Just NO! (MP Only)

[glad loom]

why having a hero is mandatory to siege a city? so losing hero in enemy territory means all armies become observers until another hero comes? this must be a joke ....

• it downgrade macro play , why should i spam units if i cant take out cities without hero

[molten vine]

I think that offers a very viable defensive tactic for the defender seeing e.g. 3 armies coming towards them while knowing they can't beat them in an actual siege, they try to kill the hero in an open field outside the city and delay the siege for a few turns until they can regroup.

I personally don't think I would ever send so many armies anywhere without at least one of them having a hero unit in it, they are some of the strongest units with utility and levelling/equipment potential, why would anyone not want one of those there for a battle as important as a siege?

[glad loom]

this is not a "No Rush" game...

the hero rule is just waste of time and makes no sense, i hope we can disable it with modding

yea please more reactions SP players who have no idea how to be good at age of wonders

[twin pendant]

Even if you lose your hero, and Hero Resurgence is on, then you won't lose the hero if you still win the battle.

[glad loom]

hero resurgence is so pro isnt it

[marble swan]

The amount of Heroes you can get is limited by the Hero/City Cap and how much Gold you can spend on the Hero Upkeep, so you're going to need units. Heroes are required to command the siege, you can't just send a stack of simple defenders to take a city. If you don't have a Hero available you can always still pillage enemy provinces.

The goal is for the player to commit to the things they are doing on the world map. Same way that you can't remove City Ruins or dismantle Province Improvements.

[glad loom]

there is no logical reasoning, the hero does not have siege tools nor is a programmer of catapults or smthing. units should not await an order to destroy enemies

[twin pendant]

Does it make a difference? If you play Pro, then good for you. I don't. I play casually.

[glad loom]

can you imagine having stack of units around a city and just sit there? makes no sense to me

[gritty salmon]

i think the concern is the hero getting sniped in a suicide attack before the army reaches the city

[glad loom]

then you should not reply to any of my threads

[gritty salmon]

and then suddenly the massive siege host can't do their job

[glad loom]

it's not just losing hero concern, it will just prolong the game for no reason.

[twin pendant]

Isn't prolonging better? Also, no need to be hostile, I only stated my opinion.

[glad loom]

in big maps , the number of simultaneous sieges will be very limited as well

[marble swan]

That's kinda the design of the game though. AoW4 is designed to be slightly more slower paced, with more choices/actions that require you to commit to them.

[gritty salmon]

dread is an mp community leader, he's absically saying that if you aren't looking at the mp perspective your input is kind of tangential to his concerns

also no dragging out a game is not better, it's tedious

[glad loom]

yea many complain about time consuming of aow games, the devs should find ways to do the opposite (shorting match time)

i hope it's a unit property resource for heroes in modding tools so i can take that out 😄

[twin pendant]

Ehm, smaller maps could work?

[gritty salmon]

i don't wanna be rude man because you seem to be engaging genuinely in good faith and just aren't familiar with how mp plays out, but legit i think you might be best stepping out of this one

the answer is: i assure you they are aware of map size being used as a means of controlling game pace

[glad loom]

it makes more sense to require a unit skill that able to siege walls like ram or catapult etc..., not a HERO which is irrelevant to actually destroying walls

Heroes are rare , it will be very bad trust me

[gritty salmon]

arguably lacking a proper command structure organizing the siege could be a problem preventing a proper siege from occurring

[delicate violet]

Aye. And in terms of design this means that you always have to invest significant resources to extend your terrain - which is absolutely sensible in a MP setting, IMHO.

[glad loom]

so heroes can give more siege damage per turn is better alternative but missing hero should not prevent the siege

[tardy parcel]

Not getting anywhere if you don't have someone telling people what they need to be doing. Heroes are your officers, and a siege is going nowhere without them.

Also, in a mechanical sense, it seems like Triumph were unhappy with stack spam being a winning meta in AoW3/PF. And this is not something I've just pulled out of a hat, it is there in writing in the dev diary.

[glad loom]

stack spam will still work by destroying sectors and other stuff, but waiting for hero is just waste of turns

[gritty salmon]

i think the argument is that without a siege commander coordinating the siege you've just got a bunch of disorganized soldiers standing around.

arguably they should at least be able to figure out "use the catapult to chuck rocks at the walls" but 🤷‍♂️

[north atlas]

I have a mixed opinion here. And I think I might have a solution.

Army+siege weapon= can siege but no tactics
Army with hero: tactics can be applied.

[delicate violet]

Earlier on you were worried that units without a hero would have nothing to do - it seems that has solved itself, then

[north atlas]

If you want to scale those walls, you can't do so with just peasants and torches though. That should even the scales

[glad loom]

not really , what i meant is after destroying everything around city

[twin pendant]

No, you are right. I never played AoW in multiplayer. So I wouldn't know better.

[delicate violet]

That is going to take several turns. If you don't have your hero in the region by then it looks more like a failure in logistics than a fault in the system to me

Heroes being necessary to sieges makes every stack containing one all the more important to watch. Is that one there to loot my wonder, or to snipe a settlement position, or will he go after my cities directly? Interest scenarios to consider

[gritty salmon]

so i think the goal is to promote having fewer, focused fronts for battles, while less focused raiding is still possible but not capable of decapitating an opponent

basically giving the player a designated "have big fights here" indicator

[delicate violet]

Aye, that is my impression as well. Which is good - it keeps attention on a few places where actually fun things happen

[gritty salmon]

i like the theory

i'm not sure the implementation will achieve that ideal

[tardy parcel]

And I believe it also exists to give the defender more chance to defend themselves rather than simply drowning in doomstacks.

[north atlas]

It's risky but I personally like it. They tried to be innovative and work on existing issues. Not just here, but in many other small issues.

[gritty salmon]

ok spirit of the argument noted but if you're getting "drowned in doomstacks" you've lost and the game shouldn't make that a slow and painful process

[pine swan]

It might also encourage you/the AI in particular not to stack all your heroes in one army to make a mega death squad like so often seemed to happen in AoW3

[gritty salmon]

i think this is the opposite of the stated goal

[pine swan]

How?

[gritty salmon]

the goal is to promote fewer, more focused areas of conflict correct?

"make one mega death squad" would then be the intention

[pine swan]

Well yes, but that's fewer, not one

If you have a single army capable of sieging cities you'll be moving very slowly

And they want slowER, not glacial

I mean you still COULD do that

But it wouldn't be verry efficient

[gritty salmon]

this would probably be faster as there's less chasing stacks around the map while yakkity sax plays

[tardy parcel]

Not really - before an enemy could sweep up your cities in a few turns with focused doomstack usage whilst you were away on other fronts. Now they're forced to spend a few turns investing in each city to take it, which gives you time to respond and pull forces from elsewhere as the defender

Again, I'm not making this up, it is in writing in the dev diary.

[gritty salmon]

i don't know what image "drowned in doomstacks" conjures for you

[delicate violet]

Not at all. You want to be able to use each hero to maximum effect - one of their greatest effects is being able to initiate sieges. Ergo, you are better off only having 1 hero per army

[gritty salmon]

but for me it is a player who has pretty definitively gotten into a game losing situation

[north atlas]

And now it can turn the tide

[ashen tiger]

I do vaguely remember some people in MP community changing things around a bit for game to be a bit more slower instead.

[gritty salmon]

if you have many doomstacks within your territory you don't reach that stage if you're capable of this

[delicate violet]

A single doomstack at the right location could mean a decisive and irrecovavle blow to the economy in 3, this way players get to react to the problem

[gritty salmon]

that is a player who lost 20 turns ago

[ashen tiger]

If memory serves me right, Amikdara mentioned that she considers longer games to be a better way to express skill since they are less reliant on random pickups / sectors.

I think there was this whole debate about revealing map type before the match, since maps where players were separated by water were less rush-favoured.

[gritty salmon]

this is the (primary) reason why i don't like playing with her

[alpine dragon]

he is unable to cope with the fact that he must adapt his strategies to the new game

[gritty salmon]

no he is looking at how he would have to adapt his strategies and is saying "this would be very unfun to play out"

[glad loom]

I will adapt to anythinf dont worry about that

[ashen tiger]

Usually losing your main stacks / cities is a death sentence anyway, so I think the main concern here is hero sniping.

[glad loom]

And longer games

Are heroes limit equal to cities

[ashen tiger]

Yeah.

[glad loom]

Do we have max cities limit with all research done

[ashen tiger]

Not really.

You have a basic cap, which can be increased by spending Imperium.

Imperium is like Cosmite.

You can increase it as much as you want, though it gets pretty expensive.

[delicate violet]

You can have more heroes, but each of them costs 30g per turn

[glad loom]

Increasing 1 city limit means 1 more hero instantly?

[ashen tiger]

And yeah, you can go beyond city cap / hero cap, but it gives you penalties.

[delicate violet]

It means you can recruit another one that costs you around 300g minimum, afaik

[glad loom]

I see

Losing a hero was big step back in aow3 and planetfall and this will make it worse imo

Maybe live games will need to enable auto resurgence if losing hero in autocombat happens often

if you're an aggressive live player and you lose a hero or 2 then you're done done done

[gritty salmon]

excited for the all hero clearing stacks

[quaint bobcat]

Sorry, the game making it optimal to care about dispersing heroes is in fact a good thing.

Also, you caring for multiplayer in a game that's quite poor at it does not elevate your opinion as you seem to think? I might be inclined to listen if you'd taken the time to expose your issues in a calm manner, rather than having to read Ninjew's answers.

[gritty salmon]

haha that's right guys you heard it here, i'm the calm collected one

[gritty salmon]

tbh i don't think he's actually been terribly rude outside of that one message

[quaint bobcat]

I mean, the OP opening post is useless

[glad loom]

if you're someone that just wants to play vs ai and have fun then those kind of topics should not be intresting for you

[quaint bobcat]

Maybe I should know this from the topic name, but you wrote "Just NO!".

[glad loom]

i see hundreds of topics about ai and SP but i dont engage in it because it is not relevant to me but when i post smthing about competition, bunch of SP guys comment as if they have so much mp experience

[quaint bobcat]

As though it should be obvious how this was bad and when.

[pine swan]

so you were hoping for the 3 multiplayer players to hop in?

and have a very diverse debate?

[quaint bobcat]

Am I commenting on your MP experience here? What are we talking about?

[pine swan]

also I wasn't talking about MP myself, just the general game design implications of the change

[glad loom]

first of all, aow3 had a big mp community for many years unlike planetfall and i beleive we will have a big community for aow4

[pine swan]

which can apply to both MP and SP

[glad loom]

so i dont know where you're getting your 3 players stats

[gritty salmon]

the title's an issue but i think the op explains his problem. it certainly could elaborate more but it does the job

[gritty salmon]

the aow mp community is a bit larger than that...

but i think he was trying to provide feedback to the devs

[pine swan]

Well

Something tells me is not going to change

So mods it is

[gritty salmon]

that does seem to be the answer from jordi's response

[pine swan]

I assume that's something that should be moddable

[gritty salmon]

however, people are still coming in to argue with him, so that's why it hasn't been left at that

[glad loom]

many big changes with modding will be bad for mp community

[gritty salmon]

he's saying he stays out of SP-specific threads because it's just not relevant to his play experience, and he's frustrated that SP players come into MP-specific threads and need basic information explained to them and argued with every time

[glad loom]

Just NO! (MP Only)

[gritty salmon]

dread i do not believe that will have the effect you desire

[glad loom]

maybe

[quaint bobcat]

No? It really doesn't. :p I'm still not sure if DreadReaper is upset about potential diving to kill a besieging hero, or the fact he might have to organize his heroes differently, or if he feels this might boost defense unduly. But of course, I do lack context. Have fun.

[gritty salmon]

i think that will encourage SP players to feel attacked and come in to debate you about how mp concerns should be ignored because mp is 1% of the playerbase and all the other typical talking points

[gritty salmon]

i think he pretty well explains in the op that he dislikes that losing a hero at any point means his army is stuck waiting around unable to siege

[dusk cairn]

Hi guys, this thread is getting a bit out of control. Let's not insult each other and remember to stay respectful of each other. Let's stick to constructive feedback.

[gritty salmon]

there are further extrapolations off that that would be helpful to have

[ashen tiger]

To be honest, I personally don't think "longer games" are going to be a big concern, since people usually just surrender after losing a bit doomstack fight anyway.

[glad loom]

if waiting for another hero recruit takes many turns (>5) then.... is it tho ?

i do not watch all streams so enlighten me

[gritty salmon]

but what if the big doomstack fight is stalled out for 10 turns because a hero got sniped so the defender sits in their castle reinforcing their army while the attacker scrambles to get a hero up there?

[ashen tiger]

Something like Orbital Relay to transport a new hero can solve that.

[glad loom]

unecessary complications just to siege a city

[ashen tiger]

Yeah, I guess, but considering the amount of heroes players are going to have on average, I don't think it is likely that most of them will be sniped.

And if someone manages to snipe so many heroes, they probably have a chance at winning against the stack anyway, so, it's just going to make attacking a bit riskier.

[glad loom]

heroes die all the time in mp games and i think aow4 will be no exception

[gritty salmon]

depends on the tactical spells. in pf players could pull off some real garbage in 1v12 battles

[glad loom]

yea so desintegrate spells will be very effective defense tactics

[gritty salmon]

you can't win that fight but if you can snipe an enemy unit (like, say, a hero) with ops/spells then that's something they will try to do every time

[quaint bobcat]

Especially considering you can cast spells on turn 1 in AoW4, provided you have the appropriate upgrade.

[ashen tiger]

That may depend on mana income though, since now spells cost mana instead of costing energy.

[gritty salmon]

uh, yeah, but that's a mechanism in an individual instance, you aren't gonna be able to categorically prevent abuse with that

[ashen tiger]

In the end, it depends on the presence of instakill spells which can snipe higher tier units / heroes.

And their strength / cost.

[gritty salmon]

or just spells strong enough to allow a battle strategy that results in a hero dying

[glad loom]

it's been an hour and we are discovering many abuses to the siege hero rule, i am sure there will be plenty more

[gritty salmon]

instakill is the obvious pick but you can run around in circles for a while getting a bunch of spells off in pf

[glad loom]

i see this similar to aow3 hero who has protection of all channels except 1 so you must have this kind of damage to kill him 😄

rediculious !

[marble swan]

You don't wait for Heroes. You can hire them whenever you want, but if your Hero limit is reached then they have upkeep and are more expensive.

[glad loom]

ok but hero spam early can be a meta in this case if someone is good at resource snowball

can i recruit all heroes at the start if i have the gold for it ?

[tardy parcel]

I presume the district system slows that down, somewhat. Plus the imperium cost for founding new cities.

[gritty salmon]

i think at that point that's an abuse that relies enough on specific game values that it doesn't really work as a forward looking issue before release. that'san after release correction problem, if extant

[marble swan]

You're limited to the Heroes available. Free City heroes will generally be of higher level than your unaffiliated ones.

But if you want, you can buy 2 heroes on turn 1 given that you have the resources.

[quaint bobcat]

One thing I do want to ask after this thread: If the besieging hero is killed, can another hero take over the siege? Am I protected from a dive if I bring 4 heroes?

[marble swan]

As long as a Hero is present in the siege zone, the siege will continue

[gritty salmon]

that's certainly good info

[ashen tiger]

How far do cities reveal cloaked units?

Could you simply park a cloaked hero nearby?

[gritty salmon]

so multifront attacks are limited (either in number or limited to only being capable of raiding), but if you need to play around hero sniping you can bring multiple heroes to bear

that may be fine

[gritty salmon]

...will the siege continue if the hero is sniped and another hero is nearby, but not actually participating in the siege?

[quaint bobcat]

Do you need heroes to pillage or did I misunderstand that? I believe you need them to enter Ancient Wonders.

[gritty salmon]

don't need heroes to pillage as per this #1098614359112024187 message

[glad loom]

what do u mean by siege continue? isnt siege timer based on fortification health vs damage per turn ?

[quaint bobcat]

Presumably you would keep your siege projects you've paid for and the progress you've made in lowering fortification health.

[marble swan]

If there's no Hero in the siege zone, the siege will be lifted.

[glad loom]

what is the downside of lifting siege then do it again

it will still be over at the same turn timer right ? do attacker lose resources?

[marble swan]

In the same turn? Not much

If you end the turn then the walls will be repaired

[glad loom]

next turn fortification health is back at max?

[gritty salmon]

i would like to note that this is an amusing conclusion to come to given this from earlier #1098614359112024187 message

[ashen tiger]

I suppose pillaging could still be pretty useful.

Sending 1 unit stacks with cloaking to a bunch of enemy province improvements in order to pillage them might be worth a shot.

[gritty salmon]

i sure hope not

[ashen tiger]

:^)

[gritty salmon]

that sounds obnoxious as hell

i believe the common parlance would be "cancer"

[ashen tiger]

I remember doing stuff like that in a couple of RTS games.

People do find that annoying, but that's why it works wonders.

[gritty salmon]

bot factories in planetary annhilation set to infinite build dox which are set to planetwide patrol area

i made some people real mad with that

it's funny

but also in an rts it's more reasonable to see managing that kind fo thing as part of the game, as opposed to TBS where it is kind of jsut tedious

also i will admit me doing that was 100% cancer

[ashen tiger]

Dark Templars to multiple enemy mineral lines in SC 2 is something which can win games in an instant. It feels very painful to lose to that.

Though, most people just build detection.

[gritty salmon]

it's also pretty explicitly not what the devs are wanting to promote right? more focused areas of conflict etc etc?

[quaint bobcat]

From what I saw pillaging does lower your MP to zero, so you wouldn't be too hard to chase down if the opponent had truesight at least.

[ashen tiger]

I guess so.

[quaint bobcat]

On the other hand, T1 spiders from the Tome of Beasts have camouflage apparently? That's not exactly the same kind of investment as a Dark Templar spire.

[ashen tiger]

Depends on whether you want the Tome of Beasts in your build.

If you do, seems close to widow mine drops in terms of investment costs.

[gritty salmon]

the real question is, is it so good you can't afford to not have it in your build?

this is an mp thread so the assumption is everyone is playing to win here

[north atlas]

Big question though, are city buildings locked during sieges?

[ashen tiger]

Depends on how good is, whether other Tomes have something similar to offer and how good other Tomes are.

[north atlas]

If you can just produce units for four turns it's gonna be intense for the attackers

[gritty salmon]

the goal of balance changes is to achieve this state

[ashen tiger]

Yep. In the end though, it depends on exact numbers and we probably won't see these until release.

Though, I would expect T1 Tome to be extremely easy to incorporate into your builds since T1 Tome skills research costs are very low.

[gritty salmon]

well my presumption is this convo is predicting possible abuses as a result of the siege hero limitation

[tardy parcel]

You can still produce units whilst under siege - draft is unaffected by a siege, but all other city incomes are halved.

[gritty salmon]

so "in theory you could do something totally unrelated" is kind of a nonsequitur

[shell marten]

I don't think it's bad for multiplayer. You will just actually have to treat your heroes as army leaders and protect them. On the contrary, this will nicely cancel out doomstacking practices because you will want to have more active armies on more places led by only 1 hero.

[gritty salmon]

we have actually determined the opposite lmao

you want multiple heroes in your doomstack so if one gets sniped the other can still lead the siege

[shell marten]

How sniped 😄

Just keep him safe

[gritty salmon]

you ever seen a hero die in pf?

[shell marten]

Yeah, because I use him to fight

[gritty salmon]

dread seems to be particularly worried about autocombat results

but also like, are instakill spells in the game?

[shell marten]

Like against AI? Just don't attempt to clean difficult sits when you going to siege

[gritty salmon]

are there units that might enable you to suicide bomb one specific guy?

[shell marten]

Obviously those now can't be allowed to target heroes.

[gritty salmon]

think the concern is losing a hero when you're amassing your army and getting delayed substantially ebcause now you need a new hero to do anything

[shell marten]

that's a counterstrat then. And I can't really imagine it.

[gritty salmon]

in any case "counterplay exists" isn't really the point. is that counterplay fun or interesting? or is it just tedious?

[shell marten]

There is a way to ressurect heroes for sure.

You just have to play more defensively/control, when that happens

[gritty salmon]

you could say the same about literally any aspect of any game

"you will simply have to play around it" well no duh

[shell marten]

kinda

[gritty salmon]

do i want to play around it? or do i want to play a different game and not buy this one?

[ashen tiger]

This thing might also affect the whole sniping thing.

Depending on whether players can get it.

[shell marten]

I want to play a new Age of Wonders game with fresh set of rules. If I wanted to play older one, I will just play the older one.

[gritty salmon]

i don't think anyone is saying that change is inherently bad

[tardy parcel]

The thread title is "Just NO!"

[gritty salmon]

we have reached this point of the conversation

[shell marten]

Besides, this rule makes a sense, since it is only logical, that only a "political figure" can claim a territory.

[quaint bobcat]

Not accessible to players as I understand it.

[gritty salmon]

he is saying this particular change is bad correct

[shell marten]

I am going to read the history of this thread, because I have the feeling it will just get heated.

[ashen tiger]

I kinda hope so, but some Ancient Wonders / Events might grant it to people.

[gritty salmon]

this thread has honestly been remarkably well behaved for what i would've expected

[quaint bobcat]

Feel free to correct me, but if the strat were bad but super annoying to deal with, I don't think I would tolerate it either.

[gritty salmon]

usually mp discussions are a massive dumpster fire of mp players bickering with each other vigorously while SP players rain in from above trying to delegitimatize the entire concept of making an mp thread or giving mp feedback

[shell marten]

Additional question. Do I also need a hero to liberate a city, which is being migrated/absorbed by the enemy?

[gritty salmon]

the sad truth is getting mp players to broadly agree to not do a particular strat is very very hard and makes the game worse in its own way forever (whatever the agreement is, players will try to push the line constantly while claiming they have technically not broached the agreement)

[quaint bobcat]

When we've discussed it with the devs, it seemed they were quite aware of this guy in particular and the question of his (un)availability.

[marble swan]

No, if a city is occupied it will not repair its walls. The absorb/migrate needs to be finished, so during that time it can be liberated.

[ashen tiger]

Might be the case, though I might have confused them with Lost Wizards.

[quaint bobcat]

Jordi has put a big "NO" on your message by the way :D

Lost Wizards are also specified to be inaccessible

[gritty salmon]

lmao

[ashen tiger]

Ah.

Missed that one.

My bad.

[quaint bobcat]

No worries, it's hard to notice

[shell marten]

It is true. The problem here is the rushed up player mentality, which has a hard time to play longer games, as they find it difficult to pause their games, and resume them the other day, much to my disappointment.

[quaint bobcat]

There's so many degenerate strats at a glance. I think I might turn on resurgence on manual battles even in SP if what this thread fears materialises.

[shell marten]

Or you change your strategy to not aggressive?

[quaint bobcat]

Can I suggest you demand a hero be present for any manual battles in MP games? It doesn't seem like much of a leap with how the game is built, it's enforceable, and it should minimize issues that might occur if running around with a floating Mystic Scout casting fireballs is still as viable as we think.

[glad loom]

Still no one argued why is it good to require a hero

[ashen tiger]

I think it is to prevent people from sieging cities with single unit stacks.

[glad loom]

Irrelevant

So your strategy is to siege with scouts

[quaint bobcat]

Sieges do cut down income by half.

[ashen tiger]

I think, you can mess up all sorts of stuff with that, since militia is no longer there.

[gritty salmon]

it is to focus gameplay onto a smaller number of specific points of interest

[glad loom]

But this is bad for macro play

[quaint bobcat]

It also pushes more focus onto heroes and their associated mechanics.

[tardy parcel]

And thematically is because Heroes are your leaders/officers. You need someone in charge who knows what they're doing to pull of a siege

(Historically, they've been quite tricky)

[gritty salmon]

maybe, but that is the argument that has been made

macro play is the dullest part of aow anyway

[ashen tiger]

Instead, I'll now have to be content with pillaging province improvements with single units stacks. : ^)

[glad loom]

Heroes are already important enough in prev aow games

[glad loom]

Historically armies can siege without leader present

[gritty salmon]

dread you have started to metamorphize into the "change is bad" strawman i said you weren't

why must you embarrass me like this

[shell marten]

Spellspaming hero strategy is countered by heals, which every playstyle will certainly have some form of access to.

[gritty salmon]

1. do you know that?
2. do you know that some other similar abuse will not be quickly found?
3. do you know that such abuses will never be found?

[quaint bobcat]

I still find the argument that single scouts shouldn't be able to besiege and conquer cities compelling, multiplayer included. What other solutions could have been put into place?

[tardy parcel]

Are these hypotheticals helpful whilst the game isn't out? Not really.

Balance is living. I'm sure exploits will be found. They'll probably get nerfed.

[gritty salmon]

they exist in previous games (instant kill spells) so yes it is an active concern

[ashen tiger]

City militia, though it kinda makes you more tied your culture.

Personally, I don't really have a strong opinion on the topic.

[quartz goblet]

Slight tangent, but still relevant to heroes and sieges. Do we know whether a hero is required to maintain a siege, or only to start one?

[glad loom]

Should be more units type to siege, not rare units only like heroes

[ashen tiger]

I can still annoy people by pillaging their provinces with single unit stacks, so, that's still there.

[gritty salmon]

really the question is "if you lose a hero, is it ok that you now that not attack cities with your 3 stack army?" and i find "well we can assume you won't lose your hero so it doesn't matter" to be an argument of little value

[glad loom]

So maybe also catapults, rams, giants etc...

[quaint bobcat]

Hm, but isn't that concern addressed when you can recruit heroes on demand?

[tardy parcel]

My argument would be "New game, new rules. If I want to take a city, make sure I'm using several heroes."

[gritty salmon]

travel time

[glad loom]

I agree unexpected things happen all the time

[quaint bobcat]

And you don't want a single spearthrower to be able to siege either.

[glad loom]

Lets see how well can live players keep their heroes alive

[gritty salmon]

this was the conclusion i came to immediately yes, this promotes mega doom stacks

which is fine by me, personally

desireable even

[quaint bobcat]

Sorry, I should have quoted DreadReaper here.

[ashen tiger]

I guess you could simply spread your army out and burn the province improvements, making the city useless.

Though, it would not be as impactful as taking the city.

[glad loom]

There is many solutions

Just not the hero rule 😁

[shell marten]

Yeah, it's mostly the two of us, but I came to the party late 😆

[gritty salmon]

1. does that actually make the city useless?
2. is that a fun or acceptable state of the game? now you need to micro split up your stack into a dozen different locations, even ignoring how this forces you to be vulnerable to modes of attack you otherwise would not be isn't that just really tedious?
3. why is this a desirable state?

[glad loom]

So tell me how can a hero with spearmen army siege a city and destroy walls without catapult

Plz stop with the historical / reality none sense

[gritty salmon]

i don't understand why it isn't "have a hero or an army strength value above 1500" (sub in any number you think would fit for 1500)

[tardy parcel]

They're built through the siege actions that you take, Dread, and used to knock holes in the wall

These are some of the siege projects shown in the dev diary

They are not all of them.

[ashen tiger]

1. Probably cuts income by like, half. Not completely useless, but very damaging.
2. Yeah, it can get tedious, though, not overly problematic.
3. I guess?

[ashen tiger]

That does sound pretty decent.

[gritty salmon]

being generous in my interpretation of what guilu said, i think the concern is less verismilitude (which is agree isn't a big deal here) and more "should singluar t1 units be allowed to claim cities"

[gritty salmon]

4. does it substantially slow the game down?

[ashen tiger]

Maybe? It might depend on how long the pillaging takes. Might not be a bad thing though.

[glad loom]

I dnt know like i said it can be many ways but i know that the hero only will not be good for mp

[gritty salmon]

personally, i would much rather just have the epic siege battle than micromanage my army farting around the countryside for a half dozen turns

[glad loom]

Why does it have to be siege like this on strategic map anyways

[gritty salmon]

because it is a new game with new mechanics and a new developer design focus

come on man

[ashen tiger]

It will still be there, just a bit later, once your reinforcement hero arrives.

[tardy parcel]

To stop cities falling in a single turn, to make taking them more meaningful, and to give the defenders more chance to affect the outcome

[ashen tiger]

Unless your opponent just surrenders.

Which might also happen.

[tardy parcel]

Also.. like Ninjew said, because it is not AOW3 or PF

[gritty salmon]

i think you missed what it was about this scenario i do not enjoy. i was not imagining "i will never get to siege now for the rest of the game" as the undesirable outcome

[shell marten]

Well, either healing, or defense rush/support. If the defender can kill the hero at the back solely with spells, it is also an opportunity cost of not being able to cast those on actually threatening units, which will be needed to turn the tides, so I'm particularly not too worried about spellsniping as long as heroes can't be instakilled with spells (which would have been a really stupid design oversight, so I don't expect it) I don't know about abuses, but it's not exactly easy to snipe a unit, which is being kept in safety.

[shell marten]

Militia in Planetfall already solved this issue.

[glad loom]

Keep it secret keep it safe amikdara

[gritty salmon]

#1098614359112024187 message <- you are here

[glad loom]

I did not like pf militia system

[gritty salmon]

i did

[glad loom]

Way too many unecessary battles to destroy each sector

[tardy parcel]

Neither did Triumph, one of the things the new system is addressing is the militia adding lots of extra fights or extra chaff to fights.

[glad loom]

So militia in main city only is fine

[tardy parcel]

In Age of Wonders 3 players had to make sure they always had armies close to vulnerable cities as they were not defended by default. In Planetfall, we had garrisons to make sure cities and sector bases were defended at all times. However, it added a lot of extra units to already huge fights with exactly the same layout, making players tired of fighting these kinds of battles and auto-resolving them. It also couldn’t stop a player from launching surprise attacks and overwhelming the garrison in a single turn.

[gritty salmon]

that's true my "i did" does come with the * that i played with a reasonable group who agreed to autobattle trivial fights

[ashen tiger]

I think that militia system might have worked better for AoW IV, ironically, since it is much easier to apply racial transformations / enchantments to militia, rather than units mods from PF, which militia always lacked.

[glad loom]

I see no issue with protecting your aow3 cities with units

Nobody complained

[gritty salmon]

aow3 crow sniping sucked real bad

real real real bad

please never allow that to return

[glad loom]

That was more about mobility than city sniping

[tardy parcel]

Or the ol' classic "Oops, I moved my stack off three tiles and some neutral marauders zoomed down the road and straight into my city" :>

[shell marten]

I did

[ashen tiger]

Invisible units are present in AoW IV.

[gritty salmon]

no it was definitely about adding extra tedious gameplay to stop a really dumb scenario from occurring as a fun extra knowledge-check trap

[shell marten]

Don't forget to fastclick cast Scorched earth immediately lmao

[gritty salmon]

hahahahaha

i did forget

[glad loom]

Anyway i guess the new siege system is going to remain

[gritty salmon]

thanks for reminding me

[glad loom]

But the requirement to start a siege should be more flexable

[shell marten]

it was like prime rogue strat no kidding

[gritty salmon]

it was fair enough when it was an assassin stack shanking your 2 civic guard defenders but the crow nonsense was so dumb

[shell marten]

I don't see a problem. You can only have several real armies over the map anyway. You just need to make sure now, that each of them has hero, and you need to pay an opportunity cost as an attacker not rush with hero into slaughter, which will result in more support based meta, rather than man army, which is very much needed moveaway from that Star Kings Champion Nonsense.

Obviously, we can play auto-combats with hero resurgence, if they will die too much.

[gritty salmon]

wooooo

[shell marten]

Futhermore, this mechanic can also be used as an argument to alleviate cancer of instakill spells.

[glad loom]

That was a joke i cant beleive you are considering autp resurgence

[gritty salmon]

it's fine enough if no one abuses it

sadly...

[shell marten]

Like by building tanks?

[gritty salmon]

???

[shell marten]

How do you abuse auto-resurgence?

[glad loom]

Tanks are heroes

[gritty salmon]

put 4 heroes in a stack

they can clear everything forever and none will ever die

[shell marten]

true, that's annoying

[glad loom]

Ariga will love this

[gritty salmon]

i did that on accident once and me doing that was the reason we stopped using that setting in my old aow3 group

[shell marten]

Well, but you can always purchase new hero if accdent happens right?

[gritty salmon]

it's pretty abuseable

[glad loom]

Yea buy another one 10 turns away

[gritty salmon]

now you have to pay the 5 turn travel time fee for no good reason

[shell marten]

You can also build your heroes to behave defensively in auto-combat. Like giving them ranged weapons

[gritty salmon]

we have returned to here

[shell marten]

If you are preparing for the siege, just don't clean. Sites should be already cleaned near enemy territory anyway

[ashen tiger]

By the way, you can give heroes camouflage in AoW IV, right?

[gritty salmon]

we have returned to here now lmao

[ashen tiger]

I can kinda imagine sniping cities with 1 hero stacks, maybe with some cheap summons added into the mix to speed the siege up.

[glad loom]

Just dont clear sites, i like that

Even in pbem battle vs ai good players try to fight hard sites all the time and take risks, you cant simply tell them not to risk anything

Its all about risk management not zero risk

[ashen tiger]

I think she meant "before the siege", not just in general.

If you are preparing for the siege, just don't clean.

[glad loom]

I know but thats irrelevant

You start marching your hero army stacks from your domain and clear all the way

[shell marten]

Come on, as if they simply wouldn't force their game to close if results are dissatisfying. 🙄 That's PBEM.

[glad loom]

Now you re on diffrent subject

And no not many do it and u get restart message

[shell marten]

Different subject, which invalidates your complain in this one.

[shell marten]

If you close game in task manager, you won't get restart message everybody knows that.

[gritty salmon]

ok amikdara so is the argument then that we should assume that heroes will never die in a mildly competent player's hands

and therefore the problem state will never occur

[glad loom]

I think its not always like this , sometimes you get restart notif

[shell marten]

yeah, heroes should never die in manual combat against the AI in a good player's hands (sorry, today's streamer)

[glad loom]

Wrong

[gritty salmon]

there are some interesting specifications you have made there

"in manual combat" and "against the ai" aren't something that should be assumed here i think

[shell marten]

what if I just shut down my power supply 😄

[ashen tiger]

I would personally say that problem state might occur, but there are many ways to mitigate it and it will most likely occur very rarely.

[shell marten]

PBEM is so full of abuses, that's why I consider live the competitive one actually.

[glad loom]

Then you re gonna need new pc every few months

[ashen tiger]

The issue it solves is kinda worse than the issues which it might cause.

Something like "Army Strength" siege limit might also be a good way to solve this though.

[gritty salmon]

🤔

you know what

fair enough

i'm turned around on this one sorry dread

[glad loom]

No problem

[quaint bobcat]

Shovels. It's called sapping and it's disappointingly effective. But apparently you wouldn't do it unless a heroic presence commanded you to. 😅

But yeah this is definitely a balance/agreeability issue and not a verisimilitude issue to me.

[north atlas]

So besieging a settlement just for the hell of it might be interesting.

[north atlas]

If your army still gets beheaded though you will be completely powerless to attack in any way or form

[gritty salmon]

i

yes?

what is the point being made

[north atlas]

You CAN put all your eggs in one basket, but if they break you're in big trouble. I think it would be more profitable to attack with a large army led by a hero or two are the most.

Both strategies are viable now.

[gritty salmon]

there are 2 scenarios:

1. it is possible for your hero to die. if so, you need the protection, as losing your hero and having the siege delayed by 5-10 turns is a severe hit to your tempo and the pressure you can exert on your opponent, as well as giving them all the time in the world to put together a counterforce. having only 1 hero leading a siege force is a big risk
2. it is not reasonably possible for your hero to get sniped, in which case it is better to have multiple heroes leading different war armies than putting them together in one doomstack

[north atlas]

It is also possible that one of your heroes might get sniped, so it's good to have a second in command around just in case.

I feel like they have given more importance to heroes in battle. They are sturdier than before. They mentioned in one of the streams that "you should put them in danger now"

[shell marten]

For those who have not played Planetfall, also keep in mind, that XP is now distributed equally among the group, regardless of who does the killing.

[slate stone]

What a disgustingly insufferable comment...

[gritty salmon]

lmao ok dude

just trying to quickly inform someone asking some questions with very obvious answers that was obviously going to be a situation that'll go south very fast

[gritty salmon]

do you have any input on the actual topic of this thread?

[last cape]

I'd be interested to know - if a hero led stack is sieging a city, can a second hero led stack "join the siege", so that if the first hero is killed, the siege continues? Or, if it takes 1 full turn of the city being unsieged for the walls to regenerate, does that mean that any siege projects completed would persist for that turn if another stack were to resume the siege? If so it might be more beneficial to have each hero leading a stack, than have one hero and a "spare" in the same stack in case the lead hero gets sniped.

[prime swan]

Sorry I haven't read the entire thread, but I wanted to add that a similar rule (only armies with heroes can capture cities) was also present in HoMM4.

[rich onyx]

Siege continues until at least one hero presents in siege area. No "stops" or fortifications regeneration.

[brittle socket]

Sorry, but 1 doom stack can lose to 3 of these. Therefore, it is definitely not worth shoving all the heroes into one stack. At least you need three armies, each of which will have a hero. It will be difficult for the defender to snipe all three without losing a lot of power against three full stacks.

[gritty salmon]

depends on how easy hero sniping is

[hollow widget]

I'm wondering if this would make sense as a game-specific rule? Like being able to toggle if heroes are required for sieges. Not sure how difficult that would be to implement.

[quaint bobcat]

They'd need to change the interface to remove the hero portrait or change it. That's inaccessible to mods already.

[hollow widget]

Right

I meant how much implementation that would be on the dev's end, not a modder's. If someone's arguing mostly from a multiplayer PoV, I imagine they'd rather have a baked-in solution than require everyone playing to have a mod.

[brittle socket]

Well, let's see in practice. So far, it turns out that it is not so easy.

[north atlas]

Harder than 3, that's for sure

[fallow raptor]

Surely the masters of exploiting game mechanics aren't daunted by a new challenge to overcome.

[glossy junco]

Best comment in this thread, if you ask me. Instead of a fixed need for a hero to start or maintain a siege, it should verify attacker strength vs. fortifications health if a siege is possible or not. A hero greatly adds to the fortification strength you can take down per round. If a siege would take too long (> X turns) the siege is over or will not be started. This prevent cities from being taken over by "scouts" and it lessens the danger of hero snipers effectively preventing sieges. But a good stack can always take over a not well guarded/defended city.

[glad loom]

i like the minimum army strenght relative to fortif health rule

• makes more sense than 1 hero alone sieging an extremely high fortif health city

as for interface problem, devs can just put leader at the siege screen instead

[rich onyx]

I am worried about armies just sit idly during siege. Lets say average game lasts 60-80 turns according to previous titles. This means reaching endgame. And now 1/8 of total match several stacks just sitting idly sieging the castle. I totally understand why such approach has been taken but still it might lead to some stagnation. I never waited more than 1 turn in TWW f.e. to assault a settlement. In AoW mp it was always about sudden pushes and mobility. Now this will change to some kind of civ-like city sieges. But according to total number of castles (a lot less then in previous titles) the whole game point is moved from being actively aggressive to something different in terms of PvP

[dark grove]

I've quickly scanned through this thread. And it's fair feedback to say that this completely changes how the flow of the game work, some may prefer how it worked in previous games, some may prefer how it works now. Design decisions are never made lightly but they are always made with the thought that we simply can't please everyone.

What I did want to bring as good news is that the siege system has several settings that are moddable, and some of the features from how the system used to work in previous iterations are still there too.

Some examples of what can be modded in sieges:

• Siege projects, new and existing ones
• Siege specific unit requirement
• Siege unit amount requirement
• Siege base progress rate
• Siege progress rate based on unit tiers

Hopefully, if you find the sieging system detrimental for you and your multiplayer group, you can modify it to better suit your wants!

[glad loom]

great news, if majority mp players dislike it we will change it

[candid meteor]

They should extend the ability to start sieges to t3 and 4 and 5 units.

That way, you still rely on heroes for a bit, but once you are strong and mighty, you don't.

It is going to be very very weird to have a host with Giants etc not be able to even scratch a wall, unless some hero is there.

It is a weird, and unintuitive way to approach this, needing a hero.

I mean, I understand the reasoning just disagree with it.

And I'm not even a hard-core mp player.

The issue will be worse in single player because in mo the players can protect their heroes.

AI cannot.

So now, this huge AI army can be rendered functionally useless by sniping the hero.

[gritty salmon]

If you're gonna allow t3 units to do it it's just a weird anti-rush feature, why even bother with it at that point?

[old parrot]

If it is restricted that way, it should probably be t4 and t5 for the imperium upkeep

[delicate violet]

Aye, making it T3 makes no sense - and in general I disagree with the idea and don't really see the need either

There will be a lot fewer cities to worry about at any given moment due to the new city cap, which limits the sieges you will have to do as a player. Making heroes a linchpin in doing so forces a strategic valuing of a limited resource, yes, but since you don't have to Siege 12 cities anymore to take out a player it's not going to be stretched to thinly

And as for the sniping... if you do it vs. AI that is shooting yourself in the foot, but also not going to be anywhere near as easy as you think, IMHO. From what we've seen AI is remarkably cautious in how it uses its heroes

[plucky lark]

I don't understand a concern especially for MP players

If someone going to build a full set of defensive buildings this is super good for you because this player is going to lose.

you do not have time to do so normally

There are like tones of buildings that will help you better than those - money line, mana, draft, main building tier 2-3 etc, even food

• special improvements

I can see basic walls would be useful for sure, maybe one special at some point

but that's it imho

plus if you going to siege capital and opponent can't attack you because he is weaker, you are also won anyway because he is sitting at -50% for all of his income from his capital city.

that's why I even have some the opposite concern. What's the point sitting behind the walls? Your capital city producing half or more the money of your empire. If you got this -50% on it by being sieged you are dead anyway.

[gritty salmon]

The problem described occurs if they build the lowest level of defense possible, as that magically creates the condition that a hero must be present to perform the siege.

This thread has not been about nor discussed any other element of sieges

[tiny blaze]

Why would you not have a hero in your strike stack? Are you trying to take like ten cities in the same turn?

[ashen tiger]

In most cases you will have a hero. The problem mostly only when someone snipes your hero / heroes.

It was discussed quite a lot up in the thread.

All in all, I personally think that it will lead to issues very rarely and will probably work fine, though, army strength siege system sounds better on paper to me.

[gritty salmon]

Hold on I got the quote for this one sec

[gritty salmon]

Nice

[tiny blaze]

These bad boys tank dragons to the face and win, I don't think you get to "snipe" them without, you know, actually winning the battle

[gritty salmon]

Haha

That is quite the assumption

[tiny blaze]

We've literally seen that in a stream

They tank a lot

[gritty salmon]

This is mp

Players are very smart and actively looking for weird tricks and loopholes

I've played too many pf games where a single scout can kite around the map while they rain hell on my through ops

We don't know what new abuses are possible in aow4 or if they will even necessarily be tactical combat based

[tiny blaze]

Then why is it even a discussion?

"Siege requiring heroes is bad because there might be some terrible exploit that takes out one of the toughest units in the game while they are controlled by an actual player, no less"

[gritty salmon]

Well yes that's why I don't think we should make assumptions about if killing a hero is or is not possible, and instead should be asking "is it ok that if you don't have a hero you aren't allowed to siege"

The possibility of if a hero can or can not be killed isn't a terribly helpful line of questioning as we simply have no actual way of knowing

[tiny blaze]

Honestly I think it's good

[delicate violet]

It is a smart counterplay - you can still put pressure on the enemy city by pillaging, but your offensive is somewhat halted until you get the new hero there

Keep in mind that getting new heroes is no longer on a cooldown - you can get them every turn

You even get to choose what kind of hero you want out of a substantial pool

[tiny blaze]

It actually encourages to split your heroes if you wanna take multiple fortesses simultaneously instead of forming a hero doomstack

[candid meteor]

I was thinking t3 because your culture tops out at t3.

I had forgotten that there are many tome t3 units.

[ashen tiger]

It's kinda the opposite though?

It is easier to snipe a single hero in a single battle, rather than a doom stack of them.

[candid meteor]

Because I might conceivably have more stacks than I have cities?

This is a wargame after all

[delicate violet]

If someone did a cheesy hero-sniping strat, as the defender you can always just... retreat your hero to keep them safe

[tiny blaze]

Given what I have seen on streams, I don't think hero sniping is gonna be a problem. You either really actually have a force that is capable of lifting a siege, or the enemy hero very likely lives

[ashen tiger]

Most likely to be the case, yeah, though there might be some exceptions.

[delicate violet]

Wouldn't eliminate them from the siege, but would keep them secure. And in any straight-up fight heroes will be hard to kill - especially if you activate Hero Resurgece, which imho is pretty much a must-have anyways

[ashen tiger]

All in all, refer to this:

[ashen tiger]

Resurgence can be kinda problematic, since it forces people to create hero-stacks to clear the map out without any risk.

[delicate violet]

Hero doom stacks would require ridiculous amounts of cash to create and maintain

A hero over cap costs 30g per turn, and what, at least 300 to recruit? Depends on how late you are in the game

[ashen tiger]

I mean, something like 4 heroes + 2 units running in a single stack.

[delicate violet]

Still going to be very costly, and you miss out on 3 heroes that could lead armies that clear sites, found cities or lead sieges - so a huge opportunity cost

[gritty salmon]

Retreating (presumably, maybe they've changed it) lowers your mp to 0. Also can defenders retreat in 4? Anyways I'd love to throw away a single scout to halt the movement of an enemy army for a turn that sounds awesome

[delicate violet]

The army is presumably already in a siege, no? So them not being able to move doesn't matter

And even then the retreat is a last option - though you are right, I forgot that defenders weren't able to retreat in past games

[tiny blaze]

You can surrender and your units don't just die on the spot, they can actually run

[gritty salmon]

Nah the snipe can happen at any time the army in en route

[delicate violet]

All in all I really see Hero resurgence as the best and intended fix for this problem

[delicate violet]

If that is a problem then again, the attacker has failed in logistics

[ashen tiger]

There are only so many sites to clear - usually doing so with minimal losses is preferable to doing so with more spread out heroes.

[delicate violet]

Tying siege abilites to specific units would always leave that as an option

[ashen tiger]

Though, the new healing system might make hero stacks more risky.

Since they might return from battles at 1 HP quite often and regen very slowly.

[delicate violet]

Depending on how resurgence works it might leave your people with 1hp in this game - which is going to make them near useless

Ah, you already mentioned it, sorry

[ashen tiger]

Yeah, I guess it can kinda mitigate the issue somewhat.

[gritty salmon]

#1098614359112024187 message

[tiny blaze]

Tbh I feel like the anti siege hero snipe can happen in one corner case where your hero is badly wounded and the defender throws a suicide stack, but walking a badly wounded hero into enemy territory is a dumb move anyways, so it's not really sniping, it's the sieging player being dumb

[gritty salmon]

The logistical failure of allowing a scout to exist near their army...?

Ok so we are in fact effectively working from the assumption that heroes will never die

Like we can do that that's fine but just to be clear

We are taking that as an ironclad statement of full certainty

[candid meteor]

Ugh no to hero resurgence.

[tiny blaze]

We are working from the assumption that it's gonna take some really powerful cheese to snipe a hero with a suicide stack

And if hero dies in actual battle — the attacker simply failed to attack, it happens

[delicate violet]

The logistical failure of not having a replacement option available, ergo having failed in supply lines of critical equipment

[ashen tiger]

Personally, I think it will still happen from time to time, but probably won't be a big deal - there are a lot of ways to mitigate it and if you are really in a good enough position you will be able to bring enough heroes to avoid the whole "sniping" part .

[gritty salmon]

Ok so we are assuming that if the cheese exists it will be difficult to do. Do we know if instant kill spells like pf's instant kill ops aren't in the game, btw?

[gritty salmon]

So players should be expected to bring multiple heroes on every offensive front?

[ashen tiger]

I vaguely remember seeing something like that.

[gritty salmon]

We are back at hero doomstacks being the expected mode of play if so

Which I personally would be just fine with, for the record

[gritty salmon]

More than that I actually think it would be preferable as that would encourage larger pitched battles (the fun part of the series) so this has my support. But just to be clear on the actual effects of what is being said here

[delicate violet]

Players should be able to do proper reconnaissance of the region they attack. If the enemy manages to hide a stack powerful enough to snipe a hero I don't see why that shouldn't be a viable strategy. And I don't think multiple heroes will be the best answer for this, but being able to quickly reinforce on front with a hero should their hero fall would fall under the category of basic logistics to me

[tiny blaze]

I am assuming that most likely the outcome that leads to losing your hero is also the outcome where you're not in a state to continue pressing that front anyway

[delicate violet]

Battles cap out at 3v3 stacks regardless of heroes, so I don't see how that would have an effect

[delicate violet]

Agreed

[gritty salmon]

Are there teleportation effects present in the game, or are we saying that delaying an enemy army for 5-10 turns (map travel time) is an acceptable result of a hero snipe gambit?

[ashen tiger]

I think "Final Ultimatum" spell from Tome of Subjugation had some kind of insta-kill effect in int.

[gritty salmon]

You can only attack from as many directions as you have heroes effectively, so this promotes making one mega army that is of 3 stacks over a bunch of mobile armies of 1 stack or less in size pressuring cities

[ashen tiger]

Also the Reaper unit from Tome of The Reaper has something similar as an ability, though that's a T5 unit.

[gritty salmon]

Which sucks, for the record, so good riddance

[gritty salmon]

I would absolutely not make this assumption for mp

[ashen tiger]

I think there are still ways to do that.

Like, parking a cloaked hero nearby and simply not reinforcing with him.

[gritty salmon]

The threat is substantially lower if they can't take cities, disincentivizing that playstyle (not necessarily eliminating it entirely)

[delicate violet]

Iirc that is permanent mind control on a routing unit

[ashen tiger]

I've meant parking a cloaked hero until the siege begins.

[gritty salmon]

That's a lot of effort and risk to go through to achieve similar results so my statement stands

[ashen tiger]

I guess.

[tiny blaze]

I think that hero snipe is even less likely in mp. You can probably pull off some shenanigans vs ai, but sniping a very tanky unit that the player is gonna be guarding if they are going to siege is a tall order

[delicate violet]

Ultimately the question is whether this is a net gain for the game or not - and since hero requirements for sieges removes the old "sneak a single scout to the city and take it" from 3 which I find a far worse tactic I'm all for this change

[ashen tiger]

Yeah, it is definitely better than that, though I wonder, why not use some kind of an army strength system?

[gritty salmon]

Having played a pretty good amount of mp youd be surprised at the ingenuity of human players, in addition to how devoted they are to winning at any cost no matter how tedious or esoteric the process is

[tiny blaze]

The other player is a player too, and probably also trying to win

[gritty salmon]

Yes that does not mean that they have equal tools in a given scenario

Is there an anti-instant-kill effect you can apply to your hero?

You are making a lot of assumptions that I have seen fall in many different ways

Players definitely get weird kills out of nothing against skilled opponents

[ashen tiger]

By the way.

[gritty salmon]

They often put a lot of effort into achieving that, simply because there exists a 5% chance that they will succeed

[ashen tiger]

We've seen a single spell create this kind of an army:

This might something to do with why the devs have not used army strength siege system.

[plucky lark]

😮

[ashen tiger]

The army was created right next to a city of an opponent.

[gritty salmon]

🤔 the presence of very powerful summon spells certainly changes the arithmetic

@glad loom would legit be interested to hear your thoughts on this

[tiny blaze]

Oh yeah, however annoying somebody pulling off a succesful hero snipe might be, spawning in stuff like that next to your city and taking it is waaay more annoying

[ashen tiger]

https://youtu.be/sww0qewO2gg?t=172

The timestamp sends you to the moment the spell was used.

Though, it was combo-ed with another spell in this case.

[gritty salmon]

If you can materialize that army over the course of a single turn in a remote region of the map all other considerations are honestly probably dwarfed by the possibility of instant backline harassment

If this required a spell to be cast 5 turns previous as setup for this, giving the defending player advanced warning, then we can talk other considerations

But if that army can take cities that's effectively a wincon tbh

[ashen tiger]

This is the spell.

The guy also cast a spell which created destroyed the province and created a forest on top of it.

[tiny blaze]

3 turns, pretty quick and I don't think people get notifications about that

[ashen tiger]

Not sure how much it cost.

[gritty salmon]

Could you prime both spells ahead of time and cast them both same turn?

[tiny blaze]

Dunno, I didn't watch this particular one

[candid meteor]

Looks very end game

[ashen tiger]

You could probably still cast this one by itself if enemy city had an empty forest province nearby.

[gritty salmon]

Don't say these words around sinsling

[north atlas]

Vlad Draculea did that and 500 years later people are still complaining

[ashen tiger]

Without using any other spells.

[gritty salmon]

Lol

Lmao

[ashen tiger]

There is also this, though the player used another spell in the video.

[gritty salmon]

"Rofl"

[ashen tiger]

Not sure if this one can create a forest on enemy tile.

[tiny blaze]

doomstack in 4 turns, brutal

[gritty salmon]

I would not call that a doom stack in aow terms

I would call that "some absurd nonsense" to be able to abruptly pull out of thin air on the other side of a player's empire

[tiny blaze]

paininthebuttstack, okay

[ashen tiger]

I think a spell jammer city improvement partially counters it.

It prohibits enemies from casting spells which affect the city or something similiar.

I don't remember exact details.

[tiny blaze]

IIRC it's a province that can be pillaged

[plucky lark]

Omg, why this spell so cheap. Like t1 summons cost 60 mana - 360 for 6 units. And this spell gets you what? 1 t4 4 t3 and 1 t2 units for 320!

[tiny blaze]

there might be summoning discount techs

[gritty salmon]

Does it? How do spell jammers work?

You don't have to cast that on a city province right?

[ashen tiger]

Don't remember that, to be honest. I think you have to build it in the city.

[candid meteor]

Costs are easily changed in a patch, and it might be priced and located to give you the edge to finally finish off an opponent

[gritty salmon]

May have something to do with how the economy scales, and wanting later game spells to be more efficient. This also has a prerequisite that must be met (cast on a forest) which is a downside I assume t1 summon spells don't need to deal with

It could also totally just be undercosted

Though tbh I'd be more concerned about casting time than cost if it's late game

[ashen tiger]

The thing is, the spell we've seen is from T4 Tome. There is also a similar spell in T5 Tome.

Might be even stronger, have not seen how it works.

[gritty salmon]

I mean, does a spell jammer actually stop someone from casting that nearby your city? Do they block all spells in a 5 province radius or something?

[ashen tiger]

I don't remember. I think it either blocks spells from nearby provinces or stops them from affecting your provinces - don't remember the exact details.

[plucky lark]

@candid meteor disagree. There are t4 and t5 units in the game and they have pretty high mana/ gold cost per units + draft cost. They are also supposed to finish off opponent, right?

Seems like just early build numbers

I hope

[candid meteor]

Hence the operative word "might"

[nocturne stone]

A good battle needs a Commander (Hero)... Most of the changes are actually making sense from warefare standpoint.
Having a Raiding party to take out a fully fortified city is nothing but a NONSENSE

AoW 4 is taking back to it's roots in AoW 1 where if a city had walls simple units without Flying/Wall Crushing/ Wall Climing was simply not possible. AoW 4 brings this to the next level how it is supposed to be done

[prime swan]

It worked a bit wonky in AoW1. The goblin bomber was a unit whose only attack was self explosion. A single bomber couldn't destroy a wall, just damage it. Yet a single bomber could capture an empty walled city without dying.

[glossy junco]

After some reconsideration I am all for the current Hero is needed for a siege setup especially in MP games. MP players are even more trying to exploit the system for sneaky stuff. Without the current system MP players would flood the world with scouts setting up sieges on all the cities to half their opponents income and production. You would effectively spend lots of time to hunt your opponents sneaky siege-boys, while setting your own siege-girls as well. With "Hero must be present" this is eliminated.

[nocturne stone]

I think the game just shifted in a bit different direction than the previous titles and most of the concerns are mainly because it is not the same system / strategy. Without actually having couple of matches to see if this works stating that MP will suffer is a bit overboard in my opinion

[nocturne stone]

It did, but this is not AoW1 so we are expecting more. I feel the game to shift in the proper direction. From all the dev diaries and videos i seem to conclude that less cities will be build because reasons and more focus would be to improve what you have. Plus finally there is a sense to utilise siege units not just some random invisible crow managed to sneak out and captured your capital because it could for no other reason

[candid meteor]

It's not like the only choices are this or AoW3 guys.

And why only heroes? Why not higher tier units too?

[nocturne stone]

It makes a sense to have a Leader organising the siege. Even in historical events sieges were lifted because the Atacking Leader was killed (assasinated). That makes sense. If you are to simulate an Empire building even a fantasy one - in all due essence You need comanders. Unless high tier units could "command" a Hero should be in charge. It is still quite far from HOMM where you need a blody Hero for each battle 😄

[candid meteor]

So my mighty Dragon doesn't count as a Leader?

[nocturne stone]

Being Mighty and Being a Leader are not mutially exclusive, however they don't seem to be equivalent 😉

[plucky lark]

Just NO! 😛

[candid meteor]

There is a greater context here. Armies could lose their entire cohesion if the leader died, and the kingdom itself could fracture.

That doesn't happen in this game.

That could be an interesting other game, like CK3 with actual fun fights 🙂

[nocturne stone]

I general i agree with you BBB. I am reluctant do brand anything bad at this point. In less than 10 days I will have more experienced opinion on tha matter :). As for the This doesn't happen in the game - i find that a bit tricky, because if you loose your heroes your empire could fall

[candid meteor]

Well, I think this will be less of a problem in MP actually, because between players of roughly equal skill it should be quite tense.

If I'm moving 3 stacks, we'll that's likely the bulk of my forces. And you as an invader will see that coming.

And respond.

So in that sense I'm not totally agreeing with the OP.

My real question, yet to be answered, is:

Can and does the AI attack and defend cities well?

[nocturne stone]

a Valid question. Tombles said that AI is better than AoW 3 😄 - I am hoping that he e is true to his words of a Goblin Master 😄

[candid meteor]

One hopes! adendum - while not perfect, I thought the AI in previous games was very serviceable, fwiw.

My "concern" such as it is, is that new systems --> AI usually issues (in any game series). Mods in PF for example

[nocturne stone]

I am eager to play the new mechanics. Having units into categories like support/shock - makes the game more complex than before and Siege would be more of a well prepared epic Encounter ( I've always wanted the game to change direction into something similar)
Have you noticed that Heroes are send to Dungeon Crypt not outright killed. I would love this aspect to be done right (like barganing chips between good players).

[candid meteor]

more complicated than ?

Intent seems to be to make things a bit easier. And compared to PF it is a less complex system

[nocturne stone]

Less complex true. I've ment deeper dive into easy to learn hard to master 🙂 in a more positive approach.

[candid meteor]

I think it will be a well received change

[deep zealot]

😄 I hope somebody starts creating an AoW4 ladder website somewhere, or at least a paid 100$ AoW4 tournament.

Maybe Triumph/Paradox can create this, giving 1000$ as prize money to the winner, 500$ to 2nd place, 250$ to 3rd place etc. It will jumpstart the multiplayer scene and maybe AOW4 it will turn into a well-known esports game!

Probably somebody already prepares a multiplayer ladder website somewhere 🙂 I'm so excited!

[glad loom]

not likely, but i have a discord server which will manage ladder games using a great ELO ranking bot

i think i will start using the bot as practice games without elo for a month or 2 until we fix big bugs/exploit. all age of wonders were so buggy at release date

and by the way it will be for PBEM/Async

[plucky lark]

for us

👴

[glad loom]

the bot supports any game format and has seperate leaderboard for each one but i guess we should stick for 1v1 and 2v2

for now 2v2 are random teams but bot developer is working on fixed teams so we can join with our teammates, it shouldnt take long before this happen

[deep zealot]

Nice! ❤️ I loved your aow3 multiplayer youtube videos!

[plucky lark]

Idk if it needed at all to be honest. I played AoW2 Shadow magic maybe 15 years ago and we used Elo ranking system back in the days. Not really good system when you have such a low number of players.

[glad loom]

well this bot is the best out there imo, you can search for a match in a hidden queue so no dodging will happen

i think if there is a decent website that hosts ladder, it's not likely to be threw hidden queues

[plucky lark]

Also it is promote power gaming and so less experimental builds will be seen. I have a bad feeling about new modular system with traits, form perks, tomes aka Stellaris way. Nothing more boring than playing Stellaris in competitive way. Like 1,5 builds.

[glad loom]

do u mean like metas strategies ?

[plucky lark]

But need wait and see

@glad loom like 1.5 playble builds

yeah

[glad loom]

the league will be eventually use a balance mod to play games, from our experience (mp players) triumph devs dont fix all bugs/exploits + they dont balance the game good enough for multiplayer

just like in planetfall server, we will have a balance group of strongest players who vote for changes for the balance mod

[deep zealot]

eventually something with liquipedia, transforming aow4 into an esport, with qualifications, GSL-type brackets, playoffs, prizes and English live commentaries!

the guys playing h3 professionally found some investors to put up prize money; I hope this happens to AOW4 multiplayer "fingers crossed"

[glad loom]

it will not happen, aow mp was never big enough for such events

we will host many tournaments tho

[deep zealot]

😦 I still hope. we'll see in the next few weeks-months how the multiplayer scene blossoms!

[glad loom]

even the game becomes very popular, the problem is that very low % of aow players play mp

[deep zealot]

Triumph could put 5k$ prize money for the first major online multiplayer tournament, it would be 0.001% of money made from pre-selling this game!

hmmm, yes.

I never played multiplayer, only singleplayer... I'm too scared to face a professional player (and played only aow1 and 2); these pros behave very differently than computer mechanical intelligence

[glad loom]

i am thinking of adding event managers in my server who get paid for each hosted tournament by them, the payment wont make them rich tho 😄

[deep zealot]

well, if possible, an english live commentator on a grand final, commenting from both sides (like they do in warcraft 3, for example)

either way, it will be fun to play and see professionals play this game to it's fullest!

[nocturne stone]

Main issue is that in order to improve multi-player it must not be tied up with competative gaming... In all due essence competative gaming ruin game experience and multi-player community suffer, because very few people move out of SP because of that...

I am not saying that competative should not exist - on the contraery, however it must not be the only multi-player part

[glad loom]

cmon man, look at starcraft and company of heroes. their MP competition is great because they have ladders

[deep zealot]

yes! same with clash royale, the mobile smartphone 'battle royale' type of game.... multiplayer propelled these massively

[nocturne stone]

Starcraft is a bad example 😉 and currently multi-player casual matches don't exist

[glad loom]

if you dont like competition then play casual mp games, i dont see the problem here

[deep zealot]

yes, top of the ladder for ultra-competitive plays... and mid-ladder for casual/fun games

[plucky lark]

games do not lasts for 3+ hours in those games. And that's really important.

[nocturne stone]

If you read my post - this is what i am saying. Mutliplayer should not be only competative

[glad loom]

i agree, i am building 2 discord servers, one for casual and other for ladder, even in ladder server you will able to play practice games without rankings

[nocturne stone]

If you turn each and every multi-player game with fixed "Balance" for Competative play - you turn non-competative rules into competative

[deep zealot]

hmm, the alternative would be to get inspiration from heroes 3 multiplayer system - it's a the first TBS with lots of multiplayer going on!

[nocturne stone]

which in turn ruins non-competative community

[glad loom]

in the casual server, players will host games with any desired settings, mods required, rules etc....

[nocturne stone]

I am one of the few people who plays AoW in all 3 types and the from experience - the best games are when people can enjoy

[deep zealot]

going to watch the quill18 live stream 😄 sorry if I won't participate to this conversation in the next tens of minutes!

[nocturne stone]

And for different people enjoyment varies - some like to be ultra competative; some preffer SP - other play the game with friends 🙂

Obviously you can't apease all the players with the same "house rules" / mods

[glad loom]

definitely true

but i must set standard rules for ladder + make rule that allow players to change it in a match if all agree

[nocturne stone]

If you do a ladder type of setting - it is not possible to do that without some restrictive rules...

And i agree with you on this aspect 🙂

Turn-based games are hard to be played competatively mainly because time management (Unless you play asyncronous mode which is another topic). Of course it is not impossible and there are certain pre-caustions

From tombles Sparcle stream of Rainbows i've noticed that on certain settings Mystic AI tends to play with huge losses

In a competative setting - this outright kills mystic as a viable meta option

if something is not done to "resolve" that issue

[glad loom]

it's best for async/pbem because if we want to create ladder for live games then it must be classic turns (simultaneous is full of abuses and conflict) => then we need to keep track of players schedule to continue their ladder games on multiple live sessions

i dont mind a ladder for live (classic turns) but i dont want to be the manager of such league

[nocturne stone]

That is an overkill like a 2nd proffesion 😄

Unless you get paid somehow to do this and you do this for a living - that is insane for "Best effort"

I think live games should not be competavie unless there is something like a torunament once per let's say 6 months

with preliminary stages where people get to no more than best 8

and untill best 8 everything is PBEM/Async

[glad loom]

that could work but what i think best settings for live tournament/ladder is to set score victory + turn timer so players will finish in one big session, if someone leave for real life emergency then he loses

[nocturne stone]

I agree

Tournament is a commitment afterall

[glad loom]

some issues will happen and we gonna need rules for it, like losing connection for long period

[nocturne stone]

That would be part of the organisation

and such an event cannot be done in the 1st couple of months

[glad loom]

it's not gonna be me 🙂

[nocturne stone]

😄

I've never said that you should be the one 🙂

I am just discussing what i have been doing with a closed community on other games

but diffferent times - different games

nowdays everything is fast paced oriented

[glad loom]

from my experience with live games, most of players prefer simultaneous turns, so a ladder is not likely to work for them. but tournaments could work

[nocturne stone]

I agree

[candid meteor]

A tournament isn't hard to organise, but the question is whether it is worth it, for TS.

Previous tournaments generated alot of visibility and discussion, and alot of balance changes.

[nocturne stone]

I remember the 1st AoW 3 tournament back in the days. It was well discussed in the forum

In terms of TS worth - if it is community driven and organised. TS could just observe if they wish so nothing more nothing less. Should they organise the Event - this is a different story

[shell marten]

During my 3 years of Planetfall multiplayer, I played with dozens of different people, and I'd only regard maybe up to 5 of those as "competitive"

[glad loom]

AOW3 was a lot more competitive especially in pbem

[nocturne stone]

Because the community is less than 1% of the whole player rouster

Also a game becomes competative either with dev support or when the game is out of support

[glad loom]

i noticed that many tried Planetfall mp for short period then left, this did not happen often in aow3

[nocturne stone]

Let's not forget WHEN planetfall went live (COVID-19 was a thing)

[shell marten]

I meant, that people who played mp didn't play it according to "competitive mindset". Many players simply played races and secret techs they liked conceptually, and cared not so much about their effectiveness. Even DreadReaper himself did not play competitively. He was a Vanguard loyalist with occasional hint of Kir'ko. He was very well aware, it's 'mid', but still played them because he liked the race.

Not even I really played the game competitively most of the time.. and instead just tried funny combinations all the time.

[nocturne stone]

This does not contradict my standing. Natural MP evolution creates some form of competativeness given enough time and this is OK. However when you start talking about MP and Competative modding prior to game release - this could create problems with misconception especially with SP only players

[shell marten]

Mods are just tool to diversify the game (in terms of viability) and prevent abuse.

Competitive game truly only has as much content as is capable to win.

[nocturne stone]

What i am saying is that SP players are scared of Competative MP (most of them) and when people start talking about MP competativness could create issues with misconception

It is important to diferentiate that is just an option - not the E2E experience for MP

[shell marten]

So you say, if I hosted unmodded games right here on this server, I'd attract more new people?

It creates this dilemma about when to introduce the mod

[glad loom]

More mods used the less likely to get new players

[nocturne stone]

true that

Best time for introducing mods is when game is out of DEV support

😄

I know it sounds bad - BUT...

[shell marten]

I must object to that 🙂 Many changes done to Planetfall in patches were actually first made by competitive mod.

[glossy junco]

0.001% fits 100000 times into the total, did you think of this? If they really would make 500 million dollars just from preorder, they would gladly offer such a tournament, I am sure. They would have to sell 5.55 million premium copies to reach this. Everybody at Triumph would dance for days, if the preorder sales rock that high 😉

[deep zealot]

You're right. Initially I put 0.01% and it seemed too low, henceforth I added another 0 to it. I didn't do the calculation/math in my head, though. Sorry! These 4X games are mostly for afficionados who enjoy slow-paced turn based strategy, such as us! 😄

[ocean sinew]

I much prefer that you must have a hero to siege

[ocean sinew]

One thing I haven't seen brought up is because of number of city limitations you have less cities (you have) to take from players. It makes sense that trying to take them is a more intensive ordeal. That seems like a good why to me

[brittle socket]

Wow, the game isn't even out yet and there's already the first candidate for abuse in the siege of the city.
The army in the city cannot come to reinforce the attacked army outside the city. That is, any mistake and the defender could not hide all the units in the city - it means they will all simply die.
If earlier armies had to be kept close and it was clear when they would participate in battle together. Now it is not so obvious, and after getting used to reinforcements within a radius of 3 hex, you can make a fatal mistake in the case of a siege.

[glad loom]

i dont understand the abuse

[brittle socket]

Reinforcements from the city do not work for armies outside the city.

[glad loom]

yea but why is it an abuse ?

[brittle socket]

If one army has finished its moves outside the city and the other is in the city, then the attacker can defeat them one by one.

[glad loom]

but there is no downside to move your armies outside of your defended city and rally to those outsider reinforcements while besieged right ? unless the exact turn the siege ends

your city defenders are not locked and can be moved correct?

[brittle socket]

This is abuse of the defender's mistakes. The new reinforcement rules teach that it is not necessary to keep armies on neighboring hexes. And if you do not know or forget this siege mechanic, then you can make a mistake by leaving the army under attack, counting on reinforcements, which will not work that way.

[glad loom]

well we learn from mistakes :P, a list of notes about the game should be posted somewhere so newcomers can take a look

like a list of tips

[nocturne stone]

Making bad strategic decisions due to whatever the reason and your opponent taking advantage is not an abuse... Abuse would be to have unfair advantage due to let's say a bug or poorly written feature and you take advantage of "Not how it is supposed to be" situation.

[candid meteor]

Stacks at the city hexes don't reinforce stacks within the reinforcement radius. It means if your army is in the centre, and someone attacks another army 2 hexes away, that 2nd army is on its own, whereas in all other situations it is not. That is where the confusion comes from.

[brittle socket]

In my opinion, a fair situation "as it should be" is when the defender also chooses which armies should take part in the battle.

[nocturne stone]

Well not being the way you think it should - does not make it "abusive" - just a different opinion.
Let's not forget this is a pretty edge case scenario where a designary decison had to be made with more than just how a defender should take advantages.

Normally when you are besieged you are already in a disadvantagous position because Enemies are at your doorstep and you did nothing to prevent that. Why should you have an "advantage" when you arleady screw up?

[brittle socket]

Yes it is, but invisible stacks near a foreign city will be very happy if one of the armies accidentally enters the city and the other does not.

[nocturne stone]

Again - this is a player's choice - not a game flaw...

If you make bad decisions and you get punished for them - that is fair

And if you look closer to the "scenario" this is in a Asyncronous mode where if you need to wait each and every player to login and decide where he will participate with what - this is would be a poor design choise in terms of game speed

[brittle socket]

Yes, I agree. This is player error. And I agree that the game should work as it is now for objective reasons, because other mechanics work like that. But I would like the game to allow the defender to choose reinforcements himself.

[nocturne stone]

are you aware there is a difference between online and offline game how they should be played?

when you are offline you don't get to choose

[brittle socket]

But when you are offline and you are attacked, the game goes into battle mode. Where is the first turn for the defender. That is, the game pauses anyway when you are attacked. So why not make this pause before the battle and start the battle already after the defender selects reinforcements and presses the "ready" button. Where then he will be able to make his first moves in battle.

[nocturne stone]

Because this ruins the rythm of the game. Consider the following scenario - i have loged in to play because i am free i start a battle then i have to wait somebody (god know's how much) to get free to click a button so i can proceed. I finish my battle then i engage another opponend and i am get stuck again with the same issue - waiting somebody to be online.
Now why would a Developer invent asyncronous mode of playing a game where i constantly need to wait somebody to be online?

The issue is about the game pausing and instead of playing i am wating - which ASYNC/PBEM is design NOT to DO (WAIT)

[brittle socket]

How is it different from now? If you attack someone, you still wait for their turn.

[nocturne stone]

Describe me the scenario which you are reffering to as "now"

[brittle socket]

You described it above. Only replace "wait somebody (god know's how much) to get free to click a button" with "wait for someone (it is unknown how much) until he makes his first moves in battle".

[nocturne stone]

It is autoresolved you are not waiting...

[brittle socket]

Anyone play PBEM with autobattles? And in live games, the situation when the player is offline and has to wait for an unknown amount of time is unrealistic, what is the point of playing live games with simultaneous moves and sitting offline?

[nocturne stone]

I think you are just mixing different aspects... for what purpose?

If you like to make a point use a scenario to make the point... don't throw random thoughts and ask questions...

For the sake of answering:

1. Does anyone play PBEM with autobatles - YES because it is a feature
2. In a live game if a player is offline - why do you think there are timers invented for?

[brittle socket]

I have already described the scenario above. In any realistic scenario, the attacker will not wait for the defender's reinforcement choice any more than he would wait for the fight to start without such a choice.

[nocturne stone]

And?

So you are basically saying that a poor player making you wait on purpose (despite being online) is the same as waiting for somebody to be online and he cannot?
I find that way of thining wrong and i will not further discuss this topic, because i find it not constructive

[brittle socket]

1. Those rules of online games that I have seen directly indicate the settings with which it is customary to play. And PBEM play ALL battles in manual mode. But even if this were not the case and would be willing to lose their armies in auto-battle against other players, what prevents not asking the player for reinforcements in case of auto-battle? Because in this case, the defender is already in a worse position because he cannot even choose the type of battle, but must accept the fact that he lost in automatic (the attacker will not use autobattle if he is not sure of his victory, he simply will not attack then).
2. The timer does not cancel the fact that player vs. player is always a battle in manual mode. And even the timer in the battle against the AFK player, you have to wait for the timer to end. Well, if there is already a timer, why shouldn't it work for all the player's decisions? For example, the defender's decision to reinforce according to the rules of the timer in battle.

[brittle socket]

Why then do you play with such people who can become AFK during a live game without saying anything? If it is PBEM, then there is no difference at all in the waiting time for the opponent's turn after the attack has started. Well, I already wrote about automatic battles above. I don't know a single player who would be happy to have his armies destroyed in a battle even without his knowledge. I can't even imagine who can play like that.

[tiny blaze]

Imho highlighting or otherwise showing what armies will be able to reinforce for the defender is enough

[brittle socket]

I aware that other games have successfully solved the problem of communicating and preparing both players for battle with options to choose strategy and reinforcements, with timers, asynchronous moves and all that.

[bitter pine]

@glad loom My friend, just found this discussion, the problem of no heroes siege is that cities dont have garrison. Only solution I see to make siege with out hero possible, is to give a huge penalty 50, 65 or 75 % of siege damage so 6 units without hero will seat near city for 4-5 turns, with a hero it would take 2 turns. Also scouts deal 0 siege damage. Something like that

[bitter pine]

Also it will be very upset if you dint have possibility to fix it

[shell marten]

There is also much less cities apparently, compared to AoW 3 settler spam