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

all right everybody welcome back to we playay games I'm Walker and here we are in age wonders 4 continuing our multiplayer basic series So today we're going to be doing an update for our toes tier list um now this is going to be a combination of all of our Toms we're going to go ahead and actually like build the tier lists uh without you here and then we'll talk through like all the changes and the way things have updated and whatnot but for those of you who have no interest in multiplayer don't worry like this is still going to be very useful for you hopefully you'll learn a lot um especially if you're interested in doing autor resolve only only CU that is something that is like pretty standard whenever it comes to multiplayer like a lot of people do autor resolve only against the AI except in play by email style but I think even there like autor resolve only generally it plays better it it it slows the game down and forces you to like build real armies rather than just like cheese the Tactical AI into outer space so if you're interested in you know a tier list that's going to help you build something that can survive a whole lot of losses and autor resolve then you're in the right place um but let's talk very briefly about our tier list itself before we start assigning things so our s tier TOS those are going to be the ones that are just like the most ubiquitously powerful these are very just generically strong the a tier TOS are going to be those that are also very powerful but maybe they have some setup costs maybe they have like very very particular builds that they go into but they Excel whenever they do that the B tier toones are going to be sometimes sideboard tones like we'll put some things here that are like very very powerful against one specific strategy but then you know things that that don't like generically work as well will probably fit in B there also going to be some things that are just doing the same thing as either the a or the S tier TOS but just worse there are going to be some of those that we'll we'll see along the way and then the C tier TOS are going to be those that I'm going to like generally recommend against those are things that I think if you're using the C tier toome you're either role playing or like you really really know what you you're doing like I'm sure that morgi and omdara actually like use some C tier TOS on occasion to to accomplish things but I I'm here to discourage you unless you really really want some role playing from playing these and then the D tier toems are going to be those that really kind of don't do anything for you there are going to be a couple of these in each tier um unfortunately but for the most part I think most of our Toms are going to fit into somewhere around the the a through the C we'll see as as each one distributes out because some of the some of the different TOS are a little better balanced than others so let's kick things off by talking about our tier one tone all right so before we dive in on you know actually discussing our tier lists I do want to mention first I am actually going to read out the the names of all of our Toms for each of these letter grades we did have at least one person who watches these while multitasking which is I think a really great way to to you know spend an hour and a half or however long it is I end up bloting about everything so we will actually you know like say all right so we've got this in in each letter grade but I think we'll also take some time to discuss each of the Toms in turn as we Blitz through this some of these we won't spend as much time talking about cuz because some of them like my opinions largely have not changed since I did like the regular tier lists um so if you want to know like how my opinion on the to of beasts like just go watch that video it's basically the same thing still but if there's something new and you know here we have the to of alchemy we will discuss that at length and then if something's changed a lot like we have a the to of necromancy here we'll also discuss that but I think it's also important to remember that here with our tier one TOS that you are picking one of these as your first toome that means that the spell that you get is really important so like here in our S rank uh we have cryomancy Alchemy warding and evocation this is pretty similar to where we were before uh I think that cryomancy is still just like a generically incredibly powerful tone it accomplishes basically everything you need it to Tom of Waring has taken a slight Nerf in the sense that now Tom of evocation is a lot stronger there's just a lot more things in the game right now that are weak to lightning damage thanks to uh the derel work shop that was introduced in Empire and Ashes and then I just like didn't update these Toms um but to of evocation I think was an S tier toome in the Empire nashes update and I don't think anything introduced in Primal Fury uh knocks it down to a I think this is just like a very very powerful damage type that naturally lightning damage does kind of like slow down towards the end of the game because there are people who are going to start picking up a lot of it these days the um toome of Naga transformation is is very very powerful there are other things in that uh that that Tome but Naga transformation is pretty Bonkers uh but let's talk about the to of alchemy here so this is going to be one of our s tier Toms the first thing I think I want to mention about the to of alchemy is that I do recommend against this as your first tier one Tome you'll note by just looking over it that like there's no summon here in fact if you start on to of alchemy you're going to get the same experience that you get if you play with uh to of necromancy as your first your tier one toome there's like nothing for you to spend your casting points on there's an enchantment here with mysterious Sonic this is pretty powerful when it comes to scaling afflictor aren't bad when it comes to like the first 20 25 turns and and clearing the board there I wouldn't you know lean into these too hard because they are a tier 2 draftable unit but like they they're not bad when it comes to early game clearing but like the real power of the Dome of alchemy is that it is just like fantastic when it comes to your research Alchemist lab is one of the best spis in the game right now it's insanely cheap uh it only costs like 60 Gold to to build this thing which means it's also really cheap on the production side and it's also insane uh valuable when it comes to this knowledge because it counts not just unique profits improvements like quaries and farms and whatnot but also if you have like SPI so Tom of alchemy is just fantastic across the board for anybody who wants to do research it also comes with a materium affinity and just one materium Affinity is really great because it sets you up to work on materium one we also have material Refinery which does work with uh the ATA transmutation which is insanely powerful we'll discuss that later we get a a way to dispel NE negative status effects effects in an AOE and then get two status protection in an early game fight anti magic tinure basically singlehandedly destroys any sort of um crowd control strategy out of your opponent you also have a relatively good siege project here in fumigation this one is like really really wide in its outcomes if you use this against somebody who is poisonous this is a terrible Siege project but against like generic free cities this is a very powerful tool to have uh and then like my asthma is fine um I think the real the real value for Alchemy is the research itself which means that like if you're if you're considering doing any sort of research stacking anything involving like high and and high Hermits and whatever then like you should probably be playing with to of alchemy like it's just really really good Tom of warding is another one of these things that you can start with just be aware that if you start with the Tom of warding that you are going to pick up some problems you're going to start with the mark of invulnerability we discussed this in one of the other streams where we uh started with the Tom of Waring it's really strong because fantasm Warriors are functionally tier 2 units in terms of their combat efficacy even with a changes to um ethereal now instead of having the uh plus two spirit resistance and Immunity to like almost every single status uh we've lost a bunch of our status resistance um but we've gained plus two physical resistance so like the fantasm Warriors I think are are largely a lot stronger at the beginning of the game and worse towards the end which is like fine right this is a tier one unit it's not going to be good at the end of the game anyway and so that's a a great change for to of warding but because you start with this spell and the AI doesn't really use it particularly well just be aware that if you're playing with Tom ofing you are taking a little bit of risk on um if you're if you need to turn spells on for a fight because like you know you don't want to lose everything be my guest uh sometimes it casts your cultural spell but sometimes it casts this one and basically does nothing for you a tier TOS um yeah beasts this is effectively still in the same place um same with enchantment enchantment is a little different because now we have a different um Arrow so now we have purging arrows instead of Seeker arrows which does make to of Enchantment meaningfully worse but I think that overall to of Enchantment is still just like a pretty solid Tome when it comes to generating value for you sundering blades is an absurd amount of damage that you can uh get on the board and of course status resistance um that you can get down on your opponents so like this is just a really really powerful to when it comes to supporting everything the uh the to of Enchantment awakened tools will generate a ridiculous amount of value for you early on and so like this is something that if you're going to take the to of Enchantment then you might want to consider it as your first tier one toome just so you can get like this thing going as quickly as possible but even spell tempered Shields is like really good like this is this is a really big deal in early game Auto resolves getting plus one resistance on all of your warriors keeps them alive a lot longer and then you know plus one resistance on everybody everybody else keeps alive a lot longer we still have issues with copper Golems die all the time um you can try to get the around this with Tom of evolution but I would just generally just accept that they die it's the way of the way of the copper Golem and then of course we have to of zeal so to of zeal this one I think there we do need to talk about a little bit uh so you're probably going to get the most value out of this toone by using fanatical Workforce this is a very very powerful spell plus 60 production income is an absurd amount of production income but it does require a lot of inputs it requires of course 45 Mana as well as the 45 casting points for refreshing this every three turns so that's like kind of costing you 15 casting points per City uh that you're trying to use fanatical Workforce on that gets really expensive when it comes to the early game um and of course the bigger the bigger problem here is that in order to really utilize all this production income you need an absurd amount of gold so if you want to use the uh Tom of zeal then I would very strongly recommend that you look into f hunters or something that's going to generate a lot of gold for you uh cuz you're going to need like really a ludicrous amount of gold to get the most value out of this toome and and for it to actually deserve a spot here on the the tier a but it is really good like to Legion of zeal you can see here that this combines um a lot of the other Elemental uh enchantments into one so you only have to research this once in order to get both the ranged as well as melee damage and then like summon Zealot this is if the Zealot dies that's a feature uh not a bug like you don't need to be paying upkeep for these things they show up they do Spirit damage they inflict condemned that allows them to inflict more damage like they just they do what they need to do which is start fights for you and then die but it's a really good to the B tiers so necromancy is our new B tier here for shadow I think unfortunately to of necromancy is not necessary in order for you to have a really good necromancy build I think that I would still generally recommend it for people because getting access to necromancers as a tier 2 support unit is actually a really big deal the uh raise Undead does work pretty well with white Born Heroes and getting white Born Heroes early for to of necromancy is a really big part of their economy package like being able to kill a free City take that hero resurrect it with you know 50 souls or whatever and then have something that'll play very very well with strengthen Undead plus two strengthen that you can always apply to your hero and generally only your hero at the very beginning of the game means that your support unit hero is to put a lot of work in and then in the unlikely scenario that your strengthened hero dies raise Undead can bring them back and the the AI is usually pretty good at that and then because of the way necrotic magic actually produces value for to of necromancy um necromancers can do a lot of extra damage for you this goes up to a 90% chance on on these sort of single action attacks it's really better for something like awakeners I think that if we get an opportunity to do um from necromancy from on high uh in single player again then we'll have an opportunity to show that off cuz necrotic magic really is very good on like big AOE uh battle mage units a 90% chance to inflict decaying in an AOE does a lot of damage and of course we have our our soulwell down here in tier one but this this is a problem for shadow because now they have their tier one uh research post here and they have a tier one research post here which means that we do not have a tier one or tier 2 research post for shadow or for anybody really um and so like research posts are a little more complicated when it comes to working them into your economy you still need to think about ways to do that cuz you want to always be able to put an academy in your cities and so like that does help the to of necromancy out here a little bit but there are some issues the skeletons are not really usable right now they're just too fragile they're a waste of your souls you're much better spending them on Heroes and and necromancers and resurrecting cities necrotize is really good this is a new spell and this is a really really good spell for your autor resolve but rotting explosion is mostly skippable and skeletons are mostly skippable and Unholy leader doesn't really do anything until you get to your tier two toome um and you start being able to work with crept Souls so like this is not a particularly powerful hero skill Soul collection is really expensive um they change it up to uh 10 Souls income rather than six which is a big increase but like the big problem with Souls collection was always just the gold upkeep and I I still feel like I would have rather this been six uh Souls income for 15 gold gold upkeep that would be a lot easier for most economies to sustain this is just like if you're going to use Soul collection research it as your third or fourth spell off of um to of necromancy build up a real economy first because if you cast this before you build a real economy then all your growth all of your gold will just go to the souls rather than anything else and you'll your economy will Lag Way behind it's not a bad toome and I do like necromancy but like overall most of the value that you're getting here is the Necromancer necrotic magic if you're if you're really working with it a pretty good uh tactical spell and a research post uh SPI don't worry about the research post not giving you knowledge that's mostly cosmetic like part of the the value of the uh the to of alchemy is that the research post is actually really really good for your research like this scales up very quickly but is as long as you it's a research post it'll allow you to build an academy period and that's like the main the main value of a research post SPI uh and then down here in the other B tier TOS like re pyromancy is just like a worse version of the other um the the other types of Elemental things and evolution is I I think that you can get good value out of this especially in Skirmish mod because it does have some cool stuff going on but it still is not in a position where it's like really threatening the the big boys and it it it's mostly playing second fiddle to everybody else C tier TOS we have uh oh so right uh in case I didn't mention it um in our a tier TOS we have Beasts and then enchantment and Zeal and then our B tier TOS we have necromancy Evolution and pyromancy C tier TOS we have um rock roots and faith and then our D tier TOS we have uh horde so our C tier TOS we have Rock I went back and forth on whether or not this should be in the B tier because the SPI is pretty good but it's basically just the SPI like everything else in in to of rock is pretty anemic and unfortunately an SPI alone is not enough to to save this thing and then to of roots is in the same place where like it's got the the entangling root spell and that's cute against the AI but doesn't really work particularly well in in multiplayer and doesn't do a lot for you in Auto resolve so like it's it's mostly nonsense and then Tom of Faith there is a big part to the to of Faith um and this is how I I've seen people generate some value out of it Abby is really cheap this is as inexpensive as uh The Alchemist lab so if you just want to build insanely inexpensive research post spis then taking Tom of faith and Tom of alchemy together gives you the cheapest spis I would not recommend this um to the average player because it does result in you having like hilariously weak early game problems uh the Chaplin are good like these do support Dragon Lords and stuff really well but like where's your summon Walker where's your summon if you don't have a summon in your tier one to you're going to have some problems in terms of scaling your military up and then that will in turn have have issues for scaling your economy up because a big part of the game and age wonders 4 is getting out of low tier units getting stronger units clearing Ancient Wonders clearing infestations conquering other people and uh if you don't have a summon you are going to be way behind when it comes to developing your military and that's mostly reflected here in these grades like I think the only really surprising thing or if you have if you haven't played with it the only surprising thing is that Alchemy is so high but it is just fantastic when it comes to your research all right so here we have our tier 2 TOS some of this is going to look familiar you can see here in our s tier that we still have to of rivalry we'll talk about the uh the nurse dis scald but uh there is something missing pretty obviously the to of amplification is gone it and the Toma summoning have kind of like switched places in regards to their tearing that's really really good it was obnoxious that you kind of had to take a to of amplification as your first tier 2 toome on basically every build if you wanted it to be competitive because of the way like Amplified mines and the access to extra world map casting just like skyrocketed your economy that early it was it was very silly and and I think that this is a much healthier format overall and I think that actually with the changes to scald uh I think rry is the worst of the stier toms here so let's just go ahead and jump in we've got the to of Fate Mists the to of constructs and the Tom of rry so the Tom of fists let's uh let's actually just like start there so the Tom of famous we did talk about this in our stream with the Toma fists but right now MTI is like one of the most powerful things in the game it allows you to do 18 versus 6 uh if you don't know what that means then go watch that stream you'll have a good time it's it was it's really fun and I I guess we'll use this as Shameless plug if you enjoy this uh this content then watch my watch my single player streams don't watch my multiplayer streams nobody ever should watch those those are just me and my friends that I do for for extra content but the uh the single player stuff is super fun and I'm having a great time and I'd love to have you with me but the uh the Misty terrain abuse is ridiculously powerful and is banned in most multiplayer circles um and so that does weigh this tone back down a little bit but it's still really powerful F blessing is a support ability so it's not like really high priority for Your Heroes it can be pretty good whenever it comes to doing uh crazy buff circus stuff but like stabs of mist generally does enough of that all on its own but it is important to note that like Toma Mists does play really well on things like wild speakers you know support units that don't naturally have their own healing ability uh because this this is a really nice free action for any of your supports to have and then of course you get misings these are are people have been showing these off as being crazy crazy overpowered they're not crazy crazy overpowered but they are really really good if your opponent does not have a solution for accuracy problems in the form of something like um inquisitors that always hit or you know Battle Mages or enough scry that like you can just shred infinite evasion um they're going to have a bad time if they if they are trying to take 25% hits against missings you're going to demolish them and that we did actually see that in one of our multiplayer games with uh I think it was zombie versus yukoh and zombie just couldn't hit hit these guys and they just like tore things apart with Misty strikes and and fatrick and they are really powerful there and then of course you have like great um extra Transformations F EMB braces like mostly skippable these sort of fixed abilities like on Alchemy if they're static on the the map when it comes to Tactical combat they're not going to be nearly as powerful uh but that that doesn't matter because I think that overall the to of famous is just like a very very strong Tome there's everything to love about it even the SPI is pretty good like this doesn't give you as much in terms of its Mana so I mostly only think you need to build this if someone's invading you but if somebody is invading you fwat Pond is really silly and then of course we have our Tome of the construct so to of the construct introduced in the Empire and Ashes DLC this thing is really xenophobic I do want to highlight that first before we talk about the strengths of this construct um tone we do need to highlight the weaknesses of it if you're trying to play with units that are not not your race or something that you've you know done a a transformation here with linked mins which it's not crazy expensive 250 casting points you can do this on like one secondary race if you're if you're doing that but like mostly you do do not want to be playing with animals or um you know Undead or dragons blah blah blah cuz you really need these effects to work these effects make it so that any of your target friendly construct or linked mind units in a chain get either hastened and strengthened across you know like an entire front or they enter into defense mode and gain watchful for one turn and this can be used on on units that have already moved so what this allows you to do is either like move bunch of people get into a bunch of fights um and then cast cascading defend and like lock down the front hardcore defense mode on everybody in the universe where you know charge attacks are marginally weaker um but also just like generally harder to to utilize I think is a a pretty solid ability but like this is really the banner for this entire toome especially now that scalds have lost their haste this is like basically the only big AOE haste other than the exhilarating on Dragon rulers so this is this is an insanely powerful tone based off of this spell alone and then of course you do get bronze Golems these are really good against very particular enemies because they have a massive um a massive lightning weakness let's let's find a a bronze Golem just to to show this off bronze golems with minus four shock weakness have the same problem that fantasm Warriors do where like there's supposed to be Frontline units that lock things down but because of this gigantic weakness to a a m iCal damage type and and no extra ways to like buff their resistance into outer space other than Tom of warding these things can get annihilated by an enemy with uh lightning weapons and then your front line just doesn't exist and then uh then that's a big problem then that is a big problem but like the just because the bronze Golems aren't oppressive doesn't make the to of the construct any worse this is a really good thing to have especially if you're playing with um daston or exemplars but even earlier on in the game plus one defense and resistance on all your shield and pole arm units that's not racial that's pretty nice uh that it gives you some flexibility in terms of utilizing things early on and I like the worker construct Nexus I think this is a pretty solid uh SPI just the ability to to stack a bunch of things next to it and get value there is really good and of course the the really important thing for the to of the construct is that this does interact favorably with powerful things the to of the golden realm gives you access to the Gold Golem which now is a construct um and so it does get these bonuses in terms of cascading commands and so like this is powerful early on as long as you can get enough racial units and constructs and then scales really well into the mid into the mid to late game not like insanely insanely well because gold golems do still have some issues with the uh the elemental weakness but this this is a very powerful strategy overall and then rry uh we do of course have the nurse to scalds but they're still just like fantastic units and my my feelings overall on rry really haven't changed the Nerf dis ODS to make these Bannerman abilities and lose haste does matter and I think it is meaningfully worse than probably the uh the other tier 2 Toms but the other uh s tier tier 2 TOS but I overall it's still quite good all right so that was a long introduction for some powerful new toys but they they are powerful and you should play around with them most of the rest of the stuff is going to be things that you've already seen before we cover a couple of things that are are interesting like the the new winds but overall my feelings on most of this is basically the way it was in our our first uh tier list so I would just like refer you to those for all of these guys but here we have the uh in the a we have to of Glades Inquisition and artificing Glades is just a very powerful ranged toome it plays really really well on high but it also plays pretty well on like most things the ability to throw Sunder defense down is a big deal and if you just support the Glade Runners with like one or two Elemental enchantments they'll do enough damage to earn their keep and then like you know the the combination of everything else that you get in the Toma Glades isn't bad like the healing ability is pretty neat the uh the entwined protectors although they die very quickly once your opponent gets um fire damage on the board these are still pretty good healing sap is nice aspect of the rout is pretty powerful Leaf skin gives you resistance to everything so like this is just a a generically pretty good to meaningfully worse than the S tiers but generically pretty good but I think like the really big winner here is the to of Inquisition so to of Inquisition has gone from being a to that like answered question that no one was asking which is how do you hit something that can't be hit CU one of the big parts of inquisitors of course is that their uh their bolt is an auto hit the bolt of judgment so this is now a really important piece for an order Mage it used to be that it you know it got 10 extra hit points on inquisitors as well as an extra defense and an extra resistance in the past patch and so they got a lot more beefy but they still didn't like solve any problems but now with all this Fay Miss nonsense going around inquisitors are a lot stronger and of course they're also existing in a universe where like or Mages now need to look for damage pieces elsewhere because shrines of smiting are way worse um and so I think that makes inquisitors just like overall meaningfully stronger and I I think that the toome of Inquisition offering you a strategic spell that deals damage a very strong all bit you know draft based unit draft based strategies just like Briefly summarize they get stronger and stronger as the game goes on because you're going to get more and more cities with built up infrastructure to allow you to like push out units so having draft units and like your tier three four five Toms is not a problem but having them on your like really really low tier TOS can be an issue because you're not going to have an infinite amount of draft on turn 15 like kind of no matter what your build is uh nor on turn 25 you're just going to have so much more on turn 45 and and because of the way like you can summon things to the board uh and these guys get built in cities and you don't have your teleporters built up yet like draft just like starts off a lot worse and then and then gets better and better and better but inquisitors aren't like hilariously soft anymore and the because they do all of this damage as an auto hit that also usually stuns I think inquisitors are good I I think that this is actually a solid a solid option now it might be a little bit worse than artificing simply from a meta perspective because artificing is really really good with barbarians and barbarians are just like a very powerful tool overall you do not need to take Tom of artificing in order to make barbarians good it does make barbarians better it gives you 30% extra crit chance on an awful lot of different types of units it does not apply to Your Heroes and of course the the hero skill here Golem assistant doesn't give you an extra crit chance either which is why this really is kind of skippable for barbarians like the the crit the you want to do as much Cris uh crit chance attacking On Your Heroes as possible cuz they just do so much damage but you really want your unit to be as Burly as possible and that doesn't help here but to of artificing offers so much in all these different packages that it is a very powerful toome um and and getting extra damage on on Berserkers on like turn 30 is huge even if it doesn't like keep them alive but hey Iron Golems they can keep people alive right yeah as long as nobody hits you with lightning damage then uh then then your iron golems are not going to be doing a particularly good job as a as a front line all right so let's talk about our beat here uh Tom of winds is a lot better it keeps getting better and better uh it might even be like something you could consider as a low low low a tier but I think it's probably more like a b tier thing but we do have Seeker arrows now in to of winds so this is the plus one range that was on to of Enchantment that's really important if you're trying to do range stuff and you're not playing as high Zephyr archers are still quite nice because they do have the the always hit here on Zephyr shot the AOE is not as big a deal simply because people are going to have a lot of Defense in the mid to late game so this um a AE is not going to be nearly as effective as an AOE on a a battle mage that inflicts a lot of status debuffs this is like just pure damage but hey it's another always hit and as we mentioned with inquisitors that's really important um and and favorable wins this is a lot better this uh gives you half of your movement if you're on land and everything on water you do not need to be playing on a a water map for this to be good any extra movement on the Strategic layer is very powerful when it comes to to playing the game being able to get to Extra infestations or an ancient wonder a turn earlier is is huge and abducting Cyclone is actually very strong like this is really inexpensive and a 90% chance to stun as well as displace enemies is really powerful in manual combats and just like anecdotally pretty good in in um a AI autor resolves it it really depends on on what it casts it on sometimes it casts it on on units that like pull somebody to the edge of the board doing nothing uh but sometimes it's actually really good and if you use this on a summon and you stun it and make it so like the opponent loses an entire turn then that can be worth the casting points uh and then wind ragers These Guys these guys are Brer than they look because they do have a a huge huge huge 60% chance to dodge uh ranged attacks but they're very weak um otherwise so I would generally recommend against them and that that is going to be reflected there in that grade for the Tom of winds but they're a lot better the to of souls probably also needs to be talked about a little bit cuz that is new here um as a tier two toome we've reworked bone Horrors I think people are going in too much on bone Horrors same with skeletons like they're okay but these are quite fragile whenever it comes down to it three defense two resistance 90 HP is not a lot whenever it comes to a tier three unit like that's sunk basically tier two and a half whenever it comes to durability and because of the the huge uh Elemental weakness the fire and and spirit these things do die pretty quickly I think if you're trying to use uh the chaff that to of souls makes available to you I would generally recommend using summon corrupt Soul inste instead the they are kind of expensive whenever it comes to massing them you're going to need a lot of souls if you want to use a lot of corrupt Souls but they're really easy to mass cuz like all you need is the the casting cost and the the souls right there so if you did your homework and you took the uh the to of necromancy then using a lot of them should not be a problem but if you didn't do that like you still can consider using the of souls cuz you get the soul collector ability so now Soul bound deals 20% damage instead of 10% as well as this 30% chance of becoming aing zombie means that actually taking toas Souls without uh necromancy is defensible I still think that overall the package of those together is still quite good um necromancy on white Born Heroes is very strong but because the low quality of both the skeletons as well as the bone horror reanimation if you want to be really really spicy about using necromancy you can wait for a great transformation again that there's some some ways to do that but Tomas Souls is still quite good and because you get the uh the soul binding on your Battle Mages as well as your supports then you can use your supports to add Soul bound and then use your Heroes using the soul collector to do extra damage with their soul bound so that lets your your supports support even more that's that's pretty cute I like that Walker that's that's fun restore Undead Army unfortunately still kind of like mostly does doesn't do anything but I think Tomas Souls is fine as a as a b tier it does pretty well uh we have Tomas summoning Tomas summoning like we did talk about as a uh tier three toome and I'm not going to go too into detail for for this thing but it is still good if you get into a big manual fight early and you manage to get an evolutionary summon like a a lightning Elemental to stick around then Arcane supercharge is disgusting plus five strengthen plus three resistance plus three bolstered resistance and static charge for you know relatively SM small cost on a legendary lightning uh Elemental can just like Slaughter entire armies all on their own if if you're not prepared to fight against it and then the mind control on Arcane Bond can be really scary it's just that like this thing also drops off really quickly that's the big problem that's that's holding it back here and and preventing me from giving this any higher than a b because as soon as you start running into control loss Immunity on everything then this to kind of doesn't do a lot for you the this at least the Arcane supercharge does scale well into the mid toate game because you can use this on stuff like bayor and uh and uh living fogs for real value but overall I think B tier is fine uh to of Mayhem this is just like to of infectious insanity but infectious insanity is probably strong enough to deserve a be all on its own it's a really powerful spell uh I have unfortunately demoted to of the D Doom Herald down to C I might have had it in C before but if not it probably deserved to be there you just don't need it in order to do morale based um strategies if you want to do morale stuff keep your units alive and kill your opponent's units that's like the easiest way to do it and then uh there there are other things that you can do that do morale manipulation but like stronger I think the biggest value you get here is the SPI and then like the rest of the to is is okay I guess but nothing exciting scrying unfortunately didn't get as big a buff uh whenever they nerfed phasing so I think it's still a c tier and then um I did talk talk a little bit about Toma fertility maybe going off uh in the the tier 2 Toms video so let's talk about why that didn't happen very briefly so to of fertility we get the nymph the nymph has here the seduce ability this is a very powerful ability that can give you control of an enemy unit in a manual battle you take control of the enemy unit you fight against their friends for a little while and then whenever the battle comes to an end before you end it you just kill the unit by holding down alt and then all of your friends you know like kill your mind control dude and then at the end of combat you get the experience points but if you're doing Auto resolve which is what we do for you know like the the multiplayer standard then you end up where you've seduced you know like a tier 2 unit and you've taken a fight that was supposed to be 16 experience points and therefore a level up and then uh turned it into 10 experience points and then like not a level up and that is a big problem for nymphs they're really good units if it wasn't for the experience Point problem because everything else about this package is really good and and I don't really know how to balance this either cuzz like when you seduce this is so huge for combat that like it is it maybe should come with a cost but like the the cost in terms of experience points is too high and it really hurts the TOA fertility as well as reavers overall the the tools that Toma fertility has here are really cool I do like the AOE um negative stats remove and it does play pretty well with to of warding but because of the the EXP problem here and although this is this is a lot better this is a a lot better um now that population is better and food and and is just better and this is buffed a lot but like I home fertility is still not good um and do not play with home of Beacon like the the light brers still have effectively zero HP you'll occasionally see it when it comes to an auto resolve that like you fight against light brers and they mind control your army and then like your army just eats itself and then you die and then you think that like the light brers are really really good and so like you want to bring them but then you watch it different Auto resolve where the light brers mind control your front line but then like you have a dragon or like one ranged piece and then you just kill the light brers and you get your units back and it's cuz he's a 55 HP one defense and one resistance so like there's a stream Where where we found a lightbringer on turn one and I just deleted it and that that is that is basically how you need to feel about these units they are extremely random whenever it comes to the what they give to you and they have the same problem with the nymphs where they deny you experience points and then like all the rest of the all the rest of the to of the beacon is just not good don't take this to and you'll be happy all right so here with our tier three Toms this should look pretty familiar here up at the uh the top we do still have the to of Devastation as an S tier to that's really hasn't changed it's actually gotten a little bit stronger because uh Devastator spheres are like almost real units now they actually have enough Mobility to to deploy and and do some real damage and so this is just a great toome the biggest downside to it of course is that you do need three chaos Affinity but as long as you're level 12 you can do the the reset trick where you just like reset your ruler For the First Time for free pick three chaos affinities um choose this toome reset again for 150 Imperium and then build your ruler the way you'd want and then you can pick up kind of like any of these tier three TOS you can't do that with the tier four Toms there you need some existing affinities in order to do a reset switch but you can still kind of do the same thing right if you are level 16 then you have four affinities if you're level 12 you have three so you just need a couple of affinity from things in order to unlock them that way but Devastation is just great um the biggest thing against it I guess is that like it's not as good on on you players trying to utilize ranged units but those are also like harder to get value from so it's it's probably the strongest tier three right now uh the closest competition is the to of transmutation I think on the previous patch the to of trans transmutation was probably the strongest in the game simply because transmute resources seems to have been bugged it was giving you draft um so you can see here that it says that it converts the Mana income into gold production and food which is very very strong but in the previous patch it was also giving you draft um and transmute resources was just like bananas bananas powerful in terms of the economic boost it gave to you and then you also had transmutation circle thrown on top uh they introduced that one in the previous patch but this is a really powerful SPI that becomes effectively a magic material which does a great job at unlocking these uh collection bonuses but also just a great job in terms of just like dumping uh economy on to you like if you just have a start where you don't have Tranquility pool that's a pretty big problem for you unless you get to of transmutation online and then and then you just get like whatever sort of resources you need the only requirement to get good value out of this is that you have cities so like like everything it doesn't play too well with um chosen destroyers but that's okay like not a not a big deal the other the other thing I think that's kind of like a pseudo ding against homo transmutation is that like steel skin you cannot take this with the uh the new AST uh trans the major transformation we'll talk about that whenever we get there basically do not stack negative lightning resistance it will make your life miserable but overall Toma transmutation is very strong and I think the uh the Toma Vigor also probably should deserve a spot here in the S rank it's it's very very powerful whether it's s or a I think you can go back and forth on um like I think in the the previous iteration we had cold dark as an S tier and vigor as an a tier but I think that overall with the introduction of elephants and the ability to use super growth to make elephant like single model entities out of basically everything that's very powerful in Skirmish um but also just like generically powerful in the game single model entities Do not drop off in uh terms of their damage output as they get wailed on and so it's really really good for you uh and of course this does apply to all of your your racial Heroes and extra HP on your Your Heroes is a really big deal tomal cold dark I I've moved down to a tier I think it's it's still very powerful and could be in in the S tier cuz you know like access to the uh the the FR flash freeze is is incredibly incredibly strong but this is a universe where people are going to be doing more terraforming thanks to primals and the fact that like the adaptation traits aren't entirely skippable now they're still not very good um but they're not entirely skippable which means that the bonus for marching winter is like less set it and forget it but like flash freeze is still a very powerful thing and this is a really powerful SPI and the fact that this is like a blind on a mage ability means that like you're more likely to get it cuz you're going to have some status resistance immunity uh or ignoring on on Mage people and then like this is a really great minor transformation so it's like still a very very strong package for to of the cold dark it's just I I think probably a little worse in a universe where people are going to naturally be fighting you on on terraforming uh we have to of pandemonium as another a tier to of pandamonium I think probably I underestimated in our initial uh run through the strategy of just utilizing chaos eaters to make bayor is very strong and there's uh like a really critical thing that I missed that that morgi actually pointed out when it comes to utilizing the the toome of pandemonium here it's that um you get 30% extra damage on all of your heroes from vessels of chaos by just combining this with like literally anything that does automatic status debuffs like uh the to of The Crucible and and lava burst there so this is one of the best in terms of damage scaling For Your Heroes really really really powerful toome um and although this is pretty narrow in terms of its application the thing that it applies towards which is getting you early Bor is very powerful Havoc magic is mostly skippable this is pretty good if you're at war with like a free City and you need to do extra farming cuz like you did not have a a particularly favorable early game when it comes to infestations and you're not playing on regenerating infestations but like I I think overall the Tom of pandemonium is is very very powerful and and does deserve a position here we also have the of great transformation uh this one I think is probably a little more defensible in the in the a tier than the other necromancy Toms so I'm going to be brave and and put it here realistically it might be a high be but I I think to of the great transformation is incredibly incredibly strong in terms of of what it can give to you you do need to be aware that any Undead strategy is going to have some serious problems the minus four spirit and fire damage means that if you afford your opponent too much time to build up an army and a counter to you that you're Army can just like disintegrate it's it's really easy to melt people when you're doing you know plus 20 to 30% extra damage to them just based off of Elemental types alone and then you stack strengthened and all that stuff on top of it um and so that's a big problem with to of the great transformation but White born is really strong FedEd Legion is great for you know lots of extra units getting bone dragons online isn't as impressive as I was hoping it would be bone dragons are of course their tier four mythics which means that they do have an easier time getting getting up to killing momentum and Legend rank but they're still tier four mythics so they only have 130 HP and like five defense and four resistance so these are good units but not like the most exciting thing in the universe and that does hold back the the Tome of of great transformation overall I was really hoping that they were going to take this as an opportunity to upgrade a bone dragon up to a tier five I would much rather see these things as like tier 4.75 with a a tier five upkeep cost and have them be really really rock skin than like what they are now which is like a tier 4.25 and and have uh I guess these also have the the high upkeep cost so the upkeep cost problem is still there but yeah Tom of the gr transformation is still still pretty good and it's a great place to work uh for Undead stuff and you do not need to take other Undead things to to get good value out of it I think necromancers are probably the best way to get good value out of them so like Souls is the most skippable of all of them uh but you know just be aware that they do they do play pretty well together the years we have to of teleportation this was one of the strongest but unfortunately they nerfed the way that phasing works so now like phase beasts are a lot worse they can't just move and phase and attack all in the same turn and then like assassinate enemy leadership structures with with relative ease uh and it's important to note on the phase beasts themselves that uh the the phasing like I'm going to save myself uh displacement effect this is not always good I have seen this be devastating for phas Beasts where like they take a whole bunch of damage in one hit but the displacement could could keep them alive and instead it displaces them like into the middle of all of the enemy who then just like tears them apart and because they have minus four shock weakness uh if they have if they have lightning weapons these things die really really quickly but phas beasts they they they're down and I think that does bring the teleportation to him down and the the quick phase enchantment is also worse it's mostly just the the teleportation hero skill that keeps this thing up I think to of amplification probably could be viewed as being stronger than um to of teleportation here in our B tier I'm not sure if this could work its way up into a maybe it's more objective to for this to be like this but I like I like necromancy don't at me it's just that like to of amplification is a lot worse as a tier three toome to of amplification used to be like absolutely necessary for you to take on any build that was remotely serious because of the way the Amplified Minds just like dramatically inre ined your research rate but because you're getting this in your tier 3es you don't have as much time for this knowledge income to pay itself back to you so you really in order to get good value out of T of amplification you really need to be utilizing the stuff like frenzy focus and Amplified arrows which you can do um like if you're trying to use high and Glade Runners and go all in on Range then to of amplification is very good but if you're not making a ranged build then I think amplification is skippable now and so I I think in a a B tier makes a little more sense um we have the to of sanctuary this is I think identical to where it was on the previous tier list video so just watch that uh and then we have the Tome of the dreadn now that is a new introduction for us so let's talk about that a little bit so the to of the dreadnut gives you some really good stuff you get a tier four Mythic and this has the same bonuses as well as penalties that the uh the dragon does but unlike the dragon um this thing is a lot more fragile 100 HP and one fewer uh resistance is is pretty spooky to be taking on a really big expensive draft unit like this it is still pretty strong in the sense that it can do a lot of damage and combined with tuning kits as long as you're using supports in your army which if you're not using supports in your army please start doing that then you can get really really great damage value out of your iron clads but you do start any entering into Realms where like if you aren't taking Tom of alchemy so that way you have the ability to clear the stun that you sometimes get there then you're in a lot of trouble cuz this is a two turn stun that you get from the um the overcharged thing two turns of stunning that ignores status resistance because this now ignores status resistance when it when it checks is really scary that's very highrisk high reward so I think Tom the dreadnut deserves its place there in the B tier important to note that war Foundry is one of the few ways that you can get extra Rank and the draft is really good so this is a a very solid SPI that you you should be looking into mostly you skip artillerist that's that's mostly nonsense but you know it's it's a solid toome not not too bad dragons and C is I think unsurprising I think it was ambitious for it to be in the B tier there are ways to use dragons in a game of Age of Wonders 4 but they're just like really expensive and pretty slow and you can do uh some some wild cheese to get these things out like ASAP but like I think overall in order to get the maximum value out of Toma dragons you kind of need the uh the everrow sanctuary the one that gives you the auto evolve ability then I could see this thing putting in some work but otherwise to of dragons is just like kind of too slow to to really pursue to of Cycles I've left in the C tier along with to of subjugation I think there are some good uses here for these uh these Toms but the to of the Druid of the Cycles is still like kind of problematic we've gotten the a lot of upgrades to Druid of the Cycles over the years or over the months or whatever but it's still it's still difficult to get value out of in a multiple in a multiplayer manual battle cuz your opponent is going to manage your corpses and like where your dead people are a lot better and then in autor resolve the AI is like mostly going to use this thing as just an assassin but hey you know a 24 damage magical assassin with really good stats and a defense mode that's really nice is not a bad unit for autor resolve and I have seen it do the resurrection at least once so it does do something um but I I think that TOA Cycles is still probably one of the the worst tier three bre and then Toma subjugation there are you know like every time they they bring out a new Mount timr Knights get better and better and better but there there's still in the same place where like if you want that sort of effect then just take a war breed and haste it like it's easier said than done now that scalds don't haste but there are lots of ways to do Hasting in the in the game and uh this this to is a lot better than this one even if the units are like a lot closer than it than it looks on paper and then to terany is our our worst of our tier three and I I don't think that's really changed like you can you can use this and you can get value out of it in like a really huge really big really slow game but those are not multiplayer games and uh not not really what you experience with autor resolve only either all right so for tier four Toms I'm going to go ahead and kick us off with the uh the toome of the Stormborn because I think that this is a very very very powerful Tome whether or not it's actually like the strongest of our tier four TOS I think is something that you you do need to debate and test for yourself but it is amazingly powerful and I think is a good way to kick us off with our our s tier tier fours so the to of the Stormborn uh we have the to of Oblivion we have the toome of the astral mirror and the toome of The Crucible so what do we get in the toome of the Stormborn so first of course we get access to the stormbringer itself the stormbringer is a very very powerful skirmisher unit that deals a lot of damage the combination of physical and magical means that it's difficult to find ways to like really prevent Storm brers from from putting work against you but like the really big highlight for them is of of course their throw storm Trident this thing has zero cooldown so they can do it as many times as they want we have always hits so that thing ignores all of those accuracy penalties and of course if you can do anything to increase their range it offers you ways to do really far attacks without being worried about uh accuracy penalties and it's an automatic electrified which is a really big deal in a three heex line so this is like a great unit across the board but I think the real highlight of the uh the toome is the transformation now before we like you know go off and say oh yeah this is so unbelievably great you do need to keep in mind you losing your Mount and leg equipment slots On Your Heroes now it is a transformation that's going to be affecting all of your racial units including your storm brers itself and of course your War breeds or your bastions or your awakeners or your uh your your ancestral wardens you know there are lots of units that you can transform very productively with your Naga transformation but the transformation On Your Heroes is not pure upside losing the the leg and the mount is a a big deal but of course what you get in exchange is like sort of what you were losing with the the mount in the leg anyway you get 40 movement and slip away which is like you get the slipaway boots built in you don't even have to make them anymore um amphibious is also quite nice in the event that you're playing on a map where you're going to be able to utilize that and then the combination of slipway as well as light blight resistance and lightning resistance on all of your racial units means that this is a very very powerful transformation for both Auto resolves as well as manual battles really really good the uh the Storm Port I think is probably a little too expensive we did play around with it a little bit in uh our our game where we continued our our F of myths campaign but I just think that like overall anything that cost 750 production is very difficult to to utilize and actually suggest to people but arcing weapons is insane this essentially gives all of your Your Heroes the ability of the uh the Lightning Spear whenever it comes to their their attacks so if you do any sort of damage stacking with uh strengthened and you know building a tier four weapon for your your hero which you should be doing that um then you can get outrageous amounts of damage here out of the the to of the Stormborn really really powerful Tome Bounty of the sea I don't think really does a lot but it's okay if like some of the Spells don't do anything because like most of what you're getting there in the to of the Stormborn is outrageous uh to of Oblivion I think mostly depends on how much you're willing to abuse sleep of Oblivion as well as uh living fog but if you're willing to abuse them then those are some insanely powerful tools that you got access to the Strategic spell have come down cuz I think that like in order to get good value out of the Strategic spell you do need lots of status resistance shading and like yeah you can cast flash freeze and ritual asomia on one stack in the same turn but like H that that's not cool don't do that they're cooler things you can do in age of wers for than fight people out of combat um the tone of the astral mirror is still very powerful like yeah they keep nerfing the ability to to make clones of things but overall the fact that you get access to infinite supports in one combat is really really messed up um so the best use of best use case for the tone astral mirror is the summon astral Reflections on any sort of some uh like support unit where they're not trying to do damage they're just trying to add value and if they can just strengthen like way more units or or add extra bolstered resistance or whatever then you're in a a great place for your your tier four TOs and then like the other pieces here are like fine in a supporting a supporting cas but like this might only have one spell in it and still be a great to for you and then of course we have the to of The Crucible I think that you could go back and forth on Crucible versus golden realm I might have talked about this in our tier four video because it does sound familiar to me um but T of The Crucible I think with lava burst is just like generically stronger than um the the current setup for gold golems gold golems have been reworked a little bit in terms of of how you get value out of them um you can't make them undying anymore with tier five to of Creator and that pushes the uh the tier five to of the golden realm down meaningfully and of course guilded cleave is also not a multi-hit so like these things no longer absolutely Massacre dragons if you put strength and five on them like you do actually have to fight other large units now um and and you know that that does hurt the the toome overall but to of The Crucible I think is is definitely here in the S tier for a lot of good reasons um and deserves the the out over to of the golden realm so we we talked about golden realm I guess accidentally but that's our first a tier I think it's still very powerful um and then of course we have some really new entrance here for for the AER so first we want to talk about the Tome of Astral convergence I guess so the to of Astral convergence used to be one of these Toms that like was hilariously bad and and you would skip every single time and like the only thing really holding it back now is just that there is another tier four astral major trans formation in to of the Stormborn but astral conversion is not messing around anymore cascading power starts at 20 damage now this means that it is very very trivial for you to just add lots of stacks of cascading power and actually get outrageous amounts of damage out of this thing it it used to like stack up I think it was like plus five damage every single time but starting at five but it was like so slow that it didn't matter but starting at 20 means this thing just shreds people until they can start working up lots of resistance and and you get it for free on a tone that gives you a really good major major transformation now the Ethereal type is slightly worse um it was better I think before when it was plus two spirit resistance and Immunity to like almost every single uh thing under the Sun but I understand if you're going to do that as a major race transformation like you need to make it a little more reasonable and plus two defense isn't bad just be aware minus four lightning resistance means that you absolutely cannot take anything that increases your lightning weakness so do not play around with this and steal skin uh if you if you need to do major if you need to do transmutation then just like skip that research um because that is not Bueno but if if you if you defend your Lightning by taking you know warding and uh you take the the to of the golden realm and then you take your uh tier five astral and you've picked up the ability to do extra crits on your maximized magic and your crits guild then that can be really good and astral Attunement can keep everybody alive and getting extra Buffs like I think this is actually like a meaningfully better toome now that both this is better and this is better and and it really could almost be an S tier except that of course cascading power does slow down and like a big big late game it 20 damage isn't going to do a lot on turn 75 but like on turn 40 or whatever it this is something that we encountered when we were trying to stream against noctis um cascading power used to be kind of a joke for noctis now it annihilates low tier units just absolutely annihilates them and this is a pretty cool ability too and because you're if you're doing all of this uh crit stacking and gilding and whatnot you're going to have a pretty easy time taking Arcane surge on your on your Heroes so I like to of Astral convergence now um and then of course we also have to of the demon gate I think that this can't prob this probably should not be an S simply because uh bayor are worse in a universe where everybody has access to um control aome imunity uh due to their their Mythic units getting it but fight for power is still a very very powerful strategy and it's actually a Little Bit Stronger now that demonkin makes it that all of your uh your racial units have the fiend unit type so what this means is that with the Tom of demong gate now you don't even have to take pandemonium in order to use fight for power it is definitely faster because it do not convince yourself that 600 casting points on demon kin is free this is a huge investment but if you do this and you were playing with uh the Tom of Devastation and your War breeds War breeds are tier four units so you can mer you can smash two War breeds together to get a bayor oh and of course their SPI is like actually buildable it used to be insanely expensive and now it's just like meaningfully expensive all right and then our last uh a tier to here is the to of Supremacy now a really big part of what gives this thing its grade is that Monument of Supremacy is a lot cheaper now this thing is only 450 cost and if you're playing around with high for instance then Mona Supremacy offers you enormous amounts of draft as well as Lots of city stability now the city stability is like mostly only useful for High um and so isn't something that you need to be prioritizing for every single build but the fact that this thing is buildable now I think is really exciting and 30 draft is a lot in a a bigger game with the way that a draft scales up in your cities exemplars are really great I I do think that it's a little unfortunate that like most of the time you want the uh the Flying Eagle Mount cuz because it just makes exemplars so good uh and that's that's that breaks my heart cuz I do like having them on elephants but you can do that too like that's perfectly reasonable and getting them extra durable is really good because these things are probably the best Shield units in the game depending on how you feel about bastions and then we of course we have a powerful strategic spell something that like individually hoses all Undead builds all on its own you have the same thing in the the to of Devastation but I think that that overall package for to of Supremacy means that like you do need to be utilizing um Battle Mages Andor you know the stability here U maybe you're utilizing the all Allied strengthened anthem of Victory this is this is also a very powerful spell when it comes to to manual combats against people but there's like a lot of pieces here in Tom of Supremacy and you kind of need to be using multiple pieces of them in order to get the max value here because order Mages did get nerfed uh we'll talk about that when we get to Tom of exaltation but order mes got hit on the face and I do think that that needs to be reflected in the grade here so a I think makes sense for Supremacy uh down in our B tiers we have the to of the nature goddess I think that this is this was kind of overhyped like the changes to uh awaken instincts over the over the years means that like this could be still an S tier depending on how a weaken instincts plays but it's still mostly banned even with the uh the changes where it no longer applies to anyone who's control loss immune that is a that is a big change because it means that now you can't do awaken instincts um and angeliz but like a big problem here for Nature's wrath is that horn gods are not good um I I don't know why they're like this but like why are you like this horn God explain yourself to me but they only have a basic defense mode uh and like not warding they also have some issues where like they're just not as durable as you would expect with 150 HP these things just like take damage like crazy and you can kind of see this for yourself whenever you play the game like the uh the gold Ancient Wonders that look like trees those are usually pretty easy to clear and it's because the Army there is like mostly horned gods and like units that are supposed to be supporting but don't have like all of the support tools if this thing had Waring then I think this tone might be like one tier higher cuz devolve is pretty good and awaken instincts is like testable now but it still has issues where like uh it's either broken or it doesn't do anything and it's like kind of vacillating between those things here for uh to of Nature's wrath and in B tier we have to of Reaper I think that we could make an argument actually for this to be in the a tier as well I think that just like overall the big problem with to of Reaper isn't the re the to of Reaper itself it's just that there's like a lot of hostility towards Undead in the game and that that definitely pushes Undead things down but like the to of the reaper gives you access to Reapers and these things are absolute units now the fact that this uh melee strike with piercing and breaching means that these things just do outrageous amounts of damage that this is a a strategy all on its own like you can do Undead stuff and like go all in on on skeletons and Bone Horrors and corrupt souls and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah but if you don't want to do that and you just want to get like most of the POF for playing Undead then just take Tom of great transformation and Tom of Reaper and make Reapers and like that's a strategy and it will work wonders for you and because it was like a a monodirectional strategy that is weak to a lot of things I do think that deserves a b tier but like if your opponent doesn't have a way to counter or interact with your Reapers then these things will run over them and so they they can be outrageously strong but you know easily countered and then we have the Tom sing now the Tomo sing is something where like it's difficult to exactly rate it because it's it's good against specific enemies so that's why I mentioned this as being sort of like a a sideboard grade location uh this is great against enemies that are trying to utilize things that apply statuses that check against status resistance that's not everybody so you know there's some things to Target there there's some people who are going to be stacking a lot of enchantments without having a lot of status resistance themselves that's where disruption blades is going to do a lot of work um but you know you're not describing everybody that you're fighting against there this isn't going to do a lot if your opponent is just doing a lot of Buffs in combat or if they've done a lot of major race Transformations or whatever like this doesn't do a lot of work there final banishment is really really rude against uh necromancy so like you know that's that's a a powerful thing to have in your back pocket and then severing Golems continue the um the disruption Thing by just giving you access to a magical disruption over AOE uh this is like a really really powerful artillery piece more or less but don't do too many of them 130 HP four defense five resistance on something that you can't apply transformations to means that like having 17 of these and and one hero is not a real strategy um spell words are cool I like the spell Jammer effect especially cuz spell Jammers are like in the place where you Cann unban them um and master disruption is a a pretty cool ability to have it on your Heroes but like you need your opponent to show you that they have a build that's weak to toas suffing before you want to take it if they have a build that is weak to it if they have something where one of these pieces or preferably two of these pieces are going to perform above rate then go ahead take Thomas evering it's also very easy to take because it only requires a combination of six of these things that's like the way that all these hybrid TOS work if you have six materium and zero uh Shadow you can take toas evering if you have two materium and for shadow you can take toas evering you just need those numbers to add up um but you do need your opponent to like show you hey I'm going to I'm going to fold to this toone before you want to take it to of exaltation is a lot worse like it's you can you can use copium and like try to describe good opportunities to use this thing thing cuz like ascended Warriors does level things up pretty quickly and you can use that to like get full dragons out of Toma dragons pretty quickly if that's what you really really want to do and ruler statue is a lot cheaper like being able to build this thing you know the the one time more easily is nice um but shrines of smiting just got like pounded on the face in this and I think that's good these these were these were before kind of like hilariously imbalanced because of the way this worked so they used to give you uh killing momentum Legend rank shrines of smiting using the ascended Warriors very quickly and then smiting pray blast only used one action pip and so what would happen is your Shrine of smiting would you know deal like 150 damage to something kill it in one shot get killing momentum kill something else in one shot and because it was a one pip you could move around a little bit first it was 32 movement points but there were ways to haste it um and then and then you just like would kill people in an alpha strike in like one turn with a couple of shrines of smiting and it was ludicrously imbalanced and if they left them as is it would have made Undead like practically unplayable on on the current patch but shrines of smiting the way they are now are are so much worse that I don't think that you should try uh to of exaltation unless you know exactly what you're doing um I would say if you want to play around with order just play with Supremacy it's it's a much better to in the current meta I think and then of course we have our last C tier here our to of chaos channeling like most of my feelings here haven't really changed I think actually I don't even know why I wasted time clicking over to this if you want to know why this to isn't bad I said it the last time go watch that one and then uh same with to of paradise like this thing is is fine specifically for the tier five nature toome because of the uh the unit enchantment but like outside of that you mostly do not want to be playing with the the to of paradise that is our D tier for our tier four Toms all right and that brings us to our tier five Toms now the tier five Toms I think there is some subjectivity to this it really is heavily heavily build dependent because you don't have like ways to Branch off when it comes to your tier five to right if you're playing his order you have the tier five ordered to you just are going to have to make the best of what you got um but that said I think that the Nerf to the way that to of the Creator Works uh has pushed it down to the a tier so it used to be that to of the Creator gave you access to Eternal Earth which was giving you undying on all of your constructs cuz they hadn't really introduced fat yet and so like they were using the uh gold golems as Elementals and they were getting the undying and that was really strong and you were getting undying On Your Dragon Ruler and that was really strong and all of the the pieces with tectonic shatter and Earth shatter engines was making to of the Creator really powerful but the Nerf to Eternal Earth I think really has hurt uh the to of the Creator so now our s tier Toms we have the tier five uh astral the to of the Ark Mage whether or not that is actually like the top kind of depends on whether or not disruption wave is unbanned for you disruption wave remains like outrageously outrageously outrageously good and if it's banned for you then this is probably more like an AER but it is still really really good because just like the access to haste on all of your your big guys especially now that haste is harder to get is really really powerful and then the maximized magic uh combination with astral convergence as well as to of the golden realm means that it shouldn't be too hard for you to get like really really interesting Battle Mages with lots of opportun is to crit and Guild and and do lots of of really rude CC with the uh the to of the Ark Mage the uh the toome of the god Emperor the order toome is our other tier five uh a s tier toome I think the to of the god Emperor we probably evaluated it a little weaker than we needed to just because like I think exalted Champion generally I I I encourage people to not play this on their Heroes because it's a little overpowered but if you're using it on your Heroes then the to of the god Emperor I think is is still an tier toome um when it comes to tier five it is very very powerful there and the rest of the toome is quite good it's just that like the the general use case of this on um on shrines is is definitely worse and in the universe where um shrines are worse so now I think it's a little more forgivable to be casting this on to your uh killing momentum Heroes but it it is pretty unforgivably insane on on killing momentum Heroes uh our a tiers we talked about to of the Creator already Tom of nature goddess I think we've talked about at length but but it is just like a great uh utility enchantment for everybody and the fact that it's a only a three spell toome I think is mostly good the um the to of the I forget what the tier five chaos to is called the to of the chaos Lord of course it's to of the chaos Lord the to of the chaos Lord still has like issues where yes call forth Avatar of chaos can be quite powerful but like you can't stack this into the same battle and your ruler is generally going to be in a lot of fights and then demonic Onslaught is like very strong whenever you can be guaranteed that you're on the attack but that's not all always going to be the case and then summon bayor is if you really want to do this like you can do that in your tier four rather than your tier five to and then unfortunately like the tier five uh to of the Eternal Lord is still kind of not great like I want to test this out um because I do think that the true death magic is something that could be pretty spicy but there's something that we didn't mention whenever we were talking about this um in the the the patch notes it's that this cannot be used within an enemy zone of control so whereas the Reapers like if we were just a valuating the to of the reaper on the strength of the reaper itself then this would probably be an S tier because this is like bananas good now it's just that like the rest of the to is kind of me um but this thing the curse of the reaper ability is really strong but if there's an enemy within your zone of control at three range is an incredibly difficult setup cost it's almost nothing when it comes to autor resolves it's mostly for manual battles and they're like with everything else manual battles against the AI are not really representative I think of of what you're looking for when it comes to age of Wonders for multiplayer um you know if that's the way you want to play in single player like you do you fam but uh you need to take into account how is the auto resolve going to use this stuff and the auto resolve is mostly not going to get great value out of that the auto resolve would get good value out of Eternal one though like this is something that does literally nothing in in multiplayer because your opponent's just going to stand on your hero but like in Auto resolve the the AI won't do that it might randomly die on top of your hero accidentally and then you know that that'll do the same thing uh but but overall to of the Eternal Lord just not not in a great place um and I I hope that we see some Buffs in the future maybe a rework to the way that the uh the Eternal one power works so that's our our Tom's uh tier list update here for the wolf patch uh I'm not sure which one of these to tier lists I'm going to use as the the screenshot but I think we're going to do our next update maybe next week we're going to do uh traits and culture and everything else cuz I do want to play around a little bit more with um Primal there have been some things that I've seen that that have really impressed me in terms of their economic growth people have been talking a lot about how like outrageously powerful the summons are and they are really good but again that's that's like the really good in manual combats and whether or not the autor resolve AI is going to use them as well is like not the case pretty obviously so how do you get value out of out of Primal in a universe where you can't abuse the Tactical AI is a question I have not yet answered but it is one I'm looking forward to answering and something that I I hope I have a a good answer for you by uh by next week but for now that's uh that's Walker here with we play games all right take care

Channel: w(&)e play games

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Keywords: age of wonders 4, aow4, age of wonders 4 tomes tier list, tomes tier list, wolf patch, aow4 wolf patch tier list, aow4 primal fury tier list, autoresolve, aow4 autoresolve, aow4 pvp, aow4 mp, age of wonders 4 guide, aow4 tomes tier list, autoresolve only, autoresolve aow4, autoresolve tier list aow4

Id: pVqsOL94Q5M

Length: 73min 38sec (4418 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024