I want to mention this since I see people consistently missing this mechanic with Spawnkin and Supergrowth - when you increase or decrease the number of units in a formation, you make them more or less sensitive to casualties (i.e., the unit becoming weaker as it loses health). Units with only a single member in formation have no penalty for low hp, whereas more numerous formations will suffer penalties proportional to their losses faster. What this means is that Spawnkin is making your units 'flag' much faster in combat, and critically it also causes some single unit formation type units such as the Warbreed to now have casualty sensitivity, which is actually a pretty significant penalty! This is why spawnkin's effect, 20% damage, is so insane for a low tier tome - it's actually coming with a minor drawback. Conversely, Supergrowth's 10HP and one retaliation attack might seem weak for a Tier III tome, but it's making your units less sensitive to casualties, and actually upgrades some small formation units into being immune to casualties by making them a single unit formation. If you're curious about the math behind it, you can try drawing a stepped function for damage vs %HP lost and looking at the area under the curves - but you can also just consider the logical extremes: a single unit's shape on that graph is a square, a formation with infinite units scales perfectly and forms a triangle with half the area - meaning in some theoretical fight where both those units are trading hits back and forth, the more numerous formation unit will lose.
Key to mention that a ranged build with fodder will pretty much guarantee the 20% damage at full-power without any drawbacks. Vines is the obvious busted example (especially since both tomes are tier I making the combo too ez), but replace any fodder in the equation for similar effect.
Your math doesn't check out. You don't lose power quicker, just in more, but smaller steps. It only has a negative effect on very few units. Going from1 to 2 in a unit is bad, 2 to 3 is kinda meh. On units, that start out wilt relatively large number, the effect is negligible.
@@stefanb6539 It checks out exactly, and you do lose power more quickly in the sense you are deprived of the 'grace period' a more coarse formation provides you. A two unit formation gets to go all the way from 100% to 50% health before it sees any damage reduction proportional to health lost (and even then gets to continue from
Summon astral reflection is arguably the best spell in the game since you can cast it on your ruler several times, you can end up winning 1v18s with just your ruler if you have the combat points and mana to spare, if you take dark ritual the summons can also cast it so you end up with constant summons of zombies as well. Ofc you dont have to cast it on your ruler, I once beat 7 late game stacks in one turn while defending my heart of the astral with my ruler and 1 golden golem, the spell alone easily puts the book of mirrors in S-tier
I just did this to take down a fully stacked group of armies with only my ruler and two summons (though it was during the magic victory spell so every spell was buffed). But apparantly if a copy of your ruler dies, the game thinks your ruler is dead and doesnt let you cast any more spells. Had to play a little smarter to not let any copies die, so duplicating your ruler can be a double edged sword until it is fixed.
I already find mirror mimic as the strongest unit in the game, together with the 3 turns dispel from astral tome V, which removes all buffs or unit enchantment from enemy army, which gives you every late game fight a 3 turn window, were your units are 150% better than enemy army... But your spell is super strong two, build ruler into a killing maschine, and than walk the battlefield.... your hero is the best scaling unit on the battlefields, thx to Leveling up and items, and this spell fully abuse it.
I concur. That spell alone is ridiculous /w Tanky heroes, especially ones /w tons of healing available. "Impossible battles", according to the game, became child's play the moment I picked it up in one of my games.
Yeah, astral reflection is singularly an S-Tier ability, everything else is nice, but that alone is a scenario winning spell for a hero/elite unit focused army.
Combat points seems like it would be the worst route to go with Summon Astral reflections since it reduces damage by 50%. What it doesn't reduce are ability uses (other than direct summons), especially abilities that are restricted to once per combat, since the reflections will have separate uses of each. Like say Overchannel, or Spur to Action, or Weaver.
My one detraction with your tome of summoning is you glossed over the power of arcane bond: that spell has a 90% chance to mind control magic origin units for 2 turns: this means the potential to control possibly some of the most powerful units in the enemies army on your first turn, throwing the enemy ranks into chaos. On your second turn it can be cast twice early on: this means you could be controlling 3 units that turn alone, using the enemy against itself and sparing your own forces while the enemy rips itself apart.
This. I used this last night in a high-risk battle. And won, because of this. The enemy had the ability to gain steadfast upon death. So I controlled all the bone golems on one half of the field to distract and kill the battle mages and healers. And because once a bone golem dies, it spawns skeletons. This meant I got steasfast 4 times. used their steadfast buff against them. Using that spell with time stops to bottleneck the army. They all routed because as they were fighting their own undying bone golem, I used my army to wipe out the other half on the map.
I would say that the original poster has rushed to put the video in front of an audience without using all the tomes in battle. He underestimates the utility of many of the less obvious spells. An example that came early in the video: he ranks Astral Convergence as an A, while leaving Astral Mirror as a B. He explains how useful Explosive Manifestation can be, for summoning a random Tier II unit... while not realizing that Summon Astral Reflection can turn the fight by itself, by providing two half-powered copies of an existing unit... which is arguably even better than duplicating one of your existing units, which already is serving a specific role in your build. And this is just one example. If you listen carefully, you can see which spells he has used, and which he is only guessing about.
@@TuidjyYeah. Seems like he heavily preferred pure stats and less synergy which is I think is the whole idea behind them. Disregarded early defensive upgrades where even a +1 impact on every single unit of an early unit can make a big difference on a larger scale than just 1v1 fighting units. Heavily underrated some status’ as well, like stuns
It should also be noted that "Gaia's Chosen" makes all your units count as plants. Thus, they synergize well with Mass rejuvenation and wrath of nature.
As much as I know it'll probably negatively impact my gameplay in the long run- I can't stop myself from just choosing the tomes that thematically work with my faction. For example I made a lich faction that are all icy and I cant force myself to choose anything other than tomes like cold dark when playing them.
To be fair, I think it's really early in terms of meta for comprehensive Tomes tier lists. Some are obvious no brainers, but these are a rarity to me. To my experience so far, it all depends heavily on the map. If you always play the same kind of map with the same challenges, sure, some Tomes will always be better than others. If you switch the challenges enough, some Tome can go up and down dramatically in terms of ranking. Finally, the most important thing is that you have fun. AoW always tried to allow everything to be customized to fit the players own liking, and that's what makes this series so good: there's tons of ways to play the game.
Since AoW4 isn's competitive game and multiplayer here is almost unplayable I think there is absolutely no need to play meta builds. Just do what you want, roleplay, everything is ok against stupid AI
@@AsaelTheBeast desyncs, long load times for AI enemies turns if you have them, crashes. It's bit of a mess right now. Needs some work but should be good with some TLC.
well, I'm the same as you I got what you fell man. I want my faction to be fire-demon themed, even if they're not in a good condition right now. but hey, its a game, I suppose to enjoy it. so I'll just play whatever make me happy and not to try to be competitive :D
Tome of Beasts is absurdly good with mounted overwhelming numbers barbarian furies. Animal Kinship, and Call of the Wild means that tier 1 spell can buff your entire mounted army, pretty significantly, for 15 mana. Add pack leader to that, and you have very powerful horse archers.
I love that we have different playstyles can tell for sure from your tier lists, and Im sure they both work. It seems like you havent done an archer build just yet so 2 things, amplifed arrows does give lightning dmg but more importantly it chains 30% of the dmg and effects, so if you keep piling unit and race enhancements on your archers, they become as good as tier V units, I would constantly poison and decay an entire field of enemies, but on that note I gotta say personally I think Zephyr Archers are broken, possibly the most cost effective unit in the game. Like the second I get them I can start punching above my level comfortably. The AIs do not understand them having the tornado ability and you can constantly move into range so you get a free round of hits, usually on multiple units, allowing you to instantly fight hard ancient wonders and camps to farm up xp on you hero. These hits also spread effects I believe. I think theres absolutely an argument to b-line for them, especially since the materium upgrade tree has some really nice things early on like metro city and other things to get more gold to rush more Zephyrs. Great video though, its awesome how many routes are effective in this game! Its going to be fun fleshing it out and finding out whats the best one
I think houndmaster are for a reason the best level1 tome to pick, they add a frontline puffer, and than simply can save attack with there bow. and with your mention buffs, there 20 base dmg bow, and 14 base dmg summon, scales extremly well into lategame. Your zephyr come, when my houndmaster cleared half the ruins of the map
@@aqvamarek5316 Hound masters are great and battle seeker training is also great, its for sure a contender for best start. Spawnkin is interesting not sure how I feel about it and blaze is a great tier 1 spell if you go full hoard. You can stack on pack tactics and go feudal for the stand together thing to just turn it up. Very very strong start and having throw away meat shields is great. But I think generally bows are better than cross bows, kiting is a nice option when you get a range increase but the damage and effect proc chance you get from shooting 3 times vs 1 is pretty big, by no means are they weak but where end game they are doing like 40 dmg and maybe 15 to another unit, zephrys are doubling that and applying status effects to both units (and if it dies they shoot another unit if they can so action economy is better too). Not to mention the 1 hex ability that is chunking groups. Overall its a rough question which is better since houndmasters wont fall off till later and you can get them turn 5 if you have the gold, but zephyrs are an actual end game unit so getting them to champion seems like a better use of the xp around you. I can agree that theyre probably the best tier 2 unit
@@BlackBirdOni Melee has some nice play styles too with stun locks and shield buff stacking or giant slayer. But ya pyromancers are amazing and you get them early. Games in the early stages though, its really hard to have tried all the build routes
@@z-rossi3672 yeah, I guess there will be balance patches soon. T4 & t5 unit upkeep need a rework, I mean, you can use them if you want, but paying imperium is a total waste, I'd rather use a stack of t3 units. Some t3 are even stronger then t4. Omg
Idk chief, Tectonic Shatter in Tome of the Creator is actually the most absurd spell that I've come across in the game. You just need 1 unit on the field and you can wipe out every single enemy within 2-3 turns.
Heavily undervalued Revelry. Morale give crit chance outside the fortune buff. The transform turns the morale crit on 2 turns sooner on average. The Skald is the best buffing support no contest. A 4 range 1 radius aoe giving 20% damage and 20% crit is nuts. Giving regen, per turn morale and movespeed with the other buff elevates it to the top. The rest of the tome mostly falls into nice to have.
Tome of Summoning - arcane bond is really powerful. its my favorite spell when unlock spells in the first round. you can flip some of the best units and it gets killed by the enemy and slows them down
I think you just glanced over amplified arrows when in truth this got to be one of the most busted enchantments in the game. A buffed up archer can kill a couple of different enemies in their turn oftenly thanks to that enchantment.
It's weird that the descriptions in the spells doesn't tell you for how many combat rounds an enemy unit for instance becomes Distracted by the spell Exhilarating Pollen.
JumboPixel have you tried mixing tier 3 nature (summon greater animal) on a desert (Phoenix) and tier 5 materium (eternal earth) spells. Question would the Phoenix live 2 times, 3 times or actual 4 times per combat. Friend has the game, I have not had the chance to buy it yet. Thank you for helpful videos
I really think you should remake a video about this tiers list and analysis on tome in a different way : Here, you"re studying most tome in a vaccum, not considering the vertical synergy. Basically, you could make two videos : one where you just highlight all the tome that basically work in a vaccum and you could consider pick even if you're not going big on this affinity (tome of the horde, tome of vine ...) and a video where you compare the whole vertical power of each affinity (and/or branch of affinity) and how impactfull each of those tome are WITHIN the confine of this affinity (which one you want to take, which one you want to skip and instead pick a stand alone tome of another affinity ...) It would make more sense
I’ve been playing through the campaign on normal and have yet to have a game make it to the tier 5 tomes. Their effects are very powerful but I feel like it takes too long to get to them somimes.
You put Astral Mirror as a B tier... have you ever used the create two reflections? By itself is already really REALLY powerful. Can swarm with fake units. If you want to really break it Wizard King spec for combat cast use the use one more spell button cast spell again to you have an army of the same over powered hero. The rest of the tome is eh.
41:08 "Construct Bolt Repeaters" isn't actually defensive! I made the same mistake myself. It's actually an incredibly powerful SIEGE project. 2 bolt repeaters that can basically fire at full map range in a 1 hex AoE every other turn. Honestly pretty bonkers and forces the defensive player to come to you.
@@AsaelTheBeast It's amazing how good some tier 1 spells are through the utility they provide. Or unintended power as well. Blaze of the Horde can hit way harder then it should if you spam lots of tier 1s.
@@MetalHev How do you figure? Houndmaster is a T2 with a T1 hound, so you're only getting 3 fire dmg from the hound since it's your T1 and not an enemy T1 for the other 2 fire dmg.
35:50 "Summon Balor" spell is pretty much useless because there are better and cheaper ways to get him. You can summon 2x Chaos Eater and then use "Fight for power" spell to get Balor. Also evil chaos race has pretty good chance to get Balor from random event. I got 2 of them in a single game just from the random events
The Tome of Terramancy is very situational. I started in a region with a lot of mountain tiles and the possibility of clearing the terrain to build more provinces and opening new paths was gamechanging. Also, the 60% instakill spell saved me a lot against problematic tier 3 units.
I was in a map that had (i forget the exact name) the big scars of deadzone you cant do anything with, was also surrounded by alot of mountains, situations like that being able to destroy the mountains was SO good. Though i had also discovered that - it seems some other terramorphing spells can clear mountains - Age of winter, the one that slowly turns your empire into ice expanding out 2 provinces, will slowly flatten mountains. If there are OTHER spells that do similar as well, probably makes it a BIT less good when it isnt an exclusive ability, but still very handy to have regardless.
Vine prison is essentially the strongest spell in the game. It makes the AI go completely brain dead and they waste all of their efforts destroying the vines instead of attacking you. I’ve beat stacks with 2+ Tier 5s using tier 1-3 armies as a result
I actually like it when some of my favorite tomes are ranked as low as C or D. It makes me think that I'm making good use of them, and they might get buffed in the future.
The problem with ranking tomes individually is ignoring synergies: One tome may be mediocre on it's own: combine it with another and it ascends to S tier. I think this particularly shines with Tome that provide debuffing spells, enchantments and racial transformations. Taken altogether, they can break the enemy army down on many different levels, potentially pulling out wins where otherwise one would most certainly lose.
@@Smithers322 Yeah, AoW4 is all about build synergies. Looking at each tome in isolation without considering how they can be used in combinations feels like it's really missing a big part of the picture.
This is more or less the feeling I had for dark tome by example. They're ranked pretty low, because the ranking is made in a vaccum, while some of the tome are meant to commit more generally as an affinity focused build. Some tomes like "tome of the horde" will always work great in a vaccum because you could theorically pick it as any race and benefit from it and forget it. Other build like necromancy and cryomancy build are "stack over time" synergy where the higher you go in the tree the most the beginning tome make sense. Overall I wouldn't care too much for this ranking because studying tome in vaccum just don't work
Why do people put such a low value on +range to ranged units? The difference between range 4 and 5 is massive, especially for powerful shots that require the unit to be stationary!
Right? Starting with high society, they get +1 when awakened. This can stack with their 1 enhancement seeking projectile. And so by turn like 5 you can have 6 range. Add to this that top veteran their gets +1 range and your little tier 1 can hit 7 tiles away. If you get the their 3 archer that has 5 range and an age. Add the bonuses and it's 8 tiles away. Often hitting on first round of combat. Crazy.
He ignores a lot. Ignores synergies even within the same tome or the one just before. Basically he is ranking these purely based off of “does __% more damage” where the higher it is the higher the tome is. I was surprised how little he considered some status’ that I think are pretty strong, such as buffing defenses in mat and then converting that into +50% damage. Has you dealing t3 or higher levels of damage on t1s. Pretty decent early game stacked on all their ways of buffing defense
Reading the different playstyles in the comments is a testament to just how well developed AOW4 is. Several different playstyles and rankings on tomes translates to diversity and hours of re-playability.
Of course that's an awesome thing in single player, but the real long term test will be how it handles in MP. Hopefully much like AOW1 we end up with SP patch and MP patch branches because of how hard it is to balance between the two.
Tome of Scrying may not offer much utility, however, the Watcher itself is one hell of a unit to get. Every time I roll into that tome, the unit quickly becomes a regular staple for my medium to long range picks. The unit itself is just a singular entity, meaning it can take a beating and continue outputting consistent damage through injuries. It has a built in stun on it's extra ability and it also has a good range to it, often gaining the privilege of landing opening hits and disabling enemy backline as the fight goes on.
tome of scrying is worth it just for the "guided missiles" enchant - which is critical for any all battlemage comp. If you can shoot through your own troops without accuracy debuffs, then you can go 6x Spellbreakers or whatever pure range comp you want to use - but it's very powerful. It's also cool to put vision on an enemy. I like scrying, even if it's kinda weak on the greater scale, i get more utility from it than some more popular tomes
Yeah i concur that the Watcher alone should bump it up a tier, making whole stacks of watcher in the endgame is very good and can just win you the game with just that.
Oh nice, dont needs to wright it myself 😅 yeah, rushing t5 astral makes the watchers one of the most cost effective and potentially powerfull units in the game, period. U literally dont need any other units, so draft buildings can be ignored completly, just focus in mana economy and expansion. In may last game my 3 wachter stacks beat 7 enemy stackts full of shrines of smite, on autoresolve. Sure, c tier... 😂
Joy Siphoners is way underrated. With high Morale you gain additional Crit hit Rate. Crits lower Morale. I had many even or negative odd fights where half of the enemy Army just straight up routed.
wow, C tier for tome of revelry sounds like sb dont know how to connect it with other tomes to amazing synergy.Not to mention that support unit from this book is probably the best for damage support unit in the game. 2x these supporters and ur stack of army have +40% dmg / +40% crit chance
A lot of the chaos tomes are meant to work in tandem with each other. Stacking all the de-buffs and giving your own army buffs against de-buffed targets means massive crits for your side and routing/fumbling enemies all over the place.
The Sanctuary province improvement is amazing and solo carries the Tome of Sanctuary into being quite strong. It's a Magic Jammer (best improvement in the game) that produces 10 mana instead of costing 10 (so essentially +20 mana) and on top of that it makes all of your other improvements unpillageable.
Evocation and pyromancy are basically the same tome. They share 5/6 spells. Ritual pyre is straight up better than channeling tower because forests are way common than mana nodes. As for lightning vs burning debuff, both do 8 dmg per turn, the diff is lightning lasts until debuffed while burning lasts 3 turns. Upside is you have better chances to inflict burning and all your melee troops with searing blades deals bonus 20 percent to burned units. And battle would need to last 4 turns after second turn to get value from lightning debuff, which in early game it isnt happening that much. I dont know why you put Evo so high. Horde is broken af S tier no doubt but if you gonna compared to it Pyro, you should also compare it with Evo. Pyro low C, Evo high D. You should be comparing all tier 1 tomes together and then 2 etc etc, not all spells from one affinity. This tier list is bad as my english.
Lightning damage is superior because you can reduce enemy lightning resistance on the overworld. You cant do the same with fire. Lightning damage is also better because very little resists lightning whereas fire is a common resistance.
@@jamesrobsonza7752 Fair points. Player units dont have any resistances until you enchant them. As for wildlife there are 14 units that have lighning weakness compared to 11 fire. Which is not that far from each other. Ofc if you want decide which one is better: you would need to count how much of that weakness is on each unit, mb is it -2 or -3, same for resistances and take all that into perspective. And you want to know what spawnrate units have not only in general but also within their tier group. I want to guess its pretty even, but I am not that smart to calc that out. As for overworld spell, yea its pretty good but not by far and its tier 3 so you need more knowledge to research it. Damage wise lighting torrent + fulmination combo will be 38 or 42 in 1 hex radius compared to pyromancer flamestrike + immolate 36 also in 1 hex radius. Pretty close. To me dealbreaker is ritual pyre. Youll be lucky to have 1 mana node in your starting location. Even if you see 2, they need to be close enough to get the benefit, all the while its not uncommon to see 4-5 patches of forests near you. Thats 1 or maybe 2 lesser magma spirits than more than evocation have.
@@jamesrobsonza7752 It's a cliché thing to say but if you know what map/factions you're going against then that should dictate your favored element. I do agree, however, that lightning is the more general and safer element if you're not sure about what you're facing. The only thing that resists lightning are wind/storm elementals and nature tome units, but its great against astral/fey/golem units. Fire would be great against nature/shadow/undead units but not against chaos/fiend/stone/fire units. Frost is great against chaos/fiend/celestial units but not against shadow/undead. All in all, better to just stick with and specialize in one element anyways otherwise you're just gimping yourself, because even if a unit type resists your element you're at least given ways to overcome those resistances. It's why I wish Mystic units had the option to select the type of elemental magic they want to use for an attack instead of splitting the damage across 3 elements.
@@DPCrescendolls Its hard to slap fire or frost tomes on mystic because you will have dead spell in your research for a long time. The one that buffs archer and skirmishers. Maybe solution to starblades would be to give +1 depending on what spell did you cast (if frost then +1frost) and if not specific only then it could be random.
@Simon Six Searing Blades does more damage against burning enemies, but has no chance to cause burning itself, while Lightning Blades causes enemies to become electrified. Pyromancy forces you to micromanage your armies in a similar way to the Dark culture's Cull the Weak mechanic. Evocation just has you make the whole army weak to electricity, and lets you enjoy your weapons being fully effective without a one-two punch involved. As far as I can tell none of the Evocation abilities actually rely on enemies becoming electrified to increase their damage. There's probably more pay off if you hit a burning enemy with Searing Blades, but if they aren't burning, the flat change to cause the enemy to become electrified is better than the damage Searing Blades isn't doing in that instance.
Really great video. I generally agree, but with some contentions: Tome of Scrying: I was surprised you ranked it so low as the power of Guided Projectiles is hard to overstate if you're going for battlemages, support casters, or ranged units. The only time it's not all but a must-have is if you are rushing melee only, and even then you'll have support in your back line trying to lob over your shock troops. I think it can be a C tier, but I find it much stronger than Tome of Summoning that you placed higher. Tome of Transmutation: I wouldn't discount the Transmuter as run of the mill, the regular ability to stun a group of enemy units and sap defenses from your enemies to your allies, it acts as a support caster with the damage of a battle mage. Does that push it to C tier... eh, but maybe high in D tier. Tome of the Creator: The resurrections applies to the Gold Golem, but it's really the only thing worth it in the whole tome Tome of Cryomancy: The other elemental T1 tome unit enchantmens also lower physical damange in exchange for the elemental damage. I'll also say that Ice Coffin and White Witch has been really useful with the Frozen status really helping take down some very strong wonder fights by taking units out of the fight. This is I think the first major disagreement, I'd put this at *at least* B tier.
I don't think people realize how good Keeper's Mark from the Sanctuary Tome really is because of one simple reason: it applies to units you summon during the battle. I researched it during a life affinity playthrough and every single vine, plant, and animal I summoned had Keeper's Mark, making them exceptionally annoying and difficult to chew through for my opponents. The fact that it forces you to wait an extra turn before being able to finish those units off really makes it a top tier spell imo.
Love the tier list, but wanna add that vine prison 52:20 if it were in a tier 3 book it would be overpowered and enough to probably propel that t3 book to S or high A tier. The fact its in a tier 1 book its actually broken. So many synergies with other books, plus it takes up 5 enemy actions. Broken. Edit: Playing around with it a bit more. Its better than many tier 5 tome spells. This has to be the best spell in the game atm.
Important to mention, the Gaia's Chosen transformation gives your race the Plant template, which it doesn't mention in the tooltip. So see those later tomes that, I dunno, give all plants +4 damage +20% crit, or revive all plants? Uh, yeah.
And the fact that you can get super growth right before it to make your stacks smaller so you maintain that high damage. Part of me thinks that nature might be the best tome tree to go for. Natural recovery (15+ heals in your domain) and ranger (the one that gives you more movement in your domain) are probably the 2 most useful upgrades for when you can unlock them. Im curious what trees people are liking though they all seem pretty (except for order but thats just me)
@@z-rossi3672 nature is the most powerful tree and it isn't close. The Mystic one might be the second, but nature is insanely more powerful than the rest.
@@MetalHev Thing is Materium has amazing nodes like metro which is +10% in evey income for every city touching the throne, that tier 4 armor you get early on, the best health regen in the game (1 per 2 movement remaining) and all the money lol. I think its being slept on crushing earth and zephyr archers are way better than he gave credit. Id take a zephyr with some unit enhancements over tier 5s easy. By mystic are you talking about blue? Cause 100%, right now my rankings are S tier: green, blue, orange A Tier: Red B tier: Purple C tier: white and yellow Yellow (order) ... I do not get why Id ever invest in it, Purple's (shadow) best ones are pretty early on with the +50 knowledge per hero level and +5 casting points per death/kill, but theyre both not really needed to late game. Red is a Playstyle specific one for sure but weaker than blues mana and summons buffs. But really give orange a try, the sheer economy it gives an the fact that zephyr archers can become late game monsters makes it worth while
@@Chikanuk Interesting you and I have materium and order swapped, tell me a bit more why you like order so much. Like what are you racing towards that makes it worth?
Of all the starting tomes, the one of healing might be my favourite. It's so handy to get that army heal spell to help heal up your first army in between battles as you go around claiming resources.
Seems like you don't value CC abilities much. The nymph has the convert spell, and the transmuter in the transmutation book has a 7hex CC stun with 90% success rate. That's huge in terms of damage mitigation. I would also recommend you to test the tome of doom herald (maybe in combination with other tomes that offer morale manipulation spells/units/buffs, etc...). Consider that the -3 morale is per hit and unresistable. So a 3 action point archer will lower an enemy's morale by 9. Combined with the morale lowering spells, you can quickly get the 30% buff damage on your race, which is huge. And the more you kill enemies, the lower their morale and the more units trigger the 30% damage buff when they are attacked. It's not as straightforward to use as other tomes, but it's very powerful when used correctly
Yeah I felt the same way especially about the stuns. Morale can sometimes have an effect on battles even without either side using morale affecting spells/units, and I felt like he considered morale from the perspective of “-3 is nothing, it won’t even affect the battle beyond what I already see” when that’s just not the case when the effects are stacked together.
1:22:26 I like this tom a lot, white witch and ice coffing are great with frozen effect. LIterally 80% units enchanments work like that its +4 dmg and -2 base dmg.
And now slowed units can't retaliate to attacks whatsoever during your turn. Makes it very effective to dish out excess damage without receiving it back.
I hate to be critical of this tier list but you're way off the mark on a large number of the tomes. You misunderstand the stuff (for example, Final Ultimatum isn't a morale buff for fuck's sake), making you rate the tome lower. For Tome of Cryomancy, you randomly complain about the elemental buffs reducing physical damage and put the tome to C tier, even though all the other elemental buffs in other tomes work exactly the same way and didn't bother you earlier...? Oh and later on, presumably to make up for dumping most of the shadow tomes in C tier, you put the Great Transformation one in S tier, failing to mention that you can't cast half of the spells in that tome without the earlier shadow tomes :) I understand that this video is already huge in length so you don't have much time to talk about each tome and lots of details and nuances are therefore lost. But I really get an impression you've seen half of these tomes for the first time here and you have no idea what's going on with them. That's perhaps to be expected of a tier list that's made so early, however it does make it more of a tier list of "tomes I like or dislike because of my impressions" rather than anything even approaching objectivity, which seemed to be your goal from the intro. I am genuinely glad that AoW4 has content creators such as yourself making videos about this game. Rating all the tomes in the game in a UA-cam video is no small task and yet I did enjoy watching it for the whole duration. I don't mean to discourage you from doing further content like this. In fact, I am hoping you will be able to, in the future, revise this tier list once you'll have a bigger grasp on the whole game. Of course, I cannot possibly claim to know everything about this game either, but for a good number of the unlocks you simply fail to read the tooltips properly, which is such a glaring error I had to point it out.
I think you're under-selling the benefit of Arcane Restoration and Arcane Supercharge. Remember, they target EVERYTHING on the battlefield--so if you've gone all in for summoning tons of units, the heal and/or buff might affect almost every unit on the field. No other healing spell outside of Tome of the God-Emperor can heal THAT many units at the same time. I've deployed it to devastating effect when going for a "full summoner" build. The real issue is, these spells do almost nothing _alone._ You must have good summoned units _already_ to make full use of them. There's no point to using it if you aren't using many (or even any) Magic Origin units. It's absolutely S-tier if you're running around with armies full of spirits and entwined and golems and such.
My favorite play style is full summoner build. These tomes make it more than viable. Hordes of tier 1-2 units will melt before a properly boosted and composited army of summons that are tiers 3-5. Once the final upgrade of the astral affinity line is taken, and if paired with channeling trait, a summoner can spam caste tier one elementals that will start as tier 3s. Main thing is surviving to that point. Once there? Game over.
A small note : RIght now, there is a bug with city that you release as vassals (either a conquered city or one that you built yourself). That bug disable the A.I. in these vassal cities preventing it from using its units and sometimes even building. I point that out because it kinda reduces a bit the usefulness of vassal oriented spells especially blessed reinforcement. However, that bug has been pointed out to the devs and they are aware of it so expect a fix sometime soon. Other than that, thanks for making this tier list :)
Hello there! Great video my man, but l think as many in the coments say that most of these tombs are weak as a single book but stronger together with others. l would love to see your idea of the stronbest trio. like for example the best first 3 book order u can go or smth.... good vid
Strange to make Necromancy a C tier when you're all about the "extra" battle units. Raise zombies alone lets you often almost for sure win a battle off of pure numbers. Especially if you synergize with horde to have very cheap tier one units that you can treat as relatively expendable. Never mind that you can, for some reason, raise zombies from skeletons. You're able to make an unbreakable wall of units while your mage heros nuke the enemies down fast with AoEs and combat spells.
I get the feeling that this tier list is just treating each tome independently. Most of the undead tomes are not that good on its own, but they build on eachothers strengths to make for a very powerful set. So getting tome of necromancy and nothing else isn't great, but getting souls, necromancy, doomherald, great transformation, reaper, and eternal lord is extremely powerful.
Astral Reflections is actually one of the strongest spells in the game. Get yourself whatever creature with very powerful ability such as mind control for example, and astral reflect it 3-4 times (feasable at turn 2), congratulations, you have now 8 more copies of that creature without worrying about upkeep cost. Mind control can win otherwise unwinnable battles btw. Do note that a mind controlled creature is considered dead if all non mind controlled enemies are dead. So fighting only half the army is enough to win, and it's even easier considering you've got more creatures to take/deal damage. Very very powerful, and most underrated spell imo.
What happens if you combine [Astral Attunement] with [Transmute Resources?] Every population creates mana... and every mana creates other resources... If you research (Astral Convergence) and cast [Astral Attunement] ASAP, and then go straight for [Tome of Transmutation], you'll have explosive growth in the endgame. Throne of Mirrors + Wizard in his Tower or Dragon Lord = Muhuhahhahahahahhahahaa Avatar of Chaos + Dragon Lord seems to be even more broken. Its main downside seems to be that it's a spell.
I would like to point out, with Order and Forest, if you use the [Angelize] major race transformation, then you could use [Awaken Instincts] without losing your army to the Berserk debuff.
Funny, Summon Astral Projections was almost competely skipped over. Id summoning two copies of a unit in battle (even though they are weaker) not extremere useful? You later even say yo think this is powerful 😂
True, I saw a clip of someone using astral projection on a hero with Assassination skill and phase. It was fun to see him killing enemies left and right.
Bro... whadya mean Materium is average? Terramancy D? Did you not use Crushing Earth? Do you just have very little experience with turn based games? 60% Chance to instantly kill a Tier 3 unit and, if it doesn't, Stuns them means you either A: Kill a high value target instantly or B: it doesn't get a turn. That is THE strongest Tier 2 Tome Spell in the entire game, bar none. Secondly, defense stacking is completely broken in this game. Defense stacking gives SO much damage reduction its actually crazy. If you get 10-12 Defense anything Tier 3 and below dealing physical damage, aka the vast majority of units in the game, will feel like their tickiling you with wet tissue paper. And thats just where Iron Golems start with defense stacking. Unfourtanetly, the Root of Materium is bugged and doesn't bolster units on materium buffs as it should, but it can become ridiculous. The fact that materium gains access to a map wide strip Bolster Defense for +Strength +Fortune equal to the bolster defense, AND bastions just exist in materium means you can have absurd defense AND absurd damage. Zephyr archers are also the best tier 3 archer in the game thanks to their special aoe ability which lets them chew up most rosters in the game when you field 2-3 of them in a roster, especially with all the buffs you can apply (admittedly wind is absolute garbage outside of that). And sunder defenses on ALL melee attacks when you're using multi-attack melee units means after 2 attacks they're sitting at -2 defense, which makes your archers do ridiculous damage. It makes a roster absurdly durable in the early game, which means you can fight far more battles than normal per turn to help you XP grind your hero, and then opens up with some of the strongest mid game tomes in the game thanks to a few key spells which are way overtuned. And lets not forget they have the STRONGEST Tier 5 tome in the game with a map wide stun that deals 30 base, and with a heart of materium deals 50. In 18 v 18 you're very likely to just stun half their units, and thanks to the absurd economy buffs you get you can just do this every turn. Also Gold and Iron golems come back after death with 60% of their health. And thanks to the eco buffs you can just field more units than any other faction in the game, and more tier 5 units as a consequence meaning you are the strongest late game faction because it doesn't matter that undead can bring their army back to life (twice) if your entire army is gold golems that ALSO come back to life and just rip through their units as you proceed to map wide chain stun them for 4 consecutive turns. Materium, overall, is the best set of tomes in the game.
I would argue that tome of the Doomherald is actually HUGE. Combining the Joy Siphoners with other effects that can effect morale can lead to whole armies running away at what would otherwise be the halfway point of a fight.
Best part is you get rng free kills on units that flee and fleeing units don’t fight back. Couple this with cryomancy’s innate slow effect and you can take your time focusing down threats as they slowly flee in terror of your little munchkins from munchkinland.
I think you were really harce on cyromancy, all of the elemental blade and arrow spells lower physical damage by 2 in exchange for +4 elemental damage. Its not that different from the other elemental tier 1 books. The most important thing in picking between them is the theme you want the charter to follow, and this is a perfect start for an ice themed character.
The Demon Gate Tome is awful and should be at least a tier lower. You fail to take into account that you only get a single major race transformation so if you take that one you cannot take another better major transformation, the Scions of Flame minor race transformation is actually better imho and no limit on how many of these you can take. The Gremlin ambushers ability is totally broken , is an amazing unit and to get them spawning for free is just ludicrously powerful. The Tome of Vigor is above S tier just for the Totem of the wild alone. Is insane to just keep getting units for free ...... and you are not just limited to a single Totem of the wild and you can just bury the enemy under spiders and the limit of just 18 units on the battlefield is laughably incorrect.
Tome of Warding seems to be underappreciated in several tier lists. I agree that the hero buff is bad(at best, it can counter/cleanse Sundered Resistance) and the lack of a unique province improvement kind of hurt it as well. But Phantasm Warrior is one of the best summons in the game. A tier 1 unit with decents stats from the get go, immune to several effects and floating. And it is both a Racial Unit(minor and major transformation), a tier 1 unit(various effects that reduce upkeep/enhance tier 1 units) and a Magical Origin Unit(again, various upkeep and enhancement effects). And it is a Shield Unit, so it has the Shield Wall ability and is affected by Shield Unit enchantments. Staves of Warding is an awesome buff for your support units and synergizes very well with other tomes that buff support units. Magical Wards is a very effective early buff for your race(including Phantasm Warriors). Mark of Invulnerability is an insanely powerful tool later in the game, when you are dealing with powerful mosters ganging up on your hero or with "save or die" abilties(and it can cleanse you of debuffs as well). Static Shield is of mixed quality. Great on a forward tank/distraction unit, as it can potentially stun several enemies. But it is inconsistent/unreliable. Overall, it is a B tier for me. If its hero ability was better, or it had a unique province improvement, it would be A.
I am playing the story map where you fight all the angel units. Probably the best scenario I have come across yet. The enemies are weak to frost so the frost tomb tier 1 is crushing it. With my army of witches they can’t move.
I did skip through most of the video (wanted to see the final chart and then looked at the tomes which I thought were good to hear ur reaction), to me it seems you haven't used them all or haven't utlised them in the right combinations.
Yeh, a lot of these tomes have synergies with other tomes, and are meant to be taken as an overall build. Also, it should be assumed that the tome is going to be utilized almost in its entirety, so one’s like Doom-herald end up being powerful when properly implemented.
I think the tome of pandemomium is AT LEAST A tier. The race transformation when comboed with nature buffs and/or dark culture pursuers is almkst a GUARANTEED +30% Damage
The thing that saves Tomb of Teramancy is that Earth Shatter is often essential for Domination victory, that will elevate it a lot now that Magic Victory isn't the automatic choice.
Incite Revolution is broken, just an FYI to anyone who reads this. Being able to convert an enemy province into Resources+Exp+Loot for yourself, at a fairly low cost, is incredibly strong.
I just used this last game with my wizard king. Granted the enemy was already pretty beat down but bullying the AI with that spell was fun. I feel like I’d hate to play against it in pvp
Keeper's Mark is OP providing a Steadfast equivalent to your units in combat. It's super frustrating to fight against(if you don't have Disruption Wave). You kinda dropped the ball on this one!
Very situational indeed but I had a hero with the Wand of Mind Control which gives a base 90% chance to mind-control a unit. Summon Astral Reflection with overcharge meant I could start with 5 heroes that could mind-control (and summon more later) effectively wololo'ing my way through battles. It made so many tough battles so easy once I could steal their tier 3 or 4 units.
Nice list. I have to disagree with tome of cryomancy. If you play as frostborne the structure alone makes it an A tier. It gives you 10 knowledge and around 20 mana per city. Incredibly powerful in the early game. And ice coffin is really nice in small fights since it takes out a creature repeatedly.
5:30 watcher is great its my main mid-late lev mage in army stack when I play dark-blue colours. It have high dmg+ it stack with tom5 COSMIC OVERDRIVE + all other battle mage buffs/enchants
I think nature is in a pretty strong place in overal terms. On the other hand, I don't think it's really feasible to simply make a tier list due to the huge weight of sinergies in this game, and also the fact how the opportunity cost changes depending on your intended build (I.E., if you want a certain T5 tome the cost is just the other of the same affinity, not all of the same tier). I aree with the Tome of Teleportation tough, I usually get it with ANY faction once I got their T5, it's just all around too useful.
I think the tome of the horde is pretty overrated. Summoning tier 1's is pretty much just a waste of mana and you have no control over what you get. Spawnkin has a serious hidden debuff which means all it takes is a smack or two and you loose that 20% dmg. So I prefer to go for Beast tomes and focus on cav. With beastkin, wolf mounts and overwhelm tactics, and tome of enchantment you can stack +60% crit. when you group cavalry, which can get much spicier than relying on a bunch of tier 1 spam. Tier 1 tactics are strong in the early game but eventually they taper off and by the end game you are left with huge stacks of inferior units that get dumpstered by the AI armies.
Very incorrect. Especially considering you're chaos. Which means your "T1" sunderers will be smacking down T3s. They'll be 91 up units that are some of the hardest hitting around. With an upkeep of 4g. So you get an essentially free unit with T3 fighter health and top tier damage. In theory it loses to a s stack of 18 T4+ units, but then they lose the other 10 attacks that turn. Tier differences are small in state and large in cost. Apply double damage and near double health and it just can't be beat. Even late late game. You may want to take the train resilient though, to make sure you don't lose power when damaged. Really though, assuming near qual budgets most fights and turn 2.
@@lyriameridoc7501 actually i just played a real full horde game as barbs and you're right. I didn't have all the synergies right the first time i tried it and it was kinda meh, but i made some really twisted chaos/nature/matter barbs that just owned everything. I think the most powerful thing you can do is go for golden horde. It makes you utterly unstoppable. Best spell in the game, you can just flood your enemy. Minor race enhancements are king, with no upkeep they can seriously beef up your tier 1's. Steelskin Demonkin are beasts.
Tome of Scrying Mental Mark is pretty strong Imho, 3 stacks of unavoidable Marked and Sundered resistance For archer and battle mage build it' s a massive boost, very often you can bring enemy resistance into negative even on buffed heroes.
Tome of Summoning mind control spell can really be OP specially on higher difficulties, when you are just a weak mf and your opponent has tier 4 magic origin units [and I swear all of them do] mind controlling one of these units most likely result in killing another unit and the AI focuses the mind controlled unit as well
My strongest combo is cannibal elves because reasons and i always go barbarian rush teleportation tome ... building outpost everywhere building chronogate everywhere its just insane
I haven't played the game yet as I'm not sure I have that much time in late spring. However, I have a question... Aren't the tomes of pyromancy, of rock and of faith the strongest in the game simply because they have province improvements for 130 production, giving insane effects for the economy boost, often twice as strong as similar buildings in terms of cost efficiency? Note: I am a stellaris player, and therefore when I see that something consumes less resources from an economic point of view, it immediately seems to me much more unbalanced than some ability that increases combat effectiveness. It is better to build a fleet of 100 cruisers than 70 cruisers with no retreat!
I downloaded the wiki for the game and came up with a fairly simple build based on this concept that I described. Be sure to take the racial trait by -10% to the amount of food needed for population growth and the trait that gives an extra city. Let's take the tom of pyromancy, and the leader will be a wizard (we will really need extra points that we can spend on casting spells). The secod will be the tom of zeal. What is the build? When we get one extra point of population, we immediately cast a piece that gives 60 of production and takes 20 of food. With this production, we are building pyromancer pyres worth 130 production (we will just build them in 2 moves) and begin to receive 10 mana per turn + 3 for each neighboring pyre. Note that these pyres are considered foresters, so having built 2 pyres in this way, we immediately rush into the mill, casting a spell for +60 to production every 3 turns (the mana gain will be just enough for this). The mill itself just levels the fine to the increase in food, and in general, the buildings that produce food are being buffeted by foresters. Moreover, this build will then explode as soon as the smiths' guild appears, giving 5 food and 5 draft for each pyre. You will have so much mana and population to build new pyres that I'm sure there will never be a problem with summoning magic units in huge numbers, spending the entire pool of magic every turn that can be spent in 1 turn. There is, by the way, an alternative: instead of tom of zeal, take tom of rook and start building quarries at +15 to industry, it's hard to say which is better.
I noticed that the best farm in the game is a feudal farm. Yes, of course, it costs 250 production and gives only 15 food. But it gives an extra 5 per adjecent farm! If we have already built 2 such farms, then the third one will give us a mind-blowing 35 food! This will allow you to start spamming the population up to the maximum for the city, so it might be worth starting with this. The same is true about the central quarry of the Tom of stone. There, too, the 3rd already gives an additional 35 production. Exceptionally strong buildings!
You can only build one pyre per city. Same with all the other special province improvements like central quarry. Also you can't build any province improvements if you don't have the population to work them, and you get that from food. This is also why the Mob Camp is so strong, it gives a percent modifier instead of a flat boost to numbers that are easy to get elsewhere.
Tome of revelry has quite decent building for early/mid game. morale is quite alright considering you will be loosing a lot of units with chaos quite often
Definitely agree. As i mentioned in my comment, Arcane bond is also an extremely powerful spell in the tome of summoning. Mind controlling magic origin units can throw the enemy off balance very early in the fight, and face the ongoing challenge of having to defeat their own units to survive.
annnd hard stop at 40:30. a 30 damage spell in a tier 1 tome is extremely good, especially considering your mostly facing T1 and T2 units at that time.
Sorry to double comment. I am extremely surprised at jumbo's tier list so close to my own opinion. HORDE + BEASTS IS OP. ROOTS IS S-TIER Every build will benefit. FERTILITY is not about power level is a prelude to natures wrath and pairs VERY. I would move that the an A. especially if coupled with early game chaos barb. CYCLES Couples really well with STAND TOGETHER. On my next game I am going to pick only low tier so I can play with some of these others.
As you really value Knowledge/Research a short PSA ;) I know this is not in scope of your tier ratings - but there is an insane synergy between Materium tomes (tons of enchantments/material transformations) and Runesmiths racial (-30% research cost for enchancements - I think it includes transformations). This is how Materium focused race can blitz through their tech tree. And put all of those enchantements on due to Runesmith upkeep reduction! Aside from the T5 tome, it is just crap :( PS: Tome of Demon Gate brings a teleporter province upgrade (yes, it is deep in the description, but the gate *is* a teleporter!). AND a major race transformation. This is what makes it A-tier strong PS2: Tome of Astral mirror is insanely good because one spell - the one that creates 2x duplicate of a unit on battlefied. **Heroes included**. If you do a magic-focused run - now you have 3 nukers on a battlefield. I think someone on Reddit posted how they clear stacks just using their magic-focused leader and this spell :P
Is everyone just gonna ignore that Revelry and Doomherald are basically meant for each other? In isolation they’re weak, but together get stupid really fast especially when you play with Nightmares and Tyrant’s set. One round can see a morale swing of over 30 in one turn. I picked Dark for my starting culture but I might try out feudal or high next. Picked up cryomancy and enchant into doom/revelry. Getting a lot of enchants going, building into a terrifying force by turn 30 or 40 or so. Take out the broom and sweep from there… nothing’ll fight back if they’re fleeing slowly for their lives as your units ride up and cut them down.
Note that Jumbo seems to rate these Tomes based on some generic playstyle. Most Tomes have very specific synergies and would be SSS Tier for some strategies while being D Tier for other strategies. I've spend a lot of times theorycrafting up builds and I find that for almost any Tome I can come up with a strategy (perhaps more fun than strong) that it would work well with, e.g. LowTierUnits, HighTierUnits, LowerMorale, BoostMorale, DebuffSynergy, DefensiveLine+Ranged, Summons, or building around a racial Tier4 unit such as War Breaker.
I want to mention this since I see people consistently missing this mechanic with Spawnkin and Supergrowth - when you increase or decrease the number of units in a formation, you make them more or less sensitive to casualties (i.e., the unit becoming weaker as it loses health). Units with only a single member in formation have no penalty for low hp, whereas more numerous formations will suffer penalties proportional to their losses faster. What this means is that Spawnkin is making your units 'flag' much faster in combat, and critically it also causes some single unit formation type units such as the Warbreed to now have casualty sensitivity, which is actually a pretty significant penalty! This is why spawnkin's effect, 20% damage, is so insane for a low tier tome - it's actually coming with a minor drawback. Conversely, Supergrowth's 10HP and one retaliation attack might seem weak for a Tier III tome, but it's making your units less sensitive to casualties, and actually upgrades some small formation units into being immune to casualties by making them a single unit formation.
If you're curious about the math behind it, you can try drawing a stepped function for damage vs %HP lost and looking at the area under the curves - but you can also just consider the logical extremes: a single unit's shape on that graph is a square, a formation with infinite units scales perfectly and forms a triangle with half the area - meaning in some theoretical fight where both those units are trading hits back and forth, the more numerous formation unit will lose.
I eagerly await the theorycrafting spreadsheets this game could inspire!
Key to mention that a ranged build with fodder will pretty much guarantee the 20% damage at full-power without any drawbacks. Vines is the obvious busted example (especially since both tomes are tier I making the combo too ez), but replace any fodder in the equation for similar effect.
Yeah, I'd much rather take Supergrowth over Spawnkin because of that. I'd only consider the latter with a Tenacious race.
Your math doesn't check out. You don't lose power quicker, just in more, but smaller steps. It only has a negative effect on very few units. Going from1 to 2 in a unit is bad, 2 to 3 is kinda meh. On units, that start out wilt relatively large number, the effect is negligible.
@@stefanb6539 It checks out exactly, and you do lose power more quickly in the sense you are deprived of the 'grace period' a more coarse formation provides you. A two unit formation gets to go all the way from 100% to 50% health before it sees any damage reduction proportional to health lost (and even then gets to continue from
Summon astral reflection is arguably the best spell in the game since you can cast it on your ruler several times, you can end up winning 1v18s with just your ruler if you have the combat points and mana to spare, if you take dark ritual the summons can also cast it so you end up with constant summons of zombies as well. Ofc you dont have to cast it on your ruler, I once beat 7 late game stacks in one turn while defending my heart of the astral with my ruler and 1 golden golem, the spell alone easily puts the book of mirrors in S-tier
I just did this to take down a fully stacked group of armies with only my ruler and two summons (though it was during the magic victory spell so every spell was buffed). But apparantly if a copy of your ruler dies, the game thinks your ruler is dead and doesnt let you cast any more spells. Had to play a little smarter to not let any copies die, so duplicating your ruler can be a double edged sword until it is fixed.
I already find mirror mimic as the strongest unit in the game, together with the 3 turns dispel from astral tome V, which removes all buffs or unit enchantment from enemy army, which gives you every late game fight a 3 turn window, were your units are 150% better than enemy army...
But your spell is super strong two, build ruler into a killing maschine, and than walk the battlefield.... your hero is the best scaling unit on the battlefields, thx to Leveling up and items, and this spell fully abuse it.
I concur. That spell alone is ridiculous /w Tanky heroes, especially ones /w tons of healing available. "Impossible battles", according to the game, became child's play the moment I picked it up in one of my games.
Yeah, astral reflection is singularly an S-Tier ability, everything else is nice, but that alone is a scenario winning spell for a hero/elite unit focused army.
Combat points seems like it would be the worst route to go with Summon Astral reflections since it reduces damage by 50%. What it doesn't reduce are ability uses (other than direct summons), especially abilities that are restricted to once per combat, since the reflections will have separate uses of each. Like say Overchannel, or Spur to Action, or Weaver.
My one detraction with your tome of summoning is you glossed over the power of arcane bond: that spell has a 90% chance to mind control magic origin units for 2 turns: this means the potential to control possibly some of the most powerful units in the enemies army on your first turn, throwing the enemy ranks into chaos. On your second turn it can be cast twice early on: this means you could be controlling 3 units that turn alone, using the enemy against itself and sparing your own forces while the enemy rips itself apart.
This. I used this last night in a high-risk battle. And won, because of this. The enemy had the ability to gain steadfast upon death. So I controlled all the bone golems on one half of the field to distract and kill the battle mages and healers. And because once a bone golem dies, it spawns skeletons. This meant I got steasfast 4 times. used their steadfast buff against them. Using that spell with time stops to bottleneck the army. They all routed because as they were fighting their own undying bone golem, I used my army to wipe out the other half on the map.
I was looking for this comment. AI doesnt react well when you take control of one of their units I think this is one of the most OP spells in the game
I would say that the original poster has rushed to put the video in front of an audience without using all the tomes in battle. He underestimates the utility of many of the less obvious spells.
An example that came early in the video: he ranks Astral Convergence as an A, while leaving Astral Mirror as a B. He explains how useful Explosive Manifestation can be, for summoning a random Tier II unit... while not realizing that Summon Astral Reflection can turn the fight by itself, by providing two half-powered copies of an existing unit... which is arguably even better than duplicating one of your existing units, which already is serving a specific role in your build.
And this is just one example. If you listen carefully, you can see which spells he has used, and which he is only guessing about.
@@TuidjyYeah. Seems like he heavily preferred pure stats and less synergy which is I think is the whole idea behind them. Disregarded early defensive upgrades where even a +1 impact on every single unit of an early unit can make a big difference on a larger scale than just 1v1 fighting units. Heavily underrated some status’ as well, like stuns
It should also be noted that "Gaia's Chosen" makes all your units count as plants. Thus, they synergize well with Mass rejuvenation and wrath of nature.
High tier Nature affinity does a better Undead than Undead.
I want to upload this long ass tier lists directly into my veins. Love the video!
As much as I know it'll probably negatively impact my gameplay in the long run- I can't stop myself from just choosing the tomes that thematically work with my faction. For example I made a lich faction that are all icy and I cant force myself to choose anything other than tomes like cold dark when playing them.
To be fair, I think it's really early in terms of meta for comprehensive Tomes tier lists. Some are obvious no brainers, but these are a rarity to me. To my experience so far, it all depends heavily on the map. If you always play the same kind of map with the same challenges, sure, some Tomes will always be better than others. If you switch the challenges enough, some Tome can go up and down dramatically in terms of ranking. Finally, the most important thing is that you have fun. AoW always tried to allow everything to be customized to fit the players own liking, and that's what makes this series so good: there's tons of ways to play the game.
Since AoW4 isn's competitive game and multiplayer here is almost unplayable I think there is absolutely no need to play meta builds. Just do what you want, roleplay, everything is ok against stupid AI
@@blazingauramancer6403 Is multiplayer really that bad? I haven't tried it.
@@AsaelTheBeast desyncs, long load times for AI enemies turns if you have them, crashes. It's bit of a mess right now. Needs some work but should be good with some TLC.
well, I'm the same as you
I got what you fell man. I want my faction to be fire-demon themed, even if they're not in a good condition right now. but hey, its a game, I suppose to enjoy it. so I'll just play whatever make me happy and not to try to be competitive :D
Tome of Beasts is absurdly good with mounted overwhelming numbers barbarian furies. Animal Kinship, and Call of the Wild means that tier 1 spell can buff your entire mounted army, pretty significantly, for 15 mana. Add pack leader to that, and you have very powerful horse archers.
I love that we have different playstyles can tell for sure from your tier lists, and Im sure they both work. It seems like you havent done an archer build just yet so 2 things, amplifed arrows does give lightning dmg but more importantly it chains 30% of the dmg and effects, so if you keep piling unit and race enhancements on your archers, they become as good as tier V units, I would constantly poison and decay an entire field of enemies, but on that note
I gotta say personally I think Zephyr Archers are broken, possibly the most cost effective unit in the game. Like the second I get them I can start punching above my level comfortably. The AIs do not understand them having the tornado ability and you can constantly move into range so you get a free round of hits, usually on multiple units, allowing you to instantly fight hard ancient wonders and camps to farm up xp on you hero. These hits also spread effects I believe. I think theres absolutely an argument to b-line for them, especially since the materium upgrade tree has some really nice things early on like metro city and other things to get more gold to rush more Zephyrs. Great video though, its awesome how many routes are effective in this game! Its going to be fun fleshing it out and finding out whats the best one
I think houndmaster are for a reason the best level1 tome to pick, they add a frontline puffer, and than simply can save attack with there bow. and with your mention buffs, there 20 base dmg bow, and 14 base dmg summon, scales extremly well into lategame.
Your zephyr come, when my houndmaster cleared half the ruins of the map
@@aqvamarek5316 Hound masters are great and battle seeker training is also great, its for sure a contender for best start. Spawnkin is interesting not sure how I feel about it and blaze is a great tier 1 spell if you go full hoard. You can stack on pack tactics and go feudal for the stand together thing to just turn it up. Very very strong start and having throw away meat shields is great. But I think generally bows are better than cross bows, kiting is a nice option when you get a range increase but the damage and effect proc chance you get from shooting 3 times vs 1 is pretty big, by no means are they weak but where end game they are doing like 40 dmg and maybe 15 to another unit, zephrys are doubling that and applying status effects to both units (and if it dies they shoot another unit if they can so action economy is better too). Not to mention the 1 hex ability that is chunking groups. Overall its a rough question which is better since houndmasters wont fall off till later and you can get them turn 5 if you have the gold, but zephyrs are an actual end game unit so getting them to champion seems like a better use of the xp around you. I can agree that theyre probably the best tier 2 unit
Same goes for battle mages, seems like he only played melee builds, but let's be honest about this, ranged > melee 😅
@@BlackBirdOni Melee has some nice play styles too with stun locks and shield buff stacking or giant slayer. But ya pyromancers are amazing and you get them early. Games in the early stages though, its really hard to have tried all the build routes
@@z-rossi3672 yeah, I guess there will be balance patches soon. T4 & t5 unit upkeep need a rework, I mean, you can use them if you want, but paying imperium is a total waste, I'd rather use a stack of t3 units. Some t3 are even stronger then t4. Omg
Drink every time he says
‘nothing to write home about’
Still a good descriptive video. Thanks for uploading
Idk chief, Tectonic Shatter in Tome of the Creator is actually the most absurd spell that I've come across in the game. You just need 1 unit on the field and you can wipe out every single enemy within 2-3 turns.
Heavily undervalued Revelry. Morale give crit chance outside the fortune buff. The transform turns the morale crit on 2 turns sooner on average.
The Skald is the best buffing support no contest. A 4 range 1 radius aoe giving 20% damage and 20% crit is nuts. Giving regen, per turn morale and movespeed with the other buff elevates it to the top.
The rest of the tome mostly falls into nice to have.
Tome of Summoning - arcane bond is really powerful. its my favorite spell when unlock spells in the first round. you can flip some of the best units and it gets killed by the enemy and slows them down
I think you just glanced over amplified arrows when in truth this got to be one of the most busted enchantments in the game. A buffed up archer can kill a couple of different enemies in their turn oftenly thanks to that enchantment.
I love this video. It could be edited down to about 30 minutes for the ADDs :)
It's weird that the descriptions in the spells doesn't tell you for how many combat rounds an enemy unit for instance becomes Distracted by the spell Exhilarating Pollen.
Good vid for trying to figure out the meta. I think you might be underestimating tome of the winds. Zephyr is probably the best archer in the game.
Tome of WInds is very strong on maps with a lot of water. Situational for sure and A tier on such maps, but B overall, true.
JumboPixel have you tried mixing tier 3 nature (summon greater animal) on a desert (Phoenix) and tier 5 materium (eternal earth) spells. Question would the Phoenix live 2 times, 3 times or actual 4 times per combat. Friend has the game, I have not had the chance to buy it yet. Thank you for helpful videos
I really think you should remake a video about this tiers list and analysis on tome in a different way : Here, you"re studying most tome in a vaccum, not considering the vertical synergy. Basically, you could make two videos : one where you just highlight all the tome that basically work in a vaccum and you could consider pick even if you're not going big on this affinity (tome of the horde, tome of vine ...) and a video where you compare the whole vertical power of each affinity (and/or branch of affinity) and how impactfull each of those tome are WITHIN the confine of this affinity (which one you want to take, which one you want to skip and instead pick a stand alone tome of another affinity ...) It would make more sense
What part of the world are you from where they say Screeing?
Most places say scrying like crying.
I’ve been playing through the campaign on normal and have yet to have a game make it to the tier 5 tomes. Their effects are very powerful but I feel like it takes too long to get to them somimes.
Good job :) Thanks :)
Amazing vids thanks brother
You put Astral Mirror as a B tier... have you ever used the create two reflections?
By itself is already really REALLY powerful. Can swarm with fake units.
If you want to really break it Wizard King spec for combat cast use the use one more spell button cast spell again to you have an army of the same over powered hero.
The rest of the tome is eh.
You keep saying vine spell is broken but I don’t see it
tome of the horde is the best tome in the game tbh
If you chose Gaias Chosen everything you have is plants.
Engagement!
I thought you were british for saying any good unit is only "pretty decent"
YT algorithm post
41:08 "Construct Bolt Repeaters" isn't actually defensive! I made the same mistake myself. It's actually an incredibly powerful SIEGE project. 2 bolt repeaters that can basically fire at full map range in a 1 hex AoE every other turn. Honestly pretty bonkers and forces the defensive player to come to you.
wow. didnt know it was actually that good.. thanks.
it's Artisan Fortifications that adds the Bolt Repeaters to your cities
52:00 Vine prison is pretty awesome. AI often focuses on destroying the vines and the vines count towards "On death..." abilities.
I used it to force the AI to waste a turn quite a few times.
It made battles that were really lopsided against me pretty doable. Would recommend.
@@AsaelTheBeast It's amazing how good some tier 1 spells are through the utility they provide. Or unintended power as well. Blaze of the Horde can hit way harder then it should if you spam lots of tier 1s.
@@mrbigglezworth42 blaze of the horde is good with the houndmaster, because its 5 total damage for each.
@@MetalHev How do you figure? Houndmaster is a T2 with a T1 hound, so you're only getting 3 fire dmg from the hound since it's your T1 and not an enemy T1 for the other 2 fire dmg.
@@mrbigglezworth42 its 3 damage for each friendly t1, plus 2 damage for each friendly non-t1. So 1 t1 plus 1 t2, 5 damage.
35:50 "Summon Balor" spell is pretty much useless because there are better and cheaper ways to get him. You can summon 2x Chaos Eater and then use "Fight for power" spell to get Balor. Also evil chaos race has pretty good chance to get Balor from random event. I got 2 of them in a single game just from the random events
You can also get them from the rally of the lieges if your vassal goes for demonkin. Pretty easy to do if you just release your own vassal.
4:28 I think it's pronounced "S - Cry - Ing" not "S - Cree- Ing"
The Tome of Terramancy is very situational. I started in a region with a lot of mountain tiles and the possibility of clearing the terrain to build more provinces and opening new paths was gamechanging. Also, the 60% instakill spell saved me a lot against problematic tier 3 units.
Destroying mountains can be huge, and seems to be one of those things Jumbo completely overlooked.
I was in a map that had (i forget the exact name) the big scars of deadzone you cant do anything with, was also surrounded by alot of mountains,
situations like that being able to destroy the mountains was SO good.
Though i had also discovered that - it seems some other terramorphing spells can clear mountains -
Age of winter, the one that slowly turns your empire into ice expanding out 2 provinces, will slowly flatten mountains.
If there are OTHER spells that do similar as well, probably makes it a BIT less good when it isnt an exclusive ability, but still very handy to have regardless.
Vine prison is essentially the strongest spell in the game. It makes the AI go completely brain dead and they waste all of their efforts destroying the vines instead of attacking you. I’ve beat stacks with 2+ Tier 5s using tier 1-3 armies as a result
Until it's patched.
_Has_ it been patched yet?
it is patched now @@JoshSweetvale
I actually like it when some of my favorite tomes are ranked as low as C or D. It makes me think that I'm making good use of them, and they might get buffed in the future.
The problem with ranking tomes individually is ignoring synergies: One tome may be mediocre on it's own: combine it with another and it ascends to S tier. I think this particularly shines with Tome that provide debuffing spells, enchantments and racial transformations. Taken altogether, they can break the enemy army down on many different levels, potentially pulling out wins where otherwise one would most certainly lose.
@@Smithers322 Yeah, AoW4 is all about build synergies. Looking at each tome in isolation without considering how they can be used in combinations feels like it's really missing a big part of the picture.
@@Smithers322 Exactly!
This is more or less the feeling I had for dark tome by example. They're ranked pretty low, because the ranking is made in a vaccum, while some of the tome are meant to commit more generally as an affinity focused build. Some tomes like "tome of the horde" will always work great in a vaccum because you could theorically pick it as any race and benefit from it and forget it. Other build like necromancy and cryomancy build are "stack over time" synergy where the higher you go in the tree the most the beginning tome make sense.
Overall I wouldn't care too much for this ranking because studying tome in vaccum just don't work
@@dorianodet8064 completely agree. A few tomes work solo, but most work best when paired with others
Why do people put such a low value on +range to ranged units? The difference between range 4 and 5 is massive, especially for powerful shots that require the unit to be stationary!
Turning your range units into effective snipers can make for the classic Skyrim play through
Right? Starting with high society, they get +1 when awakened. This can stack with their 1 enhancement seeking projectile. And so by turn like 5 you can have 6 range. Add to this that top veteran their gets +1 range and your little tier 1 can hit 7 tiles away. If you get the their 3 archer that has 5 range and an age. Add the bonuses and it's 8 tiles away. Often hitting on first round of combat. Crazy.
He ignores a lot. Ignores synergies even within the same tome or the one just before. Basically he is ranking these purely based off of “does __% more damage” where the higher it is the higher the tome is. I was surprised how little he considered some status’ that I think are pretty strong, such as buffing defenses in mat and then converting that into +50% damage. Has you dealing t3 or higher levels of damage on t1s. Pretty decent early game stacked on all their ways of buffing defense
Reading the different playstyles in the comments is a testament to just how well developed AOW4 is. Several different playstyles and rankings on tomes translates to diversity and hours of re-playability.
Of course that's an awesome thing in single player, but the real long term test will be how it handles in MP. Hopefully much like AOW1 we end up with SP patch and MP patch branches because of how hard it is to balance between the two.
Tome of Scrying may not offer much utility, however, the Watcher itself is one hell of a unit to get. Every time I roll into that tome, the unit quickly becomes a regular staple for my medium to long range picks. The unit itself is just a singular entity, meaning it can take a beating and continue outputting consistent damage through injuries. It has a built in stun on it's extra ability and it also has a good range to it, often gaining the privilege of landing opening hits and disabling enemy backline as the fight goes on.
tome of scrying is worth it just for the "guided missiles" enchant - which is critical for any all battlemage comp. If you can shoot through your own troops without accuracy debuffs, then you can go 6x Spellbreakers or whatever pure range comp you want to use - but it's very powerful. It's also cool to put vision on an enemy. I like scrying, even if it's kinda weak on the greater scale, i get more utility from it than some more popular tomes
Yeah i concur that the Watcher alone should bump it up a tier, making whole stacks of watcher in the endgame is very good and can just win you the game with just that.
Oh nice, dont needs to wright it myself 😅 yeah, rushing t5 astral makes the watchers one of the most cost effective and potentially powerfull units in the game, period. U literally dont need any other units, so draft buildings can be ignored completly, just focus in mana economy and expansion. In may last game my 3 wachter stacks beat 7 enemy stackts full of shrines of smite, on autoresolve. Sure, c tier... 😂
Joy Siphoners is way underrated.
With high Morale you gain additional Crit hit Rate. Crits lower Morale.
I had many even or negative odd fights where half of the enemy Army just straight up routed.
wow, C tier for tome of revelry sounds like sb dont know how to connect it with other tomes to amazing synergy.Not to mention that support unit from this book is probably the best for damage support unit in the game. 2x these supporters and ur stack of army have +40% dmg / +40% crit chance
A lot of the chaos tomes are meant to work in tandem with each other. Stacking all the de-buffs and giving your own army buffs against de-buffed targets means massive crits for your side and routing/fumbling enemies all over the place.
The Sanctuary province improvement is amazing and solo carries the Tome of Sanctuary into being quite strong. It's a Magic Jammer (best improvement in the game) that produces 10 mana instead of costing 10 (so essentially +20 mana) and on top of that it makes all of your other improvements unpillageable.
Evocation and pyromancy are basically the same tome. They share 5/6 spells. Ritual pyre is straight up better than channeling tower because forests are way common than mana nodes. As for lightning vs burning debuff, both do 8 dmg per turn, the diff is lightning lasts until debuffed while burning lasts 3 turns. Upside is you have better chances to inflict burning and all your melee troops with searing blades deals bonus 20 percent to burned units. And battle would need to last 4 turns after second turn to get value from lightning debuff, which in early game it isnt happening that much.
I dont know why you put Evo so high. Horde is broken af S tier no doubt but if you gonna compared to it Pyro, you should also compare it with Evo. Pyro low C, Evo high D.
You should be comparing all tier 1 tomes together and then 2 etc etc, not all spells from one affinity. This tier list is bad as my english.
Lightning damage is superior because you can reduce enemy lightning resistance on the overworld. You cant do the same with fire.
Lightning damage is also better because very little resists lightning whereas fire is a common resistance.
@@jamesrobsonza7752 Fair points. Player units dont have any resistances until you enchant them. As for wildlife there are 14 units that have lighning weakness compared to 11 fire. Which is not that far from each other. Ofc if you want decide which one is better: you would need to count how much of that weakness is on each unit, mb is it -2 or -3, same for resistances and take all that into perspective. And you want to know what spawnrate units have not only in general but also within their tier group. I want to guess its pretty even, but I am not that smart to calc that out.
As for overworld spell, yea its pretty good but not by far and its tier 3 so you need more knowledge to research it.
Damage wise lighting torrent + fulmination combo will be 38 or 42 in 1 hex radius compared to pyromancer flamestrike + immolate 36 also in 1 hex radius. Pretty close.
To me dealbreaker is ritual pyre. Youll be lucky to have 1 mana node in your starting location. Even if you see 2, they need to be close enough to get the benefit, all the while its not uncommon to see 4-5 patches of forests near you. Thats 1 or maybe 2 lesser magma spirits than more than evocation have.
@@jamesrobsonza7752 It's a cliché thing to say but if you know what map/factions you're going against then that should dictate your favored element.
I do agree, however, that lightning is the more general and safer element if you're not sure about what you're facing. The only thing that resists lightning are wind/storm elementals and nature tome units, but its great against astral/fey/golem units. Fire would be great against nature/shadow/undead units but not against chaos/fiend/stone/fire units. Frost is great against chaos/fiend/celestial units but not against shadow/undead.
All in all, better to just stick with and specialize in one element anyways otherwise you're just gimping yourself, because even if a unit type resists your element you're at least given ways to overcome those resistances. It's why I wish Mystic units had the option to select the type of elemental magic they want to use for an attack instead of splitting the damage across 3 elements.
@@DPCrescendolls Its hard to slap fire or frost tomes on mystic because you will have dead spell in your research for a long time. The one that buffs archer and skirmishers.
Maybe solution to starblades would be to give +1 depending on what spell did you cast (if frost then +1frost) and if not specific only then it could be random.
@Simon Six Searing Blades does more damage against burning enemies, but has no chance to cause burning itself, while Lightning Blades causes enemies to become electrified. Pyromancy forces you to micromanage your armies in a similar way to the Dark culture's Cull the Weak mechanic. Evocation just has you make the whole army weak to electricity, and lets you enjoy your weapons being fully effective without a one-two punch involved. As far as I can tell none of the Evocation abilities actually rely on enemies becoming electrified to increase their damage. There's probably more pay off if you hit a burning enemy with Searing Blades, but if they aren't burning, the flat change to cause the enemy to become electrified is better than the damage Searing Blades isn't doing in that instance.
Really great video. I generally agree, but with some contentions:
Tome of Scrying: I was surprised you ranked it so low as the power of Guided Projectiles is hard to overstate if you're going for battlemages, support casters, or ranged units. The only time it's not all but a must-have is if you are rushing melee only, and even then you'll have support in your back line trying to lob over your shock troops. I think it can be a C tier, but I find it much stronger than Tome of Summoning that you placed higher.
Tome of Transmutation: I wouldn't discount the Transmuter as run of the mill, the regular ability to stun a group of enemy units and sap defenses from your enemies to your allies, it acts as a support caster with the damage of a battle mage. Does that push it to C tier... eh, but maybe high in D tier.
Tome of the Creator: The resurrections applies to the Gold Golem, but it's really the only thing worth it in the whole tome
Tome of Cryomancy: The other elemental T1 tome unit enchantmens also lower physical damange in exchange for the elemental damage. I'll also say that Ice Coffin and White Witch has been really useful with the Frozen status really helping take down some very strong wonder fights by taking units out of the fight. This is I think the first major disagreement, I'd put this at *at least* B tier.
I don't think people realize how good Keeper's Mark from the Sanctuary Tome really is because of one simple reason: it applies to units you summon during the battle. I researched it during a life affinity playthrough and every single vine, plant, and animal I summoned had Keeper's Mark, making them exceptionally annoying and difficult to chew through for my opponents. The fact that it forces you to wait an extra turn before being able to finish those units off really makes it a top tier spell imo.
Love the tier list, but wanna add that vine prison 52:20 if it were in a tier 3 book it would be overpowered and enough to probably propel that t3 book to S or high A tier. The fact its in a tier 1 book its actually broken. So many synergies with other books, plus it takes up 5 enemy actions. Broken.
Edit: Playing around with it a bit more. Its better than many tier 5 tome spells. This has to be the best spell in the game atm.
Important to mention, the Gaia's Chosen transformation gives your race the Plant template, which it doesn't mention in the tooltip.
So see those later tomes that, I dunno, give all plants +4 damage +20% crit, or revive all plants? Uh, yeah.
Was about to point that out.
And the fact that you can get super growth right before it to make your stacks smaller so you maintain that high damage. Part of me thinks that nature might be the best tome tree to go for. Natural recovery (15+ heals in your domain) and ranger (the one that gives you more movement in your domain) are probably the 2 most useful upgrades for when you can unlock them. Im curious what trees people are liking though they all seem pretty (except for order but thats just me)
@@z-rossi3672 nature is the most powerful tree and it isn't close. The Mystic one might be the second, but nature is insanely more powerful than the rest.
@@MetalHev Thing is Materium has amazing nodes like metro which is +10% in evey income for every city touching the throne, that tier 4 armor you get early on, the best health regen in the game (1 per 2 movement remaining) and all the money lol. I think its being slept on crushing earth and zephyr archers are way better than he gave credit. Id take a zephyr with some unit enhancements over tier 5s easy. By mystic are you talking about blue? Cause 100%, right now my rankings are
S tier: green, blue, orange
A Tier: Red
B tier: Purple
C tier: white and yellow
Yellow (order) ... I do not get why Id ever invest in it, Purple's (shadow) best ones are pretty early on with the +50 knowledge per hero level and +5 casting points per death/kill, but theyre both not really needed to late game. Red is a Playstyle specific one for sure but weaker than blues mana and summons buffs. But really give orange a try, the sheer economy it gives an the fact that zephyr archers can become late game monsters makes it worth while
@@Chikanuk Interesting you and I have materium and order swapped, tell me a bit more why you like order so much. Like what are you racing towards that makes it worth?
Of all the starting tomes, the one of healing might be my favourite. It's so handy to get that army heal spell to help heal up your first army in between battles as you go around claiming resources.
Seems like you don't value CC abilities much. The nymph has the convert spell, and the transmuter in the transmutation book has a 7hex CC stun with 90% success rate. That's huge in terms of damage mitigation. I would also recommend you to test the tome of doom herald (maybe in combination with other tomes that offer morale manipulation spells/units/buffs, etc...). Consider that the -3 morale is per hit and unresistable. So a 3 action point archer will lower an enemy's morale by 9. Combined with the morale lowering spells, you can quickly get the 30% buff damage on your race, which is huge. And the more you kill enemies, the lower their morale and the more units trigger the 30% damage buff when they are attacked. It's not as straightforward to use as other tomes, but it's very powerful when used correctly
Yeah I felt the same way especially about the stuns. Morale can sometimes have an effect on battles even without either side using morale affecting spells/units, and I felt like he considered morale from the perspective of “-3 is nothing, it won’t even affect the battle beyond what I already see” when that’s just not the case when the effects are stacked together.
Tome of the Astral Mirror is absolutely, 100% S Tier for Summon Astral Reflections alone.
1:22:26 I like this tom a lot, white witch and ice coffing are great with frozen effect. LIterally 80% units enchanments work like that its +4 dmg and -2 base dmg.
And now slowed units can't retaliate to attacks whatsoever during your turn. Makes it very effective to dish out excess damage without receiving it back.
I hate to be critical of this tier list but you're way off the mark on a large number of the tomes. You misunderstand the stuff (for example, Final Ultimatum isn't a morale buff for fuck's sake), making you rate the tome lower. For Tome of Cryomancy, you randomly complain about the elemental buffs reducing physical damage and put the tome to C tier, even though all the other elemental buffs in other tomes work exactly the same way and didn't bother you earlier...? Oh and later on, presumably to make up for dumping most of the shadow tomes in C tier, you put the Great Transformation one in S tier, failing to mention that you can't cast half of the spells in that tome without the earlier shadow tomes :)
I understand that this video is already huge in length so you don't have much time to talk about each tome and lots of details and nuances are therefore lost. But I really get an impression you've seen half of these tomes for the first time here and you have no idea what's going on with them. That's perhaps to be expected of a tier list that's made so early, however it does make it more of a tier list of "tomes I like or dislike because of my impressions" rather than anything even approaching objectivity, which seemed to be your goal from the intro.
I am genuinely glad that AoW4 has content creators such as yourself making videos about this game. Rating all the tomes in the game in a UA-cam video is no small task and yet I did enjoy watching it for the whole duration. I don't mean to discourage you from doing further content like this. In fact, I am hoping you will be able to, in the future, revise this tier list once you'll have a bigger grasp on the whole game. Of course, I cannot possibly claim to know everything about this game either, but for a good number of the unlocks you simply fail to read the tooltips properly, which is such a glaring error I had to point it out.
I think you're under-selling the benefit of Arcane Restoration and Arcane Supercharge. Remember, they target EVERYTHING on the battlefield--so if you've gone all in for summoning tons of units, the heal and/or buff might affect almost every unit on the field. No other healing spell outside of Tome of the God-Emperor can heal THAT many units at the same time. I've deployed it to devastating effect when going for a "full summoner" build. The real issue is, these spells do almost nothing _alone._ You must have good summoned units _already_ to make full use of them. There's no point to using it if you aren't using many (or even any) Magic Origin units. It's absolutely S-tier if you're running around with armies full of spirits and entwined and golems and such.
My favorite play style is full summoner build. These tomes make it more than viable. Hordes of tier 1-2 units will melt before a properly boosted and composited army of summons that are tiers 3-5. Once the final upgrade of the astral affinity line is taken, and if paired with channeling trait, a summoner can spam caste tier one elementals that will start as tier 3s. Main thing is surviving to that point. Once there? Game over.
A small note :
RIght now, there is a bug with city that you release as vassals (either a conquered city or one that you built yourself). That bug disable the A.I. in these vassal cities preventing it from using its units and sometimes even building.
I point that out because it kinda reduces a bit the usefulness of vassal oriented spells especially blessed reinforcement.
However, that bug has been pointed out to the devs and they are aware of it so expect a fix sometime soon.
Other than that, thanks for making this tier list :)
Hello there! Great video my man, but l think as many in the coments say that most of these tombs are weak as a single book but stronger together with others. l would love to see your idea of the stronbest trio. like for example the best first 3 book order u can go or smth.... good vid
Strange to make Necromancy a C tier when you're all about the "extra" battle units. Raise zombies alone lets you often almost for sure win a battle off of pure numbers. Especially if you synergize with horde to have very cheap tier one units that you can treat as relatively expendable. Never mind that you can, for some reason, raise zombies from skeletons.
You're able to make an unbreakable wall of units while your mage heros nuke the enemies down fast with AoEs and combat spells.
I get the feeling that this tier list is just treating each tome independently. Most of the undead tomes are not that good on its own, but they build on eachothers strengths to make for a very powerful set. So getting tome of necromancy and nothing else isn't great, but getting souls, necromancy, doomherald, great transformation, reaper, and eternal lord is extremely powerful.
@@volodymyrboitchouk tak 😊 same as astral, it's all about synergies for mytical units.
30:25 One big thing in favour for the warbreed is that it counts as your species, so benefits from all major and minor race transformations
Astral Reflections is actually one of the strongest spells in the game. Get yourself whatever creature with very powerful ability such as mind control for example, and astral reflect it 3-4 times (feasable at turn 2), congratulations, you have now 8 more copies of that creature without worrying about upkeep cost.
Mind control can win otherwise unwinnable battles btw.
Do note that a mind controlled creature is considered dead if all non mind controlled enemies are dead.
So fighting only half the army is enough to win, and it's even easier considering you've got more creatures to take/deal damage.
Very very powerful, and most underrated spell imo.
really savouring all the AoW4 videos that you're putting out there. Thanks a lot!
What happens if you combine [Astral Attunement] with [Transmute Resources?] Every population creates mana... and every mana creates other resources... If you research (Astral Convergence) and cast [Astral Attunement] ASAP, and then go straight for [Tome of Transmutation], you'll have explosive growth in the endgame.
Throne of Mirrors + Wizard in his Tower or Dragon Lord = Muhuhahhahahahahhahahaa
Avatar of Chaos + Dragon Lord seems to be even more broken. Its main downside seems to be that it's a spell.
I would like to point out, with Order and Forest, if you use the [Angelize] major race transformation, then you could use [Awaken Instincts] without losing your army to the Berserk debuff.
Funny, Summon Astral Projections was almost competely skipped over. Id summoning two copies of a unit in battle (even though they are weaker) not extremere useful? You later even say yo think this is powerful 😂
True, I saw a clip of someone using astral projection on a hero with Assassination skill and phase. It was fun to see him killing enemies left and right.
Agreed. Never lost a battle with the "Summon Astral Reflections" combat spell.
Bro... whadya mean Materium is average? Terramancy D? Did you not use Crushing Earth? Do you just have very little experience with turn based games? 60% Chance to instantly kill a Tier 3 unit and, if it doesn't, Stuns them means you either A: Kill a high value target instantly or B: it doesn't get a turn. That is THE strongest Tier 2 Tome Spell in the entire game, bar none. Secondly, defense stacking is completely broken in this game. Defense stacking gives SO much damage reduction its actually crazy. If you get 10-12 Defense anything Tier 3 and below dealing physical damage, aka the vast majority of units in the game, will feel like their tickiling you with wet tissue paper. And thats just where Iron Golems start with defense stacking. Unfourtanetly, the Root of Materium is bugged and doesn't bolster units on materium buffs as it should, but it can become ridiculous. The fact that materium gains access to a map wide strip Bolster Defense for +Strength +Fortune equal to the bolster defense, AND bastions just exist in materium means you can have absurd defense AND absurd damage. Zephyr archers are also the best tier 3 archer in the game thanks to their special aoe ability which lets them chew up most rosters in the game when you field 2-3 of them in a roster, especially with all the buffs you can apply (admittedly wind is absolute garbage outside of that). And sunder defenses on ALL melee attacks when you're using multi-attack melee units means after 2 attacks they're sitting at -2 defense, which makes your archers do ridiculous damage. It makes a roster absurdly durable in the early game, which means you can fight far more battles than normal per turn to help you XP grind your hero, and then opens up with some of the strongest mid game tomes in the game thanks to a few key spells which are way overtuned.
And lets not forget they have the STRONGEST Tier 5 tome in the game with a map wide stun that deals 30 base, and with a heart of materium deals 50. In 18 v 18 you're very likely to just stun half their units, and thanks to the absurd economy buffs you get you can just do this every turn. Also Gold and Iron golems come back after death with 60% of their health. And thanks to the eco buffs you can just field more units than any other faction in the game, and more tier 5 units as a consequence meaning you are the strongest late game faction because it doesn't matter that undead can bring their army back to life (twice) if your entire army is gold golems that ALSO come back to life and just rip through their units as you proceed to map wide chain stun them for 4 consecutive turns. Materium, overall, is the best set of tomes in the game.
I would argue that tome of the Doomherald is actually HUGE. Combining the Joy Siphoners with other effects that can effect morale can lead to whole armies running away at what would otherwise be the halfway point of a fight.
Best part is you get rng free kills on units that flee and fleeing units don’t fight back. Couple this with cryomancy’s innate slow effect and you can take your time focusing down threats as they slowly flee in terror of your little munchkins from munchkinland.
I think you were really harce on cyromancy, all of the elemental blade and arrow spells lower physical damage by 2 in exchange for +4 elemental damage. Its not that different from the other elemental tier 1 books. The most important thing in picking between them is the theme you want the charter to follow, and this is a perfect start for an ice themed character.
The Demon Gate Tome is awful and should be at least a tier lower. You fail to take into account that you only get a single major race transformation so if you take that one you cannot take another better major transformation, the Scions of Flame minor race transformation is actually better imho and no limit on how many of these you can take. The Gremlin ambushers ability is totally broken , is an amazing unit and to get them spawning for free is just ludicrously powerful.
The Tome of Vigor is above S tier just for the Totem of the wild alone. Is insane to just keep getting units for free ...... and you are not just limited to a single Totem of the wild and you can just bury the enemy under spiders and the limit of just 18 units on the battlefield is laughably incorrect.
Tome of Warding seems to be underappreciated in several tier lists. I agree that the hero buff is bad(at best, it can counter/cleanse Sundered Resistance) and the lack of a unique province improvement kind of hurt it as well.
But Phantasm Warrior is one of the best summons in the game. A tier 1 unit with decents stats from the get go, immune to several effects and floating. And it is both a Racial Unit(minor and major transformation), a tier 1 unit(various effects that reduce upkeep/enhance tier 1 units) and a Magical Origin Unit(again, various upkeep and enhancement effects). And it is a Shield Unit, so it has the Shield Wall ability and is affected by Shield Unit enchantments.
Staves of Warding is an awesome buff for your support units and synergizes very well with other tomes that buff support units.
Magical Wards is a very effective early buff for your race(including Phantasm Warriors).
Mark of Invulnerability is an insanely powerful tool later in the game, when you are dealing with powerful mosters ganging up on your hero or with "save or die" abilties(and it can cleanse you of debuffs as well).
Static Shield is of mixed quality. Great on a forward tank/distraction unit, as it can potentially stun several enemies. But it is inconsistent/unreliable.
Overall, it is a B tier for me. If its hero ability was better, or it had a unique province improvement, it would be A.
I am playing the story map where you fight all the angel units. Probably the best scenario I have come across yet. The enemies are weak to frost so the frost tomb tier 1 is crushing it. With my army of witches they can’t move.
Game looks like it's got deeper rp aspects then most strategy games and better combat then ck3
I did skip through most of the video (wanted to see the final chart and then looked at the tomes which I thought were good to hear ur reaction), to me it seems you haven't used them all or haven't utlised them in the right combinations.
Yeh, a lot of these tomes have synergies with other tomes, and are meant to be taken as an overall build. Also, it should be assumed that the tome is going to be utilized almost in its entirety, so one’s like Doom-herald end up being powerful when properly implemented.
Hes just ranking the individual tomes for what they offer and when they offer it. Not really looking at combos or even affinities.
Isnt ignoring obstruction penalties really good? Does that mean you can shoot at targets in trees without penalties or something else?
Yes it negates the -40% accuracy penalty
Yes, or a pretty big part- units. You can shoot through your frontline.
I think the tome of pandemomium is AT LEAST A tier. The race transformation when comboed with nature buffs and/or dark culture pursuers is almkst a GUARANTEED +30% Damage
The thing that saves Tomb of Teramancy is that Earth Shatter is often essential for Domination victory, that will elevate it a lot now that Magic Victory isn't the automatic choice.
Incite Revolution is broken, just an FYI to anyone who reads this. Being able to convert an enemy province into Resources+Exp+Loot for yourself, at a fairly low cost, is incredibly strong.
I just used this last game with my wizard king. Granted the enemy was already pretty beat down but bullying the AI with that spell was fun. I feel like I’d hate to play against it in pvp
4:35 omg that hurt my ears. How did you pronounce scrying?!?!
I just focus on Shadow Tomes and ignore everything else 😂
Keeper's Mark is OP providing a Steadfast equivalent to your units in combat. It's super frustrating to fight against(if you don't have Disruption Wave). You kinda dropped the ball on this one!
So did anyone make a PDF or Excel list with the results?
Very situational indeed but I had a hero with the Wand of Mind Control which gives a base 90% chance to mind-control a unit. Summon Astral Reflection with overcharge meant I could start with 5 heroes that could mind-control (and summon more later) effectively wololo'ing my way through battles. It made so many tough battles so easy once I could steal their tier 3 or 4 units.
4:35 Tome of SCREEE-ing
Nice list. I have to disagree with tome of cryomancy. If you play as frostborne the structure alone makes it an A tier. It gives you 10 knowledge and around 20 mana per city. Incredibly powerful in the early game. And ice coffin is really nice in small fights since it takes out a creature repeatedly.
5:30 watcher is great its my main mid-late lev mage in army stack when I play dark-blue colours. It have high dmg+ it stack with tom5 COSMIC OVERDRIVE + all other battle mage buffs/enchants
Worth a mention that earth shatter can also remove moutains which allows you to build more provinces. Found this to be quite useful.
I think nature is in a pretty strong place in overal terms. On the other hand, I don't think it's really feasible to simply make a tier list due to the huge weight of sinergies in this game, and also the fact how the opportunity cost changes depending on your intended build (I.E., if you want a certain T5 tome the cost is just the other of the same affinity, not all of the same tier).
I aree with the Tome of Teleportation tough, I usually get it with ANY faction once I got their T5, it's just all around too useful.
I think the tome of the horde is pretty overrated. Summoning tier 1's is pretty much just a waste of mana and you have no control over what you get. Spawnkin has a serious hidden debuff which means all it takes is a smack or two and you loose that 20% dmg. So I prefer to go for Beast tomes and focus on cav. With beastkin, wolf mounts and overwhelm tactics, and tome of enchantment you can stack +60% crit. when you group cavalry, which can get much spicier than relying on a bunch of tier 1 spam. Tier 1 tactics are strong in the early game but eventually they taper off and by the end game you are left with huge stacks of inferior units that get dumpstered by the AI armies.
Very incorrect. Especially considering you're chaos. Which means your "T1" sunderers will be smacking down T3s. They'll be 91 up units that are some of the hardest hitting around. With an upkeep of 4g. So you get an essentially free unit with T3 fighter health and top tier damage.
In theory it loses to a s stack of 18 T4+ units, but then they lose the other 10 attacks that turn.
Tier differences are small in state and large in cost. Apply double damage and near double health and it just can't be beat. Even late late game.
You may want to take the train resilient though, to make sure you don't lose power when damaged. Really though, assuming near qual budgets most fights and turn 2.
@@lyriameridoc7501 actually i just played a real full horde game as barbs and you're right. I didn't have all the synergies right the first time i tried it and it was kinda meh, but i made some really twisted chaos/nature/matter barbs that just owned everything. I think the most powerful thing you can do is go for golden horde. It makes you utterly unstoppable. Best spell in the game, you can just flood your enemy. Minor race enhancements are king, with no upkeep they can seriously beef up your tier 1's. Steelskin Demonkin are beasts.
So from what I am seeing the Nature Tomes are pretty great (I already knew that but still nice to see someone else think it)
The Tome of Screeing is a great idea for a shrieking and/or screeching-themed tome
Even better, the idea of Demonic rifts summoning forth verdant fields of grass is just.. terrifying! (sorry)
Tome of Scrying Mental Mark is pretty strong Imho,
3 stacks of unavoidable Marked and Sundered resistance
For archer and battle mage build it' s a massive boost, very often you can bring enemy resistance into negative even on buffed heroes.
Inferior to just deleting your opponent by spamming summons or blaze of the horde.
@@jamesrobsonza7752 if your summons are casters such as fire golems and watchers….
Tome of Summoning mind control spell can really be OP specially on higher difficulties, when you are just a weak mf and your opponent has tier 4 magic origin units [and I swear all of them do]
mind controlling one of these units most likely result in killing another unit and the AI focuses the mind controlled unit as well
My strongest combo is cannibal elves because reasons and i always go barbarian rush teleportation tome ... building outpost everywhere building chronogate everywhere its just insane
I haven't played the game yet as I'm not sure I have that much time in late spring. However, I have a question... Aren't the tomes of pyromancy, of rock and of faith the strongest in the game simply because they have province improvements for 130 production, giving insane effects for the economy boost, often twice as strong as similar buildings in terms of cost efficiency?
Note: I am a stellaris player, and therefore when I see that something consumes less resources from an economic point of view, it immediately seems to me much more unbalanced than some ability that increases combat effectiveness. It is better to build a fleet of 100 cruisers than 70 cruisers with no retreat!
I downloaded the wiki for the game and came up with a fairly simple build based on this concept that I described. Be sure to take the racial trait by -10% to the amount of food needed for population growth and the trait that gives an extra city. Let's take the tom of pyromancy, and the leader will be a wizard (we will really need extra points that we can spend on casting spells). The secod will be the tom of zeal. What is the build? When we get one extra point of population, we immediately cast a piece that gives 60 of production and takes 20 of food. With this production, we are building pyromancer pyres worth 130 production (we will just build them in 2 moves) and begin to receive 10 mana per turn + 3 for each neighboring pyre. Note that these pyres are considered foresters, so having built 2 pyres in this way, we immediately rush into the mill, casting a spell for +60 to production every 3 turns (the mana gain will be just enough for this). The mill itself just levels the fine to the increase in food, and in general, the buildings that produce food are being buffeted by foresters. Moreover, this build will then explode as soon as the smiths' guild appears, giving 5 food and 5 draft for each pyre. You will have so much mana and population to build new pyres that I'm sure there will never be a problem with summoning magic units in huge numbers, spending the entire pool of magic every turn that can be spent in 1 turn. There is, by the way, an alternative: instead of tom of zeal, take tom of rook and start building quarries at +15 to industry, it's hard to say which is better.
I noticed that the best farm in the game is a feudal farm. Yes, of course, it costs 250 production and gives only 15 food. But it gives an extra 5 per adjecent farm! If we have already built 2 such farms, then the third one will give us a mind-blowing 35 food! This will allow you to start spamming the population up to the maximum for the city, so it might be worth starting with this. The same is true about the central quarry of the Tom of stone. There, too, the 3rd already gives an additional 35 production. Exceptionally strong buildings!
You can only build one pyre per city. Same with all the other special province improvements like central quarry. Also you can't build any province improvements if you don't have the population to work them, and you get that from food. This is also why the Mob Camp is so strong, it gives a percent modifier instead of a flat boost to numbers that are easy to get elsewhere.
@@Wlerin7 Thanks, I was wrong
Tome of revelry has quite decent building for early/mid game. morale is quite alright considering you will be loosing a lot of units with chaos quite often
Not only that, but the Skald is very powerful for buffing "horde"-players
@@Tidariis i get skald is powerful, but why horde specifically?
9:19 - wisp shouldn't be T1. It has absurdly high damage.
Definitely agree. As i mentioned in my comment, Arcane bond is also an extremely powerful spell in the tome of summoning. Mind controlling magic origin units can throw the enemy off balance very early in the fight, and face the ongoing challenge of having to defeat their own units to survive.
annnd hard stop at 40:30. a 30 damage spell in a tier 1 tome is extremely good, especially considering your mostly facing T1 and T2 units at that time.
Sorry to double comment. I am extremely surprised at jumbo's tier list so close to my own opinion. HORDE + BEASTS IS OP. ROOTS IS S-TIER Every build will benefit. FERTILITY is not about power level is a prelude to natures wrath and pairs VERY. I would move that the an A. especially if coupled with early game chaos barb. CYCLES Couples really well with STAND TOGETHER. On my next game I am going to pick only low tier so I can play with some of these others.
wtf revelerny C/D tier ranking? that shit carries hard, the spell allows you to rank up your army so quick, the morale makes you land easy crits
As you really value Knowledge/Research a short PSA ;) I know this is not in scope of your tier ratings - but there is an insane synergy between Materium tomes (tons of enchantments/material transformations) and Runesmiths racial (-30% research cost for enchancements - I think it includes transformations). This is how Materium focused race can blitz through their tech tree. And put all of those enchantements on due to Runesmith upkeep reduction! Aside from the T5 tome, it is just crap :(
PS: Tome of Demon Gate brings a teleporter province upgrade (yes, it is deep in the description, but the gate *is* a teleporter!). AND a major race transformation. This is what makes it A-tier strong
PS2: Tome of Astral mirror is insanely good because one spell - the one that creates 2x duplicate of a unit on battlefied. **Heroes included**. If you do a magic-focused run - now you have 3 nukers on a battlefield. I think someone on Reddit posted how they clear stacks just using their magic-focused leader and this spell :P
Is everyone just gonna ignore that Revelry and Doomherald are basically meant for each other? In isolation they’re weak, but together get stupid really fast especially when you play with Nightmares and Tyrant’s set. One round can see a morale swing of over 30 in one turn. I picked Dark for my starting culture but I might try out feudal or high next. Picked up cryomancy and enchant into doom/revelry. Getting a lot of enchants going, building into a terrifying force by turn 30 or 40 or so. Take out the broom and sweep from there… nothing’ll fight back if they’re fleeing slowly for their lives as your units ride up and cut them down.
Note that Jumbo seems to rate these Tomes based on some generic playstyle. Most Tomes have very specific synergies and would be SSS Tier for some strategies while being D Tier for other strategies. I've spend a lot of times theorycrafting up builds and I find that for almost any Tome I can come up with a strategy (perhaps more fun than strong) that it would work well with, e.g. LowTierUnits, HighTierUnits, LowerMorale, BoostMorale, DebuffSynergy, DefensiveLine+Ranged, Summons, or building around a racial Tier4 unit such as War Breaker.