Age of Wonders 4 Tier List - Race Transformations

[@cameronmanchester7794]

I think Gaias chosen also makes your units count as plants so you get any buffs your plants would have

[@Rukdug]

Pretty sure you're right, which would probably put it up to an A or S considering just how crazy your plant buffs will be by that point.

[@AlipheeseFateburnXVI]

@@Rukdug Combine that with the Tier 5 Nature Tome giving all Plants and Animals 20% crit and damage, and you'll be rolling over your opposition.

[@airhead4740]

You also get all the down side to being a plant. Like weakness to fire.

[@markpong2943]

I like how these KZbinrs keep making tier lists while not fully understanding the game mechanics😂

[@NhatAnhPhamDr]

@@AlipheeseFateburnXVI And also mass rejuvenation “bring all dead animal/plant back to life” the most powerful mass resurrection, mass healing in the game. And it’s cheap as f. You’re basically immortal as long as enemy doesnt reanimated your corpse into skeleton

[@8684LYFE]

Re: Angelized - noticed that if you pair it up with the Tome of Nature's Wrath's Awaken Instincts spell - your entire army effectively get to take your turn again. Awaken Instincts refills your AP (along with some other stuff), and normally causes Berserk, but when you are Angelized the Berzerk doesn't affect you so you just regain AP at full control :D.

[@tarenflores]

whoa cool interaction

[@NhatAnhPhamDr]

Really ❤ I buiild glass cannon army that desperately require something like that

[@badtiming2208]

+1 to my list of Custom Faction to play

[@HappyAspid]

And wizard kings can cast spells twice (single time) per turn...

[@philippepouliot3527]

@HappyAspid unless one of your spells is to mirror mimic the wizard king himself, then he can use the extra spell on his mimics as well as on the main unit. If that wizard king also has weaver a single cast of the mirror images on him can get you 6 overchannels

[@CornBredCrusader]

Gaias chosen makes all of your units count as plants, which buffs them from all of the other nature books that you might have picked up during the game. And then once you go for tier 5 nature, you can revive all plants, so all your units get a mass revive. If you are heavy into nature, then Gaia is S tier (imo all of these are situational depending on map, faction, and game development, some are just more generalist than others)

[@LuiBei1994]

Agreed. What do yall think is second best that actually pairs well with it tho? I usually go into the industrial steel spells

[@ELIASFA3]

SuperGrowth + Giant of the earth + Angelize will always be S tier in my heart purely because they make your heroes look gigantic in the world map and at the victory screen you're only going to see your leader's boots.

[@detrimidexta]

Tome of the Creator (Materium tier V) allows you to turn your heroes into literal giants towering over the battlefield.

[@bionicconscious]

bahaha i just did this for my lil ratkin race, was super fun. Revenge of the meek!!

[@GrimViridian]

I wonder if supergrowth will work on the upcoming giant race

[@omologo95]

Gaia's Chosen is imo by far the best major race change. The hidden bonus of turning your people into plants give the race change access to some heavy, heavy bonuses (and some drawbacks). The other race changes are good as well, as they should be, but Wighborn for instance is just so so so expensive to get going (200 souls isn't exactly easy to get at times) that it sometimes feel like you don't have the time to get it going. And if you really want the lifesteal bonus, you could also consider going Mana Addicts society trait which is arguably the best trait anyways. The Astral race change is kind of terrible though. Getting ~30 mana and knowledge extra a turn at that point in the game is very marginal. Uhh, I got a bit off track; my point being that Gaia's is the best. Wightborn still has the undead synergies, but... It really is so so expensive.

[@JumboPixel]

People into plants is cool. I didn’t forget that when I was thinking about it, it adds some nice synergies that you’ll probably utilize (though perhaps not as readily as the angel/ demon benefits that are innate). The souls thing could be a synergy, or a drawback with the major shadow transformation. It may be expensive, but you’ll access it a tier earlier!

[@HappyAspid]

Not hard to get at all if you use all opportunities to kill stuff - you will be able to transform as soon as you unlock it.

[@tuskular]

I managed to unlock the tome of the great transformation as my first shadow tome and by the time I've researched wight born, I've gotten 200 souls, it really isn't much, takes 10 turns at most without even trying... if you try tho you can plan your battles, you can get it in about 3 turns. if you take a shadow tome before though, then its really easy as long as you aren't using shadow spells maybe that's why your finding it hard? are you auto battling with spells allowed? I've had 600-700 souls banked by turn 40-45, really don't think its a problem, i end up with so many I literally have a reaper in every army XD

[@leepalmer9558]

The demonic one is pretty good, freny and flying are both very strong boosts.

[@DarkExcalibur42]

What bugs me about Wightborn is having to manually play all the battles to make sure the AI doesn't spend any SOULS on combat spells while I'm saving up to 200. Ugh.

[@Swordphobic]

Gaia's chosen is easily an S tier if you combo it with the 5th tier tome spell that ressurrects all plants.

[@arcanumelite4853]

i dont think he realizes that gaia's chosen makes your entire race plants since it doesn't say it does that... but it in fact does.

[@Rukdug]

@Arcanum Elite Yeah, it's unfortunately one of the effects that you can only see by looking at the unit cards instead of actually showing up in its description for some weird reason.

[@JumboPixel]

Just to clarify: I do realise it makes you plant people (very cool - we had a great livestream with it!). And you’re right, if you make it to tier 5 tomes the synergy is fantastic. I think the nature affinity as a whole (all tomes, not just individual transformation spells like I’m reviewing here) is the best.

[@Swordphobic]

You don't seem to value status resistance, quite often in endgame, resisting a conversion, a seduction or an outright kill spell is quite major.

[@JumboPixel]

Something has to lose out, and in balance they may have been weighted lower. Generally I’m comparing like for like, defence against damage, to see what would come out in top. Certainly a lot of room for error here though!

[@SmegInThePants]

I think it might be more valuable in multiplayer than in single player, where special effects can be gamed much harder against you.

[@dorianodet8064]

​@@JumboPixel I do think you're wrong. Statut resistance is massively more important than armor and the such, especially the higher you get into the game where unit have more hit point and survive many turn, even more when you consider that quite a few tech tree depend on applying debuff to work (Weakened, slow, burn, all the chaos tree ...) Statut resistance is unimportant early but by far the best stat mid to end game. If you stack both minor and major transformation that increase statut resistance, you're nearly immune to statut change, it mean no loss of control (stun, charm ... which are deadly debuff), no stacking debuff (weakened ...) and no debuff synergy for your opponent (you know which are often 20% to 30% increae damage).

[@tuskular]

@@dorianodet8064 I disagree with this, I do think status resistance is good and overall once your resistance and armour are decent enough its worth investing in, but on the other hand there is so many cleanses in the game, that as long as you position correctly then there really isn't any point in the having the resistance until later on the game, you are better off with damage reduction or healing, and added damage reduction is starting to become inefficient.

[@dorianodet8064]

@@tuskular Relying on cleanse ? A large part of the damage is already done when you cleanse, the Dark archer have applied weakened, all their unit did more damage and got regeneration from it, same for burning debuff and so on. It also mean you waste your spell/spellcaster opportunity cleansing when you could use it for many other purpose since spell are OP. The thing with statut resistance, especially with race transformation, is that it goes up a LOT, work both on physical and magical and without drawbacks. An army that is nearly status immune is massively stronger that one that isn't.

[@thedarkmaster13]

It should be noted that wightborn completely removes morale mechanics from your units, both good and bad. This soft limits what tomes and transformations you can combine with it. For example, revelry, doom herald, and cold dark tomes become a lot worse when combined with it since your units can no longer benefit from positive morale effects. With the frostling transformation, the tome of cold dark includes the ability to rapidly terraform large amounts of territory around your cities into arctic terrain at a pretty low price. So you'll almost always get to benefit from the arctic bonuses on the defense.

[@AhranMaoDante]

Actually, Wightborn pairs just fine with Revelry and Doomherald, although at half value. Wightborn itself gives you a -100% modifier to morale loss and gain. Reveler's Heart gives +50% morale gain. Together, they cause undead to be immune to morale loss and only gain half morale from all sources.

[@JB-xl2jc]

Love me a good racial tier list. Uh... I mean... wait, not like that!

[@igncom1]

Don't worry, the game encourages race mixing!

[@tozmom615]

I don’t have my game just now (am on holiday), do they stack? I.e can I minor race transform my main species multiple times and the changes accumulate? Can they be done several times in a row?

[@unsureashell1947]

@@tozmom615 minor transformations you can have as many as you want. major only 1 however.

[@JB-xl2jc]

@@igncom1 That's great to hear. I'll be sure to mess around with some minors tonight!

[@TheChaosNova]

@@igncom1no. No it doesn’t lol

[@Demedich1]

I personally really value Earthskin. +1 defense early on is something that is game changing when reducing damage in early fights and it’s snowballed me through a lot of games where I otherwise would have struggled.

[@matthiasdarrington3271]

I agree, and same for Steel skin. I think physical resistance is heavily under-rated in this game, because all these "build posters" youtubers value late-game impact more than actual early-game fights and tempo on the map.

[@badtiming2208]

I love the comments section because they often point out some OP strat or cool interaction I've never heard of or even considered.

[@ddenozor]

Gaia's chosen is at least S tier. No ifs, no buts. Plant synergy is crazy in end game. Also very important thing about spawnkin is that your heroes get the %20 dmg bonus without losing any models, so it's pretty huge aswell. Even without counting that it's S. Status resistance should be weighted higher, as pretty much every tactic either requires some sort of negative effect on enemy to be effective, and also you don't want enemy debuffs to easily negate your own buffs. It's pretty important.

[@TymberJ]

And for a note on Angelize -- Faithful reduces your unit upkeep by 10%, but there are buffs/benefits in the Order tree that synergize with it, including spells/units that scale their damage based on friendly Faithful units in battle, and Tier V tome spell Mass Revive resurrects *all* Faithful units. If you're going for the Tier V Order tome, that Faithful buff does work.

[@TymberJ]

I'd double check how elemental resistances work. Resistance isn't a one for one reduction in points of damage taken -- a one point increase in a resist is ~10% less effective damage taken of that type. 1 = 10%, 2 = 19%, 3 = 27%, etc. So, for example, a Finger of Death that does 45 Frost base, at 1 Frost Resist is 40 damage, at 3 Frost Resist is 34. So +3 Resistance is a 30% increase in effective health against that type of damage.

[@DenverZenn]

One thing not mentioned in Gaia's Chosen is that it also turns your race into the plant type. This synergizes so well with the other nature books (like the fifth tier one that heals/revives all plants in your army) I can't see why anyone would put it lower than an S tier. Personally, it's my go-to major transformation if I'm not picking up Angelize. On a more subjective note, Steel Skin is one of the only transformations (the only other one being Rock Skin) that grants the universally applicable Defense increase (at a moderate +2 as well). Most enemies do some sort of physical damage, so anything that increases defense gives your units a much increased survival rate. I would've placed it at least a B personally. You're giving your entire race the Tough trait, or doubling it if you already have that. It's as if you permanently had the bonus from Defense Mode on (except for the immunity to flanking).

[@etienne8110]

I guess it also depends if you are playing against AI or humans. Like the leafkin transformation can be an incredible tool for guerilla war against a human player (or just for spying on him)

[@matthiasdarrington3271]

Agreed, same with Earth-kin.

[@iondragonx]

3:12 Leafskin was buffed. It now give +1 Resistance as well.

[@dannymunch4633]

I was today years old when I realized, that Materium has no major race transformation. That happens when you played materium only once I guess.

[@notalefty999]

I think Astral Attunement is the worst major by some margin if you want to use racial units in combat. Its clearly intended for a summon focussed game where racial units see little use. +1 knowledge and mana per pop size is never going to be a massive economic benefit (a large city will have hundreds of each), but its better than nothing if you are using non racial units in combat. Frenzy is very powerful for units that attack 3 times rather than once, as it stacks very quickly. I would say Demonkin is therefore the strongest major transformation when adding in flying. I dont rate Wightborn very highly. Undead traits overall are quite bad. I tend to find its rather easy to get benefits from high morale in large fights in particular (on harder difficulty settings, you really need to trade efficiently, so if you aren't killing more than the enemy, you are screwed and if you are, you will nearly always have positive morale). The resistances suck as your net loss is substantial and poison isnt enough to offset it. Undead immunities are significantly fewer than in other titles. It doesn't prevent enemies life stealing for example and doesnt offer blanket mind immunities. As for life steal, its certainly useful, but you rate this much higher than Gaia's chosen. +20 health is generally better. You will need two full attack actions AFTER taking damage to equal Gaia's chosen and honestly, this isnt all that common a situation. If you are getting hit with a lot of AOE, its pretty good and if you are turning up to the fight half dead its good, but overall, I would sooner take a large boost to status resistance rather than some nasty penalties and a significant bump to my max health as this is going to stop being disabled or killed outright from focus fire in a way lifesteal wont. If you are disabled, you cannot lifesteal. If you dont survive being attacked for more than 2 rounds, which frankly wont happen if you are focussed, lifesteal is worse than Gaia's chosen. The entire stack having lifesteal is a lot less useful when only 1 or two units are taking damage at a time. More max health always makes any unit tankier, and not getting hit by debuffs can be massive. Although not listed, it turns you into a plant type also, which is better overall for nature affinity, though does also come with some nasty negative resistances, but unlike wightborn, you do get the universal status resistance to mitigate this.

[@salihnu]

I think a lot people are sleeping on dark as a culture and their unique Baleful Curse spell. Sunder Def Sunder Res Weaken In a 1 hex AoE has beautiful synergy with Astral Blood and Vessel of Chaos. One cast and your units have Fortune 1 and 30% more damage as well as sundered def, res and status res times 2. It has also nice synergy with the in culture Cull the Weak and if you combine it with Lightbringer you have a 60-80% chance to steal an enemy unit. As witch kings you can even go all out and overchannel for 2 casts of Baleful Curse, potentially on the entire enemy army. Now your units have at least fortune 2 what results in 20% crit, 30% damage from Vessel, 20% from Cull the Weak plus Regeneration plus their def and res are reduced for even more damage.

[@tuskular]

Just did a run with near every minor race transformation in the game and turns out that resistance is capped at 88% damaged reduction at 20 resistance, you cant do anything past that except speck into it to reduce resistance reduction attacks, also you can switch major race transformations at any time, it isn't permanent, the condition is that you can only have one active at a time and if you have multiple races you can give them different ones.

[@cathulionetharn5139]

leafskin works very wekk with forest warden skill and create forest Also sometimes it's not about being better than your opponent but being able to catch/escape (or just outmanouvre) him, forest walk + create forest is useful The same applies with frostling, they move faster on frozen plains than normal units move on normal plains think -2 ms cost per tile About Angelize, there is a spell that makes ALL YOUR UNITS GET A FREE TURN, but they go berserk, so having immunity to berserk is great

[@DenverZenn]

The downside to movement reduction is that there seems to be a cap on it. You can take forest walk, or you can build a road. Either way, you'll move at the same speed through the forest. And the camouflage is nice enough, but I'm not sure the AI is unaware of where your units are, and a human player can spend one level up on a hero to get true sight as a rank 1 support ability. I think they could have put some more work into leafskin to make it really stand out. Even rock skin gives an extra +1 defense on top of doing more or less the same stuff that leafskin does.

[@kellysamuel3383]

@@DenverZennbeing invisible works on the ai from my experience, I’ve started sieges from that were empty bc they couldn’t see me

[@cathulionetharn5139]

@@DenverZenn I am pretty sure frostling on arctic stacks with road, unfortunately I don't think you can have leafskin on forest + road because road overrides forest, also my point was leafskin pretty much comes with create forest, so you can slow others down. Sadly I don't think create forest removes road if the province had them

[@johnjab6051]

immune to charm too.

[@valacarno]

It's amazing how tendency to different playstyles can change their evaluation of the certian effects and mechanics. I have my tier list _almost_ a mirror opposite. :)

[@thegamesforreal1673]

Same here. When he put wightborn in S, I was like "WHAT?!" Sure, it's good, but it's not S at all for me. Morale is a huge part of combat and just not being able to boost your own morale anymore? Heavy no for me.

[@shalberus]

I know you already placed wightborn in s tier but honestly the most powerful thing about it is all the synergy you get from your units being undead. They can just be resurrected again and again and again, it’s like impossible to lose at that point.

[@NhatAnhPhamDr]

Also plant Mass resurrection at the cost of 10 cast point.

[@dorianodet8064]

Wighborn is just way too strong and should be nerfed imo. The sheer synergy with the other dark tome is already insane. I think Wightborn should be changed as follow : No more regeneration and instead more immunity to some statut changed that donc make sense (Charm ...)

[@C00kiesAplenty]

​@@dorianodet8064 No, shadow is like the second weakest affinity in the tomes. There are so many more powerful things you can do than that.

[@dorianodet8064]

@@C00kiesAplenty They might be, but not because of wighborn, and as a rang 3 book you can easily just pick wightborn without doing big into shadow. Basically my point is that wightborn main strengh should be its synergy with the rest of dark books, the same way that gaia chosen synergise super well with the rest of plant based spell. It shouldn't be as strong as it is "alone". It would also give more room to buff other Shadow tome if wightborn wasn't such an outlier

[@C00kiesAplenty]

@@dorianodet8064 Wightborn's main strenght is the synergy with other shadow tomes. Those give you the raise undead stuff and other undead bonuses, which is where the power comes from. The removal of morale is either not important, as morale is super easy to keep up in single player, or an active debuff because it prevents you from increasing crit chance. And if you just want lifesteal then take mana addicts.

[@sortilien2099]

Joy siphoners is sick if you go for a morale breaker build, you can stack it so fast with intimidating aura of nightmare horse or tome of inquisition. Animal kinship is really OP if you go wolf mount & the tand togehter = crit chance as a mind trait.

[@robadc]

I tried this with tome of revelry, the results were pretty impressive. On average I only needed to kill half an army before the rest began routing. Big catch being that undead armies have a lot of units immune to rout, on account of being undead.

[@HappyAspid]

Yesterday I have combined total of -15 morale per turn on my main character with it. Combine with -10 from tyrant knights on nightmares and -3 from joy syphoners.

[@lordvectra7821]

@@robadc Revelry turns a morale build into a Crit/Morale Build so even if you're facing undead, half of the build still works (the critting).

[@1987retroman]

Frostlings are super super good in the right situation and synergizes super well with the terraforming in its own tome. I think you massively underrated it.

[@kpacheco1265]

Worth noting that Reveler's Heart increases both morale gains and losses by 50%. As an example, Wail of the Banshee will reduce the morale of a unit with Reveler's Heart by 15 instead of 10. Bear in mind what type of opponents you're facing if you take this transformation as it is countered very hard by many of the shadow affinity tomes and the tome of subjugation. Edit: On a different note, elemental resistance bonuses also increase resistance against the relevant status effects. For instance, Magical Wards increasing your Fire, Frost, and Lightning resistances by 2 also effectively increases your status resistance against burning, frozen, and electrified by 2 as well. This makes transformations like Angelize a bit dubious in my opinion as it makes those units very vulnerable to poison and, more importantly, decaying. This can cripple one of the main strengths of the order tomes which is abundant access to strong healing. The nature affinity can also experience this issue but isn't quite as vulnerable to it in my experience.

[@GerritTV187]

A bit of a plus for rock skin. It helps you with settling/ moving in the underways

[@MetalHev]

Astral attunement really needs a buff. By that point in the game, Angelize's upkeep reduction increases your mana way more than the 40-50 of attunement.

[@talanir2957]

And Pass Through is honestly just worse Angelize/Demonkin. Let's be real here, Astral Attunement is just a reskin of goldtouched for mana and I have to say I like a minor transformation with 2 resistance and gold way more than a major transformation with mana and something that let's you step through walls but nothing else.

[@vRANDv]

>spending 1800 research to unlock astral attunement, by his own admission, which will only get him 50-60 knowledge per turn, for 30+ turns just to pay itself off >"S-tier" mans wildin

[@JumboPixel]

In my concessions section I shift it one lower due to its cost, etc so my final ranking is *A tier* (sorry viewers who skipped the concluding section!) Though we should remember that you have to research something, so the cost is not +1800, it’s (1800 - the cost of research alternative).

[@matthiasdarrington3271]

@@JumboPixel you should have made it much lower TBH... On the other hand I thin Earth-kin and Steel skin are much better than you make them out to be.

[@HappyAspid]

Few things I want to add. Earthkin - entire underground is affected. Was caught offguard many times by entire armies moving unseen at faster speed (underground speed is always quite low for everyone else. Frostling transformation - entire tome has everything you need to bring frost climate to your enemy. From sustained terraforming (even underground) to flash freeze that allow you to just take your weather with you anywhere on the map. PS: Just noticed - flying units do not benefit from any kind of folliage that grants protection against ranged attacks.

[@essi2]

Would be interesting to see how these rankings might have changed after Primal Fury is released and with all the other changes since this was made. Same for cultures

[@goofball3158]

Important note for Wight Born, while it’s a early transformation spell, is harder to cast than normal transformation spells because it costs a large amount of Souls instead of mana. (Souls being a resource you collect when killing enemies in combat, and there is one special improvement that produces 3 a turn.) If you haven’t been stockpiling souls before you’ve researched it, it can take a long while to finally get the benefits

[@JumboPixel]

That’s right, I’m assuming some logical/ necessary synergies are at play. However, that should’ve been stressed in the video! Thanks for mentioning it 🙂

[@SourceOfViews]

7:33 resistance doesn't reduce the damage by the amount of resistance, but by 10% multiplicatively. So this reduces damage by 19%, not by 2. That's nothing to sniff at imo.

[@Otyrr]

If you plan to play with Spawnkin, you just take the Mind trait that reduces unit loss from damage by half. It basically cancels out the negative of Spawnkin, and let's you get +%20 dmg. Additionally, I think you misplaced some of the major race transformations by not looking at their synergies with books in their tree. Gaia's makes your units plants as well, which has insane synergies with the book it comes from, and other books just below the tier you grab it from. Not to mention you can grab other minor transformations at T1/T2 to boost the major (which you certainly will have). Ie, with Wightborn you can take the lesser demon transformation on that cancels out the fire debuff, and anointed which almost cancels out the holy debuff.

[@NhatAnhPhamDr]

I use spoawnkin with barbarian/feudal which have aoe healing battle mage. Healing in this game revive model, contrast to warhammer

[@lecoutcritique8854]

Personnaly I'd rate astral convergence E tier, for two major points : first is the yields are pathetic (like it's akin to 4 building accross your empire, maybe 6 if you are playing food... in exchange for not being angel, demon, plant or undead?) and second is you are playing astral : meaning you tend to have a LOT of research bonuses already (including -25% research, even more if you play mystic), consequently you can unlock tomes much faster than other faction meaning the cost of unlocking another major transformation is way lower than for say an order/chaos/nature focus.

[@Sigrid_Von_Sincluster]

Hmm, it's almost as if the science focus transformation was built for a science victory or something ey?

[@literaturtee]

This was REALLY interesting! Thank you for this overview. It's fascinating how many synergies one can find in this game. I always like to create stories around my races so for that factor I actually like leave skin quite a lot. It'd be great though if there was one more benefit to it, like a moral boost or something like that. But for me, being quicker on the map, is actually really helpful and it also fits the lore so nicely. I'm really looking forward to the expansions and what kind of race transformations they bring to the table.

[@Emperiak]

Wightborn offers great benefits, but i think the cost should be taken in to account, the one big issue I found with the spell is that it costs 200 souls to cast which can be quite difficult to get if you are playin a necro playstyle since your spells and unique units also require souls to be used

[@Oujouj426]

At the point that you've unlocked the spell, you should've broken through the bottleneck through the sheer amount of battles you would be fighting + any soul multiplying spells (can't recall if there's more than just Soulbound).

[@Majber]

21:56 you missed that gaia chosen make units plant type and then you can apply over all plants enhancement from nature Tom V that's +20% crit chance and +4base dmg. It's huge.

[@pidgy8927]

I'm a big Supergrowth advocate, simply because I just really like leaning hard into nature tomes

[@juliannim6843]

I feel giving Astral Convergence an S-tier for empire development, while giving Golden Touched a B-tier seems a bit weird. I get that Astral Convergence give 2 resources per pop and Golden Toucehd only gives 1 per pop, but on the other hand Golden Touched is a minor transformation and also grants 2 resistance, which is quite an effective boost to survivability in combat.

[@andrewcole4843]

I guess the shrine of smiting powering up with Angelized and perhaps the mass resurrection eligibility helps make the order major get an "A" (along with the natures Wrath synergy which somebody mentioned). Order always seems all or nothing though.

[@zentonil]

My impression is that Order is a hybrid Tome Affinity; you either pair a status inflicting elemental damage with Condemned and Spirit attacks (ie. Fire vs Undead) or take the Faithful line and their tome’s healing benefits.

[@Doombot221]

Just made me realize that there isn't a major race transformation for Materium. Feels like that's an oversight since they're the only affinity without one

[@iondragonx]

I believe that Goldtouched was once their Major but, during beta, they found that almost nobody chose it over any other major so they "buffed" it by making it minor.

[@thegamesforreal1673]

It definitely needs one. My idea would be something that makes your units Elemental type. Would synergise fantastically with the Tier V Tome of the Creator.

[@kalzhae]

Gaia alone is B I would agree. but Gaia in the context of a T5 nature build is SSS, likely the most broken one by far. One thing not shown on the tooltip is that it make you a plant. Which mean you have all the plants synergy of the whole nature build unlocked, including the monstrous+20% crit and +20% damage and it can be even more crazy if you play a T3+ cavalry spam build

[@hopeandpiece]

Thing you missed, Gaia's chosen adds the plant subtype to your peoples, highly synergistic

[@JumboPixel]

I did forget to mention that in the final video, but I was aware of that synergy when I made the video. It’s nice!

[@chausser]

I played a game of chaos/shadow with Reveler's Heart undead. I think the Reveler's heart enabled them to gain positive morale while still protecting them from negative (would need more testing to be sure).

[@GrimoireOfTheSage]

I think a lot of issues with the transformations that give specific resists is that they resist THEMSELVES which is a bit meh unless you are having an orderly civil war between the faithful. It is why I like the materium transformations. Defense is just always useful and their resist boost one boosts general resistance rather than a specific, too bad for them damage is king and HP tends to be better than a small boost to defense/resist so they can't climb to the top.

[@Spo0ny_]

Just played through a scenario with a mystic custom empire. I can confirm that the 'Astral Convergence' major race transformation is very strong. At the end I had over 1.2k knowledge per turn.

[@offshore33]

Thanks for the Age of Wonders 4 Race Transformations video JumboPixel. One thing that can be harder to factor in to these lists is how all in on a mechanic you choose to go. As you mentioned, it can be hard to evaluate morale. I've also seen some napkin math about defense where stacking every source turns a tier one unit with 70 base hp into effectively 304 hp.

[@natrixnatrix]

I think you might be undervaluing the resistance buffs a bit. They can allow squishier units from being wiped out in a single turn, which means you have a chance to heal them. This is incredibly valuable if you are using tier 1 units late game. It might also mean you can tank a wave of aoe cooldowns so you avoid having to spread out your units deal with it, which can have an exponential effect if you have a lot of abilities which benefit from a tight formation. I think toughness/resilience increases in value as the game goes on with more aoe effects and a wider range of unit tiers on the battlefield. In the early game your units are also already above the threshold needed to not die in a single turn against most things you are fighting, so they do not need any more survivability at that point. That said I don't really disagree with your tier list other than that I would probably move steel skin down a tier (because lightning damage is so common, especially in aoe effects) and either move Gaia's Chosen up a step or Angilize down one. I think those two are pretty much identical in power level so having them in separate tiers feels wrong. Anointed people is maybe also a low B tier.

[@cavalyn]

I can't call Wightborn S tier when taking away morale mechanics is as much a BAD thing as a good thing. It's only useful if you are consistently having bad morale and fleeing (which you'd have to be a pretty bad player to have happen vs the AI). Most of the time you can easily get your morale high so you crit more, which you can no longer do if you're undead - making this objectively WORSE than being a normal person. And if your argument to the benefit is "oh, but now I can resurrect everything" - well, you can do that for Gaia's chosen too as a mass aoe revive. And Angelise and Order also have a mass aoe revive. So it's not even something remotely specific to Wightborn.

[@TheRoonie222]

I just started this video but please for the love of God I want to see what someone looks like with all the minor race transformations in the game stacked together.

[@JumboPixel]

Frankenstein’s monster build incoming!

[@SodapopKevin]

Leaf Skin is kinda meh but also it exists in what I feel might be one of the best tomes in the game (Glade Runner is amazing, Protector is also a great shield unit, I really like Aspect of the Root, and there are some thing things to gain from adding Forests to your domain with some province improvements and empire ugrades). It's very much a "I'm here anyway so whatever." upgrade but it's in a book that's just generally awesome for most builds.

[@xXlizamaXx]

These are great but you should really only focus on major transformations, supergrowth vs spawnkin and tier 4-5 tomes because unlike everything else in the game, those are the only things that are truly limited. Around turn 100 (or 70 in fast) if you choose Wizard King (and you should) your mana and knowledge input should be so high that once you get your tier 5 tome and it starts cycling through tier 3 through 1 tomes, you should at MOST take 5 turns to completely finish that tome, what im trying to say, is that nothing stops you from getting every single minor transformation, tier lists are fine in my opinion but they don't tend to focus on the fact that the most important choices are the things that do NOT let you take any other option once you choose them, the ones that limit your choices. That being said, this game is extremely modular and rewards greatly to people that plan ahead. Here is an example: I know I want to use watcher's as my main damage dealer unit, a solid battle mage unit from the scrying tome. I pick the two tier two tomes for the watcher and frenzying focus and then solidify my army with my own race units being tanky, suddenly, Gaia's chosen doesn't look so bad, specially with how it completely nullifies an entire combat style (Chargers) while the S tier demonkin, doesn't look as appealing, given that I don't need frenzy on my own race, my magic origin units deal with that instead. Hell, it even makes subpar tomes look good, with tome of zeal adding +2 damage type and tome of warding and tome of stone giving immediate defense, with tome of stone also giving an EXTREMELY powerful improvement in Central Quarry (+20 production with just ONE adjacent quarry to it.) What im trying to say, there is not only a big amount of choice in this game, but these choices affect every aspect of the game, to how you plan your cities to what units to use, what hero skills you get, etc. That tier lists like these seem a bit... Surface level? Misleading maybe? I do not know, I just don't vibe with the idea of power rankings when they just focus on ONE thing, even your tome ranking videos barely talk about units, improvement stacking, hero abilities and just laser focus on spells and correct me if im wrong because I've seen way too many tier lists of other youtubers too but, some are even D rank because "I haven't used this". This game is not about this I feel like.

[@Me1le]

What you missed for Gaia's chosen is that it turns you into plants. And allows nature magic to buff your units.

[@bionicconscious]

thanks for the thoughts and research! I could see how much you struggled to isolate these from their tomes overall, and i think your ratings are great. I think many of the comments are drifting toward 'which synergies' are the best convo, which is different from what youre doing here about the raw power in isolation.

[@Artus40k]

I was waiting for this one! Nice

[@ozisponas1593]

Imagine placing demon kin at S tier when you can just have the minor transformation and then picking up angelize or gaias chosen and be far stronger >astral better then gias what are you smoking mate

[@SourceOfViews]

How is Animal Kinship S-Tier? 10% damage and crit chance are nice, but nothing unheard of. And the downside of having to have animals and/or cavalery is actually pretty big. Because not only does that mean that you have to mix your armies, you also have to do it in a way that you can have these stand side-by-side (so the otherwise obvious ranged racial units + melee animals combo doesn't work very well). Lastly and probably worst, it forced you to clump up your units. That's usually a pretty bad thing to do and can easily cost you your fights in middle to late game when enemies start having good aoe skills.

[@Alex_Gron]

Earthkin better than leafkin also because of roads. You can build roads through forests. You can not build roads on mountains. And faster movement on mountains can be more helpful, i usually, almost always see situations where city centers are near to mountains. And usually it is not benefit for movement when you trying to lay siege or quickly return to defend but with earthkin it is.

[@bobbylite1969]

Gaia's Chosen is S for many reasons, the simplest being that Nature Affinity is already the best or second-best to focus on. 20 extra HP on your Tier 1 garbage is insanely powerful. And turning into your race into plants means access to some insane buffs and healing further on in the nature tomes.

[@JumboPixel]

I love the whole nature affinity line - imo all things considered it’s the strongest. Through a more independent lense though, where a players setup isn’t perfect but they have a couple of synergies, I wonder if Gaia’s chosen is really powerful enough to compete with demons - for example.

[@JDuel100]

One of my favorite combos I was able to pull off was Joy Siphoners and Reverler's Heart. You can also stack on Bloodfury Weapons and Cruel Weaponry. It allows for these wild momentum swings, especially if you run Skalds.

[@WhiteManOnCampus]

The Horde minor transformation shouldn’t quite make S tier. As good as the 20% damage increase is, it also increases your unit size, which is a very bad thing. The more units you have, the more falloff you have as they take damage and suffer casualties. This transformation can even take single units and make them two, which means they can lose a significant portion of their damage should one of their pair now die.

[@NhatAnhPhamDr]

You dont factor in the fact that book also give lord ability +20% damage, and rushing you to -30% upkeep chaos upgrade. Definitely S tier combination, not sure about transformation alone

[@JumboPixel]

I talk about all of that in the video, and in the final concessions chapter 😊 I broadly agree, though the internal synergies with demons are immense.

[@MGShadow1989]

It also looks daft unless already a small race, because of how the scaling is done. The damage loss can be mitigated by Tenacious, but even then I'd rather have something increasing damage directly and go for Supergrowth later instead, providing a similar effect to Tenacious by reducing unit size.

[@talanir2957]

TL;DR at the bottom. I would argue that Astral Attunement is honestly worse than most of the other major transformations. It's definitely not bad, but Pass Through just feels like a worse flight and the mana is way too late into the game to make up for it. It just feels like a mana version of Goldtouched to me, which as a minor transformation gives me more benefits with the 2 resistance and bonus gold, just because it can be stacked with other transformations. There could be an argument that flying also makes you vulnerable to pikemen, but the two majors that have flying include other good buffs as well. From the two flying transformations I would put angelize further down, because the blight and frost weakness can really bite your ass against anyone going into nature or shadow, while demonkin has no down side at all. As for Gaia's Chosen I would put it at least at the same level as Astral, because status resistance and 20 flat hp, plus the plant trait are really strong for any nature build, which you will be going with it most of the time anyway, the fire weakness does pull it down a bit, everything else is good. As for Wightborn, it can be really good with a necro build, but in other scenarios it might struggle more. The fact that it takes 200 souls to even cast that transformation enforces its playstyle even more and might end up taking you longer than researching another major transformation. TL;DR: Astral Attunement isn't as good as Angelize/Demonkin, because Flying is just a better version of Pass Through, plus they give other boni as well. Wightborn is good, but is only at its best in necromancy builds. Gaia's Chosen is at its strongest in nature builds, but still does really well on any other build were you might not want (or won't be able to get) Angelize, Demonkin or the other two, due to its flat stat increases, which honestly just buff most units by roughly one tier in health and status resistance.

[@olegdragora2557]

With necromancy build you have to spend Souls on units and spells, which means you'll be unable to afford the Wightborn until it's already way too late. And without necromancy it is just useless.

[@talanir2957]

@@olegdragora2557 from my experience you really don't have to get too many undead units early on, it's the combat spells that end up draining your souls. IMO the skeletons are crap, even for tier 1, the bone collector is not really worth the effort and the banshee actually does not cost souls at all. It really just gets expensive when you start producing necromancers and those aren't necessary before you get wightborn. Wightborn is outclassed without a necromancy build and a necromancy build doesn't really work without wightborn. The other major transformations can all be used without fully going into any affinity, but need a higher tier tome compared to wightborn. One might go into chaos or order for the flying transformations and some other things, but I guess most would not go for wightborn without a shadow build.

[@paweplaczek2191]

Yeah feudal+overwhem tactic+wolf mounts+animal kin with a mounted lord. Massive early game power.

[@TorSmawbs]

Astral convergence should have been lower. It really isn't worth it especially considering it's a major racial transformation. Any blue build worth it's salt is probably weighing 3 majors, and this one is like deciding to cut your legs off for 6% more mana and research. This despite the fact you are likely already cleaning house research wise, and any "rush" towards a magic victory needs the strength to defend the sites not more speed at the cost of it. I would have put it at bottom B tier considering it's a major, maybe even lower. Other than that your list looks pretty good, but you undervalue some defensive buffs and status resistance. For instance specifically because Demonkin is so strong, it's near the expected player pick in most cases. Making scion of flame the default counter dip to reduce the efficacy of the spellbooks taken along the way.

[@anthonycrous9689]

DUDE!!!!,,,lEGIT searched the for this video yesterday!Absolute champ as always GG

[@ivanhodgson1693]

One thing about angelize transformation: it makes ALL your units have faithful status which receives a lot of buffs from order spells, passives, and hero abilities unlocked in the order tomes. I feel like this is similar to Gaia's Chosen as it's easily overlooked from all the spells and passives which affect the plant tag. My personal fix for leafskin would be one extra addition: photosynthesis. Either: 1. Gain 1 food per pop 2. Require 10% less food to grow a pop. (I might be mistaken, but I think leafskin gives the plant tag too?? Will have to check that again)

[@MrMengAmok]

You also get with glades the possibility with you hero to take a perk, that gives all your units thats fight in an forrest to get 1physical and macical resistence and 10% dmg. And if you transform the landscape constantly, your are hidden, faster, tankier and deal more dmg. I would rank it at least on B tier or even A tier, because the only drawback is, that its quite mana intensive to transform everythind to a forrest. But if you manage to do so, its amazing, especially considering the perk where you get more stability in your town for every forrest tile you have. This race transformation doesnt make it quite to an S rank in my opinion, but i really like takeing it to boost my units in my own teritory, but also transform the landscape to an forrest right bevore I attack an enemie force.

[@haakoflo]

The tome of glades is fantastic for an industrious build. Glade runners provide a great DPS unit, Aspect of the Root allow their shield units to heal themselves AND go into guard mode. Create forest + leafskin allows them to make their domain much more defensible. Combined with the Rangers from the Nature Affinity (late game), they have huge movement while enemies hardly have any movement at all, ensuring they can pick fights at will. Finally, the Entwined Protector is a much better Tier 3 unit for them than even the Iron Golem. While the Iron Golem is just a slightly worse Bastion, the EP double as a support unit. Also, the EP uses mana for upkeep, which is often less of a constraint for a industrious build than gold. On it's own, Leafskin may not be impressive, but if combined with all the abilities of the Glades tome, I would get it in any Industrious build. (The only reason not to get it, would be a role playing reason.)

[@harryfieldson]

Just got into the game and my first time trying Reavers out I picked up spawnkin... by the time I finished my heavy magelock hero was 1 shotting anything the game put in front of him - hilarious transformation

[@markmalocha3303]

Worth noting for Astral Attunement that you'll likely be pretty research, mana, and casting focused already if you're that far up into Astral affinity. Because of that, it'll likely be proportionally cheaper to cast (relative to your mana/casting point capacity) than other major race transformations; it'll also be unlocked/researched a little earlier than the other tier 4 ones. Don't think that's quite enough to put it back into S tier, but it is a point in its favor that got a bit glossed over

[@perer005]

Good stuff, but would have been easier to read if you moved the Greater Transformations to the far right in the tier list. Edit: Or just added some thick vertical lines to separate minor from major!

[@jaryncovell2538]

Combining the Frostline with the Angelize and the Poison Immunity ring work absolute wonders

[@jaydendeabay3731]

I don’t know if it’s already been stated but wightborn requires around 250 souls I think? Which without soul bound takes a hot second. Unless I save for it I never can afford it right away. Thanks for your time love your teirlists.

[@Spinexus]

Kinship is S-tier easily. There are only a few other tome things i found that increase crit chance. Not one of them is in a starter tome. There are a lot of animal summons in the game too to trigger it. Not just in the nature tomes.

[@BL_Lusha]

I would move leafskin up to low B high C (and here is why). I don't tend to use elafskin for my big armies. I tend to want it for small scout units. There are a lot of buffs to scouts, but going into mid early game, this is a good way to scoot through forests faster, or use camping scouts as a way to monitor enemy movement. It does still have the *major* drawback of needing a forest though, which is why I don't think it should go much higher than C.

[@franciscoaguirre96]

Rock+Stealskin+Golden touched+adaptive armor is a beast combo

[@4verse79]

Spawnkin: more "soldiers" per unit = less damage (=the damage the spawnkined unit does) reduction when the unit is being hit. Super good

[@anorangutan511]

One thing I noticed: Supergrowth vs Spawnkin. Something you didn't mention is that being larger makes you easier to hit with ranged attacks. So Supergrowth is also double edged. I was going to nitpick a couple other things, but after getting through the whole video it's important to remember some of the transformations are weaker due to potential for stacking. For example, stacking the upkeep reduction from Angelized with Swarm Proficiency would be extremely broken if not for the negative resistances.

[@zentonil]

I never knew size affected ranged attacks, how much is the modifier?

[@anorangutan511]

@@zentonil So in supergrowth, it doesn't say this explicitly, but in the hero skill Ancient of the Earth it says "grow in size and gain large target". Even though it doesn't say "gain large target" in supergrowth, I noticed enemy ranged units rarely miss after I supergrowth my units. I also noticed that large enemy 3 unit formations (ex: iron golems) are easier to target despite being right beside a normal size unit, with no additional cover modifiers. I can't find the exact value unfortunately, probably +10%, might even be 20%.

[@ИванПетров-л6э3в]

Absolutely godlike, many thanks man!

[@sllovian7121]

Super helpful and fun, thank you! ^^

[@tc4423]

Playing as the premade godir Fangir, those materium transformations seemed pretty powerful, together. The role play value was high!

[@GrimViridian]

Beat my first game the other day (finally) had a primal lizardfolk race with a green poison dragon ruler, ended up with a mist covered fey swamp kingdom and my race had become green plant skinned draconians with misty fey eyes, i love this game

[@teambellavsteamalice]

I'd place all the greater transformations (except nature) in D tier. Very expensive, very late... and as much a drawback as a benefit! Another type has a huge net negative modifier! Like +2 +2 -4 -4, so net -4. Flying or so doesn't compensate enough to be worth time and effort! The lifesteal is nice, but in the later part of the game you should have already have some ways to keep units alive. (Not sure about Astral, does it have a hidden racial type as all have?) Gaia's Chosen is the exception imo. While being a plant (not mentioned) gives a net negative resistance, it synergizes with many nature spells. Most importantly the tier 5 tome mass rejuvenation that will heal or bring back to life animals and plants!

[@antoninlamotte8558]

I think you didn't realize that wrightborn is the single most expensive of them all : you need a whooping 200 souls to activate it, which probably makes it one of the worst transformation. 💀💀💀

[@kcw1879]

I usually play "good" races, but I don't like angelize. It gives you -4 resistance to some of the more common damage types, and the one resistance it does give you is pretty useless because you will rarely be fighting against other good races. Extremely underwhelming, and can even be a huge detriment based on other races on the map.

[@LG-jn5fx]

The thing is that endgame if you have unlocked any of these tomes and abilities you are always going to use the minor race transformations if you can. No real downside in most scenarios to these minor race transformations. I even unlocked Leafkin in last playthrough, no reason not too and slightly movement buff in places.

[@palolv2220]

You definitely under rate Status Resistance. That's what helps you defend against super annoying and potentially devastating effects like Mind Control, Insanity, Stuns, and basically any magical effect besides direct damage.

[@Viper71022]

I love these tier lists, always entertaining

[@twistedtonestudio3716]

some of these race transformations are much better when used with other traits. like astral blood with overwhelming tactics and your pretty much guaranteed to crit hit every time

[@Sigrid_Von_Sincluster]

Yeah, idk why he did not consider synergis when it comes to that transformation, because if you also pick up mana adict at the start you are going to prty much steam roll the entire map when you get to the mid game, 50% crit chance ++ high morale witch also increses your crit chance means that you will do 50% more dmg AAAND life steal for the dmg done, meaning that the ai will have a dificult time killing any unit

[@lattekahvi1298]

in my opinion the wightborn should be A instead of S, while lifesteal is really good the extra damage you take from spirit and fire is horrible, especially when you consider how easily you can stack those 2 damage types high

[@zentonil]

I agree, Fire damage is most incentivized for the Condemned Order tome path since rebuffing status resist allows Burning to proc damage buffs.

[@Dan-yl4gh]

If you combine Tenacious with Spawnkin, Spawnkin makes it more difficult to incur casualties. Tenacious+spawnkin is S-tier synergy for sure. Without tenacious it's A tier.

[@teamalice115]

I feel like generally this is a fairly good tier list. It’s pretty well established with your justifications and I think a lot of the minor ones are better because they stack while the major don’t. But you can only really spread out your affinity so much so it’s hard to get too many minor transformations in a game. Doable but you’ll struggle elsewhere.

[@Wayfaring_Stranger]

i was hoping you also show how they look like, coz im really picky about how my races look aswell and i really dont like how some of them changes them. but thanks for the breakdown

[@mitchellkrever421]

One other thing with how many units in a formation is the more die the less damage they do... Whereas a single giant will always do 100% damage even at 20% health. A formation with 5 units will only do 20% damage at 20% health

[@christopherdemlow2805]

Love your videos, and loved your live streams thank you for all you do with this game, and I really appreciate all the information you give. I want to mod the game, but am wondering what people would like? I'm not really a 4x person until this game really opened me up to them.

[@timr7349]

I think it's interesting Materium doesn't get a major transformation. I wonder if it will somewhere down the line in the game's lifecycle.

[@Zathurious]

The thing I've always liked about all transformations is that, unlike enchantments, they do not have an upkeep cost. Also, why didn't you consider aesthetic sensibilities when ranking the transformations? 😂 Just joking. I know that is a highly subjective opinion.

[@yungface4572]

I can see how spawnkin could be good with some builds but i personally never take it, its just too coinflip unless you pair it with the tenacious trait