underground maps

[mortal eagle]

Please fix the underground maps so it stops creating inaccessible areas with things like cities and ancient wonders. Also, please make a way to cross lava sections. It makes no sense, for instance, that flying units and fire based units should not be able to cross such a barrier.

[tender crane]

For general underground map generation there has been a bug report ( massive underground) that already got confirmed.
But what do you mean by inaccessible? Like literally surrounded by undiggable bedrock and no water connection? That would be bad but so far I have not encountered those.

[honest thistle]

In AoW 3 some units had trait so they could walk on lava 😄

[tender crane]

In all games prior AoW4 they had it.

My biggest wish for underground would be that surface and underground just would be exactly the same size. No bigger no smaller.
This was such annoying change they introduced in AoW3.
Modifying realm settings would then be connected to cavern types:

1. Small initial caverns connected with long tunnels, 2) big caverns with shorter tunnels and 3)
   Isolated caverns (both small and big) that cannot be connected underground.

[mortal eagle]

@tender craneBoth. There has been portions of the underground surrounded by undiggable rock, and no other way to enter them, including by water.

[honest thistle]

I played aow 3 only but underground there was superior to what we have now and on top of that you could turn it off..and its 10 y old game.

[tender crane]

Would not necessarily say superior, but I get what you mean. It was basically a special feature map that otherwise was on par with surface.
(Aside from size). I also agree that it was a good thing to be able to turn it off! Yet you easily could go full underground gameplay wise.

Still, it always bothered me that if you go dwarf/goblin in the end large portions of the underground ended up open fields and you never really had the feeling of single caverns and tunnels.

[mortal eagle]

As an addendum, not being to annex new provices in the underground with cities in certain instances should be fixed. It pretty much defeats the purpose of having cities underground.

[tender crane]

This i believe is better now and has been much better in AoW1&2&SM.
I personally would prefer even more pocket caverns that do not have connections (other than surface obviously) but only a few treasure sites.

I totally understand that this poses difficulties to full underground gameplay but this might be mitigated to granting other benefits of settling underground or even better bonuses for "free populations" that are not used for claiming provinces

[honest thistle]

Well you could sett up how much diggable or impossible to dig caverns were. I even used some mods like superior map gen or sth. But true starting city was rly bald 😄
Imho pocket caverns are fine but maybe if you pick big underground trait you could get different gameplay with larger scale^^

[tender crane]

That would be nice setting for the surface climes as well.
I mean we got the clime traits but still the AoW3 system with sliders felt more flexible in a way

[wary oyster]

The game has been out for a year now. After they got rid of terraforming as an option to connect the passageways, I just don't have faith anymore.

[tender crane]

???

[fervent mirage]

They removed the option of connecting passageways, because if you annex one, you will have "province center" on the path. These province centers block all AI movement because you can't walk on them without declaring war

[quasi wind]

I still highly prefer those open areas to what we have now where you are forced to have your cities go above the ground since you can't connect them underground...

imo the whole mapgeneration was way better in 3 than in 4

I hate to not be abled to regulate the amount of water/mountains/ w/e

and you have the option to turn the undiggable amount of underground walls up, that way those open plains wouldn't get that big

[onyx osprey]

I have myself had maps generate where the underground passages all go to lava tiles, with a "diggable" piece of terrain nearby but not close enough for units to actually reach

[limpid elk]

Bump!! Underground map needs a look at 👍