As someone who loves adaptation traits for singleplayer rp purposes, I know all too well that they are terrible. Getting info on what's actually good is a great help though. Thank you!
Not sure if this is mentioned in the video (haven't watched this one yet), but Arctic Adaptation has its use to speed up turning the world snowy in the "Tome of the Cold Dark" build, which gives you a ton of ever-precious Knowledge. It's a tempo play, but one that can be useful.
alot of his bad traits/tomes are actually decent with the right setup. Remember that most of his streams are MULTIPLAYER and multiplayer 4x have alot of rush which is why he do his calls as he does them. I get where he is comming from but I disagree with a number of his calls, I love medival culture for some of its buffstructures and cheaper upkeep. Another call is I don't mind losing and replacing units so tier 1 spearmen and a bunch of culture units he talked less well about I have gotten alot of use out of. That said medieval isn't my most used culture, I prefer barbarian, reaver, dark or industrial. I don't like high that much, they do have a everything unit setup that is solid but I rather use the more focused ones. Same can be said of traits universal ones will be decent more often but a more specialised one can carry supringly hard depending on map. I played a free for all/coop map + water with my mates and a few AI and we had regular underground size. Me having a underground adopted culture gave me alot of space to develop more or less uncontested and I could use underground tunnels to avoid sea battles entirely. Ofc with a small underground it is less useful. I have a faction that my mates hate fighting that is Primal flaming sabretooth with raider trait. Why do they take steps around it? My cities mean so little to them ( terrain are scorched ) and I burn cities rather than fight over them mid game to feed economy/bonus population thanks to chaos traits...which extends the reach of the scorched terrain around my cities. You could theoreticly do something similar with primal spider and underground or crocodile and marches.
Just got into this game watching Legend of Total War, who was my guru for years for that franchise (from Rome to Warhammer). Subbed to you now for this one, thank you so much for putting all this info, thoughts, and opinions out there for the newbies like me. this is exactly the kind of content I was looking for and you've delivered in spades.
100% play single player and 100% use random maps, so I love the adaptation traits. Getting stuck underground next to the sea is terrifying, which is why I take traits that make me more of a universal colonizer. Nothing I hate more than getting an underground start map and being instantly destroyed by it. It may not be optimal, but it’s fun! Same with the seafarers pick, not great, especially on non-water maps, but my economy isn’t devastated when it is. It’s honestly why I have 0 interest in mp strategy games. It so quickly kills variety and turns the game into a spreadsheet… that’s just me though, to each their own.
I am definitely more of roleplayer than a competitor. If I play pure competitive MP with these games, I’ll only be allowed to play like…1 or 2 playstyles and that’s it. It would ruin 90% of the fun of the game. But these vids are still interesting to watch
41:15 Poisonous is very strong, because what did poison counters? Regeneration! So if you immune to poison and use regeneration enemy will have to work harder to dispel it, also it threatens to remove regen from melee enemies. Also poison is very common debuf, and can be even more common in some realms with wild life traits (etc. Overgrown Realm, Wildlands, Rampant Flora and some others), helps in map swiping. Just pity other traits don't give immunity for other common debufs, like burning or electrified. Also inner skills not only can counter enemy, they can counter cons of your builds, for example inner lightning would help astral builds or those who take iron skin, inner fire helps your umbral demos or plant transformations. I suppose it something. Also keen-sighted very strong for maglock builds, heroes or units.
@@lege3018 personally, i think poisonous is better if going celestial because tome of warding gives you frost resistance and is, imo, an excellent starting tome for a high into celestial build. Also, for some reason, it gives poison immunity as an additional benefit.
I think that of the blood/poisonous traits you might be undervalueing poisonous. On top of making the unit imune to poison it works well with defensive wards in the tome of warding. Ive been messing with a High/Pyre Templar build where i take the poisonous trait, some other defensive traits, and start with tome of warding. This gives me resistance to every elemental damage type except spirit. But, eventually, with the celestial tag, all my units just end up getting every elemental resistance. Poisonous also halps dawn shields be better at killing enemies early and contributes to pyre templars and daylight spears being unattackable in melee.
Really appreciate your videos. I’ve only been playing AoW for about a week and I’m loving it. I’m a TWH3 convert so I’ve appreciated your explanation of the mechanics as well as discussions around some of the past meta and current meta. No MP yet, been really enjoying the campaign as I get used to the game.
Personally I think Adaptable is actually a good trait, considering it is just 1 point. Reaching higher levels 1-2 maybe even 3 fights faster would get you 2 more hp than Hardy for that duration. Since I've been playing Reavers in Campaign lately, I noticed that getting that Champion Rank on your magelocks really improves your clearing potential (on manual). You have good multiplayer experience, so I'll trust in Hardy being generally better, though I think there are some arguments for adaptable depending on your setup and that it should be very good on ranged focused builds (that apparently aren't meta)
Adaptable is probably also just a crutch for Feudal to be a little less terrible, since you get to convert your peasants into defenders faster. But why would you do that?
@@simplythecat4068 I did that with my dragon build. The idea was to get build stuff around the Tome of Evolution, so it helped that I could spend 50 gold to get what in two fights would be a tier 2 unit (prolific swarmers + the blacksmith upgrades). I also played with autoresolve most battles, and had flying eagle trait, so the defender could get to the frontline as quickly as the dragons, the pikeman could not. It's a niche build, but I think it works to get dragons to work, which is what I wanted. I wanted to fight with dragons, that's all.
I wonder if you have it set up with 'Draconic Vitality' or something too, you can be getting something like +6 H.P. per unit early on too. Essentially giving you hardy for 'Just' playing the game.
A big problem with herbivore is that the ai likes to run away from a melee fight to go eat a tree, which can trigger a retaliation attack. For that reason, i usually go herbivor only if i picked swiftfoot raptors/ elusive. Another synergy with bulwark is tome of the construct. A chain defensive mode is bonkers. Mammoth/elephant mounts can combo with supergrowth, making all your units single model entities who always do full damage. Personally i think that the entire form trait should be reworked. Double the amount of points to 10, and double the number of points that the majority of traits give. Better traits can cost a point more, and worse traits can cost a point less, making it much easier to balance. Personally, i also think that the swamp adaptation etc should just cost 0 trait points
Sharp eyes is one of those things that is immenseley hard to actually judge: +1 vision range is actually a pretty big increase in number of tiles uncovered, and scouting the map earlier means you know where to go earlier and that acn help you snowball earlier etc. These kind of scouting bonuses can be very handy but they're just about impossible to quantify.
pack tactics actually has a decent benefit for the early game - it allows to kill strong high tier units more easily, if at all, so you can clear infestations and wonders earlier that you would otherwise. like, all you need to do is to surround enemy on your turn and then attack with every unit, everyone would have 40%-60% more damage, which is a game changer. combine with sneaky and that one spell that applies distracted and suddenly you can fight battles you normally would lose.
10:40 Played feudal two days ago, and when I used CALL TO GLORY on my units with cheerful, they got +8 morale instead of +5, as the spell says. So I suppose cheerful works. If you're wondering why I played a feudal with cheerful, I wanted to see how much you can push tome archers in a solo game. I didn't care for cultural archers, but feudal gave me +20 dmg from stand together, overwhelm tactics gave another +20 while they stand together, but this time for my critical, I also took keen sighted for accuracy and cheerful for additional morale and crit procs. At last took Tome of Alchemy as starting tome for afflicators as starting archers. I was pleased with the end result.
Took me 2 tier list videos to find this one where face cam was active. I knew I recognized the voice, what up hashinshin! Seeing you makes me feel 10 years younger
Great video as a big player my self with tons of hours the oathsworn works super good with bulwark. I do find if u are using swamp, it combos seafarers, gives u a guaranteed river or an ocean start witch combos very nicely. Other than that, the others are a no-good for the most part. I do strongly agree wirh everything else u have said in n general. Keep up the great videos.
On hideous stench and sneaky: Try reavers with it. Let the enemy alpha strike your mercenary. Then use something to immobilize or freeze the enemy (harrier / ice witch). Then try to mind control it (overseer / nymph). There, one unit taken out of combat, maybe fighting for you. With nymph if it it's not mind controlled it's distracted. One or the other. Now the not mind controlled unit suffers 50% more damage from the magelocks and magecannons. It's dead. Mind controlling like this can make you have an 18 unit army very, very quick in the early game. So you snow ball from that, not from having units heal more, from stealing other people's units.
The one mild synergy for Ferocious is that you can use the Taunt ability to force enemies to walk off of one unit to try and get at another, eating an opportunity attack from the unit that came and thumped them last turn. Bonus points if they can't actually reach the unit that taunted them (but have a technically valid path to it so they have to try).
I feel like "Cold Blooded" is fairly important in multiplayer because an opponent can play a morale build against you. I've got friends who play chaos/shadow tomes and specifically make builds that will bomb morale to make 6-8 units run almost the moment our lines meet (with nightmare mounts ofc). There, cold blooded basically acts to counter them. But even beyond counter, you will eventually end up i 18vs 18 battles, even vs ai, and then morale is a big issue. It's also a 1 point trait that admittedly is for the late-game, but I'd argue it's such an important part of the lategame that it's risky to miss it out. Cheerful can work but it works by needing you to use action economy (like using a spell to raise morale) whereas cold blooded forces the opponent to lose action economy by needing twice as many debuff spells. Surely anything that causes that imbalance in action economy benefits you more, hence why cold blooded should be better than cheerful. And if you're winning enough that you can afford to cast buff spells on yourself rather than cc the enemy, then it's just "win-more" in the first place.
I think that Fast Recuperation is on par with the other best traits you've listed. Does the same thing as them early/late game, allowing you to fight more. I've found it even more useful with the hero/3 units compostion for XP boosting than 2 defense/resistance because some times you fight mostly against magical, other mostly against physical, plus it's better when you are getting from one zone to build an outpost to another.
Ferocious makes itself a STRONG niche with bulwark in righteous oathsworn builds with knight warrior heros you can have extremely dangerous honor blade and hero stacks as early as your first or second tome. Of course any build can make anything good in this game I just wanted to add that there is a new niche for ferocious races that did not exist before ways of war dlc.
Tier 1 traits that I have played with/have an opinion on. 1. Desert is worse than you made it out to be. Starting cities usually have 3 cleared resourse nodes adjacent at the start. (iron, gold, and pastures) Desert doesn't start with pastures and doesn't get replaced with oasis(10 food is not a lot, but you're nerfing your start) Undergound on the other felt good to use(only 1 game, so grain of salt). You start with excavation(100 Imperium). Whenever you excavate a resource node is created in that province(can be magic material, but unlikely). Industrial pioneer can exploit and extract in the same turn(need to position corrrectly), which also creates more places to exploit. Adaptable is worth 2hp early game. First two rank ups is 10 hp each, 20% of 10 is 2. Will make more comments later.
1:15:20 This one is important Graceful Judge Mount is actually very cool, yes it's not a dinosaur, but it is even better: it is based of Kirin - Japanese (asian) unicorn, with sometime described as dragon, stag and some other animal (like tiger or horse) hybrid and hi is considered as protector of the forest. Also in Japanese giraffe is called kirin. It's not a good choice in a game, but he looks and sounds cool enough to take this trait anyway.
imho, arctic adaptation is an extremely interesting pick because of marching winter it means you save money on roads, get bonus production and food and can be extremely quick on the map if you focus on mounted units i'm always surprised at how much i miss arctic adaptation's bonus movement when i'm not playing with a marching winter build
Arctic Adaption I think has a use, and that use is Tome of Cryomancy. Using Arctic Adaption can help a lot with getting their Schools of Cryomancy Research Stations to also provide a hefty Mana Income early game. While Cold Dark might not be as important do to having better tools for making Arctic Terrain, getting Frostspires without needing to use Marching Winter is I feel is still worth it a lot of the time.
Arcane Focus/Hideous Stench for Dragons is always fun. Bull Charge Heros who end their turns in Defense mode, add in Charge Resistance and your hero just becomes unbelievably brutal
Gotta to check if Dragon Lord's Dragon breath counts toward Empowered by Magic, since it has Magic tag. Could potentially get Strengthened for your entire army. Unfortunately, need level 12 to opt for breath not doing damage to allied troops before checking out. As a side note, already ascended my High Dragon lord via tome of Goddess of Nature, now his twin awakening innate free action and dragon roar provide himself and allies with additional stacking regeneration.
im kind of maniac: - i always take "hardy", love more hp (and adds up to mounts traits) - i always take underground adapt because i love underground (i replace by elusive when i get primal culture) + i havent met players bothering me underground ^^ - i always take a mount trait (love 80% of them ^^, i got rare exeption where i replace by elusive + resistance) => i havent tested "cheerful" but i always take doomherald tome + celebration tome, i wonder how it would impact them (but i dont have points for this trait anyway) side note: you gain a lot of movements with desolation adaptation and underground adaptation, while you slow enemies if you paint grounds with primal cultures or abyss society
A way to better describe defense and resistance: each stack of defense/resistance multiplies incoming physical/magical damage by 0.9 Or in shorter terms, stacks of defense/resistance scales multiplicatively. Notably, each stack of defense/resistance is a consistent effective HP increases of x1.111.... , which is equivalent to 10 HP on a 90 HP hero.
Fumbles do not apply on hit effects at all. That's why Cacophany can be good with a misfortune build - opponents will just not be able to stick their on hit effects to you, which can strip a huge amount of damage off of their units.
Buffs to vision range are exponentially good, as it reveals tons more tiles per +1 tile range. Of course how powerful the information you get is, can vary a ton.
Keen sighted should really be in the "good for the right build" as 20% damage increase in a ranged focused build is not bad in any way. Keen sighted and Strong, Reaver Magelocks tends to get rid of enemys. Keen Sighted and Arcane Focus, Astral may also be worth it by going for Battlemages in addition to Mage heroes. While it doesn't help with the area effect attacks so are there still some base shooting being done. They are very focused on doing that specific thing, so obviously not a generic good trait.
Hideous stench is so close to being good, like I could easily see it suddenly getting a perk like "It makes enemies distracted" and then suddenly it becomes broken BS.
The Realm World-Map Spellcasting should count towards some pool that buffs your civ in some way (e.g. if you have a specific society trait or something the more you use it the more the buff stacks - or more snow, swamp, etc. = 1 coin per turn). But Swamp out of the other terrain-traits seems like the most useful generally with river movement. I know I picked the wrong game for it, but I don't like casting 50 spells. I want a comfortable & defensible position & maybe to use my terraforming spell aggressively to inhibit enemy growth for example. - I really don't like the number of games that just add in terraforming spells randomly in on the side. They make it too quick & easy & you barely play with it apart from random run-throughs where you're Role-Playing some Terraforming Robots just following their protocol or an invading horde like how most corruption from another dimension works in W.C. III & Warhammer, etc. *Thinking for Keen-Sighted - that taking the Longer Range High Archer units, this becomes more useful with that +1 Awakened Range. - Still new, but trying out Keen-Sighted + Strong + (just put Cheerful on) - this is with High Units & wanting to get a feel for critical chance and such. Was thinking of going hardy, but trying to maximise it - take out retaliation with distracted or just flanking & crit with lots of base damage. - Playing Warframe & learning/figuring out from builds & on my own, that damage is maximised when you balance the growth of each stat. So 100% crit chance from 1 great & 3 okay traits isn't as good as 1 great trait in damage, crit chance, crit damage & attack speed. So I try to replicate that here - 50% damage (awakened + strong) with 30% increased (Crit Chance Hero & Cheerful). Was thinking of Joy Siphoners with 'Tome of DoomHerald', just 9 moral taken in a 3-shot volley which I think should be boosted by cheerful & if you Crit it's even more.
How about adding a bonus against other mounted units to elephants? Maybe a morale debuff? Historically, elephants were used as anti-cavalry units due to horses being afraid of them. I get that all mounts are not horses in this game, but it seems reasonable enough and a bonus that only works against mounted units is not as powerful.
Echoing other sentiments here. Most of these traits are for RP/theme purposes. It would be cool if everything could be balanced perfectly, but that could never happen. There is basically only 1 combo or variation of that combo you should ever pick if you want optimal. Tough, Resilient, and Enduring. The other combo is, drop 1 of the 2 pointers and the 1 pointer and take elephants or mammoths. That's it. For MP that is SSS tier, nothing else comes close. In fact, the combo of tough and resilient is so blatantly better than everything else, many, if not most MP house rule them as mutually exclusive. If you don't care about hyper sweat competitive MP, of all 15 of the people who play that way in the community, the adaptation traits are absolutely fine. You can win on any level of SP difficulty with any build you want to play with.
Also, IIRC Mammoths/Elephants reduce the model count more than regular mounts, I want to say it's actually possible to get down so that regular units are single model by stacking Mamefants+supergrowth?
So, Keen sighted. While all of you said is generally true (at least i can agree with it), you missed Reavers on that piont: With base 65℅ accuracy its almost impossible to annoy or scare people (because lack of damage, even with "Sneaky") to that point, where they are decide to rush you and lock you down. In that situation you are forced to move one hex closer, where you will find youseld in situation, where any 40 movespeed unit will reach you. Not a good spot. Second thing, bug it or not, but im not sure, how "proc on hit" Works on heroes, because if you use ranger hero ability with canceling defensive mode and retaliation strike, and it glance - it won't work. So, at least for now, keen sighted is stronger than it seems.
The only culture I feel like gets any real benefit from Keen Sighted is Reavers with a magelock hero. It is less about keen sighted being good and more about keen sighted being weirdly good at negating the major weakness the devs gave magelocks to compensate for them hitting like a freight train. I ran a sneaky/keen sighted/elusive reaver build and while not exactly optimal it did accomplish the goal of doing big stupid damage with the big stupid guns
@13:30 think youre looking for the term Effective HP.
6 годин тому
how do you feel about a tenacious + dragon tranformation + spawnkin combo? it *feels* pretty good in single player but i didn't have the chance to try it in multiplayer yet. how would you fill the build up?
I have played this game for way over 300hrs, and just now learned the following: Adaptable doesn't effect summoned units. Cheerful now gives you morale (maybe?) How defense stacks (10% of remaining damage per stack) Calvary reduces the number of models you have. Cacophony only actually mitigate 7% of damage Thanks for this.
White wolf mount for hero give 2 frost resistence, but it do not give it to the racial unit, that meant only hero get it when we get the trait, so i get it with inerfrost, to give the hero 4 frost resist but the unit only get 2, even on white wolf, i think it’s an over sight
I think you didn't mention that Flying mounts all reduce your model count to 2 (just like Elephant/Mammoth). This (obviously) makes them far more valuable than the other mounts, which are actually quite bad tbh.
I'd say the location adaption traits are more about role-playing purposes. Also, I think adaptable is one of the best traits. Leaders and heroes can use this trait, which can really help giving you more level options before everyone else.
@NextAgeHunter you can look at the experience growth by taking a similar node fight with/without the trait and a Wizard King Champion. You'll see the same growth in either case for your hero UNLESS you are a Mortal Champion. Which gets the +20% Exp Gain.
Imagine if he gave pills of wisdom on the game in the form of Shorts, as a consideration to the adhd population! Instead 2 and 3 hours uncut rambling! You viewer sort it out! lol No bro, cant stand videos 5 minutes long, imagine this, no matter how much I love AoW4
As someone who loves adaptation traits for singleplayer rp purposes, I know all too well that they are terrible. Getting info on what's actually good is a great help though. Thank you!
Not sure if this is mentioned in the video (haven't watched this one yet), but Arctic Adaptation has its use to speed up turning the world snowy in the "Tome of the Cold Dark" build, which gives you a ton of ever-precious Knowledge. It's a tempo play, but one that can be useful.
alot of his bad traits/tomes are actually decent with the right setup. Remember that most of his streams are MULTIPLAYER and multiplayer 4x have alot of rush which is why he do his calls as he does them. I get where he is comming from but I disagree with a number of his calls, I love medival culture for some of its buffstructures and cheaper upkeep. Another call is I don't mind losing and replacing units so tier 1 spearmen and a bunch of culture units he talked less well about I have gotten alot of use out of.
That said medieval isn't my most used culture, I prefer barbarian, reaver, dark or industrial. I don't like high that much, they do have a everything unit setup that is solid but I rather use the more focused ones.
Same can be said of traits universal ones will be decent more often but a more specialised one can carry supringly hard depending on map. I played a free for all/coop map + water with my mates and a few AI and we had regular underground size. Me having a underground adopted culture gave me alot of space to develop more or less uncontested and I could use underground tunnels to avoid sea battles entirely. Ofc with a small underground it is less useful.
I have a faction that my mates hate fighting that is Primal flaming sabretooth with raider trait. Why do they take steps around it? My cities mean so little to them ( terrain are scorched ) and I burn cities rather than fight over them mid game to feed economy/bonus population thanks to chaos traits...which extends the reach of the scorched terrain around my cities. You could theoreticly do something similar with primal spider and underground or crocodile and marches.
0:00 Introduction
2:40 Form traits explained
4:22 Adaption traits
7:22 Adaptable
8:46 Cheerful
9:45 Cold Blooded
12:03 Elusive
16:20 Hardy
17:30 Mount masters
20:23 Sharp Eyes
20:55 Arcane focus
22:47 Bulwark
25:50 Ceaseless cacophony
27:47 Empowered by magic
29:35 Fast recuperation
32:48 Ferocious
34:55 Herbivore
36:51 Inner Fire/Frost/Lightning
38:22 Keen-sighted
41:10 Light footed
42:44 Quick reflexes
43:57 Resilient
45:57 Resistant
48:49 Sneaky
50:21 Strong
51:57 Tenacious
53:43 Tough
54:56 Defensive tactics
58:06 Overwhelme tactics
58:20 Pack tactics
59:22 Athletics
1:02:25 Hideous stench
1:04:35 Dire bear
1:06:34 Blessed dragon + Flying mounts explained
1:08:12 Death beetles
1:10:30 Dread spider
1:11:23 Eagle
1:11:36 Elephant
1:13:27 Graceful judge
1:15:33 Mammoth
1:17:24 Nightmare
1:19:22 Pegasus
1:19:26 Swiftfoot Raptors
1:20:42 Unicorn
1:21:36 White wolf
1:23:08 Overall ranking
Just got into this game watching Legend of Total War, who was my guru for years for that franchise (from Rome to Warhammer). Subbed to you now for this one, thank you so much for putting all this info, thoughts, and opinions out there for the newbies like me. this is exactly the kind of content I was looking for and you've delivered in spades.
100% play single player and 100% use random maps, so I love the adaptation traits. Getting stuck underground next to the sea is terrifying, which is why I take traits that make me more of a universal colonizer.
Nothing I hate more than getting an underground start map and being instantly destroyed by it. It may not be optimal, but it’s fun! Same with the seafarers pick, not great, especially on non-water maps, but my economy isn’t devastated when it is.
It’s honestly why I have 0 interest in mp strategy games. It so quickly kills variety and turns the game into a spreadsheet… that’s just me though, to each their own.
@@voxkine9385 That's why you play MP roleplay sessions! :D
I am definitely more of roleplayer than a competitor. If I play pure competitive MP with these games, I’ll only be allowed to play like…1 or 2 playstyles and that’s it. It would ruin 90% of the fun of the game. But these vids are still interesting to watch
41:15 Poisonous is very strong, because what did poison counters? Regeneration! So if you immune to poison and use regeneration enemy will have to work harder to dispel it, also it threatens to remove regen from melee enemies. Also poison is very common debuf, and can be even more common in some realms with wild life traits (etc. Overgrown Realm, Wildlands, Rampant Flora and some others), helps in map swiping. Just pity other traits don't give immunity for other common debufs, like burning or electrified.
Also inner skills not only can counter enemy, they can counter cons of your builds, for example inner lightning would help astral builds or those who take iron skin, inner fire helps your umbral demos or plant transformations. I suppose it something.
Also keen-sighted very strong for maglock builds, heroes or units.
One thing about the flying mounts. It NEGATES the embarked debuff!!
Inner fire is really good when you know you wanna go undead with wightborne tho. S tier if you're going for that
Similarly, Inner Cold and Inner Lightning are good if you're going for Angelic Transformation and Astral Attunement, respectively.
Adding in Poisonous for Gaia's chosen to complete the square
@@lege3018 personally, i think poisonous is better if going celestial because tome of warding gives you frost resistance and is, imo, an excellent starting tome for a high into celestial build.
Also, for some reason, it gives poison immunity as an additional benefit.
Loving the Age of Wonders videos! You are the best channel for this game right now.
Glad you like them!
I think that of the blood/poisonous traits you might be undervalueing poisonous. On top of making the unit imune to poison it works well with defensive wards in the tome of warding.
Ive been messing with a High/Pyre Templar build where i take the poisonous trait, some other defensive traits, and start with tome of warding. This gives me resistance to every elemental damage type except spirit. But, eventually, with the celestial tag, all my units just end up getting every elemental resistance. Poisonous also halps dawn shields be better at killing enemies early and contributes to pyre templars and daylight spears being unattackable in melee.
Really appreciate your videos. I’ve only been playing AoW for about a week and I’m loving it. I’m a TWH3 convert so I’ve appreciated your explanation of the mechanics as well as discussions around some of the past meta and current meta. No MP yet, been really enjoying the campaign as I get used to the game.
P.S. - do race transformations overwrite each other or do they stack?
Minor transformations stack, you can have only one major.
Personally I think Adaptable is actually a good trait, considering it is just 1 point. Reaching higher levels 1-2 maybe even 3 fights faster would get you 2 more hp than Hardy for that duration. Since I've been playing Reavers in Campaign lately, I noticed that getting that Champion Rank on your magelocks really improves your clearing potential (on manual). You have good multiplayer experience, so I'll trust in Hardy being generally better, though I think there are some arguments for adaptable depending on your setup and that it should be very good on ranged focused builds (that apparently aren't meta)
Adaptable is probably also just a crutch for Feudal to be a little less terrible, since you get to convert your peasants into defenders faster. But why would you do that?
@@simplythecat4068 I did that with my dragon build. The idea was to get build stuff around the Tome of Evolution, so it helped that I could spend 50 gold to get what in two fights would be a tier 2 unit (prolific swarmers + the blacksmith upgrades). I also played with autoresolve most battles, and had flying eagle trait, so the defender could get to the frontline as quickly as the dragons, the pikeman could not.
It's a niche build, but I think it works to get dragons to work, which is what I wanted. I wanted to fight with dragons, that's all.
I wonder if you have it set up with 'Draconic Vitality' or something too, you can be getting something like +6 H.P. per unit early on too. Essentially giving you hardy for 'Just' playing the game.
Right but, it’s not how good something is, but how good it is compared to what else you could have. And that’s why it’s bad.
A big problem with herbivore is that the ai likes to run away from a melee fight to go eat a tree, which can trigger a retaliation attack. For that reason, i usually go herbivor only if i picked swiftfoot raptors/ elusive.
Another synergy with bulwark is tome of the construct. A chain defensive mode is bonkers.
Mammoth/elephant mounts can combo with supergrowth, making all your units single model entities who always do full damage.
Personally i think that the entire form trait should be reworked.
Double the amount of points to 10, and double the number of points that the majority of traits give. Better traits can cost a point more, and worse traits can cost a point less, making it much easier to balance. Personally, i also think that the swamp adaptation etc should just cost 0 trait points
👏below👏the👏two👏hours👏let's👏goooo!
45:30 The backstory for Guthuk is amazing
48:05 Peak fiction for Holuf-wyn
Sharp eyes is one of those things that is immenseley hard to actually judge: +1 vision range is actually a pretty big increase in number of tiles uncovered, and scouting the map earlier means you know where to go earlier and that acn help you snowball earlier etc. These kind of scouting bonuses can be very handy but they're just about impossible to quantify.
pack tactics actually has a decent benefit for the early game - it allows to kill strong high tier units more easily, if at all, so you can clear infestations and wonders earlier that you would otherwise. like, all you need to do is to surround enemy on your turn and then attack with every unit, everyone would have 40%-60% more damage, which is a game changer. combine with sneaky and that one spell that applies distracted and suddenly you can fight battles you normally would lose.
Inner Fire, Resistant, Tome of Warding and Pyromancers into Cleansing Flame=Free Strengthened and Cleanses and the glory of Anarchy!
10:40 Played feudal two days ago, and when I used CALL TO GLORY on my units with cheerful, they got +8 morale instead of +5, as the spell says. So I suppose cheerful works.
If you're wondering why I played a feudal with cheerful, I wanted to see how much you can push tome archers in a solo game. I didn't care for cultural archers, but feudal gave me +20 dmg from stand together, overwhelm tactics gave another +20 while they stand together, but this time for my critical, I also took keen sighted for accuracy and cheerful for additional morale and crit procs. At last took Tome of Alchemy as starting tome for afflicators as starting archers. I was pleased with the end result.
Took me 2 tier list videos to find this one where face cam was active. I knew I recognized the voice, what up hashinshin! Seeing you makes me feel 10 years younger
Would love a video on build order, or how to make such decisions. Just got the game and really appreciate your videos!
Great video as a big player my self with tons of hours the oathsworn works super good with bulwark. I do find if u are using swamp, it combos seafarers, gives u a guaranteed river or an ocean start witch combos very nicely. Other than that, the others are a no-good for the most part. I do strongly agree wirh everything else u have said in n general. Keep up the great videos.
the defense/res formula is dmg taken = 0.9^x, x being the actual stat.
On hideous stench and sneaky:
Try reavers with it. Let the enemy alpha strike your mercenary. Then use something to immobilize or freeze the enemy (harrier / ice witch). Then try to mind control it (overseer / nymph). There, one unit taken out of combat, maybe fighting for you.
With nymph if it it's not mind controlled it's distracted. One or the other. Now the not mind controlled unit suffers 50% more damage from the magelocks and magecannons. It's dead.
Mind controlling like this can make you have an 18 unit army very, very quick in the early game. So you snow ball from that, not from having units heal more, from stealing other people's units.
Yea, I thought you will do these after tomes, it needs it. You did it earlier, than I thought. Great aow4 content!
The one mild synergy for Ferocious is that you can use the Taunt ability to force enemies to walk off of one unit to try and get at another, eating an opportunity attack from the unit that came and thumped them last turn. Bonus points if they can't actually reach the unit that taunted them (but have a technically valid path to it so they have to try).
I feel like "Cold Blooded" is fairly important in multiplayer because an opponent can play a morale build against you. I've got friends who play chaos/shadow tomes and specifically make builds that will bomb morale to make 6-8 units run almost the moment our lines meet (with nightmare mounts ofc). There, cold blooded basically acts to counter them. But even beyond counter, you will eventually end up i 18vs 18 battles, even vs ai, and then morale is a big issue. It's also a 1 point trait that admittedly is for the late-game, but I'd argue it's such an important part of the lategame that it's risky to miss it out. Cheerful can work but it works by needing you to use action economy (like using a spell to raise morale) whereas cold blooded forces the opponent to lose action economy by needing twice as many debuff spells.
Surely anything that causes that imbalance in action economy benefits you more, hence why cold blooded should be better than cheerful. And if you're winning enough that you can afford to cast buff spells on yourself rather than cc the enemy, then it's just "win-more" in the first place.
you can get cold blooded for the army of a Lawbringer hero who has cleared a golden level infestation
I think that Fast Recuperation is on par with the other best traits you've listed. Does the same thing as them early/late game, allowing you to fight more. I've found it even more useful with the hero/3 units compostion for XP boosting than 2 defense/resistance because some times you fight mostly against magical, other mostly against physical, plus it's better when you are getting from one zone to build an outpost to another.
You gave me exactly what I was wondering about under your shadow tomes video, thank you!
Ferocious makes itself a STRONG niche with bulwark in righteous oathsworn builds with knight warrior heros you can have extremely dangerous honor blade and hero stacks as early as your first or second tome. Of course any build can make anything good in this game I just wanted to add that there is a new niche for ferocious races that did not exist before ways of war dlc.
Tier 1 traits that I have played with/have an opinion on.
1. Desert is worse than you made it out to be. Starting cities usually have 3 cleared resourse nodes adjacent at the start. (iron, gold, and pastures) Desert doesn't start with pastures and doesn't get replaced with oasis(10 food is not a lot, but you're nerfing your start)
Undergound on the other felt good to use(only 1 game, so grain of salt). You start with excavation(100 Imperium). Whenever you excavate a resource node is created in that province(can be magic material, but unlikely).
Industrial pioneer can exploit and extract in the same turn(need to position corrrectly), which also creates more places to exploit.
Adaptable is worth 2hp early game. First two rank ups is 10 hp each, 20% of 10 is 2.
Will make more comments later.
1:15:20 This one is important Graceful Judge Mount is actually very cool, yes it's not a dinosaur, but it is even better: it is based of Kirin - Japanese (asian) unicorn, with sometime described as dragon, stag and some other animal (like tiger or horse) hybrid and hi is considered as protector of the forest. Also in Japanese giraffe is called kirin. It's not a good choice in a game, but he looks and sounds cool enough to take this trait anyway.
Looking forward to this after work soon. Its nice to get another perspective that is different than mine on the game.
imho, arctic adaptation is an extremely interesting pick because of marching winter
it means you save money on roads, get bonus production and food and can be extremely quick on the map if you focus on mounted units
i'm always surprised at how much i miss arctic adaptation's bonus movement when i'm not playing with a marching winter build
Arctic Adaption I think has a use, and that use is Tome of Cryomancy.
Using Arctic Adaption can help a lot with getting their Schools of Cryomancy Research Stations to also provide a hefty Mana Income early game. While Cold Dark might not be as important do to having better tools for making Arctic Terrain, getting Frostspires without needing to use Marching Winter is I feel is still worth it a lot of the time.
I love how the Graceful Judge looks! It's the best looking mount in the game in my opinion.
Arcane Focus/Hideous Stench for Dragons is always fun.
Bull Charge Heros who end their turns in Defense mode, add in Charge Resistance and your hero just becomes unbelievably brutal
man this guy is my kind of guy so detiled welll deep thought. thanx worth the extra time
Gotta to check if Dragon Lord's Dragon breath counts toward Empowered by Magic, since it has Magic tag. Could potentially get Strengthened for your entire army. Unfortunately, need level 12 to opt for breath not doing damage to allied troops before checking out. As a side note, already ascended my High Dragon lord via tome of Goddess of Nature, now his twin awakening innate free action and dragon roar provide himself and allies with additional stacking regeneration.
Woah less than 2 hours?!?!! What sorcery is this?
im kind of maniac:
- i always take "hardy", love more hp (and adds up to mounts traits)
- i always take underground adapt because i love underground (i replace by elusive when i get primal culture) + i havent met players bothering me underground ^^
- i always take a mount trait (love 80% of them ^^, i got rare exeption where i replace by elusive + resistance)
=> i havent tested "cheerful" but i always take doomherald tome + celebration tome, i wonder how it would impact them (but i dont have points for this trait anyway)
side note: you gain a lot of movements with desolation adaptation and underground adaptation, while you slow enemies if you paint grounds with primal cultures or abyss society
A way to better describe defense and resistance: each stack of defense/resistance multiplies incoming physical/magical damage by 0.9
Or in shorter terms, stacks of defense/resistance scales multiplicatively.
Notably, each stack of defense/resistance is a consistent effective HP increases of x1.111.... , which is equivalent to 10 HP on a 90 HP hero.
Fumbles do not apply on hit effects at all.
That's why Cacophany can be good with a misfortune build - opponents will just not be able to stick their on hit effects to you, which can strip a huge amount of damage off of their units.
Buffs to vision range are exponentially good, as it reveals tons more tiles per +1 tile range. Of course how powerful the information you get is, can vary a ton.
Keen sighted should really be in the "good for the right build" as 20% damage increase in a ranged focused build is not bad in any way.
Keen sighted and Strong, Reaver Magelocks tends to get rid of enemys.
Keen Sighted and Arcane Focus, Astral may also be worth it by going for Battlemages in addition to Mage heroes.
While it doesn't help with the area effect attacks so are there still some base shooting being done.
They are very focused on doing that specific thing, so obviously not a generic good trait.
If you wanna keep this madness going on *forever*, you should start doing these kind of deep dive videos about AOW Planetfall lol
Hideous stench is so close to being good, like I could easily see it suddenly getting a perk like "It makes enemies distracted" and then suddenly it becomes broken BS.
I am addicted to athletics. Cant create a race without it anymore pls send help
The Realm World-Map Spellcasting should count towards some pool that buffs your civ in some way (e.g. if you have a specific society trait or something the more you use it the more the buff stacks - or more snow, swamp, etc. = 1 coin per turn). But Swamp out of the other terrain-traits seems like the most useful generally with river movement.
I know I picked the wrong game for it, but I don't like casting 50 spells. I want a comfortable & defensible position & maybe to use my terraforming spell aggressively to inhibit enemy growth for example.
- I really don't like the number of games that just add in terraforming spells randomly in on the side. They make it too quick & easy & you barely play with it apart from random run-throughs where you're Role-Playing some Terraforming Robots just following their protocol or an invading horde like how most corruption from another dimension works in W.C. III & Warhammer, etc.
*Thinking for Keen-Sighted - that taking the Longer Range High Archer units, this becomes more useful with that +1 Awakened Range.
- Still new, but trying out Keen-Sighted + Strong + (just put Cheerful on) - this is with High Units & wanting to get a feel for critical chance and such. Was thinking of going hardy, but trying to maximise it - take out retaliation with distracted or just flanking & crit with lots of base damage.
- Playing Warframe & learning/figuring out from builds & on my own, that damage is maximised when you balance the growth of each stat. So 100% crit chance from 1 great & 3 okay traits isn't as good as 1 great trait in damage, crit chance, crit damage & attack speed.
So I try to replicate that here - 50% damage (awakened + strong) with 30% increased (Crit Chance Hero & Cheerful). Was thinking of Joy Siphoners with 'Tome of DoomHerald', just 9 moral taken in a 3-shot volley which I think should be boosted by cheerful & if you Crit it's even more.
Bulwark Honor Blades 😍😍
Bulwark -> Oath of Strife -> Chaos Bolstering Matrix -> Counter Stance -> Win
Bulwark you really need to see Potatowhisky gameplay... This is a very very strong trait when you use it the right way
Regarding Hideous Stench I like it with Discipline where my melee units can stun on a low chance and with this it is better.
How about adding a bonus against other mounted units to elephants? Maybe a morale debuff? Historically, elephants were used as anti-cavalry units due to horses being afraid of them. I get that all mounts are not horses in this game, but it seems reasonable enough and a bonus that only works against mounted units is not as powerful.
Echoing other sentiments here. Most of these traits are for RP/theme purposes. It would be cool if everything could be balanced perfectly, but that could never happen. There is basically only 1 combo or variation of that combo you should ever pick if you want optimal. Tough, Resilient, and Enduring. The other combo is, drop 1 of the 2 pointers and the 1 pointer and take elephants or mammoths.
That's it. For MP that is SSS tier, nothing else comes close. In fact, the combo of tough and resilient is so blatantly better than everything else, many, if not most MP house rule them as mutually exclusive.
If you don't care about hyper sweat competitive MP, of all 15 of the people who play that way in the community, the adaptation traits are absolutely fine. You can win on any level of SP difficulty with any build you want to play with.
Pretty sure Grazes (not sure about Fumbles) do *not* apply on-hit effects. They just deal damage (though there might be some weird interactions)
You are right, grazes do not apply status effect. Some attacks cannot graze.
Fumbles convert hits into grazes, and grazes into miss.
how the hell did this become an hour?
Started recording and didn’t stop until it was over
Also, IIRC Mammoths/Elephants reduce the model count more than regular mounts, I want to say it's actually possible to get down so that regular units are single model by stacking Mamefants+supergrowth?
So, Keen sighted.
While all of you said is generally true (at least i can agree with it), you missed Reavers on that piont:
With base 65℅ accuracy its almost impossible to annoy or scare people (because lack of damage, even with "Sneaky") to that point, where they are decide to rush you and lock you down. In that situation you are forced to move one hex closer, where you will find youseld in situation, where any 40 movespeed unit will reach you. Not a good spot.
Second thing, bug it or not, but im not sure, how "proc on hit" Works on heroes, because if you use ranger hero ability with canceling defensive mode and retaliation strike, and it glance - it won't work. So, at least for now, keen sighted is stronger than it seems.
In truth unless someone wants to go for flavor the best trait is the one about surviving more... Is kinda Universal in all games
Ceaseless Cacophoney + that tome with all that misfortune is lols
The only culture I feel like gets any real benefit from Keen Sighted is Reavers with a magelock hero. It is less about keen sighted being good and more about keen sighted being weirdly good at negating the major weakness the devs gave magelocks to compensate for them hitting like a freight train. I ran a sneaky/keen sighted/elusive reaver build and while not exactly optimal it did accomplish the goal of doing big stupid damage with the big stupid guns
@13:30 think youre looking for the term Effective HP.
how do you feel about a tenacious + dragon tranformation + spawnkin combo? it *feels* pretty good in single player but i didn't have the chance to try it in multiplayer yet.
how would you fill the build up?
Great content bro.
I have played this game for way over 300hrs, and just now learned the following:
Adaptable doesn't effect summoned units.
Cheerful now gives you morale (maybe?)
How defense stacks (10% of remaining damage per stack)
Calvary reduces the number of models you have.
Cacophony only actually mitigate 7% of damage
Thanks for this.
Tomes please🎉
White wolf mount for hero give 2 frost resistence, but it do not give it to the racial unit, that meant only hero get it when we get the trait, so i get it with inerfrost, to give the hero 4 frost resist but the unit only get 2, even on white wolf, i think it’s an over sight
I have learnt that if i build for it it can be good
I’m just picking quick reflex’s bc I hate dealing with ranger units. I also wish that Ceaseless Cacophony was better.
I think you didn't mention that Flying mounts all reduce your model count to 2 (just like Elephant/Mammoth).
This (obviously) makes them far more valuable than the other mounts, which are actually quite bad tbh.
I would say tenacious is a great take if you plan on using spawnkin.
For fire thorns I used it with a zombie build so I was only weak to spurit
elephants + hardy + supergrowth from tomb of vigor? would this full max health build work
Succeed… no one is going to suck seed :P
I almost always go Resilient since it got moved to 2 cost. There's just so much amount of bs debuffing in this game, I'll take any way to mitigate it
Elephants should get +1 range to ranged attacks. It goes with the historical elephant war archers and plus being so tall it makes sense.
As i know Fumble do damage to attacking unit if proc
I'd say the location adaption traits are more about role-playing purposes.
Also, I think adaptable is one of the best traits. Leaders and heroes can use this trait, which can really help giving you more level options before everyone else.
It doesn't work on heroes bro, it says so on the tooltip
Adaptable doesn t effect heroes or leaders for like a year now.
Then please explain why my leaders level up faster with this trait on.
@NextAgeHunter you can look at the experience growth by taking a similar node fight with/without the trait and a Wizard King Champion.
You'll see the same growth in either case for your hero UNLESS you are a Mortal Champion. Which gets the +20% Exp Gain.
@@NextAgeHunterBecause you are stupid lmao
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first?
Imagine if he gave pills of wisdom on the game in the form of Shorts, as a consideration to the adhd population! Instead 2 and 3 hours uncut rambling! You viewer sort it out! lol No bro, cant stand videos 5 minutes long, imagine this, no matter how much I love AoW4
Put it on your tv then just go read Reddit on your phone and pretend to pay attention like everyone else
@@Shinshinvariety my man really called me out like that
It's democracy and majority likes it the way it is. Simplest answer to your comment is "Handle it."
the gen Z mind cannot comprehend paying attention to something longer then a minute
@@rogaldorn9178 How do you know "majority likes it the way it is"? May be with "another way" he would have 10 times more viewers. No?
The show you're talking about at 1:10:00 is named Blue Gender.