.
You need to get 6 heroes(5+leader), have your capital destroyed.
Then use only your 6 man hero party to destroy or vassalize the other factions.
You can only use the hero party.
Resurection on death shoud be off(Unless you use an ingame spell)

Force of nature challange:
You gotta play chosen destroyers and be at war with everyone the moment you meet them.

Stageplay challange:
You got to recreate the story of age of wonders 1, 2, 3 in 4.

I have a death wish challange:
Make costum realm:
Geograpthy trait: doesnt mater.
Clime trait: forming realm
Inhabitants trait: Dragon territories.
Presence trait: Archon prohet.
Misc trait: City states.
Misc trait: Bannerlords.
Misc trait: Might makes right.
Misc trait: regenerating infestations.
Advance setting:
Realm setup:
Player distance: Far.
Players: 9.
Game flow:
Game speed: slow.
Starting conditions: hard.
World threat high.
Victory: Score disabled.

For extra challange on these map settings:
All victory conditions off.
Hero resurgence off.
Combat:
Always auto and no retry/restart.

Still not challanging enough?
Control all 9 factions and make each faction different.

Being limited to auto resolve is really going to limit you.

Man that is a list of good idea, thank you sir!

Originally posted by アンジェル:

Originally posted by BoinBoin:

Need creative minds on new challenge ideas... (for streaming)
As the title says, I'm running out of ideas on putting more challenges on my AoW4 stream to make it more entertaining. Any creative suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

Ever since the release of the game I been live streaming AoW4 and adding more and harder challenge to keep the stream entertaining and I hit a wall when I finished my last run...
It was one city challenge on brutal difficulty but I can only use scout/hero and starting units. No global summons, vine spells, alliance victory, spider body trait. If i get additional units from pickup/event I must disband them. (realm is 7 empires in default speed)

Since the run was a success (my homie and I didn't think it was possible at first...) the only way I think I can spice it up is by adding presence trait on the realm to make 1 of the empire stronger (like the one with "Pretender Kings") but after that I am out of brain juice until DLC release.

Any ideas and suggestions are welcome... this game is hella addicting and I want to keep streaming it.

How about: no ranged attacks/damaging abilities, except the ranged is an extension of a melee damage ability? You would be still allowed to use ranged heal and buff spells, but your combat would be quite melee focused which can open up interesting new stuff.

Oh I done that challenge in a way, it was a demoralizing army made of 3 T3 Bashion in nightmare mount, 2 T2 Chaplion and a hero (per stack). It was pretty fun when you trigger a route but it can become very tiresome to play at the end game.

[snuggleform]

The Challenge of the Leming - at every available opportunity, you must run your Ruler into the nearest enemy Ruler's base, alone, to die. See if you can triumph essentially without your Ruler and essentially feeding the enemy even more exp/resources. You may use other heroes and units normally.

[Chthonic Guardian]

Honestly it all boil down to charisma and providing good and interesting commentary. If you have that people will watch as long as it is reasonable, and you don't need to do any crazy challenge stuff.

If you don't, try playing the game while juggling 3 pizzas, or have a pretty girl in a bikini jogging on a treadmill in the background.

[GrandMajora]

Written By The Victors: conquer every other city on the map, and migrate them to your race. There shall be no conflicting accounts of how your people settled these lands!

[BoinBoin]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Written By The Victors: conquer every other city on the map, and migrate them to your race. There shall be no conflicting accounts of how your people settled these lands!

Sadly I only play one city challenge on stream so migrate is not an option.