Traits and Cultures - Age of Wonders 4 (MP) Basics

I think the Dev's need to consider doing something to make the players choice of culture more impactful. In age of Wonders: planetfall the Mods mechanic helped keep even lower tier units relevant into the late game. I think the Dev's should consider either adding a few more tier 3 units or even culture specific tier 4s. Giving players some more culture specific build around units would make cultures feel more distinct. That's just my opinion though.

walker content is peak content

Hey walker! I just picked up aow4 again after taking a break since launch. Love your tier list content!! It's really helping me improve at the game even though I just do single player - I love using auto resolve as much as possible. I really liked how you made sure to read off all the traits this video. I listen to them like podcasts while I do chores and the overview really helps. Thanks for the content, keep it up!!

Unless there is one that I just missed, would you consider making a video going through all the rules you use for your MP sessions?

Thanks a lot for updating the guide it's really helpful.

OVERDUE MR WALKER (but I'll accept it because your content is top tier)

exciting, good stuff to watch later.

Thank you for the comprehensive guide. Was overwhelmed with the options offered, this helped A LOT.

Herbivore Cannibals are AMAZING!

I’m so glad I found this channel and your fantastic AOW4 guides! Please do an Item Forge tier list video!

Yes. Yes! YES! Good stuff. :)

I have not played since dragons and all these are very helpful to my min max OCD needs,

Ooo exciting. You made me switch to auto resolve only. I miss the fights but I never lost anything and would win still with T1 units even on brutal.

I’m curious to hear how significant you think Star Blades is for Mystic culture. I’ve been playing around with Mystic lately and I’ve found myself very impressed with their early game damage potential. With a Wizard King and allowing the AI to use spells you can expect basically a +6 to the base damage of your entire early. Combining that with lightning blades and lightning torrent from tome of evocation has kinda shocked me in terms of early military strength.

There is stuff that are all getting low grades but if combined I think has a good synergy. Like Mystic with Experienced Seafarers and Devious Watchers, where you focus on scouts (Having 5-6) and using summonings like Copper Golems early on. Experienced Seafarers also makes river tiles really good and sea tiles worthwhile for Mystics as the bonus gives gold and draft which they lack. Unfortunately it does not guarantee you start next to any of those.

I prefer manual combat (when it’s needed) and brutal difficulty with high world threat. But it’s nice to be able to choose between these two play styles. Both have different challenges. Auto resolve obviously becomes a lot harder in the mid to late game. I just feel like it nerfs too many builds and normal world threat makes leveling up heroes without proper army support too easy, early expansion as well. Thanks for your SP videos though! Very enjoyable to watch.

For the Tribal culture i discoverd that leaving a single low level unit or scout will attract the enemy to send 1 or 2 troops, and i would spam summon the tribal summon and kill armys worth of troops as they would send more and more solo units to kill my one guy even if they sebt more in many cases i still won. Eventually in the late game (turn 80 or 90) it did get less effective due to the Ai sending like 3 stacks at once.

What I found out so far. Ranged builds (magic or non magic) are extremely powerful. You can increase the range, get a spell that nullifies vision disadvantages. This makes ranged units somewhat first strike "able". Another very strong build revolves around summoning units (animals, elementals etc.) That way you can bring more units into the game. According to heroes: Magic ranged builds are suuuper strong. Another strong build is the leadership trait, making all your units stronger if led by a hero. If you combine ranged units, who are mounted, that can summon creatures and put a leader hero on top. You can basically have 35 active units at max on the battlefield. The AI highly underestimates the power of summoning spells and you can trick it into thinking that an army, even at tier II is a weak target, which it isn't and that can steamroll them. Also, you can increase that effect if you have units that are not on full health. If you have heroes and support units with healing/regeneration spells, you can top their health to max an give the AI a hard time. I also love to pick traits that make my tier I units stronger and cheap to upkeep. You can use guerilla warfare tactics that way and will have many disposable units at many places to spread like a mongolian cancer across the whole map. Even better if you pick tome of the horde to summon Tier I units each turn everywhere on the map. Another very strong build is one that gives you max whispering stones very fast. If you stay on max good affiliation, you can create vasalls all over the place.

I think you're mostly on spot but you underrate some flavours of Primal (Primal can get a differen placement on the list based on the animal you go for). A big part of primal eco is their SPI and with some of the animals (e.g. Mammoth or Crow) it's easy to get pretty insane value out of it. Mammoth production overtakes high pretty handily once you get there as SPI alone can be worth like 30 or more prod, plus ice start means you can also get like extra 15 mana out of school of cryomancy. Crow monolith and outpost spam are also very strong for mana and for everything once you get to tome of transmutation. Animists aren't good in auto but ancestral wardens are brutal, they're absolutely up there as one of the best cultural auto units if not the best if you reach a critical mass of them. They destroy anything mounted, large, ranged, shock units and still go toe to toe with unmounted bastions just fine.

Some notes / comments I took while watching: *Cultures* > No surprises here, although I expected you to go in-depth on the Barbarian change. It meaningfully impacts their early combat clearing and also kind of bottlenecks them into needing Crit (like how dark needs weakened, reaver needs mark... yeah we love that!) > I think mystic is slightly undervalued and could be arguably be placed next to Primal. Their overlooked mana economy lets them be another map-clearing culture by being able to spam summons. It's really a shame they can't take Fabled Hunters. I enjoyed building them with Mana Channelers and the New Druidic Terraformers. > I seriously cannot find any reason for Reavers, Dark or Feudal to be above D. Even in single player they just feel noticeably weaker. I WANT to like them and find a way to make them work but I just can't. *Society Traits* > Glad you caught on the Evil Overlords trait being so powerful. It's so easy to blast it to max level and feels good paired with Zeal and Doom Herald SPIs. > Prolific Swarmers is slightly overlooked since it can bring value to any faction that struggles early game, but I also don't think it's higher than C. Could be useful for Reaver Mercenary spam? Nah... nvm. > I wasn't sold on Reclaimers after you said you'd be stuck with 10,000 tokens, but I could see the value. > Ritual Cannibals can be messy in auto combat when the AI decides bringing a ranged unit into melee range to eat a corpse makes sense. You can play around it by not bringing ranged but... eh. > I think Imperialists is a little stronger than ranked but I also play with fewer players in my games. *Body Traits* > Did not know that about the Elephant / Mammoth mounts... that just seems a tad too strong. > Mount Masters seemed like a fun idea but like you mentioned, can't justify the 2 point cost. > I've tried so hard to make Hideous Stench to work. It just doesn't seem as effective as I was expecting.