In the Age of Wonders 4: Primal Fury content pack, players will discover new ways to conquer the realms, and bring the land itself under their control. The new Primal Culture will enable rulers to channel an animal spirit that shapes their empire, both physically and spiritually. The Tome of Fey Mists and the Tome of the Stormborne, both added in Primal Fury, include new spells to conceal troops in magical fog, gain advantages over seas and shorelines, and even transform armies into fearsome nagas. The pack will also launch alongside the free Wolf Update, which will add new features and improvements requested by the Age of Wonders community, including a rework of necromancy, new randomly generated items, and War Bounties to better direct allies in conflicts.

Tentatively excited. I got both existing packs, and the sheer variety makes the game better, even if they're - IMO - overpriced for the content. Which is fair-ish, the base game has a lot for the money asked.

In any case, after the rather tepid Planetfall I'm happy they seem to have found their bearings with 4 again!

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[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I play it in that async multiplayer they support with friends, both against each other and semi-allied with bots.

It's cool. I love the variety, I love how that works against the sameyness these games usually develop, and it has just enough techncial qualities like pretty graphics and okay netcode to never get in my way. Plus hey, async MP! Always a huge plus to me, and sadly way too rare overall.

I can see it become boring if one players singleplayer generated maps religiously, but I got Against The Storm to scratch that itch, personally.

As far as the gameplay goes, it's mostly the usual 4X fare, of course. Differences, if you're not used to Age of Wonders games:

Magic is strong, to put it mildly. The games take their inspiration from the old Master of Magic game after all, and as such leader-cast spells can wildly swing battles even when your units are outnumbered and outteched. Likewise, strong summoned units and stacked buff spells make terrifying army stacks even out of tier 1 units (in fact there's a spell tome specifically for that!).
The way you learn more magic makes for a nice little variety. You get 3 spells offered to research, you can reroll but it's costly. Every few researched spells you get to pick a new tome of spells from which to research, and every few tomes you get to advance a tier and pick higher-level spell tomes.
From tomes + some other effects you have to "unlock" certain empire upgrades, and unlike other games some of these upgrades are instead instant effects, so at the right time they could swing things wildly (like healing all your units on the entire map to full).
There's less focus on building your own empire - as you can only have 3-5 cities max anyways - and more on each city expanding in a huge sprawling network of influence and vassalizing more cities you take over, then getting tribute from them and hiring units with a resource specifically for that + empire upgrades.
Random encounters and events with decisions are way more common than in other such games. They're not terrible meaningful 90%+ of the time (though cool ones do exist!), but it's neat to get something shown so often, and sometimes you have replies that are unlocked by your specific empire attributes and setups.
The race/faction creator is something I've not seen that way since Master of Orion 2, not even when Endless Space 2 tried to go wild with that with later patches.

[–] SurpriZe@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

A great analysis, thanks.

Now you made me want to play it again! But I have issues staying interested when I have to control more than one core army and one core city. Any advice?

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Hrm, that's tricky. I suffer from the same, if I knew how to overcome it I bet I'd play more 4X games.

Somehow it works for me here, I guess because I mostly play it in MP, and mostly async. Means I never spend more than a few minutes on a single match at a time.

If city building is also your thing, check out Against The Storm, a really clever roguelike take where you only spend 30-60 minutes or so on each village you build.

[–] SurpriZe@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

Thanks for the suggestions. But I don't quite get the way this works, a few minutes at a time? How do you play it exactly?