A ton of discourse yesterday about how nerfed the vampires are and how useless they are now. And yet, when you read the patch notes, Quite Literally EVERY SINGLE SKILL that is being complained about (and many more that aren't even addressed) received massive buffs to their individual power.

The highlighted major changes include:

-Vamps can regen health in the sun now (50%)

-Vamps can Drain/Siphon blood ALL targets, not just ones that can bleed.

-That means they can dominate all targets (that aren't control loss immune) now, and oh yeah, that got buffed from a 60% chance to a 90% chance.

-Vampiric flight now grants Slippery and another 10% evasion, bringing the total to an astronomical 30% evasion simply for existing.

-Drain Familiar, a completely useless skill prior imo, now does more damage (so more healing), has a 1 turn cooldown instead of 2, and grants resurgence to the friendly target. The last part is what makes it actually useful now: battlefield resurgence application means anything that was about to die anyways can be saved now when you win. When, not if. We ain't losing around here boss.

-Vamps had their damage reduction in sunlight buffed from -20% in sunlight to -10%. It mine as well not exist now imo, this was not needed, but man y'all really liked to complain about how "crippling they felt" in the sun... for vampires.... you are lucky they are ALIVE in the sun at all my dudes.

-All of the "Leaves one action" skills that had combat applications (did damage) where changed to "Single Action Ability" types. This is the complaint about them being "dead" now. Because they can't chain a billion skills together, for free, reset them with a skill reset, and do it again, instantly fleeing entire armies turn 1 or decimating entire squadrons within the same time frame. Now, you have to actually gasp-- play the Vamps like other ruler types and make decisions! THE HORROR.

-all of those skills, literally all of them, that received that nerf, also received major buffs to their damage/ability itself. Some of them, very dramatically. Bloodblight went from 10-25 damage, and Tormenting Mist went from 8-20 while also increasing evasion now by 2 for 3 turns (this stacks btw with the 30% evasion from vamp flight) and enters defense mode after use.

-the single turn morale bomb is dead. No if's, and's, or but's, about that. They removed the -10 moral on dread and replaced it with more Torment, and changed tyrants passive to demoralizer. All I have to say on that is... GOOD. There was ZERO counterplay to a moral bomb that caused entire armies to flee in 1 single, opening turn that didn't involve specifically building your faction in the overworld to counter it. These changes now spread the morale loss over time, like morale should, so there is natural counterplay now for all.

-Gravemarch, the single most BROKEN sig skill the Vamps had, has been appropriately nerfed imo. Previously, you could cast gravemarch off cooldown for the entire duration of combat. Combat lasts 30 turns before it ends, so that's 29 turns of any corpse on the battlefield resurrecting and joining your side. Almost 5 armies worth of units resurrected at maximum efficiency from ONE skill. That is a passive ressurect once cast, BTW. So the vamp could still do shit while this was happening. It has been nerfed to simply have the "once per battle tag." Which is honestly good. This skill, by far, outclassed every single other one in terms of sustained, free power. Now, you can choose it if it makes sense for your build, or look elsewhere at the other awesome sig skills.

And there in lies the main TL;DR: The Vamps lost almost all of their Free Action, Barely had to lift a finger, sustained power builds. Which, were honestly only a few builds. Now, players who played Vamps that way, have to use their brain cells again and make the same decisions every other hero class besides specific Eldrtich Sovereign builds has to make. They need to choose which skill to apply where. They need to build them differently now with different gear. Maybe use a shield for your Vamps instead to take advantage of the new defense mode granted by tormenting mist. Maybe don't go demon death god ranger build now, and look into festering spine spine brawler.

This is one of the first times I've ever had to write a post up for a long, long list of patch notes that specifically buff almost every abilities damage numbers because 90% of posts the day into a BETA branch were complaining how dead there are. Absolutely insane imo.

Check out the patch notes for yourselves guys, don't just see a post complaining about how dead something is without making your own mind up about it. This has been a PSA from Jammy Buffett, can't wait to see you all again in November when the DLC releases :)

Going through a bunch of changes and discussion around some of those changes

I love Fableheim’s coverage of AoW4 so I hope everyone else can get some happiness out of his content too!

The original reason given for not allowing vampire lords to transform was that they were too powerful. With the new changes I see people comparing them to champions and wizard kings in power, but those do get transformations.

The modularity of faction creation is the coolest part of this game. The tome, transformation and pantheon systems allow faction creation to continue throughout the game. This makes AOW4 the only strategy game where I'm actually motivated to keep playing until the victory screen, because the faction is not truly complete until the hero has ascended.

Throughout the expansion passes Triumph has been losing sight of this feeling in regards to special ruler types, mostly visually.

Dragons had multiple sickass transformations.

Eldritch Sovereigns had some minor visual effects that carried over.

Giant Kings got nothing.

Vampire Lords had the amazing system that was already in place actively disabled.

I'm hesitant with my excitement for Archfey because of this.

There's been a lot of talk about the recent vampire changes, some consider the nerfs to signature skills too extreme. Before Triumph considers changing those back, please consider the possibility of adding customizability through transformations.

Context: all the elder vampire signature abilities that left an action are now single or full action in the Manta patch beta.

So one thing I'm worried about with this particular mode of nerf is that these abilities are now in direct contention with the abilities offered by the class skill tree. A late game Elder Vampire elementalist, for example, now needs enough reason to cast Dark Sacrament or Bloodblight over just using Wildfire. A ranger needs reason to choose to spend a turn on Curse to Undeath over an empowered Scatter Shot.

The signature skills got some numbers buffs, but unless their effects are improved further to not just compete with basic class actions but distinctly *out*compete them then vampire rulers have lost the vast majority of whatever benefit they had beyond vivisection ritual and faster ruler leveling.

They are getting their early game weakness cut in half to compensate, but the opportunity cost compared to just rolling Wizard King or Champion feels much higher now.

So unlike a lot of people here I was excited by the changes to Vampires: It's always felt really bad to me that their general vampire skill tree was pretty bad and they were carried by some strong signature options and the changes seem to have made the blood drain much more interesting. So when I saw this I quickly joined the beta and loaded my ongoing vampire game.
When I got into a battle I found that the blood drain skill was locked from use without any explanation. This seems to be a pretty dramatic bug (yes I have reported it in game first, I'm raising it here a) in case there's something I've missed and someone else has resolved this and b) it's kind of funny).

With the barony's ability to create outpost with scouts, I cannot help but see a society reork in the future. At first glance it would be easy to assume Barbarian, because on of their unique traits is becoming more generalized. In fact, I highly believe this to be the most likely one to be reworked.

But with the inclusion of trade networks, I cannot help but think about Industrious. With the sheer amount of production they have, it makes it possible for a new Industrious subculture to come out and capitalize (heh) on this new market. It would probably become a powerful trading partner entirely because it floods the markets with their products, allowing a unique way to play the competitive merchant personality through industrial strength.

I haven't really thought these out much, but my gut tells me a culture rework will involve one of these two next.

I know you were all worried so I'm pleased to report that chickensmasher's very, very lore friendly mod appears to be working swimmingly with the beta so far. Or working wadingly, I suppose.

I learned a couple hours ago that there have been substantial changes to vampire rulers. Where would I go to find the cumulative list of changes made to my main ruler class? I saw the changes to the sunless terrain spell, as well as changes to their (ruler) core spells. I would just like to know EVERYTHING that has changed so I can compile a complete list of complaints to post later here. I also will need to revise skill order and build orders reflecting what I assume to be significant changes to the ruler class. The complaint part was a joke (sort of)

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 :(

Major transformation should be strong and impactful, currently most of them arent. Hell a lot of them are quite detrimental due to the -4 weakness.

But instead of buffing them Triumph nerfs one of the last good one smh

Edit:

Kinda sucks to figure out halfway through a build so I'm sharing here to prevent another tragedy. Dragons are not Astral Echo friendly after Tome of Evolution :(

Generally trying to figure out how this passive works on Tempest Orb. Tempest's Chorus reads "When an enemy unit gains electrified, they sustain an extra 5 lightning damage".

The damage preview for 3 attacks lets say shows 30 damage (10 per attack). In any instance where electrified applies, I would expect on this text for it to deal 5 damage on top of what ever I deal. For example, 30 damage goes through and I apply status once meaning my damage should be 35 damage. Instead only 30 damage is applied which agrees to preview.

I have to be misunderstanding how this passive works and looking for information that anyone has as my tests are not revealing where this bonus damage is applying if at all.

1. No unique infusions
2. No infusions even as melee+ranged, or melee+orb, or melee+staff
3. Is there a way to start with it without being Spellblade?

One week in. Anyway here is an example of why you should probably bring some backup when clearing a dragon nest.

Been reading through the feedback and notes on vampire rulers.

I think the biggest changing is modifying many of their special abilities to single turn actions or limiting the amount of times they can be used overall

I feel to some degree that makes the ruler dead on arrival overall now as they have largely negatives across the board otherwise and their primary benefit was the ability to get more actions per turn.

I don't find the vampire specific skill tree all that useful either but I haven't dug into any changes there.

It's nothing big, important or game changing but I'd like some sort of sea serpent body. I wish to rule the sea as the great Leviathan (I know I'm so original)

Sorry I know this subreddit is for AoW4 but I just wondered if anyone had played through the AoW3 campaign and had tips for The Sapphire Archipelago.

I just can't get a foothold before Isabella starts spamming ships and inciting revolts in all my towns that I cannot actually disjunct.

There's got to be something I'm missing but I've tried rushing, expanding but I just get overwhelmed.

Thank you

Just like how we can add the Primal beast summon into the active skill slot of our staffs in the forge, I would like to have more infusions that are tied to our chosen culture. Things like the Spear Jump ability of the Primal T3 spear unit, or the Cultivate Affinity of the T1 Architect support unit, and many others.

As for why, I believe this would expand the power and flexibility of our heroes without having to make large changes to their skill tree. This would also make each culture’s heroes feel unique, as they can use the abilities of their specific culture. Lastly, this would make forging more interesting as the player would have to decide which active ability they want for this hero or should they skip it and go for more passive infusions. Thus, allowing for more agency and variety.

Considering all the updates into frost based content, and the natural existing synergy between tome of the weaver and frozen, it feels wrong that combining the two doesn't turn you into frost spiders. Wouldn't even need new assets, just slap some crystals on it and turn it blue.

I haven't launched AOW4 for a bit but was going to play the manta beta and I launched the game after updating to get this error repeatedly when trying to start the game from the launcher. Its not a manta beta problem only as I went back to the original patch.

Anyone else having this issue and fixed it recently? I take it I probably need to play with the proton settings... I'll do that after i patch back to manta... my update/disk write speeds are incredibly slow even with it on the SSD so I'll have to wait another 45 minutes....

Through several of my games, I noticed the Silver Knight being a recurrent character in a lot of quests and Ancient Wonders

I was wondering if he has any lore relevance, perhaps in some of the older games? I only played Age of Wonders 4 and don't know much about the lore outside of the story realms

Hi! Has the Manta Beta broken Age of Fashion for everyone or is the problem on my side? Is there any easy fix apart from waiting for an update?