Who will win? The AI of an entire faction or one twig standing up

Fun fact Potato, the vines benefit from the keeper's mark unit enchantment from one of the order tomes so they get steadfast... Which means that these 10 hp battle summons that the ai insists must die will always take a minimum of 2 turns to die which is pretty hilarious in practice. There is just something so satisfying about seeing a spider mounted fury waste it's web ability on three vines that can't die until next turn. I discovered this combo today completely by accident and I love it! Helped me win so many battles without taking losses.

The vines are even better if you grab a shadow tome to get the 4th unlock from the shadow tree. +5 combat casting points per death means that you gain 5 points for each vine you cast (20 cost to cast and 25 points from 5 vines dying).

i wouldn't personally call it a "strange addiction", this game is addicting asf

When it comes to spiders, taking the spider mounts with barbarian culture turns archers from infantri to cavalry and gives them web attacks

35:00 I just started up a game of Age of Wonders (1999) to check, and units got an attack of opportunity on enemies moving out of their zone of control. It did not block ranged attacks so archers could fire while in melee. One interesting thing in the early Age of Wonders games, was that retaliation attacks counted against your movement points for the next round. Basically action points came back at the end of the unit's turn, and retaliation attacks used them up just like normal attacks did, so using up all the enemy retaliations would pin them in place.

I'm trying not to write a vine joke. It's so tempting though as Potato creeps towards victory. - Ah damn it!

I got curious because of your comment about loving attacks of opportunity, and decided to look up the history a bit. As far as Dungeons and Dragons goes, the first mention I can see is from the First Edition Dungeon Master's Guide of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, released in 1977, which allows units to take a free attack if one of the combatants breaks off the melee engagement to flee. It's very possible that similar rules predate Dungeons and Dragons, of course, given that D&D was itself based on earlier wargames, tracing a distant lineage all the way to the war games of the Kingdom of Prussia, and I'm not remotely familiar with those earlier games and won't even pretend to be! So the long and short of it is, Attacks of Opportunity have been around in tabletop for at least fifty years, and possibly longer.

It may sound weird, but i got so used to the smol lizard in the bottom left corner of the screen when Potato laugh's, that it feels kinda empty when its not there. That sure as hell is the weirdest lack of editing i ever consciously noticed. Also, did try a similar build, and god, vines are disgusting, i love using em with a heavy mage build

They shall forever be known from this date forward as "up-downies" lol

Potato with the high IQ play. Hit the ranged uints with our melee units and hit their melee units with our ranged units...

About the chance to hit, the reason you were capping out at 50% is because you kept on casting vines in between your skirmishers and their dudes. This meant that they became Obscured, which inflicts an accuracy penalty to ranged attacks. There's a Tome - I forget which one, sadly - that gives you a racial transformation to ignore Obscured, and it might be worth looking into for this run.

Yea, the AI always seems to overly focus on the twigs. Having the big spell easily splits the AI armies. It’s honestly what makes the Horned God unit so good. A long range AoE attack that summons these things too…

The vines can benefit from the mark enhancement from the tome of sanctuary. Making them unable to die for one turn...now *that's* broken

Holy crap. The next episode dropped. I don't know how you've made AoW4 content so good that I'm refreshing YT in anticipation.

So I learned a interesting and broken interaction with these vines. If your fighting a army that has Mimics and you do vine prison on them the Mimic can turn themselves into the vines. This basically turns an enemy that can potentially be really rough to fight to something not even worth worrying about as if they turn into the vines they can't move and can only hit immobilize. This only would work on AI armies though. Players obviously wouldn't do this with the mimics so be careful with were you put your berserkers.

Potato guy: woa! This looks like a tough battle! :o The same guy, thirty seconds later: hehe, vine prison

I’ve always dipped in for your civ vids but this age of wonders series has me subscribed and buying a steam deck just so I can play this now.

"Oh, that was his misfortune debuff. I'm going to have to do that back to him, I think i have that spell." *casts vines again* 😂

Mighty Meek is really good for the T1 horde spam playstyle as well, since it gives T1s bonus damage when attacking higher tier units.

27:30 your vines are blocking Line of Sight. When you are selecting an enemy with your skirmisher you can see that they have clear sight up to the vines. The Hex with the vine shows you a red lie meaning your LoS is blocked. That's why you only have 50% hit chance.

I just used! It completely destroy melee units by making them lose a whole round while your ranged units eat them alive. It is amazing how this works!

"Why does it look like Karissa is about to invade me? I don't like that." Lmao

the vine spell is absolutely mad

Always looking forward to the new Age of Wonders video.

This game is done so well, it's super addictive. Keep up the content love it. Currently, I'm playing industrious, Stalwart Dwarfs who can't die!

Been loving these series, amazing game, amazing content!

Wow, just looked at your channel for continuation and there it is!

That battle at the 28 minute mark is just classic AOW. This is a great game.

if you put the anti-berserk helmet on your main hero, you will be able to use the extra turn nature spell twice when you get it

I remember when Terra Invicta was your addiction 😢. Love this game too though

Been looking forward to this all day

Even the very first Age of Wonders already had attacks of opportunity, actually. In fact, there was a borderline exploit with them, as ground melee units could not attack flying units unless the flying units engaged them, but flying units DID perform attacks of opportunity. So if you were against a strong army of ground melee units (a legion of Azrac elephants, for example), you could run away with your ground units while parking your flying units next to your opponent's units WITHOUT attacking them. The opponent's units would run after your ground units because they were the only ones they could hit, and every time your flying units would get to make attacks of opportunity.

"I wanna execute them and sell their corpse..." A lvl 1 vine tyrant is born😂

Really enjoyed the series : )

I'm enjoying this, such a good build I'm actually playing the same mission right now too. this game is so addicting

I… need… more content ❤❤❤ you're doing great thanks for sharing this game. I would have never played it otherwise

Loving the Age of Wonders 4 content! I hope the next playthrough will be with a Dark culture, I'm finding it difficult to make that culture work.

As it goes this feels like a speed run. Pure chaos of nature 😁🤘

Another great video. Thank y

love the AoW4 content, keep it coming! :D

After playing one build with the vine spell, it just feels like a cheat. I agree with your assessment that it should only produce three vines. Taking up five actions from the enemy is just insanely powerful. Extremely powerful enemies can get tied in knots by vines that just don’t die…

Found your channel through AoW4 Thank you for the awesome content

"Attacks of Opportunity" goes all the way back to table top miniature figure wargaming such as "Chainmail" (which was the wargame that Gary Gygax wrote that Dungeons & Dragons grew out of)

Was waiting for this part 2

These vines are so busted man. You can really save hp on your units by just throwing this into the enemy and getting then destracted.

The little i have been playing, my first game i enjoyed the totem spell that summons a lvl1 beast east turn, just having a unit you dont care about that eats up actions really turns combat

I MUST SEE THIS SPIDER BUILD

Love the vines!

*taking notes on how to play this game when I actually have the time to play it again*

The underground passage will forever now be known as the upper downers

my first game was a spider build, i took spider mounts as a race trait as barb, and just spewed the pathfinder scout units non stop. It was beautiful. Also had like 1000 gold per turn by the end of the game, people sleep on the transmute resources spell it can be crazy good when your build uses little to no mana.

Potato, I have a fun build for you (that you probably have already considered). Zephyr Archer with their AOE shot ability, buffed up with materium enchantments. Artisan Weapons for 30% crit (which applies to the AOE if it hits). Meteor Arrows for AOE damage on the regular shots. Seeker Arrows enchantemt and the Awakened buff from High culture for +2 range. With Zephyr Archer doomstacks you can completely melt enemy armies in like two turns

"Up Downies" will now be the official name. 😂

have you played around with the pantheon artisan craftsmen perk yet? combining it with the settlers perk gives you back 1 of the city cap, and lets you build multiple really tall cities with the +10 gold you get for each building in each city. it feels like an insane combo that i'd love to see you optimize. love your stuff, keep up the good work!

You made it my strange addiction dammit, I’ve played so much since it dropped.

just watched episode 1 today and boom episode 2 lets go

OMG I hope there will be discount on this game soooon Cant wait to play it because of you :D

lovin this

You editor is a god, 50 turns in an hour!

Nature build is OP if you capitalize using Create Forest and Awaken Forest. You basically just print unlimited strong stacks from thin air.

I love it!

I lost the moment where he's cranking out so many skirmishers at one time... how is he doing that?

I was fighting a bunch of trees and did an Automatic battle. The difference was 500 point is in my favor and lost. Did a manual battle and almost lost. I hate that vine.

35:10 If you really like AOOs you should play Dark, their Dark Warriors are awesome at controlling the enemy.

Hail the vine lord !

Potato my beloved

Up-Downeys is great 👍

great spell. great, great spell.

I support the use of "up-downies". I will now exclusively be calling the underground passages this.

Zones of control and attacks of opportunity are as old as early cardboard wargames. They're implemented in most computer wargames too, though it depends on the scale and period. See for example Panzer General and Panzer Corps.

Potato you need some help editing these videos so we can pump two or three episodes a day?

Vines spawned by a Growth t2 unit in planetfall that had Promethean backlash mod on would decimate the AI. Especially the auto turrets in cities that would shoot the nearest target.

Would love to see a bit of a beginner guide from you. I started playing and it’s a bit overwhelming with everything

Updownies! That my new name for thingies now.

Vines together strong!

HELP! I CAN'T STOP PLAYING THIS GAME! D:

Attacks of opportunity already existed in the first Age of Wonders game, any unit passing by another unit would trigger an attack (regardless of direction).

I'll have to check out the tier 1 swarm thing with other government types. Barbarian clearly works well, but nothing about this strategy other than the skirmisher relies on barbarians I think. Shadow might be nice with the charge unit, the archer, and the skeleton pikeman.

My shorting army got block by these PLANT

Amplified Arrows is another must-have ability that lets archers do damage to two targets at once; although the second only takes half damage, the extra DPS can really reduce your losses, especially if you have multiple archers with repeating attacks.

Based and Agincourt-pilled

“We will produce so much gold through warfare that running a negative income will be sustainable for us” -US monetary policy

I look forward to seeing a spider build.

Continuing my build that is almost exactly the same as this, but I want starting damage instead of health. I think Potato’s build is better because you get damage modifiers already, having that early health boost is really nice. Even without it though I don’t have to worry about losing units, the only time I lose anything is if I’m unlucky or I wasn’t paying attention to their health. I’ve had multiple fights where I had a slight disadvantage and emerged with all my units.

If you use the enchant that gives "steadfast" to your units -- somewhere in order? ---, it also applies steadfast to the vines.

I like how u referred to the auto resolve as him

My Theory: At some point in development of the AI, it was not focusing all the totems and such you can summon in combat that provide amazing buffs. So someone bumped up targeting those 'structure' units far higher than others to make sure they wouldn't be abused. Strangely, this thing is also one of them. I'd bet you can do the same thing with those totems.

Attacks of opportunity when leaving zones of control have been a feature of Age of Wonders games since the beginning. I've noticed that it's also significant in Battle for Wesnoth. As these games are heavily influenced by Lord of the Rings and TTRPGs I think your point stands. However you'd have a similar experience even in Age of Wonder 2: Shadow Magic, which turns 20 this July...

Let's go!

Range attacks are hindered by units in the way including vines why you were having a hard time hitting, resources distributed to closed city 100%

I was already mass using this to bait the AI away from hitting things I cared about, but GODDAMN

Found the most amazing combo, keepers mark and vines, you thought vines were broken, try steadfast vines! I am taking on armies 3x more powerful with a single group. Please check out this broken tactic!

nice that turn 1 loss free autoresolve can rly win you the game, you can snowball so hard of it

ik there is a tome you can pickup from the shadow branch that will make the vines repawn after death with like 20% hp and it make the vines even more game breaking. i fended off 11 6 stack t3 and higher of an army with only 2 6 stacks of t1 and t2 units on defense.

vine is good for killing reflections in dungeons

Yeah, I also think there should be 3 vines. Maybe with higher hp each. That you can place them wherever you want, and the AI goes for them, makes them extremely powerful.

Based on how much of a mindworm it is you'd expect it to be an alpha centauri sequel

Potato, you need to name the auto-resolver.

I can recommend Dark Knights on White Wolves as contenders for most op unit.