Hello everyone and welcome to the first DLC for Age of Wonders 4! The first Draconic tale that we shall be spinning is that of Smaug the King Under the Mountain, who claimed an overwhelming victory in the most recent poll. If you'd like to hop straight in to the beginning of his story, jump ahead to 13:38. If you'd like to see the first glimpse of the Dragon Lord's raw combat prowess, take a peek at Smaug's hyper carry in the High Risk Battle at 38:23. If you'd like to meet a familiar frenemy, slide on to 1:14:21. Lastly if you'd like to see the most appropriate Destiny Trait of all time, go say hi to the chairman at 1:54:49. Thanks for watching this 2 hour special and I hope you look forward to Smaug's fiery tale!
You could call the new settlement Smaugs Hold or Smaugs Desolation. Smaug the kinda guy who if he has to come up with a name for a castle, he'd call it The Castle that belongs to Smaug.
Smaug: "Give me one reason why I shouldn't turn the lot of you into charcoal?" The dwarves of Erebor present the Tome of the Golden Realm Smaug: "...Tell me more"
Dang it dude! I have been dreaming up this build and you just did it exactly jajaja Oh well, it’ll still be fun. So great watching you play this build. Thank you so much for this!
I can't believe you don't have more subs your explanations are really good and very clear. I just need you standing behind me while I play saying: No don't do that, do this instead!
@@AleXusher92 The DLC adds the Dragon Lords as playable lords, but the other AI are factions that I created in character creation. The only AI I didn't create in this run was Blint, who is a premade lord. As far as I am aware, there is no way to share Lords/factions.
When our dear Smaug is put side by side with another dragon, he gives the impression to be on the skinnier side while others are bulkier. And let the hoard grow! Thanks for the storytelling. ^^
I wish LOTR started off the intro like you did- I'm dying XD. "Smoug, who lived 200 years!... Well like 170 or something like that... ANYWAYS..." "The LONELY- The lonely mountains..." Bahahaha
In my experience industrial units really start to shine with max rank shield (and support) units in your armies. The will give every adjacent unit a stack of bolstered defense (resistance for support) when entering defense mode. Bastions can also give an additional stack every other turn with their unique ability (this also puts them in defense mode with adds up to 2 stacks on legend). Just bring your armies into a close formation at the start of the battle and stack up those bolstered defense/resistance while letting the enemy approach. Once the enemy is in striking range or charged you use the industrial spell that converts those defensive stacks into 1 stack strengthened + fortune each on ALL units and your whole army should have +30-50% dmg and critchance.
Your hoard is already pretty impressive. Healing will definitely be a problem for a bit, especially since you arent picking up order or nature, but the skald will help a bit. Adding highlands makes the prospecting insane! Im playing the Ashen War realm right now with an industrious dragon and i only had like 4 tiny batches of mountains lol. Im very happy Blint has become a meme for this channel. Keep up the good work!
I always fear the interference of publishers/parent companies but I think AOW4's overwhelming success has insulated Triumph for at least a little bit of time. Whether Paradox will remain hands-off or whether Triumph can make the most of it will remain to be seen, but I'll be keeping my fingers crossed and enjoying my time along the way. (:
If they live under the montain, wouldn't it be more suitable to make the race underground adapted? PS: If you want to significantly upgrade your steelshaper, you could go for the tome of warding.
It does make more sense, but I didn't want to face the horrors of the underground for my first Dragon Lord playthrough. XD I'll take a look at Warding -- thanks!
@@Fableheim Do what fit you best, it's your game after all. PS: The devs will rework the underground for the watcher update, to make it more spacious for cities to expend. PSbis: The tome of warding provide an enchant that allow support unit to give 2 bolstered resistances each time they use an ability on an ally, even after consuming your bolstering stacks for heals and strenthened. It also provide a minor race transformation that give 2 resistances toward the three most common magical damage.
@@Fableheim the benefit of tome of warding is three-fold. 1) your bolstered defense ability now also bolsters resistance. Thus you are no longer as weak to magic. 2) The ability that consumes bolstered stacks and gives strengthened equal to the number of stacks now gets it's max potential much faster, 3) said abilty now removes all stacks, and adds more resistance afterwards.
@Fableheim I played a game with the pre-made Tome of Rock Dragon Lord and I spawned underground with the passage right under the toadkin throne city. Suffice to say they didn't survive but goddamn it was fun roleplaying as a pissed off dragon waking up like the Balrog and laying waste to the lands of pathetic mortals who built on his domain. XD
Think it would be fun todo the dragon from the New dungeons and dragons film the one they ran away from in the caverns or as I like to call him chunky dragon
It seems absolutely nutty! The only reason I'm not using it is because of roleplay reasons, but another Beast playthrough is definitely in the works. (:
You should've gone under the mountain (underground adaptation It's been improved already, iirc, at least in my first campaign, I actually have a glut of mana nodes.) Also steelshapers are great. They make the natural defender that is the bolstered industrialist strong. You have an additional retaliation with the anvil guard, can't recall on the bastion -which you got to way too fast. So the strategy is a line of defenders. AG, dtragon, AG (or spear for dragon). Bolster the AG's first. Taunt with one AG, which puts him in defense, that shieldwalls the guy in the middle, and do that again with the other AG. When they get hit, they'll max their bolstering. Use SS to strengthen the AG's on second round of contact, and your defense is a good offense with your dragon or spear defended in first round by two AGs, and likely only getting hit by one enemy. Hard to explain. Hope I did it. It's a boring but effective early stack. Plus SS has a base 12 magic attack which, I believe, is high for support. This works until you don't really need any of the early healers mid-game, because you've got beast tanks, supported by better offense in the rear, and way better support abilities.
It would have been more accurate, but I was hesitant to do another underground for my first Dragon Lord. I might revisit it next playthrough or I might wait until the Watcher Update, when they plan to do a proper Underground overhaul. Thanks for the Industrious break down! (:
scout prospecting looks incredibly strong, especially since it's early in the game. You got an extremely high amount of production and gold, which allows you to create the snowball effect earlier and grow your territory and armies faster and faster. (google translate)
It's official. The synergy between the Industry culture, the Artifact Hoarders society trait, and the Ancient Dragon Lord, is terrifyingly good. With all the hero items you've acquired, it's no wonder your economy is growing so well.
It's certainly one of the more tedious combos out there but it has paid off tremendously well. It's also worth noting that I picked the best possible environment for it (Land map with Mountainous/Highland terrain), so it could be a dead combo on other map generations.
I’m surprised you don’t want to use fire elementals in this play through. You mentioned more than once that your theme is “everything must burn” and what better way to start the fire than with some fire elementals? They are ranged units in AOW4 and can catch units on fire which synchs with Smaugs extra damage to units that are debuffed. Since you are still early in the game it’s a good time to start leveling them up so they evolve into the big boys. Seems thematic to me that Smaug would use them. I’d like to suggest you at least get first strike and killing momentum out of the fighting skills tree for Smaug. With Killing momentum you could do a deadly tail smash, get a kill, then breath some fire - all in one turn! Looking forward to the series and pulling for Blint to die first, hopefully permanently this time.
I wasn't going to use Elementals but now that you've mentioned it, I just had a great idea -- thanks! (: I'm definitely going in to Warfare with Smaug, since there's something I need to test.
The new patch seems to give now ressources and items from digging in the underground. So maybe you should rush into the depths of the mountains to get some hoarding. I'm also surprised you survived the battle at 39:00 I was sure that this will be a "learning experience" just like with Total war. ^^ I wish we could get the ability to add the personality trait of our factions... I hope that gets added someday.
Hmmm, I'll have to take a step under the mountain to check! I also want the ability to manually choose the AI personalities, but there's some sort of twisted joy I get seeing the AI brutally twist well-established characters.
I have found that the Steelshaper only functions in pairs of two. that way you can quickly give a stack of defense and then immediately consume it for healing. and since it's equal cooldown, your Steelshapers keep rotating who buffs and who heels. Obviously, that means your other 4 units in the army has to pack the punch that in óther armies you get from 5 units.
I made Smaug in AoW 4 too except that I picked human barbarians that I called Esgaroth Raiders (the enslaved survivors of Lake-town) but I actually think I prefer your take with the dwarves. Humm...
The Grey Mountains are north of Erebor, but it certainly could've worked. I do plan on back-researching the Tome of Winds; I just didn't feel that it fit very well at the time.
My guess for the mystery opponent who would have fit Chosen Destroyers is maybe Alduin? Really looking forward to seeing how this series goes! EDIT: Also, perhaps this can be Blint's chance to redeem himself. After being so thoroughly crushed, perhaps he has learned the consequences of crossing others and will make for a stalwart ally.
Alduin's a good guess -- World-eater and all that -- but you'll have to watch next episode to find out. (: I'm weighing the options of allying with Blint but I also highly suspect his betrayal, if I do go ahead with the Materium Victory. You know how he is. :|
The Skald is probably more Slaaneshi leaning, but I interpret the Tome of Revelry as an unending slaughter party, which Khorne would definitely attend. (:
On microing scouts. Put them on auto and check every round or two (I think it's two) if they can prospect. Prospecting is super strong early game, but really drops off fast in usefulneess vs. seeing the map.
@@AleXusher92 It's enough to just create them. When you are selecting/creating your realm, select advanced settings in realm setup, then select the second tab that says Factions, and then click on the portraits next to "Random Ruler" to manually select the Ruler. The first list are all premade options, the Custom tab is a list of all factions you have created, and there's a button at the top to create a new one from scratch to fill that slot.
I was 100% going to save scum if Smaug fell. In the end, the result was similar to the AI's auto-resolve, so I decided to take it as a hard learned lesson. XD
The AI definitely needs some work. It'll get quite a large update in the next patch, but they still have a long way to go. I'm thankful it's not as brutally and unrelentingly aggressive as AOW3 but I would like it to be a little more challenging.
