r/AOW4

I know there are countless different ways to build any culture which is one of the things that makes this game great but usually there is some intended synergies with existing tomes or a general intended strategy and I guess I'm just having a hard time seeing a strong tome path for these subcultures.

So, if you had to create a "default" or standard build for these cultures as they are designed what would that look like? Here are my thoughts:

Cartel - Shadow / Chaos

I'm thinking Undead "ghost pirates" with Ghostfire, burn and necromancy tomes. Maybe the S/C blood tomes with a Vamp ruler? It fits the affinities and the undead theme. They have incentives to raid supply routes and pillage provinces which means you have to be at war and it does fit with Chaos tree. I guess you want to be at war to raid / pillage a lot but the piracy tome is Shadow / Materium so you get that one point of M affinity for some reason.

Barony - Shadow / Materium

I actually like the design of this culture better but I'm having a much harder time building it. They are designed as peaceful traders which implies you want vassals (or at least pact of cooperation) and good relations with other empires for Free Trade agreements. They also clearly have a gold focus. All of those things suggest Order empire tree to me although the Order tomes with Zeal / Celestial don't necessarily fit. I don't really see much synergy in any Shadow or Materium tomes, or the two S/M tomes... Shades and Severing. Maybe cold focused tomes with the new Frost Transformation to become elementals and then the t5 Materium tome that gives natural regen to elementals?

Also, other than being able to build cities (but not your throne city) and a culture SPI on water, I don't see either of them really having any synergy with the water based tomes and traits. Hydromancy tome is Nature / Materium, Stormborne tome is Nature / Astral and all the water related society traits are also Nature or Astral. Also water spells causing wet pairs better with lightning and Astral tomes rather than frost and Shadow, right? They should add a N/A Primal culture with a water Spirit Animal. Storm Crow kind of fits but they prefer grassland.

What do you think is the most logical tome path for these subcultures?

The new rulers for the archfey expansion, should they have a double form: humanoid with wings for peace times or when benevolent (i.e. winx), and monstrous type when angry or at war (i.e mothra)?

A ton of discourse yesterday about how nerfed the vampires are and how useless they are now. And yet, when you read the patch notes, Quite Literally EVERY SINGLE SKILL that is being complained about (and many more that aren't even addressed) received massive buffs to their individual power.

The highlighted major changes include:

-Vamps can regen health in the sun now (50%)

-Vamps can Drain/Siphon blood ALL targets, not just ones that can bleed.

-That means they can dominate all targets (that aren't control loss immune) now, and oh yeah, that got buffed from a 60% chance to a 90% chance.

-Vampiric flight now grants Slippery and another 10% evasion, bringing the total to an astronomical 30% evasion simply for existing.

-Drain Familiar, a completely useless skill prior imo, now does more damage (so more healing), has a 1 turn cooldown instead of 2, and grants resurgence to the friendly target. The last part is what makes it actually useful now: battlefield resurgence application means anything that was about to die anyways can be saved now when you win. When, not if. We ain't losing around here boss.

-Vamps had their damage reduction in sunlight buffed from -20% in sunlight to -10%. It mine as well not exist now imo, this was not needed, but man y'all really liked to complain about how "crippling they felt" in the sun... for vampires.... you are lucky they are ALIVE in the sun at all my dudes.

-All of the "Leaves one action" skills that had combat applications (did damage) where changed to "Single Action Ability" types. This is the complaint about them being "dead" now. Because they can't chain a billion skills together, for free, reset them with a skill reset, and do it again, instantly fleeing entire armies turn 1 or decimating entire squadrons within the same time frame. Now, you have to actually gasp-- play the Vamps like other ruler types and make decisions! THE HORROR.

-all of those skills, literally all of them, that received that nerf, also received major buffs to their damage/ability itself. Some of them, very dramatically. Bloodblight went from 10-25 damage, and Tormenting Mist went from 8-20 while also increasing evasion now by 2 for 3 turns (this stacks btw with the 30% evasion from vamp flight) and enters defense mode after use.

-the single turn morale bomb is dead. No if's, and's, or but's, about that. They removed the -10 moral on dread and replaced it with more Torment, and changed tyrants passive to demoralizer. All I have to say on that is... GOOD. There was ZERO counterplay to a moral bomb that caused entire armies to flee in 1 single, opening turn that didn't involve specifically building your faction in the overworld to counter it. These changes now spread the morale loss over time, like morale should, so there is natural counterplay now for all.

-Gravemarch, the single most BROKEN sig skill the Vamps had, has been appropriately nerfed imo. Previously, you could cast gravemarch off cooldown for the entire duration of combat. Combat lasts 30 turns before it ends, so that's 29 turns of any corpse on the battlefield resurrecting and joining your side. Almost 5 armies worth of units resurrected at maximum efficiency from ONE skill. That is a passive ressurect once cast, BTW. So the vamp could still do shit while this was happening. It has been nerfed to simply have the "once per battle tag." Which is honestly good. This skill, by far, outclassed every single other one in terms of sustained, free power. Now, you can choose it if it makes sense for your build, or look elsewhere at the other awesome sig skills.

And there in lies the main TL;DR: The Vamps lost almost all of their Free Action, Barely had to lift a finger, sustained power builds. Which, were honestly only a few builds. Now, players who played Vamps that way, have to use their brain cells again and make the same decisions every other hero class besides specific Eldrtich Sovereign builds has to make. They need to choose which skill to apply where. They need to build them differently now with different gear. Maybe use a shield for your Vamps instead to take advantage of the new defense mode granted by tormenting mist. Maybe don't go demon death god ranger build now, and look into festering spine spine brawler.

This is one of the first times I've ever had to write a post up for a long, long list of patch notes that specifically buff almost every abilities damage numbers because 90% of posts the day into a BETA branch were complaining how dead there are. Absolutely insane imo.

Check out the patch notes for yourselves guys, don't just see a post complaining about how dead something is without making your own mind up about it. This has been a PSA from Jammy Buffett, can't wait to see you all again in November when the DLC releases :)

6 factions, Galadriel, Aragorn, me(Gandalf), Suladan(Haradrim), Saruman, Sauron.

The scenario i had in mind: Aragorn, Galadriel and me team up and the evil guys team up.

What happened: Sauron in perma-war with Haradrim, i beat Saruman early and got Galadriel as ally early. Then Haradrim done as well. Sauron and Aragorn team up FOR WHATEVER REASON. In the end it was me and Galadriel vs. Aragorn. Epic last siege. Auto-resolve gave me a heavy defeat so i played it manually 18vs18. It was tedious but i managed to win with only loosing 2 units. No idea what auto-resolve was smoking, lol.

And i got the achievement for having a Wizard King winning with Halflings.

I love this game.

Achievement

End-Screen

Hey all, Ive been playing on and off since Giant Kings released. I'm not good at playing at anything above Normal difficulty yet. I mostly either win or lose my games by Tier 3 or Tier 4 tomes, so how do I get to those Tier 5 tomes? I mostly play on custom realms, so is there some specific settings I should be using to make the game last longer? Thanks

Hello, trying to play a game with my Vamp but siphon blood is grey and I can't use the ability?

What's up?

What's a feature or strength of Age of Wonders 4 that you'd like to see explored more in other 4X games, regardless of the setting?

https://preview.redd.it/3cb2kf8b7yuh1.png?width=969&format=png&auto=webp&s=c4d478dd0bc33c8cfb5b6974ee680ec5d1bc7e5c

I don't know if it's only the melee portion that counts as magical, but still, Ritualist or Warlock with a shotgun is kinda badass to imagine even if it might not be the most sensible loadout.

I am playing the map where there world is basically covered in ice and snow and blizzards hinder unit regeneration/do damage in combat to non frost units. I am playing as materium construct focused dwarves lead by a lightning giant king. So I was wondering, are there any good spells that make the land more productive for me and get rid of the blizzards? If yes are there any in the materium/order tomes?

I haven't used tome of evolution since they reworked it. Rapid evolution enchantment says it works on units that evolve and units that have evolved. But does anyone happen to know if it works on the evolved versions of units that you can draft or summon directly?

I know if I summon a lesser storm spirit, it will get the benefit even when it evolves. But if I then use tome of geomancy to summon an "adult"/mature storm spirit, will that unit recieve the benefit even though it didn't personally evolve?

I'm assuming the answer is no, but it would be cool to know for sure since I'm planning out a build involving tome of evolution and I'm not at my computer to check right now. In specific, I'm considering a build involving lesser tide spirits from the new tidecallers trait, and eventually planning on transitioning to drafting regular tide spirits directly once I get a tier 3 town hall. But if rapid evolution enchantment only functions on tide spirits that personally evolved, then I'd want to never draft the tier 3 tide spirits and instead solely focus on evolving tier 1s so I can keep the enchantment benefit.

Tl;dr: Does tome of evolution work on units that could be the product of evolution, but aren't?

With the barony's ability to create outpost with scouts, I cannot help but see a society reork in the future. At first glance it would be easy to assume Barbarian, because on of their unique traits is becoming more generalized. In fact, I highly believe this to be the most likely one to be reworked.

But with the inclusion of trade networks, I cannot help but think about Industrious. With the sheer amount of production they have, it makes it possible for a new Industrious subculture to come out and capitalize (heh) on this new market. It would probably become a powerful trading partner entirely because it floods the markets with their products, allowing a unique way to play the competitive merchant personality through industrial strength.

I haven't really thought these out much, but my gut tells me a culture rework will involve one of these two next.

Context: all the elder vampire signature abilities that left an action are now single or full action in the Manta patch beta.

So one thing I'm worried about with this particular mode of nerf is that these abilities are now in direct contention with the abilities offered by the class skill tree. A late game Elder Vampire elementalist, for example, now needs enough reason to cast Dark Sacrament or Bloodblight over just using Wildfire. A ranger needs reason to choose to spend a turn on Curse to Undeath over an empowered Scatter Shot.

The signature skills got some numbers buffs, but unless their effects are improved further to not just compete with basic class actions but distinctly *out*compete them then vampire rulers have lost the vast majority of whatever benefit they had beyond vivisection ritual and faster ruler leveling.

They are getting their early game weakness cut in half to compensate, but the opportunity cost compared to just rolling Wizard King or Champion feels much higher now.

Recently came back to the game after a few patches in. I mainly do Dark/Tyrants and used to get ridiculous amounts of vassal income. It seems this is no longer possible/attainable (due to patch or balance(s) or something else). Can anyone confirm? Specifically, I've just vassalized my neighbor and when at max alliegance, I cast the "Tyr. Exploitation" spell to lock them in, and while my gold income stayed the same, my mana income went up by just +2 points. The spell desc. says 20% per Alliegance point; I had 105 pts at the time of casting. Anyone knows abt this? I'm using a dozen or so mods but none touch game economics just visuals.