Age of Wonders 4 Tier List - Cultures

[@veevoir]

It is pretty weird you just hand-waved the High units as meh. The awakening itself gives them great stuff, that +4 damage on everyone just by casting one entry-level spell. And the awakening skill for archers? OOof! The most hilarious thing about High culture is that AI does not count awakening when moving towards you. So it stops right outside of your archers range. Then on your turn you awaken them - they get extra dmg, hit chance and +1 range - then wreck the enemy. Stacking range enchancements from tomes + awakening makes high culture turn into sniper culture that murders everything before it reaches you

[@JumboPixel]

I should clarify that none of the unit types deserve to be ‘hand-waved’. I actually think they’re all quite diverse, and lean into their strengths well. I also wouldn’t say that units particularly swayed any of my ratings for that very reason. They’re all uniquely good, so had little impact on my already very close rankings.

[@MGShadow1989]

I'm particularly fond of going Evil with High culture so they start Awakened, and one of my favourite units when I do this is Zephyr Archers - up to +3 range on a ranged unit that can disengage from melee like a Skirmisher, as well as all the accuracy bonuses. As you say, definitely sniper vibes.

[@drkmgic]

i agree to a point. awakening i just find to tedious. also it doesnt show which unit u've already awakened . i wish theres was a visual display

[@MGShadow1989]

@@drkmgic - there are icons next to a unit that represent buffs and debuffs, and you can hover over unselected units to see their buffs, but aye it would be nice to have a specific visual effect on certain buffs like a glow or whatever. The tedium is part of why I like going Evil, so the dormant buffs activate automatically and I can rely entirely on one or two Awakeners to rebuff some stuff, rather than also needing Sun Priests.

[@johnhobbes2268]

@@MGShadow1989 Where did you get the third range? Awaken, seeker arrows and what am I missing?

[@TheThinKing23]

You laughed at the barbarian scout “outpost builder”, but it’s so convenient not to need to bring your precious heroes from the other side of the map, or just plopping down a quick outpost whenever you eg find a magic resource. Honestly I think that’s actually very strong!

[@neetfreek9921]

Heroes have like no base vision range too, it’s annoying as hell.

[@JumboPixel]

I definitely don't mean to belittle it - very handy if your hero is elsewhere! In fact it's worth a mention because it sets them apart.

[@daniele4568]

This is my favorite thing about barbarians. You can have three cities up and running quickly with little effort

[@Kn1ves0x]

combine that with the Teleportation Province upgrade and you can just zip around the map. Hero included ^_^

[@noneofyourbusiness3288]

It is insanely good. Lets you grab special resources and ancient wonders early and get easy grudges against other players (if you need those, lets be honest you will probably declare unjustified wars anyway). Outpost builder is amazing.

[@veevoir]

And on point of Dark a small correction - they *do not* have souls resource. This is unlocked by dark-aligned tomes, but not specific to the culture itself.

[@JumboPixel]

Yup, I goofed in saying that. Should have simply said they’re better aligned with the souls economy.

[@mrbigglezworth42]

High Culture leaning heavy into ranged damage and magic are what makes it a strong contender. You get 4 extra spirit damage through Awakening even if the unit doesn't have a dormant skill to also boost, so you can stack multiple magical damage types quickly and easily. I really like the High Culture for this.

[@MrWuaandax]

It makes absolutely brutale archers

[@MrWuaandax]

Plus 4 DMG on base Is found Only in t4s or under conditions, pretty bonkers on units that hit multiple times

[@hugo3627]

Works realy well with tome of inquisition and all the damage enchantments for ranged. I made some discustingly strong glade runners with high culture, pyromancy, horde, inquisition and amplification.

[@ScabbyMcKniel]

Take Wightborn and you get lifesteal on top. Plus glowy eyes on skeletons.

[@eidolon9625]

So just in case people don't know, the mount option in the race creation are best used with the barbarian culture. I just got done playing a round based off the mongol hordes and exclusively used furies even to up against tier 4 and 5s. Furies riding Unicorns are great especially if you give them amplification arrows from the astral line. All of my armies moved incredibly quickly on the world map considering I was using exclusively mounted units and if a melee unit caught one Fury I could just phase out.

[@dsinemoi1mouton]

Looking forward trying this soon. Ty for sharing

[@flyinggothicsheer1346]

I would say that's debatable, the wolf mount is probably most synergistic with Dark Culture. Because the wolf mounts get enfeebleing howl. Which applies weakend in a 1 hex radius around the unit. The Nightmares give mounted units intimidating aura for free. I don't know if that stacks with intimidating aura from the supremecy tome. But that's great for demoralizing builds. I agree the Unicorn giving phase is a great ability. But I think it would be better on the Tier 3 Spellbreaker or Awakened than the fury. But would have to try your build and see for myself.😅

[@notalefty999]

The problem with furies benefitting from mounts is that furies are a bad unit. The tier 3 battlecasters of both high and mystic a much better units overall as candidates for mounts, particularly when you factor in quick phase later on. Combine this with the wolf mount, and you can strike first with a full 3 attacks and do so clustered together for a very large damage bonus. The 6 range AoEs for both are nice also. The spellbreaker has a very useful dispel effect, and the awakener, whilst its AoE is less impressive, can be awakened for a large range, accuracy and damage buff. It enables both to strike from a significantly larger distance than furies even before quick phase. They are also quite a bit tankier, with +20 health, +1 armour and +3 resist compared to furies.

[@eidolon9625]

@@notalefty999 Not really sure what you're saying... If you're saying that higher tier units have better stats than lower tier units then in-arguably yes. My point was that with mounts the fury becomes entirely viable even to take on stacks of tier 4+ units. I have not used the spellbreaker or the awakener with mounts but considering they are already good units without them I would not doubt that they become even better. Incidentally, I choose to go down the Gaia's chosen route with my fury build in order to make up for that weakness.

[@davids9760]

I've had success with knights with wolves in a nature build. Lot of cavalry options. can tech in order or materium as needed

[@rezokiladze2334]

One huge thing you overlooked is that the Industrious culture can prospect mountains, giving you 50~ Production, Gold, or an Item. with 2-3 scouts doing it, it stacks up quickly. But requires micro managment

[@猪武者]

yeah I think prospect is pretty strong, it is a way to get a bunch of items or money very easily

[@dorianodet8064]

After playing a full game with them, I can say they're as annoying to play with than to play against. The fact prospection can't be automated like auto explore is just not fun

[@jamesbates9038]

It takes time but if you have flying mounts (mod) and the item hoarder trait you can get a nice collection. Late game I was getting 300 mana just from items I hoarded.

[@iyziejane]

The way mystic works, star blades stacks up to 3 times. Astral infinity lets you unlock tactical spells on turn 1. Your leader should be a Wizard king. So cast a tactical spell on turn 1, use overpower to cast two more tactical spells on turn 2. Now you can first strike the enemy with 3 stacks of star blades, and the battle is over before it starts. It's the most powerful culture in late game I think because of tactical spells.

[@jtisaacs4]

Agreed.

[@Tobichiii]

that

[@dawn4383]

Early Astral blooded too and you'll have 3 stacks of fortune by that point.

[@Someone-lg6di]

Aditionally enemies proc the starblades as well was runing a mana addict nevromancer biuld using chaos tomes gor t1 buffs and it was ridiculous i sent a t1 army and hero on turn 30 and killed a dragon bandit camp while loosing only 1 unit

[@kylehollenbeck9585]

One thing that is pretty key with the barbarians is that their shielded tier one warrior had a built in stun ability. This can be key in handling the heavier hitters in enemy armies and is useful in preventing retaliation to it or any shock troops you'll be sending in. Also it puts you in defense mode afterwards.

[@mrbigglezworth42]

It also gets higher chance of success when the resistance of the target has been reduced. So it has amazing synergy with Orders condemned mechanic.

[@drkmgic]

mount are so strong tbh. especially that spider mount with its web ability. its makes scout units with web so a great fighting unit lol

[@MGShadow1989]

That stun allows T1 barbarian armies to really punch above their weight. Hero/ruler with some support like extra health and damage (my preference is a Berserker style character) 2 Shields and 3 Skirmishers is significantly more effective than any other T1 army - at least in my experience so far.

[@danielsgamerprofile4067]

Barb tier 1s are amazing the shield units stun and the skirmishers guaranteed sundering strikes 💯

[@danielsgamerprofile4067]

Dark cultures dark knight is a great unit I played dark culture on the beginner realm for my first run .. using the heavy charge followed by its dark surge aoe attack is really good their warlocks are pretty good too once I had some of them in stacks their crowd damage abilities provided nice damage in fights en masse (Also I found dark cultures research potential to be very good I had crazy research income relatively early)

[@zacharyjackson1829]

Guys don't sleep on your unique scout mechanics! For example since Dark scouts get camouflage for rocky, swamp, and forest terrain they are great for razing enemy domains or just keep a watchful eye on your enemy's movements. The barbarian scout ability to create outposts allows rapid expansion especially with Adept settlers and the first nature affinity perk.

[@rwme4698]

Really miss the unit lore that was found in prior AoW games and Planetfall. Very disappointing that it is isn't present.

[@zacharyjackson1829]

understandable, but i prioritize gameplay over paragraphs I don't read except for special occasions

[@Cowkill]

I agree. It brought a lot imo.

[@mr.murlock9780]

Agreed! I miss the little bit of story you could infer from the small lore bits in each units stat card

[@ceberskie119]

But this way you can make your own lore. Headcannon is fun in its own way.

[@chengarqordath]

The look at units not differentiating between units with repeating attacks and ones with one big hit feels like it misses a really big and important difference.

[@mr.murlock9780]

This exactly. The supports throw a single big attack while archers and battle mage units are able to hit up to 3x if they dont move. This amount of damage is not reflected at all in their stat cards.

[@godofchaoskhorne5043]

@@mr.murlock9780 it's something I only realized late game on my beginners scenario. I built a mystic nage army and was wondering why my mage's did 3 attacks sometimes and only 1 at others untill I figured it was the action points. On console it's even worse because menu navigating is tedius. Idk why they didn't give us a movable cursor at least the ability to switch like lots of other games. I wanted to use m&k but they don't even support that. All other games support m&k but a 4x doesn't lol? Wtf. I hope they fix stuff with some updates

[@nathanperish5983]

I love how many youtubers are dropping these tier lists with minimal game knowledge and baiting out engagement via debate in the comments. Keeping it classy as usual.

[@PwnMissile]

You can tell when Dark gets given an S tier despite everybody unanimously agreeing that its mechanics are fairly weak and that other cultures can generally do whatever it is trying to do better.

[@male_maid5951]

@@PwnMissile i find dark very powerful. the dark affinity is lop sided, but the dark knight is amazingly strong.

[@RaenRyong]

Mystic culture Arcanists are actually absurdly strong for T1 units. You can have Star Blades rolling before they even attack the first time and then their damage output is absolutely mental for how cheap and early they appear in the game - I've overpowered many stronger units just with their sheer efficacy. The main downside is the amount of Mana needed for the race, while trying to balance it with other factors - but if you happen to have some friendly empires near you, I normally have good luck just fighting a lot and selling some of the unwanted items for Mana to them. Granted, this won't work so easily in multiplayer...

[@cavalyn]

I'd have thought the mystic's t3 attacks "removing all buffs" would have been worth a mention since it's such a huge part of what makes them so special. Feels like a lot of the units in this got next to no coverage. Just "does a bit low damage" ignoring the fact that it applies status effects, or that the ability can stun every enemy adjacent - which is kind of a big deal. Like, Dark units are all about combo surrounding status effects, and how a big advantage of the bannerman for feudal is that his aoe support abilities combo well with their "stand together" ability, etc. Edit: Also, are you not going to tell us what "all seer's blessing" from the astral building does...? I feel like that ought to be a key componeny for deciding if it's good ot not 0.o

[@Krymefighter]

Bit rough on the Nightguard, it has decent stats and good offensive attack, with a very useful debuff to adjacent enemies *and* the Cull the weak damage bonus to enemies triggered by weakening applied by the very units (pursuer, Warlock) that it protects. Great synergy.

[@Vanethen]

Something I found out recently: If you hover your mouse over the attacks in-game it gives you a more detailed breakdown of what that attack does. For example, the T1 Dark ranged unit applies weakened at 90% efficiency (the highest) on every attack. This turns an otherwise 'meh' unit into something quite different. I am a casual Dark enjoyer and there's a lot more depth to the culture than I expected at first.

[@theschisack]

So the prospecting ability as long as you have mountains I actually think pushes industrious into B. You can get snow ball really hard off the resources and you can get hero items. It doesn't say it but that is actually super strong early.

[@Smithers322]

I was ROLLING in hero items from prospecting. I pumped out 4 scouts as my first units and sent them as fast as I could to all the mountains i could find. I got the fully equiped hero achievement so easily from this ability. I was also getting that snowball from the constant influx of industry and gold.

[@mercb3ast]

Yea, honestly I'm shocked he has it rated as low as he does. Prospecting alone, IMO, pushes Industrial into A, if not S tier. The units are nothing to write home about. They are good I guess, but not like, amazing. It's fun to take a mount for them, and then you get a mega tanky mobile cavalry unit. However, prospecting is just so over the top strong that you can practically ignore your economy once you make contact with a few factions. I suppose the effectiveness of prospecting scales directly to the size of the game. Prospecting hits a pretty hard ceiling on a small map, with limited factions, play with 7, or the 12 player mod, and you can sell your unwanted items for hundreds of gold per turn. I'm actually curious if the resources you get from prospecting scale with fabled hunters. Since one of the features of fabled hunters that isn't in the tooltip, seems to be that you get better quality items when they drop as well. Double resources prospecting, plus a tendency for higher tier item drops. Could be an insane combo.

[@haakoflo]

@@mercb3ast Industrious units are fine. With the right buffs and a support leader, bastions become near-unkillable by mid game. Also the auto-resolve really likes them, and typically bastions don't get killed in auto combat. EDIT: I've seen Iron Golems described as great units in several Tome reviews. But buffed Bastions are way better, even if you have Eternal Earth which gives Undying to the golems. For DPS, add ranged units. Get seeker arrows to make sure you can stay in the back rank with them, while retaining all 3 actions. Get Zephyr archers or Glade Runners from one of the tier 2 tomes, and you can kill virtually any enemy with low to zero losses. As secondary affinities, both order and nature work well. In fact, I would prefer tier 4/5 tomes from one of these. For instance, angelized fully levelled up (through ascended warriors) with Martial Mastery and Keeper's Mark has something like -70% upkeep, and can cheat death once per battle. Add the resurrect spell, and your units basically will never die. Or, on the Nature side, Gaia's Chosen ++ work equally well. The trick to fighting with units like the Bastions is to NOT rush ahead to fight the enemy. Use defense mode most of the time, and let the enemy come to you. Early game, charging opponents may make that feel unsafe. Before bastions, use halberdiers in the most exposed positions (buffed by Anvil Guards on the flanks) to counter that.

[@gtafbi1]

more like S tier, the prospecting ability on maps with mountain ranges easily doubles the gold and production you get in the first 20+ turns simply by adding about 2 extra scouts early on.

[@turmuus753]

Definitely, it's really annoying to use though since game doesn't tell you if the province is already prospected until you move a scout on top of it.

[@elizulie]

loving the age of wonders content

[@Rimedane]

Barbarian I feel is the most deserving of S-Tier. The Rite of Alacrity in of itself is strong. But the fact that not only can their heroes, but also their scouts build outposts, is extremely strong with even just 1 point in materium to grab the 50% off outpost cost and build time, combined with the fact that their early game units are so so strong, makes Barbarians insanely good at clearing out stacks upon stacks of neutral maurader camps early into the game. Because their scouts also can build outposts, it means unlike other cultures, they can go around and claim a lot of the special-grade materials, archon blood, etc. before any other culture. And in the mid-late game, with forced march + the forced march buff from chaos if you lean into that affinity. You can use your outposts like a super-highway before ever unlocking teleporters. If you decide to outfit Barbs there's a few things to keep in mind: Super-Archers: You can go either Nature or Materium for T3 Zehpyr a/o Glade Archers. Either set are amazing at dishing out damage before your enemy can even get the chance to go for you. On top of that, going either nature or materium gives you access to T3 Defender Type Units which prevent your enemies from getting close. With the Rites of Alacrity and huge amounts of draft in your cities, you can churn out elite armies of archers each with two melee defenders like it's sunday brunch. Toil and Bubble: With +8 blight damage from the get go, working with Shadow/Order/Astral gives you access to sundered defences, lowering their resistance to magic damage types. So instead of going all out-physical, why not outfit your warriors with elemental damage types to diversify your damage and make sure that no matter what, you're always doing decent chunks of damage by hitting them where it hurts every time. Chaos, Pure Chaos: Lean into the rage and it'll mean there's no shortage of benefits to be had, just make sure to never stop attacking. Because the best defence is a great offense and using your outposts like super-highways to have your armies move the 2-3 turns worth of distance in one go is extremely powerful. Just make sure to summon some irregulars when things get dicey.

[@SteveMorris-c2r]

I think you placed Industrious a bit low. I know its all a matter of playstyle but I think you need to give them a deeper look. Their units are incredibly durable and fantastic templates for enchantments. Sundered blades, seeker arrows and siege magic are great on the materium side, but throw in some enchants from other affinities and their units get scary fast. Chaos enchants on industrious units are crazy. Not to mention getting to toss bolstered resistance on tough and hard hitting units like warbreed and tyrant knights Industrious cultures also have better economies. City gold income is boosted by production when no buildings are in construction. That allows you to get better return on investment for building production. Food can only grow your city to a point. extra draft gets converted into food. Research and mana are limited to what tomes you have, but gold is always useful. A larger budget lets you field more scouts to prospect, establish more heavily walled outposts to protect your holdings, a larger military and more heros. Yes Industrious culture can feel a bit slow but all it takes is one fight to swing in their favor and suddenly your either King of the hill or fighting an impossible uphill battle fighting against a force that can take your best to the jaw all day long.

[@firekeeper1870]

Exactly. If you focus on enchantments rather than strategic magic, paired with all the defensive buffs Industrious offers and add some of the useful race transformations on top, your armies can become nigh unkillable. When all of your units reduce any physical damage they take by 80-90% and magical damage by 60-80%, while also constantly being able to heal themselves by attacking due to the lifesteal of the Wightborn transformation, then your enemies will be hard pressed to take even a single one of your units down. And due to all the enchantments, you units strike like a freight train. You pretty much covered all the economic aspects, so there's nothing left for me to mention there. And yeah, the setup can be a bit tough, but once you've got the Industrious train rolling, it doesn't stop.

[@SourceOfViews]

I'm currently on my first industrious, perfectionist artisan playthrough and I'm honestly not that happy with my units currently. Any recommendations?

[@dorianodet8064]

Yeah, Industrious C tiers hit me like "Waaaaat". Industrious is an easy S tiers civilization in my opinion. Their early game is heavily carried by the insane amount of durability that their unit get from inate tankiness + bolster passive. Tankiness scale better than damage with healing and regeneration. Tankiness scale better than damage with long term thing like inflicting debuff. Tankiness is more important than damage for melee unit, especially repeat attack melee unit cause their base damage are usually high enough, but getting into melee and surviving there is much more difficult. Even if you don't invest at all in them and therefor just want meat shield in front of your stronger unit, then once again ... Tankiness is best. Their ranged unit is very, very very strong. Both the flexibility of one AP attack and strengh of full AP attack. To me, the industrious is like the absolute perfect build of unit that just wait for enchantement to be slapped on top

[@veevoir]

@@dorianodet8064 Almost agree with it all, except the range unit is crap - they are mobile and versatile due to 1AP attack and have a nice skill... but lack of multiattack hurts their damage big time (enchantments trigger only once per attack, instead of 3 times in case of multiattack). But if you play with Materium or Nature books - there are good archer choices there anyway.

[@dorianodet8064]

@@veevoir It's not an archer, it's a sniper basically. You either get the great flexibility of 1 pt action or the three pt take down that does damage and more. Once again, not a main damage dealer indeed. It' a flexible killer. As for enchant, it will deal well with all enchant that are % based and debuff based cause, if I'm not wrong, full action attack have better % of success to apply debuff than repeating

[@willemverheij3412]

Industrious culture got pretty scary with my pyromancer type wizard king combining materium and chaos affinities. A more defensive playstyle works best for them, let the enemies come to your tough battle line. Move it close enough for your crossbowmen and ranged heroes to fire at the enemy but have to come to your solid battle line of tough infantry. Fire enchantments on their weapons helped out too, and chaos affinity really helps to add the needed aggression to them, backed by the solid defences and economy of industrious culture. I quite appreciate having this more defensive option, I appreciate each of the six options though for being pretty different and kind of catering to different playstyles while focusing on different affinities and tomes can help you customise it to compensate for weaknesses or double up on their strengths.

[@chengarqordath]

Especially since if you're going Industrious you'll probably also take the Materium trait to help you research enchantments faster and reduce their upkeep.

[@willemverheij3412]

@@chengarqordath That too, and it combines really well with chaos that adds some aggression, cheaper tier 1 units and getting some for free as well. Their tier 1 units are pretty solid, you can form a good battle line with them. Infantry in front, crossbowmen behind. The crossbowmen especially pack quite a punch when flanking and work better with moving around than archers.

[@RoadRunner217]

Sadly the defensive formations get ripped to pieces by teleports or flying movements. And combat spells can really ruin your day if you try to stack defenses. At the end of the day, industrious and materium really need a buff.

[@Hrafnskald]

Mystic (not Astral :) pairs really well with Mana Addicts (which you can get from the Pantheon unlocks: every turn you cast a spell on, your units gain lifesteal, healing while the Starblades make you stronger. And it's nice to be able to cast big summon spells constantly :)

[@DarkExcalibur42]

If the devs plan to add more cultures, I'm hoping for more combinations with Nature, Chaos, and Shadow. Having a source of Chaos that isn't tied to Nature would add some variety to build outcomes, and having a source of Shadow that doesn't automatically make you a little evil would be nice. At the same time... I really like how distinct the flavor of each of these cultures is, and I don't want to see stuff added that isn't of the same quality. Hard to say what could be added between the existing archetypes. Druidic (Astral & Nature), maybe? I figure one hard rule is opposing affinities shouldn't be paired (Order/Chaos, Astral/Materium, Nature/Shadow). But some other affinities feel like they'd be hard to mesh as well. Like Nature & Materium or Chaos & Materium. Shadow & Order also feels odd.

[@mustacobra]

I know this post is 2 weeks old and you probably know, but dlc include few cultures. After all 4 dlc we should have around 12 cultures

[@DarkExcalibur42]

​@@mustacobra I haven't seen anything to suggest THAT many new cultures. The first DLC, the dragon one, looks like we should expect a new racial appearance and a new ruler type plus some Tomes. But it didn't say anything about a new culture. Empires and Ashes has promised a single new culture, and it looks like that's some sort of artificer themed thing. Where did you hear about the other 5 new cultures?

[@mustacobra]

Dlc spoke of 2 New culture, I think it was dlc 2 and 3. But i still quess that last one also gives New culture, its just my quessibg thats why I said "around"

[@benjii_boi]

High is absolutely broken. The awakener is an absolutely OP unit. Exposing light is a brutal high damage 1 hex AOE that does 3 sundered def and resistance Order + nature focus with dips into mystic. Awakeners + daylight spears + lightbringer + shrine of smiting unit comp, get living vines at tier 1 then go hard on faith tomes. Keeper's mark gives all units faithful (stacks dmg for shrine of smiting) and also steadfast- this includes the living vines from nature tome. Use living vines to control battlefield and distract/immobilize enemies. They only have 10 HP but because keepers mark gives all your units steadfast and faithful it actually applies as they count as fighter units. This adds bonus to shrine of smiting as well as wrath of the faithful spell from T1 tome of faith which stacks 10 base + 5 dmg for every faithful unit on the field, so with 3 stacks of faithful units you get 18 * 5 + 10 = 100 dmg before resistances. Go celestial major transformation for extra stack of faithful reducing upkeep even more Using the awakeners you can use the exposing light spell to AOE strip any def + res buffs *and* stack sundered (only takes 2 awakeners to strip max buffs and inflict max sunder). Awakened spears provide solid frontline defense w/ +1 retaliation and charge block, and then the shrine of smiting and tac spells can absolutely wreck house on any other unit comp of any other affinity I've found 3 stacks of that comp with one hero can take down brutal AI multi-hero deathstacks with just auto resolve, it's ludicrous how busted it is

[@jtisaacs4]

Don't forget the benefit of mystic to be able to summon disposable armies around the map. Tons of mana equals tons of units that can be put on the front lines.

[@khanhnguyen-tt3ff]

Lol it being out shadow by time of horde and alot of nature's tome

[@notalefty999]

I would say that high actually is very solid for a focus on ranged racial units. Awakened battle casters and archers significantly outclass other cultures.

[@ngocanhnguyenho6788]

Yeah, ranged can dominate early game with concentrate fire tactics, but come to mid game with tier III teleport disruptors, they start being weak. Strongest tactics now is summon and mind control, late game may add mass bolstering melee.

[@dannymunch4633]

I would boost Industrious to B-Tier based on the fact, that Scout Prospecting actually has a chance to find items, even though it isn't mentioned in the description. Never stacked out heroes with items faster than with Industrious.

[@Cobra6x6]

You can also prospect some regions in the underground, the ones with stalagtites. Couple that with excavation and you can have an income of resources and items with very low risk and investment, until it runs out.

[@kieronjamescronin1588]

I think feudal might be S because of how fast you can get your city to grow (prolific swarmer + lord of the crops.) You can do this by either getting your hero to lvl 2 really fast (usually 2 combats so like 2-3 turns) or just resetting your hero to get it instantly on turn 1. You can then do this to every new city so everything grows really fast (change governors around, although you will have to reset your main hero if you gave him lord of the crops initially since iirc he has to stay on your throne city.) Also their early game feels pretty good since the peasant pikeman is really cheap (especially on brutal difficulty where you really need a lot of units to clear the surroundings quickly.) I also think the spells you can get for them are really powerful.

[@johnsnow5125]

You didn't mention that units like Fury get mounts from racial traits. And in regards to Fury, the do 3x ranged damage, Sunderers fire just once, Sunderers don't outclass Fur(ies?) but they are good, yeah. For High, the measly tier 1 archers are actually some of the best in the game because of Awakened, and the tier 3 Awakener is an actual beast of unit that also gets the +1 range on their spells with Awakened

[@cathulionetharn5139]

kinda shame mystic doesn't have an archer unit Also I always had a soft spot units that evolve into better units peasant->defender or coppergolem->irongolem Just wish the evolved units had some bonus as a holdout from evolution

[@minibotas9496]

I can understand why they don't have archers in-universe, if being a spellcaster in that culture is as easy / common as it seems, having archers seem redundant from a military perspective, better train more non-spellcasters to keep the enemy at bay rather than use those resources on more range and less protection. I also wish that more units evolved at higer levels, or got neat stuff at max levels

[@veevoir]

What is sad is that peasants evolve into a Shield unit, instead into a better polearm unit. Totally changes the buffs they can get and the role in combat.

[@cathulionetharn5139]

@@minibotas9496 yep, unfortunately some enchanntments only work on physical ranged attacks and mystics are clearly research and magic and therefore enchantment focused

[@fendelphi]

That said, you can buff their tier 1 Arcanist by basically treat them like a typical "swarmer" unit. Take Hearty(+10 health), Arcane Focus(+15% magic damage) and Mana Addicts(lifesteal). Give them the Spawnkin Minor transformation, and give your hero Battle Seeker Training(+20% damage to tier 1 units) and you have basic Arcanist dealing 6/6/6 damage without Star Blades.

[@lege3018]

Mystic's melee units are fantastic. Both have a 90% base chance on their multi attacks to apply Sundered Resistance, softening the target for your spells and battle mages (and Mystic gets a tier I battle mage). And Star Blades makes it so that the melee units get some benefit from sundering resistances in their attacks. Add some enchantments that trade physical damage for higher elemental damage and those melees units keep dishing more damage as they keep attacking and sundering resistances. Another thing about Mystic is that their unique altar structure gives +20 mana and research for every 5 astral echoes you collect around the map. It's common to have that structure giving 60 mana and research. Coupled with Astral Echoes themselves giving some early mana and research, this culture usually gets the most research out of the six, and by a considerable margin. Mystic's support unit also reduces the mana cost of combat spells by 20% merely from hanging around the battlefield. Just having one in your 18-stack army is enough to benefit from it. Industrial melee units have the Watchful trait, which gives them an extra retaliation attack per turn. That makes Industrial a painful culture to face in melee, as your melee attackers are met with almost as much damage in retaliation. And goddamn if they go for Supergrowth to get a third retaliation attack per turn. If you don't have a heavy charger shock unit in your army, you're better avoiding melee combat against them altogether.

[@rajofpsg]

man im loving how deep this game is, its insane

[@LukaszGladki1]

You've really ignored skills in units, which is what makes them often unique. Saying that barbarian shieldman is pretty standard is not true as it has stun. Astral shieldman has an aoe stun and it's an amazing unit. What I mean, you can't just compare base stats.

[@snowdawn]

Another great video Jumbo :) Enjoying so far your AOW4 content.

[@MartinHedegaard-q2j]

soul gathering is not only avaliable to the dark culture, it is tied to a tier 1 tome of shadow tome that every culture can chose from start. Also their buildings for negating negative stability not only comes very late(meaning you have to deal with shitty income n stuff for while before you can negate) but also them not having any stability structures means that getting positve stability is very hard and therefore your income will always be lower than other cultures. Cull the weak is also one of the weakest damage bonuses cause it can only be gained with single target ranged attacks or a 1 hex aoe spell and negated by enemies that are stregthened. Overall the Dark culture is by far the weaskest culture i think closely followed by industious. Industrious sucks cause all the try to do is completely countered by Barbarian, Feudal and Dark tier 3 units(and any other unit that has the charge ability) the only thing they got going for them is their affinity to get to gold golems faster and scout prospecting which is very strong. You got one thing right, barbarians are by far the strongest culture, even in large maps on brutal difficulty against multiple ai players you can still just spam sunderers and win. and yes berserkers are also the strongerst tier 3 and funny enough they dont even need them.

[@anonymoushealer1475]

Dark culture has nothing to do with souls. Thats the shadow tomes. A feudal lord can pick up a shadow tome and make undeads while a dark lord can chose not to

[@GCcoutoo100]

I was originally going to make a small list with brief opinions but this kind of snowballed into something of a larger thing lol Feudal: The most versatile culture in the game. The Bannermen is the strongest early game support unit, with the only competitor being the Soother but the Bannermen having way more utility. Knights are just stupidly strong. A very strong focus on Food yields and an inclination towards playing a nature game by summoning/producing and using animal along with powerful cavalry. The lack of Mana focus doesn't mean you won't be using spells, as Nature spells are some of the most powerful in the game. The Nature specialty provinces are also very focused on giving you a stable growth along with improving your mana yields. Their playstyle is pretty balanced and lets you essentially do whatever you want with safety as you'll rarely be in a situation you cannot solve one way or another. I'd place it very highly as it is, again, very versatile and essentially a beginner friendly choice for anyone. High: I think this is the most difficult Culture to play. It only really synergizes with itself and it's strongest unit comes way too late in the game. Even it's unique abilities aren't anything to brag about. They're not terrible per se but the only other affinities that synergize well with it are Astral and ironically, Chaos. I haven't tried everything with it, but I'd guess Materium also works well with it since it also focuses on enhancing units you already have. The units are the most lackluster thing here, as you'll be forced to rely on tome units instead along with your Awakener which comes often in late mid-game. Your buildings focus on giving you better stability and thus giving you the bonus yields from having high stability. By going further into Order you'll have access to diplomatically impacting spells and abilities, which is good if you want to play a more vassal-focused game. In general, this is focused a lot more on having tons of vassals, which you can acquire by conquering or negotiating with free cities. The issue is that more often than not vassal cities are not very useful outside of the ability to trade with them for their resources. They won't help you much during wars but they'll at least defend themselves. If you want to play a warlike High culture, you'll need to be more creative and focus on conquering enemy cities and then releasing them as vassals. I'd rank this a little bit lower than most due to it's lack of versatility and lackluster units. Barbarian: If you like to have massive armies, razing everything in your way and hording your way through the game, Barbarian is for you. Jokes apart this is legit one of the best cultures in the game(if not the best) just because it gives you easy access to the Chaos affinity(which focuses on killing everything in your way). It is also very versatile despite it's focus on war, and it's not uncommon to see Barbarians having gigantic cities getting tons of yields on all ends. It's support unit is amazing, but loses out to the Soother and Bannermen and the Berserker is kind of a letdown imo, with the Knight, Dark Knight and Awakener being the better Tier 3 culture units. It gets a bit overshadowed by the Warbreed, which if you're going Chaos you'll definitely have. Overall an amazing, very versatile culture that can do a little bit of anything, but always geared towards domination through war. Since you can basically conquer the entire map very easily with this culture, it's an easy S-Rank tbh. Industrious: I feel like people kind of fail to understand how useful Industrious can be. If Feudal lets you basically ignore your food yields because they'll always be high, then Industrious lets you totally ignore your production yields because they'll always be decently high. The biggest issue with this culture is that compared to all the others, it seriously should translate some of it's benefits to Draft. I feel like Industrious combines great with hording as well since you have that ridiculous early game production. The Arbalest has one of the best damages in the early game and can cancel retaliation from range, being the only unit that can do this without displacing. I agree that it is overall the weakest of the cultures, but it is only because it is focused a lot on the early game compared to the others, and falls behind very quickly. Bastions are incredibly strong and I dare say the strongest shield unit in the game with insane defense, and insane resistance if you get the right enhancements. I think they'll have to tweak this culture to be stronger in the late game and maybe giving it insane draft yields would be the way to go imo, as it makes sense that it's industrialization would provide it with the ability to create large tier I or II armies super quickly. Dark: Just like High, I feel like this is in a bit of a weird spot. I've seen Dark nations get roflstomped every time in my games and I think it has to do with how people believe the way to go is by focusing on Shadow affinity. It is also a class that has very little versatility with other things. It's focus seems to be on playing a "science" game where you are always two steps ahead of your foes, which really fits the theme. The ability to ignore Stability is nice, but only comes into play with the hyper-expensive Overlord's Tower. Before that, you just don't the debuffs from being below normal stability(which when compared with the benefits of having high stability doesn't pan out). Overall it feels lacking. It's starting units are piss-poor, with the archer and swordsman being extremely reliant on each other and you'll only get your ball rolling when you get other units to complement that. The saving grace is a very powerful Tier 2 Battle Mage unit that gets old very quickly when you start to get other Battle Mage units. I also found the Shadow tomes to be lacking, with only the Great Transformation tome being interesting due to Wightborn. I feel like despite giving Shadow Affinity from the get-go you might want to go for Chaos or Astral instead and focus on having powerful tactical spells that debuff and damage your enemies. Mystic: Oh boi, where do I begin with these? This is a culture for those who want to snowball the snowball. Mystics take the idea of using physical damage and throws it out the window. If you like casting a shitload of tactical spells, dealing a fuckton of damage just for casting those spells and summoning tons of units, Mystic is the place to go. The only sacrifice is the lack of good units by itself. The Soother is the best unit in their arsenal but everything else is kind of eh. They also lack versatility compared to the others since they're so hyper-focused casting spells, as you'll be forced to go with Astral to go get more casting points(Summoner's Tome is your best friend). One of the best cultures, competing with Feudal and Barbarian for it's ability to snowball the game incredibly heavily and just using tons of spells every time on every situation possible. The Mystic Abbey further helps you in getting you those early tomes, and the units themselves aren't anything too shabby, with the Arcanist dealing insane amounts of damage early in the game and even outdamaging the Warlock. Thus far they're my favorite culture and I always having fun mixing Astral with other stuff and just being OP by remaking my armies in a few turns.

[@JT-yl9yt]

You clearly have no idea how to take advantage of high units....

[@GCcoutoo100]

@@JT-yl9yt The fact that you *need* to do anything to take advantage of them already puts them in disadvantage compared to Mystic units where all it takes is to cast tactical spells. Anything that requires an extra step to be useful is already inherently inferior to anything that is immediately useful. Though I admit myself that I haven't tried everything with them yet so I understand your point.

[@JT-yl9yt]

@@GCcoutoo100 Their support units and heroes come with free actions that awaken units for several turns.

[@GCcoutoo100]

@@JT-yl9yt The buffs you get are comparatively not as great as some others. Like I said, they're not terrible, but when compared to Mystic or Dark even they're just less effective. The Awaken ability can be cast only on a single target, and otherwise you need to use a tac spell to get it off on your entire army. Until you get your Awakener with his Twin Awakening or you become Pure Evil, you're not going to be awakening your entire army at all times. Meanwhile Mystic triggers it's Attunement on all units upon spell cast and Dark get trigger Weaken much more easily and readily since it's enemy target. Like I said, I don't think High is trash, it's just comparatively harder to play due to these limitations and generally less flexible than other cultures since it plays focused on itself.

[@thegamesforreal1673]

Dragon Lords from the new DLC have certainly pushed feudal up to S tier for me. The dragon skill Ancient Governor I and II give a combined 25 knowledge to your main city, which combined with lord of knowledge (another +15) and the Lord's Manor building (+100% governor bonus) turns into a whopping 80 knowledge income, and an amazing +40 stability and +35 fortification as well. It makes playing tall as perfectionist artisans or chosen destroyers crazy good on the knowledge side, which was previously a weakness of that kind of playstyle due to knowledge generally being tied to world tiles.

[@Zuginator]

Industrial Culture: a few things of note. 1) After the Industry DLC the Industrial Culture is great at crafting gear for Heroes. 2) The Hero skill where you're always defensive is AMAZING at keeping damage low in your heroes! It's especially nice with the Dragon, plus you can craft expensive items for the Horde.

[@scavenger6268]

I just used your link and ive noticed something: Feudal Cultures have the best Town hall upgrades. They give so much Income. Dark Forge is quite handy in making a merchants guild in all of your cities (or at the minimum a mint) to really boost your gold income for throwaway units.

[@MrKogarou]

It can be easy to miss, but attacks listed with a small diamond after them have a secret added effect (visible on mouse-over). Like the Pursuer at 29:29 - it seems incredibly weak, BUT its multi-attacked ranged shot has a 90% base chance of applying Weakened. In Dark cultures, the 2 (non-scout) ranged units apply weakened, and the melee units take advantage of it. This protects the frontline and allows melee units to Cull the weak for additional damage and regeneration. Dark has no innate support unit, so this is the only in-combat healing that's part of the culture's kit.

[@caffiend81]

Pure Evil + High is hilarious. Just finished a Military Victory run with that combo focused on zephyr archers with Overwhelm Tactics and boosting their range/damage/accuracy to the point I could regularly hit even when the prediction showed 5%. Two zephyr archers could one round buffed enemy gold golems before I was done lol

[@leonholz5901]

Are zephyr archers so much better than the normal tier 1 archers? If so, how?

[@masafromhell]

@@leonholz5901 More damage, and a 6 ranged aoe damage ability

[@floflo1645]

@@leonholz5901 yes, they are tier 3 though

[@S3Cs4uN8]

@@leonholz5901 Zephyr Archers are a lot better than their T1 Feudal counterparts. They're predictably a straight upgrade in terms of raw stats and also have the excellent Zephyr Shot ability giving them a potent AoE attack and the Slippery trait (unit doesn't trigger Attacks of Opportunity)

[@mercb3ast]

They are better, but only marginally better. The other thing to consider is, high base archers will compete with Zephyrs from any other culture. Zephyr archers cost significantly more, but they are not significantly better. For the cost of 1 zephyr, you can field at least 3 tier 1 archers. So, it is really a matter of economy. Are you so rich that you can afford to field stacks of zephyr archers? If so, you've probably already won. In the early to mid game, even when you can field zephyr archers, you are, IMO, better off just running the dusk boys for the most part. Now, don't get me wrong, the Zephyr archer is better. It's just, is it 20 gold vs 6 gold better? For most of the game, probably not, at least not enough to warrant more than a couple of them kicking about. By the time you start hitting tier 3 tomes, you can already 1 or 2 round tier 5 mythic units with just the Dusk Hunters. Take sneaky at race creation. Go all in on crit bonuses. Get a way to distract the target. Sun Priests can do it, but there are other, more reliable ways to do it via tome. Suddenly you have tier 1 archers, with 90%+ crit chance, that do bonus damage to flanked targets, getting crit flank shots doing 45+ damage per hit. Zephyr will obviously do it, ever so slightly better, but you can get your tier 1 dusk hunters doing that as soon as you finish unlocking your first two tier 2 tomes.

[@theslayer5978]

You are heavily underastimate mystic units. Their tier 1 base battlemage can deal insane ammount of damage and unlike a lot of tier 1 scales really well and have place in your army. With various enchantments and racial upgrades I found out them overwhelming even tier 5 units with their high dmg output.

[@Oj_Stimson]

Thank you so much for this. I'm a new player and very overwhelmed over how much there is to learn in this game and your videos help a ton.

[@aarroncronin16]

Barbarians have so much going for them that wasnt highlighted enough: 1. Berserkers ability to live at 1 health amd then rage is huge, barbarians best unit by a mile and can massively swing battles. 2. Scouts outposts is so big, you can do the obvious things like grab remote resources but even better your acouts can go behind the enemy territory,set up an outpost with a teleporter and now you can attack from 2 sides. You can get remote cities online too and spam tier 1 armies and be a nuisence in the back line. 3. Warriors stun ability is ridiculous and they can hold the line while the sunderers do work 4: the ability where you get your move points back and heal when out an outpost synergises very well with scout outposts and they act like waypoints making your armies extremely mobile and resilient. 5: The fury might not be as good as a sunderer but it does have the highest base damage of any culture archer at the start

[@koeyfoo1028]

I think in team games, a Materium ally is pretty good because you can provide strong defense, are hard to take out, and can generate crap tons of income at the loss of mana with Transmute city enchant?

[@BadFiend]

I tried a faction using only materium tomes, and I was struck by the excessive amount of shield units you are given. I suppose you could say the same about Mystic culture, but at least the Evoker is a different tier. Annoying to get tier 1 shieldmen and two tier 3 shieldmen as a reward for my focus.

[@jacksheldon8566]

@@BadFiend 2-3 iron golem with 3-4 zephyr archer is a strong T3 army combo for materium.

[@HH-hd7nd]

Something noteworthy about the Industrious socuts: It's not just gold or production you can find (which can build up your first cities a lot quicker than everyone else of course) but also hero items - which means that your heros will have better equipment a lot faster than everyone else.

[@hydralance8837]

Fun think about the Barbarian Fury unit is even tho hey look weak they get mounts if you take that a racial ability. Having an armie Fury's on spiders is very fun and strong aswell.

[@doubleskulls]

Great stuff. One minor point, when considering the value of Affinity the primary benefit is opening up the relevant empire tree for imperium investment, and therefore the relative strength of them. Of course you do need Affinity for the T4 tomes too, but in general that would, for Industrious for example, just to unlock 2 Materium tomes to get to (assuming you don't get the Affinity elsewhere).

[@OldDragonScholar]

I looked around and I think near everyone is sleeping on dark cultures ranged units, purely because of the debuffs. Nothing any of the other cultures have anything like the T1 pursuer erasing 30% dmg with weakening in one turn without damage loss. or a T2 mage being able to erase 2 of every defense, every other turn without damage loss, at 6 range letting you to screw that one guy in particular, like their hero. This is before you start adding enchantments that do things like chain your arrows to hit a second target, essentially erasing 30% dmg across 2 units doubling the effect. The weakening starts at 90% chance for both archers and mages so it hits often even on T4 and 5. It's incredible cost to effect value and so effective as they are T1-2 and the debuffs deal in increasing or decreasing % values. You don't even need to be aggressive with dark culture, debuff defense from a distance, let the charges clash into your spears, debuff and damage their engaged line with ranged units and mop up with your spears. They are incredibly effective at dealing with higher tiered units, dark knight probably does better in pvp because of AOE being strong against T1 spam (I don't know, I don't pvp), but it's also a lot more expensive to field and would even benefit greatly from the debuff support itself.

[@cubandarknez]

barbarian warrior has access to a 1 pip stun action with defense mode, as a tier 1 this makes it one of the best front line units. Has great synergy if doing a status res shred strat too, but in general it's just great.

[@BadFiend]

The sunderer is just so much better that it's almost not worth using warriors though. Very, very early they can be useful to absorb damage for your more fragile skirmishers, but once you have any kind of enchantment going the sunderer stands alone due to having both ranged and melee attacks available, and the spamming nature of barbarian culture in general.

[@fendelphi]

Pretty good early game, but later on, the stun chance is often less than 50%, unless you can reliably shred status resistance. If it was a unit with First Strike, then a wasted stun is less of an issue, but otherwise, it is a unit that potentially does "nothing".

[@noneofyourbusiness3288]

I value draft a lot higher than knowledge. Knowledge is quite easy to get in different ways imo (like the shadow-affinity perk giving you knowledge whenever you defeat a hero), while draft is very hard to get. Sure: you can speed up production every turn with gold and there is a lot of ways to get gold, but you need the gold for literally everything, so having a way to safe some is really useful.

[@IronWilliam]

I've been getting way more bottlenecked by gold upkeep on units than draft though, when doing anything other than chaos T1 spam. So even if draft is harder to get, I just haven't felt like I needed more production than I have.

[@male_maid5951]

@@IronWilliam dont forget draft is also extra food in its downtime

[@IronWilliam]

@@male_maid5951 At like 25% efficiency though. It's not nothing, but it's not really a huge boost that makes draft extra worthwhile, better to just get food if you need food.

[@notalefty999]

You didnt mention that the pursuer applies weakened, which is obviously important for the dark culture. The nightguard is absolutely fine statistically as a tier 2 polearm and with first strike and a useful debuff, its a decent unit to run up to enemy units and stick in guard mode. The biggest problem with Dark units is that to benefit from their culture specific mechanic, you need to apply weakened. There are plenty of combinations of tome units you might realistically want to use that simply dont provide this debuff. Compared to other cultures, the dark mechanic is the one which least reliably applies to non culture units. I would say your analysis for Dark Culture economically is way off. Dark absolutely sucks economically. Even with the overlord's tower (which has a significant cost and build time), you take a huge economic hit from not having the stability bonuses. With the lowest level of stability, you get -50% income, which the overlord's tower doesn't mitigate at all. Preventing provinces from breaking off is virtually a non issue for other cultures; with the tavern and bathhouse (which also provides an xp bonus for units), there is no way you will have minus 80 stability without enemy spells on your cities, which isnt a common problem. Only dark has this is a realistic problem, and halving your city's income will completely overwhelm any economic benefits for they get from building structures. Even if your stability isn't this low, the net difference between Dark and other cultures is 70 stability, which will likely translate into a 15% reduction in all resources at a minimum. Large cities have literally hundreds of income in every resource. If Dark does drop into -80 or worse, that transition alone is from -20% income to -50%, which is catastrophic.

[@jameskaram8338]

Turns out dark avoids income penalties as well, one of the town hall upgrades (T2 I think) completely negates income penalties from low stability in that city.

[@DeadlyGrub]

Dark ignores stability minus penalties with the T2 Keep, so they actually have a rather strong eco, And why would you need to build any other units besides frontliners warlocks are insanely good. Stacking stupid amounts of debuffs while doing good dmg. I ran 4 warlock 2 eagle riders armies and had really good success. Because the cull the weak is placed on the frontline units even out of culture with the enchant.

[@luantib]

Dark is strong mechanically but I don't like how it's so limited to "here those are the bad guys" culture. I wish it was more like and counterpart to high with and gameplay based into bargaining for power with dark entities in a end justifies the means way.

[@Curtis006]

I'm currently in my 2nd campaign with high dark, a mix of order and dark, it's pretty fun.

[@droe2570]

The affinities are not related to alignment. Shadow affinity is based around knowledge and magic units, not "Evil". This is also the case with order affinity, since the best way to play High is with evil alignment because at pure evil all their units are always awakened.

[@iTzTiMeToJuMp]

​@@Curtis006 i played this and dark + order is amazing for early vassal and map control

[@luantib]

@@droe2570 I'm not talking about affinities, shadow affinity is the "scion of evil" trait affinity so not a lot of doubt about the basic intent. Dark culture literally gives you +10 evil alignment because it's based in slavery of your people and killing the defenseless, play your redemption arc if you want (I'm doing that with my Emma Frost themed build) but never forget you started evil af.

[@droe2570]

@@luantib What? It's only + 10 evil, so probably less evil than most humans in the world today. You don't have to play scions of evil if you're going shadow, just like you don't have to play one of the goodies if you're going order. Imperialist is a great order pick without alignment ramifications. And frankly, order culture plays better as evil, anyway, for always-on awakening.

[@johnnythedark3090]

Fun fact - idustrious is the best culture for special mounts. Your super tanky t3 unit is even more tanky and (finally) mobile.

[@crazyelf1]

Yeah I think that the Industrious tree needs a major buff. Given that the game is just out, at time of this writing, perhaps it should be no surprise that there are balance issues. Maybe some buffs to their units, better buildings, etc, and some unique cultural advantages could move it up. Maybe a slight buff to the Mystic tree as well.

[@lionelwhiskerknot]

They need a major materia racial transformation I think.

[@wischfulthinking]

I think you’re underestimating just how Uber defensive industrious can be. Tier 1 units tanking tier 4+ np.

[@youmukonpaku916]

Industrious gets Bastions. Bastions are insanely powerful. Huge defense and good attack when buffed using enchantments. Overwhelming tactics combined with artisan armaments and morale boosts from revelry tomes makes for a critical force to me reckoned with. Absolutely doomstackable.

[@gluttonydemon]

With a dragon as your godir, prospecting becomes pretty handy for gameplay. On top of that, Steelfury chant with a dragon is BUSTED in how good it is.

[@kcw1879]

I usually play a High culture, and I have WAY more moral than I need, in my cities and units the majority of the time. I don't even cast those spells or build buildings that give more moral, as my cities are in "Harmony" already.

[@animugril2166]

The way you explain stuff so well made me subscribe, keep it up Jumbo pixel, im interested in you doing content for more games:)

[@unfairlive2]

Am very sad about my favourite civ, mystic, being so low, but I can't disagree with it. Mana is nice lategame, once you unlock many summons (Phase dog), but early game it just doesn't provide you with any bonuses to get going, at least astral affinity is quite alright, but it's not amazing either.

[@BobHerzog1962]

The Problem with getting all that Draft or the extra Physical damage on trained units is that as Barbarian you will get lots of free units. And with Chaos books higher tier ones are mostly summoned and with elemental damage. A nature or materium barbarian can make it work since both offer lots of good Physical Damage units in higher Tier. Dark you forgot to mention warlocks and archers apply weakened. Kind of important for their cull the weak feature. Sorry but soul economy is not tied to Dark culture but to the tomes. So you can even play High Culture go into the Dark Tomes and get a Soul economy...

[@ellyann4603]

When it comes to industrials and prospection you said we could get gold and production but you can also get mounts, and gear for your heroes. it's really easy to snowball through a gear difference, and to me this makes a HUGE difference, i wouldn't rank it so low just because of that ^^

[@frenchfry9370]

Honestly it kind of makes sense that the "Evil" cultures are stronger, can't be much of an evil overlord if you got a weak faction

[@Saboras95]

You should cut the industrous helbardier some slack. Yes it doesnt have a high melee stat but it comes with one extra retaliation attack and rune of retaliation that thing is a defensive powerhouse. Group two of them with a Bastion or Tier 1 shield unit that just spams it defensive mode and they are very very hard to overcome

[@haakoflo]

It took me half my playthrough to figure out how to play industrious. Basically, they're like dwarves in Warhammer Total War. They need strong archers in the back ranks to take full advantage of their near-immortal front liners. Early game, that means making the most of arbalests. Soon enough, zephyr archers or glade runners can double their DPS while being way more survivable against teleporters and flyers.

[@JT-yl9yt]

You realize crossbows only fire once right? Units with bows can attack up to 3x using 3 actions points its why their dmg is lower they can light up units rather quickly. Awakened high archers are pretty ridiculous for t1 units to rain down dmg from safety.

[@thedarkmaster13]

Aside from the general errors other have pointed out, there's a few big notes you didn't bring up that I didn't see mentioned. First is damage type variety. Every culture other than industrious has at least two different damage types, which make them far easier to counter and gives them more options when dealing with enemies with specific resistances. Cultures that have battlemages are also able to exploit low enemy resistance right out of the gate. This is why I'd put industrious as the worst of the cultures, as it's only really good power is the ability to prospect. One damage type, no battlemages, and a focus on defense and production. It's also something that players have a natural inclination to further gimp themselves since they really like to go mono-affinity with their tome choices, which is a terrible plan as Industrious. Note that taking non-materium tomes that directly addresses these weaknesses makes the culture far better, so it isn't much worse than other options as you've said. Another is that Dark culture has no support unit. Every other culture has one that can heal. With no way to give strong targeted healing without tomes Dark is forcing you to rely on cull the weak, which is slow and unreliable. Third is that Dark culture is in fact the worst possible culture to combine with the souls and necromancy tomes. Stacking mono affinities provides minimal benefit past 6-8 affinity and shadow affinity is the worst one to stack mono affinities as the different empire shadow powers are powerful but not synergistic. Dark culture's abilities also don't synergize with the undead tomes, in fact many of them do the same thing that Dark already did to start with. Contrast taking tomes from other affinities that give healing to cover Dark's weaknesses, reduce the enemy's status resistance so weakness is easier to apply, or use abilities that reduce city stability for bonuses since you ignore the negative effects of low stability.

[@matthewmullin6042]

Why did you say the High archer is weaker than the other archers, and specifically weaker than Feudal? It has the same base stats as the Feudal version, but awakened gets +4 damage and +1 range. It is arguably the strongest base archer in the game, even beating out the tier 2 archer from barbarian.

[@moviejuhlin]

You did't talk much about the Ritual of Alacrity for the Babarian. Witch is 1 of 3 active abillitys that effect movement (forced march and order spell(-50% movement on overworld)) on the world map. Ritual of Alacrity(RoA) - Refund all movment and heal army 50% health and cancel negative effects of forced march. 3 round coldown. To use it you need to stand in the middle of the outpost or city and go in the city gearlogo and their should be a ritual of alacrity bottom (I think you need 3 pop on city before you it apperes) or just klik on the outpost. 1. So one idea is you can scout a head and build an outpost with your scouts and then get 2 turn movemnt with your main army or even more with the forced march Node. 2. With outpost you can build teleporters and going through them takes all movement away but with RoA you can move after the teleport on to outpost I think this or somthing like this is the key to mastering the faction.

[@aaronthompson2329]

I think you are underrating the Industrius culture. They lean heavily into defense and tanking but the arbalest is one of the hardest-hitting tier-one ranged units and as long as there are mountains the pioneer is strait broken. As long as mountains are in your world you will be printing money/ production/ hero items. In a recent Highlands game, I started next to some mountains and by the time I won on turn 67 I had pulled about 4-5k gold, 1.5k production, and all 6 of my heroes had tier 3+ mounts/ weapons/ items. Prospecting also works underground so even if you don't have a bunch of mountains you can get some value out of them, (until they get murked by a rouge stack you uncovered...lol). Really the only drawback that I see for them is their support unit doesn't have a heal. Also for Mystic the Spellbreakers Star Purge removes all positive buffs like the Berserkers steadfast, the high cultures awakened, etc. That one ability makes him one of the best battle mages in the game.

[@JT-yl9yt]

high have archers that can attack 3x with 10+4 spirit dmg from 5 ranges with awakened buff...they are the real hardest hitters and they are safe.

[@tomemaster1744]

What really impresses me with AoW4 is every unit still feels valid right up until the Endgame. In my experience the game is exceptionally well balanced.

[@ajlukan6959]

Is a joke rigth? All they are basically broken, Astral is just a joke what a count of damage can do

[@stanleymunro1500]

For industrious the diff between the two tier 2 spear man was first one is low def h8gh resist higher dmg. The 2nd one had high def med resist low dmg. So i wouldnt call it weak just lowwr dmg

[@Enos666]

29:16 - "Standard Scout" I gotta disagree man, I think you're sleeping on how useful outriders are and brushed over/ignored their best attribute. They're hidden in Forests, Mountains, Rocky and Swamp terrain and when coupled with Infiltrate your ability to stealthily keep tabs on what your adversary is doing is best in class.

[@oystermeister5497]

23:52 Steelshaper is actually a ranged magic unit. You said it was a polearm unit

[@noonalamada1568]

I played with the material centric culture and you didn't mention that there scouts can literally search the map for treasures and that gives BIG advantages which makes your C-Tier a bit questionable ;-)

[@airhead4740]

One thing about the high cultures awaken mechanic is it gives strengthen to any one who’s already awake so the damage at full awakened archers with more range and accuracy from there dormant trait is the best in the game.

[@ZekeRaiden]

Shocked by how highly you rated Barbarian. As you said here and before, Knowledge is crucial. Paying Knowledge is *costly,* and really hard to make up for: Special improvements are rare and mostly depend on Snow/Ice (which suck to settle), regular Research Posts require mana nodes/magic materials, and Wonders are totally unreliable as sources. By comparison, Draft is easy, and doubly so because you can replace some of it with Gold via Buyout. Getting two-for-one Draft is a weak trade. TL;DR: Even once a city is in full swing (one Research Post, Library/Academy/Arcane Institute), you're still about 20% behind everyone else (55 vs 45 is about an 18% difference.) For a majority of the game, you're more like 40% behind everyone else (10+15=25 vs 5+10 = 15). That's _huge._ The extra bonus Draft and strong units can help you conquer more cities, but you NEED to conquer those cities/city-states just to reach Knowledge parity with regular empires--who can spend those resources on growth and defense instead. Consider how highly you ranked Ancient Wise Ones in the society traits tier list; Barbarian is more of a penalty than Ancient Wise Ones is a bonus! Getting an extra 20 Draft per turn just does not make up for losing 10 Knowledge per turn. I think Mystic, High, and Feudal are roughly at the intended balance point. Mystic: finicky but potent if leveraged (befitting magic.) Feudal: basic all-arounder, hard to go wrong. High: good at doing things that aren't easy to do, lots of minor bonuses and synergies. Not surprised Dark is OP, anything that lets you ignore parts of the economy or replace them with a new economic system tends to be abusable. And Industrious, like Materium, is just really weak on paper--not that you _cannot_ win with them, but they're _harder_ to win with than other options. I'm expecting Empires and Ashes to fix this by adding a Materium transformation (turning your people into machines!) and more/better unit types.

[@TatsumiyaLightning]

I'm not sure about giving Barbarians credit for being the only source of Chaos, while not giving equal credit (at least verbally) to other cultures for the same. I'm not sure if that point actually has any merit at all since every culture gives exactly two points of affinity, and Barbs are actually one of the two that have theirs split. What if you don't want to mix Chaos and Nature? That's a wasted point then. It's a demerit if anything. EDIT: Also, you're kinda discounting the whole 3 attacks instead of a single attack thing. Some of the units you stated having a low damage profile, like Spellbreaker, actually do more damage than others as they attack three times. In fact, if they hit with all their attacks, the Spellbreaker does more damage than any other T3 base unit. And not just by a little. Yes, it has to punch through resistances three times, but it also gets all buffs (like, say star blades) applied three times as well. And that's where the diverse damage profile becomes handy. Also, units tend to have less resistance than defense.

[@unfairlive2]

Chaos affinity is atm seemingly, the single strongest affinity (And nature the second), so boosting that early on is a big upside for barbarians. Think of it like this, if your affinity helps you get a lot of really strong stuff AND practicly all choices offered in your affinity tree are good, then it's probably very desireable to make sure you get to unlock it that few turns earlier than others, and Barb does that, you get the +3 gold per unit killed earlier, you get the free units earlier (More than one even...) So yeah barbarians starting off with 1 chaos and 1 nature is pretty busted. Plus Chaos affinity really reinfroces their playstyle of crapping out a load of units and going on a wild rampage (more units, means more battles, means more wins which means... More units.) Compare this with the other affinities which might have really nice things, but definitly not many, High for example requires you to have vassals, this isn't 100% in your control, after all you might spawn weird, or just find them too late to vassalize them. Dark has 1 really powerful ability at 1st rank, but then it's kinda meh until later, materium more or less the same. Astral has some okay ones if you want to go magic. But it's hard to compete with city growth (Nature) and free units (chaos)

[@mannsama7084]

The Industrious archer doesn't do more damage compared to the other tier one archers when using 3 AP. The Industrious archer out damages other archers if you spend 2 ap to reposition only.

[@Majber]

22:56 if you play on map with lots of mountains then it's sss culture

[@araska802]

Feudal, good early game, suffers once everyone get's AOE spells, and taking advantage of being feudal will get you wrecked.

[@jonathanwells223]

Bro, either we are not playing the same game or I’m doing something wrong. I made an industrious faction of runesmiths and my tier 1 units hit like trucks. I actually needed to exploit the AI not defending its throne city properly during war for a military victory to beat them as barbarians. It’s unbelievable how strong the industrial faction gets in the late game, that faction was beating pretty much everyone in economy, research and magic, also their armies was so elite and individually powerful that I was losing at least two higher tier units to each of their lower tier units.

[@DeadlyGrub]

I think this tier list isn't great... synergies were ignored and what units are special to each faction was really overlooked. Dark is defiantly S+ tier they have free self synergies and healing along with just some of the strongest units in the game per tier combo them with tome of pandemonium and everything has 30% bonus dmg permanently basically. While they lack a support unit the units basically carry one in a backpack with the cull the weak buff and being able to flat out ignore the happiness mechanic is great. These units probably need a minor nerf to the debuffs they bring but it's hard to say much more. Barbarian is likely B+ not S. All they can do is rush. You have really good base units and probably the best support unit in the game for a culture bonus aoe regen + strengthen is crazy good. But outside of the warrior, shaman, Berserker, and Fury (If it's mounted) They only get draft. so they kind of have the worst eco of all the cultures. So it's forced into a hyper agro rush faction most of the time. And while horde + bar is crazy strong I would more call that a problem of tome of the horde needing a nerf. Spawnkin and houndmasters are presently too strong... (I wonder how long till spawnkin gets a nerf tbh it's just overtuned.) Feudal Solid A Well rounded and versatile can adapt to whatever the game needs depending on the map with the lord traits it's all around good. Also is up their for the strongest support unit in the game with aoe effects and moral boosts. The only bad part of this faction is that your polearm unit is garbage but it at least evos to a Shielded T2 if it stays alive. Buildings wise. It and high are tied for the best culture buildings for general purpose use. doubling your governors bonuses includes the perk they have so that can be insane. along with getting food + mana early is just nice. Mystic um probably a B- These guys are basically defined by what tomes you pick overall they are the middle ground but are highly reliant on tomes and mana addicts to really get anywhere near busted levels of strong. All the buildings give you mana and the main unique is buffs based on the magic stars you collect. Overall they are just a weaker version of dark imo. Support unit wise 2 heals for the price of one not bad solid middle ground support unit nothing fancy about it. High Solid A along side Feudal Units are good all arounders with a very strong battlemage that doubles as a support unit at T3 the unique buildings are good all around giving you a little bit of everything here and there. The Alignment / Awakening mechanics are really strong as the archers and mages do get some very good dps and accuracy along with making any frontline extra tanky. As for the support unit well the sun priest is a solid meh. Does it's job but it's equal to the soother in effectiveness. Industrial These guys are in a bad state so currently the dumpster of the list being a D they have some of the weakest units and structures in the game and not to mention a support unit which is worthless and I chuck for another arbalest or defender because the effect desperately needs a buff because of how sundering interactions work. The only good unit industrial has is the Bastion. outside of that the other cultures have a better version of X teir units for the most part only exception being the peasant levy which is intended to be bad (Evo units). Unless you run perfected artisans you have a struggle with gold because you need to replace your units so badly with anything else outside the bastion. The exploring of mountainous terrain is a bandage for the poor early game they suffer and helps a lot but it does require the map to generate mountainous terrain features which isn't always the case. Overall I think industrial needs some buffs and a rework to it's support unit the thing is dog. The arbalists should hit harder with the 3 pip shot removing the defense mode is nice and all but houndmasters basically do 25% less dmg on the normal shot they have and with the dog mark do the same if not more. And that's a relatively cheap T2 unit. (Again book of the horde being overtuned currently) all this culture can do is hold a line but it lacks the rearline dps to do anything about it.

[@1066design]

Jumbo, Do you think the industrious culture will be buffed in E&A??

[@methioswar2916]

I would have thought dark to be bottum together with materium tbh

[@thejackscraft3472]

I think you're underestimating just how tanky bastions are, they're by far the tankiest T3 unit that a culture can give you, and I think the tankiest in the game as a whole if you have more than one, with the most health and defense at base, and having shield wall and inspiring defense giving adjacent units +3 defense and a level of bolstered defense. get three of them in a triangle and each will have 15 defense. you're essentially forced to use charge units or magic against them if you want to break that formation. if you place them well you can form a wall against the enemy, while your ranged units shoot from behind, making up for their damage easily by using the stronger, but squishier, ranged units like the arbalest or zephyr archer.

[@johnhobbes2268]

A nice sidenote to barbarian, if you take a mount background you will get mounted archers.

[@notalefty999]

The war shaman has a very effective heal for the barbarians out of the gate. Assuming you arent already full health, adding temporary hitpoints, regen and bonus damage to the entire group can really improve your early game efficiency. The sunderer vs fury doesnt note that the fury does significantly more damage with a full attack action at ranged, but yes, the fury sucks for a tier 2 (it has no features at all) and the sunderer is a solid tier 1.

[@BadFiend]

Barbarian is also so heavily focused on buffing tier 1 units that their tier 2 units really have to make an impact to be worth using. I think houndmaster is such a good unit specifically to replace the underwhelming fury, but that's just my theory.

[@iTzTiMeToJuMp]

​@@BadFiend youre mixing chaos affinity/tomes with the culture. Barbarian doesnt have to use chaos tomes at all and can leave affinity at 1.

[@BadFiend]

@@iTzTiMeToJuMp If you are playing Barbarian without starting with Tome of the Hoard you are doing it wrong.

[@culus5180]

Something that i noticed is it’s really punishing to play as good alignment. You get far less money since you have to forgo pillaging/pillage less. It takes longer to get vassals than it would to just claim it through combat. Events usually have outcomes that are negative or do nothing for good alignments. Just in general you’re cut off from so much income on good alignments and that makes the High culture really punishing to play imo. It’s ranged damage potential is far outweighed by everything else that you lose. High/Evil is really fun though and I recommend that everybody tries it 😁

[@GamerSerg74]

Honestly you really missed the point on Industrious. For one, with all the cultures, you really dismissed the unique scout skills which for Industrious is very powerful. Assuming the map has a fair number of mountains, your scouts can bring in a ton of free gold and hero items. Production is very important since your cities will almost always be building something, and you really undersold the strengths of the Matirium skill tree and tomes. The skill tree gives additional siege projects that make them great at attacking cities and reduce upkeep for all your units allowing a larger army. The spell tomes have the most unit enchantments to buff up all your units, strong damage spells, strong elemental units and great race transformations. You can even give all your units the golden touch, turning enemy units into gold! Everyone raves about Chaos as the aggressive culture which is true but Industrious is also very good at war.

[@wischfulthinking]

I feel like you mostly only care about the damage numbers & not considering abilities.

[@flopus7]

Me: Haven't played the game yet Also me: this is the 2nd tier list I've watched like I have any context for this

[@lewismurphy8650]

Thanks keep it coming!

[@johnhobbes2268]

Thanks for the data base link. It is better than the official wiki and better than the ingame wiki.

[@BossTripp1]

The sunderer I believe can only attack once from ranged right and the fury can attack multiple times from ranged?

[@mercb3ast]

I can tell this guy doesn't play the high culture. It is by far the best archer culture. First off, you're never not going to have all, or the majority of your units awakened. What does this mean? All your units do a flat +4 damage. This immediately puts your archers into tier 2 levels of damage. Next. Your archers become default 5 range. We might be thinking, well longer range means lower accuracy! You'd be right to think that, except High culture comes with coordinated strike. Which reduces evasion on every hit from your ranged units. Which mean that you immediately improve your accuracy when you attack at maximum range. Next, we have the Sun Priest. The Sun Priest is nothing special on its own. Except, when it is awakened, it has a 60% chance to distract. This means, you can fairly reliably get distracted off on tier 3 and below units. Distracted means every attack is a flank attack. If you build your tomes towards supporting your archers, you can pickup a lot more elemental damage. You can get your baseline archers up to 6 range. Accuracy isn't an issue at those ranges. All archer units are strong, they can be turned into absolute DPS monsters. High does it better, and easier than anyone else. The tier 3 unit? You literally never bring it in an army. Why would you ever bring that, when you can make your archers hit from 6 tiles out, crit almost every hit, and if they flank, they hit for 40-50 per attack, x 3 attacks. Their archer spam is so broken, you have to consider them S-tier if you leverage that.

[@hochmeisterr]

S-Magic for casters which is OP. A-Barbarian for Mele, because having mini tryndameres one shoting enemy units is cool. B-everything else.

[@cubandarknez]

why is dusk hunter weaker than feudal archer? Seem the same to me outside of the culture traits, and I'd argue awaken is stronger than stand together for the archer.

[@mercb3ast]

Dusk Hunter is better. I'm not sure he understands the synergies that high culture has for archers. Coordinated strike = accuracy a non issue. Awakened = dusk hunters have 14 damage per volley, which is tier 2 archer damage. Sun Priest awakened = ranged distract early on. Awakened dusk hunters also have 5 range versus 4. Making them far safer to use, and more comfy to use. Take sneaky on your high culture archer faction. Now your flank shots (from distracted) do catastrophic damage. No other culture has the synergies or buffs for archers that high has. Feudal is arguably the next best, but the only thing they have is stand together. Which is objectively worse for most of the game than the +4 spirit damage high culture gets from being awakened. Plus they don't have an accuracy perk. Plus they don't have a support unit that can allow them to distract. Plus they don't get a free +1 range. For Feudal to even begin to approach the baseline perks that high gets, they have to invest into racial perks, or tomes just to match what high gets for free. I said in another reply here, all archers can be turned into DPS monsters. High archers are giga DPS monsters. They can reach out from 6 range. They get up to a +50% accuracy bonus from coordinated strike. They get the equivalent of two elemental arrow tomes, for free with the spirit damage from awakened. They can distract without having to invest into getting something that can distract. When you have a tier 1 archer, kill a Fire Giant in a single volley, from 6 tiles away. I think you're looking at an S-tier combination.

[@cubandarknez]

@@mercb3ast yeah I tend to build 6 range archers without high, want to make 7 range archers now lol

[@Leester-70]

Industrious are really good to start out with to get an understanding of the game.