Age of Wonders 4 Tier List - Cultures 

It is pretty weird you just hand-waved the High units as meh. The awakening itself gives them great stuff, that +4 damage on everyone just by casting one entry-level spell. And the awakening skill for archers? OOof! The most hilarious thing about High culture is that AI does not count awakening when moving towards you. So it stops right outside of your archers range. Then on your turn you awaken them - they get extra dmg, hit chance and +1 range - then wreck the enemy. Stacking range enchancements from tomes + awakening makes high culture turn into sniper culture that murders everything before it reaches you

You laughed at the barbarian scout “outpost builder”, but it’s so convenient not to need to bring your precious heroes from the other side of the map, or just plopping down a quick outpost whenever you eg find a magic resource. Honestly I think that’s actually very strong!

And on point of Dark a small correction - they *do not* have souls resource. This is unlocked by dark-aligned tomes, but not specific to the culture itself.

Really miss the unit lore that was found in prior AoW games and Planetfall. Very disappointing that it is isn't present.

One huge thing you overlooked is that the Industrious culture can prospect mountains, giving you 50~ Production, Gold, or an Item. with 2-3 scouts doing it, it stacks up quickly. But requires micro managment

High Culture leaning heavy into ranged damage and magic are what makes it a strong contender. You get 4 extra spirit damage through Awakening even if the unit doesn't have a dormant skill to also boost, so you can stack multiple magical damage types quickly and easily. I really like the High Culture for this.

So just in case people don't know, the mount option in the race creation are best used with the barbarian culture. I just got done playing a round based off the mongol hordes and exclusively used furies even to up against tier 4 and 5s. Furies riding Unicorns are great especially if you give them amplification arrows from the astral line. All of my armies moved incredibly quickly on the world map considering I was using exclusively mounted units and if a melee unit caught one Fury I could just phase out.

The look at units not differentiating between units with repeating attacks and ones with one big hit feels like it misses a really big and important difference.

loving the age of wonders content

The way mystic works, star blades stacks up to 3 times. Astral infinity lets you unlock tactical spells on turn 1. Your leader should be a Wizard king. So cast a tactical spell on turn 1, use overpower to cast two more tactical spells on turn 2. Now you can first strike the enemy with 3 stacks of star blades, and the battle is over before it starts. It's the most powerful culture in late game I think because of tactical spells.

One thing that is pretty key with the barbarians is that their shielded tier one warrior had a built in stun ability. This can be key in handling the heavier hitters in enemy armies and is useful in preventing retaliation to it or any shock troops you'll be sending in. Also it puts you in defense mode afterwards.

I think you placed Industrious a bit low. I know its all a matter of playstyle but I think you need to give them a deeper look. Their units are incredibly durable and fantastic templates for enchantments. Sundered blades, seeker arrows and siege magic are great on the materium side, but throw in some enchants from other affinities and their units get scary fast. Chaos enchants on industrious units are crazy. Not to mention getting to toss bolstered resistance on tough and hard hitting units like warbreed and tyrant knights Industrious cultures also have better economies. City gold income is boosted by production when no buildings are in construction. That allows you to get better return on investment for building production. Food can only grow your city to a point. extra draft gets converted into food. Research and mana are limited to what tomes you have, but gold is always useful. A larger budget lets you field more scouts to prospect, establish more heavily walled outposts to protect your holdings, a larger military and more heros. Yes Industrious culture can feel a bit slow but all it takes is one fight to swing in their favor and suddenly your either King of the hill or fighting an impossible uphill battle fighting against a force that can take your best to the jaw all day long.

I love how many youtubers are dropping these tier lists with minimal game knowledge and baiting out engagement via debate in the comments. Keeping it classy as usual.

Guys don't sleep on your unique scout mechanics! For example since Dark scouts get camouflage for rocky, swamp, and forest terrain they are great for razing enemy domains or just keep a watchful eye on your enemy's movements. The barbarian scout ability to create outposts allows rapid expansion especially with Adept settlers and the first nature affinity perk.

I'd have thought the mystic's t3 attacks "removing all buffs" would have been worth a mention since it's such a huge part of what makes them so special. Feels like a lot of the units in this got next to no coverage. Just "does a bit low damage" ignoring the fact that it applies status effects, or that the ability can stun every enemy adjacent - which is kind of a big deal. Like, Dark units are all about combo surrounding status effects, and how a big advantage of the bannerman for feudal is that his aoe support abilities combo well with their "stand together" ability, etc. Edit: Also, are you not going to tell us what "all seer's blessing" from the astral building does...? I feel like that ought to be a key componeny for deciding if it's good ot not 0.o

Bit rough on the Nightguard, it has decent stats and good offensive attack, with a very useful debuff to adjacent enemies *and* the Cull the weak damage bonus to enemies triggered by weakening applied by the very units (pursuer, Warlock) that it protects. Great synergy.

Mystic culture Arcanists are actually absurdly strong for T1 units. You can have Star Blades rolling before they even attack the first time and then their damage output is absolutely mental for how cheap and early they appear in the game - I've overpowered many stronger units just with their sheer efficacy. The main downside is the amount of Mana needed for the race, while trying to balance it with other factors - but if you happen to have some friendly empires near you, I normally have good luck just fighting a lot and selling some of the unwanted items for Mana to them. Granted, this won't work so easily in multiplayer...

So the prospecting ability as long as you have mountains I actually think pushes industrious into B. You can get snow ball really hard off the resources and you can get hero items. It doesn't say it but that is actually super strong early.

Dark culture has nothing to do with souls. Thats the shadow tomes. A feudal lord can pick up a shadow tome and make undeads while a dark lord can chose not to

Something I found out recently: If you hover your mouse over the attacks in-game it gives you a more detailed breakdown of what that attack does. For example, the T1 Dark ranged unit applies weakened at 90% efficiency (the highest) on every attack. This turns an otherwise 'meh' unit into something quite different. I am a casual Dark enjoyer and there's a lot more depth to the culture than I expected at first.

You didn't mention that units like Fury get mounts from racial traits. And in regards to Fury, the do 3x ranged damage, Sunderers fire just once, Sunderers don't outclass Fur(ies?) but they are good, yeah. For High, the measly tier 1 archers are actually some of the best in the game because of Awakened, and the tier 3 Awakener is an actual beast of unit that also gets the +1 range on their spells with Awakened

kinda shame mystic doesn't have an archer unit Also I always had a soft spot units that evolve into better units peasant->defender or coppergolem->irongolem Just wish the evolved units had some bonus as a holdout from evolution

You are heavily underastimate mystic units. Their tier 1 base battlemage can deal insane ammount of damage and unlike a lot of tier 1 scales really well and have place in your army. With various enchantments and racial upgrades I found out them overwhelming even tier 5 units with their high dmg output.

If the devs plan to add more cultures, I'm hoping for more combinations with Nature, Chaos, and Shadow. Having a source of Chaos that isn't tied to Nature would add some variety to build outcomes, and having a source of Shadow that doesn't automatically make you a little evil would be nice. At the same time... I really like how distinct the flavor of each of these cultures is, and I don't want to see stuff added that isn't of the same quality. Hard to say what could be added between the existing archetypes. Druidic (Astral & Nature), maybe? I figure one hard rule is opposing affinities shouldn't be paired (Order/Chaos, Astral/Materium, Nature/Shadow). But some other affinities feel like they'd be hard to mesh as well. Like Nature & Materium or Chaos & Materium. Shadow & Order also feels odd.

Barbarian I feel is the most deserving of S-Tier. The Rite of Alacrity in of itself is strong. But the fact that not only can their heroes, but also their scouts build outposts, is extremely strong with even just 1 point in materium to grab the 50% off outpost cost and build time, combined with the fact that their early game units are so so strong, makes Barbarians insanely good at clearing out stacks upon stacks of neutral maurader camps early into the game. Because their scouts also can build outposts, it means unlike other cultures, they can go around and claim a lot of the special-grade materials, archon blood, etc. before any other culture. And in the mid-late game, with forced march + the forced march buff from chaos if you lean into that affinity. You can use your outposts like a super-highway before ever unlocking teleporters. If you decide to outfit Barbs there's a few things to keep in mind: Super-Archers: You can go either Nature or Materium for T3 Zehpyr a/o Glade Archers. Either set are amazing at dishing out damage before your enemy can even get the chance to go for you. On top of that, going either nature or materium gives you access to T3 Defender Type Units which prevent your enemies from getting close. With the Rites of Alacrity and huge amounts of draft in your cities, you can churn out elite armies of archers each with two melee defenders like it's sunday brunch. Toil and Bubble: With +8 blight damage from the get go, working with Shadow/Order/Astral gives you access to sundered defences, lowering their resistance to magic damage types. So instead of going all out-physical, why not outfit your warriors with elemental damage types to diversify your damage and make sure that no matter what, you're always doing decent chunks of damage by hitting them where it hurts every time. Chaos, Pure Chaos: Lean into the rage and it'll mean there's no shortage of benefits to be had, just make sure to never stop attacking. Because the best defence is a great offense and using your outposts like super-highways to have your armies move the 2-3 turns worth of distance in one go is extremely powerful. Just make sure to summon some irregulars when things get dicey.

High is absolutely broken. The awakener is an absolutely OP unit. Exposing light is a brutal high damage 1 hex AOE that does 3 sundered def and resistance Order + nature focus with dips into mystic. Awakeners + daylight spears + lightbringer + shrine of smiting unit comp, get living vines at tier 1 then go hard on faith tomes. Keeper's mark gives all units faithful (stacks dmg for shrine of smiting) and also steadfast- this includes the living vines from nature tome. Use living vines to control battlefield and distract/immobilize enemies. They only have 10 HP but because keepers mark gives all your units steadfast and faithful it actually applies as they count as fighter units. This adds bonus to shrine of smiting as well as wrath of the faithful spell from T1 tome of faith which stacks 10 base + 5 dmg for every faithful unit on the field, so with 3 stacks of faithful units you get 18 * 5 + 10 = 100 dmg before resistances. Go celestial major transformation for extra stack of faithful reducing upkeep even more Using the awakeners you can use the exposing light spell to AOE strip any def + res buffs *and* stack sundered (only takes 2 awakeners to strip max buffs and inflict max sunder). Awakened spears provide solid frontline defense w/ +1 retaliation and charge block, and then the shrine of smiting and tac spells can absolutely wreck house on any other unit comp of any other affinity I've found 3 stacks of that comp with one hero can take down brutal AI multi-hero deathstacks with just auto resolve, it's ludicrous how busted it is

You didnt mention that the pursuer applies weakened, which is obviously important for the dark culture. The nightguard is absolutely fine statistically as a tier 2 polearm and with first strike and a useful debuff, its a decent unit to run up to enemy units and stick in guard mode. The biggest problem with Dark units is that to benefit from their culture specific mechanic, you need to apply weakened. There are plenty of combinations of tome units you might realistically want to use that simply dont provide this debuff. Compared to other cultures, the dark mechanic is the one which least reliably applies to non culture units. I would say your analysis for Dark Culture economically is way off. Dark absolutely sucks economically. Even with the overlord's tower (which has a significant cost and build time), you take a huge economic hit from not having the stability bonuses. With the lowest level of stability, you get -50% income, which the overlord's tower doesn't mitigate at all. Preventing provinces from breaking off is virtually a non issue for other cultures; with the tavern and bathhouse (which also provides an xp bonus for units), there is no way you will have minus 80 stability without enemy spells on your cities, which isnt a common problem. Only dark has this is a realistic problem, and halving your city's income will completely overwhelm any economic benefits for they get from building structures. Even if your stability isn't this low, the net difference between Dark and other cultures is 70 stability, which will likely translate into a 15% reduction in all resources at a minimum. Large cities have literally hundreds of income in every resource. If Dark does drop into -80 or worse, that transition alone is from -20% income to -50%, which is catastrophic.

Industrious culture got pretty scary with my pyromancer type wizard king combining materium and chaos affinities. A more defensive playstyle works best for them, let the enemies come to your tough battle line. Move it close enough for your crossbowmen and ranged heroes to fire at the enemy but have to come to your solid battle line of tough infantry. Fire enchantments on their weapons helped out too, and chaos affinity really helps to add the needed aggression to them, backed by the solid defences and economy of industrious culture. I quite appreciate having this more defensive option, I appreciate each of the six options though for being pretty different and kind of catering to different playstyles while focusing on different affinities and tomes can help you customise it to compensate for weaknesses or double up on their strengths.

Mystic (not Astral :) pairs really well with Mana Addicts (which you can get from the Pantheon unlocks: every turn you cast a spell on, your units gain lifesteal, healing while the Starblades make you stronger. And it's nice to be able to cast big summon spells constantly :)

You've really ignored skills in units, which is what makes them often unique. Saying that barbarian shieldman is pretty standard is not true as it has stun. Astral shieldman has an aoe stun and it's an amazing unit. What I mean, you can't just compare base stats.

I would say that high actually is very solid for a focus on ranged racial units. Awakened battle casters and archers significantly outclass other cultures.

Dark is strong mechanically but I don't like how it's so limited to "here those are the bad guys" culture. I wish it was more like and counterpart to high with and gameplay based into bargaining for power with dark entities in a end justifies the means way.

I would boost Industrious to B-Tier based on the fact, that Scout Prospecting actually has a chance to find items, even though it isn't mentioned in the description. Never stacked out heroes with items faster than with Industrious.

Don't forget the benefit of mystic to be able to summon disposable armies around the map. Tons of mana equals tons of units that can be put on the front lines.

This sounds like chatgpt wrote your script. Nothing useful

soul gathering is not only avaliable to the dark culture, it is tied to a tier 1 tome of shadow tome that every culture can chose from start. Also their buildings for negating negative stability not only comes very late(meaning you have to deal with shitty income n stuff for while before you can negate) but also them not having any stability structures means that getting positve stability is very hard and therefore your income will always be lower than other cultures. Cull the weak is also one of the weakest damage bonuses cause it can only be gained with single target ranged attacks or a 1 hex aoe spell and negated by enemies that are stregthened. Overall the Dark culture is by far the weaskest culture i think closely followed by industious. Industrious sucks cause all the try to do is completely countered by Barbarian, Feudal and Dark tier 3 units(and any other unit that has the charge ability) the only thing they got going for them is their affinity to get to gold golems faster and scout prospecting which is very strong. You got one thing right, barbarians are by far the strongest culture, even in large maps on brutal difficulty against multiple ai players you can still just spam sunderers and win. and yes berserkers are also the strongerst tier 3 and funny enough they dont even need them.

I don't think you did very good job with this video. Theres a lot of information you don't even understand cause your just reading menu's copy/pasted from the game. You didn't even mention what awakening buffs are, you missed obvious important features of each faction and how they work together. Do you even play this game or do you just read the menu's?

I wanted to like industrious because I like the idea of overwhelming my enemies with a powerful economy but copious amounts of cash does not get you an expansion victory nor a magic victory so the only realistic option is a military victory. Worse still, the devs fell for the classic myth that defense is equal in value to damage which makes industrious' military pretty much the worst in the game. So they suck in all the ways that matters. lackluster military, and easily beaten in the race for magic or expansion victory.

A year later, coming back to this, I have to say I disagree with like, the majority of these placements. Feudal is dogwater because its early units have trouble clearing resources early without dying - preserving the Pikemen until they evolve is cool, but tricky to do without (yawn) manually running every single minor resource combat. And the Bannermen! Why is their morale ability on a 4-turn CD? Speaking of Support units, Dark being placed so high when they have to run without one is certainly a choice. The regen they get from Cull is nowhere near as good as straight healing because you can't put it on a damaged tank before closing into a fight. You know who can take a million fights? Industrious. Yes, Defence is a boring specialty, but Not Dying is actually really strong, economically. Not to mention, Prospecting is almost broken-level good, as long as you can get a dozen or so procs out of it, which is reasonably simple to do. Having access to an entire income stream that nobody else does? Huge.

I looked around and I think near everyone is sleeping on dark cultures ranged units, purely because of the debuffs. Nothing any of the other cultures have anything like the T1 pursuer erasing 30% dmg with weakening in one turn without damage loss. or a T2 mage being able to erase 2 of every defense, every other turn without damage loss, at 6 range letting you to screw that one guy in particular, like their hero. This is before you start adding enchantments that do things like chain your arrows to hit a second target, essentially erasing 30% dmg across 2 units doubling the effect. The weakening starts at 90% chance for both archers and mages so it hits often even on T4 and 5. It's incredible cost to effect value and so effective as they are T1-2 and the debuffs deal in increasing or decreasing % values. You don't even need to be aggressive with dark culture, debuff defense from a distance, let the charges clash into your spears, debuff and damage their engaged line with ranged units and mop up with your spears. They are incredibly effective at dealing with higher tiered units, dark knight probably does better in pvp because of AOE being strong against T1 spam (I don't know, I don't pvp), but it's also a lot more expensive to field and would even benefit greatly from the debuff support itself.

29:16 - "Standard Scout" I gotta disagree man, I think you're sleeping on how useful outriders are and brushed over/ignored their best attribute. They're hidden in Forests, Mountains, Rocky and Swamp terrain and when coupled with Infiltrate your ability to stealthily keep tabs on what your adversary is doing is best in class.

The Problem with getting all that Draft or the extra Physical damage on trained units is that as Barbarian you will get lots of free units. And with Chaos books higher tier ones are mostly summoned and with elemental damage. A nature or materium barbarian can make it work since both offer lots of good Physical Damage units in higher Tier. Dark you forgot to mention warlocks and archers apply weakened. Kind of important for their cull the weak feature. Sorry but soul economy is not tied to Dark culture but to the tomes. So you can even play High Culture go into the Dark Tomes and get a Soul economy...

I think in team games, a Materium ally is pretty good because you can provide strong defense, are hard to take out, and can generate crap tons of income at the loss of mana with Transmute city enchant?

I ve just watched your 2 tier list videos for AoW4 and now i m blocking your channel, you got literally no idea about this game, none. I doubt if you ever played it

You realize crossbows only fire once right? Units with bows can attack up to 3x using 3 actions points its why their dmg is lower they can light up units rather quickly. Awakened high archers are pretty ridiculous for t1 units to rain down dmg from safety.

Shouldn't have made a tierlist out of this if you simply base the tierlist on your personal opinion. Makes me think of you really have thought about potential wombo combos... This tierlist is so bullshit. Clearly your own preferences.

Why did you say the High archer is weaker than the other archers, and specifically weaker than Feudal? It has the same base stats as the Feudal version, but awakened gets +4 damage and +1 range. It is arguably the strongest base archer in the game, even beating out the tier 2 archer from barbarian.

Fun think about the Barbarian Fury unit is even tho hey look weak they get mounts if you take that a racial ability. Having an armie Fury's on spiders is very fun and strong aswell.

I can tell this guy doesn't play the high culture. It is by far the best archer culture. First off, you're never not going to have all, or the majority of your units awakened. What does this mean? All your units do a flat +4 damage. This immediately puts your archers into tier 2 levels of damage. Next. Your archers become default 5 range. We might be thinking, well longer range means lower accuracy! You'd be right to think that, except High culture comes with coordinated strike. Which reduces evasion on every hit from your ranged units. Which mean that you immediately improve your accuracy when you attack at maximum range. Next, we have the Sun Priest. The Sun Priest is nothing special on its own. Except, when it is awakened, it has a 60% chance to distract. This means, you can fairly reliably get distracted off on tier 3 and below units. Distracted means every attack is a flank attack. If you build your tomes towards supporting your archers, you can pickup a lot more elemental damage. You can get your baseline archers up to 6 range. Accuracy isn't an issue at those ranges. All archer units are strong, they can be turned into absolute DPS monsters. High does it better, and easier than anyone else. The tier 3 unit? You literally never bring it in an army. Why would you ever bring that, when you can make your archers hit from 6 tiles out, crit almost every hit, and if they flank, they hit for 40-50 per attack, x 3 attacks. Their archer spam is so broken, you have to consider them S-tier if you leverage that.

Pure Evil + High is hilarious. Just finished a Military Victory run with that combo focused on zephyr archers with Overwhelm Tactics and boosting their range/damage/accuracy to the point I could regularly hit even when the prediction showed 5%. Two zephyr archers could one round buffed enemy gold golems before I was done lol

I think this tier list isn't great... synergies were ignored and what units are special to each faction was really overlooked. Dark is defiantly S+ tier they have free self synergies and healing along with just some of the strongest units in the game per tier combo them with tome of pandemonium and everything has 30% bonus dmg permanently basically. While they lack a support unit the units basically carry one in a backpack with the cull the weak buff and being able to flat out ignore the happiness mechanic is great. These units probably need a minor nerf to the debuffs they bring but it's hard to say much more. Barbarian is likely B+ not S. All they can do is rush. You have really good base units and probably the best support unit in the game for a culture bonus aoe regen + strengthen is crazy good. But outside of the warrior, shaman, Berserker, and Fury (If it's mounted) They only get draft. so they kind of have the worst eco of all the cultures. So it's forced into a hyper agro rush faction most of the time. And while horde + bar is crazy strong I would more call that a problem of tome of the horde needing a nerf. Spawnkin and houndmasters are presently too strong... (I wonder how long till spawnkin gets a nerf tbh it's just overtuned.) Feudal Solid A Well rounded and versatile can adapt to whatever the game needs depending on the map with the lord traits it's all around good. Also is up their for the strongest support unit in the game with aoe effects and moral boosts. The only bad part of this faction is that your polearm unit is garbage but it at least evos to a Shielded T2 if it stays alive. Buildings wise. It and high are tied for the best culture buildings for general purpose use. doubling your governors bonuses includes the perk they have so that can be insane. along with getting food + mana early is just nice. Mystic um probably a B- These guys are basically defined by what tomes you pick overall they are the middle ground but are highly reliant on tomes and mana addicts to really get anywhere near busted levels of strong. All the buildings give you mana and the main unique is buffs based on the magic stars you collect. Overall they are just a weaker version of dark imo. Support unit wise 2 heals for the price of one not bad solid middle ground support unit nothing fancy about it. High Solid A along side Feudal Units are good all arounders with a very strong battlemage that doubles as a support unit at T3 the unique buildings are good all around giving you a little bit of everything here and there. The Alignment / Awakening mechanics are really strong as the archers and mages do get some very good dps and accuracy along with making any frontline extra tanky. As for the support unit well the sun priest is a solid meh. Does it's job but it's equal to the soother in effectiveness. Industrial These guys are in a bad state so currently the dumpster of the list being a D they have some of the weakest units and structures in the game and not to mention a support unit which is worthless and I chuck for another arbalest or defender because the effect desperately needs a buff because of how sundering interactions work. The only good unit industrial has is the Bastion. outside of that the other cultures have a better version of X teir units for the most part only exception being the peasant levy which is intended to be bad (Evo units). Unless you run perfected artisans you have a struggle with gold because you need to replace your units so badly with anything else outside the bastion. The exploring of mountainous terrain is a bandage for the poor early game they suffer and helps a lot but it does require the map to generate mountainous terrain features which isn't always the case. Overall I think industrial needs some buffs and a rework to it's support unit the thing is dog. The arbalists should hit harder with the 3 pip shot removing the defense mode is nice and all but houndmasters basically do 25% less dmg on the normal shot they have and with the dog mark do the same if not more. And that's a relatively cheap T2 unit. (Again book of the horde being overtuned currently) all this culture can do is hold a line but it lacks the rearline dps to do anything about it.

Honestly it kind of makes sense that the "Evil" cultures are stronger, can't be much of an evil overlord if you got a weak faction

I was originally going to make a small list with brief opinions but this kind of snowballed into something of a larger thing lol Feudal: The most versatile culture in the game. The Bannermen is the strongest early game support unit, with the only competitor being the Soother but the Bannermen having way more utility. Knights are just stupidly strong. A very strong focus on Food yields and an inclination towards playing a nature game by summoning/producing and using animal along with powerful cavalry. The lack of Mana focus doesn't mean you won't be using spells, as Nature spells are some of the most powerful in the game. The Nature specialty provinces are also very focused on giving you a stable growth along with improving your mana yields. Their playstyle is pretty balanced and lets you essentially do whatever you want with safety as you'll rarely be in a situation you cannot solve one way or another. I'd place it very highly as it is, again, very versatile and essentially a beginner friendly choice for anyone. High: I think this is the most difficult Culture to play. It only really synergizes with itself and it's strongest unit comes way too late in the game. Even it's unique abilities aren't anything to brag about. They're not terrible per se but the only other affinities that synergize well with it are Astral and ironically, Chaos. I haven't tried everything with it, but I'd guess Materium also works well with it since it also focuses on enhancing units you already have. The units are the most lackluster thing here, as you'll be forced to rely on tome units instead along with your Awakener which comes often in late mid-game. Your buildings focus on giving you better stability and thus giving you the bonus yields from having high stability. By going further into Order you'll have access to diplomatically impacting spells and abilities, which is good if you want to play a more vassal-focused game. In general, this is focused a lot more on having tons of vassals, which you can acquire by conquering or negotiating with free cities. The issue is that more often than not vassal cities are not very useful outside of the ability to trade with them for their resources. They won't help you much during wars but they'll at least defend themselves. If you want to play a warlike High culture, you'll need to be more creative and focus on conquering enemy cities and then releasing them as vassals. I'd rank this a little bit lower than most due to it's lack of versatility and lackluster units. Barbarian: If you like to have massive armies, razing everything in your way and hording your way through the game, Barbarian is for you. Jokes apart this is legit one of the best cultures in the game(if not the best) just because it gives you easy access to the Chaos affinity(which focuses on killing everything in your way). It is also very versatile despite it's focus on war, and it's not uncommon to see Barbarians having gigantic cities getting tons of yields on all ends. It's support unit is amazing, but loses out to the Soother and Bannermen and the Berserker is kind of a letdown imo, with the Knight, Dark Knight and Awakener being the better Tier 3 culture units. It gets a bit overshadowed by the Warbreed, which if you're going Chaos you'll definitely have. Overall an amazing, very versatile culture that can do a little bit of anything, but always geared towards domination through war. Since you can basically conquer the entire map very easily with this culture, it's an easy S-Rank tbh. Industrious: I feel like people kind of fail to understand how useful Industrious can be. If Feudal lets you basically ignore your food yields because they'll always be high, then Industrious lets you totally ignore your production yields because they'll always be decently high. The biggest issue with this culture is that compared to all the others, it seriously should translate some of it's benefits to Draft. I feel like Industrious combines great with hording as well since you have that ridiculous early game production. The Arbalest has one of the best damages in the early game and can cancel retaliation from range, being the only unit that can do this without displacing. I agree that it is overall the weakest of the cultures, but it is only because it is focused a lot on the early game compared to the others, and falls behind very quickly. Bastions are incredibly strong and I dare say the strongest shield unit in the game with insane defense, and insane resistance if you get the right enhancements. I think they'll have to tweak this culture to be stronger in the late game and maybe giving it insane draft yields would be the way to go imo, as it makes sense that it's industrialization would provide it with the ability to create large tier I or II armies super quickly. Dark: Just like High, I feel like this is in a bit of a weird spot. I've seen Dark nations get roflstomped every time in my games and I think it has to do with how people believe the way to go is by focusing on Shadow affinity. It is also a class that has very little versatility with other things. It's focus seems to be on playing a "science" game where you are always two steps ahead of your foes, which really fits the theme. The ability to ignore Stability is nice, but only comes into play with the hyper-expensive Overlord's Tower. Before that, you just don't the debuffs from being below normal stability(which when compared with the benefits of having high stability doesn't pan out). Overall it feels lacking. It's starting units are piss-poor, with the archer and swordsman being extremely reliant on each other and you'll only get your ball rolling when you get other units to complement that. The saving grace is a very powerful Tier 2 Battle Mage unit that gets old very quickly when you start to get other Battle Mage units. I also found the Shadow tomes to be lacking, with only the Great Transformation tome being interesting due to Wightborn. I feel like despite giving Shadow Affinity from the get-go you might want to go for Chaos or Astral instead and focus on having powerful tactical spells that debuff and damage your enemies. Mystic: Oh boi, where do I begin with these? This is a culture for those who want to snowball the snowball. Mystics take the idea of using physical damage and throws it out the window. If you like casting a shitload of tactical spells, dealing a fuckton of damage just for casting those spells and summoning tons of units, Mystic is the place to go. The only sacrifice is the lack of good units by itself. The Soother is the best unit in their arsenal but everything else is kind of eh. They also lack versatility compared to the others since they're so hyper-focused casting spells, as you'll be forced to go with Astral to go get more casting points(Summoner's Tome is your best friend). One of the best cultures, competing with Feudal and Barbarian for it's ability to snowball the game incredibly heavily and just using tons of spells every time on every situation possible. The Mystic Abbey further helps you in getting you those early tomes, and the units themselves aren't anything too shabby, with the Arcanist dealing insane amounts of damage early in the game and even outdamaging the Warlock. Thus far they're my favorite culture and I always having fun mixing Astral with other stuff and just being OP by remaking my armies in a few turns.

Am very sad about my favourite civ, mystic, being so low, but I can't disagree with it. Mana is nice lategame, once you unlock many summons (Phase dog), but early game it just doesn't provide you with any bonuses to get going, at least astral affinity is quite alright, but it's not amazing either.

I would have thought dark to be bottum together with materium tbh

man im loving how deep this game is, its insane

I think feudal might be S because of how fast you can get your city to grow (prolific swarmer + lord of the crops.) You can do this by either getting your hero to lvl 2 really fast (usually 2 combats so like 2-3 turns) or just resetting your hero to get it instantly on turn 1. You can then do this to every new city so everything grows really fast (change governors around, although you will have to reset your main hero if you gave him lord of the crops initially since iirc he has to stay on your throne city.) Also their early game feels pretty good since the peasant pikeman is really cheap (especially on brutal difficulty where you really need a lot of units to clear the surroundings quickly.) I also think the spells you can get for them are really powerful.

I feel like you mostly only care about the damage numbers & not considering abilities.

Another great video Jumbo :) Enjoying so far your AOW4 content.

I think you’re underestimating just how Uber defensive industrious can be. Tier 1 units tanking tier 4+ np.

Me: Haven't played the game yet Also me: this is the 2nd tier list I've watched like I have any context for this

Dragon Lords from the new DLC have certainly pushed feudal up to S tier for me. The dragon skill Ancient Governor I and II give a combined 25 knowledge to your main city, which combined with lord of knowledge (another +15) and the Lord's Manor building (+100% governor bonus) turns into a whopping 80 knowledge income, and an amazing +40 stability and +35 fortification as well. It makes playing tall as perfectionist artisans or chosen destroyers crazy good on the knowledge side, which was previously a weakness of that kind of playstyle due to knowledge generally being tied to world tiles.

I would put no Culture in Tier S. And not see that high differences in power like: A - Feudal, High, Barbarian, Dark B - Industrious, Astral

Souls are not connected to dark culture.

Mystic's melee units are fantastic. Both have a 90% base chance on their multi attacks to apply Sundered Resistance, softening the target for your spells and battle mages (and Mystic gets a tier I battle mage). And Star Blades makes it so that the melee units get some benefit from sundering resistances in their attacks. Add some enchantments that trade physical damage for higher elemental damage and those melees units keep dishing more damage as they keep attacking and sundering resistances. Another thing about Mystic is that their unique altar structure gives +20 mana and research for every 5 astral echoes you collect around the map. It's common to have that structure giving 60 mana and research. Coupled with Astral Echoes themselves giving some early mana and research, this culture usually gets the most research out of the six, and by a considerable margin. Mystic's support unit also reduces the mana cost of combat spells by 20% merely from hanging around the battlefield. Just having one in your 18-stack army is enough to benefit from it. Industrial melee units have the Watchful trait, which gives them an extra retaliation attack per turn. That makes Industrial a painful culture to face in melee, as your melee attackers are met with almost as much damage in retaliation. And goddamn if they go for Supergrowth to get a third retaliation attack per turn. If you don't have a heavy charger shock unit in your army, you're better avoiding melee combat against them altogether.

Feudal, good early game, suffers once everyone get's AOE spells, and taking advantage of being feudal will get you wrecked.

Fun fact - idustrious is the best culture for special mounts. Your super tanky t3 unit is even more tanky and (finally) mobile.

22:56 if you play on map with lots of mountains then it's sss culture

I'm not sure about giving Barbarians credit for being the only source of Chaos, while not giving equal credit (at least verbally) to other cultures for the same. I'm not sure if that point actually has any merit at all since every culture gives exactly two points of affinity, and Barbs are actually one of the two that have theirs split. What if you don't want to mix Chaos and Nature? That's a wasted point then. It's a demerit if anything. EDIT: Also, you're kinda discounting the whole 3 attacks instead of a single attack thing. Some of the units you stated having a low damage profile, like Spellbreaker, actually do more damage than others as they attack three times. In fact, if they hit with all their attacks, the Spellbreaker does more damage than any other T3 base unit. And not just by a little. Yes, it has to punch through resistances three times, but it also gets all buffs (like, say star blades) applied three times as well. And that's where the diverse damage profile becomes handy. Also, units tend to have less resistance than defense.

I usually play a High culture, and I have WAY more moral than I need, in my cities and units the majority of the time. I don't even cast those spells or build buildings that give more moral, as my cities are in "Harmony" already.

Shocked by how highly you rated Barbarian. As you said here and before, Knowledge is crucial. Paying Knowledge is *costly,* and really hard to make up for: Special improvements are rare and mostly depend on Snow/Ice (which suck to settle), regular Research Posts require mana nodes/magic materials, and Wonders are totally unreliable as sources. By comparison, Draft is easy, and doubly so because you can replace some of it with Gold via Buyout. Getting two-for-one Draft is a weak trade. TL;DR: Even once a city is in full swing (one Research Post, Library/Academy/Arcane Institute), you're still about 20% behind everyone else (55 vs 45 is about an 18% difference.) For a majority of the game, you're more like 40% behind everyone else (10+15=25 vs 5+10 = 15). That's _huge._ The extra bonus Draft and strong units can help you conquer more cities, but you NEED to conquer those cities/city-states just to reach Knowledge parity with regular empires--who can spend those resources on growth and defense instead. Consider how highly you ranked Ancient Wise Ones in the society traits tier list; Barbarian is more of a penalty than Ancient Wise Ones is a bonus! Getting an extra 20 Draft per turn just does not make up for losing 10 Knowledge per turn. I think Mystic, High, and Feudal are roughly at the intended balance point. Mystic: finicky but potent if leveraged (befitting magic.) Feudal: basic all-arounder, hard to go wrong. High: good at doing things that aren't easy to do, lots of minor bonuses and synergies. Not surprised Dark is OP, anything that lets you ignore parts of the economy or replace them with a new economic system tends to be abusable. And Industrious, like Materium, is just really weak on paper--not that you _cannot_ win with them, but they're _harder_ to win with than other options. I'm expecting Empires and Ashes to fix this by adding a Materium transformation (turning your people into machines!) and more/better unit types.

Pretty bad Tier List if you ask me. You don't go into detail about the unit traits. You don't really go over the synergy, you just say its there. Gotta do better man. Check out stellaris tier list videos and do it like that. Also, in a tier list.... their should not be empty tiers.

Industrial Culture: a few things of note. 1) After the Industry DLC the Industrial Culture is great at crafting gear for Heroes. 2) The Hero skill where you're always defensive is AMAZING at keeping damage low in your heroes! It's especially nice with the Dragon, plus you can craft expensive items for the Horde.

I disagree with dark culture, High stability simply gives too many buffs, and Dark culture is missing out on +60 stability, but not only that, they actually add -10 stability. It is very easy to stay at stable for most of the game (+5% production, draft and food), and if you push it just a tiny smidge, orderly (+10%) Dark gets to negate the downsides of their terrible stability, but doesn't do so for free, and 10 mana + 10 knowledge just simply does not make up for this. Not to mention their early game is kind of weak as they have no support unit, and I'd put them in B tier personally. (Yes I am aware that you can fix their terrible early game by going mana addicts, a very powerful combo, but that does cost you 1 of your society slots, and thus isn't entierly free even if it is the single strongest one.)

Hahaha every one will flip on Industrious and Materium when multi player gets bigger. So easy to switch from mass bolstered units to damage and crit. Having the only culture unit with a TAUNT is very powerful for keeping units in place. I wouldn't rate Industrious any higher than B atm, but Materium is a sleeper. Players like to zerg cities (Civ multiplayer for instance) so all the defensive city spells and buildings that make people down rank the books will be so useful in MP.

Sorry, but my least favourite of your tier ranking videos... Evaluating units, or rather the combination of units for a culture and thus a recommended playstyle, is a tough job. Still, looking at damage ignoring if it's three repeatable attacks, one attack costing one action or three, or an AoE attack is so weird! And status effects or abilities are important too. There are lots of synergies to find, unit enchantments rule. Shield and Support buff, heavy charge shock allow others to attack without being killed by retaliation and non-shock melee troops can then deal multiple weak attacks. Ranged are even easier to get three attacks off, and easier to buff. Battle mages can have nice AoE attacks. You can supplement each culture with units and magic from tomes, to fill a gap or focus on their strengths. For instance Dark lacks a shield unit, but you can pick up a tier 3 Entwined Protector or Iron Golem with tier 2 tomes. Maybe it's kinda impossible to rank cultures, as there is so much you do with them! Instead, maybe a list of differences, strengths and weaknesses and how to deal with them? The buildings that swap out stuff I'd summarise briefly, that saves a lot of time. Another approach would be to make six videos around one primary magic type, with faction creation options and recommendations for secondary magic and possible splashes of others.

I don't understand how people rank industrious lower than high. I find awakening annoyingly micro, and without it, the units aren't that great. Industrious, on the other hand, are incredibly hard to kill without doing anything, basically, and using the steel shaper on any of the units, makes it hit like a truck. Bolstering just naturally stacks in the affinity tomes. Turn it into strengthen, and your unit is hitting way above it's tier. Not barb strong, but not as squishy or single-unit focused either. And your production can't be beat, providing all the buildings that provide the other resources we use. It's a great culture. I'd say better than High, with the disadvantage being, you really feel like you lose a lot if you move outside of materium affinity. (But golems...)

barbarian warrior has access to a 1 pip stun action with defense mode, as a tier 1 this makes it one of the best front line units. Has great synergy if doing a status res shred strat too, but in general it's just great.

With a dragon as your godir, prospecting becomes pretty handy for gameplay. On top of that, Steelfury chant with a dragon is BUSTED in how good it is.

Honestly you really missed the point on Industrious. For one, with all the cultures, you really dismissed the unique scout skills which for Industrious is very powerful. Assuming the map has a fair number of mountains, your scouts can bring in a ton of free gold and hero items. Production is very important since your cities will almost always be building something, and you really undersold the strengths of the Matirium skill tree and tomes. The skill tree gives additional siege projects that make them great at attacking cities and reduce upkeep for all your units allowing a larger army. The spell tomes have the most unit enchantments to buff up all your units, strong damage spells, strong elemental units and great race transformations. You can even give all your units the golden touch, turning enemy units into gold! Everyone raves about Chaos as the aggressive culture which is true but Industrious is also very good at war.

Do a new one, needs update.

Industrious gets Bastions. Bastions are insanely powerful. Huge defense and good attack when buffed using enchantments. Overwhelming tactics combined with artisan armaments and morale boosts from revelry tomes makes for a critical force to me reckoned with. Absolutely doomstackable.

Bri, fury ita the highest damage archer from base cultures. You just looked at the numbers like yeah jAvS BeTtErte...thats 3 shots of 12 vs 1 of 16 ma man, do you not know how archers work? Lol

It's really weird that you positioned Dark as S tier while entire community put Dark as worst culture together with shadow affinity. I think it's just your preference and subjective view but I assure I can steamroll any of your dark setup with 'mediocre' B tier Mystic you mention.

Bro, either we are not playing the same game or I’m doing something wrong. I made an industrious faction of runesmiths and my tier 1 units hit like trucks. I actually needed to exploit the AI not defending its throne city properly during war for a military victory to beat them as barbarians. It’s unbelievable how strong the industrial faction gets in the late game, that faction was beating pretty much everyone in economy, research and magic, also their armies was so elite and individually powerful that I was losing at least two higher tier units to each of their lower tier units.

will be honest. Hope they add one more culture ''Savages''. Something like barbarians but 2 chaos affinity. All units got almost no defense but high dmg for attacks that come from ambush.

I've run a few games with dark and it just feels so weak. fights I could easily handle on feudal, barb or mystic are uphill battles with Dark. And got help you if you try to go dark culture with necromancy. You are the weakest early game combo at that point.

Yeah I think that the Industrious tree needs a major buff. Given that the game is just out, at time of this writing, perhaps it should be no surprise that there are balance issues. Maybe some buffs to their units, better buildings, etc, and some unique cultural advantages could move it up. Maybe a slight buff to the Mystic tree as well.

One thing to take into account is how some factions seem way worse at auto combat, doing auto combat with industrious is so bad, they die like flies early on. I suppose the AI play to aggressive. Barbarians on the other hand seem to be MUCH better at auto combat.

You should cut the industrous helbardier some slack. Yes it doesnt have a high melee stat but it comes with one extra retaliation attack and rune of retaliation that thing is a defensive powerhouse. Group two of them with a Bastion or Tier 1 shield unit that just spams it defensive mode and they are very very hard to overcome

How is sunderer with 1 - 16 attack better than Fury with 3-12 attacks? Archers doesn’t need melee attack, and as melee unit it will just die instantly.

For industrious the diff between the two tier 2 spear man was first one is low def h8gh resist higher dmg. The 2nd one had high def med resist low dmg. So i wouldnt call it weak just lowwr dmg

23:52 Steelshaper is actually a ranged magic unit. You said it was a polearm unit

Bolstering is awesome and Steelshapers are fucking amazing offensively. I laugh at the idea that Industry could be the worst.

You under estimated the prospect ability by miles, prospect alone makes industrious s tier even if you take away all of the other benefits.

I’ve felt like knowledge isn’t that hard to come by as research doesn’t cost much. In every one of my games, I’ve reached tier 5 tomes long before the end of the game.

Spellbreaker weak? ... Mine do about 30 to 40 each shot if you got some buffs rolling. Arcane Addicts etc

I cannot grasp this game. Is it just overhead world map moving around? No city building or equipping gear?

imo not enough focus on the awakened battle caster in high culture being extremely strong and the fact that the barabrian swordsman has a stun in his kit!!

remember when materium was called the worst and weakest affinity line? Now its runaway the best