OP REAVER Ranged BUILD - Age Of Wonders 4 Empires & Ashes Guide

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00:00 - Intro
00:30 - The Culture And Race Setup
03:04 - Military Roster You Will Use
07:03 - Tomes Used For The Build
19:01 - Strategy Tips
Playlist Link: shorturl.at/iGJLO
This is a Tips & Tricks Compilation for Age Of Wonders 4. It features various Gameplay and mechanical advices, helping Beginners and Veterans. This video is featuring a the most broken and op build for the Industrious Culture I could come up with.
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[@merlinmannis9244]

I made one with keen sighted and quick reflexes, evasive. I wanted them to be able to out shoot other ranged units. I also picked fabled hunters and rune-smiths though. Nice to see someone else saw what I did

[@andrewcole4843]

I quite like swamp trait and seafarer [with thematic toads or piratical/Viking Humans]. Addresses the food weakness, the province improvements on the nature tomes fit as you start on marsh and can make more, opening sea travel and anti pirate. Expert sailors later if rivers well placed fit a reaver-raider role play as well.

[@Ic0nGaming]

Thanks for bringing this up! I was already looking at the Expert Sailors and was wondering how to combine it well. You gave me some good ideas, thanks!

[@iconoclastic23]

Since you like the sneaky trait, consider Tome of Beasts for 'Mark as Prey'. Distracts the target, meaning you can flank it from any side and get that juicy +25% damage bonus from sneaky where you otherwise would not, and it also adds 3 stacks of sundered defense for even more damage. All that for just 5 mana and 10 casting points. Compare that to the +20% damage from the 2 stacks of marked from Mental Mark for triple the mana cost and double the casting points and there's no comparison, even though admittedly the latter is a 1 hex aoe.

[@The_Babe]

Not to mention more Nature Affinity! Which Reavers can utilize even better with Tome of the Beast since they can capture animals

[@Ic0nGaming]

This is one path I did put back to the shelf for a more melee oriented build. Tome of Beasts + Flanking isn't as good of a fit for a ranged build, cause most spells in the book don't synergize as well as Mark as Prey.

[@73490kanel]

@@Ic0nGaming I think we can +- easily go for beast centric build without noticable dropoff in our range options: main thing to improve our canons is tome of the Dreadnought's overcharge(and t1 +range ofc), which we can easily take with affinity points from 1 signature skill/tome of the horde. And since both cultural archers shoot only once, they don't really care about +1 dmg from enchantments(tho +30% dmg from amp tome IS juicy), and relly mostly on their native dmg, we can simply focus on improving frontlane(outside of mainly frontline beast roaster - horned god's summons serving a purpose?) and giving some strenght/%dmg(hello nature tomes in general) to our backline

[@RowMaen]

You can use "designate target", a reaver specific spell, which gives two stacks of marked and distracted...

[@tennesseeheckler3014]

I just started playing a week ago and have already been putting in a crazy amount of hours. It's been a blast continuing to learn all the intricacies of the game. I've noticed there are a lot of tomes and perks that benefit tier 1 units. I'm wondering if there is a way to make a tier 1 horde build that is still powerful in the end game.

[@brinaldi81]

Reavers are amazing

[@dannymunch4633]

I went a bit cheesy with my first Reaver playthrough having Tome of Winds and Teleportation, to either port an enemy in front of a firing squad or if, some nasty flying/teleporting units got into my bakc line teleport a Mage lock out to allow them to fire. It worked better than expected, also because my Ruler was a magelock monster, who killed tier I and II units in one shot and with a few stacks of marked did the same to many tier III units.

[@Ic0nGaming]

Oh yea, I was also looking into this while researching this build. I will try it out as well, maybe on a more Battlemage focused approach?

[@brinaldi81]

Amplification and Revelry tomes are also so much fun

[@Ic0nGaming]

Yeah, Revelry I only skipped over cause it's been easier to get higher dmg numbers elsewhere. But the Skald is amazing for this build, the buffs crank up the damage even further!

[@brinaldi81]

@@Ic0nGaming The nature tomes look amazing with these guys! Can't wait to try them out.

[@seasand6705]

OMG amplified arrows on the cannon

[@RowMaen]

I think the seeker arrows unfortunately have lately been moved to the tome of winds (tear 2) which makes the tome of enchantment much less useful.

[@machinimaaquinix3178]

Thanks for the build! Can't wait to try this. I bet when the ranged become legendary, you are unstoppable.

[@Ic0nGaming]

My pleasure! It's clapping quite hard. Next try will be a more melee focused build and a Miasma Build for the Mystics. I think Miasma Mystics should be insane with their Star Blades.

[@herbertjager6409]

Relly nice build! I will try that by myself today. You also got something similar for melee or mage? Did you take Champion or Wizard-King?

[@73490kanel]

Personally, I really don't jam with mercenaries(very decent for a t1, but +2 upkeep is way to much, maybe would've considered them at 9 gold, idk - so I always try to use conquered city's/subdued units as frontlane in the earlygame, until I give frontline to the golems) and magelocks(even with tom of scrying - uugh, meh, would rather have glade runners/zephyr archers in my stacks, since canonns fill the role of "if you come into my zone, you are dead" way better. also a free tip - you can target the ground for their aoe), so I just spam their great duo of sup and t1 skirmisher, and 1-2 frontlane units until I reach cannons and can relly on them as backbone for golems wrecking chaos on the frontlines... is what I probably would've said, if I didn't realise that tome of wind is actually playable with reavers: zephyr archers can fit roughly same spot as glade runners, but also enhance the "deadzone" strategy later on(cannons only shoot in lines, so having an ability to nuke adjacent sides removes this counterplay option from oponent(tho a bit more relevant to pvp side of things I guess, since AI doesn't understand how cannons work, like at all. -> you can often take closest city with VERY slim armiy, just by using reaver's siedge project that gives you 2 canonns... ground fire is op...)). Well, okay, but doesn't the rest of the tome suck? Due to buffs imho it's okay/good: Cyclone - kidnapp(i.e. he is now in range of your cannons) AND likely stun enemy unit - even better if their frontlane is non mythic and we can subdue him(btw double kryo toms are nuts for reavers, so far no real problems with subdueing t4s when it is possible to hit enemy army with both spells + big food production with adaptation trait). Dust storm - since it now deals dmg, you can really lean into materium spell enhancment and make it deal both that juicy armor break and 20 dmg in 2 hex range for a cheap price wind rager - don't like this dude, but since construct centric build doesn't use a lot of mana, can cast him as a very throwaway unit sometimes, also soft counters other range heavy builds Favorable winds - speaking of spare mana - no1 likes to be late, now you can be faster on land, where it matters. So, some handfull utility, tho maybe not every1's flavor WINDBORNE SCOUTS - ..... We don't talk about these.

[@TV-ei9yb]

Is there a written list of this build anywhere please? thanks 🙂

[@dmcswiggins77]

Stupid question, but I cannot seem to find the fae race in the create faction builder. What am I doing wrong? I have the EE and DD dlc.

[@Ic0nGaming]

It's Elves, Fae is just another name the game plugs onto elven cultures.

[@scottx1415]

Thanks! comment for algo

[@mantictassadar2931]

I swapped sneaky with overwhelming tactis for that crit chance

[@Ic0nGaming]

You can also do both and leave the +Accuracy. You got so much marking, it's still gonna work out. If you happen to run into extra elusive enemies, make sure to stack up Marking Skills on Heroes and maybe add some Scouts for extra markings.

[@RowMaen]

How to get the enchantment which gives the units given by tomes the cultural traits?

[@Ic0nGaming]

It's a regular research that pops up every now and then. The spell is not bound to any tome and has always a chance of coming up.

[@RowMaen]

​@@Ic0nGamingAight, thanks 👍

[@wickeddrac7489]

Can't get into the reaver culture to be honest, digging the synergy with Industrious and the new tomes and the rp value of a golem siege tank tomes with industry culture though!

[@Ic0nGaming]

Yes, I totally want to build up a Golem Build for the Reavers too. They work surprisingly well with Golems too!

[@axnoro]

Wizard king, champion or dragon?

[@Ic0nGaming]

No specific preference. I personally love Champion and Wizking for Reavers.

[@scavenger6268]

Theme Alternative take: -Replace Runesmiths with Devious Watchers. Upon turn 10 you get 300 gold worth of outpost costs (and 6 turns of build time) reduced to just 75 gold and 1 turn. Use that knowledge for whatever you desire. Also your scout balloons are scarier and invisible. -Switch Tome of Enchantment for Pyromancy to make entire landmasses of terraformed forest into mana from the Ritual Pyre. Plus I am sure that poisonous/on fire bullets that home in on your targets is a scarier proposition to the enemy.

[@mrbigglezworth42]

I still don't like that the magelock doesn't have a snapshot ability. It's the only ranged unit that has to commit wholly to it's 1 (und precisely VON) ranged attack that can be shut down all too easily. The moment you can get tome of glades or tome of winds it's instantly made redundant, as both the Zephyr Archer and Glade Runner also deal good damage while 1 supplies an AoE attack as well and the other can mark a target and still attack. They did it in Planetfall with the Kir'Ko sniper, and those were so good you could practically get away with never building the tier 1 unit in favor of just the snipers. Hell AoW 3 musketeers could still run and beat something to death after their big hit, or spend a turn to reload, or have an engineer reload them. They aren't a very well designed unit far as I'm concerned.

[@Ic0nGaming]

I agree. As much as I enjoy the huge bang behind them, they just feel lackluster comparatively. And you put some good data behind my feeling there. They feel good when they hit, but objectively almost all alternatives are better cause they are more flexible in every way.

[@EzPz1337]

wtf is Mark ed