best big kang build before they nurf them for their next dlc?

>>2008988 (OP)
i just finished an earth giant playthrough where i immediately got the giant aoe boulder throw that effects like 3 hexes. shit is so funny. gonna try a halfling rp slut build with tome of revelry morale shenanigans next

>>2008994
>gonna try a halfling rp slut build with tome of revelry

...she got a sister?

giants might be a little overtuned lol

whats the best way to play them?

Poorfag here, can someone help me out with getting this mod?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2970473841

>>2008988 (OP)
I’ve done a rock giantess industrial culture, frost with primal wooly mammoth, and I’m doing a fire pure chaos oathsworn strife build. I think the most fun so far is the fire giant as you just raze cities non stop on a giant map. I’d say primal culture just kind of sucks now but frost is fun. Rock is just good and with industrial you’ve got a hard hitter with plenty of tanky units and decent physical range with clay arbalists. Gonna do a storm giant next and go astral and see how that goes after I finish off my remaining two opponents in the fire playthrough

>>2009822
recommend a frost giant build

>>2009837
NTA but Frost Giants get +mana for every snow province they own. The best way to leverage having lots of mana is probably summon spam, so some kind of Mystic Summoning build works well.

Something I've been messing around with is an animal based summon build, where early on you spam Summon Wild Animal. When used on snow/ice terrain (which of course Frost Giants want anyway) it has a chance to spawn an Ice Spider, which can evolve into an Ice Spider Matriarch, which is quite powerful and can be buffed in many ways. I don't think it's very optimal since the chance of actually getting an Ice Spider from each cast is fairly low (not sure what the actual odds are but it feels like 25%-ish), but it's pretty fun to have armies of frozen spiders.

The new Feudal is actually pretty cool. Just finished a game as Feudal Aristocrats and not only is it stronger than old Feudal, but creating your own noble houses is a lot of fun. I really hope they can continue working on the game for long enough to update the remaining launch cultures as well. Not all of them strictly need it, since Barbarian, Industrious and High are all decent to good already, but it would be great to have more subculture options for them and you can tell that the devs are more willing to be creative with their mechanics designs than they were at launch.

Oh my fucking god! Industrious Materiauim is ass cancer hard now if your first war is Oathsworn or Mystic. Just get fucking iced by post-patch megabuffed battle mages

>>2009854
I’d say instead of primal like above I’d go dark and get the new materium tomes and severance and skip the undead stuff. So get the tier 1 and 3 ice tomes, get geomancy for a major transformation, get tome of severance, get tome of the creator and anything else depends I liked dungeon tome but I was underground start on that one.

>>2009966
>>2009854
what about society traits?

>>2009003

>>2009990
hobbit pussy is too strong

>>2009907
Bro your spell tempered shields and superior archer units?

>>2010043
>spell tempered shields
Not good enough
>superior archer units?
Skipped Winds tome for Summoning tome to boost astral affinity.

Anyways I won the game by letting them go and having my five empire ordertide allies handle them while I went south and conquered the highest economic empire with a very shitty military score. And then when one of my allies went for expansionist victory with allied victory off, I went and conquered him too so I could score expansionist victory myself.

>>2009972
I always get ritual cannibalism with almost every ruler for the free heal and to stop units from reviving and I think it gives you food for the nearest settlement. My second sort of depends like I usually play with the wonderous past realm trait so I pick one that gives you bonuses for clearing it. Think the one that gives you extra bidning essence is pretty good for GKs if you plan to forge weapons. A year plus ago I used to always get fabled hunters until that got changed

>>2008988 (OP)
What's up with Feywater Pond? I thought that the removal of the vision penalty from Fey Touched would remove the inability to see within your own misty territory

bros i am BAD at this game

>>2010307
What are you struggling with?

Do you play custom realms?

I wish Giants had more fun weapon variety. Id love to have a giant samurai sword and go a harmony ghostfire giant with one.

>>2010322
I always play them cause im too picky to pick a premade one.

>>2010320
i just never know what i'm supposed to be doing on the map. i feel like i'm always making the wrong choices wrt what battles to take and how to build my cities

>>2010338
Early on Try to level up your ruler and heroes early by taking fights against npc marauder armies on the map they’re usually sitting on pick ups or resource nodes. Also make sure to take out any infestations (the red marauder armies) because their camps spawn roving armies that will attack you and eliminating them gives you items and gold plus other stuff depending on traits and such. Look to clear and occupy wonders, if they’re too far from your city build an outpost and a work camp to claim it. You can see how tough they are by clicking on it, usually you just want to do bronze early and you can check the power level by clicking to start the fight but you can cancel and comeback later if you need to level up to clear it. You need food to get more tiles for your cities and the non special province improvements can be built faster depending if you have say two foresters which will speed up your granary or whatever just hover over them and it’ll tell you. Focus on growing your first city and being able to afford hero units when they become available. There’s usually a free city or more near you and one is your exact race so give them a whispering stone and make sure to vassalize them before another ruler does unless you’re reaver or took the chosen destroyer trait etc. then you want to take it by force quickly. Theres honestly a lot of stuff to do and many ways to do it and you’ll find the groove and play style that suits you most. If it’s story realms those can be hard or just abnormal in how you beat them compared to just doing a custom or regular premade realm. Honestly theres a lot but just keep playing if it’s too hard just tone down the difficulty and remember there’s multiple ways to win some builds and play styles are slow early then you pop off while others you go aggro early it’s mostly up to what you choose and your play style. Also you can enable allied victory so you can just try to help an allied ai ruler win

>>2010326
>I wish Giants had more fun weapon variety.
The DLC ruler types all get shafted on weapon variety. Dragons literally only had one weapon available to them until they patched in two variants. They all still look the same, but that's at least understandable since they're not really weapons, just claws. Eldritch Sovereigns also only have one weapon, but at least it has 4 different skins to choose from. Comparatively Giant Kings have it good, having three weapon types with two skins each.

Meanwhile base game ruler types have like a dozen different weapon types to choose from, most of them with plenty of different skins as well. Of course this is at least partially because base game rulers are essentially just racial units (in terms of model/animation), so every time a new racial unit gets added it's trivial to give Champions and Wizard Kings a version of that unit's weapon. But I can't imagine it would be that hard to give Eldritch Sovereigns access to wizard orbs as skins for their weapon, or to take some 1H and 2H regular weapons and scale them up to Giant King size.

>>2008988 (OP)
Why are nymphs hot babes in AO3, and every other games in the franchise, but weird plant creatures in 4?

>>2010442
All of the fey units in AoW4 are plant-themed, both in abilities and in visual design. Not sure why they went that route but at least it's consistent.

>>2010442
They're weird plant hot babes now

>>2010442
Same reason all western studios became prudes about female bodies: woke culture and trannies in the development team

ice giants might be the strongest giant subclass
>boulders with a really high chance of freeze
>summon ice glaive is maybe the strongest summon weapon
>get to be isolated at the start which really lets you ramp up big

wait, why did they make forging tedious? do people like it? do people actually bother to smith low level gear? how can you consistently get enough of the special essence stuff you need to forge usable items? even as a warmongering race of people without leg or mount slots I struggle to fully outfit one hero before the game ends

>>2011041
Forging low tier items that don't need binding essence is instant now.

>>2011041
It has its positives and negatives. You can much easier kit out rulers in items you want of lower tier and do it quickly, but it does make it harder to make the higher tier stuff. You can see it as a positive cause it makes the cultures and tomes that give you more of the essence stronger and also makes those items you get more impactful. It does suck that the 2nd essence is really rare and if you're unlucky in drops and such can make it hard to craft anything. In general i think its a positive but it could use a little balance.

>>2010345
NTA but how do you handle economy in the mid and late game, particularly city development? I'm usually pulling around ~300 gold a turn in the late game but my balance is usually at 0 since I'm always building as much as possible in all of my cities and that usually can go through the ~300 per turn easily, feels like I'm never storing enough money and I find myself in a lot of situations where I just sell a lot of heroes if I need an emergency fund. I don't know if I should be spending less or somehow pulling in more income

>3 Turns left til expansion victory
>Allied with 3 other rulers, so just need to coast
>Suddenly peer over the other side of the map and see that one of the 3 actually got off their ass and killed off the last non-allied ruler
Shame I had to break the alliance this way but I beacons is the last victory type I hadn't achieved

>>2010345
thanks for this. i finally won a game lol

>>2011528
the last turn of magic victory was a pain in the ass because these dudes i was at war with kept sneaking into my wonder territory in various ways. ashamedly i save scummed to beat this

>>2011497
So you can make a ton of gold in different ways depending on traits and what affinity points you go with. For instance if you like aggro military victories and don’t mind being evil getting the chaos like up to where you can raze cities in one turn, get population from razing to your cities, getting a permanent gold buff per city burned, and getting gold per active war can get you super rich without trying too hard easy game if you burn down a lot of free cities. Reaver and Oathsworn strife culture are good for that. Alternatively materium can net you a lot of gold depending on how you expand. If your cities are nearby get the materium affinity point that gives you a bonus for percentage of each cities wealth that touches your throne city. Theres also another one that gives you a flat +5 or something gold per special improvement tile in your empire (tome specific stuff like demon gates or golem mines etc.) Materium also has a line point that gives you a flat 2k gold and the final one gives you a 10% reduction in upkeep for each unit tier. Also building mines, gold buildings like mints and merchants guild or if you’ve got a lot of ocean tiles the seafarers guild can get you a lot of money. Theres also governor traits like a naval one that gives you a few gold per ocean province if you level up the renown. Managing your armies by deleting extra units can also help to not go into a deficit. There’s also selling items to your allies or selling crypt heroes or prisoners back to factions after you’re not at war with them or they took over that race to make money through the diplomacy screen. Also certain wonders can give you a ton of gold so be sure to grab them if you know you are or will struggle with upkeep eventually. But also look at society traits that give you extra gold (they keep changing them so I can’t remember) for clearing wonders and infestations and having armies always fighting especially at sea for gold pick ups

>>2011530
Yeah a good point of thumb to defend your magic victor wonder or your beacons of unity is to build teleporters (or demon or chronically gates) nearby so you can move your armies around especially keeping the recall ruler and recall army via your throne city wizard tower upgrades so you can tp then tp again so you can reinforce. Leaving an army or two to defend each one is ideal but just being able to get that third army to reinforce is important. This can be costly so just having one army at each one and two you can tp around on demand can help. Astral can help with this through the skill point in that affinity line that heals you fully and gives you movement points or if you have a negative strong ruler the astral step spell can help too. Alternatively you can take the chaos point that reduces the hp and Manacost of forced match is helpful to run back and if you have the second season pass you can pick relentless marchers society trait to take zero damage the whole game. Remember roads and the upgraded movement/disembark from roads trait are almost 100% essential for any build to move fast. Barbaian culture (unless they changed it) has a unique culture trait the alacrity one that allows you to restore movement from cities (think they took it away from outposts but maybe not) to give you more mobility as well. Plus astral, chaos, and the general skill lines have single use armies you can summon once that can help out. Theres also spells in nature, shadow, chaos, and I think astral in certain tomes that can summon a usually tier 1 unit army to help you too if you just need more units to defend

>>2008988 (OP)
>add 1 good feature
>remove 3 good ones
soulless garbage these series has become.

>>2011855
Which 3 good features were removed?

How's the weeb culture from the ways of war DLC?

i'm gonna try a dark necromancy/chaos build next with an eldritch lord i think

hey guys, what's a transformation fetish?

>>2012070
nm what's a transformation fetish w/ u?

>>2011855
Examples? We use words here anon

I wish there were more pure frost tomes out there. Kinda stinks that you're only option is frost/poison necro or ghostfire.

>>2012114
Yeah I’d like another frost tome as well

>>2012114
shadow nature tome revolving around ice age creatures and effects would be nice.

>>2012214
>>2012114
I hate Shadow being so Necromancy heavy. I like the eldrich horrors of the void thing, but I hate skeletons, they feel so weak (in general, not in this game specifically). But nearly every book is meant to buff/increase necromancer with interesting things (ice/void) just kind of thrown in. It sucks because shadow and astral are the best trees.

>>2012230
i have to assume a dark/shadow rework is next in line, they are definitely the most underbaked

primal culture used to be able to reduce mountain ranges to swamps - they epitomized the terraforming theme in a cool way and had to go and seek out nodes etc to get the most out of it. Terraforming skips mountains now, and a society trait does the fantasy infinitely better (umbral disciples with altars of marching gloom), and now giants also put the primal culture to shame. Their combat summon was admittedly OP to start, but that got killed too - there's no reason to play them

>>2012253
Having in-culture access to terraforming is still nothing to scoff at, even if it doesn't effect mountains. In it way that's also beneficial since you can keep your natural defensive barriers up.

>>2012253
Yeah the summons being nerfed in combat and the support units ability to spam them being obliterated ruined the culture as their other units are just meh or bad despite the mobility they have. I like the idea and options they just went way too hard on the summon nerf like it’s overkill to make them weaker and harder to spam should have made them stronger if they wanted to kill the spam

>>2012230
I like the idea of Dark Culture it just needs a rework with subcultures and another ice tome to really shine. Honestly wish Ice/shadow was separate from necromancy in terms of tomes and affinity point skills that way both could be better. I’m guessing archon prophecy is going to be new order tomes and high culture rework and I’m hoping they add a couple order/nature hybrid tomes but Dark and ice needs to be next. I just hope we get a season 3 so every base game future and reaver culture gets sub cultures as it adds more depth, versatility, variety, and fun every time they add them

Pirate sub culture for reavers when?

>>2012304
They’re already pirates
Privateer subculture when?

>>2012303
>I’m guessing archon prophecy is going to be new order tomes and high culture rework and I’m hoping they add a couple order/nature hybrid tomes but Dark and ice needs to be next.
The tentacle DLC added that tome that let us turn into the Scarlet Crusade as an alternate for non-hentai options, so it's not pure copium to pray that I think

>>2012304
They look pretty piratey already. At least I can make the leaders/heroes outright pirates. I DO want subcultures for them, one could be more diplomatic and more chill mebbe and try to be the better parts of the old Commonwealth, but it may be awhile. Non DLC cultures will likely get tune ups first

what subcultures would you wanna see for barbs?

>>2012344
mongols (chaos+order)

>>2012344
I think a shadow one would be cool so it’s like ice so Vikings maybe sea raiders as well

>>2012032
It's okay, like upper mid tier. Pretty fun to play with decent units at every stage of the game, but their cultural gimmick isn't strong enough to really make them stand out when compared to stuff like the new Mystic cultures. In terms of subculture I would say Harmony > Righteousness > Strife. Harmony's bonus is the most overall useful of the bunch and their mounted archer is really good.

>>2012295
Their T3 is still really good, but yeah right now it's the only above-average unit they have. And with summon spam nerfed, they really struggle a lot more in the early game than they used to. Similar to other cultures with a weak early game (like Reavers) they really benefit from having a powerful combat ruler like a giant or dragon to give them a boost.

>>2012350
>>2012371
Splitting them up into factions inspired by stereotypical "barbaric" cultures would be neat. You could have something like vikings with snow/water bonuses and a berserker as their T3, Mongols with grassland bonuses and a mounted archer as their T3, and Germanics with forest bonuses and a shield guy as their T3. Though maybe making them terrain focused treads too much on Primal territory.

>>2009617
It'll probably surprise nobody, but their damage is getting tuned down in the upcoming patch so they don't dumpster entire armies with their AoEs and all but invalidate dragons. I just hope they don't overcorrect.

>>2012393
the conceptual overlap between primals and barbarians is already significant

>>2012403
Not really. Conceptually, barbarians are more like tribal central and northern European cultures. Primal takes more inspiration from African and South American tribes. They're both based on "primitive" tribes but pulling from entirely different inspirations. Of course both are viewed through both a fantasy lens and a flanderized pop-culture lens so it's hard to draw direct comparisons to specific cultures. Kinda like how Oathsworn is clearly Asian/Japanese inspired but it's not a direct transcript of actual Japanese historynor culture.

>Astral materium culture
>gets a t3 skirmisher with bayonets and rifles
PLEASE

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/discussions/2/596271645583228276/
patch notes

>>2012593
>rune of creation infusion nerfed from 1 point to 3 points
kicked in the teeth

>>2012593
>When a unit starts its turn in the zone of control of an enemy, it can no longer flank that enemy (replaces an old rule where a unit could not flank an enemy if it had moved through that enemy’s zone of control)

How does this interact with the phase ability? Are my unicorn mounts just cucked?

I don't like the Blessed Dragon mounts.

>>2012753
They do look a bit goofy. To be honest the only flying mount I like is the Pegasus. Eagles are neat in theory but they feel like they're too big for the space they occupy on the battle map. It's fine when it's just one hero on a bird but when you have units with multiple models it gets a bit messy.

>>2012303
Yeah Ice being tied in with shadow doesn't really fit imo. I mean, I get it, shadow is dark, no light, but it should be split with nature. If I had my way, If have 2 more V tomes, tome of eternal winter for ice and tome of endless summer for order/nature. But then Shadow is solely Necromancy which I hate.
>Season 3
I want to believe but honestly we're lucky to have gotten a season 2
>>2012342
>The tentacle DLC added that tome that let us turn into the Scarlet Crusade as an alternate for non-hentai options, so it's not pure copium to pray that I think
Very possible. If they're allowing other races into the Archon culture it's possible we could have a "fallen Archon" subtype that gives us order/shadow tomes. Give us more tomes in general, the rush I get from unlocking a tome is better than a gacha roll while having sex.

>>2012411
To me that's a distinction without much of a difference. I just look at them and see "primitive culture" the T3s look basically identical. They should just roll them together and have barbarian be a subculture (focused on swarming and aggression) animist (focused on collecting animal spirits to summon), and steppe (Mongol and Cossack focused on speed and horses)
It's like Oathsworn being primarily Japanese then adding a Chinese culture, yeah it's different but not so different visually that you need a new culture.
Also they need more Chinese stuff for Oathsworn. I was watching Three kingdoms the other night and I want a wizard emperor with that bead crown they have. Or Zhuge liangs fan and hat.

>>2012997
>I want to believe but honestly we're lucky to have gotten a season 2
It's all up to how much content Paradox wants to fund. The devs want to do S3 and have indicated that they've already got some ideas for S3 content, but Paradox pays the bills so if they say it's time to move on they probably won't have much choice.

>>2013005
>I just look at them and see "primitive culture"
That's a You problem.

>the T3s look basically identical
lol

>>2013011
>That's a You problem
That's a design problem. Primitive culture is literally just "barbarians, BUT IN MASKS!" With the Warden and beserker looking basically identical. At least Oathsworn gave their guys different weapons.
The ritualist looks different from the Shaman kinda, but that's all. Blowdart guy is a worse skirmisher.

>>2013021
>Primitive culture is literally just "barbarians, BUT IN MASKS!"
Sure, and Dark is just "Feudal BUT WITH SPIKES," right?

>With the Warden and beserker looking basically identical. At least Oathsworn gave their guys different weapons.
The Ancestral Warden is an ooga booga dude with a big skull mask, some kind of feather cloak and a long spear, the Berserker is a viking dude with a stereotypical horned helmet and an axe. Either you're deliberately spewing nonsense or you seriously need to see an optometrist.

>>2013021
>Primitive culture is literally just "barbarians, BUT IN MASKS!"
Primal culture is barbarians without metalworking. That's the main visual difference I see, but in my eyes it's a pretty big difference

Just re-downloaded the game. My heroes don't have signature skill options and my godir can't seem to access his class skills. Known issue or my install fucked up?

>>2013104
Classes got completely changed, hard to know what you're talking about exactly

>>2013124
I started a new game with a Giant King.
He can't access his warrior skills.
I've recruited two heroes so far and neither of them have any signature skill options when I go to select them, despite getting a notice every turn that a hero has a signature skill available.

>>2013127
There are no signature skills
Just right click your hero and click the on the level up button to the bottom right of the items

>>2013134
Well there are signature skills but they're different and they're in the same place as other skills

How often do you stay the course or deviate from whatever affinity you're lining up with?
Whether it has a major transformation, a different power spike, or just something super thematic you MUST have at the higher tiers. How often does wanting to pick useful low tier stuff keep you from higher tier tomes?
I keep doing this partially only because my brain SCREAMS to have empire development points in every affinity, except maybe Order and Chaos
>through my dumbassery of picking random tomes I JUST NOW fucking realized Warding syncs pretty nicely with Industrial, especially if you get anymore tomes that give your support unit free actions like Mending or Tinctures

>>2013202
I usually have one main affinity but other than that i get whatever works, as long as i have enough affinity to reach the tier 5 tome i want

>>2013202
I usually start without much of a plan except a general theme. The only thing I plan ahead is which major transformation I want to get.

>>2013021
No primal is like Neolithic culture with a bit of meso American stuff. Blow darts have more mobility but I agree they kind of suck but I think design wise it’s sound it just needs some buffing. Their tier 3 spearman is pretty cool with the air jump but they need a buff as well. Their support unit used to be waaay better than the shaman but they nerfed it due to spamming being OP (I’m guessing they look at MO which I never do, I don’t mind if shits unbalanced in single player if it’s fun but whatever)

>>2013127
I’m not 100% sure but there’s a 1.2 beta note someone posted here and I think they’re allowing the giants to have their runes once ascended when that comes out unless they change it

>>2013202
Yeah materium and astral are good together especially with the new tier 3 Geomancy tome. Like astral relays plus the materium gold and mines giving you mana skill points is a sick economy. Typically I just think in general what kind of affinity or combo I want whether it’s a specific transformation or a certain type of damage then go from there. I don’t like necromancy but shadow has some great affinity skill points so combining it with others is great. I used to play order and nature more but now I usually just have them as secondary unless I’m going for a specific culture

>>2012589
Yeah I think astral and materium reaver sub culture would be cool. I didn’t play any previous game but one of the in game story lords is a pure mage woman would be cool if she led that subfaction. I think the other subfaction for a reaver rework should have a melee esque tier 3 like a shotgun unit or something maybe pirates? Unless they go with Viking sea raiders in a barbarian rework

>Chaos Reavers gain spoils from warring with free cities and empires as default
>Astral Reavers gain spoils from exploring sites and capturing magic resources
>Double Materium Reavers gain spoils by building province improvements or something, idk

>Cleared an infestation before remembering to claim Call of Chaos again

Is the combat fun and worth learning? I usually just auto resolve because I like the map more than battles in 4x games, but idk if I'm dicking myself over and losing out on some snowballing capabilities if I just rely on going with nothing but a stronger stack all the time.

>>2013670
isn't there a lord ambition about killing stronger stacks? it probably gives you a good trait if you pull it off, i don't remember what though

How do skirmisher rangers stack up to the other classes? I'm assuming I can shore up defenses if I make them a WK but I'm really more used to my ruler being a warrior or defender beat stick

>>2013670
what i do for combat is manually play it, but only the first couple of turns then i turn on autobattle. it lets you position your units how you want and can get you better outcomes to straight autobattling

>>2013554
>Cleared an infestation before remembering to claim Pacification again

>>2013670
Depends on your playstyle, probably make a race that is based around evolving it's T1 unit, it will either sell you the combat or force you into playing a different playstyle that allows you to auto resolve most of the battles

>>2013695
There is I forget the renown tier bonuses though

i'm using cult of personality this game and it seems crazy strong for snowballing

are champions fun to play?

>>2013943
they take a while to ramp up, but they're pretty fun

>>2013313
>thinking lore matters anymore

>>2013974
Literally said I didn’t play previous games just saying they already have a mage in the library of rulers so it makes sense. Cunt

man dark feels like shit to play, their economy is brutal

>>2013964
>>2013943
They're fun and turn into strong killing machines but definitely feel power crept. They need to add something more to them. Maybe they get a bonus skill point every 2-3 levels to help them ramp up quicker? Or give them something similar to the giants where they can get an extra level on crafted weapons.

>>2014007
Used to be that Champions were weaker at the start than Dragons but they could ramp up harder due to having full equipment slots, but now that Giants have (almost) full equipment slots in addition to better base stats it makes sense to me if Champions took more of a support role, which is already hinted at by their innate Command ability anyway.

In general I'd like it if different ruler types would lean harder into their own niche, just to make them stand out more from one another. Especially the launch types which now feel bland compared to the newer ruler types..
>Champions as a leadership/support rules.
>Wizard Kings as a spellcasting ruler.
>Dragons as combat monsters.
>Eldritch Sovereigns as a map casting ruler with their unique rituals.
>Giants as a terraforming/crafting(/economy?) ruler.
You'd still be able to specialize them by which class you choose, but I'd like to see the baseline differences get more pronounced.

>>2014081
The class thing they added helped with that a little. Especially for a spellblade or deathknight. But i agree the base 2 need a little more to them. The Champion should have some sorta advanced integration with the race you make since they're the only one who're directly linked to them.

>>2013670
Early on I've started to manually resolve battles if the auto claims a casualty I refuse to believe should have gotten killed.
Even if I auto-resolve something I don't feel like running personally like a grueling siege I KNOW I'll win, I'll watch the auto-play so I can understand how the AI did it and see what abilities keep being used, to help visualize what helped carry fights. Plus many battle maps are just pretty
My most recent civ is some Attunement Mystic midgets made for combat spell casting in mind to further push me into running more battles
>will eventually return to Reavers and experience pure SEX of firing Magelocks

I wish you could set some spells to never be used by the autobattle. I’m tired of accidentally picking up something like Monstrous Rebirth and having the AI just delete my armies over time because it thinks it needs to cast a spell if it has the spell.
>Turn off auto-cast
But I want it to still use healing spells and whatnot, I just want to turn off specific spells.

whats your guys map size /modifiers of choice?

>>2010769
AOW4 still has hot outfits for female rulers though.

>>2014728
Maybe 3 total and not for the giant kings or champion rulers! We need butt and boob sliders god damn it! And more faces or ways to edit faces in general like I love the game and it’s so customizable I just wish they’d go all out on ruler and hero customization

>>2014672
I like very large maps, 9 rulers, wondrous past, crystal dwellings, sometimes I’ll add umbral layer usually the smaller option, I like adding toll of seasons and other happenings, and I usually go with continents but also really like islands. Mega cities is fun every once in a while especially on a big island map. I used to play a lot of warping wilds too. Lingering creators or the ways of war Maurader options are what I usually go with unless I want to play a certain theme and then I choose climate modifiers usually too. I don’t like unlimited power or regenerating infestations usually

>>2014672
>>2014760
Oh forgot to add: sometimes I like adding the strong city state options and distrusting locals as well forgot to add that. I don’t like not having city states or low population

>>2014751
you need the age of fashion mod now

lol made the mistake of trying to play a no free cities game. not doing that again

>>2015305
Why is it bad? Doesnt sound too hard.

>>2015488
it really fucks with your economy from what i noticed

>>2015305
It makes for a slower game since you won't be able to grow by conquering existing cities (which can start at higher levels as well), nor farm hostile cities for easy XP and items. But aside from that I don't really see the issue. I kinda like playing without Free Cities because it means I can expand the way I want instead of relying on randomly spawned cities.

>still running Attunement Mystic midgets
>finally getting into playing out manual combat
>still sticking to predicted even fights
>even if my projected power is actually MUCH higher due to spell casting potential
>intentionally ram into my closest neighbor, who just so happens to be a grim reaper who replaced the actual ruler through intrigue
>gonna finally get that fucking manual battle achievement
>look so motherfucking silly having all these 1% achievements for doing story realms but not the 40% manual battle one to prove I ain't an autoresolve pussy
>bait the reaper tossing scouts or wounded heroes clearing far off wonders at it, we're on a budget here.
>still have amplifier lens at the capital, first turn casting, lot of shit to incentivise manual control
>kite, self heal to huge temp HP proportions, spam that crystal slam spell the dwelling sold me
>win every single one
>no achievement
>turns out they have to be 'risky' not 'impossible'
This was funny, but I'm running out of enemies to fight and Wonders to clear

>>2015747
>I'm running out of enemies to fight and Wonders to clear
If you feel maps don't last long enough, try turning on Regenerating Infestations.

>>2015779
I actually do have the respawning infestations on this realm, but an ally I just considered not worth fighting has been taking his time constantly clearing the entire map of them out after he peacefully confederated nearly every city state on the map. I'm sure there's some still around but that ally has more global map presence compared to me being concentrated in a corner.
BUT, I also remember I left on the umbral abyss and there's at least two dwellings there no one would miss if I burned them. The problem will be solved
I just have to decide what to run next after this session

anyone played with world seals?

>>2015838
Only the campaign map that forces them
I didn't care for it too much, but it's probably more fair than an expansion victory at least since you don't get to build the hill you're going to be the king of, it's already established in plain view
Mainly I just liked the little story bits of Meandor talking again, and showing off how he's graduated from fucking up elf hyperborea all the way in AoW1, to becoming a cosmic tard wrangler

>>2015838
I did a few times I don’t like it as it kind of boring so I haven’t really played with them since I think EA maybe PF

>>2012344
Chaos base affinity
Different subcultures add different T1 units to synergize with the tome of the horde
First subculture revolves around a belief in the strength of the spirits (shadow affinity, summon in ancestor spirits to fight and curse the enemy)
Second subculture revolves around a belief in the strength of the land (nature affinity, mounted units, throat singing, bow dakka, one evolving unit because that's nature/chaos's thing)
Third subculture revolves around a belief in the strength of steel (materium affinity, magic is for fags just kill them with a fuckoff xboxhueg sword)

>>2014672
Max factions, unknown realm

What are some of the most op race/tome combo's atm? I usually build for RP but every once in a while i like to just play whatever is broken at the time.

>>2015838
A few times. Probably also the only times I can recall where an AI almost won off of alternative victory conditions, although military victory with my grand alliance slipped that away from them with 10 turns to go. Can't say they're my favorite win con but it at least it gives the AI another focal point to contest so you have smaller more frequent skirmishes over them

What do you think about the victor conditions of the game?
I don't think I've actually done a magic victory since the change since traveling to golden wonders was a pain in the ass.
Score victories are dull.
Military victories are okay, but it's a bit lame that it counts as a military victory if you become overlord of the one guy who didn't want in on the alliance.
Expansion victories... well they exist I guess.
Seals are ass.
I dunno, I'm never really convinced that anything other than military victories are worth the effort.

>>2016377
Military - The standard victory in vs AI games, everything else only happens if you force it or twiddle your thumbs super hard in the early or late game
Score - Has to exist but I'm still insanely confused how the fuck its calculated at times
Expansion - Slow but at least your free city vassals count towards the count at some point, probably the most conflict averse win condition
Magic - Can't say I've aimed for it either since the changes, seems really annoying to do and super RNG dependent
Seals - It makes the AI more proactive I guess, probably the 2nd fastest victory condition and the most likely the AI is to actually complete but also not particularly special

Was honestly hoping GK would add alternative win cons with the collection happenings but being a sort crisis is cool too except when you complete way too late and get shut down by the AI in a snap

>>2016242
i just know feudal/monarchy is op right now

>>2016377
i pretty much always go for magic, military takes too long on larger maps and expansion just doesn't seem feasible most times.

magic also feels the most strategic as you have to scope out where the gold wonders are and plan accordingly

>>2016377
I would suggest you to play some games without free cities, it will open up the other victory conditions

>>2014672
>megacities
>high maintenance
Rpg Party mode

I'm not gonna lie. I'm upset at the size of the Rewards section. The vast majority of it is just either a braindead simple shape for banners or a "skin" for a trinket that doesn't actually show up outside of the inventory menu. There's no reason it shouldn't have tons more.

I decided to check this game out.
I have no idea what's going on.
My guys are getting killed by the AI doing like mega AoE damage and inflicting like 100 damage a turn with like 12 debuffs, and I have no idea how that's happening or what I'm supposed to do about it.

>>2014672
I like Unknown Realm a lot, though there are some modifiers I usually turn off. Notably, I really dislike the ones that nerf world map healing like Arctic Blizzards, Volcanic Eruptions and No Respite.

>>2017670
What turn are you on and what difficulty?

>>2017517
Yeah the Pantheon is generally the weakest part of the game. There are a few rewards that are worth unlocking like the various society traits, but aside from that it's mostly just some weapon skins and flag icons. At least they did add some new features for rulers stored in the Pantheon a while back, but it's still a really undercooked aspect of the game.

>>2016377
I've never liked score. It feels anticlimactic and the score calculation is far too arcane.
Military usually takes too long unless you ally half the players.
Expansion pretty much requires you to have a bunch of vassals, and I personally hate taking vassals beyond the one obligatory thrall farm if I'm playing a spooky boy.
Magic is usually what I go for because I love magic and I normally focus hard on magic and research.
I've only ever played a seal game once and I got fucked over by a faction I had become overlord of stealing one of my seals which didn't count towards my own seal count.

Are any magic types as fun as necromancy?
I want to branch out, but all the other stuff looks like it just changes the flavor of damage and the specific unit to spam summon, but is otherwise the same.

>>2017727
>Military usually takes too long unless you ally half the players.
>Expansion pretty much requires you to have a bunch of vassals, and I personally hate taking vassals beyond the one obligatory thrall farm if I'm playing a spooky boy.
Try playing on smaller maps. It makes military/expansion victories a lot less ridiculous.

>>2017780
materium/physical is pretty hilarious in my eyes and was my favorite even before crazy new shit like crystal TF and the new sweet ass enchant upgrade in its tier 5 tome
Get to pile on solid defense/resistance transformations
Constructs are optional but can replace having to grab all those TFs
Speccing into 'rocks fall, everyone dies' and ignoring resistance is satisfying

I did try electric/naga mystic build, and that was fun too since I could ignore physical ranged units and spam battlemages
But I get what you mean with a lot of these starting tomes. Something like
>starting poison melee + arrow enchants
>starting fire melee + arrow enchants
>starting ice melee + arrow enchants
Do you skip the ice tome to grab other supplement stuff for your dead dudes?

>>2017780
I think the evolve stuff with dragons is pretty neat. Ive never tried it with beasts cause the end tier animals were never that interesting to me however.

>>2017846
>Ive never tried it with beasts cause the end tier animals were never that interesting to me
The T4 spider evolutions are quite good and tend to take buffs better than dragons. Just too bad that getting them is a bit of a crapshoot since they're random results from the Summon Animal spells and most of the other animals aren't that good. Slithers are pretty good as well and they're much easier to get, but they only evolve to T3.

>>2017708
I finished the uhhh realm? By turn 58.
I was playing literally the "Start the game and click this to learn how to play" campaign.

I have no idea what transpired, or why.

>>2017946
Could be you got attacked by a high-level infestation, or maybe tried to conquer a gold wonder? Those are really tough early on, especially since gold wonders tend to have additional combat effects, like spells that automatically nuke your shit every other turn.

>>2017959
I appreciate that I don't know how to explain what I encountered.
But I only did one of those and it wasn't too bad.

What I'm talking about was combat with another ruler-thing?
Like, I'm just minding my own business, get war declared on me and then like 3 stacks of 6 enemies come into my territory and when I fight them it's just an AoE spam of spells that does like a shit tonne more damage than I can work out doing.

It says they cast two spells per turn. I check the description of the spell on the right and it says nothing about it being AoE or hitting half my guys across the entire map or anything.

I still won. I just have no idea what the fuck was going on.

>>2017971
Okay I can imagine at least one scenario this could happen
Wizards king ruler enemy, enables that 'once every fight' channeling ability for a turn so he can cast two combat spells at once, then just colony drops you
Dunno what the actual magic could have been
If it was two spells EVERY turn then I have no fucking idea, that could have been totally different then

>>2017982
I honestly couldn't even tell you, this shit was my first game I don't even know what the fuck a Wizard King is.

The spells, uh, like one was lightning, the other was I think an order(?) spell that looks like a guy worshiping the ground and his back is burning.

>>2017985
Wizard Kings are a ruler type, they specialize in blasting you with insane spells. If you’re doing the intro realm, you’re probably playing as a Champion.
Was it a dude in red robes leading a bunch of cat people?

>>2017982
>>2017985
Wizard kings do get two spells every other turn if they pick defensive channeling. It's why they're the strongest ruler type in the end-game.
If it was the first campaign mission the enemy is Yaka, a wizard king who gets an aoe spell attack from an ascension skill and plays mystic potential, so he probably was spamming overcharged spells.

>>2017985
If the lightning was used a lot, IIRC there's a battlefield enchantment that causes it to hit every turn or every other turn. Can't recall what it was called off the top of my head though.

>>2017780
Astral gives a few decent support spells for magic origin units (as all undead that didn't come from the major transformation are) like astral healing to heal all of your magic origin units in the battle, arcane supercharge to give a single one a bunch of stacks of strengthened and bolstered defense and resistance, and the cosmic overdrive enchantment that gives all magic origin units +30% damage and very fast movement. Mystic summoners should also make natural necromancers since they give a 10 hp heal and one stack of strengthened to every magic origin unit in the battle whenever they cast a spell.

>>2017989
>>2018003
>>2018006
Gimmie a sec, I'll load up the campaign and post related shit.
I had fun, I just had no idea what was going on, and I sort or just assumed it was "He can just do that because it's his build", but, I don't know the exact mechanisms of how he do that, you know?

>>2018008
Related to summons, which of the summons, both elemental and astral are the most tanky? Ive been wanting to do a caster/battlemage with only using summons as the frontline tanks but i cant decide which direction to go.

>>2018017
Dunno about most tanky, but Entwined Protectors are pretty nice as a summonable frontline.

>>2018017
I know they fucked with some of the free ranks in the recent patch, but you used to be able to summon an elemental at t1 with enough free ranks to be one rank away from evolving, and then spend one rank worth of astral echoes to immediately evolve into its t3 version, so with that in mind I always just used the cheaply replaceable t3 elementals as my front line. You can probably still do this, I'm sure it's just more expensive in terms of astral echoes now. With that in mind, you could go with materium for the earth elemental since it has the shield user class, but personally I like to go with chaos to give my mages Mark of Misfortune and Havoc Magic.

>>2018017
Titan of Earth was an absolute fucking slab of concrete I could hurl at people, it was pretty tanky
I didn't even get it from opening the tier5 materium tome. It was just from a page pickup in the Abyss and I used him in desperation to avoid losing a town and he solved every problem there by being a runaway brick
Shame i can't keep it outside of fights. Also shame outside of getting lucky like I did, there's no cosmic overdrive buff either

I guess it was this?

The replay isn't quite the same. But basically he keeps casting two spells per turn, and deleting my ruler in a single turn by doing like 40 damage with each spell.
And then he can just continually AoE 4-5 of my units on the board each turn for like 15 damage each, casting Condemnation, Cosmic Ablation and Fulmination, which then leaves a status effect that does like another 10 damage at the end of their turn.

>>2018035
Ah, so not Yaka. I guess it was the actual tutorial, not the story realm tutorial. Without knowing what techs he has, it’s hard to say what specific spells he’s using. Still, Wizard King cheese is Wizard King cheese.

>>2018035
>mystic
>potential subculture
>wizard king channeling spam
>powerful evokers
Based on what little I can read, that's some serious casting fuckery right there, oof.
That is THE spell spam setup outside of replacing the other society trait
With most regular attacks of an enemy stacking a debuff that will shock you when they cast a real spell, it's no wonder all the armageddon flashy lights grabbed your attention
What's cool is that you still said you won despite all of that first try, at least the war

>>2018029
Is the idea of summons supposed to be that they are expendable? Since most of them evolve I always want to protect them so they evolve but I feel like it would be nice to have a unit I can sacrifice in those hard early game fights to soak up enough damage while my regular units fight

>>2018079
Depends on the summon. The evolving ones you ideally want to keep alive because it's just great value if you get the evolved version, but the value did get diminished quite a bit when they reworked the experience ranks, because going from a max XP unit to a zero XP unit you lose a lot more now, especially HP. The evolved version is still better but not by as much as it used to be. Also, some of the high-tier summons cost a lot of casting points so you can't always summon them instantly.

But in general yeah, summons are intended more expendable than recruits, since you can just summon more of them while you're on the go while you can only get recruited units from your cities which often isn't practical when you're on the offense.

>>2018079
Not all of them evolve, I think there are less that do than don't, but the ubiquitous elemental units might make it seem like that's not the case.
I also wouldn't necessarily say expendable as much as easily replaceable, since if you happen to lose one you can simply drop a new one into your army regardless of how far they are away from home (as long as the army has a hero of course). Mystic summoners also have the ability to just flat out buy ranks with their special resource, lessening or even eliminating the blow of losing a ranked up unit.

>>2017985
Sounds like chain lightening and mass condemnation were the spells

>>2018114
Maybe fulmination actually

>come up with a neat name to use and form a gimmick around
>since an original thought was had, there is an overwhelming autistic urge to fill everything else out manually too
>mind is a fucking blank filling in all the other shit
how often do other people have this problem making 'your dudes'?
Also despite all the other kickass ruler types, Reaver is the only one where I'd still play as a mortal Champion due to the fuck awesome snazzy outfits

>>2018377
I almost never bother with the backstory, but I usually fill out the title/ruler name/race name/throne city name myself.

>>2018377
Usually I just hit randomize until I find something I like. Occasionally if I have something in mind I do a custom name. I've thought of a rough back story for a few of the civs I've made, but I've never written any of them down because I'm terrible at writing.

Rate my dudes.

>>2018377
Usually start with function first but by the time I hit that screen I have a better idea of the faction as a whole so I'm invested in naming them. I do have trouble naming ruler/title/race sometimes but usually if I get stuck I just hit random a few times and I'll find an angle to work from there

>play random regenerated realm
>undergrown start
>astral plane divided by sea with each ruler having their own little place
>cool i'll just do magic and play tall
>have to travel a mountain and reach an undergrown passage to find the first free city which mirrors your race
>give them the stone
>declare war with me anyways
>less than 5 turns in a silver dragon infestation appears on my capital
>another 3 turn later a dragon ruler declares war on me and send 3 doomstacks with 3 level 6-7 heros to me
well that went to shit pretty quickly, had to save scum like 10 turns earlier and invest everything to somehow win against the dragon tard and make peace with the mirror race free city but now i lost all will to play because i save scummed

Game keeps crashing whenever I try to start the Sehiran Oasis or Arcalot story realms. I can start random maps just fine. Any advice?

>>2018443
Maybe it's just because of my association of the term with Warcraft, but Warchief seems like an ill fitting ruler title for a golden knight.

>>2018465
They didn't let me put him in a kilt and I didn't feel like using Gaelic.

>>2018476
>They didn't let me put him in a kilt
You could use the vaguely Roman style armor with the skirt.

>>2018497
Actually I just remembered that's wizard king specific.

>>2018497
>>2018499
I feel like a roman outfit would be off theme anyway. Discount Rider of Rohan is fine.

i'm playing an oathsworn strife pirate faction with experienced seafarers and ruthless raiders. nautical champion leader. playing on a desert island map with seals on and honestly ths might be the most fun i've had yet

I feel like being able to pay the seer guy 700 mana to instantly get the entire above ground, underground, and umbral realm mapped is really dumb and should be removed as it breaks one of the more fun parts of the game.

>>2018587
i don't really feel like shops add much in general, i might start turning them off

>>2018592
The only thing they add that I really, really like is the ability to buy specific amounts rather than relying on RNG. That's really nice.

>>2018592
>>2018594 (me)
Specific mounts, I mean. Not amounts. Getting the good ones is always a pain.

>>2018594
But anon, you must rely on RNG for the mount shop guy to spawn.

>>2018601
>RNG
The only RNG part of it is how long it takes him to spawn. I have seen him in literally every game I've had since he was added. The only question is whether or not he'll show up super early.

>>2018602
Sometimes somebody else gets the mount guy and you get stuck with the retrainer guy.

>>2018606
NTA but I've seen all 3 pop up in my domain(and one of them did spawn in another rulers domain) but that was over the course of a 150 turn game

I really hope to see more done with the ocean in future expansions. I'm eagerly waiting to be able to have an entire empire based in the sea.

>>2018665
i'm surprised tentacle path doesn't interact with it more

>>2018666
Seems like they're more focused on separating the ocean from eldritch themes, relegating it specifically to the umbral realm. On one hand, shame. On the other hand, that works out better since it lets there be more variety.

>>2018665
If there's two things I really want faggots to shut the fuck up about it's muh aquatic culture and muh vampire transformation. Aquatic cultures are always shit in games like this, because it means playing as an empire whose land holds no value for anyone else and who inherently have a massive defensive advantage. Simply by existing it throws the entire game out of balance in the most dreadfully boring way imaginable because it's a playstyle that has no reason to be in conflict with anyone else. It's literally the "go sit in a corner and jerk yourself off all game long" playstyle.

man lmao i was winning by every metric in my last game, only had one enemy left to beat by military and had score to fall back on. i checked score like 20 turns ago and i'm up by like 100 points so i'm like cool i got a buffer here, i'm sieging his capital and i'm about to win either by score or military. i don't finish in time and score ticks over and somehow i ended up losing??? i had completely had him dead. how does this even work

>>2018745
Nobody knows how score works, the best anyone's got is inaccurate guesswork. I don't think even Triumph knows how score victory works. My best guess in your case would be that the opponent got a huge magic/economy score boost due to having a ton of gold and mana stored with no way to spend it, which is bullshit but everything about score victory is bullshit anyway. I just turn it off in all of my games.

After seeing how feudal got a T4 unit, every culture should have an evolving Tier 2 unit into T4, idk how theyll make it work but I think its something nice for a revamp on every culture.

>>2018751
Please let's not homogenize cultures even more. Half the point in these reworks is to give them some more unique toys. Adding Feudal's promotion gimmick to everyone just because you want more T4 units is completely retarded.

>>2018755
i think the only other culture that should get promotions is dark personally

>>2018702
Aquatic culture is completely fine, anon. There are various materials in the ocean, along with the ability to make farms and quarries in it. If you want to add in some extra things to the ocean that make it more unique to incentivize exploring/colonizing, that's fine too.

>>2018764
>There are various materials in the ocean, along with the ability to make farms and quarries in it.
No, there aren't. There are materials in shallow coastal provinces, not in the oceans. And even in those provinces you can't build outposts or cities, so aquatic cultures would be unopposed.

> If you want to add in some extra things to the ocean that make it more unique to incentivize exploring/colonizing
Like what? Giving cultures ways to colonize the ocean would make it less unique, not more. You'd just have land and blue land, instead of land and soft barriers separating it. And if you add extra stuff to the ocean to incentivize exploring/colonizing without giving normal cultures a way to do so, it would just unbalance aquatic cultures even more by giving them access to all the new stuff nobody else can get.

>>2018702
You're absolutely right about full aquatic cultures, but coastal/seafaring factions should be more of a thing. Pretty sure the seafarer trait doesn't even guarantee a coastal start right now, and tomes about piracy or dredging monsters up from the deep would fit right into the game.

>>2018757
Dark has just been powercrept out of relevance. It flew under the radar because feudal was even worse, but now that that's fixed I'd rather see it get its own new useful gimmick in a rework than have it crib feudal's notes.

>>2008988 (OP)
ever since i updated my gog version Wizard King and Champion are all kinds of fucked. They either can't spend skill points or their class skills are missing from the skill tree
what do I do? Uninstall base-game and reinstall it?
Or do I delete even my Documents folder where all my profile and saves are?

>>2018884
Probably just try reinstalling first. Are you using any mods?

>>2018911
>>2018884
it was fucked without mods too

>>2018947
I had this and did a complete reinstall.
My old saves worked though, so I think you can keep your save data.

>>2018947
>burning blade
Yoooooo

>>2018587
You could always just not do it and keep your 700 mana

>>2019030
Yeah, with Late Game Culture Units: Extra Mod you get Blademasters as a Tier IV unit, so you aren't forced to play Righteous Oath if you want a high tier greatsword infantry unit

>>2018521
Yeah islands are so much fun

>>2018606
I don’t like the mount guy like the other two way more

>>2018702
Wrong. Since everyone can embark in this game a sea faction would be cool plus I want to slaughter dumb fish people

>>2018770
No dude it’s in the oceans like set a city on a small island and every ocean tile can be claimed post rework they did I think around primal fury.

And having a culture have an aquatic city would be unique other cultures wouldn’t be able to set them up. Soft barriers? Bro do you not colonize ocean tiles or are you just retarded?

>>2018776
Yeah I think remaking rework priority should be:
1. Dark
2. Barbarian
3. High
4. Industrious

>>2019121
It's usually better to first try to actually understand what you've read before writing an angry response.

>>2019140
What did I misread? The guy is completely wrong you can colonize ocean tiles not just coastal. That’s completely wrong. Having one new culture be able to set up a city on any water tile would be unique and they can’t “jerk off and hide” as all units can cross ocean tiles. So fuck off retard

>>2018443
Theoden/king

>>2018476
>>2018497
>>2018511
>>2018499
You lads need age of fashion

What's the early game build plan for everyone? I always focused getting units out as often as possible in the early game so that I have units ready for my second hero and their eventual stack. For cities I focused on food generating buildings and farm provinces to help get that expansion right out the gate, then gold/knowledge, followed by draft, followed by mana, and then production. Ultimate goal of course was getting 2nd and 3rd cities down ASAP.
Just saw a video that went other someone else's build plan and it was all focused on production and said buildings provide more than provinces that's making me question everything. Even ignored unit building for the most part in favor of building buildings.

>>2019249
Recently I've been building 1 production building and then basically all libraries up to the literal top tier.
Turns out you get a shit ton of resources from just killing stuff at the start anyway.

>>2018755
Feudal got a lot more than just a T4 unit to make it better, I dont see the issue in giving everyone a T4 and also doing a rework for other cultures as well

whats the best non-hero shield unit?

>>2019567
>>2019567
It's boring but Bastions because they're a racially unit and get all the upgrades and get bolstering. They edge out of Iron Golems especially if you go geomancy and get shapers mark (back before the Tome of the Creator Changes the constructs like iron golems and Gold Golems were marked as elemental and you could get a unit enchantment that allowed them to revive at half health after they died after one turn). I think they're better than Clay Defenders due to the racial transformations as well. Entwined Protectors aren't bad though with the heal and they're a summon.

>>2019567
Overall it's probably Bastions as >>2019789 says, but I want to give an honorable mention to Barbarian Warriors for being arguably the best cultural T1 unit in the game. Stun+automatic defense mode is great, and Savage Strike means they do above-average damage for a defensive unit. Optional cavalry is a nice boost as well if you can fit it into your build.

Clay Defender is cool but you kinda have to go for a full clay unit army to get the most out of them due to the Legion trait.

>>2019567
>>2019789
>>2019874
Are Examplars any good?

>>2019891
They're nice all-rounders, with good defenses and good damage. Their support features are largely inconsequential since morale isn't that important in the current meta, but being able to apply Strengthened x2 in a wide radius is still nice.
I just wish they didn't have the Large Target tag. If you give your regular dudes eagles to ride they don't become Large, so why should the Exemplar? Of course they're T4 so they require Imperium upkeep, which I'd usually rather spend on more impactful units. Also I don't particularly like Order builds anyway so I rarely get the option to use them in the first place. Finally, this isn't very important but their design is the laziest in the game. It's just an Inquisitor clipping through an eagle. Except without any weapons... why does the "shield unit" not even have a shield on his model?

Does anyone have decent learning materials for this game? Youtube is dogshit and it's not popular enough to have a real community on discord or reddit or whatever.
I just wanna learn how to be more efficient with my cities so I can abuse higher tier units without the upkeep killing my economy.

The hardest seems to be underground empires but maybe that's just me.

>>2020054
There are multiple discord communitites. Can't speak about how active they are though, since I don't use Discord.

Anyway, to be honest city development is pretty simple. Basically for all cities, your priorities are:
>1) Build your faction's Construction+Draft building first.
>2) Get the boost for your basic Research building ASAP and build it.
>2) Build your City Hall equivalent and Mage Tower upgrades as soon as you get the boost for them.
>3) For regular buildings, always focus on Research and Draft.
>4) Gold/Mana should be built if and when you need it. You can usually delay building this stuff longer than you might think.
>5) Construction buildings tend to take too long to make back their investment, so only build them if you don't have anything better available.
>6) For guilds, you pretty much always want to pick Research or Draft, unless you're really hurting for a specific resource.
Boosts are very important for all of these, so keep that in mind when you're deciding which provinces to claim. It's also pretty vital to try and secure a research lab province early on, so looking for nearby mana nodes or magic materials is always a good thing. Or you can just grab a tome with a research-based special province improvement, which is one of the reasons why tomes like Cryomancy and Alchemy are popular options. Of course you'll always want to try and grab any wonders or magic materials.

Early on you don't have much upkeep to pay, so you can get by just hunting the map for pickups and killing guard stacks for resources. So instead of building stuff like Markets and Temples you can dedicate more turns and resources to building Research buildings which scale better, and Draft buildings which let you get more units faster and thus keep fighting stuff. Focusing on fighting as much as possible also has the added benefit of getting extra XP for your ruler, which is a big deal since leveled rulers/heroes are going to be your strongest units in any scenario.

What's your best animal build? This is what I'm thinking:
https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=40:2,c7,2b,5a,eb,50,s,ac:a4:a7:9f:b7:a0:a5:b6:9c,000000,1ac,a,h,n:r

>>2020159
Looks alright, though I'd be wary of not having any Shadow or Materium affinity at all, just because their empire tree branches are really useful.

>>2020054
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_j8dY4QW8Q
This is the best fundamentals tutorial I've seen. It's quite long and a bit too rambly at times, but the guy does a good job of explaining not just how to play efficiently but also why these things are efficient. It's slightly outdated on a few details (like using 4-unit stacks to max XP efficiency is no longer a thing in the current version) but it's still very educational.

>>2020159
Keep in mind that summoned animals are NOT considered magic origin units, so they won't benefit from the bonuses that mystic summoners provide, or the support spells from the tome of summoning.
The same applies to constructs and most plants.

>>2020247
Why would you post this when you can spend 10 minutes in game testing the truth?

>>2020248
It was the case last I checked. I know it wasn't always the case, so they may have changed it again. I'm also not at my computer.

>>2020247
AFAIK summoned creatures are almost always magic origin no matter what other type they are. If you get them from sources other than a spell (regular recruiting, map pickups, rally of lieges, etc.) they won't have the magic origin tag though.

>>2020148
I’d argue that food buildings first when the boost is available is better so you can get more tiles for more boosts/wonders. It’s usually hard putting off mana and gold buildings due to army upkeep but it depends on your build. Gold is a great resource to just buy more units and hurry construction

>>2020338
Food is the lowest priority IMO. You get enough from pickups and terrain features that you can build a decent city without ever building for it, and if you really need to claim something fast, just build an outpost.

>>2020344
One big change with this DLC is I’m finding myself build the mana buildings faster I think due to the shops and crystal palace most maps pre dlc I could get by on pick ups unless I was spamming spells

>>2020344
>>2020338
With food i think it depends on location. If i have a free city close enough that might start stealing land i want ill lean into some food to block them off.

The MP community says your research needs to be 10x the turn. With astral/shadow I find this to be easily reachable but I'm struggling to make it work on other affinities.

>>2020521
The MP community can eat my ass. Just take the first Shadow node ASAP and make sure world threat is high enough that infestations spawn heroes so you can farm them.

>>2020521
Fuck the MP community honestly, I tried using the official Forum a few times and they're so obnoxious demanding nerfs all the time and dismissing others as if MP wasn't a tiny fraction of the base. I tried playing MP a few times but the lobbies are all dead even right after a DLC release and there's no matchmaking. So weird Zoomers somehow killed matchmaking for everything really don't understand when or how that happened

>>2020573
>I tried playing MP a few times but the lobbies are all dead
That's because nobody uses the ingame lobby, You need to get on discord to get any multiplayer games going.

Any strong cultural shock troops out there? I want to do a shock based army but i dont want to default to warbreed or tyrant knights for a change.

>>2020736
There's the new Fedual Knight that's tier 4 or the Black Knight which is tier 3 with Dark. Also the Barbarian Berserker. I haven't played Barbarian in forever but they used to be very good. The Oathswron Strife tier 3 is a shock unit and pretty good, can't remember if the Righteous or whatever good one for oathsworn is or not, Harmony is mounted archer. Hope they do two reworks with the next DLC feel like Barbarian rework would be pretty easy

Newfag here, is playing wide a viable strategy? It feels like most of my games end when I have 4 or maybe 5 cities, and there's times where I just feel like blanketing the map with my domain's borders.

Anyone else having fun leading doomstacks of giants across the seas?

>>2020818
>The Oathswron Strife tier 3 is a shock unit and pretty good, can't remember if the Righteous or whatever good one for oathsworn is or not, Harmony is mounted archer.
Righteous also gets a shock unit. It's pretty similar to the Strife one but it gets a different special attack. Strife gets a charge attack that damages everyone in a line and Righteous gets a single-target attack that does high damage but requires you to stand still.

>>2012997
>Yeah Ice being tied in with shadow doesn't really fit imo. I mean, I get it, shadow is dark, no light, but it should be split with nature. If I had my way, If have 2 more V tomes, tome of eternal winter for ice and tome of endless summer for order/nature. But then Shadow is solely Necromancy which I hate.
To be fair, there's plenty of dubious yank in the tomes. Materium has the lone Tome of Winds with no other connection to air magic, Tome of Destruction should be materium/chaos, but had the misfortune of being made before the split tomes...
But I dislike the blandness of the faction creation and tome system in general. I prefer the AoW3's variety of race (the fact is certain cultures are definitely race-coded in appearance and looks weird on anything else... see industrial on a non-stunties, or feudal... anything but humans and maybe halflings)/class/elemental (plus extras) spheres.

>>2020998
Sorry, Crucible, not Destruction, misremembered the name

>>2020573
The MP community ruined the game by its very existence, as usual. Balancing for MP is the bane of fun in every game.

>>2020999
Yeah crucible needs to be chaos materium and a new pure tier 4 materium tome needs to be added or maybe just shift terramancy to tier 4. That tome used to kind of suck unless you needed to get rid of mountains but after the update it’s so much better especially as there’s fewer siege projects that lower the fortification score now and tremor ritual has always been good. Glad they got a rock giant summon too

>>2020975
>does high damage but requires you to stand still.
This is fun if you have a champion leader. Cause you can charge them in and then reset their movement so they can do the 3 action attack right after, ive had one of those units wipe out max tier units or lords in 1 turn before.

>>2021155
>hold the fuck still while I spend all my actions unsheathing my katana
>your mother fucking life ends one turn from now
>don't you DARE fucking walk away from me
Nice to see Champion rulers still have unique synergy in small stuff like this.

>>2020998
>or feudal... anything but humans and maybe halflings
Feudal ratkin look nice in my fact. Honestly industrial is really the only one that looks awkward on most races, everything else works pretty well on anything, with the exception of most headwear clearly only being designed for humans.

>>2020998
Yeah tomes feel randomly assigned sometimes. I think Ice is the one that people complain about the most though because...it just has zero connection to the rest of the tomes in that affinity.

Shadow Affinity is like 80% Necromancy, but you can just barely cobble together enough other stuff to do pure shadow as a path, or Eldritch Horror mixed with Shadow or Necromancy which fits well enough. Ice though is just two tomes representing an entire element with no endgame and no synergy with anything else in it's affinity.

like you want to roll Fire or Earth magic, no problem, more tomes than you can fit in easily. You want to focus on Spirit or Blight, also not an issue. Lightning Damage? Holy shit yes.

Ice/Water/Air magic OTOH, just barely there. 3 tomes total, no endgame, no synergy, no thematic build there at all. You have to immediately graft a second theme on that will inevitably completely overshadow your "main" theme just to play the game.

>>2021185
My one disappointment with the DLC is they add frost giants but never added any frost tomes to let you play that theme out to the end. I lost interest in my frost giant cause i couldn't decide what to take after i got the frost stuff early game.

>>2021220
Yeah I wish they’d add more frost tomes for my frost giantess I went with materium and frost tomes plus the shadow tome for tier 2 that’s materium shadow. Doesent feel great though need at least one but probably two more frost tomes. A frost astral combo would be nice to get ice queens

>>2021246
Yeah I keep trying to come up with a good frost build even before the Giant King DLC and just give up in frustration every time. It's like trying to build a cool rocket ship when you only have 4 legos.

Any lore nerds know if there's a reason why there's no Nature Giant option? Seems like a weird omission like I can see maybe Order Giants given the focus on terraforming (but Nature could be forests and Order fields?) but lack of nature is weird to me especially since Dragons get all 6 and I'm pretty sure this DLC was double the price as Dragon Dawn. Really want to make a Nature Giantess ruler for some reason

>>2021403
The Horned God is the nature giant. The new Legends of Myrrida realm option adds a quest revealing the history of the Horned Gods.

deciding on starting tomes is hard
At least half the time
sometimes shit is obvious
>any mystic build? start with lightning shit
>want to give new feudal a go finally
>also wanna base it around that purifying fire tome
>can't fucking decide what to start with
>faith? zeal? pyromancy?
>also the constant urge to dive into warding and alchemy for additional support unit actions

The only thing I will ever thank the multiplayer community for is if they manage to somehow convince triumph to make 1 unit type army stacks less braindead easy.

>>2021474
They should have added it as a ruler then sort of dumb still but maybe they'll add it in a nature DLC like storm giants, fire giants, rock giants, and frost giants were also units in the base game.

>>2021499
The devs said that the Archon expansion will add Order and Shadow giants, but later clarified that they'll only be added as units, not as ruler types.

>>2021492
I always decide my entire tome progression before creating a faction, so it's always obvious for me.

>>2021492
If you’re going purifying fire time def go pyromancy and zeal

Is it just me or does anyone else want to do sand-themed stuff? I feel like a cool sandstorm/ egypt/ the mummy type faction would be really nice. I tend to play a lot of elemental builds where you terraform your surroundings and desert transformations are I think the only type of terrain without some tome or spreader.

>>2021810
I have a lord who fits that theme i like to play from time to time. I go with the dune primal and go poison/necro with a touch of materium for the gold stuff.

>>2021810
Sand stuff can be cool, which is a shame it has very little support right now.
Primal definitely can be an anchor to make a creeping sands theme work
I think ashlands/desolate has more support right now. Maybe. If I'm reading stuff right, and fire giants spreading lava flows turns the entire province into ashlands
>primal worship of that red tigger, rake in extra dosh
>fire giant kings terraforming with runestones
>calamity/ghostfire tome with that province improvement
>the calamity shrine says it turns its own province to desolate even, doesn't spread tho I think
>various spells that turn desolate terrain, usually as part of just wrecking shit

>>2009990
>AoW3 had buxom, curvy women for all races
>AoW4 has flat-chests
Good thing there's a mod for this.

>>2022167
what mod?

>>2021990
I'd like primal of it wasn't so goddamned feast or famine. I feel like they have not a single unit in their roster that's good except maybe the supp and the like. Animals really need some love because they fucked the primal summon so damn hard I never even use it anymore.

>>2022381
Primal is just so badly designed. Their units are garbage, their early game is extremely bad, their special buildings are useless. The combat summon is more a crutch they need to survive than something actually impressive. Their terrain bonus and decent T3 spearman gives you sort of a mid-game bump if you manage to get their without imploding first, and Primal Rage is slightly more usable when your guys actually have HP but they're still never actually strong at any point.

>>2022399
Also their whole gimmick of having to track down spirit lairs scattered across the map is not at all compatible with the AI's all consuming need to box you in with outposts at all times. Especially as Primal is too weak to do anything about it.

>>2022402
I'm probably going to just redesign my wood elves into high culture, cause I can't stand the poor theming AND the shifty mechanics. Worst of both worlds, which sucks because I wish I could have the primal look seperate from the overall faction design. It'd be cool if they brought back undead with creeping sands motif from AOW3. If they ever separate frost from being associated with undeath sand would make a really nice stand in. I'm surprised there's no egypt themed tomes for shadow or astral yet.

I haven't played barbarian in ages. Any ideas of what to go with that isnt just chaos razing?

>>2020829
I think everyone would agree its best to settle the first 2 extra cities you get as soon as possible. Cities are valuable and generate a lot of resources in almost any scenario. The question is whether its worth the extra imperium to raise the city cap. There's too much good stuff to spend imperium on otherwise. There's a society trait that makes it less expensive to found cities but nothing that makes it easier to increase the cap, IIRC.

>>2022495
The cost to getting 4 is pretty cheap, i think only 200 imperium. Going to 4 cities is always a nice idea imo. Maybe dont need to rush it but something to scout for.

>>2022399
Primal is fucking flawed, and I fucking FEEL it because I keep picking them anyways since I still like terraforming gimmicks. Picking giant kings gives me an alternative, thank god, but now I decided to try putting the two together with this idea >>2021990
units are still mediocre but on the upside I don't have gold problems for once
If I really wanted to commit to the naming theme to match the towns I should have actually made these guy elves, coulda renamed the leader into a Daedra

>>2020829
spamming cities used to be viable at launch, just to outpace opponents with research production, but now there's more limiters to doing that. Rushing to place your first three cities feels worth it for me, beyond that either opponents or environments feel like they limit my growth to where I don't feel like I'd get much value if I picked Adept Settlers

Already bored with the new stuff, it was awesome but still wish there’d been a full affinity of giant kings instead of just 4 and only two new tomes. Love the new handcrafted regions but feel wish we’d gotten 4 dlcs instead of just 3 this season hopefully archon prophecy isn’t too far away and we get a season 3.

Also forgot to add but I sort of hate all the umbral abyss stuff was sort of exiting on release but I just find taking umbral nests and dwellings annoying af and don’t really like picking tentacle or the major transformation. Wish we’d have gotten more fire demons and ice and vampire stuff instead as that’s the only real super evil focus dlc I guess reavers are rbil but idk feel like necromancy is kinda meh, dark culture kind of sucks rn, and I’m not too into tentacle monster stuff

>>2024197
>>2024198
Yeah, I feel you. Only having 4 Giant options feels unnecessarily limiting, and out of them really it's all about Earth Giants getting most of the attention with the new tomes and upgraded earth tomes.

Fire Giant works...fine, Storm Giant is good but the preference for water terrain is kinda limiting conceptually, like it's weird that the ideal way to play Storm Giant is ruling a bunch of Toads or Nagas. Frost Giant is disappointing because Frost is endlessly disappointing.

Btw, I feel like the last DLC had a similar issue, where they added two really cool new shadow tomes that make me want to play a shadow focused Oathsworn build except nah, you're stuck with good/order/light, harmony or evil/chaos/fire, none of them really fit a shadow build well at all.

Also agreed that umbral stuff all felt kinda extra to me personally. I do think the new ruler type is pretty cool but probably the least fun of the DLC rulers overall?

I'm not overly hyped about Archon Prophecy but also it's description is so vague I'm not even sure what we're getting so who knows.

https://youtu.be/Y-CrdbPkV-Q

Elves and humans being the most popular forms is pretty much expected, but I wouldn't have thought lizardmen would be at #3 especially since they're a DLC race.

>>2024326
>but I wouldn't have thought lizardmen would be at #3 especially since they're a DLC race.
It was the first DLC, and those are usually the ones that sell the most. Plus, Dragons as a ruler type are very popular I imagine. Dragon Ruler-Lizardmen race, Dragon transformation...I can see it. Compared to the other DLC forms that are kinda random, there's a strong reason for people to go lizardmen a lot thematically.

>>2024198
>picking tentacle or the major transformation.
Find one of the nests that have the void stones you can annex from the outpost. You can make a trinket with umbral immunity and if its early game just make it with just that. Only costs 100 and is done instantly.

>>2024326
>most popular race: Humans
>most popular culture: Mystic
>most popular tome: Evocation
Guess it's time to make a normalfag empire with all three.

>>2024411
I mean, it's by far the easiest way to play the game. I pull it out once in a while and it never gets any less braindead.

>>2024426
Though that was also true in AoW3 to be fair. Sorcerer was aggressively OP.

>>2024426
I've genuinely never played that exact combination. Closest I've got is Human Mystic with Cryomancy.

>>2024432
I mean, the human portion of that build barely matters, it's just the default normalfag choice. It's more Mystic and Astral both being S+++ tier compared to all the other cultures and affinities as well as basically impossible to fuck up.

>>2008988 (OP)
Is the game still generic as all fuck?

>>2024326
>humans elves and LIZARDS
Like the first two make total sense, but I guess I didn't know what to expect for third place either. Lizardmen have being the first DLC going for them I guess?
I play nothing but short races, didn't think dwarves or halflings would make 3rd but scalies are a surprise
>mystic, feudal, high
This is no surprise. I like Mystic, made Ulduar before with it. Mystic was already crazy before and even crazier after it's free update. Default wizard civ, cut out physical ranged units for more battlemages, simplifies what unit enchantments you'll hunt for
Feudal and high are alright and make sense being there
>evocation, faith, enhancement
Evocation is the biggest braindead pick if you're going mystic, the two are stuck together like glue since they work so well together for a nice start.
I do pick faith more than anything, even when it doesn't make sense for whatever theme I'm trying to craft. I just really like the utility and buildings in it
The enchantment tome I used to pick often, kinda fell out of using it after the game started getting updates. Still handy
>talk about vampires at the end?
Okay, I'm imagining not like just a tome with vampirism, but a fuckin vampire ruler type. That could be pretty badass

>>2024463
Idk I feel bad for the normies playing feudal before the GK update that was hands down the worst culture until the update a month ago. Glad it seems like more content is coming after archon prophecy

>>2024463
>Okay, I'm imagining not like just a tome with vampirism, but a fuckin vampire ruler type
If it's just a tome with vampire transformation or some vampire summon I'm going to be very disappointed. Vampire ruler could be pretty cool though.

>>2024551
I’d be ok with a transformation honestly but actual ruler would be sick. I also think having vampire tier 4-5 units would really make ancient wonder and infestation battles a lot more interesting like for the existing tombs and graveyards plus hopefully new ones with fun flavor texts. Yeah maybe they’ll finally split frost off into its own affinity (maybe just create a straight up new water line?) and shadow will be well shadow and necromancy and vampirism stuff which would be way better. I hope we also get more non-umbral demon stuff as well

>>2024551
Wide variety of shit they could toss to a vampire ruler type
>normal sized customizable dudes like wizard kings/champions or bigass monster?
>maybe that can be optional progression as it levels. Look like a suave motherfucker the entire time or a bigass bat mofo
>possible retread on mind control powers eldritch sovereign has, does not have to be a main theme
>manage a blood tithe on your cities, low or high, for economy boosts or a unique resource to do spell shit with
>deal with unrest if you get super demanding if you bleed your towns or free cities dry
>have bonuses fighting anything that BLEEDS
>be able to indoctrinate your heroes, make them lesser vampires one by one, government and combat bonuses and different looks like a minor TF
>get a terrain type that makes everything you terraform spooky. Not actual gloom though, fuck that shit. Mutually exclusive since the Shadow Endalion straight up says he hates tentacle shit. Just make everything look like Sylvania
>undead bonuses all around, but not mutually exclusive with using living dudes if you want. Living dudes get you that fix anyways, you WANT them around in some capacity
>I guess be a cool governor and be loved by your people, become that 'rational necromancer' fence sitters claim can work
>or kill everyone just to be edgy and be forced to raid your neighbors for a blood fix
I dunno, it sounds cool in my head at least. Make your own Dracula. Package it with a DLC that gives more undrafted support and that sounds like an easy sell

>>2024580
UNDEAD support autocorrect holy fucking shit goddamn piss fuck

>>2024326
>mfw they save vampire for the last part of Season 3

What niches would you like filled by a new ruler type? Speaking of vampires it's an argument you could apply to dragons too but I can kinda see them as the ruler that plays tall. Lots of focus on the throne city, a domain that rapidly grows and steals/corrupts even claimed lands. Espionage and ruler to ruler diplomacy could also be other aspects they focus on

>>2024620
For a tall type of leader I would go for a hivemind sort of deal
>limited or no standard mobility, moves along with the capital
>every army and city in its reinforcement range receives bonuses based on its affinity and skill points
>gains reinforcement range with levels, can also build mind nodes in outposts and cities that extend the reinforcement range

>>2024620
To be desu I already have the most important archetypes I want in the game. Wizard culture, wizard ruler, and even an eldritch outer wizard ruler (I like wizards).
The only thing I really want that we don't already have is bunny racial forms.

>>2024842
I want minotaur race too and for the Giant Kings to be able to eat small and medium units like the Kargh

>>2024842
In terms of forms I've noticed on the official board and reddit that the things that are most often requested are minotaurs and centaurs. Minotaurs shouldn't be too hard to do but I don't see Centaurs being added as a form or transformation since a quadruped form would be too radically different from the base skeleton and animation set that all racial units use. Maybe as a non-racial unit though.

Can someone shill this game to me? I think this is the first AoW game that didn't draw me in. And that includes AoW2 base campaign.

>>2024907
Centaur wouldn't work as a base race, but could be done as major transformation. See: naga.

>>2024907
They already have both human and horse skeletons, and their human skeletons are apparently designed to have modular bottoms since naga transformation works, so I think they could hack together a centaur without a massive amount of effort if they really wanted to.

>>2024978
DLC and patches add a lot to the barebone feeling the game had early on. Like just as a small example, Forms. Used to have 3 points to buy abilities with, which was basically nothing. Now you have 5 points to work with and a huge list of abilities, so a lot more customization is possible.

Heroes are a more recent change, instead of every hero having the exact same list of skills, now every hero has a class, every class has it's own unique skill tree, and different ruler types also have their own unique skill branches in addition to their class. Also every hero has an ambition/renown track which improves their governor bonuses among other things. Several cultures now have sub-cultures you can pick to specialize them in different directions, as another example.

Just lots of small improvements like that across the entire game, makes it feel a lot less shallow and boring to play. It's still very much a create-your-faction sandbox game, but now it's a pretty good one instead of a no choices simulator.

>>2018665
They already did this song and dance with AoW3 and came to the conclusion that aquatic cities/cultures fundamentally mismatch with the rest of the game.

I wish the race creator had flaws as well as boons. You can't recreate older AoW races, like elves weak to blight, slow dwarves or orcs who suck at ranged combat.

And speaking of blight, I hate how AoW4 handles damage types. Give me back proper immunities and vulnerabilities, how the hell do I kill magma spirits with a fireball or poison an iron golem?

>>2025306
Different game, different time. I think aquatic could totally work with AoW 4 and would hopefully lead to a pirate tracer subculture and a barbarian sea raider sub culture

>>2025530
I don't even care that much about an Aquatic culture (though it could be neat) I just want more water themed stuff like water magic, water summons, more Ice magic, and yeah, Pirate/Viking stuff would be cool.

>>2025533
I think they should split off Ice and create a new affinity branch around water and put it there moving tome of winds there and making the stormborne one astral water instead of astral nature

>>2025530
Not really because they're running into the same problem as before. All of their DLC is centered on the land, giving it way more content than the sea. On top of the usual inherent difficulty in interacting with other players.

>>2025533
It *is* pretty weird tide spirit is the only one you can't summon.

>>2025742
You can now. Summon elemental from the tome of geomancy has a 50% chance of giving you a tide spirit on a water tile. The other 50% is a storm spirit.

>>2025274
Sounds neat. Did they add unit descriptions and a story campaign of sorts? I know, not a priority, but I always liked those.

>>2025766
nta, campaigns are still relegated to single map story realms. They're okay, all contributing to a greater story, but still limited. I miss old grand campaigns too. The expansions released two sets so far. One shows off what happened to the Commonwealth and kind of a small lore dump for fans of AoW3. The second set brings back the shadow realm and shadow demons in the same manner for AoW Shadow Magic.
I forget if it was guaranteed, but I think the next DLC may be coming with more story map shit? It's supposed to be about the Archons, and whatever the fuck they've been up to, so it's a good chance to drop more lore shit if they do

Oh and no unit desc's still. I miss that shit too. I can imagine at least one reason they'd skip that is just to keep the illusion of your custom OC faction doods to not conflict with any potential flavor text

>>2025604
They’ve updated water tiles though it used to just be farm tiles if i remember correctly then they added dredger quarries and mangrove forests and I think pedal mines and mana nodes but those two might have been at release. Also stormborne naga transformation allowing units to appear swimming instead of ships and movement show plus giants now walking through water knee deep all point to improvements made on water since release. Given how many times the underground has been updated I think next should be more water stuff including aquatic cultures as island maps may be my favorite layout

>Decide to make a faction with a giant storm king and primal crow because I thought that the idea of halflings riding hippos (elephants) down rivers was funny
>Take experienced seafarers
Goddamn, I was getting a shitton of resources from basic provinces. I had more mana than I knew what to do with, enough to make my summoners jealous.
Anywho
>3 player map, allied with one, defensive pact with the other (they're fighting, of course)
>Start magic victory
>Other dude asks for an alliance
>Agree
>Military victory
...I don't think I could get more 'diplomatic victory' than that, what the fuck?

>>2024707
Consider: Cursed Artifact leader type.

>>2026263
Combining the economic terrain bonuses of Primal and Giant Kings can actually go pretty far. At least it did for my ashlander halflings. Gold income outpaced my needs quick, and the terraforming rocks meant I wasn't restricted to where dens where and I could settle anywhere
Going ice with the two might work too, Marching Winter could be stacked on top for another small eco buff. Other than that I don't see much going for it
Rock/tunnel spider could be the best simply because tunnel spider feels like it fucking rules now among all the Primal subcultures

>>2025899
Bummer.

>>2026978
https://youtube.com/shorts/Kvr9_Br31fo?si=FfLsgw_0wTaKfpOO

Lol they list the story as a top 5 but there’s no campaign. I’ve only played 4 and love it. The story realms and some other stuff like wonders and the new legends of mynmerdia or whatever have cool lore snippets but it’s clear they cheated out on the story for this one despite having what looks like pretty good lore

>>2027281
The lore is pretty expansive and much larger than what's typically shown ingame. It used to be that they told the central part of the story in a proper campaign and then gave hints and references to stuff like historically relevant events in handmade skirmish maps, but now that they've gotten rid of both campaigns and handmade maps what's left of the story is rather barebones and fragmented.

It's worth pointing out though, that this is 100% intentional. I think this was during Planetfall, but the devs have said in an interview a while back that they found that campaigns just weren't worth making anymore. According to their metrics, most players either ignored them or never finished them, and making a good campaign took a lot of development time. So they chose to reduce the campaign to the bare minimum (which you can already see in Planetfall) and focus on other aspects of the game instead, and use procedurally generated maps for theoretically endless variety so they wouldn't have to spend time on handmade maps. Whether that's really an improvement is probably a matter of opinion, but I do miss the campaigns of 1, 2 and 3 because they were a big draw for me personally. Don't get me wrong skirmish games are fun too, but I usually only played those after finishing the campaign a few times and I rarely play multiplayer.

>>2025331
Ideally they would rework the race creator to be more Stellaris-like
>5 traits max, positive traits cost points while negative traits grant points
>terrain preference as a point neutral pick, maybe also comes with some minor resistance changes like ashlands preference giving 1 fire resistance and 1 frost weakness
>traits for both the strategic and tactical layer

>>2026291
Are we talking sentient blade type of cursed artifact or stone monolith type of cursed artifact? I would take either

>>2024707
>limited or no standard mobility, moves along with the capital
They should take the Dominions route and just add stuff like inanimate statues and big rocks as leader options.

>>2027583
Perhaps a materium hivemind could be a big rock monolith/henge (like that one Hellenika nation that's all rocks)

>>2027583
This fits suspiciously well. Only Eldritch Sovereigns are missing.

>>2027597
Only R'lyeh gets access to Eldritch Sovereigns

>>2026641
Yeah I just finished a run where I went Frost Giant-Primal Mammoth-Ice and Nature Tomes and it was pretty strong. Once Marching Winter came online I was getting something retarded like bonus production mana and food for every snow tile.

The main thing you get out of going Frost Giant is bonus mana, so basically gotta be a summoning build, Undead, Nature, or Astral being the obvious routes. Which also works well for Primal since their units are dogshit anyway.

Still sucks thematically of course since you can't really do anything with Ice Magic except terraform and do a little bit of bonus ice damage on your units.

>>2027597
I def think they need to add the “huge retard” mount option ASAP

>>2027574
My first thought was cursed amulet, but they could use different artifact types as different classes.

Any new mods to make the female giant kings sexier?

>>2028944
Not as of yet sadly.

Remember what they took from you.

>>2034112
I wonder if it's because they think making her human would clash with non-human RP builds. I don't want my plant mole empire to have a token human chick or a sexy mole chick in my empire. The dryad titty lady at least blends in with the rest of the entwined aesthetic.

>>2034203
Yeah it's thematically consistent since other fey units like the fairies and mistlings also have a more plant-like aesthetic. In AoW1/2 the Nymph was part of the elven faction so it makes sense that she looked like a big titty elf, but in AoW3/4 she's fey and not part of any specific faction. In AoW3 it didn't really make sense that she still looked like an elf. Still, would've been neat to make her a racial unit instead of a generic fey. AoW3's Nymph wasn't racial, but they did have racial succubi so you could make "ugly" races like dwarves or goblins into a succubus if you wanted.

I got the game pretty recently. Crimson Caldera is such a difficulty spike! I suppose I either need to hide and smallpox my cities up in my corner super fast, or then try and spam harrass one neighbor at a time while defending the other front

>>2034353
Yeah that's a tricky map, but at least you get story-based ways to sabotage your opponents. If you can avoid getting gangbanged by Karissa and Cinren early on and don't take so long that someone on the other side of the map initiates a magic victory it's not that hard IMO. Grexolis is harder IMO, at least the first time through, because you're up against a blatantly OP enemy and have to partially rely on retarded AI teammates.

>>2034353
To be desu I didn't find that map hard at all. I completely ignored the enemy civs and just went for the special quests, since they're pretty easy and allow you to instantly eject the related civ from the game entirely.
My cities also ended up being pretty small, since I went all in on mana production and building conduit special improvements on every province.

When are we getting tieflings? No, oni and demonkin transformations don't count.

>>2034112
>by the time I get these fucks half my enemies are the undead, who's balls have rotted away and don't care about elf booba
Feels like too much of a gamble to recruit. At least if I get some for free I can hit dark elves with full frontal when they're not spamming their own spooky units

>>2034353
Crimson Caldera is a definite escalation, but isn't at all terrible. The fun thing here is everyone is thankfully in a FFA rage cage match with war, so you're not going to get gangbanged by an alliance of four guys... unlike Grexolis

>>2034588
Fuck thieflings, I need little rabbit people so that my culture of bunnies can raze the world in the name of their eldritch god.

>>2034794
>Fuck thieflings
That's the plan.

>>2008988 (OP)
>giant kings
No. I WILL play a dragon lord for the 389th time and I WILL like it.

>>2039033
Why not play a wizard king and get the ability to... um... cast another useless spell ever 2 turns?

>>2034112
AoW1 is my favorite, so much soul.

>>2039252
If you think spells are useless you're playing the game wrong.

>>2039252
lol clearly haven’t played the game

But I want a mod where my giantess rulers can swallow people whole and sit on them

>wizard lord
>dragon lord
>eldritch sovereign
>giant king
erm. no thanks. i'll just make another fifty mortal champions, if you don't mind.

>>2041087
I think the only one I don’t like playing is Eldritch Sovereign fun enemies though

>>2041765
It's kinda sad how lame edlritch sovereigns ended up being

>>2041815
Yeah I wish they weren’t all tentacle rape monsters or biblically accurate angels aside from the fairy looking one.

>>2041815
I like them, personally. Probably my favorite ruler type.

>>2042202
Why?

>>2042205
I like the flavor and I always liked their signature skills, especially compared to the set that humans get, both before and after the hero rework. The diplomacy options it gives with free cities/vassals are nice, too. Being able to -(DIDN'T YOU MEAN TO ASK ABOUT FLOWERS?)- them when they give you a dumb quest or declare war on you is nice.
Also Mystic Summoners has come to be my favorite culture, and they synergize well with it since they get a few "unique" summons and are a magic origin unit themselves.

Been a while since i played, they nerfed full hero stacks right?

>>2042241
Pretty sure they reverted that change

>>2039252
>useless spells
Glad you agree. Just cast useful spells and watch combat end two or three times as fast
Infinitely fucking terrifying when you get the empire improvement to cast turn 1 of combat
>chain lightning
>or crystal crash
>or calamity comet
>or tectonic shatter
>previously turned on cascading power
>stack dissonance if you're the spellfucker mystic culture

I forgot how silly things get with regenerating infestations.

>>2042216
I only tried Eldritch sovereign once, wasn't too wowed to try it again soon but the faction I built for it was also Mystic summoners and going full astral with it REALLY meshed well
>pick society traits for magic shit and summoning
>free tidal spirit at the start which carries early fights
>spec towards summoning a Magebane as a midgame beat stick, expensive though
>thanks to that fucking golden globe wonder, get that sick ass progenitor golem to summon in combat
>lithorite battle mage t4 is a solid spammable unit to collect my mage enchantments, AND also get summon bonuses
>summoning reaches a peak crazy with tier 5 tome to keep them all sonic speed and 30% damage
>my fishfucker mermaid sovereign also counts as magic origin, so it gets the boost too
>cast forgotten tomes to nuke armies from across the field
>somehow find a leftover marauder stack with a lost wizard, game let's me thrall them
>it ALSO has forgotten tomes to spam in combat
>end most fights before any army reaches me
Wild ride

some new from the archon DLC the new culture isn't a order one

>>2044113
Good. We already have three fucking order cultures.

>>2044113
proofs?

>>2044113
I hope if they add a new shadow culture they also rebalance dark so it doesn't get power crept into oblivion.

>>2044113
So it's not some archon adjacent culture then?
I don't see how you can be anything like the Highmen without being big on order
Proofs plox

some news from the archon DLC it will be a promotional crossover with EU5 and the new faction will be Ulm

>>2044599
Only thing I can find is this:https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/news.1756890/

Which says the new culture is not Archon culture. It also references the DLC tagline as "Take Command of the Forces of Light" though, so hard to imagine that all/most of the content isn't Order focused in some way.

>>2044821
I do genuinely hope it's not an order culture though, because seriously we already have fucking three of them. Order tomes are fine.
It does say "join the celestial archons" so together with "take command of the forces of light" I assume archons will be added as a dwelling like the rocky boys from the giant dlc and you'll be able to take command of their forces in much the same way as you could with the rocky boys.

>>2045939
Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Making Archons a new dwelling similar to the Crystal Guys actually makes a ton of sense.

>>2045939
Archons are a race, not a culture. So it makes sense that the new culture isn't Archons. It could still be Archon-inspired though. I certainly wouldn't mind a Greco-Roman styled culture.

>>2044821
What are titan units? Are they like giants?

>>2045939
>evil tentacle demons that are annoying as fuck to deal with, even if you enjoy committing war crimes
>neutral autistic crystals that just want to study and form an internet with their brother basement dwellers, offer sweet ass deals
>potential pure good archon dwelling???
It'd even our the alignment interactions for these dwellings, wonder what they could be like for diplomacy and trade rewards

Still what the fuck could the culture be. If it's not archons then that's cool by giving us more freedom, but what fantasy civ or trope is there to emulate next? Something that could be astral or shadow based on total available affinities of the others so far?

>>2046735
Yeah they mentioned in one of the GK streams that the Archon DLC would add holy giants and undead giants, though only as units not as leaders.

>>2046735
Titans were the old T4 units for Archons, essentially holy giants yes.

>>2034782
>Crimson Caldera is a definite escalation, but isn't at all terrible. The fun thing here is everyone is thankfully in a FFA rage cage match with war, so you're not going to get gangbanged by an alliance of four guys... unlike Grexolis
NTA.
The way you describe it is how it should go, sure, but in my experience it's all pure random.
First time I completed campaign soon after the game came out Caldera was a breeze, basically a chain of 1v1 fights against AI.
Last time (after giant kings release) they all immediately ganged on me, completely ignoring each other, and I had to turtle & do quests to actually win (it was that or slowly grinding them down for 150+ turns).

By comparison Grexolis was ridiculously easy last time, me and one of the allies ganged up on the main enemy guy (the angel orc) and killed him + his free city within 20 turns.
After that, the rest of the enemies were unable to offer any resistance at all.

>>2046805
>what they could be like for diplomacy and trade rewards
Maybe they send us to kill urrath's forces?
Or ask for some of our units to join them in a fight in another world?
Donate resourses or population to help their cause but unlike the umbrals or crystals they don't ask us for them but we flat out donate to them?
I'm really look forward for the archons, as of now evil alignment got way way too much attention, give us good players something too(but it makes sense thematicly good does not ask for rewards) and i'm starting to really fucking hate materium that shit got way way way too much dev preference leaving shadow,nature and chaos all but forgotten with nature getting the worst of it

>>2047865
The one thing I will say about Nature is that it has the most diverse endgames/Major Transformations. You can go full plant, you can go Naga, you can go Dragon and all of those are viable branching builds with opportunities to cross-over to some extent.

That said, Nature still has pretty limited tomes overall and animals are neglected to the point of not even really being viable anymore. The plant tomes have been heavily power-creeped from what they used to be but at least the last big balance patch boosted them a little bit.

I'd like to see more nature tomes focused on Animals and Water Magic, would be pretty cool. Maybe even a major beast transformation that lets your racial units get the animal keyword?

>>2048189
A werewolf or beast-form Major Transformation would be rad.

>>2048234
They mentioned wanting to do something with vampires in Season 3. A DLC with vampires and werewolves would be pretty cool. Only issue with werewolves is that it's kinda silly to combine with the Lupine form.

>>2048296
If they went for it, it wouldn't be literally werewolves, it would be something more generically beastly that just gives the racial form mucho chest hair or whatever.

>>2048189
I’m hoping for more nature order hybrid tomes

>>2048296
>>2048510
Different forms depending on unit type. Wolf scouts, bear shield units, etc.

>>2048510
> werewolves,
They could introduce a day and night cycle like Spellforce COE did with the lastest DLC?
Give the werewolf and vampire extra stats at night but 0 benefits at day

drider major TF when
I found dark elf executioners way more useful than these things back in AoW1, but if they inserted a naga TF why not a spider one

Now that the hype has faded, I think giant kings needed more content for the $20 especially since Ways of War is half the cost and included way more times a new culture happenings and all that. I think giant kings is my favorite and I buy the season pass anyway but it sort of felt like a smaller DLC. I wish each alignment had a giant king instead of just four and there were more tomes included. The new units and enemies are fun but given the price wish there was just more included

>>2053401
As many have said in the thread it would've been a great time to add more pure frost tomes to the game. Playing a frost giant feels very incomplete cause the frost theme just ends after tier 3.

Is there a way to make elven females look more like in AoW3?
Right now apart from one, maybe two faces they all look like ugly old women tired of life
Similar thing with human females

Anyone tried doing a single player game with several rulers in hotseat just doing PvE against a hostile environment? High world difficulty, high happenings, regenerating infestations, angry city states, umbral invasions, etc?

>>2044821
This new culture talk makes me wonder what the fuck we'll get next. So they straight up say it's not literal Archons for us, Archons absolutely scream to me as a perfect dwelling material so they still make an appearance. But the look of the dlc and base text still gives that order/light vibe. High culture already exists, so that's be more Order saturation. Maybe it's some culture that'd be in natural opposition to Archons for us to commit war crimes on or commit war crimes as
Maybe an Archon based DLC is the perfect time to give High a FLC update with subcultures? Other vanilla cultures seem like they need more help maybe, I don't know

Trying to wrap my head around what it could even be. Currently we have;
>High. High elves, high men. TALL ASS SPIRES AND IVORY TOWERS! Look so fucking fab anyone else of your species looks like unenlightened grugs
>Dark. We evil nigga, gonna torture you, Mordor and Isengard up in this bitch
>Feudal. THE basic medieval kingdom standard. CROPS and RIDERS OF ROHAN
>Industrial. Dorf culture. So dorf any other species looks silly wearing this. HOLD THE LINE! Hammers and anvils BITCH
>Barbarian. Conan looking fuckers. Wild men. Mongols if they weren't Vikings. VALHALLA I AM COMIIIIING
>Mystic. Mageocracy. Dalaran. Just wizard dicks everywhere. It don't get more magical than this
>Reaver. GUNFUCKERS. Terico, colonizers and conquistadors. Industrial when they're not raiding. Pirates if we sailing. Diplomacy is for fags, talk to my smoothbore
>Primal. Cave dwelling grugs. What IS metalworking? So natural we nearly return to monke. Talking to galactic-wide animal spirits
>Oathsworn. Asian. Far East. Oriental. Swear by some fucking rules like a samurai, cripple yourself so hard you commit sudoku if you break them. Babby cultivation
Every time I think of a fantasy trope that could be a new civ/culture, it's already in as a Major racial TF, like wightborn for a necropolis kind of deal, so I'm stumped now what it on what it could be

>>2053999
Ziggurat Culture. Worshipping one of the Endailons, shaping their affinity. They get quests from their Endailon during the game and receive rewards according to their difficulty. Bigger cities build bigger ziggurats and can ask for more difficult quests.

>>2053999
They could always just shit out some real world culturte equivalents like they did for the Chinese/Japanese Oathsworn.

Greek, Aztec, Arabic, Egyptian, etc. In fact they already have an excuse for several of these because they were in previous games, like Azracs and Nomads. And the Archons were more or less Greek/Roman but even if we're not getting literal Archons they can still do something with the theme.

>>2053748
Yeah I’m not a fan of all the female faces being ugly for every race except maybe two at most hope they add more faces and boob and ass sliders one day so dick of Trannie designers not letting anyone have fun

>>2054543
sorry liberals, suits decided that this game needs to theoretically be playable by little timmy who has never seen a boob in his life

>>2054676
Tits and not ugly heroes were a thing in AoW3, you know

>>2022751
swap their names but godspeed with your play anon
I like larping in stellaris more (because my shitty laptop doesn't overheat then) but have fun

>>2054824
Yeah and even in that not-so-distant past it got a lot of criticism from the usual sources for having the gall to include hot women.

I do feel like we're close to turning a corner with this shit, though.

>>2054896
lol no it didn't

>>2054543
>Yeah I’m not a fan of all the female faces being ugly for every race
All the female rat faces are cute

>>2054937
Yeah it did, I fucking remember even their official twitter account having to respond to bullshit articles about their game being sexist and shit. They tried the "the guys are also hot" defense too and the feminist harpies weren't haven't it.

Company was more based back then, I died a little inside during the first video preview when they showcased that "sex" as an option had been removed.

>>2055004
You're gonna have to provide a link because that sounds like bullshit.

>>2055045
I'm not gonna dredge up shit from over a decade ago for your amusement, I was there when it happened. I used to beta test for AoW 3, actually, last time I cared about a video game enough to bother.

Kids these days don't understand that the whole "women in video games have to be ugly or you're sexist" BS goes back a lot longer than the tranny thing, which is a much more recent fixation.

>>2055051
Speaking of AoS beta testing, I spent most of my credibility fighting to keep Tigrans, Frostlings and Necromancers from being nerfed into the fucking ground every other week. The whining was unreal.

The Sphinx especially, it still ended up garbage in the end, but I did everything I could to try and salvage it, getting them to move the charm effect to gold medal instead of getting rid of it completely, buffing the ranged attack so it actually did...anything, sigh.

>>2054676
lol AoW 1 had tits out Nymphs. Why do zoomers hate female nudity so much?

>>2055329
Zoomers don't make the games.

>>2055051
>"I can't prove it but my dad works at Nintendo" argument
lol

>>2055364
Zoomers are in their mid 20 to late 20s now their entry to the work force lines up with all the censorship

>>2055051
Yes the trans Narrative Designer (seen on this live stream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiAPR8c0Lu8&list=PLWGWMn-MF2zJ_I1axlQt-Zinsh4dQSZ8j&index=24&t=387s) has nothing to do with 90% of the female characters having man faces. Especially when their Linkedin states this:
"I believe games can be more than entertainment; they can change people and allow them to learn about others and themselves in a safe environment"

They wont stop unless we rise up and demand attractive females and purge the trannies from dev jobs

>>2055501
All I'm saying is this stupid trend started before you were born, kiddo. Obviously the trannies keep it going but they didn't start this particular train. The oldest example I can think of when I first noticed it personally was with OG Neverwinter Nights, there were retards on the forums whining about the female faces being "too attractive" and after that point coincidentally all the new female faces they added were uggos. You started gradually seeing it more and more around that time.

>>2055553
>calls me kiddo
>brings up never winter nights as an “old game”
>2002 is old now

Yeah this totally happened in the 80s! Genius move zoomer. I guess you were too young to be born to play DoA games which went strong with jiggle physics until 2012. Most fighting games were horny as hell until about 2016. Your example of CRPG just proves my point that it’s troons behind this mainstream video games were still horny well into the 2010s. The troons were locked into mmos on PCs until 2015 when they seemed to go on a never ending rampage until the present. Sorry I hurt your zoom zoom feelings but you’re wrong. The feminists screeched forever but no one gave a shit until the end of Obama’s second term aside from a few morale panics like hookers in GTA 3 and Vice City. This puritanical Trannie censorship was designed to scold and demoralize the gaming masses because of gamergate and is inorganic psyop

>>2055573
>>2002 is old now
>23 years ago

Yeah, it kinda is.

>>2055573
>inorganic psyop
It's not when they unironically believe it, like coping about more than two genders not being real but "the good thing" to believe in.

I can't wait for them all to be hitten with something even harder than ww1.

>>2054834
It was a weird but fun run. Most Primal units feel gimped, so I had to do a lot of manual battles and stick to my terraformed Ashlands. The leaping spear guys are decent though, fun backline divers, pretty mobile. I've played nearly every subculture of Primal I kinda got used to how mid their lineup is. They make up for it with their terraforming economy boons
For most of the playthrough, the most egregious bit was Zainab camp being underground.
I simply conceded there was no way I'd be positioning these in any geographic
order that makes sense, and just made do with what colonizable land I DID have.
AND I already ran out of name ideas once I had my fifth city. The game was pretty much over then, but I would have either had to grab more city names from the minor 1-2 hut camps around Vvardenfell, or use tribe names ESO makes up

Getting tired of every AI taking slip away. I swear its 3 out of 5 that take it now. It just drags on fights and is annoying to clean up.

>>2056060
It was better before multiplayer fags whined and got the primal summoner nerfed so you could just spam your primal spirit animal way easier, was a good time with the more crocodiles just everywhere summoned behind enemy units

>>2056643
How did they change it? I missed that balance patch.

>>2056702
The animist support unit used to be able to summon the primal animal way faster and I think your ruler or lords in general could too (can’t remember how it worked since they redid the whole hero skill and level up thing) but more or less if I remember right you could have animists in your army summoning them without restriction on like turn two and just place them behind the enemy units. I think they might have also nerfed the power of the primal animals themselves as in temper the more crocodiles were broken af before but I played them a few months ago and they seemed weaker but the big change was the primal fury or whatever stack acquisition getting nerfed so you couldn’t spam as fast. It wasn’t omega busted because most of your culture units sucked or were mediocre so it was fun as I really focused on your chosen animal

>>2056987
They didn't change how fast you can get the summons out afaik, but they did make it so you have to summon them near yourself instead of instantly dropping them in the enemy backlines.

>>2057037
Looked it up but it’s a pain to go through all the notes but looks like the big change for animist was Patch 1.007
Summon Primal Spirit - Now can only be used Once Per Battle

I have no idea how to pace in this game, I feel like I'm always super behind because I look at the AI and they have like double my cities with 3x as much pop (on normal difficulty) so I think I invest too much in military and then I lose battles against random infestations so I'm somehow not investing enough. What's the general build order, when should you be settling and how much military should you have in like the first 30ish turns?

>>2057697
I tend to expand pretty slowly, but I think realistically you should be looking for decent places to plop down an outpost for a future city right away and/or looking to conquer the free city that starts near you. Typically I just look for a location that has 2-3 special features nearby. Just filling in your two free city slots is great for income and I think should be done as soon as reasonably possible, though sometimes I'm pretty slow about it. I usually queue up three scouts on turn 1 for exploring and bolster my starting army with summons or free units you get from exploring.
For military I typically only have one army for the early game and when I get my first hero I add them to my ruler's army until I can get their own army online, which might take a little bit before I start production. Beyond the early game I usually just have one army per hero. By the time a new hero slot opens up my economy can usually handle another army of T1s, though sometimes I wait a while before actually recruiting a new hero. If I have a surplus of resources and I'm actually at war I'll make a heroless support army, even if it's just T1s.
I usually play a little cowardly and only take on fights listed as low risk. Make sure you look at what level the infestations you're taking on are. Bronze are fine early on, but silver and gold should be avoided. In general you should just be going around and bullying the guys squatting on resource nodes for easy xp. Sometimes the AI also just focuses on food/population. It doesn't necessarily mean you're in a worse spot. As I tend to focus on research and mana and fill every province with special conduit improvements my cities often end up being quite small.

>>2057697
>What's the general build order
In generaly you start with a workshop, and after that the order of importance is more or less:
>1) City Hall upgrades (with boost)
>2) Mage Tower upgrades (with boost)
>3) Draft and Research buildings
>4) Mana and Gold buildings (only when you actually need them, try to delay them early on and survive on pickups)
>5) All of the above again, except without boosts
>6) Production buildings.
>7) Food buildings.

Production buildings kinda suck unless you have a faction variant that gives something besides Production, because they take way too long to pay off. Spending 3 turns to build shit 10% faster is just a massive waste of tempo early on. Food sucks for a similar reason, you don't need much to make a functional city and what little you do need you can probably just get from the terrain.
>b-but what if I need to grow my city to claim a magic material or wonder?
That's what outposts are for. Better to spend 2 turns building an outpost than god knows how many turns it takes to grow another pop past the early game.

>when should you be settling
Your first 2 settlements should be made as soon as you can afford them. You should save up your imperium for this purpose. Depending on your settings you'll likely have a friendly city near you, if you can conquer them by force early on that's great for tempo and takes care of your first "settlement". Don't spend too long looking for the perfect location for your initial cities.
BTW this is another reason why Primal is just not a good culture. Their economy mechanics rely too heavily on settling near their totem thingies, and if you don't get them spawned near you you can end up spending way too much time looking for a good place to put your next city.

>how much military should you have in like the first 30ish turns?
As much as you can afford the upkeep for. Early on you want to go hunting for mobs as quickly as possible. More armies = more fights = more XP and pickups.

Give me a reaver build to try, its the only culture ive never been able to click with mostly cause i can never think of a way to go with them.

>>2058190
>claims to prioritize city hall upgrades with boost
>boost for city hall is based purely on population number
>derides building food buildings and places them at the lowest tier

Don’t listen new players! Focus on what realm traits are and what your surrounding tiles are to know what to build and focus on getting those boosts! Remember stability will make your city more productive and output more resources so don’t sleep on those buildings either!

>>2058451
Are you dumb?

IF you have the boost it's top priority. If you don't, it drops lower. Why is that impossible for you to comprehend?

>>2058190
Very comprehensive, thanks anon

>>2058594
I should maybe add that the build order I gave was mostly for the early game. Later on things like Mana and Gold become more important as you'll get bigger and more expensive armies as well as more spells to cast and more casting points to cast them with, so you'll want your income to keep up with that. In the very late game you'll almost inevitable have more Gold and Mana than you can reasonably spend, but for most of the game you'll want a good balance between what you're spending and what you're earning. After all there's no interest system, so unless you're saving up for something specific money in the bank is money wasted.
Also, things can shift around a bit depending on your playstyle, like a very summon-heavy playstyle will likely need less Draft past the early game and more Mana. And if you like to play relaxed games on big maps with few/easy enemies, it doesn't hurt to get more Food and Production to build cool megacities (though generally Food and Production are still the least important resources). Overall Research is always a top priority no matter the state of the game, because it scales better than anything else. And you always want enough Draft to quickly build new armies when necessary as well.

>>2058541
>1) City Hall upgrades (with boost)
>2) Mage Tower upgrades (with boost)
>are you dumb? I didn’t write boosts!

Don’t listen to this idiot knuckle dragger chums, if he can’t lay out his arguments clearly he can’t lay out his cities or plan an empire

>>2059422
Okay, so you're genuinely dumb and illiterate. Thank you for confirming that.

>>2059422
>5) All of the above again, except without boosts
NTA, but it's pretty obvious. The numbers aren't there just for shit and giggles. You don't have a boost on City Hall upgrade? You go to step 2. Don't have boost on Mage Tower? You go to step 3. And so on, and so on, until you run into something to build. You'll be building different shit until you'll eventually get enough population to boost the City Hall upgrade, then do that, then pick the next available item on the list.

>>2059479
>>2060849
Samefagging, pathetic. Your list sucks and you should focus on population until you get the tier 3 city boost

>>2060957
>Samefagging, pathetic.
lol
>you should focus on population
lmao

with wightborn being a thing what is even the point of vampires?

>>2066680
it's something nonwights wouldn't understand

>>2066680
cuz they ain't sexy for the coomers and the girls that play it and yeah a lot of girls love aow4
Can you guess their favorite race?
Elves

Why isn't the game more popular? it's way better than civshit, and more modern. I think a lot of people know about the game and of its good opinions but still don't try it

>>2067196
The amount of DLC doesn't help, honestly. While I think the base game situation in this game is pretty good since the game gets a fairly substantial free update with every DLC, someone looking at the game in the store doesn't know that and just sees that the game has $100 of DLC in addition to the cost of the base game.
I know I've personally passed on other games for the exact same reason, and might have passed on this one too if I didn't get in at a time where there was only one DLC.

Would it be too much or would anybody else like a sky island layer added to the game thats more astral/high themed.

>>2067196
Its just not as well known in a genre thats still pretty under the radar unless you're civ

>>2067196
Strategy games in general just scare the hoes I'm afraid

How good is this if you want to fuck with necromancy?
Like full on 'enslave the world, send out plagues to kill cities, raise everything and steamroll' or more like HoNM3 where it was just 'you get to raise skeletons and that's about it'

>>2067493
Personally, I don't think necromancy is very good in this game. You can raise undead from slain enemies after a battle, but which kind you get depends on the enemy and imo it's kind of spotty. Humanoids of any tier gives you T1 skeletons (which can come in shield, spear, bow, and mage variants), non-humanoids either T3 or T4 give you a bone crab, and non-humanoid T5s give you a bone dragon. This means that when you're fighting another civ you're pretty much going to be getting mostly shitty skeletons, and due to the way that battles are structured (up to 6 units per army, up to 3 armies per side per battle) you can't just overwhelm enemies with a million skeletons like Dominions or something. You also can't just raise undead whenever, it has to be after a battle where you killed an appropriate kind of unit to be raised.
There's a racial transformation to turn your civ's units into undead, but imo it's pretty lackluster. Appearance wise it just gives them dark skin and makes their face transparent so you can see their skull underneath, the biggest problem for me is that it doesn't change how they act, so you'll still get quests where one of your undead citizens tells you they're unhappy with the lack of farms in your domain or whatever.

>>2067196
its popular for a strategy game.give it some more time wih a drop on the dlc prices and i think it will become a classic

>>2067493
Skeleton spam with later tiers being a bone crab and a dragon. They keep their original race's transformations though, so that's neat.


You could ignore the skeleton spam though and go wightborn which makes your racial units undead with life steal.

>>2067196
>it's way better than civshit
V+ civs are utter garbage so it's not exactly a compliment
aow itself has been paradoxized to hell and back and 4 is so disjointed that it overwhelms anyone who's not a high caliber gsg/4x autist

A whole bunch of info on the upcoming DLC has just been dropped:
https://www.gamewatcher.com/news/archon-prophecy-dlc-coming-to-age-of-wonders-4-on-august-12

>>2067560
There are also skills and items that can turn corpses into undead during battle which is actually quite strong because in addition to putting another body on the field it also removes the corpse, denying the enemy use of skills like canibalize and preventing units from being resurrected.

>>2068634
damn, looking pretty good.
no archon dwelling though?

>August

>>2068642
Doesn't look like it. There's an Archon tome and 5 new Archon wildlife units (3 holy, 2 undead) though.

>>2068650
Please understand. They're a Western European developer, they're going on holiday for most of the summer.

>>2068634
why is it a woman?

>>2068668
The Astra has been a woman since AoW1.

>>2068650
Same reaction when I read it lol, they have spoiled me with <1 month announcement to releases

Post (You)r pantheon, you have one, right Anon?

I’m hyped after the YouTube trailer for archon prophecy, 2 new story maps is cool can’t even remember if ways of war had a story map think it might have been back when Eldritch Realms released. Glad undead stuff is coming and I’m excited for the Archon stuff despite not playing any previous games in the series.

Like the other anon said disappointed there’s not a new dwelling and there’s apparently only one (1!) new wonder according to the stream page. New hero class sounds cool though and I’m hoping the new update brings a culture rework I’m hoping Dark since undead tomes are incoming though honestly I hope we get more than one rework this time.

Also August 12 seems so far was hoping for a July drop but I guess Dutch get summers off to go visit spice islands or something

>>2068704
>can’t even remember if ways of war had a story map
It didn't. Only Empires & Ashes and Eldritch Realms have had story maps if I remember correctly. Other DLCs have had scenario maps but that's not the same thing.

>>2068702
I remake my pantheon every time there's a new DLC, so it never got very big.

>>2068704
>I guess Dutch get summers off to go visit spice islands or something
Nah we just have our yearly migration caravan/endless traffic jam to the south of France.

Since we may have traction because of the announcement. What's your go-to mod?

>>2068736
I only use cosmetic stuff like Age of Colors and Age of Fashion.

>Forge your destiny with Prophecy Traits — new society traits that help you shape your empire. Early in your journey a vision will appear, challenging you to define your ruler’s purpose and ambitions. How you interpret it is up to you, but fulfilling the Prophecy will unlock powerful rewards.

neat. also finally a paladin hero class is nice too

>Tome of the Revenant – Channel the power of the dead, and take vengeance against the living.
I like more necro stuff but im also hoping this lets them reshuffle another shadow tome to add more frost magic that isnt tied to necromancy, and beyond tier 3. But im probably coping with that one.

"Architects" as a culture sounds really vague. I'm guessing it'll be vaugely Greco/Roman themed and have a chariot unit, just to bring all the new content together, but that's just a guess, the name and description implies almost nothing about how they fight or dress.

>>2069093
>chariot unit
HELL YES

>>2068642
It is likely that between the new tomes, the new culture (architects), the Elysian Form and the new hero class you'll be able to cobble together a reasonable recreation of Archons and that's why they aren't a new dwelling type.

Anyway, new culture, 4 tomes, two new story realms, new narrative gimmick, overall it's the Reaver DLC equivalent for this season. At least Prophecies sound more interesting than the snorefest that seals victories turned out to be.

>2 dwelling types
>You have to destroy one of them if you're not evil
Orphaned feature...

>>2069103
Yeah prophecies seem cool I’m also excited for the new cultures monuments that do affinity stuff hope they add some cool mechanics. Seals are so boring it’s sort of sad

>>2069103
>>2069106
I actually like Seals victory, because it's the only victory type that the AI doesn't completely suck at.

>>2069105
Being Good is suffering AOW4
Still won't stop me for being good, evilfag and neutralcucks can suck it

>>2069542
True, true, I agree with your statement.
I still wish there were more dwellings, however.

>>2069542
t.achon in the making

I'm curios how defensive the battlesaint will be, like would it even be allowed to do the retaliation defender shenanigans?

>>2069105
So far we've had one new dwelling type per season (evil in Eldritch Realms and neutral in Giant Kings) so maybe we'll get good dwellings in season 3.

>>2069662
Considering Death Knight and Spellblade are mostly just remixed versions of existing trees, I expect Battlesaint to basically be Ritualist + Defender. They'll probably get the healing branch from Ritualist, and from Defender I expect the shield branch rather than the retaliation branch, since the description of being a "martyr-like tank" brings to mind someone who endures lots of hits more than someone who hits back extra hard.

>>2069662
>retaliation defender shenanigans?
Is that actually really strong? What stuff do you pick up to make it fun?

>>2070075
it's lategame

>>2069097
yeah bro lemme just strap eagles to that and fly

>>2070706
no way that thing is a racial, it's gotta be a tome unit

>>2070736
The chariot is a new mount option.

>still no unit modding
it's never coming back, is it boys?

>>2070987
IIRC when the game came out they said that they didn't like how you couldn't see what a unit was capable of just by looking at the unit, which is why they didn't want to do unit modding again. Also apparently it was too complex for a lot of players, though I don't think those are the kind of players a dev should want to cater to...

>>2071039
>you couldn't see what a unit was capable of just by looking at the unit

Ah yes, unlike now where many units are a confusing rainbow of random effects or certain enchantments directly overlay/replace the graphics of previous ones. Or that you can just turn off most of the visuals for all enchants that don't change the unit model (like wings), so if you are actually in MP (please do entertain this joke) you can just toggle them all off so your enemy has to check the stat-sheet anyway.

Both excuses (visibility and too confusing) seem extremely weak when held up to any scrutiny at all. What really seems to be the reason is ease of content design now that they have scrapped any unique factions or techs. Fewer art assets needed, less annoying to balance now that (in theory) any unit can be given almost any applicable enchantment, and it means expansions/DLC content can be slotted in easier (just stack it with everything else).

>>2051333
I think Incarnates can be OP.
But desu, the most OP thing in base AoW1, at least the campaigns, is just a human air galley + leader and heroes.
I have beaten some later campaign missions by just using them and tracking down enemy leader and killing him, while controlling almost no map.
I remember once beating the first High Men mission by using random teleportation spell, teleporting to the corner of the map where the undead leader was chilling in a small town, killing him next turn and beating the mission in like 2 or 3 turns.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-43-archon-prophecy-the-architects-part-1.1791352/

time for a race of fat women

>>2071252
bonus affinity and resistances seems kind of powerful.
Does materium get +2 defense on all of it's units?

man i hate the music design in this game

it has so many nice music tracks but they get constantly interrupted by tha same lame ones whenever you click on half of the clickable things

>>2071503
Did they remaster any of the tracks from the older games, like 3 did?

>>2071302
Please no american form with mobility scooter mounts and with an mc donalds special building
I don't think the engine can handle the sheer weight of it

>>2058364
dunno, i just went rifle spam and rushed to give them wings

>>2057697
you're supposed to win all fights with 1 hero + 3 units

>>2071829
Nah they killed the 4 unit meta a while ago. Now you need a full stack to get optimal XP gains.

>>2058364
I tried to go as deep as I could with constructs during Giant Kings dlc with a r
Reaver build, solely because I remembered mage lock cannons were constructs
>ended up just spamming mage locks rifle units a lot
>all golem tomes, but I forgot to use them other than early meatshields
>underground, so Dungeon tome, did not use clay soldiers much, but they qualified
>crystal/elemental major TF, because I planned to take materium T5 since it buffed constructs
>DID use Ironclads once I got the associated tome
>built province factory that boosted construct unit starting rank
>combined with a recruitment governor and fireforge wonder, start rolling out cheap ironclads with near max veterancy
It only worked because I raked in obscene economic bonuses from underground adaptation early on, still fun though

>>2072246
I wish there were more tomes that hooked into dungeons, they seem neat but there isn’t much to do with them.

>>2071252
this dev diary rubbed me the wrong way
i know it's petty, but the fact that they went out of their way to make them not be "order, the culture" for the archon stand-in of all things is lame
the excess of order-aligned culture was a self-inflicted problem on their part

>>2072264
After the DLC announcement but before this dev diary I looked at Architects and thought 'oh, so they're going to be Order/Astral probably?'. Double order made sense them being Archon groupies and cosplayers but with how many Order points are saturated in the cultures already I figured they'd split it and tilt towards a less common affinity
Nope to all that, pick whatever you want, they say. Justified in that it's tied to this wonder building you construct, I guess

>>2072259
I wouldn't count on it. Triumph doesn't like making DLC that interacts with other DLC in a direct way. It's possible that they'll add more underground stuff but it's not going to tie into dungeon mechanics.

But can you make an actual archon?

>tfw no actual archon gf to make actual archons with

I kinda hate the numeric value on resistances and armor doesn't really mean anything. Having a 50% resistance to a damage type is perfectly clear in what it does, but what the fuck does +2 fire resist mean? I know you can hover over the number to see the actual percentage, but what's the point of the number, then?

>>2072889
the equation changes depending on how much you already have, look up the math if you want to estimate it in your head, or maybe the table if you just want to memorize it approximately

>>2072470
why are devs in general allergic to making dlc that can hook into other dlc
it just leaves one million orphaned features in their games over time

>still can't make water elementals
ree

>>2072919
Dependency spaghetti.

>>2072919
They seem to struggle with balancing things and have issues with their AI understanding what it can and can't do. Right now you can make most early game impossible battle loses into a victory by just spawning a tentacle right behind an enemy unit. Even just letting the game auto resolve after casting it ends with a victory because the enemy AI just can't into dealing with it correctly. Imagine how much worse it would be if everything layered together.

>>2073078
I also imagine that's why their is all the clipping with outfits.

>>2072550
By what definition? That word is somewhat all over the place.

>>2072919
Because you end up with situations where you can't use the content from DLC B unless you buy DLC A first, which tends to piss off a lot of people who are either not interested in A but want to get B, or who just buy B without thinking about it and discover that it doesn't work for them. This isn't an issue for fans who buy all DLC anyway, but if you take on the Paradox model of making DLC forever (which does seem to be where Triumph is headed) it puts you in a really awkward situation with more casual players and people who are new to the game several years later. If all your DLC can stand on its own, people can just get whatever they're interested in without having to figure out which dependencies they need.

And that's just on the consumer side. If you have DLC that depends on DLC, it makes coding a lot more complex because you constantly have to check whether the things your content depends on actually exist in the player's version of the game, instead of just providing the content as-is and knowing for sure that everything works because the only thing you need is the base game.

>>2073183
I think in anon's example it works more like everything retrofits together like what we seen in some RTS games and RPGs where new mechanics touch on old ones. You can make things that effect new mechanics and old at the same time. It's why anon said "hooked into dungeons" the idea being that whatever it did on it's own would also compliment dungeons effect.

Also new comers just get put off if their is too much DLC anyway and leads to this feast or famine of sales you see. People rarely just buy the core game and say one expansion. Normally they buy the whole "complete" set that's out at the time, if their was just demand for the core game and picking your DLCs most game companies wouldn't abandoned having everything split for the "game of the year" and what not editions that get made, many devs have out right said they go that route because after the first year no one really buys the core or in parts, it just becomes all or nothing.

>If you have DLC that depends on DLC
That happens no matter what anon, the game has to check for the DLCs and they all have to be talking to each other anyway, by your logic the creation screen should never allow outfits and other cosmtics to mix and yet it does which dismiss the idea that it's too much for them. It has to be far worse in programing as >>2073078 noted for the issue because all the parts have to check with each other anyway and only really bad coding would lead to worse issues creating this awful having it only talk to parts when it absolutely has too.

>>2071039
>>2071058
foolish of me to expect modern d*vs to innovate, but my folly goes deeper than that
see, I fell for the create your faction shilling hook, line and sinker, and had this unfounded expectation that they'd double down on what they did in planetfall and let us go wild with different equipment and enchantments instead of modding

>>2071647
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jp7mc5PhhI
I guess there is this one.
>>2072833
Here's the archon gf.

>>2073219
dependency spaghetti in dlc-heavy games isn't just about coding, they have to assume some guy is going to have dlc# 2, 5, 6, and 8 out of 12 different dlcs, so how is it supposed to work for them if some feature in dlc 8 depends on the features found in dlc 3?

in other words marketing is reducing game quality

>>2073219
>. Normally they buy the whole "complete" set that's out at the time
Not true. One of the most-discussed topics on both the Steam boards and Reddit for most Paradox games is "what DLCs are worth buying" and "which DLC hould I get next".

>by your logic the creation screen should never allow outfits and other cosmtics to mix
Okay, now you're just being a genuine retardout. The customization screen is a base-game function that just list everything that's available. IT doens't require the individual DLCs to interact with eachother in any way. Your hat from DLC A doesn't need to know that your pants are from DLC B. This is in no way relevant to DLC dependencies and shows that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.

>>2074024
>how is it supposed to work for them if some feature in dlc 8 depends on the features found in dlc 3?
You are making an argument that wasn't presented. Anon wished they would have things tie together that doesn't mean they depend on each other, just that they can enhance or boost already existing traits on top of what they normally do.

>>2074116
>One of the most-discussed topics on both the Steam boards
Steams forum traffic in general is less than 20% of all user in general, looking over that forum they don't even have active users that make up 1% of the buyers of this game. It's not a good metric.

>Your hat from DLC A doesn't need to know that your pants are from DLC B
It actually does unless you want the character to be plagued with clipping, floating parts and what not. And that's best case, worse case is what happen to Dragon Age Origin DLC where if you didn't have all of it it would just strip you naked because it didn't understand the values if you didn't have all the DLCs (namely Blood Dragon armor), they patched obviously, but it shows that even simple cosmetics can cause a mess if everything isn't talking right.

>>2074686
> Anon wished they would have things tie together that doesn't mean they depend on each other, just that they can enhance or boost already existing traits on top of what they normally do.
think about this for a bit longer

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/

>>2077941
Wow, architects are close enough to mystic summoners that it might actually be hard to pick one over the other
though I don't think they have an equivalent to master summoner for their heroes

>>2077941
Architect unit lineup is weird, I'm going to have to use them to decide if I like it or not. Overall theme is definitely focusing on late game though, which is fair enough.

Kinda sad that chariots/mounts are almost useless for them though.

>>2078726
You could use Houndmasters and Tyrant knights with Chariots for them.