Why do cannons cost Warspoils as well???

[Shooty Manz]

This is probably my biggest gripe yet with Reaver faction.

I get that the thing always hits and has decent range, but meh. My main hero can down most things with his magelock.

I wanted the dreadnaught class from AoW3. My friends and I used to love this class a lot but they butchered it in AoW4. Not only is industrial faction flat out missing its core thing (guns and cannons), they've now locked it behind paid DLC for reavers which you can only ever play one way: all out war.

This whole requiring war spoils to gain anything just turns me off the entire faction. No starting whispering stone and locking your heavy hitting tier 3 behind more war spoils just seems silly.

Iunno, this entire AoW4 game just feels off. They've lost the actual "feel" of the game. Its just all over the place with no direction. I get that they wanted to open up build creativity with the tome system, but its somehow made it worse.

Not to mention the building for your city is just hella confusing.

Guns and cannons should have just been a tome that anyone can pick. Not a stupid race that requires constant war to keep up war spoils.

Feelsbadman. :\

[Midas]

Ursprungligen skrivet av gizmo:

My gripe is that there are just too little machines. I was expecting at least 4-5 mechanical units like cannon, flamethrower tank and more. We've got bare minimum. More golems than other machines. We got cannons and ironclads. I was expecting frost wielding machines, lightning ballistas, poison mortars...

I blame Tome of The Construct. It's just boring Tome of The Artificer. It has no strong theme, grants only one unit, and really should have been a more tech-focused tome. It's definitely the weakest tome in the release, imo. Alchemist and Dreadnought are solid, but Construct needed to be more interesting.

[Fendelphi]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Midas:

Ursprungligen skrivet av gizmo:

My gripe is that there are just too little machines. I was expecting at least 4-5 mechanical units like cannon, flamethrower tank and more. We've got bare minimum. More golems than other machines. We got cannons and ironclads. I was expecting frost wielding machines, lightning ballistas, poison mortars...

I blame Tome of The Construct. It's just boring Tome of The Artificer. It has no strong theme, grants only one unit, and really should have been a more tech-focused tome. It's definitely the weakest tome in the release, imo. Alchemist and Dreadnought are solid, but Construct needed to be more interesting.

It does have some interesting applications when you go for tight formations(in this, it is pretty good) with constructs. Both of the Cascade spells are pretty efficient with good formation setups(imagine using a Feudal faction on top of that). Casting both on a unit means it gets 2 extra retaliations(1 from Watchful, and 1 from Hastened). Imagine a Mind-linked Shock unit(high damage, but only 1 attack) suddenly getting 3 retaliations per turn.

And the Bronze Golem is pretty awesome(a rare tier 3 polearm unit, and being a construct means several immunities).

Both the unique building and the hero skill it provides are quite strong. Hyper-awareness is also pretty good. And it is a tier 2 tome.
Also, being both Materium and Order means you have a decent chance of bringing something like Divine Beacon(an Order Tome) to capitalize on the tight formations.

So for a wizard king commanding their automaton armies and mind-linked slaves, it is pretty awesome in my opinion.

But yes, it is not exactly "flashy", but to be fair, the Tome of the Dreadnought(the tier 3 tome) have that covered.

[Midas]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Fendelphi:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Midas:

I blame Tome of The Construct. It's just boring Tome of The Artificer. It has no strong theme, grants only one unit, and really should have been a more tech-focused tome. It's definitely the weakest tome in the release, imo. Alchemist and Dreadnought are solid, but Construct needed to be more interesting.

It does have some interesting applications when you go for tight formations(in this, it is pretty good) with constructs. Both of the Cascade spells are pretty efficient with good formation setups(imagine using a Feudal faction on top of that). Casting both on a unit means it gets 2 extra retaliations(1 from Watchful, and 1 from Hastened). Imagine a Mind-linked Shock unit(high damage, but only 1 attack) suddenly getting 3 retaliations per turn.

And the Bronze Golem is pretty awesome(a rare tier 3 polearm unit, and being a construct means several immunities).

Both the unique building and the hero skill it provides are quite strong. Hyper-awareness is also pretty good. And it is a tier 2 tome.
Also, being both Materium and Order means you have a decent chance of bringing something like Divine Beacon(an Order Tome) to capitalize on the tight formations.

So for a wizard king commanding their automaton armies and mind-linked slaves, it is pretty awesome in my opinion.

But yes, it is not exactly "flashy", but to be fair, the Tome of the Dreadnought(the tier 3 tome) have that covered.

It's not bad mechanically, it's just bland. I get they were going for the whole Planetfall Synthesis theme, but it doesn't translate well into AoW4 without something like a transformation spell that turns your race into machines.

If Linked Minds had been a major transformation that granted Construct and made the race into some kind of D&D Warforged-esque machine race, it would have been more coherent.

[just.dont.do.it]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Midas:

I blame Tome of The Construct. It's just boring Tome of The Artificer. It has no strong theme, grants only one unit, and really should have been a more tech-focused tome. It's definitely the weakest tome in the release, imo. Alchemist and Dreadnought are solid, but Construct needed to be more interesting.

Tome of Construct, much like Tome of Evolution exists mostly to provide synergy rather than do something great by itself.

[Midas]

Ursprungligen skrivet av just.dont.do.it:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Midas:

I blame Tome of The Construct. It's just boring Tome of The Artificer. It has no strong theme, grants only one unit, and really should have been a more tech-focused tome. It's definitely the weakest tome in the release, imo. Alchemist and Dreadnought are solid, but Construct needed to be more interesting.

Tome of Construct, much like Tome of Evolution exists mostly to provide synergy rather than do something great by itself.

Evolution still grants you 2 units and an interesting transformation. If only Constructs was that flavorful.

[President Jyrgunkarrd]

Ursprungligen skrivet av gizmo:

My gripe is that there are just too little machines. I was expecting at least 4-5 mechanical units like cannon, flamethrower tank and more. We've got bare minimum. More golems than other machines. We got cannons and ironclads. I was expecting frost wielding machines, lightning ballistas, poison mortars...

...Why? The Ironclad is basically the Flame Tank and Juggernaut combined into a single unit, which was probably a good idea all things considered, and you're spoiled for choice in terms of golems. You can roll around with fully mechanised stacks as early as your T3 tome pick - golem of your choice plus Ironclads. Add self-propelled cannons at your leisure.

And the Ironclads are just everything. They are miles better than the old Juggs or Flame Tanks, both in terms of visual fidelity and actual combat performance.

I can certainly understand the D'Var frustration at not every single military asset being some kind of tank, but you can address that issue by simple producing nothing but Ironclads while not at all compromising on your military performance. You might complain about the cost, of course, but can you really put on a price tag on the joy of rolling over the world steampunk battletanks with custom ammunition? No.

[nrl4509]

So I just have been able to start using these things today, and I wanted to say - I agree with OP, though I think it could be justified by making the unit more valubale. It's an interesting concept to lock a unit behind a resource that is hard to obtain, but the tradeoff is that the unit has to be... well, better than the Magelock cannon currently is.

Regular range that can be closed by cavalry immediately, only to do less damage than magelocks and only if the unit doesn't move? Sure, you can triple that, but only if the enemy isn't paying attention to what they're doing with positioning. And the resist/hit points are low as well, so your opponent can just blast that 100 war spoils out of existence without getting near you. Frankly, the AOW3 units were better in literally every way and could be paid for normally. Of course, AOW4 has lower powers in general to be fair, but in this case they're asking a little too much for too much stripped back.

More robust, better damage, better range... all or any of those could help make the cost more justifiable, but right now they're mediocre and underbaked. At the very least, give me some grapeshot to blanket any over-eager enemy that gets into melee with the guns and foolishly thinks it's safe. Or I guess take out the war spoils stuff.

Also, it would really help if we were able to manually target shots like in AOW3. There's a lot of situations I've seen where the shot would hit enemies if I could target a hex instead of needing to line up on a unit in order to hit the tile in question, something that wasn't an issue in the last game.

[Fendelphi]

Ursprungligen skrivet av nrl4509:

So I just have been able to start using these things today, and I wanted to say - I agree with OP, though I think it could be justified by making the unit more valubale. It's an interesting concept to lock a unit behind a resource that is hard to obtain, but the tradeoff is that the unit has to be... well, better than the Magelock cannon currently is.

Regular range that can be closed by cavalry immediately, only to do less damage than magelocks and only if the unit doesn't move? Sure, you can triple that, but only if the enemy isn't paying attention to what they're doing with positioning. And the resist/hit points are low as well, so your opponent can just blast that 100 war spoils out of existence without getting near you. Frankly, the AOW3 units were better in literally every way and could be paid for normally. Of course, AOW4 has lower powers in general to be fair, but in this case they're asking a little too much for too much stripped back.

More robust, better damage, better range... all or any of those could help make the cost more justifiable, but right now they're mediocre and underbaked. At the very least, give me some grapeshot to blanket any over-eager enemy that gets into melee with the guns and foolishly thinks it's safe. Or I guess take out the war spoils stuff.

Also, it would really help if we were able to manually target shots like in AOW3. There's a lot of situations I've seen where the shot would hit enemies if I could target a hex instead of needing to line up on a unit in order to hit the tile in question, something that wasn't an issue in the last game.

The Reavers are the only culture with two tier 3 units, and it is an "extra" on top of that(they basically have 1 more culture unit than anyone else).

The Magelock cannon is partially a siege weapon(faster sieges, great for bombarding entrenched and tightly packed units, as well as knocking down towers) and partially a support weapon(removes defensive stance and retaliation for every unit hit).
It is not meant to deal more damage to a single unit than the regular Magelock.

Rather than thinking "it will only deal maximum damage if the opponent stacks up", you should be thinking that it forces the opponent to NOT stack up.
Instead of thinking "well, cavalry and fliers can rush it down", you should think, it forces the enemy to rush you in an attempt to stop it from firing(and you can counter that with slows, immobilize effects and other units intercepting them).
Basically, it is a unit that forces the opponent to play according to your strengths, rather than the other way around.
And it is an AoE attack that is also a "base" attack, meaning a lot of enchantments will work on it(while Battlemage AoE abilities, which are also used in long range bombardments, both have a cooldown and is usually not affected by enchantments).

As for stats:
85 hp for a tier 3 ranged unit is pretty standard(same as Windrunners at least).
4 Defense is above average(standard is 2).
Range 6-7 is above average(5 is just your "targeting tile").
You can target a tile by holding the Alt-key.

So to sum up:
The Magelock cannon is an "extra" unit that the Culture gets. It provides long range fire support and is ideal for softening and opening up entrenched positions. It makes sieges go faster and forces the opponent to close on you in disorganized formations, or risk getting hit by the AoE.