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

all right everybody welcome back to we playay games I'm Walker and here we are in Age of Wonders 4 about to do our society traits tier list now as I mentioned in the other multiplayer Basics videos you absolutely can take these learnings and apply them to single player and in fact if you're thinking about jumping into multiplayer I would strongly encourage you to practice with your build in single player first just so that way you get a feel for the way your economy works the way your military works and of course you know train yourself to to see what sort of battles you can actually take with auto resolve against the AI cuz you are going to be doing a lot of autor resolve against the AI especially if you're playing on a live multiplayer the way that we play generally on this this channel you can't rely on manual battling against the ancient wonders to make sure that your economy grows quickly and so that's why a a trait list like this I think is going to be helpful but that said let's uh let's hop over and talk about our grading scale real fast so the S tier Society traits are going to be those that are just across the board very very useful these are going to be ones that are going to dramatically change the nature of your economy the nature of your hero economy and of course across the board are just going to be dramatically increasing your win percentage assuming that you know how to use them the a tiers are going to be pretty similar to the S tiers maybe they accomplish something similar in terms of economy but a little less efficiently than the S tiers or they're going to be those that are very very strong but have a particular build that requires uh use of these traits and we're going to talk through particular builds or or play Styles if there's something interesting so you'll notice that down below in the chapter some of them are a lot longer that's not necessarily cuz they're better or worse it just means that there's more to talk about in regards to the utilization of those traits the bees and the C's are going to be pretty similar these are going to be those that are a lot less efficient than the S and the A's they going to be a lot of like combat only traits down here but we'll discuss them from the perspective of you know how useful these are going to be both in terms of a rush because if you're taking a lot of you know military traits then you are absolutely committing to a rush uh sort of fight but the bees and the C's are still playable you just kind of need to know how to use them the D tier traits on the other hand anything that's down here in the D tier trait you should not take these in multiplayer in single player of course you can play with basically anything have fun but these are going to be role playing and those that if you bring them to multiplayer you should not expect to win cuz the they're you're playing for fun not for victory if you're bringing a de a d tier trait so that said let's uh let's jump in on our first trait here we're just going to follow it in order on this uh tier I think there might be one trait that's missing but we'll slide add in whenever we get there so let's talk about adap settlers adap settlers is a very very strong trait and I think a great way for us to start viewing the lens of economy here within our society traits it does have a little downside right it has a nature affinity and generally speaking nature Affinity isn't great in Age of Wonders 4 right now there are some use cases like awaken instincts but overall nature is a little weaker but that doesn't matter as much as you'd think because there are going to be of course six affinities available to you in the beginning of the game if you're not playing as a dragon lord seven if you are and as long as you have a way to get at least two materium Affinity pretty quickly either through just starting with two materium Affinity or by starting with one and then picking up a level four signature skill on your ruler that affords you materium Affinity your economy isn't going to be really that far behind by picking traits based mostly off of their text and not their uh their affinities in the text on adup Settlers is just through the roof good so adup settlers does a couple of different things for you it gives you a starting bonus of an extra population on your capital city this is actually a really really strong bonus simply because of what it means to your early game in multiplayer it's pretty standard to be starting on normal starting resources rather than the brutal standard of low so that way everybody has easy access to their first hero on turn or their second hero if you count your ruler on turn one but of course if you do that if you spend 250 of your 300 gold to recruit a hero the 50 gold that you're left over with is not enough to start building a building you can always start building a building prior to actually picking up the Boost because the really important thing when it comes to boosts ultimately except for the really expensive uh buildings is more the industry side than it is the gold side and while the gold is paid up front the industry cost actually scales while your uh tiles that you're working on your cities change and so if you start building a library and you don't have a Forester and then you pick up a Forester later it will actually reduce the cost of the industry of that for of the uh the library on the the fly and can finish simply by increasing your population so adab settlers isn't going to set you like three turns ahead of everybody else when it comes to building uh an actual economy in your capital city but it is going to definitely set you one turn ahead of all of them and of course meaningfully starting with an extra population means it's a little bit faster to get to five and therefore a little faster to get to special Province improvements which which are really really important when it comes to age of Wonders 4 so the starting bonus here for adab settlers is great and the rest of the text here is also great if you're not sure how powerful Imperium and empire development tree is I would recommend you just watch that video but basically Imperium is probably the single most important resource at the beginning of the game simply because it is going to naturally create both opportunities for Heroes by increasing your city cap by founding more cities which cost Imperium or it's going to give you more knowledge by giving you more cities that can build more libraries can build more cies can absorb more Amplified mines and so Imperium is just great always and this is unparalleled when it comes to the amount of Imperium you get every city that you found only costs 150 Imperium instead of 200 you might still end up conquering a reasonable number of your cities but ad up settlers even if you only found one city 50 Imperium in comparison to some of the other traits here that get you generally five extra Imperium per turn at the the beginning of the game means that those uh other traits require 10 turns in order to get to the same amount of Imperium and of course every time you found a new city it's going to add an extra 10 turns to that timer that they need to catch up but there's another big big part to the Imperium calculation here which is City cap so naturally you're going to need to expand your city cap in Age of Wonders 4 unless you're doing like a team fight or a very very small map like 1 V one you're going to want to get to four five six cities so that way your economy can keep growing and keep growing and every time you need to get to that next city of course you're going to pick the right of governance which also increase in cost in terms of its Imperium so what this means is that for a normal culture that does not take adap settlers they're going to need to spend 200 then 500 then 800 in order to get to six City cap on the other hand ad up settlers they don't just get the 200 extra Imperium up front for not having to click it the first time but they also sort of get discount Ed by not having to click it the last time either because you know in order for an ad up settlers to get to six they click it once for 2 200 and then twice for 500 but meaningfully that 800 is missing so this means that ad up settlers gets in terms of Imperium the most Imperium in the entire game by a pretty wide margin and of course you know just as a nice little bonus flung on there for free your newly founded cities also gain one extra population which is as I said with the founding cities bonus it depends on what your map is looking like but you're pretty much always going to found at least one or two cities so this is a just an across theboard great package the only thing I can level against it is of course nature Affinity isn't very good but that doesn't matter ad up settlers is probably one of the single best traits in the entire game and I think our grade should reflect that so yep add up settlers this is an easy s tier so up next we have ancient wise ones ancient wise ones is nice it gives you access to astral Affinity which of course I'm a huge fan of Astral affinity it's got a great empire development tree and some pretty good Tes along the way but ancient wise ones has taken like a huge uh stealth Nerf Over The Watcher patch it used to be prior to the Watcher patch that the best way to make progress in your tones was you know just take whatever the cheapest skills were and the of course the important skills along the way so that way you could actually cast good stuff but having random skills be reduced by 60% knowledge was just never a bad thing cuz you always going to research them but the way ancient wise one works now of course is that you really don't want to be researching skills that you're never going to make use of cuz that's not only wasted knowledge when it comes to multiplayer but it also makes all of your subsequent researches more expensive so in this case the effects is very random right minus 60% knowledge if it targets U an expert skill that you absolutely want to be researching is a colossal amount of knowledge that it fronts to you but it also might just get literally nothing so this is an inherently extremely random random effect that it makes available to you the starting bonus is okay right one random research skill is already unlocked is actually pretty nice depending on what to you're on very few Toms start with their summon already unlocked and generally speaking you're just going to be shuffling your research until you find your your summon ASAP if you don't start it with unlocked and so this can save you a pretty meaningful amount of Mana up front if it starts you with your uh your summon unlocked but it's inherently very very random whether or not you want to play around with Randomness is kind of up to you but in a competitive multiplayer format I try to do my best to reduce my Reliance on Randomness and I think because this doesn't make anything available to you in terms of real economy and the effects are uh unreliable at best I think that the astral Affinity isn't enough to make ancient wise ones any more than probably a b tier that that might surprise people because knowledge really is that important in the game it's it's But ultimately this is just unreliable and you shouldn't look to it in multi player that often so up next we have Banner Lords the first thing I want to mention about Banner Lords is that of course this is something you unlock with the pantheon none of them are really like pay to win or you know play to win because none of them are ridiculously overpowered but some of them are are actually quite nice and I think bannerlords is one of them so Banner Lords weighing against it of course is that it is an order Affinity uh and that's generally not great but sometimes you can get good value out of it like if you want to go into Angel Eyes that's that can be pretty nice but Banner Lords is really strong trait if you use it correctly it gives you effects rally of the leashes occurs twice as often what this means of course also is that your first rally is going to happen way way faster each subsequent will occur way faster you'll get access to those rally units a lot more quickly and of course this is going to help you recruit stuff from your Ancient Wonders don't think of banner Lords as necessarily I'm going to spam free cities even though the uh the starting bonus here is free City related rather use your free cities to get rally points so that way you can spend the rally points on Ancient W stuff and I think that if you're trying to really utilize order Affinity not that you have to right you can always take Banner Lords and use it in a non-order uh build but if you're going to be going into order and utilizing the stuff that's in there I think the strongest way to utilize it is to utilize all of the things that are in rally and just get a giant army ASAP and try to you know smash some face with it and bannerlords really does do that well as long as you provide it with Ancient Wonders but of course that's asking you to do something that naturally you should be doing anyways you should be trying to get as many Ancient Wonders as quickly as possible so that way you can get the economic benefit of the Imperium but this also gets you the economic benefit of the units from those Ancient Wonders this of course means that you're not going to need nearly as much in terms of Transformations so that's going to bring down the value of Transformations on your overall Toms but enchantment are generally going to work on the things that you get from your uh your banner Lords stuff except of course the uh the Mythic units but hey spoiler alert Mythic units are actually pretty good in Age of Wonders 4 and banner Lords really can get you some disgusting armies very very early just don't don't think of it as a free City perk it's it's an ancient wonder perk but Ancient Wonders are good so Banner Lords I think is actually quite nice but we did say that anything that's like situational or build dependent was probably going to be an a tier I think bannerlords is probably a tier or possibly like the very top of B but I think it's meaningfully more reliable in terms of the value it gets available to you than ancient wise ones so yeah we'll put it in a I think that makes sense on the other side of things we have chosen destroyers this is a single player only trait when it comes to multiplayer one of the most important things is to get new cities down and then get a library and an Arcane Institute into them as quickly as possible cuz that only requires one Forester and one Quarry unless those are being replaced cuz you're playing as barbarians and so those two build buildings alone are going to provide you with 25 knowledge income in addition to all of the other resources of that City chosen destroyers is just bad I think that if they wanted this to be playable in multiplayer then raising a city would have to either give you a permanent bonus to food and production in addition to everything else or it would probably give you just like a giant one- turn bonus of food and Industry that could also be pretty good but like this just doesn't play well well with the way that the game actually works and of course it precludes access to the other things that are are generally pretty good the one thing I guess that I could say that would be nice about it is that because you only have one city you're going to have a whole lot of extra Imperium but if you're not researching a whole bunch of stuff very quickly cuz you're going to fall behind on knowledge income against somebody who's just founding cities and building tiny amounts of infrastructure uh this is unplayable don't don't play chosen destroyers it's just bad so let's talk about chosen uniters the first thing I like about chosen in uniters of course is that you do get access to a bunch of Imperium this unlocks something on the Imperium tree specifically diplomatic Focus so it's sort of like starting with 150 Imperium but of course it's 150 Imperium that like does literally nothing for your economy on turn one cuz you're not going to be getting anything out of these uh these free cities that you identify until you vassalize them or at least get to the point where you can trade with them but also critically you can't put two whispering stones in your capital in multiplayer it you know until you find your first free City you just strand your Whispering Stone in your Capital to start getting a ticking bonus on on stability there and then eventually you'll find one free City and if you can't conquer it you'll move the the whispering Stone over there but if you find more than one free City and you're not able to conquer them then you should probably ask yourself why cuz that's what you should be doing with your free cities Beyond those that are just simply Out Of Reach is either conquer them and incorporate them or maybe even raise them to the ground if you have access to souls and then just refound them with with the Souls instead of the Imperium so the Diplomatic focus is like limited in terms of its value I think the extra alignment here is cute CU you know you can combine Chosen uniters and devotes of good and playing on high and then you have immediately uh plus 30 alignment and therefore you can start on the second level of the uh devotees of good and that's the only way to get there but that's like generally not what you want to be doing with high anyway your economy is a lot stronger if you just pick up neutral uh like sap and devotees of good even though this is of course an Imperium thing when we talk about it we'll we'll talk about Imperium stuff but just I I think broadly speaking the most of the other bonuses here for chosen uniters just aren't very good uh 20% income from vassals does scale pretty nicely into a very long game on a very big map so I imagine that zombies economy does look pretty good by now but it's also cost him a lot in terms of early game development and that is kind of what's important when it comes to age of Wonders 4 your early game development need means that you know if if you fall behind your neighbors are just going to eat you and chosen uniters is too slow to be that valuable but I just it's not very good let's talk about chosen unit's best friend devotees of good or at least you know what should be chosen unit's best friend devotees of good so the first thing I like about devotees of good of course is that this is an Imperium based thing I just like anything that gets me extra Imperium even if it's not going to be as powerful as adup settlers on Imperium but you can of course get 10 extra imp by starting high and going with uniters and devotes of good and if you play it carefully you can get good value out of being good being good in Age of Wonders 4 is generally worse than being evil um being evil especially if you get down to Pure Evil gets you access to plenty of events that I imagine are probably supposed to be bad but if you give me the opportunity to sacrifice population for like two or three levels on a a ruler or a hero you guarantee I'm clicking that button every single time um and the events for devotes of good are much more just like here's a bunch of economy and go crazy with that but ultimately I think the economy boosts from being good are are not as useful until you get to a late game scenario and if you slow down your early game too much which playing as a good character does cost you then it it can really be hard to get to that late game place the reason of course that good costs you in terms of your early game is that a if you attack a stack of of creeps and your a lot stronger than them you're going to get an event to either kill them for a little bit of extra experience points for your big beefy stack or let them run away but if you let them run away you don't get the experience points so playing good means sacrificing experience points on your Heroes which means sacrificing military strength on your Heroes generally speaking it's a dangerous equation and of course you get evil alignment from declaring war on free cities and pillaging their stuff and you generally want to be doing that declaring in free cities is great for you cuz that's a big high population city that you can conquer that has a guaranteed material under it and of course those free cities you can pillage and get a ton of free gold for your your cities even if you're going to conquer it and rebuild those uh those tiles it doesn't matter CU you're getting gold earlier and then paying it back later after you've made an investment with it and gotten value and of course the cost to repair is only 50 gold whereas the gold you get from pillaging is 75 so it's just like Great Value across the board to pillage stuff and devotees it makes it illegal uh you can't do it if you're if you're being good and trying to get good value here the thing that I can say about devotes of good that I think is the nicest about of course is that the starting bonuses here of extra support unit or pole arm unit means that most factions are going to get a guaranteed tier 2 out of devotees starting with a guaranteed extra tier 2 actually is a nice big upgrade when it comes to early game clearing especially if you can start with a guaranteed pole arm cuz you're playing as is dark but that's that's a very particular build that we'll talk about later but ultimately I think that devotees of good because a the stability is just nonsense and B the Imperium is relatively slow in comparison to the other things and C I'm not a big fan of of good across the board means that I I really don't think we can get devotes of good any higher than a b tier I think there are scenarios where you could use it for good value it's just it's a lot more difficult to get good value out of it than something like ad up settlers instead so up next we experienced seaf fares of course experienced sea fares does give you a little bit of Imperium it's going to unlock basic seaf Fairing and therefore give your units even easier access to getting flatsome and clearing the the board that way but it's still very very bad um unfortunately a this doesn't really help you when it comes to the embarcation cost when it comes to movement points which is very slow it I think if they wanted seaf fares to be better they would give it fast or instant embarcation in a addition to everything else but even if you did that it still wouldn't be very good Naval units in Age of Wonders 4 are just not good I don't know why that is cuz they felt very strong in Planet fall if you had access to to Seas but generally speaking I'm very unimpressed with the the naval units that are currently available in Age of Wonders 4 and just like all the other economic bonuses here are nonsense Fisheries getting a whole bunch of extra yields sounds nice until you realize that you're probably not going to be picking up a fishery in until you're at like population five or six even with experienced seafarers anyway just cuz you want to get youry online ASAP and those do not require or even utilize uh or benefit from a fishery like there's some fun late game scaling that you can get out of this but it's mostly nonsense and of course underlining the mostly nonsense here is that in multiplayer in particular very very very few groups are going to be playing with a lot of ocean tiles it's bad for player interaction and limits your ability to expand bandn and one of the things that is good about Age of Wonders 4 is that if you play with you know a land map you can actually get the game done in a reasonable time frame but you can't do that as easily if everyone has to spend Imperium in order to actually start fighting so like this is just it's not as bad as chosen destroyers it's like literally unplayable but the problem is that even on a water-based map it's not very good so experience seaf fars I think unfortunately is also a a d tier so next we have fabled hunters now fabled Hunters I think is probably a a pretty misunderstood pick when it comes to age of Wonders 4 I think a lot of people see you know the art here of I've got a bow and see the stuff here in terms of effects and say oh yeah ranged units sure I I know how you're supposed to use fabled hunters get ranged units and and fight with them and that's sort of true like Glade Runners are quite nice and fabled Hunter Glade Runners are a little bit nicer but I'm going to tell you that the rest of this text could be blank like from here down and fabled Hunters would still be one of the strongest if not the single strongest Society trait in the game because of what it makes available to you so it makes a couple of things available first whenever you clear a resource node in Age of Wonders 4 you're going to get fronted a whole bunch of resources of that resource type in my experience and I'm sure that there's a Wiki article on this but I'm not going to check I it's like four to six turns worth of production that you get on that resource note I'm pretty sure uh maybe it's 4 to seven but you get a whole bunch of turns of resources Upfront for just clearing resource nodes and of course this doubles the resources from that right if you go from five turns worth of resources for free to 10 turns worth of resources for free that should be gamebreaking when it comes to the setting the pace of your your resource economy and it doesn't just stop with resource nodes it gets you 100% resources from infestation and ancient wonders as well and because of the Ancient Wonders being on here this means that this resource is not just limited to you know food food and Industry and Mana gold no you can get Knowledge from this just clear the Wonders that get you knowledge you can get Imperium from this just clear the Ancient Wonders that get you Imperium obviously like that's easier said than done uh and it does Scale based off of world threat and of course world threat is going to be dependent on your play group uh in most multiplayer groups I've seen they're playing on normal World threat cuz the high World threat just slows the game down a lot except for when you start getting really powerful Heroes and then it actually speeds it up but you know obviously fabled Hunters is a little worse on on high World threat because it is slower when it comes to clearing but you just you get so many resources from this it's disgusting and and as I mentioned you can even get Imperium from it if you're focused it doesn't give you Imperium early game that's like the biggest thing I can lever against uh fabled hunters and of course you know you do need to scout a lot to make sure you can find those infestations and kill those but you should be doing that anyway cuz you get a whole bunch of really great stuff from infestations including you know absurd hero equipment and you should be clearing Ancient Wonders cuz you get Imperium from that so yeah fabled Hunters I think easily one of the strongest if not the single strongest tradeit in the game I think generally speaking it's actually probably stronger than adapt uh but I think it's a little harder to use it just requires you focus so much on your military and understand your military management to get good value but you know learn that get good at military management put down Outpost to heal uh and to speed up your movement around the board kill things ASAP and you should get so many resources out of fabled hunters that you're you're mom will finally be proud of you so up next we have gifted casters I I'm going to preface this by saying I wish gifted casters was better cuz some of the text here is absurd but uh It ultimately does fall a little short I think the biggest highlight for gifted casters is of course the casting points casting points are incredibly incredibly powerful in game and this is a really big bonus at the beginning of the game right plus 10 world map casting points when everybody else is on like 40 or 50 world map casting is on a percentage basis a pretty big upgrade and it does mean of course that you can start shaving turns off of whenever you're casting things especially shaving turns off of summons right if you go from 50 casting points to 60 casting points then you go from being able to summon like uh most of the time to reliably every single time without eating into your casting budget for the next turn cuz of of course you want to be trying to basically use your casting points to 100% as early as possible when it comes to age of Wonders 4 you're going to need a lot of Mana to do that but you want to do it because that is a non-renewable resource you don't get funded extra map casting points for not using them but it's just too small that's I think the biggest thing I can say about gifted casters is that in order for this to be playable in PvP I would want a couple of things changed here first of course is that combat spells costing 20% less Mana to cast is B basically blank text with the way the Tactical AI works right now I think if the Tactical AI was like something you could design a spell book for prior to an auto combat and say I want you AI to cast these spells then combat spells costing less Mana would actually be pretty nice but the Tactical AI just doesn't use combat spells very well right now and so the Mana bonus there is pretty limited the mechanical bonuses here in terms of extra points just aren't enough to justify one of two Society traits and the starting bonus start with one extra combat spell unlocked is nice cuz it speeds up the the speed at which you get to your next tier one toome but it's bad because it unlike ancient wise ones which at least has a a random chance of flipping into a summon and therefore being very very strong gifted casters does not have that you know highroll opportunity there it's always a combat spell and again with the way the Tactical AI works right now combat spells just don't matter that much I think if they wanted gifted casters to be playable this would need to be like 20 or 25 and also say like uh strategic spells cost minus 20% less Mana to cast cuz at least that's something you have control over but I I think I think unfortunately gifted casters is a c tier I I can't tell you how much I wish this was a tier because I love the concept and I love casting points but it's just not enough all right so let's talk about one of my new favorites which is great Builders so great Builders is one of my favorites both because it has access to materium and just across the board I'm a big fan of materium it has really strong empire development tree and very good toes but also great Builders itself is just interesting because there's four things going on here of such wildly different value that I think they can be attractive to different players and accidentally take people down the wrong direction so when you see great Builders I think the first thing that a lot of very very new players are going to be attracted to is of course ston walls you know they're going to see oh I have extra fortification this means of course that it's harder for people to Siege Me and You Know that that is actually something that people should be thinking about right it if you can declare war on somebody but you have to spend three extra turns sieging their Capital down then you're probably going to fall that much further behind when it comes to someone who is just clearing Ancient Wonders so if you see your your food your uh your newbie food has stone walls on their City you actually should think about not attacking them just to save yourself the time and and go focus on wonder clearing instead but you know broadly not the biggest deal the Workshop those are are pretty interesting so workshops of course you're going to start with 10 production and 10 draft income I think that most players are going to want to start with one Farm start building a workshop immediately flip the farm over to either a Forester or a quarry and then just like move on with their life and come back to Farms when they're like six or seven population if they really need to after they've gotten a Scholars Guild Online but you starting with that stuff done is nice and starting with 10 extra reduction and 10 extra draft on a percentage base is actually actually a really big bonus to your early game economy it's just that other people are going to get there it might take them a couple of turns but they'll get there you should also be aware of course that this is going to be replaced by your cultural bonus if you're playing with Artisans because you have high or you're playing with evocator Abode cuz you're playing as Mystic then instead of getting the 10 production that you get from a a normal Workshop you're going to be getting either a little bit of extra Mana or you're going to be replacing a little bit of your draft with a little stability I think generally speaking the base Workshop is the strongest of the bunch but Artisan Workshop is pretty good if you utilize neutral alignment High which you should be doing anyway most of the time the best way to play them is just get into neutral ASAP so that way you get extra food and production in your capital and and grow it like crazy and you know five extra bonus stability when it comes to your Workshop is a a nice little upgrade the quaries yielding two extra gold is also pretty nice you're not generally going to have quaries on your outposts quaries yielding two extra gold is a a little sprinkle of extra gold in there and and I think a nice little bonus to it especially once you get into the mid game because it gives you some pretty meaningful scaling once you have like five cities with three uh quaries under their effect and of course the bonuses from having Governors and everything else going on but the reason that I like great Builders is of course special Province improvements we've talked about this a lot but I think that special Province improvements are incredibly important when it comes to age of Wonders 4 especially if you have a research post special Province Improvement that's something that you can use to reliably allow most of your cities to build an academy as well as if you get multiple of them reliably allow your cities to build and really utilize Scholars guilds you can build research posts on anything that's either a Mana node or a a magical material but you know sometimes you just don't find those or you find a really good spot that looks like it should be great except you just don't have access to the ability to build a research post and then like what are you going to do are you not going to turn that out post attached to a bronze ancient wonder into a city just cuz it couldn't normally build a research post no you just build the research post anyway but that's where the province improvements really factor in and of course the province improvements are just really good across the board the biggest ding of course against these is that a there's a finite re there's a finite amount of them based off of how many Toms you have unlocked and of course B the actual production cost on a lot of the special Province improvements aren't going to be that High um but that's okay because you know if it shad off a bunch of production in the early game that is also impactful right if you can build a central Quarry for 65 production instead of 130 and get it out two turns earlier and start collecting the extra production that much earlier then it's one of those snowballing effects and the great Builder because it gives you access to building some of the best stuff in the game even if it isn't going to be shaving that much off of production I think is very very good I don't think it's as good as the Imperium stuff and I do think that if you play Banner Lords correctly and just use a bunch of Ancient Wonders that Banner Lords is probably stronger than great Builders but I I think this is an a tier pick and I'm really excited to be playing with it in in some future multiplayer stream we will definitely use this all right so up next we have imperialists now imperialist is a pretty straightforward run right there's really only two blocks of text here but there are two blocks of text that are together going to meaningfully impact the way that your economy is going to need to develop in Age of Wonders for first of course your capital city is going to start with one extra popul we've already talked about why that's good in regards to ad up settlers but here with imperialists it's also important to keep in mind that you want to be growing towards your second City basically immediately because of the way the actual effect of imperialists work so imperialists you get 20 extra City stability and 20 extra gold income now the 20 extra City stability is really only meaningful if you're playing as a neutral alignment high but also imperialist encourages you very deliberately to just found your second and third cities as quickly as humanly possible even if they're in inefficient locations as long as you can see easy paths for them to be adjacent to your throne City now the way that um cities share borders is actually modifiable through outposts you can just put an outpost down with a workshop and then connect uh two cities that are two tiles apart so don't think that they have to be like literally right next to each other but imperialist is going to tell you upfront hey don't worry about finding the optimal City Spot just find something that good enough so that way you can make it adjacent to your throne City get the extra 20 gold get a huge early game economy going and of course because all of this stuff is early game stuff that in the long term is going to be inefficient imperialist really is a rush Society trait even if it doesn't give you a military bonus this is a rush Society trait it's good when you use it to rush it's pretty bad when you don't use it to rush and and that's where I think people generally stumble when it comes to imperialists the problem of course is that imperialists are kind of competing with fabled hunters in terms of just early game economy Rush stuff but I think if you're if you're dedicated to killing somebody really really early and you're looking for an economic pick that will support that imperialist is definitely there for you it's just that you know it means it means playing a very very particular build and because it means playing a very particular build that I I think overall isn't as strong as some of the other things that you make available that are made available to you I think it's a b tier trait although you know it's not it's not unplayable don't feel bad taking imperialists just know how it's actually used all right so we have our first pure military pick here with Mana addicts now Mana addicts is another Pantheon pick but there are a lot of these pure military things so I think it's worth it for us to talk about them right now pure military is generally pretty bad when it comes to age of Wonders 4 because one of the the most important things when it comes to scaling up your military is getting access to higher tier units better units so that you can bring fewer total troops to each fight so that way the most experience gets concentrated onto your Heroes as humanly possible so anything that's pure military yeah you can still use it with getting a big economy and and better units but the big economy stuff like ad up settlers or or fabled Hunters are going to get those better units online way faster and therefore ultimately you're going to have easier fights on the map and a lot more uh easy access to ancient wanders than somebody who doesn't take those things and the the military traits just don't scale that well into the mid to late game anyway even though they do give you extra ranks on your units cuz like the first couple of ranks just aren't that M aren't that important it's not a lot of extra experience points they give you from plus one rank anyway and uh unfortunately for Mana addicts the bonuses that it gives you here are almost a net negative the nice thing I suppose is that the starting bonus of an extra battle mage unit or a support unit means that for everybody except for Mystic you're going to be starting with a a free tier 2 that that is actually pretty nice and it does mean that you can take earlier bronze ancient wonder fights a little more productively especially if you can get those leveled up but of course if you start with two support units that's not like great for your military combat advantage two support units is a basically Overkill so you're mostly going to be cycling them in and out if they take damage but that's okay but the real problem with Mana addicts is the ability itself so the first problem with this is that the Tactical AI is just not great at casting spells in combat and so you're actually kind of making it so that your your units when you're creeping and doing Auto resolve against the AI that you're actually going to creep slightly less effectively than you would with like literal blank but overall the the biggest problem is that in manual battles against other humans this is actually very exploitable we didn't do this against zombie although I did think doing it I did think about it after the the fact but zombie used to bring Mana addicts a lot and the best way to counter this is just be the defender if you you have Mana addicts and your opponent does not then the opponent's best line of play against you is to just break bring their army back to the edge of the map then the Mana addict's player has to waste a turn or two advancing their troops towards the enemy in a Siege scenario this is especially dangerous because it means the Mana addicts kind of have to give up the uh the ability to stand behind their their battlements and defend from there but even on any other sort of scenario that you can concoct it means that the ad the addicted player has to attack cuz otherwise the other players can just sit at the back of the the map and wait for morale to destroy the enemy Army this is net pretty negative whenever you take it I don't think it's necessarily like as bad as something like chosen destroyers you can technically win with this and you know props to zombie for for winning with it but I think that once you know how to fight against a a Mana addict then you know it it quickly loses its value this is good when you're fighting against new players only pretty much so up next we have I what I think is the best of the astral Affinity Society traits Mana channelers so Mana channelers I think is great for a lot of different reasons um but there are some things that hold it back right I like the fact that this is an astral Affinity thing but you don't have to get astral Affinity as early simply because astral one isn't nearly as good as astral 2 and and you can get you know a lot of Astral through your TOS or whatever so just one pip in astral isn't like a huge deal but the starting bonus here for Mana Channel is wildly wildly different uh sometimes you get a tier one bird that doesn't do anything for you except functionally es Scout that cost Mana that you might disband on turn one but often times instead what you're going to be getting is a tier one unit that can evolve into a tier three unit those are incredibly important in the early game because of the efficiency of the experience points when it comes to those so in the early game you're going to be mostly trying to maximize all of the experience points to Your Heroes as much as humanly possible especially your ruler but you have to bring other units into the more complicated fights otherwise your heroes are either going to die or they're just going to take too much damage and then they have to spend extra turns healing so you're going to be naturally bringing some other units but if you're bringing like tier one units that don't evolve like if you're just bringing a dawn defender or an anvil guard because you have to otherwise Your Heroes will die uh you're functionally throwing away the experience points those Anvil guards are are taking at least over the course of you know 30 turns or whatever cuz everyone's going to end up with a bunch of tier 3es and then your tier ones are going to be net bad for you cuz they'll die and your morale will collapse but if you take a tier one that evolves into those fights with your Heroes instead then rather than those experience points becoming wasted they become incredibly powerful because now instead of solving the issue of all right how am I going to recruit tier 3s you're just going to evolve your tier 3s um and a lot of the units that you can get here from Mana channelers although not all uh do evolve and some of them evolve incredibly well if you take mana channelers and you pick up a snow Elemental those are great if you pick up a spider that evolves those are great there are lots of really good positive outcomes to mana channelers and even the the mid- tier ones that aren't like really impressive are still good efficiency as long as they evolve but the effects here I think are pretty good summoning spells cost 50% less Mana to cast is not going to be game-breaking you're not going to save 10,000 Mana from this but it's going to save you a lot of Mana in the early game and that's when Mana is most precious and that's when you might have to have the worst case scenario of a summon that you want to summon but can't summon because you don't have enough mana and therefore your casting points just sit there doing nothing that's that's the worst I I've done it before sometimes it's just what you have to do but it feels terrible because it is terrible because casting points you don't get back and so if you can afford to have the Mana to keep summoning things or afford to keep enchanting because you didn't waste a bunch of mana on your summons in the early game that's a really big deal and of course especially if you're going to be playing around with something like the toome of Enchantment Where the AI just loves throwing away copper Golems for no reason saving a bunch of Mana cuz you have to resummon your copper Golems twice is is actually a really big deal so I think the economy side here for Mana channelers is actually very very good the biggest thing against it of course is that this does not help you out with your heroes in any way shape or form this is purely an army side thing and so it's not like amazing but the the magic origin units have plus one rank actually scales up really well too cuz this just means that even your tier four summons that are going to be you know dropping in as a a really big powerful unit are going to get instead of the four experience points that your tier one evolutionary summons start out with because of the way the tiers work they're going to start with I think 16 experience points or whatever I forget how much tier fours need to get to their first rank but it's still a pretty beefy bonus in terms of the experience point points that said I do not want to overemphasize this Mana channelers is basically pure military I could make an argument for it being in the a tier um so that way we could have a little bit of a better bell curve but I think it would be disingenuous I think that there are very specific builds and very specific Maps where Mana Channel Earths is going to succeed but overall you're probably better off picking something that has a a bigger economy side to it perfectionist Artisans is unplayable unfortunately perfectionist Artisans is cool gives you a starting tier three unit and in terms of combat efficiency as long as you you know build a good tier three unit for perfectionist Artisans to give you like a say a nightmare awakener or something like that then that is actually a really big military bonus and it means you can take bronze ancient wonders way easier you can clear things on the the map way faster when it comes to resource resource fights and of course use experience points a lot more efficiently because that tier three unit is not only going to let your Heroes take fights more more capably but of course it'll keep pace and it'll be very good even into the the mid game but the cost of taking professionist Artisans is way too high so the big cost here of course is City Cap City c cap being decreased by minus two means you have one city cap naturally so it means rather than your first city costing 200 Imperium it costs 400 Imperium and rather than your third City costing again 200 Imperium it costs 700 Imperium uh so perfectionist Artisans basically is unplayable from the Imperium standpoint alone but it also has this unnecessary penalty of City structures cost 100% more production and because of the city structures being so expensive in terms of the real industry cost likey are are very very expensive in terms of production and very very good and you have to build them 100% more production is a lot more than you'd think and the bonus you get here of five gold just doesn't it's not even good like the the devious Watchers combo with perfectionist Artisans was floating around as sort of like a meme build but even before they nerfed that interaction this still wasn't like a great thing cuz five extra gold is not gamebreaking and one extra City stability is just like essentially blank text so the uh the effects here this is a net negative even with the the late game scaling bonuses the racial tier three units is okay but you're just not going to be building a lot of racial tier three units most of your tier three units are either going to be evolutionary or from TOs and then the city cap minus two makes the your Imperium economy essentially non-functional so I think uh perfectionist Artisans you are tied with chosen destroyers for the least playable in the entire game uh but I'm going to give perfectionist Artisans a slight Edge CU if you're trying to do just like gold Wonder clearing ASAP perfectionist Artisans is actually very good at that if you manual battle stuff you can clear gold Wonders on turn 10 with profession perfectionist Artisans and it looks really good uh although that does depend on your manual battling even on Brutal you can you can do this it's just mostly there you're exploiting the Tactical AI rather than using perfectionist Artisans don't don't take this so next we have powerful evokers powerful evokers as we discussed before starting with an extra battle mage unit or support unit is generally starting with a tier 2 um but it's generally like the weakest of the tier tws that you can be starting with it's not it's not awful but the uh effects here are just pure mil milary pure military picks in Age of Wonders 4 are generally just not very good in a world where you can get easier access to Giant economies and Powerful evokers just doesn't do enough to to keep up with that yes you do get combat casting points and generally speaking I'm a huge fan of that but you're not going to have like an infinite number of support units on any sort of battle just cuz support units are going to get completely rolled if they're the only people out there with your Heroes and battle nage units depending on which ones you have access to are nice and this of course uses uses non-racial ones as well so you get a nice little bonus there if you have access to Ancient Wonders that are our battle mage units the big ding against powerful evokers is that plus five is just not a lot especially with death magic running around like if you get enough Shadow then by the mid game you have functionally infinite casting points in combat so the uh the world map casting is just way way way more important and this does not get it and of course plus one rank on battle mage units and support units isn't like gamebreaking in terms of the value it gives to you uh at least it at least this is a lot of combat strength if you have awakeners or whatever but it this is just this is just pretty unimpactful ultimately it doesn't like actively harm your Victory chances the way the the D tiers do so I can't put it there but I do think that this is pretty easily the worst of the C tiers so far so prolific swarmers prolific swarmers I think is one of these that largely got overstated uh when the game first came out because people were like thrilled with to of The Horde even though blaze of The Horde was kind of the only thing that was super spicy in that toome and now it's been nerfed and now the toome is borderline unplayable um but in multiplayer you're just not going to be using tier one units that much because if you're bringing tier one units your opponents are going to kill them you're going to have morale problems and your army is going to Route so like the bonuses here with tier one units are mostly nonsense um the other stuff here is is pretty good right minus 10% food for gaining a new population means you get to five population and therefore the tier two in your your city capital and therefore the ability to build Special Province improvements maybe two turns earlier than other people and that's that's useful but it's not gamebreaking and the non-magic origin units upkeep uh thing is is actually quite nice when it comes to scaling your economy the biggest thing I can say for it is that it does combine relatively well with something like adup settlers or imperialists in terms of just giving you a really really big head start on getting to five population but you're not going to need it for getting to 10 population don't think that you can't just build your tier three in your capital in order to start cranking out tier three units or you know add three or four tier three units in case someone is rushing you you can do that you can just you can just build them when you're at seven population without a boost like your economy should be big enough to do that and if you wait for prolific swarmers to just naturally grow you there with food you're going to miss out on the opportunity to to start getting experience points on those tier three units so this is like almost entirely rush and unfortunately because so much of the economy in the the game of Age of Wonders 4 is geared towards getting economy from ancient wonders and stuff rather than from declaring Wars on people prolific swarmers is just not that good I think it's probably net C honestly like prolific swarmers I could make an argument for B tier on a very very small Rush map but it's just that even if you are trying to rush people like just take something better like imperialists or fabled Hunters this is way way more economy and does almost the same thing as as this so up next we have ritual cannibals ritual cannibals is like borderline an only combat ability uh sort of thing but in terms of combat Effectiveness this is one of the most combat effective manual combat skills here in the society traits Tree by a pretty wide margin so ritual cannibals does technically give you a little economy in the form of minus 10 alignment if you can reliably start as evil and start getting evil events that can actually be pretty nice for your economy uh the bonus here in terms of mana and food per tier of non-magic origin unit killed is basically zero plus three food when you need you know 300 food in order to grow is not nearly as impactful as something like prolific swarmers and so the economy here is extremely anemic uh and so you'd think that I would say all right this is like a a very low C maybe it's a d but the combat ability here units gain the corpse heating ability is an enormous deal so when it comes to manual combats especially this is an enormous deal but this can be useful when it comes to just keeping your Heroes alive in a a dangerous situation with autor resolve because I have seen the AI use it sometimes I've been like testing just watching the AI and seeing if they actually use the abilities that are made available to them which is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of Mana addicts CU it has no idea what's going on in the early game and you're your creeping is way slower but ritual cannibals the the AI will use sometimes to its detriment sometimes it'll do it instead of killing stuff but if it's keeping your Heroes alive with free actions that's a big deal and of course destroying Target corpses is also incredibly important when it comes to manual battles against another player you can watch my last episode with amakara and uh wilaya and zombie and badok in that crew uh but basically it was a big fight between me and badok versus amakara and amakara had a bunch of like phoenixes and I had uh the like Auto Kill from the Oblivion Tome and corpse eating is fantastic in those sorts of combats anytime you can remove corpse from the field unless you're the only person who has dark ritual at a combat uh that's just net positive because it gives you way way way more Battlefield control and it also just throws a little bit of hit points at you for no reason and you can use it over and over again with a coold down so ritual cannibals I like normally I would say don't think about something from the perspective of a pure combat bonus um but it really is just very very good I think it's more reliable in terms of its payoff than these two and I think honestly because it scales better into the mid game I think it's probably better than imperialists I I think that ritual cannibals if you're going to take anything from uh the the chaos tree that that's probably the one you want to be thinking about so up next we have run Smiths run Smiths I think is very very strong because it's a force multiplier for all of the rest of your knowledge that floats around you want to still do the same thing with run Smiths that you do with everything else right get as many cities as you can and build up to Academy's ASAP but run Smiths because it's minus 30% knowledge to unlock unit enchantments and these are of course enchantments plural cuz you can definitely take Toms that have multiple unit enchantments uh this is more reliable in terms of the knowledge income that you get versus ancient wise ones and scales way better because there's like basically only one or two unit enchantments that are not worth researching uh they're they're ubiquitous they play well with literally everything except for uh Mythic units and and generally Mythic units are strong enough in the at least in the mid game that they don't even need the enchantments and these are just fantastic in terms of the knowledge income and then it also gives you a nice little bonus when it comes to Mana cuz you know if you have enough units and enough for that matter unit enchantments you are going to be spending a lot of mana on that and the more Mana that you're spending on enchantments the less Mana you have available for things like strategic spells or summons and that can be a real problem if you're not prepared for it don't think that this is an economy on its own rather it is a force multiplier for a an extent economy but it's a good one and the racial Shield units and pole arm units although it's pretty much only great with uh industrious cuz mounted bastions are great and everything else that falls into this category currently is not good Triumph and Paradox please a polar arm unit please but you know this is a a really nice bonus when it comes to playing around with industrious and and they're generally one of the best cultures in the game right now and then you start with three materium and then you could just go crazy from there uh so yeah I I think run Smiths although it's not an Imperium based thing I think that this is an a tier I think that this is an a tier probably even above Banner Lords and great Builders it's just really really fast when it comes to unlocking new TOs so up next we have probably the fastest part of the video ruthless Raiders ruthless Raiders is basically blank text except for get to random hero items so just as plus three is just like not a lot when it comes to Ritual cannibals and the ability to grow from here ruthless Raiders getting plus three gold and plus three draft is basically zero don't think that that is going to have a meaningful impact on the pace of growth of your economy uh minus 10 alignment is all right I I like getting into Big Time evil ASAP even if you're not Scions just for the events but like it literally does nothing else there's no other text here and then starting bonus of getting two random hero items is very random unfortunately sometimes it can be really good and you're going to remember the times that it was really good cuz you got like a very very powerful tier 2 or tier three item and just like went absolutely crazy on people but you don't get any other items here like come on guys give me give me an effect that's like whenever you destroy a free city that you get like if you raise a free City and you get a bunch of items that would be unbelievably sick and then you know it might play well with chosen destroyers but would also play well with just being evil cuz raising cities if you're going to bring them back with Souls is not apocalyptically bad and you might get a bunch of items from that but like as it is this is literally just gaining two random hero items and nothing else I I think with that in mind and it is so unbelievably random I do think ruthless Raiders is a d tier you occasionally it'll perform as an a because you'll just start with something insanely insanely good and you'll remember that one time that you started with something insanely insanely good and got to clear a bunch of stuff on the map really really quickly but it scales very badly and it's insanely random don't take this this pick it's not worth it so up next we have Scions of evil which is sort of like the you know the bad boy brother of uh the devotees of good out there but unlike devotees of good I think there are some reasons to be excited to be taking Scions of evil first of course is that it is Shadow Affinity I I think broadly speaking Shadow Affinity is one of the strongest up there with materium in terms of the empire development tree but also in terms of the tones and getting a little bit of extra picks there does help you like you need six Affinity in order to take a tier four Shadow toome and this is one of them um but also science of evil I think the economy that it makes available to you is pretty good plus five Imperium per level of evil alignment means that if you start here with a negative 10 and you aren't playing as high that you're immediately going to be evil enough to get five extra Imperium that's not not going to compete of course with the extra Imperium you get from adap settlers right you need as I mentioned during adap settlers 10 turns of Imperium to meet the uh the extra bonus that add up settlers from clicking one extra City but you can scale up evil a lot more easily then you can scale up good cuz in order to get to the second layer of uh evil basically all you need to do is declare war on a couple of free cities and pillage all of their stuff you don't even necessarily need to sack them if you just have a couple of Scouts going around committing you know minor rating you can get up to the second level and start collecting 10 Imperium per turn way way faster than you can with good um most most of the time and of course the 10 draft here I think is generally going to be a lot more impactful than the extra stability because right now outside of a neutral High stability kind of doesn't matter until you get to like the mid game once you're at the mid game then you want to start making sure that your big cities are not in negative stability cuz that's a meaningful detriment but being in positive stability does almost nothing at the moment and of course if you're playing as dark then stability does literally nothing and and the extra draft is just like pure value here so I think Scions of evil because of the Imperium in the draft and the fact that you know evil is just really good and and plays very well and the extra shock unit strength does play very well if you're going to be doing something like Tyrant Knights and awaken uh instincts and angelize I think Scions of evil is a very very good trait I think that overall Scions of evil is probably an a tier it's going to be meaningfully worse than adup settlers or fabled Hunters but I I think this is a very good trade overall and and will perform very well for you as long as you lean into it just just declare war on free cities and do damage and that's how you get good value here all right so up next we have devious Watchers devious Watchers is like pure meme that's that's really what this boils down to in any given game of Age of Wonders 4 unless you're playing Barbarian or industrious you're probably not going to produce any extra Scout units in any given game cuz if you want vision and mobility and finding things which you do uh go ahead and take a body trait that gives you access to a mount and then just build your tier one that's mounted and Scout with that it's I guess technically all right with uh feudal because I'm pretty sure that the tier one here for feudals neither of them are mounted because their Defenders are instead but that's one of the many reasons why feudal is not a particularly good culture overall um and unfortunately like the rest of the stuff just doesn't do anything wayfinder enchantment I I think this literally only affects the game if you're playing as a Mystic and if you're playing as Mystic while you're taking devious Watchers like your goal is to fight people super duper early not Scout around the board as much uh and the rest of the stuff is just nonsense like there used to be an interaction between devious Watchers and uh perfectionist Artisans that meant that you could get extra gold from those outposts I think they've nerfed that out but even with that still in this is basically all blank text here like none of this stuff matters Scout units are terrible even if they're on webs they're terrible they're only good if you can use them for economy if you're under I guess if you're underground or if you're industrious or Barbarian but like don't take devious Watchers this is dumb it it doesn't technically hurt your win percentage the way some of these other things do but like this is this is easily one of the worst traits in the game and just doesn't do a lot for you so next we have silver tonged silver tonged I think is actually really interesting because this is a a shadow pick but it almost looks like an order pick on the front but then you realize that like all right this is just Saruman trying to like corrupt the world or whatever but he corrupts the world to his great economic benefit so yeah you start with an extra Scout unit that's pretty dumb uh but the Scout units in this case because you're goal is to be to find free cities as quickly as soonly possible and then you don't even need to vassalize them you just need to get them friendly enough that they'll trade with you and then you can start trading with them for free that's why this is good it gives you of course access to diplomatic focus and therefore it's a whole bunch of Imperium it fronts you but just as we talked about with chosen uniters it it's a bunch of Imperium that's been invested in something that you shouldn't be that excited about but unlike chosen uniters which really only starts paying you off once you've invested a whole lot of time growing the relationship with those those cities you just need to get friendly enough that they'll trade with you here for silver tongue to be an enormous amount of resources especially if you find a big city now that means that this is highly random right if you find a tier four free City on the first three turns and very quickly get a good relationship with them then you might be able to trade for like 48 knowledge on turn seven for literally zero resources but you also might not find a free City immediately because you just don't have any Vision on it uh but hey there was something that we mentioned that that is going to help you out there bannerlords so I think bannerlords is like a natural friend for a silver Tong and much much much more so than chosen uniters simply because of the the way you can play play this out but you don't have to put those together like anytime you can scout around the map a little more efficiently trading with free cities and and getting value there you can get good good value out of out of silver tonged it's just that it doesn't really give you anything in terms of Imperium outside of the Diplomatic Focus which kind of only matters if there are a lot of free cities or it's a really big map um but the trade deal is just amazing this is the best thing you're going to see in the game in the society traits by a long shot when it comes to interacting with free cities and so if you're thinking about free City stuff then you should be taking this the other the other things are like interesting but not great this one is the the free City pick and it's a free City pick by a huge margin I still don't want to overstate it I don't think it's like the best pick in the game CU I think free cities are generally not that good but I do think that overall it's it's probably more reliable in terms of the actual economy it makes available to you than something like ancient wise ones or devotees of good I think frankly devotees of good is probably a c tier it's just that they're there is a very particular build where you can start with uh plus 10 Imperium on turn one and that's that's okay it's not great but it is okay so I should have checked this but apparently this tier list doesn't have everything on it there are actually a couple of picks that are missing and one of them I think is like a little more understandable artifact hoarders is new I'm pretty sure that this is actually requires the dragon Dawn DLC but Wonder Architects has always been here wilay definitely used this in our very first multiplayer match so I I don't know what this uh this wheel bear is doing over here but we're going to we're going to use this wheelbarrow for perfectionist Artisans or rather for um artifact hoarders and then we'll do it again for for Wonder Architects and we'll just have to move it and use your imagination Dungeons and Dragons style whenever we're talking about it it'll it'll be here and then it'll be somewhere else and and you'll just have to fill it in the wheelbarrow is both the wheelbarrow is love but let's uh let's talk about artifact hoarders first so artifact hoarders is what what Raiders wishes it was this is actually a gen genuinely insane perk cuz it gives you not access to just two random hero items but unlike uh Raiders which basically stops there and has no other text this is fantastic the effects here of gaining a tier 2 or three hero item after clearing an ancient wonder or infestation means of course if you're playing with regenerating infestations or with with extra Ancient Wonders it's even better but even if you're not even if you're not if you just get a couple of extra tier two or three guaranteed hero items this is a huge upgrade to the military efficiency of your Heroes cuz you want to get as much good equipment for them as quickly as possible so that way not only are they going to be combat effective against Ancient Wonders and uh infestations as they mention here but also combat effective against other players if you have good equipment and your opponent has nothing Your Heroes are going to be a lot more impressive and a lot more oppressive when it comes to real Combat and this is this is it right this is just a ludicrous number of extra hero items and I I think on that text alone it would be a very powerful pick but it's also materium Affinity I love that it gets you access to more materium stuff earlier including materium one and it does give you extra Mana I mean like the artifact horde isn't a ludicrous amount of extra Mana but you don't need to be getting a bunch of extra Mana for extra Mana to be good right if you get 20 extra mana on turn 20 or whatever because you just have some crap laying around then you're functionally sitting on two extra resource nodes and then you might be able to summon more things more reliably or enchant things reliably this is that's not like the important part of The Horde don't think that this means that you need to be trading with the other players in the game and buying up all of their crap at really really expensive rates rather just think that this is like a nice little bonus text and that the real line here is the the reward for playing the game right you want to be fighting ancient wonders and infestations as much as humanly possible anyway and this pays you out in probably the best way possible maybe a little worse than fabled hunters in terms of the real economy payoff but this is getting stuff for your Heroes and the heroes are the core of your military so I the first wheelbarrow here I think for artifact hoarders is going to have to be an S tier I think it's going to meaningfully be worse than adab settlers and fabled Hunters but I I this is a great trait and if you're not sure where to start then get a bunch of Heroes get artifact hoarders fight things make your Heroes crazy strong and just dumpster people so up next we have Wonder Architects Wonder Architects is the uh Lucy in the football for me it's one of the things that looks on the surface like it should just be like ridiculously ridiculously good but it does have some problems so Wonder Architects it starts you with one nearby ancient wonder that's cleared that's going to be a bronze ancient wonder depending on whether you're underground or on the surface you have a different pool that you can potentially pull from but you're going to be getting access to a bronze ancient wonder the issue with Wonder Architects is that you don't start with it attached automatically and based off of the r random map generation you might get screwed rude I've seen people like myself I've had a couple of spawns in the underground where the bronze ancient wonders spawned on the other side of an impassible passage and therefore literally could not be attached to my city and therefore could not start providing me with extra Imperium until I built an outpost there if it starts next to your city and you can attach it to your Capital immediately then you immediately start getting 20% production on that City on your capital and start churning through stuff not to of course you get the extra bonus of having another tile that other tile type counting towards whatever boosts you need in your in your capital or or city that it's attached to and because it doesn't require a population in order to be annexed and of course it also doesn't require a population in order to be attached to an outpost your outposts and your cities are just going to be way way way more efficient once you start getting going but this is just this is an insanely random outcome when it comes to the early game I think Wonder Architects would probably be a lot stronger if they made it reliably spawn in the second ring for the city so that way you could you know keep it you could actually plan around how to get it plan around how to build around it but the way it works now is that sometimes it starts in the first ring and it's great sometimes it starts in the third ring and it's okay sometimes it starts on on the other side of an impassible wall in the underground and it's awful and sometimes it starts next to the enemy cities because right now even on medium distance you can spawn crazy close to your opponent and it can and the bronze Wonder can spawn away from you and therefore it's not just bad it's actively terrible cuz it gives a bronze a cleared bronze ancient wonder to your opponent so Wonder Architects I I love this I love this pick I wish it was better I do wish that they did something to rebalance it so that way it would be more reliable but I think unfortunately it's just it's way too random in terms of its outcome I I think I I think this is a b tier I think this is a b tier and I think it's actually meaningfully worse than imperialists I think it's just a midb tier at me wonder Architects just be better like if it spawns in a reliable second ring it's immediately an a tier probably around here cuz I do love the extra Imperium for them and I like it being a little more planable but like the way it the way it works now is just it's spray it's you you pray that you don't get screwed by RNG that's just way that's the way it boils down it's so it's so rough so last but certainly not not least we have talented collectors so talented collectors has a couple of things going for it first of course is that it starts you with a magic material nearby this is a huge deal for two reasons first of course cosmolux Elixir and Imperial Essence are enormous bonuses to start off with rings of binding of course is also important but this is something that becomes more and more important as the game goes on you don't really need it super early but if you can get an imperial essence or a cosmolex Elixir going early game you're going to thank yourself uh and of course an extra magic material gets you that much closer but of course the magic materials themselves are also pretty good and critically you can build research posts there so this basically means that your Capital has a guaranteed extra research post or a guaranteed research Post in case you're extremely afraid of of bad spawns and afraid of no Mana noes for whatever reason but you'll usually find Mana noes and and that draws the the research post value down but a second research post is required in order to build a Scholars Guild and so in order to maximize the amount of knowledge you have floating around in your economy you generally want to get scholar guilds on basically every city sometimes you can't though sometimes there's just not enough research posts one of the easiest ways to get around this of course is to take either a to that lets you build research posts or to play as high which gives you access to the sunshine but getting a guaranteed extra research post on your Capital means that it's that much easier to reliably be able to build a a Scholars Guild there and to be able to reliably build one early cuz you might you know see uh I can get to that Mana node over there but I have to chew through two tiles of of dirt nonsense first with with no research nodes and and you know sometimes it's just not worth it but talented collectors help split that that Difference by giving you a magic material it doesn't start cleared so be aware that this is not like uh the Wonder Architects it's it's not a free pickup and of course this is also not giving you access to extra Imperium unless you start with a of material that's a part of the uh Imperial Essence and then it's still not even free really and the effects here of plus five gold Mana knowledge food production and draft for each magic material looks pretty good and obviously does play relatively well cuz this these are all nice little bonuses but this is a total combined value of 30 per City per magic material 30 stuff lines up pretty poorly against like one fight on a fabled Hunters over the course of a short game and of course every fight of fabled hunters is going to push the value here on on talented collectors that much further away I think if talented collectors wanted to be good I think it definitely could be because there's definitely some pieces here that that are interesting especially the the guaranteed research post but I I just there's not there's not enough to make me want to take an economy pick that doesn't give me access to Imperium and doesn't give me access to to really really broken stuff in terms of military or or potentially industry so I think I think this is probably a c tier I think I think it's roughly on par with prolific swarmers honestly all right well that's uh that's our society traits multiplayer Basics tra video this is going to be really really long but let me know if you found any of this uh useful and if there are any videos you're looking forward to in the multiplayer Basics I think up next we're probably going to do tier two TOS I'm going to hope that we get that done before Eileen and I go on a a quick little vacation to the mountains all right that's Walker take care

Channel: w(&)e play games

Views: 11,534

Keywords: age of wonders 4, guide, tutorial, aow4 multiplayer guide, multiplayer, society traits, aow4 society traits, aow 4 society traits, adept settlers, fabled hunters, scions of evil, aow4 pvp, autoresolve aow4

Id: oLJJBu5bEzQ

Length: 71min 51sec (4311 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2023