>>2437898
i don't know bro. on paper it's my wet autismo dream but when it comes to actual gameplay sometimes game becomes too tendious.

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>>2437898
>did you enjoy season 3 DLC junk?
You can argue all day about whether the price was justified (I think it's really expensive compared to the price of the base game), but in terms of content it was pretty good.
>did you enjoy gay vampires and blood tomes?
Vampires are pretty based, because as a ruler they have more impact on your playstyle than any other ruler type.
>did you enjoy mobile home Nomads and Fractured TF?
It's okay. I don't love the Nomad roster, but being allowed to move your cities allows for some interesting strategies and their ability to basically scale infinitely off of resource nodes makes their lategame insanely strong.
>did you enjoy raiding the closets of all the wizard kings from AoW2 to see what porn they have stashed away?
It's a fun feature. The last DLC felt a bit empty without any new ruler or culture, but the new tomes are nice and the wizard secrets include some really neat stuff.
>did you enjoy the free Empire tree rework?
It's an obvious improvement over the original version. More actual decisions to make, less "if you have affinity X you need to focus on strategy Y" bullshit, and better balance overall.
>did you enjoy the Reaver touchup and new Federate Reavers where diplomacy is an option but there's still fuckoff gun units?
This part I'm a bit "meh" about. It's good to have the Federate option, but the Imperial option still feels lacklustre and Reavers as a whole didn't actually get significantly better IMO. I like them thematically, but in terms of power level they're still low tier.
>post your goddamn rulers and factions you fucks
Okay.

>>2437898
I played AoW1 as a kid, teen. It was awesome.

>>2437898
>played it last time 2+y ago
>figured few dlc came out so might aswell try it again
>pirate it again
Game is fun, but most of 'story scenarios' are still shit because it kinda force you to end game as fast as possible, maybe reaching 1 or 2 highest tier tomes.
Maybe it just me but I usualy just try new stuff, like races/cultures/rulers and then jist forget about the game. Its the same shit with all paradox games and more broadly, with all strat games with similar model.

>>2437898
Vampires are cool though and synergise very well with my underground goblincels

>>2437999
Game needs a campaign, like older AoW games.

>>2437898
>vampires
Very good. I made a ton of them. I enjoy mixing up vampires and primal cultures a lot.
>nomads
Have you ever given a warclaw dragon 5 stacks of looted power?
>secrets of the archmages
Definitely the weakest of the bunch but still pretty good. I love the tomes of abjuration and burning passion, a lot of my characters ended up sticking them in their tome path.
>empire tree rework
Mostly good. I dislike that all of the vassalage perks are still stuck in order and shadow though.
>reaver rework
They feel a lot better to play. I still hate harriers however and imperial reavers not having any bonuses to subdued units like federate levies feels strange. I end up circumventing harriers with magical means like cryomancy and using subdued units as early game meat shields before pretending the mechanic doesn’t exist.

>>2438005
It would help, certainly, maybe do smaller campaigns that revolves around new cultures that ties in to main one.
Phanteon is a neat mechanic but it still feels luckluster and it makes playing custom maps most fun way to expirience the game.

What do you think about 3 and Planetfall - are these games worth playing after 4 was released?
Also, what's your opinion about 4?
I've never played AoW games and I was wondering....

>>2438063
>3 and Planetfall
3 is pretty good. Out of the game you listed is easily has the best singleplayer campaigns, though that's not much of an achievement considering the campaigns of PF and 4 are pretty weak. It has more customization options than 1 or 2, but not nearly as much of a focus on customization as 4. Battles kinda feel like an alpha version of 4 in hindsight, being mechanically similar but less refined. For example if you kill half of the models in a unit in AoW4, the unit only does half as much damage (not counting certain buffs which partially bypass this), but in AoW3 a unit can be almost entirely eliminated and still do full damage.
Planetfall is the midway point between 3 and 4 not just chronologically, but also mechanically. It has a very similar customization options to 3 and the combat feels like an upgraded version of 3, but the maps and the strategic gameplay feel much closer to 4. It got a lot of hate for abandoning the fantasy setting of the older games, but as long as you don't mind that it's a good game. The campaign of PF is one of the more challenging in the franchise IMO, but most maps are pretty boring in terms of actual gameplay and I found the story to be bland as fuck.
IMO all of the AoW games are worth trying if you're a fan of the genre. None of them are perfect, but they all have their strong points.

>>2438072
>your opinion about 4
It's either the best game in the franchise or the worst game in the franchise, depending on what kind of things you value in a 4X game. The biggest thing in 4 is that it trades flavor and atmosphere for player freedom and customization. You get to design your own faction in WAY more detail than 3 and PF offer, but this also means that everything ends up feeling kind of bland, because there are no defined differences between, for example, elves and dwarves. There's only YOUR interpretation or elves and dwarves. So if you want cannibal barbarian elves and sneaky magical dwarves, you have that option, which is good for player agency but dilutes the classic fantasy feeling of the older games. Thankfully AI leaders do mostly stick to the "classic" race templates, but even then you run into the fact that you're expected to pile on a dozen or so enchantments and transformations onto your race, which again is good for finetuning what your race is like but makes for a very cluttered and messy result in terms of aesthetics.
Gameplay-wise it's a really solid entry to the franchise. Combat is better than ever and the strategic gameplay is pretty varied, especially if you have the DLC. If I have one gripe it's that there's a lack of really big impactful endgame strategic spells, but that's kind of been an ongoing issue with the franchise.
4's campaign partially suffers from the same issues as PF, but the overall map design and flow of the missions is noticeably better. The story is a bit schizophrenic, kind of hopping from one event to another without any real guiding thread, and it's also divided over a bunch of DLCs so if you have just the base game there aren't many story maps to play.

Is this thing like AoW3 where a dreadnought plays completely different from sorc for example, or is it just spreadsheets fighting like stellaris and what you roll up has very little influence on actual gameplay?

>>2438168
I'd say it's halfway between those two.

Which culture you pick still defines how you approach the game, kinda like choosing dreanought or archdruid or whatever in 3, so it's not just a generic empire with a bunch of modifiers like Stellaris. But after the early game the focus starts shifting towards the magic tomes you picked and away from your culture. Since you can pick tomes more or less freely, it becomes a bit more more of a bland mix unless you make an effort to stick to a specific theme.
It's still up to how you make your choices, but it's not like the older games where your choice of race/culture largely defined how you play the game. Instead, it's the tomes you pick during the course of the game that end up having the biggest impact. A Barbarian faction will never play exactly the same as a Mystic faction, for example, but if you played a game with both and picked the exact same tomes every time, their strengths and weaknesses would end up being very similar in the lategame.

>>2438258
You think adding more culture spells to research once you unlock tier III and tier V tomes respectively would increase the flavor of your culture pick?

>>2438396
Yeah, even having just one or two thematic cultural spells per tier (which unlock once you've unlocked any other tome at that tier) would go a long way. That, plus adding more cultural units. Each culture should at least get a native T4 option imo. I'm okay with T5 units all being big capstone mythics that are only obtainable via tomes, but right now Feudal is the only culture in the game with a T4 which feels kinda lame to me. And while I'm at it, give heroes a couple of skills to unlock based on their culture as well. Right now, culture feels entirely irrelevant to how you use your heroes. This would also create an incentive to recruit heroes from a different faction, which right now is completely pointless.

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I am going to be trying Grexolis for the first time soon. What am I in for? I was going to play it on normal. I am not particularly great at the game and I hear grexolis is basically a sweat shop. Like you have to play really specifically to beat it? I play a lot for RP too so I already don't like being super meta.

>>2438410
kind of not true about the hero thing. Some heroes from the astral culture has that dissonance thing they can inflict.

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>>2437898
I really liked the vampire DLC. Vampires are cool and I like the tomes it added. Tome of Mayhem, Doomherald, and Torment is one of my favorite combos. I also enjoy when I can terraform the environment in a way that makes it better for me and worse for everyone else and vampires get that built in. Rapier and whip is a cool weapon type too.
I like the idea of Nomads but they're kind of a pain in the ass to play and Scavengers are probably the worst culture in the game right now. The rabbits however I like a lot.
The shrouded isles are a neat concept, but I haven't played too much with them so far. The spells are a cool idea, but they're also kind of a mixed bag. I was skeptical on the grimoire weapon concept at first, but I actually like it a lot.
The empire tree rework was pretty good for the most part. I still feel like I don't want anything in the materium branch though. The addition of a node in the astral tree that gives sundered resistance on all damage and debuff spells is probably my new favorite node as someone that likes astral affinity and battlemage heavy army comps.
The reaver rework however I'm not happy about. Cannons being buffed is nice, and the addition of the war spoils structure helps make war spoils not feel completely useless (at least for a while), but the harrier is still a useless dogshit unit that brings down the culture's entire early game, harriers are still too tied to the subdue mechanic for no good reason which also brings down the subdue mechanic, and dragoons got fucking nerfed. I'm still disappointed in the new subculture as well. I dislike the order affinity/vassalmancer playstyle in general and I also think order has way too many goddamn culture/subculture options already, meanwhile astral and shadow only have representation in their own culture and the all affinities cultures. I also think "the good boys (order)/the bad boys (chaos)" is the least interesting possible way to handle subcultures.
This is me current laddie.

>>2438498
I haven't tried Grexolis myself, but from what I understand your primary enemy has a massive head start on empire and techs and is extremely aggressive, and your AI teammates are useless.

>>2438498
It's been several DLCs since I played Grexolis, but IIRC by far the easiest way to beat is was to play an underground build, which allows you to turtle in relative safety until you've got an army that can kick the main faggot's ass. Ideally you'll want to have a build that focuses on Blight and/or Frost damage, and which is strong against Spirit damage (so no undead).

>>2438498
There's harder story maps in DLC but Grexolis is up there, as it's the one most fresh in peoples brains since it was the last vanilla campaign in base game
The idea is kind of simple though. The whole thing will be a team rage cage fight. Your main enemy will have an advanced start, but you get to pick bonuses to even the playing field a little at mission start, and add additional little map buffs whenever you KO an opponent

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>>2437898
Pantheon rework when
Isn't it funny that the way it works now is quite literally lore breaking? It establishes two factions, lets you make your own third and then you beat story realms and all leaders go to your Pantheon, despite being rivals fighting each other.

Those two story factions should be premade now, but still in your control so you can add guys to them
You could be able to make many separate Pantheons of Godir now, maybe defined by some overall traits and influence
That's high effort, but I'd steal nuxcom base design for it for a gimmick and a flavor. Let us build some stuff in Haven and show those leaders interacting with each other. Add some unique rooms for diplomacy between Pantheons or something like this.
Just throwing ideas, but this stuff has potential, but it's merely very light metaprogression system for some traits and cosmetics despite it's lore background. Feels wasteful

>>2438258
I just checked the wiki and the culture units are all a bland sad mess. Pass.

I think people who can write head canon love AoW4 and people who can't don't like AoW4. People will say "Oh, well everything is a shit samey slurry because you can alter so much." But I think that is the magic of this game. If you want Dwarven Mountain Druids, you can make that. If you want religious zealot dark elves, you can do that. If you want Rat Knights, you can do that. I'd rather this than basically be told "DWARVES ARE ALWAYS THIS" or "ELVES ALWAYS LIVE IN THE FOREST!" There just seems to be more freedom for me in AoW4. I can see however if you don't like head canon how it might seem that everything is like everything.

Did they remove the lance weapon option for architect rulers or did one of my outdated mods bork it somehow?

>>2438933
Lance is Warrior and Defender, death knight and maybe spell blade classes. oh and battle saint maybe.

>>2438935
Something's wrong with my game then, when I choose architect I can only pick hammer or sword and shield with those classes.

>>2438945
Hmm... that is strange then. I wasn't aware of any architect limitations on starting weapons. Seems odd. Can you use any other two handed weapons? I wonder if Architects just can't start with a two handed melee weapon. Seems weird.

>>2438945
>>2438946
Not everyone gets lances to start with. Afaik only feudal, dark, and high can start with a lance naturally.

>>2438967
hmnmm those factions are the ones I play the most which is why I never noticed. Interesting. Kind of makes sense I guess? Are there any other weapons that are locked to a faction like that?

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>>2438967
I found an old screenshot (from before the latest season), the lance used to be there but now the only melee options are a 2h hammer and a spear+shield, and I don't remember the latter being there when I last played.

>>2438976
For the most part it's effectively just cosmetic. Your rulers and heroes draw from their culture's personal weapon cosmetic set, with wizard kings and vampire lords pulling from their own unique cosmetic set instead. Industrious gets hammers and mystics get their bladed maces instead of one handed swords for instance.
For other weapons of note, pistol and sword is unique to Reaver as is the magelock. I assume blowguns are unique to primal, and I believe sword and net and sword and javelin are exclusive to certain cultures. The one handed spear+shield is unique to architect, too.
>>2438985
Lance of glory is from one of the DLC bonus equipment sets. I think the season 1 herald set. Any ruler of any culture or type can use the DLC equipment, but heroes custom made during faction creation cannot.

>>2438990
>sword and javelin
Just javelin, rather. Also there are some special weapons that can be unlocked through the pantheon rewards that follow the same rules as the dlc equipment, any ruler can start with them but heroes cannot.

>>2438990
>Lance of glory is from one of the DLC bonus equipment sets.
Oh, that explains it. Turns out that whoever uploaded the latest version of the game forgot to include like 2 DLCs but I found them in the comments.

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Updating an old half-assed Reaver faction I made once when Empire and Ashes DLC came out. I'm gonna retool this and think I'll use it for the fey story realm, partly because I just want to use Reavers again, partly because I figure Marked and Focused Aggression will pay dividends against all that fairy shit with clinging mist
My question though, what are your starting tome picks for Reavers, what combinations do you end up with? Right now I just stuck Tome of Rock there because I just really like the rock TF spell and Obsidian Weapons broadly applying bleeds to my doods, but I'm not committed to that

>>2438498
It's not as hard as everyone says, so long as you avoid the holy orc guy from beelining your cities and molesting you. Your AI allies are useless, so play hyper-defensively and outfit your border cities with garrison stacks. The Nimue buff for getting free units helps with this btw.

>>2439108
Hmm... I wonder if I am fucked then. I wondered around maybe too close to green orc jesus and he set his status to war with me and my allies. It is turn 10 I think. How fucked am I?

>>2439039
Last time I did it was before they nerfed the dragoons, but I focused on making the most out of ranged damage.

Decent pick-ups:
-Tome of Cold: Frost arrows for slowing, making it easier to kite your enemies
-Tome of Discipline: Focus Aim for the ability to point your magelock at something and guarantee a hit (note: doesn't work on dragoons anymore)
-Obsidian and Enchantment are both decent in general
-Scrying (T2) can get you the ability to ignore obstacles and some distance penalties, and Wind boosts range outright. Sands and/or shades offer decent flanking boosts if you can consistently set up distracted with your reavers.
-Prophecy offers an excellent T4 support and two great enchantments
-Cryomancy + Cold Dark + Geomancy and you can start opening with the Flash Freeze spell to freeze a province and drop a bunch of status resist penalties, then freeze all your enemies with your attacks during the fight, maybe even attempting to subdue them with your overseer.

Obviously you don't need to go for all of these at once, just pick what works for you.

>>2439111
Maybe. You're going to have to fight him eventually, so it kind of depends on your culture and starting bonus. If you got the free units stuff you can probably mash together three stacks and fight off his first prong, hopefully without tanking your economy. After that you can see if you have enough room to push somewhere- either take one of his cities or aid one of your allies, especially if you can knock out one of his allies.

you there, fantasy enjoyer
>Mortal Champion
>Wizard King
>Dragon Lord
>Eldritch Sovereign
>Giant King
>Elder Vampire
which archetype do you want to see next?

Can I become a dragonoid archmage in this AoW? Mind you my only AoW experience is 3 and really liked running a dragonoid mage. I've been exploring the wiki and it doesn't have any dragon race except for the lizardmen but it isn't the same.

>>2439307
I can become a dragon here? As in my hero becomes a four limbed fire breathing dragon? I guess I'm gonna buy 4 after all.

>>2439039
Tome of abjuration is very nice on reavers. 2 precognition procs on a good chunk of your unit roster and +2 armor for your breachers.
>>2439307
I think they're gonna make wizard king more interesting next. After that I'd probably say a fiend type ruler. Maybe a celestial ruler too but I made an order eldritch sovereign and I would be very sad if they just made a new ruler instead of giving me my celestial summon rituals (and other such rituals for other affinities)

>>2439379
>>2439380
You CAN make a dragon ruler, and dragons are very good. Draconians were relegated to a minor transformation like the frostlings were unfortunately, so you'd need to take the tome of evolution to turn your race into them.

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>>2439387
>fiend
>celestial
why not make a planetouched type ruler with 6 different subtypes, one for each affinity
>Order - Celestial/Aasimar
>Chaos - Fiend/Tiefling
>Nature - Feytouched
>Materium - Oread
>Astral - Genasi
>Shadow - Duskwalker

just steal the concept of planetouched from dnd or godlikes from pillars of eternity and make it fit aow4's six affinities
that could be fun

>>2439307
I can't think of anything else at this point and only make Wizard Kings and mostly Champions anyway. I made one Giant though.

I guess >>2439400 makes the most sense

>>2439400
That thought did cross my mind. The Endailon seem to be pretty active now and are actively choosing people to represent them so it wouldn't be a stretch to have an "Agent of the Endailon" ruler type. I think the only problems with that are that since it covers all 6 affinities it would have to paint some pretty broad strokes and it leaves vampire rulers as an odd one out that could've been rolled into this ruler type.

>>2437898
Kinda sad we are going full throttle into wargame focus.

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>>2439380
Yeah, 4 legs, wings, breath attack that can be any of the six base damage types. Note that they're dlc content, not base game.
>>2439307
Some kind of greater fey/fey lord seems like the next most likely thing to add.

>>2439389
I'm both the same guy but thanks. I recently just fired up AoW 3 about 4 months ago and I really enjoyed my time.
>>2439425
Now this is pod racing. This is what I want in a strategy game. A real dragon that I can play as. Already bought the game with the dragon dlc.

>>2439425
>Some kind of greater fey/fey lord seems like the next most likely thing to add.
That would be cool. I try to cope sometimes by building a themed Eldritch Lord but it's really not the same.

>>2439389
>Draconians were relegated to a minor transformation like the frostlings were unfortunately, so you'd need to take the tome of evolution to turn your race into them.
Have you even played the game? Draconians aren't a mionor transformation. Tome of Evolution only gives you scaly skin, Tome of Dragons gives you the full (major) Draconian transformation with wings and horns.

>>2439420
AoW has always had a focus on battles, even in AoW1.

>>2439404
>The Endailon seem to be pretty active now and are actively choosing people to represent them
Do we know who the current Endailon avatars are, aside from Sundren representing Shadow and Karissa representing Chaos?

>>2439565
If I remember correctly most draconians (in 3 at least) did not have wings or full horns, just horn nubs. The tome of evolution race transformation gives that weird skin tone and replaces your race’s hair with horn nubs. The draconian transformation in the tome of dragons also grows your hair back (thankfully), but draconians in 3 didn’t have hair.

noob here
do you use the same faction over and over or do you jump to different ones?
I tried one default faction then started making my own just to try different books (messed one game where I plaid with a summon faction and barely used summons, thought they were bad lol)

>>2439993
Some draconians in 3 did have wings, but I don't think any had full horns unless maybe it was a cosmetic option for rulers. I honestly never played them because 3's draconians were ugly abominations that should be killed with fire. Hotter fire than they'd like.
Anyway this is all neither here nor there because lizardfolk are obviously the AoW4 equivalent of draconians. (not the anon you're replying to by the way)
>>2440038
I usually play different factions all the time to try out different build ideas, but I have a couple favorites I come back to now and again.

>>2439307
At this point it feels like the only things missing are giant monsters like kaijus or behemoths, maybe actual non-eldritch gods, and maybe some sort of construct like a fantasy version of a gigabrain super-AI too. And they could also come up with some underwater stuff similar to the underground and add leviathan-like water monsters as leaders.

Have yet to play any of these, curious about 4.
What is the main appeal?
How does it compare to other 4x? Like endless space/legends, civ, etc.

>>2440094
>a fantasy version of a gigabrain super-AI
That's already what the lithorite neutral faction is.

>>2440108
>What is the main appeal?
Customization
>How does it compare to other 4x?
It's way more combat-focused than most other 4X games. It has other stuff like city development and diplomacy, but they're relatively bare-bones.

>>2437898
Still waiting for the other cultures to get touched up or reworked to be even more interesting.
Would like if Primal culture went into emphasizing certain characteristics of it like the spiritual, the hunter/warrior aspect or the animal/nature part of it and get even unique units from each.
Would've been also fun to get werecreatures for Primal culture. They could simply reuse some skeletons for certain werecreatures and put on various elements on them.
I can already see a weremammoth for Glacial Mammoth worshipers...

>>2439307
I feel like they should add a "scourge" type that plays like a typical fantasy antagonist, where they gain benefits off destroying magic (they need to get rid of any McGuffins) and field weaker but numerous armies, possibly with stronger Heroes as a benefit (Four Heavenly Kings type thing) but I feel the ideal window for this sort of ruler type was with the Nomad culture...

>>2440187
The main reason they're going back and touching up cultures is to add subcultures to cultures that were made before they started doing subcultures, and primal was the original subculture culture.
I doubt they're going to touch primal at all beyond minor balance changes.

>>2440206
Maybe they could add starting situations as an extra layer to faction creation?
>dormant power
ancient force of evil/good/whatever that awakens in times of great opportunity/need, the map is already somewhat "played out" when you start (other factions have starting cities, tomes, armies, XP, etc., some wonders are cleared out, some free cities already vassalized), but your leader and starting army is giga strong and you get a massive one time food, production, gold, and knowledge boost to kickstart your empire
>fractured empire
start with multiple nearby free cities of your race, some at war with you, vassalizing or conquering them will give you bonuses befitting an ancient, established empire, grabbing them all will restore the empire for a bigger boost
>wandering army
it's adventure mode bitches, start with a strong army and no city, settling is optional, gain resources based on the level of your leader and can research and recruit without a city, if your leader dies they respawn at the nearest outpost or vassal city (routed units too)

>>2440268
>industrial
>high
>barbarian
Who's gonna get tweaked next

Hello venerable lords. How do I create a dragon lord with a focus on arcane spellcasting? It seems that it's restricted when it comes to equipment slots which has some very good stats when it comes to boosting magic. Seems that spellblade or warrior might be the best but I don't want that. I want a dragon archmage which can sling some nasty area of effect damage. What do? Oh and what does "magic damage" mean? Does it mean anything that inflicts elemental damage?

>>2440314
It's gotta be high. Everyone complains about how tedious awakening all their units are and how there's so many order subcultures.
>>2440374
Magic damage is anything with the "magic" tag on its ability sheet. For instance, dragon breath attacks are magic attacks. For being a spellslinging dragon, you're definitely going to want to go either spellblade or elementalist. Picking the astral affinity skills at level 4,8,12, and 16 make your dragon even more specialized in magic. Level 8's astral affinity skill for instance gives them a repeating ranged magic attack which is very handy if you're not planning on going ham with a warclaw.

>>2440414
I'm currently not at home right now so I can't progress or test out anything yet. Do I hyperfocus on the tome of my element (arcane)? Or is it better to branch out in other elements or discipline? I'm still new here and I don't know if it's better to branch out since I have a minor focus on dark to take advantage of spell casting I don't know if there is some combination that will lead you to dome spell casting/magic damage amplification bonuses.

>>2440314
My money's on high, they're generally considered to be in a much worse state than industrious or barbarian. Also these devs love order affinity cultures.
>>2440374
Elementalist and warlock are the designated magic classes, with elementalist focusing on single element damage and AoEs and warlock focusing on debuffs. Dragons will be reliant on their claws and breath attack at first since they don't have the option to equip a weapon to give them a magic bolt base attack like an orb or a staff, but at level 8 when you unlock your second signature skill you can take the astral transformation which gives you a the cosmic bolts base attack to use if you want your dragon to be sitting in the backline slinging spells, and you still retain your base claw attack to bat away anyone that gets close.
Magic damage is anything that says magic at the bottom of the tooltip. You can inflict elemental damage with physical attacks. It used to be that elemental damage was always considered magic, but that was changed relatively recently because defense was considered useless compared to resistance because of how many sources of magic damage there were compared to physical.
>>2440438
For a new player, I'd personally recommend just going all in on one affinity. It's easier to understand that way while you get the hang of things, and the base game tomes of any given affinity are generally designed to synergize with the other tomes of that affinity. Tomes also have affinity requirements to be able to pick them which can complicate making multi affinity builds, but if you're just picking every tome of a single affinity it won't matter because you'll clear those requirements easily.
Once you understand the game a little better and know what tomes give what and what tomes have cross synergy with tomes of other affinities then you can start thinking about multi affinity builds.

>>2440374
If you hover over an ability there will be tags listed in the lower left corner of the text box. It may say something like "physical" or "magic" or "missile" or "debuff" or "support". In the case of an elementalist, you're looking for anything with the "magic" tag. For a dragon this is your breath weapon.

You probably want the "cone breath" upgrade for increased area, and maybe the quicken breath upgrade to reduce cooldown.

Dragons are solid spellblades as well, but since you want to focus on AoE you want Elementalist. Note that breath weapons are magic attacks, but are not base attacks nor single-shot attacks, so you're looking for generic "magic attack" boosts like Withering or Sundering Magic, Unrelenting Elements, Elemental Echo. Elemental Gateway is good for moving into a good blasting position. Ritual of Elements lets you reset the cooldowns on all your abilities, so you can do a rotation of abilities and then reset them to start from the top again in the next round.

Despite not being a member of your race, your dragon inherits your race's applicable traits, so you can pick up abilities like Overwhelm Tactics and Arcane Focus to boost your crit and breath damage (mount traits do nothing for dragons, obviously).

You have a lot of different ways you can go with the signature skill.

At level 4 Astral is most bang for your breath weapon, but the others have some merit- nature heals, chaos boosts crit, order opens zeal.

Level 8 is similarly flexible, and you can play to the tomes you've taken or plan to take. Materium and Chaos both synergize well with their respective T5 tomes, Order adds Condemned if you're playing with Zeal, Shadow adds lifesteal and the ability to generate free cannon fodder.

Level 12- storm/inferno boost your breath damage most, rust buff removal is great, no bad choices with the rest

Similarly good with 16. Feel free to use https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/HeroBuilder.html to check out builds

>>2440438
Going all in on one affinity is certainly easier. The affinities tend to synergize really well with themselves. Astral affinity focuses a lot on summons, lightning damage, combat spells, and electrified. It will have a lot of synergy with an elementalist dragon that specs into lightning. Later on you can get the throne of mirrors which is really funny with a dragon ruler. After you get some experience with the game you can try mixing and matching affinities to create your own build.

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>>2440493
>>2440478
>>2440474
A lot of very good tips here. Thanks very much. Now I'm very excited to go home from work.

Have they mentioned any future rework for high culture? I love the look of the units but i hate dealing with the awakening mechanic.

>>2440735
It's fucking obnoxious to play against, too. Makes every turn take twice as long as it needs to.

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>>2439279
Looking over this shit finally helped me actually slap something together again
>Tome of Cold/Ice
I enjoyed the shadow affinity from these, didn't feel like the slow was helping me too much. I still like the combo, but looking at Pyromancy tome and seeing fire arrows now apply to more stuff while Ice arrows stay the same is kinda lame
>Obsidian
luv me bleed, luv me rockman, simple as
>Scrying
I didn't pick this one but the range buffs and another spell for applying Marked looked sweet
>Propecy
This one looked just fucking nuts for giving Reaver buffs, I was going to pick it next but I finished the map while still running through Tome of Calamity, because I figured my guns needed Ghostfire shot
>Tome of Shades
Ninjas were a nice second skirmisher alongside Dragoons, the shadow TF, enchantment, and spammable aoe spell plus a materium lens/amplifier led to a lot of missed swings against me
>Geomancy
With the two ice tomes, I feld I would have gotten extreme value out of these three combined, but the fae story map kept altering the terrain so I didn't always get to fight on ice. Still nice though

My dorf ganger won, but at the cost of his beard. Equipping different weapons deleted his facial hair, damn shame
Now I gotta figure out what I wanna run for that demon story map

>>2440762
I feel if you want to use Shades, you really should take Winds or Sand Stalker alongside it, because the AoE blind spell those tomes have makes it much easier to get mileage out of Shades.

Am I overrating the Tomes of Winds and Scrying for ranged heavy cultures like Reaver and Feudal/Monarchy? I always feel like I have to take them as my tier 2 tomes.

>>2437898
Wait so there's actual callbacks

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>>2439039
>Powder Gangers in AoW4
Shieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet
Now I gotta do NCR. I would rather do Legion, but that is going to be a bitch to do because none of the Cultures do the Roman Aesthetic, Architects are fucking Greekoids. Its not good enough.
>One faction creation later
Fuck you anon, you don't wanna know what I had to put myself through. You owe me a drink.

>>2440882
>default personality

>>2440895
good catch anon, I will correct it to something appropriate fitting Chief Hanlon's personality. likely something about duplicity on account of his quest

>>2440853
Sort of. They're both really good for ranged heavy builds and imo you NEED either guided projectiles or keen sighted for ranged damage focused builds to work, but you can certainly get away with not taking scrying or winds. I'm personally a fan of chaos/shadow for ranged builds, taking doomherald/mayhem as my t2 picks.

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>>2440925
I've been running the NCR reavers I've made here >>2440882 and Overwhelm tactics is just REALLY fucking amazing for Ranged build. I just crit all day, morale continuously goes up from landing crits and because my morale is high i crit more and more its a vicious circle of crits and its like I'm running the Finesse Perk on a 10 Luck build with Bloody Mess, Cowboy, Commando, Gunslinger and Better Criticals. Its kinda nuts!

>>2440882
Shit son you put more effort into this than I did.
Usually once I win a map with an army and ascend the ruler, I'll give them an update and actual description
>Caeser's Legion
Yeah Architects aren't the perfect fit. The outfits almost work until we remember they're more Greek than Roman
Something that fits their average load out in the wasteland like Barbarian may give better results, get some throwing spears an javelins that way. Or Nomad conquerors? That could represent how Caeser's main army keeps moving around to dickslap and take land. But we know he still holds and keeps land instead of abandoning it, and has sights to permanently settle in NV so, iunno. Just my half-assed thoughts
Tome of the Horde feels almost an auto-pick for starters. You'll get plenty of chances to throw dogs into things while spamming shitty T1 units for whatever you decide your average Legion soldier will be

>>2438931
I can write head canon but it's boring to play a game relying on me doing that. I might as well just sit and dream without a game.

>>2440945
I like the game as it is now but I 100% believe if they kept races having their own cultures and stat changes and replaced classes and specializations with the tome system AoW4 would've been a lot better. 3 had some really cool stuff that came from the way it did races too like orc musketeers essentially being line infantry because if someone closed into melee they could war cry and beat the shit out of them.

>>2440939
and Legion Mongrels are quite notoriou for putting the Fear of Mars into their prey, and most combatants just hear rumor of Legion being observed in an area and their recent actions really put the piss in pissant.
So, tome of the Horde is a must, agree. I also believe any legion build should also include Morale-Sapping attributes and stuff.
I think a good bonus for a Legion build would be Ceaseless Cacophony on account that Legion combatants are known for their battlecries and the mockeries and taunts they throw at their opposition to rattle them psychologically.
I've played enough New Vegas and have observed enough fights between NCR soldiers against Legion Warriors to tell you that even in a fight where Legion is outnumbered, Legion typically wins skirmishes and engagements when the NPCs meet naturally. This is usually the case because you'll have NCR troops break rank and begin fleeing when Legionairies are close enough to cut them down in melee.
I have to admit: Caesar may have an Int of 3, most people consider his Cancer to be the cause of this, but he did give his warriors a very strong combat doctrine that promotes their hand-to-hand skills before learning marksmanship.

I've also seen cases where Decanii with brushguns, cowboy repeaters and other such guns popping the heads of their own legionairies because the Primes and Recruits go ahead into melee. honestly would I be Caesar or Legate Lanius, I would change the rifle doctrine and change it for shotguns, which heavily synergizes with their already close-quarters preference. not to say the Legion shouldn't have long range specialists, they should on account of the Rangers and 1st Recon existing.

You can tell I'm a Legion enjoyer

>>2440958
Reading this made me a bit happy. Just enabling the imagination a bit and finding a use for one of AoW4's stengths

Alright Mr Legion Enjoyer lemme give this a bit more thought

>Tome of the Warband
This feels like a nessecary second pick. For fucks sake, boys born in the legion are raised and bred for war. Plus it'll help tilt morale and the tome in general is more about might than magic. Practical for the Legion
>Tome of the Doomherald
An early option that can screams 'we WILL crucify you' with the minor TF spell and cruel weaponry. Shred and peel morale from enemies
>Tome of Zeal
Now, hear me out. This is a possible option. Half the Order tomes are about faith and chorus prayers, the other half is about subjugation and beating bitches into submission. Zeal can be a stepping stone down that if you choose. I'd say the Legion is extremely zealous in their goals
>Tome of the Desert Stalker
Possible option if you want everything to LOOK like a wasteland as you go out and spread desertification. Supports ambush tactics and flanking if you wanna feel like you're jumping NCR patrols in the middle of nowhere for a gangbang
>Tome of Shades
Vulpes shenanigans, and as some anon told me earlier, pairs well with the sand tome due to doubling down on fighting dirty with blinds
>Tome of the Warlord
This kind of just adds on to the martial lean in, and gives you the option of having a Lanius sized mofo chopping heads and giving orders

Racial traits? I think Tenacious is a valid option too. Legion troops aren't afraid of casualties compared to the NCR

As for culture, my mind keeps looping around between Barbarians, Nomad Conquerers, or Reaver Imperialists. Reavers feel auto pick if you want to keep an abundance of gun units

I'd say the leader can still be Caesar and you could make Legate Lanius one of your guaranteed hero picks in advanced options, same with Vulpes

>>2440992
>pairs well with the sand tome due to doubling down on fighting dirty with blinds
it doesn't, really, shades has a practically equivalent blinding combat spell as winds does, and the rest of winds doesn't really benefit anything in shades and vice versa

>>2441037
he said tome of the desert stalker thoughchance, and desert stalker DOES synergize with tome of shades well

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Just buyed boughterized these, what am i in for?

>>2441040
>dragon dawn
the AoW equivalent of the Dominions expanding monster, fun alternative beast builds, HPmaxxing and evolving
>eldritch realms
the AoW equivalent of a Dominions titan supercaster, niggermen, devs vvlt

>>2441039
sandstorm is even worse than winds

>>2441043
>tome of the desert stalker gives damage and status infliction when flanking, a shield unit with a free teleport action on sand, and a race transformation that gives more flanking damage on sand terrain
>tome of shades gives damage when flanking and makes all attacks against blind units flank attacks
think nigga think

>>2440945
Write head canon? You just make a faction based on head canon, you don't need to write it anywhere.

>>2441040
Scalies and tentacle hentai

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Why is the AI always creating a casus belli for the most minor of grievances? The guy is in a friendly relationship with the other guy only to stab him in the nuts because the first guy built a farm on his own city border. Then it escalates into a world war because the other guy is also in a friendly relationship with a guy that is like 2 kingdoms down. Then the the other guy on the other side of the map is a little bit on the evil alignment and the scmucks suddenly calls for war. which. What the hell is going on and is there any advantage in being evil? Seems that the more evil you are the more that you are likely to be at war. At least from my observation.

>>2441051
alignment is kind of irrelevant unless you have one of the effects that keys off of it, such as playing a high or oathsworn culture or the devotees of good or scions of evil society traits

wars just happen because the game design and map settings want them to happen

>>2441045
Reading this reminded me I need to give those desert primals a go with this combination. Seems finally worth it to try snake tribals
And I'll probably pick the same two tomes for a Nomad scavenger run. I have what I believe is a bitchin name scheme for them that I'll show once I'm done with current run
Nomad scavengers, anything feel super vital or useful to them research wise?

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>>2441058
>Reading this reminded me I need to give those desert primals a go with this combination. Seems finally worth it to try snake tribals
just a quick reminder unless they changed something in the last patch primal serpents do NOT get benefits from empowered beasts. I would know, because I wanted to do a desert primal vampire beast build but this small anti-synergy irked me enough to quit the run. Free my nigga Set.
>Nomad scavengers, anything feel super vital or useful to them research wise?
Probably want some chaos to get the exhausted immunity at the end of the tree. Combine that with swift marchers trait and the tome of winds so you can zip around the map at light speed.

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Secrets of the Archmages is unironically amazing. One of my favorite content packs for this game.

Thrones of Blood have been disapointing. Rise from Ruin has been mid but here the devs actually delivered. Were this not the case I would have been upset about my preorder money.

>>2441170
what did you like about it so much?

>>2440992
>Tome of Zeal
The Legion dsoes have a religious aspect to them. The Cult of Mars is their religious sect. in-game, very little is known about them on account they are not brought up much if at all. According to fanon, The Cult of Mars is both dedicated to the worship of their Patron Deity, Mars and his son, Caesar.
In addition, The Cult of Mars, in fanon, also have the responsibility of dealing with Technology that other Legionairies would normally be barred from interacting with. Caesar despises the overreliance on these technologies but he's not foolish as to eschew them completely if they are innevitably too useful or unavoidable to use. Case in point being the Howitzer and the Auto-Doc we find in the Legion Camp Caesar holds. These are operated by members of the Cult of Mars, who have extensive Followers of the Apocalypse like understanding of these devices. If you put Helios power station into the hands of The Legion, Mr. Fantastic, if left alive, will join the Legion and will remain the station's operator. He will be been inducted as a member of the Cult of Mars as a Novice to the Cult.
This is fanon, but its a better headcanon than most could think of and thu I run with it.

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Never seen this random event before, but this is the perfect ruler to get it. Being able to pay to permanently give everyone -4 status resist on my status effect build is pretty nice. I'd be pissed if I were playing a vassalmancer though.

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>>2441292
Oh, those are constellation events, its new from the latest patch. I've had two happen during my current game with my NCR Rangers faction posted here >>2440882
I also came around to make a magic weapon for my ruler: The Gobi Campaign Scout Rifle.
I figure its the most succinctly relevant New Vegas unique weapon on account of the themes and abilities of my civ.

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>>2440992
Tome of the Warband comes into mind as exceedingly in-line with the concept of a Legion inspired civilization

>>2441204

The new narrative missions are awesome and I think Shrouded Islands are genuinely game changing as a mechanic. The tomes are good too but that is nothing new. Every expansion has had great tomes so this one does not really stand out in that regard.

I could review each mission but that would take up way too much post space and just say that figuring out how to beat them has been great fun. I even replayed the last mission several times.

But, maybe more importantly, shrouded islands can be wildly impactful. And its actually not because of the wild signature spells that you can find (those are fun too), but the much more common Breached Sanctum that you can discover. People don't realize this yet but a generic Breached Sanctum is 4 provinces worth of research posts that you can add to ANYcity. It completely changes city planning and means even a crappy city spot can be salvaged by teleporting one or two of these portals.

Coastal territories yay or nay? Or should I stick to the flatlands?

>>2441456
Depends. are you going to be playing aquatics and flyers? Do you also plan on getting buffs that are related to the terrain you're on? I know coastal provinces allow for the building of research buildings on those provinces but that's as much as I know

>>2441292
I just got one related to Order, its called The Lodestar. I suggest that you get a racial transformation that will grant you the benefit of the event, in your case, turning your guys into Fiends,as for the Lodestar event, Celetial units as well as Faithful and Zealous units gain the benefits.

>>2441456
If you go all in on sea tiles they can really work out. Also i wish they just warhammer 3 naval battles. The terrain always suck, the little boat units just suck from it being satisfying to watch them fight, and losing skills is also unfun.

Are phase beasts and mimics worth it as part of your permanent army? The astral serpent and gazer seems to be enough. Even john undead and jane chaos with their reapers and balors seems to melt like butter exposed to lightning with the enchantments. The higher tiered units seems to be ineffective in general. Well, at least when I deployed the mimics. The mimics kinda suck or I'm not utilizing it correctly.

>>2441456

The problem with water tiles is that you can't build SPI's on them. Devs know this so they compensate you by unlocking thematic city structures. Ultimately, its fine to claim one or two water province that are coastal that can link to an SPI but I'd not go much beyond that.

Maybe one day we will get one or two water exclusive SPIs.

>>2441456
Coastal territories can spawn ruins which allow research posts. If you see a good grouping of them then definitely try to settle them. Otherwise I'd only bother if you have experienced seafarers. Maybe if they ever allow SPIs in the water and add aquatic ancient wonders then you can choose to settle water over land frivolously

>>2441530
Phase beasts are just okay. They're set up for teleporting onto back line units and they're pretty bad at holding the line to protect their own army's back line, which is usually what astral builds would rather have.
Mirror mimics are bad. They rely entirely on your opponent having a good high tier unit to copy and it rarely ends up being worth it. In theory they get stronger when mimicking a unit of a lower tier, but in practice they don't actually seem to. Might be worth it when assaulting a gold wonder, but still probably not. It's funny to note that the game itself also considers mirror mimics to be shit because two of them with backup are considered bronze ancient wonder material.

>>2441713
Phase beasts are also animals, ethereal, magic origin and shock unit. Lots of tags to stack enchantments on them. Not sure if there is a build for them. An astral/nature build might be more feasible with the fey tomes now.

>>2441725
There isn't any enchantment that targets ethereal units (which most of astral's summons are), and magic origin status and a class tag are both very common things that most units in the game possess. The only extra tag it has is animal, which I guess you could design a build around, but unless you just really like the tome of teleportation I don't really think it's worth it just for phase beasts. There are other t4 charger animals you can get from the tome of vigor, which you're already taking if you're doing an animal build.

>>2441530
phase beasts are a T4 shock unit that can benefit from arcane supercharge, empowered beasts, and cosmic overdrive

>>2441713
>>2441744
Then what's a good high tier unit I can deploy in the astral line? Don't tell me I'm kinda stuck with the astrals or spellbreakers. While I understand they shit out a butt load of damage they can't take a lot of it. The spellshields also kinda suck tanking. I want to know what's a good juggernaut that can frontline in this tree. I can't rely on my dragon hatchling which is a tier 3 unit forever. And the game only gave me one because of an event.

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>abjurer glyphs changed but still don't affect magic fighters
damnit
>shadow weapons changed again
fuggggggg

>>2441713
>They're set up for teleporting onto back line units
I have a dumb question about strategy, how do you keep these units alive? I feel like any unit you send out that goes directly through or above or around an enemy army just get so separated from your main force that they get surrounded by the enemy and instantly deleted after they hit once or maybe twice.

>>2441776
>The spellshields also kinda suck tanking
Have you tried increasing their tanking capability? Like putting prescient circlets or mirror veil on them.
>I want to know what's a good juggernaut that can frontline in this tree.
Astral kind of lacks easy access to one. If you get your hands on a mage bane, like through the astral vision of destiny, that would work well. All summoned animals count as magic origin so maybe you could splice in nature affinity to get the tank you need. Living fogs could work too but that requires 6 shadow affinity. If all else fails you could try gunking up the enemy's advance with astral serpents and combat summons. Astral serpents can make themselves invulnerable, slow enemies in an AoE, and stun enemy attackers so they're pretty good at stopping enemies before they reach your mages.
>>2441790
Phase beasts have displacement so that helps their survivability a bit. Defensive enchants and spells go a long way towards keeping them alive. For instance, if you have keeper's mark then the enemy will completely waste multiple units' turns trying to kill your flanker only for them to be invulnerable. The easiest way to keep them alive would be to hold them in reserve until the enemy's melee troops are committed and engaged with your melee line so there's less enemies to counterflank your flanker.

>>2441776
Astral lacks good high tier units, for the most part. Astral serpents or storm spirits make a decent enough front line, and spamming explosive manifestation also helps if you have the right set up to make it not super costly. If your opponent has t4+ units out the ass in every army, then mirror mimics can actually pay off to recruit. You can also get units via rally of the lieges, and even if you don't have any vassals, most wonders provide some troop options that might be useful.
>>2441790
Don't just send them out ahead of your army to die on their own, the rest of your army should be engaging the enemy at the same time so that the flanker isn't the only target for the entire enemy army.

Im feeling like playing a summoner faction but i cant decide if i want to go with elementals or astral stuff, which one is better for going heavy into? And im talking hero+all summons or a hero+support and all summons type stuff. I haven't tried it since they changed the mystic culture so i have no idea what works right now.

>>2441781
I hate that shadow weapon change. It loses so much character.

>>2441828
>I hate that shadow weapon change. It loses so much character.
You know what I hate most? They're fucking up this tome because of pyre templar abuse combined with shrine of smiting AoE blind. When all this is said and done the tome of shades will be in the gutter while MPfags parasitically latch onto a new broken combo that likely still includes pyre templars.

>>2441828
Astral has some pretty good summons and also includes a good number of conduit SPIs on its tomes, which you'll want for the mana income. Mystic summoners is always a good option for a summon focused build. Personally I used to really like astral + chaos mystic summoners, focusing mainly on the storm and fire spirits, since later on you could summon them one rank away from evolving and then just pay to rank them up immediately for a really cheap t3 shock or battlemage. Don't know how well it works as of the current patch with mystic summoners astral echoes income nerfed and the free rank for magic origin units gone from the empire tree, though the new empire tree includes some new stuff that's pretty good for summoning builds too.

>>2441950
>Mystic summoners is always a good option for a summon focused build.
Didn't they completely remove the point in a recent nerf? Like, is there any reason to play as summoning instead of potential or something?

>>2441967
I don't remember exactly everything that got changed, but they're definitely not bad. You can still pay to level up units and therefore easily evolve your elementals, you still heal all your MO units every time you cast a spell, and they still have a pretty good unique t3.

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>>2440762
So looking at the map effects of the Obbadeth demon hellscape mission before I actually started it, I tried crafting a faction to have what I'd thought were advantages and this is what I ended up with
>gobbos, because I wanted a break from dorfs and hobbits
>seeing the effects for cheaper T1s and expensive T3+, start with that Horde Tome
>Toss in Tenacious as a racial trait to mitigate the Spawnkin's racial TF's downside grabbed from our research
>Reaver Federates because I just wanted to try them
>Chosen Uniters society trait, with the idea to make/subjugate lots of vassals to coincide with being 'good guy reaver'
>Fire Giant King for several reasons, but mainly because the idea of a giant man tard-wrangling goblins into becoming an ordered federal money printing, gun printing factory society who convince everyone to pay taxes was somehow a funny idea in my head

Oh god this map, all the objective conditions and matchups instantly making me switch up my research path
>Karissa is here and pissed, told her to fuck off with guns
>agree to help the heavy metal fallen angel across the lava lakes, but swear no pacts
>EVERYTHING is a fucking demon, so much fire resist and burn immunity, panic pivoting from the pyromancy/cleansing flame idea I wanted to combine with Federate Reavers
>being a fire giant pays off eco wise due to colonizing all the hell-tiles with no penalty, decent in combat because of fire resists
>Tier 1s are so fucking cheap jesus fuck, build a mob camp SPI and boom, pennies for pike and pistol units
>so many units I regret picking Runesmith for the other society trait because buffing this huge army would STILL be expensive as fuck
So the idea right now is just maybe stack racial TFs, grab and build vassal states, and see how far I can coast with these tier 1 units
Holy FUCK do I love the pistoleer compared to harriers

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The NCR Rangers have claimed victory over their foes in the Fields of Rebirth, Establishing supreme vassalage over the free-peoples of the realm, establishing deep bonds of friendship with another ruler and squashing the threat to the NCR that was Raina the Golden. Her frogmen were quashed under the intense gunfire of the NCR's most elite troops. Chief Hanlon sighs in relief as the siege of Raina's capital was far less grueling than the first battle of Hoover Dam against Caesar's Legion. His men had found a way to desertify Raina's realm before the final siege, granting them untold advantages in a now-familiar landscape. Their Desertstalker enchantment and Desert Adaptation granting them a natural ease in traversing the terrain while their combat doctrine made short work of Raina's soldiers and mercenaries.The Capital was taken and the Flag of the NCR was raised high above the keep. Soon he would be met with General Oliver and relieved of this assignment and a proper NCR Garrison would come and enforce NCR law. The NCR Congress would likely want a full report of the campaign and Halon was already dreading his next assignment.

>>2440895
I finished playing with my NCR Rangers and gave Hanlon the Chivalrous Diplomat AI Trait because its what alligns the most with NCR Policies. Its unfortunate there's nothing that fits Chief Hanlon's personality more closely that doesn't make him a dickish bastard.

>>2442022

Funny I kinda went opposite route. Instead of focusing on fire protection, I decided to run Shadow Architects for abundant frost damage. Which worked quite well in battle with the spammable tier 1 supports all hitting like trucks and being surprisingly tanky thanks to the new tome of abjuration.
My economy still suffered and made me wish I had picked fire giant instead of shadow dragon so I could have an easier time claiming provinces. Giants are also less upkeep hungry than dragons so there is that. I was barely keeping myself afloat by leaving all the gear I found lying around unused just for the money income.

Are the Eldritch lords still kinda meh compared to the other caster lords?

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I'm not angry.
I'M FUCKING LIVID!
>It died at the begtinning of its next turn
Get. Fucked.

>>2442198
They still have forgotten tome spells for the longest-range attack in the game. You can absolutely force a confrontation where the enemy has to choose between either getting slowly ground down from across the map or being forced to run through your ranged damage gauntlet.

>>2442192
I also went frost architects for a "hell freezes over" gimmick run. Had to keep building monuments to keep my affinities in order because I wound up going heavy materium for geomancy so I could freeze provinces and then freeze demons. Picked off Karrissa early enough that the map took like 250+ turns and I still didn't get either the ritual finished or the achievement since this was before the most recent patch. My vassals wound up closing it out for me because apparently they're not bound by the truce.

>>2442239
I'm a fucking retard. the backfiring effect is that the spell dealt 20 unblockable damage to the dragon. I got free damage out of a pure debuff spell. Reading Comprehension: Zero.

It's been a while since I last played and just bought the season 3 bundle. Do you lads have any good build ideas for a vampire? Best to just lean heavy into necromancy with warlock as the class?

>>2442286
Depends. Are you talking specifically about class and skill choices or culture/tome choices?

>>2442294
Culture and tome progression first, and if you have tips for class and skill progression after that I'm happy to learn.

>>2442297

Vampires don't have too many set paths to go down where they make more sense than other rulers but I can name a few.

The most straiforward strategy is bleed/blood parasite. Tome of Rock plus Tome of the Blood Rite as your openers and then you move up in such a way that you can get Tome of the Crimson Reign later. Also, if you'd rather go the more magical route, simply doing a battle mage build with cultists from blood rite is possible. In that case, you might want to go tome of the alchemist to get even more bleeds via affliction.
A vampire also makes sense as a necromancer, seeing as they are undead. In that case just go down the tome path that unlocks soul gathering and you will be good. You get to make those rosebound skeletons.
You can use a vampire in a morale build, via skills that can route multiple enemies at once. Still, this is more niche since it only applies in battles where your ruler is present. When that is not the case, your morale build will be no better or worse than other generic morale builds.
Finally, with the new tome of the weaver you can do an animal focused build. Get tome of evolution and start making spider hatchlings, rushing the item forge to do so. Evolve them into Vampire Matriarchs and buff those with the prior mentioned spider tome and Tome of Vigor.
Notably Vampire heroes are better than regular ones, so if you want to go down that route, be sure to take Dark Culture for more prisoners to feed to your heroes and power level them.

There are still a few more minor synergies I've not mentioned but you can discover those on your own. Mix things around depend on what you want to do ultimately. Nothing in this game is ever 100% ridgid.

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>>2442286
This is what I've been playing with in my current game. I just focus on applying an illegal amount of debuffs with my battlemages and thanks to the vessels of chaos transformation they get a pretty nice damage bonus from it, too. Misfortune + morale damage means the enemy fumbles a significant amount of their attacks, and misfortune + torment means they take significant damage on their own turn when they do. The transformation from the tome of blood rite also helps all your debuffs actually stick.
The vampire lord himself does mostly the same thing, applying all the debuffs from the left side of the warlock tree with extra morale damage from the level 4 signature skill. I have him sitting in the back using a grimoire. He was pretty weak in the very early game, but once he started getting all his debuffs online he started doing really well, and once I was able to forge him a t4 cosmic damage grimoire his damage exploded and now he's like a little howitzer in my back line.

>>2442286
Dark tyranny merciless slavers scions of evil nightmare mounts
Tomes of alchemy, blood rite, doomherald, mayhem, torment, pandemonium, revenant, calamity, and eternal lord

Can I cream the dlc for this game and play it online?

>>2442009
I'll be honest, the t3 is probably the most awful thing about summoning to me. The other two subcultures get way better t3s.

>>2442286
personally i made vamps with either death knight or ranger

there's no necessity to go necromancy, though it's decent with vampire if you want to

i made a bunch of different tome builds with them but ended up enjoying one where i kind of combined blood and zeal for the first level and followed that trend from there

>>2442286
Vampire with Dark culture, warlock or DK, either subfaction, spec into either major undead TF, worked well for me.
Doubling down on any research that gives bleed plus blood parasite application resulted in fields of maggots annoying the fuck out of my enemies
I made one a hobbit and the other a dorf.
If I do it again though I'll wanna go left field and try an animal/nature build maybe

>>2442336
The free elemental is pretty good, and unlike most unit summons it's a leave one instead of a full action, so you can move up, summon your boy, and staff blast all in the same turn. The link isn't too bad either and it's a free action. They're not good at on-demand healing, but the tome of summoning gets two pretty good healing spells.
They won't outshoot a spellbreaker or spellweaver, but there are a decent number of pretty good t3 magic origin battlemages you can use instead for them to support like the watcher, the vigil, the magma spirit, or the fairies.

I'd love to get into it but it looks complicated as fuck and I don't think i have that kind of patience (autism)

>>2442611
I know its cringe, but maybe the solution to settle the question is for you to watch a video or stream.

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Just finished Evermore. Overall pretty fun, but wasn't a fan of the gotcha moments like Nekron's blood ritual, even with all the free goodies they throw at you. Merlin at least kept the spawns in check, but Reskar did fuck all.

>>2442838
Evermore was funny for me because I beat it on all 3 difficulties. And I started with the hardest one. Which turned out to be the easiest.

For some reason, Merlin just went completely apeshit and completed two of the three anchors so all I needed to do was settle the next to the last one defend the final assault for the game to end on turn 62.

On normal the scenario lasted a lot longer since every AI was a lot more laid back.

Yeah I get phase beasts now. They're an assault unit and kinda a tank at the same time since they teleport a tile or two if they're attacked. You can combine this with that explosive manifestation to surround the ranged part while the front liners goes through Takeshi's castle with your backline.

>>2442198
Eldritch is the most boring-but-broken Lord in the game. He can spam Global spells so much enemy armies are half dead before engaging. Give him a few turns and he can kill city defenses without any fight even.

>>2442286
I ran Mammoth Primal Blood Freezer Warlock, picking up Cryo, Blood, Rock, Construct, Long Dark, Geomancy and usually the game ends there (Elder Blood and Calamity if it somehow did not). VampLock is absolutely diabolical due to a plethora of obnoxious AoE abilities he can use to as a vector for the usual Warlock BS.

I didn't know your dragon hatchling turns into a full fledged dragon. I also dont have a clue how that happened. Do you just make sure they're exalted rank or something? I kinda doubt that's the case because the little guy has been exalted for quite a while.

>>2443838
Some units like that one have the evolve tag that causes them to change into a higher tier unit when they reach legendary rank. It's shown as an icon on the stat card and you can see what unit they evolve into by hovering over their rank on the stat card.

>>2443838
Evolutions and promotions happen at legendary rank. I know promotions are locked until you have a certain town hall tier but maybe evolutions are too

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That army should have blown me right the fuck out but I managed to asspull as win my just... Huddling my troops together and juicing the brains out of my Hero and let him zap the fuck out of anything within firing distance.

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>>2443988
To be fair, he did have a slightly gonzo Heavy Magelock that previously belong to Chief Hanlon, my "NCR Ranger" Civ leader

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This is what Chief Hanlon is currently running as his primary

Newbie here. I'm playing the first map; like the anon above, I chose the industrialized humans with muskets. There are two opposing factions on the map: an Orc Wizard and a Vampire Lord. I have good relations with the Wizard. The question is, how do I win the map? Do I have to conquer everyone?

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>>2444022
There's multiple wincons. Pic related is whereyou can find out what the various of wincons are.
you want to click on the small icon on the top left with the shape of a grail/cup
This will show you the kinds of victories available for your map.
some story maps will have alternate wincons and sometimes ways to expediate wincons. like on Rise of the Godyr 3, there are several factions which can be knocked out by simply completing a specific quest that will frighten those civs so hard they pack their shit and forfeit.

The Military wincon is the standard "kill everything thatisn't you"
The Expansion Wincon is painting a specific amount of tiles on the map your specific team color to trigger an automatic win
Magic Victory is basically a King of the Hill type deal where you need to have researched the spell to bind a Gold Ancient Wonder. Gold Ancient Wonders are not to be fucked with early in the early game of your match on account the bastards in there are pretty nuts. Its the most complex wincon that involves a bit of Military an Expansion.

I've never pulled a Magic Victory on account that when I could pull it off, I've already bullied the NPCs into a corner and have nearly the entire map painted.

sometimes, the better thing to do is to let an NPC paint the map his own color while you go around picking fights until that one NPC is ready to get popped and you take their cities and territories.

>>2444022
What map are you playing, a story map or a generated map?

Story maps usually have story-based win conditions, though conquering everyone is still an option in most of them. On a generated map it depends on what options you picked at map generation. You can see the different victory options by opening the Quest panel (the button in the top left that looks like a cup).

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>>2444047
yep, doing the Gildercoil story.
>Pic Related: My victory, fresh off the press as of this post.
Ironic that I, using a civ based onthe NCR won using a Celestial transformation on a Demonic map.
Also, I found it incredibly fun to use Desertification allover the map to further take advantage of my Desert trait. made everyone else be dogshit while I was doing fine.

>>2444046
>>2444047
Thank you. I didn't notice that button.

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I only know part of what's going on since I didn't play Shadow Magic, but I'm pretty sure this thing wasn't here the other time we were in Evermore
Also uhh for anyone who finished this already, if the Draconian guy captures three zones instead of me, or say, Merlin somehow does, that still fulfills the quest objective to stall this crisis event right?
With that in mind it makes me wanna restart as a Nomad so I can just move and park there, would be a neat excuse for finally trying Nomads
I had to make custom factions with strategies in mind just to beat Grexolis and Arcalot, and Evermore is rated the same difficulty which is why I'm considering it

>>2444217
>Also uhh for anyone who finished this already, if the Draconian guy captures three zones instead of me, or say, Merlin somehow does, that still fulfills the quest objective to stall this crisis event right?
Yes

>>2438931
Literally, if dwarves are not defined by loving craftmanship and living in mountains, they are not fucking dwarves.
Is it fun to make new races? Yes.
Their identity in this game, along the headcanon are lost? Also yes.
Just play the games you want. If it makes you happy play this or else just play other games. Nobody really cares.

Imperial Reavers still have the problem that your levies die like flies and I've not really found a way to fix this problem other than high tier units you get from ancient wonders.

Seriously, bone dragons are amazing as levies if you manage to get them.

>>2445057
This is exactly why I despise online fantasy discourse. Everything has to be Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, or World of Warcraft. Nothing else is permissable, or some terminally online loser like yourself will shit himself to death in rage. No imagination allowed, everything must follow the exact same template or it's fake and gay. Your Dwarves aren't drunk Scottish miners?
NERD RAGE! Your dragons don't have four legs and two wings? NERD RAGE! Your pantheon isn't some lazy adaptation of ancient Latin or Germanic mythology? NERD RAGE! Stay in your lane and copy the rest, or it's not real fantasy!
The genre that's literally called "fantasy" somehow became the one where fantasies aren't allowed and we all have to follow the rules laid down decades ago.

Fuck you and everything you believe in.

>>2445373
>>2445057
I agree with both points to some extent. Dwarves are an established thing from an established series that you are fundamentally copying from by making dwarves. Just making dwarves again but saying actually they're totally different because they like trees or whatever isn't being original and honestly you failed at originality as soon as you decided to just do dwarves again instead of making an actually original fantasy race. That said this is a computer strategy game and what you can make is limited by the pieces you're given to work with.
On the other hand for this particular game (where many of the races were established in prior games) it's easy enough to just think of any non-standard racial civ as an offshoot, which isn't an uncommon concept in fantasy media, with elves probably being most known for it. The series also features wizards who have created entire races of their own (Yaka and Aerelazaliar) and modifying your race with magic is a common mechanic in 4. Personally I think the game strikes a fine balance of having races be their own thing, with a default set of racial traits that the computer (to my knowledge) doesn't stray from and still allowing you the player to decide if you want your dudes to some form of offshoot and customize them to your liking as the sort of powerful wizards we play as in this game would do.

>>2445441
>Dwarves are an established thing from an established series that you are fundamentally copying from by making dwarves. Just making dwarves again but saying actually they're totally different because they like trees or whatever isn't being original and honestly you failed at originality as soon as you decided to just do dwarves again instead of making an actually original fantasy race.
In that case, you go and tell all the other retards that their dwarves are shit, because they're just an adaptation from WoW, who adapted them from D&D, who adapted them from Tolkien, who adapted them from Norse and Germanic mythology. You don't get to play the purity card on having an "original fantasy race" when it's literally the same bullshit watered down from the actual source a dozen times over. And you certainly don't get to choose an arbitrary link in a long chain of OC DONUT STEELS and decide that's the way the One True Fantasy Canon should always be from now on.

>tome of gluttony for demonic hunger
>chaos vision of ruin for power from slaughter
What else can I pick to scale my units even harder?

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>>2445454
Actually, yes, I can say that the thing you're copying from, that being Tolkien, is the way it should be, and I think you're being incredibly disingenuous putting Tolkien, who was inspired by real life mythology to create his own fantasy mythology, on the same level as the people who literally just copied directly from him wholesale.
The point is that you're not being original by copying Tolkien's dwarves and then making them blue, because at the end of the day you're still copying Tolkien's dwarves, and if you're going to change everything about them to the point that they barely (or don't) resemble dwarves anymore, why not just take the one extra step, and NOT make them dwarves, removing the last bit of material that you're copying and letting your fantasy race be its own thing and not a 36th generation bastard child of a Tolken dwarf? Basically, if it doesn't look like a duck, walk like a duck, fly like a duck, eat like a duck, or quack like a duck, why call it a duck?
This is all neither here nor there in relation to this game, however. Once again this is a computer game and we're limited by the Lego pieces we're given to work with, and it's not hard to imagine any non-standard race you create is a splinter or offshoot of the main race that exists in the game's world, altered either by a different environment or the powerful wizard that rules over them.

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>>2445636
Hello, fa/tg/uy here. Dwarves have been represented in many ways across multiple cultures. The variant of Dwarves that we in the western world are, of course, Tolkien variety, whom themselves are inspired by ancient norse mythology. Specifically Brokkr and Sindri, the two dwarven brothers who forged Mjolnir.
Every dwarf we see in western culture; from the dwarves of Tolkien, the dwarves in Warhammer Fantasy, the Leagues of Votann in WH40K, they all trace their lineage to Brokkr and Sindri.
There are other depictions of dwarves but those are more visually aligned with what we call Gnomes.

There isnt a way to terraform land into the blessed forests right? I dont see anyway but making sure i didn't miss anything.

>>2445693
There isn't as of yet.

>>2445783
If you cast Create Forest on a map using Blessed Fields and/or Blessed Region on a blessed non-forest province, will it become a blessed forest?

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>>2445636
>if it doesn't look like a duck, walk like a duck, fly like a duck, eat like a duck, or quack like a duck, why call it a duck?
This comparison would be a lot less obnocious if you didn't have a degenerate emotional attachment to one arbitrary pop-cultural definition of what a "duck" is.

You're putting Tolkien on a pedestal he never asked for. He didn't invent Dwarves, he took one specific aspect of mythological Dwarves from a specific story and adapted it into his own stories. Why is it such an outrage when other people take a different aspect from a different story and make their own adaptation of the same thing? This obsession with hammering down One True Fantasy Canon and applying it broadly with zero regard to any context is exactly why I despite mindless followers like you. You're the anti-fantasy; trying to kill fantasy not just by shutting down your own creativity in favor of endlessly copying the same thing over and over, but desperately trying to enforce these hyper-autistic rules on everyone else's fantasy as well.

>>2445661
>There are other depictions of dwarves but those are more visually aligned with what we call Gnomes.
Not to mention some texts using Dwarves as literally just a different name for Dark Elves.

>>2446145
>>2445661
>>2445636
What I don't get is why people get so rabid about dwarves in particular. Everyone readily accepts that there are a million different types of humans, elves, orcs, etc. but when the manlet race is slightly different from the pop-culture definition it's suddenly a problem.

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>>2446147
good catch on that! On that note, there is something to that effect depicted in Western media. the Dwemer of The Elderscrolls were often described as having darkened, ashy skin, sort of like how Dunmer do in 4th Era. The shorthand name of the Dwemer is Dwarves/Dwarf.

>>2446174
Autism over tradition, which I believe is completely justified especially in a day and age were tradition is being desecrated in the name of progress, but going further on that note is,unfortunately, /his/ and /pol/ territory.

>doing an industrious chaos/materium build that's heavy on burning and retaliation
>game plan: stack burning, stack crits, stack retaliations and beat the shit out of anyone that fucks with me in melee
>early tome path is pretty straight forward
>hit tier 3
>5 different tomes I want
fugggggg
I can't even skip T4 because I really want chaos channeling and crucible

>>2446232
Time to make some compromises
I guess you could just try to determine what's most crucial for your immediate survival and would help in the short term

Speaking of chaos/materium, I like how now quarry provinces went from feeling near useless to solid, at least in my head
Affinity improvements after i drop one down, gives me draft, food, and less stability penalty
Double fun once i tried it with a giant king for more quarry maxing. Now i just want to do it with that society trait that also gives some gold

>>2446145
I have no attachment to dwarves. As I've said in every one of my posts so far which you've completely ignored every single time, I'd much rather you just not use dwarves at all and come up with an actually unique new fantasy race instead of this false pretense of originality of copying something but changing around a few details. You keep going on about creativity, but what I'm telling you is that by copying someone else's work you have fundamentally failed at being original from the word go.
>Why is it such a ln outrage when other people take a different aspect from a different story and make their own adaptation of the same thing?
Dwarves aren't in DnD, Warhammer, Warcraft, et cetera because the writers of these things were inspired by real world mythological stories to create their own story, they're in there because they were in Lord of the Rings and they're copying Lord of the Rings, which is why they also have everything else that was in Lord of the Rings, like elves, orcs, and goblins. That is the difference.

>>2446286
>I guess you could just try to determine what's most crucial for your immediate survival and would help in the short term
The 5 tomes in question are
>geomancy
gives me my 3rd astral affinity point, more damage, resistances, a good backline unit, combos with both chaos and materium T5 tomes because of elemental transformation
>warlord
every single part of this tome has a place in this build
>devastation
really I just want the flameburst weapons and nothing else, but flameburst weapons is really good
>transmutation
good unit, good enchantment, good transformation, good spell
>cleansing flame
I literally have 0 debuff cleanse and the pyre templar is tailor made for this build
I ended up going with geomancy and warlord, which worked out pretty good except I ended up in a war with an opponent that applied blind and decayed a lot. Also I learned you can't target city provinces with terraforming spells, which is extremely obnoxious since the AI wants to sit in their cities and my geomancers/resonant weapons don't switch to fire

>I'm telling you is that by copying someone else's work you have fundamentally failed at being original from the word go.
Are you autistic or just retarded?
Every piece of art or media in all of history has been "take thing that is known and make slight changes to it".

Speaking of tome of the warlord. I have a question. I tried the tome and mixed some warlords into my armies but they turned out to be surprisingly powerful, more than their semi suppor designation would imply.

So. I had a thought. What if instead of many tier 1-3 units and one warlord, recruit 2 of those units at most and fill the rest with warlords? This way, the few units become extra powerful due to stacking the buffs of multiple warlords rather me needing to decide how I the fuck I'm supposed to spread this limited resource around.

Has anyone here tried something like this? How did it go?

>>2446417
>more than their semi suppor designation would imply.
Warlords aren't support units. They're shield, shock, polearm, and support units rolled up into one.

>>2446232
I always plan out my entire build path before I ever start a game.
>>2446401
>Also I learned you can't target city provinces with terraforming spells
That only applies to the ones you get from adaptation traits and restore the land. Most terraforming spells can target enemy provinces just fine.

>>2446473
I tried to do the chaos channeling spell, I think it was blocked because it spawns a unit too. I plan out my entire build in faction creation but now that I'm actually trying it other options look good.

>>2446492
That's probably it, actually. I know the game also prevents certain cultures from taking certain society traits just because they can't get the free starting unit it comes with, so that sort of thing tracks.

Are any of the hero options traps for a Dragon Lord? I wanna do an underground dragon focusing on the Dungeon stuff, but I'm not sold on a hero unit type or culture yet (Probably Reavers?), and I'm not sure what other tomes would work well with Dungeon Depths.

>>2446548
I feel like playing a Ritualist or Warlock Dragon Lord is a bit of a waste but they are still better than Defender. For a normal hero you can give them a tier 4 shield that allows them to get "always end turn in Defense" which frees up your build path immensely but Dragon can't equip them which means you'll not only do bad damage because Defender but you also don't be as durable because not ending turns in defense mode.

>>2446565
>ritualist
I remember someone saying that dragon ritualist is actually overpowered and sometimes banned in MP. No idea why.
>warlock
They do the same thing niggermen do with warlock, get the friendly buff pact for quick and easy 20% damage.
>defender
Giant flying brick is pretty useful actually, enemy bakcliners will never get their full turns.

>>2446573
Because Ritualist itself was heinously overpowered in MP before this expansion. When their Global abilities applied all their buff force multipliers. Mind you both Warlock and Ritualist have good options when playing a Dragon ruler but you'll start noticing the cracks real fast. As you said, Dragon Rulers are flying bricks. Warrior, Death Knight, Battlesaint, Spellblade and even Elementalist (once you get lvl 8 and go Astral so you have an actual ranged attack) all allow you to bury your enemy in pain as you leverage Dragon Lord's superior stats to make up for a lack of utility. Warlock and Ritualist simply do not benefit as much. And as I explained, Dragon Lord is the squishiest Defender option due to no armor slots or shield. Any job it can do a Hero on a flying mount would do better, faster.

>>2446548
Good news about Dungeon Depths is that it's basically self-contained. Just need to set up underground. Preferable to have another trait that forces you underground and grants farms, so either Underground Adaptation race trait, Subterranean Society society trait or Primal Spider culture. Subterranean Society is the only trait in the game that potentially doubles the value of a province, but it can still be paired just fine with Primal Spider, or ok with Underground Adaptation (farm benefit is redundant but it still gives the province annexation range and grants cave walk to your lord, which might not be relevant because of flight).

>>2446565
I thought defender dragon is fine. You can stack materium dragon for retaliation boosts. Between Tail Strike, Pushing Attack and Stunning Bash you can do a thing and enter defense mode, so you can path to unlimited retaliation and then just park your ass on top of things. Honestly, since you have charge resist from materium dragon and heavy charge resist ain't a thing anymore you're free to go to the "always defend" and start slapping people if you wanted, though retaliation will probably outperform it. Warclaw warrior unga bunga is still generically good and can be interesting with materium for charge resist and first strike plus the extra retaliation on charge.

I've heard people say that dragon ritualist can be interesting, though I don't know what the build. I think it's heavy nature though.

Spellblade and Elementalist both get power out of slapping effects onto your breath weapon and just cooking a wall of dudes.

>>2446589
While they are squishier, they can do things you can't do with a flying mount, since materium dragon can pick up first strike and I don't think that's accessible to heroes without polearms (which disable mount slots. Can still fly with racial transformations though)

>>2446358
>Dwarves aren't in DnD, Warhammer, Warcraft, et cetera because the writers of these things were inspired by real world mythological stories to create their own story, they're in there because they were in Lord of the Rings and they're copying Lord of the Rings
/tg/ has long come with the terms that this is in fact the case. too many creatives over the years have come out and said as much.There is no denying that Professor Tolkien made something so universally compelling to the western audience that even today peoplecontinue to ape the success of his Legendarium without understanding the deeper meaning behind it.

>>2446419
So Warlords are exactly as the tin suggests: Lords of War. Successful at every aspect of martial combat. I'll have to check those out later

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>urge to make civ of scary spider riders rising
Surprisingly, nothing in the tome itself that's about applying poisons if I read it all correctly, a lot of immobilized status applications tho. Also morale drain. That'd make me want to throw in the Doomherald Tome for cruel weaponry but there might be some redundant buffs here
And extra damage to immobilize/frozen units?
Now my first instinct is to just take Primal Culture tunneling spider and run with that
But I like the idea of thinking up a few alternatives, like
>Default Primal underground Tunneling Spider, ape off current Arachea's template, improve on it. Fey Mists optional, but handy. Tome of Glades required
>Either Nomad culture acting as desert stalking horrors, shades too, we camel spiders now
>Dark Cult of Tyranny to double down on applying status effects, all the poison applications
>Any other culture that could also pair with Cryomancy/Cold Dark to make use of that Frozen damage bonus. Lol Reavers? Spider riders with spider rifles
Probably means I'm locked in for nature t5 tome if I get that high tho, since the big dick enchantment there applies to all spider units now
Or Cosmos, happily grabbed that during the final story mission at Evermore and that turned out to be a nice general buff for everyone

>>2446714
>https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=1e:52d:19,505,c,5c,58:51d,4f,s,f0:528:9b:155:257:22f:150:96:95,000000,1ae,a,h,n:r,am
Federate Reavers on spiders, buffing Breachers with constriction focus and other nasty things, clambering over obstacles, breaking through walls and immobilizing enemies with webs and the constriction from their magic attacks.

i gave this game a go and it played a lot like civilization mixed with a bit of homm. How does it differ?

>>2446812
The six unit stack and three stacks per side in battle restriction changes how you handle army composition and unit use. Also unit types usually serving specific tactical purposes in the army requires to more considerations than big stack good.

>>2446714
Tome of the Sandstalkers has Poison Weapon enchant, that's where that went.

>>2446815
I would also add that Veterancy of a unit grants stats that can make them survive a blow or two.

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>>2446750
>Reaver + tentacle/constriction
I heard this once before along with the cryomancy tome for freezing/slowing people. Honestly seems like good battlefield synergy for Reavers to fire all their guns, even if I think there's something in my brain discouraging me from combining them.
After playing Federates for two maps Breachers ARE one of my new favorite units though, followed by Pistoleers
>>2446970
Yeah melee enchants that both poison and weaken, plus some damage on flanking? That sounds nice in theory. I just haven't tried the Tome yet. I could justify dune striding driders with words easy if it felt good to play out in combat

I'm just glad I have the option to make pic related an entire civ

>>2447302
If you switch the tome of shadows with artificing, you can give the breachers siege magic for 10% damage, demolisher and siege breaker. You can just Blast straight through the walls and whatever other obstacles with your gun cone.

the options for this game seem kinda generic like why can't I give my bugmen a hivemind society and where are all the feral looking creatures like vicious aliens or monsters everything just looks like human and retextured human

>>2447337
Because of me. I'm preventing you from doing those things.

>>2447357
can you stop it

>>2447366
No.

>>2447368
Its over

>>2447302
AoW1... yep, that was a good game.

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>>2447468
>that post could have been an image macro

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>frontline units get sundered, stunned, insanity, and every other debuff in existence
>enemy still can't kill them even with 6 armies
>lithyl's military score drops to 5/6 in one turn
the line is HOLDING my drengbarazi

>>2447522
What magic doping did you do to these dwarves
>industrial
That probably has something to do with it.

>>2447522
>>2447612
Mate, he's runnin mostly T3 andT4 units with high degrees of veterancy and two heroes against an army of trash mobs mostly made of T1 and T2 units.
Of course he's going to crush the ops, he even has a T5 Mythic unit in there.
Also, look at his fucking economy and his goddamn pips. man is loaded to the gills. its fucking wild he's not won the game by this point.

>>2447612
Ferocious, bulwark, desolate adaptation
Pyromancy, warding, burning passion, artificing, geomancy, warlord, chaos channeling, crucible, creator, cleansing flame
So everything is on fire, their elemental resistances are jacked, they’re regenerating every turn, and if you hit them in melee they will clobber the shit out of you with 3 crit hammer/halberd strikes. Unfortunately a lot of these units were made pre-cleansing flame so they have no faithful/zeal and thus no status cleanse.

>>2447626
OH...
this is you eternal wargame... that expalins so much.

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need some tips on these topics, I'm a noob

I've been trying to avoid casualties in my fights but sometimes I just can't help it.
I know it's a pain in the ass having to create fresh units but how often do you accept some loses?

Also, I'm still trying books and figuring them out, but how do you pick your governor's weapon? There are lots and some of them are identical
I'm usually choosing melee governors and I like 1h+shield, but blasting enemies with a big ass weapon in a charge feels good too

also
>try bunnies for the first time
>no ears bug
epic

>>2447743
I’m on a regenerating infestations map, I had the toll of seasons happen to me, and I neglected to build teleporters because my mana economy has been fucked for most of the game. I went on a side quest to genocide one of my neighbors who was being a little shit, and then afterwards I decided to do the magic victory because that would be the quickest out of all of my options. Now I’m at war with everyone but they suck and my armies mog them even 3 to 1

>>2447821
>how often do you accept some loses?
If it's something I can replace with a higher tier, I don't care enough to manually replay the battle to try to save it, I did manually replay the battle and couldn't save it, it died during an 18v18 and no way am I restarting this shit for a unit or two, or it's something I can just summon again next turn.
>how do you pick your governor's weapon?
If you mean your ruler it depends on what I want them to do. Heroes usually just get whatever I have on-hand if I have a higher tier version of whatever they came with.
>no ears bug for bunnies
Truly a travesty. The game is literally unplayable. This isn't sarcasm.

>>2447821
Regarding weapons, it depends. During character creation you pick by class and a lot of weapons are generally interchangeable and differentiated mostly by type. As a general rule there's a difference between repeating weapons which let you fire them up to three times per turn if you have 3 actions and an enemy within range, and single-shot weapons which cost only one action but do about twice as much damage and benefit twice as much from flat damage bonuses (like +2 fire damage or something as opposed to +10% damage). Singleshot let you maneuver around or do some other things before attack and can generically do more damage unless you're in position for 3-hit repeater attack.

One-handed melee weapons are mostly taken because they're repeating weapons that let you use both a mount and shield, letting you wander in and then hit and sit.

Charge weapons are single-shot weapons that gain a damage boost when you run in, plus knocking enemies out of defense mode and disabling retaliation if they don't have charge resist and generally are about going ungabunga on something. Their high damage also means you do more retaliation damage when people attack you or run by you. Most charge weapons lose both your shield and mount slot, but the lance category of weapons lets you keep your mount in exchange for a minor decrease in the base damage of the weapon, making it a strong pick for a charging warrior.

Polearms have the First Strike property which means that instead of them hitting you and you hitting them back, you'll make your attack before they do, which can help defend you especially if you have multiple retaliations. They also come with Charge Resistance and do extra damage to cavalry and creatures with Large target, so pointy sticks will absolutely chunk your dragon lord if you're not careful.

>>2447821
Bows and Magic Orbs are the missile and magic answer to swords- repeaters that let you fire a volley of attacks and still keep your mount usually. Does mean you need to be in a position to get the maximum value out of a full attack

Ranged single-shot weapons tend to be either primary single-shot weapons like crossbows where the idea is you move around and make one attack per round, or flexible weapons that come with a repeating melee weapon and a single-shot ranged attack with extra bonuses plus a cooldown. Special mention to the Magelock, a magical rifle that has a single action ranged attack that does decent damage plus a 3 action long-range high-damage shot, and it ignores half of defense making it an excellent pick for a ranger if you find or craft one.

Single shot magical weapons include staves and tomes. A magic staff is useful to craft because it's the only weapon category in the game that has access to enchantments that boost all of a hero's support abilities, making it incredibly good on a ritualist or battlesaint, and was ridiculous in the prior patch when ultimate abilities had the support tag, so you could stack like 8 buffs onto your entire army. Still good for a support hero, also can have spells like a wand if that's your thing.

Tomes poach from the Eldritch Sovereign and grant single-shot damage at a longer range in exchange for costing more AP, and tend to be more useful for dropping status effects on something in the backline.

Get more magic items by clearing infestations and killing heroes, or crafting. Crafting items requires access to magic materials which you can find and settle near or trade for, and crafting also requires binding materials which you get by breaking down magical loot you already found. AI generates loot you can buy if you've got decent relations with someone. You can get by on random loot, but dragons, giants and eldritch sovereigns need to craft if they want better weapons since those don't drop often.

This game is disappointing for something that's supposed to let you invent whatever you want. Stellaris feels more creatively deep than this bland shit. There's no interesting fantasy archetypes and races feel like costumes. Even on sale this game was a waste of time.

>>2448273
I mean, you have to accept there needs to be a degree of modularity in anything designed to be customizable. Stellaris isn't any different in that regard.

>>2448273
Eh, I'll bit I guess. Stelaris archetypes and magic research are way more limited than AoW 4 is. Yeah the cultures won't change as much as they would in Stelaris but the Culture/Physical traits and especially Magic Research makes it way more interesting to actually play.

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Anyone got how percentages stack on top of each other? For example if I got 30% and 60% ranged/missile evasion. Does that mean the percentage are additive or they stack mutiplicatively or some other calculation I'm not aware of?

>>2448582
Percentages are pretty much always additive, and you can get 100%+ evasion for ranged attacks, though the game caps it so there's always at least a 5% chance to hit.

Damage just keeps stacking additively

i got aow on sale and I cant beat the fields of rebirth. I keep getting one shot by characters with god weapons

>>2448732
isn't that the first map?
what are you using? how's your economy?

>>2448732
Just give a screenshot of how you're doing

>>2448273
Kind of, when you see cultures are just a skin. The only transformative gameplay is in magic. And by that point your best units will have nothing to do with your culture.

>>2448941
>>2448941
>And by that point your best units will have nothing to do with your culture.
Depends on your build and culture. Mystics and Reavers tend to be built entirely around their built in ranged units, for instance.

>>2449031
Still, cultures desperately need higher tier research to make them more significant in the late game.Tier 3, 4 and 5 research when you unlock the tome tier would go a long way. Also their spells need to represent their culture affinity for use with the lenses.

>>2449031
>unlock 'superior' or 'higher tier ranged' with obscene research
>ignore because we're fucking Reavers and everyone gets a goddamn Magelock rifle to hang on their mantlepiece
You can't replace such a beautiful sounding unit.
>>2449075
Amplifier/lens do help make spells feel 2x as impactful. It's a low key method to lock in on an affinity
I have double dipped before, one lens for one affinity, one amplifier for another, just because on one end sweet damage spell and on the other a kickass support spell

>>2449117
Anthem of Victory for your own armies and then Fan the Inferno for the enemies.

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inspect the what

>>2449434
your scout called him a gr**nsk*n, putting you at pure evil alignment

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>be shitter
>play on normal
>quickly get first in military victory
>barely 500-600 power per stack
is this because I didn't prioritize knowledge and I just have more stacks than the AI?
I can't even clean wonders

>>2449809
The rankings are weird as fuck. I've been playing since release and I still don't entirely understand what some of them are based on.
That said, the AI isn't very good in this game, especially on the strategic level. It's mostly okay at fighting battles (with some outliers in either direction based on what unit types it has), but it's terrible at developing cities and building armies. It's possible it fucked something up and can't sustain a big army. Depending on certain map settings (like high World Threat, or Regenerating Infestations) the AI also tends to be bad at keeping their shit safe, so it's possible that they're just losing too many fights which tanks their military rating.

>>2449863
>so it's possible that they're just losing too many fights which tanks their military rating.
it seems that way
I played just a few campaign missions and a few random scenarios and they seem to just go kamikaze often

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I'm trying to understand offensive formation (champion skill)
All the units give +10% bonus damage to their adjacent friendly units.
I have a unit adjacent to another one, I assume the +10% damage is in effect already.
I bring another one to stay adjacent, but the damage doesn't increase further
So it's just a single unstackable +10%?

also bald bunny fix when

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>>2449863
Not that guy but I didn't know that high world threat with regenerating infestations would be a threat on a continent wide scale. I only deliberately chose the option to spice things up and to, in my assumption, have some mapwide barriers to actually put some effort clearing up before actually making face to face contact with rivals or allies. I didn't know they would wipe some of the players off the map. Well so far 1 AI player's empire fell victim but I have a feeling that my rival will also face the same fate since the army that he keeps on sending is getting weaker and weaker compared to the earlier turns. Also might makes right and distrusting locals made whispering stones useless. I already fucked up the free city near me. Why wouldn't the whispering stone raise anymore of their allegance? Do I have to kick their asses again to so I can raise their allegance to integrate them?

Has someone tried Magic Fighters out yet? War Golems or Astral Serpents. Or swarms of Zealots?

>>2449809
Military victory ranking is just total military strength, to my knowledge. You can easily climb the ranks by building armies and descend the ranks by losing armies. In general the rankings don't really matter except the ranking for score victory.
>>2449947
I'm pretty sure that one doesn't stack even though it doesn't specify, so yeah, just a 10% damage boost. Most of those positioning based bonuses don't stack.
>also bald bunny fix when
Not soon enough. I miss my big beautiful ears.
>>2449987
Both of those traits reduce whispering stone strength, so your whispering stones probably do fuck all. If you're looking to integrate the city you should just conquer and absorb them.
>>2449997
I've always liked the astral serpent even before it got changed into a magic fighter, but the magic fighter class doesn't really change much unless you're stacking enchants for battlemages, then they're pretty good.

>>2449947
>it's just a single unstackable +10%?
Correct. Most bonuses don't stack with themselves unless the text explicitly says they do. In that case it'll usually also say how high they can stack, like something might stack 5 times max for example.

>>2450054
So I suppose noxious stench doesn't stack either.

>>2450094
you know what does? Ceaseless Cacophony. it triggers on each culture unit you have, so if you surround a unit with this, the stats losses get nasty

>>2450244
nevermind I'm thinking of somethin else, I'm full of socks

>>2449947
Ears were fucked even before that patch came out and they still haven’t been fixed. I’m not holding my breath.

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>>2450004
>>2450054
thanks guys
I couldn't find anything about it
10% is still nice

>>2450298
I bet the fix is just something that could be done in less than 5 min

You know this isn't a real strategy game, right

>this anon again

>>2450500
it is, it's just mid as fuck
but it's greatest sin is that it got rid of modding

>>2450513
yeah, not even having a map editor is actually devastating

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how do I play brutal difficulty without falling massively behind because of nodes with undead titans and a full army on turn 5

>>2450720
win battles without losses

>>2450733
how do I win battles without losses without falling massively behind because I sat in my capital waiting to get a full stack to fight the turn 5 mythic units guarding nearby resource nodes

>>2450746
win battles without losses without waiting

>>2450750
how do I win battles without losses without waiting when I'm outmatched in both quantity and quality

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>be noob
>completed several games in normal
>decide to try third campaign map on normal (caldera one where you're at war with everyone)
>make summoner blue faction
>melee units weaker than previous ones I tried
>die in two hits
I'm summoning electric elementals and pumping echoes into them to level them but still I'm getting assraped by lots of units
last fight some NIGGER t2 unit summoned two or three fucking crocodiles on first turn and when the summons ended I was in fucking shambles

>>2450762
quality is your own skill

>>2450764
those are charge units, if you'd rather have something sturdier start with the tome that gives you phantasms

or just go with animal summoning and try to spidermax

>>2450764
Crimson Caldera is where most people consider the campaign starts getting difficult. I actually did that one as mystic summoners, but that was a year or two ago. I don't know how you're playing, but I think mystics are best used as a heavy ranged faction, with your melee units mainly just holding the enemy off your battlemages instead of charging into melee themselves. Storm spirits are okay for this, mostly because they're cheap, but phantasmal warriors are better. If you have the eldritch realms dlc tome of the tentacle gives you a really good combat summon for the early game to use as a completely disposable meat shield and/or tie up ranged units and an enchantment for your battlemages that lets them root enemies in place, which makes it easier to just plant your feet and shoot. I personally wouldn't really spend astral echoes to level units unless they're close to leveling and it's cheap, or if you can get a storm spirits to max rank and evolve them by spending echoes. It used to be possible to get enough free ranks on summons that you could summon your T1 spirits just under max rank and immediately evolve them with a single rank purchase, but it's been a while since I played summoners so I don't know if it's still possible given some of the recent changes. Might just take longer to get to that point.
Also combat summons only last 3 turns, if you play keep away with whatever is summoning them, or even just stand your ground and let them come to you, you can potentially time them out or at least ensure they'll only get a turn to do damage to you before they disappear.

I've tried other cultures and units but I keep coming back to mystic and all in arcane progression. I can't live without the utility it gives in the overworld map and not blasting and summoning in combat. Especially running any niggermen faction to the ground. Merlin, I fucking hate the eldritch niggermen as enemies.

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>>2451100
for me, it's Primal
Their units have been subpar for a long while but I cope thanks to the growing economy gainz
also combining them with Giant Kings is pretty fun seeing eco numbers go up

keep posting your factions you niggers
this is my second attempt at any ice-themed faction ever, the first one was making Ulduar run by metal dorfs when the game first came out
I don't have much of a goal for this one except snowmaxxing, no clue what I'll even take except for Cryomancy/Cold Dark
Maybe Glades for forest spreading to diversify economy and t3 archers?
Shades because I keep using that godly skirmisher unit and loving it?
Tome of Rock/Blood Rite for bleeds and decent minor TFs?
Transmutation/Geomancy/Goldtouched for fortifying defense stats and a major TF?
Does crystallized geomancy major TF give me slowed or frozen chances when fighting on ice?
And would that frozen chance stack combined with Primal Mammoth Boon and Icetouched from the Frostspire feature for Freeze chance, do they each roll for their chance separately, or just it defaults to the single greatest chance of individual application each attack
Only late thing I had in mind was Calamity for Ghostfire projectiles and comet spam
good old comet spam

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>>2450799
>Crimson Caldera is where most people consider the campaign starts getting difficult.
just been a few turns and so far I've had no problems, it's just that when I get to melee I get demolished
Between the two astral tomes I picked the one where you get elementals and ranged casters, the one with the phantasmal warriors is the one I was going to pick up second (a big mistake it seems).

I am trying to do single affinity runs to keep it simple so I can get used to the game mechanics (right now I'm trying to be able to put a second city earlier compared to my previous matches)

I just think that losing even a single unit is a total loss (I have my main full stack and a single elemental running around, besides two explorers)

I'll keep going even if I lose, it's the only way to become a non shitter

>Also combat summons only last 3 turns, if you play keep away with whatever is summoning them, or even just stand your ground and let them come to you, you can potentially time them out or at least ensure they'll only get a turn to do damage to you before they disappear.

I'm trying to lure them to me while I hit them from afar, but this time they popped me a fucking crocodile at melee range in the first fucking turn of the combat lol

thanks for the tips man

>>2451100
Same. I love the theme, I love the units, I love the spells, I love the utility, I love it all. Almost all of my favorite builds are some flavor of mystic and all of my favorite builds are part astral, but my most favorite build is still full astral.

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>>2451128
It's not super min-maxed, but for my ice build I use this tome order:
>Cryomancy
This is a no-brainer. It's cold-themed and even if you weren't going for that it's still a solid tome.
>Rock
Partially to get some Materium affinity, partially because I used a Rock Giant for this build so getting Mountain Walk and Mountain Camouflage is great. If I wasn't using a Rock Giant I'd probably get Enchantment here instead.
>Artificing
More Materium affinity, plus it's just a good tome.
>Revelry
This one's more or less just a filler. It's not a bad tome, but it can easily be replaced.
>Geomancy
It's not the absolute best major transformation IMO, but it does have great synergy with cold builds because of Resonant Weapons.
>Cold Dark
THE ice tome. If you're not taking this, you're not doing an ice build.
>Calamity
This is already a pretty good tome in a vacuum, but more importantly it's the only way to get fire/ice synergy. Since there aren't any more ice tomes to pick up anyway, it's kinda fun to be able to pivot into fire without creating anti-synergy.
>Crucible
More fire, and more Materium affinity to unlock your capstone tome.
// note that if you don't want to add fire damage, you can replace Crucible with Golden Realm and take literally anything you want instead of Calamity
>Creator
This is why you need all that Materium affinity. If you're taking Geomancy, you really need to take Creator as well. The synergy is just too good. Plus this boosts your Ice Elementals, so it has decent synergy with your cold tomes as well.

Also, a little bonus tip since you're using a Frost Giant. Unlock the Rune of Creation: Frost ASAP and craft a wand with that rune for each and every one of your heroes. It's amazing value for a pretty cheap item.

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>>2451128
I remember your Ulduar post and copied it for my own
He looked better before Astral Ward was changed from looking like lightning
They also need to fix the dwarf helmets already

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>>2451128
>keep posting your factions you niggers
This is what I beat Arcalot with. I'm wondering whether I should try and grab Ysariel's transformation and ordermaxx with tomes of supremacy/archon or lean more into shadow with tomes of crimson reign/revenant.

Playing video games you, huh?

>>2446174
Certain (((people))) are really particular about the way (((they))) are portrayed, even in a fantasy setting. When the avaricious, backstabbing, physically stunted, big-nosed race of goldsmiths get portrayed the wrong way, (((they))) get up in arms about it.

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Hell, it's about time.

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>>2446174
Humanchads accept any variety as long as they can self-insert, elffags just want to make their OC donutsteel, and orcbros just wanna have fun. When you are given the option to play a dwarf, people who would pick the dwarf want to play as the pop-culture definition of a dwarf. You can play around with the concept a little bit, but you still need to stay in the general area.

>>2451339
>my bunnies finally got their ears back
Age of Wonders is saved

>>2450799
I actually finished Crimson Caldera here >>2444084 with these guys >>2440882 and I've had a pretty good time, took me three sessions to get through it but it was fine

>>2451353
Federate Gun Dwarves is kino

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>>2451128
Surprisingly effective, especially with Breachers blowing up enemies on death.

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Primal feels better to fight with right now. Actually really easy earlygame clearing out neutrals. The ruler started with the sword summon, and animists can perform their combat summon after turn 1. Tier 1 shields feel more durable with that free heal into defense mode, and the Glacial Mammoth buff means a lot of my units can freeze on strike turn 3 so long as they did some damage turn 2
Tossing a second animist into the mix gives me a row of three combat summons to soak up damage
I've been a pretty good karma ruler so far but this free city declared war on sight AND is kinda in a sweet spot geographically, so they're going to be un-person'd

>>2451204

I don't pick Artifice enough, so I may pivot into that. My brain has locked into Glades/Shades for the tier 2's a lot, unless a gimmick specifically demands otherwise, and I could try a mixup to shake off the habit. Shades still feels a little thematically relevant since this is looking like a Materium/Shadow hybrid gimmick
Geomancy into Creator felt damn fun the instant I tried it with a Rock Giant leading underground dorfs when Giant Kings first released, and I'd do it again for some crystal ice looking frostlings
Pointing out the crafting wand is probably the most helpful tip tho. I totally forgot about the effects there underneath the rune tooltips
>>2451353
where do halflings fall into this I wonder
if at all
I just keep pairing them led by tallboy leaders