Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Peng Chuwei

Change always comes with risks.

The understanding of the name "Miracle Age" by most players in previous lives may stem from the so-called "three fantasy strategy games" that have been compared with the "Heroes" series and the "Mujahideen" series for 24 years with its developer Triumph Studios.

The original "Miracle Age" (Age of Wonders) was released in 1999, with the characteristics of "Hero Invincible" series and "Civilization" series. It has not only the elements of "Hero Invincible" series, hero training and the design tendency of re-conquest, but also the urban construction, expansion and productivity system of "Civilization" series. In 2002, "Miracle Age 2: the Wizarding Throne" (Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne) was released, which basically improved the game's worldview, in which players no longer play the leader of a certain force, but a powerful wizard. In this generation, the game introduces the design of strategic spells, where players can cast a variety of spells on the big map, from summoning troops, changing terrain to destroying cities, to name a few, greatly enhancing the strategic sense of the game.

The concept of "immortal wizard" has become an important part of the game background since the shadow of "Hero Invincible" in the picture of "Miracle Age".

After the release of "Miracle Age 2: the Wizarding Throne", the "Miracle Age" series came to a standstill, and Triumph Studios turned to developing the quirky action game "Overlord" series. Until 2014, the studio returned to the "Age of Miracle" series, bringing the "Age of Miracles 3" (Age of Wonders 3). "Miracle Age 3" inherits the consistent strategic depth of the series, and players have to choose not only the race, but also the profession of the leader and the specialty ball they are good at.

Generally speaking, in addition to the general units of each race, the most advanced units come from the specialized balls and classes of heroes, such as rogue leaders can train scoundrels and trackers. Druid class leader heroes can summon wild animals, train shamans, warlord class leaders can train scorpion lions, and so on. Race, class and specialty ball determine the technology and recruitment units that players can study in a single game, respectively.

The plot of "Miracle Age 2: the Wizarding Throne" continues in "Miracle Age 4". In addition to strengthening the strategic system, "Miracle Age 3" also improves the training mechanism of the arms. In the game, the unit skill is a controllable variable that can be given and deprived to his units at will-through technology, heroic skills, treasures, and resource points. One of the great pleasures of the game is to train units with unique and powerful skills. At the same time, because units can "customize skills", newly created soldiers are generally similar, so in order to enhance differentiation, damage is divided into various attributes in "Miracle Age 3". Units of different ethnic groups have different resistance to attribute attacks-looking for mutual restraint in combat has become the core idea of the game.

In short, although the strategic system of "Miracle Age 3" is complex, it still serves tactical combat.

In 2019, Triumph Studios released "the Age of Miracles: stars", which can be seen as the "Age of Miracles" series, the background is set in outer space, the world view and background are separated from the biography, at the same time, in terms of play, this work also continues to enhance the complexity of strategic and urban construction systems, and these designs are finally added to the "era of Miracle 4".

From tactical to strategic, after talking about previous generations of works, let's talk about today's protagonist, Miracle Age 4.

I always have a feeling that from Age of Miracles 3, Age of Miracles: star to Age of Miracles 4, developer Triumph Studios has been trying to expand the breadth of the strategy system in the game and reduce the depth. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the taste of today's players-people seem to prefer to roam in a sea of decisions made up of events and the drunkenness of spending round after round in a daze.

To achieve this experience, Triumph Studios designed the following for "Age of Miracles 4":

First of all, implement the idea of "arms customization" since "Miracle Age: stardom", and strive to make everything customizable-once, "by designing hundreds of features and hundreds of unit templates, let players cultivate their own troops to a certain extent" is the core feature of the "Miracle Age" series, and achieved a harmonious balance in three generations. In "Miracle Age: stars", developers further modularize these features, making the army a complete tool person, in addition to the basic data of different classes of arms, players can customize the units they want to the maximum extent through the module unlocked by technology.

Even the characteristic of race has become a customizable module, the background setting of "Miracle Age: starry Stars" is set in outer space, but also because the space background makes the skill modularization seem reasonable-- in the fourth generation, the module system has been transformed into "racial transformation magic" and "enchantment magic". Although it is not as extreme as "Miracle Age: starry Stars", it is also quite exaggerated-- 6 cultures correspond to 12 magic books. Players can use the five units given by culture and the troops obtained from the magic scripture, and the cultural troops recruited are almost whiteboards, and the skills are often only the initial ethnic characteristics.

This means that players have to study the magic code to give the unit enough ability-- the word "give" should be replaced by "unlock", because the seemingly diverse skills in the magic code are based on the premise that the original ability of the unit is reduced. So if players want to get a good enough (deep) tactical combat experience, they have to climb up the technology, and only unlock enough modules. The game can only reach the fun stage-this experience is supposed to be given to the player at the beginning.

Because the "module acquisition-tactical combat depth" curve is not perfect (or even without any design), developers have to choose to reconcile the early lack of combat experience with cultural events and more complex urban construction. At the same time, under the banner of returning to the second generation, players can only choose 1 from 3 of the contents of the magic code that can be studied at a time.

Like Miracle Age 2: the Wizarding Throne, the game can only choose one of the three technologies randomly selected at a time to study the skill pool for each inning of Miracle Age 4. 12 magic books multiplied by 5 orders, and then multiplied by 6 studies in each book, the actual total number of skills is about 340. In Miracle Age 3, there are about 150 skills that can be studied, and the former is more than the latter in total. But in the actual play, under the five-person map, the total number of skills that players can study is only 100, some of which are originally architecture, race, and belong to the unit's own skills, which are actually not much different from those of the third generation. For example, wild monsters on large maps often have enchanted spells-which is tantamount to telling players that these abilities are originally given directly to these units.

At the same time, enchanting spells also have a negative impact on tactical combat, because this generation of games cancel the separation and dispelling of world spells, resulting in enchanted spells too powerful, whether PvP or PvE, tactics are relatively simple, it is difficult for players to find the previous generation to build their own routines, but also against each other in the battle.

To better illustrate, let's compare what players can do in the first 10 rounds of Miracles 3 and 4, respectively:

Miraculous Age 3: open the map, choose one of 12 random studies (these studies come from race, class, and expertise), study which treasure point to go around, and decide whether to start with construction to get resources, or to fight with high-level units.

"Miracle Age 4": open the map, determine the magic code, choose one of three random studies (the study comes from the magic code of choice, the corresponding cultural concept of the promotion of the magic code, and the cultural concept determines the upgrading of the empire), decide to upgrade the empire, build a random soldier, determine the tendency of urban expansion, save resources, save population, hang up, and fight.

In Miracle Age 3, players' decisions are more meaningful than 4 generations. we can see that from 3 to 4 generations, players have more early choices, and there are always countless events and decisions waiting for players to make. These events must be made, but not so important, just to restore the experience that players can have at the beginning of the third generation. The really meaningful decisions often occur in 15 or 30 rounds-but in fact, most of the time, you click down all the way.

It's a pity. Triumph Studios has always been good at designing strategic frameworks and customizing excellent turn-based battles. The problem is that in order to allow players to focus more on strategic systems, the game reduces the density of optional battles. In Age of Miracles 4, players don't have many manual fights-even the most difficult.

The end of the road to change, "Miracle Age 4," sold 250,000 copies within four days on the shelves. This result shows from the side that the path of change taken by Triumph Studios is feasible. In any case, for most people, the interaction at the strategic level is always easier than the game at the tactical level, and simplicity means easy to use. I can understand the desire of developers to expand the player base-they complicate many of the strategic designs and make the game look fun, but the problem is that in the underlying architecture of the Miracle Age series, strategic designs always serve tactical combat. When the strategy is too bloated, the tactical battle slips into the abyss of loss of fun.

This is the success and price of the road of change in the "Miracle Age" series.

Advantages

+ the number of initial races and occupations is satisfactory.

+ the stories of events and battles are quite good.

Shortcoming

− AI is too weak.

Poor optimization of −

The depth of − chess is not enough.

The − combat interface is a little messy.

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