#Builders, towers, roads and castles.

130 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

unreal yarrow
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Builders were my favorite unit in AoW. Sending them to build roads was pretty much an escort mission, especially on 3. But AoW4 building isn't as good as previous games. I think this might be because of several reasons:

1- Roads are pretty much useless. Got a province? It comes with free roads. Got no province? It's ok, roads are just as good as grassy terrain. This makes roads pretty useless. Plus, they do not stand out as much as before (this one though may be my fault, as I play with low res)

2- Building is no longer as cool as it used to be because every single unit can do it to some extent. Got a hero? Good, he can build everything. Got a dog? It can STILL build roads. Gone are the days when if you wanted to build you actually had to bother. This initially seems good, but it makes building more shallow than before despite being the same amount of work for the devs, if not more!

3- Castles are less interesting now. They can still be used to capture some resources, but they will eventually evolve into a city. Those cool defensive structures between mountains are still there, but they've lost much of the appeal of the previous games. That's a pity because with the new siege system castles could be so much more.

4- Watchtowers look... a bit too tattered. I miss the good old fortified-looking watchtower which could be upgraded into something else.

5-Settlers are gone. Merging them with builders would be ok, but making every hero and their Godir being able to do it makes things less interesting overall. There's no need to bother actually taking your time and gold building a unit capable of settling. Again, that's convenient and I see why it was done, but I don't quite like it.

5- Walls were an upgrade which I always loved to have on AoW1 and 3, but now I don't even need to bother anymore. Again, convenient, but not that good in my opinion.

Hope I'm not being harsh or conservative.
I like most of the bold decisions taken with AoW4. Keep up the good work, guys!

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Forgot to mention, with the province system you no longer have control over which specific HEX of the terrain you want your thing built over, and you can no longer build an isolated city with no roads for those wicked loners out there. That makes things less unique. Less "your city" and more of a "default province building"

ALSO, please remove the rumber next to each city. CELESTIA 5 is a fantastic name for a space station, but it's a bit odd to see those numbers next to your cities.

And yes, I was the kind of guy who named castles and watchtowers after fallen heroes or great battles.

placid flume
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I found the changes to be efficient. In your opinion, what is gained from a gameplay perspective by having a dedicated builder unit?

craggy field
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Is castle here mostly interchangeable with outpost? It's been a long time since I played 3 and I never played 1 & 2 so I'm curious about it's common usage

placid flume
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Aow 3 never had anything called a "castle." Neither did the first two games. 3 introduced the Fortress with a small domain radius. Nothing like that existed before 3.

unreal yarrow
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Fortresses were pretty much that. But they were more useful since you could block strategic hexes, like mountain paths or roads.

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You could argue there was some charm to the old builders. You had to actually bother to build them and protect them. When every unit can do it it's more efficient, true, but it kind of loses a bit of complexity. It is more simplified.

summer lintel
# placid flume I found the changes to be efficient. In your opinion, what is gained from a game...

I don't like how people can simply build an outpost anywhere they want and upgrade it into an town. With a seddler in an army you always knew; "If I don't want that guy to settle here I'm gonna have to declare him war and kill the settler". Now you never know...
"Is the guy going to settle here? Is he simply exploring? Shall I declare war on him, just so he deffinetly doesn't settle there?" I personally don't like that aspect, aggreeing with the OP.
Another big thing is, it wasn't that easy to get onto a new position for settling, you couldn't simply use your army to go there, you had to keep the settler safe, now you can simply say, "Oh, I like that spot, gimme an outpost here" when exploring with your hero.
On the other hand, you can't settle anywhere without your hero unless you have a barbarian scout, which is another issue for me. I personally prefer having my heros in battle, than scouting with them. Now I have to scout with my heros since I otherwise can't create usefull outposts and thus no cities.

unreal yarrow
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In AoW3 it was often useful to build roads and forts.
In AoW4 grass and roads have the same move points and they're pre-made in provinces so there's no point on wasting gold.
As for forts... Aow3 map generation and building on hexes did allow for some interesting chokepoints which aren't there on AoW4 (for the time being, at least)

summer lintel
unreal yarrow
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Even then, since you cannot build on a specific hex, you can no longer block paths.

summer lintel
digital glen
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They are the op

summer lintel
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I have no eyes

unreal yarrow
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And I have no memory, I forgot I said that already 🤣

unreal yarrow
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Builders, towers, roads and castles.

digital glen
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: p

exotic bolt
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I like the outposts into cities setup, think it works well

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However I do find the Materium and Nature early empire tree upgrades probably make them pop up a bit too fast and cheaply

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Getting 25g outposts that come up in 1 turn with free palisade walls and can turn into a city in a turn is maybe a bit too fast and cheap

summer lintel
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you have to siege it

exotic bolt
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Yes I think the key issue as I said may come from empire tree upgrades that make them pop up super quick with prebuilt walls for 25g

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It's a little ridiculous at that price I think

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Especially with the culture trait that makes buildings generate gold and thus your instabuild outposts have half the upkeep by default

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And you can get them to cost no upkeep or even generate gold by sticking more stuff in them lol

summer lintel
exotic bolt
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Well like

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Tough?

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I fail to see this as a problem, once you had to check if there was a settler, now you have to check if they're founding an outpost

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Same deal right?

summer lintel
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not really.

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Can you read?

exotic bolt
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No need for personal attacks and yes I have read your posts

summer lintel
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I don't feel like it, since you put the same thing over and over again, seemingly not reading what I sent.

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There beeing an outpost doesn't mean there going to be a city

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there being a settler means there going to be a city

exotic bolt
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I fully recognise your issue of not knowing, but the outpost is a claim to land just like a city

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And you can see if an outpost is turning into a city

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Just like if you see the settler

summer lintel
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There's the issue. You never can tell until the city's there

exotic bolt
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You need to fight over the land either way

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If an outpost drops you're never getting that tile back unless it's razed

summer lintel
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A city can produce units, a outpost can't

exotic bolt
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If it turns into a city it's just a bigger outpost basically

summer lintel
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an outpost can't produce units

exotic bolt
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Outposts can house teleporters which is basically unit production but scarier

summer lintel
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that's in late game

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not early

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I don't mind late game. I'm talking about early

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in late you just destroy those outposts anyway since you actually have several armies

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in early game you've got one hero

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that one hero needs to be there for creating cities, while also destroying enemy outposts

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kinda tough

exotic bolt
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Your opponents have the same limitation

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Unless barbarian culture

summer lintel
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I want an option to create cities without needing to set of a hero for it

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thus I prefer a settler

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also I don't need to siege a settler

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means I can kill it without a hero

exotic bolt
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Being able to destory outposts without a hero is probably a good call

summer lintel
exotic bolt
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That would be bad positioning yes

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But also a good reason to get the room of recall

summer lintel
summer lintel
exotic bolt
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Well it's a tradeoff right?

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You go somewhere and found a city, they go somewhere to found theirs

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If it's super agressive and close to you and they lose it then they lose all the imperium they invested when you steal it off them

summer lintel
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what now?

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I cant destroy it since I need a hero

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or I cant settle since I need a hero

exotic bolt
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It's far from impossible to do both in my experience

summer lintel
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I don't say it's impossible to do

exotic bolt
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But also, if you feel really pressured by this specifically then you can build your nation around this

summer lintel
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I jsut say it's

  1. annoying.
  2. unnecessary
exotic bolt
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Barbarian culture with some order and nature

summer lintel
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woohoo

exotic bolt
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Well the option is there

summer lintel
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and very much fun. Almost as much as never being able to use your hero in combat since you have to settle with it while also sieging outposts

rapid falcon
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The fact that to start a siege you need a hero is kinda ludicrous not gonna lie

exotic bolt
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It acts as a barrier to constant frivolous sieges

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But it is a little odd too

rapid falcon
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Yea sure, it would work if not every single needed to be sieged

exotic bolt
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Wouldn't that be removed as a thing if the materium empire perk for auto walled outposts wasn't a thing?

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Do you need a hero to raze a non walled outpost?

summer lintel
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need a hero to conquer anything that belongs to another player/free city, apart from wonders

exotic bolt
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Hmm

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Irritating to be sure

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I feel like if Barbs can found outposts anywhere then anyone should be able to get rid of them

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Imma try a playthrough as barbs with Materium Nature affinity to see how disgustingly early I can drop walled 25g blockers on every relevant asset on the map

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Probably can't squeeze the +5 gold income perk in there but would be hilarious if that's possible too

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For free unlimited walled outposts XP

rapid falcon
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I feel like they should add a unit of engineer

craggy field
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Oh yeah. Basically sub in as a hero for such things but be a sub par combatant similar to scout

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I really like that engineer idea. Basically additional unit type per culture

exotic bolt
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Why not have an neutral affinity empire tree tech to make scouts do this

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Since scouts are basically the unit we're talking about lol

summer lintel
exotic bolt
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Extra spritework for a unit functionaly identical to one we already have?

summer lintel
exotic bolt
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Yeah, but the combat behaviour of this unit is to be the same as a scout right?

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Why do we need a separate building unit then?

summer lintel
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also a scout has higher mobility

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should have lower upkeep cost

exotic bolt
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Than a scout?

summer lintel
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the scout

exotic bolt
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Scouts already have very low upkeep

summer lintel
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...

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the builder should be more expensive

exotic bolt
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Oh

summer lintel
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so the scout has a lower upkeep cost

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still 6g

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but lower than the builder

exotic bolt
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Ok, but, why do we need a high upkeep unit to do this task mechanically speaking

summer lintel
# exotic bolt Ok, but, why do we need a high upkeep unit to do this task mechanically speaking

who talked about high upkeep?
Depending on how much the unit can it should be about 8 to 14g in my opinion, if it's only the usual things with streetbuilding and so on plus outpost into city building it should be around 8 to 10g, if the builder is able to instantly build a city without the outpost thing or able to build an outpost with an improvement for some extra gold and taking a little extra time it should ofcourse be a higher upkeep.

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also having the ability to build that unit doesn't mean you should'nt be allowed to build outposts with heroes, you can still allow to do that, it just means you don't rely on using your hero to do that.

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I personally would prefer that way, since it gives every player the option to play as he wants.

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You can pay the upkeep and build cities without your hero, or go the cheaper way and rely on your hero.