Welcome to the first Age of Wonders 4 development diary since release. My name is Lennart Sas game director / studio manager at Triumph. Today we’ll be reflecting on the launch, the reception and we are going to be looking forward to the big Dragon Dawn DLC and specifically the free Wyvern Update that accompanies it.
Reflecting on the Launch
Wow! What a launch. For us the Age of Wonders 4 launch has been a dream: both a critical and commercial success. Paradox put out a press release the game is the fastest selling in the series; selling 250k units day 4 of release. We are very grateful to all the people making this possible.
The launch has been a rollercoaster in other ways too of course; some may have seen the user reviews directly after release. This was primarily caused by people not being able to launch the game after purchasing. This was unfortunate and we started investigating and preparing a hot fix which alleviated some of the issue.
Luckily the user review score quickly climbed up in the hours after launch. Since then we have made a number of patches to improve stability and performance in the various platforms. We also got help from one of the graphic card manufacturers who fixed their driver.
We were happy to see the core premise of the game gaining massive traction. The faction creation and evolution plus all the new systems were widely embraced by fans but also appealed to a new audience. Of course we have also seen feedback and criticisms for a subsection of the fan base (that actually started as soon as we showed the route we were taking) that preferred a more traditional approach (to factions especially). In future updates we’ll keep on investing in faction content allowing both for more distinction in gameplay and growing the number of possible fantasies.
Modding is off to a promising start, with the Steam Workshop already having 285 mods at the time of writing. We see people adding in new content like creative additional Tomes but also making interesting adjustments to game flow. This is very inspiring to the team.
All in all the Age of Wonders 4 has had a very healthy start and we are looking forward to expanding the game with your feedback. Of course we have mapped out the DLCs for the coming year but we also expect to do a lot in the supporting patches and updates.
The Wyvern Update and Dragon Dawn
The Dragon Dawn Content Pack and the massive free Wyvern update that accompanies it are nearing completion. I can already say that the date may be closer than you think. We are on target to make this the fastest DLC / major patch release after launch for an AoW game.
The Wyvern Update
The accompanying (free) Wyvern Update already has over 10 pages of patch notes. Here are some provisional highlights I can share with you: (thanks Jordi and Filip for summarizing this list!)
Faction Creation
We've added a Create Faction button which takes you directly into the Faction Creation Flow. You can create a new Faction from the ground up, edit an existing Faction or Generate a Random Ruler using the new Random Ruler Feature. We also added two new traits; one body and social traits.
Empire Development
The Empire Development Tree has been rebalanced. Early Skills will require more Accumulated Affinity and have an increased Imperium cost. Some Skills have been moved earlier/later and some are replaced with entirely new skills.
We've also addressed several issues with them, such as:
- Wild expansion - Reduced chance of summoning a Greater animal from 60% to 20%, fixed a bug where it triggered on annexing ancient wonders or swapping provinces between cities.
- Military Engineering - now grants work camp instead of Palisade walls, Outpost cost reduction reduced from 50% to 25%.
- Knowledge Extraction - changed from 50 Knowledge per Hero level to 150 per Hero.
Souls
While several of the Tomes will be visited in this Update, Necromancy Tomes will have rebalanced Soul Economy. The following changes should result in a higher general soul income and the possibility to gain even more souls when investing in it.
- All Necromancy Tomes: Change Soul Harvest income from 1/2/3/4/5 and 5 per hero level to 2/3/4/5/6 and 6 for each Hero.
- Tome of Souls: Replace Soulbind Army: Sustained World Spell: Soul Collection: +6 Soul Income and 30 Gold upkeep.
- Tome of Souls: Soul Fire changed from 10 Souls to 10 Mana.
- Tome of Necromancy: Reduce Necromancer Soul cost from 50 Souls to 70 Gold and 25 Souls.
- Tome of Great Transformation: Change the cost of Wightborn Transformation from 200 Souls to 300 Mana and 100 Souls.
Cavalry & Mounted Units
We've heard you loud and clear. You wanted more mounted units, so we have put several units on top of Horses, Wolf, Boars and the likes. The Mystic Spellbreaker, Hound Master and Wild Speaker units are now permanently mounted, while units like the Dark Pursuer, High Dawn Defender and Glade Runner will get mounts when paired with a Exotic Mount Trait.
These units will also be more easily recognized thanks to the new “Optional Cavalry” tag in the unit panel encyclopedia.
Quality of Life Improvements
But what have we done to make the player experience smoother? Well...
- You now have the ability to disable the “Combat Action Camera”, giving full control to the Player. This should help with accessibility.
- The “Show Location” button should now indicate way better where the corresponding event location resides. This now has an animated sequence so the Player can visually see where the location is relative to their current location.
- Status Effects are now also displayed in the Unit Abilities panel. Here, you can see the number of stacks and duration of a status effect. They also include tooltips; so you don’t have to enter the Unit Panel anymore to determine what an effect does.
- If you attack through an underground passage, the Reinforcement Rule is now disabled, so it’s always a 1 army vs 1 army battle
- Added a Next and Previous button for the Hero Panel screen
- Buttons for cycling through cities are now in a fixed position.
And of course a list of misc fixes
- Fixed issue where vassals that where player cities would not send attack armies or spawn patrolling stacks
- Fixed issue where campaign specific personality traits could get automatically assigned to rulers.
- Fixed issue where players would sometimes incorrectly receive alignment penalties for breaking treaties when war was declared on them, instead the war declaring player now receives the penalties.
- Fixed an issue where the 5 turns delay for declaring war on a Free City would not be applied when vassalizing a city / having a vassal city.
- Fixed issue where vassalizing a migrated city, that at any point in time used to be a free city, would revert the city back to the original race of the free city. Instead it will now generate a new free city as owner of the city.
- Fixed magic victory spells losing their effect when reloading that game.
- Outpost upkeep is now correctly removed when the outpost is converted to a city.
- Fixed bug where Spider Webs were dealing double damage
- Events are moddable.
- And much more!
We understand that you want to get your hands on these fixes ASAP but we kindly ask for a little more patience as we verify the fixes. Our plan is to roll these things out on all platforms simultaneously.
The road further ahead
We are just at the beginning for Age of Wonders 4 and look forward to expanding and improving the game longer than we have done any game in our history. Your feedback will be a major driving factor, as we strive for even greater immersion, replayability and fun!
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