Age of Wonders 4 Review (PussNuggets)
First off. I want to make it very clear i really am enjoying this game. was a big fan of both age of wonders 3 and planet fall. And gameplay wise this is a good game. Dare i say better that both the previous games in a lot of ways. I like where they went with core mechanics and its fantasy world is amazeballs.
BUT! It has one glaring issue that i think a lot of people will wind up getting disappointed with if youre playing this mostly as a single player game. And thats unfortunately the AI.
So let me explain, the battle AI is actually good and gives you a decent challenge. Its the world map AI that just absolutely blows. I just finished my first run. And again had a lot of fun with it. But when it came to the point where factions were starting to declare war on eachother i started noticing the terrible world map AI.
First off, like in planetfall there are infestation units that will periodically roam the map and attack you and other AI factions until you destroy it. My entire campaign i was the only player actually attacking these Infestations and their nests. The AI Factions would simply just move units near them but never actually attack them unless an infestation came into their borders.
There are also murauding guard units that are stationary that will guard resource nodes rendering them useless until taken out or removed. But the AI factions didnt seem to care about these either. The ai takes provinces but just leave the guards on the resource nodes with out clearing them.
Then theres warfare. I had countless wars pop off in my game. And i watched as my allies would simply just wander unit stacks aimlessly around the map while being at war and never make a move on the enemy. And like wise the enemy never bothered to attack us. I also used scouts to survey lands of two AI that declared war on eachother just to see them both moving units near eachothers cities but never attack eachother.
I only had it twice where in a war with and orc AI where i sent in my armies to take out their capitol and they would spot my armies and counter attack with their own stacks. But that was about as aggressive as i saw the AI on the world map get. And this was on normal difficulty.
So while i really do like this game. As someone whos going to play this game mostly single player. The fact that the world map AI just seems mostly brain dead and not programmed to be aggressive at all during wars, really is disappointing and winds up making games completely boring. I know i never have to worry about defedning my cities in a war because the ai will literally never come attack me. All i have to do is send massive stacks to them. And that just ruins the replay factor this game could otherwise have for me.
I dont really see myself playing many more matches in this game until something is done to tweak the AI in the world map to be better than what it is. So there fore at this time i cant give the game a thumbs up or really justify the money i spent on it even though otherwise the game is great.
If you can look past Poor AI then by all means this game is worth it. just personally i'm not and will not be having as much fun as i could with this game until hopefully the world map AI gets tweaked.
EDIT: So i came back to throw this in here. Since everyone was bashing me for playing on normal i did a test run on hard to simply watch the AI behavior. Heres what happened in my game as bullet points. I'll give the AI credit where credit is due that at least on hard the AI did take out infestations and such this time around, albeit very slowly and in a passive manner. But wars, they typically felt the same. The first war on myself wasnt declared until about turn 71 turn 72. which is about normal. And in this war it was between myself and an AI directly bordering my south. So i sat all 8 of my 6 stack armies at the time on my two southern cities and i counted as by as late as turn 87 she didnt even try and attack me once. my scouts instead spotted her armies, as with my normal game, just squatting in her cities shuffling around.
And it was also around this time my ally who had damn near 20 armies declared war on the guy to her left. Youd think they'd send it all on the city closest right? nope. for another 15 turns they too just shuffled their units around near their cities before finally launching the only attack i ever saw them do in that war. which they lost miserably.
Going back to my war. After waiting til about turn 96 and no actual attacks on me yet i decided to delete all my armies but two and have those two armies defend my capital. It wasnt until i did this that magically the AI decides to send all its armies at my undefended cities. Takes them, brings their armies to my main city but never attacks me there. Mind you i have two stacks of units here while she has at least 8. But not one final attack from her to end me when she easily could have. In fact she decides to completely retreat all her armies after raiding my provinces.
It wasnt until about turn 118 that the guy to my north declared war on me and sent about 15 full stacks to a few tiles outside my main city. Even then he decides to, once again shuffle his units aimlessly right outside my city until turn 129 where he finally started to siege me. Which makes no sense. 15 armies against two should have been an instant siege as soon as he saw what i had defending. Not aimless shuffling of troops for ten turns.
So while the AI showed more agressiveness over all on hard during wars. The way in which it was done was incredibly passive and the AI seems to get stuck in this unit shuffling mode. And i still would argue because of poor AI behavior i didnt have as much fun as i could have on hard either because in order for the enemy to even be aggressive towards me in a war i had to purposely delete armies just to see it. If i hadnt i almost garuntee the AI would have just camped all their armies at their cities until i either asked for peace or i threw my units to the slaughter.
Even age of wonders planet fall had better AI in my opinion when it came to wars. I dont ever recall the AI in that game being super passive after declaring a war on me like they are in this game. And for me it just makes gameplay dull. And thats just me and my own personal gripe. no one has to agree with me. its how i feel about it. Still a great game over all. But the AI just for me makes it not worth playing games if i know what theyre going to do every single game. which is just sit there and do nothing until i lose armies either on purpose or not. For me AI in a single player mode is a big part of the experience and my personal experience with it in this game is just meh. again simply my opinion and everyones inclined to agree or disagree with that sentiment.