A few things: 1) When you make an outpost in order to make a city, turn it into a city as soon as you have enough imperium to do so. Don't waste a lot of time building walls or work camps (especially when you dont have the upgrade that makes you do that faster and cheaper). An outpost cost you 10 gold per turn, while a city generate resources for you. The time you waste to get stone walls in an outpost you could have grown the city to at least size 3 and have gotten palisade walls and some buildings done already. By building all kinds of stuff in the outpost before turning it into a city, you end up using more gold and having a smaller city. 2) I don't think nature aspect was a good pick for your dragon. 10 temporary hp on a random unit (that have to be close) is of quite limited value. Being safe from charge attacks and deal extra retaliation damage seems of much more value in this part of the game, and you can always use your free respec of your dragon to change it when it becomes more of a caster than a fighter. I would go Materium early and Astral (for the 30% damage om breath attacks) later. 3) Don't neglet getting Devout Radiance, it is a very good damage spell when you get to paragon level. It deals much more damage than any other cheep to cast 1 hex radius spell. It is also great that it only hits enemies. You can even boost it to 40 damage if you build the order amplifier. It is of course VERY good against undead and demons. 4) Make sure to pick up pacification before you take down your first infestation, those +300 relations makes a big difference! Maybe just take it now so you don't forget...
Good advice all around here. I think that with the materium affinity outpost boost, upgrading the outposts (particularly to get stone walls) can be worth it if you are expecting to be attacked, but without that upgrade it's probably not worth it. In my particular case I went for it because although wood walls can be built fairly quickly, stone walls take quite a bit longer to construct in a small city. So I don't "totally" regret the decision to build stone walls (time will tell if the extra defense is worth it), but I do agree that the work camp was not necessary. I think nature aspect is an ok choice if you start this build with an extra polearm and go straight for the healing skills with the dragon, but I agree that in this case the materium choice would have been better for the reasons you described since my dragon has to carry the team a bit in terms of early game combat with that vowkeeper. In the long run I think it won't matter too much since my dragon will be using support abilities almost constantly, but for the early game I think I agree with you here. I probably won't change it though, since I can't respec a second time for free :( I have not forgotten about devout radiance, don't worry - just haven't had much of a need for it yet. And I do appreciate the reminder about pacification! I always forget to pick that up until like a turn after I've cleared something, lol
Hey Bob how's it going! I'm back for this series, and am already a huge fan of the oathsworn righteousness build! Here are some points from me: 1. Yes, you don't always start with a vowkeeper, you started with one because it's the starting bonus for devotees of good. Could've started with an additional polearm unit too, so all things considered, pretty great. 2. The dragon hoard + artifact hoarders combo is pretty wild, can confirm. However, you won't want to forge new items then since disenchanting items will reduce your income. 3. On that note, you won't be able to execute captured heroes either since it's evil. You'll have to grant them freedom if you want their items. That also reduces your knowledge/mana income in return for giving you gold+mana. 4. Thers is an argument to be made for perfectionist artisans as well, that gets you an avenger as the starting bonus. Pretty nuts in the early game. With a champion leader, you get access to "decisive command" pretty early too. That can lead to a devastating combo of a massive charge attack by the avenger and helmsplitter on the same turn. As a matter of personal preference, i usually don't produce any tier 1 units. I do produce a bunch of tier 2s, and as soon as i get access to the third level of town hall, i get to making the backbone of my army with tier 3 units. I agree that there is a point to expanding quicker with a better t1 unit, but i feel that the extra maintenance that the honor guards require puts you behind in terms of late game armies. Not much else to comment on today. Love to be back and love to see you back too! Cheers!
Thanks aniruddha, glad to have you back! You raise some interesting topics and points here. (1) Good call here, forgot that "extra" vowkeeper (or polearm) comes from devotees of good. Should have clarified that! (2) While I do hoard most items, I will splurge a bit for certain things in the item forge - especially T4 weapons for heroes. But on harder difficulties, you fight so many heroes from invading independents that your hoard still stays pretty full as long ad you don't forge "too" many items. (3) As for the captured heroes, I usually just let them sit in the prison generating research until a war is over. If you release them, the player who initially recruited them can re-recruit them for free. Once that player is out of the game, I believe there isn't any disadvantage to releasing them aside from the prison knowledge income. That being said, there may be cases where releasing them specifically to bump up "good guy" alignment is worth it - especially since i get bonuses from good alignment from both devotees of good and nobility devotion :) (4) Funny you bring decisive command up, because my initial build for this series was going to be a champion in part because of how well that skill pairs with the avengers. But I had several requests to check out the newly-refreshed dragons, and I don't regret it. I just finished an off-camera game with this build tonight, and I really liked it!
I love skyrim so much. Please dont forget to name one of your heroes Ulfric :D . You are such a good player and it is so nice to see how you manage your cities and your manual combats. I have and keep learning alot from you, thank you for making these videos. The Dark Brotherhood is demanding that you win this, so please do the best you can. All the best to you.
Thanks so much, Ivo! It's always encouraging to hear that my videos are helpful to other people. I have to give credit for a lot of what I know to the awesome people who leave comments here on my channel. There are some very smart people who leave very helpful advice which has allowed me to learn the game much faster than I would have on my own. I'm very thankful to have this community! As for my heroes and cities, I would love to stick with the Skyrim theme - you just might have to remind me every now and then :p Not sure how Ulfric would feel about being turned into an Argonian, but hey - I guess that's his problem XD
Dovah the Kiin returns in full dragon form :) 7:15 Holy shit, skeleton demonkin toads look awesome! I don't think I've ever seen that combination before XD I'm curious to see what your tome progression is going to be like. Guessing you're going to go heavily into order stuff for the obvious synergies with righteousness's innate spirit damage (and since order tomes are just generally strong against everything, so they should support you well regardless of which AIs you end up fighting), but it was curious that you mentioned not getting much nature affinity when that's usually good for heal-focused styles.
Was wondering who's been around long enough to catch that this is also a reference to that old draconian sorcerer series, haha. You've been here for awhile :) Sooo I just wrapped up an off-camera game with this build, and I gotta say that by the end game it feels pretty busted, haha. What I said about nature affinity might have been a bit misleading though - what I meant was that I don't start with much nature affinity, but I will pick up more as we progress. This is a very specifc build without much room for deviation prior to the Tier 5 tome. Builds like this feel a bit trickier to pull off now that leaders no longer get affinity for signature skills, but I think it's a good change because it makes you think much harder about what tomes you pick. I actually had to do some - *gasp* - math for this one :p
I may need to pay extra attention to this series. My newest run is the eldritch realms story scenario. I picked the toadkin zeal hero, and the eldritch units are TOUGH.
Oh yeah, they can be brutally hard - especially on the "Hard" world difficulty setting (which is different from AI difficulty). You often just have to accept that you won't be able to take out some of the umbral nests until mid-game, but when you do go to fight them, I can offer a couple quick tips: (1) spirit damage and status resistance are your friends (2) abilities that clear negative status effects (particularly decaying) are very important (3) The umbral tyrants can mess you up really bad if they cast tyrant's mark (a free action with no cooldown) on enough of their own units. Focusing on quickly killing units that have tyrant's mark cast on them will prevent the umbral tyrant's damage output from spiraling out of control. happy eldritch monster hunting ;p
I've noticed with this game that unguarded pickups are a lot less noticeable on the map than they were in AOW3. I wish that somehow they popped out more.
I think I agree with you. I tend to notice the shiny ones (especially gold), but production and food pickups can be a bit harder to spot depending on the terrain type. To be fair, however, I do have kinda bad eyesight that probably isn't representative of most of the population, haha
So Oath of Righteousness entire thing is that its spirit damage boost is *not* supposed to work on flank attacks, so you kinda have to rethink your instincts a bit. Basically you get boosts for facing people head on.
Yes! I often find myself making this mistake and going for flanks. I've been clicking that "undo move" button much more often lately to compare damage from flank attacks to damage from frontal assaults. At high devotion level, just running up to the enemy and smacking them straight in the face is definitely the way to go, haha XD
I'm probably not as good as Indrid, haha - he's very knowledgeable about the game. He's even been kind enough to stop by my channel every now and then to give some advice! But don't worry - generally speaking, I try to make my series more challenging as I go. I'm sure I'll get to 1 vs 6 (or more) eventually :)
Nothing wrong with a little Skooma during communion! And don't even get me started on the Hist sap. It's not the Argonians' fault the other races can't handle it...XD
Not sure if a stone wall was a need with the amount of gold you left yourself, never know when an event might cost you 2 rounds of gold production. The northern area is full of danger and opportunity but I dislike it for the concept of a buffer city as it has the umbral land near it and would if encroached give a nasty mood de-buff. always a dragon supporter! love the beasts, was it never the right time to use the wand to provoke your foes to charge in? chip damage a round earlier might prove useful later on.🧫
Thanks for the feedback! Kris Lighthawk mentioned something similar with respect to the walls, but more with regard to how long they take to build rather than how much they cost. In either case, the walls might not have been necessary (especially without the materium affinity upgrade to make them cheaper). I guess time will tell if the extra defense was worth it! The one nice thing about going for stone walls during the outpost phase is that they can be built faster than a small city can build them, but that's really the only advantage and may not be worth the economic opportunity costs of not founding the city itself a few turns earlier. As for the umbral land, it will almost certainly be an issue in the short term but only if the umbral nests expand it. Otherwise, you can just build around it until you have enough extra city stability to overcome it. Fortunately, oathsworn culture has lots of ways to boost city stability (most notably through their level of devotion), but it does admittedly take some time to get those buffs going As for the wand of provocation, I probably don't want to use it to lure units into charging at my dragon. Better to lure enemies to charge into the polearm units (who have charge resistance and first strike). My dragon is a decent fighter now, but in the long term he will fill more of a support/healing role. That wand will eventually get given to a different hero - preferably a melee one. For now, I'm letting the dragon hold onto it just for the bit of extra health it provides via the dragon's major ambition reward
A few things:
1) When you make an outpost in order to make a city, turn it into a city as soon as you have enough imperium to do so. Don't waste a lot of time building walls or work camps (especially when you dont have the upgrade that makes you do that faster and cheaper). An outpost cost you 10 gold per turn, while a city generate resources for you. The time you waste to get stone walls in an outpost you could have grown the city to at least size 3 and have gotten palisade walls and some buildings done already. By building all kinds of stuff in the outpost before turning it into a city, you end up using more gold and having a smaller city.
2) I don't think nature aspect was a good pick for your dragon. 10 temporary hp on a random unit (that have to be close) is of quite limited value. Being safe from charge attacks and deal extra retaliation damage seems of much more value in this part of the game, and you can always use your free respec of your dragon to change it when it becomes more of a caster than a fighter. I would go Materium early and Astral (for the 30% damage om breath attacks) later.
3) Don't neglet getting Devout Radiance, it is a very good damage spell when you get to paragon level. It deals much more damage than any other cheep to cast 1 hex radius spell. It is also great that it only hits enemies. You can even boost it to 40 damage if you build the order amplifier. It is of course VERY good against undead and demons.
4) Make sure to pick up pacification before you take down your first infestation, those +300 relations makes a big difference! Maybe just take it now so you don't forget...
Good advice all around here. I think that with the materium affinity outpost boost, upgrading the outposts (particularly to get stone walls) can be worth it if you are expecting to be attacked, but without that upgrade it's probably not worth it. In my particular case I went for it because although wood walls can be built fairly quickly, stone walls take quite a bit longer to construct in a small city. So I don't "totally" regret the decision to build stone walls (time will tell if the extra defense is worth it), but I do agree that the work camp was not necessary.
I think nature aspect is an ok choice if you start this build with an extra polearm and go straight for the healing skills with the dragon, but I agree that in this case the materium choice would have been better for the reasons you described since my dragon has to carry the team a bit in terms of early game combat with that vowkeeper. In the long run I think it won't matter too much since my dragon will be using support abilities almost constantly, but for the early game I think I agree with you here. I probably won't change it though, since I can't respec a second time for free :(
I have not forgotten about devout radiance, don't worry - just haven't had much of a need for it yet. And I do appreciate the reminder about pacification! I always forget to pick that up until like a turn after I've cleared something, lol
One of my favorite streamers playing my favorite game. Love your relaxed and educational play style. I learn more from you than anyone I watch.
Hey Bob how's it going!
I'm back for this series, and am already a huge fan of the oathsworn righteousness build! Here are some points from me:
1. Yes, you don't always start with a vowkeeper, you started with one because it's the starting bonus for devotees of good. Could've started with an additional polearm unit too, so all things considered, pretty great.
2. The dragon hoard + artifact hoarders combo is pretty wild, can confirm. However, you won't want to forge new items then since disenchanting items will reduce your income.
3. On that note, you won't be able to execute captured heroes either since it's evil. You'll have to grant them freedom if you want their items. That also reduces your knowledge/mana income in return for giving you gold+mana.
4. Thers is an argument to be made for perfectionist artisans as well, that gets you an avenger as the starting bonus. Pretty nuts in the early game. With a champion leader, you get access to "decisive command" pretty early too. That can lead to a devastating combo of a massive charge attack by the avenger and helmsplitter on the same turn.
As a matter of personal preference, i usually don't produce any tier 1 units. I do produce a bunch of tier 2s, and as soon as i get access to the third level of town hall, i get to making the backbone of my army with tier 3 units.
I agree that there is a point to expanding quicker with a better t1 unit, but i feel that the extra maintenance that the honor guards require puts you behind in terms of late game armies.
Not much else to comment on today. Love to be back and love to see you back too! Cheers!
Thanks aniruddha, glad to have you back! You raise some interesting topics and points here.
(1) Good call here, forgot that "extra" vowkeeper (or polearm) comes from devotees of good. Should have clarified that!
(2) While I do hoard most items, I will splurge a bit for certain things in the item forge - especially T4 weapons for heroes. But on harder difficulties, you fight so many heroes from invading independents that your hoard still stays pretty full as long ad you don't forge "too" many items.
(3) As for the captured heroes, I usually just let them sit in the prison generating research until a war is over. If you release them, the player who initially recruited them can re-recruit them for free. Once that player is out of the game, I believe there isn't any disadvantage to releasing them aside from the prison knowledge income. That being said, there may be cases where releasing them specifically to bump up "good guy" alignment is worth it - especially since i get bonuses from good alignment from both devotees of good and nobility devotion :)
(4) Funny you bring decisive command up, because my initial build for this series was going to be a champion in part because of how well that skill pairs with the avengers. But I had several requests to check out the newly-refreshed dragons, and I don't regret it. I just finished an off-camera game with this build tonight, and I really liked it!
I love skyrim so much. Please dont forget to name one of your heroes Ulfric :D . You are such a good player and it is so nice to see how you manage your cities and your manual combats. I have and keep learning alot from you, thank you for making these videos. The Dark Brotherhood is demanding that you win this, so please do the best you can. All the best to you.
Thanks so much, Ivo! It's always encouraging to hear that my videos are helpful to other people. I have to give credit for a lot of what I know to the awesome people who leave comments here on my channel. There are some very smart people who leave very helpful advice which has allowed me to learn the game much faster than I would have on my own. I'm very thankful to have this community!
As for my heroes and cities, I would love to stick with the Skyrim theme - you just might have to remind me every now and then :p Not sure how Ulfric would feel about being turned into an Argonian, but hey - I guess that's his problem XD
I did not know about items on your dragon counting towards dragon hoard! That totally makes sense of course... just never heard of it.
I gotta give credit to my brother for that one IIRC - just goes to show that there's always something new to learn :)
Dovah the Kiin returns in full dragon form :)
7:15 Holy shit, skeleton demonkin toads look awesome! I don't think I've ever seen that combination before XD
I'm curious to see what your tome progression is going to be like. Guessing you're going to go heavily into order stuff for the obvious synergies with righteousness's innate spirit damage (and since order tomes are just generally strong against everything, so they should support you well regardless of which AIs you end up fighting), but it was curious that you mentioned not getting much nature affinity when that's usually good for heal-focused styles.
Was wondering who's been around long enough to catch that this is also a reference to that old draconian sorcerer series, haha. You've been here for awhile :)
Sooo I just wrapped up an off-camera game with this build, and I gotta say that by the end game it feels pretty busted, haha. What I said about nature affinity might have been a bit misleading though - what I meant was that I don't start with much nature affinity, but I will pick up more as we progress. This is a very specifc build without much room for deviation prior to the Tier 5 tome.
Builds like this feel a bit trickier to pull off now that leaders no longer get affinity for signature skills, but I think it's a good change because it makes you think much harder about what tomes you pick. I actually had to do some - *gasp* - math for this one :p
I may need to pay extra attention to this series. My newest run is the eldritch realms story scenario. I picked the toadkin zeal hero, and the eldritch units are TOUGH.
Oh yeah, they can be brutally hard - especially on the "Hard" world difficulty setting (which is different from AI difficulty). You often just have to accept that you won't be able to take out some of the umbral nests until mid-game, but when you do go to fight them, I can offer a couple quick tips:
(1) spirit damage and status resistance are your friends
(2) abilities that clear negative status effects (particularly decaying) are very important
(3) The umbral tyrants can mess you up really bad if they cast tyrant's mark (a free action with no cooldown) on enough of their own units. Focusing on quickly killing units that have tyrant's mark cast on them will prevent the umbral tyrant's damage output from spiraling out of control.
happy eldritch monster hunting ;p
Big fan of your series :D GJ
Thanks! Glad to still have you around :D
I've noticed with this game that unguarded pickups are a lot less noticeable on the map than they were in AOW3. I wish that somehow they popped out more.
I think I agree with you. I tend to notice the shiny ones (especially gold), but production and food pickups can be a bit harder to spot depending on the terrain type. To be fair, however, I do have kinda bad eyesight that probably isn't representative of most of the population, haha
So Oath of Righteousness entire thing is that its spirit damage boost is *not* supposed to work on flank attacks, so you kinda have to rethink your instincts a bit. Basically you get boosts for facing people head on.
Yes! I often find myself making this mistake and going for flanks. I've been clicking that "undo move" button much more often lately to compare damage from flank attacks to damage from frontal assaults. At high devotion level, just running up to the enemy and smacking them straight in the face is definitely the way to go, haha XD
I think you mentioned Faction ideas. How about a build based on the "Dvar" from Planetfall? ;)
No wispering stone in your city turn 1. Its actually important as i will keep stability until town hall 2
Indrid Casts already did a 6vs1. Was hoping you'd go more!
He will, just give him some time.
I'm probably not as good as Indrid, haha - he's very knowledgeable about the game. He's even been kind enough to stop by my channel every now and then to give some advice! But don't worry - generally speaking, I try to make my series more challenging as I go. I'm sure I'll get to 1 vs 6 (or more) eventually :)
@@Ivo015 Thanks for the vote of confidence ;)
Looking at what Argonians get up to in the Elder Scrolls, not so sure about Righteous Oathsworn... But what do i know.
Nothing wrong with a little Skooma during communion! And don't even get me started on the Hist sap. It's not the Argonians' fault the other races can't handle it...XD
Not sure if a stone wall was a need with the amount of gold you left yourself, never know when an event might cost you 2 rounds of gold production. The northern area is full of danger and opportunity but I dislike it for the concept of a buffer city as it has the umbral land near it and would if encroached give a nasty mood de-buff.
always a dragon supporter! love the beasts, was it never the right time to use the wand to provoke your foes to charge in? chip damage a round earlier might prove useful later on.🧫
Thanks for the feedback! Kris Lighthawk mentioned something similar with respect to the walls, but more with regard to how long they take to build rather than how much they cost. In either case, the walls might not have been necessary (especially without the materium affinity upgrade to make them cheaper). I guess time will tell if the extra defense was worth it!
The one nice thing about going for stone walls during the outpost phase is that they can be built faster than a small city can build them, but that's really the only advantage and may not be worth the economic opportunity costs of not founding the city itself a few turns earlier.
As for the umbral land, it will almost certainly be an issue in the short term but only if the umbral nests expand it. Otherwise, you can just build around it until you have enough extra city stability to overcome it. Fortunately, oathsworn culture has lots of ways to boost city stability (most notably through their level of devotion), but it does admittedly take some time to get those buffs going
As for the wand of provocation, I probably don't want to use it to lure units into charging at my dragon. Better to lure enemies to charge into the polearm units (who have charge resistance and first strike). My dragon is a decent fighter now, but in the long term he will fill more of a support/healing role. That wand will eventually get given to a different hero - preferably a melee one. For now, I'm letting the dragon hold onto it just for the bit of extra health it provides via the dragon's major ambition reward