54:42 You can't miss on a 90% chance to hit, as it is 90% to hit for full damage +25% to graze (so actually 115% chance to hit). You only need to fear hitting your own units, if the hit chance is below 75%
Ohhhh...this is BIG info for me. I had no idea this game worked kinda like Planetfall in that regard, although I suppose it does make sense. Are these mechanics detailed anywhere in-game? Or is there an online resource somewhere with this info? I've having trouble finding anything
@@BlackArrowGaming I don't know of any official info about this, and I am not sure where I got it from myself (possibly from a tutorial video) but I know for sure that is true, because I have verified it by looking at the combat log (where you get the rolls) for a lot of ranged attacks. If you roll 1 - 25 under what you need to hit you always graze, roll lower than that and you always miss.
LOL at the lore! I love it! You should rename your capital to Washington D.C. and then any further Cities can be named Federal Building 1, Federal Building 2, etc. You should also have another self imposed rule where you must choose the option that pays the most gold in quests and events. This map did indeed seem huge at first but after only a couple of hours you managed to explore like over 25% of it.
While I do think the self-imposed gold rule sounds hilarious, I'm not brave enough to attempt that on this playthrough, haha! However, if I can remember, I'll try to rename my capital :)
It'll be fun to see Steve take a shot at taxing the dragons! Looking at the two Ancient Wonders you have next to your capital, I strongly suggest you make it a Production-focused city. With both the Lair of Silk and Enchanted Den each Quarry would be giving you 5 Production and 4 Mana. Plus, once you finish building everything, all that extra production can be converted to gold. Also, while Sprint gives you everything Skirmisher Discipline has, it's only for a single turn, and you're mostly using it to take a step closer to making the shot. If you want to put Steve into more risky spots to get a kill or cover another unit's retreat, it could be pretty good, but if you don't plan on anyone getting close to him, it would then be wasted, and you should only take it if nothing else looks good while going for Killing Momentum.
Agreed that the capital could be pretty good for production, but at least until I get a couple other cities up I'm gonna try to keep it balanced. In the long run building a bunch of mines and quarries there could make for some big gold yields to support armies, so converting production to merchandise could be a great option in the late game. The main problem with skirmisher discipline is that Steve can't fire after "using" it. Sprint allows you to take a step but still have full action points for firing the rifle. Skirmisher discipline doesn't leave you with full action points after taking a step, meaning that Steve can only really use it to retreat. That being said, he could still use poison bolt after running away, so it might still have some utility
I was referring to Sprint when I said "using" but as I said, it wouldn't really be useful unless Steve gets caught by an enemy's ZOC. But after reading some of the other comments, Klydon's idea of just making boots that'd let you Move without provoking Opportunity Attacks is a better idea than using a Hero Level on it. As a side note, I'm currently doing a Rever run as well, though I'm going for a more defensive and slow rather than a Sneaky Snipers build. That being said, so far, I've found Warding Bond to be a good way to keep my frontline alive, and with my Hero kept away from most threats, I can rely on my buffed unit's defenses and my Hero's much larger health pool. Use that info as you deem useful. Additionally, Just noticed that Earthkin has been changed to give Racal Units Mountain Movement, so keep an eye out for the Materium Dragon since he might walk right over all the mountains on the map.
@@KireoRayus I appreciate the head up about Earthkin, will try to keep an eye out for that! A slower and more defensive Reaver build could be interesting. Would work well with their cannons in particular I think, since those are gonna do a bunch of damage if you can protect them for long enough
Sorry if I didn't explain that clearly enough - let me try to help here: Any time that you "boost" production by constructing a certain type of province improvement (e.g. building a forester to boost production of a granary), the game deducts 30% of the production (and gold) cost from that building. So, if a building would normally cost 100 production to build, boosting production of that building would discount the production cost to 70. In this game (unlike it's predecessor), production will carry over to the next project when the current project is finished. However, as far as I know, production does not get refunded it it has already been spent before "boosting". For example, if you've already constructed a building 90% of the way and then boost it, the boost only finishes off the remaining 10%. The other 20% is basically lost since the discount provided by boosting production is specific to the building being boosted. What this means is that if you are planning to boost production of a building, you should avoid building any more that 70% of it yourself before getting the boost. Since picking up production resources gives a lot of production all at once, it's a good idea to have a couple buildings queued for production that already have boosts applied to them in order to ensure than no production from the pickup is wasted. Hope that helps :)
I am excited as well. I've practiced with them a little, but this will be my first full playthough. They should be exciting to use - they're basically a "glass cannon" culture, so anything could happen!
44:55 Derelict Workshops seem to pop up inordinately often in my games. I've had a couple where they were the ONLY spawners - no graveyards, nothing else, just workshops.
My friends and I have had the same experience. At first I thought it was just chance, but lately it really does feel like their spawn rate is strangely high. Seems like it might be a bug.
Land maps always create this kind of mountain corridors situation, which is pretty nice for funneling enemies, but also makes industrious culture massively overpowered. One thing I've noticed with them though is that infestation armies seem really bad at crossing mountains to come raid you because I constantly get messages about raids being sent that never arrive. I guess they just die against more easily accessible targets. Skirmisher's discipline is pretty good actually, just not on a unit that requires 3 action points to attack, because sprint is only once per battle. Also, don't forget the little button above the minimap for all your expansion planning needs. Wish that was hotkeyed, honestly. :P
Agreed about industrious culture and the mountains - I've been playing industrious in a lot of recent MP games with friends and it's crazy how much free stuff they can get each turn just by running four pioneers all over the place. It's even better considering they can repurpose all those free item pickups into making really good stuff in the item forge
Indeed - I am aware of this but not sure if I actually said anything about it during the episode. Later on I also might grab glade runner archers since they get a free target mark as well. You can stack marked like crazy in this game with the right setup >:)
Man I like the Muppet movies but I don't think I ever saw that one...sounds like I might be missing out! "Joe from Legal" seems like a solid hero name anyway though, but there's at least one other that needs to come first :)
I am not sure about infestations, but I think they usually just attack the nearest player city (no matter if it is an AI of human player) I don't think they attack free cities, but I seem to remember them attacking vassal cities. I don't think they have a max range they can attack at, as I have been attacked by some very far away.
If so, that means I'm gonna have to clear this stuff out quickly. Fortunately I think my army is big enough that I should be able to start clearing the derelict workshops to the west. It's that one in the corner to the east that really bugs me - that's gonna take forever to get to :(
Remember, when you fight Bone Horrors, that the skeletons they spawn come in not on defense mode. If you have a horror pinned, shoot it down with magelocks and then the pinning units can slaughter the hapless new skeletons straight away.
Great advice here, thank you! I knew the skeletons didn't benefit from first strike (despite holding spears), but did not realize that they technically aren't in defense mode. Good to know!
Definitely looking forward to this. The realm creation was cool and I've been fumbling a bit with the reavers, so it'll be a great learning experience to see what you do with them.
In all honesty, it's going to be a learning experience for me as well. Although I've practiced with them a bit, this will be my first full playthrough as a Reaver. I'm kinda learning this game as I go since everything is relatively new, lol
I think I'm ok with it too. There's so many mountains that will eat up a lot of the space, so this still gives room for both myself and the AI to grow during both the early and mid game. Might make for much more powerful AI in the late game as well, which could be both interesting and terrifying, haha...
@@BlackArrowGaming i know your a busy man but do you find AoW4 a bit more engaging than AoW3? I find that the Economic System and your land grab process tons better. Planetfall def tried to make it better but still fell short.
@@MtnLionFHL In general, I like AOW 4 more than AOW 3 in "almost" every way, haha. I think the province system works very well, and the province adjacency bonuses that you can take advantage of remind me a bit of city planning in civ 6 (which I love). The biggest thing I can think of that AOW 3 did better than AOW 4 is the map itself. For whatever reason, AOW 3's maps just felt a bit more "grand" and believable to me. I think it's because land maps had more interesting features such as large rivers and lakes, bridges on important chokepoints, etc. AOW 4's province system seems to prevent some of these more interesting terrain features from showing up, but I also can see how it makes economic development much more interesting, so I think it's at least somewhat justified. Another thing I think AOW 3 handled a littler better than AOW 4 is the diversity between the different races and unique abilities that would show up only with specific combinations of a certain race and class. For example, an orc theocrat could make orc crusaders with "tireless" (unlimited retaliation attacks). Barring combat spells, there was no other way to get that on a crusader aside from that very specific niche combo, which I think was fun. That's not to say AOW 4 is all bad though. I think the idea of being able to customize your own race also has it's merits and can be a lot of fun for coming up with your own niche strategies. I just feel that they could lean a bit more into making each race feel a little more unique. IMO, this biggest missed opportunity for AOW 4 was not bringing over the "unit mod" system from Planetfall. In planetfall, every individual unit could be equipped with up to three mods, allowing you to customize each individual unit on a very granular level. Better mods cost more resources to upkeep, and certain mods were better at helping you deal with specific types of threats, so it make the whole system feel very balanced and important. In AOW 4, unit mods have essentially been replaced by empire-wide buffs for specific types of units (like giving sundering blades to melee fighters). It is much, much more basic, and you basically just stack as many enchantments on all of your units as possible provided your mana upkeep can afford it. IMO, limiting it to three enchantments per unit and letting you select which ones you want on each individual unit (kinda like Planetfall) would make unit enchantments feel far more interesting and meaningful.
In the case of the gremlins standing in gold, I’d vote to leave them in situ until you can go and capture one. The Overseer is your go to support unit. Harriers immobilize a gremlin, the Overseer subdues it, and it’s out of combat and can be yours permanently for 40 war spoils after combat.😊 slow to get, but maybe faster than via tome research….
If I can find some, I'd gladly take them - just need to get a couple overseers while still somehow affording to pay the rest of my bills, haha. My economy is being stretched to the limit right now, mostly just because I have so many units being supported by only one city. Not sure if I should go after the derelict workshops next or just go try to capture the city state to the north. economically, capturing the city state is a better option, but the workshops are gonna send stuff to attack my capital if I don't deal with them first.
I wrote this comment super early in the video-they were killed while you were on your way to clearing the first Wonder, and long before you spammed more irregulars than your city could fund. You had, though, just outlined how important gremlins were to synergize with magelocks, before you annihilated your first opportunity to acquire some….😂
@@Aneirin2000 Oh, yeah I see what you're saying now. That's a good point, didn't consider "saving" them until I had overseers. But I think they were also standing on a stash of gold that I really wanted in the short term. So maybe Steve just saw the pile of gold and got a little impatient >:)
Who knew that all it would take to get more views would be to play a fantasy strategy game as a federal civil service employee? Haha XD Glad to have you around :)
Only thing i don't like with magelocks is their accuracy at large distance. i feel like they are supposed to be sniper units. But they loose it as fast as common archers, so getting +3 range (base, enchantment and legend medal) doesn't really help, you'll have 75% accurancy penalty even without terrain/units. Also by thumbnail i thought thats YOU gonna pay taxes (like cosly army upkeep and other increases). Nice start btw :)
Yeah, the accuracy penalties for long range can be rough, but with the combination of keen sight (which my units have) and marked (which I can get a lot of), it still works pretty well. I would say keen sight is almost a requirement for this build, but my friend likes to use overwhelm tactics for the extra crit chance instead (since a crit hit on a magelock flank attack with this build is unbelievably devastating) And I guess with how much upkeep is costing me at this point, the "tax season" description does seem applicable to me as well, haha
@@alfarabi73 I would suggest choosing based on your planned build. Are you planning to stack crit chance from other sources? Overwhelm tactics (combined with certain tome enchantments and affinity upgrades) can help you achieve 100% crit rate. Bear in mind, however, that you still have to hit the target to land the crit. (Fun side note: In the initial build of the game, you actually did NOT need to land the hit in order to land a critical hit. As long as your crit chance was at 100%, you could never miss. That's what my "archer crit build" series was all about, but it has since been patched out of the game...for good reason, lol. It was horribly overpowered, haha.)
@@BlackArrowGamingIndeed, I heard about the original critical hit calculation mechanic. It's mind-boggling that the devs instituted that in the first place. It is neither intuitive nor balanced! ;)
I am very surprised that you have not used imperium to boost your city grow at all, doing so in the very early game is a very good way to jumpstart your city. The only reason to not do it, is if you want to get a very early second city going, but you are clearly not doing that. The AI you have found is very far away, I find it unlikely that none are closer (in my most recent games I have had AI start very close to me) so I suspect that one or more are closer to you underground (or even in the close part of the unexplored overground part of the map)
I'm not opposed to boosting city borders with imperium in the early game - I usually just try to avoid if possible. My general rule of thumb is that I usually only boost border growth if (A) I absolutely need it in order to boost production of a building or (B) to prevent a city state or other player from grabbing a province that I want. In this particular case, I haven't felt the need to do it for either of those reasons, but I think I might need to do it at least once pretty soon in order to get to the second town hall upgrade faster. Will see how much food I get from clearing that other wonder first. For what it's worth, I "hope" you're wrong about the AI being that close underground, but I have a feeling you might be right. I really need them to fight each other, at least for a little bit. The worst case scenario is that one side targets me while the other side just builds up and get really strong. If they start claiming seals while I'm busy dealing with their enemies for them, that could be really bad. Basically, I need to keep an even amount of pressure on both sides without crippling them to the extent that the other side becomes too powerful. I don't think I've ever played a game with a dynamic like that, so it should hopefully be interesting!
Would be nice if Land Maps would chill on the mountains a bit, give more open space, and maybe a few small bodies of water. If you really want insane on mountains though -- go Land with Highlands selected.
Yeah I'm in the same boat as you, would like land maps to have a bit less mountains and some water features, like above ground lakes and maybe a couple larger rivers here and there
Hahaha, you know ... we have a say here in my Country that the only two certain things in live are death and taxes ... so if the dragons aren't paying their taxes ... what choice is there but the other certainty.
Yeah I figured that's what it was probably from. And that would be double to original reward amount because of the "fabled hunters" society trait. Honestly, it's such an incredibly powerful economic trait, especially early in the game...it's crazy good.
@@BlackArrowGaming It is indeed a very good trait, I have used it quite often. It is even better if you use "regenerating infestations" in the map setup (which I like to use)
@@Kris_Lighthawk in my very first game i turned regenerating infestations on because that's kinda how barbarian camps work in civ, but with the world difficulty level on the hardest setting they quickly became more than I could handle, haha. But yeah, I can see how fabled hunters would be a solid choice for any map with that modifier. Never thought of that before!
@@BlackArrowGaming True, depending on map settings, regenerating infestations can be rather overwhelming, sometimes to a degree that even highest difficulty AI have great troubles with them in some areas of the map.
This should be interesting. Playing against the dragons was easier than I thought it would be, although I did have two other players and allied with one side. The big advantage for you is that you got a corner spot, which should help, but if one of the northern dragons gets going on the gateway victory, that might make it a bit tough for you to be able to get to them. So some observations from the cheap seats. First, I think you have to be more careful on your army movement to stay out of the ash and to try to use friendly territory to heal your units. You missed a golden opportunity to do this with the very first fight when you could have had your main stack with in 3 hexes of your target, but very close to your city border and sent the scout down initiate the fight. You take damage and you simply step back in to get the big heals between turns. As it was because you committed your whole stack, no one got any healing. Character development: I think it is more important to beef up your army early/help your economy. I agree with the sprint pick, but after that, it should have been inspiring leader to help your economy (remember reaper pike are more expensive than normal T1 units because of the merc tag) and then beefing up your T1 units with the tag that added hps, etc to them. (Pikes are going to be your front liners for awhile and the skirmishers are squishy). Given Reapers are so squishy, you should have gotten the T3 elemental summon. It would have made a big difference early game. For some reason, you seem to like the regen one and it simply isn't that good. Too easy to knock regen off units and if you are depending on it to heal up units, then I think you are in trouble. Economic decisions had me scratching my head at times. You were busy pumping units out like crazy and now you have a severe economic issue. Perhaps better to slow roll some out because you had T2 units coming. I would have strongly considered a second leader even with the upkeep costs. You need them to beef up your army and the sooner they start leveling the better. I think you should have taken the cash from the encounter. Your income was very low and you wiped out your cash reserve building those units and now have a single digit income a turn. Also, you should have picked the Chaos one that gives you cash per kill before the last fight. You killed 6 enemies there, so that would have been a nice haul. Reminder to get the forge at some point. One of the easiest items you can usually build is feet which give you extra movement and won't provoke an opportunity attack. Overall a good first episode and looking forward to more. BTW, I was stationed in Great Lakes for 5 years umm.. a long time ago. I feel your pain from the cold. 😁 (Sorry for the book)
Thanks Klydon! Lots of good feedback here, will do my best to break down where we agree and where we differ: First, I agree that some mistakes were made with army movement/positioning for healing purposes. I'll try to be more mindful of this going forward. I'm not used to playing with this combination of map traits active, but i should get the hang of it pretty soon :) Totally agree with you on picking up inspiring leader as I forgot about the increased upkeep cost of mercenary units. I'll make a note to grab that and some other leadership bonuses for Steve! As for taking the regen hero signature skill over the elemental summon, this was primarily because I really wanted to start getting nature affinity income. Nature affinity empire upgrades are some of the best in the game IMO, and I don't plan on picking many nature tomes. If I can get a little extra nature affinity from hero skills that have some decent utility, I'm ok with that. If the T3 elemental summon pops up again later, I'll probably grab it then. Economically speaking, I agree that I've basically ground my economy to a halt by building a military that's a bit too big for the city that's supporting it. However,, I'm ok with this given how many infestation spawners are around me, and how much money I'm going to get from taking their stuff out. This build relies heavily upon breaking/pillaging stuff as a major source of income, and there's plenty of stuff around me to fight, so I'm not too worried about that right now. Although I am planning to prioritize getting some gold-generating stuff in my capital asap. That all being said, you're 100% correct about how I should have taken that chaos affinity perk before the last fight - good call! No worries about the "book" :p
@@BlackArrowGaming I get it on the Nature affinity and I absolutely agree with you that the Nature affinity is one of the strongest branches in terms of goodies, especially with the biome you are playing in. Also given the biome and what you can do from a race standpoint of view, you might say that IRS = Infernal Revenue Service, but that might be something for a future playthrough. 😁
Skirmisher discipline is like having SPRINT all the time on..its pretty good for your guy..BUt then you need to reset the SPRINT cos its a waste of upgrade then.You just lose that extra movement
Yeah, I eventually decided against it because there's no point in using it for rifle heroes. They need all three action points to fire, so sprint is better for them. Skirmisher discipline doesn't help them at all unless they get surrounded and you need to make a last-minute retreat
Hahaha - well I'm glad you didn't actually choke, but I'm pretty sure a couple keyboards out there might no longer be in service due to people taking a drink at the wrong time :p
I know, right? I'm trying to keep up with all the cool new content, but my series take so long that I feel like I'm always one major update behind, haha. At least that's a good problem to have :)
TBH I originally intended to play this one on Pangea, but it felt like that map crunched everyone up more towards the middle so I opted for a land map instead to spread the players out a bit more. That being said, I also intended to set the map size to large (instead of huge), so things ended up being a bit more spread out than I initially was hoping for, lol. Oops... I didn't include oceans because I feel like naval combat still needs some work in this game. I would like to see more ships and stuff.
@@BlackArrowGaming Hehe Okay my man.Loving your playthroughs but so little time to watch these days with my daughter growing .. i plan to watch your next solo AOW4 playthrough
![[FULL] RETROSPECTIVE : Final Fantasy Tactics](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RUBmYqs1jZ0/mqdefault.jpg)
Death and taxes are the only certain things. And those dragons are about to get both.
LOL
Freaking perfect, I love it!
Hell they even tax you AFTER death 🙄
No Allipavar the Destroyer, putting an artifact into your hoard does not count as a "loss" for tax purposes!
Turns out that gold gained from pillaging enemy cities is not tax-deductible either...XD
54:42 You can't miss on a 90% chance to hit, as it is 90% to hit for full damage +25% to graze (so actually 115% chance to hit).
You only need to fear hitting your own units, if the hit chance is below 75%
Ohhhh...this is BIG info for me. I had no idea this game worked kinda like Planetfall in that regard, although I suppose it does make sense. Are these mechanics detailed anywhere in-game? Or is there an online resource somewhere with this info? I've having trouble finding anything
@@BlackArrowGaming I don't know of any official info about this, and I am not sure where I got it from myself (possibly from a tutorial video) but I know for sure that is true, because I have verified it by looking at the combat log (where you get the rolls) for a lot of ranged attacks. If you roll 1 - 25 under what you need to hit you always graze, roll lower than that and you always miss.
@@Kris_Lighthawk Nice - thanks for sharing your research on this :)
LOL at the lore! I love it!
You should rename your capital to Washington D.C. and then any further Cities can be named Federal Building 1, Federal Building 2, etc. You should also have another self imposed rule where you must choose the option that pays the most gold in quests and events.
This map did indeed seem huge at first but after only a couple of hours you managed to explore like over 25% of it.
While I do think the self-imposed gold rule sounds hilarious, I'm not brave enough to attempt that on this playthrough, haha! However, if I can remember, I'll try to rename my capital :)
It'll be fun to see Steve take a shot at taxing the dragons!
Looking at the two Ancient Wonders you have next to your capital, I strongly suggest you make it a Production-focused city. With both the Lair of Silk and Enchanted Den each Quarry would be giving you 5 Production and 4 Mana. Plus, once you finish building everything, all that extra production can be converted to gold.
Also, while Sprint gives you everything Skirmisher Discipline has, it's only for a single turn, and you're mostly using it to take a step closer to making the shot. If you want to put Steve into more risky spots to get a kill or cover another unit's retreat, it could be pretty good, but if you don't plan on anyone getting close to him, it would then be wasted, and you should only take it if nothing else looks good while going for Killing Momentum.
Agreed that the capital could be pretty good for production, but at least until I get a couple other cities up I'm gonna try to keep it balanced. In the long run building a bunch of mines and quarries there could make for some big gold yields to support armies, so converting production to merchandise could be a great option in the late game.
The main problem with skirmisher discipline is that Steve can't fire after "using" it. Sprint allows you to take a step but still have full action points for firing the rifle. Skirmisher discipline doesn't leave you with full action points after taking a step, meaning that Steve can only really use it to retreat. That being said, he could still use poison bolt after running away, so it might still have some utility
I was referring to Sprint when I said "using" but as I said, it wouldn't really be useful unless Steve gets caught by an enemy's ZOC. But after reading some of the other comments, Klydon's idea of just making boots that'd let you Move without provoking Opportunity Attacks is a better idea than using a Hero Level on it.
As a side note, I'm currently doing a Rever run as well, though I'm going for a more defensive and slow rather than a Sneaky Snipers build. That being said, so far, I've found Warding Bond to be a good way to keep my frontline alive, and with my Hero kept away from most threats, I can rely on my buffed unit's defenses and my Hero's much larger health pool. Use that info as you deem useful.
Additionally, Just noticed that Earthkin has been changed to give Racal Units Mountain Movement, so keep an eye out for the Materium Dragon since he might walk right over all the mountains on the map.
@@KireoRayus I appreciate the head up about Earthkin, will try to keep an eye out for that!
A slower and more defensive Reaver build could be interesting. Would work well with their cannons in particular I think, since those are gonna do a bunch of damage if you can protect them for long enough
I did not understand the comment about not wanting to take a production cache until you had higher production.
Sorry if I didn't explain that clearly enough - let me try to help here:
Any time that you "boost" production by constructing a certain type of province improvement (e.g. building a forester to boost production of a granary), the game deducts 30% of the production (and gold) cost from that building. So, if a building would normally cost 100 production to build, boosting production of that building would discount the production cost to 70.
In this game (unlike it's predecessor), production will carry over to the next project when the current project is finished. However, as far as I know, production does not get refunded it it has already been spent before "boosting". For example, if you've already constructed a building 90% of the way and then boost it, the boost only finishes off the remaining 10%. The other 20% is basically lost since the discount provided by boosting production is specific to the building being boosted.
What this means is that if you are planning to boost production of a building, you should avoid building any more that 70% of it yourself before getting the boost. Since picking up production resources gives a lot of production all at once, it's a good idea to have a couple buildings queued for production that already have boosts applied to them in order to ensure than no production from the pickup is wasted.
Hope that helps :)
@@BlackArrowGaming Very cogent indeed!
I'm still making my way through your Jormag playthru, but it's exciting to see what you do with the recent reavers!
I am excited as well. I've practiced with them a little, but this will be my first full playthough. They should be exciting to use - they're basically a "glass cannon" culture, so anything could happen!
44:55 Derelict Workshops seem to pop up inordinately often in my games. I've had a couple where they were the ONLY spawners - no graveyards, nothing else, just workshops.
My friends and I have had the same experience. At first I thought it was just chance, but lately it really does feel like their spawn rate is strangely high. Seems like it might be a bug.
Land maps always create this kind of mountain corridors situation, which is pretty nice for funneling enemies, but also makes industrious culture massively overpowered. One thing I've noticed with them though is that infestation armies seem really bad at crossing mountains to come raid you because I constantly get messages about raids being sent that never arrive. I guess they just die against more easily accessible targets.
Skirmisher's discipline is pretty good actually, just not on a unit that requires 3 action points to attack, because sprint is only once per battle.
Also, don't forget the little button above the minimap for all your expansion planning needs. Wish that was hotkeyed, honestly. :P
Agreed about industrious culture and the mountains - I've been playing industrious in a lot of recent MP games with friends and it's crazy how much free stuff they can get each turn just by running four pioneers all over the place. It's even better considering they can repurpose all those free item pickups into making really good stuff in the item forge
Grew up in Illinois, winters are brutal. Also fun fact, -40 is approximately the same for farenheit and celcius, its where they intersect.
Yep, I have a friend in Britain and noticed that when I was translating Farenheit to Celsius during one of our conversations, haha :)
Remember that the harrier net adds a layer of marked. That means you get more damage out of the big guns.
Indeed - I am aware of this but not sure if I actually said anything about it during the episode. Later on I also might grab glade runner archers since they get a free target mark as well. You can stack marked like crazy in this game with the right setup >:)
I would give anything to see a Mole hero as Joe from legal from the Muppets Now show just to hear the Joe laugh in episode 1. 🤣
Man I like the Muppet movies but I don't think I ever saw that one...sounds like I might be missing out! "Joe from Legal" seems like a solid hero name anyway though, but there's at least one other that needs to come first :)
I am not sure about infestations, but I think they usually just attack the nearest player city (no matter if it is an AI of human player) I don't think they attack free cities, but I seem to remember them attacking vassal cities. I don't think they have a max range they can attack at, as I have been attacked by some very far away.
If so, that means I'm gonna have to clear this stuff out quickly. Fortunately I think my army is big enough that I should be able to start clearing the derelict workshops to the west. It's that one in the corner to the east that really bugs me - that's gonna take forever to get to :(
Remember, when you fight Bone Horrors, that the skeletons they spawn come in not on defense mode. If you have a horror pinned, shoot it down with magelocks and then the pinning units can slaughter the hapless new skeletons straight away.
Great advice here, thank you! I knew the skeletons didn't benefit from first strike (despite holding spears), but did not realize that they technically aren't in defense mode. Good to know!
Definitely looking forward to this. The realm creation was cool and I've been fumbling a bit with the reavers, so it'll be a great learning experience to see what you do with them.
In all honesty, it's going to be a learning experience for me as well. Although I've practiced with them a bit, this will be my first full playthrough as a Reaver. I'm kinda learning this game as I go since everything is relatively new, lol
Good to see you back Bob. Nice lore 🙂. Personally, I’m glad you did the large map.
I think I'm ok with it too. There's so many mountains that will eat up a lot of the space, so this still gives room for both myself and the AI to grow during both the early and mid game. Might make for much more powerful AI in the late game as well, which could be both interesting and terrifying, haha...
Ty for the explanation of your tactics and strategy. Really helps understand the game. Great vids btw
Thank you so much! Glad to hear that my videos are helping :)
@@BlackArrowGaming i know your a busy man but do you find AoW4 a bit more engaging than AoW3? I find that the Economic System and your land grab process tons better. Planetfall def tried to make it better but still fell short.
@@MtnLionFHL In general, I like AOW 4 more than AOW 3 in "almost" every way, haha. I think the province system works very well, and the province adjacency bonuses that you can take advantage of remind me a bit of city planning in civ 6 (which I love).
The biggest thing I can think of that AOW 3 did better than AOW 4 is the map itself. For whatever reason, AOW 3's maps just felt a bit more "grand" and believable to me. I think it's because land maps had more interesting features such as large rivers and lakes, bridges on important chokepoints, etc. AOW 4's province system seems to prevent some of these more interesting terrain features from showing up, but I also can see how it makes economic development much more interesting, so I think it's at least somewhat justified.
Another thing I think AOW 3 handled a littler better than AOW 4 is the diversity between the different races and unique abilities that would show up only with specific combinations of a certain race and class. For example, an orc theocrat could make orc crusaders with "tireless" (unlimited retaliation attacks). Barring combat spells, there was no other way to get that on a crusader aside from that very specific niche combo, which I think was fun. That's not to say AOW 4 is all bad though. I think the idea of being able to customize your own race also has it's merits and can be a lot of fun for coming up with your own niche strategies. I just feel that they could lean a bit more into making each race feel a little more unique.
IMO, this biggest missed opportunity for AOW 4 was not bringing over the "unit mod" system from Planetfall. In planetfall, every individual unit could be equipped with up to three mods, allowing you to customize each individual unit on a very granular level. Better mods cost more resources to upkeep, and certain mods were better at helping you deal with specific types of threats, so it make the whole system feel very balanced and important. In AOW 4, unit mods have essentially been replaced by empire-wide buffs for specific types of units (like giving sundering blades to melee fighters). It is much, much more basic, and you basically just stack as many enchantments on all of your units as possible provided your mana upkeep can afford it. IMO, limiting it to three enchantments per unit and letting you select which ones you want on each individual unit (kinda like Planetfall) would make unit enchantments feel far more interesting and meaningful.
@@BlackArrowGaming Agree with almost everything you wrote here.
In the case of the gremlins standing in gold, I’d vote to leave them in situ until you can go and capture one. The Overseer is your go to support unit. Harriers immobilize a gremlin, the Overseer subdues it, and it’s out of combat and can be yours permanently for 40 war spoils after combat.😊 slow to get, but maybe faster than via tome research….
If I can find some, I'd gladly take them - just need to get a couple overseers while still somehow affording to pay the rest of my bills, haha. My economy is being stretched to the limit right now, mostly just because I have so many units being supported by only one city. Not sure if I should go after the derelict workshops next or just go try to capture the city state to the north. economically, capturing the city state is a better option, but the workshops are gonna send stuff to attack my capital if I don't deal with them first.
I wrote this comment super early in the video-they were killed while you were on your way to clearing the first Wonder, and long before you spammed more irregulars than your city could fund. You had, though, just outlined how important gremlins were to synergize with magelocks, before you annihilated your first opportunity to acquire some….😂
@@Aneirin2000 Oh, yeah I see what you're saying now. That's a good point, didn't consider "saving" them until I had overseers. But I think they were also standing on a stash of gold that I really wanted in the short term. So maybe Steve just saw the pile of gold and got a little impatient >:)
Nice to have you back!
Thanks slice! It's nice to have a little break in between series, but I enjoy getting back in touch with everyone when a new series launches :)
Steve from accounting should have an ally...Bob from internal audit xD
I like it, but there's one or two other names that we need to hire first :)
Love you man, good luck on the new series
Thanks so much! There are six dragons involved, so I will take all the good luck wishes I can get XD
first time watchin one of your vids, and of this game too. but the intro for steve from accounting immediately sold me on watchin lmao.
Who knew that all it would take to get more views would be to play a fantasy strategy game as a federal civil service employee? Haha XD
Glad to have you around :)
Only thing i don't like with magelocks is their accuracy at large distance. i feel like they are supposed to be sniper units. But they loose it as fast as common archers, so getting +3 range (base, enchantment and legend medal) doesn't really help, you'll have 75% accurancy penalty even without terrain/units.
Also by thumbnail i thought thats YOU gonna pay taxes (like cosly army upkeep and other increases).
Nice start btw :)
Yeah, the accuracy penalties for long range can be rough, but with the combination of keen sight (which my units have) and marked (which I can get a lot of), it still works pretty well. I would say keen sight is almost a requirement for this build, but my friend likes to use overwhelm tactics for the extra crit chance instead (since a crit hit on a magelock flank attack with this build is unbelievably devastating)
And I guess with how much upkeep is costing me at this point, the "tax season" description does seem applicable to me as well, haha
@@BlackArrowGaming The question of Overwhelm Tactics versus Keen-sight is really driving me nuts - I simply cannot choose! ;)
@@alfarabi73 I would suggest choosing based on your planned build. Are you planning to stack crit chance from other sources? Overwhelm tactics (combined with certain tome enchantments and affinity upgrades) can help you achieve 100% crit rate. Bear in mind, however, that you still have to hit the target to land the crit.
(Fun side note: In the initial build of the game, you actually did NOT need to land the hit in order to land a critical hit. As long as your crit chance was at 100%, you could never miss. That's what my "archer crit build" series was all about, but it has since been patched out of the game...for good reason, lol. It was horribly overpowered, haha.)
@@BlackArrowGamingIndeed, I heard about the original critical hit calculation mechanic. It's mind-boggling that the devs instituted that in the first place. It is neither intuitive nor balanced! ;)
I am very surprised that you have not used imperium to boost your city grow at all, doing so in the very early game is a very good way to jumpstart your city. The only reason to not do it, is if you want to get a very early second city going, but you are clearly not doing that.
The AI you have found is very far away, I find it unlikely that none are closer (in my most recent games I have had AI start very close to me) so I suspect that one or more are closer to you underground (or even in the close part of the unexplored overground part of the map)
I'm not opposed to boosting city borders with imperium in the early game - I usually just try to avoid if possible. My general rule of thumb is that I usually only boost border growth if (A) I absolutely need it in order to boost production of a building or (B) to prevent a city state or other player from grabbing a province that I want. In this particular case, I haven't felt the need to do it for either of those reasons, but I think I might need to do it at least once pretty soon in order to get to the second town hall upgrade faster. Will see how much food I get from clearing that other wonder first.
For what it's worth, I "hope" you're wrong about the AI being that close underground, but I have a feeling you might be right. I really need them to fight each other, at least for a little bit. The worst case scenario is that one side targets me while the other side just builds up and get really strong. If they start claiming seals while I'm busy dealing with their enemies for them, that could be really bad. Basically, I need to keep an even amount of pressure on both sides without crippling them to the extent that the other side becomes too powerful. I don't think I've ever played a game with a dynamic like that, so it should hopefully be interesting!
Welcome back, glad to see you at it again!
Thanks so much, it's good to be back in contact will all my UA-cam friends :D
Would be nice if Land Maps would chill on the mountains a bit, give more open space, and maybe a few small bodies of water.
If you really want insane on mountains though -- go Land with Highlands selected.
Yeah I'm in the same boat as you, would like land maps to have a bit less mountains and some water features, like above ground lakes and maybe a couple larger rivers here and there
Hahaha, you know ... we have a say here in my Country that the only two certain things in live are death and taxes ... so if the dragons aren't paying their taxes ... what choice is there but the other certainty.
>:)
1:28:19 You got 400 food from the lair of silk...
Yeah I figured that's what it was probably from. And that would be double to original reward amount because of the "fabled hunters" society trait. Honestly, it's such an incredibly powerful economic trait, especially early in the game...it's crazy good.
@@BlackArrowGaming It is indeed a very good trait, I have used it quite often. It is even better if you use "regenerating infestations" in the map setup (which I like to use)
@@Kris_Lighthawk in my very first game i turned regenerating infestations on because that's kinda how barbarian camps work in civ, but with the world difficulty level on the hardest setting they quickly became more than I could handle, haha. But yeah, I can see how fabled hunters would be a solid choice for any map with that modifier. Never thought of that before!
@@BlackArrowGaming True, depending on map settings, regenerating infestations can be rather overwhelming, sometimes to a degree that even highest difficulty AI have great troubles with them in some areas of the map.
Great to have you back!
Thanks umardara, glad to have you back for another series as well!
new series! great :)
definitely will watch it!
Thanks Michael! Glad to have you around!
This should be interesting. Playing against the dragons was easier than I thought it would be, although I did have two other players and allied with one side. The big advantage for you is that you got a corner spot, which should help, but if one of the northern dragons gets going on the gateway victory, that might make it a bit tough for you to be able to get to them.
So some observations from the cheap seats. First, I think you have to be more careful on your army movement to stay out of the ash and to try to use friendly territory to heal your units. You missed a golden opportunity to do this with the very first fight when you could have had your main stack with in 3 hexes of your target, but very close to your city border and sent the scout down initiate the fight. You take damage and you simply step back in to get the big heals between turns. As it was because you committed your whole stack, no one got any healing.
Character development: I think it is more important to beef up your army early/help your economy. I agree with the sprint pick, but after that, it should have been inspiring leader to help your economy (remember reaper pike are more expensive than normal T1 units because of the merc tag) and then beefing up your T1 units with the tag that added hps, etc to them. (Pikes are going to be your front liners for awhile and the skirmishers are squishy). Given Reapers are so squishy, you should have gotten the T3 elemental summon. It would have made a big difference early game. For some reason, you seem to like the regen one and it simply isn't that good. Too easy to knock regen off units and if you are depending on it to heal up units, then I think you are in trouble.
Economic decisions had me scratching my head at times. You were busy pumping units out like crazy and now you have a severe economic issue. Perhaps better to slow roll some out because you had T2 units coming. I would have strongly considered a second leader even with the upkeep costs. You need them to beef up your army and the sooner they start leveling the better. I think you should have taken the cash from the encounter. Your income was very low and you wiped out your cash reserve building those units and now have a single digit income a turn. Also, you should have picked the Chaos one that gives you cash per kill before the last fight. You killed 6 enemies there, so that would have been a nice haul.
Reminder to get the forge at some point. One of the easiest items you can usually build is feet which give you extra movement and won't provoke an opportunity attack.
Overall a good first episode and looking forward to more. BTW, I was stationed in Great Lakes for 5 years umm.. a long time ago. I feel your pain from the cold. 😁 (Sorry for the book)
Thanks Klydon! Lots of good feedback here, will do my best to break down where we agree and where we differ:
First, I agree that some mistakes were made with army movement/positioning for healing purposes. I'll try to be more mindful of this going forward. I'm not used to playing with this combination of map traits active, but i should get the hang of it pretty soon :)
Totally agree with you on picking up inspiring leader as I forgot about the increased upkeep cost of mercenary units. I'll make a note to grab that and some other leadership bonuses for Steve!
As for taking the regen hero signature skill over the elemental summon, this was primarily because I really wanted to start getting nature affinity income. Nature affinity empire upgrades are some of the best in the game IMO, and I don't plan on picking many nature tomes. If I can get a little extra nature affinity from hero skills that have some decent utility, I'm ok with that. If the T3 elemental summon pops up again later, I'll probably grab it then.
Economically speaking, I agree that I've basically ground my economy to a halt by building a military that's a bit too big for the city that's supporting it. However,, I'm ok with this given how many infestation spawners are around me, and how much money I'm going to get from taking their stuff out. This build relies heavily upon breaking/pillaging stuff as a major source of income, and there's plenty of stuff around me to fight, so I'm not too worried about that right now. Although I am planning to prioritize getting some gold-generating stuff in my capital asap.
That all being said, you're 100% correct about how I should have taken that chaos affinity perk before the last fight - good call!
No worries about the "book" :p
@@BlackArrowGaming I get it on the Nature affinity and I absolutely agree with you that the Nature affinity is one of the strongest branches in terms of goodies, especially with the biome you are playing in.
Also given the biome and what you can do from a race standpoint of view, you might say that IRS = Infernal Revenue Service, but that might be something for a future playthrough. 😁
My Gloomhaven campaign has a Craig from Accounting and a Vernon from IT, I wonder if they work at the same firm as Steve?
Steve works for the IRS at the moment, but throughout the history of my videos he has had many other employers as well...so it's possible! XD
Skirmisher discipline is like having SPRINT all the time on..its pretty good for your guy..BUt then you need to reset the SPRINT cos its a waste of upgrade then.You just lose that extra movement
Yeah, I eventually decided against it because there's no point in using it for rifle heroes. They need all three action points to fire, so sprint is better for them. Skirmisher discipline doesn't help them at all unless they get surrounded and you need to make a last-minute retreat
I see you are a real hardcore player. Thanks for the broadcasts, but how do you feel about the guides? I really miss them in this game
What do you mean by guides? Sorry - just not sure what guides you're referring to
OMG the lore part made me almost choke on my salad.
I literally spat out my rice cake during the "Lore" explanation.
@@stewartgames6697 XD
Hahaha - well I'm glad you didn't actually choke, but I'm pretty sure a couple keyboards out there might no longer be in service due to people taking a drink at the wrong time :p
Almost isn't good enough, step it up Steve.
i am yet to try the ashen war scenario but seems like a good time to do it before primal fury!
I know, right? I'm trying to keep up with all the cool new content, but my series take so long that I feel like I'm always one major update behind, haha. At least that's a good problem to have :)
Any reason you picked "land" for the geography aspect of the map?
TBH I originally intended to play this one on Pangea, but it felt like that map crunched everyone up more towards the middle so I opted for a land map instead to spread the players out a bit more.
That being said, I also intended to set the map size to large (instead of huge), so things ended up being a bit more spread out than I initially was hoping for, lol. Oops...
I didn't include oceans because I feel like naval combat still needs some work in this game. I would like to see more ships and stuff.
@@BlackArrowGamingAll makes sense - thanks!
Hello, "Bob".
Hello "Julius" ;p
good lore
Thanks - I put many hours of careful thought into it ;p
BOB you live in ILLINOIS? no way. I am in Chicago... Tell me if you wanna connect.i live in Roscoe village
that's nice of you to offer but I'd rather not give hints as to where "specifically" i do/don't live within the state for security reasons :)
@@BlackArrowGaming Hehe Okay my man.Loving your playthroughs but so little time to watch these days with my daughter growing .. i plan to watch your next solo AOW4 playthrough
@@TheRealSlobo Family comes, first, man! It's all good :)
YAY
:D