Astral Tomes Explanation and Tier List - Age of Wonders 4 (the most anticipated)

[@noneofyourbusiness3288]

3:53 Astral Affinity Empire track (compared to Chaos) -------------------------- Tier 1 11:30 Tome of Warding 18:46 Tome of Evocation 31:50 Tome of the Tentacle Tier 2 40:22 Tome of Scrying 45:55 Tome of Fey Mists 58:00 Tome of Summoning Tier 3 1:08:10 Tome of Corruption 1:23:56 Tome of Amplification 1:34:03 Tome of Teleportation Tier 4 1:43:13 Tome of the Astral Mirror 1:48:36 Tome of Astral Convergence 1:58:03 Tome of the Stormborne Tier 5 2:05:14 Tome of the Arch Mage -------------------------- 2:07:50 Tier list

[@vladimirkiselev6066]

Summoning well from the tome of summoning reduce combat casting cost too. If you run Mystic culture, your combat summons spells can become free. And big chunk of the spells covered are combat summon spells. Now then, one also have to pay attention to spells which has multiple tags, buff+debuff, as an example, as those benefit from multiple empire bolstering buildings and some passives at the same time. Finally, unlocking tome of archmage will unlock an option for your lord to ascend as sorcerer, which enable casting 2 combat spells every turn.

[@znail4675]

And with how it works the Pantheon now so can you get that lord every game if you want.

[@znail4675]

Tome of Scrying is totally awesome for Reaver as each Mark gives 10% bonus damage for ranged units, including the Watcher if you cast the unit enhancement that gives all none racial units the racial bonus. Tome of the Astral Mirror, this feels almost like a nitpick, but it's amazing how you consider the Mirror Veil a meeh ability, it's like one of the strongest unit enhancements there is, it's just that the rest of the Tome is bad. I was kinda surprised by the Astral Convergence not being ranked even higher then B as it got that really strong win condition. One thing special about Astral is that Mana is for sure something you need to build for as it's very easy run out with the many good spells that you really want to cast every single combat.

[@theslayer5978]

What I love about astral afinity is that it has way more playstyles then other afinities. For example if you go with order you always surround urself with tanky melee frontline and good support units to support frontline. Nature is animal summoning and supporting it, chaos is equal to order, but worse, materium is equal to order and IMO on par, shadow is undead summoning or frost shenanigans. Astral has very unique playstyles and adaptable. You can go: spellslinging (ehich is very unique playstyle), summoning, battlemage style bombardment, TPing around the world-map and being massive anoyence, combat summoning, early-game rushing, late-game scaling builds. Astral is harder to use then other tomes especially combined with mystic culture but it's so diverse and fun to the point that other playstyles might feel dull. And IMO it brings some of the old AOW1,2 and even 3 broken archmage stuff to the table.

[@MetalHev]

I think the idea behind the mimic is to make a build based on low tier racial units, buff them to high heavens, then turn the mimics into +30hp/+50% damage/cosmic overdrive versions of them.

Ohh that's actually a very interesting mid to endgame build idea!

[@afalling0bject178]

Can mimic copy.your own units?

[@vladimirkiselev6066]

@@afalling0bject178 nope, they can not. They run all the way until they're within 3-4 range from the enemy unit they want to copy, copy them and end their turn while taking a beating.

[@MetalHev]

@@afalling0bject178 yeah, just looked at it again and it seems you can't. So yeah, I'm out of ideas.

[@ForbiddenFollyFollower]

​@@MetalHevXD

[@OldManBolt]

These tome reviews have been amazing for me as a new player.

[@bullroarer-took]

As a primarily single player of this game, i can confirm that i rarely even get to tier 5 much less go back for counter tomes

[@vladimirkiselev6066]

Ah, that's a shame, because unlocking tiev 5 tomes opens up cool ascension perks

[@biowiener7825]

oh, im the opposite single player, i only finished 2 games over all but my last one was 304 turns vs 8 players on a large map, ofc couldve finished a bit faster

[@feykro222]

Now we need a tier for the coolest looking characters/heroes.

[@Landonpeanut]

I'm still convinced that in the complete history of the game, pre-nerf phase beasts have been the most overpowered unit the game ever had. They had Heavy Charge Strike, there were no real spearmen counters, and they could move, charge, and attack in the same turn. Testing it with my friend at the time had me losing my backline to phase beasts that started their turn >12 tiles away. Even melee units couldn't fight them evenly because they'd phase away after one attack. Point for point, I don't think that any unit could fight them evenly except Warbreeds at the time because all ranged, battlemage, support, and normal melee units were deadweight, and Warbreeds were the only shock unit that could just out-stat them.

[@Tentacl]

Cosmic overdrive + disruption wave is just SO good.

[@Horlianz]

I think the Idea behind tomes like Tome of the Fey mist, is that you do the Astral / Nature thing of growing your shit without much wars. The Vision and defensive Buffs provided for fighting in your own City influence area means, that you always know where enemys are gonna come from. They in turn cant see your units in your Area, which makes trying to attack you scary. Win conditions like "Expansion Victory" or "Magic Victory" are the ones you want to go for here. The idea is: I turtle up and YOU have to come to me. I see what you are up to and can prepare. GL fighting into my misty domain, with Cycles of Seasons and something like Throne of Insidious Whispers or Fortress of Vines. There is a reason they put so much "when besieged, gain" or "when battling in your Domain, gain X / debuff X / Summon X" into Astral and Nature. I must say that from what I have seen and played myself, beeing proactive and aggresive is something that feels quite nice compared to it, but now that I think about it, I might just try that more passive "you do you and I do me and if you come I will slap the shit out of you" playstile

[@st8113]

Watcher is a lovely unit, it's just a shame the rest of the tome does nothing. Combine a pile of them with an astral signature hero, the long range stuns, while you're also using combat nukes - melee can barely reach you.

[@theslayer5978]

Tome actually does fine in astral-mystic bm builds. Aplying -5 magick resistance in 1 hex aoe might be rly good.

[@znail4675]

Even better for Reaver with the 10% bonus damage for each Mark.

[@smegg9676]

Watchers look so cool :)

[@creepyfellow]

Most of my last runs were based on Tome of Tentacles and Astral Mirror with Hideous Stench and other tanky traits to make really sticky, annoying constrictors. All tomes and traits ranked really low on your tier list, great fun, 10/10 would recommend. Variants were alchemy to make them stick inside miasma, discipline for dual sticky/stun capability and any other battle mage/support tomes for damage. Especially fun is having a melee hero in the middle of a group of enemies with Retaliating Growths for unlimited retaliations, higher stickyness and free defense mode, its a great buff spell.

[@riderzaur]

Offtopic: I've been watching your AOW4 content for a while and always had a 'this guy is so familiar' feeling. A few days ago I realized who you are. It's been a long time since I followed your top lane rants lmao. I'm very glad to see you're doing well! Ontopic: do you sometimes play single player maps? And yes, keep reminding the like. I forget so often, especially on long videos!

[@SimpleReally]

btw you overlooked something about astral travel; unlike the other teleports you can use it offensively to attack a different city or reinforce an ally, every single skirmish for the rest of the game your opponent has to assume your leader can show up and turn the tide

[@notalefty999]

Did you know that if you dont like someone who is focussing on Astral tomes, you can tell them "You put the Ass into astral". Granted, that works better when you say it than when you write it, but still.

[@leathermage]

It can work, but sometimes, when you say that to astral player he will time stop you and reveal that he actually picked tome of tentacles early on in the game.

[@stevenxu5747]

This has been a great video series! I hate to be "that guy" but in retrospect, it may have been more useful to discuss the tomes by tier, rather than by affinity. Then you're making a like-for-like comparison, and weighing up the opportunity costs within each video. On the other hand, I can see that some affinities have mechanics that are preserved within the affinity (Blessed, Zealous, Souls, Marked, etc).

[@Shinshinvariety]

Yeah I think you’re right, I should have done it that way. Maybe in the future.

[@MutatingManiacGarr]

Comment down below

[@z-rossi3672]

Feel like going archer enhancements or battle mage is just the best thing for new players. You can just trivialize AI with those

[@SimpleReally]

evoker hits 3 targets for 15 damage on live, 6 range 1 turn cooldown

[@Shinshinvariety]

Just a good buff then

We calli it a civilization-style game (and it's true). BUT: we can also look at it as a starcraft-like game, as the tomes role and the fog of war create a dynamic that's very similar to starcraft's various tech choices.

[@Shinshinvariety]

It’s like civilization meets heroes of might and magic meets total warhammer

[@SimpleReally]

any tips on attunement early game creeping? you start the game with 4 units and autoresolve immediately kills your only spearman, it's such a chore having to manually do every fight

[@Shinshinvariety]

I’m in bed right now but my immediate thoughts are to try turn 1 buying out an extra unit or changing society traits to get an extra unit. Maybe different hero weapons or form traits?

[@e-rankluck2594]

Tbh I actually really like Tome of the Tentacle. The conjure spell is kinda useless feeling. But I actually quite like the Constrictor. And putting lock down on my supports/mages has also been really good for me before. But I also tend to run very range heavy armies where keeping enemies at a distance is worth a lot more. Though I also did kinda rely on a beefy greatsword hero to use with retaliating growths with to just have the ai murder themselves on him so maybe not.

[@andrewlockhart2401]

Would you also be able to do a video about how you level different heros and recommendations on what to level when?

[@PraetorianMan]

Do a video about society traits! Or whatever they're called, I just had a fun playthrough where I combined the 40 move point racial trait with the road marcher society trait and then spent the entire game *flying* across the map. Kind made it hard to go back to any other kind of build lol.

[@Nodjia]

Perhaps a dumb question, but would the tome of scrying help enough to be worth it to counter something like tome of mists? It seems like it would allow some leverage against some of the obscuring effects, but I don't know how it interacts with clinging mists, etc. Obviously, if the goal is to counter mists, you can just go mists.... but I guess it depends on if we want to do a transformation. Regarding the umbral mistress, I think there is an overall game design consideration to take into account. I think that the complaint that "order tide" becomes too strong late game because it counters a lot of the base mechanics of other affinities comes into play here. The "evil" or "offensive" effects which dominate, debuff and DOT enemies seem to be designed for "mid-game tempo" builds. So from my perspective, the umbral mistress is fine because it is meant to be extremely powerful in the narrow window before racial units become "control immune" and gold golem frontlines spam the fields. So beasts and chaos feel like "rush tempo", dark and umbral and most offensive debuff builds seem to be "midgame tempo", while order tide is the "all our units are immune to your effects lategame-tempo".

[@mangaranwow2543]

Although i can understand your complaints on T2 units being not the best/cost efficient to use. Yet i always feel a significant power spike when i get the houndmaster. One of the better units in the game imho.

[@notalefty999]

Cascading power stacks with enemy spell casts also.

[@Gokudo01]

1:13:00 Warbreed comes from a Tier 3 tome

[@Tastatur13]

I know you're more of an MP guy, but against AI, tome of astral convergence has been, and still is, probably the strongest tome in the entire game in my opinion. Explosive manifestation+cascading power allows you to win battles against 3 full armies of T3/T4 Units with a single scout on your side, due to the AI's ineptitude to properly deal with summoned units.

[@loonynine22]

ive been waiting on this one!

[@Knightdale]

The PoE2 era is coming closer. Only two days left!

[@SourceOfViews]

Please add timestamps. I know it's a lot of work, but otherwise this is really hard to use.

[@oscarlove4394]

you shouldn't feel awkward about asking people to like and subscribe. i know it can feel awkward, but like you said it costs nothing. and for people like me who are very forgetfull its very helpfull. i probably wouldn't have liked this video if you didn't remind me.

[@ayabass]

First . . Just in time I'm playing Astral build

[@amera35]

Before tiger patch I thought heroes was the number one thing they did rework in the game. I think the affinity trees are now up. They're just so uneven it's comical

[@notalefty999]

For Mirror Mimic, do you know if, after transforming, it retains the mythic unit bonuses or if (assuming its magic origin), it continues to benefit from cosmic overdrive?

[@norbertkowalczyk2197]

Yeah, astral tomes let's go

[@MrPAACK]

Will you do a society traits tier list?

[@ForbiddenFollyFollower]

Sometimes you say "it would be better if we got this building for free and didn't have to research it" but that's not true because tomes with six things to research especially tier 1 tomes lets you skip to higher tier tomes much quicker because they take less time to research even if they're useless.

[@darumanu9276]

I hope they do not netf Umbra mistress, such a good summon

[@climhazzard115]

Honestly you need to reevaluate every statement of "it's not racial so it won't scale as well" from the context of playing a mystic summoner. They're literally all magic origin units. I also think that when discussing astral abilities that you need to evaluate targeted debuffs, like arcane bond, from the context of being able to stack -6 status resistance, minimum, due to astral affinity skills.

[@blackleon1708]

A holiday!

[@itayshmuelov3688]

Why do you always have deodorant in your hand?

[@Runstrem]

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