Age of Wonders 4 Tier List - Tomes of Magic

Age of Wonders 4 has a very detailed research system and a very rewarding one at that through its tomes of magic in this video I'm going to break down the basic tones of magic across the six affinities for all of the juicy detail and unlocks that they offer here on screen is the kind of things that I'll be consider as I go through and make my assessments and there'll be time cards handily linked below if you'd like to bounce between any sections or nuke the watch time and finally if you could leave a like And subscribe that would mean heaps on a big video like this and so let's begin we're going to start at the top and work our way down and that means we're looking at the astral Affinity first starting with the Tome of evocation and I think that actually we're starting with a fairly decent pick here some standout things to point out are the fact that we have access to a summoning unit granted of course it's just a lesser storm Spirit but nonetheless this is a tier one Tome and that's a decent pickup we also get the evoker which is one of our units that will train instead in a battle Mage unit and of course there's a strong Synergy here as well around lightning right and you'll see that again and again there's an enemy Army spell to deal damage of course we have the very powerful lightning blades just to feed into that finally two more spells a damaging spell which deals a reasonable amount of lightning damage and then a unit enchantment to top it all off I think this is a really solid opener of course we get some extra casting points our wonderful lightning weapons we also have the channeling Tower as the Improvement and the Affinity but as I mentioned in the intro some things I'll wait higher and some things will be a little lower the wider combinations that you might make with the tomes could be outside of the scope of my evaluation but looking at what we have in front of us I think we have a really solid introduction as a well-rounded tier one Tome with power with a couple of different units on offer that are reasonably strong in their own rights I think that the time of evocation our first ranking so it's an important one will be ranked at an a tier I'm I'm a big fan of this one I think it's got lots of power early on lots of diversity and great Synergy within our second tier one tome in the astral Affinity is the Tome of warding here a little bit less of an initial bonus instead we get the support hero skill uh bolstering support which is reasonable enough but there are a lot of good support hero skills let's take a look at what it actually has to offer one thing that I'm quite a big fan of myself is the summon Phantasm Warrior I think the Phantasm Warrior is a fairly reasonable unit it's got lightning damage that's great you'll notice that we don't receive however a traditional unit unlock inside of the Tome of warding what we do receive is a friendly unit buff spell that makes us invulnerable herbal for at one Turn Only We have a unit enhancement enchantment spell that gives us a little bit of extra bolstered resistance there is a skill level 3 buff spell that targets a friendly unit gains a shield with a base 60 chance of inflicting stunned on the attackers reasonable enough but sixty percent not that great there are a lot of spells that'll reach higher than that and then we have a minor race transformation here slapped inside of of course a tier one tome in this case it grants us a little bit of extra defense resistance against lightning fire and frost now race Transformations generally tend to be pretty good and this one may not be the best of the lot but it's reasonable enough if you're coming up against at magical foes however I think that the Tome of warding is significantly weaker particularly compared to obviously its direct competitor the one that we just looked at the time of evocation it's weaker across the board in delivering less I think it has slightly less internal Synergy and the lack of units in comparison isn't really made up for by this minor race transformation in my opinion with not quite as much on offer both in terms of breadth but also depth and pure strength it's hard for me to really recommend this Tome especially in comparison to the time of evocation it is for those reasons that I'm choosing to place the Tome of warding at a seat here moving on to tier 2 which of course we can unlock as soon as we have two tomes from tier one not necessarily of course from within the same chapters of the library or the same Affinity I.E astral we arrive at the Tome of screeing and this one is about Vision uh true sight inflicting marked on the enemy what does it deliver well we get a little bit of a hero skill essentially this one battle magic uh precognition physical ranged and Magic attacks ignore accuracy penalties from the obscuring condition caused by units in the way in certain terrain okay it is what it is what do we actually get that's tangible well we have a summoning spell here that we can summon a watcher a battle mage unit so if we missed out on one earlier on potentially this is our opportunity to pick one up the Watcher has reasonable hit points and a fairly High 36 damage uh psychic gaze which is nothing to be scoffed at however of course we always need to take into account and keep in mind that many of these units will have upkeep and you need to factor that in when you're factoring in how many you can summon outside of that I would note probably the Tower of true sight as a city structure we haven't seen uh the likes of City structure yet so it's important to point that out this would allow you to essentially find hidden units something that's not especially impactful in Age of Wonders for or at least something that can be fairly easily played around the rest of these are either unit spells in terms of enchantments or Army spells and by and large I don't think they're especially strong with perhaps the exception of guided projectiles which could be used to combo in and get some fairly nice things going from within your army I don't think there's enough strength here in any of these spells to really sit this Tome apart from many of the others it's for those reasons that I'm scribing this one down uh into a seat here I think actually for a lot of the same reasons as warding just didn't quite have enough versatility or power within the Tome to really set it at a beta or greater in my opinion the second tier two Tome is the Tome of amplification and I think that this one is very strong you'll notice of course we have six unlocks instead of five but that's not why I'm giving it that it's instead actually thanks to this not just the hero skill though I should note that the hero skill does make tactical spells give plus 20 more damage but also because of this wonderful pylon here it's a combat spell you can summon it in battle a stationary structure that increases the damage of your spells by 20 we also have a uh a relatively interesting sustained city spell that can give you 20 extra knowledge if you've got some stability to trade off I'd also like to point out the minor race transformation here gives us Attunement Fortune soon which is a great way to increase our critical hit chance Critical Hits I believe deal an extra 50 years 50 extra damage there's also of course morale factoring in around that and then we just have some generally fairly decent spells chain lightning damage spell 20 damage that chains on here we have a physical uh ranged attack enhancement that will give us extra lightning damage feeding into that as well this one across the board is really nice there's a lot of strength throughout here and a lot of really powerful abilities notwithstanding of course the fact that our magic are both our tactical spells and also our combat spells while we're in the battlefield uh can deal an extra 20 there's some very powerful effects considering how early you unlock the Tome of amplification thanks to its wide range of impacts particularly those early damage buffing spells that'll have a big impact on our armies we also have a special Improvement as well that can give us extra casting points which are somewhat harder to come by than a lot of other resources in the game and it is for all of those reasons that I'm giving this time our first honor of istia I think it does deserve that slot it's iffy I could see Arguments for it being placed at a as well don't get me wrong but I'm gonna give it a relatively low but nonetheless significant at istia ranking after unlocking any two tier 2 tomes we get access to tier three the first one that we presented with an astral is the Tome of summoning obviously as the name would suggest it's all about summoning and you can see that reflected in its special Improvement which gives a little bit of mana and knowledge for adjacent conduit if you can muster up some of those and then our battle magic expert hero skill is at the start of combat summon an astral wisp I'm generally a fan of extra abilities summon extra units it's important to note that this is more of a token unit than anything else but the option is there inside of the Tome we're presented with a few interesting things firstly you'll notice that we have the astral serpent which is a unit that we can summon in it is honestly not that great compared to a lot of its peers it's a tier three unit its damage is relatively low and of course you'll be paying for it a lot not just to produce it but then an upkeep I argue there are many other bitter options within this tier within this class of unit and for this price don't get me wrong if it's your favorite unit out there you do you keep using it but I just don't think it quite compares to a lot of the other things on offer uh outside of that we have Arcane restoration uh restoring spells are always really nice healing all magic origin units with an extra 20 temporary hit points uh can never be a bad thing and then there's also this buff spell which targets friendly magic origin units bolsters their defense and strength static charge for three turns now don't get me wrong there's nothing inherently particularly bad about a lot of these abilities but I think that they are generally outclassed by a lot of other things not just within this tier but honestly many of the earlier tomes will outpace a lot of these effects it's important to note while konjour Kondra astral keeper might be fairly reasonable and fun over combat spell to cast I don't think it alone as well as a couple of other strengths can really save the day here uh overall not a terrible Tome some highlights some questionable spells I think it actually ranks fairly middle of the road and it's going to be our first BTO ranking not quite reaching for the ultimate power of the eso 80 but some nice in-battle effects I think lift this Tome up to a b tier rank our second option at tier 3 for the astral tomes is the Tome of teleportation and this one is very powerful and I think it's important to note that teleportation abilities generally are very strong here of course we have a hero skill makes the cast a Teleport to a Hicks doing it within battle that's great that's fun the real power though comes from this this kind of thing anyway here we have a world spell makes Target friendly Army teleport back to the nearest own City fantastic we have an emergency teleportation healing spell makes the closest Allied unit teleport to within four hexes of Target hex and heals it we have phasing enchantment the phase ability is unlocked on units and we have a building which is nice enough 10 gold income three for each astral trade relay built in your Empire is it the best structure of all time not necessarily no but the teleportation impacts and the Strategic Importance of Being able to teleport armies for example back to a city cannot be understated as for the Beast here we have a summoning spell for a shock unit a somewhat powerful one sure again keep your upkeep costs in mind I can't knock the phase Beast though I think it's a decent unit what I think is really great is also this Chrono gate a special tile Improvement plus three Banner but conduit plus three knowledge per conduit grants evasion but crucially it functions as a teleporter a teleporting Province one way and you could argue actually almost the best way for us to Traverse around the map and around our Empire outside of these one or for potentially emergency options overall I think the strength in the Tome of teleportation is very clear unlocking powers and opportunities that you may not otherwise get at all or you might get much later in the piece the Tome of teleportation is teleporting its way right up to the top and it's taking first place this one so far is definitively the best tier uh Tome that we've ranked in my opinion and absolutely worthy of that stf status at tier 4 now we're getting interesting because we're gonna need six of the appropriate Affinity as well as having two tier three tomes researched so there's a little bit of a step up of course for our tier fours and tier fives in comparison to the rest here we have Tome of the astral mirror and I think as far as tomesco this one is okay magic deflection our hero skill that we're picking up but what are we actually getting well we're getting this uh summon mirror mimic which is the summoning spell providing a unit which is okay it's a Mythic unit of course that can take the form of other units gaining their abilities and healing themselves if you can pick up a powerful unit you're gonna be in top fighting form if not you're going to be left a little bit out on your own the other things here are really about uh units and leaders impacting damage back onto the enemy shielding yourself or potentially reflecting damage back as you can see here in Mira Vale we also have a couple of other somewhat interesting changes I think Throne of mirrors is a great example when the city is besieged Grants the defender an astral reflection of the ruler if they are not present themselves as to reflection is a copy of another unit that deals half the amount of damage so there are a little sort of ways that you can either get back at your opponent by reflecting damage be a little bit sneaky here at units and cities gain a plus seven Vision range that's obviously incredibly significant of a buff however does vision range compare to some of the other things that we can unlock not necessarily no or at least it's not quite as important so don't get me wrong strong abilities though they are somewhat situationally dependent they can be uh plan B's or backups or overall things that are actually slightly more aligned with Espionage and that kind of thing Vision range Etc I don't think it's a bad tone but I do think it's a little bit of an unusual one I'm going to rank Tome of the astral mirror our first tier 4 Tome at a B tier ranking like I say interesting effects very unique effects not necessarily bad ones but I don't think anything is especially good enough to Warrant lifting the entire Tome up to a higher rank things get uh quite spicy when we move through to look at uh Tome of the astral convergence here we have some very interesting abilities we have a Siege project that will destroy enemy towers and deal damage over on astral shattering you can destroy any Province on the world and summon a powerful Army of marauding Astral sea creatures into it you also have down the bottom left here a major race transformation for the Tome this one allows units to pass through obstacles and we'll receive plus one mana and knowledge for every population not a terrible major race transformation not the strongest one that we'll see but quite interesting opens up a few other interesting ways to play generally not a bad ability we also have a combat spell which summons a tier 2 astral sea creature into a fight a big fan of abilities that can give us extra units over the normal unit cap which would of course be 18 versus 18 for the units that were around within the world but not of course ones that we can summon in during combat it'll also deal a little bit of extra damage overall I think that the Tome of Astral convergence is a very strong Tome with some powerful effects given it holds that major race transformation and otherwise has some fairly powerful fairly strong effects of course it is a tier 4 tone though I place less of a waiting on that in comparison to some other things I'm going to rank this one at an atier I think it's a really strong Contender you generally couldn't go wrong picking it up particularly of course if you're playing down that build a solid pick tier a Worthy and now we have our big bad boy Tome of the archmage the only tier 5 Tome of course our requirements now being that we need eight Affinity total and we need to have researched two tomes from the previous tier tier 4. we can only have one tier 5 tone researched not that there should be much of a problem considering uh the kind of effort that you need to put in to get these and how long a game May last this one provides us with a little bit of everything that we've seen so far of course it's important to note that tier 5 tomes are and should be in a strength level of their own so we'll have to keep that in mind as we move through and I introduce you to more of them and rank more of them but let's take a look at what this does we have a debuff spell that stuns distracts and marks enemies within a one hex radius okay we have a astral travel World spell that makes our leader teleport to the Target World Hicks pretty strong very flexible we have Cosmic drive this unit enchantment is very powerful it grants plus 30 damage to our magic origin and combat summon units as well as gives them very fast movement this is just a wide reaching strong ability and I rate that very highly lastly we have disruption wave disables enemy unit enchantments to three turns uh dispels or positive status effects and on the enemies and gets rid of our negative ones when you combine this with the extra damage it's hard not to argue that Tome of the archmage is obviously incredibly powerful really strong effects here across the board I think it is perhaps not the strongest of the tier 5 tomes though I think that we'll see some stronger ones to come look I can't deny its strength of course a tier 5 Tome it has some great abilities that stretch into the battlefield and give us a little bit of sort of tactical Supremacy or superiority outside of it as well particularly with our teleportation I am going to rank this time our first tier 5 Tome at an eightier a really solid Contender a powerful Tome though not the best in class that we will see and I don't think it's the best bang for your buck within the astral Affinity either considering how much earlier we can unlock some abilities especially from those times that I've ranked up there in the S tier all right you chaotic lot let's move on to chaos now of course we're looking at the chaos Affinity in the first home is Tome of The Horde this is one that you can pick up of course almost right from the start what does it offer in particular well a few things we'll start with our minor race transformation which will increase the number of units and crucially give us plus 20 damage very early on very strong ability I rate that highly I will also grab the houndmaster arranged unit that summons a warhound now this is important again because it can push us over that cap I won't mention this every time for summoned units moving forward I have mentioned it once before in this video this will be possibly the last time but it's important to note that when we uh draw into combat with our normal units we're traversing the map with the limit is 18 versus 18. once we get inside however we can summon extra units or potentially build them through Siege projects here we have the ability to summon a warhound very good considering how early on we get it outside of that we could also summon in a completely random unit using our Mana from Summoner regulars or friendly Tier 1 units become buffed combos very nicely of course with things like the warhound with things like summon Irregulars and then lastly a little bit of fire damage on top I think that time of The Horde uh in case you can't tell is very powerful awful a very powerful minor race transformation early and some good units with reasonable Synergy around them time of The Horde you spoil me you deliver a little bit of everything you deliver it very early in the game I mean even just that 20 damage buff alone is great notwithstanding the extra token units and synergies around those I'm going to give Tome of The Horde and S tier I think it deserves a spot right at the top for that incredible value early on the Tome of pyromancy I'm less convinced on especially compared to its uh twin brother Tome of The Horde I'm not sure it quite delivers for us here obviously there's a focus around fire damage whether you're dealing it to enemies or enchanting your own units you can see there's a couple of damage spells to deal it and then a couple of Enchantment spells to add it to your largely melee or ranged units so of course you've got a physical Focus here we can summon in a lesser magma Spirit not bad but again these lesser Spirits keep in mind that they are little babies and will need some extra experience to grow up and strong and here we unlock our battle mage unit uh it's skill level two its damage is reasonable enough you'll probably want to be training or recruiting them when you get it so this isn't by any means a bad pick but of course we do have other unit options including summoning them in and it's important to keep that in mind the internal Synergy here is nice with a focus on using our spells to cast damage or enchant and then bringing in our newly trained unit potentially with some lesser spirits to grow up so I can't really fault it on that the ritual pyre provides a reasonable amount of Mana combos with Foresters nothing terrible and here we have essentially the opposite of the lightning Buffs we were looking at earlier but this time for far I think the fire Strat can absolutely be a viable one perhaps not quite as strong as some of what the other tomes have offered I also think that given it doesn't have a lot of the things and the crucial things that the previous Tome and Chaos offered like the minor race transformation I can't justify giving it an s or really even an a tier I think that this time the Tome of pyromancy sits quite happily at either a b or potentially a high C tier I'm somewhat on the fence about this one but I think I've rested on leaving it at the lower end granted of a b tier ranking next up we have the Tome of rivalry which focuses in around morale and experience and you'll notice a lot of its pictures are Pretty in Pink and we have a Siege project that takes away a little bit of morale Buffs a little bit of morale of course leading into that theme we see that as well in the unit enchantments giving morale additional strength over here units in the Target friendly Army gained 30 experience from combat for three turns that is reasonable but if your opponent is using their spells to say strike you down or heal themselves then extra experience may not necessarily be that great of a priority and I think that their overall theme somewhat lets this Tome down as a minor race transformation plus 50 morale from all sources isn't strictly a terrible one but again if I can say buff myself with an extra 20 damage one time earlier are you gonna be in a better position for give giving yourself 50 extra morale at home later I'm just not sure that the strength here really Compares with a lot of stuff that's on offer we do of course unlock our recruitable support unit not a completely terrible unit by any stretch of the imagination at some somewhat useful Buffs here some somewhat useful abilities overall a decent unlock but I think that the Tome itself is lit down by really a lack of just pure strength there isn't enough upfront to offer to keep competitive with everyone else if all you're doing is buffing your morale if you're short on morale then this will be a great fix for that but if you're not if you're trending along around average which you probably ought to be I don't think that rivalry gives us enough Rivera's Triumph in the carnival of Flesh combined with a couple of all right abilities may be the only thing actually for me at the moment that is saving me from giving rivalry a detier ranking I will rank rivalry at cetir I think that's roughly where it belongs just because it doesn't quite have the impact it doesn't have the weight to carry that the rest of these tomes have offered the Tome of Mayhem at tier 2 is about inflicting Misfortune on the enemy and causing them to stumble randomly displacing them as well as improving and buffing our own Army The Siege project makes the start of battle enemy units displaced by four hexes and they gain that Misfortune fumble so we're trying to sort of weaken them down with a variety of spells including making our base attacks inflict that Misfortune everything revolves around adding Misfortune to the enemy trying to make them stumble and you'll see that across everything with the exception of course of this summoning spell which summons a gremlin onto the map a gremlin that is actually a pretty interesting unit its strength might not be necessarily as great as the rest but it is an option for us to summon something in and it's probably the best summoning option that we've had so far if you can stack some of these Misfortune Buffs they can come through and deliver reasonable power the I'm not sure that it's necessarily the best strategy and again somewhat similarly to rivalry I'm not sure it delivers a massive amount of power I think that Mayhem does stand slightly above rivalry in terms of its overall strength though if you can stack a few of those 10 fumble chances you might just find that you are in a fight with a bunch of buffoons and baboons it is slightly more offensive I suppose in that way and perhaps slightly more useful I'm gonna rank it at a B tier ranking here we have the Tome of pandemonium which is about negative status effects you can see that potentially here inside of Havoc magic which is a unit enchantment a Grant's base magic attacks a 30 chance of inflicting a random negative status effect so you've got a 3 and 10 chance of doing so you'll see also you could use a debuff spell to do that yourself we have a minor race transformation that gives plus 10 damage for each of the target's negative status effect and we have Insight Revolution which is actually a world spell destroying a province and summoning a brigand camp so there is synergy here for negative effects however there isn't actually a huge way to cast them we have this debuff spell which inflicts random status effects on all units within a relatively small but significant enough I suppose one hex radius and then we have Havoc magic which means that some of our units will have a 30 chance this combines with the unit in the tone which is the chaos heater and the chaos procedure in of itself is a very expensive unit to cast and to hold and its damage is very low chaos bolts dealing seven it's all about for this consuming chaos removing negative status effects from the enemies dealing 12 random Elemental damage for each one removed and lifesteal so you'll heal this in of itself isn't terrible the trouble is it removes the effect so you're casting it again removing the effect maybe you're removing a couple of effects potentially at this point maybe 24 damage and a bit of lifesteal is reasonable enough but at a base level it doesn't quite do enough and I think that can be said actually for the Tome as a whole I don't think it quite does enough I don't think there are quite enough ways to give reliable debuffs on the enemies negative status effects I think that the uh overall impact of the world spell is not too dissimilar from other world spells to be fear fairly run-of-the-mill and the rest of the stuff including this quite weak minor race transformation just doesn't stand up to a lot of other things I think the internal Synergy is there but very weak it is for the first but not the last time on this list that I'm giving the Tome of pandemonium a d tier I think it tries in a similar way that revelry tries to lean into something and it just doesn't quite even do that as well as rivalry the Synergy isn't there the power isn't there for me it's a d-tier pick in the tier three tomes our next tier three Tome is Devastation Devastation has a lot of stuff around sieges and dealing damage including these units that you can construct as a Siege project again pushing us over that traditional 18 vs 18 cap limit to devastated spheres we also have unleash the hounds which brings in six in terms of normal unit unlocks we unlock a quote monstrous shock unit and it is monstrous uh tier four of course it's dealing a lot of damage it'll cost you a lot of gold draft Etc to train it up but it will be worth your time it's quite a powerful unit combine that with maybe a little bit of an extra critical hit chance with flame burst weapons or this unit enchantment which gives you Demolisher allowing you to destroy fortified obstacles and a 60 chance of canceling the enemy's defense mode this Tome is really about grabbing a fist and punching with it you punch with your two extra Siege projects giving you a lot of diversity and strength you you've got a very powerful unit to unlock and reasonable spells enchantments to go along with it I think that this one is especially strong actually the time of Devastation is a very good pickup obviously it leans into domination in particular but you can even play around that in other ways you may not necessarily be going for Domination when you're besieging an enemy and I think that the overall unit Buffs are alone even actually when you combine it with the war breed would be good enough to give this at least an average ranking stack the extra Siege potential on top and I think we're looking at an above average term the time of Devastation for me initially I was going to place it at a beat here but I think that it does actually quite genuinely deserve to be above average is it going to break the game no but I think it's very good and for that reason I'll be ranking it at an a tier in tier four we have Tome of the demon gate opens a riff to summon fields and burn the world in your wake okay so what do we actually get well we get our major race transformation here inside of this Tome which is always exciting in this case we turn into demon kin granting us burning immunity faster Movement we can fly and we have frenzy increase dealing of damage as we attack the other thing probably to note within uh within this Tome is that there's a lot of spells summoning spells terraforming spells unit enchantment and damage so we we took off all of the boxes we also get the demon gate which will function as a teleporter here for us so we're unlocking that at tier four it's also a deploy location we can also use it to produce some of our mini fiend units which have their own Buffs the terraforming spell which is also something to keep an eye out for as we move through the list in this case terraforms into that terrain deals fire damage to enemies so there's some slight aggressive potential but maybe not massive the other one I guess is uh fight for power is probably worth noting two fiend units of the same tier in the Target army fight one another one dies transforms into a more powerful one so you can bring back that sort of tokenizing effect from earlier on from some of the earlier tomes potentially even The Horde and structure this using that as your base overall I think that demon gate is a reasonable enough Tome however at tier 4 you have to be really strong to compete demon gate delivers a major race transformation because it delivers a major race transformation I don't think I'm actually going to put it where I had initially planned to put it which was at setier and instead place it at a B tier it really is just a couple of things lifting it up from a lower rank I'm fairly happy with that placement next we have chaos channeling offers some very interesting abilities firstly a minor transformation which of course can be stacked with other miners will give us immunity to burning something that we saw earlier at vengeful Flames which damages melee attackers some fire resistance and fiery wake which ignites flammable terrain very good for a minor transformation of course unlocked relatively late in the piece we also have golden horde which is very similar to one of the abilities on the tree that you can only get once but in this case we can use it over and over it's a summoning spell summoning a full Army of random granted Tier 1 units although again there is some Synergy for that within class that can be produced for a city on a Target hex so we can magic up some fairly weak armies out of almost nowhere whenever another unit dies in battle we get strength and temporary hit points not terrible this damage spell has a two hex radius which I would note is wider than many others casting of course far everywhere as you go and then there's this other one which lets us summon a gremlin every turn in combat up to five gremlins in total we of course would use this on a city whether you fight in that domain whenever you do so I should say you'll receive a gremlin one per tune for five turns I think chaos channeling is a pretty powerful Tome has some really nice effects with a minor race transformation almost better than the major one especially if you consider that you're not limited to but one minor race transformation and overall solid ability solid spells and pretty versatile in combat I'm going to give this one an eight-tier ranking I think it's absolutely worthy of that slot and if I was ranking it from best to worst I'd probably place it somewhere in the middle but for now that spot will do just nicely and lastly my Lord we have Tome of the chaos Lord which lets you summon a unit that personally I really like the flavor for it's bailor bailor is summoned in a targeting City loses two population and spawns bailor and Mythic unit at loads of different abilities here on offer I would also note death explosion is one of its things otherwise this is our tier 5 tone so we set a high bar we can only get one of these what else does it offer all attacking units gain extra momentum and hastened per turn very strong sure Insight Rebellion a targeted City units are mind controlled and It suffers uh stability penalty when it's being besieged good not as good as some of the other things in this tier though I would say and then we have a combat spell a tier 5 combat spell that summons an avatar of your ruler the Avatar has the same abilities as your leader spawns with full action points or fiends and Demon kin game morale so basically you can spawn a second one of you pretty decent honestly pretty decent and all of these abilities are as you would expect with the tier 5 Tome however I think there are more powerful tomes than this one I am a big fan of bailor I do think that cool fourth has some versatility I think there's potentially less strength however in these other two I don't think they quite do enough to lift it up and search this Tome any higher than around a middle of the road ranking I give chaos Lord a passing grade but only just it's a c tier Tome for me because of its tier 5 status it of course sits the bar fairly high and I don't think it quite delivers as well as the others in class next we move on to Imperium what I think could be one of the weaker collection of tomes in the game starting at number one we have the ability to summon our first Golem copper Golem tier one pole arm unit not terrible we're not going to be spending a lot else on summoning units so we might as well the city spell here is interesting enough trading a little bit of stability for production and draft of course leaning into that slightly at war-like and physical damage Focus that we have here a little bit of extra range for our units nice enough perhaps nothing to write home about to your mum a little bit of extra resistance and finally centering blades a 90 chance of thundering their defense and Demolisher as well so you can stomp through objects the Tome of Enchantment isn't terrible but I can move through it fairly quickly because it's fairly straightforward nothing here is particularly exciting particularly diverse or particularly strong however it's not strictly a bad pick either as far as tier one tomes go I think it's fairly decent it provides a bit of Versatility it provides a little bit of extra strength for your units and a unit to summon in which is always nice in the early game I think that the time of Enchantment deserves a betier ranking next we have the Tome of rock which does have a minor transformation within it although it's potentially one of the weaker Transformations on offer basically just giving us a plus one defense and also you can walk along rocks faster and make yourself look a bit like a rock you can also summon in a Little Rock here we have another list of spirit the Lesser Spirit option of course for this class outside of that I think that the buff spell is fairly weak Stone skin nothing to write home about the spell also lets you lob a big rock an enemy and deal 30 damage but that's about it and then of course we unlock a flying shock unit gargoyle a fairly weak unit although its charging strike can pack a punch it's important to note over on the right hand side the special province is good perhaps nothing to write home about but a reasonable source of draft nonetheless did I say draft I mean production either way the Tome of rock is a little bit underwhelming really it is a bit underwhelming its transformation is underwhelming it spells are fairly straightforward and don't quite pack enough of a punch for me to Warrant putting it above the wrist for me it's a close call between a c tier and a d tier I think it gives quite a bit but nothing it gives is particularly strong or eventful and that's a shame because at tier one there are actually a surprising amount of very strong picks and I think that this honestly has to be right down there with almost the worst I'm gonna rank this one at a low C tier ranking the Tome of artificing at tier 2 I think is one of the better tomes with inside of this materium Library I think the Iron Golem is a really nice unlock a unit that we can of course train without draft build without gold rather than summon it in it's a powerful unit it's shielded it's Elemental and while its damage isn't overwhelming it's a great blocker particularly for this era this sort of period of the game the other thing that we get are nice defenses the defensive side of the offensive magic that we may have seen before in this case we can construct uh bolt repeaters we also get the Artisan fortification City structure finally we have a little bit of Siege magic for some extra damage as The Siege breaker and Artisan armaments which gives our units a fairly decent plus 30 percent critical hit chance of course that applies to our Iron Golem so the internal Synergy here is very real the gold mine is a decent enough Province Improvement that'll leave leverage off the fact that you probably already have a few quarries around maybe you want to get an extra mine I would note it's a fun one as well because it spawns an iron golem on the owner's side for combat just a little fun thing to note there are other ways to do this of course but that's one here's another one to get a free Iron Golem through Golem assistant a hero support effect that I'm a particular fan of even though it does just summon a tier 1 token unit I think that the Iron Golem and really important structures like potentially the bolt repeaters or your more aggressive Siege magic do wonders for the Tome of artificing I think it's a really solid pick potentially the best in this tier at least as far as materium is concerned don't get me wrong not the best overall but I think a really strong Contender nonetheless particularly because of its relatively early unlock time I'm placing it at an a tier the term of winds provides us with uh six different things you'll notice that two of them are units there's a wind rager that we can summon in and then we have a ranged unit an Archer and actually a pretty decent one at that of course these slightly stronger units will have more upkeep Etc but this one is a nice range tuner honestly it is outside of that a lot of these spells I find to be a bit underwhelming it targets an empty hex and pulls the closest enemy to within three hexes of that location is all right potentially for pulling one enemy out but nothing to write home about there's a unit enchantment that grants Enchanted units flying mounts our Scout will benefit from that at the minute but of course it could go a little wider than just one unit and then there's some a combination of friendly Army and debuff spells that overall aren't bad but I don't think that this kind of thing even dust storm for example is strong nor is it especially a good use of my somewhat limited combat uh and sort of a casting points not terrible but not great I think that the units are potentially a little bit of a Saving Grace for the Tome of wins thanks to that slight uplifting wind at the end I think the time of winds deserves a betier ranking for its General strength in unit provision and OK spells the toe of transmutation comes in at tier 3 focusing on debuffing enemies buffing your allies end quote changing your economy we unlocked a battle mage unit not a terrible unit a fairly run-of-the-mill and then the rest here we're looking at spells I would note that our minor transformation gives us a little bit of Defense blight resist a minus two lightning resistance however uh not one that I would write home about and then outside of that you're looking at changing your city gaining sundered defense and fire damage thrown at the enemy and then some adaptive armor as well I think that these abilities including the Adaptive armor are not all that great to be honest there's not a huge amount of power tucked in most of this stuff and there are some downsides potentially that you might not want to take on I think that overall the time of transmutation doesn't quite provide enough strength to set it even at an average ranking it's for all of those reasons that the Tome of transmutation is going to transmute itself uh down here into AC ranking I think it's just a bit underpowered across the board and while it does provide diversity in what it offers it doesn't really have the strength to back any of it up the Tome of terramansi is our other option at tier three one that I've played around with quite a bit important things to note trim a ritual at the start of combat The Siege project will destroy towers battlements and additional wall obstacles a fairly nice breakdown of at least some of the earlier Siege defenses a seismic shark is sort of a little bit smaller more of a damage spell based on the actual fighting other than that the terraforming spell that adds the rocky feature perhaps not especially useful yes I know there's synergies you can become Rock people move a bit faster but that feature isn't strictly one that you'll be reaching for very often and then we have the stone Spirit uh tier 3 fighting unit that we can summon of course nice to be able to summon it in at a slightly higher strength that we may have seen it earlier on I think that Tremor ritual is potentially though the only real Saving Grace here as a Siege project it's not a bad one the rest of these abilities I could easily take or leave most in fact probably all of them I don't think that the Tome of tyromancy is an especially strong tone of magic and I think that the tremorr rich will while it does a little bit to lift it up doesn't really do it enough for me there are plenty of other ways to destroy Siege projects and I don't think that beelining to this Tome for that effect is really enough to send it apart from the rest unfortunately it's a tone that I quite like that I've experimented with quite a bit but I don't think it Compares in class there are many other tiered one two and of course three tomes that are just better than it and unfortunately I will be placing it at a d tier ranking next we move to the golden realm a tier 4 Tome and one that I think is worth your time the Gold Golem is a huge big powerful unit Towers Above the Rest it can walk up to walls during a fight and just stab across them in all seriousness though it's a very good pole arm unit and absolutely worth the unlock we have a minor race transformation that'll make us a little bit richer and more resistant to Magic we have a city structure that gives 20 gold for each magic material within the city's domain not terrible a good way to get extra money on top of our Bazaar which will also be providing income the other two things that we'll receive are City structure City structure that actually is pretty good if you're making a lot of money buy now is 25 cheaper and can be used two times a turn instead of once and gilding blast perhaps the the least interesting thing here the least powerful awful thing though will give us a stunning little bit of extra gold I think in this effect it is the combination of having a couple of pretty interesting City improvements and this big bad boy the Golden Golem a fantastic unit I think that this Tome is very strong provides a lot of different effects reaches across a lot of different areas the minor race transformation is nice the Gold Golem really carries hard here too I'm ranking this one at either an a tier or an S tier I could be convinced either way for the purpose of this video I'm ranking it at a noted low istia I think they're a really powerful effects there to make you a lot of money to build up a large army of those golems and then you will just destroy very strong tone our other tier 4 option is Tome of The Crucible and uh it's a fairly decent one too actually unfortunately it doesn't equip us with a unit by default so instead here we're turning to as you can see things like combat spells again we do get this time just one city structure and then some Buffs the city structure itself battlements Grant physical ranged and Magic attacks plus four fire damage setting those hexes on fire is a nice enough defense I think that there are as some other highlights that should be drawn out here though and really it's about pure Firepower with the heroes bringing in extra fire damage where they use the meteor shower to cast down meteors on the enemy and really burn them through all your arrows there's some strong Synergy within this Tome and I think it is a fairly powerful one all of its effects are fairly powerful though perhaps not quite as exciting as what some of the others might offer it's definitely not worth sleeping on this one I'm gonna give the Tome of The Crucible a b tier ranking a slightly Higher One perhaps but I think it's a fairly middle of the road considering it's a tier 4 unlock and lastly we have Tome of the Creator the tier V Tome of course the hardest to get to out of the lot we have four effects we can summon in the Titan of the earth obviously a very beefy unit 150 HP though I would note its damage isn't especially High considering just how massive this thing is we also receive an upgraded Siege project in this case it's the Earth shatter engines siegecraft we know what siegecraft does I don't believe that these are actually especially strong I think you can conduct sieges perfectly fine with some of the earlier unlocks throughout these tomes or just in general I'm not confident that the Earth shatter engines are quite as impactful as they might sound or look you then have tectonic shatter which causes 30 physical damage to all enemies and they have over half chance of being stunned all obstacles on the world map have half a chance of being destroyed this is obviously a big strike 30 damage is not a lot for a Max tier spell it's important to note it is just physical damage as well the chance of being stunned is all right it's a powerful impact don't get me wrong but it's a little underpowered in comparison to some of the other tier 5 times and then we have eternal Earth which grants uh undying which restores units to life after two turns at 50 off their HP this is potentially a Saving Grace and what is otherwise pretty underpowered things across the board either underpowered or not overly useful and I'm not sure that this is enough to say that the extreme length that we have to go to to get our tier five tomes among the other pieces of the criteria that I use to evaluate here I think that this time while its effects are powerful is worthy of either a c or a d tier ranking just doesn't quite compete with the wrist I'm going to place it at a detier and now we move on to Nature I think the set that I've given the highest ranks to overall but I don't want to spoil it let's take a look first up we're looking at the Tome of roots a very powerful one at that this gives us some healing abilities early on healing abilities are of course Very powerful particularly in the early game where armies might be very evenly matched the extra hit points or regeneration could make or break a fight combine that with some extra blight damage from Poison blades or poisonous arrows we then have kind of an extra token unit right that we can summon in five living vines that are not especially strong though they can entangle the enemy they're powerful to use tactically or to bring in a few extra tokens into the fight and then we have the uh entwined thrall which is of course this tomes version of the early summoning unit maybe it grows up to be big and strong but it deals a fairly strong base attack to begin with that poison needle 16 even a melee strike of 12 not terrible overall I think that there's a lot of power inside of the Tome of roots not just from summoning units onto the world map pulling in extra tokens in fights giving all of our blades and arrows poison and then crucially keeping our units alive one of the best early combat spells you can get is healing roots and potentially one of the best summoning units that you can get is at least at this stage uh the entwined thrall I think overall this is a very powerful unlock getting food and Mana from our special Improvement the herbalist is not bad and the overall nature Affinity while I don't value things like Imperium tree unlocks very highly at all when I'm factoring equations in my head to produce these tier lists it's important to note that the nature Affinity is pretty dang good and I think we'll see that as we move through I think that the Tome of roots is a solid versatile Tome with a relatively powerful unit to unlock healing abilities and some extra enchantments that can deal a bit of extra damage to boot all wrapped up in an easy to access tier one tone package I think it deserves an st rating Tome of beasts another very strong Contender and another very strong tier one tome in this case of course we can summon in random tier one animals with a small chance of getting a tier two though our Tier 1 units could grow up into tier twos one day anyway uh and we see this theme kind of bleed through a little bit minor race transformation here giving us 10 damage and critical hit chance not quite as good as the 20 damage that we've seen from other minor race transformation but still pretty decent note though that we have to be adjacent to a friendly animal or cavalry so there's some other caveats at play to just weaken that down a little bit we get our support unit here that's fantastic not a terrible unit good for an army of beasts and of course we have cool of the wild to buff our beasts or Mark the enemy as prey there's some reasonable Beast Synergy As you move through there's also some token Synergy that you might want to take into account and overall these abilities are fairly strong summon wild animal can pull up an army very quickly and you could potentially use the wild speaker maybe in combination with animal kinship to produce a fairly strong powerful well-flanked synergy energized Army I think that the time of beasts is a very good term with some small caveats and uh relatively minor but a collection nonetheless of things that just pull it down a little bit in comparison to its peers I'm gonna rank this time at an a tier ranking again very solid pick probably can't go wrong maybe not quite as good as the other Tome even within this tier one nature class if you agreed with me on the time of roots and you like the time of roots you're gonna like the Tome of Glades quite a bit too this one unlocks our ranged unit that we can build and train we also get someone entwined protector looking a little bit beefier here a shield unit with I would add healing abilities plus 20 temporary hit points and this unit then enters defense mode a really solid unit two unit unlocks we have a terraforming spell to create forests or underground mushroom forests if you wish we also have this minor race transformation which sort of bleeds into that as well we get Forest walk we get Forest camouflage is it the best minor race transformation uh absolutely not no there are definitely more powerful abilities that we can get uh however I guess I have to give it some credit for synergizing well with create Forest we at least could make our own territory forest in this time to give ourselves Forest walk Forest camouflage too and then the last last thing that we get is a unit an enhancement enchantment I'm going to say that a million times and then mix up uh here it gives us aspect of the root which heals 30 temporary hit points and enters defense mode granted units of course our shielded units being being a great candidate for that further layering in on top of this healing sap right so it's not just that healing sap but we're spreading the aspect of the route across the board we know the value of healing in keeping units alive particularly in close fights this Tome also brings us a very powerful units particularly of course our summoned protector and then a little bit of a Synergy with the forests I value these Forest synergies a lot less than I value almost everything else including the sacred Meadow important to note we can bring in Forest Warden a little bit to buff it up but I don't think that's what this Tome is really all about I think it's about powerful units I think it's about grabbing this aspect getting a lot of healing online a lot of strength online and then falling back on these other things as far as tier 2 times go glades you are a powerful one um and it is for that reason all of its juicy offerings that I'm placing Glades at an Easter our second option here is the Tome of fertility which doesn't compare in comparison with Glades it's got to be set we have this combat spell summons a flora obstacle maybe not even quite as useful as our Vines although this can at least deal damage and we have a city structure in the form of the Temple of fertility which really is only useful on especially large cities you're unlikely to get a huge amount of value out of this in comparison to other things that you could be building we have restore the land which is another terraforming spell combined with a little bit of healing and another unit unlock in this case the nymph the nymph is a slightly higher skill level than what we've seen before and it comes with a few extra abilities it's actually a pretty nice unit in terms of its overall versatility and its damage isn't bad its Health isn't bad it's of course the support unit I think it's potentially one of the saving Graces for this Tome and while not everything here is especially terrible it just doesn't quite give me me enough the temple just doesn't quite give me enough restoring land yeah sure adding grassland super nice not quite enough though even the blossom of Life potentially without giving a direct significant heal might not be enough to get me out of tricky situations a good Tome but I think fairly average in terms of power level because I think it's fairly middle of the road the Tome of fertility is going to plant itself uh smack bang at the B tier at tier three we have the Tome of vigor which gives us the upgrade to the animals that we were summoning earlier in this case we get to summon tier three animals pretty decent we also have the super growth minor race transformation another minor race transformation for us in this case giving us 10 extra hit points and retaliation attack this one is pretty nice honestly decent enough we also have unleash Beast which of course will buff our Friendly Beasts we've got Empower Beast as well and then we have this interesting combat spell it summons a totem of the wild which spawns a random Tier 1 relatively tokenized unit granted at the start of each of our turns for up to five turns a nice way to bring in extra units into a fight potentially then we could look to maybe Unleash the Beast empower the Beast and of course we're summoning them in on the world map combining that with a nice well a fairly nice trait and also a fairly nice minor race transformation I think that the time of vigor is a very solid pack I don't think it is quite worthy of an East here but I give the Tome of vigor a very comfortable a tier rating summoning in those more powerful animals is really good and the ability to bring an extra token tier one units is not to be scoffed at either Tome Cycles is a pretty interesting one it unlocks Druid of the cycle which can sort of play with life or death healing and live units and bringing perished ones back or Cycles in to try and mess with an enemy and get an insta KO it's pretty fascinating and it combines with a lot of the other things uh that this Tome does let's take a look for example at this healing spell parting gifts another particular star of the show until the end of the battle whenever a friendly unit dies all other units within two hexes heal plus 12 temporary hit points nice to have likewise if you just want to throw damage at the enemy and heal yourself you have an opportunity to do it here if you defuse health projectiles of Decay another solid one to deal blight damage and a 90 chance of inflicting Decay there are some reasonably powerful spells here with a pretty good unit Druid of the cycle I think that Cycles is again another solid pickup out of the nature tree this tree really does deliver this one is a really close call for me like a a really really close call uh but I think it's just not quite as good maybe it's just not quite as good uh as the uh other time that we just looked at within tier three right we're comparing effectively Cycles to Vigor and I think here we just slightly miss out I'm going to put it at a beta however I could concede it I could give a concession and move it to the ATF fairly easily too at tier four we have the Tome of paradise the sweet sweet time that involves a lot around messing with the Enemy buffing up yourself for example take this pollen spell which gives you 15 morale and has a really high chance of enemy units well of causing them to become distracted guy has chosen is another thing to note it's our major race transformation giving us a whopping 20 hit points three status resistance char large resistance as well it's a pretty good one a fortress of vines will give us a quite a bit of extra defense Nature's Bounty focusing on our health the blessing of paradise is a city spell focusing on stability and making a lot of money and then it all rounds out with Enchanted Bloom Target friendly city starts altering terrain to Grasslands one Province per turn it extends out and while the spell is active grasp them gives food and production there are some really nice benefits across the board some of them used aggressively others used to transform your race and they're all generally speaking pretty powerful at the Garden of bliss another opportunity for us to get a lot of stability if you're after stability this will of course be one of the tomes for you it doesn't lean into a lot of tomes and it does feature here Paradise I think is worthy of either an s or an a tier I think it sits right at the top with some of the best stuff in the game however I don't think it's quite good enough to push itself into the top tier the istia ranking and it's for that reason that I'm gonna give it a high 80. Nature's wrath is our other tier 4 option and this one pulls some really neat tricks out of the Hat awakened Forest lets us remove a forest and replace it with an army of animal or plants that come under our control super good or if you'd like to perhaps turn a province into a forest to get one first you can with destructive regrowth destroying a province and replacing it with Forest while also dealing a bit of damage so you can use that tactically there's a nice heel buff here heel buff spell 15 hit points you also regain all of your action points pretty good awaken instincts potentially the best buff spell that we've seen so far obviously within nature we have devolve which is a chance to shrink an enemy back down to a tier one unit and all of it is rounded out by this horned God a big bad boy coming out of tier four it's our Mythic unit it's a huge big plant it does an incredible amount of damage and it can also turn Flora obstacles into Flora Stingers bringing an extra units and dealing an incredible amount as it goes along super duper strong Nature's wrath pecks a real punch not just from healing your own from bringing in more units like the haunt God but also the power of Awakened Forest to instantly summon an army as something that we've only really seen in a couple of other tomes at high levels I think Nature's wrath is very powerful in fact I think Nature's wrath is so strong that unlike the tone that we looked at just before it it does slightly reach up and grab an estia ranking in my humble opinion and last but most certainly not least for nature we have Tome of the goddess of nature a tier V Tome and in this case we're just getting three potentials out of it the most stripped back out of what we've looked at so far we have the fact that all forests can grant us Vision on the world map okay we have force of nature Enchanted units get 20 crit hit and plus four blight damage and last but not least we have mass rejuven Nation a healing spell heals all friendly units with a whopping 40 temporary hit points and it brings all deed friendly animals and plants back to life with 50 of their total HP in other words we're going to heal all of your army that's alive by a huge amount 40 temporary hit points is I think the most we've seen so far and any of your animals or plants which you should have quite a few of tree people I can come back with 50 of their HP Mass Rejuvenation is huge incredibly strong it makes these other two things look pretty non-existent although they do of course have their own value particularly force of nature I think that mass Rejuvenation though is potentially right up there with one of the best spells in the game time of the goddess of nature your power to swing fights into our control and reanimate our armies I think makes you worthy of an istia ranking Now we move to order and we're going to start with the Tome of zeal of course the tier one tome providing us with five unlocks a world map summon spell as we would expect summoning in a zealot not an especially strong unit of course fanatical Workforce is the city spell which gives us production in exchange for food potentially hurting our early growth though it may be some trade-offs could or should be made the rest here condemnation of course dealing at about 15 damage and condemning the enemy then we have a unit enhancement enchantment which gives us that Zeal and an inspiring chant for a little bit of morale the abilities here aren't necessarily bad they're slightly underpowered uh when you look at them individually and compare them with like for like say summons or Buffs that you might find in other areas but they do have a reasonable Synergy of course we're looking quite a bit at our spirit damage here inside of this Tome and to be able to summon in our base unit is always a good start I believe that the Tome of zeal is fairly middle of the road in terms of what it gives us in terms of its overall power level and for that reason I'll be placing it at a B tier time of faith is our other option here giving us an Abbey our special Province Improvement that can give us knowledge which of course we'll see a little bit more of as we move through the rest of this video but important to note that they were maybe a little rarer than some of the other things here we'll unlock our trainable recruitable support unit the chaplain which is always nice we'll also finally gain access to a little bit of that sweet sweet healing outside of nature here of course an army heel giving us not temporary hit points but actual restoring hit points we can also leverage stability for a little bit of knowledge again harder to get and there's a little bit of kind of swaying of city-states here with uh faithful Whispers I feel that Tome of Faith reaches out and does a lot of different things of course it has six unlocks the maximum possible but also just in the diversity of different things that are offered here I think that earning knowledge is harder to earn than some other resources so should be given uh quite very minor but slight kudos for that too the time of faith for me is a low a tier ranking I think it's just a little bit better than the likes of the B tier it's of course unlocked very early on as well so we have to keep that in mind I'm going to rank it at an eightier and spoiler alert we're gonna get another eightier ranking here out of the Tome of Inquisition the time of Inquisition unlocks the skirmisher unit for us one that does a pretty hefty amount of damage this early on anyway with the bolt of judgment also likely to stun the enemy for a turn so it's a powerful effect that will likely knock them down here we see a tribunal leveraging population for knowledge this is unlikely to be as good as some of the other knowledge buildings but another way to get it so perhaps I can't complain and then the rest of what we're looking at here are a variety of spells including those to cast on the enemy Army like losing 50 of its move points on the world map not bad and one of the ways that you can interfere with enemies before they're strictly fighting with you on the world map nice to see we also have mass condemnation dealing a whole lot of spirit damage and inquisitors Zeal again at leaning into that Spirit theme I think that the time of Inquisition position is a pretty powerful tone gives us some nice effects some nice synergies and mass condemnation gives us a well sorry the burden of guilt actually more importantly gives us a unique impact that other areas don't have the time of Inquisition is a decent tier 2 Tome perhaps not something quite to write home about but it does present some reasonably strong benefits I think it's worthy of either an A or a B tier I'm going to give it a high quote unquote B tier ranking and our other tier 2 unlock we have Tome of the beacon this one is pretty interesting I'd like to draw your attention to a couple of things firstly summon lightbringer summoning a battle mage unit into the fight granted its Spirit bolts don't deal an awful amount of damage so it's potentially not gonna be leading the fight but it's a good enough unit there's also a sustained city spell here Target vassal City Grants to play a 10 Imperium each turn Imperium of course even more difficult to find uh sources that produce it knowledge yeah it's rarer than safe food Imperium rare is still so it's wonderful to see ways to leverage that we can also give vessels some souls and ultimately cast this the Tome of the beacon uh this summons a Divine Beacon which grants plus five temporary hit points and plus five morale at the start of each turn for friendly units within a two hex rating this is a really great way to keep morale high and provide wide reaching Buffs with the Tome of the Beacon's ability to earn materium Imperium I should say getting my eeriums confused heal us up provide us with some good units and reinforce in that way I think it presents itself as a very strong tier 2 option in fact I think that Tome of Beacon is such a strong tier 2 option that it deserves rightfully to be placed at the S tier for those wonderful constructables that it delivers among many other things in the Tome of sanctuary at tier 3 we have a minor race transformation which gives us a bit of spirit resistance and Status resistance potentially uh the first one they're not being quite as useful as the second and both of them being all right I think the thing to note here is healing spiers which is a city structure adds 12 healing spiers in combat during a Siege friendly units in the domain heal uh 12 per turns this is a great way to whip down some healing ability that will provide Sanctuary right 15 hit points a turn gains one bolstered resistance it's a pretty neat ability and I think it's potentially the Saving Grace for the rest of this Tome it is not that great it's probably the best way to summarize it all of these abilities don't get me wrong you know healing a target of its hit points uh it's temporary hit points dispels negative status effects I mean these are nice but they're not super good I think the healing spiers though do lift this up and save it from getting an otherwise uh somewhat harsher ranking I give Tome of the sanctuary thanks to its one or two saving Graces a b tier ranking I think it rightly sits there I could be convinced one either way in this case but I'm happy with a B the tier 3 Tome of subjugation I just don't think gives enough it's a little bit of a way for you to potentially subjugate maybe be a little bit evil inside of order which would otherwise be good you've got things like Baron's Palace a city structure providing 25 gold if it's built and can only be built in cities of another race as well as a little bit of stability of intimidating Aura to reduce morale final ultimatum to potentially boost up your morale and we unlock the Tyrant King a heavy shock unit and a reasonable enough unlock although this is a somewhat expensive unit given its skill level a subjugating raid also of course adds into that Baron's Palace effect besiege that he's losing a population and it would being sort of escorted to your closest own City overall I think that these impacts are a little bit underpowered the time of subjugation has some internal Synergy although perhaps it's less synergetic with the entire Affinity that it sits within at a hole it does potentially provide an alternate play style but I don't think it delivers enough power to Warrant it any higher than a c tier ranking here on my tier list at tier 4 the time of Supremacy is a fairly interesting one we're leaning into morale in particular here and of course that reoccurring theme of spirit damage as well and you can see that there's things like Zeal and spirit damage coming through again in some of the Buffs we have the ability to pull up a bit of draft and stability from our city structure and we'll continue to get morale and strength from further Buffs the unit of note here is the eagle Rider it's a flying Shield unit a somewhat unique one although its damage is fairly low considering its cost is fairly high you'll be using it as slightly more of of course a shielding and support unit through its emboldened allies but overall it doesn't really give as much power a particularly in comparison to units within a similar class it's an exciting unit but it's not an especially strong one I think that the time of Supremacy delivers some fairly decent spells fairly strong and a unit that you'll be glad that you've unlocked for sure I don't think though it really delivers a huge amount of power and I think it is perhaps marginally better than the subjugation that we looked at the time that we looked at earlier and so I I think for those reasons I'm going to place it at a B tier a slightly higher V tier but it only just gets there now we look at the Tome of exaltation the other tier four Tom and order this one unlocks Shrine of smithing it's a unit believe it or not it's a mythical unit it packs a big punch it's got a lot of Health you'll be glad that you've got this on your side of the fight mark my words and she was about City structure again of course we're leaning into City stability in this case also Mana if the city has no Governor it's Governor bonus uh will be doubled if it has a governor I should say you'll get twice the effect outside of that I'd also like to highlight the major race transformation that's on offer here turning our units into Celestial units with extra Spirit resistance minus four for blight and Frost and also control loss immunity making you immune to the effects that make you lose control of a unit so a fairly strong wrong combine that of course with the fact that you'll fly and that you'll be faithful which will reduce your upkeep it's a fairly nice major race transformation we also have ascended Warriors giving non-hero units in an army plus one rank that's a really nice Beth spell uh buff spell and then we have of course uh angel eyes that major race transformation going along with everything else uh that I think actually brings together a fairly strong tone here inside of order it could be one of the strongest ones that we've looked at so far I think it's real power is the mythical the Mythic unit that it brings in but everything around the edges is nice enough too that it's a a strong enough Tome especially with a major race transformation inside I give the Tome of exaltation a high a tier I think a case could be made for s i could be convinced that way as usual it's usually a plus or minus one either way but I'm pretty confident with that ranking and I think it deserves to be placed there and then we have Tome of the god Emperor our tier V tone become a God to be worshiped your mere presence inspires your troops specialize in buffer units what do we get friendly Army spell units and Target friendly Army gain Resurgence for one turn when it dies in combat it's revived at the end of its owner as a Victorious revived units are brought back with 50 percent we then have exalted Champion for three turns Target friendly unit deals plus 100 damage and has a huge amount of Defense that's a very strong buff spell we have Wrath of the emperor which is an enemy Army spell dealing sustained 20 Spirit damage becoming demoralized condemned and if there are any enemy territory they get an extra 50 damage and then finally and perhaps the most significantly of all mass revive targets all friendly dead units with faithful or Zeal something of course you've undoubtedly been able to pick up and sort of craft into your people by now they come back to life with 50 of their total hit points Mass revive you are huge and of course we combine that with a few other Buffs around the edge I think that mass revive is enough to make this uh Tome exceptionally good spells that can bring your entire Army back from 50 are game changing spells they will make or break almost any fight and if your opponent opponent can't do it back to you they better have really whooped your backside because you're about to re-summon everybody and I think that that is in of itself enough to lift this Tome up to Greatness for all all of your hard work and being a good Emperor I think you deserve an istia ranking rounding out our penultimate section and leading us through into the shadow realm we begin with the Tome of Souls of course the soul economy will exist inside here we have uh unlocked for the bone Golem a fairly decent unit actually in terms of early on that created in a city using souls or by fusing two skeletons together though so there is a little bit that you have to keep in mind before you can get these online however you shouldn't struggle to bring skeletons into your army the rest across here we have a variety of spells damage spells unit enhance enchantments obviously and buff spells to boot I would notice that there's no direct way to bring in any units and we don't unlock any specific units of course outside of the bone Golem the Spells themselves aren't terrible Soul Bound for example allowing us to generate more souls we could deal some direct damage and of course we grab Soul Harvest and the Soul collector as well novice hero skill so it comes together to start the form the basis of a soul economy but it doesn't deliver a lot of strength and it doesn't provide me with a lot of immediate options given its lack of immediate impact and the overall sort of slightly underwhelming performance of this Tome I'm gonna give it a c tier ranking the other tier one option available for shadow is the Tome of cryomancy this one does provide us with our unit options we get access to the battle mage that inflicts Frozen we also get access to summonin this version of our crappy little spirits of course they can grow up big and strong and in this case we've got the Lesser snow Spirit and the rest of the theme Here is of course all about that snow it's about Frost damage whether it be on our blades or our arrows similar of course to effect that we've seen before for lightning or in nature we also have an enemy Army spell that causes a blizzard this is a fairly standard run-of-the-mill introductory Tome it does unlock a few units I don't think there are a lot else of what it does is especially useful though especially when you consider that we're losing a bit of physical damage in exchange for this Frost damage so we do uh we have to focus in a little harder here than we might potentially with other unit types right there's almost an anti-synergy of course at play inside of this as well important to note we'll grab the school of cryomancy giving us a little bit of extra knowledge potentially a slight Saving Grace but across the board there is a little bit of an anti-synergy here although we do unlock some early units for some slight anti-synergies and an overall lack of power compared to its peers particularly within its tear grouping of tier one I'm going to place this Tome again at a c tier ranking putting both of our options from this grouping at cetir at tier 2 we continue our focus on Souls with the soul well a special Province Improvement giving us a few Souls though of course not as many as we could get in combat speaking of which we have our Necromancer coming our support unit a reasonable enough unlock and then we're surrounded by a bunch of spells raises Target corpses in a one-hicks radius as zombie units that die at the end of combat a rotting explosion dealing 15 and 15 and applying to Kang necrotic magic which gives us just a 60 chance of inflicting to Kang uh damage over time effect so that is not great odds but it's a unit enchantment so all of our attacks Will Roll those die and then finally restore the undead 20 hit points of all undid units in a Target Army and that's of course a friendly Army spell overall these impacts I think are uh not terrible but they're also really in and around average in terms of their overall impact the damage is fairly low the healing potential is fairly low not even striking into temporary hit points unfortunately in this case and the unit enchantment I mean yeah decaying is nice five black damage to turn but we're really gonna need to give and deal a little bit more if we want to be competitive with other tomes in this tear grouping not to sound like a broken record I swear I'll give one of these to him something other than c but I think that this time deserves a c tier ranking just slightly below average for what we might compare to within that tier 2 ranking though not of course inherently a bad pick you will need to lean into the souls economy as well to make it work obviously that goes without saying but important to note nonetheless Tome of the Doom Herald is up next providing us with a summoning spell well for a banshee a unit that I personally don't think deals enough damage or has enough effect to Warrant summoning it there are other summoning options that I think are much better than this one across other tomes I just don't feel like it delivers enough even potentially in comparison to some of the units that I'm just training that will have ultimately lower upkeeps at least when you look at them across their opportunity cost and frankly deal more damage than this guy the rest of what's on offer out of these five unlocks as you can see are all spells we have a minor race transformation that lets us steal three morale per hit not the best transformation in fact I would argue it's probably one of the worst a little bit of morale dealing is great if you're winning a fight you're gonna win slightly more if you're losing a fight You're Gonna Lose slightly less but the impact is really not that profound and it's not going to turn the tide of of a fight it's no plus 20 damage by any stretch of the imagination and the rest of the spells here like I say good enough definitely but a little bit situational and arguably just not impactful enough to compete I think that the Doom Herald is one of our rare but not all that uncommon d-tier rankings it doesn't deliver enough on any front it doesn't have a single saving grace even to lift it up from the dreidges of D tier and in a complete shift we have the Tome of great transformation one of these tier three tomes that has so much power packed into it it's almost unjust uh taking a look at a couple of other things before we get to the real juicy stuff we have a city structure that replaces our defensive Towers it heals Undead units within six hex for 15 hit points you might be thinking well I'm not an undead unit oh but wait there's more uh we have the domain of death which gives us a little bit of stability it's a sustained city spell nice enough uh a neat little world spell that can upgrade resource notes so they'll give you an extra five Mana per turn nice to have let's get into the juicy stuff though we have a unit enchantment which will give us plus 10 hit points across a huge variety of unit types and ultimately we have this major race transformation at tier three so it's quite early for a major transformation and boy does it pack a punch we become Undead which yes as you can see will change our resistance levels it'll change our morale modifiers we'll be immune to poison and crucially it'll give us life still our units attacks will heal ourselves for 10 temporary hit points with an additional five coming from repeating attacks when you combine the extra resistance with this major race transformation ability across the rest of this Tome it is a very powerful for one indeed the great transformation transforms for me what was so far looking like a pretty weak group of tomes and surges itself right up to the top I think rightfully claiming a spot that only one other in my opinion of the Shadow tomes will be able to reach it deserves an istia for its major race transformation implications we also have the Tome of the cold dark causing enemies to become blind and spreading Arctic terrain of course that's done through this terraforming spell which extends up to two provinces outside of the domain slowly converting it over to provinces with snow and ice which will give you a little bit of extra food and production you'll be able to summon the more powerful snow Spirit unit which doesn't deal a huge amount of damage through individual strikes but is a fairly decent in combat you'll receive a general terraforming spell as well altered terrain to Arctic giving enemies Frost damage and really leaning into what you do best the minor race transformation is interesting here too leaning into the internal Synergy extra Frost resistance immune to Frozen and you'll get Arctic walk and this all comes together with a friendly Army spell the target of the army gains Universal camouflage for three turns so it can't be seen at all on the world map so there's some really interesting opportunities to be quite stealthy here to build up a frozen domain around yourself and harvest a little bit of extra knowledge as well out of the special Improvement I think that the cold dark is a pretty powerful Tome I would generally pick it up I think it's a good pick it's not an S tier pick though the internal synergies of the cold dark are something to be proud of and some of its effect like the extra unit like the race transformation for example I think set it above the wrist I tossed and turned between whether I wanted to place this one at a B tier or an a tier I think it deserves to live somewhere in between I'll be ranking it at a quote unquote low a tier Tome of the reaper will probably be a decent pickup for you you get this fairly expensive and while it doesn't deal the most damage it does have some pretty interesting abilities like greater corpse consumption which is a brilliant one if you're leaning down that Undead route which of course by this point you will be you also get Harvest population which is a fairly interesting one you get to harvest a population for 60 Souls helping you potentially build up your soul economy a little bit more one of the rarer ways you'll be able to do that and you can construct Soul siphons gaining 40 Souls during a Siege I think that there's some good internal synergies here around Souls around the undead and a nice enough unit unlock with a very powerful ability but I don't think that the Tome of the reaper is anywhere near as strong as some of the others that we've just looked at especially when we consider that it's up at tier four I think that time of the reaper is worthy of a middle of the road ranking placing it somewhere in the bottom half of the B tier picks the Tome of Oblivion summons the living fog very sort of large High health unit that granted doesn't deal a huge amount of damage with its mind strike but can inflict Insanity on the enemy as well as a damaging fortified obstacles the insanity thing comes through with things like sleep of Oblivion devouring void conjures of void which each turn sort of pulls enemies into the void dealing 30 damage and the fog of insanity completes the effect as a sustained city spell I think that there are reasonable benefits here within the Tome of Oblivion it's sometimes difficult to manage their impact because they rely quite heavily on the impacts of insanity for example playing out the unit becoming uncontrollable attacking random units within a certain range so there is of course an element of Randomness to it but I think that the effects are strong enough Tome of the reaper could change the tide of battle with some reasonable Insanity plays it is unlocked at tier 4 making it a bit more expensive but I think it warrants a low beat here and now we arrive at our final tome Tome of the Eternal Lord what do you do at tier 5 and are you worthy well there's a combat enchantment that gives us 15 Frost damage with a 90 chance of blinding and weakening them we have raised Undead Army summoning a full stack of low-tiered Undead units onto a Target World this is our ability to quickly draw an army out of nowhere inside of these tomes and while we don't get it to the very end it shouldn't be slipped on even if they are fairly weak units being able to pull them out of nowhere potentially merge them in to even stronger skeletal units using our spells should not be slipped on true deathmagic is a unit enchantment it grants magic attacks a 30 chance of inflicting Marked for Death the unit will not recover hit points and will die when the effect expires it's only a 30 chance but if we can get that from all of our magic attacks we're probably gonna deal some pretty decent damage and then finally we have Battlefield reanimation all friendly undid units come back to life with 50 of their hit points and enemy corpses come back to life as tier one zombies under your control until the end of the battle this is one of those effects that like a couple of others in a couple of the other tier V tomes could completely change the fight not just reanimating our army providing their Undead which of course they should be at this point they should all be but also bringing the enemies back as extra token units to throw in the line of fire time of Eternal Lord therefore sets itself apart from the rest of course right up there with those other the tier five times that give us this ability and I therefore rank it at an Easter and that my friends concludes my tomes of magic tier list ranking what did you think I'm sure there'll be plenty of disagreement there always is on these kinds of videos but there's a little bit of course of objectivity of personal plays and experiences bleeding into the overall analysis do let me know what you think regardless I'm always Keen to hear your good feedback and I'll see you after I've wristed my voice in the next one take care everybody

Channel: JumboPixel

Views: 84,548

Keywords: age of wonders 4, age of wonders, age of wonders 4 gameplay, age of wonders tier list, age of wonders 4 tier list, aow4, aow4 tier list, age of wonders 4 guide, age of wonders 4 tips, age of wonders 4 trailer, age of wonders 4 review, age of wonders 4 tutorial, paradox interactive, aow 4, age of wonders 4 lets play, age of wonders 4 races, JumboPixel, age of wonders 4 tomes of magic, age of wonders 4 times, age of wonders 4 tomes, age of wonders 4 tomes of magic tier list

Id: hH_s0EGHzfM

Length: 94min 27sec (5667 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023