Culture explanations and Tier List - Age of Wonders 4

[@Shinshinvariety]

Okay sorry I skipped primal units. I'd re-upload with an edit if I could, but it's doing pretty well right now. I had just played 12 hours of MP games, and then made this video and i was actually tired as hell. You can see that with the oops on Oathsworn, and on Primal units. Second update: Yeah Oathsworn strife is really good, Harmony has really good archers, and Righteousness ironically ends up being the weakest. As I suspected, the culture is pretty dang OP actually and up there with the best.

[@royalgreed4499]

Can you make a quick unlisted video and link it here?

[@Turbulance16]

Can you time stamp your topics? I was more curious about your personal opinions on specific things on specific traditions.

[@perferstrategy]

@@Turbulance16 Yeah timestamps would be nice. Since primal and industrious seem to be my culture but am curious to see reaver since I havent even got that dlc yet

[@jacksheldon8566]

12 h without errors nor desync? Lucky you

[@LewdGeek]

Yeah, you should delete the video and remake it from the ground up...

[@demon5649]

"Don't pick feudal" Me, and my 23 vassals basically playing crusader kings:

[@hraughr]

Is this one of them sarcastic reviews? Cause the dude is plain wrong for like 9 min straight, I haven't watched more yet. "Giant slayer might come into play..." Omg, In a game where are lategame threats are large, that's an epicly misleading statement...

[@royalgreed4499]

So wait is feudal actually bad or good ? Im new and i dont know anything

[@supersanttu7951]

@@royalgreed4499 I've seen a lot of other people diss Feudal as well, so it's probably a genuine opinion

[@OrdigTroll]

@@royalgreed4499 It's just fine, it's not great, but it's playable. Getting Gold and Mana on their unique structure line is circumstantially good, but those are typically relatively easy incomes to boost in other areas. Their biggest problem is that they are mediocre, and so whatever strength you're looking to maximize with them is probably maximized more easily with another culture. I *do* like their city-lord titles though, can get some nice early game science or production with them

[@AshSmash-30]

Feudal is like a starter faction, its mechanics are simple and it's units are designed to 'clump' together to get 20% extra damage. The economy is the same, you won't struggle for resource. No matter how you play.

[@elPacho_42]

Feudal: 1:22 High: 10:07 Oathsworn: 19:43 Barbarian: 43:12 Primal: 52:03 Reaver: 1:01:42 Industrious: 1:15:09 Dark: 1:24:43 Mystic: 1:33:14 Final Rank: 1:48:00

[@flynnpatrao3470]

Doing the lords work

[@ScreenSpidah]

You are a scholar, and a gentleman. And perhaps even a Godir.

[@Aeonfell]

+10 Good Alignment

[@Arbaaltheundefeated]

Everyone who has fought High Elves in tabletop Warhammer knows exactly how it feels running into those awakened Daylight Spears or Halberdiers.

[@IDidntVoteForThisOption]

@@Arbaaltheundefeated rasalhague!

[@arkadisevyan]

@@Arbaaltheundefeated they hit hard as fuck

[@flopus7]

@@Arbaaltheundefeated staunch line of spears goes hard

[@sylvi9306]

As someone that has played Reaver a lot cause I love big boom. One thing that I think should be stressed about the magelock cannon that makes it far easier to use is that if you hold down the alt key to allow you to free target it's attack, you can actually target the ground. This artificially extends it's range. As you can target the ground at the edge of your attack range and leverage the three hex line to hit something two hexes outside of the range. It is also of note that cannon auto hits, if you stand on the hexes in it's line, you are getting hit.

[@Gokudo01]

thanks for sharing 400hours here, I didn't know, I will try it with the harmony ranger

[@perferstrategy]

I knew about the Alt click because the little plant bushes told me to Alt click lol so it taught me I can attack targets without a unit target. Wow now I really want to buy Reaver culture DLC, sounds like my favourite. Thanks for telling me

[@okonkwojones]

How do you make the war spoils economy work? Because that always seemed so low impact it might’ve well not been there, and compared to the diplomacy limitations felt like a net-negative. I know they buffed the situations where you could actually gain spoils, but does it help enough? And is there any use in spending them to bully free cities?

[@sylvi9306]

@ Honestly, I pretty much spend warspoils on nothing but producing more magelock cannons and keeping captured units at the start of the game as a tempo play. I never spend it on pressing free cities since I’m to busy declaring war on them to get more cannons.

[@okonkwojones]

@ Do you get spoils from killing creeps and free-city armies now? Was thinking about doing a Reaver playthrough next, and was wondering if it would be worth keeping one free-city around as a Total War Warhammer style Skaven sack-city, just to farm up warspoils and hero/unit ranks, but I couldn’t remember if you still only got them from burning free cities, and could only get them repeatedly from fighting majors and pillaging their improvements. I know you *should* just use it for cannons and units, I was just wondering what can they *even* be used for diplomatically? as I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Reaver LP where someone opened up the diplo menu to even look how they could be spent in any other way. Seemed like Triumph had an idea for a system they thought would be worth the economic tradeoffs (else they’d have just forced chosen destroyer’s-lite on them), but it wasn’t terribly well executed on.

[@Read_What]

The thing about Reavers is that they're straight up the best faction in the game with no competition IF and only if you give them the Sneaky Trait(+25% Flanking Attack Damage) and Take the two Society traits: Fabled Hunters for an Extra Ranged unit which is a Magelock and Perfectionist Artisans for an Extra Tier 3 unit which is a Dragoon (and also it's just an OP trait). Start with the Tome of Zeal - everything on that tome is just good, or you can start with the Tome of Discipline for Focus Aim, or you can also start with the Tome of Beasts since it gives you access to Mark as Prey(Causes a target to be distracted) thus allowing every attack on a target to be a Flank, elevating your Sneaky trait although you're not going to use this spell for long since you have an inherent reaver spell that does the same but better later on. With this build you can steamroll any early fight and even do Gold wonders WAY earlier than you're supposed to. Highly recommend trying out this build at least once.

[@znail4675]

Reavers works pretty good with summons as well as that can give them some strong frontline and there are also some like the floating eye (name?) that marks enemies.

[@arkadisevyan]

@Read_What you guys are sleeping on the new culture, grace is far too OP literally makes every unit a tank, and it makes tanks unkillable

[@-Kidzin]

Only if you play manual combats and most MP is done with autoresolve making reavers meh.

[@millerrepin4452]

The reavers by default has a culture spell that give distract, 2 marked, and two sundered defense. Why are you using the mark as prey spell?

[@Read_What]

@@-Kidzin This is sadly true since the AI has no idea how to play reavers so you'll have to play out alot of the early fights yourself but you'll take no damage. Still a pretty big con.

[@noneofyourbusiness3288]

AoW4 is such a good game. I am so happy the 4X genre is having quite the resurgence in recent years. Lots of great titles, that all put their own spin on the 4X formula.

[@NightWhisper8462]

One thing to point out, the armor stat for shield units takes into account the shield defense trait and any other bonuses so with the dawn defender it's 5 armor on non-flanks, 2 armor on flanks, feudal defenders have 7 armor on non-flanks, 3 on flanks, I'm pretty sure it's because the shield isn't an item but a trait and so it automatically gets thrown into the calculation for base stats, unlike shields on a hero. Tbh even if the feudal defender had 11 armor on non-flanks it'd still be meh.

[@noneofyourbusiness3288]

The thing that really makes Ashsabertooth so miserable for Primal is that you dont get resistance to the vulcanism debuff (forgot the actual name, but it prevents regen). That means you start in terrain that prevents you from regening your troops. That is absolutely terrible and honestly feels like an oversight. ps: forgot to rate the primal roster. ;)

[@DarkFire515]

As an AoW 4 beginner this video was an epic starter guide to units & cultures. Thanks very much for taking the time to record this for us all!

[@Shinshinvariety]

You're very welcome!

[@rakatosthemad6602]

The warriors soul trait for oath of strife was originally stated to gain the bonus *when outnumbered* and still apears to function as such from what i can tell. It apears the dlc shipped with a typo

[@rodd9734]

Loves these guides. Really helpful. Would like to see specific or generic build ones if possible ofc. Keep up the good work.

[@HobGobMob]

19:00 As for High culture, it's funny how daylight spear used to be considered a worse copy of industrial halberdier, because he did the same as halberdier, but only under awakening, and awakener was almost the best nuker in the game. Apparently the rebalance and the simplicity of receiving awakening are making themselves felt.

[@lancegambit9851]

The dark knight IS good. For Heath Ledger's performance alone.

[@bwes8851]

@lancegambit9851 I mean, the movie is iconic for my generation. I'm sure kids in today's society will hate it bc it takes them away from fortnite for 2 and a half hours.

[@blackleon1708]

"Magelock is a unit with a weirdly nice ass..."

[@crym77]

Need a time marker for this.

[@janneswilmink487]

Since Primal units got got skipped, here is the list (Though I can't really judge how good these are, outside of that they are a better pick than Feudal): For starters, all units get their Spirit's boon, all attacks and most abilites generate Rising Fury (1 per attack for mulit attacks and 2 per single attack), Magic Damage of units depends on the Spirit (Dune Serpent deals physical in all cases). Tier 1: Spirit Tracker: Scout Unit, identical to Feudal Scout stat wise. Abilities: "Primal Concealment: Can't be detected on Favored Terrain", "Spirit Sense: +6 Sensing Range". Protector: Shield Unit, 70 Health, 5 Def, 0 Res, optional Cavalary. Abilities: "Strike, 10 physical damage, uses all Action points", "Primal Renewal: Removes all stacks of Fury from this unit and heals it for 5 temp. health per stack removed." Primal Darter: Ranger Unit, 55 Health, 1 Def, 1 Res. Abilities: "Shoot Blowgun: 10 Physical Damage, 90 Accuracy, 3 Range, Uses all action points", "Disengaging Shot: Single Attack, 10 Physical Damage + 10 Magic Damage, Always Hits, 1 Range, Unit Jumps Back 3 Hexes." Tier 2: Primal Charger: Shock Unit, 70 Health, 2 Def, 2 Res, Abilities "Charge Strike: 21 Damage, +20% Damage per hex travelled, Cancles defense mode, Removes retaliation attack.", "Cleaving Charge, 17 Physical Damage, +20% Damage per Hex travelled, Attacks Units In A 1 Hex Cone." Animist: Support Unit, 60 Health, 1 Def, 3 Res, Status Resistance 2 Optional Cavalry. Abilities "(...) Blast: 16 Magic Damage, 4 Range, 90 Accuracy.", "Spiritual Healing: Heals Target for 20 Temp. Health, Target gains 3 Stacks of Rising Fury if it has a Primal Animal Boon.", "Summon Primal (...): Summons a unit based on the Spirit you chose, Requires Fury and consumes all stacks on use, Summon starts with Frenzy when summoned on favored terrain." Tier 3: Ancestral Warden: Polearm Unit, 95 Health, 4 Def, 3 Res, Status Resistance 3. Abilities "Strike: 16 Physical Damage, uses all Action Points, +40% damage to Cavalry and Large Units.", "Primal Lunge: 10 Physical Damage + 10 Magical Damage, 3 Range, Jumps to target Hex and then deal damage to all adjacent units, Enter Defensive mode after use.

[@draconiandraco]

@janneswilmink487 in my opinion ancestral has some of the absolute best Frontline units. Their tier 1 shields at elite with a proper mount compare to base tier 3 bastions from industrial in the late game but are much easier to get to legend. Which puts them over~ Their blow guns are terrible but make decent skirmishers in a pinch. Animists are incredibly useful for buffing your units for early game damage. I also can't disregard that they can be mounted as well pairing amazingly well with t1 shields. Chargers are mediocre charge units but if paired with an animist buff can hit fairly hard on their 2nd round of attacks. They just reaaaaally require setting up which puts them at the bottom of the charge roster for me personally. Ancestral Guardians are the best faction polearm and the best units for taking out backline casters and archers as long as you can hold off/pin their other units.. solid in almost any 1v1 match up with any faction unit. Their price tag as tier 3 units is a steep choice though and you can't doomstack them because the Ai just likes to dive them into the first unit they can reach but if you're doing manual combat, doomstacking them is perfectly viable and they'll take out just about any faction 6 squad.

[@Ragatokk]

You did a real brain fart there on strife, it turns off when the enemy has more troops than you.

[@Shinshinvariety]

Yeah, oh well

[@creepyfellow]

Wording is confusing, but it actually only works when enemy army is not outnumbered. Meaning it works in same size or smaller army on your end.

[@Ragatokk]

@@creepyfellow The wording is not confusing at all, 'attacker deal extra damage when not outnumbered' = deal extra damage when the enemy has the same amount or less troops. If it does not work that way, then the tool-tip is written wrong.

[@stevenjohnson7183]

@@Ragatokk Do we know how this actually works?

[@Ragatokk]

Also being underground on a massive underground map seems good.

[@dependent-ability8631]

underground is great for very defensive cities

[@martenkahr3365]

The problem is early growth. The underground has no pastures, and therefore no food piles on the world map to accelerate the growth of your capital. Which consistently puts an underground start economy behind surface starts for the rest of the game, especially in MP.

[@millerrepin4452]

Feudals strength is that they are flexible no matter your build. But they do have some strong builds too. Get white wolves and strong racials, nature tome to increase damage of cavalry and animals, and you get where this is going right. you can make defenders go from a good tier two unit to a high end tier 3 unit with all the enchantments and racial transformations you can get.

[@sod1237]

22:50 Harmony heal feels very good to me. it keeps units alive (that is the main problem with healing in this game. Focus fire simply kills units, before you van heal them)

[@znail4675]

Yeah, keeping your units alive to avoid replacement costs are very strong and it's also less conditional. While it doesn't add damage so does live units do more damage then dead ones. Hermony Oathsworn are over all rather strong as the special unit is amazing and there is a slightly hidden feature as Harmony have the most in the game of cavalry plus optional cavalry units with 4. That makes any of the special mounts or just basic mount very strong. It's also their already good units that are mounted making it quite possible to only use the mounted ones. The oath isn't really an issue either, you just need to accumulate points or clear some infestation in between your declarations of war.

[@sod1237]

@@znail4675 Thanks. i did not notice that, even though i m just playing a game with white wolf mounts. I play team games, as i dislike "diplomacy" in 4x games it always feels random and ganging up.

[@KieranPearson-dm1id]

Starting underground isn't bad. Seen others agree with it and it's better than you think especially early game with a good culture

[@johnphillips2807]

I really like tunneling spider. I’ve found that the boon is fantastic and your main city is nicely hidden away and naturally protected. I’m curious about the downsides of starting underground, especially when you’re getting that extra knowledge.

[@blessedheretic779]

Reavers - The tier 1 pikeman, is the most powerful tier 1 unit bar none. Tier 2 stats, in a tier 1 slot, and can be regularly summoned and enforced at no time and barely any cost. Picking techs that empower tier 1 units EXCLUSIVELY now are buffing a unit in a tier 2 slot, with a POLEARM, and most high end enemies are GIANT or MOUNTED which it gets a massive bonus against. Built right, they are a nightmare that can have massive radiant damage, have huge defenses and health pools. Yes, there are stronger units in higher tiers. But the mercenary is more than half their cost and WILL kill them because the chances are, that unit is a giant/mounted. The insanity of anyone saying Mercenaries are mid or low tier is a bit silly.

[@LewdGeek]

Harmony is amazing, you just have to use the Bounty system A LOT

[@mairguimaraes1287]

You never played mystic potential, did you? They get MASSIVE bonuses like, +18 vision range on ALL UNITS or +40 food on all cities. Also all mystic's tier 3 units are awesome, potential's for instance allows you to cast another spell each round, which is a huge advantage in any stage of the game, specially mid to late game.

[@wepg]

Potential is very complicated. I think that if Attunement had remotely reasonable values for echoes economy then Potential would be inarguably the strongest, but Potential is very skill intensive and requires a *lot* of autoresolve homework to get the build to give you the kind of military economic pacing you need in the first 15 turns to compete. Once you get past the gate though, it really is unbounded and it *absolutely* scales the best into the late game, so well that you can kinda do whatever and vibe. Just fix your early game fight problems and they rule.

[@HostileRespite]

That extra caste is so good when you have the shadow tree affinity skill that refunds 10 magic every time a unit dies. It's non stop death from above!

[@wepg]

@HostileRespite Yeah, it's *really* disgusting.

[@iafeth6564]

Yea, I had something like +400 bonus casting points with this culture from spell bonuses alone. You can spawn armies of magic units out of your ass with this amount of power, or saturate enemy territory with dozens of umbral nests in a few turns.

[@EmperorGladiatuss]

OMG! You are Hashinshin from League. The Jax/Aatrox player! Man it's been soo many years since I saw anything about you. Cool that you are doing variety.

[@ericb8342]

Why is starting underground so bad? I don't get it. I get mushroom forests so I'm not late to a Library, and my city grows at the same rate it would otherwise. Admittedly, if I don't take the Adaptation trait I have to spend Imperium and probably an extra Scout unit on digging, but in return I get a higher density of resource nodes. My initial scout takes maybe one extra turn to get above ground and exploring, but in return I get a capital that is more challenging for other players to find and access. It used to be that the underground had no magic materials, but that was changed a long while back now. What am I missing that makes underground an int?

[@znail4675]

I like underground starts as well. You will often have an exit nearby your start city as well making it easy to expand to the topside and you get an extra expansion range from your city as a bonus making it a lot easier to grow into a large city while having worthwhile tiles to expand on.

[@ericb8342]

I wouldn't go as far as to say I *like* starting underground. It's a nice change of pace, but it definitely feels weird. I'm actually open to the possibility that that weird feeling is something that I'm just missing, that makes it an objectively worse start. So...I'm honestly asking Shin or someone to educate me here.

[@theslayer5978]

MP wise underground start hinders early game cause you need to cleat tiles and invest racial point into already unlocked prospecting (which will make ur units weaker). If you'll w8 for ur general tree then it will take 5 to 10 turns to learn prospecting and then you can say GG WP to upground player who is probably set-uping his 2-nd city. Also Underground can be VERY RNG-based, cause sometimes you may spawn surounded by a very bad terrain either cause you need to prospect alot or you don't have a lot of good terrain to set-up some rly important buildings. BUT sometimes RNGesus can help you and place your city in a very defendable location. Also having underground city in mid or late game can be a really good strategy, which is usually done via Vassalisation. RP wise you can go whatever you want, buddy!

[@PraetorianMan]

Underground is *really* good for beating the last mission in the regular campaign, against Noctus or whatever his name is. Otherwise I've never seen a situation where starting underground wasn't basically a giant self-own. The resources nearby just tend to be bad.

[@ericb8342]

Nah, I've got it now. It's not about the Trait Point or clearing dirt; it's about mapgen. Underground has no Pastures, so you have zero food-reward fights to grow your capital early, which basically guarantees you'll put yourself behind the other players in a MP game. It *is* a guaranteed int. Combine this with the fact that you might just spawn directly below a free city or another empire and get railroaded into dealing with that before you can play the game, and yeah, underground start is strictly worse.

[@Whos_007]

This is lowkey my favorite game right now. Havent had this much fun since like bg3 release

[@stormquake4930]

What if they made Feudal also cost less to hire units? Make it a proper early game rushdown start that falls off as others scale. Zerg mode

[@Shinshinvariety]

If Feudal also had -20% unit recruitment cost it'd at least help their eco a bit. I think if you combined that with making their spearmen better (at least 70 HP as a buff) they'd probably be way more competitive. Right now it's just an issue that Feudal can't win early, but also doesn't scale well, so they have exactly 0 way to win a fair fight.

[@sebastianbauer4768]

Does the upkeep reduction apply to magical summons? That would be interesting. Especially if it stacked with other reductions. The way I see it feudal is about growing faster or having higher developed cities. There is also some synergy with tome of evolution, that peasant does have the evolve trait …

[@HobGobMob]

@@Shinshinvariety Feudal were too good before, but they were accidentally nerfed when unit evolution was moved from champion rank to legend rank (now they actually need to recruit defenders) and the heroes were stripped of their economic skills, feudal lords gave a huge boost to the economy at the beginning of the game and were considered almost the strongest skill.

[@Tsintch7568]

Feudal being weak is realistic. Imagine being a peasant with a spear fighting a giant tank or an angel

[@BlobBlobkins]

Imagine being a peasant in 2024

[@arkadisevyan]

Plus peasent pikman at legend is stronger then what it evolves into😂😂

[@Shinshinvariety]

I don't think Feudal should just generally be unplayable if the game is only gonna have 10 or so cultures. The balance is BETTER than other games like HMM in the regard that more 'cultures' are playable, but it has a serious issue with Feudal doing NOTHING excellent. There's literally no world where Feudal is good at anything. The early game is just such an important issue in a game like this. You can't have a culture that's having all their units blown away by early game battles, while other cultures are building up to and getting 18 units, and feudal is still rebuying dead spearmen.

[@Solus749]

@@Shinshinvariety that is where you run unit buffs and do as the feudal units are supposed to do...CLUSTER when they do that they get 20% damage bonuses and them being CHEAPER alloows you to keep more army around for less cost....or just offset a unit enchantment or 2. Their strength are in numbers not singular units

[@Tirax13]

@@Shinshinvariety you can build around defenders as cavalry. They are one of the best Tier2 Units after all. Combined with Knights you have a fast Melee Line. With tome of Evolution and other XP buffs you can really quick Develop your peasants.

[@elerai1496]

Whoa Hashinshin! Nice to see you're still out here man. Kind of just felt you're familiar, because why would a (former?) league player play old man's games, but hey, its you. Just started AOW4, but I think Feudal Bannerman does have a niche, they're they only ones with two AOE support effects, one of them on low CD; which does work well with Staves of Warding (Tome of Warding) and similar enchants. You can AOE trigger Staves for 3 RES on turn 1 while still keeping your heal off CD. But yeah, Vowkeeper does feel a bit too strong, their heal needs to be CD 3.

[@Ragatokk]

I have not played multiplayer, but damn oathsworn harmony archers felt busted, and since its a T3 recruitable you can spam them like no tomorrow.

[@Shinshinvariety]

It’s very strong but being limited to doing nothing isn’t a good situation. You just have to sit there and watch everyone else get strong

[@Ragatokk]

@@Shinshinvariety Well, you can make pacts to get called in to war, and you can grow pretty strong on your own without conquest. You can be quite effective at making vassals of the free cities too.

[@znail4675]

@@Shinshinvariety You just can't declare war against everyone at the same time without doing things that gets your devotion up. If nobody else declares war on you take that time to build up your devotion to eat any future "wrong" actions.

[@SeaCow1g]

I think the design behind the Oathsworn Strife is actually intended for Hero-only armies where, especially early on, you are very likely to be outnumbered. The way I see it they get extra imperium by pillaging stuff; they also get gold. They then use that extra imperium and gold to recruit extra heroes. You then go fight people with hero-only armies which are going to be outnumbered, but significantly stronger cause of devotion. I think that’s the intention here.

[@kennethkalvaitis8293]

I play often strife as chosen destroyers. They want to fight everyone, so I lean into it. Adds more bonuses to upholding your oath, and the most of the stuff destroyers can't do, is stuff you don't want to be doing anyways. You can go to war almost whenever you see fit. They are not very flexible in their playstyle, but it is a pretty stong box they are put in

[@okonkwojones]

27:04 Is outnumbered referring to # of models in a unit, or is it total number of units in the battle. and do non-essential (like in combat summons, and raised zombies etc) count towards the total, because they really shouldn’t.

[@darumanu9276]

Feudal basically is just a base faction with average stats and no defining feautures (basically gets powercrept within 1 patch)

[@Fabs12369]

my god i watched you YEARS ago playing toplane in league, and i get invest in aow4 and suddenly i find you doing aow4 content?!?!?! fucking nuts dude

[@tyco969]

Great video- helped me with some new builds :)

[@SeaCow1g]

I think Oathsworn Strife are best suited to be another early rush culture. They have much better than average t1 fighter and t2 support units and their ability to pillage in one turn from the get go and do more damage when outnumbered means you can fan them out early and start harassing enemies much earlier than pretty much anyone can. This might sound nutty but on a mount their fighters always have 3 units, even with Spawnkin transformation, so I think the idea is to go tome of the horde, spam their T1 fighters and start attacking people as soon as possible and pillage their stuff and they’ll have a hard time dealing with it cause those units are stronger in small raiding parties and will kill anyone who tries to stop them with anything less than full stacks.

[@joethesheep4675]

i quite like Mystic - Potential. The economic buffs which you breezed over quickly are actually quite substantial and keeping them running is also very easy. Yeah. Use of dissonance can be a bit finacy. Especially in early game where you dont have a lot of spells to begin with. In lategame you generally have enough spells to cycle throug to always find one that does the required job that hasnt been used this battle already. Also there used to be a herospell that grants all spells overcharge this turn (for no action points). Idk for sure but i immagine that one is in one of the astral affinities now. Its probably not worth picking it up for other cultures but for Mystic - Potential it probably is. Also: If you got 3 armies lead by a hero each and everyone got that ability you could cast one and the same spell up to 4 times overcharged in one battle if you wanted to. In fact if you through Spellweavers in you could double that. Not saying thats a valid strategy but "only once per battle" is not even half of the truth. I think Potential is at least deserving of A-tier if not sharing a spot with attunement.

[@Leivve]

For feudal, one thing to note is a lot of their "peasant" troops is they cost less to recruit in both gold and draft. So their function is to be disposable meat shields that eat the charge in place of your more valuable troops, they get one poke off, before they die. The problem with this is that troops dying is just bad regardless. Both for moral reasons (if not your own drop, then the enemy getting crits from it), and consistently having to replace them, still requires those troops to sprit to the army to fill the slots; which just slows you down, and clogs up your recruitment Q. The only consolation prize you get is if they survive to level 3 they get upgraded to the most vanilla mid unit.

[@znail4675]

Starting with the "evolve" tome feels kinda mandatory as Feudal as that makes it much easier to keep the Spearmen alive.

[@baltazarvok2564]

Now, pick mammoth mounts as racial trait and the nature tome with supergrowth and that mid vanilla unit becomes a single entity monster for just 50 gold in the start. basically with nature tomes you can end with fast armies that hit just as hard at 1%hp as on 100%hp.

[@sebastianbauer4768]

To highlight how bad feudal units are compared them to oathsworn harmony, which you view as the weaker of the three. Remember that peasant with 65 hp? He faces the sworn guard with 100 effective hp(gets +30 from the "weak" harmony). Same for the archer. 30HP difference is *massive* between units of the same tier. A charge unit that gets +10 damage to its attack would need to hit your unit 3x just to make up for it and 4x to pull ahead. And that’s without factoring in defense and resistance. I mean just go through the roster of oathsworn harmony vs feudal and mentally add the 30HP to each unit. You mentioned 5hp differences on the units because it matters, we are talking 30HP. Not to mention those 30HP are 30HP you don’t have to regain between battles. That’s 3 turns worth of the trait natural regeneration on the world map.

[@forwenein2669]

I mean, to get the +30 HP from "weak" harmony you have to have lots of Good alignment, so unless you get creative with gettings free cities/other players to attack you and grant freedom to their heroes, it'll take so long for you to reach +30hp that most builds will progress past Tier1s and Tier 2s. It is still impactful when it comes Tier 3 and above of course, but the difference turns from 65 HP vs 100hp to 130HP vs 160 HP, not as drastic

[@NopeNopenope-y6u]

Righteousness is kinda unfair if you take traits, that give you Good Alignment. You can have 2nd lvl devotion from the start. Then spare some low-lvl mobs, and devotion 3 is yours within like first 5 turns - wabam, you have +4 dmg on all your units. Primal on crows felt a bit broken. Fury is very easy to generate. Give your hero upgraded command, and your damage-dealers will melt enemies, or your support units will spawn thunder birds on turn 1. And prospecting is simply the best. Your economy flies to the space with it. And if you are a dragon ruler with "artifacts hoarder" trait... you'll be swimming in gold and mana.

[@Nesssox]

4:19 doesn't it only have 8 defense vs non-flanking? cause you can see when hovering that it takes into account shield defense +3 which would also mean that you only get 4 armor if flanked.

[@HostileRespite]

Feudal is ok when payed with chosen destroyers. Having only one city but multiple lords allows you to swap lords when/if needed when the mega city needs to ramp up production, food, research, etc. the units are indeed meh, but they'll do the job until you research tome-locked units.

[@kuwe4652]

Mystic attunement and potential got nerfed since the split? Haven't played for a while and in the beginning summoning was definitely the weakest option for mystic

[@wepg]

Summoning still is the weakest mystic by a longshot. Shinshin is probably evaluating the game from a more casual point of view, as there are some things in here that are definitely off-base if playing with high skill players who get the game, but I think largely won't mislead the average player playing the game to have fun. Good list.

[@Watts_uk]

This is super handy for new players, thank you!

[@ForbiddenFollyFollower]

Shield defense is already factored into each shield unit's defence stat. I think evolution units were all changed to evolve at level four not five now.

[@sylvi9306]

On potential subculture. Yeah, I don't really like playing with arcane inspiration. However, whilst it is quite a pie-in-the-sky strat. Pretty much the only reason I ever get the tier 5 Materium tome is just for this culture. Using overcharge and overchannel from the tier 3 unit, you can cast a map wide explosion multiple times a round that can stun. This can result in that any fight where you have even one or two of the tier 3 unit can end very quickly as the entire map gets nuked.

[@D34DF0X17]

i play a fair amount of mp for this game , honestly , unless your build is focused on t1 rushes , you are summoning units to power farm , you don't often recruit many t1 or t2 units , there is a term called t2 hell , were if you are not hyper focused on an early rush Strat t2 in mass cannot be produced fast enough before the enime is recruiting tier 3 even with units ranks, so you might aswell "rush" or mid game rush i guess u could call it with stacks of t3 as a form of timeing attack before they scale into t4 / mythic units, there are some t2 support units that are very useful and see play but, generally t2 units they don't age well in the economy of the game, t3 culture units are valid in most cases , and can be build defining , and often define what your cultures unit enchants transition to into the later stages of the game , if your culture lets say feudal , has a melee t3 , you are most likely stacking melee enchants on them as they are very effective on charge units , and you will often then transition and replace them with a higher tier MELEE unit as you have invested in melee unit buffs / maybe even racial traits , it can define your build. and i mean your whole point on feudal being bad kinda ignores them getting steadfast as a racial spell and unfortunately i think its not unique to there lords skills anymore but it was on release , if you take the racial trait for low hp units deal more damage etc , and have steadfast you get so much value out of that extra turn of attacking. and this also stacks... with keepers mark... so you have can spend 2 units unable to kill there frontline, there design is poor in auto resolve coz the ai dose not use steadfast properly or at all , but having an unkillable frontline can be VERY strong. overall tiers are prity accurate tho , fudal dark and reaver are low tier , but.. there is no question new faction op , devs made a mistake making reavers weak on release , and now go by the logic of put it out strong nurf it into place , i expect oath sworn to be nurfed in some way if they care about healthy balance. but they did nurf primal after release so its just the dlc new thing op model of things now days tbh would give your ass a good kicking with feudal or dark , in any realm or settings of your choosing, lets go!

[@ddenozor]

I feel like Feudal could be given a stronger version of draft resource called 'levy'. With it they could recruit tier1 units much cheaper or even without using gold, recruit units directly on vassal city centers, and have cheaper hurry recruitment functionality.

[@libertylemonz7145]

Marcher/Hunter Barbarians are the most fun build in the game You didn't mention it but Glacial Mammoth is almost as good as Sylvan Wolf because there's several shadow tomes that have cold terrain synergies, you can get a lot of production with the Cold Dark tome running

[@earlkoh216]

I agree that feudal is the worst culture with the worst units, but i think you missed out the most important reason why they suck so hard. The reason why the suck so hard is mostly because their autoresolve vs the ai is so terrible Feudal is actually okay if you manual battle against the ai. However they suck hard against human opponents and autobattles for the following reasons. 1) the ai cannot use their passive bonus. Lets say you have an enemy unit you want to kill with 3 peasant pikemen. A human player will surround the unit with pikemen before unleashing their attacks. The computer will never do that. 2) the ai uses steadfast extremely suboptimally 3) their tier 1 units are the weakest in the game. Whie defenders and bannermen are okay, tier 1 units form the backbone of the army for at least the first 15 turns which is arguably the most crucial phase of the game. Their tier 3 (the knight) is actually a very powerful tier 3 with their giant slayer, but i think its too little too late. The bottom line is that shield units, especially the ones with some form of disruption, is essential to early game fights. Just conpare an anvil guard with a peasant pikeman. 4) the feudal economic bonus is absolutely terrible 20% upkeep reduction is a joke. The high economy gets 20 widgets at neutral from as early as turn 2/3

[@wepg]

This dude AoWs. To be fair, formation traits got *meaningfully* better in the current patch as the AI is *much* more favorable towards utilizing them (as well as leveraging the defense modes on shield units and support units, kinda making feudal even worse indirectly as they need the defensive scaling). This has cascading effects in terms of empowering AoE attacks out of the player, but the AI is definitely playing a stronger game by trying to utilize the tools that already exist in the code rather than dodging people trying to cheese them in fights.

[@earlkoh216]

The problem is that a large portion of the game is balanced around manual fights with the ai, when in reality, no one manual fights with the ai all the time (personally, I only do so in certain golden wonder battles, fights Vs other ai empires, certain crazy infestations) because doing so is very time consuming and repetitive. Feudal suffers from this the most out of all the cultures. If you actually control a feudal empire manually every single battle, stack all the form traits that benefit from sticking together and use optimally, you will absolutely demolish the ai. Personally, I think that in order to balance this for both autoresolvers like myself, and manual battlers, the steadfast spell needs to be reworked(because in human hands it's absolutely op, and absolutely useless in the hands of the ai). This will allow feudal tier 1 units to be buffed heavily

[@wepg]

@earlkoh216 steadfast is reworked and meaningfully better now; the real problem with Feudal you already highlighted. Their units are garbage and their economy does not work. Steadfast was only the tip of the iceberg, and it's one that Triumph actually did a reasonably good job (auto)resolving.

[@joethesheep4675]

I always thought the Bannerman from Feudal was quite good but i never did a direct unit-stat comparison. Seems feudal is actually pretty weak. Havent played feudal in a long time but just because i dont like the gameplay of it. I thought, up until now that it was alright tho. Gotta check out industrial tho. Never played them. "Attack is the best defense" is what i believe in so i ignored them up until now. Listening to you talk about what they can do, a couple of interesting tactics and combinations spring to mind. PS: Barbarian with the ability of scouts setting outposts is rediciously strong tho. I always struggle to divert my heroes to set outposts in the early game. There is just sooo much to do for them at the start of the game and spending a couple of turns for them to just go somewhere and make an outpost always hurts. So barbarian might not be the A+ tier but its the smoothest to play early game for that ability alone.

[@okonkwojones]

Barbarian’ ritual of alacrity plus that forced march trait is insanely op for map clear.

[@jmrwacko]

All the Serpent Primal games I’ve played have generally started me with a forest on one side and a desert on the other side of my starting city, just fyi.

[@SirBlaze75]

@Shinshinvariety I think you got how damage is done by Strife oathsworn wrong, The wording is when the attacker is not outnumbered, so if you're defending your damage will turn off very quickly whilst you're winning and if you're loosing it'll stay om, , where as if you're attacking it's the opposite you'll have more damage whilst you're winning but it'll turn off if you start to loose. Sounds like it's a Bully race. Now that is going by how it is written not sure how it actually plays out as i don't own that DLC. Basically from what i can read you want to defend with just 1 or 2 units and win unless a unit is like 5 men and a hero is 1 man then defend with a 6 hero stack or single man stacks, and you want to attack with 3 full armies of non single person units

[@donbemont7901]

Re Industrious, you leave out the fact that their prospecting nets them a surplus of hero items. Pure luck whether they fit your heroes, but regardless, they can be turned into incredible items in the Item Forge. This alone is an incredible strength of the faction.

[@JustinSharp-tk6bc]

Vow of purification doesn't shake mind-contol, it specifically targets a friendly unit( which a unit ceases to be under mind-control.) Have tried this in game to no avail.

[@scottprince5357]

@@JustinSharp-tk6bc That got changed with the last patch. Single target spells that dispel can be used on mind controlled units and will dispel their spells. Unit abilities, however, still can't be used to break mind control.

[@JustinSharp-tk6bc]

@scottprince5357 that's exactly what I said. Vow of purification (which is a unit ability) doesn't shake mind control, which was one of the "selling points" of the recorders choice to favor the Vowkeeper unit.

[@sebastjankosec]

I think this would've been good if you also ranked alongside all of this the magic thats exclusive to each race

[@mneri82]

pretty good analysis

[@koeyfoo6424]

You put so much value in damage and I think you can do better with nuances in game playstyles. I absolutely love defensive victories and I hope you can analyze things based on what they're meant to do rather than your bias for damage. Yes, killing is your thing, but not for players like me that love cooperation and diplomacy wins.

[@halfblood3182]

I play alot of pvp and I find Crocodile is better in pvp then pve bec healing is alot stronger now then it use to be. Tank builds are also stronger and wirh Decay immunity is strong if your the one running a healing tank build with order bec they can't stop your healing in any way. You also can Decay them countering thier healing is a big surprise of how much healing a player uses in a game and when u take that away from them they crumble.

[@FishboyAbzu]

Can you explain why starting underground is bad lol

[@Shinshinvariety]

Underground has HUGE RNG on whether or not your land will actually be useful, shrinks the overground map (yes really, for some reason) and generally will almost never give you good expansion for further cities. You also need to spend a huge amount of time excavating your city, so it kinda slows you down a lot. Getting your 2nd and 3rd city started by turn like 10 is really important.

[@pharoahman475]

For the Warbound, you might have had one of the mounted racial traits, especially since a 2 Dot version for Generic mounts was just added.

[@ketsueko7498]

Since the new update feudal were nerfed really hard. Before the hero could become "lord of something" that gave to their governed city flat bonus on certain resources but since the hero rework they do not have this anymore and it was replaced by the unit upkeep. They literally loose one aspect of their identity. I do not play feudal but i do bot like the little care they seem to benefit from the developers. I hope a feudal rework will come before the next big dlc or culture

[@erikasrumbutis360]

*Casually skips primal units*

[@Shinshinvariety]

I accidentally skipped after I spent like 20 minutes on their sub cultures

[@jan3381]

😡

[@LewdGeek]

Feudal are monsters, why they are week at the beginning, they are almost broken

[@Trubripes]

On magelock cannon, you can use an ironclad to push enemies away from it.

[@ho8ojoe8]

I just bought the game on the free weekend and this video has been super helpful but I disagree with a lot of your comments 😂 Also pretty sure the whole point of reavers is you make your front line from subdued enemies.

[@churchillogbonna9010]

Wonderful video, explained quite a lot actually....will it be possible for u to do a video on some mods for this game and explain how their units compare to the original

[@icefamily1]

I also suffer from CINS (chronic itchy nose syndrome). It drives me nuts, and it drives the people around me nuts. My wife yells at me.

[@matthewheather6911]

Is this a multiplayer tier-list or single player. I'm new to this game just bought it last sale and i've been having a blast with Feudal though it's only on Hard AI.

[@kn1v3z2k]

would reaver necromancer be a good combo? use weak shield chaff frontline / free zombie meat shields btw, tried a horde dark combo, where i stacked as much % damage as i could, and at the start the chargers were doing 50+ damage in a single hit.

[@josephrobinson1658]

Is Dark balanced around the assumption the player is running a necro playstyle?

[@LewdGeek]

For Feudal, you get 40% upkeep. ITS HUGE, and you can have a HUGE army for almost free. You don't know what you are talking about. Feudal is a legit culture that can do a LOT OF DAMAGE FAST.

[@SmegInThePants]

Yeah w/the latest expansion feudal is underwhelming i feel now. Or at least boring now. The special governing traits your heroes/leader could get are now basically available to every hero in the game. There's not much in the way of decisions to make in how to apply your feudal bonuses. Might be good as a culture for a new first time player because of that though, less analysis paralysis to worry about while learning to play. Passive bonuses and just go, not having to worry about the culture element of the game. But if I were the devs I'd rework feudal to have some sort of interactive mechanic so that decisions about this feudal mechanic would need to be made by the player. I mean it is a strategy game, so make a mechanic where the player has to strategically make a decision on how to use it. Sure, to use their passive bonus it'll impact your decisionmaking in tactical battles, but if you pure auto-resolve there's literally no culture based decision to make unique to the culture. Or keep it as it is for the purpose of marking it as the new-player-friendly culture, the simple culture, the tutorial culture. hehe. Reaver has grown on me over time so I'd rate it higher. I think I had to learn how to adapt to it. Dunno about the oathsworn yet, just came out and I've only done righteousness. Had fun mind you. But since it just came out, its mostly likely to see some adjustment in upcoming patches anyways, so who knows where it'll land.

[@BAGELMENSK]

I think feudal is nice for stacking adjacency buffs

[@creepyfellow]

Feudal works best when going order to give other culture units from conquests or rallies their good stand together perk.

[@Washeek]

And seems like it benefits the most from special mounts.

[@luka188]

@@Washeek High is really strong with special mounts, because the dawn defender gets them. Dawn defenders on special mounts absolutely slap. Especially on beefy elephants.

[@Washeek]

@@luka188 Yeah idk what came over me when I wrote that. Actually Feudal isn't that great with mounts. They're good for the knights and that's mostly it.

[@Mattyice402]

Did you skip industrious at the end?

[@ThatCoffeeKnightfromEurope-y3f]

1:48:05 that's okay 😊👍... We all do as we know... But😅 do you knoww about "Tier List Maker" is a website? Just as you recorded your screen (and your nice Bear wallpaper❤) you can just as well record a screen with a Tier Maker❤. I wish you a lot of luck on your Journey. I started only Today, my channel...! Oh, and about my own Playtrhough Pantheon... Both of my Ascended Custom Heroes 😅 are of Barbarian Culture. Because 🤩 Barbarian is SOOO good at Early war, and winning the game on Turn ~25 or so. Super easy!! Much love❤❤!!

[@adamorick2872]

You misunderstand how to play feudal if you call it f tier. 1stly stand together adds defense to all units woth it that stand next to eachother. You can literally make yourself almost unkillable by choosing to custom your race with both defensive traits, plus calvary. Defender becomes calvary. And if you aren't going for tier 3 units in capital quickly you are setting yourself up for ai to overrun you. And then thiers the knight, all the defensive from race plus stand together makes a stack of knights very dangerous. You play evil, burn free cities to the ground to fund early growth. I've found Fuedal survives ai attacking them far more then other races, especially primal.

[@kravernar]

28:30 its because they want you to deliberately bring armys with 5 units

[@e-rankluck2594]

Currently in the middle of a Reaver Run where I dipped hard into nature stuff and the fey mist stuff has made the Dragoons an absolute menace

[@nonexistent4177]

I'd personally put Reaver down with Feudal. They don't do anything special, they are kinda squishy, tier 3 skirmisher just don't cut it, and the Magelocks still just stand around doing nothing. Could try capture enemy shenanigans, but that's still not worth it. Specially since now you can't get heroes that allow River Trolls to be recruited. And then Oathsworn Strife is probably the weakest of the three. Mainly cause they seem railroaded into a Chosen Destroyers run only. Cause you are penalized for a whole lot. Even vassalizing cities, so if you are not razing them to the ground, you're never sitting at paragon. I can even understand not being allowed to defensive pact, or alliance. But having that plus no vassals... Chosen Destroyers only faction.

[@antlbvc5445]

in another video you said that in the tome of arrows +1 range is really bad and here you say its good? how does that make sense?

[@GreenSkinGentleman]

So based on your two recent videos, Industrious culture + Order is a good combination? Brb quarry stacking and launching crusades

[@Shinshinvariety]

It’s certainly a combo. I’m not sure it’s ideal but if it makes you happy

[@Njordin2010]

How about including chapters??

[@zackariahtravois7125]

Can we get a recommended faction guide at some point? Ive tried every faction and still cant figure out what i like besides Industrious, tho theyre slow

[@antonovemil5787]

What's wrong with starting underground?

[@zeusapollo6504]

Feudal got destroyed by the dev team through constant updates, it wasn't weak in vanilla AoW4.

[@sketchyviper5162]

Just on defend feudal, it does have AOE steadfast as a spell you can get. Though honestly in the past it was better overall, the best success was evolution time spam peasants rush which is funny to do to friends.

[@dozekarTheCursed]

Hey, hey. There's a reason to pick feudal. Sometimes you gotta disrespect your opponent and beat them with garbage. Side note that flanking disables defenders defense bonus. They almost never get it and it shouldn't be counted except in autoresolves. This basically means you never get it against players or scarier targets. I take back everything after seeing his oathsworn. He's an idiot. Harmony is absurdly powerful, easily the strongest of the three. You just need to play extremely passive aggressively. build on everyones borders, and run hermit kingdoms so people are forced to constantly either pay you to get rid of claims or if they're AI they go hostile and you can destroy them. You just can't play like an idiot.

[@Jebushatesyou]

thank this vid was helpful

[@Owlr4ider]

After talking so much about the different Primal aspects you completely forgot to talk about their actual units... Also as bad as Feudal is it's far from unplayable and a good player using a good setup built around Feudal can absolutely win games in multiplayer. Especially against lesser skilled opponents but also against equally skilled ones in a high skill match all around given a good enough start.

[@vBurnedWins]

the bastion was all adjacent allies not just him and an ally

[@ifer1280]

Mystic potential gets a lot of economy from inspiration

[@jonatangraversen7623]

i agree with most things you said in this video, i dont agree warlock is bad, its not great either, but compared to other tier 2 mages they compare similarly, i consider a unit bad if you would research a tome to get another unit instead of building this one, decent if you only use other units if they come with tomes you are researching anyway, and good if you will use it over units from tomes. based on this id say dark roster is bad, except warlock who is decent and dark knight who is good. A small correction to magic origin units, they are not everything you summon to the board, but its a general rule of thumb that summons are magic origin, there are exception tho, the most common being the zealot.

[@jonatangraversen7623]

ah i wrote this before you got to mystic, and i disagree with you on all their tier 3s, while summoner gets overshadowed by not wanting to build the level 3 townhall, if you do build that you would definitely want a couple of those with your army, and the other 2 are very strong

[@thewolfpack5290]

Thank you for the content! Personally, I found "nice ass" the most helpful and can't do anything but whole agree!

[@iTzTiMeToJuMp]

Shinshin playing this was not on my bingo card

[@chryssalidbait8765]

Have to say, I was extrwmely dissapointed with the Reaver faction. Dreadnought was my favorite class in Age of Wonders 3,ä and I eagerly awaited Empires and Ashes to re-introduce it. Well, instead of the old game's Magi-Steampunk industrial faction, we got a bunch of magitec edgelords. Massive dissapointment.