DARK CULTURE UNIT GUIDE - Tutorial & Tips AGE OF WONDERS 4

[@jamesbates9038]

This is why I go spiders with nature affinity. You can replace your whole front like with spider matriarchs and fit in a few frost spiders. Let them soak and do damage for you then run your knights around the flank to destroy support units mages and archers. Also one entwined protector in each front line is an easy heal for your shock or spear units and it grants defense. Another great thing I like to do is make all calvary/beast units get the glade runners because they have spider mounts and give them every enchantment. add in super growth and empowered beasts it makes those lower defense dark units tank like pros.😮 2 Glade runners, wild speaker. In the back mounted calvary in the front is pretty strong If you build the other 2 stacks with spears and beast.

[@marcbennett9232]

My first game was dark with wolf mounts. Love those knights! Also love ignoring city stability

[@Rashagar]

I think the best synergy I've had with the dark culture so far is by taking the tome of glades. I love the entwined protector shield unit for parking behind a night guard spear wall. It has an AoE heal of it's own, and you can take aspect of the root to give your spears (and the protector) a self heal for any particularly hairy situations. Letting them hold the line longer gives your battle mages and shock units more time to get into position and dish out the damage. At least that's been my experience so far.

[@Krymefighter]

Thanks for these guides, subbed and looking forward to the Mystic and Industrious ones. Glad you called out the healing effect from Cull the weak, between that and Weakened. I want to try not running a support unit at all - freeing up a spot on a 6-stack for even more damage. Coupled with the racial traits of fast recuperation and elusive....

[@norfemignissius4936]

Dark Knight no longer have "Heavy" Charge Strike :x Only played Dark Culture once, I'm much more of a defensive player so struggling with them. I don't think I've been able to land "Dark Surge" properly during my first campaign with them. I had to go for Tier 4 & 5 summoned units to finally catch up.

[@siriushelldog6771]

IMHO necromancy goes very well. We turn into undead, take necromancers and raise the dead back into battle - in theory, you can soften up AI armies with cheap units before you go with your normal armies.

[@Ic0nGaming]

Oh yeah, definitely a nice add on! I love to work generally with all sorts of summons, Necromancy of course is very fitting into the Dark Theme ^^ Basically any sort of expendable troops works nicely for the Darks to set up some free room for your hard hitters to strike in.

[@siriushelldog6771]

Well, initially I had a less elegant scheme where we make a couple of armies tier 1 with a necromancer and send them to death. Buuuut I read the ability more carefully and saw that the necromancer can revive only once per battle. Sooo, just tier 1 zerg-rush

[@MYPSYAI]

the best way to go Necro is to use Heros. The hero unit has access to 4 hero spells and can pick 1 every 5 levels. The first spell you need is Summon undead, this summons 3 skellies or zombo's, and is the turn one starter. The other skill to chase is dark ritual, it is an AOE dmg spell that raises undead from corpses. You can only summon undead once, but dark ritual has a cool down every 3 turns. So you make 3-6 hero's like this, and if you count in weaver you can summon 36 undead by turn 2. You can also raise any that die. These undead have access to race mods and enchants as well, so you can really juice them up with the right tomes.

[@climhazzard115]

I feel like my Dark culture cyromancer might just go Cyromancy>warding, then just use the phantasmal warrior to shore up the front line until late game, or at least midgame.

[@2old2game5]

I think I know the answer here but if you are going for undead necromancy style do you really need to build any farms? I didn’t see that on your other vid tips for dark culture or I may have missed it.

[@stefanb6539]

Can you do a Wildlife Sancutuary unit guide? Preferably also on Arctic Terrain?

[@MYPSYAI]

I have beaten the game on brutal with dark 3 times and I still haven't used any dark units. I always go hero's only. Dark is one of the best cultures for heo's only. You can put weakening aura on your heros, and enchant it to your units too. You can put cull the weak on any hero and use the enchant to get it on your undead. On the hero cull the weak works on any attack, so you can use magic or ranged as well. So, hero's only, summon undead on all of them. 36 zombies on turn 2. Infinite raise dead with dark ritual. This strat is so broken, my unit power goes over 3-4000 by turn 60/70. And you only pay upkeep for hero's, so 30 g/ turn for each one over your cap. 4 cities means 6 heros costs 60 g / turn (2 x30g). That means i can use 4000 combat power for almost no upkeep, and fully invest in everything else. The funny part is you can do all that without ever touching a dark tome or using any kind of shadow at all. Just hero skills

[@BlackBirdOni]

Interesting approach. How do you build your heroes? I agree, summon undead is a bit broken for archer/battlemage builds too. That 3 body canonfodder blocks the enemy just in range of your units to absolutely annihalate them next turn 😂

[@Max_Cony]

so you do 3 armies of 6 heroes, which costs you just 540 gold? what weapon do you suggest for those heroes?

[@MYPSYAI]

@@Max_Cony I suggest using magic. The best way to farm the items you need early on is to war with a city state, go smash their armies and leave the city alone. They will hire more heroes and are automatically equipped and after some time they will send a raiding party against you. They will all have a similar load out so scanning the heroes before you choose your target is a good idea. One time I noticed the heros all had wand of resurrect and I was able to farm 9 of those. Of course it's important to realize you only need 1 party of 6 heros to beat the game. At lvl 15 you will become completely unstoppable... so getting 18 heros is really just an unnecessary flex. However this technique is so damn overpowered it kinda ruined the game for me.

[@Max_Cony]

@@MYPSYAI i need this for multiplayer, thats why asked about 3 armies. thank you for answer.

[@casualbrowsingyeah]

Wouldn't the evilest thing you could do is enslave the unicorns and make them help you murder innocents?

[@ngamashaka4894]

Or you can vote for Kamala :)

[@platoonmexx9278]

iam very new to this game, how would i change the mount for my units?

[@Ic0nGaming]

It's a physical trait for the race, you have to pick it while creating the faction.

[@platoonmexx9278]

@@Ic0nGaming ohh, i thought thats purely cosmetic^^ does it say, that you get these traits n abilities by choosing a wolf or spider as mount? 0.o thx

[@nickg8100]

What culture would be the best for a nightmare mount morale sucking beast?

[@Ic0nGaming]

I think Industrious. They got so massive resistances and like to sit in the face of their enemy. Only problem is that you need to hit T3 units first, but then it should be massive I think. Needs playtesting though, just theorycraft here.

[@Majber]

12:00 once enemy have tier 4 and tier 3 units then you should counter them by your tier 4 and tier 3 units... Not by tier1 units...

[@Ic0nGaming]

Yeah, but you shouldn't leave them in the trail of the enemy T4 and T3 either. Usually there's only a few of those hard hitters and strategic positioning helps to mitigate losses.

[@thevoxdeus]

It's hard to generalize about what you should do in each situation. Just remember that you can afford 5-10 tier 1 units for the cost of a single tier 5 unit, so it *can* be very effective to counter high tier units with waves of low tier units.

[@dach829]

Im liking dark it reminds me of everblight from warmahorde. Now just need dragons xpac

[@Ic0nGaming]

Oh I'm so looking forward to the Dragons =)