Ok,

So, what happened. After installing Age of Wonders 4 and booting the game, there was an immediate response by Norton that it had blocked the EXE from engaging in some form of online communication.

A couple of months ago i noticed similar behaviour with Xuan-Yuan Sword VII but obese brainmelted me decided that such an event probably had something to do with the Chinese overlord trying to get their hands on any and every piece of information they can. In hindsight, maybe a bit silly to react like this, since this also triggered a compulsive line of thought ending in me removing the game from my hard drive ( yes i remove games if i suspect spies!! ) but now....

Why would such a friendly Dutch company that shows only sense and admirability towards their players display spy behaviour? And with their new Paradoxal banner they wield, they must have their honour to protect, especially with their shared dream of DRM free gaming.

Seriously, though, These 2 games are the only ones that had this form of communication blocked as far as i can remember. The games do work after this action, but in all sincerity, i can't comment about if the games act as they should.

If anyone has a clue about what is actually going here, What is actually blocked, Why are these the only games from my almost 1000 titles counting library have been blocked? Etc
(Is GoG to blame??)

Shared dream of Paradox account required for multiplayer "DRM-free" gaming... anyway, it's probably just nosy fucks sending telemetry data to the mothership. Have you checked their privacy policy? Surely your AV also told you where it was trying to connect (domain/host, port)?

I would say most games I buy from GOG attempt to phone home. Unity games are particularly egregious about this. I'd assume it's just game developers wanting to collect information about how people are playing the game. I've yet to find a game that doesn't run if you block the connection, so the first thing I do after installing a game is block the executable files from connecting to the Internet.

Maybe i've managed to miss most of those. I do buy about 15 to 20 games a year through GoG. I do understand the need for phoning home. I presume most games do deliver on something like that. It is just with steam and the other portals i use i never had such and event. That is to me an oddity.

Even with games that offer the option for sharing telemetry i never noticed a blocking message when i do agree to share info.

Nah, i don't like it. I probably will return AOW 4 I believe it to be a most common poppup, at the time i did not pay a lot of attention. The .. wholeness of the situation took some time to reach my brain

There's a reason I disallow all network access to all closed source programs, unless absolutely necessary. Games, for one, never get 'net access, even though it might be beneficial for multiplayer. Luckily, I have no friends to play games with, anyway (except maybe for PBEM Alpha Centauri, which requires no 'net access).

In other words, the only way phoning home would bother me in games is if failure to phone home would result in the game not functioning. To date, none of the more than 1000 gog games I own have this problem, as far as I can tell. Granted, I don't own either of the two games mentioned in the OP.

For a handful of games, my AV/Firewall actually did log to have allowed communication, but it's not many.

Some do it for statistics, other - mostly decision making games - do it to compare your choices with the community (hello Telltale). And of course strategy games need to be able to connect for multiplayer where the campaign of the game in theory would not need it, but uses the same engine.
But for none of these it's necessary, that's the most important point. If block access for these games or set your firewall to a opt-in instead of opt-out, you can still play - completely offline.

If most games you buy are made in Unity, and indeed many indie games developers on GOG use Unity, its Unity fault really.

You can follow this post to find another thread that explains this in details and how to cut it on some Unity games:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/technical_question_why_unity_games_are_so_badly_optimized/post6

I would guess that that would be because you probably didn't test all 1000 of your titles. Maybe do that first and let us know the results after you've done so.

I also heard a lot of people say that Pathfinder: WOTR has integrated spyware/malware in it, and so does its EULA, so you should especially test with that one if you have it.

I'm running Norton life lock for the better part of 3 years now. I won't state that i tested all my games but i hope you would believe me if i say that a good part did pass as played in that timeframe. I usually just literally kill the network card.... though somehow windows does manage to come online during bootups even with the card disabled... weird but true

Sounds as if it would load standard drivers first before anything else.
Good thing that our games don't run during startup :)

That's not exactly the reason. Some devs I know pretty well have released a Unity game a long time ago here on GOG. It was pretty successful but people complained about the game phoning "home". I immediately informed the programmer and he told me that he simply did not know. It seems to be the default setting when developing in Unity to collect some hardware data but it can get turned off pretty easy. That's exactly what they did in the first patch. Since you can't change GOG reviews unfortunately some damage has already been done (game still was succesful enough luckily and they are working on a second one which will not have the same problem from the beginning). I wrote a review explaining things to help them.

uhu, those nasty developers would probably try to get their hands on your privvies right away!!! Can't be trusted.... Even if they smile it is already a lie!!!!!
Never trust a creature that always Smiles ~ Dolphins - Lord Terry Pratchett

I actually meant the windows start up. It is very strange to receive a couple of mails and or receive a small windows update while you know for sure your card is set to offline. You will even check if this is the case.... Maybe it has something to do with the difference between restarting and powering down/on.... some log or something .... Strange thing is, the online status will only persist until the last app has started up. Usually (at least visible) the gpu monitor/oc driver program and then it is again offline.

Years ago, I noticed that the EXE file for Majesty Gold HD does the same thing you described AOW4 does. That game is also published by Paradox Interactive, but I don't know if there's any connection to that.

I usually use this little program called InternetOff which sits on your taskbar and lets you turn the internet on/off easily.

Yes, I got that.
The games don't run at startup.

The deactivated card is only so by software, there is no hardware switch for it, Windows just ignores it. I find it very strange, but it looks as if the deactivation happens only after the synchronization of your emails.
What you could try is to uninstall it's drivers (or just don't connect the cable in the first place)

Ok, thanks.... Might look into that one... Though i have planned a complete clean-up and reinstall for a long time now so i might give that one a go first.