Before you choose your 5th tome, take an inventory of your economy. Can you support Tier IV units? Can you utilize the spells in the next 5-10 turns? If not, choose a 3rd tier I or II tome. There are some wonderfully powerful infrastructure buildings and province improvements inside those tomes that you should be able to run through very quickly, supercharging your econ, adding more Minor Tx and Enchantments, and adding more tier III unit options. Big brain plays for sure.
@@male_maid5951 You should be able to click View Tome Library (or something like that) and see all existing tomes you've unlocked/can unlock. I'm assuming you can select it from there
@@male_maid5951 yes you can, and it's extremely cheap to do because research from tier 1 is many times cheaper then tier 3 or 4, and it's almost always a good thing to research 4~5 additional tier 1/2 thomes, not only for the spells but also because it gives you more affinity, special districts and hero skills that can help you a lot. I'm actually kind of weirded out ho no one ever talk about it, expecially about how you can get so much stronger by picking up a bunch of cheap unit enchantments and race transformations and become so much stronger.
I really like the tome system. It provides a lot of flexibility to an otherwise inflexible part of 4x games. It does have a downside however. If you fail to plan out your strategies for war, econ, expansion and eventually victory the system can feel less than impactful. Its always a good idea to look for race and culture synergies. Some tome units fit perfectly into some cultures while some do not. A good example of this is Industrious culture and Iron golems. Bulwarks and iron golems share a role, tier and have very similar stats. So the value of such unit is lesser compared to say an iron golem in a high culture that does not have a similar unit. Its always important to know what these units an spells do so you can make informed choices and plan your strategy. I do want to give a word of warning to race transformation spells. Many of them do have downsides that are less apparent. especially the stronger ones. Spawnkin gives a nice 20% damage boost but it front loads all of your damage output. The longer the fight goes the less damage your army is going to deal due to the losses from damage your units take. It also means your army is now much weaker to AoE spells and abilities due to the sharper damage fall off from casualties. Wightborn also has its down sides. The -4 fire and spirit resistance hurts alot and can lead to a war loss if your not careful. Wightborn is in a tier 3 tome and makes it so your army is hard countered against the tome of pyromancy, a tier one tome, as well as all order based spells and enchantments In addition to all units from the high culture. The same can be said of the tome of Exaltation's angelize transformation. Angelize makes you weak to blight and frost damage. That means all units from barbarian cultures, the tome of cryomancy and all nature units and magic now have advantage against you.
@@jiawenlu9613 It also gives you a -2 poison if I recall. I once was experimenting with shadow magic and got into a war with a high order based culture. About half way through the war I used wightborn to turn all my people undead not knowing about the spirit resistance debuff. Despite having higher army strength They started to mop the floor with me.
It says you can only have one tier 5 tome but i had shadow and chaos. I got shadow first, and and then eventually after raising chaos affinity to 20+ i got a chaos event where i could sacrifice my leader to unlock the tome of chaos. Was cool to have reapers AND balors in my army.
What you forgot was the most important part of the new player experience: seeing how ridiculous you can get a wizard to look and then setting them to be a lord in game. Hoping its like stellaris and i can bring them with me into the pool for multiplayer. My friends need to get blitzed by my sexy frog witch
Mass rejuvenation brings back plants to life After casting leafskin (I think, noticed it a while later) ALL my racial units counted as plants So yeah, oof
Gaia's Chosen(Major transformation). And yes, it is very powerful. Also synergizes with the tier 5 "Force of Nature" enchantment(+20% crit chance, +4 blight damage on base attack for all your plant, animal or cavalry based units).
I wish there is an option or choice to either get a new tome or continuing with current researches. In all of my (vanilla game) RP playthrough, I've had to compromise and picking contradicting (RP wise) tomes, which forcing me to stack up unwanted affinities, just so that I can continue researchinh all of the content of my chosen tomes.
I really want to stress how important it is to also consider the province upgrades each tome offers, especially during the low tier tome picks. These can be built on ANY province (if you are a caster, you can replace your old forester with a unique province conduit), and the low tier ones only cost 60 gold (goes up to 100, 170, 280, based on tome tier). I had a summoning build that had 5 unique conduit provinces which equates to over 100 mana a turn from a city with zero base conduits, including city mana structures, as these unique upgrades "count as" the type of unique province upgrade they are (for city structures like the mage's guild). Each unique province can be built once per city, so 5 unique conduits = 20 guaranteed conduits in a 4 city empire.
You should do a tier list going over the units granted by ancient wonders. Mostly just because the units are cool, not necessarily because it's a useful guide lol
@@millerrepin4452 My point exactly. I don't want build guides of "WINNING COMPETITIVE STRAT!" I want build guides of "This is something stupid and weird, but you can do it!"
the main issue with "strong" t4 tomes is that you have to commit to the affinity, so if their lower tier options aren't great then that t4 has increased opportunity cost.
It means that the research got the random 25% research cost reduction from the perk in the empire development tree. Same with the 60% from the one society trait
I think the tier list wouldve been more useful if it was in tier I-V order and then tier F-A order, so it's easier to find your best picks for each tier
I have thought this same thing a whole bunch of times. When I am in game I am looking at how all the tier 2 tomes compare and trying to pick the next one for use and synergies. Not how Arcane looks as a whole.
Depends. You still need to defend for 15 turns after you activate your magic victory spell. If you do not have a stabile empire and effective armies, you could lose the cities with the important buildings. It is also possible to simply not having Magic Victory as an objective(when setting up the realm).
I just thought of this while watching the video, do you think one of the new races/cultures we’ll see in the DLC’s will be an ent type race? What are y’all’s hopes/ speculations?!
One other aspect not discussed is how quickly you need to get research done. If you take too many different affinities, it will take you a long time to get higher level spells.
On the other hand, picking more level 1 tomes means faster progression in the Imperium tree. It all depends on which tools you find important for your playstyle as well the current(and future) situation.
My impression is because Nature is life affirming and focuses on growth and propagation; the Nature tomes that are themed on death emphasize the cycle of life and rebirth. Shadow is very much life negating, it’s magic is about inhospitable cold, doom, insanity, and undeath (something that violates the natural cycle of death and regrowth from the nutrients of the dead).
why is everyone saying this game is good? it's actual trash compared to AoW2. no special racial units, every race literally feels the exact same. AoW2 had 15 races with completely different units. The ingame music is uninspired dog shit compared to AoW2, too. Also, why do the buildings/towns look exactly the same for every nation? that's so fucking lazy, in AoW2 every nation had their own, thematic art for buildings... AoW4 is just extremely lackluster in so many aspects compared to its ancestor AoW2
Before you choose your 5th tome, take an inventory of your economy. Can you support Tier IV units? Can you utilize the spells in the next 5-10 turns? If not, choose a 3rd tier I or II tome. There are some wonderfully powerful infrastructure buildings and province improvements inside those tomes that you should be able to run through very quickly, supercharging your econ, adding more Minor Tx and Enchantments, and adding more tier III unit options. Big brain plays for sure.
Solid advice, especially because those units unlocked at tier 4 have high running costs and new ones like imperium upkeep.
Nah i need that t4 , economy be DAMNED!
wait, you can choose a third t1 tome??? how?
@@male_maid5951 You should be able to click View Tome Library (or something like that) and see all existing tomes you've unlocked/can unlock. I'm assuming you can select it from there
@@male_maid5951 yes you can, and it's extremely cheap to do because research from tier 1 is many times cheaper then tier 3 or 4, and it's almost always a good thing to research 4~5 additional tier 1/2 thomes, not only for the spells but also because it gives you more affinity, special districts and hero skills that can help you a lot.
I'm actually kind of weirded out ho no one ever talk about it, expecially about how you can get so much stronger by picking up a bunch of cheap unit enchantments and race transformations and become so much stronger.
I really like the tome system. It provides a lot of flexibility to an otherwise inflexible part of 4x games. It does have a downside however. If you fail to plan out your strategies for war, econ, expansion and eventually victory the system can feel less than impactful. Its always a good idea to look for race and culture synergies. Some tome units fit perfectly into some cultures while some do not. A good example of this is Industrious culture and Iron golems. Bulwarks and iron golems share a role, tier and have very similar stats. So the value of such unit is lesser compared to say an iron golem in a high culture that does not have a similar unit. Its always important to know what these units an spells do so you can make informed choices and plan your strategy.
I do want to give a word of warning to race transformation spells. Many of them do have downsides that are less apparent. especially the stronger ones. Spawnkin gives a nice 20% damage boost but it front loads all of your damage output. The longer the fight goes the less damage your army is going to deal due to the losses from damage your units take. It also means your army is now much weaker to AoE spells and abilities due to the sharper damage fall off from casualties. Wightborn also has its down sides. The -4 fire and spirit resistance hurts alot and can lead to a war loss if your not careful. Wightborn is in a tier 3 tome and makes it so your army is hard countered against the tome of pyromancy, a tier one tome, as well as all order based spells and enchantments In addition to all units from the high culture. The same can be said of the tome of Exaltation's angelize transformation. Angelize makes you weak to blight and frost damage. That means all units from barbarian cultures, the tome of cryomancy and all nature units and magic now have advantage against you.
Gaia's chosen has a hidden make your units become plants. Give -4 fire res
@@jiawenlu9613 It also gives you a -2 poison if I recall. I once was experimenting with shadow magic and got into a war with a high order based culture. About half way through the war I used wightborn to turn all my people undead not knowing about the spirit resistance debuff. Despite having higher army strength They started to mop the floor with me.
Fire. Literally have spent hours looking for a tome by tome break down of what's weak/strong against what
That tip on changing tile improvements blew my mind.
I never knew tier IV and V tomes were tied to affinity. I actually learned something today. Thank you.
It says you can only have one tier 5 tome but i had shadow and chaos. I got shadow first, and and then eventually after raising chaos affinity to 20+ i got a chaos event where i could sacrifice my leader to unlock the tome of chaos. Was cool to have reapers AND balors in my army.
Btw you can lock in a spell with the padlock, extremely handy to use
Just watch out because that costs mana.
What you forgot was the most important part of the new player experience: seeing how ridiculous you can get a wizard to look and then setting them to be a lord in game. Hoping its like stellaris and i can bring them with me into the pool for multiplayer. My friends need to get blitzed by my sexy frog witch
Mass rejuvenation brings back plants to life
After casting leafskin (I think, noticed it a while later) ALL my racial units counted as plants
So yeah, oof
Gaia's Chosen(Major transformation). And yes, it is very powerful. Also synergizes with the tier 5 "Force of Nature" enchantment(+20% crit chance, +4 blight damage on base attack for all your plant, animal or cavalry based units).
the commenter with the most upvotes has the biggest brain
I wish there is an option or choice to either get a new tome or continuing with current researches.
In all of my (vanilla game) RP playthrough, I've had to compromise and picking contradicting (RP wise) tomes, which forcing me to stack up unwanted affinities, just so that I can continue researchinh all of the content of my chosen tomes.
I really want to stress how important it is to also consider the province upgrades each tome offers, especially during the low tier tome picks. These can be built on ANY province (if you are a caster, you can replace your old forester with a unique province conduit), and the low tier ones only cost 60 gold (goes up to 100, 170, 280, based on tome tier). I had a summoning build that had 5 unique conduit provinces which equates to over 100 mana a turn from a city with zero base conduits, including city mana structures, as these unique upgrades "count as" the type of unique province upgrade they are (for city structures like the mage's guild). Each unique province can be built once per city, so 5 unique conduits = 20 guaranteed conduits in a 4 city empire.
You should do a tier list going over the units granted by ancient wonders. Mostly just because the units are cool, not necessarily because it's a useful guide lol
The rule of cool is the point of the game lol just have fun
@@millerrepin4452 My point exactly. I don't want build guides of "WINNING COMPETITIVE STRAT!" I want build guides of "This is something stupid and weird, but you can do it!"
the main issue with "strong" t4 tomes is that you have to commit to the affinity, so if their lower tier options aren't great then that t4 has increased opportunity cost.
What do the white exclamation points mean on the tome icons?
Discount on research time
Why is there sometimes an exclamation mark next to the spells in the research screen?
Came here to ask the same thing
It means that the research got the random 25% research cost reduction from the perk in the empire development tree. Same with the 60% from the one society trait
@@Shrade-0 Thanks, I tried hovering over for a tool tip but never saw one
@@Shrade-0 Thanks mate.
I think the tier list wouldve been more useful if it was in tier I-V order and then tier F-A order, so it's easier to find your best picks for each tier
I have thought this same thing a whole bunch of times. When I am in game I am looking at how all the tier 2 tomes compare and trying to pick the next one for use and synergies. Not how Arcane looks as a whole.
Always go cheapest research available and rush magic victory?
Depends. You still need to defend for 15 turns after you activate your magic victory spell. If you do not have a stabile empire and effective armies, you could lose the cities with the important buildings.
It is also possible to simply not having Magic Victory as an objective(when setting up the realm).
Magic victory path is basically military path without sieges
How. Do. I. Change. Spell. In. Combat. Spell. List... plz... ;) ?
Thank you 🙏
Don't pay for an army... summon one!
I just thought of this while watching the video, do you think one of the new races/cultures we’ll see in the DLC’s will be an ent type race? What are y’all’s hopes/ speculations?!
4 dlc’s have been announced no mention of ents. The races we are getting are lizards/dragons, beast men and Eldritch humanoids.
One other aspect not discussed is how quickly you need to get research done. If you take too many different affinities, it will take you a long time to get higher level spells.
On the other hand, picking more level 1 tomes means faster progression in the Imperium tree. It all depends on which tools you find important for your playstyle as well the current(and future) situation.
I would be interested to watch your feature film.. you are that good :)
Skeletons go brrrr
i dont get it why nature and show are opposite in my think
My impression is because Nature is life affirming and focuses on growth and propagation; the Nature tomes that are themed on death emphasize the cycle of life and rebirth. Shadow is very much life negating, it’s magic is about inhospitable cold, doom, insanity, and undeath (something that violates the natural cycle of death and regrowth from the nutrients of the dead).
Energy vs Entropy. Life vs Death.
@@fendelphi i dont see dark and natrure in that terms
@@jacawandersmok9043 How do you see them then?
@@jacawandersmok9043 its means death and life
I like my covfefe with sugar and cream.
why is everyone saying this game is good? it's actual trash compared to AoW2. no special racial units, every race literally feels the exact same. AoW2 had 15 races with completely different units. The ingame music is uninspired dog shit compared to AoW2, too. Also, why do the buildings/towns look exactly the same for every nation? that's so fucking lazy, in AoW2 every nation had their own, thematic art for buildings... AoW4 is just extremely lackluster in so many aspects compared to its ancestor AoW2
AoW2 😂🤡😂
You’re spamming this comment in multiple videos? Salty.
@@zentonil ppl shouldnt fall for this marketing campaign of paid youtubers and waste 60$
@@shadearca you're 12?