Age of Wonders 4: Secrets of the Archmages DLC

I really like anything that adds more event/wonder variation and the story maps are pretty cool so far. The new tomes are fantastic and fill a couple niches I'd noticed were missing. I believe with the last patch the AI portal cheat has been fixed. $20 is probably excessive, wait to get on sale/with expansion pass. Which is also overpriced, but less so, and I'm a sucker for the game anyway.

This DLC made game very hard to play due to constant crashes. It crashes in own maps and scenario maps especially.

First story mission is a bugged mess with game ending crashes. I would wait before buying this until they sort out more of the kinks.

Generally a nice DLC. The story realms are quite interesting. I will be in favor of another story DLC in the future with similar style. However, I leave a temporary negative review because currently the story realms are still having many issues that destroy the experience. - Bugs. Serious bugs that will kill your save and ruin your effort of many hours. - The first and third realms are way too difficult on Hard difficulty. There is no room for build up at all, for you basically need to be able to beat your enemies at day 30-50 while most of the builds need at least a T3 tome. I wonder if the devs themselves have ever beaten the Hard difficulty story realms without cheating? Please, play your products yourselves before selling them. - Not a specific problem for this DLC but for AOW4 itself: the terrible AI of allies largely strengthens the negative experience of story realms. Ally armies are always wandering at some meaningless random places and never clean infestation or even defend their own cities (at a place where takes you >10 turns to reach). I know you can boost Merlin's AI some way in the third realm, but the other "allies" are more of burdens that provide additional cities to your enemy.

For context, here is my review of the whole season pass, it was made before this DLC but I completely called out what was about to happen. https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004413401/recommended/3976440?snr=1_5_9__402 I'll make it short this time because just like Triumph, I don't care enough to put some effort in this DLC. This DLC is "okay" in term of content, because bascially any new content will always be good. What's not okay is the price asked for 6 tomes, 3 story mission you may be will play once, and 1 form which is okay, but is also "another birdman form", something the game already had. This DLC has no business being 20 bucks, the same price than the rest of the DLC of this seasons, more than DLCs like Dragon Dawn, Primal Fury or Ways of War and the same price than EMpire of Ash and Eldritch Horror. This is shrinkflation at its finest, a dev cashing on the good will they garnered from their captive audience and the scumiest use of Season Pass, where you push the sale of something nobody would buy on its own once they'd know exactly what it is. I'll be direct, this DLC isn't worth 20 bucks. It's at best worth 5. No culture, No leader, just a single form and 6 tomes that each feel like they are heavily tied to other DLC: The Tome of Weaver and Sprite are heavily leaning to work with the Primal Fury DLC (The spider culture and the Fey tome) The Tome of Gluttony is basically the other half of the tome of Blood Rite from the Thrones of Blood DLC and are clearly meant to be used together. The Tome of Cosmos is crafted to be the last Tome of a culture using the Empire Cosmos trait from the Cosmic Wanderer DLC (the name is basically a give away). This means that even if we ignore the pricetag, this DLC should be at the very bottom of your purchase list for this game as it rely on other content to be used in a way to makes sens. It's a shame really because they COULD have made a "tome focused" DLC delivering a dozen of elemental tomes the game is desperatly needing (Ice, Water, Fire, Wind, Earth all need love), it would have been an easy win and made the DLC very attractive, but instead you get a pack of random disparate themes, most being extension of content from other DLC or feeling like they should have had their own DLC (like the Tome of Sprite that should have been part of a Fey focused DLC). This whole Season and this DLC in particular massively undermined my thrust in Triumph and I'll wait and see before getting on board with their next season pass instead of showing them support as a show of trust.

so I love this game and was incredibly excited for newer content being released. was I a little sad that this pack wasnt purely astral gettng some love? a little, but thats hardly the biggest problem here. so Secrets of the Archmage is the final DLC for this pass, and theres been something ive noticed over the last few, is that while I love the content and the game as a whole, I would always find myself engaging with it less than I would previously. its not that the content here isnt enjoyable, far from it. I would adore the content I got my hands on and then play for about a week or two and then put it down again until the next expansion. it wasnt until this pack that I was able to figure out why in that there is objectively less content here than in previous packs. for example, whether you like it or not (I did enjoy the pack) the Thrones of Blood expansion gave you objectively less content than a similar pack with a new ruler type, Eldritch Realms. "but this is a new type of content pack, a story pack. theres no comparison point from existing content." ok fair enough, but is what were getting here up to par? for the tomes?....I mean its alright, theres no real theme to the tomes besides how they tie to the story missions, and are a weird mishmash of ideas. not only are they rather random when it comes to ideas, but some of them really just feel like extensions of content that already exist from expansions (I can already tell tome of gluttony and the tome of blood rite from Thrones of blood go well together which makes me wonder why they werent the same tome to begin with.) or are concepts that should really get a whole dlc devoted to it that are put here for the sake of filling out the roster (you could make a whole dlc of content for fairies, hell even a whole new ruler type. and now if they ever do, two whole tomes for fairies are only gonna be a part of seperate dlc this one and Primal Fury.) I cant really comment on the quality of the story realms in good faith because as a whole I havent played them yet. my only complaint here is once again, how many youre getting. its a story pack with 3 new missions. thats pretty neat, previous DLCs, for example Eldritch Realms again, had 2 story missions, alongside the new ruler type, and a ton of content. Eldritch Sovreigns * 1 new ruler type * 3 new tomes * 2 new forms * brand new map layer * 2 new story missions * cosmic happenings Secrets of the Archmage * no new ruler type * 6 new tomes * 1 new form * 1 new map layer (which is incredibly limited) * 3 new story missions there are a few minor bells and whistles with the new pack but this is the meat of the DLC. a bunch of newer content traded off for one extra story mission and throwing in a bunch of random tomes. do I think every expansion should have a laundry list of things added to it? no, this pack is like I said a story pack. if you want this stuff then go for it, no problem with that. but you are getting less here than previously, and the part I object to is that its the same price as Eldritch Sovreigns. ultimately im making this review because I do love this game, and Triumph do good work, but I also know how predatory Paradox have gotten as of late, and watched it diminish several good games with overpriced, undercooked expansions. I urge people to not accept less for the same price becuase it will tell the company that its ok to provide less. the only reason I bought the DLC was because it was somehow cheaper to purchase it with the expansion pass currently (still confused how that worked but hey I payed less) and so I could write this review. if you really want to play as owl people, wait for a sale. but dont pay full price for objectively less content than usual. thank you for your time EDIT: also something ive noticed is if you try to play a game with the new Shrouded Isles content, the AI will automatically know where to find them, and rush to claim them before youve even had a chance to start doing anything. had a game where I watched a solo ai ruler snatch up a portal on my doorstep, and look at his capital and he already has 2 others. on turn 8. 2 seconds worth of QA testing would have spotted this, and im amazed that it was released like this. not great to have one of the main selling points of your dlc be nearly impossible to engage with.

Is this worth 20 euros? No. Even with the season pass, this is bad value. My stance on this has not changed. This is me giving them credit for a step up, despite the horrid pricing you should not support unless you really are a devout supporter and simply wish for more content. Why is this a positive review? Because at least they put effort into the units etc this time. It's a noticable upgrade from the last DLC. Staggeringly noticable in fact. These are not all recolours. 6 tomes was genuinely desperately needed, tomes are one thing that is arguably lacking the most together with unit variety. This helps in two areas that were much needed AND finally gives us actually interesting new units that you might want to use unlike the dreaded War Golem. Not a single new unit here is a genuinely bad looking. And we finally also got a new T5 tome, look at that! The content for the price isn't a lot, but at least now there is content I can point at and say "Hey, that's neat!" unlike with the last DLC. We probably won't go up from here, but if we did, it's a good direction.

Triumph studio developers good. Paradox marketing team bad. I firmly believe $20 is excessive but the content is good. Take that as you will.

The only Paradox DLC worth buying these days Decent Value Fun Additions Thoughtful changes Completed implementation Doesn't break a core aspect of the game immediately upon release Man, Vic3 wishes it got updates like this.

Hopefully a temporary negative review as the devs are aware of the issue, but we'll see how long it takes them to address it and how well they do so. The issue that ruins this DLC at the moment is that it introduces small pocket planes that have leftover goodies from great wizards of old, which can be claimed and moved to your territory for exploitation. What happens currently though is that the AI has permanent maphacks, and moving/claiming the portals doesn't require fighting anything, just a resource expenditure. This leads to the AI immediately rushing all of the portals and scooping them up, often long before the player even had a chance to explore their immediate area. In every game I've started with the Secrets content enabled, the AI I have discovered will routinely have have around 3 portals already claimed by turn 20. This is awful to play with and really ruins the main gameplay selling point of the DLC.