Updated as of Wolf Patch/Primal Fury! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-h6b12HmSKSg.html This one is another doozy. Please feel free to 2x speed this thing or just skip around to whatever traits you want to know more about, though I guess I should probably encourage you to watch the entire thing three times over for algorithm reasons.
Yeah, I've been intending to do a signature skill tier list for a while. It might end up being done entirely on tierlistmaker given that there isn't a section on signature skills in the encyclopedia in game for some reason, but a discussion on how to evaluate each skill is definitely something that we need to talk about. "Ooops all summons" hasn't really been viable for a *long* time and I still encounter people who think that way on reddit.
I think you're the only one making mp guides for age of wonders 4 on all of youtube. Cudos for that. Would love to see some good builds for mp. Also, I'd love to know, what buildings do you prioritze for cities? Are there any buildings you never build/not worth it?
I might end up doing some basic builds in the future, but my ultimate hope is to encourage people to learn enough about the game through my videos that they can experiment on their own. Some baseline builds, though, certainly could be helpful! As to buildings, the single most important piece of infrastructure imo is an academy- getting it down with boosts only requires two quarries, a Forester and a research post, so getting those tiles on each city ASAP is very important. Once you have an Academy down you can start making adjustments to your buildings and SPIs as your economy requires and your build allows.
I see two solutions to this dilemma: 1. Procrastinate less. 2. Procrastinate even more so you end up being so slow that you can add the newly released content to the list and make it look like you are fast. :P@@wepg
Adaptation traits are actually even stronger. Especially Arctic and Desert. Snow is top, sand is bottom, that is how maps are generated. That means you are starting ether on top or bottom on the map and that is an amazing tactical advantage. Less scouting, better defense. Having control on where you spawn on strategic map is huge.
It's useful, but the question of whether or not they are worth 1 trait point basically comes down to ability to take advantage of the starting spawns and any tome synergies, though controlling map location is definitely cute. Ultimately I think they are not worth it most of the time, but Arctic has the most play space due to how reliable the spawns are and how well it plays with Cryomancy, Pyromancy or Beasts.
I wanted to learn about MP and specifically about how to build auto resolve armies. I found nothing but I decided to watch this video after starting up my game for the first time in months and seeing that Forms Traits had changed. And wtf I found this video taught me a SHIT LOAD about MP and Auto resolve! What a gem. This video should have been 2 or 3 vids in a playlist with clear titles breaking up all these topics. Subscribed. Now to start 2 times speed binge the live streams to get the up to date stuff I guess.
You might find this Playlist helpful- ru-vid.com/group/PLTnobXuaoRUxyriozzrxRgLnHpaOlUFoA&si=bknGAu9JyEMPl0Gd Note: planning on updating the Tomes Tier Lists next week, but most of the information within is still *mostly* accurate. Mostly.
@@wepg looking forward to the update! Kind of want to come back from the break from AoW4 after playing it (and crushing :P) extensively in first month or two.
i was really surprised about a few things, but i loved your explanations. Stench e.g. i value a bit more, but is pretty reliant on the type of units (especially melee) that you use imo, but it REALLY helps early when u use summons like snow spirits. Overwhelm i like a lot more too, since it only requires you to pair up when you expect to deal damage. and the AI profits from it in auto resolve alot imo, allthough its micro can sometimes be unreliable (because technically to attack, you always have to move 2 units at once b4 attacking, which is pretty wonky). I think Amikdara (prob spelled wrong) used it in the feudal shock build in that Highest Hermits stream, right? Obviously none of these are S tier tho. Love the vid! Have a nice day
Yeah, Stench isn't strictly unplayable, it's just highly situational and definitely more expensive than it should be. Amikdara was bringing some real spice, as she was running overwhelm tactics *and* White Wolf Mounts, so even the things that are more narrow *can* be playable with the right pilot and the right luck, but I think if you pressed her for the best builds she probably wouldn't recommend what she was running 9 times out of 10.
I just discovered your AOW4 videos recently, and even if I am not into the MP scene, they do have a lot of useful information. That being said, it would be good if you made a video about the current best builds. We do get a good idea of what to pick with your previous videos but it would be good to hear from you and your group about what you think are good synergies between traits/civics/tomes etc ... I'll see you tonight !! (or in 20 minutes) :)
Regarding Hardy, the way the math works out, core defenses (Defense, Resistance) don't have true diminishing returns. Each point makes you take 10% less damage than if you had 1 fewer point. This means that each +1 Resistance is exactly as good as before: You'll take 10% less damage than if you didn't have it. So each point of Resistance is ~11% more HP, then 11% more HP than that, then 11% more HP than that, and it keeps scaling until the cap. At 20 Resistance you have 822% functional HP or 87.8% damage reduction. An intelligent player will attack your weakest defense if possible, so it's not actually as good as raw HP when that happens, but I wanted to clear up that misconception.
Yeah, there was definitely some hand waving when it came to Hardy in an effort to not turn it into a Pokemon discussion about special vs physical walls. That said, the progress on each point of damage reduction is not the same- once you start getting your defenses *very* high, Hit Points become more and more impactful. Someone could make up an excel spreadsheet on how to get the highest effective HP total, but ultimately there are easier tools for increasing defense and resistance in game through bolstering than there are tools for increasing max HP. Hardy isn't really better than Tough or Resistant without taking into account the point cost, but given how huge it is on your early game growth and how it never really stops being useful I've basically never been unhappy with it in any build
I'm planning on doing a live stream with the patch notes which should include a "first impressions" tier list, as well as serving as an opportunity to talk more about the Golem Patch.
Yeah, they can absolutely be useful when doing just auto combat only challenges, or just building a faction that doesn't need to do manual battles to make good progress in-game.
@@wepgWhat do you consider the best trait combos for an auto combat build? Culture and ruler included if you don't mind, helps me theory craft when those are kept in mind!
@@The_Babe I think the "best" is map dependent. Industrious, High and Barbarian all have very good autoresolve results once you know how to evaluate enemy armies on the map. I'm of the opinion that you should aim to get at least 1, sometimes even 2, research post SPIs that you can use, so Cryomancy or Alchemy (or potentially Necromancy in the new patch, apparently) should be on your radar. In terms of traits, also kinda depends. Tough/Resistant/Hardy is a really good combination, but I've had success with Hideous Stench on High specifically, and Industrious is so physically bulky they can usually afford to drop tough for strong. If you want to run Athletics or a Mount I'd typically recommend taking the speed + resistant, but I've enjoyed Hardy + Arctic Adaptation if you're going with Tome of Beasts for an early rush build- don't sleep on the power of evolutionary units even in autoresolve, you just have to be careful about which battles you bring units to. No reason to bring your Ice Spider with 9 exp until it evolves into a fight against 2 pyromancers and some chaff, as the risk/reward is just not balanced. Actual ruler type is debatable- Wizard Kings are the uncontested masters of manual thanks to how powerful Overchannel + Casting Points is, but in autoresolves only Wizard Kings are a lot less busted. You mostly just get the (meaningful) advantage of way more World Map Casting, which should hopefully set you up for stronger autoresolves. Dragon Rulers are very, very powerful at giving haste to your board, especially important in autoresolves where you don't have a bunch of skalds. Champions are mostly not good, but I still like them with High if you are taking Hermit Kingdom as your cities grow like *crazy* once you hit neutral alignment, allowing you to slingshot some tech big time.
Yeah, it *looks* like it should be good but in practice is pretty underwhelming. If Triumph reworks spiders to have better accuracy checks and subdued to give at least *some* exp for units you don't recruit I can see both of them becoming better, but at the moment I think they should mostly be avoided.
phasing enchantment makes your battlemages insanely good at teleporting to the frontline on the first turn to be slaughtered on auto resolve, would be really nice if the AI would save it to be used to escape zone of control only.
@@wepgit was, exactly what I wanted. Sharing knowledge with your 4x players is just basic ethics, btw. People who keep their secrets to themselves, just lose all coplayers like you said, making their own multiplayer experience worse.
@@blackleon1708 The delay was 100% not inspired by trying to keep information secret, I can promise you that. Without going into too much detail, just having some weird stuff going on irl that is pretty demotivating when it comes to content creation. It's useful to contextualize things, though, in that while *I* might not be particularly motivated to make content, the content can still be useful to people.
@@wepg oh, I didn't imply you keeping secrets, it's just reaction to your words close to the end of video, this was call to action I suppose, share this video and stuff. You said that it's more fun if we share knowledge, and I completely agree, even I say that not sharing is bad and not ethical. Im sure you have good reasons to use time in that way, those videos are a lot of work, and probably not profitable at all. I will wait, quality of your work stayed, it's good content.
What i like on arcane focus is that it is percentage damage. I dont like to have so much attack damage upgrades for my battlemages. In some cases battlemages dont attacck at all, expacialy since exisat the dragon bomb.
One of the things i like about hideous stench is; you only need one adjacent meele unit to inflict the debuff every unit in your Army can abuse. Even your Chaos Eaters and Watchers can profit from the racial trait this way.
Yeah, basically any source of elemental damage profits from Hideous Stench; in terms of what it accomplishes it is nice, the biggest issue is just that it costs 3 points which is a *huge* investment.
Of note on Dire Bear Mounts and Overwhelm: Even if you're _not_ using defence breaking units to attack with overwhelm, *the +40% damage should always more than make up for the bonus damage reduction from defense mode, even with the trait that boosts defence mode (Bulwark).* (at least, unless I grossly misunderstand how the damage calculations work, which I concede I might.) Of note on Hardy: I think it's a bit overvalued here, because we take a level 0 tier 1 skirmisher as our comparison point. I figure for most tier 3/4 units adaptable could have much the same effect unless you're regularily hitting max level on your units, since at those tiers an extra level gives as much HP or more as Hardy. I still assume it's a solid A tier from how strong an extra 5% hp can be, and how HP is effectively scaled by defences. Not that I have any pvp experience to verify whether the math checks out. Really cool to see a take on this from a perspective I otherwise would never interact with! Edit: I think I might've miswrote my take on overwhelm? hopefully I still got my point across correctly. the bolded section is my main point, that with overwhelm you should always more than make up for the defence mode benefits. the italicized "not" is edited in now and hopefully makes the sentence align better with what I mean.
The "best" comparison point for Hardy is really heroes, who have 90 HP so are getting close to 9% more HP for 1 trait point versus the damage reduction on going from 3 defense/resistance to potentially 5 defense/resistance but for 4 trait points. On a cost-benefit standpoint, Hardy is just awesome and can fit into a ton of different builds thanks to the low cost.
Thank you! A very detailed video. Tenacious is better than you make it sound, imo. And it better works with 2-models unit, not with crowds. With this trait 2-models unit can't go below 75% damage output. And now your top-tier pikemen are an absolute nightmare for your opponent's giant units. Swamp, honestly, sound like a very defensive thing. It's hard for you to navigate this territory, but it's even harder for your opponent. So, it might be a good option for some high empire.
I play a lot with mage. The problem is mainly the cost in time because auto-resolve is catastrophic. You can have a situation where autoresolve give you a defeat, to a situation where you save all yours unit in manual mode. It is... at this point ! Because AI rush to foes lol and don't play at all with bottleneck effect. Accuracy and arcane focus are the way. But, to do that, you must work around with meat shield. It extremly efficient, but sadly a lot of battle are manual. So I am not totally agree with your point on efficiency of Battle mage, they can be extremly effective but cost TIME. Also to note : dire bear work with mage. For the accuracy, yes there is the "always hit" with theyre special skill, but after that, they MUST be accurate with base attack. If not, you lose a lot of DPS. And you tell it : they must be at max range to avoid bad surprise. The key of usage is meat shield to block the way. Its very important to understand that. If not, knight do the job and you are dead. EDIT : And obviously magic dragon leader Dark 1/Astral 12 to enhance the crowd control early-mid.
Most of my guides are designed with autoresolve only/mostly in mind, as that's a core part of Multiplayer, but it is true that manual combats make a lot more strategies viable.
Tome of Alchemy is absurdly busted while also being balanced by the fact that it gives you basically nothing to spend world map casting points on, so it's *extremely* difficult to justify taking as your first tome. Great SPI, reasonable ranged unit for creeping, lots of powerful ways to get out of status effects and a siege project that *can* randomly solo free cities that are unprepared for it. There's a lot to love, but also no summon or even spammable strategic spell *period* means if you take Alchemy first you basically need a foolproof plan to be on your 2nd tome by like T10 or you are crippling yourself. Overall, I think Alchemy is basically an S- tome if that makes sense. Amazingly powerful but still mostly feels balanced. *Mostly*. I guess it just depends on how much knowledge you like in your game, but I like more generally.
Sure! Underground Adaptation is no longer a troll trait so taking it isn't offensive to the other players, but it still has some serious issues with generation for the underground *player*. It's sorta like Wonder Architects where it comes with a giant heaping scoop of RNG, but unfortunately most of the RNG is just downside risk, as the upside risk still isn't there and the lack of pastures to clear and easy access to bronze wonders really hurts. It's technically playable now and the proliferation of spirit weakness in underground fights means you *can* attempt to justify it if you are on High and/or Zeal. I think that it remains mostly not worth it as it is a 1 point trait that you have to do a lot of work to get it back to neutral value, but if you want it for RP reasons knock yourself out.
You can't take Eagles and Herbivore together in MP either, as Eagles is 4 and Herbivore is 2. The 4 points on Eagle Mounts precludes a lot of other options when doing faction creation. If you mean, "where are those traits on this list," please check the pinned comment!
Yup! This week has been kinda complicated as I was sick earlier, then it was my wife's birthday and today she's having a small surgery that kinda requires my attention and chauffeuring most of the day, but I'm planning on getting refreshed Tier Lists out soonish? Ultimately if I do them too early into a patch cycle they are less likely to be accurate, but too late and they are less likely to be useful.
Do you think that a ~10% damage buff would fix ranged (Less for mages ofc)? I think it could make them a more interesting glass cannon while still keeping much of the counterplay the same.
Hello! Ive seen most of ur videos but i still cant get the most common game plan for MP :D Prioritize reasearch speed and Imperium? Increase it by building a lot of cities?
Yup, basically. If you want to see it exactly in action, watch one of my streams- either the first episode of my Watcher Patch stream or the first episode of The Highest Hermits should be helpful. Both under Live Tab. Basically you want to scale your heroes and knowledge as much as possible, as they scale the fastest.
Racial units and Cultural units are two different categories- some tome units are racial units as well (like Warbreeds and Eagle Riders, as I highlighted in the video).
@@yeeterbohlen282 Tomes update should be out tomorrow, society and cultures maybe this weekend. It had been a while since I played around with Tome of the Dreadnought so I figured I owed it another shot.
will you update this ( or cover the new traits) when the update hits, since it swaps around quite a bit of stuff. not sure if it necessarily solves most problems
Yeah, I'm gonna Livestream the patch notes when they drop and do a "first-impressions" tier list that will also serve as a way to talk about all the changes from the patch that kinda got swept up as a part of that. I'm also going to try to do something a little different for the channel starting in March, check the community tab soonish!
I'm not sure I understand why Unicorn mounts are any good. Phase takes all your actions and moves you 6 tiles. But couldn't your units move 6 tiles anyway? Sure, maybe in some cases you can blink over obstacles and it makes it a littler easier to get flanking, but I don't see how that's worth 3 points.
In practice it makes combat positioning an absolute nightmare for your opponent. If you have to fight unicorn mounted warriors early on, you're really going to suffer, but even into the mid/late game unicorns allow tyrant knights to get flanking for a heavy charge strike really easily, meaning you can threaten to assassinate enemy leadership with just a few units. Try them out, they really put in work.
@@wepg But if they have to use all three action points to move 6 spaces, why not just move normally? And if you teleport behind someone and have just one action point left, doesn't that leave you essentially no charge room from behind?
@@SongsoftheEons So you still get the charge bonus utilizing phasing (one of the reasons phase beasts are still *very* powerful units in the current build of the game). The main advantage of phasing is simply in exploiting the opportunities afforded to you by the way battles typically play out- you can't clump your units too closely together or you afford your opponent opportunities to *really* punish you via AoE exploitation, which typically means your rulers and heroes and squishier units will have *somewhere* your scary phasing units can blink in and demolish them.
not a bad tier list although i would disagree on Unicorns, Nightmare mounts and atheltics being S tier. at most I would put them at A tier because they are expensive traits. While i would move tough and resistant to S tier as they are most reliable traits along with hardy that you can have and they have longest longevity. you always want racial units/heroes to be more tanky and those traits grant that. Wolf mounts are strongest PVP mounts but worst PVE mounts. Sadly the way vanilla is designed you dont really benefit much from movement traits as your heroes already move fast and you dont really use much units to clear if you want to play efficiently. That makes skills like mounts and atheltics less useful.
Very fair, have you been moving away from the play pattern of breaking off units to trigger fights? I've had very mixed experiences using heroes to trigger resource node battles primarily due to the autoresolve *loving* to hurl isolated units into the enemy army or run them off in weird and different directions. Have you found ways to manipulate the autoresolve AI to not suicide your heroes, or is it just not as much of an issue with resistant and tough online?
@@wepgbest result is gained when you have all heroes in single stack and use cheap summons to reach far away targets on the world map. Often times those summons will die after 1 or 2 fights but its worth it
Tier lists are fun and all but as someone jumping into the game. I have a basic understanding of it since I am a fan of AOW in general, but I heard you mention things that you take for granted that we are expected to know and I don't. Something about building a farm and canceling it to turn it into a mine and you get the farm benefit somehow anyway. yada yada. Why stability is 'nonsense', How exactly you focus on leveling a hero (the game mentions that making sure they get the killing blow doesn't help, and it doesn't really explain HOW to focus exp on hero). Why taking over a free city is better than converting it. Anyway, do you have somewhere to point me towards to try and learn the basics? Not the build good thing, kill bad thing, don't face tank with your archers basics, but stuff more like what you mention above? I tried looking at steam guides and so far I find stuff that kinda gives me red flags like 'gold is the most important resource *says nothing similar about imperium or knowledge*'.
I did summon greater animal on a desert more than10 times and I was only getting nightmares and red wyverns. Is the 50% chance to get a Phoenix correct?
Yeah, though the way Paradox and Triumph handles RNG is very strange. I don't know how to dig into their code to confirm the exact way they handle it, but it seems to be seed-related which you can't change by simply reloading a save, you need to change the game state meaningfully enough to adjust the seed.
@@sciemk8723 Ah, yes, that's certainly possible- to be honest I've never even bothered to play through the story realms except for a brief foray into Grexolis so I can't tell you how Tome of Vigor plays out there.
I wish the devs were more competent because there's a lot of missing QoL and balance. Ranged having to get nearly within melee range to properly contribute is incredibly stupid design, especially when their effective range is usually half the distance of what a typical creature can move and ranged units don't come with anything in their kit to disengage/avoid opportunity attacks. I've tried making archers work but they consistently get outperformed by literally everything. I usually only bring one just because they're cheap and autoresolve will hyper-focus the shit out of them, protecting units I actually care about from damage.
I think the devs are aiming their development at mostly casual players which isn't "wrong" as a lot of the player base for AoW4 is inherently pretty casual, but it does have some serious cascading issues as a result. Hopefully the devs start relying on more input from the MP community when it comes to the continued development of the game, but given that the MP community is always going to be small I can see issues there as well.
Archers have the massive advantage that you can focus fire. Which is pretty useful. I haven't really found that long range is that big of a problem. It's more when stuff is obscuring, which really depends on the map and your other units. With some good shield units, I've found that ranged units are pretty useful. If your archers ever get in melee in the first place, you've kinda already failed.
@@jaspermooren5883 the issue is that ranged are mostly only good in manual battles against the AI. In autoresolves, the AI has no idea how to use ranged units, running them basically into melee range to get their accuracy up, and in manual battles vs humans ranged units *can* be good but generally just get bullied by armies that specialize in melee stuff.
@@wepg yeah you did say this video was more focused on competitive multiplayer, then archers might be less useful. Auto resolving I just do in the over world, so I don't see what the AI actually does with my units. I never particularly noticed anything about it, but that might just be me. I like playing with archers, but I always make sure a minority of my army is archers, usually 4 melee 2 archers per army, indeed if you have more archers than that they tend to die, which honestly kinda makes sense.
I just really wish we'd get proper racial traits for the forms. An elf should always be an elf, a ratling should always be a ratling, etc. It'd be great if 2 1-point traits were locked in to each form, or something along those lines.
I've considered a bit of this myself, but ultimately I think the customizability is a strength of the game. That said, going with pre-constructed rulers or forms might be something we do in our MP groups moving forward, as I do think it could be a fun way for us to show off some of the less popular strategies.
Dead thread, but! I love the customization. Making strange characterizations of the different races is evocative for me. I made some dwarf barbarians with a dragon as their leader, and I picked traits to be crit-y and move through each other. The idea of these conquered dwarfs who adapted to be a conquered people who go and spread their ruin is really cool, and a huge departure from the normal dwarf schtick. That's dope!
I'm surprised elusive didn't make it into S tier. It heavily skews auto resolve battles in your favor since you will have +4 def on retaliation attacks. Especially on factions like reaver it allowed me to spam my t1 spearmen well into the lategame. And for one point it easily beats the rest imo since you'll always have retaliation attacks in auto resolve
In terms of application to 100% autoresolve, Elusive is meaningfully better, true. +4/+4 if you are taking on average 3 retaliation attacks before the end of a fight is meaningfully more effective HP than you'll get from any of the other picks. The issue is that, unlike a lot of the other picks, it does virtually nothing in a manual PvP battle. I could see an argument for C tier given that it really is quite nice in the farming phase of the game.
