General Industrious Build Guide - AoW 4 (MP) Basics

all right everybody welcome back to we playay games I'm Walker and here we are in Age of Wonders 4 with our multiplayer basic series and today we're going to be discussing our general build guide for the industrious culture now whenever you're building a faction in Age of Wonders 4 I don't think you have to start with your culture as your Lynch pin I think if you want to start with your tier five or you would just like you know want to start with a like a special thing that you want to use like hideous stench or Eagle mounts then that's totally fine too um but I think that a culture is a perfectly reasonable thing to start with because it is the sort of thing that is really important early on and then generally as the game goes uh the power and importance of your culture will decline over time and so like understanding how your your faction is going to function at the very beginning of the game is something that is going to focus a little bit more on on your cultures and so we're going to we're going to highlight that here in this video but in future General build guides if we do with like a tier five then we will'll probably do something where throughout the the video we'll we'll focus more on how things are growing now that that said because the uh faction design here won't actually allow us to you know show all of the different tones that you're going to research along the way I have built database Pages for these uh these factions but we're also going to live build like a 100% sweaty industrious build towards the end um just so that way you know if if you're really interested in playing in competitive uh multiplayer then like you have somewhere to start but I think that these three factions are all doing something very powerful they're exploiting the way that industrious is going to play Let's first build before we jump in on talking about industrious let's have a conversation broadly about how you create a faction in Age of Wonders 4 for the perspective of of multiplayer or autor resolve only so the first thing you need to keep in mind whenever you're designing a faction here is that your military and your economy are intrinsically linked now unfortunately for us um there's nothing here about resource node in the game and it doesn't really tell you that much about Ancient Wonders whenever you're clearing them uh but ultimately whenever you are conquering things in Age of Wonders 4 whether it's a resource node or an infestation or an ancient wonder you're going to get some sort of bonus if it's like food or production it'll be assigned to the closest city if it's a a global resource like Mana or gold it'll go to your Empire and so what this means is that you need to keep your your military growing because that is an efficient way for your economy to grow and your economy needs to keep growing because that's an important way for your knowledge to keep growing if you fall behind on knowledge in multiplayer you die um that's that's pretty it's it's pretty much one to one whenever it comes to those sorts of things uh so you need to have from turn one an idea of how your military and your economy are going to function and how they are going to support each other some uh some some societies and some cultures actually utilize uh cities more than than the map clearing aspect uh simply because Town Halls are so efficient so here you can see Town Hall one the Town Center that you get for just founding a city you get 20 draft income 30 food income 20 production income if you add up all of the production costs for all of the infrastructure that you need in order to meet this it's like almost a th000 production and so what that means is that like yes you get lots of resources from clearing the map but you really don't want to abandon uh civilian growth either um because you know it one you get a lot of resources for just getting an extra City but two you're eventually going to run out of places for you to clear um this is one of the stresses that you have to come to terms with whenever you're playing multiplayer like you can't bring your Heroes to literally every single fight cuz uh then you're just leaving resources around for another player to take so like the the game and the pacing for your your economic growth is something you need to keep in mind from turn one but just as important you also need to have as we mentioned a research path um or at least a way for you to get a bunch of knowledge uh simply because it is so important for you to get access to those higher tier units this is less crucial now um now that like tier one units do inflict less of a morale penalty on everybody else for dying but like if you're showing up with tier one units and your opponent has War breeds you're not going to win the fight I promise um and so like you you really do need to to balance both your your early game economy your midgame War Readiness because you don't want to be on turn 30 and have you know 11 units and then your opponent attacks you with 24 and then you die uh and then like late game you know being able to to sweep the map I think you also need to understand uh in regards to autoresolve the way combat is actually going to work and the way for that matter your economy is going to supplement that so in autor resolves some losses are inevitable you just need to accept this uh it's it's the way the game is going to be played I think personally it's healthier that way anyway so that way like some of your growth has to be going towards that otherwise growth can get completely out of control but you don't want to lose all of your units all of the time so you need to have tools that the the autoresolve AI is going to understand unfortunately it does not understand everything equally um my understanding based off of observation of the AI is that the AI doesn't really see other units in combat but rather the the units mostly just kind of like walk around on their own and so that means that you need tools that are just generically stronger um uniquely passives things that make each individual unit stronger based off of enchantments or racial Transformations those are really good uh but there are a couple of classes of of things that actually do kind of see each other support abilities for instance are something that that actually do perform pretty well in autor resolves simply because the AI will prioritize using Buffs and heals very early into a combat sometimes like almost insanely early into a combat I cannot tell you how many times I've seen an herbalist use its ability with literal one damage rather than save it for a little bit later into a fight but but it will use these abilities and that means that you you do have some tools that you can count on when it comes to autor resolve but I do want to highlight that there are some tools that you cannot count on um ranged pieces are generically a lot worse in in autor resolve if they have ways to get around their accuracy penalty then they're better so things like um the storm brers because they Auto hit and uh inquisitors because they Auto hit and Battle Mages because they Auto hit do perform a lot better in in autor resolves but like generic ranged pieces will just walk straight up to the enemy take a shot at it and then the enemy will walk over to them and then mulch them in melee and then and then your ranged piece dies um and that's mostly because of the the behaviors it's trying to prioritize its accuracy in order to increase its damage while not being aware that by getting closer to the um the the Target in question it'll die and and you know like this is complicated when it comes to autoresolve AI like I don't know how much uh Triumph can dedicate resources to trying to improve it versus we just as a community except the the problems that exist with it but there are some problems Beyond just the ranged thing like spell casting is a lot worse in autoresolve right now because we don't have the tools from planet fall where we could just choose a spell book I don't I don't know why that's not in the game that that that was a great idea in Planet fall and should definitely make the jump over here cuz like if you if you're playing as Mystic you want to just cast spells when it comes to combat um and depending on the the way that your AI is prioritizing things even if you click the the autor resolve AI spells on it sometimes doesn't cast um and for that matter like summoning doesn't work particularly well in in autor resolve uh and because there's also like different weightings involved with spells you might not even see some of the important spells like primals uh their summon is a low weight and so basically never gets cast by the auto so like you want to lean into the tools that it does understand while also leaning away from the ones that it doesn't Buffs and just passive things are are great for your autoresolve um and that's kind of like what we're doing here with this build overall and that's kind of something that you want to do with all of your different uh things but in the universe where you're leaning into multiplayer you do want to keep in mind that you need ways to proactively challenge your opponent not just passively develop in regards to autoresolve only that's where the extra TOS are going to come in um and like what we're going to highlight in the the end point of of this build but before we do that let's talk about industrious generally uh and highlight the strengths of this culture including its roster all right so what's in a culture here with industrious well the first thing that you're going to get out of industrious is the materium Affinity every culture is going to have two Affinity associated with it out of your starting six uh affinity for your Empire seven if you have a Dragon Ruler this isn't going to massively impact the direction of your Toms because you can develop in those in basically any direction you want but this is going to have an outsized impact on the development of your Empire tree and two materium Affinity is like almost the best thing you can get on your culture um military engineering is an enormously impactful pick now they they haven't quite updated the uh the costs here in terms of the Affinity requirements on the database you do need 15 um but starting with two means that because you acquire the Affinity at the end of your turn you can actually unlock military engineering on turn nine whereas if you only have one materium Affinity then it takes until turn 16 that is huge when it comes to the early game development of your outposts whether or not you need to go all the way up to three Affinity is something that I think you need that conversation with yourself now that um Imperium is so precious in the beginning of the game you almost always want to just get an early City down is as quickly as you can uh and so getting getting military engineering unlocked on turn four sounds spicy but it does set your your cities back a little bit um but that two starting Affinity means that you can get this thing online really really early and outposts are huge in this game outposts not only exploit uh global resources but they also build roads and create a friendly terrain for you to heal in and move through more quickly so like if you're not making outposts almost every single turn like especially once you've gotten military engineering online then your economy is probably growing slower than it needs to it it's just huge in terms of the military logistics like think of yourself as tra and you're just building a bunch of roads that and and bridges and stuff so that you can go conquer daia uh and that's not like super sexy and and whatnot but honestly Logistics win Wars and this thing is one of the best Logistics picks in the beginning of the game and then it also has like nice little upgrades for the cities cuz the Work Camp gives you an extra population so like this is just a great materium tree even even further down um and so starting with two materium Affinity is fantastic for industrious you also get access to here it says through bolstering units get sturdier as they get hit in battle bolstering is just a really cool ability simply because there are very few ways to get access to bolster defense in the game bolstered resistance is a little more um prolific simply because almost everybody can uh use warding if they want it and if they want to combine it with Tom of rry for even further instant uh crazy amounts of bolstered resistance they can but bolstered defense is a lot harder to find um and this means that like industrious is not going to get absolutely clowned on by somebody who's trying to use uh you know to of Enchantment and ther defenses in the same way that some of the other melee units uh can get into a lot of trouble but the biggest thing that you need to keep in mind is the Scout prospecting so when it comes to your your faction you know are you going to be leaning into the the units that you get available to you or the special abilities that are here on them it's usually a little bit of both uh but I think for industrious if you can get away with leaning into Scouts then you should be aware that because Scout prospecting is competitive between players the more industrious people there are on the board um the kind of like the worse your Scouts become uh but that also means that like the more of your own Scouts that you build the fewer uh prospects other people get it's just it's a really difficult uh math that you have to that you kind of have to adjust to what your map looks like but you really don't want to be using industrious if it's like an eight player game and everybody else is playing industrious and also your own Islands because there's going to be nothing for you to prospect but if there is something for you to prospect just take your scout put it on a cliff mountain or stalagmite that'll make the uh the map tile in question highlight an orange or you like the pick will appear I'm not sure what the UI is in the uh the Xbox or Playstation but it's going to it's going to make a little Dingle Bop appear and then you click on it and then you get production or gold or critically and I don't know why it doesn't highlight this a a low tier artifact it seems like you can get tier one and tier two artifacts off of them still this is really really good uh simply because getting early artifacts for your Your Heroes is enormous in it when it comes to the power spiking especially if you can find an early an early low tier weapon to to sub in even just like a tier 2 battle axe is a lot better than crobo like a lot a lot better than crobo um but because it can only be prospected once you do need to you do need to be aware of of limits on your scouting but I think industrious is actually in a position where they could get away with building some extra Scouts um so I think that generically you want to be prioritizing draft early on just you can get these Pioneers out but do be aware that the uh the prospecting ability is is not on the Pioneer it's on the the culture so if you conquer an industrious City you do not get get it by building um Pioneers but if you're playing industrious and you conquer somebody else like Barbarian Ian then you can get their Scouts uh use their Scouts to Prospect and also build cities so your cultural units of course are not going to be the end state for your Empire ultimately you're going to get a lot of units through your Toms as well as through uh interactions with rally of Lees now that you can get like tier five units there uh but at the beginning of the game having a highquality unit roster is actually really important on your auto resolves if you just lose fewer units in uh Auto resolves that you can devote more resources towards growth and that can pay off really quick dividends when it comes to especially if you just maximize your knowledge and industrious is uh roster here Beyond you know just being able to make Pioneers to to prospect is really really good in Autos Anvil guards have a three- turn taunt now this means that it's a taunt the Anvil guards will still be taking lots of damage onto themselves but because they have watchful and of course they're really Burly all on their own as long as you can do something to supplement their magical resistance then typically anwal guards can really go the distance and fight for a very very long time as an efficient unit mostly you're going to be phasing them out because you're going to get access to tier three bastions but like in the Skirmish mod right now ampel guards are fantastic and they're also really really good in Auto resolves they'll just draw all the attention onto themselves then you know you can bring a snowpit into a fight and feel really good about the chances of the snow Spirit surviving said fight um because multiple units will be attacking your Anvil guards instead so they're great supports for evolving things they're also great supports for uh bringing rang pieces if you really want to because again like the all of the attention is going on to these low tier units in a 90% chance means that if you do any sort of status resistance shredding through like a blizzard or something like that then invalu guards are actually going to do a very good job of of utilizing the CC you can't use them forever because they are tier ones but like these are these are great great tier one units and same with the arbalist we got to see this with a zombie playing on I think it was elephant mounts with to of beacon in the Skirmish mod but home of Beacon against a tier against a hero cuz a hero counts as a tier five is plus 10 damage um and then because this is a single shot then it becomes plus 20 damage so he was shooting Wii's Heroes for like 60 damage with arbalist so arbalist they again low tier units you're not going to be making an infinite number of them because you really do want to be concentrating your draft on units that are going to scale better into the late game but because these are optional Cavalry they can become very very durable by just slapping them on a you know an elephant mount or uh what have you or really effective at at getting themselves killed if you slap them on a a unicorn Mount I would not take unicorn mounts with uh industrious right now simply because they they don't have any other optional cave other than herbalists and they'll die they'll die pretty hard before before your Bastion come online of course um but they're they're just great at at clearing the map um and they they perform really well there H as a tier two pole arm you're not going to be producing an infinite number of them but Rune of retaliation does get around accuracy problems so if you're fighting against somebody with to of Mists uh you might want to consider bringing halber ear because these will actually do damage back uh and then of course like the survivability on on halers is just through the roof because of the interaction of bolstering and watchful and their first strike they don't have any any like fancy bips and Bops other than the Rune of retaliation but I think out of all of the tier 2 pole arms that are in the game I think the Haler is actually the best uh simply because this is a a very strong answer for some very dangerous combination you're going to make three of these and then two of them are going to die early and then you'll have one for a fight on turn 30 um but steel Shapers are a fantastic support unit so as we highlighted with bolstering it's just very difficult to find bolster defense anywhere and there's two of it here on steel shaper on a free action at a two uh turn cool down very powerful effect on the surface but because of the strength from steel uh and the fact that here with uh industrious as we can see in our our TOS we have the steel Fury ch the tools available to industrious are not only creating a defensive Matrix but using that defensive Matrix to create offense so you this is a great unit for um for a Dragon Ruler if you bring to of warding but it's also just like fantastic across the board in terms of creating both defensive and offensive pressure biggest problem is that it does deal physical damage so like for industrious uh you need to prioritize finding magical damage and for that matter because you're generating so mucht extra bolster defense um even on your tier 3es you want to find magical resistance on your your TOs and on your your builds most of the time rather than physical stuff you're just going to answer your physical damage problem uh very cleanly bastions are one of the few tier three cultural units that I think you can justify bringing for most of the game um like sometimes you get into fights where it's everybody has only tier fives but that that's pretty rare for a game to go that long and Bastion are fantastic when it comes to their their defensive press pressure the biggest problem with bastions is that they don't have a lot of offensive pressure but you can fix this with a lot of different tools there's lots of enchantments in the game and because they have the the flexibility of getting strengthen five and fortune 3 very easily off of their cultural spells don't think that the damage needs to stay here in fact one of the problems that you need to solve both for autoresolve as well as for manuals is how do you find strength and five fortune 3 and uh industrious does it all on its own so that's that's a breakdown of our our roster uh and now why don't we talk about how to actually build a faction here with um with with industrious and we'll look at our three starting factions starting off with our basic industrious build so say you and your friends are settling down for your first game of Age of Wonders 4 multiplayer or you're about to start off your first uh autor resolve only single player campaign in that case I think I would recommend playing around with a basic industrious build or something that looks a little bit like this because this is going to make the tools available both to you as well as to your Auto aut resolve AI where things should work out pretty well for you so let's look at this build now unfortunately when we get to the uh the to development for it we are going to have to hop over to the database because there's nothing about that here in game um but you know we can talk through all the rest of it here in our our faction creation because I do like the visuals so first we've went with uh Mammoth mounts and strong as our traits now I do think that generally you do need to find a solution for Magical damage incoming as a as an industrious player if you don't have that you're going to be in a lot of problems uh pretty quickly and fortunately Mammoth mounts with a four Frost resistance actually counters some really powerful things very easily like this is enormous against Reapers for instance because of the way that that damage reduction actually works with breaching so this is a huge upgrade in that fight but you could take elephant mounts instead it doesn't really matter and and frankly I think that bastans can make a pretty good argument for using something like nightmare mounts as well um but elephant mounts and Mammoth mounts do something very powerful they give you fewer models per unit and that means that your units are going to have like a more consistent damage throughout the game um in this build we have not used both an elephant mount as well as super growth on the Tom of vigor but you absolutely can do that too because that'll make your bastions literally one uh unit per per model uh or one model per unit so that way the damage will never go down on the bastions and that makes them a lot less ignorable um but even without super growth your basons are still going to do a great job of doing damage and then this early power Spike for the mammoth mouths should also give you a good good Advantage when it comes to clearing the board now it is important to note that I think mounts are generally worse on a really really big map um as the game progresses and people conquer more and more things and people are fighting with each other on like an eight player free-for-all or whatever uh people are just going to start unlocking teleporters and then the extra movement points that you get for Mammoth mounts just don't matter that much but in a small like four player game or something like that you're probably going to kill somebody or die before you unlock teleporters um and so this is a really big advantage in that that early game slice it is important to note that mounts are worse uh with Heroes as the game goes on and so again this is something that that lends itself more to an early game smaller map um but if you're going to be playing multiplayer you're probably you're probably only going to find three or four other people crazy enough to do it with you uh and so I think I think mounts are a little better there uh but strong is also just really helpful for industrious across the board there are lots of defensive tools available to industrious I think you can make easy justifications for things like resistant um but you're going to find plenty of bolstered resistance on to ofing if you really want it and so I I think finding damage on your traits is is pretty important if you if you feel like the uh the build can survive with it and I think here for industrious you mostly can um industrious as our as our culture of course the society traits here we're running with Smith uh run Smiths and Scions of evil I think science of evil is a fantastic pickup for industrious early game you going to have some serious draft problems simply because you you really do want to get at least one or two extra Scouts um and if you can afford it even more is better cuz they're fantastic at scaling up your economy especially on on a map where there are going to be enough Mountains for you to to get good value out of them for many many turns you can offset this of course by picking up a an early blacksmith in your cities and I actually think you should do that most of the time with most builds especially with industrious but Scions of evil Pro providing the pl plus 10 draft even on turn one is huge for you there are very few things that are going to provide that level of draft and because evil is something that you can stack up pretty quickly if you really want it uh you can get a lot more draft than that the extra ranks aren't like super duper important but it means that anything that has a a bonus is going to have like an extra metal guaranteed so like between science of evil just looking at itself once you get to Pure Evil your uh Bastion will start with silver medals that's where the Run Smiths come in and then you have now gold medals on your uh your Bastion so like the Bastion here are going to be through the roof really really powerful but one thing that's great about run Smiths is that this is not actually providing flat bonuses to you but rather discounts on unit research you probably want to lean into things that are going to use more unit enchantments when you're playing with run Smiths do be aware of that um but that's that this does not mean that you can't research or use uh racial Transformations that's totally fine to to research those things as well this is just a a great great economy bonus across the board for uh industrious there are other things that you can definitely use that we'll highlight in the other builds but I think for a basic thing starting with a bunch of extra draft ways for you to get really good knowledge scaling and then because we're taking the toome of warding as our tier one Tome we're going to start with two astral Affinity so here in the uh the database in the Empire tree getting down to Adaptive research which uh requires 40 astral Affinity is insanely good for everybody but especially for industrious so industrious isn't going to be scaling up their production in their cities quite as as much as some of the other factions um especially things like high simply because you have so much production and gold coming in from the map but that's where like things that discount on the costs of things are even better for industrious simply because they are going to have all those those resources coming in and they don't need to look at like the production in their city but simply making things cheaper adaptive research with just two starting astral Affinity is a unlocked on turn 21 which is amazing in terms of pacing for your uh your knowledge growth if you can find more astral Affinity by like picking up a a signature skill on your ruler or something like that like you know bang on but you don't have to in order to get great value here by by turn 21 you'll have a couple of cities that are are able to use this well you don't even have to do stuff that's inadvisable and crazy like delaying your Academy um and if you can find a third astral then then you know go for it but to of Waring is fantastic for industrious across the board no matter what you're doing um you just get a lot of extra magical resistance here here with stabs of warding of course this is going to turn your steel Shapers into just Massacre machines the ability for them to get two uh bolstered resistance on every single ability on those on those steel Shapers is going to a keep your strength in Stacks really high because of the extra interaction with Grant defense but it is going to actually give you more bolstered resistance because of the healing ability also counts as a a support so like you're just going to keep a lot of uh resistance across the board on everyone and bolstering support isn't even a skippable skill on some Heroes like if you have a you know a signature skill Rally or something like that then this is fantastic or or uh even better on on mass Rejuvenation holy cow you do have some issues with autor resolve where like you're going to be wasting resources into Mark of invulnerability but because summon fantasm Warrior is a great way for you to supplement your uh your Anvil guards onto the map and that is something that you do generally want to reflect in your your early game Toms you're usually going to want to be able to do some summoning and this is great at it um and then of course we're going to be running with a wizard King no no surprise there I think generally you can use a a dragon and that is going to be in our our general Dragon build uh but industri doesn't need to like you get plenty of artifacts so much so that like the lack of spaces On Your Dragon Ruler do does come back to haunt you if you're playing on a super duper small map then you could probably even get away with a champion because the plus 20 draft in your throne is really powerful when it comes to pumping out your your early game Scouts and anval guards and stuff um but the fact that this doesn't apply all of your cities is just silly like Champions these they need a buff they need a buff buff me please I don't want to make every single build uh except for high use wizard king or maybe a couple of dragon Lords but right now you mostly skip Champion um but then we have of course the remaining development for this build because we've just talked about the framework but not the direction so how do we take these starting tools and transform it into something that meets the requirements for what we're looking for so our second tier one to we're going to be taking to of alchemy to of Alchemy as we discussed in our our tier lists is just fantastic for research across the board and because you're probably going to have a couple of cities with tier 2 um Town Halls pretty quickly and ideally even Town Hall 3es pretty quickly with industrious if you can find enough uh prospecting you're you're going to have the the slots for some spis and the SPI on to Alchemy Banana's good like there's no way around it you're also of course because you're play with industrious you have an SPI of your own that gets you extra production so that is a way for them to to help keep Pace with the with high production economy but Alchemy is also really good in terms of utilizing the defensive tools of industrious one of the biggest problems that you can do is encounter someone who's playing around with like decaying or or just like a whole bunch of CC and and can disable everyone and to valky clowns on those guys um and allows you to effectively ignore all of the rest of the problems with status resistance into the late game uh as long as you got to of alchemy you're you're you're golden baby you can do whatever you want to so our tier 2 Toms we have to of the construct and to of of Glades I think generally if you're playing with a mount uh you can consider to of Glades but here specifically with industrious I think that it does do a lot of work because you're not just getting the Glade Runners the Glade Runners be you know make make no mistake they're not going to do a ton of damage on this uh this build we are going to pick up to of The Crucible later so that way they will have some offensive pressure but the the Glade Runners really are there more for uh like supporting you might have one or two of them utilizing strong and then Mammoth mounts to keep their damage really really high the bigger value out of Glades is that you do get access to the uh the healing ability for all of your bastions the um I forget what it's actually called Walker you you you could you could look this up ahead of time I promise uh but the to of Glades gives you access to aspect of the root which gives you uh 30 healing on your own bastions that is insane when it comes to Auto resolves actually and then uh Lea skin of course getting extra resistance is really good for your your bastions and just keeping them on the board um and but the to of the construct don't think that this means you have to go oops all constructs we will be picking up Golden round later uh but like really this means that you need to have mostly things that interact with linked Minds which can definitely include your own racial units um like blade Glade Runners and the like now as we get further on um I think you can kind of develop your economy in any different direction uh one of the most important things that you can do is be flexible if you notice your opponent is playing around moving towards Undead for instance then like just pick up a t of Devastation if you haven't used your reset for something specific uh in order to pick up Affinity or something like that then you can pick up a to of Devastation with literally zero chaos affinity and a level 12 ruler by just picking uh by resetting for free picking three chaos signature skills taking to of Devastation resetting for 150 Imperium and moving on with your life uh but if you're if you're not seeing like industrious or something like that then to of dragons actually is a really solid major transformation for industrious in particular cuz no major transformation for materium you do not have to build uh materium out towards materium like there's lots of different directions for our our industrious build to go and we'll highlight that in our other builds but to of the Creator is still a very powerful Tool uh you should not be ashamed to lean into materium stuff but that means that you don't have a major transformation and this one's a really cheap one and it's available early uh you also get an SPI for research posts but like most of the things you're getting in in to of dragons you're probably not going to use a lot of the Dragons so like if you want to take the TR of transmutation first do that um to of transmutation I've attempted to not put on every single build here for the uh industrious but it's really really powerful because you're going to have all of those extra artifacts laying around so that means that if you find lots of magic materials which T of transmutation through its SPI gives you just like infinite uh Magic materials to of transmutation the transmutation circle is just going to give you any number of magic materials that you want um and that is an amazing powerful ability uh transmute resources is less broken now because it doesn't give you draft but it's still really good transmuters are fantastic with anything that shreds status resistance but also just across the board are really really good uh disablers a one hex AOE stun is crazy and then you got some other tools in terms of your defensive and and I actually also really like melt armor a guaranteed Sunder defense is fantastic in our our current uh Skirmish build do be aware you can take to of transmutation first for like basically every single build in competitive multi player and it's still mostly correct um just just play it play it how you want uh Crucible of course gives us access to some damage for our Glade Runners through the meteor arrows and lava burst which is just a a strict upgrade over um melt armor and a reason that you don't have to take those together but like this is just a a fantastic damaged home and then golden realm is of course going to give us access to uh gold gold golems and things that'll interact favorably with construct because we want to make a hasty boys basically is what we're going to come down to um the hasti stuff that you can get and yes that doesn't leverage Mammoth mounts as well but hey hasted gold golems are pretty good and then Tomo the Creator is going to give you your AOE uh disable everything like tier five Capstone there there lots of different directions that you can go on after this uh but this is going to set a good pace for your economy and your growth as long as you're prioritizing the right things in terms of your empire development uh and then if if you find an opportunity to find maybe an extra astral early on you'll you'll do well for yourself so that's our our basic uh build but what if instead of looking at a basic build we were looking at a specific build geared towards a specific map like what if for instance you knew you were playing against regenerating infestations so what if you're playing on the smaller map or maybe a media map and you know you're going to be playing with regenerating infestations on well in that case I think you can consider something like this Dragon industrious build here so let's take a look at that so our Dragon industrious build we're going to be playing with bullwark and with Hideous stench I think generally speaking bulwark is one of the best abilities for industrias to be taking these days especially if you're thinking about picking up uh the to of the construct and then you know using the the everyone enters into defense mode a little a little more proactively than uh ninu accidentally used it in our in our Skirmish fight but bullk is a fantastic ability on your Heroes because your Heroes here with industrious are automatically going to find defensive Master uh at level six if they just concentrate exclusively on on warfare that is really really disgusting cuz defensive Masters will end your Your Heroes in defense mode every single turn which is going to naturally give them some pretty massive bonuses extending Z to all adjacent hex's defense resistance immune to flanking fantastic fantastic but then you also get two extra defense and resistance for only two points um the one of the big problems with bull work is that there aren't always ways to proactively end your units in defense mode but industrious has I think the best tools uh there for auto resolve because they they have the bastions with their uh defensive sweep they also have their own Anvil guards with their with their taunt and then their Heroes with defensive master so just great great pick across the board and then here because we have access to enough survivability I think we can run with something like hideous stench generally speaking I I think you don't want to take hideous stench for most factions um because this thing costs three points if it cost two I think it would be a lot more fair uh but here because industrious does have plenty of survivability and because we're specifically trying to hunt down infestations things like minus status resistance are a lot more useful there most of the time whenever you're clearing the map um minus status resistance isn't as as impactful because most of the things you're fighting are going to be tier one and tier two therefore they'll have effectively zero status resistance anyway so all of your things will mostly proc all of the time anyway but like minus two status resistance against a tier three or a tier four unit is actually a huge deal and there the minus two resistance is also a bigger deal cuz it the way um negative resistance Works my understanding is that it it has some diminishing returns and caps that are are not explicit in the game uh but it it means that pushing people into negative on non-specific damage types is not as useful as as as you'd think uh but this is if if if you're trying to use a hideous stench build then I think this is probably one of the best options here because your dragon lord is going to be insanely bulky based exclusively off of bulwark and defensive Masters already and then this is going to give your uh Your Dragon Lord even bigger spikes whenever it comes to using probably your uh your cone breath attack um in regards to of course our society traits uh we're going to take with uh fabled hunters and artifact hoarders I don't think this should be a big surprise here I think fabled Hunters is also still generically very powerful on industrias no matter what you're doing um not this is true for basically everyone uh and you do not have to necessarily take Glade runners in order to get value here you can combine them that way if you so desire but the skirmisher unit abil is probably better on on stormm rers anyway because those things are like just grotesquely overpowered at the moment and then the 75% extra resources from clearing infestations should interact really favorably with something like regenerating you don't you don't need regenerating either um but I do think that if if you're if you know you're playing on a smaller medium this is the direction I would go for sure and then artifact hoarders of course gives you even further outs to just leaving item sitting around in your uh your artifact horde uh for your dragon you do want to be fine like emotionally breaking them down to make better items cuz you'll find plenty of magical resources throughout the game that will actually encourage you to to do stuff like make U the slipaway boots or or a haste effect for Your Heroes on their on their boots or you killing momentum on a ring there are lots of things that you want to make instead of just mana and gold so don't don't be afraid to break them down but having even more artifact ability at the beginning of the game when you're playing with a dragon lord is really powerful here uh cuz you you really are going to find a lot of extra artifacts through prospecting our dragon lord as I mentioned we are going to play with astral I think that's going to be important for two reasons one um I think that getting up to three astral Affinity at the beginning of the game is fantastic not only at targeting down those those early game Empire picks but pushing you further in like if you're playing with a Dragon Ruler if you don't have three plus uh astral Affinity then you're going to fall woefully behind when it comes to your world map casting but starting with three astral here means that this is available on turn 21 which is which is a very powerful upgrade uh in case you need it and then further down of course finding a easier access to right of Astral abundance is great for your economy and and you don't need necessarily more astral to get there although you know you can take the uh the the astral uh option for your Your Dragon Ruler on level four if you want to really leverage your ability to clear uh infestations and the like but in regards to our toome development what are we looking at here so first I think if you're going to be clearing up bunch of infestations that something like to of evocation as a a start for an astral dragon is actually insane um just being able to throw the the lightning damage strategic spell down onto a combat starting everyone with minus three uh lightning resistance means that your astr dragon will clear basically everything on the on the Strategic layer without any sort of issue you are going to have some problems as you go further and further into uh Ancient Wonders cuz there you cannot use strategic spells and so having more enchantments and racial trans formations is actually pretty helpful so we're going to go after evocation into cryomancy for our research post SPI as well as for accessing more um Shadow Affinity we didn't really highlight this but Shadow Affinity on the empire development tree also super important at least the the first pick in particular knowledge extraction is a lot of extra research and dra this dragon lord should have a a pretty quick path in terms of uh generating value for you terms of our tier twos we have to of the famous and to of rry so to of the famous is a little xenophobic because your your dragon lord is not going to be able to transform therefore you're not going to be able to ignore the accuracy problems but because the breath weapon on your dragon lord does I think that it's fine uh that your your guy won't be able to hit with her claws that doesn't matter if if you nuking people with quickened breath every other turn um you're going to do fine for yourself and then to of revelry is just a fantastic tool when it comes to defensive scaling if you are taking Tom of Waring I think and you're playing 100% sweaty then you probably have to take to of revry but even if you're not playing with Tom of warding I think you have to consider it cuz you really do need something that's going to give you extra bolstered resistance especially in an AOE and this is one of the best tools available there and then the the ability to continue to ramp up your chaos is something that we can use here so in order to make the Affinity here work and actually be able to pick up to of the cold dark and then all of this chaos towards the end you are going to need to be careful in regards to the signature development of your dragon lord what I'm going to recommend is that the first time you hit level eight you're going to pick up just whatever your Shadow Affinity signature skill is you should be able to get that before you hit to of the cold dark in terms of your research unless something went woefully wrong at that point you pick up to of the cold dark and then you look for ways to get up to uh three Tranquility pools three Tranquility pools will give you access to a status immunity ring for Your Dragon Lord that will allow you to reset into something where you can carry um something other than the order transformation On Your Dragon Lord but if even if you don't find that you can still reset into find ing um Chaos on your level four and your level eight as your uh your Transformations For Your Dragon Lord that's perfectly reasonable as well but you're going to need two fixed uh chaos Affinity just so you can pick up the rest of this this development here including to of Devastation anytime you're doing a whole lot of early Transformations and enchantments critically on melee units then you should very seriously consider to of Devastation as like an actual part of your build rather than simply something that you take cuz you see Undead and I think here these uh these War breeds will do some really disgusting amounts of damage the only problem that they would normally be encountering is a lack of haste but hey coughs an uh exhilarating Roar so there's ways for you to leverage War breeds without turning them into silly nagas with the skinniest tail in the universe please I want a thick Boy show me my thickest of boys give me give me a chunky a chunky War breed tail on those guys but um nag Naga transformed War breeds aren't quite as cool as they as they should look and as we go into our tier fours we will here have two different options for major Transformations that means that just don't research one of them like you don't need to take both the fact of the matter is that I went back and forth on whether or not this was the the right way for this economy to develop um but I think storm brers are powerful enough that you want to take them kind of no matter what you're doing we're playing with an astral Dragon so doing a lot of extra uh lightning damage by assigning wet to everyone should be very powerful but I do like to of the demon gate in terms of what it offers to you if you want bayor you can get them um bayor will be worse going into a a wet wet world but they will be better going around with uh minus bazillions of status resistance on everyone so Play Play that one by ear as to whether or not you take the demon kin transformation or the Naga one uh just just be aware that your your late game Army is mostly going to be War breeds and and storm brers anyway and then uh to of the Chast Lord is a tier five is a perfectly reasonable one it does play a lot better on the offense so it this is generally better in classic turns rather than in simultaneous um because like you you just aren't going to be on the attack every single time in simultaneous turns unless unless people are are giving you a freebie there uh but this should be a very quick development for our Dragon Lord because of the tools in regards to fighting infestations the only thing you really need to be aware of is that your dragon lord is going to be a little squishy you're probably going to want at like tier your level four pickup um either the astral or the materium just to increase your defense or your resistance cuz you're not you don't have the the normal defensive tools uh but the offensive tools are going to be through the roof and it should make it so that your auto resolves as long as they get a good early breath weapon in which I generally recommend using cone with this guy um you should be able to strip lots of enemy models clear the the map really quickly get the resources from an infestation clears with uh fabled hunters and overwhelm your opponent before they know what's up and hideous stench does interact really favorably with multiple types of Elemental damage so keep an eye out for that so what if instead of you know dipping your toes into playing with industrious for the first time or ing to leverage a powerful Dragon to clear a map as quickly as you can what if instead you're a person of supreme culture and importance and you want to use to of necromancy because necromancy is cool well fortunately for you I do think that industrious is one of the better shells for necromancy typically one of the problems with necromancy is simply that like uh your guys take insane amounts of damage to Spirit and fire um and so like your guys are a lot more fragile than they look but because of the defensive scaling on industrious that is a lot less of a problem there was a game where we were fighting against Z um like I this is a like six months ago but he had a bunch of shrines of smiting and this is before shrines got nerfed and we had a white born and we still managed to get through that fight because those guys were Burly as heck if you have you know always five bolstered resistance on all of your dudes as well as you know resistant or bullwark or whatever uh your your units Can Go the Distance against that kind of magical incoming damage and that is that is the way that this this build is going to develop so as we mentioned here we have bullwark resistant and Hardy as our as our traits that's going to be great for Our Heroes as they develop because they're still going to get defensive Masters so we got the bull work there but resistant is just great for all of your units in terms of uh offsetting the the the weakness as well as like juicing your strengths like if you encounter a Meer crocodile and you're playing with bullwark and resistant and White born their crocodiles will do absolutely nothing to you I promise um and so like this has a a great way to mitigate the downsides as well as highlight the strength uh in regards to our society traits we're going to take ancient wise ones you can kind of sub in anything in terms of an astral Affinity here like if you want to play around with hermit kingdoms or Mana channelers you can I just think that like generically ancient wise ones is probably one of the easiest ones to use simply because this is a passive and so like you don't really need to do a lot the only downside is that the minus 60% knowledge is very random this can save you absolutely nothing if it targets a spell that you're not interested in actually casting um the great Builder pick here is going to do a very good job for us in terms of scaling up our SPI economy SPI economy is going to ask you more to get extra cities than anything else um and because it's going to be scaling off of cities that are at least population five where you can build the town hall it is a little scarier to burn them down and then reanimate them using your souls so you might just Bank a lot of souls with this build until you get to White born and then go crazy um because you cannot do the normal burn down and reanimate as efficiently but there's there's definitely things you can still do with your souls and fortunately by by taking great Builders you do get a workshop at the beginning of the game I don't I don't know if that's going to be enough draft on every single map cuz you like you really do need to to juice your Draft when you're playing as industrious so if you take this combination of society traits I think you're locking yourself into an early game uh blacksmith but because of the workshop that's not even devastating in terms of your production like a lot of extra production is coming there to you um because this is for free and then of course as we develop we'll move into the to of necromancy so to of necromancy I I think broadly you're not going to be using skeleton reanimation uh I would encourage most people to not use these in in Auto resolves right now they're just way too fragile but one Necromancer and a white born hero who you've reanimated from killing a free City because you can do that one uh is really efficient in terms of both of your economy because it saves you enormous amounts of gold or Mana for the reanimation um but also really efficient in terms of combat because there's only going to be one Undead unit if you only have like a white born hero and nobody else so the Necromancer is sort of locked into using strengthen Undead on that hero which is really really powerful cuz it means that that hero is effectively always going to be hastened and is going to be heading up towards strength and five like ASAP as long as you got one Necromancer sitting around and then necrotic magic is is seriously insane um this thing does apply to the non-re repeating attacks on your Battle Mages so this means that this is actually a 90% chance in an AOE on a battle mage who's using one of their their AOE abilities for for decaying which is one of the best uh damage overtime abilities like the 10 blight is not insane but the preventing regaining HP is disgusting against someone who does not have enough regeneration stack sitting around uh most of the rest of the Tom of necromancy you're not super interested in though this is a good a good tactical spell um and you do sometimes have enough Mana or enough uh gold to run Soul collection but you don't have to always use everything um in the to of necromancy in order to get good value here and just the Necromancer hero and then neotic magic is enough I think to to want to to take it early uh we'll of course be using a wizard King I think anytime you're messing around with major Transformations then you need to seriously consider a wizard King uh because it makes your life a lot better if you're not doing that then you kind of have to start with at least three astral so you're not woefully behind on casting points but a wizard King alone is is going to be fantastic on anything other than the absolute smallest of maps um and a crobo is also just like generically useful and because the the industrious should be able to replace that weapon faster than normal uh you should be in a bit of a bit of a bonus I'm hoping at some point they make it so you switch back to the godier sword because that is actually really good um the godier sword you can see here actually deals Spirit damage naturally so getting getting that as an unequip option would be great for this build but across the board um when it comes to necro industrious what you can look at in terms of your to development you have to take to avoing I think um this is Al this is really really good with industrias no matter what you're doing but especially in a universe where you're going to be playing around with uh with you know necromancing units um and that Massive Spirit and fire weakness you you kind of have to use to of warding there's no way around it uh but because you have an SPI on to of necromancy and it's in your tier ones now you're not hopefully woefully behind in regards to your um your Economic Development and your research development in particular as we move into tier twos I'm going to recommend here just playing around with to of the Doom Herald and to of summoning if you want to do with just like generically boring powerful things like rry then like you can do that too that's fine but I think that the defensive Matrix that we've built for this necro industrious is strong enough that you can afford to do something like Tom of Doom Herald to of Doom Herald is usually not that good um simply because like you're not getting a lot of extra damage out of the cruel weapons most of the time although there are ways to exploit crumbling formations um but there if you have insanely durable units which uh bastions are insanely durable units then to of the Doom Herald can actually be a massive spike in combat efficiency and especially in with the interaction with necrotic magic and banshees in the event that you get into a manual combat early you can just summon in a banshee and then use it as just like a nuclear bomb of a like a massive 2 AOE 90% inflict Decay that's a really really powerful tool even if it is not good in Auto resolves in regards to multiplayer if you're fighting with manuals on against your friends dropping in a Banshee on like turn 25 or 30 is disgusting um and on that note you can use Tom of summoning to to juice those further this is of course like highly debatable if if you're not moving into to of the archage later then you can summon kind of whatever you want to here if you're moving up towards to of the Creator but I like to of the Ark Mage especially if we're going to play with to of golden realm because I think it's fun um and so you have to take to astral if you're if you're going in that direction and to of summoning does have some really cool outs uh if you notice your opponent is playing around with a lot of magical origin units then this to is insanely powerful uh but even if they're not like they're probably going to have something that is an evolutionary summon if you get into a fight early enough then this thing can just like walk all over them uh and and as we progress in we'll see of course to of transmutation so that way we get access to our transmuters with the AOE uh decaying effect outside of the the use the single use missiles that are the uh the Banshees and to of great transformation which order you do those in I think kind of depends on what your economy looks like but broadly speaking I think the the power available through to of transmutation makes you mostly want to take it early it's just really good um to of the Reaper of course is going to give you access to Reapers unfortunately reapers are not magic origin units apparently so you're not going to be able to haste them with the the to of the Ark Mage but they're still going to be hastal using um your necromancers so like this is this is an opportunity for you to lean into making access to haste for your uh your big boys and then uh to of the golden realm you're mostly not going to be using the the gold golems here but rather if you're leaning into to five um for astral then you're just picking up the Guild on magical attacks which could be a an opportunity use a Dragon Ruler but I do think that you can use it on basically anyone and have it be very powerful to of the golden realm giving you Guild on on crits automatically plus the massive crit that you get off of to of the arc Mage means if you find any other critical on anything including you know like just building stuff using a to of transmutation and and item Forge means you can make it so that your uh AOE magical attacks have like effectively a 100% chance to Guild it's just very very useful across the all right so before we get into this final section where we're going to do a 100% sweaty no friends build for industrious I do want to highlight that you don't want to bring the exact same build every single time uh in the event that you do that your opponents are going to get wise and they're going to find ways to counter you uh like this this is true in ag of Wonders 4 there's always a solution to a specific problem and that means that you need to create not specific problems for your opponents but like General problems for your opponents which is what this uh this build guide I I hope is is gearing you towards but in a 100% sweaty no friends industrious build yeah right so let's take industrious here um we're going to go ahead and run with a wizard King I think that if you know what you're doing and you want to have fun then you can definitely play around with a dragon lord especially on a smaller map um but just like generic sweatiness uh wizard King is still the best thing in the game as as boring as it is for me to say it to you it it is true um and I do generally like starting with to of Waring with uh industrious I love the the starting astral affinity and its interaction with your empire development but I also think that generally speaking um the the extra strength that you get off fantasm Warriors when it comes to early game game clearing is absolutely worth it uh you do need to be aware that if you run into someone who deals lightning damage you do not bring your fantasm warriors they will die way too fast uh but I think generically the the power in both your Empire as well as your military development off of warding makes it almost an auto include and then we're going to go with crobo cuz I I think that as yawn as this is it is one of the best picks that you can take uh in the game in terms of early game scaling and then even as you get into the mid to late game like having one extra unit that can sometimes inflict blind or at the very least stand next to somebody's unit that needs clear zone of control is still useful like this thing does drop off towards the very end of the game um and so you can take something else but I I think it's so powerful early that you kind of have to in regards to our traits I think we're going to be wanting to go into storm ringers later on so we're probably not going to want to mount here so we are going to go with bullwark simply because there are so many ways for that to be uh net positive for us and I like elusive mostly on these guys simply because you do have like a lot of things that are going to interact with retaliation attacks and opportunity attacks if you don't have power attackers then elusive is a lot better and here with our our uh taunting I think we can get a lot of value and then early on I do love herbivore I think herbivore is another one of those things that kind of slows down as the game goes on um and so having two of those does sound a little bit bit dangerous but be aware that herbivore is so powerful in the early game clearing that it can save you enormous amounts of of gold um especially if you're playing without barbarians the ability to keep the pressure on and keep clearing is really really good in regards to our society traits I think you kind of have to take something that offers draft and I think the best draft is generally science of evil simply because this does scale militarily really really well um and it's not too difficult to find enough evil if you're willing to burn down a city or two uh and then for other pick I we're obviously not going to go with r with uh silver tonged I don't think that that adds enough and then here with this this Empire that's mostly going to be doing map oriented things druidic terraformers really isn't like where I want to be so I think I could make a good argument for adup settlers simply because you one are going to have extra bonus draft in every single city rather than just your Capital rip and piece um Champions uh or fabled Hunters but you know what we've seen enough things with fabled Hunters these days so we'll go with adap settlers and it it really does work wonder for early game uh development for your industrious we're going to go into Alchemy of course because that is solving the biggest specific problem for our our um our guys which is decaying and then in regards to our tier twos because we do have a to of warding I'm going to recommend revry that's just generically really good for sweatiness and then fists as well um just across the board sweatiness is is always is always a useful thing you could still go into to of construct but because we're going to be going into Naga transformation later we kind of have a haste built into everyone um and then because we have bullwark and we have defensive Masters and we have the defensive sweep on our on our bastions there are going to be a lot of ways for us to get around people trying to flank us so I don't think that uh to of construct is strictly necessary go with to of transmutation as as boring as it is to of transportation is unbelievably powerful um and then in regards to our other tier three I think you could make an argument for something like to of amplification if you wanted to really lean into to utilizing your your storm brers so we'll pick up to of amplification there and then we're going to go in on Tom of Stormborn uh unsurprisingly whenever you get Naga Transformations online your bastions go from being annoying to being insanely dangerous cuz they are going to be like able to pop around the map kind of at will and and up Behind Enemy units when they try to kill you it's really rude uh and so I I like I like pushing for that and then in regards to your other tier four depending on what you see out of your opponent you could potentially pick up like one uh materium affinity and that would allow you to do uh the Tome of Crucible and therefore access meteor arrows on your your storm brers if you are so inclined and then for uh tier five we'll go with to of the Creator simply because that is available and although we don't have other ways to shred enemy status resistance here within the build and therefore our um our nuke the everybody tectonic shatter ability will be a lot worse it is still a very powerful uh spell to have in your back pocket as well as like the undying effect can be be useful if you happen to find kind a powerful Elemental to to pick up along the way but to of the Creator is mostly like a just a freebie in terms of the Affinity so that's our our tier five here with this this sweaty guy so this is like a great way for you to just leverage early game military find your way up to uh to of the Stormborn use some storm brers and some bastions to clown on people supported by scalds and then in the event that the game goes Super Duper long and you end up looping back around you can pick up stuff like Tom of the golden realm and uh work in some some gold golems into your build if you are so inclined so that is our uh video here with the general industrious build if you liked this uh this format then let me know if you had a different way that you wanted this video to to lay out also let me know that I'm not 100% sure which direction I want to go with for our general industrious builds and like other General builds in the future so if the combination of the database in the game is uh is what you're looking for then then I guess you're in the right place uh and for now that is uh that's Walker all right take care

Channel: w(&)e play games

Views: 6,161

Keywords: age of wonders 4, aow4, build guide, aow 4 industrious build guide, age of wonders 4 industrious build, age of wonders 4 industrious, dragon ruler, necromancy, aow4 mp, aow4 pvp, autoresolve only, aow4 autoresolve, age of wonders 4 pvp industrious

Id: qLXP1o5KUIg

Length: 59min 26sec (3566 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024