Settings for racial forms/cultures pool

[Sotnik]

Is there a way remove a specific racial form or form+culture combo for all the scenarios? I really don't want to encounter feudal frogs and any moles. Now I am hesitant to buy DLCs, because they would ruin my hopes to play a classic fantasy setting even more.

I would like to quote PlutonArioch who illustrated the idea better and in more details.

Originally posted by PlutonArioch:

I have to agree that a way to restrict which forms/cultures are going to be present on a custom world is sorely needed!

The way it currently is, all the worlds feel pretty "samey", no matter what I play and on which world, I will always find a mix of everything already present. Even if I play a 1v1 between high elves and dark orcs, I am pretty sure to find feudal "church mice" around the corner, and with dragon dawn there will be poisonous lizard people somewhere.

If I don't customize the AI players, it is rare to find two factions with the same form. The game seems more geared towards shoving everything it has into every game, rather than having thematic cohesion, and therefore more variety in the long term.

Yes, AoW4 is set in a multiverse setting, and wizard kings from magehaven can reach any world in theory. They don't all go to every world at all times though, and those worlds we get to don't feel like different worlds, where life has evolved in a unique way, they feel like different areas of the same world with a hodgepodge of everything always present.

Sometimes I would like to play on a world similar to the OP, with only humans and elves present as sapient beings (there are other worlds outside of the D&D universe someone might want to imitate), sometimes I would like to exclude any humanoids, and play with cats and mice, or I would like to play on a world where only lizards ever became sapient. Sometimes I would like to have all AI players and marauders have a specific form, and take a different form myself, roleplaying a magehaven invader on a world that has only ever had one dominant species.

It would also be nice to select available cultures. Just because I have E&A installed does not mean I want firearms in all my medieval fantasy worlds. Sometimes I would like to have a purely feudal world, or a barbarian world. Maybe I want to focus on a clash between high and dark cultures. Just some examples, the possibilities are practically endless.

It would give the different worlds a different identity and a different feel. This would in my opinion greatly increase the replayability of the game.

[GrandMajora]

NO, you get what the RNG decides to roll for you!

Also, what do you consider 'classic' fantasy setting? Because I'm pretty sure that beastfolk are about as classical as you can get!

[Sotnik]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

NO, you get what the RNG decides to roll for you!

Also, what do you consider 'classic' fantasy setting? Because I'm pretty sure that beastfolk are about as classical as you can get!

For me, that's LotR and DnD.

Some racial forms don't look well with specific cultures. Besides, it would be good to set ratio of forms: some of them to be abundant like humans, others are rare. In some cases I would like to play themed realms: populated with elves, dwarves and orcs or humans and goatfolk etc.

Goats are ok if Primal or maybe Dark or Barbarian culture. Otherwise they feel out of place.
Frogs are Primal only. Once a year.
Rats... Maybe Primal, but with Dark and Barbarian they still look cartoonish.
Moles are a hopeless piece of Disneyland.
Lupine... not sure, but I would prefer to customize them to make gnolls. It would even be better just to introduce a tome with one high-tier Werewolf unit instead of this form.
Lizardmen were much anticipated, but only Primal culture could fit them.
Birds might be versatile, but I would prefer to leave them as a rare species.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Sotnik:

For me, that's LotR and DnD.

Once again, "beastfolk are about as classical as you can get."

Just because they weren't presented as part of the core playable races, doesn't mean there weren't a crap ton of animal themed races and monsters running around the Forgotten Realms, or whatever setting your D&D campaign takes place.

-----------------------

As for your choice of cultures for them. While I understand what you're trying to say in regards to what is most stereotypically associated with such forms, it is worth keeping in mind that Age of Wonders 4 takes place in a multiverse setting.

Magehaven is connected to countless worlds through its gate system, where the people of those worlds can have evolved and developed along any number of different paths. The Wizard Kings themselves have developed a habit of using their powers to guide and manipulate their people's development along whatever suits their whims.

So if you want High Rats to resemble a faction of literal 'church mice', or your Reaver Orcs to wage war with more advanced weaponry, you have the options there to do so.

[GrandMajora]

OH, I also just remembered something that might help.

When setting up a map, you can toggle whether the NPC's use the default traits associated with them, or if they use randomly generated ones.

If you want them to adhere to their common stereotypes, you might try disabling randomly generated traits for their forms.

[Sotnik]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Sotnik:

For me, that's LotR and DnD.

While I understand what you're trying to say in regards to what is most stereotypically associated with such forms, it is worth keeping in mind that Age of Wonders 4 takes place in a multiverse setting.

Magehaven is connected to countless worlds through its gate system, where the people of those worlds can have evolved and developed along any number of different paths.

Yeah, and its' a shame I cannot find a realm without molemen among countless realms.

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

OH, I also just remembered something that might help.

When setting up a map, you can toggle whether the NPC's use the default traits associated with them, or if they use randomly generated ones.

If you want them to adhere to their common stereotypes, you might try disabling randomly generated traits for their forms.

Thank you! Will that option make racial forms adhere to specific cultures too?

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Sotnik:

Thank you! Will that option make racial forms adhere to specific cultures too?

No, it will only affect the racial form traits. Which, depending on the type of culture they decide to go with, might seem a bit counter intuitive when you have Barbarian Elves with Arcane Focus.

[PlutonArioch]

I will start by saying that I do not have any inherent problems with the presence of any of the forms or form/culture combinations as such. The variety of possibilities is greatly appreciated.
However, I have to agree that a way to restrict which forms/cultures are going to be present on a custom world is sorely needed!

The way it currently is, all the worlds feel pretty "samey", no matter what I play and on which world, I will always find a mix of everything already present. Even if I play a 1v1 between high elves and dark orcs, I am pretty sure to find feudal "church mice" around the corner, and with dragon dawn there will be poisonous lizard people somewhere.
In order to properly randomize the form traits of AI players, I have to crate a new custom faction and press the randomize button there, then use that custom faction, otherwise only the culture, ruler, and names will be randomized, at which point I could also just create a faction myself - and that does still not influence the marauder forms, which are always selected from presets.
And if I don't customize the AI players, it is rare to find two factions with the same form. The game seems more geared towards shoving everything it has into every game, rather than having thematic cohesion, and therefore more variety in the long term.

Yes, AoW4 is set in a multiverse setting, and wizard kings from magehaven can reach any world in theory. They don't all go to every world at all times though, and those worlds we get to don't feel like different worlds, where life has evolved in a unique way, they feel like different areas of the same world with a hodgepodge of everything always present. Inhabitant traits can somewhat alleviate this, but it does not feel good either. Here is a birds nest, with events related to big birds, but it has chaos eaters instead because this world is inhabited by demons, and that dragons den over there is inhabited by the same stuff, but we still call it a dragons den... and those traits don't influence the AI players either.

Sometimes I would like to play on a world similar to the OP, with only humans and elves present as sapient beings (there are other worlds outside of the D&D universe someone might want to imitate), sometimes I would like to exclude any humanoids, and play with cats and mice, or I would like to play on a world where only lizards ever became sapient.
Sometimes I would like to have all AI players and marauders have a specific form, and take a different form myself, roleplaying a magehaven invader on a world that has only ever had one dominant species.
It would also be nice to select available cultures. Just because I have E&A installed does not mean I want firearms in all my medieval fantasy worlds. Sometimes I would like to have a purely feudal world, or a barbarian world. Maybe I want to focus on a clash between high and dark cultures. Just some examples, the possibilities are practically endless.

It would give the different worlds a different identity and a different feel. This would in my opinion greatly increase the replayability of the game.

[pelias117]

I'd like to put my ten cents in here as well. I never use anything, but few cities because I like my worlds to be inhabited by fewer races.

As to who is right or wrong in a classical fantasy sense, everyone should be able to have their view. I think the key to a fantasy world is your personal use of imagination. I, personally, enjoy Hobbits, I just balk at the idea of their global and militarized armies holding their own against men, elves and dwarves. (Redwall also has its place, I just don't want to live there in an imaginative sense.)

Someone could comment about how at the end of the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbits overthrow Saruman and Wyrmtongue. Then I would say something about the fact that they weren't going marching on warhorses to conquer their neighbors afterwards. Then another counter would come, ad nauseum, until somebody brought up a comparison to a gross, nationalist guy who liked to paint and had a mustache.

Being able to have a world of elves, where a strange race of Rats lived underground would be really cool to me, make the game more diverse and wouldn't hurt people who wanted a world that looked like the Starwars cantina, if the generation of said world was controlled by the flip of a simple button.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by PlutonArioch:

Sometimes I would like to play on a world similar to the OP, with only humans and elves present as sapient beings (there are other worlds outside of the D&D universe someone might want to imitate), sometimes I would like to exclude any humanoids, and play with cats and mice, or I would like to play on a world where only lizards ever became sapient.
Sometimes I would like to have all AI players and marauders have a specific form, and take a different form myself, roleplaying a magehaven invader on a world that has only ever had one dominant species.

A pre-historic Dinosaur style civilization would be a pretty cool map concept.

Or something like the Lizardmen ending to Chrono Trigger, where humans were wiped out in a major battle against the dinosaurs, thus allowing lizards to claim their place as the planet's dominant species.

[spartanspud]

Just make races you like and choose them in advanced settings when you set up a match. I haven't seen molemen aside from the second story realm or something.

[PlutonArioch]

Originally posted by spartanspud:

Just make races you like and choose them in advanced settings when you set up a match.

I already do that. It is not a good solution though. For one it completely takes out the surprise as to who I will meet on this new undiscovered world, as I just spent a while creating them. Then, I am limited to what I can think of. It makes sense when I already have specific ideas for the whole world, and everyone in it, it does not if I just know what the world should be like and who I want to play in it. So the only thing that is left to do is to create a custom faction, then use the randomize function there until it gets close to what I want, and manually adjust it to fit my vision - this still takes away all the surprise.

And after all that, it does NOTHING at all, to change the marauders / free cities on the map. Some of the free cities will be based on the races of the players, but not all. There usually are higher tier free cities that are randomized. So lets look at an Example. Lets say I felt like playing on a greenskin world, where chaos affinity is dominant, to lead a rebellion of barbarian Goblins against the feudal Orc overlords, and whoever conquers this world goes on to join magehaven as a newly arisen Godir:
I handcrafted lets say 5 Orc factions, my own Goblins, and maybe one more Goblin faction as ally, making it 7 players total (the default amount), all Orcs and Goblins, all feudal and barbarian. In my head this world has never seen other races. Well, the holy mice sitting on my first available mana node beg to differ. The first free city I find will be my own race, uncomfortably close, but whatever, I'll integrate them, because roleplay, and I'll have a twin city as capital. Next though I meet Industrial Cats already with steelskin, because they come from a high tier free city with materium mastery. After fighting them and clearing out some golems, ironclads, and roving furnaces from a derelict workshop, I finally meet my first (or maybe second) Orc opponent, and he is going to fight me with angelized Halflings, not Orcs, because he integrated another high tier free city (with order mastery), and their troops are better than his own because they again, come from a high tier free city, with late game transformations. Not to speak of the poisonous dark Crocodiles I meet everywhere next to the holy Mice, the dwarven and avaian reavers, feudal humans, mystic toads, etc. The same marauder races can also be found inside all the wonders.

This is just an example, but it pretty much describes every time I tried to play on a themed world.
I can force the players, while ruining the discovery, but I can not force the world population. So, any theme I might want to go for ends up as only an approximation, and feels like just another part of every other world I played before, and therefore pretty generic, not unique as it should be.

Originally posted by spartanspud:

I haven't seen molemen aside from the second story realm or something.

I do see moles more rarely among the marauders and free cities, but I assume they are more likely to be found underground, due to their inherent underground adaptation, where I don't go that often. Or it is just a RNG oddity.
As random AI players/races I see them quite often.

I can, and I usually do, use the "No Free Cities" realm trait, which at least gets rid of some of this, but not all. And I am taking out something that is meant to be a somewhat big part of the game.
I do believe some of this can be done with mods, but I would have to create a new mod for every themed world I want to play, and I have not yet managed to make it work.
It should be easy for the devs to provide a couple of lists with checkboxes for the forms and cultures, which populate the lists from which the randomized races draw their parts.

[spartanspud]

Originally posted by PlutonArioch:

Originally posted by spartanspud:

Just make races you like and choose them in advanced settings when you set up a match.

I already do that. It is not a good solution though. For one it completely takes out the surprise as to who I will meet on this new undiscovered world, as I just spent a while creating them. Then, I am limited to what I can think of. It makes sense when I already have specific ideas for the whole world, and everyone in it, it does not if I just know what the world should be like and who I want to play in it. So the only thing that is left to do is to create a custom faction, then use the randomize function there until it gets close to what I want, and manually adjust it to fit my vision - this still takes away all the surprise.

And after all that, it does NOTHING at all, to change the marauders / free cities on the map. Some of the free cities will be based on the races of the players, but not all. There usually are higher tier free cities that are randomized. So lets look at an Example. Lets say I felt like playing on a greenskin world, where chaos affinity is dominant, to lead a rebellion of barbarian Goblins against the feudal Orc overlords, and whoever conquers this world goes on to join magehaven as a newly arisen Godir:
I handcrafted lets say 5 Orc factions, my own Goblins, and maybe one more Goblin faction as ally, making it 7 players total (the default amount), all Orcs and Goblins, all feudal and barbarian. In my head this world has never seen other races. Well, the holy mice sitting on my first available mana node beg to differ. The first free city I find will be my own race, uncomfortably close, but whatever, I'll integrate them, because roleplay, and I'll have a twin city as capital. Next though I meet Industrial Cats already with steelskin, because they come from a high tier free city with materium mastery. After fighting them and clearing out some golems, ironclads, and roving furnaces from a derelict workshop, I finally meet my first (or maybe second) Orc opponent, and he is going to fight me with angelized Halflings, not Orcs, because he integrated another high tier free city (with order mastery), and their troops are better than his own because they again, come from a high tier free city, with late game transformations. Not to speak of the poisonous dark Crocodiles I meet everywhere next to the holy Mice, the dwarven and avaian reavers, feudal humans, mystic toads, etc. The same marauder races can also be found inside all the wonders.

This is just an example, but it pretty much describes every time I tried to play on a themed world.
I can force the players, while ruining the discovery, but I can not force the world population. So, any theme I might want to go for ends up as only an approximation, and feels like just another part of every other world I played before, and therefore pretty generic, not unique as it should be.

Originally posted by spartanspud:

I haven't seen molemen aside from the second story realm or something.

I do see moles more rarely among the marauders and free cities, but I assume they are more likely to be found underground, due to their inherent underground adaptation, where I don't go that often. Or it is just a RNG oddity.
As random AI players/races I see them quite often.

I can, and I usually do, use the "No Free Cities" realm trait, which at least gets rid of some of this, but not all. And I am taking out something that is meant to be a somewhat big part of the game.
I do believe some of this can be done with mods, but I would have to create a new mod for every themed world I want to play, and I have not yet managed to make it work.
It should be easy for the devs to provide a couple of lists with checkboxes for the forms and cultures, which populate the lists from which the randomized races draw their parts.

I know it's not. But it's the only currently available solution.

[PlutonArioch]

At the very least it would be nice if we could restrict the marauders and free cities to the races of the player factions, as a compromise.
That way we would still have to customize every faction in the game, but at least the world population would fit in, and it could also get rid of the ridiculous race names those marauders tend to have.

[spartanspud]

Really we should be able to have more control in general, but at the moment we can't and it's not changing in the coming update. But it's something lots of people ask for. So I am hoping they're going to get around to it soonish.

[PlutonArioch]

I do have some hope that the Eldritch Realms DLC with all its talk about magical realms etc. brings with it an overhaul of realm customization... but only time will tell.
At least as it sounds from the description they will have to add stuff to realms for it, and while they are at it, changing realm stuff, they could add some more options to customize it.