[Brutal] What happens when the good guys are bad? A whole lot of Evil. - Ep.1

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

I'm starting to feel a little guilty benefiting from Potato's addiction to this game. Thanks for the content.

[@tomasavendanozacarias5205]

you are not at fault, you can do nothing to stop potato, the ones to blame for that addiction are potato and paradox

[@jaspermooren5883]

Enabling addiction is tight!

[@egilzroshi9737]

At 5:00 your leader actually died. There is an option turned on by deafault that resurrects your leader after auto combats if they die.

[@gibbcharron3469]

I believe it specifically requires at least one non-hero unit to survive as well, but yes.

[@Mathmachine]

Evil High Elves? We're just being redundant now, aren't we?

[@strangestecho5088]

High does not equate to morally good in the Age of Wonders lore. High Elves were just the original celestial race that came to Athla to prepare the planet as a safe haven for humans. However, the High Elves refused to leave the planet when the time came and the human refugees eventually stormed the capital to kill the Elven King Inioch and most of his court. This sundered Elven society into the Dark Elves and Wood Elves. The Dark Elves wanted revenge on humankind at all costs and turned to dark magic, slavery and general evil, where as the Wood Elves were isolationist and wanted peace. After the events of the second game the two Elven factions mended their society and became High Elves again.

[@Mathmachine]

​@@strangestecho5088 while I do appreciate the lore info I think you may have missed the joke.

[@T0tenkampf]

redundant no, that means things that are the same. High Elves are Lawful Good. Drow on the other hand...

[@Mathmachine]

@@T0tenkampf at least Drow are honest with the fact that they hate you. High Elves are usually depicted as hoity toity holier than thou supremacists that put on a nice front. Again, usually, not always.

[@omfg0teh0greatizzle]

@@T0tenkampf "while I do appreciate the lore info I think you may have missed the joke." -Mathmachine 2023

[@nosuslp3121]

You could have annexed your first ancient wonder directly after your first province, thanks to wonder architects. Then your units could have stayed where they were and still healed.

[@stewartgames6697]

T'was painful to see it sitting there, right in front of him. All that delectable imperium left to rot on the ground like worm-ridden apples in the late autumn alpenglow.

[@BrutalButtSlap]

Now do if the good guys was the "bad guys", Dark were you get Good Alligment and try to mantain high stability even if your people don't care... (basically a challenge) Maybe "Materium but we have a Ikea manual", to see how far can "Runesmiths" and "Wise one" with a rush for Astral Inspiration get you...

[@BJJohnson98]

Or you could do Loki but with more of a focus on diplomacy instead of brute force. Start with a mix of Shadow and Order and gradually lean into Order as you go along (or Astral if you really want to go the Marvel route since the mid and late game Astral tomes are definitely reminiscent of his MCU powers).

[@GigaHands]

I've toyed around with a morale-damaging build myself, and lemme tell ya. When it gets going, it REALLY gets going. Enemies that rout or die reduce the morale of every single one of their allies. Applying a little AOE morale-debuffing with banshees or spells, then routing/killing something, can cause a powerful domino effect that routs the entire enemy army in a single turn. Doing this greatly reduces the amount of fighting you have to do, which means your army is healthy and ready for the next fight.

[@machetank4045]

I do like it a lot when you go into manual battle and comment on it, there is something really satisfying about it. One thing i think you fail to do is giving your capital the whispering you start with one turn 1. It's literally free, no cooldown on moving it or temporary penalties when removed, only upsides.

[@jackheil2494]

Idk if it's just me, but potatos voice is so damn soothing it tends to make me fall asleep even when I'm not tired

[@AJCherenkov]

Congrats, you've recreated the Thalmor from first principles

[@Lazuli901]

Obsessed with ancient wonders and architecture, while being evil jerks...it's the Dwemer reborn!

[@T0tenkampf]

sounds like the square mustache dude to me

[@JoshSweetvale]

​@@T0tenkampfYep. Evil Order is pretty much Fascism.

[@Melatonine1987]

I am still learning from your manual battles despite having 100h in game myself keep it up

[@markschusteriii5076]

Downloaded a more race traits mod, and it had intimidating aura as a option. Went full morale build with nightmare horses and would inflict like -15 morale at the end of each turn per knight. It was super fun routing enemies in 1 turn over and over again

[@TheDirtyShaman]

High Culture can give Zephyr Archers up to 9 tiles range on their area attack with the awakened buff, which will usually cause enemy forces to rout before ever coming into range to counterattack.

[@bamsebulle]

I need to try that. That sounds like alot of fun. Zephyr archers are awesome

[@JoshSweetvale]

Prefer Glade Runners, as their special attack is a free action and you also unlock Tier 3 shield bois.

[@QuestionableObject]

Staves of warding comboed with Skalds and/or dryads (anything with spammable aoe buffs) is insanely good

[@rylandorr]

I absolutely cannot wait for your next AoW4 videos now to come out. Keep up the great content man!

[@volodymyrboitchouk]

I'm doing this for story realm 3 right now! High + Wightborn with red armor color looks absolutely awesome. Throw in necrotic magic to turn your magic from gold to dark purple and your now vampire crusaders leading an army of the undead! Dark and order work together so well, its insane!

[@alpturan7897]

Loved the manual combats! Favorite part of these episodes. I particularly enjoy hearing your thought process for tactical decisions

[@kiapor99]

as someone who's terrible at the manual combat, watching you play these out is really helping me learn.

[@Xexelli]

Love that you love this game, can’t get enough.

[@Sky_Guy]

5:01 Hey Potato just FYI, your hero didn't "almost die" they just straight-up died. There's a setting that resurrects your hero if they die but the battle is won, and by default it is set to "Auto Resolve Only." You can either turn it off or make it apply to all fights, but either way that's why you sometimes see your heroes "survive" a fight with 1HP on auto-resolves.

[@iptf]

I do indeed enjoy the aspect of fighting battles manually, thank you.

[@couchpotato8729]

Really excited to see how this morale build comes together! I would also love to see, at some point, a build where you focus on maximizing archer damage (I've see lots of praise online for feudal/high culture and getting seeking arrows/lightning arrows as early as possible).

[@keccakec]

I can speak on this one a bit. After seeing this video I decided to try a scions of evil + cannibal high society. I took the race perk that gives crit when near another ally of the same race, and then ended up taking any bonuses to crit + any ranged enchants I could. I'm finishing up the playthrough now and I can tell you with certainty it's absurd. I have had T1 archers get 3x crits at around 80% crit chance and nuke a T4 unit. And if the units do survive, they get to enjoy 3-4 status effects that will kill them soon after. I basically just manual battle anything I lose more than 1 unit on and have won "impossible" battles manually. The strategy is literally summon any trash mobs you have abilities for (spiders are good for this), have them as the primary defense because they are disposable, blocking bottlenecks if possible. Have secondary defense be tanky shield bois, and behind them is your army of nuclear warheads with staffs and bows.

[@couchpotato8729]

@@keccakec Dang, that sounds super cool! I'll definitely have to give this build a try for myself now!

[@gillettedave]

honestly I freaking love Pyromancers the aoe fire spell is so much fun to use espcially if you go for buffing battle mages.

[@JoshSweetvale]

Tome of the Dragon now gives _all_ battlemages access to a firebomb AoE.

[@greggs_sausageroll1608]

Another excellent video, your fast paced aow4 campaigns are just the best.

[@teendrinking]

yes! really enjoying watching you play AoW4!

[@T0tenkampf]

oh look Tater goes full evil again :(. Here's a challenge for you, doesn't matter what race configuration you play but you have to go Lawful Good Paladin mode. You can NEVER perform any action that shifts your alignment down toward evil. Let's find out of GalaHad or GalaHadn't.

[@ReadyF0RHeady]

Absolutely adore this Types of build where you Break Fantasy stereotypes With good/evil factions, Just Like DARK Souls and berzerk where the shiny Guys are the evil ones etc

[@TheJollyLlama875]

Evil high culture archer spam is sick nasty

[@benjii_boi]

Evil High is great, still one of my fave playthroughs

[@Taliesyn42]

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of two T1 tomes you turned down. I really like the Tome of Roots - you get two damage buffs, a solid heal, and the OP vines. And I'm also a fan of the Tome of Faith, which gets you a 20 point heal, a solid support unit, an enchantment that gives ALL of your support a free heal, and a single target damage spell that scales as the game goes on if you stick with Order tomes. Even Convent and Faithful Whispers are really useful.

[@ArmorBreaker88]

Me just waiting for potato to annex the pre cleared wonder, let's see. Ah i can go to sleep now, perfect

[@rigokendrali3241]

Its funny, this is Chaos Dwarves of Warhammer fame thematically. Did a similar build when creating that faction in AOW4. 😅

[@WeirdGamer20555]

Always here for a new potato Age of Wonders 4 run.

[@basbekjenl]

Yes watching the battle is entertaining to me

[@g_raffthearchlich]

Born to be good, chose to be evil

[@greenmushroom4258]

Fantastic content. Keep up the aow campaigns!

[@espasmemuscular]

Roleplaying is 100% the best way to get fun out of this game (imo)

[@Denzarki]

and going with the flow.. i was gonna do arcane rats as my first leader/race.. but early on they did a quest and got an angelic transformation so i went into order instead, it's been fun

[@johngillan4475]

Thank you for your video

[@keithvernieri9147]

Picks wonder architect talks about it for a minute and then doesn't annex the wonder, bad potato lol

[@capester]

This is great! I'm hoping you take the tome with the forest creation in it for maximum value

[@edane2228]

Yes more manual battles! I am a noob and sometimes I do worse than the auto-resolve. Seeing the strats helps alot!

[@jgoody9597]

Morale is an excellent build to focus on. I did a melee heavy morale build and using time of revelry, you can LVL your heroes quickly and use them to destroy enemy morale by sniping heroes, especially in battles where the enemy has multiple heroes.

[@blueguitarthings4722]

Love this AoW4 content!

[@MrMolova]

My brain still doesn't compute this game. I just can't follow it. Oddly though, I love the videos. 😂 Every turn is unpredictable to me and a surprise lol

[@joevanhy5171]

what makes these videos stand out is the editing, it's such a great game but there's a lot of downtime between turns and decisions

[@snefansson]

Definitely prefer when you fight the battles manually! It's fun seeing you finagle yourself out of crappy situations unscathed. But I also understand that the game just gets tedious for the player when you have to micro manage every single unit all the time

[@Lavafish2525]

I would love to see a wolf riding feudal pack tactics build of staying together

[@GingerLampacher]

I´m thoroughly enjoying Age of Wonders 4 myself. Did a really interesting Ice-orc build and used aggressive terraforming to mess with my neghbours before conquering them. The ability to theme a faction and play that theme out is something I've never experienced in my limited time with 4x games. PotatoMcWhiskey I love your Civ 6 content, but I would not be mad at all to see AOE4 become a routine thing that appears alongside the usual tile porn crafting.

[@agus_beckly6843]

High culture's sniper archers are incredible, especially if you get the guided projectiles enchantment from the tome of scrying, to bypass the penalties from obscured enemies.

[@JoshSweetvale]

You can replace them with Glade Runners come Tier II tomes.

[@coldfusion230]

I tried this where I went archers and took everything to buff them and ended up with snipers firing homing rockets!

[@carlotheemo]

im excited for the major patch

[@robjohnson3095]

I played an underground materium culture and forced myself to only make cities underground, all but my starting city were highly constricted despite being a "massive" underground, it's a pretty hefty penalty to take also, making the world have less wonders and then choosing the wonders affinity, another hefty penalty to apply to oneself! well, the game does let you stack enchantments till tier 1 units can stomp dragons so, you do have to hold yourself back somehow :)

[@stewartgames6697]

If you are looking for a future playthrough suggestion, consider playing using the "example mod" made by the game devs that unlocks the Dire Penguin form, then focus almost solely on ice magic, with some chaos tomes thrown in.

[@austinlokey3946]

Love your content as usual McWhiskey! Tried watching some other people explain this game and they don't have the charisma, detail, and flare that makes your content so entertaining. Two questions: 1. Where can I vote for the next build you play? 2. Can you do a short segment on useful Key bindings? Maybe even one on mods but the game is already pretty stacked.

[@austinlokey3946]

My current issue: 'n' works as the default "select action" key binding but when I rebind it to 'mouse click 4' or '5' it stops working. Anyone have ideas on why? *Using a Razor Synapse mouse. **'n' on my keyboard no longer triggers the next action after binding it to my mouse. When I bind it back to 'n', the keyboard bind works.

[@crazyhorse705]

I'm ready to see my tater get mashed . Great series I like 🎉

[@imblackmagic1209]

adept settlers is a full imperium injection in the mid game, for 5 city cap you only need 200 imperium while other empires need 700, that's a BIG difference

[@tarenflores]

maybe for your tyrant build to route enemy armies, zombie barbarians? i remember you said healing would be good with berserkers. so big casualties up front with berserker charge, healing, and sustained morale advantage, could be pretty good synergy 😸

[@FranzM-qs9lo]

I just did a playthrough with High Archers. It's totally busted My armies were 1 melee hero, 2 defender and 3 archers. For tomes i did enchantment for +1 range and horde for +40% dmg due to spawnkin and battleseeker i did a high crit build with overwhelming tactics, artisan, revelry and astral blood. Just grab every archer enchant after the 100% crit. With only tier 1 units, they get max Level fast and all battle exp goes to the heroes. 3 volleys killed a bone dragon...

[@joetriccas]

I love it all and I want to buy it but I can't justify it atm lmao!!!

[@czarkusa2018]

I'd really like the High culture/affinity to have a one off alignment inversion so that the choice of good/evil could be reactively changed mid game.

[@fugitiveunknown7806]

Try this with Imperial/Evil or Destroyers. Take hero. Neutralaligned high gets + food/pro based on city stability. Starting +50 in that gives a great turncone bonus. Later you go evil when +20 produxtion/food per city is no longer crazy powerful.

[@910suck]

wish i was this into strategy games *sigh*

[@castlehoff21]

It never occurred to me that I could overchannel before casting my first spell. I'd always cast my first spell then overchannel, risking me forgetting to press the button before using my hero to attack.

[@MrMojave]

Hey potato long time fan love the civ series, but loving these series just as much. Anyways I had an idea, if you're itching for an underground kinda roleplay style game you should make a Ratkin race that is barbarian and name it whatever you want but has to be themed and it's theme is Warhammer so it's a SKAVEN!!! Faction from Warhammer what do you think?

[@Drewski1234]

have you seen the Strat/exploit with shadow affinity where you make 2 outposts close to your main city and then make them into cities; only to release them as vassals immediately and then kill them over and over (by vassalizing and then releasing them) for infinite money/mana glitch while also leveling all your units and heroes?

[@ReySilverskin]

I always feel like I'm in the minority when I say this, but I think Industrious might be my favorite type of empire. I like to play tanky with defensive and support units, so the ability to build up defense buffs over a few turns and then convert them all to attack buffs when the time is right really speaks to me. Nature and Order tomes seem to fit that play style well. The only big downside to Industrious is that they don't get any cultural battlemage or shock units, though their archers do have a secondary attack that cancels defense mode and thus lets them sort of fill that role.

[@JoshSweetvale]

Industrious culture (and artefact hoarders) combines really well with a dragon lord. Giving the dragon the defense mode skill, and prospecting, starts to syngergize _really_ well. As for battlemages, tomes have those. Or just go Glade Runners. 2 Mounted Tier 3 Bastions + 3 Mounted Tier 3 Glade Runners = Ultimate SWAT team

[@offshore33]

Something I'm having to get used to with Age of Wonders 4 is setting my facing direction. Like if my forces sweep right or left and I accidently just leave them facing that way and allow the enemy to get free flanking shots.

[@isaacnoel2805]

Enable Custom Factions, Spider Counter Build, Auto-Resolve Only Challenge.

[@funakfunak2740]

No governor set for Province 404

[@Meanlucario]

I'm starting to think Potato enjoys being evil a bit too much...

[@screwkingsisle6459]

MORRREEEE!

[@Tubalcain422]

Potato McYesplease!

[@vhswrestler160]

I want to know how you would build a potato mcwhiskey faction. Maybe not optimal for gameplay but a faction and ruler that best represents you.

[@leaky_orifice5421]

You should try a game on Story Realm 5. The AI started the victory spell on turn 65 playing on Easy. Definitely the hardest of the scenarios I've played.

[@haid8144]

the autoresolve is sometimes so bad, thats the downside. the upside is, that fighting manually is so much fun, I don´t care to do it over and over again😁

[@iluvjayden]

i forget that he was a civ youtuber :’D

[@lordwellingtonthethird8486]

Do you unlock new armour cosmetics or something I don’t have half the ones you do

[@785paris]

Hey Potato, love your content and channel. Have you played the Grexolis campaign. Seems the AI is really overpowered and constantly producing units in abundance. Not sure if anyone else is experiencing this. I’ve even dropped down to easy and can’t beat the scenario. Any thoughts?

[@ekulio]

Versus shock units you want to close the distance with your own melee line and not hang back. That prevents them from getting their charge bonus and from ganging up on one of your units. Edit: plus, going into defense mode against shock units is pointless.

[@Semirotta]

I wonder if the developers are ever going to fix the random crashes... Im also not very much of a fan of the no race related bonuses and negatives. I dont understand why that was taken away. But then again a lot of things were made weird in this. P.S The "very big map" is very tiny map... The distances between every player / AI even with "far" setting is ridiculous. Takes 2 turns to travel to first enemy already.

[@danielt1337]

How the hell do you get hunter bow your 2nd npc stack? I played a 70 round realm world and didn't find another ranged hero item besides the tier 2 crossbow some ai hero started with the whole game

[@munchyy592]

Any chance on getting some modded playthroughs?

[@nick16characters]

hehe dung defender

[@Bblade317]

So is the basic idea to raise your pop with Imperium early on as opposed to building a 2nd city? When are you supposed to expand like that?

[@dmitriyk.2890]

Damn. I really want to play it but it woks really slow on my laptop and it is not an opion to buy a PC when you may be moving within a year. So I stick woith CIV6 for now. Maybe I should check for gaming laptops. Still props for this videos.

[@fyr3st0rm35]

The thumbnail just keeps making me think of 'I'm a very good bad boy' lol. Also I have heard people call everything under the sun including materium units the best most overpowered thing in the game while I was sitting there 3x attacking with awakened dusk hunters on turn 1. Btw in my current playthrough I doubled back for horde and pyromancy and they are so super not necessary with how much damage you already deal, I totally regret not getting supergrowth and like the map heal spell instead if for no other reason than to auto-battle some of this stuff in endgame. Not to mention by that point it's pretty gimmicky to still be relying on T1 units as the backbone of your army at least that hard, they'll be fine dealing like 60-75 damage per turn instead of like 100. Edit: If anything it really is feeling like a huge slog, it might be time to just shamefully toss this one in the bin and finally try out shadow, I hear wightborn is just deliciously broken and probably synergizes well with supergrowth/being lazy. Very interested to see how morale damage meta works out.

[@Cryten0]

When you say lumber mill so you mean forestors?

[@johnh290]

can you do a one city challenge?

[@gloriousrobotbunny3275]

for me i see stored gold to a certain point (like more than 300 per city) as wasted potential. if i have 2 buidings in ther que, and it would cost me 150 to hurry the first one, i will take that deal any day

[@hieracium3317]

You picked a map with no ancient wonders, why did you pick a trait that allows you to annex ancient wonders.

[@MartynWilkinson45]

The map trait only bars built wonders, the "natural" wonders are still there

[@horserage]

The real question is, when will you do the inverse?

[@meurtri9312]

MATERIUM GIRL!

[@firefistjackson3890]

Did he stop playing civilization VI?

[@clockworkangel6780]

Potato, you want to play high?? 👀👀👀

[@clockworkangel6780]

0:55 seconds

[@Denzarki]

So is the reason i am sucking at manual combat cos i need to have 2 stacks walking around together rather than 1?

[@DrLove-xv3th]

Hey if it helps maybe lower the difficulty so you are more open to more of a roleplay build vs optimal build

[@Thanonemo]

:D

[@Cryten0]

Didntnyou just do a materium run? So job done. Just di anything underground.

[@damiens4601]

I dont think you have yo click on produce merchandise

[@elihall6480]

Are you an Aow4 youtuber now