@Gorbash You're welcome. And I thank you, good person, for some inspiration you just gave me.

See, it didn't make sense to me to give Frostlings farm construction abilities on snow, because they don't occur to me as farmers, but rather Hunter-gatherers and fishermen. So why not instead give them special bonuses on huts (and maybe coastal tiles)? Think I'll call it Hunter's Lodge and either even them up to farm level or maybe make it slightly different... Bear with. 🐻‍❄️

@HjAa Thanks for the clarification. Though my worry is not so much the point cost, as the slot cost. Slots are quite limited, points are more fluid. So having to invest two slots for more or less one choice is for me at least a bit much.....

Many thanks, kind friend. There are several hundreds of mods for this fantastic game. Knowing that my work made it to the top for you is a great honour.

Cheers! This is my favorite mod for AOW4!

@Tanaka The add-on is supposed to give features to the races that are a bit more out there than this one, bringing back AoW 3 abilities like Draconic Ancestry to Draconian Support units, Guardian Flame to Dwarven and Weakening to Goblin, along with Defensive Strike to Dwarf Infantry etc. Bringing back Toad Hop to spearmen is another one.

I'm afraid however that I haven't even succeeded at making a draft, as the files won't talk to each other and nothing shows up in game. At this point I have given up the idea of making it work. We'll see further ahead.

What is this add on mod about? Have you completed?

Hi @Gorbash and thanks for the feedback. <3 I'll have a think. I see your point and while it makes sense for them, just like swamp adaptation would make sense for goblins and possible desolate adaptation for Draconians, I prefer to keep those separate as the mechanism inherently isn't a part of the AoW 3 races. The boons given with the Heritage should be enough to warrant the 1 point cost, I would have thought, as the adaptation gives you an Earthshape spell and arctic starting location as well.

I like the idea of Frostlings being a thing again, but please add being able to create a farm in the hostile environment to the respective races (eg Frostlings in snow etc)
Love the idea of Frostlings marching again, but having to spend two slots simply so they can eat ....

Well, I got the zoomies and gone and did it anyway. All races are now more on par with what the original races were. That said, this does enable me to make an even more flavourful add-on mod. Have a look and hope you'll come to like it. Happy gaming, everyone!

@HjAa, as long as all the traits are balanced in comparison to each other, go crazy (maybe instead of nerfing the powerful traits, buff the ones that are weak to the same level)

@Cat-Lunatic Thanks for reporting that bug! I wouldn't want to change the original races in this mod as that's what it was originally made to create. Doesn't exclude the idea of making all the new AoW 4 races a bit closer to that style and then making a separate mod where I give both the old and new races some fun traits. Although that might be a bit ambitious with my current availability.

@Fenrisúlfr I always appreciate your support! And it does also make me feel very torn about the whole thing. Part of me really enjoys the new races a bit more imaginative and crazy. Makes me feel more like "oooh, I want to try playing this race this time because of its fun dynamic". Maybe there's a compromise to be had, where some of them get toned down.

Anything but Ratkin, because they're so damn fun to play right now. Tear them down!

@HjAa, i would say as long as it is easy to understand and all the traits are a similar strength, it is fine

If you give them the new stuff, you should give the old races newer stuff too. but also, Frostling appears as a form when your starting a new scenario, if you reach the advanced section to limit say, forms or cultures to appear? Frostling appears there.

tl;dr: Would you miss them if I removed Toadkin's leap, Ancient's deteriorating vessels, Goatkins's pastures etc in favour of just small stat changes, rebated buildings and cost changes?

Hi everyone! I had a talk with my friend with whom I had this idea to begin with, and got the feedback that some of the new AoW 4 race traits might be a bit complicated, so I wanted to gauge a general opinion.

Would you mourn the removal of things like Toadkin's leap, Ancient's deteriorating vessels, Goatkins's pastures, Wolfkin's savage strikes and the new Avian and Molekin ideas, in favour simpler traits like small stat changes, rebated buildings and cost changes?

Is giving the "new" races more complex traits more frustrating or more fun?

I settled on 20% movement points recovered per battle and 8 combat move points whenever you finish with a critical. By accident support abilities could be used (but no defense or attack) when that triggered, which I thought was fun so I'm keeping it for now. Try it, let me know if there are more thoughts (encourage to use the feedback discussion) and have fun playing, everyone!

@GOGATSY Interesting! Thanks for reporting the bug. I was indeed trying to make a full frostling race where the males were goblin-like and females elven-like, but couldn't get them in the game and thus didn't think anything got affected. Must be a very small chance that this happens. Will fix for the next patch!

It seems that one of your heritages, probably frostlings based on the icons, gets added to the world creation as a full race and, in-game, if a random AI ruler chooses it, their names are blank and they don't have full models. Some of them are empty and some are just without their heads.

@Butcher Pete Thanks for all the feedback and for complimenting the mod. As this is turning into a forum I think it'd be better to start a discussion about it. You're welcome to post feedback there.

Your mod is great, please don't take my autistic spam as an insult. I'll stop blabbering about this now.

Suggestions:

The Imp bonus is fun but absolutely insane. It also has the potential to cause lag with vassal spam. I recommend reducing it to a much more modest -10% (down from -50%).

I recommend changing the food bonus to only applying a much smaller 5% food bonus per neighboring city with no penalty, this will require changing the name of course (the name was weird anyway... herd animals do not typically want small herds, they are very happy in huge packs).

I then recommend adding a penalty to the Goats that increases their morale loss by 100% called, "Fainting Goats." That hefty combat penalty should help negate their eco bonuses while selling the fantasy of playing goats.

TLDR: I had 3 cities of size 3 & 4 by turn 7 and was building my 4th, making a new city every other turn in clusters -- allowing me to negate the penalties and only add food bonuses. I was releasing cities as vassals in bad areas, which kept their food bonuses, and these vassals were spawned with armies while paying taxes.

The food bonus is all over the place. I get the complaints about the food bonus. But by 100% playing around the bonus (like described below) causes an early game explosion and vassal swarm potential. The AI would definitely not be able to play with the goats effectively. The late game can easily result in food dropping to 0... which is not fun.

Ok... I don't need to go 20 turns and I can already say the Goat bonuses are absolutely nuts when you play around them and do not play normally.

In detail:

By turn 3 I grabbed Fruitful Integration by starting with 5 Nature. Adding Settler reduced the Imp cost per city to 50 (as Settlers stacks with the Goat bonus).

By adding Swarmers & adding Agrarian on top of the Goat bonus, I reduced the food cost to grow and I was adding cities in clusters so that they were touch one another. This meant each city had a massive +30% food bonus turn 7, negating the penalties.

Vassals can be released immediately and reductions to cost apply here also (first vassal is free, then 12 Imp up to only 50 Imp).

As for the Goat thing... hold on... let me run the game right quick. I'm going to create a Goat/ Nature Dragon civilization with Swarmers and Settlers and I'll tell you in a bit how many cities/ vassals I can found in 20 turns.

On the Evasion thing for Avians, I just want to point out that in AOW4 it only works against targeted ranged attacks. AOEs and melee attacks are not affected and hit with 100% accuracy.

Evasion also caps at +95% with excesses being ignored entirely.

Accuracy also removes evasion at a 1:1 ratio while also helping hit distant targets.

Accuracy, meanwhile, is uncapped.

So the Elf +10% accuracy is insanely good. The Avian +10% evasion is pathetic.

There is a reason why the starting Accuracy item infusion grants +10% accuracy, while the starting Evasion item infusion grants +30% evasion.

If you gave Avians 30% evasion, it would at least make them annoying. Because of minus armor, Avians' would still get stomped by melee and physical magic so it should be fine.

I could definitely see how "Hit & Fly" like that could be exploited. Keeping neutral camps alive, for instance, and then promptly battling your way to the other side of the map and siege the enemy capital in one turn.

Honestly just giving Avians flying is the easiest choice that does not require much programming. No need to make your modding job harder than it needs to be.

Also keep in mind flying is not nearly as strong as it was in AOW 3. Flying units cannot enter the water without seafaring. Everyone can start with a tome that allows you to summon flying combat units now. Flying can also be given to every race by starting with Giant Eagles and the cost of Giant Eagles had to be reduced from 5 to 4 and now, finally, to 3 because they realized it wasn't all that good.

It's a fun idea! Like a super light version of it, allowing you to take a step back as an archer or repositioning one tile. Right now I was trying out them getting 50% movement back after battle, which was quite fun as well. Calling "Hit & Fly". Perhaps tuning that down as well (to like 20%) and giving them those two small bonuses combined would be enough to give them more flavour and balance. I like the idea of a hit and run, making use of quickly escaping up into mountains with their updraft ability.

or maybe a tuned down version of it at least

Master Skirmisher is the name

@HjAa, what about giving them that skill that gives them movement ater attacking/killing, i think the dragoon from the reaver culture has it

@Butcher Pete Thanks for the feedback. Most of the "old races" are based on previous games in the series and what they'd do to balance otherwise strong races. The reason I won't change the race costs is that I'd still like to allow players some customisation.

Other users have complained about the Goatkin food malus being too limiting 🤔

Perhaps there is something to give to Avians to further compensate for the -1 defense. As long as it balances with halflings -2 and their lucky feature, I'm down. Maybe something with damage or knowledge gained from battle... Ooh or perhaps gaining move points from victories (strategic) and attacks/kills (tactical).

This is an interesting idea but things as they currently stand are not balanced at all.

As it stands Avians are less than worthless while Elves/ Dark Elves, Dwarves, Goatkin, and Draconians are incredible.

Something you could do is make certain racial traits cost more than others.

Examples:
I would actually give Avians a -4 (evasion doesn't matter when you are giving other races accuracy bonuses and - armor is horrible). Alternatively replace "Updraft" with "Flying" and "Fast" and Avians become a +1.

Goatkin would probably by a +10 (as any changes to Imperium costs is absolutely insane and the late game food malus doesn't matter as more growth means more unhappiness while early food bonus means you start steamrolling.)

In general I could stand a little bit of lopsided balance but things here are really all over the place.

Big update for the Ancient form and a few smaller tweaks. Enjoy!

And it's a description of the Canadian band "ANCIIENTS", not from the GPT.

Haha, you've caught a placeholder that I never updated! Thanks for reminding me.

The description of the ancient race's ability is very strange. I don't know if they used a GPT to write the flavor test, but for some reason the race description mentions events from 2013, the United States and Canada, and it doesn't make any sense.

We've had talks about this one previously and it might be a bit extreme property. On paper, it should mean that you take a slow damage (-5) in wilderness and need to revisit friendly territory (make outposts, for example) to heal, or have stronger healers with you. How have you been playing it thus far?

I'm considering if they perhaps should have an even stronger HP buff, say +30, to make up for it, and/or def/res to +2/+2, but I'm not sure if that would be extreme, too. Or perhaps lower the decay to -7, but I don't really like removing the debuffs as much as making it interesting with a stronger buff.

Let me know your thoughts, all! How could we compensate for this in a cool manner?

can someone give me an advise on how I'm supposed to deal with the ancient's disintegrating vessels effect?

Ah gotcha guys thanks for the clarification!

Thanks again for the kind words, @Tanaka, and thanks for stepping in to explain, @Fenrisúlfr. Forestry includes all dense vegetation aboveground. I don't think Mangroves and Mushroom Forests are included, though the latter is included for races with Cave Walking. Lizardmen could definitely have Mangrove walking.

@Tanaka, "Simians have Forestry and Mountaineering; jungle movement is included in the former." they meant Forestry

Mountaineering and Jungle movement are the same in this game? Well that's dumb and makes no sense.

Would love this below as well! Thanks again for the best mod!

@Grathocke Agreed, I do miss that bit as well! We've discussed it previously and a +5 or -5 morale for liked/disliked terrain could be a nice little modifier. Could also experiment with +10 and -10 as a next level for hated, but that might be too powerful with other morale modifiers included. Nothing I have time to look into at the moment, though, even if it would be cool to link with the heritages!

@Fenrisúlfr Possibly. I'll have to do a deep dive into this at some point! :) And you're right about @Grathocke's question as well.

@Grathocke, the issue with that is some halflings might be adapted to ashlands and having them be mutually exclusive really effects roleplaying aspects (also you would need an exception for the primal culture as well otherwise worshipping you chosen animal can negatively effect you)

Wouldn't it be possible to give a positive, or negative, like your example for Ashland Halflings, by not allowing to choose opposing traits?

@HjAa, is it possible to add a check saying if halfling has ashland adaptation ignore morale penalty?

Tl;dr: Should I just give a little bonus for terrain a heritage always likes, like Forests and Grasslands for Halflings, or should I include disliked and hated terrains as well? This would mean that Halflings with an Ashland adaptation would still hate Ashlands.

I looked into the morale system and it would indeed be possible to change morale with terrain. But then come the complications with Adaptations, which the previous title didn't have. I would likely consider it too much work to go into each and every adaptation and make it so that say, Halflings with an Ashland adaptation now would no longer hate Ashlands.

I might, however, be able to give a bonus from the adapted terrrain type which would then compensate a little bit for their normal dislike or hate for it, or give a big plus if that race doesn't have a negative for it.

@Tanaka You're very welcome! I'm most pleased you like it. Simians have Forestry and Mountaineering; jungle movement is included in the former. You're giving me an idea, however. Would be cool if they had a special ability to move unhindered through vegetation on the battlefield... *goes to research this possibility*

@Grathocke Agreed, I do miss that bit as well! We've discussed it previously and a +5 or -5 morale for liked/disliked terrain could be a nice little modifier. Could also experiment with +10 and -10 as a next level for hated, but that might be too powerful with other morale modifiers included. Nothing I have time to look into at the moment, though, even if it would be cool to link with the heritages!

My only issue so far why do simians have mountain movement and not jungle movement?

Thank you for making this mod! Finally what I wanted!