Age of Wonders 4 - Overexplained - Beginners Guide - (Shadow/Necromancy) - Pt.1

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Age of Wonders 4 is a new magic based 4x game that has some elements of civilization as well as Master of Magic.
Playlist: • Age of Wonders 4 - Gig...
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[@zhshsG7]

Potato, you should know that if you start constructing a building and you boost it afterwards (eg by making a forester), the discounted gold gets refunded to you. So you get both the production and the gold discount, even if you are in the middle of production.

[@tsukiortu]

I did not know this thank you for the info that's very useful

[@zhshsG7]

@@tsukiortu :)

[@brandonkohrman2622]

Dude super helpful I wondered about that

[@Barfopotamus]

such a great tip idk why I didn't just test this out myself lol but such a gamechanger to know

[@Nota-Skaven]

Necromancy is always really fun conceptually but it always seems to be completely broken or useless with nothing in-between, I like the use of souls to check its power without making the abilities useless

[@doxkowalski915]

Hey, could you give some examples, please? I'm currently writing a thesis about the portrayal of necromancy in history and its transfer to fiction and games, and having an additional angle or other game examples would be a great help.

[@charlestaylor8344]

Just won my first necromancer game. I feel that necromancy in this game early on is pretty meh/crap. Early game undead units are really not great. Late game necro is stupidly powerful. I feel it might need a balance as at the moment it goes from 0-100 real quick with nothing great in-between

[@namidragon13]

@@doxkowalski915 The way Necromancy is depicted in Video Games is heavily influenced by the amount of work needed. 1. The most common way games depict Necromancy is "summoning" generic Zombies from corpses. 2. Sometimes games go the extra mile and the corpse "type" actually impact the result of the Necromancy, e.g. a dead Troll becomes an undead Troll, not just a generic human zombie. 3. Rarely do games give undead characters a mind of their own. Noteworthy examples for Undead/Necromancy in Video Games which I played would be: - World of Warcraft is by far the biggest game that has the Undead as a playable race with a bunch of Lore behind them. - Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous allows you to play as a Lich who can revive some (but not all) main characters which can massively impact the story. - Divinity Original Sin 2 also has Undead as a playable race with a lot of thought behind the interactions between Undead and "normal" races in a fantasy world. - Total War: Warhammer has multiple Undead races, with the "Tomb Kings" having a focus on the implications that immortality brings to an ancient civilication.

[@korrul]

@@doxkowalski915 The basic routes games historically took was a) you get free stuff from things you are already doing (killing stuff). Iirc old Heroes of Might and Magic has this thing when % of your enemies killed came back as free stuff. This tend to be very snowbally. The other route tend to be powerful effects with additional requirement of having a body around, which can often be too many hoops to jump through and you often "do nothing" in difficult ęncounters, esp ones against single boss in rpgs. Both approaches tend to be highly contextual on amount of weak enemies or how attrition based the game is. The unique resource here a) incentivises early commitment, to start gathering the resource b) doesn't make it culture specific (and leads to Race Falling narratives due to transformation) and makes you both get something from stuff dying but both bottlenecking and giving you control over what you actually do with the resource

[@poilboiler]

Heroes of Might and Magic 5 did a neat thing where every week you got a pool of necromancy points you could spend to raise troops after battles. The types you could chose from depended on the enemies you slew and raising more powerful ones cost more points.

[@r3dp9]

I really appreciate a beginners guide, that is actually a beginners guide, which also contains tips relevant to experienced players, without wasting any time bragging or hyping in the intro. I swear, over half the videos that show up for this game have the same level of thought put into them as network television.

[@JManRox13]

It's very appropriate that the evil necromancer faction you're playing as are cats. My cats love raising armies of the undead.

[@manwithabasicprofilepic]

An overexplained series? YES! I’ve listened to your Civ ones multiple times and always learn something new so I’m excited to see what you teach us in AoW!

[@jesperengelbredt]

Yes, this is exactly what we need. I was so happy to see this pop up.

[@darksilver9593]

you won +1 sub at 1:20 when you said "darth Meow Meow" that one got me to the core lol. going to smile over that for a week.

[@Ben_D.]

This is my favorite 4X game. Absolutely loving it, but some of the mechanics are over my head. I appreciate this series.

[@justinsinke2088]

"We are a nation that gets up in peoples faces, and then eats their faces." I am getting more and more convinced to just buy this game the more I see of it. I like playing Stellaris in part because of the different combinations of ways you can build your empire, but Age of Wonders 4 just feels like it somehow has exponentially more customization minutia right off the bat.

[@loxley75]

Buy it! i haven't been able to tear myself away from it! Just the fact that you can create all the custom factions yourself to populate your realms with, not just the one you are playing means it never gets boring!

[@dsinemoi1mouton]

There are indeed a ton of options. It's a fine tuning fest. The 2 major issues to me are multiplayer (beside hotseat which is great) and AI. Combat AI is very decent tho. But it sucks at making decisions on the map.

[@jesperengelbredt]

I think Stellaris has more options, mostly because it has large amounts of DLC adding options. But in many ways I find the options i AOW4 easier to relate to. They are less "abstract" in some way, while a game like Stellaris (or Planetfall) have stuff that is more weird and unreletable.

[@harjutapa]

Of note: you didn't need to wait on the production of the Storehouse. Boosts are retroactive-ish, in that they subtract the full 30% even if you've already partially constructed the building. I've had boosts complete structures from that mechanic before.

[@yegorm8]

Also I think that if the structure is almost complete when it gets boosted and the next structure in que is also boosted the bonus production carries over. Maybe a bug

[@seanhoffman2755]

Ya but does it refund the gold tho? I think the gold is the important part. My guess is no it does not refund gold, becuase I get boosts, build the improvements and remove the boost later while it is still in the queue, sure I do not get build speed, but I do save the gold.

[@adamsparks3429]

It also retro refunds the gold as well

[@Gokudo01]

do you get the gold back too ?

[@muse0583]

One thing you can do for additional souls/knowledge is immediately go to war with your first vassal city. This allows you to get a large amount of knowledge from killing heros with the first shadow affinity tree skill as well as begin snowballing your soul income earlier. You can still vassalize and absorb them after you've taken them out. Helps with negative alignment as well. I strongly suggest you do this if you're playing dark into the necro tree.

[@BSOD.Enjoyer]

if you manage to capture free city heros, you can send them home, so you can defeat them again, on the same turn, to get even more knowledge. repeat this until the hero is dead

[@Nota-Skaven]

@@BSOD.Enjoyer now this is big brain time

[@lukemcniven4131]

​@@BSOD.EnjoyerI think releasing hostages gets you positive alignment though

[@WinSlayaGaming]

Thanks for the shoutout Potato! Watching your videos has helped me understand the game a lot too, and l'm loving your longer videos like this one

[@Krishnath.Dragon]

Speaking of Tomes, my favorite tome by far is a third tier Materialist book, it allows you to level mountains and turn it into rocky terrain. It's a nice way to make additional space for your city to annex. Of course, you can only place a quarry there as a base improvement unless you terraform it further (such as with the nature spell Raise Forest), but you can put any special improvement on it afterwards. I recently had my starting city spawn next to a massive mountain complex, which made it easy for me to build the third tier magic focus next to it after shattering the mountain, thus making it really easy to defend. Good stuff. Also, the tier IV and V ranked units are insane, and if you go the nature route, you can actually get the tier IV units earlier than your opponents with one of the nature branch skills. Specifically the one that spawns a random animal when you annex an area. I've regularly gotten tier IV units from that. Usually Spider Matriarchs, but sometimes tier IV wolves, or if the area is at sea, Krakens.

[@Avilacjf]

Soothing, educational, and entertaining. What a great channel you got here!

[@rbarnes4076]

You totally had me at 'Darth Meow Meow'. Great stuff here. :)

[@harjutapa]

I was super looking forward to you doing an Overexplained for this game. I've got a pretty good grasp of most of the mechanics, but I always learn something new in these videos.

[@Alorand]

8:15 - It's not necessary to produce merchandise. You can start building an un-boosted building, and if you get the boost later it updates to the lower cost and even refunds you any excess production.

[@seanp1315]

Thank goodness! I bought this last night after watching some of your recent series and I was definitely feeling overwhelmed. I'm so glad to see this I'm sure I'll be watching it a few times.

[@linkatronic]

So excited for an overexplained series! I picked up a lot from your regular videos but there were a couple things that I was confused about, like the tome research.

[@Checkingthetap]

As a new AOW4 player this guide has been great. I'm still playing on easy mode. This video explains so much

[@unplugandplay9318]

Great video - I learned a lot of new things about aspects of the game I thought I thoroughly understood. Kudos!

[@al_wombat]

11:00 Combat Tactics (basic) - so incredibly helpful for me starting out! Thanks!

[@SeanGomesPortfolio]

Ohhhh yes. Overexplained here we go! I must admit, I kinda bounced off of AoW4, but this will likely get me right back into it. Thank you!

[@LeeShand]

This was needed! I can now finally play the game after owing it from launch! Thanks :)

[@robcole6]

Thank you for this video. It is extremely helpful and informative. Great job.

[@scanix100]

You could start a building for full price, then annex a province with a certain type of building to get the building boosted in mid-building, is if you manage to get the boost before you build the building your resoureces spent are sort of refund, so you don't have to wait a turn with producing merchentdise to get the boost and start after it, you could do that right away.

[@Miiro55]

Been waiting for the next potato video to drop!

[@aleksandaraleksandrov324]

Hi, Potato! I consider myself a pretty experienced strategy gamer (with thousands of ours on Civ, TWWH, Xcom and others) but I find a lot of AoW4's concepts and mechanics a lot different than other similar games. I was happy when I saw you made an overexplained video but after watching it, I feel like you went a bit too fast and missed overexplaining a lot of stuff. I would love to see more explanation on empire management, city/building management and knowledge/tech strategy and progression. Thanks and keep the AoW4 content going!

[@Gronmin]

Been waiting for a series like this

[@Allarra1]

Loving the AoW4 content! Learned a lot from watching them and have been enjoying the game quite a bit! I know you mentioned you generally don't play campaigns, but I would love to see how you approach them. They have some really interesting conditions that make the games quite interesting and challenging, so hope you consider giving them a go! I haven't been able to find many videos from more competent players, so you would definitely be fulfilling an as yet unmet need. Looking forward to the next vid!

[@maartenpauwels8970]

If you're interested in the story realms, Marbozir was playing them.

[@Allarra1]

Thanks, I'll check that out!

[@NoirMorter]

You sell this game really well. It looks like I could have more fun playing this than Civ.

[@busterjay64]

I kinda wish I havent been playing this game 37 hours a day since release. This would be a great video to get me super interested in this game. 👍

[@thespicyjim8954]

Hey man, just wanted to drop by and say that I'm not really into Civ on a deep level, but I adore AoW4 and I love that you're playing a bunch of it!

[@ercan2805]

I'm in love with this game thanks to Potato :D

[@Dracobyte]

Thank you for these guides!

[@casualbrowsingyeah]

I literally just daydreamed about a race of necromancer dwarves that live deep underground (The Undwarven, led by Arch Crypt Keeper Felghultach Mountain-Bones). Please continue approximately reading my mind, pog video btw

[@AnonSeacat]

I like to play with the regenerating infestation map option, it makes the world feel a lot more dangerous--especially if you put a lot of distance between player spawns. It also makes that first chaos perk worth a lot more.

[@JDuel100]

*Note: Barbarian Scout units have the ability to build Outposts for Double Cost.

[@barryevans791]

"we just need to do 60 points worth of more evil things" was a very evocotive quote

[@iptf]

Excellent series. Exactly the content missing for this game. Looking forward to reading it in six months time and disagreeing with everything.

[@ethantash3533]

Would be awesome to see a "High orc" game been thinking about it since I found out about this game Regardless you content is always awesome and you do great work!

[@akatsukiawsome13]

Dark shock agro with fast initiative plus sneaky is hilarious in multiplayer, stays relevant with your T3 shock

[@remortisgaming]

Curse you potato man! I was working on my necronomicon! Beat me to it. Jokes aside glad to see you deep diving into AoW4! This game is so fun.

[@ninthshade7375]

Awesome! Thanks for this!

[@icefrost2628]

Haven't really watched the vid yet but Darth MeowMeow just made me laugh so much

[@TylerSantinelli]

Great video, I can't wait to see where this playthrough goes. Have you had any luck with AI ally factions? I can get allies in my games but they don't seem to help in war at all, they totally ignore the other factions until I can see their units.

[@Mathmachine]

A movie length episode of Age of Wonders 4 from Potato. It must be Christmas.

[@blackleon1708]

Now that's really useful

[@camilomanrique9816]

Potato did the Toy Store "I don't want to play with you anymore" meme to Civ 🤣🤣

[@johngillan4475]

Thank you for your information video

[@Xmifi_]

I hope this will become the standard in the future for other games to. The overexplained method.

[@Graypaws]

I’d also suggest starting at 4 or 5 opponents until you get the hang of it, raising the number as you get familiar with the game. I’d also suggest surrendering if things get out of hand, don’t just start another game. You gain exp/levels towards unlocks.

[@jglaziers]

Your explanation and teaching is top notch, but holy cow do you talk fast! I had to check KZbin to see if I had it on 1.5 speed!

[@opheliamoonrose4316]

PotatoMcWhiskey: "We have unlocked death magic" Me: Death Magic for Adepts by Cradle of Filth plays in the background 😂

[@igazeuponthestars]

So, in my experience and opinion (feel free to disagree and share yours), the best way to play as shadow/dark culture is to NOT play shadow affinity as your main(biggest) one, maybe a 3rd. The shadow tomes do not provide nearly enough power as other tomes of the same rank, with the notable exception of tier 3 tome of great transformation. I could go on a rant about how you should focus on debuff/morale draining for military victory, or rapid expansion for magic victory(your do have a lot of bonuses to knowledge income compared to other cultures), but i would end it here and not draw definitive conclusions on the way you should play the game

[@jacawandersmok9043]

I like cold part of shadow and culture and imperium tree[ sumon units also cool in imperium tree / dyplomacy part

[@danielcarpentiero1843]

Did u see a way to transfer providence s from one city to another. U seem like a knowledgeable guy seen some ur civ 6 videos and really like these aow4 vids keep up great content potato

[@owtfox]

Hey, thanks for the video! I prefer to lean into T2 Warlocks and Night Guard with Shadow, starting with Faith for the healing Dark sorely lack, then leaning into debuffing ^^ Can you do a brutal Necro playthrough, instead of tutorial? Dare you to not use Chaos ;) Cheers!

[@Nota-Skaven]

Faith is just so good, I'm tempted to go faith literally every game

[@nightbladexxx]

All hail Darth Meow Meow! I almost spit my water out when you said his name 😂

[@Qbe.]

I'd like to request a video on stacks. As in, what's a good stack composition, guidelines on how many to have according to turn/needs, etc., as I find that I often have too many or too few units, and I'm not sure what's a good comp for a stack. EDIT: LOL, I made that comment at around 1:05:00 , and like within 5 minutes you started talking about stacks and comps

[@nahnah4526]

Love this game

[@GlenishDsilva]

Thank you!

[@gamingpgmp3189]

@PotatoMcWhiskey The maps are created in order from top to bottom. the first map It is actually at tutorial. And the story it is also a tutorial of some sort. @everyone - Play them from top to bottom in order.

[@ObscuriaDragunAed]

I think the ironic part of this that was purely due to the KZbin algorithm's autoplay, is that this popped up directly after your tome tier list where most of the tomes you're using you shit on from the last vid lol. Not saying that in a doiuchey way, I just can't stop snickering at that since I just got done hearing about your lamentations for cryomancy and pyromancy.

[@OrionTheta1]

One of your Cities should be called "Litter Box" right? ;) ;)

[@christopher2866]

😂

[@oneshotson1340]

A brutal AI built a gross industrious materium/necromancy build on me in a game and it was impossible to chew through. Crazy amounts of buffs and in player hands I think it would be ridiculous

[@rhevoramirez7969]

great game!

[@peterh1875]

This is my take on the game: I've played around with this game for a few hours. Most of the mechanics are not new to me, because I've been playing AoW since version 1: that was a long time ago; and this game recycles a lot of method and content, of the predecessors, dressed up in the Emperor's New Clothes. Still, some things look interesting and invite further experimentation. But not all that different from Planetfall. *BUT* this is supposedly a strategy game. So will someone please explain this to me - I conquered a hostile city (during my first 10 turns) in the most recent game. I didn't have enough empire points to migrate it from Orcs to Halflings, so I set them free as vassals. Fine. Imagine my surprise when *_on the very next turn_* that vassal had spawned a full stack of 6 strong units on the ruins of it's town, plus a couple of extras out in the landscape . This is absurd. 0 production time for 8 units. HA! I had read on *tube that the "AI" cheats outrageously, so I was warned, sort of; but this is driving the sublime to the ridiculous. I hit [Alt][F4] in disgust. Shame on you Triumph Studios, shame on you Paradox. This is not a strategy game as I understand the term. No underlying logic to the computer units and stacks. Until they fix this, I would strongly advise against wasting your money on this...if you're planning to actually play strategy rather than crap shoot.

[@ChaosRevealsOrder]

I have only 2 problems with the game: - I'd wish I could set a maximum Cap of 1 army. Currently, it feels like i need to spam units and the hero progression kinda becomes some other thing you do instead of the focus. - I'd wish A.I. wouldn't spawn 3 powerful army stacks out of thin air after I just defeated his 3 stack already while in siege. I've never seen A.I. cheat so hard in this genera before.

[@sterile_coffeegc3801]

I've never seen this happen I ain't gonna lie. Usually when I destroy my opponents army stack it takes like 5-6 turns for them to retaliate unless there's an army of lieges drop

[@digitalk1llraymon448]

@@sterile_coffeegc3801 What he's talking about is something that happens usually very late in the game (in my experience at least) that when you're sieging a city, once the AI prepares its army, it will attack you, and if you wipe them, you barely get any breathing room because, at later turns, cities are usually massive, and the AI has such a massive amount of draft that it spams T3 and bellow units in about 2-3 turns and its never just 1 unit. If you don't have either a godlike army group, or a bunch of reinforcements nearby, then when the AI gets these massive attacks on you every 3-4 turns, they wipe out your stacks due fo numbers alone. And since if you retreat to heal you stop sieging, the AI gets to burn you out extremely fast.

[@luka188]

@@digitalk1llraymon448 Which doesn't seem to be a sign of cheating AI at all, but the game mechanics working in its favor and the AI using them well.

[@regisfilius755]

30:13 not sure 'dps' (damage per second) is the right term here. Damage output, damage potential or damage per turn might be better.

[@viffaria]

Honey, wake up! Potato's new 1 and a half hour overexplained tutorial on Age of Wonders 4 just dropped!

[@jesusfranco]

Thanks for the video, helps a lot in learning some basic stuff that is not well explained in the game... But.... i had to put it at 0,75 speed. Either you speak very fast or the video is over accelerated!!! XD

[@gard540]

Your videos on this game is the only thing keeping me from losing control and making the poor financial decision for me of buying this game. Please, for the sake of my wallet, keep them coming, I need my fix. 😅

[@nikappi]

Loved your overview, I felt that it was VERY comprehensive and aptly titled as a beginners video. I would suggest that you consider slowing down your speach however. Considering that this is a beginners video, I sometimes found it diffiult to follow your speaking with the visuasl and would have gotten much more out out of viewing with a slightly slower presentation.

[@anonymousgmo1]

this game looks so much more fun than Civ 6 ever did

[@discount701]

Should you build outposts/new cities ON resources or only next to them?

[@whipstachedesigns]

Depends. Imo the best setup is an outpost on a gold vein, then add a work camp to secure the neighboring resource (or vice versa). But if you're not planning to add a work camp (or expand into a city) you can put it on the resource. If you are planning to make it into a city, there are other more important factors to consider when choosing the location.

[@earlofdoncaster5018]

I thought that if you met the boost conditions boosted the output.

[@jacawandersmok9043]

can you play good dark culture? any nissing?

[@skuldrax3880]

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Meow Meow The Wise?

[@jgoody9597]

Man I wanna watch this but I don’t wanna spoil my first souls playthrough. Decisions decisions

[@TimSedai]

Pretending you're doing this JUST because I suggested it a week or so back for my ego lol

[@Alorand]

Why go Champion with the Dark faction? Isn't the bonus stability kind of wasted?

[@wkvdmerwe4407]

Man I wanna watch this video but I'm not done exploring the Shadow tree for myself. I did get my ass kicked thoroughly las night tho, 1more try before I bow to the Potato

[@Tenly_UK]

there is ez way how open all panteon if you say about it . Create new map small map with 2 player - find other player ( its abut 3-4 turn) and go war with him, then you should be his vasale and move your all castle under his control . he - win and you also because its your vasale - so in the end you will see Victory and 500 point win :) i have 50 lvl already xdd spammed a lot with this

[@john0constantine]

5:20 Correction: the yellow circle is not how far you can move in a single turn. It is where you can move right now, limited by movement and visibility. Depending on movement range and visibility you might be able to move further once you see where you are going at your new location.

[@Erbsenbrei]

Further: The radius is determined by the slowest unit in your army. If for instance you want to fight a camp but are a tile short, you may still have a unit with movement left in your stack which can initiate combat for you and pull your main stack in.

[@SethKamins]

I'm really enjoying the game it's a lot of fun. However if I'm not playing online it sure seems like the enemy never attacks me. And I just tech up until I crush them. Even on hard difficulty.

[@TUBOR67]

I thought, if you go dark, the stability doesn`t matter - does it?

[@emran433]

How he get the revive the undead ability and poison orb at first?

[@dennisBuesoCalix]

They are a level 13 Pantheon unlock. So while this is a great video for beginners to understand how to play the game, it is impossible for anyone to have the same setup without having played a lot already.

[@al_wombat]

07:00 …and since this is overexplaining] for the Upkeep of magical units.

[@Tenly_UK]

27:45 only hero can build ouptost , i gues scaut can , isnt it ?

[@Yoids]

This is overwhelming... I bought AOW3, and I think I stop playing because it was too complicated and there was no tutorial, so I was going nowhere. Does this game have a tutorial to explain the game to someone who never played a 4X before? Or should I just forget about it XD

[@timpeters7852]

Any tips for how to keep the game from crashing every four turns?

[@Riac007]

Moore Age of Wonders plz

[@uSher0]

i love you

[@stephenzepp6536]

I'm surprised you wait so long to turn your first outpost into a city. Aren't you losing a LOT of tempo by not getting the hero associated with that city leveled up as early as possible? You're also paying the upkeep costs for the outpost without it generating any income for you...

[@lukedemler4421]

ive found myself playing more planetfall than aoe 4 lately, they just did too much, i really just love the sci-fi setting and the unit mods changed the gameplay so radically.

[@KingQuatto]

Or barbarian scouts can build outposts

[@Xexelli]

How do I turn the computer on? Still stuck on that part.

[@christopher2866]

Talk dirty to it

[@lukedemler4421]

give it a reacharound

[@brianbittner9088]

I get that you mentioned not over-optimizing but hitting auto-explore before the scout even moved hurt... There was a lot tempo in making that first move since auto-explore could have begun after taking his full movement.

[@makadi86]

what is moral?

[@Leon-uw2dk]

Day 1746 of wondering why he didnt buy buildings with his reserve of gold

[@Siege181]

I love potato’s guides but sometimes it does feel like he’s explaining “now 6 is a bigger number than 5, that 5 is SMALLER than 6 as a number” 😂😂