so, quick note about Wonder Builders. having the wonder not cost a pop is actually huge, as it also doesn't increment your pop count, so it's a space you can annex without increasing the food requirement for your next pop. you also didn't mention the early rally and potential T3 unit you can get from it on or before turn 10.

Founding 4 cities in an Adept Settlers game? The time I took it I think I made 20. 4 of my own cities. 16 cities I founded and immediately turned into vassals for gold and imperium (through Order tree) and Expansion victory points. If you found a city of your own race and turn them into a vassal it refunds 100 imperium, with adept settlers it only costs 150 imperium. If it is your own race the vassal is immediately a bonded vassal, you don't need a whispering stone. Adept settlers saved me 1000 Imperium that game. wow... 50 x 20 = 1000 imperium. Realized it helped me win my first game but didn't realize how much. It is a weird way to play because I was optimizing armies and fighting and researching, but the winning mostly just cared about making vassals and relying on the brutal AI cheats to grow them. Not sure if anyone else is playing this way. Agree with Prolific Swarmers being best. Mana addicts I haven't tried but it does seem good.

If there was EVER a game so doverse and fun that didn't need tier lists, this is it.

The algorithm blessed me with this channel a few days ago, and I'm happy it did. I'm a big fan of the way you explain things and just how clean your presentation is. I'm also happy that this excellent game is getting so much attention from creators. Edit: spelling and grammar.

Great Tier List. Talented Collectors is also surprisingly powerful, with one free Magic Material nearby, and each city gains 5 of each income type except Imperium (gold, food, production, draft, knowledge, mana) per Magic Material you have. This plus a few early outposts to grab Magic Material, can be a huge early game boost, especially if you're playing Mana Addict-Astral-Wizard King for maximum spell slinging (which normally suffers in the early game economy build up phase).

Thanks for the rapit content , being following your channel when I bought the game. Your enthousiasme is catching on. Thank you.

Have you tried Perfectionist Artisans? It's so good. Every outpost can be gold generating (the outpost and all the buildings in it generate +5 gold each) so you can spam them everywhere giving you tons of gold and map control. And the T3 unit to start makes clearing early camps and dungeons easier. Combine with Shadow Walkers which gives a free Watchtower in every outpost this thing is overpowered. Literally the fastest win i've had so far was Perfectionist Artisans+ Shadow Walkers on a High Culture. Run around with your fast invisible scouts and find all the free cities early. Vassalize a bunch of them, use the gold to place outposts everywhere. Outposts give like +12 gold per turn base and more with resource nodes. Cast order spell to get +5 imperium from each vassal. Found cities in your myriad of outposts, release them as vassals. Cast spell on them to get even more Imperium. Rinse and repeat till you're making like 700 research per turn by turn 38-39 and then get a sub 60 turn victory by buying your seed, root and heart outright in 3 cities from your capital and 2 vassals you integrated. Ezmode. Don't even need to fight wars, but you could if you wanted to. Edit: Additional note. Since this build generates alot of gold and Imperium, more than any other build I've tried, you can also support large stacks of T4-T5 units so it also scales very well while also starting off very strong. Swarmer builds I've tried do perform well early but they don't scale all that well. This one does both. For even more insanity, give it Spider Mounts and then it's just straight up unfair; your scouts can actually fight and your T3 unit starts with a spider mount too.

Very good list.

I like the idea of having a bipolar society! Nature/Materium. Adept Settlers, Wonder Architects. You get imperium for every wonder, cheaper imperium costs to settle. When settle get +1 pop, which is independent from the wonder annexation. Materium is undoubtedly the best defensive line, and nature has some amazing damage options. Sure, the people might be a bit confused at times, but this is about me, Wizard King!

Reading through the comments and it appears, there are many interesting and powerful builds, so it seems the game is pretty well balanced after all. I have only done a couple builds so far and having a great time.

Overall? No complaints, solid list. Covered Mana Channelers, Mana Addicts, Adept Settlers, and Wonder Architects, all my top picks. My only quibble: I'd say you overvalue Prolific Swarmers, but only a bit. Top 10 for sure, but maybe #2 or #3. The T1 +rank is weak long-run, and less food needed is basically just 1-2 provinces or a building. Upkeep reduction is the true selling point...and upkeep usually isn't a problem unless it's mana. TL;DR: I think Adept Settlers merited the #1 spot, followed by Mana Addicts, and then Prolific Swarmers. Otherwise, solid list.

Nice vid. My favorite combo is prolific s warmers and ritual cannibals.

I started to value chosen uniters as a top tier trait, if not the best overall. Vassal Spam is a legitimate tactic, given that you are limited to 3 cities only. It also doesn't matter much, if you place outpost close to the next one, because buildings provide much more mana, knowledge and gold than provinces... and thats all you need from a vassal. I don't know exactly how its calculated. If you get a 20% multiplier, its just a nice 20% more income from vassals, who can make up half of your economy. But if it is added to the vassals shared income it would be a huge boost. A normal Vassal starts ith 30%, so getting a extra 20% nearly doubles your income. And even on the highest level it would go up from 50% to 70%. In this case the trait would provide 20-40% more economy, which makes it by far the strongest trait overall.

Since you mentioned it in the Video, lets collect some good, lesser known minor combos here. I start with three, Industrious hero ability, Defensive Master and cultural trait Bullwark. Gives your Hero +4 to both resistances Low morale and misfortune. Fumble attacks can decrease moral and with very low morale and misfortune 5 it stacks up to 90% Sneaky and Tome of Beasts. Flanker from pack leader stacks with sneaky which makes mark as pray a +75% damage boost.

ancient wise one is a blessing combined with runes smith, i went it in my second civ because i wanted to RP a old rune master. It was one of my best builds

Good alignment so hard to get. Evil alignment however... Kill your enemies without playing off grievances? Evil. Walk through territory? Evil. Slaughter MOBs on maps? Evil. Pillage every enemy provinces for cash then burn their city to the ground for 1000 gold instead of vassalizing and begging them to be your friend? Evil. Which one reward would you like, or you can have all 3 if you are Evil. Tome of the Horde may be the second most broken thing in the game, but #1 is Evil. Evil is S+ tier.

Here's my setup... the goal is setting up for an Elven Archer motiff, that just so happens to work SMASHINGLY GOOD in combat. After playing around with some different setups to attain this goal, I ended up with the following: Elven Form (of course this can be changed if you want) Racial Traits are Keen Sighted for archery bonus and Elusive (best for breaking away if engaged) Feudal Society (the "Stand Together" along with cheap pikeman that turn to shield units and of course cheap archers), the Nature and Order that comes from Fuedal is great Ancient Wise Ones for the Faster Tech advance AND getting the Astral Tree started Runesmiths for the Unit Enchants on the cheap Leader: Champion (usually an Archer, but you could do a Battle Mage build too) First Tomb: Tomb of Roots (explained below) Second Tomb: Tomb of Enchantment Third Tomb: Tomb of Glades Doing your build this way also grants you points in FOUR branches of the Imperium tree right from the get-go! What this build focuses on is this... Ranged Elven Archers just DEVESTATING the enemy in waves of arrows, hiding behind a line of Pikemen or Shieldmen who do not move... stand closely packed for multiple doses of "STAND TOGETHER" from Feudal trait and buffing damage of your archers is a priority... I usually make stacks of 6 with 1 archer hero, 2 "linemen" (shield or pike), 2 archers and a support unit (bannerman for feudal for the buffs and healz). Your first Tomb is Tomb of Roots with a priority of Vine Prison and Poison Arrows... buffing the damage of your archers with poison arrows, and the vine prison distracting your enemy and keeping them pinned out of melee range while you rain arrows on them. Your second Tomb is Tomb of Enchantment for the soul reason of getting Seeker arrows... CRITICAL to this build, you get extended archer range! Your third Tomb is Tomb of Glades, as this gives you both a Tier-3 Archer unit and a Tier-3 Shield unit to protect them with. The key to winning with this build is always form up close for the Feudal Stand Together bonus, keep the shield units in front of the archers, try and use natural obstacles (rocks, cliffs, etc) to protect your flanks and LET YOUR ENEMY COME TO YOU... you don't move unless its mop-up time. With a build like this, and clever use of VINE PRISON, you can keep most or all of your enemy at range while you just rain down buffed arrows on him. You take very little or next to no damage with this build and can defeat much stronger opponents. Yes, before you say it, there is an Achilles heal, stacking together vs an army that uses AOE damage... to be honest, at least vs the AI, that's pretty rare, or at least manageable with the bannerman and feudal army heals. A human opponent will be very different of course, but vs the AI, this build works smashingly well, and almost never takes casualties. Keep adding tombs that do buffs to your archers, and remember you took Runesmiths to make all these stacking archer buffs cheap and manageable! *I did try this first time around using "Fabled Hunters" as a trait, it sounds natural for this build, right?... I found this to be a wasted pick... you'll already get plenty of nature from Feudal and the Tombs you select, so you don't need this for Nature... as for the pick itself, it gives you an extra archer and archer XP... big whoop, with the above strategy, you'll probably only have to build ONE ARCHER (cheap anways) to get your first army rolling and the XP for your archers will both come fast, and you wont really need to make new archers because you just wont be losing that many archers (if any) if you play right. However, taking Fabled Hunters prevents you from taking either Runesmiths (needed for all the buffs you do) and Ancient Wise Ones (giving you faster buff research and early access to the Arcane tree that you'd lose taking another nature trait).

Dark, swarmers & scions of evil with horde tome my go to start

3:11 around turn 85 usually my enhancement costs are 50% so, if I can reduce it by 30% then it's huge. Also if I focus a lot of enchanted tech then 30% less time on research is great too. I was playing material/nature that focus heavy on ranged units and inquisitor for melee.

I’m running an Industrious culture group with Wonder Architect and Great Builder, literally 6 Materium affinity start because Tome of Artificer or whatever it’s called You get the wonder, that gives you +20% production THE you get the magical tools from the time (city improvement) and BAM suddenly you’ve got a production value so high (by like turn 6) that you can build almost anything inside of 2-4 turns This allows you to hammer out a massive amount of internal building that boost other, much needed resources By turn 20 I had 3 cities all about 4 spaces apart, all with borders connected (further boosting efficiency in all areas by 10%) and had connected 3 wonders (got lucky on the Bronze ones nearby) Made it so by Turn 30 my cities where so heavily upgraded that even with my near complete lack of overworked expansion I had around a 350 or so gold income

Good alignment is really easy. Simply once you have entered a war with a foe, release all of the enemy heroes you capture.

Ive made a hero ball (all heroes) by being industrial, fabled hunters, and talented collectors. For some reason just having maxed level heroes for a game with no units was hilarious to me. Cost a lot of gold tho, and the outposts count for talented which IMO makes it OP for resources. edit: also used shadow tier 2 tome for the soulwell /souls to animate cheaper

looking fwd to reading the comments tomorrow.

It's funny, I find the customization to be its greatest weakness. Completely strips all immersion from the game, which is a hugely important aspect of any fantasy game, to me.

I haven’t had the chance to test it but Shadow Walkers seems fairly powerful for Industrious cultures to prospect in peace with an extra Scout to gain resources with, and Barbarian cultures can more quickly rush Outposts across the map. Also, anyone with Spider/Wolf mounts and/or Tome of Beasts can attach the extra Scout to their army for combat buffs without missing out on early exploration.

With adept settlers its a free +1 city, so the first bonus city is still 200i. Very nice trait for hyper expanding

The only thing so far that prevents me from picking Mana addicts is that it seems like the AI doesn't really use spells in auto battles and I don't wanna bother my friends who play with me by having to manually battle 2 times per turn just to make use of this perk.

Hey there! I've been having some trouble running Age of Wonders 4 on my computer. It seems to be struggling with performance issues and lag. I'm a big fan of your channel and was wondering if you could do a video showcasing how the game performs on Boosteroid. It would be really helpful to see if Boosteroid can provide a smoother and more enjoyable experience for this game. Thanks a lot, and keep up the great work!

I just think you value Tier 1 units and their cost reductions too much here. I did the same before, and thought that Nature/Chaos early game wins it all. To me it doesn't anymore. I've been using a very strong build lately: With Perfectionnists Artisans + Wonder Architects, start with Tome of Beasts, Feudal Humans with Wolf Mounts and Overwhelm traits. Here I play into the adjacency stacking bonuses, and on powerful shock cavalry buffed by spells and bonuses. With early game, I focus on spending all my imperium on buying pop for my city and negating the production malus from Perfectionnists Artisan until I reach city level III. I start with a Wonder exploitable immediately (hopefully you get the Production one). I also start with a Tier 3 Knight on wolf, which allows you to roll over any creep stack with the bonuses from Tome of Beasts (I cast Mark as Prey every turn and focus that unit). Once you have more wolves you can use the Call of nature something spell... Early game, scouts are super strong in battle too. In 10 turns, I have access to Town level III, my city has 10 population, and at turn 12 I start adding Knights on White Wolves. I level up my hero first in support to get all the perks that will buff up my wolf cavalry units, then buff the hero's personal skills. This build is honestly stronger than most Tier 1 units rush strats. And it doesn't rely on ANY early game Affinity tree perk, allowing you to spend ALL the Imperium on getting more pop for your city. The money you make is insane, allowing you to buy units and buildings every couple of turns even at the start of the game. So yeah, not even seeing Perfect Artisans on the list makes me think you're missing out some factors here. My own impression is the game is more balanced than we think but we haven't simply established a real meta yet, nor the most optimal builds for each map/situation/strats.

I’m a fan of Ruthless Raiders and I am ruling a horde of barbarians killing everything in site. I can have an economy where I get negative gold income, but once my arm is done killing and pillaging, it’s a net positive!

4:21 upkeep reduction also save you gold in some enchancements

great video ! does mana addict life steal stack with the undead one ? xD

Perfectionist artisans is basically a gold-mine+ for every building you have, but also I think its important to mention that the boosted mechanic works on current production for that building so boosting your buildings is far more impactful for perfectionist artisans as its significantly cutting down on your production so its more like a 50% increase in production cost. Another thing to mention is that you can straight buy the knowledge buildings with the extra gold income, so you end up ahead in knowledge early on.

Neutral High Elves with Imperialist Canibals and a Hero. Having +45 stability gives a huge early bonus due to neutral agenda. Tier up into an all awakener army late game. I also like Halfling Wolf Riders (dark) with Evil Settlers. Spam evil cities, rush to tier 3 and dump infinite dark knights. Its freaking annoying.

@JumboPixel I really like mana addicts, but the only thing that makes me hesitate picking it are freaking Magebanes. Any fight against those can be crippling.

I have a question why does he have access to 4 traits for each category when I only have 3? I have all dlc and the pass so is it mods?

Cannibal has a flaw, it is a global army cooldown, not just unit. Means that if one unit did the corpse eating, it gets locked for everyone else from that action. Annoyed me so hard when I did my Arthas Scourge meme play. Turn X, did the action, locked. Fine. Turn X+1, omg still locked. And its global, all units still locked out. Not just that unit that did action.

I haven't seen it said anywhere but should we be using imperium to upgrade city size?

I think you overvalue population. After 10 pop food becomes useless. You need more food to produce a new pop that it will ever produce itself. Even on a food recourse. Since you love to play swarmers it is fine. Because the expansion victory is the easiest on with this strategy. However. If you play for other victories you shouldn't really have more pops than you have special districts or than you need for the 40% discount. For example. The School of cryomancy improvement makes you 10 knowledge and around 20 mana. Which is the same as 6 settlers would produce. To get those settlers you would need 5000 food or even more. Compared to 125 production for the improvement. The central quarry or the builders quarter pay for itself in 3 or 4 turn. Even low pops need more than 10 turns. Food is by far the worst recourse after turn 30. If you play chaos just steal other empires pops if you want to grow.

As with most of this game, these traits/times by themselves are hard to rank because of the combos. Ancient wise ones and runesmiths together are completely ridiculous. Then the second, that’s right, just the second imperium tree upgrade for astral affinity reduces research cost again. I was able to reach my T5 tome in the first story realm in like 50/60 turns. It’s absurd if you focus on knowledge.

Easy Early Game Alignment gains: Select the Peaceful Realm Trait that makes a lot of Fairy spawns. When you attack these, there is a chance you get a once per turn mini-event that lets you tell them to go away for Good Alignment (free clear, no fighting needed), fight them for Evil Alignment, or potentially trade one resource payment for a bonus. This allows you to push your empire towards Good or Evil fairly easily in the opening 5 turns.

Uhhh. Devotees of Good is rather incompatible with Neutral alignment.

What does having +1 rank do?

You did 11 not 10 lmao, half way through you said Devotee good was 5th but you had already done wonder architects as 5th.

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this list goes to 11. when you are rockin at 10, and need that extra push. put it up to 11.

Ooooo am I first?