Giant Kings & Eldritch Sovereigns, Cosmetics

[Flushing]

I am consolidating my prior thread on the lack of meaningful Eldritch Sovereign Cosmetics to include Giant Kings.

There simply aren't enough cosmetic options for Giant Kings, and there is a total absence of sub-cosmetics, like different hairstyles and ornaments.

Why can't we change horns on all models, the cyclopian head has the same 2 horns across 3 faces.

All humanoid leaders (Wizard Kings and Champions) have an exceptional amount of cosmetic diversity.

Same with Dragon Lords, amazing cosmetic diversity.

That being said, Giant Kings could have similar cosmetic diversity to all other humanoids; instead, they follow the same trend of the Eldritch Sovereigns, with very limited options.

I was hoping Eldritch Sovereigns would get a lot of love, but I don't know now considering Giant Kings follow the same trend.

I am very disappointed with Eldritch Sovereigns because they're largely just a collection of recycled graphic assets, with few unique independent assets.

It's like, Let's just take these three Helmets and call them Heads, or lets use racial transformations as body types and parts. I have only managed to come up with 2 sensible Eldritch models.

All that being said, Age of Wonders 4 has never been better. The game is exceptional, I love it.

[Cindeerella]

I kinda agree, I hate ES and Giants lacking customization options. Making something unique looking is very hard. Heck I can pull Dragon snout at maximum to make a gharial. But all Eldritch and Giants are more or less the same.

[Flushing]

Originally posted by Cindeerella:

I kinda agree, I hate ES and Giants lacking customization options. Making something unique looking is very hard. Heck I can pull Dragon snout at maximum to make a gharial. But all Eldritch and Giants are more or less the same.

Agree. The Devs do read feedback and almost all comments on their official YouTube livestream. I'm sure they will listen.

Also agree on Dragon Lords, I made a near perfect Dragon Ball Z Shenlong, and Skie from Dragonlance.

Zero complaints on humanoid and Dragon leaders.

Again, I love this game, it's the best fantasy 4X game of all time.

On the spectrum of grievances, this is small. But, a big part of AoW4 is the total customization of racial Forms and leaders. They even incorporated that into the lore itself. Eldritch Sovereigns and Giant Kings are inconsistent with that.

I hope they don't address this with a handful of Pantheon additions. Both leaders need a lot more love.

All that being said, do you multiplayer at all?

[Cindeerella]

Problem with all visuals - a lot of work for artists and animators. Maybe Triumph decided to put those resources into other things, because both new content for ER and GK dlcs look great visually, but ruler customizations got really crippled in exchange.

I’m not big fan of MP, I play AoW4 as wargame for cool manual battles, I’m complete sucker at 4x parts and I don’t like doing super optimized rainbow builds. And without those you can only suck XD
Tried MP few times, other people have like 2-4x better economy than me, even if I win few fights against them I still will lose anyway in long run.

[blackhand_lost]

Originally posted by Cindeerella:

Problem with all visuals - a lot of work for artists and animators. Maybe Triumph decided to put those resources into other things, because both new content for ER and GK dlcs look great visually, but ruler customizations got really crippled in exchange.

Don't make up excuses for them. They cut corners where they shouldn't have.
This dlc costs as much as Path of exile 2, or I could buy a couple smaller games. And they couldn't bother to fit even ALREADY EXISTING haircuts onto the new models, which aren't even that good btw.
The clay soldiers from the new book got silly zombie animations and they look like human soldiers with stone texture for some reason. It's immersion beaking and I've seen free mods with more effort put into them.

[Blanch Warren]

It's legitimate to disagree with a cosmetic choice, i.e. one which portrays an aesthetic of clunkiness rather than some kind of regimented machine, but the fact that they put this in their official video would not suggest they are all that ashamed of it. Even if I doubt that portraying a Clay Arbalast required their greatest animation work.

Could they potentially do a Clay Arbalast that isn't a retextured Arbalast? They may well do so if that's what people want. But no one hid it from you. I don't think it was the selling point of the DLC, and if no one cared about it maybe we could just move on.

https://youtu.be/n7Ih1SZmHPg

[Astasia]

It's worth tempering your expectations here. When Eldritch Realms released they mentioned they ended up putting in a lot more Eldritch Sovereign customization than they had planned to. The "limitations" make a lot of sense there because of how varied the shapes are, it's not like dragons where they have a few consistent attachment points to scale allowing for finer customization of parts. Any variations on the body or head of a sovereign is basically an entirely new unit model. I really don't expect any expansion to that system. I may be misremembering, but I think the 2 extra customization options from Ways of War came out in a patch sometime after the DLC released, so maybe there will be a couple giant "inspired" options added to the sovereigns, but ya I'd say that's probably about it.

Giants I feel like they could port over some more of the humanoid assets without that much effort, so maybe that will happen. Separate hair, head, hat, and horn options would be nice, though many of the heads would likely become full coverage "hats" to make that work, like I wouldn't expect any options for the 2 headed one as an example.

[Blanch Warren]

Although frankly I've never been one for watching much media, the lead up video to the release of Eldritch Sovereign verbatim states that the models are more or less made "as much as we can before release."

I personally believe that the Eldritch models are of good quality. Although quite varied, they don't feel to be of equal quantity, but they were not expected to be. If you actually look at Eldritch video, an enormous quantity is not what was advertised. "We do as much as we can" is what was advertised.

If people support Triumph, then I believe they will try to release a few more models if that's what people want. I'm under the impression I've seen a few more face models released for wizards/champions released without notice.

This is not a studio which would seem to have as much audience as some other Paradox games, but I have found them to respond to feedback. I almost get the impression they respond to my feedback individually. I put out a request in the suggestion forum that another society trait have stability, with Imperialists gold bonus making less sense for someone like a summoner. Lo and behold, Mana addicts get a stability bonus for mana nodes now.

Minds think alike, anyway.

[Flushing]

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

Although frankly I've never been one for watching much media, the lead up video to the release of Eldritch Sovereign verbatim states that the models are more or less made "as much as we can before release."

I personally believe that the Eldritch models are of good quality. Although quite varied, they don't feel to be of equal quantity, but they were not expected to be. If you actually look at Eldritch video, an enormous quantity is not what was advertised. "We do as much as we can" is what was advertised.

If people support Triumph, then I believe they will try to release a few more models if that's what people want. I'm under the impression I've seen a few more face models released for wizards/champions released without notice.

This is not a studio which would seem to have as much audience as some other Paradox games, but I have found them to respond to feedback. I almost get the impression they respond to my feedback individually. I put out a request in the suggestion forum that another society trait have stability, with Imperialists gold bonus making less sense for someone like a summoner. Lo and behold, Mana addicts get a stability bonus for mana nodes now.

Minds think alike, anyway.

I hear you, but we aren't at the pre-release date for Eldritch Sovereigns anymore. They need some love, and more than ad hoc Pantheon additions.

I know that Eldritch Sovereigns are supposed to be monstrous, but, frankly, most combinations look like ♥♥♥♥.

The Giant Kings have as much diversity, or lack thereof, as the Eldritch Sovereigns, but their model combinations work.

Most Eldritch Sovereign models just look like sloppy mistakes. Truly, just a vomit of different graphic assets for different body parts.

I am willing to bet that you have no more 2 go to model types that you find tolerable. Perhaps that's projection on my part because that's all I have.

[JustACorpse]

While I would like more, it is a small dev team, I have no idea if the game and DLCs are selling well enough for them to consider expanding their team, and most of their efforts seem to be on DLCs or reworks. Basically, I wouldn't expect much unless they get a massive influx of sales that allows them to expand operations, and even then, that is probably not going to be their first priority.

[Flushing]

I just wanted to circle back to my original disclaimer and expand on it.

Age of Wonders 4 is amazing. It is by far the best 4x fantasy game on the market and probably of all time.

Most of you have played earlier titles in the genre and recognize how good we have it in AoW4.

For me, the only 2 things that I would like improved upon are:
1. Eldritch Sovereign and Giant King leader models; and
2. Multiplayer stability.

Again, game is great.