Tier 5 Tomes Tier List - Age of Wonders 4 (MP) Basics

all right everybody welcome back to we play games I'm Walker and here we are in Age of Wonders 4 about to discuss our tier five TOS in our multiplayer basic series now tier five Toms are going to be pretty meaningfully different from the other TOS we talked about up until this point yeah you need eight Affinity in order to pick it up but that's not like drastically different from tier fours I think the really big difference is that one there's only one of these tier five TOS in each magic type but two and I think this is the really important one you can only pick one of these so that means you really do need to understand the different strengths of each of the toms the different weaknesses of each of the TOs ways to play around both with and against the Toms in question cuz I do think that basically all of them are playable there's one that I think is a lot weaker and then one that's probably a little bit weaker but because each of these has enormous strengths as well as you know exploitable weaknesses there's going to be a pretty big concentration of these up around the a tier I I do want to spoil that for you just cuz you know basically you can't go wrong playing around with these and a lot of the issues that you might encounter along the way assuming that you survive until this point kind of solve themselves once you get access to tier five Toms these things are really really powerful so you know that said let's kick things off by talking about our first to here the toome of the Ark Mage so I think we do need to talk about the elephant in the room before we talk about you know the rest of the Tome of the arc Mage because there's a lot of really great stuff here but we do have disruption wave now disruption wave is up there with awaken instincts and spell Jammers in terms of things that are almost always going to be banned in a PVP situation right right now it does sound like spell Jammers are being reworked to the point where they are actually testable in multiplayer we'll see how the 100% casting works but I it sounds very very good to me and so hopefully there's some sort of change coming for disruption wave but the but ultimately this spell right now is just too good and that's really unfortunate for astral because it means that it really does get banned a lot and that means that astral doesn't get access to a very powerful ability that it does desperately need dispels all negative status effects on all allies is something that I was really hoping we would find here on Arcane restoration maybe it would be too powerful there but you're definitely getting access to it here or at least you would except that it also dispels all positive status effects on all enemies and disables enemy unit enchantments for three turns this spell is just too good right now uh not sure exactly how to rebalance it if they wanted to keep all these effects then maybe turning this down to just one turn might be interesting but I think even if they just removed the unit enchantment entirely and said that is a seance ability you know because now we're going to get a to of severance with Severance Golems if it was just this it might be more fair but really to of the Ark Mage doesn't suffer too much by lacking this uh disruption wave ability this is still a very powerful Tome but this is exactly the sort of effect that I wish I had access to as an astral player in in a multiplayer game and so hopefully it gets rebalanced soon all right so what are we going to do with the to of the Ark Mage assuming that disruption wave itself is banned well fortunately for to the archage there's a lot of powerful stuff here so we first have a hero skill maximized magic now generally speaking I'm not a huge fan of battle magic skills I do think that generally Your Heroes are better off built towards killing momentum and then you know you might have one or two Battle Mages along the way but this one is the payout for being Battle Mages and if you build these well they are absolutely disgusting whenever it comes to their combat efficiency you get plus 40% crit chance and then plus 20% accuracy on its own this is a nice little bonus you know if you can crit on your uh your AOE spell with your battle mage and do 50% extra damage that can be pretty solid that's a a really good way to get extra morale and and AOE clearing but that's not really the great value of maximized magic the best way to use this is to stack your crit chance as close to 100% as possible and then go ahead and pick up the Tome of the golden realm so the to of the golden realm gives you access to another battle magic skill gilded magic makes critical hits with magic attacks inflict gilded for one turn gilded is a stun effect it's not going to ignore things that are naturally status immune but it's going to going to get through anyone who's naturally immune to Frozen so you don't have to worry about that interaction and this thing isn't a percentage based effect it doesn't check against status resistance all it asks is that you accomplish a critical hit and because you have that you know 40% extra crit chance here out of maximized magic you really can get up to 100% if you really want to the downside of course is that in order to take to of the Ark Mage you do need eight astral Affinity cuz this is a tier five toome and then of course the materium affinity for the to of the golden realm you're going to need at least six and order to pick that up that's not like an impossible ask you should be able to get eight and six pretty easily but there's another really powerful part of the to of the arc Mage that doesn't really care if you have six materium Affinity CU at the moment gold golems are are not currently magic origin or combat summons and this is a very very powerful unit enchantment so what do we get we get 30% extra damage and very fast movement very fast movement is going to make all of our magic origin guys move 48 on the world map and in combat this is basically a permanent haste effect that can't be disenchanted except by you know A disruption wave as we previously discussed not going to be not going to be assuming this is real so this is just a very very very powerful unit enchantment cuz you can get this on some really disgusting units here Bor oh yeah they're magic origin units and they don't currently move 48 so a permanently hasted bayor that deals 30% extra damage that sounds pretty fair oh maybe a 48 movement speed living fog with 30% extra damage and a whole bunch of enchantments thrown on top of it is is more your speed or perhaps you want the horned god with 48 movement points and 30 extra damage I mean these are just like ridiculously ridiculously powerful units that you can power up with this this single unit enchantment now of course you if you're doing that you are going to be in sort of weak to the Tomo summoning and their ability to steal your your units so do be careful but if you're not seeing a too summoning on the other side Tom of the Ark Mage is very very powerful you can get some ludicrously ludicrously good units but of course in order to get those really powerful units online you're probably going to need to take you know either the to of the demon gate with fight for power and the to of the pandamonium for chaos heaters so that way you can get your bayor or you're going to need the shadow Affinity here for to of Oblivion and summon living fog which means that you need six Affinity in a different type of magic that isn't astral and isn't materium you can accomplish both uh Cosmic overdrive and maximize magic if you're very careful with the way that you use your TOS especially if you're willing to do like the reset juggle when it comes to you know what you get out of your signature skills but it's complicated and micro intensive and if you don't want to do it you know more power to you I think there's no shame in coming back to pick up gilded magic after the fact if if that's the direction you want to go but this really is a very very powerful unit enchantment you just need to give it the the units to enchant and then it's fantastic you also have a really cool utility spell here in astral travel this is not like you know the world spell that's going to change the nature of the game cuz you do have other things that allow you to teleport your ruler and for that matter your ruler stack if you build that in your your wizard tower but being able to strategically teleport Your Leader around the board can do some really really silly things when it comes to unlocking sieges and the like and and ways to use the to of the arcage both offensively as well as defensively and then of course you also get a really powerful debuff spell here in in time stop now this is only on a one hex radius and so you're not going to be like you know doing this to your enemy's entire Army you're really lucky if you hit three units with this but this is a really powerful spell to hit three units with stunned for a turn distracted for a turn five Mark for three turns obviously marked with the new Reaver culture that's going to be coming out looks incredibly incredibly powerful but even if you just picked up the the toome of pandemonium here for the uh the extra damage out of vessels of chaos this is three debuffs that you're applying and therefore this is 30% extra damage on your Heroes and then you know you set yourself up for uh really powerful bayor they're worst things you can be doing with your time and this is this is great I mean like ultimately this isn't going to help you break through someone who is status immune but because this isn't a percentage-based effect this is going to be applying against most of the units you're going to be encountering in combat I think all in all the to of the Ark Mage has amazing utility spells here very very powerful it's really interesting that you have a lot of different ways to use this and those those ways are inherently stressed against maximized magic and so that that creates some opportun for you to really design this toome in your culture the way you want but I think the to of the archage is very good I think the biggest thing against it is that disruption wave is generally banned and all negative status effects on all allies is something that you're desperately going to want on your tier five astral tone because of what else is available in your tier five TOS if they rework this to being playable then this could very well become an S tier but for now I think a makes sense all right so let's talk about our tier five chaos toome the toome of the chaos Lord now there is an issue here with the to of the cast Lord yes you do get access to the summon bayor spell but like if you want bayor then you should not do this you should take to of the demong gate fight for power to of pandemonium chaos eaters and then you just get your bayor like way way faster and also they don't cost two population the two population isn't as big a deal cuz this really more means that your growth is like capped in your cities more than you're sacrificing it and you know being capped at functionally 12 population isn't really meaningfully different than being capped at 15 but this does slow things down in terms of your your growth on a really big map but more importantly there's just cheaper and easier ways to get bayor so like this spell basically is a blank whenever it comes to the to of the chaos Lord and call forth Avatar of chaos is like good on a really big map with a lot of extra enemies that you're trying to you know Avail yourself of and keep your ruler alive and therefore you know your ability to keep researching and and casting spells around but you can't stack your avatar of chaos so if your ruler is already there you can't cast the spell and if you're figh fighting you know not a bunch of enemies but just one then you're probably going to have your ruler there in which case the spell also kind of doesn't do a lot and so it's unfortunate that we have two spells that kind of don't do a lot because we also have a a hero skill that I'm not like a giant fan of summoning a tier one fiend which if I remember correctly means an inferno puppy is not not going to change the outcome of combat and summoning a an extra Gremlin is also not going to change the course of combat it's nice that this is on the Warfare hero skill Branch though so like this is a this is worth a pickup it's just not exciting ultimately I think the real headliner for the to of the chaos Lord is demonic Onslaught and incite Rebellion inite Rebellion is a Siege project that's going to start you with two enemy mind controlled units that's actually very powerful depending on who you're playing against it does mean that this is not going to play particularly well against anybody who picked up celestials so it does have some weaknesses there but generally speaking if you're mind controlling two enemy units then they have to use one of their their status debuff clears immediately or the battle is going to turn turn very very quickly and you know extra City stability and then the uh the damage to the siege walls which I I wish the tool tip showed us here but if I remember correctly it's six means that Insight Rebellion does have some good use as a Siege project but the real highlight for the to the chaos Lord is the Demonic Onslaught spell itself now this one is a little difficult to use depending on what sort of situation you're playing in if you're playing on classic especially classic against the AI then you sh should not have any difficulty being on the attack every single time which means of course that you can cast this set it and forget it your army has killing momentum and hastened for basically the entire combat cuz with hastened and killing momentum the combat is not going to last very long I promise the issue of course is that in a simultaneous game or in a game where people have you know civilized rules of engagement uh you're you're not necessarily always going to be on the attack so like this is something that really is metad dependent upon your map settings more than anything else and I think that's unfortunate cuz this really is the strongest part of the to the chaos Lord I think overall if you're interested in getting good value out of out of chaos you probably want to avoid the to of the chaos Lord and just take the astral one cuz frankly like plus 30% damage and very fast movement is usually a much better payout for having access to bayor than getting an inefficient way to do it in a spell that is only sometimes useful so I think on reflection this is going to be a b tier I I don't think you're doing yourself a a really big disfavor taking it but I you really can get stronger tier five Toms here with Age of Wonders 4 all right so up next we have our tier five materium to the to of the Creator so the to of the Creator like a lot of the other materium TOS I do think is just very good you get consistent access to Great spells and then of course a fantastic Imperium tree to go along with it I do think that their headliner at least you know what appears to be the headliner right now does require a little support from some of the other TOS but not like a dramatic amount of support so what do we get here in tectonic shatter first all enemy units sustain 30 physical damage now physical damage because the defense is going to be like all over the place is probably going to be more like 15 to 20 physical damage but you're doing this on a global scale which means your opponent kind of needs to start using their Mass Rejuvenation effects like immediately and if they don't have access to a global heal then this really can wear them down over time but more importantly is all enemies have a 60% chance of becoming stunned because you can't really you know kill an entire army with just physical damage you kind of need to be the attacker when it comes to using Tech shatter and trying to use this 60% chance of stunning now 60% doesn't sound like a lot but you do need to keep in mind that there are lots of great ways to reduce enemy status resistance blizzard is a fantastic spell flash freeze is even better right minus five status resistance is huge but even if you don't have either of those and and for some reason you go into order and you pick up a condemn Army condemned is minus three status resistance if you can just get one of those effects then you can maintain this as being roughly a uh 50% stun here and if you can get it over a 50% stun then you know good for you that is where you're getting insane insane value cuz if you just skip like half of your opponent's Army's actions every single turn in combat and they're also taking you know 15 to 20 damage every single turn in combat from your tectonic shatter you you're going to have a huge advantage in that combat even if you do eventually run out of casting points doesn't matter right if the first three turns of combat are you skip nine actions out of your opponent it's going to be pretty hard to lose now of course the counterplay to this is that a you want to make sure that you have good ways to increase your status resistance especially against someone who has flash freeze you want to really keep status resistance in mind but you also want to have some kind of global heal effect and fortunately SL unfortunately nature gets both of those and so that means that Tom of the Creator does have sort of a natural counter when it comes to using tectonic shatter we'll talk about that when we get to our nature toome but the tone of the creator doesn't stop with a tectonic shatter in fact I I think that's basically the beginning so we get Eternal Earth now Eternal Earth is good but not broken beyond all belief in multiplayer because people do generally bring and use uh dark rituals and auto kills but if you're not doing that then this spell is ridiculous right now cuz this grants the undying tag to all of your Elementals this doesn't mean they're going to come back over and over and over again now they can only trigger once per battle anyway but frankly most combats are not 15 turns so doing it once is more than enough cuz right now gold Golems are Elementals which means that these guys come back now I've heard that gold golems are going to be moving to constructs rather than Elementals I don't know how that's going to interact with eternal Earth I do think that because right now uh there is a lot of counterplay to corpses being on the on the field this isn't like a broken unit enchantment but it is sort of like tectonic shatter where it says hey if you don't have something in your sideboard that's going to help you against my undying gold golems and you're in a lot of trouble you also get access to the best combat summon spell fell in the game I'm not sure why that went to materium rather than astral cuz astral does have stuff that says hey are you doing combat summons or not but uh you know whatever like I like materium I don't I don't hate seeing Earth Titans here I do think that it would be really great if Stone Spirits could evolve into these because I don't think that stone Spirits are like inherently broken units and I don't think it would make pancy and and rock like busted beyond all belief but uh as it stands now you know just being able to get it on the field out of a a call the Earth is actually pretty nice you get seismic slam which of course is going to give you a 90% chance of inflicting immobilized it's not quite a stun effect and of course is like meaningfully worse against ranged units like like shrines of smiting and cuz you know the Earth Titan is actually weak to Spirit damage the the these guys are going to go down pretty quickly to order but overall I think uh the Earth Titans are pretty solid units to be able to summon on the on the fly if if you discover that tectonic shatter just isn't going to work for you you also get a Siege project in create Earth shatter engines now earthshatter engines are not like the strongest Siege project in the game they're actually incredibly ineffective whenever it comes to real Combat these are way worse than onagers but this is 10 Siege uh speed on your siege project instead of like three on your onagers Earth shatter engines can chew down virtually any size wall and if your opponent is being careful and building up their walls to enormous sizes you actually might not be able to Siege their cities down in a reasonable time without Earth shatter engines so this is a great great thing to have in your in your pocket when it comes to Siege projects just you know don't take it if you expect your opponent to have reasonable defense if they're going to have real troops on the ground you'd probably rather have onagers or or even better bolt repeaters out of the to of artificing but you also get a really cool hero ability here the ancient of Earth so unit grows in size gains large Target now this of course means that now Your Heroes do take extra damage from gold golems so that's a little bit of a weakness to them but that's like the be all end all of the weakness cuz you also get 20 extra hit points points 30% extra damage yes you can't use a mount which is unfortunate you know but it sounds like the Unicorn Mount meta is is about to disappear anyway and so just getting this on a a hero who has blink and killing momentum means that your heroes are going to dish out damage like absolutely nobody's business I think overall this is just a a great tone lots of stuff to to do here I do think that in a future patch uh because Eternal Earth is going to get a little worse that we might see to of the Creator come down but I think for now this is like an S minus tier Tome I think it's marginally better than to of the Ark Mage if to of the Ark Mage had you know disruption wave and it it was actually castable in combat then it could Edge these guys out because being able to remove all those stun effects would be really nice but for now the the natural counterplay of this is probably taking this instead and I I think that's an all right place to be in all right so up next we have probably our only unplayable tier five toome the toome of the Eternal Lord in the chat for the Tome of the Eternal Lord everybody it's unfortunate cuz I do love my Undead boys but this this to is as bad we have soul Harvest which is cute but if you want to use Souls you absolutely need to take it before your tier five to so this might as well not even be here we have access to Eternal one which is close to a b a blank text uh hero skill because of the way combat really works in PvP now in single player it's a little easier to get good value out of this and so I think this to is a little better there but even in single player this is like literally no extra strength for you until a hero has died and then after two more turns you get it back that's incredibly slow when it comes to getting good value and of course in PVP like if your opponent notices that hey you've got Eternal one they're just going to kill your hero and then use dark ritual on it or they'll kill your hero and they just stand a unit on it honestly in single player on the the very hard AI I would prefer it if the AI would start standing on ET Turnal ones just so that way like single player people could get a feel for why this to is not good but as soon as your opponent understands how to play the game then this this uh hero skill basically is just pure blank text and therefore 100% skippable you have access to a unit in enchantment that mostly doesn't do anything right a 30% chance of inflicting something that's a slow very slow kill chance is really bad this could be better in the world where Battle Mages are better and it sounds like Battle Mages are going to be a little better on the new patch but this is still like way too low in in a percent and way too slow to actually be an effect that I'm interested in raise a Undead Army is not very good you do not get very solid units out of this just looking here at what you can actually pick up um on the the database you can see you're just getting absolutely nothing in terms of real units and it costs 150 Souls you know what else costs 150 souls and it's just like way way better a Reaper just get a Reaper instead so like don't cast the spell it's not good withering Mists is one of these things that right now isn't particularly exciting but might be really powerful in the upcoming patch it kind of depends on how powerful ranged is it looks like ranged is going to get a meaningful buff cuz the huge huge Nerf to mobility and and phasing but we have to evaluate this as it is right now and as it is right now this is a a pretty underwhelming spell it deals 15 Frost damage on three turns you know so you're going to get 12 or 10 or whatever over and over and over again but you can do the exact same thing with atom of the Creator and tectonic shatter this is going to do pretty similar amounts of damage against most builds and this is a 60% chance of stunning everybody on the other side whereas this guy is a 90% chance of blinding for one turn and a 90% chance of weakened one now weakened one is I don't think enough I if this was weakened two or weakened three think that would be a lot more interesting both for dark players as well as for the game generally cuz right now it's it's pretty trivial to get five strengthened over and over and over again if you really want to and you usually do and so I think the The Meta would be more interesting if this was is a a larger weakened effect but the blind might be great if it turns out that in the the new patch that Glade Runners are just like amazing without the uh the phasing unicorn effect to keep them in check then withering mist and the Tome of the Eternal Lord could get meaningfully better but this is this is really I think the the thing that's trying to hold the the Tome together at the moment and really is one of those things that's a little better future proofed cuz Battlefield re reanimation is going to get taken on the nose in the upcoming patch cuz now there's an ability that allows anybody to do a global corpse clear over and over and over again as a tactical spell I don't think that's particularly fair to necromancers cuz these guys are not at the the top of their Mark here in Age of Wonders 4 and so like a global corpse clear is is a really crying shame it means the AI is going to get a lot better at devouring corpses which means Battlefield reanimation is get a lot worse all friendly Undead units coming back to life with 50% of their total HP is cool and getting all enemy corpses as decaying zombies is also pretty nice but of course in order to get great value out of this you do need something that's going to be proactively killing a bunch of units on the other side preferably not in your Tactical spells so maybe you want to you know pair this with a living fog or or something else that's going to be doing a bunch of damage but this spell is going to probably very quickly do nothing in the new patch cuz the AI is just going to have great ways to consume corpses and your opponents already have that so like this spell is is pretty underwhelming I think to of the Eternal Lord if we were trying to Future proof it and say withering Mists is probably going to be better then it might be a c tier toome but realistically right now this is a d tier you really if even if you're playing oopsa Shadow you should probably find a different Affinity to try to get your good value out of this spell just doesn't do anything right now I I hate to see it but it's the way it is all right so next we have our tier five nature to the toome of the goddess of nature so the first thing that I really like about this to is that it is only a three- spell tone this is actually very very good on these later TOS because of the way researching works so in Age of Wonders 4 you unlock each toome after you've researched four spells it doesn't have to be four spells from the same Tome and of course you're going to have your cultural spells sitting around in the event that you want to research those as well but even if you don't want to research them those are still going to be there in your Quee of research and that's the way the game is going to work out is that as you research every single tone because you only need need four spells you're invariably going to be adding more and more spells to that queue there are very few TOS in the game that have fewer than four spells and so you're almost always going to be adding crap that like ultimately you don't want to be researching until after you've gotten your tier five tone then you might back it up and research some inexpensive garbage in order to get to a a further and further tone down the the road but overall having fewer spells is actually really good CU it means that you're not adding stuff to that queue but critically whenever you research a new toome it's going to show you three spells it's not going to show you all of the spells from that spell book and that means that you might get screwed so like if you research home of the Creator and you don't get shown tectonic shatter as one of your options you kind of have to just start go going fish and just shuffling your spells over and over again to find this because it's very powerful early on and then slows down as the game goes on so you want to get this online like super duper early same with stuff like you know the astral if you're trying to play around with a cosmic overdrive and you don't get shown this is one of your choices then you got to you got to go fishing and that means that you might have to spend hundreds of Mana in order to find the spell that you're trying to unlock hundreds of Mana shouldn't bankrupt you but if you have to do that a couple of times it can be really annoying and be aware of that that is a a meaningful cost to doing research and that means that t to of the goddess of nature has a pretty big advantage over the other high tier TOS you just you see what you need immediately you start researching this one and then depending on who you're playing against you probably lock either this or this probably this one but this has some good utility and then you just get both of your good spells immediately and then you can just you know you're Off to the Races you saved a ton of mana on this this to unlock and it's not like all of the toms have great spells either like there's almost always at least one or two that are skippable and so the fact of the matter is that having fewer spells in your spell book especially on the the higher tier TOS is almost a net positive that's one of the many many reasons I don't like Tom of paradise but to of the goddess of nature what do we got in terms of our spells and our abilities well we have a hero skill that I mostly am not a big fan of Base attacks have a 60% chance of inflicting poison decaying weakened or immobilized for three turns is one of those things that I'm pretty skeptical about but it is on the Warfare branch and of course poisoned is going to start stacking which means that this could have a lot more utility in in the game post patch and I do think that decaying isn't like a bad effect I think out of all of them like the worst effect here is just the fact that it's only 60% chance I think if this was an automatic success then obviously this would be a lot stronger I'm not sure if this is like exactly where Avatar of nature needs to be in comparison to the other tier five uh hero atoms but unlike the one in Shadow at least this does do something but I think all of these spells are actually really good is the the big highlight for Tom of the goddess of nature so generally I'm not a big fan of vision effects cuz like even the one that gets you plus seven Vision on on your cities isn't like a big deal that's maybe one or two extra turns before somebody gets to your city to besiege it but this one gets you intelligence all over the map uh especially if you did your homework and you picked up Tom of Glades to create Forest but even if you didn't as long as your opponents aren't proactively destroying forests with only a couple of terraform effects that actually work there then you're going to be able to see their army as it's coming together this means that it's sort of like the end of The Shadow uh Imperium tree but unlike that one which costs 500 Imperium this you just have to cast this is I think very innocuous uh it's it's obviously pretty skippable for people but because it is Vision so far into enemy range I think this is actually a really good spell and something I'm excited to be casting but the real highlight for the toome I do think is the force of nature enchantment so this is a unit enchantment 20% critical hit chance and plus four blight damage but unlike almost all of the other unit enchantments here there's something unique we have animal Cavalry and plant now this means of course that this is going to be applying to your Tyrant knights in the event that you have those guys sitting around or your Eagle Riders cuz those are also calav uh and of course it's going to be applying to your Phoenix's from from your your to of vigor but most critically I think is this plant tag so of course the plant tag is going to be applied to your summon horn Gods but way way more important in the event that you picked up gu's chosen as a major race transformation then it means your heroes are plants and I've tested it it does actually work Your Heroes get the unit enchantment here force of nature so that means your heroes are going to get a 20% critical hit chance and plus four blight damage this is not like the most busted uh unit enchantment in the universe cuz light damage is generally not great but this does mean that you have a much extra punch against someone who has a bunch of celestials so it means you can fight against order Mages a lot more effectively that's a great counter to have in your back pocket and of course even against people who aren't trying to use order Mages it's not like blight damage is actively bad this isn't reducing your damage output on any Dimension you're not minus two physical it's just plus four blight damage up front and 20% crit chance the big downside of course is that you do have to take Tom of paradise and guy has chosen in order to get that that interaction going and although this is a very powerful race transformation this is a six spell spell book where this is kind of the only spell available to you so that does weigh on the the final grade for the to of goddess of nature but this is a really really powerful unit enchantment don't sleep on this and then of course you also have mass Rejuvenation now Mass Rejuvenation is more like a green counter spell than anything else this thing is really really good if you're fighting against somebody with Tom of the Creator obviously you're going to need ways to clear the stun effect or at least to resist the stun effect but oh hey plus three status resistance right there cool so to with goddess of nature it's going to give you this plus 40 temporary hit points which should be more than enough to to offset the damage from you know any sort of tectonic shatter effect and of course help you fight back against a lava burst it's not going to counter the lava burst because of plants taking extra damage from fire but it'll it'll help you offset that so you got something here that's a great counter against order somebody that's a great counter against materium unfortunately you don't have a whole lot that counters you know the the shadow toome but the shadow to is pretty bad so it mostly counters itself and you don't have anything really that that helps you counter the uh the the chaos to but the chaos to if you're running up to it with to of goddess of nature you're probably going to die because they have bayor and those things are you got to run all over you but like outside of that situation I think to of the goddess of nature is really really powerful biggest thing against it is not the three spell spell book I think this is actually one of the strengths but rather the uh the hero skill being so anemic but I think overall Tom of goddess nature is pretty solid I think I'd put it roughly on a tier with the uh the astral Ark Mage cuz you do have to take the the to of Paradise in order to get good value out of this and to of paradise is a pretty terrible toome overall all right so our final toome here the toome of the god Emperor is our tier five order toome now if you're picking this up you do need eight order Affinity in order to get here so I'm just going to kind of assume that you've picked up the to of exaltation so you can use shrines of smiting if you're thinking about playing with order you probably absolutely need to take this cuz this is basically C your tier five to that you get available as a tier four toome for some reason and it's it's really really good you get angeliz which is going to give you Faithful and then you get shrines of smiting which means that you're just doing a ton of extra damage from faithful units but this means that like the way that order Mages build their Heroes is actually probably going to be a little different cuz the big punch is your shrines of smiting you don't want to have these guys like abandoned and you do want to have your Heroes be combat effective but overall there's a a meaningful shift towards the strength of units when you're playing with order versus everybody else so that means the support skills are generally going to be better and hey you got a support skill right here so you're going to take some support skills so that way your units are a little more Burly and then they're contributing extra damage to your shrines and this one is going to keep them alive so this is a one pip skill that means that you can move your hero wherever it needs to go on the battlefield heal for 30 temporary hit points in a two hex radius and then also give two defense two resistance and two status resistance to basically all of your units except for the shrine themselves this means that the order line is a little glass Cannon right cuz especially if your opponent has access to sleep of Oblivion or devolve then they're going to try to attack you by killing your shrines first and that that is a dangerous place to be in as an order Mage but if you're sure that you can keep your shrines alive or you can revive them successfully then Dome of protection actually does a really really good job of keeping those faithful units alive for your smiting prayer blast the rest of the Dome is also pretty solid you ACC to mass revive unlike the one in nature of course this isn't going to be offsetting the power of tectonic shatter and so like it's a little scarier to be trying to play against a materium with a to of the god Emperor and frankly you might even just skip the to of the god Emperor entirely and find a different tier five toome if you're playing against materium but Mass revive isn't bad it's just that it is going to be held down pretty meaningfully by the access to to corpse clear when it comes to PVP and probably when it comes to single player as well now that there's something that devours corpses all all over the world available to the AI this is a situational spell more than anything else another situational spell we have Divine protection this is very much a winmore actually it's like quite literally a winmore because this does literally nothing if you're not victorious in the combat so this spell isn't like great but it is useful in a a really highly attrition based war with another player and it can be all right if you're autor resolving a bunch of stuff it's just ultimately this this does literally nothing unless you win uh and it does not help you win so not a not a great great spell the big highlights for the to of the god Emperor are these two spells here now the Wrath of the emperor itself is replaceable if you picked up the to of Supremacy and you took condemn Army then you kind of don't need to research the spell but given that I'm not like a gigantic fan of of toas Supremacy I like seeing a repeat spell here but if you did take toas Supremacy then just skip this one because it's basically the same thing this is going to do 20 Spirit damage demoralized and condemned these are all great effects it's just that you order has has literally the same thing going on there you cast an enemy territory though it will deal 30 damage instead which is which is nice and then of course the uh The Condemned bonus is very very good with Zeal but I think the real the real strength of the toome is supposed to be this spell the big downside of course is that this doesn't really do anything about keeping the shrines of smiting that you're probably going to be casting this on alive uh and your opponent if they see an exalted champion on a on a shrine of smiting had better have access to sleep of Oblivion or devolve or you're going to kill them very very quickly and this one does kind of ignore uh devolve as well cuz status Protection Plus 10 status resistance on your shrines those things cannot be targeted by anything that doesn't automatically succeed uh and they also do 100% extra damage for three turns yeah like this is this is unfortunate that it is counterable with some of the the things that are generally in the game but most of the time exalted champion on a shrine of smiting is just a a fantastic plan when it comes to order Mages I think overall the to of the god Emperor is pretty close to a single spell toome uh you do get access to a a pretty nice support skill but I think ultimately it's probably still just like an a tier I think it's not like a bad tone by any means and exalted champion on your shrines of smiting is very very powerful it's just most of the time it's just Overkill like there's not a big difference between shrines hitting for 150 versus 300 and uh this this kind of does get you there all right that's our tier five to tier list here for Age of Wonders 4 I'm really curious to see how things shake out in the upcoming patch I would love to see disruption wave be playable and therefore maybe this move up to S tier and this move down to to a tier cuz I think that would be a good flip-flop or if there's something else coming for the the to of goddess of nature but I think overall you really can't go wrong playing with any of the tier fives except maybe chaos and definitely Shadow I'm not really sure how to fix this one but right now you should just skip this toone basically every single time uh but for now that's uh that's Walker here on we play games take care

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Keywords: age of wonders 4, guide, tutorial, aow4 multiplayer guide, tome tier list aow4, age of wonders tomes, multiplayer, age of wonders 4 guide, age of wonders 4 tips, tier 5 tomes, aow4 tier 5 tomes, age of wonders tier 5 tomes, aow 4 tier 5 tomes tier list, tome of the creator, tome of the arch mage, tome of the god emperor, tome of the goddess of nature, tome of the chaos lord, tome of the eternal lord, aow4 pvp, autoresolve aow4

Id: b2amqR3aODs

Length: 35min 53sec (2153 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 29 2023