Form Traits Tier List - Age of Wonders 4 (MP) Basics

all right everybody welcome back to we play games I'm Walker and here we are finally with our form traits video on our Age of Wonders 4 multiplayer basic series now this video is geared towards multiplayer but that said you absolutely can take this and apply it to single player it's just that generally in multiplayer a big part of the game is that you have to do auto battles against the AI manual battles are generally reserved for PVP and that means that of course the things that you have to evaluate and the way you have to evaluate things is is pretty different you can't rely on just chees the uh the AI in a manual battle and getting any build to work the way that you can in in some single player scenarios some of these traits obviously are like role player centered but I think that broadly speaking the change that they made in the Empire and Ashes Golem update is huge and very healthy and very well done so for those of you who don't know prior to the uh the Golem patch SL Empire and Ashes DLC we used to have the mind and body traits I did do a video on that a little while back uh but some of those traits were a lot better than the other ones and ultimately there were really only a couple that you could justify bringing in a multiplayer scenario that is not the case anymore now that we have this five trait point system and a lot of these traits that were a little weaker have been reduced down to only one and some of these very strong ones are up to three there's a lot of really interesting uh Deltas when it comes to the different traits that you can bring in in Age of Wonders 4 now that said I think we should have a brief conversation about our grading system as well as of course like what these traits actually do because they're not going to be useful in absolutely every single scenario and so contextualizing that before we jump in I think is going to be useful so where do these traits actually apply these traits are actually only going to apply to units and heroes of your race generally speaking you're always going to have some evolutionary units in multiplayer very early on so these traits are not going to apply to those evolutionary summons are a very different kind of Beast than your own racial unit and you're also probably going to go ahead and find a free City to hire a hero off of a very very common pattern in multiplayer these days is to just delay your earliest hero until you find a free City because if you find a free City with zero opinion of you then you can hire a level three hero a level three hero is obviously a lot more combat efficient than a level one hero so you won't have to deal with any sort of losses there hopefully uh you know no guarantees when it comes to Auto battles and and multiplayer and the like but But ultimately you should be aware that these traits are going to be really influential on your early game creep because these are going to be applying to the the troops that you have at the beginning of the game and then they're going to become slightly less and less important throughout but they'll always be there as long as you're using some racial units like Eagle Riders or War breeds and the like and so the way that you want to evaluate them is one what does it give me up front two how does it scale throughout the game and that's going to be impacted here on our tier list I think that the S and the a tier are going to be those that really you can't go wrong with we'll talk about good use cases for everything even the ones that I feel like uh probably a little bit underperform but the S and the a tiers are going to be those that really if you're not sure where to start start there the B and the C tiers are going to be those that are still useful But ultimately have very particular Niche cases or ultimately are just like kind of carbon copies or the SN tiers but weaker maybe they have a serious problem where there's just like a broken mechanic and hopefully something gets fixed by by Triumph in the future and then the D tiers are going to be those that I personally have either experienced and played around with and know are not good or just haven't seen anyone actually use them usefully in a multiplayer scenario that doesn't mean that you can't take them in single player like you know obviously the game is about having fun but if you're trying to rumble in multiplayer you should be aware that if you're taking a d tier either you're a genius like morgi or amakara and know exactly how to get good value out of these things or you're uh trying not to play super hard which is you know that's also fine too now that said instead of just going through you know and and looking at all of the onepoint things and then you know talk about all of the adaptations all at once I think it's going to be more fun for us to just follow this little list down here for our our tier list I'll put a link for this in the description and uh we'll evaluate things alphabetically and that said we get to start with our big uh big loser in our our new update adaptable how the mighty have fallen so once upon a time adaptable was like one of the best traits in the game it used to be plus 30% experience on all of your racial units including your Heroes this is huge when it comes to multiplayer because if you can get to level four or eight earlier with your Heroes and get some uh good signature skills on them then it makes it a lot easier for you to just you know click on a a bronze ancient wonder and click Auto Battle or a silver and Auto Battle it and and not worry about losing things cuz signature skills really do make a big difference even in Auto Battle but this isn't applying to your hero anymore um it is only one point which is nice for adaptable but getting extra experience on your non-hero units isn't nearly as useful as you'd expect the early game units that you have access to your tier ones and tier twos only get a couple of extra hit points when they level up now of course this is going to be applying to all of your racial units including you know your War breeds and your Eagle Riders and the like but ultimately you probably have other ways to scale those units that are better if you're going to be using those things getting racial Transformations is actually very very strong and 20% experience points really just doesn't do as much as you'd hope I think unfortunately adaptable even with the nice little use case of of feudal being able to Evo evolve their uh their Pikeman into Defenders faster just isn't very good and part of that of course is a reflection on feudal itself But ultimately I think that this trait is not that great I think you can do a lot better than adaptable and I think that if somebody wants to beat me with this and move this up to a c tier then I'd be happy to but I think the way that it's stands now is you probably can just skip adaptable and and find better one point traits here cuz there there are some really banging onep pointers all right so up next we have Arcane Focus this appears to be a fairly innocuous trait something where you're like all right if I'm using Battle Mages as it says here uh you'll just get extra damage and it only costs you two trait points so this might lead you into thinking that if you're playing as Mystics or whatever that you should be taking Arcane Focus every time but that's not really true and it does misunderstand the way Battle Mages work now obviously battle Mes in particular with Mystics because of the existence of arcanists they do get a little more out of this pick but most Battle Mages are not actually going to be the main source of damage for your army but rather a supporting unit that assists offensively now some of the other support units also do the same thing where they're going to be giving you strengthened or the like but these guys are going to be rather than buffing your own units they're going to be debuffing enemy units and that's a really big part of of what the value of a battle mage is some of them like uh the spell break ERS are enormously enormously powerful not because of the magic damage that they do but because of their ability to remove Buffs from enemies others like the uh the awakeners and their ability to add distracted once they've been awakened or even earlier on in the game if you're playing on a team format and you want to take white witches and the like for all of these you're not really using the Battle Mages to kill enemy units you're using the Battle Mages as crowd control or as a way to increase the DPS for your other units so that means that like arcane focus is kind of a nonbo or at least not necessary in order to get maximum value out of your battle mes you don't want to be overloading on Battle Mages and just show up with no front line cuz then you you will absolutely die as as melee units just Slaughter you wholesale and so you have to use these very particularly now fortunately it's not just Battle Mages obviously with the introduction of the item Forge you can create insanely powerful magical attack items for Your Heroes and that makes that ultimately you can have a a wizard hero a little better now than you could earlier but that's of course stressed against the fact that now we also have access to the uh the pistol and sword which is ridiculously good and probably needs to be nerfed in the future but there's another good use case for this you know Arcane focus is magical attacks and this does apply to Your Dragon Ruler so if you really want to go into it you can make your dragon ruler's breath weapon insanely powerful using Arcane Focus I think that's probably the best use case of Arcane focus in my opinion but I think that because it doesn't really work on the thing that you're intended to be using it on or at least it's not necessary for the thing that that you should be using it on Battle Mages and the fact that even if you are trying to make like the beefiest dragon in the universe this doesn't really increase their survivability just their offensive output and ultimately when it comes to age of Wonders 4 uh and the way that the morale system works you do want some offensive output but you really don't want to be losing units I think that Arcane Focus isn't great there are some use cases I think it's generally better than adaptable because it does have that nice Synergy if you're just trying to play on a very very small map and kill people with Mystics and to of The Horde on like turn 15 or whatever that you can use it but I I think that Arcane Focus does not deserve higher than a c tier unfortunately all right so up next we have our first adaptation trait Arctic adaptation now Arctic adaptation I'm I'm happy is the uh the first one here because I think that nowadays it's actually probably one of the strongest adaptation traits but the adaptation traits all do something unique they all change the starting Terrain around your Capital as it says here starts in the Arctic so this means something very particular it means that a you're going to be starting with snow or ice near you so if you take the at of cryomancy your SPI will be guaranteed to get you a lot more Mana than otherwise it also gives you access to the freeze the land spell now all of these terraforming spells are ridiculously expensive you're basically never going to cast them in a multiplayer scenario I'm not sure why they cost so much but they cost 60 mana and 60 casting points when it comes to early game and Age of Wonders 4 You are not wasting 60 Mana in order to you know get three extra Mana per turn that means you need 20 turns with an SPI in place in order to just make back the Mana cost and that's overlooking of course the fact that 60 casting points in the early game is an extra evolutionary summon that you could have access to you're mostly not going to be casting these terraforming spells even if they were like 20 mana and 45 casting points I still wouldn't be casting them that often in multiplayer and the way they are now you're basically ignoring them every single time now that said do still have some good use cases because of the SPI overlap and because of your ability to control what spawns near you that's actually I think the biggest thing that you get out of all of these traits but you also get a nice little niche bonus um if you look in the Age of Wonders 4 database and you look in our nature TOS you actually see on the to of beasts itself summon wild animal so summon wild animal is not actually an entirely random pick it gives you access to a very particular group of things depending on what environment you're casting it on and in this case I think if you want to get the most out of someon wild animal you actually might want to consider taking Arctic adaptation because you get a 133% chance on an Ice Spider ice spiders of course are tier 2 evolutionary units that evolve into tier fours that is really really strong as well as access to polar bears which are really nice tier 2 units I think these guys generally perform better than the uh the Razer backs that you get on Just default and overall getting access to gorus piglets is also really nice gusk matriarchs in the event that they evolve are really terrifying their ability to eat corpses mean they they're a lot more durable than you'd think otherwise so ultimately Arctic adaptation I think is like the most usable out of all the adaptation traits but because freeze the land is just like unnecessarily expensive the ability to build farms is mostly skippable in the early game you really want to focus on gettings down in your cities as quickly as possible and then maybe you start picking up farms and by then hopefully your city is big enough that it can reach out of snow and then like who cares if there's Farms or not these are are very Niche mostly role playing but they do they do have some use cases just be aware that the biggest use case I think for Arctic adaptation is the control of what you're fighting against if you take home of pyromancy and Arctic adaptation then you'll actually be very impressed at how easily your uh Your Heroes with just the fire skill just mulch through the uh the creeps and and clear the board very very quickly and I think that means that the Arctic adaptation is probably a c maybe a little bit higher than Arcane just because this does give you an economic bonus indirectly through your ability to either get extra Mana from an SPI if you take cryomancy or just kill stuff if you take pyromancy all right so up next we have Athletics our first three-point trait and boy howdy this is an important one so when it comes to age of Wonders 4 in the early game you're not just taking your entire stack and sending it into a fight hopefully in in multiplayer the ideal way is to break off you know one of the sacrificial units that you don't really care about a dawn Defender a warrior a sender or whatever and send it into a resource node on its own then you also have within the reinforcement range you have your Heroes and your evolutionary summons that way you preserve the movement points on the important units if your unit that you send off into you know Leroy Jenkins things dies that's okay but in the meantime your other units who've preserved their movement points might be able to move into another fight if they took damage they might be able to move back into friendly territory to heal and that means that anything that gives you extra movement points gives you indirectly extra economy it gives you extra experience points for the important units and extra military strength that way and it's just great across the board not to mention of course like extra movement points on Mystic projections is really critical for Mystic in terms of their ability to keep exploring the the map just because of the way the uh the Mystic pickup thing works you really do want to consider Athletics with I think basically everything because it it doesn't just stop in terms of value early game and in comparison to the mounts but it actually continues into the mid and late game cuz one of the things that's going to become more and more apparent the more multiplayer you play is that there are a lot of things that do extra damage to large targets and all of the mounted things make all of your optional Cavalry into large targets they give them a little bit of extra hit points to to compensate but five extra hit points when your opponent is doing you know 40% extra damage or 70% extra damage is not enough to compensate and Athletics just undercuts that problem entirely by keeping your Heroes or your critically important uh early game or even mid game units as small Targets this is a really great really really great PR pick the only downside of course is that it doesn't really give you anything on the units that are naturally mounted the same way that these guys do but across the board I think if you're not sure what you should be doing to get extra movement points on your units and not sure how to build things take Athletics it also performs really really well with stuff like War breeds or if you want your hero to have access to a a pole arm then you kind of have to take Athletics you can get around it in combat through access to a haste spell but the eight extra movement points on the world map is enormous when it comes to repositioning prior to access to teleporters it really is a just a gigantic deal and I think for that reason I think Athletics probably does need to get an S tier I there are obviously some mounts that are going to be able to compete with us so he might end up as like a low s TI but wholly mackerel movement points are good three cost on traits doesn't make this any worse all right so up next we have bulwark bullwark says defense mode grants plus two defense and plus two resistance that is of course on top of the natural plus two defense and plus two resistance you get from being in defense mode itself now these numbers should sound pretty familiar if you've looked at resistant as well as tough then you see that each of those traits will in turn give you plus two resistance or plus two uh defense naturally but this puts both of them together with the caveat that you have to be in defense mode in order to get those bonuses that that means that in order to get good value out of bullwark you need to either be uninteresting in combat and just like defending a lot and ultimately just getting overrun by your opponents or finding ways to enter into defense mode proactively fortunately for bullwark there are some really good ways to enter into defense mode proactively available from the very beginning of the game and even scaling into the mid game it used to be in the late game that you could just rely on bastions and defensive Mastery and bull workk to just like carry the day and have immortal bastions when it came to late game fights that's no longer the case and I think is generally healthy but there are some really really strong ways to enter into defense mode available no matter what if you're playing as industrious the taunt on your Anvil guard puts you into defense mode if you're playing as uh Barbarian the stun from your Shield bash also puts you into defense mode but available to everyone through two different tier 2 toes you have some really nice ways to get into defense mode just on the board if you have Glades and aspect of the roof then your all of your pole arms as well as Shields can actually heal themselves and then enter into defense mode which of course is proactively changing the nature of the board but one of the biggest changes that makes buw work actually very good here is the to of the construct whether or not you can actually take to of the construct does kind of depend on your build but to of the construct in particular gives you access to cascading command defend largely I'm not a big fan of things that require you to Clump your units together I think overall if you're clumping your units too much your opponents are going to get AOE ways to exploit that but cascading command defend and reposition are both very very powerful spells when it comes to the game and this one allows all of your linked mind units and constructs to enter into defense mode even if they've already acted so this is I think like the best use case for bullwark is to to take this toome right here but if you're able to actually affect the board State while also entering into defense mode this is a fantastic skill and I think one of the things that people are still kind of sleeping on when it comes to age of Wonders 4 this this is I think an e TI maybe it's a low E TI we'll see how we we end up slotting things out but overall you cannot go wrong taking uh bullwark all right so up next we have coldblooded this is another one of those traits that has very little text but quite a lot of subtext so for one point you get morale loss being reduced by 50% it says that units are less likely to route but that's not really the the be all end all when it comes to morale now be aware if you've watched some of my streams with you know wilay in our group that rout does come up but that's not the the only point of morale routing is at 60 morale but very low and low morale both inflict a fumble chance on your units and for that matter High morale allows you to inflict extra crits which in turn also inflict morale damage because of the way critical actually works and so what this means is that this trait can be very very strong under very very particular circumstances it's not good when you're just clearing you know resource nodes if you have four units two of them are heroes or whatever and the AI has just like four random dudes standing around guarding a gold mine morale is not going to matter in that fight and in fact as you scale up towards the end game morale is going to matter less and less because you're going to start hitting things that have fearless or things that have morale bonuses for all of your units uh scalds are really good but anything that prevents your units from routing is going to be incredibly powerful so this means that cold blooded has a very very narrow band of the game where it's actually pretty nice it's very very very good in like a big team fight on like turn 20 with a bunch of tier one and tier 2 units cuz there you're getting an enormous bonus before people are actually able to do morale manipulation the only downside of course is that because it's not useful at the very beginning of the game not very useful at the very end of the game this is a a very crowded play space for cold blooded but if you're playing on the Skirmish mod by badok which I I'm not sure if he's still updating it right now cuz he's a little burned out on on Age of Wonders 4 but hopefully he gets back to it but there on the the Skirmish mod especially if you're playing like 18 versus 18 with low tier units you should seriously consider cold blooded that said I think that cold blooded is probably just a c um it does have some some nice use cases when it comes to different forms of PVP but be aware that this thing can be a lot stronger depending on your map all right so up next we have defensive tactics how do we rate defensive tactics well this gives you plus one defense plus one resistance and plus 10% evasion when standing next to a friendly unit with defensive tactics it does not stack so what this really means is that this isn't a an ability that requires you to death ball your units in fact you definitely shouldn't be deathballing your units even if you have those sorts of abilities but rather this one allows you to move your units in pairs and those pairs will cover each other pretty effectively plus one defense plus one resistance and plus 10% evasion might not sound as impressive as like plus two defense and plus two resistance on bullwark but while this one has very particular builds that do exploit it really really well and and do utilize it really well this one opens up the battlefield for you a lot you don't have to do much in order to get great value out of the defensive tactics the biggest problem that I can lever against it is that a evasion isn't as useful as you'd think most people are still not using a bunch of ranged units in multiplayer especially because they just do not perform well in in Auto resolves that's a problem that I I hope that Triumph uh revisits in the future but largely defensive tactics also doesn't give you status resistance and we mentioned when talking about Arcane uh I think that a lot of Battle Mages really aren't being used for their damage output but rather for their CC and their debuffs and so the fact that defensive tactics doesn't give you a status resistance bonus is actually like a lot worse than this this evasion bonus I think the defensive tactics does have some really nice uses especially in a smaller map where you can you can do some real fighting very early on in the game because 10% evasion matters more if you're just fighting against people with their basic Army than if they've been able to build up to war breeds but like defensive tactics this this does do what it says on the box as long as you just keep your units in pairs then this can be a meaningful upgrade over something like tough or resistant and I think for that matter I think we probably can go ahead and give this like a low be tier we'll we'll fill things in as we go but just just don't don't death ball them and this will perform pretty well all right so up next we have desert adaptation the weird younger brother of Arctic adaptation so desert adaptation what do we get we get a desert around our capital unfortunately for Desert adaptation there is a little less predictability whenever it comes to the units that you're going to be fighting instead of Arctic adaptation and unlike Arctic adaptation where we did highlight the good value that you could get out of your uh to of beasts and summoning wild animals the pool of things that you summon from if you start with desert adaptation is really bad I just not not a big fan of Inferno puppies or Inferno hounds I think largely tier one and tier 2 units aren't great and the fact that these guys evolve into tier twos rather thaner tier 3es or tier fours is a really big ding against the uh trying to use to of beasts with that that adaptation so what can you use desert adaptation for well it does give you ways to exploit Frost weaknesses so if you take the frost staff on your your ruler at the beginning of the game and the ability to use that uh freeze spell then that can be pretty good and of course if you take cryomancy it your SPI won't be generating extra Mana for you but that's okay it doesn't have to generate extra Mana to be good value a resarch post is a research post as a research post but desert adaptation does give you something interesting in the the mid game so we did highlight that you know this uh to of beasts is just not very friendly towards uh deserts but on the other hand the Tome of vigor is incredibly friendly towards deserts so you can see here uh cold you can summon an Ice Spider make triarch a tier four that can be pretty good and white wolves and Thunderbirds this is all like a pretty nice selection of things but if you start with desert adap ation and you don't die then you get up to 50% chance to summon a phoenix on your your summon greater animal summoning phoenixes is I think the best use case for Desert adaptation summoning a 50% chance on a phoenix is really really disgusting so if you end up with like three or four of them very quickly you can overwhelm your opponent because Phoenix's just they play really really well until your opponent gets way to eat corpses but that's a way down the line and unfortunately because it's such a slow start I think desert adaptation just isn't very good if you can get to the mid to late game and and then you know get into Tom of vigor then it can be very powerful but that you can just move towards deserts if that's what you want to do the map is Big conquer towards a desert that's generally better than starting with desert adaptation unfortunately so we do have to give them a d all right so up next we have our first of our mounts dire bear mounts now dire bar mounts are restricted to Empire and Ashes only if you don't have the DLC you won't see this here but if you don't have the DLC you're not missing out like there are other mounts available to you I'm not going to talk too much about the movement bonuses because that is something that we talked about a lot when we talked about Athletics but rather I'm going to focus on each of the mounts and like what they make available to you in turn and the best use cases for them so dire barar mounts give you 10 hit points whereas the other ones only give you five hit points I think are one of those things that you on the surface you might think you want more of them on your glass cannons and there's an aspect to that that is true but ultimately if you have like a high damage low hit Point Unit you do want to just keep those out of combat or you know out of Frontline combat as much as possible that's the best way to have more hit points is just don't get hit um but that's not always an option if you have like Melee stuff and that's what dire be mounts I think really really perform well with in particular I think dire be mounts perform really really well with power attackers because of this unit deals 40% damage against units in defense mode so heavy charge strike on things like Tyrant Knights and Dark Knights and uh regular Knights they naturally want to be attacking into units that are in defense mode because they break the defense mode and allow other people to follow up with attacks and in this case because defense mode naturally gives a pretty meaningful bonus to defense especially if they happen to have bullwark you're going to be doing less damage on that first hit and overwhelm really gets around that in fact it makes it so that against most things you'll actually be doing more damage by attacking someone who has defense mode than someone who doesn't that's kind of weird and it does mean that like you do need to be careful about how you manipulate your combat but I think overall dire bear mounts are fantastic on Knights in particular and they're pretty good on other things like you know you're going to get a little bit of extra damage in the early game by having dire bare mounted Dawn Defenders cuz the AI just likes to be in defense mode and if you have more movement speed you'll be able to get that first hit for a little bit of extra damage but the big bonus the really big bonus for dire bear mounts is the the night combo and of course you do have a ruler starts with dire bear mounts so if you have a dire bear and you have an AOE magical attack and you have Arcane Focus going on or something like that you can do some proactive damaging on on defensive mode at a big big range but I don't want you to be like attacking into defense mode with your Glade Runners on a dire barar Mount that's like generally not great and not the best application of of a mount in general I think that these guys do Focus in on on heavy charge strikes if you're going to have units with heavy charge strikes you probably want dire bear mounts that's probably like an a tier you know they they perform really well in in a particular build and they don't perform badly in other ones you're going to get extra hit points no matter what you do but the best way to get value out of this is to use overwhelm and that means that you you kind of want ways to get your units into melee and doing lots of extra damage and one big hit and that says heavy charge strike to me all right so up next we have dread spider mounts now dread spider mounts unlike some of the other mounts here we don't get a passive ability and unfortunately unlike unicorns who still have a very powerful option here in Phase The Dread spider Mount web ability has just gotten nerfed over and over and over again so now we need to evaluate dread spider mounts as they stand and they don't stand very well so web it used to be bugged it used to do double damage and I'm glad it doesn't do that anymore uh but now it's a twox cone right in front of you as as a basically a melee attack that wouldn't necessarily be a problem except for the way that it checks for accuracy the way it checks for accuracy is it checks against the first Target and if it misses the first Target it won't even check for accuracy on any of the other ones I think that's a bug and I think that it's something that probably needs to be fixed by Triumph because it makes dread spiders like really anemic uh even in early game fights we had a a little game with wi slaya and zombie where I had a spider and I attacked with a web into a lesser storm spirit with only a 40% chance because of the wind barrier but that was like the only thing I could ATT attack against and then it missed everything else and then prompted a retaliation attack from the the Lesser storm Spirit anyway it's just not where you want to be when it comes to your Mount traits and unfortunately because of the fact that this is a physical damage thing it's not going to scale particularly well into the mid to late game generally people are going to have more hit points to the point where you probably aren't even going to be clicking web even if you have access to it most of the time un like turn 40 so the use cases for this are pretty narrow it's really good in the very beginning of the game still it does do a pretty good job of making your Dawn Defenders a lot more dangerous in autor resolves for instance but immobilized is just not as good as you'd hope it doesn't prevent people from doing retaliation attacks it doesn't prevent them from being able to shoot you or use different different non-movement abilities to to keep in the fight and the best use case you might think is like all right if I've played reavers subdude does work with immobilized so like maybe you want to take dread spiders on your reavers the issue therein is that that subdued is actually like actively not good for reavers you when you subdue a unit you don't get the experience points for killing them which means that if you are subduing things you're really undercutting the growth of your Heroes uh so I think dread spider mounts you can still bring them if you want um and I do think that this this option here would be better if it were able to check for accuracy against all of the units but the way that it works now I think I I can only recommend this based off of the movement points alone now the movement point alone I think are not bad but I think that this is actually meaningfully worse than defensive tactics and probably meaningfully worse than a lot of the other things we'll see in the B tier all right so up next we have elusive now what do we get out of this it's a onepoint trait so that means it's really inexpensive it's easy to jam on basically any build but unfortunately it's also not very good uh it gets you plus4 defense and resistance against retaliation attacks and opportunity attacks that's not the worst thing in the world like that's a lot of extra defense and resistance But ultimately when it comes to like fighting against an another human especially after like turn 30 or whatever you should have enough things that do heavy charge strikes or charge strikes that like you're not going to have a lot of retaliation attacks being thrown around anyway and then your opportunity attacks like mostly are not going to be taking those anyway either because you'll have Sprint on your heroes or you'll have the ability to like phase your your Battle Mages out if you took the to of teleportation or you just kill things that are threatening to cause opportunity attacks right you you should have enough melee things to support your ranged units if you're Desiring to bring them that you can avoid opportunity attacks entirely so what is the real use case for elusive well in the beginning of the game when you're autor resolving against the AI it does actually do a pretty good job of keeping units alive mostly just because the the AI just like runs units into each other and then they smash smash smash and then somebody dies and hey if you're taking a lot less damage when you hit them than they are when they hit you that can do a lot when it comes to to keeping your units floating but I think that overall the package that you get out of elusive is is like only that good uh in like the first 10 or 15 turns when you're autor resolving and then mostly just doesn't do anything when you're in in like the big important manual battles against the other people and I think that you'll see that this also applies to single player as well like most of the time if you're manual battling in single player you you just shouldn't be taking retaliation attacks or opportunity attacks so uh elusive unfortunately despite being really an expensive I think as a d tier trait probably better than adaptable but because it does not offer you like Phoenix's I think we're going to put it less than a desert adaptation here all right so up next we have fast recuperation probably one of the weakest traits in the game right now fast recuperation cost two points which is just like a ridiculous amount for an ability that does literally nothing in combat right regenerating an additional 10 hit points per world map turn does not impact a combat at all it impacts your strategic layer in that it allows Your Heroes to heal a little bit faster and your racial units to heal a little bit faster but ultimately you should be accomplishing that not through fast recuperation but just through utilizing outposts any friendly terrain that you can put down not only is going to make it so your units can move faster internally but they'll also heal just way way faster inside a friendly terrain to the point where fast recuperation kind of is unnecessary I think if this thing gave you like some sort of natural healing in combat maybe a small one or an activated ability or something like that it could be neat but the way that it stands now for two trait points you get uh sort of a a friendly terrain following you everywhere is just not very useful and not very impactful so unfortunately where it stands now fast recuperation this is an easy D tier I think this might even be worse than adaptable honestly cuz at least this thing scales pretty well into the mid to late game and and keeps your you know War breeds growing their experience points pretty quickly whereas this uh just doesn't do anything all right so up next we have ferocious now ferocious is sort of like the weird older brother of elusive here it's going to deal 40% extra damage via retaliation attacks and opportunity attacks as opposed to having extra defense against those things uh but unfortunately it cost two trait points and we didn't even like elusive that much elusive is also like kind of an offensive ability in the sense that you know extra defense and resistance against retaliation means that you want to be proactively attacking people whereas like ferocious is sort of a defensive measure instead it's something that gives you extra damage if people are attacking you and so you might be inclined to want to bring ferocious with something with a taunt effect right if you have like an anel guard and you have ferocious and you use a taunt on something then you will actually do a little bit of extra damage in the early game and there are a lot of industrious ways to get extra uh retaliation attacks more watchful But ultimately the damage output of a lot of those units because they are multi-hits are actually going to be pretty low and so if you want to do more damage via retaliation attacks like just enchant them or you know take strong or whatever and so what this really does more damage with is if you have a a single hit like a a power attack or heavy charge strikes that said you're not going to be doing doing a lot of retaliation attacks with those units anyway cuz they are a little glassier so they're not going to have as many opportunities to like hit back before one unit or the other is dead uh and because this thing costs two trait points I really just can't justify bringing this almost any time like there are some really interesting things you can do with the item Forge cuz now you can give taunt to Your Heroes and that can be cute that can definitely be a way to to get good value there especially if you take the the watchful trait on your ruler but just overall if you're taking a trait for like a couple of Heroes and absolutely none of the rest of your army for two points you're you're probably not going to do very well so unfortunately ferocious it's in the same boat as all these other ones just like not a good not a good trait all right so up next we have one of the most cost effective traits in the game Hardy so if you haven't played with Hardy it's one trait point for eight extra hit points now that eight extra hit points is a flat amount therefore it's not going to be like a percentage based scaling thing it's not going to play as well into the medium late game but it is very very impactful in the early game and it still is one of those things that the more defense and resistance you have the more hit points you kind of want because of effective hit point multiplication eight extra hit points for one trait Point Compares very favorably to the mounted traits right these are five extra hit points for three or 10 extra hit points for three if you take dire bear uh but even in comparison to stuff like tough and resistant at the very very beginning of the game Hardy scales very well against that and it's because of a couple of different things so first damage over time has been changed now damage over time checks for specific resistances to stuff so here we can see on poisonous uh that there's a poisoned ability this is going to deal blight damage that blight damage actually ignores natural resistance on units it would actually only check against blight resistance on units that means that having a larger hit point pool makes you more resilient against damage over time effects but it also just makes you more resilient across the board on a percentage basis it's actually like more efficient to have a Hardy than to have either tough or resistant in a vacuum when your hit points are very very low but even if your hit points are like 55 here we can compare this right if we had 55 hit points and instead we had 63 because we took Hardy that those thunderers would have functionally 14.5% more hit points if instead we took something like tough or resistant how many extra hit points would we actually have so we naturally have a 10% physical resistance or a 10% magical resistance each of those will give us two extra on those damage channels right so defense at three instead resists 27% of incoming physical damage or 27% of incoming magical damage that means that you're really only getting 177% extra resistance by taking tough as opposed to the like 145% resistance you're getting by taking Hardy uh and of course Hardy as we mentioned applies to everything as opposed to those specific damage Channel picks so while it might not be as effective if you know exactly who you're fighting against like if you know you're fighting against uh a Mystic for instance then resistance will do more but like here in a vacuum if you're not sure what you're playing against or if you're just interested in clearing you know your creeps as quickly and efficiently as possible Hardy is fantastic I think that this is just a really really great ability if you haven't played around with it I strongly recommend it it does drop off a little bit into the mid to late game but be aware that natural regeneration checks off of your actual maximum hit point total so hardy on your War breeds for instance or if you manage to find a ring of regeneration anything like that it's going to work really well and of course just if you have 120 hit points instead of 112 and you have like 10 defense and resistance those extra eight hit points are going to go a long way because you do start hitting diminishing returns as your defense gets higher and higher it's a little harder to show that in the database But ultimately you start hitting some like soft caps when it comes to defense and resistance and then the the hard cap at 20 and then you just like as many have points as possible will really help you out but yeah Hardy this is an easy s tier if you if you haven't used it you should all right up next we have hideous stench which is my uh nickname in high school so hideous stench what do we get adjacent enemies without this trait suffer minus two resistance and minus two status resistance I'm a really big fan of anything you can do to manipulate status resistance in Age of Wonders 4 just because of how incredibly powerful some of the statuses are in the game there are things like Frozen and stunned that effectively like pseudo kill enemy units and that's a really really big deal so anything you can do to make your enemy units uh more weak to that is actually a a very nice pickup here and of course minus two resistance if you recall what we just talked about when it came to Hardy and like effective hit points on on units if you did this on an enemy Barbarian for instance it would be plus 17% extra damage effectively which means that this kind of does more damage against enemy units than stuff like Arcane Focus but unfortunately for hideous stench a it cost three trade points that is an enormous investment I think this would be a lot more fair if it were only two but meaningfully this also requires you to be adjacent to the enemy so it doesn't really do anything in the very beginning of a battle when your units are on one side of the board and the enemies are on the other in order to get maximum value out of hideous stench you need to have a primarily melee focused build or at least something that can put a lot of melee onto the board adjacent to the enemies and then something that can help exploit the magical damage extra that you're you're doing here with your resistance now that does mean that this extra magical damage might come from something like Primal strike on a barbarian eight8 extra blight damage that you get extra damage from because you have this minus two resistance can be really really impactful but you also kind of want to have like Melee stuff that also does magical damage so like a dragon with the the cone breath attack for instance can actually use hideous stench pretty well but this is very very narrow when it comes to the actual impact of the game right you you need to have a lot of very very specialized units in order to to use this well and I do not think think that it because of that narrowness justifies the three trait points I think this is cute and I think that it's not like a truly unplayable thing unlike some of the other traits that we've looked at but I think in order for this thing to be any higher than a c tier I think it probably needs to be only two trait points but overall like it's it's not strictly unplayable all right so up next we have keen-sighted now this is a really interesting one simply because of the way autoresolve works in multiplayer you're going to do a lot of Auto resolve against the AI it's very very standard I think that even in single players that one of the most fun ways I have to play the game is to do autoresolve only challenges cu the the manual battle AI remains pretty easily exploited and it's because of some of the behaviors that it ex exemplifies here so if you ever used a ranged unit in an autoresolve situation and gotten weird results and then gone back and watched it you'll know what I'm talking about the AI likes to take ranged units and like move them in toward WS melee units to take shots against them the reasoning behind that is that the further away the range unit is is from the melee unit it'll have lower accuracy so the the logic of the AI will say hey we're going to do more damage if we get closer without thinking that oh if we're a range unit and we get super close to a melee unit we're uh going to get thrashed pretty easily and that's something that like I think the AI probably should just be improved on when it comes to behaviors here in Age of Wonders 4 but a way that you can get around this is to increase the accuracy on your ranged units the higher the accuracy is on the ranged unit the more the the AI logic will say hey I don't need to get you know three tiles away from that that unit to shoot at it I can stay at five or six cuz I'm still going to have a pretty good chance at hitting it so if you're trying to use ranged units especially in autoresolve you should seriously consider keen-sighted the problem therein is that this is taking a bad unit type in an autor resolve situation and making it sort of like medium the best way to get around accuracy is to just have a spring fairy with true strike that's that's the best way to use ranged units it's just that that only lasts for one turn and you're not always always guaranteed to get a fairy so you know keen-sighted might be necessary but the thing is is that like phasing despite being nerfed isn't like unplayable anymore and that means that you're still having issues where range units are fragile easily overwhelmed once melee units get there and because Mobility is still so high in Age of Wonders for in combat you really can't overp specialize in ranged units or you're going to die so keen-sighted it's it's not that it's bad it's just that it mostly applies to bad unit types and makes them like mediocre uh whereas there are some things that you can do like taking strong that makes good unit types even better or like tough or resistant or Hardy that makes all of your unit types better and that means that like this is still existing in a a world where it's not ideal it does have some nice use cases especially when it comes to your magical attacks like uh the tier five Tome astral it allows you to get a much higher crit chance but crit Chan is still being restricted by accuracy so if you want to pair that with the Tome of the golden realm and get all of your crits guilding then you might want to seriously consider keen-sighted there just so that way you can ensure crits to to keep guilding people but I think overall keen-sighted it's pretty narrow in terms of its application probably a c tier like you can get good value out of it it's probably better than Arctic to be honest but like overall if you want to use a lot of ranged units then probably play a different game even if you're playing with reavers and marked and increasing accuracy that way the autor resolve AI still doesn't really understand how to use marked and will like shoot at stuff and then Mark them for whatever reason uh and so like this is this is useful under certain circumstances and uh pretty bad outside of those very very particular use cases all right so up next we have lightf footed this is one of these traits that was introduced alongside the Golem patch but it's not you do not need the uh Empire and Ash's DLC in order to play around with it but it's a very very strong trait because of the way it modifies your movement so it allows friendly units to move through each other so here if we have like this this halfling he's the the center the center hex and we have a unit down here who wants to get to up here naturally what it would need to do is move all the way around it would need to move three tiles in order to get to this other side but with lightf footed you can just move straight through your own unit in order to get there that shaves off an entire hex and that's only if you have two units on the board right if you have like 18 units on the board lightf footed dramatically changes the way your units can position and that's assuming that you don't have like even other things that are going to modify your movement speed if you've modified your move M Speed because you have mounts or Athletics or if you just have like haste through your scalds or Through Your Dragon Ruler this thing becomes even better does not require like flying in order to get good value and therefore if you're taking lightf footed you probably don't want to be an angelize or demon kin is a major race transformation that's not necessarily a bad thing like you don't have to go in those directions it's just that those do give you a lot of extra flexibility when it comes to moving around the board I think the biggest thing I can lever against lightf footed is that a the autoresolve AI doesn't really get good value out of it so it's mostly useful in the manual battles against the other players but it is really good there I think the the really biggest ding is that if you play around with lightf footed a lot in terms of practice and then you bring a faction that doesn't have lightf footed uh you'll probably train your brain to misidentify opportunities for movement um that's mostly a skill issue that I I experience myself if if you're really good at at playing this game and you know avoiding falling into your own traps then lightf footed is probably a little better but it doesn't really modify your defensive nature which is a little issue cuz ultimately when it comes to age of Wonders 4 you want to keep your units alive as long as possible so that way your morale doesn't collapse and this doesn't do a lot there but hey you know if you can withdraw a unit straight through your own lines back to the the Back Field to heal up and become reserves lightf footed actually does a great job on that too I think that for two trade points this is a very good very good pick and I think that you should not over uh Overlook it when it comes to this game I think it's probably a little better than defensive tactics honestly in terms of keeping units alive and and of course it's very strong when it comes to exploiting offensive uh pressure as well just a a really solid trait all right so up next we have nightmare mounts what do we get out of nightmare mounts these are one of my favorite Mount types and it's for a couple of reasons so one we get the intimidating Aura ability this thing is going to trigger off of status resistance and doesn't affect tier five and hero units this means that the intimidating Aura value is going to gradually decrease as the game goes on but this is actually pretty imp act F at the very beginning of the game if you just have like Warriors or you know Dawn Defenders or whoever low tier units that have access to a intimidating Aura then you can actually do a lot to keep your entire Army Alive by keeping nightmare mounts on the field cuz if you can just get the you know the auto resolve to the point where the AI that you're fighting against is down into low a fumble chance of 20% means that while you're not necessarily going to Route enemies during a a resource fight you might keep all of your other units alive and that can be really critical especially if you have evolutionary summons and that's a big part of the game so like this is very strong at the beginning and then throughout the entire game you're also going to have access to vicious killer on any of your optional mounted uh units vicious killer is ridiculous this thing is like to the point where it's banned on heroes in some multiplayer communities um it's not quite as powerful as it was in previous patches cuz now it only affects enemy units up to three hex's away but this is very very strong cuz it gives you the opportunity to not only you know get people down into low but you can kill just a couple of units with vicious killer you can start routing big parts of your enemy's Army you just need to be careful about your own positioning for that matter of course if your opponent has nightmare mounts you need to be careful about your own positioning and you want to be very very careful about cycling your enemy units out or just like suiciding them onto uh something that doesn't have vicious killer so that way you don't suffer this massive penalty but this is this is a very very solid mount type the only downside of course is that it is a meta pick if you take nightmare mounts and you're opponent knows that you've taken nightmare mounts they just need to pick up a couple of things that that manipulate morale and then they're not as strong and generally you're going to see revry in a lot of builds because it is still very very powerful even in the the current build of the game mostly mostly because of scalds but it is very very powerful so that makes nightmare mounts like a little bit worse but I think overall nightmare mounts are highly competitive I would put them probably in the S tier behind Athletics simply because of the the athletic ability to get around the large Target exploitation problem but uh this is this is definitely one of the the best Mount traits in the game and and you really can't go wrong picking it up all right so now we have overwhelm tactics overwhelm tactics unfortunately is going to compare kind of dis favorably against defensive tactics you can of course stack these things together but then you start entering into the realm of how many times you autor resolving if you manual battle every single battle then like you can make basically anything work but when it comes to autoresolve the AI still doesn't really understand how to utilize these things particularly effectively you'll see a lot of units that would have bonuses if if they would just stand next to each other kind of like wander around the field aimlessly and then shoot at things and then die um and that that that problem kind of doesn't even get solved in a a PVP manual battle scenario because this thing doesn't really solve indirectly what the defensive tactics thing solves this makes it a little harder for people to exploit you moving around in pairs whereas this doesn't in any way shape or form now like sort of how strike is sometimes a block card in in slay the Spire um this critical hit chance increasing your damage does mean that you might be able to remove enemy models and therefore reduce the damage output of those enemy units cuz models do impact that uh and so it's not like it's entirely bad when it comes to the value that it produces for you and of course there are ways to modify crits like if you have more critical hit chance from uh High morale or if you have more damage from like to of rry or if you have more crits just from like to of Devastation or whatnot then overwhelm tactics does get a little bit better and of course crits are are pretty useful when it comes to manipulating morale it's just that like this costs two points and and requires you to have very particular control over combat and because of that in comparison to something like strong or just like the general defensive pattern of of tough a resistant or something like that I think that overwhelm tactics is a little underwhelming I think that this is probably a b tier uh I think it's definitely meaningfully worse than defensive tactics in terms of implication on the game and how it actually plays out but it's probably better than Keen so yeah bottom of B tier sounds good to me all right so up next we have poisonous this is a really interesting one because of the Imp ation on your early game it doesn't scale as well into the mid to late game but it does have some value even there but in the early game this thing can be really really strong depending on your start so you get plus two blight resistance melee attackers have a base 60% chance of becoming poisoned and immune to becoming poisoned yourself this package means that there are some maps where this can actually outperform some of the other things that would naturally dry your attention for damage like strong because of poisoning so if you inflict poison on enemy units that are attacking you like if you have Dawn Defenders or Anvil guards or or Warriors or whatnot that you can just like kind of put in front of the enemies to to soak up attacks they're not only dealing damage back with their retaliation they're also inflicting this stackable poisoned debuff on the enemy and this of course as we discussed in Hardy kind of gets around a lot of the natural resistance damage channels and does a lot of almost pure damage unfortunately dots does happen like after they act so it's not like they're going to be uh significantly reduced in their model count before they they do some damage to you but this can shave a turn or two off of combats and autor resolve and that can save you a unit in a very tight situation and of course the blight resistance can be useful depending on your map settings right if you are fighting against Wildlife that are doing blight damage or plants that have a blight uh weakness then poisoning can become a lot better or the blight resistance can become a lot better but it does sort of preclude the other adaptation traits you really don't want to be taking poisonous and Arctic adap ation cuz then you're just getting like absolutely no value out of this and you're probably not going to get as much value out of this this is also like awful in the underground because the undead are immune to poisoning and there are a lot of them down there but ultimately this is a trait that I think is mostly good you just need to be aware of the problems with it first we have a problem where if you're playing as a champion your free city is guaranteed to be your race type that means that they are also guaranteed to be poisonous which means that they are guaranteed to be immune to poison uh so you're kind of taking a trait that does literally nothing in your free City fight that that's not necessarily an issue it's just that a lot of these other things are things that you can play around and design a an army that works better for you than it does for the enemy and that's not the case when you're playing poisonous you just kind of have to accept that your free City fight is going to be a little bit harder because neither side has something useful and then critically it also does a really good job of fighting against Alchemy which is another the potential free City fight problem because if you have Tom of alchemy because it's good and you're fighting against a free city that is is your race type uh your to of alchemy is going to vastly underperform versus what it would normally do uh but of course because this is good against of alchemy there's there's some value there what this means in terms of like waffling and whatnot is that you should probably be very careful when it comes to your faction design if you're taking poisonous because you do not want to get zero value out of any parts of this in comparison to just something like resistant poisonous is probably worse unless you have a particular build the thing that it does give you poison countering regener ation is is cute but unless your opponent is doing a lot of poisoning that doesn't matter that much and there's just so much regeneration that you can generally overwhelm poisoning anyway so like it it starts off pretty good and then generally slows down and I think that that is descriptive of probably like a midb tier yeah somewhere around there makes sense all right so up next we have quick reflexes quick reflexes is just like the easiest way to flex on somebody cuz this is a a pick that does borderline nothing 25% harder to hit by by ranged attacks would be good if ranged attacks were good but they're mostly not and the best way to use them is true strike which would like ignore quick reflexes entirely so this thing what does it what does it do in the early game when you're autor resolving against enemies you kind of want to see ranged attacks on the other side just because you know how the AI Works in Auto resolves it'll just waste those ranged units for no for absolutely nothing uh so 25% harder doesn't really help you there and then in a manual battle against an enemy if your opponent is bringing a bunch of ranged attackers and doesn't know what's up uh you're probably going to crunk them and the best ranged attackers obviously the the battle mes they ignore evasion entirely because they're just using their magical attacks and then they just do damage and and crowd control to them so quick reflexes for two trait points unfortunately it's just like it's in the same bucket as a lot of these other two trait Point things in the event that the AI Logic for range units becomes better and and range just becomes better in in Age of Wonders for across the board we could see this thing moving up but I think with the way that the game works right now this is a d tier probably around here honestly like this is just it just doesn't do anything like your opponents don't need to offer you the way to exploit this uh trait and then you've taken a two-point trait that does virtually nothing in autor resolve and virtually nothing in in uh manual PVP all right so up next we have resilient and just as we mentioned with Hideous stench I think anything that modifies status resistance whether it's positive or negative should be something that you're paying attention to when it comes to PVP but just as with Hideous stench I don't think that resilient justifies its three-point cost here and we'll we'll explain why so what do we get we get plus two status resistance and negative status effects last minus one turn with a minimum of one so plus two status resistance is nice like ultimately it depends on how much status resistance you have base but like this is somewhere between 10 and 15% uh increased chance to resist whatever things are throwing at you assuming that whatever they're throwing at you even checks status resistance that's the first problem with resilient there are a lot of things that are in the game that do not even check status resistance and then immediately you get that that debuff applied to you and you're like all right well fine Walker we get minus one turn well the problem there is that a lot of the really strong things that are going to be ignoring status resistant checks entirely only have a one- turn window anyway like a lot of the CCS like Frozen and stunned they only last one turn which thank goodness they only last one turn cuz otherwise they'd be unbelievably broken um but you can't really have this being reduced to a minimum of zero cuz that would also be just like outrageously busted so like this this unfortunately it has some serious problems if you know your opponent is like locked into to of pandemonium for instance then resilient is kind of nice but the the issue there is that like your opponent is going to notice that hey you have resilient maybe I shouldn't take Tom of pandemonium there are ways for your opponent to adjust their build in game whereas there's no way to adjust your traits in game to pick up resilient in the event that you notice that your opponent is trying to go all in on statuses so this is like a very risky metapic that sort of doesn't have a really high upside unless your opponent isn't paying attention and that that combined with the the high point cost here means I don't think we can give resilient a particularly high score I think that really ultimately it's it's somewhere around hideous stench in terms of its its application I think both of these traits if they only cost two would be a lot better but the way they stand now with three and and with you know making it so you can't take some of these other things they are very dangerous and generally should be avoided in in PvP all right so up next we have resistant now we did already compare resistant to Hardy somewhat davora but I want to highlight that you can actually take these things together cuz resistant only cost two points and Hardy only costs one so what does resistant actually get for you it gets you plus two resistance it says here that it reduces damage from magical attacks but that's not really true what it really reduces damage from is non-physical damage whether or not they're trying to hit you with a you know a blast from an archinist or just a base melee attack from a snow Spirit you're still going to be checking against resistance when it comes to the elemental damage that is being pumped out and Elemental damage although it starts relatively small on the board and then generally gets more and more important it never is like useless in the same way some things are like yeah defenses is really really powerful when you're fighting against creeps that are Anvil guards or whatever but if you're trying to clear a bronze ancient wonder almost all of them are going to have something where resistance comes into effect and then as you move up the the up the channel and you start fighting against Silvers and Golds and other people you'll see that resistance rapidly outscales defense in terms of its like real value so I think this is actually a very powerful trait it's just a powerful trait that kind of like starts slow and then ramps up as the game goes on it it's very easy to overlook because it really doesn't have any text on it um but I think this is a very powerful trait and one that you should seriously consider in any sort of like bigger Longer PVP scenario if you're playing like a team fight and and or like a 1 V one or whatever then tough is 100 % better 100% of the time but in a longer game where you go to turn 50 or whatever then resistant is very very nice and should definitely be on your your radar so I think resistant I think this justifies itself as an a tier whether or not it's better or worse than uh bullwark kind of depends on your build I think it's not that hard to build around bullwark and get good value out of it so I am going to place it behind there but this is highly contextual upon the build that you're you're playing with if you're not playing with a build that can actually utilize defense mode proactively then this isin better all right so up next we have sharp eyes now for one trait point we get units get Plus One Vision range and plus one sensing range on the surface this sounds like it does literally nothing cuz it does not impact your combat at all uh similar to fast recuperation in that sense but I think this is actually marginally better than fast recuperation because of its impact on your economic growth one of the most important things when it comes to age of Wonders 4 is not only being able to clear out your resource nodes as quickly as possible but also finding your free City finding infestations and finding Bronze Ancient Wonders that combination of you know you need a lot of scouting in order to find all these things as quickly as possible means that there is actually an economic benefit to something like sharp eyes it's it's generally not too difficult to start scouting those things out once you start learning how to read the fog but overall like being able to fog bust really quickly does pay dividends cuz not every single ancient wonder is actually going to appear under the fog to you you do sometimes have to just like manually see it and Plus One Vision range does help there now I think the problem with sharp eyes is that first as we mentioned it does literally nothing in terms of combat and also plus one sensing range is just like not enough I think that if this was something like Plus One Vision range and plus three sensing range it would be a lot more interesting um sensing range is like whenever you see that that red circle exclamation point underneath the fog you don't know what that is but you you've sensed it you've heard that there's like an enemy Army over there and maybe you should like Scout around and and stay away from them or whatever so I this isn't like a a terrible terrible pick because of the impact when it comes to your scouting and especially on a low light uh map then this can actually be pretty useful it only costs one point so like you're not investing a whole lot in order to get there but it's just that like it as I mentioned does not do anything in terms of real Combat and it's it's mostly just an economic pick but it's an economic pick that costs you almost nothing so I think this is a c-tier trait I wouldn't be ashamed to take it if if you really really wanted to all right so next we have sneaky so what do we get here this has plus 2 5% damage on flanking attacks if you don't read further into the tool tips you might miss that flanking attacks deal an extra 25% damage naturally so this takes it from plus 25 to plus 50% and that might draw your attention if you're you know playing around with distracted that's really I think the best way to make good value out of sneaky like yeah you can definitely do some phasing and stuff like that with uh unicorn mounts but you you do not need sneaky in order to get good value out of unicorn mounts you just need to play the game and and then you'll be doing all right but the way that this works in reality is that a it doesn't really impact your auto resolve that much like occasionally you'll get a flanking attack accidentally especially because um the the AI loves to look away from the enemy Army while using Buffs for some reason and then if your auto resolve just like picks up on the opportunity to do a a flank attack you just get a little bit of of extra bonus there but B it also just doesn't use distracted particularly well so then you kind of need to think about it from purely the PVP Dimension like in your man manual battles against other people or if you're manual battling the the AI how much does this give you in comparison to something like strong where this is just like consistently available if you have something where you're relying on distracted from your to of beasts and you can only target one thing at a time to generate distracted you should not take sneaky it just doesn't do enough for you you need something where you are not dedicating your casting points or for that matter your battle casting slots in order to get distracted so high or for that matter like a Dragon Ruler that's moved into order is generally pretty preferential if you're trying to utilize sneaky cuz that is a good way to just like consistently get distracted on the board and then get a lot of extra damage out of sneaky cuz if you can flank people by just like walking straight up to their face and then punching them 25% damage is not bad but if you're relying on being able to literally outflank people then sneaky just doesn't work that well in in PvP even if you're deliberately trying to do that like you're probably just going to be sacrificing material to get a little bit of extra damage in comparison to something like resistant or tough where you flank them do some extra damage but then also have the survivability to survive the retaliations or you know the gang gang up that everyone is going to do on your your flanking units I think sneaky if this thing cost one it would be a lot more useful but the way that it stands now at two I I just can't recommend sneaky to people I think that broadly speaking it's probably somewhere in the the C tier like it does it does do stuff it's just like not great stuff maybe it's marginally worse than Arcane yeah somewhere around there makes sense all right so up next we have strong we've talked a little bit about strong already but this is actually a really good trait when it comes to increasing the damage output for most of your units so this is plus two physical damage on all melee and physical rang attacks this should immediately tell you that if you want to get the most value out of your strong you probably want multi-hit attacks rather than single hit big damage uh hits cuz like doing two extra damage on 20 is on a percentage base a lot less than doing two extra damage on eight but this also critically Stacks up the more extra hits you get to do so how should you really use strong I think strong plays best with something like a a ranged hero who has access to a big bow ranged Heroes I think are generally a lot better than ranged units because they do have the accuracy bonus from taking the archery perk uh not to mention the fact that they have access to Keen Eye which does not require you to pick up the the to of enchantment in order to get that extra range and so if you're trying to do that and you're trying to use like a really really powerful ranged hero strong can be really good but even if you're not using a powerful ranged hero this is still a meaningful increase to your damage output and therefore sort of an indirect buff to your survivability on your units if your units are able to hit for two extra damage on all of their own attacks as well as all of their retaliation attacks and opportunity attacks this thing actually does add a lot of extra strength to your early game and even into the mid to late game it can be useful it's just like this thing is definitely not as as useful on war breeds as it is on say your your Eagle Riders but broadly speaking like this is a a pretty reasonable pick and I I think if you're thinking about ways to increase your own damage output as opposed to your survivability that you really can't do better than strong so I think strong justifies itself as like a a low a tier like this thing does do put in a lot of work and unlike something like uh overwhelm tactics this does not require you to have very poor positioning in order to get maximum value out of it all right so up next we have swamp adaptation and this one in big letters do not take this unless you are role playing um swamp adaptation un fortunately unlike Arctic and desert doesn't really have like a great pool of things that you can pull from in the event that you want to move into to of beasts or to of vigor and more than that it's kind of like a big penalty on your early game rivers are going to be spawning preferentially near you rivers are mostly not good in Age of Wonders 4 because they slow you down a lot Riverwalk helps a little bit because it lets you move through those Rivers at a a faster pace and then swamp walk helps a little bit when it comes to moving through your swamps but you see here swamps cost six movement points Rivers cost six movement points Arctic adaptation and desert adaptation and for that matter underground adaptation all of these are going to be reducing things down to five for almost all the different movements and that is a really big difference when it comes to your early game scouting and moving around the board so the combination of all these things means that like the swamp adaptation does have a couple of applications you are going to be fighting on maps that have a lot of water that means that units are going to become wet an awful lot so they'll have a bigger weakness to lightning damage and to frost damage damage so if you really want to exploit those damage channels then swamp adaptation I guess isn't the end of the world but like this is just actively bad for your early game economy and does not justify a pick unless you just want to to show off that you can win with a swamp adaptation pick if if if that's what you want to do then like you know live your best life but if you're interested in in building a strong faction then you should stay away from this this is this is aggressively bad for your early game in a way that makes it very hard to keep up with the other players so uh swamp adaptation I think this is probably even worse than fast recuperation this at least like doesn't slow down your early game whereas like this is almost not only does it cost a trade point it's almost bad for you if you take it so yeah stay away from this even even if you have herbalists which are not the best SPI in the game but like this is just this is super bad don't don't do not take swamp adaptation all right so up next we have tenacious what do we get here so damage penalties from casualties are haved what does that actually mean in ag of Wonders 4 if you have a unit that has multiple models on it as it sustains damage those models will actually die as they die the damage output for your unit in question is actually going to decline and this evades some of that penalty only half of it though and the problem here is that a in the mid to late game a lot of your units are only going to be single model entities um especially if you move into Tom of vigor and you take up super growth but like unless you move deliberately into Tom of The Horde and pick up uh Your Spawn k then a lot of your stuff is is going to be single model entities by the mid to late game so this is something that like kind of only does stuff at the very beginning of the game also like on the flip side of this is that the easiest way to get around damage from casualties is not just to have a single amount of entity but to just go berserk berserk ignores literally all of the damage penalties from uh casualties and there are a lot of things that that turn units berserk if that's what you're really interested in so tenacious at two trade points I really don't think that this justifies itself it combos with things things that aren't particularly good and doesn't make the things that are good better uh and of course this does literally nothing on your Heroes themselves because the heroes are single model entities by definition even if they have spawn kin sort of like sneaky where if it was one point then we could have a more interesting conversation about it but the way that it stands now if if this is something you're concerned about just take resistant or tough instead like this that's much better than tenacious so uh tenacious I this is a d tier trade I think in in my book I think it's marginally better than desert adaptation but because this thing can actually get you some pretty meaningful economic bonuses and this thing like does literally nothing in the mid to late game uh D tier makes sense to me all right so up next we have tough now tough is one of those things that you kind of have to compare in your own mind towards things like resistant or bullwark or Hardy but fortunately if you really want to go all in on that you you definitely can and still get some good value here but what are we getting specifically on tough itself well we're getting plus two defense plus two defense is one of those things that in the the early early early game is very important almost all of the things that you're going to be fighting against in the early game are going to be dealing physical damage some of them are might maybe going to do a combination of physical as well as magical but the things that are like doing pure magic damage like support units that you're clearing on the board are things you really shouldn't be afraid of anyway those are great sources of free experience points early on so I think that like tough in a vacuum in the early game is generally stronger than something like resistant the issue with tough is that unlike resistant which generally gets better and better and better as the game goes on tough generally gets worse and worse and worse uh another thing that of course is important when it comes to resistant is that this is going to be reducing your damage from a lot of different types of of magic you'll frequently see people with multiple types of Elemental enchantments on their units and of course if you're got plus two resistance and people are attacking you with both a source of frost damage as well as a source of uh lightning damage then this is actually going to come in twice on that case whereas there's really only one direct way to to interact with defense it reduces physical damage so what this means is that this thing is very powerful in the early game not so important in the mid to late game but it does still have some situations where it's useful there because of the power of materium materium isn't like the only powerful thing in the the mid to late game we are going to be revisiting the the cultural uh tier list sooner rather than later uh I think barbarians are are definitely underrated in my my previous tier list but materium and industrious are still just like very very strong in my book uh and guess what's really good against tectonic shatter plus two defense if your opponent is casting tectonic shatter over and over and over again against you it can be very terrifying and something that it can be difficult to survive against if you're not prepared you can get around this by by you know limiting it to once per battle the way we were doing it in in WIS slay's group but overall you should be aware that defense it does get worse but it does still have some use cases and if your opponent is planning towards a tier five tone unlike you know resilient where if they're planning towards pandemonium a tier three toome you can easily just like audible out of if they're moving towards tier five materium that's the only tier five materium that is available to them they have to pick it anyway so this thing does play very well against that Dimension if you know your opponent is going to be taking uh the to of the Creator and or the like lava to of lava burst effectively if you know that that's coming for you then you should definitely consider tough as an option and even if you don't this does play well in enough in the early game that I think we can we can evaluate it uh pretty favorably here I think it's probably worse than resistant overall and probably worse than than bull work just because as we mentioned this is not too difficult to build around but this is definitely an eight-year trait in my book and something that you can absolutely get good value out of all right next we can talk about underground adaptation the trait that breaks my heart so once upon a time Underground adaptation was compet competing with adaptable for like one of the best traits that you could pick in your mind slot cuz it was huge for your early game economy it used to be that whenever you excavated stuff you got basically a role on the uh the prospector table same with like whenever you're playing as industrious you would get gold or production or maybe an extra item but these days whenever you use excavation you almost always get literally nothing you just clear the clad maybe you see a resource node down there and that's an opportunity for you get a little bit of experience points and fighting and whatever but you don't get that gigantic flood of resources it's conceivable that that was intentional because underground adaptation at one point would be really really powerful if it came with an excavation that was good but what this means is that because they've directly nerfed excavation they've also hurt the the gaml of just picking up excavation as a non underground adaptation I think that combined with the fact that now the water is just like so so so much better that if you're looking to expand in a different direction in in Age of Wonders 4 go to the water don't go underground let other people do that let them waste their Imperium and and like dig everything up and then you go down there and Conquer it yourself but if you're definitely you know helping bent on playing in the underground adaptation you should know that the things that you're going to be fighting against are generally going to have Spirit weakness so if you can play as high or I guess feudal if that's your flavor or is an order Dragon then you have a lot of extra punch when it comes to the things you're fighting down there similarly if you're fighting in the underground you're going to see a lot of Undead so you do not want uh poisonous down there because they are naturally immune to poison but the underground adaptation because excavation is bad is a lot worse but the overall of this is that this is a troll pick so the way map generation Works in Age of Wonders 4 is it'll actually look at how many players are on each layer of the map when it determines how big the map should be and so if you and your teammate in like a 2v2 both choose underground adaptation and the opponents don't then the map rather than being designed for a like a four-player map it'll be basically designed for a two-player map which means that now you can do like really hardcore Rush strats I guess that's good cuz it means means that you have control over that but it also means that like the single player experience has gotten just a lot worse in my opinion cuz now a lot of these uh randomly generated factions are going to have multiple traits underground adaptation is a lot more common these days on just generated AI uh rulers which means that maps are just very claustrophobic I think if they want underground adaptation to just be like the rest of these where it's fine from a role playing perspective but not disruptive Triumph desperately needs to revisit it's it's random map generation cuz it's I don't think this is fun like it's a 4X and if you're playing with you know six players and three of them have underground adaptation there's no exploration you just meet the enemies immediately and I just I don't like that it it breaks my heart cuz I did love this trait but now it's now it's not good outside of like a very very particular Rush strategy I guess that means that it's probably somewhere in the D tier is it better or worse than desert adaptation kind of depends on your build than what you're doing but I I guess it's easier to to rush people without them noticing if you're playing underground adaptation whereas this one like kind of doesn't do anything until you got to Toma Vigor so down here makes sense I I wish it wasn't the case but it this is this is where it belongs all right so now we just have two mounts left unicorn mounts and white wolf mounts but before we jump in on that if you are enjoying this video you know like this but more importantly if you and your friends are are about to play a game of Age of Wonders 4 and you've watched this and you've gotten good value out of it don't don't keep this to yourself share it with them like I I think you're only going to have fun once demolishing them because you have a knowledge Advantage if you do that too many times guess what your friends aren't going to play with you anymore and if everyone is like kind of on the same page in regards to experience with with Age of Wonders 4 or at least experience with Age of Wonders 4 content I think they're going to have a better time playing with you and and you'll get more games out of it so share it with your friends um that said let's talk about unicorn mounts these things are still insane so once upon a time the phase ability here was just like ridiculously overpowered it only required one action point remaining and would leave an action point and so like a very consistent play pattern was just get unicorn mounts on like basically anything and then just move them all around the board phase behind the enemy ranged units and then smack them around very very disgusting with things like uh Barbarian Warriors but also just like really really strong on Knights and and other power attackers that remains true here with FaZe it's been nerfed I do want to be clear about this the fact that this now requires a full action and only leaves one action point is actually a dramatic dramatic change when it comes to the balance of the game and in only a healthy way but it's still not like bad this is a six movement ability that allows you to phase Behind Enemy Lines use your power attack or your stun off of a warrior and then the rest of your units are still going to are still going to be able to clown around and the the best case of this is still there the Barbarian Warriors so if you've played with barbarians then you'll know that that Warriors are just really really good they have that insanely powerful Shield bash stun that's a great ability and does play really well with stuff like nightmare mounts cuz you stun somebody lock them in place and use intimidating Aura but it's even better with unicorn mounts cuz this allows you to just apply this stun wherever you want uh and it does actually work pretty well in Auto resolve cuz the the Warriors will just like blink over stun something allow your other units to clown on the the units that aren't stunned and keep your evolutionary summons alive this is a really really big part of the game if you can use your early game stuff that you start with to keep your EV tionary summons alive and growing and then get to those tier 3es before other people and then use those tier 3es along with your Heroes to start clearing out Ancient Wonders you're just going to be so far ahead of them economically and militarily that it's not even funny and the the Unicorn mounts still do what they they say on the package it's just they're not busted anymore they're just they're a little more fair they're a little more fair that's what I will say about the Unicorn mounts that that said because the the phase is still very very powerful I think these guys are competitive with something like Athletics whether or not they're better or or worse I think is build dependent I think for something like barbarians then these remain just like the most powerful thing that you can be taking um whereas for you know something like the the feudal or Mystics then you're almost certainly going to want Athletics instead and I think that means that like somewhere up here in a tier or S tier makes sense for unicorn mounts and I do think that because this plays really well with the things that are strong it deserves a slot in the S tier all right so we have our final trait here white wolf mounts white wolf mounts are pretty meaningfully different from the other mounts because this is not only going to give you a passive ability it's also giving you an active ability it is balanced by the fact that a neither of these are particularly powerful and B uh especially in feeing howl is very dangerous to give to your autor resolve we didn't really talk about this when it came to unicorn mounts but if you only have like one or two units with phase as in like banshees they have a an amazing tendency to just phase off into the distance and die on their own and so unicorn mounts is like useful in the sense that if your entire Army has phasing then they're way less likely to isolate themselves similarly white wolf mounts have some issues when it comes to their autoresolve so first of course anything that requires you to be adjacent the AI is generally not going to make good value out of and this one only applies to melee attacks that doesn't mean that you can't get good value out of the pack Hunters especially if you're trying to use like big Power attackers I do think that generally you'd rather have dire bear mounts over white wolf mounts uh even though this does do extra damage against units that aren't in defense mode simply because like you have a limit on where your melee attackers can actually be stationed like unlike ranged units and you know overwhelmed tactics or whatever you can't always be able to position two units that have melee attacks together adjacent to one more enemy you can of course get even more than that if you're like really stacking these things into the sky and like clumping all of your units up and getting gigantic extra bonuses to their melee attacks but guess what if you do that your opponent is going to AOE exploit you and um you're not going to you're not going to get as much value out of this as you'd hope so this is this is definitely sort of like a a pair kind of thing as his defensive or overwhelmed tactics but the biggest problem with white wolf mounts is just the way that the AI uses INF feeeling howl you cannot take white wolf mounts if you are going to have an optional Cavalry ranged or support unit cuz the AI will just like take your ranged or support unit and literally run it into melee not just like near melee but literal melee to use the enfeebling howl now this is very strong in manual combats where you're trying to fight at a very low level uh I know that I think it's nju and and amakara have been doing a lot of fights on uh the Skirmish mod for batok and playing around with like tier one and tier 2 units and there white wolf mounts can even outperform dread spider mounts in terms of their damage output simply because this is going to be dealing Elemental damage whereas this is going to be dealing physical damage and this of course has a mischance and this of course does not have a mischance so infeeling howl I think does kind of let the white wolf mount outperform dread spider mount in almost every single Dimension and and critically the white wolf mount that you start with is is actually a tier three whereas all the rest of these are tier tws and in case you need to you know disenchant it for extra material for your Forge or if you have a dragon or whatever the white wolf mount is a tier three and that does matter a little bit in terms of your early game economy but the the AI behaviors here for this are just not very good and when it comes to the PVP aspect you're just not going to be using infeeling howl basically ever with your white wolf mounts outside of an early low low Skirmish and the pack Hunter is just difficult to get like really great value out of so unfortunately I think white wolf mounts is probably around a b tier I think it's definitely better than the spiders as we just discussed probably a little bit better than poisonous just cuz it it does give you the extra movement points but overall it's there are better mounts that you can be picking up all right so that's it for our form traits video here on on we play games I'm going to go ahead and start updating some of the other videos for uh the Golem patch and in the Empire and Ashes but this one I think is the the most meaningful when it comes to new content the other the other ones like all the tones we might just literally put them all together in the same video and then just like I build the uh the tier list in the background and then just show it to you and discuss what has changed but we do need to revisit some of the other things I think that I did undervalue barbarians so we will talk about that whenever we come around to it hopefully at some point in the future I can have a nice interview with morgi who is definitely the best Barbarian player if if not one of the best players of Age of Wonders 4 in the world so keep your eyes uh peeled for that and thanks for for tuning in take care

Channel: w(&)e play games

Views: 17,056

Keywords: age of wonders 4, guide, tutorial, aow4 multiplayer guide, multiplayer, age of wonders 4 guide, age of wonders 4 tips, age of wonders 4 traits, age of wonders 4 form traits, age of wonders 4 tier list, age of wonders 4 traits tier list, aow4 pvp, autoresolve aow4

Id: H_CI1ns-JNs

Length: 84min 21sec (5061 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 24 2024