Couchpotato spotted the dev diary #21 for Age of Wonders 4:

Dev Diary #21: Watcher Update: Research and Magic Victory

Hi champions, wizard kings and dragon lords! I’m Bas, a game designer at Triumph who has written some Development Journals in the past about Sieges and Ancient Wonders.

Today we’re going to be taking a look at some of the major changes we’re working on for the upcoming Watcher update. In particular updates to the Research system, and a shiny new Magic Victory system featuring Gold Ancient Wonders! Some of these changes were put into the open beta last week, while others will be coming some time today. Make sure to keep an eye for when that goes live!

Tome Requirements and Research Speed

Since the release of Age of Wonders 4, lots of players have made all kinds of combinations and builds using the tome system. Stacking all kinds of bonuses and sometimes reaching incredible research incomes in order to make the most powerful builds! While this is where a lot of the fun lies for players, we also identified some issues:

Many early tome unit enchantments increased damage for units, which when stacked by researching a lot of early game tomes, you could create incredible damage output on early game units for little mana, research and gold.

After players have built up their research economy. Low tier tomes become incredibly quick to research. This also meant that players who had finished their tier 5 tomes would be able to go through the rest of the tome library fast. And some would even have completed the entire tome lineup in a single realm, let alone finish up several tomes in a single turn!

[...]

The Dragon Dawn Content Pack has been released:

Age of Wonders 4: Dragon Dawn Content Pack | OUT NOW!

Thanks Couchpotato!

Take a look at the upcoming Dragon Dawn Content Pack:

Age of Wonders 4 | Dragon Dawn Content Pack First Look — Coming June 20th

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JumboPixel presents the announced updates and DLC for Age of Wonders 4:

Age of Wonders 4 MAJOR UPDATES - Dragon Dawn DLC, HUGE Game Patch & MORE!

Techraptor reports that Age of Wonders 4 sold 250k copies in a short time:

Age Of Wonders 4 Sales Hit 250k In Just Four Days

Age of Wonders 4 sales managed to reach 250,000 in just four days, according to new data revealed by publisher Paradox Interactive. This figure makes the fourth major installment in the Age of Wonders series the fastest-selling across its franchise, which should be encouraging if you love these games.

In a press release, Paradox says that between May 2nd, when Age of Wonders 4 launched, and May 6th, the game sold 250,000 copies across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. These sales take into account both pre-orders and post-launch sales and also incorporate both the standard and premium editions of Age of Wonders 4.

[...]

Thanks Couchpotato!

PC Gamer reviewed the strategy game Age of Wonders 4:

AGE OF WONDERS 4 REVIEW

Dust off your wizard hat.

Magic is rarely wondrous in its frequent videogame appearances. It harms, it heals and if you're lucky it maybe transforms enemies into sheep or frogs. Not so in Age of Wonders 4, however, where it drives every component of this arcane 4X, dramatically transforming worlds, cities and the creatures that inhabit them. With your expansive collection of magical tomes, you can dabble with god-like powers to your heart's content. 

The Wizard Kings—would-be deities—have awoken in the Astral Sea and are ready to exert their influence over the multitude of worlds that exist in this magical realm. As one of these Wizard Kings, or a mortal champion, you must grow in power to dominate these worlds, using magic and warfare to put the competition in its place.

[...]

With all the ways you can develop your empire, Age of Wonders 4 demands to be played over and over. But there's also an overarching progression system, the Pantheon, that encourages you to hop back in. Founding cities, forging alliances, completing quests and countless more activities will net you Pantheon XP, which in turn unlocks points that can be spent on the Pantheon tree. Rewards include new cosmetics, icons and gear, which can be used in your next game. Through this system you'll also automatically unlock new map types. Meanwhile, rulers you've created can join the Pantheon, allowing them to appear in future games as potential friends or adversaries. Conceptually, I'm a big fan, though I confess that I would have liked Triumph to do more with it. A new cape or hat doesn't hold a whole lot of appeal. 

Not that I need more excuses to keep coming back. Age of Wonders 4 scratches my itch for experimentation like few other strategy games, seducing me back in to try new tome combos and drag my empire in new, weird directions. And every time, I return from my fantasy foray with a sack full of anecdotes, like when I resurrected a rival ruler who had been plaguing me all game as an undead minion, forced to serve me for eternity. Magic just makes everything more fun.

Score: 87/100 

Thanks Henriquejr!

The strategy game Age of Wonders 4 has been released:

Age of Wonders 4

Rule a fantasy realm of your own design in Age of Wonders 4! Explore new magical realms in Age of Wonders’ signature blend of 4X strategy and turn-based tactical combat. Control a faction that grows and changes as you expand your empire with each turn.

Triumph Studios’ award-winning strategy series has emerged into a new age, evolving the game’s iconic empire building, role-playing, and warfare to the next level. A new storytelling event system and hugely customizable empires provide an endlessly replayable experience, where each game adds a new chapter to your ever-growing saga.

Powerful Wizard Kings have returned to the realms to reign as gods among mortals. Claim and master the Tomes of Magic to evolve your people, and prepare for an epic battle that will determine the ages to come.

Create te Empire of your wildest Fantasies

• Craft your followers by combining bodily forms, societal traits and arcane powers. Build anything from a clan of cannibal halflings to mystic moon elves, or recreate your favorite fantasy tropes
• Seek powerful tomes of magic to enchant your armies and evolve your people! See your people physically change as they morph into angelic beings or scions of chaos to face their enemies.
• Seek glory through brutal domination, cunning alliances, or ultimate arcane knowledge, and write your legacy into the very fabric of the realm itself!

Strategy meets Role-Playing like never before

• Every choice opens up new possibilities and tactical advantages; deep, multilayered strategy allows you to try new tactics or explore new powers at every turn
• Tactical turn-based battles bring your armies to life, showcasing their power in an environment shaped by your decisions. From skirmishes with roaming monsters to vast sieges with dozens of units on each side, with the addition of a morale system and more features, every battle brings a fresh challenge
• Tremendous variety in empires, units, and environments keep the game endlessly replayable. Age of Wonders is more moddable and open-ended than ever in the series’ history

Make your Mark on a vast reactive World

• Explore a new realm with each game - or create your own! Challenge new variations and combinations of locations and features, from frozen wastelands ruled by ice queens to desolated ruins where dragons roam
• A new event system provides unexpected levels of storytelling for 4X games. See your decisions shape the world around you, from growing cities and roaming armies to world-warping magic effects
• Guide your empire to greatness - but the story doesn’t end with your victory or defeat! Ascend your rulers to an in-game pantheon and unlock ways to further customize your experience. Encounter your own creations as potential rivals or allies in subsequent games, and experience the next chapter in your own story!

Zerkovich presents the main game mechanics of Age of Wonders 4:

5 reasons to try Age of Wonders 4!

IGN reviewed Age of Wonders 4:

Age of Wonders 4 Review

The fact that your legacy follows you in Age of Wonders 4 is rewarding, and the faster pace of its very strong campaign mechanics and pretty good tactical battles make it feel like you can write a new chapter of this saga in a reasonable amount of time. Cranking all the dials up to maximum weirdness can lead to some edge cases that ruin the fun a bit, but it's not that big of a price to pay for the vast map and empire customization we get to play with.

ACG reviewed the upcoming Strategy RPG Age of Wonders 4:

Age of Wonders 4 Review

Dev Diary #13 for Age of Wonders 4 explains how diplomacy works.

Welcome to another Age of Wonders 4 Dev Journal! My name is Thom (not to be confused with Tom or Thomas), I’m a gameplay programmer at Triumph Studios and primarily responsible for the Diplomacy systems and related AI.

Today I will take you through some of the changes and additions we’ve made to the Diplomacy systems. There is a lot to go through as we had many objectives when working on the diplomacy system for AoW4:

•     Improving the overall experience of how players interact with each other.
•     Increased player agency while still focusing on how AI players can manage difficulty and pressure in a more proactive manner.
•     Clearer AI behavior and proper foreshadowing of actions and shifts in the AIs attitude.
•     Greater variety in gameplay and the role of personalities.

Together with Jordi, we’ve done a stream highlighting these changes as well:

Trading

We’ll start off the journal by talking about the trading system, which is at the heart of your negotiations and dealings with the other rulers in the realm. Throughout the series we’ve featured Diplomacy in various forms, always trying to improve upon the last iteration, and we hope that the new system is no exception.

With Planetfall we introduced free form trading where you can haggle with AI players to try and achieve specified trade deals, sometimes at a great profit too. The only downside was that you’d have to go back and forth with AI players to broker a deal, which did not always work out since there was no way of knowing which deal would work for the AI beforehand. For AoW4 we have reworked this system entirely, focussing on clarity and providing a more straightforward experience.

[...]

Dev Diary #9 for Age of Wonders 4 focuses on Ancient Wonders.

Dev Diary #9: Ancient Wonders

Greetings future Rulers, welcome to another Development Journal! I’m Bas, a game designer at Triumph Studios. I’d like to give you some glimpses into the grand structures called Ancient Wonders that can be found in the realms you conquer.

Each Ancient Wonder is a monument from the great ages of the past, with several ties to the old Age of Wonders lore. They make the lands more coherent and mysterious as you encounter an ancient Mother Tree guarded by vengeful Entwined, a Secret Temple desecrated by evil cultists summoning a demon or a Lost Tower of ancient wizard horribly transformed by the Astral Sea.

Ancient Wonders are, next to being monumental landmarks in the world map, also filled with adventures and the promise of loot. They are the evolved versions of Treasure Sites in Age of Wonders 3 and Landmarks from Age of Wonders: Planetfall.

Discovering an Ancient Wonder

When you first uncover an Ancient Wonder on the World map, you already get a glimpse of what’s to come through:

• The name, which hints at the adventure that awaits inside.
• The tier, which indicates the difficulty but also the value of the Ancient Wonder and its rewards!
• The background lore, indicating what the Ancient Wonder’s original purpose was and what might still lurk inside

Beware though, that trying to enter and capture Ancient Wonders, while a dangerous ordeal in itself, also have diplomatic repercussions, other players gain grievances if you try to explore Ancient Wonders that are close to them. No one likes nosy neighbors stealing the loot.

To take you on an adventure, we’re following Wizard King Cinren Toliath of the Ashborn Hedonists.

[...]

The latest dev diary for Age of Wonders 4 talks about cities and how they can be expanded and goes into lots of detail.

City Domain

Cities project a sphere of influence around the city called their domain. This domain extracts resources and ensures rival players can’t just enter it without consequences (more about diplomacy in a future dev diary!)

In Age of Wonders 3 and prior, this domain was a hexagon-shape that grew equally in all directions out from the city. This allowed it to exploit the natural resources of nearby resource nodes but gave the player no control. In Age of Wonders: Planetfall this was changed to a sector system, which resulted in player control over growth and more natural shapes that follow the environment. But these choice moments were few and far between and it was hard for many players to comprehend the impact of these choices.

Age of Wonders 4 uses a new province and expansion system. Provinces also follow the natural features of the world. They are smaller than sectors and unlike Planetfall you will gain a new province every time you gain a new population. Cities can easily get up to 15 population and 15 provinces, making your cities grow more organically in byte-sized chunks. This allows you to “steer” their expansion towards high value resources or to cut-off bottlenecks with your territory.

Province Improvements

Whenever you annex a new province you can immediately choose what type of province improvement will be built here.
The choice of improvements depends on what features that province has.

[...]

IGN presents the official story trailer for Age of Wonders 4:

Age of Wonders 4 - Official Story Trailer

Age of Wonders 4 will be released on May 2:

Age of Wonders 4 | Announcement Trailer

Rule a fantasy realm of your own design in Age of Wonders 4! Explore new magical realms in Age of Wonders’ signature blend of 4X strategy and turn-based tactical combat. Control a faction that grows and changes as you expand your empire with each turn.

Triumph Studios’ award-winning strategy series has emerged into a new age, evolving the game’s iconic empire building, role-playing, and warfare to the next level. A new storytelling event system and hugely customizable empires provide an endlessly replayable experience, where each game adds a new chapter to your ever-growing saga.

Powerful Wizard Kings have returned to the realms to reign as gods among mortals. Claim and master the Tomes of Magic to evolve your people, and prepare for an epic battle that will determine the ages to come.

Create te Empire of your wildest Fantasies

• Craft your followers by combining bodily forms, societal traits and arcane powers. Build anything from a clan of cannibal halflings to mystic moon elves, or recreate your favorite fantasy tropes
• Seek powerful tomes of magic to enchant your armies and evolve your people! See your people physically change as they morph into angelic beings or scions of chaos to face their enemies.
• Seek glory through brutal domination, cunning alliances, or ultimate arcane knowledge, and write your legacy into the very fabric of the realm itself!

Strategy meets Role-Playing like never before

• Every choice opens up new possibilities and tactical advantages; deep, multilayered strategy allows you to try new tactics or explore new powers at every turn
• Tactical turn-based battles bring your armies to life, showcasing their power in an environment shaped by your decisions. From skirmishes with roaming monsters to vast sieges with dozens of units on each side, with the addition of a morale system and more features, every battle brings a fresh challenge
• Tremendous variety in empires, units, and environments keep the game endlessly replayable. Age of Wonders is more moddable and open-ended than ever in the series’ history

Make your Mark on a vast reactive World

• Explore a new realm with each game - or create your own! Challenge new variations and combinations of locations and features, from frozen wastelands ruled by ice queens to desolated ruins where dragons roam
• A new event system provides unexpected levels of storytelling for 4X games. See your decisions shape the world around you, from growing cities and roaming armies to world-warping magic effects
• Guide your empire to greatness - but the story doesn’t end with your victory or defeat! Ascend your rulers to an in-game pantheon and unlock ways to further customize your experience. Encounter your own creations as potential rivals or allies in subsequent games, and experience the next chapter in your own story!

Thanks Henriquejr!