One thing on the Tome of Terramancy as well is that I find it's really good on an underground race. Earth shatter can be used on the bedrock tunnels and will allow your cities to expand through them
I feel I should point out that the tooltip for reagent refinery seems to be bugged last time I checked. In the tome it says it gives 20 gold per MMaterial, while in the city it says it gives 10 food and 10 draft (if I remember correctly) per MMaterial.
22:05 I wonder if Goldtouched makes your racial units count as Elementals the same way Supergrowth makes your units count as Plants for the tier V abilities in Nature
Tome of Transmutation is remarkable, because it is the one Materium tome any self-respecting Astral affinity player should pick. Reason: Astral has 5 or 6 types of conduit special province improvement in their line, and if you put them all into a single domain, that one city will produce more mana than other player's entire developed imperium. Problem is, it takes forever to build them all. Now, if you are already well into pumping the Mana output of your city, and you get Transform Resources going to turn your Mana in 75% production PLUS 75% gold PLUS 75% food, suddenly your array of conduit in being gets a massive construction boost. Tome of Enchantment with Awakened Tools is a bit of a step into the right direction, being able to summon an extra Masonic Hall from a bit of mana is a considerable early speed boost, but sadly, Enchantment doesn't offer anything else, if your army composition relies almost exclusively on battlemage and support units, to bolster your CCP with Powerful Evokers. Transmutation, beyond Transmute Resources, also has a nice AoE bomb, a cool new battlemage with a Stun AoE and a racial transformation to pick up a bit of defense. The hero skill sounds cool, but as a dedicated Mana spewer, you probably don't want Heros with Expert Warfare skills, and the unit enchantment is the one useless spell in the tome, which is much easier to accept than Enchantment with only one entry fitting your style, and everything else just clogging up your research.
rock blast being physical make it a nice addition to any army that have an easy access to source of sundered defence early game (like the sundering blade enchantment from the tome of enchantment)
@@rudesthazard5769 Exactly my first thought. Nothing more annnoying than gnawing away your enemies front line with spell damage, just to watch their darn healers patch them all up in a single turn. Problem is, 30 physical damage is still a bit too low powered to reliably snipe anyone, and it really scales badly into mid to end game. You can only cast so many spells in the decisive first 4 or 5 turns of a battle, and wasting a spell for doing so little overall damage hurts.
It's good to differentiate between combat spells that damage units and those that damage *enemy* units. Tome of the Crucible combat spells damage *all* units, which makes them less useful than their massive raw damage would indicate. Meteor shower especially chooses a random enemy, and THEN drops *next to* that enemy, and then damages all units adjacent. So under the worst circumstance you could wind up with a meteor that damages 6 of your units and one enemy unit. If you're running an undead army with a vulnerability to fire, you probably don't want to risk this. If you're immune to fire damage or have a very high fire resistance, it's less of a risk.
Yeah, this tome is probably underpowered due to this. You even have to be careful with your archers cause they cannot properly aim at pinned frontliners anymore. Your idea of grinding up fire resistance is something to my liking though ... =)
The best part about the Earthshatter Engine is that it's a completely free (costs 0 gold and 0 mana) siege project that does 10 siege damage, which AFAIK is the highest damage besides the special project unlocked by the Wizard Tower ancient wonder that costs like 250 mana and does 15 damage. One important thing you didn't mention about Gilded: anything Gilded is also stunned. It doesn't just give bonus gold, it's also a stun. When I saw the cost of the 1-hex AoE gilding blast spell I was curious why I would want to pay like 100 mana to cast it, but that made it make sense for me.
I don't know if this is a bug or if you simply missed something about the Golem Mine. When I've had the improvement, the first battle within the Domain spawns an Iron Golem. It's not summoned in the battle, it doesn't have a turn timer or anything, it's not restricted to that Domain, it's a regular unit automatically summoned for free. It seems to be a one-time thing but maybe I wasn't paying enough attention.
It would be cool if golden touched give your unit elemental trait even if for this it has to be a major race transformation I wouldn't mind. Elemental trait has advantages on their own without talking about eternal earth combo. Immagine with industrial culture a bunch of hard to kill unit that come back to life passively without talking about three commonly seen damage over time immunity.
My current game is a dark culture reliant on weakening, nature tomes with poison / decay, and Doomherald. So now I'm really struggling when my opponent has mass-produced Iron Golems immune to everything
I’ve been doing iron golem based armies and once you enchant them with bolstering resistance the only real threat to them is magic/lighting damage since they’re immune to most status and I think even immune to morale effects?
With Heart of the Materium you can just wipe out entire stacks by spamming tectonic shatter. Only the toughest enemies will even be alive by the end of turn 2.
Please pay more attention. Around 7th minute you talk about artisan weapons, which give 30% crit, and you say "it makes your melee units stronger", and that is completely wrong. Archers benefit too.
Oh nice, thanks for adding this in! But I'm terribly sorry about not noticing some things - this game has a gigaton of information density and I'm sifting through it since 70 hours. Sometimes you just miss things and I feel patronized by the way you put down your criticism. I love additions, but believe me when I say I am paying attention. It's just a gigaton of information to process.
I think you really underestimated transmute resources, it gives you three times the amount of mana you would of gotten in other resources, turning that city way up in ability