OP DARK ICE DRAGON BUILD Guide AGE OF WONDERS 4 Tutorial 

I like devastation over cycles. Construct Devestator Spheres is a really, really strong siege tech that will speed up your breaching speed dramatically. It does something like 8 fortification damage just on its own. Flameburst weapons along with a skald is going to make your dragons really terrifying to deal with. Materium aspect on your dragon lord will play into this as well. Something a lot of newer players may not realize is that Dragons can crit on their breath weapons and the damage you get out of critting with them is devastating. You just walk up in manual combat to a cluster of enemies and poof, half or more of the health of like 3 or more units is just gone. This wins fights. Critical hits on tail sweeps is almost equally devastating which makes even your young dragons pretty dangerous. Materium tomes have a lot of benefits that play really well into dragons as well. Lots of defensive unit enchantments to make your dragons a lot sturdier, being able to apply sunder defense on your attacks which is nasty and t4 artificers are nuts. That AoE stun they get will punish the AI for grouping units up so hard its funny and make otherwise tougher fights way, way easier. Also the imperium perks have some really strong offerings as well. This build really flys through tomes in a hurry too. I'm only on turn 26 and im generating 185 ancient knowledge per turn, and i'm sure more experienced players would be able to get significantly more than that.

I would love to see an updated look at dragon builds. I see that your older ones was when nature aura healed yourself. Also solid resource videos as I’m new to the game after the eldritch update but not new to the series.

Great build as always! I think I'll go for a mount trait as that would benefit both the knights and glade Runners. Wolves provide more weakening and dire bears are cool for chargers as they deal more damage to units on defense mode, its nice since chargers like to alpha strike!

excellent

Hello, I'm new subscriber, but really love your videos. By any change could you make an amazing build for an Archmage character? Like an "Elminster" from d&d. Good direct damage and power of magic instead of summon and enchant (even mod allowed if it helps!)

Appreciate your videos. Can you do a comparison of tier 5 units? I found it interesting you said dragons are the weakest. I'm new to AOW4.

One question: wouldn't it worth utilizing the Snow Spirit from Cryomancy, since it benefits from the Tome of Evolution as well?

OH MAN HE JUST KEEPS DELIVERING!!!

Check it. Dark cull the weak and life steal stack. You going back to Undead? Herbivore, and ritual cannibals. I.e Mass consumerism. Or choose mana addicts so dont have undead weakness and run the casters trait so you can keep up the spell casting. Even keep that evolution for the bonus hp. Waiting to send this message to see what you talk about in the video. I also went the route of Empowered by Magic and Cleansing Flame and Dragon Transformation for an incredibly resilient set up. So many things to do with the Dark Culture now and its amazing I love the Mystic Update!

a build without supports until T3 is WILD very cool!

Always fun. Thanks.

Is it possible to try a joke build sometime? Like Undead Plants, Undead Celestial Demons, Ethereal Constructs, or Celestial Plants? I've been messing with mods to try to find the absolute worst starting build possible for this game lol

Thank you! 🙏

Can you do any tips for finishing Ancaltlan Campaing map (2nd mission for new DLC campaign)? It's very hard, I have many problems with finishing it playing your high culture pyro/cleansers build. I appreciate any tips :D

Dark culture dragon lord is a weird combo and makes your economy funny. Workable, but funny. Dark cultures want heroes and they don't care whos. Your own heroes are going to provide the majority of the support your army is lacking. All you really need is a restore or rejuvenate and your army should be good. Enemy heroes fuel your economy. Dark culture is the only culture where all cities benefit from heroes in the prison and crypt, not just the capitol. Yet those prisons and crypts do you no good if they are empty. Thus the need for hero hunting. Dark cultures are less reliant on war for expansion as they are for money and heroes. You can afford to be more selectively aggressive than barbarian and reaver cultures who thrive off constant conquest. Dark culture cities suck at gold production and the buildings themselves can be rather expensive, so having a lot of them can really hurt your economy if its not well established. I find having fewer larger cities is more cost effective. You can toss your first whispering stone onto your capitol and use your imperium to boost its population. You cut down on gold spending by boosting your structures, grow your eco much faster and gobble up all that good land. Your nearby free city honestly should be used as a farm for heroes and gold. Dark culture has no real need for vassals as you can just use your whispering stones to steal intel and gold from others factions vassals. In case anyone was wondering the chosen uniters 30% bonus vassal income applies to the court of whispers effect to steal vassal tribute. It also stands to reason that tributaries and master of houses effects from the order empire developments would as well. Supreme vassals give 50% of their income as tribute. Chosen uniters boosts that to 80% and master of houses boosts your stolen tribute to a whopping 90%. Plus ten gold from tributaries and 15 research from all seeing and the cities vision info which could be priceless. So since conquest can get pricey and stealing others tribute is faster then war is best for crippling and maiming your opponents by capturing heroes, raiding and stealing land. Now for how a dragon lord makes dark culture weird. The dragon horde gives gold per level of artifact in the horde. One gold for a tier one and a whopping 9 for a tier 4 piece of gear. Heroes have gear and when you execute a prisoner or sell a corpse you should get the gear off of them. You can then take the low level gear and break it down in the item forge and convert it into high level gear for your own heroes and your horde. You basically get to turn research and mana income into military power and gold income. Nine gold a turn is nothing to scoff at. Its nearly double what an extra mine would give and doesn't cost stability. As long as you have low tier artifacts to melt down you can do it over and over again too. Im not privy to the exact math but converting tier one artifacts into higher tier ones should be cost effective. Last time I used the item forge it took maybe 4-5 tier 1 to make a tier 4 , but if anyone wants to crunch them numbers go for it.

Please stop with these builds! Every time I get the urge to start a new game to try it and I never get back to my backlog of halfway finished games!