Tier 5 Tomes Tier List - Age of Wonders 4 (MP) Basics

[@MrZurvion]

When there's a 36-minute long video about tome tiers, but you already know that all Tier 5 tomes are Tier 5.

[@wepg]

For real, next level thinking.

[@arthidon1466]

I'm excited to see your updates after the DLC :)

[@wepg]

I was planning on recording Form Traits yesterday but spent the entire day just kinda rolling my back out after helping my buddy move his entire house. Soon? Hopefully in the next few days? Please Walker, you've been saying that for weeks, make it happen.

[@dannymunch4633]

In my opionion the easiest way to deal with Disruption Wave is probably leaving the effect as is but turning it into a 1-hex AoE. Thus it is more focused, still very impactful if placed right without shutting the entire enemy army down, plus you can play around it by not clumping up your troops.

[@wepg]

Yeah, that's another fix that could be worth testing. Tbh I would prefer it be global but reserve the disenchant effects for the tomes that are centered around it, but we'll see what the next patch has for us!

[@Doombot221]

Maybe this is from post patch, but I do feel like the chaos tome is probably closer to being in the same tier as Nature and Order. I think the killing momentum and hastened effect for your army is active whether you are attacking or defending so that's quite strong. Call avatar of chaos relies on your ruler being strong, but that's not too hard to make happen and being able to invoke them anywhere you need without worrying is pretty powerful (if the avatar is killed I don't believe it kills the ruler). And you already mentioned incite rebellion's strengths

[@zeusapollo6504]

Devs made some very heavy handed nerfs to necromancy in the new golem patch and DLC. Dark Ritual just 1 use per combat, would have prefered elementals, ethereal and constructs to just counter that, many T1 tomes have access to early T1 Elementals that can evolve to T3 units. Their corpes could never be turned to zombies in AoW2 and AoW3. But no thats not enough, the worst Tome ever Shadow T5 Eternal Lord, must receive another punch into its face with final banishment. Flameburst weapons was obviously not enough, or corpse eating abilities, the devs act like zombies are some kind of a temporary T5 unit at this point, why have so much counterplay to it? And a dev says on discord or steam, T5 Tomes are meant to have spells that are game ending. Also love, how Bone Golem was renamed to Bone Horror without raising its Tier to T3 at least. The original Bone Horror in the first 2 games was a very tough T3 unit. Bone Collector was T3 using the same theme. With T5 units around the Bone Horror could easily be a T4 unit in AoW4. So the whole picture does now look very mehish for necromancy and its unfun, no matter what game mode you are playing. I mean it could have much more potential, creativity and fun with proper balancing. Thanks for this video, i repostet it a lot on steam to raise some attention.

[@wepg]

Yeah, Necromancy is in a very rough spot right now. It is easily countered through fire damage and exploding/consuming corpses already, and now there's a way to remove all corpses from the combat at the click of one spell. Hopefully the devs come back and give Necromancy a better place to shine, but at least they *did* reduce the action points on raise undead on Necromancers themselves to 1 AP so that's a meaningful buff. Still strange, though, that their T5 is so abysmal.

[@Mickeyshere]

You should make a tier list of the strength of units. Just a tierlist that ranks how strong units are in the game using criteria like overall combat power as well economic strength. Maybe list what units are best of all in their tier etc

[@wepg]

I could see myself doing something like that, but the issue is that a lot of the strength of units is contextual to a degree that makes it difficult to tier list them, but a "best of" definitely could become a video.

[@LeopardInTheMist]

Have you talked about the Bolstering Matrices and Focusing Lenses? As I've watched through the series I don't remember you talking about them or referencing them when talking about spells. They can add a significant boost to a bunch of spells. Are they just not used in multiplayer?

[@wepg]

I haven't mentioned them, but yeah, the lenses are one of the other reasons Materium is in a great place right now. Extra damage on Lava Burst and Tectonic Shatter is no joke.

[@kadras3221]

Hey first of all thanks for your work :D I really enjoy the game and you helped me alot. Will you do some stuff to hero leveling and whats good and why? or did you already do something in that area?

[@wepg]

I haven't, but I should!

[@R17inator]

Do you plan on doing tier lists for other stuff before the DLC launches by the way? Curious to see how you would rank the signature skills based on their manual combat usefulness, how much they hurt your heroes/ruler in auto, and the affinity they provide on your ruler.

[@wepg]

Yeah, actually recording Signature skills today!

[@SanderMalus]

I don't think you "need" pandemonium to make balors since demon gate allows you to just produce chaos eater with draft in any city, plus it frees casting points for "fight for power". So if you don't intend to rush balors and want to go mostly astral, you can just get +3 chaos governor and skip most chaos tomes. I find it odd how you always mention pandemonium when talking about balors when demon gate exists.

[@wepg]

You can go that way but demon gates are *very* slow by comparison. They are very expensive to build, unfortunately, and Pandemonium gets you Balors so early it is *much* better.

[@M0rgi]

Pandemonium get them online faster while tome of demon gate makes it more efficient to summon balors and after you get both skills online its faster then summon chaos eater skill.

[@wepg]

UPDATED AS OF WOLF PATCH: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pofUpIKCbpmEa68si=gj2sFDEKAdVJprn4

[@SkyForceOne2]

Dude, listen. You are playing this game anyways. Nobody expects you to do 3 hour well-structured presentations, most people just want to listen what you already know and practise everytime you play this game anyway. There really is no reason to drag this out. Just hit the record button and speak your thoughts out loud. Your videos are doing very well, because there is not alot of them in the AOW4 MP niche. Please take this opportunity while you have it, in your streams you seemed like you want to. Stop procrastinating, there is nothing you can do wrong here, and no amount of time will make things more perfect. If you have personal issues holding you back however, there is obviously no need to justify yourself. I think most people here would even watch unfiltered gameplay, as your streams show. I appreciate your streams and content overall, aswell as you as a person (the small part I am exposed to, anyway). Hope you are doing fine! Love your content!

[@wepg]

You are quite right.

[@blackleon1708]

Eh, most disappointing part of game for me. I expected something like magical nuclear bombs, you know, 4x stuff. While, yea, its a couple of very strong tools, none of them are really that epic or interesting, most of them are just peak utility stuff. Its stong, but it's not something you expext out of game/world ending power. Its not pure power, its too subtle.

[@wepg]

Tectonic Shatter, Disruption Wave and Exalted Champion are all *very* powerful spells to be fair, but yeah, a bunch of the spells don't feel that much stronger than T4 spells. Maybe that's intentional so if you fall behind on knowledge you don't just die?

[@blackleon1708]

@@wepg well, maybe we can have at least unpractical nukes? Thing so telegraphed, it's impossible to use in real game? But I can do that in sp? Anyway, dispelling enchatments, despite being nothing flashy or destructive, feels like PRACTICAL nukes. Basically it allows for breaking the game. I want something more like statement, which nukes do in civ series.

[@Dlinktp]

If you're doing shrines of smiting memes how many shrines do you run per 18 units?

[@wepg]

It's a risk/reward calculation. I think honestly I'd probably want minimum of 4 shrines, max of 6, depending on what kind of enemies you are facing down. Too many and your Shrines do meaningfully less damage, but too few and it becomes meaningfully easier for people to take your Shrines out.

[@Dlinktp]

Alright, thanks! Right now I'm settling on having a bunch of warbeeds shrines and heroes, how many skalds would you run per 18 units in that comp?@@wepg

[@wepg]

@@Dlinktp probably 2-3; 3 is ideal but they aren't faithful so they'll drop your damage output a bit on your Shrines *unless* you take Tome of Faith. As a 2nd T1 tome it's a bit less miserable. In that case definitely the full 3, one per stack, as Skalds really do kick it, especially with Shrines and Warbreeds to haste.

[@Dlinktp]

Would you just go zeal/faith? I've been doing cryo/zeal since I find cryo really busted but I guess that could be an alternative. I tend to run around with a billion snow spirits, would you just run zealots until you reach your t3? @@wepg

[@wepg]

@@Dlinktp I think Cryo/Faith is honestly probably more useful if you are planning on Shrines and Revelry, as otherwise your Skalds can't get faithful.

[@wizard380]

You were wrong, they didn't buff battlemages they nerfed them :)))))

[@wepg]

Eh, they nerfed the Battlemages nobody uses. The nerf to phasing is a *giant* buff to all ranged units.

[@enflameddrago6783]

LOL if sleep of oblivion is not banned in your games then I'm using disruption wave 😂

[@wepg]

We've been playing with sleep as an actual sleep, so no eating corpses at the moment, but honestly most groups allow sleep to function as written as one unit per spell is not nearly as game breaking as you'd think. It also requires an ability to permakill, so it's not that oppressive if you know what you are doing.