Industrious Culture rework (a Davinci's winged flying unit, +1 infussion forging items, dwarf-Egypt)

[lavish egret]

I see Industrious as one of the culture reworks with highest potential to be fun. Some ideas to be added:

-a Davinci's winged flying unit tier 2, with a different name of course, the unit could be called Inventor and have a low damage attack causing distraction, if not racial unit to be possible then use this as inspiration to have summonable drones looking as mechanical bats
-a Davinci's Fighting Vechicle of Tank, maybe tier 4, it could fit industrious culture, but if cannons aren't wanted by devs this could be changed with ballistas, magic staves or cadapults instead. Another idea for this could be a circle of summoned shields similar to the ones of Giants, this tank of autonomous floating shields would be a single unit and be good at stunning enemies.
-Industrious could have a spell that makes the forging of the next item to have +1 infusion points
-two subcultures: 1)dwarf: focus on heavy armored units, physically sturdier 2)Egyptian: focus on more light armored units, magically blessed
-reuse the actual features of industious to be common on both subcultures

I think it could be interesting, even if half of things don't make the cut, industrious have one of the highest potential to be extremely fun and addicting.

[tranquil vapor]

Did you play any of the previous games in this setting? The reason I ask is that a few of the things you're asking for already have a precedent, but have already been ported over to AoW 4 with slight differences.

[lavish egret]

I didn't play much the previous aow games, but even if we already have a tank in a tome is ok to have another mechanical than the reaver culture

[tranquil vapor]

Just looking at one: The summonable bat-like construct. That's literally what the spydrone was in Age of Wonders 3. They ported it over as a (worse) Reaver unit.

In any case, it was said early on that the Industrious culture isn't supposed to tap into the steampunk genre by itself. It's supposed to be a callback to old Dwarves, like how High is supposed to call back to High Elf culture.

So, any revision to the steam-punkiness is probably best reserved for a Reaver rework.

[lavish egret]

this could change, dwarfs on many settings have mechanical invents

sreampunk can be diverse, just like magic

Personally I would like industrious to have rifles like dwarfs from fantasy warhammer

reaver have been very popular and a similar steampunk culture could be good to have

[tranquil vapor]

Dwarves were always heavy on crossbows in AoW. The only exception was in AoW 2 and 2.5, where the Dwarves had an engineer unit to support their steam tank. It used a pistol. But, for the most part, gunpowder was a human thing up until AoW 3. In AoW 3, it depended on your ruler type.

[lavish egret]

this could be enough: pistols and steamtank

[tranquil vapor]

Yeah but then this Egypt idea comes out of left field.

[lavish egret]

I was thinking in Elder Scrolls Online dwarves, they are a long dead civilization with mechanical scarabs and things that look fantasy mix of dwarf snd egyptian

[pallid otter]

Dwemer inspirations are Sumerian and not really Egypt though? Unless I am missing some specific developments unique to TESO (which I'm not planning on playing).

Either way, they don't fit neatly into any of cultures AoW4 already has, and honestly, given how distinct the concept of Dwemer is, imho they really shouldn't be shoehorned in like this either.

[sterile rune]

I think this would be great as a tome Unit. A counter part to the Dreadnought. Where the Dreadnought and it’s Tome are based on war. This could be a Tome of Inventions

[strange geyser]

I like the idea of industrious having better forging capabilities. This being said, the reavers are the ones with high tech and i like that. If i want tanks as my dwarven in industrial empire then I’ll tap into that tome. I would like to see more mechanized/steam punk warfare though