@wepg 10 ай бұрын
UPDATED FOR WOLF PATCH: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pryhprJ9npq1ZYE.htmlsi=gj2sFDEKAdVJprn4 I think they could make Tome of the Horde potentially more playable if summon irregulars had a small chance of summoning a tier 2 unit the same way Summon Wild Beast does (and would probably still be weaker overall due to the evolutionary abilities of some of the tier 2 units you can get from Beasts). At the moment, though, it is 100% singleplayer AI abuse only nonsense. What would you do to make Horde more playable?
@TheIlluvatar619 10 ай бұрын
Hello, nice video! For your question, it is kinda hard to make a simple answer. *T1 pros: easy access cost, low xp requirement, low maintenance, you start with them for at least 15turn, good candidat for multiple enchantement+racial transformation(%benefice return>to other unit in general) *T1Con: poor hp scaling and resistance, lack of special ability to make it relevant i would suggest few option (not specially all of them together): *having mighty meek equivalent in the tome itself *put Demonic Anthem in the tome of chaos channeling for better payof later on, and change it to: t1 and t2 unit without anthem curse explode when they die, dealing 20fire dmg in aoe, transform into a t1 80%/t2 20% fiend with anthem curse that cure at the end of the battle (can not be remove otherwize) *having an enchant in chaos channeling that grant: t1 unit have heavy cost, +2 fire dmg, 30%chance set burning on hit, +3statut resist,+1 def,+1rez *make the hound from HOUNDMASTER benefit from enchantement (didnt test recently but wasnt the case before) *swap fury or blaze by : Mercenary call *combat summon*; 30mana/25cp: summon a random t1 from any city. I Believe that making payoff later makes the tome better, it also kind of partially miss out the point of horde: swarm your opponent with many more unit. with some of these idea you could still set up exploding zombies or animal, t1 will be equivalent of t2 unit, could have battlefield option to neutralize archer and caster(summon). i think the tome doesnt need mutch to be B tier, witch is acceptable. what do you think? how would you improve it?
@MontegomeryLoL 10 ай бұрын
One of the tricky things about Summon Irregulars is that it draws from *every* T1 unit you can make, including things like Beasts or Fiends if you have a hero, tome or structure that gives you access to more units. If you're doing a build that focuses on enhancements that can undermine things. I think the fundamental problem with Tome of the Horde, and Chaos in general, is that a lot of its "power" is in letting you spam T1 units and give them a little more oomph, but because combat quickly becomes 3x3 quantity doesn't really make up for quality, and Battle Seeker Training hardly picks up the slack. So at face value you need to add more Chaos buffs to help T1 units, but that risks making T2 even less influential on the game. Practically speaking maybe T2 units just need to be lumped in with T1 units for the purposes of Mob Camp, Fury of the Horde, etc.
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
@@TheIlluvatar619 Yeah, any/all of those suggested buffs could definitely bring it up. I personally wouldn't mind seeing it just work with tier 2 units as well to keep them viable outside of a turn 15-20 rush strategy, but if they are going to stick with tier 1 units then making it give your tier 1 units something like "expendable- when tier 1 units die in combat no morale penalty" would be very, very solid
@TheIlluvatar619 10 ай бұрын
@@wepg since their is a complete tome about moral bonus, despite being a nice and solid option, it woud compete with it in some way. as mongomery and you suggest, adding t2 to the mix could be an idea, at the risk of making rush a bit too strong. i dont really like the idea of having a player rushing me turn 20 with 3x4 unbreakable t2 unit that can evolve later into t4. also i think non evolve t1 unit hold their ground at early game, and can be a solid harassement tool, not killing, but slowing your opponent. not really my playstyle, but i can see a world were a bunch of t1 unit army marching with no leader close to a border, just for pillaging. so maybe a buff like: t1 and t2 unit of your army are worth 50% less xp could be interesting as well in this case. also an outpost building buff could be consider, like: 150gold, 3turn, your outpost can produce t1 and t2 unit,+10 draft. it could be either on racial trait, or horde itself.
@Cythil 9 ай бұрын
Personally, I think one should be careful about finding a way to replace the 1st tier units. But instead, making them more viable. Making quantity over quality an option. How? I am not sure, but There could be some creative idea out there. I just do not like those ideas that pretty much say copy the mechanics of another tome. Maybe I can come up with some good ideas later. I will at least think about it. The only thing I can think of right now, maybe an ability or spell that lets you call in reinforcements.
@consistentlystupid4726 9 ай бұрын
I know you say this is generally just for PvP since the Tactical AI isn't great, but as someone who plays only single player I do still find this incredibly useful. Great video!
@wepg 9 ай бұрын
Glad to hear it! I think you can play whatever you want to on Singleplayer and have fun, but if you are interested in min-maxing but not abusing the AI, then these lists can be useful there as well.
@Barl3000 7 ай бұрын
I think one of the reasons Tome of Cryomancy is so good is because of how strong its internal synergy is. Everything in the tome either helps with or directly applies Frozen or Slowed or it will exploit those statuses in some way.
@wepg 6 ай бұрын
Yeah, there's basically nothing about Cryomancy that isn't good. It's definitely the most applicable T1 tome, capable of putting in work in basically any build.
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
Oh snap, big correction - Central Quarry is actually *cheaper* than builder's quarters, not more expensive. I think that is probably enough to make Tome of Rock a B tier tome, though it is still *generally* weaker than Tome of Enchantment (unless you care about stability - which High Culture certainly would, at least during their Neutral phase!).
@blackleon1708 9 ай бұрын
Damn, it's what i want in terms of content, i will watch all of your aow4mp tutorial videos, that's golden Subscribed too
@wepg 9 ай бұрын
Excellent!
@mattheworman7779 10 ай бұрын
Commenting for more AOW stuff
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
More to come soon!
@R17inator 10 ай бұрын
Tome of the Horde used to be strong at launch with spawnkin giving heroes the same damage boost as regular units instead of evasion and Blaze of the Horde being an enemy hero one-shotter that infinitely scales off number of friendly units (including summons) on the entire battlefield instead of friendlies adjacent to the target enemy, as well as Houndmasters and their war puppies not being made of wetter tissue paper than even T1 archers back then. The nerf hammer really hit it hard.
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
It was okay at launch but largely overvalued. Spawnkin and Blaze of the Horde were the headliners which were both solid, but didn't make up for how anemic the summon, the affinity, the hero skill and the economy were. Now it is a wasted pick basically 100% of the time.
@tuskular 9 ай бұрын
@@wepg Surely it must be really good if you rush someone down and succeed, as you can always switch into better tomes later on too progress, plus if you will get there developed city, and the 20% dmg will affect your higher tier units too. I do think the tier 1 buff skills are a bit of a meme, but the reinforcing on the front line with units that have gold upkeep is the main advantage imo, you can easily overwhelm someone by saving several turns to reinforce. but you definitely have to transition out into tier 2 units asap afterword's or use your city adv to go for hero stacks.
@wepg 9 ай бұрын
@@tuskular You'd think, but enemy capitals start on 50 fortification, which means spending a veritable eternity on sieges unless you are willing to invest giant sums of loot into the siege. Rush strategies are almost always going to be only powerful in a team format, as in a FFA you are *way* better off spending the early game grabbing wonders and just clearing the board for resources so you can get powerful enough to kill an enemy with *good* units. Horde is basically unplayable outside of teams, though it does have some niche cases there.
@The_Babe 9 ай бұрын
I like how straight to the point you are with these videos. Well scripted or improvised, you don't stumble and waste time with filler words, so it's an easy listen!
@wepg 9 ай бұрын
It's not scripted, but it does take a bit of time to edit out the nonsense. Glad you liked it!
@R17inator 10 ай бұрын
How do you think the upcoming Tome of Alchemy would have likely ranked on this list if it was made after Empires n Ashes and the Golem Update launched? From the info I have seen in the recent dev stream, it gives a Materium and Nature point, so 50/50 between good and not-so-good affinity for the empire development tree, and it also gives a research post (10 base income, +3 research for every adjacent province that is not of the same type as the other adjacent ones), a cheap and early 1-hex aoe dispel spell (Anti-Magic Tincture, purges debuffs and applies 2 status res), a support unit enchantment and hero skill (called Mysterious Tonic) that grant a free action ability that cleanses one debuff and applies two random buffs. It also provides a research-able structure that grants 5 gold and research and an additional 5 of each of those for each magical material in the city, a siege project that damages and poisons enemies at the start of battle (though does not contribute to fortification health damage before the siege), an aoe spell that creates a 1-hex cloud that weakens and applies "affliction" debuff to enemy units in it (affliction makes it so they have a 90% chance of gaining condemned, slowed or damage over time for each hit they take, the status effects they get depends on the damage channels of the attack), and then a T2 repeating crossbow unit with a secondary ability that can also apply afflicted (I think probably an aoe too, the devs described them as having a "grenade launcher crossbow thing"). Between the Materium point, research lab and dispels, I can see a case for it getting an A-tier spot at the very least. The fact that it is a T1 tome that provides some cheap and easy dispels reminds me of the Promethean secret tech in Planetfall with their Purification Field module.
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
I think you almost always want to take a tome with an evolutionary unit as your first T1 tome, but outside of the lack of a summon and a strategic spell Alchemy looks pretty spicy. I think high B or low A sounds about right. It's not going to dethrone Cryomancy any time soon, but getting even more research posts floating around sounds very sick.
@drkmgic 10 ай бұрын
You shoudl post builds next
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
It's definitely part of the plan, though the new expansion and some big reworks are like a week out so *probably* will wait until after the patch drops for some build videos.
@drkmgic 10 ай бұрын
@@wepg ty I feel like watched more guides of this game rather than play it lolol
@akedus44 10 ай бұрын
Uh, just wanted to mention at 30:00 you talk about souls overflow healing your undead. It doesn't. It just increases their max HP by 20 so they can be "overhealed" so to speak.
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
Yeah, good catch. It's still a solid option to have as a sideboard spell in your spellbook, but definitely more narrow in application.
@akedus44 10 ай бұрын
@@wepg From experience, the increased max HP only becomes useful after you get Wightborn so that you still get value from the lifesteal for units that are still at full HP. Before then, it practically functions more like an aoe strengthened spell.
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
@@akedus44 Eh, it's still an AoE stun clear which is ultimately the most important part of the spell.
@akedus44 10 ай бұрын
@@wepgAh, that's also true. My bad, I mainly play SP so the scary status effects like stunned are so rare that I often forget which spells dispel status effects.
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
@@akedus44 Yeah, no problem, hopefully the AI gets to the point where stuns and the like become a real threat out of them! Debuff clearing on an AoE is an extremely rare and powerful thing to have in MP, and the only reason it isn't a big deal in SP is just the tactical AI, which means in the future it could absolutely become a bigger deal there.
@codyksp 10 ай бұрын
I would say Tome of Beasts is S tier when combined with mounts purely for Animal Kinship, Call of the Wild and Pack Leader. Mark as Prey is a nice bonus, but I haven't heard of anyone taking the tome to summon animals. Wildspeaker is horrible imo.
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
I've played around with summon animals and as a rush strat it is very viable. Wildspeaker is awful unless you can get it a T3-T4 animal to work on, but then it becomes a legit good unit for a finite amount of time (as T2 units drop off quickly). The transformations and skills are quite nice and definitely keep Beasts as a top tier tome in my book, but the economy side is meaningfully worse than Cryomancy and the combat effectiveness is *usually* lower than Warding, so I think A is about right. Maybe S-.
@julianbraunbeck7632 10 ай бұрын
you know, you said that Astral affinity is very strong, but materium is better so... would you say materium + astral is the best combo? very strong in my experience (singleplayer only though), especially lategame, bc what is more powerful than just chaincasting lavaburst
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
I think the strongest is Materium, Shadow and Astral overall, but there are a few different dimensions that affinities are useful along. I did a video about the Empire Development tree itself if you want the full details!
@Ownz1nR34LT1M3 6 ай бұрын
Hey I really like your videos but I have some feedback, it is really bothering me that you dont clearly state the tier a tome goes in at the start or end of the explanation. Sometimes I completely miss it and have to wait so long before you show the tier list again that I miss it again when I look away. That would be awesome for those of us who listen to these videos while multitasking!! Placing into the tier gives more context for the explanation as well and gets me more invested into the explanation.
@wepg 6 ай бұрын
You know, I hadn't even considered that as a problem but I absolutely will do my best to change that moving forward; that said, a lot of the "updates" I'm probably going to just show the entire grading scale so that we can get through everything at a reasonable clip. I can probably go through letter grade at a time? That's probably safe? Good to keep in mind the usability while multitasking, though, as these videos are inevitably *long*.
@jaredrichardson78 10 ай бұрын
Tome of faith has nothing else of value?!?! Healing you armies red HP is a VERY rare ability, much less party wide, outside natural healing. Chaplains are incredibly strong support units, especially with Staves of Mending, which makes every support unit a good healer. But also the FREE healing on your heroes makes your heroes also have great sustain. Especially because a backline hero can heal archers and get them over the limit to get a unit in the stack back and thus do more damage. Plus, if you are getting Staves of Warding from Tome of warding, it is an amazing source of bolstered resistance I also think your stance that chaos affinity is bad because it is frontloaded with skippable pigs in a dress. IMO, early game, most of your imperium should be spent putting up more cities and by the time you start wanting to buy chaos affinity stuff, you should have 4 to 5 cities. Tome of the Horde is a trap in games against the AI, the increased stack size on spawnkin is SO bad, so thank you for rating it low. Now with my butthurt rant over, granted that I have no experience in multiplayer, I only play vs AI. Also, I'm just some asshole with an opinion and just like assholes, my opinion may stink and be full of shit. Thank you for sharing, I got a lot of entertainment out of this video
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
The issue is, right now, T2 support units drop off crazy fast and when it comes to creeping you are *way* better off getting a strategic spell that deals damage to the enemy creeps than trying to heal yourself. If you want to heal yourself, put up an outpost, *especially* if you are playing barbarians (but even if you aren't, outpost + one hero with Mass Rejuvenation is almost always enough sustain to keep your heroes rolling). Most of your imperium should indeed be going towards getting cities, but there are some incredibly powerful early imperium picks on a lot of the genuinely good parts of the imperium tree. Shadow 1, Materium 1 and Astral 2 are incredible force multipliers to the power of your economy in AoW4, and a good chunk of the rest of their trees are fantastic followups. Ultimately Chaos does get some solid stuff down the line, but in order to get there in any reasonable fashion you have to specialize a *ton*, otherwise you'll be getting those powerful picks online too late to make a big impact, and a bunch of the chaos tomes are either narrow, bad, or both (Revelry and Devastation aside). Play some MP! I think you'd really enjoy it!
@jaredrichardson78 10 ай бұрын
@@wepg Damn, it is hard to argue with you, you have some REALLY good points. I am reminded of the general D&D attitude of "if it is dead, it can't deal damage, but if you are healing someone and not killing it, it still can deal damage." I dont really have anyone to play with, I dont know anyone who plays the game, and I feel stressed when I take too long and have attention span issues when waiting for others. Plus, sometimes I'll save scum a fight to figure out my turn (like move this and that and then OH NO, that was why that positioning was pad, RELOAD, I also will often rage quit if I cannot reload a really stupid misclick
@wepg 10 ай бұрын
@@jaredrichardson78 Very fair. The Multiplayer community is very small at the moment, and as this is a 4X you kinda have to commit to a *long* game unless people are cool playing on Teams mode and just *brawling* as soon as possible. We may just do some big time team brawling after our most recent MP match ends, but after that, if you are genuinely interested in MP and can commit to 6-8 sessions on Sundays, think about joining us! You'll hopefully learn a lot!
@jaredrichardson78 10 ай бұрын
@@wepg well shit, I might just do that! I am a chef, so Sundays will be a work day once I get my food truck fully up and running, but I have no idea when that will be. Do you have a discord I should join?
@jaredrichardson78 10 ай бұрын
@@wepg I'm a chef and work on Sundays, so I'm not sure I could, but I might! Do you have a discord, or something, I could join?