Another tip is to buy a second hero before you have two cities. What happens very often is your hero goes one way and then your scout finds a good spot to settle another way, but you’ll lose too much momentum clearing camps if you backtrack with your ruler. So sometimes it’s necessary to send out a solo hero and take a hit to your economy to settle as proactively as possible.

If you’re the Barbarian class your scouts can make outposts which is insanely strong

If you want to (for example) rush a Granary, even though it's not boosted yet, you can still queue it up. Then when you unlock a forester, the boosted effect will be applied retroactively, reducing the turns required to build.

My pro tip, spend imperium and get your main cities pop up, and keep building farms and foresters the first few turns. This way you get the bonus for all the early buildings, then get mines. Sheep is always your first focus since early on you want to grow fast, you can swap off growth for free later on so its the best start. Also turn 1 always get a scout and fight as much as you can to rank up your units and hero

As a fellow Kiwi, I approve of prioritising sheep

Thanks for this, always feel like I am spending to much on maxing my cities.

Good stuff! Thank you for this. Love your presentation style.

I usually send a scout underground and then have them excavate as much as possible, first time I did this I found a small cave with 2 of every resource node (except sheep), a silver ancient wonder, and the only entrances to the cave were easily defended chokepoints.

For the most part sound advice. I do want to say I feel your under utilizing scouts and building your cities far too close. Every cultures scout is different and has its own unique benefits. Feudal scouts are low maintenance meaning you can field more. High scouts have greater vision range, Barbarian scouts can set up outposts. Industrious scouts can prospect, Mystic scouts have pass through and dark scouts get extra range when inside hostile territory. For the most part fielding many scouts is a very good thing as early game your city draft is going to waste. Well so long as you don't go over budget. I do want to point out that mounted body traits also affect scouts, save for mythic. That means you can have web on your scouts, or phase, or intimidation aura. The way you want to use your scouts does change with culture though. Feudal and High want to get the lay of the land so they can start diplomacy and quickly plan out their expansion. Barbarian and dark want to use their scouts in a more aggressive fashion. Mainly by setting up forward outposts as barbarian to claim defensive positions and resources or get info on hero movement from the minor and major factions. Industrial and mythic scouts are both out for resources. Scout prospecting is a huge part of early industrial economy and Mystic culture rely heavily on the extra magic from astral echos. Scouts can also be a good early game bump to your army. Once you hit the mid game their role changes. With the crow companion enchant they gain farther sense range allowing them to sit on your borders and watch enemy movement. This makes them a great early warning system for invasion. While weak a single scout still counts as an army which allows you to raid or capture provinces with out tying up your combat units. As for your cities they are a bit too close. As the game goes on they are going to start to stagnate. A large portion of a cities income is in its provinces. You should always take a vassal city until you hit your city cap. The most you can get from a vassal is 50% income where as if you take the city you get 100%. A vassal is great for when your at your city cap because its an imperium cheap way to expand your economy. That allows you to spend your imperium on growing your cities. You only have so much imperium. You would have been in a much better position if you didn't build those two cities and instead used the imperium to grow your throne city, then picked up the two free cities when able. I understand the desire to build victory monuments close together but by the time your able to build them you should have an army large enough to defend three sites and teleporters. So there really is no need to have them right next to each other like that.

Thanks for this. Just got the game and your ideas are helping me a ton. Thank you

Arguably the single most important tip you should follow when creating a custom faction, is choosing the best traits to take the most advantage you can get from the environment of the Realm itself. For example, if the Realm you're playing in is dominated by ice, snow and tundra, It's generally going to be a good idea to give your new faction, the Arctic Adaptation Mind Trait, which allows you to build farms on snow covered provinces, without suffering reduced food income, like you would if you were to build huts on those snow covered provinces. Another example, would be if you're playing on a Realm of islands, in which case, the Experienced Seafarers Society Trait, would be beneficial to your new faction in the long run, as it not only grants you the Basic Seafaring Empire Development right at the beginning of the game, it grants your cities additional gold and draft income, for every Fishery Province Improvement in your cities. This has incredible synergy with the Seafarer's Guild, the fourth and final tier of the Shipyard City Structure, which is only unlocked by claiming Ocean and Sea Provinces in a given city, as the Seafarer's guild causes your Fisheries to produce even more resources per turn, for every Fishery Province Improvement in the city that has built the Seafarer's Guild.

I'd really like a guide that's about where to be in development around which turn, and what milestones the NPC enemies will have reached around which turn, depending on map size and difficulty setting. So, around turn A, the enemy will likely have completed milestone X, Y, or Z, around turn D you can expect F, G, H unit types, around turn L easy NPCs will have around P number of armies, etc.

Careful equipping random items willy nilly. If you use auto resolve, watch to see how the AI uses them. I have seen ranged heroes rush in close to use a knockback item and leave themselves vulnerable.

This game is sooo good! Thank you for the guide.

Well Done

Also the whisper stone assigned to the capital on turn one

it may be minor, but i try to send my initial hero stack out in the same general direction as my scout so that the first turn or 2 the scouts can assist in combat

On OP trick is diplomacy and using as many whisper stones as possible to vassalise as many free cities as possible, that way you can "expand" your power without the need to manage many cities by your own. If you then recruit armies for your vasalls and order them to assist you in battle, you can use them as meatshields during a siege against your main opponent before you go in with your own units to clean them up. Diplomacy is very powerful in this game.

This is best format ! And exactly what I am looking. There are many content in KZfaq about this game , BUT you have good quality content, that’s the difference, thank you a lot❤🇺🇦

Good pro tips.

really quick to slap a farm on a marsh tile :)

I have been able to do some amazing victories. did alot of military victories with my Obsidian Elves, Dwarves ruled by big Daddy Moradin, and My Holy Halflings who ended up being giant, steel skinned angelic beings and got a few score victories with the king in yellow and my deep ones and David Bowie and his Labryinth Goblins. Got my first magic victory with my Humans which was fantastic because they were built in honor of my dungeons and dragon kingdom of magic. But I have failed twice now due to runnning out of time in creating a proper Orc horde that dwells in the deep Earth. Bowie and his goblins made it because he had just his one city and two vassels and just built and built and went full nature and when someone tried to do a magic victory his goblin and beast horde washed over them. But my Orcs on a rampage keeps failing.

Yyaaaa Boii

Don't forget to explore and expand into the Underground as well.

Mm newb here and i feel this is something for folks who have been about the block at least 2 times

I always make it to turn 89 then get annihilated by the enemy's swarm of armys... I have a huge problem figuring out how they get so many powerful units so quick..

Towers stat flagged to laat empire and u can casr around them with out needing a unit for fog of war

Your expansion wasn't optimal. That second city will be very inefficient with nothing but sea tiles to work with. Sure, you can generate some income from the Seafarer's Guild in the mid game, but it is going to be very expensive to grow that city without 3 Farms, Quarries, and Foresters each. There is no reason to rush additional cities if you don't have the space for it. They won't contribute much and will have a lot of Stability issues. You also gave Yellow the opportunity to gain Grievances against you (as opposed to you gaining them against him) by not building an outpost in that direction ahead of his expansion, which is a mechanic that is very important early game and you didn't cover. The AI will almost always build towards you so they can get Grievances to declare justified wars if you expand towards them. Having a Major war justification gives you huge benefits to Imperium and Relations with Free Cities and any other AI players that like justified wars. So, if you're against an Expansionist AI, getting early outposts to stake your claims is extremely important for giving yourself room to grow and casus belli to kick them back when they inevitably step on your toes. As it stand, you have no choice to grow your capitol and second city but to conquer Flowing Fields, as vassalizing it would still leave you no room to expand Casterlan, so you would need to either raze it (evil act) or conquer it and slowly transfer the provinces off to other domains.

One question, so far I've usually stuck with tomes of the same affinity, at most 2 different. Is it ok to just go all around?

Why when I go to seige a city the power levels are totally off vs when you enter the fight 2 turns later?

Amazing. This video can be used for reference as an example of definition of “confidently wrong.” Not about everything. Some of the basics are right. Overall though…

your accent is highly addicting! may I know where you are from? :)

Why do you have extra society traits? I don't have talented collectors

Go archers, and grab all the archers buff with spawnkin as the first racial trait. One stack of 6 archers can take on a 3 stack easily.

Do you know why an Outpost doent give the option to turn into a city? I only have 1/3 cities and it is far from any other neighbour provonces.

11:21 bad optimization there in that you have a whispering stone available at turn 2... At turn 1 you always give it to your capital to boost everything.

I like being annoying so that the AI declares war on and gets the Emperium drawback

Also, make a video about how to win STORY 5. Soooo hard ! lol

Why is manor addicted an option for race traits? Is that what happened in victorian times? 😋

While I build at least 4 scouts..

3:22 it would be significantly better to do that with the economic map mode. And also: literally every single game you will start with a pasture, an iron deposit and a gold mine nearby. Did you not know that?

2 cities in nowhere is a bad idea. In mid game other 2 cities near them could just take needed territories and you could just saved really needed cap for better places. Imp is a really precious resource. So wasting it on many little cities is a waste. Your opponent could use imp for insta army or on smth else and rush you easily. I don't even talking about how much resources you need to properly defend each city, build def and blockers vs magic. In aow4 best thing is to have max 5 cities or less and a vassal or two.

this was more like a beginner tips video....

You didn't fight....

Where are the "Pro" tips lol

Story 5 is BROKEN. Your going so well, estabished yourself. Then Blue rocks up with a 2000+ army and just smashes your armies of 500... How can you fight that? They have mythic units when you only have teir 2.. So annoying !

Pro Tips at 6:00 ... hes telling us to look what you want to build first and how to boost the building.... then he boosts the wrong buildings wich he didnt want to build first. this already screams "IDIOT!" and I have no interest of watching more. Maybe try to make a plan first before you make a video?

U build a farm on a gold mine ? U mad? You loose tht extra gold. U need tht gold mine for a guild structure tht boost ur gold for every gold mine. More gold more army. More army More chance to win battle. Tht a terrible advice.😢

Game burns my computer yo

If you say wam bam one more time I will kill a baby rabbit