What does everyone set the number of players at when they play? I have never played with under 8. I havent been playing long but enjoy the craziness.

After ascending a Cosmos-themed ruler, I noticed something I really didn't like. The ascension trait you get from the Tome of the Cosmos synergizes really badly with the Empire of the Cosmos society trait, despite both being thematically aligned. The Empire of the Cosmos trait gives you increased benefits when you have 1, 2 or 3 of each affinity. The ascension trait gives you the Avatar of the Cosmos passive, which provides a battle effect for each individual affinity you have at 5 or more. So basically, if you want to benefit from the society trait, you'd want to spread your affinities as much as possible. However, if you wanted to benefit from the ascension trait before reaching the late-game, you'd want to rush each individual affinity to 5, one at a time. This creates a situation where thematically these traits really should work well together, but gameplay-wise they encourage completely different strategies.

Got Khorne nailed, just looking for suggestions for Slannesh, Nurgle and tzeentch! Hit me with that Immaterium stick!

I like to share my experience about the ascension ascetic society under an xp focused build. Because you take care of your units you can also take the ruins of chaos society trait to boost you dmg by 50%, extra hp is not really matters.

First run I picked the oathsworn culture due to the honour blade which is a T1,5 unit. I choose wyvern mount just because it was quite new (mobility means more fight)

First book was tome of warband and another crucial is tome of revelry - revels of carnage spell.

I choose battlesaint for early sustain later its only purpose is to give xp at the end of the day.

XP build recipe

Ascension - shaper +50% xp

Form trait - adaptable +30% xp

Ambition - instructor +25% xp

Bathhouse - +10% xp

Magic materials

Silver tounge fruit - +20% xp (miscellaneous infusion)
Focus crystal - +10% combat xp if you control one

tldr

T1 exalted rank needs 400 xp and every other level you need additional 400

Every unit gets 10 xp just because its exist

Units under a champion hero gains 15/round

Units under a hero with mentorship gains 8/round (it says 40 for the least experience unit, but if you have a stack of hero + 5 unit, then this is the average/turn)

Tome of paradise - fortress of vines +10 xp inside domain

Empire tree

Foraging (3rd nature) - +2 xp inside domain

Dutiful watch (4th order) - +5 xp inside cities

Lawless land (8th chaos) - +5 xp in unowned province

Spells

Revels of carnage +100% xp from combat

If you have a recruiter ambition hero at renown lev 3 + a city with blacksmith guild + school of mastery province (strife has), your T1 units start at legendary rank.

Every several turns your units passively gains a level, while your fighting parties gets a level nearly every round.

Just before the end of the run

I though wait a minute. A T2 unit only needs 600xp/level, so they can be as well 20+ level and because I like battlemages (and they have % dmg boost as form trait rather then fighters flat), and like high culture because battlemages can do distracted I picked the ultimate ascension unit, the evoker.

Form trait: arcane focus, sneaky adaptable, athletics and vulnerable to physical (during the game I was lucky and purchased some bears for them which gives them +40% most of the time when cast its 3 AC spell. They are moles to give them justice :D

They can completely annihilate enemy stacks from distance.

I thought a lot about the T1 sunderer, he might be awesome as well with this setup.

Ofc these setups are super weak against insanity, domination, instant death and other hard cc stuff, but in you cities you have multiple stacks of units with not that stupid stats but good enough to clear up those sites where the reapers waiting for you.

Probably it is not a cool strategy in PVP because it is quite easy to hard counter, but its so much fun.

I forgot to mention tome of wind - favourable wind to have even more combat per turn ;)

When you ascend a non-racial ruler to the Pantheon they keep some of their signature skills. However, some of the higher level ones remain "dormant" when you start a new game, providing nothing until you reach the level you would normally unlock them at. So what's the point? Isn't this the same as them just not keeping the skill when they ascend? The only difference is that now if you want a different skill in a new playthrough you'll need to use your skill reset. I guess, maybe it makes sure the AI will use these skills when they get to that level? I am just really confused by this...

I know that balance wise having race transformations affect these rulers is a bad idea because they already are much stronger than the base game rulers, but sometimes I just want to play as a demonic vampire and not being able to apply the Demonkin visual tranformation to my ruler is sad

Definitely my most metal victory... turning me the Balor and the shrine to ash and still got the military victory

Not just skeleton spam, all sorts of necomancy effects

Basically the definition of a necromancer character

I have a one issue whenever I see the Progenitor Golem, its Breach Bolt attack animation looks gorgeous. The way it rear up, put forelegs forward and shoot magic bolts? It looks so elegant! And I notice that animation set are very similar to Dragon.

So, I have one of my Dragon Ruler build that use Astral Transformation and use Cosmic Bolts as a primary attack (it's kinda weak but whatever). But to my disappointment. It uses Dragon Breath Comet attack animation instead!

While Comet Breath animation is not bad, very dragony, but I would love to have that animation for one of its attack, and Cosmic Bolts suit pretty well. Pretty please?

Currently shield units and heroes are boring and useless. They are not good frontline. Most of the time enemy can simply ignore them focusing on backline. Technically shield units have advanced defence modes which are supposed to help. But in practice it only brings units together for devastating AoE attacks.

Thus the proposal is for shield units to intercept attacks. The rules can be simple or advanced.

1. Ranged attacks passing over or near shield units must target said unit.

2. Melee attacks next to shield units must target shield unit.

3. The most healthy shield unit makes the interception.

4. If the shield unit would die the attack is not intercepted.

5. Interception for ranged attacks may be 100% or less. Guided projectiles may cut interception chance in half.

6. Heroes with the shield gain interception.

I witnessed this mechanic in Eador New Horizons and it was hilarious. Sometimes annoying but still fun.

Hello everyone,

As an architect, what exactly does my chosen starting affinity determine? Obviously affinity pjps off the rip, but if I use tomes to push another affinity into dominance does that affinity take over as my incarnate affinity?

Soooooo, as name suggests, I'm figuring out a fun vampire pirate build, custom island realm where pirate lords fight for dominion etcetc, human, reaver federate, Vigilante knights + Seafarers, BUT I cant have an actual vampire with a sword and pistol?! (S&P). Am i missing something? did i overlook a paragon unlock? Or am i just going to have to pretend I'm vampire edge lord? 😅

Fortress of vines is summoning vines beside enemies in all my battles. I got them while in neutral territory while clearing an infestation, and even inside an allied players territory while I was fighting to open a portal. Not sure that's meant to be happening according to the description.

I recently got AoW4 on PS5 and I’ve been loving it. My main question is how many hours does it take to really understand the game?
I’m on turn 70 and things are really ramping up, many leaders are unhappy that I’ve been sieging bases and forcing them to become my vassals.
I’ve noticed my rival empires have really ramped up in terms of their army composition and I’m getting lost in the sauce as to what I’m supposed to be doing to win lol.
Not to mention the monsters are getting increasingly aggressive and anytime I take a 3 stack to go siege my base ends up getting attacked.
Any advice would be very helpful. My tier 1 and 2 units are getting wrecked do you completely take those units out at some point?

I wondered if there are any podcasters that go into any AOW related topics? Doesn't have to be 4, any part of the series would be interesting. I love to read about different builds, the background, strategies, lore and so on and listening might be just as fun during commute.

I didn't find anything on Spotify and would love recommendations if you have any! Thanks!

For me, it’s three heroes most of the time meaning ruler +2 more heroes. Maybe that is because I basically pick cult of personality every game. Honestly, I can’t imagine playing without it.

If I play and control 2 factions in a game and then one of them reach the victory screen to ascend into Pantheon, would another faction keep all the transformation that I’ve got all the way to play on another session as well? (But not ascending traits amirite?)

As the title says. I feel like a tall build is much more viable now and I really want to give one a try. I have a few ideas for how to approach it, swamp adaptation with druidic terraformers, industrious seems good for raw production, funny enough Imperialists seems like a decent option for it starting with another pop and the border bonuses.

But I feel like my ideas are just missing something. So I figured I'd post here and see what people say. I found some other old posts referencing this idea, but they are all pretty old.

What would be the most efective build for a defensive ruler? I want to play as (and against) the masters of defense.

Share your ideas, thanks.

Played on brutal difficulty and challenging+ combat, high world threat and fractured realms. There were a lot of infestations. A lot. By the time I stumbled upon the third artifact, it was already turn 188 and I decided to load my save before the battle and check out how many pantheon points I'll get and funny thing I noticed, that a mere tier 1 item that doesn't even require a turn to craft gives 15 xp.

So, since I destroy nearly 200 infestations, I had a buunch of unused items, so disenchanted them all and ended up getting over 26k essences. Crafted a bunch of swords, disenchanted them all, crafted again, disenchanted again. 30 min later I ended up with 1000 crafted tier 1 swords and rose my previous pantheon points from 20 to 50.

Now, I really love Pantheon system, and the fact that you need to work to get some of the fun cultural traits and ruler starting items is very appealing to me. But this is nuts, I defeated 6 empires single handed, destroyed ~200 god damn infestations that were spawning like mosquitoes in summer evening and still that amounts to less than 1000 tier 1 swords. I find it broken as hell. Might as well add a button next to the pantheon panel that says "add +30 pantheon points", so people don't spend nearly an hour crafting bunch of tier 1 items.

In reality, dear Triumph Studios, if you stumble upon this post, remove the exp gain from tier 1 items, as they don't even take a turn to create. I know I know, if I don't like it, I shouldn't do it, but I just can't help myself when I see a cheese like this.

So my friend asked me to get the game for multiplayer purposes. However, when I wanted to double-check if the game allows cross-play. I noticed a lot of posts about instability during crossplay.

Could anyone confirm or deny that this is still the case in most MP games with crossplay?

Thanks!

Can you suggest any mods to enhance my AOW4 experience?

I open the game and find this, as far as I know I don't have any winged Giant in my Pnatheon

Has this happend to anyone else?
Or is there a way to have winged giants?