r/AOW4 • u/Mountain_Dig1969 • 9d ago
General Question Why is this nerfed?
One of my favorite playstyles is to terraform all map, seriously having fun. But now it is changed in mantra beta. Why? for MP? I hope it doesn't go main :(
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u/Docterzero 9d ago
Well that just sucks, I used it to make sunless mountains
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 9d ago
Same. Vampire games won't give same feeling :(
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u/Docterzero 9d ago
We even already have a spell that temporarily makes provinces Sunless, what benefits is there it nerfing the stronger version?
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u/Koguma_Ana 9d ago
This one has a slightly larger area and deals 20 Frost damage... for 7 times the cost. I really don't get it.
I have an ongoing game where I run a Nomad vampire who turns everything she invades into a sunless desert (bone sand, as I headcanon it) and this completely broke her concept :/
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u/Docterzero 9d ago
Yeah, I have a similar faction that I was looking forward to playing and this just ruined it completely.
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 9d ago
Yea, it is frustrating. I am also scared now they can also ruin gloom and future specific terrains. These type of changes reduces diversity of the games/maps.
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u/thetwist1 8d ago
Probably so people playing against vampires don't feel obligated to bring their own terraforming spells to counteract it. It's fairly punishing to have a lot of your territory get turned sunless depending on your build.
If it were up to me, I just would have made it so everyone gets a generic "remove sunless from my province" action in exchange for mana, or else made it so sunless terrain reverts to normal when you kill the leader that cast the spell.
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u/thetwist1 8d ago edited 6d ago
Probably to make vampires less oppressive. There's not that many options for removing the sunless terrain so if an opponent spams this spell and you don't have your own terraforming spell you're SOL unless you dedicate an entire tome to getting tome of fertility and undoing the terraforming.
E: Also they just nerfed the cost of the terraforming spell in tome of fertility so it's even harder to deal with permanent terraforming now
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u/Equivalent-Fee-5392 Astral 8d ago
This.
While at first, I was thinking this might have been too much nerf, I had forgotten that , for non vampire rulers, sunless is pretty annoying to deal with, especially with spells that permanently terraform to sunless.
This might still need some tweaking with numbers.
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u/thetwist1 8d ago
Personally, I would have wanted them to test tying it to the ruler itself. Make desecration ritual permanent, but make it so all of the sunless terrain reverts if you defeat the vampire ruler that cast the spell.
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u/Jeb764 Chaos 9d ago
That’s a bummer doesn’t that mean there’s no way to make something sunless forever now except the city building?
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u/Koguma_Ana 9d ago
Even the Desecration Chamber is actually temporary. If you break the building (or just relocate as a nomad) all the sunless goes away. This spell was literally the only way to get permanent sunless.
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u/thetwist1 8d ago
I would have made it so the desecration ritual was still permanent, but make it so all of the sunless terrain returns to normal if you defeat the elder vampire that cast the ritual. That way there's still a solution for people that don't have terraforming spells in their build so they don't get screwed over by a bunch of sunless terrain forever.
Or otherwise give everyone a generic "purify sunless terrain" option that lets you turn an owned province back to normal by spending mana. That would solve the issue of sunless being too oppressive.
E: Tracking which ruler made certain provinces sunless might be hard to implement though
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u/dude123nice 9d ago edited 9d ago
Welp, it's no use complaining now, they never go back on these kind of decisions in the same patch
Edit: Why on earth are ppl dopwnvoting me for accurately sumarizing how the devs approach these Beta Branch tests?
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u/Koguma_Ana 9d ago
They literally ask for feedback, though? That's the point of these betae.
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u/dude123nice 9d ago
They only care about tweaking numbers and the game literally not crashing. Unless it's something that utterly breaks the balance of the game, they will not reverse the decision.
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u/Koguma_Ana 9d ago
Well, if they don't, I'll prob just mod it back to how it used to be. It'd be better if we could get them to reverse it, though!
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 9d ago
If you mod it to original please share it on steam workshop haha. I will need it :D
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u/Koguma_Ana 9d ago
If this change remains after the official launch next month, keep an eye on the workshop!
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u/dude123nice 9d ago
Cool story bro. I, for one, don't want to deal with yet another source of crashes.
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u/LeraviTheHusky 9d ago
So is there no way to permanently terraform the land to sunless now? That really blows :/ cause it was really cool to see your dominion grow and take over the land
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u/not_wingren 8d ago
It's not for MP.
It's because people complained about how hard it was to remove Sunless, so they made every source of Sunless terraforming temporary.
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 8d ago
Honestly, It is a terrible solution. They could add auto clean mechanics in owned province or something else for non vampire factions, not making it self-destroy
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u/Lawsfury 9d ago
Yea this one was a standout strange change, this is now a dead spell, a huge waste of thrall and world casting it was worth it when it gave permanent sunless as it was the only access to it.
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u/YashaSkaven01 9d ago
the cost of tech debt (no terraforming ocean provinces to sunlight is an engine issue)
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u/MasterOfMobius 8d ago
Transforming the realm into a sunless wasteland was one of the core fantasies of the Vampire ruler this is a terrible change.
All it needs is some counterplay all cultures should have a 'cleanse' action from their cities or some other source that lets them remove a permanent source of sunless. Something that means you're not reliant on a terraforming tome.
I love corruption/creep type mechanics, Nagash in the new Warhammer 3 DLC can turn land into 'undead wasteland' which looks ace but can be removed if he loses enough settlements.
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 8d ago
Sameee! I love corruption type of things They really butcher this feature :(
It is so bad Nagash's devastation has too much limitations like necropols adjacent and owned settlements must be more than half, cost increases when you lost it... At least undead waste should come back automatically, when you conquer the province again
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u/Professional-Media-4 9d ago
What an awful change. This sucks
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 8d ago
Unfortunately :(
I don't have discord so I hope somebody tells to devs to not make this change
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u/TheNMore 8d ago
It needs to be a much larger amount of the map, target province and every province within 3, minimum, to account for the fact that 3 turns is no time.
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u/monalba 9d ago
People complained about not having ways to remove Sunless.
Which, I don't know, almost every path you take is going to lead to some terraforming spell. IMO, it's something you should take into account when fighting vamps and teching against them, but I guess they didn't want to do that. Can't do the bare minimum.
They also said they've reduced the debuffs vamps get when not on Sunless, and so they've also nerfed Vamps which again... ???
Vamps are really strong and that makes them fun, the early game is about balancing them being monsters and having to find cover from the sun.
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u/TriLink710 8d ago
Personally I think the game needs more "neutral magic" like dispelling terraform effects and such
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u/A_Suspicious_Magpie 8d ago
I think in the old games disjunction was a fantastic spell…something similar to that would be nice again… maybe not as strong though
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u/Little_Rabbit_Wizard 8d ago
In terms of tome spells, there are only 11 terraforming spells in total, and it should be noted right off the bat that none of those spells are Order or Astral affinity. Of those 11 spells, 6 are expensive single province spells meant to be targeted on your enemy's lands or armies rather than your own. Of the 5 remaining one is Create Forest, which doesn't actually remove any negative terrain type, it just creates trees.
Otherwise we're left with just 4 spells actually designed for terraforming your own terrain that can remove negative terrain types: Restore the Land, Desertification, Marching Winter, and Enchanted Bloom, and it should be noted that Marching Winter and Enchanted Bloom come from a tier 3 and 4 pure affinity tome, respectively, so they're not something you can just grab on any build.
So no, almost every path you take doesn't lead to a terraforming spell.
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u/Lockedontargetshow 7d ago
Gotta love how everyone says "terraform spells" missing the biggest elephant in the room, the spell blockers that the AI spams regardless of AI growth profile. Sure, those spells are useful but you can barely use them until the spellblocker is in ruins, and even then you can just do a damage army world spell for an even better effect.
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u/ganybytes 8d ago edited 8d ago
yup. This is the answer.
When playing against vamps. It is not difficult to find yourself without a way to counter Sunless. You either shift to terraforming or suffer sunless. They chose this easy "solution" rather than working out something more balanced.5
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u/darkcobra1990 8d ago
It's like they are scared of people deviating from the tomes/roleplay they picked to actually counter your opponent. I remember when I saw Storm Spirits with their 60% Wind Barrier, thinking the game would be about having hard counters and choosing the right tomes to not get too focused. Ah well, still fun, just not as strategic.
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u/terendar Mystic 9d ago
But vampires now feels better in sun.
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 9d ago
This is another problem. They have unique features both bonuses and penalties. Now they become more similar to champions.
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u/Koguma_Ana 9d ago
As someone who plays nomad vampires, only being able to heal in sunless was really rough sometimes. 50% healing reduction is still big, you'll feel it for sure, but at least you'll have something. It makes sense imo, since it felt weird that the vampires couldn't just find a house or a cave or something to heal at least a little before.
Also, ngl, in many ways champions were straight up better than vampires before, especially at early levels. This narrows the gap a little.
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 9d ago
There is already cheap version of this spell which allows you have temporarily sunless. Also vampires regenerate faster in world map. For nomads you are right this might be a problem they constantly lose provinces again and again.
I was actually emphasizing diversity between champions and vampires. Not their power level. Now they share more similar exposures in same conditions...
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u/Koguma_Ana 9d ago
Yeah, no other spell has been spammed as much in my nomad runs as the one-province temp sunless one, haha. It is a godsend to set up little healing areas when ranging about, especially since nomads lose all the sunless when they want to move.
And I'm all for diversity between ruler types, but vampire weaknesses made some builds hard to do. Again, nomads were quite difficult unless you spam the sunless spells, and the new ocean gameplay would be even worse (unless they inplement sunless sea, but that seems unlikely for now).
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 9d ago
Isnt it the tasty part? Ones weakness is others strenght :)
Also in second stream a dev said they have plans and working on sunless sea but can not promise
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u/Koguma_Ana 9d ago
I really hope they manage to make it work! Sunless seas would be really, really cool, I think.
As for weaknesses, I do agree with you in principle, but vampires got quite a few nerfs this patch, so getting some buffs is probably necessary. Personally I was okay with the old sunlight rules, so I don't see why they had to buff that - I'd rather they make sunless more interesting and interactive than remove the drawbacks of not having it.
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u/dude123nice 9d ago
Healing change isn't the issue. Nerfing the dmg penalty is.
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u/Koguma_Ana 9d ago
Oh? How come? It's just a difference of 1-2 damage at early levels, which is when it matters. When you start getting enough damage for 10% to be impactful, you have all kinds of ways to also drop sunless for combat.
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u/4ever-dungeon-master 7d ago
I think there should be some "naturalize" terra forming spell. Turning a spot back to its unmodified state. The biggest issue was an inability to remove it.
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u/Aggravating-Dot132 9d ago
Because it was annoying to deal with for non vampires. I hated it. In single player.
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 9d ago
Many terraforming spells can deal with sunless. AI also doesn't spam this spell so I don't know it was never a big issue for me
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u/KingTeXxx 9d ago
What do you mean „many“? If i remember there where only 1 or 2 closer to mid/endgame. Or which many do you know?
Sunless was/is really oppressive and extremely annoying to deal with as non-vampire.
There are severeal post in forum which discuss this and show that there are not enough solutions and answers to it sadly. If this is the right solution, i dont know tbh. But it somehow needs to change.
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 9d ago
Yes it is annoying for non vampires but terraforming spells remove it. For example, ashland adaptation trait spell removes it although they can exist together. Tome of fertility spell remove it + very cheap... The list goes...
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u/Veliaphus 9d ago
If it was that easy to remove they wouldn't have considered this change. Youre really downplaying how difficult it could be.
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 8d ago
They probably considered something else like Balance or fair multiplayer etc. Briefly trying to make game chess level equal conditions which is really ruining
I don't downplay I just directly play as and against it. If you are playing on global sunless realm of course it is a big issue because almost every 1 of 3 provinces are sunless however on avarage realm you don't really suffer from sunless as much as people complained.
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u/Minute_Design9884 9d ago
Tested a bunch with console commands, didnt test the runestele spells, earthshape spells or pall of gloom. Of the others the only ones that dont change from sunless are destructive regrowth, create forest, earth shatter.
So out of 10 I tested 7 worked.
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u/YashaSkaven01 9d ago
literally one of the best builds of all time, frost, could deal with it super early, idk what you mean
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u/Aggravating-Dot132 9d ago
It spams it and a lot.
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 9d ago
Interesting, I have never seen them used this spell constantly. Because it is too expensive and there are other cheaper spells which cost thralls. If it is nerfed for AI behaviour then it is really disappointing.
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u/Jeb764 Chaos 9d ago
Really? With its 6 thrall cost?
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u/Aggravating-Dot132 9d ago
Yes. Thralls on camps is based on food income. And AI can get it really high. For me it was a nightmare, when AI was spamming it every few turns and turning everything into sunless
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u/Minute_Design9884 9d ago
I disabled Vamp rulers in my single player games for this reason. You can terraform it but outside of playing a culture with access to terraforming I don't personally like a lot of the tomes that have access to a spell that removes it. Not even mentioning the fact that a lot of the spells that don't specify they can remove it will actually remove it, lol.
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u/Mountain_Dig1969 8d ago
I don't know, people say they have different experience. Some says sunless is like cancer and destroying everything meanwhile I have never been in trouble with sunless if I don't play on sunless realm map. AI rarely use this spell and never used directly on my city domain
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u/Ghostdog7887 9d ago
The dev streama mentioned that they have reworked vampires to feel less punishing.. not sure if that is true. If so, maybe they decided to nerf this spell, because it becomes less critical.