I love my spider gobbos!

[Aunty Herbert]

OK, the game tells me over and over that scout units aren't meant for combat, so offf cooourse I want to play a faction based on combat scouts.
And it actually works so far...

The build in a nutshell: Barbarian culture, Goblin spider riders, (as in I keep the sneaky trait and the goblin appearance, but change the physical trait to spider mounts)
Cultural traits: definitely Shadowwalkers, atm with the ruthless raider trait for extra gold income.

Starting tome: Beasts! This has so much useful stuff:

#1 the hero ability packleader. Sneaky gives a 10% damage bonus against flanked opponents, packleader adds another 25% for all units in their army.
And the Mark of the Prey spell, that gives its victim distracted, so EVERY attack counts as a flanking attack, and the poor sod also gets 3 stacks of sundered defense for good measure.

#2 Animal Kinship, a racial transformation for another 10% extra damage, and +10% crit, while adjacent to an animal or cavalry unit. Well, how many cavalry units are in the game? There is the knight, the dark knight, and all the scout units except the mystic scout. That's it. So this tome is clearly meant to boost scouts!

Talking about cavalry and animals, Call of the Wild gives all of them 1 stack of strengthened (+10% damage, there is a pattern here) and bolstered defense.

Last not least, the Wildspeaker, who can summon a throw-away distraction animal at the start of the fight that can get under the enemies feet, while the Spider Riders kite their prey.
Sadly, she isn't mounted, so she trundles behind in the footslogger army, along with the Warriors and the War Shaman, for extra punch in the harder fights.

I usually ignore the Summon Wild Animals spell, if I want more beasts in my ranks, I can build a Wildlife sanctuary, where I can chose what to get, instead of rolling randomly.

With all those tier 1 units carrying weight, the usual follow up for tier 1 tome is the tome of the horde,

The strong side of the spider goblins is the explosive game start and dominance over the map. The pathfinders have 48 movement, reduced movement costs in forest, swamp and rock, and will sooner or later acquire Raven companions for increased vision range.

And as they can do a lot, they are the only unit I need and build for quite a long time.

They can spread out to explore the map, scoop up all the unguarded stashes, and can deal with most marauder guards by themselves. Their upkeep costs are rather cheap to begin with, and get even cheaper once the chaos affinity kicks in, so I can afford a lot of them.

If I run into a hostile free town, or a grumpy empire, who insists on declaring war, the universal camouflage from shadow walkers means, that I can pillage all their stuff for free and ambush their weak armies in the wild.

With all the gold from raiding and pillaging, it's very affordable to plop down the occassional outpost to claim all the good stuff on the map. It costs 100 gold to start them with a pathfinder instead of only 50 gold from a hero, but then, I only have 1 hero for a good while, meanwhile I have pathfinders everywhere.
Outposts also come with a free watchtower upgrade from the shadowwalker trait, and can serve as quick fuel station via the barbarian rite of alacrity.
And if I put them in the right spaces, any non hostile empires will constantly bump into them to provide me with a ton of grievances, which I can either sell or collect to justify a war.

The hero also comes with a mount, but they "only" have 40 movement points. Also, they'll drag around the free starting units, warrior, shaman, sunderer, and later on one or two wildspeakers, so they are even slower, but they can provide the solid core for fighting anything on the map, that doesnt die to a huge swarm of souped up spider raiders, and the hero has to eventually beef up enough to go dungeon delving and take on the diverse wonders without an overwhelming swarm of spiders for assistance.

[The Former]

Excellent! This is the way. :) Making excellent use of the race builder to create a memorable faction that doesn't fit a clear-cut convention. Spread, wonderful gobbos! Spread and be mighty!

[jephrey64]

Wow, nice! And people complain about customizing, pffft. If you are stealthed, can you pillage without fear of being ganked by defenders?

[The Former]

Originally posted by jephrey64:

Wow, nice! And people complain about customizing, pffft. If you are stealthed, can you pillage without fear of being ganked by defenders?

I would assume the stealth wears off while you're pillaging, but since you can slip away to stealth quickly after, it's much safer.

[jephrey64]

Originally posted by Lockfågel, Paradoxriddaren:

Originally posted by jephrey64:

Wow, nice! And people complain about customizing, pffft. If you are stealthed, can you pillage without fear of being ganked by defenders?

I would assume the stealth wears off while you're pillaging, but since you can slip away to stealth quickly after, it's much safer.

Was asking OP, since he alludes to doing exactly that.

[Aunty Herbert]

If you are in war with someone, you can absolutely pillage without getting spotted right under their nose.
(unless they got the skills or hero ability to see through the camouflage ofc but that is rare enough to really bite you in the *** if you don't pay attention and start pillaging the wrong guy or gal)

I haven't figured out, exactly how the interaction with peaceful neighbors go. I think you can cross into their domain without causing grievances, as you arent "seen" doing that, but once you start breaking stuff it still counts as hostile action.

And yeah, pillaging counts as evil action, even in war. You'll be "truly evil" in no time, so all those neutral or good cities and empires only qualify as food source.

[jephrey64]

Originally posted by Aunty Herbert:

If you are in war with someone, you can absolutely pillage without getting spotted right under their nose.
(unless they got the skills or hero ability to see through the camouflage ofc but that is rare enough to really bite you in the *** if you don't pay attention and start pillaging the wrong guy or gal)

I haven't figured out, exactly how the interaction with peaceful neighbors go. I think you can cross into their domain without causing grievances, as you arent "seen" doing that, but once you start breaking stuff it still counts as hostile action.

And yeah, pillaging counts as evil action, even in war. You'll be "truly evil" in no time, so all those neutral or good cities and empires only qualify as food source.

Eeexcellent. (ties bib around neck)

[Mors Avis]

As I keep saying, people who think the game is shallow or "stale" simply lack imagination.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying out "non-standard" approaches like Aunty Herbert here. (Nice rundown, btw.)

AoW4 has a lot of depth, but it seems like some people just don't get it.

Even some YouTubers, like PotatoMcWiskey, seem stuck in one playstyle (while still experimenting within the confines of that playstyle.)

When you blow the doors open, though, there's a ton of replayability here.

[Schguet]

Originally posted by Archon:

As I keep saying, people who think the game is shallow or "stale" simply lack imagination.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying out "non-standard" approaches like Aunty Herbert here. (Nice rundown, btw.)

AoW4 has a lot of depth, but it seems like some people just don't get it.

Doing weird ♥♥♥♥ that then "somewhat" works isn't making the game any less stale (i don't think it is, but I can easily see why some people think that).

You can play every game in very weird/bad ways and some people enjoy that. It still doesn't make a game any less stale or more variet. A game is varied if there are tons of GOOD options, not when it has 2-3 good options and then tons of mediocre/worse ones.

[PeaceMaker]

Originally posted by Aunty Herbert:

OK, the game tells me over and over that scout units aren't meant for combat, so offf cooourse I want to play a faction based on combat scouts.
And it actually works so far...

Game tutorials usually treat most gamers like they're 10 year olds. "IT'S A SCOUT! DON'T GO ANYWHERE NEAR A FIGHT!!!"

But If you're smart you can easily find alternate roles for units. Scouts can be very useful if you use them with brains.

[Mors Avis]

Originally posted by Schguet:

A game is varied if there are tons of GOOD options, not when it has 2-3 good options and then tons of mediocre/worse ones.

You can take that hard line approach with literally any strategy game. So, what, you're only going to play the "meta" because the herd mentality says so?

Good/bad is also largely subjective. Look at PotatoMcWiskey's tome tier list. The list is based solely on his preference for one type of gameplay/victory condition: domination.

Every tome he lists as bad is a tome that falls outside of this restricted view, and then look even worse when he argues them down without showing how they can be used (with a different goal in mind).

He doesn't play defensively or for the magic/beacon victories, so it ultimately results in a very skewed list.

[Raelic]

What does that web movement do?

And setting aside fiction, wouldn't swinging a weapon while mounted on a spider put it's legs at risk? LOL An enemy would have to be well within the leg span for a fighter on the back of a spider to reach it. And swinging that weapon would probably cut a leg.

[No Leaf Clover]

About camouflage, doesn't the AI see through it anyway ?

[jephrey64]

Originally posted by Raelic:

What does that web movement do?

And setting aside fiction, wouldn't swinging a weapon while mounted on a spider put it's legs at risk? LOL An enemy would have to be well within the leg span for a fighter on the back of a spider to reach it. And swinging that weapon would probably cut a leg.

Yeah, doncha love it when people criticize a game like this in terms of "realism"? But the million other unrealistic features don't occur to them.

[Raelic]

Originally posted by jephrey64:

Originally posted by Raelic:

What does that web movement do?

And setting aside fiction, wouldn't swinging a weapon while mounted on a spider put it's legs at risk? LOL An enemy would have to be well within the leg span for a fighter on the back of a spider to reach it. And swinging that weapon would probably cut a leg.

Yeah, doncha love it when people criticize a game like this in terms of "realism"? But the million other unrealistic features don't occur to them.

Calm down, it just occurred to me because of the other topic talking about two handers on mounts.

Even within fiction it seems weird. In Warhammer all my spider riders have spears or bows, but the spears are pretty short. Even holding the spear by the very butt of the shaft wouldn't reach. LOL Or the spiders have too small legs for carrying the big body.

[Aunty Herbert]

Originally posted by Raelic:

What does that web movement do?

Web isn't a movement option. It's an AoE 1 attack, that, appart from doing damage, has a 60% chance to immobilize everyone hit for 1 turn, range 4.
Which fits quite well to the kiting play style.

The other special mounts are wargs or nightmares, which are better suited for melee not kiting, and the unicorn, which has a once per battle Phase ability. Which is indeed neat but being able to pepper the opposition with nets every fourth turn is way more useful for a swarm attack with kiters.

Originally posted by No Leaf Clover:

About camouflage, doesn't the AI see through it anyway ?

I don't know what the AI sees. I do know that I can pillage with a even single lone scout unit, while the AI 6-unit hero army stands right beneath my pillager and just picks its nose.

Also, unless I misread the UI, I can cross neutral borders with my camouflaged scouts without producing grievances.

BTW: BIIIIG DISCOVERY:
The barbarian Fury unit is listed as footslogging in the encyclopedia. I haven't played with other barbarian cultures before, so I don't know, if this is a flat-out mistake in the encyclopedia, or a result of the special mount physical trait, or any other interaction, but in my game, I can build them as spider cavalry with 48 movement! No fancy forest/rock/swamp walk like the pathfinders, but definitely quick enough to keep up with the fray, and it makes them a valid target for the cavalry buffs.

That's a f-ing big thing, One disadvantage of scouts is, that they arent viable for all the ranged unit buffs. You can only buff them for being tier 1, for being cavalry, with racial buffs or with skills and abilities, that buff the entire army.
Specifically for scouts, there are only the 2 general skills and the Tome of Wind, which can give them flying.

Now Fury is a proper ranged unit! (albeit tier 2), which opens up infinitely more buffs to stack on her!