Order Tomes Explanation and Tier List - Age of Wonders 4

[@kulovicz3152]

00:00 Intro + Order affinity and mechanics explained 07:03 Tome of Faith 19:55 Tome of Disciple 34:04 Tome of Zeal 42:00 Tome of Inquisition 49:54 Tome of the Construct 57:04 Tome of the Beacon 1:03:03 Tome of the Cleansing Flame 1:19:20 Tome of Sanctuary 1:24:24 Tome of Subjugation 1:29:15 Tome of Exaltation 1:36:18 Tome of Supremacy 1:43:08 Tome of Prosperity 1:51:03 Tome of the God Emperor 1:59:14 Overall ranking

[@Shinshinvariety]

thank you

[@tormound117]

A 2 hour video for each affinity would be great. Nice to hear your opinion on how each tome works compared to its own affinity and sometimes another. Also the last 5 min of the video is a black screen of what I assume was supposed to be your Order tier list.

[@arkadisevyan]

order tomes are some of the best but the imperium tree is one of the worst

[@yep8058]

@@arkadisevyan yeah i think they ran out of ideas with that one

[@peterb7186]

"What movies have you seen recently" "Well, mostly tome stuff from Shinshin.."

[@shadowblade5656]

I love that this is a two hour video going in depth into each tome. I may have watched it on double speed but I watched the whole thing. The game has so many tomes and so many options that it's really rather easy for beginners and novices to get overwhelmed trying to parse through everything to figure out a build idea. Plus, the fact that you explain *why* something is good or bad instead of just going "use this, don't use this" is really really nice.

[@Leivve]

If you do decide to do this for the other affinities, I would suggest going through each tome, make a few bullet points that you want to cover for each one prior to filming. Can help you be slightly more concise with each tome, since you know what 3/4 points you want to touch on in particular with a tome, without having to go so far as writing a script. Can avoid missing things and having to go back, and lessen he amount of mistakes you make/feel you made.

[@Gokudo01]

+1, organize a little yourself, to make a point faster, you can easily gain 30 min with your thought in line.

[@TheJinnobi]

I'm glad I found your channel - you're detailed and explain the "why" behind the ranking, which is great. You have my like and subscription. As for myself, I generally play Shadow with some Arcane and a tiny bit of Materium.

[@kn1v3z2k]

would love every tome breakdown

[@peterhousen7974]

Wild to see you making content for this game, and I love it! Would absolutely love some more videos breaking down the other tomes, and some combo tomes!

[@MajorBones123]

Brand new subscriber here, I can confirm that the call to action at the start of the video was all it took to remind me to subscribe, it really does work.

[@Shinshinvariety]

Yeah it’s annoying for me to remember but does work

[@Ragatokk]

I find faithful whispers very good when focusing on vassals. Pick tome of faith first into beacon third. You end up getting so much mana...

[@sod1237]

yes. Without it, my allies always steal my free cities. (i play team games)

[@sod1237]

I think he is simply wrong on this one (at least in any kind of free city based build, which is something that "order" is strong in). the whisper does NOT block other spells, because it can mostly be cast in one turn. The problem with spells with limited use is, when it blocks casting for 2 turns and blocks you from casting something else. even one turn casting is bad, because you mostly have less casting points available in the next turn. Whisper is a nice "fill in".

[@richardsavage2262]

Great breakdown and the blooper made me laugh, keep up the good work.

[@riderzaur]

I already have a lot of hours in this and I kinda have my playstyle and know a lot of synergies and stuff, but it's always fun to hear other opinions. Thanks for making these!

[@Owlr4ider]

For the Exemplar, all it really needs is for Embolden Allies to be a free action, and maybe increase its base resistance too. As a free action Embolden Allies suddenly becomes a useful ability and a flexible one too as you can use it before(on your backline) or after(on your frontline) movement. Also as a side note strengthen/weaken get stronger the higher the base damage of a unit is, since it's a percentage increase. So improving damage from 10 to 11 is not as strong as from 20 to 22 for example, so having sources of strengthen/weaken, especially multiple stacks of them, on late game units is actually pretty useful as early game units with these abilities don't tend to last too long in a late game battle, barring very specific builds of course. Even with this change the Exalted won't be a powerful enough unit to make the tome viable or anything but it's a small step in the right direction, along with other necessary buffs to the tome to allow it to compete with the other tier 4/5 tomes out there, especially its direct competitors from the order affinity. Lastly, I think a video like this could use another part regarding race - class - tomes synergies as the tomes are a part of the bigger picture of designing your strategy for a given game. For example the order affinity as a whole excels at boosting racial units so it really doesn't want to be a mystic for example that relies on summons instead(even non summoners). Or which of the racial abilities benefit the most from the order affinity as order is far from the only affinity that interacts with racial units.

[@igncom1]

Inquisitors are great. I'm playing a game as Ham Binger right now with feudal, spawnkin, draconian Inquisitors and they just tear apart my enemies.

[@Ravi9A]

Awesome, recontextualising my order game as i got back into the game this year.

[@BlackBirdOni]

Just a small correction: Fanatical Workforce doesn't create a 40-resource difference but rather a 25-resource difference because you also spend 45 mana to cast it (which is quite a lot in the early game). That said, it's still a great spell since it effectively gives the equivalent of 5 quarries worth of production.

[@rakatosthemad6602]

Earned a sub, for sure. Could we hear an over explained chaos tomes? Love to see the duality with the other combat heavy affinity

[@jon8167]

Great video would love to see the other tomes. The detail is impressive

[@steeltrap3800]

Here's a challenge that could result in an 'S' tier video, so to speak. You've mentioned opportunity cost (hallelujah) and put some basic principles there as to what your goal is (to make the BEST choice at each opportunity). The challenge? Do a video on THAT. Don't know if you're familiar with documenting decision trees/process flows, but they're more or less a bunch of nested "if/then" statements. The difficult bit is being able to organise them into 'groups' and THEN decide the order. Things that presumably matter are your own faction choices, but then what about...the map? Known enemies? Your immediate needs/priorities? And so on. In other words, it's taking the sorts of details in these videos and then, MOST usefully for most people (even though they possibly don't realise it), explaining HOW TO EMPLOY those details effectively. What would THAT produce? A guide on HOW TO PLAY!! I'll confess it's a pet peeve of mine that devs build really complicated games then give nothing useful about how all that complexity comes together and thus the sorts of thinking required to play well. Not all of us have 100 hours to stick in a game simply to try to learn good methods, and one upon a time some great game designers used to provide it pretty effectively (yes, I'm old, LOL). Perhaps you've done that video; I've watched a few of yours, but haven't seen the sort of thing I described. Just a friendly thought/suggestion/challenge. Cheers

[@igncom1]

Enchantments like Mighty Meek seem great for necromancy T1 swarm builds. Or for summoning builds where you push out T1 elementals in battle.

[@e-rankluck2594]

Nicenicenice. Was planning a Paladin style run soon so thisll be useful.

[@steeltrap3800]

2:37 You don't like to talk about things you don't know 100%? Bravo! Ninety nine point something percent of the internet's content would disappear were everyone to hold to that standard, LOL. It's a great principle, and even saying 95% being the floor would improve the world tremendously. There's a saying I've used many times over the years in my working life: if you want to test your understanding of something, try teaching it to others. Often novice students can test you the most as they will ask things those with some knowledge might not, and those questions can really make you go back to the fundamentals of the subject. Cheers

[@SinerAthin]

I definitely appreciate this sort of content. Way too many tier lists are just people slotting items willy nilly without actually explaining the how and why. That being said, it might be a good idea to start with a summary and show the audience the full tier list at the beginning of the video, and then go into the lengthy explanation.

[@igncom1]

I find that the use case for constructs like the golems are for forms like Elves who have bonuses to ranged combat, but none to melee. So having a non-racial unit to take up that role can be really handy, and as it is fighting polearms is hard as they always do great damage and aren't really countered by anything else in melee.

[@LoneWolf3571]

Please do all affinity tomes! There aren't many detailed content creators for aow4 (atleast that I know of)

[@SimpleReally]

Hi I just bought the game, your channel has been invaluable. I would love to see a building/province upgrade video, which ones are most cost efficient or worth rushing etc. keep up the good work

[@thewolfpack5290]

Love your content!

[@okonkwojones]

21:25 mantra of purification doesn’t need to be channeled like a map heal (ie army heal) or sustained spell (ie faithful whispers): it’s a combat cast (hence temp hit points) and a dirt-cheap one at that. Not a ton of tier 1 spells give you that kind of bang for the buck that a 5/10 15 heal+2 status dispel give turn 1 (and it’s been the free spell unlock I’ve started with the 3 test games I played starting with discipline as my 1st tome).

[@okonkwojones]

And the tempo you get on early camp clear from that cheap as chips spell is bananas-I’ve watched the autoresolve replays and the ai seems relatively competent at using it.

[@GreenBaji]

"Faithful Whispers is useless" Dude.... have you ever tried a vassal build before? You should try it, it's pretty broken and snowball you hard. This "useless" cheap spell is how you start to snowball. Sure it makes no damage but it makes sure you win the race against other people to gain more vassals. Once you have like 8 Vassals and 1 person declairs war against you he gets attacked by so many, not to speak how much Ressources you get from vassals ( for FREE, pick Silvertongue ) Another thing to "Ascended Warrior" works great for boosting dragons to evolve.

[@sod1237]

true

[@shiniselune399]

By the time you have 8 vassals the game is already over. If you're playing agains the AI you can win much much faster, if you're playing against real players and they allow you to have 8 vassals you're pretty much guaranteed to win. In a vacuum the effect isn't bad but compared to the rest of what you can do with that 45 mana/casting points its very mid. Even summoning a single unit can snowball you harder than this. Furthermore you're putting your snowball in the hands of the AI which is not competent.

[@sod1237]

@@shiniselune399 well 8 vassals is a bit much. but 4, before you star taking enemy cities? my problem with casting is rarely casting slots, mostly upkeep. so the 45 mana to keep ahead of anyone else trying to take the free city seems like a good investment.

[@shiniselune399]

@@sod1237 In single player i'm already taking enemy cities before i even have my second vassal, most runs i just conquer free cities since i know i can make better use of them than the AI. In MP in a balanced lobby you shouldn't have 4 free cities, most players would kill them anyways if you wanted to go for a vassal strategy and again the AI is incompetent so the real threat they pause compared to the investment you put into them is minimal. You're perfectly entitled to play however you want but if we are looking only at whats the most effective in general that spell isn't good especially with how fast the player can progress if they optimise their play.

[@sod1237]

@@shiniselune399 apart from play style, my simple point still is: a 45 points cast does NOT clutter my casting "schedule". there obviously are phases of the game, that require you to pump out one summon after the other or you are researching big spells in about the same time it took to cast the last one. but for rather big parts of the game, my casting is constrained by mana (and especially mana upkeep), not by casting slots.

[@conradmills4977]

Worth noting that the Inquisitor's Mark Enchantment applies on skirmishers' melee attacks in addition to doing the usual ranged debuff thing. Not a big thing, but it does make the enchantment able to turn on other enchantment effects (like cryomancy's frost blade thing) without needing units devoted to turning them on.

[@Zathurious]

You can sometimes get a Benevolent Soul through Rally the Lieges.

[@viktor7879]

man it would be a blast to listen about all pof the affinities

[@klix008]

I really like this content. Was wondering if you could do a turn brake down tutorial or something of that nature.

[@V4shStampede]

Liked and subbed watched in full. Make more of these, there's not much of this type of videos out there and even if there are, your input is important as something to compare to. I also recommend adding some tomes that combo well with the main affinity you are talking about and an example build that would use the affinity in question as it's main focus. There's a "AoW4 faction creator" tool for making your own faction build that is good for showcasing tome progression and all the other creation picks in a neat package. Like, I would personally go High with an order build, but that would mean that my affinity tree would be order hyperfocused whereas there are great things to pick up in materium, astral and shadow affinities. How would you go around this limitation? The order affinity tree is also centered around vassals and this isn't really useful imo. I have made a barbarian order build with a shadow dragon ruler, marchers, hunters and tome of cryomancy as my first tome. Then you can go zeal and spec into order while having 3-2-2 of other affinities that give you better uses for your imperium. Is this a good idea? Also I really want to see an ambition and ruler tierlist. Talking about what rulers compliment what types of builds and what ambitions are the easiest to work with, would be really valuable. Imo the only great and easy ambition got taken away from us on day 1 and now it's been a struggle to find a replacement that would be effective and consistent.

[@Blastxu]

You can get blessed souls via rally of lieges when you annex some of the wonders. In fact, each wonder adds a different unit to the rally.

[@alexdolezalu9066]

Yup! there's a plenty of cool units that can only be obtained this way.

[@Blastxu]

@alexdolezalu9066 I like the fire giants myself, idk how powerful they actually are, but being able to place a tower every few turns us great to take pressure off your units

[@ElConquistadordeAmor]

You did a great job breaking everything down and keeping it interesting. I actually sat and watched this entire video and I largely agreed with you. However, you were far more generous to Tome of the Beacon than I would have been-it's the worst tome in the game, in my opinion. Its only niche use is to use Mighty Meek to buff zombie spam, otherwise it just has nothing going for it. Blessed reinforcement has also been feature-crept out of the game; it had a somewhat niche use back when the game came out, but now that you can directly reinforce your vassals via Rally of the Lieges, it serves zero purpose now. That tome is dead in the water and just needs to be reworked completely.

[@IDidntVoteForThisOption]

I’d love a video on every affinity, 2 hours is a bit rough for me personally though…. We’re talking 12 hours of content for just tomes!

[@racheecha974]

Cascading command only cascades to friendly constructs so I’m not sure that skill is useful without them, since it only would buff one racial unit.

[@igncom1]

The only issue with videos this long is that I find it hard to comment on anything without commenting on everything! For Tome of Faith yeah I've always seen it as a tome where you pick up either the chaplain OR the staves enchantment. But if you do end up switching to a different support later in the game, you'd want staves anyway. I'd only really consider a couple factions who might even want a new t2 healer, but even then.

[@sod1237]

yes.

[@jonatangraversen7623]

you need 4 researches to progress to next tome, but they dont have to come from this tome, you have the 2 scout upgrades and a few cultural techs you also may or may not want to slot in somewhere, but a tome should have atleast 2 "good" options and 1-3 "decent" options, as a general rule of thumb, but sometimes you can tank a dead research if you have 3 or more good techs in a tome fx, or if you have 1-2 key gamebreaking options it doesnt matter that you will be "wasting" the next 2-3 techs if the good stuff you did get is better than 4 "decent" options from the alternative

[@mihos11]

1:59:12 "I just realized I have a black screen" "I'll edit that in post" It was not edited in post :(

[@wojciechdrzazdzewski8248]

I suppose maybe linking some of the super effects of order tomes (like the cleansing rain, as if treat it like the gold dragon in the dragon tome) with good alignment could help balance both- especially since imperium tree for order is not that swell already. Also, I found using ascended warriors with said dragon tome to be a funny combo to quickly turn a stack of dragons into tier V by spamming it on them XD. Probably not too viable, but still fun to do.

[@BushWookieActual]

Brother when u said you were embarrassed about forgetting something last video, so you spent 3 hours hyper focus cramming… ADHD was the first thing that popped up(sounds just like me) then you immediately confirmed it for me. 😂 3:18

[@sskull8]

i learned a lot from this

[@blackleon1708]

I wanted to ask if you will do it, but it's already here. This is great

[@klodpraisor]

order tomes try to not randomly counter everything challenge (impossible difficulty)

[@alexandrossful]

hey pretty new to the game and i really want to find a good build around the tome of cleasing flame any idea ?

[@emilsoderman3691]

A lot of the Faithful stuff seems to be there for interactions rather tahn the rather anemic 10% upkeep reduction.

[@ForbiddenFollyFollower]

Either all the OP tomes should be moved up a tier or require affinity from both types to use so they're more interesting.

[@Chonus]

Something that always bothered me is, why does the Blessed Soul have -2 Blight / -2 Cold Res from the Celestial tag, isn't it supposed to be -4 / -4? You can get them from Rally of Lieges btw, I'm sure you know.

[@okonkwojones]

43:04 wait…bolt of judgment doesn’t inflict condemn? Huh, I always assumed bolt applied it and then you exploited it with the melee strike.

[@churchillogbonna9010]

Do Aow 4 mods next pls.. those guys work deserves some love

[@necrolicious]

I just started playing this game and went searching for information. I wasn't expecting to find......THE SUPER-TOP HASHINSHIN!!!!!!!11!1

[@Ozhar1]

shrine of smiting is also a construct, btw

[@MsDragonkingz]

I’m actually fairly certain that the burning blades enchantment does work with Ghostfire, will need to run some numbers in my next game I suppose

[@Shinshinvariety]

Would be nice if it did to make a late game fire build viable

[@ConvictThugDraco]

Hey hash, Paradox gonna introduce a new dlc on HOI4, do you have plans to record a hoi4 DLC review or gameplay?

[@zackariahtravois7125]

I have to disagree with ur take on the tome of the beacon. Getting Blessed Souls arent an issue if ur using Rally of the Lieges where u can get one every turn. Thru the order imperium tree, they can gain extra ranks, u can instantly refresh it and vassals contribute extra units. I will admit they arent super powerful, but they are immensely better than dawn defenders later on Edit: im gonna get the duke nukem meme I just know it

[@sebastianbauer4768]

One thing these stationary summons excel at is blocking tiles especially in conjunction with natural blockers. The healing and morale is just bonus really, but the sheer annoyance of having them cut of a tier 5 melee unit … then what? Waste time hitting a beacon that’s only there for 3 turns anyway?

[@noxusguy9735]

sheesh now we have to do with every tomb for every affinity 2 hour each

[@earlkoh216]

Fellow ADHD boy here I only watched the tier 1/2 tomes , cause I cant concentrate for more than 30-40 min at a time I think you are sleeping on tome of the beacon. sure its not an S tier tome by any stretch of the imagination, but it is most certainly not useless ( although I concede that it is useless for a pure order build) Tome of the beacon has 2 duds - lightbringers are bad for the reason you mentioned. This unit needs a rework, it sucks to play against, and it sucks to use - conjure divine beacon is absolutely terrible Covenant of the beacon, while not overpowered, is a good spell. 15 mana per turn is essentially a Mana obelisk ( which costs 250 production) If you have only 1 vassal, it is probably not worth the knowledge + worldmap casting+ mana upfront costs , but if you have 2 or more vassals, yeah its not bad Mighty meek, while not generically powerful for the majority of builds , can absolutely be the cornerstone of certain tier 1 builds. I think that you neglected to say that mighty meek does 10 SPIRIT DAMAGE to heroes( with non repeating attacks) , which is absolutely ludicrous. This damage is further scaled by damage % effects. A tier 1 unit that can use mighty meek well usually fulfill at least 2/3 conditions ( They have a non repeatable attack that can be done every turn/ Every other turn, They can evolve, they are generically powerful) Some common units that use it well includes the arbalest, the skirmisher, the frost spirit, the storm spirit , phantasm warriors My favorite build is to use reavers because their tier 1s have a single not repeatable attack, and the mercenary is essentially a tier 2 unit classified as a tier 1 unit. Its not that good to be honest, but its real fun to see your tier 1 units mulch up enemy heroes

[@twistedumbrella7537]

Nice video

[@bobdickens3674]

ok 2 hour shinshin video

[@RellMayers]

That's why i clicked on video even tho i dont play this game

[@sod1237]

11:20 Can you really remove mind control?

[@sod1237]

anybody?

[@okonkwojones]

@@sod1237there’s one that I didn’t think you could remove because it actually flipped ownership of the unit, (Turning it red) for the duration, and therefore untargetable to “target allied unit”. But They’ve also split MC into like 3 different tags now (mc, dominated, and…another one maybe?) and i might be misremembering-Maybe it’s one of those sustain ones, where you get the line between the controlling unit and the targeted unit, like the Reaver’s overseer subdue ability? The eldrich/umbral units have a similar mechanism for their puppeteer abilities.-or maybe you can clear all forms now in one of the many post eldrich realms patches and I’ve just missed it.

[@sod1237]

@@okonkwojones Thanks a lot for the reply! I think you are right but i also thought i might have missed something.

[@sod1237]

@@okonkwojones it is the most important thing to remove, imho. Especially if you would prefer to run autocombat, but you cant, because your units which already were in close combat with the unit that is mind controlling your unit abandon their attacks. and turn back to focus down the unit that is being controlled. PS: sometimes it is even funny to watch the replay of your utterly dominant stacks losing one unit: Computer used mind control and the alpha strike of your entire army ends the poor former friends lifes instantly.

[@jonatangraversen7623]

farm is kinda a dead province improvement, but a farm next to an abbey is almost a research post. if you can stack a couple other SPI that scale with farm adjacency i would consider making a gigafarm between 2-3 cities, like we already do with research posts and quarries if we have the SPIS for those

[@Shinshinvariety]

that's totally right actually

[@V4shStampede]

Lmao they did really just slap an inquisitor on a bird and call it an exemplar 😂

[@savardmike]

I subscribed because you asked 🤪

[@AbominationalFailure]

zeh · lut, not zee-lot

[@hasanalaf8073]

subbed for more!1

[@alexkardula7471]

First ❤

[@igncom1]

Not going to lie, but the Tome of the God Emperor doesn't seem very good to me. What I mean is that every time I have gotten to it, I've already won or am in the process of winning. I'm not a big fan of it either really.

[@shadearca]

That can be said for literally every tome of that level.

[@rogancalypso5041]

Thank you uncleshinshin for describing a game mechanic of a game which I will never play. Appreciate it.

[@michaelcloutier2642]

Get on with it

[@benwilliams3539]

not 4 minutes in an already banging on about 'adhd'. stop lying bro.

[@Shinshinvariety]

… what?

[@Tirax13]

What you talking about? Chaplain IS the second best t2 Support after vowkeeper.

[@Tirax13]

Zeal is a good tome but def Not the best. Warding and cyromancy are better. Also Order t2 tomes are garbage

[@Darknimbus3]

@@Tirax13 IDK Tome of Zeal is pretty alright. That Inquisitor is a pretty good unit, with stunning. Tome of Construct is also decent with that Bronze Golem which can be terrifying under the right circumstances and can make your units tankier together. Certainly worse tomes out there. But yeah Tome of the Beacon is kind of 🗑️🗑️🗑️🗑️

[@Tymelost]

the odd af begging for non players to watch your videos is hilarious.. i would NEVER watch a video on something i have no interest in.. the difference between someone with a family and someone in a dungeon desperate and alone :')