Originally posted by Elhazzared:

It's not so much that no one is re-inventing the wheel for 4X games so much as that on one side, few 4X come out every year sometimes might not even see one in an entire year, On the other hand, in many cases in the atempt of re-inventing the wheel they actually make the game worse than if they had just stuck to the basics, a great example of that is AoW4 which was made terrible as a result of implementing a town cap, not only it removed the abillity for a proper comination victory but it severely nerfed the AI in how it should build and what it can have (which is why it cheats so much now to keep up with the players).

Stellaris may be have been the last game to do it right but it also has it's fair share of problems. You can't bring a game to an end due to end game lag. Paradox keeps changing fundamental stuff about the game thus making people who liked the game no longer like it and their new price tags and what they offer are horrible.

I bet if there was less re-inventing the wheel and just more sticking to the basics with only very small improvements there would be a lot more successful 4X titles coming out.

Regarding AoW4, you can easily mod the town limit. It doesn't help the game. And the AI cheating is about the same as previous games. Maybe it is just more obvious now, but it has ALWAYS cheated.

Regarding the thread, I think what we are seeing is less a 4x specific fatigue, and more a general games/attention fatigue.

And 4x games tend to be among the slower games out there, taking a very long time to complete. I suspect this is part of why certain games are less "complete" (as in having a beginning, middle and end) and are more "continuous story generator" or leaning towards being memetic as opposed to being more gamelike.

That said, the basic 4x formula is a bit long in the tooth, and tbh even the nomenclature doesn't make much sense to me. They should have just called it Civ likes.

Imagine something like the Helldivers world, except instead of FPS it is RTS.

Doesn't exist afaik. Could be interesting.

Define worthwhile!

Originally posted by Stormfrenzy88:

Yea the roadmap at least acknowledges all the main shortcoming with the game so if they succeed with implementing the changes in a satisfying way the game will be greatly improved.

So, *all* the shortcomings were known about/predicted, before release.

A more cynical man than me might have a few things to say...

...and indeed, it has been said :)

Cadfan is correct. The dlc is very much just more AoW4, with new Dragon Lords, some new tomes, some new units and forms.

It is not an overhaul of the game.

As for
"I hope the Lizardkin are like that too. Each race needs to have many unique things about them."

This is not the game for you buddy. Form is just visual, it has no bearing on the game play.

That fight has been fought and lost, for better or worse.

So, really, if you don't like the central gimmick of the game, i.e. create your own faction/race/whatever, then this is not the game for you, unless you really *really* like something else, like city management.

Originally posted by Nasarog:

I've been watching the dev diary and playthrough on youtube. I like it. I will at least get what I want, and it's okay. I still think the cats need a major rework though.

Cats rework?

I know they started work on Dragon Dawn quite a while ago.

Also, it has been 6 weeks since release, and DD is a "small" dlc, so perfect to release around now.

And another seemingly obvious idea is to have a Dragon Invasion.

Not necessarily like the Void bringer one from PF, more a horde of Dragons descends on the map and pillaged everything.

Naturally, the strongest players (most territory etc) will feel the most effective, but defeating the horde wins you the game.

Could also be Orc etc Invasions.

And so on.


You could have the warpgates malfunction and spawn Astral creatures everywhere.

So many possibilities.

A fantasy game like AoW lends itself naturally towards a victory based on quests, such as assemble the 5 mithril parts to create the doodad of bling.

That could be a fusion of seals and quest victory.

Get to location 1, hold for x turns, acquire the mithril part, unlock location 2.

Locations are in progressively more hostile areas.

Then place all 5 at the altar of y, again, in a not nice area, and hold off the enemy spawns for x turns.

So like beacons except you need to get out there and use your armies, which means they aren't fighting enemies.

Originally posted by Warmacblu:

The "Seals" victory condition was pretty cool but it basically boils down to king of the hill. In AoW4 when you go for a magic victory you have to build a specific structure which then alerts all other opponents so you end up having to do the same thing as the "Seals" victory condition except for the fact that it's in your territory and at the moment no NPC armies are spawned to attack.

I'd like to see a victory condition that involves a combination of things. Combat, research, expansion, etc. Endless Legend and Space did a good job with the faction quest line and I think that would fit perfectly into AoW4. The story realms are kinda like that actually so I could see creating a quest line for each Culture working well.

The fact that it is I'm your territory and you choose when to build it makes all the difference.

Seals were good because they were finite, on fixed points on the map, and provided a credible way to win without "building your engine".

Indeed, to win the seals usually meant weakening your engine.

You needed a decent stack to capture a seal in the first place (you need no army to build a beacon or magic root etc) and you were incentivised to be the first to capture a seal (juicy items) but once captured, you had to hold it.

If you kept a force capable of holding it, that force couldn't do anything anywhere else.

If you kept a light force, you would lose the seal.

It gave a nice alternative to fighting over thrones.

Also, seals tended to be in areas with no or few resources, so there was no benefit (other than getting your points), and lots of sacrifice, to capturing them.

Building a beacon/root has zero risk, especially given how, in some 400 hours of gameplay, I have had the AI in AoW4 capture precisely 2 cities of mine.

Amd one of those was a city with no walls, on the outskirts of an enemy empire, with my nearest army 8 turns away.

Zero pressure building a beacon etc.

Yeah, indie stacks will spawn, but with seals you had to take your army into hostile (or at least non friendly) territory and defeat a decent stack just to start.

Here you build your beacon in your cities, already well defended.

There is no *tension*.

AoW4 end game is spectacularly unfun imho.

It boils down to 3 or 4 super stacks just flattening everything (the fun option) or end turning for 15 turns against independent spawns.

And I say that as someone who thought Invasions in PF was a good idea, not as well implemented as it could have been.

There is so much that could be done here, just taking inspiration from other games in the same series.

AoW3 had cosmic events, some of which shook things up, like a troll invasion which could mess you up if you weren't prepared.

To be fair, late game in AoW3 release was also not great, but I remember that game very very well, and I don't remember the end point being so bland as it is now.