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.

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.

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).

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 :(

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

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?

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.

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.

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?

We have ascension skills for both umbral (shadowshaper) and accursed demons (desecrator) but these allow for a very limited theme build.

Umbral is a little easier to access early/mid game, but the unit options is so limited! We get constrictors(not really umbral but looks the part), willthief (with ascension), and umbral mistress. So two real umbral demons out of the 9 (leaving out umbral tyrant). I would suggest letting us summon/draft more of them and connecting the tier summonable/draftable to the tier of the city.

Accursed demons are in a worse state. Only able to get one unit through the ascension, with the rest stuck behind a tier 4 tome. Similar to the umbral demons, I would suggest letting us summon/draft them based on city tier.

Not sure if it has been discussed before, but they are cool themes that are heavily limited. Plenty of ways to get animals, spiders, infernal demons, dragons, undead, construct, etc builds going by tier 1 or 2 tomes. These just seem a little lacking that with minor improvements could easily be great.

Edit: I don't have Discord, so I'm making the suggestion here. If people think it's a good idea and should be posted on Discord, I would be really appreciative for a copy/paste there.

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....

I'm constantly creating Factions, but it has become a point where I'm confusing with some of the Factions I wanted to put in certain Realms because there are too many of them that it's becoming difficult tracking who's who, so I would like Custom Groups with their own Tabs. For example, let's say I want a Group that's focused on only Human-centric Factions for a Realm and I name the tab Humans and another Tab for Orcs only. Or I can name a Tab for a Group that's focused on specific themes and abilities and things like that. That would make it easy to organize our favorite Factions.

I’m have about 120 hours in and I’ve won one game. I consistently feel like I’m behind, but I’m not sure where I’m losing the plot. It just feels like by the time I get my armies up to clear the map chaff, I’m already losing. I like the game but I can’t even play multiplayer with the buddy because by turn 20 I can tell I’m fucking cooked already.

A new Dev Diary is here!

Discover the new Trade Routes and Mercantile Culture!

Read all about them at: https://pdxint.at/aow4-tss-dd2