Affinity Development Track Explanation and Tier List - Age of Wonders 4

[@Restributordevill]

In-depth analysis for various ruler and hero types would be amazing, learning about various synergies between rulers and various setups helps a lot

[@stevenxu5747]

Hang on, wait!! We haven't discussed the generic empire tree yet!

[@noneofyourbusiness3288]

7:04 How affinity works 13:07 Chaos 37:04 Order 49:00 Nature 1:00:32 Materium 1:09:55 Rites of Order, Nature, Materium 1:15:31 Shadow 1:27:15 Astral 1:36:08 Tier list

[@olegoleg258]

> we're gonna try to keep it a little bit less long

[@HobGobMob]

Now only society trait video left.

[@Fhornsrule99]

Jeez man, you're 35?! You don't look a day over 27. Keep up the great content

[@cathulionetharn5139]

clean shave + resolution too small to see details (like wrinkles) can do that to a guy Apparently staying at home and not leaving and not having the sun shine on you is supposedly also a factor No hate tho

[@SoulRuninFree]

Wait he’s thirty five wow I was Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy off.

[@olegoleg258]

A small tip: While I personally mostly watch your videos because I need both audio and visual stimulus, those who do not watch your videos but rather listen to them will not know what is going on when you say something like "it's also a button you could press" because it's something really bad, since they are listening to it in the background. Just wanted to mention it, it happens very rarely

[@ForbiddenFollyFollower]

Druidic empire was probably changed to synergize with tome of prosperity spi as well as tome of paradise spi to get more gold/mana.

[@Modfet]

oooh what I just needed.

[@codyksp]

I disagree with increasing the pace of the DLC, I think it would make the game too unstable. I do agree with (and have been saying) they should do base game reworks between the DLCs.

[@gorxela8982]

One thing about Call of Chaos: it let's you get units that you normally can't recruit or summon like Herald of War or Lost Wizard if you're lucky when you clear a high level infestaion. But yeah, outside of this it mostly sucks, especially for multiplayer.

[@znail4675]

Fruitful integration is better then you make it out as while it costs 100 imperion delaying your first city 2-3 turns, so does it reduce the time to build that city by 2 making up for that lost time. That also makes it easier to get to a good spot to build your city and makes the extra population essentially free. If you already found a good spot then you could use that time to upgrade the size of your outpost getting even more initial population.

[@darkcarnage5691]

"Not over an hour" not good at guessing the length of his own videos😂

[@justincronkright5025]

Wondering about the quick notions I've had of the Nature Affinity Track for a while now, I'm not conceptualising that all of them are taken & so they may seem excessive. With so much food-focus, the stability buffs should come auto-matically to partially off-set/delay your stability building construction time (so you build a different building first). - Fruitful Integration: Founding/Absorbing -2 Turns, New & Absorbed Cities +1 Pop, **Current Cities gain 50 food**. - Soiltenders: Farms grant +5, **each adjacent province improvement grans +1 Stability (looking at unique Farm Improvements Mostly)**. - Natural Recovery: Seems good overall - a choose or pass it & you can decide when. - Expert Sailours: Provinces of these sorts grant +2 food **and +2 stability**. - Expansive Reach: Seems reasonable, particularly with Oathsworn for pushing your terrain-type further (if I'm not mistaken). - Wild Expansion: **I really feel as if there needs to be an animal version of the necromancy souls, this would just streamline the two playstyles to be functionally similar - though for different end purposes of course. This point on the nature track would simply expand this gameplay**. - Natural Order: **Forested provinces give +2 stability, unforested provinces give +1 food & +1 draft**. - Druidic Care: Seems good as mentioned. - Rangers: Seems good as is, since yes as you're on this affinity track going for more cities, food & provinces all PRE-buff this (unlike the Wild Expansion - FOREST One)'. - Druidic Nature: Cities produce +100% Food **& 50% of City Stability added as food income**.

[@hoppalot4977]

I agree with the "Explaining Concepts" comment. My point of view comes from a Singe player, Role play type of gameplay. Making factions from my favorite media (LotR, WoW, DA, my irl cats). These videos have helped me navigate the tech tree better, what/when to pick, what buildings to prioritize, ect. All while sticking to my own rules of RP. Great vids, Keep it up.

[@noneofyourbusiness3288]

I hope they rework feudal to profit off vassals more. That would be a flavor win and make for some fun order-affinity based vassal builds (I did a whispering stone-scout rush once and it was kinda fun, but not really that powerful and I did not use feudal for it, because I do not hate myself).

[@1001airstrikes]

Very interesting, thanks! I am very much looking forward to your early game video as you have mentioned rushing to get 5 cities. I'm struggling to get 3 cities down by turn 40 and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong

[@thefakerking51]

The pillage skill in choas also effects the emperium gain from strife. They also combine to make pillage instant. It is very powerful.

[@zeusapollo6504]

nerfed in beta

[@sarkham92]

Let me start tha ti agree with almso everything you said, but let me evaluate and add some ideas and comment. the 120-160 and above skills can come in play around turn 20 but ONLY if you go pure affinity, which is usually a poor/bad approach and decision. Like you sayd going rainbow is ultimate move, but maybe there is some circumstance where you can go pure affinity to get that "late game" skill early in your middle game They should make that affinity give some sort of resource that can be spend on buying those or reducing the costs, lets say 1 choas affinity gives 1 chaos point lets call it chaos orb. and you use it to pay for chaos skill and then rest of that cost you take in Imperium. So when you unlock first skill by acucmulating 20 afinity points you also have 20 chaos orbs the skill costs 100, so you can pay 20 chaos orbs and 80 imperium, or skip, and acucmulate more chaos orbs to decres the costs as you like. And so each affinity gives its own currency that be used only for its specific tree, with white tree being available only for the imperium as it is now. Also regardning first chaos improvement i think you get Tier5 unit from the infestation, so it can be strong early on especially on cultures or maps that cannot build additional cities, strife or megacities being easy examples. Regarding wild expansion you can remove province from your city and after 3 turn claim it again to get another unit for free, not the best skill to get, but you can micro it and kind of abuse. Natural order could just say, get 2-3 stability per each pop. it would be neutral but still nothing crazy. Druidic Empire could give +1 resource per specific tag in province, so grass +1 food, forest +1 draft, rocky +1 production etc and i think it still be kind of meh, but maybe more enjoyable to take when not going mono affinity. +1 rank on magic origin with wizard tower upgraded can make your summon units instnantly evolve into Tier 3 units, like storm elementals for example. whbich combines with next upgrade that gives knowledge with each level, makes you transform mana directly into both army, and knowledge. and that is crazy strong. Teleportation mastery is nice when combined with CHrono gate form the astral tome. makes them cheaper, SPI that materium can help and proc and also use this node. quite strong but yeah not as crazy. So, it seams playing mystic summons is always way to go, and support it with materium and shodow cultures or tomes. thanks for the content!

[@joshuashevchuk7279]

I’m pretty sure you can get a tier 5 mythic after clearing a gold infestation at turn 20. Yeah that sounds ridiculous

[@cathulionetharn5139]

I think at one point you could stack pillage time and pillage instantly, it was super toxic and got rightfully removed what about the generic ones? was there another videoI can't remember about them? Also isn't there a magic material that gives imperium? that's pretty good

[@olegoleg258]

You could, popato MC whiskey with oath of strife pillaged instantly. It cost you the movement of your front most unit but else, you could just run onto a tile and instantly pillage it

[@desert7868]

For some reason the AI does not want to clear infestations, unless you the player gets near them. If u plop a city near an AIs border sometimes they wake up and start clearing. If u wanna see something funny, put Re-spawning Infestations on, then start exploring around turn 60. legit i've seen AI get killed by infestations on normal world threat. the other classic is AI sitting on a special resource without clearing. like bru, its turn 80 and u haven't picked up Tranq pool in your second largest city.

[@Leivve]

Certainly every affinity should have a repeatable capstone that unlike city cap doesn't increase in cost. So if you all mono color you have a pay off for it.

[@jonatangraversen7623]

29:30 Spoils of destruction does work like that afaik, but it could be worded better. its also just underwhelming even with this tho.

[@Chonus]

First turn spell casting used to be at the beginning of the tree not to long ago.

[@ryanerickson8138]

Maybe I’m in the minority but I’d like to see you do single player LPs or some of the story missions in the game. The Grexolis story mission was an absolute ballache.

[@SLUGROM]

Can you do a tier list of society traits I like to know where they stand right now

[@sergeybrrr4056]

Hello. I have a problem with mechanics. Can you help me? Eldritch sovereighn have a talent - forgotten tome mastery. It says "forgotten tome signature skills give their next spell 1 turn faster". What it's means? What is "forgotten tome signature skills"?

[@Shinshinvariety]

I haven't played much, or any, of Eldritch sovereign, unfortunately.

[@SoulRuninFree]

At least Astral is clearly winning in something

[@cavalyn]

Astral is so overly good on these that I feel like this is why so many astral toned don’t have unique buildings.

[@SoulRuninFree]

@ yeah maybe, but what I love about astral is the fact that it’s a affinity that works with every single culture, to a degree. I think it doesn’t really work for barbarians though but it still can. You need stronger summoned or magical origin animals with nature. You have tome of summoning and the tier 5 tome. You want really good tanking as industrious tome of warding. You want really powerful ranged units. It’s got something for a lot of different things. Usually what I tend to do is mix nature and astral to make stupid powerful Magic’s origin animals. Tome of beasts, tome of summoning, tome of Vigor, and the tier 5 tome of astral.

[@Landonpeanut]

Oh boy, here I go defending the Chaos tree again. With the way that timing attacks dominate skilled games, I still think that Rite of Chosen Warriors is so strong that it singlehandedly makes the chaos tree pretty good. 500 Draft per city is just so, so much. If you have 4 cities and made sure to save gold, that's 500/600 production for 2 nasty tier 4 units in each city. Setting yourself to have this available right as you hit Pyre Templars, for example, is so ridiculously hard to defend against.

[@wi8231]

But before that, you will have to deal with alchemy -> feymist timing attack & umbral mistress timing attack. Rite of astral abundance only requires 100 astral. Doable I guess, but really hard & require a bit of luck. Ofc, it will work perfectly in sim city MP.

[@znail4675]

Skilled Raiders and War Slaves are also great. The main issue right now with Chaos is that it lost a lot of Hero skills that came with the tomes in the recent Hero rework and haven't gotten anything in return. Before that so was Chaos quite good actually and the primary tree if you wanted strong Heroes. They really need to look at Tomes that lost skills and give them something to make up for that. Every time he rates a Tome he points out that it doesn't get any building, but it used to be a hero skill there.

[@zeusapollo6504]

I mean, you can just take mystic potential lock spells for insane high CP also take mana channelers and get some ok ranked Mistresses. With draft units you can push the ranks higher, but the opportunity cost for this, going deep into chaos tree seems too high now, with the hero rework that removed many of the extra affinity points.

[@PraetorianMan]

I really like chaos builds, but yeah there are really serious synergy problems with that tree. It *BEGS* you to constantly be pillaging and razing... which is a problem if you want to just vassalize conquired cities like a more normal person lol. I had a really wierd idiosyncratic build that combined the oathsworn culture [the one that focuses on good alignment] and then completely stacked it with chaos tombs and buffs, along with the prolific swarmers and road walkers traits [and the race trait that increases movement points to 40]. It produced a very fun build of "holy demons" that could literally fly across the entire map in, at most, like 2 turns [and they were strong AF, my throne city could just build legendary rank tier 1's out of the gate and they were habitually 2-shotting enemy tier 2's]. It was one of my favorite builds in a long time... but yeah the super ugly penalties for razing and pillaging made like half of the Chaos affinity tree basically untouchable. You'd think that would then just beg to make this build in the that warmonger oathsworn subfaction... but the way that thing just cant vassalize conquered cities *at all* is straight up even worse than just dealing with the order/chaos anti-synergy. Either the warmonger oathsworn needs some of the restrictions lifted... like at least let me vassalize a conquered city, and/or the Chaos affinity tree needs less shit that completely focused on razing entire cities. Like, give me a unit upkeep buff or something. Replace one of the ending options with just "Everything starts with +1 rank". Super boring buff, but *vastly* more useful.

[@blackleon1708]

Cool! Thanks

[@PresidentJimmyDean]

I'd rather the other trees be brought up to Astrals standard rather than Astral being nerfed. As it is, Astral is fun

[@Sanvone]

So the game still feels being carefully balanced about not making macro strategies viable (city cap, food being not good, game lasting around 100 turns). Damn I miss my pet spam builds from AoW3 :/ It's so weird that many strategy games go towards that strickly curated experience.

[@ashemar1]

what exactly was nerfed for mistress? -1 to def and res? That's nothing really :) but dev could accidentally make it totally unusable so small changes are ok...

[@amera35]

Triumph is like 25 people or something lol, pretty small.

[@zeusapollo6504]

35

[@SquigglyBeasst]

Dude, I appreciate your content and the depth of your analysis. Pleeeease put timestamps in. The videos are very long and I want to hop to the bits I'm most interested in.

[@z-rossi3672]

Been a huge fan of rainbow build since day one, usually just having one main that youll get to T5 if it comes to that and dipping into enhancement stacking is just so effective

[@notalefty999]

One comment in particular you like and you say that it was some lame comment about your videos helping him understand. Clearly the comment you should have highlighted was about putting the ass into astral.

[@bullroarer-took]

I can confirm the Bandit Army skill is terrible. The army that spawned is totally random races and cultural units. Zero synergy with anything, you're way better off spawning units literally any other way

[@robb7748]

Sorry but the video became too confusing when you started repeated saying affinity when you meant imperium.

[@Runstrem]

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