#The Tome system is not very interesting

1084 messages · Page 2 of 2 (latest)

surreal zenith
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Some absurdly priced future tech skills would be interesting. I was actually thinking it would be an interesting wraparound if a couple of the ultra lategame techa were tied to culture. As a kind of a capstone to double back and reward your culture choice.

viral temple
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I overall enjoy the Tome system and think it is fine. I am also thoroughly in the camp of: the game ought to end 15 turns after unlocking tier 5, everything else is post game shenanigans.

I do have 2 counterpoints here though, the first is that there are absolutely scenarios that invite playing for a different win-con and thus end up possibly extending the game past the above. The story realms here being a clear example, you might want to play on to see all the story beats. Which leads to:

I do feel that the scaling of research in the upper tier ranges is a bit too slight. I almost always have tier 4s and 5s just fly by within 1-3 turns, with nary a concern for tech length. This does undervalue the feeling of cool, strong magic a bit, it kills a bit of the exclusivity and anticipation of researching these really powerful spells. And this is all without really trying at all. Few days ago I watched a stream from Amikdara who pushed the research much more that I usually do and she got to 500+ within something like 30 turns. If I was doing that I would easily pop multiple research options in one turn in a late game which feels a little too much.

This reminds me a little of the AoW3 launch, where it was pretty damn easy to tear through the entire tech tree as well at launch, this was later scaled a bit more for the better I feel and I think AoW4 might benefit from something similar.

cedar mural
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Can't outposts already build teleporters with the empire upgrade? Pretty sure I did that in one of my games on continents

icy wolf
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Probably RP slight decrease will be of help...
In my experience the over abundance of Heroes which you can take out for 50RP per level really helps speading up high tome unlocking

viral temple
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I forgot about shadow farming, yes, the above was written without that in mind even 🙂

icy wolf
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It is to early in the game with minimal investment in shadow

surreal zenith
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Why have I never seen this before? XD

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I feel dumb now.

icy wolf
viral temple
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the trick I feel here is to not overdo scaling at the lower levels, you do want tome diversity as a possibility for the adaptability it encourages.

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sorry, that was an ugly sentence 🙂 quick minor edit

icy wolf
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Actually halving the Shadow farm from 50 to 25 would be an elegant solution for high end snowballing

surreal zenith
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In retrospect, I think this is because I always get teleporters via tomes. I got it a couple times but never actually realized outposts can already do it. Sorry for the derail.

viral temple
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I think outposts require the general affinity perk?

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even if you got a tome with them, not 100% actually

icy wolf
surreal zenith
icy wolf
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SOme of the tome upgrades i find them either redundant or lackluster - so i skip them 😄
Also for teleporters i make sure to build one which can be used by more than one city
And yes Outposts for mobility

surreal zenith
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But yeah back on topic, I think the research explosion issue would, if resolved, also solve a lot of the issues OP mentioend.

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Even moreso once we get more dlc tomes.

icy wolf
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I agree it should be reviewed, and i agree that it should be focused on T3 tomes and higher (T1 and T2 are okay)

surreal zenith
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Well, the stat of grabbing a bunch of low tier tomes is kind of OP right now in MP apparently. So I don't know if it's actually okay. Grabbing 1 extra tome in a tier seems fine. But I've been seeing posts of archers with flaming arrows, poison arrows, spawnkin, and the astral buffs hitting for like 120 damage in a volley. and that's t1 units.

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That ALSO seems to somewhat make tome/faction identity get somewhat diluted. But I wouldn't want people completely on rails either. Ideally it should be a balance so staying in low tiers feels costly without being completely worthless either.

icy wolf
surreal zenith
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To a point. Remember there's some good AoE heals, and also a racial trait to reduce the damage penalty from casualties.

icy wolf
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Getting multiple T1 tomes before T2 should be a viable strategy because you sacrifice precious time even in MP

viral temple
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oh no, those Dusk Hunter monster stacks are absolutely artillery cannons

surreal zenith
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My (limited) testing shows that's still absurdly damaging.

viral temple
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they kill tier 4s no problem

icy wolf
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Also enchantments cost mana... not necesseraly you have the economy for this

surreal zenith
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I feel like archers are a special case. A lot of enchants feel not worth it, but archers can alpha strike very hard. Part of it is crits negating misses, but I believe I saw a dev mention they were looking into that?

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That was fixed in Planetfall so I would be extremely surprised if they're not going to do the same fix from last game.

viral temple
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yeah it's caused by AoW4 being based on an older build of Planetfall I believe, so the crit fixes that game got near the end weren't part of it

icy wolf
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Archers (90% of them) have a huge weakness... If you move you get at least 33% reduced DMG (same with battlemages but not that exact case due to special abilllities)

viral temple
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bit of a "they probably thought that was already in" kinda thing

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but unravelling those kinds of balance issues, thought not fully unrelated, do feel like they might stray a bit off of the original topic

surreal zenith
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With dusk hunters and the tome of enchantment their range buffs make it a nonissue.

icy wolf
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Overstacking Arrows is not that OP as it sounds.. I find the issue with battle mages more of a concern because you always have to go for 2 particular tome for frenzy and focus

surreal zenith
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Throw 1 or 2 melees in front and it wrecks.

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I think we're veering off topic. Want to switch to a different channel?

icy wolf
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archers die well by battle mages

surreal zenith
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General chat 2m

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?

icy wolf
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Yeah we are derailing...

surreal zenith
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Seeya in general 2

nocturne hatch
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I just wanted to say i appreciate the attempt to understand and defend a point of view you don't even share here

rugged inlet
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uh, I actually played with them - once - and they were a major nuisance, but really did nothing but actually prolonging the game for us (very much) as instead of being able to focus on destroying an enemy you now had to additionally exterminate spawns over and over and over again; so I don't know how you think this was planned to shorten the game

shy basalt
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i thought there was a wincon attached to voidbringers

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i guess they were just a map shakeup then to prevent the situation from getting stale

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🤷

rugged inlet
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yes, mopping up a few nests, then wait, and then destory their HQ to win the game
but depending on your location and your enemies who chose void bringers it was easier to just rush to their capital

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also if you destroyed the nests, but your human ally didn't in MP and you destroyed the void bringer's HQ you win, but they are stuck in an unrecoverable state as they didn't fulfill the wincon and the whole session is busted

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I mean most people aren't able to realistically clear a max tier ancient wonder until they stacked up bonus over bonus on their units; so yes, the game basically tells them "hey, there's still content to be had here"; so why would they want to "quit" at that point?

shy basalt
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surely by the time you have 2 t3 tomes your number of active enchantments gives you the power density you need

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i suppose if casualties are considered unacceptable and also you are not very good maybe it's a problem

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idk i suppose i haven't tried my hand at taking high level wodners much

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maybe i'm underestimating them

surreal zenith
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It depends on type of wonder and auto vs manual.

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That one tree with the horned gods constantly summoning vines is actually tricky for ai. Cause you know how bad autocombat is vs vines...

tepid sage
icy wolf
icy wolf
rugged inlet
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<@&947815420835016775> can you lock this one as well then? The moment #1110390948187348993 got locked he jumped in here

rugged linden
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idk if this is applicable.

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He isnt muted but hasnt said anything here wrong

icy wolf
# rugged linden He isnt muted but hasnt said anything here wrong

I didn't. Point is i agree with NINJEw that you don't need T5 tome for clearing gold wonders, because the system gives you options to clear them faster should you have the skill. In it self that's the beauty of the Tome system - gives you options and it is modular for expansion

rugged linden
tepid sage
icy wolf
tepid sage
# icy wolf before entering normaly there is an option to take some advantage and delay wave...

Yes, I did 🙂 Otherwise I wouldn't even try. There was just a moment in the game when I cleaned everything around me. And only this golden wonder remained. Therefore, I decided to try to do it in several attempts, because there were many troops that I wanted to exchange for higher tiers. Therefore, I started with the strongest armies to inflict as much damage as possible, and then I wanted to finish the work with weaker armies. The one of last battle was the funniest. When there is only one Lost Wizard with 1 HP left. And I thought that a 5th-level hero with a t1 army of legendary rank (it was a shame to lose legendary ones, so I left them for last) would be able to finish him off. And it turned out that I thought so in vain, because the autobattle was lost and I lost this entire army and hero.

rugged inlet
tepid sage
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I had to wait for my leader to respawn and build a new army of t3 units to finish off that one Lost Wizard.

icy wolf
tepid sage
# rugged inlet wonders, as with other marauder stacks, scale over time; though max tier ancient...

I know it. But they still have additional rules and buffs that also greatly affect the battle. Especially if it's automatic combat. AI is not able to understand, for example, that reinforcements are not important and you can win by finishing that one unit. There is also a lot of randomness with the skills of Lost Wizards or other t5 units. These can be really weird things that auto battle can't handle.
If we talk about the battle in manual mode, then for this you definitely do not need to wait for t5 Tome of Magic and in manual mode you will be able to win earlier and with a less powerful army.

rugged inlet
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I know that, but the game doesn't tell you that, it actually does the opposite with its "very risky battle" evaluation and army points
this evaluation does okay for auto combat, which there again is nothing to tell new people that
if you want to design a system that's good for everyone you need to look at more play styles than your own
I wrote

most people aren't able to
not "I am not able to"

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currently newer player, casual player, or player who just like to take their time are all running into the issue of the game giving you too many options, or options which they actively do not want with the current tome system

icy wolf
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can we take this topic to general chat?

It is going off tolic of how tomes are interesting to - player capability to win gold tier wonders?

rugged inlet
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tomes are the main way to advance in the game, thus more tomes equals stronger armies etc

molten bison
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Things I'd support from this & other thread:
• Repeatable lategame research, so you aren't forced to choose another tome in super late game/victory lap situations. (Possibly make this unique per culture)
• More tomes with DLC - makes it less likely games with many players end up choosing the same upgrades, could include soft counters for currently strong tomes
• More cultural research, be it spells, buildings that give perks to produced units, units themselves .etc
• Minor Transformation Cap (say 6) per race - (Having the transformations would still be useful as you can transform different races in different ways)
• Possibly making Scion of Flame/Frostling mutually exclusive like Spawnkin/Supergrowth for thematic reasons
• More Diplomacy - Accepting a peace deal only to have your ally call you back into the war feels weird. Perhaps your ally shouldn't be able to call you back in for 5 turns to allow a bit of time for another peace deal? (more like a cease fire)
• Balancing some of the more overpowered tomes/research.
• Possibly nerfing runesmiths/ancient wise ones/astral insprition and some of the research empire skills - Someone in the other thread explained you could get T5 tomes by turn 35, which if true seems too strong when stacked.

Things I'd oppose from this & other thread:
• Restricting tome picks from multiple/opposing affinities
• Slowing down/speeding up research based on number of tomes/affinity of tomes
(Both would unfairly hit certain builds or punish adapting on the fly, or be a huge buff to playing single affinity)

rugged inlet
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Perhaps your ally shouldn't be able to call you back in for 5 turns to allow a bit of time for another peace deal?
a truce is 10 turns, if you set it to 5 you can still be called back to war while the truce is active, thus accepting marks you as breaking treaties, and rejecting is breaking a treaty and rightfully marks you as such

molten bison